Army Special Mission Unit Operator | Erick Miyares (throwback ep)

0:00Tonight, we are here with a special guest, Eric Miyaris. He served as an Army Special Mission Unit operator just as a way of introduction. I'm just going to tell a little bit of a funny anecdote myself about when I was a young ranger, and we went out to the border of Pakistan in 2004. And when we got out there, there was already an American where we were there to set up camp up on a hilltop out there by himself. American with an Afghan interpreter. And they're looking down at the border control point with Pakistan. And when we'd go up there to bring him like some food and water, this dude had like a big beard. He was wearing, I think like blue jeans and maybe a camo top had all these like necklaces on and everything. We were just as young rangers were looking at this guy like, who is this dude? And what in the world is he doing up here? And he was like, super chill. Like, oh, hang loose my dude. But it was clear that he'd been left out in the sun a little bit too long.

1:00He's like, hey, maybe this needs to be brought back to chill out in the fog and watch some DVDs like a normal soldier deployed to Afghanistan. But I always tell that funny little anecdote there to allude to the fact that JSOC has these operators who are deployed sometimes in single 10 missions in highly compartmentalized operations. And even within the military, even in the special operations community, oftentimes very little if anything is known about those guys or what they do. So I'm very pleased to have Eric on the show tonight and just pull back the curtain just a little bit and tell Americans about what it is that some of these guys in these programs do. So Eric, thank you for joining us tonight. Absolutely. It's fun. I'm excited to be here. You guys are great. I love watching your shows. I love getting into the spec ops and the intel side of this world.

2:01So thank you very much for having me. Yeah, absolutely, man. And could you start off with telling us as we ask all of our guests about their origin story about your origins growing up in Miami as a kid and kind of the path that eventually took you well, first into the Marine Corps, right? Yeah, absolutely. So I came to America if you would and my mom's belly, my mom is pregnant and her, my grandmother, grandfather and her siblings left in, I want to say, was May, 1971. They were able to catch essentially the last flight or one of the last flights that was leaving Cuba into the US. So very fortunate that we got that plan and that we got welcome to the United States with open arms. And essentially, like, you know, most Cubans they either go to Halea, Miami or the head up north, I want to say it's like New Jersey somewhere. But we ended up obviously in the Halea area. So born and raised there until I was 18, essentially, you know, I went to private school, which

3:05was a bilingual Cuban American school. So my upbringing was all this sort of that dual US Cuban heritage, speaking Spanish in the streets of Halea. And then, you know, just to mention, raised by, essentially, was my stepdad, my mom never married. But for our intensive program called Mr. Clean, he kind of raised me and instilled sort of this level of patresism and this, this vision of wanting to do this unique sort of cloaking, dagger type work to keep it simple with what he had done in sort of the Bay of Pigs aspects of it. And so in 1991, on the year earlier, I joined the Marine Corps, originally was supposed to be active duty to go into infantry. I think I also had seen that, you know, force recon video and that's what I wanted to do. And I wanted to leave Halea or I would have ended up either, you know, in jail and trouble

4:06or. And so I went off into the Marine Corps to do infantry. So I'm going to stop there. Well, you spent quite a bit of time in the Marine student. You served as a scout sniper, if I recall correctly? Yeah, so I ended up doing just shy six years, which I'll cover for a while. I didn't finish that full contract later on as we talked to the reasons going into the Army. So, you know, I got finagled by my recruiter, which, you know, 29 years later, I've learned from other folks that I've talked to that. They also got host by the recruiters. And so my contract ended up being in the reserves with the promise that once I came back from basic training or from school of infantry or my trade that I would then go and I could duty. So for those five and a half years, I spent just about every day trying to get back, get onto activity or do as much activity, schools or floats or whatever I could be part of in

5:09order to kind of earn a spot to be able to further bring me back on. And so essentially I was a tow gunner in Miami, which I didn't even know we had that capability. Interesting. Those guys had just came back from the golf floor. So my first check-in in was to being a tow gunner, which I highlight was I did get to shoot a highly a kid who got to shoot a tow missile. That was really cool. Did that for a little bit? And then I found out as I was trying to continue that process that there was an ability to go to airborne in an organization in West Palm Beach. That was an angle, air-naval gun fire liaison company. And so that's where I first went to airborne school as a Marine. Actually, ironically enough, I got to go to Pathfinder as a Marine because of that organization. So I did forward observer, naval gun fire for a little bit. And then really found what I really enjoyed in my time in the Marine Corps. I went to a state-patune surveillance target acquisition up in the New Orleans area.

6:13So I was with them in and out for about three or four years. And that's actually where I work as a regular spotter. And then I became a scout sniper and then spent the time doing work with the JTF-6 doing chronic acotic missions. That's pretty cool. So yeah, we've had a few people on that the JTF-6 ops. Yeah. That was a big mind to be four and eleven. That was like the cool thing to do before the 11. Yeah, that was where all the action was. Yeah. And then how did you make that transition over to the Army? What was that kind of point and what kind of led you to that decision? Yeah, so when I was in state-patune as a Marine, I was young, dumb, not focused in college. Just I want to preface that a lot of the reason and sense of urgency to get back and I could do this is I ultimately wanted to cut my teeth at the Marine. I had aspirations when I was in high school and I knew I wanted to join the military in

7:17particular the Marine Corps. That ultimately I wanted to either go to the CIA or I wanted to go into the FBI. I think the FBI was more because one of my uncles was just scared that I'd be killed or some reason. So I threw in the hat. I'd go to the FBI, right? But I knew where I wanted to go to. And so the path was, you know, go to the Marine Corps, do your college and then go apply. I didn't see, I think I was going to be in the Marine Corps that long. And so when I was in New Orleans, there was a whole lot of partying, a whole lot of, you know, I almost got to a point where I was like, man, I'm going to lose my liver or whatever else that's back there. So I'm like, I'm going to come back to Miami so I can at least get back to school because you don't have all the great influences that you did in New Orleans. And so when I came back to Miami, I think I was going back to the Anglico unit and I met my, my first wife. And then it was kind of a relationship of friendship. And at that point, she was looking to go into the National Guard as most people did in

8:18that time frame. This is 97 for college money. And so she's like, I'm going to be this linguist in the Army and do this and stuff. I'm like, okay, that's cool. Where, where we going? Monterey, California. I was like, okay, that'd be cool. So I went as a military spouse to essentially to Monterey for the word. And then I was like, the you kidding me? Is this what the Army does? Right? So I saw a DLI from a spouse perspective. And then I started to do my research again. And as I'm over there, there wasn't, I think the only closest unit was like a reserved force recon unit up into that. I'm like, I don't want to travel over there. And then I just did some, some thinking, some soul searching really. And I was like, okay, well, maybe how about going to the Army as an option? Let's do this military intelligence because I thought that that would align best at that point with going to the CIA, right? Or going to go do intel work as I had planned in that I would ultimately focus focus on school. And so I made a mistake during the National Guard for a month, same thing, horrible contract

9:20aspects. And then just the next day after I joined active duty and then signed in some ports somewhere with a bunch of other former Marines that were learning how to be in the Army. And you went into the Army on what was your, what was your MOS? I mean, it was an intel job this time, right? Yeah, it's a 98 golf. So that was the, uh, SIGINT electronic warfare interceptor. And that, I do want to talk a little bit about, you know, what that job entailed and where you got assigned. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, so when I came in, uh, just because it'll finally come up later on, you know, I was a proud E5 and the Marine Corps. And part of this whole negotiation too was like, hey, you're going to be an E4. I'm like, oh, get to be a corporal, right? Now you get to be a specialist. I'm like, I'm a specialist of what, right? So I started off my army career with a bunch of other Marines, get a C bag full of clothing

10:24that didn't even teach me how to wear. And then, and then, you know, flew back to DLI, which was, by the way, a phenomenal. I learned so much, uh, because I was a careerist. So I didn't have to apply to all of those, um, rules that were there. And actually, uh, interesting thing I met, uh, what would later on would be three other former UNI members that I would then go through selection with. Um, I think it was the conversations we had earlier that just kind of jarged that memory. So that was pretty neat. It was an amazing time. Uh, and so I, I, I, I deal I from timing with my, my former spouse who was still learning. I finished the Spanish and then went to good fellow effort space to go learn at that time to be a 90-a-golf. Um, and then that started my career really with ironically, Russian, Russian warfare. That's what we learned. Uh, and then I want to say that they sprinkled on initially some of the counterinsurgency and maybe some of the counternecotics was part of that intel school.

11:27And so I just loved it, right? Coming, uh, as a Marine who had been, you know, a sniper had done some stuff in JT at 6, but just that combination of infantry and jumping out of planes and everything that I had done. And then I got to focus kind of back into, I've always liked academia. And so I really loved being an intel guy, right? That gave us just so, I guess just because I was fortunate to have that hard skill, young hard skill background and then learn to be an intel guy. I think it's a really deadly conversation, uh, or a combination, excuse me. Um, and as I was finishing school of infantry or not, excuse me, I was finishing good fellow. Um, I got kind of got hooked up and someone came up to me and said, hey, you know, what are your plans? I'm like, I got no idea how this army thing works. I don't know where I'm going to go. They're like, hey, where there's this thing called seven special forces, would you like to go? I'm like, okay. Sounds good. So I've got the word special in it so far. You know, this looks good. I was going to ask you that because I didn't know if when, you know, when you went in,

12:31if you went in an active and, and DLI was basically your AIT and, and good fellow, you know, the follow on because you had an infantry background, these hard skills. I imagine you would have been plucked out for like a SOT A team because, yeah, they, because they're desperate for people like you. Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting that you did say that because I remember it and me had the DLI or maybe in that transition of hope that they had started. I remember doing, and I still think I have the resume. It was horrible writing horrible. I don't even know how I went to seven good, you know, God bless that they did take me. But I had to put in their hands. It was in 11 Bravo and 11 I think Hotel also. And then I had some of these hard skills, you know, airborne. Right. So as an E4, I guess it all align Spanish, you know, all the G, the scores you got to have. It just aligned perfect. And then there was also that, that, that buddy hook up, right? Somebody called somewhere and say you to branch or whatever that was.

13:32Hey, you may want to pull this guy. So I had direct orders from there straight to group. So ended up spending two years in seventh group, which, you know, for you guys knowing that not this is not the convention army. So I'd never spent one day in the convention army. Good, better and different. That was literally my world is, you know, leaving the Marines coming through the training seven group. And that was fast and furious. And then straight to where I ended up at. So just for our viewers who might not know, so you went to a side 18, right? So, yeah. So, uh, side days are a special operation teams alpha. Uh, they are sort of the sicken side of special forces. They don't go through the QCore. So they're, their own element. How was that for you being in group? Like, how was that being with Green Beret? How do they treat you? How is the reception? Yeah. I want to say that I, you know, and I only just because I saw it on a photo the other day,

14:36I had my gold wings on, right? Yeah. So I was on my gold wings. Right. I think I stood on E4 E5 and, you know, I made a bit a little bit cocky because I was a native. I was excited. I was probably more goal lucky than anything, right? And I want to say, you know, I had a really good relationship with the, the ODA's never really had. And I looked at it in a retro spec as I went back in time as I was retiring. I was looking at all the awards and the writeups and they were all written by. And I'm like, man, I got to find this guy captain, so and so and master sergeant, so and so. And, you know, as I wrote, you know, posted just the other day of the dude who shot the guy who shot me. I'm like, man, I got to go thank these guys. Like, I'm going to ask all like, you know, they were really good. Now when I was in the Sade's, it was an interesting time because it was pre G1. Right. So a lot of the, I don't think any of those guys were former anything else but army. And so when they were in a Sade, unfortunately, what I perceived is that a lot of those guys

15:39wanted to be ODA's. They wanted to be green grades. Right. I'm like, I don't know disrespect to anyone, but I'm like, I didn't want to be a green gray. If not, I would have, I think I'd gone down that route, but I kind of had plans. My future and at that point, it had greater ambitions, right? So I was very happy to be in a Sade. And I got exposed that seven special forces group at that time had some really good connections with the IC. So we were very fortunate. We were across the street from Yususaka Army Special Operations Command. So we got all the capabilities. My first mission was Panama. I learned and cut my teeth with one of our Sade, you know, the Tasman Charging. He taught me some ropes, you know, going in and out of the roads of Panama. If you guys have been there, you know, you can go the wrong way, skip you better find your way back. And that's how I grew up. And then the next couple of missions were integrated with green berets. And I brought the languages. I brought my hard skills so they didn't have to worry about me necessarily shoot, move

16:42and communicate. I already knew how to do that. But I brought my, I think I brought my technical proficiency. And I was just happy to do my job. So yeah, how many people at DLI were confused and further on in your army career were confused by your gold wings? A lot. Yeah, they were. They, you know, so it was funny because I did see someone else at some point. I remember somebody that had, you know, maybe two or three rocker strikes, but look more like than my little three wings on my, my, my charging. And they were wearing it. They were prior service. And it was that same whole long thing. If you put a 40, 187 and you put it in, but anybody who's ever read an army or military regulations, there's like 50 ways to read it. Right. Right. And at the end, you're just like it doesn't say you can't because there's no way to quiver it on it. And for a while, somebody I think told me something and it wasn't the military. Am I guys? It might have been in just to keep a lower profile when we started to go travel and sanitize

17:47for training. Then we took it off anyway. So then for the longest time, I just didn't even wear anything on the uniform because we were training or going forward to do, you know, the Fid missions and stuff like that. But yeah, I was at the beginning. It was kind of a, yeah, I was like, Oh, crap. I shouldn't do that. And then after I left group, it just really didn't matter because I stopped doing any of that. So tell us about this operation down on the Ecuador Columbia border where you guys ran into ELN. Yeah, so that, well, that was that was interesting. And that was kind of the start of a lot of things for me. And I want to say that was my second mission in seventh group. It was still your typical Fid mission flying into Keto and from Keto, we were going to do this to the Bhutamaya area. So it was probably, I don't know, like 12 hour, 11 hour drive with an entire company of, you know, everything that we can take to support the police over there in that training.

18:49And so my mission was to do force protection at the Saade. So I was in the lead vehicle with the commander, the sergeant major. And I think like a Kamogai, it was a Kamog SF guy and then it was, you know, token me. And my responsibility was, you know, essentially do the intel guy, do the second stuff. Obviously I had a pre-brief prior to leaving of what potentially could be threat. And I think it was like that 18 pox kind of working with him and, and so I was your typical. It was a really good mission because at that point, it wasn't just flying in somewhere. And then just training the guys that you had to do a movement and through, you know, it isn't, it isn't, it wasn't Afghanistan at the time, but it's still you're in the, you're at that, you're at that border area and you're a bunch of green goes transporting, you know, million dollars worth of capability. So you are a moving target. And so I'm in the lead vehicle. We're going town to town to town. And I think I've mentioned it before like, I knew my, my, my trade.

19:51I was pretty decent at it. But obviously I relied on the skills. A lot of the green berets that were there. These guys have been long, long tooth guys and seventh group. I traveled in and out of Latin America more than I did. So they really understood. So I kind of, I want to say that Kamogai, the Kamog SF guy that was next to me, kind of helped me in that perspective, bounce what I was interpreting from an intel side and what he did from, from just his skills and his experience. And so we were kind of bounced that off as we would go town by top. People stopping to take piss breaks. But then, you know, here's where in that convoy, a lot of the, my skills now in the streets of Miami helped me, right? Like that definitely had a, I've always listened to that little voice. For, for the longest time throughout my entire career. And so two or three towns, two little, three little towns prior to where we got hit. Oh, the ambush, that was already something, an engagement going on. It was just decilating, right? Like you kind of see in the movies, you pull it in and you're like, where the hell is everybody?

20:54Yeah, like it's not supposed to be right. I can see that they're self-towered. It's the oil pipeline. There's all of these, you know, met tea type stuff. You're like, okay, this, this is not right. And so you kind of give that indication. And then as you get to the next one, there's a little bit of traffic sort of on the SIGGET world. And SIGGET is pretty easy, right? And either belongs there, it doesn't belong there. You either listen to it and you can tell. I think at that point that, you know, a lot of that comms in there is, which they will later survive. You know, they can say like, hey, there's three, three blue cows in the truck. Well, that's not what that means, right? This is the, that's, that's fairie of stalking. Or generally a regular, you know, a person who learned Spanish may not understand that. Someone who's from the streets is going to understand, you know, some of that. So that's really what I was queuing on. Because this wasn't like, you know, Cuban, you know, border of battle and Russian border of battle. This was more thug level or whatever can happen in there. And so as we get to the, the last town, as we're leaving and it's starting to get, you know, get dark, it's kind of the whole thing.

