Speaker 1: M h utful. If it doesn't work, you're just not
Speaker 1: using enough. You're listening to Software Radio Special Operations, military
Speaker 1: news and straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 1: Hello again, everyone, Welcome back to Software Radio Software Bradio.
Speaker 1: Long time on targeting. I'm your host this evening. Steve
Speaker 1: bel Sturt joining me is a very very special guest. Uh,
Speaker 1: somebody I've known for quite a few years, although we
Speaker 1: lost touch for a little a while, my old commander
Speaker 1: from Panama. Uh at that time it was Major Kevin
Speaker 1: Higgens and retired as a colonel. Uh. We're gonna take
Speaker 1: a break a little bit from Afghanistan tonight. I know
Speaker 1: everyone's been inundated with that stuff. I'm gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about Latin America and and Kevin is the subject matter
Speaker 1: expert on Latin America. We're gonna talk about s F
Speaker 1: in Latin America from sixty two through present day, and
Speaker 1: we will, uh, we'll touch on a bunch of different
Speaker 1: subjects that I believe our listeners will really enjoy. But
Speaker 1: before we do that, Kevin, welcome to the podcast. We
Speaker 1: appreciate your time. And I gotta tell you, Europeans a
Speaker 1: lot better looking than mine is. Well. Good to see again, Steve,
Speaker 1: and congratulations on this the software program. That's really uh
Speaker 1: an important contribution to the community. Well, we appreciate that,
Speaker 1: especially coming from someone like you, because I don't believe
Speaker 1: there was a harder working guy at the time when
Speaker 1: we were all stationed at Pantama than yourself. And I
Speaker 1: had to Brandon on the podcast a few months ago,
Speaker 1: and we we were laughing about how at times we'd
Speaker 1: have to drag you out of the uh the office
Speaker 1: to get you to get a meal in. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was Uh, those are some good times there. We had
Speaker 1: some good nations back then, we did, and a lot
Speaker 1: of good people. Uh. But uh, yeah, Steve, as you
Speaker 1: were saying, I guess the last forty six years I've
Speaker 1: been affiliated with Latin America, I didn't anticipate it would
Speaker 1: turn out this way, but uh, I guess my association
Speaker 1: began as a cadet at West Point. When we enter
Speaker 1: the academy, you have to take some tests to see
Speaker 1: how you're gonna do in certain subjects, and they saw
Speaker 1: that I was going to be pretty weak in math
Speaker 1: and science, which is the whole program there. They have
Speaker 1: engineering program, so everybody has to take a language, and
Speaker 1: the easier language department was the Portuguese Language department because
Speaker 1: it was run by the Brazilian officers, the exchange officers,
Speaker 1: and they said, this is gonna be where we're gonna
Speaker 1: put you for your language, because you're gonna need all
Speaker 1: the time. You can get to dedicate to math and
Speaker 1: science there. And uh, as I was studying Brazilian Portuguese,
Speaker 1: I started to learn a little bit about Latin America
Speaker 1: from Detroit. No I had no affiliation at all with
Speaker 1: Latin American my whole life is growing up. But as
Speaker 1: I started to study about Brazil and stuff like this.
Speaker 1: When it came time as we were getting ready to
Speaker 1: graduate and you have to pick your next assignment, I
Speaker 1: saw Panamas up there as one of the options, and
Speaker 1: so I said, well, gosh, I'm gonna go to Panama
Speaker 1: because maybe I can catch a mac flight down to
Speaker 1: Brazil when i'm there and see some of these places
Speaker 1: that we've been studying about, you know that you see
Speaker 1: in the magazines Etanama, Beach, Copacanana. You know, maybe I
Speaker 1: could get there because I just assumed that in Panama
Speaker 1: was gonna be a ditch running through the jungle But
Speaker 1: when I got off the plane in Panama as a
Speaker 1: second lieutenant, I saw Panama City, million people. There, quite
Speaker 1: a an explosive city there on the Caribbean and on
Speaker 1: the Pacific, and I realized that this was a part
Speaker 1: of the world that, you know, UH was not well known.
Speaker 1: And I said, you know, maybe I'm gonna hang my
Speaker 1: hat here and and and put my energy and force
Speaker 1: into knowing about Latin America and learning about it. We
Speaker 1: had enough Soviet experts at that time, Middle East experts,
Speaker 1: North Korean experts, and so I says, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and become H drilled down here, and UH I
Speaker 1: showed up there in the one Brigade, I was UH
Speaker 1: there on the Atlantic side and the fourth of the
Speaker 1: tenth Infantry. UH I was living at Fort Gulic, which
Speaker 1: was at the time the home of the third Battalion,
Speaker 1: seventh Group. So I was sharing the same bo q
Speaker 1: with these lieutenants and captains from the UH the third
Speaker 1: of the seventh and we would exchange stories, and so
Speaker 1: I learned about SF. During that time, UH lose with
Speaker 1: the Jimmy Carter years, so they weren't deploying much, but
Speaker 1: they were helping the seventh the infantry brigade there to
Speaker 1: train up. At the time, we were still in the
Speaker 1: Canal zone. This was the U. S Canal Zone, which
Speaker 1: was put in existence in nineteen o three, and UH
Speaker 1: included UH the canal plus five miles on either side
Speaker 1: of the canal, about sixty thousand Americans there. They had
Speaker 1: their own post office, their own police force, their own
Speaker 1: government um. But in NY seven there was people their
Speaker 1: third generation, some even fourth generation coming up. And now
Speaker 1: as I show up there with the canal, treaties are
Speaker 1: in play and they general feeling in the US was
Speaker 1: that the canal was belonged to the US, the U
Speaker 1: S National strategic asset. But at the time we were
Speaker 1: getting a lot of heat from these different insurgent groups
Speaker 1: that were growing up around Latin America, Panama itself or
Speaker 1: Marjorie Host Their leaders said this canal was a dagger
Speaker 1: stuck in the heart of Panama, and I and Castro
Speaker 1: was trying to foment revolutions in different countries from Colombia
Speaker 1: and Nicaragua and stuff, and and so I think that
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter strategy was, let's turn this canal back over
Speaker 1: to the Panama and maybe that'll take a little bit
Speaker 1: of the wind out of the sales and UH it did,
Speaker 1: and so we were there during this treaty negotiation process.
Speaker 1: We would practice UH civil disturbance exercises as the infantry
Speaker 1: unit and counter gorilla exercises because Tario said that if
Speaker 1: the US doesn't vote, this canal over to us. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go in and take it. And so the one
Speaker 1: brigade focused on different UH contingencies and UH we UH
Speaker 1: we had the Jungle School of course over in Panama
Speaker 1: where units would rotate into Fort Sherman to do a
Speaker 1: three week course hundred first Airborn, eighty second the range
Speaker 1: of Italians, and then the final week of that they
Speaker 1: do a counter guerilla exercise and they would tag our
Speaker 1: one night third of gade to be the aggressors. So
Speaker 1: we had a lot of time practicing being like the
Speaker 1: guerrilla force working against the conventional force. And the rest
Speaker 1: of the army at that time had this is seven
Speaker 1: three years after Saigon fell, so the rest of the
Speaker 1: army had put Vietnam behind and they're now focusing on
Speaker 1: the Middle East folded gap. But in Panama we were
Speaker 1: still locked in that moment where we were turning over
Speaker 1: a lot of the lessons learned from Vietnam, and it
Speaker 1: was a beneficiary of that as a second lieutenant. Our
Speaker 1: company commander was Rudy Jones. Uh. He was a career
Speaker 1: seventh Special Forces Group guy and he was coming over
Speaker 1: to fourth for the tenth to get his company command
Speaker 1: time and Vietnam veteran he would be able to. And
Speaker 1: he just came out of Delanaga, Georgia as the lane
Speaker 1: walker there and so when he took over as our
Speaker 1: company everything was kind of like a range of school
Speaker 1: without a graduation date. And uh, on Monday morning, we
Speaker 1: would pull our weapons out of the arms room. We
Speaker 1: would go into the jungle for four days, come in
Speaker 1: Friday morning, clean up the weapons, and then do that
Speaker 1: uh four weeks a month and so at the end
Speaker 1: of the month we had twenty days out there on
Speaker 1: the jungle doing these different count of guerilla or guerrilla
Speaker 1: warfare things under the tutelage, let's say of Rudy Jones.
Speaker 1: And I think that was a great background experience. They
Speaker 1: have to understand that concept because as a time that's
Speaker 1: set the stage for the next forty six years for
Speaker 1: me to have that kind of the experience. I think
Speaker 1: your first tour as an officer is always an important one.
Speaker 1: You get the guy that goes to Germany for his
Speaker 1: first tour and fifty years later he still has those
Speaker 1: UH beer steins up on his fire in place, he
Speaker 1: still goes to October Fest. The guy that went to
Speaker 1: Korea on his first tour, He's studied taekwondo, he's watching UH,
Speaker 1: you know, the different UH martial arts movies and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. So your your first to are really kind
Speaker 1: of is a benchmark for you for the rest of
Speaker 1: your career. And so that would be some advice to
Speaker 1: be careful what your what's the first tour is going
Speaker 1: to be UM And then UH. I was of course
Speaker 1: an easy cell to go to Special Forces. When I
Speaker 1: left there, it's a two year tour. I went to
Speaker 1: Fort Bragg and UH went to the Special Forces course
Speaker 1: in April's UH in April seventy nine, ninety nine. UH
Speaker 1: there's only three groups at the time. We had tenth
Speaker 1: group in Fort Devans with four Italian and bad Tools,
Speaker 1: and then UH we had the seventh group with a
Speaker 1: Ford battalion and Panamon and the two other battalions and
Speaker 1: Fort Bragg and then fifth group, the three Italians were
Speaker 1: also at Fort Bragg, and we're all there at the
Speaker 1: smoke bomb hill. You know when the wooden buildings are
Speaker 1: at work, and you know, each wooden building would hold
Speaker 1: one company. So the bottom floor of that company would
Speaker 1: be like the supply room and the storage area, and
Speaker 1: then the second floor would be all six team rooms
Speaker 1: with the be team. And so in your team rooms
Speaker 1: were about the size of you know, closet type thing.
