# The Wild West of Iraq: A Bank Robbery in Baghdad | Josh Bates | Ep. 403

An episode of [The Team House](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1492797340), 21 Mar 2026, 2 h 21 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/70785316/josh_bates_bank_robbery_spreaker.mp3

We sit down with Josh Bates to discuss his experience as a Marine infantry officer during the invasion of Iraq, from the initial push north to the chaos of Baghdad after the regime collapsed. He breaks down the realities of urban combat, leadership under pressure, and the breakdown of order that fueled the early insurgency. We also discuss how those experiences shaped his career and led to writing The Baghdad Shuffle. Grab "Baghdad Shuffle" here:⬇️ https://a.co/d/045PaH2P Today's Sponsors: Mando ⬇️ Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with MANDO and get 20% off + free shipping with promo code \[TEAMHOUSE\] at https://shopmando.com/ GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! Blue Chew ⬇️ https://bluechew.com/ Get 10% off your first month of BlueChew Gold with code "HOUSECALL" Mars Men⬇️ For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at https://mengotomars.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video -early access to shows -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ PRE ORDER JACK'S NEW BOOK "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN" ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803651/the-most-dangerous-man-by-jack-murphy/paperback/ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured __________________________________ Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" 00:00 Start 01:10 Growing Up in Hawaii & Marine Family Background 05:18 9/11 and Entering the Marine Corps 07:27 First Combat: Seizing Iraq’s Oil Infrastructure 10:55 Fighting Through Southern Iraq 15:07 Entering Baghdad & Urban Warfare 18:50 Looting, Crime, and Collapse of Order 23:08 Policing Baghdad & Early Occupation Chaos 27:15 Najaf, Elections Fallout & Rising Insurgency 34:15 The Wild West Phase of Early Iraq War 45:50 Platoon Leadership & Combat Culture 1:05:30 Transitioning Roles & Leaving the Platoon 1:20:45 Intelligence, Counterintel & Career Shift 1:35:30 Writing The Baghdad Shuffle 1:50:15 Lessons from Iraq & How the War Changed 2:05:00 Final Reflections & Closing Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

## Transcript

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[3:17] Speaker 1: Bye, Hey everyone, Welcome to episode four hundred and three
[3:22] Speaker 1: of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy with tonight's guest
[3:25] Speaker 1: on the show, Josh Bates. He's the author of The
[3:28] Speaker 1: bag Dad Shuffle. It is a novel. We'll get into
[3:32] Speaker 1: it largely, or I shouldn't say largely, but I mean
[3:35] Speaker 1: his military experience bleeds into it quite a bit. Josh
[3:39] Speaker 1: served in the Marine Infantry and then as a military
[3:43] Speaker 1: intelligence officer, and then went on to become a counterintelligence guy,
[3:47] Speaker 1: did his twenty years and retired back in twenty twenty
[3:50] Speaker 1: two and pen this novel, which I mean, it's like
[3:54] Speaker 1: a noir really it's it's a war story, but it's
[3:57] Speaker 1: also a sort of murder mystery in a sense, told
[4:02] Speaker 1: through the perspective of a twenty six year old marine
[4:04] Speaker 1: and everything that that entails, you know, coming out of
[4:07] Speaker 1: the invasion of Iraq. So yeah, I really love this book,
[4:09] Speaker 1: but we'll get into it in a bit. Josh, thanks
[4:12] Speaker 1: for joining us on the show today.
[4:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, Jack, thanks man, Thanks for having me on. Glad
[4:16] Speaker 2: to be here.
[4:18] Speaker 1: So yeah, start at the beginning, Josh, tell us a
[4:20] Speaker 1: little bit about your origin. How did you grow up?
[4:23] Speaker 1: I know you grew up in Hawaii, right, your dad's
[4:25] Speaker 1: a military or a marine veteran.
[4:28] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[4:28] Speaker 4: Yeah, So I was actually born in Camp Pellinton, nav
[4:30] Speaker 4: of Hospital, so kind of born into the gig, as
[4:33] Speaker 4: it were. My dad had been an enlisted guy. He
[4:36] Speaker 4: was machine gunner in Vietnam and then was wounded a
[4:38] Speaker 4: bunch and was out for about seven eight years. So
[4:41] Speaker 4: by the time you met, my mom, got married, had me,
[4:43] Speaker 4: you know, he'd come back in as an officer finally.
[4:45] Speaker 4: So yeah, station at Campeltons, So that's where I was born.
[4:48] Speaker 4: But I actually grew up mostly here. Like I said,
[4:50] Speaker 4: he was pretty good at Homestead and so he was
[4:52] Speaker 4: in like you know, first time in third Greens, two three,
[4:55] Speaker 4: the regiment, all these units that are here on Awahu.
[4:58] Speaker 4: So I did most of my formative year here, which
[5:00] Speaker 4: was you know, didn't didn't suck. Yeah, I mean, you know,
[5:04] Speaker 4: for fortunate enough to work my bolt where I was
[5:06] Speaker 4: able to come back. And I was joking with you
[5:08] Speaker 4: before before we started recording, but one of my my
[5:10] Speaker 4: greatest professional achievements was doing my last like almost eight
[5:13] Speaker 4: years on active duty on a wahu, which is really
[5:16] Speaker 4: hard to do. But my my wife was still an
[5:20] Speaker 4: activeduty in the Navy. She retired from the Navy Navy
[5:22] Speaker 4: nurse and so I was able to kind of like
[5:24] Speaker 4: leverage that a little bit as well, because you know,
[5:26] Speaker 4: dual military family deal.
[5:28] Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, that's uh mom and dad were both
[5:32] Speaker 1: in the military.
[5:33] Speaker 4: Uh yeah, not my mom, no, she uh yeah, my
[5:36] Speaker 4: mom is a is an early childhood educator teacher principal
[5:42] Speaker 4: education side of the house. Yeah, but the pops was
[5:45] Speaker 4: in the Marine Corps. All weup until in fact we
[5:47] Speaker 4: were actually in Iraq together, which is hilarious. Like I
[5:52] Speaker 4: this is you know again back in the Wild West days.
[5:53] Speaker 4: Not to get ahead of the story, but we had
[5:55] Speaker 4: already my battalion, first Night seventh Marines had already moved
[5:58] Speaker 4: back down to the off out of Bagdad. This is
[6:01] Speaker 4: in like summer of O three, and my dad was
[6:03] Speaker 4: on the first Marine Division staff in Babylon.
[6:06] Speaker 2: And then like he.
[6:07] Speaker 4: Shows up down there one day and he's like, oh, hey,
[6:09] Speaker 4: but I need to ride back. So just like you know,
[6:12] Speaker 4: hopping the gun truck drove him from the shof back
[6:15] Speaker 4: to Babylon. No, I don't think we had like radio
[6:17] Speaker 4: comms with the tying back then when you could do
[6:19] Speaker 4: all that.
[6:19] Speaker 2: This is before all the like the id.
[6:21] Speaker 4: Bread and all that craziness and when they're very very
[6:24] Speaker 4: very permissive row for for engaging anybody that wanted to dance.
[6:29] Speaker 4: But anyway, yeah, so yeah, I grew up mostly here
[6:31] Speaker 4: in Hawaii and then found out about this thing like
[6:34] Speaker 4: my junior senior year of high school. But the nav
[6:36] Speaker 4: overs are officer training corps that they provide like full scholarships,
[6:40] Speaker 4: you know, and then you give back. So it was
[6:41] Speaker 4: kind of already planning on going the rains anyway, so
[6:43] Speaker 4: I was able to was able to land one of those, uh,
[6:46] Speaker 4: and like I saw everybody, and I think it's a
[6:49] Speaker 4: lot of it is when you come out of Hawaii,
[6:51] Speaker 4: like you're in that uh you're kind of geographically lumped
[6:54] Speaker 4: with the kids that are applying for those scholarships from
[6:56] Speaker 4: like here, Okinawa, Guamart.
[6:57] Speaker 2: So it's not super competitive, right, Like there's not a
[6:59] Speaker 2: lot of people.
[7:01] Speaker 4: And plus it was like in the mid nineties, like
[7:02] Speaker 4: no one you know, was going to the military at
[7:04] Speaker 4: that time, and they think they're gonna make like a
[7:06] Speaker 4: million dollars in like the dot com boom or whatever.
[7:09] Speaker 4: So timing worked out. Will got the scholarship, went to
[7:12] Speaker 4: University of San Diego, which also did not suck, and
[7:15] Speaker 4: then got commissioned out of there as an amster guy.
[7:18] Speaker 2: Awesome.
[7:19] Speaker 1: And so what do you have to go to like
[7:22] Speaker 1: the U is there like a basic infantry course that
[7:25] Speaker 1: they put the officers through.
[7:27] Speaker 4: Yeah, so we go, uh to go Oscer candidate school
[7:30] Speaker 4: and then all Marines, regardless of MS, all officers go
[7:33] Speaker 4: to the basic school. And then after the basic school
[7:35] Speaker 4: you go to Infantry Officers Course, which is a really
[7:37] Speaker 4: really great course. And we actually started just the way
[7:40] Speaker 4: mine worked out, like we we actually started ioc M
[7:43] Speaker 4: Stry Opsters course before we were even had graduated TVs,
[7:47] Speaker 4: so we were kind of doing both there for a
[7:49] Speaker 4: few weeks and then transitioned in. But yeah, that was
[7:52] Speaker 4: a great experience. I mean I think, you know, the
[7:53] Speaker 4: training budget for that course is probably equivalent to like
[7:57] Speaker 4: what most victory unit, like what most line battalions would
[7:59] Speaker 4: get for like a year when it comes to like
[8:00] Speaker 4: AMMO and all that. So but they you know, they
[8:03] Speaker 4: really stressed like all the it's it's like graduate level
[8:07] Speaker 4: kind of you know, mind arm stuff. So yeah, it
[8:09] Speaker 4: was it was great. Yeah, demanding, like super physically demanding,
[8:12] Speaker 4: but good. Yeah, and what year was that that you
[8:15] Speaker 4: went through the course in two thousand. So I got
[8:17] Speaker 4: commissioned in two thousand. I went to IOC in the
[8:20] Speaker 4: summer of two thousand and one.
[8:21] Speaker 1: By the time I finished up my okay, man, so
[8:24] Speaker 1: you're coming right into it when nine to eleven happens.
[8:27] Speaker 4: Yeah, So I was actually on leave out here in
[8:29] Speaker 4: Hawaii surfing, hanging out, having a great time after IOC
[8:34] Speaker 4: and before I had actually chucked into one seven into
[8:36] Speaker 4: first time the seventh Brain.
[8:38] Speaker 2: So it was on my like post IOC leave when
[8:41] Speaker 2: it hit. And then you know, then I couldn't fly
[8:42] Speaker 2: out of.
[8:43] Speaker 4: Here because like all the air traffic ship down, so
[8:44] Speaker 4: I had to actually you know big my exo to
[8:47] Speaker 4: like extend my leave before I could report in. But
[8:50] Speaker 4: finally that, yeah, that happened. Then we went and then
[8:52] Speaker 4: you know, I showed up there. We went to the
[8:53] Speaker 4: It was in twenty I Palms, Californias were one seven,
[8:56] Speaker 4: so you know, just south of Ford Durban there like
[8:58] Speaker 4: in out in the desert in the hobby, a great
[9:01] Speaker 4: place to train.
[9:01] Speaker 2: So like that's all we did.
[9:02] Speaker 4: You know, Like I was joking, like I had a
[9:05] Speaker 4: house in twenty m Palms, but I should have just
[9:07] Speaker 4: had like my mail forwarded out to the field like
[9:09] Speaker 4: Rainbow Canyon, because like we were always always in the field,
[9:13] Speaker 4: which was great, so you can do all kinds of
[9:14] Speaker 4: crazy combined arms stuff out there, which we actually used,
[9:17] Speaker 4: you know during during a wife wondering the invasion, and
[9:20] Speaker 4: we were kind of a more conventional fight there.
[9:22] Speaker 2: For for a few weeks a few months, so that
[9:26] Speaker 2: was good.
[9:26] Speaker 4: And then yeah, so we did the combined arms exercise stuff,
[9:28] Speaker 4: did all that, and then we went on in early
[9:30] Speaker 4: two thousand and two, we went on a unit deployment
[9:32] Speaker 4: program uh to Okinawa and then you know, Korea, some
[9:36] Speaker 4: some of the guys went to Thailand everywhere else and
[9:39] Speaker 4: that was that was great because by the time we
[9:40] Speaker 4: got back, you know, we had just enough kind of
[9:43] Speaker 4: time to you know, clean weapons, do all your admin
[9:46] Speaker 4: and stuff, and then we were then we pumped back
[9:47] Speaker 4: out to Kuwait to wait for the invasion like in
[9:50] Speaker 4: January of three or something. So we had a really
[9:52] Speaker 4: tight cohesive unit. You know that that battalion had been
[9:55] Speaker 4: working together for you about a year and a half
[9:58] Speaker 4: pretty straight, with like the same folks like kind of
[10:01] Speaker 4: in the same billets and everything.
[10:02] Speaker 2: So that was that was really good.
[10:04] Speaker 4: And that's when I I bumped up from a rifle
[10:07] Speaker 4: platoon up to be the com Mine Arms Anti tank
[10:11] Speaker 4: plating commander, so the cat patoon commander, which is you know,
[10:14] Speaker 4: essentially it's eight gun trucks a mix of toe missiles
[10:18] Speaker 4: and heavy machine guns to fifty thousand Mark nineteens, which
[10:21] Speaker 4: was probably the best job in the Marine Corps when
[10:24] Speaker 4: we actually when the invasion kicked off because again operating
[10:26] Speaker 4: well forward the battalion again not a lot of adult
[10:29] Speaker 4: supervision promissive roe uh you know, and lots of lots
[10:35] Speaker 4: of heavy you know, we were heavily armed. So that
[10:37] Speaker 4: was and we were actually you know, like fighting like
[10:39] Speaker 4: our first the very first day of the war kicks
[10:42] Speaker 4: off and we were tasked with basically seizing this this
[10:46] Speaker 4: gas oil separation platform down in as of i Are,
[10:48] Speaker 4: which is like right west of Boswara, so like southern Iraq,
[10:51] Speaker 4: they were, they were where they're gonna sabotage it, kind
[10:52] Speaker 4: of like they did back you know, ninety one.
[10:54] Speaker 2: So we go rolling in there and you.
[10:56] Speaker 4: Know, we were actually like it was the Iraqi first
[11:00] Speaker 4: mechanized division, so it was like you know, shooting dudes
[11:02] Speaker 4: were actually wearing camis.
[11:03] Speaker 2: And yeah, yeah, and there's.
[11:04] Speaker 4: Tanks and ship out there, so like it was you know,
[11:06] Speaker 4: it's kind of like what everything in my Marine Corps
[11:09] Speaker 4: training and stuff had prepared me for for like real
[11:11] Speaker 4: conventional combined.
[11:12] Speaker 2: Arms war like actually kind of happened. You know.
[11:15] Speaker 4: They was like no no plan survives first contact, and
[11:17] Speaker 4: it's like that one kind of did you know for
[11:19] Speaker 4: like the first day or so, which was which was
[11:22] Speaker 4: pretty kind of I think shocked us all, but it
[11:25] Speaker 4: was good, you know, it felt prepared.
[11:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, so I mean, let's just roll right into it. Then,
[11:29] Speaker 1: I mean, what was it like rolling up on this
[11:31] Speaker 1: gas terminal and having to take it over and you're
[11:33] Speaker 1: a it's still a young officer, first first taste of combat.
[11:40] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[11:40] Speaker 4: So we were literally and my cap tune you were
[11:43] Speaker 4: kind of like a kind of double as like a
[11:44] Speaker 4: motorized reconnaissance people. But so we were literally like the
[11:46] Speaker 4: lead element of like the entire division as we were
[11:49] Speaker 4: heading up there, and I remember like the harriers were
[11:53] Speaker 4: supposed to do a fly by and tell us if
[11:55] Speaker 4: like some of the burnoff flares were still if they
[11:58] Speaker 4: could see him or not, because they were worried if
[12:00] Speaker 4: they were turned off. That meant, hey, they're going to
[12:01] Speaker 4: blow this thing, you know as we go through or whatever.
[12:04] Speaker 4: And I think they were turned off, but it was
[12:06] Speaker 4: just like, well, shit, we got to go anyway and
[12:09] Speaker 4: do it, you know.
[12:09] Speaker 2: You know, I don't even know if.
[12:10] Speaker 4: We ever got the word actually I'm trying to if
[12:12] Speaker 4: we even knew what they saw. But we rolled up there.
[12:15] Speaker 4: But the funniest thing in the Ox character in the book,
[12:18] Speaker 4: which we'll talk about later, he's partially based on my
[12:22] Speaker 4: gunner that was in my truck, who was just an
[12:23] Speaker 4: absolute like surgeon with all heavy machine guns.
[12:26] Speaker 2: Right.
[12:27] Speaker 4: But we had spent months for prepping for this, where
[12:29] Speaker 4: we had like oil engineers in California and some down
[12:32] Speaker 4: in Kuwait, some of the British guys and stuff they
[12:34] Speaker 4: had built, you know, their company had built like that
[12:36] Speaker 4: that gasol separation platform sixty years before or whatever, and
[12:40] Speaker 4: so they had given us all these lectures like, hey,
[12:42] Speaker 4: whatever you do, there's this one feeder pipe that's about
[12:45] Speaker 4: you know, eight ten inches in diameter, you know, sits
[12:47] Speaker 4: maybe like four feet off the ground. Like you can
[12:49] Speaker 4: shoot a lot of this stuff. Do not shoot that,
[12:51] Speaker 4: do not shoot that. So what happens literally very first
[12:55] Speaker 4: rounds of the war. We see a kind of a
[12:57] Speaker 4: late model like Toto land cruiser leave like the facility,
[13:01] Speaker 4: and then they see us and you turn it. Obviously
[13:02] Speaker 4: it's regime dudes, right, like they're the only ones that
[13:04] Speaker 4: are drive around and in late model cruisers.
[13:07] Speaker 2: So you know, I'm tapping my my.
[13:09] Speaker 4: Gunner on the lake he and he lights them up
[13:11] Speaker 4: and with the mark nineteen but one of the forty
[13:13] Speaker 4: microant names. We got so close to it that it
[13:17] Speaker 4: like hit the back bumper, takes a hard right turn
[13:20] Speaker 4: like ninety degrees almost and what does it hit that
[13:22] Speaker 4: tiny assi little feeder line and I mean it was
[13:24] Speaker 4: like a mushroom cloud.
[13:25] Speaker 2: Like you know, went up. So I hear over tie intact.
[13:28] Speaker 4: They're like, oh, you know cat Red, that was called
[13:30] Speaker 4: cat Red's gone, Like you know they just got smoked
[13:32] Speaker 4: by by by like a seventy two or something. They didn't,
[13:37] Speaker 4: you know, it was crazy. So yeah, literally we had
[13:40] Speaker 4: one job like do not shoot that thing. And then
[13:42] Speaker 4: very very first burst of the round takes out that
[13:44] Speaker 4: the feeder line. So that was a good, good, uh
[13:47] Speaker 4: inauspicious start to the war for US man. But he
[13:51] Speaker 4: did dump but bear my gunner. He did dump those
[13:53] Speaker 4: guys in the in the land cruiser though, so that
[13:55] Speaker 4: was that was a win.
[13:56] Speaker 2: And so you firm pills.
[13:58] Speaker 1: The you guys did see that that gas terminal, and
[14:01] Speaker 1: then you're like waiting for follow on for since I guess.
[14:04] Speaker 4: Yeah, we did it, so and then we kind of
[14:06] Speaker 4: pushed through like the talent of Azibare, which is not
[14:09] Speaker 4: real big, but there's like a bath party, like you know,
[14:12] Speaker 4: substation head you know, suborting headquarters and stuff down there.
[14:15] Speaker 4: Took all that, and then the next day we've been
[14:19] Speaker 4: kind of in a bunch of gunfights in the like
[14:20] Speaker 4: in the built up area of it, which again it's
[14:22] Speaker 4: not it's not like a huge metropolis or anything. It's
[14:24] Speaker 4: like way on the outskirts of Basara, but there's like
[14:26] Speaker 4: you know, the kind of mid rise apartment buildings and
[14:28] Speaker 4: stuff like fighting through all that. That was the first time,
[14:31] Speaker 4: like so I guess it was the second day of
[14:32] Speaker 4: the war. It was the first time we saw like
[14:34] Speaker 4: the quote unquote Saddam Fedayen guys like in their in
[14:36] Speaker 4: their black Jammi's out there because mostly up into that,
[14:39] Speaker 4: you know, that whole first day it was dudes that
[14:41] Speaker 4: were still like in there. They weren't cammis that were
[14:43] Speaker 4: like the green Satine, you know, the racking army guys.
[14:46] Speaker 1: Yeah, the conscripts.
[14:47] Speaker 2: Right.
[14:47] Speaker 4: But so the first day we had someone in city
[14:49] Speaker 4: shooting at us, I guess was like the second day
[14:51] Speaker 4: of the war as we pushed through there. But then yeah,
[14:53] Speaker 4: so we seized it and we see we we pushed
[14:55] Speaker 4: out to kind of our limit of advance, and then
[14:56] Speaker 4: the Brits came with I guess with the chie and tanks.
[15:00] Speaker 4: It was like one of their armored units came through
[15:03] Speaker 4: did afford passes of lines with us, and then they
[15:05] Speaker 4: rolled all the way into Basara, which you know, as
[15:07] Speaker 4: you guys know, they kind of stayed there for the duration.
[15:09] Speaker 4: So and then uh yeah, and then we just went
[15:12] Speaker 4: back out to Route one and headed north all the
[15:16] Speaker 4: way to beg.
[15:16] Speaker 1: Dad, wowst couple of weeks. What was uh what was
[15:19] Speaker 1: that trip like? And also how did you guys, like logistically,
[15:24] Speaker 1: how is this done? You know, did you guys have
[15:27] Speaker 1: to did they set up like fuel? I'm just kind
[15:29] Speaker 1: of curious on my own mind how you guys all that.
[15:32] Speaker 4: Like full matt max like our logos, you know, good
[15:36] Speaker 4: on them, because like you know, they were jacking like Iraqi,
[15:39] Speaker 4: like civilian fuel tankers and stuff like that. Yeah, just
[15:44] Speaker 4: anything to get their hands on. And honestly, I don't know,
[15:46] Speaker 4: like you know, we didn't.
[15:47] Speaker 2: We never.
[15:47] Speaker 4: We always were able to get more fuel, and we
[15:50] Speaker 4: had like it was kind of bever the hillbilly style.
[15:52] Speaker 4: We had all, you know, all the stuff stacked on
[15:54] Speaker 4: top of all the jerry cans, but not so we
[15:55] Speaker 4: had a lot kind of carry organically. But when I
[15:58] Speaker 4: when I think back at that and think about like
[16:00] Speaker 4: the kind of the time distance, like how much you know,
[16:03] Speaker 4: ground we were recovered and stuff, you know, we obviously
[16:06] Speaker 4: re upped on on fuel and AMMO and they always
[16:08] Speaker 4: got it to us.
[16:09] Speaker 2: I remember one time this was probably even.
[16:12] Speaker 4: I think it was like north of nazarea, northwestern Nazurea
[16:16] Speaker 4: and like CE one thirties, like landing on like you know,
[16:19] Speaker 4: dirt strips and stuff and just kicking out palettes of
[16:23] Speaker 4: of gear and stuff in the back. And recently so yeah,
[16:26] Speaker 4: hats off to the to the lug folks that that
[16:28] Speaker 4: made that happen, because I don't I don't remember us
[16:30] Speaker 4: ever really being short of anything all the way up
[16:35] Speaker 4: until except for maybe I think my eighty ones guys
[16:38] Speaker 4: like the mortar rounds and stuff. I think that may
[16:40] Speaker 4: have been like one of the few things that some
[16:42] Speaker 4: of them ran out of.
[16:43] Speaker 2: But yeah, so yeah, it was.
[16:46] Speaker 4: It was kind of like an ad hoc. A lot
[16:47] Speaker 4: of this stuff was on the fly, a lot of
[16:49] Speaker 4: it was kind of behind the green door. As far
[16:50] Speaker 4: as I was concerned, I really know, it's all magic
[16:53] Speaker 4: how they were making it, how they're making it work.
[16:55] Speaker 2: But but they did. Yeah, so it was.
[17:00] Speaker 1: Did you guys get ambushed or anything on the way
[17:02] Speaker 1: up the bag dead?
[17:03] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, I would say, you know, probably almost
[17:05] Speaker 2: every day.
[17:06] Speaker 4: I think there was. There was something some sort of
[17:08] Speaker 4: drama because again, we were pushed way ahead of our
[17:10] Speaker 4: battalion because they were all in tracks right, so like
[17:14] Speaker 4: in the AVS, so US and Humbies are going way
[17:17] Speaker 4: faster to the point where like even some of the
[17:20] Speaker 4: stuff that I had never thought I would, you know,
[17:22] Speaker 4: doing like field expedient like HF com shots to talk
[17:25] Speaker 4: back doing that stuff, because we were like so far
[17:28] Speaker 4: ahead of like where of where the battalion you know,
[17:32] Speaker 4: they just could keep up. But yeah, yeah, so there
[17:36] Speaker 4: was I would say, maybe not daily, but like quite
[17:39] Speaker 4: a few on the way up there, and then we
[17:40] Speaker 4: hit the big Schamal came through when we were still
[17:44] Speaker 4: well south of Baghdad, that big sandstorm. They kind of
[17:47] Speaker 4: ground everything down for about a day, for about twenty
[17:50] Speaker 4: four hours, and that was really eerie because it's like,
[17:53] Speaker 4: I mean, you couldn't you could barely see like two
[17:55] Speaker 4: feet out of the truck at that point, and uh,
[17:58] Speaker 4: just kind of waiting like when this thing clears, like
[18:01] Speaker 4: you know, we're gonna have like a wall of Special
[18:04] Speaker 4: Republican Guard guys like right in front of us, or
[18:07] Speaker 4: you know, how is this kind of Unfortunately we didn't
[18:10] Speaker 4: know it affected them as well, So we went.
[18:13] Speaker 2: On pushed all the way up and then right when
[18:15] Speaker 2: we got to the Dialla River there.
[18:16] Speaker 4: On the south side of Baghdad, that's when things really
[18:19] Speaker 4: started kind of heating up. So again kind of it
[18:23] Speaker 4: was still kind of like a combined arms fight at
[18:25] Speaker 4: that point, like we had a like a frog like
[18:28] Speaker 4: the free range over ground missile come like tombe lean
[18:30] Speaker 4: through the did the Iraqi shot at us like you know,
[18:33] Speaker 4: mortar rounds everything. We were still calling in artillery on
[18:37] Speaker 4: positions and stuff. So it was it was kind of
[18:40] Speaker 4: you know what my being trained is, like that's my
[18:42] Speaker 4: concept of like what combined arms war looks like.
