Speaker 1: M H foot Force. If it doesn't work, you're just
Speaker 1: not using enough. You're listening to Software Radio Special Operations,
Speaker 1: military news and straight talk with the guys in the community,
Speaker 1: SOFTWAREP Radio on Time on Target. Very excited to have
Speaker 1: Stuart Stu Steinberg, author of This Is What Hell looks
Speaker 1: Like Life as a bomb disposal specialist during the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: on with us. If you're not on YouTube, we're we're
Speaker 1: gonna video of this as well that you might be watching.
Speaker 1: And uh, I was gonna get into your bio. But
Speaker 1: it's like every year from the Vietnam War until now,
Speaker 1: you've done so much, so I'm excited to to get
Speaker 1: into all of it with you. And I know Jack
Speaker 1: is as well. Cool. Um, the just the resume that
Speaker 1: you sent me, it's pretty amazing, you know, between being
Speaker 1: an e O D serving the U. S Army for
Speaker 1: five years and then getting a law degree specializing in
Speaker 1: capital murder as a criminal defense investigator from two thousand three,
Speaker 1: and then too was in nine ten working with the
Speaker 1: U N Office on Drugs and Crime as an advisor
Speaker 1: to the Afghan police officer I said with the Afghan
Speaker 1: Afghan Border Police, I should say, and training the Afghan
Speaker 1: Border Police personnel in the conduct of counter narcotics operations
Speaker 1: along the border of Iran. It's it's a pretty amazing resume.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot to start with. And uh, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure where we should even start. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we should probably start st with, you know,
Speaker 1: um going into the United States military and UH, this
Speaker 1: incident you mentioned in your biography of chemical weapons prior
Speaker 1: prior to you even going over to Vietnam. I think
Speaker 1: that'd probably be a good place to start. Yeah. When
Speaker 1: I graduated from U D School, they sent me to
Speaker 1: this uh dumped in Utah called Dugway Proving Grounds and
Speaker 1: UH at that time, UH Dugway was where we stockpiled
Speaker 1: the vast majority of our chemical and biological weapons. And
Speaker 1: this included like mustard rounds left over from World War One,
Speaker 1: UH and uh and a lot of nerve gas rockets
Speaker 1: and UH one of our jobs was checking these rockets
Speaker 1: for leaguers and there were a lot of them, and
Speaker 1: we would find the leaguers and destroy them. So UH,
Speaker 1: it was it was an interesting job. And then um
Speaker 1: in uh March of n actually marched the thirteenth, which
Speaker 1: happens to be my son's birthday, not eight but March
Speaker 1: of thirteen, we uh accidentally nerve gased a sheep ranch
Speaker 1: and with about a ton of saren. And what happened
Speaker 1: was they were testing a new uh uh dispensing unit
Speaker 1: and it malfunctioned, and uh it ended up killing thousands
Speaker 1: of sheep and pretty much everything that walked, crawled, or
Speaker 1: flew uh in an area of about forty thousand acres.
Speaker 1: So you confirmed that it worked? Though, Oh, yeah, it worked.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, um, and I think I mentioned
Speaker 1: this in the book and the chapter about Dug Way. Um.
Speaker 1: You know how you hear that, you know, cockroaches can
Speaker 1: survive a nuclear blast, Well, they can't survive nerve gas
Speaker 1: because they have a central nervous system. So, uh, it
Speaker 1: was fortunate that for whatever reason, this happened on a Thursday. Um.
Speaker 1: And the herders, for some reason, Thursday was their day off,
Speaker 1: so they were gone. But their horses, their dogs are
Speaker 1: all dead. And uh, after we clean this mess up,
Speaker 1: there were actually three of us who volunteered for Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Uh you enough. Yeah, I just figured, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of idiotically actually that you know, in Vietnam, at least
Speaker 1: you would hear the enemy coming, which of course turned
Speaker 1: out not to be the case. And uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got out of there. I wanted to ask, isn't
Speaker 1: this is this the famous chemical weapons accident that Seymour
Speaker 1: hersh ended up writing about, and there's like a big
Speaker 1: expose a on it. Yeah, And what was really interesting
Speaker 1: is that do you guys know who Jack Anderson was?
Speaker 1: Name rings a bell, but bring up he was. He
Speaker 1: was an investigative reporter for the Washington Post, and every
Speaker 1: year on the anniversary of this event, he would write
Speaker 1: something about it and how the government was covering it up.
Speaker 1: I mean they covered it up for I don't know
Speaker 1: seventy and I don't know, maybe thirty years. Um, they
Speaker 1: denied that it had happened. And of course, I mean
Speaker 1: at one point, um, they had some guy who was
Speaker 1: claiming that it actually was the result of overspring of
Speaker 1: some kind of uh insecticide or something, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: And what was really sad about it was that they,
Speaker 1: you know, tried to blame this on the F four.
Speaker 1: The device was being flown by an F four. They
Speaker 1: tried to blame it on the pilot four as a phantom.
Speaker 1: Isn't it a phantom. Yeah, F four phantom. And you know,
Speaker 1: when I look back on it now, I mean the
Speaker 1: thing about Doug Waye. They tested these weapons systems UM
Speaker 1: on live animals, mostly beagles and sheep and rabbits. Why
Speaker 1: they chose beagles, I don't know, Uh, but it well,
Speaker 1: it was a really weird place. You know. It was
Speaker 1: out in the middle of nowhere. The back end of
Speaker 1: it actually butted up to the Bonneville Salt Flats. And
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things I was kind of
Speaker 1: looking forward to, uh while I was there, was being
Speaker 1: able to watch the world land speed record runs. But
Speaker 1: I had to get out of there. How when you
Speaker 1: say you were involved in the clean up, I mean,
Speaker 1: what what does that mean? How do you even go
Speaker 1: about cleaning up a searing gas accident? Well, mostly it
Speaker 1: was identifying the area that had been contaminated. And what
Speaker 1: actually ended up happening was they ended up bringing in
Speaker 1: these rome plows UM. I think they may have been engineers,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. And and uh and they dug a
Speaker 1: huge pit, I mean huge, like the size of a
Speaker 1: football field, and they basically scraped everything into this pit.
Speaker 1: And in the same way that we used to destroy
Speaker 1: these nerve gas rockets. They filled the pit with tires,
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands and thousands of tires, and then uh
Speaker 1: we uh laid out charges see for tied all together
Speaker 1: with dead cord white fosphorus grenades and then soaked the
Speaker 1: whole thing in jet fuel and then we set it
Speaker 1: off and uh and after it burned out and they
Speaker 1: pitted cooled off, they covered it up, they put offense
Speaker 1: around it, and UH said no trespassing. One of the
Speaker 1: interesting things that I learned when I was doing the
Speaker 1: research for my book was that this land was actually
Speaker 1: owned by the family of Orange Hatch. Uh. Interesting and
Speaker 1: so that probably helped them keep it quiet too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they obviously, you know, they paid the sheep farmer
Speaker 1: a lot of money, uh to shut up basically. And
Speaker 1: we were debriefed by these guys from the Department of
Speaker 1: Defense and we're told, you know, we had to sign
Speaker 1: non disclosure agreements and all of a sudden crap and
Speaker 1: uh it was it was just another reason, you know,
Speaker 1: to get out of there. What do you what do
Speaker 1: you think about that now that you know we're decades
Speaker 1: later and you reflect back on it, do you have
Speaker 1: any thoughts about you know, say, the legality of chemical
Speaker 1: weapons or the legality of test them, uh, or the
Speaker 1: moral you know, ethical implications. I think yeah, it's completely immoral.
Speaker 1: It's completely unethical as far as I'm concerned. Um, why
Speaker 1: we still have these weapons? Obviously we know that the
Speaker 1: Russians are using them. We know that, you know, because
Speaker 1: of the poisoning of the skirtballs. Uh. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: what's going on in Syria. I mean yeah, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they should all be gotten rid of. I mean it's
Speaker 1: bad enough that, you know, we've got enough nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: to destroy the world five thousand times. You know what
Speaker 1: do we need this stuff for it? Do you think
Speaker 1: we need to maintain a chemical deterrent or should we
Speaker 1: take the high road on that and get rid of
Speaker 1: ours and just encourage the rest of the world to
Speaker 1: do the same. Yeah, that's a tough question. Um m hm,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know what the answer is. I mean, personally,
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, we should take the high road and
Speaker 1: get rid of them. I mean you're gonna have you know,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have uh countries out there, people out there who,
Speaker 1: um aren't going to care what we do. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: the bad actors like for instance, the Syrians, the Syrian government.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and uh, you know, whether we have a
Speaker 1: stock problem or not, it's not going to stop them
Speaker 1: from using these weapons for bad purposes. And now that
Speaker 1: you've told that story, it actually does begin to make
Speaker 1: sense of why a young man would willingly volunteer to
Speaker 1: cover the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia. You know, I
Speaker 1: kind of believe that everything happens for a reason, And
Speaker 1: the truth of the matter is, if that event hadn't happened,
Speaker 1: I mean I probably would have eventually come down on
Speaker 1: orders for Vietnam anyway. But volunteering to go, um, and
Speaker 1: then I extended my tour, so I was actually in
Speaker 1: Vietnam for eighteen months. Um. I met the best men
Speaker 1: I've ever known in my life ever. And Uh, I'm
Speaker 1: on the board of directors of the National Lee O
Speaker 1: D Association. We just had our convention in Scottsdale, and
Speaker 1: so every year, you know, I get to see most
Speaker 1: of these guys um uh that I served with. UM.
Speaker 1: Most of the guys I served with on the first
Speaker 1: team I was on our deceased. Now there there's not
Speaker 1: many of us left. Um Um. Most of them UM
Speaker 1: have passed away from herbicide related diseases. Um. But the
Speaker 1: third team, I was on the seventh Ordiency Attachment up
Speaker 1: in Northern I Corps. You about fifty clicks f in
Speaker 1: the DMZ. There was something special about that unit. First
Speaker 1: of all, we were the only team in Vietnam that
Speaker 1: never lost a man. We had people, you know, wounded
Speaker 1: of course, um, you know, and one guy that lost
Speaker 1: a foot, but uh, yeah, the other teams I was
Speaker 1: on all lost people. So yeah, you were talking about
Speaker 1: the guys that served with that are still here. Jack
Speaker 1: made the connection with you through Mike Vining, So I
Speaker 1: think our audience would have to hear how you how
Speaker 1: you met Mike was such a like in my community.
Speaker 1: Mike and I are actually in Vietnam at the same time.