Speaker 1: You just had enough room for your metal wall locker,
Speaker 1: maybe put your rucks at on top of that wall locker,
Speaker 1: one desk in there, and a typewriter. Maybe there was
Speaker 1: one guy in the team that could use the typewriter.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't hard to get a company meeting. You
Speaker 1: just yelled down the hall and everybody stick your head
Speaker 1: out and you put the information out and you can
Speaker 1: move on with with yourself and and and then there
Speaker 1: was no reason to hang out in your team room
Speaker 1: because it was very much like being in a telephone booth.
Speaker 1: So a lot of guys would, you know, do what
Speaker 1: they had to do, and then we would go out
Speaker 1: to do the training. We weren't well resourced, so a
Speaker 1: lot of the training was getting National Guard aircraft. Harley
Speaker 1: Davis was our lieutenant. Colonel Davis at the time was
Speaker 1: our Italian commander. He flew us out to Puerto Rico
Speaker 1: and we went up to Toro Negro for a month
Speaker 1: see rations three dollars and fIF decents a day for
Speaker 1: incidentals and then UH we'd come back from there and
Speaker 1: he took us out to the Mojave Desert and dropped
Speaker 1: us in there for a month. Same thing. We were
Speaker 1: creative on a low budget. We were able to do
Speaker 1: some through training. UH. The the third Italian fifth Group
Speaker 1: was dedicated to Cuba. That was our focus area, and
Speaker 1: so we had a repository of Spanish speakers there UM
Speaker 1: and we UH each of we divided Cuba up between
Speaker 1: the teams. I had the East Lid binos and we
Speaker 1: UH had all the maps and the paperwork and UH
Speaker 1: books reference materials, and we stored them in the A. S. T. Building,
Speaker 1: which was a big barn like building there in the
Speaker 1: Snoke Bomb Hill area. Obviously, at this time there's no
Speaker 1: discs or USB drives and stuff like that, so everything
Speaker 1: is paper companies and every ninety days we would have
Speaker 1: to brief our group commander of Italian commander on this
Speaker 1: is what we're gonna do. This is what our area
Speaker 1: looks like. This would be R S E and each plan.
Speaker 1: These are the optimal drop zones. Well, of course we
Speaker 1: never went to Cuba. But when the Cuban revengee UH
Speaker 1: flotilla came from Mariel, Cuba, and I went with twelve
Speaker 1: eleven guys to Fort chaff the Arkansas. There aren't twenty
Speaker 1: thousand Cubans that came in and they sent them to
Speaker 1: Indiantown Gap, Fort McCoy, all these names that I'm hearing
Speaker 1: on the UH the news these last couple of days,
Speaker 1: and I went to Fort Chaffe UH. And Fort Chaffee
Speaker 1: was also I had. It was in World War Two.
Speaker 1: It was a former German pow camp, but they had
Speaker 1: buildings of wooden World War two style barracks. We put
Speaker 1: twenty thou guys and then we divided that area up
Speaker 1: into four areas and they put three s F guys
Speaker 1: in each area. So it was a total Inbed language,
Speaker 1: Inbed language, Human Spanish, and that that was our experience. Um.
Speaker 1: I was on the green Light team. I was on
Speaker 1: the Halo Stadium team there and so that was some
Speaker 1: good training, but I kept looking for that mission. You know.
Speaker 1: Here I was a Green Bay green right. Uh. I
Speaker 1: was supposed to be doing adventurous things. And I kept
Speaker 1: reading the paper and looking for that moment, you know,
Speaker 1: because I would have to go to the team room
Speaker 1: and listened to the Vietnam War stories from Richmond Nail.
Speaker 1: He was there, and Johnny sent these guys. Uh, and
Speaker 1: I said, I've got to be that. I'm supposed to
Speaker 1: be that. When is my time coming? And then um,
Speaker 1: we had some guys filtered down to Panama. We had
Speaker 1: the Spanish speakers in Panama. When President Reagan took over,
Speaker 1: he had seen Nicaragua fall and he said, we don't
Speaker 1: want that to happen again. And uh, Salvador was the
Speaker 1: next one that looked like it was in danger. So
Speaker 1: he started launching training teams there from third of the
Speaker 1: seventh in Panama and one Gonzalez, he had had been
Speaker 1: third of the fifth with us on the Scooba team.
Speaker 1: He had gone down to Panama and he come back
Speaker 1: on leave and he started telling I, say, this is
Speaker 1: what's going on there, and I said, that's that's where
Speaker 1: I've had to be. I've got to go there. And
Speaker 1: so I got on the phone with DA and I said,
Speaker 1: I gotta go back to Panama. And they said, well,
Speaker 1: you've already done the Panama Panamas a backwater. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: not what's happening now, he said, And you can't go
Speaker 1: to SF. You know before this wasn't a brand. Sit
Speaker 1: were all infantry, and you know back to back SF
Speaker 1: tour is going to be suicide. You've already done a
Speaker 1: pretty good job of destroying your career already, you guys,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna send you back to Panama, I said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna send you to Fort Jackson to be a
Speaker 1: basic Infantry company commander there. And so I thought, oh gosh,
Speaker 1: you know the war is gonna be over before I
Speaker 1: could never get back there. And uh, but two weeks
Speaker 1: later the guy called me back and he said, uh,
Speaker 1: the assignment's officer and he said, I can't get an
Speaker 1: infantry guy to go to the Air Defense Artillery Advanced
Speaker 1: Course and now pass them. Can you help me and
Speaker 1: be the infantry rep and now pass them? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: you think I could get my assignment of choice after that?
Speaker 1: And he goes, well, what do you got in mind?
Speaker 1: I said, I'd like to go to the Sralevant and Panama.
Speaker 1: I said, that's a good He said, that's a good idea,
Speaker 1: said we can do that, and then after you're done there,
Speaker 1: we'll get you your infantry company commanders. So that was
Speaker 1: my ticket to get to back to Panama, to get
Speaker 1: in the fight, to to get to El Salador and
Speaker 1: and be that advisor there. That was this sort of
Speaker 1: thing that all the SF training and all the SF
Speaker 1: guys that we know would like to be there. That's
Speaker 1: uh uh and so uh. But Albasa turned out to
Speaker 1: be a pretty good trip because it's right across the
Speaker 1: river from Warez. I was able to work the Spanish
Speaker 1: thing and I watched Spanish TV all day to perfect
Speaker 1: my Spanish. Uh. And then I show up in UH
Speaker 1: in Panama on September of eighty two. And when I
Speaker 1: got there, uh, a lot of the guys from third
Speaker 1: Italian fifth Group had beat me there because they were
Speaker 1: because there were so many missions popping up in Honduras
Speaker 1: and in um El Salvador. They put the battalion at
Speaker 1: a hundred thirty percent strength and all the Spanish speakers,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, were from third of the fifth and
Speaker 1: fifth group. At that time was in that moment where
Speaker 1: they were looking at redeploying them either to El Paso
Speaker 1: or Fort Campbell in the end Fort Campbell one, and
Speaker 1: they were learning to farm guys into Arabic school. And
Speaker 1: so guys had to make a decision. Do I stay
Speaker 1: with that fifth group flash because some guys that you know,
Speaker 1: they had gone back many years with a fifth Gree
Speaker 1: flash and that was part of their identity. Or do
Speaker 1: I deploy down with my language and get into the
Speaker 1: fight here that looks like the next new adventure. And
Speaker 1: so when I showed up there, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of guys uh Kenny McMullen, uh, Gordon Smith, Robert Smith,
Speaker 1: Chuck Buro, all these guys had already beaten me there
Speaker 1: because I had that detour over in Al Paso, and
Speaker 1: so it was like old home week there. But again
Speaker 1: they had like the unit was at a hard and
Speaker 1: thirty percent strength because they were getting sent everywhere. When
Speaker 1: you're a four deployed unit, you don't need a JCS
Speaker 1: deployment order. You know, you need the j CS deployment
Speaker 1: order to remove KNUS forces to Ocona's location. But if
Speaker 1: you're already oconis the sink can call you on the
Speaker 1: phone and say, can you send somebody to look at
Speaker 1: this problem? I got in Honduras tomorrow and you're gone.
Speaker 1: And so that's a much more convenient thing for them
Speaker 1: to do. And when they started tagging the RAG units
Speaker 1: for different missions in Central America, they were the ones
Speaker 1: that they could look out, you know, a few six
Speaker 1: seven months out ahead, and the units could then get
Speaker 1: their stuff ready to go. But the stuff that would
Speaker 1: be popping up overnight, those little crisis action things, they
Speaker 1: would send a third of the seventh that was That
Speaker 1: was very useful to have a four deployed s F
Speaker 1: unit there and use you know, Hugh Scrubs was a commander.
