Tim Kennedy - Green Beret Sniper / UFC Fighter | SRS #100

We are at episode 100 I can't believe it took about 4 and a half years to get here the truth be told we're still in our infancy a lot more to come and um but you know as I reflect through the past 100 episodes I thought a lot about you know what does this show Mean to me what is the What is the reoccurring message the reoccurring theme and and and for me you know what I get out of this and what I hope you all get out of this is no matter how dark of

a place you're in no matter how bad it is no matter how much you've messed up in life there is always a way out there is there is always A way to put that behind you and find Redemption to become a better human being a better dad a better husband a better Countryman just a better person all around and the guests that have been on here have proven that time and time again thank you for sticking around man that that chokes me up to to say that but um our 100th guest really needs no introduction

but Uh I just want to say that I found him to be an incredible human being I'm proud to know him he's done a hell of a lot for the country in service and continues to out of service beyond what anybody's ever asked him and um he just still does today he's a former UFC fighter he's a former well he still is Green Beret actually and and uh I can't believe I hadn't met him Until dinner before we actually recorded this show but perfect guest for 100 and a new friend of mine ladies and gents

if you get anything out of this please comment like And subscribe to the YouTube channel and if you're feeling extra generous head over to apple and Spotify leave us a review even if it's just one word that really helps the show out and um and I want you to know that No matter how you've supported us whether you've been here from the beginning in the gun review days or you're just coming and this is your first episode you're a patron however it is I appreciate it my team appreciates it and we love you and without

further Ado I'd like to to welcome Mr Tim Kennedy to the Shawn Ryan Show here's to the next 100 and God bless [Music] America Tim Kennedy welcome to the show man Sean thanks for having me dude long time coming how have we not crossed B before I have no idea I was um as I was thrown out names of good friends former teammates and you're like you're doing this with them and I'm doing this with them and we just there was overlap but I don't think any ever connection Y in our like circles we probably

have two 300 people that we both know but this is the first opportunity I've had to sit down With you well it's an honor to have you here man real honor I'm uh I've been real excited to meet you so thank you for making the trip but um so we're going to do a live story on you okay be super interesting I know I know you think it might be boring that's what you said in the text but I guarantee you it's not uh I can't I can't wait to get this out and no pressure

I didn't tell you last night at dinner but uh you're going to be episode 100 what hell Yeah nice so pretty cool pretty cool that's awesome but uh let me kick this off with an introduction here okay it's a long one Tim Kennedy husband father of three three daughters one son you're Special Forces Green Beret Special Forces sniper Ranger qualified infantrymen and Airborne former professional mix martial arts fighter and two-time title Challenger having fought in the largest organizations in the world to include The UFC Strike Force IFL and we black belts in bra Brazilian jiujitsu

and US Army combatives you're an author New York Times bestseller of scars and stripes and unapologetically American story of the fighting the Taliban UFC Warriors and myself number one audio book in the world for more than 13 weeks very impressive it's wild it's a mouthful chapad connoisseur uh coowner co-owner of Ranger up CEO of sheep dog response which is a tactical training And self-defense company co-founder and board member of save our allies can't wait to get into that uh opened in aogi Academy that's K through 12 Charter School in 2020 and now you have more

than how many many schols we're going to open 50 new schools in 2024 and we launched online mentorship this year and we have thousands of um mentores what's the plural of yeah that are all on this like sovereignty Freedom loving uh americ Element that I think I wish every single American embraced which is what it means to be a good contributing citizen man I love the motto or your maybe it's not the motto of this I don't know what it is but it's your personal goal which is to preserve and protect human life ower people

to provide for their families and expand freedom and take down the Department of Education oh yeah the end the end state for appy is to abolish every use useless form of Education or Whatever that word means um to to truly give back sovereignty to the to the family so that children can be what they they're destined to be which is amazing individuals and critical thinkers and contributing members of society not not slaves not lemings not U consumers you know not labors yeah yeah but I can't wait to dive into that too that is you know

I didn't realize I knew you had started a school I did not realize how much Traction uh and how fast that took off until I started doing a little research on you so man that's just you get some super honorable things you're doing and um yeah that's not me though I me that's that Matt Buro my partner um Michelle Myers and Lauren that run the school like they're 100% all credit goes to them and to God cuz um if I was in charge of any of it you know there'd be like uh there'd be swords

on the walls and they'd be axes you see little kids Running around with tomahawks like let's go you know so unfortunately they they they put me in a corner and limit my my influence and one of the few fighters to serve in the military and fight professionally at the same time yeah I don't know if that was the best idea but well part of your story now yeah so um but yeah man I'm I am really excited to have you here everybody's pumped about this we got a patreon community they're the reason I'm here they're

the reason You're here and that I'm able to do this and so I give them an opportunity to ask questions okay and so this one is from Stephen Casey in reference to the hunting Hitler TV series that you did on the History Channel are there any things that didn't make it into the episodes that are worth knowing what got cut if anything from the series that would help us understand better yeah it's a it's a great question it's a hard question um about half of what we investigated ended Up on the edit room floor so

I'd say we overshot 200% of the investigation that never went into yes it was real truthful storytelling um but they're also F following like this narrative that of a story that they wanted to tell and the Arc of that story was did Hitler get out um the things that I cared about were around the idea of how did these Nazis get out and more importantly how did Their idea ideas get ground and um you know have legs into history moving forward one of the one of the hardest things that didn't make it into the show

was us following some of the Nazis into the Middle East in North Africa um what are they doing in North Africa yeah uh well they were aligning with radical Muslim groups and what are the Nazis and the Muslims have in common kill Jew that's right so uh you Know the founding of the mujahadin to um the grand Muti when Israel was first going to become a nation in 1944 they uh you know when it finally happened in 1946 The Grand muy was organizing every single neighboring country to attack the grand Muffy was being advised by

Nazis um and every one of those Muslim based countries the grand Muffy who was like the religious leader at the time over all of them he was orchestrating and and Organizing strategically the connective advisers which were Nazis that had been smuggled out of Germany and into North Africa uh any like anywhere that they could go that they were welcomed so like in Argentina for example gigantic Nazi population huge German settlements that were there even you still see that down there oh yeah yeah I went this got cut this is we went to this fight club

as I was trying to find out about um these Legacy Heritage Family owners the land Owners down in Argentina like we go to these rural remote areas and you'd walk into a coffee shop you like Buenas and they're like gluten Morgan I'm like all right I mean you're in the middle of nowhere and there's this blonde six-year-old dude with blue eyes and he's correcting you speaking Spanish and Argentina cuz he wants to speak German in his coffee shop and I mean it's rooted in there i' going to this fight club as I was trying to

find out who Owned some of these pieces of property that we're getting on there were dudes with SS tattoos on their necks swastikas on their arms Palm leaves on their sides you know and um all the way back to the brown do the palm leaf mean the uh the the German campaign of North Africa okay the uh you know it's it's like a palm tree with a swastika at the base of it [ __ ] I've not seen that yeah wow I literally like see and these are grandsons of you know men that Escaped war

criminal hearings to settle in Argentina Brazil Uruguay Paraguay North Africa in the Middle East wow yeah they got out that's that didn't make into the show go figure um one more question this is actually actually from another Patron but I'm personally interested in this too uh her name's Amy Weaver she wants to know did we get Hitler or did he escape well he died for sure um now did he die In April in 1945 in the bunker uh or did he live a few more years we we know his health was deteriorating rapidly um at

the end of the war regardless of if he got out we know his ideas got out and the the way that we did this investigation was we looked as we're looking at patterns of life as as as you know like as as you hunt people you first every person has a fingerprint and um no matter where they Go in the world that F fingerprint is how they live like if you want to find me you're going to find me in Jiu-Jitsu gyms you're going to find me in good coffee shops you're going to find me

in cold water you're going to find me um at shooting ranges like the no matter where I go I I end up having this very similar pattern where I stay the floor that I stay in the room that I stay in so as we figured out out the pattern of Life of these Nazis um we looked you know two Through 10 escaped you know the Joseph mangay the sensis the Adolf ikeman th those guys got out so if number two 3 4 5 6 7 8 nine 10 if all Martin Borman if all these guys

got out but Hitler then didn't and was left there to die what was he such a fanatic radical that he wanted to go down with the sinking ship um or we know for a fact that the all of the things they rehearsed and all of the Escape Routes that they had practiced Were ultimately used by high ranking Nazis could it have been Hitler absolutely um did we find The Smoking Gun of here is his body here is his skull here is the DNA proof no we did not interesting yeah frustrating yeah it's uh man that

had to be a fascinating project to be on it was a ton of fun getting a call when you're in a a weird moment in your life being like oh you can fly drones you know how to use ground penetrating radar You can speak Spanish you got deployments in South America do you want to hunt Nazis and I was like yes yes I do first I'm going to hide this direction second book me a flight tell me where to go I cannot wait you know I've been hunting people my whole entire adult life and now

you're going to tell me to hunt Nazis the only thing better would be like zombies like this this is like a a moral free um no guilt opportunity to hunt people I'm in very Cool very cool well we're getting ready to get in your life story but first everybody always gets a gift all right any guesses umia I already have it no um how many times gummy bears those are legal in all 50 states yeah so feel free to dive in at any moment they're these are very nice packaging too thank you thank you okay

and uh yeah I don't know if you've heard of that Book it's a fascinating book it'll be linked in the description if you want to pick up a copy there's then a really ugly dude on the front that needs to get a haircut and uh that obviously is a range body armor I mean yeah Stars and Stripes ladies and gents New York Times best seller for third weeks on audio book and I don't know how long for the book but that's crazy but um yeah so you don't have to read that all now okay little

Light reading material for the ride home when I read the audio book um you know you're in a studio like this it's completely silent it's like sensory deprivation and you're reliving as you're reading your own book like the worst moments of your life like this is not a a War story of like here's all the awesome things I did it's literally all the things that I failed at my whole entire life failed title fights failed as a teammate failed As a Green Beret like fail fail fail fail fail fa fail and um and you're like

sitting there in shame and embarrassment and humiliation by yourself in a Sound Studio and uh dude it took me it was so hard to read this book all bet it was hard how long did it take you to do that audio book well they said it like you you you probably knock this out in like 5 days if you just like sat there it took me a month a month a month wow you like the I'm 15 years old my best friend Dies in a car crash and uh you know like the the youth the

the my childhood ends and you know when you're sitting there reading walking up to see my best friend's mom who there's she she's not the same woman that she was was two days ago there's no life behind her eyes it's literally like a shark's eyes there's just deadness behind there and my best friend's older brother Jordan um he couldn't even see me like he couldn't look at me because I was his brother's Friend and so like now I'm isolated and I'm living all of that stuff as I'm reading this book but I'm remembering back to

things that aren't even in this book you know your mind just travels so fast especially with with emotions and memories it was so hard to read this you know when you got blown up when I lost teammates when I you know like that brings you back to some some hard hard moments well I hope to cover a lot of that today so um well thank you You're welcome the paperback just came out did it really yeah this is uh this is like two weeks two 3 weeks uh release here it's cool well let's get into

the interview now so where did you grow up I was born in s Louis biso California um and uh my dad was a Narcotics officer and my mom was they were like the the Opposites she was a counselor at the church she is a piano teacher you know she ultimately homeschooled us and uh you know this is As a child I was born in the 80s and raised in the OR born in the 70s and raised in the 80s you know she' walk around with a wooden spoon in her back pocket you know I think

my my little sister's first memories were like in the movie Twister where like chunks of wood were flying past her head which were which were these spoons that my mom just kept breaking and um so I was born in St L bispo and raised in the Central Coast of California past wolves Atascadero Cambria that was like my our Hood yeah cool middle class yeah single income father of uh your mom was all volunteer yeah oh wow wow okay Liv off a cop salary off a single income of a police officer in California in the'80s we

were poor um you know we did we had one bathroom in the house um we always had somebody living in our house with us as well uh you know somebody from the Church on hard times or like I can't remember a single moment growing up where my brother and I and my sister were sharing a room or that there somebody else sleeping you know if if it was a girl that she was sleeping in the room with my sister you know she was struggling with an eating disorder or whatever um or like abuse at the

house they come and live with us cuz like the kennedies were the safest place you could possibly be you know if you're in Mike Kennedy's house with Paula Kennedy my parents like you're safe um and that projection of my parents and that essence of being a protector and a provider like obviously heavily influenced me and how we grew up you know by the time you know my sister's in elementary school and my brother and I are you know 8 10 years old I'm I'm already ready to throw down with somebody that sends a weird look

towards my six-year-old sister like it was just This is who we are as as men is we protectors first and foremost of our of our family man that's great you don't hear that a lot these days you know there are some I wish it was a little bit more common yeah me too so you guys you had a tight-knit family very tight but still close with your dad incredibly close and your mom yep and your siblings yep I'm uh flying my brother's getting an award next week in um his partner was in a really really

Bad shooting and uh my brother's just an epic hero uh as my sister is brilliant she's incredible uh there there's a a photograph of my my my brother running so like covering fire as he's moving his partner off the X from the shooting man and uh it's an incredible photo but more importantly like in that moment my brother is the ground force commander of the shooting where you know a great in community hero gets shot up by a criminal and um my brother's taking this Dude getting him to safety to metac him out to save

his life so I'll fly to California so my brother can get his award next Friday oh man yeah well congratulations to him that's that's he incredible um so what were you into growing up fixing fences fighting Mexicans um like this is this is a rural California when people hear California like yeah I surfed I was not a surfer um Hollywood was 4 hours South San Francisco is 4 hours North you know we Uh there was avocado trees there were the beginning of wineries not a lot of wineries so there's garlic there's onions there's strawberries uh

the orange trees are further south and Inland you know we um I'm working on the scary Ranch um I did martial arts I shot I hunted and I worked um we started working young what did you really I what do you think you really excelled at getting into trouble I uh I man I I started like throwing down early um you know somebody would say something slick to my sister and I was like a pit bull that had been starved and locked in a cage for too long and I would just go I just need

an excuse um the first time I heard my brother-in-law who married my sister he's Asian and his brother also adopted um he was black and we're at the California Midstate fair in Pastor OES California I hear two words that I'd Never heard before did you just say your brother's adopted um my brother-in-law is Korean and then adopted and his other brother is also adopted there are six um like white German kids kig and then there were six adopted kids a family of 12 and the races of the adopted kids were were varying of you know

black and Asian um and or the California Midstate Fair which is like again really Rural and uh you know I hear two nasty racist words I didn't even know what they meant But but I knew what they were intended to mean I was like here's the situation you've got China Russia Ukraine the border the banks seem to be collapsing plus the Chinese just negotiated with Iran Saudi Arabia and Brazil to drop the US dollar and most Americans including myself feel that we're in a recession right now but despite all the evidence I can't tell you

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going for it so it was really early when my dad recognized that I have to do something with that middle born second born child cuz he's going to Go to prison forever if I don't figure out what to do with him so he put me to martial arts boxing kickboxing Jiu-Jitsu um and uh and I really really liked that what age did you start the man I I I was probably 6 S8 when I started the shaon karate then Taekwondo then taekwon do to Japanese Jiu-Jitsu Japanese Jiu-Jitsu to Hawaiian Kempo Hawaiian Kempo to like I

just kept on playing with different styles it wasn't until like Chuck Liddell and um Jake Shields came into my gym and I was like the you know I was 16 years old big fish in a little Pond where I could do really well against everybody in all styles of fighting stand up and I was competing I was traveling around so I thought I was a big deal until Chuck Liddell and Jake Shields came in and uh they mopped the match with me like I was a petulant useless child and I was like I don't know

what just happened but wherever they train at I need to go Train with them so it was I started training at the the pit with John Hackman and Chuck and Gan and Scott Adams and and that was uh that Glover Tara you know the guys that became UFC Champions so you were you were a protector I mean it's carried on throughout your entire lifespan obviously you know but it started protecting your sister yeah and your family and your friends and then Special Forces save our allies sheep dog Response I mean there's a ongoing Trend here

but um what you mentioned earlier in the interview about a your best friend died in a car accident yeah and that was the end of your childhood yeah the um I don't know you know I would I had an amazing childhood but it was also rought with um disaster there's death in my life always you know like Christmas day my Grandma dying um watching my grandpa die slowly of empyema you he's a World War II greatest Generation guy so watching him slowly shrink and and pass um our my my mom played the piano at church

carolly Stewart was the worship leader at that church and um she died in a scuba diving acccident her son Nathan was like my best friend through grade school and um her other daughter was my sister's best friend so Nathan and I and um so When she died you know I think I was maybe 9 10 years old and having somebody that was such a staple in your life just gone you know she was she was there every Sunday I'd see her three or four days a week as she's dropping Nathan off to our house as

she'd go run the errands in town cuz they kind of lived out a little bit and um and then I don't see Nathan anymore and then you know that these are formative memories of like okay how do how do you Death is so prevalent and life is so finite um and then when I was 15 we were uh these are great kids when I say they're going to parties they're like going to Christian after Bible study parties like there was no drinking there was no there young men behind a steering wheel which is a very

dangerous thing and uh trying to pass one of their friends on uh on a turn and somebody came around the turn and they had an a Head-to-head collision with another car you know and Jordan was giving his little brother Jared CPR and um that was the last night I saw Jared obviously and I didn't see Jordan for a decade like we couldn't see each other I couldn't I didn't want to see him he didn't want to see me like it was literally just the end and walking up you know carrying that casket as a pole

Bearer and knowing that like my childhood friend is here and you know Push it in the back of that go take it up to the top of the Atascadero cemetery and um you know the that dirt going on the top of that coffin not just literally sealed him but like sealed childhood like the age of innocence is over yeah and um from that moment for the next 15 years I was a uh a force uh a thing without purpose and a thing without Direction which is a really dangerous thing yeah a young man without purpose

Man yeah we see that a lot today too now yeah in all aspects but um what got you what got you interested I mean your dad was a sounds like he was a very good narcotics cop yeah well a peak War on Drugs mhm you know this is uh Pablo Escobar and the cartels the syndicated criminal organizations have finally like legitimacy in a way that we are just now understanding where you know they're bribing people as lobbyists have influence over people the cartels had Influence over governments you know so they controlled Columbia up to Mexico

all through Central America North South America and um and uh an operation very similar to like Fast and Furious my dad and his team this narcotics task force steal an entire plane of cocaine from Pablo Escobar Costa Rica they bring it to United States they distribute the cocaine pallets these are pallets of cocaine and Uh I remember walking into s Lou bispo my mom my brother sister and I went to Madonna Inn and grabbed some pies and we walk into this storage area and there's two pallets of cocaine and my dad who's a giant and

all of his colleagues are giants they're all like 65 66 300 lb dudes they're sitting there with MP5 suppressed you know there's a Porsche and a Lamborghini sitting in the storage facility and there's two pallets of Cocaine and I just hand off these pies and then we go back home this this is like all of my memories are like this growing up they took that cocaine and they gave it to Reg Regional Distributors those Distributors then gave it to like Street dealers and then in one week they went and arrested all of the Distributors and

all of the dealers like they arrested hundreds of these people on the whole entire West Coast they didn't lose a Single gram of cocaine wow you know this is um they're good wow and uh this is also when meth was starting to really explode on the west coast and uh my my dad had a background in chemistry and he started recreating different ways to cook meth like we had like big huge glass beakers like a huge chemistry sets in my house I'm like if only people understood that my dad was cooking meth um and the

laws that we know now about how much um NyQuil you can buy all came From that era of law enforcement guys figuring out well if you have this much NyQuil and you have this much um like if you're using Smurfs to go and buy all these different ingredients so they they added limitations as to how much you could buy of what type of chemicals to be able to produce or mass produce meth I was like my D wow it's sick did you realize the significance of all that not at the time no no I was

I am dumb and I was even more DB back then man that's Really that's interesting I'll bet he's I'll bet your dad's got some really good story dude the dude's a wild man like we're just at SHOT show you know he's he's like the most gregarious this is not the the dad that I grew up in the 80s right like the the grandpa that he is to my son where you know he's teaching my son how to shoot his precision rifle and he's my son puts his finger on the trigger a little bit early doesn't

have a sight picture yet and He's like hey hold on there Rolo um you know your middle name's Michael you're my namesake um we never put our finger in the trigger unless we're actively engaged in a Target I was like wait a second you kicked me in the head at this moment right here I remember you kicking me and he's like well it's different now you he's like I got it Dad but knock it off uh now he's just like the most he and my mom are the sweetest uh like spending time with Mike and

Paula is Nobody comes away with that like if you go to their house they're cooking for you a gigantic huge meal you know as you watch Tuli elk come on the property um you're going to the back patio and shooting out precision rifle a few hundred meters you like that is just the most inclusive family environment and now they're just the sweetest people you know you you had mentioned also that uh you became pretty crafty cuz of your dad yeah as a kid y breaking into cars using Slim gems Y what age did that start