Speaker 1: He was on a team down in the Delta, and
Speaker 1: uh we never met U while I was there. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, in my book, I talked about these three
Speaker 1: attacks on this AMMO dump that the team I was on. Uh,
Speaker 1: for the first ten months I was there, I was
Speaker 1: responsible for and a lot of you do you guys
Speaker 1: came in from all over the country to help us
Speaker 1: clean it out. Mike wasn't one of them. So I
Speaker 1: actually met Mike. Um. I think the first uh any
Speaker 1: t e O D A convention I went to was
Speaker 1: in two thousand four. It was in Colorado Springs and
Speaker 1: that's where I met Mike. And of course his story
Speaker 1: is yeah, grang out loud. He was the first of
Speaker 1: you do you guy that went to Delta and of
Speaker 1: course was involved in the fiasco in the desert trying
Speaker 1: to rescue the hostages. Um. He's just a great guy,
Speaker 1: A great guy. And my wife and his life Donnas,
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time together down in Scottsdale, and uh,
Speaker 1: they're just just wonderful people. Wonderful people. Just a brief
Speaker 1: segue because you mentioned your book, I just wanna um
Speaker 1: let the listeners know. The title of the book is
Speaker 1: This Is What Hell Looks Like A life is a
Speaker 1: bomb disposal specialist during the Vietnam War. And you go
Speaker 1: look for it on Amazon. It's available now. Um. So
Speaker 1: can we talk a little bit about, you know, when
Speaker 1: you first landed in Vietnam and what your experience was
Speaker 1: like as a young E O D technician. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: uh flew out of Oakland, Uh, you know, stopped in Hawaii,
Speaker 1: had been in oakanhaw and then we landed in Vietnam
Speaker 1: at ben Wai Air Base and then they chucked us
Speaker 1: over to Long Ben Uh, which was kind of where
Speaker 1: all the big army units were, personnel and whatnot. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they started, you know, lined us all up,
Speaker 1: and they started calling out names, and there was and
Speaker 1: I went with another guy from dub Waite, a guy
Speaker 1: named Tom Brown, and they called us out and told
Speaker 1: us to go stand over wherever and uh and a
Speaker 1: clerk from our control unit ended up picking us up.
Speaker 1: And UH we stopped at this UM Air Force Enlisted
Speaker 1: Men's club. It was like being in the States. I mean,
Speaker 1: you would never know there was a war going on. UM.
Speaker 1: And I had some burghers and whatnot. And then we
Speaker 1: flew out, uh from ben wa Tom went to the
Speaker 1: one uh in uh Cameron Bay, and I went to
Speaker 1: the one in four. He flew out on the See
Speaker 1: one thirty. I flew out on a chinook. I know
Speaker 1: we landed somewhere to refuel, but I just don't remember where.
Speaker 1: But um, one of the things I talked about in
Speaker 1: the book was, you know, wondering when the hell I
Speaker 1: was going to get a weapon, uh, because you know,
Speaker 1: h the chinook I was on. Uh was a lot
Speaker 1: of guys from the hundred and seventy third Airborne Brigade,
Speaker 1: and of course they were all armed, and man, I
Speaker 1: was really jealous, you know that these guys said guns
Speaker 1: and I didn't because I'm thinking, you know, we're in
Speaker 1: a helicopter here. You know, it's not like we're flying
Speaker 1: and really fast. And you know what if we get
Speaker 1: shot down and you had to wait to get to
Speaker 1: your unit before you were Yeah, I had to wait
Speaker 1: to get to the unit, yeah, before I ended up.
Speaker 1: Really that sucks. Yeah, I did, you know, And of course,
Speaker 1: you know, back then, unlike now, you know, people went
Speaker 1: to Vietnam individually. You didn't go with the unit. Now,
Speaker 1: you know the e O D teams and when they
Speaker 1: originally came over, you know, they came over as a unit.
Speaker 1: But after that it was you know, when your tour
Speaker 1: was up, you got replaced by someone, and you know,
Speaker 1: it kind of started all over again. And so what
Speaker 1: kind of missions were you getting once you once you
Speaker 1: arrived at your unit, you finally got your M six team,
Speaker 1: What was the e O D mission? Like? What were
Speaker 1: the type of operations that you guys participated in? Well,
Speaker 1: the basic you know the thing about the e O
Speaker 1: D is to identify renders safe uh and and destroy
Speaker 1: all forms of explosive ordinance. You know I E D
Speaker 1: s and UHDUD two thousand pound bombs. I mean you know,
Speaker 1: uh bad ammunition. Uh. Now that the first team I
Speaker 1: was on, we had we had two man on site teams,
Speaker 1: uh where we ran pretty much constant combat operations with
Speaker 1: the units of the D seventy three Airborne the game
Speaker 1: in the fourth Imagery Division, excuse me, and uh so
Speaker 1: we were went on a lot of combat assaults. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, we went into hot l z ease and
Speaker 1: took off from hot lse ease and um uh it
Speaker 1: could be anything from you know, a long range recon
Speaker 1: team would be out doing an assessment after an air strike.
Speaker 1: And the thing about air strikes particular really be fifty
Speaker 1: two strikes. They were always going to be Dud's um.
Speaker 1: So you know, these long range recon teams would stumble
Speaker 1: on Dud who knows five pounder seven fifty thousand pounds
Speaker 1: two thousand pounder and enable call us. So we would
Speaker 1: get inserted. Sometimes, you know, we had to hump you know,
Speaker 1: four or five, six, seven clicks to get to you know,
Speaker 1: where the ordinance was, and and then you know, we
Speaker 1: do our thing, you know, we blow and of course
Speaker 1: then that told the enemy that we were there. So
Speaker 1: um yeah, so so you had a high tail it
Speaker 1: out of there pretty fast. Yeah yeah. And sometimes what
Speaker 1: ended up happening is you'd get sucked in. You guys
Speaker 1: are the weather. You couldn't get a bird out. So
Speaker 1: then we'd end up like being the you know, the
Speaker 1: eighth and ninth members of this long range recon team
Speaker 1: and you know, well we'd be grunts for the rest
Speaker 1: of the day in the night and you know, hopefully
Speaker 1: get out the next morning. These were all ORP teams
Speaker 1: or recon lurks, long rangery continents. Yeah, and sometimes eight
Speaker 1: teams you know, special Forces guys. Um we did one uh,
Speaker 1: I did one gig when I was staying. I was
Speaker 1: t d Y in the Delta for a couple of months,
Speaker 1: and we did one gig with a team of Navy seals. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was it was. It was the best
Speaker 1: job I've ever had, you know, despite the danger and everything,
Speaker 1: and you know, getting my ass blown up in the
Speaker 1: AMMO dump and you know everything else, that's just you know,
Speaker 1: well tell us about the m O dump story. Then
Speaker 1: how did how did that happen? Yeah, I commented on
Speaker 1: shirt before we recorded a new album, the the uh
Speaker 1: are you thinking of the live albums and Beast in
Speaker 1: the East. Yeah, well here's the crazy we're getting onto
Speaker 1: doc and now. But I actually went all the way
Speaker 1: to South Dakota to see them play that Rainion show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I hung out with a guy who we had
Speaker 1: on the podcast before, um Matt Vererkand and it was
Speaker 1: a great time. I mean, Don's voice is definitely not
Speaker 1: at its peak. Seeing George Wench though on guitar, I mean,
Speaker 1: guy is there's there's something wrong with that guy. I mean,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be able to play like that. He's an
Speaker 1: incredible man, He's a monster. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, I'm glad
Speaker 1: you noticed that that. Right when I saw the Motorhead show,
Speaker 1: I was like, I think there's a big cross section
Speaker 1: of guys on this show who are just like metalheads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think that's probably true. What did you
Speaker 1: ask me the AMMO dump story? Oh? Yeah, well on
Speaker 1: February March eleven, twelve. In March nineties sixty nine, the
Speaker 1: VC got into the queyan Ammo dump and blew it up.
Speaker 1: And during all three attacks they never saw a single VC. Uh.
Speaker 1: They got in and out of the dump without being seen.
Speaker 1: It was yeah, And every time the dunk got hit,
Speaker 1: they would then increase the amount of security. And by
Speaker 1: the time the dunk got blown up the third time
Speaker 1: on Marche, I think you know, between the two field
Speaker 1: forces lurbs and Korean Marines and uh and uh some
Speaker 1: Vietnamese Army rangers, they had nine or ten ambushes set
Speaker 1: up around outside the dumpy. They never caught anybody. On
Speaker 1: one occasion. Uh, they did hit a VC patrol, but
Speaker 1: they weren't sappers. They were just happened to be a
Speaker 1: patrol um And uh yeah, so how the hell were
Speaker 1: they getting in and out? Did you guys ever figure
Speaker 1: that out? Well? Yeah, to two times they actually came
Speaker 1: through the wire and we're not seeing the second. The
Speaker 1: third time they actually tunneled under a creek and came
Speaker 1: up in a location in the Ambo dump. It was
Speaker 1: a blind spot to the guard towers. And not only that,
Speaker 1: they actually had roving patrols with dogs inside the dump
Speaker 1: by the third attack. And you know what was really
Speaker 1: irritating about it was they blew it up. We started,
Speaker 1: and of course all three times we were in the
Speaker 1: dump while entire paths of you know, eighty one millimeter
Speaker 1: mortars eight inch around won seven fives were detonating. And
Speaker 1: how we never lost anyone. Yeah, it's just one of
Speaker 1: those miraculous things that you know, you just can't comprehend.
Speaker 1: And now the m of battalion, the one four Ordinance Battalion,
Speaker 1: they did lose three guys during the third attack. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, I'm kind of sick. The thing about that
Speaker 1: was every week in the Army Times they would publish
Speaker 1: a list of people who were killed in action or
Speaker 1: missing or whatever the week before. So the week after
Speaker 1: the dump went up the third time, those three guys
Speaker 1: who were vaporized basically because they were on a pad
Speaker 1: eight inch rounds that went up, they were listed as
Speaker 1: missing in action, presumed dead because they didn't have the remains. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they found the ring finger of Captain Allen, his citadel ring,
Speaker 1: so I guess they thought the rest of him was
Speaker 1: in de Moine or something. Yeah, I mean I remember,
Speaker 1: I mean a friend of mine was telling me this
Speaker 1: story about how in Afghanistan there out on patrol and
Speaker 1: the guy behind him get they think he stepped out
Speaker 1: a pressure plate. Explosives went off, and the dude was
Speaker 1: just vaporized, and he's telling me how surreal it was
Speaker 1: that one second there's a human being there, the next
Speaker 1: second the guy's gone, like it's a fucking magic trick
Speaker 1: or something. And they found the dudes ember or radio
Speaker 1: like two deployments later. Um, you know, a kilometer away
Speaker 1: from where the explosion took place. Yeah, I have to
Speaker 1: understand was the trip Yeah yeah, you know I saw
Speaker 1: in your on your resume that you spent some time
Speaker 1: over there too. Will definitely get into that. So your
Speaker 1: role on the on that was to clean up the
Speaker 1: mess I guess again, yeah at them. And there are
Speaker 1: some pictures in the book of the devastation. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: we're um, there's a there were a pado one of
Speaker 1: five rounds that just you were like ankle deep in
Speaker 1: you know, unexploded rounds and shrapnel and you know whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: can you describe for people a little bit about like
Speaker 1: as far as the size of this facility, how much
Speaker 1: uxo we're talking about? Uh, this dump originally before the
Speaker 1: first attack, had nineteen tons of ordinance and after the
Speaker 1: third attack, eleven thousand tons had been destroyed it and
Speaker 1: we ended up uh blowing a lot of the damaged
Speaker 1: ordinance and and dumping hundreds of tons, thousands of tons
Speaker 1: of it off the coast of Vietnam into the South Genes. See.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that that area where we dumped this stuff
Speaker 1: is completely dead now, you know, because we did dump
Speaker 1: a lot of chemical weapons, particularly white Foster's rounds. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's crazy. So I mean this, this, uh,
Speaker 1: this facility must have been like a major logistical hub
Speaker 1: for the entire VIE. Second largest dump in Vietnam. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the only one bigger was the Air Force
Speaker 1: dump in the name this is. This is like an
Speaker 1: interesting case study as far as like if you were
Speaker 1: to study like a rule of warfare, unconventional warfare or
Speaker 1: something like that, that they were able to sneak in
Speaker 1: there three times. Yeah, yeah, I have to wonder, you know,
Speaker 1: going back to something you said earlier, how do you
Speaker 1: balance out being a guy who is proud of your service,
Speaker 1: is still working with you know, e O D Veterans Association,
Speaker 1: and then at the same time, as you talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: have ethical concerns with you know what type of weapons
Speaker 1: we were using. Uh, You're gonna have to say that again.
