Rob O’Neill: Near-Death Experiences, Top Secret Area 51 Helicopter, & the Disgusting Push for War

Fourteen years after he killed Osama bin Laden, former SEAL Rob O’Neill can say with authority that the warmongers pushing for regime change in Iran are disgusting. (00:00) How O’Neill Accidentally Joined the Navy (09:29) The Most Challenging Part of Becoming a SEAL (15:04) O’Neill’s First Deployment (19:19) Where Was O’Neill on 9-11? (43:36) O’Neill’s First Kill (1:23:59) The Moment O’Neill Killed Osama bin Laden Paid partnerships with: Tecovas: Get 10% off at tecovas.com/tucker Cozy Earth: https://CozyEarth.com/Tucker code TUCKER for up to 40% off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/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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• 0:30Tucker Carlson?

  How'd you get into this?

• 0:31Speaker 02

  Into the Navy?

• 0:32Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, I mean...

• 0:34Speaker 02

  It was one of those things where, a time in life where it's just time to leave town. If you ever want to make God laugh, tell him your plan for life, and then something changes.

• 0:43Tucker Carlson?

  That's for sure.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  And it's even like going up to Bin Laden's bedroom. It was never planned to be that way. It just happened. Like, life happens around you as you're planning. I joined the Navy just it was time to leave town. I had a bad relationship with a girl. My plan in life was college basketball, MBA, and then work with my dad as a broker. And I had a bad relationship. I got dumped, and it's like, I gotta leave. And the easiest way out of Butte, Montana, is to join the Marine Corps.

• 1:07Tucker Carlson?

  Butte is not the same as Bozeman.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:10Tucker Carlson?

  I don't think, I don't think people understand that.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Bozeman is beautiful. It's got Yellowstone. Even though Yellowstone's in Wyoming. You know, the show made everyone go to Bozeman.

• 1:19Tucker Carlson?

  Of course.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Bozeman's beautiful. There's great food, really good coffee. In Butte, Montana, you will get your ass whooped.

• 1:24Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Like, it's a mining town. And they're proud of that.

• 1:28Tucker Carlson?

  The biggest, I think it's the big, was the biggest.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, yeah. It was, I think it was the, it got electricity before Chicago. And it still has the oldest Chinese restaurant in the country, the Peking. And this is funny, so the guy that owned it, his name was Danny Wong. His son, Jerry Tam, owns it now. Best Chinese, you only need a menu. You go in there and they just serve you. But after Danny Wong, they named the street behind it after him. And I don't know why, but they named it Danny Wong Way. Wong Way? It's like, are you messing with him after his death?

• 1:59Tucker Carlson?

  We too low.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  But uh, yeah, it's, it's just, uh, it's a wonderful town, really good food and they don't quite realize how good the food is there, how good life is there. Like, I have friends back home that, because I have an odd job now, I'm not really sure what I do, but I have friends that have a nine to five, like they go to work, uh, they have lunch with their buddies, they go home at five, they see their kids, they're with their wife and I'm jealous of them. Like a normal life.

• 2:39Tucker Carlson?

  It's a cool town.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really is.

• 2:42Tucker Carlson?

  It's a, it's a, it's an old fashioned town.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it, it is. Uh, I, I've actually brought, uh, when I was at SEAL Team Six, I brought about 20 dudes up there, um, to skydive. We sold off a skydiving trip for high altitude and then a horseback riding and mules and stuff like that and they got along great in there with, with them. I, I told the beaut guys, hey, um, there's a difference between being a tough guy and being a technical fighter, so let's just all get along. Don't, don't, you don't punch him, you don't punch him, let's just have a drink. And we did, it was a blast. There was one fight, but it, it ended a little amicably.

• 3:12Tucker Carlson?

  So you wanted to be a broker?

• 3:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I just, I thought I would, uh, it just, I, I didn't know anything about it. But my dad did it, he looked good in a suit and I just, I liked his house.

• 3:20Tucker Carlson?

  So you didn't dream of fighting wars?

• 3:24Speaker 02

  No, I, no, the, um, no, we weren't a military family, it was, uh, you know, I'd, I'd seen Full Metal Jacket and Navy SEALs, but there was, it was never gonna be me. I, I did have two friends that, that wanted to be in, in the Marine Corps, growing up and they were two years older than me and they were the reason that I went to join the Marine Corps because I saw them when they'd come home. And I had one dude that joined the Army and he gave me great advice when I just sort of decided, he just said, get it in writing. And that's good advice for life. Like, you know, we can, yeah, I, I love when people say, let's do business on a handshake. It's like, fine, I'll shake your hand after you sign the contract.

• 3:55Tucker Carlson?

  Well, so you went to join the Marine Corps but wound up in the Navy?

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, because the Marine recruiter was at lunch. Um, and I, I wanted to be a Marine because I wanted to be a sniper. And the but the recruiter was gone, the Navy guy was sitting right there. And he was wearing his khakis. He was a chief and I didn't know what a chief was, but he's a senior dude in the enlisted ranks. And I went in there just because my Marine friends told me that the Marine Corps is actually part of the Department of the Navy. It's just the men's department. And so I went to ask him, where's the Marine if anyone will know you will. And like the Army guys are here, Air Force guys are here, Marines is just not there. And he said, why do you want the Marine Corps? And I said, I want to be a sniper. I'm a hunter and Marines have the best snipers in the world. Carlos Hathcock, like I said, full metal jacket. I can do that. It looks cool. And he said, look no further. We have snipers in the Navy. You need to be a Navy SEAL first. He brushed over that and gave me a contract and I signed.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  I didn't know what a SEAL was. I didn't know how to swim.

• 4:43Tucker Carlson?

  Was this at a recruiting center?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's still there. I go in there when I go back to Butte, Montana, talk to the recruiters now just to see if anybody wants to be a SEAL or even, you know, maybe I can tell them that Marine boot camp is going to be great or join the Army. Be a Ranger would be awesome. Just a, it's just a good, it's a good way to grow up. Wherever you are in this country, you can go join right now, be on a bus, three hots and a cot. You'll be, you'll be a part of a brotherhood somewhere. And I mean, just being a Marine would be cool, but he just wasn't there. But I look back on it now and I tell my daughters that if that, the butterfly effect, if that Marine recruiter wasn't at Arby's at 11:30 on a Wednesday, you wouldn't be alive because I would have joined the Marine Corps instead of the Navy. But I joined the Navy and he showed me the videos of what Navy SEALs are after I signed. And I remember I went to get my mom, I brought her in and said, check this out.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  And she didn't say it, but she admitted later, like, there's no way in hell you're going to make it through. The only one who believed in me was my dad.

• 5:34Tucker Carlson?

  Wow.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  And

• 5:35Tucker Carlson?

  What year was this?

• 5:36Speaker 02

  1996. I, yeah, I joined in 1996, so I left in 97.

• 5:42Tucker Carlson?

  So what was going on in the world in 1996?

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Nothing. No, I joined in 95. I went to boot camp in 96, January 96, nothing. And that's part of the mystique was I can, I won't make it through SEAL training, but I'll live in San Diego. I'll go to a ship on the fleet for four years. I'll come back to Butte and I'll hang out at Maloney's Bar and tell sea stories like that. Like I'm not going to make it. Nobody makes it through SEAL training. And that was almost a mindset of failure.

• 6:05Tucker Carlson?

  So you're a teenager at this point?

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I, you know, I learned how to swim. I knew I wouldn't quit. But it's

• 6:13Tucker Carlson?

  View is not on the ocean.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  No, the entire state's landlocked. Right? I could, I mean, I could, I could keep myself alive, but I didn't know any strokes at all. I actually ran into a buddy of mine who swam at Notre Dame, one of the few swimmers from Montana, because I still had my ID from Montana Tech. They had a pool. And I had a couple, I actually had a couple of weeks before I left and I ran into him at the pool and he goes, "Don't take this the wrong way. I'm happy to see you in the pool. I've just literally never seen you in the pool. What gives?" And I said, "I just joined the Navy. I'm going to be a SEAL." And he goes, "Oh, not like that. You're not." And he showed me the breaststroke and the side stroke. And then I practiced that and I was good enough to pass the screening test to get into SEAL training. But that's, I mean, that test is easy.

• 6:52Tucker Carlson?

  So the first test is a swim test?

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, it's a, it's a, it's a 500 yard swim,

• 6:58Speaker 02

  42 pushups, 50 situps, eight pullups, and then a mile and a half timed run. Like, it's really easy. But when I went there, when I went to bootcamp and took that test, there's, we're sitting at bleachers. There's 250 dudes on these bleachers. And I remember thinking, well, what makes me special? There's no way I can make it. And out of that 250, two of us passed the test. And then when you pass that test, then you might get orders. And then out of that, two of every 250, 85% won't make it through training. So it's, it's a really, but, but it's a mindset at, at a certain point. You need to.

• 7:26Tucker Carlson?

  So from the day you got on the bus as a teenager, like, you know, you're in the, you're in the Navy.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:33Tucker Carlson?

  How long was it from then until you got your Trident?

• 7:36Speaker 02

  I think, well, it would have been a year. Bootcamp, no, a year and a half. Bootcamp was nine weeks. I did a two-week A school where basically the Marines taught me how to wind a bobbin and use a sewing machine.

• 7:47Tucker Carlson?

  They call it, sewing's a big part of it?

• 7:49Speaker 02

  No, no, just, you had to get a rate for a job in the Navy, like boats is made or photographers made. Or I was an air crew survival equipment man, just because that's the shortest one to get me to, to San Diego. So I did two weeks in Millington and then I went down to, in April, it would have been 96. I checked into Buzz Class 208, classed up there and, and then we graduated in December. But I got, I got some good advice by a guy by the name of Tom Donovan, who is an admiral now, which makes me feel so old. He might be a two star, but he was fresh out of the academy. And the Naval Academy has a really high rate of guys making it through because they screen them so hard in Annapolis. And his dad was an admiral and I remember seeing him and he doesn't remember saying this, but I ran into him in the cages one, one day and I was like, wow, this is crazy. Like I'm scared, but you're like in charge. Like you gotta be really scared.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  He looks at me goes, the fuck are you afraid of? Why are you, why are you scared? I'm like, I don't know. He said, don't be afraid. Just, these are just normal dudes. Just make it, make it one evolution to the next. And he was a student like me, an ensign.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Great. He, I mean, there, there are guys that when we did hell week, he person, there's like at least 20 Navy SEALs that owe their careers to Tom Donovan because he got them through. Like just like motivating them as a student.

• 8:59Tucker Carlson?

  So in 96, 97, you're, you know, trying to become a Navy SEAL, which is, you know, the most famous of the American warfighters. But what do you think you're going to be doing?

• 9:10Speaker 02

  I didn't know.

• 9:12Tucker Carlson?

  Did you think about it or are you just so focused on?

• 9:14Speaker 02

  No, I, well, I was focused on the training because I wanted to make it through. I had, I keep bringing up hell week because that's allegedly the hardest part. When you wake up on Sunday and you're, you don't sleep till Friday. You're awake the whole time, running with boats on your heads and doing evolutions. Cold, wet, sandy, miserable. Like by Wednesday, every part of your body that's touching cloth starts to bleed because of the salt water in the sand. But I had an instructor. I don't know why he said, I don't know why he was, he didn't need to be motivating, but he said, right before hell week, you're about to go to war for the first time. And the enemy is all your doubts, all your fears and everyone you know back home that told you, you weren't good enough to do this. Keep your head down, keep moving forward. You'll be fine. One, one, one meal at a time. He, he said, um, another, he said,

• 9:55Speaker 02

  the first day of training was, I know you've read the books and probably seen the movies, regardless of what you've been told. However, this course is not impossible. People graduate. Look at me. I'm living proof. So I will never ask you to do anything impossible, but I will make you do something very hard, followed immediately by something very hard, followed by something even harder, day after day after day for eight straight months. And that sounds like a lot to get from now to graduation day, but don't think about it that way. That's not how you achieve a long-term goal. Do it like this. Wake up in the morning on time. Make your bed the right way and then brush your teeth. That's three wins. You just started your day with three victories. Make it to the 4am workout. On time. And when I'm beating you, don't think about the pain. Concentrate on your next goal in life, which is breakfast. After breakfast, your next goal in life is lunch. After lunch, it's dinner. After dinner, do everything you need to do to get back inside

• 10:40Speaker 02

  that perfectly made bed. And because you took the time in the morning to make your bed the right way, regardless of how bad today was, and it'll be bad, tomorrow's a clean slate. Tomorrow's a fresh start. And when you feel like quitting, which you will, do not quit right now. That's a motion. Quit tomorrow. If you can keep quitting tomorrow, you can do anything. And just, that's the mindset that I needed that because I went there scared. It's like, well, I'll just quit because it's almost like fear of the unknown. Like, I'll just quit because it's easy. Or watching other guys quit, like a loud mouth, or a big tough guy, or a college football player, he quits, it's like, well, shit, if he can't make it, I can't make it. And that's like sympathetic quitting. Just let them go. No, no one's better than you. Just because you're from Butte, Montana, or from West Palm Beach, or from Long Island, doesn't mean someone from Chicago's better

• 11:24Speaker 02

  than you. And, and people like Butte, Montana, we were almost in a bubble. Like, the other side of the continental divide is you got Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, there's got to be better athletes than me or something. But don't believe that shit. You can do anything. Just got to keep the right mindset.

• 11:38Tucker Carlson?

  How many guys quit?

• 11:40Speaker 02

  We had a big class. Out of our 227, we graduated 33. That was big. Two classes before us, they graduated seven. There was a class that graduated zero. Like, they call it the class that never was. They got down to so few that like, well, you're all done. Got to go to the next class. But then the older you get, it's funny, you get, every Navy SEAL always says, my, my class was the last hard class. Because that they're easy now. And they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, we graduated two. They made us fight it out. Just bullshit.

• 12:07Tucker Carlson?

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• 12:52Tucker Carlson?

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• 13:03Speaker 03

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• 13:48Speaker 03

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• 13:55Speaker 04

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• 14:36Speaker 04

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• 14:56Speaker 02

  But it's the camaraderie there. You meet the people, you, you, you, the sense of humor, the dark sense of humor. And misery loves company. We say that all the time. The one guy that I met during Hail Week, that you're cold and wet and miserable the whole time, but every day, at least once a day during Hail Week, they send you to medical. They check you out. They look at your eyes because you're, you're going to be delirious, freezing, you're shaking. And then as soon as you're done with medical, they, you have dry, a dry uniform and dry boots, dry socks. And as soon as you put them on, you're right back in the water. Like, it just sucks. And I was trying to tie my boots one time, and I couldn't. My hands were shaking so bad. And I look at my buddy and I go, hey, Barker, can you pee on my hands? And I meant to warm them up, right? And he's freezing.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  He just goes, well, yeah, if you're into that. I'm like, no, I'm not. That was funny. But I mean, just the dry sense of humor and the camaraderie.

• 15:46Tucker Carlson?

  That sense of humor, yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  But that's, that's the, that's what you need. When, when we were going after Marcus Luttrell, we were awake for about three days. We're on top of these mountains in Eastern Afghanistan, and I, and we're exhausted. And I looked at my guys and I said, this is why training is so hard. Because if we were going to quit right now, where the fuck are we going to go? We're just here. And this, and that's why, you know, you, you've been through the training, and then combat's way worse. Even being at the SEAL teams is way worse than SEAL training. That's just the initial welcome to the Naval Special Warfare.

• 16:15Tucker Carlson?

  Did you have any sense of that when you were, when you completed training? Did you have a sense that I'm going to do shocking things for the next 10 years?

• 16:24Speaker 02

  No. When we finished SEAL training, the last part is 40 days, maybe 30 days on San Clemente Island, where they say no one can hear you scream. You go out to this training site, and it's no time off. Then when you get done with that, it was a Monday, and we're graduating Friday. And I remember the instructor saying, right, go to admin and go to dental, get your service record, your medical record, because you're checking into SEAL Team 2. And I'm like, well, shit, what does that even mean? I'm, what do you mean, I'm done? I, this shouldn't end. Now you gotta go be a SEAL. So, good luck.

• 16:50Tucker Carlson?

  Did they give you any sense of what that would mean?

• 16:52Speaker 02

  No. No. I picked, I picked two, two, eight, and four, because they were on the East Coast. And I wanted to go to two, because they were in Bosnia. And that's the closest thing to combat. And I thought I won a combat. That's before I went to combat. And, you know, they're in Sarajevo, Kosovo's popping off, we'll get in there. So I went to SEAL Team 2. And then, I mean, they don't really teach you anything in SEAL training. Then you, when we got to the team in my era, then it was SEAL tactical training, a 13 week course, where they finally teach you how to do stuff. And then you go to a platoon, which is 16 guys, and that group works together for a full year, getting to know standard operating procedures and how, you know, tendencies. And then they sent us overseas. So my first deployment was in the summer of 1998 on the USS Austin. We went to the Mediterranean. You know, there was, we heard about Al Qaeda.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  They were in Albania because there was some sort of an exercise and they threatened them. And I just finished sniper school. I'm kind of jumping around here. I just finished sniper school, so I was on a rooftop with a range card, you know, out to a thousand yards, looking at this place like, okay, I made it. I'm a Navy SEAL now, but there was nothing. It was, you know, before 9/11, so I thought I was high speed.

• 17:54Tucker Carlson?

  In Albania?

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, if you're locked-

• 17:58Tucker Carlson?

  I'm not sure most Americans understand we send SEALs to Albania. What are SEALs doing in Albania?

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Well, you got to figure that part of the woods, the Adriatic, and you got all kinds of Al Qaeda guys in Kosovo, Bosnia, so they're going to be in Albania too.

• 18:10Tucker Carlson?

  I mean, of course it makes sense and it's a heavily Muslim country and, but I guess, my question is, did you understand just how-

• 18:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 18:19Tucker Carlson?

  -large the landscape was?

• 18:21Speaker 02

  No, because we were just basically training. We spent a lot of time with the Special Boat Service in the UK. A lot of time with the German comm swimmers, Norwegian Jaegers, those are badass dudes.

• 18:31Tucker Carlson?

  Really?

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're, yeah, they're really good. But they don't get involved because their government sucks, but they're studs. I talk about skiing and rock climbing, never seen anything like it. Plus the best looking dudes in the world, like, got to be honest.

• 18:42Tucker Carlson?

  The Norwegian?

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're studs, like, they're really good. Telemark skiing, there's nobody better. And so combat skiing, you know, rucksacks, guns and all that crap, like carrying the old M14s because they work better in cold weather. But we were training just because contingencies, like, we don't know, you know, Russia's gone, Cold War's over, nothing's going to happen, so we're basically going to be safe. And when my time came up, after four years, I just, I knew the guys and I'm like, I'm 23, I don't want to go home now, I want to stay with these guys. So I re-enlisted just to stay with the guys at SEAL Team 2.

• 19:15Tucker Carlson?

  What year was that?

• 19:16Speaker 02

  That would have been 1999 or right around 2000, no, 2000. Jaco re-enlisted me on a- On a Humvee in Kuwait, but I re-enlisted because I knew the guys and then nine eleven happened and I'm like, well, I can't can't get out now. And then I I ran into a dude from SEAL Team Six at Navy Exchange. On I was taking a leadership course at Dam Neck, which is near Oceana in Virginia Beach. That's where SEAL Team Six is. And I'm taking this course and I went over to the Navy Exchange, which is a mall in my uniform with a trident and my cammies. And there's this dude in there with flip flop shorts, a beard and long hair. He's kind of eyeballing me because he knew I was a SEAL. And I'm like, well, that's a SEAL Team Six guy. And that arrogant fuck, I'm going to find out what that place is like. That's the only reason I went SEAL Team Six is that guy was mean mugging me.

• 19:59Tucker Carlson?

  Wow.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  But that's again, that's how, you know, life's decisions, the smallest.

• 20:02Tucker Carlson?

  Two thousand and one, you been in five years?

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Uh, yes.

