Mike Durant – Black Hawk Down: The Untold Story of Gary Gordon & Randy Shughart | SRS #259

Mike Durant, welcome to the show. >> Thank you. Pleasure to be here. >> It's an honor to have you here. It's an honor to have you here. And just just like I was telling you on the EDC segment, um your name has been percolating around the studio studios um for a couple of years now. And um >> do I owe somebody some money or something? No, actually uh after we interviewed Tom Satderly, uh your name Kept coming up, kept coming up and um so I just really is, man, it's an honor to have you here

and um I think this is um obviously a very important piece of American history that that I would I'm honored to be able to document. So, and um you know I don't I don't know if this means much but uh you know the for me uh joining the SEAL teams and you know that whole other life that I did um you know that was it was the Vietnam generation and you guys uh that That motivated me to do that. It was the movies and the stories and and um man like >> well I've I've heard

that a lot actually you know I mean I think the one universal emotion when when people either watch Blackhawk Down or know what happened is anger just frustration and wanting to do something about it. And I think that was really what motivated a lot of people to say look you know I want to get out there and try to help Fix this. you know, get get into these organizations and and and go write these wrongs, I guess, because there were some wrongs here that uh you know, it's it's pretty tough to get over and uh

I appreciate your service as well. Thank you. Thank you. Well, everybody starts with an introduction here. Mike Durant, retired chief warn officer 4 and US Army helicopter pilot who survived captivity in the 1993 Blackhawk Down incident during Operation Gothic Serpent in Mogadishu, Somalia. Although doctors said you would never fly again, you proved them wrong returning to duty after recovery. Removed a leg rod in 1995 to run the Marine Corpse Marathon. retired in 2001. Your awards include Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart, and Distinguished Service Medal. Author of In Company of Heroes, tried your hand at politics

and ran as a Republican candidate for the US Senate seat in Alabama in 2022. You're a Husband to Lisa and you have been you have a blended family with six children and more most importantly out of everything uh we just found out you're a Christian. So once again, welcome to the show and um you know this is for those that don't know and haven't put it together yet um Mike your helicopter went down in Somalia in 93 and um the famous incident Blackhawk down and uh we are going to get a a full account of

of what happened um in that Time frame. And so once again, it's an honor. And then little side note here just before we get into the interview. I don't know if you've seen this, but it's kind of relevant right now. Have you seen Minnesota? This is happening in Minnesota. Somali's who are defrauding the government to fund terrorism, more specifically al-Shabaab. Once again, this is in Minnesota. and they are using housing stabilization funds uh to do this. And according to Poly Market, they only have a 24% chance of ever being deported from this country. I'm just

curious, what are your thoughts on that? >> Well, this this whole uh immigration, I'll call it, of Somali into our country has been bizarre. There is a large concentration near Minneapolis. I know that. And there is also a large concentration in Maine. One of my crew chiefs was from Lisbon, Maine, and very close to his hometown. And I never quite Understood that to begin with. And I I I actually did a law enforcement event a year or so ago uh for uh undercover drug agents in Minnesota and they shared with me the challenges they have

dealing with that particular community because a lot of them share the same name so they can't figure out who's who. There's no record of them really in terms of you know this person was born here. They're they're this old. No no no means of really easily identifying them. and they Are involved in a lot of criminal activity and unfortunately because of you know some of the policies of previous administrations and state and local governments in some cases they're they're given the opportunity to do the kind of things you just described and to think that within

our own border there are people supporting al-Shabaab is I mean it's really unimaginable for us as a country and I I I I can't understand how people on the left think that that Kind of thing is just the price of doing business for having, you know, hey, come, you know, like Joe Biden said infamously, come, come, the borders are open, you know? I mean, it's it's ridiculous. It's insane, >> man. I'm with you. I mean, it's surprising, but it doesn't surprise me. In fact, that flag right there, I don't know if you told the guys

told you where that's from, but you know, this isn't just a left thing, Unfortunately. Um, you know, the government has been funding the Taliban 40 to87 million a week in cash. And the person that broke that is a friend of mine, legend. He's an Afghan-American uh was Army intelligence and brought that flag back when he broke that when he broke that um story and recovered that flag from the Taliban burning that in Cabbell, Afghanistan, you know, and and that's still going on. That was going on since since the withdrawal, maybe before the withdrawal if I

remember correctly. And I mean, it's just been passed from one administration to the next. And I mean, we we just had the this did you the Syrian terrorist who's the president now at the White House. They hosted him. They hosted somebody that's cutting our heads off at the White House. Anyways, Chris Rufo says, "The largest funer of al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer." Unfortunately, >> I believe it based on, you know, what I've seen there in my my discussions with, like I said, the law enforcement folks up in that area, >> man. But, um, well, we

got a couple of Let's move into some better >> But, I got you a gift. >> Oh, here you go. Thank you. Oops. >> Vigilance League gummy bears. Made in the USA, >> still legal in all 50 states. >> Well, I like the story about the guy that told you he ate three bags and he still didn't feel anything. >> Yeah, we get some good emails. And and then u one last thing to get through, Mike, I have a Patreon account. It's a subscription network that we've turned into uh one hell of a community. And

uh these these guys and women were they Were with me at the very beginning when I was doing this with just my wife in the attic of my house. And um so one of the things I do is I offer them the opportunity to ask every guest a question. And this is from Heather Henshin Henchinwood Henchelwood excuse me. Speaking to your time as a P, what wisdom, courage, resolve did you draw from during that experience? What gave you the courage or hope in the middle of The darkest moments? >> Uh, I would say family and

faith are are the things that gave me the the courage to to press on. Uh, my one year my my first son was had turned one the day after we left for Somalia. My parents were actually flying in for his birthday when my pager went off and I I don't think I ever even encountered them. I think I left before they got to my house and they were there for his birthday. And so I thought about Him uh and he's the one we spoke about earlier, by the way. Uh you know, what would he do

without me? And what kind of person would he become? and and and my wife at the time, you know, I mean, raising children alone is tough and I felt like I needed to survive for them. The the philosophy that helped me get through it and I think this is true for any challenge. I mean, yeah, okay, this is unique, but we all have challenges. I mean, you know, whether It's a health issue, marital issue, a issue with your kids, job, whatever. Everyone faces challenges and and there are times when things are going to get really,

really, really rough. And it was really, really, really rough when I first got captured, for sure. And all you can do is say, I just need to take one step forward. I don't have to worry about, man, those guys in Vietnam, they were in captivity for seven years. There's no way I could do that. You Can't think that way. You just got to think, I need a I need a milestone I can get to. I And for me, it was I got to make it like during during the overrun. I mean, it's literally I got

to make it through the next 30 seconds. And then, you know, as things calm down, you can start to put more deliberate milestones in place to help you move forward. But, you know, you don't eat the elephant in one bite. You you just find something you can do to feel good about. I mean, It's not really any different than a sports team that's getting their butt kicked, right? They come out in the second half and they they just need something to complete a pass, you know, something to make them feel like there's some possibility they

can win here. And it helps it makes if you feel better about it because you've accomplished something, you're moving in a positive direction and ultimately if you keep doing that, you will overcome whatever That major obstacle is. Man, I mean, did you ever think you would make it out of that alive? >> Well, you know, I I never gave up. Again, I I thought when they overrun the site, I I thought I was dead. I mean, they had overrun other people and killed them all. I mean, they don't they didn't have a track record of

taking prisoners. There was one Nigerian prisoner, but I didn't know about him. I didn't know about him till I got released and they Brought him into my room. Uh so from from my perspective, everybody that they overrun gets killed. And they had beheaded uh some of the Pakistanis back in June, which by the way is the catalyst that gets Task Force Ranger involved uh and played soccer in the street with the heads of these Pakistanis. Okay? And it's terrorist like mentality. What you're trying to do is you're trying to strike so much fear into your

adversary That your adversary says, "I'm not messing with these guys." And it doesn't work for us. I mean, we, you know, we understand, yeah, okay, there's bad guys out there. They're going to do bad >> But for other members of the coalition that come from country X or Y or Z, they don't want us. They're not going to they're not in it for that. You know what I mean? They want to be part of this flag waving thing where we're supporting the effort and here we are. But when it gets really bad, they don't want

to be part of that. So, it's effective against those kind of countries or entities. But anyhow, when when that overrun occurred, I I still remember looking up at the clouds and seeing that cloud go by and saying, "This is it. I mean, it's it's over." And you know, when I wrote my book, one of the things my coowwriter and I disagreed about, you know, it was it was Not long after 911 when I wrote the book. And I said, the only thing I can think of that is similar to this feeling is if you were

above the impact site in the World Trade Center and you knew you couldn't get down and you knew you're done. I mean, it's it's over. It's the same sort of process in your mind. Your life is about to end. And that that's what I felt. He he he thought it was too close to 911 to even make any reference to it. So, he didn't ever put it in There. But that was that was how I was trying to explain what this feeling was like. You know, I'm screwed. I mean, I I am literally it's it's

over, you know, >> and uh >> that that was the most, you know, dynamic. And then when they carry me through the streets, that was just a whole another, you know, it kind of happened again. I just thought, there's no freaking way I can survive this. And and somehow did, >> man. Well, I'm glad you did. >> Well, I am, too. You know, and I know my life is a gift. I I I had an uncle and I have a couple friends that uh call me on the day I got released anniversary, not the day

I got captured to say happy birthday because to their in their mind my second life begins then and I know how I know how lucky I am. I am Lucky. >> Damn, Mike. Well, we'll get to all this stuff, but first let's let's just start at the very beginning. Where did you grow up? So, I'm from New Hampshire. I grew up in a pretty small town as a paper mill town. Bluecollar folks, you know, uh just uh obviously for me it's normal, right? It's like the way everybody else grew up, but it's probably not normal.

Uh it It was I have great memories of it. I I you know, you don't know what you don't know. You know, I mean, to you this is this is this the same life that every other kid is experiencing. And you know, I I had great opportunities to I did we did all and when I think about it, all the things we did, I mean, you know, we went hunting. We spent a lot of time camping in the summer. I played hockey. I played football. I've had a very brief And horrible career as a baseball

player. Uh skied a lot. Uh you know, just all these amazing activities uh that again to me this is just what everybody does, right? And it was uh I look back very fondly on my time there. our most of our family lived around so you know holidays there'd be quite a few folks present and uh a lot of uh smartasserie I guess I would call it which is part of where part of my personality comes from is is you're at Least the way my brain works is I'm almost always constantly trying to figure out how

to make a joke out of something. How can I get a oneliner in here and there? I'm not a good joke teller. Don't ask me to tell a joke because I I'm I'm okay. There's maybe, you know, one or two I can pull off, but you know, like some people, it's like a different one every day. They just keep firing them. But I I'm And it's just because of the people I was around. You Know, they they were always trying to outdo each other with this oneliner. And I mean, laughter's great, right? I mean, it's

it's one of the things that makes life enjoyable. So, I I always appreciated being around them. And it certainly had an effect on on who I became. I did pretty good in school when I was young. Uh but then I kind of lost motivation when I I entered high school. Again, I don't know why, you know. I don't know what affected me. I mean, I Was still capable. I just didn't put the work in. I mean, I I would just go to school and do the minimum. We had divisions at the time, A division, B

division, C division. I was in a division, but you know, just barely because I just wasn't putting the work in. I didn't want to go to college because I just didn't like school that much, you know, and uh I didn't want to work in the mill, which is, you know, the main employer in the town I grew up In is a paper mill. Not there anymore. Thank you, unions. Um but, uh I I knew I didn't want to work there. And what else could I do? And then this guy who was a neighbor of ours

in a place we went camping. He was an army helicopter pilot, warrant officer. He also was in the guard though and he had his own business where he owned a few airplanes and a couple helicopters. And I think I'm 14 at the time. And he asks if I'd like to work with him one Summer. And so I go work with him and get to go flying on a helicopter with him. He since passed away. Joe Brigams his name. We're over Mount Washington, which is the highest mountain in the Northeast. It's 6,280 ft. Feels like we're

hovering. We're probably not hovering, but flying slowly enough where it feels like we're hovering. And we're in a glass bubble. It's sort of an old school helicopter, You know, and I mean, I could just see it all around me. And I'm just in awe of >> Wait, what's the glass bubble? >> It's the cockpit of the aircraft. You know that just that vintage aircraft you're >> talking about a air pocket or something. >> Wait a minute. How do I not know this? Now I feel like a >> this technology we're working on that. >> So

uh you know we're we're over this mountain and and I'm looking at him like And he starts talking about how yeah you know I learned how to fly in the army and you know this is this is my job and you could do it too if you wanted to. And I'm like hell yeah I want to. this is this is absolutely what I want to do. So I worked with him that summer and even though you know we we did one mission where there had been a a small private plane that crashed into the mountains

and we had to recover the remains of the aircraft. There's blood All over the cockpit. You know I had hiked in and we took the airplane apart and he came in and slung it out. Even you know seeing sort of the worst of aviation where there's a fatality didn't really discourage me. I just thought you know that that'll never that that would never happen to me. It was, you know, just not even thinkable that that that would ever occur. >> Wait a minute. You actually did a mission. >> Yeah. I mean, we were we hiked

in on the ground. We supporting him, took the plane apart, and so he could sling it out. And he came in with a helicopter. We hooked up the cable and he pulled the part cuz it's it was in the the national forest and they don't like to leave stuff like that out there. >> Uh so it was those kind of jobs that we were doing. He did all sorts of miscellaneous stuff with his aircraft. And uh the most bizarre one, not to get Too a far off track, was he would harvest cranberries out of a

cranberry bog with his helicopter. So they put a net down, the cranberries float when they're ready. The net comes up, they tie the corners together, he flies with his helicopter, hooks it on, slings them over, throws them on the truck, comes back out, gets another load. >> Just all kinds of crazy stuff you can do with helicopters. So anyway, from that point forward, I'm like, "All Right, this is my plan. I'm going to try to figure out how to do this." So I go and I talk to the recruiter. And of course, apparently he had

a quota. And part of his quota was not to get somebody to sign up to want to go to flight school. So he told me, uh, "Sorry, that's not available." And you know the old story is, you know, a recruiter's lying because their lips are moving. And I I said, "Okay, well, is there something else I could do?" He Said, "Yeah, you're a fairly smart kid. You did, you know, you did pretty good on the test. Uh, we can send you to language school, which is pretty good, and you'll be in military intelligence." Okay. So,

I signed up, joined, was enlisted, went to uh DLI, Defense Language Institute in California, which again, I mean, that's a great school. And uh >> I didn't know you could join just to go to that. Well, if you have an MI uh MOS, So I was a Spanish voice intercept operator. 98 Golf was my MOS. So, my job is going to be after learning Spanish and then going and learning the technical part in Texas. I go to Panama and I'm listening to broadcasts mostly from Central America, Nicaragua, other places. At the time, heavy use of

high frequency radio. So HF, just the way the signals work on HF is they can go I mean they can go around the world. So you can pick them up from a great distance. So We're listening basically every night scanning scanning. You hear this conversation. Okay, that sounds military. Start the recorder, write up a summary, give it to the analysts, and then they go back and do a full translation. So my job was just sort of front end, try to find it, summarize it, and see if it's got any value. Sounds kind of cool, but

it was kind of boring actually. Uh, they were actually at the time still Morse code people. Believe it or not, they were still using Morse code in Central America. >> Oh >> And they're sitting next to me now. Can you imagine all freaking night long listening? Can you imagine? Every single one of them smoke like a freaking chimney. I mean, just nonstop sucking down the butts. Uh, so I I said, "Okay, language school was cool. Going to Panama was cool, which is where I was stationed." And oh, I forgot somewhere in there. I was going

to I wanted to go to airborne school. So, I filled out the paperwork. I took the test. And then I get my assignment in Panama, which was the strategic intelligence facility down there, the 470th Military Intelligence Group, which So, when you're a young enlisted dude, you don't know the Army. you don't know, you know, what's the right thing to do? So, I went and talked To my NCO and I said, "Hey, I want to go to airborne school, but I got this assignment. What do you think?" He said, "That's a cherry assignment. Go to take

the assignment." So, I took the assignment. I didn't go to airborne school. So, I I go down there and I'm sitting on the beach one day and this freaking flight of Hueies goes over with with the with the grunts in the back and their legs hanging out low level over the jungle. And I'm like, why did I lose Sight of that goal? That's what I want to freaking do because I mean, >> yeah, >> does anyone ever hear a helicopter and not look up? I mean, it's just there's something magical about them, you know? And

and so I said, "All right, I got to get off my ass and get back to figuring out how to get to flight school." So, I applied for flight school from Panama. somehow got accepted even though this is back in the day where you're actually Putting paper in an envelope and sending it on its merry way to some black hole somewhere you know it in Washington DC and believe it or not I actually was advised make a copy because if you lo if they lose it you know you have to do it all over again

I made a copy they lost it I sent the copy in and got accepted uh if I hadn't been accepted I would have left the army uh and it wasn't because I was really dissatisfied, but I Just couldn't see myself, you know, listening to radio broadcasts in Spanish for the rest of my life, you know, >> but I got accepted. And, you know, you think about your life and where does it make these dramatic turns. Obviously, flying with Joe initially, getting motivated to do it was a huge signal >> and then getting to flight school

was the next one. And I would say my mindset changed in flight school. And I I real I Realized, you know what, this is going to be what I make of it. And and Joe had told me this, you know, you're responsible for the safety of your aircraft and everybody in it. And I and I took that seriously and I I worked my ass off. I I studied hard. I I tried hard. And I would have been number one in the class except for on one particular check ride. And I didn't fail the check ride,

but the the guy said I drifted out of the lane, which was a Major safety vote. Maybe I did. I I didn't remember doing it, but either way, he docked me five points on the most important check ride in flight school, and it put me in number two in the class. But number one guy got Shinooks. I didn't want Shinooks. Number two guy got the only Blackhawk slot in the in the class. >> No >> I'm number two guy. >> And you wanted a Blackhawk? >> Yes. cuz cuz Blackhawks were brand new. I mean, I

had seen one. Uh, and I'm like, man, that's the sexiest freaking machine I've ever seen. And I still think that I mean, it's it's an amazing machine. And I got the slot, the only one. And turnaround, meaning soon as I finish flight school, I wait a little bit longer and then start Blackhawk transition at Fort Rucker. And I mean, I'm young. I'm early 20s, you know, and Then I get my assignment which again, you know, I think about and that's why I said earlier I I'm I feel so lucky. Not only am I lucky to

be alive, but I'm lucky that these various things happened to me along the way that some of them like being number two instead of number one. I was disappointed in, but in the end >> it it really achieved what I most wanted, you know, and it's just I guess it comes down to you make the best of It, right? I mean, not everything's going to go your way. I don't care who you are and you know you just got to make the best of it. Anyway, I got an assignment in Korea to fly. >> Did

you find flight school challenging? >> Yeah, I mean it's challenging. Not everybody makes it, you know. It I mean we're first of all, we're soloing with six hours and my roommate had a midair in in Flight school with six hours. >> Holy So, so we're coming around and the stage fields they call them are basically most of them are six parallel runways and they're in opposite traffic. So the airplane the aircraft are flying opposite, you know, right-hand turns on one side, left-hand turns on the other. You're landing in the same direction, but you're making opposite.

So these two guys come around and they Both overshot. And then then when they tried to level out to the right altitude, the bottom helicopter, not seeing the top helicopter, crashed into the belly of the second helicopter. >> Cut the landing gear off, cut the the antennas off the tail boom. Of course, they got six hours. Neither one of them knew what in the world happened. One of them thought he had an engine failure. He didn't have an engine failure, but he Treated it like it was an engine failure. They both got the aircraft on

the ground and uh both continued on with the with our class, I think. >> Wow. Yeah, but the point being 6 hours is not a lot of time. So, but pretty much everybody figures out the hardest thing is hovering because hovering is, you know, you're having to do things with your feet. You're in and both of your hands and they're all doing opposite things and it's just it's just A coordination drill that you have to sort out. And most people get it. Um, I would say more people probably have trouble with instruments than they do

moving the sticks. the instruments is you can't see outside and you're you're flying based on indicators in the cockpit and you know bars and needles and and it it requires a lot of I would call you know situational awareness spatial awareness and I I I would say if if I had to compare the two I think more People have trouble with instruments >> uh but you know our class started with 80 we were cut in half uh and that was purely a throughput issue it wasn't that half got thrown out, but we got cut to

40 and then, you know, I don't know what percentage ended up dropping out, but I would say most make it through. Um, and then so then I end up going to Korea. And again, I didn't really want to go to medevac yet. That's kind of Lame, right? I want to go to aerosault battalion or something like that where we're going to do multi-hip missions and support customers. I don't want to go fly patients around. But again, in the end, it's the freaking greatest assignment I ever could have got because I'm having to learn how to

operate on my own. I was the first Blackhawk guy to get to that unit and they still had Hueies. So, I'm the most experienced freaking Guy in the company >> with Blackhawks and I'm 22 years old. And you know, we flew in the end, I flew 150 actual missions in in Korea. And the only reason I know that number is because you'd get a a little award every time you reached a milestone. And getting 150 was a lot. And I I actually extended my time there in Korea because I liked it so much once I

got there and I was flying so much. The key to a brand New aviator is logging time. And it's hard now because helicopters are exp all platforms are expensive. So getting flight time is gets tougher and tougher and but to re be really good and develop as a pilot you just got to get time in the seat. I mean it's just that's just a fundamental truth. And so flying you know I think I almost got 500 hours in my first year there which is quite a bit >> for somebody right out of flight school. And

they made me a unit trainer, which Means I'm teaching people how to fly along the demilitarized zone. You had to memorize it. You couldn't use a map because the the idea here is if you get misoriented, you got to know, you know, burned in your memory where the line is because if you fly over it, they're going to shoot you down. I mean, it's just it happened. I don't know if you remember this, but it happened in the late or mid 80s. uh a Kya. I think he was flying a ka guy named Robert Hall

Overflow the border and the North Korean shot him down and and that was basically you know what you were doing everything you could to avoid but you would get medevac missions up near the border so you had to you had to know where it was and because I I was the first blackhawk guy there I'm the unit trainer so that's where I got a lot of my hours just flying and flying and flying >> um one other thing that was cool is The Koreans were big on building this Korean US relationship. So they sponsored a

program to bring family members over. So my parents got to come over and and spend some time traveling around visiting the DMZ. But my commander let me take my father up in the Blackhawk along the DMZ. >> Oh man, that's cool. >> It might have been the high point of his life. I I don't know. I mean, he was he was beaming uh when that was over. And Uh, of course, I did some slightly aggressive stuff for the aircraft, but but you know, in the end, we all got on. >> Scare the out of your

old man. >> Oh, hell yeah. Wouldn't you? If I could have made him throw up, I would have, which is actually not that hard. But uh anyway, so awesome experience, lots of missions, really cool missions, you know, and come out of there experienced and Feeling good about who I was as a pilot and then heard about this special unit and you know, >> how'd you hear about it? >> So literally was in a bar. I mean, there's a guy there whispering about, yeah, well, they just formed this unit at Fort Campbell, counterterrorist. uh you know

they they were they were going to go in and rescue the hostages in Iran because not everybody knows this But there was a second attempt that was going to happen. Everybody knows about Eagleclaw. Not everybody but people that follow the military but not everyone knows that there was a second attempt going to be made and that's the birth of the 160th. the 160th was put together and conducting rehearsals and modifying aircraft and and in order to be better prepared for the second goound because the reason Eagleclaw didn't work as well as it should have is

is it was just Clued together. It was not treated like a like you know a joint readiness train up. It was grab these helicopters here and these pilots here and stick them on this ship and you know they're just going to all meet in the desert and go hit us off the target there. There's not an adequate train up or preparation and the results were catastrophic. So anyway, so these units formed and and the best decision that could have ever been made With regard once the once the hostages got released, I'm sure, you know, most

people may not remember this, but the when Ronald Reagan took office within days, the hostages all got released. And so now you got this task force that has been created to go do a rescue that doesn't need to be done. What do you do? Well, somebody went to the Hill and said, "We got to maintain this." I mean, you just don't know where it's going to happen next. And if if you try to throw Together assets at the 11th hour, the outcome is probably going to be the same as it was in Eagle Claw. So,

there was a decision made to to maintain the unit. And that was the the birth of the 160th. So, TF1. No What year was that? >> Uh early 80s. I mean, probably probably 83, 82, 83. because I'm in I'm in Korea uh in ' 85 86. >> So was the unit already was TF-160 Already stood up or were you one of the initial pilots? >> No, I'm not one I'm not one of the plank holders. I wasn't too far behind but some of the plank holders obviously were still there but but no I was not.

>> Okay. >> So I find out about the unit and I'm thinking you know I read Tom Clansancy books. This is this sounds pretty freaking cool. And and it did. You know I like I'd love to do that. And I go to Fort Campbell. I'm I'm assigned to the 101st. >> What year is this? >> 88. So they've only been around for 5 years. >> Yeah. man. That's cool. >> Yeah. >> I mean, it was still in its early stages of development. >> Yeah. >> And again, I I don't know how this works. So I

sign in when I get to Fort Campbell, sign in 101st, and then I go to the bunker. you know, it's this clandestine looking place that no one would know was even there. And and I I go talk to the recruiter for the 160th and said, "Hey, I'd like to assess." And he says, "Uh, okay. So, what's your status?" I said, "Well, I just signed in 1001st." He said, "I mean, we could go to bat for You and try to get you out of that, but to us, you're not that valuable because, yeah, you got a

fair amount of flight time. you know, I think I had 800 hours, but you haven't done a lot of multi-ship. You haven't you don't have a ton of night vision goggle time. Why don't you do some time in 101st? Build up that experience and then come back. And I'm like, all right. So I went and did two years in the 101st, went to to instructor pilot course, built a lot Of multi-ship formation time, night vision goggle time, and then I went back and it's a uh it's a pretty robust selection process and and training process.

