#8 Eddie Gallagher - Retired Navy SEAL Tried for Murder

Chief Special Operator Eddie Gallagher is without a doubt the most controversial Navy SEALs of modern day history, and quite possibly in the entire history of Naval Special Warfare. Shawn Ryan Show #008 Chief Gallagher explains in depth how teammates under his command at SEAL Team 7 not only accused him of being a war criminal, but relentlessly tried to send him away to life in prison for the alleged murder of an ISIS fighter in Mosul, Iraq. Eddie walks us through his version on what seemed to be the entire Naval Special Warfare community continuously attempting to take his rank, strip him of his SEAL Trident, and ravage his reputation even after proven innocent. His wife Andrea and son Ryan share their first hand accounts of how the NCIS raided their home and strategically wreaked havoc on their family. Keep up to date with Eddie Gallagher's book release date, The Pipe Hitter's Foundation, and Social Media here ⬇️ https://theeddiegallagher.com https://pipehitterfoundation.org Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

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• 0:46Shawn Ryan?

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

• 0:50Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:53Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:54Speaker 01

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

• 1:07Shawn Ryan?

  Welcome back to the Sean Ryan Show. This is the final episode of 2020. And what a hell of a year that's been, huh? Right? Yeah, I think we could all agree on that. To kick things off, once again, thank you for the massive influx of Patreons we've had. Come into Patreon. If you're looking for tactical training, if you're new at the game, and you're just trying to learn how to use your new piece, that's your spot. We keep the bullshit to a minimum. There's a ton of us over there. It's not all about the bling or the most expensive bullshit that you bought. It's just about how to become proficient with whatever tool you picked.

• 1:52Shawn Ryan?

  So, head over to Vigilance Elite Patreon. If that's not your thing, and you don't mind, leave us a little Christmas present. Head over to iTunes. Leave us a one-word review, even if it's just one word. It's not that hard. We'll link it below. That helps us out, gets the show out to where it needs to go, so that everybody can hear it.

• 2:17Speaker 03

  I mean, the shit that we saw in that deployment.

• 2:19Shawn Ryan?

  What was some of the shit that you saw?

• 2:22Speaker 03

  Look, we're trying to recce a spot and I look over and they had, uh, kids heads, little kids heads on the spikes. There was dead bodies all over the place. We had our terp blown in half. I got pulled into the Master Chief of Trade at, um, and said, hey, you're under investigation. They went and raided my house.

• 2:42Speaker 04

  He went to fight, you know, for our country to prevent people from terrorizing, you know, members of the United States. And then they take him and they lock him up on American soil and then they lay siege to his home and terrorize his wife and his children. It's pretty sick. My oldest son opens up the door. They're all screaming at him. They're pointing rifles at my children and they're saying, put your hands up.

• 3:07Shawn Ryan?

  Eight years old with a gun in your face.

• 3:09Speaker 05

  Yeah. And there's like two other people with rifles. They're like the lasers are like right on us.

• 3:14Shawn Ryan?

  So you wound up not guilty?

• 3:16Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 3:17Shawn Ryan?

  And, and what, what, what did that, I mean?

• 3:22Speaker 03

  Bro, the courtroom erupted.

• 3:27Shawn Ryan?

  Our next guest is a former Navy SEAL. He was a sniper. He's a medic. He's a breacher. And he was also tried for murder, only to be found innocent. He's the most controversial Navy SEAL of our times. He's all over the news. He needs no introduction. Without further ado, please welcome 008, Mr. Eddie Gallagher.

• 4:05Shawn Ryan?

  Mr. Eddie Gallagher, welcome to Tennessee. Thank you for having me. It's awesome to be here. Yeah, man. It's a pleasure to have you. So, um, just a quick introduction, you know? So you are probably...

• 4:23Shawn Ryan?

  I would say it's a good chance you are the most controversial name in this in SEAL Team history with actually without a doubt and you know you've been through hell and back. You've had teammates, you know, betray you. You went to court, you know, and wound up not guilty. And, you know, another reason that I think you're so controversial is President Trump stepped in to your case, not once, but twice. And that has not happened since, I think, Richard Nixon.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  The melee massacre.

• 5:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, 1968. And, you know, with the election cycle and how divided the country is right now, it puts you in the limelight even more than you probably wanted to be. So, but, so we're going to talk about all that. But first, it is December, and I give everybody a gift.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  So this is the main reason I came out here.

• 5:32Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I'm saying, dude. We give some good presents.

• 5:35Speaker 03

  Oh, my man. I appreciate it.

• 5:37Shawn Ryan?

  Any guesses?

• 5:39Speaker 03

  Could it be squishy, soft and squishy, guys?

• 5:44Shawn Ryan?

  It might be. It might be.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  I don't want to ruin the the box.

• 5:51Shawn Ryan?

  Ed Calderon took the last one. He's the first guest to ever take the present box.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm like, this is, it's nice.

• 6:01Shawn Ryan?

  So we got the, we got the updated version.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Oh, sick. Heck, yeah.

• 6:13Shawn Ryan?

  Brand new hat.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 6:20Shawn Ryan?

  So that, you know, you are a sniper, you're a medic, you're a SEAL, you're a breacher, but if there's one thing you are not, it's a fucking escape artist.

• 6:38Shawn Ryan?

  So I got you a extra handcuff key, a saw blade that will go through metal, and there's also a get out of jail free card in there from Monopoly. So, you know.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  You know what? My wife will appreciate that for sure.

• 6:54Shawn Ryan?

  Good. You know, keep that in handy, you know, you might need to use that sometime.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  Never out of the realm.

• 7:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  Possibility. Nice. This is, this is it right here.

• 7:05Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  This is what I was waiting for.

• 7:08Shawn Ryan?

  I should have sent you some of those in prison, but we didn't have them yet.

• 7:13Speaker 03

  Dude, I appreciate that, brother.

• 7:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, my pleasure.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  Rocking this hat today. Sure.

• 7:28Shawn Ryan?

  So, uh,

• 7:31Shawn Ryan?

  moving on, you just wrote a book. It's not out yet. I think you said it's still under review.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  Under DOD review.

• 7:38Shawn Ryan?

  It should be releasing soon. Man, The Man in the Arena, From Fighting ISIS to Fighting for Your Own Freedom. And I can't wait to read it. I want to hit some of the topics. I'm hoping that you'll bring some stuff up that's exclusive to this podcast. It's in that book. But when's the release date on that?

• 7:59Speaker 03

  So, right now, like you just said, it's in DOD review. It's out of our hands of when they're gonna be done with it. They've had it for about two and a half months. I'm being optimistic and saying I'm giving it about two more months. So I'm hoping that the release date will sometime be in first quarter of 2021, hopefully. March, you know, April, but we'll, we'll constantly put updates out, but right now it's on preorder. You can preorder it and it comes with a preorder bundle. You go to Eddie Gallagher, book.com and with the preorder bundle, you'll get a challenge coin and a note from myself and Andrea and my wife.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  And then you also get the book a month early before it's actually out before everybody else and it'll be signed by both myself and my wife.

• 8:51Shawn Ryan?

  Awesome. Yeah, I pre-ordered one and I can't wait to get it. If you could just tell the people over at, you know, the Pentagon or whoever's reviewing it to hurry the fuck up, that would be great.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  I'll drop your name over there. Hopefully it'll speed up the process.

• 9:05Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. But,

• 9:10Shawn Ryan?

  you know, your career in the SEAL teams, to be honest with you, seems like up until the very last part, like a fucking dream career. I think you did eight deployments.

• 9:24Shawn Ryan?

  Shit ton of combat time, a lot of trigger time and I don't want to spend too long on your childhood or anything. Actually, I've brother briefed through that. You have some really good podcasts out there already.

• 9:38Shawn Ryan?

  So I just want to start off with SEAL Team Seven Alpha Platoon, your last deployment. And, you know, from what I understand, you have, you have a handful of combat deployments before you ever even showed up there. You have multiple awards with valor, which for you civilians, that means combat trigger time, which you were awarded for.

• 10:10Shawn Ryan?

  You're a sniper, you're a breacher, you're a medic, you got Sailor of the Year, which is a very high honor. You know, that means you're the highest, the, the best SEAL at the SEAL Team. Was that at SEAL Team Seven?

• 10:25Speaker 03

  That was, I got Sailor of the Year for Group One, so all the West Coast.

• 10:28Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Group One, yeah.

• 10:30Shawn Ryan?

  That's a huge deal. Wow. You got your own parking spot.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I got a, I got a funny story about that too, which, uh, well, we can get into later. But yeah, I definitely got my own parking spot and, uh, honestly, I don't know how I made group one say of the year. But you know, somehow I got picked for it. I, you know, I had a, my best friend was my platoon chief at the time. So he, he did a good write up for me, which is how I think it got pushed through, but yeah.

• 10:57Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, whatever. You got it, man. That's cool. And, you know,

• 11:04Shawn Ryan?

  am I missing anything? Oh yeah. You were rated the number one platoon chief, uh, team seven. And you took the worst rated platoon, uh, and made it into the most effective, best, uh, highest rated platoon in team seven and, and what a year, year and a half.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:26Shawn Ryan?

  Um, so, and you were only able to bring one guy with you. Uh, I remember you saying, you know, you wanted to stack the deck and you were trying to bring some friendlies over. And to a team that was complaining about weak leadership and you were told you were only allowed to bring one guy with you and, and, um, so let's kick it off from there. SEAL team seven, Alpha Platoon, you're taking platoon chief.

• 11:57Shawn Ryan?

  Getting ready to lead these men into Mosul.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 12:02Shawn Ryan?

  And their prior deployment, they were bitching about weak leadership and now they have you with, with a magnitude of fucking combat experience.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I, uh, was just coming off, um, a rotation out at, uh, the CRE, crisis response element, which was, uh, in UAE. I just picked up chief and, um, I was given the opportunity to do a platoon chief for the next rotation.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  The master chief of the team told me he was going to, uh, I was in Charlie platoon at the time. And he was going to take me out of Charlie and put me in charge of Alpha Platoon.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  The word around or everybody knew that Alpha team didn't do, Alpha platoon didn't do so hot, uh, the last rotation. Nobody really knew, knew why. I mean, I didn't know any of those guys. But that was pretty much just the word that was put out and it showed, you know, when you saw those guys perform.

• 13:06Speaker 03

  So, once I was given the opportunity to go over to Alpha,

• 13:12Speaker 03

  you know, I didn't, I went over there with no preconceived notions. I wasn't going to like, okay, you guys are a bunch of turds or whatever. It was, everyone was starting off on a clean slate, because I didn't know anybody.

• 13:26Speaker 03

  So I took over, I sort of

• 13:30Speaker 03

  entered that platoon pretty slow, sort of feeling it out.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  The, as you know, like, so when you come back from deployment, you're in professional development phase. That's where everybody goes off to their specialty schools. So the platoon is never really fully together until you start a ULT or workup.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  But while I, while during ProDev, I came up with a training schedule where we, we were going to work on the basics two, three times a week. And I didn't care if the whole platoon was there or not. And I was like, well, you know, do it with what we got right now. And then these guys filter and come back from schools. We'll just, you know, enter the training.

• 14:13Speaker 03

  It was not, nothing sexy about the training. It was all just basic stuff, you know, patrolling, post, pre, pre-op assault procedures, you know, two, four man remembraries, starting at basics, going through. Just getting used to each other, building some team cohesion. Yeah. Seeing how everybody walks. Yep. And the older, the third platooners, at the time, I think, thought that they were

• 14:43Speaker 03

  too good for, you know, that I was taking up their time by doing this basic training. And there was, I didn't know at the time, but there was definitely a lot of grumbling from these third platooners, which is about. There's probably four of them.

• 14:57Shawn Ryan?

  So, let's just take, um, let's just take all the like stuff that you learned about them afterwards and just like first impression, how to go.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Okay, first impression.

• 15:09Shawn Ryan?

  And one, actually, one question I do have is you hit a crossroads before you took platoon chief. And if I understand correctly, and you were gonna go back to green team to screen to go over to become an operator at Dev Group.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:27Shawn Ryan?

  Or the other option was to take your platoon chief slot and you chose your platoon chief slot. Did you know the platoon you were gonna take over before you made that decision?

• 15:39Speaker 03

  No.

• 15:40Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't?

• 15:41Speaker 03

  No, um, I had called up my buddies over at development group, you know, told them my situation, what my options were. I still wanted to go over there. My, my goal was to go screen. Um, they gave me the advice or like, no, take the platoon chief spot. Um, you know, I don't think there was much going on or they weren't doing much at the time. Um, and I had, I was pretty long in the tooth when it come to my years in service. I think I was at sixteen and a half years at that point. I had been putting off doing, picking up chief or, uh, taking any leadership roles just because I wanted to maintain,

• 16:25Speaker 03

  just be a shooter, um, a door kicker. But, um, you know, my time, my time had come and they were like, no, you're gonna do, you know, your next stop is a leadership role. Uh, so I, I decided to take that. Um, you know, but with the, the downfall was, once you do your platoon chief, you can't screen to go over there. I mean, that's like a hard, fast rule. Um, so that was a huge decision for me at that point, but, uh, you know, I made the best one, um, I think for, uh, and it was also good. I made a decision for my family as well. Um, I didn't wanna,

• 16:59Speaker 03

  my wife, you know, Andrea would do whatever I chose to do, but I knew she did not want to move to Virginia Beach. So,

• 17:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  That was, that was a big factor in there too.

• 17:09Shawn Ryan?

  Even after you found out what which platoon you were taking over?

• 17:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I had. So I had no qualms like at all about taking over that platoon. Um, you know, I, I learned early on that I, I'm not going to listen to rumors or whatever of people's reputations or platoon's reputation. Um, I was like, you know what? I'll go in there. I mean, they're all team guys. Um, and I'll, I'll see what I got. Like I said, everybody started off on a clean slate. Um, and honestly, they were a bunch of good, like good dudes, good operators. Um, you know, after we started training together and what I, what I came to found out is like their last leadership and I'm not talking bad about them at all.

• 17:49Speaker 03

  But I mean, I think it was pretty lax. Um, there wasn't a lot of effort put uh into getting better at your skill craft. It was just like, go through the motions and then we'll go on deployment. Um, which to me, that's not, you know, we should always be striving to be better. Uh, and when you start doing that by working on the basics of your craft and then go from there.

• 18:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  So that's like the mentality I came in with. I was like, hey, we're just going to start from the bottom, work our way up. And especially when you have, we had about four new guys, uh, two JOs, um, and then two enlisted new guys. Um, and you know, you're only as good as your slowest guys. So I was like, hey, we gotta bring these guys up to speed as well.

• 18:33Shawn Ryan?

  There was only four new guys in the whole town?

• 18:35Speaker 03

  That's the least amount I've had. Um, and all my other platoons.

• 18:40Shawn Ryan?

  Well, so why were these guys rated the lowest or the, the worst platoon at Team Seven when you showed up?

• 18:46Speaker 03

  What they told me when I, what the platoon told me, um, after I got to know them a little bit, cause I wasn't, I wasn't gonna like pick like, pick at them. Like, why are you guys rated last? But you know, eventually it started coming out and a lot of it was, uh, what they told me was due to their leadership. Um, they blamed it on their LPO, their chief and their OIC, uh, saying that they, you know, none of them got along. And that they didn't have good command and control and you know, it all went downhill from there, I guess. Um.

• 19:19Shawn Ryan?

  Were their tactics savvy?

• 19:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, they weren't, they weren't bad at all. That's and that's what I came to found out. I was like, as soon as we started, you know, working from, from ground up, I was like, these guys are, he's good to go, you know, they just, I think they just needed to have somebody there that's like, this is what our job is, is what entails, and we're gonna work at this. Uh, and by the time we had started to work up, you know, a big example of, of it is we started to work up, um, our first block was CQC. Um, and

• 19:55Speaker 03

  usually what trade at the guys who run CQC will say is like, you know, the first platoon to come through from a team is usually sort of a mess because they have, you know, they're sort of figuring it out.

• 20:07Shawn Ryan?

  Real quick, CQC is close quarters combat. So CQC is when you see a team of operators kick a door in and, and flood a structure. So just for that.

• 20:19Speaker 03

  Yep. So yeah, trade at they, you know, they usually, and I saw it too, like, you know, a platoon isn't fully there yet, you know, they're, they're still getting used to working together. Um, I wanted to cut that out by making sure we busted our ass during Pro Dev. When we showed up, we were pretty much a cohesive, tight unit at that point. And it showed, you know, trade at told me, they're like, you guys look like you've been working together for, you know, two years. Like this is, this is the best we've seen a platoon come for your first block.

• 20:48Shawn Ryan?

  Shit, really?

• 20:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:49Shawn Ryan?

  So you like?

• 20:51Speaker 03

  Which was awesome. I mean, it was the hard work paid off. And I think the guys, you know, whether if they were bitching about it or not, finally saw that they're like, oh, we're actually doing awesome this time, you know, and that, that continued all the way through ULT. Um.

• 21:04Shawn Ryan?

  So how long is Pro Dev nowadays?

• 21:07Speaker 03

  Pro Dev is, it fluctuates, but usually that's still around the six month, five to six month mark, um, from the time you get back from deployment to where ULT starts.

• 21:17Shawn Ryan?

  So in six months and, and ULT or, or, or Pro Dev.

• 21:24Shawn Ryan?

  The guys aren't even all together. So you took a team who's not even all together until, until the actual workup started and they're already fucking going from the worst platoon to operating at the highest level at that particular team.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're getting high remarks from trade at, um, which I don't think they were used to from their last, you know, last go. So they were, you know, they were all riding pretty high, I think, and feeling good, which they should, you know, they put in the work.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  Big thing I did during Pro Dev is I took the new guys and I had them go watch a team going through CQC or and I'd have them come back. And I was like, you guys are putting us through CQC. You're in the rafters and you're going to critique all the older guys as they go through. You know, I had them take notes of everything that trade it was putting out. And I think that was a huge, huge thing. I mean, some of the older guys didn't like it at first because they were like, you know, why are these new guys critiquing us? But it built confidence in the new guys. Um, I think that's how they, they got up to speed real quick. Um, and it also humbled, which, you know, I told them, I was like, you can critique me, you know, the OIC, the chief, everybody down. I was like, there's no, no rank here. This is,

• 22:39Speaker 03

  this is about our craft. So, you know, if you see something, say something, then we'll fix it. Um, so it humbled everybody, you know, guys that thought they were, you know, above it all. Um, and then it also brought the newer guys up.

• 22:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, fuck it. That's goddamn, that's good call. Uh, you just crushed the egos.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:59Shawn Ryan?

  Right at the very beginning.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  And that's why, yeah, I think that's huge is take ego out of the equation and it's a,

• 23:07Speaker 03

  you know, you'll flow better for sure. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, we went through workup. We're fine. Um, workup's about six months. And we had no, no issues during any of that. And I think, you know, you had your kind of minor bumps. Uh, um, I remember one of the, uh, JOs got a safety violation or a couple of safety violations, which is not out of the norm. You know, we, we push the envelope in training.

• 23:37Speaker 03

  But I started noticing like he he get the safety violation and was very like I'm not signing that this isn't right. I shouldn't get that, uh, which I'd never seen before. Um, you know, usually you get handed something by trade day, you're like Roger that sign it and move on. Um, so that was sort of like a first indicator of, okay, you know, the attitudes I was dealing with, but you know, I pulled him aside, gave him a talking to and was like, you're sign this and move on. It doesn't, this has nothing to do with you as an operator. Like as long as you don't make the same mistake, we'll be fine. And so he did reluctantly, but uh, there was definitely a little bit of attitude there. Um, but I, you know, I didn't think anything

• 24:22Speaker 03

  of it. Uh, and we, we ended up finishing workup. Um, we knew from the get go, I knew from the get go that I wanted to go deploy to Missoula. Um,

• 24:35Shawn Ryan?

  When did the team find out?

• 24:37Speaker 03

  Um,

• 24:40Speaker 03

  the end of, end of workup, I believe is when they officially were like, this is where you're going. Um, it's, it was, it's pretty designated beforehand. Like this is where, you know, this troop's going to San Con, this troop's going to Guam, but that can change at any time. So if a troop is messing up or a platoon's messing up and they're like, okay, we're not sending you guys to the hotspot. Like we'll send somebody, no, another platoon that's got their shit wired tight. Um, we're going to send them there instead. So I mean, your, your place can go at any time.

• 25:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  It's sort of, you know, it's competition based, which I think the way it should be.

• 25:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, that's a pretty fucking good spot to go at that time.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I had done my homework, uh, beforehand. Um, I had, one of my best friends was actually out there, well, um, in Missoula at the time, uh, from team five. So I was keeping in pretty good comms with him, sort of getting a, getting a read on like, how it was going to be, you know, by the time when it was going to be our time to deploy. Uh, and it was, it was looking good. Um, you know, they, They hadn't started clearing Mosul yet until the very end of their their team five's deployment and they managed to push through the east side. And we we were going to come in and take the whole west side, which was all urban and pretty massive. So it was it was definitely what we were, you know, what we were wanting.

• 26:07Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, was the team, I mean, pretty fired up about it?

• 26:12Speaker 03

  The, you mean the platoon?

• 26:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, the platoon, I mean, everybody was on board. And I let that I let that know as soon as I took over. That that was my intention was like, we will go to the hotspot wherever that's at, like, that's my goal. I plan on being the best platoon here, going to the best spot on deployment and having a good deployment. And everybody was on board, you know?

• 26:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I would think they'd be pretty fucking stoked to have, you know, they have weak leadership supposedly. And and then and then you come in a shit hot operator with a fucking metric shit ton of combat experience to take it over. They were ranked the worst platoon, now they're the best platoon. And you're going to do exactly what you signed up for, which sounds like, you know, it's another dream deployment.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, it should be, you know, any team guy should be chomping at the bit to go on a deployment like that.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  So, yeah, we got a, we did, we got picked to go. Exactly where we wanted to go, which was awesome. It was ourselves and in another Gulf platoon, which they were from another troop, they paired us together and we were going to fall under Marsoc. Cause they had a control at that point. So we were just going to fall under them and operate under Marsoc.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  So we started before we deployed, I started, you know, communicating with the guys over at Marsoc, just seeing how they were going to operate. And so we just have a good working relationship with them. And it turned out that the ex or the CO that was going to be out there was actually when I was with the Marines was one of my XO. So we knew each other.

• 27:58Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 27:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a small world.

• 28:00Shawn Ryan?

  That definitely helped out a bit.

• 28:02Speaker 03

  Oh, big time. And he was, this guy's awesome. Probably one of the best dudes I've ever been around in the military. I mean, I I pretty much idolized him when I was 20 years old, you know, with the Marines, just a stud.

• 28:17Speaker 03

  But yeah, we um ended up getting, you know, getting to go where we wanted to. Everything was fine. No, no issues. Um, I think, you know, it was the typical issues near the end of um. With, you know, uh, not ULT, but with the next one, uh. Sit. Sit. Uh, you know, near the end, I think you get a bunch of guys constantly working together for a year and a half. Um, there's going to be little gripes here and there. Um, I started noticing some of the guys bitching about my OIC. Uh, you know, that he talks too much during debriefs or like this, just nitpicky little stuff.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  Um, which I wish I would have nipped in the butt right there. Um, but I just took it as like guys just bitching. Yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  Uh, but then uh, we got on deployment and we uh, hit the ground running. Um, you know, I.

• 29:15Speaker 03

  The um, we landed uh, in Urbil and ended up going to, we, we split, platoon split. Uh, went, went to the Mosul dam house. Uh, and then um, I forget the uh. We ended up going to this mansion. I think it was in Shaycon. And um, that's where Team Five had been operating out of their whole deployment. But when we landed, we found out that we weren't even going to be, they're like, nope, you guys are going. Living in Mosul at a FOB and uh, operating out of there. Like right in the middle of Mosul? It's right on the outskirts. Yeah. I mean, so we, we drove out to that FOB to sort of uh, get, get our eyes on it and see what gear we needed to bring.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  And yeah, it was literally on the outskirts of, I mean, they were getting mortared. Um, you know, you could see. The city, you know, burning and getting bombed, which was, you know, not too far away. Yeah. Um, so it was, yeah, it was pretty close. Um, shitty living conditions. Uh, they pretty much just took over. Some houses and made it into a FOB. No, no real security. I mean, there was some, but. It was a, it was just, you know, pretty shitty living and just uh, no showers, no. You know, we had two portageons between.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  You know, three platoons and a whole admin unit out there. Um, but that's, you know, that's what I expected. And I was like, that's whatever. This is what we gotta live in. Yeah, I mean, that shit sucks unless you're fucking getting to do what you want to do. And then it doesn't matter. Exactly. Yeah. And it was, I was like, yeah, this is fine. Um, we ended up moving, you know, into the house that we were gonna live in and it was, it was shitty. It was like it's some squatters had been living there for me. There was feces everywhere. So we cleaned that out and I could tell, um, some of the guys were like, what the fuck? Like pissed that we were living in conditions like that.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  But it was like, this is, this is the way it is, you know? Um, and it's not like in conditions that we haven't worked in in the past, you know, doing VSO and all that stuff like that.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  We definitely, uh, hit the ground running, but it was like a huge learning curve. Um, we were doing AAA, which is advised assistance in a company, um, which I had never done before in that capacity. Um, we got introduced to our partner force then pretty much the night before we went out. What were they like? They were E R D, Emergency Response Division. Um, they were a pretty, they're a pretty massive partner force. I don't know the, I remember the exact number. Iraqis? Yeah, they're Iraqis. But they were not vetted. Um, so there was a mix mash of Iraqis with a lot of Iranian influence. Oh shit.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  Um, so we were told, you know, to keep eyes in the back of your head the whole time. Um, you know, you can't really trust them fully. Um, but honestly, like I met their leadership and, um, they, I was fine. You know, it was good to go. They were all about getting after it. Um, they're, they were motivated to go clear. Um, which is wasn't, I wasn't used to seeing that. And, you know, I think a lot of times your partner forces, you sort of got to work, uh, work at it to get them to, to work. These guys were ready to go. Um, we were told.

• 32:52Speaker 03

  Pretty much, you know, you're gonna go out with them and advise and assist in the company and that was pretty much like it and you're like, okay.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  And we were also told we were not going to be allowed within eight hundred meters of the frontline of frontline trace of where they were. How many of these guys were there?

• 33:14Speaker 03

  ERD probably, uh,

• 33:18Speaker 03

  five, six hundred. Five or six hundred? And how many of you guys are there?

• 33:26Speaker 03

  Well, just our platoon was twenty four and then we had two other platoons there. You split them in half? Yeah, so each of us, each platoon had their own Iraqi officer, which whatever rank they wanted to give themselves. But we would coordinate with them and then they would tell the guys in the front lines, like who were actually the ones clearing houses and pushing through the city of like, hey, this is where you should go or this is what you should be doing. Holy shit, dude. I was expecting you to say like twenty, thirty guys, five or six hundred fucking. And that's, you know, I could be like strong over estimating that by just by a little bit, but you know, it was hundreds of them.

• 34:10Speaker 03

  So you weren't really like with the actual guys themselves up on the front lines. You were back with the, whatever liaison they had with you. And our, our main mission was to go out there and support them through there. We had, we all carried ATACs on us and we could, you know, we, the ERD, like one out of every five of them had a beacon on them that we could follow them on our, see them on our ATACs and know their positions. You know, so we'd be like, okay, that fire team's there, this fire team's there. And that, not that that worked all the time. So an ATAC, can you describe that for? An ATAC is pretty much just like a handheld device, you know, looks like an iPhone.

• 34:52Speaker 03

  And it pretty much gives you a clear picture of the battlefield. And you can have your position, your friendly positions on there and also, you know, the allies or the partner force that you're with, you can track them. So that way. When you're dropping bombs or making movements, you know, you're you're uh, there's a clear. Yeah. Um. It's like real time. Yeah. Real time like drone feed looks like, right? Yeah. I didn't have that shit when I was in. No, that's I was the first time we we used it as well, uh, but we were we we boned up on it pretty good before we uh, got out there. So each, pretty much each operator had one um, in the platoon and ATAC uh.

• 35:37Speaker 03

  So um, the first, like I said, the first couple of weeks were like a learning curve. Um, we, I would brief the CO, Marsoc, every each night, like this is where I'm going tomorrow. Um, they would approve it, um, long as it was like eight hundred meters behind the front line. And then we would, I would usually pick a secondary and tertiary spot, just in case that didn't work out. Um, but the uh, first couple of weeks, we went out there and um, it was a uh, it was a crazy sight. Um. It reminded me of like something out of Braveheart to where

• 36:15Speaker 03

  we got out there, the Iraqis hadn't started clearing yet. They were like um, lined up in a line, vehicles, tanks. And then all, you know, mortars were just like coming in from ISIS, just landing all over the place. And uh, I was like, okay, what's the game plan here? And they were like, go. And they just started driving into the city and, you know, IEDs going off and you're just sort of watching it. Holy shit. We were just like, okay, this is pretty, pretty legit. Yeah. Um. But then uh, we, what we came to find out is, you know, we would set up in this position. Um, and I, at first I had the whole platoon out, you know, so we were going out with.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  Six mat Vs, um, and we'd all set up in this position and you know, there was mortars going off everywhere. And ISIS would fly drones over and so they would, they flew a drone over your position. They would just get your grid and next thing you know, mortars are coming in, you know, near you. So myself and my OIC Jake Portier, we decided, we're like, you know what? This doesn't make any sense to have the whole platoon out here. We're, we have too much of a big footprint here and somebody's going to get, you know, hit with a mortar one day. Uh, if we just have this, have everybody go out. So we decided to split the platoon up. Um, I would send, I'd sent half platoon back to the mansion and Mosul dam house.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  So they could just chill, rest and refit for a week. And then, uh, I kept half platoon out with us and they would rotate week on, week off. So that way guys were able to go back and get a break. And you know, we're getting a fresh set of guys, um, every other week that we're ready to go.

• 38:05Shawn Ryan?

  Real quick, uh, just kind of like paint the picture a little bit. Do you have an estimation of how many ISIS fighters were in Mosul at that time?

• 38:17Speaker 03

  Thousands.

• 38:18Shawn Ryan?

  Thousands?

• 38:18Speaker 03

  I, I would say, I mean, they were, yeah. I mean, it was, I, so Mosul was like,

• 38:28Speaker 03

  I don't know, three or four times the size of San Diego.

• 38:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  So, I mean, they had years, like three or four years to fortify that place. Um, waiting for exactly what was going on, which is us trying to come in there. Uh, so they, I mean, it was, it was pretty crazy to watch. They had intricate tunnels dug all over the city that went for miles.

• 38:51Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 38:52Speaker 03

  They had, um,

• 38:55Speaker 03

  I've never seen so many IEDs in all my deployments. I mean, they had them everywhere. Every parked vehicle, you might as like it was a V bed. They had it ready to blow. They had V bed staged, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of V bed staged all throughout the city. Holy shit. We would push through and we usually around noon, we called it V bed Palooza. They would just start coming out of the woodwork and you just see them blowing up left and right. And you know, maybe like 10, 12 a day, you would watch go off. What were they targeting? So they would target the partner forces. So as the partner forces are clearing through,

• 39:41Speaker 03

  ISIS has drone, you know, it was like drone wars in the air. There was drones all over the place and they would have a guy sitting in the V bed, which he is welded in there. He might, might have been in there for days, just waiting. And then they activate them through comms or like turn your car on. And this guy can't halftime, they can't see, you know, everything is, um, looks like a Mad Max vehicle. They have plates welded on to every, every piece of the car. And so they're directing them through comms, you know, back up. Go forward, take a right, you know, they're going slow and then they'd be like, okay, put your foot on the gas and now blow yourself up.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  And they, you know, target, you know, they'd be guiding them into wherever the partner forces were or us if they saw us. We, we came pretty close to one. Had one go off about 20 yards from us. Damn, these guys got pretty high tech. Yeah. It was definitely a new environment for me because it was, it was definitely like a 360 and you know, you're looking up in the air. And not only down at the ground for IEDs, but you're now you're looking up in the air for drones because as soon as a drone flies over, you're like, okay, here come the mortars or they have our position.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  So it was a, it was different. Yeah. But it, you know, it was something that we just adapted to along the way.

• 41:10Speaker 03

  And that's when, uh, after about two weeks of doing the rigmarole of going out there, picking a spot, getting mortared, you know, drone would fly over, we would take mortars until we're like, okay, this isn't safe anymore. We're going back. Uh, it became pretty frustrating because it didn't feel like we were making that big of a dent. Or having that big of an impact.

• 41:35Speaker 03

  At that time, all we were doing is just launching a Puma and reporting enemy movement.

• 41:41Speaker 03

  So me and the OIC talked and I was like, hey, um, I'm pretty frustrated with the way things are going. He was too. I was like, let's take more of an offensive posture here. I was like, this is what, let's split the group up and we go out. I was like, we'll go pick our spot. Um, and then we'll go wreck a, a good building that we can get into and that we were able to engage from. Uh, and so he was like, yep, that sounds like a good idea. How were you wrecking? Were you? So we would go out to our spot, designated spot, and then I would take myself, uh, probably three other dudes from platoon along with, um, maybe three or four partner force guys that I thought were good to go. Um, and we would

• 42:26Speaker 03

  go on a little patrol not too far from, you know, the spot we're at, you know, we'd probably,

• 42:33Speaker 03

  you know, two, 300 meters. On foot? Were you guys garmed up like the locals or were you? There was no. Kitted out? No, we were kitted out, um, patrolling just like, you know, if you're in the open, it was daylight.

• 42:48Speaker 03

  But we were pretty far like behind the front lines. So we're still 800 meters. So it's not, we weren't going into enemy territory, but you always, there's always that chance. Yeah. Because the front lines would fluctuate, you know? Yeah. ISIS might take a huge step forward one night and we show up the next day and be like, holy shit, we just lost all this ground overnight. Yeah. So you saw that?