[18:44] Speaker 2: That that actually happened all the way until we got inside.
[18:46] Speaker 4: Baghdad in like that first week of April or whatever,
[18:49] Speaker 4: and then it became kind of more of like a
[18:52] Speaker 4: heavy policing action.
[18:54] Speaker 1: What happened that day that you guys hit Bagdad And
[18:57] Speaker 1: what was the plan if any?
[19:00] Speaker 4: You know, so, like looking back and I'm trying to remember,
[19:03] Speaker 4: I know we were supposed to seize Uh we got
[19:05] Speaker 4: to Tarika Ziz's house and literally must have just barely
[19:09] Speaker 4: barely missed that basterard because like I mean I remember
[19:12] Speaker 4: like there was still like you know, food that was
[19:14] Speaker 4: not heading like maggots or or anything. Like he had
[19:18] Speaker 4: just left right Yeah, his his collection of like soft
[19:22] Speaker 4: porn DVD still scattered across the thing. But uh yeah,
[19:25] Speaker 4: so we we hit that house that like there was
[19:27] Speaker 4: that that neighborhood there on the Tigris where a lot
[19:29] Speaker 4: of the regime heavies lived, and that was kind of
[19:31] Speaker 4: our first objective. But then we pushed past that into
[19:35] Speaker 4: uh where Baghdad University was, and then that's right along
[19:39] Speaker 4: the river there you know, it goes over like as
[19:41] Speaker 4: if you're going out towards the airport, towards Bagdad.
[19:44] Speaker 2: International And yeah, that was hilarious.
[19:47] Speaker 4: Ones we got we got ambushed on that on that
[19:50] Speaker 4: going over that bridge, and then the guys at ambush
[19:53] Speaker 4: just jumped into like a houseboat.
[19:55] Speaker 2: On the river.
[19:55] Speaker 4: So it's not like a cigarette bat or somewhere they
[19:57] Speaker 4: can speed away, So you know, it's just like not
[20:01] Speaker 4: a good.
[20:01] Speaker 2: Plan on their parts.
[20:02] Speaker 4: So those dudes ate a bunch of forty mic mic
[20:05] Speaker 4: and then we had a detachment from first tanks with us.
[20:09] Speaker 2: You know, and the m ones that like those guys
[20:11] Speaker 2: killed more raggis and cancer. Like those first couple of
[20:14] Speaker 2: days in Baghdad, there was Dagnava University had this big
[20:17] Speaker 2: it was probably like fifteen story I guess it was
[20:20] Speaker 2: dorms essentially, you know, like or some sort some sort
[20:22] Speaker 2: of maybe administrative building or something. But it was like
[20:24] Speaker 2: a one of the taller buildings in Baghdad, at least
[20:27] Speaker 2: in that section of the city. And uh, you know
[20:29] Speaker 2: it's guys again like not a good plan, but you know,
[20:33] Speaker 2: shooting you know, light machine guns and small arms from
[20:36] Speaker 2: like the fifteenth floor down to where the ones would
[20:39] Speaker 2: just roll up to the bottom, like stalling grad style,
[20:41] Speaker 2: raised the main gun and just put like in pact
[20:43] Speaker 2: rounds right, you know, right through it.
[20:44] Speaker 4: So but all that calmed down, I would say within
[20:47] Speaker 4: about two or three days. And again this was still
[20:51] Speaker 4: all the peace love, you know, yanking down the statues.
[20:53] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[20:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the Shia folks coming out.
[20:56] Speaker 1: These are like legit you know, Saddam regime that are
[21:00] Speaker 1: fighting you at this point.
[21:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. So that was.
[21:05] Speaker 4: Yeah, we had people coming up thanking us all the time,
[21:07] Speaker 4: like in the streets and then you know, and then
[21:11] Speaker 4: those were kind of were out that welcome. But uh
[21:13] Speaker 4: but yeah, so for the first few days and then
[21:15] Speaker 4: and then I would say I think it was maybe
[21:17] Speaker 4: like the end of that first week is when like
[21:19] Speaker 4: all the real heavy looting started, right.
[21:21] Speaker 2: Yeah. So again that was to include.
[21:24] Speaker 4: That that bank that was kind of an ar Zona
[21:26] Speaker 4: responsibility there and social Bagdad that got hit.
[21:28] Speaker 1: The museum was the one that captured the media's attention.
[21:32] Speaker 1: I remember the like Iraqi National Museum getting looted.
[21:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it.
[21:37] Speaker 4: Was crazy with TV and the like the logistical capability
[21:41] Speaker 4: of those guys to loot that stuff was like super
[21:43] Speaker 4: I mean it made that like la riots looked like,
[21:46] Speaker 4: you know nothing like how it was almost like NASCAR
[21:48] Speaker 4: pit crew style, like come in and just strip a
[21:50] Speaker 4: place completely to include like the light switches and the wiring.
[21:55] Speaker 1: Poverty will do that. Yeah, poverty will do that for
[21:58] Speaker 1: those folks. So yeah, tell us about the bank robbery.
[22:02] Speaker 4: Yeah, so we were, like I said, it was kind
[22:04] Speaker 4: of every day there for about a week or two
[22:08] Speaker 4: weeks kind of after everything settled down to Baghdad. It
[22:10] Speaker 4: was like every day was kind of a bad day
[22:11] Speaker 4: of cops, Like you just didn't know what was gonna happen.
[22:14] Speaker 4: So we had teamed up with these Iraqi policemen that
[22:18] Speaker 4: I think Captain Omnied was his name, and then two
[22:20] Speaker 4: of his subordinates and of course you know, never fitted
[22:23] Speaker 4: these guys.
[22:23] Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's I was gonna. I was gonna ask
[22:25] Speaker 1: that that just like came together organically, like you bumped
[22:28] Speaker 1: them in the streets, like hey, bro.
[22:30] Speaker 4: Literally bumped into him in the streets. And then they
[22:33] Speaker 4: asked us. They're like, hey, we knew, you know, basically
[22:35] Speaker 4: we got some there's some broken in. We didn't have
[22:38] Speaker 4: any terps with us nothing, so like, but the their
[22:41] Speaker 4: head guy.
[22:42] Speaker 2: The captain kind of uh, you know, had some functional English.
[22:46] Speaker 4: So he's like, you know, a lot of drama going
[22:48] Speaker 4: down here, we just don't really have the ass to
[22:50] Speaker 4: like get after it. Will you guys help us because
[22:53] Speaker 4: people being victimized, like well, you know, like a bunch
[22:55] Speaker 4: of people settling blood feuds and the looting and everything else.
[22:58] Speaker 4: We're like, yeah, man, you know, got nothing else on,
[23:01] Speaker 4: you know, on the schedule, Like we're just kind of
[23:02] Speaker 4: patrolling indefinitely, so like, let's do this. So we teamed
[23:05] Speaker 4: up with those guys and they included us into a
[23:07] Speaker 4: few a few things, and then I think it was
[23:10] Speaker 4: actually the day after we kind of lost contact with them,
[23:13] Speaker 4: is we were patrolling by this this bank there, uh,
[23:17] Speaker 4: kind of like an essentral Baghdad and all kinds of chaos,
[23:21] Speaker 4: people screaming, you know, you could see, could smell smoke
[23:24] Speaker 4: and fires and stuff or whatever, and these dudes had
[23:26] Speaker 4: tried to breach the bank with RPGs to get in
[23:29] Speaker 4: and I don't think they ever actually got into the
[23:31] Speaker 4: vault or whatever, but you know, getting a gunfight there,
[23:34] Speaker 4: shooting those guys chasing them away, and that was just
[23:39] Speaker 4: kind of the first time where it really clicked in
[23:41] Speaker 4: my mind of like, wow, you know, the combat zones
[23:44] Speaker 4: are super fertile ground for for crime all kinds.
[23:49] Speaker 2: Uh.
[23:49] Speaker 4: And then that was you know, so later on, you know,
[23:51] Speaker 4: writing writing back Dad Shuffle, that that bank robbery with
[23:58] Speaker 4: some of the cash that the regime was not able
[23:59] Speaker 4: to like out of the country in time, and how
[24:02] Speaker 4: that would inspire a lot of guys to go to
[24:04] Speaker 4: some pretty extreme measures, you know, to get their hands
[24:07] Speaker 4: on that.
[24:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, yeah, breaching a bank with RPGs, you know,
[24:14] Speaker 1: as one does.
[24:18] Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah, it was wild, you know, that was And
[24:21] Speaker 2: that was another one.
[24:22] Speaker 5: And again, like the the photo on the cover of
[24:25] Speaker 5: Baghdad Shuffle, I think was it was either that day
[24:28] Speaker 5: of the bank or maybe right after when we had
[24:30] Speaker 5: like yanked down some of those guys that we thought
[24:33] Speaker 5: may have been responsible for the ones that are sitting
[24:35] Speaker 5: FLEXI cuffed in the back.
[24:37] Speaker 2: But uh.
[24:37] Speaker 4: And then when I really when I look at that,
[24:39] Speaker 4: I think about like, like I had a nine mil
[24:42] Speaker 4: you know, I forgot about that, Like going back, I
[24:44] Speaker 4: didn't even have a rifle like going I mean, of
[24:46] Speaker 4: course we had heavy guns on the truck and stuff,
[24:48] Speaker 4: and there I'm running through the streets of Baghdad with
[24:49] Speaker 4: the Niner, just with guys they're going up against dudes
[24:53] Speaker 4: with the RPGs and stuff. But yeah, you know, it's
[24:56] Speaker 4: just things that you don't think about at the time.
[24:58] Speaker 1: They just didn't have enough rifle to go around, you know,
[25:01] Speaker 1: we must have.
[25:02] Speaker 4: I don't honestly to this day, Like I know, I
[25:04] Speaker 4: think I think what had happened was I ended up
[25:07] Speaker 4: using our Ford observer. He was artillery. He was actually
[25:11] Speaker 4: still a PFC. I think he had just come from
[25:13] Speaker 4: like it was still you know, shitting camp Pilton Chot
[25:15] Speaker 4: when he joined us like in country, and he was
[25:19] Speaker 4: our Ford observer and he had the NAM sixteen. So
[25:22] Speaker 4: I just was way before you know, Lyne the the
[25:26] Speaker 4: victis rein issued in force. So we had the M
[25:29] Speaker 4: sixteen in the truck. And of course, like the mount
[25:31] Speaker 4: is weird, like it's kind of cumbersommer or whatever. So
[25:33] Speaker 4: I did keep that one on my side on the
[25:35] Speaker 4: passenger side sometimes, and I used that a few I
[25:38] Speaker 4: used his rifle a few times. But yeah, I guess
[25:41] Speaker 4: just because like the vehicle commanders got you know, issued
[25:44] Speaker 4: the nine mil and so.
[25:45] Speaker 2: Yeah that was.
[25:48] Speaker 4: Yeah, so we I'm sure We had the rifles available,
[25:50] Speaker 4: but for whatever reason, for like logistically of like stacking
[25:52] Speaker 4: them in the truck and everything, or thinking I wasn't
[25:54] Speaker 4: going to be like engaged outside the vehicle as much,
[25:58] Speaker 4: which you know in this downtown Dad, you're out of
[26:01] Speaker 4: it quite a bit.
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[27:35] Speaker 1: Hey, guys, I'm Jack Murphy here at the teamhouse, and
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[29:07] Speaker 1: Thank you everyone. You talked a little bit about how
[29:11] Speaker 1: you know once we removed the Saddam regime, it was
[29:14] Speaker 1: like this entire criminal element kind of comes bubbling up.
[29:18] Speaker 1: What was you know the next you know, a couple
[29:21] Speaker 1: of weeks like for you in your platoon.
[29:24] Speaker 2: Really chaotic, really chaotic. So we had kind of.
[29:27] Speaker 4: We were housed up in this like like then like
[29:30] Speaker 4: a country club I guess for like the Senior Baptists
[29:33] Speaker 4: right there on the river, you know, kind of a
[29:34] Speaker 4: guggy place. I mean obviously had no power or anything.
[29:36] Speaker 4: It had been a lot of it had been.
[29:38] Speaker 1: Like streamed swimming pools and stuff.
[29:40] Speaker 2: Did have.
[29:40] Speaker 4: Yeah, I had, In fact, I had a big drained
[29:43] Speaker 4: swimming pool. It was kind of that was like indoor
[29:46] Speaker 4: that I remember. The like our Human Exploitation team guys
[29:50] Speaker 4: that were assigned to us, they used that. It was
[29:53] Speaker 4: kind of like Bond Villain style. They had some like
[29:55] Speaker 4: creeky lights set up and then deep into the pool
[29:57] Speaker 4: and they would use that. That's what they would interrogate
[29:58] Speaker 4: guys in there. So anytime we go snatch batties off
[30:02] Speaker 4: the street and like toss them in there, they go
[30:04] Speaker 4: spend some time in the deep into the pool, getting
[30:06] Speaker 4: getting sweated. But yeah, so were we were huge up there,
[30:09] Speaker 4: and we were really kind of like waiting on word.
[30:11] Speaker 4: I mean, you know, the general thing was like, hey,
[30:13] Speaker 4: make sure that like just try to keep the violence
[30:15] Speaker 4: to a minimum, like, don't let these people shoot each other,
[30:17] Speaker 4: try to try to keep the looting under control as
[30:19] Speaker 4: much as possible. They were still trying to kind of
[30:23] Speaker 4: wrangle a few. This was before the CPA, right, so
[30:26] Speaker 4: there was no depathification order or anything like that, So
[30:31] Speaker 4: we were still trying to find guys you know that
[30:32] Speaker 4: we could use, like hey, you know, you guys have
[30:34] Speaker 4: got the kind of the professional background and potentially a
[30:37] Speaker 4: little bit of WASTA left with whoever might be remaining
[30:40] Speaker 4: to try to get them to cooperate with us, just
[30:42] Speaker 4: to try to keep the civil unrest like in check.
[30:45] Speaker 4: But really, you know, at that time, being you know,
[30:47] Speaker 4: first lieutendant, like captain commander, a lot of that, a
[30:50] Speaker 4: lot of like the big decisions on like how that
[30:52] Speaker 4: was going to proceed were way way above above my
[30:56] Speaker 4: pay grade at that point, so it was man, they
[30:59] Speaker 4: just ye had just like go out and patrol our
[31:02] Speaker 4: little sector of the city, which changed quite a bit,
[31:04] Speaker 4: and then you know, trying not to try not to
[31:07] Speaker 4: let them kill each other or you know, commit too
[31:10] Speaker 4: many acts of major criminal violence. So that was that
[31:14] Speaker 4: was the gig there for a while. Uh actually for
[31:17] Speaker 4: the rest of our time in Baghdad before we got
[31:19] Speaker 4: reassigned down down south to Nishav But yeah, it was
[31:22] Speaker 4: it was. It was wild. It was, like I said,
[31:25] Speaker 4: we for a few days we were we were teamed
[31:29] Speaker 4: up with those with some of the bag Dad policemen.
[31:32] Speaker 4: But then they kind of just, you know, disappeared. I'm
[31:34] Speaker 4: sure a lot of those guys. A couple of them
[31:36] Speaker 4: were probably regime affiliated dudes that saw the writing on
[31:39] Speaker 4: the wall. You gotta get fill out of here, Yeah, exactly,
[31:41] Speaker 4: So they all kind of dissolved away. And yeah, and
[31:45] Speaker 4: then at that point we were just again it was
[31:47] Speaker 4: just kind of like patrol and definitely and try to
[31:49] Speaker 4: figure it out. Although I do remember, and I've asked,
[31:53] Speaker 4: I've asked my former company commander who's now a general
[31:56] Speaker 4: officer in the Marine Corps about this, and he doesn't
[31:58] Speaker 4: remember this.
[31:58] Speaker 2: So again, maybe it didn't happen.
[32:00] Speaker 4: But I swear to God when we were brought back
[32:02] Speaker 4: in one time too, we'd just come back from a patrol.
[32:05] Speaker 4: We brought the vehicles back into that little the Baptist
[32:08] Speaker 4: country club place where we were hooched up, and he said, hey,
[32:12] Speaker 4: we just got like a frag out to get ready
[32:14] Speaker 4: to move on to Syria.
[32:16] Speaker 2: Like going all the way to Damascus.
[32:17] Speaker 4: We're like, holy shit, like like we just got here
[32:22] Speaker 4: and now we really are kind of running out of
[32:23] Speaker 4: here and you know and everything. So it's like that's
[32:26] Speaker 4: gonna be a that's gonna be a tall order. So
[32:29] Speaker 4: and I've had a couple of people confirmed that were there.
[32:31] Speaker 4: They're like, yeah, I remember that, like they literally thought
[32:34] Speaker 4: that there. You know, there was a frag to hate. Hey,
[32:36] Speaker 4: there was like a warn ord essentially, like be prepared
[32:38] Speaker 4: to crazy to move yeah, to move in to go
[32:42] Speaker 4: you know, head out west and go into Syria.
[32:46] Speaker 2: Obviously that didn't happen.
[32:48] Speaker 4: Uh, And then it kind of turned into you know,
[32:51] Speaker 4: and then there was this kind of like weird loll
[32:52] Speaker 4: I would say, so like the first couple of days.
[32:54] Speaker 2: In Baghdad and be fighting.
[32:55] Speaker 4: Then it kind of transitions with like looting and just
[32:57] Speaker 4: kind of you know, criminal ship everywhere.
[32:59] Speaker 2: And then there was a little bit of a loll
[33:01] Speaker 2: there towards the end where things weren't too bad, I
[33:05] Speaker 2: mean nothing good was happening, but like the actual violence
[33:08] Speaker 2: that kind of subsided, and that was probably when the
[33:09] Speaker 2: last vestage is.
[33:10] Speaker 4: The regime or you know, like we got to get
[33:11] Speaker 4: the hell out of here, and and you know, there
[33:14] Speaker 4: was just less targets opportunity for people that were looking
[33:16] Speaker 4: for some get.
[33:17] Speaker 1: Yeah, and it takes the bad guys some time to
[33:19] Speaker 1: start to organize and plan and all that.
[33:21] Speaker 2: For sure, Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
[33:23] Speaker 4: And then and then about that time, so I guess
[33:25] Speaker 4: this was maybe like late April early May. That's when
[33:28] Speaker 4: we got reassigned down to Nijav, which was like a
[33:30] Speaker 4: whole you know, separate ball of wax with the holiest
[33:33] Speaker 4: city in shiad them and all, you know, kind of
[33:35] Speaker 4: dealing with the fallout of all that. But yeah, so
[33:39] Speaker 4: they went down there and and actually Nashov was supposed
[33:43] Speaker 4: to be kind of the template, right, so we had
[33:46] Speaker 4: spent most of late May and June prepping kind of
[33:51] Speaker 4: the the you know, the the population down there for like, hey,
[33:55] Speaker 4: you guys are gonna have elections in July. This is
[33:57] Speaker 4: gonna be the first you can elect a new Marria.
[33:58] Speaker 4: Because they're been like a Suny guy former is guy
[34:01] Speaker 4: Macaberat dude. That was like the kind of the interim
[34:04] Speaker 4: mayor obviously all the shit, and Najav hated that dude,
[34:06] Speaker 4: and they didn't want to you know, he's got to go.
[34:09] Speaker 4: So Nijav was gonna be the test bed for the
[34:11] Speaker 4: first like democratic elections, you know, free, free and fair
[34:14] Speaker 4: elections in Iraq. And so we literally had marines out
[34:18] Speaker 4: there teaching like you know, civix and one oh one classes,
[34:22] Speaker 4: to the to the population, to the kind of the professional,
[34:24] Speaker 4: to the intelligencia there in Nijaff, most of whom are
[34:27] Speaker 4: like hardcore Iranian aligned like sheio clerics and stuff.
[34:30] Speaker 2: But you know the time that.
[34:32] Speaker 1: You have like some E five who has a college
[34:34] Speaker 1: degree and you're like he's there.
[34:35] Speaker 4: Pointing totally like there, like I'm just to build up
[34:39] Speaker 4: on capital Hill. It was literally like to that degree
[34:42] Speaker 4: of like trying to trying to walk them through that piece,
[34:45] Speaker 4: and it was great. And that was like when Sistani
[34:47] Speaker 4: came back from Iran and like all you know, so
[34:48] Speaker 4: it was just chaos. But then literally, because I still
[34:50] Speaker 4: had it in my little two commander's notebook, I think
[34:52] Speaker 4: it's like July third, two thousand and three, there was
[34:55] Speaker 4: only one notation and He just said, we're fucked because
[34:58] Speaker 4: this guy Mike Geffeler, who was coalition professional authority, you know,
[35:02] Speaker 4: Shia expert or whatever. He flew down from Baghdad to Najaff,
[35:06] Speaker 4: you know, he lived down there and basically told and
[35:08] Speaker 4: we were like two days out the elections were literally
[35:10] Speaker 4: supposed to happen. I think on the fifth or sixth,
[35:12] Speaker 4: like two to three days out from the elections, and
[35:14] Speaker 4: he said, hey, elections are off. We don't know who's
[35:16] Speaker 4: going to win. It's too dangerous. We can't you know,
[35:19] Speaker 4: we can't be promoting some of these guys in positions
[35:21] Speaker 4: of power that we're going to regret down the line,
[35:23] Speaker 4: you know, which was probably true, but it's like, hey, asshole,
[35:25] Speaker 4: like you know, we've spent we've been building these guys
[35:28] Speaker 4: up like for the past you know, month, six weeks. Yeah,
[35:31] Speaker 4: and now two days before the election and he, of
[35:33] Speaker 4: course he just hoops on the burd and he's back
[35:34] Speaker 4: in Baghdad.
[35:35] Speaker 2: We're the ones left hold in.
[35:36] Speaker 4: The back until a pissed off Shia population that like,
[35:39] Speaker 4: oh yeah, I remember that thing we talked about elections,
[35:41] Speaker 4: Like yeah, that's off.
[35:42] Speaker 1: Like remember that democracy thing we talked about yeah, not.
[35:47] Speaker 2: So much, not so much.
[35:49] Speaker 1: How did they respond to that?
[35:52] Speaker 2: Not not great?
[35:53] Speaker 4: You know, great there was because actually nap it was
[35:56] Speaker 4: pretty calm by that point. You know, we were still
[36:00] Speaker 4: doing crazy you know, snatching guys in the middle of
[36:02] Speaker 4: the night and stuff. Some of the duws that we
[36:03] Speaker 4: had like that were actually targeted guys that by that
[36:05] Speaker 4: point we kind of suits some batist guys. There were
[36:10] Speaker 4: some like Vadercore dudes that were acting up there.
[36:13] Speaker 2: They did.
[36:13] Speaker 4: Some of them had actually you know, had immigrated to
[36:16] Speaker 4: Iran and then come back.
[36:19] Speaker 2: And they were kind of getting a little uppity.
[36:22] Speaker 4: But like for the most part it hid, you know,
[36:24] Speaker 4: like the it was not the same level of kind
[36:26] Speaker 4: of like you know, carnage and violence that like Baghdad
[36:29] Speaker 4: had been. Right it started to calm down. But yeah,
[36:32] Speaker 4: things did did not go great down there. And that
[36:34] Speaker 4: was also about the same time, like every Thursday night,
[36:37] Speaker 4: uh Solder would come down from Baghdad to a mosque.
[36:42] Speaker 4: I don't think he was really invited into Najaf proper,
[36:44] Speaker 4: but in al Kufa, which was like the little the little.
[36:47] Speaker 2: Town right next to it, right to the.
[36:49] Speaker 4: East, I think if I remember correctly, there was a
[36:52] Speaker 4: huge mosque there, so he would come down to do
[36:53] Speaker 4: like the Friday sermons like at that mosque essentially, and
[36:58] Speaker 4: so we were you know, tracking him every weekend. And
[37:00] Speaker 4: I still member my buddy Ryan, like who's eighty ones
[37:03] Speaker 4: between commander? But he was out one night, you know,
[37:06] Speaker 4: because this is like all of us we were just
[37:07] Speaker 4: like rolling around in like you know, half civilian garb
[37:10] Speaker 4: and like just these like shitty old dots and pickups
[37:13] Speaker 4: that we had, you know, that were abandoned or whatever.
[37:16] Speaker 2: And like that was kind of the movement.
[37:18] Speaker 4: I mean, like again, a lot of times I had
[37:19] Speaker 4: no no, didn't even have comms battalion, but we just
[37:21] Speaker 4: go out like kind of the scout snipers or some
[37:24] Speaker 4: other guys and go snatch guys like out of the street.
[37:26] Speaker 4: So we actually I was on opswatch back in the
[37:29] Speaker 4: back in the CC one night and my buddy Ryan
[37:32] Speaker 4: and it's like, hey man, we've got Solder dead to
[37:35] Speaker 4: rights right here. My sniper is with me, like he
[37:38] Speaker 4: can take the shot, he's got this. He could actually
[37:40] Speaker 4: see him. He was kind of open courtyard in this
[37:42] Speaker 4: little building, you know. So of course they run that
[37:44] Speaker 4: up the hill, back up to back up to Bagdad down,
[37:47] Speaker 4: like nope, hands off.
[37:50] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[37:52] Speaker 4: So yeah, there was kind of some some exciting moments
[37:54] Speaker 4: like that, but it was, yeah, for the most part,
[37:57] Speaker 4: it was just trying to contain the disappointment of like, hey,
[38:00] Speaker 4: you know, sorry, we told.
[38:03] Speaker 2: You this was going to happen, and now we got
[38:04] Speaker 2: to go back on our promise.
[38:05] Speaker 1: So our bed I mean, najaff I'm probably skipping ahead
[38:10] Speaker 1: a couple of years, but that place did descend into
[38:12] Speaker 1: like total chaos a couple of years down the line.
[38:14] Speaker 2: Big time, big time. Yeah.
[38:16] Speaker 4: Yeah, actually not even that much longer, So that would
[38:19] Speaker 4: have been summer of three and then so you know,
[38:24] Speaker 4: the big battles kicked off like in spring of four,
[38:27] Speaker 4: so like that, it wasn't Yeah, and how much of
[38:30] Speaker 4: that can really be tied back to you know, our
[38:33] Speaker 4: time there causation correlation, you know, who knows, but obviously
[38:38] Speaker 4: it didn't. But it didn't help the fact that we
[38:40] Speaker 4: that we were not able to you know, kind of
[38:42] Speaker 4: come through on our promises for elections. And honestly, by
[38:45] Speaker 4: that point there was you know, the kind of the
[38:48] Speaker 4: the Iranian influence was much heavier in Off by that
[38:51] Speaker 4: by that time as well, So I say, Sostani came back.
[38:54] Speaker 4: That was in like maybe June or something, and then
[38:57] Speaker 4: and like Sata was coming down from bad Dad. So
[38:59] Speaker 4: there was like a lot out of the kind of
[39:00] Speaker 4: the the Shia rivalry piece that was starting to starting
[39:04] Speaker 4: to happen there.