And uh I'm I'm fortunate in that I'm not a great athlete. I'm a decent scholar. I'm not all that good-looking. I can't run all that fast, but I could fly a freaking Blackhawk. I mean, I it was it was like it was an extension of me. I really that is how it felt when I Strapped that thing on. It's like I I just felt part of it. And had enough, you know, intellectual capacity to be able to manage all the systems. And then another part of flying that I don't think most people appreciate, certainly those

kind of missions is is you have to have a perspective that is larger than just yourself. You have to, you know, where's the ground force, where's the other aircraft, where's the threat, where's the weather, where's the Terrain, you know, all those things. You're constantly, they're changing, they're dynamic, and you got to keep track of all that in addition to doing all this. So, and I was good at all that. I mean, I'm not suggesting I was the goat, but I was pretty damn good. And so, uh, I didn't really struggle with assessment or or the

training at all. I mean, the wash out rate is fairly high, but I I got through it pretty well. And it's, you know, it's physical Fitness, it's a psychal, it's a swim test, it's land nav, it's, you know, life- saving, it's all that stuff, you know, and it was so early on in the in the development of the unit that we didn't have what is now special operations aviation training battalion. We didn't have anything. We the training was done by operational unit guys. So your instructor is a flight line guy who just got assigned to

go provide flight instruction for these new guys. There Was no >> it's like a extra duty >> right now. My class was actually the first green platoon class. So it's just coming to life. They they uh >> What does that mean? Green platoon class. >> It's the it's the training. It's like green team, right? It's it's it's the curriculum >> and and the uh >> So you're the first one that actually Went through a pipeline >> in Green Platoon. Yes. It was the first class. >> Now there's been training before obviously, but it was all

sort of ad hoc, right? >> Yeah. >> Uh but we were the first ones to actually go through Green Platoon. >> Wow. So you're damn near a plank. You're a plank owner of the training platoon. >> I guess so. I guess you could say that. Right on. >> And I'm a world record holder. >> And you're a world record holder. So, like I said, it wasn't it wasn't a a huge challenge for me. Navigation's hard. You know, when you're in MVGs and and there's not a lot of terrain to deal with, which is pretty much

the case in this part of the country. I mean, there's there's hills, but when you're up at a couple hundred feet, that the Hills don't pop out like they do when you're on the ground. The navigation's a bit of a challenge. I'm not I was if there's anything I'm not great at, I would say it's it's land navigation. Uh but we were we were getting technology in the cockpit that was a huge help. You know, we had uh uh Omega systems at the time which are rudimentary versions of GPS. They're not using satellites, but it's

a it's basically a digital navigation capability. Now, we were not Allowed to rely on that. We had to use the map and planning and time and speed and and figure all that out. >> Uh I did it good enough to pass is all I can say. But everything else I was really good at and and got through Green Platoon. Uh got the beret put on by another fellow New Hampshire boy. Uh the coach we call him now general retired daily. U great American just a great shot down seven times in Vietnam. Holy Just Just Anyway,

I I have a there's a special place in all our our hearts who who know him uh for him and he's he's still he's still with us. But uh anyhow, he he put my bay on me and now I'm feeling really good. Right. I'm I'm a me I'm a member. I'm a card carrying member of this organization. And right out of the gate, the first training mission, we're going to Thailand with ST6 All on one bird. And they arrive, two fast boats on the aircraft. We put two helicopters on the aircraft and fly over there

for a training mission. We had been given what what we call relaxed grooming standards, meaning we could we could grow our hair long. That doesn't happen all that often in the army, right? So I'm thinking this really is a Tom Clancy book, you know, and in you know who are we fooling? Nobody. But anyway, and we land over There in the middle of the night. We offload all this stuff, stick it in a hanger, and we went about just doing everything under the sun for the next three weeks. Live fire. I mean, what amazed me

is that these are not ranges, okay? The the the the Thai special forces went out and basically told the people that live there, we're going to shoot the out of this area and you need to clear out. You can come back on Saturday. That's a range Saturday. That's a range. Okay. So, we're out there firing mini guns. I mean, everything else. And I mean, we we slept in the jungle one night, uh, you know, cuz it was a it was a bilat between the the six guys and the and the the Thai special forces. And,

uh, anyhow, we they we did some jumping with them. We I mean, just everything. I mean, it was it was everything I imagined it would be. And it >> but that's got to be a staunch Difference from the 101st to working with Steel Team 6 right off the bat. >> Yeah. I mean where you couldn't afford freaking pens and pencils to do your your mission planning now you know now it's like what do you need? >> Yeah. The Golden Conx box. >> Absolutely. I will say that the six guys, some of them partied a little

too much at the end. >> No, I don't come to the show. and they actually had to be dropped off in Hawaii Because they were in that bad a shape. They they were so dehydrated. Maybe it was from their time in the jungle. I'm not sure. I'm sure. >> But I always love working with them. We work with them quite a bit. And you know, this whole who's better six or delta irrelevant to me. I'm honored to say I trained and flew both both organizations fairly regularly and have tremendous respect for both communities and uh

anyway you know that that's out Of the and then and then within a year within six months I deploy on my first real world operation prime chance who's also goes by the name Ernest will uh the Iranians and the Iraqis were having a skirmish and the Iranians as part of this were mining the the Persian Gulf and they were hitting oil tankers and uh I think it was Reagan reflagged some foreign ships under US flag to justify using our military to defend these Ships. that that may not be exactly right, but I believe that that

was the rationale behind the ref flagging is it's easier to sell if you say these are US ships transitioning to the Persian Gulf at risk of being blown up by the Iranians. That's why we got special ops units on, you know, on uh oil derks in the Persian Gulf blasting the boats, the Iranian boats that they catch land mines. It was winding down by the time I got There. before I got there was the first ever engagement using night vision goggles. It was one of our unit guys, little bird gun. They've stone cold caught the

Iranians dropping the tail on this uh boghammer I think they were called uh on video there and there's a mine and they're pushing it off and of course you got to get freaking permission from the headshed all the way back in DC, you know, like are you sure? Yeah, we're sure it's Iranian. They're Putting a mine in the ocean. Okay, take them out. And they they it's it was the Iran was the name of the boat and that the the steering wheel for the Arana Jar is still hanging in the regimental headquarters at the unit.

And they there were survivors and one of the survivors uh so one one of the rockets configurations for our 2.75 in rockets is a fchette. It has 2,000 little darts in it basically and it it flies out. I don't remember what distance, maybe 400 Meters. The the nose cone opens and these darts go out and you you hit a much broader area. Obviously, you're not going to take out, you know, an armored vehicle with it, but if you're if you're trying to take out, you know, troops in the open or whatever, it's very effective weapon.

And one of the guys, one of the Iranians had a fchette in his face when when he got captured and they were I don't remember which SEAL team it was, but They were on the the the the oil uh Derek with us. >> Uh so they they boarded the ship, captured these guys, you know, put them on the helicopters, brought them back. Again, this is before I got there, but it was the first night vision goggle uh engagement in history. Uh, I will say this about that mission. It was the hardest flying I think I've

ever done because the sandstorms blow through there just like they do in the Desert, but you're over the water and you can't see I mean, we would describe it as flying inside a ping pong ball. I mean, imagine what you could see inside a ping- pong ball. Nothing, right? and and you're 30 feet over the water and you know flying 100 plus miles an hour 110 knots usually is what we flew and I mean it was it was tough and then we're landing on this very tight oil platform. It was not designed for Helicopters and

we're putting little birds, Blackhawks, the customers, us sport people all on this thing. As I was coming up here, I was trying to think of what's the best way to describe this. And the thing that came to mind, never thought of before was Thunderdome. I don't know if you remember the the Mad Max movie where they're out over the water. That was kind of what that was kind of what it was like. I mean, it's just it's coming out of the water in the Middle of the Persian Gulf and we're we're putting all these assets

on it and launching these missions from this this this place. Uh we our forward operating location was was in Bahrain and we we would fly out to the oil platform from Bahrain, you know, when we did a crew swap or bring the customers out or back or whatever. But like I said, it was winding down by the time I got there. And uh so flying inside the ping pong ball, I mean, this is where the this is Where using your instruments really comes in handy. Correct. >> Yes. Now, it's a combination, you know. The good

thing is at this point with the night vision goggles, somebody finally had the idea, we need to cut the bottoms off of these because in the early days of night vision goggles, it was a fullface goggle, meaning it's a box you put over your face and then the two tubes stick out the front of the box. So, you can't see underneath the tubes At all. When I got trained on goggles in flight school, we wore full face goggles and you would fly them in the daytime with filters over the tubes that replicated getting the right

amount of light into the tubes so it seemed like it was at night. That was freaking hard. Somebody figured out what this is. We're making this way harder than it needs to be. Let's get rid of the box. And then we ultimately put, you know, a mount on there where they where they flip up Instead of being sitting right on your face. And now you can see underneath. So you when you're down low over the water, unless it's perfectly calm, there's usually a little ripple and you could kind of see that out of your periphery.

But I mean it's the margin of error is very very very small. And I, you know, I try to explain to people part of why one pilot is on the controls, meaning you're responsible to keep the machine out of the water. The other guy does the Radios and putting the navigation information in and all that stuff that distracts away and gets you inside the cockpit. And and for people to understand how quickly that can go to think about all the texting and driving problems we have, it's because people change their focus from looking outside the

car and and controlling the vehicle to their phone and all of a sudden they're drifting over the center line. Well, if that's you in that helicopter at 30 ft, you're in the water. I mean, it because it happens that fast. Yeah. >> So, you know, very disciplined about who's on the controls, who's who's doing the mission management, and the we also had infrared uh lights on the aircraft that you can't see without goggles on. And once you get down to 30 ft, you can start to see those lights reflecting off the water. So, that's another

So, you got the radar altimeter, which is giving You your absolute elevation above the water, which was 30 ft. You're trying to maintain that. And then you got this this sort of peripheral where you can see your lights reflecting and then you can see in some cases the ripple of the water. But you got I mean you got to be hyperfocused. >> Yeah. >> To make sure you don't and we've lost we've lost birds. I mean we lost a bird last year in the water. Uh not really The same scenario but I mean overwater flying

low level is to be taken seriously. And again, you know, I I said earlier, I think it was the hardest flying I may have ever done, but you get better, right? You sur you survive it. You learn, you gain new experiences, and you move on. >> You guys do some wild man. Do you do you happen to know Allan Mack? >> Yeah. Yeah. I listen I listen to his podcast. Yeah. He's also New Hampshire Boy. >> Is he? >> I think so, man. I think he >> I love that guy. >> Yeah. Yeah, a lot

of good comes out of New Hampshire. >> Oh, I miss free or die, right? >> When we launched this show, it didn't come with a handbook. One day it's cameras, the next it's logos, merch, shipping. Suddenly, you're doing 12 jobs you've never trained for. And it gets Overwhelming. And it gets overwhelming fast. And that's why I use Shopify. It's like having a business partner who actually knows what they're doing so you can focus on the work that matters. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. Powering 10% of all ecommerce in

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to note. We didn't lose anybody on that op. And that will be the only one that I've was on where we didn't lose somebody. And uh again, just great great execution and great training and great assets and just Everything about it was again the unit lived up to my every wildest expectation and beyond. >> How fast was the unit growing back then? We were really small and that's again you think about how fortunate I was is you know to get there at that point in history it was it was very small uh you know in

terms of numbers of helicopters I this is a this is a guess I might say 50 I I don't know >> 50 pilots >> no uh helicopters you know maybe maybe a couple hundred pilots >> those are really rough I could be off by order of magnitude there I don't I don't know but it's was much smaller than it is now. >> Tight community. What's what's the camaraderie like? I mean, I you know, >> pretty much grew up as a SEAL, >> you know, interviewed lots of Delta guys, lots of Green Berets, SEALs, Force Recon,

Mars, Rangers, lots of ground Guys. I've only done a couple of pilots. I'm just, you know, what and I don't think when I, you know, when I interviewed Alan Mack, uh, who I think we were talking about that offline, >> um, you know, I don't, I don't think we really got into the kind of like the team life camaraderie. What, what is that like over >> super tight? >> It is. >> Oh, absolutely. A lot of competition Among the platforms, right? >> I'll bet. >> Yeah. They're all idiots, you know. >> Probably a lot of

competition within the platform. >> Yeah. Yeah. To a certain extent. Yeah. Between the companies and that sort of thing. But it was it was all to me to try to get us to strive to be better. You know, >> our sole focus was meeting or exceeding the customer's expectations. We knew More than any organization I'd ever been a part of in my life. And of course, I was still fairly young, but the focus was on the mission and on the customer's mission. and we would do anything to make sure we were going to fill that

need for that customer. >> Who was your customer? >> Delta, Seal Team 6, Rangers, Air Force Special Tactics. MarsOCK didn't exist at the time and that was pretty much it. I mean, we rotate among those three Entities. How do you rotate? Is it is it I mean, is it is it like a I don't know. Is it like a cycle where where Mike Durant's team is with Delta, then it goes to Dev Group, then it goes to Rangers? I mean, is it like a rotation or >> Well, I think it was primarily driven by the

customers training requirements. you know, we'd have our own where we would do things just for us. But let's say let's say uh you know, ST6 needs to do a Ship takedown with with a half, you know, Hilo assault force and a bath. Then they're going to reach out to us and say, "We need whatever four, six Blackhawks, four little birds for this training period at this time." And then, you know, we we always had a standby mission. So, we've got to keep that uh uh intact because there's a rapid response standby capability that is there

365 days a year, 24 hours a day. So, that's the priority even even if It's a real world, you got to maintain that. So, whatever assets are left and sometimes you'd have to crossload between companies because you know, whatever the requirements were. So, I think it's really again I I wasn't involved in the op side all that much. I just kind of hey we're going to vacap and we're going to go you know support ST6 do uh you know >> uh uh chip takedowns but it was again to me for us that's the Ideal situation

and you know one day you're with this amazing group of people doing this crazy thing and next day you're over here with these guys doing that crazy thing and they're all freaking awesome and you know it was just >> it was I mean I I miss it bad but you you you you you I you I you I you I you I you I you I you I you I you I you I I don't want to say you grow out of it. You reach a Point where you know this I can't do this anymore.

This is this is somebody else's job. Yeah. Um so anyway, Prime Chance, by the way, Prime Chance is the first combat action by US SOCOM. So US SOCOM is formed just before Prime Chance. And in their history, I remember I would didn't know this until I I read about it within the last couple years where they talked about that was the first, you know, real world combat action by this newly formed US special Operations command. >> Wow. >> Yeah. >> The unit had been in Grenada, the 160th, and that was their baptism by fire, but

SOCOM hadn't been formed yet. US >> Gotcha. Gotcha. >> All right. So, uh, we do all that and then not shortly after that, this incredible guy named Cliff Walcott sort of enters my world. Uh, Cliff was a Cobra guy that had been in the unit a Little bit longer than me and he had this idea where he wanted to turn our Blackhawks into attack helicopters. And any other place in the world, they would have said, you know, go have your fantasy somewhere else. meanwhile, just go do your job. But it was the 160th and he

he had an ability to convince people of things that I could never do. We used to say he could sell coolers to Eskimos. I mean, he was it makes perfect sense, but that's a leap. I mean, to create a New This is a dramatically different mission, training, capability, and it's coming from a, you know, the ground up, right? >> And I was in the right place at the right time. I was pretty good at what I did. He and I got along and I kind of became his not necessarily his right-hand man, but pretty darn

close. And so got to be part of the development of the armed Blackhawk from the moment we said, "Man, Wouldn't this be cool?" all the way to two conflicts later shooting it in in combat for the first time. Wow. And I mean, again, remember this is 90ish. We're designing this thing with pencil and paper. I mean, I actually went to Walmart and bought, you know, you buy them for kids. They you can draw like squares and triangles with little plastic template thing. >> Yeah. I went in Walmart and bought one of those so I could

draw it's basically An engineering diagram of how we wanted to manage the rockets and manage the guns through the system in the aircraft to provide to the engineers at Rockwell Collins who are actually going to write the software to do it. So I mean this is how primitive we are. >> Holy >> We're handwriting this stuff. you know, I want to press on this button and it's going to take me to this page and then I'll get to pick from these different Types of rockets because in a tube like for us, we usually carry 19

shot rocket pods. You could put fchettes in there, H in there, flares in there. I mean, you got to mix and you got to know where they are so that you can pick the one you want when you pull the trigger. So, that's basically a, you know, very basics on mission management. So, we're designing that. We're designing what we wanted the cyclic to look like because we need a different grip. We we can't Use the grip standard grip from a helic a Blackhawk because it doesn't have enough buttons on it. So we we're we're like

handd drawing that. And what are we going to use to uh as a site? Now the little bird guys were still using grease pencils. I mean, basically, you would put your seat in a certain spot in the aircraft and then you would count the number of screws over and the number of screws down and you'd put a pipper right there and that's your aim point. >> No way. >> Yes. >> Holy >> And we did the same thing. And the difference with us is Cliff was the only guy who had gotten formal attack helicopter training.

The rest of us, we'll just learn on the fly. I mean, I never went to a single formal training course on how to fly an attack helicopter. And within a year, I'm going to be cut Loose flying for these units, danger close, live fire, and then ultimately in combat. And again, I think about the timing and how fortunate I was to be at that place at that time and be a part of all that. I mean, it it just doesn't happen to be able to do that sort of thing. So anyway, we're starting to develop

this. And early on, we sort of stuck to the basics. Miniguns fix forward, which they'd always been capable of doing that. When they first Put the miniguns on there, they they thought, well, in case we ever need to use them this way, let's come up with a a way that we can fix them forward with some pins and then the pilots can shoot, you know, by with diving fire. So, that was already there, but it had not really been done much. And Cliff then sort of gave it a new new life. And we put the

first thing was rocket pods. So we could put actually we could have put four rocket pods on there. Two on each side. 19 rockets a piece. So that's a lot of that's a lot of rockets and miniguns. And the bird's kind of ready, but it's not really been signed off by anyone. And Just Cause happens. Now, Just Cause before the OP went down was called Blue Spoon. And we've been practicing this thing, I I just kind of read up on it before the we we we got together today. According to this book, we've been practicing

it for two years. I knew it was years, but that's about When I got to the unit. It was two years before that. So, my whole time in the unit, we've been talking about Blue Spoon, which is Take Down Panama. And just before Christmas 1989, all the criteria are met and we get to go. And it was again just that mission I would argue one of the most successful we've ever done as a nation. I mean 26 targets on at H hour. Seal team six had multiple targets. Delta rescued Kurt Muse out of Melo prison.

I was at Rio where we had the largest airborne drop since Vietnam and like 21 other targets. And it was conventional forces. There was Marines, Army, special ops, all simultaneous. First time the F-17s had ever been used. That was at Rio. I saw the bombs go off and within a couple days we we took the place down. I mean, it was incredible. Damn. >> And I'm flying with Donovan Bryley. By The way, I mentioned Cliff a couple times. Cliff's the first loss in Somalia. He's flying with Donovan in Somalia. So, they're the first two combat

losses in Somalia. Donovan and I are flying in just cause. And our mission is not glamorous. We're going to fly with two Apaches and and at least two little birds, maybe four. Little birds are the H6s. And these are gunbirds. and we're going to go take out be part of the force to take out Rio. So The airfield seizure is going to be done by the Rangers that are on all these C130s coming out of Fort Benning. I think it was 17 C130s. >> 17? >> Yeah. Lowle drop. I think they dropped somewhere around 800

ft. I mean there's just Rangers falling out of the sky like rain and we're right underneath it. I mean it was unbelievable. Again, I said our mission wasn't glamorous. We were a FARP bird, which is forward area re Refueling a rearming point. So, we had developed this capability where the Blackhawks or Chinooks could fly in land, put out pumps, connect a hose to our fuel tanks, and provide fuel, ammunition, and rockets to the little birds. So, we're like a mobile gas station. And then they continue to do their mission. So, that was, you know, they

don't have a long range like we do. We got a lot greater range than they do because of the fuel that we can carry. I Think it's the first combat FARP we ever did as a unit. I think cuz I know we didn't do one in Grenada. We didn't do one in prime chance. We're out in the ocean. So, might have been not necessarily anything that anyone ever takes note of, but I think it was the first combat FARP we ever did. And you know, Donovan and I, we take off. We're Were we leading? I

don't know. We were ahead of the Apaches, but I can't remember if the Little birds were ahead of us. I think they probably were. Anyway, our bird is so laden with rockets. I mean, we're floor to ceiling in the back full of rockets, full of minigun. We were way overgross. I mean, meaning our aircraft's too heavy. But it's combat, right? And it's And yeah, I've been the prime chance that qualified as combat, but it really didn't feel like combat. This was combat. We're going to go punch somebody hard. And I'm like, I don't Give a

how much this thing weighs. We're taking it down there. So, we're skipping off the freaking runway. We had to take off like an airplane because the aircraft was so heavy it wouldn't fly. And I mean, I think we broke the wire strikes off, which are these little devices that hang down from the landing gear to in case you hit a wire, it'll cut the wire. I think we broke them off. But, I mean, I don't know what we weighed, but we were freaking heavy. And We skipped down the runway. We skipped down and finally took

off. Start flying. get out of the ocean. We get down there and there's a I think it's a ZPU4. It was an anti-aircraft gun on the end of the airfield. And I've read different accounts here, but I think it was the Apaches that were supposed to neutralize that gun. So, we get there at Hour, 1:00 in the morning. Now, HR got moved up on a couple of elements of this mission because the, You know, once certain things started happening, this Panameanians knew this shit's going down. And Kurt Muse was probably the most time-sensitive thing. So,

I think they launched a little early and ultimately rescued him, and that's a whole another story. I think you had one of the Delta guys on here talked about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Vickers. Um, so you've covered that already. Uh, but anyway, that was our little birds that that were flying that mission. Uh, we're Down literally at 1:00 a.m. and and I'm I'm in the cockpit with Donovan. I'm saying, h, I don't think it's going to happen. We always sort of sab saber rattle and then, you know, everything winds down and all of a sudden

boom, 2,000 pounder goes off right in front of us. And it was the F-17. They were brand new. No one even knew they existed. They dropped two of two of those birds dropped two 2,000 pounders right there, right near the barracks. Again, there's some controversy here. They claim their mission was to just scare the out of the PDF, the Panameanian Defense Force, not kill them because the theory is we get Manuel Norya out, they'll all convert and they'll support the new military and the new leadership and we don't want to kill them all. We need

them, right? I think that's generally the idea. There's other theories that, well, the F-17 couldn't hit the freaking backside of a freaking Barn, you know, but I I don't know what the right answer is. All I know is those freaking bombs went off at 1:00 a.m. on the nose. And that's when this AAA gun starts shooting because obviously they know they're being attacked. So, it's firing into the night sky. And so, we're we're over the ocean. We're not far over the ocean, but we're we're right there watching. And I'm like, "Okay, when's the Apache going

to take this freaking guy out?" Because these 130s are coming In. And you know, it's just firing into the air. And the Apache comes on the radio and says, "We're return to base. We got mechanical problems." And 60 Minutes actually did a show on this. The Apache was brand new. It's a great helicopter. I'm not bashing the aircraft. Anytime you feel new capability, you're going to encounter stuff that just didn't get tested thoroughly enough or the requirements were slightly off. I think primarily it Was a humidity issue with the black with the Apaches cuz obviously

very humid in Panama, but I know there was also a vibration issue where when they turned the turret gun, which is a 30 mm, it was creating vibration that was popping breakers. I think again I I don't know 100% sure but all I can tell you is they mission aborted like right after we got there and I have one regret. Actually I have a couple. We should have just maneuvered Our Blackhawk in and shot the out of that AAA gun because it's mechanically driven. It's not a ZSU 234 that's got electric motors that could just,

you know, and then take us out. It's a guy cranking this freaking thing and he's got and it only has so much down angle that it could get we could have come in right over the water and just hosed the out of those guys and and taken them out and we talked about it >> and I got talked out of it and I I really wish we had I don't think there were any fatalities on the 13s but they got hit. I mean, they were there were rangers that got hit and didn't lose any birds,

but still, you know, it it was it was an opportunity where I wish I would have gone with my gut, which was if they're not going to take care of this thing, we need to. So then what talked you out of it? There was a guy on board from the from the Ranger Battalion. He got thrown on the aircraft at the last minute and he said, "No, no, you know, I I don't remember exactly what he said, but there was also an AC-130 there. There was little bird guns there." And arguably that's their primary mission

is to take out like this. You know, that really shouldn't be our mission, but they weren't doing it. And the book I read said the AC-130 took it out. I I I don't know if that's actually what Happened. It ultimately stopped, but I thought they ran out of ammo. That's how much they freaking fired. And so at this point, the airdrop started. So our job now is to go land where we're supposed to and set up this forward area rem arming and refueling point. And we're close to the airfield. So I'm thinking all these freaking

PDF guys that are, you know, vacating the barracks and and hightailing it are going to overrun us if we stay here too Long. So, and we had to shut the bird down because we're burning a lot of gas sitting there with the blades running. So, we shut the bird down. We still got the auxiliary power unit running because that powers the pumps. And, you know, that lets us get off the ground fairly quickly, but it's going to take two or three minutes if we got to crank the engines. So, we're obviously, you know, we got

we're on we got a crew chief on the Guns. We got our weapons out because we're still in the cockpit. We're not we're not getting out of the cockpit. And we put the rockets all out there and the little birds come in and they land and we refuel them. They hadn't fired yet so they don't need any ammo. So they drain us. I mean we basically got only enough fuel to get back. And uh I'm like, "Okay, do we just leave these rockets laying here or do we just put them back on the bird and

take them Back?" And I think you know, no, we put them back on the bird and took them back. So, we had refueled them, which basically gave them one ammo load and and two bags of gas to work with. I know they did engage targets. I know they supported the the airfield seizure. Somewhere in there, a chip light comes on. So, this is like in your car where you get an check engine light, which means there's a piece of metal that has been detected within the main Transmission, which now I'm thinking, "Oh we overstretched the

transmission and it's starting to come apart. But I'm like, we can't shut this thing down here. I mean, we're gonna the PDF is they some of them got to come this way and you know, they're going to stumble upon us or we're going to be in a firefight on the ground. And so I decided we're going to fly this back. So we we crank it up, Fly back, land it on the airfield. Turns out the transmission wasn't trashed. It was just probably, you know, like if you run a a transmission in a vehicle in a

gear that's never been used much. Maybe there's a a metal shard or something that wears wears off and ends up in the oil. Well, that's what these chip detectors are designed to detect and it's got a magnet in there and it'll attract it. That's probably what Happened. We we put this thing in a mode that it hadn't been in. It's not a gear, but it, you know, the weight of the aircraft put it in such a such demand on it that uh uh it caused the chip to come loose. So anyway, we make it back,

land on the airfield, find out about all the other that went down, find out about the whole Kurt Muse mission, how that went, which I think was also the first uh rescue of an American uh that Delta did. I'm not 100% sure on that, But I think it was. And uh you know, it's all good news. High fives all around and then we rack out for the night. And then, you know, obviously leadership's got to figure out where do we go from here? What's next? Well, Nor egg is not caught, right? He's on the loose.