• 43:12Shawn Ryan?

  And there's fucking thousands of them.

• 43:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:13Shawn Ryan?

  Throughout the city, so it'll be nothing for, you know, somebody to fucking skate by.

• 43:18Speaker 03

  Exactly. I mean, and that's the other thing is when we drove in every day. There was, I mean, hordes, hordes of women and children and men leaving, fleeing the city. So we're literally driving through hundreds and hundreds of people. You know, and you don't know which one, who's ISIS and who's not.

• 43:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Speaker 03

  It was, it was chaos. Um. But yeah, so we started splitting up the element, like the elements. So I would take a rec element up, pick a good spot. That had good advantage point of the battlefield. Come back, grab all the weapons, uh, Gustav javelins, whatever else we needed. And then we would just send, set up an OP in there for the day. Um, it ended up working out really well. Um, we started seeing really good effects, good effects from doing that. The partner forces were loving it, um, because we were actually engaging, um, with them, with our organic weapons and not just the air.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  And what I came to realize is the, the partner forces would, uh, clear to a certain point until, and if they were taking, you know, gunfire, then they would just stop. And they're like, we're not moving, um, until something, they would just like blow this whole block up, drop bombs on it, which we're not, you know, like, we're not doing that.

• 44:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  But they're like, well, then we're, we're not moving. And so what I found out is I'd go up, like, okay, where are you taking sniper fire from? And they're like, oh, that building, you know, okay, cool. Look at it and like, all right, third, third level, like, yeah. Jab, you know, shoot a javelin at it. We jab it and they would all start cheering and start clearing.

• 45:03Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. So, uh, javelin's a kind of, it's a missile launcher for those of you that don't know.

• 45:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:09Shawn Ryan?

  So they're asked, so your partner force, your men are taking, uh, they're getting engaged. They're getting shot at, they're getting fucking blown up. They're asking you to blow up a city block and you say no, which, so you're showing restraint there.

• 45:25Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:25Shawn Ryan?

  For somebody that's, you know, accused of being a, uh, Merciless killer. Your guys are getting fucking killed and you're telling them that you can't, you can't do what they want you to do because innocent people are gonna fucking die.

• 45:41Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah.

• 45:42Shawn Ryan?

  So, yeah.

• 45:43Speaker 03

  Um, but once we were able to engage with the javelins, which are, uh, you know, pretty precise and accurate, um, they, they loved it and they would just start moving forward. So that's how we sort of kept them going every day. Um, and the, you know, the command, Marsaw Command was like loving it and you know, we'd come back and they're like, you guys are kicking ass like this is, this is great, you know, and the fact that we were requesting to go out, not requesting, but we were like, we're going out every day. Um, we could have taken, so we had three platoons and we could have worked in shifts to where you have, we'll go out one day, two days off. Um, but me and my OIC were like, no, we want to go out every day. Um, this is

• 46:29Speaker 03

  a golden egg of a deployment. We want to get every, every little bit out of it we can. Um,

• 46:35Shawn Ryan?

  So you were tied with?

• 46:38Shawn Ryan?

  With your OIC?

• 46:38Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, me and him had a really, really good relationship. Um, he's just an awesome dude. Um, really good officer, but also he was not, uh, how to say this politely, like, not like every other O where he thinks, you know, like I'm, I'm the officer and I'm in charge. Like he really like, we bounce stuff off each other and he listened to me on a lot of things and was like, okay, you know.

• 47:08Shawn Ryan?

  He's receptive.

• 47:09Speaker 03

  Yes, big time. Um, and so, yeah, we, that was, that was, thank God, me and him got along. Um, and I think that's what really like helped us move forward through that deployment, um, because we were on the same page the whole time. Um.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  The uh, so we started implementing those tactics, um, you know, breaking up and doing the recce, recce piece and um, we started getting deeper into the city. Um, and it got a little more harrier the deeper we got in. Um, the frontline, like I talked about earlier, started really getting skewed a lot, um, because the closer we got to Old Mosul, which is the little, little city inside of Mosul, which is like a, the oldest city there is there. Um, you know, it's from biblical times.

• 48:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:09Speaker 03

  They had that place locked down, like that was their ISIS's like, called like the beehive, you know, then. So when we started bumping up against that, that's when the partner forces were like, we're getting, I mean, they were getting swacked left and right. Um,

• 48:23Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck.

• 48:25Speaker 03

  So it, and it got a little hairy for us sometimes too. We had our uh, we had our Terp was um, blown in half or uh, by some kind of rocket that was shot at us. Um, and uh, it just got, it started getting a little too,

• 48:47Speaker 03

  too dangerous, I guess. Um, and we made the command, made the call, Marsoc was like, okay, we're going to switch um, fobs and we're gonna go all the way to the north end of Mosul and start clearing from that way. Um, because either like the partner forces aren't gonna, they're not going any farther. Um,

• 49:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 03

  So,

• 49:07Shawn Ryan?

  Was it just uh, was it just Team Seven Alpha Platoon and a Marsoc element?

• 49:13Speaker 03

  And uh, Team Seven Golf Platoon.

• 49:16Shawn Ryan?

  So that's what, maybe like 50 fucking people?

• 49:19Speaker 03

  Well, you also have, um, you also had uh, other partner forces out there. It's dude, it was, it was a hodgepodge of, so we had ERD, um, which we were partnered up with. You had um, oh, I forget the, the name of the other one. It was like uh,

• 49:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I forget their name, but they were actually a vetted group, which NSW was in charge of. So there was another platoon, a Bravo platoon, but they were working under a whole different, they were working under NSW. So they were taking a whole different section of Mosul. So you got to think like, you know, there's the whole west side of Mosul. I mean, it's massive. So you had Bravo platoon working with their partner force here, us on the other side, working with ours. And then you had a contingent of like other random Iraqi forces like Fedpol, which is their police unit, I guess. They're also clearing. So what ended up happening is we were clearing through and we just started converging on

• 50:27Speaker 03

  each other. How was the communication? It was good. Like with Bravo, we, we would, you know, talk to them while we're out there. And we're like, hey, this is, you know, this is where we are. This is where you guys are. Cool. There was never any problem between American forces now with the partner forces like Fedpol, ERD, and whoever Bravo was with, I forget their name. That got super hairy. You know, our Gulf platoon got lit up pretty bad by Fedpol. Just driving in one day, the whole, all their Humvees started getting shot at. You know, we'd have green

• 51:08Speaker 03

  on blues almost every other day, like not actual green on black. They weren't shooting us, but they would shoot at us because it was just, it was hard. You could try to mitigate it as much you can, but eventually, you know, once we started converging on each other, it got real, pretty hairy. So that's, I think the decision to move to the north was, was a good one because it sort of opened it back up again. So we packed up within 48 hours and moved to the north side of Mosul and started clearing from there. That is actually the first day, the first day we started clearing from there is the day of the, the incident that became so famous. We

• 51:58Speaker 03

  We uh, you know, it's SOP, we had a pre designated, pre designated spot. Um, we went out and we were actually a lot closer that day to the uh, enemy than we had been. It was probably, we were probably like three hundred, three hundred, four hundred yards from them, from this uh, village that they were. There was this little village, or a town, or whatever you want to call it, right before you get into the main urban part of Mosul, that we had to go through and we were told that ISIS was, you know, they've been using that village and they're, they were all in there. Um, and sure enough, we showed up that morning, probably around six thirty seven in the morning.

• 52:39Speaker 03

  Um, picked a pretty good spot behind some walls where the uh, matbies that the uh, turds could see right over the wall. And yeah, it was like a turkey shoot. They were, I mean, they were all out in the open, just walking back and forth between huts.

• 52:54Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 52:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, we waited, we sat there and watched them probably for about ten, fifteen minutes, waiting for the, our partner force to start actually clearing through, um, which, you know, typical Iraqi fashion, they were just taking their time. Um, so we decided like, alright, we're just gonna start engaging and we probably engaged these guys for an hour. Um, I mean, it was, it was awesome. Everybody, you know, fifties were going off, snipers, jabs, um, and we pretty much decimated most of the, most of the guys in there, uh, that village before ERD started clearing.

• 53:31Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 53:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:33Shawn Ryan?

  How many, like, how many guys do you think there were in there?

• 53:37Speaker 03

  In that village total, probably

• 53:41Speaker 03

  sixty, maybe.

• 53:43Shawn Ryan?

  Sixty guys and how many of you?

• 53:45Speaker 03

  Uh, there was, at the time. Probably like thirteen or fourteen of us.

• 53:50Shawn Ryan?

  And the partner force was.

• 53:52Speaker 03

  Partner force.

• 53:52Shawn Ryan?

  Lolly gagging ass around.

• 53:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, they were just back there waiting, you know, as we're engaging.

• 53:58Shawn Ryan?

  How much do you think you thinned them out before they got there?

• 54:00Speaker 03

  Oh, big time. We thinned out most of them before they even started clearing and we let them know. I think that's what they were waiting for, you know.

• 54:07Shawn Ryan?

  We finally were like. Why didn't you guys do all the dirty work?

• 54:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 03

  Which is fine. We were like, yeah.

• 54:13Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck it, we'll do it.

• 54:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's uh, thanks.

• 54:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:18Speaker 03

  But they, they started clearing through, um, really had no issues. Um, because everybody was pretty much dead.

• 54:27Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, do you think you, you guys killed what seventy-five percent of them, eighty percent?

• 54:34Speaker 03

  I'd probably say eighty percent or even higher, maybe ninety percent of them. Cause they really had no, they, they went through that village pretty quick.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  We had a hellfire at a couple of buildings. And actually the war, one of the buildings that we hellfired, um, is where they dragged this ISIS fighter out of the partner force as they cleared through. Dragged him out and brought him back to us. And that's where the whole debacle happened.

• 55:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, uh, I know I said we weren't going to talk about the, uh, the controversy, but you know, I don't understand. I watched this documentary called The Gallagher Effect and uh, put out by somebody on the New York Times and they basically paint this fucking ISIS fighter like some little innocent little fucking kid.

• 55:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:23Shawn Ryan?

  And you know, one thing I just don't understand how

• 55:29Shawn Ryan?

  half of the nation can be so up in arms, even if you did stab the fucking kid, you know, to death. I mean, here's a journalist ripping you apart when.

• 55:43Shawn Ryan?

  Two thousand fourteen. They've got journalists on.

• 55:49Speaker 03

  Getting bad.

• 55:49Shawn Ryan?

  World TV getting their heads like literally sawed off on fucking television. And then they paint this fucking kid like he's some little innocent. The poor little ISIS kid.

• 56:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's pretty disgusting.

• 56:02Shawn Ryan?

  They put people in cages and burn them alive.

• 56:05Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:05Shawn Ryan?

  You know?

• 56:06Speaker 03

  I mean, the shit that we saw in that deployment too, not to like. Whatever sidetracked, but dude, I. Haven't seen anything like that in any, any of my other deployments. Um, you know, you always see like the atrocities of war and.

• 56:23Speaker 03

  Stuff, you know, innocent people get killed. It's just that's war, um, you know, civilian casualties on both sides.

• 56:32Shawn Ryan?

  What is some of the shit that you saw that these guys were doing?

• 56:37Speaker 03

  Um, I think one of the first things I saw, um. Going through, we ended up pushing into this neighborhood and, uh. We were driving through.

• 56:50Speaker 03

  And, uh, they had a, like a playground.

• 56:54Speaker 03

  In the middle. Of these like apartments and they had like this fence going around it. And I remember getting out and like walking up. Look, trying to wreck your spot and I look over and they had, uh. Kids heads. Little kids heads on the spikes. Just. Sitting there, um. And women too. There was dead bodies all over the place. So I, I don't like, it's hard to even.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  Put you like, I tell people that and they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, but like, no, they, nobody was cleaning up the dead as we were pushing through. So there was, you're just like walking over either piles of bodies that they just pile up. Or they were just scattered through the streets.

• 57:42Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck, man. So they were cutting little kids heads off and sticking them on a fucking pole.

• 57:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, and then at certain points, we would be, uh. In certain areas where there was like a field or some kind of open space between us and ISIS, you know, and it'd be, they'd probably be like eight hundred thousand meters away. And they would send hordes of women and kids running over the through the field towards us. And then just mow them down halfway because they were trying to draw us out or our partner force out to the open to come help them, which a couple of times they succeeded, you know, the partner forces, they would try and run out and help these, you know, women and kids and then they ended up getting smoked too.

• 58:33Speaker 03

  But yet again, you you held restraint. Yeah, it's well, there's nothing I mean, and it's, you know, it's one thing to like, talk about it or, you know, like, you know, I see, it's funny to see like, uh, reports on Mosul now, or they do like these documentaries and they they do like, oh, there was horrific stuff that happened, but they don't go into detail about like what actual horrific things they were doing. And it's another thing to actually be there and see it going on. Yeah. And, um. That's tough, man. I mean. It does. It it emotion gets involved. Um. You know, you're just like, how can people be doing this to? And you can't fucking do anything.

• 59:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can't. You just sit there and you're like, okay, well, we'll wait until we can push forward. Um, they would also, they were using our ROEs against us. Um, they, uh, would chain civilians into, um, buildings, you know, chain them along the walls inside. And they would put silhouettes on the roof of like with weapons. So then ISR would see it and be like, oh, there's two dudes down there and we'd end up dropping on the building. And then they would come out and use that as propaganda against us. Like, oh, you see what they just did? Uh, you know, it's one big like evil game they were playing. Um. That's hard to do, man, to watch people get mowed down. I mean.

• 59:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, it sucks. Um, so.

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's it's crazy to think, you know, after this whole thing and like how much the media, half the media, most of it tried to empathize with this ISIS fighter. And, you know, I think NPR just recently went, they sent a team out to Iraq. And they interviewed this ISIS fighter's family. They found him and they were like, you know, trying to be sympathetic. And even the ISIS fighter's dad in the interview, which I was watching, and was like, yeah, he joined ISIS. I told him not to. Like, that's it, you know? It's uh, it's pretty black and white.

• 1:00:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:43Speaker 03

  But yeah, the uh, to see like you were talking about, see the media just try and twist it.

• 1:00:50Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'm just trying to show like, you want to talk about fucking restraint, you know, that's, that's, that's hard to watch. And I mean, I can relate to it. One of my biggest regrets is I was sitting in a sniper hide and we were supposed to be killing anybody that blew up a fucking convoy and it was in front, I was set up in front of a school with my partner and we were all gillyed up and these kids fucking came down and got out of school. They were probably about 10, 12 fucking years old and pulled out a cell phone and, you know, we fucking called it in. And they were like, don't fucking do anything.

• 1:01:31Shawn Ryan?

  And you know, that sounds weird like, oh, who gives a shit? They had a cell phone. Well, back in oh, four, oh, five, nobody had fucking cell phones unless they were getting ready to call something that was going to detonate a bomb and sure as shit, you know, I saw a fucking convoy get blown up and

• 1:01:49Shawn Ryan?

  didn't do anything about it.

• 1:01:50Speaker 03

  And that's, that's why I don't think people get is like, they think civilians maybe think war is black and white. It's gray. It's all gray. That's, that's where you have to live. And you had to make this, you had to make decisions in that gray. You know, it's nothing.

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  You know, like you'd see guys like on this deployment or even Afghanistan guys with ICOM or that's considered a weapon, you know, because they're communicating, but then it's on you as a shooter to make that choice like, okay. Is this guy actually doing something on that ICOM or, or is he just somebody else? And sometimes that decision.

• 1:02:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Speaker 03

  You know, it can be right or wrong, but as long, as long as you can live with it, um, I think you can do a better night knowing that you did the right thing, then.

• 1:02:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  You should be fine. Uh.

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. So yeah, the, um, going back to this, they brought the ISIS fighter in, um.

• 1:02:50Shawn Ryan?

  They brought him to you or you went to him?

• 1:02:52Speaker 03

  No, they brought him to us.

• 1:02:53Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:02:54Speaker 03

  And it was very like confusing and chaotic when they brought him back. Um. The, I was actually in another spot, so I had moved, once they had cleared through that village. I had, uh, moved my vehicle and another one, um, to the flank, sort of set up like an L to cover them as they went through. Uh, so I was probably like 400 yards away from the main element and, uh, it came over the radio that. Hey, I think they, they have an ISIS fighter here. Um, I was like, all right, check. I was like, well, they're done clearing. I was like, we'll, we'll come back there. Uh, went back and, um, you know, walked up, there was a crowd around him.

• 1:03:38Speaker 03

  Uh, a lot of guys from my platoon and a lot of Iraqis were around this guy. I walked up and he looked like he was on death's door. Um. Just out of it. Um, man, I was like, hey, get the med bag and we'll start treating this dude. Um, and I wasn't to be clear, like I didn't give a shit whether this guy lived or died.

• 1:04:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03Speaker 03

  It was more of like, this guy's here. What are we doing? You know, I, I can't just execute this guy. That's not the right. I mean, you know, I, I would have, I didn't, it wouldn't have mattered to me, but I was like, get the med bag and we'll, we'll work on him until he dies. Um. And that's pretty much it.

• 1:04:21Shawn Ryan?

  Did you come over comms and say, everybody stand off, he's mine?

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:04:25Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't?

• 1:04:26Speaker 03

  No. I, I said something to the effect of like, yeah, just keep him there and we'll come back.

• 1:04:33Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:04:35Speaker 03

  The, yeah, that whole thing, they, they somehow coordinated two, three of them and came up with that same line. Um, but then it was just whatever. They're ridiculous. The, it was like two or three of the guys in trial said, you know, like, oh, he said this, but then even their buddies were like, oh, I didn't hear him say that. So it's, it's all convoluted. Um, but I did say, you know, hold him there. We're coming back. Um, cause I wanted to see what we had. Uh, the guy was pretty much on death's door. So I got a med bag, uh, walked up and, um,

• 1:05:16Speaker 03

  I started assessing him. Um, the, the Iraqi general was actually putting him back on the, they brought him in a, on a hood of a Humvee and they were throwing him back on the hood of the Humvee. Um, just like willy nilly. I was like, hey, we'll, we'll treat him. We'll take care of him. And he's like, okay. Uh, left him there. I assessed him. He had been, like he had a, either a shrapnel or gunshot wound to the left leg and he definitely, he wasn't breathing properly. So, uh, I did a crike. Criked him. Um, criked him, no issues. Uh, got misting in the tube. And then by that point, two or the other medics in my platoon had come over and started assisting.

• 1:05:57Shawn Ryan?

  Real quick, just for the, the audience and the listeners, a crike is when you cut a hole in somebody's neck so that they can breathe.

• 1:06:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:07Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, you know, and when I was, uh, kind of doing my research and they said that you had stabbed this kid to death, this poor little ISIS.

• 1:06:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:17Shawn Ryan?

  Young boy. Uh, they said you stabbed him to death. And then I found out that you criked him. And I was wondering if they spun.

• 1:06:27Shawn Ryan?

  Spun that because it would technically.

• 1:06:31Speaker 03

  No, they they didn't use that. No, they they legitimately.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  Craig Miller, who was my LPO lied and said I legitimately took my knife out and started just going to town on this guy's neck and found everybody, which is a complete lie.

• 1:06:51Speaker 03

  I cracked him and then the two other medics were there. I just got up and we at that point Iraqi partner force was like all circled around us. And I looked up and they had phones. So I went and got the general and I was like, hey, back these guys up and get them out of here and tell them stop taking pictures of us because they were infamous for they would take pictures of everything over there. And we were like, hey, we don't want we didn't want to be any of the pictures. So he did so. He was like, you know, back off, clear everybody out. I went back and at that point, they had already done two chest tubes on them. One was jacked up on the right

• 1:07:31Speaker 03

  side. They messed that one up, but on the left, they got a chest tube in them. And they just started doing other procedures on them. So at this point, he was pretty much like a live tissue lab. And so guys were who were interested in becoming a medic, one of the new guys came up and were like, yeah, go ahead and do an I O. Like, it's pretty much like a pig lab at this point. And no, there's no issues on what was going on. Like, nobody was like, hey, this is, you know, I'm bothered by this. Everyone was on board. And the one of the new guys started giving him a interosseous in the chest plate to try and get some fluids in them. They tried to

• 1:08:11Speaker 03

  give him an IV. He had no veins, so they went I O. And at that point, I had walked away again, went and talked to the O I C. He was just like, what's going on with that guy? I'm like, he's, he's done. You know, he'll be dead here or he is dead already. He's like, okay. He was, you know, busy talking to the J TAC at that point. And there was nothing going on at this point. So I think that's another thing. There was no firefight. It was pretty much they cleared through that village and it was they were done for the day.

• 1:08:43Speaker 03

  So I had walked back and Corey Scott, who was at the head of the patient or the ISIS fighter, not the patient, but uh, he was like, yeah, he's done. He's dead. I was like, okay, are you sure? He's like, yeah. I was like, okay, I got on my knees. I flicked him in the eye. No response.

• 1:09:05Speaker 03

  Like I gave him like a sternum or a side rub, nothing. And then uh, this is where the story becomes, what it became is I took my knife out. I just like poked him in the side, didn't break any skin, jabbed him, no response, put it back. And that was it.

• 1:09:24Shawn Ryan?

  So the reason he's doing that for the listeners is it's just, you're just confirming that he's dead.

• 1:09:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:30Shawn Ryan?

  You know, sternum rub, somebody's gonna, they're gonna move. An eye tap, you're gonna see fucking their eyeball move, you know, and same with a knife. You're gonna get some kind of a reaction.

• 1:09:41Speaker 03

  Kind of response. So yeah, I did, you know, three different things and I just wanted to make sure this dude was dead and we're not like, leaving this guy barely, barely breathing. So yeah, he was done. And that was uh, pretty much it. We um, you know, all got up and I requested, we actually requested to go back to base because we were sitting around doing nothing. Um, we were told to stay out there for the remainder to like, couple more hours just to see if the partner force would clear anymore. But we, we knew the partner force enough by then and we were like, they're not, they're not moving the rest of the day. They're done. Um, but we stayed out there and uh,

• 1:10:26Speaker 03

  that's when uh, you know,

• 1:10:29Speaker 03

  board team guys, um, were all sitting around. They started messing with the body, uh, which would, I mean, it was no, nobody was thinking anything of it at the time.

• 1:10:37Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 1:10:39Speaker 03

  My OIC came up and was like, hey, since we have time, when I do anything, do you want to reenlist? Because I was planning on reenlisting that deployment at some point. I, I, just like other deployments I've been on, I reenlist, I'd reenlisted out in the field. Uh, so I was like, yeah, let's, we do it now. We got time. So we did a short little reenlistment ceremony, not over the body, not like the body, body wasn't even part of it. It was in the vicinity with, along with three other bodies that were off to the left. We were at.

• 1:11:13Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, that sounds like there's fucking bodies everywhere in the entire city. So where the hell are you even gonna have reenlist out there where there's not a fucking body?

• 1:11:20Speaker 03

  It wasn't like, yeah, the body wasn't even an issue or a thought.

• 1:11:23Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 1:11:24Speaker 03

  Reenlistment thing. So I reenlisted. And uh, got done with that. And. Guys started coming down and they were taking pictures. They're doing stupid pictures with the body. You know, onesie twosies coming down, just pretty much fucking off.

• 1:11:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:46Speaker 03

  You know, didn't think anything of it at the time. And then I even went over there and took a couple of pictures with them, just fucking around.

• 1:11:54Speaker 03

  And uh, the started, a couple of guys started flying the drone. They were playing games like, you know, low they get, you know, drone to the body and. Bounce it up and down and all, all this saying it right now, sounds pretty fucked up, but at the time it's like, nobody, you know, we were just like, whatever, we're just waiting here.

• 1:12:14Shawn Ryan?

  I, I, I think what people don't fucking understand is, is no human is supposed to experience this kind of shit.

• 1:12:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:22Shawn Ryan?

  And. When the, when that shit becomes the fucking daily norm.

• 1:12:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, you don't think anything of it. And that's, it's hard to explain to people like you're in a completely different mindset over there, you know.

• 1:12:36Shawn Ryan?

  Well, what people don't understand too, is the fucking comedy, like, and I'm, you know, that's how, look, go to a firehouse. Go to a police station, go to a fucking SEAL team, go to a marine base. And when, when humans. Deal with tragedy, tragedy on, on a regular basis, the only fucking coping mechanism that you have is humor.

• 1:13:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:00Shawn Ryan?

  And that humor gets fucking dark, but the important thing is you're finding. Something, you know what I mean? To, to, to kind of keep your fucking mind going.

• 1:13:12Speaker 03

  Exactly. Yeah. If you can't laugh about it, then you know, have, have fun while you're in chaos, then you're gonna be pretty miserable.

• 1:13:21Speaker 03

  So yeah, guys were fucking off and then it was time to go home. You know, we went back to base.

• 1:13:29Speaker 03

  I went, came back, debriefed the day. The body wasn't brought up during the debrief, you know. And then went and got a workout, did a little workout and after the workout, I walked into a, a meeting that was going on with the LPO and everybody below.

• 1:13:51Speaker 03

  And every, you've got, you know, real quiet when I walked in and I was like, what's going on? What's up? Nothing was said. Everyone sort of like dispersed. Well, then Corey Scott came up to me after I'd walked out and he was like, hey, there's guys have some issues with the pictures that we're all taking today. And I was like, okay. What's the problem? They're like, well, some of the guys are scared that, you know, they're going to get in trouble for taking pictures. Or that they're going to be, you know, out there. And I was like, all right, well then just delete them. Like it's a pretty simple solution. He was like, all right. So he, he walked off, then Craig Miller, my LPO came to my room and pretty much emphasized the same thing to me.

• 1:14:34Speaker 03

  Like, hey, some of the guys or have issues with the pictures. And I was like, all right. I was like, bring all the senior E6s in.

• 1:14:43Speaker 03

  I brought them in and I was like, what's the issue here? Same thing was brought up, but the pictures and there was a TC Burn, who was one of the medics, had a helmet cam on, you know, during the whole thing. I was like, okay. I was like, so I don't understand what you guys are stressing about. It's like, don't, you know, show the pictures anywhere or delete them.

• 1:15:07Speaker 03

  Uh, we came to an agreement and it was like, just delete. You know, I was like, if you guys have issues, then delete it, delete everything. And we'll move on. And like, nothing was done wrong, but like, if you guys think you're going to get in trouble or stressing about it, then delete everything. They're like, okay. Um, the problem is some of the other guys didn't want to delete them. Um, they were like, I'm not, I don't have a problem with this at all.

• 1:15:30Speaker 03

  But.

• 1:15:32Speaker 03

  You know, I thought the issue was resolved. It was everyone was like went on their merry way and we're like, okay, it wasn't brought up ever again.

• 1:15:37Shawn Ryan?

  Did you think anything, anything of it?

• 1:15:41Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:15:41Shawn Ryan?

  With the team cohesion or?

• 1:15:43Speaker 03

  Not.

• 1:15:44Shawn Ryan?

  These guys didn't like you or?

• 1:15:45Speaker 03

  I already knew at that point, I was pretty well aware that two of the guys didn't like me, Dylan Delay and Dalton Tolbert, they. I could just tell from body language and the way they like, you know, interacted with me that. They didn't like me, but you know, in all honesty, I didn't really like them too much, but it was, this was a job. I'm like, you know, we have a job to do. I'm not going to let a. Personal things get in the way here.

• 1:16:15Speaker 03

  But I could tell, yeah, that they didn't. There was something about me they didn't like, you know, you could just, you know, you walk into a room and you're like, all right, what's going on here?

• 1:16:26Speaker 03

  But, uh. I think at that point. Because.

• 1:16:32Speaker 03

  I don't know if that, that, that was what fractured or whatever, but, uh.

• 1:16:37Speaker 03

  The pictures or any of that was never brought up again, you know, the rest of the deployment. I think what was, what started happening is, uh. You know, the, we kept working and it got busier. Um, you know, we were going out all the time and I had.

• 1:16:54Speaker 03

  Uh, one of the guys in my platoon come up to me and was like, hey, um, I think we're working too much. Um, you know, we're tired. And I was like, okay.

• 1:17:06Speaker 03

  Let's have another meeting and I want to hear it, you know? And the, the, I pulled the senior sixes again and, and the complaints I heard from that meeting were. I don't have time to work out.

• 1:17:21Speaker 03

  You know? The workload's too much. You know, or.

• 1:17:27Speaker 03

  It was sort of petty complaints to me where I'm like, dude, this is a deployment. And not only that, I have you guys on a week on, week off rotation. I'm like, you're getting a whole week back R and R. I'm like, myself, the OIC have been, are staying here the whole time. And we're not complaining or whatever. I'm like, the workload's not going to change. And I just let them know that. It's like, we're going to be going out. Like, you guys have a week to go back and rest and refit and come back out. There should be no excuses, you know? They didn't take that, I don't think, too well. Didn't say anything to my face, but I could tell they were like, okay, you know, our complaints didn't get us anywhere.

• 1:18:12Speaker 03

  Dalton Tolbert was screening to go to green team when we got back. So he came up to me and was like, I'm pissed because I don't have enough time to work out to get ready for green team. I was like, okay. I literally was like, I will, I understand. Because I completely understood. I was like, you know, it's a big thing. I was like, I'll take you off some of the ops so you have time.

• 1:18:36Speaker 03

  He's like, okay. So I took him off, you know, the next two days of ops. And I was just like, hey, you can chill and work out. And I came back the next day and then he was pissed that I took him off the ops and that I was saying I was punishing him. And at that point, I didn't know what to say to him. I'm like, dude, you just told me that you didn't want to like go out. I'm trying to help you out to go work out. And now you're saying I'm punishing you. I was like, I can't. Where's, where's the, you know?

• 1:19:05Speaker 03

  Where, when are you going to be content? You know, like, that's, that's just the kind of attitude I was sort of trying to deal with. And honestly, like, as a leader, I was having a hard time with it. As far as I've never been around guys who were complaining about going out into combat or like actually getting to do the job.

• 1:19:25Speaker 03

  So, I mean,

• 1:19:27Speaker 03

  I don't know if I dealt with it in the right way. I didn't, I didn't know how to deal with it. I was just like this, we're gonna keep going, mission first, um, you know, and.

• 1:19:37Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what the fuck are you supposed to do? Tell the United States of America, hey, we're not gonna uh, take Mosul because uh, we need to fucking work out, guys.

• 1:19:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:46Shawn Ryan?

  You know, my butt's starting to sag a little bit.

• 1:19:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, but honestly, that was like the dilemma I was in to where I didn't know, you know, what to do as far as, you know, I had called my S E A. I'm like, dude, these guys are fucking bitching, you know, about this and he was just like telling them to stop being a bunch of pussies. You know, I was like, alright, exactly. So I'm, I'm doing the right thing then.

• 1:20:13Speaker 03

  But yeah, I think from that meeting on, it just started, you know, fracturing. Like I think guys were, these guys that were saying they were tired and didn't want to go out, they started really being a toxic group and started trying to get the rest of the platoon, you know, to go against me. But it was all, this is all done behind the scenes. I had no idea like, any of this was really going on until after the fact.

• 1:20:40Shawn Ryan?

  How early was this in the deployment?

• 1:20:43Speaker 03

  Um, this was probably four months in.

• 1:20:46Shawn Ryan?

  Well, was it a six month deployment?

• 1:20:48Speaker 03

  Seven.

• 1:20:49Shawn Ryan?

  Seven month.

• 1:20:49Speaker 03

  It was six months of straight work and then the last month we had nothing because Mosul was clear. Um, so which was good. It was like, to me, I took that as a month of like decompression before you go home, which I told the guys, I'm like, dude, this, take this month to like,

• 1:21:06Speaker 03

  work on yourself, get ready to go home, you know, this is, it was a busy deployment. But yeah, it was, it was six months of straight work. So around the fourth month, I think is when the guys really started.

• 1:21:22Speaker 03

  Not, not, not the whole platoon. I'm talking like-

• 1:21:23Shawn Ryan?

  That's when you start picking it up, picking up the signs.

• 1:21:26Speaker 03

  These four guys were really working to, you know, turn the platoon against me.

• 1:21:32Shawn Ryan?

  Were they all on the same team? You said you'd broken the team up into two.

• 1:21:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, so these guys were all in the same, same team, same group. All lived together in the same room.

• 1:21:42Shawn Ryan?

  So they had plenty of time to conspire.

• 1:21:46Speaker 03

  Commiserate, you know.

• 1:21:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:48Speaker 03

  While you were in the field working.

• 1:21:48Speaker 03

  It goes on, you know.

• 1:21:52Speaker 03

  And it was probably around the fifth month is when I really, the end of the fifth month is when I really like, found out just how bad it had gotten. I was living with, so my, I roomed with the OIC and one of the JOs. I asked to use the JO's phone one day to call back to the Shake On House, to have them bring up some gear, whatever, when they came and rotated out. He was like, threw me his phone. And I looked at it, you know, pulled up who I was gonna call and a text thread came up. And I saw my name like all through it. So naturally I was like, what's this? Started reading it and this guy was like, we're fucking sick of working for Eddie. He's gonna get one of us killed. Like,

• 1:22:36Speaker 03

  he's making us go out too much. He's too aggressive. Like, just a list of complaints. This guy was, you know, and just talking shit.

• 1:22:47Speaker 03

  So I read that and I was like, what the fuck is this? I mean, it sort of took me by surprise. I pulled the JO in. I was like, dude, what is this? And he, you know, pretty much got white. It's like, oh, I, I don't want, I don't have anything to do with it. And I was like, well, obviously they're texting you these things. I'm like, so you knew this was like, there's some discontent going on. I'm like, why don't you just bring it to me? And he, he completely was, you know, I don't want anything to do with it.

