Chad Robichoff. Dude, welcome to the Sean Ryan show.

Super honored to be here, man. I've been looking forward to it for a long time.

Me, too. Yeah, I've been following you a long time online. I'm just fascinated with all the good stuff you're doing. You're just. Dude, you are just a solid human being, and you're doing great stuff in the world. And I can't believe we haven't met before now, but, hey, we're here, and I am super excited about this interview. Thank you for being here.

No, thanks. Thanks so much.

And then we recorded an awesome podcast last night and had a great dinner. And we're on a fast timeline here because I know you got to get to Colorado, and so let's dig in.

Yeah, absolutely. First of all, and thanks for doing my show. I know you don't do a lot of them, but that was really cool to come here, and your staff was so awesome to accommodate us being able to record you. So excited about that as well.

Well, it was an honor to be on your show, man. But. Well, let me give you an introduction.

Okay.

It's one of the longest introductions I've ever done, but.

Oh, man.

But. So, here we go. Chad Robichauff, former special operations Force reconnaissance Marine. You were a DoD contractor on a very high level eight JSOC deployment. You founded the Mighty Oaks foundation, which has served over 450,000 service members and first response. First responders. You know what I love, man, is you're helping everybody. We see a lot of nonprofits. I just interviewed this guy, Johnny Wilson. He says there's 70, over 70 nonprofits that are just for special ops. And there's so many other guys out there that have done stuff and that are out there suffering. And so, thank you for helping everybody.

Absolutely, man. Everybody has their own unique role to play in the big picture, in the military. As special operations guys, we kind of feel like we're the best. But once you go out into combat and operate, you know that nothing happens without the whole system in place. And, you know, from the administrators to combat engineers, all those guys. So we gotta take care of the.

Infantry guys, especially the infantry guys.

I mean, and the spouses. We take care of spouses, too. At our program, we treat the spouses, even if they're divorced, the same way we treat an active duty service member. We will put the same amount of care. We pay for everything for the spouses, just the same.

That's amazing.

That's a commitment we made as an organization.

I mean, almost half a million people?

Yeah.

What's that even? I mean, it's.

Come on.

Half a million people.

I know. We'll get into it. When I started, mighty Oaks people helped me. And the only reason mighty, mighty Oaks began was God put a deep burden in my heart to pay it forward. And that could have been the one person or half a million people. I just knew that I needed. I knew that what someone did for me, I needed to pay it forward. It was my responsibility. And then, you know, over the years, God just has orchestrated this amazing team and supporters to make this happen. And I get to be a part of it, man. And we've been to really not only impact a lot of people's lives, but and save people's lives and restore their families and change their legacies for eternity, because that's what we do. But we get to also empower them to go out and do the same thing. And that's why it's grown the way it has. Because we don't just help people, we empower them to go out and make an impact themselves.

Yeah, we're going to dive into that. But I know you guys are making a huge dent and some of the issues that are going on, first responders and better, and I just commend you for that. You also co founded save our allies, which you guys started, basically, to go into Afghanistan. We'll get into that. You're the host of the resilient podcast, which I was just on yesterday. You were a federal air marshal. You worked with the state Department. You got a medal of valor for bravery in law enforcement. NBA, about to receive another masters from Harvard. From what I understand, you're a professionally MMA fighter, fourth degree black belt in jiu jitsu, with an 18 and two record. I believe 17 are from submission.

Yeah. Actually, as a jiu jitsu guy, I'm proud of those 17 submissions. I'll bet you are.

You're a Christian, a follower of Christ. You've advised presidential administrations, congress, the VA, and DoD on the effects of PTSD. You're the author of several books, some of which is the unfair advantage saving of zs, which is a national bestseller and is now being turned into a real motion picture. Congratulations on that.

Thank you.

I know that's a huge part of your story, and I can't wait to dive into that. And now your next one that is coming out. When does this release?

August 13. A mission without Borders. It's going out through Nelson Thomas Nelson books, and I'm super excited about a mission without Borders. It's a very personal story between me and my son. It's about, the backdrop is Ukraine. It's about my son and I.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

And you are a husband, a father, a grandfather. You've been married for 28 years. Congratulations.

Thank you.

It is no easy task.

No easy.

And especially no easy task when you're deploying as a marine and as a JSOC operator.

Yeah.

And all the stuff that you do.

Now, all the odds are stacked against you, for sure. And Kathy's a pretty strong, pretty strong lady.

You founded the nonprofit fourth option, which I love. We'll get into that, too. What I really like about fourth off, that's what everything you're doing now, right?

Yeah, yeah. Everything. I mean, mighty Oaks is our recovery. We do international efforts at Mighty Oaks, but sea spray, who, I won't say his name, but sea Spray is my partner in a lot of the international stuff. We do humanitarian work and rescue operations. He wanted to start his own effort. And so I said, as chairman of the board, I helped him stand it up. And we run those international, currently running international efforts around the world. And, you know, sea sprays out in another country right now, literally, as we're sitting here rescuing on a rescue operation.

You know what I love about that, we talked about it this morning, is that's already funded.

Yeah. Yeah.

You don't need to go around. And, I mean, it's funded so you can 100% concentrate on the mission. And I find those to be the most effective nonprofits.

And so, you know, mighty oaks, with the effort, with veterans and first responders, you know, for me, I'm always fundraising. I have to raise $8 million a year to do our programs. But the humanitarian rescue operations, I'm very blessed to have some good relationships with people who love to just do the right thing for other humans. And when we come and say, hey, we have an operation and we need to pull the trigger on this operation, because if we don't act in the next 24 hours, someone's going to live or die, and people write checks and make it happen. And so it's amazing that there's amazing human beings out there that do the right thing when our governments won't.

Yeah, man. It's. Some of the stuff you were telling me last night about what you guys are doing and what the government is asking you to do is just. It's mind blowing. But. And I want to end this with, out of all the stuff that you've done, what comes to my mind is you're humanitarian. You have saved over 17,000 Afghans from potential genocide. You had a major part of the Ben hall rescue. You had a major. You have a major part going on and saving lives in Ukraine. I know you want this out there. You do not support the Biden Zelensky, hundreds of million, billions of dollars going over there. You're only there for the people. And very commendable. You know, I think it's hard for people to push their politics aside when it comes to just helping people these days. And you're leading by example with doing that.

I say when I speak a lot because a lot of people have given me a hard time about being in Ukraine and they're like, Zawinski's corrupt. And I'm like, so are politicians in Washington, DC. Right? Most politicians at the beginning of time. But if you let your politics get in the way of your heart for people, you should probably change your politics. As humans, we have to be there for one another in our weakest times. And if God opens the door for me to do that, I'm going to do it.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we got a lot to dive into. But before we do, everybody always gets a gift. If you watch the show, you already know that.

Outstanding. You got your own gift bags.

Like, hey, it's actually just from Kroger. And we slap a sticker on.

You put a sticker on it. Actually, you get the Sean Ryan bottles and you get the coffee cup sleeves.

You know why I do that?

It's good branding.

That's why we do it. I used to drink bubbly on her all the time and we would tag them, shout them out, just because I love the brand. And then they. They don't like us, probably because we're a little bit political over here. So, you know, I was like, you know what? If you don't appreciate the free commercial that hundreds of millions of people have seen by now, then I'll just get my own branded stuff.

They're not the only water, right? Yeah.

You're welcome.

Yeah, I just had a cup of this.

Yes.

This is awesome.

I know me and you were talking a lot about brain health yesterday and so I wanted to give you that. That's got a bunch of functional mushroom extract in there. Super healthy for your brain. Finest ingredients. They source everything they can in the US. Unless they find a better ingredient, then they will put that in there. So I think we can all appreciate that.

But I do. Yeah.

Layered, superfood creamer. And what else we got here? Let's see the real good stuff formix mushrooms, and vigilance league gummy bears. So can you tell me what these are? Well, they're legal in all 50 states, so you don't have to worry about popping on a drug test. But it's just candy, man. It's just gummy bears.

Right on.

That's it.

Everybody loves gummy bears.

I know, right?

So, got some hydration packs?

Yeah, yeah.

And the stickers in here.

That's all good. Let's get on with the interview.

Awesome. Thank you for the gifts, man.

You're welcome. You're welcome. So, Chad, I just. I want to do a complete life story on you. So we got about 5 hours to cover it all. And so I want to start with childhood. I know you had faced some childhood trauma and dealt with some really tough things growing up. Get into your marine service, get into what you were doing over at JSOC, and then at least half the interview needs to be on some of the stuff that you're doing now and within the past couple years, especially the afghan withdrawal, saving Aziz, the stuff you're doing in Ukraine, and hopefully some of the stuff you guys got coming. So, with that being said, where'd you grow up?

Southern Louisiana. Like, really southern Louisiana? Swamp people. I grew up, my parents and all former grandparents spoke French, so french speaking household. Very.

You speak French?

I could understand where I grew up. It's not French like in France. Cajun French, half English, half French. A lot of slang. And so I was. Because I was the oldest grandchild and there were so many french speakers where I grew up, it was forbidden to be spoken in school. So I was the first generation of people that parents were trying to stop from learning French. But because I grew up in that household, I could always understand it. And I think it gave me an aptitude to learn languages. I think because I was able to learn languages pretty easy as an adult and eventually went to language school for Urdu. For Pakistan. For Urdu. And then I learned Dari in Afghanistan pretty good. So I feel like I had an aptitude for language because of maybe growing up that way.

How many languages do you speak?

I don't speak any other right now than English, but I wouldn't claim to speak any. But when I was in Afghanistan, I felt like I had a pretty good.

You could get around.

Get around with Dory. And then when I went through language training for Urdu, I spoke it really well. But when I got to Pakistan, everyone that speaks Urdu, which is national language, also speaks English, so they didn't. The tribal areas that I was actually working in, they spoke more pashtun, and so English actually ended up being more helpful than Urdu for the areas I was in Pakistan. So I didn't really get to practice Urdu as much as I did Dari.

Interesting.

But yeah, so grew up in southern Louisiana. My family on one side of my family was like true cowboy cattle hay. The other side of my family were commercial cat fishermen. And so as young as, like, six years old, I was out in the Pirog hunting with a 410 shotgun and fishing. Like, kind of grew up that lifestyle where you kind of out on your own and just very, very much like go back in time, like 50, 60 years. And that's kind of how I grew up. And I really am thankful I grew up that way. My family has about 84 years of military service, so I'm told World War one. So before that, but I don't have any evidence of that. But world War two in the army, Korea, in the army. My father was the first marine in my family. He joined us infantryman at 0311, went to Vietnam in that capacity, and myself as a force recon Marine and then an Afghanistan veteran. And then both my sons, my oldest son, Hunter, join the Marine Corps, the Anglico, which I don't know if you know, Anglico, Air Naval gunfire liaison company. It's a little four man, little four man teams that embed with foreign nationals, so they have access to us air support.

So they're JTACs, Ford Infantry Corps. Yeah. So, in fact, he went to Afghanistan embedded with the georgian infantry and a four man team to bed with the georgian infantry and actually got to, you know, do fire missions and stuff like that.

No way.

Yeah. So two generations of Afghanistan veterans. My youngest son, Hayden, is still in the Marine Corps. He actually was on active duty, got out refusing the vaccine. He was one of those that got kicked out. And then as soon as they lifted it, he got back in the Marine Corps and the reserves, and he's a crash fire rescue, and so the firefighter side.

Incredible.

So, yeah, so that's kind of our military service. But, you know, my father is very significant role in my childhood because my father went into Vietnam, because he went to Vietnam under. I don't know if you know, like you probably do. Like, if you got drafted, you went into the. Usually you went to the army. You didn't go into the Marine Corps. My Marine Corps pretty much volunteer there in Vietnam. And so my father volunteered to go to Marine Corps. And the reason he did was he was driving to high school and he was goofing off in his car, and his best friend was in a passenger seat. He swerved off the road and hit the back of a garbage truck. And his best friend that he was driving died. And so his response to that was to go in the Marine Corps, volunteer as infantrymen, and go to Vietnam. And so he went to the Marine Corps already broken, probably on a death wish. And when he got home, he was just a very broken person his whole life. And so he was a very angry man, a very violent man. A lot of physical abuse in my home, and fist to face, he always wanted to fight me.

Even I remember he was a little kid, didn't want to. Not spankings or. He wanted to physically fight me. And so I had an older brother. He was a year older than me. And anybody who's grown up in a physically abusive phone like that, siblings get really close. And so my brother and I beat in something we'd always be at in the woods, in the swamps, playing, pretending to be in the military. You know, that's like boys do. And we talk about joining the military and escaping that lifestyle. And I remember, like, I was about 13 and he was about 14 years old. He's a year older than me. And we watched this video. You've probably seen it. It was in. It was, you know, talking early, late eighties. It was filmed on a strand in Coronado, and it was a seal video, and it was kind of like a seal promo video. And I remember seeing this image of this seal coming out of the water. He had twin eighties on his back. He had a boonie hat on. His face is painted green, like seaweed hanging off him, the old m 16 rifle.

And I'm like, I want to do that. Like, that's. That's what I want to do. That's who I want to be. Like, just that image in my mind, but I was like, I don't want to join the Navy. Yeah. And, you know, I say that jokingly, but the truth is, the reason was that my father, as dysfunctional as my father, was the one thing that always made my dad, like, the only thing I ever seen in his whole life that made him proud and happy was the fact that he's a United States Marine. Even though he only did it for two years. You know, that two years was so significant in his life. It was like everything was about being a marine.

Damn.

I'm like, if they can make that guy, that miserable guy, happy, I want a piece of that. And so I learned about, like, recon Marines and force recon Marines. And as a teenager, that's. I became infatuated with it. I'd read books. They had these amazing stories of these guys from Vietnam. Third force recon. Third recon company. I ended up serving at Third Force Recon later. So that was like a unit that I read as a teenager. And so I started running and swimming and eating healthy, which I don't even know how it's part to eat healthy, because. From Louisiana. But I started really taking care of myself about a year into me and my brother doing that, making a commitment to do that together. He was shot and he was killed, and it was just devastating.

Hold on, Chad. Hold on. Yeah, we got a lot to unpack here. Yeah, let's go back. You know, the traumatic childhood I'm realizing is very common.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of people that have been on the show that I had no idea you being one of them until. Until we did some research on you. And so, you know, and there's a lot of people going through that kind of stuff right now. And so I always like to unpack what happened to you if you're willing.

Yeah.

To, you know, and talk about how you escaped it. And eventually, if you have any advice, you know, for kids that are going through that right now. So let's go back to what age did that start?

I can't. You know, it's crazy. And, you know, people think I'm crazy for saying this, and I actually never even mentioned this publicly before. I had this vision of being. It's almost like I see myself in a third party, of being a toddler and being held under a bathtub with water while I was trying to cry and being held, like, drowned underwater. And I had that vision in my mind for, like, ever. Like, I'd always see my dad holding me under a bathtub, water pouring out as a toddler, crying and gasping for air because I'm, like, suffocating. And. And so one day at about ten years ago, I told my mom that, and my mom started crying, and she said that my dad used to do that to me when I would cry. He would get so frustrated with me crying, and I wouldn't stop crying as a baby that he would take me and hold me under the water like you want to cry. And so he'd hold me under the water. And so I believe that. I remember it all the way at that infancy age, and subconsciously I remember that. And, you know, my mom.

My mom validated that. And so my mom, you know, a guy coming home from combat, frustrated, can't take the pressure of a baby crying. And that was his response to that. And then I can remember being, you know, even four or five years old, watching my dad physically beat my mom. And I don't mean, like, I mean, like, slapping around. I mean, like punching her and beating her. And at about six years old, that's when my dad left, divorced my mom. And I remember, like, sitting on a swing in the front yard with my mom, watching my dad leave. And, you know, at that young, I could remember that. The imagery of that. Holy shit.

When would these calm flashbacks, when would these flashbacks happen with the bathtub?

All through my life?

Like, were they triggered by anything specific?

I think it just, for me, like, I don't have, I didn't, I don't have a lot of things that even, even things, like, to this day, I deal with. I don't have a lot of things that trigger me. It's usually isolation or, like, sitting still. Which probably explains why you read my bio. And people are like, oh, that's amazing, bio. I hear that bio and I'm like, that sounds like a very discontent person. That was, like, trying to stay busy and meet the next goal. Like, sometimes I hear my bio and I feel, like, super uncomfortable because that's, that's what I hear. I hear someone that's discontent, that was chasing something. And I think one of the things, as I'm older now, I know that I was chasing. I just had to stay busy. I had to stay moving. Because when things slow down for me, that's when I have trigger. That's when I start dealing with a lot of things that come back to surfer. So for me, busyness has been a battle because it's almost like addictive behavior. Some people might drink or do drugs. For me, business was a way to not think of those things, isolate it.

When I'm still, which is being still is healthy. When I'm, when I'm still, that's when those moments would come to remember that some of that stuff.

Damn. Did your dad ever re enter the picture?

Yes. So it was pretty, pretty. I went about. So my dad left when my brother died. He couldn't handle the, a grieving wife. My mother went to live with her parents. She couldn't handle the loss of a son. My dad left and we went to Africa and pretty much abandoned me and my sister. My sister was about 20, so I lived with my sister. She was going to college and tried to finish high school and continue that course for the Marine Corps. And so fast forward to, like, adulthood. There had been gaps at times that I wouldn't talk to my dad for, like, 510 years. You just disappear. Well, it had been about ten years that I was away from my dad, and I got a call. This is like. And I know we'll get into starting mighty oaks, but this is, like, my life's on track now. After tons of stuff gone wrong, I'm starting mighty yokes. And I went through a major forgiveness to me personally in my life. And I get this call from the hospital saying, your dad's in the hospital. He had a heart attack, simultaneous heart attack and a stroke.

And yours next to Ken. And I remember being, like, angry. Like, why would they call me, like, why does he even have my name associated? Like, I haven't talked to him in ten years. Like, why would they call me? Like, I'm just being real angry about that? And then. But then realizing, like, this dude's, like, train wrecked his life. He doesn't have anybody else, and so I have to go and sign paperwork for him and be his next kin for this situation. And that led me on a. That led me to, like, a real conviction point, because I had just come out of a situation where people forgave me, and now I'm not wanting to forgive my dad because of what he did to me. And so I ended up going and seeing him, and that started. And he was in. He went from that state to very, like, almost like he just, what do you call the word where he was just, like, couldn't take care of himself. He was. He was. He was, like, had the stroke. He was stuck in a wheelchair. This is a guy that was, like, physically strong his whole life.

Mean, like, super mean, violent and just physically strong to, like, a guy that was bound in a wheelchair and couldn't wipe his butt. And so I went see him for a couple of times, and we kind of reconnected. I felt like I had some forgiveness there for him. I actually was new in my faith, prayed with him, and felt like, you know, he was in a repentant point in his life, and then he disappeared again.

You were new in faith.

I was new in faith at the time. Maybe like, two years. Two years. But, you know, you're kind of on fire in the first two years of your faith. And, you know, I say that the first two years, mine had went out, but I was really like, you know, I felt like I have to share what I discovered with him. And he really, like, grabbed a hold of it, but he disappeared again, and I know why he disappeared? And I couldn't get a hold of him. But then I got an anonymous call that he had hooked up with this woman, and they had to put him in. They were using a Social Security check, and they put him in this drug house. And he was just parked in this drug house in Oklahoma. And so I made some phone calls, found out where he was, and I got on a plane and rented a car and went. Found him. And when I went into the house, it was the middle of this bad neighborhood. I went into the house, and there was tons of people in this house. You could tell they were just hanging out, like, some.

Some guys that were probably in their early twenties. And I went in. I think they thought I was the police, because when I seen him, he was parked in the corner in a chair in, like, a hospital gown. He was filthy. He had a feeding tube in him with an empty milk jug that they were pouring stuff in. And they were just. And I'm just like. I just yell, everybody get the f out the house. And people, like, I think, again, I think they thought it was the police because they just ran out of the house. And when I went to him, he's, like. He was, like, kind of, like, out of it. And I looked at his first thing. I looked at his hands, and his fingernails were, like, really long, and they were full of feces. And he was, like. He was in a. He was, like, in a pair of underwear, and it was soiled, and he was just filthy. And I kind of panicked. I went to the bathroom, and I got somebody's toothbrush in his bowl that was on a table. And I got some water, and I went. Start cleaning his hands.

And I called 911. Start cleaning his hands with somebody's toothbrush and just washing my dad's hands. And then they came. Picked him up, and health and human services came from Oklahoma, and they put him in a nursing home. I was trying to get him to the state I was living in at the time. I was living in California at the time, but because of the way the medical system was, they couldn't move him, so he couldn't be in the state I was. So he didn't have anything. He didn't have a pair of underwear, clothes, like, so I had to. I bought him a tv, a phone with some prepaid cards, and I started calling him, and he would call, and he was like. He was, like, having dementia. So he'd call me on that phone, and he'd say, chad, this is your daddy. Like, I love you. And he never would say his whole life that you love me, but he'd say. And he'd start crying and tell me, I'm sorry, and he'd say it over and over, and then I'd say, okay. And then he'd hang up the phone, and about 30 minutes later, he called and had the same conversation again.