Speaker 1: He had been there for for many years, and uh,
Speaker 1: I had met him there when I signed in, I
Speaker 1: came up to his office here and I remember when
Speaker 1: I went to the office there, I saw that hall
Speaker 1: of heroes, you know, the previous battalion commanders, and the
Speaker 1: first one, uh, you know being Bull Simons. You know,
Speaker 1: uh it was still the eighth Group in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two, and you know, he was the guy that
Speaker 1: was the Sante guy. In the nineteen seventy he led
Speaker 1: a mission as to he did, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: lose and lose on. Yeah, they were freed to five
Speaker 1: guys and maybe a lot of them were from the
Speaker 1: Baton Death March that he was at. It was World
Speaker 1: War two. And then uh, even as a retired guy
Speaker 1: in ninety eight, he did that mission for Ross Barrow
Speaker 1: and then you go down the line and you uh,
Speaker 1: we saw bow Grits. Uh. He was the battalion commander
Speaker 1: down there. I never met bo Grits, but I met
Speaker 1: all the guys that worked for him, like Strugs and
Speaker 1: Jones and Remo Butler and uh, all these bow Grid stories.
Speaker 1: But you know, General west Marland gave him that mission
Speaker 1: to go and find the down spy aircraft and Cambodia,
Speaker 1: which he was successful in doing. It was highlighted in
Speaker 1: Robin Moore's book The Green Berets. Uh. But he kind
Speaker 1: of set the tone. All of those guys who were
Speaker 1: as team leaders and company commanders, they went on to
Speaker 1: become general officers and stuff like that. Now. I think
Speaker 1: he retired as a lieutenant colonel, but he had probably
Speaker 1: twenty officer general us for letters are recommended his because
Speaker 1: he would do stuff that would really he really knew
Speaker 1: how to uh get the men's attention. Like, for example, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, Doug Days was telling me he just arrived
Speaker 1: in uh in Panama and he's on his way out
Speaker 1: to his first jump night jumped unto lake get to him,
Speaker 1: uh sixth jump, and he's sitting there and waiting, you know, waiting,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, bo grights in the middle
Speaker 1: of the thing comes in. This is Days getting the door.
Speaker 1: You're the jump master, the Doug says, he goes in.
Speaker 1: Mary Collum raised his hands around and uh nobody died.
Speaker 1: But he always remembered that with rights, you have to
Speaker 1: have your your head in the game. And then Chris
Speaker 1: Saint John told me about this time they are in
Speaker 1: pt formation, you know, with their shorts and their T
Speaker 1: shirts on, everything, in a hilicopter there with blades turning,
Speaker 1: and he sent the guys over a team over to
Speaker 1: the hilo and they he look flew into the interior
Speaker 1: of Panama and dropped the guys off one by one
Speaker 1: and they would have to come back on their own
Speaker 1: using their own devices, no money, no uh wallet, and
Speaker 1: and um that really got their attention on the importance
Speaker 1: of the language training. And then uh The best one
Speaker 1: I think was uh An n c O McMullan. He
Speaker 1: told me that they had put him in isolation in
Speaker 1: Panama and they said, you're going to jump into the
Speaker 1: Sierra Maestro in Cuba. And uh they did all the
Speaker 1: brief things and they gave them live immitiution and everything.
Speaker 1: They got in the sea one thirty and they jumped
Speaker 1: out over and they landed in there and they're trying
Speaker 1: to link up with the partisans there in the Sierra
Speaker 1: Maestro in Cuba. You know, they didn't know they had
Speaker 1: to do their wills and they didn't know if they're
Speaker 1: going to come back. And when they link up with
Speaker 1: the partisan, it's companies started major. They're not in Cuba,
Speaker 1: they're in Turo Negro, uh Puerto Rico. They were pissed
Speaker 1: at first, but they said, you know, that was the
Speaker 1: best training we ever had. And so this was the
Speaker 1: kind of spirit that was inculcated. I think was a
Speaker 1: very key key moment there. Now, roger Donalan took bo
Speaker 1: grights is uh slaught as a hard act to follow,
Speaker 1: But roger Donalan was a hero in his own right.
Speaker 1: You know, he was the first Medal of Honor winner
Speaker 1: and U and then h after him was Chuck Fry
Speaker 1: and so, and now we have Hughes Crooks, uh and
Speaker 1: he's the group com manner. And so when I go
Speaker 1: in there, he said, no, we can't send you right
Speaker 1: away to El Salvador, which is what I anticipated going
Speaker 1: because he says, we were limited to fifty five people there,
Speaker 1: and I got to make sure I pick and choose, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, proven commodities. He goes right now, the emphasis
Speaker 1: is taking the Salvador Army, which was a ten thousand
Speaker 1: men ceremonial army, and building up for fifty four thousand
Speaker 1: uh formidable counterinsurgency force. And the guys that I need
Speaker 1: now are guys that might have Vietnam experience, or guys
Speaker 1: that have n c os that have a training experiencing
Speaker 1: in equipment these raw recruits into these cassador and dairy battalions.
Speaker 1: And he said, there's plenty of other missions here, and
Speaker 1: you know, if you prove yourself, you know, we might
Speaker 1: be able to look at you going here in a
Speaker 1: year's time. So okay, game mom, I'm gonna go ahead,
Speaker 1: and you know, attack all of these different missions he
Speaker 1: might give me. Uh. We ended up getting into the
Speaker 1: fifty five man limit problem because when we started sending
Speaker 1: trainers there under Ronald greg And, there was some consternation
Speaker 1: in Congress that we could be going down the slippery slope.
Speaker 1: It's only five years after, you know, And they said, well,
Speaker 1: how many guys are you gonna send there? You had
Speaker 1: twenty last month, now you got thirty. Now you got
Speaker 1: how many you got down there? And they reported that
Speaker 1: what we havet okay, let's keep it at fifty five. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do that. And that hamstrung us. But it was
Speaker 1: they did a big favor for the salvador and army
Speaker 1: because there's no way that fifty five guys are gonna
Speaker 1: win the war. Uh. Had they not put those uh
Speaker 1: ceiling on us, we could have likely sent the hunt
Speaker 1: first down ere eighty second. We could have just shoved
Speaker 1: the Salvadorans aside. But now you can't because now you've
Speaker 1: got fifty five. And how are we going to design
Speaker 1: these fifty five guys to have the best impact? Now
Speaker 1: you still have to take this ten thousand men largely
Speaker 1: ceremonial army and train them into a fighting force. How
Speaker 1: do you do that? So we came up with the
Speaker 1: Krim the Central regionalde and Training Ento Militar, the Regional
Speaker 1: Military Training Center, which was built wooden sea huts were
Speaker 1: established up on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. UH, Honduras
Speaker 1: and El Salvador. They're part of the five Central American republics.
Speaker 1: But Hell, Honduras and El Salvador have had, you know,
Speaker 1: I love hate relationship because their border was really well
Speaker 1: marked on the hundred sixty mile border that they shared,
Speaker 1: and so the Hondurans were, uh, they were threatened by
Speaker 1: nicarag When Nicaragua, the Sandiniss had just taken over in
Speaker 1: September of seventy nine, and the Soviets and Cubans had
Speaker 1: built their army up to fifty thousand, providing main battle
Speaker 1: tanks and other wheeled armored vehicles, and the Honduran forces
Speaker 1: only at fifteen thousand. So they were willing to kind
Speaker 1: of cooperate with us with the understanding that for every
Speaker 1: Salvadoran battalion we could train in the crem in Honduras,
Speaker 1: we would also train a Honduring battalian so they could
Speaker 1: keep that sort of parody thing going. So that mission
Speaker 1: was tagged to seventh through a bit fort Bragg and
Speaker 1: they carried that mission for ten years, UH, turning out
Speaker 1: unit after unit, and you could see the huge difference
Speaker 1: when these units came back after having that training. That
Speaker 1: all slight training in Honduras and they came back into
Speaker 1: the war made a big difference because in Ol Salvador
Speaker 1: at the time, if you had men, they were manning
Speaker 1: the perimeter because tonight could be the night there's going
Speaker 1: to be an attack. So we let the guys sit
Speaker 1: there and do some f t X or some range
Speaker 1: training thing when we have an ambush here on the
Speaker 1: Pan Americana, and so they would constantly abort training. But
Speaker 1: when you could send the men up to Krim, up
Speaker 1: to Honduras, they were in an isolated area and they
Speaker 1: went through the full package deal. UH. The other thing
Speaker 1: we had was the School of America's in Panama that
Speaker 1: started in and was there all the way through eight four.