[39:06] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you're right, it's it's impossible to say,
[39:08] Speaker 1: you know, could have, would have, should have. Right, but
[39:11] Speaker 1: if we had a better mobile demobilization or better transition plan,
[39:15] Speaker 1: maybe things didn't have to be quite as bad as
[39:17] Speaker 1: they got.
[39:19] Speaker 2: I'm for sure.
[39:20] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[39:21] Speaker 4: Yeah, or just not make the promise in the first place, right,
[39:23] Speaker 4: just kind of like hey, let's take a knee, everybody,
[39:25] Speaker 4: just we got to calm down and kind of figure
[39:27] Speaker 4: this out.
[39:27] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's going to take us twelve months to get
[39:30] Speaker 1: this ship together.
[39:31] Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. I Mean they're they're extremely you know, culturally
[39:34] Speaker 4: is an extremely patient society. Like you know, they're used
[39:37] Speaker 4: to deprivation and having to wait on stuff all the time.
[39:39] Speaker 2: So like, if you.
[39:41] Speaker 4: Know, I think that probably would have been the wiser
[39:45] Speaker 4: course of action there is to be like, hey, we're
[39:47] Speaker 4: still working on this, let's figure it out. But starting
[39:49] Speaker 4: to make promises like yeah, six weeks, you're gonna have
[39:51] Speaker 4: elections and then you know, and then two days before
[39:53] Speaker 4: the election is selling them not so much.
[39:56] Speaker 2: That's a that that didn't go over well.
[39:59] Speaker 1: Anything else notable happened down there in Najaf that you
[40:03] Speaker 1: want to get into.
[40:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like I say, there was a lot
[40:07] Speaker 2: of Uh.
[40:09] Speaker 4: I just think in contrast of like you know, the
[40:10] Speaker 4: early what like especially that early part off one just
[40:13] Speaker 4: has like such a distinct flavor compared to later on
[40:16] Speaker 4: because like I say, they were still you know, it
[40:18] Speaker 4: was like me the other captain commander, uh, he's got Jimmy,
[40:22] Speaker 4: Like we would literally just every night just be like
[40:24] Speaker 4: talk to the opso like okay, we got a guy
[40:26] Speaker 4: that is suspicious or whatever, like a weapons cash we
[40:29] Speaker 4: got you know, we're gonna go hit and literally just
[40:31] Speaker 4: jump in civilian vehicles and like cruise out and just
[40:34] Speaker 4: go snatch guys. Like I said, like we didn't even
[40:36] Speaker 4: have comms like with with any of the other you know,
[40:39] Speaker 4: with the Batian staff or anything.
[40:40] Speaker 2: We're going out there, and that would have been like unthinkable.
[40:43] Speaker 4: By the end of those three Yeah, you know, like
[40:44] Speaker 4: by the time, so just how quickly like the tactical
[40:47] Speaker 4: environment changed.
[40:48] Speaker 1: It was it was wild like you in your in
[40:51] Speaker 1: your book. I don't know if this part's true, but
[40:53] Speaker 1: doing an assault from the back of a dump truck.
[40:56] Speaker 2: That was absolutely true.
[40:57] Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I still remember the you know they get
[41:02] Speaker 4: the marine we had driven. He was just like wait,
[41:05] Speaker 4: it's like because he's Mexican, right, like Latino guys like well, dude,
[41:09] Speaker 4: you're gonna be You're like our stunt Iraqi Like yeah, yeah, exactly,
[41:14] Speaker 4: you bland right in right. So all the rest of
[41:16] Speaker 4: the Marines and I don't even know where I can't
[41:18] Speaker 4: remember who it was, you know, one of the Lanst
[41:20] Speaker 4: criminals found this like huge dump truck like, hey, we're
[41:23] Speaker 4: going to use this thing.
[41:23] Speaker 2: And it was like, oh.
[41:25] Speaker 4: That's actually like a pretty brilliant plan because you couldn't
[41:28] Speaker 4: the like the walls on the on the dump bed
[41:31] Speaker 4: were high enough to where like marines crouched back there
[41:34] Speaker 4: like you couldn't you know, you couldn't see him. Uh
[41:37] Speaker 4: So then we had, you know, the guy that was
[41:38] Speaker 4: kind of in mofty like driving, and there was this
[41:41] Speaker 4: little we called it Vietnam or that's a mantutem we
[41:44] Speaker 4: did because I couldn't pronounce the name of this like
[41:47] Speaker 4: shitty little village that was like south of nasjav and
[41:50] Speaker 4: it looked you know, it was right on the on
[41:52] Speaker 4: the river there, so it had like a lot of like,
[41:54] Speaker 4: you know, kind of lush date palms. It was very
[41:56] Speaker 4: green actually in start contrast to the rest of southern Iraq.
[42:01] Speaker 4: And we had gotten word there was like a weapons
[42:03] Speaker 4: cash down there, and there was, but I mean again,
[42:05] Speaker 4: it was mostly like you know, old ass infield rifles
[42:07] Speaker 4: and stuff that probably most of the beings just used
[42:10] Speaker 4: for like self protection, you know, from from the carpet
[42:13] Speaker 4: bagger's coming in from the north to the steal those guys.
[42:16] Speaker 2: But it worked.
[42:17] Speaker 4: We got all the way into the village unchallenged, you know,
[42:19] Speaker 4: and they're they're probably thinking like, oh God, like you know,
[42:21] Speaker 4: we're finally getting some some civil reconstruction support or something,
[42:25] Speaker 4: and then you know, a bunch of brains jump out
[42:28] Speaker 4: sick rifles in their face and basically put the zip
[42:31] Speaker 4: ti of the entire village together.
[42:33] Speaker 1: One of my uh this was I think it was
[42:36] Speaker 1: a friend of mine who was in the eighty second
[42:39] Speaker 1: during the invasion or shortly thereafter. Riding that timeframe. They
[42:44] Speaker 1: got a hold of a city bus and they used
[42:48] Speaker 1: that to go and do raids and like get the platoon,
[42:50] Speaker 1: just load them up on the bus. And he told
[42:52] Speaker 1: me the story of one time how there was an
[42:55] Speaker 1: Iraqi waiting at the bus stop, just patiently sitting there waiting,
[42:58] Speaker 1: and they're like, ah, fuck it, why not And they
[43:00] Speaker 1: stop and pick him up and the guy gets on
[43:03] Speaker 1: it like sits down and starts looking around at all
[43:05] Speaker 1: these soldiers. It's like, holy fuck, he shot off and
[43:10] Speaker 1: the first chance he got, he got out of there.
[43:13] Speaker 2: Oh, Man's say, that's great.
[43:14] Speaker 4: Those are the ones, like I say, like, those are
[43:16] Speaker 4: the stories, dude from because after twenty years of what
[43:21] Speaker 4: everybody hears, just like the horror stories of how it
[43:23] Speaker 4: was later, right, you don't realize like how much we
[43:26] Speaker 4: were able to kind of get away, how free reeling
[43:27] Speaker 4: and just kind of chaotic it was in the early
[43:29] Speaker 4: days where you could actually have have shit like that
[43:31] Speaker 4: go down and nobody blink an eye.
[43:33] Speaker 1: And you captured that so well in the book I thought,
[43:36] Speaker 1: actually better than I've probably seen in any other you know,
[43:39] Speaker 1: book or film or anything. Just like the sheer amount
[43:42] Speaker 1: of chaos and mayhem that went down in Iraq in
[43:45] Speaker 1: those early years, and how you're sort of experiencing that
[43:49] Speaker 1: as a platoon leader where it's like, oh, go on
[43:51] Speaker 1: this mission halfway out there. Oh no, actually we need
[43:53] Speaker 1: you to go and do this, and you come back
[43:55] Speaker 1: and you have no idea what the fuck's going on,
[43:57] Speaker 1: And then they'd ask you to go do some other
[43:58] Speaker 1: shit at another far out location mission that just comes
[44:02] Speaker 1: out of nowhere, and you haven't slept in two days.
[44:05] Speaker 1: You're like lightening up your thirtieth cigarette. I mean, yeah,
[44:08] Speaker 1: all of that kind of stuff is like, yeah, I
[44:10] Speaker 1: thought you you really captured that well in the book.
[44:13] Speaker 4: Well I appreciate that, man. Yeah, that's that's great to
[44:15] Speaker 4: hear again. Obviously, you know, it's kind of the again,
[44:17] Speaker 4: it seems a little absurdist almost, just like looking back
[44:21] Speaker 4: twenty five years later or whatever, like looking back on it. Yeah, yeah,
[44:24] Speaker 4: it's like that just doesn't really compute with like kind
[44:26] Speaker 4: of our version of you know, out Iraq or Afghanistan
[44:30] Speaker 4: or any of that played out later on. But it
[44:32] Speaker 4: really was and I think, you know, trying to capture
[44:35] Speaker 4: like the humor of it as well, because I think
[44:37] Speaker 4: that the gallows. You know, my pops had always told
[44:40] Speaker 4: me from day one, he's like, you know, every day
[44:42] Speaker 4: in the Marine corps is not going to be fun,
[44:44] Speaker 4: but most of them are funny, especially especially in combat
[44:47] Speaker 4: if you maintained that mindset, and marines are just you know,
[44:51] Speaker 4: soldiers whatever, just servicemen in general are just like hilarious creatures,
[44:54] Speaker 4: especially when you're talking. I think the average age in
[44:57] Speaker 4: my patune was probably like nineteen and a half or twenty.
[44:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
[45:00] Speaker 4: So super young and just like no you know, reptilian brain,
[45:04] Speaker 4: like no filter, just like all from just like everything
[45:07] Speaker 4: coming straight straight out the mouth and really kind of
[45:11] Speaker 4: like you know, one thing that I think does kind
[45:14] Speaker 4: of change in service culture is some of the kind
[45:16] Speaker 4: of the slang and the cadence of the way they talk, right,
[45:18] Speaker 4: So like especially that, and this is the best way
[45:21] Speaker 4: I've been able to describe it to date, is like
[45:23] Speaker 4: in the in those early days in if, like a
[45:25] Speaker 4: lot of the Marines kind of talked like a cross
[45:27] Speaker 4: between like a mid nineteen nineties like la gangbanger and
[45:31] Speaker 4: like a late forties private eye. It was just like
[45:33] Speaker 4: really weird, you know, of like different influences and stuff.
[45:36] Speaker 2: So I think, you know, a lot.
[45:37] Speaker 4: Of them growing up on like gangster rap culture and
[45:39] Speaker 4: like Tarantino movies and just like all this weird shit
[45:41] Speaker 4: and then mixed with like the kind of the military jargon,
[45:46] Speaker 4: like it just had this like strange patois.
[45:49] Speaker 2: Like yeah, yeah, hilarious like slang and stuff that they
[45:51] Speaker 2: would use.
[45:52] Speaker 4: And I was always joke about that, like they literally
[45:54] Speaker 4: would have like a different way of saying of like
[45:58] Speaker 4: how to kill somebody for like every letter of the alphabet.
[46:01] Speaker 4: You know, like they would just have like a different
[46:03] Speaker 4: word for it, like all the time, and it was
[46:04] Speaker 4: it was pretty hilarious like watching them try to kind
[46:08] Speaker 4: of like one.
[46:09] Speaker 2: Up each other.
[46:11] Speaker 1: Yeah the way you the way you described it in
[46:13] Speaker 1: the in the book. I mean it's funny because the
[46:16] Speaker 1: platoon like they almost talk like their gangsters or something
[46:19] Speaker 1: like there are another street gang out there, like yeah, yeah,
[46:22] Speaker 1: we're gonna go know ace this guy Yeah.
[46:26] Speaker 4: Yeah, Like I said, they literally like you know, ace, bump, clip, dump, flamed, greased.
[46:31] Speaker 4: They literally had like one for like every every day
[46:33] Speaker 4: of the alphabet. And it would mix them up a lot.
[46:36] Speaker 4: And and honestly, I don't know if it was like
[46:37] Speaker 4: an inside thing to see you who like you know,
[46:39] Speaker 4: could sound the coolest, but you know, there's definitely those
[46:42] Speaker 4: guys were the main character of their own movie for sure,
[46:45] Speaker 4: and it just provided it was like a gold mine.
[46:48] Speaker 4: Like like, my only really regret is I didn't really
[46:51] Speaker 4: write down as much as I didn't turnal or anything
[46:53] Speaker 4: like that while I was over there. You know, we're
[46:54] Speaker 4: pretty busy, so so I probably missed a lot of
[46:57] Speaker 4: it that I just don't remember. But some of that
[46:59] Speaker 4: stuff that just stood out in my mind. It was
[47:01] Speaker 4: just absolutely hilarious.
[47:03] Speaker 1: Any funny ones that you want to highlight.
[47:06] Speaker 2: Oh god, there's so many, like I remember.
[47:11] Speaker 4: Well, rewind to the day, so like we were still
[47:13] Speaker 4: in Kuwait right like right before the night before the invasion.
[47:16] Speaker 2: My platoon we were actually up technically we crossed into
[47:20] Speaker 2: like the DMZ part of Iraq.
[47:21] Speaker 4: We were providing security for a sing detachment that was
[47:25] Speaker 4: doing like some sort of singing up against Sapphwan Hill,
[47:29] Speaker 4: which was that that hill that kind of looked out
[47:31] Speaker 4: over the border there in Iraq. They were they're worried
[47:33] Speaker 4: about whoever was, you know, whatever Iraqi forces were up there.
[47:35] Speaker 4: They were trying to you know, paint a picture on
[47:38] Speaker 4: the electromatics magnetic spectrum of what the hill was going
[47:40] Speaker 4: on down there.
[47:41] Speaker 2: So we were actually up there.
[47:42] Speaker 4: We get the call over the behind tack like hey,
[47:44] Speaker 4: come back after they you know, they had just wrapped up,
[47:47] Speaker 4: and we're like interesting because we're supposed to be up
[47:49] Speaker 4: there for another couple of hours or whatever. So we
[47:51] Speaker 4: roll back and my company commander, who again now was
[47:55] Speaker 4: a general officer of the Marine Corps, absolutely phenomenal, you know,
[47:58] Speaker 4: phenomenal leader, gives us like this like raw ros speech
[48:02] Speaker 4: like we're going to war, right. You know I can
[48:03] Speaker 4: tell he'd like rehearsed this one for a while, right,
[48:05] Speaker 4: and it was a damn good speech. Like I was
[48:07] Speaker 4: fired up, like absolutely ready to follow this guy into hell.
[48:10] Speaker 2: So he gives the whole speech and the room is silent,
[48:13] Speaker 2: and then my buddy Jimmy, who was the other captun
[48:16] Speaker 2: commander he just raised. He's like, sir, so does that mean?
[48:19] Speaker 4: And Margaret's not coming from full metal jacket, and like
[48:23] Speaker 4: even even the company commander just like absolutely dying laughing,
[48:26] Speaker 4: you know, from the from the very beginning, just like
[48:28] Speaker 4: oh my god, just the one time we're trying to
[48:31] Speaker 4: get everybody locked in and try to maintain some varying
[48:33] Speaker 4: and then it's gotta be that guy.
[48:36] Speaker 1: So yeah, somebody's gonna say, playball from the factor.
[48:40] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[48:43] Speaker 4: Yeah, so there, Yeah, there was just so many of those.
[48:46] Speaker 4: Like I say, like, that's my my greatest regret is
[48:48] Speaker 4: just like it's just not not writing down more of
[48:52] Speaker 4: it when I had the chance to hear it, you know,
[48:54] Speaker 4: fresh fresh from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
[48:55] Speaker 1: Well, the other thing is, I mean, you're like in
[48:57] Speaker 1: your mid twenties yourself. What's it like trying to control
[49:01] Speaker 1: you know, thirty five forty eighteen nineteen year old marines
[49:06] Speaker 1: and environment like that.
[49:08] Speaker 4: Well, un fortunately, and what was crazy is like I
[49:10] Speaker 4: didn't even have a platoon startant. So normally, you know,
[49:12] Speaker 4: have the staff startan as like the because of a
[49:16] Speaker 4: host of different reasons, our staff startant wasn't with us
[49:18] Speaker 4: by the time we got you know, into Kuwait and
[49:20] Speaker 4: then in Iraq.
[49:21] Speaker 1: So I take it was that there's a Gomar involved,
[49:25] Speaker 1: I take it.
[49:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there was.
[49:29] Speaker 4: I mean, just a bunch of reasons why why he
[49:31] Speaker 4: got he he was moved to a different billet. But
[49:35] Speaker 4: so essentially, like my de facto platoon stars was like
[49:38] Speaker 4: a twenty year old corporal, you know, it was one
[49:40] Speaker 4: of the vehicle commanders that was I mean, and you know,
[49:43] Speaker 4: I was blessed, like obviously, Yeah, the Marine Corps really
[49:46] Speaker 4: harts on you know, junior in SiO leadership.
[49:49] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[49:49] Speaker 4: Yeah, And by the time I had come to those
[49:51] Speaker 4: that platoon, those guys were already like locked on. So
[49:54] Speaker 4: it wasn't it wasn't super hard in that sense as
[49:56] Speaker 4: far as like at least I had guys.
[49:59] Speaker 2: That knew the gig.
[50:01] Speaker 4: You know, they were technically and tactically super proficient, so
[50:04] Speaker 4: the younguins would never like try to second guess them
[50:06] Speaker 4: or anything. You know, they had the street crid to
[50:08] Speaker 4: pull it off. And and yeah, and we had I
[50:11] Speaker 4: think we had a pretty good relationship where like if
[50:13] Speaker 4: there was if there was you know, an order that
[50:16] Speaker 4: I had to give that maybe didn't make sense or something,
[50:19] Speaker 4: you know, that we could kind of communicate that, like
[50:21] Speaker 4: not in front of the in front of the boys,
[50:23] Speaker 4: but like off to the side and maybe try to
[50:25] Speaker 4: explain a little bit ter so that like help me
[50:27] Speaker 4: help you to kind of sell this thing on like
[50:29] Speaker 4: what it is we're doing. But again, you know, and
[50:31] Speaker 4: most of most of the Marines didn't care. They just
[50:33] Speaker 4: wanted to go out and get trigger time, Like hey,
[50:35] Speaker 4: we're just going to patrol around all day kind of
[50:37] Speaker 4: like you know, or go post up somewhere like a
[50:39] Speaker 4: tethered goat and like hope someone shoots at us. Like
[50:41] Speaker 4: that's fine as long as like you know, we're allowed
[50:43] Speaker 4: to return fire. And so it wasn't hard to keep
[50:47] Speaker 4: them motivated. The hardest part is, like you know, probably
[50:50] Speaker 4: the midsummer there in two thousand and three when it's
[50:53] Speaker 4: just like one hundred and twenty degrees and there's not
[50:55] Speaker 4: a lot of action, like that's that's when it gets
[50:59] Speaker 4: gets much tougher.
[51:01] Speaker 2: So yeah, they were great. Yeah, I got I was
[51:03] Speaker 2: dealt a really stellar hand with UH.
[51:06] Speaker 4: And I was actually even allowed to bring a couple
[51:08] Speaker 4: of marines over from from my rifle platoon in Suicide
[51:12] Speaker 4: Charlie that came with me to the.
[51:14] Speaker 2: Caputun, which was was good.
[51:15] Speaker 4: And you know there's a couple of them in there
[51:17] Speaker 4: that's like, well, you're absolute like Libo risk Nightmare and Garrison,
[51:22] Speaker 4: but like you know, if the if the v breaks down,
[51:25] Speaker 4: I can strap it to you. You can just like
[51:27] Speaker 4: pull it, you know, and other skills. So and that
[51:30] Speaker 4: all worked out really well. You know, I had marines
[51:32] Speaker 4: there that were like again like the the the the
[51:35] Speaker 4: kind of the epitome of the terminal lance. Right, they
[51:37] Speaker 4: were never gonna they were never gonna become se os
[51:39] Speaker 4: or every corporals or whatever. But I would see them
[51:42] Speaker 4: make the most you know, dropping dudes at like crazy
[51:46] Speaker 4: distances off hand, you know, just like the actual combat
[51:50] Speaker 4: skills were really on points.
[51:51] Speaker 2: So it was it was a good place to have them.
[51:53] Speaker 1: Yeah, a bunch of dudes that want to mix it
[51:55] Speaker 1: up with some bad actors.
[51:57] Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
[51:59] Speaker 1: I So how long were you in your platoon in
[52:02] Speaker 1: Iraq during that whole pump for the invasion?
[52:06] Speaker 4: Yeah, so we were there, So I actually went back
[52:09] Speaker 4: home on advanced party, so I had I actually gave
[52:14] Speaker 4: up the capa tune while we were still in the shaff,
[52:17] Speaker 4: Like at the end of July. Maybe I became like
[52:20] Speaker 4: the S three Alpha or Zulu, like the battalion oposy.
[52:23] Speaker 4: I was like his, his deputy or whatever. So I
[52:26] Speaker 4: was working in the op shop there for another couple
[52:28] Speaker 4: of weeks and then they're like, hey, you know, we're
[52:30] Speaker 4: going to go back, but the battalion's coming back to
[52:32] Speaker 4: Iraq early next year, so we need someone to go
[52:34] Speaker 4: back to start the training program to do you know
[52:36] Speaker 4: already start like the PTP process of like getting everybody.
[52:39] Speaker 2: Ready to go.
[52:40] Speaker 4: So I actually went back advanced party. So I left
[52:43] Speaker 4: I think in late July or early August. So yeah,
[52:47] Speaker 4: so we got to quit in January, so that had
[52:49] Speaker 4: been yeah, six seven months.
[52:50] Speaker 2: Yeah, and that whole time so obviously, you know, it
[52:53] Speaker 2: felt like a lifetime.
[52:54] Speaker 4: But then the battalion got extended and they didn't come
[52:56] Speaker 4: back until I think October, so I was I was
[52:58] Speaker 4: back in twenty on palms for you know, two and
[53:00] Speaker 4: a half months before before they got back.
[53:03] Speaker 1: Did you go back earlier and all that happened is
[53:06] Speaker 1: like the protagonist in your book, because you were getting
[53:08] Speaker 1: out of the Marine Corps.
[53:10] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I.
[53:12] Speaker 4: Kind of hinted to the fact that he you know,
[53:16] Speaker 4: I don't want to go recruiting duty. I don't want
[53:18] Speaker 4: to do any of that kind of the normal like
[53:21] Speaker 4: infantry progression, the b bill thats sucked, like in the fleet,
[53:24] Speaker 4: I would do that. If I could have stayed at
[53:25] Speaker 4: Capitoo commander, I just would have done that for like ever.
[53:28] Speaker 4: But that's you know, that's not the game. So I
[53:31] Speaker 4: was thinking, yeah, looking at some other stuff.
[53:35] Speaker 2: I was married at the time my wife was.
[53:39] Speaker 4: She ended up getting accept the FBI, so she became
[53:42] Speaker 4: FBI Special Agent Max Wife.
[53:44] Speaker 2: And then I knew that.
[53:45] Speaker 4: Was going to be like a complication, right, like trying
[53:47] Speaker 4: to do It's one thing when you're dual a military,
[53:49] Speaker 4: but like trying to do you know, DJ and d D,
[53:53] Speaker 4: trying to figure that out and live in the same places,
[53:55] Speaker 4: like probably not going to work. So yeah, I went
[53:57] Speaker 4: back in and got out and then applied to a
[54:01] Speaker 4: bunch of applied to LAPD, applied to San Diego Police Department,
[54:04] Speaker 4: a bunch of trying to figure out like where she
[54:06] Speaker 4: was gonna get stationed as a fed gotcha? And you know,
[54:10] Speaker 4: I tell this story all the time, like I did
[54:12] Speaker 4: a thank god I didn't get picked up to or
[54:15] Speaker 4: wasn't it. I actually did get a conditional letter acceptance
[54:18] Speaker 4: from LAPD, but ended up leaving Southern California before before
[54:22] Speaker 4: my academy day started. But then we because my ex
[54:25] Speaker 4: wife got stationed up in San Francisco, so I will
[54:27] Speaker 4: applied to that, I say, like an unnamed police department
[54:30] Speaker 4: up there, you know, did some ride alongs, did all
[54:34] Speaker 4: the testing and everything scored really high, and like I'm
[54:36] Speaker 4: all motive and I'm you know, fresh back from Iraq
[54:37] Speaker 4: at this point, so I'm going out on right alongs
[54:40] Speaker 4: with these guys. And it was a canine officer to
[54:43] Speaker 4: us with right, and like maybe twenty meters out of
[54:46] Speaker 4: the out of the police station, he sees this chicken
[54:49] Speaker 4: head that's like creeping around on probably like a stolen
[54:51] Speaker 4: beach cruiser or whatever, and he's like, hey, watch this
[54:53] Speaker 4: movie jam this guy up right. And I was just like, well, okay, cool,
[54:56] Speaker 4: but like do you need probable clause or anything. He's like, nah,
[54:59] Speaker 4: you saw and you saw him make that right turn
[55:01] Speaker 4: without using a hand in arm signal.
[55:05] Speaker 2: So he does.
[55:06] Speaker 4: So this guy rolls over and you know, gives this
[55:08] Speaker 4: guy the bums rush essentially like don't let me ever
[55:10] Speaker 4: catch you like in the city limits again, like get
[55:12] Speaker 4: the hell out of here. So I'm thinking, like, these
[55:13] Speaker 4: guys are not playing around, right, this is like this
[55:16] Speaker 4: is like an old.
[55:17] Speaker 1: School like this is like like the police department in
[55:19] Speaker 1: the Big Lebowski. Get your gold bricking ass out of
[55:23] Speaker 1: our city exactly.
[55:27] Speaker 4: So they like not five minutes later, you know, he
[55:29] Speaker 4: gets a radio call there's like, hey, the Marshalls have
[55:31] Speaker 4: like a fugitive warrant.
[55:33] Speaker 2: They just got one of their sources just said this
[55:35] Speaker 2: dude's in the house.
[55:36] Speaker 4: Like they want to go, but they need some local backup,
[55:38] Speaker 4: you know, so into the Burger King parking lot map
[55:41] Speaker 4: on the hood.
[55:42] Speaker 2: You know, they're like, like, you know.
[55:43] Speaker 4: There's gonna be some some good ship to rolling this
[55:45] Speaker 4: kind of sketchy part of town. Pull up the guy
[55:48] Speaker 4: the I'm writing with you. He's like, hey, I know
[55:49] Speaker 4: you're just back from Iraq. He's like, but you can't
[55:51] Speaker 4: be in the stack, like you can't come into the
[55:53] Speaker 4: house with us. And I was like, yeah, no, I
[55:54] Speaker 4: got it. I'm a civilian, like this fine. But then
[55:57] Speaker 4: he pops the trunk and he's got the mosburg in there,
[55:59] Speaker 4: and he's like, but this is a shitty neighborhood.
[56:00] Speaker 2: So anybody tries to jack the ride like shoot them
[56:03] Speaker 2: out there.