I mean I had slim gems like in my room uh I was I was probably 10 or 11 when I went into the church parking lot during a a week bible study and I opened up every single car in the parking lot I just for the act of knowing that I could break into every car in there and I took things out of their glove box and I set it on the seat so the pastor Tom gtis he uh and Woody Shoemaker who is the youth pastor um they're like everybody comes out they see that

all their cars are broken into and uh you know I'm just sitting here like you know like I don't I don't know what happened like I don't know what happened to these cars like a ghost broke in there and Woody Shoemaker who is a former Navy SEAL he's like my youth pastor he's like Tim come over here I was like yes sir he's like uh you breaking these cars like yeah he's like Would you do that for I'm like I just needed to know that I could um like my dad T taught me how to

do it like this is 10 um me and my friend augi G would take our repelling gear like we're teenagers we would cut holes into roofs of commercial buildings and repel in there to figure out that we could steal stuff out of there the statute limitations I'm fairly certain has expired so like I'm not breaking any laws now just for the act of doing it And you my my dad teaching us how to go up and talk to anybody about anything and be able to like break down barriers like how soon you can like you

know make contact with somebody actually touch them to to break down another barrier you like to find out things about them and to build rapport like he could walk up to a stranger and as an undercover police officer convince that stranger to sell him drugs that would send him to jail for forever that's a Skill that he taught all of us and the skills of breaking into vehicles or breaking into houses or like how to get a warrant or how to like change a narrative to tell a certain story like these were things that we

grew up we're also a very Socratic household my mom called us living room lawyers we would sit down my dad would pick a topic and we'd argue he'd force you to pick a side and then you'd have to defend and argue that side um whether you agreed with it Or not K and this is us at like 6 7 8 N9 10 years old wow so critical thinking was was uh definitely celebrated in your house very much so and uh you know by the time you start figuring out kind of who you are at 18

I became I went to EMT school and and the fire academy to become a firefighter um and dad is still shaping you know my my brother now is a police officer he's 21 I'm 18 I'm uh working at the taso fire Department my brother's working I think for his first one was s Louis biso PD and um still being shaped like we're not men yet like frontal lobe is not developed and my dad is I first time that I came home from a a mass casualty incident you know I'm covered in dirt and blood I'm

I'm I'm shaking and uh you know he's like hey go hop in the shower before you talk to your mom I'm like I'm fine I'm just going to go to bed he's like go Take a shower I didn't realize that I was covered in blood and shaking and crying and couldn't even talk I didn't remember any of this I remember just walking through the door and my dad go telling me to go take a shower and um you know he had already seen everything he already knew what what hell was like and he was preparing

his family for a real world that uh that he knew would ultimately have to experience you know he didn't know that 9/11 was going to Happen you know what so you became a firef at age 18 that's right how long were you a firefighter for 3 years until I could go to the police academy and so so you knew did you know when you became a firefighter was going to be temporary yeah did you enjoy it I I did it was um it was really hard work uh not in the way that physically hard I

love that part of it I loved being um on a vehicle rescue and you know Cutting doors open and uh I building fires I loved the the violence of fire um made a lot of mistakes cuz I was young and dumb you know got some people hurt because I wanted to push push more than I should have um like melted literally melted my helmet um my helmet if you go to the tasket or fire firefighter 42 that was me um you see like I heard these pops and Bubbles and that was my my helmet that

was melting and popping the plastic On the top um the thing that was hard was you know going to a domestic violence call and finding you know a kid in an oven and not being able to like that guy did it like I know that guy did it and like my job is not to be a witness to what's happening my job is to provide medical Aid to what's there it's the police officer's job so I always felt constrained in my hands tied as to what should I should have been Doing but similarly had I

been a police officer I my view of Justice would be for me to beat that dude to death so that probably wasn't alignment either I don't know I still figuring it out yeah there's a serial killer in San L bispo California named Rex Krebs and I was growing up when he was kidnapping women and they were just disappearing and I was working at a bar called the library in St Louis Bispo like Chuck and and uh and Scott they were running it so you literally had the best fighters on the planet as bouncers and then

um and this then this idiot like uh barbacking and carrying out trash but I remember at the end of the night these girls like I could smell fear from them they were so terrified to walk to make that walk home from the bar back to their homes not knowing if they were going to be the next girl that would Just disappear and I thought that that was the you know there an era of Silence of the Lambs where jod Foster is hunting this this unknown murderer that was the embodiment of evil like that is what

evil really was and it wasn't until 9/11 that I saw what evil could be at scale and so I wanted to hunt these type of serial killers I wanted to hunt this type of evil because I thought it was the most evil thing that I could see that could exist and Then then I saw a girl in a polka dot dress look out a window of a building that's on fire that she went into early because she was a single mother and she wanted to get off early so she could pick up her kids from

school and she's trying to make this decision about if she's going to jump to her death or burn alive and her last Act of of conscious thought is to hold her dress down as she jumps to her death um and I wanted to kill everyone that had Anything to do with that that changed everything man man remember that remember that falling man that guy that just jumped out head first like he was a professional sky diver in a Delta position just uh tracking down towards the ground yeah I do so how old were you when

9/11 happened I was uh 21 21 so you're just about to go into the police academy I was uh in grad school and um yep going to the Police academy you were in it mhm what so what happened then finished school and uh and over the course of 18 months I went to the recruiter's office on 911 mhm there are a thousand people in line thousand people standing there trying to talk to a recruiter and um nobody was there you know it was like so I came back a few times it took it took 18

months mons for me to ultimately get a 18 x-ray contract to go and try to it Was a it was a fast track to become a special forces guy and um looked at every Branch you know is trying to figure out how do I get to marw how do I get to buds how do I get to Green beray it was what the fastest route to get me on a plane to the desert so you picked you picked Special Forces right yep how how long did it take for you to ship out the uh to

training yeah that 18mon timeline to finally get the 18 x-ray contract so 2003 is uh when I left um and then that pipeline you know that year and a half pipeline of uh basic training to infantry school to Airborne school to um this big huge at tritter called sopy and then to selection and then post selection to um small unit tactics another tritter called sopy 2 then to small unit tactics then to phase 2 3 4 5 6 uh to sear School to the dawning of the Green Beret then the day I graduated I walked

and uh another weird rare anomaly I had been they had been tracking I'd performed really well through training and uh I also was a top 10 fighter on the planet when I enlisted you were already top 10 on the planet yeah [ __ ] I just won like the largest middleweight tournament on the planet the extreme cage fighting championship uh that Dennis King Mayhem Miller uh Ryan narte me was like eight of the best fighters on the time I was the lowest ranked guy in that whole entire tournament I won um that was just a

few months before I enlisted and um so they had been following me and when I graduated I went to the directly to the cff which is something that should never happen what's supposed to happen is you go to an Oda you spend two three years at an Oda you get a bunch of experience Um you go to some schools then um you go to this selection course um and a must requirement to go to the CIF and cff which is Safar Tech and then from there you're you go to a selection to go to this

unit de that's what should always happen that's not what happened with me so I was this young child that uh knew nothing about the military that knew nothing about war knew nothing about the army that was then going to a special Missions unit damn bad plan well let's let's rewind let's rewind so let's let's let's skip basic training let's skip everything up to selection let how was that was that a challenge for you no it wasn't no bre you just breezed right through it yeah that I mean that post 911 you would have had to

walk in to the barracks in the middle of night like a ninja with a lead pipe and smashed dude's knees in to have them quit MH we in our selection class there was not a Single quit there's not one voluntary withdrawal so now if there's four or 500 people that go to selection 3 400 of them quit and then of the remaining 1 to 200 you know maybe 20 or 30 end up getting selected MH um four to eight out of 100 and then post 911 MH not one quitter not one dude was like ringing

a bell not one dude is is saying uh that he wants out like you'd literally have to kill him to have them dude dude's feet were falling Off and they were taking super glue and gluing the bottom of their feet back on to to pass team week where were the majority of these guys from where they coming from that class there were a ton of cleic athletes I they were from all over the world ton from Florida ton from Texas and ton from California um like of the 90 there's 6 600 something dudes that went

through the sopy and Ultimately the 88 that were selected in our class to go forward once you pass Special Forces assessment and selection which is a 23 28 day hard attor um then you get selected to go to the Q course the Q course is a year to a year and a half long pipeline line of training you how to be a Green Beret and then when you finish that pipeline then you get to Dawn your green beret and go to a team and then you get To your team they tell you that you know

nothing you start all over again but that um you know from that gigantic population of people that first were at sopc to the 88 guys that ultimately got selected the 88 came from like they were high level athletes from all over the the nation but most of them Florida Texas and California 88 people got selected yeah That round yep that's a lot it's a ton that's a lot that's highest percentage that they've ever had is it is it still to this day man that's so it wasn't that it was easy for me it was easy

for us there's nothing that it it was the environment and we'd also been together from like this group of 18 x-rays had been together from basic training to infantry school to Airborne school um to through sopy and we had learned none of us had ever been in the military before So we didn't know how to do army we just knew how to cheat mhm and we cheated at everything and we we figure out communication systems and how to you know tap codes and symbols and we had watches for when the the Cadre were going to

be coming in to check you so like the whole entire Barracks asleep you're not allowed to be sleeping but everybody's sleeping but two people on either end at the the two edges of the windows where the or the doors where the Doors are cracked out a little bit and they're looking out and they had like set up things that we could hear the guys walking so the moment that we heard that sound the whole entire Barracks would get up and guys would start like fixing their Ruck sacks like we're breaking every single rule you weren

allowed to run on the roads we ran every road um so with the 8 biggest class to ever graduate selection or to get selected highest percentage of graduates Highest percentage with that amount of motivated men to go and protect the country what what do you think I mean the criteria had to be had to be upped they had to level it up right from from what it usually is with that with that no the the standard never changes the the the the must pass Gates mhm uh which which are very close held um not Secrets

but like the things that you have to do to be selected uh those don't change like you you have to run This far for this fast you have to run this Sprint for this fast you have to be able to carry this much weight for this long you here's the gring criteria during team week here's like so like of these these variety of ma Must Pass events when you get through those Gates and you're like checking as you go that doesn't change so like the like you might have five people that graduate 10 people that

graduate or 100 people that graduate but everybody has to pass that Those Gates but if you pass I guess what I'm asking is if you pass does that necessarily guarantee you a slot that you're going to be selected no so that's what kind of what I'm asking is usually there's this is this is Peak War yeah so there was what year is this 2004 okay so there's definitely so they're expanding at this point they're expanding and guys are dying okay and um and they're dying a lot okay so they were they were needed yeah that's

what I Was getting at I was wondering if they if they had if they had the slots to fill 88 they knew they're going to yeah that's that's dark but um This Is War and you know in 2004 when you're looking at fuia and raditi and solder city um this is uh the first 10 years of GWT from you know 2002 to 2012 like it was very dissimilar to the second 10 years of GWT those first 10 years that that was war like those were battles block by block Door by door um lots of killing

and um on both sides and green Brays were carrying a big burden of that because they were the first ones in Afghanistan they were the first ones that were in the big gunfights they were also the ones that were you know by with and through advised assisting and accompanying these militant Fighters because that that's the Special Forces way was to to work with your your aligned Fighting force so those guys were getting hemmed up and they needed help problem was 18 x-rays we died way more than everyone else can you describe what an x-ray is

uh normally to go to the Green Berets you are in whatever you're in the 82nd you're in the 100 first you're in Ranger regiment and you have are an E4 an E5 and you put in your packet to go to selection that has always been the way they've only done the 18 x-ray program One other time which was during Vietnam where you take a a guy qualified off the street so he has a high ASVAB score he has a high GT score he has a high PT score and um you put him into a special

force selection Pipeline and so they're SF babies they've never spent a day in the Army but they have on paper all the qualifications that they could potentially later be a Green Beret mhm all of the guys coming from the regular army from combat arms they they have to Have that same GT score they have to have that same ASVAB score they have to have the same PT score but the most important thing is they have experience and that had always been the requirement you had have to spend 3 four five years in the Army then

you could go to selection the 18 x-ray program uh bypass that so you know a college athlete and that's why there are so many Collegiate athletes in in that class cuz you had to you know you had to be smart you had to Have a high GT score and a high asbab score and you had to have a very high PT score you uh then got this contract that promised you if you pass past basic training infantry School Airborne school and sopc which is the big a tritter then you could go to directly to selection

and uh but we died I think at twice the rate of regular army Green Berets no kidding yeah damn man young dumb yeah but not Invincible you know with going through The SF uh baby program you get to you get through selection you get to the Q course correct what how are you how are you received there is a guy off the street who was pipelined right in yeah they hated us did they yeah um they got they know they hated you well they tell they told us they hated us um that was pretty direct

like I hate you you don't deserve to be here um and to their to their Credit they're doing a tour as instructors like the the NCO development you would go to a team for 3 to 5 years and then you would go to swick to um the special Warfare training group and you would become an instructor teaching at one of the different phases one of the different schools Halo School sniper School scuba school and you do you know your your two threeyear tour as an instructor and then you go Back as a senior NCO back

to the Oda so now you have Oda time you have instructor time so you've really mastered a craft and it made a lot of sense during peace time but these guys that are coming off these teams um you don't have a choice of when the timeline is for you to go to swick to teach maybe they just got back maybe they're going to miss a deployment because they got orders to go and teach and now they're Furious because they're missing the war Now they're Furious because their brothers are over there fighting and dying and they're

sitting here looking at a 22-year-old kid that just came out of college that thinks he knows everything and uh and wants to go and be a warrior and that guy's been in on an Oda for five six years and has during peace time and has done everything perfect so he can go and be a war fighter and now we SE there talking to a snot-nosed brat you know like I get it Man y yep I think that was my generation too I was I was uh right there with you and yeah that had to be

I didn't really agree with it you know uh we're all here to protect the country right but uh I do understand it and you know the the period between Vietnam in 9/11 there were very few Panama Grenada you know Desert Storm one which we didn't have a part there wasn't there wasn't much there wasn't much uh to spurt around no and so so I get it But what did you think of of the Q course was that a challenge for you no no [ __ ] I loved it I loved every second of it I

love sear school um we we're chomping at the bit to get done M um I took accelerated language school I test out early I just wanted to how fast can I get that green B on get to a team get on a plane that was the only thing all of us wanted to do all of us were fighting and positioning we going down to um the companies and asking hey Do you guys have like your deployment orders do you know which day you guys are leaving because all of us the day that we graduate all

of us would be requesting to go directly to that company because they're the next one that are going to be bouncing and um so like all of us are like positioning and fighting for a chance to get into the fight yeah so did you have any Hang-Ups did you fail anything no nothing just no clean first first through Everything um funny sear story um one of the guys that had been medically recycled was could you could you please describe what sear school was what the purpose of it is every Special Operation and Aviation unit sends

their guys to this SE school and there's different phases and levels of it but the one that special operations goes to it's a survival evasion resistance and Escape Um and uh during this we also included peacetime government detention which is if you're captured by a non-state or state actor and and you're being held how do you navigate the which is different than like if you're a p being held by a combatant so during the school they teach teach you survival like how do I Forge for food how do I purify water how do I set

traps um and then on the evasion side if somebody's chasing you Whether it's in a rural area or an urban area how do you escape um the resistance portion is during interrogations and torture how do you stay um in the the technique is inside of your circle so they they tell you these are the things that you're supposed to know and these are the things you're supposed to say and these are the things that you're supposed to do and how do you stay inside of that during you know really uncomfortable physical treatment um Which I

think now they call torture but you know you're training people I hate that people throw stones at training that is hard like how do you prepare people for war without it being like War and the last portion is escape when uh so that's your school and uh it's you know it's a couple of months the guy that had been recycled which was one of my friends and teammates that I'd gone through all these phases to he was working with the Cadre and was learning like all the different escape and evasion routes so there were lanes

that were designated designated to each of the teams he told us which lane we were going to be on and I went and I stole M boxes and I went out and I plotted a 10-digit grid coordinates and I buried boxes of MREs during my evasion lean totally cheating like this is not allowed and I'm not recommending anybody to do this but this is what we did cuz we knew like we see The guys that were that were coming out of sear school you know they'd lose 30 40 50 lounds during sear School their cheeks

are sunken and their eyes are sunken in they like and they're about to go to a team it's one of the very last things that you do and their bodies are broken we want to go to war so not only did I want to graduate but I wanted to graduate physically capable of going to a team to immediately hop on a plane to go overseas so the motivation was kind Of pure but the route was very unethical MH so we borrow we Barrow these MREs there's 11 guys that are all 18 x-rays that I'm all

friends with and we have one Air Force crew guy that's on our team and um the we finish the survival portion we get into the evasion and the you're very motivated to not get caught during evasion because the sooner you get caught the sooner you go into the Concentration Camp so if you survive a week that is an extra week that you are Not in the concentration camp if you're caught on day one you spend six days and however many hours that you were captured early in the concentration camp getting beaten getting water boarded getting

put in torture positions in you know pain isometric positions getting starved um so but if you stay out how long can you survive during that week with the limited food that you're going to have while you're running um and they you know they're Hunting you with thermals and dogs and all the things and they're trying to you know manipulate in this Lane that you're training so we buried MREs we go to these 10 dig grid coordinates we dig them up and uh i s i hand out these MREs and the other guy's like sick this

is so awesome you know way to go uh me and my friend Brian are the ones that went out and buried him and this Air Force guy is like where did you get these I buried them how' they get like How do you know that this was where we're going to be like I was told by you know somebody that's working as support right now that this is was going to be our lane so we went and buried our food here and they're like that's cheating I was like is it like I don't I don't

think it is and uh to his credit he stuck to what he thought was right and he wouldn't eat any of them and uh and we helped even though we were fed we helped him Forge for food we're getting Deer corn you know we were like finding Turtles and snakes that's why they call us snake eaters um this the training area it's like very swampy and Marshy so there's not there's not a lot of great food we're eating pine nuts you know we're making pine needle tea for vit Vin C like we're doing everything we

can to help this dude even though there's plenty of calories over there that he wants nothing to do with hold on let me finish my Snicker bar real quick Y and Uh but again to his credit he does that whole week and there's I mean there's food for us all the time and they bring us a a roadkill it was like a dead raccoon or a dead deer and most people after not eating for 5 days they would just skin this thing gut this thing throw it stew it and they'd be so pumped to have

a little bit of protein we're like that's kind of icky so the you the cad were like what's touching what's going on here man like what are you guys Doing well during indoc which is the most dangerous portion like when you're initially captured mhm it's it's where most casualties occur uh you know if you look like shuart and Gordon during Blackhawk Down the thing that they were trying to save the crew from was that initial capture that that wave of emotion that happens happens on a battlefield that's when people get get killed and don't get

moved into captivity so like the longer and more Peaceful that that transition can be the the higher the chance of survival so they make that that that Indo when they're taking you in to be very intense during sear school there's lots of beatings happen there's you know people are getting knocked out and teeth and blood and all the things and when we finally at the end of that week we go to make our link up to get evacuated which were uh betrayed and we get captured by The adversary Force it's at the end of the

week they force you to go to this link up and we all get black bagged all 12 of us and you know they're pulling your hood off they're smacking you like what's your name where you from what unit are you what are you doing here and they're going down the line the moment they pull up that Air Force's that guy's Hood he get I all of us we hear him start screaming they had food buried they had food buried they had food this Whole entire time this whole week theyve been eating and and the crazy

intense indoc phase where like this whole Camp is just beats and screams and slaps you could hear a pin drop everything stops and the guy goes what' you say he says my team had food buried on their Lane and immediately they separate all 12 of us they pull us from everybody and for a week during resistance um their interrogations were trying to find legitimate real Information which was where was the food who had the food how did you get the food and they had one guy telling all of the information that he knew and then

they had 11 guys that stayed in their Circle damn at the end of this 11 dudes graduated and one guy failed for an Integrity violation he got recycled all 11 of us stayed in our Circle and didn't break for 11 for the whole entire time and at the very final moment um I'm not going to give away the the the final day Of SE school it's like a big emotional event ID cards come out from the instructor's necks and uh you see like that military DOD CAC card and they're no longer they're not sitting there

like evil torturing Pricks they're now Sergeant so and so and you have graduated and they the whole entire Cadre comes and gets the 11 of us and they're like hey we need to talk to you guys ID cards are hanging around their neck and then And we're like yeah okay seriously what happened you need to tell us what occurred during evasion week and now during a resistance week where you guys one all had the same story the whole entire time and uh like it was fascinating because it proved the te the things that they were

teaching actually worked in real interrogations and they had real interrogators coming in to interrogate this class the 11 of us to get out real information and all Of us knew that if we me if we messed up all of us are going to recycled at best worst kicked out of the Q course and uh and all 11 of us like we look at each other and we look back at them we're like Donnie the Green Beret is going to be in five weeks when I put on my Green Beret you can be there and the

moment I get my green beret I will talk to you about what looked what what this looked like good call and all of them were there SE every single are with no sh it Proved that like their ttps their pois their points of instruction their tactical training points were legitimate and truly worked in interrogation and they and this was turned into a case study a perfect case study yep nice well you know don't rat your team out was a good lesson yeah it's pretty straightforward you know that might be the biggest Integrity violation of all

yeah but wow no [ __ ] y well what did they say when you told Them they uh they changed rules where any student that was in a support rule for the Cadre was never they they like siloed information that was relevant to the training so that the the students that the trainees that were going through the course never had access to the cadra information so like you know that' hang outside of the Cadre rooms so they they changed a bunch of rules to to limit Silo information but uh they were they were thrilled that

This that this stuff worked that's amazing that's amazing so so you get done with s school where are you going next so I went to Charlie Company um for Third Battalion seven Special Forces Group it was the at the time it was the cth the commanders in extremist force and every how did you wind up can you explain what the Sith is yeah first cuz not a lot of people know about that no uh the CF every Special Forces Group takes an area A region of the globe uh so seventh group handles South America third

and fifth group balance between Africa and the Middle East um first and 10th group between Europe and the Asian Pacific so regionally we always have four deployed companies that are in that region so you have a special forces company that's in South America you have a special forces company that's in Africa you have a special forces company that's in the Philippines or on In Japan or in Europe and so that's that is a crazy concentration of talent and Firepower that's for deployed all of the time um they were tasked with hostage rescue and counterterrorism so

you would go to special schools and a special selection to be selected to go to the cff um that the time the Commander in extremist Force so you had the combatant commander which was you know the fourstar guy that was in charge of that region of the planet he had his own Special operations company that was his so that was if the cartels ran into Bogota Columbia and took over the embassy you had a company of Special Forces guys that were standing by this is why like uh Benghazi was so infuriating to so many Green