Speaker 1: So when when I got there in eighty two, the
Speaker 1: School of America's was still there. As part of the
Speaker 1: Panama Canal Treaty draw down, the school would eventually be
Speaker 1: relocated to Fort Benning, but at the time the School
Speaker 1: of America's was running a full curriculum there and so
Speaker 1: they designed it to bring in more Salvadorans from commando
Speaker 1: courses and econcourses and stuff like that. And so, uh,
Speaker 1: the storm of seven teams that were in Panama, they
Speaker 1: got tagged to run an eight week recondo course, eight
Speaker 1: week you know, long range of consistance courses, and I
Speaker 1: got tagged for two of those. I got tagged with
Speaker 1: my team. I was on eight. To use a single
Speaker 1: letter numbering system back then animal O d s one
Speaker 1: through sixteen, and my team was given the mission to
Speaker 1: train the Salvadoran recon elements, uh two of them, one
Speaker 1: was the Naval Special Commando Unit and then we did
Speaker 1: another three month exercise and that was very valuable to
Speaker 1: learn Salvadoran Spanish or how they would respond, so that
Speaker 1: when I finally did get Tell Salvador in October of
Speaker 1: eighty three, I had a pretty good feel for what
Speaker 1: that basic building block was going to be alike. And
Speaker 1: I think that you know, uh, Hugh scrub showed a
Speaker 1: lot of wisdom by giving people a chance to kind
Speaker 1: of get their feet went with these different sort of
Speaker 1: off site training things before he launched them into the
Speaker 1: super Bowl. There in El Salvador Um, we also had
Speaker 1: the Salvador and Military Academy. Uh. They were normally cranking
Speaker 1: out fifteen graduates a year, the cadets. But this war, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, when the army is growing from ten thousand
Speaker 1: fifty four thousand, what do you need? You need platoon
Speaker 1: leaders and they, you know, cranking out sixteen second lieutenants
Speaker 1: a year is not going to cut it. So the
Speaker 1: Fort Benning guys they opened up the the School of
Speaker 1: America's I mean the Officer's Candidate School in Spanish. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so they would send these first year cadets up
Speaker 1: to a six month carbon copy version of OCS and
Speaker 1: they would come back and as a second year cadet,
Speaker 1: he's now a platoon leader taking the men out on
Speaker 1: the ambush patrols and small unit operations. And they were
Speaker 1: doing about a hundred fifty to a hundred eighty graduates
Speaker 1: a year, and that was that was helpful. We also
Speaker 1: had the Immediate Reaction Rettalion Bayoso. The Souber created six
Speaker 1: thirteen n large mobile forces called Beerys, the tim the Infantaria,
Speaker 1: the react on the Media, and the second one was
Speaker 1: Theosa Batalian that was sent up to Camp McComb and
Speaker 1: now Rudy Jones is a major and he's the S
Speaker 1: three of the battalion, and he sets up that training
Speaker 1: program and that was six months long, and when they
Speaker 1: came back, the guerrillas had several huge defeats back to
Speaker 1: back to back, and so they would not even want
Speaker 1: to get in the same department as the daeos. It
Speaker 1: was in this department they would cross the river just
Speaker 1: to avoid contact because at that time, you know, the
Speaker 1: guerrillas in the early days, there were these highly motivated
Speaker 1: university students twelve thousand, fifteen thousands strong, probably ages twenty two.
Speaker 1: And then our army, on the other hand, might have been, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the younger on the younger side, eighteen years old,
Speaker 1: not really understanding why I'm here, you know, maybe rafted
Speaker 1: conscript army and uh. The so when the Viosa shows
Speaker 1: back up, you could really see that that significant difference.
Speaker 1: And that was one day to skin the cat. The
Speaker 1: cat being how do you train a ten thousand man
Speaker 1: army if you can only have fifty five guys in country.
Speaker 1: So the fifty five guys in country mainly came from
Speaker 1: third of the seventh in Panama, and they put three
Speaker 1: guys in each of the six military zones. There's fourteen
Speaker 1: political departments in our Salvador, and so they put three guys.
Speaker 1: It was a major warrant in a n c O.
Speaker 1: Normally the warrant program now is starting to kick in.
Speaker 1: Up to this time we had about four. We still
Speaker 1: have first lieutenants as exos of the teams, but now
Speaker 1: we have the warrant that more than likely went to
Speaker 1: eighteen foxtra training and stuff like that simheres like. And
Speaker 1: so when they broke down the duties of the team,
Speaker 1: they would have the n c O focusing on training
Speaker 1: and the civil defense I'll talk about that in a second,
Speaker 1: and then the warrant officer would be working with the
Speaker 1: intel sections, the fusion centers, and then with maybe psyops
Speaker 1: would be as other area, and then the officer would
Speaker 1: be maybe looking at operations, current operations, future operations, and
Speaker 1: advising the different commanders that were in that military zone. Again,
Speaker 1: there's fourteen departments and they divided them up into six
Speaker 1: military zones, and so each of the military zones has
Speaker 1: a three man team like that. And then we had
Speaker 1: another split team six guys that were in laone where
Speaker 1: we had the National Training Center with sem Centro. The
Speaker 1: training into military forces are modest and this this team,
Speaker 1: UH is there running basic training courses, then corporal promotion courses,
Speaker 1: maybe some other recondo type stuff. And that took the
Speaker 1: heat off of a lot of the departments that up
Speaker 1: to now we're doing their localized training. They could then
Speaker 1: export their men over there, they would get trained and
Speaker 1: then they would come back with standardized training. UM. So
Speaker 1: my my first tour, there was an eight three to
Speaker 1: eighty four. I was actually on two back to back
Speaker 1: t u I s from Third of the seventh as
Speaker 1: the eight commander. Now, at the time I was there,
Speaker 1: there was three commanders of one wasn't on during, one
Speaker 1: was in a Salador, and one was I think in Ecuador,
Speaker 1: and so we did we didn't even have an even
Speaker 1: though there was three guys up on the board. We
Speaker 1: were in three different countries. That's just the way the
Speaker 1: storm was mounting. There, UH a lot of great opportunities
Speaker 1: for guys, and so Third of the seventh became a
Speaker 1: magnet for guys that wanted to deploy. It was a
Speaker 1: self filtering systems, so the guys would hear the stories
Speaker 1: about what the guys were doing, so you would get
Speaker 1: this certain type of guy that was feeling bad if
Speaker 1: he was not deployed, if he was walking around and
Speaker 1: the p exparking around and Ford gool like, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: feel good about himself until he got on the plane.
Speaker 1: That was the type of guy we were getting. And
Speaker 1: so it was a good, good time to be there,
Speaker 1: and so UM I ended up doing my year there
Speaker 1: as the advisor. They that's when they started the civil
Speaker 1: defense program that was an important component of the uh
Speaker 1: A counterinsurgency. Bruce Hazelwood, famous Bruce Hazelwood, he came out
Speaker 1: to San Decente, That's where I was, and that's where
Speaker 1: he came to set up the the civil defense program.
Speaker 1: And that was kind of a pivotal experience because I
Speaker 1: just watched him kind of an action, how he set
Speaker 1: up the civil defense program, how we conducted training, and
Speaker 1: uh I realized is that all these years I was
Speaker 1: doing it wrong and from there I was able to
Speaker 1: kind of get the right way of approaching things and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So it's kind of like a living
Speaker 1: laboratory for me to watch him how he set that up.
Speaker 1: And basically the idea on his particular civil defense program
Speaker 1: was that each of the municipalities. Each department has a
Speaker 1: twenty municipalities, and each municipality has a town, mayor, town, principal,
Speaker 1: town and h. The Civil Defense Force would have fifty
Speaker 1: weapons assigned to it, and you would try to recruit
Speaker 1: five men from the municipality, so that every ten days
Speaker 1: you would do one day uh duty. So three nights
Speaker 1: a month you're doing and you get some basic training,
Speaker 1: you know, fire and movement range training, patrolling training. They're
Speaker 1: basically guarding the town square, which has the mayor's office,
Speaker 1: the church, the other administrative buildings, and then you go
Speaker 1: out to the perimeter. Nothing uh spectacular, nothing fancy, pretty
Speaker 1: simple stuff. They were armed initially with the M one
Speaker 1: carvings from the Korean War, and then uh they had
Speaker 1: a trouble getting magazines form, so they switched to the
Speaker 1: END fourteen. By the end of the war, the D
Speaker 1: fourteen was what they or handling. But this really bothered
Speaker 1: the guerrillas because uh heretofore, the gorillas could come into
Speaker 1: town without any opposition to buy a Coca cola, or
Speaker 1: to go to the pharmacy to get medical supplies, or
Speaker 1: go to the hardware skirt buy a bag of nails,
Speaker 1: to create a roadside bomb, but now they can't do
Speaker 1: it because these guys are preventing them from doing it.
Speaker 1: But more than that, the grillas can live with a
Speaker 1: passive population, but they can't live with people that now
Speaker 1: are taking a step against them because their narrative is
Speaker 1: we are fighting for you, you're fighting for the people.