21:56The road goes along to our right. If you would as we were moving to the full tomorrow area, there's the oil pipeline that just runs all the way across, right? And as we're coming around a bend and we turn left, it's kind of a huge blind spot. And as we come, come around and then now we can see forward down the road. And then the S turns, it's a little, it's like a bridge of wooden bridge and there's a bus, the school bus there. And that was like your A typical. And the dudes are robbing them. They were really kidnapping a politician that was there. And I guess I didn't know we were coming or they may have known we were coming. As I'm coming around, I get that unique break of squelch, right? That follows with some spoken language. But as we come around, I give an indicator. And as soon as we come around, we start getting shot fired. And there was that big old crap. This is not supposed to be happening, which was part of that. So I'll stop there for a second.

22:58Yeah, no, that's, I mean, this is a pretty big deal too. I mean, prior to 9-11 that you have Americans on, I don't want to say clean desktime, but it's kind of low visibility. You're not trying to make your presence known. And then you run into the enemy and start taking fire. Yeah, you take fire. And you stumble across their activities and to go forward originally, they were declared to be banditos. But that was really also because of the host nation. As you know, the Americans are coming with food money. There's lots of money. They don't want the US to pull out because it wasn't assessed that there's bad guys. So you're going to downplay as if you're in any of these, I don't want to say they're well-conscious. If you're in any of these other countries and you're supporting that nation and something happens, they can look bad. They don't want the US to pull out. And then ultimately, I get shot. And so that means now somebody's down. And this is going to essentially go up the flagpole, right?

24:00So yeah, so initially it was, it was banditled later on as they're processing everything from the intel side and as the heroic actions from the green braids and everything that happened. The MI side and the user-soc side is looking, hey, do we give this guy a purple heart? Are we not giving this guy a purple heart? Do we give this guy what awards are we going to give for these actions? Because it did happen. Then the information surface and the user-soc was amazing. I mean, I got a lot of the general officer notes. And everybody was very supportive because they're like, hey, it did happen. People did get shot at. We killed people. They saved lives of guys that were about to get taken as hostages. And then they found out, yeah, these are dudes that were ill and are far. They're training down there and they're doing this as part of money. And then it goes back to the order of the information that we knew about the way that they operate. But that was it for me personally. Well, I'd imagine that left group shortly after that.

25:01So I don't know what how, that's that group or at least that group changed in time because I was gone shortly after that. I mean, that was a problem that seven of the group was having a lot, I think, during the 80s and the early 90s. Right? They weren't getting recognized. They weren't getting combat infantry badges. They weren't getting purple hearts. Because they weren't in an official war or whatever. We talked about that with Greg. Yeah. They were being kind of left out to, you know, left out to dry. Yeah. I mean, the threat was there. I can tell you that because I would then go to Columbia the next mission. And then we ramped up force protection. My first protection was kind of one of those things like, okay, a lot of the old timers and the team were like, no man, hey, there are people that are going to want to rug it. We're Americans. We bring nice fancy stuff. Right. And then we were training the police or the military.

26:02We're going to come after them. You can see where that cycle goes. It doesn't need to be war. Right. Essentially, it isn't war, right? War on drugs or war on, on, on their neighborhood, if you were like a turf war. So yeah, I remember, and again, at this point, I was young. Well, I learned a lot from the, you know, the team sergeants there. And, you know, we were carrying the fanny packs and we would go to the gym and we would protect each other. Where is your gun? Where didn't you keep your gun? Because there was that threat level. It wasn't, it wasn't like it is like it, if you would go to Afghanistan, but it was there. How did that go down though, where on that operation where you got shot and had to be evacuated? Yeah. So as the vehicle came around, we took, I want to say, maybe the first two shots, they, the driver went forward a little bit and then the determination was to, to bolt back because there was nowhere to go forward, right? So we needed to get some, some distance between the bridge, the hard bridge, because it was dark at that point. And then I, I want to say they can see or acknowledge because of the, the beams of light from

27:03the vehicle, they can see the first two guys and then there were some guys on, on the, on the hilltop or along the hilltop. And so we backed up and for you guys that have been in those little crappy one way roads, you know, luckily the guy who was driving, no, don't go too far back because then it's a cliff down or you're going to hit the pipe. So we got enough, you know, lucky just pulled back enough that when the two, the commander and the sergeant major opened the doors to start engaging, we were then in the back. And I think the combo guy had his radio up, his was able to get to his weapon faster. I had all of this crap on me, right? Lesson learned for the rest of my career, how to keep everything tidy. And so as we open up now, there's only, again, it's a one way road, you know, hill, hill on the left and then a drop, a dark drop down, which you would potentially hit the O pipe. So there. And so we could not, we cannot engage because we had the other two guys in front of us. And so my thing was to come out, I came out the back rear door was essentially I knew

28:06to jump over and try to get into sort of the dish. I just didn't know how deep the ditch was. So as I'm untangling, getting ready to move and to jump as I'm jumping over, you know, I get nicked in the inner thigh and it goes out the exterior of my right thigh and then just kind of come crashing down. And then, you know, it was like crap, right? You know, I feel the heatness in my leg. There's a lot going on. It's my first engagement in combat. And I think I've mentioned it before, like it was, it was interesting for me to mentally go from, okay, I'm going to do my job as the, the saute guy, right? Yeah, I'm going to do some, some typical be a team member, but that's what these guys are here for. But once I got shot, now it's kind of like, because this is personal, and that adrenaline kind of kicks in. And so that, that marine in you comes out, like, okay, got it. Now I'm going to be part of this team, part of this, this, this aspect of it. As I hit the ground, as I do that quick, you know, like quick combat life,

29:07say, or check if you would, like, all right, I'm okay. Go for my, like a nine millimeter at the time of red. Boys are standing there. Make sure the boys are still there. Yeah, well, yeah, that's just like, okay, it's trying to check. You shot my brand new North Face pants or, I think we're in North Face pants. I'm like, I'm still paying for those things. And then I go look up and then now this ditch is really high. And I'm like, okay, this is now, I'm going to have to either crawl up. And then, you know, obviously, you're a loaded team and say, hey, I'm hit or whatever I said. And then it appeared within, within seconds, a minute that, that then, either the medic or maybe one of the guys that was in the back vehicle actually came, came to see me, kind of double check. He had the comms to be able to relate back. You know, he's been, he's been hit. How far, if that was your inner thigh, how far was it from your femoral artery? That's a really dangerous place to get shot. Really, really, really close. I'm very lucky.

30:08When I've, again, in, I don't think I even looked at the X-rays or even cared when I got back to Wal-Mac. Is it Wal-Mac? Whatever it is, is that correct? I never looked, yeah, I never looked at it. Only till I was retiring, that now you're making the case to the VA. I got shot. How many percentage can I get that they looked at all that stuff? And they're like, hey, man, you, that was really close. I was like, yeah, never, I never really went back. But I mean, as I feel it, it's really right. It's got to be centimeters that it went through it. I do know that the medic wanted to try to put like some rod. He's like, I've got it, you know, first combat. He's like, I got to do all these procedures for you, man. Yeah, you're not doing that, dude. Right, right, right. And of course, you got a CIB out of all of this and a combat patch. I didn't get anything out of it. I get a, yeah, they all got there. I mean, they all, you know, they got their awards. They were world-tech, and it was both documented.

31:09It did their part. I think I left out of there, obviously, my first, the first purple heart, which again, lots of respect for the professionals. I saw all the paperwork that they had to do to get that, to get that filed in that time. And forever, I took two things out of that. It is take care of your people when it comes time to work. Because I saw, you know, from captains to, you know, e6s all the way to three stars, pushing the staple forward. So I believe in the process. Sorry to kind of hijack that a little bit. But that's not what I, no, no, it's your show. So you're not hijacking. Very good. And actually, talking about a package check is a good segue. So a good segue to our first sponsor of the night, which is chillboy undies. Because you got to keep the boys chill, right? Check out chillboys.com. They sell great boxer briefs, uh, socks, long johns.

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34:13When does this idea or when do you even first hear that there's this secretive JSOC intelligence unit? I mean, I think especially at that time in the late 1990s, no one even knew these guys existed really. When did this idea or what, when did, when did knowledge of this unit's existence even creep into your awareness and what made you make that decision to kind of take the jump over? You know, there's something you just said that just jared my memory. And I'm going to make a joke here probably to you is what I got hog tied by a bunch of Rangers on an abandoned airfield on a JSOC exercise. So true story. So how I actually even came to understand what JSOC was and even I didn't even know what the tiers would be. I didn't know any of that. While while in group, I think the only thing I participated in was at the Sears School, right? So they need they needed bodies. I think they,

35:15I don't know, maybe they needed a little brown guy to play a part. I did go be like an extra at Sears School there at Port Bragg. And so I kind of saw a world that I wasn't I wasn't aware of when I was in marine and definitely not while I was in an environment or a side or a group. And then there's a couple of guys that came in typical, came in the little blue blazers with gold buttons and you know, by debt sergeant, because they have an idea you need to go a report of a year because they're doing a casting call interviews for an exercise. Like oh, okay, cool. And then he's been Spanish speaker. So there was something that they said that then I felt all right, cool. I can be I can be of use. And so I went through this interview process and they made me talk. They wanted to make me be these lines. And essentially, ironically, I then end up playing eight folk, a commander for a, you know, a Latin American terrorist group for an exercise. So I said, first time I get to grow my beard, I get to, you know, as an intel guy, I was interesting

36:17because I could think go to the skip if you wouldn't even look this up. So I got to really rehearse rather than just being like somebody random that they got a group to play a character in one of these dare sexri sizes. And so I then during that, the, you know, back side of being a target. So I was essentially the number one target or the number two target for this exercise. So Jason brought everything to bear. And I got to see it from that perspective, right? I got, and I got to see it because I had my lines. And then I got to go to like the little talk where they're orchestrating. And then I remember this one guy, just kind of to your story of a hippie, you know, in the mountains, he just looked different, right? This guy just carried himself different, long hair, that blue coat. It seemed like he wore that everywhere, right? And he was just authoritative. Just telling everybody knew everything he was doing and capabilities and assets and the boys. And I'm like, oh man, that guy's pretty cool. But then I get told to go off. And then they're going to capture me

37:22and have this little piece of paper on you. Don't say anything and talk in the radio. And subsequently, I didn't know what a direct action hit would be or a hospital, you know, I didn't know what that would be. But I thought the fucking concussion grenades, right? And then quickly learned backwards. I knew that they were assets because I was at that time as just a Saadeh, there were capabilities at hand that didn't make sense to what I knew, right? As an E5 and a Saadeh, you know, with a SIG and KER or capabilities. I knew so much. But when this exercise was unfolding, I'm like, how the hell are these guys going to do that? Who the hell are these two? How the brother guy was really inquisitive of how they were going to find me. And there was things being brought to bear that I had no idea. And obviously, I guy with the blue blazer wouldn't tell me. Till, you know, at the dead of night, they found me. It happened to be in this one with the

38:24Rangers and all two respect. Those dudes came in. They stormed in, hog tied, they're crap out of me. I was still with the concussion, whatever they they threw in there and I'm hog tied. And finally one guy finally found that little piece of paper. I'm like, dude, if you did all that to me, you better have found that, that's a C, right? You better have found that fucking thing. Other lesson learned. And so from that one, I went back and went through the debriefing. I talked to that one guy. He was a sergeant major at the time. He was a sergeant major. And then all I know was to the effect of, hey, guys are going to be coming in the months to be, just show up for the pitch, the recruiting pitch. And so I then went back and told somebody that was encouraging me. I was like, hey, I'm interested to do this between training and stuff like that. And I went and then it was two guys that ended up being forever two of my greatest mentors, right? It just really quick. Hopefully a lot of organizations, when they send folks to do the

39:25recruiting, you send your best and the best because that impression lasts forever. And it was, in fact, it lasted forever. A, the guy that ran the exercise or that aspect of the exercise, I would then work for him or know who he was. And then the two guys that came for recruiting. I don't remember much, but whatever they pitched, I wanted to do it because I just remember being hog tied and all of that. So that mystique, again, I knew there was no videos. There was nothing. And then I applied. And they would basically said, here's a card. We'll call you. Don't contact us. And then that's it. And then I went and that's when I got shot and came back. And I was like, oh, crap. I know I got to go through some selection process. And then at that point, I had heard bits and pieces, but there was nothing being talked about. I grew up in nothing. I want to say that there was one guy that was a former guy that, hey, came back. There were some incidents, unfortunately,

40:28fatal that I didn't know that this guy did come from somewhere, but he was pretty dinged up mentally. And I filed that later on, which is what I do now for a lot of the vet and suicide. After I got shot, came back. And then I knew I just needed to train. And then did, did, end up getting that magical phone call. Hey, here's some information. Show up. And you're going to go through your selection process. What can you tell us about the selection process? Because I've had some conversations with people who actually actually said they had a good time at the selection course and thought it was a very challenging experience where they were kind of asked to think outside the box. Yeah, for simplicity, that is, you know, I reckon it's just begun his personal, which is going to probably come a file out of that. I went every time I went through something, I knew more and more that that's why I wanted to be. I never saw it in the Marine Corps, I never saw it. I grew up. I didn't even read about it in a book, right? During that time, maybe I could

41:30have correlated it to a movie or something. It was every time something was done. I was just enameled by it. I was enameled by the the preciseness, the timeliness, the exactness, the no feedback, right? The no feedback aspect of it. I don't know, might have been something from my childhood is just the way it was, right? Like, and so it just, it was hard. It was physically, it was physically hard, mentally hard. I think it was the good piece, very individual aspects of it, which I enjoyed. And then there was always that mistake, right? You know, you start with so many, and then one day so many are gone. And you keep going out. And with that told you, is it you're going through all of this? You want to be part of an organization that has high standards, right? And so I remember that. And all, and it's just the way things rang, the littleness. I was just, it was just attracted to that compartmentalization, to that mind challenging, to that you're not

42:32going to figure it out, right? Like, nobody, nobody talked about it, nobody knew. And the people that said some stuff, I remember in my class, you're just like, okay, you need to get chapter out of the army because you're just talking wacky shit, right? Like, we're not here looking for aliens. Like, so, so it, it forever, I was, you know, obviously, really proud to have been selected. But many times in my career, and I think we talked about this earlier, as we transitioned into GWAT, and then as certain organizations changed in time, I would always revert back to selection as the core of why they select people. And that in essence is your selection is an indicator of what you may have to do in the possibility, because in those selections, you're going to be tested across this spectrum. And that spectrum is tied back to obviously an organization's

43:35requirements for the people that they need to do certain missions. What do you think that core is that they're selecting for? Like, well, I guess I'm kind of asking that question of like, what is the quintessential operator, which I know is kind of a broad and maybe unfair question in some ways. But what do you think that those qualities are? You know, the ability for ambiguity, right? The ability, and it's been said a million times to live and think in the gray is very difficult. That ability, you know, I'll do respect to everyone, but every marine, every rifleman, every seal, every other operator, every, you may not have the mindset to take off and do what is needed, right? And Dave, you can relate to it, which is that, you know, at the, and the icy world and the tradecraft world is, hey, come back and fight another day, right? And they always, depending, you're, you know, the old instructor from the old Cold War will tell you, you know, don't be that

44:37ranger who has to take that hill. You might have to make that determination. You evaluated, you said, I will come back tomorrow. And a lot of by DNA, if you would, you know, the infantry people, the more of the special operations, track on, you know, a drag or knuckle, if knuckle, drag or are going to want to use that adrenaline. And so the type of people you need is that person who's able to think emotional intelligence, right? It is critical. That ability to go nope, that compartmentalization intelligence to be smart, thinking out of the box. Yes, you know, those things, those are, those are key. And then there's things you're just not going to be comfortable, right? That a lot of people are going to be like, hey, I didn't join the military for that. But that's great. Thank you for your, you know, we saw that a lot. Thank you for your patrachism continue. You're going to leave here and you're going to do great things. But this may not be for you. And because this world, we're actually not going to tell you about it. And so there aren't very many people that are going to go do something, not being told because you knew when you guys went