[56:05] Speaker 4: And these guys going and go into the house and
[56:07] Speaker 4: like I hear shots, you know, like holy shit, they
[56:09] Speaker 4: just greased this.
[56:10] Speaker 2: This fucking futuitive that they're they've.
[56:12] Speaker 4: Been trying to serve this warning on comes out turned Unfortunately,
[56:14] Speaker 4: it turns out it was the guy's dog, the future
[56:16] Speaker 4: that had like pitbull that he tried to release on
[56:18] Speaker 4: the cops and they had to shoot him, had to
[56:19] Speaker 4: shoot the dog, but they snatched this guys.
[56:21] Speaker 2: So anyway, you know, an hour into my very first
[56:24] Speaker 2: ride along.
[56:24] Speaker 4: With this police department, I was like, these guys are
[56:26] Speaker 4: not fucking around, Like this is how you know, this
[56:28] Speaker 4: is how it's going to be. Like okay, cool, So
[56:30] Speaker 4: you know, go through all the rest of my testing.
[56:31] Speaker 4: Then I go into like the oral examination room, you know,
[56:34] Speaker 4: with like some old ass detective that's on his way out,
[56:37] Speaker 4: like a public affairs officer who I don't think she
[56:40] Speaker 4: liked me, you know from the from jump. But they
[56:42] Speaker 4: start giving me like all these like scenario questions. Let's
[56:46] Speaker 4: just say I didn't I didn't answer those the way,
[56:48] Speaker 4: you know, thinking that like these guys are they're the
[56:50] Speaker 4: test of my loyalty, like you know, the thin blue line,
[56:52] Speaker 4: Like I can't be reporting on the rogue dudes.
[56:55] Speaker 2: They're out there like cracking schools.
[56:56] Speaker 4: So yeah, needless is that I got the I got
[56:58] Speaker 4: the thin envelope in the mail saying thanks but no thanks,
[57:00] Speaker 4: Uh we don't want you.
[57:02] Speaker 1: How do we make of money? Disappear?
[57:05] Speaker 4: Yeah, the first scenario question that gave me was the
[57:09] Speaker 4: screen test, right, So like you're with your training officer
[57:12] Speaker 4: and then you pick up some guy for drunkenness early
[57:14] Speaker 4: or whatever, and the guy's like spitting at you through
[57:16] Speaker 4: the cage, so he slams on the brake to.
[57:18] Speaker 2: Like smash, Like how do you respond?
[57:21] Speaker 4: I'm like, well, you know again, they're testing my loyalty,
[57:23] Speaker 4: Like this guy's a decor my PGOs, decorated cop.
[57:26] Speaker 2: Like I don't really want to dime them out for
[57:28] Speaker 2: something like that.
[57:29] Speaker 1: You know, you did not understand the exam man, not
[57:34] Speaker 1: at all.
[57:34] Speaker 4: I did not understand this assignment, Like I said, thank
[57:36] Speaker 4: god I was not hired as a cop because like
[57:38] Speaker 4: I had the eggs at the absolute like wrong wrong headspace,
[57:42] Speaker 4: wrong idea of like what went into policing. You know,
[57:44] Speaker 4: I thought it was gonna be like every day in Baghdad,
[57:46] Speaker 4: just cruising around, like jamming guys up left and right,
[57:49] Speaker 4: and obviously that's that's not the gig.
[57:51] Speaker 2: So yeah, it was good. Good that didn't work out
[57:54] Speaker 2: and the stars aligned.
[57:56] Speaker 1: You know.
[57:57] Speaker 4: I was going through a divorce, so like John back
[58:00] Speaker 4: in the Marine Corps, and then that's how I transitioned
[58:01] Speaker 4: in to the intel side because I kind of missed
[58:03] Speaker 4: my company's man window, you know by this point, so
[58:05] Speaker 4: it's like, you better find another job.
[58:08] Speaker 2: I want to stay in the rins.
[58:09] Speaker 1: One of the other things I wanted to point out
[58:11] Speaker 1: that this book brought it back for me, you know,
[58:14] Speaker 1: having like little flashbacks obviously the whole Iraq experience, but
[58:19] Speaker 1: then being like a mid twenties combat veteran back home,
[58:26] Speaker 1: addicted to the action, not really giving a fuck about anything,
[58:31] Speaker 1: not thinking too hard about anything, certainly not thinking too
[58:34] Speaker 1: hard about your future. Basically, if you do do something,
[58:37] Speaker 1: it's to try to get laid. Absolutely, it'd be like
[58:43] Speaker 1: that is the protagonist in this book. And I was
[58:46] Speaker 1: just reading that and I was like, yeah, that's exactly
[58:49] Speaker 1: what it's like.
[58:50] Speaker 4: So absolutely and again just again, you know, like the
[58:53] Speaker 4: reptilian brains just making horrible decisions like left and right, right.
[58:57] Speaker 1: Going to getting shit blasted every night, yeah.
[59:00] Speaker 2: Every night, Like yeah, exactly.
[59:03] Speaker 4: And like I said, you know, I was fortunate, like
[59:04] Speaker 4: I never really personally, I never really struggled too bad
[59:08] Speaker 4: any like lingering PTSD or anything like that. But obviously
[59:11] Speaker 4: when I came back the first time, I was hyper
[59:14] Speaker 4: hyper vigilant, right, Yeah, Like when I was just a
[59:17] Speaker 4: salty asshole, like you know, twenty five, twenty six years old,
[59:19] Speaker 4: Like you can't you know I'm in combat, like you
[59:21] Speaker 4: fucking pog like you have, Like what can you tell me?
[59:23] Speaker 4: You know, again, not not the right, not the right
[59:26] Speaker 4: approach to any of that. And I guess you know,
[59:29] Speaker 4: I'll throw this out there, like I hopefully the statue
[59:31] Speaker 4: limitations of whatever is inspired like a dying myself out
[59:34] Speaker 4: on this one, but I think it's a good learning point.
[59:36] Speaker 2: Right.
[59:36] Speaker 4: So when I came back, I was rolling strapped everywhere,
[59:39] Speaker 4: like with my personal hand and like, which in California
[59:41] Speaker 4: is not felony. You know, I didn't have no concealed
[59:43] Speaker 4: carry permit or nothing, but like it just felt like
[59:46] Speaker 4: horrible to not not have a pistol with me, right,
[59:48] Speaker 4: So just ride and dirty all over California, like didn't
[59:51] Speaker 4: matter on leave and stuff. Just again just strapped. Everybody
[59:55] Speaker 4: had the forty five, I mean, like at all times.
[59:57] Speaker 4: So one day I'm going my buddy who was still
[59:59] Speaker 4: in the name be at the time, and I went
[1:00:01] Speaker 4: to college with this guy, craziest head I know, right,
[1:00:03] Speaker 4: Like this guy he's wild man, absolute wild man. We're
[1:00:06] Speaker 4: going surfing and he sees me like pull pull the pistol.
[1:00:10] Speaker 4: As I'm getting like my towler wetsuit or whatever out
[1:00:13] Speaker 4: of the backpack, he sees it in there, He's like,
[1:00:14] Speaker 4: holy shit, man, like what are you doing?
[1:00:16] Speaker 2: You know, and explain to it.
[1:00:17] Speaker 4: And then he was the one that kind of talked
[1:00:19] Speaker 4: me off the ledge of like like, dude, you can't
[1:00:21] Speaker 4: be You're gonna fuck up your life, Like you can't
[1:00:23] Speaker 4: be doing that, Like you can't be rolling around with this,
[1:00:25] Speaker 4: like you know, illegal concealed pistol.
[1:00:27] Speaker 2: And so it took the craziest dude I knew to
[1:00:30] Speaker 2: tell me that to.
[1:00:32] Speaker 4: Like realize like, oh yeah, yeah, like maybe I should
[1:00:34] Speaker 4: kind of like think through this a little better.
[1:00:36] Speaker 2: And yeah.
[1:00:38] Speaker 4: So that yeah, so Bob, if you're listening, man, thanks
[1:00:41] Speaker 4: thanks for the thanks for the stage advice. Uh but yeah,
[1:00:47] Speaker 4: so that yeah, just like that, coming back into the
[1:00:49] Speaker 4: world after that is yeah, a lot of a lot
[1:00:52] Speaker 4: of bad decisions.
[1:00:53] Speaker 1: You know, and so it was probably just, uh it
[1:00:57] Speaker 1: was for the best that you came back into the
[1:00:59] Speaker 1: Marine Corps.
[1:01:00] Speaker 4: Absolutely absolutely, it was. Yeah, that was yeah, I learned
[1:01:04] Speaker 4: that pretty quick.
[1:01:04] Speaker 2: You know.
[1:01:05] Speaker 4: I actually did get this like corporate gig up in
[1:01:08] Speaker 4: in Silicon Valley, Like, well, my ex wife was, you know,
[1:01:11] Speaker 4: it's okay, like the FBI agent, you're like a gsn
[1:01:14] Speaker 4: GS ten step one or whatever, like we're not gonna
[1:01:17] Speaker 4: be you know, we need a little bit of cash
[1:01:18] Speaker 4: to be able to live in the Bay Area for crisis.
[1:01:20] Speaker 2: So I took a corporate gig up there.
[1:01:23] Speaker 4: Hated it was just absolutely you know, like culturally and
[1:01:27] Speaker 4: you know, like the very first day, like I was
[1:01:29] Speaker 4: doing an audit of one of the subcontract and I
[1:01:30] Speaker 4: think I called the subcontractor. I told them that their
[1:01:34] Speaker 4: their books were an abortion like on the VTC and
[1:01:37] Speaker 4: they were just.
[1:01:37] Speaker 5: Like, whoa, you know, you can't.
[1:01:40] Speaker 4: You can't be calling the subcontractor an abortion like on
[1:01:43] Speaker 4: the on the video tele conference. Like that just doesn't fly.
[1:01:47] Speaker 4: So again it was just yeah, just like not not
[1:01:50] Speaker 4: a good fit for me to be coming from the
[1:01:52] Speaker 4: Marine Corps again, like the saltiest first attendant in the
[1:01:56] Speaker 4: world coming back from from.
[1:01:57] Speaker 1: OHI, Corporate America. They don't really like, you know, they
[1:02:02] Speaker 1: kind of frown on you, you know, telling people like hey,
[1:02:04] Speaker 1: fox stick, hey shit, yeah, you know hey ass fuck yeah.
[1:02:10] Speaker 1: It doesn't go.
[1:02:10] Speaker 2: Exactly exactly, you know, like the Marine Corps like the military.
[1:02:14] Speaker 4: It's like the last like kind of bastion of like
[1:02:16] Speaker 4: body shaming and shit, and like yeah, of course none
[1:02:18] Speaker 4: of that flies. Like they don't dig the profanity. There's
[1:02:21] Speaker 4: just like so I was like, yeah, okay, maybe I
[1:02:22] Speaker 4: should go back. I think I think the Core is
[1:02:24] Speaker 4: probably the better bet at this point. But but it
[1:02:28] Speaker 4: was good, you know, because then I again I LA
[1:02:29] Speaker 4: moved on the intel side, which was was good for
[1:02:34] Speaker 4: me because it kind of really opened my eyes to
[1:02:35] Speaker 4: like you know, I had I had no idea even
[1:02:37] Speaker 4: come to the Marine Corps. Like I knew that there
[1:02:39] Speaker 4: was like military intelligence, but I had no idea like
[1:02:41] Speaker 4: really what that encapsulated.
[1:02:43] Speaker 2: When I was going through my you know, basic school
[1:02:45] Speaker 2: and stuff.
[1:02:45] Speaker 4: I just like, if you're not like infantry or like
[1:02:48] Speaker 4: some sort of combat arms, like don't even bother like
[1:02:50] Speaker 4: who cares? You know, But uh, it was good wait one,
[1:02:54] Speaker 4: because you know, it wasn't taking care of my body
[1:02:56] Speaker 4: so like physically, I was not like in the greatest
[1:02:58] Speaker 4: place anyways. Infantry like you always joke it's like infantry
[1:03:02] Speaker 4: years or like dog years, so like biologically, and you know,
[1:03:05] Speaker 4: I was twenty five, twenty six or whatever when I
[1:03:07] Speaker 4: got out that first time, but I was biologically my
[1:03:09] Speaker 4: body felt like I was like seventy.
[1:03:12] Speaker 2: The lingreen injuries and the like the.
[1:03:13] Speaker 4: Shitty diet and all the inflammation causing foods and the
[1:03:16] Speaker 4: like the just constant boozing and everything.
[1:03:18] Speaker 1: So Jack Daniels, Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[1:03:22] Speaker 2: So yeah, so it was good.
[1:03:23] Speaker 4: Uh and then like maybe in the intel side, you know,
[1:03:25] Speaker 4: like my first not even as a as a counter
[1:03:28] Speaker 4: intelligence human intelligence guy yet it just as like a
[1:03:30] Speaker 4: general mag tap what we call GREENERD ground task force
[1:03:32] Speaker 4: intigen Saucer went to Fallujah with first Sympathian, first intel
[1:03:36] Speaker 4: Italian and started ah.
[1:03:38] Speaker 2: It was made the officer in charge of a new cell.
[1:03:40] Speaker 4: It was called the Epic, the Economic and Political Intelligence Cell,
[1:03:44] Speaker 4: and we got really so like as a brand new
[1:03:46] Speaker 4: intelligence guy just come out of the basic you know,
[1:03:48] Speaker 4: like the intelligence training pipeline, deployed you know two months
[1:03:52] Speaker 4: later or whatever to Iraq. It was a really good
[1:03:55] Speaker 4: kind of peak behind that green door of like how
[1:03:57] Speaker 4: big intel works, because you know, I was working all
[1:03:59] Speaker 4: kinds interagency stuff, so c I a Treasury.
[1:04:02] Speaker 2: We did a lot of stuff with Treasury, which was
[1:04:03] Speaker 2: really cool. On the kind of like Project blood money stuff.
[1:04:06] Speaker 4: And my first real assignment was kind of getting after
[1:04:11] Speaker 4: a lot of the illegal oil sales out of Beiji,
[1:04:15] Speaker 4: So the Beiji Oil refinery, like they're you know, stealing
[1:04:17] Speaker 4: all kinds of like heavy fuel oil and stuff out
[1:04:19] Speaker 4: there and then taking out to Syria and Jordan to
[1:04:20] Speaker 4: sell it on the black market. So and obviously all
[1:04:23] Speaker 4: that money was coming back to finance kind of the
[1:04:25] Speaker 4: the you know, the Cudy rebellion. So that was a
[1:04:29] Speaker 4: you know, it was it was challenging in a completely
[1:04:31] Speaker 4: different way than the infantry is as far as like
[1:04:33] Speaker 4: trying to how.
[1:04:35] Speaker 1: We're around, how did you guys try to interdict some
[1:04:37] Speaker 1: of that stuff.
[1:04:40] Speaker 4: So again being the being the salty infantry guy, like
[1:04:44] Speaker 4: I was coming up with all kinds of plans trying
[1:04:46] Speaker 4: to pitch to the regiment that was there with us,
[1:04:47] Speaker 4: as far as like Trojan horsehops, you know, going back
[1:04:49] Speaker 4: to the using the dump truck to like cruising into
[1:04:50] Speaker 4: the village, we were trying to we drawn up stuff
[1:04:54] Speaker 4: to like basically mock up some oil tankers that we
[1:04:57] Speaker 4: were hoping would would get jacked out on the on
[1:04:59] Speaker 4: that Ma East West Highway there that's going out towards
[1:05:01] Speaker 4: the Jordanian border and then you know, like let the
[1:05:05] Speaker 4: let the bad dudes roll in on it and then
[1:05:06] Speaker 4: just smoke them like when they got Of course, they're
[1:05:09] Speaker 4: super high risk type stuff like that, and at this.
[1:05:11] Speaker 2: Point in the war, they're kind of like like that's
[1:05:13] Speaker 2: probably not the best approach. So it was hard. It
[1:05:17] Speaker 2: was a lot of introdition out of the border.
[1:05:18] Speaker 4: Uh So interestingly, my my my old imagery tie in
[1:05:24] Speaker 4: one seven was back in country way out west on
[1:05:28] Speaker 4: the border in al Kayem at that point, so that
[1:05:30] Speaker 4: was kind of good. I got to go out there
[1:05:32] Speaker 4: and see some of the most of the guys I
[1:05:33] Speaker 4: with were already you know, had already rotated out of
[1:05:35] Speaker 4: that unit. But at least it was cool to see
[1:05:37] Speaker 4: like my old battalion out there, and they did some
[1:05:40] Speaker 4: they did some introdiction stuff. At the at the border,
[1:05:42] Speaker 4: there was much more kind of like uh you know,
[1:05:45] Speaker 4: customs boarder patrol type stuff kind of some or some
[1:05:48] Speaker 4: like heavier kind of policing action like that. Beiji was
[1:05:52] Speaker 4: was not in r that was not in Alambar province,
[1:05:55] Speaker 4: so like that was kind of out of the remit
[1:05:57] Speaker 4: of the Marine Corps. So we tried to we just
[1:06:00] Speaker 4: stuff with the army that had responsibility for the for
[1:06:03] Speaker 4: the UH that that was their area of operations there
[1:06:07] Speaker 4: for the refinery actually was UH. And then you know,
[1:06:09] Speaker 4: and I can't remember the details on some of it,
[1:06:11] Speaker 4: I know there was we did a few things where
[1:06:13] Speaker 4: there was some like dye marker like in some of
[1:06:15] Speaker 4: the that they would add to some of the fuel
[1:06:18] Speaker 4: so that they could spot it like as it was
[1:06:19] Speaker 4: going through the different checks, you know which ones that
[1:06:21] Speaker 4: were like if it's legit or not, because like I
[1:06:24] Speaker 4: think that what it was. It was like they had
[1:06:26] Speaker 4: something all the actual like legitimate exports that were coming
[1:06:30] Speaker 4: like out of the refinery were being secretly like dye
[1:06:34] Speaker 4: dyed purple or something like. I can't remember what color
[1:06:36] Speaker 4: it was, but they had they had some sort of
[1:06:37] Speaker 4: die they could use to do that. So at the
[1:06:39] Speaker 4: interim checkpoints when they would when they would just try
[1:06:41] Speaker 4: to like blend in and take the illegal fuel HFO
[1:06:44] Speaker 4: and stuff out to the border, UH, you know, they
[1:06:47] Speaker 4: would do like the old dipstick and check it and
[1:06:48] Speaker 4: if it wasn't the right color, then you.
[1:06:50] Speaker 2: Knew it was off the books.
[1:06:52] Speaker 4: But of course then they you know, then the bad
[1:06:54] Speaker 4: guys that had inside people like on both sides. So
[1:06:57] Speaker 4: they figured that out and then then it was onto something.
[1:07:00] Speaker 4: You know, it's just like this kind of constant, constant deal.
[1:07:02] Speaker 2: But it was a lot of that. There was already
[1:07:04] Speaker 2: like a.
[1:07:04] Speaker 4: Lot of like tons of reconstruction fraud going on at
[1:07:08] Speaker 4: that point on the civil affair side, so just you know,
[1:07:11] Speaker 4: those huge palettes of like hard currency that were getting
[1:07:14] Speaker 4: flown into buyapp or whatever and then in the Iraqi
[1:07:18] Speaker 4: Central Bank and then just you know just melting away
[1:07:20] Speaker 4: like into the gray economy as these like you know,
[1:07:24] Speaker 4: so we did that was a lot of you know,
[1:07:26] Speaker 4: working with the syncing dudes to track a lot of
[1:07:28] Speaker 4: the local contractors that were getting the contracts to rebuild
[1:07:32] Speaker 4: like you know, schools or some sort of utilities like infrastructure,
[1:07:36] Speaker 4: trying to track those guys down to so we had
[1:07:38] Speaker 4: firm connections of like between them and you know what
[1:07:41] Speaker 4: was like Zarkrow's associate dudes or whatever whoever it was
[1:07:44] Speaker 4: that they were that they were kind of juggled up with,
[1:07:46] Speaker 4: and that's then you know, then we could get some
[1:07:48] Speaker 4: of the action elements to go and and uh take
[1:07:52] Speaker 4: those guys down. But again, like you know, I almost
[1:07:54] Speaker 4: that entire deployment. Uh. For the most part, I was
[1:07:57] Speaker 4: just stuck in this like in a skiff right, like
[1:07:59] Speaker 4: in this windows pock like I was just staring at
[1:08:01] Speaker 4: like seven different computers and trying you know. So it
[1:08:03] Speaker 4: wasn't it wasn't like fun in the sense of like
[1:08:06] Speaker 4: you know, rolling through the streets of Baghdad jamming guys up.
[1:08:09] Speaker 4: But it was challenging in kind of a different respect.
[1:08:11] Speaker 2: And then and that that was that was good.
[1:08:14] Speaker 1: Yeah, the life of an m IO officers, I understand it,
[1:08:16] Speaker 1: like the reality of it. You're not out spying, You're
[1:08:20] Speaker 1: more like in an office briefing.
[1:08:23] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:08:23] Speaker 4: Well, especially as I was, like I said, in the
[1:08:25] Speaker 4: Marine Corps on the on the CIQM in side, that's
[1:08:27] Speaker 4: a little bit different. But again it's mostly the you know,
[1:08:30] Speaker 4: the Stephan CEO's and the worn officers they're going to
[1:08:32] Speaker 4: be doing like the really fun stuff.
[1:08:34] Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh. And by the time I.
[1:08:36] Speaker 4: Had lap moved, you know, I was already like a
[1:08:37] Speaker 4: mid grade to like late grade captain, So I was
[1:08:39] Speaker 4: kind of long in the tooth to be allowed, you know.
[1:08:41] Speaker 2: I was.
[1:08:41] Speaker 4: Now I'm the staff guide that's got to just try
[1:08:43] Speaker 4: to get all that shit approved which is a completely
[1:08:46] Speaker 4: different gig, you know.
[1:08:47] Speaker 2: But it was but you know, it was good.
[1:08:50] Speaker 4: It was still kind of it was cool to be
[1:08:51] Speaker 4: you know, in the mix and and really trying to advocate. Again,
[1:08:55] Speaker 4: I like, I say, I think I'm joking with you
[1:08:57] Speaker 4: before this, but like a lot of the kind of
[1:09:00] Speaker 4: elicitation and inception skills that I learned, like you know,
[1:09:03] Speaker 4: as a human or like in school, I probably used
[1:09:05] Speaker 4: those more against our higher headquarters to get shit approved
[1:09:08] Speaker 4: I ever did than I ever did against the enemy,
[1:09:10] Speaker 4: you know. But but yeah, it's a it's a the
[1:09:15] Speaker 4: skill set transfer is over, so.
[1:09:20] Speaker 1: Then tell us about making the jump over to the
[1:09:22] Speaker 1: c I side.
[1:09:24] Speaker 2: Yeah. So again it was completely non traditional path.
[1:09:29] Speaker 4: Usually in the Marine Corps on the officer side, the
[1:09:31] Speaker 4: way it works is like you start off in kind
[1:09:34] Speaker 4: of an intel specialty, so like CI human or sigent
[1:09:36] Speaker 4: or whatever, and then you kind of broaden out as
[1:09:38] Speaker 4: you go.
[1:09:39] Speaker 2: I did.
[1:09:39] Speaker 4: I did my exactly opposite. But I think what was
[1:09:42] Speaker 4: happening was the Marine Corps was losing a lot of
[1:09:44] Speaker 4: like kind of mid company grade seat human officers guys
[1:09:49] Speaker 4: that were doing you know, because the op tempo was
[1:09:51] Speaker 4: crazy back this is like six you know, so there,
[1:09:54] Speaker 4: you know that point, people are just constantly deployed, so
[1:09:56] Speaker 4: I think a lot of people's got burned out and
[1:09:58] Speaker 4: jump ship to go do whatever.
[1:10:00] Speaker 2: And then.
[1:10:02] Speaker 4: I was kind of they so the Marine Corps decided
[1:10:05] Speaker 4: to do like a one time thing, like hey, we're
[1:10:06] Speaker 4: gonna take some guys that already have clearances, they're already
[1:10:09] Speaker 4: Intel dudes, and we're going to send them to see
[1:10:11] Speaker 4: how Human school, you know, to do that kind of
[1:10:13] Speaker 4: cross deck over. So of course I got picked to
[1:10:16] Speaker 4: do that, jumped all over. It's like, hell, yeah, I
[1:10:18] Speaker 4: want to go. I'm going to see see what this
[1:10:20] Speaker 4: is all about. So I got over there in the
[1:10:23] Speaker 4: Marine Corps again. You know, it's unique in the fact
[1:10:25] Speaker 4: that those two military occupational specialties are blended, right, so
[1:10:28] Speaker 4: it's into one MS. And it's also unique that MS
[1:10:31] Speaker 4: school is the only one I think in the Marine Corps.
[1:10:33] Speaker 4: This MS producing where enlisted an officer go together.
[1:10:37] Speaker 1: Interesting.
[1:10:38] Speaker 4: Uh so it's yeah, you're in the same in the
[1:10:40] Speaker 4: same cohort. So it's you know, it's great, it's a
[1:10:43] Speaker 4: great course. Uh yeah, you get certified you know the
[1:10:46] Speaker 4: Military source operations. Uh, we're c I agents, not special agents.
[1:10:50] Speaker 4: Unlike you know in the army, see I side, you
[1:10:52] Speaker 4: have guys that actually have like arrest authority or gotten
[1:10:55] Speaker 4: to fletcy and you tightly eighteen authority stuff. So we
[1:10:58] Speaker 4: generally or not, we do have some of our guys
[1:11:00] Speaker 4: do you end up going to flesse if they're going
[1:11:02] Speaker 4: to be assigned in CISS like the Marine special agent
[1:11:04] Speaker 4: or there's a couple of other builts out there. At
[1:11:06] Speaker 4: least in my time there were real they would go down.
[1:11:08] Speaker 4: So they're actually eighteen elevens as well, So I was
[1:11:11] Speaker 4: not I mean, I have you know, c I badge,
[1:11:12] Speaker 4: but just CIA agent and not a special agent.
[1:11:16] Speaker 2: So that's good.
[1:11:17] Speaker 4: And you're also and then you also get qualified to
[1:11:19] Speaker 4: be a duty interrogator as well. So that's the and honestly,
[1:11:22] Speaker 4: I think that was the portion. Like the training is
[1:11:25] Speaker 4: is really you know, realistic and pretty thorough. It's a
[1:11:30] Speaker 4: long course, and I think the and the interrogation is
[1:11:33] Speaker 4: usually what cut most of the guys that it traded
[1:11:36] Speaker 4: like that was the one that got them right. So
[1:11:38] Speaker 4: like most people can eventually they may not be great
[1:11:41] Speaker 4: at it, but they can learn the fundamentals of source handling.
[1:11:44] Speaker 4: They can learn the fundamentals of you know, CIA investigations
[1:11:47] Speaker 4: and functional services and all that.
[1:11:49] Speaker 2: But doing the the.