And so, we're going to split up into two primary elements. Seal Team Six is going to go on the other end of the canal, Cologne, and Delta's going to stay on This side of the canal. And we're going to conduct ops when we get good intel. So I go to the clone side with six and we probably did I don't know four direct action missions where we you know taking down targets. It was really bizarre for me is that when I was enlisted in military intelligence I lived in Cologne. So we're flying all around places

I used to go to now taking down targets. I mean there's where I used to live. That's the bar we used to go to And all that. It was just >> crazy weird. Wow. >> To be uh to be doing all that. >> And I got to tell you one story uh about a mission that the circumstances are somewhat similar to what ends up happening on the bin Laden mission which obviously I was not part of. So we're coming in, we got, you know, dudes in the back. This the Seal Team Six guys. We're taking

down a target. I don't know if the I don't remember if The weather changed or we came in from a different direction, but the wind direction was not what we thought it was going to be. And in a helicopter, if you happen to be downwind of your buddy's rotor wash, that's not a good place to be if you're trying to hover because the air is already disturbed and it's already, you know, wants to suck you down. Basically, if you're ingesting all of that, especially if they're higher than you, and you're you're getting all That downflow,

your blades can't bite, I guess, is the simplest way to think about it. So, we're supposed to fast rope our seals into a tennis court. So, I come to a hover. I was flying and I don't have enough power. I mean, again, I don't know if it's cuz now we got a tailwind. We thought we'd have a headwind, but I just don't have enough power. And there's nothing I can do except the thing's going to the ground whether we like it or not. And the crew Chiefs are our eyes and ears in the back and

they're calling me down. You know, tail right, tail left, meaning, you know, if there's something back there that I can't see, they're the ones that are guiding me around this stuff. >> And I'm pretty sure we landed right on the net because the net obviously is going to squash. And I know the the the operators are like, I thought we were roping and and all of a sudden we're just elevatoring down to the ground, but Somehow the blades fit inside the fence around the tennis court. Again, I credit the crew chiefs. I mean, they're the

ones I'm doing what they're telling me to do. I can see in front, but I can't see very well to the sides, and I definitely can't see the back. And they guided me all the way down, got it on the ground. Guys got out. Now I got plenty of power cuz all the weights out. and we took off. You know, again, when you think about your career in military Aviation, it's those moments that by a hair you're still here or you could have been another name on the wall, you know? I mean, just it's not

necessarily skill, it's fate, it's luck, it's timing, it's you name it. It's it's somewhat random, you know. And there were many many many times in that that career flying where one variable was different and I'm on the wall and I'm I'm fortunate that I'm not. >> Wow. >> So we don't have Manuel Noriega yet and a commander says, "Hey, Green Platoon starting again. We hadn't reached the point where we have permanent staff in Green Platoon. So, I got to go back and be an instructor to teach this class because we got students ready to go.

And I'm like, "All right, I miss Christmas already. Things are kind of winding down. We don't know where the hell." We called him Elvis, too. Every time we've Chased somebody, we've called him Elvis. And, you know, we're getting Elvis sightings all over the place. But, I don't remember. I don't think we found out he was in the Papa Nunier yet. But either way, you know, this thing is kind of wrapping up, so I'm going to go. And I mentioned fatalities. We lost a Little Bird doing a gun run. Uh Sunny Owens and uh Hunter was

his last name. And again, unit was small. So even though they're Little Bird gun guys, we knew them well. And >> they they got shot down, crashed, and both died. >> Damn. >> And uh you know, all that happened in those in those first few days. So I fly back, make it back for New Year's, not not for Christmas, and uh watch it on the news when Manuel Noriega gives up and oh by the way, Cliff Walcott is the one who flew Norie from the Papo Nunia with his Delta Escort to The tail of the

C130 on Howard Air Force Base and he's in in custody and spends the rest of his days in prison. He was a bad dude. He was a very bad dude. I mean, if Maduro's as bad as Noriega, then he needs to go because Noriega was really bad. I mean, like cult kind of stuff. >> What was going on down there? >> Uh, well, I mean, he he took control of the country. I mean, he, you know, he was actually an MI when I was there >> as a lowly NCO in the 47th Military Intelligence Group.

Noriega came and had a meeting at our facility when he was a colonel in the in the MI in the Panameanian Defense Force. So, I had seen him. I mean, he he kind of looked the same. I mean, you know, he's little short dude, you know, pineapple face with uh you know, this this same stature he had when he somehow took over. Uh, but Torihos died when I was actually in Panama and that's the actually the only Highest priority message we could send as a as an intel unit that went out during my time there

when was killed. I don't know if there was speculation that Noriega had anything to do with Theres to death. Wouldn't surprise me cuz I mean he he aspired to take over and then you know he he was just he was running drugs. I mean, we found boxes of marked drilling equipment that was weapons. I mean, he had bundles and bundles of cash with little address Labels on there. Manuel Noriega personally sent to him. He >> Wow. >> He had I mean, he's a heavy drinker. He was into drug trafficking. I didn't read this in this

latest book I read, but I was told in one of his offices, he had pictures on the wall of his his adversaries and redes through the ones that were dead. >> I mean, that kind of guy, >> bad dude. Uh there was an attempted coup before Just Cause. So again, you draw comparisons to what's going on in uh in Nicaragua today. >> That would be ideal is, you know, have a coup occur that takes Madura out. Um, >> Venezuela. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, Venezuela. You're right. Yikes. Fil my geography test for the day. Uh,

but uh there was a coup attempted coup and he squashed it. He figured it out. He's got his loyalists Involved. It was close. I mean, so I understand it. It almost worked. And then the people that were most loyal to him, made their last stand, captured the people that were leading the coup. I think they killed them. Pretty sure they killed him. Uh and then uh obviously his he's he survived that and that's when we he declared war against the US. I know it's there's all sorts of stuff that happened but and then he killed

some American service personnel and that all Those things together were like okay we've had enough of this. We're going to go do it and we were ready and I mean we've been practicing for two years. >> Yeah. And that's why I say I I think if I had to pick what I would be most proud of, that's probably it. Even though my role was pretty minor. So back home teaching Green Platoon, furthering the DAP program, defense, we had to we had to change the name. We we wanted to call It the direct action penetrator, but

there's something about you fielding new attack aircraft that you got to call it something else. So, we had to change the name to defensive armed penetrator, which is what it's what it's called now, but everybody knows as as a DAP. And now we want to get more sophisticated. We're going to put a 30 millimeter on here. Same one that's on the Apache, exact same gun, but we're going to put it in a fixed forward mode. So, it's not turret. It It's hanging on the wing. And oh, by the way, we can put two. So, we

could put one on each side with 30 mm magazines inside the cabin. Uh, awesome weapon. I mean, that thing, 625 rounds a minute, I think, of 30 mm. And what's weird is the sound. I mean, it's still a distinct very I mean, the minigun is, but the the 30 is more likeoop, which doesn't sound like 625 rounds a minute, but that's what it sounded like. You could you you could hear it. And it it has either uh inert rounds or high explosive dual penetrator rounds. Uh, and the HDP would, you know, explode obviously when they

hit the ground. And and then we put Hellfires on there. and Cliff Walcott and I were the first ones to shoot a hellfire off a Blackhawk and I still remember he let me push the button and we're out west somewhere. We got a customer lasing the target and you know kind of amped up because Hellfire Pretty famous first ones to get to do it and I push the button and nothing happened. And it's because it takes a second for the hellfire to leave the rail. But I didn't know it. You know, I'm thinking it's going

to be like a rocket. As soon as you hit the button, it's gone. And I must have hit that button like eight times in one second trying to get it to shoot. And finally, it left the rail and goes up. And because a hellfire comes Up, there's two modes. Lock on before launch, lock on after launch. Lock on before launch. It's it's it's getting it's identifying the coded laser first, which to me is lowest risk because if you throw it up there and somebody put the wrong code in, it's going to just go nowhere. So,

we did a lock on before launch and it but it's still going to climb and then it's going to do its final trajectory down into the target And boom, big explosion like you know that was freaking awesome. And then, you know, we got to shoot them in training and and I get to teach people on them. So, this thing is a badass now. I mean, we got every weapon you could ever want. And then the crew chief said, "You know what? when we're covering the brake because the way we fired these things is we're in

a diving fire mode and you get we're supposed to stay 200 meters or More from the target which sounds like a long ways but when you're diving at a target 200 m is not very far and we break and which causes you to mush through a little bit cuz I mean you got a lot of inertia going here and they said you know we need a way to cover ourselves in the brake so let's put some M60s in the doors that cuz the miniguns are fixed forward and that way when you're on the brake I

can, you know, after you've And then you're in the break and the crew chief's like, "Bang, bang. Take that, too." You know, it's like, but we let him do it. I don't know if they still do it cuz it's pretty sporty to be back there standing in the cabin while we're in a break, you know, trying to shoot at a target. But anyway, it was it was the wild west. It was so freaking awesome. And, you know, we had to shoot a ton. I don't remember what the rounds were, but it's like I don't know.

I'll Throw some numbers out there. 12,000 rounds of mini 72 rockets and 1,000 rounds of uh 30 per month. >> Nice. And I'm an instructor, so I get to do mine and I get to go with you and you do yours cuz you got to show me that you can do what you're supposed to be able to do with this stuff. So, I mean, literally thousands and thousands and thousands of rounds. And I found that I could shoot pretty good, too. I mean, with a with a with an aircraft. Now, Regular shooting, I'm okay. Shooting

with a Blackhawk, I could hit the freaking target. And then Desert Storm rolls around and now we're freaking ready. We got this. No, actually, I'm ahead of myself. We did not have Hellfire and we did not have 30 for Desert Storm, but the rockets and mini were good to go. We're ready. We fielded. Cliff and I took the first check rides as brand new DAP pilots for the unit. We took them on the same night Because again, this is brand new capability. We got to somehow validate that we can do this for the customers. So,

first night we got little bird pilots in the front seat with us. So, there's a lot going on in the cockpit. So, I'm now basically single pilot, gunnery, customers on the ground, flight of two, night vision goggle with a little bird guy who doesn't know about a Blackhawk in the other seat. It all goes okay. But when we get back to The debrief and they're both little bird gun SIPs, standardization instructor pilots like head the head instructors, they b they said this is not safe. I mean we we're not value add in the cockpit. So

let's put another Blackhawk guy in the front seat. We'll sit in the jump seat. So second night it's two night check ride. They're in the jump seat. And I'm just telling this story because it goes back to my statement about the Difference between still walking and talking and being on the wall. I'm chocked too. We roll in, we hit we hit the target, we break off, and we could do it a couple different ways. We could do what we call welded wing where both birds are flying in formation. We're both shooting at the same time.

Or we stagger, lead shoots, and then you roll in, you shoot, and then you join up. We were we were uh staggered. So the guy in the other seat who shall Remain nameless, he's no longer with us. So there's no point in telling anybody who he is. He was up. I mean, all I can say, he just And this is my check ride. And I got a littleberg guy that isn't all that interested in seeing another platform sort of hone in on their turf. So, it'd be real easy to bust me if if these two

guys weren't really good dudes. And uh it's Fred Horesley and Randy Jones are the two Littleberg guys. Ry's a legend. Fred unfortunately passed a few years ago, but both legends in the Littleird community. So, they're giving us our check rides and we shoot and break. And I'm in the break and I'm joining back up on Cliff and a rocket goes off of my bird and it goes right underneath the belly of Cliff's aircraft. >> Whoa. >> Now I'm flying, right? So I'm like, "What the was that?" And this other guy says, "Uh uh uh, my

bad." Yeah, you're bad. you almost shot down our lead aircraft on a training mission. I said, "All right, we'll talk about it later." So, we hadn't put those new cyclic grips in yet. And we're using buttons on the cyclic that were already there. We just rewired them to control the weapons. And a lot of guys, and it's stupid, would talk on the intercom by putting Their hand. First of all, you got a floor mic. So, if you're not on the controls, you should be using the floor mic. You push on the button. It's like the

old >> uh high beam switch in an old car. >> Basically, that same kind of switch. >> You should be using that, not touching the controls. >> But some guys put their hand on top of the cyclic and then the the the microphone triggers are on the front and Would squeeze it like this to talk, even not on the controls. So he did that and his palm pushed the rocket button because that's what under was underneath his palm. So he not only did he not safe the freaking weapons, he pushed the fire trigger off for

the rockets. And I'm like, "Okay, my freaking check ride is toast. It's not my fault, but there's no way I'm going to get signed off." Anyway, we finish the mission. Everything else goes okay. We go back and land and you know I'm not sure I would have been that much of a professional knowing that we're about to kind of hone in on their territory. I mean they own the gunbird world for the soft community and now we're introducing this competitive player here and they're probably not all that thrilled about it. I know they weren't. They

told us, but they signed me off anyway. And they should have cuz it wasn't my fault, but it gave them Every reason to not, you know, for something like that to happen. So now I'm a full mission qualified gun pilot in the unit. Cliff is two first time and we're ready to rock and roll and start providing fire support for customers. So Desert Storm rolls around. >> Hold on. What happened to the guy that aded a rocket? >> Nothing. I mean, >> nothing. No, >> they didn't kick him out. >> No, we should have. >>

We should have. >> Holy >> Cuz actually back to Panama, one of the Delta guys had an AD in the hanger and he was gone. And I I use that example sometimes when I talk to people about having standards and then maintaining those standards. I mean, the standard is you have an AD in this unit, you're gone. >> Yeah. >> And I saw it. I mean, it freaking happened. And you know, it's a lot of money and time invested in a quality guy, but that's the standard. And if that's the standard, you know, I agree

with you, we should have. >> Wow. >> Um, >> it, you know, everybody knew it happened. Um, and I guess nobody felt like it was it was worthy of expulsion From the unit, but I agree with you, probably should have. So then Desert Storm happens. So, we are going to rescue the hostages. So, there were hostages being held when Kuwait was overrun. They're being held in Kuwait City. And our mission called Java Man is going to be to assault the this target in Quate City and rescue the host. And we trained and trained and prepped.

I mean, we launched off ships. We had mockup targets on shore. We trained down off the coast of Florida. We simulated the targets at at Bragg. I mean, we we were freaking ready. And, you know, Desert Storm had not kicked off yet. And so, we're thinking we we I was literally going to be the number two bird over the beach in Desert Storm. And Cliff was going to be number one. So, again, there's this theme here. Same guys, event after event after event. And uh We're what I remember most about that mission is we got

briefed afterward that we're probably going to see a 50% casualty rate and not a single freaking person said I'm out. You know, everybody just sort of accepted the fact that, you know, that's why I came to this unit to do this kind of and we're we're going it's not going to be us. And that's a, you know, you have to look at it that way. You have to look at it like, Yeah, there's going to be some losses taken, but it won't be me. You know, I I just, we call it big sky, little bullet

theory, meaning, you know, they can shoot at you all day long, but the odds of them hitting you is is low enough where I'm going to just take this risk. So, anyway, we're ready to go. We we did the final demo. Trying to remember who was there. at least a three star, if not a fourstar, was there to basically give us the Thumbs up. Yep. You guys look ready because I mean, we had mock-ups of where the barracks were. That was my target where the barracks were for the these like reinforcements and I went in

there and laid down a whole bunch of rockets and blew the out of it. I don't remember what Cliff was hitting. And then the assault force came in right behind us, you know, and and liberated the hostages. Well, they freaking let him go, you know? So it's Like there goes our mission, you know, and you know, this happens over and over and the world is soft. But it's like, son of a gun, you know, good news is these people are all going to be fine. Bad news is we don't get to do this freaking amazing

mission we thought we were going to do. >> Put it back in there. >> Yeah. And then to make it worse, Desert Storm kicks off and we're still home. >> It's like, you know, we were like Besides ourselves. And what does any good soft unit do in that scenario? Find a freaking mission, right? Figure out how you can contribute and get your ass over there. And and that's obviously what Delta did. What happened is Saddam Hussein started using Scuds and he was launching Scuds. The real threat was he was launching them into Israel. And the

concern was if the Israelis join the fight in retaliation, the coalition Is going to fall apart because the coalition, I mean, we're basing out of Saudi Arabia. So, you know, at the time, the Saudis today are much more willing to sign the Abraham Accords and and, you know, and and reach some sort of peaceful arrangement with the Israelis, but back then it it wasn't there yet, right? And that was the concern. I mean, our whole freaking force is based in Saudi Arabia, and if the Israelis get involved and this thing unravels, what The hell is

going to happen? So, this becomes a major concern that these Scud missiles are, and that's why he was doing it. He wanted to draw the Israelis into the fight. So, Delta's mission was neutralize the Scuds in western Iraq. And we were putting them in on the ground. And I'm flying a DAP at this point. Attack version of the Blackhawk. The Shinooks are doing the infills because they need to bring their vehicles in. You know, there's too much That needs to go in for a Blackhawk to carry. So, we're escorting the Shinooks and we did several

missions. It was cool. I mean, we, you know, we put them in. We're in these attack helicopters. So, we're orbiting, providing security, making sure there's nobody around while they offload the vehicles and get loaded up and and go find their hindsight. And on one night, I I have an operational satcom radio, so I can talk to the jock. These Missions were long range. We were flying long ways into Western Iraq. And Colonel Brown at the time, Doug Brown, is talking directly to me and he's telling me that they have a new mission for us, but

we're in this orbit and I'm getting like half of his transmission and I wasn't the lead, but I had the working satcom. So, I call the other bird and I said, "Hey, we're getting a mission change. Let me take the lead Because I'm getting all the information." Roger. So, I'm writing this down, this coordinate. And then he's he's he's saying something at the end and I I don't know what he's saying. And I said, "Can you spell that phonetically and he's Sierra Charlie uniform delta?" And when he got to uniform, I'm like, "Holy we're going

to go shoot some Scuds." And Cliff Walcott, who's back in the jock, he's on the other team that's not flying that Night. He must have been so pissed because it was his idea to arm this thing, right? And the first time it's going to get used in combat, he's not there. And I don't blame him. I would have been pissed, too. But I'm like, "Sorry." You know, it's like, so I put the coordinates in and we're we're flying out through the desert. The Chinooks have finished their mission. They're heading back. We go up over this

power line. It's Probably 200 feet tall. Start coming down the other side and freaking right there is a Scud tail launcher like right in front of it. >> Oh And I'm like weapons armed rolled in minigun on it and I'm too close to shoot rockets. You know it's one of the phenomena that you know we learned enough about aerial gunnery to be familiar with is is called target fixation. You know you're diving at this Target and you want to hit it more than anything in the world, right? But you got to remember at some point

you got to break it off because you'll fly right into the freaking target. if you don't and again you're gonna mush through probably a little bit. So you got to be disciplined and you know I mean adrenaline is flowing like crazy here and this is a big deal you know and somehow had enough situational awareness to realize I'm too Close to shoot rockets and I broke it off. As it turns out, that picture in my fleer, which is a infrared sensor, ends up on the SOCOM calendar a few years later. I have a picture of

it uh that I that I uploaded, and you can see the minigun rounds in the dirt. They're little black dots, and the picture has the crosshairs of the fleer dead center on the Scud. And then the And basically what's happening is when I first started shooting, the rounds are low and left. So, I'm walking them in to the target. And the way it would normally work is, okay, once the round miniguns are on the target, you might have to do a nose adjustment because rocket ballistics are different than minigun ballistics. And you just you learn

that through training, you know, nose up, nose down, depending on where you are. But in this case, I'm too close for rockets. So, I don't shoot them. But you can see the miniguns running are closing In on the target, and then some of them start to hit the target, and then I break off. I think we're at 62 feet is what it shows on the image, which is not very high over the desert. and see this picture. >> Come around. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's a pretty cool photo. And and I mean, if you look

at this picture and you think about you encounter this in the dark in the middle of night in the desert, that's that's a Scud. I mean, There's no question. The road wheels are hot, you know? I mean, it's got thermal characteristics of a real It's not a balloon. I can tell you that. So, we come around, line up again. Now, I'm ready, right? We know exactly where it is. We're going to shoot rockets at this some this time. I come around, line up, my co-pilot, Lance Hill, who was killed in a crash later on. AR

arms the gun. I hit the Trigger. Nothing. Lance, it's one switch. Throw it. And he says, "You're armed." And so I looked down. All right, I'm armed. You know, my first instinct was Lance up, right? But uh I was armed. Hit the button again. Nothing. What? Tried the rocket button. Nothing. Come around. Let's try it again. Try go to safe. Go back to arm. Nothing. Meanwhile, talk two is, you know, I'm doing rockets and mini. And really sharp guy, but not as good a shot as me. I mean, he just wasn't. And never blows the

thing up. I'm so pissed. So, we we break off and I said, "Look, we we got a gun problem. We're going to go figure this out." We're actually pulling control heads out of the aircraft in flight and and loosening and rettightening the cannon plugs on the back cuz all I can figure is there's just a loose connection. Pull It, reconnect. Pull it, reconnect it. Put the freaking box back in. Roll back around. Come back in. Nothing. I was livid. I mean, I was livid, right? And the other guy now is technically lead because he was

lead to begin with. So, he says, "Hey, we've been here a long time. We got to get out of here." Son of a So, here's the other regret. Kind of like in Panama. I wanted to just hover up and fleer record this thing all around, you know, Basically slow hovering, getting amazing video of the whole thing. And same thing, you know, it was a discussion. No, we need to get out of here. This we've been here too long and we didn't do it. Now, we had great imagery of it. You you'll see the picture and

it's it's it's pretty obvious what what it is. Um but uh we we fly south. Next day, crew chiefs go out, avionics goes out, testing the bird. Everything looks okay. Well, I don't believe you. I want to go shoot this. So, we load it up, go out into this place in the desert. Uh, everything works fine. All right. I don't know what changed overnight. They didn't do anything. Park it. Wait a night cuz that's not our night to fly. That's going to be the other team's night. Next night we go out. We got a fire

mission. Same freaking thing. >> No way. >> Same thing. It won't shoot. This time I was so pissed I actually said I'm going to crash this aircraft in the desert. I mean that's how upset I was. >> We're going comic. >> I mean one of one of the crew chiefs who didn't know me that well because I was flying with the other uh company or platoon at least. I think he's the other Company didn't really know me and is this guy going to kill me? You know and went back and and this is why I

love the crew cheese. If they respect you, which I like to think most of the crew chiefs respected me, they're going to try to help you out, figure out what the hell is going on here. And without anybody telling them, one crew chief thought of, okay, here's the only variable in this equation, time. When we went to the range, we only had the bird Running for like 15 minutes, but on these long range missions, the bird's running for like two hours. I want to put power to the aircraft for two hours and see if anything

happens. And sure enough, a component in the freaking gun control box powered up for a long period of time was overheating and failing. And then it would cool off and it would work. And I don't know what electronic component that is, if it's a resistor or diode or what the hell it is. So they Went to freaking Radio Shack in Saudi Arabia. It's not really a Radio Shack, but a place like that. Bought a new component, came back, put it in, fixed the problem. >> No way. >> And then the war's over and I never

got to shoot again. >> Damn. But I did fire miniguns on his gun and it was the first rounds in anger of the of the defensive armed penetrator. >> Well, that's pretty badass. >> So, I got I got that to say. My last ordinance, by the way, that I did drop was a piss bottle I threw out of the aircraft before we crossed the border. >> Scud before we crossed the border. So, anyway, that's my uh my my life leading up to Somalia. Lot and this is peacetime army, you know. Yep. >> In all in

a 5year period. Just >> pretty cool. >> Crazy. You know, if you think about it, Overwater combat, jungle combat, desert combat, and now urban combat in Somalia. >> Yeah. >> I want one more war story cuz again, back to the you could be on the wall in a second. Again, me and Donovan flying. We're we're again, this is a new aircraft, so we're we're developing task condition standards for various things that we do with it. so that there will be something to evaluate people by in The future when the when the pilots come and and

we did various things like you know simulate you just got taken off a C5 you got to put the aircraft back together put all the weapons on load them up and shoot as fast as you can click how long did that take okay let's put a little fudge factor on there margin for error let's just say it's 40 minutes I don't remember what it was well this time we're going to do a hide site and we're going to go which is Essentially you know you fly in at night camo everything up, sleep during the day.

When it gets dark, you take the camo off and then you go fly to hit the target. So, we do this and we're going to go shoot at Fort Knox, which is about a 2-hour flight. So, I'm in the left seat this time. Donovan's in the right. And we got approval to roll in hot. No. Uh, we didn't have to clear the range cuz we Had eyes on the range before we got there, which is unusual. Usually they, you know, range safety is going to want you to do a dry pass, but they let us

live fire right out of the gate. So, we roll in again. There's two DAPs. We're we're about to shoot. I'm flying. I pull the minigun trigger. And these freaking miniguns, the tracers are doing this in front of the aircraft. And I'm like, as soon as I saw it, I let off. I I never even got close to Shooting rockets. And I said, "That's the worst bore sight I've ever seen in my life." Because you have this little device that you you set an aim point like on a hanger door out in front and then you

cuz these these weapons come on and off, right? >> And rocket pods and you and you have to adjust them to where they're going to point at least close to what you're trying to shoot at. It's not an exact science. At least it wasn't then. But This is way out of out of out of range here. And Donovan comes on there again. We're on night vision goggles. He says in his typical deadpan, "Donovan Brryley way. Uh, Mike, we got a problem." And I'm like, "What's up?" And I start to feel something in my eyes. And

he puts his finger light up. So a finger light is just this little green LED light that we have so you can read stuff in the cockpit under your goggles and still, you know, maintain light Discipline. and he puts it up there and there's bullet holes all through his cockpit. So the minigun, the bolt that supposed to keep it from turning left and right fell out on the way up. And when I pulled the trigger, holy >> You would think the gun's going to go this way because of the wind, but the barrel rotation caused

it to go in. if and we have these armored panels on the side of the cockpit and we always put Them forward because you just don't know. You you're gonna have some kind of weapon malfunction. Shit's going to go flying and take you out. So, he had his armor panel forward. I think the gun hit the armor panel and stopped, but it went in enough where bullet holes all through the cockpit, through his windshield. I mean, there's there's probably 10 bullet holes through the windshield. Missed his knee. >> Wow. >> By like 2 in. Holy

>> 2,000 rounds a minute. So, so we land, we check the bird out. We had a medic with us because live fire and we had a medic with us. He's rinsing our eyes out cuz it was gr What I felt in my eyes was shrapnel from the windshield and and dust in the air, you know, just shards of glass and and everything felt okay. I don't think I got any real, you know, shards of glass in my eyes. And uh so I'm thinking, do we leave the bird here Or can we fly it back? And

I'm I'm thinking about what's in the what's in the regulation and there's nothing in the regulation that says you can't have holes in the windshield. So I said, "Fuck it. Let's put some uh duct tape on the windshield over the holes." And all my instruments work fine. We're done shooting, that's for damn sure. And we'll take this bird back. And we flew it back and they repaired it. And we put a better pin in the minigun. Holy man. Wow. Oh god. >> How many How many aircraft are under TF-160 >> aircraft total? >> Yeah. How

many I mean what? No, not total, but how many different models? >> Okay, so you got gun little birds and assault little birds. And then you got assault Blackhawks and armed Blackhawks. And there's 10 armed Blackhawks now. I mean, back then we only had a Couple. And then Shinooks. And the Chinook battalion is and again they reorg so maybe they've changed this. Uh but the quantities don't really matter but then there's a Shinook battalion with Shinooks in a company at least when I was there were part of the like the tier one support. >> Gotcha.