45:41to ranger school, but they're just cool. It's about, you knew about SF, you knew about how the agency might be a little bit different, but everything is an military, but this world, no, because that's the type of world you're going to operate in, right? And so singleton, two, three, four, ambiguity, so that ability really is simple to operate and be trusted. And so there's a integrity is huge. Yeah, your word, your word is it. And then so your analytical process to process the information, not only as an individual because you work in team and you're able to talk to each other and then an analyst is going to take it, but it all starts with that trust that that guy really go do that he, that he self-assess how many people really notice self-assess. Hey, man, I'm hurt. Yeah, it was one thing to muscle through a long walk and to go, I may need to stop. It's okay for me to stop because the mission I got to do tomorrow is going to take me 18 more hours to do. And then I don't know what's going to happen. So I need to have some reserves, right? So that hopefully that

46:44answers the mindset of it. And then, and then the last one, and if I would is, I mean, you gotta be comfortable with being uncomfortable, right? Like you've seen some of the pictures and there's, there's, I mean, I'm not doing anyone that's done this right, this can relate to guys doing other sort of intel, intel work, which requires more of that mindset, but is hey, you don't know what you're going to need to be tomorrow. And that can be in a variety of ways, which I think you'll probably cover on later on. But it starts there. And you know, it's interesting because one of the things you said is, is, you know, the ability to do what it takes. And I think a lot of people think, when they think of that, they think of like from a shooter perspective to kill a bad guy or to, you know, take the shot, but sometimes it more like in a DEA scenario, it's like not taking down the bad guy, knowing they're doing harm, but waiting to collect on the bigger picture. Like that type of thing is hard for people to walk away from. You know, it's like

47:49practical patience. Yeah. Yeah. It's, so sometimes doing what it takes isn't, isn't like the the gung ho, yeah, I'm going to sue a Spontane or, you know, just charge in here and blast this person. I'm okay with killing bad guys. We've Roy Jenkins. It's living. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's living in a much more, you know, kind of obscure world of, I know this person is actively hurting people, but it's not my job at this point to stop them from hurting these people because there's a larger picture that that's being taken in. Yeah. You guys both said something and, and I get in here, and now I'm fortunate that post processing, and when I went to NICO, the National and Trufford Center of Specialments for traumatic brain injuries, it's generally here in Walter Reader. We get a lot of special operators that come that are, you know, 15, 20 years into career and these guys are burnt out. And so there's a command sent them to this one month

48:52program. And so one of the key things about NICO and traumatic brain injuries and PTSD, if you would, is based on triggers, right? And so when we did the sector side really quick on triggers, I was, let's kind of, kind of almost be like a joke. Like I was there with the seal. I was there with a guy from Fort Bragg, and I think it was another SF guy, and it was me. And interestingly, and the seal came from from the higher tier level. And their triggers and the mentality, and nothing, nothing wrong with any of the, but it's this that that by default, by default, they're going to, their triggers are different than our triggers. Our triggers are very suppressed. You know, if you bump into me, I am just going to go away. If you hit my car downtown, you know, the streets of patientville Haiti, I'm just going to keep on quick as the mission is more important. You have to be able to control that adrenaline. And yes, I can pull out my gun and I can shoot them. And yes, I can pull out my knife. We can do all of that. But it is that emotional ability in

49:54in those triggers. So when we did the sector size, all my triggers were different than theirs. That's interesting. Because my requirement was to be for us to be gray. In gray is not, you know, only cloak and dagger, but it's those emotions. Right. Like you're, I'm not going to, if you, you know, as you know, there's from a fist person for intelligence service. Someone is going to probe you while a lot of these Marines, you know, these wild up guys are, they're going to, they're going to, you're going to fill that test. They're going to show that you're an aggressor where you have to be able to be able to control that. We just go, okay, I got something else that I got to protect. So Eric, you did get selected, of course. And I was wondering if we could take a moment here because I know you're a bit of a student of the, the history behind it. If you could tell us a little bit about the unit history now that, you know, you're getting read on to the mission and on to the unit. And I know there's plenty of things you're not able to speak about. But are you able to talk to us a little bit about the unit history? Why it came about? Why it exists?

50:57How it developed over time? Yeah, I'll do my best to navigate. So obviously there was a unique requirement a long time ago when a lot of these other organizations came. So there's a, from my background, and just to keep a simple, obviously, special operations and intelligence and the importance of intelligence at a tactical operation and strategic requirement. In a particular strategic, that very hard on the ground intelligence with certainty to be enablers for people who have another job. Right? Another tier organization who has something to do. And so that's a, that's a, kind of an origin story of the requirement, right? For unique special operations that keep a simple. And then the history. So I always found history in that regards, as a childhood growing up, because of my stepdad and sort of the Cuban background and what, why pay a big, you know, the Bay of Pigs. I didn't understand it in high school. But I did ironically when I went to

52:01Goodfellow to be a military intelligence. That was something that I learned. I learned the insights and out from it until of the Bay of Pigs and the requirement for intelligence. And so when I, when I start getting to the unit, you know, these things start to kind of combine kind of my, my life at being at, at seven through, which is special operations and then being an intel guy. And then some of the things from my childhood with my stepfather at that kind of Bay of Pigs world. And so getting into the unit and I was a young guy. So as any of these organizations, they skip you go to the corner and draw, right? Like you got to earn your key, right? Like it's, and so you know that because that's kind of part of selection. That's part of the course. And so when you step in the first day, you know your place, right? And then they bring you in open arms. But then you just, there's just so many things going on and things that you won't, you won't be exposed to in training, obviously, because if you're not selected, then just like anything should be compartmentalized.

53:03And then when you get in there and depending where you go and you do kind of like the unit history, they're very good at, at, at, at, at a corporate level, if you would have an organization sharing its history where we come from. So now you understand that you're inside, excuse me, you're inside the fold, right? So you get some of that. And then I happen to be that the teams that I went into were full of history, full of the guys that did stuff, some of the, you know, the, the ninjas, as we call them, these are the skills wise. And so when, I think I mentioned it to you, when you're sitting in there and you're having some of your briefings or you're, you're getting in there or you're having some of your team talk, right? At the team room and you're having a drink. These stories come on and you're like, you fucking kidding me? Like we did that, you did that. And everybody's just humble. Yeah, we did this and we did that and we were part of this. You know, a lot of it wasn't the, hey, my, you know, my, my sock is bigger than yours. It is, hey, man, start learning because you got to get into those shoes quick and you've got to be able

54:05to understand the spectrum because they don't teach you this in the schoolhouse. You've got to be ready for the spectrum of what the possible is. And so yeah, you're seeing, you know, and I think that time we didn't have, we didn't have computers. So I remember part of my day was come in, workout, go do combat ads, go do some technical stuff. And then as if I was getting ready to go, I'd have to read on paper the daily sit reps. And so you're reading these sit reps and it's kind of be like reading a, you know, a jack car book. You're just like, are you serious? Like these dudes are out there. Like you didn't even meet these guys. And you're like, oh my god. And then you read the other folder of some, you know, there's 10 things going on in the world. And then all of a sudden, and there's this drawer of all of the other stuff. So I got to read them, right? And then there's a lot of history. So I learned early on of people. I mean, we would celebrate what individuals did because they became myths. And it was okay. It's kind of, I think I mentioned it once. It's kind of like being like, the Indians who sit around the campfire and talk about how they

55:06slayed, I don't know, whatever, and how they did something. And then that instilled in me. I don't think the 20 years that we're there, I learned all the history. I was fortunate. A lot of the great beers brought me in and talked to me about these stories. And they was kind of passing on of the history, which is an honor to be sort of bestowed just this, this, this information, which unfortunately it got, it's got to stay in your head. Right. So you talk to talk to others, but yeah, that's that was my go ahead. I was just wondering how was that for you from going from the Marine Corps, which is very focused on a spritical or very focused on history. I mean, you get history classes during boot camp, you know, and then going some place where the history is so fragment and threaded that you really have to track it down on your own if you want to know it.

56:06Yeah, that's a good point. I don't, that kind of probably, you know, answers, answers some folks questions like, hey, what does it seem that you're so much more passionate about being a Marine, right? That whole once in a while is a Marine. But that's why I started. And that's how when I left the streets of Halea, and I went into the Marine Corps, I got inducted into into the Marine Corps history. And so in and out was Marine Corps history forever. And then my time in the army and the right in the seventh group was too quick. It was fast and furious. I was in and I was out. And then when I came to the unit, it was all based about history. Right. Because of its origins, it's about, there's also this piece of, hey, buddy, this is for real. Right. Your actions, home, forward, back, left and between what you say, who you're married, who you talk to, what you purchase, what you wear, affects the organization. Right. And so that ties back into the history and into the why and in simple places into the level of what you're operating at. And it sinks in some time.

57:12It really does sink in, right? When you start going up the ranks, I think by time guys are E89s, you know, you start understanding more of the inner workings of money, of, of charter, you start understanding authorities. Right. And once you look at these authorities, you're looking across, right. And I always studied also intelligence as the intelligence community. So I knew, oh, wow, okay, this organization, not only in the hallways, but in documents like you're for real, right. You're giving a lot of money. You have a lot of your requirements are at that level. And then I experienced it, you know, and I will get into where I did the typical tactical mission, you know, running around the, the mountains of Afghanistan to a strategic mission, which is there's serial chance, you know, there's haters, no riggle room for compromise, which is different than being shot in the leg or getting hit by an RPG compromise. In essence, there's really not an option. So history was important to understand. When you say the spectrum of the possible, I mean, it sounds like a lot of the guys at the unit

58:18had really everything thrown at them as far as mission profiles, types of missions. You mentioned the title authorities. And in one sense, it sounds like the dream job that you can kind of do whatever it is you need to do. That's maybe the wrong term to use. But I mean, you have different means to accomplish your missions. And probably you guys have a wider left and right limits to do that, then probably some of the other units. But I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the difficulties or, or maybe not of straddling that world between special operations and the intelligence community and sort of existing in that gray area. Yeah, absolutely. So by definition, if you were, there isn't, and maybe it's changed inside the night, I was referenced, you know, hey, I got out two years ago in the world could have changed since then. Nor do you see a lot of special operations as we relate it to, you know, and we talked about

59:20this earlier, you know, the direct action, halo, scuba seals, you know, what was the old term, and I fixed finish or whatever, fine fixed finish world to this, which has always been more on sort of the agency side, they'll collect intelligence, espionage, right, worlds. And then when you get to put that potentially on one plate to something you said earlier, it is very unique, right, to be able to, and I want to probably go back, because I got a little bit lost here on the mentality side of it. I was fortunate just from a groundwork when I first got there, I did the A typical mission that was going on. So that was good for me and my peer group when we came in, I got to going to that real mission. And that was, you know, everything that I trained for, everything that we had done, every preparation, we were doing it, even to have, you know,

1:00:25the subsequent risk levels that came with it and exiting out. So had that under my belt, and then, and then the global world, terrorism kicked, and then we, you know, everybody's going off and doing Afghanistan, AFL work, you're going out looking on the mountains, you're doing all of this type of work. But when you got back, you may or may not go back on that rotation, you may have skills that you've developed, you may have certain characteristics, languages, technical, other hard skills that you may have, or plain and simple, what happens in our world, is your by-nates. Hey, I want, I want, you know, Joe or Dan to come on this mission, think of whatever reason. And so then you're going off and you're doing that. And so for me, 20 years later, and you're probably going to pull the strings on a little bit of, that was a lot of jumping around. And that literally is a lot of jumping around between all of those different skill sets, things you had to go learn to do. And then all of the crap that I come into is box, that it's part of it, which you have to put away, because you're not bringing that stuff

1:01:30on to mama, because mama and the family really don't know what you're doing. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to rely on like some cliches and some Hollywood to try to, I hope paint this picture. And you can tell me if you agree or disagree. But it sounds like people like you were bouncing very much between like being a character in, let's say like American sniper or one of those types of films. And then jumping into the next mission, which is more like tinker tail or soldier spy. And you're having a kind of like jump in between these two very different worlds. And I can only imagine, well, the amount of stress that that puts you under. Yeah, you know, the neat thing is the sanity part is we had really good mentors, right? And so I hope that I was a good mentor. I think I was, you know, and so I had really good mentors that guide you, right? And so you step in for you guys, you step into a team room and that team room functions a certain way that it becomes

1:02:32becomes normal. And so that that became quick, quickly became normal. And in particular, after the global world on terrorism, organizations still struggle. We're like, oh my god, I said that was supposed to be doing that typical stuff. But after a while, these units are resilient and they adapt. And then, you know, I think we mentioned before you have NCOs. NCOs are the backbone of a lot of these special operations units. And the NCO that that gray beard, you know, nope, got it. Sock it up. This is what you're going to go do. Go put your, you know, go put your dry suit back in your cage. Go get your suit. Go freshen up, you know, literally go freshen up your language. Go do the straight graph. Go get your shots. And study up on the mission and get out completely to the different side of the head and spear. And by the way, the protocol for this one is, you know, Tom Mama, you're, you're not going to talk to her for three months, right? And then

1:03:33by the way, Skippy, have you shit in order? And don't fuck up. No pressure. No, that was to, well, the pressure really was like, you can go do really good. But if you fuck up on the day, you came back, like, that's it. You fucked up that day. And you're just like, that's not fair. But you know, there's unique cultural things. Yeah, hopefully that answers. I'd like to get into, well, of course, 9-11 happens. The war on terror kicks off. It changes the unit urine changes a lot of these units and how they operate. I like to kind of get into that and start getting into, you know, some of the year time getting deployed to Afghanistan to rack. And do you want to lean a cent of that before we kind of, I'd like to ask you about Ramadi? Yeah. Yeah. Um, that took me a little bit to Ramadi. So the first one I did was, again, as I mentioned, that that typical mission was a good mission came back. Yeah, I think that one, you know, sent a long hair beard. And surely after that one, I met my wife. So my poor wife and it is,

1:04:38you know, you got to bring in the family because with my family, I don't, I don't know if I would have been able to do this this long, especially in my spouse, my, my current spouse of 19 years. And so that's when she met me. She was a foreigner, better on the streets of DC. And Dave, you can relate to it like, hey, crap, this is a foreigner. I'm in a, you know, a special unit. Right. Like, oh, God, this is just, why couldn't you just meet an American? So much easier to date. And, you know, I got it, you know, love at first sight, I fell in love. And then, you know, and so she was a foreigner, I really know anything about the military. She was from Brazil, came into the US, probably been in the US, not even a year. Her parents had been here for a while. That's why she met me. And then I was off to do training at Fort Bragg or something like that. And then went into GWAT. The first thing I did for GWAT, I was fortunate. Again, my mentors, one that is now one of my lifelong mentors and good friends is a lot about selecting by names. They should like me to go. We set up like essentially like an FL cell

1:05:45overseas somewhere. I think we were like, do buy or Qatar or one of these places, right, where the task forces were setting up points, points. And so we was an officer, senior guy, and then I went in there. And so from there, that was me. Then I think I posted somewhere. I went to like five different countries. I went from an embassy to transporting money to transporting prisoners on helicopters that the task force I just got in to landing in these dusty AFOs somewhere to meet my buddies and hand them crap that we bought them at REI. That was my holy crap. I came from somewhere completely different focus to the, I finally got into the global war on terrorism. I got into the global war on terrorism probably, like a year later, because we sent all our guys out. And as Jeremy and some of the guys, you had out in there, they got burned out, right? Like they were doing stuff that they weren't designed to do. And those guys have that, you know, those elements, those other SMUs have

1:06:50the ask behind them to do that. And they were tiring out. So we were, right. It's not the number. Yes, you know, it's never created to like produce at that kind of tactical level in support of so many ongoing tactical operations. Now, I want to say, and again, this is only me putting my my G.H. Edie Sardin major at 19 years later, it's because of our creativity. Right. And it is because of our problem solving abilities from the lowest, you know, E5 operator, you know, where Jeremy came from to wherever I came from it. And then just the, the missions that these units have, if people present the problem and a solution, you're going to get the resources. And so anyway, that was the first thing I did to that mission, which again, took me onto the ground, I went and grabbed prisoners. But it was at atypical. I think we talked about a jack is like, you know, a commander's looking at you go, and hey, we need one of you guys, it's either from your element or a Delta op, you know, or another operator, we got this sensitive