[1:11:53] Speaker 4: Interrogation piece was like, that's what kind of becomes more
[1:11:57] Speaker 4: like real math, you know, where it's either like it
[1:11:58] Speaker 4: works or it doesn't. You can either you can write
[1:12:02] Speaker 4: a cohesive interrogation plan and stick to it and like,
[1:12:04] Speaker 4: you know, actually work the approaches and everything.
[1:12:06] Speaker 2: Or or you can't.
[1:12:07] Speaker 4: You know, and it's but yeah, so it was good.
[1:12:10] Speaker 4: It was a great, great educational process. It was good
[1:12:14] Speaker 4: to go through all that. And then I was fortunate
[1:12:16] Speaker 4: that they will basically stay in a CI human role
[1:12:19] Speaker 4: as a two X.
[1:12:21] Speaker 2: At some point in the Marine Corps.
[1:12:23] Speaker 4: That's the kind of the office designator for the staff
[1:12:25] Speaker 4: sea human officer in some role for the rest of
[1:12:28] Speaker 4: my career. So for like from two thousand and by
[1:12:30] Speaker 4: the time I finished that school was two thousand and eight,
[1:12:33] Speaker 4: so from two thousand and eight to twenty twenty two,
[1:12:35] Speaker 4: when I when I finally hung it up.
[1:12:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was cool. It got to expose to
[1:12:40] Speaker 2: a lot of stuff.
[1:12:41] Speaker 4: Did a year long deployment to Afghanistan and twenty twelve
[1:12:46] Speaker 4: twenty twelve to twenty thirteen, where I was the one
[1:12:50] Speaker 4: meth for the first marine ext misionary first Ford G
[1:12:53] Speaker 4: two X and then concurrently the Regional Command in Southwest
[1:12:56] Speaker 4: C two X, which was that was a great deployment
[1:12:59] Speaker 4: I do again at that point, so we had basically
[1:13:02] Speaker 4: all of Helme in province and Nimrus like out in
[1:13:04] Speaker 4: the southwest there and.
[1:13:08] Speaker 1: Was that sharab.
[1:13:11] Speaker 4: Uh So we were we were at the Bashi and
[1:13:14] Speaker 4: Leatherneck compact and the last Karga was like the was
[1:13:17] Speaker 4: the home and seat and then you had like Shindan
[1:13:20] Speaker 4: and stuff to the north northwest. Yeah, so we were
[1:13:25] Speaker 4: so yeah, I was there on Camp Leatherneck like where
[1:13:27] Speaker 4: the meth headquarters was and that that's where our skiff
[1:13:29] Speaker 4: was and everything. But again that was another great deployment
[1:13:34] Speaker 4: in the sense of like we got to do a
[1:13:35] Speaker 4: lot of things that probably because again the kind of
[1:13:39] Speaker 4: the lack of adult supervision America was quote unquote kind
[1:13:43] Speaker 4: of you know withdrawing starting the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
[1:13:46] Speaker 2: So we were pulling out a lot of areas down there.
[1:13:48] Speaker 4: So it wasn't like the the it wasn't the main
[1:13:50] Speaker 4: effort at that point, so which was good and bad,
[1:13:53] Speaker 4: but good in the sense that it allowed us to
[1:13:55] Speaker 4: get a lot of like ops approved that probably would
[1:13:57] Speaker 4: never happen you know after that. So I think like
[1:14:01] Speaker 4: we did. I think in the year I was there,
[1:14:03] Speaker 4: we did eight or nine human source enabled kinetic strikes
[1:14:08] Speaker 4: using you know health fires from from UA VS. Which
[1:14:12] Speaker 4: again that was at that point you know that that
[1:14:14] Speaker 4: was thirteen fourteen years ago. That was a lot you know,
[1:14:19] Speaker 4: for to for to be able to do. And one
[1:14:21] Speaker 4: you're obviously like Agency CIA have been doing that for
[1:14:24] Speaker 4: like a while and everything, but for us to we're
[1:14:25] Speaker 4: actually having marines that were out there, you know, getting
[1:14:27] Speaker 4: sources to and plant you know, different tracking devices on
[1:14:30] Speaker 4: bad dudes and all the coordination effort that goes into that.
[1:14:34] Speaker 4: So we you know, it was like we actually had
[1:14:36] Speaker 4: some like real kinetic successes there. On the c I side,
[1:14:39] Speaker 4: A bunch of stuff went down where you know, everything
[1:14:43] Speaker 4: from like local national and third country national workers that
[1:14:47] Speaker 4: are working on the base and turps that go bad
[1:14:51] Speaker 4: that are working both sides everything, So yeah, yanking, yank
[1:14:54] Speaker 4: and a lot of guys. The the the incarceration set
[1:15:01] Speaker 4: up there was not great as far as trying to
[1:15:03] Speaker 4: get like any kind of you know, criminal conviction where
[1:15:06] Speaker 4: like the Afghanis courts would actually hold them, but if
[1:15:09] Speaker 4: nothing else to do it, we denied a lot of
[1:15:11] Speaker 4: people that hit applied for US visas that are never
[1:15:13] Speaker 4: coming there because they had broke.
[1:15:17] Speaker 2: Bad at some point. So yeah, it was just it
[1:15:20] Speaker 2: was a challenge.
[1:15:21] Speaker 4: It was like a lot of it was just a
[1:15:22] Speaker 4: lot of stuff going on all the time. And then
[1:15:26] Speaker 4: you know, also having to to try to get both
[1:15:30] Speaker 4: you know, the US four A. It's like our higher
[1:15:32] Speaker 4: d quarters back in Cobble to like sign off on
[1:15:34] Speaker 4: all this stuff. But yeah, the Marines did a great job.
[1:15:37] Speaker 4: Like there you know, so again in the Marine Corps,
[1:15:38] Speaker 4: like for the on the enlisted's side, you have to
[1:15:40] Speaker 4: lap move in just see human. So those guys all
[1:15:43] Speaker 4: come from other ms right, they've already been so they're
[1:15:45] Speaker 4: older and like kind of more.
[1:15:46] Speaker 2: Mature and more experienced and stuff.
[1:15:48] Speaker 4: So they come they come from other ms is and
[1:15:50] Speaker 4: uh so like you know, some of the best ones
[1:15:52] Speaker 4: I had were like guys that come from like the
[1:15:54] Speaker 4: Marine band and stuff. You know, so it's just like
[1:15:56] Speaker 4: you know, but they but they found you know, they
[1:15:58] Speaker 4: kind of found their niche and doing evated. Yeah, yeah exactly.
[1:16:02] Speaker 4: So yeah, again I was like I had great news
[1:16:04] Speaker 4: out there. My CEI coordinator authority awesome. Both my human
[1:16:09] Speaker 4: operations guys, my opsos on the on the Hawks side
[1:16:12] Speaker 4: were really good. So yeah, again I got I got
[1:16:15] Speaker 4: dealt a good hand and I had a I had
[1:16:18] Speaker 4: a I was working for it too. That was like probably,
[1:16:21] Speaker 4: you know, he's probably one of the best intel officers
[1:16:23] Speaker 4: and Marine Corps ever produced. Super smart guy and let
[1:16:26] Speaker 4: me get you know, he really gave me a lot
[1:16:27] Speaker 4: of rope to where I almost hang myself but not
[1:16:31] Speaker 4: quite with some of the stuff they let us get
[1:16:34] Speaker 4: away with out there.
[1:16:35] Speaker 2: So that was another good, good deployment.
[1:16:37] Speaker 1: Any uh specific capers that you want to detail from
[1:16:41] Speaker 1: that time in your life.
[1:16:43] Speaker 2: There was one.
[1:16:44] Speaker 4: So we had and again this is like the one
[1:16:46] Speaker 4: when I when I told guys that are you know
[1:16:48] Speaker 4: c I A or or even some of the d
[1:16:51] Speaker 4: I A human ers and stuff, They can't believe that
[1:16:53] Speaker 4: this this would happen.
[1:16:55] Speaker 2: But so we actually killed well we ended up wounding
[1:16:59] Speaker 2: the guy.
[1:16:59] Speaker 4: We didn't kill him in personally, but so we actually
[1:17:02] Speaker 4: but we got the targeting board to approve hitting a
[1:17:04] Speaker 4: recruited asset. So this guy had been on the books forever. Again,
[1:17:09] Speaker 4: you know, US forces are kind of like withdrawing from
[1:17:11] Speaker 4: some of the hinterlands. This dude was operating down south
[1:17:13] Speaker 4: towards the pack border, and he had been on the
[1:17:17] Speaker 4: books forever and we had gotten some indications from doing
[1:17:21] Speaker 4: some of the he was failing some OPS tests and
[1:17:23] Speaker 4: then he did some CI reviews like yeah, this, you know,
[1:17:26] Speaker 4: this dude is definitely.
[1:17:29] Speaker 2: Not on the up and up and.
[1:17:30] Speaker 4: Things are getting worse. And so that's where you had
[1:17:32] Speaker 4: to kind of I had to make the decision like, Okay,
[1:17:34] Speaker 4: you know, go ahead and dump them and drop the
[1:17:36] Speaker 4: burnous or we keep them in play. And because once
[1:17:40] Speaker 4: the way it works is because of like what you
[1:17:42] Speaker 4: can actually do and I probably can't get into the
[1:17:44] Speaker 4: specifics of it. It might be classified, but like what
[1:17:47] Speaker 4: you can do with people that are actually recruited assets
[1:17:50] Speaker 4: vice a developmental source that you haven't actually you know,
[1:17:52] Speaker 4: pitched and dropped the fig leave to yet varies quite
[1:17:55] Speaker 4: a bit. So made decision, Hey, let's keep this guy
[1:17:58] Speaker 4: in the books because you know you may come in
[1:17:59] Speaker 4: hand and uh and you know the Marines that made
[1:18:03] Speaker 4: that case.
[1:18:04] Speaker 2: To me, I was like, yeah, that actually sounds like
[1:18:06] Speaker 2: a good plan, Like let's do that. And sure enough
[1:18:09] Speaker 2: it did. So we get word later on that.
[1:18:13] Speaker 4: This you know bad guy that's down he had actually
[1:18:15] Speaker 4: fled down into Pakistan had sent some sodium cyanide uh
[1:18:20] Speaker 4: and they were going to basically poison the well of
[1:18:23] Speaker 4: an Afghan Army outpost that was down south down there
[1:18:26] Speaker 4: and try to kill you know, to kill all the.
[1:18:28] Speaker 2: Afghan Army DIDs.
[1:18:29] Speaker 4: And so we used our you know, bad guy source. Essentially,
[1:18:33] Speaker 4: he was gonna be the courier when he grabbed. So
[1:18:37] Speaker 4: we had the you know d i A flew out
[1:18:39] Speaker 4: these chemmists, so we had we had an ass recruited
[1:18:41] Speaker 4: asset that was you know, good to go that we
[1:18:44] Speaker 4: did trust he was able to intercept the actual the poison.
[1:18:50] Speaker 4: We hold it for a couple of hours, you know,
[1:18:51] Speaker 4: flew some di ia chemists down there. They sampled it. Yep,
[1:18:54] Speaker 4: that's you know, it's sodium cyanides poisons, gonna kill if
[1:18:57] Speaker 4: he gets.
[1:18:57] Speaker 2: In the water.
[1:18:57] Speaker 4: Supply, those guys are are fucked right. So then we
[1:19:03] Speaker 4: used the asset to be able to push it to
[1:19:05] Speaker 4: the to the bad guy to to be the courier
[1:19:09] Speaker 4: that was going to take that up to the arm base.
[1:19:11] Speaker 4: So then you know, so we get the and obviously
[1:19:13] Speaker 4: got the guy tagged and everything was telling him like, hey,
[1:19:15] Speaker 4: this is one time when you guys to talking to
[1:19:17] Speaker 4: the folks that are in control the fires on this one, right,
[1:19:20] Speaker 4: like you absolutely cannot miss because of this guy who
[1:19:23] Speaker 4: lives through this thing.
[1:19:25] Speaker 2: Then he's going to know the gig is up, right,
[1:19:26] Speaker 2: like how do you know? How do they know that?
[1:19:28] Speaker 2: Like you know, and then we don't know what's going
[1:19:30] Speaker 2: to happen.
[1:19:30] Speaker 4: And it was a placebo right like we obviously didn't
[1:19:32] Speaker 4: let that guy like roll away from the meat with
[1:19:35] Speaker 4: like the actual poison, but then he would find out eventually, right,
[1:19:39] Speaker 4: So it's like he absolutely has to die on this,
[1:19:41] Speaker 4: like it can't be sure enough what happens, like the
[1:19:44] Speaker 4: you know, the hell fires off the rail and at
[1:19:46] Speaker 4: the last second, this Savilian vehicle like the due was
[1:19:49] Speaker 4: on a motorcycle and it was like coming into so
[1:19:51] Speaker 4: they had to do I think they call it like
[1:19:52] Speaker 4: a cold shift or I don't know what the aav
[1:19:54] Speaker 4: you guys call it, but like where they basically had
[1:19:57] Speaker 4: to try to divert the hell fire at the last minute,
[1:20:00] Speaker 4: so it it blows up. Dudes wounded but not dead.
[1:20:05] Speaker 4: We're just like, oh god, how are we going to
[1:20:07] Speaker 4: explain this one right? And there so fortunately we had dispatched.
[1:20:10] Speaker 4: There were some marines I think there was Scott sniper
[1:20:12] Speaker 4: team that was at like one of his outposts. They
[1:20:14] Speaker 4: run out there like with some of the Afghan army
[1:20:15] Speaker 4: guys like oh what happened? And the thing was like, hey,
[1:20:18] Speaker 4: tell this guy, he just hit an I d You
[1:20:23] Speaker 4: can still even like even from the prid feed, you
[1:20:25] Speaker 4: can still see there was like debris from the hell fire,
[1:20:27] Speaker 4: like the fins and that it was obviously that wasn't
[1:20:31] Speaker 4: what happened. But yeah, for the time, we're able to
[1:20:35] Speaker 4: convince them the best what went down. So that was
[1:20:38] Speaker 4: again it was like something the one time we really
[1:20:42] Speaker 4: needed it to work. We're like, hey, this guy cannot
[1:20:44] Speaker 4: survive the strike, and of course he does. And then
[1:20:46] Speaker 4: to come to find out that civilian vehicle that was
[1:20:48] Speaker 4: coming into the pictures was the dude's family.
[1:20:51] Speaker 2: I mean they just happened to be coming back at
[1:20:53] Speaker 2: that same time.
[1:20:55] Speaker 1: So that what became of that guy?
[1:21:00] Speaker 4: Uh, you know, I think he died a little bit
[1:21:04] Speaker 4: after he I mean, he he lived through the strike,
[1:21:06] Speaker 4: but he was pretty fucked up, like he required a
[1:21:08] Speaker 4: bunch of you know, medical attention, and then so he
[1:21:12] Speaker 4: was you know dead to us at that point. Uh,
[1:21:16] Speaker 4: slither it into whatever cave he was going to to
[1:21:18] Speaker 4: like try to. Actually I think he may have even
[1:21:20] Speaker 4: gone back down across the border back into Pakistan to
[1:21:23] Speaker 4: to get some medical attention, if I remember. I can't
[1:21:25] Speaker 4: remember all the details. But he was combat ineffective after that,
[1:21:27] Speaker 4: so he he did live. The Fortunately, in the strike,
[1:21:32] Speaker 4: the you know, the the placebo poison was never recovered
[1:21:36] Speaker 4: up in a way. So like the guy that so here,
[1:21:39] Speaker 4: the mastermind back in Pakistan that was tasking him to
[1:21:42] Speaker 4: do all this, uh you know, never he just he
[1:21:46] Speaker 4: just thought the guy got blown up and his poison
[1:21:48] Speaker 4: was destroyed in the in the in the act. So
[1:21:52] Speaker 4: it worked, but it was just again one of those
[1:21:54] Speaker 4: things were like oh my god, like you know, it
[1:21:56] Speaker 4: puts the needles there for a while, but fortunately prevented
[1:21:59] Speaker 4: them from poisoning the the Afghan Army platoon out of
[1:22:02] Speaker 4: the combat outpost down there down south, which would have
[1:22:05] Speaker 4: been bad news.
[1:22:07] Speaker 1: The webs we weave. Yeah, and then you had some
[1:22:13] Speaker 1: visibility on the Camp Bastion attack also.
[1:22:17] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so that one again, man, this was rough so.
[1:22:22] Speaker 4: That you know, in September of twenty twelve, there has
[1:22:25] Speaker 4: guys come that breached the outer perimeter of Bashan of
[1:22:28] Speaker 4: the airfield and especially took out an entire harrier squadron,
[1:22:31] Speaker 4: the US Marine Corps Hairer squadron to include one one
[1:22:34] Speaker 4: of their NCOs was killed and the squadron commander was
[1:22:36] Speaker 4: killed in that attack.
[1:22:38] Speaker 2: Basically trying to you know, defend against it.
[1:22:41] Speaker 4: Horrible, right, and there had been a lot What made
[1:22:43] Speaker 4: it worse was there was a lot of indicators this
[1:22:45] Speaker 4: was coming and we had been trying to raise the flag.
[1:22:47] Speaker 2: But the problem was Bashion Airfield.
[1:22:49] Speaker 4: The Brits had security responsibility for it, right, and they
[1:22:53] Speaker 4: were on their kind of intelligence side are much more
[1:22:56] Speaker 4: hamstrung as far as what they can do with local
[1:23:00] Speaker 4: nationals or three country nationals that have access to the base,
[1:23:03] Speaker 4: what they can do with there was like a little
[1:23:05] Speaker 4: village that was kind of attached to the perimeter fence
[1:23:08] Speaker 4: of the of the airfield. That's where the actual like
[1:23:12] Speaker 4: that was like the staging area that the bad guys used,
[1:23:15] Speaker 4: you know, to to to make the breach and come
[1:23:17] Speaker 4: in and start blowing up planes and kill the Marines
[1:23:20] Speaker 4: and we had had a lot of indications for months
[1:23:22] Speaker 4: before this h that things were bad, and there were
[1:23:25] Speaker 4: some other events too.
[1:23:27] Speaker 2: Back then.
[1:23:28] Speaker 4: I think it was like maybe March of that year,
[1:23:31] Speaker 4: so maybe six months before the US Secretary Defense coming
[1:23:35] Speaker 4: out to do like a visit there, landed at Bastian
[1:23:39] Speaker 4: and as the plane is like taxing, one of the
[1:23:41] Speaker 4: local contractors on Bashian basically drove out to try to
[1:23:46] Speaker 4: inter like in one of the in the worker vehicles
[1:23:49] Speaker 4: they had there on the camp and like lit himself
[1:23:51] Speaker 4: on fire to like it. We still to this day,
[1:23:54] Speaker 4: I mean he died before we could target them, so
[1:23:56] Speaker 4: we don't know really what the what the motivation was.
[1:24:00] Speaker 4: But again that was another you know, major force protection lapse, right,
[1:24:03] Speaker 4: This like flaming dude like driving out to like the
[1:24:07] Speaker 4: hit the plane that the the United States Secretary Defenses
[1:24:10] Speaker 4: is sitting in.
[1:24:12] Speaker 2: Not a good look, right.
[1:24:13] Speaker 4: So that was the first time we went to the
[1:24:15] Speaker 4: Brits like, hey, guys, like we've got to do something
[1:24:17] Speaker 4: on this side, and they agree, you know, and I'm
[1:24:19] Speaker 4: not trying to like throw shit on our brit kinnterparts
[1:24:22] Speaker 4: like the CI guys and stuff that we were working
[1:24:24] Speaker 4: with with them were all about it, but they were
[1:24:28] Speaker 4: they were seriously hamstrung from like our regulatory and like
[1:24:33] Speaker 4: a rules and regulation standpoint of like what they could
[1:24:35] Speaker 4: do because a lot of it, a lot of those
[1:24:36] Speaker 4: folks were basically given the same like civil liberties protections
[1:24:40] Speaker 4: that like a UK citizen would have right so as
[1:24:42] Speaker 4: far as what they were allowed to do, to collect
[1:24:43] Speaker 4: against them, to provide all the indications warnings of something
[1:24:47] Speaker 4: like that popping off again, they were just again they
[1:24:49] Speaker 4: were hamstrung, not not able to do.
[1:24:51] Speaker 2: It, which was bad.
[1:24:53] Speaker 4: So fast forward to September when that pops off, and
[1:24:58] Speaker 4: that you know, absolutely tragic that it happened because it
[1:25:02] Speaker 4: didn't need to. And we had been shooting warnings up
[1:25:05] Speaker 4: the whole time. But basically by the time they go
[1:25:07] Speaker 4: up to you know, all the way up to Kabul,
[1:25:10] Speaker 4: when it was time to make decisions on okay, well,
[1:25:12] Speaker 4: like how are we going to change the like actual
[1:25:14] Speaker 4: functional relationship between the US and the UK on that
[1:25:18] Speaker 4: you know, nothing, nothing ever really came of it.
[1:25:20] Speaker 2: So we didn't make any traction.
[1:25:21] Speaker 4: And this was like you just beating our heads against
[1:25:23] Speaker 4: the wall for you know, almost six months at this
[1:25:25] Speaker 4: point of like, hey, we need to make some structural
[1:25:27] Speaker 4: and authority changes on how we do this. So that happened,
[1:25:32] Speaker 4: and then the globes did kind of come off finally
[1:25:35] Speaker 4: right in the aftermath. But I mean again it's like this,
[1:25:38] Speaker 4: you know, the two squad and has already been destroyed
[1:25:40] Speaker 4: at this point, too late.
[1:25:42] Speaker 2: But yeah, we were we were able to actually, uh.
[1:25:45] Speaker 4: To long story short, the guy, the father of of
[1:25:49] Speaker 4: the guy that facilitated the attackers, breached into the airfield.
[1:25:53] Speaker 4: We were able to pick him up a couple days
[1:25:55] Speaker 4: later in shore Bacha actually like which is the Afghan camp,
[1:25:58] Speaker 4: but this on the other side, and that that was
[1:26:00] Speaker 4: another again looking back on it, and it was a
[1:26:03] Speaker 4: tragic situation that all that that it came to that,
[1:26:05] Speaker 4: but the actual act was you know, basically had him
[1:26:08] Speaker 4: it set up like a ruse, incentivized him with like
[1:26:12] Speaker 4: a payout for some information that he thought he was
[1:26:14] Speaker 4: kind of like double dealing, and then just like threw
[1:26:17] Speaker 4: him in the land cruiser drove him back. So as
[1:26:19] Speaker 4: soon as he got in and he got and he
[1:26:21] Speaker 4: got slammed down, and then like the flexi cuffs came on.
[1:26:23] Speaker 2: You know, it's like, oh, ten years of friendship and
[1:26:25] Speaker 2: cooperation and this is how you treat me, you know.
[1:26:27] Speaker 4: So and then I think he realized real quick when
[1:26:29] Speaker 4: there was a really silent ride all the way back
[1:26:31] Speaker 4: to the to the dicision and facility, you realized.
[1:26:33] Speaker 2: You realized then that the gig was up, and and
[1:26:36] Speaker 2: you know, he was fucked.
[1:26:37] Speaker 4: But yeah, it was just like the fact that it
[1:26:41] Speaker 4: took something like that to make any of those actual
[1:26:44] Speaker 4: like structural changes, uh and to and to loosen some
[1:26:47] Speaker 4: of the authorities of what we needed to do to
[1:26:48] Speaker 4: get after it was was horrible.
[1:26:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, that it was. It was heartbreaking.
[1:26:54] Speaker 1: What was that a like insider threat issue? I know,
[1:26:57] Speaker 1: the bad guys like breached the wire, but did they
[1:27:00] Speaker 1: have you know, trustees inside the camp?
[1:27:02] Speaker 4: They did, so, like I said, there was like this
[1:27:04] Speaker 4: little village that was like basically attached almost to the
[1:27:09] Speaker 4: outer perimeter of Vashon Airfield and that was they had
[1:27:13] Speaker 4: so that the I think it was eight guys, eight
[1:27:17] Speaker 4: or nine man breach team. I really I'm trying to
[1:27:20] Speaker 4: remember the details. But so of that of that, like
[1:27:23] Speaker 4: we'll just say it's like the enemy squad thatched. They
[1:27:25] Speaker 4: ended up breaching the perimeter fans and coming into the airfield.
[1:27:30] Speaker 4: They had a facilitator in that little village, and that
[1:27:33] Speaker 4: was the guy whose father we ended up snatching later
[1:27:36] Speaker 4: because of course, that would have been one of the things, right,
[1:27:38] Speaker 4: like that that dude's son like never left that village.
[1:27:42] Speaker 4: He did about a day and a half before that attack,
[1:27:45] Speaker 4: or about maybe twenty four hours for that attack, And
[1:27:47] Speaker 4: that should have been something that like, had the Brits
[1:27:49] Speaker 4: have been allowed to like actually really collect on those dudes,
[1:27:52] Speaker 4: that would have been the anomaly from the baseline. That
[1:27:54] Speaker 4: would have been, like, hey, why is this guy leaving
[1:27:56] Speaker 4: all of a sudden, like it was because of his
[1:27:58] Speaker 4: position down there, Like that would have been It would
[1:28:01] Speaker 4: have put a lot more focused down there, and you know, counterfactual,
[1:28:04] Speaker 4: who knows, like would have actually prevented it, Not sure,
[1:28:07] Speaker 4: but like the fact that none of that was even
[1:28:09] Speaker 4: done on the on the front end, even though we've
[1:28:11] Speaker 4: been bigging, even though we've been dagging to do it
[1:28:13] Speaker 4: for for months at that point, that that's what made
[1:28:16] Speaker 4: it such a tough.
[1:28:17] Speaker 2: Bill to swallow.
[1:28:20] Speaker 1: And then coming back from Afghanistan, what was the next
[1:28:23] Speaker 1: stop in your career?
[1:28:25] Speaker 2: Uh?
[1:28:26] Speaker 4: Yeah, So I came back and then I found out
[1:28:28] Speaker 4: kind of last minute that I was going to Command
[1:28:30] Speaker 4: of South College.
[1:28:31] Speaker 2: So I went back to which I didn't want to do.
[1:28:33] Speaker 4: I wanted, you know, trying to say I was trying
[1:28:35] Speaker 4: to work my bolt to back then d I A
[1:28:37] Speaker 4: still had the operating bases like who won in LA.
[1:28:39] Speaker 4: I thought, oh, maybe I can you know, stay in
[1:28:40] Speaker 4: southern California. But he just always told my my monitor,
[1:28:43] Speaker 4: like I don't care how many times you deploy me.
[1:28:45] Speaker 4: I just as far as like being stationed, like don't
[1:28:47] Speaker 4: send me east of Interstate five.
[1:28:50] Speaker 2: But for school, like for command of Staff, it's like
[1:28:52] Speaker 2: you have.
[1:28:53] Speaker 4: To go or you have to get out, you know.