• 20:06Tucker Carlson?

  Did anyone you know, um, shoot anyone during those five years?

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Uh, no, there was rumors of one guy might have got a kill in Bosnia. But the only guys who were shooting were would have been Somalia right around nineteen ninety-three. And then ninety-one, I don't think SEALs even did anything in Desert Storm. And then you had Patia Airfield in Panama in nineteen eighty-nine. And those dudes are just legends because they got in a gunfight. And some guys did a combat swimmer op. They they swam over to instead of blowing up Noriega's boats, I guess they were told to unscrew the screw on the back of the boat. Typical American, let's just be nice about being mean. Just unscrew it. Just blow the damn boat up. But those guys were just legends and nothing until we just finished a forty day thing in Kosovo or thirty days and we're sending out emails and then the towers were hit and then we're like.

• 20:51Tucker Carlson?

  Where were you when that happened?

• 20:52Speaker 02

  Germany. I was at Stuttgart.

• 20:54Tucker Carlson?

  What were you doing?

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Just a deployment. We we had a unit over there. So we'd go over there and we would we would stage out of Germany. So we went to Lithuania for training, went again to Norway over Scotland. And we do training around there. Kosovo was the real world stuff. And then back to Germany, because that's where all of our stuff was. We deployed to Germany. It's called the UCOM. So European Command, uh, Special Forces are over there and SEALs go over there. And then we have a place, we had a place in Rota, Spain, too. Uh, but that's where deployments were. And that's all you do. You're not. We like I did, um, when I was on the deployment with Jaco and Drago and Scott Page and Steve Drum. We, um, the one mission we did was, um, we took down a Russian tanker full of smuggled Iraqi oil. And there was no resistance. I mean, like we were taking away steak knives because there was weapon like just bullshit mission.

• 21:36Tucker Carlson?

  Where was it?

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Uh, that would have been in the Persian Gulf. They were smuggling oil. So we just, we hopped on that, drove it to Oman and we made headlines and we thought we were high speed. So that would have been right around 2000.

• 21:45Tucker Carlson?

  What did the Russians say when you boarded their ship and?

• 21:47Speaker 02

  They didn't have a choice. We just, we came in with a helicopter. I was a sniper in the helicopter and our guys fast roped down and they, our guys just took, we're good at that. There was, but no, no, we're anticipating resistance, but I don't think they had any guns. So, but that was like at the time.

• 21:59Tucker Carlson?

  Were they annoyed that you stole their ship?

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. But we were doing stuff like that. Like people were smuggling dates and we would take down these little Dow boat dates. Like, all right.

• 22:07Tucker Carlson?

  Dates like the fruit?

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Dates. They're smuggling dates. So let's go save the planet. Literally Navy SEALs taking down boats with dates. That's it.

• 22:15Tucker Carlson?

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• 22:56Tucker Carlson?

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• 23:22Speaker 00

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• 23:52Speaker 05

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• 24:22Tucker Carlson?

  So you go from that to?

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Well, the 9/11, and it's just, uh...

• 24:26Tucker Carlson?

  How soon did you realize, like, this changes everything?

• 24:29Speaker 02

  The second, the minute the second plane hit the tower, the south tower. And we just assumed, because we were already overseas, they're just gonna keep us here and we'll go to Sudan, because that's where a lot of al-Qaeda is. We didn't know, we didn't think Afghanistan, us. But someone knew somewhere, so... But we stayed over there for another month, and then we went back and then redeployed.

• 24:47Tucker Carlson?

  To where?

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Um, well, we were heading over to invade Iraq. I was on a boat, it was in 2003. We were on with Marines, they're gonna go through Turkey. But then something happened in Liberia. So they sent the Marines off, and then we turned around and had to swim into Liberia to do, to do hydrographic reconnaissance for the Marines to come in and save people out of the embassy. And, I mean, that was a different, that's a different place to be, too, because it's a civil war. Liberia's named after liberty, and then Monrovia's the capital, named after President Monroe, because they sent, they sent us...

• 25:18Tucker Carlson?

  I was there then, that year, 2000, summer of 2003.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  We, you know, the most dangerous thing we were thinking about was sharks or saltwater crocodiles. When we got there, the people loved to see us. They thought we were liberating them. No shots fired, but there was a civil war going on, like, cannibalism, so...

• 25:33Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  It's kind of an awakening, but we missed the invasion of Iraq and then turned around, and then I went...

• 25:37Tucker Carlson?

  We went to Liberia.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:38Tucker Carlson?

  Did you see General Butt Naked when you were there?

• 25:40Speaker 02

  No.

• 25:41Tucker Carlson?

  He was a major commander.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I didn't even, I'm not familiar with that at all.

• 25:45Tucker Carlson?

  General Butt Naked? It describes his uniform.

• 25:51Tucker Carlson?

  So you're in Liberia.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, when they're invading Iraq. So they're already in Afghanistan. They're invading Iraq and we're in Liberia, which is just weird. But, you know. Yeah, that was that. And then went back and then I screened for SEAL Team Six, went through selection. And then my first deployment to Afghanistan was 2005. Went to Jalalabad, right around the time that Turbine 33 was shot down, Red Wings, lone survivor.

• 26:14Tucker Carlson?

  Why did you, what is SEAL Team Six and why did you want to be in it?

• 26:17Speaker 02

  SEAL Team Six is the National Mission Force. And so they were designed to rescue American hostages at sea. If a cruise ship gets like, so Delta Force will do the airplanes and stuff and then we'll do the water. On paper. And that's just where the best SEALs go because half of the guys that get selected to try out don't make it. These are Navy SEALs, like, like experienced Navy SEALs, usually five or six years in the SEAL Teams and then they try out for SEAL Team Six. And it's just a hard selection course. There's a lot of close quarters battle, a lot of drills designed to make you fail. And to see, just to see how you handle failing. Because they don't really care if you succeed. They want to see how you handle failure.

• 26:59Tucker Carlson?

  It's not about physical fitness.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  No, well, you do at least a 10 mile run every morning. And then you get into the training and like skydiving, a high altitude, high opening jumps. That's when you jump out of a plane and you can go to a spot 11 miles away, under canopy. Like, even looking down at your GPS, you can't feel any wind, but you're going 90 miles an hour. It's just, it's a crazy experience. Jumping at night, jumping bundles, jumping tandems, jumping gear, testing stuff out. And that's scary, you know, I mean, when you, when you can't see anything, but you know, you're at altitude, you know, you know, you're at 25,000. Like you think you're looking at Tucson. Oh, wait, that's actually Phoenix. Because I'm so high up here. And then, you know, like even on a 25, we would do 25,000 foot halos, so high altitude, low opening. And it's weird, we were wearing the old school altimeters with the dial.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  And watching it get to zero and knowing you're not going to hit the earth because you had another 13,000 feet to go. It's crazy, it's crazy feeling, but it's so dark, you can't see it. You got to trust your.

• 27:53Tucker Carlson?

  How long is the fall in a halo?

• 27:54Speaker 02

  For that would be about two minutes. Normally when we jump at 13, it's about a minute. Depending on what you're doing. If you jump a tandem, you have to set a drogue chute, like a six-foot drogue chute to stay at terminal velocity with everyone else. We're jumping a bundle.

• 28:07Tucker Carlson?

  What's a bundle?

• 28:08Speaker 02

  A bundle is a huge barrel that weighs about 400 pounds and it's full of extra gear. So it'll be radios, batteries, bombs, bullets, just stuff that guys can't carry. So the bundle master jumps all of it and then you break it out and you hand it out when you get down there. And some guys like it because it hits, like when you're jumping at night, under night vision, you can sort of see the ground, but you can't, like you, you want to flare when you get to the bottom and that, that turns the back of the parachute down so you can stop.

• 28:35Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  But if you flare too high, it needs to eat again, then it'll just drop you from 10 feet. So you kind of judge where you want to do it, but the bundle will hit the ground first and you hear it hit and then it just kind of pulls you down. But the entire time, the bundle's trying to kill you on the way down.

• 28:48Tucker Carlson?

  So you're connected to a 400-pound barrel?

• 28:50Speaker 02

  With a 10-foot tether, yeah.

• 28:51Tucker Carlson?

  I mean, that sounds unappealing.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  It is. And it's one of those things, I did it just because I wanted that qual. I want to say that I'm a tandem master, a bundle master. I just want that qualification.

• 29:02Tucker Carlson?

  What can go wrong when you're jumping with a 400-pound barrel?

• 29:04Speaker 02

  A lot of stuff can go wrong. Everything from when you start, you've got to set your, your drogue parachute. If that doesn't set, you have to know it by feel that you're now going faster than everyone else and you gotta, you gotta get it set out there. You gotta get to that thing out there. Then, once you're falling with it, I've had an occasion where, when I pull, so the, when you pull, like little things, like remember to cross your legs because you don't want it to snap your nuts off because you got this thing in it.

• 29:28Tucker Carlson?

  Little things?

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Little things like that.

• 29:29Tucker Carlson?

  Details.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  In my case, anyway. But, um, once that pulls too, then, you know, you gotta check your canopy, make sure it works, you got all, all nine cells up there, make sure the brakes work and then you do your little test. But I've had it before where only half the parachute opened and then it's in a dive and I'm in the middle and this thing's spinning violently.

• 29:46Tucker Carlson?

  Oh.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  And, um,

• 29:47Tucker Carlson?

  The 400-pound barrel is spinning violently?

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I'm in the middle of it. And this, this driftal force is pulling me to the, I had a,

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Line twists behind me, so it's it's pinning my head to my chest and the cutaway for the bundles right here. And I I'm lucky I I pulled on a high altitude jump at 10,000 because normally you pull at 55 and I actually burned about 7,000 feet in this spin if I would have. And so I I remember saying to myself, if um, if you ever want to see your daughters again, you you got to get this now. Because it's like I can hear it and the ground's coming. I pulled it. The thing shot off. It's got a parachute on it. So it landed in Farmer Brown's field. I landed by myself under this 400 foot canopy and I remember my buddy Phil came out to me. He didn't see the malfunction, but he came out and he goes, you look like you just saw a ghost. Are you okay? And I said, um, somebody needs to change that. This this high speed canopy with that low speed cutaway has got to change because we just changed the new parachutes, these high performance parachutes.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  Someone's gonna die. And a year later Lance McCarroll died at the same malfunction because they didn't fix it. And then they fixed it. It's like, why didn't you fix that?

• 30:46Tucker Carlson?

  What happened to him?

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Same same exact malfunction, except he pulled at 55 and he couldn't get the um, he couldn't get it out and he smacked into the ground. And like some of my buddies went out there to him. Um, they they had a they craked him with a pen, like a writing pen, cut his neck and put it in there, tried to get him to breathe and he died out there. And that's in training. Um, training's and this is during war. Like he, I don't remember what year that was 2008, maybe. But um, yeah, I mean, the training's dangerous. But it has to be done because well, we do, we do all that. We do all the jumps, all the wind tunnel time indoor skydiving because that one jump that you need to nail the exit, you you can't like Captain Phillips. Like everyone there had been in the tunnel, had done the jump. That's just because you got to nail that exit. When you leave an

• 31:27Speaker 02

  aircraft, especially a C 17, you're hitting the relative wind at first. So 130 knots. So so you're actually hitting that wind straight until it transitions you to go down. So when you jump out, especially with the rucksack, it's going to pull you. And if you mess with it, you can flip and then you don't if you pull on your back, your canopy could come out in a horseshoe and wrap around your neck and people have died that way. So you really got to nail an exit. So we trained that much for that one jump.

• 31:50Tucker Carlson?

  How many jumps are you doing?

• 31:51Speaker 02

  I had I've had over 1000 probably.

• 31:53Tucker Carlson?

  A thousand?

• 31:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's not that's not a lot either. Like some of our uh, some of our instructors 28 some thousand. We because we hired civilians like Arizona Arsenal and uh, Marana, Arizona, best skydivers in the world. So we started to hire the best in the world to teach us this, like the best fighters, the best skydivers, the best shooters, the best drivers, just to teach us how to do what they do. And they taught us how to do exits and learn how to fly canopies.

• 32:16Tucker Carlson?

  You have over a thousand jumps?

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:18Tucker Carlson?

  So that's multiple jumps a day?

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I'd go that out there a lot. I would, I would do about eight trips a year to Arizona for two, three weeks at a time, just to skydive.

• 32:26Tucker Carlson?

  How often are you skydiving when you're out there?

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Uh, every day, six a day.

• 32:30Tucker Carlson?

  Six jumps a day?

• 32:31Speaker 02

  Maybe more, depending on your attitude. Like, guys would say for 10. Or guys just wanted to get back to the Trident Bar and Grill with Nelson Miller owns that place. It's just fun to hang out.

• 32:39Tucker Carlson?

  Did you lose your fear of jumping out?

• 32:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was never a fear of jumping. It was, uh, the first jump is like, um, looking through straws, like you really lose your periphery. But then it starts to get easier and easier. And then, so jumping is not, I mean, when you're strapped to a bunch of stuff at night, it's definitely sporty, but it's not fear. It's like, I know how to handle this. And I'd rather, like the Army jump static line where you connect to the thing and you jump at 2,500 feet or whatever, like that, I don't want to be connected to the aircraft I'm jumping out of.

• 33:09Tucker Carlson?

  No, no.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  I'd rather have time to, I've got a minute to work any high-speed malfunction or low-speed malfunction. I can solve it.

• 33:15Tucker Carlson?

  But that's low, I mean, 2,500 feet doesn't give you a lot of time to react.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Well, that's why, that's like the 82nd Airborne, like they're just throwing hundreds of people at once and like vehicles and stuff. Like, that's Ranger stuff. Like, we can take an airfield. And ours is, uh, high, high opening because we can ideally jump in and then float without anyone seeing us. And I've had friends do that. I had, um, one of my really good friends is, uh, he led the jump to, into Somalia to rescue Jessica Buchanan. And they jumped, uh, I think 17 dudes in 40 knot winds that, like, we wouldn't have jumped in training, but he did that and they led it and they, they killed like 22 terrorists and rescued both hostages. And that, again, that's just because... He was prepared. His team was ready. Like, they did so many training jumps that we can, we can do this when we need to.

• 33:59Tucker Carlson?

  You said that training for SEAL Team Six was heavily psychological and they make you feel like a loser. They make you fail on purpose. What, what does that consist of? And what's the purpose?

• 34:10Speaker 02

  They, they just want to see how you handle failure. And even, even when we're training later, when we get into SEAL Team Six, in a debrief, even after a combat mission, on a debrief, I would say, okay, what did you screw up? I don't, I don't want to sit here and listen how awesome you are. What did you fuck up? Tell me. And we'll learn from that. So they purposely get you in situations that you can't pass. To see, just to see, like, when they ask you, what were you thinking? Your answer should be, I'm an idiot. That's it. Deflated. Don't get in an argument you can't win. But the guy that starts to explain, well, here's what happened, blah, blah, blah. You know, thanks for the debrief. You're out of here. Like, I don't want to hear your, I don't want to hear your excuses. Just, you're an idiot. Now learn from it.

• 34:48Tucker Carlson?

  So sometimes when people sell products on TV, I love this product. I use this product. There's the question in the mind of the viewer. Does this guy really use the product? Does he really love the product? Would he keep the product at home? Ask my dogs. Yes. Now, we are in a garage. I'm not gonna tell you where it is because, again, this is prepping. But this is my garage. There's a gun safe. And this is a part of my stockpile of Ready Hour. Completely real. The second I put it here, the second Ready Hour sent it to me, I felt peace of mind. Because no matter what happens, we're not going hungry in my house. I moved a lot of fishing gear out of the way to keep it in my garage. And ever since it's been here, I have felt the peace of mind that comes from knowing my family's not going

• 35:33Tucker Carlson?

  hungry no matter what. LastCountrySupply.com. LastCountrySupply.com. It can be in your garage along with the peace of mind that comes with having it.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 36:13Speaker 00

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• 36:27Tucker Carlson?

  try Dayquil Intense Flu. Hit it. Yeah. Dayquil Intense Flu. The fast-acting daytime coughing, aching, aching, aching fever power through your flu medicine. Uses directed. Keep out of reach of children. So what would they make you fail?

• 36:43Speaker 02

  House runs. That's when, in a kill house, like when a hostage rescue team comes into a house, you'll see it in action movies and stuff where they just come in here and they clear the whole area. There are definite steps, distances, movements, and angles based on covering each other's backs and fields of fire. So each, like one man goes here, two men goes here, three, four. And they just, they make it really, really difficult.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Target identification, like they'll stupid paper targets where someone's pointing something at you and you shoot them, all of a sudden it's just a cellphone. So that's a safety violation, you're probably fired. Or they'll have something holding a hostage and if you shoot the wrong, well, if you shoot the wrong person, you're out. But just little footwork stuff or too far off the wall, too far, over penetrate, long hallway, stairwell, just you screwed something up. You didn't go by the, by the standard operating procedures, but they'll let you keep going to see if you, like when I, when you first take a step into a room, are you the person who comes into a situation and makes a mistake? And then realize worrying about that mistake right now is not going to help. I have a job to do and we'll talk about that later if we live.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Or are you the person who comes into a situation, makes a mistake, and then you can't stop thinking about that mistake? And even though you're moving this way to clear that corner, you're dwelling on this mistake and because you can't stop thinking about that mistake over here, that's where you make a bigger mistake and that's where they get you. And then you're fired. So it's make a mistake, get over it. And then keep going on. And the, the, the house run can be another 20 minutes. And you're still thinking about that first entry point that you screwed up, but you gotta get that out of your head.

• 38:14Tucker Carlson?

  How do you do that?

• 38:15Speaker 02

  You just, just get over it. It's, I mean, it's, it's as simple as just stop thinking about it. You, that, that no longer matters. That, that, we're, we're just here.

• 38:22Tucker Carlson?

  Your failure no longer matters?

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Nope. Because, I mean, everyone's still alive. I screwed up, I came in with the wrong foot, whatever.

• 38:30Tucker Carlson?

  So they make you feel incompetent?

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Yes, like every run. At the end of it, you're you get debriefed on on how bad you and like the whole like green team that we call it the selection course telling just telling everyone how they screwed up and then then you get then everyone gets punished for it. And then as soon as you're done getting punished, you're right back in there again. And then the whole point is, can you get over it?

• 38:50Tucker Carlson?

  I mean, that's that sounds harder than running.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  It's hard. And I've seen dudes that when they just freeze, they they they screw up too many things and they just freeze.

• 39:02Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, because it's a perfectionist who gets into this business anyway. Like, who wants to be a Navy SEAL? Only someone who wants to test himself be the best, right?

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so.

• 39:13Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Someone's got something to prove.

• 39:15Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  And they want to be the best. And then, I mean, it's even it's even unique going to SEAL Team Six. It's not everyone knows that SEAL Team Six is a different animal. Like, a lot of the Navy SEALs you see out there now weren't at SEAL Team Six. And they know that. And they a lot of people don't talk about it. That is the best command in the world. Though, I mean, those are the guys that they call when Osama Bin Laden pops up, SEAL Team Six.

• 39:38Tucker Carlson?

  So how do you I mean, how do people fail out? I mean, these are all SEALs with five or six years.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  Usually, safety violations, like I was talking about with the wrong foot or shooting the wrong target. You can have minor safety violations or majors. If you get a major, they're going to boot you. But if they like you, they might keep you, like if they personally like you. If they hate you, you're in a bad you're starting off on the wrong foot. There's a point during the screening process where they just hand your picture around to the guys that have made it. And if you get too many thumbs down, like I've seen this guy, and I don't like him, you're not going to you don't even get to try. Like, it's a it's a good old one.

• 40:09Tucker Carlson?

  Really?

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, you want to.

• 40:12Tucker Carlson?

  What percentage is the attrition?

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Fifty percent. When I went through, half the guys didn't make it.

• 40:17Tucker Carlson?

  And you knew them all, I assume?