And so he was very repentive at the end of his life. And I was pretty sure at that point, from talking to him, that he had, you know, that he had found his faith. And then I got a call, not from the convalescent home, but from the funeral home that he had passed, and that was about seven years ago. Shit. And so, yeah, so of all the things that I've been through with my dad, I realized in the years that I hated my dad, I realized that he was just such a broken person that I never had the opportunity to heal. And that really convicts me to do better for our veterans who are coming home, because that's a big part of my motivation of why I do what I do at mighty Oaks for the veterans, because not only did I go through that myself, through my own experience of combat, but I was the recipient of that hardship as a son. And had my dad got. Had my dad been introduced when he came home from Vietnam to what we do at mighty Oaks, you know, he would have not lived the life he lived.

Our family would have not suffered the way what our family suffered. And so I feel a responsibility to take those lessons into what I do every day. And my dad was just a broken person that never got the healing. I can say that truthfully and with compassion now, as opposed to, like, hating him for what he was. He was just hurting.

Damn, Chad. So that's some heavy stuff.

That's my. That's the foundation of my childhood.

Wow. Let's rewind.

Yeah.

What did he. What was he doing in Africa?

He was working in oil field. When he got of the Marine Corps, he went to. He. He went to. Into the hydraulic engineering field. So he'd always work in the oil field and hydraulics. And so he, you know, always take these jobs overseas to make, you know, make more money, tax free money. And so he was always chasing money.

How did you find out he ended up.

He ended up with no money in the end. Right. He didn't even have a pair of underwear. He chased money, women, booze, and so much to the point that when he died, I called his sister, I called his brother, I started calling people. I couldn't have a funeral for him because not one person would even go to a funeral for him. And so his ashes are in my house. I plan on doing something with his ashes. I still can't decide what to do with them. But he didn't even have a funeral because he didn't have one person that would even go to a funeral for him.

Whoa. Yeah, I'm speechless.

I think I speak with Marine Corps boot camp all the time. And the fact that he was proud to be a Marine, I got permission already from the Marine Corps to put his ashes on. On the training grounds in MCRD, San Diego, where he went to boot camp. Me and my sons went to boot camp as well, and so that's where I'll probably put his remains. But I hadn't done it yet.

Did your kids ever meet him? Your wife, your kids?

They did. My oldest son did. All my kids met him, but as kids. And my wife, my wife did several times.

How did you find. Do you know who Victor marks is?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I've been knowing Victor for a long time. In fact, you know what's crazy is Victor and I. So I grew up in that environment. Victor grew up in that similar scenario. We grew up, like, 6 miles down the same street.

That's right.

Same guys from each other. Whoa. Yeah. We were like 6 miles apart, man.

That's. I was gonna say, man, you guys have a very similar.

He lived on. By a blue bypass road, which is. I lived on end of that. Crazy.

I couldn't believe that he was able to find forgiveness for his dad. And so, I mean, how did you. I mean, shit, Chad, you're getting drowned as a three year old, as a toddler, possibly before that. The physical abuse, the abuse of your mother, your siblings, and who knows what you're not bringing up. How were you able to. I mean, honestly, I mean, I think I personally struggle with forgiveness. I know a lot of people struggle with forgiveness. And some of the things that I need to forgive people for are when I talk to a man like you, and this is what you're talking about, you were able to forgive your dad for that? The shit that I'm talking about is so minuscule.

Yeah.

You know, comparatively. And how did you find it?

One, I didn't want to give it at first because I was. I was. I had held that anger for so long. But, you know, I believe in God's timing. When I got that phone call from the hospital, like, I was living in this. I was living in that. In this moment of grace at that point, because I had just had treated my family like a complete lunatic. Like, I never physically abused them, but I certainly emotionally and mentally abused my wife and my kids. I was having, you know, affair on my wife. I left my family, like, had been the worst husband and father that I possibly could have been, and yet my wife and my kids had just forgiven me and give me a second chance. And so if they could do that for me in that moment, and now I get this call from the hospital to come and help my dad. Like, how, like, how much of a hypocrite would I be to not be able to just extend that same kind of grace that I was given and to know that, you know, the grace and forgiveness that God gives us all, that offers for us all that I had just been given that to this new chance at life.

Like, and by the way, I didn't have a second chance. I had plenty of second chances in my life. Like, I had just went through that in that moment. And so it was demonstrated for me, you know, it was demonstrated for me by a wife that had absolutely no reason at all to give me a second chance. I didn't deserve it. I didn't earn it in my most, like, despicable times towards her. She's going into church and praying for me, falling on her knees and praying for me, saying, and, you know, God, let me see Chad the way you see Chad. Let me love Chad the way you love Chad. Let me forgive Chad the way you forgave Chad. That's what she is praying for me when she knew I was having an affair on her. Like, let me see Chad the way. See, not the way she sees me. Let me see him the way God sees him. And, like, so just having to just experience that, like. Like, I knew that I had to be able to offer that same grace to the person who I felt in my life had betrayed me the deepest, and that was my dad.

Damn. What was it like for you? Walking into the hospital, seeing him?

I was still angry, like, and I carried that during that rebuilding that relationship. I carried that for a long time. Bite my tongue. It wasn't like, okay, I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna be happy about it. No, I wasn't happy about it. I'm a pretty. I could be a pretty strong willed person. My personality, I'm sure we were a lot like, that way. I'm pretty strong willed. I was very grudgeful and, like, super cynical. Like, I'm just gonna open this up for him to hurt me again as soon as he gets healthy and so. But, you know, I knew that wasn't the reason that I needed to do it. I needed to do it as much for me as for him. I needed to do it for me. Cause I didn't wanna live with that anger anymore, like, towards him. I just needed to let it go, man. And it was really just understanding, like, what he had been through. And I remember when I first learned about why he joined the Marine Corps. And I met the sister. I met the sister of the kid that was killed in the car. I was speaking at church, and the kid that was killed in the car when he was driving went off the road, hit the garbage truck.

She came up to me in tears. She went to high school with my dad. I remember when that happened, and she's like. And she's telling me how she forgave my dad for killing her brother. And she was crying. This was like, years, obviously, years later, you know, man, 40 years. 40 years later or so. And so I just. It was just something I had to do. And like I said, you know, I had to do it for me, too, not just to forgive him.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think people confuse forgiveness, though, with, like, sometimes I feel like, oh, if I forgive someone, I have to give them a clean slate and forget, and I have to, you know, allow myself to be hurt again. That's not always the case. My father wasn't in a position to hurt me again, so that was easy, right? He's not in a position to hurt me again. He's not gonna. He's not gonna physically abuse me. He's not gonna manipulate me or take advantage of me. I'm a grown man, and so that's a little bit different. But sometimes we're in a position to where someone could still hurt us and be vulnerable to us, and we feel like forgiveness makes us, means that we have to get in the green light to hurt us again. That doesn't always mean the case. Forgiveness could be like, hey, I forgive you. Like, I'm letting this go for myself, but I'm not gonna. But that doesn't mean you're allowed to come back and hurt me again. That doesn't mean we have to be friends. Like, forgiveness doesn't always mean that we're going to restore our friendship or a relationship. It just means, like, I'm going to forgive you for that.

And I pray that you go on and have, you know, successful in your life and your life, productive in your life, and don't do that kind of behavior again. But I don't have to let you back into my life. So forgiveness is one thing. I chose not only to forgive my dad, but to let him back into my life. And I did feel like I had the ability to protect myself from him ever hurting me again because I was not in a position for him to anymore. And my family, like, he wasn't gonna put in a position to hurt my family either.

Let's go back to your brother. What happened?

So very broken family, split family, stepdads and step moms and all that stuff. So we were, we had, we went into our other families for a weekend and we had just got there. Like, he had just got home to his other family. I just got home to my other family. And he had a half brother on that other side that was eleven years old. And they got in the argument and apparently he had got taken a shotgun, a 20 gage shotgun off the gun rack. I don't know if he loaded it or was loaded, no one knows. And he was pointing at him in the argument. My brother was on the phone telling someone what was going on. He had a fire poker in his hand and tried to knock the gun out of the eleven year old's hand. And again, no one knows. Did he shoot intentionally or did the gun go off? I would believe it was probably intentionally because of the fact that we all grew up around guns and, you know, just the culture. Everybody was hunting from like five, six years old, so. But the gun nonetheless, the gun intentionally or intentionally went off point Blake range in his chest and he died instantly.

And no one else was there to witness it. Someone was on the phone. The person on the phone was one street over, told his father his father ran over in the house and he was already dead. And so, like I said, when you grow up in that kind of environment, siblings are who you're closest to. My brother was like every day super close and extremely devastating to me. I went in a pretty deep isolation and that pushed me into just really focusing on running, swimming, martial arts, like the martial arts. Since I was a kid, we did it together. So I just kind of isolated in that environment.

How old were you when that happened?

I was 14. I was 14. And by the time I was 15 is when my dad had left. And so from 15 to 16 I'm living with my sister. I get a job roofing, putting shingles on houses in Louisiana and trying to work and go to high school. And I started failing high school. I wasn't going to graduate and so I went to Marine Corps. Recruiter names. I remember his name to this day. 30 years later, staff Sergeant Ronald Brown. And I always joke, most people remember the recruiter's name because they hate him. I remember this guy's name because I'm just forever grateful. Like, he heard my story. And I remember he just, like, he was just like, I want to help you. And he helped me get in the Marine Corps without even high school diploma, which. 1990, 317 years old. You couldn't join the Marine Corps without a high school diploma. He wrote a letter to headquarters Marine Corps and said, this kid wants to be a Marine. His dad was a Marine. And this is a story. And they let me in, and I don't know how, but I took the ASVAb test, scored really high.

High enough to be just, like, buds, you know, you have to score. Your GT score has to be over 115. I had 116 GT score, so I was high enough to be able to recon. They didn't have a recon contract, so I got an infantry contract. And I made a promise to him that when I got out of infantry school, that I would get my GED. And I kept that promise. It wasn't contractual, but I kept that promise. And when I went to boot camp, got an infantry school, one of the first things I did was went to Copper Mountain College in 29 palms, California, and I got my GED.

Damn.

And all these years later, I got an MBA. And I always joke when I'm speaking. I'm like, I can't spell the NBA, but I got one. And now I'm about to get my second master's from Harvard, which I don't need another degree right now. I'm not getting it for the degree. I just. I love learning. And there's some courses there that I.

Want to learn from before we move into your military career. As a man who's been through all of that in childhood, and like I'd mentioned, there's millions of millions of kids that are in similar situations right now.

Yeah.

What advice do you have for them?

There's a book by. I'm trying to remember the name of it as you're talking. Victor Frankel wrote it. Are you familiar with this book?

I'm not.

Okay. Victor Frankel was a POW in the Nazi camps, the Jewish PoW. And he just talked about the one thing that people can't take away, one freedom people can't take away from us, is our mind and our thoughts and our connection with God. And, you know, people that you're talking about are in a different range of that. Right? Some people go talk to a school teacher their counselor. Some people could go talk to their pastor at church or a counselor, but some people are like, they have no one they could talk to. We can always talk to God. And God knows our circumstances more than we ever could. And he knows our hardships and hurts more than we ever can even understand. And I think when you feel like you have no one and that's just a lie because it's not true, you could always have a relationship. God. Talk to God and plead your case to God that he'll open doors and orchestrate miracles to get you out of that environment and situation. If you have the ability to talk to someone, most kids in that situation not only want to or scared, I think most people think you're scared to talk to someone else outside of it.

Most kids want to protect their parents. Cause at our core, like, we love our parents. I still man what I'm doing right now. I wish my dad could watch this interview. Cause I want him to be proud of me. Like, everybody wants their dad to be proud of them, no matter how terrible they were. And so at your core, you wanna protect your parents. So a lot of times, kids will live in that environment not because they're scared to ask for help, because they want to protect their parents and hide and shield them. And to me, the answer to this question, what I would tell those kids is you're not protecting them by hiding. That you have to expose what's happening, not just for you, but for them, too. They're never going to change. You're never going to get better unless it's exposed. And so you have to talk to someone. And whether it's a. A counselor at school, a mentor, a neighbor, someone you trust or, you know, get connected in a church and a group and share that with someone. Because a lot of times kids will think, I deserve this. I've been, you know, I'm not a good kid.

I'm stupid, I'm bad, and I deserve this. You don't deserve that. No kid deserves to be physically abused, especially sexually abused. And I thank God that I've never experienced that. But I know that most people in those situations deal with sexual abuse as well. You know, you don't have to deal with that. You should never have to deal with that. So you got to talk to someone.

Yeah.

As scary as it may be.

Well, thank you for that advice.

Yeah.

You know, you'd mentioned. You'd mentioned two things that I'm piecing together already. And so, you know, we talked about your intro, and you see a guy that moves fast. Always keep him busy. Always one upping himself. I mean, that's what I thought when I read your bio, too. I was like, man, this guy, he's an overachiever, which is not always a good thing. You had mentioned you want your dad to be proud. Do you think that you've accomplished so much? Do you think that that plays a role in that, as you want your dad to be proud of you and it caused you to consistently outdo yourself? I mean, marine special operations, JSOC. I know you were over a dev group for a while. Mighty Oaks foundation, save our allies, the new nonprofit that you guys are running, saving. I mean, 17,000 plus people from Afghanistan. You've offered. Offered over three books. I don't know how many books you've authored. You have an MBA. You're getting a master's from Harvard. I mean, is that the stem?

I don't know. I asked myself that, too. One. There's a saying, tell me I can't. And I had a dad and a stepdad that both told me I couldn't. I remember when my. My mom's married to this complete degenerate at the time, and I'm going in. Wrinkle my mom. I was 17, so my mom had to sign a paperwork, and then we forged my dad's because he was overseas. And I remember my stepdad, who just had total, like, when she met him, he was living in the back of a pickup truck. Like, just total deadbeat. And usually what deadbeats do is they try to bring everybody else down to their level so they don't feel so bad about themselves. But I remember, like, telling him, like, I'm going. I have infantry contract because I want to be a recon marine. He's like, what are you gonna do when you don't make it? That was just. That was first. What are you gonna do? Cause you're not gonna make it to be a recon marine now. You can be stuck in infantry. And I'm. And I remember. I remember, like, oh, like, screw you. Like, if anything now, like, I'm gonna do it in spite.

Like, to spite you. And then I felt like, even though I may never made a promise to my brother, like, that I was gonna do it, I felt like we had decided together, and I needed to complete that for both of us. And then my dad, he also didn't think I would ever become a recon marine. It was like a childhood. Everybody has these childhood fantasies, and we know that 80% of people that go in special operations don't make it so. They just didn't believe I could, and I was like, tell me. I can't. It makes me want to do it more. And then. But then there was something like that that was so satisfying about achieving that, that it. That you want that feeling, and then it's fleeting. It goes away, and so it's like, I have to get the next thing. And you see this so much as systemic. In special operations like this next school, what's the next certification? You start chasing certifications, and you start chasing units. Like, and being a recon Marine wasn't good enough. Now. Now I want to be a force recon Marine. Why? Because I didn't even know what, really, the difference at the time was.

Now I really understand what the difference was by the time. I just. It was the word. I want the word force on the front, because I knew those. The top 25% of the guys. I want to be a force recon Marine. And now. And now, you know, I heard that recon Marine, that recon Marines had opportunities to go to JSOC and serve with, you know, at either task force orange or Delta Force or dev group. They had slots there. Like, I want to do that. Like, that's. I went as far as I go to Marine Corps, like, I want to do that. And so I was always chasing the next thing, and it just was never fulfilling and never good enough. And people tell you all the time, and I know you hear, like, thank you for your service. Like, man, a lot of my service, I'm a patriot. I love people. I love serving service, serving. I know now that I'm a servant more than anything else, but a lot of that was selfish. It wasn't about our country. It wasn't about people. It was about me, like, filling the hole inside of me that I couldn't put my finger on.

Something was missing. And those jobs are great, by the way, but the problem when you do that is your identity becomes tied to that. And when your identity is tied to something, when it gets taken away from you, and it will, at some point, either you retire, you're going to get hurt, or something's going to happen. You're not going to do that anymore. It will destroy you. And my identity was so tied in those accolades and those titles and those positions that when I lost it, it almost cost me everything. So looking back now, like, it's good to do those things. Those jobs are noble, and it's important, and we need people that have the courage and capability and the mindset to build, do those jobs. But our identity should never be in that. And for me, it was. But as you're trying to build your identity around those things, it's always fleeting, and it's never enough. I mean, you name, I don't have to know any of the guys. You name a guy in special operations that's been to those units, and it's the same trajectory. They're just chasing. They're chasing something. They don't even know what they're chasing.

It's just that fulfillment. They're trying to, they're trying to build that identity, and it's just, it's never enough climbing.

Never enough, you know? But, you know, looking back after you just said that, would you have changed anything?

No, I wouldn't have. You know, I don't wish the things I've been through in my life on anything, for anyone. But I think if you took one of those things out, including the childhood trauma, I would not be who I am today. And I love who I am today. And this, and by the way, like, I wouldn't have said that probably even ten years ago at, sorry, mighty Oaks, I was ashamed of myself. I felt like a fraud. I always felt like a fraud. No matter where I was at, what unit I was at, where I was at, I felt like I didn't deserve to be there. When you don't feel like you deserve to be there, you feel like a fraud. I think, has always got to places early. I was always the young guy. I was always the guy that, I was never the fast, I was never the best shooter, I was never the fastest, I was never the strongest. I was never the smartest. I was always just the hardest working. And so that got me to places that I probably wasn't ready to be at yet. But I earned my way there.

And so in my subconscious and my. We're all. We're all self conscious, we're all, you know, and so I think under the. Underneath that, you hide it, but, you know, I just never felt like I quite deserved to be everywhere I was. And so, you know, just like this. This kind of, like, under the, like under the radar, like, to myself. Like, I just felt like I had something to prove always, and I didn't feel like I deserved to be there.

Interesting. Well, Chad, let's take a. Let's take a quick break, and then we'll get into your entire military career.

Yeah. Yeah, let's do it.

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So go to seanlikesgold.com or call 855936 GOLd now. Performance may vary. Consult with your tax attorney or financial professional before making an investment decision. All right, Chad, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to dive into your military career. So I know you went in as infantry reconnaissance, forced reconnaissance, and it just kept going up from there. So let's talk about, you know, what year did you join?

19 93.

93. What was going on in the world?

It was peacetime. You know, we just, I came out of the Gulf War, Somalia. And so, you know, not only was it peacetime, but first, last major war, and not any disrespect to the Gulf War veterans, but the last major war had been Vietnam or sustained war had been Vietnam. And so, you know, the military was a lot different during the nineties when you go in a peacetime military. And I remember, but I remember going to twin aunt Palms, California, which is where I asked to go, because somehow I'd never been to 20th palms. I've never seen 20 amp palms. But I just had this image in my mind that the toughest marines came from 20 amp palms because it gets 130 degrees in the summer, it gets down, you know, freezing temperatures in the wintertime. Like lots of, there's tons of fuel dops going on. So, like, I'd always heard the toughest marines come out of Toyota Palms, California. So I'm like, that's where I want to go. And, and then I get there and I'm like, holy crap, where'd I go? And, but they had all these guys that just got back from Somalia, so they were, you know, war veterans, and, which, again, no disrespect to that, that was a crazy.

Somalia was crazy. But, but I remember going to barracks, and I was like, holy crap, this is like checking into prison. Like they're catcalling you from the barracks. On the top of the barracks. They're like, like, you're gonna get raped. Like, like, oh, my gosh. Like, what? What is going on? Like, checking in the Marine Corps infantry unit at eight, at, you know, I turned 18 in boot camp, checking in Marine Corps infantry units, a pretty, pretty crazy thing, especially back in the nineties, a bunch of guys that just came back from Somalia, like, you know, getting some fresh, some fresh new meat.

Yeah, yeah, I'll bet.

So I, my first unit I checked into, which was, I was kind of remember kind of being disappointed at first because Antoine poems, you have that, what's called the line, the line battalions, which is line companies, and in the major infantry battalions, 372737, like First Battalion, 7th Marine, Second Battalion, 7th Marines, Third Battalion, 7th Marine, 7th Marine Regiment is there. That's where you assume you're going. But there's a few infantry guys that go over to first tank battalion, and they have these, like, cat platoons, which are like mechanized infantry units. One is like a weapons, mechanized weapons unit, and the other one is a scout platoon, toes and toes and scouts, like tow anti tank missiles. So that's where I went because I was a tow gunner. That's my mos was. And so I remember being disappointed because I'm like, I want to go to one the line companies, a weapons company, ended up going to their first tank battalion, but actually ended up being a pretty cool place to be. And I was there for a short period of time. I tried out for recon in infantry school, passed the recon ndoC. I don't know why they gave it to us, because they didn't accept anyone that wasn't an NCO, which would have been everyone at infantry school that went through it.

And so even though I passed it and get accepted. And so when I got 20 palms, I tried out for state platoon, which if people don't know what state platoon is, it's target acquisitioning platoon. And that's the, that's the snipers.

Okay.