[1:28:56] Speaker 4: So like at that point, you know, it was still
[1:28:57] Speaker 4: I was still shy. At my twenty I was like
[1:28:59] Speaker 4: a mid grade.
[1:29:00] Speaker 2: It's like okay.
[1:29:01] Speaker 4: So I went back for command of Staff, which actually
[1:29:03] Speaker 4: was it was a good it was a good experience.
[1:29:06] Speaker 4: So did that for like nine ten months and then
[1:29:09] Speaker 4: got doors out here out here to Hawaii where I
[1:29:11] Speaker 4: was the the G two X at Marine Forces Pacific,
[1:29:15] Speaker 4: and then eventually transitioned across the street and down the
[1:29:19] Speaker 4: hill to uh the Indo pick On J two X,
[1:29:21] Speaker 4: which is where that's where I retired out of. But
[1:29:24] Speaker 4: the GIG at marf Pak was was really great at
[1:29:26] Speaker 4: the time as far as because we were the only
[1:29:28] Speaker 4: so my G two X office there. It was me
[1:29:32] Speaker 4: the deputy was the chief Monster for and then we
[1:29:35] Speaker 4: had my chief was the Master sergeant and I had
[1:29:38] Speaker 4: two assistant chiefs. There are staff startists in Gunny, so
[1:29:41] Speaker 4: we were the only sea at the time. We were
[1:29:43] Speaker 4: the only Marine CI Human ns on island. So like
[1:29:47] Speaker 4: the actual there was there was no CI Human company.
[1:29:50] Speaker 4: There's one in Okinawa and there's one in California, but
[1:29:52] Speaker 4: there's not one here right, So it was good in
[1:29:55] Speaker 4: the sense that in addition to doing the normal CIA
[1:29:57] Speaker 4: Human staff work on the on the mar for staff,
[1:30:00] Speaker 4: we actually got to do the all the like the
[1:30:03] Speaker 4: actual CI Human work on island as well, right in
[1:30:06] Speaker 4: support of the of the units here. Had a really
[1:30:08] Speaker 4: good working relationship with the the in CIS field office
[1:30:13] Speaker 4: here in Holadu down in Pearl Harbor, we had a
[1:30:17] Speaker 4: couple of Marine CI Human Chief worn officers that were
[1:30:20] Speaker 4: the Marine Special Agents down there, so they were like
[1:30:22] Speaker 4: our main contact for like all the c I stuff
[1:30:24] Speaker 4: and to this day still friends with them. I won't
[1:30:27] Speaker 4: I won't call them out here because they're still in
[1:30:28] Speaker 4: the game, but like great, great, you know, great dudes
[1:30:32] Speaker 4: and that, so that relationship worked really well. The FBI
[1:30:37] Speaker 4: office actually moved from downtown Halu out into Kapal, which
[1:30:40] Speaker 4: is like out west, which made it like believe it
[1:30:42] Speaker 4: or not, even though it's further distance wise, it made
[1:30:44] Speaker 4: it like an easier drive to g out there. So
[1:30:46] Speaker 4: that facilitated just from the fact being able to any
[1:30:48] Speaker 4: time working like count of espionage cases and stuff out here.
[1:30:51] Speaker 4: Obviously the Marine Corps like we're not what's called the
[1:30:53] Speaker 4: military department kind of totals organization. We're not the nd CEO,
[1:30:57] Speaker 4: you know on the CI side for that's in CIS
[1:31:00] Speaker 4: is for the entire Navy, right for the Department of
[1:31:02] Speaker 4: the Navy. And then the FBI obviously retains jurisdiction for
[1:31:06] Speaker 4: all the domestic CI stuff. So it was getting you know,
[1:31:10] Speaker 4: got to work a lot of the inneragency stuff with that.
[1:31:13] Speaker 4: It was on the JTTF stuff with those guys, but
[1:31:16] Speaker 4: it was mostly mostly China focused counter espionage and a
[1:31:20] Speaker 4: lot of you know, again, let's just say it was
[1:31:25] Speaker 4: the an elegant way of putting this, like a lot
[1:31:29] Speaker 4: of like you know, old guys that get seduced to
[1:31:34] Speaker 4: get honey trapped to start writing point papers and shit
[1:31:37] Speaker 4: like that and generating a lot of leads that way.
[1:31:42] Speaker 4: But yeah, it was a good It was a good
[1:31:43] Speaker 4: working relationship between US and say US and the FBI.
[1:31:46] Speaker 4: And again it was about I would say, you know,
[1:31:50] Speaker 4: if I could open up my CI journal from those years,
[1:31:52] Speaker 4: from like say fourteen to seventeen or eighteen, it was
[1:31:56] Speaker 4: predominantly about ninety percent China, I would say, and I
[1:32:01] Speaker 4: take that's kind of a one China approach. Obviously there's
[1:32:04] Speaker 4: some Taiwan issues that uh with guys that you know,
[1:32:10] Speaker 4: maybe playing for both teams. Uh So yeah, that that
[1:32:14] Speaker 4: really ate up. A lot of the day was on
[1:32:17] Speaker 4: the SI. So it was a much more CI heavy
[1:32:19] Speaker 4: focus on that one and then also so supporting it
[1:32:22] Speaker 4: for the all the just the the bilateral and multi
[1:32:26] Speaker 4: lavel exercises that the Breens do like all over the Pacific.
[1:32:29] Speaker 4: Right so every time we had guys, you know, they're
[1:32:31] Speaker 4: going to go do Cobra Gold and Thailand right now.
[1:32:35] Speaker 2: Next thing, you know, I've got.
[1:32:36] Speaker 4: Like a list of one hundred and fifty local national
[1:32:39] Speaker 4: guys that we have to do like full CI vetting
[1:32:41] Speaker 4: on a whole thing it's just like that kind of anybody.
[1:32:44] Speaker 4: It's gonna be like a driver or like some sort
[1:32:46] Speaker 4: of facility the exercise in some way, you know that
[1:32:48] Speaker 4: kind of stuff. It requires like a lot of like one,
[1:32:51] Speaker 4: a lot of administrative discipline just to kind of wrangle
[1:32:54] Speaker 4: all that stuff right because their arms around it. But
[1:32:56] Speaker 4: then the actual you know, leveraging like multi d efforts
[1:33:01] Speaker 4: to to actually you know, run collection against that to
[1:33:03] Speaker 4: make sure that we're keeping those guys safe while they're
[1:33:06] Speaker 4: out there. Uh. And there was definitely some interesting stuff
[1:33:08] Speaker 4: on the human side as well, but less so just
[1:33:11] Speaker 4: because I mean there's a lot of like you know,
[1:33:13] Speaker 4: the overt stuff that we do back in Garrison, but
[1:33:15] Speaker 4: there was not as much as there was, say, like
[1:33:19] Speaker 4: you know obviously like in a in a combat zone
[1:33:21] Speaker 4: like an Afghanistan er. Yeah, I wreck, but the CIPS
[1:33:24] Speaker 4: was real. The threat was persistent. It was a full time,
[1:33:27] Speaker 4: you know, twenty four to seven, three sixty five gig
[1:33:30] Speaker 4: there was. Yeah, that's the part.
[1:33:33] Speaker 2: You know, I don't miss having to go run surveillance
[1:33:35] Speaker 2: at like you know, on a Saturday night.
[1:33:40] Speaker 1: Well, can you tell us about some of those counter
[1:33:41] Speaker 1: espionage cases as I think, you know, we hear a lot.
[1:33:45] Speaker 1: Of course, the United States cannot pride itself free of
[1:33:47] Speaker 1: the Middle East, right, and so we hear a lot
[1:33:50] Speaker 1: of those kinds of stories, but we don't hear so
[1:33:52] Speaker 1: many like the indo pay com spionage stories that are
[1:33:55] Speaker 1: run for Yeah.
[1:33:56] Speaker 4: There's some well there's something that I can talk to
[1:33:58] Speaker 4: you that I only had a very peripheral So the
[1:34:02] Speaker 4: main the main couple unfortunately that I was very very
[1:34:06] Speaker 4: directly involved in, I can't because they actually never ended
[1:34:08] Speaker 4: up going to prosecution and it got turned out. And
[1:34:11] Speaker 4: one of those was just a perfect storm of like
[1:34:14] Speaker 4: I literally thought we had the FEDS, like DJ was
[1:34:16] Speaker 4: ready to like go full on, and that's when it
[1:34:19] Speaker 4: was the day that Comy got fired when when director
[1:34:22] Speaker 4: covid So we lost like all our all our momentum
[1:34:26] Speaker 4: on that one and it kind of just withered and
[1:34:27] Speaker 4: died on the line. But yeah, there was someone there
[1:34:30] Speaker 4: was a guy named Bishop that was an army contractor
[1:34:34] Speaker 4: out here that actually I think he got arrested like
[1:34:37] Speaker 4: the week before I got on island. Uh So there
[1:34:39] Speaker 4: was a bunch of fallt up from it was actually
[1:34:41] Speaker 4: again my MA Marine Special Agents DOUN in the c
[1:34:43] Speaker 4: I field office that you know, dropped the barry sets
[1:34:45] Speaker 4: on that guy. And he was another one got you know,
[1:34:47] Speaker 4: contractor guy retired army I think lieutenant colonel who.
[1:34:51] Speaker 2: Had uh.
[1:34:53] Speaker 4: Basic guy you know again got seduced young Chinese girl
[1:34:56] Speaker 4: that was working out East West Center right here, Yeah,
[1:35:00] Speaker 4: big time, Yeah exactly exactly.
[1:35:02] Speaker 2: So we've all seen that movie before.
[1:35:04] Speaker 4: Still works, still happens all, you know, surprisingly, Still still
[1:35:08] Speaker 4: a lot of that going down. Yeah, So he got
[1:35:10] Speaker 4: he got jammed up. I think that was in twenty fourteen,
[1:35:13] Speaker 4: I guess, And I think he's out of prison now.
[1:35:15] Speaker 4: He did like maybe six seven years. And there was
[1:35:18] Speaker 4: another guy, Eddie Lynn, who was an NFL Navy NFO
[1:35:21] Speaker 4: in the P three or PA squadron that basically gave
[1:35:26] Speaker 4: up a bunch of like really classified stuff on that
[1:35:32] Speaker 4: platform as far as some of the maritime surveillance capabilities
[1:35:35] Speaker 4: of it. So he's another one. I think he's out
[1:35:37] Speaker 4: of jailer now too, or is about to get released.
[1:35:39] Speaker 4: So he was another one, did maybe six seven years.
[1:35:42] Speaker 4: And actually my marines did have a did have a
[1:35:44] Speaker 4: small role in that one. Again it was you know,
[1:35:46] Speaker 4: we were kind of constantly keeping abreast with with the
[1:35:49] Speaker 4: n CIS office that was that was kind of with
[1:35:51] Speaker 4: the and the f guy that you know was obviously
[1:35:53] Speaker 4: leading the charge on that one. But there was a
[1:35:55] Speaker 4: couple a couple of like you know, ruse interviews and
[1:35:59] Speaker 4: stuff like that that were set up that the guy's
[1:36:01] Speaker 4: got to participate in, which was which was you know,
[1:36:03] Speaker 4: gratifying to be able to contribute even in a small
[1:36:06] Speaker 4: way to that one.
[1:36:07] Speaker 2: But yeah, unfortunately, like I say that, the ones that
[1:36:08] Speaker 2: we really tried to really end depth.
[1:36:12] Speaker 4: Was personally involved in, a lot of them are unfortunately
[1:36:15] Speaker 4: still classified because those guys never yeah, never actually got
[1:36:18] Speaker 4: indicted and it never got prosecuted.
[1:36:20] Speaker 1: Do you ever see, like I've heard stories from CI guys.
[1:36:24] Speaker 1: There's one that if that comes to mind, it happened
[1:36:27] Speaker 1: in South Korea in the nineteen nineties where like it
[1:36:31] Speaker 1: was a supply guy for the military. He was and
[1:36:34] Speaker 1: he kept wanting to, like he decided at some point
[1:36:36] Speaker 1: because he had gambling problems, money problems, women problems, all
[1:36:39] Speaker 1: the typical stuff, he wanted to become a spy, a
[1:36:42] Speaker 1: paid spy for the Chinese. And he started like making
[1:36:45] Speaker 1: overtures like I can sell you a radio, and like
[1:36:48] Speaker 1: the embassy was kind of like the Chinese embassy kind
[1:36:51] Speaker 1: of flirting with him just a little bit, but no
[1:36:53] Speaker 1: real traction. It sounded like, but this guy is like
[1:36:57] Speaker 1: he's such a fucking mess inside. He's like going out
[1:37:00] Speaker 1: to bars and telling girls like I'm a Chinese spy
[1:37:02] Speaker 1: and stuff like this.
[1:37:03] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:37:04] Speaker 1: Uh, Like did you ever see like just really wazoo
[1:37:07] Speaker 1: type ship like that?
[1:37:09] Speaker 2: Guys will be completely off the reservation. Yeah, we had
[1:37:11] Speaker 2: a few. There's one. There was one marine that.
[1:37:14] Speaker 4: Was ethnically Russian, right like born in Russia and it's
[1:37:17] Speaker 4: like migrated to Hear like the late nineties or something,
[1:37:19] Speaker 4: joined up and he that dude went like completely off
[1:37:23] Speaker 4: the off the rails on the uh kind of like
[1:37:26] Speaker 4: the the white nationalists like you know, alt right like
[1:37:29] Speaker 4: hard right thing and again just making just crazy ship
[1:37:33] Speaker 4: that he was posting out there like under his true name,
[1:37:35] Speaker 4: like on social media handles and stuff that were you know,
[1:37:38] Speaker 4: talking about like you know, killing minorities and shing like that.
[1:37:40] Speaker 4: You know, So there were every now and you get
[1:37:42] Speaker 4: ones like that, they're just like, yeah, catch me, you know,
[1:37:45] Speaker 4: and I even trying. It's like the dudes with the
[1:37:47] Speaker 4: born to Lose tattoo going to rob the liquor store
[1:37:49] Speaker 4: like in a gun that's in their name or whatever,
[1:37:50] Speaker 4: you know, that kind of thing. Not a not a
[1:37:53] Speaker 4: very sophisticated uh c ifo in that sense.
[1:37:57] Speaker 2: But there are but I mean there, but there are
[1:37:58] Speaker 2: some very you know China, especially so when I got
[1:38:01] Speaker 2: here in.
[1:38:02] Speaker 4: Twenty when I got back here in twenty fourteen, that
[1:38:06] Speaker 4: was you know, right after she was kind of consolidating,
[1:38:08] Speaker 4: like the end of that first really hardcore like counter
[1:38:11] Speaker 4: corruption campaign, because there was like a lot of capital
[1:38:15] Speaker 4: flight like coming out of China, right and we were
[1:38:17] Speaker 4: tracking a lot of that because it touched there was
[1:38:20] Speaker 4: a Marine Corps nexus with a lot of like our
[1:38:21] Speaker 4: bases and stations around the thing, especially a lot of stuff.
[1:38:24] Speaker 2: In Guam and in the Northern Marianas.
[1:38:25] Speaker 4: You know, when all of a sudden you see like
[1:38:28] Speaker 4: this like kind of shitty ass casino like in in
[1:38:32] Speaker 4: the scene of My out in Guam, it's moving more
[1:38:34] Speaker 4: money than like Macau and like Vegas does in a
[1:38:37] Speaker 4: single days like went to hell, you know, crazy stuff
[1:38:41] Speaker 4: like that, or like you know, why does Palal have
[1:38:44] Speaker 4: like a one to two bank.
[1:38:45] Speaker 2: To population ratio.
[1:38:48] Speaker 1: In Micronesia?
[1:38:50] Speaker 2: Yeah, yea, yeah, so yeah, there was all kinds of
[1:38:53] Speaker 2: stuff like that.
[1:38:53] Speaker 4: They again, we you know, we would be tracking, but
[1:38:56] Speaker 4: like for us to get involved, there has to be
[1:38:58] Speaker 4: some you know nexus back to the Marine Corps for
[1:39:01] Speaker 4: you know, for it to be But because we we
[1:39:04] Speaker 4: had folks that were constantly out for all these different
[1:39:07] Speaker 4: multilateral exercises and engagements and everything with all these you
[1:39:11] Speaker 4: know foreign police forces and foreign militaries and everything, you know,
[1:39:14] Speaker 4: we came into a lot of contact with a lot
[1:39:16] Speaker 4: of those dudes. So like whether it was like you know,
[1:39:18] Speaker 4: Chinese fourteen K triad dude that were there were like
[1:39:21] Speaker 4: funneling money through Micronesia, or they were you know at
[1:39:25] Speaker 4: the behest of the Chinese Communist Party, or guys that
[1:39:28] Speaker 4: were you know trying to bail out of their former
[1:39:31] Speaker 4: like regime heavies that were trying to get the hell
[1:39:33] Speaker 4: out of China with their golden parachute before.
[1:39:35] Speaker 2: She and his men jammed them up and you know
[1:39:37] Speaker 2: send them to the to the the graeducation camps. Yeah, exactly.
[1:39:42] Speaker 2: So there was a lot of that going on.
[1:39:45] Speaker 4: Obviously, just a lot of like there's a huge like
[1:39:46] Speaker 4: console their presence here like on on a wahu specifically,
[1:39:50] Speaker 4: So a lot of the the Indo pac nations, you know,
[1:39:53] Speaker 4: have like a diplomatic presence here, which which is obviously
[1:39:57] Speaker 4: a platform for a lot of the Shenanigans. And then
[1:40:00] Speaker 4: just because like you know, you have a in a
[1:40:02] Speaker 4: Pacific command and then you have all the service component
[1:40:04] Speaker 4: commands here on island as well, except a very target
[1:40:06] Speaker 4: rich environment for you know, for foreign intelligence to to
[1:40:11] Speaker 4: get after.
[1:40:12] Speaker 1: What was your perception of the Chinese intelligence threat. I mean,
[1:40:16] Speaker 1: you've talked about it a lot, but you know, from
[1:40:18] Speaker 1: people I've talked to, you know, the interesting thing is
[1:40:21] Speaker 1: that MSS doesn't really send like case officers abroad. They
[1:40:25] Speaker 1: send their surrogates from the mainland or whatever it's it's done,
[1:40:28] Speaker 1: you know, at a distance. What was sort of your
[1:40:31] Speaker 1: observations about the persistent nature of the threat, the targets
[1:40:36] Speaker 1: they go after, their methods.
[1:40:38] Speaker 4: Yeah, so, I mean when I before I got back
[1:40:41] Speaker 4: out here, you know, I was kind of like I'd
[1:40:43] Speaker 4: always heard the whole like the thousand grains of sand approach,
[1:40:45] Speaker 4: Like that's how they didn't they didn't actually like expose
[1:40:48] Speaker 4: their case officers to contact the foreign countries like they
[1:40:51] Speaker 4: would just kind of like kind of maybe more of
[1:40:54] Speaker 4: like a very expansive approach kind of like this the
[1:40:56] Speaker 4: old Soviet model of like a bunch of useful idiots
[1:40:59] Speaker 4: or you know, just casual contacts that they would use
[1:41:02] Speaker 4: to like, you know, they may not have access to
[1:41:05] Speaker 4: the crown jewels, but they're building the picture through these
[1:41:07] Speaker 4: thousand grains of sand, through all these like low level
[1:41:09] Speaker 4: collection efforts that are going on through you know, commerce
[1:41:12] Speaker 4: and tourism, except just any vector that they so they
[1:41:14] Speaker 4: could use to get you know, someone that has some
[1:41:17] Speaker 4: tie back to the back to the PRC to kind
[1:41:21] Speaker 4: of build that collection picture, right, But definitely so I
[1:41:24] Speaker 4: when I got here back here in fourteen fourteen to seventeen,
[1:41:27] Speaker 4: for sure it got more sophisticated than that. And I
[1:41:32] Speaker 4: can't I don't think I can really talk about some
[1:41:34] Speaker 4: of the specifics of why that is on like kind
[1:41:37] Speaker 4: of the TTP front and some of the ones that
[1:41:39] Speaker 4: we used to kind of expose some of those more
[1:41:42] Speaker 4: sophisticated efforts. But it did as far as like actual
[1:41:46] Speaker 4: at least from the MSS side, seeing case officers out here,
[1:41:50] Speaker 4: I won't much of that.
[1:41:52] Speaker 2: But on the military, well, so when they did their organization.
[1:41:55] Speaker 4: From the two PLA to whatever they call the MD
[1:41:59] Speaker 4: or whatever like the on the so basically on their
[1:42:01] Speaker 4: on their military intelligence side again because at that time,
[1:42:06] Speaker 4: you know, we still had like from huge exercises like
[1:42:08] Speaker 4: Rimpact up until like twenty sixteen, China, the PRC is
[1:42:11] Speaker 4: still participated in that, right, so you had whether it
[1:42:15] Speaker 4: was like you know, Chinese like media platforms that were
[1:42:18] Speaker 4: covering the exercise or the actual participants themselves. There Again,
[1:42:23] Speaker 4: it just increased the scope and a lot more vectors
[1:42:25] Speaker 4: for kind of more sophisticated, more professional, more trained collection.
[1:42:29] Speaker 2: Operations like against US in that sense.
[1:42:31] Speaker 4: So that was now obviously like after the first Trump
[1:42:35] Speaker 4: administration that there the engagement level dropped off quite a
[1:42:38] Speaker 4: bit as far as like what they were formerly, you
[1:42:40] Speaker 4: know what we would formally train with them, so about
[1:42:42] Speaker 4: in twenty seventeen specific, so I think, yeah, I think
[1:42:45] Speaker 4: the last time the PRC participated in like a big
[1:42:47] Speaker 4: one like like Rima Pacific, which is a huge you know,
[1:42:50] Speaker 4: nable exercise, multip that one enable exercise out here, I
[1:42:53] Speaker 4: think twenty.
[1:42:54] Speaker 2: Sixteen was the last time.
[1:42:57] Speaker 4: But yeah, you know, they obviously no doubt learned a
[1:43:00] Speaker 4: lot lessons from some of their their successes and failures
[1:43:03] Speaker 4: there that that translated in.
[1:43:06] Speaker 2: So yeah, we did, we did see.
[1:43:07] Speaker 4: I guess what I'm trying to say is, like the
[1:43:08] Speaker 4: overall trend was they did become more more professionalized and
[1:43:13] Speaker 4: a little bit more sophisticated in their approach to in
[1:43:16] Speaker 4: into their collection mission, especially here on island on o
[1:43:20] Speaker 4: wahu Uh than they had been potentially in the past.
[1:43:24] Speaker 2: But it was but at the same time, there was
[1:43:29] Speaker 2: other things that that they may be a little bit
[1:43:32] Speaker 2: slower on the uptake, so especially when it came.
[1:43:35] Speaker 4: To their own kind of like kind of their own
[1:43:38] Speaker 4: operational security some of that. And again I'm talking around
[1:43:42] Speaker 4: this because I don't want to get in classified details,
[1:43:44] Speaker 4: but there was definitely like, uh, there were some signatures
[1:43:47] Speaker 4: that became like a preat apparent even just say like
[1:43:51] Speaker 4: on some of the commercial front stuff, right like blowing
[1:43:54] Speaker 4: up the same restaurants here time and time again for
[1:43:56] Speaker 4: like you know, that just stuff like that that like
[1:43:58] Speaker 4: you would think by that that point of their journey
[1:44:01] Speaker 4: that as a you know, as a nation, as an
[1:44:03] Speaker 4: intelligence apparatus, they would have kind of moved beyond that,
[1:44:08] Speaker 4: and especially here right because like the Chinese diaspara on
[1:44:10] Speaker 4: island is enormous, so it's not and it has been
[1:44:14] Speaker 4: for over one hundred and twenty years, so it's not
[1:44:16] Speaker 4: you know, it's not like a it's not like those
[1:44:19] Speaker 4: opportunities aren't there. And honestly, like again, I've been out
[1:44:21] Speaker 4: of the game for over four years now, so like
[1:44:23] Speaker 4: maybe maybe it has advanced beyond that. But like I said,
[1:44:27] Speaker 4: so we did see we did see advances and increases
[1:44:31] Speaker 4: and sophistication on their collection efforts, but like a lot
[1:44:34] Speaker 4: of the kind of trade craft and opsect stuff, it
[1:44:37] Speaker 4: wasn't a commensment.
[1:44:39] Speaker 1: Yeah, like parallel development. They they're not like KGB level.
[1:44:44] Speaker 4: No, yeah, not not when I was an actor duty
[1:44:46] Speaker 4: that there there is now maybe like on some of
[1:44:49] Speaker 4: the other like on cyber side and stuff like that,
[1:44:51] Speaker 4: other other parts that like I had less exposure to. Maybe,
[1:44:54] Speaker 4: But as far as the you know, traditional Ford intelligence,
[1:44:58] Speaker 4: like their human effort against us was was and I
[1:45:03] Speaker 4: would expand that into some of the kind of the
[1:45:06] Speaker 4: influence operation side of it as well that they that
[1:45:09] Speaker 4: was trying to go on was yeah, maybe not maybe
[1:45:12] Speaker 4: not as sophisticated as you thought it would be given
[1:45:15] Speaker 4: the level or the types the construct of the operations
[1:45:18] Speaker 4: they were trying to run if that makes sense.
[1:45:20] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it kind of hand handed, right right.
[1:45:24] Speaker 4: Not not not always, Like I said, there was a
[1:45:25] Speaker 4: few that were that kind of caught us by surprise
[1:45:28] Speaker 4: when we finally caught it onto like what was actually
[1:45:30] Speaker 4: going down.
[1:45:30] Speaker 2: I oh, yeah, pretty slick. But but that was that
[1:45:34] Speaker 2: was more the exception than the rule.
[1:45:35] Speaker 4: There was, you know, unless it was some sort of
[1:45:37] Speaker 4: massive effort to try to distract us with a bunch
[1:45:41] Speaker 4: of which a bunch of like you know, obvious fuck
[1:45:44] Speaker 4: ups to try to get us, you know, divert the
[1:45:46] Speaker 4: eyes away from what was really going down, which you know,
[1:45:49] Speaker 4: it is possible, so it's hard to you can't can't
[1:45:52] Speaker 4: just prove the negative peace on that.
[1:45:53] Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, I mean I think the interesting part
[1:45:57] Speaker 1: that you you said is that the grains of sand
[1:46:01] Speaker 1: approach is kind of over now and they're moving on
[1:46:03] Speaker 1: to actual intelligence operations.
[1:46:06] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:46:07] Speaker 4: Yeah, like I said, And especially because like most of
[1:46:08] Speaker 4: the stuff we dealt with, because our touch point was
[1:46:11] Speaker 4: with their their military intelligence, right with their military services,
[1:46:14] Speaker 4: so obviously that's more of their them I side than
[1:46:17] Speaker 4: the than the MSS side. Yeah, that was a that
[1:46:21] Speaker 4: was a big deal. And then also because there was
[1:46:24] Speaker 4: a little bit beyond that, because we have some educational
[1:46:27] Speaker 4: institutions here on island, uh did, like the East West
[1:46:32] Speaker 4: Center about uh and and we have a PCSS out
[1:46:35] Speaker 4: here which attracts like a lot of So there were
[1:46:37] Speaker 4: some other stuff that was that just because of like
[1:46:41] Speaker 4: the happenstance of our geography, Yeah, you know, led to
[1:46:44] Speaker 4: to a heavier presence, if you will, of Chinese intelligence efforts.