>> Uh and but then we had a battalion in Savannah which had shinooks and Blackhawks also. And we have battalion at Fort Lewis which has shinooks and black oxalls. Lewis is new. It wasn't it wasn't there when I was in the unit but the little birds only exist in first battalion at Fort Campbell. >> Gotcha. Yeah. >> Gotcha. >> Well, Mike, I think we're getting ready to get into Somalia, right? >> More fun. >> Let's take a break before we do that. >> Cool. You know what I love about the old classic holiday movies? There's

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let's start talking about Somalia. >> Okay. I'd like to rewind and tell one more war story. >> Let's do it. >> Because again, it speaks to something you asked about earlier, and that is how close we all were. >> Uh I I tell people I shot myself down Five times. You just heard the story of of the most dramatic where the minigun rounds are going through the cockpit. The others were not quite that exciting, but another one that probably worth sharing. So, we're out at the range at night. We're shooting and again I was an

instructor so I I don't remember if I'm qualifying a guy or doing currency or whatever but we're going to go out two nights in a row. So we shoot go back park the bird button it up come back the Next day we're pre-flighting same aircraft and there's a hole in the engine inlet. So on a Blackhawk up kind of over where the cabin doors are, there's these two inlets cuz it's got two engines that are basically on the upper outside portion of the airframe. And it's got a big opening in the front where the air

gets sucked in and there's a hole, pretty good size hole. So the crew chiefs pull the cowling off And inside laying there in the front end of the engine is a 30 mm round like the projectile not not not the shell casing. And like we're like what the hell? How did that happen? So it's got dirt on it but it's not deformed. So there's no way that that round hit the ground or hit a tank or whatever cuz we had tank hulks out there that we're shooting at >> and and flew up in the air

and then we Flew into it. There's there's just no way it would have been smashed, right? >> But it's got dirt on it. So that's that's kind of weird. But in the end, the conclusion was that we somehow sucked up enough dirt while flying that it got the round dirty. I don't know. So anyway, the commander's pissed, right? He thinks, "Mike, you're shooting too close to the freaking target. If you're if you're flying through your own projectiles, that's less than 200 Meters." Okay. And I'm like, I swear we didn't, you know, and Cliff, God bless

him. He comes up with this theory. I'm like, run with it, brother. You know, you got it. Go to bat for me. and he briefed the leadership on his theory that it was a squib round, which means it doesn't have enough propellant in the jacket to fire it correctly. And what happened was it fired, but it was moving so slowly that It was in the air in front of us. And we flew in and caught up to it. >> Are you kidding me? Do they buy that And I'm like, I mean, when somebody's willing to

go to bath for you with that story. >> Yeah. No kidding. >> Yeah. That's love. And but we still can't explain it. If that wasn't it, I I don't I don't know. I mean, is is somebody down there throwing projectiles Back at us, you know? I mean, this is at the range. We're at training, right? Never mystery never to be solved. But the bottom line is one of my other selfshootdowns is is is written off because of the squib round theory. >> Damn. >> Thank you, Cliff. >> So, now we're getting ready to go to

Somalia. And Somalia happens because the Somali ambush a group of Pakistanis back in June of 1993. You know, the initial the initial invasion is in December of '92 where we're going in basically when I say we, the US military is going in to provide security for the relief operations because the warlords are stealing all the food. >> So, the initial invasion is conventional forces primarily. There's some soft, but not not a lot. Uh Marines involved, amphibious landings, all goes very very well. Uh, as I know it, I've never Spoken to a person who says they

shot fired a round during that initial invasion. The Somali are just backing off. They they they know this is the US military and we can't screw with them. I mean, you think about it. We're right on the heels of Desert Storm. And this is kind of how I explain this from a Somali perspective. And I mean, we kicked the out of Saddam Hussein in 100 hours, you know. And so, the Somali are looking at this as we Can't win this. this is we got to figure out some other way turn it more into an insurgency

which is essentially what they did and the initial phase of this operation is I don't want to say it's a cakewalk never is when you enter into a country like that but it goes really well security's provided relief organizations got protection food's getting to people who need it mission's over right well we have an election back here and we put a Different administration in the White House Bill Clinton And they don't know about foreign policy. I mean, they just don't. They're they're very naive in thinking that, well, you know, we went there to provide security,

but maybe we could help them kind of turn things around and, you know, build build their their economy back and get a government put back in place and all those things that sound really great, but go try freaking doing it. You know, I mean, it's really very very difficult to do, but that's the mission. So, uh, the mission transitions from security only to trying to gain control of the city so that a a provisional government can be stood up into power because right now it's just warlords and waring clans got to rule in their roost.

And in any change scenario like this, the person who's got the most to lose is going to resist the most. I mean, if you're a deed and you have 60% of the Support of the people and the Hobbergetter clan is controlling the majority of Mogadishu, you don't want to see change. You got what you want. So that he is logically most opposed to this change. Well, the tactical commanders, again, I'm not there yet. I don't I don't know anything about any of this decision-m but there is an effort to uh disarm the population because there's

a lot of weapons and a lot of Violence and I guess the theory is if we gather up all these weapons they won't be able to fire at us and they won't be able to fire at each other and that'll be step one toward our achieving our goal. >> Well, there's a UN force of Pakistanis in June. >> How are we going to do that? How? Yeah. >> Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Good freaking luck. It's a city of 800,000 people. I mean, That's why I say they were naive in thinking that this was something

that could be done. It could have been done with decades of effort and hundreds of thousands of troops, but not with the numbers of troops we had on the ground. I mean, initially at our peak involvement, we had 38,000 US troops involved. That's during the initial phase. By the time I personally get there, we have 1,500 left total. in a city of 800,000 people. But it's a coalition force. Now, coalition forces, you know, certain partners are very capable. >> Yeah. >> Australians, Canadians, UK, few others, but some are, you know, >> Yeah. probably the majority.

>> Yeah. You know, it's the brief swell and they got their flag out there and all that, but you don't want to go to war With them. Uh the Pakistanis actually deserve some credit here because they're going to come back into play later. Um but there there's a Pakistani under UN uh command, UN soldiers. I mean they're Pakistanis, but they're wearing UN markings and they're ambushed in the street. And these are the ones who are slaughtered and beheaded by the Somali. And so obviously the UN being ultimately responsible for these the loss of these soldiers

issues a resolution. They're Going to find who's responsible and they put a reward on Adid's hit because they say he's probably the one that was behind this and he was. >> So Adid is starving his people. He's got 60% support. We got a coalition force with roughly a thousand troops. >> A thousand Americans. >> Thousand Americans. >> 1500 Americans. Yeah. Now why is how does he how does he have 60% of okay >> I knew you were going there. So before Adid there was this guy named Siad Bar who was the president and again you

know you could put him in the category of Saddam Hussein right dictator. I don't I don't know for sure. I'm not you know I don't have a PhD on Somalia. All all I can say is I know of him and I know that at least what the Somali told me when I was in captivity, he was bad news. Well, >> you know, was he or wasn't he? I'm not sure. But but Adid led a coup to run him Out of the country. >> Mhm. >> And that's how he became this sort of folk hero and

the Hobbergetter clan uh got to the point where they were, you know, supported by a majority of the population. >> Okay. You know the the small people don't know he's stealing the food. I mean you know there is no internet there is no TV there. The only thing good being broadcast is radio moadishu which He controls. >> So >> this sounds familiar. >> Yeah. Doesn't it? >> Yeah. So >> not any different than any other country? >> Nope. So this is how you know he's basically positioned himself where he is. So when the Pakis are

killed, the UN issues the resolution. Now we start to Spin up and initially Cliff is the flight lead. He goes to brag and they come up with a brilliant plan. They're going to go in. We're not taking any helicopters. We're going to borrow Blackhawks that are already on the ground in Somalia. Shooters are going to come in. We're going to make some quick mods to these aircraft like bolt some fast bars in or something. I don't remember exactly, but not a whole lot. Can't put miniguns cuz That's a big mod to the aircraft. But, you

know, we'll get by with M60s, I think, is what they had at the time. Maybe 240s. I'm not sure. I can't remember. Lowprofile clandestine force. Adid is still making public appearances. >> I got a question. Yep. >> Why would you Why would you not want to bring your own Blackhawks that you train in? >> Signature. >> Is that what is that what it is? It's a signature. >> Yeah. They wanted to just get in low visibility cuz we're different color. We got different systems on board. >> They didn't want anything to stand out. They just

wanted it to be, hey, we've seen this helicopter a thousand times. >> Yep. >> And we don't really need a lot of the fancy we got on our aircraft. I Mean, you know, a basic blackhawk could probably do the job for that mission. I mean, you know, we're navigating to a point in the city and putting the shooters on the ground, you know, and we don't really need a flare. we don't really need, you know, just a lot of the stuff that we had on our aircraft. >> Uh, ideally, we would have it, but, you

know, again, kind of like I'm sure you've heard over and over, the bad guys are inside the wire. I mean, they They're they're working for the contractors. They're emptying your portaotties. They're, you know, they're all around. You don't know who they are, right? So, keeping these black helicopters with all this fancy on it >> under wraps, you know, >> not going to happen. >> Well, it's hard. So, the president gets briefed >> and I the key point here is that Adid is still making public appearances. So, it'd be like Bin Laden, you know, out in

the open with two bodyguards during the day. That's freaking lowhanging fruit. I mean, very easy target. >> Easy. Yeah. Very few places in the world that we can't get that guy. >> And the president's brief. I have no idea why. I went there. What I've read is he was told the chance of success is One in four, 25%. Why? I don't know. I think the success is 95%. Based on what I know about that plan and what was happening with the deed at the time. He doesn't want to be embarrassed. No politician does. So he

says, "We're not doing it." Missed the window of opportunity. Had that mission gone down as planned initially, you never heard my name. I mean, I never go to Somalia. This this thing goes down with two crews and a Handful of shooters and they apprehend the guy and turn him over to the UN and it's game over. But that's not what happens. We're told, "We're not going." Um, and and okay, we're not going. So very we continue on with all our various other things that we're doing and we now 10th Mountain Division launches an attack on

a suspected clan meeting place. Now they they did what they're supposed to do. Overwhelming firepower before they put troops on the ground, go In, clear the building, but everybody's dead. And unfortunately about 80 of the people that are dead are women and children. So now Adid has everything he needs to turn the Somali against us. And I'm not pinning responsibility on the 10th Mountain. I'm just telling you what happened. They they did a good job. I mean, they did the mission the way they were trained to do it. But the fallout of it is Adid

now has information that he can share with his people to convince Them that the Americans are not here to help you. They're here to kill our people and take over our country. It's not exactly what he was saying, but essentially what he's trying to get the Somali to believe and proof of how effective that was. President Bush went to Somalia after well he was about to leave office and the people are in the streets celebrating Viva President Bush waving American flags. This is I think In January of 1993. 10 months later, they're dragging the bodies

of Randy, Gary, and my crew through the freaking streets. Now, you talk about losing the hearts and minds of the people. That's the best example I've ever heard of. I mean, we lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the people. This went from fighting, you know, diehard supporters of a deed to essentially the whole population of the city because he was effectively Convincing them of something that just wasn't true. He had radicalized the entire population >> essentially totally anti- Now we didn't help. I mean we were flying missions every day and every night

and it's a little thing I guess but you know when you're flying 10 freaking helicopters rooftop every day every night. Initially, you know, they're waving at us. Later on they're throwing rocks at us, flipping us off, You know. I mean, you could just tell there was just a change in how they viewed us over the just the time period that we were there. But the ultimate catalyst for things changing on our end is uh hover blows up a Humvey. Four US soldiers. I think it's August 8th is when that happens. They're all killed. So now

you got the 10th Mountain attack. You got a direct attack against US military forces. all killed. They're changing their tactics. They're becoming more hostile. We need a different plan. So, we reassembled at Bragg and now we're going to go with the full meal deal. We're going to go with company rangers from third of the 75th. We're going to go with, you know, two teams of attack helicopters. We're going to go with uh my, you know, almost a full uh deployment package so that we got everything we need to take this on. So You're home this

whole time and all this intel is being passed to you guys and >> well we were sort of back and forth to brag back and forth. We actually when I finally got the deployment order we were in Texas on >> not in Somalia. What I mean home >> not in Somalia we hadn't deployed yet. >> So when that Humvee is blown up we all go back to Bragg. >> So you guys are I'm sorry. So you guys are state side just bouncing around Planning. It's on it's off. It's on. off this whole like how long

is this going on? >> Well, the Pakis are killed in June. The uh 10th Mountain attacks in July and the attack on the Humvey is August 8th. So about a month. >> Okay. Month and month and a little more. And then after the Humvee explodes, we're like, "Oh boy, now this is cuz that was the trigger in Panama like when they when Nora killed those the I don't Know if it was one or two. I think it was one American service person. that sort of put it at another level and so we're thinking all right

now this is probably really going to happen. So we all go back to brag. We're running rehearsals. We had role players. We And it's interesting. I brought actually >> rehearsals for what? >> For the scenarios that we were likely to encounter. >> What were the scenarios? Were was this Is assassinated on a deed? >> We believe this was the Yeah. to capture a deed. But this we believe this was the birth of these now used hundreds of times uh scenarios where we we're gonna apprehend someone in a in a certain uh scenario. So like I'll

give you an example and this is this is my kneeboard from Somalia. I mean this the reason I didn't have it the day I got shot down is the mission developed so fast I never ran back to get it because I didn't have Time. But so that would have been what I carried on every other mission. And it's got all the crews, it's got the frequencies, it's got the the the concepts. And the amazing thing to me is people didn't have computers back then. So we had one guy, we more than have one guy, but

one guy that I remember that was techsavvy enough where he produced this stuff in 1993 when the average person doesn't even own a computer and and we're generating all this stuff. And You know, again, you can handwrite it, but it it sure looks a lot better done that way. uh and we developed these various scenarios and those kneeboard packages show each of those possible scenarios and what we're going to do in case we face A versus B, for example, and it worked like a charm. I mean, it it it was brilliant. Again, I don't know

who came up with it. I don't know if the if the the Delve guys did or you know it Was a collaboration between the two of us but it allowed you to react quickly and which is what you got to do when you're after a person right you can't spend two days planning a mission if you're chasing a person so so we're but we're rehearsing all this so we had people driving vehicles around Fort Bragg you know simulating these various scenarios and I would say we probably flew various versions of the of those profiles I

don't know 20 times before we ever deployed. >> Wow. >> And I uh I had reached a point where I I that's why I didn't run back and get it. I didn't need it anymore. I you know Ray's got his so I I don't need to bring mine if I if it's going to cause me to run back and lose some time. So, um, you we're we're talking about the leadup. So, we finally are told, "Okay, you're deploying." And this is, uh, August 28th, I think. Cuz I I said to you earlier in another conversation,

I left one day before my first son's first birthday. His birthday is August 18th. So, I left on August 17th. And we're doing this BBOP back and forth until we deploy. I think we deployed on the 24th and we were mission ready on August 28th. Now That sounds like a long time, but mission ready was we had all the assets in place and we've conducted a day rehearsal in country and a night rehearsal in country. And the leadership has said, "All right, we're we're 100% ready to roll." And then the thing is broken into phases.

Phase one, well, phase one was pre-eployment and deployment. Phase two is capture a deep. He's all we're going to go after. I think there was two missions in phase two. Took down a target. Supposedly he's where a deed is. He wasn't there in either case. Missions went well. I mean, you know, we still got the element of surprise. They don't know what we're doing. They they can't react fast enough. We're trying to keep time on target to maybe 40 minutes or less. And uh you know, some targets are big. They take longer to clear. Some

are small. You're in and out faster than that. Um But again, all went well. No losses taken. No aircraft damage, nothing. I do have a memorable thing for me, which may not make it above the cutting room floor depending on how interesting this is to the average person, but you know, as you probably saw on the frequency card, we got a lot of frequencies we're monitoring and we have four maybe five nets at the same time in the cockpit. So, when there's a lot going on, we call it a helmet fire. There's I mean you

got to sort through a lot of comms and sometimes you know the crew in the back sometimes will turn it off because they don't want to hear it. Now the guys who really wanted to stay situationally aware, they're the kind of crew chiefs you want because they recognize, you know, my role could become important at any point and I got to know what's going on, right? So they they they don't want it to be quiet. They want to be kept up to speed on all These. So you might hear the execution checklist. You might hear

the, you know, the airtoair net where we're talking to each other. You might hear the ground force net. You might hear the fire net. And and if you're listening to all of them, you got a pretty good picture of what's happening. Well, we're coming into the target. It's the first mission, actually. And it's a night mission. Everybody's blacked out. This place is freaking Dusty. And there's dust clouds everywhere. And I can't see the building that we're going to. I just can't see it. And our guys wanted the this is the level of precision they wanted.

There's a there's a a iron gate around the compound, small compound, and they want to be roped on the path inside the gate so they don't have to breach the gate because they don't know what the gate's made of and they know whether it's locked. And that's precision under night vision goggles. And you know, again, it's a city. You got GPS, but it's not that accurate. You've got to be able to see the target. So I called out on the airet. I said somebody put a laser on the target building and one of the crew

chiefs in the first Blackhawk in which was 61. I think might have been 6'2. Anyway, they're the first two birds in. So they don't they're not dealing with the dust like we are. That crew chief's Got his radio nets up. He hears me and no delay. instantaneously infrared laser right on the target building and he makes this circle on it and that's you know I I tell that story because everybody's got a roll and and that one small act could have been the diff if if this had gone hot it could have been the difference

between my guys being in the right place and able to support or being a liability put in the wrong place or even worse put in somebody else's field Of fire because nobody knows where they are >> and all That matters, right? I mean, it all matters. And soon as I saw that laser swirl on the building, I'm like, "Oh, there it is." Hovered right on in there. Saw the trail, saw the gate, they talked me in, roped them in. Mission accomplished. And you know, it it's just there's something like that that doesn't occur on every

mission, but is the difference between success and Failure when everybody knows their responsibility and their role. everybody's aware and everybody's engaged and and that's just a that's a positive example of that. So anyway, we're we only chased a deed for a couple missions and then we're kind of like, okay, this is an Elvis scenario again. You know, we're we're he's not here. We need to broaden the scope of this thing. So goes up the chain of command. Let's go to phase three. So phase three is to Capture everybody in his infrastructure, which is about 50

people. And now it's a target-rich environment. I mean these guys are everywhere, right? And so the next missions are after all these guys. And we had some success. I mean from a execution perspective is 100% success, but didn't always have something to show for it. I mean the intel was bad. People were misidentified, whatever. But we didn't lose any birds, didn't lose any guys. I Don't even know that anybody got wounded. I think maybe a couple people did, but nothing major. And we're starting to pile up some success here. In the end, we will have

captured 27 people, I think, on the list and turn them over. The most successful mission was mission number five. And we're chasing Osman Otto. He is the number two guy. And if you've seen Blackhawk Down, he's the guy That's smoking the cigar, acting all cocky. He wasn't cocky. Trust me. I mean, when when he got rolled up, he looked like like a guy would look that's just been manhandled by Delta operators and thrown in the back of helicopter. You know, it's like Saddam looked when they pulled him out of the hole. You know, these guys

don't look cocky. They they look humbled like they should. Well, this one proved you were on that. >> Yeah, we were all I mean, we were all on It. Yeah. So, >> can you describe it? >> Yeah. So, initially we're told Well, we first of all, we went after Otto on mission number four. No. Five. He had a piece of property called Otto's Garage. I mean, to think this is the richest guy in Somalia means he ain't all that rich, but I a junkyard. Daytime mission. We're rolling in and RPGs are going off around us.

Okay. First time we've seen that. A threat, but not a huge threat because they're air bursting and they're not really all that close. They're not supposed to air burst, but they are. So, something's going on here. But, let's just call an alternate pickup zone. So, we infilled right into the auto's garage and our guys cleared it, took it down, captured eight of his people that work for him. He was there. The intel was good. And you can see it on video as we're coming in. Guy, these guys are Smart. They're not stupid. He didn't run.

He looked up, saw the hilos, and says, "Uh, I'll be back in a bit." And just casually walked out of the compound down an alleyway. I mean, you can see it. And you know, we found out later that that was him, but his guys are left there. And we captured them. And then, like I said, we did an alternate pickup zone, which means you go in to extract from another location cuz you're thinking if they were shooting RPGs on The way in, they're probably going to shoot a lot more if we go back in there.

So, we pick up from an alternate location. The ground force just has to maneuver on the ground to the new pickup zone. Didn't take any fire at all. Successful execution. Just missed a really, really lucrative target by seconds. Then we get a hit on him again a couple days later. He's in a meeting place downtown. All right, spool up, ready to Rock. We launch. Oh he's in a vehicle. Well, no problem. All we got to do is switch contingencies. And that's the beauty of all that planning and all that rehearsal. We know exactly what to

do now. We just got to change, you know, how we act in the terminal area with the helicopters. But everybody knows. All you got to do is tell the guys on board. Everybody on the flight crews know this is where we're going now that it's a convoy. As I understand it, the shooters shot so accurately. The belief is he's in the second vehicle. So they hit round in the engine block, round in the driver, but didn't hit the primary target. When his vehicle's disabled, he jumps out, runs into a building. So now we don't have

the assault force on the ground yet. This thing is switched back to what we call a strong point. No problem. Just Communicate to the guys. They know. We know where we're going to land. We didn't put my guys on the ground. We were we we we we closed on the target, but I'm 99% sure we did not put our guys on the ground. We just basically pulled off and and held. And I think, you know, it's been 30 freaking years. But, uh, either way, the Delta guys go in, they're clearing the building, they find him

buried under a bunch of trash. Pull him out. Photo. Bingo. Execution checklist. Code word goes out. They got the we got the primary target. Man, that feels good when you're when you're on an OP like that and you know, it all comes together and you know how important this guy is to the mission. And then I I for some reason ended up flying back with Cliff. He ended up on Cliff's bird and we landed together and that's what I say. He sure didn't look cocky. You know, these freaking operators are taking him Out of the

back of the aircraft and and we're like, "Yeah, buddy. your your your your day just turned dramatically from being the richest dude in Somalia to the uh the richest dude in prison. And you know, obviously he got interrogated. They moved him to some holding facility somewhere. And you know, the experts said if we' have stopped right there, Adid eventually would have lost all his ability to influence because he didn't Have any money and it all would have happened. You know, it would have happened on its own, right? >> Well, that wasn't our mission. Our mission

was to keep going after him and his people. >> So, >> who are the experts? >> Who are the experts? Intel analysts, you know, and and I'm not criticizing intel people. It's a hard job. I mean, you try to predict the future, right? It's like >> it's never going to be 100% right. It's a matter of how close to right can you be. >> Is this coming out >> immediately or is this all in retrospect? >> All retrospect. plus everybody's 2020 vision in in hindsight, right? >> Yeah. >> So, we we rekit. We're ready to

go. You know, let's let's The mission continues. So, there was a mission six. I'm trying To think of what mission six was. I can't remember. I ended up on a mission to go extract some three-letter agency guys, I think. Nobody told me who they were, but they got compromised and they p they picked me as lead and then another bird, night vision goggles. We had to fly to a location in the city. We landed. They were all positioned there with some of their gear, loaded up on the birds. We brought them back. I don't know

why we didn't do it with ground Vehicles, honestly, but uh I mean, it was kind of cool to be to be part of that. I remember my chock 2 speaks fondly of this story because he says, you know, I mean, obviously thinks a lot of me and I appreciate that, but he he said, uh, you know, Mike made this great call on the way. He said, you know, normally we go in as a flight of two, but we didn't know. Mike didn't know if it was dusty. So he said, "Let me land alone and see

what it looks like and Then you come in after me >> because, you know, I mean, if we went in there and we both browned out." >> Yeah. >> So anyway, I land, it wasn't that bad. It was a soccer field or something. It was actually pretty good. And then he came in immediately and I didn't really get a reaction from the guys loading my bird, but he said those guys were like, "Yes, you know, thank you." I don't know what risk they were, but anyway, we got Him on board, brought him back to airfield,

never saw him again. And so I had actually had a bonus mission somewhere in the middle of all that. Then then mission seven of the real, you know, direct action missions happens on October 3rd. And uh you know we let me back up. A few days prior there was a Blackhawk from the it had 1001st Airborne pilots on board, but I think the bird was Actually an asset from 10th Mountain. I'm not I'm not sure if that's all right. I know for sure the pilots were 101st Airborne. They're flying around at night. They are uh

blacked out. They're on the move. There's not much else you can do in a helicopter to prevent yourself from being shot down. and they get hit by an RPG. Goes up through the belly of the bird, explodes in the back, everybody in the back's killed instantly. The Explosion, the two pilots survive, birds on fire, they crash land in the city. It's uh Dale uh Shrader and Perry Alman are their names. And I I think it's Dale that pulls Perry out. I don't I don't know for sure, but one helps get the other one out. Everybody

in the back's a lost cause. The aircraft's on fire. They get in an alleyway and you know, again, I I'm secondhand telling this story, but bottom line is they they're engaging the Somali. There's a reaction force, but it's a ground reaction force back at the airfield. So, it's going to be a few minutes before it gets to the crash site. Burning Blackhawks tend to attract a lot of attention in the middle of a city of 800,000 people. So, you know, they're fighting, they're shooting, they're evading. And again, don't hold me accountable here. I only know

what I've been told. There's a Pakistani, I believe, with an armed personnel carrier nearby that says, "American boy, American boy." And I think it's Dale that makes a decision. I mean, we can't hold these guys off. They're they're going to overrun us. I got to trust this voice. So he goes to the voice, turns out to be a friendly Pakistan. I don't know if it's an APC or some kind of ground vehicle. Gets him out of there, gets him to safety. They both recovered. They both stayed in the army. They both Kept flying. Uh, you

know, takes a look and it keeps on ticking kind of thing. Uh, what it meant to us was it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. You know, I'm I mean, again, we're going into all parts of the city, day, night, lots of aircraft stationary. You know, when you're putting operators on the target, if you're fast roping, you're hovering up in the air. I mean, you're you're you could be engaged by anybody within range. >> Yeah. Absolutely. And we recognize that. And normally with the assets we had on on hand, we would

if we lost a bird, we have a search and rescue helicopter dedicated to recovering the crew, getting, you know, security and medics on the site as soon as you can. But they're gonna have to fast rope, too. So, if you do that, this guy just got shot down and you put another one, right? What do you think's gonna happen to that bird? Same freaking thing, Right? Well, I I I wish I could take credit for it. I can't I don't know whose idea it was, but somebody raised the flag and said, "That's a dumbass contingency.