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering, how do you balance out between being
Speaker 1: a guy who's obviously and as you should be proud
Speaker 1: of your service, writing a book, working with other EO
Speaker 1: D veterans, and at the same time, as you expressed earlier,
Speaker 1: you have ethical concerns with the type of weapons we're using. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't see any um, I don't see
Speaker 1: any problem with those two things. Um. Uh Uh. The
Speaker 1: guys I served with, I mean I sort of I
Speaker 1: sort of saw us, or see us as having been
Speaker 1: existential doctors. Um. Every time we disarmed or destroyed uh,
Speaker 1: you know, bad ordinance or a booby trap or something
Speaker 1: like that, we saved lives. Uh. One of the events
Speaker 1: that I talked about in the book was where uh
Speaker 1: we disarmed a bouncing betty that had been uh putting
Speaker 1: the floor under some boards of a school, a school
Speaker 1: for Christ's sake. Um. And the reason the VC did
Speaker 1: that was because this village I had allowed a marine
Speaker 1: cap team, a combined accent betune team to operate and
Speaker 1: run ambushes out of their village. Um. And so because
Speaker 1: of that the VC decided to punish them. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: you know so, Yeah, and every time we took care
Speaker 1: of like, for instance, you know, even you know, a
Speaker 1: five hundred pound you know, air dropped bomb, you know,
Speaker 1: if we blew it up the VC and weren't sawing
Speaker 1: it in half and steaming out the explosives and making
Speaker 1: homemade bombs with it. Yeah, and it's worth pointing out.
Speaker 1: I know you're well aware of, Stuart more so than
Speaker 1: I am, that e O D technicians continue to do
Speaker 1: a lot of work in places like Loose and Burma, Cambodia,
Speaker 1: diffusing these bombs that you know, kids are playing around them.
Speaker 1: You know, the the UXO is just spread across the
Speaker 1: countryside over there. It's terrible in Southeast Asia. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: yet you were, you know, crazy enough to extend your
Speaker 1: deployment to Vietnam for what another six months? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: what what made you want to stay? I mean it
Speaker 1: wasn't because you guy, You had these great guys you
Speaker 1: worked with. Yeah, it was you know, the men that
Speaker 1: I served with, and the adrenaline. I mean, you have
Speaker 1: thought of coming back to the States, Uh, and being
Speaker 1: on a state side team seemed like kind of a
Speaker 1: boring proposition, and I would have extended again, except that
Speaker 1: I was knee five with a lot of time in grade,
Speaker 1: and they told me I had to go back to
Speaker 1: school for nuclear weapons. So yeah, I would have stayed
Speaker 1: longer and eventually you didn't have to come home, of course.
Speaker 1: Um what what was that like? Was there any thoughts
Speaker 1: about staying in the military or was after Vietnam you're
Speaker 1: kind of yeah, there was. I ended up on a
Speaker 1: team in Ohio and we were located on an old
Speaker 1: arsenal and I had re enlisted once already, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I was thinking of making it a career. Um and
Speaker 1: uh uh they actually the career counselor had to go
Speaker 1: down to Fort Campbell actually talked to me about re
Speaker 1: enlisting in um. Uh, the possibility of me going to
Speaker 1: the prep school for West Point, which at that time
Speaker 1: was at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, And I thought about that.
Speaker 1: Um they offered me six and then I decided that, well,
Speaker 1: they were doing a lot of drug testing back then,
Speaker 1: and I was smoking weed and I knew that center
Speaker 1: or later and I was going to have a bad
Speaker 1: piss test and uh. And then I found out that
Speaker 1: I could get out sooner if I was going back
Speaker 1: to school. So that's what I did. And I mean,
Speaker 1: you didn't just go to school, You went to George
Speaker 1: Georgetown went to law school, right. Well, I actually got
Speaker 1: my law degree. At the time, it was called the
Speaker 1: Franklin Pierce Law Center in conquered New Hampshire is now
Speaker 1: the University of New Hampshire School of Law. And uh.
Speaker 1: During my third year of law school, my constitutional law
Speaker 1: professor in the demon of the law school had submitted
Speaker 1: my name for this graduate teaching fellowship at Georgetown and
Speaker 1: I ended up getting that. So I taught at Georgetown
Speaker 1: in the clinical program for two years and instead of
Speaker 1: paying us more money, they let us work on advanced
Speaker 1: law degrees. The adjunct high jinks that universe. So I
Speaker 1: ended up with the Masters in Law in administrative law.
Speaker 1: So why law? I mean, was this an effort to
Speaker 1: get marijuana legalized or no? Um? Uh, how it actually
Speaker 1: happened is actually pretty funny. Um. I had my b
Speaker 1: A and uh, I was living with a bunch of people,
Speaker 1: including the woman I eventually ended up marrying uh in
Speaker 1: in d C. And uh to excuse me, two of
Speaker 1: our roommates, we're law students We were getting high one
Speaker 1: night and one of them said, oh, you should take
Speaker 1: the law school aptitude tests and go to law school
Speaker 1: while it was the next day and I said, Uh,
Speaker 1: aren't you supposed to take a course or something like that?
Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, just go. It's somebody want to
Speaker 1: show up and you'll be able to get in. And
Speaker 1: that's what happened. UM. I took the test and UH
Speaker 1: got pretty high scores. UM and I ended up actually
Speaker 1: picking Franklin Pierce because they offered me a scholarship for
Speaker 1: my first year. I think I may have been their
Speaker 1: first Vietnam veteran. UM. Interesting. Yeah, and then from two
Speaker 1: thousand three you specialized in capital murder as a criminal
Speaker 1: defense investigator. I'm wondering how you got into that. Well,
Speaker 1: we were living in Michigan and I had hooked up
Speaker 1: with another Vietnam guy who was a recon marine and
Speaker 1: Steve and I UH had a contract with the Michigan
Speaker 1: Indigent Defense Services to do investigations UH in UH for
Speaker 1: defense lawyers who were handling homicide cases in most of
Speaker 1: no in Michigan. And so when we left in UH September,
Speaker 1: we ended up in Oregon out here in the high desert.
Speaker 1: UH and mostly because we had friends that had a
Speaker 1: place uh near where I live now in Maddres, Oregon,
Speaker 1: UH that they only used a couple of times a
Speaker 1: year for skiing or golf or whatnot. And they said, what,
Speaker 1: you guys can stay there, just pay the utilities. And
Speaker 1: and so when I first got here, I ended up
Speaker 1: actually working uh for uh a lawyer in Bend, UH
Speaker 1: doing legal research and stuff like that. And somehow during
Speaker 1: that process I met a criminal defense attorney from Madras
Speaker 1: and I went to work for him, mostly doing you know,
Speaker 1: felony stuff, you know, misdemeanors whatever. And I ended up
Speaker 1: UH with a partner UH and UH we ended up
Speaker 1: one of our cases took us over to core of
Speaker 1: Allis where Oregon State is, and UH we had this
Speaker 1: wild uh sex crimes case and UH and basically because
Speaker 1: of our investigation, the defendant was found not guilty. And
Speaker 1: an attorney who was part of the capital defenders had
Speaker 1: been in the courtroom the day you know, the jury
Speaker 1: came in with the not guilty verdicts, and he basically
Speaker 1: asked us if we'd be interested in working on capital
Speaker 1: cases and we said sure. So I ended up we
Speaker 1: ended up actually with an office over there, and we
Speaker 1: were living over there at part time, going back and
Speaker 1: forth over the mountains. Um. They were they were complicated
Speaker 1: and very complex cases. And I'm, you know, glad to
Speaker 1: say that him. None of my capital clients was sentenced
Speaker 1: to death. Can you talk about some of those cases
Speaker 1: now that they've been you know, prosecuted and everything. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess the one you know that I remember the
Speaker 1: most would be the last one that I worked on. Um.
Speaker 1: This was a case where my client and his buddy
Speaker 1: killed this guy who was uh some kind of martem
Speaker 1: up with the local newspaper and uh it turned out
Speaker 1: that this guy had been abusing young boys and the
Speaker 1: co defendant was one of those boys. Sh It, So
Speaker 1: he and my client uh went to this guy's house,
Speaker 1: and the co defendant confronted the guy and told him
Speaker 1: if he didn't give him some money and any pictures
Speaker 1: or videos or whatnot that he had of them, um,
Speaker 1: he was going to go to the cops. And so
Speaker 1: he attacked the kid, and my guy, who was waiting
Speaker 1: in the garage heard the ruckus ran in and and
Speaker 1: this guy was huge to defend the victim. He was
Speaker 1: I think six seven or six eight and waged about
Speaker 1: three d and fifty pounds. My guy, uh was maybe
Speaker 1: six too and probably waged but he was buff. I mean,
Speaker 1: this guy was a weightlifter, and he ended up dragging
Speaker 1: this guy off of the other kid and ended up
Speaker 1: stabbing him something at sixty five times something like that.
Speaker 1: So uh uh, how we won this case was when
Speaker 1: we finally got into the crime scene, which was about
Speaker 1: a week after the cops had done their thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: the other investigator and I, because each defendant had their
Speaker 1: own investigator, and Mike and I became really good friends
Speaker 1: because of this case. Uh. We were searching different parts
Speaker 1: of the house, and the state's case had always been
Speaker 1: that this was about a robbery and uh, but we
Speaker 1: noticed that things like the guy's wallet, which had cash
Speaker 1: in it, was still on the dresser, and there were
Speaker 1: all kinds of expensive items around the house, um that
Speaker 1: hadn't been taken, cameras and video gear and whatnot. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so I'm out in the garage and I'm kind of
Speaker 1: doing my thing, you know, I'm doing a three sixty
Speaker 1: one way and on three sixty the other way, and
Speaker 1: then I looked up and I saw a trapdoor in
Speaker 1: the ceiling of the garage. So I pulled up the
Speaker 1: the return on the search warrant and I'm looking for trapdoor, trapdoor, trapdoor.