1:07:53thing go pick up this prisoner or go take this gear or go take this money. And so you're doing stuff. You are that trusted entity that can take care of whatever. And so when we traveled, go ahead. I was just going to say the problem. I mean, the problem with your ability to be flexible and to get it done and not just yours, but the unit in general is that that just generates more work. Right. How do you get can do attitude? Right. Right. Right. Wow. It became that we're like, well, I'm glad they think we can do it. Okay, how the hell are we going to stop? I live my lives. And a lot of the guys that were my bosses were like, all right, buddy, we're going to go to the whiteboard. So we would go to the whiteboard with markers and figure out how to do this. So anyway, so I did, I did that. And then my real first time into the the the hard skills side of it was doing, I joined the seals and Kabul for a PSD type A

1:08:55full work. So that was just being another enabler in sort of that joint world. Right. I think that's key for folks to understand that in the joint world, you know, one element in charge, but there are other many people that make that capability, right. Everybody's got a key job regardless of which you were especially at these levels, but someone always has the primary responsibility. So I was embedded for about a month in Kabul, which was good. However, then I get that magical phone call as we always do because we pack everything we can possibly pack for contingencies. Like, okay, you're going to go into the mountains of a side of odd. And now you're going to go do AFO work and you're going to replace your buddy over there because he has to come home because he's going to have his first child, which by the way, then we end up knowing, you know, our friends children feel like they leave off the high school. So anyway, so I'm going to go replace this guy and probably, you know, the guy you met in the mountains might have been there before. So I'm now dumped in,

1:09:56you know, whatever I saw about was that joint base with the Rangers OGA SF group and our guys and doing stuff along the border. And that was literally, you know, operator slash human technical, right, for for the Intel special operations world. It's not really an int. You're just a person who can get stuff done. I think that's very key to articulate the difference that folks want to go, well, you're a keyboard monkey. That's all you do. Well, no, we get things done. It's just you know, like an ODA team, you may have a specific skill, but at the end, you're still a green beret or you're still a seal, you're still, right? The problem is that yeah, problem. Essentially, a problem is outside. That took me to like 2002, 2003, but let me know how you want to. Yeah, Eric, real quick, just for the people who, you know, listen and may not be falling along that well, can you tell us what AFO means? And then what you do when you're F.O. Because you know, like you said that your first job was, you know,

1:11:03was outside of theater, was outside of the combat area. But then you went into combat theater and did PSD and F.O. So can you tell us about AFO? Yeah, so like advanced force operations in Essen is in the beginning of a leaf or G.Wat in this particular case, right? There was other elements that have written books or guys have written book in how they were done in the mountains doing advanced force operations. But there's also this administrative side that has to get done, right? Like special operations doesn't have bases all over the place. We're a very, very small little tick in the beginning that we have to find land, we have to find resources, we have to do administrative stuff. And in some way, in instances, be able to get into a fight beyond what we worked as for. So that aspect of it from a liaison perspective was going, setting up from an advanced force was we were helping all kinds of stuff from vehicles to how to bring planes,

1:12:04how to get houses, how to get weapons in, how to get, you know, all of that aspect of it, which when you're, you know, doesn't matter how special you are when you're going to someone's face, you, it's a relationship. Like, hey, man, I'm going to have to go, you know, I need those barracks, right? And here's all I can tell you, right? And so that's a lot of leg work to facilitate people coming in and or the other one is providing options. So we have to sometimes provide multiple options. So it's just not like you went to go do one thing. Sometimes we're doing that thing one, two times and three times, because option number one and number two went to shit. And now you got to go do number three. And that's really what you're running around with the flexibility to just jump on a C 130 and fly and go to this country and then go to that other country, right? And that's at the admin in the non combat area. And then in the combat area, it is just these enabling all of these other activities that the regular conventional mechanism can't do fast enough. Right? Like, hey, these guys went in there. They took that this hit, but those prisoners need to

1:13:08quickly go from this little shitty night, even a phab to this interrogation. Because now they're doing it at this new place because someone set up a capability, but they you can only go, you know, interested. That's a lot of that work. And then the typical stuff is then you're out operating out of phab X and, you know, this entity is assigned to do special reconnaissance is assigned to do A4 work up in the mountains, looking, right? That's different than doing more of the major combat operations. You're doing three, five, you know, small elements with other IC partners, with other indigenous at that level. And just really quick, I mean, a lot of it was really possible because we were able to thank God there was a lot of, you know, really cool, you know, the Rangers and the Marines and National Guard that helped us accomplish a lot of the work. Because when you're doing a lot of the say a pho work, you're not taking a full package like you're taking whatever you could put in trucks.

1:14:12And then when you get there as many of you are the guests, say you're like, oh, I guess these trucks aren't going to work. Right? Can you buy those jingotrucks? All right, we're going to buy these jingotrucks. No authorities need it. Right? Give it take. Now we're buying these jingotrucks and now you're you're continuing forward. Right. Right. Yeah, it's, you know, I think that it's interesting that, you know, when we watch movies, you know, somebody a team shows up and, you know, there are all these weapons waiting for them or there's a safe house waiting from and people don't understand that doesn't just happen. Yeah. Like like the US military and the CIA and these other organizations don't have hit teams staged everywhere and safe houses staged everywhere and, you know, all these things. And that kind of gets left out of the books and the movies because like, are you going to make a movie about logistics? Right. But, but, is the logistics can be very, very spicy, like you say, when it's just you and three other guys or two other guys and five indige in them, you know,

1:15:13out, you know, out in the mountains outside of, you know, Oregon or whatever, you know, and it's like, okay, well, you know, how do we get trucks to navigate these? I just can't go to the local toyota dealership and buy a bunch of high lux and that that operation, like a lot of people don't understand, including, you know, the operators dare I say, Rangers, seals, etc. Don't understand that, like, yeah, you went on this operation, did kicks the mask, got HVT number one, but there is like a whole cluster of enablers around that shit that made that operation actually happen. I mean, we were just kind of like the guys that kicked in the door the last 30 seconds of it. Yeah, you got, I mean, you guys bring us a point that something you had said, I mean, we, and it was someone that, that you knew day that we know in common. And so that peer group was out forward, right? And so one of the things that we were doing back at home station was monitoring because they were out first with, you know, organically with the guys that they went out to go do, like, you've had the guy on

1:16:15your show before. And those days were, you know, the points that I'm gonna get, they were freezing their ass off. Yeah. Because we didn't have that gear, right? We had gear for those guys had their gear for their specific missions. And yeah, they were able to get up. I think they were doing a training mission somewhere, take that package and get to Afghanistan. But there's that terrain was different. There's a lot of unknowns. And so when they're getting ready to do, they're buying a lot of crap on the economy, but they had that reach back power, right? And so they had, that's the uniqueness that these organizations do have is you're picking up the phone and you're sending an email and it gets prioritized. But that takes time to buy this stuff, right? And then get it in, and if, you know, and nobody really is going to wear gear that you haven't trained with, because that's pretty dangerous, right? To just take, especially some of the more critical kind of capabilities. But we had guys that, you know, took certain gear that we had on the show, but we had a pretty wide range of gear from across all the other SMUs or entities. We would get

1:17:20similar their capabilities and then we would have ours so we can be interoperable for Black and better words. But then those guys are like, dude, I didn't think I was going to go from here to 10,000 feet and I'm fucking freezing my ass off because so we would literally, you know, and you hear maybe sometimes these things and movies or books. Guys are going to REI, Hudson Trail, and we're buying and we don't know. We're going to, you know, this 18 year old, we're like, hey man, if you had all the money in the world, what would you buy for your buddy who stuck in the mountains of a really high mountain freezing ass off? And he's to be really like because he's carrying a lot of vital stuff and they're like, well, you know, there's a Sarc Taric $800 jack, right? And people are like, well, you guys are overspending with, that's the only thing that was available in 2001. Right. So we quickly had to get that gear because that's time. That's time that those guys on the ground are like, hey man, I know how much, you know, how far I can hump, how much gear I can take. I know how cold that can be, but after a while, you're just going to be, I don't care how bad

1:18:24ass you are, those mountains of Afghanistan and that time will eat you up, right? Your boots. That's why quickly on, soft went and ditched whatever boots we had and we were buying, you know, whatever high speed boots were available, but these elements were able to get that done to your point. That was critical to be able to get this gear and the stuff to these guys hands. I was thinking that those REI co-op rebates on those big purchasing. That's been nice for the guy going and making the purchase. Yeah, the government impact card. Yeah. If it's on his account, it doesn't matter what credit card he's using. So let's jump, let's jump then over to Iraq and Ramadi. I think we're talking a little bit about this mission before we started the episode, before we started streaming here tonight. I think it's really interesting, some of the details and how you accomplished what the job you were assigned to do out there. Can you have walk us through that? Yeah, absolutely. So that was when I got there, it was probably November

1:19:272006. And so my good friend of mine was taking lead on that requirement. He had been hand selected to lead certain aspects of that. And so that target set had been in the work for about a year prior. So from about 2005, it was essentially one of the number one target sets that the top 10 that we were looking for. And I mean, the greater enterprise was looking for in Iraq. And so they had gotten closer. They were narrowing down. I mean, this was going after a very elusive, so one off from senior Al Qaeda. You're trying to get to them by their communications, their facilitators, key folks. And so this person happened to have an extreme amount of level of trade craft training and just what they were doing with very, very, very,

1:20:29it had a lot of the agencies allude to how they were essentially communicating and then the way that they were doing things. It just, I mean, again, we can throw everything at it, we just couldn't figure out to the simple terms where the hell this person was and who they were. Right. And so by time I got there, I had been hand chosen, I was operating somewhere else came back. I think my kid was like a year old. And then I'm back out the door. I go to replace. And then I'm taking on this other capability. And so we end up working for the task force commander as a unique capability for him. Right. He's got his elements of that point was a seals there. That team is there. They're doing their work. And it was a joint effort. And so essentially my task was to lead some efforts leveraging I see capabilities and intelligence community capabilities and

1:21:29just kind of pulling together how to get to this entity. And so we had done several, you know, operating into Ramadi as you guys know in November of 2006 was extremely dangerous. I think there was a huge flurry of activity going on in the summer of 2006. I think there's like movies and books written about it. But by the time I got there, I knew that it was a hostile environment. And so I had ran a couple of operations going in essentially from the task force in and out of everybody looking for my home mission was just find this into the door. And it gave the task force commander and the overarching special operations commander on the ground options. Right. That's what that's essentially what we do is just provide those options. And the one really big mission was that was going to be a cordon sweep by the Marines and sort of the army going from one, you know,

1:22:30one side of Ramadi all the way across. And we provided to the task force commander, we're like, hey, we believe this entity, which has a very unique high level of trade craft. Like this enemy is employing high levels of trade craft. And it's just you're just not going to, you know, send Rangers in there and find them. It's just not going to work that way. Eric can find it interrupt for a moment. I mean, trade craft implies training, a professional intelligence service training. Was there any indication or any idea of where the bad guys picked this up from? There is. And I'm probably going to refrain a little bit, but it's definitely at the state sponsored level. Holy shit. It was good. And it was stuff that I'll prophesied. I ended up having to go into the interrogation room with the gators at that point

1:23:30because of the dynamics and the relationship ultimately, I'll get to this point. But when they started to peel the onion, it was just like, oh crap. Okay, that this is at another layer, which made sense. But when you're starting to see technical, you know, and it's kind of shit, you see in movies, you see in person, wasn't who they were. Yeah. So we're up. You're up against a state sponsored terrorist organization. Your state sponsor, this is state sponsor running around in the open, you know, in the open in Ramadi amongst the other crap that's going on, right? So you've got the regular task force going across, you know, and that includes the bricks and everybody else going against high level targets. And you got the Marines or the regular sea, you know, everybody else. But then you have this other little spots that were state sponsored. There's always another layer of stuff going on all the time. It's just if that's your responsibility, you're aware that in the other building, there's something at the strategic level where you're looking at it

1:24:32at the tactical level. Right. And this is the thing on the other side of that that onion and that other little spot, you were the adversary that the pop sign of that battle space to find that one guy. Yeah. And you know, it's like we talked about this earlier, the harder part is navigating the political piece, right? Like it's somebody else's space. Right. So people think it's like, oh, the Marines just went in there or the seals went in there and they tore down this door and got the bad guy. But before that even happens, there are layers of for good reasons. Sometimes that that house that building can't be taken down. Right. Because there are other things that play. Right. So that ability to also understand, hey, wait a minute, what is actually also going on here, a block away, two blocks away, right? So we got your approvals. You know, I presented the the option to be embedded. There was a court on sweep that was going to happen. So that means

1:25:34then when these things happen, the populist knows that the Marines and the military are going to come through. So they're going to hunker down, right? And activities are going to go down and we're going to do all of this PR kind of stuff. So quickly grab my kit, flew over, embedded, I want to say there are the second ID, their scout pretend, right? Because then this is the kernel that was in charge of new somebody from the task force, which again, it's usually who you know, these friendships that go a long way that help facilitate these operations. So, you know, I got my little rhetoric, ruck full of kit, my guns and stuff and my uniforms. And actually on that one, that's the one that I took to uniform to took an army uniform and a Marine uniform, understanding what possible courses of actions, what some, you know, lines of operations could be. So I flew over there. At that point, only the kernel knew and then he brought on the senior staff sergeant, I was in charge of the scout team. So essentially, I became one of their team members. So we went in

1:26:39in the darkness just like the scout team would do, providing overwatch for the greater cordon glue, which gave me then the opportunity to sneak and peek in and out of the houses as they were going in Ramadi. So we weren't the official work-em-ing party of the cordon suite. We were more of the overwatch, but that gave me more of the ability to look for what I was looking. So all they knew is, you know, Eric, you know, that you're hippie is going to be tag teaming with them, right? And so the neat odd conversation, there was, hey, do you want to be with us when we go into the, you know, we find your guy or direct action like, no, dude, that's your job. Bump up up, you know, and I'm like, no, no, dude, like, you do your job. I got my job. The shit goes bad. I'll step in, but this is your primary job because I've got two or three other things that if something happens, I'm going to be able to do. So anyway, we went in the cover of darkness in and out of these houses, till we found, so we found one of the houses where then there was

1:27:40indicators that, that, that clued me in, that that was a spot. My overall mission was, you know, obviously this person, we've been looking for them for about a year, was leave that person in place. Right? This is the greater, that's how that operates. You've found them, you've confirmed it visually, right? And the whole goal was not let that person realize that he had actually been targeted, that we were looking for him. So success in that mission was leaving this HVT, this high level guy, the leaf that he had skirted us. Wow, at the same time, there were culverts, there were culvert stuff that was done, right? To, to activity to, you know, certain things that were done, confirmation, leaving them in there, and then we moved on. However, because there were then we were there, the Marines were around, the Rangers were around, we hit a nerve, but you hit a nerve not only for him, maybe the cell that was around him didn't even really know who,

1:28:43that who he was, but they were, you know, they were just other simple terms, other bad dudes, they reacted to us. And as I was coming out, I was really about to put my tent doors on, because I was sending a note back, you know, quick note to confirm kind of like a jackpot if you would. Now, as soon as I come out of those metal gates, we get hit by an RPG. And it was a real shock, because you weren't expecting it. We weren't here in gunfire. Again, like I said, you hit that kind of nerve. And as we were coming out of that one house, that RPG hit, you know, the other side of the block, which is, I don't know, meters. And it went from putting on my, you know, second back on the team, being the first guy that gets out, and then just being slammed by the compression onto that blue gate. And then the next five hours, which is just a gunfight, just movement back in portion, I said. And this is sort of behind the main advance or within that main advance. Yeah, yeah, we were just one little small piece again hidden within that greater cordon sweep