And so you have it at the, at the battalion level, there's an, in weapons company, it was a state platoon in there. And then also at the regimental level is a regimental state platoon, tried out for state platoon. Got in with the state school, which is a five week school. There's like state school, and then there's a division level sniper school where you get them Os. And so I was there for about six months. Antoinette poems when I tried out again for recon and then went over. Tried out at first recon battalion went through what's called. Now the program is a lot different now, but back then you went through what's called, you did indoctrination, get in, get accepted, and then you go to a recon indoctrination platoon rip. And back then it was, it was all like e four s that were gatekeepers and they didn't want you in their community. So it wasn't really Arkin Hyde training. It was just total, like, hazing and a gut check. And then you make it through that, and then you go to basic reconnaissance course. Nowadays they have a year long pipeline. You sign up, you go to BRPC, or now they have it.

It's called RTAP, recon training assessment program. You do four weeks infantry school, you do RTAP. Then you could be there for up to a year just in RTAP, but you could also be there for three months. And then you go to basic constants course, which is three and a half months. Then you go to preschool by combat, dive, jump school, free fall school, seer school, and then you go to unit. So when you go to unit, you're schooled out. Back then when I went through, after you go to recon school and get the recon mos, then you go into platoon and eventually you're going to go to dive school and jump school and later on you go to free fall.

Interesting.

So it's a lot different now, the same, you know, in buds now you have Sqd and they, they're doing, you know, they're showing up at the unit with free fall. Yeah, we're back in, you know, I'm sure even your day.

No, you didn't show up with free fall.

Yeah, now they show up with everything.

So what did you find the most challenging?

Getting into recon, I showed up in really good shape. I mean, I was running like 16 minutes, 3 miles, doing like 40 dead hang pull ups. I was in really good shape. I was super small and. But my body wasn't as tough as I thought it was. I was in shape, but I wasn't tough, and so the school broke me. Like, my it bands were shot. I went from running, starting the school running 60 minutes, 3 miles to graduating running 20, 1 minute, 3 miles. Much different nowadays. Nowadays they build guys up. It just broke me. I left that school, like, broken, and. And I went to a winter class in Coronado, and.

Nice.

Yeah, it's so, you know, cold. I'm small, skinny, and so the cold was just really hard mentally.

How long is recon training?

Well, now it's a year long pipeline, but BRC itself, the basic recon course is three and a half months.

Okay.

And that's outside. That's not the dive package. So, typically you have RTAP, which would be. They'll be in there by three months, and then three and a half months for BRC, two weeks. For Prescoba, the dive phase is nine weeks, and then. And then the jump and free fall, that's in sear. That's all after it, but, yeah. So that core training you're probably looking at with RTAP and basic reconnaissance course. Take out the dive portion, you know, you're talking about eight months. Add the dive portion, you know, you're getting close to a year.

So you get through recon school, you show up to the unit. Where'd you go first?

Recon battalion at first. They disbanded the battalion at that time, in 94, put a platoon in every regiment. I went back to Twin Aunt Palms, to 7th Marines, to the platoon attached to 7th Marines Regiment, and at the time, the commander of 7th Marine Regiment was mad dog Madison Mattis. He was Colonel Mattis, and we were platoon commander, reported directly to him. So we worked directly under Colonel Mattis, which was pretty awesome. Yeah, I mean, and so I didn't realize at time how blessed we were because he assigned a guy, a gunner. The Marine Corps has this rank called gunner. I don't know if you've heard this. Have you heard of gunners? Not gunny. Gunners and combat advisors. This guy's a Vietnam veteran, recon Marine who adopted opportunity, mentored at opportune. So we got tremendous amount of training. Being in twilight Palms field ops all the time, I really felt like I learned how to be a recon Marine there. I became an excellent navigator, and we went through all kind of foreign weapons training, and it was just really good time. In fact, everybody came out of the platoon, like, a lot of guys came out of that platoon.

One guy switched over navy, went to dev group, a couple of guys, a bunch of guys went to force. A bunch of guys went to Marsoc. One of the guys still in at 30, I think he's 34 years in now. He's a gunner himself.

Damn.

And so, like, just, we had really had some guys had some amazing careers coming out of that platoon. It was 24 of us that went to that platoon. And, you know, I was only. When I went there, I was only 18 years old. I had no idea how privileged I was to be there and learn, work directly under. You know, I had my platoon commander, this gunner, and then Colonel Mattis, working. We were like, he had us reading. Reading books and reading Bravo 20 and doing case studies on Bravo 20. And I'm 18 years old, and I really. How much I'm getting pumped into me. Damn.

What was it like working under Mattis?

I tell you, there's a lot of great things. Cause he, like, really. He took a lot of personal pride in that platoon. Cause it was a new thing. He took a lot of personal pride in it. So we got to interact with him a lot. There was a lot of great things. But I watched him give office hours to two of our team leaders, and I was like, holy cow. Like, I never went to get in trouble in the Marine Corps after seeing that I was one of the team leaders. There's four team leaders, and the two we had to go in there. He made us go in there and watch and guys get demoted, restrict it, loss of pay. I was like, oh, my gosh. We had did I'm gunner taught us how to do some snatch missions, like snacks, snack and bag missions. And, you know, we had, like, recon teams with six man teams. So you had, like, two guys on one side of the road and four guys on the other, and, like, flash to flashlight and get somebody to look, and you grab them and drag them off. Well, right behind, we had a.

Right behind the 20 m poems is a communication school. And so being, you know, young special operations guys, bullies, we were like, we gotta do it. We gotta practice. And then do it to one of these communication kids what ended up being one of them instructors. They grabbed him and zip tied him, put duct tape over his mouth, and he pissed on himself and was, like, crying. So they cut him loose and let him go. He went straight to a phone and dialed 911 and gave a description. Well, back then, the only people with short rifles, we were the only ones with shorter rifles. And so the MP's are smart. They went to the armory. There's only 24 guys on that whole base of, you know, 30,000 people that had short rifles, and they were checked out of the armory, and so we got back to the barracks. They were waiting for us, and we had a standoff with MP's and opportunity commander had to come, and we all, I went into, all of us went locked up in the brig all night.

You had a standoff with the military police?

Yeah, I mean, it's a platoon of us, and they're like, ten. There's like ten MP's that's like. And we're like, we're not going. Right. And they want to talk. No one's going to rat on each other. And so finally, a platoon commander to come in and. All right, guys, you have to tell them, this guy's pressing charges. You have to tell them who did it. And so none of them ratted out, but the two team leaders fessed up. They took responsibility, and we call it Black Wednesday.

Yeah.

So I had to go in there, watch Colonel Mattis give the. Basically, he was like, you guys are bullies, and, and I'm, and I'm not gonna allow it. And, yeah, yeah.

Something tells me Mattis had a very small tolerance for bullshit. Yeah, but I've never had the opportunity to meet him. But what's the attrition rate, like for reconnaissance?

It's become like, kind of like Bud's where it has a wide front gate. It used to have a pretty narrow way to get in a selection process. Now a recruiter could sign someone up for a recon contract. It's pretty easy to get there from the fleet Marine Corps. You could put in for a lap, move to recon. And so they get a lot of people that show up there. And so about 80% attrition rate is what they're running.

Wow.

Yeah. So they, you know, I tell you one thing I'm super proud of in my community, I've been the guest speaker at four. Now four graduations. I just learned, and I'm the only one that was ever invited back, and I got to do it four times. So it's super honored to do that. And I just spoke at the last graduating class. Class. And as a recon marine, I'm super proud that all this political pressure, they never have lowered the standard. In fact, a lot of guys from my generation will be like, they didn't have it like, we have it, like, we had it harder and stuff like that. We had it different, but it's way more professional now, and it's better, and it truly produces a better product. It produces a better reconnaissance operator, in my opinion. The program is very professionalized, but I don't think in that professor professionalization, they've compromised the standard. That's good to hear. In fact, I would even say it's higher. These kids, like I said, when I graduated, I was like a Holocaust victim. Now, as graduating, you hand the certificate. Every one of those guys hands feels like a professional athlete.

When you shake their hands, they're rugged from the salt and sand, and. But they're strong. And I'm like, these guys are studs. They're like, you know, they're like professional athletes when they graduate. Now, that is. I see the same thing at SQT buds. Yeah. The guys, they're producing. They're producing some solid guys.

That's good to hear. Yeah, that's good to hear.

Because, you know, you always. You don't want to see it. I mean, the military itself is. Has been softening and weakening.

I know, man. I try not to. Look, I talk to guys that are active still. I don't really want to get into it, but, I mean, you hear about. You hear about the gender stuff coming in and.

Everyone. I'm trying to push through a female right through every one of these schools, and they tried plenty of times a recon, and they wasn't doing it. And they got a female through. And I was like. My first response was, there's no way, absolutely impossible that a female could graduate BRC. Like, that was my. And then. And so I called some buddies, our instructor there, and they're like, she did, bro, but she's like a crossfit professional. Like, the vision one, water polo. Like, I don't know all the specs, but she's. There was. She was, like, legitimately. Like a mutant.

Yeah. You know, I wasn't even talking about that. I was talking about the new age gender talk.

Oh, yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, it seems like the woke agenda is just infiltrated everywhere, but it takes.

The focus of what's important.

It's a great. You know.

Yeah. It's weird.

I feel like three years ago, we were debating if women should be in special ops. Now it's. Yeah, now we're way beyond that. But what is.

I'm just.

What is your take on women in special operations?

Well, like, in a six man recon team? I just don't think even. Even, you know, not to disrespect this girl that made it through BRC, but. And, you know, the other ones that made it through Q course, and I heard a ranger bat. They lowered the standards. That there. That's what I heard. I don't know, not taking anything away from any of them, but it just complicates things way too much. I mean. I mean, if I'm sitting in a hide, shitting in a plastic bag, like, I don't, I don't want to do that with her there. I don't want to. I'm sure she doesn't want to do that in front of us. Like, and as the emotional thing, like, men are protectors, especially the men in those communities. Like, now I have, you know, if we're going, if we're, you know, going through a door and going in a room to kill people, like, now my focus is on protecting her because you're gonna just. Men are gonna develop like a little sister.

Yeah.

Personality towards her. I mean, the people that are making these decisions never lived on a ship. They never sat in a hide for six days and shit in a plastic bag. And they're making a decision not looking at all the different factors. This is a starship trooper, right?

Yeah. You know, I think it's, it's. I'm not saying they don't have a place at all.

No.

You know, when you break up a team dynamic, the other thing that people don't have exposure to is the, is the camaraderie that happens within the team, that builds that team cohesion, you know, and the minute another sex is injected into that team, it changes the entire dynamic. It inserts drama, it inserts jealousy, there's sexual relations, there's all the stuff you're talking about, and it just breaks up the team dynamic. You know, the argument is, well, the guy should be more professional. Fuck you. The president of the United States several times has had affairs. Senators have affairs, CEO's have affairs. This shit goes on in every, every company, every aspect of government, all the way up to the highest level. So if you don't hold your own fucking president accountable for that shit, don't hold an operator.

Right.

You know what I mean? Fuck you.

It gets down to the fundamental level of why the military exists. And people would just overlook that for all these stuff. The military exists to enforce periods. It's not a social experiment, it's not a boys club, it's not supposed to be fair. Like the best person for the job, the best dynamics for the team to mission accomplishment. The military is for our national defense and protect people around the world that can't protect themselves to win wars. And that should always be the first question, is this better to win wars? This is better? If the answer is no, then what are we doing. No. Yeah, exactly.

It does have a very high potential to break up team dynamic, and that is a horrible thing in a small unit like that. Like, you're talking about 24 people, you know, and. But anyways, you know, so what? When you graduated BRC, became a recon marine, we talked about making your dad proud. You've carried that with you, it sounds like, your whole life.

Yeah.

How'd that feel?

It felt like a. Aha. Like. Like more than a. I wanted to be proud of me. Like a proved that I could do it right.

Who was your first call?

I don't. I don't think I called anybody in my family.

No kid?

Yeah, I don't think. I didn't call anybody in my family. It would have been. I was very. All my adult life until. Until probably about four years into mighty oaks, I was very quiet, very private. The fact that I'm, like, public speaking right now or even on this show is like, I would have thought, no way in a million years I'm even telling anybody I'm in the military. I was just very quiet. I didn't write back to my family. I didn't call my family, tell them about military. I was like, even my wife, Kathy, I think one of the things that probably was attractive to me about her is that she never even. And it's not now because it kind of backfired. It became bitter towards her, but that she never even cared about what I did. Like, I could have. I could have been a cook in the air force, and she was, like, totally oblivious to. She's like, oh. Like, you know, she thought, you know, even like, while we're. She's around the, you know, platoon, the recon. Not that she didn't. She just didn't care. It's just not important to her. And at first, I was like, okay, I like that.

And then later on, I got bitter towards it because I felt, like, disrespected and unappreciated better. But, uh. But, yeah. So I never really. I just stayed close to the guys I worked with.

Interesting.

That was enough. Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah, I didn't. I didn't.

What timeframe is this?

94 is when I became a recon Marine.

So 94. I know you went and did some stuff down at the border. I don't know what came first. Did you become. Did you go force and then go to the border?

No, the border. Borders. As a recon amphib, recon Marine, they have what's called JTF six, joint terrorism task force, or terrorism for terrorism task force six. And that was basically the US military working with federal agencies for counter narcotics. I know the seals back then, the seals were doing a lot, you know, out of wartime, and recon was doing it quite a bit. And we even go cross border. Do cross border operations. This is where. Well, like live ammo.

Interesting.

Everything back, back in. And it's funny because President Clinton was president at that time. And people, I remember people like, getting on President Trump for sending troops to the border. Sending troops to the border. And I'm like, I was doing that under President Clinton in the nineties. Like we were, and we were catching cartel guys bringing drugs, drugs across the border. And then you have to work around, the reason you have to work with the federal law enforcement is these laws called posse comatatus laws, which is where Us military cannot collect on civilians or be used against civilians. And really. Yeah.

Used to exist.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think they, I think they still do exist. They just don't. Oh, yeah, they just don't matter anymore. They don't follow the rules anymore. I mean, we have, we have, we actually have border immigration laws, too, if you. We do look it up. Yeah.

I have no idea.

Immigration laws. It's all kind of laws. Yeah.

Well, let's. Let's get out of the legal stuff. What were you guys doing down there?

Yeah, cartel is bringing, bringing, you know, drugs in America. So we work a lot with the DIA. I mean, the DEa and then DIA, the Defense intelligence Agency and the border patrol. We work with the border patrol directly as an asset. And so they employ us and six man's primarily six man observation teams. And we'd set up with some of our equipment, some of our observation equipment and catch people. Track, like tracking, set observation points, track people come across the border in places that they knew they were coming across and then walk, walk the border patrol or DEA onto them. And then we also were in the, I think it was called San Clemente National Forest in southern California, where they had these, they had these grows that were like these steel capes, aircraft cables between two valleys and built basically like a false floor of the earth over them and how it always grows underneath. And so we were tasked with basically patrolling and finding them. And we had a methodology of, we had a methodology of finding these grows that we had find. And so we. And those, those were always occupied. So now we're going to actually.

So hold on. They would find, they would find valleys or gorges and put in a fake floor.

Fake floor. So you can't see it from the, from air aerial imagery. And so underneath there, these bees, these grills, these greenhouses that they put inside, they'd have inside there, and they grow in like they were growing tons of weed. And this is obviously in the nineties when you couldn't do that and harvesting, and they'd be totally occupied with, you know, illegals down, the illegal immigrants down there.

What was the floor made out of?

There'd be. It'd be a, like, aircraft cable. Some remember being these steel cables made like a grid. They'd be like a canvas on top of it, and then dirt and vegetation grown on top of it. So it's like a complete, like, false floor, and it'd be a whole, like, underground grow underneath these. And so obviously the irrigation to it. So one of the things we do is move perpendicular to flow, flow of water, and look for these black tubing lines and then follow those into the grow. That's how we're finding them. And then. And then maybe these things would be booby trap. Like, I remember stepping in and there's like a rat trap with a twelve gage shotgun, black shell, like. And then they have like a fishing wire with, like, hooks hanging in it and stuff like that. Like, damn. I was like, yeah, I know that.

Stuff was going on.

I was like, you know, 1920 years old doing that. It was, yeah, what peacetime military get to do, you know?

Were you guys rolling guys up, too?

No, we were. We were. So we basically go in, we detained, detain people we didn't know arrest authority because of these laws. Right. We detained people, hold them, and then the DEA or border patrol, depending on different operations. That operation we're doing the gross. That was DEA. And so DEA come in, detain them. Harvard stole the stuff, pose a big picture. We'd be behind the camera and they're all like, holding. Holding bad guys, holding marijuana, taking a picture. The DEA just made this big bust, and I thought that was kind of cool, actually. Like, they're posing for the paper and all that stuff and, you know, nobody knows that we're out there doing it, man.

That's incredible. How long were you doing that for?

I think I did like six or seven of those back in during my time on active duty, because we never deployed. Right. There was no deployments. Yeah, so that's like six or seven of those. And they were like 30 days at a time. So we'd go down, actually, we'd stay. We'd stay in Coronado, at the barracks in Coronado. And we leave right off. We'd fly right up from the airfield, the helicopter would pick us up there, take us down to the border, and so we go. It was super cool for, like, real world training too. Like, you're actually inserting, you're doing, you know, insertions and live amp. Like, you know, so it's, you know, when you're not getting to operate in combat. Really great experience.

Damn.

Yeah. Yeah.

You got an award down there.

I got a. We got several, like, accommodations for, like, certificates, accommodation from Colonel Mattis. So for the operations we did down there.

Very cool. Yeah, very cool. Where did you go from there?

I went to third force recon company on their ini staff. That's a reserve unit, but they have active duty component. And so I went there, and then I, then I decided to switch to the reserves because I wanted to go to college and come back in as an officer. That was kind of my plan. And so I went to work as a police officer in New Orleans during a time, went to college. I was doing about ten days a month at the reserve unit. And then.

Let's rewind real quick. Why did you go? Why did you leave?

I wanted to be an officer. I thought, hey, I'm gonna make this a career and best way for my family. I just got married. Hunter was my first son. He was born in Toyota Palms, California. And I'm like, this is probably a good career. I love my job. I love what I'm doing. This is everything I wanted, and so I want to be an officer. So I'm gonna. I had applied for the Meset program, but it was while I was waiting, I just decided, hey, I'm just gonna go into reserves, and I'm gonna go to college. And because I wasn't in the Meset program yet, I decided just to get a job. So I got a job as a police officer. Ended up figuring that was a better way to do it. And then when I get my degree, I'll get commissioned and I'll go back in as officer. That was my, was my, that was my plan.

Interesting. When did you meet your wife?

I met her in 1994. We got married in 95, a year later. And so she was. We were dating when I went through BRC, through recon school, and we spent the weekend on Coronado beach, because you don't get many days off.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And how'd you guys meet?

I had a friend that was in the barracks, and he lived. He grew up in the same town as her. She lived in Paris Valley, if you know where that's at.

I don't.

Riverside county California, between San Diego and toy and palms kind of between there. He grew up there, and he was in the barracks, and he'd have a car, and he's like. And I did, and he's like, hey, will you drive me home for the weekend? I'm gonna go. Want to go visit my girlfriend? And so I wasn't doing anything, so I drove him home, and. And then I met while he was at his girlfriend's house. My wife was friends with her parents, and so she came over there, and Kathy came over, and I met her right away. I was like, you know, California girl, blonde hair, blue eyes. I'm like, I'm, like, super interested in her. And so I talked to her that night, and then I told my friends, like, hey, I want to meet this girl again. I want to really get to know this girl. And they told her, and she's like, I'm not interested. He's too short. So. So she wasn't interested. And, uh. Yeah. And so, so my friends felt bad for me, said, like, hey, we, in, like, two weeks, come back, and we'll, uh, we'll set you up on a blind date.

So that's, that was what happened. And so they set me up on this blind date with this girl, and this girl was supposed to be, like, pretty, like, wild. So they were like, you're gonna, you're gonna get lucky tonight. And. And I remember. I remember. I remember them saying that. And anyways, I go there, and the girl and my friend's girlfriend in the back getting ready. I never hadn't seen her yet. They're in the back getting their hair done and makeup, and I'm sitting there, and my wife pulls up, she sees my truck and realizes I'm there. And she comes in, and she says hi. She's talking to me. And then she realizes, like, I'm about to go on a blind date with this girl. And when she realizes that, I think the competitiveness came out. She's like, I thought you were interested in me. She didn't say that, but that's what she was thinking. And so me being, you know, a young marine, I'm like, I invite her on my blind date with us. I'm like, what are you doing tonight? So this girl's in the back getting all pretty, and she shows up in sweats, her hair's in a bun, and I'm like, invite her on this date with us.

And so she comes as the other girl. The other girl is the fifth wheel, and we're all these young people out that night.

Hold on.

How does this go?

How does this conversation go?

She. I invited her, and she said, yeah, I'll come. And then the girl comes out and realizes now there's another girl coming on this blind date. And, you know, they had one girl that's probably willing to do whatever I want. Another girl. Kathy's, like, super, like, not willing to.

Do whatever you want.

Yeah, she's super conservative. She's, like, very, like. And not that way at all. And. And that's what I chose at night. And so I ended up kind of ignoring this girl the whole night and spending attention to Kathy. And we probably spent every moment that I wasn't training or doing something for the next year together. And then a year later, we got married, so. Yeah.

Awesome.

Yeah. Not every meeting story is a romantic way. You want to come on this blind date, Willis? Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's got typical young marine shenanigans. Right.

Right on.