• 1:23:17Speaker 03

  So I decided to-

• 1:23:21Speaker 03

  I didn't know what to do. Um, I was pretty pissed. So I, you know, went and worked out and thought about it. And I was like, you know what? I'll just remove this, this guy, send him to another platoon. And, you know, rotate him out with another guy that wants to be here. And I had guys the whole deployment. Calling me, knocking on the door, trying to get, you know, augment us because we were doing the most work.

• 1:23:46Speaker 03

  Uh, so I called back and let him know. I'm like, hey, man, uh, pack your shit, you know? I'm gonna send you over to Delta. I'm gonna get somebody else over here and take your spot. Um. That didn't go over well. That turned it ended up being like, he was pissed. Uh. So I had one final meeting with the E sixes the day, the next day. Uh, my OIC calmed me down. Um, was like, dude, I know you're pissed, just let's all go talk and hash this out, which was the right call. Uh. So we drove, we actually called off an op or like going out so we could settle this. Drama and, uh, I drove, we drove up to the, uh, Shaycon house.

• 1:24:31Speaker 03

  And, um, I pull up there and it's all the accusers. So it's Craig Miller, Delay, Dalton, uh, Corey Scott and, uh, this other guy who I won't, I won't mention because he's still active duty and he actually did the right thing. Um. I went and talked to him. I walked in the house. They were all standing there looking at me and I was like, called the guy into a room and, uh, sat him down and was like, hey, let's emotions off the table or trying. And I was like, let's just talk and hash this out. What's going on? Like, so like, I understand why, you know, your complaints or like what the issue is here. And we had a good conversation for about 10, 15 minutes and it, what it came down to was,

• 1:25:16Speaker 03

  you know, the guys were, what he was telling me is the guys were rotating back for rest and refit for a week. And then they were commiserating and creating this hate circle and it was all, you know, everything was my fault. Was all directed at you? Yeah. Which I completely understood. I was like, dude, that's not my first rodeo. I make usually when guys get tired or whatever, leadership gets blamed for something, you know, they're, they want to point the finger bitch about something, which is completely normal.

• 1:25:45Speaker 03

  So, you know, we talked about it and he came, you know, he was like, dude, I, I realized what, you know, we're working, we're working ourselves up here. And, uh, you know, I explained some tactical things I was doing, um, to him and he was like, no, that doesn't make sense. I'm like, this is why we're doing this. Uh, he was like, no, I got it. Um, and that was the end of it. I was like, dude, let's just finish this deployment out. I, I did tell him, I was like, dude, you're arguing and like, do some shit duty for a week because you're texting the J O here, talking shit about your chief. Uh, I was like, so I had him doing like supply runs for a week, you know, but that was it. Were they pissed at the O I C at all? So while I was in this meeting with this guy,

• 1:26:29Speaker 03

  the, oh, my O I C was out with the rest of the guys and I guess they were all trying to get him to turn on me. They were like, you know, he's, they, they told him I was manipulating him, uh, that I, he's not really in charge, that I am, um, I mean, this is coming from E five, E six is two, you know, an officer. Uh, the, Jake immediately chewed all them out, told him, you know, shut the fuck up, um, that, you know, he had, we had a good working relationship that I, you know, and that he was pretty pissed that they were, they were pulling this like mutinous type crap. And he was, uh, he put them in their place. I didn't, I wasn't there to witness it, but I heard about it, which is, I mean,

• 1:27:14Speaker 03

  I respect Jake for doing that, you know, for standing up. And so I came out after that, I after that meeting and pretty much pulled the rest of the guys in. I told him to go ahead and get everything out. I was like, get it off your chest. I was like, what else? I'm like, why are you guys so fucking angry?

• 1:27:34Speaker 03

  And then it came out. Delay was like, we heard you called, you called us a bunch of pussies. And you called us cowards. And I was like, yeah, I did say that. They're like, yeah, well, we're fucking pissed about it. And this is where they told me, they're like, we've all been together for three, this is our third platoon. You're the new guy, like, whatever we, like, were together. They said that straight to my face. So as like, as a chief, I was like, I was pretty worn out by this point. Dealing with the drama, dealing with this petty shit that I didn't think I'd have to deal with on a deployment. I just looked at him, I was like, you know what, man?

• 1:28:18Speaker 03

  I was like, I apologize. I'm like, I apologize for calling you guys pussies and cowards, all right? I was like, let's just get over this crap. And I was like, if that's what you guys are really mad about, then let's just move on. And finish this deployment out strong, you know, we'd had a good deployment. We're being very successful. I was like, this is, all this is doing is just dragging us down. This little petty thing we got going on. They all agreed. They're like, yeah, you're right. Okay, we shook hands. I'm like, all right, we'll move on. Unfortunately, I moved on or tried to, and they kept their little circle going. Which culminated to when we came back from deployment, and that's when I found out that they were

• 1:29:03Speaker 03

  still spreading little rumors about me.

• 1:29:08Speaker 03

  I had, I had gone home on the first flight on deployment as well, which wasn't an easy call. There was, you know, you usually rotate out three different flights. And then usually the chief is supposed to stay to the end, do turnover, go out on the last flight. I had

• 1:29:27Speaker 03

  Some personal problems at home with my kids. Andrew was having a rough time.

• 1:29:34Speaker 03

  And to be honest, I was fucking over being around some of these guys. So she has, Andrew had never asked me to come home once early from a deployment, no matter what was going on, but she was like, I'd really appreciate it if you got home, you know, quicker or sooner. And so I made the call. I called my mass chief and was like, dude, this is what's going on. He's like, yeah, no worries. Go home on the first flight. He's, you know, everything's good to go.

• 1:30:02Speaker 03

  So when I left on that first flight, these guys really turned it on because I was no longer there and started going to the OIC. Like really trying to hammer home like, dude, fuck him. Like, you know, he was manipulating you the whole time, the whole thing all over again. Yeah. How did you find that out? My OIC told me. He, uh, he came back on the third flight and he was like, hey, man. And he pulled me aside and we just talked and he was like, dude, this is what these guys were doing.

• 1:30:34Speaker 03

  He was like, they were even, so my wife had taken a picture of me and my kids, like, you know, reuniting, deployment, reuniting, whatever, you know, hugging each other. Posted it. I mean, they were using those pictures like, look at, he's home with his family and we're not like, he shouldn't be home, like using all this crap to stir things up. Luckily, my OIC, he told me, he was like, I, they had me going for a second. But he's like, this isn't right. You know, this, none of this, it's all bullshit.

• 1:31:08Speaker 03

  So that's when, uh, and I had also heard,

• 1:31:12Speaker 03

  I got back on the first flight

• 1:31:15Speaker 03

  and nobody was really back at the team just yet. Um, you know, guys are still coming in from everywhere they were deployed. So there was like handfuls of guys back and I had a couple guys come up to me. And they were like, hey, man, like, there's a couple dudes in your platoon who were saying some shit about you. And I was like, what are they saying? You know, he's like, well, they said that you're tactically unsound. You're too aggressive, uh, that you're dangerous and all that. I was like, okay, you know. Yeah, you've already been fucking proven time and time again. Yeah, but then they were like, they also said you're a thief. And that's when I was like, what? And I'm like, oh yeah, they said you were stealing from everybody.

• 1:31:57Speaker 03

  That set me off to where I was like, I've never been called a thief before. Nor did I steal from anybody. I was like, so this needs to be addressed. And I'd heard it from probably two or three people, different people at that point.

• 1:32:14Speaker 03

  So once the whole platoon was back, I called them in for a meeting.

• 1:32:20Speaker 03

  And myself, OIC, everybody.

• 1:32:24Speaker 03

  I was like, dude, came in. And you gotta think like, more than half the platoon has no clue that this, any of this drama is going on. They're, maybe if they do, they don't think it's as bad as it is. Um, so, you know, the whole platoon is in there, sort of like, what's this meeting about?

• 1:32:39Speaker 03

  I was like, hey, ranks are off. I was like, I want to know, like, what's going on here? Like what? I was like, I've been called, you know, told them everything that I'd heard. Um, and I was like, I've been called a thief. I was like, I want to know right now what I stole from somebody. I was like, because I've never stolen anything from anybody. And I was like, so if I somehow did, I want to either fix it. Or if it's rumors that you guys are starting, I want to squash it.

• 1:33:07Speaker 03

  Nobody said a word for about two minutes and I told them, I was like, listen, I've already heard it enough times. Let's just get it out. Uh, Dalton Tolbert. It's like, okay, well, you stole a Red Bull out of refrigerator six months ago. And I looked at him and I was like, what? And he's like, yeah, you stole somebody's Red Bull. And it's six months ago. A Red Bull? Yeah. I was like, out of the platoon fridge.

• 1:33:41Speaker 03

  And I didn't know what to say to that. And I was like, dude,

• 1:33:45Speaker 03

  I don't know if I took somebody's Red Bull or not six months ago out of the platoon fridge where everybody goes in and just grabs whatever. Uh, but uh, I was like, tell me that's not why you guys are calling me a thief.

• 1:33:58Speaker 03

  He's like, well, that caused a huge issue. I was like, okay. Um, well, I was like, I can't either confirm nor deny if I took a Red Bull or not. I don't remember. I was like, please tell me there's something else. You have something more concrete that you guys are calling me a thief on.

• 1:34:16Speaker 03

  He, uh, what was the Tom McNeil, who was the J O that I live with, the whole deployment.

• 1:34:25Speaker 03

  He didn't say anything, but Dalton told it again was like, you didn't pay somebody for a haircut. You gotta didn't pay somebody back for a haircut that they paid for. I got one hair, one haircut that deployment into the end and Tom McNeil paid for it because me and him went together. So I looked at Tom and I was like, hey, he's right. I didn't pay you back for the haircut. I was like, I'll, I'll go get the money out of the ATM. Tom's like, no, no, no, it's not a big deal. I don't, I don't care. I was like, well, obviously you do. If this guy's talking for you, you know, this has been talked about before. It must be an issue. Uh, I was like, tell me there's something else. And there was nothing.

• 1:35:03Speaker 03

  Craig Miller said, uh, he stated that I stole his sunglasses and I, um, was like, I don't have them. And he's like, well, I have them back now. So I was like, well, how did I steal them? And he's like, well, I wrote it on the board that somebody stole them. And all of a sudden they appeared the next day. I was like, so you're putting that on me? And he was like, yeah. I was like, well, I, I didn't steal them, man, you know?

• 1:35:27Speaker 03

  And that was pretty much the end of that meeting where I was like, dude, you guys need to cut this shit out. Like, stop spreading this hate. I was like, I don't know what's gotten into you. And I told them, I was like, you guys need to decompress. Like it was a hectic deployment. You guys need to go chill out, take whatever these two weeks of leave, block leave you have and just, you know, I was like, I mean, to talk to somebody, talk to somebody, but this isn't gonna, this isn't gonna help anybody. You guys keep spreading this hate. They all were like, you know, the rest of the platoon, I think, was confused on what was going. They were just like, what the fuck? But these guys, you know, some of them nodded their head like, okay, we get it. Dalton Tolbert,

• 1:36:08Speaker 03

  he was like staring daggers at me when I said this. And so I looked at him and I was like, or I was like, we can go to the fight room, which is that trade at. And I was like, and let's just fight it out. I was like, if you guys, I'm like, you guys don't like me. I don't fucking like you personally. I was like, ranks are off. I was like, we can just go get it out that way and then go on a merry way. If that's where you guys want to go. I was like, I'll fight every one of you one after the other. And I was like, and you'll kick my ass. But I was like, I think it'll, we'll feel better at the end. Uh, nobody said a word, you know, Dalton just like looked down at the ground. I was like, all right, then I don't want to hear shit. And I was like, I'm still your chief. And if you guys need help with anything,

• 1:36:53Speaker 03

  and I did help them out with their next duty stations, you know, it's like I'm not holding anything personal here. I was like, but I did tell Craig and them. I was like, dude, I'm not like your buddy. I was like, especially after this, you guys accuse me of all this shit and spread lies about me. Like, we're not hanging out or anything. But, uh, I will help you out in your career if you need help going to your next station or assignment.

• 1:37:22Speaker 03

  That, uh, they went from that meeting and went into the command and told them like Dalton and Craig, that I had threatened to assault them. Um, I was threatening their lives because I invited them to go to the fight room and settle it that way.

• 1:37:45Speaker 03

  And that's where, I mean, they, they started from there and then the, the escalation of allegations started. I mean, it went from that I was too dangerous, you know, blah, blah, blah, all the other crap with the tactics. Then, you know, he's a thief. And then it escalated to now he's like trying to come after us, which wasn't far from the truth. I wasn't even thinking about them. Uh, the command actually.

• 1:38:16Speaker 03

  When Craig and them came up to them and started giving them these complaints, they were like, hey,

• 1:38:22Speaker 03

  he's too dangerous, his tactics are this and this, like, so the commander's like, okay, well, give me some of the tactics he was doing. I think this was my TU commander. I was like, I want to, all right, what was he doing that was so dangerous? Give me an example. They're like, oh, he used us as bait. He was trying to get us killed. So like, I was like, okay, well then, give me an example. And this is the example, the example they gave me, like, well, we were on a roof, getting shot at by a sniper and he had one of us put our helmet on a stick and put it, you know, up at a, over the wall so we could see where the fire was coming from. And they were like, yeah, that's been a tactic that's been used. Yeah, forever.

• 1:39:06Speaker 03

  To like, did they make you put your own grape up there, like your own head? And he's like, no. And he was like, well, what's the issue? So they really had no, like, they were coming with these complaints with no, nothing to back them up. They were just, I mean, the more they tried to explain it, the dumber they sounded. And the commander just told them the same thing I did, like, it sounds like you guys need to go decompress. Like, it sounds like, you know, you guys need to go chill.

• 1:39:32Speaker 03

  They were like, well, he's a thief. And then my TU commander's like, what was he stealing? And they're like, oh, he took power parts out of a care package. That wasn't his. And I think my TU commander's like, this all seems pretty petty. And if you take that up with the chief's mess, then, like, if you, you know, which they never did, because it was all BS. But they came back three different times to my TU commander with the same complaints. And I think my TU commander got fed up and was like, listen,

• 1:40:06Speaker 03

  is there something valid here? Why do you guys keep coming back and saying stuff like, did this, did he do any low act violations? Or anything like that? No, they denied it three different times. They're like, no, nothing like that. And he's like, well, then if there's nothing like that, then go fucking decompress. Like, he got number one chief out of the team. He's, you know, doing, Marslock had nothing but good things to say about him, like, we don't understand why you guys are coming with this BS unless there's something valid. And

• 1:40:39Speaker 03

  They got pretty frustrated at that, I guess. Um, and they about four months later is when they came back and they're like, oh, we have something.

• 1:40:47Shawn Ryan?

  Like four fucking months?

• 1:40:49Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. Yeah. And, uh,

• 1:40:53Speaker 03

  they, and what we came to find out is, you know, afterwards, they were conspiring over text messages, like figuring out a plan like, I mean, you could see it in all their text messages, like, we need to make sure our story is watertight, so no one could poke holes in it, like this and this. They're be having little meetings, you know, uh, and that's when, yeah, for about four months later, Craig Miller went to the T U commander again, who was now, he was at a different command.

• 1:41:16Shawn Ryan?

  So everybody was probably scattered around.

• 1:41:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, everyone was scattered off, you know, to different commands. Um,

• 1:41:23Speaker 03

  and that's when, uh, yeah, he came to them and was like, okay, we have something. And he was like, what is it? And he's like, oh, he stabbed a prisoner. And my T U commander was like, okay, well, are you, we're gonna route this up. I'm sure, you know, like, yeah. And that's where, I mean, it skyrocketed from there. It's like they, they went and reported it to, these guys went and reported to NCIS, uh, called NCIS themselves and told them that I had murdered an ISIS prisoner. And that's when it just went off the rails. Uh, you know, NCIS got involved. Um, this guy, Agent Warpinsky, who was the lead agent,

• 1:42:06Speaker 03

  it, you couldn't have put a, a worse actor in this whole situation. I mean, he, uh, he pretty much came, just to give you like, an example or context, the first interview he did, like, hadn't even done, started investigating the case.

• 1:42:24Speaker 03

  He brings in Craig Miller, um, and the first thing he says is, this is a black and white, open and shut case. We already know we got him. So go ahead and say whatever. And you guys aren't gonna get in trouble for anything that you did. So it was like, gave these guys carte blanche to just spew out whatever they wanted.

• 1:42:44Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:42:45Speaker 03

  So basically, what Warpinsky did is he formed a prosecution and then did the investigation. You know, did it completely backwards.

• 1:42:53Shawn Ryan?

  Before we go on with that, just heading back.

• 1:42:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:55Shawn Ryan?

  You, when you took that platoon over, you have one guy that you brought in,

• 1:42:59Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:43:00Shawn Ryan?

  which sounded like he was your boy, your right hand man, your LPO, and

• 1:43:07Shawn Ryan?

  He got transferred to another platoon because that chief got shot in the chest, correct?

• 1:43:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:43:14Shawn Ryan?

  Did he live?

• 1:43:15Speaker 03

  He did. Yeah, dude. He's that guy's an animal that got shot in the chest. Yeah, big old Indian.

• 1:43:22Shawn Ryan?

  Is that when you started to see maybe?

• 1:43:24Speaker 03

  Actually, that's and that's a good point, man. I'm glad you brought that up. So I did have Craig Miller was not my LPO. During workup or any of that, I had this other guy who was was my right hand man. Awesome. Awesome guy, awesome operator. And he picked up chief right before we deployed. But he, you know, the team or the command was like, he's going to stay with your platoon because usually like if someone picks up chief, they're not going to have two chiefs in the same platoon. They'll move him. Somewhere else. At least that's the way they did it. On the west coast for a little bit.

• 1:44:05Speaker 03

  But they were like, yeah, he's going to stay as your LPO, the whole deployment, you know, which I was thankful for. I mean, that guy, he was an awesome LPO. Just had a good, good read on the dudes and he would also come to me if there was anything like right away, like, hey, man, guys are bitching about this, or they're wondering about this and we would address it, you know? But yeah, about a month and a half into deployment. Bravo platoon, yeah, their chief got shot in the chest. And they were needing a chief, so. I sent my LPO over there.

• 1:44:41Shawn Ryan?

  Were they in Mosul too?

• 1:44:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:46Speaker 03

  So my LPO went over there and that's when Craig Miller had stepped up as LPO and that is actually where I think.

• 1:44:53Shawn Ryan?

  Things started to.

• 1:44:54Speaker 03

  Things started going down because Craig. Was best for like really good buddies with all the other senior E sixes. I think he found he found it difficult to detach himself as an LPO and not just like a friend peer, you know? So it was the guys were coming to him with complaints or and whether they were petty or not. And he was instead of like coming to me and being like, hey, he was keeping it to himself and sort of just encouraging it, you know?

• 1:45:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:25Speaker 03

  And all that was, you know, after the fact, obviously, that I found most of this out or I had, you know, an idea, some of what was going on, but not to the extent.

• 1:45:35Shawn Ryan?

  No confirmation?

• 1:45:36Speaker 03

  No. And I wasn't really worried about digging into it. I was focused on just going out. I mean, and that's, that's the one, uh, one of the downfalls, I'll say, like, that I, that happened to me, my OIC both admitted it to the platoon and like, you know, we were too focused, mission focused, and just like worried about going out every day. And we apologize if we didn't, we weren't like, focused on how you guys were doing, I guess, you know, it was, uh, could have done a better job at that. Uh, but that's, yeah, that's just my, where my mindset was at the time.

• 1:46:14Shawn Ryan?

  So we're getting ready to take a break before we head into the NCIS investigation and, and, and the courts and everything. But I do have two questions and one is,

• 1:46:28Shawn Ryan?

  do you get personal satisfaction out of killing the enemy? And two, do you respect the enemy?

• 1:46:43Speaker 03

  I respect the enemy for sure. I mean, I respect they, especially ISIS going through that. I mean, they were, I mean, the, I respected their will. I respect their will to fight. I respect how they're, you want to talk about loyalty?

• 1:47:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:03Speaker 03

  That's a fucking loyal bunch right there. And they're willing to die for their ideology, how, however fucked up it is. It's, to me, it's impressive to watch guys blow themselves up on a daily basis off, off an idea, you know?

• 1:47:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:21Speaker 03

  Do I get personal satisfaction?

• 1:47:26Speaker 03

  I don't know how to answer that without sounding like a psychopath, but like, or however I was painted. Cause now I, I find it hard nowadays to answer questions like that because of just how I was painted. But yes, I get personal satisfaction of taking evil off this earth.

• 1:47:43Shawn Ryan?

  I would say that's a valid answer.

• 1:47:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I do.

• 1:47:46Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know anybody that I've worked with or myself that doesn't.

• 1:47:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:50Shawn Ryan?

  And, you know, I respect the shit out of them too. I hate them. I fucking hate them, but you know, when you get down to it, it's fucking another man that's

• 1:48:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:01Shawn Ryan?

  standing up for what he fucking believes in, which to be honest with you is more than you can say about 99% of the people that live in this fucking country.

• 1:48:11Speaker 03

  That's the truth right there. Yeah. And that's, that's where that level of respect comes in for them. You know, cause at least they're stand, they're standing up for something. Whether they might be on the wrong side, at least they're doing it. And you know, if, if you would ask me that question before all this mess, I would have probably been like, fuck yeah. Like I get complete satisfaction out of it, uh, which I do. But, uh, I think just because of the rigmarole, everything I went through, now it's like.

• 1:48:41Shawn Ryan?

  Now you have to be political.

• 1:48:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. Not even like political, but also like just the judgment, you know, like I was, I've been painted as this war criminal psychopath. So therefore I'm always like, well, if I answer it truthfully, then people are like, oh, you are a fucking

• 1:48:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:59Speaker 03

  crazy bastard. Whereas like I'm, I'm not, but yeah, I do get personal satisfaction out of taking evil off this earth and killing the enemy. Just like a firefighter gets personal satisfaction about putting out fires, you know?

• 1:49:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:10Speaker 03

  It's, it's my job.

• 1:49:12Shawn Ryan?

  Well,

• 1:49:15Shawn Ryan?

  thanks for the honesty. On that note, let's take a fucking break.

• 1:49:19Speaker 03

  All right.

• 1:49:34Shawn Ryan?

  Well.

• 1:49:37Shawn Ryan?

  My fires kinda suck.

• 1:49:44Shawn Ryan?

  But my gummy bears don't.

• 1:49:48Shawn Ryan?

  Head over to VigilanceLead.com.

• 1:49:53Shawn Ryan?

  Buy yourself a bag of gummy bears.

• 1:49:57Shawn Ryan?

  And if your fires suck too. Get yourself a Vigilance Lead beanie. Keep those grapes warm.

• 1:50:07Shawn Ryan?

  Enjoy the show.

• 1:50:24Shawn Ryan?

  Alright, so we're back from the break. And, uh. She just had a hellacious deployment. And. Your task unit commander told the boys to. Get a hold of NCIS. So just rewind him real quick, um.

• 1:50:43Shawn Ryan?

  This shit is just blowing my mind that, um, from the era that I was in and. Every other guy that sat in that fucking chair across from me. This would have been a dream deployment, so it's, it's, it's, um. You know, for whatever it's worth, I would have loved to have been in a fucking platoon like that. Doing that mission. And, uh. Everyone that I know, uh. From what you're saying in your account would have. Given anything to been a part of that, so. I mean, that was some shit, man.

• 1:51:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was an awesome deployment. Probably one of my better ones for sure, like just action wise and work wise. And you know, that's what I had, I had told these guys, you know, that same pretty much speech. I was like, you know, guys will give their right not right now to be where you're at. You know, and you guys are sitting here bitching and complaining about going out too much.

• 1:51:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:44Speaker 03

  That's ridiculous.

• 1:51:46Shawn Ryan?

  That's interesting. Is that, is that still team wide now? Is that like how the community is?

• 1:51:51Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:51:52Shawn Ryan?

  Heck, no, no. Well, that's good to know.

• 1:51:54Speaker 03

  No, and that's why I'm one, you know, I made sure I, I tried to get that point across like the first interview I did. Like the actions of these four to five individuals do not in any way like replicate what the feelings are in the community as a whole. I mean, most of the guys that are out there, just like you and I would were banging down the door, trying to get in on that deployment. Everybody wants to get in the fight. Everybody wants to go on the, the hot deployments or the good ones. I just think these

• 1:52:26Speaker 03

  four individuals, you know, they're just, it's just a different, different breed of, uh, I don't know, you know, it's, and I'll tell you this, like, I've tried to wrap my head around it. Like, how did these guys like get to this point? And how, why did they go to this, you know, level to like come at me? And I'll never be able to figure it out. Honestly, like I can come up with, try and come up with as many excuses as possible for them or like, oh, maybe it's because they were tired or they were this or that. And everything that they did, nothing justifies their actions at all. And it's not, it's not in my DNA, or I'm sure it's not in your DNA to ever pull some shit like this.

• 1:53:05Speaker 03

  Where you're like, oh, I don't like this person. So therefore I'm just going to do stuff to take him down and possibly send him away for life. Especially another teammate, you know?

• 1:53:17Shawn Ryan?

  Well, moving on, what happens when they tell the boys, contact NCIS?

• 1:53:23Speaker 03

  So they were pulled, I think they were pulled into a little meeting and they were pretty much told like, if you guys want to move forward with this, here's the number to NCIS. And so these guys contacted NCIS. My TU commander went and reported it up the chain of command that this was told to him.

• 1:53:46Speaker 03

  They, the head shed above him, which was that group one, I think it was a group one JAG,

• 1:53:53Speaker 03

  told him, is there anybody willing to come forward and say they saw this?

• 1:53:59Speaker 03

  He said, yeah, I don't know. Went back and he's like, are you guys willing to come forward? And at that time, not all of them were, they weren't on board. Craig Miller was like, oh, I'll come forward and say it. But they were like, we need, you know, if this really happened, we need more people to come forward.

• 1:54:20Speaker 03

  They, you know, they got, I think, so at that, that same time, when the, the command JAG was telling them to come forward, they were already talking to NCIS as well. So it was like this discombobulated, who reported what, you know? And I think that became a whole nother piece of drama later on, which they tried to charge my TU commander with obstruction of justice or hiding it, whatever, not reporting it, which is, he did.

• 1:54:50Speaker 03

  But once they, they called NCIS themselves and were like, you know, we have this case or whatever. That's when it started, it went off the rails. I was pulled in around that time and told that I was under investigation officially. Came out on the command, whatever you call it,

• 1:55:13Speaker 03

  the blotter, whatever, it goes out to all of NSW. And it said that I was being investigated for laws of armed conflict.

• 1:55:21Shawn Ryan?

  Is that, is that how you found out?

• 1:55:23Speaker 03

  I was pulled into the Master Chief's office. This is actually, I got pulled into the Master Chief of Trade at.

• 1:55:33Speaker 03

  He uh, he's out now, but he, he pulled me in and said, hey, you're under investigation um, for low act violations. I asked him what were, what is it? Like, what's the low act violation? He's like, he told me he couldn't tell me. He couldn't talk to me about it. Um, wasn't out, you know? He's like, I'm not gonna talk to you about it. I know. Um, I asked him what I should do. Uh, I was like, I've never been in a situation like this. And he was like, no, I, I can't tell you anything. Um, which was pretty disappointing. Uh, but then one thing I'll remember he said to me uh, before I left his office is he looked me straight in the eye and he said,

• 1:56:17Speaker 03

  if you did what they're saying you, they, you did, you need to come out and fess up to it now and own up to it. And I was like, I don't even know what you're saying I did. He's like, you know what it is and you need to fess up to it. Uh, and that's when uh, I shut, I shut the door to his office and told him, I was like, dude, I'd been on, I knew this master chief. I'd been on ops with him before. Um, I'd seen him pull some swayly shit and I was like, you know, I've never judged you or anybody else for their actions. Uh, and I appreciate if you didn't judge me, especially when I don't even know what's going on right now. Um, and I'd appreciate some help, you know?

• 1:57:00Speaker 03

  But if you don't have anything helpful to say, then just shut the fuck up. Like, don't talk to me then, you know? Uh, so I walked out of there and that's when I, I went to my buddy, uh, another, another operator and asked him what I should do. And he gave me the name of uh, his lawyer, um, who I contacted. He told me I should contact him just in case this thing went off the rails, which it did. Uh, but yeah, I called him and just sort of had them set up on the side. Um, waiting to see if anything happened.

• 1:57:30Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:57:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, the, um, once I, so, once I got told I was put under investigation, I was immediately started. I got pulled out of, um, I was the SCA, Senior Solicitor Advisor over at Salk, um, Urban Combat Trade. And I got pulled from that position, thrown into an office with no job, no responsibility, just told to come report each day. Um, that lasted for about a month and they pulled me from there and sent me to supply, across the street where there's no SEALs. Um, there's one SEAL Master Chief in charge, but the rest are,

• 1:58:09Speaker 03

  you know, support, um, and admin guys. And, uh, that's when I, I mean, I had already known it was like, this isn't going well. But then, once you sort of get pulled away from the teams in general and thrown in supply, you're like, okay, this is, this is where they send the shitbirds. Um, so from there, I, I went to talk to the Group One Master Chief. Um, I want, I want to know what was going on, um, which was Steve Ward at the time. Uh, that he refused to talk to me, but I went over there on my own. And sort of forced a meeting with him. Um, was like, hey, he said the same, same line to me. I'm not going to talk to you about anything. Um, you know, don't bring up anything to me.

• 1:58:53Speaker 03

  And all I told him was like, the stuff that's being said isn't true. Um, that I suggest they did some internal investigation of their own before they further this. Uh, and I, that I told him this will be the biggest black eye in the community if he keeps progressing this way.

• 1:59:11Shawn Ryan?

  Are these guys, did you have personal relationships with all these guys or?

• 1:59:14Speaker 03

  I knew, so I knew, uh, you talking about the Master Chiefs?

• 1:59:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:19Speaker 03

  I knew them. Yeah. Like I didn't, uh, I hadn't done platoons with them or anything, but small community, like you know them, they knew who I was too. Uh, you know, there was. Nothing personal like where they would have something against me or I had something against them like not that I know of anyways. But it was definitely weird the way that everybody sort of. You know, hands off like you're on your own. I got told by a man, another master chief that I was pretty much I had to look at it as I was on an island all by myself. And I had to swim my way back if I wanted to come back and no one was gonna help me.

• 1:59:59Speaker 03

  And that's after I heard that, that was like the honest truth and I was like, okay. And I was like, I'll swim my way back then. Damn. Yeah, so it was, it was pretty disheartening. You knew it was NCIS at this point? Oh, I dealt with NCIS in the past. I mean, and this is what's funny is like I, I was brought up in the teams. Obviously it was like day one shit like don't trust NCIS. They're, you know, they're always out to bag a seal. They're always trying to find something to take a seal down. And I, they actually. My first platoon, when I was a new guy, they took my, my platoon chief.

• 2:00:42Speaker 03

  Off of deployment, just came up, swooped him halfway through and he was gone.

• 2:00:48Speaker 03

  For some, I don't even know, some BS that didn't even happen, but. I, I had dealt with them like very minimally, just like in that case and then.

• 2:00:58Speaker 03

  This, nothing like this though. But so when I knew. They were involved, I, I didn't know, I had no.

• 2:01:08Speaker 03

  No idea just. How fucked up those guys were, like, what a clown show they were, you know, and. I pretty much, you know. Got firsthand experience just seeing how they operated and. When they. Well, I'll get to the point where they, they raided my house, but yeah, they, they pretty much.

• 2:01:32Speaker 03

  They started the investigation, I think in late April of 2018. And I had no idea just how extensive they were investigated. Like all I was told of investigation. No one had ever come and talked to me. This is like, so this is like a year after the actual. Yeah. After the. After the deployment. The kid. Yeah, the kid. That was May of 2017, correct? So this is about a year later.

• 2:02:05Speaker 03

  You know, I obviously was told I was under investigation, but no one was saying a word to me.

• 2:02:11Speaker 03

  And I was sitting in supply for however long, a month, month and a half. No job. Now, you know, I show up and there's nothing for me to do. So I took it upon myself at that point. I was like, okay, well, I'll just start prepping for retirement or like, maybe I'll get out. I don't know. So I, I started taking classes on a transition. I went to the Honor Foundation, which is like a transition type program to just see what's like out there in the civilian world and prep you. I started putting in for Intrepid Spear, which is like a branch off of NICO for TBI and everything else like that.

• 2:02:55Speaker 03

  I had been recommended to go after that deployment. I'd been, you know, taken enough blast at that point that they were like, hey, you know, just get checked out. And that's pretty much protocol now, like before you retire. It's like, I want to go get checked out and not, you know, get NICO full head to body scan or head to toe scan. Because as we know during our career, I don't report anything. I didn't, you know, you suck everything up. And my medical record was pretty thin.

• 2:03:25Speaker 03

  So I started all that process while I was in supply and it was still nobody, you know, nobody was blocking me from doing that, but nobody was saying it to me either. And in round in June, I get a phone call at home from somebody at supply, one of the chiefs that worked there and he had told me that the XO wanted to speak to me the following morning. XO was a SEAL and that I hadn't met with him yet and he just wanted to have a face to face with me since I was attached there, which made sense to me. I was like, okay, you know, whatever. Got up the next morning, went there, showed up, you know, his office

• 2:04:06Speaker 03

  15 minutes prior in uniform and knocked on his door and he cracked it open, looked at me, told me to wait a second, shut the door and then about a minute later he opened it and there was probably five to six NCIS agents in there. I walked in and they, you know, flashed their badge, told me that they were going to take me to for some interrogation, question me. And they started, you know, pulling everything out of my pockets. At the time, I didn't, you know, I, I played it cool. I was just

• 2:04:46Speaker 03

  like, you know, I was pretty pissed, but I knew if I had reacted in any negative way, wasn't going to look good. So I was like, okay, just like compliant. But what pissed me off is they handcuffed me for no, and I was like, why do I need to be handcuffed? I'm going, they're like, oh, it's protocol. It's not protocol. You know, they handcuffed me and paraded me around in front of the whole supply command. You know, for a shame factor, because when somebody sees you in handcuffs, they're like, oh, this guy did something.