1:29:49that was going on. And, you know, interesting then by the time we secure, I think it was like two hours into it, not even that long. We had secured a rooftop. And then I had helped the JTAC with supporting fire, calling in pass, some other activities at the same time. He had the radio. So I reported back to the task force. I'm like, hey, I found, we found the guy. What do you want me to do? And I love the commander of the time. He posed like, hey, do you think you want to bring him back? I'm like, okay, sir, like we can. This is what just happened in the task force. The JTAC had seen the explosion. So they, we had odd eyes, right, on my little team had all eyes to protect this movement. And so that was, you know, at that point, he said, hey, just leaving there and to some of the men to help kind of stuff that we talked about, I just remember finalizing that cons with the commander, because that was my priority, not the gunfight, not the, because all of that kicked in instinctively,

1:30:53if you would, but it was providing that message, getting that commander to say, all right, man, I'll see you when we get back, go back to all your hot wash, and then just only remembering waking up at the jock at my little, you know, little cot at the, with the task forces at what felt like two days later, because I had just, I did not remember. And again, I would only come to find this out, you know, whatever, 20 years are not even that 15 years later when I retire. When, like when you're working in somebody's battle space like that, I'm sure you have sort of a cover for action for the troops that you're around, but are the battle space commanders, are the battle space owners generally glued in to what your actual mission is, or does it even bypass them? You know, the answer, it depends. I think at the

1:31:53level where, you know, calculated risk, if somebody's going to get hurt, you're going to, you're going to break something, you're going to potentially do something. If you can do it underneath the radar, right, and obviously, higher moral ground, now violate anything ethically, right, and not put, because my authorities, my authorities may be different than the people that we're catching a ride, or they're using us. At the reality, you know, the individual guy, operator, whatever team, any other team who's doing a similar activity, will assess am I putting somebody into risk, because hey, man, you know, you don't look like them. I've taken a lot of measures to look just like them, in that particular operation, we're just really quick, like I went in wearing Army regular Army uniform, which I don't even know why I even took them. I think I took them so I can get out of country if I had to go to Qatar, right, like I'd never wore them, but I wore them to go be like the scouts, because that's what they wore. So I had everything that they wore,

1:32:54except I had a big beard, but then the whole story was I was like, I look like a turp. So you can play that for those those 10 minutes. You got that gray area of 10 minutes, but you would tell the guy, him and you know, you would trust somebody. Hey, this is here's what's going on with the left and right. You don't want to put somebody to put their ass in the line. And in particular, where you're you're reaching that scout team leader. And now what happens is they're like, oh my god, this guy, this task force guy, no, dude, like don't worry about me. worry about your team, because I'm going to be gone. Right. And I don't want you got to keep that rotation. You got to keep on going. And then also you want people to feel part of a greater something. Right. So I thank them. I would bring them in. You know, you're like, hey, that's the guy and they're, you know, they're like, they don't know. There's so much shit going on. Right. And then a month later, to this story, there's 15 hits across two major cities. So the dudes are probably like, okay,

1:33:55I was part of that. Right. Right. And hopefully their commander went back and said, you were part of and I've seen that to be with a lot of my other former friends that they have built these relationship with these these commanders or these sergeant majors or these people that helped us. I so you're alluding to sort of the aftermath of this operation that they're down the line. There was an action taken against the high value target that you were after that night. Yeah. So that night, by the time I got back, I think I got back like a day later, or when I when I woke up and I got back, we then went to work for about another month. And this was just intense, you know, development of a target at the, at, you know, at the levels that you, you know, you kind of read about where all capabilities are brought in. It was just, it's just amazing. Like the teams, the teams, right, like just we brought in all kinds of experts. We brought them in into this joint and just developed, developed, developed, provided a variety of options.

1:34:58And then the targets that's grew and grew and grew. So when it's done, you know, it isn't just going as you guys know and going just take out that back guy just because it's the time is right. You leave it up to other echelons to figure out what the best way to do it and when to do it. And then there's all kinds of authorities and stuff that happens. So there's some patients. So a month, essentially a month later than the Rangers. You know, I went and then at this point, I went in with specifically to go get that guy with a rager, a rager element that was with us there. And those guys were amazing. The funny, funny story is I went to the team leader and I brief him like, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to be one of, you know, 15 other hits. When you go in here, I'm going to go confirm. And then I need you to pull everything out of there. And he's like, Hey, Eric, you do know that these are Rangers. And if like you tell them to pull everything off of that hit, they're going to pull the fucking microwaves. They're going to pull the lamps. They're going to pull shape. Okay. Thank you. Like only take anything that's electronic. Anything that's electronic. I'm like,

1:36:03take anything that's electronic. So if someone can draw a picture of Rangers hitting, you know, these two story cows taking these bad guys out, which is one thing, but literally carrying microwaves, carrying computers, carrying lands. Because again, as you mentioned, you alluded to like at that level, they're, you know, you're taking everything because you're looking at the state level. It is so important. That was a huge SSE effort. Like it hadn't been done in a long time. But the Rangers would just stay with just so happy to go do that, right? Like they went in there, dude, and they were so happy. Like, I got the microwaves. Well, I got the lamp. They didn't know, you know, five guys like we on the fridge out. I'm having, I'm having flashbacks to an operation we did in blood for some reason, even though we were task force north. And then to say, it's kind of thing they want us pull the electronics off of that mission. And we pulled, we pulled everything. And then when we walked because the target was right next to the fog, we walked back

1:37:07out of the fog. And then, but there weren't trucks to meet us and drive us to the airfield to get on the 160th birds. And the sun's coming up and 160th doesn't fly it not during daylight. So the whole platoon of Rangers and we're holding like computer CPUs and shit like that. Like full tower computers like running full sprint, like a mile down the road to the airfield. So we can get on the birds and go back to our base. And really, I think the whole reason is just because we don't want to be stuck in blood for a day, we want to go back to the chat hall and get some, get some red bulls and whatever else. But yeah, that's really funny. It was a great mission. I mean, that we all of that stuff came back. And then I'm like, all right, mission complete, right? And this kind of goes to something that we were talking about earlier. I'm like, they captured all of these people. Now it is the next level of, you know, of folks that are working this mission set, they're going to start the interrogations. They're going to start gathering the intelligence and they're going to do all of that. But I got to get home, right? Like it's not, you know, like my time is up,

1:38:10but that was my mission. And I'm already getting indicators that I got to train up for other, other things to go do, which I did. I ended up deploying literally three weeks later in a completely different hemisphere for a hostage rescue type thing, which I've been going on for a long time, which I was very happy that I got to go do. But when I got back, I then came to the higher part and go, Hey, you build a relationship with this person and the entity and you know them so well, I had psychiatrists that actually worked for us that were just understanding how these people think breathe and the end with that hole was fusing on a whiteboard, right? We had this white board of death and everything was being put in there. And they're like, yeah, the boss wants you to go and you're going to go and hang out with the gators for a week because you have built a relationship with this individual because ultimately you guys have figured out. And that's really simply how you can get a little bit more car operation. Oh, well, so you actually had that scene like in the movie,

1:39:13the Battle of Al Jhears where they're sitting in the back of the car like I feel like I know you because I've been tracking this so long. Yeah, I mean, I had to go back in there and so I got to sit and watch a day of the process going. And then the next day I was in the booth for about two or three days in that cycle. How did this gentleman respond to having you there? It was kind of checkmate. Yeah, we got you. It was it was that sense of it was checkmate at the level of, you know, if you would Dave the you know, the the I see officer to the I see officer right at that trade crack at that at that level, you're like, okay, you got me. You know, and that's actually been later on. We used it in again to talk about at the schoolhouse of what's in there. We didn't know this was going to happen, but this is what we can do. This is what people can do. These are the

1:40:19ideas we bring out. And because you're trusted at this level, well, you're going to move forward with it. And again, I was packing to go home and but then we went and we did it and it was successful. And it's not, and obviously I was a small fraction of it. There are just so many other professionals and mechanisms that helped us facilitate, but we're just those out of the box thinkers as I say, how about this and they're going, okay, well, you know, this, this dude thinks we can do it. And let's give it a try. And it's and that's awesome. That's wild, man. And I mean, that's just an incredible and kind of rare story, I think of of espionage taking place inside of war zone. Yeah. Could you tell us a little bit? You alluded to being next sent on a completely different mission and a completely different AO to locate American hostages. As one, you know, what can you tell us about that? What was it like kind of bouncing from Ramadi to a totally different AO? Because you had been working on this prior to, right? Yeah. You know, I'm going to keep trying to keep that one

1:41:25simple. And so there had been, except you, there's probably one that's a little bit more noticeable a lot closer to home for folks, right? And, and I, we, the greater soft community was one part of it, but when you've got Americans capture hostage, I've seen the energy that goes behind taking bad, you know, bad people off the streets. I have seen a different level of dedication and passion to go rescue our Americans. It's just a completely different world. And so probably, I don't want to, I'm going to kind of speculate maybe two years prior to that in and out. And it was just as opportunity we're seeing. Again, you were doing something else, studying, learning, whatever, you were going to go do that. And then you can come back and do another one. So that one, I, I still hadn't even, again, known that what a traumatic brain injury was. I had no idea what that was, but there was as everything happens, new information, new developments, new equals

1:42:30new opportunities. And then you're, you're sent to the fight. I had nothing to do with in that aspect, part of the planning is just again, one of the folks that by name said, all right, it's Kippy. Here's what we're going to go do. And then it went from leave Ramadi. And I've talked about this for us putting everything that went on from a year prosecuting that target in all the combat trauma, all of that, and even also acknowledging, and I'm remiss if I don't say all the, all the service members that were killed in that time in Iraq and Ramadi, that weighs heavily. And unfortunately, you see it, but you've got to put it away or it's hard to operate sometimes at the levels, but I put Ramadi into that Malila folder and I put it at the safe at my team room and locked it up and prepared for the other one. And that little Lee was get back into the mission, understand where it's going, you know, you're going to go and dress completely different, you're going to go do completely it's all literally a different world. Right. And there's higher, there's

1:43:36higher level of, I don't want to say it's risk or compromise, but sensitivities that are in play with it. So you got to check your mind, you got to check where you're at. And then went off and did it. And I want to say that that point was it wasn't successful, which a lot of times in our world, there's a lot of things that don't lead to success at that moment, but they do later on. And so you kind of used to, hey, I move that football just a little bit more forward for the next option. And so we did, we did go down integrated. I think we went down for maybe two or three weeks. And then, hey, there's nothing else to do because of other things have to come into play. And it takes that world to rescue folks. It is in black and white. It's not like dropping a day, J. Dan, this is a, this is a chess game, right. And there's things that have to be put in place. And sometimes they'll take weeks. So, okay, back you go. And then you're doing something else. Ultimately, that did culminate into a success. I want to say I was probably in the horn of Africa.

1:44:42For some more when that, you know, those American hostages were rescued. And I can tell you everybody, anybody that was involved in it. Just easily shed tears, just enjoy to know that our folks came back. And that we had a part of it to a part in it. Yeah, those are some of the greater highlights. I'm not going to, I won't drop any dimes here, Eric. I'll just say I think it's fascinating that officially the role that you and many others played in in recovering those American citizens is completely unacknowledged. People have no freaking idea. Okay. Eric, you know, we, when we talk to a lot of service members and intelligence professionals, you know, one of the challenges they have, which gets mixed in, I think, with post-traumatic stress, like it all joins together and including the TBI's, but is also the shifting of gears, right?

1:45:47Going from, you know, a hundred miles an hour in a combat zone with no decompression, no like sort of venting function from the government to back to his fillion life. And that's very hard to go to do this ramping. And even that creates its own sort of low grade post-traumatic stress in a while with one foot on the brake, one foot on the gas all the time. But for you and others like you, it wasn't just shifting gears from going from operational at, you know, a hundred miles an hour, killing what's in front of you or whatever, to back at home, trying to fit in with people at, you know, TGIF or whatever, TGIF Fridays or whatever or Outback or whatever. But you were actually also going on operationally still in a high stress environment, but with a completely different

1:46:48focus and a completely different. So how hard was that for you? Did you, did you, because this is this, I'm going to make this a bigger question, because one of the things you mentioned when you talked about sort of your expression of post-traumatic stress or these things being different than like a dev group guy or a cad guy, do you feel that guys in your world compartmentalize and detach a lot more because that's sort of part of the job. And then so you almost have the sort of an hedonia, you know, this, this lack of feeling that that becomes your survival mechanism. Yes, and, you know, not, and there's a guy, I'm, you know, I'm not an assulter, I don't come from those organizations, I've worked really close with those organizations,

1:47:48made friendships with a lot of them earlier on when I started my career in 2000 in this unit, and of course at the time from, and I've seen a lot of them suffer from post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries. The, what I will say is then, you know, in each organization protects their activities differently, you know, I'll say they're simply, but, you know, a seal is a seal, so a seal does seal stuff, okay? So I'm assuming the spouses and the children of a seal and every seal know that those dudes are going to be constantly in danger because that's what they do, and that's what they're really good at doing. Special forces, same thing, the rangers, the Marines, and then however, guys from CAG and however that world, but they're cycles in the way that they train and in the way that they deploy, you know, and again, I'm just generalizing here in three to four months

1:48:52that kind of stays in par with what, you know, the special operations is going for deployment. Now in the world of sort of intelligence, special operations in a unique world for a lot of unique small organizations is that then we don't have those same cycles, and what happens at work literally stays at work because at a, you know, it's nothing because it's super sexy and, you know, James Bond crap, well because it's classified work, right? And so anybody that works in the IEC and the intelligence community, they'd either work there and they can't talk about it, and so we have a large aspect of that, and I would say this in general in sort of military intelligence, and then mix that with special operations. So we tend to compartmentalize a lot, and I've mentioned this before on a personal level, and I will say that I did wrong. I probably had a lot of opportunities to tell my family that I got hit by an RPG that I almost feared getting imprisoned,

1:49:53that I, you know, stumped my head and passed whatever, all of these really bad things that happened, as well as even share accomplishments, hey, then I just came back from a rotation and something really good happened. Why you, my son went to the hospital when I left and you had to deal with the bills, there's a good outcome, but we didn't even share good, bad, or indifferent, because you compartmentalized. And a lot of that in that selfish perspective, I didn't want, you know, my wife to take away my kitchen pass and go, you're done, where I'm going to divorce you, because we have high rates of divorce, and a lot of the divorces were, I don't know what you're doing, but I know it's not good for the family. And so we tend to compartmentalize, hopefully it's getting better, that it has to get better, where folks that are doing this level of work or any level work in the military learn to do what PTSD and TVIs upfront when you get back from a rotation. And so we tend to compartmentalize more because of the type of work that we do, and again,

1:50:55it doesn't come home, for me personally, the way I always conditioned myself, the way my mentors taught me, I never took anything home, there was nothing home, there was no souvenirs when you came home from a trip, you know, there's just set rules, you leave it in your wall locker, and maybe you bring it home five years later, because Joe went to Africa and he brought you that elephant. It's just the way it is, because at the end you're protecting not only the organization, and as we've all talked about it, you're really protecting that person to the left and to the right of you, by these little things, because in this level, whether there's less room for error, you gotta check that ego, right? You gotta check it at the door. And so there is a lot more compartmentalization. Now the mental aspect of it is, I don't think anybody when GWAT started thought that getting hit by grenades and RPGs and being shot at or being compromised or being singleton stop or going in and out, moral injury is another one

1:51:57that people think, well, maybe only assaulters have more injury because they killed a bunch of people. Right. Moral injury extends to, you know, I told my wife all the time, I said, I didn't fall into the person, I never lied to you, but I didn't tell you the truth. Right. There's a lot of moral injury that today I don't remember. Right. Really what I suppressed when I suppressed it, where I was at, until I'm looking at photographs going, oh, fuck, I was, I could sleep, I was talking, I was over drinking or an asshole, right? Or something happened and I left it in the team room in that safe because that's how I love to deal with it. So I'll stop there just in case you I mean, it sounds, it sounds like a cliche, but I can imagine here how like your mind becomes a labyrinth over time and just the psychological pressure, it must be so immense. And I want to get into the kind of toll that doing this line of work takes on people in a bit,

1:53:06but I did also want to hit up some of these other stories that we had talked about. Yeah. You had mentioned one where you had to initiate the emergency destruction plan of your equipment. And I was wondering if you could tell us as much as you can about that operation and why you had to go down that, I mean, maybe you can also explain what the emergency destruction plan is for people who don't get it. Yeah. And you know, it was, man, I think it went over almost against every fiber in my body to even acknowledge that or even again, now I'm realizing that if I did didn't say anything to my family, that's kind of my Limpub's test, right? And then again, there was other people involved in these things and there's other folks that have had similar scenarios that I hope they're listening and I hope that they figure out that you need to work through it, the things that we've or anybody else has gone through. So in particular, this one, I actually did put it in my PTSD paperwork at the VA, took a little bit because of the sensitivity

1:54:10involved around it, but it did get help figuring out that, oh yeah, I had to do, which is right, classified classified for the five W's of it, except the how or why or whatever. You know, what actually transpired. And so it was, you know, it's sensitive. It was an operation doing intelligence work. And what an emergency destruction plan is, it's kind of like an old shit plan, right? And so if you're going to get compromised, one man's, five man, 10 man, and they're playing wherever you're at, you've got to send it guys in a tactical world. I remember at least, formatively, as a satay, that would be take a thermite grenade, you put it in your backpack, you would hope that that thermite grenade would go down, right? I think I pretended to do that one time in a JRX and I kind of passed that one. Well, sometimes you don't get to carry thermite grenades, right? So the level of some of these operations, you've got to be way more creative.