Speaker 1: There's nothing there. So I got a ladder, I pulled
Speaker 1: it down, got up into this attic over the garage,
Speaker 1: turned on my flashlight and discovered this guy's pedophilia cash
Speaker 1: Holy sh it, videos Uh young boys underwear, Uh dildoz,
Speaker 1: I mean, what the fuck? Yeah. So, you know, we
Speaker 1: unloaded all this stuff, and the state we notified him
Speaker 1: about it. They tried to force us to turn it
Speaker 1: all over to them, and of course our lawyers told
Speaker 1: the judge that that ain't happening, and the judge basically said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, that's not happening. You know, the cops should
Speaker 1: have found this stuff. So this dude was a serial predator.
Speaker 1: I mean he he had. I mean, was there any
Speaker 1: idea how many victims? There were dozens? Oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there were like, I don't know, a hundred and
Speaker 1: something videos of mostly homosexual stuff, you know, men on men,
Speaker 1: men on boys, and there were eight millimeter videos to
Speaker 1: he had been filming, you know, Uh, some of his encounters.
Speaker 1: Was this dude, like I had school teacher. Was this
Speaker 1: guy like a school teacher or a soccer coach or something.
Speaker 1: It was like the classified editor for the Albany, Oregon newspaper.
Speaker 1: It was a fairly good sized paper for that party
Speaker 1: of Oregon. And he was just grabbing kids off the
Speaker 1: streets or something. No, he was meeting them, uh like
Speaker 1: by being uh football coach or a little league coach,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And some of them were street kids too.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm wondering you mentioned, and it ended
Speaker 1: up uh that uh, once the evidence came in, you
Speaker 1: know our evidence. Uh, the jury ended up finding my
Speaker 1: guy not guilty of everything, including stealing the victim's card. Good. Well,
Speaker 1: what I was gonna say, I'm I'm wondering though, is
Speaker 1: you spoke earlier about the adrenaline rush of being in Vietnam?
Speaker 1: Is an e O? D Are you just a guy
Speaker 1: who's addicted to that adrenaline rush, whether it's you know
Speaker 1: this scantling bombs are taking down predators like this? Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I think that's fair to say. Um. The capital work
Speaker 1: was very exciting and often dangerous because a lot of
Speaker 1: times the people we were looking for weren't much better
Speaker 1: than the guy we were defending. Um. You know, one
Speaker 1: of the things about a capital case in Oregon is
Speaker 1: there are two trials. First there's the guilt and renis
Speaker 1: his trial, and then there's the death penalty trial. So
Speaker 1: you would try to track down people who knew your
Speaker 1: guy and hopefully, you know, they would be able to
Speaker 1: tell you something good. You know, it's something that would
Speaker 1: save your client's life because you only needed one juror
Speaker 1: to hold out. Going back to the thing I mentioned about,
Speaker 1: you know, ethical concerns with weapons. Did you have any
Speaker 1: ethical concerns with that job? Nope? Nope. Yeah, weapons. It
Speaker 1: sounds like you're taking down some dirt bags in this case. Uh,
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward. But I mean you said you work, the
Speaker 1: work was dangerous. I mean I imagine you came across
Speaker 1: what like outlaw biker gangs and stuff like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Actually I did have a case that involved outlaw bikers. Um.
Speaker 1: And uh this was up in h Classic County. I'm
Speaker 1: in uh a northwest corner of Oregon. And this guy,
Speaker 1: this is very interesting, was a stone cold white supremacist,
Speaker 1: neo Nazi whatever. And uh, I remember when I first
Speaker 1: met him and he said something. He said, Steinberg are
Speaker 1: you Jewish, I said, yeah, and I and he said
Speaker 1: that's interesting. And I said, well, Jude, I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: what I came to save your life. And we did.
Speaker 1: We did save his life. Um, so you know, maybe
Speaker 1: that had some effect on his inherent anti Semitism. Might
Speaker 1: not know, uh and uh, but he and I actually
Speaker 1: ended up getting along really well, that's great. That reminds
Speaker 1: me of you know, if you've ever seen American History X,
Speaker 1: like where these guys are jailed together, you know, like
Speaker 1: a black guy being in the same cell as a
Speaker 1: white supremacist and at some point like you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to communicate with this guy, You're gonna have to find
Speaker 1: something that you could get along on. And I think
Speaker 1: sometimes out of that lack of of being able to
Speaker 1: find an alternative, you realize, hey, we're not all that different. Yeah. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: at that point it's uh, it literally is kind of
Speaker 1: a do or die moment. Yeah. Um. And then from there,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned earlier two thousand nine to two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten, working for the UN Office on Drugs and
Speaker 1: Crime as an advisor to the Afghan Border Police, training
Speaker 1: the a p B personnel and the conduct of counter
Speaker 1: narcotics operations along the border of if we were on
Speaker 1: another high a frontaline job. Yeah, and how that happened
Speaker 1: was UM, one of my good friends who's retired UH
Speaker 1: Army major ranger, UM multiple tours in the Balkans War, UM,
Speaker 1: the First Gulf War and then Afghanistan. When Tony retired,
Speaker 1: UM after being an Afghanistan for about eighteen months, UM,
Speaker 1: he took over this program that U n o d c.
Speaker 1: Was running where UH they were training the Afghan border
Speaker 1: police and doing counter narcotics operations and UH at that time,
Speaker 1: I was working as a veterans claims officer for a
Speaker 1: group called Central Oregon Veterans Outreach, UH strictly a volunteer
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And UH, I'm in the office one
Speaker 1: day in my cell phone rings and I'm looking at
Speaker 1: it and it's got like nineteen numbers, kind of going
Speaker 1: what the know is is? And it was Tony and
Speaker 1: he says, UH, I need you to come to Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, he said, well, they keep sending
Speaker 1: meet people who don't want to do the job. UM,
Speaker 1: they would do the class work and then they were
Speaker 1: they would not UH, they wouldn't go out on operations, um,
Speaker 1: because it was dangerous and they were bunch of chicken
Speaker 1: chips and uh. So you know, I talked it over
Speaker 1: with my wife and my son and they said okay
Speaker 1: and uh and I went, so what did the job involved?
Speaker 1: Then you you went out there and train them and
Speaker 1: then you had to go out into the field of
Speaker 1: these guys. We uh I taught courses and improvised explosive devices,
Speaker 1: ordinance identification, tactical convoy movement, and searches of people, places
Speaker 1: and things, um. And then we would help them develop intelligence.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways we did that was by
Speaker 1: going out uh into basically the desert and meeting with
Speaker 1: the sure as, the councils of these nomadic tribes people
Speaker 1: and we would because they were very concerned that a
Speaker 1: lot of their young men were getting involved in drug
Speaker 1: trafficking because of what they were getting paid to run
Speaker 1: these drugs over the border into Iran and uh and
Speaker 1: what we would do is we would find out you
Speaker 1: know what they needed, you know, a well better cell
Speaker 1: phone service, and we would try to get that stuff
Speaker 1: to them. In one case, we delivered sixty metric tons
Speaker 1: of food supplies in this one district that was really
Speaker 1: in bad shape food wise, and by doing that, than
Speaker 1: people would give us good intelligence and then we would
Speaker 1: help the a bp UH you know, plan the interdiction
Speaker 1: operation and you know, we'd go out with them and
Speaker 1: stop the bad guys and sees the drugs. And you know,
Speaker 1: this is an interesting topic. I wanted to mention with
Speaker 1: you because you have this UM service from Vietnam to Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to know if you have any observations
Speaker 1: about improvised explosive devices between the two conflicts, and if
Speaker 1: they've changed, if it became a lot more sophisticated in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: I ended up actually discarning a device that unfortunately I
Speaker 1: figured out how to discern it before picking it up,
Speaker 1: because I eventually found out, you know when I sent
Speaker 1: UH technical intelligence stuff back to the Hazards Devices School
Speaker 1: the Redstone Arsenal, that it hadn't any and anti lift device, UM,
Speaker 1: very sophisticated, and all of the parts inside this little
Speaker 1: box about you know, this big UH came from Radio
Speaker 1: Shack and that was that the trigger mechanism, yeah, the
Speaker 1: detonator yeah, and so they had like fail safe built
Speaker 1: into them, and like you said, anti tampering devices yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: who do you how do you think they learned to
Speaker 1: do all this stuff? I mean, I've been to Afghanistan, um,
Speaker 1: but in a different region. I mean there, it's pretty
Speaker 1: bronze age out there, you know. I mean where do
Speaker 1: you think they were acquiring something? Were being trained at
Speaker 1: Iran about sixty clicks over the border from islam Calla,
Speaker 1: which was the border crossing up in the northwest. We
Speaker 1: knew that camp was there. Why we didn't bombit is
Speaker 1: beyond me. You know, they didn't want upset the Iranians.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the deal was. This is also
Speaker 1: you know, there was another place in the same area
Speaker 1: in Iran where they were making e f P s
Speaker 1: explosively foreign penetrators and these were just killing people left
Speaker 1: and right. And uh this was like the I r
Speaker 1: g C. It was like the Iranian government that was
Speaker 1: training them to do this. Uh yeah. And of course
Speaker 1: that was completely at odds with the Iranians position on
Speaker 1: narconics UM because at the same time they're counting arconics guys.
Speaker 1: Over the years, at least by the time I got there,
Speaker 1: they have lost a couple of thousands UH narcotics cops
Speaker 1: in UH gunfights and whatever, you know, with the people
Speaker 1: that were you know, making these devices and smuggling the
Speaker 1: drugs over the border, and nothing happens in Iran where
Speaker 1: the I r g C is not involved, especially if
Speaker 1: it involves money. Yeah, and it's interesting too because at
Speaker 1: least my understanding of it is, you know, let's let's
Speaker 1: take our own government by for example, like the CIA,
Speaker 1: if they were to run a covert operation, U S
Speaker 1: taxpayers would fund that covert operation through official channels, right,
Speaker 1: official governmental channels that funded I've been told that with Iran,
Speaker 1: with the I r g C or kodes Force or
Speaker 1: one of those, that they will say they will approve
Speaker 1: a covert operation, and then the Iranian government will tell
Speaker 1: that unit, okay, now fund it. Like you have to
Speaker 1: find funding. And maybe maybe that's through trafficking drugs. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's to be um maritime shipping through some other illicit
Speaker 1: business to fund that operation they've assigned. Yeah, it could be.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, No, I don't either. I'm just
Speaker 1: speculating in this case as well as what may have
Speaker 1: been happening, you know, in the overall scheme of things.
Speaker 1: I mean, we didn't even put a dent in the problem.