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Oh, I knew all of them. And it was just bizarre, because one minute you're having breakfast with your buddy, then you go to the and I there were guys I had breakfast with, and I never saw them again in my life. They did they did something wrong, they're out. They would walk around with the instructors, and they're all SEAL Team Six guys, these instructors, and they've been through this course. They'd walk around with like two airplane tickets back in the day when you'd have paper tickets. They'd be like, all right, we're not we're not done until two of you guys go home. So we're going to keep training until two of you guys fail. Like it's a tough course.

• 40:44Tucker Carlson?

  How long is it?

• 40:45Speaker 02

  Nine months.

• 40:46Tucker Carlson?

  Nine months?

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:48Tucker Carlson?

  Does anyone fail out at the end?

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Not usually. When you get through the initial part of close quarters battle, they, they keep you around. The, the initial down in Tennessee, not Tennessee, in, in, um, Arkansas, where the hell are we? Mississippi. If you make it through that and jumping, they'll usually keep you around because you've proven you can do that stuff. Plus they spend a lot of money on you and so they might keep you around, but you can get shit canned at any time too. When you're, um, at the command, if you screw up, they can, we can.

• 41:14Tucker Carlson?

  So you graduate, you become part of SEAL Team Six?

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:17Tucker Carlson?

  You made it to the top. What do they do with you next?

• 41:20Speaker 02

  They split us up into squadrons and they're just, you, you go from, um, being a, a number team to a color team. So like I was at SEAL Team Two and then I went to SEAL Team Six, red squadron. So I was at red. And, uh, it's even funny out in town, like you see some of the local groupies and they would talk to SEALs like number or color. It's like, first of all, fuck you, but second of all, red.

• 41:41Tucker Carlson?

  Are there better colors than others?

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Uh, no. Um, it is funny that, no, uh, when you get to that level, everyone is, is at, on the same level. There's different, um, different attitudes, uh, personalities. Like red team was known for training way too hard. Gold team was known for telling people to F off. Like you can't tell us what to do and blue was awesome. Uh, when we finally started silver, this is kind of funny that so, cause Delta was going to go to four squadrons. So we went to four squadrons and the rumor that gold squadron started was, yeah, I heard the next one's going to be a silver squadron. And that rumor just started and it turned into silver and we, we finally asked gold, why, why did you keep saying it was silver? And they go, cause silver is not quite as good as gold.

• 42:19Tucker Carlson?

  Second place.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. But no, uh, I did one deployment with silver also and the guys are just, uh, the best of the best.

• 42:26Tucker Carlson?

  How many are there in SEAL Team Six?

• 42:27Speaker 02

  About 200, I think at any time. And that was a unique place because I, I was excited to get out of bed. Because every day I could go to work with people who were better than me and we all thought that way. We all acted that way and nobody ever undermined any, undermined anybody else. Like if someone was out shooting me, like in a, a speed drill, I would, I'd go up to them and say, hey, why did you switch your holster to here? What, why did you put that pouch over here? What do you, what, what time do you wake up and what do you, what workout do you do in the morning? What do you eat? I want to find out what you're doing to make, what made you better than me today? And try to get better and then, and then we'd help each other instead of like trying to steal their job or whatever, we'd help each other. And then when we, I mean, At that level, when we first started going to Iraq, because I'd only seen Iraq on television,

• 43:09Speaker 02

  suicide bombers everywhere, car bombs going like I, I, the first three months in Iraq, I was like, are we missing something? Because we're really good, like we're, this isn't even close. The enemy's not even getting a shot off. We got to a point where um, we stopped blowing up doors and stopped talking to each other and went quiet, went silent like we, if we were silent, we were faster. And we got to a point where we, instead of blowing up a door and waking, instead of landing a helicopter right on the house, we'd land way over there, walk in, pick the locks, break the glass quietly, go in. We would have competitions on who could touch more terrorists while they were sleeping. Like walk up to them and you'd like to test their vest for a suicide vest. And then you put your hand on their lips and go shh, and you wake them up. And then they shit their pants.

• 43:52Tucker Carlson?

  And then what happens?

• 43:53Speaker 02

  You arrest them, unless they have a suicide vest on them. They, they, they find out if the 72 virgins are real.

• 43:59Tucker Carlson?

  When was the first time you saw someone killed as a SEAL?

• 44:02Speaker 02

  Um.

• 44:03Tucker Carlson?

  Do you remember?

• 44:04Speaker 02

  I want to say in Ramadi, I didn't.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  You know, because we dropped bombs on people in 2005 and then I went to Iraq in 2000, late 2005, and that's the first time I killed someone. Me and actually the sniper from the Captain Phillips mission, we got our kills at the exact same time.

• 44:24Tucker Carlson?

  What, what happened?

• 44:25Speaker 02

  We, we were doing a um, a combined hit with, it was SEAL Team Six, Delta Force and the Special Air Service. So we got a good crew coming in. And we're splitting up this, this uh, like SAS has this, Delta's got this, and here's our target. And we crept in, we just started that tactic of, of not going on white lights, not moving fast, going dark, not talking. Like when, when I see people at war just screaming, go, go, go, all that bullshit, it's like, shut up. Why aren't you just yelling, here we are, just shut up. And like, if, if you point this way, I'll assume you see something and we can just read off each other. So we went into this house, four of us, one of the guys was from the SBS, Special Boat Service. And we're walking down this long hallway, four of us, and this dude came out with an AK and he could have killed all of us, but he couldn't see us. So he went back in the room and then we hit the room and killed him.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Then we came outside as the whole town started to light up and me and the sniper went out and we, we did this cross pan thing on a building and as like when you're crossing, like I'm covering here, he's covering there. And you can wave and take your corner or whatever, but these two dudes just popped up, two Al Qaeda guys. I blasted him, he blasted him. And I go, oh shit, I just killed that guy. And my buddy goes, I just killed that guy. I'm like, what do we do now? Like, I guess we do one of those bounding things and find more Al Qaeda guys. But it was, it was almost like, uh, the first kill wasn't, uh,

• 45:39Speaker 02

  it, it didn't bother me. It was more of a, okay, now I'm part of the club. Cause now I have friends that have kills, now I have a kill. And then the, you know, the floodgates opened and everyone started killing people.

• 45:49Tucker Carlson?

  When was it? It was 2005?

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Uh, 06 and 07 was when it really got hot. And then over in Afghanistan.

• 45:55Tucker Carlson?

  Did you, wait, but did you, that night after you'd killed somebody, did you think about it?

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Uh, not really. Um, I, no, I mean, it was just a kill. It was, um, everyone's, everyone's trying to get there. Everyone's trying to do it. So I'm just part of the club. It didn't bother me at all. And again, just working with these guys, I, I thought I was a different mindset. So it didn't, and that guy still doesn't bother me. He had a gun. He was maneuvering on us. So whatever. He was, he was definitely Al Qaeda. And then, you know, we, we just did that. And we were really good about it. We, we, the more latitude that we had, as far as collateral damage, the, the fewer innocent people got hurt because,

• 46:27Tucker Carlson?

  I'm sure.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  because we're the good guys.

• 46:28Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  And we're not going in there to murder people. And if you, if you, if you give me that, then, but, but then, I mean, it got to the point. Right before I got out there, if you're in a gunfight and there's a cave, I remember one, there was a cave, we're trying to call in hell fires. And the bosses 200 miles away said, we're not saying there are women and children in that cave, but we can't prove that there are not. It's like, what are we even doing here? But we got good at it. Um, every night we're going out and we, um, uh, General McChrystal decided that we should be hunting, um, Sunni terrorists. That's what Al Qaeda, they're Sunnis. And they were terrorizing the, uh, the locals. And that's kind of where I got an affinity for locals, because they gotta deal with us, then they gotta deal with Al Qaeda. All they're trying to do is get on with their lives. Like, most people in a combat zone are not combatants. They just want to live.

• 47:10Tucker Carlson?

  Of course.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  And so they deal with Al Qaeda in their house. But so then we would go to their house and then we, that's when we got into interrogations, try to find the bad guys and root them out. And we were given the latitude to, if you, if you see, uh, kill them, uh, kill them on sight.

• 47:21Tucker Carlson?

  How, how would you know who they were?

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Uh, well, I mean, usually if they go to their guns or they, uh, they sleep outside with guns buried, you can kind of tell they're bad guys. And you know, if they don't have guns, we don't, we don't kill them, even though we, we know they should be. But again, we're the good guys. So we're not, we're not trying to do that. But they'll usually hop up and fight, or, you know, or in the trees, or on the, you know, get shot at from rooftops and things like that. But interrogating him was, was actually funny. I mean,

• 47:47Tucker Carlson?

  How do you do that?

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Um, the way I started to do it, cause I never had training. We just learned on the job. And so what I would do is I would take my interpreter and like have him stand here and put the Al Qaeda guy right in front of him. So they can't look at each other, but I talk to him and he talks to you. And then you tell me what he says and I'm, and I'm going to be very direct. I'm just going to ask a, who's the man of the house? How many guys are here? What are their names? What's your name? And then let him go. But, but then like I, I've run in-

• 48:12Tucker Carlson?

  Why, why do you ask that?

• 48:14Speaker 02

  Uh, cause if there's seven, usually it's like a rule of threes. Like if there's a seven dudes, there's going to be 21 women, 16, God knows how many kids. So the, the guys are the bad guys. And so, uh, if there's seven dudes, five of them are going to be, they live in the house and those two are, they came in from Jordan. That's Al Qaeda. And just separate and then you arrest them and bring them back to, you know, prison and stuff and they can interrogate him there.

• 48:34Tucker Carlson?

  So you look for, you look for contradictions? You ask them all separately?

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Cause the two guys are lying. They don't know who the guys in the house are. They don't know their names or how many people are here. The five guys that live here do. And then, then the one that I really liked was like the 12 year old kid, the boy. The oldest of the children, because you could, you could prop him up, like dust him off. And say, all right, finally I'm talking to the man of the house. What's going on here? Who are these dudes? And then he just, yeah, I am the man of the house. Well, these two are assholes. I was like, all right, cool. Or even bring them in a place where they, they can't see him, like put them behind a sheet or something. And I'll bring these guys in and you just point to the, like a, like a lineup. On TV and then those, those are the bad guys and they don't know who the kid is. And then just roll them up that way. And I mean, it sucks. You send them to prison, they're out in 30 days and you're fighting them again.

• 49:17Tucker Carlson?

  Where, where, where was the prison?

• 49:18Speaker 02

  Abu Ghraib, usually in Iraq and then, uh, Bagram, we take them there. We sent a few guys to Guantanamo.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  You know, that was, but at the time too, it's almost like it, it's, we, we were at a time where we're just fighting for the guy next to me. The, the overall plan, like Bin Laden's a ghost. We're never going to find him. Like I would even joke with dudes I was interrogating, like, uh, who's the man of the house? Whose house is this? Where's Osama Bin Laden? And I'd see terrorists laugh at me. I'm like, I don't know. Like, I know you don't know. I don't know either. I just figured I'd ask. But like I've run into, um, English speakers. Where, um, like, like he didn't need the interpreter and he'd say, I know the deal. This, I remember one guy said, I go, you know, the deal? He's like, yeah, I know the deal. You're going to send me to prison. I'm going to get out in 30 days. I'm going to kill your friends again. And I said, so you've dealt with Americans before, huh? And he's like, yeah. I'm like, did they look like me? Like with the beard, short sleeves, tattoos. Do they look like me?

• 50:10Speaker 02

  You didn't, you never dealt with us. We're not here on accident. We're here for you. And then again, watch Al Qaeda shit their pants. It's pretty funny.

• 50:18Tucker Carlson?

  I mean, what a heavy life, though.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it was, but everyone was doing it. So it seemed normal.

• 50:25Tucker Carlson?

  Well, did you ever talk about it? I mean, you're just, the people you're, the guys you're working with sound like smart people. I mean, they're screened for intelligence and self-control and like, they're not shallow people.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  No, right. No, they're deep thinkers.

• 50:40Tucker Carlson?

  I can tell.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  But um, just be like everyone around you is doing it. So it seems normal. It was not uncommon to see a guy at the team that just made headlines around the world and say, hey, dude, you just made headlines. Cool. You want to go to the gym? Like just blow it off. Uh, when, when my buddy rescue or rescued Richard Phillips. And I, we were on the ship and I said, this is obviously before the bit.

• 51:01Tucker Carlson?

  Can you explain the Richard Phillips story for those who don't remember?

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was um, uh, the Maersk Alabama was a ship, uh, carrying crate around the Horn of Africa. And Somali pirates had started taking the ships as criminals because the insurance company is always paying the ransom every time. So it's, it's going to be a lucrative business.

• 51:20Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  And um, they captured the Maersk Alabama and Richard Phillips was a captain. In order to save his crew, because there was a fight on board, he got in a lifeboat and then the four terrorist criminals got in a lifeboat and then they went out off to sea because he was going to just send them out. But they took him as a prisoner because they could sell him to Al Shabab or whatever they're going to do. And eventually um, the USS Bainbridge destroyer started towing it. So they're towing this around uh, not sure what to do with them. That you got terrorists inside there and a, and an American prisoner. I mean, even to the point that he jumped out once. And he was looking at the Navy like, are you gonna go hot? Like you can go shoot now because I'm in the water and they didn't even shoot like, you're putting his, his life at risk because if they get him back, they're, so they tied him up and all that stuff. And then that's when they called us.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  And I was um, it was my birthday, Good Friday, April 10th, and I was at my daughter's Easter tea party at her preschool. And I'm getting her cupcakes. I got a pink plate and I walked over to, she's four years old and I got a message that you're going to get them now. So I had to kiss my daughter, like look her in the eye. Like that's the hardest part too of combat. Look her in the eyes and kind of realize this could be it. This could be the last time we ever see each other. You know, and there's a huge difference between kissing your kid goodnight and kissing your kid goodbye.

• 52:31Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, that's for sure.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  And she was always there, like she was four during that one, she was one after Lone Survivor, she was seven, going after Bin Laden, but saying goodbye to her, giving her a kiss and then, uh, um, well, I, we had a set amount of time to get to work. We'd all, we'd been selling it since 1980, but we'd never done it. And I have about an hour to get

• 52:50Tucker Carlson?

  Selling it to

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Selling that we can be wheels up at a certain time and we can be anywhere in the world in 24 hours. We've been selling it to like JSOC, the army and the White House. And you gotta figure the Obama administration, they've only been in, in office for a few months. So there, this is very serious, but the funny part of the story was, uh, I, I was ahead of schedule and I stopped at a 7-Eleven on the way, there's a 7-Eleven outside of the base and I got a, a log of Copenhagen, a carton of cigarettes and as much cash as I could out of the ATM.

• 53:15Tucker Carlson?

  That's the spirit.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  Cause I knew we're going to be jumping on the east coast of Africa, but there's never a perfect plan. We might not land where we want. I'm the lead jumper and I'm, we might not end up where we want. If I land in a semi-permissive environment, I might be able to barter with the locals with the tobacco or, um, pay my way to safety with cash.

• 53:32Tucker Carlson?

  What brand of cigarettes?

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Um, I bought Parliament Lights.

• 53:35Tucker Carlson?

  Parliament Lights?

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. But, uh, but I was in there to get it and there was one dude, there was one dude in front of me and he was buying a USA Today and the headline was about Richard Phillips, about the mission we're trying to do. I'm right behind him and he slammed it down on the counter and kind of announced to the whole store, man, I sure wish someone would do something about this. And I'm behind him recognizing the irony and looking at my watch and I tap him on the shoulder and he turns around, I go, buddy, pay for your shit and we will. Like I, I'm not even kidding, like the national security timeline is squarely on your very broad shoulders.

• 54:08Tucker Carlson?

  Did you make it within?

• 54:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I made it in time and then, uh, 15 hours and 46 minutes after, um, I got the message, we were in the Indian Ocean with 103, 103 guys, full head count. And then, uh, a day and a half later on Easter.

• 54:19Tucker Carlson?

  How'd you get in the Indian Ocean?

• 54:20Speaker 02

  We jumped out of a C-17, we flew from Oceana, refueled and then, uh, I led the jump out. And we had a dude behind me that, um, he wasn't a SEAL and he didn't have any skydives, but he was a communicator. He set up the radio so we could talk to the White House, but then we're like, we might need better communication when we get down there. So I'll handle this. And I went over and kind of kicked him and said, hey, he was chasing plans, homie. Guess who gets the skydive? And he's like, oh no, I didn't join the Navy to be a SEAL and I don't want to skydive. And I was like, you're half right. Have a nice jump. And so we

• 54:48Tucker Carlson?

  You told him on the plane that he was jumping out over

• 54:51Speaker 02

  You're gonna strap up to my buddy here and he's gonna jump. Well, that was a funny story too, because I'm on the ramp. We just launched the boats. I'm the lead jumper. I'm the first guy to bring the guys down. I turn around at the end is this poor kid doing his first tandem. And before I jump, I'm in a great mood, right? Because I hooked him up. I'm a tandem master, so I'm doing the personnel inspection on him.

• 55:10Tucker Carlson?

  He's just a radio guy.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  He's a radio guy. And I could have ordered him to go, but I'm like in a good mood. And I'm like, dude, chicks pay for this shit on the weekends. And that water's like 90 degrees. This is gorgeous. It's gonna be so fun. And he's scared to death. So I'm getting ready to jump. And I turn around and I kind of give him a like thumbs up and I'm getting nothing. And my buddy who I connected him to, his head comes around and kind of gives me a thumbs up. And then this kid looks back and they're like in each other's intimate space. And the last thing I heard my buddy say was, well, don't look at me, bro. I don't know what half this shit does anyway. Before he jumped him. And then we had, so we jumped in.

• 55:39Tucker Carlson?

  So the kid actually went out the plane?

• 55:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. He stayed scared the whole mission.

• 55:43Tucker Carlson?

  Well, yeah.

• 55:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. But then it ended on Easter.

• 55:46Tucker Carlson?

  So you land in the water and what happens?

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Sink the parachutes. We sent four boats out. So we hop on the boats and we go to the USS Boxer. And then we put the snipers on the Bainbridge. And then we were coming up with plans because no one had thought of a lifeboat being towed by a destroyer. So literally, everyone come up with a plan and we'll write them down and we'll come up with the top five. And as we're doing that, the snipers got a good look. They were looking at him for a while and they got the shots and they just took it. And yeah, and one of the stories, I don't know if it's true because I wasn't with him, but his story is awesome. One of the snipers, there's an obstacle at SEAL training called the slide for life, where you climb this structure and then you slide on top of a rope all the way down. And we always thought, what's the application, the reality of it? When are we ever going to need this?

• 56:31Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 56:31Speaker 02

  That one guy needed it that one time when he crawled down to rescue Richard Phillips. So he crawled down there. And again, this is his story. He said he pulled his pistol and he's getting ready to go in that small hatch in the back. And just being an arrogant Navy SEAL, he's like, this is the only time I'm going to rescue someone. I gotta think of something cool to say. What do I say? SEAL team here to get you out, whatever. He said he went in there. And now he's in this lifeboat, they've been using it for a toilet for five days. And it's in this hot African sun. And now there's three dudes laying in it with their heads blown off. And he said, he looked at Richard Phillips and the first thing he said was, I'm gonna need therapy after this shit. That's what I say. I'm gonna need therapy.

• 57:10Tucker Carlson?

  Did he?

• 57:10Speaker 02

  I don't know. And I don't know if he said that. The story's awesome.

• 57:15Tucker Carlson?

  Did, was there, I mean, to crawl into a, you know, a latrine filled with guys who had their heads blown off, pretty heavy thing to see.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  It is. What I was getting at though, was when, when my buddy did that and I, I talked to him afterwards, and they did a really good job in the movie, the sniper shoot, and they just, they put their bipods up and they leave. I talked to my buddy and I said, you realize that you've just done the most important thing in the history of the SEAL teams. And his response was, cool, can we go home?

• 57:44Tucker Carlson?

  How long did it take you to get home?