I'm like, I never seen what's behind door number two. Yeah. But I know it's behind door number one, so I'd rather take you. If you would have said no, then, you know.

So you went to force. Did you. Did you have to do any training to get in there?

No. You don't do any extra training to go to force. Usually it's based on experience. You know, you like guys that have, like, been. Did a whole stint in a recon platoon. Kind of a standout. Okay. In a way, if people are wondering, like, recon force? Recon. In a recon battalion, you have Alpha company, Bravo Company, Charlie Company. So you have three companies. The fourth company is force. So that's 25% of the recon battalion.

Okay.

Will be force. And so it's usually the guys that kind of stand out. It's been around a little longer, a little more experienced loader maybe. Now, nowadays, it's probably a couple of deployments under their belt.

Gotcha.

Back then, it was just. It wasn't in diplomats. Every new belt. So it's just the kind of standouts.

How long were you up force.

To 2000. 1997, as a reservist and active duty of that same unit till 2003 when I went to JSOC.

Okay, so you were. Okay, so you were reservist.

Yeah.

Reservist.

Yeah.

So you leave. You didn't want to become you. You weren't going to become an officer?

Yeah. That decision came on 911.

God.

That it wasn't going to become an officer.

You went into the PD.

Yep.

Correct. All right, let's talk about that. Okay, let's talk about leaving force.

Yeah.

And focusing more on police work.

Well, yeah, at that time, the reason I was at the police, because I was in the reserves, gonna go to college when I'm. Eventually, I'm gonna leave the police to department to go or sheriff's department to go back into Marine Corps officer. But I graduate the police academy, go work undercover narcotics, because I come from the military special operations background. I look super young. I go work in narcotics for a year, move over to patrol, and then about two months out of FTO, I get in a pretty. Pretty serious shooting incident where, you know, where I shot and killed someone on duty. And, you know, it was pretty significant. Pretty significant part of my life, to be honest with you. It's probably one of the more, like, milestone, like, traumatic things that I've been through in my life, even outside of combat, because things like that aren't supposed to happen.

Let's dig in. Why was it so significant?

So I'll tell you how it happened. So I'm at a, by the way, where this happened. To give you some geographical context. If you fly into New Orleans airport, you actually don't land in New Orleans. You land in a town called St. Rose. And so in St. Rose. That's right. I mean, probably, like, 2 miles from New Orleans airport, this happened. I heard a guy named Steve can tell he get a call he was working to beat over. We have beats. So I was. I was working 203. He was working beat. No, I was working beat 202. He was working beat 203, and I was beat. 203 was gone. So it had a gap. He was two or four, actually. So there's a beat going between. When I heard Steve can tell, you get this call was a domestic violence call. Just. You start paying attention, right? You just want to listen what's going on? And he's like, he was one of my field training officers, Marine Corps, Gulf war veteran. What? Like a kind of a bigger than life kind of guy. He's a SWAT team at Jefferson Parish guy. He'd already been around a while.

He was like, like, pretty solid guy. And so I'm listening on the radio, and I hear his voice come over to radio saying that someone had a gun and that he was calling for backup. And when I heard his voice, I knew something was significantly wrong because he's, like, such a composed guy. Like, something went wrong. And then the radio system, as timing may have it, was brand new for our department, and it went dead. Comps went down. And so I kind of, like, had this imminence. Like, I have to get to him. So going down river Road, across the Mississippi river, and as I'm going, got my lights on, got my sirens on. People were stopping in the road, right? They're not pulling over. And I remember just being, like, panicked to get to him. And when I pulled up, it was kind of, like, not really a trailer park, but, like a modular home community. And so the houses were elevated, and it was about 30 people outside of this house. And I could see that Steve's on the porch of this elevated porch with this woman yelling, but he's looking inside. He's looking inside.

He's yelling at this woman. So I could see he needed help. Make my way through the crowd and get there. And I knew exactly this house before the guy. We had been there before. The guy's name was Russell Stebbins. Always domestic violence, always, you know, giving the police hard time. So it was a very familiar place. And Steve's like, get this lady out of here. Because the guy just barricaded himself in the back room with a gun. And so I start trying to talk to her. She's being argumentative. I talk to some guys down. I'm like, hey, grab her. So I grabbed the lady by the back of her shirt and her pants, and I pushed over the rail, like, forced her over the rail, and some men grabbed her and pulled her over. And I remember you went over, she later trying to pull her, and she, like, fell in this barbecue pit and fell over. And then her kids were there. Her kids were like, you know, probably like, five, six, seven years old, two kids right there. And they were scared, and they grabbed ahold of her. And so when I seen that and those guys had her, I went back to the front door where Steve was, and Steve went.

Steve went to the window of the room that the guy was in so he wouldn't shoot out the window. And so he's watching the window. We're trying to get the radio working, and I'm standing in there in the doorway. And as I'm standing in the doorway, I'm looking into a. I'm looking into a living room. To my right is a kitchen table. And I remember seeing, like, food still. They were just having dinner. Their plates are on the table, family pictures, toys on the floor. Like, this is not like, the environment. This is not Afghanistan, right? This is like, I lived. I lived a few miles away. And when Russell came out of the hallway, he stopped right before the end of the hallway. It was catacorned to me. So I'm in this door, living room, catacorners, the hallway. I could see a mirror. And when he came to the edge of the. I could see him. He got in the against. He just barricaded himself behind the wall. And he had the rifle in front of him. And he reaches down, and I could tell he press checked it. And I'm like, he's checking to see if he's got a round vent chamber, which, you know, to me is, like, pretty significant.

He's thinking he's gonna get in a gunfight. So I just. I was yelling at him, like, hey, put down your gun. I'm talking to him like a policeman. Put down your gun. Come out. Let's talk. He's like, you guys need to leave. I want to talk to my wife. That's not going to happen. We're not leaving. You can talk to your wife, but you need to put down the gun. We'll facilitate that. Just put down, like, do not come out with that gun. And if you'd asked me that day, like, even a minute before that happened, if a guy pointed a gun at me, what would I do? I'm going to smoke him, right? That's kind of like, as gunfighters as we think we do. But when he turned that corner and he came out, he had the gun over his shoulder. He didn't have his shoulder. He had it over his shoulder. And his hand was holding the receiver, and his finger was by the trigger. Well, I remember seeing, like, his fingers. Not the trigger. Well, it's by the trigger. Well, I don't know why he was holding it that way, but he's pointing it right at me.

And based on lethal force, like, I could have killed him right there. But. And that's what I would have probably said if you'd asked me that question, like, quiz me before. That's why I would have shot him. But like I said, looking in this guy's home, his kids right behind me, his wife's screaming behind me, there's still food on the table. I felt like I still had control of that situation, and I felt like I didn't have to kill him in that moment. And I'm like, he had too much to drink. He's taunting us, by the way. Russell Sevens was six'three. 263 pounds. I know exactly his height and weight. I was about 125 pounds. I was training a lot. I've been training my whole life, and jiu jitsu and MMA. And so even though he's bigger, I just felt like I still was in control. But at that point, I went from being a policeman to just being two dudes. And I remember telling him, I'm like, I'm gonna fucking kill you. That's the words I used. And he'll recursive. I probably won't curse much on this show, but that's the words I said to him.

I was, I wanted to know, serious, I'm gonna fucking kill you. Put down your gun. And he's like, you put down your gun. And I'm like, not gonna put down my gun. And so I moved towards him and I pulled. I pulled my gun in, like, my pistol in to retain my weapon, and I grabbed the barrel of his gun and pointed away from me. And when I did that, I kicked him in the nuts, like, not like a football kick, but like a push kick to disarm him. And when I kicked and pulled, like, nothing happened, he was, like, holding on that thing so hard. I did it a second time, and my arm must have came away from my body and he grabbed my arm. And so now we're, now I got this giant man who's mad, and I'm way smaller than him being overpowered, and we're fighting over two guns. And in that moment, I remember realizing, like, he's never gonna give up. Like, this is, I have to kill him. And. And so I just rolled my wrist over to break his grip, and I came over and I fired one round.

Boom. Like, right in the center of his chest. He stepped back and I pulled in and I fired firebore. Six shots right in front of me. I remember watching the rounds go into him, like, hit, hit his body. And Steve, I didn't even know Steve came behind me, but Steve came and he was shooting right over my shoulder. He shot six times as well. I could hear his. I could hear his gun. I could watch the casings come out of my Glock. I was watching the casings come out of the top, you know, Glock that come out of the top. I was watching him, like, roll out. I could hear about mechanics of my gun. I could separately hear the mechanics of his gun functioning. I never heard a bang. I just heard, like a, that pop. And my ears never ring or anything. And so we hit him eleven out of twelve times. I didn't drop the round, by the way, always. That's an important point, you know, he turned. He turned and he landed on his knees. And he looked right back at me conversationally, like, totally calm. And he's like, you killed me.

That's what he said. He's like, you killed me.

That's what he said.

That's what he said. Yeah. I mean, it was. He wasn't. He wasn't in pain. He. It wasn't. It was emotionless before. He was mad, angry, riled up. It was just like, total, total, like, composed. He just looked right at me and said, you killed me. Like he knew. He knew he was gonna die, like, in that moment. And I pushed him down, and when I pushed him down, he fell. And I pulled the rifle out from under him, and I pulled his hands back to handcuff him. And I remember feeling like his. Because his other arm came up. When I broke his wrist, his other arm came up in front of him. So one of those rounds went through his wrist. And so when I grabbed his wrist, it was like a noodle, and it blew the bones out. And I had blood, like, it was super slippery. I had blood, like, everywhere on me. And I put. I handcuffed him. And while I was handcuffed, I heard him, like, breathe out, like, his last breath and die. And then me and Steve start clearing the house, making sure no one else was in the house.

I think some guys from down there came up and blocked the doorway. But I remember looking back before we cleared the house, actually, I remember looking back for some reason. My first thought was look back at the wife. And I just seen her screaming. And I wanted to, like, go out to her, like. Like, because we were there for her, right? And. But obviously, she was probably hated us in that moment. Her kid. The kids were just like in shock. It was perfect view. Everybody seen everything. Damn. And cleared the house. And then we were. Every police seemed like at that time, every police. Her sirens, all the police came and separated. Steve and I took our guns away, went back to polygraphs and interviews. And then the next day, the newspaper headline said cold blooded murder. Sub headlines say police had justified went in about a pretty long period of investigation. And then I went before because the DA didn't want to make a. Make a position on it. Election year, I went before a grand jury for second degree murder and was cleared. And then after we were cleared, then Steve and I got the medal of Valor from the governor of Louisiana.

Man.

Yeah. The reason I say that's just a significant thing is because you just don't think things like that would happen. I know they do every day. But for me, I was mad at him that he would. That he made me do that in front of his wife and kids. I was just so, like, pissed that he made me do that in front of his wife and kids.

Is that the first life you've taken?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the most intimate. Yeah.

How do you feel about that today?

Oh, I still. It's still to this day, like. Like, sometimes. Sometimes I'd be thinking, like, those moments are still. Still in us. Right? I think about that, and I'm like, why they. Like, why did that guy do, like, I think about his kids. Like, I don't know. Like, how'd those kids. Where'd those kids end up? They saw that, you know, I don't. I don't know who those kids are, where they ended up, but they saw that, and, like, why did he have to. Why did he have to. Why couldn't he just put that gun down? Why did he have to do that? He knew he wasn't gonna get. He knew we weren't gonna leave. Like, you know, one of the things that came back in the autopsy was that. That corroborated my statement of trying to disarm him and trying to save his life, was that his testicles was, like, the size of a bowling ball. Kick him. That's like, what. I don't say that to say kick hard, but I say that to say, like, that's how determined he was not to give up that gun. I kicked him twice, like, blasted him, and I was training muay Thai at the time.

He felt it, and. But he was determined not to give up.

Damn, jed. What. I mean, had. He had a history of this stuff.

He had a history of being belligerent to the police, but never anything like that. Too much to drink. Too much to drink.

Do you feel like maybe there's a possibility that you saved those kids?

I think so. I think. I think he was. I think if he would have got past me, he would have. That weapon was loaded. It was off safe, it was chambered. I think he wanted to shoot his wife, and she was in a crowd with the kids, and there was about 30 people in that crowd. And so, obviously, that's why I wasn't going to get out of the doorway. He wasn't going to get past the doorway, you know? And so I think if I. You know, if Steve or I would have let him come out of that house and have access to those people, he would have. He would have fired a rifle at his wife or into that crowd of people.

How long did the investigations go on?

About four months or so. So about four months. And I was on administrative, like, working at the detective bureau, doing administrative work. That's how. That's how I ended up in the detective bureau, because after we got that award, the medal of Valor, I'd already built a reputation. People like me in the detective bureau doing administrative work, and then the chief was like, they never promoted anyone to detective that young. I was only 23 years old, and they promoted me to detective.

Did you feel like he deserved it?

No.

Why?

I felt like I got it. Cause I had a. Cause I got an award, and. But then I went in there and crushed it, you know, I remember, I mean, you got people that been in department, like, 2025 years putting up a detective, and there was two slots open, and we get me and Steve, the two guys get the war, get it, right. And so people were obviously not happy. Better. And, you know, gonna run their mouth about it. And so that made me realize, okay, I gotta go out and earn this and prove it. So I worked really hard, did a great job, end up getting. Going from general investigations to violent crimes task force investigating homicides.

So, hold on. You kill a guy who's determined, potentially determined to kill his wife, possibly his kids, maybe more.

Mm hmm.

They put you under a four month investigation on it, try to burn your ass, wind up giving you a medal, put you in this new unit, and you don't feel like you deserve it?

Well, you know, doing something like that doesn't make you a good detective, you know? So what does good investigative work like? Be intelligent, smart, experience. Experience. A lot more experience that I had. But at the same time, like I said, I'm. I had the opportunity to do that. I'm gonna embrace it in a day about working. You know, I worked everybody there, and, you know, in my time there. In my time there, in a year there, I worked. I think it worked, like, close to 30 violent crimes either. Murders, attempted murders, shootings, and had the highest conviction rate of any detective on those types of cases. And so my last year there, right before 911, I ended up moving over back to special investigations and became the senior detective at special operations. Special investigations, which is like narcotic spice, stuff like that. And so.

Damn, man. Yeah, you rise to the top everywhere you go.

I just, like I said, just work hard, man.

Yeah, lots of people work hard, but. So 911 happens.

Yeah. Yep.

Changed everything for you.

Yeah, man, I was. I was still in reserves. I was a, you know, the military free fall team leader at third force, the sergeant. And so I remember watching those planes fly into World Trade center buildings, and I'm like, dude, my life just changed. Like, one, I want to. Want to participate. Two, I don't want, I don't want to go back in as an officer. Like, that was my, that was my goal and that immediately changed my goal because I know, and obviously I'm very thankful and respectful to all the military officers. But in the recon community, if you're a reconnaissance officer, you're an administrator and a planner, you're not an operator. Those who need it, but that's not what I want to do. And so despite having the ability to get commissioned at that time, I decided to go. Within a week of 911, I resigned from the police department, the sheriff's office, and was that I went to third force recon on active reserve contract because it was the fastest way to get back on active duty. And I thought we were going to deploy everybody that was in the reserves. Everybody thought everyone's going right.

And the attitude of the military at the time was not like, oh, my gosh, we're going to war. Everyone's like, hey, what's up, sir? Let's go do this. The military was super motivated. The country was patriotic and charged up to do the right thing and retaliate for what happened in the twin Towers and the Pentagon. And so I thought we were going to deploy right away and we didn't. And so the air marshals came. Very smart. I had a friend, Danny O'Toole, who was former dev group guy, retired dev group, and he was, he was one of the first, one of the original 45 air marshals at a time. There was about 45 air marshals before 911. And so what they did, and it was really smart how they did it. They tasked those 45 guys to build a force up of, I won't say the number, a couple of, you know, a pretty significant force of air marshals. How do you do that? Right. It takes like about a year and a half to get someone through a federal hiring process, through OPM to get somebody a top secret clearance, and then go through FLETC to get trained.

So that's the best way to do that. Target the reserve units for guys that already have T's clearances but aren't military, contractual obligates the military. And so that's where they focused their recruiting efforts. It was pretty smart.

Yeah.

And so they came to third force as well as. So that's why the first wave of air marshals were all guys, reserved, a lot of team guys and a lot of, a lot of SF guys and then a lot of recon guys. That was the first wave of air marshals were all those type of guys. They gotta be able to pass the shooting standards, because at that time, the air marshals have what's called. They changed it after about two years. But it's called the TPC tactical pistol course.

I've heard that is.

It was brutal. It was crazy. It was the hardest pistol course I've ever shot.

Can you talk about it a little bit? Yeah, I'm super interested in it.

I think 30, 30 rounds in less than 30 seconds. And you can drop. You can only drop three rounds. You can't drop them off the paper. You can drop three rounds out of the. Out of the center. A. What do you call the. A thing. A box. A box, yeah.

30 rounds. 37 in less than 30 seconds.

Yep. At seven. At seven yards. And so the drills are different drills from concealed Holster, 1.656 shot ribbon drill under 3 seconds.

Oh, so it's not 30 all combined?

No, no. It's ever drill back turn three targets. I think they back turn three targets in 1.8 seconds. So pivot drill. Boom, boom, boom.

This sounds very familiar to my qualification to get into the agency.

Yeah, it was good, man.

I wonder if that's where it came. I'll bet that's where it came.

A lot of pressure now about, after about two years, they got rid of. They dropped to the ATPC.

Why?

Why? Because the secret Service took over leadership and so of their marshals. And, you know, anytime the government gets control of something, they ruin it. And so basically they said instead of. Instead of, they said, hey, this is too much. Instead of bringing the shooters up to the standard, they brought a standard down that are shooters, and they want to bring other federal agent. Federal agents in. And that opened the door for people from all over federal agencies to lateral and have a better paying job, something a little more sexy. So you get. Then you got a ton of guys from, like, the Bureau of prisons, Border Patrol, and it wasn't. It wasn't the best of them. So it deteriorated pretty quick after that.

Damn.

Yeah. So it was a good thing at first. And so I went through the second class of that, a couple of guys from my unit, and then I got to the Denver field office myself, and Dave Limone, who's a Navy SEAL, we became the training head. Training officers built the. I built the combatives program that they started using the beginning for the air marshals wide. And then. And then Dave was primarily handling the firearms training. And although we worked together, do both. And then. But I still want to deploy, and I just wanted to go. And then some buddies went and a deployment came up for Iraq, early deployment. Like, pre invasion deployment.

Nice.

And so I had the opportunity to do that. And so that's where I was going. But then while I was preparing for that, then I had some friends from the unit, from Delta Force. I don't know if you knew the guys from Somalia. Rich Kachocho, Norm Hooten, Brian Morgan, all those guys from the original. I was friends with a lot of those guys. Tom Satterlee, I don't know him. Pat Savage, mainly. Rich Kurchocho was the Q. If you watch the movie Blackhawk down, the AFO on a bicycle, pretending to be a journalist, that's Rich kachocho. You. And he was a really good friend of mine. And he's like, hey, that's the select selection going. They're looking for some certain qualification qualifications for some guys at JSOC. I think this would be a really good fit for you. I know what you really want to do. He's like, I don't think you should do it because I think you should. Air Marshall's a good gig. I think you should. You got, you got three kids at home, but I know it's what you want to do. And so if you want to do this, probably the perfect fit for you.

You got it. You got a degree. You have worked undercover, like, as a civilian, and, you know, you have all this other training, like, I think you'd be a really good fit for it. So I trained up for it and I went, did this selection and got selected.

So you went to, you basically, you're probably not going to say this, but I will. So you got recruited specifically to go to Delta selection.

Yeah.

Made it through Delta selection and got to. Did you go to OTC?

No. So, so I thought, don't know.

Delta. The Delta training pipeline is called OTC.

OTC. No, I thought. I thought I was going Delta selection because the Delta guys recruited me. So that's where I thought I was going to. And it ended up being. It'd be a selection specifically for this program. And I didn't even know what the program was until after I got selected and get, you know, read into it. So I thought, we're doing Delta selection. We did not do Delta selection. So I did not. I did not actually do a Delta selection. It was a JSOC task force, and it ended up being at the other, the other unit. That's where it went. The reason I'd be in a dev group being a dev group. Yeah. The reason why the Delta guys did it is because they had the experience in an AFL program and they were also, they wouldn't only task with recruiting for it. They were tasked with running some of the training for it. And so that's how I got. And luckily, I say luckily because had I not run rich Koch Ojo, there was no way I would have got the opportunity to try out for that.

So what was selection like.

Basic, basic skills of, you know, being able to do all your fundamental navigation skills and stuff like that, checking for a lot of, a lot of different things that.

You know, was it the long walk?

It wasn't a long walk. It was portions, portions of that because these guys are putting it so they want to see that. Same at this. They're looking for those mental attributes. For me, nothing physical was anything. It was the interview process that I thought was very significant, like asking different decision making criteria. Give us an example. Silly stuff like, right, how you stop a vehicle. Right. You know, shoot the driver. Right. Like stuff like that. But then, but then also putting your scenarios like, like if you, and I didn't understand all the scenarios first because I didn't know, I mean, you're going to do something like that. So I'm thinking, I'm trying not to be an assaulter. I'm thinking I'm trying to be as to go and be a sold tourette at the unit. And so they start asking questions about, you know, being in a business environment and what kind of decisions you make in a business environment, a foreign business environment, and they're looking for your business aptitude and then, and basically asking questions like in a compromise scenario, like not really looking for the right answers, looking for how you process.