• 2:05:20Shawn Ryan?

  Had you done any research on what, on what you should be doing to prepare for what might happen?

• 2:05:28Speaker 03

  All I knew was, I mean, what I had been told since day one, like, I want my lawyer, you know, I'm like, I'm not talking to him one bit. But other than that, no, I hadn't done anything else.

• 2:05:42Speaker 03

  You know, the lawyers that I had on standby, there was nothing, like, nothing was being told to me at the time. So there was really nothing to go on. It was like, I just know I'm under investigation and they were like, okay, well, we'll just see where this leads. It could go nowhere or, you know, it could go the way it went. And once they, they pulled me, they drove me across to 32nd Street, which is another Navy base there. Across the bay from Coronado, which is where the NCIS little headquarters is and they, they brought me in there and That's the major base in San Diego, right? Yeah. They put me in interrogation room, just like something you see out of the movies, you know, had the little see-through glass thing there and

• 2:06:26Speaker 03

  they sat me down, tried to be all buddy, buddy with me like, hey, man, like, we're just, you know, we've heard some things and you're being, you know, just accused, this was the first time I heard you're being accused of murder.

• 2:06:42Speaker 03

  And I knew better than to, I wasn't even gonna start having a conversation with them. I just was, and I was polite to them. I wasn't a dick. I was like, hey, I even said that. I was like, I don't wanna be a dick to you guys, but I want my lawyer, like, before I say anything. And they were like, oh, okay. And I was like, you know, can I call him, you know, can I call him? They had my phone.

• 2:07:06Speaker 03

  They were like, yeah, just give us his, give us his number and we'll call him.

• 2:07:11Speaker 03

  I gave it to him. They both walked out, shut the door and that was it for seven hours. No one came back. I think twice, somebody knocked it, cracked it open to see if I needed to piss. Seven hours? Seven hours from, well, I'd say like, yeah, eight thirty in the morning till four or five in the afternoon. I don't, I can't remember exactly when they let me out. And they told you you were being charged for murder? They didn't tell me I was being charged with anything. They just said that I had been accused. Accused of murder? Of murder. For, did you have any idea what for? They said I was on the prior deployment, that Mosul deployment. And that's it. That's all they really said to me.

• 2:07:56Speaker 03

  And then once I told them I wanted my lawyer, they left.

• 2:08:01Shawn Ryan?

  When they told you that and they told you it was the last deployment, did you have? I mean, it sounds like you guys got a shit ton of trigger time.

• 2:08:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:08:10Shawn Ryan?

  Is there any specific?

• 2:08:12Speaker 03

  No, that was sort of like the scary part of it was.

• 2:08:18Speaker 03

  You know? I think you kill enough individuals, you know, on an employment, you can be like, well, this could be. Any one thing and not saying that we murdered anybody, but. You know?

• 2:08:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:29Speaker 03

  You don't know, you don't know what what's being said. I had heard enough rumors up to that point. And I heard some, I mean, the teams is like one big circle. So I had guys obviously come up to me like, oh, these guys are, we heard this. I mean, I heard they heard I was stomping babies out.

• 2:08:48Speaker 03

  It was like, it went from like the most. Craziest rumors to the most like mundane. I mean, that's why. You know, Andrea coined coined the term. I think it was like from. Red Bulls to work crimes, you know, it was, it's just everything that and everything in between. And. So I, I had no real concept of like or idea what they were actually. Saying I did, you know, or what scenario that I was supposedly involved in.

• 2:09:20Speaker 03

  Uh, so once.

• 2:09:23Speaker 03

  They locked me in there. They kept me in that room.

• 2:09:27Speaker 03

  You know, I had no idea what was going on, but while I was in that room. They went and raided my house. They raided. My cage and my car, which was at the team. They went to everything.

• 2:09:41Speaker 03

  And they also, they sent a.

• 2:09:45Speaker 03

  I don't even 20 to 30 man SWAT team to my house.

• 2:09:49Speaker 03

  And.

• 2:09:51Speaker 03

  The crazy, this is the crazy thing is when they were taking me over to that interrogation room. I asked them, I was in the back of the car handcuffed and like, how long is this gonna take? And they were like, why? I'm like, because my wife's not home. She's at uh lunch or like a brunch with a friend. And I was like, my oldest son is leaving and I need to be back by, I think it was like one o'clock, because my youngest son's there. I specifically remember this as those two looked at each other like, and they're like, oh, no, yeah, we'll, we'll get you out. You'll be done by then. I was like, okay. Well, as I'm being, you know, I'm in that office with no phone, uh, wondering like, what my kids are gonna do. Uh, they were actually raiding my house during that time. Um,

• 2:10:36Speaker 03

  they, my youngest son was downstairs watching TV. Um, my oldest was still in bed. How old? Uh, he had just turned eighteen. And your youngest? Uh, eight years old at the time. Um, the way they both like have described to me what happened is, you know, my, my youngest was watching TV. We have a big window that looks out into the street in our living room. He looked out the window and saw guys with automatic weapons coming up to the house in it like a train, you know? Um, he had said he saw a guy in the window, I think, with a gun, which he's eight years old. He ran upstairs.

• 2:11:20Speaker 03

  Um, got my oldest son, woke him up. Um, and it was like, there's guys with guns outside. Uh, my oldest son, told me to get the fuck out of his room, or you know, it was like, whatever you're, I thought he was just being kooky. Uh, and he started crying. He was like, no, there's guys with guns. He's like, you, you need to go look. So my oldest son walked downstairs and he said, uh, he could see somebody out of the window. And, um, when he opened the door, there was, uh, a guy on his knees with a gun to him, pointed at him, and then two guys with their guns pointed at his head. The eight-year-old?

• 2:11:59Speaker 03

  No, this is my eighteen-year-old. And my eight-year-old's standing behind him crying. Um, they're yelling at uh, my oldest son to get his hands up. Um, which he did. And um, then they were like, well, you need to come outside now, you know, this is all. My oldest son is like, doesn't know what's going on. Um, he calmly was like, well, can I put my hands down? To open the door and they didn't know what to do. They said they just sat there like trying to figure out how how to actually conduct a fucking raid or um.

• 2:12:34Shawn Ryan?

  So these guys are.

• 2:12:36Speaker 03

  No, they were.

• 2:12:37Shawn Ryan?

  This is the first house they ever raided.

• 2:12:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, and the crazy part is, is they. These are all NCIS agents. They had an FBI agent somewhere in the mix. Because they wouldn't, they would not be able to conduct that raid without an adult there present. So that's what they used. Like they had an FBI guy there like being like, oh, I'm overseeing this. Um, but that's, I mean, that goes to show you anything. These guys can't even conduct raids without an adult present. So they don't do anything stupid. Um.

• 2:13:10Speaker 03

  They ended up pulling my kids out in the middle of the street in their underwear. Um, by this time, the neighbors, you know, are all looking out, seeing this go on. They have my whole street. Every avenue to my street barricaded off. Um, you know, it looked like I was a cartel member. Um.

• 2:13:27Shawn Ryan?

  So they yanked an eight year old kid out of your house at gunpoint and threw his ass in the front yard in his underwear.

• 2:13:37Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 2:13:37Shawn Ryan?

  For everybody to see.

• 2:13:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, and left him there for a while. Um, and just they started to lay siege to my house. Now. My wife is Andrea. She's down the street, probably like two miles at a uh breakfast place having brunch with a friend. She gets a phone call from my daughter.

• 2:14:00Speaker 03

  Who my daughter was in in Ohio at the time um with her uh biological dad and uh so one of the neighbors had called my daughter a girl that was our neighbor and was like there your brothers are outside with guns pointing at their heads in their underwear like and there's people all over the streets with guns. Holy shit. So my daughter was like calls my wife and she's like I just got a call from so and so and this is what's going on and you know all this is probably like crazy and they're just like what and so my wife gets up and she's like I gotta go um races try races home um and she said that she tried to pull up in our neighborhood and everything was blocked

• 2:14:45Speaker 03

  off um she somehow got a call from one of the NCIS agents and she was like I'm I'm coming home and they were they opened it up and let her through um she parked and then they immediately started interrogating my wife uh they brought her into a van I think um and just started asking her all sorts of questions uh you know. And you had no idea this shit was going on. I had no idea that any of this was going on um my I think it was my youngest son asked one of the NCIS agents why they were there um and they pretty much said he's your

• 2:15:27Speaker 03

  dad's a murderer or he's being like told told the kids that I'm being like charged with murders pretty much telling my kids I'm a murderer which is insane to me why you would tell somebody's kids that when you don't have anything you know at that point uh and then um you know my wife pretty much told him to screw off in some form or fashion was just like I'm I have nothing to say to you uh and then she went in and watched them pretty much take everything out of my house uh you know took all my kids electronic equipment took anything they could. Damn. Um they found going through my garage.

• 2:16:10Speaker 03

  Just like any other team guys garage, I have all my kit bags and shit in there. So they were pulling out. I, you know, magazines that are high capacity magazines for California and pretty much being like, oh, got them on this. I had a, this is actually pretty funny. I had a

• 2:16:32Speaker 03

  dummy grenade, the blue body in one of my kit bags. They called EOD and said I had a live grenade in my house. So EOD, I guess, rolls up to my house and come to find out it's literally a dummy grenade. And they're like, this is, you know, just to give you an idea how incompetent these fucking guys are.

• 2:16:55Speaker 03

  You know, the best thing I think I heard my wife say is, uh, when they were, you know, they'd been there for hours and she's just like watching them go through all of our shit and take it. And she told me, she's like, they all look like I was just a bunch of beta male, like dudes, like just, you could tell like these fucking guys have no idea what they're doing. And one of them came up to her and I don't know if he put his hand on her shoulder, like did something. It was like, this must be really hard for you. What's going on right now? And I guess she told me, she looked at him and she's like, you have no fucking clue what we go through in this community. She's like, you think this is fucking hard? She's like, you're out of your mind. Like, get the fuck, hurry, get your shit, get the fuck out.

• 2:17:37Speaker 03

  So they, you know, dispersed. I have no clue that this is going on. Uh, I get, they come back in the interrogation room. Finally, and they're like, hey, all right, you can go.

• 2:17:50Speaker 03

  At this point, I'm like, just fucking worn out just from sitting there for so long, wondering what's going on. I, I come out. They had my phone and they're like, we're keeping your phone. I was like, all right. And they're like, do you, I was, I said, can I call my lawyer? Or I think it was either my lawyer or my wife. And they're like, oh, yeah. He gave me my phone. I put the code in and then they yanked it out of my hand. Like you can't have it. And that's how they got into my phone.

• 2:18:21Speaker 03

  And right before I left the NCIS office, one of the agents, this little turd, Brian Frank, he actually testified at my trial. He's in there all kitted up and looks like he's like this little kid playing airsoft. He looks right at me and he's like, hey, when I was walking, he's like, I saw your wife today. And I turned and looked at him like, what? And he's like, yeah, I saw her. And I didn't, I was like, okay, like, what the fuck are you talking about? I just walked out. Like little did I know, you know, until I got home, that they had pretty much laid siege to my house.

• 2:18:58Shawn Ryan?

  So they're fucking taunting you?

• 2:19:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. Everything they did was to taunt me and try and get me to do something so they can be like, we got them. I mean, it was, at that point, I had no idea, but it became more evident as this whole nightmare went on, but um,

• 2:19:16Speaker 03

  uh, I got home. And that's when, you know, my wife and kids were in the living room, just like, what the fuck? And uh, yeah, that's when we knew, I was like, dude, this has gotten real, you know, like what is going on? Um, I went into the command the next day furious. Um, went, demanded to talk to the group on mass chief again.

• 2:19:45Shawn Ryan?

  Usually we take phone calls on the show, but uh, this time we happen to have your son and your wife here. And so I'm gonna bring them on and we're gonna get their firsthand account of the raid.

• 2:20:01Shawn Ryan?

  So Ryan?

• 2:20:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:20:02Shawn Ryan?

  Do you remember when the police came to your house?

• 2:20:05Speaker 05

  Uh, I did, um. It was a, I forgot what day it was. It was on the weekend, it was like a Saturday. And um, he was gonna, my dad was gone at work and my mom was at a photo shoot. And my sister was in Ohio, I was with my brother. And I was watching TV. And I heard a pounding on the door and someone was like yelling, get out. So I opened that curtain and there's a ton of people with guns outside.

• 2:20:30Shawn Ryan?

  How many people?

• 2:20:31Speaker 05

  There was about fifteen people.

• 2:20:33Shawn Ryan?

  Fifteen people?

• 2:20:34Speaker 05

  And there was like cars blocking the entrance to the. Like, cause it was a through street and they were blocking the entrance. Like, it was our house that was blocked. Like, we couldn't get out. And um, I went upstairs and I was telling my brother, like I was crying, that there's people outside with guns. And it was funny because he was like, if it's your friends with Nerf guns, I'm gonna hit you so hard. So he goes outside and we're both in our underwear and there's guys that with guns and um.

• 2:21:03Shawn Ryan?

  How old were you?

• 2:21:04Speaker 05

  I was eight or seven and. So I walk outside and there's people, like there's a guy camped with a shotgun like by the side and then there's like two other people with rifles. And they're like the lasers are right on us.

• 2:21:18Shawn Ryan?

  They had their lasers shining on you?

• 2:21:20Speaker 05

  And they were like decked out with armor and stuff and there's like a guy with a thing like to knock down our door and. Um, we, these people made us go in a car. And we waited for like thirty minutes and they were in our house, like taking everything and like, there's people everywhere.

• 2:21:37Shawn Ryan?

  What did they do when you opened the door or they opened the door?

• 2:21:41Speaker 05

  Um, my brother did.

• 2:21:43Shawn Ryan?

  And what happened when they, when the door opened?

• 2:21:45Speaker 05

  Uh, there was like five, the, fit like all, everyone's yelling like, get out of the house, get out of the house and, yeah.

• 2:21:51Shawn Ryan?

  Were they pointing their guns?

• 2:21:53Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:21:53Shawn Ryan?

  At you? Where were they pointing?

• 2:21:55Speaker 05

  Behind their cars and stuff.

• 2:21:57Shawn Ryan?

  What about the guys in the door?

• 2:21:59Speaker 05

  Um, they were like. Less than a foot away and like the gun was like right at my head. So it was, it was really close.

• 2:22:08Shawn Ryan?

  So you're eight years old and you had a whole team pointing a gun at your face in your underwear?

• 2:22:14Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:22:14Shawn Ryan?

  And they made you go outside in your underwear?

• 2:22:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:22:17Shawn Ryan?

  Did they hold a gun on you while you were in the front yard in your underwear?

• 2:22:21Speaker 05

  Um, there was a couple of people that were, but most of them went inside to go inspect the house and like move, they were moving all the furniture and like, they didn't, it was dumb.

• 2:22:34Shawn Ryan?

  Were they asking you questions?

• 2:22:37Speaker 05

  No, they're, I, I think they were asking my brother questions and then like, yeah, we sat in the car for about thirty minutes and um, since my sister was in Ohio, my, her friend, she was calling her and calling her and texting her that like there's a SWAT team at my house like and we're in a car and my mom didn't know what was going on. He, my dad, he was like, like he was somewhere and he wasn't able to contact us or anything. So.

• 2:23:08Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think they knew that your dad wasn't home?

• 2:23:12Speaker 05

  No, they knew.

• 2:23:13Shawn Ryan?

  They did know?

• 2:23:14Speaker 05

  Yeah. They knew that, they like, I don't know what was happening, but all I knew was they knew he wasn't home and they were trying to scare us.

• 2:23:26Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 2:23:27Speaker 05

  And they wanted him to do something. I don't know.

• 2:23:31Shawn Ryan?

  Did they scare you?

• 2:23:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was scared.

• 2:23:33Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet. Eight years old with a gun in your face.

• 2:23:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:23:37Shawn Ryan?

  In your underwear. Well, thanks for sharing, Ryan. I appreciate it.

• 2:23:41Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:23:44Shawn Ryan?

  Well, thanks for coming on, Andrea. I appreciate it.

• 2:23:46Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me.

• 2:23:48Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, so we just got your son's account of the NCIS raid and uh, I just wanted to get kind of where you were, what it felt like, what it was like when you showed up at home to see your eight-year-old son and uh, and your eighteen-year-old son in the front lawn with their underwear on at gunpoint by the NCIS.

• 2:24:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. So it was June twentieth.

• 2:24:17Speaker 04

  2018, and unbeknownst to us, our house had been being cased for weeks by NCIS. And we actually had a neighbor that was working in tandem with NCIS. I think he thought he was some type of Matt Damon informant type character from the movie. So he had started to report our movements and report different things. And he had also informed them that we were going to be moving. So NCIS had been watching us, watching our movements. And so that day, I had left the house. I was leaving to go to meetings and I had work, work meetings. Eddie had already left to go to work. And it just seemed like a normal day.

• 2:25:01Speaker 04

  We left the boys at home. Trevin was still asleep, who was our 18 year old at the time. Ryan would have been eight. And so he was at home, he was up, he was just like watching cartoons. And I went to my first meeting. And it was actually with a girlfriend. Since we were leaving, we were kind of having one last little get together. And I was at the table and my daughter had called me. But my daughter was not home. My daughter was actually in Ohio. And she called me asking where I was. And I was like, I'm, I'm with my friend, like, what's going on? And she sounded very worried. And she's like, Mom, she's like, the neighbor girl just called me.

• 2:25:42Speaker 04

  There's police everywhere and the boys are outside of the house, like they're in their underwear. And I'm like, what, what are you talking about? So I just like got up, left the table, jumped in my car. And as I'm driving, I'm trying to like call my neighbor. And it just kept on going to voicemail and voicemail and voicemail. And finally, by the fourth time, I think I called, she picked up the phone screaming. And so my neighbor, my next door neighbor is on the phone screaming. And she's like, they've got your kids, they've got your dogs, they're everywhere. And I'm like, who is this? Who is it?

• 2:26:18Shawn Ryan?

  Them.

• 2:26:19Speaker 04

  And she's like screaming on the phone, saying, this is their mother, this is their mother. And I'm hearing someone screaming back at her, saying, get off the phone, get off the phone, get back in your house. So I'm in full like. What is going on? Freaking out?

• 2:26:34Shawn Ryan?

  What did you think? Do you have any idea?

• 2:26:36Speaker 04

  No, I had no idea. Well, we lived in Point Loma, which is kind of like Point Loma Military Housing. We lived at the Village NTC. So it's kind of like a thoroughfare between like Rosecrans, which is a very busy street, and also Harbor. And we have a lot of homeless. So in my mind, I'm like, is there like a homeless person or a bum like in my, you know, garage or something? Like, what are they doing? I didn't know it was even NCIS. I had no clue. Once I found out what was going on, I got another call from a blocked number. And the woman was like, we are from NCIS. We're at your home. Tell us what kind of car you're driving. They had the streets barricaded. They had the streets barricaded. They had people in full militia riot gear.

• 2:27:21Speaker 04

  They had people staged and set up like they're going to war. And I'm, so when I come through, there's like seven to eight black, you know, armored vehicles in front of my home. And there's people just like spurting out everywhere, out of my garage, out of my front door. And my son had only turned 18 two to three weeks prior, which they also knew. And so they took advantage of the fact that Eddie was gone. I was not there and they gained entry through an 18-year-old that just woke up. So when I got to the home, they actually pulled me into a vehicle and started to question me. But what I found out later was Eddie had already been apprehended.

• 2:28:03Speaker 04

  He was at work. They came, they got him, and they threw him in a room for seven hours. They denied him legal counsel. So there was no Navy SEAL threat there. So you didn't need to lay siege to my house with two children in it in that fashion.

• 2:28:17Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you, why do you think they showed so much force for an eight-year-old?

• 2:28:21Speaker 04

  To terrorize us and intimidate us and to convince people that, you know, we did something wrong. And that's exactly what happened. That's, it worked because you don't go to that level. And then people just were like, oh, my gosh, it has, you got, you guys had to have done something.

• 2:28:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:40Speaker 04

  And so it worked. So they had Eddie. He did not know the whole day what was going on. He did not know that our home was being raided. So if you think of the psychological warfare that they started at that moment to entrap him in an office building and then basically did not tell him all day what they were doing.

• 2:29:01Speaker 04

  It was just a form of psychological warfare on him because he went to fight, you know, for our country to prevent people from terrorizing, you know, members of the United States. And then they take him and they lock him up on American soil and then they lay siege to his home and terrorize his wife and his children on his own land. I mean, it's, it's pretty sick.

• 2:29:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:24Speaker 04

  What they did. So that was Eddie's story, what was happening to him while this was happening to us. But what I found out later from the boys was that Ryan was actually sitting kind of in a chair like this, watching TV and looks out the window and sees people with guns and like battering rams lining up at our door. And you can imagine an eight year old, he starts freaking out. He runs upstairs. He tells my son who's in bed asleep at this point, that there's people with guns at the door. And so my oldest is just like, dude, what are you talking about? He's thinking it's maybe neighborhood kids with Nerf guns or something and Ryan's being Ryan. But then Ryan starts to break down in tears. And so my son gets up, obviously, and is like, okay, they walk downstairs.

• 2:30:09Speaker 04

  My oldest son opens up the door. And so there's a main door and there's a screen door. And they're all screaming at him. They're pointing rifles at my children and they're saying, put your hands up. And they're also simultaneously saying, open up the door. So if you can imagine the level of bush league that this operation is. So my son's like, do you want me to put my hands up? Or do you want me to open the door? And they're like, do you give us permission to enter, put your hands up? And so he basically gets pulled out into the street along with my son in their underwear. And they're just paraded right into the, you know, middle of our housing complex. And then they all just rush in. And that was the start of a seven hour raid on our home.

• 2:30:51Shawn Ryan?

  I just want to, you know, I'm sorry that you and your family had to go through that. And I just want to tell you, you are a strong, motivated, effective, and just amazing human being.

• 2:31:06Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:31:07Shawn Ryan?

  And I mean, the campaign that you started from scratch and what it turned into, I mean, if it wasn't, you know, for you, then you'd still be in there. So, I mean, what an example you've set.

• 2:31:22Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:31:23Shawn Ryan?

  And hell of a job. So.

• 2:31:24Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:31:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Thank you for coming on. I appreciate it. Alright, so you're going to talk to the Master Chief at the Command after your house just got raided?

• 2:31:35Speaker 03

  Yep, so I went in, um, demanded to talk to him. He came over to supply, um, sat down with me and another Master Chief that was in charge of supply and, uh, I was like with, you know, I was pissed. And I was like, my house just got raided. My kids were pulled out of gunpoint yesterday. What the hell's going on?

• 2:31:56Speaker 03

  Why aren't you guys like, at this point, I was beyond, I think I was beyond frustrated, um, because nobody had been talking to me at this point. Now my family was getting, they involved my family and started, you know, they put my family to shit, which I don't, I have a line that everybody knows.

• 2:32:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:13Speaker 03

  You can mess with me all you want, like, you know, I might fight back, I might not, I don't know, but you mess with my family, like, that's it, you know, um, and that was pretty much well-known through everybody that knew me in the community. Like, that's when my family's what mattered to me the most. So I was, I was definitely, uh, beyond pissed off. Um, the group on Master Chief Steve Ward told me that, uh, he's like, denied knowing anything about it, which is bullshit. And, uh, then he told me that if I had any issues with it, that I should go talk to a chaplain.

• 2:32:53Speaker 03

  And that was the only thing advice he gave. I was like, that's what you have to say to me right now? Is that I can go talk to a chaplain about what's going on? He was like, yeah. And he's like, oh, and one more thing. And he slid a piece of paper across the table. I had picked up E8 or got selected for E8 and, uh, he was like, you're not going to pick up E8. We're gonna hold it off until this whole investigation is over with. And they're like, he had me sign it. And at that, I wish at this point I didn't sign that, but I didn't give a shit at that point. I was like, I don't care, so I hear.

• 2:33:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:33Speaker 03

  And that was it. He left. And I think, you know, as you can expect, that raid spread like wildfire through the community.

• 2:33:42Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:33:43Speaker 03

  You know, and of course, the the dummy grenade they found in my garage got spread and they found five hand grenades and blah, blah, blah, like just escalates as the telephone game passes through the teams.

• 2:33:56Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have any friends at this point?

• 2:33:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I had, I had my my, you know, my brothers, my teammates that I was talking to, but it's very hard. You know, what can they do?

• 2:34:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:09Speaker 03

  They're they're almost like, dude, this is fucked up. And they're, anybody that I talked to that I was, what I was going through, automatically got scared themselves. And they were like, dude, what are they gonna do to me? You know, if I, you know, step in and say something, it's, um, that's how they drive fear into you, especially raiding your house like that. I mean, that, what that does is, there's no reason they they could, they could have easily walked up, knocked on the door and got the same job done. They did it for that reason, because they want to put shame on to you. They want, and it worked. The neighbors, our neighbors were like, because we went and asked them afterwards, like, hey, did you happen to videotape any of that? Or, and they're like,

• 2:34:54Speaker 03

  we're not like that. You, they don't come and do that to you unless you did something.

• 2:34:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:59Speaker 03

  And so it worked. And then, uh, it also, what they do it to drive your family apart, too. They hope that, you know, they cause enough stress on to your wife or on to yourself that you guys start going at each other. And then one of you flips on each other, starts, you know, doesn't help out. But, you know, obviously, that didn't work with us. But, um, that's, I've seen that happen enough, heard enough stories that happened enough times when I was in the brig, that, I mean, it's all for a purpose of why they do those things.

• 2:35:29Speaker 03

  But yeah, at that point, you know, I had talked to my buddies about it and they were all just like, dude, they had no advice or anything. They were just like, dude, this is fucked up. Just like, you know, we were thinking. But that was pretty much the deciding point for me that I was getting out. I'm like, I'm getting out, you know. You know, I felt at that point betrayed. Just sort of just left, hung out to dry. I had a couple of buddies that were master chiefs at that point that were told me exactly, they're like, they are railroading you. Like, this is what's happening. They're just hanging you out to dry.

• 2:36:08Shawn Ryan?

  Why, why do you think they're?

• 2:36:10Speaker 03

  I think it was to protect what it, well, what it comes down to is they're protecting the institution. Right? The NSW. Anything that's brought out in the public arena or in the media that is bad against NSW, they would rather just dispose of whatever that problem is than actually put up with it and fight back. You know, they're like, because they don't want any stains at all. And that's, I mean, that's due to the fact of how big NSW has gotten over the years with all the success that we've had. I think they, you know, a lot with success comes with, comes a public

• 2:36:52Speaker 03

  scrutiny, you know. So any little thing that happens, you know, anything that says seal on it gets pointed back to NSW and they're like, oh, what's this? So obviously, if there's a murder, they're like, we're just gonna fucking hang this guy out to dry instead of actually looking into this because this looks bad on the institution.

• 2:37:10Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:37:11Speaker 03

  That's, and that's the sad part. I mean, it's a sad reality of what I found out. You know, it's, there's a difference between expendable and disposable. I know I'm expendable. Like, I, that's, that's part of the job, but I'm not fucking disposable. Like, you just don't, you can't just throw me away because you feel like this might look bad on you or your career. Picking up three stars. So I think that was a big driving force of why the head shed, like Group One or the Admiral, really didn't look, like never, they never talked to me once. Still haven't. Still never talked to those guys and why they came down on me so hard. You know, they were just like, we're just gonna make an example out of this guy and that's it.

• 2:37:58Speaker 03

  At that point, I was getting, you know, I decided to get out. We had already bought a place, a house in Florida. So I moved my family down, down there, I think like two weeks after the raid. Drove across country, moved them in and then the plan was I was going to come back to San Diego and geo batch until my retirement date. And just fly back and forth and just finish out my career.

• 2:38:26Speaker 03

  They waited, NCIS waited until I came back from Florida. Got back to San Diego and I got accepted into the TBI Treatment Center, which is Intrepid Spear.

• 2:38:41Speaker 03

  Started going to that, I was in about the beginning of September. And was going through that, nothing was being said to me still, just doing my thing and then on September 11th.

• 2:38:57Speaker 03

  The, my old SCA, Brian Alzawi and two MAs showed up to the Intrepid Center.

• 2:39:06Speaker 03

  And told me that they were going to take me away, that they were ordered to take me away to the brig. Shit. I was like in shock and I was like, why? They couldn't tell me why, they're like, we don't know, like the Admiral. Admiral Green and Commodore Rose Bloom just signed off on it and they want, they want us to take you there. And, you know. At that point, I remember looking at, I was in a room with three of them. And I did think first, I was like, I'm about to start fighting right now, like this is, you know, I was going through all sorts of scenarios in my head. But I decided again to remain calm, I was like, you know, doing anything stupid is not going to help the situation.

• 2:39:52Speaker 03

  I let them handcuff me and put me in a van. Um, and the two MAs drove me to the brig. Um, I had no idea where the brig was. I thought it was something on a ship still. I was like, where are you guys taking me? Um, it was to, uh, Miramar, uh, Marine Corps Air Station.

• 2:40:16Speaker 03

  They had a pretty, those two guys had a pretty good idea of, well, they were, what they were telling me was they're like, oh, you'll be out in a week. You'll be out of the brig in a week. And I was like, well, how does this, how am I going to get out in a week? And they're like, oh, they have a hearing for everybody that goes in there their first week and they, that decides whether or not you should stay in there or be let out. And I was like, okay. Um, but either way, I was, I was like,

• 2:40:43Speaker 03

  I was like in survival mode at that point. I was like, I don't know what the fuck's going on. Um,

• 2:40:48Speaker 03

  they took me first before we went to the brig. We went to a, a medical, uh,

• 2:40:55Speaker 03

  place on Miramar to make sure I was healthy enough to get put in the brig. They did like a full checkup on me. Um, so I'm sitting in handcuffs in the medical place with families. Everyone staring at me. Um, and, uh, they did the full checkup and then took me to the brig.

• 2:41:15Speaker 03

  And as soon as I got in the brig is when I was like, dude, what the fuck? Like, there was probably

• 2:41:24Speaker 03

  eight to 10 guards who met me, just me for intake. They all treated me like I was Jason Bourne. Um, each of them were like posted up, like every time I moved, like I was about to

• 2:41:39Speaker 03

  do something.

• 2:41:42Speaker 03

  The first thing I, I got checked, when I was getting checked in, they ask you, do you know what you're in for, in here for, or why you're here? And I, at the time, I was like, sort of jokingly, I was like, killing ISIS? And they're like, yeah. And I was like, okay, like I was joking, but like, no, that's why you're here.

• 2:42:07Speaker 03

  And, uh, that was all that was said to me.

• 2:42:10Speaker 03

  I got told the CEO of the break came down, told me um that, you know, it doesn't, she saw my service record or whatever. And she's like, that doesn't matter in here.

• 2:42:25Speaker 03

  You're not technically a prisoner, but you will be treated of how you you will be treated as good as you treat the guards. I'm like, okay, you know, I told her, I was like, ma'am, I'm not here to cause any trouble. I I should be getting out of here in like three days. This is a big mistake. Like whatever's going on here. They threw me in solitary confinement right off the bat for three days. Why? Just just to get in your fucking head? Yeah.

• 2:42:55Speaker 03

  Put me in there. I wasn't allowed out of that cell for three days, not even, I think they let me shower once. But the every time they moved me at that point, they shackled my arms and legs. So it was like, you know, even from my cell, my solitary cell to the shower was probably 10 feet. And they'd have to shack me on like, take me down there, put me in there. Cause you're a seal. Yeah. And that's all what it came down to. I finally got that little hearing that they were talking about about six days in. And that's when I knew that I was fucked.

• 2:43:36Speaker 03

  Cause I really had no, at this point, I have no clue what's going on. You know, I'm just sort of trying to figure it out as I go.

• 2:43:46Speaker 03

  They have this hearing, my lawyer, one of the lawyer that I had on standby showed up. And um, that's when I first saw the prosecution.

• 2:43:57Speaker 03

  And they had the NCIS agent come, Warpinski. And literally I went in there and the pro they have a, it's not a judge. They just appoint some officer on base to come in and act as the judge. And he just decides whether you stay or he can get out.

• 2:44:18Speaker 03

  The prosecution got up and pretty much let loose a flurry of just.

• 2:44:26Speaker 03

  Crazy allegations for about 10 minutes. They called me. They called me everything from murderer, a drug mule, that I said I beat my wife. That I'm a danger to my kids.

• 2:44:41Speaker 03

  I'm a fake Christian.

• 2:44:44Speaker 03

  A fake Christian? Yep. They said that, oh, he goes to church, but he really doesn't practice what he like making crazy statements like that. Like that's a. And I'm telling you, I sat there listening to this. How the fuck is that even relevant? They brought up all sorts of like shit, because all they were trying to do was like taint my. Who I am as a person, I guess. Which it was, that was probably. One of the craziest moments, just hearing them say this shit. And I can't like not allowed to say anything back. The lawyer that I had at the time wasn't stopping them from saying it.

• 2:45:26Speaker 03

  He was just like, like, it's like he'd heard this all before, you know?

• 2:45:33Speaker 03

  Then the. It NCS agent got up and said his whole piece was like pretty much just regurgitated. Whatever this, you know, the prosecution said. Said that I, you know, murdered. You know, this ISIS fighter, they had the picture at that time. They're like, here it is. Look at him, you know?

• 2:45:56Speaker 03

  And then the main reason why they kept me in is because the second prosecutor got up and pretty much went over every qualification I had. Every school that I'd been to. Everything I'd done in my career, but used it as like, it's a bad, like against me. It's a bad thing. And that was why they could not in good conscience, let me out because at any moment I could do anything.

