# Ep. 235 | Michael Pack | Last 600 Meters Director and Producer

An episode of [Former Action Guys Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1475060182), 10 Nov 2025, 1 h 24 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/68497402/michael_pack_documentary_fallujah_najaf.mp3

Michael Pack is an award-winning filmmaker and the producer/director of The Last 600 Meters, a documentary covering the 2004 battles of Najaf and Fallujah. He’s also known for Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, which premiered in theaters and on PBS. Over his career, Michael has led major media organizations, including the U.S. Agency for Global Media and the Claremont Institute, and produced dozens of acclaimed documentaries through his company, Manifold Productions. Michael's Sites: https://manifoldproductions.com/ https://palladiumpictures.com/ Support the show https://patreon.com/formeractionguys https://jcramergraphics.com https://ANGLICOshop.com 00:00:00 Last 600 Meters Trailer 00:02:12 Intro | Becoming a Documentarian 00:07:55 Apprenticeship Resurgence 00:16:10 In His Own Words | Clarence Thomas Documentary 00:25:49 The Last 600 Meters | Battles of Fallujah and Najaf 00:32:44 Battle of Najaf | Mahdi Army 00:41:02 General Mattis 00:49:53 Adm Rickover | Nuclear Navy 00:55:17 Military Innovation 01:03:24 War in 4k 01:13:48 US Agency for Global Media | Voice of America

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: It was almost as though there was a boogeyman out there.
[0:05] Speaker 2: We were facing a lot more enemy than we had
[0:08] Speaker 2: the capability to deal with it.
[0:10] Speaker 1: Dug trenches, they fortified houses, they were ready.
[0:15] Speaker 3: We wanted to go. We were just waiting on the
[0:17] Speaker 3: edge of a knife. When are we going to get
[0:19] Speaker 3: to go?
[0:20] Speaker 1: The order is seize the city.
[0:25] Speaker 2: RPGs, small arms fire from everywhere, come out.
[0:31] Speaker 1: I told him that I wanted to go, and he
[0:34] Speaker 1: looked at me and said, sorry, you're gonna die. The
[0:39] Speaker 1: destruction is just horrible.
[0:44] Speaker 2: The hardest thing about fighting this enemy is they're not
[0:46] Speaker 2: afraid to die. They're not afraid to die. Then how
[0:50] Speaker 2: do you fight him?
[0:53] Speaker 4: Ramp don't down.
[0:56] Speaker 3: Be prepared to start at one end of the city
[0:58] Speaker 3: and fight your way through to the other.
[1:05] Speaker 4: There's firing going on. Their grenades being thrown in the house.
[1:10] Speaker 1: Became a hand to hand fighting.
[1:12] Speaker 4: It was so close.
[1:14] Speaker 3: Two selfless marines run across this kill zone four times
[1:20] Speaker 3: to pull marines out of there.
[1:35] Speaker 4: I wasn't worried about, you know, getting shot or getting wounded.
[1:37] Speaker 1: I was worried about the guys to my left and right.
[1:44] Speaker 3: You always want to reassure these men that they've done
[1:47] Speaker 3: their duty.
[1:48] Speaker 5: Because that memory is seared into their soul.
[1:51] Speaker 1: They never forget it.
[1:53] Speaker 4: None of us do.
[1:57] Speaker 1: Foreign policy. I don't make it. I just delivered the
[2:01] Speaker 1: last six hundred meters.
[2:02] Speaker 5: Of it, all right, So, Michael Pack, welcome to the
[2:15] Speaker 5: former Actually Guys podcast. Really appreciate you having on. You
[2:19] Speaker 5: are the man behind six hundred meters or the last
[2:22] Speaker 5: six hundred meters, and then also created equal Clarence Thomas
[2:26] Speaker 5: and his own words, a couple interesting documentaries that I
[2:29] Speaker 5: think my audience would be interested in.
[2:30] Speaker 4: So I really appreciate you coming on to day.
[2:33] Speaker 1: Well, thank you. I mean, I have been producing documentaries
[2:35] Speaker 1: for many decades. We've done over fifteen that have been
[2:38] Speaker 1: nationally broadcast on PBS. The last one was the one
[2:42] Speaker 1: you just mentioned, created equal Clarence Thomas in his own words,
[2:45] Speaker 1: and the new one, the upcoming one is the Last
[2:47] Speaker 1: six hundred Meters, The Battles of Najaff and Fallujah, which
[2:52] Speaker 1: is coming out the day before Veterans Day, November tenth,
[2:56] Speaker 1: which is also, as you well know, the two hundred
[2:59] Speaker 1: and fiftieth anniversary of the Marine Corps Birthday of the
[3:01] Speaker 1: Marine Corps. And these were mainly but not exclusively marine battles.
[3:06] Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, sometimes the armies participation in the Battle of
[3:11] Speaker 5: Fallujah is a little overshadowed by the Marines, but you know,
[3:14] Speaker 5: I mean, it is what it is. I guess there
[3:16] Speaker 5: are some good books out there that I've read from
[3:19] Speaker 5: the army's perspective.
[3:20] Speaker 4: I think House to House was one of them, but
[3:22] Speaker 4: I have to go back and check that.
[3:24] Speaker 5: But yeah, So the other thing that when your rep
[3:27] Speaker 5: reached out to me, I thought the documentaries themselves were interesting.
[3:31] Speaker 5: But you've also been involved in the government side of
[3:34] Speaker 5: broadcasts and like Radio Free was it Radio Free Europe
[3:37] Speaker 5: and then Voice of America or Radio Free Asia excuse
[3:42] Speaker 5: me in Voice of America and because of like recently,
[3:46] Speaker 5: we had the defunding of that. So I'd like to
[3:48] Speaker 5: talk to you a little bit about that as well.
[3:50] Speaker 5: So we can start wherever you'd like, and we'll just
[3:53] Speaker 5: kind of move around as the conversation goes.
[3:56] Speaker 1: We can talk a little bit about my work for
[3:57] Speaker 1: the government. I've worked for the government three different times
[4:00] Speaker 1: in my life, but I think we should focus on
[4:01] Speaker 1: the films more, mostly because start anywhere you want, you're
[4:07] Speaker 1: the host, you pick justin.
[4:09] Speaker 5: Well, well, let's go ahead, and I do want to
[4:12] Speaker 5: talk about how you even got into production, video production, communications,
[4:18] Speaker 5: that kind of realm. Was it something that interested you
[4:20] Speaker 5: when you were young or did you how did you
[4:22] Speaker 5: find yourself in this world?
[4:25] Speaker 1: Well, you know, I've been running. I have two companies.
[4:29] Speaker 1: Metofold Productions is the first company I started, and now
[4:32] Speaker 1: we started a new company, Palladium Pictures. You can see
[4:34] Speaker 1: the name behind me. And I started Manifold Productions a
[4:37] Speaker 1: long time ago in nineteen seventy seven, right out of college,
[4:41] Speaker 1: and I wanted to make films to shape the way
[4:45] Speaker 1: Americans thought about the world, and in particular, coming out
[4:49] Speaker 1: of NYU Film School, a lot of filmmakers, a lot
[4:52] Speaker 1: of my friends were making films that I didn't agree with,
[4:55] Speaker 1: that were like pro nuclear freeze and very anti American,
[4:58] Speaker 1: and I wanted to make even though I liked them
[5:01] Speaker 1: they were my friends, I wanted to make the contrary films,
[5:04] Speaker 1: and I was going to make documentaries for a few
[5:06] Speaker 1: years and then go to Hollywood and make future films.
[5:08] Speaker 1: But those few years it became decades. And here I.
[5:11] Speaker 5: Am that it is always interesting when you're a creator
[5:16] Speaker 5: and you're surrounded by people that you don't necessarily agree with,
[5:18] Speaker 5: but you like enjoy being around and you can appreciate
[5:21] Speaker 5: their Yeah, their works as work.
[5:25] Speaker 4: You know.
[5:26] Speaker 1: Well that's right, and you know, the film world and
[5:30] Speaker 1: this documentary world in particular, but maybe even the media
[5:33] Speaker 1: and culture more generally is generally dominated by the left.
[5:37] Speaker 1: And I'm generally but not on the right, you know,
[5:39] Speaker 1: a right of center, more conservative person. So but I
[5:43] Speaker 1: grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, so
[5:45] Speaker 1: I'm very used to being surrounded by you know, blues
[5:48] Speaker 1: state people and progressive and I like them. These are
[5:53] Speaker 1: still my friends. But yeah, I don't necessarily agree with them.
[5:57] Speaker 1: And I think really the world country would be better
[6:01] Speaker 1: if there was a little more balance in the cultural
[6:04] Speaker 1: products of America and in my own area of documentaries.
[6:08] Speaker 1: You know, this has been a renaissance of documentary filmmaking
[6:12] Speaker 1: over the last few years. You know. Streaming services Netflix
[6:15] Speaker 1: and Amazon, Hulu, HBO have a huge number of nonfiction
[6:20] Speaker 1: programming period they say, up to thirty percent of their product.
[6:24] Speaker 1: And really the money has been better and the quality
[6:28] Speaker 1: hasn't gone up, but they're mainly dominated by films that
[6:32] Speaker 1: are either a political or clearly progressive, and as I say,
[6:37] Speaker 1: have a lot of friends with progressive filmmakers, and they
[6:39] Speaker 1: make wonderful films. But America needs to hear multiple stories
[6:44] Speaker 1: and multiple sizes of the story, and a lot of
[6:46] Speaker 1: it has to do not so much with bias in documentaries,
[6:49] Speaker 1: but in what stories you choose to tell. You mentioned
[6:52] Speaker 1: earlier that I made a documentary created equal Clarence Thomas
[6:56] Speaker 1: in his own words, which was Clarence Thomas telling his story.
[7:01] Speaker 1: I mean, I do not pass judgment on him, but
[7:05] Speaker 1: I don't think someone who hated Clarence Thomas wouldn't want
[7:07] Speaker 1: to make that film. On the other hand, there have
[7:10] Speaker 1: been like four or five films about Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
[7:13] Speaker 1: who I think is worthy of documentary biographical treatment, but
[7:18] Speaker 1: not only you know, you have to hear both of
[7:20] Speaker 1: these kinds of stories, and I think it would be
[7:22] Speaker 1: better if there were more of a spread of ideas
[7:26] Speaker 1: in the documentary world, as in movies and culture more generally.
[7:30] Speaker 4: No, one hundred percent agree. I think anyone that ascends to.
[7:34] Speaker 5: That level of the political sphere or cultural sphere, I mean, yeah,
[7:39] Speaker 5: there should be some kind of documentary something that describes what,
[7:42] Speaker 5: you know, how they got to that level, what drove them,
[7:46] Speaker 5: you know, as both a lesson for people and in
[7:50] Speaker 5: some cases maybe a warning for some people, you know,
[7:52] Speaker 5: depending on the subject. And I think it's you're also
[7:56] Speaker 5: correct that there needs to be more information out there.
[8:00] Speaker 5: And I think with how social media has grown, how
[8:06] Speaker 5: things like YouTube have grown, the quality of electronics you
[8:11] Speaker 5: can I mean today, honestly, you could film a very
[8:14] Speaker 5: good documentary on your phone and take that video and
[8:17] Speaker 5: turn around and edit it because of how high quality
[8:19] Speaker 5: phone cameras are, and then produce it yourself and then
[8:23] Speaker 5: release it on YouTube. I think that's kind of shifted
[8:26] Speaker 5: the landscape.
[8:27] Speaker 4: Go ahead.
[8:28] Speaker 1: It has, but it's not so much the technology. Just
[8:31] Speaker 1: like the less six or meters, it's not just the
[8:33] Speaker 1: technology of warfare, you know, it's the training and grid
[8:36] Speaker 1: of marines. In some ways, it's parallel in filmmaking. Yeah,
[8:41] Speaker 1: you can have the technology, but a lot of people
[8:44] Speaker 1: don't have the training or knowledge to tell stories in
[8:46] Speaker 1: a compelling way. And I often say that the sort
[8:51] Speaker 1: of progressive side has a lot of training grounds. Film
[8:54] Speaker 1: schools are often now there are four thousand universities in
[8:58] Speaker 1: America each have a film school, and a lot of
[9:00] Speaker 1: them say they're focused is social justice and progressive ideas,
[9:05] Speaker 1: and so there's a lot of training. And then because
[9:08] Speaker 1: of this profusion of progressive filmmakers, there's a lot of
[9:11] Speaker 1: chances for young filmmakers to work with really great filmmakers,
[9:15] Speaker 1: some of whom are friends of mine. So one of
[9:17] Speaker 1: the things we've done at our new company, Palladium Pictures,
[9:21] Speaker 1: is to start an incubator program to train young, non woke,
[9:27] Speaker 1: right of center but very broadly considered filmmakers. And I
[9:31] Speaker 1: invite your viewers and listeners to apply. It's open now.
[9:34] Speaker 1: They go to Palladium Pictures dot com and click on
[9:37] Speaker 1: the incubator button. And this is his third year and
[9:40] Speaker 1: we work. We fully fund five or four or five
[9:45] Speaker 1: short films made by people who've made a few little
[9:48] Speaker 1: films and want to up their game. We fully fund them,
[9:52] Speaker 1: we executive produce them, we oversee them, and it's a
[9:55] Speaker 1: chance to make a different kind of film. And we
[9:58] Speaker 1: would actually welcome applications from veterans and veteran themed films,
[10:03] Speaker 1: which we haven't actually gotten a lot of, but we
[10:06] Speaker 1: would welcome them, and you can apply today, just go
[10:12] Speaker 1: to that website.
[10:13] Speaker 5: Yeah, I'd like to see more programs like that, amongst
[10:17] Speaker 5: other industries as well, rather than requiring someone to go
[10:20] Speaker 5: to school and get training and do all in training
[10:23] Speaker 5: and stuff that doesn't even matter with what it is
[10:25] Speaker 5: that you're working towards, you know, having people bring in,
[10:29] Speaker 5: bring in people to like mentor you know the classic.