Berets is because when that was happening there was a company of Special Forces guys that were sitting on a plane like just imagine you know there was what 12 GRS dudes that were Saving two different compounds the the Department of State compound and the agency compound uh what would have happened if you dropped 60 Green Berets into this fight you like the whole thing's over y you take one Oda the whole thing's over but uh it's like there's a lot of Survivor guilt in that but that that was the Sith they were a hostage rescue

for where were those guys sitting um they they were a 2hour flight I think Glover was one of Those guys that's right you know yeah take Mike Glover and a company of Mike Glovers and drop them into that firefight dude completely different outcome yeah infuriating yeah phone gets ultimately somebody picks up a phone and says no those guys can't go yep hope that person Burns an Hill I'm sure they will yeah me too yeah so that's the c um and so how do hold on hold on let's backtrack cuz The cth so the CF is

basically it's a it's a hostage Rescue Team yep um very Advanced tactics very I mean just to get in the door over there how did you get in the door of the Sith yeah as a new guy yeah I should have been there an SF baby new guy nonetheless John MC uh former Delta Force operator um amazing war fighter a stored career at the unit um he was my boss he was my First team sergeant and he had been kind of paying attention to some guys going through the Q course cuz he knew we're about

to go to war and he this was also the C's first deployment to combat uh they had missed all the other rot because the the combatant commander hadn't released them to go into non-the conflict so he had kept them kind of unfairly saying like no no I need my CF you you guys are under my control like you you had this Um competition about who could control which units were going to be in what battle space and he didn't want to release his Elite fighting force to go you know from South America and go fight

so they missed the first few rotations gotta and they were just like they were ravenous to get into the fight and um you can train tactics into young men preparing for war um but putting the will to Fight and that dog in somebody some people have that and it's it's really hard to artificially train that into somebody I think the Marines do a really great job of of planting that that dog in somebody uh the the Special Forces regiment it's an it's a group of intellectuals like yes they're War Fighters but they also are kind

of ambassadors and they they they work a Lot with different governments and the embassy and um you know it's a joint inter agency multi- Department it's it's kind of a complex world that special forces Works in and John knew that we're going to go to war and he wanted he wanted a guy that had the dog on him I can think of hundreds of teammates that have it and they were the guys that you wanted to be the first guy through the door you know if the Brian Hall the Jeremy hasell the Ben Rios like

those Guys kicking a door anything on the other side of that door is going to be melt with with speed surprise and violence of action hell and fury and that's a hard thing to like to put into somebody so John had knew my fighting background knew my hunting background knew my shooting background and then had followed me through the Q course and um I was also Moonlighting as a as a bouncer in bars in fville North Carolina where I was Going to school and I was also fighting um Moonlighting fighting like while I was going

to the Q course I was still training and fighting as a professional fighter no [ __ ] yeah why were you doing that I'm sorry we're got to go down this Rabbit Hole why would you put yourself I'm just curious the dog why would you put yourself into a situation that could potentially take you out of your ultimate goal which is fighting for the country cuz it would have been Relatively easy for that to happen the the young men think that they are invincible and um and the balance of me wanting to keep my my

sword sharp and keep that like ability to fight you know fighting gun fighting knife fighting brick fighting um fist fighting it's all fighting you know like you you you take some person that's good fighting at fighting and you you you give them a battle axe or you Give him a club like that dude is still like really dangerous what it's because he's a fighter first it's like the heart of that Warrior is a is a very powerful thing regardless of what tool he has like I I am you know in this room no more or

less dangerous because I have a gun or I don't have a gun like I you know kill him W without anything and I wanted one that please don't fill my camera oh no I like Him that illusion that you are invincible as a young man uh but you feel Invincible like I remember feeling Invincible like you can't you can't hurt me you can't kill me you can't stop me from graduating you can't stop me from making it to a war you can't stop me from going to this unit and you definitely can't stop me in

a fight you're like to me fighting was just plain um you know was I was making money on the side and I was keeping my sword Sharp and I was keeping you know the the ability to do violence at at an acute point so I wanted to keep doing it and I did it all the way through my whole entire career makes sense I figured that's what you were going to say you know yeah would you do that again if you were you had the wisdom you had now no so John John MC yeah wild

he hand selected you to come into the Sith yep and uh Sergeant maor Quendo who is the company sergeant major when he brought me in um he he pushed back real hard and uh and he was right but man John was a force he's one of those guys and Garrison he is not a fun human to work for um he is not a fun guy to to be a subordinate to um he's definitely not one that like you want as your personal mentor about how to be a good human but you put John MC in

a case in Glass that says break in case of War violence and you break that he is one of the greatest War fighters to like walk during gwatt and um the we were a hammer in that first deployment I'll bet I don't want to get into that yet but what year what year is this 2005 this oh [ __ ] so this is like the height this is Peak this is the height so so this Americans hanging from bridges burnt alive this is like this is Peak War yeah this is this is the hype So

you get into the Sith what how are you received not well um the uh you have to go to the school this uh this multimon hostage rescue school that is a hiat tritter and um so I go to this school graduate come back to the team you know I thought I'd be accepted and we're weeks pdss is the predeployment site survey team has already launched they've already set up Where we're going to be landing at where we're going to be working out of they're starting to set up Target packages you know they're getting we're getting

our TS briefs about what it's going to look like when we get into the operational environment this is before we even wheels up you know and then I knew nothing Sean I like I had no idea how to ammo I had no idea how to do a forecast I had no idea how to pack a pallet I had all the things that like While the Q course taught you this the skills to be a green ber they didn't teach you how to be a good teammate of doing the things of your job you know like

um how to do an inventory of our night vision how to like I know how to zero a gun because I'm an 18 Bravo but like as I'm packing out the guns for this deployment how many guns am I am I supposed to take all of our guns like every single dude has 10 different guns You know am I taking 120 guns like I had no idea what to do and um and I had no idea how to ask I had I was too um conceited or egotistical to um to ask in the right way

which is like hey can you teach me I don't know how to do this or find a here in the company that could explain how to do it cuz my senior God bless his heart Ben was uh he had to do everything because he had an idiot for a junior me that had no idea How to do anything so and he didn't have the time as he's prepping to go to war to teach me how to do things cuz he had to do them he had to palletize everything cuz I didn't know how to do

it he had to do and he didn't have the time pre in Peak War predeployment to teach the subordinate so so it just and uh made it hard were you the only new guy yeah that wound up on the stuff yep there's one other guy Dave that was that was same age and uh but a Little bit you know maybe six months more experience than me he and I were the kind of the only two guys there and the last two they never did it again yeah that's a I mean that's a steep learning curve

I'm wow yeah when did did how when did you figure out you know what the significance of being on a sift team was I was pulling outside security in Iraq when Uh a squadron Delta Force leadership D Tomaso comes and takes a KN next to me he goes what are you doing and I'm wearing dcus like cool fancy desert camo that we had altered you know so like we our pockets and moved them up to our sleeves we put like spandex shirts underneath our body armor um complet like unauthorized but functional and I look over

this dude he's wearing multicam and none of us had multicam and I was like who the [ __ ] are You he's like I'm D Tomaso and I's like I don't know who the [ __ ] that is he's like you didn't answer my question I'm like I'm pulling security he's like where's your intersecting sector of fire I turn on my laser and like 2 seconds later the guy on the right corner of the building turns on his lasers and our lasers goes like that he's like all right great have a great night and just

gets up and walks away and I was like who the [ __ ] was This guy you know and we're at a bomb Maker's house for one of Zara's lead henchmen like this the vbi IDS that were kind of plaguing um Bagdad at the time like this was one of those houses and this dude just like shows up on Target and like walks up and starts talking to me and it wasn't until afterwards when I'm like who is this dude and they tell me who this is and I start understanding who the units are that

are part of this task force and then it like clicks as Like holy [ __ ] we're the this is the A Team like this is like the most elite fighting force on the planet all 100% Focus focused on one kill capture thing of one person the sharpest tool in the entire arsenal of the American Military was being wielded towards one person and it was that it was that night that I was like holy crap like this is frightening damn man that's when it started to make sense very cool wow I still could grasp it

cuz I'm dumb But that that was the first time where I was like whoa yeah yeah lucky to be here yeah didn't deserve to be there how long were you at the sift before you got kicked out the door on deployment uh 3 months that's it that's it three months yep I got I missed one month of our premission train up because I was still in spartic so I like I missed a portion of so pre before a special operation unit Goes they they they they look at their metal task their mission mission essential task

list these are all the skills that they're supposed to be able to have to go and do this Mission so they go and they rehearse and execute and they're graded on all of their core tasks before they go overseas that's called your PMT your premission train up and uh I missed a month of that because I was in school so then I get there I Finish the last two months we have two weeks off before we ultimately have to show back up they give us you they give us like a uh 8 Days permissive leave

where we got to hang out with our our families before we went overseas are you married at this time uh-uh were you together yeah how's she taken all this um she's she's such an amazing woman and uh everybody that comes to her Now where was like um how are you dealing with Tim and Afghanistan right now or in Israel or Ukraine and uh she knew what she signed up for you know she she was at Fort Brag North Carolina in 2004 5 and six and she saw her friends coming back without she saw her friends

coming back without eyes she had friends that deployed and never came back you know she was there on the green ramp receiving her friends she's such a good good human when I say friends like these Weren't boyfriends they they were just her friends that she was there to support she was so young um and uh so she she knew what she actually probably knew better than I did what it what the cost of War was cuz she got there before I did yeah yeah so you guys okay so how did you guys meet super creepy

she uh she was working a government contract and she was keeping Inventory of these secret um devices and every single one of them has a serial number and she was working for a Government Contracting Company that kept the inventory of all those things and then reported it back to the Army and she shows up and I saw her and I was like that's a Russian spy there's no there's no way that that supermodel of a human exists in this world which is like You know butt sweat and um ECT charges and petting no nail lines

and you know like there's guns everywhere and grease and we're covered in in carbon from shooting all day and there is no possible way so I I figure out who she is um I kind of like make friends with some of her friends I go up and try to talk to her as I'm standing in front of her like this she just like starts turning without acknowledging that I'm talking to her so like I kept like Adjusting to try to stay in front of her as she kept turning I like are you do you not

see me right here I'm I'm like what's wrong with you and then she just turns and walks away doesn't say anything to me and I see her stab a dude that grabs her leg uh with her stiletto she balances on one foot and she's walking up this ramp she stabs this guy uh that that's trying to get her attention and uh I love I was like that's that's uh That's the woman for me so I I um I spend a I have to manipulate a date out of her I tell all of her friends that

we're going to be like meeting up at this time and I tell her a different time she shows up early although a little bit late it's fine but I had enough of a window that the nobody else had arrived yet and as soon as she got there this is like the flip phone razor time so I'd preset text messages with all recipients so I hit send and it goes Out to all of them that dinner's canceled and I take her out to dinner and I go out to dinner with her every single day I go

on a date with her every single night all the way up until I leave and that was uh my first trip with her and then when I was gone I had some asot guys some advanced Special Operations spy guys that literally followed her around Fort Brag to make sure that she was a good girl and she was she was yeah and you Guys have been married for 17 years now yeah congratulations wild what in your opinion is the secret to a successful marriage you have to fight um complacency kills we know that in combat and

complacency kills in marriage where you take things for granted about the person that you're with you know this this person that you you chose to spend the rest of your life with but now you You know you Let Yourself Go you you get a little bit the dad bod you know you um you stop buying flowers you stop lighting candles you stop buying lingerie you stop fighting for that person that you fought for uh that you dated that you courted that you tried to sweep off their feet and um you know now 10 years down

the road you're you're fat and you know you're not sleeping you're drinking a little bit you care more about football game than you do her you Know like shame on you you don't deserve her so like you sit down the sword and when you sit down that sword that sword's hard to pick up sometimes you know you don't have the calluses anymore you don't have the strength anymore you don't have the condition anymore and it's the same same way with a marriage where it's like constant vigilance and intentionality into your marriage and um the heart

of a man is is a is a hard thing you know we we can fall in love Easy we can um you know we have these aspirations and these dreams you know I I have to choose between going overseas and doing something that I know I was put on this planet to do or to be present and I know I can't be present and look at that person look at her or my kids in in the face in the eyes without the things that I know that I that God put me on this planet to

do and trying to reconcile those two things the only way that can happen is with Intentionality and um and discipline well I think that's great advice man thank you I don't know I'm still figuring out though hey well you're doing a hell of a good job there's not too many people running around out there that could say they've been married for 17 years and through all the combat deployments and the time apart yeah it's all her yeah but um last question then we'll take a Break so you're at the CIF and you find out you're

going to Iraq did that hone in your mindset at all I mean that you're you're you're getting exactly what you asked for you're going to war it it did but I didn't appreciate it okay and I didn't understand what that meant you know like I still had John Wayne movies in my head you know I still had Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis like this is what I thought war was going to look like you know it's Like this Barrel chested Freedom Fighter as I'm like covered in the enemy blood as I'm standing there with an

American flag behind me you like that this is I don't know the the the mind of a young man that knew nothing um what I thought war was going to be like and what war was like was very different those were the Delta between those two things are Indescribable y y all right well on that note let's take a break when we come back we'll pick up in bag Dad all right when I first started this whole podcasting thing an online store was about as far from my mind as you can get and now most

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you're in that's shopify.com Shan this episode is sponsored by better help a lot of Us wish we had more time but time for what if time was on limited how would you use it the best way to squeeze that special thing into your schedule is to know what's important to you and make it a priority therapy can help you find what matters to you so you can do more of it it's helpful for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries it empowers you to be the best version of yourself and it Isn't just

for those who've experienced major trauma therapy can help everyone be the best they can be if you're thinking of starting therapy give better help a try it's entirely on online designed to be convenient flexible and suited to your schedule just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapist at any time for no additional charge learn to make time for what makes you happy with betterhelp visit Betterhelp.com Shanay to get 10% off your first month that's betterhelp hp.com all right Tim we're back from the break we're getting ready to

go into your first deployment with the Sith team under Shrek MC yeah in bagad that's right yep we first went to alassad and um we're we're there with uh the seals and um the we were logistically constrained with the amount of air that we had um Number of T Targets in this time period were plentiful and uh everybody fighting doing a mobile a vehicle assault was very difficult from that spot um so we Rel relocated a few weeks later from alassad into Baghdad and uh we're in the international the green zone kind of on the

row of of the The Joint Special Operation command houses and uh once we tied in with them it went from you know two three targets a week to like 10 targets a night so let's what year is This this is uh 2005 2006 oh I was there then so we're there at the same time so everybody's there yeah so what I'm what I want to get at is Baghdad at that time was like the wild west you're hearing car bombs all the time you're hearing gunshots all throughout the day it becomes very real the smell

everything you know it's there you'd hear at night when it's quiet you could hear five or six different units in Gunfights m and like is that us no that's not us who is that do they need are they good and like we're sharing qrfs and qrfs is running to to you guys to provide support and then another qrf is coming to us it's Madness the whole entire city you know zorka's Peak power right now all of his lieutenants are in Hammer mode Al-Qaeda is for the sole purpose of destroying and killing as many Americans that

are on their soil as they as they can and to destabilize the New Iraqi government that we were trying to put into place so like this it was a very volatile Peak War this is This Is War yeah yeah did it start to set in at all hearing that seeing it it was um we never got this deployment in comparison to my next deployment to to Afghanistan could not have been more dissimilar this I'm part of an elite unit that's part of an elite joint Special Operations task force that is part of an elite coordinated

Strategic Mission that is a very different thing than you being in Afghanistan as a special force sniper adviser to NATO allies like could not be further apart we were the hammer every night you know if if somebody from this task force is showing up at a door um if you shot from that house everybody dies you know if you're on target um you're going to get bit you're you're going to get this Battlefield interrogation that's pretty intense the Tactical questioning as we're find finding follow on targets as we're continuing to build out this target set

Americans are hanging from Bridges after they burnt been burnt alive and dragged through the street that's this era of War this is you know black Blackwater dudes being tortured um football players being kidnapped and tortured you know having um anybody that was working for the American government Zwi is having his henchmen like they' drill their hands to the wall they' cut off their eyelids and then they'd rape their family in front of them before they kill them and you'd walk in you'd find this raped and murdered family with this dude's hands drilled to the wall

like this is [ __ ] Peak war did you see that yeah you walked in on that we we we found um every kind of imaginable horror that terrorists do to to civilians we we we Found let's rewind let's re let's I want to go right into that first time you saw that what is the op just everything from the from the from the insertion to walking in that room yeah um it's funny full full circle as in Israel just this recent October and we're in some of the kutas uh adjacent to Gaza and seeing

the same things that I saw back 18 17 years earlier in Iraq um the Inhumane barbaric things that these radical extremists do are just inhuman and I think that's the point is they want to show that anybody that does anything to support not Sharia law not the radical ideas isn't human right they're infidels so they can do anything they want to them um on this is God what month is this this is early 2006 we um are going to what we thought was a Vbied Target and um think Al aloa was like the point guy

and we do a call out initially so you set up like an l shaped Ambush on the outside of the house and this is this was early tactics of like for 2006 2005 2006 not a lot of only Special Operations units were still um combat arms were still doing Hard Knocks and and there's no immediate Dynamic entries we're doing as deliberate as we possibly can after some houses get blown up and there's Booby traps and bombs so we're trying to do call outs and um we're doing a call out of a Target and when we

finally go to assault and clear the building um as we come in through the front door and you find a couple of kids that had been raped and murdered your brain doesn't process it you know you can't um not you're you're planning what you're going to see but the last thing you plan on seeing is you know dead kids in a Corner um and uh I have a really good memory and I journaled the whole entire time that I was deployed in all my deployments um and I'll go back and I'll read some of these

journals and there's things I literally don't remember but it's written down you know like I came back and I sat there with a pencil in one of my green notebooks and I wrote for hours Everything that I experience my my grg is in there like the target package is in there everything's in there and I'm like no way this happened I don't remember this and I'll go and like I'll ask teammates that that were there at that same time and they're like dude I barely remember that the way the brain works like the fog of

war and then compartmentalization yep the trauma like I I I deny myself that like I saw some of the things that I saw You know but we saw them and it's you remember it now do you remember seeing them now some of them some of them no some of them yeah but a lot of them no you remember the first time no and then confusing Afghanistan to Ukraine to you know Israel um the rooms look the same the trauma looks the same the date is different yeah but the journal is accurate yeah it Is I'm

sure it is why did you start journaling I uh was we we had a one of very first kill capture missions [Music] we do a a dynamic entry of a house and as we're approaching the front door the front door is open opened and a a man is standing mil military aged man is standing there there is an AK on the other side of so there's a T intersection of a hallway that is from The main entry of the room I'm stacked on the right hand side behind the Al and uh he and I are

on the right hand side the stack the other side of the stack is on the left we kind of like have Cross coverage inside of this door so like once the number man goes number one man goes you you you kind of just follow taking opposing directions and um from the right hand side of the door we could see the gun and we could see the guy from the left Hand side of the door you could only see the guy but you couldn't see the gun so Al and the translator they're yelling to this guy

to get on the ground get on the ground get on the ground and the guy goes to grab the gun and the right stack shoots him and uh military AG Man On Target as he's trying to grab a weapon and he literally falls on top of the gun you know he has a stack of of uh um green tip rounds he was wearing one of those bead prayer necklaces it was Really weird cuz it looked like a rosary but it's not they're Muslim prayer beads and I remember looking at those beads and being like is

this dude Catholic like what is this guy doing here obviously you know like but these are the things that go through your mind in real time in a million thoughts per millisecond and um you know the guy falls over on top of this weapon and we flow through the house you know whether it's going to be a flash Bang or it's going to be a dynamic breach an explosive BR of the door the moment that goes off just like a bullet those bullets going that over pressure from the barrels and those bullets impacting create a

in the UDA Loop the the it resets everybody on the inside so you always follow your rounds in so P poow we shoot and we flow into the target after we secure the building and um we're Trying to find where the the follow on target is like move off to the next one and I don't know who made the calls so a 156 investigation is where the the army goes into fact finding about information that of possible criminal activity for UCMJ action um and uh I've had a few 15 sixes of these military investigations and

this was the first one where it should have been military AG Man On Target um cooperated statements from teammates that he was trying to Grab a gun was shot on target died on top of a gun case closed no investigation totally fine and this is Peak War when you say Wild Wild West like you're shooting dudes squirting off targets when they're trying to move like if if you do a deliberate um assault on a house so like a call out and you see guys start squirting out the back of the houses we we are set

up to engage those guys that are leaving the target um but then we Have a guy on a Target that dies on a gun and this initiated an investigation and it was at this moment where I was like we're hunting the highest level dude in all of Iraq and the scrutiny of this task force post Blackwater you like as now the Press is looking for excuses and opportunities to hang um figuratively and literally and metaphorically Special Operations and contractors uh that in response to that scrutiny we we Were I don't know like putting ourselves unnecessarily

at risk MH so I started journaling from that night forward every single Target this is why I was able to write that book with such Clarity um with with Nick was because I I had 50 15 years of journals from me in a variety of conflict conflict zones so starting that night after that investigation Al was actually pulled off of the the assault team because of that shooting who initiated the investigation Do you know no you know and this is I mean I do but uh um was it a US service member yep I uh