• 2:46:21Speaker 03

  You know, I could escape to somewhere and disappear. At what point did Andrea find out that you were in prison? Uh, probably.

• 2:46:32Speaker 03

  The second day, or maybe that night, I, I heard a loud one five minute phone call, which they weren't even gonna give me, but I, luckily I remembered it in my cell and I was like, hey, I wanna call, uh, I called my lawyer, um, told him what happened and I told him to call my wife and let her know. Um, so I think they, they killed, they might've called her that first night, uh, second day. But my lawyer told me right off the bat, he was like, there's no, there's no bail system in the, Uniform Code of Military Justice. So he's like, you're not, unless they let you out, you're not getting out.

• 2:47:11Speaker 03

  And that's pretty much after that, uh, hearing that we had, they deemed that I was too dangerous to let out. Oh, and one other thing. This is, so one of the guys in my platoon, Josh Brands, um, one of the accusers was my neighbor. He lived four houses down from me.

• 2:47:36Speaker 03

  Had no idea this guy was even like, really involved with the other accusers, um, in my platoon. He was, I didn't even give him any thought, you know, and I'd, I even saw him all the time and just give him like a head nod, like a what's up? Uh, he was staking my house out for NCIS the whole time. For NCIS? So he was pretty much a

• 2:48:01Speaker 03

  volunteer NCIS agent. Um, so he was feeding them information, letting them know my whereabouts, you know, when I worked out, when I did what, uh, and he also, so they got him to write a letter,

• 2:48:18Speaker 03

  which they read off at that hearing, saying that I was stalking him, that I walked my dogs past his house every day and was scaring his family. So that was like a huge factor. They were like, oh, and he's stalking one of the guys on his platoon, which was complete, like I, when I read that letter, when we were in that hearing, I'm like, that was like another punch in the face, like, what? Like, this dude's, I'm stalking him? Like, you know, I had no idea this guy was involved. Um. But yeah, that was, that was it. Like, you're not, you're not leaving until your court date.

• 2:49:01Speaker 03

  Which was? Which was undetermined at the time. I hadn't even been charged with anything yet.

• 2:49:07Speaker 03

  So I just sat, I sat in the brig for about

• 2:49:15Speaker 03

  two months at that point.

• 2:49:18Speaker 03

  Not, so you, when you're in the brig, you can't, all the phone calls are recorded. There's, they have two prison phones there that you split between sixty people. You're not allowed on the phones until after five PM to like nine PM.

• 2:49:38Speaker 03

  If you want to use a phone, it costs a butt ton of money. It's some ridiculous, like every minute, some ridiculous charge. And all the phone calls are recorded. And NCIS comes in weekly and takes all my calls there, or whoever they're investigating and listens to them. So, you know, I was told right away, don't say anything over the phone. When you talk to your family, don't talk about the case because they'll just, they'll pick apart any little thing you say and try to use it.

• 2:50:06Speaker 03

  So, I mean, phone calls were pretty rough, like back and forth, just because at that point, there's only so much you could talk about without it like coming back to like the nightmare. So we, it was, uh, it was tough

• 2:50:21Speaker 03

  to be able to sort of communicate what was going on because Andrea started fighting back right when they threw me in there is when she pretty much was like, fuck this. And she started a grassroots campaign to like, put the truth out about what was going on. She wrote a letter to the community

• 2:50:41Speaker 03

  asking for help from everybody. Did she get any? She did. She go all behind the scenes, like people that were like, dude, we want to help, but

• 2:50:52Speaker 03

  when it came down to like help from foundations, nothing, they were like, nope. How were people helping? Uh, people, I mean, it was all my boys that I, you know, private platoons, whatever, reached out and they're like, dude, we'll write character witness, whatever you need, character witness statements, this and this, what else can I do? But at that point, I mean, there's not a, there wasn't a lot guys could do, except write character witness statement, or, but she, or, you know, go around and try and advocate in some way, which is difficult to do, but she was just more calling it out, like, there's, like, they threw him away in prison for not, like, he wasn't doing anything, you know, which is the truth. Like, I wasn't a threat to anybody. Um, and

• 2:51:35Speaker 03

  she was just like, let him out, so he can be with his family and defend himself against this. Uh, and they just ignored her completely, uh, the command did. Um, so she started, she started the grassroots campaign on her own, um, decided to, she has, she has a background in marketing and business and stuff, you know, doing stuff with, uh, helping, um, spouses get businesses off the ground. And she just took the tools of what she knew from that and was like, I'm applying it to this and pretty much started a, you know, uh, started an Instagram page and all that to like, get the word out about what was going on. And

• 2:52:18Speaker 03

  throughout the process, I mean, she gained quite a following. Uh, a lot of people, which is, it was amazing to see. Um, but I had no real idea that all that was going on, you know? Like, I knew she was doing certain things, but certain things couldn't be said over the phone. Um.

• 2:52:37Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, I guess, you know, I remember when that was all going on and

• 2:52:42Shawn Ryan?

  damn, to think that you had no fucking clue in there, you know?

• 2:52:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:52:47Shawn Ryan?

  How big it had gotten and all the news stories and everything. I mean.

• 2:52:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. It was a, it was a shock when I got out. Like, I had seen, I knew she was going, she went on the news eventually. Um. And we had one TV in there in the uh in the pod and you're only allowed to watch CNN in there. Uh I think they do that for like torture purposes, but it's if you had a cool guard, what you could get him to change the channel. Um, so I think once I, you know, I knew she was gonna be on. So like I begged one of the guards and like dude, and so he turned it, you know, and I got to watch her on Fox News. Uh, but I had no real idea. Like, I don't think I could grasp how big it had gotten until I got out. And I was like, holy shit.

• 2:53:36Shawn Ryan?

  She did a hell of a job.

• 2:53:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, dude, she's

• 2:53:38Shawn Ryan?

  A hell of a job.

• 2:53:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, she's the hero. Uh, her and my brother both. My brother is also, uh, another one that's, do he, both of them, the dynamic duo, the two heroes in my book. Um, they dropped everything and just worked their asses off to get the truth out. Um, but yeah, like, so when I was about two months in is when I finally got, um, the charges.

• 2:54:04Shawn Ryan?

  So these are your, uh, charges right here, the first three of them.

• 2:54:10Shawn Ryan?

  specification, premeditated murder. And that chief special warfare operator Edward R. Gallagher, US Navy Naval Special Warfare Group One on active duty, did at or near Mosul, Iraq, on about three, May 2017, with premeditation, murdered a wounded male under the care of the said SOC Gallagher by means of stabbing him in the neck and body with a knife.

• 2:54:46Shawn Ryan?

  When you showed up and that ISIS fighter was laying there that

• 2:54:54Shawn Ryan?

  do you have any fucking idea this shit was gonna come out like this?

• 2:54:57Speaker 03

  No, not a million years. Not one bit.

• 2:55:02Shawn Ryan?

  And then basically it goes on to you murdered an old man, you murdered a young girl. And but these.

• 2:55:16Shawn Ryan?

  There was one that was in Afghanistan, if I remember correctly.

• 2:55:21Speaker 03

  That wasn't a, a charge. That was, they were looking to charge me with, throw that on there, but they, again, that was all on hearsay from the accusers who weren't even in the teams at the time that went down.

• 2:55:38Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:55:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:55:40Shawn Ryan?

  And then there's, there's actually, I think, eight pages of this. And, uh, everything from murder to little bottle of, uh, tramadol that they found.

• 2:55:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:55:54Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 2:55:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, they throw, so pretty much the way it works for which I, you know, we found out the military judicial system is they have the main charge, which is premeditated murder. And then they can get just a laundry list of other charges and it's like spaghetti. They just throw it all at the wall and those will see what sticks. None of it has to have any merit. They'll just charge you with it and be like, okay, we'll see which ones we can get them. So the more charges they have on you, then when you go to court, the more likely they are to get you on something.

• 2:56:28Shawn Ryan?

  Did all the charges come at once or did they just keep adding more and more?

• 2:56:32Speaker 03

  They added the, uh, two, uh, murder charges, the extra ones, the old man and the little girl, um, at my article 32. So to explain that, um, the article 32 is like a civilian equivalent of a grand jury, um, just with the military. So you go up there, the prosecution presents their case or what they have at the time. And then the judge rules whether to proceed with those to court martial or not, or some other form of, you know, punishment or whatever else.

• 2:57:08Speaker 03

  While at that article 32, uh, they, they were, you know, presenting all the other charges or trying to, you know, get them to go to court martial. They had, uh, the NSA agent take the stand again and just regurgitate and everything.

• 2:57:27Speaker 03

  We requested that the accusers come and take the stand on my Article 32. Because we're like, we want to hear it from them. Because I, as I, I said then, and I said the whole time, I'm like, these guys are lying.

• 2:57:39Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know how many people?

• 2:57:41Speaker 03

  At that point, yeah, I knew who, who the, I had already read, I got a binder full of evidence. So I got to read all their NCIS interviews. I got to watch their NCIS videos. I knew everything that they had said. And I, I was like, they're, I knew, I was like, they're fucking lying. And they have lied. You could tell that they had tried to like, get a story together. But then, once they got separated into the little interrogation rooms, NCIS, they couldn't keep their stories the same. So there were so many discrepancies and big ones.

• 2:58:22Speaker 03

  That, that's why I was like, I want them to take the stand. Right now, which the judge and the prosecution denied. They're like, oh, there's no need for them to come up here and say anything. The NCIS agent is just regurgitating what they said, so that's good enough.

• 2:58:36Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. Going back to the, the old man and the girl.

• 2:58:45Shawn Ryan?

  So was that just hearsay? Because I couldn't find a whole lot of.

• 2:58:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. So this is.

• 2:58:50Shawn Ryan?

  Information.

• 2:58:51Speaker 03

  This is what happened with the old man and the girl.

• 2:58:55Speaker 03

  And you gotta like, bear with me on this, because it sounds as stupid as it sounds.

• 2:59:02Speaker 03

  Josh Brenz, during his NCIS interview, told Agent Wapinski that

• 2:59:12Speaker 03

  he had seen a little girl get shot. Which we all saw, you know, kids get shot at deployment. But, and that he thought ISIS had done it. But now he thinks that I did it. And so, Agent Wapinski is like, well, did you see him do it? And he's like, no, I wasn't in the same building as him. But so and so, another guy in my platoon, told me he saw Eddie do it. And he'll, so they called that person in. And that person's like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I never said that once and I never saw Eddie shoot any little kids. So what they did is they took so and so's testimony and just hit it. And they were like, just gave him Josh Brenzes. Straight up. Straight up, hit it.

• 2:59:59Speaker 03

  Didn't fit the agenda. Nope. And they did, that's the common theme throughout my whole thing is they had, they hit every piece of evidence that would have been like, this is all bullshit. They just, if it didn't fit their agenda or the prosecution, they just tried to bury it somewhere. So that the little girl got thrown on. Oh, this is the other thing that's just gonna blow your mind.

• 3:00:21Speaker 03

  So the old man is actually, has some truth to it. Uh, but look, a guy from my platoon came and testified

• 3:00:32Speaker 03

  at my trial. And was like, I was with him and that was, that was an actual shithead that he shot, not an old man. And it was a justified shooting. And he even said he had an argument afterwards with one of the accusers that day. When that accuser tried to be like, oh, I think that guy was unarmed. And he was like, no, he was armed. I was there with him. You know, watched the whole thing and that's, you know, got pretty much thrown out.

• 3:01:02Speaker 03

  But, uh, the judge at my Article 32 ruled that the two murder charges, the little girl and the old man should not go to court martial. He was like, there's, and he even said, he's like, there's not enough evidence here. This is all up hearsay.

• 3:01:17Speaker 03

  Little did I know that that judge really has no control of what goes to court martial. The command, Commodore Rosenblum overturned the judge's ruling and was like, no, you keep those charges on there. Holy shit. So my own command. It was like, even though there's no evidence here, just keep them on there. And so that's how I went to court martial with those three, three murder charges.

• 3:01:41Shawn Ryan?

  Now, are these videos of these guys, their interviews with NCIS? Are these the same ones that the New York Times got their hands on?

• 3:01:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, but they spliced them up.

• 3:01:52Shawn Ryan?

  How did they get their hands on those?

• 3:01:54Speaker 03

  Uh. Because.

• 3:01:57Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it sounds like it's, you know, such a sensitive investigation. So who the fuck released that to the New York Times?

• 3:02:05Speaker 03

  The prosecution and, uh, Warcom.

• 3:02:10Shawn Ryan?

  Why did they do that?

• 3:02:11Speaker 03

  To paint me, um, in a bad light to went, to help win over, I mean, for exactly the reason that we're here talking about it.

• 3:02:20Shawn Ryan?

  So this doesn't fucking make sense to me because you have what sounds like almost an entire fucking community saying that you're guilty of, of murder, murdering an ISIS fighter, which makes no fucking sense to me. Uh, and a little girl and an old man and then a whole list of, uh, you know, basic misdemeanor bullshit charges, it sounds like.

• 3:02:56Shawn Ryan?

  I don't understand the, the, and, and, and you say that they were coming at you hard because they, they, you know, they wanted to protect the institution.

• 3:03:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:03:08Shawn Ryan?

  So they wanted to protect the institution. We get they leak the fucking videos to the New York Times, which

• 3:03:16Speaker 03

  Because.

• 3:03:16Shawn Ryan?

  Now, now the entire fucking world knows.

• 3:03:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, because at that time, so they didn't leak all that information out at first. It wasn't until. Uh, my wife started really fighting back and getting a bunch of people, you know, behind us that now I think the command felt like, okay, there's, we're losing this battle. Hmm. Let's pull this number right here. And the prosecution, the prosecution was leaking stuff to the media from the get go. Um, we tried to call him out on it two to three times during our, uh, motions hearings. Like it was, it was so blatant and so bad that, uh, the media was putting out evidence or like before we even got it. No shit.

• 3:04:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. So we would be like, how is it that this is being printed in the newspaper last night and we haven't gotten this evidence yet? And the pro, this is, and this is how they investigate things in the, the judicial system there with the military. The judge will be like, okay, yeah, that is disheartening to hear that this is happening. Prosecution, we want you to look into this and see who's doing it. Prosecution comes back the next day, like, we looked into it. We don't know who's doing, it's not us. And that's it. That's it? Move on. Yeah. And so that, that was happening over and over. Um, they, you

• 3:04:46Speaker 03

  know, they leaked everything to do exactly what, what was done. So slander me in the media, cause it, it'll drive, you know, when they go to the court martial, the jury will be tainted already. And I'm just gonna have a preconceived notion, you know, that I'm, I'm guilty. And that just helps them win their case. Uh, so yeah, I mean, that was, that was going on pretty much the whole time. But I had, again, I'm locked up. I am not seeing any of these crazy articles that are coming out. Um, I'm just hearing about them from my brother, my wife over the phone or like people that came and visited me, um, would say, you know, there's pretty shitty articles coming out about you and it's, it's not good. Yeah. Um, I had no idea like what really was being said. Um,

• 3:05:33Speaker 03

  But yeah, you got, you got to think too, man, like they added those, so they didn't have those old man and the woman on there at first.

• 3:05:42Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, God.

• 3:05:43Speaker 03

  But they had the, they had the NCIS interviews where all that shit was said. They added those two on because they were getting the same reaction out of everybody that you just gave, like he murdered an ISIS fighter, like who fucking cares?

• 3:05:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:59Speaker 03

  They're like, okay, we're not winning people over like that. What are the two most, uh, you know, um, controversial things we can get him? He murdered an old, old man, and this is the best thing. I murdered, I murdered an old man on Father's Day. That's what they were putting out. It was Father's Day when I murdered this old man and then I murdered a little girl. That right there drives some emotion. I mean, even if I heard like somebody kill a little kid, I'd be like, dude, what the fuck? You know, that's, that's messed up. So they knew like that would drive people to be like, this dude is a monster. This dude is crazy. And, you know, it just went from there. Uh, and they just continued to smear me. Um, you know, every chance they got.

• 3:06:44Speaker 03

  And it was all just like false misinformation that was being put out. Uh, you know, I, I try to explain it to people. Like my case is sort of like, um, almost like a false rape case to where it's like a girl comes in and is like, oh, I got raped last night. Um, and when, when really she just had sex with a dude that made a mistake. It does, that dude is screwed no matter what. Just that one allegation is like, even if he's found innocent at the end.

• 3:07:14Shawn Ryan?

  But it sounds like throughout NSW, throughout the entire community, um, I've heard you say that, you know, they were, they were counseling guys for wearing

• 3:07:27Speaker 03

  The Free Eddie shirts.

• 3:07:28Shawn Ryan?

  Anybody that talked about it was gonna get counseled. Uh, I mean, there was an active campaign.

• 3:07:36Speaker 03

  Big time, like straight up legitimate active campaign. The Commodore. Oh, here, oh, this is another story. Um, my mom and dad, um, flew from Maryland out to see me, to visit me when I was locked up. Uh, I think like the first month I was in there. You know, came in and saw me, I had visitation on the weekend.

• 3:08:02Speaker 03

  They didn't know what to do. They were like distraught. My dad is a retired lieutenant colonel. He was like, well, I want to go talk to your command and find out what the fuck's going on. And I was like, yeah, go, you know, go ahead. They went to group one, waited there for, you know, they got there at six in the morning, waited until the Commodore came in. The Commodore refused to speak to them. And Mass Chief Ward and the Command JAG talked to them, and this is the exact words that were told to them. They told my mom and dad, if you knew what we knew about your son, you'd want him locked up for life.

• 3:08:45Speaker 03

  And they just left him with that. Didn't tell him anything else. Like, who the fuck would say that to somebody's parents? You know, even if, even if you had all the evidence and you knew like he's guilty, why would you put somebody's parent, like say a statement like that to somebody's parents, you know? It's, but they had nothing and they were just actively trying to screw me. This is where, this is the other crazy thing is the Commodore was going around, went around to each team while I was locked up and had all calls with every SEAL at each command. And I was told this by through by multiple SEALs from each team, the same speech he gave,

• 3:09:30Speaker 03

  that I was guilty, that nobody should better support me, nobody should support me. And this is the worst, this is the kicker, that he'd seen the video of me doing said act. And that I was, it showed I was guilty. No should. He said that to each command. To, so now you got to think, man, like, I mean, that's, not only is that unlawful command influence, but you are straight lying to everybody. And, you know, there, there was that, this video, the rumor of the video was what really turned, you know, made everybody question like, oh, is there a video? Like, does it show it? No, there was no.

• 3:10:13Shawn Ryan?

  This is the video where.

• 3:10:15Speaker 03

  Where I come up and I.

• 3:10:15Shawn Ryan?

  Just roll a guy over.

• 3:10:17Speaker 03

  That's it. Like, that's the only video. But he lied. So that video was not allowed to be shown to anybody at the time because it was part of evidence, right? There was, I forget what the word is for it, where you can't show the evidence.

• 3:10:30Shawn Ryan?

  Did the video really shut off? Have you ever seen that video?

• 3:10:34Speaker 03

  Uh, I saw, it was part of TC Burns helmet cam. I mean, I saw the video once the evidence was presented to me.

• 3:10:42Shawn Ryan?

  You never saw it before then?

• 3:10:44Speaker 03

  Not, uh, no, not really. I never paid really any attention to it. I knew TC had his helmet cam on, and that was like the big discussion. Uh, it was like, hey, just if it bothers you, delete it or whatever, you know, the pictures. Um, but this is what's funny is there is a full-length video of everything that happened that whole day. I mean, he had his helmet cam on the whole day. Um, it just so happened to show just me coming up and then shutting off. It doesn't show anybody else. Now TC's one, he was one of the, like, got in with the accusers. Um, and he pretty much gave up everything to NCIS. Like,

• 3:11:23Speaker 03

  oh, here's, here's everything right here. So they either spliced it up or like cut it off at certain points, so it didn't show anybody else, you know, doing any medical treatment or anything like that. I mean, it's, and that's the big question. Everyone's like, well, why does the video shut off? Uh, or stop? I'm like, ask the accusers that. Ask NCIS that. I wish it would show the whole thing. Like, it would vindicate me even more, but they deleted it. And there was, there is deleted, actual deleted files of that video, which we brought up in trial. Like, why are these, I mean, they're there, but why are they gone? Why can't we watch them?

• 3:12:01Shawn Ryan?

  What did happen after you were there? You know, obviously, because you're in the video. What happened after that camera shut off? Is that when you cracked him?

• 3:12:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was starting to. So that camera shut off right when I was doing my initial assessment of him. And then I pretty much cracked him after that. Um, and then all the other treatments that were done, which TC did the chest tube and everything else that was done to him. It would have just shown that we pretty much medically treated him to death.

• 3:12:33Shawn Ryan?

  There are some uh pretty controversial texts that you sent and uh I'm just gonna read them. I've got a cool story for you. When I get back. I got my knife skills on. And then another text thread that says, good story behind this. Got him with my hunting knife.

• 3:12:58Shawn Ryan?

  Now, I did listen to uh you say that those were there was a whole nother thread that that um they basically cherry picked a couple of things out. What else was in that thread?

• 3:13:11Speaker 03

  So the knife skills and just the knife thing uh. So the one was like got him a cool story behind this guy my honey knife. That was to one of my best friends and other team guy um he would.

• 3:13:25Speaker 03

  You know, text, we could text back and forth while on deployment the whole time and uh he would, you know, check in periodically uh like how how's deployment going? What's going on there is it, you know, and I was like to this point, it's awesome, like giving him updates um just like this is a pretty epic one uh. And that day. Was uh I figure it was like two or three days after the incident. Uh my dog guy who was in the platoon sent me. The that he sent me that picture of me with, you know, posing with the body and the knife. As like I'm talking to my best friend and I was like, oh shit, and that's why I just sent him that like cool story behind this one got him like a joke and he was like.

• 3:14:05Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:14:06Speaker 03

  The joking thing which.

• 3:14:09Speaker 03

  To this, I mean, that is the. That right there was the worst and best piece of evidence. The prosecution had.

• 3:14:17Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 3:14:18Speaker 03

  It was obviously the worst because it doesn't look good. It's like. Well, here it is right here. But if you go ahead and zoom in. And really inspect that picture.

• 3:14:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:29Speaker 03

  There's no blood anywhere on me. There's no blood on the knife. They did a DNA test. Everything on that knife, nothing came back um except that. It had been touched at some Iraqi. Like it had been touched by an Iraqi at some point, which is like, yeah, it was we were in Iraq for seven months.

• 3:14:49Speaker 03

  So like when it came down to it, they were like, dude, there's, you know, yeah, that text was stupid to send.

• 3:14:56Shawn Ryan?

  They they tested the shit out of the knife.

• 3:14:58Speaker 03

  Oh dude, nonstop. And they came, it was nothing.

• 3:15:02Shawn Ryan?

  Why was the knife out? Did you cut his clothes off or?

• 3:15:05Speaker 03

  Uh, that was the one I I jabbed him with, uh, to see if he had any stimuli left in him or was alive. And then, uh, it was just a stu- I posed for stupid picture, you know, and it was like, just being whatever.

• 3:15:20Shawn Ryan?

  The person you sent that to, did they bring him in?

• 3:15:24Speaker 03

  No, didn't even talk to him once.

• 3:15:26Shawn Ryan?

  They didn't even talk to him?

• 3:15:28Speaker 03

  No, never called him, never. I mean, that's because they knew, like, if you follow the, and my, my, one of my lawyers went through this in the trial. Like, if you go ahead and look at the rest of the text thread, like, it's not, there's no admitting to a murder here or being like, oh, I did. It's just a series of bullshit jokes, you know, of just dark humor.

• 3:15:50Shawn Ryan?

  I get it. We talked about it earlier, you know, but, uh, you don't have to answer this, but who'd you send the text to?

• 3:15:58Speaker 03

  Oh, he's active duty.

• 3:16:01Shawn Ryan?

  Roger that?

• 3:16:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:16:03Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Well, so that shit got thrown out then?

• 3:16:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, the, uh, which ones though?

• 3:16:12Shawn Ryan?

  The text.

• 3:16:14Speaker 03

  It got read, I mean, they got read in my trial. It was, I mean, it's all, I mean, it's definitely, it doesn't look good. It doesn't make me look good. Uh, so yeah, they kept that and they kept, I mean, they would keep reading those in the trial. And like, you know, look what he said.

• 3:16:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:32Speaker 03

  But it's like I said, I mean, like, dude, you could go through, you take any team guy's phone, go through every text message he sent. And you can pick, you can charge anybody with, you know, with anything, uh, you know, not making excuses for.

• 3:16:47Shawn Ryan?

  You can take anybody's fucking phone in the whole world and they'll find something to charge your ass for.

• 3:16:54Speaker 03

  So, yeah, those, I mean, like I said, those were the best and worst piece of evidence that the prosecution had the whole time. And believe me, I was shitting my pants. And I was like, dude, I was like, why did I send like, if I could just go back in time and just not, you know, do that. But it happened and, uh.

• 3:17:13Speaker 03

  You know, it actually ended up being good for us because it was like, dude, look at the picture. Where and this is where Craig Miller's lies. Like, got the best of him is, uh. He during his NCIS interviews had said that I had, you know, stabbed him.

• 3:17:34Speaker 03

  Uh, by he was either by the collarbone or in the neck, um, maybe like once or twice. Uh, never mentioned seeing any blood or anything like that. It was just like, oh, he just stabbed him. Well. When he gets to trial, he goes on the stand completely changes. Like, he's like, no, I saw him. He knelt over him, started jamming the knife into his neck and knife started pumping out of. The prisoner's blood or prisoner's neck like, uh, he called it baby vomit. It looked like baby vomit coming out of his neck. When he said that. And I was just sitting there listening to him. I was like. You're done. Like, you just fucked yourself because.

• 3:18:19Speaker 03

  Not only is that not true, but now it, I mean, you can go ahead and look at my clothes. On the pictures, like if it was really pumping out and I'm sitting there, I'd have blood all over me.

• 3:18:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:30Speaker 03

  And. You know, because I already, you know, none of that was true. I was, I think that really, he fucked himself pretty good on that one. But he, you know, that's what those guys, they got up there. A lot of them got up there and. Tried to either over emphasize their story or change it up a little bit, you know, um, and it just.

• 3:18:50Shawn Ryan?

  Did the fighter even have that much blood on him?

• 3:18:53Speaker 03

  He had a. A pool of blood like right over his right shoulder. Right here. And that's what they were saying is that came from the neck wound or whatever. But in reality, if you look at it, the messed up chest tube that was done, you can see. I think this is what I think where it came from is that it was bleeding out and was just going under his armpit and pulling up there. Um.

• 3:19:17Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, because they had a failed attempt?

• 3:19:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:19:19Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:19:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:19:20Shawn Ryan?

  So they went to the other side?

• 3:19:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. All right. Because it wasn't, that blood's not there from the crike. It was a clean crike.

• 3:19:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:19:29Speaker 03

  So that's the only. Way I can see that blood being pulled up there. Uh, but of course, you know, they were trying to say it was from.

• 3:19:38Speaker 03

  Be stabbing him in the neck, but this is the other thing. So there's three guys that only said they saw me stab him at first. So one said I stabbed him in the neck. One said I stabbed him in the ribs. And then the other one said I stabbed him both. Like, but they all had different versions of where I had stabbed him or not. And in the end only one of those Craig Miller was the only one who went up there and the other two were like no, we were, this isn't true. Um, and they refused to testify.

• 3:20:17Shawn Ryan?

  Jesus.

• 3:20:18Speaker 03

  I had a

• 3:20:22Speaker 03

  one of the guys when I was in prison came and visited me.

• 3:20:27Speaker 03

  One of the accusers and I sat down with him and he straight up told me, it was like, this is all a lie. This all this got out of our hands and we don't know what to like, we don't know what to do. And I'm sorry this happened to you.

• 3:20:41Shawn Ryan?

  One of the accusers came to visit you in prison and fucking told you that this was all a lie. And he was sorry.

• 3:20:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 3:20:53Shawn Ryan?

  Would, I mean, what? What the fuck was your reaction to that?

• 3:20:59Speaker 03

  At that point,

• 3:21:02Speaker 03

  I looked at him and was like, I, I mean, I was like, dude, I appreciate, at that point I was like, dude, I appreciate you like coming in here and letting, you know, stand being a man and letting your, telling the truth. I was like, but and he straight up told me, he was like, dude, I the NCIS is now hasn't trapped everybody that's involved. And like, well, if you go back on your story, we're going to throw you in prison. Um, so he was like, I don't know what to do.

• 3:21:31Speaker 03

  And I told him, I was like, dude, I can't tell you what to do because I'm in here, but I was like, you know,

• 3:21:39Speaker 03

  I'm gonna be going away for life. If it's like, this is fucked up, but I stood up and I looked at him and I was like, I forgive you. And I hugged him. And went back to my cell. And then, um, he left. And then about

• 3:21:59Shawn Ryan?

  You hugged him?

• 3:22:00Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 3:22:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:22:04Speaker 03

  I didn't know, like, I was.

• 3:22:08Speaker 03

  You gotta, you gotta think, man, like, at that point, I already knew these guys were, you know, were lying. And I had sort of.

• 3:22:16Speaker 03

  I had a moment when I was in the, in the brave, we can go over to where I just got levity and like.

• 3:22:23Speaker 03

  I was good. Um, but, uh. After he came in, um. You know, I hugged him for, you know, it's like, I forgive you. Um, and then about two and a half weeks later, another one. Showed up.

• 3:22:41Speaker 03

  Same, like, I don't know what to do. Um, this has all gotten out of hand. Um, and the same thing, man, just like, dude.

• 3:22:52Speaker 03

  I hugged him, I was like, dude, I, I forgive you guys, man, but I, you know, I told him, I was like, just think about my family. Um, what they're going through and they were like, you know, we're gonna try and. Make this right. Uh, but I was like, at that point, I was like, don't tell me any, like, I don't want to hear. What you're gonna do or not do. I was like, I'm already enough shit as it is. I don't need to hear anything or. What, what you guys are doing with, I mean, you guys started this mess. So, uh. But that was, I mean, that, those were two crucial moments for me, because I mean, I was like, fuck.

• 3:23:32Shawn Ryan?

  Did that, I mean, did that feel, did that feel good?

• 3:23:36Speaker 03

  It did. Uh. You know, it's so, when I was, when I was locked up, man, like, I, the first. Probably two months, I was fucking having, like, it was bad. I was just. Losing my mind. I mean, I wasn't like, out in the open, losing my mind so everybody could see it. I would sit in my cell and just like. You know, I was like, in my own head, freaking out. Uh, I couldn't control the situation, you know, just like any operator. You want to be able to have control and like. Be able to fix any problem or deal with it. And there is nothing I could do, man. Like, I was literally helpless. Um.

• 3:24:16Speaker 03

  I wasn't in control of anything and then I had a pretty eye opening conversation with my wife on the phone.

• 3:24:24Speaker 03

  Where at that point, I still thought, I still thought there was some hope that the command was like gonna come through for me, you know? Like dude, this is how brainwashed I was. Or you can call it, you know, loyalty to a fault where I was like, there's no fucking way they're doing this to me. Like I couldn't process it. And my wife, she was like, I want you to listen to me real closely. She's like, I sat there and waited for you the past, how many years while you deployed over and over? You left us over and over. You constantly told us you were doing a righteous thing and we believed in you and that's why we stuck around and waited for you.

• 3:25:06Speaker 03

  Every time to come back, we put up with everything the team says thrown at us because you told us it was the right thing to do and we believe in you. She's like, no, I want you to listen to me. She's like, the command is against you. She's like, no one's coming to get you. You don't have any control. You are, you know, you're on, all you have is me, your brother and whoever, you know, a couple of people that are here fighting for you. She's like, you need to get that out of your head right now that anybody's coming to help you from the command. And after that conversation, I like, it was hard to hear, you know, and I went back to my cell and sat there for a little bit. And I got down on my hands and knees, man, and I like talked to God out loud and was just like,

• 3:25:53Speaker 03

  take this from me, like, like I, you know, I can't deal with it.

• 3:25:59Speaker 03

  No, I'm just like, you're in control and whatever happens, happens like it's, this is in your hands.

• 3:26:06Speaker 03

  You know, I pretty much was just like, that's it. And I'll tell you what, man, like, I got up, walked out of my cell and I felt like the weight of the world was off my shoulders. And I was like, And it that's not to say it was like on Easy Street the rest of the time, but like that right there. I mean, you know, and I would talk to God every night and just be like, dude, help me to get through tomorrow, you know?

• 3:26:30Speaker 03

  And he did. It was, it's like I physically felt it. It was, uh, it was pretty insane. So I think by the time those guys had come, uh, and like, and I think that was God, you know, they came and they were like, straight up like we lied. I that at that point I was like, dude, I can't like sit here and get angry anymore, you know? I was fucking wore out. But I was like, dude, thank God.

• 3:27:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:27:01Speaker 03

  That they've come to their senses, you know?

• 3:27:04Shawn Ryan?

  You were in prison for nine months, right?

• 3:27:06Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 3:27:06Shawn Ryan?

  What was your, I mean, I'm assuming you told your attorneys or you told Andrea, you know, that you had two of the accusers come up and, uh, you know,

• 3:27:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:27:16Shawn Ryan?

  come clean. What did the attorneys say?

• 3:27:23Speaker 03

  My, I had, I think I had my old attorneys at that point and they were like, whoa, they were like, you shouldn't trust them. Like this is how I was being told that they were still working for NCIS and they were just really just trying to get stuff out of me, um, which I didn't believe. I was like, that doesn't, uh, I just didn't believe that that's what they were doing. Uh, but that's what my old set of lawyers were trying to tell me. Uh, but then, once my new set of lawyers came on, they were like, what the fuck? Okay. And they ended up talking to them, um, talking to those, those two and, uh, one of them was Corey Scott, who went and fessed up to the murder. So.