Speaker 1: But now they have these five hundred guys that has
Speaker 1: said the opposite. And these five hundred guys have daughters
Speaker 1: and mothers and wives and stuff like this, and they're
Speaker 1: now the eyes and ears because they know that their
Speaker 1: uncle is on the civil Defense force and they see
Speaker 1: a guerrilla unit walking across the open field there, and
Speaker 1: they're going to report that because these guys are not
Speaker 1: just recruited from the town, they're recruited from a twenty
Speaker 1: kilometer radius around the town. So now you have a
Speaker 1: situation that the gorillas didn't like very much, and so
Speaker 1: they would attack these different things and try to take
Speaker 1: this program down. And and granted, the area where the
Speaker 1: gorillas were most predominant UH predominant were the areas it
Speaker 1: was harder to recruit and UH on the areas where
Speaker 1: the guerrillas, like on the west side of the country,
Speaker 1: it was easy to recruit guys, and why not was
Speaker 1: kind of like a uh, you know, a club atmosphere
Speaker 1: you go out to shoot at the range and low
Speaker 1: risk situation and they would have thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: guys come to be recruited. But then when you go
Speaker 1: to Northern Morizon or something, that would be a suicidal
Speaker 1: mission to say, I want to be in the civil
Speaker 1: defense here. But the areas that we were focusing on
Speaker 1: with those conflicted areas, the areas that were being contested
Speaker 1: with the fark and stuff like that. But that was
Speaker 1: a brussa wood project that ended up working really well
Speaker 1: because it gave the small Salvadoran army at fifty four thousand,
Speaker 1: another group of people that could hold down static positions
Speaker 1: in towns so that that would free them up to
Speaker 1: go out and do patrolling and actual offensive operations against
Speaker 1: the guerillas. One of the guerrilla strategies was to do
Speaker 1: economic sabotage to blow up all the bridges, the power lines,
Speaker 1: and that they were doing like about three hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars a year of sabotage, and that would be three
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars less that the Salvadoran government could use
Speaker 1: to improve the life of the town scope by building
Speaker 1: wells or schools or something. Had they had to rededicate
Speaker 1: this money just to rebuild the same bridget he's there
Speaker 1: the day before. So having the civil defense guys there
Speaker 1: helped hold down the package a little bit. And um,
Speaker 1: So when when I did my tour there, I said,
Speaker 1: I gotta get back, um and UM, I said, what's
Speaker 1: the quickest way back. I'll go to Korea because I
Speaker 1: was still in the infantry and you have to check
Speaker 1: that block to get the infantry the company command or
Speaker 1: else you're you're dead in the water. And I said, hey,
Speaker 1: to save this place, to go to Korea, because you
Speaker 1: know they're one year two of those guide once falling
Speaker 1: off all over the place. But I got to create
Speaker 1: They don't know that. No, we don't do it that way.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to do one year as a guy
Speaker 1: in the G three year and then after that, if
Speaker 1: you prove yourself in the G three, will give you
Speaker 1: that company commn. So I did a two year hiatus
Speaker 1: there in Korea where my dad had served in UH
Speaker 1: following the inch On invasion. Was able to that, you know,
Speaker 1: I was able to discuss UH that with my dad,
Speaker 1: his his time and more h detailed manner walking some
Speaker 1: ground that he had walked. And then uh I came back.
Speaker 1: Because when you go to Korea you can get your assignment,
Speaker 1: your first assignment of choice anyway, so I said, well,
Speaker 1: I want to go to El Salvador San Miguel, And
Speaker 1: so I came back again at this time for a
Speaker 1: year and a half, and I could see the difference
Speaker 1: because the the s F training that had come in there,
Speaker 1: the you now had an n C O cores. These
Speaker 1: kiddets that were just coming out of the uh iobcure
Speaker 1: the officers o c s, they were now seasoned uh
Speaker 1: platoon leaders. We hadn't gone from zero to fifty helicopters.
Speaker 1: And the helicopter was a huge difference. They were Huey's
Speaker 1: with an M sixty door gun. But up to that time,
Speaker 1: the girls were allowed to walk in groups of four
Speaker 1: hundred in noon. You know, in the open fields, you
Speaker 1: know from one area to another, who's gonna stop them.
Speaker 1: But as soon as you put that first hue up
Speaker 1: with the M sixty delta in there, it's a game
Speaker 1: changer because you have the high ground always with the helicopter,
Speaker 1: and then they brought in the mic models, which were
Speaker 1: the Huey's with the two point seven five rocket pods
Speaker 1: on each side, and then they created the d C three,
Speaker 1: the C forty seven Phantasma, and then of course they
Speaker 1: had their complement of A thirty seven's that we're out
Speaker 1: there as well. But the helicopter really made a huge
Speaker 1: difference because Salvator is not a big country, you know,
Speaker 1: three hundred kilometers wide and about a hundred sixty kilometers high,
Speaker 1: and so you can fly from here to there. It's mountainous,
Speaker 1: so there's some good places where the grillas are going
Speaker 1: to be able to hang out without you be able
Speaker 1: to get getting to them. And but that that air
Speaker 1: thing really made a big difference in um getting support
Speaker 1: to units that were attacked or evacuating guys medical evacuations.
Speaker 1: When I first my first tour there in eighty three,
Speaker 1: we had ten jazz at these a day friendly forces did,
Speaker 1: and almost all of them for in front and entos
Speaker 1: encounters with gunfire. But then my second tour there was
Speaker 1: also ten kids with these day that eight of them
Speaker 1: were due to minds and booby traps. The minds and
Speaker 1: booby traps. While I was in Korea, they came out
Speaker 1: with the minds and booby traps, and uh there's very
Speaker 1: predictable places to land those helicopters and very easy ways
Speaker 1: to shut down these different traditional trails that the government
Speaker 1: forces would walk down. And so eight out of ten
Speaker 1: guys and that last part of the war were suffering
Speaker 1: from minds and booby trap injuries. And the gorillas were
Speaker 1: able to perfect the quantity of the explosives that they
Speaker 1: put in each of these uh toe popular type devices
Speaker 1: that they made all homemade devices. None of them were
Speaker 1: commercial uh fabricated devices. They were all homemade and just
Speaker 1: enough explosives to shatter the guy's foot without killing them.
Speaker 1: Because now they know they have to do extensive amvitation
Speaker 1: and they don't have a veterans administration program there and
Speaker 1: the only way to keep paying these guys to keep
Speaker 1: them on the rolls. So in the in the San
Speaker 1: Miguel where I was there with three thousand men, there
Speaker 1: was five hundred that were on one leg or less
Speaker 1: that were you know, battalions were for people that were
Speaker 1: taken out of the field by the time there and
Speaker 1: d M four they had two hundred men assigned and
Speaker 1: all in Morison, but they also had five hundred guys
Speaker 1: on one leg or less. So you would see on
Speaker 1: pay day, you know, when they could come in to
Speaker 1: get their pay, the guys would come in on you know,
Speaker 1: the crunches and wheelchairs and stuff like that. And remember
Speaker 1: General McCaffrey was there and he goes, hey, you know
Speaker 1: this is not good. You look at this unit going
Speaker 1: out from an operation there watching these guys come in.
Speaker 1: And the colonel said, no, because this is good because
Speaker 1: the men will know that we're not going to abandon
Speaker 1: that no matter what happens to them after, we're gonna
Speaker 1: still stick with them. We're going to keep them paid
Speaker 1: and make sure their families are okay and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Uh um. And when I left there, uh, that's what
Speaker 1: I ended up doing my master's thesis, Sounds Countermine Operations
Speaker 1: in Alsalvre, because I said, there's got to be a
Speaker 1: solution to this. And so when I went to Fort
Speaker 1: Level with like gove In and I said, let me
Speaker 1: see if I can come up. There's something out there.
Speaker 1: And you know, leaven Worth got a vast library and uh,
Speaker 1: most of the stuff that was valuable was from Vietnam,
Speaker 1: you know, in the leader Wars of the Vietnam concept
Speaker 1: that was their main problem as well, the same types
Speaker 1: of movie tracks and stuff. So I tried to see
Speaker 1: what I could do to turn that around. And where
Speaker 1: I was and let me let me interrupt for just
Speaker 1: a second. I wanted to ask you something. Did you
Speaker 1: notice a difference in the level of training for the
Speaker 1: fml nds between your first deployment in their second one? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think what you ended up was they didn't have
Speaker 1: a deep bench. Uh. You know, they had some very
Speaker 1: um ideologically motive they did uh uh you know, the
Speaker 1: Universitario type guys at the beginning, and then they start
Speaker 1: taking casualties. But then there isn't that another Universitario guy
Speaker 1: to take their place. So now they're doing stuff like
Speaker 1: pulling kids out of the houses, you know, twelve year
Speaker 1: olds and saying carry this mortar base plate for me
Speaker 1: for two weeks. Um. And then towards the towards the
Speaker 1: end of the war, um, we start seeing maybe up
Speaker 1: to females now because they're they're ready to put anybody
Speaker 1: into the ranks, and we start seeing twelve thirteen year
Speaker 1: old stuff like that, and the That's what brought them
Speaker 1: to the piece table because they were looking at the
Speaker 1: road ahead and they said this is not the arc
Speaker 1: was not going in their favor, so they went to
Speaker 1: the peace tables. That's essentially what happened because they could
Speaker 1: they could see uh and and their their campaign to
Speaker 1: do the minds and boobie traps was very effective, hugely effective.
Speaker 1: But Salvador being the most densely populated country in the
Speaker 1: Western Hemisphere all the a a rural country, you also
Speaker 1: have civilians walking around, the old lady, the little kid
Speaker 1: that's also stepping on that mind and so they might
Speaker 1: the f m l AND may have had some popularity
Speaker 1: in Europe, uh in Mexico. Mexico had recognized the f
Speaker 1: l AND as a belligerent force, as did France. But
Speaker 1: now there's this big turnabout in this effective tool that
Speaker 1: they were using against the military now has a negative
Speaker 1: effect on their their international support because we weren't using
Speaker 1: minds of book chest. We had claimers that was all
Speaker 1: only claimant and so any of those sorts of activities
Speaker 1: was clearly on their shoulder. They couldn't say, well, that
Speaker 1: was a military booby trap or something. Uh And so
Speaker 1: That's what I saw towards the end that the they
Speaker 1: were desperate to kill the ranks up. Um. There were
Speaker 1: some hardcore guerrillas there. They were out there for three
Speaker 1: or four days at a time, eating two or three tortillas. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were always on the run. Now that were the
Speaker 1: intel was getting better so that they could not feel
Speaker 1: comfortable in a place for a long period of time.