• 57:45Speaker 02

  About two weeks. We went to Qatar and hung out at the pool for two weeks. Karaoke night, R and R.

• 57:52Tucker Carlson?

  What a weird life.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, well, because we never, because we'd never done that mission before. We'd been selling it since the eighties. And that actually reminds me of the mindset, because you know, getting to SEAL Team Six, the mindset, those snipers were sleeping in their own beds on a long weekend. And their guns did not need to be sighted in for the most difficult shots of their lives, but their guns were sighted in for the most difficult shots of their lives. If they would have, if they would have, um, they didn't get complacent. Complacency kills. Complacency is caused by success. Too much success and you have a tendency to say the worst thing you can say when you're running a team. Well, this is the way we've always done it. Those guys could have said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna sight my gun in on Tuesday. I can drink beer all weekend. And that's a shortcut, that's being complacent. And they weren't complacent and it saved a man's life.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  Those shots, I mean, they're, they're shooting through a window and two moving boats. You know, there's some serious, and, and if they miss, they're gonna kill them right away. Like, if you miss this shot, he's gonna execute, and it's on you. And that's a lot of pressure.

• 58:51Tucker Carlson?

  How do you, how do you hit something when both the object you're standing on and the object the target is standing on are moving?

• 59:01Speaker 02

  They'd done it 10,000 times in training. They, uh, muscle memory. They, shooting at movers, walkers, cars, shooting in wind when someone's walking, like having a moving target in wind, so it almost seems you're shooting behind it, but you know the wind's gonna take it into them. Uh, anticipating the, um, what the sea state is like, and you're, you're leading them. I didn't take the shot. It was just awesome shots. They were, uh, yeah, they're pros. Really good dudes.

• 59:26Tucker Carlson?

  So how long between that mission and?

• 59:29Speaker 02

  Bin Laden?

• 59:30Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Two years.

• 59:30Tucker Carlson?

  Two, what'd you do for that two years?

• 59:32Speaker 02

  As soon as, um, as soon as Captain Phillips was done, we went over to Afghanistan and I was on the base when Bo Bergdahl walked off. And so we tried to rescue him. That's a weird story too, uh, cause I, I wherever you are, be there, be present. And I happen to find myself on all these major missions just because I was available. Uh, I've had army guys joke with me. They said that I'm the Forrest Gump of the Navy, only I'm not as good looking and I can't run as fast. I'm not sure how to take that. But, uh, Bo Bergdahl walked off because the way that we would work overseas is we see-

• 1:00:04Tucker Carlson?

  So who was Bo Bergdahl?

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  Bo Bergdahl was the guy that the Taliban grabbed him and they held him for five years in Pakistan. And then the army flew in and traded out those five Taliban guys for Bo Bergdahl. So he was a POW, but he walked off because he was an idiot.

• 1:00:17Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  And, uh, the way that we would work-

• 1:00:19Tucker Carlson?

  He walked over to the Taliban.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  He walked out just because he was going to start a new life in the mountains and he, it's one of those things where just because you don't think you're at war with someone, doesn't mean they're not at war with you.

• 1:00:28Tucker Carlson?

  Well, exactly.

• 1:00:29Speaker 02

  When he walked off the base, um, we, I went into the tactical operations center with a coffee and they said, yeah, this dude just walked off the base. And I was like, he walked off? Said, yeah, we intercepted this phone call from the locals calling the Taliban. They said, we found this American soldier. Do you want him? And they said, the Taliban said, what do you mean? You found him? They go, they said, we found him on the side of the road taking a shit. And the Taliban's response was, yeah, we want him and he'll never shit right again. And that, like, that dude was held for five years. And, and I've been asked before too, should he, should he do jail time? It's like, no, he needs therapy because he's been punished.

• 1:01:01Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  He realized he made a huge mistake.

• 1:01:04Tucker Carlson?

  Whatever happened to him? Do you know?

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  I don't know. He's in, I think he got court martialed. Um, I don't, I don't know. I should look that up.

• 1:01:10Tucker Carlson?

  Wow. So you went to Afghanistan-

• 1:01:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:12Tucker Carlson?

  -after the Indian Ocean. What was that like?

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  Uh, it was the same. Um, it was, uh, summertime. So they don't really fight in the winter. They do the spring offensive and they fight all summer. And we'd just been authorized a few years prior to actually fight the Taliban because we were fighting just Al Qaeda as a tier one unit. And then they authorized us to Taliban. So we could fight anybody. Um, and it was just, I mean, same stuff, looking for, you know, targets that weren't as important as our government tries to make them. They, they like words like shadow governor and here's the spider web of this, you know, this leader of, it's like, or you mean a farmer? Like what, where, where's Al Qaeda? Well, they're in Pakistan. Why aren't we in Pakistan then?

• 1:01:50Tucker Carlson?

  Good. Why weren't we in Pakistan?

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know. Well, we, we were running sources in and out. And then the agency was right there. My actual deployment right before the bin Laden raid, I was running, um, several outstations, working with the agency and the bin Laden team was there and I didn't know him. Um, and it was- I used to give the agency shit. I was like, the biggest problem with the CIA is they make too many cool movies about the CIA. You're not that cool. But the Bin Laden team was there, and they were that cool. And I just didn't know it. And then I met them later.

• 1:02:16Tucker Carlson?

  Were they really?

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:17Tucker Carlson?

  They lived up to the hype?

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  When I met them at first, when, when the commanding officer SEAL Team Six came in with a team of women, and said, the reason you guys are here, this is as close as we've ever been to Osama Bin Laden. And they explained to us how they found him. I was like, okay, these, this is their tier one unit. This is a good team. But the whole time they were there, because I, we got back from Afghanistan, like in February or March. My last, well, my second to last deployment was like my 12th deployment, I think. And then they, we went to Miami for diving. We were, we were still thinking Somali pirates and the mothership. Like, we're gonna, we're gonna make up tactics, how to dive in currents in the middle of the ocean, so you can hit an anchored ship. And plus, we're in South Beach. Like, we just finished war, and then we'll, we'll train all day, and then we'll, we'll go out, have fun on the patio

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  with happy hour with our friends. And then we got recalled to Virginia, just the senior guys. And, and they, when, when we first got there, they said, this is real. This is not a drill. We found a thing. And this thing is in a house. And it's in a bowl in these mountains. And in this country, and you're gonna go get it, and you're gonna show it to us. And we're like, cool, what's the thing? Can't tell you. Okay. Which country is this? Can't tell you. How are we getting there? Can't tell you. Huh. How much air support we got? None. Okay. That's an answer. And then we assumed it was Libya. Gaddafi, the Arab Spring, whatever that was, was happening. So this is April 2011. We assumed, okay, we're gonna fly off some Ospreys, off a flat top. And they don't want to tell us, because Ospreys have a shady track record. They've crashed.

• 1:03:45Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, I've noticed.

• 1:03:46Speaker 02

  So we're gonna go there, get them, and bring them back. That's gotta be it. So we were actually training for that. And, oh, they said also, you're not taking any Air Force guys. So if you used to carry a radio, you're the radio guy. If you used to be a corpsman, you're the, you're the, you're the medic. Because we're not bringing PJs or CCT. And so we're adjusting our gear for about a week. And even other dudes from other color teams were coming up to us, like, hey, this super secret mission, what, what is it? And I'm like, I, I don't know. And they're like, come on, you can tell me. I'm like, I, honestly, I don't know what it is. And then they, um, on a Friday, they briefed us again and said, all right, go home, be with your kids, uh, come back Sunday at about 5:00 AM and we're going to leave and we're going to drive you to a place and read you in.

• 1:04:24Tucker Carlson?

  How many men, by the way, had kids, would you say?

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  I think all of us.

• 1:04:28Tucker Carlson?

  Wow.

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  Maybe one of the guys on the mission didn't, maybe two. I could be wrong, but I, most guys were family men. Most guys were in their, in their early thirties, married. And then, uh, they were briefing us. This is actually a funny story. Um, come in on Sunday and, and I remember asking who's going to be there at the, at the read in. They said, well, the vice president, secretary of defense, secretary of the Navy. It's like, Jesus. What, but they're going down the list and they said, CTC pad will be there, blah, blah, blah. And they kept going and I didn't say anything, but CTC pad is a counter terror pack Afghan. If we're going to Libya, that doesn't make any sense.

• 1:05:03Tucker Carlson?

  No.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  So I went home and then we came back. They split us up. This is a funny story. They split us up four dudes in, in vans and we're driving down to North Carolina. My boss is next to me. My two buddies are driving and I told them exactly that CTC pad. And I said, this isn't Gaddafi. They, they found bin Laden. And my boss looks at me and he goes, that's exactly what I was thinking. So we're just calmly discussing it and my buddy driving, as bad as it sounds, he looked me in the rearview mirror and goes, man, O'Neal, if we kill Osama bin Laden, I will suck yo dick, just like that. Rude, but, uh, three weeks to the day, we're standing over his body and I went, hey, uh, now's a good a time as any. He's like, oh, hell no. I'm like, you said it. But then we went down to the thing and that they, uh, the team was there and we weren't joking anymore. We're all serious.

• 1:05:47Speaker 02

  And they said, yeah, this is, uh, as close as we've ever been to Osama bin Laden. And they, uh, the head targeter explained, she must've talked to us for three hours about how she found him to the point where it's like, okay, we just believe you. I, I don't need to know anymore. I don't need to know how the sauce is. I trust you. We're going. So let's train up on it. Can we go now?

• 1:06:05Tucker Carlson?

  What was she like?

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  Just cool. As cool as you can imagine. Just an awesome professional. Like she's, she's the reason that I, what I was saying, okay, this is the real tier one CIA. She was like that badass. The team was badass, but she was like in charge of it. She even came with us to Jalalabad. She stayed with us the whole time. Yeah. Just didn't go to AABAD with, she stayed at the, at the talk in, uh, JABAD. But we trained, uh,

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  For a couple of weeks, just on the exterior, because I don't want you to tell me what you think is inside. Like, if you tell me there's definitely going to be a right turn, there's going to be a left turn. So don't, it's like almost when, when we go to a target, I don't want you to tell me how many men, women and children you see. Tell me how many people you see and I'll figure out who they are when I get there. Just let me do that. So we trained on the exterior. We came up with the perfect plan. We talked about contingencies.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  The youngest guy in the room one night said, well, the helicopter could crash in the front yard. Let's talk about that for 30 seconds and that's what happened. And then we went out west to, well, we would stand around this table at night talking about it and you know.

• 1:07:07Tucker Carlson?

  And this was in Jalalabad?

• 1:07:09Speaker 02

  No, this is in, in North Carolina. Someone who made a two scale model of his entire place and we're, and like SEALs are funny. Like we have a good time and guys were joking and I'm usually the guy telling a joke or whatever. But I said to the guys like, hey, you should take this a little more serious because this is a one way mission. Like we're not coming home. This is it for us. We're, you know, we're going to get shot down. There's going to be a fight and if anyone's going to blow his house up when we're in, it's bin Laden. We're going to run out of fuel. Like, take this serious. And then we went out, out west to Nevada and we met the helicopters. And we turned a corner and we saw these things and everyone's kind of laughing. And I remember someone said to me, why are you laughing now? And I go, well, there's a better chance we're going to live because I didn't know we were going to war on transformers. These helicopters that they got. So we trained on them for a while.

• 1:07:50Tucker Carlson?

  What were they?

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  Stealth.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  Helicopters that no man invented, like these six, I don't, I can't even describe them. They're just awesome. And we were training with them with.

• 1:08:04Tucker Carlson?

  What makes them different from?

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  I don't know. It's got to be the angles of the, the, the, the outside, the structure and the paint.

• 1:08:12Tucker Carlson?

  Had you ever seen one?

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  No, no one had. The president didn't know about them.

• 1:08:15Tucker Carlson?

  The president didn't?

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. They, when they were talking about, what are they going to do? Are we going to bomb the house, the place? And the, um, the air force said that to bomb it, we got to put 22 JDAMs on that house, 2,000 pound bombs. Like you'll never know he was there. And then I guess the chief of staff, the air force said, there's one more option. And he told them about the helicopters and that's when we went out to train with them.

• 1:08:34Tucker Carlson?

  So the president didn't know that his own military had these?

• 1:08:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that and he was cool too. Um, there was no, there was no partisan politics on this mission. This was just, this is the right thing to do. When we first presented a plan, uh, two helicopters, 32 minutes and then fly out, you might run out of fuel. So they were going to run over the Hindu Kush. Like we gotta get back to Afghanistan. Um, if we get compromised, it's going to be because of the local police. It's not, it's like if someone invaded near West Point, it wouldn't be cadets going after them. It would be the cops.

• 1:09:06Tucker Carlson?

  Sheriff.

• 1:09:07Speaker 02

  And then that weren't a weird spot because I don't want to kill cops. I don't want to kill Pakistani police. They're just doing their job. We're here without their invitation. So what we said is we're going to, we'll hard point it. And then you need to send someone to Islamabad and negotiate our release or whatever, because we're not going to surrender or whatever. But that was our plan. And, uh, I guess Barack Obama again, looked at the chief of staff of the air force and said, what do you need to rain hell in Pakistan? My guys are not surrendering to anybody.

• 1:09:30Tucker Carlson?

  Good for him.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  Which is some South Chicago politics right there. It was awesome. So we got a guerrilla package. We got more helicopters, more stuff juiced up. And I don't even know what we had over, overhead. But I mean, when we finished and they launched F-16s, I know we had something up there that convinced them to turn around.

• 1:09:45Tucker Carlson?

  But these helicopters, was anyone aware that these existed?

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  No one knew about them. I mean, these are.

• 1:09:50Tucker Carlson?

  So the US military can just like have, I mean, a helicopter, it takes a lot to build a helicopter. That's very weird.

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, and I can't get too much into it because.

• 1:09:57Tucker Carlson?

  Right. To extent you can.

• 1:09:58Speaker 02

  They're like, you, you're not even allowed to talk about what you think you saw here. Like it's, there's some serious shit going on.

• 1:10:04Tucker Carlson?

  When you say they were out in Nevada, where in Nevada?

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  Well, I can't say that either.

• 1:10:08Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, but I think we know.

• 1:10:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, we probably know.

• 1:10:10Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  Near Vegas. That's where we stayed.

• 1:10:15Tucker Carlson?

  That's crazy.

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  I mean, it was, it gave me faith in what we can do if we need to.

• 1:10:22Tucker Carlson?

  I just find it very, not to, I never thought I'd be focused on the helicopter. Like who cares? But.

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  And it was, um.

• 1:10:27Tucker Carlson?

  But that's the weirdest thing I've heard in a long time.

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then you gotta figure the pilots had never heard of them. And so they, they got to practice for what, five days? And then they're flying us into Pakistan? Those are the heroes, the pilots.

• 1:10:37Tucker Carlson?

  How do you get a machine like that from Vegas to Jalalabad?

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  That's, I think they probably put it in a C-17, flew them over. And then when they put them together, they're too, like, they're in the middle of an airfield with, they're covered during the daytime and then there's bright light shining out so no one can see them. They would put these things in the hangar so like Chinese satellites couldn't see them. They're, they're pretty serious.

• 1:10:59Tucker Carlson?

  What's it like to ride on one?

• 1:11:01Speaker 02

  It was comfortable. It was quiet and it was just cool. We had, there was more room in that. They look kinda like 60s.

• 1:11:09Tucker Carlson?

  Cause there's no engine, right? It's just all anti-gravity.

• 1:11:12Speaker 02

  There's something up there. Yeah, they're flying by magnets.

• 1:11:14Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  But no, they were, they were cool and it was, it was, it was comforting because, I mean, once you take off and cross the border, they tell you that you're in Pakistan. It's like, okay, now we're gonna find out if this works. And then, then again, the mindset comes in like, um, worrying about a missile is not gonna stop it. So I'm not gonna worry about it, you know? It's like you're worried about anything in life that you're worried doesn't affect, why are you wasting your energy?

• 1:11:38Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:38Speaker 02

  So what I, what I do, I learned as a sniper was count. So I would count from zero to 1,000, 1,000 to zero. And I would just get that in my head, you know, counting, changing the cadence up, just counting, you know, looking at the watch. We got 90 minutes to get in there. Cairo, Cairo the dog was sitting next to me, the Malinois, uh, no easy, no ordinary dog is a book written about him. His handler Chesney was right here.

• 1:11:58Tucker Carlson?

  Good dog.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  He's the best dog. He was the best dog I've ever worked with. Cairo was the best.

• 1:12:02Tucker Carlson?

  What made him?

• 1:12:03Speaker 02

  I don't know. He, he was just a, he was smart. He was just a good boy. He, uh, he'd been shot before. In the chest, in a gunfight.

• 1:12:11Tucker Carlson?

  No way.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, and when a dog gets shot, he's just dead. And we got, it was a weird, really weird gunfight a couple of years before we were doing vehicle interdictions. Taliban and Al Qaeda were figuring that we were coming after them at night, so they would start driving their motorcycles right around dusk to cross the border of Pakistan. And then we just started hunting them on their motorcycles. And if you've never hunted men out of a helicopter on motorcycles, you have not lived. You could take pig hunting, that's nothing. Hunting guys on motorcycles. So we got in a fight one night where we found a low ground, we ended up in the low ground, we had to split it up. I had to flank some guys up here and these guys went down there and there was, we could hear my guys in a fight and they said, hey, we got a friendly wounded in action. And I, I asked, who is it? I wanted a call sign, cause you know, if you tell a call sign, you don't know who it is, but I know exactly who it is.

• 1:12:57Speaker 02

  And they said Cairo. I'm like, fuck, he's dead. That's just, he got shot in the chest and the arm. But the guy with him, who was actually the point man on the bin Laden raid, got to him and like shaved him and put a chest seal on him. The pilots came in under fire and pulled him out and then

• 1:13:12Tucker Carlson?

  No way.

• 1:13:13Speaker 02

  And the surgeons were waiting for him and they saved him.

• 1:13:15Tucker Carlson?

  Ah.

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  So Cairo lived and he actually, he actually

• 1:13:18Tucker Carlson?

  The pilots landed under fire to save the dog?

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:13:21Tucker Carlson?

  You know, that does make you love America.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  Yes, because he's one of the guys.

• 1:13:24Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  We're his pack.

• 1:13:25Tucker Carlson?

  Other countries don't do stuff like that.

• 1:13:27Speaker 02

  So he went on trips with us again and he actually, he actually got PTSD. Um, because we'd be on targets and we'd tell him to go in a room and he'd kind of, you sure? Like, yes, go, that's your job. Get in there. But then he went on the bin Laden raid and he was

• 1:13:39Tucker Carlson?

  So why, why do you, pardon my ignorance, why do you bring a dog on a raid?

• 1:13:42Speaker 02

  He can smell them. He can find them. Uh, people hiding. I've, they, I've had them open secret doors for me, like get on their hind legs and push something in it opens in a castle. Just weird Afghanistan stories. They'll, they'll chase people down. They'll, they'll, um, they'll corner them. They, uh,

• 1:13:56Tucker Carlson?

  Just like finding a grouse.

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  It's, it's, yeah, yeah. And they're, well, even a Cairo, uh, I read stories that he had some $20,000 titanium teeth, which is bullshit. He, he had one tooth because of a gum disease. He was there for his nose and his job was

• 1:14:09Tucker Carlson?

  He had one tooth.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  He was just a good boy. But on the, on the, yeah, and he was, he was with us always. He was, he was one of the dogs that could, um, when we were overseas, we would have like the stadium seating with leather couches to watch when we're not working, watch TV and everyone could sit there. And once you take their vest off, they're just part of the pack now. So you can pet them, you can play with them and they want their ball more than, more than a treat. But then they'll do stuff like if they're up on the same level as you and put a pawn, you, you gotta push them off. Cause they're trying to get up there because like his handler is his dad and you're an uncle.

• 1:14:40Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  And if they start doing that posh shit, they're trying to get up the chain of command. So

• 1:14:43Tucker Carlson?

  They certainly are. They're trying to dominate you.