• 3:28:07Shawn Ryan?

  If I remember correctly, you did say that a lot of the prison guards were kind of coached by NCIS to, to try to get you to snap.

• 3:28:17Speaker 03

  Um.

• 3:28:18Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of shit were they doing?

• 3:28:19Speaker 03

  So, yeah, they were told.

• 3:28:26Speaker 03

  So it was, I didn't know it was happening at first, but like anytime somebody visited me, anytime I had like any kind of interaction where I had to speak through somebody through a glass or whatever, I would get strip searched like butt naked, you know, lift up your nutsack, do all this crap. And I thought that was like, okay, they don't do that to everybody. That's so. They were doing that to me a bunch at first. And then they would randomly, I'd be sitting down. They just randomly like get up, search me, then go toss my cell.

• 3:29:04Speaker 03

  They're constantly fucking with me with my visitation. They would, they wouldn't let me have visitation sometimes or tell me like certain people weren't allowed to visit me.

• 3:29:17Speaker 03

  And it became pretty evident, like the other prisoners were actually like, dude, they are, we haven't seen this, like they're messing with you. And I was like, all right. Well, one of the guards finally came up to me. There's a couple of cool, there was, there were some cool guards in there that were definitely like, this is bullshit that you're in here. But they were like, hey, man, you're NCIS. They were like, somebody, some enlisted guy from your command was in here and they're telling, they're having meeting, every, the guards have a meeting every morning before they go on shift and they're like, make him snap today. Like keep fucking with him until he does

• 3:29:55Speaker 03

  something. And once he told me that, I was like, I was laughing. I mean, there's nothing, nothing in that brig is scary. I mean, there's a bunch of fucking putzy E5, you know, kids. So I was like, dude, all right. And I just treated it as a game. And it was like, every time they would do something,

• 3:30:18Speaker 03

  you know, I had this one time, this gunny sergeant who was an MA, he like stripped me naked and then was having me do stupid shit like, pick up your boots. Now do this. Now bend over and do this as I'm naked. And I'm looking at him like, bro.

• 3:30:35Speaker 03

  Like what's, I know what you're doing, man. Like, let's just give it a rest. And he was like, you know, he got all up my face, like, what the fuck do you mean what I'm doing? And like, oh, you're getting smart. And I was like, dude, I just smiled and was just like, hey, man, thanks for your, thanks for your service, bud, you know? Great job on the volunteer, your, your contribution. And just walked out. That's all you could really do is just keep it to yourself, because that's, that's what they wanted. They wanted me to do something. Uh, they even had,

• 3:31:08Speaker 03

  the prosecution was getting other prisoners to try and befriend me, or, you know, get me to say stuff and to take lesser sentences for them. So like, if you get Eddie to say something, we'll cut your sentence in half, or we'll do this. I mean, that, it was pretty rampant. Uh, and you know, the other prisoners were coming up and telling me these things. And all of it is like, you would think like this shit's illegal.

• 3:31:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:31:35Speaker 03

  No, I mean, I brought it up to my lawyers, and my lawyers brought it up in court, and it's like,

• 3:31:42Speaker 03

  yeah, okay, move on.

• 3:31:46Shawn Ryan?

  How, how did you wind up getting the new lawyers?

• 3:31:51Speaker 03

  That's another, like, act of God is, uh,

• 3:31:55Speaker 03

  you know Bernie Kerik?

• 3:31:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:31:58Speaker 03

  So Bernie Kerik, who I didn't know, uh, read one of those smear articles about me, and literally was like, something doesn't seem right here. Um, he made some phone calls down to, uh, I think the Pentagon, some SEALs that were working there, and was like, what do you know about this guy Eddie? Um, what's going on with this? And they told him that, uh, they didn't, hadn't worked me personally, but that I had a very good reputation from what they've heard, and that this doesn't seem right either.

• 3:32:29Speaker 03

  And that there's something fishy going, like, they just were like, there's, something's not right about this. Uh, so he ended up. Connecting with my wife, reached out and was like, if there's anything you need, um, let me know. Um, and he started asking questions about the legal team that we had at the time. And he was like, what are they doing for you? Tell me what they're, you know, what's their plan of action, which they had none. Um, and, uh, it wasn't probably until a couple of months down the road from when Bernie initially had contacted my wife that we were fine, like my lawyer Andrea was like, we gotta get rid of these guys. And Bernie's like, I have, uh, my lawyer standing by, ready to like, help you guys out.

• 3:33:10Speaker 03

  Um, Tim Parlatory, and that's who, and this is, it's so nutty, cause I didn't, didn't know Tim. Yeah. At that point, all I was doing was just listening to Andrea. She's like, if she was like, this is the best route, I'm like, then do it, done, you know? So she's like, I talked to this guy, Tim.

• 3:33:33Speaker 03

  He seems like a legit lawyer. She's like, I think we should hire him. I was like, okay, uh, I talked to the guy, talked to him on the phone for five minutes. And he was like, I'm coming up there to see you. He was, he's from New York.

• 3:33:49Speaker 03

  I, after I had fired Phil, or no, I fired Colby, um, first, and I kept Phil Stackhouse on, um, just for some continuity, cause he had already been on the case. Tim flew out and, uh, first time I saw him, it was definitely not what I was expecting. He was, uh, you know, you hear a New York lawyer, like, you know, expecting like, this hot, you know, high-power suit, high-power tie, walking in, but Tim is like, just this big old, looks like a football player, just massive dude. Uh, he used to be in the Navy, he was an officer in the Navy.

• 3:34:26Speaker 03

  And, uh, that was it, man. Like, he, uh, it was like a 180. Like, as soon as he took over, it was, dude, he knew more about the case after taking it from in 48 hours than my two other lawyers did, and they'd been on it for five months. Holy shit. It was insane to watch. And then to go to the courtroom with him. Like, the first courtroom appearance I had with him was like, holy shit, I have a lawyer. Like, he was fighting back, like, calling the prosecution out and everything. Uh, I mean, it was awesome, you know, he- It's a that was definitely like some divine intervention and then um Mark Mucasey uh was

• 3:35:08Speaker 03

  my uh lawyer I had and that uh he was one of he's well he is one of the president Trump's lawyers. But he had nothing to do with anything. He knew Bernie Kerik.

• 3:35:24Speaker 03

  You know, I grew up knowing Bernie and was just talking to him one night and was like, dude, I saw this. What's up with this Navy SEAL thing like this doesn't this looks fucked up and Bernie's like, dude, I'm helping them. And uh he said he's like, well, tell them I'll offer my services like if they need help because this is jacked up. And um of course, once that was like told to me like, hey, this guy. Mark Mucasey said he'd help you and he's one of Trump's lawyers. I'm like, well, yeah, like, why wouldn't I want?

• 3:35:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:35:54Speaker 03

  You know that so. Ended up hiring him as well and dude, it was it was definitely like an awesome. Dream team. That I had.

• 3:36:04Shawn Ryan?

  At what point did Trump get involved for the first time?

• 3:36:07Speaker 03

  The first time uh he got involved was uh when I was locked up the um.

• 3:36:16Speaker 03

  My wife and brother had uh hooked up with Congressman Duncan Hunter and Congressman Ralph Norman. Um and they.

• 3:36:28Speaker 03

  Obviously, my wife had been on Fox and Friends a couple of times at that point or once and she knew that that's the president watches that religiously every day. So she was pretty much got on there and was like, this is what's going on. You know, I think that got his attention and then uh. You know, he didn't do anything at first, but then we got we got fifty over fifty congressmen to sign um. A petition or whatever saying to let me out of pretrial confinement so I could properly defend myself.

• 3:36:57Shawn Ryan?

  God damn, I'm glad he uh didn't label that portion fake news.

• 3:37:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:37:03Speaker 03

  He uh yeah, so like all he did is.

• 3:37:08Speaker 03

  Which that was a crazy day like I got told and by this point. We had a lot of people promise stuff that just didn't come, wasn't coming through, you know? It was definitely an emotional roller coaster of like, oh, this is, this person's getting involved. You know, we'd been told the president was going to get involved like four times at that point. You know, it was, it was always like a crap shooter and I wasn't putting, you know, I knew my wife was doing a lot of work, but I, I wasn't getting my hopes up to just be like. The president of the United States Azure bad? Yeah. Yeah. Same spark. Yeah. And so like I walk, I was walking to Chow lunch and one of the guards, the female guards walked by me and she was like,

• 3:37:51Speaker 03

  giving me a weird look. And I was like, what's up? And she's like, are you, you're getting out today? And I was like, no. And she's like, well, the president just tweeted about you on TV and said that you're leaving. And I was like, what the fu, are you serious? She's like, yeah. So

• 3:38:10Speaker 03

  by the end of that day, man, they, they fucking came in. They were like, prisoner Gallagher, stand up. Like you're out of here. And I, so this is the, this is the crazy part. All he tweeted was to get me out. He's like, get him out of confinement so he can properly defend himself for trial. Didn't say like, he's guilty or not guilty. Um, he just said because of his prior service, he, you know. He has a right to a fair. He has a right to a fair trial.

• 3:38:39Speaker 03

  The command Rosenbloom.

• 3:38:43Speaker 03

  I get let out of the brig, like not even let out. I'm like checking out. They sent MA down there.

• 3:38:51Speaker 03

  And pretty much took me from the brig and then threw me in a barracks room with like restriction on steroids. I wasn't allowed out of the room. I wasn't allowed a TV. I wasn't, I wasn't on anything. It was like, I was still in the brig, still had to be in the same uniform. And I had to get escorted if I wanted to go eat. Cuffed and everything? No, no cuffs. That was the one like I just, but I just sat, you know, sat in that room for an extra. Month and a half.

• 3:39:24Shawn Ryan?

  So it was nine months in prison?

• 3:39:25Speaker 03

  It was no, it was a seven and a half months in prison and then a month and a half in this room, but the judge ended up

• 3:39:35Speaker 03

  adding that on to my, he was like, you guys, he pretty much told the command, he was like, what you guys are doing to him is confinement, just like the brig, like, so he just added that on to my, he's like, he's pretty much served nine months in the brig from, because it was ridiculous, I mean, the command, my, my family would try and come visit me, this is when I was in the barracks. They would, command would deny them, like my wife and kids, um, be like, no, you can't see him unless we, we say you can during these hours. So it was pretty much like I was still locked up, uh, just now, it was almost, I don't wanna say worse, but it was like I was by myself in a room, now I wasn't seeing anybody, you know?

• 3:40:19Speaker 03

  They had a, a guard on post outside my door at all times.

• 3:40:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was stu-, it was just stupid.

• 3:40:28Shawn Ryan?

  Talk about the phone call.

• 3:40:30Speaker 03

  From the president?

• 3:40:31Shawn Ryan?

  No, they brought you a phone to make a call that had no service.

• 3:40:38Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, so,

• 3:40:42Speaker 03

  we threw, we had to throw, we had to put together a complaint when we back to court saying that, what the Commodore and the Admiral were doing to me was tantamount to confinement and that I still, I, basically, they weren't following the president's orders. I still wasn't allowed to talk to my legal team. I still, I had no, no communication with anybody, so therefore, how could I properly defend myself?

• 3:41:06Speaker 03

  So the judge told the prosecution, like, he said, uh, I'm not ordering you to do this because I can't, but I suggest you guys get him a phone so he can contact his lawyers. And so the command shows up about a week later, nothing, took their time. And they're like, here, here's your phone. It was like some.

• 3:41:30Speaker 03

  You know, nineteen ninety four, like Samsung uh that had no service. They locked, I could only call my lawyer and my wife and I think my brother.

• 3:41:44Speaker 03

  You know, I wasn't able to dial anything else out, but which didn't matter because the phone had no service. So they gave that she the command jag gave that to me. And then they gave me a laptop with no internet. No, nothing. And they're like, you can't have this laptop in your room. We're gonna they locked it in another room in the barracks. So if I wanted to go use it to go look at any evidence, I had to have whoever they had from the command watching me, standing over me, watching or like watching me do this, which is a violation in itself, you know, I'm looking at my own trial stuff like. Yeah.

• 3:42:26Speaker 03

  We brought that up to them after they gave me the phone, I brought it up to the command. Actually, the the jag that gave it to me, I was like, hey, my phone doesn't have any service. And she just looked at me and she's like, too bad and walked off. I mean, they knew what they were doing. Yeah. They were just, I mean, they were blocking me from being able to defend myself at every turn. And it wasn't until um the prosecution finally got caught. So cheating and spying is where I was let out of confinement. That was the judge's remedy. So they, the um

• 3:43:06Speaker 03

  as soon as Tim and Mark and all them got together as a legal team.

• 3:43:11Speaker 03

  The prosecution sent them an email. This is a CHAZ plaque was a prosecutor. And on that email, it was just some random email too. It wasn't nothing of like significant importance, but on there was a tracking beacon at the bottom.

• 3:43:28Speaker 03

  It's like an embedded virus. And luckily, my Tim, my lawyer caught it because he had a case, two cases ago that dealt with it. The same thing and he saw it and he emailed back and was like, tell me this isn't what I think it is. And got no response from the prosecutor. He's like, dude, they looked into it, found out it was spy like they sent them spyware. So that became a whole nother like side issue of my trial. So then we had to bring that up like

• 3:44:02Speaker 03

  this is violating, I don't know how many of my rights. Was that, was, so that beacon, was that an attempted breach? Yeah. Did they breach? No, they didn't. So if he would have clicked on that beacon, it would have been a full breach. What, what did the beacon look like? It was the symbol for the

• 3:44:21Speaker 03

  the RSL, the

• 3:44:26Speaker 03

  pretty much the, the command that the prosecution falls under. If there's a symbol. But there's something like about it that Tim was like, this isn't right. And yeah, it turned out the prosecutor sent that beacon to my whole legal team, including all, you know, my civilian lawyers. The lawyers that were representing my OIC.

• 3:44:52Speaker 03

  The Navy Times, because the Navy Times had just started writing articles that were actually looking good for me. Because that, the Navy Times was, uh, his name is Carl Prine, who was writing all the articles. He started doing some digging of his own into what was going on and started finding out the truth, like this is, these dudes are fucking lying. And he started writing articles that, you know, insinuating or saying like, hey, man, this is, maybe this isn't what we think it is. And the prosecution didn't like that.

• 3:45:23Speaker 03

  So they sent them a tracking beacon as well. So that's to the media. Now we're violating the media's rights. So it became a real big deal. And we thought that, I mean, it was a good chance the case was going to be thrown out over that. Uh, because in a civilian court, it would have been thrown out hands down. Um, but their remedy was they, and this was a complete surprise. Um, this was pretty much an awesome day. We went in just to talk about the spying caper and all that stuff and, uh, At the end of the, that day, the judge, like so nonchalantly was just like, alright, um,

• 3:46:07Speaker 03

  you know, due to the fact that I think you violated some of his rights, I'm just, I'm letting Eddie Gallagher go free or out of confinement. And it was like, I couldn't, I was like, what the fuck? And my wife was like, and she like jumped up screaming like, you know, and that was it. I got to go be with my family until trial, um, which trial was like, I think at that point a month off.

• 3:46:31Speaker 03

  But that was, uh, that was a big day, like just to be able to go see my wife and kids. Um, I went and flew home, you know, for like two days and then came back and all we did was prep for trial from that point on.

• 3:46:44Shawn Ryan?

  So you go to trial and you need to explain to all of America how an entire fucking SEAL team, or actually an entire SEAL community has turned against you and you need to prove your innocence? I mean, were you ready to do that? At that point, were you confident that?

• 3:47:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, uh, I mean,

• 3:47:10Speaker 03

  I had confidence in my legal team. Uh, you know, I knew, I knew they had,

• 3:47:17Speaker 03

  they had done their due diligence. I mean, they worked their asses off all the way up to trial, preparing for it. Um, and I, like, I knew the,

• 3:47:27Speaker 03

  I had the truth on my side. I think that's what I was like, dude, I have God and the truth on my side and I'm going into it with that mindset. And, uh, cause at, at that point, so much corrupt shit had happened. I was like, I would definitely wasn't putting any faith in the justice system or like that's they were gonna do right by me. So

• 3:47:49Speaker 03

  I just had to have faith, you know, in God that it was gonna work out. And then I trusted my legal team. I had full trust in them. And so we went into it with that attitude. I mean, it was like, we were, every day I went to trial was like going into like an, almost like an op, you know?

• 3:48:06Shawn Ryan?

  How many days was the trial?

• 3:48:08Speaker 03

  Oh, it was like two and a half weeks.

• 3:48:11Shawn Ryan?

  Two and a half weeks every day?

• 3:48:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:48:15Speaker 03

  It was uh, it was nuts. Um, you know, it's, and it's not like anything you see out of a few good men or rules of engagement, like the courtroom's not, you know, made of rich mahogany wood and like it's, dude, it's a piece of shit courtroom. Like shitty carpeting, like nothing, there's barely any room for uh, people in the back and they fill those seats with media. Those are the first people that flood in and then any supporters I had were told to like wait outside or, you know, they put it like an extra room for them somewhere else. I mean, I barely, thank God they let my mom and dad and wife in there and my brother.

• 3:48:57Speaker 03

  But uh, dude, it was, it's a circus. Um, you know, the media was there. It was, you know, I'd pull in every morning. Uh, with, with Andrea and my brother and that's, they're like little vultures, man. They're waiting and they come up to the car and they're all around you and you just gotta like, open the door and I just would walk in the courtroom, you know, they're shouting all sorts of questions at you. Um, but once I, you know, once you're in the courtroom, it's like game on. Uh, and I just kept a straight face the whole time. I wouldn't look at the jury, the jury. So juries, they, you know, we started off

• 3:49:36Speaker 03

  the first day with jury selection, which is a whole process. I had no idea how like intricate it was. Um,

• 3:49:46Speaker 03

  they have like 20 jurors showed up at first, uh, and you can, so in the military justice system, there's no like,

• 3:49:57Speaker 03

  not everybody has to vote the same, you know, like in the civilian world, like everyone has to be not guilty or guilty. It's not that way in the military justice system. It can be like, you know, five people voted guilty, four people voted not guilty, therefore he's guilty.

• 3:50:11Shawn Ryan?

  Shit. There was a seal on the jury.

• 3:50:14Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 3:50:15Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know him?

• 3:50:16Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's uh, yeah. He uh,

• 3:50:23Speaker 03

  so he was one of the jurors. So there was three seals originally on the jury. Um, but. One of them who I knew he was smart enough to be like, get me the fuck out of here. He came up with some excuse saying, you know, I'm doing something classified. So he got off. The other two were from Warcom. One of them said right away, like they had to fill out answers on a paper that he thought I was guilty. And that's what he would find me. So they were like, all right, you're gone.

• 3:50:59Speaker 03

  Straight up lied. They asked him if he knew me. He said, nope. He'd been to my house five times. I know, I know him, I know his wife or his ex-wife. And he lied and said that he had never talked to me. He said, he, I think he said that he saw me in the gym one time or whatever. And that was it.

• 3:51:23Shawn Ryan?

  Is this, is this fucking?

• 3:51:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, the dude's been at my house. It was crazy, dude. He like straight up lied and was like, no, I don't know. So when he did that, we had to go back and so we had to deliberate on who to pick. You know, like who were going to kick off? And that was like a big point of contention because I went back and my dude's fucking lying. But then they were like, oh, was he lying to like, help you? And I was like, it doesn't, and we came up with the, we're like, it doesn't matter. Like, we have to have integrity and

• 3:51:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:51:56Speaker 03

  we gotta kick him off. But the problem was, we went back and the number of jurors that we wanted was seven. That's like, my lawyers were like, we have to have seven jurors. It's whatever lawyer math they have. And we started kicking, so I kicked all the officers off. And I was like, get rid of them, except that we kept one Navy officer. And by the time we got down to like, we were at seven jurors. And my legal team was like, just leave him on. And we were like, dude, what the fuck? And they're like, we're not going to six. Like he's staying. So we left him and then come to find out. He was try actively trying to find like get everybody to find me guilty.

• 3:52:41Speaker 03

  So that I had six Marines on the jury and they were all like, this is all bullshit like they. Cause I guess after the trial, my, my lawyers and the prosecution go back there and talk to the jury to think, to get like, what were you guys thinking? And the Marines were just like, dude, everybody was lying. Like, there's no way. And uh, it was like, no, like, I think he's, you know, he said something to my lawyers like, dude, I think that guy tried to find you guilty. And uh, I didn't believe it at first either. I was like, no fucking way until this idiot did a whole post on Facebook the next day.

• 3:53:20Speaker 03

  Like a fucking rant on Facebook about how I was really guilty, but this and this and this. And posted it on a.

• 3:53:33Speaker 03

  Yep. Posted that shit on. That right there, I was like,

• 3:53:40Speaker 03

  I was like, first off, dude, like, you have to be a complete fucking moron to, you were on the jury and now you're posting shit on social media like. And second, I'm like, dude, you lied. And I didn't, you know, I didn't say anything about it, but now I'm like, dude. And there's enough, I've had enough people talk to him after the fact. And they're, I mean, I've had two guys who were like good buddies with him and they're like, dude, fuck that guy. Like after I talked to him, he's, he's completely, he was at Warcom and he'd been tainted. I mean, they were like, he's guilty. They were, you know, they were telling everybody that and uh. God damn. Yeah, dude, it gets, it's nasty. It's like,

• 3:54:23Speaker 03

  and that's, that's the crazy part. Yeah. And so. Holy shit. So uh, god damn. That's, that's wow. Yeah, it's, it's wild. It gets

• 3:54:38Speaker 03

  the level of like corruption and like just nasty stuff that people that were tainted, you know?

• 3:54:47Speaker 03

  It's, I would never believe it unless.

• 3:54:51Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking A, man. So what, what, what was the turning point in court? I mean, I know it, bud.

• 3:54:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, I think, you know, the turning point in court for the media and everybody else was, you know, obviously Corey Scott, um, who was the, one of the prosecutor's main witnesses that, you know, he was gonna get up there and, you know, what the prosecution thought was like, he's gonna get up there and be like, oh, you know, he stabbed him and, um, he got up there and completely was like, no, I'm the one who killed him. Uh, but, uh, you know, that was like the big oh shit moment that, you know, everybody talks about, but to me that wasn't the, the whole trial was a turning point for me.

• 3:55:40Shawn Ryan?

  What, uh, well, I mean, you didn't know he was gonna do that.

• 3:55:44Speaker 03

  No.

• 3:55:46Shawn Ryan?

  Man, do you, I would love to see your facial expression when he gets on the stand and says, I'm the one that fucking killed him.

• 3:55:55Speaker 03

  I can tell you I look just like this.

• 3:55:57Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't.

• 3:55:58Speaker 03

  Didn't make a freaking move because

• 3:56:03Speaker 03

  I, at that point, there had been so much shit that had gone on in this case, like ups and downs and twists and like to me, when he said that, I mean, I was like,

• 3:56:16Speaker 03

  oh shit, but I was like, here's another monkey wrench. Like, where's this gonna go? You know? Um, and it went exactly the way I thought, like, they didn't care that he said that. They were like, we're still charging him with, like, it was like, yep, we'll just dismiss him. Um, you know, after he got it, when he said that, the prosecution got up and just straight attacked him and was like, you're a liar, you lied. And then they would, all they did was attack him with every other witness, like Corey Scott's a liar. And so it's like, dude, that was your main witness.

• 3:56:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:56:49Speaker 03

  Um, you know, I, that definitely was a turning point in the case for the prosecution and I'm sure the jury, they were probably like, dude, these prosecutors are so fucked up. Uh, but to me, it was like watching every, every one of those dudes get up on the stand was. It couldn't have gone any better. Yeah. I mean, I knew they were fucked up. Like, I knew they had told so many lies, but dude, I, it was even worse than I thought. Watched them get up there. Um, Craig Miller was prob- Craig Miller to me was a big turning point. He, he was, he's just a complete moron. Uh, got like, like we, I talked about before, changed the whole story about blood spurting out.

• 3:57:33Speaker 03

  Then he was making up lies that didn't even happen. Like, it was not about that day. Um, he was talking about blowing down a wall, which that never, like, didn't even exist. Uh, he even said that he had put hands on the ISIS dude and like was kicking him down. That never happened. I mean, it was, it was really odd. The shit that they were like lying about, they really had no, no relevance to charging me. Yeah. But I think they had told so many lies at that point that they, you know, they thought some of it was the truth or they just couldn't keep up.

• 3:58:10Speaker 03

  Um, and it showed. I mean, even the media, they were sitting in the back, like, especially when Craig Miller was testifying and they were, first off, they were like, how is this guy a Navy SEAL? Like, he's an idiot. And they're like, how do the prosecutors even call this guy up? It's, it was that bad. Um, Wow. He got flustered. Finally, my lawyer was asking him enough questions. He, then he all of a sudden got the case of am- he got a case of amnesia and then all of a sudden couldn't remember anything. You know? Um, and it's the same with, uh, every other dude, you know, Delay and Tolbert. There are two stories about shooting the old man. They didn't match up at all. Um, they were talking about the same guy, but there was like,

• 3:58:53Speaker 03

  one guy fired, you know, said they fired warning shots, one said they didn't. Uh, you know, it was just this discombobulated mess. Um,

• 3:59:03Shawn Ryan?

  On your mini documentary that your buddy at the New York Times made, he said, well, for starters, was Andrea and Ryan and your other sons, did they go every day to court?

• 3:59:18Speaker 03

  No.

• 3:59:19Shawn Ryan?

  Did they really just show up the one day? Was that just a coincidence?

• 3:59:24Speaker 03

  That was, yeah. And that's, I mean, I'll give it to the New York Times and them for trying to put that together. But, uh, yeah, we, my, so I had all three of my kids were there

• 3:59:37Speaker 03

  at the Airbnb that we were using as when the trial went on. And, uh, you know, we were coming back every day. And of course, that's all that was being talked about back there. My family was staying there. And so my two older kids, Trevin and Ava, they were like, hey, can we go? And I was like, I have no problem with you going, you know, me and Andrea both like, if you guys want to go. So they, that's how they showed up that day. Like, had nothing to do with Corey Scott or what was said that day. It just happened to fall on that day. But I mean, that's the, that's the first question the media asked when we came out of, walking out of court that day.

• 4:00:22Speaker 03

  Andy Dyer from the Union, San Diego Union Tribune, instead of like the big bombshell that somebody else just submitted to the murder, his, his question was, how could we in good conscience take our two kids to a trial that shows dead bodies? Like, there's pictures of dead bodies in there and you're gonna let your kids watch that? And I wasn't allowed to talk, you know, but dude Andrea lit him up. Like, it was, it was awesome.

• 4:00:51Speaker 03

  She was just like, you know, we don't hide our kids from evil. We don't hide them from what your dad does. And, you know, that's, that's the question you have.

• 4:01:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:01:02Speaker 03

  It was, they were, they would try and picket anything, try and demonize you.

• 4:01:07Shawn Ryan?

  So you wound up not guilty?

• 4:01:10Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 4:01:10Shawn Ryan?

  And, and what, what, what did that?

• 4:01:14Speaker 03

  I mean, that, uh,

• 4:01:16Shawn Ryan?

  Do you still have the stone cold stare when you heard that?

• 4:01:21Speaker 03

  No, I think, uh, well.

• 4:01:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's like, it's hard to explain that moment. Cause it would, it was just, uh, it was crazy. Yeah. You know, they, we closed our case, uh, you know, prosecution went, closed our case, defense went and closed our case. And they were like, all right, you know, jury's going to deliberate. Um, it took them about a day and a half.

• 4:01:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was crazy day and like just waiting, um, for them to come back and, uh,

• 4:01:57Speaker 03

  yeah, when they finally did, it was, it was like, hey, the jury's got their decision. And it was, you know, real quick, got into the courtroom.

• 4:02:06Speaker 03

  They really didn't, yeah, didn't hit me until like, I was like sitting there, waiting for them to come out. I was like, this is it, you know, like, oh shit. Yeah, bad man, fuck. Yeah, they called them in and then you stand up at attention as they come in. I'm just staring straight ahead.

• 4:02:23Speaker 03

  And it's like no time wasted. They're like, read them off. And, uh, the crazy part is they don't read, they weren't reading the charges like, you know, for premeditated murder for this. It was like, charge one, specification two. So I had no idea like which ones they were talking about. So they were like, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty. So there was that one. And I remember it's like, as they were reading them off, I wasn't even hearing it. I mean, my heart was like, felt like it was coming out of my chest and it was just like, you know, ringing in my ears.

• 4:02:56Speaker 03

  And, uh, once I got done reading them, I was like, fuck, like, which one was like guilty of it? And my, Tim, my lawyer grabbed me and he was like, it's the picture, you know, and like hugged me and dude, it was like, bro, the courtroom erupted. I mean, everybody was crying.

• 4:03:17Speaker 03

  It was pretty nuts. It was, uh, I mean, you saw a team, I mean, team guys flowing in, just balling, like grabbing me. It was pretty epic, like, I was, I think I was just like in shock, you know? People just like grabbed me, like hugging me and, uh, you know, my wife was crying, everybody was balling. My lawyers, all my lawyers are crying, just, I think everybody was so happy, you know? Cause like, everybody had put so much. Like time and effort and just, you know, people believed in that case, like they was, it meant a lot to them. Yeah. So, yeah, it was, it was nuts. Uh, then, uh, yeah, I went right from there.

• 4:04:00Speaker 03

  Went and got sleeved up. I went right, I drove right to the tattoo parlor.

• 4:04:06Speaker 03

  It was, uh, and of course, the media turned that one into a heyday, you know? Said something like Navy SEAL gets acquitted and goes right to getting alcohol and tattoos or something. It was like some crazy article they wrote, but. What'd you get? I had so, I had no tattoos, um, at all through my whole career. So the first one I got was, uh, well, actually. First one I got, you know, Mike Martin? Yeah. So he, you know, he passed away, um, during my whole thing, but he snuck in. When I was in the barracks room, they had me confined. He came in on a Saturday and snuck in.

• 4:04:48Speaker 03

  Uh, with a silencer tattoo gun and tattooed the, uh, my bone frog on my back and then my wife's name. Right there. And then, uh, after my, uh, trial. Oh shit. Yeah. Fucking badass. Oh yeah. It was, he's such an awesome guy. Um. And, uh, yeah, after the tattoo, I, the first thing I got was my wife's eyes with like the flag wrapped around it. And then pretty much this whole arm was dedicated to my wife and then my kids. That's awesome. Yeah. It was, uh, you know, I never like. Thought about getting tattoos or like, it was always, I was like, there's gotta be something, you know, that has to have like. Real meaning behind it. And that was it for me. I'm like, dude, if this isn't it, then I don't know what is.

• 4:05:34Speaker 03

  So yeah, when, uh, did that, um.

• 4:05:39Speaker 03

  You know, I had the, uh, I had to go back for my sentencing for the picture, um, which they threw the book at me. Big time. Uh, I think I'm the first person ever to get sentenced or a court martial for taking a picture. But yeah, they, they pretty much turned that into, you know, they tried to turn that into a war crime. Yeah. Which it's not, uh, you know, it's not, I don't think it's in good taste, but, uh. It's not a war crime. Other that, if that's the case, then.

• 4:06:13Speaker 03

  There's been tons of war criminals in the military since the beginning of the, you know, camera. Yeah. You know, it's, but whatever, you know, they wanted to get their pound of flesh out of me. Um, I think the Navy was definitely, they were pissed, embarrassed.

• 4:06:27Speaker 03

  And then they came at you again. Then did not stop. Yeah. Um, I, uh, after the trial, I went back to work thinking like, just like I talked about that Master Chief had said, you swung me way back. And I thought that's what I had done. Like went through the gauntlet. It was like, I'm back, showed up. I was like, ready to go back to work. They were like, you're banned. They banned me from all the teams, uh, bases and they stuck me in supply down at another base again. Um, and they said, uh, you know, it was the same deal, like report there every morning.

• 4:07:07Speaker 03

  Um, I wasn't allowed to put in my retirement because the punishment for, uh, my court martial hadn't like been officially gone through yet. They had to wait for like some Admiral's signature, which they said could take months. Um, so I just had to, you know, show up and not do anything. Uh, and so all I did at that point, I was like, I'm going, I had so much leave. Uh, I never took it. So I was like, I'm just going on. I would, I would go back to Florida, uh, spend time with my family and then come back, you know, every two weeks, come back and be like, okay, what's, you know, what's going on? Um, it was, they

• 4:07:49Speaker 03

  were blocked, they were completely blocking me from getting anything done. Um, I was not allowed to go to, I was still, I still belonged to trade at, but I wasn't allowed to go there. Uh, so all of my paperwork, everything I needed was there and, but I wasn't allowed to access it. So it, it was just a stupid game that they were playing with me. Um, the command would toy with me like the group on Master Chief would be like, oh, we need you to move all your stuff out of your cage into this Connex box. And then next week, I'll move out of that Connex box over here. Like it was just stupid stuff.

• 4:08:25Speaker 03

  And um, you know, I, I was pissed, but my lawyer and a couple of people advised me, they're like, do not do any, like, if they're fucking with you, just let them fuck with you, like, don't give them any reason um, to come at you, come after you anymore.