They want to know how you think.

How you think. Yeah. And so I was actually really like, take him back. Like, because I wasn't expecting those type of questions at all. And then, um, you know, and so I thought I bombed it. I thought, man, because you, you're expecting one thing, you get side, you get blindsided. And so you automatically think, I wasn't prepared for this. I totally bombed it. And then I find out that if I'm, that if, that if I'm interested, that I'll get, I could go to the read in and I got read in and that's when I found out that it was the other unit and actually what I'd be doing. And to be honest with you, it was a pleasant surprise. I was stoked.

Really?

Yeah. I wasn't like, oh, man, I thought I was gonna be doing this. It was like, it was like you're expecting to open your Christmas morning, you're expecting to open the present and get a bicycle, and it's a freaking Honda 250.

Hell, yeah.

That was. That was my. That was my. My response. I was like, this is amazing. This is like a tremendous opportunity. And I still look at that today. I'm like, every special operations has this competitiveness between them. And I think that probably the closest is because the closest recon and seals, I think the closest compatible mission wise. And so there's always this fun competitiveness, but everybody knows that at the premier NSW unit, that's a difference.

Yeah. So what were you excited about? Were you excited that you were about to attach to development group, which is SEAL team six, for those that don't know? Or were you excited about the job description? That it wasn't an assault or that it was some under the radar?

Yeah, I'd say both. But the second more so. Cause I just feel that, first of all, like, that AFO job, advanced force operator job, the clandestine logistics job sounds super sexy, but no one wants to do it, especially the assaulters. Like, no one wants to do it because it's a. You're not. You're not kicking indoors. Like, my job wasn't kicking indoors, shooting bad guys in the face. Like, my job was making. The job of AFO is to go as a singleton or maybe a small team embed with local nationals, build a plausible reason to be in a. In a. In a non permissive area, meaning where us military is not. You're. You're by yourself, you don't. You don't have a radio, you don't have, like, you truly are alone. And now you have to build a clandestinely build infrastructure and operational plan to put assaulters on target and safely get them off. Like, it sounds super sexy, but the assaulters that know, like, no one wants to do that job. But for me, I, like, this is, like, exactly right up my alley. This is, like, exactly what I want to do. Like, I love the independence to be able to think outside the box on my own, to build a problem solve.

I like, I. Like, I loved undercover work. When I was working undercover, I feel like, put me in it. Put me in a. You know, put me in Washington, DC, working in the. In Congress. Like, I could talk to anybody. I could get along with anybody, put me into projects, I could go hang out with drug dealers. Like, any environment I'm in, I feel I could get along with anybody and work with anyone. And so I love that environment. I love to be able to just be with different people and do different things, do different types of things. And I just loved, I loved the idea of that job and I wanted that training and I'd always kind of somewhat heard of it, but I didn't know that job existed in a way that did. So now I'm being exposed to what it is and the more they're briefing me, the more I'm like, this is, this sounds like the coolest job on the planet. And the training was incredible. The guys that put together the training, they had input from. Input came from green team on some of the stuff that they wanted us to have.

Green team, for those that don't know, is the training pipeline to get in development group, team six.

Yeah. So we had input from green team on our training package and it was being built for us, for the first wave of guys that came in. It was being built for us. And then, and then, and then the, the unit guys, the CAD guys that recruited me in, they had a contract from, from our command to build that program. And so we had with high risk seer. High risk seer, which is like corporate cover, then all the corporate cover training and then loan operator course, like, you know, you by yourself, the medical stuff that you need to know about yourself, the, you know, singleton operations, working by yourself with one other guy for your basic, you know, basic gunfighting skills and stuff like that. And it was really good training and I learned a lot in a really short period of time and then learned the rest of it on the ground as we went.

How many guys showed up to that selection? How many guys got recruited? Did you see him?

No, I didn't see him. No. It's not like a lineup or anything like that.

No shit. The selection is just you.

Yeah. And yeah, I couldn't tell you who I was competing against or. Yeah, I could tell you the guys that they picked, you know, at net wave, it was twelve of us. They got picked. Three. Three dev group operators, three guys from SF guys, two CAG guys and, and four for Srikant guys.

Damn, dude.

Yeah. And we're the first wave of all the training.

So you're basically a plank owner of whatever you call that.

Yeah, yeah, whatever they want to call it. Yeah, yeah, we're the first ones, so. And it was out of necessity because, you know, dev Group had the mission in Afghanistan at that time. Delta is focused on Iraq and who had who. That mission skill set was probably more capable for Delta, but that group had to stand that up.

Can you talk about some of the training once you got in once, once.

I got there, yeah. I mean, we did recurrent training. We did recurrent training, but after everything else was like, as we went, like I did about, did about. The initial training was about six months. And then I went right at the end, I went right to Afghanistan and.

On the job training.

On the job training, yeah.

And figured it out.

The recurrent, the recurrent training was every year we did driving training. We didn't go, you didn't go back to high risk here, but you did a scenario based training. Sdrs. We always did recurrent SDR training because that's what keeps you alive when you operate as a singleton.

Can you explain what an SDR is to the audience?

Yeah. So surveillance is counter surveillance and surveillance detection, and then SDR is surveillance detection routes. So surveillance detection is being able to detect if surveillance is being conducted on you, which is very important when you operate in a singleton, because if single, if surveillance is being conducted on you, then you're going to be able to know that the next phase of surveillance is if you're going to be abducted or attack or something like that, it's going to come behind surveillance. Usually, especially in the Taliban, the Taliban doesn't traditionally. You might think like, oh, man, if you're out by yourself as an American and you're in Jalalabad walking around like, the Taliban is just going to grab you, kill you, shoot you, kidnap you, probably not. They probably going to go out, let somebody know you're there, hey, we see american here, like, and they start smiling you, and then they can decide they want to make sure who you are. It's a slower process. You go downtown Chicago here, wrong skin color, you're probably just gonna get shot, right? So there's not really like a lot of violent crimes of opportunity in that scenario. So surveillance is usually gonna come first.

So surveillance detection is being able to detect surveillance. Surveillance detection routes is using a strategy. And I won't get into TTPS techniques, tactics and procedures of SDR routes, but it's basically you use a surveillance detection route to expose surveillance. So you do certain methodologies and you put them in your daily agenda to build the exposing and potential surveillance you have on you. And so it is a survival tool for people that operate in singleton capacities.

So what are they briefing on? What are they briefing you you're going to do when you get to Afghanistan?

Well, I mean, it would be no secret to say that, you know, that command's agenda was the top ten, right? Bin Laden, whoever's on the top ten list, they were on the menu. That's what they're going to get. That's the whole focus of that command being in Afghanistan. And so the assault forces are gonna guys go in and capture or kill those guys. And so they. Most of those targets gonna be in non permissive areas, either eastern Afghanistan, in the mountains of. In the mountains of Afghanistan and areas that don't have conventional military, or across into the father, the federal minister, tribal area, or even further across the border into Pakistan. So our job was to. Was to set up infrastructure through building a plausible reason. I won't, you could probably use your imagination of how you would build a plausible reason for Americans to be in certain areas. So I have to create a reason, not a shallow one, because you got, you gotta have some legitimacy to it. Create a reason to be there, create a presence there, create a footprint of traffic that you could hide real operations in and then. And then build all the clintest infrastructure.

Infrastructure to build, to put assaulters on target in a non conventional way. You know, any. You know, when I say non conventional, I don't mean. I mean, you know, fast roping onto, you know, fast roping into a compound, you know, with a. With a CH 46 is pretty conventional. But how, how do you do that in non conventional way where guys can slip in and slip out? And that requires a lot of on the ground in advance, prior logistical coordination like safe houses. Then you staging local national weapons and get, you know, procuring local national weapons going in and, you know, by local natural weapons, procuring them, building safe realms that could be fortified, it could be fought from, you know, ak forty seven s and pkms and hand grenades and RPG's and building fighting positions in those safe houses, having money, clothes, passports, blood, like, who the assaults come, what's everybody's blood type? Let's get blood, let's have blood standing by, you know, you know, a cache like cache type facility and capabilities inside of a safe house. And then all the routes to and from, like all the contingencies, all the contingencies that could be, that could go wrong in operation like that.

All that has to be in place from the moment you move them, move them from wherever that staging area is to the target, to their back off the target, to the back on Bagham air base safe, and we're still out there. We stay out there, all the tourists.

So you're basically, you're a facilitator.

That's it.

You are a facilitator that sets up every aspect surrounding the actual operation with plausible deniability? Yes, for everyone. Foreign weapons, foreign ids, foreign everything.

I mean, in Afghanistan, every town you go in, like a lot of different areas, you have a different license plate. You know, you go to a different checkpoint, you have to have different permits for different areas. If you don't know any of that and don't have that in place, you might. You might have the best operation in the world. When you get stopped at the first checkpoint, everybody gets pulled out of vehicle, it's over. But now all that has to be facilitated in advance. And by the way, you can't do that without local, local national element involved. And a little bit. Little bit of I did with Aziz, who was my teammate and interpreter, I did about 100 of those in my e deployments.

You facilitated 100?

Yeah, operations like that.

Operations.

And I'll say, just so people don't get confused, not every one of them was a capture, kill hit, but over 100 operations facility.

Is there anything in particular that stands out? Do you want to talk about number six?

We, you know, as he's. And I put. Put the command on number six and they killed him. So that's the highest I got up on the list. We tried. We tried for number two. Obviously, we're all after number one, and. But number six we got. And. But we almost didn't because of. Because of his ease, we did.

You want to go into it?

Yeah. Yeah. So, batikoot, Afghanistan, Battakoot's little farming village. Everybody thinks of. Afghanistan is like desert, right? Like Kandahar. But, man, Afghanistan's. When I think Afghanistan, I'm thinking rocky mountains, Colorado, gray granite rocks, pine trees. Smell, you know, smell of pine creeks. Beautiful. That's Batticut. High mountain forming villages, very cold. We were there. So aziz and I had been there a couple of weeks and to set up. Set up the operation, and we've been working together for a while. Aziz, you know, not just assigned to me as my teammate, my friend, you know, he's my brother. And very, like, when I say witting, like, as witting as there's parts of the operation that I couldn't say here, I could definitely not say on this show. He knew and seen and was aware of this dude. I won't get into this story, not that I can't, but not to get off track, but he's the only Afghan I know that was recognized by Congress for the rescue of four seals, Dev group guys. And it was me and him. We got a call from the command to go clandestinely extract these four seals. Not that Devgu couldn't have went get him, right.

They could have sent a QRF and killed that right in the village and got those guys out, no problem. But they wanted to maintain the operation, and they didn't want any collateral, civilian collateral damage, because it was Taliban infested village. And so they asked us to go. Go in and get it. And Aziz was like, it's middle of the night. Aziz that know these guys?

Hold on, hold on.

I'm getting into. They're a totally different story now.

Let's just do this story. Let's talk about the entire thing. Then we'll go back to number six. Yeah, actually, let me stop right there.

Okay.

Why don't. I think this is a good point in time to talk about who exactly Aziz was and why he's so important to you.

Yeah.

And. And how he plays a role in your life.

Yeah. So when I. When I get to Afghanistan, the very first time I land at Bagram Air Force base, I'll start there. I didn't fly. Most people might be picturing, like, you fly there with your unit on deployment. That wasn't the experience I had or the type of job I had. I flew an unmanifested plane out of Norfolk with a couple other operators I never met before with a rafting bag with $2 million in it of cash that I snapped to my ankle because some big neanderthal named Moe from the command was like, hey, I got some. I got some Ambien right here. Why don't you take two? They all knew I had that money, and so they were there. You know, they didn't know me, but they knew who it was, and they were just giving me a hard time. You know how guys are. They giving me a hard time. And, uh, so I curled up like a cat on top of a pallet, flew there. Those guys, you know, those guys, the assaulter guys went off, did their thing. They'd been in, out. They were being in and out, in and out of there all the time.

And I. And I was told to wait there to meet. The exo was coming to meet me. So I was sitting there waiting, and. And I was standing on the edge of this 2003. So I'm on edge of the airfield, and there was these Hesco barriers and Constantino wire. And I remember, like, in that moment, being by myself in the dark. I mean, my first moment was like, this feels like 29 poems. Like, something about it. It felt, like, familiar, like, 29 poems. But then I remember, like, thinking, like, holy crap, like, this is real. They like, hit me. Like, I'm in Afghanistan. I've never been to war before. Not. Not only am in war now, but I'm doing this freaking crazy job that I've just got that I've never done before. I've just got training in it. But it's just the reality hit me, like, somewhere another side of this, in the dark, on the other side this Hescober's and Constantino wires the taliban like the enemy. And over the next few months, I'm going to try to facilitate killing them, and they're going to try to kill me. And that's really what's about to happen.

And, like, you kind of ask yourself, like, am I ready to do this? You know, am I. Am I ready to do it? The Marine Corps entrusted me to represent them at this incredible unit that I'm, like, feeling, like, super privileged, like, honored to be able to be a part of. Like, am I ready? And we were talking last night about these four pillars of resiliency and, you know, mind, body, spirit, and social. Like, you know, if I would have gave that inventory mentally, I was, I was motivated. I knew my job. I had tremendous training in my job. I really had a confidence in myself. Physically. I was in the best shape of my life. Socially. I'm with the premier special operations unit in the world. The support you get there, like, why am I excited to go there, man? What can't they get like that? Any resources you need, right? You can get there. But spiritually, you know, I had to wear Christian stamped on my dog tag. But the truth is, that was a chink in my armor. Like, I was, I believe, looking back now, when I got there, I made this decision because my wife was, like, pressuring me.

Like, you're going, like, I'm praying for you and stuff like that. My wife was, like, pushing me towards, like, God. And I was like, you know what? Like, right now in my life, I have to choose between being a warrior or being a person of faith because I believed that the two couldn't coexist. I believe that that was something you had to choose between. Because I thought, I'm gonna have to be violent. I'm gonna have to. And as Afo, I'm gonna have to lie to people, manipulate people, not just the Taliban. I'm gonna, like, take good people, civilians, buy cars in their name, because getting trained, like, buy houses in their name and set. Set them up between my command and me in the Taliban. So when the chips fall, they're gonna be the ones that some manipulating people lying to people, like, so I just felt like I had to pick between this job being a warrior and being a person of faith. So I believe I made a deliberate decision to put God out of my life in that moment, something I could do when I get older and be a warrior. And I wish I would have knew the truth, but the truth is, there's nothing more powerful in the battlefield of Afghanistan or life than the men of God and people of God.

And the two not only can coexist, but when they do coexist, they're the most powerful people on the planet. And I wish I knew that. And because I chose to put that aside, I believe that it left a giant hole inside of me that over the years, filled with anger and rage and bitterness and some real darkness took over me. But back to Aziz, like, through all that, I had a partner, because while that job again might sound kind of cool to some people, some people were like, I would never want to do that job. You spend a lot of time alone. Out of those eight deployments, I spent two weeks on Bagram. All my time was off, was off base. I lived out in the community. I wore civilian clothes. As awesome as the guys at the command was, and I was proud to be at that unit, I rarely got to work with them except putting them on target and putting them off target. And so Aziz was my. Besides a few guys that I worked with on my team, primarily, Aziz was my teammate. He was assigned to me as my interpreter, but he eventually worked his way into being a number two guy and our teammate, and even part of planning operations and someone, I really became the trust and lean on how to pull off some of the stuff we were doing because there's no textbook for doing it.

And even if you have one, you go into a new environment, a new combat environment. Everything changes. You have to be adaptable and be able to, you create it as you go. And not only that, like, we were given complete, like, talk about enough rope to hang yourself. Like, you know, they, like, figure it out. Like, you know, I remember, like, I won't say the name of, you know, the CEO of Rexo. Like, telling me, like, hey, we need to get. We need to establish a presence here. I'm like, we can't. There's no presence. Like, there's no plausible presence there. And they're just like, yeah, good luck. Like, figure this out. Like, and you gotta make it happen because that commands depending on you given a plausible reason to be there. So when those assaulters get on target, they're gonna be safe, and they're gonna not only be safe, but they're gonna, you know, capture or kill whoever they're going after. And so you gotta figure it out. And they give you tons, like, all the leeway. You got all the resources and all the money to make it happen, but you got all the leeway to succeed or fail, and, you know, you got to figure that out and by yourself, and you got to.

And you sit in the meetings, you're like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I don't know why you trust me to do this, but I'm going to keep that to myself, and I'm going to figure it out. And then when they leave and the briefing is over, and they leave me, like, aziz, help me out, brother. Like, how are we going to figure this out? And every time he'd figure it out, we'd figure it out, man. So because of that, we became someone that I tremendously trusted. And I watched him over the years, put his life on the line for Americans that he never met before, for me, saved my life multiple times. And again, I will get into sharing the mission for number six. But one example is with those four team guys. They were doing an operation. I can't say what they had an asset, a technical asset that was part of this program that, again, I can't talk about exactly, but because they were with this asset, they couldn't leave this asset in place, and they couldn't just leave it there. So they couldn't just be feet move. They had to stay with it.

If they would have put a QRF in there to get those guys, the operation would have been compromised and need the operation to continue. And they probably would have killed a lot of people in that village that need to die. And so the command called us and said, hey, four team guys, they're here. They need you guys to go get them. And we're looking at that. We knew the environment. We're like, this place is like freaking a hornet's nest for Taliban. And I'm like, Aziz, how are we gonna do it? And he's like, came up with. I won't say exactly details, but he came up with a way to go get them. And. And I'm like, I trust you. And he. And he and I got in a. Got in a car, and we drove through the night and scooped those guys up and got them out of there. And, man, what was it like when they figured out?

I mean, how were they when you found them?

It was actually pretty funny. Not the most tactical or sexy scene. Like, we were looking for them where they were supposed to be, and we're like, where the heck are these guys? And we didn't have any comms with them, and we had one of those they, like, behind this bush, like a k ga. Are you kidding me? I'm like.

Here we are at Dev.

Group, Kaka, most elite guys in the world. Kaka by the bush and make it works. Yeah.

Holy shit.

That's hilarious. Don't freaking kill us. Cause they're, like, waiting for them to kill us. You know, it's me and. Yep. But, man, like, there's nothing super technical, like, if you're looking for, like, a super technical, like, operational story with that, if it's just who he was, like. Like, I remember his words when he's like, I'm like, trying to figure it out. I'm like, you're down. He's like, those are my brothers that he never met before, but because he felt part of the unit that he was at for 16 years, by the way, those are my brothers. Like, and he wanted to go get them. And, I mean, it was. It was sketchy that Harry was sketchy just going in that area and, you know, had to get us through. He had to get us through all the checkpoints to get us there. And we had to figure. We had to figure it out. Not. We didn't have weeks to figure it out. We had a couple hours to figure it out. Making phone calls, making it happen, putting himself at risk. And that's why we made sure that he got recognized for that movement. He got recognized by Congress on house floor for the movement of those four seals.

And I was super proud of him to see that when he got that, because I think he's the only. I think he's the only afghan interpreter I know to be recognized at that level. Wow. For that. For that operation. And, you know, he deserved it, too. I cried when he went. When they were reading that thing.

Oh, man. So that's incredible, man.

Yeah, yeah. And then fast forward number six. We're there weeks before setting up the operation. We're in Batticoot again, this, you know, forming village. And we parked. We parked, like, in these pine trees. We're in Hilux, parked in these pine trees. And he wanted to walk across this field. And I remember being kind of irritated with him because it was freaking cold, windy, like snowing, and his field was, like, muddy. And I'm, like, tromping through snow, wet, snowy mud. Like, I'm like, what are you taking us through this mud for?

Are you guys dressed in local garm?

Oh, yeah, totally.

All that stuff.

Yeah. And not trying to just throw man jammies on and, like. Like, it wasn't, like, dress up. Normally, we dressed every day. Like. Like. I don't mean, like. Like, some, like, cargo pants and shoes and, like, not all Afghans wear man jammies. Right? So. But. So just dressed like a normal afghan at a pretty gnarly beard, like my year old and always had. Always had peanut butter from protein bar stuck in it. But, uh. And, you know, those things are, like, super important, too. Like, hey, you could wear a pacoul in this area, and you're cool. You wear a pacoul here, and you're getting pulled over. Like, I mean, don't walk there. Don't eat that, don't talk to that person. If you talk right now, they're gonna. They're gonna know you're not a Dora speaker, and they're gonna kill us. Like. Like, he saved my life every single day. Do just that. Right? Don't wear that hat. This little picture Massoud, we're gonna have hanging on our windshield, on our rearview mirror, which works in this town, but take that crap off in this town, because we're gonna get shot for having it. All that stuff, like, every single day.

Like, he keeps you. He kept me alive, you know, not just in those, you know, lifesaving moments.

Yeah, yeah.