We need another solution." And we concluded, we general term, not me, that we needed a tank because a tank could have gone from the airfield to any crash site in the city within 5 minutes, maybe 10. Request goes all the way up to chain of command, gets to sect defaf, Who says no. Why? Not because we don't have tanks all over the world. I've talked to so many tankers since then because they were put on standby. Somehow they knew that there was a potential they were going to be called upon to go and they were

every single one I've spoken to said we couldn't freaking wait. I mean we wanted we wanted to go. We we would have absolutely been able to go through those streets. We would have got to you guys. We were ready to rock and roll. And SE sect defev says no. And it's for political reasons. We had been we we took the forces out. We went from 38,000 to500. That appeases the American people who don't want to be in a conflict. We took all the armor out. We took all the AC-130s out. And I've been argued by

other people within our community that the AC-130s wouldn't have made a difference. Sorry, Fellas. You're freaking wrong. they would have made a difference. Okay? Because I was in captivity when they came back and the Somali were scared to death of them. And by the way, that's kind of what you want. You want your enemy to be scared to death of the assets that you have. >> So anyway, we asked >> what was the political reason. Do you know? >> Well, because we had been pulling Out and Aspen's like, "We're we're telling the American people, we're

we're cleaning this up. We're about to finish. We're not sending back in." That was his rationale. And there's a letter that just got released within the last two years from one of the generals on the ground in Somalia to the leadership in Washington saying we don't have control of the situation. Something bad's going to happen and we need more assets or we need to say we're done. I Mean, which you know, if the if the priority wasn't high enough to give us more assets, then get us the hell out, you know? I mean, you can't

have it both ways. You can't you can't give us a mission and then not give us the we need to be successful in that mission. So, there's three things and and I want to make sure I don't forget about this cuz to me, this is what motivates me to keep talking about this thing. There are three actually there's four things that We got screwed over on. I haven't mentioned this yet, but we asked for a aircraft carrier. Why do we want a carrier? Two reasons. force protection. If you're at sea, the Somali have nothing to

touch us. Nothing. I told you earlier Matt Ryerson would still be alive if one of these decisions had been made differently. That's the decision. If Matt's on a carrier, that mortar never never comes anywhere close To him. But he dies after October 3rd standing in the compound because we're right there. The freaking bad guys are less than a 100 yards from us because we're told no for the carrier. We got to live on the airfield. AC-130 firepower. There's no such thing as too much firepower. I mean, that's a fundamental truth. Tanks. Using another helicopter for

search and rescue in an urban environment in the Daytime is a bad idea. We wanted a tank. We got told no. And the last one, I don't really understand the technology, but it's it's counter battery fire. Basically, you can you can calculate the projectile that's inbound, calculate its location, and more effectively place counter fire on that. We asked for that, too, cuz they've been motoring us almost every day, the whole time. And, you know, we're sandbagging the aircraft. We're moving around, you know, but We're living in a freaking >> It's crazy. >> It is crazy.

How many times throughout history are politicians and bureaucrats have abandoned commandos and left them to die. It is asinine. >> It it's very troubling and yet we we keep going to do it and we always will and God bless those who still serve and still do it but man it pisses you off. There's there's a quote. >> There's ne there is never ever any accountability for this You're right. Well, >> no accountability for the politicians in this country. There never has been and there probably never will be. >> Well, it will come full circle unless

Aspen. Um, and you know, I mean, he's another human being. And I don't I don't wish wish wish him ill, but he he ends up dying. And and people that know him, And we're getting ahead here, but I I'll go ahead and finish this thought. They flew me down to brag for for the Delta memorial. And And you've been there. You you've you've been there when the boots and the weapon and the helmet and the goggles are there representing the fallen and the families are there and we're all there unless Aspen walks in. I don't

think he was Well, I know he Wasn't prepared. I I mean, I don't think he'd ever seen any light in his life. I don't think he ever saw this as anything but a chess match and a political chess match. And when he you could see it. I mean you could see the look on his face when he walked in that room and he realized we this up. I mean as civilian >> was less as >> he was a secaf and Why the hell Clinton picked him as a sack defaf is beyond me. He had a

reputation as being anti-military. I think again I'm not a PhD on every politician that's ever worked in the administration but I'm pretty sure that's right. But >> these people don't give a about their slot. >> They just want the power. I saw it in this last administration. These people are so hungry for power. >> They don't give a where they get placed. They just want in the admin. They just want in the administr. You give them a broom. They would love it. >> I agree. >> They know they know they're not the best place. It's

disgust. This it's another discussion. I want to pollute the interview. It's garbage. No, I I then and you should be you should be upset. We should all be upset that that This is how it works. But I will say that I mean visibly you could see something some switch flipped in him. And there are friends of his that said and I don't know if it's true, but I've I've read this that he I mean physically it just he died. I mean not long after I don't remember maybe it was years, but it was he was

supposedly never the same. But anyway, regardless. >> Die to what? Uh, I don't know, natural causes. I'm not sure. I mean, he didn't Like take his own life, but uh, he they just don't get it. I mean, to your point, >> no sympathy for these people. >> Well, to your point, he he just didn't get it. He didn't he didn't understand that this is real. These are people with their lives on the line and your responsibility as civilian leadership is to be make them give them everything they need to be successful. That's it. That's the

only job you have. Hey, you know who else was never the same? >> Them. >> Yeah. Everybody on the ground who was doing the job. I don't give a if that guy was ever the same. him. you. >> Yeah. piece of >> Sorry. So All those things we asked for, none of them we got. So people say, "Well, why'd you go?" Because that's our freaking mission. That's why we went, you know, when we were in Desert Storm, there was a crew who didn't want to go north of the border because they didn't feel like they

had the right mission equipment on the aircraft and they were told, "Okay, pack your bags. You're going home." And two more Guys came in and they flew the mission and nothing happened. So, uh, you know, again, unless it's unlawful, you've swore an oath to do it. And and you want to do it. That's why you're in the freaking unit, right? If you didn't want to do it, you wouldn't be there. And I wanted to go. And on that day, as we looked at this thing, again, I'm a flight lead here. So, I'm in this op

center with the leadership, and we're Looking at this thing, and we all knew the risks. I mean, there were four risks on this one. Daytime don't have our techn technology advantage. We've done it six times. This is number seven. And they're changing their tactics with each evolution. They now understand what we're doing pretty much as well as we do in terms of general concept. It's in the worst part of the city. We're going into Bakara Market. This is where all the bad guys are. I mean, we're in, you know, Into the lion's den. And then

you can't land the Blackhawks. So that complicates extraction. Fast roping. I mean, we're exposed a little bit more, but we can do it pretty quick getting them in. But the only option to get them out is rooftop. And that's a bad idea. I mean, if they've been on a target 40 minutes and you come in with a Blackhawk and you're sitting on the roof long enough to load, you know, for me, I had 16 Rangers. I I'm I'm exposed for way too long. That's a That's a bad idea. So we were going to extract by

ground and that's why the convoy's out there. The the mechanism to get everybody off the target is the convoy. All good decisions. And people said, you know, have asked me over the years, were you comfortable? no, I'm not comfortable. I mean, you this is, you know, that this is each time the threat ratchets up and but I Was comfortable enough. I mean, I wasn't to the point where it's like, man, we shouldn't be doing this. No, that wasn't how I felt. I felt like, you know, we got to get in, got to get out quick.

We got to do our job and, you know, we'll talk about it when it's over. Well, that ain't how it goes. So, in the infill, uh, again, it's like 3:30 in the afternoon. Uh, we're going to put my guys on the target. So, my guys are supposed to put a perimeter in. I'm Leading the ranger element. So, the Delta guys are on the little birds and and the two lead Blackhawks. And then I've got another element behind it's going to come in right behind them and seal it off cuz you don't want reinforcements coming in

and you don't want leakers going out. Well, if you look at the video, it looks like we're crawling. Well, the reason we're crawling is on the initial infill, it's so dusty that a little bird does a Go around. And if a little bird's got to do a go around, you know it's dusty because they don't generate nearly as much dust as we do. And now I'm I can't go around because if I go around it's like you know when you're flying commercially and ATC tells the aircraft you know hold that's a I mean you know

it just takes too much time to make a loop. So we just deling my flight off cuz I got to let that little bird come around get back in get his guys off and Come out. And until I see him break the dust cloud I can't close on the same locations. So, we're we're flying pretty slow at this point, but we're trying to get in right on his tail. Doesn't matter other than it's we're a little bit more vulnerable cuz we're flying fairly slowly, but they didn't get any shots off at us at that point

that I know of. Anyway, we get in our box formation. Everybody's roping in. It was super dusty. The only thing that I could see Was a telephone pole out my chin bubble. And that's how I'm maintaining my position. I'm flying again on this one. You know, I keep talking about me flying. Ray and I, who is my co-pilot, we were rotating missions. He would fly one, I would fly one. And this just happened to be the day that I was flying. And so, we get all our guys on the ground, we come out, the whole

flight comes out, we go north of the city, and Now I got them up there and we're holding. We're essentially done because we're going to Xfill by ground. And we we reached the point in the mission where we're going to uh consolidate, you know, count heads, get everybody on ground vehicles, and get out of there when all hell breaks loose. And 61, Cliff Walcott and Donovan Bryley, the guys I've been talking about for the last two hours, they're in the first bird, uh, and they get shot down and They're killed instantly. The aircraft, as far

as I know, came down, hit a wall, and then rotated and basically crushed the cockpit. And miraculously, guys in the back, I mean, not hurt bad. Dan Bush, I I don't think was hurt at all. I think he gets shot later. Uh, not 100% sure, but uh for I mean, it's on video. One of the guys comes out and sets up security to the tail of the aircraft. The crew chief survive. One of them's not really hurt hardly at all. I don't know how because if you look at that crash, I mean, there's just there's

no survivable space. I don't know how in the world they didn't all get killed. But anyway, they didn't. So now the commander's got target in contact, convoy in in contact, crash site in contact, and we don't have the assets to handle one of these. And now we got three. So best idea they can come up with is consolidate on the crash site because They can't get Cliff and Donovan out. They obviously need to provide security for the guys that are still alive. So the idea is get everybody to close on the crash site. We'll set

up security, get the bodies out, load up on the vehicles, and get the hell out of here. Meanwhile, I'm still holding. And in my mind, Donovan and Donovan and Cliff are not dead. I mean, I I'm like, "Okay, they got hit by an RPG. They got it on the ground. we'll all, you know, yak About it later and tell war stories later and all that other And then Carl Meyer, who's a flight lead of the Little Bird Assault Force, the the MH6s that put the guys on the ground right around the building. You can see

it in the video. They they make it like an L-shaped landing right around the target building. Gets on the radio and says, "Hey, I can land in the street. My aircraft's small enough. Why don't you let me land near the crash site and We'll get a couple of the operators that are most gravely wounded on board. Now, he doesn't have crew chiefs. He just got two pilots. Freaking brilliant idea. What you know why we never really talked too much about that as a contingency before? I have no idea. But commander says do it. So Carl

and Keith Jones land. Now again, tremendous respect for Carl. He recently passed. Tremendous loss for the whole aviation community. This just freaking thinking on your Feet. If I was landing that bird, I would land at an intersection. But Carl is smart enough to realize if I land at the intersection, which gives me the most room, I got threats coming from four directions. >> Four four. Yeah. Four fields of fire toward you. >> I'm not sure I would have thought of that, but he did. Well, Blackhawk wouldn't have fit anyway, but anyway. So, he goes beyond

the intersection, Lands, Keith jumps out. Carl's the one that's talked about firing his MP5 down the alleyway as he's holding the controls with his knees and, you know, RPGs are exploding on the wall. I mean, I thought he was borderline melon, my personal opinion. Uh, but Keith jumps out and goes and gets one of the most gravely wounded Delta operators. And then I think they convinced Dan Bush to get on that aircraft as well. I think Dan ultimately doesn't make it. Uh it May not have been Dan, but anyway, they end up with I think

two guys, neither of which make it, I don't think. And they get them to medical uh treatment. You know, it would have been hours otherwise a day actually otherwise had they not done that. In the meantime, the commander says, "Send the search and rescue bird in." Remember the bad idea we just talked about? >> But it's all he's got. I mean, there's nothing else he can do. >> So, they go in, they're roping their security and medical team on near the crash site, and they get nailed by an RPG. The American Revolution didn't just happen.

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It's a It's a They call it a titanium spar. It's shaped like a backwards D. I guess if you look at it the right way, it's shaped like a frontwards D, but either way, and the Rest is just aluminum. Well, it looks like the the whole spar is compromised, but somehow that blade held on. There's a hole in the fuselage. I always thought they held their position. Dan Gelat, good friend of mine, says no, they didn't. They They started to take off. Still got guys on the ropes. The crew chief said, "Oh, oh, oh, we

got guys on the ropes." They went back down, got them on the ground, cut the ropes, went back to the airfield. That crew actually jumps in a spare helicopter and it there's a few things that has to happen first that needed a test flight or something because they just changed an engine. I don't remember. And then they come back out. They end up flying 17 hours because they're the search and rescue bird. So they're they're flying all night. And now the commander says to me, "Hey, I want you to replace 61 over the target." Hell

yeah. you know, but we don't have Snipers on board. I mean, all we got is miniguns. So, we go in and we join the orbit. This was a bad idea. I mean, you know, somebody should have realized before this happened that that just didn't make sense in the daytime. You're giving the advantage to the bad guy. I mean, you know, I got a 57 whatever foot long helicopter that they can shoot at. Meanwhile, I'm trying to, you know, my guys are trying To hit a two foot wide target that has cover, and we do not.

So, all they got to do is wait for us to fly by, which is what they did, and then come out of the doorway and shoot the RPG at us. And I mean, we can't shoot. I I I told the crew chief, I said, "I'm arming you up, but I mean, we got friendlies all over the place here. They're they've gone from the target to the crash site. We don't know where they are. We got to hold until we figure out where All the friendlies are and then once we're comfortable, then we can start engaging

targets. So, they never fired around. I mean, we we made it maybe around a target three times. And I'm doing I'm again, I'm flying. I'm trying to do everything I can. I am Was it a right-hand turn? No, I'm in the right seat. So, I'm in a We're in a lefthand turn and we're we're in a bank. So, I'm actually looking through The cockpit to the open door on the other side, trying to figure out what the hell's happening as I'm making this orbit, trying to change my altitude, trying to speed up, slow down to

make it hard for us to hit because we know they're going to shoot at us. And, you know, guy steps out with an RPG. Never saw him. Never saw RPG coming. And of course, you know, they hadn't shot enough at helicopters to realize how much they needed to lead us. That's why Cliff gets hit in the tail and that's why we get hit in the tail. >> And I'm sure they were shooting at the main body of the aircraft and just because you know they don't know enough to lead it hits the tail which in

the end >> is worse damage than if they'd hit you know the main part of the fuselage because if you lose a tail rotor on a Blackhawk at slow speed you are at low altitude and that's the condition We were in. So it hits I tell people uh it feels like a speed bump going way too fast in a parking lot. I mean if you hit a speed bump 40 m an hour that's what it felt like. It jolted the fuselage. But I never saw it. So I don't know where we're hit. I roll the

aircraft level looking at everything. Everything looks okay. Controls are all working fine. And the command air mission commander calls on the radio and says, "Uh, you better put it on the ground." I'm like, "There's a freaking firefight going on down here. The airfield's right there. I mean, I can see it." No, I'm going for the airfield and that's my prerogative. I'm the I'm the pilot in command of the aircraft. I mean, at that point, I am officially in charge of what we're doing. And it didn't matter if the president himself called me. I I have

the authority to do what I think is right. So, We're we start flying and then I start to hear this whining and it builds up very rapidly. And what had happened was the the RPG hit the bottom of the it's a transmission. We call it a gearbox underneath the tail rotor that connects to the tail rotor. It blew part of it off and now it's got no oil. So, it's just gears that are probably damaged turning at a super high rate of speed. and they just disintegrated. I mean, that was the whining that I heard.

And The guy that was behind us, I believe what he said was, "It looked like your tail rotor turned into vapor." I mean, he said, "It just completely disintegrated." And when that happened, we're still fairly slow. And that's the death sentence because if you lose your tail rotor and you're going fast, the the air flow over the fuselage is going to keep that tail from kicking around. The wind is going to basically push it like a Weather vein. But if you're slow, there's not enough push from that wind to keep the torque of the engine

from spinning you around. So we start to spin. And initially, I mean, I've been flying these things for years. I got a fair amount of flight time. I felt like they were part of me. I'm looking at my feet like, am I doing the right thing here? Because it's the pedals that control this this uh left right movement basically when you're at Low slow air speed. And I'm like having to convince myself, no, you're doing the right thing. The aircraft's not responding correctly. And Ray and I reached the conclusion instantaneously, we've lost the tail. And

now we're in a flat spin. And I know it's maybe getting into too much weeds here, but >> No, no, you're not. What what happens is center of gravity is a huge issue with helicopters and it's called the the Moment of the of the weight. So if you think about something balancing the further away from that balance point, it takes less force to move. So the tail is the furthest from the center of gravity of anything. So losing that weight, losing the gearbox and the tail itself now makes that tail super light, which causes the

tail to want to go up. Without changing anything else, the tail now is suddenly going to want to go up. Well, that's what happened. So the Tail's going up, so I del. What I'm actually trying to do is level the aircraft, but it's in fact deling decelerating the aircraft, which then causes the whale tail on a Blackhawk, as people might refer to it, it's called a stabilator. It's an air foil on the back right below the tail rudder that as you slow down, it comes down. And what that's designed to do when they first designed

the aircraft, when you're decelerating to land, if you Didn't have the stabilator back there, your nose would get too high and you'd have a hard time seeing where you're landing. So they put that stabil on there to basically give you a lift on the tail. So that's making it even worse. So now the stair's going down, the tail's coming up, and I got to pull back even more to and which is the opposite of what I'd like to be able to do, but I can't dive because I'm only at 70 ft. So we're in this

impossible Scenario where we're likeoo and all I could see is brown earth and blue sky, just the line. Everything else is a complete blur. And I said to Ray, I guess we better pull him off. And he's already going. I mean, he knows he and the reason he has to do it is the power control levers on a Blackhawk are up overhead. They control the engines. And the engines are what's creating this torque that's spinning the aircraft. It's not a great thing to not have Engines, but if you can cut the power to the engines,

at least the spin will stop, but then you're going to fall from the sky. So he goes for him, but we were spinning so violently and we talked about this actually on the ground. We're both instructors, so why, you know, why the hell would that be what you talk about on the ground? Because that's just what you do. He said to me he couldn't hold his arms Up. That's how fast we're spinning. The centrifugal force is driving his his whole upper body to spin away from the axis of rotation. So he gets one to idle

and gets one about halfway off. So when when we hit the ground, we're still spinning, but somehow pure luck, amazing skill, pick your number, we crash on the wheels. And that's the only reason I'm still That's the only reason any of us survived. If you if you crash on the side upside down, we're all dead For sure. But we crashed on the wheels, yet we're still spinning. So there was some torque left in the airframe. It ripped the right landing gear off. I remember laying there on the ground looking back at it like, "Holy shit."

I mean, I didn't know there was enough force in the world to rip that off. I mean, this gigantic metal attaching point that the upper portion of the strut on a landing gear, the front landing gear on a blackout, there's a Picture of one right there, you know, has. And it's completely ripped off. I mean just and you know when we hit my seat which has shock absorbers in it you know which helped but it had enough vertical impact to crush my my seat and everything underneath it and I'm sitting in a hole basically cuz

my seat is completely collapsed. My right femur is snapped into two on the edge of the seat. The only explanation I have for that is I had my M9 in a low slung Halter holster right there. So, it added some weight to my leg. I I can't think of any other reason why my right femur would have broken off cuz it wasn't any bruising like the cyclic didn't hit my leg. I don't know. I mean, you can't explain everything in a crash. And my vertebrae were crushed. one, not the not the discs, not the squishy

things, the bones themselves. One one crushed 30%. And because of the spin, they're crushed In a in a doors stop-l like shape. So, if you saw an X-ray on my back, which I have, I mean, I don't know how I can do what I can do. I I really don't. They're they're disfigured and crushed, and I have what's called a kyphosis in my back. It turns 32 degrees at one point and then 13 degrees forward at another because when we hit, we're spinning. So, I go forward and sideways with enough force to smash the bones.

>> And I mean, that's what hurt. I mean, when you have a femur fracture and you can't feel it, not because your nerves are severed, but because your back hurts so freaking bad, you can't feel it. That's freaking being in pain. And it it hurt. It's I mean, I can't even describe it. I can't I can't I I can't even relate to it anymore because it's been 30 years, you know. But I regain consciousness and you know it takes a second to figure out, right? Like where am I? What the hell happened? Don't remember hitting

the ground. Push some metal out of the front windshield. And we think that's what Randy Sugarart and Gary Gordon saw. We think they saw either me moving or Ray Frank struggling to get out of the aircraft. And that's when they got on the radio and said, "Hey, we got survivors. Let us go in." And initially, and I think this probably bubbles up to General Garrison. I'm not sure 100%. I never asked him if it it was him or Colonel Harold, Gary Herald, who who made the call, but they said no. There's no way. >> Why

didn't you ask him? >> I'm I'm off calms. My My >> I didn't know if you meant that you saw him later on. >> Oh, why didn't I ask uh you know, I don't know. Does it Does it Does it matter at this Point? Do you want to put him in an uncomfortable situation? I can I can explain why I think they made their call from my perspective. It's triage. I mean, you got Now you got four fights. You had three. Now you got four and the only operators left on a bird are Randy and

Gary. Do you want to put them at an isolated crash site where they're surrounded or do you want to use them over here where the bulk of your force is? It's a command decision. I'm never Going to second guess it. Would I have made the same one? I can't say. But that's my explanation for why they made that decision. They didn't think it was possible to save us. And they were right if you think about it. I mean, they were right. But Gary and Randy don't take the answer. Don't take no for an answer. They

they continue to orbit. In the meantime, you know, Ray's getting out of the aircraft. He had a lower leg fracture and a back Injury, but not as incapacitated as I was. I mean, with a femur fracture and a crushed spine, >> you're not going anywhere. >> You're not going anywhere. I mean, it's hard to get out of a freaking Blackhawk healthy. you know, you got to step over the controls and and everything else. So, I just decided I'm going to fight it out from the cockpit and uh but Ray gets himself out uh and we

never said another word. We talked about the spinning and What we did in the power control levers and and that was it. I mean, the last time I saw him, he was standing by the cockpit. He had his MP5 and he's getting ready to go do his thing. I did some stuff that I still don't understand completely. I mean, obviously took my helmet off. It's a flight helmet. It's not a a a Kevlar or anything. And then I had my wedding band on my watch band and I took those off and I set it on

the center console. Can't explain it. No idea why I did that. And then again, I settled on the fact that I'm going to do what I can from the cockpit here. And right about that time, Randy and Gary show up. Now what happened that I am you know oblivious to is they kept orbiting and they kept seeing the movement and they insisted and as I understand it on the third request they were speaking directly to either Colonel Harold or or General Garrison and said look if you Don't let us in they're closing in and we're

going to lose them all and I think it's General Garrison I think he said you know what you're asking me and they said yes we understand. And he said, "Put them in." And so, uh, Jim Yakone and Mike Cafina, who are flying this aircraft, Super 62, put them in. And they are put in behind me. So, I don't see the aircraft and I don't hear them until all of a sudden they're right there. And I'm like, "Holy how did you get here?" You know, like this is unbelievable. I I knew Gary, not well, not a

personal friend, but I I he'd been on my bird. I I I recognized him and I'm like, "Damn, freaking rescue force. God bless you." You know, but we didn't talk. This is just happening in my head. And they lifted me up, set me on the ground. How you lift a guy, you know, I probably weighed 185 at the time with a broken femur and a broken Back and not further injure him is beyond me in a in the middle of a firefight. But they did. I mean, I don't remember really feeling any more pain at

all or anything bad happening to my leg or anything. I told him, you know, my my my leg's broken. I knew it was broken at that point. And I said, you know, and the movie has me saying my back's kind of weird, I think. I said, you know, something wrong with my back. if you know. But anyway, they put put me on a On sitting with my back against what I think was a survival kit, which is a a big box of that's in the back of the aircraft and gave me my MP5. And then

they go around the other side. So, I'm on the right side of the aircraft. Bill Cleveland is behind me. He's hurt bad. I mean, he's he's moaning. I mean, he's probably dying. Uh Tommy probably same way, but I couldn't hear him. I think Tommy actually got hit by the minigun in his Chest. It's on a pintle mount. And again, the spin and the crash was so violent that that gun smashed right into his chest. And I think, you know, pro that's probably what killed him. Uh not sure 100%. But um and I'm taking shots here,

taking shots there, but my gun, my my MP5 keeps jamming. Like what the hell? Clear around. Get another round in there. Clear around. Fire. jams again, clear around. I mean, now over the years, and I figured it's probably damaged because it was sitting on the magazine vertically and you know that vertical impact, it's not designed to take that kind of force. So, the magazine was probably bent and or or even maybe the rounds themselves were damaged. I'm not sure. But either way, I mean, it was shooting, but it was shooting one, maybe two, and then

I'd have to clear a jam and I got rounds laying all over me. And anyway, I end up Winchestering the Thing. And >> are you hitting? >> I I think I was I think I hit a couple guys, but I mean, it's it's hard to shoot sitting like that, period. And you know, that's not a long-range weapon. It's almost a pistol with a long barrel. You know, >> they didn't come back, which is the desired effect. So, you know, to me it was effective fire. It did. It did. I was trying to hit him. I

just don't know If I did. >> In the meantime, >> how long were you in the helicopter? Not long >> before they showed up. >> Not long. I mean, in my mind, less than five minutes. >> What was the conversation like with you and your co-pilot when he exited the >> simply? We talked about the power controls and that was it. >> That's it. What? Why did he exit? Where Was he going? >> I think he was going to try to take cover somewhere behind a tree or something. >> You guys didn't discuss it. >>