[1:46:48] Speaker 1: I mean also, and it pisses me off actually that uh,
[1:46:52] Speaker 1: you know, the Chinese where they see the entire diaspora
[1:46:56] Speaker 1: as being Chinese. You know, there's no such thing as
[1:46:58] Speaker 1: hyphenated American for that. They all see them as members
[1:47:02] Speaker 1: of the Chinese family, so to speak. And what it
[1:47:06] Speaker 1: results in sometimes is actual Americans of Chinese descent being
[1:47:11] Speaker 1: strong armed by you know, the M S. S or
[1:47:15] Speaker 1: or p L A or whoever the fuck it is.
[1:47:17] Speaker 1: And I mean it's kind of horrifying that, you know,
[1:47:20] Speaker 1: Americans are are being having their civil rights violated by
[1:47:26] Speaker 1: some goon squad. Uh that's you know, far away on
[1:47:30] Speaker 1: the other side of the Pacific.
[1:47:32] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:47:32] Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean especially when you're talking about kind
[1:47:35] Speaker 4: of like the newer diaspora populations that still have familial contacts.
[1:47:39] Speaker 4: You know, back in the PRS they have fami obviously
[1:47:41] Speaker 4: a huge leverage. That's a huge leverage point that you
[1:47:43] Speaker 4: know that the Chinese, that the Chichams are not not
[1:47:46] Speaker 4: afraid to yep, yeah, to put the screws on. So
[1:47:49] Speaker 4: that's uh yeah, that's a real thing for sure. Absolutely absolutely,
[1:47:54] Speaker 4: and we saw that out here.
[1:47:57] Speaker 2: Uh.
[1:47:57] Speaker 1: Okay, before we get into retire any other final thoughts
[1:48:01] Speaker 1: or stories, who want to tell about the about your
[1:48:03] Speaker 1: Marine Corps career.
[1:48:05] Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, that was the like I said,
[1:48:07] Speaker 4: I was really fortunate, I think to kind of see
[1:48:11] Speaker 4: that whole, that whole spectrum from being down the paton
[1:48:13] Speaker 4: level and the infantry side all the way up to
[1:48:16] Speaker 4: a Joint human organization there when I wrapped up in
[1:48:21] Speaker 4: the at the J two ex end okay coom so, no,
[1:48:24] Speaker 4: you know, it was a great ride, great career, but
[1:48:28] Speaker 4: you know, I was very very fortunate to kind of
[1:48:30] Speaker 4: be in the right place at the right time and
[1:48:32] Speaker 4: a lot of those and and kind of having that
[1:48:34] Speaker 4: front seat to a lot of those those big events,
[1:48:36] Speaker 4: you know, whether it was the you know, the invasion
[1:48:38] Speaker 4: of Iraq, the kind of the progression of the guat
[1:48:42] Speaker 4: as I went through all the Afghanistan days and then
[1:48:44] Speaker 4: like oh the pivot to Pacific, like oh maybe.
[1:48:46] Speaker 2: Not but.
[1:48:49] Speaker 4: Just seeing but again seeing coming especially getting here like
[1:48:52] Speaker 4: after you know, after she consolidated power and then like
[1:48:55] Speaker 4: really started to kind of up their game a little bit.
[1:48:58] Speaker 2: Yeah, it was, it was. It was a good ride.
[1:49:02] Speaker 1: And you retired in twenty twenty two, and what was
[1:49:05] Speaker 1: the point for retirement?
[1:49:07] Speaker 2: Well, so that was the thing. I didn't really have one,
[1:49:11] Speaker 2: so I kind of punted and I went back to school.
[1:49:13] Speaker 2: I did.
[1:49:14] Speaker 4: I did have some Jed Bill leftover because like, yeah,
[1:49:16] Speaker 4: I came in when it was like Montgomery, but then
[1:49:18] Speaker 4: you know, you can transition it over to post nine
[1:49:20] Speaker 4: eleven sou So that was great, you.
[1:49:22] Speaker 2: Know, like I had.
[1:49:24] Speaker 4: So I went back to U got a master's and
[1:49:26] Speaker 4: diplomacy and Military studies at Wipes University, which was actually
[1:49:30] Speaker 4: a great program, and they my thesis, my master's thesis
[1:49:34] Speaker 4: was actually on domestic military intelligence operations in the United
[1:49:38] Speaker 4: States from sixty five to seventy five, so leading up
[1:49:42] Speaker 4: to and it was mostly army just because like you know,
[1:49:44] Speaker 4: that was the preponderances most of the USAC guys that
[1:49:48] Speaker 4: were like running that but you know, it looked at
[1:49:51] Speaker 4: kind of the different whether it was like you know,
[1:49:54] Speaker 4: hard left guys, anti war, like all the different kind
[1:49:57] Speaker 4: of threat demographics and then the actual locating like domestic deployments. Right,
[1:50:02] Speaker 4: so like whether it was you know, Watts in sixty
[1:50:04] Speaker 4: five or Detroit in sixty seven. Like, there is a
[1:50:07] Speaker 4: lot of very hardcore like concerted military intelligence collection against
[1:50:12] Speaker 4: US citizens and support of those efforts, right, and not
[1:50:15] Speaker 4: to mention, like I think in this day and age,
[1:50:18] Speaker 4: because we're bombarded with that, right, whether it's like marines
[1:50:20] Speaker 4: going into la or what you know, there's a lot
[1:50:22] Speaker 4: of like the deep state or what you know, there's
[1:50:23] Speaker 4: like a lot of static in the media right about
[1:50:25] Speaker 4: and a lot of that you know obviously for real
[1:50:27] Speaker 4: or like most recently with all the deportation stuff with Ice,
[1:50:30] Speaker 4: Like there is a lot of like very legitimate, you know,
[1:50:33] Speaker 4: concern fear about federal government overstepping its balance and using
[1:50:38] Speaker 4: collection efforts against US persons for sure. But it was
[1:50:42] Speaker 4: refreshing to you know, I started that program and started
[1:50:46] Speaker 4: that that research thesis, right, you know, not too long
[1:50:49] Speaker 4: after January sixth, where I was thinking like, oh, man,
[1:50:51] Speaker 4: like things are really not going well, right, like this
[1:50:54] Speaker 4: we're we're kind of like losing the nerve. But and
[1:50:57] Speaker 4: then maybe this, maybe this is like the wrong way
[1:50:59] Speaker 4: to look at it. But it was a little bit
[1:51:00] Speaker 4: comforting in the fact that when I really dug into
[1:51:02] Speaker 4: some of those episodes, it made the current situation not
[1:51:06] Speaker 4: seen as bad, if that makes sense. So, like I
[1:51:09] Speaker 4: was getting you know, I found a bunch of like
[1:51:11] Speaker 4: source material on microfies and stuff like the actual UNI
[1:51:13] Speaker 4: reports from the different like am I battalions and stuff
[1:51:15] Speaker 4: that were actually conducting collection operations against there. And then
[1:51:19] Speaker 4: some of like the you know so like in Detroit
[1:51:21] Speaker 4: and sixty seven, like the National Guard in up firing
[1:51:24] Speaker 4: over one hundred fifty thousand rounds, Like there was you know,
[1:51:26] Speaker 4: tank commanders that were putting like Kavy machine gun rounds
[1:51:28] Speaker 4: into a partnerent buildings.
[1:51:29] Speaker 1: So yeah, that was Mitt Romney's dad, I think that
[1:51:32] Speaker 1: called yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And so they was
[1:51:38] Speaker 1: the reason the only reason why he didn't ask the
[1:51:41] Speaker 1: President to use the Insurrection Act was because the buildings
[1:51:45] Speaker 1: that were burned to the ground, the owners wouldn't be
[1:51:47] Speaker 1: able to file insurance policies because it would be there's
[1:51:51] Speaker 1: no insurance against insurrection.
[1:51:55] Speaker 4: Yeah, so like when you like again, when you again,
[1:51:57] Speaker 4: this is maybe like a bad maybe the right lens
[1:52:00] Speaker 4: to approach it through, but like looking at just the
[1:52:03] Speaker 4: heavy kinetic effort and just how pervasive and invasive military
[1:52:07] Speaker 4: and toes coquestions against US person's whears back then, it
[1:52:11] Speaker 4: makes me feel and and really like kind of the
[1:52:13] Speaker 4: the you know, the findings of that whole project was
[1:52:17] Speaker 4: before a lot of the legislative fixes that finally came
[1:52:20] Speaker 4: like in the seventies, you know, after kind of Slash
[1:52:22] Speaker 4: Gnger Report, Urban Committee and eventually Churchpike was more like CIA,
[1:52:26] Speaker 4: not as much military INTELBICCE, but like all that stuff
[1:52:28] Speaker 4: that happened in the seventies to kind of get it
[1:52:30] Speaker 4: back in track, the army and the do D and
[1:52:33] Speaker 4: really all the services kind of self corrected before that happened,
[1:52:37] Speaker 4: which was refreshing to see.
[1:52:38] Speaker 2: Right.
[1:52:38] Speaker 4: So, I mean, obviously there a difference between you know,
[1:52:40] Speaker 4: kind of regulation and legislation, but some of the DoD
[1:52:44] Speaker 4: directors and stuff that came out because there was a
[1:52:46] Speaker 4: you know, finally after some pretty egregious abuses from time
[1:52:50] Speaker 4: to time, and some of the actually technically, if we
[1:52:52] Speaker 4: looked at it, now we'd be like, yeah, that's horrible,
[1:52:53] Speaker 4: but they were in a legal gray area or or
[1:52:56] Speaker 4: were legal back then, right, But the Army actually and
[1:52:59] Speaker 4: the US the d D writ large self corrected on
[1:53:03] Speaker 4: a lot of that stuff before they were legislatively mandated
[1:53:07] Speaker 4: to do so, you know by Congress, which I think
[1:53:09] Speaker 4: that's a good that's an inspiring precedent for like, you know,
[1:53:12] Speaker 4: moving forward of like if we're actually being honest and introspective,
[1:53:16] Speaker 4: you know, as the as the d D on roles,
[1:53:20] Speaker 4: missions authorities, stuff like or even just triage of resources.
[1:53:24] Speaker 2: Right, Like a lot of shit going on in the world,
[1:53:26] Speaker 2: Like could we really And that was a big thing
[1:53:28] Speaker 2: in my research. So the guys that were coming.
[1:53:30] Speaker 4: Back to Vietnam, like we have more people on the
[1:53:33] Speaker 4: North America see I desk back at USC at Fort
[1:53:37] Speaker 4: Halliberts than we do like in the entire Vietnam analycal section,
[1:53:40] Speaker 4: Like you know, it was like a mismatch of like
[1:53:43] Speaker 4: the Jews just wasn't worth the squeeze essentially.
[1:53:45] Speaker 2: Yeah. So I think in a day of you know,
[1:53:48] Speaker 2: of constant.
[1:53:49] Speaker 4: D D budget battles and manning and resourcing issues, I
[1:53:53] Speaker 4: think that was refreshing to see that at least, you know,
[1:53:56] Speaker 4: fifty years ago took a hard internal look and actually
[1:53:59] Speaker 4: made some changes that worked. So you know, probably time
[1:54:03] Speaker 4: for hopefully that that same little of introspection you know,
[1:54:07] Speaker 4: eventually bubbles to the surface. Who knows, but at least
[1:54:10] Speaker 4: there's a historical precedent for it.
[1:54:12] Speaker 1: Back in the sixties and seventies, did you find that
[1:54:14] Speaker 1: they were spying on a lot of like piece nick hippies.
[1:54:18] Speaker 4: Yeah, so there was like I mean, there was a
[1:54:20] Speaker 4: bunch of different kind of groups that were targeted, right,
[1:54:24] Speaker 4: So there was obviously like the anti war thing to
[1:54:26] Speaker 4: include like former service members that came back that were
[1:54:28] Speaker 4: then you know, became hardcore against the war. There was
[1:54:32] Speaker 4: like the no kidding radical left who, especially in the
[1:54:36] Speaker 4: early seventies went superkinetic with like bombings and yeah, yeah,
[1:54:40] Speaker 4: the weather, the robberies, armed robberies and shootings and assassinations
[1:54:43] Speaker 4: and stuff. And then like a very real and I
[1:54:46] Speaker 4: think the one thing that he does kind of get
[1:54:47] Speaker 4: maybe downplayed or comcood a little bit is like, oh,
[1:54:50] Speaker 4: these people there.
[1:54:51] Speaker 2: Was never any foreign intelligence connection.
[1:54:53] Speaker 4: This is all like an organic thing and actually not
[1:54:55] Speaker 4: so much like start pulling the thread on that, you know,
[1:54:58] Speaker 4: Cuba had had had a very definitive hand and a
[1:55:03] Speaker 4: lot of that movement. Obviously there are Soviet masters in
[1:55:06] Speaker 4: both Jou and KGB had some efforts there.
[1:55:09] Speaker 2: There were some other foreign players there and kind of
[1:55:12] Speaker 2: the the international kind.
[1:55:15] Speaker 4: Of totalitarian communist world that were that were providing some
[1:55:19] Speaker 4: very direct like funding and training to to a lot
[1:55:22] Speaker 4: of that stuff. So that was interesting because I think
[1:55:24] Speaker 4: a lot of that, you know, it's kind of like
[1:55:25] Speaker 4: the there's a lot of like apologizing for the like,
[1:55:28] Speaker 4: oh no, that you know, it went too far looking.
[1:55:30] Speaker 4: We were trying to like find connections where they didn't
[1:55:33] Speaker 4: really exist, and there was probably that's probably true and
[1:55:36] Speaker 4: in some respects, right, I mean, I think we probably
[1:55:38] Speaker 4: cast a much bigger net. It wasn't a very targeted effort,
[1:55:41] Speaker 4: and a lot of like potentially kind of like you
[1:55:45] Speaker 4: know collateral damage people that got swept up into that
[1:55:48] Speaker 4: that didn't need to be but that doesn't you know,
[1:55:51] Speaker 4: two things can be true at the same time. But
[1:55:52] Speaker 4: there was also there actually also was like very definitive
[1:55:55] Speaker 4: connections between you know, foreign intelligent entities that were directing
[1:55:59] Speaker 4: some of that funding it training people, you know, the
[1:56:03] Speaker 4: whole the whole smattering.
[1:56:06] Speaker 1: Uh and what did you go on to do after
[1:56:08] Speaker 1: grad school?
[1:56:09] Speaker 4: Uh? So then I, you know, i'd finally I'd always
[1:56:12] Speaker 4: wanted to write the book right like that, but there
[1:56:14] Speaker 4: was a lot of reasons I kept putting it off. Obviously,
[1:56:16] Speaker 4: on act duty, I'll have a lot of time to
[1:56:18] Speaker 4: do that. But I thought it was a cool story. Again,
[1:56:20] Speaker 4: I grew up reading a lot of like crime novels.
[1:56:23] Speaker 4: That was kind of the genre that I tended to
[1:56:25] Speaker 4: James L. Roy stuff I like really and all that.
[1:56:28] Speaker 4: So in the mid century he kind of like rotue cop,
[1:56:30] Speaker 4: you know, criminal conspiracy type thing. I'd always dug that
[1:56:34] Speaker 4: growing up, so like that was what I was trying
[1:56:36] Speaker 4: to and when I was so I wanted to write
[1:56:39] Speaker 4: like a military thriller based on my experiences in Iraq,
[1:56:42] Speaker 4: but then kind of like use that as the wrapping
[1:56:45] Speaker 4: around what would be the kind of more traditional like
[1:56:48] Speaker 4: noir crime story that was their preach. But yeah, so obviously,
[1:56:51] Speaker 4: you know, there's a lot of growing up. You know,
[1:56:54] Speaker 4: I was always a huge reader. Always had like a
[1:56:57] Speaker 4: lot of paperbacks, you know, like take them to the
[1:56:59] Speaker 4: field or or a cargo pocket or throw one in
[1:57:01] Speaker 4: the pack, because you know, you know how it is
[1:57:03] Speaker 4: when you're like training, there's a lot of like downtime
[1:57:05] Speaker 4: waiting on helos or trucks or waiting on the gouge
[1:57:08] Speaker 4: to figure out like what you're doing next, you know,
[1:57:10] Speaker 4: that kind of thing. So that was kind of my
[1:57:12] Speaker 4: escapism for that, And it got to the point where
[1:57:15] Speaker 4: I was like, Okay, you know, I've read enough of
[1:57:16] Speaker 4: them to where like, yeah, I may not be able
[1:57:18] Speaker 4: to write one this as good as like the top
[1:57:20] Speaker 4: ten percent of that, but like I I know, I
[1:57:23] Speaker 4: kind of know the structure. I know the game enough
[1:57:24] Speaker 4: to where I think I can do this right, I
[1:57:25] Speaker 4: can take I can transpose this story into like a
[1:57:28] Speaker 4: narrative that I think will you know, entertain people. So
[1:57:34] Speaker 4: and plus I you know, at the point where I
[1:57:36] Speaker 4: was like a lot of those books i'd written that
[1:57:38] Speaker 4: I read that I really enjoyed. There was very few
[1:57:40] Speaker 4: written by authors that like under like you know, forty
[1:57:42] Speaker 4: years of age, right, Yeah, I mean there was there,
[1:57:45] Speaker 4: There's always a few, but like that was kind of
[1:57:47] Speaker 4: another I was like, I need to be older, get
[1:57:49] Speaker 4: some more living and make sure like I really can
[1:57:51] Speaker 4: pray in being kind of too close to the to
[1:57:54] Speaker 4: the events in the book wouldn't have been good either, right,
[1:57:56] Speaker 4: So it was good to have twenty plus years of
[1:57:58] Speaker 4: kind of like hindsight to kind of kind of chew
[1:58:00] Speaker 4: on the story and let that litter.
[1:58:03] Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that helped.
[1:58:05] Speaker 4: So then when I was out of grad school, I
[1:58:07] Speaker 4: was like, well, you know, I don't really want to
[1:58:09] Speaker 4: get a real job. I like being able to like
[1:58:11] Speaker 4: you know, surf in the morning and hang out with
[1:58:12] Speaker 4: my dog. And my wife had closed up her practice,
[1:58:16] Speaker 4: her medical practice like in town, and she was like
[1:58:18] Speaker 4: seeing patients like you know, post post COVID. It was
[1:58:21] Speaker 4: like doing the online telehealth stuff, so she was working
[1:58:23] Speaker 4: out of house.
[1:58:23] Speaker 2: I was like, oh, this is great. You know, we're
[1:58:25] Speaker 2: just we get to like real retirees, you know. So
[1:58:28] Speaker 2: I was like I need to do something that that
[1:58:31] Speaker 2: I can do here. And I was like, now, okay,
[1:58:33] Speaker 2: now's the time, like I got to write this thing.
[1:58:35] Speaker 2: So I did. And it was fortunate to.
[1:58:38] Speaker 4: Have some good kind of beta readers that that that
[1:58:41] Speaker 4: I was able to get early drafts out too. So
[1:58:43] Speaker 4: that yeah, So when I finally and this one went fast,
[1:58:47] Speaker 4: because again I've been kind of ruined on that story
[1:58:49] Speaker 4: for a while, so like I by the time I
[1:58:51] Speaker 4: actually sat down when I had the first manuscript ready
[1:58:55] Speaker 4: to send out to some of the BEATA readers, that
[1:58:57] Speaker 4: was like probably less than one hundred days so fast,
[1:59:01] Speaker 4: which is you know, being an author, like you know,
[1:59:03] Speaker 4: that's that's that's a pretty quick and like none of
[1:59:05] Speaker 4: none of the follow ones will ever be anywhere that fast,
[1:59:07] Speaker 4: you know. But because that one, i'd you know, been
[1:59:10] Speaker 4: twenty years of kind of like plying it out, yeah yeah.
[1:59:12] Speaker 2: And working it so yeah.
[1:59:14] Speaker 4: So I got it out, had had some really good
[1:59:17] Speaker 4: feedback from some people that you know, I respected and
[1:59:20] Speaker 4: trusted on that side, and then shopped it around and actually,
[1:59:24] Speaker 4: so the Double Dagger was actually the first person, the
[1:59:26] Speaker 4: first company, first publisher that I sent the manuscript to,
[1:59:29] Speaker 4: and Phil Halton, the head of the company, he you
[1:59:34] Speaker 4: know well who was also the former Canadian Humaner, cool
[1:59:38] Speaker 4: guy so and a great author himself. So he, you know,
[1:59:42] Speaker 4: I kind of cold pitched it to like this whoever
[1:59:46] Speaker 4: whoever it is on the other end of that email
[1:59:48] Speaker 4: that was reading that was screening him. So he sent
[1:59:50] Speaker 4: me an email a couple of days later it was like, hey,
[1:59:52] Speaker 4: get on my zoom schedule.
[1:59:54] Speaker 2: So we did that, and you know, a couple of
[1:59:56] Speaker 2: days later, I had had the book contract.
[1:59:58] Speaker 1: Awesome, So it was it.
[2:00:00] Speaker 2: It kind of all came together.
[2:00:01] Speaker 4: And you hear the horror stories of like trying to
[2:00:02] Speaker 4: go to different you know, I've had seventy five rejection letters.
[2:00:05] Speaker 4: But to be fair, I had also done a lot
[2:00:07] Speaker 4: of like targeted research on who I thought might actually
[2:00:09] Speaker 4: dig it. Yes, I had read some so like James Siskell,
[2:00:14] Speaker 4: who I think you guys have had on the team
[2:00:15] Speaker 4: House before. But anyway, author you know, former armysf guy
[2:00:19] Speaker 4: Cia Dude, Like he's written a buch of thrillers and
[2:00:22] Speaker 4: like he transitioned off of from a different publisher to
[2:00:26] Speaker 4: Double Dagger, and I was reading one of his books
[2:00:28] Speaker 4: and I was like, oh, who is the wait, this
[2:00:31] Speaker 4: is a different publisher, Now who is this? And then
[2:00:32] Speaker 4: I started researching them and I was like, oh, you
[2:00:34] Speaker 4: know what, this might be the ones. And then I
[2:00:36] Speaker 4: really kind of did a deep dive on who they
[2:00:38] Speaker 4: were publishing and who they're getting after, and I was like, yeah,
[2:00:40] Speaker 4: I think these guys will dig it, and unfortunately they did.
[2:00:42] Speaker 2: So that was the book.
[2:00:45] Speaker 1: Yeah, it all came together, and so I mean the
[2:00:49] Speaker 1: plot of the book, much of it we've kind of
[2:00:51] Speaker 1: like touched upon in various ways because you kind of
[2:00:53] Speaker 1: drew out of your own experiences. But they just tell
[2:00:56] Speaker 1: the readers what they're getting into. I mean, as you say,
[2:01:00] Speaker 1: it's kind of wrapped in the war in Iraq, but
[2:01:02] Speaker 1: then the protagonist comes back home and there's this uh
[2:01:07] Speaker 1: what is what is it? Oil for food scandal that
[2:01:10] Speaker 1: has happened and looted money, and and it takes on
[2:01:13] Speaker 1: like these classic noir elements, there's a lot of players
[2:01:16] Speaker 1: in the game. It gets very confusing. The protagonist is
[2:01:20] Speaker 1: a flawed man. Uh, and of course mayhem ensues. They
[2:01:24] Speaker 1: end up in Mexico. I mean, what would what do
[2:01:26] Speaker 1: you want to tell our readers or the listeners right
[2:01:29] Speaker 1: now about your book?
[2:01:30] Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's I mean that it truly is kind
[2:01:32] Speaker 4: of like a traditional kind of hard boiled, you know,
[2:01:35] Speaker 4: crime novel that's wrapped in the trappings of or set up.
[2:01:38] Speaker 4: It uses kind of that that narrative device of the
[2:01:40] Speaker 4: war to kickstart it, right, and and I needed something
[2:01:44] Speaker 4: that was going to take the story back to l A,
[2:01:46] Speaker 4: right back to California.
[2:01:47] Speaker 2: So when I when I thought about that.
[2:01:49] Speaker 4: Bank robbery that we talked about earlier, that that actually
[2:01:52] Speaker 4: happened that you know, that was the present form of
[2:01:53] Speaker 4: the guys were trying to reach the bank with the RPGs.
[2:01:56] Speaker 1: Uh.
[2:01:56] Speaker 4: You know, later years later, months later, it read about
[2:02:00] Speaker 4: a lot of the oil for food skim that had
[2:02:01] Speaker 4: been from the nineties all the way on where they
[2:02:03] Speaker 4: were getting like huge infusions of hard currency back that
[2:02:07] Speaker 4: the regime was sitting on and they were actually you know,
[2:02:09] Speaker 4: using those bank bolts to store a lot of it, right.
[2:02:12] Speaker 4: And then when everything fell there in the Spring of three,
[2:02:16] Speaker 4: they didn't get all that money out of there, right,
[2:02:18] Speaker 4: And then so there was kind of a scramble between
[2:02:21] Speaker 4: some of the mid tier regime guys, like all the
[2:02:23] Speaker 4: heavies we've got, all the decade card guys were taken
[2:02:26] Speaker 4: off and uh and getting out of there. But some
[2:02:30] Speaker 4: of the other guys, I think saw that opportunity right,
[2:02:32] Speaker 4: like they were like kind of the next mid tier
[2:02:34] Speaker 4: down below, like, hey, get my hands on some of
[2:02:35] Speaker 4: this cash and I can get out to like Jordan
[2:02:37] Speaker 4: or Syria or somewhere to start over and make it happen.
[2:02:41] Speaker 4: But I needed something that brought it all the way
[2:02:42] Speaker 4: back to to California. And then so later on, like
[2:02:46] Speaker 4: during that that two thousand and six deployment, we were
[2:02:49] Speaker 4: tracking a lot of hoj walas, right, Like that was
[2:02:51] Speaker 4: like that was a that was a big thing, and
[2:02:55] Speaker 4: trying to map out like what that network looked like
[2:02:57] Speaker 4: and finding out obviously that there was you know, they
[2:02:59] Speaker 4: hit exist in the US for like a long time,
[2:03:01] Speaker 4: so there was you know, there's money that was not
[2:03:03] Speaker 4: being observable from kind of in international banking that was
[2:03:06] Speaker 4: flowing back and forth between between Iraq and the US,
[2:03:10] Speaker 4: and specifically in southern California, because there's a huge Iraqi
[2:03:13] Speaker 4: diasper there, you know, relative to other parts of the country.