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  But then you gotta be careful because he doesn't have a muzzle on. If you piss him off, maybe he'll bite. But Cairo never would. None of the dogs ever bit. Well, one dog probably did, but, uh, he was just a good boy. He never would do that. He wouldn't even try to challenge, uh, for, for hierarchy. He was just awesome. Just a great dog. That book's amazing. An ordinary dog is amazing.

• 1:15:02Tucker Carlson?

  And they can find people anywhere.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. They'll, you're not hiding from him and you're not going to outrun him. He'll, if you, uh, if you score it, because it's, you know, it's better to send a dog to get him than to just shoot a guy. You can, he'll bite him and then we'll arrest him. Cause you don't know, he might be running because he's afraid or what. I'm not on the bin Laden.

• 1:15:17Tucker Carlson?

  And this is not a culture in Afghanistan or Pakistan where people keep dogs at home, right?

• 1:15:22Speaker 02

  No, they hate dogs, but they have dogs. They have them like. One of the hardest things to get used to is the 30 dogs that are barking as you roll up on a house. They're just out there barking all the time.

• 1:15:31Tucker Carlson?

  But they're not pets?

• 1:15:32Speaker 02

  No. Yeah, but our dog, that's cool to watch our dogs with those dogs because they don't give a shit. Like this, like, I'm so much better than you. They didn't even pay attention to the other dogs.

• 1:15:42Tucker Carlson?

  Really?

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  Uh huh. Like, I'm the one wearing a vest. I'm carrying extra magazines. You're nothing.

• 1:15:47Tucker Carlson?

  They carry extra magazines?

• 1:15:48Speaker 02

  They carry mags and they wear a flag and he had his red man patch, yeah. And so he, I was sitting next to Cairo. He was asleep on the, and it was a funny conversation just to what, because not conversation. I was looking around the helo flying into Bin Laden's house just to see how my guys were handling. We could get shot down. What, how are you guys dealing with this? And one of my friends was asleep. He put his headphones on. He was asleep. And I kid you not, the, what I said to myself was, you're asleep, literally on the ride to Osama Bin Laden's house. Like you have ice in your veins and I actually see why women find you attractive. That's badass.

• 1:16:20Tucker Carlson?

  That is, that is.

• 1:16:21Speaker 02

  And then we banked to the south, 10 minutes out and, and it sounds Hollywood, but I was counting still. And I don't know how I remembered the quote, but I said, 556, 557, freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward and freedom will be defended. And it kind of sunk in 10 minutes from Bin Laden's house. Like, holy shit. This is the mission. This is the team and we're going to kill them. Holy shit. And then like the air crew guy who never gets credit, he reached over and opened the door two minutes out. Like the, the crew chief's job was to keep the helicopter flying and open the door. That's it. But how important is that? What if we couldn't have figured out the door? Like just sitting in a helicopter can't get out. And if we got hit with a missile, he's got a family too, and they'll miss him. But no one ever mentions him. He's a hero. He opened the door. He, he was the first step of us getting into Bin Laden's house.

• 1:17:06Tucker Carlson?

  Who are the pilots? Not by name, but who do you get to fly a machine like that?

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  Uh, they are Task Force 160th, the night stalkers.

• 1:17:13Tucker Carlson?

  Talented?

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  They're the best in the world. The army helicopter pilots are the best helicopter pilots in the world. And we got the best four. And we're lucky we did because the flight lead saved everyone's life on the first helicopter by crash landing it in the front yard.

• 1:17:27Tucker Carlson?

  How do you crash land a helicopter like that?

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  Well, when he, he told me, I'm not a pilot, but he told me when they were coming into fast rope, which is when you hover, 30 feet, 20 feet, whatever, ropes come out, snipers are watching, guys just slide down. They're going to separate to where they're going. Uh, and my, we're going to drop some guys off and Cairo outside and then my team's going to the rooftop. We're going to hit them that way. But as soon as he started to hover, he realized he couldn't hover. Like there was an updraft, some with the fences were different than the ones we were training on. And it was a little bit warmer than we were used to, so they're not going to get much, that much lift. And he said, an inexperienced pilot would have powered it up and rolled it and everyone would have died. But he realized in the blink of an eye, if he can turn it and put the tail on the 15 foot fence and pin the nose, everyone might live. And he made that decision quicker than I just explained it and he just smacked it into the ground.

• 1:18:14Speaker 02

  And then our pilots was bringing us to the rooftop.

• 1:18:17Tucker Carlson?

  Was anyone injured in that?

• 1:18:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, but not like at the times like they have bad backs now, like they they're spying stuff. But nobody got hurt right then. And plus, the adrenaline was pumping. I'd imagine just getting dropped like getting dropped off in a crashed helicopter in the front yard of the number one terrorist in the world. And you don't know what the resistance is going to be. And so our guy will lift it up, but he saw them and then put us down. And he knew they couldn't hover. He probably couldn't hover, but we didn't know they crashed. So they just he kicked us out. So now we're outside of Bin Laden's house, looking at a 20 foot wall on this end. I can see his house. And I remember just thinking, I guess, I guess we start the war from here. We know what we're doing. There's a door right over there. Let's go blow that one up. So we went to the northeast corner where there's a double

• 1:18:57Speaker 02

  door. And the I called a breacher up who's a breacher is a methods of entry guy. He's going to get you in. He'll he'll pick that lock. He'll break that glass. He'll blow that door. So he decided to put a seven foot charge of C6 on the double door, which will open anything. And he blasted it. And we tried to go in and there was an open like a tin can, but there was a brick wall behind it. And

• 1:19:18Tucker Carlson?

  Why was there a brick wall behind?

• 1:19:19Speaker 02

  Fake door. He just made a fake door. And the breacher turned around. He goes fake door. This is failed breach. This is bad. And I said, no, this is good. That's a fake door. He nobody does that. He's in there. So now we know this door opens over here. It's a carport. So we got to go past his house to this double door that we knew opened because we'd seen it open. And the the other we heard them saying dash one going around.

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  Dash one going around because we assume they took fire and they're doing a racetrack and they're going to reengage, but they were saying dash one going down. So we didn't know they crashed and we said, hey, this is so and so, we're going to blast the carport and they said, no, no, no, don't blast it, we'll open it. And before that could even register, the double doors opened and a thumb came out with a glove that we recognized and it's like, okay, it doesn't matter. I don't know why they're in there, but it doesn't matter, they just are, they're in there. And that's, that's a point in life, like sometimes it doesn't matter why. Exactly. We're just, it just is and the clock's ticking. I told you yesterday about the football team, when I talked to the offense, like it doesn't matter why it's second and 15, it just is. And you can complain about it, but the clock's ticking. We gotta make a, make a move. So then we, there was already, and this is a weird thing about rules of engagement too.

• 1:20:26Speaker 02

  One of my guys was outside of the house and he'd shot through the window at, I think a brar, one of the couriers, and his wife jumped in front of him, so he shot her too. And he looked at me, this is how fucked up the rules of engagement are. He goes, this is SEAL Team Six guy, he goes, she just jumped in front of him, I just shot her, am I going to be in trouble? And I go, dude, who cares? Let's go find Bin Laden, then we'll worry about rules of engagement. But why is that in your mind right now? Because your leadership is so poor that you're thinking about going to jail right now? So then we, you know, we got inside the house, these are all guys from the other helicopter. They're going down a long hallway and I hopped into a room because like if, you know, I hope you're never in this position, but if you're in a gunfight in a house, get out of the hallway. It's just, that's just good business. So I'm in this thing and I'm looking for bombs to, because this, he's going to blow

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  this house up, he's got to be a martyr. And one of the guys behind me just said, helicopter crashed. And I said, because we had extra helicopters, so I thought, they were 45 minutes behind us, they weren't stealth. So I thought we just lost two helicopters full of my friends and I'm like, my God, what helicopter crashed? He goes, bro, our helicopter crashed in the front yard, I think he walked right past it. You didn't even notice? No, I didn't even notice it. But now it makes sense. Okay, now that's why they're in here. And then even the sniper who was with Cairo, running around, he saw the tail on the fence. So he's running around and the tail was right there and his response, he came over the radio and said, all right, guys, be on alert, they're ready for us. They have a training mockup of our super secret helicopter in the front yard.

• 1:21:51Speaker 02

  And then the there was silence.

• 1:21:52Tucker Carlson?

  He thought who is Bin Laden?

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  Training on it, yeah. And the boss came over and goes, no jackass, that's ours because we crashed. And he goes, that makes a lot more sense than the shit I was just saying. So these are the conversations and it's it's crazy to think the guys still have their sense of humor. But then I then I'm just and I'm I'm behind my guys and I'm watching them and it was just so cool. I was so proud of them. Like we could die at any second and it's not even phasing you guys. You're just doing your job slow as smooth, smooth as fast. No one's freaking out. Just you're you're you're escalating as necessary. You know, you're you're you'd kick the door. Try the door, kick the door, go mechanical, go explosive, boom. And then the woman told us, uh, you're gonna run into a stairwell and you're gonna run into Khalid Bin Laden. So the head.

• 1:22:31Tucker Carlson?

  Who's Khalid Bin Laden?

• 1:22:32Speaker 02

  Uh, his son, his 20 year old son. And she said, and she ended up being 100% right on everybody in the house.

• 1:22:38Tucker Carlson?

  This was the CIA targeter? Yeah.

• 1:22:40Speaker 02

  Woman, sorry, not chick. Um.

• 1:22:43Tucker Carlson?

  I doubt she'd care.

• 1:22:43Speaker 02

  I don't think she gives a shit. Um, but yeah, he was right there and he hopped behind a banister and we got eight dudes going up the stairs. It kind of turned, they go up and turn back and they're separated by, um, just a banister and they're both armed. They're both grown men and they want to kill each other. And so instead, normally I'd pick some guys back and move them out of the way because in an urban environment, if they start throwing grenades.

• 1:23:03Tucker Carlson?

  Of course.

• 1:23:03Speaker 02

  But I'm, we're gonna die, so I want to see how this goes down. I gotta see this. And he just whispered to him. Cause we're quiet. We don't, we're not saying anything to each other, so we confuse the shit out of them. And he whispered something along the lines of come here, come here in Urdu and and Arabic. And he said his name twice Khalid. And Khalid leaned over, he's got a gun, he leaned over, he goes, what? Blasted him right there.

• 1:23:23Tucker Carlson?

  How did he know how to say come here Khalid in Urdu and Arabic?

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  That's how smart he was. He just knew he would need to know how to say that. Just certain things like I was kind of arrogant that when someone tried to teach me how to say drop your gun. It's like, I don't need to know how to say that. I can say it like that. I'll just shoot him. He'll drop his gun. But this guy learned it and like he just was smart. And that saved, I don't know how many lives. Cause if we turn that corner with an AK, I don't care how much body armor you have on at that range with a 762.

• 1:23:49Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:50Speaker 02

  He killed him and it was right. And I remember walking over his body thinking, okay, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. And I was right for about seven seconds and then I saw Bin Laden. That was cooler. But we went to the, the second floor. I'm about seven or eight, I forget the number back and guys start to split off because you've got unknowns, there are people in here, rooms over there and there, so they're clearing that and then it's, we're down to two guys now, it's the point man that killed Khalid and then me. And the way that works is he's looking up and I'm looking back and I have, you want to have, not control, but you want to let the point man know you're there, so either hold his leg or hold his shoulder. And he's feeling that and his, he's always looking forward and wherever his eye goes, his, his gun goes. So he's looking at the top of this curtain and he can see people moving behind it and so he starts to pimp me, doesn't know it's me, but he knows it's one of his shooters.

• 1:24:35Speaker 02

  And he just starts saying, we gotta go now, come on, we gotta go, we gotta go. Cause he's saying, those are the suicide bombers, but we can beat him, but we have to go right now. And for me, it was just, uh, it wasn't bravery, it was like, he's right, I, I want four, I want, I'll take two, but it's gonna be just us and I, and I, I'm just, we're gonna blow up now, I'm tired of thinking about it. And I just squeezed him, he went up. And there's a curtain at the top of the stairs, not a door, and he moved the curtain and there was these two women there, and he assumed those were suicide bombers. So he just jumped on them, which is most courageous thing I've ever seen.

• 1:25:07Tucker Carlson?

  He jumped on?

• 1:25:08Speaker 02

  He tackled them to absorb the blast, so the guy behind him could get a shot, like it's crazy.

• 1:25:12Tucker Carlson?

  And you can't say that man's name?

• 1:25:13Speaker 02

  No, but he should have a medal of honor. Someone knows who he is and it's not hard to figure it out. And just be, and simply because he went this way, I turned left and there's Bin Laden standing there.

• 1:25:23Tucker Carlson?

  What was Bin Laden doing?

• 1:25:24Speaker 02

  He, he had his, both hands on Amal, uh, his wife, and she was shorter and he was tall. And he was maneuvering, um, he was skinnier than I thought, his beard was kinda gray, uh, taller than I thought he'd be skinnier, I remember skinny, but I, I was looking right at him and that's his nose, I've seen that nose a thousand times.

• 1:25:41Tucker Carlson?

  Did he look at you?

• 1:25:42Speaker 02

  I think so, but it was dark. And it was, he's a threat, I gotta kill him. And the way you kill a suicide bomber is shoot him in the mouth or in the head. Uh, so I shot him twice in the head, then once more on the floor. Because all they need to do is suicide bomber, I've dealt with suicide bombers and it is terrifying and it's permanent and it's loud, it's scary. And all they need to do is have like a negative and a positive, they just gotta touch the leads. So they, they, they can do that, like this and they just go, boop, and then everyone blows up. So you, and I, I was even giving some shit about that, like, why'd you shoot him in the face, uh, positive identification, it's like, well, shoot him in the chest, people live for a couple of seconds after you shoot him in the chest, you wanna kill him, he needs to go down.

• 1:26:16Tucker Carlson?

  What'd you shoot him with?

• 1:26:17Speaker 02

  Uh, 556.

• 1:26:18Tucker Carlson?

  Yep.

• 1:26:19Speaker 02

  Hollow points, 77 green. H and K 416.

• 1:26:23Tucker Carlson?

  How long between when you identified him and shot him?

• 1:26:27Speaker 02

  Probably second, maybe a second. Like the saying we had is, you have a second to convince me not to kill you. And he didn't do it.

• 1:26:37Tucker Carlson?

  And that was his bedroom?

• 1:26:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:38Tucker Carlson?

  What was his bedroom like?

• 1:26:40Speaker 02

  Uh, big bed, king bed. I think he and I think they were him, his daughters and his wife and young son were all in there. I think it was two daughters, I think.

• 1:26:51Tucker Carlson?

  At the time when you shot him, they were all there?

• 1:26:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were all there. Well, it was the daughter that actually said, finally, it was that's Sheikh Osama, you got him. That's before we did the Geronimo call. Cause we, uh, this is cool. We had a dude from another squadron who had been teaching himself Arabic. So he was already deployed with Blue Squadron and we were Red Squadron and we flew over to Jalalabad. He was there and because he taught himself Arabic, we're bringing you because you're a shooter. SEAL Team Six, you're coming. So congratulations. So he was the one that was speaking Arabic and even his buddies were giving him shit because we had stopped going to Iraq and we're just in Afghanistan. It's like, why are you still studying Arabic?

• 1:27:22Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly.

• 1:27:23Speaker 02

  You don't need it. Well, it's like the skydive. I might need it once. And, and the, the daughter was trying to say it wasn't him. She finally said, yeah, that's him. That's Sheikh Osama. You got him.

• 1:27:32Tucker Carlson?

  His daughter said that?

• 1:27:33Speaker 02

  Daughter said that. And then when we came over the radio forgotten country, Geronimo EKA. And that wasn't, we didn't, uh, we got shit for that too, because we said, we used the word Geronimo as a pro word. We didn't name him Geronimo. That would be an insult to Chief Geronimo. It was a pro word in honor of Chief Geronimo's. Instead of saying, hey, I'm in Bin Laden's room and he's dead. You say Geronimo EKA, meaning Geronimo means I am with Bin Laden right now. And you have different pro words. Instead of saying, hey, I'm at the front gate, you say something else.

• 1:28:00Tucker Carlson?

  How did the kids and the wife respond?

• 1:28:02Speaker 02

  Um, they were shocked. They were surprised. Then they were scared. Um, they were the same as every target. Um, they huddled in a corner and, and you know, you try to calm them down. Try to reassure them. You're not going to get hurt now. Just sit here. And then when you're leaving, you say, all right, stay here until the sun comes up. Uh, we do have aircraft, so don't go outside until Pakistani military gets here, then you'll be fine. We're taking him.

• 1:28:25Tucker Carlson?

  Is he the only person you took?

• 1:28:28Speaker 02

  We left everybody else there.

• 1:28:29Tucker Carlson?

  What else did you take?

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  We found a bunch of intel. We didn't know if he was running Al Qaeda, but he was. He had a, it might have been two or three offices. So we took, they, they had the old school towers for a home computer. So we crushed those, took the hard drives out. We found a bunch of CDs and a bunch of papers and anything electronic or written. We just, we just threw it in a bag and brought it back. And then, then we spread it up with the intel analysts when we got back. And they went through, I didn't really go through anything. I've heard rumors of missions and porn and all that stuff, but I think the porn might've been there because they were,

• 1:29:04Speaker 02

  they embedded missions on that. So if someone looked at it, they would just see porn, but not the mission they're trying to send, I guess. And again, that, that might not be what happened, but that's what someone told me, but I didn't go through any of the intel.

• 1:29:18Tucker Carlson?

  The inside of his house, was it like the house of a rich guy?

• 1:29:21Speaker 02

  No, it was, it was, it was kind of standard. Like, um, I think he might've been the only one with a bed bed. The rest of them had like floor mats. Just kind of like everywhere over there. And then, you know, there's animals and trash that they burn and it's not a, I mean, there's a garden. They were growing their food and three story house, but it wasn't, I mean, it, it looked like the outside. It was a stone inside. There wasn't a lot of decoration. There was a couple things hanging up, um, you know, Korans on shelves and shit like that, but.

• 1:29:44Tucker Carlson?

  How did it smell?

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  I don't really remember. It's when I got in there, it smelled like bombs going off because my guys had breached a few times. So it smelled like a training area. And but, and again, it was one of those things where you're just kind of taking a snapshot. I remember saying like, you remember this because this is going to be it. Like this is going to blow up. Just remember this. And then, you know, I killed Bin Laden. We got Bin Laden and I was just standing there. I'm, I'm going to go take a picture. And one of my guys came up to me and he goes, hey, you good? And I said, um, what do we do now? Cause we're still alive. And he's like, now we find the computers. Every night we do this hundreds of times, right? And I said, yeah, you're right. Holy shit. And he said, yeah, you just killed Osama bin Laden. Your life just changed. Now get to work. And I knew what work was. So we, we got to get him in a body bag, got to find the intel, bring him his body outside, blow up a helicopter, call in another helicopter, and then hopefully live for 90 minutes and get back to Afghanistan.

• 1:30:30Tucker Carlson?

  Did you take books?

• 1:30:33Speaker 02

  Possibly. I was more working on the computers. I was in the, um, I imagine, I'd imagine they took pretty much everything they could.

• 1:30:42Tucker Carlson?

  How many people were killed in the raid?

• 1:30:43Speaker 02

  Four. Um, one, two, three, four, five.

• 1:30:46Tucker Carlson?

  Five.

• 1:30:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, we killed, um, the courier, the other courier, his wife Khalid and then Osama.

• 1:30:51Tucker Carlson?

  What happened to his Osama bin Laden's body?

• 1:30:54Speaker 02

  Well, when we got back to Bagram, we flew him to Jalalabad. We showed him to the, the woman that found him. We showed him to-

• 1:31:01Tucker Carlson?

  The CIA targeter?

• 1:31:02Speaker 02

  Yep. She was there. She wanted to see him and she saw him, said, I guess I'm out of a job and left.

• 1:31:07Tucker Carlson?

  That's it?