Nope. >> Nope. >> When did you notice When did you notice the Somali closing in on the helicopter? >> Not yet. I hadn't seen any Somali yet. That's one thing the movie misrepresents. In the movie, they're Showing me like killing half a Mogadishu from the cockpit. Never fired a round from the cockpit. I mean, I fired plenty of rounds from the ground, but not from the cockpit. And >> so when they showed up, no, nobody was they weren't closing in. >> Not yet. >> At least I hadwards. Not long afterwards. >> Not long. I mean,

almost immediately. >> Seconds. >> Yeah. Yep. And uh Gary goes down. >> You saw it. >> No, I heard it. Gary, for whatever, you know what? What is it that you remember about people? You know, do do people remember how you look, how you talk, how you posture yourself? I I can't explain it, but I remembered his voice because when when he had flown on my bird, you know, we did a pre-brief and he asked some questions or whatever, and I just Remembered his voice. To me, there was something unique about it. and and I

heard him say, you know, damn, I'm hit or something like that. It wasn't anything desperate. It wasn't, you know, I just thought he just took a round. Honestly, as I understand it, if it wasn't that round, it was a round soon after that just hit a gap in the body armor and became a bor mortal woman. Randy comes around. >> How long? How long? >> Not long. man. >> Not long. So Randy comes around. I mean they they've been shooting the hell out of Somali though. I mean it was like being at the range. I

mean it the Somali say 27 Somali were killed at crash site 2 and none of them by the aircraft. I mean all gunfire. So that gives you some perspective when there's at most four of Us probably only three of us shooting and I would say 99.9% of that is Gary and Randy. >> So you don't even know if you're hitting. >> Right. Right. Not not 100% sure. Uh, you know, I mean, I would see a head pop up. >> Yeah. >> And shoot at it. There was there's some video of this corrugated tin wall, which

was to my right, and I hear I could hear movement behind there, and I'm just Shooting through the wall. I mean, at this point, it's freaking survival, right? And, you know, if it's an American, they're going to call out something, you know? Uh, so I'm just shooting through the wall to get these people to stay away at some point. And I had forgotten about this, but now that I was reminded, what I think was a hand grenade got thrown in here and I just heard it hit the ground and I'm freaking out like, "Holy there's

a freak." And I remember swinging my weapon around because I couldn't see it and I'm I'm hoping to just hit it, you know, and bang, it goes off. Nothing hit me. But again, just adds to the man, you know, this is this is just off the chart, right? So Randy comes back asking, "Where's the crew chief's weapons?" And I'm like, "Oh shit." You know, I went from feeling pretty good about this to man, we are screwed. And I told them where they were, you know, again, this Is the this importance of SOPs and standard operating

procedures, uh, you know, doing things the way they're supposed to be done. crew chiefs had their weapons exactly where they were supposed to be. They're not buried under some or there's this place we call the hell hole in the back that's behind a panel that you know sometimes you throw stuff in. No, they were right where they were supposed to be. And I I told him where they were. He went in and He's out in like 10 seconds. Now he's got two M16s freshly loaded, full magazines. And he gives me what I've always thought and

still think was Gary's weapon. And at that point, I'm like, "Oh if this is Gary's weapon, he's down." Like down hard. And now it's Randy and me. And he gets on the fire's net, which we had programmed in our survival radios, the Fire Net, because you pretty much know you're always going to be able to talk to Somebody on that net. That's just how we did it, you know. And there was an A and a B channel. I don't know if what the B channel was. Maybe the SAR net was something. But anyway, so he

calls And I hear a familiar voice from one of the little birds saying, "A reaction force is in route." All right, hold on a little bit longer. It's going to be eight hours before somebody else gets to our crash site. We don't know that. Randy goes around the Bird, makes his last stand. I mean, it's just a matter of time. They they had all closed on us. They knew we were lightly defended. They, you know, they had set up a matrix of the city just like us and they were sending out over handheld radios where

the target was so that everybody would converge on it and they could overwhelm us with numbers, which they they definitely had numbers and and now this time they were all converging on our crash site. Uh, And they all assaulted from the left side. >> Did you hear him make his last stand? No, I just heard the shooting stop and then I could hear the voices and it's Somali voices and I'm like, this is it. There's nothing you can do. I'm out of rounds. I've shot all the rounds out of Gary's weapon. Why I never shot

thought of my pistol, I cannot explain. I never thought of it. Never thought of it at All. I I to this day cannot explain why it probably saved my life. >> That's what I was just gonna say. It's probably a good thing you didn't. >> But I never drew it because I just didn't think of it. So I've got the MP5 is laying there. I got Gary's weapon across my chest. It's empty. I'm looking at the sky. I can still remember the clouds. And I'm just thinking, "This is how it ends." And That's how it

was going to end because they were the only thing I've ever seen in my life that I think is comparable was the seals in Fallujah on the bridge. Not not the seals, but the the contractors. >> Contractors. >> Yeah. >> That's to me is basically equivalent to what happened. It was pandemonium. I mean, it was things I just in my mind Having the benefit of, you know, growing up where I did and and being an American and and a and a Christian and what's right and wrong. I just couldn't imagine ever doing what they did.

I I just couldn't imagine it. So, initially, they're going to beat me to death. Uh, so when I first told this story, I said I got butt stroked and it broke my nose, my cheekbone, and my eye socket. If I had you put your Finger and run your finger along the bottom part of my eye socket, you'll hit a spot where it goes up about a quarter of an inch cuz this this whole part of my face got smashed in. What I was surprised no one ever questioned me on though is if you buttstroke somebody

that hard with a rifle butt, that's going to leave a mark. The shape of that butt. Well, if you look at my interrogation video, there is no mark like that. Why did I say that? Because I guess in some respects, I'm a I'm a protector. I, you know, if I had to describe myself, I'm a problem solver. I don't have a lot of patience for incompetence and and and dishonesty and I'm a protector. I didn't want the families to know what happened. I somehow in my naive mind they wouldn't know. No one would tell them

and that would be better for them. What I didn't know is Bodies are about to be dragged through the streets. Body parts are about to be turned over to the compound in bags. I didn't know any of that. But what they hit me with, I believe, was someone's arm. Uh because it was it was heavy and soft and when when it obviously had enough weight that when it hit my face, it smashed the bones in my face, but it was soft enough that it didn't create a bruise. And I remember looking at the guy that

Did it in disbelief like humans can't do this, you know, >> like one of >> Yeah. One of our guys, >> one of your teammates arms. >> Yeah. I mean, I can't guarantee that's what it was, but I'm pretty sure that's what it was. man. >> You know, I remember seeing movies when I was younger about, you know, Vietnam And horrible that But it's a movie, right? you know, and you don't you're horrified by it, maybe if you're really drawn into it, but in the end, it's a movie, but this is actually happening. And I

said, I I mean, it shocked me. I didn't say anything. I just looked at the guy like, "Holy shit." you know, and somewhere in this sequence, and by the way, they're they're split between people that are Trying to take my and people that are trying to beat me to death. So, they're trying to get my boots off. And I think this is where my femur goes out the backside of my leg because they're, you know, they don't take great care to really loosen your boot, right? I mean, they're pull the bow and then pull pull

pull until it comes off. Well, if your freaking femur is busted and somebody else is trying to get your your your your boot off, it it's going to Create some havoc up here where the fracture is. Well, my femur goes out the backside of my leg. I mean, punches right through a hole about the size of a half dollar. You know, my son played hockey and and every time I pulled his skates off, it reminded me of that. you know, try taking a a kid's hockey skate off. It's hard. You're pulling it pulling hard on

his leg. And that's what they were doing to get my boot off. And it was uh Anyway, again, because my back hurt so bad, I don't remember it happening and I don't remember the pain of it. All I can tell you is there's a big ass hole there and my femur was out the back. So anyway, somebody realizes you have value as a prisoner. Everyone else is dead. I think or die. >> Did you see them dragging the bodies through the streets? >> I did not know that happened. I I did not know. >> What?

When you say that originally you had said that it was the buttstock, what were you protecting the families from >> knowing that that kind of carnage had occurred? >> Okay. I mean, I don't think it was a matter that I couldn't talk about it. Although it, you know, let me tell you, when I first talked about this, all of this, it Was pretty tough. >> I bet it was. And it's just been a healing process over the years. And I don't think you're ever 100% healed. It's grief. I mean, you know, if you lose a

loved one, car accident, whatever. I mean, you're going to feel some emotion about that probably for the rest of your life. You know, you think about them, you think about they're not there anymore. It's grief. And I think it's it Lessens over time, but it never goes completely away. For me, it's harder if I'm tired. If I've, you know, I've had a short night of sleep or whatever, and I'm vulnerable. I let my guard down a little bit. It's a little more difficult, but I'm as healed as I'm going to be. I mean, I'm not

going to be healed anymore. I'm I'm not saying I'm over it. It's I mean, if your friends all die, you shouldn't get over it. I mean, That's, you know, you you should miss them. You should grieve them. And I do, you know. But anyway, um, somebody realizes I have value as a prisoner. And Mark Bowen is the one who discovered this. I did I didn't know. I don't remember this shot being fired. He claims he fired shots in the air and got control of the mob. I mean, again, at that point, and the doctors told

me, Mike, give yourself some slack here. You're in freaking shock, okay? You Don't sustain injuries like that and then be overrun and beaten and not be in shock, you know? He said, "Your brain's probably not processing everything like you normally would." And and I said, "Yeah, you know, doc, you're probably right. I never I never really thought of it that way, but you're probably right." So anyway, the Somali claims he fired shots in the air, got the crowd to back off, and said, "You know, we're taking you into captivity, And we're going to turn you

over to a deed." Well, before they did, the only identifying >> They told you that? No. >> Did any of these guys speak English? >> No. No. Mark Bowen told me. >> So you have no idea what these guys are saying? Nothing. >> No. Or who they are. I mean I know they're you know pissed off out of control Somali. >> Yeah. There's just people ransacking your body >> and trying to kill you. >> Yeah. Some obviously civilians. Some I mean they didn't wear uniforms like a traditional military person would. But I mean you could

tell they're they're you know SNA Somali National Alliance people. the way just AK-47 kind of militaristic looking. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> So, The only identifying things I carried, we had a green piece of cardboard that got us into the Task Force Ranger compound cuz it's secure, you know, and we have access points. And we would leave like to go run PT. We would run around the airfield. I mean, we carried our MP5s, you know, we had them slung on our backs when we'd run, but the airfield was, I think it was like maybe six miles

around. And we were actually training to go do the Marine Corps Marathon again. And another thing that I think helped me survive this is I was in pretty damn good shape. I mean, we were training to go run a marathon the following month. And uh but when we got back, we'd have to show our credentials. And it's nothing sophisticated. is a green freaking piece of cardboard with it laminated. All right. Task Force Ranger. I also had my name tag on which has a picture of a Blackhawk. It's got my rank On there. US Army wings

and I think that's it. When they were ripping all my off, one guy pulls this green cardboard and he says, "Ranger, ranger, you die, Somalia." So, I guess they did speak English. My correction, sorry, I forgot about that. What? That's that tells you several things right there. They know what it takes to ask access the the task force ranger compound. I mean, soon as he sees The green card, that to him is this is my access. So this is why I said earlier, you don't know who the bad guys are when you're in these third

world countries. You're relying on locals to do different things, which we have to because we don't have the the support a lot of times to do it all with, you know, green suitors or blue suitors or or or you know, organic assets. So anyway, then they threw dirt in my face and then They wrapped a rag around my head so I can't see and they hoist me up in the air. Now, it's possible my femur goes out here. Again, I don't know. Uh, and at that point, I'm being paraded around through the streets. So, I'm

like the living version of what they did with the bodies. They're celebrating. They shot down an aircraft. They killed Americans. Now, they have an American. And they I mean, >> what are you hearing? >> I'm hearing screaming. I'm I always thought And again, I can't see. So, I felt like most of the loudest voices were female. I don't know if that's an accurate uh recollection, but that's what I recalled. And then I'm getting hit. And I, you know, you know, I know if you kill a male of their in their family that that, you know,

is something that the women uh seek rep retribution for, reparations for. And maybe that's part Of why they're hitting me. I don't know. Right. But I I know we kill a lot of people there and rightfully so they're attacking us. I mean, we're not killing people just because we want to. They're attacking us. I mean, we're we're essentially defending ourselves. So anyway, I I describe a moment and I've said this from the beginning. I left my body. I mean, I I there's a there's a Scientific explanation for that and there's a spiritual explanation for that.

All I can tell you is it happened. I remember distinctly looking down and seeing myself being carried through the streets and the pain went away. I mean, it was like, wow, that thank God that's not me, you know, cuz that looks like that really sucks. And it only lasted a few seconds and then bam, it is me. And that the Scientific explanation being your brain has a lot of capabilities that you'll never use. And one of them is it can it can trick itself if it's dealing with significant trauma and and try to figure out

a way to tell you it's not real. That's the scientific explanation. The spiritual explanation is I'm about to die and God sent you back. Don't know. >> Yeah, you do. I know I got a lot of people pulling for me that are up there. >> Yeah, that's no My grandmother in particular. and and you can't say no to her. So, I'm back in the moment and they're they're carrying me through the streets and then they they throw me on the ground and uh I'm trying to get sorted out. Just a bizarre little trivial thing. My

Desert tan flight suit is a two-piece which looks kind of like BDUs, not not a traditional like Air Force looking flight suit. And it's got really long pockets. And what had happened was the pocket I had a pocket knife in it and the pocket flipped over. So if you reached in, you thought you were getting to the bottom of my pocket, but you weren't because it was flipped over. And they reached in there, they searched me, but they they didn't see the pocket Knife. So, I had a pocketk knife. What am I going to do

with it? I don't freaking know. But but I have a knife. Okay. And I'm like looking at my situation. It's like, "Oh, man. This is bad." And they're arguing amongst themselves. They don't You could tell they didn't know what to do. They They hadn't really planned this contingency. and they uh suddenly come back in the room and they hoist me up again And they run me out to a flat like a truck with a big flat surface on the back, throw me on the back of that, throw a tarp over me and then get on

the back of the truck cuz you know in these third world countries, right? If it can if you can fit 50 people, you can fit 51 on the back of the thing >> and and they all pile on >> and basically they don't want anyone to know obviously American or Somali that I am there. Now according to Mark's Research, what actually happened here is that the people that overrun the site are not Hobart. there's some other clan and they reached a deal probably a monetary deal with a deed to turn me over to him and

the group that comes to get me to move to the second location is a deeds people and that's why they move me so quickly to another location. I don't know any of this is going on but that is apparently what happened. So I'm moved by ground. I Don't know where the hell we're going. And they put me in a a little octagonal room that had like like some of the bricks higher up had like ventilation through them so I could hear what's going on outside but I couldn't see. The lower parts of the wall are

solid. It's like a dirt pavel kind of floor. No, it might have been concrete floor but it's pravel outside just like survival school. Exactly the same way. And the beauty of it was I could hear them When they approached the door just like survival school. I don't know just a coincidence. But uh so during the night they had chained me up. I call it a dog chain just primarily to give you some sense of this of the of the thickness of the chain. It was fairly light and I was sweating profusely. I mean it's hot.

You can imagine with all these injuries, all the shit's going on my body. I was actually able to get out of the chain. And I'm laying there and, you know, I Got the dirt out of my eyes. I'm straightening my leg out a little bit. It's starting to swell. I still have my trousers on, but they're very baggy. Eventually, my leg is going to get big enough where they're skin tight. And at that point, I'm like, there's no freaking way this leg is ever going to make it. And they're they're they're approaching the door and

I rewrap the chain around my wrist to make them think that I'm still Chained up. And I look and AK-47 through the crack in the door. Bang. Round goes off towards me, but the person didn't take time to aim. It hits the ground maybe 5t away from me. The round ends up in the in my left arm and the shrapnel from either the round or concrete floor ends up in the back of my fractured femur leg. I'm like, Jesus Christ, you know, like I don't have enough going on here that they're shooting at me in

captivity. So, I go to pull the because the round had decelerated to the point where it didn't go in that far. And I went to pull it out and I burned the out of my fingers. said, "Little lesson learned. If you get shot and you try to pull the round out, it's probably going to be hot if you don't give it very much time because it's obviously gone through the barrel at a high velocity." So, I burned my fingers, got it out, threw it on the ground. All right, what's next, troops? And somewhere in that

night, I don't remember if it was before I got shot or after I got shot, but I start hearing the convoy and I'm racing through my mind. You know, we had reconnaissance birds up. So, >> do you have any recollection of time? >> Yeah, >> you do. >> Yeah. But I, you know, the sequence was one before the other sometimes. You It's Been so long. I don't really recall. Uh, but during the night, so probably it's before I get shot. I hear the convoy. It had to be the convoy because I mean, there's a a

lot of shooting both both ways coming in and going out. I mean, obviously the Somali that are around where I'm being held are shooting and I hear round. I swear I can hear what were uh you know probably large caliber rounds flying and hitting the walls. Were those RPGs? Not sure. I don't I hadn't heard a lot of had heard RPGs flying before. So, I don't know. It could have been that. But either way, it's coming. And I'm like, man, they know where I am. This is a rescue because it's coming. It's getting louder and

louder and louder and I'm thinking, "Okay, a reconnaissance bird saw them capture me, followed me, kept eyes on the whole way. Now they know ex right where I am and they're coming to get me." Like, you know, is is Somebody else going to come in here and pop me? And it gets louder and louder. And I'm surprised they didn't actually cuz how close they got. But I don't I think it was just a coincidence. They were just on their way to either crash site one or they had been at crash site one and they were

on their way to the Pakistani stadium. I'm not sure timelinewise which which explanation makes more sense but it had to be them. I mean it was it was a large Volume of people and as soon as it apexed and started getting quieter I was like they don't know where I am. They're just passing by. And so I I I woke up the next day. They came in, gave me a banana, which doctors later said that you shouldn't have eaten a banana. I don't know something about the potassium or something. It's not good for something that

was wrong with me. I don't know what it was. >> You got all this going on. They're Worried about a banana. >> I don't know if I should eat a banana. >> Should never have eaten that banana. >> Sorry. I'm on a diet. Yeah. Uh and then they gave me a bowl of water. Nasty. Nasty. But I knew I had to drink, so I drank it. And they gave me an MRE that looked like it had been there for a decade. I mean, it was sun bleached freaking I mean, just like it'd been it had

been laying in the sun for a Thousand years. But I knew I had to eat, you know? I mean, you're going to die if you don't drink water and eat something. So, I did what I could to try to eat it. He gave me a can of Pepsi. I think that was that first day. And uh I remember, you know, spilling some of it and the ants were everywhere, flies were everywhere. Freaking nasty, nasty, nasty. And made it through the first day. And that night They said, uh, "Will you do a video?" And I said,

"Hell no, I'm not going to do a video." And they said, they didn't seem to push the issue. And then I started thinking, well, I can't really stop them if they freaking come in here and start videoing me. What am I going to do? Well, I started thinking about blinking, you know, blinking something. And without getting into something that's could be considered sensitive, I Couldn't remember how to do it. So I thought, all right, let me just do what they taught me to do in resistance training in survival school because I had been to special

forces c uh well sea level sear. It's the same sear the SF guys go through. They go through with us and we we're all together in the camp. And uh I was actually the first person to ever go through SF Sea level sear that used it in the real world. Wow. For 10 years, Patriot Mobile has been America's only Christian conservative wireless provider and they stand by their values. Patriot Mobile has been a great supporter of this show, which is why I'm proud to partner with them. Patriot Mobile offers dependable nationwide coverage, giving you the

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Probably different it was structured more around a V at the time around a Vietnam scenario which doesn't really happen anymore but all the fundamental stuff that they taught worked and again it's kind of sensitive so we won't get too much into it but you know the resistance stuff is is kind of common sense right it's basically given meaningless information and one thing that helped me because They didn't have a clue what my rank was. They wanted to know. And again, it's on my name tag, right? So, there's no issue telling them what my rank is.

And it's the big four anyway, right? Even if you try to be hardcore and be big four, nothing more. You know, that rank is one of them. So, I'm wasting a lot of time with these guys trying to explain what at the time I was a CW3, trying to explain what a CW3 is. And I I went like I went private, Sergeant, warrant officer, lieutenant, cap, you know, basically that fundamental, right? Showing we we sort of sit somewhere in the middle. And they're like, I don't know what the heck you're talking about. We don't understand.

So they finally settled on, initially they thought I was lieutenant colonel and then they settled on that I was a major. And I'll show you something in a in a bit here that actually Addressed to me from them. It says too major Durant. But you know, if you can waste time with that kind of crap, you know, that's a victory. So they never figured it out. And then without warning, this pretty big entourage shows up. And I'd always says it's possible Adidas was there. I don't know if he if that was him. He just stayed

in the background. It was actually a CNN camera guy that The the Somali National Alliance went out and said, "Hey, you with the camera, come with us." And he did. And he filmed the interrogation and uh you know, initially I'm doing everything they taught me to do and time's a wasting. And I'm having to hold my weight up because I'm sitting. They had me propped against the wall and my freaking back is crushed and I'm getting this is very painful and I'm getting to the point where I can't hold Myself up anymore and I they

they threw a blanket on my right leg to cover the femur fracture up and they're asking me questions about this and that and I you know I I I basically told them I'm a Blackhawk pilot. Well, they captured me next to a freaking Blackhawk. I have a Blackhawk on my name tag. it's probably okay to say that, you know, and then they got into the political questions, which you have to give them credit knowing That to them, the most important thing was not, you know, how many people are in Task Force Ranger, how, you know,

how how many aircraft do you have? They weren't asking that. They they were asking the political questions. They knew that if they could get me to say something politically significant that it could affect policy. That was their theory. CW3 Mike Durant Us >> I'm a black pilot. Black. >> How do you think this operation is good? How do you say this is uh this operation is what? How do you think this operation soldier has to do what I'm told? You know, the people Innocent people being killed is not good. >> And that's the pressure you're

under, Right? Is like, "All right, how do I get past this point and not do that?" So, the two questions they asked me were, "How you think this mission in Somalia?" And I I probably didn't answer it for a while or I didn't say anything. And then they kept asking and I finally said, "I'm a soldier. I do what I'm told. Okay. And then they said, "You kill the people innocent." Obvious what they want me to say. And I said, "Innocent people being Killed is not good." Who's going to argue with that, right? I don't

think they knew what they had when when I answered that second question. Pretty sure it ended right there and they ran out thinking, "This is what we wanted." No. In the end, the survival people will tell you it helped me. It didn't help them because now they have proof of life. I'm a prisoner. They're accountable. They don't care about the Geneva Convention, but the rest of the World does and they're going to hold them accountable. So, it really helps improve my chance of survival. Not what they were thinking. Gave them nothing. they uh you know

they had damage control to do like beyond anything I've seen in my life because of what they did with the remains of everybody else from crash site 2. So that that was much more significant than uh you know the more about being accountable for me and it it ended up helping me not what it Felt like. I mean you know you're being interrogated in captivity it ain't going to end with you feeling good. I mean, one way or the other, you know, you either said something you weren't supposed to say, or you're like like me,

I thought I did what I was supposed to do, which I did, but you know, are they going to manipulate this into something that, you know, different? There's no way to know, right? It's very, very difficult. And They train you, and it was the training was good. I mean, it it was effective. And I know they've used my video a million times since uh to train other people on what you're supposed to do. and it was over. And then they realized, wo, way too much attention here. Word's going to get out that that Durant's here.

We got to move him again. So they packed me up, dragged me out. Now they this time they stick me in the Backseat of a car. My leg is still No, the doctor came. Sorry, the doc the Dr. Kadilla. And great that he was a US med school trained doctor, spoke a little bit of English, but he had nothing. I mean, he had aspirin and betadine solution and gauze. That's it. Because he'd been treating all their people and they had, you know, estimates are anywhere from 6 to 800 killed and 2,000 wounded. Now, that's the

high end, but it's a lot of It's a lot of casualties on their side. And they got nothing left. I mean they were their their supplies were exhausted. He wanted to get me to dig for hospital because you know he wanted to see what's going on with my leg but and my back but they adided people wouldn't let him do it and they said no he's not going there. So he put a splint on my leg. Did this you know what I'd have to go back and look at my notes. I may get This out

of sequence. It's not really that important anyway. He puts a splint on my leg and and it was a basically like uh you know the wire shelving. >> It's kind of like that. But he splints me all the way down to my foot. So my ankle can't turn, my knee can't bend, and my fracture is so high he can't stabilize. There's not enough bone left for the fracture to to actually Stabilize. just, you know, maybe, I don't know, 8 in of of femur in my upper femur, and then there's, you know, whatever, 12 in, and

then the rest of my leg. So, the only place it can pivot is the fracture. So, he he has stabilized everything else that's not messed up. And now when they're moving me around, it's like, oh my god, I I couldn't feel my femur before, but I freaking can now. And I'm like, there's there's no way my femoral artery is not going to get cut Because my legs moving around and it's all pivoting right there at the fracture. I I think they move me like that. So, they stick me in the backseat of this car, throw

a tarp over me, and then two guys get in the back seat on top of me. At this point, I'm in so much pain. I'm hyperventilating. I mean, the sweat is coming out of me like a cartoon character. And I mean, I I I think I'm gonna freaking die. I mean, it's just Off the chart. And we're driving through the city and we get to the next destination. We stop and everybody else gets out and they leave me there. And I'm like, son of a They got the video and now they're just abandoning me in

the city and they're letting the people do what they will with me. was what I thought. And I'm waiting and I'm waiting and there's nothing going on. And then I kind of move the tarp out of the way and I'm Like, could I possibly get in the front seat of this freaking thing and make a getaway here? I wonder if they left the keys in it. But I don't even know if it's it's probably a standard shift. I mean, I can't drive that with a with one freaking broken leg, you know? But I'm thinking about

it, which is a positive sign. I mean, I'm thinking about how do I solve the problem, which is again my nature. And about that time, they all come back. But all they had been doing, I believe, is just going out and reconing and make sure, you know, it is what they thought it was in terms of presence of other people. There's nobody around. So, they come back, they get me out, they bring me in, and and I call this the hotel nowhere. It was basically like a Motel 6, this row of doors down a balcony.

And there was a woman that that sort of kind of ran the place. And I I saw her the next day. She showed up and it was just Bizarre. There there was times when like people would come and they'd open the door and look in like come see the American, you know, and little kids and not not a huge volume of people, but I'm sure like maybe it's her relatives or something or other people that live there out of curiosity coming to look at me. And you know, again, I'm just trying to tread water, stay

alive here. And nothing happened for a couple of days. And then uh Things started getting weird. I was being visited by this propaganda minister named uh Abdi, clean dressed, you know, obviously a person of stature, spoke pretty good English, and I I described it as he would come and try to tell me bedtime stories, and he was trying to indoctrinate me. He was telling, "This is where I learned about uh Adid's role in ousting Sad Bar and how Adid was really a national hero." And I'm like, "Yeah, he's a freaking national hero." All right. And

and you know, they're basically just trying to convince me to sympathize with them. Again, I've been trained on all this. I know what's going on. And I'm just, "Yep, okay, whatever you say. You know, sounds like a good story. You know, why don't you tell me, you know, the old lady in the shoe next?" You know what I mean? It's like this is this is just made up And that's happening. And They asked me if I wanted anything. And I my standard answer had become at some point along the way. I just want a plane

ticket home. That's it. I don't want anything else. And they liked that. They they respected that. They liked that. >> They did. And I'll tell you how I found this out in in a minute. They, you know, I wasn't saying, you know, I wasn't hostile. I wasn't Disrespectful. You know, they're Muslim. They would actually pray in the room. And, you know, I was quiet and reverent when they were praying. And in the end, they're going to do the same for me when I when I get the Bible. And again, some of this I was just

winging because it's common sense, right? But I I uh I just listened to his stories and just sort of filed them away. And then he said, "Would you like a radio?" And I said, "Shit." Yeah. I mean, it one of the lessons I learned in survival school, they offered me a candy bar and I said, "No, not unless everybody in the class gets one." And in the debrief, they said, "Well, that's a bad call. You need the candy bar. we're not asking you to do anything to earn the candy bar, you know, just eat it.