Speaker 1: That was another thing as you were saying, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just such a small country. It's you know, as granted
Speaker 1: there was mountainous and thickly vegetated, but still it's a
Speaker 1: small country with the military getting better by the day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they put us put a damper on their offs. Yeah
Speaker 1: I did. And the like I said, there was no
Speaker 1: n c O core. When I first got there would
Speaker 1: be a single cadet that might wear a bright colored
Speaker 1: scarf and say you hundred guys follow me, and they would.
Speaker 1: But then as we got down just that short tour
Speaker 1: I took in career, when I came back, I saw
Speaker 1: that the seven group guys that created this nice SF
Speaker 1: this nice uh n c O core that was doing
Speaker 1: that sort of small uh leadership, small unit leadership. It
Speaker 1: was needed to win this thing right after, right after
Speaker 1: your last tour, that's been everything started heating up in
Speaker 1: pent Well before that, we had this other thing that
Speaker 1: happened to us in six and that was the drug
Speaker 1: situation in the Indian Ridge, Bolivia, Peru, Columbia, and so
Speaker 1: simultaneous with this Central American thing that we were doing
Speaker 1: from now, all of a sudden they hand us this situation. Now.
Speaker 1: Colin Paul at the time said, I don't want our
Speaker 1: guys to be the lead, but we will support the
Speaker 1: State department with training. And so that's what we get.
Speaker 1: And each of these countries in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia,
Speaker 1: they needed to have a special UH counternarcotic force that
Speaker 1: would be air mobile because of the vast distances, that
Speaker 1: would understand small unit tactics, because the narco traffickers would
Speaker 1: often be guerrilla forces like the Sin Cheese and Trew
Speaker 1: or the FARC or the E L N in Columbia,
Speaker 1: or they just might be well armed. So the types
Speaker 1: of skill sets that they needed to the police forces
Speaker 1: needed to be trained in do not sit with the
Speaker 1: Philadelphia Police Force, but with seven Special Forces Group. And
Speaker 1: so the p O I S that we had were
Speaker 1: fairly consistent with what we were doing in the crem
Speaker 1: and Honduras and in these UH Salvadoran missions. So we
Speaker 1: had eyes that were really up in their game with
Speaker 1: language and running these training programs. And they were then
Speaker 1: UH spun off to go to Bolivia to set up
Speaker 1: the Garas training program. That was Captain Charlie Cleveland was
Speaker 1: the first one there, and almost everybody from seventh group
Speaker 1: had been there once in their life by now, and
Speaker 1: then UH we talked about Bob Clawson going down with
Speaker 1: Mike Coup to do the assessment of the Colombian Narcotics
Speaker 1: Police which later became the Hunglass. They stayed behind to
Speaker 1: work with the British s a S. The British s
Speaker 1: a S ran the first iteration of the Colombian Hungla
Speaker 1: course in I was able to go to the thirtieth
Speaker 1: anniversary of the Hunglas in Bogata in nineteen ten. The
Speaker 1: s the S a S guys and three s a
Speaker 1: S guys were there and they all talked about Bob
Speaker 1: Classon and Mike Coup. Three years later they had helped
Speaker 1: them because they were excellent Spanish. Because as you know,
Speaker 1: Mike and Bob. Were were very familiar with Latin America
Speaker 1: and the SAS guys were just showing up for the
Speaker 1: first time into the region, and they provided them a
Speaker 1: lot of great help out there to put that together. Um.
Speaker 1: And then we had the Yeah, and then we had
Speaker 1: the Cincies in the Wayaga Valley in Peru and we
Speaker 1: sent Blue Venture down there. The sentis were established by
Speaker 1: seven Threw back in the nineteen sixties, but then we
Speaker 1: rejoined them again in nineteen eighty nine with UH Captain
Speaker 1: Ben's cholic and mess started Fromkowski went out there and
Speaker 1: they were followed by ed reader Dan Tomlinson went out there,
Speaker 1: UM and UH they were a key unit to help
Speaker 1: the d E A low, you know, take down these
Speaker 1: uh drug labs that they would identify. And so now
Speaker 1: we've got these things going on. And then in Um,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned on top of all that, in now
Speaker 1: we've got the Noriega situation. Uh. This is our home
Speaker 1: base uh Panama, and he's uh creating a consternation while
Speaker 1: we're a deployed. When I took command, when I got
Speaker 1: out of eleven Worth, I took command of Alpha three seven,
Speaker 1: our company, and there was only two guys standing in
Speaker 1: Formation Sergeant Deck then and starting Deck were the only
Speaker 1: two guys there because everyone else was in a Salvador, Ecuador, Columbia.
Speaker 1: Everyone was deployed and UH when the first thing I
Speaker 1: did after I took command in July of eighty nine
Speaker 1: was to go out and visit them as many as
Speaker 1: I could, and they were all coming back uh in
Speaker 1: December of eighty nine two then do a handoff. UH.
Speaker 1: The other company was Beat Company, Bruce Jos Company, and
Speaker 1: they were the ones that were focusing on t aiming
Speaker 1: up for the event of the potential just cause invasion.
Speaker 1: And so from July to December, they did a couple
Speaker 1: of short like three week trips to Costa Rica through
Speaker 1: trip to uh Guatemala or something. But their main focus
Speaker 1: was to train up the different missions. We had, like
Speaker 1: twenty different scenarios that we were training for, primarily to
Speaker 1: uh prevent Oreega from escaping different air fields that he
Speaker 1: might have escaped from. We would send his teams there
Speaker 1: to kind of put eyes on those areas, and Brucios
Speaker 1: and his teams were training up that and then I
Speaker 1: was supposed to take over from Bruce in uh uh
Speaker 1: you know, December nineteen was our handoff or something, but
Speaker 1: that turned out to be when they let the fused
Speaker 1: for just can So Bruce's guys are already farming out
Speaker 1: to Bolivia ed readers getting on planing to go to Peru,
Speaker 1: and meanwhile my guys get coming. Alpha three seven's coming
Speaker 1: off the planes. But by this time we've already set
Speaker 1: up in the hangar at all Brook ready to start
Speaker 1: launching out the h our missions. And so when guys
Speaker 1: were landing in uh Howard Air Force Base to thinking
Speaker 1: you're going on Christmas vaccasion or something after their six
Speaker 1: months tour in Bolivia, I would tell Stan Brown, I says,
Speaker 1: you can't go to the Fort Davis right now. You
Speaker 1: gotta come to this hanger and I'll let you know
Speaker 1: what's going on. So he shows up the hangar and
Speaker 1: I said, okay, in six hours the phenom invasions can start.
Speaker 1: So we uh, you know, we had guys who were
Speaker 1: well trained to do the Panama invasion, but a lot
Speaker 1: of them were on already down on the ground in
Speaker 1: Bolivia and they had you know, we're back at they
Speaker 1: then they're change over. But luckily all that training that
Speaker 1: the guys were doing in uh downrange turned out to
Speaker 1: help us throughout the invasion because everybody's Spanish is on
Speaker 1: par uh. For example, when we did a couple of
Speaker 1: our h our emissions, the one on the Pacora Bridge,
Speaker 1: for example, I had Mitch Williamson with me and he
Speaker 1: was the guy that trained the two or three gunners
Speaker 1: of the Sin Chiefs for six months. And so I said, Mitch,
Speaker 1: I said, can you lay two oh three fire along
Speaker 1: this river bed? We think guys are in that river bed?
Speaker 1: And he said I can do that. And I knew
Speaker 1: he could because he had fired thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: rounds and uh. And so we had like this, this
Speaker 1: all star team, albeit we hadn't worked together. You know,
Speaker 1: some of the guys. I said, you don't know me
Speaker 1: yet because I didn't get a chance to see you
Speaker 1: that I'm your company commander. And in six hours we're
Speaker 1: gonna get on this black Hawk and we're gonna go
Speaker 1: cure and uh. But it was a fast learn you know,
Speaker 1: as we went out to the countryside and did two
Speaker 1: different missions and you're there in close quarters everybody. Uh.
Speaker 1: He had that high maturity level and they understood what
Speaker 1: was going on. I remember when we went out on
Speaker 1: Christmas Day to David and I had Chief que back
Speaker 1: with with me and J. J. Johnson, and they had
Speaker 1: just come back from El Salvador where they ran their
Speaker 1: fusion centers there, Intel Fusion Centers and Sulutan and in
Speaker 1: Um Charlatanango and I said, okay, remember what you did
Speaker 1: in the Sulutan, JJ, do that right now for me
Speaker 1: and Davy. Here's the big map here in the conference
Speaker 1: room that we just took over from the PDF, and
Speaker 1: start plotting things and interviewing people and do everything that
Speaker 1: you did there. And he said, okay, I got it.
Speaker 1: So you can do that in audible at the line
Speaker 1: of scrimmage because everybody kind of understands what the situation
Speaker 1: is going to be and what needs to be done.
Speaker 1: And then when we did our promote liberty following that,
Speaker 1: we pretty much used the Salvadoran model, you know, where
Speaker 1: you have a small amount of guys. We had eight
Speaker 1: guys in the company, we have to spread them out
Speaker 1: over these different provinces. And so the guys were doing
Speaker 1: basically the O pat mission that we did in El Salvador.