I'm never going to disparage there's a guy that was at War um I am an E5 at the time that just wants to get in gunfights I did I was not in his shoes I was not in his position I was not in his position of Authority or responsibility that is his name on documents those are his men that work for him so like if I were in his Position I'm going to say I'm of course going to do something totally different but I'm where I'm at now I'm never going to throw a stone at

I didn't know what he knew at the time um do I think it was wrong of course um dude I would do anything to have Al in every single to be the number one guy in every single room that I ever went into cuz he was fast he was Dynamic and and he was uh violent I mean this happened a lot a lot and it just got Worse and worse and worse and I don't I really don't want to steer the interview this way but I think it's important that people hear this type of stuff

you know and and um how early in the the deployment I mean that's your first deployment welcome that was my first weapon from select to Fire and press the trigger really first time right there and initiated a 156 investigation so you pulled the trigger That whole right side of the stack did like and everybody stepped over there's three people that shot that dude and there was a stack of rounds like this right here it's crazy right at the intersection of that necklace um maybe 15 bullets all touching each other like how did that investigate ation

um affect your your mental state negatively it uh it made me second guess everything that I was doing it made me you know in that in that observe Orient Deci side act what should be the gunfighter loop of how fast I can recognize that there's a problem direct my attention towards that problem decide what the appropriate action is to take on that and then and then act on that you know that that's milliseconds and that's LI or die and then confusing all of that is well what should be the action might cause me to be

investigated for a not- righteous shooting that's going to get K get me kicked out of Country or like even worse you know be arrested and sent to jail um or kicked off the team you know that that was the worst fear for me was to do something that would get me kicked off the team um and you should not have fear of fighting when you're in the middle of War and there was all of the just like the the same moment that we started losing momentum in the Vietnam War when cameras started coming in there

and and you're supposed to be fighting And winning winning our job is to go and kill the enemy we're supposed to be the most lethal fighting force on the planet and I should not have to think about what some politician is going to be leveraging and positioning and some argument on the floor to try to demonize what the fight the men and women that are wearing the flag on the shoulder forward are doing in combat like you sent us there so let us do our job and right now we've been seeing it For the past

10 years where every single opportunity is just a talking point for some politician well you go all the way back to 2005 and 2006 it was a it was very similar you know you had uh journalists looking for opportunities you had politicians looking for opportunities it was just it was infuriating yeah yeah what did so that was the first time he pressed the sugar yeah what did that feel like for you Um minimal recoil you know the green tip it's a high energy fast bullet that uh is very light in grains you know uh and

stepping over a body that is shot afterwards John again we get back to the hooch and uh it slaps on backs and popping a bottle of whiskey mhm you know like I didn't know what to think I didn't know what to feel um you know he'd already been in a thousand gunfights I have no idea how Many you know deployments he'd been in but it was normalized in this is this is the way like that you are a warrior you are on a warrior team and you just had your first welcome and uh for a

man for a young man searching for purpose and for searching for a place not knowing if he deserved or belonged to be like deserved and belonged on that Oda uh there was maybe for the first time a feeling of I Des I deserve to be here I wanted to be There but I didn't know if I deserve to be there did you feel in a a tremendous sense of accomplishment yes um I did the thing that I was M like trained to do that night um in my journal uh I wrote cuz there were two

young boys in that house and uh Alive or Dead Alive and I posed this question to myself that I Couldn't answer at the time CU I just remember the wife screaming and the boys screaming for their dead dad and I did I just create a new Revolution in this wheel was I a spoke that just continued to I just killed one bad guy but just made two more like these are going to be forever men future men that hate everything about me and us and yes I took out one but it created two more have

I just perpetuated this this endless Saga that Is good versus evil and I just created two more versions of evil you know I cut off the snake the the head of the snake and two more sprouted up in its place because of my actions well there's another way to look at that too I mean look at the example they had to follow for sure you know so that's that's interesting that you were already thinking that yeah did it bother you at all a little bit you know the uh man it would be so Nice if

war was against 30-year-old men with beards that are doing evil you if you took the kids off the battlefield if you took the women off the battlefield if you took um the confusing smells of the kitchen mixed with the smell of um all the dust that's kicked up from the over pressure of a door charge you know where you're like I remember the smell of that dust that fine moonlight dust that gets kicked up From our charges or from our flashbangs and you walk through the kitchen you're smelling curries and spices and herbs that are

hanging on the wall but then you also smell the lead smell of the blood from that's pooling on the floor for you like all of that is not what the brain's built to do MH um all the while there's a 28-year-old girl with two sons all three of them are screaming for their dead dad um and this is as good as it's going to get You know it just gets worse after that yeah like that's on the best case scenario bad dude with a gun on target um you know with legitimate Intel you took out

a top Terrorist on your first deployment well the you guys yeah took it but that would been really cool yeah let me uh let me correct myself there but let's let's let's get into that I mean that is a that's a huge piece of American History yeah that not a lot of people have insight into so can You walk us through the Zara operation yeah so there were actually let's start here let's who was Zar yeah one of the embodiment of evil like the personification of inhumane radical Islam um Zara was the leader of al-Qaeda

in Iraq uh you had Bin Laden if if like you think kind of two separate but connected elements you had Bin Laden that was still on the run but unknown since torbor right he's he's kind of disappeared but he is the figure head of This larger radical terrorist Wing but the man that is the Ground Force Commander that is in charge of everything that's happening in Iraq is Zar Zara and his lieutenants uh you know he was INF famous for posing with dead American soldiers um Battlefield recovery of their weapons and if you saw him

he's sitting there with a 249 or a 240 or an M4 that he took off dead soldiers dragging through them through the streets heaven forbid uh somebody Gets captured the he was Infamous and notorious for torturing so he would torture any American informant so anybody that was giving information to the Americans he would torture them um you know Chris Kyle American Sniper his his book is following some of the enforcers from the Zara Network and um there were a few different Special Operations task forces that were tasked with eliminating support and uh Strategic ground that

he controlled while all the while we're on this kill capture mission to find him specifically and um that the the climax the the crescendo of that led to a single night where we had taken down targets leading up to it week after week after week when did you find out you were going after him um this would be March of so month before we finally Found him and killed him damn I I mean that's got to be that's got to be motivating as hell yeah to be out there after that guy let's revisit that I

am an E6 now MH um and brand new to the team so the the task force 100% knew who they're going after and my team's leadership knew who they're going after but the 18 the junior 18 Bravo uh that gets a grg and is told where I'm going to go and where I'm going to uh attack and where my position is going to be and Where I am in the stack and where my load plan is on the helicopter where my position is on the on the vehicle that night my my level of understanding of

what was happening in the battle space was you know like uh pre prepubescent at best gotcha so like uh everybody maybe besides me knew what was happening cuz uh you know it's it's difficult when you're stupid so and that's where I was right on man at least you're honest y but um well yeah walk Let's walk through the just walk through everything dude so much you know this is uh this is good nobody's done this yet yeah we didn't lose we didn't lose anything that task force had the unit Ranger regiment the C the CF

had our qrf were Abrams and Bradley's loaded with infantrymen you know like if we start getting scuffed up Abram tanks and Bradley tanks came and just leveled blocks you know this is um I say we didn't lose we're hitting a Target that has maybe you know a bomb maker an assistant and a couple of security guys so four guys on target we're hitting them with with a company you know you're you're heading in with six like an entire troop of an assault force and uh H how Victors and winners approach a gunfight is every single

thing is in your favor you know you're in the dominant position you have the dominant Technology you have the dominant men you have every dominant speech prise and violence of action that you can execute On Target is being done in real time that's what this entire deployment was you know the uh purple heart hearts that were given out to the guys in the task force were from you know shrapnel like nobody got shot nobody got killed this was this was murder time this is we are going to find this guy and we're going to kill

him So the the target board or the murder board right you have the guy at the top and then you have strings connecting to every single one of his lieutenants and then from his lieutenants every s every single one of their enablers and then from their enablers every single one of their advisors and you create this big huge Target list and then you attach physical locations to where these people could be or will be in real time and uh you you've seen hundreds of these boards You have the people and then you have the targets

the those targets aren't always exactly like even though this is you know number three guy's house he's not he's only going to be at this house at this specific time so you have to figure out the pattern of life and where that person is going to be for you to not just take down that Target but also take out that person because what we're trying to do is limit the options available for where this where Zara can Squirt to and um the targeters the the Army and joint military Intel team they're amazing they're just so

good they're they're they are the best that have ever been in the the existence of this species watching what you know jck can do is and I'm watching you know like by no stretch of the imagination do I deserve to be there um I am at best a gun that is barely competent in how to use it you know I'm just doing what I'm Told and getting to see the effectiveness of all of America's might power technology and Military prowess directed at an acute single thing is just the most impressive display maybe in history like

I got it we went to the moon we found one dude that owned an entire country and we took out every single bit of ground and person that that man knew until he we ultimately dropped two bombs on top of him and he dies looking up at An American operator that's freaking epic it is so we hit Target Target Target Target weeks leading up to this final night and um this is my understanding of it is that we had hit enough targets and taken enough literal ground enough of his safe houses where there there were

a few there were few enough for him to run to in one night you know in some nights we'd have 5 6 7 8 9 10 follow on targets as we're doing a battlefield Interrogation and during tactical questioning the guy says yeah this is the other place that we go to and um limiting as you look at like the physical places on the board there's lines through them now there's like 10 or 15 left we can do 10 or 15 in a night and they get prioritized and of course the highest priority targets the ones

that have the highest likelihood of finding you know Numero Uno dude get you Know one through four the unit takes this one um these guys take this one down to us and then he goes back through the list and uh that night we just hit him house after house after house after house and uh for those listening right now that are wondering what the unit is that is Delta yeah and they're you know they're they're the leaders of the task force they are the best most capable fighting force on the Planet and um they're hitting

all the houses you know the the first time in in seventh group history and and to my to my knowledge the first time in uh Special Forces history was during this deployment where the cff and the and Delta Force were on target for the first time on for gunfighting it's kind of cool we that night I was uh outside security just just or C that was not an house really wanted to be but uh I'll be wherever John told me to be at this moment of my career and uh when it was wild leading up

to these final nights where 160th soar uh the the Army Special Operations Aviation Group they're flying guys to targets we have panders um like armored personnel carriers that are really really fast zipping all over the town the the Iraqi Counterterrorism Force the is is collocated with another element of the C and they're going and hitting all of these different targets and they're the ones that are like really driving a ton of information you know you get you hit a Target sometimes the guys from that Target try to sore and that's the end of it sometimes

they call for qrf because they don't realize who they're in a gunfight with and the qrf that shows up is the Iraqi police that are supplied And trained by American Military and they're pulling out guns that were given to them by the United States government and you're you're picking up a Glock off Target and being like we gave the gave you this you're dead but I I want to lecture you that that you do not deserve to have this and like trying to figure out who the enemy was at this time is is cuz we're

training some of the Iraqi military we're training some of the Iraqi police um but then some of them Are being controlled by Zara you know he has some pretty long levers and he's able to manipulate uh via force and fear and power for them to do what he wants that and we get some nights where we're in a gunfight and 160th got shut up so bad they couldn't even come and pick us up so our xville we're we're like at our xville spot after a full night of gunfighting and we don't have a ride out

to get back to Baghdad to into the city proper into the international into the Green zone and uh we're like well where's the closest friendly Force we find this little tiny Marine fob and uh we try to get them up on comms you talk about one of the scariest moments of my my life is walking up to a Marine Base face uh as a bunch of dudes blacked out in body armor and guns with dudes in drag bags and uh a couple of dudes that are zip tied as we're walking up being like don't shoot

us you like front link up of friendly forces in a battle space And like lasers start popping at us you know and we're like we're doing the whirly bird up in the sky with our lasers like no no no don't don't Mur us please we walk into this fire base these guys have nothing they have you know you know they're using M16s with aogs um they're getting mortared every single day they're eating t- rats the their gym are buckets filled with sand and uh milk jugs filled with cement that's what they're doing for like shoulder

press And bench press and they're training every single day they're going outside the W wire every single day and I'm coming from a base where I have all the protein powder we have like stacks of energy drinks like we have this big huge nice gym with like a jiujitsu mat we have our own shooting range you know I get to go and I walk into this remember I've never spent a day in the military I've only been in Special Operations and my whole entire time on a team I've only Been at the CIF so I

walk into this I'm like what like you guys live here and they're on they're on a 12-month deployment yeah yeah and they're getting hit every single day it's wild it is and that led up to you know two weeks later us being able to in one night hit every Target driving Zara to his final last safe safe house where they drop two guided bombs two Munitions on top of him did you guys know he was on the run While you were hitting these targets yep well during the interrogation of people on target the you're starting

to get this picture of the spiderweb and the things were being cooperated from multiple targets where people were saying the same things like yeah this guy's going here this guy's going there everybody's like this address this house this location are all like driving back to these limited you like on the location Killboard there's only a few left and we're now seen that they're all going back to those same places and it wasn't you know I wasn't on target when he died um but when we get back you know we're unloading we're pulling belts we're you

know open bolt machine guns from 240 and 249 start stripping Gear start repacking speed bags you know starting to change batteries and everything goes black like all comms get shut down all Jammers get Turned on so sa phones aren't working like nothing's working and um and uh all cell phones all internet all uh landlines everything gets cut for the whole entire compound and that's when I was like did this just happen you know only a couple of that only happens for a couple of reasons one somebody messed up really bad and they have to shut

out shut down all Cals out two is something really Good happened and you have to shut down all comes out I was really hoping it was the ladder and It ultimately ended up being the ladder when did you get the news when uh almost the same time I heard that George Bush is going to fly in to shake everybody's hand no [ __ ] dude yeah I don't think like I mean I I know it's been leaked and there's photos that have been leaked but you that was regiment Delta Force and seventh group CF all

standing there shaking hands as and George Bush walked down and like he didn't do that for publicity nobody knew he just hopped on a plane and flew over there to shake the hands of the men that killed the guy that had been doing so many unspeakable acts to so many innocent people did it register at that point no still didn't register still doesn't it still doesn't damn Tim I mean there's a moment in history and Like how do you know that you're there um I didn't deserve to be there I was still an immature teammate

not supporting in any way so like there's there's a lot of like emotions of of Shame and regret like I would have wished so desperately to be the 2010 operator back in 2006 just four years man just give me four years couple of combat deployments a couple more schools a little bit more Understanding of act how to actually contribute instead you know like um I'm just looking at a door in front of me and if the guy number one guy goes right I'm going to go left like that's where I was and uh that sucks

well you were hand selected by a very seasoned operator for I'm sure a very good reason yeah I bet if you ask John if he could go back and make that same same decision he'd make a different decision well that does matter Yeah but so was pretty epic it sounds like it that is uh did you know the guy that found him yeah and one one of uh Matt Smith who's the director of training for sheep dog response retired special force sergeant major he's worked for a bunch of incredible units special missions units uh you

know he he was longtime friends and and so getting to like hear the stories and and firsthand and you know being there and getting to tie what Happened at that Target with where we were at the exact same time you know is uh you know going back to my journals too and like relooking at that night which Target we're at and which people we were questioning when that happened and we roll back in to the compound when they finally dropped those bombs and uh you know we' just been in another fight with a different qrf

it's like the elevation and drenin you know is is freaking out and then like wait what Just happened like it's over like we got him damn do you want to talk about what what happened when they found him or should we keep that offline totally up to you I want everybody to know that this dude that Zera radical murderous raping torturing fanatic burnt people alive you know dragg them through the street tortured I I don't know if you're try how many do you think Sean do you under His lieutenants did he how many people did

he torture and murder specifically Iraqis T thousand I can't answer that you know I don't know SE thousand tens of thousands it's got to be it's I mean I remember rolling up to locations where they would put people's heads on cender blocks and on huge blocks and then just launch cinder blocks straight down and H pop pop people's heads like a Grape I've seen pregnant woman you know get hung on hooks just to bleed out with the fetus inside and he was part of all that yeah he's orchestrating all that the headings all the all

of the [ __ ] that you saw over there he was he had a hand in yeah so his last his last breaths as he was dying from shrapnel and overpressure was an American Commando with his foot on his Chest you know that's um I'm not sure Americans have the appetite or the tolerance for what it means to win a war you know in 1941 a day that I live in infamy and we were attacked at Pearl Harbor it finished with us dropping two nuclear bombs on a people that wouldn't submit they behind every blade

of grass when you come onto the the motherland of Japan you'll find somebody fighting to protect Japan like fine Hiroshima you like do are you done No fine here's nakasaki you know are you done um then we won that war right in Europe in the in as we pushed into Berlin it was absolute destruction and Carnage of everything if you look at photographs from early 1945 late 1944 it is destruction in Epic in Epic Proportions um there there's no moral equivalency when you're trying to win a war there's winning and there's losing that's it and

we're we're looking for like some moral justification about how We're going to be fighting these wars these days and there's winning and there's losing and um so I realize that now people may not have the appetite of what it looks like to have an American standing with his boot on the chest of one of the evilest men to walk the face of the planet in my lifetime but that is a beautiful glorious thing and I hope they can understand why that's important I think most people listening Here are going to understand why that's important but

thank you for sharing that America that's right Chris country in history that's right so what do you do so you take out Zara you guys take out Zara how much longer do you have on this deployment I mean that that was the point of the deployment so we come back um keeping the momentum and hitting making sure that none of his lieutenants are promoted so keeping that initiative Where we continue to hit targets rapidly over the next few nights um we maybe had a 48 hour standown as the president came um which is another one

of the reasons why all the comms were shut down and once you're told that you know President Bush is coming in uh everybody goes from the task force and is there and you know they shake hands and a few pictures are taken and he bounces and then it was like let's go back to work every single bit of Information that was taken off of every single one of those Targets on that night is then rep prioritized into a new Target list as we you know taking this guy off but moving elevating these two guys that

we haven't yet found and uh and trying to keep that momentum to secure and stabilize that battle space and then you go home how many top terrorists do you think were neutralized that deployment 50 50 top You know like I mean there's a lot a whole of cards that's right yeah I mean in that deck of cards I think there's three or four just in that specific 2004 5 six s deck of cards I think there's like five or six dudes that were in that deck nice in that one deployment but then you know the

the lieutenants for every single one of them respectively like those guys went to the dirt as well so there was a there was a 48h hour Window of I you got to meet the president I'm sorry but we got to slow down the Ops cuz you got to meet the president and then it's right back at it right back to work as it should be yep no time for celebration let's go get the rest of them I I think um there in that tactical pause and that Battlefield patience which is so important and often um

misunderstood they were also processing all of the information taken off of all of those Targets that night and then they had to re prioritize all new targets going forward and that I mean that's hard like even now if I were if I were tasked with that how do you reorganize your whole entire Target list um with all information that's taken off of 25 Targets in one night and then you move off you know number two number one to five and seven mhm like and then all of the new ones we didn't even know about Yep

man that's a that's a hell of a first deployment too holy [ __ ] dude I still get like heart racing thinking back that's that's deployment number one my first combat deployment man amazing yeah and things changed Afghanistan yeah so let's go home okay let's let's so you get home do you get married on this trip home yep so you come back you find out you talk to the spies she's good Yeah and uh I know I'm going to be going to Ranger school to special force sniper school and um and I'm already starting to

position I'm trying to find out which unit is the next unit going back to Afghanistan and I start trying to uh manipulate position myself to get on that hitch so I'd like knock out two schools and then go on the next rotation so you're not on the cth no I'm still on the cth then what are you looking at Other units for so the uh you once you spend a couple of deployments or a couple of years on the assault Force you can move to the Recon Halo sniper team so I go to Ranger school

my team Sergeant John says hey if if you're going to go to Ranger school you can't come back to this team unless you're on Honor Graduate and uh so you have no choice but to go to Rangers school because you're immature you don't understand leadership you don't Understand the army so go to Ranger school and if you're not Honor Graduate you can't come back to this team so I go I'm Honor Graduate I come back to this team but then like I still have the chip on my shoulder because I'm a prick and uh I

still haven't learned humility evidently so I'm like [ __ ] this team then I'm going to you know I'll go to the hell SN team so then I uh Alex Ortiz is the team Sergeant for 796 and uh he offers me a spot to come To 796 so I go to sniper school after Ranger school and I'm looking for when is the next combat deployment for anyone in the greater Special Forces regiment CU now I wanted to deploy as a sniper MH and um so I'm still in the Sith but I'm looking for jobs for

usao jck um for Coalition soft forces that need a sniper cuz I wanted to be an experienced sniper not just a paper sniper mhm and that was uh and especially as a special forces Sniper in addition to being able to shoot far you know far far away you come with the the understanding of a battle space and how to you know calling nine lines and how to be the connective tissue between other speci Special Operations units and combat units in the theater with like as a softly like a special operations Lis on um so a

sniper is really useful in those roles because he can speak the languages of lots of different different types of Units so I was trying to find a way to get to War as a sniper and the cth having just having just returned they weren't on the Playbook to go back for like two more years okay and I did not want to wait two more years gotcha gotcha how did you how did you propose to the to your wife yeah so uh I had first we were going to be going to a baseball game in Southern

California and I was going to do that cringy 7th in thing I had that set Um and it for a variety of reasons uh a nephew that was sick we ended up not going to the game so I canceled that then I was going to do it at Disneyland during the fireworks um and uh but fog and weather came in and they canceled the fireworks that night so then I was going to do it um at the beach house in California in Cambria and we're driving on the coast Road over and as soon as you