[10:34] Speaker 5: You're gonna come in and work underneath me. You're gonna
[10:36] Speaker 5: get a little bit of pay, but you're gonna get
[10:37] Speaker 5: a lot of training, and then eventually you're gonna grow
[10:39] Speaker 5: and go and do your own thing, you know, become
[10:41] Speaker 5: your own journeyman out there. I like that idea, and
[10:46] Speaker 5: I think that right there is going to improve coverage,
[10:50] Speaker 5: you know, in different industries because people are realizing, like,
[10:53] Speaker 5: why do I need to send a guy over here
[10:54] Speaker 5: to get a four year degree when we can just
[10:55] Speaker 5: train him on what we specifically need.
[10:58] Speaker 1: That is right. And so we get a lot of
[11:00] Speaker 1: people who have made videos, for instance, for nonprofit groups
[11:05] Speaker 1: like think tanks or maybe a veterans group, but they've
[11:09] Speaker 1: never made their own film, and they're all around the country,
[11:13] Speaker 1: they're not just here in the DC area where we are,
[11:17] Speaker 1: and they submit an idea and then we talk to them.
[11:23] Speaker 1: My son runs this program and he talks to them
[11:25] Speaker 1: once a week. I told them once every other week.
[11:27] Speaker 1: But we begin by getting all the applicants here, we
[11:30] Speaker 1: run through their ideas, we workshop their ideas, which we
[11:33] Speaker 1: all try to improve them. And as I say, we
[11:36] Speaker 1: talk to them every week. We're in this. In the
[11:39] Speaker 1: second year, we're about to go visit them all in editing.
[11:42] Speaker 1: We work with them and their editor and then we
[11:46] Speaker 1: distribute them and make sure they're seen. And I think
[11:50] Speaker 1: it's allowed all the people in it to stretch and
[11:53] Speaker 1: do things more than they've done before. So you know,
[11:57] Speaker 1: in the very first group, there were you know, to
[12:00] Speaker 1: young women, young female young women director of producers, and
[12:04] Speaker 1: they had never made they'd made films that, you know,
[12:07] Speaker 1: for interest groups, but they wanted to make it. They
[12:09] Speaker 1: ended up making a true crime film about the city
[12:12] Speaker 1: they grew up in northern California, and they'd never done
[12:14] Speaker 1: anything like that, and it was challenging for them. And
[12:19] Speaker 1: I think they're now anxious to do it again. I mean,
[12:21] Speaker 1: and they've learned a lot, and so that repeats itself
[12:25] Speaker 1: in all of these cases, but it is not I mean,
[12:29] Speaker 1: these you know, we give them thirty five thousand dollars,
[12:32] Speaker 1: which is more than the cost of a cell phone,
[12:34] Speaker 1: which is enough to do a fifteen minute film. It's
[12:37] Speaker 1: not a huge amount, but it's not. It really is
[12:41] Speaker 1: the ability to think through the story. There's a lot
[12:44] Speaker 1: of talk about storytelling in my world, but knowing how
[12:47] Speaker 1: to do it involves doing it and working through the
[12:50] Speaker 1: problems rather than just thinking about it.
[12:53] Speaker 4: Yeah. No, yeah, yeah, I understand what you're saying there.
[12:56] Speaker 5: I do like again, I like that you're allowing people
[12:59] Speaker 5: to come in and try something, because so as you
[13:03] Speaker 5: were talking about that, I was thinking about my own
[13:05] Speaker 5: kind of journey here. I got out of the Marine
[13:08] Speaker 5: Corps and I wasn't really sure what I was gonna do.
[13:11] Speaker 5: I went to I started college for a degree in
[13:14] Speaker 5: business administration, just because that seemed like the most practical
[13:18] Speaker 5: general degree. And I did one semester of that and
[13:21] Speaker 5: I'm like, man, I do not like this. This feels
[13:24] Speaker 5: like I'm gonna go to a cubicle, you know, like
[13:25] Speaker 5: that's where I'm headed. And so I switched to a program,
[13:30] Speaker 5: the Journalism Program, and it was a journalism and advertising
[13:34] Speaker 5: program through STSU. But at the same time, I built
[13:37] Speaker 5: my first website and I also started the podcast, and
[13:41] Speaker 5: I had never done anything like that before. So like
[13:44] Speaker 5: my website, I went to YouTube and I just watched
[13:47] Speaker 5: YouTube videos literally for an entire weekend and just built
[13:50] Speaker 5: it my very first website. And I think what you're
[13:54] Speaker 5: doing is interesting because you can bring someone in like me,
[13:58] Speaker 5: not doing website stuff, but film stuff, and not only
[14:02] Speaker 5: kind of like give me the information, teach a little bit.
[14:06] Speaker 5: There's just so much stuff that I told my own
[14:09] Speaker 5: son this the other day. I was like, you don't
[14:10] Speaker 5: know what you don't know yet, like you're you're he's
[14:13] Speaker 5: talking about making films as well, which is interesting that
[14:16] Speaker 5: I'm having you on. But he's talking about making films
[14:19] Speaker 5: and he's kind of rejecting any kind of like training
[14:21] Speaker 5: I'm trying to introduce him to. And I'm like, your
[14:24] Speaker 5: problem is, man, you don't know what you don't eat.
[14:26] Speaker 5: You don't even know what questions to ask because you
[14:28] Speaker 5: don't even know what you don't know. I was like,
[14:29] Speaker 5: you're that new into it. You need to sit down
[14:31] Speaker 5: and learn stuff. And I think it's great because I
[14:35] Speaker 5: can self teach my you know, I could be self
[14:38] Speaker 5: taught on a lot of stuff and then come to
[14:40] Speaker 5: someone like you and then you polish up everything.
[14:43] Speaker 4: You know.
[14:44] Speaker 5: You polish up the workflow a little bit, like, hey,
[14:46] Speaker 5: I see you doing it this and then this and
[14:47] Speaker 5: then this. How about try it this way. It's much
[14:50] Speaker 5: quicker and you're like, oh, okay, it opens those you know,
[14:53] Speaker 5: those things that you just don't catch until you're in
[14:55] Speaker 5: that professional environment with someone that's been made the career
[14:57] Speaker 5: out of it.
[14:58] Speaker 1: That is very true. I mean, and I will say
[15:03] Speaker 1: it's a general rule of thumb that it's easier to
[15:06] Speaker 1: teach young people. I don't know how young your son
[15:08] Speaker 1: is when I'm assuming he's young, so our people in
[15:12] Speaker 1: our program tend to be in their thirty mid thirties
[15:15] Speaker 1: to mid forties actually, although there's no age requirement at all,
[15:20] Speaker 1: and it can be hard to teach people who are
[15:23] Speaker 1: already into their careers. But I actually think that these
[15:26] Speaker 1: people have learned a lot. And they would all say
[15:28] Speaker 1: they learned a lot, and they do. Maybe they've learned
[15:31] Speaker 1: that there are things they don't know, but they are
[15:34] Speaker 1: willing to learn up to a point. It's you know,
[15:37] Speaker 1: it can only pushed so hard. So yeah, it's a
[15:42] Speaker 1: challenging process. My son who runs it is a good educator.
[15:46] Speaker 1: Not really my skill, it's really his skill. He studied
[15:50] Speaker 1: educational entrepreneurship with Penny as a master's in pen in
[15:53] Speaker 1: it and he's a natural teacher and he's very good
[15:55] Speaker 1: getting people to sort of understand what needs to be done.
[15:59] Speaker 1: It's a challenging thing and at some level people like
[16:03] Speaker 1: challenges and at some level they resist them. So it's
[16:06] Speaker 1: a it's a push and.
[16:07] Speaker 5: A pull, yeah, for sure. So let's move on to
[16:11] Speaker 5: these actual documentaries. I'd like to start with the Clarence
[16:14] Speaker 5: Thomas documentary because that's he's such an interesting character, you know,
[16:21] Speaker 5: or not character, but person within the government. And I
[16:25] Speaker 5: don't know how much my audience knows about him or
[16:28] Speaker 5: some of the work he's done in the Supreme Court,
[16:30] Speaker 5: you know, he was he didn't even speak for the
[16:32] Speaker 5: longest time while he was in the Supreme Court.
[16:36] Speaker 4: I don't know.
[16:36] Speaker 5: I'd like to hear what it was, What was it
[16:38] Speaker 5: like to work in that, you know, work with someone
[16:41] Speaker 5: like him and create a know that you're telling his
[16:43] Speaker 5: story and how important that is to get it right.
[16:47] Speaker 1: Well, we thought it really was important to tell his
[16:50] Speaker 1: story because the other story, with the anti Clarence Thomas story,
[16:55] Speaker 1: was out everywhere, and we didn't want to make it
[17:00] Speaker 1: a hagiography, just a sort of puff piece about him.
[17:03] Speaker 1: So that's why we had the idea of him telling
[17:06] Speaker 1: the story directly to camera. He looks directly at camera
[17:09] Speaker 1: and talks about his own life, so it doesn't really
[17:12] Speaker 1: purport to give you all points of view. It gives
[17:14] Speaker 1: you his point of view on his life. And he's
[17:16] Speaker 1: a great storyteller with a wonderful deep Bay's voice. And
[17:20] Speaker 1: he talks about first growing up. I mean he was
[17:24] Speaker 1: born in Pinpoint, Georgia, a Gulla speaking part of Georgia,
[17:29] Speaker 1: so he sort of not really English even being his
[17:31] Speaker 1: first language, in dire poverty, and then his father left
[17:35] Speaker 1: before he could even remember. His mother left Pinpoint to
[17:39] Speaker 1: go into Savannah, and they lived for a few years
[17:43] Speaker 1: in real erb as he said, they went from rural
[17:45] Speaker 1: poverty to urban squalor, and they didn't have enough to eat,
[17:50] Speaker 1: they were cold in the winter. Instead of going to school,
[17:53] Speaker 1: he would just wander the streets of Savannah aimlessly, and
[17:56] Speaker 1: that went on for a couple of years till his
[17:58] Speaker 1: mother really she couldn't take care of him and his
[18:01] Speaker 1: younger brother, her two boys, and brought him to her father,
[18:04] Speaker 1: his grandfather, to raise his grandfather was very poor, but
[18:07] Speaker 1: not as poor as his mother had been, and he
[18:11] Speaker 1: gave those two boys discipline and hard work, and he
[18:14] Speaker 1: was a Catholic. This is this is, and this is
[18:16] Speaker 1: in the segregated South. Savannah was still segregated, and so
[18:21] Speaker 1: cons sums to put up with that too. And his
[18:25] Speaker 1: grandfather sent him to Catholic school, and the nuns gave
[18:27] Speaker 1: him discipline and hard work, and clins Thomas thrived and
[18:32] Speaker 1: that he did really well in school. You know, he's
[18:34] Speaker 1: a brilliant person, obviously. But then thet of sixties came
[18:38] Speaker 1: and he rebelled against it all who beelled against his grandfather,
[18:41] Speaker 1: whopelled against the nuns. He rejected his Catholicism. He became
[18:45] Speaker 1: very sympathetic to black panthers and Black Power movement, and
[18:49] Speaker 1: you know that. Then he went off to college to
[18:53] Speaker 1: Holy Cross in Massachusetts, and gradually, we tell the story
[18:57] Speaker 1: in the film through a series of events, he gan
[19:00] Speaker 1: he saw that those new ideas he picked up were
[19:04] Speaker 1: sort of shallow and faults, and he came back to
[19:07] Speaker 1: the Catholicism of his youth and his grandfather's more pro
[19:11] Speaker 1: American values. This was the era talking since this is
[19:14] Speaker 1: a veteran show of the Vietnam War and his brother
[19:18] Speaker 1: went to Vietnam and Colins. Thomas initially had contempt for
[19:21] Speaker 1: all that, and his brother said, you know, if you
[19:23] Speaker 1: don't like America, go live somewhere else. You know, that
[19:26] Speaker 1: kind of fight that people my age remember happening during
[19:30] Speaker 1: the Vietnam War, and Clais Thomas was on that side
[19:33] Speaker 1: against his grandfather and his brother. But eventually he came
[19:37] Speaker 1: back and now, you know, he refound his faith. He
[19:40] Speaker 1: refound his faith in America. He re you know, he
[19:45] Speaker 1: kind of reaffirmed both his grandfather and brother and their values.
[19:48] Speaker 1: Went off to Washington, you know, went to Yale Law
[19:51] Speaker 1: School and then went off to Washington. Worked in the
[19:53] Speaker 1: Reagan administration, and as a black man in the Reagan administration,
[19:57] Speaker 1: he was ready always under attack. You know, he's uncle Tom.
[20:01] Speaker 1: He's a trader to his race, and that attacks went
[20:04] Speaker 1: on to his work in the reg administration, at the
[20:06] Speaker 1: EOC and elsewhere, and then finally, you know, he's appointed
[20:11] Speaker 1: to the to the Appeals Court and then the Nominal
[20:15] Speaker 1: Supreme Court. He has a controversial battle within Nita Helsh
[20:19] Speaker 1: She accuses him of sexual harassment, which he denies. And
[20:22] Speaker 1: you hear it from his side of being what he
[20:26] Speaker 1: considers a smear job, an attack on him, and he
[20:28] Speaker 1: gives a famous speech about a high tech lynching that
[20:32] Speaker 1: that's what was going on on the part of the Democrats.
[20:35] Speaker 1: And finally he's confirmed, and he has a very distinguished
[20:41] Speaker 1: career in the court, standing for for originalism and a
[20:49] Speaker 1: close reading of the Constitution. And it's a controversial, eventful
[20:54] Speaker 1: life and he tells it well, and that's what the
[20:57] Speaker 1: film does. It was in movie theaters just before COVID,
[21:01] Speaker 1: until COVID knocked it out a movie theaters. It was
[21:04] Speaker 1: also nationally broadcast on PBS and then streaming, and it's
[21:07] Speaker 1: available on Amazon and you could find it through our website,
[21:12] Speaker 1: our first website, Manifold Productions dot com, and also before
[21:17] Speaker 1: that on PBS. We had another one of our military films,
[21:22] Speaker 1: which we should maybe talk about too before we get
[21:24] Speaker 1: to the less six Hindrometers, and that is we did
[21:27] Speaker 1: a biography of adamal Ricover, who's a different kind of
[21:30] Speaker 1: military hero.