So I'm like, okay, I'll take the radio. And they show up with a little transistor radio. And from That point, I'm listening to the Armed Forces Network broadcast. I'm listening to BBC. So I got to now I have a connection to the outside world. Hugely important for morale, right? And then something weird starts to happen. I think it was on the 8th, which is like five days later or five days after the shootown. They come in, they start sweeping up all the dead flies in the room. They bring a mattress in. There was a guy

named Fimbei that had Been introduced along the way. He was the head guard and as I found out later, he was basically charged by a deed with my well-being. Fimbei was responsible. If I was killed, it was FBM's fault. If somebody else stole me, FBM's fault. If I was captured, Fern's fault. So, he was the man. And most of the time he spent in the room with me. But they're cleaning all this up. They give me some pajamas, some clean pajamas. They bring a mattress in and I'm like, "What the hell? Am I going to

get released? What's happening here?" And again, all this stuff's going to help me survive. So, okay. you know, and then in walks a Caucasian woman, blonde hair from the Red Cross, Suzanne Hoffsteader. I'm like, this is incredible. It's like, just hold my hand. You're an angel. You know, you are the only non-hostile person I've seen in 5 days. and don't leave, you know, And that's how I felt and what I said. And she she just wanted to check on me. She said, "I have a box of stuff for you, but they wouldn't let me bring

it. They gave us no notice that uh we were going to get to visit you. They came and asked. I volunteered. They stuck a bag on my head. I have no idea where we are. Uh but we're doing everything we can to get you released." and she said, 'Would you like to write a letter home? Yeah. So, I wrote wrote a letter home. Always again trying to be that light-hearted, sarcastic guy, you know, saying uh you know, I've been eating something, but unfortunately, uh no pizza or something like that. And that set off a bit

of a firestorm in the world. I got pizzas from all over the world when I finally got released. And >> what what seriously though, what what did you write? >> Well, I did I wrote I wrote I'm I'm okay. These are my injuries. You know, I told him I had fractured femur. I thought I had a broken back. I was shot. Probably broken bones in my face. You know, I I've I've been eating okay. Uh you know, not sure what happened to everyone else. You know, that kind of stuff. And I spelled femur wrong. I

think I spelled it fem. I didn't go to med school. Surprisingly, I knew it was a femur. Um, that set off a bit of a what was he trying to say? You know, uh, but I wasn't trying to say anything. I was I was just trying to explain what my injuries were. And then I said, "Hey, can I write another letter?" And they said, "Sure. Who you want to write it to?" I said, "I want to write it to the guys at the compound." So, basically did the same thing. I said, "You know, these are

my injuries. Don't know where Everyone else is." Uh, and I signed an NSDQ and I was trying to tell him something and unfortunately the Red Cross with their commitment to neutrality thought it was a code. So, they scratched it out. But you could still read it and it's our unit motto. Nightstalkers don't quit. And basically, I'm trying to tell them my my state of Mind, right? It's like, I'm still in it. You know, you guys come. I'll do what I can to try to help you with the rescue. Don't worry about that. Uh but there's

not much else value I can add. You know, I didn't know where I was. I didn't know if anyone else had survived. I just I didn't know anything. They were dropping hints that no one else had survived, but they didn't really come right out and say it. And uh so that letter made it to the Compound. They knew it was NSDQ at the bottom. I'm told they put it on butcher paper, blew it up, and posted it in the jock uh as a as a way to motivate some pretty demoralized folks after the losses that

we took in that battle. And uh you know, at least now they know, hey, at least he's got somewhat of a sense about him and and we need to continue to try to figure out where he is. Until recently, I never discussed this, but somebody put it in Stars and Stripes, so it's in the public domain. They were broadcasting songs from an air from an aircraft cuz they found out I had the radio. And the and the brilliant thing was they were broadcasting a different song in different parts of the city. So if it come

if it comes back, hey, I heard AC/DC hell's bells. >> No >> Brilliant, right? And I would have thought we wanted to protect that, but again, it was it was in Sergeant Stripes. >> That's pretty slick. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was all kinds of brilliant that came out of this. Just all kinds. Now, I didn't know that's what they're doing, but hopefully I will stumble into making some mention of the music that I'm hearing. And I did hear it. And then they started uh requesting songs for me when they found out I had

the radio. And The one I remember is a song called Seol Wind that I think had come out that summer. And Donovan was Indian and he would sing that song all the time cuz he was proud of his Indian heritage and they dedicated to me from him. So I'm thinking, "All right, Cliff and Don are okay." Anyway, this goes on soon as the Red Cross Suzanne leaves. They follow it up with two reporters from the Guardian, which is a paper I think out of Paris. And reporters, man, I am freaking vulnerable at this point. I

just wrote a letter to home and I I let my guard down a little bit. Were they smart enough to come up with that strategy? I don't know. But I thought about, okay, if if I tell them what happened from the moment the RPG hits the aircraft, nothing wrong with that. That's intelligence that will help maybe solve some part of this puzzle for our guys. So I said, "All right, I I'll tell you what happened from the moment the RPG hit the aircraft." So, I go through it all and then at the end they they

said, you know, I've been talking for a while and they said, "What do you think? What's what do you think's going on here?" And I said, "The only thing I said in Captivity that I would take back if I could, and it isn't that big a deal. You don't have to be a freaking rocket scientist, but I felt if I screwed something up, this was it." I said, "Something's gone wrong here." Yeah. something had freaking gone wrong. It was it was a train wreck. But I I felt my standard was that shouldn't have been said.

And that's the quote they ran with. I mean, that was the money shot, you know, which again, is it that Valuable? No. I mean, there were already plenty of people saying, "Hey, this thing is way out of control." And you know, the movement toward we're pulling everybody out had started with the bodies being dragged. I mean that that was really probably the shock that that for almost forced it shouldn't have forced but it but in a political person's mind that's the rationale for saying we're coming out we didn't want to come out I Can tell

you I didn't want to come out nobody else wanted to come out everybody else wanted to finish the job but politically that I think is what caused it that's my theory not right I'm not advocating that I'm I'm just saying that's what caused it. So anyway, now there's been all this activity again because you got reporters, you got Suzanne, and then they they think, "Okay, he's location's probably going to be compromised. Let's Move him again." So stick me in another car, take me to another location, never saw the mattress again. Uh I did keep the

pajamas. Um and now I'm in the final location. And I remember I'm I'm laying next to a window. It's just an opening. And there's no wind, there's no glass. But I started thinking, am I going to survive long term just laying here? I mean, no, I'm not. I mean, I got to eat. I got to drink. And I got to do something to keep my physical condition Up. So, I started doing pull-ups on the freaking window sill just to get my heart rate up, you know, thinking again, that's all very positive. That's showing you're optimistic.

You're going to live. You just got to figure out how do I help my my condition? What do what can I do? I came up with another idea which was I asked them to wash my brown t-shirt thinking uh let's you know if they wash it they're going to have to hang it on the line to dry and maybe again this is A stretch right but I got pretty limited freaking resources here and if they hang it on the line to dry maybe when the helicopter flies over they see a brown t-shirt you know it's

a stretch right but >> they don't know where I am that's the issue right if they know where I am boom They're launching assault, no doubt. And that's what they were prepping for. And if you're going to get rescued, who the hell would you rather have come rescue Than that? You know, they're already in country. They're there. You were fighting with them. Now, you know, C Squadron was augmented with A Squadron by that time, but it's still, you know, the guys, right? They that's who you want doing this mission. So, anyway, there was and you

know, again, it was sensitive at the time. Now, it's not sensitive. because the technology is pretty common place. But they were going to try to Give a deed a cane with a beacon in it. Somebody was going to try to uh ID his location. So it wasn't for me, it was for a deed. That was another thing that was going on that they were still trying to make happen. And the the gift never got to him. You know, I doubt he would have thought through that and not used it. >> Uh so maybe they could

have found him that way. So there's all kind of that was going on to to try to again Keep this mission moving forward and accomplish what we were actually after. And again, I'm listening to the radio. I'm hearing stuff. And this guy's named Robert Oakley's name comes over the the the broadcast. Former ambassador Clinton now has sent Robert Oakley over to straighten things out. If we had a thousand Robert Oakleys in this world, we'd have a thousand less problems. The guy was I mean they trusted him. They called him A shoot straighter because they didn't

speak very good English. Obviously they meant straight shooter. But as soon as his name came across the wire, the whole mindset changed. Now other things changed again. A squadron comes in, carrier battle group comes back, AC-130 is back, tanks are on the ground. All the we asked for now suddenly materializes because we have a fire that was preventable that now we have to put out politically, >> which proves the was all available, you know, it wasn't a matter of obviously. >> Yeah, it wasn't available. And I still remember when the first two jets flew over

where I was being held again. You know, the smaller are like, you know, they mean business. And then I had worked with AC-130s. I knew what a 105 round sounded like in flight and I can hear it and it's, you know, whistling as it's coming down. And boom, the 105 Round blows up in a vacant lot in the city and the freaking Somali's come in and they're pointing at the sky. They're all agitated. AC, AC bad. And I'm like, yeah, AC is bad. Bad for you. And you know, this is why my point is it

would have made a difference. Could they have done danger close engagements across the street? No. But outer perimeter, hell yeah. They could have smoked the inter >> just the presence. >> Yes. >> Even just the Even if that was the whole point was just to get the presence and they didn't have to light a round off. >> 100%. So I'm right. And the guys who don't agree with me are wrong. And apparently you agree with me. So I appreciate that. >> The guys on the ground had it right. The in DC didn't. >> Yeah. >>

But I've heard this story, >> right, >> about a million times. >> So I'd love to slap those around. >> Well, it'll eventually motivate me to run for office, but that didn't end well. I guess it did end perfectly for me, but not for the country. >> I think that was a blessing in disguise. >> Absolutely. But anyway, um once Oakley and I he since passed, but I Met with him a couple of times. So, he's told me this personally. He said, "Look, I met with him and I said, "You people have two choices. You

got serious damage control to do with what you did to the remains of the American soldiers. Now, you could make that a little better by releasing Durant or not. And if you don't, eventually we're going to figure out where he is. And if you haven't paid attention, the carrier battle group's back, the tanks Are here, AC130's back, we've plused up the force to I don't know, I don't know how many, 10,000 maybe. And we're going to wipe out your clan, your call within 48 hours. if they let me go. He said he didn't make a

deal. All I can tell is what the man told me. I didn't want them to make a deal. I honestly did not. I wanted to live, but I didn't want us to throw away everything we had accomplished To liberate me. And I and I really don't think that deal was made. If it was, I'm not privy to it. Again, I just think it was politically once I was released, the administration didn't have the guts for a tough fight and they said, "We're out." And I I know every member of Tesl Ranger still on the ground

that was able to fight was pissed off because they didn't they wanted to finish it. And you know, the thing about it is it's tough. If you think about me personally, I'm three in one, right? Prime Chance was a success. Just Cause was a a success. Desert Storm was a success. But what everybody ties me to is Somalia. And I don't see Som I don't see me as free and what I'm 4 and0. We kicked the out of those guys. All right. We would have stayed. We would have finished the job and we would have

accomplished the mission had we been allowed to. If the standard is you can't take losses, then don't send Us down range because we are going to take losses. I mean, this this is not an easy task. These these people fight back and we are going to lose people. And if and I'm not saying it's okay to have 18 and if you count Matt 19 casualties, but if if you just compare the numbers, 500, 700 to 18, that's not a loss. I mean, we captured the two guys we were after. They were turned over to the

UN. We took losses. I mean, more than we wanted to. And and and I know It's tough on the families, and I know it's tough on the everybody in the unit that was friends with these people, but we didn't lose that fight. We kicked the out of those guys. Our little birds alone. Well, miniguns, too, cuz they got the same guns. Fired 175,000 rounds of ammunition. That's how that's how much shooting went on that night. Now, again, I wasn't there counting the ammo. That's what I'm told. So, if that's not right, I need some I

need Some slack there because that's what I was told. 175,000 rounds. All right. One guy who I think's going to get inducted in aviation hall of fame this go around. Little bird guy. Awesome warrior. He had blood on his windshield. I mean, that's how close in they were providing fire support for the guys fighting all night long. And and anybody you talk to that was on the ground at the target is going to say those little birds were just there all night, you Know, providing fire support. There was no other fire support. I mean, again,

no AC-130s, no artillery, no mortar positions, nothing. I mean, it's whatever they had on their backs and the little birds. That's it. And anyway, it's it's very very frustrating that it's viewed as I hate to even use the f-word, a failure. I don't I don't think it was a failure. I feel like a lot of people feel like it was, but it wasn't. It we got it done, but we took some heavy freaking because we weren't resourced. If we had been resourced, I mean, I gave you Matt as the example. There's other examples of other

people that probably would not have lost their lives if we had the tanks and we had the carrier and we had the uh um AC-130 and the counter battery fire and all that thing that we talked about. So, it's very very very very disturbing uh that you know we go into harm's way And our hands are tied, we're set up for failure, whatever you want. Now, in the end, General Garrison takes responsibility. He handwrites a letter to Clinton saying it's on me. I mean, I appreciate that he did that. Uh I don't know what what

else he could do. I mean, what you know, can you say, "Hey, you don't give me the I want. We're not launching maybe. I don't know. But again, I think we all felt Comfortable enough." Nobody thought what happened on October 3rd would ever happen. Nobody thought that based on our track record up to that point. And uh it is what it is. I'm truly sorry for the families that the hole will never be filled and you can't fill it. I mean, there's nothing you can do other than remember them. You know, I like the philosophy

and I'm sure you've heard it is a soldier dies two Deaths. One when he stops breathing and the second time the last name is ever said. And we got to, you know, make sure that second time never happens. >> You know, we talk a lot about dealing with loss on the show, you know, through through stories like this. And I think the general consensus is, you know, you you you you have to live how they would want you to live. And they would not want you to live. Miserable, depressed, feeling sorry for yourself, drowning yourself

in a bottle or in a bottle of pills and and and they'd want you to live. >> Hell yeah. >> You know, and and >> Stephanie Schugart's letter to me says it better than anyone ever could. And you know, I can't quote it, but it's in my book. And if you read it and you don't get choked up, you're made of something different because it's pretty Freaking heartfelt. And uh you know and that's what I've tried to do. You know uh my wife's a goldstar wife. Lisa is her husband. I told her that I do

pretty well until I get to this part because it's her. She was pregnant and her husband was in the unit. I didn't really know him. We had met, but I didn't really know him and he was flying on a on a Chinook MH47. He was in the jump seat because the guy in the front was doing an assessment for the unit and there was a material failure we call it in the aviation world. Water intrusion in the Chinook caused the aircraft to completely go out of control and they were in the clouds I think and

it spun out of control and there was no surviving. I mean it was it was a hole in the ground and She uh you know she gets woken up the next day, your husband's not coming back and now she's got a a baby to have and he already had one two and she's on her own and uh you know she's helped me a lot because I always have a hard time figuring out like what do you say you know and And she said, she said, "It doesn't matter what you say cuz you they're not going

to remember it Anyway." She said, "I can't remember a single thing anyone said to me after Pierre died, but I knew they were there." man. And that every time I think about it, she's an amazing woman. You know, I told you earlier she's she's also a helicopter pilot outranks me. Airborne qualified, but you'd never know. And she's a great mom and a great Wife and uh I'm lucky to have her. I'm happy for you, Mike. You okay? Yeah, it's just thinking about that moment. You know, when you love someone and you think about situation when

they were in unfathomable pain or sorrow and that hurts me worse than my own experience by far. And uh I don't know, it's I I can't help it. It's the one thing that still really gets to Me. And that daughter who she was pregnant with just just visited us in Alabama expecting her third. They already have two and she's expecting her third. She's a great mom. Kids are fantastic. So you carry on. It's like you said, you know, you carry on. What What else would they want you to do? You know, they want you to

carry on and remember them. One of the most profound things that was sent to me, I couldn't possibly read all The letters, but I read a bunch of them and it was a cancer survivor uh who during treatment was in a group and in the end she was the only survivor and everybody talked to her about survivor guilt and survivor guilt and I don't remember she said she had it or didn't have it but she said look back but Don't stare. Meaning, you know, think about them. When I think about them, I think about the

positive. I mean, I think about Me and Donovan, you know, standing there together getting our air metals from Just Cause and I have a picture of it. He probably made some kind of stupid ass joke and we're both smirking when the commander is putting the air metal on us. You know, that's the I remember. Just all the We had such good times. We were such a good bunch of guys. I mean, we really were. We loved what we were doing. We loved the mission. And we would have been in no Other place or time than

where we were. And uh I I just feel fortunate to have done what I did. I didn't mention the Bible. Holy cow. So, this this is the Bible I got from Suzanne. And it came to me in that box of stuff she said she had for me. Came later. some weird stuff in there. There was this and then uh couple of paperbacks which I never read. I did read this. Um I don't I don't even remember a dog Bowl. It was very strange. I I don't know what they thought I was going to do with

the dog bowl. At least I thought it was a dog bowl. But I I I read it. But I also kept a journal in here. The Somali didn't know I was doing it. They thought I was reading the Bible. Uh, but I I felt like I needed to capture everything that happened again from the moment the RPG hit the aircraft all the way through so that I would have a a completely accurate account of every event. Wow. And they uh I don't know if you want to take a look at it there, but Whoops. They

uh they let me leave with it. I had it in my hand. And you know, again, that goes back to I was reverent when they were praying and they respected my uh reading the Bible and again used it as another tool, but it it was valuable in the debrief for sure because I was able to go event by event right through the whole thing. And what were we trying to do obviously is we're Trying to figure out, okay, if this happens to somebody else, you know, what what what might we learn from your experience? What

are the doors look like? All that stuff, you know? And uh again positive sign that problem solving, thinking about the future and and and how to you know learn from this, leverage what I know. >> Wow. You wrote all this in in there. >> Yeah. And no one else can read it. I'm the only one. It's made up. I made up symbols and abbreviations and stuff that only I can decipher. So if they did discover that I was writing it, they wouldn't know what the heck it said. And then the last thing I brought, truth

stranger than fiction, is I I get a call from a guy who says that there's a Somali that wants to meet with me. This is after I'm back and partially Recovered. And I'm like, hm, not sure I'm really up for that. So, I went and talked to our intel officer. I was still still in the unit. I stayed in the unit eight more years. And uh I uh I asked him, I said, "What do you think I got to do?" And he said, "Your call. If you want to meet with him, go ahead. Just, you

know, you know what's classified, what's not." I'm like, "Man, that seems kind of loose, but okay." So, I told him I'd meet him in Nashville, actually. And you know, again, I'm not trained on this stuff, but seems pretty logical. I got there early, got sort of where I could see what was going on, and I spotted the guy as soon as he came in. I mean, Somali have just a a very unique look to them. Uh, and, you know, I knew it was him. and you know making sure did did he come with three guys

that you know split up and went you know Couple went somewhere else. No, he he came by himself. I don't see anything else going on here. Let him sit for a few minutes. He's watching his watch. I said, "All right, I'll go down." So I I walk up and he says, you know, with cordial as he can be, he gives me a freaking t-shirt that has a Somali hand and a Caucasian hand shaking hands and it's got like US Somali National Alliance, like we've made peace with each other. and he wants me to be an

Advocate for forgiving the Somali essentially I'm I'm summarizing here and I'm like no freaking way. I mean you got the wrong guy that the there's wounds here that are not going to heal for a long time. Not mine but you know there's we lost people in a bad way and I am not going to get up front publicly and say you know we ought to forgive these guys. No way. And then he gave me some letters. So I Brought the letters and one of them is from Adid himself. >> Are you serious? >> Yeah. With

the official seal and then one is from Ferimi, the head guard. And there's a there's a translation in English. Fimbies was in in I don't know if it's Arabic. I don't know what it is. >> Do you mind if I read this? >> No. This is from Adid. Dear Major, Dear Major Michael Durant, 8th November 1993, I'm sending you and your family my best greetings in that of the Somali people. I and the Somali people who saved your life in the course of the unpleasant event on October 3rd, 1993 are hoping you a fast recovery

and a good health. This letter is to be delivered to you by our special envoy to the US, Mr. Mohamad Iman. And I hope That you will one day visit Somalia, but in a different and happier circumstances, and that you will develop a sense of friendship with the Somali people. I am confident that you will explain to the American people your real experience during your stay in Somalia by telling them the truth about the events in Somalia. Yours truly, Muhammad Farra Adid. Wow. I mean I for saving my life. Thank you Very much. That's sarcasm

if people are not picking up on that, you know. >> Wow. >> Yeah. So I didn't respond and I told him no. Now, I did take the opportunity to say I don't remember if it was Stephanie or Carmen, which are Randy and Gary's wives. One of them, I think it was Stephanie, had asked if there's any way we could find Ry's wedding ring. And you know, the odds are pretty slim. But I said, you know, if you want to try to heal some wounds, if you can find a wedding ring, one of the guys that

was killed at crash site 2, I'll get it to his wife, but I, you know, I'm not going to commit to doing anything. Just, you know, it's your your call if you want to make a gesture. And, you know, I'm sure they never found it. And they they never uh they certainly Never reached out. Now, they did have my my dog tags. I know that Adid's son had my dog tags, actually. because I had I did have those on. Um, and he was kind of proud of that, I guess, I'm told from people who met

with him. And then Deed gets killed sometime later in some sort of skirmish. So, you know, he got what he deserved. Took a little bit longer than we would like to have seen, but he he got killed. And then, you know, as I alluded to earlier, we were given the Withdrawal order and and everybody left. and we turned over all the people we'd captured, all 27 of them or 29, I don't remember exactly. And now, you know, you basically just kick kicked us all in the nuts, you know. I mean, >> how were you released?

>> Oh, uh, well, Robert Oakley, we have to we made that I'll call it a threat. I mean, it was a threat. Within 20 within 48 hours, they they agreed to let me go. >> You said that, but how who came to get You? So, they brought a Nigerian prisoner in, which no, I don't even think we knew they had. He was really happy. I don't know how long he'd been in in their custody, but he was being released with me. A Red Cross doctor comes in and again, we're trained, you know, keep your guard

up. Don't don't believe everything they're trying to make you believe. So, I'm like, is this guy real? Is he not? Morphine shot. Okay, he's probably real. You know, that feels really good. your legitimacy just went through the roof for me. And uh then this entourage, it almost looked like the three wise men. I mean, they're all dressed in in formal traditional wear, drinking tea, all come in the room like to celebrate this momentous occasion that I'm being released. And I'm like, this is too weird, you know? And then they put me on a a litter

and they're trying to take me down the Hallway. They're trying to turn corners. They can't turn a corner. They got to angle the thing. I'm sliding off. They finally get me in the street. I'm covered in this sheet cuz what shows up on the news is it looks like blood, but it's just a it's just a sheet that's got a lot of red in it. And uh they load me in the back of a van. And there's media in the street. So they had told them, you know, where I was at that point and that

I was being released. They stick me in the back of this van. Well, the doors won't close because the litter's too long. So, two guys, Farbeimi's one of them is sitting on either side holding the door manually. Okay. With my litter sticking partway out. Well, we get to a traffic intersection and there's traffic backed up and there's a truck next to us. I can see through the windows. It's got like 25 Somali on the back and they're all Looking down and they see me and I think the concern is, oh you know, these these are

potentially a threat. We got to get out of here. Jam on the gas. I go sliding halfway out the back before these two guys get a good grip on I mean, it's like Keystone Cops. It really was. And they finally get to the UN compound. Farbeimi goes through security at the UN compound. One of the guys, I don't know if he's on our list of 50, but he was Pretty high up, has got credentials to get in. I'm stunned. And then all hell breaks loose because they realize it's me. And the next person I see

from Task Force Ranger is actually the JAG, the attorney who happened to be over at the UN compound for some reason, and finds out that that I just came through the gate. Comes on over there. I recognize him and I'm like, "Okay, this is absolutely real for Now." And in the mayhem, Fimbei disappears. I don't know where he went. I don't know how long he stayed inside the wire, but he's gone. And anyway, they they take me over. I They put me under. I start having surgeries after surgery after surgery. And then our company commander

comes over with the guys and I'm half unconscious. And I'm looking around and I'm like, "Where the hell's Cliff and Donovan?" And Herb Rodriguez, who's our company commander, big heart, big guy, big heart, just breaks down. I mean, he's like, "We lost him." And I'm like, "Jesus, you know, there'd been enough loss, you know, and now there's just two more close friends that are also gone." I was like, "Get me the hell out of here, you know, this is just too much." And then and then right after that, I get a call from Clinton. And

I'm like, you know, What the hell are you going to say, right? I'm I don't know what to say. Caught me off guard. I just said, "Yeah, I'm proud to be an American." You know, click. And >> what did he say? >> I I honestly don't remember. I think it was something, you know, like a politician would say, "We're so proud, you know, to welcome you home and, you know, hope you'll come visit me." Well, I did get an invitation, can't remember Who it came through, to go to the White House. And let me tell

you, and rightfully so, there's a lot of anger levied toward him and Aspen, both of them. They're both responsible. Uh, you know, I know uh it was either Jaime Smith's father. Jamie Smith is the one who bled out in in on the at the at the target. He was on my aircraft and uh I don't know if it's his father or Ry's father, but one Of them just chewed Clinton's ass. I mean, you know, you're responsible. The blood is on your hands. And I knew that and and I felt the same way. And I'm like,

there is no freaking way I'm going to White House for a photo op. So I I totally blew it off. I didn't go. >> Good for you. >> Yeah. No way. And uh I did go to the Medal of Honor ceremony, but that you know that included all the families and and I felt like I should >> both those guys got the Medal of Honor. >> Yep. >> And were found with empty magazines. >> Y and I didn't know this, but and I believe this is true still. First time that award has ever been earned,