Speaker 1: During the time I was there, Um, you know, we
Speaker 1: probably seized several hundred metric tons um of you know,
Speaker 1: either opium or heroine excuse me. And but at this
Speaker 1: point two thousand nine and ten, I think you know,
Speaker 1: they were manufacturing something like eight or nine thousand metric
Speaker 1: tons uh a year. So what we took care of,
Speaker 1: uh was basically just scratched in the service. But I
Speaker 1: just figured that every every kilo of this stuff that
Speaker 1: we kept out of the system meant that maybe somebody's
Speaker 1: kid wasn't overdosing and dying. Before we wrap things up here,
Speaker 1: any last story that you can maybe give us from
Speaker 1: this is what hell looks like. People on the show
Speaker 1: love to hear those great war stories, and I know
Speaker 1: there's a lot in the book. Well, h the first chapter, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's about a hundred and first base called fire support
Speaker 1: based Rifle and uh it got overrun and and it's
Speaker 1: where the title of the book came from. When my
Speaker 1: partner and I were overflying the base. Um, you know
Speaker 1: the destruction, the carnage, I mean it was right there
Speaker 1: your face. Um. And this was a small outpost maybe uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a company of hundred first guys, an artillery
Speaker 1: unit and some Vietnameese army guys, probably not more than
Speaker 1: two people that got hit by a reinforced regiment um
Speaker 1: and uh as we were flying over it, and I
Speaker 1: turned to Paul and I said, dude, this is what
Speaker 1: hell looks like. And that's where the title of the
Speaker 1: book came from. A lot of audience is going to
Speaker 1: pick it up. Huh. I know a lot of our
Speaker 1: audience is gonna want to pick it up. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a weird event because the actual
Speaker 1: title of that chapter is um. I remember right as
Speaker 1: fire support based right of the day, it was Reigning
Speaker 1: Dead UM. And what that relates to is what they
Speaker 1: did with the bodies of the dead NBA soldiers is
Speaker 1: they basically put them all on the sling and flew
Speaker 1: them out over the jungle and dumped them from the air,
Speaker 1: which is a work ring. That's wild. Yeah, it's difficult
Speaker 1: to imagine. I mean there were uh three different gunfights
Speaker 1: that broke out while we were there, including as we
Speaker 1: were landing. I mean, as soon as we got on
Speaker 1: the ground, we were in the middle of a pitch battle. Uh.
Speaker 1: A patrol that had gone out of the perimeter had
Speaker 1: gotten hit by an ambush uh and uh. And then
Speaker 1: during the rest of the day, Yeah, there were two
Speaker 1: more events like that, our patrols had gone out and
Speaker 1: gotten hit. Um. So it was uh, yeah, it was something. Well,
Speaker 1: let me ask you in one more question, what brought
Speaker 1: you full circle in a sense to come back and
Speaker 1: decide that you wanted to write a book the same thing?
Speaker 1: Um to you know, reflect back on your pretty extensive
Speaker 1: career and write about all these things. M hmm. Well, um,
Speaker 1: I felt like I had something to say. You know.
Speaker 1: The process of going from actually starting to work on
Speaker 1: it until publication was took about ten years. I had
Speaker 1: actually started writing it differently, much differently than the way
Speaker 1: it's ended up now. And I got about maybe halfway
Speaker 1: through it, and one day I was reading it and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, then mistakes, I don't like this, and
Speaker 1: I literally ship candid. I don't even have a copy
Speaker 1: of uh and uh. And I started over and I
Speaker 1: was fortunate that I found a lot of historical stuff
Speaker 1: at the National Archives um um daily incident logs and
Speaker 1: the teams I was on. Unusual incident reports like the
Speaker 1: one I wrote up about rifle uh and after action reports,
Speaker 1: uh from you know, the daily journals, daily staff journals
Speaker 1: for infantry units that we were out with, UM and uh.
Speaker 1: And it was also kind of a It was also
Speaker 1: I think of Catharsis for me, you know, being able
Speaker 1: to you know, say what I had to say and
Speaker 1: UM kind of like I guess, uh, I felt better afterwards.
Speaker 1: In the process of doing that research for your book.
Speaker 1: I mean, really, you're researching your own history in your
Speaker 1: own life. Were there any things you discovered unexpected or
Speaker 1: things about operations that you're like, WHOA, I didn't know that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's a chapter in the book called uh Elz Sally
Speaker 1: the battle raged all around us And when I recovered
Speaker 1: the unusual incident report about this particular event, uh where
Speaker 1: my seal and I have gone out with a pink
Speaker 1: team from a hundred and first not gonna arrow rifle tune.
Speaker 1: A chinook had gotten hit flying AMMO into a remote
Speaker 1: base and it jettison a slang load of unconventional ordinance
Speaker 1: M one five rounds that when they were fired, opened
Speaker 1: up and little bomblets came out cluster unitions, cluster bombs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course these are really dangerous items. UM and
Speaker 1: line as short of it was. You know, we end
Speaker 1: up setting the shot after gathering up all this crowd,
Speaker 1: and it was me, my CEO, the platoon leader, and
Speaker 1: his r t O. And he had sent the rest
Speaker 1: of the Pink team back to secure the LZ. And
Speaker 1: right when we're getting ready to pull the shot, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, we're in the middle of a gun battle.
Speaker 1: Um and we were actually behind this huge pilot ordinance
Speaker 1: firing back at the enemy and uh, you know, with
Speaker 1: everything we had and and uh and they broke off contact.
Speaker 1: We pulled the shot. We've all asked down the trail,
Speaker 1: and we get down the trail and we can hear
Speaker 1: somewhere up ahead of us, about a half a click
Speaker 1: or whatever, the Pink team, the rest of the Pink team,
Speaker 1: they get ambushed. So now there's this other gun battle
Speaker 1: we're running into and you can't retreat back to the charge.
Speaker 1: You should go back because the shot was cooking off.
Speaker 1: So we eventually, you know, they were able to stave
Speaker 1: off this ambush, and uh and we ended up getting
Speaker 1: extracted and the shot went clean. And uh, so I'm
Speaker 1: reading this report. I have no memory at that time,
Speaker 1: no memory of this event, having occurred. So I called
Speaker 1: up my former CEO, Andy Brelan, who unfortunately has passed away,
Speaker 1: and I said, Andy, I'm gonna read you something. So
Speaker 1: I read him this page and a half long thing
Speaker 1: and he says, I don't remember that, And I said, dude,
Speaker 1: you wrote it. And this supports my theory, which I
Speaker 1: referred to as Kelly Bundy brain. You know from uh
Speaker 1: married with children. Well, the brain is only capable of
Speaker 1: handling so much ship and you one point, at some point,
Speaker 1: you get to the place where your brain is full.
Speaker 1: So the next thing that you get or whatever that
Speaker 1: you're going to retain, means that you've got to get
Speaker 1: rid of something else. So, you know, I'm guessing that's
Speaker 1: what happened. I think it's just like something to do
Speaker 1: with evolutionary biology that you're so overwhelmed that your brain
Speaker 1: decides what the focus on to get you out of
Speaker 1: the immediate situation. Yeah. I mean even to a you know,
Speaker 1: totally different extent here. But I always think about, you know, now,
Speaker 1: with technology, with cell phones, with how little we have
Speaker 1: to memorize. I mean, how many people's numbers do you
Speaker 1: have memorized? Three? I can remember my home phone number
Speaker 1: from when I was a little kid and we had
Speaker 1: rotary phone still but but everybody remembers, like at least
Speaker 1: if you know you're our age or older, like ste
Speaker 1: when you know, you know, you had a crushed on
Speaker 1: some girl and you got her number, and you know,
Speaker 1: like the middle school before. You gotta remember those digits,
Speaker 1: you would you would remember those and it would be
Speaker 1: you know now, I I, how many times have you
Speaker 1: and I said, what's the bathroom code again? Which is
Speaker 1: four digits? So we can't remember my Sun and I
Speaker 1: talked at least you know, us a week twice a week.
Speaker 1: I don't. I couldn't tell you his phone number. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I agree with your theory. I think it. It
Speaker 1: works in other ways, but I think for what you're
Speaker 1: talking about, it also probably has to do with the
Speaker 1: traumatic experience as well. I'm sure. Yeah, so it's one
Speaker 1: more time. I want to read the title of the
Speaker 1: book of Steuze. Stu's book it's called This Is What
Speaker 1: Hell looks Like Life as a bomb disposal specialist during
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War and uh stew this has been super interesting.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Speaker 1: Well thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, thanks,
Speaker 1: and I think we'll be able to talk some more
Speaker 1: at some point, so really appreciate. Yeah, yeah, you'd be
Speaker 1: more than welcome come on any time you want, and
Speaker 1: will make it happen. All right, sounds good. Well, hopefully
Speaker 1: i'll have this pinchon nerve taking care of by then. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I hope you're all right, uh and hanging in there,
Speaker 1: and I'll put this up tomorrow and send it over
Speaker 1: to you. All right, great, awesome, Thanks so much, Stu. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks to have a nice afternoon. Thank you, see, take care.
Speaker 1: That was great man, A great suggestion from Mike Vining. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that was super interesting. You know, I haven't read stews
Speaker 1: book yet, so I didn't really know much of what
Speaker 1: to expect other than that he was a NEO D
Speaker 1: tech in Vietnam. Um, those are some incredible stories though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but even just looking at his bio before reading the book,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's so much so I mean, and
Speaker 1: then even the stories after being an e O D.
Speaker 1: We're pretty insane. The you know, basically the working as
Speaker 1: a sorry, working as a criminal defense investigator for capital
Speaker 1: murder cases pretty insane. Um. I do have some emails
Speaker 1: I want to get to before I do, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about Great Club. Jack and I were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier the videos up of you know, things being
Speaker 1: sent out, so I know there was a bit of
Speaker 1: a delay there. But now we have everything being sent
Speaker 1: out and they're doing an awesome job. So the long
Speaker 1: anticipated collaboration watch with NFW Watches that's being sent out
Speaker 1: in the next premium crate. We have different tiers of
Speaker 1: membership depending on how prepared you want to be, and
Speaker 1: gift options are available as well. Scott Whittner has been
Speaker 1: talking to me about all the great stuff that we
Speaker 1: have coming as the new year is approaching pretty soon really,
Speaker 1: and it's a lot of custom products and it's gear
Speaker 1: hand picked for you, um and you know, it's a
Speaker 1: club fore men by men, and that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1: You can check that all out of Create Club dot Us.
Speaker 1: Once again, that's Great Club dot Us. Scott Whittner is
Speaker 1: doing an awesome job. You guys have heard him on
Speaker 1: the show before. Former Marine editor of the load out
Speaker 1: Room load at room dot com. Now for your dog owners,
Speaker 1: you're gonna love this. We've partnered with Kuna. Kuna has
Speaker 1: a team of trained canine handlers picking out a box
Speaker 1: through dog every month of healthy treats and training aids.
Speaker 1: It's custom built through your dog's size end age as well.
Speaker 1: The products are US sourced, all natural and they not
Speaker 1: only promote a healthy diet but also promote being active
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Speaker 1: dot Dog. It's efficient for you. Your dog is going
Speaker 1: to appreciate it as well, of course, and that's spelled
Speaker 1: c U N A dot d O G visited now
Speaker 1: sign up um and then as a reminder, you can
Speaker 1: check out the spec ops Channel. Spec ops channel dot
Speaker 1: com training seller is on there. UM also the inside
Speaker 1: the team rooms that we've done, whether it's the Navy
Speaker 1: Seal Army Rangers cut from the same cloth, those are
Speaker 1: all up on their spec Ops channel dot com. Take
Speaker 1: advantage of a limited time offer of a subscription for
Speaker 1: only four ninety nine a month. And we also have
Speaker 1: the app, and we have the app now for software Radio,
Speaker 1: which Chris did an awesome job on. So check out
Speaker 1: software radio dot com. Check out the software Radio app
Speaker 1: that's available now if you have an iPhone, I know
Speaker 1: the Android is gonna be up in pretty much no time. Um.