Crest the hill and you see the ocean I saw this Gigantic layer of marine clouds so I knew that once we got it was going to be a full moon that night that once we got to the beach you wouldn't be able to see anything besides the black murkiness that is fog um and I have a bad relationship with fog so I was like I don't really want to propose to my wife on a dark beach in the middle of the fog so as we're on top of this hill looking this mountain looking out on

the Pacific and the the the Pacific Ocean like it's My my my home it's my I love that water um I right there on the side of the road I got down on a knee and was uh like you're made for me I don't deserve you uh and I I and I I know that you fight for me I'm not going to tell you how I know but uh and she she said yeah that was it and I drove to my grandma's house in Cambria and told her she was the first to hear that uh

I was getting married oh man it's cool very cool very cool now marriage is tough so You get married you get engaged and you get married on the same trip home yep and find U your new unit well I stay in the CF um I find my new deployment oh okay um so I still at C3 seven I was still in seventh group cth and um I okay so hold on let me so there's multiple teams in within the Sith in each group there are two troops and each troop is comprised of an assault force

of Two odas and a um a wcky team Okay and that wcky team is broken into like the Halo sniper and then like the tech hum hum side of the wky team got it so each of those troops could kind of work independently but as a squadron they can like work as a four team assault team with two wcky teams you know that's how we're organized got it and this deployment a new Battalion was going into Afghanistan and The soft Coalition so the the all of our NATO allies with all of their special operations teams

that are for deployed the British the Canadian um Czech the French uh all of those teams are under the battle Space Commander of the American Military so the American kind of combatant commander of Afghanistan has all of these different countries that are all allies that are all working under this kind of coordinated um combatant Wing as you as a special force of sniper I myself and my sniper partner volunteered to be usao snipers for the Coalition soft so anytime that any one of our Allied tier one um units were going to be going to a

target one of us would well the plan for both of us was to go but as soon as we landed in Afghanistan uh my sniper partner gets the Dear John Letter that his bank account had been dumped that his wife had a dude on the Side and she was just waiting for him to fly overseas she's like selling his gun selling his motorcycle dumping his bank account so uh he was going to be combat ineffective so they flew him home which left me there by myself so now I'm a usao special force sniper assigned to

the Coalition and I'm like I got nobody so this whole entire deployment I am just hopping from TST to T EST time sensitive Target or trip or Mission which e with each of these different Coalition units before we get into the actual deployment you did another thing on your off time you started your first company correct that's right Ranger up how did that come about I uh there there's this fighting tournament called the Army combatives tournament and all military branches could send their best fighters to this 4day long just violent tournament you you'd weigh in

You' the first phase was fighting and Grappling the second phase was fighting in panra limited striking rules and the third phase was you fighting in real MMA fights um for who is going to be the Army combatives Champion Ranger up was like a this apparel line that would make fun of all of the things about the military that you couldn't make fun of being in the military and it was awesome and uh Nick palesano and Tom AA And and Dave were like hey we want to sponsor you so I went and fought in the in

those Army combes tournaments as a former professional fighter so I'm the only guy in history to to win them three times and you'd fight anywhere from 10 to 20 times over the weekend um you know obviously submission fights pancreas fights and then finally MMA fights what's a pancreas fight it's uh so your bare knuckle it's close fist to the body kicks to the head but you can't Close fist punch somebody to the face so it's grappling and kickboxing heavy gotcha um and then the it kind of like limits face damage so that you are able

to fight which would be your your third phase and Final Phase which is the Championships fights uh in MMA rules um when I won that Nick and Tom and Dave were like hey man we also heard that you're like fighting on the side so they started sponsoring me and I said well why don't Instead of you sponsoring and paying me like I would like some equity and I would like to help build Ranger up so that was my first like business entrepreneurial step was getting Equity of Ranger up and then starting to help build that

brand man you guys had some great branding for the time I remember I remember this one video specifically and it was I've never met Nick but I think it was Nick and he was he had this Old Special Forces medic on there dude that was hilarious we were like so far ahead now now there's tons of great military apparel lines yeah you know you had like 762 you have nine line you have uh Grunt Style and they're all great companies owned by great guys um we were the first you know we were the first ones

to do it uh you know Matt best and Jared that went on to own Black Rifle coffee they had Article 15 you know with Rocco so like but we were the first MH and um you know we were the first ones in pxs we were the first ones like saying things that you couldn't say and putting them on shirts and having soldiers like wear those things around it was freaking awesome yeah yeah that stuff really I mean that got legs fast yeah it took off it seemed like it yeah it it blew up it it

was crazy to go from you know Nick and Tom and and Dave like printing shirts in a garage to them you Know selling 5 million in shirts wow it's you know yeah an infantry off officer an SF officer a ranger battalion kid and uh and uh Green Beret damn damn that is uh very cool it's fun did you guys get a lot of [ __ ] for that mhm did you yeah we got like oh you're you're those guys you know like and some some people didn't get the jokes and and uh and Military humor

is not humor that is appreciated sometimes out of the military so non service members would See some things and they' be like dude that's not funny at all they're like no it's it's it's absolutely hilarious you're like I'm sorry that you don't get it and I'm sorry that you're offended or whatever triggered word is now but uh this is funny you just don't get it and that's a you problem yeah how long did that run uh go on for wait 10 years 10 years yeah yeah I mean that that carried me into you know I

fought for IFL and Strike Force um UFC I was I was wearing Ranger Up On fight shorts and um and that the success of that company and how to do it and how to Market really led into me opening new business ventures and how to organize business um there were a lot of mistakes that we made at Ranger up but like with all mistakes ideally you learn from them and I was just surrounded by really smart people that once we made a mistake and they learned from them they would then tell me what To do

so I didn't make them again cuz I would make again cuz I'm dumb but they would be like ah maybe if you learn from this we'd do this differently and they it just kept kind of getting better interesting interesting yeah that uh I mean it essentially created an entire subculture out of the military that that brands have taken ideas from learned from develop new ideas I mean that was that was kind of the start you know and it's Uh very cool yeah we're definitely proud of it uh you we didn't we didn't exit like the

way that you would want you know as you position yourself to sell a company at the right time um we we did it in all the wrong ways uh which is another hard lesson to learn where you you know you've been part of a brand for 10 years and then you kind of watch that brand die on the vine you like R rep still exists you know I still own a percentage Of it you know but the the that company which I don't control anymore neither does Nick is like a shell of what it once

was um you know that that stings yeah uh we're like man why don't we sell at this moment or why didn't we position to exit at this moment and we just didn't know any better yep yep yeah well plus was a uh it wasn't your primary focus nah you know so all right let's move into Afghanistan so you're a sniper foruse a suck Yeah so going from being on a jck task force hunting the number one dude on the planet to being a single sniper in support of Coalition units that do not get tier level

targets you get whatever's there in their battle space um there's no qrf there's 's no support there's not even another person on target that speaks English and sometimes in some instances like like I knew they some of the guys on the On Target spoke English they just wouldn't talk to me in English you know like I don't speak French I don't speak German you know like I fight to go with the Canadians or the British but um they weren't trying to get into the fights like the Czechs were like the cchs wanted to get into

fights so like me traveling and and deploying and going with the c sof for example into Firebase anacon like they wanted to get into gunfights No [ __ ] I never even I never worked with the checks dude they're bad are they yeah a bunch of Viking blooded dudes never got the opportunity I've seen the I've seen the poock seen the and uh those boys were hungry yeah but I never yeah never saw the checks kind of same Vibe between the two of them you know they like the like the guru and and Che sof

both have that like something to prove Eastern block anxiety of post USSR where like they got they Have a chip on their shoulder they want to know how to fight they want to bring Lessons Learned From combat back to their homes be you have to be in Eastern Europe when you have Russia knocking on your door often um and then making incursions into cria into Ukraine and and um for you to understand the the permanent anxiety that these Special Operations guys have because it's on them right like you can say nato all you Want but

if Russia came to the Polish border which they were trying to push through you know like when they got all the way to keev and they're looking at moving all the way up into Poland um Poland was positioned to find a Line in the Sand and stand there and dial on it like you'd have to step over the body of every single polish Special Operations guy if you're a Russian soldier trying to invade Poland and they have had that for 20 years yeah so then they get to go to war but they haven't been in

war like real war and now they want to prove their tactics their procedures they want to make sure that their equipment is right they're using the right ammo all the things that you learn from war they're trying to perfect there the check and the polls um or maybe the the most hungry yeah yeah did you so What's it like going on with those guys they uh don't shoot at them they uh they also don't have the same scrutiny you know this is 2008 now now we're Peak Afghanistan War I went from like Peak Iraq war

to you know 2007 89 is Peak Afghanistan war and um if you're on you know if we're moving we're we're we're on a a gaff a ground assault Force we're in vehicles moving towards a Target and that Target starts shooting at the ground assault Force they're just going to level the target you know like this is the war that we're at now it's not like Hal continue to roll up and hit them in a dynamic entry it's like cool let's stop and we're just going to drop bombs and mortars on top of these guys and

then we're going to cruise down his maneuver elements and pick up the bodies you know this is uh um we got blown up as Valley and ER is gone with the checks and uh it was A IED initiated Ambush and they had positioned a few hundred foreign Fighters and Taliban in this Valley with this intent of taking out the entire Czech Special Operations the Special Forces Oda that was es escorting them to Firebase Anaconda um and all of the resupply that was going to keep them at this Firebase throughout the winter so there's this gigantic

Caravan of Jinga trucks and then the Czech Special Operations forces And the American escorts to there and I was the layers on to the Czech Special Forces okay this is just an example of like the different types of missions that I went on as that USA sniper leaz on from the time that initiated um that IID initiated Ambush kicks off pcam machine guns start going off RPGs are skipping off hoods and slamming into Vehicles like that was the beginning of a 3-day gunfight Um and if if you're doing your your Battlefield damage assessment you know

you're looking at a few hundred dead foreign Fighters damn um you know the vehicle in front of me gets disintegrated everybody inside of it dies you know like purple Hands Hearts were handed out to like not handed out that's not the right word um everybody gets Purple Hearts from this Mission um you know shrapnel in the back and the necks we're in villages as we're Moving from there all the way to Firebase Anaconda every time that we move to the next Village we're having to fight door too building to building to get through this Village

and you couldn't go around this Village because around the outsides of these Villages they had put IEDs damn uh so it's just like and you're with the checks yeah how are you communicating with them how are you integrating with their tactics I would mostly talk to the Americans about where we were and where we were going and I would just observe what the checks were doing or how they were maneuvering and then I would communicate to the team sergeant of the Special Forces Oda about hey we're going to be heading you like we're going north

rest our aouth is this right now um we're going to be moving to this position and the company Commander spoke broken English but English enough where he would relay to his unit that would be Maneuvering to a a new position and then he' give me like the bluff he' give me the wave tops like this is the bottom line up front we're moving to this hill and we're going to be providing suppressive fire uh as the Oda is going to be moving to the South so I call the Oda be like hey we're moving up

to this hill this is going to be the grid coordinates um and uh and I'll give you Intel from this position as we go and that would be rapidly changing and I Would always be struggling into find figuring out like what the heck is going on right now yeah and so I mean I got to be honest this sounds like a pretty good Mission set to me I mean so you're you're basically a strap hanger for anybody that's doing [ __ ] that's right I got to was it hard to integrate in with these units

and and get them to say yeah we want them on the op no you I mean um you know you that you pass a sniff test you go into the Premission briefing and um you ask a few of the right questions and you know how am I going to be an asset where would you like me how would you like me to communicate what kind of information do you want me to relay to the Americans um like here are some capabilities that I have in calling for fire this is um the equipment that I'm bringing

with me um is this appropriate where I would be useful if I have the stuff is there other stuff that You would like me to have that I do have that I can bring if you'd like you know th those type of things really um build immediate Rapport when you're having kind of an outsider come into your unit um they they also recognized the value of having that American Special Operations lays on you know they if you want air support and you are uh French Special Operations and you're trying to call for American call for

fire that's hard right but then you have A me there where I can just pick up my phone and be like my figurative phone and be like hey this is where we're at this is what we need this is where I need it send it and it's done so like they they recognize the the value in that so with the right questions and the right kind of immediate Rapport building and I would also bounce each one of the different nationalities had their own bases when you got to like bogram or Kandahar they were all segregated

into Like the Italians were here you know the French were here the British were here do you remember like uh I remember so I was I would I would go and spent I would go have dinners with them I would uh you know like if there's a soccer game happening I would go and hang out with them and uh I was able to go outside of the wire and acquire things that help build poor with foreign units um so you know I'd bring a bottle of wine or you know like things that are hard to

come By in Afghanistan i' bring and show up with you know some salted meats and uh for a soccer game and and then you know you're that was E6 with you know combat patch recently came from Afghanistan I got a ranger tab like they know that I'm the Special Forces sniper so there there were it wasn't as hard to build that initial report poor you know like thinking back to my dad about like how to break down barriers um I came bearing gifts um I kept my mouth shut asked Questions when appropriate and uh looked

for opportunities to contribute how many different units did you operate with about a dozen wow over the course of uh eight months damn did you so now you're you're a you're a special forces sniper You' got a whole new set of capabilities and skills did you engage anybody as a sniper yeah a lot did you kill anybody as a sniper yeah a lot can we talk about the first One yeah it's a bad one it's sad like all war is um I wish it was like dude I saw this dude squiring out the back of

the target you know he like his head holding the head of a of a baby on his shoulder you know and um he's carrying an AK and I see that he's wearing a VB vest and he's running towards an American unit and I shot him you know uh yeah it was a child carrying a 1875 lever action British rifle and he Was moving in resupply points between uh this Taliban machine gun position I saw him move a couple of times I didn't know how old he was he's about 5 600 meters there's like hours of

Li limited visibility so like I see a guy with a gun moving from like the far side of a hill to a machine gun position he does it a couple of times so the next time that I see him moving I shot him very rarely do you get to go and see the people you shoot as a sniper and uh this Was in our direction of travel so as the Caravan starts to move in that direction and I come and I see this 11 12 year old kid with a rifle um actually have you ever

come to my office in Texas in Austin I have this gun hanging on my wall right underneath it is the centcom permission from the Jag for me to bring it's not a war trophy they said it's not even functional um and I also have US Special Operations Command Jag authorizing me and I have both of them Like the stamped approved uh what were those like little squeeze things that put a permanent mark on the paper yeah you know with the Jag signature yeah with their little pressure seal both of those things sitting right underneath there

and I it reminds me of two things one is every time I hear a politician say like why do you need a gun like what is the importance of the Second Amendment we have f-16s and f-18s and M1 Abrams I Think back to a little boy a peasant a nomad that had been kicking the American Special Operations ass in this Valley for 3 days and he's running around with an 1875 musket one man with a rifle protecting his own land how powerful he is and the power of the Second Amendment and how this insurmountable force

of one one good guy with a gun how powerful that is so that's one reason and the second is to remind me of the cost of War it's Never the way that you want it to be it's never the way that it is in the movies it is horrible it is Young it is pain and uh uh you know I I don't want my son to ever have to shoot an 11-year-old kid carrying a gun that doesn't even work that's War um everything else is for the movies does that still haunt you yeah yeah I'm

sorry it's War yeah someday we'll have Peace we'll all live together but until then this is what we're looks like you can have these ideals and dreams of grandeur but it's eviscerated bodies and burnt smell of hair and flesh and children that are raped in tortured and die from overpressure wounds and bad guys on the same not but two days later from me shooting that kid I throw a grenade through a window with a a pcam machine Gun Mike Goble hero one of the greatest green BRS to walk the face of the planet Roy benov

level green BR I walk up to a door and I don't know how he knew this I don't know if uh he was precog like maybe he came from the future and came back in time and I walk up to this door divine intervention it's happened multiple times in my life I walk up to this door we see bad guys move into this building and uh as soon as I go to reach For the hand handle the door Mike and I we always had like some friction we had been in a couple of fights over

some dumb stuff he was in a machine gun position he had a pistol out I like why aren't you on your machine gun he's like well I want a pistol kill like you're you're a stupid idiot and then we fist fight um so like fast forward to thisal Neanderthal conversation 100% I put my hand on this door and he Hits me so hard and shoves me and I stumble back and fall over as this door gets shredded with machine gun fire and I don't know if he like heard a bolt drop or if he heard

a selector switch there's no way cuz I was at this door right like I didn't hear anything all I know is like I just start falling back and I'm like trying to get my feet cuz I'm going to come at him and knock his teeth through his face cuz he just shoved me cuz I thought he wanted to be The number one guy through the door and as soon as he shoves me it pushes him back and this door just gets shredded with machine gun fire and uh saves my life no no question had I

been there like a half a second later and Mike gal not been there I'd be dead and uh I see as this door like kind of starts swinging that there's a machine gun sticking out of this window and I take a grenade I throw this frag grenade Through this window again it's not like the movies right there's not like this flame like there's nothing like it's just this thud and uh what you want hear is silence you know all I hear is women and children start screaming this guy had barricaded himself and surrounded himself with

a bunch of women and children in this room and uh you know this is two days after coming off this Kid you got a lot of Spartan stuff in here do you remember the plungers behind the line of the 300 so you'd have the guys in the front the phons right the short stores and the Spears and they would move that line forward and they' step over the bodies of the people that were fighting that would die against the shields the next row behind them were long Spears so they were guys that were stabbing through

the shoulders and over the shoulders of the Forces that were coming so that the wall would come they'd attack they' close the wall Spears would come and as you'd step over these bodies the third row would be a plunger and he would have this metal Spike and he' just stab these guys as the Spartans would move forward every night as we moved forward I would sit there all night long with a thermal imager and I would Splash rounds into every heated body on the battlefield holy [ __ ] dude and I did it every night

For eight hours couple hundred rounds a night [ __ ] the only one that could shoot out so the with these RG 33s with the crows um amazing targeting system what we didn't have was a lot of ammo so the Pros has thermal they'd be able to spot a Target I would lay and they'd give me an asmith in a in a distance in a direction right and with distance and Direction I'd kind of P the body and then I would dump a couple of Rounds in it and then they'd move it five degrees and

then' give me a new distance in Direction I Would adjust and I'd Splash a couple of rounds repeat every night and that uh exhaust yeah it's heavy and then you drive out and you just see these bodies that have you know your holes in them to uh to go into the next Village that a dude is fighting from a room that he's surrounded women and children This Is War [ __ ] War man how did that deployment end with no Elation or Grandeur with no celebration with no um time you know a uh a redeployment

date for me to go to another school that was uh I had that rifle which I'd kept in my my little tiny crappy plywood sleeping Area um and I remember like getting in fight after fight after with an Air Force JAG guy with like uh the redeployment security clerk he's like you can't like I can I literally can like this is paperwork with a stamp that outranks you saying that I can like you can't I'm like this gun's coming with me um it's like that fight to bring that gun back home was CRA But ultimately

you know the that just employment datee ended and I'm by myself like I didn't Fly home with a team I didn't like high five five like let's go back my wife met me at the green ramp when I landed there's nobody there damn yeah how was it coming home to your wife broken yeah I was a I was a broken dude how was she I didn't know her it was eight months since I saw her and in 8 months you know I did the worst things that a person can do to another person and uh

she didn't right she's at home uh she's working every day she's taking care of our Shepherd you know she's running marathons and you know she's finishing her MBA and um so she's developing as a human and I'm developing in a totally different way you know not better or worse just different so I was at a Best Buy this guy in this BMW starts cruising by and uh he's smoking cloves there was an Indian restaurant that was like just a couple buildings away but uh clearly it was like downwind from it because I could smell like

the curry from the Indian restaurant and I could smell his clove and he was listening to some Arabic music and then he's like in a bad guy's car cuz like that's what all of them Drew and like I mean I was thinking About just like smoking this dude and fville North Carolina I've been home like 3 days and I was like man I got to to I want to go back to my house for a few days um they had just had the UFC fight for the troops the same weekend that I got home and

I got home the day after it happened so like Brock Lesnar's in town Randy Couture's in town like these are all dudes that I knew and um and my man I love the Brotherhood of combat arms specifically Special Operations uh Alex Ortiz and uh this sucks because I can't remember a couple of their names because they're dead now some of my teammates that sucks um they knew and had heard what that deployment was like for me um and uh you know when I'd call back to give them updates to my team Sergeant I Called Alex

i b uh hey hey boss just wanted to give you an update I'm back just got back from this hitch that I was with the British or the Canadians or whatever um he's like hey man I I I heard like I'm getting updates every single day on the red side so first of all I just want you to know that I'm super proud of you um I want you to not feel any pressure to do anything like you know be the best that you can be but You're not proving anything to anybody like we're we're

proud to have you and like that really that was the first time that I was like I felt like I belonged there um was because of Alex and um even even like my team leader was supportive would we're not highly developed on the emotional IQ scale so having you know a a superior give you that affirmation was rare and uh so when I came home they were they Were there physically you know my wife was there like emotionally like I I don't know what you need right now but I'm like here and then the team

was like you know take whatever time um you need but we're not going to let you get out of the saddle so like we're going to be sending you to another school immediately so like take a week figure things out and let's get you back on the horse you had kids too yep you had two Two daughters from uh pre-military they were uh they were born 10 months after 911 so I tried to recruit on 911 and and this kind of period of debauchery of uh me living as a Broken Man Without purpose trying to

cuz I was trying to get in the military like it took me 18 months trying to figure out what branch I'm going to they have Delayed Enlistment things are trying to put me In like this irr thing and I had no idea how any of it worked so I I knew where I wanted to go but I had like no purpose or Direction um and uh you know a young man without purpose is a very dangerous thing so uh yeah I was got a few girls pregnant thought I got AIDS um you know went for

a swim in the Pacific Ocean butt ass naked out into the fog with no plan about how to get back just uh trying to figure things Out were you hoping to die out there not consciously you know there was no I was trying to get baptized you know I was trying to like wash away I mean at that moment I literally thought I had AIDS I had a I had a girl that I had partied with after a cage fight and she was a ring girl she comes and she is trying to find all of

her Partners cuz she tested positive for HIV and um so one kudos to her is she's trying to track everybody down and be Like hey you know so she walks into the gym I have a few girls pregnant at this moment of my life my grandpa's dying of empyema and I can't do the thing that I want to do which is going to the military and uh you know post 911 it's just chaos like this this is if you're in basic training which just blows my mind and going to buds like the same year that