Speaker 1: But now they're in in your case and Chapo Uh
Speaker 1: doing the same thing that I was doing in Santa
Speaker 1: Center in a salvadory, you know, reporting, observing, advising, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of giving uh the commanders back in
Speaker 1: the rear of the sort of information that you're you're
Speaker 1: not gonna get from flying a drone overhead or something. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember in Chapel the cops were, um, they were
Speaker 1: very motivated to please after the war, you know how
Speaker 1: it is because they knew, you know, we had to
Speaker 1: cut down a lot of uh strength there. And then
Speaker 1: they gave us an army reservice who was a actually
Speaker 1: a National Guard guy SF National Guard guy who was
Speaker 1: a Swat Team member from St. Petersburg, and he made
Speaker 1: up Chapo Swat Team t shirts for all the cops.
Speaker 1: And then somebody sorry said the general field, aren't you
Speaker 1: guys jumping the gun a little bit with this, you know,
Speaker 1: Chapo Swat Team. But yeah, those were those were fun times.
Speaker 1: That's when I first met you back then, you know. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then wa waite Chapel and I've got at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and so you know, following uh that promote Liberty
Speaker 1: operation in Panama, they redeployed Third Italian to Fort Brant
Speaker 1: as part of the Panama Canal Treaties that were signed
Speaker 1: in October of seventy nine. We had a twenty year
Speaker 1: period whereby the year two thousand we were supposed to
Speaker 1: have withdrawn and turned over all of these installations UH,
Speaker 1: and which we did. We we complied with debt and
Speaker 1: as part of that draw down UH, they sent the
Speaker 1: third Italian back. But luckily guys like U Hugh Scruggs,
Speaker 1: who was now the seventh Group commander, and Roy Trumbull,
Speaker 1: who was our Italian commandity. So we've got to keep
Speaker 1: at least a foothold here because during the time that
Speaker 1: I was a captain, Roy Trumbull was there as the
Speaker 1: A three seventh commander and he was out there deploying
Speaker 1: to Honduras and these different locations, and he saw the
Speaker 1: value of having the in country forces there, as did
Speaker 1: Hugh Scruggs, who he did captain major lieutenant colonel time
Speaker 1: in Panama. And so we were able to keep Charlie
Speaker 1: three seven there for another ten years and then UH
Speaker 1: from there they moved to Puerto Rico to kind of
Speaker 1: keep that same sort of in country or that in
Speaker 1: theater response thing. And that was a very good decision
Speaker 1: because they had to get launched a few times on
Speaker 1: a few good missions Charlie three seven. During the time
Speaker 1: they were UH, there was the one that we think
Speaker 1: about as the Peruvian UH mission where they jubut tomorrow
Speaker 1: took over the Japanese a Vassador's residents. We had um
Speaker 1: George Franco Captain with zeitsins as I said, Chris, as
Speaker 1: I stay. They had just come from there doing a
Speaker 1: six week deployment, and then a week later this situation
Speaker 1: and with the Japanese Ambassador's residents there and the unit
Speaker 1: that was sent to respond was the unit that they
Speaker 1: just trained, and so UH they turned around, sent George
Speaker 1: back down there and he was able to get access
Speaker 1: right up onto the target because the guys had their
Speaker 1: diplomas from Charlie three seventh the ink head and dried
Speaker 1: on it yet and so these were their friends and
Speaker 1: they explained everything what was going on. So this sort
Speaker 1: of thing where we build these Milton Mill relationships in
Speaker 1: order to have the doors open for different things. That
Speaker 1: was a perfect example of where it would have been
Speaker 1: hard for just a random guy up the street to
Speaker 1: come up on the target to ask what's going on.
Speaker 1: It wasn't hard for zights or for Franco to go
Speaker 1: in there and get that information, so that paid dividends.
Speaker 1: They have the Charlie three seven there, but now we
Speaker 1: don't have the in theater forces now they're all located
Speaker 1: now in Egglin there. But through the nineties we continued
Speaker 1: the the counter drug thing. They and the Salvadoran thing.
Speaker 1: They signed our peace treaty in ninety two, uh, and
Speaker 1: so that kind of quieted things down a little bit
Speaker 1: in Central American. So in the nineties we then put
Speaker 1: our full focus down in the Dayan region and the
Speaker 1: narcotics thing, and kind of culminated in the development of
Speaker 1: Planned Columbia nine or Year two thousand was signed in
Speaker 1: July at two thousand and uh. It was now the
Speaker 1: Mill Group commander in Columbia when that had happened, and
Speaker 1: then uh, you know, we went ahead and um over
Speaker 1: the next twelve years, the Seventh Group would have four
Speaker 1: teams in Columbia to working with the police, to working
Speaker 1: with the army. This is even after the Iraq invasion,
Speaker 1: because it wasn' until the Iraq invasion that Seventh Group
Speaker 1: got pulled into the mix. Because when we were just
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, the fifth group kind of had a nice
Speaker 1: rotation working. But then when you developed that second operation
Speaker 1: with Iraq, then it's all hands on deck because this
Speaker 1: thing looks like it's going to be a long thing,
Speaker 1: and of course it did turn on to be a
Speaker 1: long thing, and so everyone has to kind of get
Speaker 1: into the rotation. And so in around two thousand three
Speaker 1: seven through of only in instead of eighteen O T
Speaker 1: A s to deploy down range each quarter, they now
Speaker 1: only have four. And so they they look at the
Speaker 1: map and say, well, if we're gonna have anybody go anywhere,
Speaker 1: it's got to be Columbia, because that's where the more
Speaker 1: intense activity was taking place, and that's where all the
Speaker 1: US agencies were working. So they d D wanted to
Speaker 1: join up with the rest of the State Department and
Speaker 1: the U D, A, U S, A, I D. And
Speaker 1: so we all worked there together during those years and
Speaker 1: that that culminated in a peace treaty as well into
Speaker 1: sixteen and you know, the farc were brought, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty much to their knees, and so they realized that
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to group, much like the salvadren guerrillas
Speaker 1: did in but Columbia is a vast country, and uh,
Speaker 1: you had sixty six different fronts in the FARC, and
Speaker 1: each of them are very locally recruited, and you don't
Speaker 1: have that sort of centralized leadership like the f fml
Speaker 1: N did. When the FLEN said okay, everybody, puts your
Speaker 1: weapons down. Uh, that was an easy thing to do.
Speaker 1: And of course most people were willing to put their
Speaker 1: weapons down because they were eating that one tortilla every
Speaker 1: three days and getting rained on and uh, sleeping under
Speaker 1: a poncho tip thing. But now with the FARK situation,
Speaker 1: you have this uh, you know, billion dollars and years
Speaker 1: sort of industry going on, and then this guy is
Speaker 1: going to far combatant for twenty years. What's he gonna
Speaker 1: do now? So, uh, you might have still a lot
Speaker 1: of conflictive zones going on in Colombia even though this
Speaker 1: peace treaty has been signed. Because of that other aspect
Speaker 1: of the thing. There's a lot more different motivations other
Speaker 1: than an ideological push to get these guys out there. Um,
Speaker 1: Central America, I guess to close up, we we had
Speaker 1: a great displacement internally in the Central American countries, but
Speaker 1: also a lot of them went to the States and
Speaker 1: you'd have these uh Salvadorans that would show up in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and they would get picked on. Uh. They
Speaker 1: would be these newcomers that would come there and people
Speaker 1: would you know, assault them on the streets or whatever.
Speaker 1: But they would get together and form these sorts of
Speaker 1: defense groups there in Los Angeles to fort these attempts
Speaker 1: of other organized gangs you know, from the fifties and
Speaker 1: sixties that were harassing them. But those things kind of
Speaker 1: spiraled into the MS thirteen and the Pandia Desio show,
Speaker 1: the two big gangs that we have now in the
Speaker 1: Central American countries. Uh, those guys would get in trouble
Speaker 1: in the United States and they'd be decorded and they
Speaker 1: would come back to a Salvador in the nineties and
Speaker 1: the early ads here and they would bring some of
Speaker 1: the skill sets that they had learned these self to
Speaker 1: Film's forces in Los Angeles ended up then asking different
Speaker 1: businesses in the area, Hey, could you please contribute money
Speaker 1: to this gang we have here so that we can
Speaker 1: protect you. And then it's called extortion. And then maybe
Speaker 1: they want to supplement their income by selling drugs. That's
Speaker 1: called drug dealing, and so they become illegal groups, and
Speaker 1: UH Salvador Propio, the actual Salvador, hadn't seen anything like
Speaker 1: this before. So these guys pretty much gave the scury
Speaker 1: forces here a run for their money because they were
Speaker 1: a couple of steps ahead of them. And so that's
Speaker 1: a persistent problem that we're dealing with here now, even
Speaker 1: in two thousand twenty one. But that was kind of
Speaker 1: the roots of the of the gang. The creation of
Speaker 1: the gangs was they started in the US. These guys
Speaker 1: ended up getting recorded. They come here and provide some
Speaker 1: mobile training team type advice to the guys here, who
Speaker 1: end up becoming even more skilled at it than the
Speaker 1: original UH founders. The main problem that we have is
Speaker 1: extortion in El Salvador right now, that every business is extorted,
Speaker 1: whether it's the bakery or the gas station. And they
Speaker 1: kind of the gangs are they divide up the neighborhoods
Speaker 1: each click a small group of gangs. They have twenty
Speaker 1: by twenty block area they're responsible for, and there might
Speaker 1: be thirty businesses in that area, and they kind of
Speaker 1: gauge how much they're going to charge you for this
Speaker 1: protection money monthly could be fifty dollars, it could be
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty dollars. They kind of do an assessment.