1:55:11And at least in my experience and the experience of the folks that were involved in this in session of this mission line, as that had taught me, I don't think anybody else had done one. Later on, I did come to find out and maybe somebody did something similar because they're always going to have these hairy scenarios. But I'm so glad I didn't have to pay the bill because I destroyed a lot of stuff. I think I was like, what is it? A 15-6 or whatever it was? I got back and I thought I'd done good and then I like, you're getting invested and I'm like, why not? Why does that work out? Anyway, so there I am. You know, we're working in an environment that has very little room for forever. And it meets the threshold, and activity meets the threshold with two two guys that I think the world of for their actions. And then funny stories later on, I have

1:56:12kind of processed how I said them. But I get a phone call, right? There's that dreaded phone call with, you see those in the movies with, you know, the red cows about to take a poop. Well, that means you need to go to ABCDE and go. And that means that the entrance into Monster Limit. There's no thinking that has to be planned. That's methodical. That's timing. And so I get the phone call and I go through the process. I think at that point, we hadn't thought about only doing it with one person. There was this little, you know, a gray area there. It was manageable. But there was a lot of things to break, sanitize, right? And then in part of the destruction, and emergency destruction plan is also an escape and evade aspect of it. So part of that is twofold. It was destroyed and get the hell out of there and go. And then go means there's a plan. And I think my plan on paper was like two days. And later on, I'm like, I don't know, I kind of walked that far,

1:57:15right? Like it was one of these elaborate, like go downhill, get on a boat, go across this river, you're in another country. And now you're just going to go that away. I think I just did uh-huh. I know what to do. Like it's never going to happen, but it happens. However, in this aspect, I'm then halfway, I get the bag, I destroy everything, do everything I need to do within protocols. One part of it that we didn't know is it's really hard sometimes to destroy things when you don't have thermites. And you've got to take your hands to it. And now you've got this adrenaline, right? We know what adrenaline is. We know how your eyes are going to go down and you start ripping. But now your hands start getting bloody, right? And because you're breaking plastic and plastic starts to cut. And after a while, you've got your your your bodies and your heart rate's going. But now blood in your hands is really slippery, right? And I don't even make it a mess at that point. I'm like, I'm not even worried about DNA. I'm not even thinking about it. I'm just thinking about I can't hold crap in my hands and blood everywhere. So I'm destroying stuff. My hands are getting bloody. Uh, I wash up as

1:58:20best as I could. I sanitize as best as I could. Um, and then I start moving out. And then I get a phone call him and it's you got to come back. Um, wasn't thought about in order to make everything go back to green, right? Uh, if you would, simple as green, yellow is your your kind of endanger red is your endanger. So to get back to green, you need to get back. And so that's not quite anything I ever thought about. So I literally have to come back. Uh, and just accommodate things in order to get back to green. And so that took a lot of creativity of why at the end, you know, just like you see in the, what is it that this, uh, ID channel? You know, why did the murderer have blood in his hand? Well, why do you have blood in your hand? You say you're doing X, but you're really doing why? And so that ended up being good. Uh, I had some creativity on the spot to, um, explain why I have blood in my hand, why they were scrapped, but I had a reenact. It put

1:59:21kind of things back in place. And then, you know, my, my, uh, essentially, you know, everything got back to green. Uh, and then but a couple of days later, we wrap up, we get out of there. I go kind of back to what we were talking about and we didn't get to go home. Then subsequently, there's that, you know, that frago, Hey, man, I know you get kind of destroyed everything, but you guys need to stay here for another month because we need you for something else. The answer is, okay, let us figure it out. So that's that story. That's crazy. That is, you know, it's interesting because on the show before we've talked about the weight of decisions you make that you have to make, right? Like when you're on patrol and you see a guy with a cell phone, do you shoot him or do you not? If he's triggering an ID and you haven't shot him, you, you just veiled your team. If you shoot him and he's an innocent, then you just committed a horrific act. I mean, we saw was it in 2001 when the AP three went down or, uh, right in China and China.

2:00:26Right. Yeah. And they didn't just say, right? Oh, right. And they didn't destroy the equipment because and people go, how could they not do that? They had procedures in place. That's a lot of weight on them. If they destroy that equipment and then our government turns around and tells them why did you destroy that equipment? Like, you know, whatever. Like that's a lot of weight. Those are heavy decisions because you like you said, you're glad they didn't make you pay for it. Right? Or yeah, I mean, I try to make kind of fun of you even though it isn't true story. You know, and later on into the future, I would always think about that. And I'm like, okay, that's kind of silly, right? Like I need to make sure when I do a mission back brief, if we got to do this, you're not fucking going to go and go chase these people because they did what you just agreed we're going to do. Right. Check. Right. Lessons like or sometimes we get, so procedurally used to what's going to go wrong till things go wrong. And then unfortunately, it always ends up in an investigation. Good organizations, good companies learn from that and change

2:01:28everything. So it doesn't happen again. So then the folks are going to do it. They're not like, hey man, you remember what happened to Eric? But what happened to these guys? Yeah. Fuck that. And what what happens is you compromise the system. Right. You compromise the integrity of how you're supposed to work. Right. So continue to a take care of your fricking people all the way to the end because they're going to give you, they're going to give their lives for you. They're going to go to jail. They're going to fricking, you know, sit in a cell somewhere. And, you know, but be there to back them up because, you know, those, you know, being an American hostage and there's been very many of them. That's a world I never wanted to be in. Like I'd rather have, and I've never told my wife, like, I rather have been shot blown up, killed, but to be captured. Right. I still have, I still have nightmares about like, right. It still goes into that hyper vigilance that folks that have been, and it doesn't matter what you did in the military or if you were even an undercover police officer, you don't want to get ratted. You don't want to get found. Like

2:02:32Eric, you're just not going to. I was wondering if you could tell us about some of those times where you were afraid of being captured because I know, you know, you would mention doing sigleton operations and a few occasions. And again, I mean, back to the amount of psychological stress you're under. I mean, that's a very different scenario than being part of a Delta squadron or a Ranger Platoon or a conventional infantry company. What were some of those, some of those instances that, you know, really stick with you? Yeah, and I mean, I'll say I'm not the only one that's ever, that's ever done that. A lot of, a lot of folks, you know, have been tasked to do things. And what essentially is a sigleton, you're by yourself there, but in the shadows, and if you wouldn't have the bad word, in the background, there's people helping you, right? Like there's no, you're just going to go to yourself, generally, in this country, induce stuff by yourself. You're going to have an element, but it is your ass on the line by yourself. You don't have a buddy to your left and to your right, right? It's just you and what and what you're doing. And so I did have one

2:03:38in sort of mid 2000s post-Romadi post some of the other stuff that I did. And at that point, I was already kind of worn down a little bit. And so one of that in that rotation, I essentially found and then entrusted to do some placement in access, if you would. So the ability to develop gain access and kind of work my way closer, while in the back, I knew the same elements you just mentioned would be there to take care of it. But there wasn't an instance going in and out of a facility that I worked out was that high level of stress, right? Just getting bags in, developing the relationships to have people not blink and eye, right? That took weeks to develop, and then you're going in and out. And essentially you're sleeping there by yourself. You're living your

2:04:41life every day as you need to. And then you're operating when it's the right time to do things, kind of that wave of the hand if you were to keep it simple. And so I had been doing this several days about a week. And there were like always there's always something going around around you. And this was city-wide. So city-wide, the, and this was a hostel. This is literally a hostel environment. It wasn't Iraq and Afghanistan. And so there wasn't a lot of US entity just running around. It's very select folks running around. And so in that one and working had not only a weapon, but I had some other capabilities and things that I was doing across the spectrum of the ins. And then there was one time that the lights in the city went off. And before that I was getting, I would do a Comst check with sort of another operator that was back in an area. I would do my Com shots, if you would, communicate, get my instructions. Here's what I'm going to do. Here's my updated

2:05:45emergency plan. If something goes on, here's my schedule for the day. I'm out. Right. And that's how you kind of work. Then it was a point that, hey, hey man, by the way, here's the front level. It's going up, right? We're going from, we're going to red. And what really matters is they're targeting Americans, right? Still American. However, little brown guy that you look like, you're still, you're not from there. Sorry, you're not from there. And so at the same time, I was getting closer and closer and kind of creating some avenues into what I needed to facilitate. So when I come back, then you're always, you know, you get tired. You start to do your checks and balances. Okay, I don't remember that person. I don't remember this. This person's new. I've never seen that person at my car. I like all of this starts to build up, which there are always multiple things going on around you. It is just identifying which one is focused on you. Like there's criminals, there's other

2:06:46intel work, there's always a multitude of things going on. It's just having that clear mind. And so one night, I'm, I'm at the site that I've had where I was living. And at that point, I had a big toll. So unfortunately, I had probably been drinking a little bit more than I need to, needed to. And, and I was exhausting myself to go to sleep in order to continue to operate day to day. I was reaching that really bad threshold and the entire lights in that city go on. Like all of it, there's no power. And so the critical lifeline that I had was common. And as you guys know, when commas done, I don't care how many guns you got. I don't care how fast you can run. I don't care. But what indigenous clothes you're wearing, you got no common man. That's when you feel, that's when that gut feeling. And so the power had gone down. And I was essentially, probably within minutes of packing up and making a run for it, right? Because I would have met certain time windows. And then there were a slightly elements that they were doing their own stuff around

2:07:49that that new hey, if this happened, you're going to go help this one knucklehead doing his own thing. So that ended up being to get to a point in a variety of ways. One of a major PTSD for me, because I I slept with my pistol at my pillow for various nights, you know, in a nice off bed. But I had a pistol. I had all the measures to know if the door was open. I shouldn't have been doing that. Like that pistol should have been a tertiary thing to get to. It should have been kind of more concealed. Everything else would have been more of my protection. My gun was the last, but the gun with the first thing. And so when those lights went off and at the level that I was at, that, that was really hard to be in that scenario. And so till today, not that today, I think, you know, it took, it took probably going back a couple of months and even recent, the SGB, SIGLAG Lavinbach to kind of take that fight flight because that ramped me up really, really high.

2:08:53And there was no one coming no down. There was no one coming no down because I really didn't talk about it when I got back home. Never talked about it to our docs. Never talked about it to my spouse. It went back and that envelope and that was made, you know, 2000s. And then it just kept on kept on working. Aaron, I mean, I hopefully will talk more in a broader spectrum about post-traumatic stress after this because it's it's a big deal. And we tried to talk it on the show, talk about it but can you tell us a little bit about the about the what is it the Stellic gangling block, right? Yeah. Yeah, so it's like I'm in block. Yeah, and I get I'm not a doctor. Yeah. Don't know, you know, so this is my my fourth one. I just did two of them the last week with Doc Mulvaney, former Navy SEAL term Army Doc, Storganare. And so the SGB I want to say I'm going to throw a number out there probably about 10 years ago, 10, 13 years ago,

2:09:57became something that was then being used in at least a special operation community to help with post-traumatic stress. Essentially what it does is they put what it says, light a cane on the sympathetic nerve going obviously up to the brain. And essentially it just numbs it. Well, what does that do for us who've been in the fight of flight syndrome these high stress levels? And again, it's not only veterans, it's not only military. It can be, unfortunately, you know, someone who got raped or had a really bad stressful environment, they got they got stuck and they couldn't make the loop of coming off the fight or flight. And what it does is essentially for me from my high-enders, and it just it's stopping it, right? It's allowing you to reset. And what it did for me that first time where this is 2019. So again, I got shot in 1999, came into the unit at all, you know, just about it seems like every trip I had an incident or something was going on till 2019. So that's a lot of fight or flight syndrome.

2:11:00And so what that did to me was take off what it felt, you know, like an 80 pound rock, just your body feels alleviated and your emotions just, you know, what do we do with most of them? You just start to cry. You just start to release. And you start to feel, I know most guys who have PTSD, or girls, at least in this line of work, stop feeling. You stop being able to be sympathetic on the stopping country. So that SCV has been, and hopefully this answer it, just an amazing therapy or procedure to help, you know, alleviate and grow post-traumatic stress. And like how long after you receive a shot, do you, does it last for for you? They say it's typically six months. And I would say that that's about right. So my first one was right after the two guys, two friends of mine, they committed suicide in 2019. So I got that one.

2:12:02And then six months later, almost to the tee, when I was really getting into the medical aspect of retiring, which is now I'm understanding all the shit that's broken. I did my second one. And that was about six, seven months ago, or six months prior to the first one. And so they typically say it's about six months past the first one. And then I went along on this last two, it was probably about a year and something, because the first two were on active duty. And unfortunately, the VA and civilian health care isn't paying for it. So it took me a little while. And so the last ones I just did a week ago were on the, typically to do it on the right side. And now they're also doing it on the left side that is also helping for traumatic brain injuries. So, so the VA is not covering this? They won't cover out of pocket. In other words, they won't send you from my research and the research that I've been done with the nonprofit that I'm working with.

2:13:06The VA won't say, okay, go to the Steglig, you know, this institute to get it done. There they are certain VA hospitals. They will do it. From my understanding for folks that have tried, it has just been, it's been very difficult for them to get an appointment in the timely manner. Yeah. To go get an SGB. Yeah. I say, right. Yeah. I, not to say anything about the doctors and the medical staff at the VA because I, I generally think they're good, but the administration, I think they're planning as to weigh out vets, like let them die before we have to pay for anything. It was to weigh stuff as much as possible. The hardest part you just really quick on this is if we do it on active duty, why are we not doing that at the VA side? Right. Like if a soldier marine or service member, that was part of the get-well plan on active duty, a year prior to getting out, and their diagnosis of PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and all of a sudden you literally are

2:14:06spitting them out of the active duty tricur system. There's a gap. Yeah. Into the veteran system, and then you're not following up with that care. Right. I think you're causing more issues and that can probably hurt that person. Do you want to plug the nonprofit that you mentioned that you're working with? I can if you don't. Thank you. So right now, I'm, I got brought in as a team member to the military special operations family collaborative. Okay. Essentially what they do is they focus on research, education, and connection. Right. And so what, and there's a huge team or a huge grouping of other nonprofits, all secure foundation, warriors hard and healing. And there's a couple of other ones. Really key ones right now, unfortunately, it's amazing. But what they what they're focusing on is taking research from these institutes and these other nonprofits and

2:15:08these things that are working, going, okay, this is proven medically. This is proven, peer wise, this is proven across various other institutes. And then we, they provide education, they're providing education at certain commands at special operations, which is good. So these special operations command are bringing in these entities to allow us to share what we've learned from those outside of active duty, right? Because there's a different aspect to that. And then they connect. And there's a lot of connecting of just like what I did with, with SGB. And in particular, they just had a couple of soft, soft team room health events that we had online. And there's another one coming on May where we had Dr. Lynch, Dr. Tudy and two other doctors talking about SGB and psychedelics. So again, the reason we're sharing this is because they've done the research at a high

2:16:09level to go, okay, this is, this is being proven at multiple commands, the seals, the rangers, whatever. And so that's essentially who I'm teaming up with with a lot of these front. Yeah, we've had a couple of that's on the Sam Juan and a couple of others who have talked about the benefits of psychedelic trunes down like it was in UT Austin where they, there's a couple different places. Yeah, but where like people are having great effects from this, what you're talking about the, the, the, the, the, the, the basil, what is it? The G, GB, SGB. I've heard about that before and I've heard that people had really good effects, at least like short term relief from it. You know, yeah, there's no, I mean, I'll tell you besides the funkiness and you guys come, you know, from an environment, we're like, okay, we put a needle in your neck. Okay, that's about it. Right. They're now removing anything. Right. Not putting anything in. Like I've yet to, in the research piece of it, though, somebody grew something out of their forehead. Right.