And so, yeah, so we're walking across this field, and I'm being a total, like, butt head towards him, like, giving him a hard time. And we get across this field, and there's this old man that's, like, you know, sitting on the side of the road in the middle of snow, in the wind, just squatting there. I don't know why Afghans do that. Sitting there squatting on the side of the road in the snow, and we see him, and Aziz starts talking to him, and I could tell, like, it was a pretty serious conversation. I couldn't understand everything they were saying, but he was telling Aziz, like, you need to get him me out of here. Because the Taliban was in the area, and they're. They're looking for the foreigner, which was me. There's no other foreigners in Batticut, Afghanistan, besides me. And so somehow they didn't know I was there. Probably just being seen there, and they were looking for us. And so as he's like, hey, brother, we have to go. Because it wasn't like they're around the area. Like, he had just seen them and so we start walking back across this field.

You warned me. How do I tip your table over? Yeah, we start walking back across this field. And, you know, when you find something like that out, by the way, like, it's easy for me just to say that, but if you think about the mindset of that, like, I'm in battacoot bagrams. If you drove to Bagram, it would take a day and a half. I don't have a radio. There's no QRF coming to get me. I have a aks as ease as AK 47. We have a few magazines in our bags, hand grade in our bags, pistol and a waistband. That's it. And so imagine that, you know, that's the scenario. You're by yourself, like, in that feeling, and, like, the Taliban's here, a couple of truckloads, and they're looking for you, like, you know. And so walking back across that field, that's a large, open danger area now. And so the first thing I tell Aziz is, like, because, again, these guys are in the area, like, hey, man, like, if we get hit through this field, because the big. We get hit through this field, like we had trained before together, like, we're gonna.

We're gonna have to bound out of here. Like, we're in this open danger. We literally were talking about that. And we were about 100 yards from that road. And they drive behind us three trucks. And the three hallux trucks, by the way, were. They were so confident to be in there. They had their black flags flying with the white riding on the Taliban flags. I still can't remember. Usually have vivid memory of the things, but I can't remember if one or two of the trucks had a p cam mounted on top. But they hit the brakes, start backing up, and, you know, now they stop, and they get out. And Mias. He's still talking during that time, by the way. Not that it matters, but I have no reason to get in details. Me and Z changed guns and gun bags because that ACs was having some problems, and he felt like I was a better shooter. He's like, here, take this rifle. And I didn't argue with him. We just switched guns, and we were talking about basically bounding out of there if anything happened. But at the time, I went from being nervous to, like, super calm because I was thinking, like, maybe my confidence overtook me.

Not. I wasn't complacent, but my confidence overtook me. Like, what I was talking about earlier. Is there no random. I don't see random violence happening. They can't drive in that field. That field I was complaining about. Now I know they can't drive in it. So I felt good about that. Cause they would get stuck. And they're not gonna just randomly kill us. Cause they don't know who we are, right? So I'm like, if we just ignore them and keep walking, we're good to go. That's what I was thinking. So I hear them start yelling, and I didn't understand what they were saying. They were definitely talking, speaking in pashtun and not dory, and. But then I heard the word stop. Bosh, bosh, bosh. And they're out. So now they're yelling aggressively, so they're yelling us to stop. And probably the only thing that stopped is my heart, like, in a moment. But I still was like, you know, we just keep up until Aziz and Aziz just, hey, brother, just keep looking straight. Keep walking. Trying to walk towards the tree line. And I heard. I don't know what I heard first. If I heard the gun go off or that.

That boom over my head. The air crack over your head? I don't know what I heard first, but I remember hearing both distinctly, like, I heard. Heard a gunshot, and I heard the air crack over our heads. And in that moment, man, it's like, if I run, they're gonna kill us in that muddy field. And if we give up, they gotta capture us or kill us. And so I just felt like the only option to do was divide, and it really, really is the only option. And so I just. I told Aziz, man, get ready to move. And I just did about face. And the first person I saw, I shot. Like, as I turned and as my gun came up, I saw a guy. I saw a red hilux truck, a bunch of guys. But I saw this guy standing there, and he has AK in his hand, and he's just standing by the passenger door. And I just shot two rounds right center mass. And when I did, I thought I missed him, because the window. The first thing I saw was the window behind him. And so I thought I missed him and hit the window, and.

But then he fell. I think he went back and hit the window. He fell. And when he fell, I fired those two rounds, and I was expect. I was kind of didn't know what to expect, but I was expecting, like, a gunfight. And I'm yelling for Z's to move. I'm expecting a gunfight. And they all just, like, stopped. I think they were. I think they didn't think we would fight back and think it shocked them. So everybody just stopped. Like. Like, if you shoot a deer and then. And then one deer falls, and all the deer are like, that's kind of what it was like. And then they all rushed instead of shooting back, they all converged between two vehicles to go get cover behind the vehicle. And so I just went between the two. I didn't. I didn't aim anybody. I just went to the convergence point and just started emptying my magazine. And that convergence points, I'm just yelling at Z's to move. Aziz starts moving, and I.

What distance are you?

100 yards. Super close for that.

Yeah.

And then after they got behind the vehicle, before Aziz got set, I started hearing the gunshots. It started slow. I started pop popping, and. And then just, like, chaos. And. And then when I heard Aziz start shooting, and he yelled. He yelled. I started moving, and I don't know how. Like, we're in the mud, so normally you would see, like, dirt flying up everywhere. I didn't see any of that. Like, I've seen that before. I didn't see any of that. And I don't. I can't explain how, like, God protecting us, whatever. I never seen dirt fly up. Nothing from around us, 100 yards away, 20 to 30 guys, never seen any of that. And so the third iteration of us starting to move, I remember, like, and this all happened obviously, very fast. As I'm shooting, I saw Z stop. And, you know, for those that know about lateral australian peel or bounding, and the reason we're going laterally backwards was this field. We were just going downrange. So we were going laterally to the treeline. We went laterally right, staying right in front of them. And. And the reason you're doing, you're holding a base of fire is not just to cover the guy, but to draw fire to get attention off that guy while he's moving.

And so you never stop, you never shoot. You don't shoot move because you want the. Want me to draw. I want to draw fire for him to move. And we're doing it right out in the open. And so I seen Aziz stop, and I remember peripheral thinking, why is he stopping? And then I seen him shoulder his rifle, and I'm like, what is he doing? And then he shot. And when he shot, he hit. He had seen something I didn't see. It was a guy come up with RPG. And he felt like. He felt like if he would have kept moving, I was drawing a fire. To me, the guy would have fired RPG and hit me. So he stopped exposed himself and shot that guy. Before that RPG went off and saved my life, I didn't see it. He would have fired off 100 yards. I would have been dead. And when that happened and I realized what happened, I think at that point, I seemed. We're close enough to tree line, and the tactics went out the window. I'm just like, run. And we just ran, like, neither one of us shooting anymore.

We just ran to the tree line, and we got that tree line, got to our truck, went back to the safe house, and got in touch with the command. Took us a little while to figure out how to communicate, told them what happened, and. And the command was, like, basically trying to decide, is this a. Was this a compromise or chance contact? Right. That's important.

Yeah.

Right. It was. This was this opera. Is the operation compromise, or was this just Taliban out there? There's a foreigner. They want to know who it is. And it was Aziz that said he could. He could have got us out of the operation, got himself out of it. But he's like, nah, man. This guy. These guys don't know of anything. But we're doing. We need to stay here. We got. We gotta finish this. Not even a question. And. And the command trusted his decision off that. And I don't think the command told really, it was like. I think everybody's like, hey, let's not make it a big deal, because we don't want to sweep this one under. We don't want to let it get in the way of the operation.

Yeah.

And because everybody wants. You know, when you get a top ten guy, everybody wants him. So. And so. Yeah. So they kept going about. In about ten days later, I couldn't exactly. But about ten days later, we launched it, and they killed him. They killed numbers number six. Yeah. And that's who Aziz is. And that was one of, like, three times that probably that specifically that he saved my life, but again, he saved my life every day. And then, you know, the unique thing about Aziz was that Aziz, that Aziz and I, like, I didn't go back to base, and he went home. When we were done operating, I went to his home. I lived in his home. Like, I mean, I was telling somebody the other day, like, what's the longest thing been ever with a shower? I'm like, probably, like, five weeks. Like, me and Aziz out in those cold mountains, like. Like, you know, that was before my cold plunging days. I didn't want to take a bath in the river. And, you know, when we got. When we were done, like, and you just crave, like, a real warm, good meal.

And it was his wife hatra, that made that first warm meal coming out of those mountains after operating. And I didn't go back to the chow hall or anything like that. I went to his home and ate there. And I held. I held my shoot. And Mashuda, his oldest son and daughter when they were born as babies. Like, this dude's my family. Like, he's my brother, and he's one of the most important. It's, like, few people in the world that I would, like. Everybody talks about, like, laying your life down for somebody, but, like, it's few people in the world that would, like, lay everything down for, like, you know, just no questions asked. Lay my life down for. And Aziz is one of them, man. Yeah. Like, he's one of the most incredible human beings I ever met. And people talk about patriotism and freedom and democracy. This dude, I remember being, like, blown away. Like, I'm driving, obviously, we're in these long drives all the time. We're living in a car together. And we'd be driving, and he'd just be talking about freedom and democracy in a way that I never even heard it before.

And I'm thinking, like, this is a guy that never even experienced it and gets it more than I even get it. Or people here get it. And he was willing so much to lock arms with Americans so that his daughters could be teachers or journalists. Anything but a sex slave, right? His daughters could be free. And he did not want his sons to have to be forced to be Taliban fighters and grow up the way he grew up. And he was willing to give everything for it, and he did. And, you know, and I think he's one of the most phenomenal examples of the allies, the wartime allies that fought beside of all of our troops. Not just special operations, but all of our troops for the last 20 years.

Yeah. Yeah, man, he sounds like a hell of a guy. I'd love to meet him.

Yeah. Yeah. He's smart, too. He speaks, I think, eight languages, and he just. Yeah, he's. He's an incredible human being.

Well, Chad, let's, uh. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll just pick right up here.

Right on.

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Find Ketone IQ and your local sprouts or earth bar stores nationwide. All right, Chad, we're in Afghanistan. We just talked about the number six going after number six and the, the gunfight you have with Tal man. Let's talk about. There's another significant thing that happened over there. Yeah, let's talk about that.

Yeah. So I started, like, I started dealing with, like, a lot of, like, the pressure of it, right? I started with, like, a lot of anxiety and stuff, but I was able to hold it together until we had what I would say is a major compromise in our operation. We had, like, we had a number of local nationals working for this program, obviously, because of what we were doing. And a lot of them were recruited from Northern alliance. They were OGa trained for a specific program and then given to our program. So guys that were vetted, right? And so we haven't had a number of them. And one of them flipped over the Taliban. His name was Bashir. So Bashir flips over the Taliban and don't know why. When I say, like. Like, this guy and I slept on the side of a mountain together. Like, we built operations together. He was. He was one of my favorite guys outside of Aziz to work with. He was just super solid, tons of combat experience. But for whatever reason, you know, maybe they started his family. Whatever he flips to. The Taliban compromised our operation. Twelve of our teammates are captured, held, and then killed.

Two Americans, contractors, and ten Afghans. And, you know, people listening may not you hear about Z, so maybe a little more context, but may not think it's as big of a deal for these Afghans to be killed and not Americans. But, man, these. These guys were like my brothers. Like, these guys that lived in, played soccer with their kids, slept in their homes, ate dinner with their families. Like, these guys would have died for me, and I would have died for them. And I do believe they did die for me in trying to protect our operation and died for everybody, every American on here listening that these guys were solid, solid dudes. So when that happened, Aziz's family was contacted, and he was targeted. So now he's compromised. And he chose. At that moment, I watched him choose to stay on the program, continue operating, and move his wife and kids into hiding and not. Not have contact with his father, his in laws, anyone. They chose that for us, you know, to continue operating. That's how committed he was. In addition to that, we had a v bed driven in one of my houses and vehicle born ied to blow up our house.

The intent was obviously killed. Me and my friends, luckily wasn't there at the time, but we do believe that one of our guards were there. We never heard from him again, so we assumed he was killed when they. I mean, the house was level. And then at that time, we had all been pulled out to be briefed. Everyone across the board was like, okay, that happened. We're still in. Like, we were like, this is too important. And so I went back into a neighboring country that I've been working in. I won't say the name because it's in my book, saving Aziz. The Pentagon reviewed it and redacted it and redacted the name of that country. But not very hard to do the math, right. I'm in this neighboring country, and then I get abducted by a foreign intelligence agency. How about sun? By sunrise, I had a knock on my door, and I knew, first of all, the guy who led this abduction wasn't, like a stranger. As soon as I went into that country, I started working with their country's, like, bureau of Business affairs, and they immediately attached them to me. And I knew he was, you know, that from that intelligence agency.

I mean, he was. It was very easy to figure out.

So this is this country's version of CIA.

Yeah, yeah. So he's basically. He would have been, like, assigned to me, and he's supposed to be business guy. He wasn't very good at his cover. It was very obvious. And, you know, he was always, you know, coming in our house, like, taking things. Took a thumb drive off my desk. It was constant, constant, constant. And then I had another sloppy trade car. Very sloppy tradecraft. I mean, like, hey, come in my office. I do the same business as you. I go in this office, and, like, the. The flyers for the business is still warm, like, the pictures, like, fresh on the wall. Like, if. Like. And the secretary behind the desk is like. Like, she. You know, it's, you know, very sloppy. We were walking. I thought one of the most interesting things is we're walking. I had a suit on. You might. I'm wearing a suit, and I'm walking across this. This courtyard, and I walked in the dust, and my shoes got dusty, and I did this, you know, like, military. Like, shine my toes. And he stopped and he goes, why'd you do that? Were you in the military? I was like, yeah, I was.

Were you? But he was just. That was, like, day one with him and, you know, always leaving phones, listening devices. Like, hey, your house. Like, I'm really worried about your security here, so I'm gonna get. I have a cousin. He's retired general. He's gonna build up, put an alarm in the house for you. I'm like, no, no, I'm good. He's like, no, I insist to put a listing platform inside your house. And so it was that constantly. And then I had one person corner me at a hotel and say, hey, I got something to tell you. Took me to an american hotel to tell me. I'm like, please don't tell me. Like, I don't want you to tell me that Jack is this guy. That's. He said his name was Jack. Jack is a. Is a, you know, a spy. And please don't tell me. And sure enough, he told me he wanted to confide in me. Cause he wanted something from me. And. And then now I have to. Now I have to act like a normal person would act. So I have to get on the phone and open line and call and, hey, you know, hey, you sponsored my visa and you sent me here.

Now I got the government after me. I'm trying to do business here. And so I had to. So it was a lot of pressure all the time. And so you ask how that abduction happened. About sunrise, I had a knock on my door. It's Jack. He's got another guy with him, both in suits. And when I opened the door, two big dudes, both in suits as well, come out, met us, four of them, and forced their way in the doorway. And they're like, hey, we want to show you a piece of property. I'm like, at five in the morning, you want to come get me? Show me a piece of property. Who are these guys? And they're like, it's a property that we think you'd be interested in buying. And I'm like, no, I'm not going, right? Like, I'm kind of refusing to go. And they're like, no, you don't understand. Like, you're coming with us. And so, you know, I didn't put up a fight because it was a fight that I felt like I could maybe talk my way out of. But when I got in the car, I realized that I probably shouldn't have got in the car.

And two guys in front, I'm in the back, in the center. And they started driving and started asking some questions. And then they stopped, and everything got silent. And I said a few things, and I realized we're not having a conversation now. They're driving me somewhere and drove out of the major city into the woods and on the side of a mountain. And they, you know, stopped the car and took me out of the car. And I was thinking, you know, I don't have anything to defend myself with if a gun comes out, you know, gonna fight for my life. But. But I thought. I thought that was. I thought. I thought I was gonna die right there. I thought they were gonna question me, interrogate me and kill me. That's why I was pretty convinced in that moment.

Have you ever been in another situation where you thought you were that certain that you were going to die.

No.

What's going through your head other than you're gonna die? Because eventually that wears off.

Yeah. I say no. But there was moments, like, around that time that I had this such imminence that I would put sticky notes in the lid of my suitcase from a wife, telling her loved her, gave her permission to move on with her life. My oldest son, like, you're going to have to be the man of the house now. Tell my daughter, my other son, that I love them. I'd put those sticky notes in the lid of my suitcase, go out in operation, come back, and I'd throw them away because I didn't want anybody to find them. And then I'd do that over and over again because I think my personal effects, I make it home, so I put it in the lip. I was doing that. So I probably had that sense of imminence that I was probably going to get killed because things were getting so sketchy. But in that moment, like, I knew I was gonna die at that moment, like, I mean, in a gunfight, like, you might live, you might die. You shot you. But I, like, there's, I'm, like, a thousand percent convinced, like, they're going to kill me.

Yeah, they're gonna kill me, right?

This is where it ends?

Yeah. Yeah. It's one thing, like, being. It's one thing, like, when you know you're. When you believe that and know you're gonna die, like, and it's not happening to me. Like, it's gonna. It's. It's a pretty heavy thing. People talk about it all the time, like, lightly, but, like, it's a pretty heavy thing. And I believed in that moment I was going to die. That's the only time in my life I ever, like, believed in that moment. I'm gonna die. I always, like, I'm gonna work myself out of this. I'll figure it out. But I didn't feel like I could. I figured I could talk my way in the delay, but I didn't feel like I could talk my way out of that situation at that point.

At what point you realized when the conversation stopped, this is. You're about to get assassinated in the car ride.

In the car ride? Yeah, in the car ride. When they stopped talking and we left the city, I knew they were bringing me somewhere to where they kill me. And that whole time, I'm thinking, like, I'm thinking, like, do I try to jump out the car? Do I try to, like, fight right here. But I just didn't feel like there was a right moment, because, like I said, I always before thought I could work myself out of this. I kept looking. I kept thinking and looking and plotting for the right moment, but I just felt like there was never the right moment. And so get out. I was hesitant to get out of the car, but I'm like, if they want to kill me, they could kill me in the car, so just get out. At least maybe I could run or something like that. And they. Some heavy, heavy questions, very direct questions, not so much about me, about the program manager who had been in that country before, who they had received, who I knew they had received information and know who he was. I don't want to say how, because I don't want to get the guy in trouble.

He's a friend. But they had information to know who he was. And so the questions were more about him. And. And they were, you know, they were very direct. They knew things that they shouldn't have known, and. And they in it, and they basically also validated, insinuated that they were going to kill me right there.

How did they say that?

Well, they said, I wasn't, you know, you're not leaving this. You're not going to leave this side of this mountain. And they were sort of saying things like that, and then they. But then they. But then they start shifting to. I know a couple of times you talked about being. Being in a prison. The reason I know that, because I've had dreams, I've had terrible nightmares about since being in a prison. And the kind of things that they do to get information on people in a prison, they're like, saying, this is a kind interview. Like, basically, if we take you down in one of our prisons, it's not gonna be the same way. And so I thought that's when I kind of limited hope. Like, okay, maybe they're not gonna kill me here, maybe gonna take me to a secondary interrogation in a prison. But then I might have that actually probably a little bit more scary to me. But then there was just a moment. At that time, I felt them kind of. I felt them kind of concede. I mean, look, you could get anything out of anybody. If people think they could hold up an interrogation, you get anything out of anyone you want.

I got some missing toenails right now. I mean, imagine you start sticking pins in those missing toenails right now. Like, but they never went that far. And so I don't know why they didn't. I couldn't tell you to this day why? They didn't go that far. They didn't physically abuse me. It was just intimidation and threats. So maybe they, maybe. And so because it never got to that point, I just felt like they don't know what they think. They don't, they're not. They know, but they're not certain. And they're gonna. In the, and I started seeing this hope that they're gonna, they're gonna let me go to let us play out. And that's exactly what happened. They told me to get in the car, never say anything again, drop me off at the. Didn't say a word. When they dropped me off back at my house, it was. But it was like 2 hours. And, and then, and at that point, obviously, I went back to, I went to Dubai, met my program manager in Dubai, gave a debrief, and talked to guys in Ci. Ci guys wanted to talk to me, did a debrief with them, and then knowing what I know now, I don't know how this happened, but we proceeded.

And I went back and.

You went back?

I went back.

And honestly, is a compromise operative. You went back?

I went back. I didn't.

What was the reasoning behind that?

Because, because of who was next on the list and the operation that was pending. It was just, it was too important. Everyone. And, and so I'll tell you this, like, one thing I didn't know at the time.

Hold on. You don't understand that.

Yeah.

You're a compromised operative.

The whole, the whole operations compromise, in my opinion, at that time.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah.

But especially you.

Especially me.

So what is the rationale sending a compromised operative back into so much so.

I think so much was invested and they were so target focused that nothing else mattered besides the mission, you know, nothing else mattered besides the mission. I believed at that time the Orso would have known, the chief of station would have known of that country, the ambassador of that country would have known. I was, I was there. I later found out after this compromise that none of them, none of them, even us in that country, so, which is obviously ended up being a pretty big deal and pretty problematic for the, some of the people at that time in the command to have me there operating without. None of those people do. So obviously, you're in somebody else's territory doing operations. And so for me being, for me being, you could call it, interviewed or interrogated or abducted, whatever you want to call it, you know, by a foreign intelligence agency in that country, and then the ambassador, chief of station, RSO to not know that person was there. Ended up being a pretty big deal.

Chief of stations, the head CIA person in any particular country.

Yeah, yeah.

They didn't even know you were there.