Speaker 1: They don't want to kill the golden goose. Uh. They
Speaker 1: want to make sure you still have some money at
Speaker 1: the end of the month to pay your light bill,
Speaker 1: because if they do too hard of an extoration, the
Speaker 1: guy's going to close down the business because he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to end up working through free um. And so
Speaker 1: you can report yourself to the police, but if they
Speaker 1: find out, they'll kill you or a family member. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of a dissuasive measure, uh that they use
Speaker 1: the threat of force. You do have some safety because
Speaker 1: that you know that each of these cliques are extorting
Speaker 1: thirty different pleases, so um, you will they won't be
Speaker 1: able to figure out which of these thirty people are
Speaker 1: adding us out. So you've got some prediction there. Once
Speaker 1: you go to the ante extoration forces, they're pretty professional
Speaker 1: here in El Salvador. They'll set up some over uh
Speaker 1: site positions. They don't just want to arrest that kid
Speaker 1: on the bicycle that's sent to the bakery to pick
Speaker 1: up the thing. He's not a key player in this,
Speaker 1: but they kind of tracked the kids, see where he goes,
Speaker 1: and then they wait to maybe they can develop a
Speaker 1: situation where they can pounce and break the whole structure down.
Speaker 1: And so when you're reading a newspaper that they captured
Speaker 1: fifteen people in this town, that might have been a
Speaker 1: mission that was six months in making. But while they're
Speaker 1: waiting for that six months in the making mission to
Speaker 1: really hammer them, you as the vapory guy, are still
Speaker 1: paying months. They're still losing your money, and you're still
Speaker 1: wondering whole is Tonight to night they're going to find
Speaker 1: out that I was the guy that snitched on him,
Speaker 1: and so you're feeling very nervous. Uh. Once they captured
Speaker 1: the gang that used to bust it up, and then
Speaker 1: maybe you would have a respite for several months or
Speaker 1: years or forever. But now the gangs are more organized
Speaker 1: so that when they see the one element that gets captured,
Speaker 1: they go ahead and back fill so that they don't
Speaker 1: lose those months of extortion. So now you think you
Speaker 1: have a respite. You might get a month off, but
Speaker 1: then the next month they're coming a new guy and saying, okay,
Speaker 1: here I am. I'm the new guy, and now you
Speaker 1: have to pay me that two hund fifty bucks and
Speaker 1: you just went through this harrowing six months wondering if
Speaker 1: these guys are gonna find out. So then you decide
Speaker 1: do I go back to the police again or do
Speaker 1: I just pay the light bill, pay the water bill,
Speaker 1: and pay the gang bill and so? Or do I
Speaker 1: go to the United States? Do I try to start
Speaker 1: over there because I'm not going to grow my business
Speaker 1: because the money that I would have used to fix
Speaker 1: the rough or hire another worker is now going to
Speaker 1: the gang. So is it better? Am I better going
Speaker 1: to the States at this point? And so a lot
Speaker 1: of the people that you show up at our border
Speaker 1: are saying that I am endangered there in a sense
Speaker 1: that they would be endangered they weren't paying that explorion fee.
Speaker 1: And uh. They're also seeing that their ability to expand
Speaker 1: is limited, and even though they might have no direct
Speaker 1: physical threat, uh, they don't want to continue on with
Speaker 1: this uh young this carousel right. Um. So if we
Speaker 1: can fix that problem, then I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people will feel content because the pain you know that
Speaker 1: that was you know the Irish the data family. We
Speaker 1: ended up with a big immigration because the pain of
Speaker 1: staying in Ireland where your family was for two thousand
Speaker 1: years becomes greater than the pain that you might experience
Speaker 1: from leaving your grandmother behind. So a lot of people
Speaker 1: got on the boats because it was either that or
Speaker 1: they're going to die. So most people are probably content
Speaker 1: to stay where they're at. You know. The other problem
Speaker 1: we have is the magnet in the United States. You know,
Speaker 1: you have a three minimum wage a month m in Salvador,
Speaker 1: and maybe a good job is getting that Coca Cola
Speaker 1: delivery truck job where you're paid seven books today, and uh,
Speaker 1: you were fighting to get that job, but then you
Speaker 1: hear from your cousin in Houston who's making seven dollars
Speaker 1: an hour. And then if you think to yourself at
Speaker 1: the end of that hard day and the hunter to
Speaker 1: re temperature in San Miguel, whether it was worth it
Speaker 1: or whether I should go to Houston. And so you
Speaker 1: have that sort of phenomena, even though you're not being
Speaker 1: messed with by all out of gangs, you realize that
Speaker 1: if I do take a risk to go up there,
Speaker 1: I might be able to improve my position. And so
Speaker 1: that that's uh why you see a lot of guys
Speaker 1: going up there obviously, And so even if we do
Speaker 1: fix the security situation, you'll still have that magnet scenario
Speaker 1: that we have to contest with. That's kind of uh,
Speaker 1: Latin America. In the last forty nine years, I think
Speaker 1: we've touched on a lot of stuff there. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it was it was the best time of my life
Speaker 1: being stations down there. You know, we got to visit
Speaker 1: a lot of different countries. Um. You know, I worked
Speaker 1: in some of the same places you did at different times,
Speaker 1: and um, you know in the Indian Ridge stuff. I
Speaker 1: remember when I was they whittled the uh, the drug
Speaker 1: training mission from eighteen downs. The three guys and h Me,
Speaker 1: Danny Carponetti, Dave Ortiz were down there, and Colonel Scruggs
Speaker 1: came down to visit us with a remo, and um,
Speaker 1: he's a lot of the Honda uh excuse me, Bolivian
Speaker 1: um hierarchy. I guess had fond, fond memories of Colonel
Speaker 1: Scrugs and it greased a lot of skids for us
Speaker 1: down there. Yeah. No, it was a long term relationships
Speaker 1: worked good. It was a good time because we had
Speaker 1: autonomy and responsibility at the small team level, you know,
Speaker 1: like that three man team that you mentioned with Danny Carponetti. Uh,
Speaker 1: you guys were you know, the US represented. It is
Speaker 1: in a wide swath of territory in Bolivia, and that's
Speaker 1: a that's a big responsibility. You're not just a cog
Speaker 1: in the machine of our you know, a conventional force
Speaker 1: moving across the d m C in Korea. You are
Speaker 1: this guy that is the US representative down there. You're
Speaker 1: doing training and diplomacy and stuff like that. And I
Speaker 1: think that was uh, you know a big attraction of
Speaker 1: being in the Seventh Group at the time. Oh yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean, uh, you know, we got to do so
Speaker 1: much great stuff, all of us, and it was just
Speaker 1: a really good time to be in Seventh Group during
Speaker 1: that era because like you said, you know when you
Speaker 1: took over the company, they were telling two standing there. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the yeah that I see now the teams
Speaker 1: that are coming, Uh, they've you know, I've been working
Speaker 1: with the State Department UH since two thousand one, and
Speaker 1: I've had pretty much during that whole time, UH and
Speaker 1: SF team that's helped me do the training of the
Speaker 1: Humblas for the ten years I was there, and in
Speaker 1: Honduras for five years, and I was there and I
Speaker 1: could see a very uh more intense, uh maturity in
Speaker 1: the sense of, you know, the combat skills, because the
Speaker 1: guys knew from their multiple tours into those combat zones
Speaker 1: that tonight could be that night, and so their war
Speaker 1: fighting skills are very supreme in that sense. But what
Speaker 1: they miss out on was that trip to Equitor, the
Speaker 1: trip to Bolivia, the counter of the comparison with Honduras
Speaker 1: with a Salvador, and that sort of stuff that can
Speaker 1: only come from being there on the ground. Um. But
Speaker 1: when it came to putting together an eight week training program,
Speaker 1: let's say, in La Pato Rickue, Honduras, the guys did
Speaker 1: a great job. That had just come out of Afghanistan
Speaker 1: a month prior, you know, so as far as that
Speaker 1: sort of quality we had, you know, it's as good
Speaker 1: as as it's ever been in that sense. Excellent. Well sir, um,
Speaker 1: we don't want to take up all your your over
Speaker 1: your vacation time. I know you're visiting family members here
Speaker 1: in the States right now, and uh, I want to
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us. It's been a pleasure. It
Speaker 1: was great to talk to you again, and let's do
Speaker 1: this again so soon, all right, Steve, Well, thank you
Speaker 1: very much, and I'm glad I was able to catch
Speaker 1: up with you. Yeah. Absolutely okay. For all of us
Speaker 1: here at radio and suffer up dot com, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Uh please check out our podcast once we post it
Speaker 1: up it'll be there'll be a video on YouTube of
Speaker 1: this and as well as an audio version on our website.
Speaker 1: From all of us here, it's soft up Radio. We
Speaker 1: want to thank you all for listening and thanks to
Speaker 1: our guests. Kevin Higgins, Sir, it was again, it was
Speaker 1: a pleasure. Thanks for joining me. Well, thank you, Steve.
Speaker 1: You have a great day YouTube use them listening to self.
Speaker 1: Rep Lydia M.