I'm walking into the ocean butt ass naked swimming in the fog like I just wanted I would Have done anything to be where you were yeah that is some heavy [ __ ] man but you find purpose well let's talk about divine intervention so you're a Christian yeah you're a man of Faith very much so we've talked we just talked about something that happened and now we're getting into this which we had discussed either last night or this morning yeah I mean even getting plucked out of this water like I get naked I swim a

mile or two Miles out into the fog if you've ever tried to recover somebody from the fog it's it's nearly impossible just trying to recover somebody in the oan at night we just lost two seals at night that went into the drink as they're trying to board like we knew where they fell in like we're talking about an entire body of water where nobody saw me walk into this water supposedly some some old woman uh had a witness of me getting into the water it's imposs possible this Is like pre- cell phone like there's P

there's a pager on on the sand next to my wallet um there's no vantage point that any house with a phone can see me so that doesn't make any sense but ultimately a coast guard boat and I hate that I got rescued by the Coast Guard that ultimately a coast guard boat with this dude with his feet hanging off the front of this boat cruises up and like hey What are you doing tell him I'm swimming and he makes fun of me uh I give him a brief update of like what's happening in my life

and he's like man I was going to offer you a ride back in but maybe you just want to stay in the water and I was like nah it's cold and he leans forward he like looks at my dick and he goes I see it's cold like but like lit a fire you know I was like all right he said well I'll give you an option you can Clamber you can climb up on the boat but from this point for for you're going to treat your life with a little bit more respect than you do

at this moment or did at this moment I I said all right and he threw that ladder down ah man it was so hard to climb up I've been that water maybe an hour hour and a half to climb up that rope net with my hands that weren't even working right here the Pacific Ocean Marrow Bay I'm going to guess it's 52 53° I've been out there hour hour and a half um you know long enough to to be in bad shape and he put one of those wool navy blankets on me and it felt

like a million needles or burning steel needles were like burning in my back it was like the best feeling I've ever felt I was alive there's no way that Mike goal heard that bolt drop and saved my life there's no way that some woman saw me Walk into the ocean I was able to give uh a specific distance and direction as to where I was in the water this is impossible and there's no way that in the F in the darkness a boat would be able to come up and find somebody in the water there's

no way go forward to my wife and I have been married about 10 years and uh coming back from 20th something trip burnt emotionally you know raw all the wires are Exposed um and uh just going to call it quits you know we I'm I'm done and uh we're together and I don't know we hadn't been to church I hadn't been to church in 10 years I uh I I couldn't reconcile like what was happening in war and the things that were seen with uh that there's the ex there's an existence of a loving God

and um so we walk into this Church and the pastor is giving a sermon on the importance of marriage and why it is one of the most important things that you can do in your whole entire life and I was like well that's kind of awkward we we're kind of already in this let's be done moment and she's not really looking at me I'm not looking at her and he's like you know and and starting today we have this new small group called marriage matters and there is room for everybody That wants to go if

there's a thousand people in here that want to start marriage matters we will find a thousand slots and um and come as you are we don't care what you have going on in your life just come and like she won't look at me I won't look at her you know and I was like oh this is awkward and she's like yeah like what do you want to do and the girl next to my wife that I've never met before her name is Jen Ferguson Jen Ferguson she leans forward She goes well I'll tell you guys

what you want to do so I'm the small group leader for this marriage matters thing and I was like do you want Jen I need you to not talk for a little while I don't know you and I just want you to pump the brakes of spinch and like your awesome energy just he's like you're an 11 I need you at like a two and I knew you had a two over there so you know on that day uh my wife and I walk into a marriage matters class and Saves our marriage um it's going

to even more weird and you're this exact same time one of my older daughters Sabrina there's a there's a well there's a a hole it's called a deep blue well in Texas it's called Jacob's Well it's about an 80 foot straight down dive but an entire River comes up from this um spring so you're swim swimming against this current uh and it's about 20 by 20 wide hole that goes deep into The water you're not allowed to scuba di in it because a bunch of people have been lost and they died down there um it's

a it's a very difficult free dive MH and um in the same time that I am trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do in this marriage Sabrina and I go there and um she's a great swimmer and she's hanging up on the top I do a free dive down to the bottom grab a rock fight my way back up set the rock there go back through my My free dive pre-dive breath protocols take the rock SL FP off and go all the way down to the bottom I'm sitting down there maybe about 2

minutes and I'm just like it's cold this is like Texas Spring Aqua for water and um just in the darkness and it's very eerie a lot of people can't even like swim over it because it's literally just this straight down blue hole and uh I see this glimmer of this ring or of this metal and I swim over There and I fan it and I find a size 14 Irish b band titanium wedding ring and uh I grab it and I swim back up to the top and I'm like Sabrina look what I just found

she's like where did you find that I like at the bottom are you kidding me clearly like somebody had jumped off and it had fallen off their finger and uh I have giant aans it's my ring size you can't resize titanium and It's an Irish band I'm Kennedy I'm obvious obviously Irish and I I had taken my ring off my original ring and I hadn't been wearing it um and then sitting here at the bottom of this deep blue hole is my new wedding band at this exact same time of my life yeah wow I'm

not saying confirmation bias that I could project that these things I wanted to happen but they did happen and they're So statistically impossible that I can't sit back objectively and be like these were coincidences you know there's no way I didn't die in that Valley there's no way I didn't die at that door there's no way I didn't die in the water there's no way that that ring wasn't put there for me you still have it yeah man wear it every day at home yeah I don't shoot train or travel With rings they cause extra

problems does your faith continue to develop do you practice it I definitely practice it um you know I read the Bible I do devotionals um I am uh I know God exists I know a loving God exists I know that there's Divine Purpose I know that every single person was made for a purpose and finding that purpose and I I've found my purpose and I know why I'm here Um what is your purpose it's uh it's literally the mission statement of our company and everything that I do is tied back to preserving and protecting human

life and enabling and empowering people to provide for their families and be able to expand Freedom like that is why I'm here it's a damn good purpose yeah I think on that note let's take a quick break how many guys out there are worried about brain health you know all We hear about is Fitness everybody's getting ready for bikini season cuz Spring's right around the corner I'm personally more concerned about my brain you look around you see all these brain diseases that are getting out of control I'm going to take everything I can to improve

the health of my brain and I'm going to tell you about my five favorite supplements from lired superfoods that help with brain health all right the first thing I do every morning is I have Led superfood creamer it's got adaptogens and functional mushrooms which are great for brain health I put this in my tea tastes amazing who likes vegetables cool me neither that's I take L's Daily Greens just pour it in a cup shoot it real quick you got your daily vegetable intake plus guess what yep that's right functional mushroom extract there's six different kinds

in here once again great for brain health after greens we got Daily Reds this one doesn't actually have any functional mushrooms in it but I can't stand beets I think they taste like [ __ ] and so I take one scoop of this put in my water and I don't have to eat beets anymore all right we're winding down the day now this is the next supplement I take every single night lared sleep and Recovery helps me sleep helps me recover from my daily workout and guess what yep you're right it has mushroom extract guess

what it's Good for your brain and I save the best for last most of you know this my favorite supplement at LS is performance mushrooms has a ton of mushroom extract super super good for your brain take it every single day sometimes multiple times a day these are my five favorite supplements from lared superfoods you can go over to lared superfoods.com use the promo code SRS save 20% ladies and gents I would not have partnered with this company if I didn't believe in them they take the cleanest ingredients they try to Source everything in America

unless they find a better ingredient that's more quality somewhere else I think we can all appreciate that once again lared superfoods.com use the promo code SRS that'll save you 20% I want to give a big thank you out right now to all the vigilance Elite patrons out there that are watching the show right now just want to say thank You guys you are our top supporters and you're what makes this show actually happen if you're not on vigilance lead patreon I want to tell you a little bit about what's going on in there so we

do a little bit of everything there's plent of behind the scenes content from the actual sha Ryan Show on top of that basically what I do is I take a lot of the questions that I get from you guys or the patrons and then I turn them into videos so we get right now there's a lot Of concern about self-defense Home Defense crimes on the rise all throughout the country actually all throughout the world and so we talk about everything from how to prep your home how to clear your home how to get familiar with

a firearm both Rifle and Pistol for beginners and advanced we talk about mindset we talk about Defensive Driving we have an end of the month live chat that I'm on at the end of every month where we can talk about Whatever topics you guys have it's actually done on Zoom you might enjoy it check it out and if zoom's not your thing or you don't like live chats like I said there's a library of well over a 100 videos on where to start with prepp all the firearm stuff pretty much anything you can think of

it's on there so anyways go to www.patreon.com vigilance Elite or just go in the link in the description it'll take you right There and if you don't want to and you just want to continue to watch the show that's fine too I appreciate it either way love you all let's get back to the show thank you attention creators we see you guys ripping our content and putting it all over social media we've seen it on Snapchat Instagram Twitter Facebook YouTube Tik Tock you name it here's the deal we absolutely love It some of the reels

you guys are making are getting over 20 million views here's the deal we wanted to make it even easier on you so we've created a link it's down in the description of every single sha Ryan Show episode it has thousands and thousands of raw cut reels for you to download for free turn it into your own creation monetize it put it everywhere you want all we ask is that you tag the Shan Ryan Show in the description thank you Let's see what you got all right Tim back from the break I needed that break yeah

that was getting pretty heavy there and uh I appreciate you diving deep for that last segment there but so now it's you're leaving the cth and UFC is about to pick you up that's right how does that how does that even happen so I I was fighting the whole time that when I'd come back from Deployments or I'd get back from a school I I fought 5 days after graduating from Ranger school most people don't walk for months like you don't have to take a PT test for a year after graduating from Rangers school I

graduated from Rangers school and I get a call from Leo kinsky who is um one of the owners of the team one of the teams in the international Fight League the IFL on Fox and uh he said hey I have a I have a fight this weekend I lost my light heavyweight can you come in I heard that you're a fighter and the you're on some shows that you're just in uh can you come this weekend I was like well it's it's Monday like weighin or Friday fight Saturday I was like all right so five

days later I weigh in on Friday and I go and I fight um Dante Rivera incredible black belt professional fighter and um beat the Brakes off of him and Lio kinsky is like who who are you like what is going on here and I'm trying to explain him like everybody on Fort Brag or on Coronado all of us trained all of us fought all of us like it is just part of the in every course that You' go to whether it's spartic or spaic or cysc every single morning you're were fighting you're grappling you're you

know on the cmms Range you're like it's just Fighting and they wanted to keep that Warrior Spirit healthy and I was like I hate to break this to you but I literally know about a thousand guys that fight as well as I do and they're at Fort brde currently but uh but I'm here if you want me to fight so I kept on fighting and that went well and it went unnoticed for a while until One Night Live on Fox a couple of sergeant majors were at a famous bar in Fort Brag North Carolina and

they see this kid With a shaved head walk out to the ring and it says a ranger from Fort Brag North Carolina there are no Rangers at Fort Brag North Carolina and they're like well that's probably one of our guys isn't it and they see me go and knock this guy out in a main event fight and um so they go Tim Kennedy they get on the global and they search a staff sergeant Tim Kennedy had signed a c37 and I get back I'm on leave I haven't broken any rules uh so I took Permissive

leave to to travel um weighed in on Friday so I took leave on Thursday and Friday traveled Friday waited fought on Saturday flew home on Sunday and I get home Monday morning at 6 I show up for PT and my team Sergeant goes hey uh we have to go down to group headquarters I was like like our group they're like no no no special forces command I was like okay like you got a good uniform I'm like marginally you know so I go in There the only thing that was good was my Beret I look

like a dumpster fire we walk in and the command sergeant major of Special Forces command of US Special Operations Command and of group are sitting there and they're like uh so hey how was your weekend I was like it's fantastic you know uh we saw that you're were fighting and I was like Roger you know did I do something wrong and they're like well you can't do both it's like I've been doing both I've literally Done both for the past eight years you know you just saw it as a main event fight um but like

I've been I've been fighting for the past 8 years I've I've you know a couple dozen fights in my duration of here at Special Forces they they said you have to choose you have to pick between the two and um I don't want to I was like no like make me like we will make you this is the Army this is how this works you literally have a choice so you can do One or the other uh so what was the rationale behind that I don't know digital footprint facial I don't I've always F this

like misconception about what I'm I was 100% aany guy they could have told me to do anything I would have warn anything I have always just wanted to support the regiment in the best way that I possibly could most people couldn't understand they couldn't control me and That scared them even though they didn't need to control me because I would have done anything that they asked you're already loyal to to the death but they they they couldn't understand that because they couldn't control me doesn't mean that they can't control me because I voluntarily would have

done anything that they needed to do for the regiment you want me to go on suicide prevention you like recruiting retention I would have done any of that you know Just let me fight you know if you leave me alone and let me stay on my team and continue to deploy and go to Specialty schools and develop as an NCO and also win every single of the most prestigious fighting tournaments within the military and bring that recognition and honor back to the regiment which I was doing like that gigantic trophy on your wall I brought

that to you like all of those ribbons those are mine like I got awards for those like oh you don't care okay Got it um green Brays have two National Guard Special Forces uh groups 19th group and 20th group so I was leaving active duty the National Guard they're they're part-time soldiers and full-time civilians so you as an mday Soldier you work some weekends a month a couple of weeks a year and then deploy when called upon and um so when I was trying to figure out like what how do I how do I do

both because I'm gonna do Both get a call from the Texas National Guard 19th Special Forces Group and they're like hey come to us you can fight we'll use you use use recruiting and um you get to go to an Oda I uh the day I got out they would if they just left me alone pay me as an E7 salary nice pennies right like I would have done anything the Army wanted MH they didn't so then I go to the National Guard and the National Guard Pays a contract to me as a marketing recruiting

retention tool and they're paying me hundreds of thousands of dollars to put Go Army on my butt no way I would have done it for free you know like that I would just just just let me fight man good for you man but uh so that was like the beginning of then the marketing and media was a forced position from the Army saying you can't do both damn I mean it turned out you know I I how do you feel about it I Don't know teammates got in fights when I wasn't there you know deployments

that didn't go perfect um and the wh ifs right like never go down that road because that is that is just one that leaves to despair but like had I been there would this have gone different um could I have been part of this operation and it you know could I been with Mike goal when he died um in one of his many deployments later Into Afghanistan uh he saved my life I wasn't there when he died like would that be different I don't know um Andrew McKenna like I don't know got it I understand

that but UFC yeah I go for the title runs so I uh commit to fighting I'm a part-time Soldier full-time fighter and uh while I'm doing that I am Contracting for a bunch of different um for-profit government contractors and um you know because I Still got to put food on the table so I'm I have a skill set and so my full-time job is like fighting and contract acting and then I'm like a part-time Soldier [ __ ] I mean food on the table you're making hundreds of thousands for wearing Army on your on your

fight shorts you're Contracting y you got to be making at least 2 300,000 a year off that yep 1,500 bucks a day at the time and uh and You're you're in the National Guard yep and then the fight purses what yeah so what is how does it work how does it work in there so pre we say the rebok deal so the UFC controls all apparel now so you wear what they want you to wear and you get a you get depending on how many fights you have you get a a purse an apparel salary

purse but back then you could sell every inch of your shorts and your fight Banner so I could take on you Know like Trion or um a firearm a knife a I I would never do it but like Depot or like you could have any sponsor that you want and they would pay you to have their name on your banner and on your fight shorts then you would have your fight purse and then you had kind of like the commercial marketing so you know as a professional athlete and with the military background there were a

bunch of different commercial entities that Were like hey will you film this commercial for us like this is the very beginning of social media like Facebook and Myspace um and uh so like social media influencing wasn't a thing but television and radio and Serious XM were so you could like go on there you could record like a 30 second hey I'm Tim Kennedy I'm a UFC fighter you know I'm also like a Green Beret blah blah blah insert like all the cringey things and you'd get paid for those things MH So I'd take my fight

purse I would take my banner fight shorts marketing purse and then I'd take like my commercial purse and break those down into these quarters where my wife and I would then reinvest those monies into businesses okay because we're still just living off of one of our respective um solid incomes okay and uh and she was a W2 still as a government contractor and as we're were trying to like buy a house and continue to like grow our position It was hard to go to a bank as a professional fighter and overseas contractor yeah it's like

uh no no I promise they're going to pay me like I just got to find some more poachers or some Pirates I'm going to win yeah leave me alone give me the alone but um I mean how are you how are you manag so you're fighting at the number one I mean what did that mean to you to be fighting in the UFC at the I mean you just came from the Apex of military Special Operations You went to the CIF then you had a extremely eventful deployment in Afghanistan now you're you're you're fighting at

the apex of the US military now you're fighting at the Apex and mixed martial arts yeah I mean what's the sense of accomplishment there there's no like I haven't arrived there's no feeling of like I've accomplished anything um I wanted I wanted to be the world champion that's what I wanted I Wanted that Tim Kennedy is the world champion of the world and um you know fighting for the world title a couple of times fought for the strike force middleweight title against share and Luke rockold you know when I go into the my first fight

in the UFC I'm fighting hoder Gracie like the most accomplished the one of the greatest Grapplers in the history of pugilistic sports my first fight in the UFC a stay or go winner stays loser goes uh you know to go to Fight Main Events against like Michael bisbing and I I was the last person to fight in a UFC fight for the troops I fought haen atal I supposed to fight L Macha but fought at Fort Carson in an aircraft hanger as the main event damn that's cool man for the UFC surrounded by service members

oh man that's awesome dude I mean the talking about full circle whoa that's got to be I mean that's got to be a just an awesome experience and adrenaline just Pumping and I mean again like I I I hadn't felt like I arrived and I didn't feel like I deserve to be there and I had so much guilt like I had abandoned all these men and women in uniform and now I'm in there as a prize fighter making you know hundreds of thousands of dollars and all these men and women in their uniform in an

aircraft hanger for their first opportunity to see a live UFC event and you know it like it kind of stung a Little bit and Joe uh Rogan walks in to talk to me after and I can barely formulate words you know it was I I'm sorry I love you I wish I was with you like that's what I D was able to get out so you really felt a lot of guilt yeah damn man yeah fighting how how were you able to I mean how are you able to compete at that level I mean I

I I don't know a lot about mixed martial arts and I don't know a lot about the UFC but I Do uh can appreciate the dedication that it must take to get to that level and you know I hear about these guys fight camps and and how much time Blood Sweat but tear goes into training for for especially a title fight but you don't have that kind of time because you're still deploying you're still in the National Guard and on top of that you're doing I'm I guess I shouldn't assume anything but probably combat deployments

with US military Contracting companies that's right so you're going to war coming home what doing a quick fight camp and then going right into the ring I you could stay in shape when you're overseas uh I I wrote this online uh they're called letters from a foreign land and it was talking about like me doing snatches with 50 cows and running up hills with transmissions and filling upo ammo cans like all of the unconventional training that I was doing while I was overseas to Stay in shape and then I would come back and I would

immediately go into fight Camp so I'd fly to Albuquerque in New Mexico with Jackson winkl John best fight team on the planet at the time and we have Jon Jones Rashad Evans George St Pierre Carlos cond demo page um Holly Holm like the list just goes on and on of all of these incredible world champions and I'm Brian Stan and I'm one of those guys there um so I could immediately walk into to this room and The best in the world are all Consolidated into this one place there's only like three or four super camps

on the planet at the time and Jackson Winkle John was one of them and uh so I start doing my fight camp there I'm at altitude and I'm train training with the best in the world so I come back in shape arguably had I taken a different approach it would uh that little bio would not say two-time title Challenger you know that stings quite a bit mhm cuz I never won the world title I was a perennial Contender that was uh you know on three different title runs fought for the title twice was positioned to

fight for a third time and and um never won what could you have done differently I was always torn I don't think I could have ever done anything differently uh because like my heart was always in two different places I wanted to be in Africa I wanted to be in the Middle East I mean desperately like I couldn't not be there and um then I wanted to be a world champion you know my this the worst thing about the ego there's my ego that wanted those two things and um I probably didn't need either of

them you know how how about like being like the best teammate or the best employee or the best husband or the best father uh I argue that those are Far superior to these other two wants but those were the things that were driving me was to be in war and to uh be a world champion are there any similarities between being on the battlefield in the thick of it and being in the ring in the thick of it physiologically there's a ton of similarities you know like the the exhaustion physically uh and putting all of

the all of who you are and everything that you have into this Moment you know to not get knocked out or choked out um similarly like putting everything that you are and everything that you have into this moment to not die so like physically it's very similar um you know and when a commentator is talking about like man these guys are going to battle look at this war man it feels like it when you're in there and uh like I would I'm never would never castigate or disparage you know one of the commentators or one

of the athletes That are out there that describe what they're going through as you like as a war or a battle cuz that I mean it's it's you're out there completely raw and exposed you know you're wearing shorts a cup tape gloves and a mouthpiece and you're going to go try to knock out another dude in a cage it's um it's pretty it's pretty Gladiator yeah yeah I mean that's that's as close as it gets right but um I mean what were how would you prepare yourself mentally For you I never what the similarities between

preparing yourself for going on an operation and going into the ring they're they're really really similar you um you know that that preparation and that training and that skill development you know on the military side those core metal tasks making sure that you know know how to shoot move communicate medicate you know when you look at the the fighter making sure that I'm able to Grapple both offensively and Defensively making sure I'm I have good offense and defense as as a striker being able to dictate range and execute my game plan over their their game

plan those are the same things that I'm trying to do in combat MH um and then a big advantage that I had was like the military discipline and this very clear approach to both business and being an athlete I took it like I treated it like a business I was 10 minutes early to every single training Session you know like I had all of my gear I was at the right place at the right time with the right equipment to the right training you know when when um Greg Jackson walked in for our first private

and uh I was sitting there I was already wrapped up and um 10 minutes before our session was supposed to start and he's like I was about to go and like watch some tape for a little bit I didn't even know that you're were here I was like Well we start in 10 minutes don't we he's like yeah I mean I I wouldn't have expected to see here for like 30 more minutes I'm like all right well moving forward I'll be here 10 minutes early you let let me know if you want me to arrive

later and then set that time accordingly and I same with Winkle John you know a striking coach and uh it was hilarious cuz I'm in the in the gym with Jon Jones who's on the opposite of that Spectrum right like he's out partying Late and and burning it down and showing up like hung over talk about the most talented Athlete on the planet man that guy is the best who ever done it and uh he could show up two hours late to practice be there for five minutes and get more out of that practice than