Speaker 1: Very cool, but I want to get into emails because
Speaker 1: we had a few really good ones. Sorry, I'm a
Speaker 1: little congested today. I don't know why, but here we go.
Speaker 1: Or say it's the weather moving in. Yeah, probably, Um,
Speaker 1: all right, I'll go with the shorter one first. This
Speaker 1: is from Sean. Hey. Uh, this is from Sean from
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. I don't want to pull name him unless
Speaker 1: he wants to do it. Uh, Sean says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I was wondering if someone could explain some of the
Speaker 1: similarities and differences between mac vi SAG and the Phoenix
Speaker 1: program versus modern units like Omega teams and Task Force.
Speaker 1: I'm sure Jack has a really good answer for this one.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the difference between MACVIE SAG and the Phoenix
Speaker 1: program versus modern units like Omega teams and task course
Speaker 1: A eight pretty to the point. Well yeah, okay, it's
Speaker 1: a short question, but I mean that's a really ill
Speaker 1: aford answer. Um. Okay, So, back during the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: you had MACVIE SAG, which was Military Assistance Command Vietnam
Speaker 1: s He's an observations group which was a endeavor that
Speaker 1: saw American Green Berets partnered up with UM. You know,
Speaker 1: one or two Green Berets partnered up with four or five,
Speaker 1: maybe six mountain yards. I believe there was also Chinese
Speaker 1: Nung mercenaries in the Fold, and they would go across
Speaker 1: the fence, so to speak, into Laos and Cambodia and
Speaker 1: North Vietnam. Their primary function was to do reconnaissance operations.
Speaker 1: They also did things like sabotage diversions UM. There's some
Speaker 1: psychological operations run UM ambushes. They they did a prisoner
Speaker 1: snatches or attempted prisoner snatches UM to take people alive
Speaker 1: for intelligence value. There's all sorts of different stuff they did. UM.
Speaker 1: It's very direct action kind of hands on UM, either
Speaker 1: direct action or reconnaissance. The Phoenix program was a little
Speaker 1: different now as I recall, it was also a joint
Speaker 1: endeavor with the c I a UM. And what had
Speaker 1: happened that the Phoenix program was more focused in South
Speaker 1: Vietnam because the Viet Cong had established a shadow government
Speaker 1: in South Vietnam, so that you had this the actual
Speaker 1: official government, but then you had this secret Vietcong communist government.
Speaker 1: And the Phoenix program was an attempt to neutralize that
Speaker 1: shadow government UM and and a counterinsurgency effort. UM. Some
Speaker 1: people have decried the Phoenix program as this like criminal
Speaker 1: assassination unit. UM. I mean whatever you want to say.
Speaker 1: I mean, how the hell are you going to deal
Speaker 1: with a communist shadow government? I mean you kind of
Speaker 1: have to go out and whack some of these guys.
Speaker 1: It is what it is. UM. Now, by comparison to that, UH,
Speaker 1: he asks about OMEGA teams and Task Force AT eight,
Speaker 1: which is more of our contemporary modern War on Terror timeframe.
Speaker 1: Test Force A D eight was just one of the
Speaker 1: many names given to the task forces the special Joint
Speaker 1: Special Operations task Force UH UM that existed in our Iraq,
Speaker 1: and you know we can we continue to have one
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. UM. I was a part of one of
Speaker 1: these task forces. UM. It combines UM, you know, Seal
Speaker 1: Team six, Delta Forest Rangers, UM, some special Forces elements
Speaker 1: are brought into it, and some other different special mission
Speaker 1: units are all brought into the fold. And UM. You know,
Speaker 1: primarily we were in the business of capturing and killing
Speaker 1: high value targets. So in that sense, I suppose you
Speaker 1: could draw some parallels to some of the programs that
Speaker 1: existed in Vietnam. Although there's there's so many differences to
Speaker 1: dictated by the way technology has evolved institutionally and structurally,
Speaker 1: how the military has changed since the nineteen sixties and
Speaker 1: early seventies when Vietnam came to a close. UM, what
Speaker 1: I say, UH terrain, UH, structure, and then the technologies
Speaker 1: itself of course has evolved. There's of such thing as
Speaker 1: a cell phone during Vietnam now, so the signals, intercepts
Speaker 1: and everything else has dramatically changed. The way we're UM finding, fixing,
Speaker 1: and finishing targets has changed dramatically since the Vietnam War. UM.
Speaker 1: The other thing he asked about is Omega. UM. The
Speaker 1: Omega program, it's called something else now, but that is
Speaker 1: a CIA endeavor and the way that worked and continues
Speaker 1: to work is it's a CIA program that sees active
Speaker 1: duty military personnel seconded to the auspices of the Central
Speaker 1: Intelligence Agency. UM. So you will have UH usually it's
Speaker 1: been Seal Team six members or rangers who have been
Speaker 1: seconded to this program. And what they do is the
Speaker 1: Omega program specifically targeted foreign fighters in Afghanistan. So these
Speaker 1: arabs that come in from the Gulf States or Iranians,
Speaker 1: whoever it is. Foreign fighters that come in Afghanistan, OMEGA
Speaker 1: would target them quite specifically. And the military personnel. I mean,
Speaker 1: the Omega teams were UM contractors a lot of times
Speaker 1: CIA contractors, but then these military personnel were seconded to them,
Speaker 1: primarily so they can call in air support for the
Speaker 1: for a c I A element. Because a c I
Speaker 1: A guy cannot call in UM air strikes. But now
Speaker 1: you have military personnel on the OMEGA team, they can
Speaker 1: call in air strikes. UM. There was an article in
Speaker 1: the New York Times which is a very um mind
Speaker 1: bending article to read because it's it's like one of
Speaker 1: those things like the CIA wants you to know something,
Speaker 1: so they we get to the New York Times. The article,
Speaker 1: the way it's written is really weird. But what they
Speaker 1: were saying is that under the Trump administration, OMEGA has
Speaker 1: been UM had their focus changed from just going after
Speaker 1: foreign fighters to going after UM, the Taliban, the indigenous
Speaker 1: UM you know, guerilla though fighters, insurgents of Afghanistan and
Speaker 1: going after not just foreign fighters but the actual taliban UM.
Speaker 1: And how how that's working out, I I'm actually not sure.
Speaker 1: Off the top, of my head. But that's kind of
Speaker 1: where we're at now. So there are similarities and there
Speaker 1: are differences between all of these units, um, and how
Speaker 1: they work the legal framework, um, what the missions are,
Speaker 1: and um again, I think a lot has changed between
Speaker 1: these elements from Vietnam to today because of military structure,
Speaker 1: because of the technology, and because one war was fought
Speaker 1: in the jungle and the other was fought in the
Speaker 1: desert and in the cities. So there are some pretty
Speaker 1: big differences. Um, that's a lot of information. Like, that's
Speaker 1: that great answer. That's a fucking thesis paper right there.
Speaker 1: Like you could write your PhD uh dissertation on that subject.
Speaker 1: Jack Murphy, dropping knowledge. But that's that's the long and
Speaker 1: short of it, you know, all right. Um, I like
Speaker 1: this one. This one's a little longer, but it did
Speaker 1: make me laugh. This is from Jack White uh Ian
Speaker 1: and Jack. First off, I love this. It's rebrushing to
Speaker 1: get some quality news mixed with comedy rather than listening
Speaker 1: to the Bukhaki. The mainstream media feeds my generation, and
Speaker 1: I'm a feeling this audience knows what that means. If not,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna explain. Google. Google is your friend. Folks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but not not safe for work that um second. For
Speaker 1: a while now, I've been inching towards joining the military,
Speaker 1: whether it be the Army, Navy, or Marines. I cannot
Speaker 1: decide where I would best fit. I would like some
Speaker 1: clear advice on what the pros think, y'all being the pros,
Speaker 1: I'm certainly not a pro. Maybe Jack. I am married
Speaker 1: with a five month old son. I'm in shape, just
Speaker 1: built like a ship brickhouse, built to move heavyweight. Thus,
Speaker 1: I have been a multi time state powerlifter. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I'm able to get my stamina above part to meet
Speaker 1: the majority of requirements. I've just caught between sitting down
Speaker 1: with the wife and taking the next step or constantly
Speaker 1: being unsatisfied with a regular twelve hour a day job.
Speaker 1: I know I want to UH to serve a purpose
Speaker 1: larger than myself. I have a great job and a
Speaker 1: comfortable life, but I constantly seek more gratification for my work.
Speaker 1: My goal, if I am the plunge into this world
Speaker 1: is too is too is to spend UH whatever time
Speaker 1: necessary to put myself way beyond the physical standard and
Speaker 1: quality for special forces. I'm sufficiently educated and level headed
Speaker 1: enough to learn most anything, any advice on what may
Speaker 1: make the choices and transformations easier and the path have
Speaker 1: a little more quarity. And then he writes, you guys
Speaker 1: are the ship always blow the Joe Rogan experience out
Speaker 1: of the water. That's a pretty high compliment. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I agree with that, uh, because this guy
Speaker 1: seems interesting. At the same time, I'm gonna say has
Speaker 1: a pretty high opinion of himself. But I like it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like I'm tough, I learned anything. What
Speaker 1: do I do well? Self confidence is a good start. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: People ask me this kind of question all the time,
Speaker 1: and I mean there's no real answer because it depends
Speaker 1: on you as a person, Like people should I be
Speaker 1: for Srikon or a Navy seal? I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it depends on you. Um. I think the question you
Speaker 1: really have to answer is what do you want to do? Um?
Speaker 1: You know, once you know what you want to do,
Speaker 1: then you have a much better idea of what you
Speaker 1: want to do in the military or what branch you
Speaker 1: want to go into. Um. You know, do you want
Speaker 1: to do? Do you like do you like to swim?
Speaker 1: If not? You know, Yeah, don't be a seal. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just I'm not trying to be a smart ass,
Speaker 1: but like, do you want to go overseas and work
Speaker 1: with far in foreign cultures, with foreign people, and special
Speaker 1: Forces is probably a good option for you, even though
Speaker 1: it's funny. Rob O'Neil has said on the show he
Speaker 1: could barely swim before he became a seal. And then
Speaker 1: sometimes you have um guys who joined for really weird,
Speaker 1: bizarre reasons and it ends up working out. I mean,
Speaker 1: Drago has said before on the podcast that he signed
Speaker 1: up to be in the army as you you know,
Speaker 1: just coming into America, then saw the movie Navy Seals
Speaker 1: with Charlie Sheen and said I want to do that,
Speaker 1: and then changed, yeah, I mean you have to figure
Speaker 1: out what it is you want to do. I think
Speaker 1: for this dude, um, he has a wife already a
Speaker 1: wife and a kid, and uh in a job. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'd encourage him to think very carefully about what he
Speaker 1: wants to do. Um, if you want to go and
Speaker 1: join special Forces or something like that, it takes a
Speaker 1: hundred and ten percent, so to speak, well, maybe not
Speaker 1: a hundred and ten percent. It takes a percent effort.