[21:31] Speaker 5: So, first off, with the Clarence Thomas stuff, I knew
[21:35] Speaker 5: about his like poor upbringing and some of the some
[21:38] Speaker 5: of the stuff that he worked through, but I did
[21:41] Speaker 5: not realize that he was he like jumped over and
[21:45] Speaker 5: was like with the Black Panthers and all of that.
[21:47] Speaker 5: That's something I've never even heard that before, which is
[21:49] Speaker 5: pretty wild. It's interesting, and it's just kind of an
[21:53] Speaker 5: example of how people's point you know, worldviews and points
[21:56] Speaker 5: of view shift as they received more one they mature
[21:59] Speaker 5: a little bit, they receive more information about topics, you know,
[22:03] Speaker 5: and it's just no one like trying to lock somebody
[22:07] Speaker 5: in one kind of perspective is never like a good
[22:10] Speaker 5: idea because you never know how their thought process is
[22:13] Speaker 5: going to change over time with new information.
[22:15] Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm making a lot of biographies. Most people are
[22:18] Speaker 1: more complex than you think, especially those that have achieved
[22:22] Speaker 1: the peak of their profession on whatever side. You don't
[22:26] Speaker 1: get that way. You don't get on the Supreme Court
[22:27] Speaker 1: without having a lot to say and being a brilliant
[22:30] Speaker 1: man or woman. And yeah, he's a more complex figure
[22:34] Speaker 1: than people thought. And we were very happy the PBS
[22:36] Speaker 1: broadcast that film. I mean a lot of prevs viewers
[22:40] Speaker 1: do not like Clarence Thomas, but we have tried in
[22:44] Speaker 1: our films to reach out to a broad public, you know,
[22:47] Speaker 1: not just a narrow part of the political spectrum, and
[22:50] Speaker 1: PBS has done that for us. And my wife is
[22:52] Speaker 1: my business partner, likes to say that we got a
[22:56] Speaker 1: lot of calls from people who said, I watched the film,
[22:59] Speaker 1: I didn't like Clarence tom before I watched it. I
[23:01] Speaker 1: don't agree with them now, but I think I understand them,
[23:04] Speaker 1: and that's success for that kind of documentary.
[23:07] Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure. I mean adding contact, letting people. That's
[23:11] Speaker 5: the problem is so many people are making judgments about
[23:13] Speaker 5: people they don't even know, they know nothing about. They know,
[23:16] Speaker 5: all they heard was a headline that they disagree with,
[23:18] Speaker 5: and they're like.
[23:19] Speaker 4: That person is the worst ever.
[23:20] Speaker 1: You know.
[23:21] Speaker 5: It's like so again, I think these kinds of documentaries
[23:23] Speaker 5: is really important. And what an interesting opportunity to get
[23:27] Speaker 5: access to a Supreme Court justice. I mean, I can't
[23:30] Speaker 5: imagine that comes about very often for many film producers.
[23:35] Speaker 1: It was really a privilege. We interviewed Justice Thomas for
[23:38] Speaker 1: over twenty four hours over six month period, and his
[23:41] Speaker 1: wife Jenny for six and no spinquish Justice has ever
[23:47] Speaker 1: given that amount of interview time to anyone going back
[23:50] Speaker 1: to the beginning of the Supreme Court, So it was
[23:52] Speaker 1: really a privilege. It was an honor. I mean, he had,
[23:55] Speaker 1: of course no editorial control, so it was a lot
[23:58] Speaker 1: of trust on Justice Thomas's part, but he understood that
[24:02] Speaker 1: our purpose was to have him tell his story from
[24:04] Speaker 1: his point of view, so we cut it to make
[24:07] Speaker 1: it the most articulate version of his point of view.
[24:09] Speaker 1: And my own point of view is not there. I
[24:11] Speaker 1: can hear me off camera asking some questions, but it's
[24:14] Speaker 1: really his story.
[24:16] Speaker 4: Yeah. No, I really like that. I really enjoyed.
[24:17] Speaker 5: That's kind of what, obviously, in a different format I
[24:20] Speaker 5: wanted with this podcast. So when I got out of
[24:23] Speaker 5: the military twenty eighteen, podcasts were kind of becoming a
[24:27] Speaker 5: bigger thing, and I was one of those people.
[24:29] Speaker 4: Like, yeah, my buddy's can make a podcast.
[24:31] Speaker 5: But I kind of really believed it because I was like,
[24:32] Speaker 5: all my friends from the military are like jatax, and
[24:36] Speaker 5: you know, they've all done this crazy stuff throughout the
[24:38] Speaker 5: war years that no one will ever know about unless
[24:41] Speaker 5: it's recorded. You know, maybe they're family and friends maybe
[24:44] Speaker 5: in some cases. And I thought it was important to
[24:46] Speaker 5: get those stories down because unless you become a general
[24:50] Speaker 5: or Supreme Court justice or the age, the average marine
[24:54] Speaker 5: veteran or soldier or whatever is not going to have
[24:57] Speaker 5: a documentary made about them, And I thought this is
[25:00] Speaker 5: a really good opportunity for them to tell their story.
[25:03] Speaker 5: For I think it's important for the American public to
[25:06] Speaker 5: understand where they're sending their sons and daughters and what
[25:09] Speaker 5: they're actually doing when they send them to those places.
[25:11] Speaker 5: I think it's important for the American taxpayer to understand
[25:13] Speaker 5: where their money's going, where it's being spent, how we're
[25:16] Speaker 5: spending it. And I think it's also important for those
[25:20] Speaker 5: individuals to record their own history so that maybe one
[25:23] Speaker 5: day they're a great great great grandkid, we'll find an
[25:26] Speaker 5: archive and they'll find this video clip of them talking
[25:28] Speaker 5: to my podcast and get to hear them tell their
[25:30] Speaker 5: story about what they did in Iraq or Afghanistan or
[25:33] Speaker 5: you know whatever.
[25:35] Speaker 1: I completely agree with that. I mean, I think that's
[25:37] Speaker 1: part of our purpose is with the last six hundred meters,
[25:40] Speaker 1: and I think it's very important to preserve those stories,
[25:43] Speaker 1: and I think we should all salute that effort, especially
[25:47] Speaker 1: as we get closer to Veterans Day.
[25:49] Speaker 5: Yeah, so, what what brought about six hundred the last
[25:52] Speaker 5: six hundred meters?
[25:53] Speaker 1: Then, well, I was working on a film on the
[25:58] Speaker 1: Iraq War was primarily funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
[26:03] Speaker 1: and it was originally focused on technology and warfare, and
[26:06] Speaker 1: you might remember there was a big focus on that
[26:08] Speaker 1: at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. There was
[26:11] Speaker 1: a lot there was, you know, it began in a
[26:13] Speaker 1: very dramatic way with special forces going in there with
[26:16] Speaker 1: close air support and just the Northern Alliance mounted on horses,
[26:21] Speaker 1: you know, and so there was horses in one hand,
[26:23] Speaker 1: and you know, precision guided munitions from the air, and
[26:27] Speaker 1: there was a lot of focus on technology. But as
[26:30] Speaker 1: I researched the war in Iraq, I saw that a
[26:33] Speaker 1: lot of it really didn't came down also to the
[26:35] Speaker 1: sort of grit and valor of the Marines and army
[26:40] Speaker 1: soldiers in the field. And then I heard the stories
[26:44] Speaker 1: of these battles and they were even then it was
[26:47] Speaker 1: obvious they were going to be the biggest battles of
[26:48] Speaker 1: the war, and in the end they've been the biggest
[26:51] Speaker 1: battles that America has fought since Vietnam. And really the
[26:55] Speaker 1: first battle Flujah and Nijav are often neglected. People for
[26:58] Speaker 1: some reason, solely focused on the second battle flusha. But
[27:01] Speaker 1: we focus on this six month arc and I think
[27:05] Speaker 1: that's a crucial time and very revealing about the face
[27:09] Speaker 1: of that kind of war.
[27:11] Speaker 5: Yeah, and you're right, the second Battle of Fallujah overshadows
[27:17] Speaker 5: a lot of stuff in Iraq, a lot of things
[27:19] Speaker 5: that happened.
[27:19] Speaker 4: That's a lot, you know.
[27:21] Speaker 5: I think that's the first thing a lot of people
[27:23] Speaker 5: think about when you start talking about the Iraq.
[27:25] Speaker 4: War, because it was such a big deal.
[27:27] Speaker 5: There's such a there's a lot of pride in the
[27:29] Speaker 5: Marine Corps, you know, over it, both the first and
[27:33] Speaker 5: second battles. The first battle, I know marines that were
[27:38] Speaker 5: in that, and I know they were pretty bitter about
[27:42] Speaker 5: the entire situation because of you know what, let's start
[27:46] Speaker 5: from the beginning. Do you want to give background on
[27:49] Speaker 5: the first battle or do you want to go where
[27:51] Speaker 5: would you like to start on this? Because I could,
[27:53] Speaker 5: we could. I'm kind of jumping in the middle, really,
[27:56] Speaker 5: you know.
[27:56] Speaker 1: Well, I'll give a little background, although I beg your
[28:00] Speaker 1: viewers and listeners to watch it rather than listen to me.
[28:04] Speaker 1: I mean, the whole point is the people there are
[28:07] Speaker 1: the better storytellers than yours, truly. But the first battle
[28:11] Speaker 1: Flusjah began in end of March April of two thousand
[28:17] Speaker 1: and four when four Blackwater contractors were killed, burned, dragged
[28:22] Speaker 1: through the streets of Fallujah, and two of them were
[28:24] Speaker 1: hung from a bridge in Fallujah, and people including children
[28:28] Speaker 1: danced and celebrated, you know, under their charred bodies hanging
[28:33] Speaker 1: from the bridge, and the image was so horrific that
[28:37] Speaker 1: against really some military advice, it was determined that we America,
[28:42] Speaker 1: for its sort of dignity or whatever standing in the world,
[28:44] Speaker 1: had to clear the city. And they were Marines were
[28:48] Speaker 1: ordered to take the city of Fallujah, and they began
[28:51] Speaker 1: that process, as you just implied, only to be told
[28:54] Speaker 1: to stop when and this is a typical insurgent tactic
[29:00] Speaker 1: in today. You know, the surgeons were able to sort
[29:02] Speaker 1: of get these images of the Marine Corps, of the
[29:05] Speaker 1: of the you know, the kind of intense kinetic aspect
[29:09] Speaker 1: of the fight, and make it look bad and get
[29:12] Speaker 1: it out on their own media sympathetic to them, like
[29:15] Speaker 1: Al Jazeera, and the world opinion turned against America and
[29:19] Speaker 1: the Marines, and so the Iraqi government put pressure on
[29:23] Speaker 1: the on the military to pull out, and at first
[29:27] Speaker 1: they just pulled out and stopped for weeks, and then
[29:30] Speaker 1: finally it was agreed that they would pull out entirely
[29:33] Speaker 1: and hand Fallujah over to this so called Fallujah Brigade,
[29:37] Speaker 1: which was really just another name for the insurgents who
[29:40] Speaker 1: had the city for six months to do as they wished.
[29:43] Speaker 1: And it really descended, in the mind and the words
[29:46] Speaker 1: of one of our interview subjects, into a kind of hell.
[29:50] Speaker 1: You know, all kinds of bad stuff happened there. It
[29:52] Speaker 1: was an arms depot, it was there were torture chambers,
[29:55] Speaker 1: there were beheadings, and as results of this renew food barbarity, again,
[30:02] Speaker 1: it was determined to clear up the city of Fallujah,
[30:05] Speaker 1: and that was Now we're into November two thousand and
[30:08] Speaker 1: four and that's the second Battle of Fallujah, but you know,
[30:12] Speaker 1: the second Battle Alusha. To avoid the look of the
[30:16] Speaker 1: first Battle Flujah, they announced we're coming in and the
[30:19] Speaker 1: date were coming in. They appealed to civilians to leave.
[30:23] Speaker 1: A huge number of them left and went to Ramadi.
[30:26] Speaker 1: But you know, also the leadership of the insurgents left
[30:28] Speaker 1: and went to Ramadi. You know, they're not stupid, so
[30:31] Speaker 1: left behind in Fallujah were really hardcore, you know, kind
[30:36] Speaker 1: of insurgent you know, junior people who were preparing to
[30:44] Speaker 1: kill as many Marines as they could before they were
[30:46] Speaker 1: going to die and go to heaven and get their reward,
[30:49] Speaker 1: their seventy two versions wherever it was. So it was
[30:52] Speaker 1: a very tough battle. There was still civilians there. They
[30:55] Speaker 1: had to clear it house by house. And you know,
[30:59] Speaker 1: it's true the Marine Corps celebrates as a victory, but
[31:01] Speaker 1: like a lot in Iraq, it's a victory in one hand,
[31:04] Speaker 1: it's it's you know, on the other hand, and the
[31:07] Speaker 1: leadership went to Ramadi and we didn't press the advantage,
[31:11] Speaker 1: and you know, it's it's it's got its mixed sense.
[31:14] Speaker 1: I mean, so we try to tell the story how
[31:17] Speaker 1: it felt. And even in the second battle, there were
[31:20] Speaker 1: people who were not feeling completely happy about the outcome,
[31:23] Speaker 1: and we try to portray all that, all sides of it.
[31:27] Speaker 1: The Marine Corps likes to remember it as simply a
[31:29] Speaker 1: great victory, and it is kind of a great victory,
[31:31] Speaker 1: but it's not. It's not a simple victory. And it's
[31:35] Speaker 1: best to tell these stories in their full complexity.
[31:38] Speaker 5: Well, yeah, it's never a simple victory, that's for sure.
[31:40] Speaker 5: And I do know a guy I remember I served
[31:44] Speaker 5: with the marine who was in Ramadi during this and
[31:48] Speaker 5: I believe he. I believe it was eighth Marines. Nick
[31:51] Speaker 5: Sisk is his name, and he was like, yeah, man,
[31:54] Speaker 5: everyone talks about Fallujah in the battle and stuff. But
[31:56] Speaker 5: at the same time he's like, we were getting all
[31:59] Speaker 5: these like increased attacks and all this stuff was happening
[32:01] Speaker 5: because a ton of fighters, like you said, left the
[32:04] Speaker 5: city when given the opportunity, because they're not gonna leave
[32:07] Speaker 5: everybody there to sacrifice themselves.
[32:09] Speaker 4: They got to keep it going.