I would have been there been having been there the whole time damn he's just such so Superior is it surreal training with people like that mm for the first time yeah I mean like like what the hell am I Doing here Rashad Evans was the champ at the time and like walk in like Champs there you know Brian Stan who is like one of my favorite Fighters he's a Marine officer that uh we were in Iraq at the same time kind of cool but watching him just knock people out with his right hand and then

being like to walk in and see to George St Pierre you know like one of the greatest welterweight weight champions in the History of the sport and like there know damn it's rad cowboy Cerrone you know he's in the Hall of Fame now but and he'll probably be inducted for a few things to include you know his fight with ro and McDonald one of the best fights in UFC history and uh like that's one of my teammates I'm training at his house I'm going to his Ranch you know and uh yeah it's weird it's surreals

like not even the right weird like it's indescribably weird Again like do I belong here but I'm like open you up um like mauling you in the corner I hit harder than you you can't hit I guess I deserve to be here like when's my fight date damn damn how long would you how long would it take you to prepare for any particular fight six weeks 6 weeks mhm would you time your deployments to where you had six weeks straight with them yep I try to said it where I'd come back from a hitch and

I'd you know wife and I would pack up the Car drive to Albuquerque and uh do the fight Camp go to the fight come back pump do another pump had you experienced a lot of losses or failures up to this point I mean you blew through SF selection you blew through the Q course you said there was no challenge there blew through sear School pumped out two crazy deployments sounds like you were crushing it as a kid you know and then Now you're fighting at the at the Apex of like I said mixed martial arts

and I mean is that the first time you've really experienced failure yeah that that's not like self-induced from choices you know um standing there as a 21-year-old with a couple of girls pregnant and no like source of income uh you know that's failure it's a different kind of failure but th this this one is like in your face you're standing there You're covered in your own blood mostly naked and the dude next to you gets his hand raised and he's called the champion and you're just standing there they have to go to your Afterparty cuz

like sponsors paid for you to go there your eyes swollen shut you your hands are swollen you can barely hold a glass with them and uh you got to walk into this room of your fans that you just failed and let down um but I'm not going to not show up you know cuz like they're there To see me they they love me like win or lose um and yeah it's it it sucks how do you learn from it what did you take from it in the long term after the fight you had a a

fun account to follow is the UFC fight doc he's the guy that stitches most Fighters up he's um he's a cosmetic guy and you know he'd put the little local pain killers on these he in inject um some lidocaine and he'd come up to sew my face closed and um like Okay lay down on the table he'd walk up with the the painkiller he like n I don't want that so I have to I can see your skull Tim I need to like this is from Robbie Lawler this is from Jacare Souza you know like

this was uh I think from Luke rockold and um like nah just Se Me closed and he would sit there and he'd pull out and he's talked about it a bunch of times on his uh on his Pages he'd sit there and he'd sew my Face closed and I wanted to feel every bit of that pain cuz every single one of those things was like a mistake that I had made and I would carry that I would like breathe in this failure and I would bring in this I would Breathe In this pain and I

would ex and I would like exhale purpose and and this embracing the suck embracing failure as We kind of move into some of the darkest most horrific moments of my life to include the Mexico border Ukraine Afghanistan Israel um the same thing and I would like suck in all of this failure my failure the failure of the situation the pain that I see and then I would like exhale purpose Dan Holloway kind of coined that phrase and I it doesn't more aptly describe the what I would feel and weaponize all of that failure into purpose

makes a hell of a lot of sense I Mean makes sense it's hard to do yeah there's embarrassment and and shame and ego and you know like then the physical portion of it like okay well how do I then take this purpose and direct it into something meaningful and constructive like motivation is failing discipline and intentionality is permanent so I have to take that purpose and turn it into what I'm doing in the gym what I'm doing in my technique what I'm doing in my businesses um what I'm Doing overseas how I'm planning in these

ARS when we fail or do something unsuccessfully like how do I turn that too good yeah do you did you ever trying to think how to word this did your coaches or your team or your your your your opponents anybody you know the the UFC commentators did they see anything different in you coming from the background I mean this is a sport extremely grueling as close to being a gra Gladiator as you Get couple months earlier you're putting hundreds of rounds into bodies in the middle of the night yeah do they see yeah a difference

in the way you carry yourself the way you fight the way you train your discipline your motivation your dedication like is there a difference between what you brought to the table yeah with all that other life experience that nobody else in the UFC has comp Compared to Leo kinsky first was like what is wrong with you is we're we're about to walk out to the fight everybody's Y come on let's go let's go let's do this you know like getting ready to go out and and I'm sitting there are we having sushi after this fight

cuz that sounds great you know I haven't some real Wasabi you know not not this fake pce stuff and he's like you're about to fight can you focus on your fight and I was like yeah I got it Man just relax and I went out there picked this dude up put him on his ear knocked him out and um I come in the back after my fight with Robby Lawler barn burner like bathed in Blood and uh they come and stick a microphone like what man how was that that was one of the craziest most

brutal fights we've ever seen you know Robbie comes on to like to become one of the greatest like like George S Pierre one of the greatest welterweight Champions I'm knocking Everybody out he has the Cinderella story of an exit he's in he's going in the he is in the Hall of Fame and he'll go in as one of the permanent Halls of Fame and um hey how do you feel like I feel good you know they're like doctors taking my pulse and I'm already back down to like a 55 heart rate and like what is

what is wrong with you you're like like well there's nothing wrong with me just my experiences leading up to this have been Vastly different like this is not the Pinnacle of my life this is a fight and this is a sport and I want to be world champion but this is not the the wildest thing that's happened to me in this in this past couple of months yeah yeah do you think that scared your opponents yeah I don't know if it's a good thing either why is that remember the first time walking into a shoot

house and like it felt like You're looking through a straw mhm and then the 500th time that you went in there and you could see everything you could see that they glued a uh a flashlight over the hand hand of the guy that originally held a gun cuz they're trying to have you shoot a no shoot Target when which which was a shoot Target you know but you saw it and you also saw like that was crappy glue and it was a bad paint job and um you realize that the the door that you guys

Breached last time they didn't change that door out now you can just swing it open you don't even need need to put ECT charger you see it all yeah compared to like number one where like all you could see was like walk through the house like this when I was walking out to the cage I'd have to hide my wife in the audience cuz I see everything I could describe where every judge was I could tell you um where my what my corner was wearing like I was I was seeing too much or like I

should have just seen what was in front of me so I think there was like there was some value to that like I never had the pre-fight butterflies you know like guys were throwing up before they're walking out you know like I'm playing on my phone and um figuring out what I'm going to have for dinner I mean it's got to be there has has to be a certain amount of fear for somebody to walk into the ring with another man who is taking life Yeah legitimately killed for survival and this is a [ __

] sport yeah I mean I can't think of anything that would be more intimidating for an athlete well could was to the dudes cuz I got beat you know Luke rockold beat me Jacare squeed out a decision y Romero although he cheated he beat me you know so there's uh there's a couple of losses on there that those badasses in light of standing across from a dude that's been to war a bunch of times and it's like me Have you ever had that conversation with anybody I'm I'm friends with most of like most of the

athletes that I competed against with in my era and um you know we we joke a lot about those some of those things um you know like Luke rockold to you know his credit he's like man I I had no idea what I was supposed to do with you you I just wanted to keep on the outside and and pepper you cuz I didn't want to let you near me that's what he did that's How he beat me you know literally that was his game plan and um so you know it's just interesting it's a

I mean it's a it's just an interesting psychology to tap into you know it's it's uh I've always thought about that ever since i' I've heard about you so yeah it's fun yeah I'll it was I'll bet that was a hell of a ride but so what was um what was it that why'd you leave UFC when uh my you know my heart got broken in the fight with Y Romero and knock him out at the end of the second round Michael bisbing is the champion Michael bis Bing's last loss was to me I beat

the breakes off of him for 25 minutes and um so like this is my third title run you know I beat youel Romero this is a title Eliminator fight the winner of us is going to go on to fight for the title and um he threw a variety of of Mischievous and uh cheating mechanisms is able to after I he gets Saved by the Bell at the end of the second round um blow some big punches into him up against the cage John McCarthy pulls me off him and um you know like I'm like did

I did he get Saved by the Bell or is at the end of the fight you like did Jon touch me after the because if Jon touches me before the the Bell then I won if he touched me after the Bell then and I'm I'm blasting him and he's just Like he's out he crumbles to the ground and I was like okay there's the round so I go back to my corner and I'm sitting there I'm pacing back and forth just looking at yel Romero as he's uh just messed up and uh his Corner's in

there they're they're fixing his face the Bell sounds Ding and I take a couple of steps forward and John McCarthy grabs me he's like no Tim go back to your corner so the athletic commission rules are very matter of fact you have 10 Seconds to answer the Bell if you don't answer the Bell it's disqualification and uh as you can imagine I'm a man that would know the rules so 10 seconds passes and that's the end of the fight I'm screaming I'm still I take my mouthpiece out I Chuck across the floor I point at

Dana White I like you're [ __ ] going to pay me for that fight you know I'm looking for my wife put your red he's on I'm coming you know and uh think of that out the after Party I also know I'm going straight to the title I'm going to be fighting Michael bisbing I'm going to destroy him this is all happening in a matter of seconds right 10 seconds happens 15 seconds happens 20 seconds happen you know like I'm talking with my corner like all right hey um let's get these gloves off let's start

getting things going and John McCarthy's like hey come back in we're fighting I we're fighting they call it Stoolgate is a pretty um there is a Calamity of errors that John messed up big time he got played by his Corner the corner spilled some ice they put on too much Vaseline they're pretending like they couldn't speak English um there's confusion about like when he had to get off the school stool ultimately they were able to buy him an an extra 40 something seconds and uh so he he sat there for almost 2 minutes while I'm

leaving the cage mentally he's with the Sole focus of getting back into the fight and uh huge adrenaline dump you know that end systems wild and I get knocked out a few seconds later that's the uh that's the end that's the that was I was like man I don't want to do this all over again D what the hey if you can't get off the stool you can't get off the stool that's the end of the fight you don't stand there for another minute fight how do you recover from That the that was um I

actually fought one more time against K Kelvin gum and uh I didn't I shouldn't have I was already done at the end of the y u fight but all of that propelled me into everything that I've done post fighting um into starting these companies into you know going overseas on Rescue operations you know nonprofit for profit like like filling gaps It gave me purpose um got and also ended the most selfish portion of my life the um being a professional fighter everything has to be about you your diet your travel schedule your sleep schedule um

you're training like all of these things you're trying to line up from this periodization so that you're peing at the right moment so everything is a and it's terrible it's like the most selfish thing that you could It's and I I wanted so to be done with it because I wanted to do something to contribute in a meaningful way back to the things that I care about I couldn't when I was fighting I could like amplify because I had a big platform you know to to talk about things but I couldn't specifically contribute gotcha so

this propels you into what you just said the darkest portion of your life which Tim we got about an hour left Before you got to get to the airport so I'm going to leave this up to you we got a lot to cover we could talk about the school we could talk about sheep dog we could talk about Ukraine Israel the Border where do you want to go well that I think they're all we'll kind of I think maybe cover wave Toops of them because they're all very connected when you take a step back you

know like you know what I was doing in Ukraine was different than what I was Doing in Israel which was different than what I was doing in Afghanistan what I was doing in those were vastly different than what I was doing in the military uh part of operation Lone Star on the Mexican border you know fighting cartels and human traffickers and drug smugglers um sheep dog response where we're training under the soft model of like empowering people to force multiplication it's the Special Operations the green Bray soft model Like we don't want to do all

the fighting I want to go and find a populace that supports our ideas equip and train them to do the fighting with and and and for us sheep dog response is fully embracing the soft approach where I'm trying to train as many Americans as I possibly can in really basic good citizen skills of like being able to provide for your family being able to preserve and protect human life that that's what We're all the shoot move communicate Medicaid like we're trying to give those skills to civilians and after you know nearly 20 years from or

25 years as a EMT a firefighter a police officer and then a special operations guy and then a government contractor when I saw globally the frail edges of the canvas and how weak we were strategically I knew that big problems were going to be On the horizon MH so in um August of 2021 which is when we founded save our allies I was on the phone I was I was actually riding scars and Stripes uh I was sitting on the couch with Nick pesano and uh my phone rings and it was Chad roash Show and

Chad hey man I have a I have my translators in Afghanistan he's currently being hunted by the by the Taliban they're going to rape and murder his family and they're going to Kill him I've been on multiple deployments with this guy can you get in there and I my phone had been been burning down since Afghanistan started crumbling for contract jobs like personal recovery evacuations and I didn't want to be the that I wanted that chapter of my life to end of like this propheter and um I was like yeah I'll be on a plane

tomorrow and I look over at Nick and Nick's on the phone Nick's talking to Sarah Verardo SAR verardo was is this incredible woman whose husband was horrifically wounded in Afghanistan and she's carried all that purpose and pain or all that pain and all that suffering and directed it into purpose so she started the independence fund the First Responders Action Group a whole bunch of different military nonprofits and she has a ton of connectivity at the Pentagon so as I start trying to figure out how am I going to get get into Afghanistan Nick turns to

me as like you're not believe who I'm the phone with right now and she is saying that we got our way into Afghanistan so like divine intervention yet again like I'm on the phone like we're doing that Spider-Man thing where it's like wait you got you got you got let's go so I booked a flight that same day we had to fly into uh UAE and figure out other routes to smuggle us into Afghanistan and um and that was Literally the four of us on the phone was the beginning of save our allies damn and

it was identifying these gaps that the US military wasn't able to go outside the wire at hkaya to go and recover people that had been isolated and were unable to make it onto hkaya so um Hamed Kai airport which was the final Neo the non-combatant evacuation operation which was being run by Department of State which is a bad idea but they're doing the best with what They had um everybody that was flooding to hkaya was getting stuck at these choke points and the people that controlled the Outer Perimeter was the Taliban so they nobody could

make it past the Taliban to even make it to the base to get onto a plane to be flown out so all these people that fought with us for 20 years you know these were Special Forces Commandos with a dozen deployments you know they have TS clearances and they you know they fly Helicopters that we gave them um they stay they're either going to be working for the Taliban or they're going to be killed by the Taliban it's going to be one or the other mhm and then we have all of our leg legitimate allies

to include Americans that were contractors that were plumbers and electricians you know for KBR H burton rathon all those contractors were stuck in Afghanistan so they had to be brought out and for them to be brought out they had to be Escorted in well this was the first identified gap which was the American Military can move Logistics wise we could do anything but how do you go and find three people five people seven people that are hiding in a warehouse out in the city and then be escort them past the Taliban and bring them onto

the base past H uh past American lines and then put them on a plane that's the Gap and that's we had four guys on the ground and that's what we immediately Went to work doing how did you do it um I have a I have a picture of a Target on the back of the target are three different conops so there's four of us Dave was going to be stained back as like comms for the three of us that went to do solo Singleton missions and on the back of a Target is in permanent marker

con like concept of the operation number one this guy's going to eaglegate He's linking up with this the agency to go find this group of people and they're going to be bringing him through this guy number two Tim is going to be going out this abig gate he's going to be picking up so and so number three we're GNA be going and we would do this every 60 minutes for the entire time that we had left till ultimately the bombing at abig happened on the 26th and they like locked down the base were you there

for That I was what a mess it was so bad you know we uh we we we did really those men and the team back in DC they're so brilliant they didn't sleep for for weeks doing everything um again like I was I was barely deserving to be there being surrounded by so many capable operators that knew how to do so much so fast so effectively and so efficiently I'm just like trying to like contribute in the Best way that I can not every Mission went well you know we had we were bringing in some

buses through Blackgate and there was a miscommunication and a a commander at that gate wouldn't let those buses in and everybody thought that it was me like that Tim Kennedy was the one that had set all of these buses up this was absolutely our our operation but guess who are the people that were making the calls to link up this is at the highest level of of government right Like the most elite commanders on the planet are saying who is getting on these things and trying to communicate that down to a ground captain or a

ground light Colonel and that's coming from like fourstar joint level is uh where wires get crossed right and uh so these buses get kicked back out into the City and you know all those people got tortured and killed by the Taliban um but you didn't have time to think about it because the moment That that gate gets closed I had nine other I had to run over to the UN gate to clamber over that wall through constantina wire to run out to do another Le link up with a Commando that was bringing him him and

another Aviator on and his their entire families you know like had minutes to like take a breath yeah yeah damn how long were you guys there um I mean s sa allies started working from the moment Taliban crossed the the Border and started taking Kandahar and Bam uh you know as kabo like all the way until they're stuck at Kandahar we were we had teams in DC that were doing Logistics and building lists and deconflict lists to get rid of dupli duplicate names and also verifying you know if we brought in one wrong person the

whole thing's for not you know like the whole thing's a failure I I could have you know saved a thousand people But we bring in one terrorist done yeah right so like we had to be perfect um and so 10 days total on the ground all the way up to where outside the W wire operations were can't like I would have had to fight my way against 82 airborne and Marines to go outside of um hkaya so that was the uh you guys evacuated how many people oh man if uh if you went into the

talk that night they they have we we moved Privately 12% of everybody that left anywhere from 6,000 to 15,000 people were moved by private Nos and private contractors you know Pineapple Express um the uh Glenn Beck and Mercury one um obviously save our allies Mighty O like the dozens of Veteran organizations all mobilized and I and I'm never going to take credit for us moving one because there's not one person that moved off that air base that was not coordinated facilitated by 10 Other groups MH you know so like total 15 to 20,000 man you

know is tragic as that story is and is what a [ __ ] complete disgrace our government is like a complete incompetent [ __ ] nightmare the fact that a few veteran organizations were be able to would have been able to come together and get 6 to 15 save 6 to 15,000 lives Against you're more effective than the US government yeah I don't think people [ __ ] are hearing that you're more effective than the US government yeah that's how that I mean that's insane to me you know and man you guys did amazing work

there man yeah we I can't even say their names you know but like Kevin Sean Sean Dave Nick Sarah like the this group of people again Divine there's no way that you Could the connections that each of us brought and the experiences that each of us brought from all of the different things that we've been doing for the past 10 years made for the perfect recipe for Success like had it not been us it wouldn't have happened you know the um from you know Eric Prince and Glenn Beck and like the connections that they have

you know Mark the the these people were able to just move little tiny nids and Knobs to make this a possibility MH and um yeah what hell what a what a hell hole though you know those babies stuck in constantina wire you know executed women on the side of the road by the Taliban right in the face of the Marines the 82nd um and we funded it yeah we did and we're we're continuing to fund them y it's um yeah when when Iran are we are we a failed state yet we're Close we're we're knocking

on the door to complete disaster we we still have the best and brightest on the planet we're the most prosperous Nation on the in in the world with the most elite fighting force to ever walk walk the face of this planet so no but uh man we're close yeah we're definitely riding the line yeah yeah um let's get into what you were doing in Ukraine so we recognized at AF in Afghanistan that there is never going to be a single solution to a problem when you have a gigantic gorilla that is the American government and

the bureaucratic approach to problem solving they're always going to be constrained by rules authorities and authorizations funding uh permission like the list of their constraints are seemingly endless right but if you're small if you're like this small Expeditionary ability um small digital footprint small Financial footprint small risk um we provide incredible asset to the large Behemoth right where cool you have a problem we too care about that problem but we have a bunch of different opportunities or different approaches to solve this problem you got all these constraints we don't have any of these constraints whether