2:17:11It has an app. Right. Most in the quick test within minutes is that I, so on my right side, your right eye literally freaks out. And so that's the test to go. Okay, it worked. Yeah. Yeah. So for those of you who are listening and watching the organization that he mentioned is, you can find it at ms o f c dot or I'd never even heard of that one. Yeah, I have an ear. It's in military special operations family collaborate. M s o f foxrot c charlie dot org. If you guys want to check that out. And so Eric, there's a whole bunch of other stuff you did in the military that we're not, I don't think we're going to have time to get to tonight. We'll have to do this again sometime. No, yeah. I'm you for having such an amazing. Yeah, I mean, I know you spent a lot of time doing like force modification work developing the new generation of technologies for the

2:18:15special operations community. I would like to take some time to talk about getting out of the unit, getting out of this clean desk, thine world. And I had mentioned to you previously that, you know, we interviewed Sarah Carlson on the show once who was a CIA analyst. And she really talked us about how an analyst can have PTSD. I mean, and I think the public thinks like, how can somebody who sits behind a computer all day have PTSD and they don't understand the type of pressure this person is under to get it right 100% of the time, which of course is impossible, right? I think that the public understands at this point that we have these soldiers, we have these hardcore dudes who we send into combat overseas, they shoot and kill bad guys. Sometimes there's collateral damage. Sometimes they see their teammates killed and this leads to this phenomena that we call post-traumatic stress disorder. But I think the public has a harder understanding people like

2:19:18Sarah Carlson, the analyst side, or people like yourself, Eric, who are on sort of the technical intelligence side, not necessarily pointing a gun and shooting people. I think that there's, I'd like to take a little bit of time to kind of unpack your experience for people. I think this entire interview has done that a little bit. But to further go into your path getting out of the military and sort of some of the issues and the unique aspects of your job that lead to a different type of post-traumatic stress. Okay. Yeah, so a lot of it was acknowledgement, right? So there's the what, again, as I mentioned, kind of putting it in Pandora's box just so I can go out to another trip. And I can pass the test with the doc or the psych. He says, okay, Eric's clear to go out. Right. That was literally the, that was literally my, you know, five metre night fight for 20 years or

2:20:18whatever. And most guys and girls in a variety of things that they went through a lot of and they saw a lot of stuff that you just lose sleep. It's just not normal, right? And then you can't talk about it. There's no, there's also this stigma. So I think part of it, maybe what you'd have mentioned is there's a huge stigma about a vulnerability that, you know, bombs dropping on people and people getting killed or, you know, we're saving stuff then you should be able to know you're still freaking human beings. This isn't a video game, right? And the G-Waters have been going on for a long time and it's been non-stop, right? And so that's another key aspect of it. And so for me, personally, reaching 2019, there were several key aspects of it. And hopefully, it relates to others who are in similar positions getting rid of retire or ETS or have gotten out and now can look back and go, man, you know, maybe that's a good idea. Is if you have a family and, you know, and that can be a significant other or your children or even your mom and your dad, you, you,

2:21:26want to give back to them, you want to be able to say, here's what I was doing for all these is because I know you suffered. You saw me, right? There's a key thing, perspectives. Like, I can tell myself I was okay. So I'm starting to look back at those pictures, going, dude, you look like shit. Like you were beat down, you were having issues, medically, marital, family, friendships. When she starts to retire, you're you're really coming to a, hopefully, most people come to come into Jesus and go, I need to close this chapter and I need to go to the next one because if you've learned anything from reading or watching some of these podcasts is, I don't care how bad of an issue or how tough you were, you're going to have some remnants of what you went through, right? And so for me, it was, all right, I, because of the suicides, that was literally what tripped me and I fell flat on my face. I went into a dark corner and said, I went back to the skills that I did

2:22:26have of self-assessment and ability to self-adjust and go, all right, the right thing to do right now, Eric is asked for help and I asked for help. And so part of asking for that help, as I was getting rid of the retire, was, hey, you, you'd need to open those Pandora's boxes and figure out all of these things that you went through and how did it really affect you? Like the PTSD, the TBI, it's moral injuries. Oh yeah, Aho, you weren't around when your wife needed you, your children needed you, your family needed you. And for me personally, one of the aspects of it was I cut away from a lot of my family 29 years ago when I came into the military again, you know, for simple terms, they were Cubans and I didn't want any of that to hinder my family or hinder my ability to serve this nation. So I cut ties with my family. So there's a lot of guilt associated with that. So when I started to look at my transition, there is a selfish aspect, which I hope some folks take to it, which is him and

2:23:27you've done a lot to serve this country. If you're entitled to VA benefits, then take the time and focus on that because going through that VA process will also help you find care and help because you're going to acknowledge you're broken somewhere and then you're going to get treatment. So as I started to open that box, identify that I had issues and started to document it, then I would start working on that aspect of it. And importantly was, okay, what kind of person am I going to be post military? Doesn't matter how cool, you know, all the cool stuff you do, how am I going to provide from my family post? Because literally when you get out, I get out 30 September, one October, I'm a civilian. I'm no longer Sergeant Major Meadas. I am now Eric Meadas. And that's it. There's nothing else that matters, but I'm now Eric Meadas, who's responsible for a family and I got to get my, I now have to really get my head straight

2:24:27because I got to be a civilian and take care of them to what they want because they weren't, they didn't sign up to serve this country. So there's a lot of aspects of transition, especially if you're married, if you're married, that now that weight, and you got to work through a marriage, you got to fix a marriage, heal a marriage, post that service in which you've heard, you know, in the last two, three hours, is that in all of that who really suffered are the family members that have to endure all of this. Hopefully that kind of answers Jack and David, which you were. I look at it's an overview for sure. Yeah, and we've, you know, we've talked about this before where you know, there's this big, you know, thank you for your service culture, which is appreciated. But at the end of the day, especially for people in special operations, we, we were doing it because we wanted to. Like there was no draft, right? There was no, we were all in it for own reasons that were ultimately selfish in some ways. And the people who really, and I'm not like, you know,

2:25:34we all have our demons and post-mattox presses real, but also the people who really suffered were, were the lives in the kids and the husbands in some cases, but the families that were left behind that weren't out there living their dream. You know, we're not there doing the cool guy stuff that they they're living with the uncertainty. You know, you know, yeah, you know, at any moment, you know, somebody could kick in your door and, you know, when you're in some, you know, non-permissed environment and take you hostage, but you signed up for that. You want like, that's the life you wanted on some level. And we suffered from that, but, but the families didn't sign up for that. And, and we forget sometimes, and the divorce rates in special operations, and I'm sure, in your unit, are astronomical, and you cannot blame spouses for, feeling left behind when, when we just go do our

2:26:34thing. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that can be an entire conversation on it. I would say that mean, we took advantage of knowing that our family would be there for us, right? I, there's one, there's a few things that I told my wife and the one thing I, I, I, I, which I had promised because I had all full intent, literally was to walk home, because walking in special operations is a core of what we do, right? That mindset that I can walk back. It's a carpet. So, I would always promise I will walk back. If at any case, and that against me being compromised, and if I've got to fight my way, chew my way out of somewhere, I'm going to walk back home. But what does that mean to them? Right. That's not something I spouse wants to hear. They don't want to hear that. They want to be able to hear like, hey, as soon as you leave, your kid's going to get sick, and the mortgage is going to come in, and that bills can come, because here's I know what we were doing. Right. And I mentioned this, and I think I said this,

2:27:38I was always, I came home to be on TDI, and I went home to deploy. Right. I lived 20 years, at least more so until I figured it out, forward either admissions, training, embedded in some agency doing something. And then I came home to TDI, hoping to hurry up and get and get out of here. Right. Now the reality, and it's probably the hardest thing I had to do with, because again, a lot of my friends have gone everywhere for good bad reasons, because you're just like, I mean, I got to leave you guys alone. I have my family. So, I don't have the team room anymore. I don't, I have some really close friends that we maintain. But now it's just you and that family to, you know, to work through it. And I think there was something that you had asked as part of that transition is, how do I want to unfold my story? How do I want to say what I did? How do I want to do? I know what to say. I got my master's degrees. I can be a technician.

2:28:40I can be an executive. I can go freaking build lawn cabins. But there's a process that then I have to worry about, what am I going to disclose and what I did? It was really hard to get to this point. Right. There was a lot of thinking and retrospect, but my purpose is, two foes, really quick, kids. I want, I don't want another suicide. Right. I don't care if I served with them. I didn't so we tend law enforcement, military, family member, first responder. I don't care. Not for having to go through things like this. And because people aren't talking, I will share that I went through this as much as I can share of the really cool missions that I went through. You know, and that was important. And really, I'm giving back my family and, and my close friends their life. Right. Because I took away their lives. Unfortunately, because we what we had to protect organizations always have to protect, just in basic, all right. Every military person has to do the

2:29:43family is who takes the brunt of the opposite because they don't understand it. They don't do that freaking every yearly opposite class. There are opposite classes you tell them not to put anything on social media. And they're like, but why? Right. So anyway, Eric, something you told me once that really stuck with me, there's something you told me about the unique issue that people in your line of work have. And it reminded me, I just adjust the position of this. I have had the nightmares in the past where you're doing a halo jump and you pull your rip cord and nothing happens and you go through all the performance measures to try to fix it and none of it works. Or where you're in a firefight and you're shooting your M4 and the gun goes down and you go through sports, you know, do all the corrective measures. The gun still will not go off. And I remember my dream, literally breaking down the gun and field stripping it and trying to fix it and it still would not go off. I think that's a dream. Every, every ground guy goes through every ranger, every seal probably

2:30:45has those same kinds of dreams. You told me once that a nightmare you would have is that you would wake up in the morning and you would not know who you were, that you would not know what your identity was because you've been traveling and all over the world doing these different missions under different aliases, living as different people. And then you come home and you're going to wake up in the morning and you're not going to remember who you actually are. And that's something that really stuck with me. Yeah, I mean, you know, the complexity of just and special operations, it's for good reasons. It has to be very protective. The element is surprised, right? And protect the organizations that do special operations. And then and then there's that aspects when you're doing intelligence work, obviously more so. And then you mix both of them and then if you're a military service member, first an intelligence officer, that's different because they have,

2:31:48different authorities and different protective measures. I'm still an E9, but I'm struggling this world. And so at least from 2000 to maybe 2018, at least traveling and doing stuff, there was so much stuff to be involved in, not to sound cliche, but so many secrets that have secrets, right? Yeah, things, you know, it's funny, things that happen in Vegas, they in Vegas, well, they're similar, right? Things that happen forward, stay forward. And then that's protecting the mission itself. And then there you have your moral injuries. And then you have, you know, what aspects when mechanism facilitated my ability to conduct the missions I did, what we did at a certain time and place, right? And there were key to the success that to keep it simple. And so those things weigh on you

2:32:54extensively, right? It's one thing to constantly say, I'm an infantry man, I'm an infantry man, and that's what I do. However, when you start getting into the grayer areas of where, you know, and hopefully for the audience, I know you guys kind of reflect your audiences, you know, this, this should, it isn't a video game. But there are pieces that are in some of these, you know, these books and these movies that draw from reality. And some of the things that got the guys and girls in various echelons have had to conduct. Can you hear me? Yes, we got you. That's how hard, how hard the student is, he has his pace plan for the podcast. Of course you do, bro. That's how it tastes like. And so,

2:33:55sorry, I'm at a second major, you know, because actually a poor hard-wired and so in this world of having to do all of these things, and they're just not black and white, man, you wake up sometimes, you go to sleep, and you, and nightmares are nightmares for a reason. You're like, what did I do? What can I talk about it? I don't have to talk that much. Sometimes, who the fuck am I? Isn't like this James Bond shit? Is what was my mindset at that time? Right. Was I hunting people? Was I lying to people? Was I just, did I go on this trip? Because I wanted to avoid my family. That's a fucking nightmare. That's a nightmare that now you kind of think about, at least for me when you're retiring, you know, hey, asshole, did you really get hurt on that mission because someone sent you or because you volunteered? That's still a nightmare that I've got to in this atmosphere, she's I had to figure out a way to do it. I'm like, okay,

2:34:58lying one on one, they ask, oh, you volunteered for your spouses at some point are like, all right, did we make up a name? Did Andy say you needed to come? What do you volunteer? Because I heard the other spouse say that Joey volunteered for that mission, right? So and hopefully that kind of ties back to it, but there's a lot of that who was I and that push on last one. Eric, can you just change the microphone on Zoom? I think maybe it's using the microphone on your headphones if you can change it to the one back in your computer like before. And I'm going to go ahead and use the opportunity to jump up on my soapbox for a moment here if you'll permit me because I do want to address something else that I think is unique about the position that folks like you have where in the Central Intelligence Agency, we've interviewed a lot of these folks here on this podcast. There is a process for their cover to be lifted and for them to reintegrate back into the civilian world. So that alias that cover

2:36:03persona, whatever that was, there is a process for it to be lifted and then that person can come forward and say, Hey, I was in the CIA and maybe they can't reveal all the details. That's frequently the case. They may not be able to say what country they were in. Of course, they can't say who the sources were that they developed, but they can tell a lot of their stories. And if you look back at a lot of the interviews we've done with Douglas London, Mark Polymeropoulos, I mean, many people that we've interviewed, they're able to tell quite a bit of their story and say, I was a CIA officer. This is what I did. But for people who are for lack of a better term or army spies that work in this kind of clandestine world, it sounds as though you folks are kind of just expected to maintain your silence forever in perpetuity. And I think that's kind of unfair in a number of different ways, including the pressure that we put on the soldiers themselves, the veterans themselves,

2:37:05and they're again, as you mentioned, their families that we're just expecting this guy to just hold it all inside all of it. And I'm not saying that they all need or should or want to come on a podcast like this, but I think it's an unrealistic and unfair expectation to expect them to just not talk about any of it with, you know, their immediate circle of nothing else. Yeah, contract really quick. Can you hear me better? Not really. Can you hear me now? Yeah, that sounds better. All right, let's do this. Okay. So, no, we don't have a mechanism to do that. Unfortunately, you good? Okay, you're just kidding. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Good priorities have to be priorities.