[32:10] Speaker 5: And he's like, yeah, it got really intense around Ramadi
[32:13] Speaker 5: with ied small arm attacks and stuff like that.
[32:16] Speaker 4: At the same time, it did.
[32:17] Speaker 1: And it got bad and again in Fallujah right away
[32:21] Speaker 1: or at least a year or so later. So yeah,
[32:25] Speaker 1: I mean it's hard to you know, but it's hard
[32:29] Speaker 1: to know how to define victory. But the thing you
[32:31] Speaker 1: can say, and we depicted both in the first and
[32:34] Speaker 1: second battle, is the heroism of these marines. You know,
[32:39] Speaker 1: cannot be gain stead. I mean, they're heroic, and we
[32:42] Speaker 1: depicted in the film. And in between the two battles
[32:45] Speaker 1: of Flujah is the Battle of Najaff, which is in
[32:48] Speaker 1: the south against Shia insurgents and it has its own
[32:55] Speaker 1: complexity and heroism too, and was a huge battle. Sam.
[33:00] Speaker 1: That was the story as well.
[33:01] Speaker 4: That was with is that mctadal his army.
[33:05] Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, okay, the Mahdi army.
[33:07] Speaker 4: The Mahdi Army, Yeah okay. I remember that he's still
[33:10] Speaker 4: isn't he still alive. He's still in that area right now, right.
[33:13] Speaker 1: Well, that's that's right, and he was in the government
[33:16] Speaker 1: for a while. Yes, he's still there. He's still a
[33:19] Speaker 1: force in Iraq.
[33:20] Speaker 5: He's one of the few that probably made it through
[33:22] Speaker 5: that that had his own little militia and stuff that
[33:24] Speaker 5: made it through basically the entire war and still you.
[33:28] Speaker 4: Know, a man of influence in the area.
[33:30] Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he obviously had political skills. Although we tell
[33:33] Speaker 1: the story at our film. You know, in the middle
[33:37] Speaker 1: of the Battle of Najafa, there was a lot of
[33:41] Speaker 1: special forces going after high value targets and they went
[33:45] Speaker 1: after Maktyra Sader's home in Najaff. He wasn't there, but
[33:52] Speaker 1: they broke into his home and they went up to
[33:54] Speaker 1: the bedroom and they were surprised to find framed photographs
[33:59] Speaker 1: of American action heroes of the day, you know, Sylvester
[34:03] Speaker 1: Stallone or Bruce Willis or you know whatever. And even
[34:07] Speaker 1: though he's a hater of America, he chose to frame
[34:11] Speaker 1: those those guys.
[34:12] Speaker 5: You know, cultural influence of America knows no balance, it.
[34:16] Speaker 1: Does it can't be underestimated. Hollywood movies, they're powerful. But yeah,
[34:23] Speaker 1: he learned how to survive and play one force against
[34:26] Speaker 1: the other. And even in a jaf the battle enough
[34:28] Speaker 1: he escaped by Sistani. Another Shia leader more closely allied
[34:34] Speaker 1: with the US forces comes in and he makes a
[34:36] Speaker 1: deal with Sistani that lets his troops you know go.
[34:40] Speaker 1: You know, so they were hoping to finish off the
[34:42] Speaker 1: Mahdi Army in Najaff, some of the Marines, but they
[34:46] Speaker 1: escape again. And as you say, he's there now, and
[34:49] Speaker 1: it's not as if he hasn't shouted anti American things
[34:53] Speaker 1: and killed a lot of Americans. So it gets to
[34:56] Speaker 1: be a complex thing. As one one of the officers
[35:01] Speaker 1: said in the first Battle of Flujah, Yeah, when we
[35:05] Speaker 1: were we were killing them one day and then suddenly
[35:08] Speaker 1: we're working at it. You know, we're making a truth
[35:10] Speaker 1: with them and we're making a deal. But as I said,
[35:12] Speaker 1: what's a few RPGs between friends. Yeah, it's very a
[35:16] Speaker 1: very bitter comment, and it's tough to go. I mean,
[35:21] Speaker 1: it's it's it's a challenge. We have the same thing
[35:24] Speaker 1: in Afghanistan dealing with the Taliban. You know, are we
[35:26] Speaker 1: killing them and fighting them or are we making deals
[35:29] Speaker 1: with them? So it's a challenge in this kind of battle.
[35:33] Speaker 5: It's very frustrating to be a service number, especially ones
[35:37] Speaker 5: that are that are in combat or have been through combat,
[35:39] Speaker 5: seeing their buddies get killed or something like that. It's
[35:42] Speaker 5: very frustrating to hear politicians talk about the situations, you know,
[35:46] Speaker 5: because you're like, man, you're talking about this in like
[35:49] Speaker 5: a very off the cuff, like it's nonchalant manner, when
[35:55] Speaker 5: this is something that really affected me, my friends, my family.
[35:59] Speaker 5: Now you know that who knows how many iraqis like
[36:03] Speaker 5: And it's sometimes you can understand the political you know,
[36:08] Speaker 5: political decisions have to be made. It's a big picture.
[36:11] Speaker 5: You know, you really have to understand the big picture.
[36:13] Speaker 5: But I think a lot of stuff was just you know,
[36:17] Speaker 5: again the stopping in Fallujah for six months, that was
[36:21] Speaker 5: all politics, and then it just became like okay, well
[36:24] Speaker 5: that's not working, let's get in there.
[36:26] Speaker 4: And what did that do?
[36:27] Speaker 5: That created a situation that made it much more dangerous
[36:30] Speaker 5: for the Marines that were going through where if they
[36:32] Speaker 5: would have just let them continue. From my understanding, and
[36:36] Speaker 5: you can back me up on this, I don't remember.
[36:38] Speaker 5: I think they had already cleared like half the area
[36:41] Speaker 5: or maybe even more. It was a pretty good amount
[36:43] Speaker 5: by the time they stopped them during that first battle
[36:46] Speaker 5: of Fallujah.
[36:47] Speaker 1: Well, those that we interviewed were very confident that they
[36:49] Speaker 1: could have taken over the rest of the city.
[36:52] Speaker 4: Everybody I've talked to that was there says the same thing.
[36:55] Speaker 1: But that who knows, you know, it's you know these
[36:59] Speaker 1: you know, you know, we do not it is not
[37:02] Speaker 1: a political film, as I've said, and we do not
[37:05] Speaker 1: look at and question what the policymakers decided and why
[37:10] Speaker 1: they decided it. You know, we look at the impact
[37:13] Speaker 1: on the battlefield. But I will say, you know, I'm
[37:17] Speaker 1: very sympathetic naturally to the Marines that I interviewed them.
[37:19] Speaker 1: They're in my film. But there's something to be said.
[37:21] Speaker 1: You know, the other politicians are trying to hold the
[37:25] Speaker 1: coalition together and if they need an Afghan government that
[37:29] Speaker 1: they can deal with, and if you know, they need
[37:31] Speaker 1: they can't lose all the political sport in Afghanistan and
[37:35] Speaker 1: counterinsurgency is a battle for hearts and minds as well
[37:38] Speaker 1: as for just taking ground, and it's very hard to
[37:41] Speaker 1: know how to make those decisions. And I think that
[37:44] Speaker 1: those are very tough choices. I mean it's obvious in
[37:49] Speaker 1: retrospect that, for instance, the CPA Coalition Provisional you know,
[37:57] Speaker 1: authority Forces Authority, Paul Bremmer, you know, made a horrible
[38:01] Speaker 1: mistake in in disbanding the army instead of incorporating them,
[38:05] Speaker 1: and then they went they you know, is Sadam Hussein's army,
[38:10] Speaker 1: and then they went right on and became part of
[38:12] Speaker 1: the insurgency. But it's easy, it is easy in retrospect,
[38:16] Speaker 1: and we did make a lot of mistakes.
[38:19] Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, he not only the army, anyone that was
[38:22] Speaker 5: part of the part of the government. What was the
[38:26] Speaker 5: government group, I can't even remember.
[38:27] Speaker 1: That Bathist Yet party. Yeah, that's right. They got rid
[38:32] Speaker 1: of the entire government apparatus and the entire military. And
[38:36] Speaker 1: I think the military one was worse because all these
[38:39] Speaker 1: trained military men, now angry, were really rapidly incorporated into
[38:44] Speaker 1: the insurgency. I mean, they were a key component of
[38:46] Speaker 1: the people we were fighting in Fallujah, and you know,
[38:50] Speaker 1: they were easily radicalized by Sunni radicals, you know, they
[38:56] Speaker 1: were Sunnies, and the other thing they were threatened by
[39:00] Speaker 1: being a minority in a now majority Shia country. You know,
[39:03] Speaker 1: most of Iraq as Shia. I think it's seventy thirty split.
[39:07] Speaker 1: And Sada Mussin's Bath Party was Sunni and they had
[39:11] Speaker 1: power for a while, and they were used to power,
[39:13] Speaker 1: and seeing the power shift democratically, it wasn't a great
[39:17] Speaker 1: thing for them. So, yeah, it's challenging to make all
[39:20] Speaker 1: that work, you know what I mean, Yeah, maybe it
[39:22] Speaker 1: could maybe it could.
[39:23] Speaker 4: Never have worked, you know, yeah maybe.
[39:26] Speaker 5: I mean, I think you're correct in the military that
[39:30] Speaker 5: being very dangerous for the country, having the military being
[39:33] Speaker 5: disbanded and those people not allowed to work in the
[39:35] Speaker 5: new government. But I think it's a it's a double
[39:38] Speaker 5: whammie when you talk about people in the Bathtist Party,
[39:41] Speaker 5: because from my understanding, everybody that was in any kind
[39:45] Speaker 5: of government industry you basically had to be. So if
[39:49] Speaker 5: you ran the water plant, you were a bath this guy,
[39:52] Speaker 5: you know. So it's like when you took all those
[39:54] Speaker 5: people and go, hey, you can't no bathists can work
[39:56] Speaker 5: in this new government. You're taking all the trained people
[39:58] Speaker 5: that know how to run everything, and that's why we
[40:00] Speaker 5: had so many infrastructure problems.
[40:02] Speaker 1: Indeed, it was it was a big loss of you know,
[40:05] Speaker 1: big brain drain. I think Paul Bremer had this of
[40:09] Speaker 1: denotification plans of Germany in mind, and we did denazify Germany,
[40:14] Speaker 1: but we didn't actually get rid of everybody that ever
[40:17] Speaker 1: had any connection with the Nazi Party, where there would
[40:21] Speaker 1: be the same thing, that would have been no government
[40:23] Speaker 1: in West Germany. So it's a it's a challenge, you know,
[40:27] Speaker 1: what to do, you know, and and you know, there's
[40:32] Speaker 1: a sense that some of these people in the military
[40:35] Speaker 1: participated in atrocities on behalf of Sodom, saying what to
[40:39] Speaker 1: do with them? It's it's it's a moral and political quandary.
[40:44] Speaker 1: I don't claim that if they had a point in me,
[40:45] Speaker 1: I would have been able to figure it out any
[40:47] Speaker 1: you know, I would have made all the right decisions.
[40:50] Speaker 1: Probably not.
[40:51] Speaker 5: Oh it's easy to look back and armshair quarterback, you know,
[40:54] Speaker 5: I definitely is that would be a tough situation to
[40:56] Speaker 5: find yourself in. Hopefully, you know, you would think that
[40:58] Speaker 5: you could do the best job given the circumstances. But
[41:03] Speaker 5: when you so, when you decided to make the documentary,
[41:06] Speaker 5: can you kind of walk us through that process of
[41:08] Speaker 5: how do you how do you find the service members
[41:11] Speaker 5: to come and be in the documentary? Do you go
[41:14] Speaker 5: to them and you just have like the same kind
[41:16] Speaker 5: of setup, but can you kind of give a little
[41:18] Speaker 5: background about the production of it, and you know how
[41:21] Speaker 5: that went well?
[41:22] Speaker 1: As I say, we've made lots of documentaries for PBS,
[41:26] Speaker 1: we were able to get this sport of a corporation
[41:28] Speaker 1: for public broadcasting, and so we knew that, you know,
[41:31] Speaker 1: was in the PBS umbrella, and that gave us a
[41:34] Speaker 1: certain amount of credibility, as well as the fact that
[41:36] Speaker 1: I had done a bunch of these and our process
[41:39] Speaker 1: was to find what we thought was compelling footage of
[41:42] Speaker 1: these battles, both shot by homback cameramen that were working
[41:46] Speaker 1: for the military and independent photo journalists, and then look
[41:51] Speaker 1: for the people in the in the footage, and relied
[41:56] Speaker 1: on a high degree of cooperation from the military, especially
[42:00] Speaker 1: the Marine Corps. And I have to say it was
[42:03] Speaker 1: challenging to get that. You know, there was a sort
[42:07] Speaker 1: of suspicion that a PBS documentary on the subject would
[42:10] Speaker 1: be kind of anti military for whatever reason. They had
[42:13] Speaker 1: that attitude and it was very tough. And I think
[42:17] Speaker 1: the thing that turned it around is that General Mattie
[42:22] Speaker 1: was the really hero and main commander in the first
[42:27] Speaker 1: Battle of Fallujah, and I wanted to interview him, and
[42:30] Speaker 1: I pursued that and General Madison said to me one
[42:33] Speaker 1: day that he would he would talk to me. So
[42:37] Speaker 1: we met it like at a coffee shop right outside
[42:39] Speaker 1: the Pentagon. I'm not exactly sure why. And I talked
[42:41] Speaker 1: to him for a long time, like a couple of hours,
[42:43] Speaker 1: like I'm now talking to you, wow, And he has
[42:46] Speaker 1: a lot of questions. And at the end of it,
[42:49] Speaker 1: General Maddis said, well, look, I'm not going to be
[42:52] Speaker 1: interviewed in this film, but I will help you in
[42:54] Speaker 1: every other way possible and I think he'll do a
[42:56] Speaker 1: great job. And that was it. And then he left
[42:58] Speaker 1: and I thought, well, that was like a disaster because
[43:01] Speaker 1: I want to get an interview. What does it mean
[43:03] Speaker 1: he's going to help me. It doesn't mean anything. People
[43:05] Speaker 1: say that kind of stuff all the time. Yeah, but
[43:07] Speaker 1: with General Mattice, and maybe this is true from Marines
[43:09] Speaker 1: generally they promised something and then they're going to do it.