I'm going to go as a for-profit contracting company and not once ever has anyone Ever profited in any way shape or form off of anything that we've ever done in the humanitarian evacuation neoc everything that we've ever done always stays within the organization to advance abilities and capabilities so that then when the next Crisis happens and [ __ ] there have been so many in the past three years yeah where I can pick up the phone and be like hey sir uh just want to give you an update uh here are some current capabilities that

we have in the Region uh I have a team that's on the ground or they're at the border or they've positioned themselves they have this ground evacuation route we've set up the these rat lines we have these EV evacuation um and evasion Lane set we have these boats we have these planes right like all I do is come with assets tell me how you want me to to to to skin this for you like because I can do it as an NGO I can I can come in the humanitarian Aid and evacuate personal Recovery um

but ultimately like with our with our mission with our purpose everything else is for the sole reason of being able to accomplish that mission first always no salaries you know I've never never taken a scent um neither has anyone else that that is part of that organization all 100% program funded damn we were talking last night how much you you hate Nos and you're not wrong when they get so big and they lose that but when you look at a problem and you Go like how do I how do I get Americans out of Sudan

how do I get Americans out of Israel after the worst terrorist attack in their history and per capita in American in any history you know 10 times worse than Pearl Harbor um uh eight times worse than 911 in per capita and but the difference was that everybody there was raped and murdered and tortured big significant difference all the Americans 40,000 of them that are in Israel now have no flights to get out they're also some of them are old and they went to see where Jesus was baptized but they can't make it back to the

airport or they're in Jerusalem they have to get back to Tel Aviv um every like Delta United America all those flights are canceled even though you've booked you've tried to book three four five six different times and now your your card has been charged every time now you have no money to book another Flight because your credit card's Frozen and there's no Airline that'll take you so how do you get out so then Department of State says hey we're setting up these corridors and these timelines for us to fly these people out we're going to

bring them back to you back to Europe into a safe area to get them out but we can't go actually out and pick them up boom new Gap identified let's build rosters let's start building manifests let's start moving building movement Sheets and start escorting these people in insert the next conflict you know man you guys are effective you know and yes I do hate a lot of nonprofits I think a lot of nonprofits start off with a very good mission statement and they want to do good and then they explode and then greed kicks in

and the next thing you know nobody gives a [ __ ] about what they were doing originally it's all about [ __ ] money and taking out the competing nonprofit out rather Than and you know in in in the way the conversation went is when we started talking about keeping it small keeping it Grassroots having you specific investors that don't need name recognition and are trying to build a massive business they want to affect the world in a postive manner and um and so that's that's what I was getting at yeah the the other side

of that coin that you're totally right About the NGO is like how many times have you in your professional career a missionary group um you know a nonprofit Doctors Without Borders that gets hemmed up in their stuck now they're captives and and they're being used as hostages or leverage for not just money but also like positioning within the government like it happens time and time and time and time again so like they they they are and have been historic historically big problems um we are organized in a Way that we are small we are maneuverable

and most of all the the talent you know if you look at um the group that was in Israel um JP Ryan um Nate these people are coming from tier one the most elite special operations backgrounds in the world and then moved on to work for other groups that gave them even more skills and like these are the guys that are that are effectively doing the Evacuations and the rescuing like there's nobody more capable or competent on the planet and uh they want to be there their heart is there to do the right thing they've

always wanted to be able to help in a meaningful way but they've always had their hands tied and and and sometimes by by the government sometimes by by Bureau Chiefs sometimes by be like case officers sometimes the list goes on of all of the ways that they've been constrained now they just Get to do good yeah and they have all the well not all the resources because we're small but we have enough resources to do the job at the highest level freaking rad yeah it is man you know the uh Dave um Benjamin Hall he

was the Fox News correspondent that got blown up in Ukraine oh okay I'm not familiar with them um kind of peek evasion Fox News correspondent is doing um a segment and his car gets attacked his cameraman dies he gets horrifically Wounded um rad right now benal is in you in Israel covering the conflict there full circle sa our allies was mobilized by Fox to go and rescue him out of Ukraine so we had to First find him in the M middle of this invasion in the entire conflict like where is this one dude that got

blown up he's in some Hospital somewhere and uh and he's dying and we had to evacuate him out of the country get him into Poland and then get permission from the Secretary of Defense To fly him into the military combatant recovery like we brought him to L stool to Ramstein and then he moved as if he was a combatant into the military hospital system and had that not happened he'd be dead um damn so when people are throwing stones like the Secretary of Defense put his name on the bottom line that we could move this

dude out of here so like if you think that I'm out there doing like some John Wayne [ __ ] like it could not Be furthest from the truth like I'm doing in whatever way we can contribute the best that we can with the assets and and support that we have we'll do that but by no mean is anyone out there being like hey look where my name is like look what I did well thank you for set setting the record straight I want to fight some people sometimes throwing you and me both man throwing

darts at my forehead like trying to take a selfie hey you know everybody's tough On the internet right yeah but um the border am might take you down there I would love to go down there let's go it is insanity yeah that's what I keep hearing it's hard to believe it's very hard to believe when you see numbers when you see like 300,000 people a month the Super Bowl had 60,000 people in it right this last couple days ago yeah 60,000 people then you multiply that to 300,000 come across in a month one month five

times the Super Bowl crossing our border military age men from every single one of our enemies State actors moving their people across our open border Chinese Russian terrorists see this is multi-time th this is where I get into this is what really I mean everything else that's gone on all of it the Afghan withdraw Ukraine Russia is like it Epstein like all of it dude all of It this [ __ ] when I just asked you do you think we're in a failed State I don't know how you can answer that question and say no

because we have become so [ __ ] incompetent in this country I don't I don't understand how we could not be defeated it it would have to be a nation that is more incompetent than we are and that's [ __ ] hard to find right now that is really hard to find we don't have a [ __ ] border we are the only free country left in the world supposedly free right yeah and we have a wide openen border the roughly what last thing I read 6 million plus people have crossed we are broke we

are printing our money we have weaponized our dollar we we've destroyed the first amendment by Tech corporations it's fake money it's I mean in in how could we possibly not already be Defeated that's a real [ __ ] question yeah um what would you do if you were Russia what would you do if you were China what would you do if you were one of these many terrorist organizations who by the way are all joining forces against a common enemy you know who that common enemy is for those listening we're the [ __ ] common

enemy good job good [ __ ] job letting this [ __ ] happen I wouldn't have to do Anything I would continue to stoke and stalk the flames and fires of dissent um of racism of every form and fashion of divisive issue that Americans have right now to conf conf to confuse and divide us further um I would throw all of my money into Tik Tok Instagram Snapchat to make these kids sit there on those phones for as long as I could which they are I would show them that the nuclear family is not necessary

that freedom isn't Really thing that's given by God but something that's given to us by the family the or by the government which is another thing that they're paying for us to see on our phones often I would uh I would finance and support uh political opponents that would um want to fight American values and put in other forms of governance that are wholly against the American ideals and the founding fathers would have imagined I would try to support the expansion of The federal government government these are all the things that I would do if

I was the adversary and that's what they're doing they don't have to do anything they just sit back and hang out and watch us just eat ourselves that's that's what I'm getting at you know we we I just I don't know how we pull out of this I don't know I mean we talked about we talked about at the beginning before the cameras got turned on you know People people think something people thought something was going to happen at the C people think you know how how come nothing's happened yet you hear one side of

the aisle mocking people that are concerned that our borders wide open and in and mocking them because nothing's happened yet we've had we've had 3 years where there has not been any terrorist attack well let me tell you about war games and Simulations they inject they put they put these things through a simulation it shows the probability and the percentage that they're going to have to come out on top what's you know maybe today they have a 65% this is hypothetical maybe maybe today in the simulation they they they they feeded all the information and

the simulation says hey you got a 65% chance you're going to come out on top against the US yeah but right now we are a failed State we are completely Incompetent and so why would they take that time to attack us right now why wouldn't they up the percentage okay well let's let's let's put a little PE more people in this way put them up in this region let's get let's let's infiltrate the power grid over here it's weak there's no there you can't even arrest an immigrant right now even in this state INE yeah

exactly and so it's all they're doing right right now is strategy They're just infiltrating doing whatever they need to do to get that percentage up and then when somebody strong comes in and the [ __ ] starts to get cleaned up that's when it's going to happen yeah so how do you fight that um I I argue you know for the Titanic which was headed towards that Iceberg had they known and they just made a slight adjustment just a couple of degrees they would have avoid that whole Entire Iceberg right none of those people is

is that what we need to do just the the slightest of adjustments does that pendulum need to swing back once again towards sovereignty and freedom you know the um the founding of apey our school was in that same vein the founding of Sav our allies the founding of sheep do response like all of these things all it takes is this entrepreneurial American Spirit for we as a collective to be like man we Acknowledge that this is not right and this is dangerous and for us to combat for us to have a strong America again is

for the individual to be a strong competent capable individual right not to be fat not to be this gelatinous mass that can barely read that just sits there and swipes on their phone and looks at porn all day long doesn't know how to use a rifle doesn't know how to purify water doesn't know how to be an intentional disciplined parent to their To their children or a a loyal entrepreneur that's going to be dedicated to his employees and his colleagues and his Partners in the companies like this is when you look at the founding fathers

when you read that beautiful declaration Declaration of Independence in the Bill of Rights like these these were written by Americans that stood on the core values of what it meant to be an American they were not educated at some ivy league university But they wrote a document that will stand the test of time and God I need Americans to recognize how vulnerable we are ex everything that you just said right now can be fixed we adjust just a couple of degrees and people take back their sovereignty they start growing their own food they start having

their own chickens they start getting strong and body and in mind they they are an ungovernable Force the Americans the essence of being an American is Ungovernable we are Rebel we are rebellious uh traitor from our origin let's remember what that looked like they told us to do something we said no and we put their te in the harbor then then they went to Boston and that shot that was heard around the world kicked off us killing every single one of them and kicking them off of this continent that is what Americans can do you

mess with our Bo in Pearl Harbor we drop two atomic bombs Yeah there's only so many Americans left yeah I'm hoping unfortunately but you know I think that uh kind of where I'm going this how do you fix it I think you're you're doing it trying the youth the school let's get into the school that you started and how that's developed yeah um so ape uh the first school was apogee Cedar Park and it was literally a brick-and mortar Socratic school and um man year one was hard did Uh did everything wrong I thought I

knew how to run a business having run ran a bunch of businesses and running a school is pretty different then year two kind of like learn from our mistakes Like a Phoenix Rising From the Ashes we we adjusted we also realized that we have to expand the the influence so we went from just being a brick and mortar to online mentorship I partnered with Matt Buro and we started apog strong and we Brought in thousands of people in the online mentorship program like how to be leaders in your community what sovereignty Financial sovereignty physical sovereignty

looks like um and then from that mentorship program we said hey we want to expand this apy school idea who wants to open a school and all of these owners step up and S and raised their hand like I want this in my community so we have been training and mentoring all of these School owners About in 2024 we'll open another 50 schools and um and then all of again back to doing the right thing with money and and H being small enough to to make sure that you're aligning with your purpose and and Direction

motivation um taking all of those funds and putting them back in to then help other schools launch and to build a larger campus to be able to Mentor more people so until we until we bring the Department of Education to its needs or completely Abolish them you we we haven't produced something from public school I I yes there's outliers and there's anomalies where like extraordinary kids are going to always rise you know but you take that same kid and put them anywhere they're going to they're also going to be wildly successful it's the the the

mass it's the 95% and they have just been turned to useless masses the consumers laborers um tax meals that's it I don't Need those we're a bunch of tax meals but um I'm really interested in the school and so one question I have is I me this this how when did you start that three years ago 3 years ago and how many schools are there now well 50 launching in 24 and how many are there right now one one yeah okay so we went one year one mentorship launched year two and expansion happens year three

year five will'll be at 300 schools wow so how do You how do you fil how do you filter who's coming in to the school without getting sued yeah you know because this [ __ ] seems to just bleed in everywhere yeah um um we we have one the people opening the schools they are part of the mentorship program so we've spent months and months and months going to live events with them training with them talking to them learning about their values making sure That their Vision alignance with the vision of the school so we

we have you know Matt has hundreds of hours with these new school owners um on the and then on the mentorship side when we are advising about how they're going to be accepting am you know we have this gigantic waiting list we're we're accepting applications for 24 school year for ape Cedar Park so you can go to appcar park.org and put an application right Now and when you put an application you're going to be entered into a this big huge funnel and and there's these Gates that you have to go through here's a reading list

of books here is you coming in to tour the academy where we get to do a face to face with you um here is you the your hero your kid getting to go into one of the studios and spend time with the teachers and the the other Heroes um I love kids um and they're also Innocent they're not great Liars so when they're in there for a week they're interviewing with the whole entire Studio that kid goes home we get to ask all of the kids and these these Socratic Minds these critical thinking minds they

know like they're amazing brilliant truly brilliant genius little kids and when we go like hey man what what do you what were your impressions what did you think and we we have a bunch of series of questions we have Socratic Conversations of like um you know would he be a value added to the studio what does he bring that would be useful and that you would benefit from that you would learn from him what are some things that you think would be kind of a detriment and listening to an 8-year-old in a very clear way

articulate why that kid is good or bad for the studio man like wow wow that's good it's a learner-driven environment that means The lead leaders of that studio are the kids you're also giving these kids freedom of thought yeah without any repercussions there there's no what do you think about this all questions are open-ended so they're guides not teachers in every single one of the studios not classrooms in studios like Socrates he wasn't telling somebody how to do something he was asking questions open-ended questions for that person to think through their answers and Critically devise

the solution to the the the question that was being posed by The Leader by the guide so I'm not going to say hey we're going to add mulch to the playground this is how much mulch we're going to add I'm going to go to the kids and I'm going to say hey what mulch do you want how much volume of mulch will you need to make this 3 in deep okay if the thickness of the mulch like you know a sand compared to a gravel compared to a rock is that going To change the amount

of volume that we're going to have to order like we have so we have just done these kids so dirty because we they're so capable they're so much more capable and they're so uh there's fascinating study done by NASA and MIT they took a bunch of kids preschool they started tracking them saying which ones could problem solve at a genius level so take something give them a problem and you provide them with existing Solutions which ones could use The non-existing solutions to solve the same problem and the longer long story short the longer that these

kids were in school the less capable and less genius they ever were in problem solving are you kidding me no 100% Google this right now it is the most mind-blowing study the final conclusion was the the longer these kids were in public school the Dumber they got the less critical thinking and problem solving were they capable of Um and MIT and NASA were like all right man let just let just kill the study yeah let's sweep this one under the rug you go back to the origin of public educ a with Rockefeller saying man I

don't need anything I don't need I don't need a critical thinker I don't need a collaborator I don't need an innovator um I don't need somebody that that that can create I just need somebody that can work I just need a laborer I just need somebody smart enough to show up to my Factory and do the work to make me money that is the origin of public education yeah and every day since then it's just gotten worse so you have two options right now you open your own school or you homeschool your kids that's it

how do you I'm really interested in this I mean I told you my idea last night I don't I don't want to take any time up explaining my idea but um how do you vet the I'm sorry I know that what what Do you how do you the teachers what do you call them guides how do you vet the guides yeah in in a really similar way uh of course like the background check and the social media scrape scrub um the the drug test all those things but most importantly people that are applying are when

that first email comes across hey I'd really love to come work for your school I am leaving insert this place that I currently have been a guide or a teacher at for this amount of time for These reasons now I'm going to ask five very basic open into questions and these openend questions of like very similar to that kid showing up to the studio and saying you know as he's auditioning and it interviewing against all of his peers uh we the last thing that we need is a teacher in there you know how are you

going to be at a peerby peer level be be able to guide these kids through here's a problem and uh and they're they're open-ended narrative questions and when We interview these guides it it's very evident which ones get it and which ones don't um my first year major mistake I hired teachers I went and I bought I bought the highest fanciest um you know with the best resumés and like awards for this and this but they weren't aligned with this vision and uh catastrophic failure really yeah and what are some of the things that you

saw um when a critical thinker that can't sit At a desk that needs to move to problem solve and is going to think in a in in an atypical way that teacher who can only do something linear but then something that's kind of chaos and Anarchy in an approach to a solution they literally can't process so they'd combat it and they'd stifle and they'd stuff and they'd Stomp and they'd stop or instead we're supposed to inspire and supposed to to to to give um resources And if they fail it's fine like if the kid fails

you will learn from that failure and I don't need to have every kid passing in a session I just need that kid to grow I just need that child to evolve and to um continue down this road of becoming a critical thinker they can do anything like if you can program manage and you can critical think you can do anything so like why don't why aren't we And we haven't been in education doing anything besides teaching kids how to take a test I'm not I'm fairly certain I've never been I've never been to war and

I've never walked into a ring and I've never start started a business that I was like given anything that was useful that resembled a test that I ever took in school why don't we prepare them for what real life looks like you know you were talking to me About some of the some of the curriculum and you were talking about some type of an exercise that you had these kids doing where they were building their own business Y what age group was that first second third fourth grade can you go through that exercise super simple

we had a business Fair a date set so in two months from now we're going to go to this business fair or we're going to go to a farmers's market everyone in the studio you have To create a product you have to create this product you have to Market this product and you have to bring this product to market then at the end you're going to come back to the studio and you're going to give a brief about the performance of your product so one one little girl got took a loan from her parents bought

mason jars got kinetic sand and then built themed uh environments in every single one of these kinetic Sands so like one of them Was like green and brown kinetic sand she put all these little dinosaurs in there and she sold them for $25 a piece the cost of her product like her out of pocket pocket cost was like $3 you know so she's making $22 $ for every single one of these sales and she sold a whole bunch of them at the farmers market and she paid her parents back then she took her profit and

gave her presentation here was what I spent here's how much my booth cost here's how much the the cost Of goods were this is um the loan that I took this is the interest that I paid back and here's my profit right and then we had another one that took um he went and collected all the sheds off his parents Ranch and he trimmed them and cut them with a skill saw which is kind of cool how many kids know how to use a skill saw put screws through them with like nice little fancy washers

with this big huge industrial screw and turn them into Hardware so it's like a bolt that Went through it on the back you could screw in the nut uh with another washer and you would have like this axis uh handles for your cabin tree he took those and built them and sold them as sets like six and eight and 12 depending on how many drawers you had for within your bedroom and uh sold dozens of sets and made a ton of money he had almost no overhead besides some bolts and some nuts and some washers

so he was almost Pure profit besides the the the cost of him renting one table to put at the farmers market and uh so success massive success and then this other kid went and like took some sticks some branches that he thought looked like guns and tried to sell them at the farmers market and made no money cuz nobody bought them I his his uncle bought one and you know out of Charity and he went back and he had to brief everybody in his class and he was embarrassed and I remember being Embarrassed I remember

failing I remember not doing well in a Stelling spelling test I remember all the times that I failed were the moments that I learned the most and I will argue even though the two success stories sure they made some money and they learned a ton about how to do business their their parents were super involved but that kid that sat there with shame and embarrassment learned the best lesson of them all and uh Everybody's walking out of the studio parents are mad because you know Tommy didn't do great in his presentation where he lost time

lost a little bit of money and but most of all was embarrassed because all his friends were successful and instead being able to you know Dr to position switch the perspective and be like but look at what he learned you know and are you excited to see what he's going to do in this next One yeah but it's on you parent like there's no teacher that's going to sit here and hold their hand and do this work for them and it is not your job parent to do all the work for them it is your

job to help them be able to learn how to do this it's your responsibility it's nobody else's responsibility government's not going to teach your kids ethics grit integrity and hard work that is your job so rise how many how many kids are In the school roughly apy so 24 I think will probably be around 3,000 3,000 between mentorship um physical locations brick and mortar schools that's incredible so if I wanted to BR we're not we're like just getting started I know I know that's what that's what's so exciting about it I I I mean we're

literally like the second first year was a real rough start we're in our We're in our our second year right now you know we're three years into this two years of actually doing it right yeah and um we're going it's I mean it's obviously spreading like wildfire yeah so you know I want to know if I want to bring this to Franklin Tennessee yeah what do I do start go to apyr strong.com that we launched a a documentary yesterday like an hourong documentary talking about public education talking about our Purpose talking about our vision how

you know Matt and I are approaching not education not schooling about creating critical thinkers and um so you're going to go to apyr strong.com uh all the people that are going to be opening schools are going to come from within the mentorship program um they there'll be very rare exceptions because we have to know everybody like if we don't know them personally and we haven't spent time with them you're not going to open A school so like we have to have the Rapport and relationship and trust and faith that you're going to be doing the

right thing um to continue to spread this Vision so if you go to apog you get on the mentorship program um and there's a lot we demand your big reading list like you're journaling you're working out every single day um we're asking questions about intentionality as you as a parent and you as a as a as a husband or wife and your family um and It's a full family approach like this isn't hey you leader of the household it is you as a complete family nuclear family as a family unit how are you approaching raising

the most powerful in influential children that you possibly can man you are doing a lot of good stuff hope so I'm I'm trying if not I'm going to go crazy no man I'm um we covered a lot of ground there yeah and um I wish we had another 6 hours to uh dive into some of the stuff but as we're Walking across Big Bend in uh Southwest Texas towards the Mexican border well we we can talk more right on well I'll meet you down there but Tim I just want to say man um I'm really

happy that our paths have crossed and and uh it's an honor to know you it's an honor to be able to get your story out and um man I'm just uh I'm blown away at all of the good that you're objecting into this world because we sure as all need it man so thank you Thank you man thanks thanks for having a voice dude I'm I'm I'm proud to know you so thank you keep on chilling at you all right brother thank [Music] you how many of you have logged into your Netflix Amazon Hulu whatever

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