• 1:31:08Speaker 02

  Didn't even stick around. She said, yeah, she just kind of looked down like, I guess I'm out of a fucking job. She was, the only reason we were there because of her and she gave up her life to find him. She was so cool. No husband, no kids, 20 hours a day, only on this. And once she saw him, that's it. Like when I saw her later, I said, cause every, no one at the agency believed her, really? Like 70% maybe? And when they got back, she said, like, everybody got awards. And I didn't even get a parking spot. Yeah, but we, we showed, um-

• 1:31:34Tucker Carlson?

  She sounds like a hard case.

• 1:31:35Speaker 02

  She's badass. She's, like, if anyone knows her, hire her. Like, I'm not gonna say her name or what she looks like, but yeah, hire, that's an important-

• 1:31:42Tucker Carlson?

  Have any idea what happened to her?

• 1:31:43Speaker 02

  No. I don't. I mean, I've heard, no, I don't know. Probably on Wall Street or something. She should be. But yeah, we brought him back to Jabad. We showed him to Admiral McRaven, um, who was awesome. Uh, and he, you know, we, yeah, we had a, just a moment looking at him. And I remember he put his hand on my neck, kind of like that. It was like a really, uh, just a cool team thing. Like, here's the boss, here's the guys, there's Bin Laden.

• 1:32:07Tucker Carlson?

  What was, what was Bin Laden wearing?

• 1:32:09Speaker 02

  He had on a, I think it was like pajamas, like white pajamas. Might've been gray. Uh, it's kind of hazy.

• 1:32:15Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:15Speaker 02

  For me. But then we brought him to Bagram, um, laid him out. Uh, they were doing the DNA tests. And this was a weird time for me too, because we're still in our gear. We laid out all of our intel. The smart people are going over that. The TV was on and, uh, they brought us breakfast sandwiches. And President Obama with a red tie came down the red carpet and he said, "Tonight I can report to the people and to the world, the United States conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda." I hear President Obama say Osama bin Laden. I looked at Osama bin Laden and I thought, how in the world did I get here from Butte, Montana? And then I had a bite of the sandwich. I'm this is the best breakfast sandwich I've ever had. And then they did that. And then we had, we handed him on and oh, and then we're looking

• 1:32:56Speaker 02

  at the TV and we're just like, say it that no one was hurt. You gotta say it, say it. And he finally said, no, Americans were hurt. Like, thank you. Because our parents were now watching this back home.

• 1:33:05Tucker Carlson?

  And they'd figured out by this point.

• 1:33:07Speaker 02

  At this point, yes. They because we well, I called my dad before I left on the mission. I couldn't even tell him what we were doing. I called him in my gear in Jalalabad. I grabbed one of the phones in one of the B huts. And I called him and I would call him on missions before. And I would just say, hey, gotta go to work, whatever. And he would always say, I wish I was going with you. And I would say, you know what, Dad, I wish you were too. And this one, I called him. And I just was saying, hey, you know, thanks for teaching me how to be a man.

• 1:33:30Speaker 02

  I gotta go to work. And he said, I wish I was going with you. And I said, well, I'm with some really good guys. Don't worry. And then I left. And he was at home and I'm getting a little emotional now. He was at home in a Walmart parking lot. And he sort of realized that we're going somewhere important. He didn't know I was overseas. And he went into Walmart and he ran into his sister, who's a registered nurse. And she saw him. She's like, and she my dad says, he was his two favorite words, apoplectic and catatonic. And she said, what's going on? And he goes, I don't know. I think, I think something's going on. And then we got back and he saw the TV and said, holy shit. Because my dad always thought that I was on the big mission. And and he's gonna think that was it. And he was, I even called

• 1:34:12Speaker 02

  my mom, I'd been joking with my mom my entire life, even in high school. I would say, don't worry about me, Mom, I'm here to do something important. I'm gonna be safe. Don't worry. I'm here to do something important. And I called her from Bagram. And I say, hey, Mom, you can start worrying. Because that important thing, I think, I think it just went down.

• 1:34:29Tucker Carlson?

  That's amazing.

• 1:34:29Speaker 02

  And then we handed him to the army and they they, they flew him out to a ship and threw him over, over into the ocean is what they told me.

• 1:34:36Tucker Carlson?

  Not only is that an amazing story, you did an amazing job telling it. How long after you killed Osama, did you get out of the Navy?

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  My end of obligated service was January of 12. So I could, I was gonna get out then. But then on August 6 of 11, extortion 17 was shot down.

• 1:34:57Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:34:58Speaker 02

  And we had 31 Americans on board and some Afghans. And we lost a lot of guys from SEAL Team Six on that. I knew. Pretty much everyone on that helicopter. So then I was definitely gonna get out because I want to see my daughters get married. And the unfortunate truth is-

• 1:35:12Tucker Carlson?

  So what, I mean, that changed your perspective?

• 1:35:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it can all, everything that is, everything that's ever mattered to you can end with one bullet.

• 1:35:21Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:22Speaker 02

  And a bullet never, never lies, and it needs to be right once. So, but then we also had to backfill those guys because we lost a troop of SEAL Team Six guys. So I went to a different squadron to deploy one more time. And my, my thought process, my thought process was, um, I came in through the front door, I'm gonna leave through the front door. So I'm gonna go to war one more time to prove that I didn't just come here to kill Bin Laden.

• 1:35:46Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 1:35:47Speaker 02

  I'm gonna do one more deployment. So I, and actually Bin Laden wasn't the last guy I killed with that gun. I went overseas again and, um, um, I went with Silver Squadron, we had a winter deployment. Um, got in a couple fights, but it was winter in Afghanistan, so not a lot. My, my, actually, my last mission was an L ambush, which is the oldest tactic in war. The only time I've ever done is when you set up an L and someone either walks or drives right into it and you got them two ways. So we were able to do that with a, with a vehicle. We were watching a vehicle start in this village, drive around a mountain.

• 1:36:19Tucker Carlson?

  This is Afghanistan.

• 1:36:20Speaker 02

  In Afghanistan. And then they were, they were waiting for Americans to ambush. And Americans didn't show up on Monday, so they went back to their house. They did it again on Tuesday, and then we're watching them now, and then Wednesday and Thursday. And then I remember watching them saying, if they do it tomorrow on Friday, their day of prayer, they're definitely gonna do it Saturday. So if they do it tomorrow, we're gonna set up on them Saturday. So they did it Friday, now we're gonna set up on them. And this is the winter, it was a car, and no one else is driving this road. So we just, we inserted, we set up on these rocks, put some snipers up, so we have an L ambush, and we're gonna wait for them. And everything, everything that can go wrong will, no matter what you're doing. The mission was so simple. We're, someone is gonna be in a plane watching them, and then they're gonna give us a green light, yellow light, red,

• 1:37:04Speaker 02

  and that's when we're gonna pop out. And even, I was even telling the army when we're selling, I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna pop out and I'm gonna stop the car. And he's like, what if he doesn't stop? I'm like, I'm gonna shoot him. This is pretty easy. I'm just gonna tell him to stop, and then if he doesn't, I'm gonna kill him, or the sniper as well. Um, so we set up there, and naturally, their car wouldn't start. So we're, we actually took out cigars and lit them up, waiting for them to try to figure out how they're, to start their car. So they're on this other side of this mountain, we're waiting over here, car won't start. Like I almost want to walk over there and help him put it, put it in gear and jump it and then I'll run back to the rocks. But then we're waiting on him and we're starting to get the calls and a van full of women and children drives right past us. And it's like, what was that? Like, where did they come from? Like, imagine if we weren't well trained and we just lit up an entire family for no reason.

• 1:37:47Speaker 02

  So a van drove by and then these dudes finally drive up and we said, you know, we step out and I tell him to stop and he didn't want to stop. So we killed him. Him and he like, they tried to get out, cut their RPGs and we killed five of them, I think. And that was it, last mission.

• 1:38:01Tucker Carlson?

  With the same rifle you used to shoot bin Laden? What happened to that rifle?

• 1:38:04Speaker 02

  Then I brought it back and I asked them if I could keep it and they said, no. So I had to, I turned the gun in and I don't know if someone else got it. I don't know if they hung it up somewhere. I don't know what.

• 1:38:14Tucker Carlson?

  You have no idea what happened to the rifle?

• 1:38:15Speaker 02

  I kept the firing pin though. I have that, but they kept the gun. So they might've given it to some, one of those radio guys that is going to skydive for the first time. He just happened to be carrying the bin Laden gun.

• 1:38:26Tucker Carlson?

  That's pretty funny. Did you tell them this is the bin Laden gun?

• 1:38:28Speaker 02

  Everybody knew. Yeah. And even the gunner's man, he was cool. He let me keep the firing pin, but even the gunner's man is, I was like, easy. Come on dude, let me keep the gun. I'll give you $10,000 for the gun.

• 1:38:37Tucker Carlson?

  What kind of gun was it?

• 1:38:37Speaker 02

  18K 416. Good gun. Never had an issue. Never had a jam with that gun.

• 1:38:42Tucker Carlson?

  So you come back from your last appointment to Afghanistan and then?

• 1:38:46Speaker 02

  Well, then I get, I get done and I have, I had a bunch of terminal leave, they call it. You get 30 days of paid leave a year and I hadn't taken any. So I have a like 90 days of leave where I can still get paid, which is good because now I have until August to figure out how to get a job. Cause it's weird to leave the military without a degree because I know guys now that would, they'd rather go to war than fill out a resume because war makes sense. The resume doesn't. I don't know what shoes to wear with a suit, crap like that. So I, I had to learn what to do and it just, I'm fortunate that I can tell a story. I'm fortunate that I can manage stress and, and solve problems. I got on the speaking circuit and again, just being present, got offered with leading authorities out of DC.

• 1:39:30Speaker 02

  And the first speech I gave was to, I think 2,000 airline pilots. And I had no experience speaking, never taken a class. And I remember being backstage, looking out at this audience. I'm like, I called my agent. I'm like, hey, I've been to combat, but am I going to faint when I get out on stage? I have never been looked at like this. And she said to me, here's what you do. Here's the key. Three glasses of red wine right now, not two and not four.

• 1:39:54Tucker Carlson?

  That was her prescription.

• 1:39:55Speaker 02

  Three, and you'll be fine. And then I didn't have them, but I walked on stage and they were pilots. So there was a lot of Navy guys, a lot of Marines in the audience. And one of the Marines, former Marines, he kind of heckled me. And that clicked like, oh, they're friendly. Okay, good, good. This is a fun crowd. And so I gave my first speech like that. And then just, and speaking is just, you can't really market it. You just, if you're good, someone in the audience hears you and hires you.

• 1:40:15Tucker Carlson?

  That's exactly.

• 1:40:15Speaker 02

  So it's like I did one in November and then two in December and then five in January and then 10 in February. And I just started speaking and then helped guys transition.

• 1:40:24Tucker Carlson?

  How was your transition?

• 1:40:26Speaker 02

  I mean, it was difficult because, you know, I don't necessarily miss the missions, but I miss the guys.

• 1:40:31Tucker Carlson?

  Of course.

• 1:40:32Speaker 02

  The skydive trips to Arizona, there's nothing like those. You know, skydiving with 30 of your best friends, going out to dinner when you're done jumping, talking about the, how close that jump was and then jumping the next day. And, and you know, I miss that. I miss the workouts, the morning stuff, because even at SEAL Team Two, we, every Tuesday, rain or shine, we had the two mile ocean swim. And I'm talking like February in Virginia Beach is not fun to do it. But the bus ride to get there is hilarious, just because every, it just sucks. And we all know we're just going to take a big bite of this shit sandwich, but we're all in it together. Let's go swim. I miss that.

• 1:41:02Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:03Speaker 02

  If I never do an ocean swim again, that's fine, but I do miss that bus ride.

• 1:41:07Tucker Carlson?

  What, what is PTSD?

• 1:41:10Speaker 02

  Uh, PTSD is real. And it takes for me and a lot of my friends, a lot of my Marines, a lot of SEALs, some of them don't have it, but for me, it seemed like a seven year thing. Like right around the seven year mark, it starts to sink in what you were doing.

• 1:41:25Tucker Carlson?

  Seven years.

• 1:41:25Speaker 02

  Seven years out of the Navy is when it started to hit me.

• 1:41:28Tucker Carlson?

  Really?

• 1:41:29Speaker 02

  And that's just.

• 1:41:30Tucker Carlson?

  Had you ever had any symptoms of what you would now describe as PTSD when you were serving in the Navy?

• 1:41:35Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:41:36Tucker Carlson?

  Or for the first seven years out?

• 1:41:37Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:41:38Tucker Carlson?

  Interesting.

• 1:41:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it just, it just seemed like that's what we were supposed to be doing. But then, you know, you get older and you realize that, you know, I was in houses killing people in front of their families. I mean, even to the point where you're like, okay, I did kill that guy in front of his two sons. Now did I get rid of a terrorist or I make two new ones? What are they gonna do when they get, what are they doing now, now that they're in their twenties? I mean, they're not gonna forget me killing their dad in front of them. Uh, the guy that I killed in front of his wife, he's not, and I killed his brother right before I killed him in front of his wife. They're, they still remember that. They still hate my guts. So you start to think about, I mean, I'm convinced I never killed the wrong person. But also, I, I started to think, could I, could I have talked them out of that? Cause the one guy that I talk about, I, I tried to talk him out of getting his gun. Like he got up and was trying to kick me.

• 1:42:20Tucker Carlson?

  What, what, where was this?

• 1:42:21Speaker 02

  It's in Ramadi, Iraq. We, uh, we just went into a house and as soon as we went in to the, it was a big like Saddam mansion type place. Soon as I went in, there's a guy with a gun, so I blasted him. Then other guys were coming in. There's an open door here and I, I did a one man entry, which you shouldn't do, but I went in there and there's a guy in bed with his wife. And I'm standing above him and, uh, he, I can see a gun and he's right there and he's waking up and he like, he threw a kick or something. And I remember thinking, okay, he just woke up. Give him a courtesy 10 seconds, cause he, that's, he's groggy. And then he starts looking at the gun and I was like, no, don't, don't do that. Don't do, and he went for it and I killed him. And then I put a white light on him and his wife now sees him. And so she screams. And then I'm like, man, I, why, and then later I started to think, you know, why did I shoot that guy?

• 1:43:06Speaker 02

  Well, because he went for his gun, but why did he go for a gun? Well, cause I'm in his room at two in the morning. And then you start thinking, why am I in his room? Well, George Bush had a problem with Saddam Hussein, so we invaded Iraq. And that's why I just killed that guy. And again, everything that ever mattered to that dude, doesn't matter anymore, cause I just took it all away from him. So that, and that just starts to, you know, that you could, that can eat you up sometime, me, anyway. Some guys don't have a problem with any of it. And he was, he was a terrorist, so whatever. But you still think about it. And the, the thing that I bring up too, is if I had met that dude in Paris over coffee, did he know a joke? You know, that's, that's the weird shit. And then for me, it's PTSD is, is anger, like a quick anger and then, um, hyper awareness, like even if I'm downstairs making a sandwich in my kitchen, I gotta be looking at the doors. Just to make sure no one's coming in, you know, yelling at the wife for not locking the door.

• 1:43:51Speaker 02

  Arm the alarm, here's the shotguns, here's how it works. She probably doesn't need to know all that, but that's just, that's part of it because one of my sayings is it's a large planet, but it's a small world. And people can get here really, really quickly and we've done it to them. And they can do it to us and it's one of those things that it's so dark and bad and I know what people are capable of doing to each other and I don't want to see it again. But you know, if they come here, I mean, I'm ready for them. But you get an October 7th type thing in this country, people are not prepared for what they might see. Cause it's people are, people are worse than animals as far as violence. We can do some of the most horrific shit to each other. That, that, that gets to me to the point where like I do IbaGain now, I do psychedelics. I'm actually going back down with a company called Ambio in a couple of weeks to do IbaGain.

• 1:44:36Speaker 02

  I do it once a year just because when I, when I start to get a short temper or just like if I, if I have to have green noise on to sleep, so I can't hear what's going on in my head. It's just time to get back into the psychedelics. And what the psychedelics do is they get, they get, they get me structured. So there's like a four, four or five month window for IbaGain that it, it works. And that's when you're supposed to structure yourself. So like, for me, it'll be the barefoot walking in the grass at least five minutes after you wake up and before you go to bed. And then meditation, yoga and working out. I mean, you gotta work out, just get, get that, get the endorphins going. But IbaGain helps you get back in that. And then once you're in that system, then it, you can stick with it. So that's, that's how it helps them. But yeah, PTSD can be anything.

• 1:45:17Speaker 02

  I've, I've, you know, I've seen guys try to drink their way out of it, which is horrible. Cause it's like, I've had friends say, yeah, I'll take a drink of alcohol to get rid of the pain, but then I gotta have one more drink of alcohol to get rid of the pain and then I'll wake up the next day while I have a hangover, but you know, we'll get rid of it, another drink. And it's a vicious cycle in there. And then, but the alcohol doesn't help. The psychedelics do, and that's why they're not legal here because it works. And I don't know why they won't help the veterans with that. I think they're working on it now. I know there's a, there's a company also in Texas called Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions. And they partner with Ambio and we get veterans and first responders to Mexico, but we should have it in New York at the VA, we should have it in Virginia and California. Veterans should be able to get IbaGain administered medically. And that's how they do it in Mexico. It's a doctor, you're on a heart monitor, they watch you the whole time and it just,

• 1:46:01Speaker 02

  it gets in your brain, it shows you stuff and it really, it kind of cleans out the closet. It's, it's terrifying.

• 1:46:08Speaker 02

  I begane is, DMT is not, it's awesome, but it breaks everything up and then it kind of pushes that out for you.

• 1:46:13Tucker Carlson?

  Why is it terrifying?

• 1:46:14Speaker 02

  Because it opens your, like when people say you use 30% of your brain, it's like you use 30% for tennis and then a different 30% for chess or for whatever, but this one opens all of them and it all talks. And so stuff that you've suppressed, trauma as far back as your childhood, it'll show it to you that you wanted to stop thinking about. And then you have to deal, like you have to deal with it. Like the medicine shows you things and you can tell it. I don't want, I'm not ready to see that right now, but if it keeps, like for me, it's demons. If it keeps showing you stuff, you have to deal with it right now.

• 1:46:45Tucker Carlson?

  Demons?

• 1:46:46Speaker 02

  Demons, like, like black gum, yellow teeth demons. Yeah. Just staring at me. At first, and then it gets rid of them. But-

• 1:46:53Tucker Carlson?

  What do you think those are?

• 1:46:54Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't know. It's hard to say. I mean, it's just an evil face, but it's a bunch of them. And then with your mind working, if you're-

• 1:47:04Tucker Carlson?

  Do you think they're real?

• 1:47:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:07Tucker Carlson?

  I think so too.

• 1:47:08Speaker 02

  I do. I think, I think there's, there's real evil in the world too. And guys like me that were never supposed to be killing people, they're gonna, they're gonna taunt me a little bit. But when your mind gets creative-

• 1:47:16Tucker Carlson?

  What do you mean, guys like you who were never supposed to be-

• 1:47:18Speaker 02

  Well, I wasn't supposed to be a killer. I was supposed to be a chef. I was supposed to be a stockbroker. So, I mean, I have a big heart. Like I don't want people to go to war. You know, I don't want people to be shooting each other. I don't want bombs dropping on innocent people.

• 1:47:31Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:47:32Speaker 02

  But, but when you, under Ibegane, as creative as you can get, you can start thinking of horrible shit. And because you're in, you're in a state, you actually see it. You can see it. It's, it's a vision of like, like awful, awful shit. And so you have to deal with that. And, but it goes back and forth and the medicine kind of like guides you. And the coolest thing it said to me was, the only people who go to hell are people who think they deserve to. So it's a, it's a healer. But it's just, it's, it's really scary. And then there's a 24 hour period where you're just, it's like a really bad hangover, you're depleted. So you get a bunch of IVs and stuff, you do a Reiki massage, which is an energy massage. And then they give you five MEO DMT, which is the god molecule.