I use the word earned by two people for the same act. didn't know that there's a there's a Medal of Honor uh museum in Chattanooga actually and uh they're they're they Have efforts underway to build an exhibit for Randy and Gary and they've been in touch with me a couple of times and and I just found out that it's moving forward. Uh and that's where I learned that that they said that that was the first time that had ever happened. >> Damn. It's right across from the aquarium for people that are familiar with the with

Chattanooga. >> Well, check it out. Yeah, it's right There. Literally across the the >> My respects. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Mike, let's take a quick break. >> All right. lot of dark stuff going on in the world right now. And it's to the point where I don't even believe my own eyes anymore because I cannot verify what people are saying about all the political violence, the division. I partner with this production company called Ironclad and We're doing an eightpart audio series on SCOPS on why foreign countries, governments, maybe even our own government would conduct a

SCOP on its own people. And I just think that that this series is going to be extremely important because it's going to open the eyes of people on why these things happen. You can head over to scopshow.com, order it today. I think you're going to get a lot out of this. Who's pulling the Strings? Who's pulling them? All right, Mike, we're back from the break. Um, thank you for going through all that. I know that was really tough. So, I just I just want to say thank you for digging deep and uh revisiting that. Well,

it's it's my wife part that I struggle with, but uh she's the Anyway, she's doing doing great now and good good. Let's move into, You know, there was a a documentary made recently and uh my friend Tom Sadderly was I think he was pretty excited to do it because when he came here he had said that this would be the last time that he talks about October 3rd, 1993 ever again. And then Netflix came around and he asked he said, "Hey, I know I told you this. Please don't hate me." I'm like, "Dude, that is

you." And um But I know it wasn't uh it didn't turn out the way that he had liked and it sounded like anybody on the American side at least was extremely pissed off. Had the wool pulled over their eyes and u and uh sounds like it felt a lot like a betrayal. >> 100%. And I understand how Tom feels. I mean it a lot of times I'm like I I I can't talk about this again, you know? I mean, it's been a long time. Talk talked about it hundred And hundred hundreds of times, but I

I I personally feel an obligation and I'd do it because some of this stuff we can't lose sight of. It's too important. And I I'll I'll just do it, you know. uh on the documentary. Yeah. I was very upset when I saw it. They started out by saying, "We're going to interview 80 people." And I'm like, "Well, I have a unique perspective on a part of this story. I'll participate because no one else can Tell the story." And as it turns out, they may have considered talking to 80 people, but they didn't talk to 80

people. And I thought by talking to that many people, they'd have a better handle on the big picture. Like Adid is the villain. We're there to help feed the freaking people. They kill our people and drag our soldiers through the streets. Pretty clear who the bad guys are. They twisted it around to make it almost seem like we're the villains, Which I was shocked that because I like the producer. I I felt he was being straight with me. >> What was his name? I honestly don't remember. I'd have to look it up, you know. And

I don't know whether ultimately he's calling the shots. I I really don't. I don't know who was wanting to put this angle on it, but it's dead freaking wrong. You know, I will tell people that Blackhawk Down is accurate enough. The Netflix surviving Blackhawk Down sucks. I mean, it it I was glad to hear Tom's version of it. Glad to hear the Rangers version of it, but that Somali they talked to. Anyway, I I v The villain in this story is Adid. I mean, did they put in the fact that they brought Tom's best friends

back in trash bags at the gate? Did they put that in there? Did they put in there that you were being beat in the face with a arm? >> No. >> From another service member who we don't even know who it was. What? Who the are these people? Man, I wish you knew that producers's name. I'm tempted to go get my phone and look it up right now. >> Yeah, I can find it. Yeah. piece of >> Whoever chose to take that tack is I don't know. anti-American. It's like these >> Everyone in Hollywood is

>> Well, you know, I I guess >> everyone in Hollywood is anti-American. >> I guess that's true. It's unfortunate. >> All of them. They're all pieces of All of them. Well, they didn't even and one of the specific comments was you didn't even mention Randy Sugarard and Gary Gordon Medal of Honor. Okay. Not even mentioned. I I mean, I was I was shocked. >> I was excited about this when I Was excited for Tom. I was excited for everybody involved and then Tom told me don't watch it. So, I'm not going to watch it. Yep.

But man, like what the it's not, you know, I tried to convince them to course correct by doing sort of a follow on with, you know, some additional footage or something because I mean, the can's open at that point, but by the time I see it, it's in the public domain. I can't They didn't give us an Opportunity to to provide comments, edit, nothing. I mean, they took what we said and then packaged it the way they wanted. >> I'm sorry, dude. There's like that just really makes me angry. And like >> Hollywood politics and

with little kids is at the top of the list. >> Well, that's a perfect segue to the next thing we're going to cover, politics. Right. >> All right, let's get into your run for Senate. >> So, I had been saying, >> thank God you didn't get elected, by the way. Yeah, I I wake up every day saying that >> for the past 30 years and it's not like it happened every day, but people would ask me, "Well, you should run for office, right?" Cuz I think you got some notoriety and you know, you could stand

up in front of an audience and talk That, you know, that automatically makes you a a candidate for politics. And and I would always say when I had my own company, which we're not going to get into, but I had my own company for 15 years, and I always said, "I don't like the politics of business. I can assure you I would despise the politics of politics and and that's why I didn't want to do it. And then it occurred to me, well, you know what? I'm the perfect person for it because if you don't

like Politics and you aren't a politician, that's the kind of person we want to elect. So, I allowed myself to believe naively, quite frankly, >> that you could make a difference. that I could make a difference. Uh that it was a fair fight, which it's not I can't I can't say it's never a fair fight, but it certainly wasn't a fair fight in my situation. And I I have per my personal credibility was impacted which is probably bothers me more than Anything else because I've worked really hard and I think been fairly successful in portraying

a positive image for the unit, for the people we supported, for the military in general, for myself, for my family. That matters to me. I want people to think, you know, people like him are squared away. They're patriots. They're I'm not going to say necessarily fearless, but super squared away, which I said earlier, is something, you know, that I I admire and I respect. And what Happened to me in the campaign, I think, tainted that to a certain extent. But it's almost like as soon as you say you're going to run for office, people are

suspicious of you because they're so conditioned to being lied to, to people don't turn out to do what they said they were going to do. And I I kind of understand how difficult it is to stay on that track as you learn more. I I I'm not trying to be sympathetic, but man, it's a freaking Difficult thing to do. >> I just can't I just Man, it's just so bad out there. Like we were talking at breakfast. We have a mutual friend. He's running for Senate. I I people ask all the time to come on

the show and I fell into this in the last presidential election of of giving people a platform. I don't know if I can do it anymore. You know, I got friends that are running for Office and I'm like, I I can't I I can't >> I can't trust you anymore >> because you're telling me this and every time I have a politician, whether it's Trump or some congressman, they all lie. They lie right to your face just like we are sitting across from each other. And it doesn't even bother them. Yeah. >> And so I

tell him now, I said, "Yep, you get you get your ass elected, spend a Couple of years in there, and if you're actually about what the you're talking about, then I'll give you a chance on your next run." >> But no, man. I've seen so many people go in there and they just It's like It's like they never had any values to ever even to begin with. >> They're just trash. Yeah. >> Well, you know, sorry. >> My I I was very naive about how it would Work. I mean, I you have to do an

assessment, right? Do you really think you can win? I mean, if you don't think you can win, why would you ever do it? I mean, I thought I had a really good shot. I mean, people are against career politicians. That's who there's really three primary candidates. One's a career politician. One has been working in politics her whole life. uh and me who combat veteran, special Ops guy, you know, business owner and and this was a successful business. This wasn't, you know, I just did some consulting work. I mean, we had 700 people working for me

from zero. >> Holy >> Yeah. So, you know, I understand how to lead. I understand what impacts business. I understand how the government works. I understand the implications of foreign policy. I I lived it. I was on the point of the Spear. You know, I felt I'm a slam dunk better qualified than anybody else here. And the polls revealed that I was ahead by double digits. Now, polls are not always right, but you know, we came in with a splash. We made a amazing campaign video. I'm flying a Blackhawk which we rented and I'm you

know saying various things in the cockpit and and uh there was a amazing narrative that was going on in the background. In fact, I know President Trump saw it because I Mean it had that kind of splash. It was like wow this is good. You know this is the kind of thing you want to start your campaign with. And you know, we really came out of nowhere and all of a sudden I'm out front and that didn't happen immediately, but I but I was as we're getting close to the and this is a primary we're

talking about and I spoke. I'm just going to use names because you know what? They didn't hesitate to me. So why why would I Not use them? >> I don't know why you would protect any political prostitutes. You're right. >> That's what they are. They are prostitutes. The US capital is the biggest most elite wh house on the planet. That's the truth. So the the dynamics here is Mo Brooks, who was in the House, ran for this office against me and Katie Britt, who ultimately won. Katie Britt was Richard Shelby's chief of staff. I don't

know who that is. Richard Shelby, longtime senator from Alabama, one of the most powerful senators to have served in in recent history. I mean, he was in the Senate for decades. And uh >> he was, aren't they all awful? >> Look at Mitch McConnell. >> Well, he's coming up next. Very influential. I mean, very influential. And Because of what happened between Mo Brooks and President Trump, President Trump was really pissed off at Mo Brooks and he did not want him to win. So I get introduced into the process because nobody thinks Katie can beat Mo.

So, I'm again more qualified arguably and better chance to win. And When the poll came out that showed I was ahead, Katie was second and Mo was third, leader McConnell, Mitch McConnell called me and said, "Hey, we just saw the polls. Just want you to know Mo's in third. We're out. Meaning we just The most important thing to us is that he does not win. Yes, sir. Okay, got it. Within two days, the super PAC that put out the that was not true about me Received either five or $10 million from a fund that I

believe he controls or controlled. Who's he? McConnell. So, somebody twisted his arm. It had to be Shelby. Had to be. Uh because he he really wanted Katie, his chief of staff, to win. Uh I met with a surrogate of Senator Shelby and it was it was a you know in an office sitting across from each other, richest man in Alabama actually. and he was nervous as if he were on Trial. And I'm like, I'm looking at my consultant like, you know, what's up here? And, you know, he's not saying anything. I mean, he's like rubbing

his palms and sweating. and he starts talking about when he ran for office, how they exposed a video of him from from when he was in college and how it totally trashed his reputation. And then he talked about just weird stuff every >> This sounds like this sounds like, you Know, when they send somebody and they it's like they're your parent. Like, I'm just I'm just looking out for your best interest. Like, I just wouldn't want anything bad to happen to you. How about you get the out of my office before I start your head

on this parking curb? >> Get the out of here. I should have had you with me. So So again, I'm new to all this, right? So I'm not quite sure how this is why this is playing out the way it is. But then he gets to the point after probably 45 minutes of going all over the place with all kind of weird I mean, he point blank says, "We want you to drop out of the race." and we want you to run from Mo Brooks's seat that he's vacating instead and we'll support you. And I'm

not quite sure what to do here because I don't I don't want to do that. I don't Want to be in the House. I mean, it's up enough to be in the Senate. But if you got to deal with, you know, 450 other morons, some of which are are incredible that these people got elected, what they who they are, what they represent, what they stand for, I I could not work with those people. There's no way. And >> look at how weak these people are. Look at them in the face and look at how weak

these people. Those are installed because they they are so weak. >> Yeah. >> They are easily manipulated. They don't even know what the is going on. Which is probably again another part of why I get steamrolled here. But this meeting is about basically the warning, right? that if if you proceed, we are going to bring you down. Again, I I was I was naive. I was shocked. I didn't know quite what to do. So, we leave and I'm like, "Does this kind of happen all the time?" "No." He said, "I've never seen that happen before."

And I said, "Well," and then they my adviserss all said, "Well, it's your call." And I'm thinking, well, I mean, I don't know of anything that they could bring up that would bring me down, you know, and they said, 'Well, then then we should press on. And we decided to press on. Well, I was doing a presentation on Somalia At the war college at Carlile Barracks, which is Army War College in Pennsylvania. A friend of mine who was in ' 06 at the time invited me to come up and do it. If you watch the

whole presentation, this is the irony of it all. If you watch the whole presentation, at the beginning, he says this is nonattribution. Now, for those who aren't familiar with that, what it means is nothing said there should ever be attributed to the person Speaking it officially ever. They put the briefing on the internet. I didn't say anything in the briefing I wouldn't say again. But what and I said it to you during this podcast. I said disarm the population. That's what our UN task force was doing in Somalia. And I was just explaining that this

is what happened leading up to the Pakistani massacre. They took that sound bite out of that presentation and said He is anti-second amendment. He wants to and they then they have the video of me disarm the population. I mean how how incredibly dishonest is that? And I mean it pretty much that alone pretty much tanked me. And then uh my sister got on there and that's a complicated story. Uh but I mean she should be thanking me, not doing what she did. I don't know if they paid her. I don't know what. But she got

on there And said some that just was not true at and and it was at that point it was over. And I I came in third. And you know, I met with President Trump, met him for like an hour, and he never endorsed anyone, but in his mind, I was another John McCain because we're both military pilots. We're both PS. And he will never forgive John McCain For his vote on Obamacare. And I think >> he's only interested in Yesmen. >> Yeah. >> That is Donald Trump. a person that surrounds himself with yesmen. >> Yeah.

And that's why I think serving in what I thought was a noble capacity to represent the state of Alabama and the interest of the citizens of the state is is not really what I ever envisioned it to be. It's I mean to be the kind of senator that they want right now, you Just vote party. I mean just vote whatever whatever the leader wants you to vote, you vote. I mean there's very few exceptions to that. And you know, most of the time you probably should, but not all the time. And I I don't know.

I dodged a bullet. Honestly, I would have hated every moment of my life. Somebody asked me at a at a it wasn't really a fundraiser. I hated doing fundraising. Uh they this woman asked me, "Why do you want to be a Senator?" I said, "I don't want to be a senator. I'm willing to do it because I think we need people like me doing it." And it shocked her. It's like, "You don't want to be a senator? Why are you running?" because I think people like me need to do it. You know, maybe we can

make a difference. >> It probably would have been a lost cause. I would have hated my life. I don't know. You know, we'll never know. I'm sure as hell not trying again cuz it cost me a lot of money. I mean, I put a lot of personal money into that race. I mean, a lot. You have to. I mean, it's a big It's Alabama is a big state and to get, you know, media is the king. Although social media is a kind of a cost-effective way to do it these days, but now there's so much

AI out there that you don't know what you're reading. Is this AI generated? Is this real? You know, it's really really up right Now. Honestly, >> that's where podcasts come in, Mike. >> There you go. That's why I'm here. The >> establishment doesn't own podcasting yet. So, actually, I'm sure they own a great portion of it, but they don't own I don't think they own any of the top people. and um and uh you know then podcasting is what really influenced this last election. >> Unfortunately, we had candidates, but in my opinion, but uh one

more thing To add. So, this jackass Parker Griffith, who's a a a former uh member of the House, I think, also a doctor, he gets on the radio and says that I I have PTSD. Never met the man. Who is this? His name is Parker Griffith. He's he was a former House member of the House from Alabama. And again, he's just one of the cronies that they're trying to apply to discredit me. >> General Flynn, again, I don't know where You stand on him, but he was supportive of me. You know, he was, you know,

Alabama is very proTrump state, and I I like most of what he's doing. Um, and getting support from anybody associated with President Trump helps you as a candidate in Alabama. And you know he came out this lamb basting this Parker Gri the four he didn't imply it he came out and said it that if you if you served in combat you are damaged goods. That's basically What he said. And he said we can't elect somebody to the Senate that is damaged goods and has PTSD. This is a doctor who's never seen me before, never met

me saying this publicly to discredit me. I mean, I was so pissed off. And what really disappointed me, honestly, is the veteran community didn't stand up. If if every veteran in the state would have said, "That is up. That guy should not be doing that. That is wrong. This is a guy who served the Country and is willing to go serve six years, six more years. We should support him." They didn't. I don't know why, man. We if I would have known about that, that would have gone everywhere. So hopefully I I just we just

didn't hear about it. You know, but >> I would have been all over that >> Yeah. >> So, and I, you know, >> I hate these people, Mike. I Hate them. >> I mean, I felt like I had grounds for a lawsuit. I really did. I mean, this is stone cold lies misrepresentation, whatever you want to call it. But, you know, legal battles are terrible. You know, I don't like attorneys much more like politicians. I have some friends that are attorneys. Forgive me, guys. But I I I just I I can't stand it. I mean,

it's all just technicalities and loopholes and, you know, this little bit of language over here. And it's not, you know, nothing's about what's right and wrong. It's I don't know, just very, very frustrating. So, I just let it go. And I just consider myself fortunate to not have won. I regret doing it because I feel like there are some people who really do think I'm anti-second amendment, which is ridiculous. And I spent a lot of money. Those two things I Would like to undo, but can never be undone. I mean, I shouldn't say can never

be undone. Well, you just accepted a new SIG MCX SCAR or uh not SCAR spear here. So, and >> I think it seemed pretty pro- Second Amendment to me. >> We clarified where the comment came from. I mean, >> so yeah. >> Unreal, >> man. I'm sorry. It's just >> I thought it was a fair fight and it was absolutely nothing like a fair fight. >> It is. I mean, you're just dealing with people that are like more than willing to sell their soul for they don't even know what they're getting. Yeah. >> Walk it

into there. >> They don't even know what the they're getting, but they are overwhelmingly willing to sell their soul to Get into that club. It is wild. >> Yep. >> But well, let's talk about some good stuff. All right, let's talk let's talk about, you know, we we were talking at breakfast about a couple of different nonprofits that you're affiliated with. Uh, and so I'd like you to go ahead and I know you're sitting on the board of one. Would you like to talk about that? >> Yeah, I'm on the board of a few Actually,

but the one I'm most active in that I think, you know, resonates the most with with our community is the Special Ops Warrior Foundation. Uh, it was founded at Desert One. Most people are familiar with that term, but if you're not, this was the first attempt to rescue the hostages in Thran back in the 80s. And uh there was an accident. Uh there were eight American fatalities And 17 children left without a father. And good on them. I mean the guys that were associated with I don't know if it actually happened you know right then

and there but at some point immediately after this incident they all got together the survivors of the mission and said let's pass the hat and help fund college education for these 17 kids that are left fatherless and it eventually evolved into the Bull Simons scholarship fund I think it was called Bull Simons legendary SF led the Sante raid all you know I mean his his accolades go on and on and um and now has become the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, not Wounded Warrior. People a lot of people that aren't associated with the community confuse the

two, >> but it's special operations warrior foundation. It's special ops.org is the website. >> special ops.org, correct? >> It'll be in the description. >> All right. And here's the charter, which I don't know how you could find a more noble cause than this, is that the the children of every fallen special operator or people who were supporting special ops missions. So, let's say you got operators on the ground and they got a a fixed wing air support and and and the the crew goes in, those kids would be covered because they're on this mission. Now,

it has to go through a a Process to to validate that, you know, this was part of a special operations mission and children of Medal of Honor recipients and now severely wounded because a lot of the severely wounded, I mean, yeah, they're going to get disability, but there's there's there's a lot of gap still for some of them. >> Uh, so they're they're they get financial support as well. I >> I don't think you've talked about what exactly their financial support is. >> Yeah. The support is to send the children of these people who qualify

or these families who qualify to school from cradle to career. Meaning, if you're a three-year-old and you have special needs and you need a tutor, that qualifies 100% funded. All you got to do is send in the bills as long as you know your your fallen parent was within the special community or support in support of it. And it goes all the way to graduate school, 100% Funded along with stipens, computers, I mean everything. I mean, this is it's a heavy lift. I mean, right now, I think we have 284 students in the program currently.

So, they're in school at some level. And since inception, there's over 2,000 kids that have gone through the program and been been paid for. And uh you know, it's a commitment to them. So for the organization, not only do we have the counselors and you know administrators and I mean we do things Like bring kids in the headquarters in Tampa. Bring them in and let them experience the college life to see you know is this really what I want to do. We also pay for not everybody needs to go to college. I mean you know

I've been advocating that for years. It's not right for everyone. So let's encourage and support the trades as well. And same thing, I mean, if you want to go learn how to be a welder, you want to learn how to be electrician, you want to Whatever, all you got to do is submit the paperwork, and if you're if you're a qualified, supported member, it gets paid for. And again, I I I don't know of a of a more >> that's awesome, man. >> Worthy organization than this. You know, something you said there at breakfast, too,

that that um obviously really stuck with me is that um man, I hate saying it, but um suicides are covered, too. And uh I've lost way more friends to suicide than I have a battle. That is that is uh that's a real problem. It it is it is uh a a shock to me to see the percentage of kids in the program that are in the program as a result of of a suicide. Uh we got to fix the problem. I mean we got we got to figure it out because these are great people that

have already proven in their ability to do things that go far beyond what the average Person can do. And you know, there's something there and it we just need to get to the bottom of it. >> How many kids have been put through uh school? O >> over 2,000. >> 2,000. >> Yeah. And and because it is a commitment, there's a big fundraising requirement to this. I mean, obviously college gets more expensive every year. I mean, they go to they can go to Harvard. They can go anywhere they want. and we do an actuarial actuarial

that looks at, you know, statistically here's the number of students you can expect in the future and what college is going to cost and and we we don't have enough funds yet to cover that. It's a big number and and you know that's what we're working toward is to make sure that if things play out the way statistically they look like they probably will, plus or minus, Then we're we're driving toward getting to that number. And so a lot of what we do is fundraising and there's a lot of very generous people who support the

or organization. >> That's awesome. >> Yeah. >> Well, we'll be making a donation. So, >> wow. Well, we appreciate that very much. >> I love what you guys are doing. So, >> and it's getting the word out, you know. I mean, the more people that know about It, I think once you realize what what we do and and I I use the word we loosely, I'm on the board. I'm not, you know, I don't work in it day in day out, but I'm proud of my association with the organization and uh it it's just it's

God's work. I mean, it's just really really significant in the lives of families and and people that are otherwise, you know, hurting. >> That's awesome, man. I love it. Love That. >> Special operations >> Special Ops >> Special Ops.org.org specialops.org Mike, if you had three guests to recommend for this show, who would they be? >> So, you know, I thought about this before coming up and there's a lot of military guys. I mean, you know, there's a lot and and they Deserve the platform, but thinking about, you know, things that I've encountered here recently in

my life that either inspire me or I think uh showcase something that deserves also deserves a broader audience. My daughter who you met a couple years ago bought me a book for Christmas called Outlive and it's by Dr. Peter uh Atla or Atia. Are you familiar with it at all? >> I've interviewed him. No, >> I gotta send it to you. >> You already checked the block. So, >> he's awesome, man. Peter, >> I'm one for one. Okay. And I'm trying to do it actually if you you know, I'm sure your your podcast covers it.

But it's basically, you know, you can add 5 10 years to your life if you focus on fitness, weight, highintensity. >> Yeah. >> Cardio, which which is kind of the rotation I'm in now. I hope it'll work Because I kind of enjoy being around, but uh good deal. All right. Well, we think alike then. So, he was a good one. So, the the other two I have uh is uh I don't know if you read about this guy. I I would just be interested in hearing him talk for two hours. His name is uh Killian

Joure. Neil, do you know who he is? >> No. >> He's an extreme ultra uh mountain climber. He just did all the 14,000 foot mountains in the United continental United States in 31 days without a car. >> Holy >> He went from mountain to mountain with his bike. Okay. His cumulative I think it's 61 14,000 foot peaks. I don't have the bike mileage right. It might be something ridiculous like it's thousands of miles on the bike. 400,000 vertical feet. I mean, he Basically just went non-stop for 31 days climbing mountains back down, riding his bike,

get the next one, climb mountain back down. I mean, I've done 14ers. They're hard. I mean, after I've done even an easy one, I need a couple days, you know, and and this guy's like, bang, bang, bang. Reneer is how he finished. And and with Reneer, because I did it with this same daughter a few years ago, if you do it with a climbing company, you're going to start At I think I think 5,000 ft is where they bring you by car. Well, he didn't start at 5,000 ft. He rode his bike up to 5,000

ft. >> Damn. >> And then he climbed the rest. Honest. I mean, this guy's unreal. He's a machine. I mean, you know, you and I have been around a lot of physical freaks, but this guy, I don't understand how he I really don't. And I don't know if he'd do it, but I I'm just in awe of of his Accomplishment. >> I'll check him out. We'll look him up. >> And then the third guy uh is is this guy Brian Stern, and he he started Greybull Rescue. Have you ever heard of Greybull Rescue? >> I

think I have. >> Yeah, I know someone else said they mentioned him. What they're doing is pretty amazing. And actually it's an opportunity I think for for folks who have miss being part of the kind of Missions we were all part of to get back involved in this kind of stuff. So they basically it's a nonprofit but wherever there's a crisis they go. I mean, you know, whether it's the fires in in California or the uh hurricane in Jamaica or Israel when when everything happened there, getting Americans out. Uh I mean, it it's pretty insane.

And >> they do some trafficking stuff, too. >> They do some anti-trafficking stuff. >> Yeah. So, Brian, who's sort of the the Engine behind it all, uh I think he'd be a good guest. I you know I you might have to rein him in. I don't know if that's going to be on the podcast but because he's very he's very very high energy and like going a million miles an hour but what they're doing is I'm impressed and I'm I'm on an advisory board there. But I told him I don't do a lot. I mean

I see all the traffic on Signal of all the stuff they're doing. It's like geez I cannot Believe what you guys are doing. >> And it's they're helping a lot of people. I mean, thousands of people. It's a lot of people. >> We'll uh do a deep dive into that, too. >> And it started in Afghanistan, actually, during during the pull out. >> No >> Where they were getting people out. >> They were one of the groups in there. >> Yep. >> Yep. >> That's pretty cool. >> Yeah. >> All right. We already had my

first, but >> Well, Mike, this is where we we end it. And um man, I once again I just want to say it was an honor and uh thank you. Thank you. I appreciate, you know, getting to tell the story of these amazing people to such an audience, you know, that otherwise may sort of skip the wave and but not really understand what what These people sacrificed and and what what their what their true capabilities were. I mean, it's just it's incredible. If you could if you could recreate it in other sectors, you'd be unstoppable

and and I'm just proud to have been part of it. >> Yeah. You're a hell of a human, man. I'm just so fortunate to still be alive and wake up every day thanking the Lord and thanking Randy and Gary for their Sacrifice and focusing all the positive things that I have in my life. You know, I think if more of us did that, we'd probably be a lot happier overall. We got a hell of a lot to be happy about and we tend to focus on the negative and I don't I don't get it. >>

I am definitely guilty of that. But but uh but thank you, Mike. >> All right. You're welcome. >> God bless, brother. >> Thank you. No matter where you're watching Shawn Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify podcasts.