Speaker 1: Like you're you're kind of all in, and you're like,
Speaker 1: psychologically you have to be all in. It's not something
Speaker 1: you can have asked. Um. And when you have a
Speaker 1: wife and kid, you're in like a totally different world. UM.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying you can't do it or you
Speaker 1: shouldn't do it. I'm just saying you have to think
Speaker 1: that over really carefully. Especially do you want to Um.
Speaker 1: You know, you're gonna be in training a lot, You're
Speaker 1: going to be deployed a lot, um. You know, and
Speaker 1: with that in mind, maybe you can serve your country
Speaker 1: UM and another job that doesn't require you to be
Speaker 1: away from home so much, but you're still serving in
Speaker 1: some capacity. Um. But you still get to be with
Speaker 1: your wife and kid. I mean that's all stuff. You really,
Speaker 1: I really encourage anybody in that situation to think carefully
Speaker 1: about um and and not make a hasty decision. I'm
Speaker 1: not telling you not to. I'm just saying you need
Speaker 1: to think about that real hard and and discuss it
Speaker 1: with your family. UM. I was a young single guy
Speaker 1: when I did it, so I mean, who cares? You know,
Speaker 1: I run myself into the ground. UM, But now you
Speaker 1: know I'm a little bit older. Um, I have a wife,
Speaker 1: I have a kid, Like I can scarcely imagine doing
Speaker 1: it over again. Um, and it makes me have that
Speaker 1: much more respect for some of my teammates who were
Speaker 1: away from their kids. I mean some of them had
Speaker 1: like three, four or five kids and they're away from
Speaker 1: home for like six months at a time. I mean
Speaker 1: that's fucking crazy, and it makes you. It makes me
Speaker 1: a pretty she Now the sacrifice not a lot of
Speaker 1: our soldiers make. I mean, I don't think I made
Speaker 1: a sacrifice. I was having fun. I was there because
Speaker 1: I wanted to be. But um, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of these other guys spending so much time away from
Speaker 1: their family, I mean that's really hard, and I have
Speaker 1: that much more respect for them. Um, you know that
Speaker 1: is a sacrifice. Now now that now that I'm older,
Speaker 1: I can understand the sacrifice, spart a little bit more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good answer. Um, send those emails. I get questions all
Speaker 1: the time on Twitter and all that. Send them to
Speaker 1: soft Rep dot Radio at soft rep dot com. Uh
Speaker 1: to other pieces of news to get into the sixty
Speaker 1: minutes interview with Trump. He almost hinted at maddis no
Speaker 1: longer being a part of the administration when asked about it.
Speaker 1: So Alex Hollings wrote a piece for the News rep
Speaker 1: about this, called the Man Without Party. Trump calls Defense
Speaker 1: Secretary James Maddis kind of a Democrat in hint of
Speaker 1: departure um. After months of rumors that Defense Secretary James
Speaker 1: Madis maybe the next high profile departure from the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: President Trump himself added fuel to the fire over the weekend,
Speaker 1: calling the former Marine in general in air quotes kind
Speaker 1: of a Democrat and suggesting that Madis may soon be
Speaker 1: moving on. So that was from sixty minutes. I know
Speaker 1: that there was there was a much larger context of
Speaker 1: the interview. I didn't watch the full interview. I know
Speaker 1: you read the transcript, but that was the big bombshell
Speaker 1: of the interview. And I don't think that is something
Speaker 1: Trump would say unless they're you know, because I know
Speaker 1: he added and we get along great. You know, he's
Speaker 1: a good guy. But I don't think he would add
Speaker 1: this weird um jab of kind of a Democrat unless
Speaker 1: the guy was looking to leave or was being sent down.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a super weird, strange, unprofessional thing to say.
Speaker 1: I but I mean this is this is an administration
Speaker 1: like no other where, Like he sells out and undermines
Speaker 1: his own administration. And also in to be fair, it's like,
Speaker 1: what does kind of a democrat mean in the case
Speaker 1: of James Maddis, because you know, what does I mean?
Speaker 1: Maddie is a guy that anytime the media has tried
Speaker 1: to get him to play politics, he has said, look,
Speaker 1: I'm in charge of war, I'm the Defense Secretary. I
Speaker 1: don't want to get into all of this. So he's
Speaker 1: a guy who's done his best, I think to be
Speaker 1: completely a political There's been a few things he said
Speaker 1: that he's against enhanced interrogation, UM, his stance on the
Speaker 1: idea of transgenders in the military. He's said a few
Speaker 1: different things. But I'd say he's a guy, more than
Speaker 1: anyone else in the administration who does not play politics.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what democratic well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's being secretary of Defense is inherently a political position.
Speaker 1: You're a political appointee. Um. But yeah, he has tried
Speaker 1: to stay a political I think it's to the best
Speaker 1: of his ability as far as staying above the partisan politics.
Speaker 1: You know, he sees himself as someone who executes defense policy, um,
Speaker 1: not somebody who wants to muck around um with a
Speaker 1: with a political nonsense in DC. Um. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: Trump he's just laying the groundwork with this kind of
Speaker 1: bullshit um, so that he can push Maddis out of
Speaker 1: the administration. Um. I think that Trump kind of is
Speaker 1: afraid of Maddis in a in a sense because the
Speaker 1: guy has credibility um, and that doesn't make him look
Speaker 1: good by comparison. And uh, I think John Bolton wants
Speaker 1: Trump or I'm sorry, I think Bolton wants Maddus out
Speaker 1: because he wants to push for us to go and
Speaker 1: do Iran and topple the regime there. And Maddis is
Speaker 1: one of those guys who's he's pragmatic, he's smart, and
Speaker 1: he's like pumping the brakes like whoa, whoa, whoa, Like
Speaker 1: we've seen this ship go down in Iraq, We've seen
Speaker 1: it go down in Libya, we've seen it go down
Speaker 1: in Syria. Um, why the hell do we want to
Speaker 1: do that in Iran? I think a replacement of maddess
Speaker 1: um of both into Maddie's position would be unpopular for
Speaker 1: people who aren't necessarily the biggest Trump supporters, but like
Speaker 1: Maddis and then even people who are Trump supporters, because
Speaker 1: I think I've said it on the podcast before. I
Speaker 1: think Bolton is looked at as a Republican establish ASHMNT guy,
Speaker 1: and people who voted for Trump voted for him because
Speaker 1: he was a departure when do we drain the swamp
Speaker 1: were waiting? I do feel he was a departure from uh,
Speaker 1: you know, from the political establishment. And and one of
Speaker 1: the biggest examples I could think of, whether you love
Speaker 1: or hate the guy Steve Bannon, there's no one else
Speaker 1: on that stage, whether it was like Marco reb Ruby
Speaker 1: or Jeb Bush, who would have appointed Steve Bannon new
Speaker 1: a position. Steve Bannon to me, was as um anti
Speaker 1: establishment as they came. And a guy like Maddis I
Speaker 1: think was a departure from the establishment as opposed to
Speaker 1: a guy like Bolton. And now we're bringing in these
Speaker 1: guys who were seeing as a part of the you know,
Speaker 1: long standing Republican establishment, right They're they're pushing Trump where
Speaker 1: you know, the system is so much bigger than any
Speaker 1: one person, and Trump is being pushed in certain directions.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I'm not trying to defend Trump. But
Speaker 1: I mean this this, like I said, the system is big.
Speaker 1: The power wants to do what power wants to do.
Speaker 1: And I think Trump is the kind of guy who
Speaker 1: if Bolton comes to him and it's like, hey, do this,
Speaker 1: it'll make you look tough. I think Trump just bride
Speaker 1: nods and said, yeah, yeah, I do that. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't think he has a wherewithal And you can
Speaker 1: see through the sixty minutes interview. I mean it's just
Speaker 1: like like this total rambling, nonsensical cagning. I saw this
Speaker 1: stuff about climate change. You read that, And I mean
Speaker 1: it's hard to talk to Trump supporters about it because
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, he's playing four D chess. You know
Speaker 1: he's doing he's moving the chess pieces around, and you're
Speaker 1: just you know, not smart enough to see it. You know,
Speaker 1: we're we're all awed by his brilliance. Um or you know,
Speaker 1: Trump is just playing a character on television. This isn't
Speaker 1: who he really is. And it's like, well, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: one thesis or or the other is that he really
Speaker 1: is as dumb as he appears in these interviews, And how,
Speaker 1: how and why are we going to make continuously make
Speaker 1: excuses for him when he comes off sounding like a
Speaker 1: complete moron and he's unable to speak intelligently on you know,
Speaker 1: hardly any subject. You know, you asked him about NATO.
Speaker 1: I know about NATO. I know a lot about NATO.
Speaker 1: It keeps like saying, okay, you say you know about NATO, like,
Speaker 1: but you can't speak to it on at length. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you even know what that acronym stands for? I
Speaker 1: think he knows that. I don't know if he doesn't
Speaker 1: or not, which is scary. Um. So, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is this is who he is. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: he's just very easy to manipulate. Um. He has thin skin,
Speaker 1: he has a shallow ego, and I mean that's not
Speaker 1: a good combination and a president, especially when you have
Speaker 1: sharks in the water circling like John Bolton and uh,
Speaker 1: you know they're going to maneuver the more pragmatic, mature
Speaker 1: personalities like James Maddis out of the administration. The only
Speaker 1: time I saw Maddison Trump publicly butt heads that I
Speaker 1: could remember that was, um, you know that we all
Speaker 1: heard about was when Trump made a statement on Twitter
Speaker 1: about trans genders in the military and came out and
Speaker 1: said that you know, he hasn't consulted with it. It
Speaker 1: wasn't even I don't really see it his butting heads
Speaker 1: as much as it was just like Trump saying stuff
Speaker 1: on Twitter, but D O D hadn't received any like
Speaker 1: policy changes or policy memos or anything. So they're kind
Speaker 1: of like what you know, I mean, you're kind of
Speaker 1: being caught with your pants down again. And uh and
Speaker 1: you know that leaves you know, people like Madison in
Speaker 1: the lurch because now they have to respond to tweets,
Speaker 1: you know, and say like, well, I haven't heard anything.
Speaker 1: And then the other piece of news I know you
Speaker 1: wanted to bring up, there's this BuzzFeed article that's going
Speaker 1: around regarding mercenaries. Yeah, and that's pretty good scoop that,
Speaker 1: uh that this dude at BuzzFeed got. If you want
Speaker 1: to pull up the article really, yeah, I mean I'll
Speaker 1: look at UM. I read. I read through it this
Speaker 1: morning and I really need to go through and read
Speaker 1: it again. UM in detail. Yeah, it's a good scoop
Speaker 1: they got. It's about UM. It's about this Israeli cat
Speaker 1: who UM talked to Uato given his firm a job. UM.
Speaker 1: And they were going into Yemen, uh to do assassination missions.