• 1:48:13Speaker 02

  And you go to, you go wherever heaven is and you see it for, you lose track of time. The first time I did five MEO, I asked them when I was done, how many days have I been asleep? And they said a minute and a half, because you lose track of every, like you can't describe it. And I've heard other people talk about psychedelics, you can't- It's the most beautiful time lapse, like you lose track of time and I get, I feel like I'm being lifted by my stomach and there's like, there's family everywhere and a maternal voice and it was telling me I was home, but in a language I didn't understand, but I could, I couldn't understand it, but I knew what she was saying. And like my grandmother, my dead grandmother was there and she was just saying, we're not waiting for you. We're just here. Like, like we're here now. Like, and it sounds crazy right now, but it's, it's, it's, it's

• 1:48:58Tucker Carlson?

  Doesn't sound crazy.

• 1:48:59Speaker 02

  It'll really, it really opens your mind to what next. It's, I mean, everyone that's done it too. I like, I went through with, I'm talking Sergeant Major and Delta Force guys, 30 years in the army and they finished this Ibergen Reiki DMT and they, they told me to give a message to Amber Capone. She just, she runs vets, Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions. Please tell Amber that she saved my life because I was going to kill myself next week. This was my last shot at doing something for myself and it cured, it's cured heroin addiction overnight. Like dope sickness. Like I heard a story of a woman that was addicted to heroin and she did Ibergen, didn't have any visions, just slept. And she said, I don't think it worked. And they said, well, are you dope sick? And she goes, no. And he

• 1:49:44Speaker 02

  goes, it worked. So now just set your patterns. So it's, I mean, every veteran that's seen combat should, shit, everyone that's had any trauma in their life should, should get a shot at Ibergen. Cause it's a, it's a life changer.

• 1:49:59Tucker Carlson?

  What are the symptoms of PTSD? You said anger and paranoia. I'm paraphrasing.

• 1:50:03Speaker 02

  Just awareness.

• 1:50:04Tucker Carlson?

  Awareness.

• 1:50:04Speaker 02

  But like over aware. Like I can't concentrate on the show because I'm always looking at the door. And then the anger, I mean, that's, that's not me. I don't like getting angry, but I'll just, I'll get really pissed off and I'm

• 1:50:14Tucker Carlson?

  Where do you think that comes from?

• 1:50:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's, it's just gotta be all the, all the stuff that we saw because even, you know, shooting people is one thing. Not all of them bother me. A couple of them bother me just because you kind of what if I did it differently. But then, you know, you see other dead people, you, you have friends, like the, the worst conversation is when someone would come up to me and say, hey, did you know Scott Neal? What do you mean, did I know? What happened? You know, did you know Rob Reeves? Yes. What happened? You know, just did you know? It's like, I knew them. What happened? You know, did you know Neil Roberts was the first one I heard? Fifi, the guy that fell out of the helicopter, um, red team, um, in Afghanistan. And I, yeah, I knew him. He's, he's the first SEAL I met. He brought me, we went to Arby's my first day because he was an older guy and he brought two new guys to Arby's to tell us what SEAL Team Two was like. Yeah, I know him.

• 1:51:01Speaker 02

  I knew him. So just losing friends and knowing their families, it's just, it's, I think it's a lot. I mean, and it's like anything, like just the older you get, the more shit you start to realize.

• 1:51:10Tucker Carlson?

  Of course.

• 1:51:11Speaker 02

  But there's, I mean, there's a lot of dramatic stuff, even like, I remember, um, a house I went into in Iraq, and we're going into two, three in the morning. I went into the wrong house and the only people inside was a woman and her, her young daughter. And I'm standing, they came out of the room to look at me. Here's some dude with a green face and a gun, getting muddle over their white carpet. Wrong house. And I remember looking at him, just thinking, I understand why they hate us. Like, I wouldn't want to wake up to this guy in my house.

• 1:51:37Tucker Carlson?

  No, not at all.

• 1:51:37Speaker 02

  And just thinking, what did I, did I traumatize that poor young girl? For nothing? So just shit like that. Maybe I'm too sensitive, but we, they asked a lot of us. We did a lot of stuff over there.

• 1:51:48Tucker Carlson?

  What are you haunted by?

• 1:51:51Speaker 02

  Um.

• 1:51:52Tucker Carlson?

  Is it, are you more haunted? Well, I can see probably haunted by everything. Why wouldn't you be? But are what, is it the killing or the seeing?

• 1:51:59Speaker 02

  No, it's, you know what it is? It's, it's haunted by stuff that's probably not going to happen, but I'm anticipating it. The, uh, the October 7th style attack on a gun free zone in Arizona, when suicide bombers go to an elementary school. Um, when the sleeper cells activate and they, they're cutting heads off somewhere. That bothers me. It doesn't bother me if they come after me. I can handle them. I got them.

• 1:52:19Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:20Speaker 02

  And I'm so morbid sometimes it's like, well, if they get me, at least that's an ending, finally. But, uh, no, I mean, I'm, you know, I got shotguns, like we said yesterday, whatever. But just thinking about, I, I don't want, I don't like the idea of innocent Americans getting killed here just because, uh, political, uh, ideologies left our borders wide open. And they're here and they haven't forgotten about us. They, they've always said to us that, uh, you know, the Americans have the clocks, but we have the time. And they're not going to forget. They, they hit the World Trade Center in 93, they came back in 2001.

• 1:52:49Speaker 02

  So that bothers me and it's almost like the idea of something bad happening bothers me and it probably never will. You shouldn't be worried about stuff that won't happen, but that's part of my PTSD.

• 1:52:58Tucker Carlson?

  It's always struck me as weird that combat veterans kill themselves, which they do, of a much higher rate than noncombat veterans, but you know, they survived and some of them really beat the odds to survive.

• 1:53:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:53:13Tucker Carlson?

  And then they went up killing themselves. Why?

• 1:53:16Speaker 02

  I think, again, it's the, they can't live with the guilt. Or I know some guys that killed themselves because they had traumatic brain injury and they can't live with the headaches.

• 1:53:25Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:25Speaker 02

  I begin cares that too. I mean, guys need a shot at this. They don't need to be taking all the pills the VA gives them.

• 1:53:31Tucker Carlson?

  What do you mean the guilt?

• 1:53:34Speaker 02

  I think just talking to some guys, like some Marines I know from Fallujah, just the killing, the watching guys get killed. It's like, could I have saved my friend? Like, I'm fortunate. I don't think I've ever killed the wrong person. I've actually never seen one of my friends hurt in front of me, which is crazy going into that much combat. But some guys have. And some guy, I mean, I was talking to guys that were trying to put their buddy back together when he was blown in half, like his best friend, like just that guilt. I'm tired of living through this.

• 1:54:01Tucker Carlson?

  Is there guilt over killing?

• 1:54:04Speaker 02

  Not, I don't even think even guilt. I do think about that one guy every day, but again, he was a bad guy. But could I have talked him out of it? Like, was it worth it? Probably, maybe not, but the unknown. And then just wondering, you know, again, wondering, how did that affect them? How did that woman that the dog bit, you know, bit her arm or whatever?

• 1:54:24Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:24Speaker 02

  And just, I mean, because again, why are we here and why are we doing this to this, this group of people right now? And it was, it was never the weapons of mass destruction. And now I'm fighting for the guy that came in the room behind me, the guy who's in front of me. That's who I'm fighting for and we're going to win.

• 1:54:38Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:39Speaker 02

  And Americans win every, every fight toe to toe. But what's the reason we're here?

• 1:54:44Tucker Carlson?

  You said this, this hit you and it commonly hits people. I think you said seven years ish, years after they're safe and living in some leafy suburb with a pretty wife and like, everything's fine, but they're not fine inside. How many conversations did you have in all the years you were in all these 12 deployments or whatever about why you were there, about the meaning of taking another man's life?

• 1:55:07Speaker 02

  We didn't talk about it at all. Not when we were in. It was just the job. The only person that brought it up was one of our personal trainers. Cause we have these trainers that will, you know, do everything from strength coaches to helping you stretch a bad back type stuff. And I remember he said, every one of you guys has changed. You just don't realize it. Like every single one of you guys, you're not the same as you were when you checked in here for selection. Like you guys are all different now. And it was just because of the, because of the missions, whether, whether they admit it or not. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a lot. We were good at it.

• 1:55:37Tucker Carlson?

  Well, undoubtedly, you know, the best. Yeah. I just think it's interesting that the US government or your officers, I mean, why is it, why is it left to your personal trainer to note something that obvious?

• 1:55:49Speaker 02

  And I don't, I don't, um, I don't think they have interest in, in, in, in mental health or even helping you separate because you're not sticking around to do the job they need you to do. And then they might be getting better now, but I doubt it. That they're certainly not doing psychedelic work.

• 1:56:05Tucker Carlson?

  What about the moral questions? Like how many people you served with were, like, you know, faithful believers in God?

• 1:56:12Speaker 02

  Um, a low percent, uh, maybe 5%.

• 1:56:17Tucker Carlson?

  Wow.

• 1:56:18Speaker 02

  But the, the further we're out now, more guys are going back.

• 1:56:22Tucker Carlson?

  I've noticed.

• 1:56:22Speaker 02

  A lot of Christians, a lot of, I'm Catholic and I'm going back to church. Now I didn't go to church. I don't, the only time I went to church in the Navy was at funerals. And it doesn't make any sense. You think I would have been better with Jesus?

• 1:56:33Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:56:33Speaker 02

  Doing that. And even when they would bring a pastor out to pray before a mission, we're like, whatever, let's go kill these fuckers. But now it's kind of like, all right, maybe take a rap off that too.

• 1:56:43Tucker Carlson?

  Fair.

• 1:56:45Speaker 02

  But yeah, it's um.

• 1:56:46Tucker Carlson?

  I guess I'm making a point, which is it seems like they're treating you like animals or machines. They're not considering the effect on you. That's just sorry to say that, but that's the way.

• 1:56:56Speaker 02

  No, they, they, I mean, they cared about our professional development. They cared about us going to sniper school.

• 1:57:00Tucker Carlson?

  Of course, right.

• 1:57:01Speaker 02

  Doing training, but it, I can't remember. I mean, they, okay, they started to get good with retreats. I remember they would do some retreats, like you get to take you, they would pay for you and your wife and kids to go to like Great Wolf Lodge and do the water park. And, and they would have classes about like, it was more marriage counseling because we're all nuts anyway. So they did, they did, they, I don't want to say they didn't do anything, but they, they certainly aren't keying on. It's almost like if, if someone's got a psychological problem, then do we, do we trust them to be the lead jumper on that jump? Do we trust them to be the one man, you know?

• 1:57:32Tucker Carlson?

  Did you see people go crazy?

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw, I saw people freeze. It, it's a different animal.

• 1:57:38Tucker Carlson?

  What does that mean, freeze?

• 1:57:40Speaker 02

  Just freeze, like if someone shoots an AK-47 at you in a house, it's really loud and scary.

• 1:57:46Tucker Carlson?

  Can't imagine.

• 1:57:46Speaker 02

  And I've seen guys just stop. It's, it's not, I mean, nothing on them. People react differently. I, I just say, I was just dumb enough to go after them. But some, some guy, I mean, and some guys quit, some guys like, I'm not doing this anymore. As soon as, well, after Neil Roberts fell out of helicopter, a lot of poster child SEALs hit it, beat it.

• 1:58:05Tucker Carlson?

  What, can you tell that story quickly? I, I'm not familiar with it.

• 1:58:08Speaker 02

  Um, that's when they were going after Al Qaeda, Operation Anaconda.

• 1:58:11Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:11Speaker 02

  And it was mainly, it was like the 10th Mountain, some Army Infantry, Delta and SEAL Team Six. And they were trying to put SEAL snipers on top of a mountain called Taka Gar. And they, and they're being flown by TF-160, the best pilots in the world. Al Mac was actually flying, the best pilot in the world. Razor Zero Three is his book, his stud. He's, he's so cool. I had a shirt made that said, I know Al Mac, like he's a badass. But, and he saved everyone's life, but when they were inserting, they started taking fire, they got hit with an RPG. And Neil was on the, on the, um, the, the ramp. He was going to be the first guy off. He's carrying a saw, squad automatic weapon, belt fed machine gun, and he fell out. And he fell so hard, he actually bent, we have the gun, it bent the barrel. So he's without a gun now on the mountain.

• 1:58:54Speaker 02

  The helicopter, helicopter takes off without realizing he fell out. So now Neil's by himself with Al Qaeda and they, they did him dirty. He, he fought, fought for a while, but he, he ended up getting killed pretty bad. And then they came back in to get him. And that's when, um. Uh, Ritz Labinsky and Chappy was John Chapman, CCT guy who they were both awarded medals of honor. John Chapman should have been awarded two medals of honor for what he did on the mountain. He actually ended, they ended up fighting it out close quarters, like inside bunkers with each other. They found Neil, uh, they ended up, they left John Chapman, Rangers went up and got him later. Really shitty fight, but Neil was the first casualty that everybody knew and loved. Like he, like his, his O course time, he was the fastest obstacle course runner at Buzz is on his headstone.

• 1:59:39Speaker 02

  So he was the first one that died and that's when a lot of guys started like, when we started training after that fight, everything that we'd been trained on, change it. Cause you're not going to do that stupid shit. You're not going to stand up, pirouette and say center peel. You're going to get the fuck down because these bullets are coming right here. Uh, so change everything. Now we're going back and we're fighting in the mountains with guys who've been fighting their whole lives. To the point where like, I, I, I remember fighting guys where saying to my guys as we're getting ambushed, this is going to end one of two ways. We're going to die or we're going to win. That's it. And save one bullet for yourself. Cause you do not want to get captured by these guys. So it's, it's, it's very intense. I mean, I'm, I'm in one fight I was in, I ran into a, a guy that looked like me. Red hair, red beard, shooting a belt fed machine gun at me yelling, Allah Akbar.

• 2:00:23Speaker 02

  And that realization is, okay, that's a Chechen. And those dudes are very serious. That's Al Qaeda, like a hundred percent Al Qaeda. And you, you, you're going to have to kill him or kill yourself. Cause it's on. And, um, yeah, that, I mean, I was on a border bombing. Did you kill him? Yeah, with, uh, the air force. We ended up getting, um, we got ambushed for a full hour. I, I'd actually, um, I'd heard about from Vietnam guys, they used to wear their, we used to wear gear in lines, like third line, first line, second line, third line. Uh, first line gear is on your body. It's the most important shit you have. So it's on your belt in your pockets. Um, so your second line is your second most important, like bullets, grenades and water. Third line is your least important stuff in a backpack, like foot powder, extra socks, sleeping bag.

• 2:01:08Speaker 02

  The reason you carry it that way is so if you're running for your life, you can start getting rid of it. Third line for a second line, you can sprint. And I'd never heard of anyone doing it, but I dropped it and had to go to my radio guy. Cause we're getting ambushed on this mountain. It was just a horrible day. Um, and I told them to call, you know, we gotta, I can see this checkpoint up top where the leadership is. I want to bomb them first. And they said, well, we don't have any, uh, there's no air support. We got nothing. So we had to lay there and take fire as they're surrounding us and they got close. Like, I mean, Tracers flying in between my hand and my face, like in between two tracers is five real bullets, zip. Where you're almost thinking like, um, now, is it gonna hurt when I get shot in the face? Or do you feel it? Or do you go to heaven? Or what's what happens when

• 2:01:49Speaker 02

  you'd like, that's like airburst RPGs and stuff going off? And finally, he'd snap me out of by saying, I got one. I got a jet. And I said, cool. Hit that checkpoint. And he said, I can't because the batteries just died. And I'm a big believer in not micromanaging. And I said, change the batteries. He said, I can't. I'm not carrying the spares. Remember you are. I'm like, oh, shit. It's in the backpack. I dropped 100 meters that way. Now I gotta run and get that damn thing as they're shooting at me here. And that, you know, got the batteries and threw them to him. And he called in, I think it was a B1. Because he said, bombs away two minutes out. And like, two minutes out, what did space shuttle drop these things? We need them on us. And then you just hear him sizzling in like bacon. And then we just start bombing the side of this mountain. And they start running back into Pakistan. We pursued him into Pakistan and bombed them for three hours. Because we could, we had

• 2:02:34Speaker 02

  positive identification troops in contact. So we can bomb them. But then we get back. And Pakistan, we killed 11 Pakistani soldiers, and I don't know how many Al Qaeda. And they started saying an unprovoked ambush, Americans started bombing Pakistan. So the boss I talked to said, well, here's the deal, because I was the ground force commander for that. And he goes, Well, you're either gonna get a Silver Star, or you're going to Leavenworth. So we'll let you know. It's like, when? Like, why do we three weeks to find if I'm going to jail now? But yeah.

• 2:03:00Tucker Carlson?

  Did you get the Silver Star?

• 2:03:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was my first. I got two.

• 2:03:07Speaker 02

  But I mean, again, with those, it's not, it's almost like I'd give the Silver Star back to not have that memory.

• 2:03:12Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, no, I bet. So when you're tormented by what we refer to as PTSD, like, what are you thinking?

• 2:03:21Speaker 02

  I wouldn't say tormented. It's just more, it's just the awareness and the, um, just, just thinking thoughts that I don't need to be thinking, just, um, knowing what if, if, if someone got to someone I loved, what they would do. And I don't like thinking about that. So it almost, again, not tormented, more of a protector, like an over protector.

• 2:03:43Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 2:03:43Speaker 02

  And, you know, just makes, you know, make sure everyone has guns.

• 2:03:47Tucker Carlson?

  So that's a lot to go through, you know, in your 40s, you know?

• 2:03:51Speaker 02

  Well, and to consider, like, I just joined to get out of town. It's like that, it's like that poster, the dude chucking a grenade and says, I just joined for the college money.

• 2:04:00Tucker Carlson?

  So given everything you've just told us for the last two hours, how do you feel when you're driving in your car, looking at your phone, and you see some political figure saying, hey, let's have a war with country X?

• 2:04:12Speaker 02

  Well, a good indicator is if anyone's referred to as a warhawk, they've never been to war. And they just love the idea of the military industrial complex. They're going to get paid, their friends are going to get paid, they have no skin in the game. And they've never been up close when, I mean, getting bombed in a house you're in has got to be the worst thing ever, buried alive in that heat. And they just love doing that because we'll get a contract to build more bombs. And just the threat, I mean, as long as I've been alive, there's either been war or a threat of war. And if you keep people afraid, we'll slowly give up our liberty. The patriarchs sounded great on 9/12, but a week later, it's like, wait, what are you watching? Why are you watching us now?

• 2:04:55Tucker Carlson?

  Did you guys ever talk about that?

• 2:04:56Speaker 02

  No, because it was red, white, and blue and apple pie. Like, we're Americans and we're the good guys.

• 2:05:01Tucker Carlson?

  When you were in the service, like, the whole time, you never?

• 2:05:03Speaker 02

  No, I didn't question Iraq. It's like, I wanted to go. Like, let's get, get me in there before this ends.

• 2:05:08Tucker Carlson?

  When did you start rethinking?

• 2:05:10Speaker 02

  About seven years.

• 2:05:13Tucker Carlson?

  You're the most famous trigger puller in the war on terror. I think that's fair to say. So, and a lot of positive reinforcement because people are impressed by your bravery and amazed by all the things that you saw, and you are kind of the Forrest Gump of the war on terror. I think that's true. But at what point did you start to question, like, what was that?

• 2:05:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, seven years. I know, after Iraq, after we pulled that, started to pull out and ISIS was formed, it was like, at first for me, it was more of a, we never should have invaded, but we also shouldn't have left. Like that. And then you got that convoy of ISIS coming in from Tikrit, it's like, bomb them, we have AT-10s, that's ISIS, kill them all. But they didn't. And then ISIS turned into ISIS and, you know, it's all part of the Islamic Jihad, it's all the, you know, ISIS, and even though they're different sects, Hamas has a lot, all those, everyone down to the Houthis, it's all, you know, but then they're, but then they're fighting us because we're there. Guys were leaving countries like Jordan and Syria to go to Iraq because well, we can fight Americans and I got nothing else going on. It's easier to kill them there than it is to get to Afghanistan.