• 4:08:47Speaker 03

  So I played it cool the whole time. Um, and then uh, that's when I got the phone call from the president. Uh, I was coming back from Florida, back to San Diego. And I landed in San Diego and I got a call from my lawyer saying, hey, if there's a weird phone number that comes up, pick it up. And uh, it's like, why? And he's like, just do it. And it's like, alright. And sure enough, it was one, I think they said it was from Egypt. And so I picked it up and yeah, it was the President of the United States and the Vice President um, on the phone. And they, he called and was like, listen,

• 4:09:33Speaker 03

  I'm calling to tell you that you're, I'm gonna let you retire, you're gonna retire as a chief uh, with everything that you've earned over the past 20 years. Cause uh, the punishment they had tried to give me is I was gonna retire as a E1. An E1? Yeah. And that's what I don't think anybody really knows is because they had thrown the book at me and they sentenced me to

• 4:09:59Speaker 03

  uh, four months in the brig, which I'd already served, almost triple that uh, or over twice that. Um, but because you get that four months, that's automatic reduction to E1. Um, and so I would have, it would have been like 20 years never existed. Yeah. Um, so he was like, that's not happening. Um, I'm letting you retire as a chief and uh, with everything that you've earned. You know, and then he talked to me about, I mean, this, he knew more about my case than I think most people like he knew all the intricacies of everything that had happened. All the crap the prosecution had pulled. I mean, he was disgusted by it and he was like, you know, he's like, we don't treat our warfighters like this.

• 4:10:44Speaker 03

  He's like, this is not, not while I'm president, you know, and he's like, we don't throw away our warfighters. And he's like, so I'm, you know, thank you for your service and I'm going to let you out with, or let you get out with everything that you earned.

• 4:10:58Speaker 03

  And then he, you know, really made a bunch of remarks about my wife, how amazing she is and how she's the reason that he was even involved.

• 4:11:08Speaker 03

  That he was, he's like, she's a remarkable person to watch. Fight, you know? He's like, I forget what he said. He said,

• 4:11:18Speaker 03

  you know, she stands, she's a good salesman. She stands by her product and she's like, that product is you, you know? And so, talked to him and both the vice president, just I, I was, you know, in shock, you know, what are you going to say? Yeah. On the phone, I just sat there and listened to them and thanked them over and over and,

• 4:11:37Speaker 03

  yeah, so that. They were going to pull your seal, try it in. Well, that's so after I get off the phone with them, I go into work the next day and I go right to trade at where I'm banned from. I drive right on. I'm like, dude, fuck this. I walk in and I'm like, hey, I want my paper, like, all I, all I wanted was my paperwork to put my retirement in, which they were not giving me. I go up to the third deck, walk into the admin and it would, you would have thought I walked in with a shotgun. I mean, it was all admin people in there and they all like, stop what they're doing. And like, oh my gosh. And I literally was like, hey, I just need this, this and this. And I'll be out of here, you know? And they were like, oh, you know, they're all helpful. They're like, definitely. And.

• 4:12:23Speaker 03

  The mass chief of trade it comes walking out.

• 4:12:27Speaker 03

  Sees me. And uh. It was so awkward. He was like. Oh, what's up? And I was like. Hey, how's it going? He's like. Oh. And then he walks back in his office and shuts the door. And I'm like, okay. Comes out about thirty seconds later. Completely different demeanor, like bowed up. Gets in my face and is like. Who gave you authority? To even come in here like you're not like just being a complete douchebag and he's like. You're not allowed in here. I don't know what you think you, you know, what makes you think you can walk up in here and I just. Turned and looked at him was like, you know, he, cause he said, who gave you the authority to come here? And I looked at him, I was like. The President of the United States when he called me yesterday.

• 4:13:12Speaker 03

  I was like, get the fuck out of my face. He looked. His face was like. Hey, like walk back into his office and. I like, I had it at that point. I was like, dude.

• 4:13:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:13:25Speaker 03

  Fuck you. Fuck all of you guys. Um, I was like, in my paperwork. I mean, the, the admin people were cool. I had no problem with them, but just. Him and then the CEO of trade it comes walking out. This is literally this happened. I turned, he comes walking out of his office, looks at me. And then goes back in his office and shuts the door.

• 4:13:45Speaker 03

  Like, these are grown ass Navy SEALs that we're talking about here. And I'm like. Dude, are we like, really? You know, but. Either way, I, I left there. I didn't go back. I just got everything I needed. Um, and uh. I go back to supply to put in for retirement and I get notified by group one. They call me, they're like, oh, uh, yeah, you're not. You can't put that in because now we're going to take you to China review board. And we're pulling your bird.

• 4:14:15Speaker 03

  Man, they just wouldn't fuck with a lot of the go. You couldn't make, you couldn't make it up. I literally sat down with the group on Master Chief. And had to have, like, I tried to have like this heart to heart talk with him. I'm like, dude, I get it. You guys are coming after me. Like, I'm publicly number one. I was like, but do you know what this looks like? Like, the president just said I could retire. And just let me go. And now you're coming after me again. I was like, this looks like you're giving the middle finger to the President of the United States. And I was like, you do understand that? And he was like, no, no, no, that's that's not what we're doing. I was like, okay, I'm like, that's what it's gonna look like. But I, I welcomed, they were like, we're gonna go to the Trident Review Board.

• 4:15:01Speaker 03

  And I welcomed it. And I was like, fine. I was like, I'll go. I was like, because that is the first and only time you guys have ever offered to hear my side of the story. And if it has to be in front of a Trident Review Board, and I, I'm able to talk to a bunch of senior enlisted and give my side, I welcome it. I was like, even though I already know there's a predetermined outcome, that you guys are gonna pull my bird. But if that's what it takes, you know? And uh, I went and reviewed. So when you have a Trident Review Board, you can go and review the evidence beforehand to see what they're gonna, you know, bring up. And I was going to trial all over again. I mean, it literally was like I had never been in trial. They were just like,

• 4:15:46Speaker 03

  all the charges again.

• 4:15:49Speaker 03

  Which I was like, okay. But uh, literally the next day, the president steps in again and tweets, I wake up to a tweet that said, you will not be taking his Trident. Uh, get back to work.

• 4:16:06Speaker 03

  Dude, I mean, and so I walk into work the next day and I'm like, You know, what are you gonna do now? You know, what's and they told me they were like, oh no, we're still pulling your Trident. And I was like, okay, you know, I don't know where this is going, but it's like, it's not gonna end. I mean, you're going up against the president.

• 4:16:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:16:31Speaker 03

  Which, that's on you, you know, but they they never ended up doing it. They tried. And we ended up fighting back pretty hard to where they they were gonna take my Trident, my TU Commander's Trident, my OIC's Trident. Anybody that testified on my behalf, they were just gonna pull their Tridents. But they it all ended up getting dropped.

• 4:16:57Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 4:16:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it was like that to the very last day when I got my retirement ID. Just constant trying to like target me in some way.

• 4:17:08Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that is fucking sad, dude.

• 4:17:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was super sad. And the sad part is like watching the guys in the community who were not, you know, they were all coming up to me like, dude, this is bullshit, you know, like they were all on my side, but they, it was a very like looking over your shoulder type of.

• 4:17:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:17:29Speaker 03

  And it's, uh, yeah, it was pretty bad. Admiral Green, he's gone, you know, out of that seat now, but dude, he.

• 4:17:41Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, they got rid of the Secretary of the Navy over this.

• 4:17:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that was a, that was another. So I think I got hammered pretty good because I spoke out against Admiral Green, right? When I was on active duty, people were like, I mean, even other SEALs were like, oh, you shouldn't have done that. That's whatever. I don't know what their conduct on becoming or, you know. But at that point, I had, I mean, they had done so much stuff to me.

• 4:18:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:18:12Speaker 03

  I was like, dude, I don't give a fuck anymore. And Fox News was like, asked me to come out. I was like, done. And I flew out over the weekend, flew in on like a Saturday and.

• 4:18:28Speaker 03

  I was fired up. I was like, ready to start putting people on blast. And my lawyer was like, don't do it. Don't mention anybody's name because you're still on active duty and they could still charge you. But when I went in there, I had evidence, I had already evidence that the Secretary of the Navy was meddling in my case. I had an email that somebody gave me that he was, he, he personally was reached out to organizations and told them not to support me, which, why is the Secretary of Navy reaching that low into something?

• 4:19:06Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 4:19:06Speaker 03

  But I put, I went on Fox News and I put that on blast. I was like, this, this, and this. I put Admiral Grease name on blast. I was like, dude, I don't care. And then, within three hours after the interview, the Secretary of Navy was relieved, which I'm not saying it was because I went on there, but I think, you know.

• 4:19:27Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe it might have had a little something.

• 4:19:29Speaker 03

  Had a little something to do with it, yeah. So, I mean, and then he got caught going behind the Secretary of Defense's back. So, he didn't do himself any favors.

• 4:19:40Shawn Ryan?

  Before we, you know, close the book on this, this chapter, I do have one question. And you were gonna get a Silver Star for that deployment. Do you know what that was for?

• 4:19:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I saw the, so, the way it was explained to me, and this is, I didn't know I was being put in for a Silver Star.

• 4:20:06Shawn Ryan?

  Well, the Silver Star, for those of you that don't know, is the third, the, the third from the top.

• 4:20:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:20:17Shawn Ryan?

  Best combat award you can get. It's, it's a, I mean.

• 4:20:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's a, I mean, it's a big deal for guys that, that, you know, get them. I mean, and I had no idea that I was being put in for one until we got back from that deployment. And the only way I found out was because one of these junior, junior guys said it. They're like, oh, well, you, you got put in for a Silver Star. And I was like, what? And like, yeah, that's, and so I went and talked to my OIC and T Commander, like, yeah, we ran it out. We recommend you for one. And it was for.

• 4:20:55Speaker 03

  The first day was for multiple acts because they changed and I can't keep up with the award system, but they changed it from doing one act, valorous act to multiple acts. And then now they changed, then they changed it back to just one act again.

• 4:21:13Speaker 03

  The write up I got for it was, you know, we, we were in a position and we started getting

• 4:21:23Speaker 03

  shot at pretty good, shot up. We had taken PKM and all sorts of fire. And I had requested the, the MatVs to pull up on this bridge and light up where we were getting shot from.

• 4:21:41Speaker 03

  They didn't, they wouldn't do it because they were like, it's, you know, we're taking fire. So I ran, I ran down, I was at the third story of the building, but it was like open. I was running down through bullet fire, whatever, sprinted across the field. Which this is, I'm just reading this from the write up. It all, you know, to me, I'm like, I don't, uh, it doesn't sound as crazy, but like I, uh, yeah, I jumped across, ran across the field, jumped in the MatV, pulled it up onto the bridge, hammered down on that building that was, we were taking fire from. And then, uh, got out, ran across the field

• 4:22:20Speaker 03

  again, taking fire, grabbed the javelin, went up, uh, ran up to the third deck again, and then engaged and, uh, smashed the enemy position, um, that, and the fire ensued or whatever. Jesus dude, all by yourself? Yeah. Holy fuck. But it's, dude, it sounds like, it's, believe it, to me, it wasn't that crazy, you know, it was like, but that was like the one write up they did it for. And whatever. It, when I got my, uh, that was the funny thing. When I got my award, finally, when I could retire, I, I was like, you know, processing it through with the admin guys

• 4:23:03Speaker 03

  and the admin guy's like, dude, I've never seen this before. And I was like, what? And he's like, come look at this. They had whited out the Silver Star and wrote bronze with V in pen. Are you shitting me? I still have it. I'm like, at that point, I was like, dude, I don't even care. Like, I don't care. Like, I think. You know, awards are here and are there, man. I think there's

• 4:23:29Speaker 03

  people that get them that don't deserve them, and I think there's people that don't get them that do deserve them. And it's the cross in between. So I don't put any, like, whatever.

• 4:23:37Shawn Ryan?

  Well, just for reference, I think it's Medal of Honor, Navy Cross, Silver Star.

• 4:23:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:23:43Shawn Ryan?

  So, pretty big fucking deal, man. But, you know, well, let's take a break.

• 4:23:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:23:56Shawn Ryan?

  There's a lot of people looking for land these days.

• 4:24:02Shawn Ryan?

  As we continue to, uh,

• 4:24:06Shawn Ryan?

  lose our freedoms. So we're on our way to look at a piece of property out in the middle of nowhere. And, uh, this particular piece only sits on an acre and a half, I believe, 1.5 acres.

• 4:24:31Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Eddie, we just got back from the break and, um, I just wanted to bring up, we were talking about the book on the break. And, uh, that QR code thing you were talking about, I think,

• 4:24:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:24:43Shawn Ryan?

  is amazing. I've never seen that in a book. And, uh, if you don't mind, just in a brief description, like, give everybody a rundown of what that's gonna be like in the book.

• 4:24:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, so the way I wrote the book is, um, obviously it's from my point of view of everything that happened. Uh, I have, you know, chapters in there from my wife, um, my brother, and, uh, I think my lawyers have a, you know, chapter in there. There's a couple of other people that were involved. Um, but, obviously, the book is from my point of view. Um, I wrote it in such a way that the reader, you know, can see everything that my family went through, um, and then everything that happened at the trial, but it's gonna be, it's up on the reader. You know, I wanted to write it in such a fashion that the reader can make his decision at the end, whether they think I'm guilty or not, or what decision they would made if they were the jury.

• 4:25:39Speaker 03

  So the only way I could do that is I put, um, you know, to do it honestly and not just from my side. I put QR codes in the book. So as you're reading it, um, like if you're reading about the trial and you're like, okay. You don't believe like certain things I'm putting in there, or you want to know more, you can click on the QR code and you can listen to all the trial audio. You can listen to, uh, or watch all the NCIS videos, um, and you can see it all. I'm not hiding anything. It's, uh, you know, I'm putting everything out there. And so by the end of the book, you can, uh, make your decision on what you would, what you would

• 4:26:20Speaker 03

  find me as, as jury member.

• 4:26:22Shawn Ryan?

  That's amazing.

• 4:26:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I tried to write it in that fashion.

• 4:26:25Shawn Ryan?

  I can't wait to, to get my hands on it and, and the like the cute, the fact that you've put the original court audio in there and, and, and by just by scanning the QR code. So it's like, oh, if you don't believe me, then.

• 4:26:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I want to be as transparent as possible, you know, there was enough.

• 4:26:46Speaker 03

  You know, during my whole, the whole trial and everything else, I mean, the media put out enough stuff that was completely, uh, biased, um, against me. Um, and they spliced, you know, certain things, uh, to make me look evil. And I'm like, I'm not going to do that. I mean, yeah, there's, there's going to be things in that QR code that don't make me look good because they, you know, they dug through my life, but I, you know, I'm not going to hide. I don't have anything to hide, you know, I'm not a angel, uh, you know, I'm trying to be a good person, but I'll just put everything out in the open.

• 4:27:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, moving forward, uh, this will be the last segment. I just want to talk about, um, kind of your transition, which, uh, holy shit, man. I, I can't even fucking imagine, uh, what that was like. You know, most guys just have to, you know, not just have to, but you know, dealing with, uh, the, the post-traumatic stress and, and trying to figure out what the fuck you're going to do and, and, uh, you know, not being able to feed the addiction to the adrenaline and all that shit coming into play on top of what you were dealing with, um.

• 4:28:01Shawn Ryan?

  It's amazing, it's a miracle that you got through it and that you're still sitting here. And then after that, we'll talk about, you know, what you're doing now with the Pipehitter Foundation, which I think is fucking amazing, but.

• 4:28:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:28:19Shawn Ryan?

  So you did eight deployments and just the, just your last deployment, you saw more shit than most people will ever see in a lifetime. And even, even more than a lot of other operators in one deployment. And, you know, kind of talking with the online, you had brought up that

• 4:28:42Shawn Ryan?

  there were other deployments that were, that were, there was more action. And, you know,

• 4:28:51Shawn Ryan?

  you saw a lot of death. You saw a lot of trend, uh, you saw a lot of traumatic shit. I'm sure you've lost more friends than you can count. And you have killed

• 4:29:10Shawn Ryan?

  a lot of bad, bad guys. So what about guys that you've saved from being a medic?

• 4:29:20Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, I mean, we

• 4:29:25Speaker 03

  just, I mean, just this last deployment, uh, the one I was on, our EOD guy got shot.

• 4:29:31Speaker 03

  You know, he was up on the rooftop setting up some charges for some loopholes. And, you know, one random shot rang out, um, tagged him in the leg. And, uh, we managed to pull him down. Uh, myself and another medic worked on him. Uh, you know, he, he's actually back operating, um, now, um, just a good dude. But yeah, we, you know, ended up working on him, um, and having a buddy carry him back to, uh, you know, the, um, rally point, which we had stayed pre-staged. But I mean, that's, you know, on other prior deployments, you know, you work on guys or partner forces all the time, um, whether.

• 4:30:17Speaker 03

  They're, you know, shot or, I mean, most time I've worked on a lot of partner force guys.

• 4:30:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:30:22Speaker 03

  That have been, you know, blown up or shot up pretty good. It just comes with the job of being a medic and it's just, you know, one of the qualifications.

• 4:30:35Shawn Ryan?

  How many guys do you think, how many men do you think are still alive because of the fact that you patched them up?

• 4:30:43Speaker 03

  Um.

• 4:30:46Speaker 03

  Counting team guys or and also partner for.

• 4:30:49Shawn Ryan?

  Any human life that you.

• 4:30:51Speaker 03

  I would say probably like 20 to 25, maybe. Um, just that's what I can think of the top of my head. You got, you're thinking, you know, we also take care of, you know, when we were doing VSO, uh, those stability operations out in Afghanistan, you're taking care of the villagers nearby. We do like med caps, bring them in and, you know, the, they don't have the stable.

• 4:31:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:31:16Speaker 03

  Environment we have here. So that, you know, they're bringing you these kids that are, you know, got dragged. I remember, I remember this one kid got dragged by a, a horse, you know, um, he had to be like five or six years old and they brought him in and, I mean, his whole scalp was gone, peeled off. We worked on him, ended up medevac in him and saving him.

• 4:31:37Speaker 03

  And just there's, that's, you know,

• 4:31:42Speaker 03

  that's the one part of, uh, going over there, you know, taking the war aspect out of it. You know, when you start helping the actual civilians over there and that are, you know, they're stuck in a war zone that they're not, you know, taking part in it, but they're just stuck there and helping them out. Definitely gives you like, you know, a feeling of satisfaction or gratification. Like you're, you're actually doing some good, you know?

• 4:32:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:32:12Speaker 03

  Amidst all the violence and everything else, like being able to take care of like, you know, some female or even like, you know, pregnant women over there. They came and saw us and we'd, we'd help them out. But just being able to like. Take care of them and send them on their way, you know, as do as best you can. It it makes you feel good.

• 4:32:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:32:32Speaker 03

  Like you're you're doing something good in the world.

• 4:32:34Shawn Ryan?

  Have you ever have you ever thought about the fucking magnitude of the fact that there's you just estimated twenty? Twenty guys that you saved and I'm and it's more than that because you just brought up a med cap. But in combat, there's twenty human beings walking on this fucking earth that wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you being there. That's pretty like amazing shit.

• 4:33:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a I mean, you you never think of it like that. You're just you're just doing your job, you know. That's part of what, you know, being a medic is just helping other people out. Um, but yeah, it's when you take a step back like you just did and look at it in the big picture. It's a it's a pretty awesome feeling, you know.

• 4:33:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's pretty fucking amazing, dude.

• 4:33:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:33:25Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, well.

• 4:33:30Shawn Ryan?

  Did you? Did you even have time to, I mean, deal with?

• 4:33:35Speaker 03

  No.

• 4:33:36Shawn Ryan?

  Post-traumatic stress?

• 4:33:37Speaker 03

  No.

• 4:33:38Shawn Ryan?

  All the other shit was going on in in court and with the NCIS or?

• 4:33:42Speaker 03

  Not at all. Um, and it's a it was pretty crazy because, you know, I was at that TBI clinic trying to get, you know, intrepid spear. Um, getting worked on.

• 4:33:58Speaker 03

  You know, I had multiple, I've had multiple concussions.

• 4:34:03Speaker 03

  You know, throughout my career and, you know, when I got there, I hadn't reported a lot of them or some of them were just half-assed reported. And so when they really started digging deep into everything that's been going on, I was it was pretty eye-opening to be like, oh shit, you know? This is what I've done to my brain. Um, and then they bring back the scan and show you like, you know, this, this is what's, you know, part of your brain looks like from all the the blasts. It's a it's pretty eye-opening, but you know, I didn't have any, I got pulled out of that clinic and thrown in prison, so I didn't have any, uh, real time to like. Treat myself or take care of myself and um I remember going you know while I was locked up I had

• 4:34:46Speaker 03

  buddies visiting me and other team guys and they they were constantly you know checking up on me and being like are you okay and I you know like any typical team guy I'm like I'm fucking fine you know um I'm good and I was I was good at the time because I was in fight mode

• 4:35:02Speaker 03

  you know during that whole process I think my I was just focused on like fighting you know for my freedom and getting out I really wasn't worried about any other the ramifications um and it really didn't hit me until uh I got out um you know even the last day I'm you know I think I was telling you about it at dinner last night uh you know I hadn't

• 4:35:27Speaker 03

  during that whole time I didn't I hadn't processed everything that was going on it was just every day was a fight um and the day that I went and got my retired my ID uh retired ID you know I was by myself it was very just like went in they were like here it is and you're gone you know thanks for coming out

• 4:35:50Speaker 03

  I went back to my truck I just sat there and I let it I mean I just started balling

• 4:35:57Speaker 03

  by myself in my truck it was it was like everything just started dumping out of me uh and I was

• 4:36:05Speaker 03

  it was more of a bittersweet um because I didn't I didn't want to get out you know that's I that job I love that job um I mean it was my religion for 20 years and to leave like that was not the way that I had ever pictured it or planned it but it was also like I was glad it was over you know I'm just glad I was going back to my family uh to start a new chapter um but once I got home uh

• 4:36:38Speaker 03

  I was probably I was good for a couple of months I think you know just sort of settling it's like the I guess the honeymoon phase of getting out um but once I started writing the book it everything sort of came crashing down on me uh

• 4:36:54Speaker 03

  I went to like some pretty dark spaces, you know, just going rehashing everything that had gone on. I hadn't, you know, taken the time to sort of unravel everything that had happened to me and my family.

• 4:37:09Speaker 03

  So, once I started rehashing everything and having to like really dig, you know, go into the details, everything that happened. And it was so much that I couldn't even remember half the shit. Yeah. Uh, went on, but, uh, you know, I was getting, I got angry.

• 4:37:23Speaker 03

  I think that's the only emotion I had for a while was just like anger and frustration. Um, you know, my Andrea saw it, my wife saw it, my kids saw it.

• 4:37:33Speaker 03

  You know, I'd come down from working on the book and I'd just be in a dark space. Wouldn't talk to anybody.

• 4:37:42Speaker 03

  And, you know, thank God I have, I'm telling you, the only reason I'm halfway like good now is because of my wife. Uh, you know, she's my rock and she's like, she told me, she's like, you know, you need to deal with whatever's going on. And she's like, it's not just with the book or what happened. It's like your career, you know, everything that's, you know, you've been through. And, uh, cause I think when you're going through, you know, and I try to explain to people how it is, you know, in the teams or it's like you're on a train going 120 miles an hour all the time. And any traumatic event that happens, whether you lose, you know, a teammate or,

• 4:38:25Speaker 03

  you know, something else, you see some atrocities, it just goes in the caboose. You don't even, you're like, yep, throw it back there and just keep going. Well, once that 120 mile train stops, guess where that caboose is coming? It's gonna come crashing right into you.

• 4:38:43Speaker 03

  So that ended up happening. Uh, so I went, you know, Andrea and I talked and. You know, I focused on the focus was just doing the book, but it was also taking this year to like, get treatment um and really fix myself and make myself a better person to be around uh and just, you know, and that's, that's the right thing to do. Um, it's, you know.

• 4:39:08Shawn Ryan?

  She sent us a, Andrea sent us a list of the treatments that you went through and that is a, that's a pretty fucking extensive, long list.

• 4:39:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I, I feel, dude, I, I feel blessed that I even got to go to those treatments, you know, and it was through the uh, you know, Seal Future Foundation. Um, those guys reached out to me right away and they were like, listen, whatever you need, um, hit us up. Uh, I went, got all my blood work done right off the bat. Um, and that was a pretty, another eye opening thing when they came back and told me, you know, everything that I was low in. Uh, my body is, you know, like, yeah, your, if your brain's not working properly, the rest of your body's gonna pay for it. And um, so I was low on a lot of stuff. They hooked me up with a, a lot of like

• 4:39:56Speaker 03

  supplements. Um, got me on uh TRT, which my testosterone was low. Uh, and then um, I went and did a H-Bot treatment, which is uh, the um, I forget the, what H-Bot stands for. Uh, but pretty much you go into a, uh, it's like going down in depth. You're going into um, the dive chamber.

• 4:40:20Shawn Ryan?

  The hyperbaric chamber?

• 4:40:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, hyperbaric chamber. And they take you down. And I did about sixty-five treatments of that.

• 4:40:26Shawn Ryan?

  Did you uh find that effective?

• 4:40:28Speaker 03

  I did. Um, you know, it's not the end all be all, but I definitely felt uh better afterwards. I wasn't feeling the effects during it. Um, I was sort of, I was sort of frustrating, but about two weeks after, it felt like a fog had been lifted a little bit.

• 4:40:43Shawn Ryan?

  So the science behind that, correct me if I'm wrong, is they take you down um, to depth and it, because the blasts have kind of.

• 4:40:56Shawn Ryan?

  loosened up the membrane on your brain, correct?

• 4:40:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:40:59Shawn Ryan?

  And so basically when they go down to depth in the, in the hyperbaric chamber, there it's, it's compressing that all back together.

• 4:41:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:41:08Shawn Ryan?

  That's kind of like, and uh,

• 4:41:10Speaker 03

  scientific as we're gonna get.

• 4:41:13Shawn Ryan?

  And dummy terms.

• 4:41:14Speaker 03

  I can't explain it any better than that either. Like it's, yeah, it pretty much helps you, uh, it's supposed to heal your brain. They've been, they've been doing it for years with, uh, NFL players and they're just now seeing that, uh, this treatment is doing wonders for guys that are coming out of our profession, um, who've taken multiple concussions or like they call them little mini concussions over and over, uh, and they're seeing a lot of good effects from it. Um, I recently just got, actually my dad is a, uh, you know, retired lieutenant colonel. He was a desert storm, um, and you know, he was, I actually got him to go down and do it and like

• 4:41:55Speaker 03

  seeing, I mean, the big change when he got done with it as well. I mean, it's, you can see the, they had the positive changes and the, the effects that it has on, on people. Uh, so it, I definitely got a lot out of that. Um, and then I, you know, dealing with, I still had this like weight on me, uh, it felt like, you know, where I would still go into these dark, you know, just places or just angry, um, and I couldn't figure out, you know, I knew what was going on. Um, and I'll tell you like that's having podcasts like this or any other SEALs are doing podcasts that when they have their guests on and guys talk about

• 4:42:37Speaker 03

  the stuff they go through and they're vulnerable and able to be like, hey, this is what I went through and, uh, it helps like, it helped me a lot to be able to listen to those guys because I'm like, okay,

• 4:42:49Speaker 03

  I'm not the only one feeling like this. Uh, and then it just gave me this self-awareness to be like, I need to, I need to do something about it and I'm, I'm just not going to sit here and be angry and miserable.

• 4:43:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:43:01Speaker 03

  Like I want to, I want to change, you know, I want to be different. Uh, so I went, uh, I did this pretty, um,

• 4:43:09Speaker 03

  Not invasive, but uh it was different. Uh, plant medicine. Um, it's called Ibegane. Is this, is this when you went to Mexico? Yeah. So it's through uh the vet program. Um, and it's Amber and Marcus Capone run it.

• 4:43:30Speaker 03

  And they uh flew me out to Mexico and you take this Ibegane. Um, it's just a pretty powerful hallucinogenic. Kind of like ayahuasca. Is this like, is this psilocybin? No. Okay. So this Ibegane comes from like a tree bark. Uh, it's, I think, and I, I don't want to mess this. I think if they said South America.

• 4:43:55Speaker 03

  Which, you know, certain tribes use it um as like a rite of passage when they're, you know, they take it and like to become a man or like to find your, your, your purpose. Uh, but uh they've come to find out that this medicine is like, they also used it to treat um addicts.

• 4:44:16Speaker 03

  So they use it for heroin addiction, any kind of addiction. They were using to treat patients and they were finding that it was working. Um, and then they started to now treat vets, you know, guys who have massive, you know, TBIs or PTSD uh, or in which also we know comes along with addiction problems, you know, alcohol abuse, pills, everything else. And they're, I mean, they're finding out like it's doing wonders. It's almost like you think, you know, a game changer for a lot of guys. Uh, so I had talked to a couple buddies that had already done it. Um, you know, they sort of explained it to me, but even when you haven't done it and you have, you know, people explaining to you, you're like, I was still, I was nervous about it. Um,

• 4:45:00Speaker 03

  but Andrew and I talked about it and we, she was on board, you know, and so I went down there and uh, yeah, it was, it was a game changer for me. Um, it. It um. What's the process like down there? So they, you go down there, um, you just go to this house and they have, uh, doctors on, you know, there, um, they have like this nurse or, and she's also a shaman.

• 4:45:27Speaker 03

  She prepares the medicine, um, they, you know, everything is done with like reverence. They, they're very professional about it. They have, uh, people watching you 24 seven while you're on it. Um, they hook you up with EKGs just so they can monitor you. How do you take it? It's, uh, in capsule form. How long does it last?

• 4:45:46Speaker 03

  10 hours. 10 hours? Yeah, and it's intense. Um, it's super intense. You, so what we did is, um, and actually it was on your last podcast. Uh, he sort of taught it pretty much exactly how he said it. Um, you go in there, you write your intentions of what you want to get out of it. You know, um, I, so I, I wrote down like, you know, I just want to be happy again. Uh, I want to feel like innocent again, like, you know, sort of I look at my kid, you know, Ryan, who's, you know, I see him, he's just an awesome kid laughing and just happy. I was like, dude, I want to feel like that again, you know, and not have this

• 4:46:29Speaker 03

  burden or whatever you want to call this weight on me. Um, and I wrote it down on a piece of paper.

• 4:46:37Speaker 03

  And then you throw it in the fire and then you take the medicine and they lead you upstairs to a, a room with beds. You just lay down on the bed, you put a, uh, one of those eye covering sleep masks on. And you just wait, um, until it kicks in and, uh, How long does it take? It, mine took a while to kick in, so I, I was there with three other guys. Um, Are you guys all in the same room? Yeah. So they were all on beds and everyone's in there sort of monitoring us. Uh, they play like, you know, real chill music. Um, and I mean, everything is like to make you comfortable. Um, but those guys, I could, I could hear that they had kicked in. Like some of them are throwing up, um, cause that's sometimes what happens. Uh,

• 4:47:23Speaker 03

  So I was getting pretty frustrated. I was like, dude, you know, did I get a bad dose or what's going on? But then, uh, yeah, all of a sudden it's like ringing or buzzing started happening. And it's when I could feel it come up the back of my spine and like it feels like the back of your brain is just explodes and you are.

• 4:47:45Speaker 03

  It was like 10 hours of like I got went into space.

• 4:47:50Speaker 03

  You know, I was like, actually like in space around me. I could see the stars and you actually feel like you're there. You know, it's like this is actually going on. But what's crazy about the medicine is you're, I could literally, if I wanted to take my eye mask off, I'd know where like I'd be conscious to be like, okay, I'm in this room, you know? But then I'd go back to it. I'm back to, you know, in space, but uh,

• 4:48:18Speaker 03

  you know, it was, it really, it started off super intense at first. I felt like the bed was trying to like buck me off. And like it was flying all over the room, but uh, I just remained calm and like worked on my breathing. Um, just to like chill and then pretty much I watched a whole reel of my life. I watched myself being born, um, watched myself as a child growing up all the way, uh, you know? I forget how far it went, but um, it, what it did for me is, you know, um, it just made me really appreciate, you know, what I had, uh, which was my family.

• 4:48:59Speaker 03

  And just, I mean, stuff that I think I was like overlooking, you know, because of the, everything that had happened and um, it just, you know, I came out of it like that's with this like weight off me, um, and just like a feeling of peace.

• 4:49:15Speaker 03

  And it just gave me like a foundation to. You know, if I start feeling a certain way, I can bring myself back to that place a lot easier than I could have before the medicine.

• 4:49:26Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. When did, uh, so you're basically you were accessing memories that you hadn't accessed.

• 4:49:31Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. It was insane. And then this is, this will trip you out. Like this, this is hard to explain to people. So. I mean, it sounds crazy, but, uh, I was watching. So you're watching. It's almost like a old film of yourself and then at some point during it, I started, I was watching my dad as a little child. And like him growing up and then how, you know, him with his dad. And it was, I mean, but it was like, actually you're, you're like, dude, this is actual footage, like.

• 4:50:05Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 4:50:06Speaker 03

  But it was like, I was accessing my dad's memories, um, which sounds insane. Um, and I know like, you know, people listening like, what the frick? But I mean, I, it was nuts.

• 4:50:19Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you know, I did some research on this shit and, um, we're not shit, but this stuff is like psilocybin in particular and, and, uh, I can't, I can't remember the exact percentages, but I think they say you can only access 10% of your brain or, or human beings can only access 10 or 20% of their brain. It's a small amount. And, uh, when the psilocybin or hallucinogenic, uh, takes effect, it like literally unlocks the rest of your brain, which gives you access to all these memories and, and is the way I kind of understood it, but.

• 4:50:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's, that's pretty much how it felt like it just act like the rest of your brain has woken up and you're, it just starts bringing back. Or you start seeing all these memories that you don't even know you had. Um, I mean, stuff when I was little, I mean, they were, they're actual memories, but like. You know, I, when I was four years old, like, walking into the store with my mom, like, holding her hand, or it was actual, like, I was watching that go on. Uh, it was, it was pretty crazy. Um. Was it first person, or was it like you were watching? No, it's like you're watching, um, it's like right in front of you and you're watching like old film. You can see yourself?