[43:12] Speaker 1: And after that, General Mattice did help me in every
[43:15] Speaker 1: way that he could, and he and after that doors opened.
[43:20] Speaker 1: I mean he he let people know that he was
[43:24] Speaker 1: somebody I was somebody that could be trusted, you know,
[43:27] Speaker 1: as far as reasonable. And that changed it. And thanks
[43:32] Speaker 1: to that, we got a lot of cooperation and we
[43:35] Speaker 1: did manage to get the footage and the people that
[43:37] Speaker 1: we needed, including special Forces people who came and were
[43:41] Speaker 1: on a film, you know, without having their identity and
[43:43] Speaker 1: face obscured. And it was really a great thing. But
[43:47] Speaker 1: it took a long time. It took, you know, a
[43:49] Speaker 1: year to get to get to that point. It's not
[43:51] Speaker 1: a short, quick process.
[43:54] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[43:54] Speaker 5: Now, I think that's it's probably not necessarily that they
[43:59] Speaker 5: I would say, they're afraid that it would be.
[44:01] Speaker 4: Like an anti war.
[44:02] Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean maybe I guess somewhat You're right there
[44:05] Speaker 5: on that. It's definitely I think his the vetting, the
[44:08] Speaker 5: General Mattis vetting is very much like, hey, you know,
[44:11] Speaker 5: we're talking Marine Corps legacy here. We want to make
[44:14] Speaker 5: sure that this is done right. You know, if you're
[44:17] Speaker 5: going to ask for this kind of participation, and he's
[44:19] Speaker 5: willing to help you, like make sure that it's the
[44:21] Speaker 5: right story, you know, that we're telling the actual story
[44:24] Speaker 5: and not some kind of agenda filled, which was probably
[44:27] Speaker 5: again why he did that meeting.
[44:30] Speaker 1: And he wrote, I think the nicest thing anybody's ever
[44:34] Speaker 1: written about any film I've done. I think you might
[44:36] Speaker 1: have seen it part of that quote in the press release. Yeah, yeah,
[44:40] Speaker 1: you know. He called it, you know, a classic and
[44:43] Speaker 1: a good way to understand the ground truth, the last
[44:46] Speaker 1: six hundred meters the life of the infantryman. And I
[44:49] Speaker 1: praise from somebody who knows, and I'm gratified that when
[44:54] Speaker 1: it was finished he felt that he helped me and
[44:57] Speaker 1: it was worth it. So that's a great thing. And
[45:00] Speaker 1: also I promised General Madis, like I promised all the
[45:02] Speaker 1: people in the film that would be on PBS. I
[45:05] Speaker 1: like to say, I didn't say when, and now it's
[45:06] Speaker 1: on seventeen years later, so at least it's a promise
[45:09] Speaker 1: I lived up to.
[45:11] Speaker 4: It's coming out.
[45:12] Speaker 1: Sim Yeah.
[45:15] Speaker 5: So General Mattis's quote it said he said, the last
[45:18] Speaker 5: six center meters reveals the infantry's world as it has
[45:20] Speaker 5: seldom been seen by those who have not experienced it.
[45:23] Speaker 5: This film, uncaptured by politics or ideology, reveals the most
[45:26] Speaker 5: bruising ethical environment on earth and the character of the
[45:29] Speaker 5: young men that our nation sins and harms.
[45:30] Speaker 4: Way it's infantry.
[45:33] Speaker 5: So I mean, high praise, high praise General Madis. People
[45:37] Speaker 5: mostly love him. There are some. There is some hate
[45:40] Speaker 5: out there form you can see that in the comments
[45:42] Speaker 5: of some of the videos I've done about him.
[45:44] Speaker 1: But my view about General Mattie, not that it matters,
[45:48] Speaker 1: is whatever you think of his him as secretary of State,
[45:52] Speaker 1: have you secretary of Defense, or whatever you think of
[45:54] Speaker 1: his politics, he was a great general, a great battlefield general.
[45:59] Speaker 1: Very few people just agree with that, and so his
[46:02] Speaker 1: comments on a film about Fallujah are pretty definitive. I think,
[46:08] Speaker 1: whatever you think about other things about him, yeah.
[46:10] Speaker 5: One hundred percent. And that's you know that people people
[46:13] Speaker 5: that can't separate, you know. I mean, that's two different things.
[46:17] Speaker 5: Him as him in the political world and him in
[46:19] Speaker 5: the as a military leader. That's two different things. And
[46:22] Speaker 5: I understand that generals are politicians as well, blah blah blah.
[46:26] Speaker 5: But he's a general that literally was in combat led
[46:29] Speaker 5: his his you know, marines in combat operations. So you
[46:33] Speaker 5: got to give the guy props and again he's a
[46:36] Speaker 5: legend in the Marine Corps. What an opportunity I'd love
[46:41] Speaker 5: to meet General Madis. What an opportunity to just be
[46:44] Speaker 5: able to sit down anybody of that level, that caliber.
[46:50] Speaker 5: It's such a gift for them to even even not recorded,
[46:53] Speaker 5: just for you and them to be able to sit
[46:55] Speaker 5: down and have a two hour conversation and give you
[46:57] Speaker 5: that much of their time to kind of pick their brain.
[47:00] Speaker 4: And wow, it.
[47:02] Speaker 1: Was it was. It was great thing that he did.
[47:04] Speaker 1: I'm not sure what persuaded him to do it initially,
[47:06] Speaker 1: and it was, yeah, I was picking his brain, but
[47:09] Speaker 1: he was really kind of quizzing me too, so it
[47:11] Speaker 1: didn't feel you know, it wasn't just granting an interview,
[47:15] Speaker 1: but it was. It was a privilege to do that.
[47:18] Speaker 1: And actually, during the course of the film, if ever
[47:21] Speaker 1: I needed anything, I had it. Then I had his
[47:25] Speaker 1: email and he would respond within an hour. Once you
[47:28] Speaker 1: would say, well, I'm about to go into a battle,
[47:31] Speaker 1: but I want to let you know this. I god, well,
[47:33] Speaker 1: why you bother and respond to me? General matters have
[47:35] Speaker 1: about wait a day or two. But he was really
[47:38] Speaker 1: all night long, get rid of all these things. No one.
[47:41] Speaker 1: Even Michael packed his wall to deal with immediately, So
[47:45] Speaker 1: that was that was a good thing. I have to say.
[47:48] Speaker 1: A suggestion I have to you justin when you edit
[47:51] Speaker 1: this podcast is to show the trailer.
[47:53] Speaker 5: I think that's I was thinking about opening with it. Actually,
[47:56] Speaker 5: I think that I was thinking about opening with it
[47:59] Speaker 5: because I want people to know. You're not my normal guest.
[48:01] Speaker 5: Normally I have military people on, I have veterans. I
[48:05] Speaker 5: have had some embedded journalists that have that were in
[48:09] Speaker 5: combat zones.
[48:10] Speaker 4: Come on.
[48:11] Speaker 5: But I thought your perspective would be interesting because you
[48:15] Speaker 5: are documenting this history. You're you're you know, you're discussing
[48:20] Speaker 5: intimate details of combat and operations with guys that were there.
[48:25] Speaker 5: And for me, it's not a big as big of
[48:28] Speaker 5: a deal. I guess because I sit down, I was
[48:32] Speaker 5: in for twelve years.
[48:33] Speaker 4: That was shop talk.
[48:34] Speaker 5: A lot of this feels like shop talk when I'm
[48:36] Speaker 5: when I'm talking to other combat veterans, because it's like
[48:39] Speaker 5: we get it. We understand when you talk about this
[48:42] Speaker 5: thing or you describe it in a way, I understand
[48:44] Speaker 5: why you described it that way or you you know,
[48:47] Speaker 5: And I think it's interesting when someone who wasn't involved
[48:51] Speaker 5: in that creates like a documentary, and they do a
[48:55] Speaker 5: really compelling job of pulling the stories out because it's hard.
[48:59] Speaker 5: It's hard for someone that wasn't there or doesn't fully
[49:01] Speaker 5: understand this military world to get it right. So from
[49:07] Speaker 5: what I've seen, it looks like you've gotten it right.
[49:09] Speaker 1: It is, but you know, that's the challenge of making
[49:11] Speaker 1: documentary films. What did I talked about Clarence Thomas? What
[49:15] Speaker 1: did I know about the Supreme Court? Or I'm not
[49:18] Speaker 1: a lawyer, let alone a Yell or Harvard educated lawyer.
[49:23] Speaker 1: You know, I have to kind of enter into that world.
[49:27] Speaker 1: And those people have their own language and codes and
[49:30] Speaker 1: sense of things too. I mean, each documentary has that world.
[49:34] Speaker 1: As I mentioned, we made this documentary about Adam Rickover,
[49:37] Speaker 1: So the world of you know, you know people who
[49:40] Speaker 1: work the submariners and the you know, the nuclear Navy people.
[49:44] Speaker 1: They're their own world too, and they've got their code
[49:47] Speaker 1: and their way of talking and insider outsider sense. And
[49:51] Speaker 1: each documentary is like that.
[49:54] Speaker 5: That's another crazy job living in a submarine. Can you
[49:57] Speaker 5: what was his background? I'm not familiar.
[50:00] Speaker 1: So Adamiral Ricover. I think he has an incredible story
[50:06] Speaker 1: that film too, is available on Amazon. Ricover The Birth
[50:09] Speaker 1: of Nuclear Power. Ricover was really the greatest engineer in
[50:14] Speaker 1: the military, I think, in American history. He was born
[50:18] Speaker 1: in Poland, and you know, he remembers Kazak He's Jewish.
[50:23] Speaker 1: He remembers Kazakhs coming to his village on horses, right,
[50:26] Speaker 1: the guy who built the first nuclear submarine remembers people
[50:30] Speaker 1: on horses and sabers, you know, a long way, and
[50:32] Speaker 1: that his parents, you know, fled these programs in Poland
[50:37] Speaker 1: and came to the United States. He was eight years
[50:38] Speaker 1: old in Chicago. To Chicago, they had no money, and
[50:42] Speaker 1: he went to the Naval Academy because it was free,
[50:46] Speaker 1: and the Navy was always the most aristocratic branch, I
[50:50] Speaker 1: might say, and they did not like they were not
[50:53] Speaker 1: so nice to Jews at the time. In Ricover's time
[50:56] Speaker 1: at the academy, I think it was twenty two, Class
[50:58] Speaker 1: of twenty two or something like that, there was another
[51:01] Speaker 1: Jewish guy in the academy and his page in their yearbook,
[51:06] Speaker 1: called the Lucky Bag, was perforated. So if you didn't
[51:09] Speaker 1: want that annoying Jew in your yearbook, you could tear
[51:11] Speaker 1: out his page and it wouldn't damage your yearbook. That's crazy,
[51:15] Speaker 1: it is crazy. They denied it was an antisemic semitic,
[51:18] Speaker 1: but you know, the also portrait on the page was
[51:20] Speaker 1: a parody of a jew with a hook nose. I
[51:22] Speaker 1: mean it was really something unthinkable today. So recover they
[51:28] Speaker 1: put him down and he was like, you know, he
[51:30] Speaker 1: was not like a marine. He was a short, you know,
[51:33] Speaker 1: kind of thin, you know, non athletic guy. And he
[51:37] Speaker 1: went he went and got an engineering degree at Columbia,
[51:40] Speaker 1: and during World War Two he spent a lot of
[51:43] Speaker 1: time restoring ships and working in the inner inside of
[51:47] Speaker 1: ships and learning everything about how ships run. And then
[51:51] Speaker 1: after the war he had this idea that the Navy
[51:55] Speaker 1: should Everyone knew that nuclear submarines were a game changer
[51:59] Speaker 1: because diesel submarines world War two submarines could only stay
[52:02] Speaker 1: underwater for an hour or two. I mean they were
[52:04] Speaker 1: really the most dangerous thing in World War two, more
[52:07] Speaker 1: dangerous than fighter pilots. You know, there were huge number
[52:09] Speaker 1: of these people were killed because they have to surface,
[52:11] Speaker 1: and then once they surface, they were like sitting ducks.
[52:14] Speaker 1: They've got no maneuverability of power, and a huge number
[52:17] Speaker 1: of them died. So a nuclear submarine could stay under water,
[52:21] Speaker 1: you know, for months and months at a time, indefinitely
[52:25] Speaker 1: really now.
[52:26] Speaker 4: And much quieter because it doesn't have that loud diesel running.
[52:29] Speaker 1: It's quieter, and go deeper, it's easier to hide. And
[52:33] Speaker 1: so everyone would be a game changer. But people thought,
[52:36] Speaker 1: what would take you know, decades to develop peaceful nuclear
[52:40] Speaker 1: power and nuclear power for energy, And people like Robert Oppenheimer,
[52:43] Speaker 1: who is the genius behind Manan project, was one of
[52:47] Speaker 1: those people, we won't do this for a long time.
[52:49] Speaker 1: Rick ever said I can do it in eight years,
[52:52] Speaker 1: and he created a group inside the Navy, against a
[52:55] Speaker 1: lot of opposition from the Navy, that was going to
[52:57] Speaker 1: do it. And they did do it, and they built
[53:01] Speaker 1: the first nuclear submarine. It was called the Nautilus, and
[53:06] Speaker 1: shortly and they were working on it when Sputnik happened,
[53:09] Speaker 1: which was a Soviet achievement in space, and Eisenhower wanted
[53:13] Speaker 1: an achievement to match it, and they had the Nautilus,
[53:16] Speaker 1: and they promoted the Nautilus and they sent it under
[53:19] Speaker 1: the North Pole. It was the first submarine to transit
[53:22] Speaker 1: the North Pole arrival to Sputnik, and Admiral Ricover built
[53:28] Speaker 1: up the nuclear Navy from then on, and the nuclear submarine,
[53:32] Speaker 1: as you know, is one of the three legs of
[53:35] Speaker 1: the triad. During the Cold War, you know, there were ICBMs, bombers,
[53:39] Speaker 1: and nuclear submarines, and nuclear submarines were the only ones
[53:42] Speaker 1: that could survive a first strike. So he built that,
[53:46] Speaker 1: and he built the first commer commercial nuclear power plant
[53:48] Speaker 1: in Shippingport, Pennsylvania. So it was a huge achievement, I mean,
[53:52] Speaker 1: to develop a new energy source. Now, am Roocover's described
[53:56] Speaker 1: in the beginning of our film as a genius and
[53:58] Speaker 1: an sob and we tried to be true to both
[54:01] Speaker 1: aspects of Admiral Ricover. He was. He was famous for
[54:04] Speaker 1: having these really horrible interviews where he sought off the
[54:09] Speaker 1: front of chairs and he made people uncomfortable and he
[54:12] Speaker 1: grilled them. And Jimmy Carter we recreated some of these interviews,
[54:16] Speaker 1: including Jimmy Carter's interview, and Jimmy Carter was in the
[54:20] Speaker 1: nuclear Navy and loved Admiral Ricover and says in the
[54:22] Speaker 1: film and said before that Effre's father, Adamal Ricover, had
[54:26] Speaker 1: the most influence on him. I was privileged interview President Carter.