I didn't know I was there the whole time.

What do you think when you get sent back in?

Well, they did ask me. What did they ask you? Am I willing to go? Right about course. I'm like, yes. Cuz I'm so bought in as well. I flew, I flew in through, I did a layover in Beijing and when I landed in Beijing, they came on the plane and sprayed for bird flu. And I didn't know it at the time, but I had a panic attack. I thought I had allergic reaction to whatever they sprayed. And I wanted to get off the plane and it wouldn't let me in the plane. I couldn't breathe. That was the first panic attack I ever had. I landed in that country and I went to, I didn't go back to my house. I went because I didn't want to go back to my house because of what had happened. I went to a little hostel and like a little bed and breakfast kind of place. And that whole night I dealt with panic attacks for the first time. And I did one more operation there and I was in such a, I was in such distress that I couldn't even remember what happened. And I called executed like an e and e contingency for leaving that country and bought a round trip ticket for, in case anybody's watching, I left all my personal effects, all my operational stuff, went to, went to Dubai again.

And that was my basically e and e. I was inside. I remember being at the airport and going through customs and I'm like, I was trying to play it off because I wasn't having this panic attack, I'm like every policeman there for me, I'm like, there's more police here than normal. Every policeman's there for me. And the flight was delayed. I remember like that movie argo, like watching the clock tick like because my flight was delayed leaving. I'm like, did delay in the flight for me. And when I got on that plane and it cleared those mountains and I was heading to Dubai, I was like just this relief. And then, and then I get there and I think, okay, if I get there I'm gonna be good. But, but when I land they're like, stay, sit in your hotel and stay there. And I'm like, I'm gonna die. Like right now I'm dying. Like, if anybody's had a panic attack, like physically, like, I am 1000% convinced I'm dying right now. Don't call anyone. Stay in your hotel. I call my grandmother, who's like my mom, and basically telling her, like, I'm dying. I'm not supposed to, but I did.

I call my wife, and my wife freaks out. My grandmother comes to my house to watch my kid. My wife buys a plane ticket to Dubai. Somebody from the command goes to my house, will stop. My wife, like, trying to shut it down, and they're, like, trying to call me down over the phone, and I'm there for like four days. I went to a little pharmacy, bought a valium, took some valium to try to calm me down. I could not calm down. And then finally I get back to the states and had a CID briefing again, got pollied. And then at that time, I was no longer in the military. I was actually in a contract in my command. And after about two weeks, I got read out. And so I'm dealing with being ratted on my program, which for those, that means I can't do my job anymore. I don't have access to that job. Not only that, but all my friends, I don't have access to talk to them about it. I get put before a clinical psychologist. They diagnose me with PTSD, severe, chronic PTSD. So I'm dealing with these panic attacks.

I literally feel like I'm gonna, like, the only way I know describe it is, like, if you're drowning to death, like, I mean, that imminence of panic, will you never die? Like, that state of panic 24/7 like, that's where I was at. On top of that, I was embarrassed, right? Cause I'm like, I worked my whole life to get there. Like, and I felt privileged to be there and to be getting the Marine Corps and infantry and recon and force recon and go to that unit and be there and put in its premier operation and be where I was at in that operation. Like, the point where we're at. I felt like all the eggs were in one basket on me, and I felt like it was like if I played football and made it to NFL and it was a game winning play, like, I fumbled the ball. Like, I was just embarrassed. Like, I was ashamed. And so panic, like, shame, failure. Like, I'm just. I was just freaking a mess.

What was the mission? Can you talk about that at all?

I can't say who, but it was on the top of that list. And so my job at that moment was doing a feasibility study, and so I had just did right before that, I had just did a feasibility study. They had the target was in this area, in the fodder region, but on the other side of afghan border. And so he's in this area, and they said, can you get in that region, basically about 20 miles from the target, get a rifle in there and fire that rifle off without. Without any kind of, like, compromise? And so I went into. I went and got hunting permits. Got all the permits, got a rifle, traveled for a couple of days through the mountains, spent two weeks up in the mountains, and went on ibeck. Ibeck. Hunt killed ibeck in his smallmountain village. And that was a successful feasibility study, which. Which green lighted operation to go get that target? And so it was a feasibility study, and I got to shoot ibeck.

What the hell is an ibeck?

It's one of the pretty prestigious, like, hunt for the big game hunters. Big mountain sheep.

Nice, cool.

Really cool horns. I didn't even know at the time, like, I was shooting something that people pay a lot of money to go to go hunting. But, uh, yeah, so my job was doing that feasibility study and then that green lighted operation. So I would have been doing all of clandestine logistics to put this, you know, probably a sniper team in that same area. And so I was so vested in doing that, and we were. The whole. The whole program was so vested in doing that because we were so close, and I felt like they put all those eggs in one basket, and I had to hold it together till the end. And so because I felt, you know, fell apart, I felt tremendous level of guilt to my friends, to my country, like, to this operation, and it was embarrassing, man. I mean, there's no other way to, like, I can't describe any other way, but I was just embarrassed. I was shamed of myself. Like, I felt like. Like I failed, you know? And for a long time, I felt that way. Shit, I know now that I gave all I could give, you know?

Yeah.

There was nothing more I could give, but. But at the time, I was in for a long time, I was completely ashamed. I didn't want to show my face around any of my friends or anybody. And by the way, some of the guys that I worked with validated that and told me that I failed. So, you know, that, you know, the community, like. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, they're, like, counting on you, like. Yeah, I know you did. Like, you know, so it stung, like, deep.

Yeah, yeah. You get home?

Yeah.

How's your wife receive you?

My wife? She. I think that's the only time in my life that my wife says she's ever seen me weak. She's always looked at me as strong as a protector and provider, and she said I was just completely broken and docile, and she didn't know how to handle it. I mean, literally, like, she would. She would just play cards with me. We played cards, like a card game. I grew up just to keep my mind busy, because if my mind stopped, if my mind stopped, I wouldn't have straightened out. Panic attack. The first medicine they gave me made me feel like a zombie. The second one, what was it? Ssri's nose. Seroquel, I think. Seroquel. And then Ativan. And they had me in Ativan, like, every day, and I just felt like a zombie. And then they put me on Lexapro, which. Which. Not that Lexapro was a bad thing for me, but in my mind, my paranoia, I felt like it was killing me. I felt like it was poisoning me. So I'm like, I don't want to take it because it's going to kill me. And then anything physical, any physical activity, I thought I was going to have a heart attack.

And so my wife and my counselor were, like, trying to snap me out of it and get me to do something, and that's when they talked me into. Talked me into getting into mats and doing jiu jitsu. You know, for those who don't know jiu jitsu, brazilian jiu jitsu, grappling based martial art. I'd say I did it since I was little, but I'm still little. I did it since I was five years old, and I was already a professional MMA fighter on the side. So, at five years old, I started judo, traditional jiu jitsu, martial arts, trained my whole life. In 1995, I started brazilian jiu jitsu. I'd already fought professionally, Mma, so, for me, like, getting those mats was something that I was familiar with. And when I got into mats and grappled for the first time, I was like, I found the cure. Because you can't think about Afghanistan and do jiu jitsu, right. You gotta be mentally present, or you get beat up, and. And so I just really, like, felt like it was the cure. But I always say when I. And I do a lot of speaking.

On this, but let's rewind.

Yeah, go ahead.

Before we get into jiu jitsu, how bad was the home life?

I was a mess.

Were you drinking?

No, because I. The reason I wasn't is because I was. I was scared of it. I was scared that if I would start drinking, I wouldn't stop. And I. And if I would have not been so, like, I thought my body was failing, and so I thought, like, if I get. If I drink too much alcohol, it's gonna kill me. Like, I was. I just felt this imminent sense of, like, death. I felt like my body was gonna stop working at any moment. And so alcohol scared me, and so I'm thankful for that, actually, because I probably would have. Probably would have numbed me, and I would have probably stuck with it. And that's why jiu jitsu kind of.

Worked, because what was going on at home?

Well, at first, she. You know, at first, Kathy just wanted to support me, but then that. That's very hard to do with somebody that's not accepting it. And my behavior manifested in was frustration, which resulted in anger and. And outlashes. Even before that happened, coming home from Afghanistan, like, I would yell at my wife and kids, like, the Marine Corps drill instructor, slam doors, punch holes in the wall, break things, like, throw a temper tantrum. I remember, like, being in traffic one day, and I don't even know what my wife said, but my three kids are in car seats in the back, and I, like, flip out and yelling. I start kicking in the dashboard, and she's trying to drive off. So I tried to kick the shifter off the thing. It's totally, like, temper tantrum. Like, a 15 year old child, like, my kids in the back, screaming, grabbing the freaking visor, ripping it off. Like, I would just lose control. And that's not, like anybody that knows me knows that. It's not my behavior at all. I'm, like. I'm, like, a super kind. Like, you know, I could be a violent person, but I'm a pretty, like, gentle person.

I'm just that way. And. And so I was just so out of character for me that she really had a hard time. Like, she would just start crying. She didn't know how to handle it. And then one time, I was home for my daughter's birthday party. I always loved to share this story. Not that I love to share it because it's super embarrassing, but it's just, like, to me, one of the most grotesque illustrations of how I was behaving that day was that time my daughter's having a birthday party, and she's super opinionated, and she didn't like the icing on her cake, something super simple. And, like, grab my little girl's birthday cake and pick it up, and I threw it against the wall and destroyed my little girl's birthday. And, like, in that moment, I remember thinking, like. Like, who behaves that way? Like, what kind of dad, like, behaves that way and ruins a little girl's birthday? And. And in those moments, like, that, I did that because that was just one example. In those moments that did that. Like, I knew I was wrong, but it was. I didn't want to had that admission of guilt, so I would justify it and double down.

Like, yeah, like, but everyone's an idiot. Like, she disrespected me. Like, she should learn to be more respectful. Like, you guys are idiots. Like, and so I just double down and dig in. And so, recognizing that behavior before that crash and during and after, instead of. Instead of correcting that behavior, I just distanced myself for my family. I just figured that was a better, safer option, was to distance myself from them. During it was more deployments, training between deployments, staying busy. After. After I came home and was diagnosed with PTSD and dealing with these panic attacks, it was still like, okay, now it's the mats. I'm just gonna stay in the mats as much as possible and train as much as possible, because it's. It's. It's gonna keep me away from them. And progressed in it. Progressed into starting to fight again, you know, fighting professionally and using that as avoIdance. And by the way, like, in speaking of jitsu, like, I love Jiu Jitsu. I think physical outlets are a great cure for. For the physical and emotional mental stuff. But I also think you could have medicine for being sick and abuse that medicine, and that's kind of what it did with Jiu Jitsu.

Like, man, like, even now, to this day, like, being in veterans ministry, like, man, I have a bad day because it's so difficult dealing with freaking veterans. Like, I go to a gym, and I find, like, some 20 year old stud, and I choke him out. Makes me feel better. I love Jiu Jitsu, but at that moment, I just used it as a place to hide and not get better. And my family, because of that, my wife, who was trying to support me, became more and more distant, and she became more and more bitter towards me. And the meaner I was still being mean and spiteful to her, and eventually, the distance grew. And I'd sleep in the gym. I'd sleep at friends houses. I'd sleep in my kid's bedroom. Probably the loneliest place Kathy and I would say we've ever been is in our own beds with our backs turned toward each other in just this dead marriage, and we were just we just, we both would have said at a time that we just despised each other and hated each other. And we're there for the kids and just coexisting for the kids.

How old were your kids at that time? There would have been seven, nine and twelve. Seven, nine and twelve. That's the time range they remember. Yeah. And especially my oldest son because he's, like, always been, like my best friend, like, attached to my hip. And I was coaching them at the time. They were doing jiu jitsu. They've done jiu jitsu since they could walk. And so they were always around me. They were at the gym all the time. And, I mean, you know, when you get an environment like that, it's not. There's a lot of girls around, and I'm starting to be successful. My jiu jitsu school ends up very quickly with, like a thousand students in two years and open a business and just crushed it. And then I started fighting professionally again. I win a world title. I'm ranked number six in the world. I'm fighting on Showtime and MTV and NBC Sports and fought in all these big shows and ended up being 18 and two as a professional. So on the surface, it looked like everything was successful. But below that false facade of success was still just broken home and broken person.

And then, you know, with this broken marriage, it wasn't hard to start stepping in relationships with other women. Ended up in a full blown affair. And when Kathy found out, instead of saying, let's fix this, I said, you know what? I'm glad you found out, because now it gives me a reason to leave. We sold our home, filed for divorce, signed two separate twelve month leases on two separate apartments. So we're pretty committed. I remember, like, packing our house. This sounds pretty twisted. Probably packing our house. Our family sits together, we're crying together, holding each other, supporting each other, and they're leaning on me as a dad and a husband. And I still put stuff in that u Haul and separate our family. I thought the problem was, you know, I thought the problem were different things. I thought she didn't understand, and I'm too destructive. And this can never, you know, be sorted out. And it was better for the kids. That's what I was believing. It was better for them. That's a lie that most divorced people think, right? It's gonna be better for the kids. They're not gonna have to get to Christmases.

They're not gonna have to deal with the fighting anymore. They got to be exposed to all these things. Could be better for them. We all know that's a lie. The statistics show that's a lie. Unless there's violence in the home, it's usually not better. It's better to fight for your family and work it out. But we did anyway. And so my wife and I had two very different responses. My wife went to a church. She switched churches to a small church where she felt she could be connected. And that's when she started praying for me. That's when she went and went. And I don't mean on Sundays. She went, like, almost every day of the week, praying, you know, that prayer. You know, God, let me see Chad the way you see Chad. Let me forgive Chad the way you forgive Chad. Let me love Chad the way you love Chad. Despite what I was doing to her. Meanwhile, I set up this apartment, and within two or three days, I had my bachelor pad. Like, it's all decorated stuff on the wall. It actually makes me very embarrassed to say this and super disgusted to say this about myself, but I think it's important for me to be transparent about it.

I didn't even put my family pictures out in the living room because I didn't want girls to come in there and see that. Like, I put. I had a shelf in my closet that I put all my family pictures on because I didn't. I wanted to look like a single guy. That's. That's pretty. That's pretty. That's the state of selfishness that I was in, and I wanted to be. I signed up for a fight on strike force because I wanted something to work towards, and I took that fight. Tim Kennedy and I were fighting. Daniel Cormier was on. It was an amazing card. Like, daniel Cormier is in the card. It's when the UFC own strike force, and it was like, pretty big deal. I focused on training for this fight, and I fought a kid named Roberto de Leon. I was undefeated. He was like a stud coming up, and. And I had submitted everyone at the time, so they wanted. They were talking about me not being able to strike, and Tim. And so I fight Humberto, and I decided I wanted to stand in the middle of the cage and strike with him and 10,000 people in there.

Toyota center Houston, Texas and every round, like, if you like fights like this is like my rocky balboa. Like, every round, I kicked him in the face, knocked his mouthpiece out, knocked him down. He punched me in the head, knocked me down. It was back and forth. And so, for the first time in my professional career, I go to decision. And I'm asking my corner, like, who won? And they're like, I don't know. It was close. And one judge, the first judge calls for Humberto, and I'm like, I just lost my first professional fight. Second judge calls for me. It's gonna be a split decision. The third judge calls for me, my hands raised. And it's a very surreal feeling, right? You're in the middle of that cage, 10,000 people. It's super loud. Everyone's screaming all the weights off because I just won this fight. Been training for it for three months. And then I remember having this moment where time someone stands still and everything gets quiet. And I remember looking around, thinking of all these people here. My family's not there. Kathy, who had been in my fights before, the kids, like, kathy's not there.

And I remember thinking, like, I just fought so hard to win this stupid fight. I love the sport, right? But stupid in context. And meanwhile, you know, I didn't. I hadn't been fighting for my family, and I probably walked out of that cage of my head held low that night. And Tim Kennedy and I had a after fight. He fought Jacare that night. He lost. Very controversial. I thought he was robbed decision. So we had after fight party ranger up through after fight party for us at Buffalo wild wings. I stopped in and, you know, and said hi to Tim and, you know, told him that I thought he won the, you know, thought he won the fight and tried to lift him up. And everybody's congratulating me on my win, and I just want to go home. So I got in the car, went home by myself, and I remember, like, I got home and I got in bed, and I'm laying in bed, and my mind starts spinning. And I'm thinking, like, of all the damage I caused, like, everybody in my life, I was mad at, like, my father, people in the military, right, for the way I left the command, and people that didn't understand or trying to make me feel guilty.

I was, like, just mad. And my wife never understanding me. Like, everyone's an idiot. That was my mentality. But in that moment, I'm like, you know what the common denominator is? It's me. Like, I'm the problem. And in that moment, this thought came over me that maybe my family would be sad without me, but they would be better off, right? Maybe my family would be sad without me, but they'd be better off. I think probably everybody listening to your show probably knows that the same hopeless thought finds a home in the hearts of, you know, whatever the stat is. 1722 40 45. One a day is too many. But that same hopeless thought finds a home in the hearts of people every single day. That maybe my family and my loved ones will be sad without me, but they'll be better off. And veteran suicide is kind of a weird thing. Like, a lot of people say, that it's a coward's way out. How selfish could you be to take your life? I do believe, and I'm not defending it by any means, this must spend my life, committed my life to fighting against. But I do believe a lot of people, and I say this not just in my situation, just talking to survivors.

I believe a lot of people believe that they are the problem. And if they remove themselves from the situation, it's gonna be better for those around them. This Marine Pete that I know, you know, stood in the back of his pickup truck surrounded by police, and the last thing he said was, tell my wife I love her and I'm doing this for her. And he blew his brains out. And, you know, Heather, his wife, you know, talked about, you know, putting her head on his chest at the funeral, demanding to see him, even though he had shot himself in the head and they didn't want her to see him. And at the not funeral, at the morgue, and she said something that really stuck out to me. She said, pete thought he was taking away the pain, but all he did was transfer it to everyone who loved him. And that really stuck out to me, because in that moment, that's what I believed. I believed that I was going to take away everyone else's problems by taking my life. And I thought that was the solution for my family. That's the best thing I could do.

Like, I had my time. I did something cool and important. But that season's over. I can't do that job anymore. The MMA things fun, but it's not, you know, it's nothing that's significant in the world, right? It's a sport. I'm never going to be able to do something as important as I did again. And I don't have a purpose anymore. And I'm just ruining the people that loves lives that ruin the people's lives that I love most. And so I made the decision. And I had a Glock 22 pistol and 40 caliber pistol, and I would sit in the floor of my closet, and I pulled those pictures of my family off that shelf, and I'd put them on a circle on the floor around me, and I would just stare at them for a while, and I tried to build the courage to pull the trigger. I was so deliberate about it that I wouldn't think about the angle. Like, I didn't want. I wanted to be fast. But I do believe this was divine because every time I put the gun to my head, I would have a vision of who was going to find me.

Because someone's going to hear it, or you're not going to show up somewhere or you're going to start smelling, right? Eventually someone's going to find you. And the only other person that had a key to my apartment at that time was my oldest son, Hunter. He was 13 at that time. And the thought of my son being part of finding me that way was enough to pump the brakes. But I was in such a dark place that I was in such a dark place that I would be back, like, that day or the next day. And for a period of almost two weeks, I was just battling back and forth trying to make the decision. And it was one morning I was in that closet. I didn't have the gun to my head. I remember having it on the floor, like, kind of holding it on the floor. And I was. And I had those pictures and I was looking at those pictures and I was just. My mind was just spinning. And I heard a knock on my door and I wasn't going to answer it. I was just getting to know her. I didn't know who it was.

But when I heard Kathy's voice announce herself, I totally panicked. She would never came in my apartment. She didn't have a key. She certainly wouldn't have came in my closet. But I think I was so ashamed of that. I hid the gun under, under a blanket, even though she would have never came to see I hid it. That's probably how ashamed I was, what I was doing. And then my next reaction was, and this probably sounds pretty twisted to people, but it's just what happened. I was just so mad that she interrupted me killing myself. Like, how dare her come there to my apartment that I didn't ask her to come to and interrupt that. And I ran to the door and I was just, like, opened the door and totally berated her. And she was standing there. She's not a very calm arguer, by the way, but in that moment, I think God gave her, like, this calmness. And she was super calm. And because she was so calm, I was trying to get her out of there. And I literally, like, I grabbed her purse out of her hand and I took it and I threw it over the balcony, like, out in the parking lot, like, just to get her to leave.

Like, all her stuff went everywhere, total, like, d bag for doing, you know, doing something like that. And I was just trying to get her out there. I was telling her to leave, and she asked me a question again. She's, like, super calm, which is totally out of character for her. Now I'm the coma now. She's like, how could you do everything that I've seen you do in your life? I mean, we were 17 and 18 when we met. She saw me go to BRC. You've been through buds, like, what it takes. She saw that. She saw me riding 80 page patrol orders on my only day off. She saw me doing training for operations and pre deployment stuff and going to schools and training and how committed I was to do stuff. She told me get my MBA when I was working, when I was already working 80 hours a week. Like, she saw me, like, train for fights and cut 35 pounds of weight. And a discipline it takes to do that. And when no one's around, I won't even lick the nacho cheese off the back of a chip. Cause I'm like, that kind of discipline.