• 4:51:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I'm seeing myself and whoever's with me, uh, through it. And then you, it was like, if you wanted to stay on a certain memory and be like, okay, I want to dive into this and see what you, you could do that. Um, but it was, it was almost like, uh, like, if I didn't want, I was like, oh, I don't need to see that. I could just scroll through my, you know, to the next film. Um, it was, it was crazy. Wow. And then each, the film that I was seeing, which was gnarly, and I didn't think about this till afterwards, it all had burnt marks. Like, like it had been singed around the end, ends of the film. And I think that was, you know, because part of the intentions, you know, because we threw in the fire and it was like showing me, you know,

• 4:52:16Speaker 03

  this is what you wanted to get out of this, and this is why we're showing you this. Uh, so it's, Damn. It's, you know, the way they, they do it, it's not, and that's, you know, I think people, if certain people are like, oh, I don't know about that, like, they treat that medicine with such reverence and they do it in such a professional manner. I mean, that's how guys are getting a lot out of it. It's not, guys aren't just going down there to take this and be like, oh, I'm tripping out. Like, it's done for a certain, uh, purpose, you know? Yeah. To help guys heal. And then you, after you take that, you do another drug called, uh, five M E O D M T. Um, which is a, uh, which is actually pretty crazy. It's poison from a toad. Uh,

• 4:53:01Speaker 03

  so they have you smoke that, um, and that is supposed, they call it the handshake, so. When you do the IBG game, it pretty much shows you everything that, you know, you want to get treated or worked on. Right? So you you come out of that like, okay, I just got shown all this stuff and you're trying to process it. Then you, when you do the five AMO DMT, it's like a handshake. Like you're like, oh, my gosh. Okay, now I understand. You know, it's sort of like releases everything.

• 4:53:29Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 4:53:31Speaker 03

  And I like I got out of that, like I had a lot of, uh, obviously, you know, anger and, um, you know, I was holding on to, you know, even the guys that these accusers, you know, that was, you know, I was angry about that. Um, and, uh, you know, it's one thing to, you know, I was like, I forgive, you know, some of those guys and, um, but, you know, the human nature in me, I was still holding on to some, some stuff and, uh,

• 4:54:02Speaker 03

  it just, it gave me the realization, like I came out of it and I'm like, you know what, like, there's no reason to be like me being angry at those dudes or like, you know, have this hate, like all it's doing is hurting me. You're right. Like, those dudes, I mean, they, they proved exactly what they were, you know, I had called them cowards on deployment because they had acted like it. And then I think they proved to the world exactly what they were and, uh, you know, I've been asked like, oh, what, you know, if you saw one of them, what would you do? And I'm like, do nothing. I was like, there's nothing worse that can be done to those guys than what they did to themselves.

• 4:54:46Shawn Ryan?

  So this, this treatment puts you at peace with all that shit?

• 4:54:51Speaker 03

  I would say like not, and I'm not, I'm not going to say like a hundred percent because, you know, if I, depending on what mood I'm in and if something is brought up, you know, I might start getting a little irritated by it, but, uh, it gave me the tools to like,

• 4:55:08Speaker 03

  realize like that's happening and be like, you know what, that, that none of that matters.

• 4:55:12Shawn Ryan?

  So when you said you took the second drug and it just released everything, it released what? Like the emotion? Or things just made sense?

• 4:55:21Speaker 03

  It's hard to explain. So you, uh,

• 4:55:26Speaker 03

  When you take that, the I or the five MEODMT,

• 4:55:31Speaker 03

  you inhale it in for, I think, 10 seconds and hold it for 10 and let it out and you, you know, they have you on a bed and you literally fall back into the bed, but when, after you take the drug, it's, you don't feel like, you don't hit the bed, you just keep falling and you're just going. Holy shit. It's a, it's a pretty scary feeling, but they, you know, they prep you beforehand on like, hey, just trust it. Don't, you know, try not to fight it. Just they tell you just to let go. And so that's, I mean, I did exactly that. I just let go and it, you keep falling, but eventually it brings you to this, this place, uh,

• 4:56:12Speaker 03

  where I, it's hard to explain. Like I saw, it was like these pink and blue hues and it was just like, you feel nothing but love. Like, it's like the most intense love you can feel, uh, and you're, it's, and the way I can explain it because I'm a believer and I, you know, believe in God and Christ. Like, I feel like it brings you closer to God and Christ. Like, you feel like his love and just how much he loves you and everybody else. And you're just like, it just helped me come to realization. Like dude, all this baggage and all this crap that I'm holding on to or that's bothering me. Like, none of that matters. Like, it's fine. You know, like,

• 4:56:53Speaker 03

  you're gonna be okay. And you have all these people that love you. Like I have my wife, my kids, you know, all my, my teammates, my friends, like you have all of this. So why are you focused on everything else? Like, be appreciative of everything that you have, uh, in front of you. And so that's what it,

• 4:57:11Speaker 03

  that's what it did for me, you know? And I think it, for it, it, for each different person, it does something different, depending on what your intentions are going into it. That's fucking amazing. Yeah, it's a, it was, it was a game changer. And then, um, I went to, After that, I was, you know, good. And then I went to another retreat, which is almost a similar feeling, but no, no drugs or anything. It was called Operational Restored Warrior.

• 4:57:41Speaker 03

  They take you up to a mountains in Colorado.

• 4:57:45Speaker 03

  There's probably, and you don't, they don't tell you anything about it before you go. They're just, again, like just trust it.

• 4:57:52Speaker 03

  So I went up there for four days and you are pretty much at this, you're at a ranch. It's like pretty desolate, nothing around and it's all very spiritual based and they

• 4:58:06Speaker 03

  they you know, have you go over everything. It's they, it's all veterans who are not doing too hot. Well, I mean, I felt when I went there, I was like, dude, I'm doing pretty decent compared to some of these guys I'm here with. But they pretty much heal guys there spiritually. You know, they, and it's not what like, you know, they're not like, oh, Jesus, God is what, you know, it's very, it's based around, you know, God and Jesus and but they, it's, it's almost like you're in a spiritual battle constantly. And that's like, they explain to you like, you know, the negativity that we have, or especially with, you know, us when we get out and we, they're like, you know, there's voices in your head that are telling you like,

• 4:58:51Speaker 03

  you know, to get pissed off at certain things like that's all, you know, whether you want to call it the devil or like he's trying to get in your head. He wants you to be in like this negative space. Like that's where he wants you. And then they give you the tools to be like, you know, that's not, that's not where I'm supposed to be. You know, I'm better than that. And they give you the tools to fight back against that. And you know, it was, it did a lot. I mean, that, that was a big, big thing for me too. I came out of there feeling a lot better. And then my wife actually did one for, they do one for female vets as well and then spouses. So Andrea went just recently and she came back and the same thing. She was like, it was amazing. Wow. So it was really cool.

• 4:59:34Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think it has to do a lot with just checking out? I mean, I'm assuming there's no phones, there's no fucking social media texts, phone calls, anything from the outside world, just you and, you know, nature that God created without any of them?

• 4:59:50Speaker 03

  Oh, that definitely has a lot to do with it. I mean, it's the same thing with the Iba game too. They take everything away from you. So you have not like, there's no distractions at all. And I think, I mean, that's the, both those treatments, that's sort of the hard thing to overcome. Because you, at the end of them, everybody's feeling like, dude, I feel awesome, you know? I'm ready to go back into the world and like, start crushing it.

• 5:00:19Speaker 03

  But I think the reality is you gotta know like, hey, you're going back to pretty much what America like, or not America, but uh, you're going back to the world, back to social media, back to, you know, the news, back to all the negative information that's just constantly being pushed at us. And I think you just gotta know before you do that, like, hey, you know, these things are out there and there's some, there's stuff every day that's gonna try and take you down. That's gonna try and get you in a negative mindset. Um, and you just gotta be self-aware to be like, okay, I shouldn't be watching this. Or I shouldn't be reading these comments. Um, it's not doing anything for me, you know? And, you know, I think that's, that's always gonna be a struggle, um, to try and,

• 5:01:05Speaker 03

  you know, to fight against, uh, but as long as you, I think, as long as you're self-aware, um, and you, you have the tools to be like, okay, this shouldn't be bothering me or I'm not gonna let this bother me right now. Um, that's, that's what that, those places give you. Um, and I think, I mean, that's, I think it'll, it'll help tons of guys. If, you know, I think that's what guys should be going through. Um, you know, I'm all about the plant medicine. Um, especially as you know, you know, the VA and.

• 5:01:35Speaker 03

  The big pharma, that's.

• 5:01:37Shawn Ryan?

  I won't even fucking go to the VA.

• 5:01:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, they just wanna shove pills down your throat and, you know, be like, oh, then of course, once that pill starts having bad effects, they just add more pills on to fight those effects. And before you know it, you know, guys are on like fifteen different medications. Then they wonder why guys are blowing their brains out, you know, and like, oh, it's like, dude, because all that shit, it's all one big money-making process for them.

• 5:01:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:02:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, you know, this, this plant medicine, if it, if it's as like invasive as people wanna think it is, or not invasive, but a sort of out of the ordinary, um, and just, but if it's getting guys off pills, off alcohol, off, you know, helping them out, I'm all about it.

• 5:02:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:02:19Speaker 03

  I mean, I've seen the positive effects of it, uh, on hundreds of guys, so I know it's working.

• 5:02:26Shawn Ryan?

  You know, back to the VA, I mean, I hate to go down a negative road when we're trying to be positive here, but, you know, it just fucking makes sense for them to over-medicate because the minute a veteran drops dead, guess what, that's more money in USG's fucking bank account.

• 5:02:41Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 5:02:41Shawn Ryan?

  And so it is not in their best interest to give veterans the care that they fucking need, nor does, you know, sorry, but I don't think the majority of America gives a fuck, you know? We've, the VA's been fucked up forever.

• 5:02:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:02:59Shawn Ryan?

  It will always be fucked up. It's never, it's never, you know, a top discussion in politics. And, um, and, um, so I, I fucking refuse to go.

• 5:03:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't, I went there, when I got out, I went and checked into the one near me, uh, just to like, register and, um, and I'll tell you what, like, the people that work there, like the lady I talked to, nothing against her at all, like, she's like, super nice and was like, okay, and she, this, it was the crazy part is, uh, when she started going through my record, and she stopped and was just like, they're not used to dealing with soft individuals at all. And she was like, oh my gosh, like, I haven't seen something like this in a long time. And I'm like, to me, I'm like, well, that's, me and all my friends are just, you know, that's all we're used to being around, so like, there's nothing out of the ordinary,

• 5:03:55Speaker 03

  but they don't know how to treat, um. Individuals that come out of the SOF community and like what they've seen or like what they've dealt with. And the first thing they do is just like, oh, take these, you must be depressed, take these antidepressants. So like, cause you tell them like how you're feeling or like what symptoms and it's, you know, it's all because of TBI or stuff like that, but they automatically start treating it for, oh, you must be depressed or you must have this. And that's when I start putting you on these medications. You know, they tried to give me, give me some and I was like, no, I don't want any pills. And they almost in a way try and force you like, why don't you want these pills? Like you should be taking them, you should be on this.

• 5:04:40Speaker 03

  I mean, I had to, they were calling me a couple of times, like, do you want them? Do you want us to send you them? And I'm like, no, you know, why are you, you know, trying to push this on me? And then when they ask you what you're doing, so she was like, what are you doing? If you're not taking pills, what are you doing to like help? And I'm like, you know, plant medicine, I'm just like, I'll smoke some weed, you know, something. And they're completely against all that, you know, they're like, oh, well, you know, that's, uh, but if you're, if you're doing that, then we can't help you.

• 5:05:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:05:13Speaker 03

  Like, okay, well then that's the why I'm doing it. So you.

• 5:05:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm telling you, this is helping me and you're fucking telling me it's not helping me and you want to give me.

• 5:05:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, yeah, it's backwards, you know?

• 5:05:28Speaker 03

  But yeah, I mean, that's, I'm, I'm glad, and I think that's why these foundations like SEAL Future Foundation,

• 5:05:35Speaker 03

  the Navy SEALs Fund, like just, well, these are the ones that I know because it's coming from the SEAL community. I mean, they have really taken an interest in forming an alliance to help because they're seeing that, you know, guys aren't getting the help they need when they get out. And so that's their main mission is to help guys when they get out and get them back on their feet mentally.

• 5:05:55Shawn Ryan?

  Who, what's the name of that organization?

• 5:05:57Speaker 03

  It's the Navy SEAL, or not, no, not Navy SEAL Foundation, SEAL Future Foundation.

• 5:06:03Shawn Ryan?

  SEAL Future Foundation is run by?

• 5:06:07Speaker 03

  Johnny Wilson.

• 5:06:08Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 5:06:09Speaker 03

  Awesome guy, I went to buzz with him. He's, that's his mission in life is to help guys when they get out and to get them back on their feet mentally and physically and spiritually.

• 5:06:20Speaker 03

  And so, I mean, I think he started off that foundation to help get guys jobs when they get out. But what he found out is, I mean, You can take, you know, the best operator and when he gets out and be like, get him a job at Golden Sacks or something, you know, he, he's still not gonna be doing good.

• 5:06:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:06:40Speaker 03

  Nothing, you have to treat, you know, you have to fix yourself before you can start moving on. Uh, that's what they're finding out, so it's good.

• 5:06:49Shawn Ryan?

  You said you smoke weed sometimes?

• 5:06:51Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 5:06:52Shawn Ryan?

  How much does that help?

• 5:06:53Speaker 03

  Uh, it helps big time. Like, you know, if it's, uh, if I start feeling anxiety, um, and it's crazy like the little things that'll set me off or like get my anxiety going, which it's, it's almost frustrating to where I'm like, dude, why am I feeling like this over, you know, this little thing right now? Like it's working me up. Uh, it'll help me, you know, just bring me back down to level and be like, everything's good, you know? And I don't, you know, you're not smoking it. And I think there's a big misconception on, uh, the whole, you know, marijuana and they've done so much forward progress on that now. Like they have certain things where you can take it and you're not high. You're not like, oh, I'm, you know, but you're just calm

• 5:07:38Speaker 03

  and relaxed and it's, you know, just helps you sort of, uh, you know, even out.

• 5:07:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:07:47Speaker 03

  So, yeah, I'm, I'm all about it.

• 5:07:48Shawn Ryan?

  I'd say the same thing, man. I, um, when I started, when I used to live in Florida and it was legal there, I, it took my doctor forever, my doctor outside of the VA to talk me into doing it. And, uh, you know, I was like, I'm not doing this shit. This is, you know, I need to fucking stay on task and, and, uh, and then, and then, uh, I finally tried it and it was like fucking life-changing for me. And, uh,

• 5:08:16Speaker 03

  It's funny, like I didn't, uh, you know, I started doing it like Andrea, she knew, you know, that I was gonna try it, but that's how I knew that it was helping, um, because she was like, I noticed a difference, like you're more. Chill, you know, and I'm like, good, then it's working.

• 5:08:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I wish, you know, I'm a conservative, I don't, whatever, but that's one thing I can't fucking stand about.

• 5:08:43Shawn Ryan?

  The right side is they're so anti marijuana and it's like if you fucking assholes would, you know, come out of Washington and actually do some research and talk to, you know, the, some of the guys that are doing this and how it's helping them, maybe you would change your fucking mind.

• 5:08:59Speaker 03

  I think, yeah, that's, and there's also a big push against it because Big Pharma runs everything, you know, and they're, that's why they don't want to legalize it, because they know it'll get people off pills.

• 5:09:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:09:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:09:13Shawn Ryan?

  Anyways, but, uh, man, it sounds like you're

• 5:09:18Shawn Ryan?

  extremely proactive coming out, uh, and getting yourself up to par before,

• 5:09:26Shawn Ryan?

  not that you didn't hit a fucking all time low when you're in prison, but I mean, you know, the, the fact that you hit the ground running, it was like, all right, that's done. I mean, did Andrea push you to start going to these programs?

• 5:09:40Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, um, she, she pretty much put the orders down right when I got out, like, you're not doing anything this year, like, I don't, because I, I was already like, all right, what am I gonna do next? Like, get a job, do, you know, whatever, my, I was gonna plan on contracting, I mean, that's, that was my next go to before, like, all that mess happened, I was already on my way to, you know, do what you, what you have done, um, and, uh, that was a no go now because obviously my face been plastered everywhere, so,

• 5:10:16Speaker 03

  she was just like, that's it, like, you're, you need to chill out, um, and she knew it was gonna be rough for me, you know, um, she was like, you know, I'd be chewing the carpet after a month of being in the house, which did happen, uh, but it was, we were both on board with, you know, like, all right, let's just get these treatments done this year, let's focus on fixing you, and then we can move on, 2021 will be more like, what are we gonna do, you know, our ventures, uh, and I'm glad, you know, I'm glad I did it, uh, you know, it was stubborn at times, uh, for sure, gave her a hard time about it, but, uh, you know, I'll tell you what, man, and like I said before, it was from listening to.

• 5:10:57Speaker 03

  Podcasts like yours or other guys when the guys come on and start talking about their issues like it gave me it was almost like I wrecked it before I got out. I was like, okay, this is what I should be looking out for. You know, at this end, eventually I, you know, start feeling that way or have the same issues as some what these guys are talking about. So I knew right then I was like, okay, this is, you know, those guys that talked about the dark road, they went all the way down to where, you know, they had a gun in their mouth. I'm like, I don't want to get to that point, you know, like I could, and it's very easy to like, I could go to that point real quick. If I just like keep on this negative mindset and just be pissed off.

• 5:11:41Speaker 03

  And then, you know, I don't want the, you know, I have, look at my kids and my wife and like, I don't, they don't deserve that. They put up with, you know, 20 years of service of me being gone all the time. And, you know, losing, losing friends who are like my kids, uncles, like, you know, watching them get put in the ground, like they've been through enough to where I'm like, they don't need to deal with me when I get out and be my, all the problems that now are happening. So I was like, I need to fix myself quick. Just so I can be a good husband and father and, and move on.

• 5:12:16Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck man, well, it looks like it's, it's working. I mean,

• 5:12:20Speaker 03

  So far, it's, it's going all right.

• 5:12:21Shawn Ryan?

  You know, shit, I mean,

• 5:12:24Speaker 03

  But it doesn't end. And that's the, I think that's the other thing is like, the, the problems aren't, they don't go away, you know, it's not like you're fixed and, you know, our job has, you know, consequences and those will be with you for the rest of your life. But just as long as you find tools, how to deal with them, you know, but they're, they're never going to go away.

• 5:12:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:12:49Speaker 03

  But as long as you can, uh, find ways to deal with them and get through it. I think that's, that's the key.

• 5:12:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. You know, being with, uh, being through everything you've been through and just the fact that you said, you know, that the fucking job has lifelong consequences.

• 5:13:06Shawn Ryan?

  You have a son who obviously really, really loves his dad and looks up to you a lot. It was just really cool to see. And we kind of talked a little bit and it sounds like he either wants to join the military and kind of go down the path that his dad did or go to space.

• 5:13:29Shawn Ryan?

  Would um would you want Ryan joining the military and going down your path?

• 5:13:35Speaker 03

  Um.

• 5:13:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, if that's the, I mean, it's, it's not what I want. But if that's what he wanted, um, I'd be behind him 100%. You know, I, I treated like my dad treated with me, like he was never, you know, pushed me to join. But my family has a very, uh, deep, like, everybody is, most of the males have served in the military. And usually they're careerists. Uh, so I, I think, you know, I ended up joining just, it was whether genetics or whatever, like I just pushed myself towards that path.

• 5:14:16Speaker 03

  Without my dad or anybody, I actually went and did it without telling anyone.

• 5:14:22Speaker 03

  With Ryan, um, you know, yeah, he, he wants to be a SEAL. Uh, that's all he's grown up with since he was a baby. You know, he's been, he hung out at the teams as a child nonstop. I would take him into work all the time. He loved being around the guys. He has definitely definite attitude for it.

• 5:14:42Speaker 03

  Unfortunately, uh, but yeah, he, if he wanted to do that, I'd be 100% behind him. You know, and I, I've told people this, like,

• 5:14:53Speaker 03

  you know, I know the consequences of the job and I'm hoping, you know, maybe by the time he joins, they'll have it figured out or they can mitigate some of the stuff that we went through, um, just as far as like the.

• 5:15:07Speaker 03

  The all the blasts you take during training and all that. Um, but then again, I don't think there's a, there's a way around a lot of that.

• 5:15:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:15:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'd be a hundred percent behind him, man, if that's what he wanted. Um, I'd rather him go to space, though, for sure.

• 5:15:23Speaker 03

  Keep him on the astronaut path.

• 5:15:27Speaker 03

  But yeah, I have nothing against kids. I mean, I, dude, I wouldn't give back my 20 years for nothing, you know? Despite the last two years, it's, like I, like I said before, that was just a few bad, you know, bad actors in the whole big scheme of the military. So, you know, I'm proud of my service, you know, I'm glad I did it. Um, I got to be around what I think are the greatest individuals I'll ever be, meet on this earth. Just guys that are, there's something to be said, like, to be around guys like that, that just, you're constantly striving to be better. You're constantly striving to be as good as a guy next to you.

• 5:16:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:16:08Speaker 03

  And whether you know it or not, he's doing the same thing. He's trying to strive to be as good as you and you're constant. I mean, it's hard to find that anywhere else.

• 5:16:15Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 5:16:17Speaker 03

  So.

• 5:16:18Shawn Ryan?

  It's hard to find anybody that'll just do their fucking job.

• 5:16:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:16:21Shawn Ryan?

  Let alone a little.

• 5:16:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it's a.

• 5:16:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, answer your question. Yeah, I would have no problems with him joining at all.

• 5:16:35Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. So what are you doing now? Tell us about the, the Pipehitter Foundation and, and how it started, where it's at, where it's going.

• 5:16:45Speaker 03

  Yep. So we have the, so right now, um, you know, the book is finished, it's in DOD review. Um, and then the big, the big project we've been working on all year is the Pipehitter Foundation. Uh, we got that up and running, uh, in April or May. Um, and it was been slow going due to the, uh, the vid, um, this year, but, um, we decided to start it pretty much. Near the end, I mean, we had talked about like, we gotta do something. Cause after we saw behind this curtain that we didn't know existed, which was the, you know, military justice system, if you want to call it that. You know, I saw a bunch of guys when I was locked up who shouldn't be there.

• 5:17:30Speaker 03

  Granted, there are guys that belong in there for sure. But there's a, a number of dudes, I mean, a lot larger than people would like to hear about that just got caught up in the system and are being unjustly incarcerated. Due to the corruptness of how the system entraps people. And it's not talked about, you know, it's sort of hidden. Nobody really knows about it. So when I was going through and when I was actually locked up, you know, we came to the realization like, okay, this, this happened to us, you know, for a reason. Like, we didn't understand what at first, until we started seeing, I started seeing other people,

• 5:18:15Speaker 03

  these kids in my position that don't have any help. They didn't have the help that I had. I didn't have an Andrea Gallagher or Sean Gallagher, you know, my brother, to get behind them or a family to get behind them and fight them. You know, a lot of people don't have that. They're not as lucky or as blessed. And so we're like, you know what, we need to, we need to be that for the, you know, these people. So that's the purpose of the foundation is we pretty much raise money. And then people can go to our site and fill out a grant application. And we tell them to be as thorough as possible about their case, about what they're going through.

• 5:18:59Speaker 03

  And I have an awesome board, board members. I have, you know, Rob O'Donnell, a prior law enforcement. Awesome Mark McCasey's on there, one of my lawyers. I have another team guy on there, Carl Higby, Joni Marquez and Tommy, who worked for Congressman Duncan Hunter. And as a board, we review each case. Once a month, we take all the cases, review them, and then we, you know, decide yea or nay, like, we're gonna help these people. And Once we were like, yep, we'll do it and then we'll, we end up, you know, talking to the individual

• 5:19:41Speaker 03

  um and seeing what they need and what we provide is if they need uh money for their legal defense, you know, provide that or we know how stressful it is going through something like that. So we provide emergency relief funds for their family. Uh because you know, when you're going through a stressful situation like that, uh you know, you're paying for lawyers, you're also, you know, it causes all this undue stress in the family. Um so we sort of try and take some of that away um and just so they can get through it. And then we also uh will do advocacy um if they want it, you know, some people obviously like, no, I don't want my name anywhere. Like, okay, you know, but if people

• 5:20:22Speaker 03

  want to be advocated for and like, hey, do you want, do you want us to help get the word out about what's going on with you, then we'll do that for them as well. Um and then we, you know, we help active duty law enforcement and first responders. Uh. Shit, man. How long have, how long have you been doing that? Uh, we so uh we got it our nonprofit approved in like April or May and we've pretty much been helping guys and girls um probably for three months now. Holy shit. So we're. Are you uh, how's funding so far? It's been rough, uh, obviously due to this year, you know, doing some fundraising, but uh,

• 5:21:04Speaker 03

  you know, it comes in every once in a while. I mean, we, we uh, obviously because of the COVID or you can't go do a lot of fundraising, um, stuff like that. But uh, we, you know, we put out mailers and, you know, the people that are generous and that, you know, the, just the patriots of this country will donate whatever they can and every little bit helps. Um, so, and that money is going directly, I mean, we're helping people out now. So once we, we see that money, it's going to a family or a service member or an officer right away to help them out. Um, yeah, we're hoping next year, you know, we'll start be able to build uh more of a base of funds and start uh be able to help more people. That's solid, man.

• 5:21:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's good. And that's, dude, that's. Super gratifying, uh, you know, do getting the nonprofit started and all that was I had no nothing to do with that. There was a lot of administrative shit that I'm, I can't even handle. So like Andrea, like, and, uh, the board, uh, we have Dina Cruden, who's also the executive director. She's amazing. Um, they pretty much got everything going, uh, got everything approved. And then, you know, once we started actually helping people and, you know, having guys call me and being like, dude, I just got, you know, whatever thousand dollar grant from you guys and you have no idea like how much I needed that at this time, like that right there. I'm like, dude, that's, that's why we're doing this.

• 5:22:34Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome, man.

• 5:22:36Speaker 03

  So it's, yeah, it's good. It's, uh, and it gives us a purpose, you know, it gives me a purpose, um, which is, I think one of the number one things is hard to find when, once you get out and it's trying to find another purpose to like how you can serve.

• 5:22:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:22:51Speaker 03

  Luckily I've, you know, we have this, so.

• 5:22:54Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have any idea how many guys are out there that, uh, are in, are in the middle of a situation like yours?

• 5:23:02Speaker 03

  Um, there's, off the top of my head right now, I can, you know, I can come up with like eight.

• 5:23:09Shawn Ryan?

  Eight?

• 5:23:10Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:23:12Shawn Ryan?

  How do you decipher whether?

• 5:23:17Shawn Ryan?

  Cause potentially you could be, if you made a wrong decision, you could be helping somebody that.

• 5:23:22Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 5:23:23Shawn Ryan?

  You know, is an actual fucking criminal.

• 5:23:25Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:23:26Shawn Ryan?

  So how do you, I mean, you said your lawyer's on there. Yeah. How do you kind of determine?

• 5:23:32Speaker 03

  So that's why we ask people when they fill out the grant to be as thorough as possible. Um, like with everything. And if we, they fill out a grant and there's, you know, we'll look through it pretty, you know, in detail. And we're like, all right, there's some information missing here and we'll reach out back and like, hey, you know, can you fill out some more just because, so we can get sort of an idea. Um, most of the time, you know, you can tell when someone's getting screwed or someone's getting fucked like, and there is always that chance, you know, you're like, okay, we're going to help this person and maybe they are guilty, but, uh,

• 5:24:11Speaker 03

  You know, if I if we're for looking at a person's case, and this is just my from my point of view when I'm looking at it. I look at how they're being treated through the process. And if I, you know, start seeing the same things that was done to me, or I've seen done to other guys, um, and just the in the unjust way they do things, I'm like, right away, I'm like, okay, guilty or not guilty, this person's not getting due process at all. Like, he hasn't even, he or she hasn't even had a chance to like, speak out or say their side. They're just automatically guilty until proven innocent.

• 5:24:46Shawn Ryan?

  You're helping them get the right to a free trial.

• 5:24:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm helping them get. And that's the thing, like, we, you know, if it ends up being like, okay, we helped this person, they go to trial and they're found guilty. Well, okay, you know, but I did my due diligence to help that person and like, take the stress off them and their family until that point, you know, um, you know, I'm not a jury member. We're not that's we're not there to like, say whether you're guilty or not guilty. We're just here to help you through the process and just take as much stress off you as possible. And, you know, help you actually, the only rights that you have during a situation like that are the ones that you can afford.

• 5:25:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:25:23Speaker 03

  Service members and law enforcement don't make enough money to buy, you know, to hire good attorneys. So we're, that's where we come in. I'm like, hey, we'll help you fund so you can have have a good attorney and actually have a fighting chance.

• 5:25:40Shawn Ryan?

  That's fucking awesome, dude.

• 5:25:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's a definitely a gap that's missing in, um, you know, helping or service. I'm glad that we're filling it.

• 5:25:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, had it, you know, had it not been for what you went through, I mean, I don't, I don't think anybody would know.

• 5:25:58Speaker 03

  No.

• 5:25:59Shawn Ryan?

  You know?

• 5:25:59Speaker 03

  And that's the other reason we started it to, um, you know, the amount of people that got behind myself and my family during my whole thing, like the the Patriots that got behind us and I mean,

• 5:26:14Speaker 03

  I had people reaching out, you know, left and right and like, you know, we're supporting you, whatever we can do. I mean, these people, I don't know any of these people. These are from all over the country. I mean, that right there, I'm like, we, we have to give back, you know, we, we got all this support from all these people. We have to give something back. I mean, we can't just like, okay, yeah, we're done. Like, thanks. It's like, no, that's not how it works. It's, you pay it forward, you know? So like, I feel, I almost feel like it's our duty to be, to be doing this.

• 5:26:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So on top of the nonprofit, what, what do you see yourself doing in the next five years? And what, what are you hoping to accomplish?

• 5:26:54Speaker 03

  So I actually, I recently, uh, I think it was like about a month and a half ago, two months ago, I, uh, went out with, uh, TSI, the Shooting Institute, um, just volunteered to come along and help, uh, teach. They, they did a trip where they went taught, uh, some, uh, SWAT guys and I think some Air Force guys out in Texas. So I tagged along on that, just, um, to see how I, I would like it or see how it would feel. And I, like, I, I loved teaching. I love teaching those guys, uh, you know, tactics, um. I just felt like I was at home, you know, again, doing it, um. So I think I'm, I'm looking to do something like that next year. Um, I want to do it locally where I live and just be able to, uh,

• 5:27:39Speaker 03

  instruct in shooting, um, and hopefully tactics, uh, you know, if I can get a kill house nearby, um, do some training like that, um. That's in the infancy stages right now, but I, that's what I plan on, uh, hopefully doing next year. Um, and I also, I hooked up with, um, uh, company, Precision Tactical, uh, they make, you know, all sorts of firearms, um, and they, uh,

• 5:28:06Speaker 03

  Just awesome individuals and they built, so they built a gun around me. They let me pick out all the parts, you know, just exactly how I would wanna, how I'd wanna have it. And they, uh, we're gonna be selling those, um, here soon. Um, so we'll see how that goes.

• 5:28:23Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 5:28:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:28:24Shawn Ryan?

  You got a picture of it?

• 5:28:26Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I do.

• 5:28:27Shawn Ryan?

  Cool, we'll post it up top.

• 5:28:28Speaker 03

  I appreciate that.

• 5:28:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, man.

• 5:28:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:28:31Shawn Ryan?

  Well, uh, good luck with teaching. There is definitely no shortage of people wanting tactical training with the current state of the country right now. I can fucking guarantee you that shit.

• 5:28:41Speaker 03

  Well, I'll be picking your brain for sure.

• 5:28:43Shawn Ryan?

  So, but, um, well, man, I kinda wanna wrap this thing up. It's been a long podcast and it has been a fucking honor having you sit across from me and, and, and share your experience and everything. And you've already answered this, but I wanna properly ask you, um, even though I already know the answer. But with all the shit that you've been through and the, what seemed to be the entire community, trying to ruin your very existence for doing what America asked you to do, would you fucking do it all over again?

• 5:29:18Speaker 03

  In a heartbeat. Yeah. I, I love that job. Uh, that was, it's hard to, like, that's all I ever wanted to do, you know? Once I got, got into the teams, that was it, man. I get to, I loved every bit of it and I don't have, like,

• 5:29:39Speaker 03

  when, uh, you say like, you know, the entire community, like, it's not the, you know, the entire community wasn't against me. It was just some in- individuals in the command, like the guys themselves, man, like, you know, they, I knew most of them had my back, you know? They, they couldn't come out and say it right, right then, but I've had enough phone calls, um, from guys, you know, congratulate me and just that they were supporting me the whole time and.

• 5:30:09Speaker 03

  You know, the teams are made up from the enlisted. The enlisted is what makes the teams, the guys, the shooters, you know, and the platoons, not the, not the head shed, not the guys in charge of WarCom. You know, they might make the decisions, but they'll never be able to change how the culture, you know, they can try as much as they want, but team guys are team guys. And as long as we have them in the, in the platoons, it'll stay similar to why we, you and I joined.

• 5:30:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, I just want to say, man, once again, it's been a fucking honor having you here. And I can't fucking imagine what that felt like to go through all that. And, um, and it's just really awesome to see where you're at now and see you doing well and, and, um, and helping the next guys, helping, helping the next generation coming out and, and, and you're just a solid motherfucker, dude.

• 5:31:05Speaker 03

  Dave, I appreciate it. You are too, man. I'm glad I came out here. It's an honor to be out here and like your podcast is, is exceptional and I'm glad I got to be on it.

• 5:31:15Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.