[54:31] Speaker 1: But you know then Admiral Roocover had to deal with
[54:33] Speaker 1: the fact that even under President Carter, who brought in
[54:37] Speaker 1: anti nuclear people into his administration, nuclear power was under attack.
[54:40] Speaker 1: And finally Ricover was sort of forced out during the
[54:43] Speaker 1: Reagan years. And it's a great story, but the key
[54:47] Speaker 1: thing is, here's somebody who in the American military, under
[54:51] Speaker 1: the USCS of the Navy, developed a new power source
[54:55] Speaker 1: that doesn't happen every day, and the people who did
[54:58] Speaker 1: it never forgot. I mean, one of our key interviewer
[55:01] Speaker 1: is Ted Rappo, who is one of his technical directors, said,
[55:04] Speaker 1: I knew what it took to do what he did.
[55:06] Speaker 1: I just wasn't capable of doing it. I wasn't willing
[55:08] Speaker 1: to piss everybody off and put everything on the line.
[55:11] Speaker 1: And he's an amazing character, very different from the people
[55:16] Speaker 1: in the last six centred meters. You know, it takes
[55:18] Speaker 1: a lot of different kinds of people to make a
[55:20] Speaker 1: great military, and you need these kind of maverick engineers
[55:25] Speaker 1: like Adam Rickover as well as the heroic and very
[55:29] Speaker 1: tough marines in the last six centred meters.
[55:33] Speaker 4: So it takes a lot that kind of I mean.
[55:38] Speaker 5: Having having military members. There's such a diversity of thought
[55:43] Speaker 5: in the military, and then when you bring all those
[55:45] Speaker 5: people together and put them in these tricky situations, there's
[55:49] Speaker 5: a lot of good ideas that come out of that,
[55:50] Speaker 5: and there's there are some bad ideas.
[55:53] Speaker 4: But I remember, I remember early earlier.
[55:57] Speaker 5: In Iraq, I want to say, probably two thousands or so,
[56:01] Speaker 5: maybe two thousand and eight, there was a marine combat
[56:05] Speaker 5: engineer that submitted an idea for mine rollers on the
[56:10] Speaker 5: front of vehicles, and that was they had not had
[56:12] Speaker 5: that before before, it was just up armored the vehicles
[56:15] Speaker 5: and hope for the best. Well, this marine engineer was like, hey,
[56:18] Speaker 5: why don't we try this? You know, I think he
[56:20] Speaker 5: was like a farmer or something, and he knew, you know, hey,
[56:23] Speaker 5: we put plows on the front of stuff, you know,
[56:25] Speaker 5: or we put on the front of the combine. We
[56:26] Speaker 5: got this thing that reaches out. Why can't we just
[56:29] Speaker 5: put wheels instead of blades and have it run and
[56:32] Speaker 5: run over the mines first. And that kind of ingenuity,
[56:36] Speaker 5: you know, comes from being put in a trying situation
[56:41] Speaker 5: where you're required, you know, your life is on the
[56:43] Speaker 5: line here. So it's like, hey, I'm gonna start thinking
[56:46] Speaker 5: of ways that I can you know, make this better
[56:50] Speaker 5: so that I'm not getting blown up. I mean, I
[56:52] Speaker 5: just I appreciate people that can think outside the box
[56:54] Speaker 5: and bring those ideas forward.
[56:56] Speaker 1: And I think that's I mean, this isn't yet another subject,
[56:59] Speaker 1: but I think that's very important for the military today.
[57:02] Speaker 1: I mean it's been very hard to innovate in the military.
[57:06] Speaker 1: I mean even for Admiral Ricover, he had to do
[57:08] Speaker 1: it against the wishes of every single CNO A chief
[57:12] Speaker 1: naval officer in his life, and the military brass opposed
[57:19] Speaker 1: every time he got a new star, from the first
[57:22] Speaker 1: star to the fourth star. It was opposed by the military.
[57:26] Speaker 1: He had to go around them to Congress. I mean,
[57:28] Speaker 1: an amazing thing you couldn't pull off today. And he
[57:30] Speaker 1: had support from both Democrats and Republicans. Another challenging thing.
[57:35] Speaker 1: But innovation is a challenge today. I mean I'm cheered
[57:39] Speaker 1: that there's a whole group of contractors that are trying
[57:42] Speaker 1: to do things differently. You know, I'm thinking like Palenteer
[57:46] Speaker 1: and Addill and Androl and you know, there are way
[57:50] Speaker 1: we really need to innovate. I mean, now we are
[57:53] Speaker 1: threatened by China, a near peer, which has a huge
[57:57] Speaker 1: supply of very talented engineer that are developing new technologies
[58:01] Speaker 1: for them and we have to keep up and it's
[58:04] Speaker 1: challenging to do that. And the military has i think
[58:07] Speaker 1: gotten a lot, you know, a lot of overliance and
[58:11] Speaker 1: a small number of contractors and it's the contracting process
[58:14] Speaker 1: has become slow and we really need to reform it.
[58:17] Speaker 1: That's a subject for yet another documentary. But that's a
[58:20] Speaker 1: challenge too.
[58:21] Speaker 5: The red tape is lengthy, you know, to get anything done,
[58:26] Speaker 5: to get I mean, that's why it's actually kind of
[58:30] Speaker 5: a lucrative job for somebody to get out of the
[58:32] Speaker 5: military that understands military contracting and military contracts and go
[58:37] Speaker 5: work for a civilian company that's involved in it. Because
[58:39] Speaker 5: it's so concluded, it's so like, there's so much red
[58:43] Speaker 5: tape the bureaucracy, it's hard to make anything happen. So
[58:48] Speaker 5: you've got to bring in these professionals that have worked
[58:50] Speaker 5: in that you know, chaos before. And it definitely does
[58:55] Speaker 5: slow innovation because if I understand that, if I, oh,
[58:59] Speaker 5: I have this cool idea, but if I submitted, it's
[59:02] Speaker 5: really not going to go anywhere. Maybe in two years
[59:04] Speaker 5: someone will say something about it or someone and by
[59:06] Speaker 5: that time, who cares.
[59:08] Speaker 1: Really needs to be reformed. But I'm you know, Thatt'll
[59:12] Speaker 1: Fluojiah began with the death of these blackwater contractors. But
[59:15] Speaker 1: I'm a believer that contractors and these outside organizations can
[59:20] Speaker 1: bring change to the military, you know, because it's very
[59:24] Speaker 1: hard to get around that red tape that you alluded to,
[59:27] Speaker 1: and you know, we need to do something to fix that,
[59:31] Speaker 1: and it's a challenge. But the military has always been
[59:35] Speaker 1: the biggest of bureaucracies, even in World War Two. You
[59:38] Speaker 1: have books like Catch twenty two about how difficult the
[59:40] Speaker 1: military bureaucracy is, Admiral Recover said in his last testimony
[59:46] Speaker 1: to Congress. They said, well, Admiral Recovery, you have been
[59:50] Speaker 1: you know, head of nuclear actors from the nineteen fifties
[59:53] Speaker 1: here to the eighties, thirty years. What have you learned?
[59:55] Speaker 1: How can we fix the Defense Department? Admialreco said, I
[59:59] Speaker 1: would divide the Defence Department in random, at random into
[1:00:02] Speaker 1: three equal groups. Three equal groups, picked them at random,
[1:00:06] Speaker 1: and the first group would write suggestions in longhand to
[1:00:10] Speaker 1: the second group. The second group would respond in long
[1:00:12] Speaker 1: hand back, and the third group would run everything. And
[1:00:16] Speaker 1: they said, well, that's you know, obviously that's a joke.
[1:00:19] Speaker 1: He's saying it only takes a third of the people
[1:00:20] Speaker 1: to run the Pentagon, and that was back in the eighties.
[1:00:23] Speaker 1: I mean everyone has had that sense. But now that
[1:00:27] Speaker 1: we face China, we have to take it seriously and
[1:00:31] Speaker 1: find a way to innovate. And that's a challenge for
[1:00:33] Speaker 1: other people, and it's a big challenge.
[1:00:36] Speaker 4: I think.
[1:00:37] Speaker 5: I believe this administration they're wanting to thin out the
[1:00:41] Speaker 5: general ranks, and I think that's a good idea myself,
[1:00:45] Speaker 5: because when you're too heavy at the top like that,
[1:00:47] Speaker 5: and there's too many people that are at these upper
[1:00:49] Speaker 5: echelons that have to sign off on this project or
[1:00:52] Speaker 5: that project or whatever, it just slows everything down. I
[1:00:56] Speaker 5: also believe the Marine Corps came back out with another
[1:00:59] Speaker 5: thing like that they had before, where it was like
[1:01:01] Speaker 5: an innovation thing, like if you have an idea, submit
[1:01:04] Speaker 5: it and they actually give like a cash prize if
[1:01:07] Speaker 5: they if it's something they end up using like that,
[1:01:09] Speaker 5: I think it's like five thousand dollars or something, but
[1:01:12] Speaker 5: you know, hey, that's better than nothing. I don't even
[1:01:15] Speaker 5: know if that's true or not, if that's the right number,
[1:01:17] Speaker 5: but if you're in the military, look into it because
[1:01:20] Speaker 5: innovating you're the people that are on the ground. You're
[1:01:23] Speaker 5: the people that see what works what doesn't work, you know,
[1:01:26] Speaker 5: junior marines at the point of the spear, like you said,
[1:01:29] Speaker 5: the last six hundred meters there the guys and girls
[1:01:31] Speaker 5: that are in that that portion, you're the ones that
[1:01:34] Speaker 5: are directly affected by stuff.
[1:01:35] Speaker 4: So if there's.
[1:01:36] Speaker 5: Innovations or things that you think can be changed, you
[1:01:39] Speaker 5: got to bring that up because it's literally life and
[1:01:42] Speaker 5: death at that situation.
[1:01:43] Speaker 1: You know, well, that is really true, and all many
[1:01:47] Speaker 1: great innovations come ground up and not top down, and
[1:01:52] Speaker 1: you know, healthy organizations find a way to get those
[1:01:56] Speaker 1: suggestions from the ground. Even corporations to people who are
[1:02:00] Speaker 1: working on the production line know how to make it
[1:02:02] Speaker 1: better in some ways. And if you can't get that
[1:02:06] Speaker 1: innovation and expertise rising up, you're not going to be
[1:02:09] Speaker 1: a healthy company or military.
[1:02:12] Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's uh. And you mentioned before the contractors.
[1:02:16] Speaker 5: I remember one group that we worked with a lot,
[1:02:19] Speaker 5: most people in the Marine Corps did before they deployed,
[1:02:22] Speaker 5: was the I think it was JAYADO, which is like
[1:02:24] Speaker 5: the Joint Ied Defeat Organization, and it was contractors that
[1:02:28] Speaker 5: had people in country and over here, and they were
[1:02:31] Speaker 5: basically getting the most up to date information on what
[1:02:34] Speaker 5: types of IEDs, what types of triggers, and different things
[1:02:37] Speaker 5: like that, and training people right before they headed over Like, hey,
[1:02:41] Speaker 5: we got they had contractors in country that are going
[1:02:44] Speaker 5: through and you know, pulling all the information about what's
[1:02:46] Speaker 5: actually happening and feeding it to them so that the
[1:02:49] Speaker 5: information is most up to date. I think they did
[1:02:51] Speaker 5: more than that, but that's the main way I interacted
[1:02:53] Speaker 5: with them, and I thought that was important, you know,
[1:02:56] Speaker 5: like learning how to use the different defeation defeation devices,
[1:03:03] Speaker 5: learning signs, and you know, just kind of the whole thing,
[1:03:06] Speaker 5: because it's that's the game you're playing when you get
[1:03:08] Speaker 5: over there.
[1:03:09] Speaker 1: Indeed, I mean IDs whoever heard of them and us
[1:03:12] Speaker 1: in the general public until this war and then you
[1:03:14] Speaker 1: hear about them all the time. And now drones, you know,
[1:03:17] Speaker 1: who ever heard who thought about drones? And now drones
[1:03:20] Speaker 1: are such a game changer in the Ukraine.
[1:03:23] Speaker 5: Warm Well, you know I've mentioned this before on the podcast,
[1:03:28] Speaker 5: like there's not much we can say about drones because
[1:03:30] Speaker 5: we kind of opened this Pandora's box by not only
[1:03:35] Speaker 5: with our like larger drones that we used, you know,
[1:03:38] Speaker 5: the reapers and predators and stuff like that early on.
[1:03:40] Speaker 5: But I remember towards the end of when I was
[1:03:43] Speaker 5: in Afghanistan in twenty thirteen, we had special operations. Guys
[1:03:48] Speaker 5: had a drone called the Switchblade, which was a one way.
[1:03:50] Speaker 4: It was a drone.
[1:03:51] Speaker 5: You popped it, it took off and it had a little
[1:03:53] Speaker 5: bomblet on the front of it, and it was a
[1:03:55] Speaker 5: little Kamakazi drone. And I was like, Wow, that's really crazy.
[1:03:59] Speaker 4: That's a thing.
[1:03:59] Speaker 5: That's a crazy thing that we're doing. And now that's
[1:04:03] Speaker 5: the skies are filled with them over there. I can't imagine.