• 2:06:19Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, of course.

• 2:06:20Speaker 02

  And so we're just fighting to fight. You know, we forgot about W and Bs about a couple of months into it. And then it turns into a surge and it turns into, well, we gotta kill ISIS and well, we gotta kill Zarkawi. Well, we gotta kill, you know, it's first it's Hussein, Ude and Qusay, and then it's Zarkawi, and then it's now it's ISIS, and then it's Baghdadi. And then you got Qasem Soleimani from Iran, and then you got the Iranian influence everywhere in Afghanistan, you know, they're all in Pakistan. Al Qaeda's working with Iran, the Sunni, the Shia, all together. It's like it's, you know, it's a mess. And, well, I mean, hopefully now it's gonna get better. I mean.

• 2:06:53Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, well, that's always, you know, that's always the hope. We're commanded to hope.

• 2:06:56Speaker 02

  If the bombs in Iran worked, great. I mean, you know, Iran's one of those things where I don't want them to get a nuclear weapon, for sure.

• 2:07:04Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, for sure.

• 2:07:05Speaker 02

  And but then I was also saying, if you're gonna bomb them, you better be all in and be right. This intel cannot be wrong. And they hit them, and it's like, well, I mean, and again, I wasn't necessar- I definitely didn't want a land war in Iran, but if you're gonna, now that you hit them, now I'm 100% in with you. Because it doesn't matter why we're here, we are. Did it work? Because you're betting a lot on that. And if, yeah, I don't want troops on the ground there.

• 2:07:30Tucker Carlson?

  What would that look like?

• 2:07:32Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it will look like everything. We go in, we kick someone's ass, but then we decide a nation build. And that's where they get us. No one's gonna mess with us. But our, like, the Marine Corps is not there to build schools. Marine Corps is gonna break stuff, kill people. And then the way we handled Iran is great. Punch them in the face and tell them no. And then leave. And that's, or destroy the whole country. That's it. But this whole nation building, we've proven, I mean, it didn't work in Vietnam, we're still, we're still in a conflict with Korea. What happened in Grenada? What happened in Panama? What did we do in the first Gulf War, Second Gulf War? Afghanistan, you know, we got Bin Laden, but he was in Pakistan. You know, why are we giving money to Pakistan? If they're harboring terrorists, you know, it's very complex.

• 2:08:13Tucker Carlson?

  Why are we doing that?

• 2:08:14Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't know why we give Egypt all that money. They built a wall. They won't let any Palestinians in.

• 2:08:19Tucker Carlson?

  Well, we're doing it through request of another, I mean, we're not doing it for Egypt, right? We've been asked to do that, of course. But like, why do you think we went into Iraq? Were you almost got killed?

• 2:08:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think because Saddam Hussein said he was going to assassinate George H. W. Bush. And George W. Bush, you know, loves his dad and never let that go.

• 2:08:41Tucker Carlson?

  Yep.

• 2:08:42Speaker 02

  And I had friends that were flag officers in the Pentagon a week after nine 11, and they were already planning the invasion of Iraq. And some of these officers like, why? What are you talking about? They had nothing to do with this. Why are we going to invade Iraq? And that, and we shifted all of our assets to Iraq instead of Afghanistan. When we should have been fighting al Qaeda here, find Bin Laden, kill him. And then hopefully that's it. But now we're in Iraq, bogged down. No, and I mean, even taking down Baghdad, it's like, what's the, what are you going to do next? Well, the, you know, they'll, they'll rise up and then they'll start their own government. And we were saying, well, what if they don't? Well, they will, but yeah, but they might not. What if they don't? Yeah, but they will. No, they won't. And then they didn't, and it's chaos.

• 2:09:20Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, they didn't?

• 2:09:20Speaker 02

  No. They're in there robbing the museums. But it's almost one of those things too, like the, the devil you know, is better than the devil you don't.

• 2:09:30Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 2:09:31Speaker 02

  These people have been under a dictator and maybe they need a softer dictator because they're not ready for democracy.

• 2:09:36Tucker Carlson?

  Obviously.

• 2:09:36Speaker 02

  And even in Afghanistan, you think the people in the Shurikak Valley want our style of democracy? I've talked to farmers, I've eaten rice out of the same bowls these guys and had a probably Taliban guy saying, why would I send my son to school? When I can teach him on a farm? He doesn't need to sit in a school. Why would you build this one? We don't want that shit. Because it's different and our, we don't do any research. We don't know the history of places. We just think, yeah, we'll go over there and they love you. I'd love to break into a lot of the politicians. Most people don't like the United States. And especially in that part of the world.

• 2:10:08Tucker Carlson?

  Wait, you, there was no research done?

• 2:10:10Speaker 02

  No, they, they.

• 2:10:13Speaker 02

  There were officers that thought Iraq and Afghanistan were the same. They, they didn't-

• 2:10:17Tucker Carlson?

  Officers thought that?

• 2:10:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. What's the difference? Going to one or the other? It's like, it's a huge difference. Like, if you run, if you run into a dude from Saudi Arabia in Afghanistan, he's a foreigner to them too.

• 2:10:27Tucker Carlson?

  Big time.

• 2:10:27Speaker 02

  He's a foreign fighter.

• 2:10:28Tucker Carlson?

  He looks nothing like them, by the way.

• 2:10:29Speaker 02

  I ran into one dude, and I think the only reason I didn't shoot him is because he made me laugh. He didn't speak English, but his T-shirt said, I'm not kidding, it said, "It's not a beer belly, it's a fuel tank for a sex machine."

• 2:10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. He didn't know what it said, but I thought-

• 2:10:45Tucker Carlson?

  Where was this?

• 2:10:46Speaker 02

  That was in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. It was one of my first missions in Afghanistan, in a house, in the city.

• 2:10:52Tucker Carlson?

  And he had no idea what it said?

• 2:10:52Speaker 02

  No idea what it said, and it was awesome. Give him a quick gut punch and tell him his shirt's funny.

• 2:10:58Tucker Carlson?

  So, but you think there were, you know that there were officers who thought Iraq and Afghanistan were basically the same?

• 2:11:03Speaker 02

  I had an officer, I told you about the L ambush. When we were selling, you had to sell your mission. Here's what we're gonna do, here's who's there, blah, blah, blah. I was selling this to him, and I said, "We're gonna insert here, and we're gonna set up an L." And an officer said, "What's an L?" And I said, "An L is the second thing they teach you after you join the army, the first being, there's your bed, this is an L ambush." And he goes, "Who invented it?" And I'm like, "Sun Tzu invented, I don't know, the art of war, man, an L. I'm gonna hop out and stop." He's like, "What if he doesn't stop? I'm gonna kill him. Why am I talking right now? It's an L. It's not hard." And, yeah, but I mean, they're, they don't do, not all of them. I've worked with great people, but there, there are people that are making decisions that shouldn't be making decisions. Like I said yesterday, once you stop carrying your own luggage, you shouldn't be in charge of anybody.

• 2:11:48Speaker 02

  You're just surrounded by, and it gets political, like, you get to that level, like a captain in the Navy or a colonel, now they're just trying to make admiral or general, so they're doing the politics. And if you don't do the politics, you're not sticking around. So then you're thinking about my next star, uh, when am I gonna go work for DineCor, what's my political thing gonna be when I get out? So it's just political shit. And then the guys below them, they're just yes men, and they're gonna tell you what you wanna hear, not what's real. They don't wanna tell you the truth because you might actually know what's going on on the ground. Go talk to some E4 Marines, they'll tell you what's happening. And we're not winning this war right now. Because we're out there building schools or giving people a shit ton of money to embezzle and they're saying they're building a school, but they're buying a house in Qatar. Like you go into Afghanistan where they don't, they don't know what time is.

• 2:12:33Speaker 02

  They don't know how old they are, but give them a briefcase full of cash and see what they do with it. The corruption, I mean, it's horrible, but they don't think ahead like that. They think, because they think everyone's just like us. People are different.

• 2:12:44Tucker Carlson?

  Do you think that those wars had a corrupting effect on the United States?

• 2:12:48Speaker 02

  Well, um, no, I mean, I think the invasion of Afghanistan was good. I think we had, I mean, but we're right back where we started.

• 2:12:54Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:55Speaker 02

  Bin Laden's gone, a lot of Al Qaeda's gone, but they're going to get replaced. The, the, almost 30 training camps over there, terror training camps in Afghanistan again. God knows what's going on in Iraq. I mean, that's

• 2:13:04Tucker Carlson?

  How does that make you feel? You fought in both, you killed Bin Laden? I mean,

• 2:13:08Speaker 02

  No, I mean, we, it's, it's fulfilling because we were able to prove that if you're a bad guy, we have people that will come find you. We proved it and we cut the head off Al Qaeda, the snake. They know that we can do that, so it was worth it.

• 2:13:23Speaker 02

  We took a lot of Al Qaeda off the battlefield. I think we slowed down their ability to attack this country for a while, but they're getting close to coming back.

• 2:13:32Tucker Carlson?

  You say we're hated in a lot of the world and don't know it. Why are we hated?

• 2:13:36Speaker 02

  Uh, you know what? It's almost a jealousy thing because we are the most powerful country and we just proved with what we did in Iran that like we can, China and Russia are watching, like we can, we can fly pilots over you. You'll never know that they will hit you, they'll be home the next day. Like they'll, they'll leave from the middle of the country, anywhere in the world and you can't, um, there's nothing you can do about it. So I think a lot of them are jealous in that aspect, but we're also the, uh, we're the big dumb tough guy in the bar that doesn't know he's tough until he has to be.

• 2:14:04Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:04Speaker 02

  So, I mean, in the Middle East, just because we're there and, uh, like forward defense, I, I'm, I, I know that the world's a safer place with a strong United States. And the forward defense and alliance solidarity is great. The carriers are awesome. But you know, just people get sick of us. We, you know, we're still in, we're still in Germany.

• 2:14:23Tucker Carlson?

  It's only been 80 years. What are we doing there? By the way, do you know?

• 2:14:27Speaker 02

  I mean, I've been there. It's fun. We're going Oktoberfest. That was awesome.

• 2:14:30Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, it's great. I don't know if it's been great for them, but did anyone ever explain, you know, you're at the highest levels. They were saying, you know, we're in Germany for this reason, we're Japan for this reason.

• 2:14:40Speaker 02

  No, we just had a unit there and we can, we can forward stage out of there. So we can be somewhere like Bosnia quicker. We can, we can fly to, you know, we stop in Ramstein on our way to Iraq and Afghanistan. So we can get there quicker. We got air force bases over there too. I mean, we have a great relationship with the Germans.

• 2:14:55Tucker Carlson?

  What you must, you deal with a lot of, you've met a lot of politicians. I know that he worked at Fox for a while. Always politicians there. Did anybody ever apologize to you?

• 2:15:05Speaker 02

  There's nothing, no, I don't know if there's anything.

• 2:15:08Tucker Carlson?

  What do you mean? They, they sent you, I mean, you signed up for the seals. You know, you're going to risk your life. That that's on you. I think that's fair, but what's on politicians and policymakers is to only ask you to risk your life for really good reason. I think that's fair too.

• 2:15:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. No, no one really has said anything. George Bush wrote me a handwritten letter, which was cool. Just thanking me for, because I, I said that that quote, freedom itself was attacked this morning. So he thanked me for remembering his words. That was cool. And I, I mean, and I don't think an apology is necessary because at the time I wanted it more than anything.

• 2:15:42Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:42Speaker 02

  I mean, seriously, but nine 11 happened. Let's invade everybody. I'm ready. Let's go.

• 2:15:46Tucker Carlson?

  Everyone felt that way.

• 2:15:47Speaker 02

  Just, I mean, it's again, it's, you know, time goes on, maybe there's a lot of them are thinking, well, we did make a bad decision. But at the time, everyone was ramped up. You had Democrats voting for war.

• 2:15:56Tucker Carlson?

  Oh.

• 2:15:57Speaker 02

  Well, they love war now though. So I don't know.

• 2:15:59Tucker Carlson?

  All but one, Barbara Lee of Berkeley. Um, so did, I mean, you live still in a world surrounded by people who had jobs similar to yours.

• 2:16:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:08Tucker Carlson?

  Are they rethinking their views? Or are you thinking what they went through and what it meant?

• 2:16:13Speaker 02

  They're rethinking their lifestyles. Like, I was always impressed when some of my friends told me they quit drinking. They left out the part that it was because they did I begain. I said, oh, you quit drinking. That's great. Well, I did I begain. And so they're, they're rethinking their lifestyles and getting, getting into, into more healthy stuff. But I haven't heard a lot of my friends talk about Iraq the way I talk about Iraq. They, they don't, I don't, I'm not sure if, I mean, we went in there just because that there was a vendetta. There was nothing tactical about that.

• 2:16:46Tucker Carlson?

  Does it make you wonder, like, there are all these theories about Bin Laden, who he was really working for? Was he behind, actually behind 9/11? Was that really him who you shot? Do people ever say that to you?

• 2:17:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've, I had someone tell me it was a body double that I shot and I, my response is, well, I killed a guy that was in bed with Bin Laden's wife. So either way, he had it coming. But it was, oh, 100% him. That was definitely him.

• 2:17:13Speaker 02

  You know, even meeting the CIA people before we went, like, I was convinced because of the, especially that one woman that was, it's him. Definitely him. All the stuff we found, he was definitely still running Al Qaeda.

• 2:17:22Tucker Carlson?

  But how the hell did he live in Pakistan for 10 years?

• 2:17:25Speaker 02

  Had to be with the ISI, the intel service had to, had to be monitoring him. Cause I think they have vested interests in keeping Al Qaeda a little bit out bay, which is good for everyone. Cause you know, you don't want Al Qaeda getting their nuclear weapons.

• 2:17:37Tucker Carlson?

  But they're a massive recipient of USAID.

• 2:17:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:17:41Tucker Carlson?

  But they're basically our enemy?

• 2:17:42Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, we were funding the Mujahideen in the eighties and Bin Laden was a part of that. Tell, cause the big enemy was, was the Soviet Union. So let's fight them in Afghanistan and start pumping money in there through Pakistan. So they've, they've been involved forever.

• 2:17:56Tucker Carlson?

  What was the role of opium in all this in Afghanistan?

• 2:17:58Speaker 02

  You know, that was, that was kind of dumb because all we're doing, I mean, heroin's bad, but you're taking away someone's livelihood. So what are they going to do if they can't grow opium? They're going to fight you. They're going to be Taliban. Why do you care? Stop worrying about the opium. Let them grow it. Who cares? But that, that became a major thorn in our side because we're worried about opium. How about we just kill the Taliban and Al Qaeda? Who cares?

• 2:18:22Tucker Carlson?

  What about female literacy? Was that a good reason to go to war?

• 2:18:25Speaker 02

  No, uh, for war? No, that's more in, I don't think, that's for, uh,

• 2:18:29Tucker Carlson?

  Just joking.

• 2:18:29Speaker 02

  Well, I'm just saying.

• 2:18:30Tucker Carlson?

  You always hear people say, well, the female literacy. And it's like, okay.

• 2:18:33Speaker 02

  No, that's, that's, that's on them. Take care of your own house. I don't.

• 2:18:37Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:37Speaker 02

  If your women can't read, I'm not coming to shoot people over that.

• 2:18:41Tucker Carlson?

  So you never thought of that as you broke into someone's house?

• 2:18:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:18:43Tucker Carlson?

  Your girls can't read?

• 2:18:45Speaker 02

  It's almost like, well, we want women to vote. I'm like, why?

• 2:18:50Speaker 02

  I'm joking.

• 2:18:51Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, sort of.

• 2:18:52Speaker 02

  I'm half joking.

• 2:18:52Tucker Carlson?

  I, I'm not. Um, but, wait, sorry. Um, were the guys, did you ever talk politics?

• 2:19:00Speaker 02

  Not really. I, cause I remember I would, um, I would read political books before nine 11. I would, when we, especially on the ships, I would, I remember reading like Sean Hannity's books and, uh,

• 2:19:09Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:10Speaker 02

  I read, um, Alan Combs book, um, just to get, try to get both sides. That's kind of where I got my politics. Like, well, this is crazy. That makes sense. Uh, but no one was really interested in that with me. I couldn't get anyone to play chess either. Um, but, uh, but I, yeah, I've always been, I've always been political, not political, but trying to pay attention.

• 2:19:27Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:27Speaker 02

  And I honestly believe the media was telling us the truth for a while until, again, COVID or whatever.

• 2:19:33Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah. You don't believe that anymore?

• 2:19:35Speaker 02

  No. Um, no, that was a scam.

• 2:19:37Tucker Carlson?

  So last question on a, on a happy note. So you made, basically made the case without saying it, that a lot of the flag officers, your senior military leadership, not impressive. And that's very obvious to me. Who is the most impressive senior officer you've known?

• 2:19:53Speaker 02

  Bill McRaven.

• 2:19:54Tucker Carlson?

  Wow, that didn't take long.

• 2:19:55Speaker 02

  No, he, he always has been. I knew him.

• 2:19:57Tucker Carlson?

  Can you tell people who he is?

• 2:19:59Speaker 02

  Uh, Admiral McRaven was in charge of Joint Special Operations Command.

• 2:20:02Tucker Carlson?

  Yep.

• 2:20:02Speaker 02

  When we took the bin Laden raid. He's the one that sold it to President Obama. Um, he's a SEAL Team Six guy. Uh, and he just, he'd always, I think he was, I think he was an admiral the whole time I was in the damn military. But every time he showed up, he was, he looked and sounded like an officer. And the way I described, like, he looked like a SEAL. He sounds like a SEAL. He's got, he's really sharp. Um, tact, like, and I shouldn't badmouth all flag officers because he's included. He's just a badass. He knew it. Really good at everything. And the way I would describe it is like, I understand why Al Qaeda was afraid because like 23 Bill McRavens just came in your house at night to get you. And that's scary. So then, but just, he was, he was just sharp, sharp as a tack. And, uh,

• 2:20:41Tucker Carlson?

  Honest?

• 2:20:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. He, I mean, yeah, he's, he's the guy. Like it, it, it doesn't take, it didn't take me a second to answer that question.

• 2:20:49Tucker Carlson?

  How did he get to that? How did he become an Admiral?

• 2:20:52Speaker 02

  I don't even know how that works. I, you know, obviously got to take command of different places. So, you know, run a platoon at a SEAL Team, run operations, you get promoted to an executive officer, then a commanding officer, which is an O5 level, have a command move up to like the group level. So you got like a couple of different groups and like dev group being one of them, SEAL Team Six, commander there and then just start getting stars. So he was, he was the second four-star Admiral ever. I think Admiral Olson was the first one, great officer too. We were, I was fortunate, my SEAL officers were for the most part really good, like Jaco. He was, he was one of my guys. No, I was one of his guys. And he was a dude that I learned, what I learned from him is I've, I've never seen him lose control

• 2:21:34Speaker 02

  or yell. But what he was really good at when you screw up is, man, I expected so much more out of you. Oh, yeah. I'm never going to let you down again. That, he was incredible. He re enlisted me in Kuwait. And then, yeah, I've worked with some, I've been fortunate to work with really good officers.

• 2:21:49Tucker Carlson?

  But McRaven best.

• 2:21:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, by far.

• 2:21:53Tucker Carlson?

  Rob, thank you.

• 2:21:53Speaker 02

  Of course. Thank you for having me, Tucker. This has been fun.

• 2:22:00Tucker Carlson?

  We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day. We know the people who run it, good people. While you're here, do us a favor, hit follow and tap the bell so you never miss an episode. We have real conversations, news, things that actually matter, telling the truth always. You will not miss it if you follow us on Spotify and hit the bell. We appreciate it. Thanks for watching.