Speaker 1: The journalist name is uh Aarum Roston. I don't know
Speaker 1: the guy, but hey, it looks like he did some
Speaker 1: good work here. He really uh nailed this story down. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, so these firm hired you know, special
Speaker 1: forces guys, a dev group guy, a couple of seals
Speaker 1: sounds like one Delta guy in a bunch of French
Speaker 1: foreign legionnaires. And the whole fucking thing was like amateur
Speaker 1: our front words to back. I mean, like they show
Speaker 1: up at the hotel to fly over there, and like
Speaker 1: the dudes are all wearing fatigues and ship walking around
Speaker 1: the hotel and I'm like, oh my god. And then
Speaker 1: and the whole thing was just like it's like a
Speaker 1: cluster funck. Like they claimed that they actually did some
Speaker 1: successful assassinations. Um, there's one that was botched. They definitely
Speaker 1: attempted one that was botched. Um, it's just some of
Speaker 1: the quotes the sky got out of some of the
Speaker 1: some of these uh, some of these special operations veterans.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm like, how in the world would you
Speaker 1: say that to a journalist, you idiot. The whole thing
Speaker 1: is just like a case study and and like how
Speaker 1: not to do it? And I mean it's like some
Speaker 1: Hogan Hogan's heroes type shit um and uh, I mean
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring this up because well, it's an
Speaker 1: interesting story. This this article. Actually it's basically the plot
Speaker 1: of my third novel that I published like maybe four
Speaker 1: years ago now, direct Action and The Pot of Shameless Plug.
Speaker 1: The plot of the book was, Um. It's about a
Speaker 1: group of former Seal Team six guys who are contracted
Speaker 1: to go to the Middle East and uh and kill um,
Speaker 1: not just terrorists, but kill people who are involved in
Speaker 1: the Arab Spring, like pro democracy movements, political people, um.
Speaker 1: And so it's like a rogue merk operation. And that's
Speaker 1: exactly what happened here. You have a bunch of misfits
Speaker 1: and weirdos um that were hired by this firm uh
Speaker 1: to go to the Middle East and kill I mean,
Speaker 1: we don't even know. And that's a main subject in
Speaker 1: the articles. How do you know these people you're targeting
Speaker 1: or terrorists? Some of them are just probably people who
Speaker 1: fell out of favor with the royal family. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: of them are um, you know, political people. So it's
Speaker 1: like it's really like the novel I wrote, coming to Life.
Speaker 1: In some ways, it's kind of creepy. UM. And I
Speaker 1: remember I remember years ago, I had an interview with
Speaker 1: another author and uh, someone who was a member of
Speaker 1: the intelligence community, J. T. Patton, and I was on
Speaker 1: his podcast and we were talking about my book and uh,
Speaker 1: and I was telling him, I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of real things in this novel, a
Speaker 1: lot of real incidents, a lot of real facts that
Speaker 1: I bled into it. But the actual plot of the book,
Speaker 1: this notion that these there's these renegade former soft guys
Speaker 1: running around the Middle East killing people. That's bullshit. I
Speaker 1: made that plot up. It's a word, a fiction, and
Speaker 1: I'd be shocked if it turned out to be true.
Speaker 1: And out today, I like, I will, I like roll
Speaker 1: over in bed and open my cell phone and uh.
Speaker 1: Some friends had sent me this article, like several different
Speaker 1: people and I got pull it open and I'm still
Speaker 1: laying in bed reading it and I'm like, holy fuck,
Speaker 1: it's really very depth article. I haven't read the whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is um and you know, this is uh again,
Speaker 1: this is a it's a total like amateur hour deal.
Speaker 1: It just reminds me of like, you know, one of
Speaker 1: these Robert the Nero movies, like it should serve as
Speaker 1: a warning. Like you you feel the heat around the corner,
Speaker 1: you need to walk. You just turn away and walk.
Speaker 1: And if I was recruited for something like this and
Speaker 1: I'm in a hotel room and my secret black ops
Speaker 1: uh murk assassination unit shows up and they're like wearing
Speaker 1: cry precision pants and like runt style T shirts. Bro,
Speaker 1: that is the heat. Okay, you turn around, you walk
Speaker 1: your happy ass out that fucking door. Because this is
Speaker 1: amateur our ship. There is no fucking way any of
Speaker 1: any of our guys should be involved in bullshit like this.
Speaker 1: Like you want to go and do cool stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: you go to Jay Sock, You go through the recruitment process,
Speaker 1: become a c I, a case officer, go do that
Speaker 1: kind of ship. Um. I have talked friends at well,
Speaker 1: I've had people try to rope me into like bullshit
Speaker 1: mercenary stuff before. I've also had friends of mine who
Speaker 1: have told me about stuff they're thinking about jumping on.
Speaker 1: Like one one friend came to me years ago and
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, yeah, Jack, I'm talking to this uh
Speaker 1: this firm. Uh they want me to smuggle guns into
Speaker 1: this African country and like, go assassinate somebody has something
Speaker 1: to do with like gold mines or something like that.
Speaker 1: I was like, stop, stop, stop, Okay, they want you
Speaker 1: to smuggle guns from America into Africa. Fucking think about this.
Speaker 1: Nine nine times out of ten, what you're dealing with
Speaker 1: right now is an FBI sting and the second you
Speaker 1: move a weapon, you're going to fucking federal fucking prison.
Speaker 1: Think about what you're doing here, Like you gotta be smart,
Speaker 1: Like you get out of the military, and all these
Speaker 1: guys they have no idea what's legal or not legal
Speaker 1: a lot of times, or they're jumping on board with
Speaker 1: stuff that they really shouldn't be without thinking it through. Um.
Speaker 1: It goes back to that article I wrote about Tiger Swan.
Speaker 1: It's like, look, if somebody is giving you a a contract, you're,
Speaker 1: you know, a sergeant that just came out of range
Speaker 1: of battalion or a chief that just came out of
Speaker 1: a seal team. Maybe you should take that contract to
Speaker 1: an attorney and have them review it. And that's about
Speaker 1: keeping your ass out of the fire, because the people
Speaker 1: you're working for they don't give a funk about you,
Speaker 1: and they will hang you out to dry in a second.
Speaker 1: And even on the off chance that this is like
Speaker 1: some sort of like c I a cut out or
Speaker 1: something like that, I mean, here's what you look. The
Speaker 1: nature of cutouts is that they're designed to be burned.
Speaker 1: Like the second something goes sideways, whoever's behind it is
Speaker 1: just gonna walk. They're gonna turn and walk. And when
Speaker 1: some reporter calls up the CIA and it's like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: did you guys ever do work with x y Z
Speaker 1: private military company, the CIA is gonna be like no,
Speaker 1: click done, And that's it. I mean, that is the
Speaker 1: nature of a cutout, and it's nothing personal. That's the
Speaker 1: nature of deniability, right so, and so I just want
Speaker 1: to say this to you know, young rangers, young seals,
Speaker 1: young green berets getting out of the service, do not
Speaker 1: get involved in this stupid petty bullshit with this want
Speaker 1: to be operator nonsense. And I know you're you're looking
Speaker 1: at these pictures on Instagram about how you're a fucking
Speaker 1: Ronan warrior and you're looking at operator is fuck Nation
Speaker 1: and it's telling you about doing hood rat ship and
Speaker 1: goon ship overseas. No, that's fucking gay. All right. I
Speaker 1: know you're not supposed to use gay as a pejorative term.
Speaker 1: I got it. But it's just like real talk for
Speaker 1: a moment here, Like, don't be fucking stupid guys. Come on,
Speaker 1: it's not worth going to jail, all right, It's not
Speaker 1: worth dying over some stupid ship. You're working for some
Speaker 1: fucking amateur who thinks he's gonna cash in big. The
Speaker 1: guy who ran this whole thing, it says in the article.
Speaker 1: Now he's he's doing like some vape cannabis uh company
Speaker 1: in California. Now, Like that's the kind of ship you're
Speaker 1: you're dealing with here. Don't do it, man, Go use
Speaker 1: your g I bill, go to school, do something normal
Speaker 1: if you want to go and do cool ship man, Like,
Speaker 1: like I said, apply to the c I A apply. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're in the military, go take the
Speaker 1: long walk. Uh. Go to Delta Force. It's a good unit. Professional,
Speaker 1: you know, go be it, Go be a Green Beret,
Speaker 1: whatever the funk it is. But don't get involved in
Speaker 1: this stupid amateur ship. Don't do it. Like I'm I'm
Speaker 1: tired of it and I'm tired of seeing Like good
Speaker 1: guys get hemmed up and don't even come to you.
Speaker 1: Some of these companies will come to you and they'll
Speaker 1: pretend like they're working. You know, we're we're doing we're
Speaker 1: drafting up some report for for names Maddest and Pompeio.
Speaker 1: So go overseas and collect all this intel for us. No, dude, no,
Speaker 1: get it in writing. You take that fucking thing. You
Speaker 1: know I want that in my contract right here. Well,
Speaker 1: the article is American mercenaries were hired to assassinate politicians
Speaker 1: in the Middle East, written by A rum Roston for
Speaker 1: buzz Speed check it out. It's like I said, I
Speaker 1: haven't read the whole thing. It's very indebted. I mean
Speaker 1: this is like a small book here. Yeah, man, Like
Speaker 1: I said, I mean, this guy locked in the story
Speaker 1: I think pretty good. And I don't have any firsthand
Speaker 1: or set even secondhand knowledge of this because it's not
Speaker 1: my story. I didn't work on this. But it's well
Speaker 1: done though, just from the liddle of that. He interviewed
Speaker 1: a number of people who are on this team, and
Speaker 1: he has drone footage, he has some documentation, so I
Speaker 1: mean he spent some time on it obviously, um, and
Speaker 1: it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out. Um.
Speaker 1: And again, I'm just kind of like beside myself by
Speaker 1: some of the similarities to this book I wrote four
Speaker 1: years ago. Um, you know, down to um, you know,
Speaker 1: former dev group guys carrying hatchets out on mercenary operations.
Speaker 1: It's like down down to that like granular level of detail.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what the funk? Man, It's it's exactly the
Speaker 1: same kind of crap I wrote about in this book.
Speaker 1: And I wish it had remained in a novel and
Speaker 1: it remained a work of fiction. But somebody is always
Speaker 1: dumb enough to actually do it. Yeah, crazy stuff man. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: next episode better Death to Our Grea because I am
Speaker 1: the Revolution is about to be in theaters. Well, so
Speaker 1: why there's gonna be a premier in New York. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's gonna be my wife's documentary. She
Speaker 1: just did a Ted talk in Milan, you know, which
Speaker 1: is it's about, you know, amongst other things, it's about
Speaker 1: a a YPJ commander in Syria that she spent some
Speaker 1: time with. Um. But we'll talk about the other personalities
Speaker 1: in the documentary. And yeah, it's we're gonna do a
Speaker 1: premier in in November here, I'll be there as long
Speaker 1: as I'm invited to come from I might be able
Speaker 1: to hook you up, I would hope. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: Benny will be in next episode. Check out softwarep radio
Speaker 1: dot com. Check out facebook page. We're now on Spotify
Speaker 1: and the uh the new act SOFTWAREP Radio Act, which
Speaker 1: is all the episodes, all the way back episodes that
Speaker 1: aren't on Apple Podcasts anymore as well, so back and
Speaker 1: we at buzz Aldern on Diamond Dallas page all these
Speaker 1: crazy guests that we've had on from the past, so sweet.
Speaker 1: Appreciate you guys checking it out and uh as always
Speaker 1: leave a review on Apple podcast New episodes up every
Speaker 1: Wednesday and Friday, and we're out guys. Hope you're checking
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