[1:04:06] Speaker 5: I mean, I can't imagine what that's like to be
[1:04:10] Speaker 5: sitting in a fighting position and you can hear the
[1:04:13] Speaker 5: worrying of the drone, you know, process off in the distance,
[1:04:16] Speaker 5: like oh man, and just.
[1:04:18] Speaker 1: A scary prospects.
[1:04:21] Speaker 5: It's got to equate to the sound of hearing artillery
[1:04:24] Speaker 5: shoot in the distance and you know that they're shooting
[1:04:28] Speaker 5: at you, like if your area gets bombarded a lot,
[1:04:30] Speaker 5: think World War two and the in the you know,
[1:04:33] Speaker 5: in the forest and stuff like that, and you hear that,
[1:04:37] Speaker 5: You're like oh shit, here we go. You start hearing
[1:04:39] Speaker 5: the drones, You're like, oh man, here we go. It's
[1:04:41] Speaker 5: about to happen, Like get ready. I just can't imagine
[1:04:44] Speaker 5: what that's like. And it's unfortunate that the general public
[1:04:50] Speaker 5: is being so desensitized to these kind of wars because
[1:04:53] Speaker 5: it's all in four K, getting uploaded on social media and.
[1:04:58] Speaker 4: Shared everywhere, like I.
[1:05:00] Speaker 5: Don't even like I have a news page on Instagram,
[1:05:04] Speaker 5: former Action News, and I share a lot of like
[1:05:07] Speaker 5: video footage from around the world of different events. And
[1:05:09] Speaker 5: when the war in Ukraine started, these drone videos, I
[1:05:13] Speaker 5: was sharing them because it was so crazy. Initially, none
[1:05:16] Speaker 5: that were like up close of people getting killed or
[1:05:18] Speaker 5: anything like that. But the prevalence of that online now
[1:05:23] Speaker 5: is crazy, and it's in the American public and the
[1:05:27] Speaker 5: world probably in general, is just becoming so desensitized to it.
[1:05:30] Speaker 5: I was talking to a friend a couple of weeks
[1:05:33] Speaker 5: ago about it and was about that and like the
[1:05:35] Speaker 5: Charlie Kirk video and stuff, and I was like, you know,
[1:05:38] Speaker 5: these kind of videos back in the early two thousands,
[1:05:43] Speaker 5: you'd have to really seek that kind of thing out.
[1:05:46] Speaker 5: There were websites that you could go to and we
[1:05:48] Speaker 5: all knew them ogrish lively, you know, we knew those sites,
[1:05:52] Speaker 5: but not many people actually went and watched those videos.
[1:05:56] Speaker 5: And now we're just getting people in four K. You're
[1:05:59] Speaker 5: just wiping through Instagram and you're seeing people get killed
[1:06:02] Speaker 5: in four k, like wow, that was crazy. Next video,
[1:06:04] Speaker 5: next video, you know, and it's like it's just I
[1:06:07] Speaker 5: don't know, we're living in a weird world where all
[1:06:09] Speaker 5: this stuff is being served up.
[1:06:10] Speaker 1: You know, I think that's true. Yeah, you'd have to
[1:06:13] Speaker 1: work hard to avoid the Charlie Kirk video and they shot.
[1:06:18] Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean I think that's why documentaries are important.
[1:06:21] Speaker 1: I mean, these sort of thirty second forty second videos
[1:06:26] Speaker 1: of death and destruction don't tell much of a story,
[1:06:29] Speaker 1: and you don't see the human consequences of it. And
[1:06:32] Speaker 1: so that's why I think longer form stories like ours
[1:06:36] Speaker 1: are important.
[1:06:37] Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
[1:06:38] Speaker 5: And I like something I do like doing when I
[1:06:40] Speaker 5: have someone on is ask them how they interacted with
[1:06:43] Speaker 5: the local populace.
[1:06:44] Speaker 4: You know, what was it like? Did they like you
[1:06:47] Speaker 4: where you were at, did you interact with them? Were
[1:06:49] Speaker 4: they kind? Were they not?
[1:06:51] Speaker 5: You know, I mean we had kids throwing rocks at
[1:06:53] Speaker 5: us all the time. Because they thought it was funny.
[1:06:54] Speaker 5: But we also like had kids that were super nice.
[1:06:56] Speaker 5: You give candy and stuff too. That human aspect of
[1:07:00] Speaker 5: it is very important. I remember being in Saying and
[1:07:06] Speaker 5: we would be out at like a patrol base or moving,
[1:07:09] Speaker 5: and the Taliban would start sending up their kites, which
[1:07:11] Speaker 5: they were signaling to each other, and then we would
[1:07:14] Speaker 5: get to wherever it was we're going, and then we'd
[1:07:17] Speaker 5: see all the women and kids leaving the area with
[1:07:20] Speaker 5: their goats and stuff, and it's just like, that's crazy. Imagine,
[1:07:24] Speaker 5: you know, you see all the kites, here's the signaling
[1:07:26] Speaker 5: there's about to be something happening, and hey, get all
[1:07:29] Speaker 5: the kids and all the livestock, let's move. And it
[1:07:32] Speaker 5: was kind of wild to see that happen. And I
[1:07:34] Speaker 5: always wondered what was going through their mind.
[1:07:37] Speaker 4: You know.
[1:07:37] Speaker 5: Obviously in our mind we're like, oh shit, something's about
[1:07:40] Speaker 5: to happen. Let's get ready, but you wonder, like what's
[1:07:42] Speaker 5: going through their mind? And you really, I mean most
[1:07:44] Speaker 5: of us, obviously we feel bad for these people, like
[1:07:46] Speaker 5: we don't want this to happen on their farm or whatever,
[1:07:49] Speaker 5: but it just kind of is what it is, you know.
[1:07:53] Speaker 1: That's always a tough question, and it's always hard to
[1:07:56] Speaker 1: really assess what the local population thinks. I mean, we
[1:08:00] Speaker 1: are also we have in our new company, Palladian Pictures,
[1:08:04] Speaker 1: we have a partnership with the Wolfsbury Journal and we're
[1:08:06] Speaker 1: doing a bunch of short documentaries. We've done two already
[1:08:09] Speaker 1: and we have three in post production, and one of
[1:08:13] Speaker 1: them is about withdrawal from Afghanistan and that's our only
[1:08:17] Speaker 1: military one. And yeah, I mean, you know, the Taliban
[1:08:22] Speaker 1: swept through in the end, and everyone may deals with them,
[1:08:25] Speaker 1: but how happy are they now now that the Taliban
[1:08:28] Speaker 1: is in power and they're living under sharia law and
[1:08:31] Speaker 1: women aren't getting educated, and you know that Talban's gone
[1:08:35] Speaker 1: back to harboring terrorists like al Qaeda, I mean, and
[1:08:39] Speaker 1: how good is that for the population? I mean, it's
[1:08:43] Speaker 1: you know, who knows. You know, it's really it's a
[1:08:47] Speaker 1: tough thing.
[1:08:48] Speaker 5: It is a tough situation for them, and it's unfortunate
[1:08:52] Speaker 5: when you look at it and you're like, man, there
[1:08:54] Speaker 5: was such an opportunity here for you. Indeed, part of it,
[1:08:58] Speaker 5: part of it was our fault because we, like you
[1:09:02] Speaker 5: had mentioned earlier when when we were talking you on
[1:09:04] Speaker 5: the political side of it when you're working in a
[1:09:07] Speaker 5: country like Afghanistan, you know, as an advice I went
[1:09:10] Speaker 5: as an as an Afghan National Army advisor, and we
[1:09:13] Speaker 5: were told like, hey, there's gonna be some level of
[1:09:16] Speaker 5: corruption that you're just gonna have to be okay with,
[1:09:18] Speaker 5: Like it's just that's there. That's how they operate, that's
[1:09:22] Speaker 5: how their culture. You know, they're just that's it. So
[1:09:25] Speaker 5: you can either accept that and maybe get something done,
[1:09:29] Speaker 5: or be mad about it and maybe not get anything
[1:09:31] Speaker 5: done the whole time you're there. And I think that
[1:09:34] Speaker 5: was okay to a point, but then we accepted too much.
[1:09:39] Speaker 4: We allowed them to do too much.
[1:09:41] Speaker 5: You know, people talk about how the country fell so quickly,
[1:09:45] Speaker 5: and I remember when we did the pull out, someone
[1:09:48] Speaker 5: on on x or on Twitter was like, oh man,
[1:09:52] Speaker 5: the military's gone. The country's gonna fall in six weeks
[1:09:54] Speaker 5: or less. And I was like, six weeks, it's gonna
[1:09:56] Speaker 5: be like six days. Like you don't understand some of
[1:09:59] Speaker 5: these Afghan National Army soldiers at the far reaches, in
[1:10:04] Speaker 5: these like crappy patrol bases in the middle of nowhere,
[1:10:07] Speaker 5: in these areas that they're defending. Some of these guys
[1:10:10] Speaker 5: don't have enough food AMMO because the corruption, the stuff
[1:10:15] Speaker 5: never got down to them. Their commanders sold their uniforms
[1:10:18] Speaker 5: rather than giving it to the men because he wanted
[1:10:20] Speaker 5: to make some money on it.
[1:10:21] Speaker 4: You know.
[1:10:22] Speaker 5: So when a Taliban group rolls in and goes, hey,
[1:10:25] Speaker 5: you can either surrender or we're just gonna kill all
[1:10:27] Speaker 5: of you. And you're sitting there with no food and
[1:10:29] Speaker 5: maybe one magazine of AMMO for your ak. You know,
[1:10:33] Speaker 5: what are you gonna do? You're gonna fight with that one.
[1:10:35] Speaker 5: It's so I don't know it. Yeah, it's tough when
[1:10:40] Speaker 5: you're talking about stuff like that. I guess I've kind
[1:10:43] Speaker 5: of rambled a little bit.
[1:10:44] Speaker 1: But we interviewed this Afghan general Alazai, who is the
[1:10:49] Speaker 1: final commander of the army in Kabul before the final
[1:10:56] Speaker 1: before it with Row, and you know, he's taught about
[1:11:00] Speaker 1: how you know, all of a sudden, you know, they're planning,
[1:11:03] Speaker 1: They're they're counting on US contractors there, they're counting on
[1:11:08] Speaker 1: help from the US in terms of maintaining their air force,
[1:11:12] Speaker 1: you know, and spare parts and maintenance. And their their
[1:11:17] Speaker 1: advantage in the air is their their their crucial advantage
[1:11:20] Speaker 1: over the Taliban and then boom, they're gone. They can't
[1:11:23] Speaker 1: fly the planes. They don't have them anymore. You know,
[1:11:26] Speaker 1: there was supposed to they were in some cases. In
[1:11:28] Speaker 1: his case, he before he was head of the arm
[1:11:32] Speaker 1: General Army, he was head of the Special Forces in Afghanistan,
[1:11:35] Speaker 1: and you know, they're working closely with US Special Forces
[1:11:38] Speaker 1: and these people are gone and they're gone from their
[1:11:40] Speaker 1: point of view like that. You know, one day they're there,
[1:11:43] Speaker 1: on one day they're gone, and you know then what
[1:11:46] Speaker 1: you know, So it's very hard. It's hard on them.
[1:11:51] Speaker 1: It's hard. It was hard on the US Special Forces
[1:11:54] Speaker 1: that were leaving and didn't like to be leaving. It's
[1:11:58] Speaker 1: a tough situation all around. Like these things like these
[1:12:01] Speaker 1: wars constantly throw out.
[1:12:03] Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot.
[1:12:04] Speaker 5: I mean a lot of people were like what are
[1:12:05] Speaker 5: we doing there? Why do we lose so many people?
[1:12:07] Speaker 5: If we're just going to walk out like that. I
[1:12:09] Speaker 5: will say I've mentioned it before that it affected me
[1:12:13] Speaker 5: less than a lot of people that served in Afghanistan
[1:12:15] Speaker 5: because I was an Afghan National Army advisor and singing
[1:12:18] Speaker 5: and we were the last advisor team in Singing and
[1:12:23] Speaker 5: there was an actual effort to kind of wean the
[1:12:26] Speaker 5: ANA off of our support, like they didn't. I remember,
[1:12:29] Speaker 5: I remember one of their soldiers being shot in the
[1:12:32] Speaker 5: stomach and we got denied a METAVAC request because they
[1:12:36] Speaker 5: wanted them to exercise their ground METAVAC capabilities. And I'm like, man,
[1:12:41] Speaker 5: you're gonna have this guy drive in the back of
[1:12:43] Speaker 5: a bouncy hum vy from saying into last Carga like
[1:12:46] Speaker 5: that's crazy, you know. And I disagreed with some of
[1:12:48] Speaker 5: the stuff we were doing, but I also understood that, yes,
[1:12:51] Speaker 5: they they can't just rely on our close air support.
[1:12:53] Speaker 5: They can't just rely on our support for some of
[1:12:55] Speaker 5: these things. So we got to start weaning them off.
[1:12:58] Speaker 5: When I left, I think within six to eight months.
[1:13:02] Speaker 5: Pretty sure it was less than a year from when
[1:13:04] Speaker 5: we left Singing. One of the other guys that I
[1:13:07] Speaker 5: deployed with sent me a video and it was of
[1:13:10] Speaker 5: the Bizarre, and the Bizarre was like a ghost town
[1:13:13] Speaker 5: with tumbleweeds going through it, and ISIS had come through
[1:13:17] Speaker 5: and taken over the area and shut down all of that,
[1:13:20] Speaker 5: and I was just like, man, so that was kind
[1:13:22] Speaker 5: of my I went through all of that, the emotions
[1:13:25] Speaker 5: that a lot of people had when the whole country
[1:13:27] Speaker 5: fell early on, you know, and that's why when when
[1:13:31] Speaker 5: I heard that we were pulling out, when somebody was like, yeah,
[1:13:34] Speaker 5: six weeks is probably all they got, and I'm like,
[1:13:35] Speaker 5: there's no way, dude. You're being very optimistic, so you're
[1:13:39] Speaker 5: thinking six weeks. But yeah, yeah, I'd like to I
[1:13:44] Speaker 5: do want to touch on I know you said you
[1:13:46] Speaker 5: wanted to focus on the on the movies, but before
[1:13:48] Speaker 5: we get off here, I do want to talk because
[1:13:50] Speaker 5: it you know, it says that you were the first
[1:13:52] Speaker 5: CEO Senate confirmed CEO of the US Agency for Global Media,
[1:13:56] Speaker 5: which oversees the Voice of America, Office of Cuba Broadcasting,
[1:14:00] Speaker 5: Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks, in Radio Free Europe,
[1:14:04] Speaker 5: Radio Liberty. Before you can you tell a lot of
[1:14:08] Speaker 5: people don't even know what those are or why we
[1:14:11] Speaker 5: even have that. Can you kind of give like a,
[1:14:14] Speaker 5: you know, a little explanation of why what those organizations
[1:14:18] Speaker 5: are are for their purpose and what you think the
[1:14:22] Speaker 5: importance of those are.