[2:03:16] Speaker 4: Maybe not as much as like you know, Deerborn, Michigan
[2:03:18] Speaker 4: or some of these other spots, but like there's quite
[2:03:21] Speaker 4: a few going back to like way before, you know,
[2:03:23] Speaker 4: pre Baptist times there were, so that that kind of
[2:03:26] Speaker 4: connection was already there. So then it was like, you know,
[2:03:29] Speaker 4: how do I get Jim the protagonist this this you know,
[2:03:32] Speaker 4: young marine lieutenant, how does he get trapped up in
[2:03:34] Speaker 4: all that?
[2:03:34] Speaker 2: Right?
[2:03:35] Speaker 4: And so he does and without you know, no spoilers,
[2:03:37] Speaker 4: but like he gets drawn back and he thinks he
[2:03:40] Speaker 4: thinks the war's over, you know, his part of the
[2:03:41] Speaker 4: war's over, he's coming back. He's gonna get out of
[2:03:43] Speaker 4: the Marine Corps and put that compartmentalize it all, put
[2:03:46] Speaker 4: it back in the in the closet.
[2:03:48] Speaker 2: Uh.
[2:03:48] Speaker 4: And then he gets drugg back into this, uh, this
[2:03:52] Speaker 4: caper of trying to expiltrate all this money.
[2:03:55] Speaker 2: Uh.
[2:03:55] Speaker 4: And and also some barabonds, which I thought was just
[2:03:58] Speaker 4: a fun narrative device, again being you know, growing up
[2:04:00] Speaker 4: in the eighties, like all the cool crime movies had
[2:04:04] Speaker 4: some sort of Barra bond aspect, huge Michael Mann fans,
[2:04:07] Speaker 4: So like, you know that the opening hit there in
[2:04:10] Speaker 4: Heat where they're where they're taking out in the armor
[2:04:12] Speaker 4: cars with the bear bonds. I was like, I need
[2:04:13] Speaker 4: to incorporate that somehow as just like a homage to like,
[2:04:16] Speaker 4: you know that that that part of pop culture that
[2:04:19] Speaker 4: inspired me. So there's the money that's moving, you know,
[2:04:22] Speaker 4: and and honestly the whole wa piece of it is
[2:04:25] Speaker 4: a little bit of a red hearing. But then also
[2:04:28] Speaker 4: the bonds that certain Iraqi criminals and their international associates
[2:04:34] Speaker 4: think that this guy Jim might have brought back with
[2:04:37] Speaker 4: him from Iraq, and then you know, then the chases on. Concurrently,
[2:04:42] Speaker 4: there's the revenge angle, right, So he he loses a buddy, uh,
[2:04:46] Speaker 4: he become ends up becoming pretty close with in Dagdad.
[2:04:50] Speaker 4: And then there is the person he holds responsible for
[2:04:53] Speaker 4: that killing actually ends up in he was as Iraqi
[2:04:57] Speaker 4: intelligence officer, actually ends up making his way back into
[2:05:01] Speaker 4: the US illegally or and then down into Mexico. So
[2:05:05] Speaker 4: like that's that's his chance to to you know, finally
[2:05:10] Speaker 4: see his his thirst for revenge for business friend.
[2:05:14] Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting that the protagonist is, you know,
[2:05:19] Speaker 1: partly motivated by justice, he wants some revenge for his
[2:05:23] Speaker 1: buddy that got killed, partly motivated by trying to impress
[2:05:27] Speaker 1: some girls. And then the third one that kind of
[2:05:30] Speaker 1: struck that you know, uh, someone who wasn't a veteran
[2:05:34] Speaker 1: wouldn't pick up on this. But the other one is
[2:05:36] Speaker 1: he wants the war to mean something.
[2:05:40] Speaker 4: Absolutely, and yeah, I would even add a fourth one
[2:05:42] Speaker 4: in there was just straight compulsion, right, And I think
[2:05:45] Speaker 4: there was a lot of like that, a lot of
[2:05:46] Speaker 4: guys coming back that are like because I know I
[2:05:48] Speaker 4: definitely experienced that where I would do shit and be like.
[2:05:51] Speaker 2: This is not my best interest, this is not a
[2:05:53] Speaker 2: good idea, Like why did I just do this right?
[2:05:55] Speaker 1: You know?
[2:05:55] Speaker 4: And it's because there's a certain and whether it's you know,
[2:05:57] Speaker 4: chasing adrenaline highs or from combat or whatever whatever it is,
[2:06:00] Speaker 4: So we all have different, you know, personal reasons for
[2:06:02] Speaker 4: doing that.
[2:06:03] Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, I think that was a big
[2:06:04] Speaker 2: question of like fuck was it? Like was that all
[2:06:06] Speaker 2: worth it? Like what we just went through over there?
[2:06:08] Speaker 4: Like what you know obviously like Iraq doesn't seem to
[2:06:11] Speaker 4: be in like a better place like what you know things,
[2:06:13] Speaker 4: and we're progressively getting worse and worse. So how is
[2:06:17] Speaker 4: a way to kind of maybe it's a you know,
[2:06:20] Speaker 4: the protagonist being able to punt on the big questions
[2:06:22] Speaker 4: of like, even if the actual war isn't worth it,
[2:06:25] Speaker 4: how can I make it personally worth it? You know,
[2:06:28] Speaker 4: within within the confines of my own life and my
[2:06:31] Speaker 4: own kind of like arc as a you know, as
[2:06:33] Speaker 4: a person.
[2:06:34] Speaker 2: And that was something that I reflected on pretty hard.
[2:06:36] Speaker 4: I'd had those conversations with my marines, you know, like
[2:06:38] Speaker 4: when we came, when they finally when when the battalion
[2:06:40] Speaker 4: finally got back and you was able to finally sit down,
[2:06:43] Speaker 4: like I would deal with those guys when we're talking
[2:06:44] Speaker 4: about it. It's like even if politically some of the
[2:06:48] Speaker 4: goalposts shifted and we may not have like you know,
[2:06:51] Speaker 4: achieved what we thought we were going in there to do. Like,
[2:06:54] Speaker 4: you guys still handle business and you you still put
[2:06:58] Speaker 4: a lot of really really bad dudes in the dirt,
[2:07:00] Speaker 4: you know, and that's something you can always And these
[2:07:02] Speaker 4: guys would have done nothing but like just victimize other
[2:07:04] Speaker 4: people for like the rest of their time on Earth, right,
[2:07:06] Speaker 4: And you shorten that time considerably by dumping these guys, right,
[2:07:10] Speaker 4: and that and that was so you know, be proud
[2:07:13] Speaker 4: in that. And I think there was a lot of
[2:07:17] Speaker 4: you know, I specifically wanted the protagonist not to have
[2:07:20] Speaker 4: like had any like confirmed kills or anything like while
[2:07:22] Speaker 4: he was interact and then had that lingering over his
[2:07:26] Speaker 4: head right like that there is like, hey, what what
[2:07:28] Speaker 4: tangibly did I actually contribute to that mission?
[2:07:31] Speaker 1: Uh?
[2:07:32] Speaker 4: And then maybe he gets his opportunity when he finally
[2:07:34] Speaker 4: gets back to California and then down eventually into the
[2:07:37] Speaker 4: the wilds of northern Baha.
[2:07:41] Speaker 1: So the book again, it's called The bag Dad Shuffle
[2:07:44] Speaker 1: by Josh Bates. Where should people go to find it?
[2:07:48] Speaker 2: Yeah?
[2:07:48] Speaker 4: The easiest is Amazon. So yeah, that's that's going to
[2:07:52] Speaker 4: be the quickest. Not a lot of in store distribution,
[2:07:55] Speaker 4: uh in the United States. My publisher is Canadian uh,
[2:07:59] Speaker 4: and so yeah, we don't have a lot of and
[2:08:01] Speaker 4: sort of stuff. There are a few independent bookstores that
[2:08:04] Speaker 4: they're carrying into around here. So obviously, like you know,
[2:08:08] Speaker 4: if you can go to an independent bookstore in your
[2:08:10] Speaker 4: neighborhood and have them order it, that that's great. They
[2:08:12] Speaker 4: can do it as well through their bookskin stuff. But yeah,
[2:08:16] Speaker 4: if you just the quickest way of obviously you just
[2:08:18] Speaker 4: through Amazon.
[2:08:18] Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope people will go and check it out.
[2:08:21] Speaker 1: I mean, this is I think I was telling you
[2:08:24] Speaker 1: before the show, but not on air. You know, I
[2:08:27] Speaker 1: don't watch a lot of these GWAT movies. I don't
[2:08:30] Speaker 1: read a lot of the g WAT novels. I read
[2:08:32] Speaker 1: the nonfiction I have to for my work, and I
[2:08:34] Speaker 1: do enjoy the non fiction, but when it comes to
[2:08:37] Speaker 1: like the fiction, I always feel like I don't need
[2:08:40] Speaker 1: somebody else to interpret my own experiences and like reflect
[2:08:43] Speaker 1: them back at Like I don't need to read a
[2:08:44] Speaker 1: book to understand.
[2:08:46] Speaker 2: What that was.
[2:08:48] Speaker 1: And and sometimes you know, I can be too critical
[2:08:51] Speaker 1: and I feel like I'm not being fair to the
[2:08:53] Speaker 1: author or to the filmmaker because they are reflecting someone
[2:08:56] Speaker 1: else's experience. It's just not mine. But anyway, that's my
[2:09:00] Speaker 1: own personal hang up with it. So I always have
[2:09:02] Speaker 1: like a hesitancy around some of this uh sort of material.
[2:09:06] Speaker 1: But when I read this book, I mean it clicked immediately.
[2:09:08] Speaker 1: I was like, Yeah, this is exactly what it's like,
[2:09:11] Speaker 1: and it captures that experience, and it's something that I
[2:09:14] Speaker 1: would recommend, like to civilians who don't understand what it
[2:09:18] Speaker 1: was like, Like this is like something you can hand
[2:09:20] Speaker 1: them and they can read in a fictional format, like
[2:09:23] Speaker 1: this gives you a pretty good picture of what that
[2:09:26] Speaker 1: atmosphere was like back in those days.
[2:09:29] Speaker 2: Well, I really appreciate that.
[2:09:30] Speaker 4: Man.
[2:09:30] Speaker 2: That's yeah, that's say. That's great to hear. That's exactly
[2:09:34] Speaker 2: what I was trying to convey with it.
[2:09:36] Speaker 4: I think it was a very unique time, like in
[2:09:38] Speaker 4: the history of America's involvement in the Middle least, you know,
[2:09:40] Speaker 4: as far as like how kind of chaotic and free
[2:09:42] Speaker 4: willing it was. And now it's there's enough distance between
[2:09:45] Speaker 4: it to where like that a lot, like I said,
[2:09:47] Speaker 4: a lot of that stuff can kind of seem unbelievable
[2:09:50] Speaker 4: at times, right, And that's why, you know, obviously the
[2:09:54] Speaker 4: kind of the hard world style can be like a
[2:09:55] Speaker 4: little bit untouptable for some people. It's very you know,
[2:09:57] Speaker 4: very profane, violent and everything. But like I think that
[2:10:00] Speaker 4: is like a true reflection you know, how that actually happened.
[2:10:03] Speaker 4: But at the end of the day, you know, and
[2:10:04] Speaker 4: I don't mean for it to be any kind of
[2:10:07] Speaker 4: like you know, crazy, you know, existential look at the
[2:10:11] Speaker 4: war or I'm not making any like political statement with it,
[2:10:14] Speaker 4: per se. I mean a lot of people I think
[2:10:15] Speaker 4: will derive from their own personal experience, especially people who
[2:10:18] Speaker 4: serve in Iraq but or who just were American citizens
[2:10:20] Speaker 4: that you know, endured all that from from wherever they
[2:10:23] Speaker 4: were in their lives. But at the end of the day,
[2:10:26] Speaker 4: I also wanted to be like like an entertaining story.
[2:10:29] Speaker 4: I want people to dig it and have fun, like
[2:10:30] Speaker 4: I said, because you know, I grew up on a
[2:10:32] Speaker 4: lot of like that, like that the hard boiled like
[2:10:34] Speaker 4: hyper real stuff where it was like James Overroiy books,
[2:10:36] Speaker 4: Tarantino movies like all that kind of shit, Like I
[2:10:38] Speaker 4: really dig it and doesn't a lot of times I
[2:10:41] Speaker 4: think I gravitated towards that because that kind of like
[2:10:43] Speaker 4: the hyperreal like vibe kind of more accurately reflected my
[2:10:49] Speaker 4: personal experiences than than what like when people were trying
[2:10:52] Speaker 4: to be maybe like overly literary or like not, And
[2:10:55] Speaker 4: I don't mean that in a drive of way, but
[2:10:56] Speaker 4: they were, you know, they were trying to It was
[2:10:58] Speaker 4: like some people think it very personal, heavy ofroach to it, right,
[2:11:00] Speaker 4: which I think is good and can be you know,
[2:11:02] Speaker 4: maybe it's cathartic for them, or maybe it's just like
[2:11:04] Speaker 4: that was that was truly how they see it, and
[2:11:06] Speaker 4: they want to get that out and I get that,
[2:11:08] Speaker 4: and I'm supportive and there's a lot of those books
[2:11:10] Speaker 4: I really enjoy, but personally it was like, hey, I
[2:11:15] Speaker 4: want you know, the main job of the writers to
[2:11:18] Speaker 4: get the reader to keep reading, and I wanted it. So,
[2:11:21] Speaker 4: you know, there's a lot of reasons for keeping the
[2:11:23] Speaker 4: pacing tight, and so maybe like people a little wittier
[2:11:26] Speaker 4: or a little sharper than they would be in real life,
[2:11:28] Speaker 4: but I you know, I think those are trade offs
[2:11:29] Speaker 4: that are that are okay in service of kind of
[2:11:33] Speaker 4: the broader the broader story.
[2:11:35] Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I I hear what you're saying, I mean,
[2:11:38] Speaker 1: I don't Again, I don't want to be too hard
[2:11:39] Speaker 1: on any other author, but like a lot of the
[2:11:42] Speaker 1: works of literature that are produced nowadays, like I just
[2:11:45] Speaker 1: can't relate to them, you know, you crack them open.
[2:11:49] Speaker 1: This is why men go to the bookstore and they
[2:11:51] Speaker 1: kind of look around at the fiction and then they
[2:11:52] Speaker 1: waddle off to the history section, like there's a you know, yeah,
[2:11:58] Speaker 1: new new biography about sure Chill. You know, yeah, you know.
[2:12:02] Speaker 1: But I think a lot of dudes out there will
[2:12:04] Speaker 1: appreciate this book, and I hope, you know, our listeners
[2:12:07] Speaker 1: will go check them out. Do you plan to keep writing?
[2:12:10] Speaker 1: Do you have any other ideas in the back of
[2:12:12] Speaker 1: your mind?
[2:12:12] Speaker 2: I do so.
[2:12:13] Speaker 4: I'm actually I'm about three fourths of the way done
[2:12:16] Speaker 4: with the prequel, So I have a prequel and a
[2:12:18] Speaker 4: sequel plan. Uh and I so my my contract was
[2:12:22] Speaker 4: just with this first one, so I've got to, you know,
[2:12:24] Speaker 4: renegotiate all that. But and I would actually throw that
[2:12:27] Speaker 4: out there for the listeners or guy has any advice
[2:12:29] Speaker 4: on it. But I kind of thought maybe doing the
[2:12:31] Speaker 4: prequel next would be the better, you know, because there's
[2:12:33] Speaker 4: a very deliberate cliffhanger at.
[2:12:35] Speaker 2: The end of Bagdad Shuffle.
[2:12:36] Speaker 4: Yes, So you know, do you give the readers like
[2:12:39] Speaker 4: the satisfaction of you give them the resolution in the
[2:12:42] Speaker 4: sequel right away or you throw the prequel out there first.
[2:12:46] Speaker 4: And it actually revolves around Jim's stepdad, who's a marine
[2:12:50] Speaker 4: who is transitioned into a private intelligence gig on the
[2:12:53] Speaker 4: EVA Desert Storm. It is kind of like a you know,
[2:12:57] Speaker 4: it's a mixtape of all my favorite like and nineties
[2:13:00] Speaker 4: conspiracies with I mean, we've got like support activities like
[2:13:04] Speaker 4: Yellow Fruit Scandal stuff going down there, like all the
[2:13:07] Speaker 4: way from there to like Iran Contra to you know,
[2:13:11] Speaker 4: Project Babylon, like you know, so it's like, I just
[2:13:15] Speaker 4: it honestly, like the first draft is maybe a little
[2:13:18] Speaker 4: a little too expansive in scope, but like that was
[2:13:21] Speaker 4: kind of the the idea going into it is like,
[2:13:23] Speaker 4: take all these like little snippets of kind of lesser
[2:13:25] Speaker 4: known conspiracies and criminal capers that went on that are
[2:13:28] Speaker 4: somehow military associated or revolve around Desert Storm.
[2:13:33] Speaker 2: And then like how do I kind of connect the
[2:13:35] Speaker 2: dots on those?
[2:13:36] Speaker 4: Right?
[2:13:36] Speaker 2: So, like that's that's the approach going into it.
[2:13:38] Speaker 1: That's awesome. Man, I love it, like that period of time,
[2:13:41] Speaker 1: like the nineteen eighties or so much crazy shit that
[2:13:44] Speaker 1: went on, and I feel like it's not tapped into
[2:13:48] Speaker 1: by sort of the popular culture. I don't know if
[2:13:51] Speaker 1: it's because it's too recent or there's just not an interest,
[2:13:56] Speaker 1: or I guess in a military context, most people think,
[2:14:00] Speaker 1: well nothing happened.
[2:14:01] Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, could be further from the truth.
[2:14:04] Speaker 1: Yeah it was.
[2:14:05] Speaker 2: It was wild. Yeah.
[2:14:06] Speaker 4: A lot of it was inspired by this guy, this journalist, uh,
[2:14:09] Speaker 4: Steven Emerson back in.
[2:14:10] Speaker 1: The later Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a classic book.
[2:14:13] Speaker 1: People should go out and read that again.
[2:14:16] Speaker 4: And you know, I love all that stuff that's like
[2:14:18] Speaker 4: on the periphery, right, like you know, like the mean
[2:14:20] Speaker 4: kind of the mean theme stuff like.
[2:14:21] Speaker 2: So that's why I didn't want to like really do
[2:14:23] Speaker 2: like the Hunt.
[2:14:24] Speaker 4: For WMD or anything in the bag Dad Shuffle, right,
[2:14:25] Speaker 4: that was kind of the main event, like all that
[2:14:27] Speaker 4: kind of stuff I wanted to. I like those stories
[2:14:29] Speaker 4: that are on the kind of periphery that less you know,
[2:14:31] Speaker 4: maybe like have less exposure that you really want to
[2:14:33] Speaker 4: get after. And I think that period from like the
[2:14:36] Speaker 4: the mid eight but basically from yeah, some of the say,
[2:14:39] Speaker 4: like yeah, maybe like yellow Fruit in like eighty three
[2:14:43] Speaker 4: eighty four, like when that all the way through a
[2:14:45] Speaker 4: round contra and all the lead up, all the way
[2:14:47] Speaker 4: through through desert storm and some of the aftermath of
[2:14:50] Speaker 4: that even into the mid nineties, especially when oil for
[2:14:53] Speaker 4: food kicked off. And that's kind of the connecting you know,
[2:14:55] Speaker 4: the connecting dot to to bag dies shovel. But uh, yeah,
[2:14:59] Speaker 4: I think that that stuff is fast, and I don't
[2:15:00] Speaker 4: think it's been mined very heavily on the fishing side.
[2:15:04] Speaker 4: But there's a lot of great you know, source material
[2:15:06] Speaker 4: out there. I think it's began to be dramatized right
[2:15:09] Speaker 4: turned into that.
[2:15:10] Speaker 1: And the other thing too, is because it's the eighties,
[2:15:12] Speaker 1: you can actually sometimes go and talk to these people
[2:15:14] Speaker 1: like they're still around.
[2:15:15] Speaker 4: True, yeah, yeah, exactly so, or or they've written you know,
[2:15:19] Speaker 4: maybe they may have to drop a couple of houndo
[2:15:21] Speaker 4: on Amazon to find like some obscure copy, but these
[2:15:24] Speaker 4: people actually actually wrote you know, contemporary like memoirs and
[2:15:27] Speaker 4: stuff at their time, you know. So yeah, there's just
[2:15:30] Speaker 4: a lot of like a lot of really juicy stuff
[2:15:32] Speaker 4: in there. And again talk about you know, just wilding
[2:15:34] Speaker 4: out and like very little adult supervision, like some of
[2:15:37] Speaker 4: the stuff that uh, you know, especially the army, like
[2:15:40] Speaker 4: just because of the mission that a lot of those
[2:15:42] Speaker 4: guys were given. It's like with the ISA things that
[2:15:45] Speaker 4: we were talking about earlier, Like, yes, it's wild, absolutely wild,
[2:15:48] Speaker 4: like what was going on.
[2:15:50] Speaker 1: There's a book I read a couple of years ago.
[2:15:51] Speaker 1: I have it around here somewhere called Commandos and All
[2:15:55] Speaker 1: about the Contras. It's basically the history of the Contras
[2:15:58] Speaker 1: in Nicar. Okay, that's a really good book. If you
[2:16:01] Speaker 1: can pick that, I will definitely have to check it out. Yeah, okay,
[2:16:06] Speaker 1: So there's a prequel in the works, potentially a sequel
[2:16:09] Speaker 1: coming down the line.
[2:16:11] Speaker 4: Definitely, definitely. So I've actually gotten that. I started writing
[2:16:14] Speaker 4: both at the same time, which again I do not
[2:16:16] Speaker 4: recommend that. I mean, I don't know, so maybe some
[2:16:19] Speaker 4: people's brains can. But I got to the point where,
[2:16:21] Speaker 4: like when I was trying to map out the chronologies
[2:16:23] Speaker 4: and the actual events and the connecting tissue between it
[2:16:27] Speaker 4: got a little cumbersome. So then I got about halfway
[2:16:29] Speaker 4: done with the sequel, I put it aside and then
[2:16:31] Speaker 4: I just focused completely on the prequel. And that's that's
[2:16:33] Speaker 4: what I so it actually started. The prequel starts in
[2:16:35] Speaker 4: the summer of nineteen ninety in the right before the invasion,
[2:16:38] Speaker 4: right before I rack it.
[2:16:39] Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to it.
[2:16:40] Speaker 2: Sounds awesome, awesome, Well, I will send you one of
[2:16:43] Speaker 2: the arcs and yeah, yeah, yeah, please be some feedback
[2:16:46] Speaker 2: on that one.
[2:16:48] Speaker 1: So the Bagdad Shuffle, folks can go find it on Amazon,
[2:16:53] Speaker 1: some other stuff in the works, anything else you want
[2:16:55] Speaker 1: to tell people about anywhere that people can go to
[2:16:58] Speaker 1: find you. You on social media and anything else.
[2:17:01] Speaker 4: Yeah, So on Instagram is author Josh Bates, uh and
[2:17:04] Speaker 4: then on Facebook is the same Josh Bates author and
[2:17:08] Speaker 4: pop up. So that those kind of my I guess
[2:17:12] Speaker 4: my two major fan I'm not really like on Twitter
[2:17:14] Speaker 4: or x that much or substack, but I am now
[2:17:17] Speaker 4: just very very recently, just in the last couple of weeks,
[2:17:19] Speaker 4: so I've started uh co hosting podcast called The Green
[2:17:23] Speaker 4: Door with my buddy Rinda McPherson, who who you actually met.
[2:17:27] Speaker 2: He was the one that hosted that event.
[2:17:28] Speaker 4: And yeah, so a former marine mental asser buddy of
[2:17:33] Speaker 4: mine served Influsia with him, you know, a great great guy.
[2:17:36] Speaker 4: And it's it's kind of more focused on again, like
[2:17:38] Speaker 4: the that the stick is like, there's there's all this
[2:17:41] Speaker 4: esoteric knowledge behind these different green doors, right, so from
[2:17:43] Speaker 4: the veterans community or the intelligence community and then transitioned
[2:17:46] Speaker 4: into the business world or into something completely different, and.
[2:17:50] Speaker 2: It's like, what, you know, how does that work?
[2:17:52] Speaker 4: How do you how do you take kind of those
[2:17:55] Speaker 4: the skills and that exponential base from behind one green
[2:17:59] Speaker 4: door to the next. So really kind of you know,
[2:18:01] Speaker 4: the intelligence industry and innovation side and also some creatives.
[2:18:05] Speaker 2: Cool.
[2:18:05] Speaker 4: Yeah, it's fun, you know, it's it's part of it
[2:18:08] Speaker 4: is an excuse just to to talk to folks that
[2:18:10] Speaker 4: are interested in and hang out with them.
[2:18:12] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[2:18:12] Speaker 4: But yeah, that's up there on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
[2:18:15] Speaker 4: as well. So the green Door podcast if you if
[2:18:17] Speaker 4: you're into.
[2:18:18] Speaker 1: It, cool and we will have links down the description
[2:18:21] Speaker 1: of this video and the podcast for folks who are listening,
[2:18:25] Speaker 1: they'll be able to go down there and find all
[2:18:27] Speaker 1: that stuff in the description. Awesome, Josh, thanks so much
[2:18:31] Speaker 1: for taking some time out of your day for us. Yeah,
[2:18:36] Speaker 1: thanks for writing this book. I'm anything else I didn't
[2:18:40] Speaker 1: cover that you want to hit up.
[2:18:41] Speaker 2: Before we go, I think that's probably your wrath. I'll
[2:18:44] Speaker 2: let you guys, I know it's late there on the
[2:18:46] Speaker 2: East coasts. Yeah, yeah, no worries to get off to
[2:18:48] Speaker 2: whatever whatever you're doing. Yeah.
[2:18:50] Speaker 1: Well, thank you everyone who joined us tonight, and we'll
[2:18:53] Speaker 1: see you next time.
[2:18:54] Speaker 2: All right, Thanks Jack.
[2:18:58] Speaker 1: Everyone. I want to tell you about my new novel,
[2:19:00] Speaker 1: The Most Dangerous Man, out in June. It is a
[2:19:04] Speaker 1: novel about a Regimental Reconnaissance Company soldier who gets kidnapped
[2:19:08] Speaker 1: while he's on a mission to West Africa, and when
[2:19:11] Speaker 1: he wakes up, he finds that he is now being
[2:19:13] Speaker 1: hunted for sport by a group of tech billionaires through
[2:19:17] Speaker 1: the wilds of West Africa. This book is based on
[2:19:21] Speaker 1: stories that I heard over the years about safari guides
[2:19:24] Speaker 1: taking wealthy clients hunting for poachers on game reserves in Africa.
[2:19:29] Speaker 1: I took that and I took a century old short story,
[2:19:32] Speaker 1: The Most Dangerous Game, and modernized it. And the product
[2:19:36] Speaker 1: is this book, which I think will feel contemporary and
[2:19:39] Speaker 1: resonate with audiences today. Thank you and please check it out.
[2:20:00] Speaker 4: Attatatatatastasattattattattat

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