2:38:06With regards to that, you know, and I won't focus on anything from an organizational perspective, but I will tell you that then there is a sense of difficulty at the humanistic level when someone is, hey, man, I got hurt. Oh, I've got PTSD. I've got PTSD for an explosion, and then the other, you know, I will share that out of my PTSD claims. There's eight of them. I want to say, or 10. Eight of them, eight or seven of them were classified. Okay, Eric, why were they classified? And now I am out of the military. How do I incorporate my family into my great get-well plan? Well, part of my get-well plan is, why the hell are you scared of sleeping in a hotel room? Why do you have to have a gun? Why can't you fly in an airplane? And you think it's going to fall out of the sky? All you say is if it isn't one of your pilots and you don't have a parachute on your back,

2:39:09you're not trusting that aircraft, right? And it isn't just an adultly because that airplane is going to fly. It's because we've been in some shitty airplanes that have literally, if they would have fallen, you would have been eaten by sharks or you would have been held hostage. And so then there's the administrative aspect of that, right? Okay, we're all the certifications for all this training for all of these things that you did. And then if I choose to articulate in LinkedIn, which has become a staple for your network, whatever, worth your net worth, well, if you don't know what to put on LinkedIn because it's all hush hush, I'm sorry, 20 years as a Sergeant Major in the 29 years or anybody else, yeah, you're going to get only certain jobs, contract work, or you're going to get something that maybe when you came into military, and I think you mentioned this earlier, Dave, you know, you might have wanted to be, and I don't know, you had other ambitions in life, but you came into military for patricism to serve this nation,

2:40:14in particular, guys who came in and grows right at September 11. But now in this world, when you're trying to articulate and you don't have, for like a bit of words, as we always get an SOP, right? Because we look at SOPs for MFF jumps or whatever we do. There's a checklist, there isn't a checklist, that to me, and again, it's not pointing fixture, pointing fixture, at this point, as a veteran, I don't need to bring that in order I need to make excuses anymore for my family, I need my life back, right? Right, right. And that's the tough thing is that when you have that, you know, 22 year or 20 year or 14 year or 10 year, whatever it is, blank spot on your resume, that looks like a generic military resume or whatever, how do you go to, you know, Google for a head of security, head of site, you know, whatever, whatever kind of job it is for an executive level position, which you've been doing, you know, and say I have this skill set when you can't back it up

2:41:20with, you know, with anything. Well, and again, I'm going to get on my SOP box a little bit, probably because I've had like three or four scotches, but there's that off ramp I feel like for the officers, for like the blue badgers and the CIA, for the military officers and the army, that they have that sort of off ramp and it's all set up for their career progression, but for the NCOs, for the contractors, they get fucked. Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, and we've kind of, you know, briefly talked about it, you know, the interworld in the military and in depending what you did, it just doesn't translate easily, right? And that's not even saying, hey, you were a, for like a better word, an assault or a ranger or a seal, a recon guy, those are things that at least you can put in your resume and what really what, and I've been on the corporate side where I'm looking for people that I need to hire and I'm like, okay, what skills did you get? Where did you apply that training,

2:42:22what level of leadership did you do and what were the outcomes, but a lot of young folks are like, oh my god, I did all of this stuff. I don't know how to translate and I can tell you, tax that program has, I get my experience, very little knowledge of how to translate SOP experience, which is very ambiguous. The stuff that the Green Beret seal has had to do in the last 20 years isn't part of the standard recruiting checklist of what you're going to do and then and where I come from in some of this intel and activities, right? There's a lot of programs like the better words that have been created in the last 20 years that guys have guys and girls have gone to do that don't have an exit plan, right? Some folks hopefully they're smart and this is what I learned from some of my mentors is like, all right, man, take that training course and find the equivalent in English civilian speak, right? I think we talked about it like I went and did computer network operations. So I got

2:43:23trains to do computer network operations at the IC and high levels. While I was in the organization taking some of that advanced training, I used that to translate to civilian speak because I had learned from people prior to that. They're like, hey, man, I don't know what how to say that I did this six month course in whatever training even though it is marketable, but it doesn't have a code to train into. Right. Yeah, it's a burden and I'm sorry, I'll just take the second that there's a lot of folks that are, I don't want to say suffering that don't quite know how to go back and share or articulate, you know, what what they've been part of for multiple reasons. Eric, we're taking up a ton of your time. I'm going to try to run through some user questions here really quick. Yeah. Brad says any big difference between what you did in a CIA

2:44:23uh parent military officer also ever work with any body-centered therapy or no one who did. Okay, so the first one, um, uh, different capacity. I'm a DOD guy that's a CIA intelligence officer even though and Dave can help me out. We're two different things. I'm an enlisted inside the military. However, when you start deploying, there are authorities that certain military intelligence organizations have access to to be able to conduct intelligence operations. So at the end, doing operations potentially similar in the back as roles um, different entities, but there's some overlaps. And then have you ever done any body-centered therapy or no anybody like hay vening maybe or

2:45:24EMDR or um, I've done with a whole bunch of um acupuncture. So we had some of our you know, former 18-seried deltas that came on as PA's were pioneering a lot of really cool acupuncture for us. I think the Hoffman cocktail they were doing on us which really, really helped. And then on my way on as I was transitioning out, there was some EMDR, some stuff with the ice. Yeah. That was really good for for sort of therapy on the PTSD. I am for this closure looking at some of the psychedelics. Yeah. So, well, I mean, honestly, like I said, I mean, we should we should connect you with Sam with Sam because like she's done a ton of research into it and it's it's helped her out tremendously. Yeah, yeah. Open to it.

2:46:27Yeah. And then EFT is also another sort of, I guess, more body-centered therapy that the people have had success with. Um, uh, Joe's got you. Thank you very much for the donation. Semper Phi EDC guy. Thank you very much. Sean Pierre. Thank you. All you guys BPA is he. Thank you for your donations. Uh, Hilba life's matter. Um, hey, we're not going to ask this question about the uh, SAPS. Uh, so if you want to ask another question and chat, please ask it. We'll, we'll credit your your donation to another question. Um, Hilba life's matter. Uh, is it better to do the job as a single man because I hear it as a single man thing all the time. Sometimes I wonder if it's better not to be. It depends. So there are times that, um, again, as I mentioned earlier, you're really never by yourself. You're you always have, you know, a network of people behind you from communications to emergencies to, um, actually, the largest part that ever helps the singleton or folks

2:47:32committing or conducting an act, what appears by themselves is a supporting for structure. Without those supporting for structures, you're not going to be able to do it. So there are times that sometimes doing things as an individual, doing things as a couple. Um, it's what makes sense at that level to be able to accomplish that, that mission. Um, some of them obviously have to do six man or or squads or teams. Uh, hopefully that answers it. I, I also think that Hilba is asking about relationship status to the single guy's fair better. Oh, god, I'm so sorry. No, that's okay. But do the single guys fair better or? You know, I, I, I would say I've seen, again, in the 20 years, at least in this, I've seen a lot of guys come in single, a lot of guys marry. Um, and those that had a stronger foundation was the married guys. Yeah. Because, you know, you could be as tough

2:48:33as a badass as you are when you come home, you're like a little wimp and you are going to Mama to help you. Yeah. Right. Because at least in my world, for my family, it was a circle of trust. And that circle of trust, that first onion or that, you know, lowest part of that onion ring was me, my wife, my son, and my dogs. That was it. And so when I came from whatever, they were my support network. And what we noticed a lot with the singles, um, we worried about them because they would go back to their apartments where they're going and we, we would have to pull them in. And so ultimately, no one can endure. I don't think I know very many people that stayed singled in the dislike of work. Yeah. If not, you start broaching very risky behavior. Yeah. Because you don't have somebody to check you. Right. I mean, and, and really the guys who have like this sort of the stronger wives who will call them out. Oh, yeah. And yeah. No, you're right. Yeah. They are your

2:49:37foundation or your reality, even though again, everything I mentioned that you may not share, you may not, but they know you inside and out. Yeah. And you've got something to come home. So and, you know, that's my hope. And you know, when you go to Sears School and you think about getting interrogating or captured, you've got to have something that you put in your mind. And mind was always, if I'm going to break out of here, I'm going to figure a way to walk, right? Yeah. And maybe didn't have a tangible, but I knew I was going to walk home to my wife and to my son. And one hard thing to take away from anybody is hope. Yeah. And, and my hope that I would get back to my family. So unless you have something that powerful as a, as a, as a single person, is very difficult. Yeah. I'm interested in because I'm sorry. Our, our older in life anyway. Most of our, our guys are 30 and above. Right. So we're, we're, you know, there are no young, young folks in these units doing this. Yeah. And, uh, man search for meaning, Victor Franco wrote about that in the concentration camps that, that the people who had something to live for were the

2:50:43ones who make it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Jackie, thank you very much. Uh, low what you guys are doing and keep it up. By the way, uh, go Navy. Uh, T bar, thank you. Uh, what's hard? We're blending into a civilian population or navigating all the politics of the war zone when running a strategic mission. The navigating the strategic because you would think it would make sense. You would think that everybody's on the same ship. For the greater good of the mission. And unfortunately, the greatest heart breaks and disappointments that I've ever had have been home have been going back, you know, at work or going, you know, to downtown to some entity were for lack of other words, we had to get mother mayi, can I go operate or can we get the go, uh, or the funding and then just be shot down for stupidity. Uh, and, you know, you kind of figured out you're like, hey man, I gotta eat. Listen,

2:51:45I'm gonna, you will get promoted, right? You got to do that reverse kind of intelligence work and go, you will get promoted, let us do our mission. So the, to the answer blending in is hard, but you, you figure out there's, it's just you in that environment. The political has been, I think, in my perspective, the hardest thing to navigate is just getting after it sometimes. How, how did you were unit, uh, deal with officers who were very protective of their careers and wanted sort of the no failure options? So there's a lot of breach. There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of, like Jedi, I don't have the right word, like Jedi and mind tricks, but there's a lot of NLP. Whether they're like a real warfare, right? Like, I'm gonna get this guy and I'm gonna get this person to believe the cause. And then that person tells somebody else and that person gets to

2:52:46someone else. Again, as an enlisted people, the enlisted folks that stay there for a long time, we don't ever, and this goes across a lot of organizations, you're like, oh, god, I know with this person, unfortunately, is in their mind. They're worried about their career. They're gonna ride this phoning to the end. Hopefully, they'd listen to us. And what we're gonna need to do as professionals is provide it in a way for them to make the right decision making process. We're gonna provide it in a way. We take out the, hopefully we take out the emotions and we get to the facts and we're able to present the case for them to do the right thing. And when they, unfortunately, they don't, there are times that they're like, hey, bro, I told you so. Like, yeah. And then, and if you're young in the career in the unit, in any of these units, you are ultimately going to come back when you decide to go from an, you know, I don't know, a captain or a major. And now you're going to, you know, like, we will see you again. Yeah. I will probably be here. That guy will be here. And that person that was your teammate and the

2:53:49listed will probably see building this unit. So please make the right decision because at the end, we're all trying to get to the, we're trying to get to the same end state. Because I mean, I, I mean, you guys have these guys coming in from Instagram. I like, we're these guys. We'd have them come back to us and SF is like battalion commanders and some of them are like, yeah, you don't really know anything about SF at all. Why are you here? Yeah. I mean, we, we, we get them from, from all over the places. It's not Intel guys. I mean, you know, you get all breeds of people that come in, yeah, off for some level. And I really don't care where they come from at the end because of the selection process is in all of that. At the end, you, you start, you should start with the clean slate, right? And then when we start creating those conversations and just like, you know, just like me or anybody else, it's, you're only as good as your last, your last mission in what success you had. And so as you start, you know, you don't want to build that hallway file. Right. Right. hallway file. Yeah. Connor, thank you, Ren. She said, thanks for the content chance.

2:54:54Semper fight EDC. Semper fight Eric. Hassan 116. Thank you. Have you run across any other Cuban Americans? Sorry. Americans in the soft J sock grade episode. Hey, go check out a previous teamhouse episode with Ruben Garcia, served in Vietnam, Cuban immigrant. And, and then was involved in SOT. Yeah. Amazing interview. Oh, I haven't even seen that actually, ironically enough, I have not really. I think, yeah, not, not just anyone that I've had to work with, right? Like either on a mission, forward, anybody from another tier or anything that I build a relationship or even, I did Google, when I Google in the I see Google, you know, at the, whatever the search of like Google my last name to see if there was anybody else. I think I popped up like two people. So I stopped searching my last name to see if there was any other meodices. And I never found anybody.

2:55:55I know, I know another error. Keep me mad if I, if I mentioned his name here, but I'd be happy to introduce you guys. Eric, there was a lot of them meodices I hadn't found Cubans. I hadn't, I I had been blessed with a whole bunch of Puerto Rican, Mexican, all kinds of other, I've got Egyptian brothers, you know, all of the other dudes that we get. But no, not, not, not Cubans. Did he'll be ask another question? You see him. I don't think so. I think that was the last one. And it was a world most like three hours. And Eric, I really appreciate your time on a Friday. I know you're out doing family stuff right now. This has been an awesome interview. I hope that we can have you back at some point. This is like a really unique perspective to have. We, yeah, we really appreciate it. And, yep, sorry, go ahead, go ahead, Eric. I'm sorry. I just wanted to, you know, thank you. But, you know, openly also, I do appreciate, you know,

2:57:01this, this isn't about me. Like I've never, I didn't come from a world where Eric really mattered. It was great, the great admission. You know, and this isn't about the organization I came from. And we both have talked about it is the folks that do this line of work. And I think you guys are getting at it. You're getting at sharing these stories. Some of them are cool. I wish, you know, I'd love to come back and share aspects of other things that I've been involved with and been involved in or even have knowledge of without compromising anything. And again, it isn't, it isn't about the unit. And hopefully people don't worry about where you came from, but they worry about the individual. And for you guys as a podcast, you're doing just an amazing job at sharing that history and capturing it and forming it in a way that is fun. And hopefully, new generations of people who want to do this line of work. And just as importantly, family members and children or friends that have had someone involved in anything that you guys cover,

2:58:02glean something because I think you guys have done an amazing job at getting at it and providing that information. So I thank you. I know my family thanks you for being able to share my ability to share the stories and answer these questions and obviously not compromise anything into the future. Well, we appreciate it. And for a lot of our viewers, I don't know if they understand like the amount of pressure that a person like you like that that we have on ourselves, you have on yourself, you know, and, and, you know, you want to be loyal to your people. You don't want to, you don't want to be the person who talks out of school, but there are also stories that deserve to be told, need to be told. And these communities have had a horrible, horrible rate of, you know, suicide, self-harm, alcoholism. And, and we really appreciate you like making yourself vulnerable

2:59:08and, and, and, and letting other guys who might be in your position know that it's okay to come out and, and talk about this. And America, you know, about about what we're going through. The American public can't support a capability that they don't know we even have. So to talk to the public, to talk to the taxpayers out there and let them know that, well, we do have these guys and we should support them and make sure that they're taking care of it. It's an important and it's a healthy conversation. And make sure they're taking care of, you know, like, it can't be so absolutely 100% secret that you can't, you can't even talk to the VA and get to support that she's. Yeah. And I think that's the key, you know, and I, that's the silver, you know, and again, and it doesn't matter what level or the per the individual's perception of what they can and can't talk. And sometimes we are our worst enemies. Right. Right. We were ground ourselves in a freaking shallow pool because we weren't world informed. However, whatever what we can do, those that are now veterans

3:00:11is illuminate the path, not compromise anything. But we're smart about this, right? Folks that come from our community, we're smart people we can get at it. And I think the way we're we're addressing these topics and we're illustrating out of the end, you're, hey, I'm not, I'm not talking about any TTPs. I'm literally telling you what the life right is of people who've done this work across the spectrum, what their families are. And hopefully someone's living who works at the VA, who works somewhere. And just we move this forward to take care so we can at the end actually really become a stronger nation. And take care of our people because the next generation is coming. And in this world of, you know, I don't want to say Google, Facebook and all of this crap, we've got less people who want to really serve this nation. Right. We need them to be prepared to do it. Right. And we kind of need to adjust a little bit our biases and help them move forward. So yeah. So check out um um military special operations family collaborative that's ms o f foxrot c charlie.org

3:01:17um you know they're doing great work. Eric, where can people find you? Yes, so the key one is on Instagram. So echo nine axiom is the primary one you can find me on Instagram and it's on Facebook. Uh and if you google now Eric me out is on google you can find me. Uh but really on Instagram is the first one on Facebook. There's echo nine uh ech oh nine dot axiom and then from there really there's a link tree that'll lead to and a lot of these videos and a lot of that information. All that information is also going to be down the description of this video. Um also down the description you'll find a link to our patreon if you guys want to support this live stream. We really appreciate it. Make sure you subscribe if you haven't already. We've got some review on iTunes all that stuff helps and we really appreciate that. Uh next Friday we're going to have Ben Milligan. He should be here in the studio. Um he wrote by water beneath the walls. I'm reading this book right now. It's it's complicated but it's a

3:02:21history of amphibious warfare and amphibious commando operations and what led to the creation of the Navy seals. There's some heracies in here about William Darby. We'll talk about that. Uh oh yeah Ben Milligan. It's spicy special hops apostate. You know and Ben is a former seal so we're going to break his balls a little bit about hair product and things like that but no he this honest honest to god this is a really good book and I like I'm learning things and hear that I didn't know anything about so I highly suggest people go out and get a copy of this and give it a read really good stuff. I'll start getting some more keys and I'm excited we're excited to talk to Ben next week and Eric again man thank you so much um taking some time out of your Friday evening. Yeah we really appreciate it. Gentlemen thank you so much and I want to do it again. I want to have you on against time because we have to do it again. We want you and we will next time where we can tip a few back. Yeah yeah. Oh we will sweet. All right. See you next Friday.

3:03:21Oh this works but I'm gonna say cheers. Dolly. Let's see you next time.