[1:14:24] Speaker 1: Sure, and I worked in that for that group twice.
[1:14:27] Speaker 1: In the George HW. Bush administration, I was in charge
[1:14:31] Speaker 1: of what was then called WorldNet is now really the
[1:14:34] Speaker 1: TV part of the Voice of America and all these
[1:14:37] Speaker 1: organizations are just a radio, TV Internet together in spite
[1:14:42] Speaker 1: of their names. And the Big one and the Voice
[1:14:45] Speaker 1: of America originated really in World War Two, originally part
[1:14:50] Speaker 1: of the OSS and or really part of the Office
[1:14:56] Speaker 1: of War Information, and it grew out of that, and
[1:15:00] Speaker 1: then its purpose originally was to get American propaganda, so
[1:15:04] Speaker 1: to speak, out to contract to counteract Nazi propaganda. And
[1:15:09] Speaker 1: then during the Cold War it became its own freestanding organization,
[1:15:13] Speaker 1: originally part of the US Information Agency, and then over
[1:15:17] Speaker 1: time these other organizations grew up to Radio Free Europe.
[1:15:21] Speaker 1: Radio Liberty grew out of also the Cold War, based
[1:15:25] Speaker 1: in Europe, and it was supposed to provide local broadcasting
[1:15:28] Speaker 1: to parts of the parts of the Soviet Union that were,
[1:15:31] Speaker 1: i mean, all of the Soviet Union had had was
[1:15:34] Speaker 1: under this, you know, intense censorship by you know, the Kremlin,
[1:15:40] Speaker 1: and this is surpriding alternative local news. And over time
[1:15:43] Speaker 1: as a Radio Free Asia developed, and a Middle East
[1:15:46] Speaker 1: broadcasting doing the same and the purpose and then Office
[1:15:50] Speaker 1: of Cuba Broadcasting doing the same thing for Cuba. Some
[1:15:53] Speaker 1: of them part of the federal government, like the Voice
[1:15:55] Speaker 1: of America. Some of them you know, independent, quasi independent
[1:15:59] Speaker 1: nonprop it's like the Voice of America, like Radio for Europe,
[1:16:02] Speaker 1: Radio Liberty. But together they cost almost a billion dollars
[1:16:06] Speaker 1: and they reached lots of people all over the world
[1:16:09] Speaker 1: in like eighty plus languages. And their purpose remains to
[1:16:13] Speaker 1: sort of contract to counteract the propaganda of our enemies
[1:16:18] Speaker 1: like Russia, China and Iran, and to tell America's story
[1:16:23] Speaker 1: in a fair, even handed way and to represent the
[1:16:27] Speaker 1: views of whatever administration is in power along with criticism.
[1:16:32] Speaker 1: And it's an important mission and I was honored to
[1:16:35] Speaker 1: be in charge of it in the first Trump administration
[1:16:38] Speaker 1: for a brief amount of time, the last eight months.
[1:16:41] Speaker 1: But you know, it was very over you know, the
[1:16:44] Speaker 1: problem with these organizations, and there are many such in
[1:16:47] Speaker 1: the government, but this is one, is that it became
[1:16:50] Speaker 1: very ideological. You know, it was really it drifted to
[1:16:53] Speaker 1: the left. It was very you know, when I was there,
[1:16:56] Speaker 1: there was a you know, it was we were leading
[1:16:59] Speaker 1: into the election, and there was very much you know
[1:17:04] Speaker 1: that everyone was very sympathetic to Biden. They ran very
[1:17:07] Speaker 1: pro Biden pieces, and even though they're required by law
[1:17:12] Speaker 1: to be bipartisan, there was an effectively a Biden ad
[1:17:15] Speaker 1: run by one of the services until they had taken
[1:17:17] Speaker 1: it down, and that kind of bias. You know, the
[1:17:21] Speaker 1: American people are finding this. It's supposed to represent American
[1:17:23] Speaker 1: ideals without bias. And the problem was, you know, over
[1:17:28] Speaker 1: many decades, you know, from like the end of the
[1:17:31] Speaker 1: Cold War until I came in, it had really drifted
[1:17:34] Speaker 1: and it was very hard to fix, and they resisted
[1:17:37] Speaker 1: being fixed. And President Trump in this second term has
[1:17:41] Speaker 1: directed a person who effectively has my job that though
[1:17:44] Speaker 1: she's not said confirmed, Carrie Lake, to reduce it to
[1:17:48] Speaker 1: its statutory minimum, which she is doing. But I believe
[1:17:52] Speaker 1: these organizations just are not really fulfilling their function of
[1:17:57] Speaker 1: telling America's story and providing an al term to the propaganda
[1:18:01] Speaker 1: of our enemies. I would like to see a new
[1:18:04] Speaker 1: kind of structure arise. I mean, all these institutions are
[1:18:08] Speaker 1: the products of the Cold War. Why are there five?
[1:18:12] Speaker 1: You know? How come there? You know? How come there
[1:18:13] Speaker 1: are five? You know? It's different technical departments, five different
[1:18:17] Speaker 1: legal departments, five different pr departments, I mean wise, you know,
[1:18:21] Speaker 1: and the whole thing is structured around contingencies of the
[1:18:24] Speaker 1: Cold War. I think it's time now that our strategic
[1:18:29] Speaker 1: demands are very different I mean, where China is our
[1:18:32] Speaker 1: principal enemy, not the long that the Soviet Union now departed.
[1:18:37] Speaker 1: We need to really rethink it, and I'm hopeful that
[1:18:40] Speaker 1: the Trump administration will do that.
[1:18:42] Speaker 4: I think so. I that kind of.
[1:18:47] Speaker 5: Avenue of putting information out there, I believe is important
[1:18:50] Speaker 5: if used properly. And that's the problem is when you
[1:18:55] Speaker 5: don't necessarily have editorial oversight or you know whatever, and
[1:19:00] Speaker 5: it starts.
[1:19:01] Speaker 4: To move against you.
[1:19:03] Speaker 5: And it's tough because anytime you're talking about the government
[1:19:08] Speaker 5: funding a media company, you know, that's a lot of
[1:19:13] Speaker 5: people will immediately turn off to that, Like, I don't
[1:19:16] Speaker 5: like that at all. Why is the government funding any
[1:19:18] Speaker 5: kind of media Because it's automatically propaganda, right, I mean,
[1:19:21] Speaker 5: that's it's being funded by the government.
[1:19:25] Speaker 1: It ends up and it ends up how many biases.
[1:19:27] Speaker 1: I mean, it's very challenging for the government to fund
[1:19:29] Speaker 1: media for just the reasons you say, justin and I
[1:19:32] Speaker 1: think it. I think it's easier to imagine the government
[1:19:35] Speaker 1: supporting independent media that arises outside of the government, of
[1:19:40] Speaker 1: which there's a lot. Actually, now it's the same point
[1:19:43] Speaker 1: you made earlier. Everyone's got a cell phone and everyone
[1:19:46] Speaker 1: has access to the Internet. I think that we really
[1:19:50] Speaker 1: need to rethink it, and you know, it's challenging to
[1:19:53] Speaker 1: set up in a way. I've heard people say that
[1:19:57] Speaker 1: all together those five broadcasters make in some sense before
[1:20:01] Speaker 1: before they have now been stripped down one of the
[1:20:04] Speaker 1: biggest broadcasters in the world. And should that be the
[1:20:07] Speaker 1: American government's role, and how should we do that. I
[1:20:11] Speaker 1: think those are important questions and I hope they get
[1:20:14] Speaker 1: decided at a high strategic level. When I first went
[1:20:18] Speaker 1: to work with the Voice of America was part of
[1:20:20] Speaker 1: the US Agency for Global Media, which I mean was
[1:20:24] Speaker 1: part of the US Information Agency, which had a deeper
[1:20:28] Speaker 1: connection to the State Department in US foreign policy. And
[1:20:31] Speaker 1: if Americans are going to spend a billion dollars, it
[1:20:33] Speaker 1: has to have some connection with the goals of the
[1:20:37] Speaker 1: US government. It can't just be another CNN. We already
[1:20:41] Speaker 1: have CNN and it's available in lots of the world.
[1:20:44] Speaker 1: And it's so different than the Cold War, when you know,
[1:20:47] Speaker 1: the Iron Curtain was literally a block to information crossing
[1:20:51] Speaker 1: the air, whereas now there's a flood of information, including
[1:20:54] Speaker 1: the misleading information and lies and false information. So it's
[1:20:57] Speaker 1: a different kind of media picture, and I think different
[1:21:00] Speaker 1: kind of organizations are needed for it.
[1:21:02] Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree with you.
[1:21:04] Speaker 5: The media landscape is so much different now. I've talked
[1:21:08] Speaker 5: about it here about people joining the military. I always
[1:21:12] Speaker 5: talk about how, you know, went back in my day
[1:21:14] Speaker 5: when I was going to join. It's like if you
[1:21:16] Speaker 5: wanted to know anything about the military, you had to
[1:21:19] Speaker 5: find a book about it and read about it, or
[1:21:22] Speaker 5: maybe the Discovery channel would put out a documentary about
[1:21:26] Speaker 5: a once force or something that sounded cool when you're like,
[1:21:29] Speaker 5: I want to do that. Now now there's so many
[1:21:34] Speaker 5: social media channels. There's literally a social media channel for
[1:21:37] Speaker 5: pretty much every unit. Now people can know exactly what
[1:21:41] Speaker 5: the job is that they want to do and even go,
[1:21:43] Speaker 5: you know what, I like how this unit runs their stuff.
[1:21:45] Speaker 5: Look at their Instagram page. I hope I can get
[1:21:48] Speaker 5: stationed with those guys. And people may not know that
[1:21:53] Speaker 5: that's a thing, but it's huge, you know, pages like
[1:21:55] Speaker 5: you probably haven't heard of this, or maybe you have.
[1:21:57] Speaker 5: There's a page called Goon's up right on Instagram. Really
[1:22:00] Speaker 5: great guy. He's been on the podcast before, but he
[1:22:03] Speaker 5: has such a massive following from the infantry community, mainly
[1:22:07] Speaker 5: Marines but also army as well, and He has introduced
[1:22:12] Speaker 5: so many people that haven't joined the military yet to
[1:22:15] Speaker 5: different aspects of what it's like to be an infantryman,
[1:22:18] Speaker 5: be a machine gun or be a mortarman. And it's
[1:22:21] Speaker 5: just information that we couldn't have even thought of. I mean,
[1:22:23] Speaker 5: I joined the Marine Corps. I was planning on joining
[1:22:25] Speaker 5: the army because my dad was in the army. And
[1:22:28] Speaker 5: I was like, yea, I'm gonna join the army and
[1:22:30] Speaker 5: become a ranger. And then I read Marine Sniper and
[1:22:32] Speaker 5: I was like, that's it, and I'm joining the Marines.
[1:22:35] Speaker 5: Like you know, that's the effect that a book had
[1:22:37] Speaker 5: back then, the same effect as being is happening on
[1:22:40] Speaker 5: social media and these alternative media sources that the older
[1:22:45] Speaker 5: generations haven't really grasped yet.
[1:22:48] Speaker 1: Yeah, we definitely need a new policy taking all that
[1:22:51] Speaker 1: into account. Absolutely.
[1:22:53] Speaker 5: Well, all right, Michael, I really appreciate you coming on today.
[1:22:57] Speaker 5: Go ahead, and where can people find what's your website again?
[1:22:59] Speaker 5: Where where they find your documentaries and social media?
[1:23:03] Speaker 1: Well, our older documentaries actually including the West six Centimeters,
[1:23:07] Speaker 1: are are described and information about them and you could
[1:23:11] Speaker 1: see where to watch them and trailers on our website,
[1:23:16] Speaker 1: Manifold Productions Dot com and m A and I Fldproductions
[1:23:20] Speaker 1: dot com and our newer films are on the new
[1:23:24] Speaker 1: website Palladium Pictures dot com, p A L l A
[1:23:27] Speaker 1: d U M Pictures dot com, including the chance to
[1:23:31] Speaker 1: apply to our incubator, which we talked about earlier. And
[1:23:36] Speaker 1: my X account is Michael pack Underscore. But there's more
[1:23:39] Speaker 1: information really on the websites. And then of course they
[1:23:43] Speaker 1: should tune in to the film on November tenth, the
[1:23:47] Speaker 1: Marine Corps two hundred and fiftieth birthday and the day
[1:23:50] Speaker 1: before Veterans Day at ten pm. But if they miss it,
[1:23:54] Speaker 1: it'll be streaming on Amazon and elsewhere starting Veterans Day
[1:23:58] Speaker 1: November eleventh.
[1:24:00] Speaker 5: You know what I might, I may try to release
[1:24:02] Speaker 5: this before. I know, we talked about releasing it after.
[1:24:03] Speaker 5: I may try to release this on Sunday so that
[1:24:06] Speaker 5: it's before it comes out. Yeah, so everybody can take
[1:24:10] Speaker 5: a look at that. Well again, I really I'll take
[1:24:12] Speaker 5: all those links and I'll add them to the show description.
[1:24:14] Speaker 5: So if you're watching or listening, check out those links there.
[1:24:17] Speaker 5: You can check out my page Former Action News Former
[1:24:19] Speaker 5: Action Guys on Instagram. My website is Jakramergraphics dot com
[1:24:23] Speaker 5: and Michael.
[1:24:24] Speaker 4: It was a real pleasure.
[1:24:25] Speaker 1: It was a pleasure for me too, great questions, Thank you,

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