Like, she's, like, seen all this stuff of my professional work, and she's like, how could you do all of that? And when it comes to your family, you'll quit. And, you know, I don't know about, you know, people listening, but, man, to me, there's no more soul cutting word than to be called a quitter. And she was absolutely right. I had been successful at professional things, but when it came to the most important things, like being a husband, being a father, being a young 17 year old kid that raised his hand and made a commitment to do something important according to all those things, including my will to live. And I'm a pretty radical decision maker. And in that moment, I made a decision to get back in the fight. But I knew I couldn't do it alone, and I knew I couldn't do it with the people I'd surrounded myself by. And I had, in that jiu jitsu gym, black belt, winning MMA fights, everybody told me everything I wanted to hear and not what I needed to hear. I had systematically pushed accountability out of my life, and I had no one to tell me the hard things I needed to hear.

And somehow, like, inside of me, I knew that. And so I asked, Kathy, is there someone at this church you're going to? Some man that could hold me accountable to trying to put my life back together? I didn't care about God. I didn't care about her church. In fact, I wasn't. I didn't want anything to do with that, but I wanted someone outside of my circle. And she called the church, and there was an elder on call named Steve Tothe. He is not an MMA fighter. He's not a jiu jitsu, like, jiu jitsu guy or military guy or anything like that. In fact, he was gonna meet me to connect me with a retired CEO named Mike Charbonnet. I don't know Mike Charbonnet is, but he's a retired CEO, his sons, or seals, and he's also a pastoral counselor. So that's who he was gonna meet me to meet, but I ended up never meeting myself. I know Mike Charbonnett now, but I ended up not getting consoled by Mike, because I just. Me and Steve just clicked. I met Steve at a Starbucks coffee shop, and while he wasn't a retired seal or anything, that was Steve had was the gift.

He's got add, like, really bad. And that was a gift. That was a perfect gift for me. And when I say he's got add, like, when you go eat lunch with Steve, like, still to this day, I hang out with him. He's worked up together a lot. He'll, like, go to eat at lunch at a restaurant. As he's getting up, he's pulling his keys out his pocket. His pocket. And he runs across the parking lot because, like, his. His attention deficit's so bad that he. He feels like walking's a waste of time. And so the reason that's his personality. He's a total weirdo. But the reason that was such a gift for me is because I had already decided, in my mind, my new goal was to get my family back. So I was like, what do I have to do to manipulate the situation, sweep everything into the rug and get a clean slate? So I wrote a five paragraph order, op order of how I was gonna fix my life. It was super good. I'm kind of academically, like, orientated with stuff, and it was super good. It was very impressive. And I went to this meeting with Steve, prepared to do that, but because he's freaking got add, he wouldn't even look at it.

Like, I put it on a table. I slid it over to him, and I'm like, hey, check this out. Show it to my wife so I can get her back. She knows I'm serious now. She's gonna forgive me. Everything's gonna be good. He puts his hand on that paper without even looking at it, slides it back over to me and tells me I'm gonna fail. And I remember being like, who is this jerk? Like, you didn't even look at it. And he tapped on that paper, and he said something that was probably the most important thing I ever heard in my life. He said, if your plan doesn't have anything to do with your relationship with God, I'm not going to waste your time, and I'm not going to let you waste mine. The person that Steve had mentored right before me, I didn't know this until later. The person he had mentored right before me, he had been passive with. And a guy took his life, and he, I'm the next person. And he knows he has to be direct with me and bold with me. This plan doesn't have anything to do with your relationship with God.

You're gonna fail. You're gonna fall on your face. You're gonna end up right back where you are. And, you know, in that moment, Sean, I had tried everything, man. I had been through counseling. I had been on medication. I've been through VA counseling, civilian counseling programs, medication, jiu jitsu, winning an mma, making money. Some of those things are good, some of those things are bad, but none of those things change my situation. And from that, we have a saying at Mighty Oaks foundation now, it's, if what you're doing isn't working, then why not try something different, right? Everything I tried didn't work. Why not try something different? So this guy's telling me, you know, that I have to have faith. And back on that airfield and bagram, standing on that fence, I knew that was the one thing I didn't have. There was a chink in my four pillars of resiliency, of the chink in the armor, was I didn't have that. That spiritual pillar. And I'm like, you know, thinking, like, what do I have to lose? I tried everything else. What do I have to lose? Why not try? And so I made a decision at that moment to trust this guy Steve.

And I surrendered my life to Jesus, became a Christian. I didn't really even understand what that meant. But beyond that decision, Steve discipled me. Or, you know, for those that aren't familiar with the disciple word, christian, christian disciple word mentored me for a year in biblical living. And what was so profound for me, looking back at that, was at the end of that year, what I realized was that all these bad things that happened to me, losing 15 friends over my eight deployments, Foster Harrington, who served in my wedding and was there on. All three of my kids were born. We did three units together. We were on black Wednesday together with Colonel Mattis, where he was standing there across from me when Colonel Mattis gave those office hours. Like, Foster was one of the greatest people I knew. And, you know, when he died, we were both on our first deployment and just being so angry. And that was one thing. Like, all these bad things that happened to me, my childhood, Afghanistan, all this stuff, as bad as those things were, those things didn't lead me to be in a closet with pistol man.

What led me there were the choices that I made in response to those things, and I never lost the power and ability to make choices. I was just making bad ones. And so what the Bible had taught me, and it's the mentorship that Steve had taught me, was how to make better choices. And. And I think we're talking about this last night, right? The Bible doesn't. I mean, people say life doesn't have a handbook. It actually does have a handbook. We just don't read it. And that's the Bible. It's our handbook. And by reading that, like, yeah, man, and learning, did I still get anxiety? Did I still get depressed at times? Did I still get angry and frustrated? Of course I did. I've been through a lot of stuff, and I'm human, but I was able to have a blueprint to make better choices in response to that. And by making better choice than being super intentional about biblical living, the result was restoration in my marriage and my family. 28 years of marriage now. Three kids that are married, three granddaughters, a grandson, and a way. My brand new daughter, summer, that we just brought in our home and adopted and into our family is my daughter now.

Two of my kids went to Bible college. My two sons went in the Marine Corps and served honorably. They were in ministry now full time. Like, I had restoration, my family had restoration. It's PTSD, anxiety, depression. Those things were able to be resolved. I found hope again, and ultimately, I found purpose. And purpose is what we were created. We had people lessening the agreement. My faith or believing God or not. The truth is, you were created that purpose. And if you don't have purpose in your life, we wither up and die. That's why veterans kill themselves. Not because we've seen or did. It's because you had important purpose, a mission. You get out and that purpose is gone, and admission is gone, because your identity was hiding a job and not who you were created to be and not something deeper in a foundational relationship with your creator, and it wither up and die because we have to have purposes. Mark Twain is one of my favorite quotes. The two most important days in a person's life are the day that they're born and the day that they find out why. And when Steve Toth introduced me a life that I believe I was created to live, I found out the why.

And God put a deep burden in my heart to pay that forward to others. And that manifested in what I do today and founding mighty Oaks foundation.

That is incredible, man. That is incredible.

That's why when I say I have the second chance, I have, like, I'm just blessed for it, man.

We're doing a hell of a job for somebody that is veteran first responder, just anybody, you know, that's going through a tough spot in life. And, you know, there's a lot of people nowadays that are turning towards faith, the Bible, Christ, God. And they don't know where to start, but there is a wave happening. I'm part of it. I mean, I'm. I'm recent, you know, and. But you've been here a lot longer than me. What advice would you have for somebody that's, that's looking to dig in? Where do they start?

One.

How do they build the relationship?

One, there. There is no real faith unless it's through relationship with Jesus. Like, that's. That's everybody. There's millions of faiths. Not millions. There's thousands of different faiths around the world. Why Christianity? And I'd point to people, to someone I told you about, Vodi Bakum has an incredible message. Vodi Bakkam's a christian apologist. He has an incredible message called why I choose to believe the Bible. Why I believe the Bible. I'd point people to go listen to that. I can't tell you in a few words what that message. If you're questioning why to believe the Bible, why to believe Christianity, that is the most powerful, succinct message on why the Bible. Secondly, faith is sustainable in those pillars, right? You could have the mind, body, spirit, social. You could have all those other things, but faith is a sustainable one. I believe there's a million ways in this world to get injured, to get hurt. Veterans do not have a monopoly. First responders do not have a monopoly on trauma. I believe there's only one way to get well, and that's through a relationship with Jesus and aligning your life systematically with the life you were created to live.

Most of the problems we have in our life are because we're not living a life the way we were intended to live it. It's like if I had a brand new corvette and I went, drove it off road in the mountains, and you're like, this thing's a piece of junk. It's a piece of crap. No, I'm not using it for what it was meant to be. It was meant to be on a hardball road. So you're not using it. You're not living your life the way it was meant to be lived. And so when we align it, that's why I say when you align your life, and the only way you can align your life with the life you're meant to live is to read the handbook, and that's what the Bible does. So I'd start there. Because you don't need anyone else to do that, right. You could start by reading God's word and understanding.

Where would you start?

I would start in.

It's 2000 pages.

Yeah, I would start. I would start in the book of John. In the Book of John is 2021 chapters because it's the most succinct message of the gospel. So I did the book of John and then maybe read a proverbs a day for a month, because proverbs is 31 proverbs, one for every day of the month. And by the way, you could go back and do it every month for the rest of your life, and you're going to get something out of it. Interesting. It's called the living word because it's going to be different every time you read it. And that's where I would start reading. And then you need to get connected to someone who has, like you said, has been on that path a little bit longer, someone that's trustworthy, that can mentor you along that path and share that journey with. And I can tell you the one thing that I've learned through my faith journey is that I will never do it alone. I have put myself alone plenty of times, and I don't trust myself enough to ever do it alone, especially my faith journey. When I was a young recon marine, I learned this thing called plus minus equals.

And the analogy is that I always train with someone better than me. That's the plus that I can learn from. I always train with someone a little bit below me so I can pour into them because it makes me anytime you teach something, you're going to be better and giving back. So you're not just building yourself now. You're building in the community and next generation, and you always have that equals someone that you go neck to neck with because they push you to be in a competitive realm, push you to be better. And so I actually carried that in the jiu jitsu. When I go train every day, I find someone that's better than me that's gonna smash me. I don't wanna just walk out the gym winning all the time. I wanted somebody that's gonna smash me, someone that I could, I'm better than. Cause I could refine my technique and get. And I feel better. Like, builds my confidence up a little bit. And I'm investing in the team and the next generation and then someone equal to me that I'm like, before we go, I, like, wipe the sweat off my palms and slap hands.

Cause I know we're freaking about to go to war. Like Tina Martinez in California, jared Chafean. Like, I know my guys, and everywhere I train, like, that's the guys that we're gonna, you know, Sam and Robin in Prescott, arizona. Like, we're gonna, man, we're about to get after it. And we just, like, push each other and grind, like, like. And so I took those things into my christian walk. And so now in my life, I have someone that is always that plus person in me mentoring me, something I can lean on, discipling me, someone that I can pour into, and that person I'm just, like, doing life with. I want to have those three people in my life all the time. And that's a rule that I'll probably never, til the day I die, not implement my life, man.

Do you mind if I add something?

Please.

When you decide to take that leap, you have to remember always, because people get really judgmental in this realm. And it's about your relationship with God, in your relationship with Christ, and your relationship with the Holy Spirit, not anybody else's. Shouldn't be feeling guilty, shouldn't be feeling judged. It's about you and your creator. And that's it.

It is. People have to understand, you can't be who you created to be unless you have a relationship with the creator. There's no shortcuts around that. So it starts there. A lot of people look at churches and you say, like, man, the church is full of hypocrites. Hospitals are full of sick people. Like, I mean, that's what they're there for. Like, church is full of broken people. Don't look at the church, don't look at the pastor, don't look at humans. To evaluate your view of God. Those are good things to be a part of in the community. We're supposed to be part of community and a community of other believers. And I know last night we talked about different ways to do that, but the primary and fundamental relationship should be your relationship with Jesus. And that comes through prayer and studying God's word and then surrounding yourself with like minded believers that are going to challenge you and take you to the next level.

Thank you.

I'll say it again, man. You're professional of faith, like, encourage so many people. I hear it all the time, and I'm super proud of your courage to do that.

Thank you again.

Yeah, yeah.

The Mighty Oaks foundation.

Yeah.

How was it born?

Well, it was born out of that. It was born out of that desire to pay it forward. Like, really. So I'm in this dark place, and when you're in a dark place like that, you feel like you're all alone. Like, no one could be struggling like me. No one can feel the way I feel. No one's marriage could be so bad they want, no one's life could be so bad that they don't live anymore. And I realized coming out of the side that I wasn't the only one. You know, people were killing themselves every day. People were divorcing every day. People were in depression every day. I'm like, not. Not only am I not the only one, but this is an epidemic. And I found the solution, and I believe that I found the solution. And it was like if you were dying of cancer and someone gave you the cure, you know, just keep that for yourself. You. You get in the rooftop and you tell, hey, man, the cure is in here. Like, come on, like, come, come get some. And that's why I felt like. I felt like I was obligated to share that with people from my community and everybody who might be infected by this belief and system, that they are going to make permanent decisions, temporary problems, and take their life and destroy their families and lose hope.

Like, I want to share hope. And God just really burdened me to do that. And so I felt like the best way to do that was to walk away from everything I was doing in my life. I'm at that peak of my MMA career. I'm making money in my gym. But I didn't want to do dabble. I figured if I dabble with it, there was a safety net to fall back to. I wanted to cut the tether, jump in the deep end and go all in with this. And so we started Mighty Oaks foundation. And that was twelve years ago. And for those who don't know what Mighty Oaks foundation is we do four things that we stay pretty narrow focused and we do four things really well. We do resiliency events where primarily I go to bases around the world by requested active duty military. I speak on resiliency, suicide prevention, spiritual resiliency, that spiritual pillar of those four pillars. And I've spoken to over about a half a million troops over the last twelve years, one of the places being Marine Corps boot camp every quarter for the last almost ten years, nine years or so at San Diego, I've spoken at Marine Corps boot camp and now for about two or three years now I've been in Parris island, been tons of SF groups, all the recon infantry battalions.

I've spoke at the highest level, First Marine Corps division, did a division division wide, all hands, but commanded by CG event and you know, NSW done tons of, tons of different types of commands and it's just been incredible. And then we've written several books that have three book series that you got in your bag called path to resiliency, the truth about PTSD, which is a creation perspective of PTSD and not the solution, winning the battle against suicide. In those three books we've given away about a half May, about 400,000 copies to the troops and equip them. We make them, they were like 45 minutes reads it can fit in your core go pocket and we distribute those all over. In fact, just this morning we had a. We had a bunch sent out to, not just in my speaking, but we sent events, but we send them. We just sent a bunch out to Korea. I got a text this morning to Korea, some troops there. And so that's their prevention plan. And I really believe in that because like an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure if you stop it on the front end by inoculating people, by being resilient and being ready, then we have a recovery program which is.

Is where we have our camps and we have ranches in California, Ohio, Virginia, two in Texas. And we bring activity service members, veterans, first responders and spouses. We pay for everything, including their travel. We do about $8 million a year in programming and that's just a great donation of patriots. Donate to Mighty Oaks as a nonprofit and we make that free. And those programs are a week long and they're non clinical, peer to peer mentoring, teaching people essentially how to make good choices and take responsibility for their situation and make better choices every day in response to their trauma, not just relying on medication. We're not like saying no medication ever. We're saying that if medications the only part of your plan, it's probably not a good plan. You gotta take responsibility, you gotta make better choices and take control of your life. And that is the ultimate solution, through aligning your life with the life you create, the living and beyond. That week, they could sign up for our aftercare program. And we have about. We manage about 80 outposts around the country where people can meet weekly, but we have partnered with about a thousand that people can meet weekly.

And then we have a leadership program that graduates, alumni could come through, get trained by us to pay it forward, whether in their communities or through our program. And about 28% of our graduates sign up to that leadership program and paying it forward. Forward. So we have that, by the way, we've had 5500 graduates over twelve years, but now we're doing about 1000 per year. So we've got exponential growth. We have. We're building our global headquarters in Texas. The successes we've had with faith based program have allowed me to go to DC, testify before Congress and Senate. I've advised President Trump had appointed me as the chairman of a White House faith based coalition for Veteran affairs. And I was able to consult with deputy director of VA. We got executive orders signed. We worked in a province bill, presidential roadmap to empower veterans and the national tragedy of veteran suicide. We were just really impactful with getting faith based programs available to active duty service members of veterans, because without getting into super history of it, like President Bush made the opportunity and faith initiative brung faith based programs and community programs available. Veterans.

President Obama signed executive order in 2009 that killed that. And then so in 2016, when President Trump was on the campaign trail, General Boykin, if you know General Boykin, is. He's been a great mentor and friend of mine. He had a. He was leading a town hall for veterans, and candidate Trump was coming through and he said, and six veterans were going to get to ask candidate Trump any question they wanted. And so he was selected to be one of them. And so I could ask any question I wanted. And the question I asked was that. And the reason I asked is this, because when President Obama signed that executive order, the suicide rate was 16 a day. They killed the community and faith programs, they dropped, put billions of dollars into add 1500 new clinical programs, and the suicide rate went from 16 a day to 22 a day. From two years from when he signed the executive order, it spiked. And so for me, I'm like, and we're killed. Faith based programs work. We know they work. And even if they don't work. The veterans of anybody should have an option, right? They should have the freedom votes choose that route.

And so when I got to ask candidate Trump any question, it was that if you become president of the United States, will you overturn this executive order? And he said yes. And then he kept talking, right. And so the media kind of twisted it. And I had the opportunity to, to defend him. I went on Bill O'Reilly defended what he said on Fox News. And then General Flynn called me. They put me together with the team. I was part of the VA transition team when he took office and eventually was able to come and help get some of those things done for that executive order mainly. And so our advocacy side, MIT Oaks, has been very impactful for policy. And then the last thing we do is our international program. And that's where we, we take some of our mighty Oaks graduates, train them and allow them to go around the world and pay it forward to our ally partners around the world by teaching them how to do the same programs we do. And we've done that all over the world. Peru, we just got a team come back. My son was on it.

And they just trained, I think right now they've trained and certified about 100 chaplains in Ukraine because they don't really have a chaplaincy. And so you got all these civilian conscripted soldiers, and now the pastors from their community want to be able to go and provide chaplaincy service to them, but they're just pastors from orthodox church in order to understand chaplaincy or how to work with military trauma. And so we're going in and training those chaplains and certifying them through mighty oaks, man. So that's mighty Oaks and amazing work.

Amazing work, man. Yeah, it's, you know, it's, wow, you're really making a dent. And not just a dent, you're, well, 450,000 plus people have gone through there.

Yeah, through our z and C programs and then recovery programs. I think we're approaching about 6000 now in our recovery programs. And that's our, you know, our guys that come stay with us.

Wow.

And again, me, we pay for every bit of it and, you know, there's no strings attached at all.

How can people help?

Well, I mean, mightyoaksprograms.org, people could donate there. As important, actually, probably more important than people donating is if any veterans, first responders or spouses are listening and need that help. You don't have to do it alone. You're never meant to do it alone. And again, you don't have to reach out to us. Apply online. There's an application homepage, application button. Mightyoaksprograms.org, comma, click the application button. The application is super simple. We make it simple on purpose. We'll get everything we need later, and one of our team will contact you. And we have, I think this year we have almost 50 programs going, so there's lots of dates to choose from. If anything, you're going to go to amazing facility. Our facilities are insane. Insane. So nice. And the food's amazing. So if anything, you gotta. You're gonna go to an awesome place for a week, and you're gonna get fat with amazing food and. But you could be around good people who've been where you've been and maybe a few steps ahead and help you lead the right direction. Lead you in the right direction. Finding hope again.

Solid work, brother.

Yeah.

Very solid work.

Yeah. One of the most incredible things to tie all those. All those four things we do in perspective. Remember I mentioned this guy Pete, that's in the back of a pickup truck and shot himself? He was in a church service. When I gave an invitation, I was in church service. Brooklyn, Oklahoma, gave invitation for all the veterans that community to come to mighty Oaks. Pete turned his wife, everyone on a pulpit. You start talking, you say something like that. You see the wife snudging the husbands. So Heather probably nudged him and was like, you need to go to that. But he told his wife that, I know I need to go to that. Cause he's diagnosed with PTSD, but somebody needs it more. He chose not to go, and he killed himself.

Damn.

In that same congregation was a guy named Reed hasty. Reed chose to come. Reed came to Mighty Oaks. It took us months to get him there because he couldn't fly. Cause his panic attacks were so bad, he couldn't fly. Usually, like, one day a week, he'd go to inpatient Va. He talks about how humiliating it was because he was like a sergeant in army, responsible for millions of dollars of equipment and men. But when he'd go into VA, inpatient, they take away shoelaces because he couldn't be trusted with them and how humiliating that was. And so, through his anxiety, we were able to get him on a plane, got him to California. He comes to our program, has a radical encounter with Jesus, becomes a Christian, comes back to our program, flying, no problem. Becomes a team leader, does 50 programs, becomes a team leader, instructor, trainer, starts training our team leaders, goes home in his community, builds one of those weekly outposts, starts building it. He said some weeks he would go there, there'd be one person. Some weeks he'd go there, there would be no one talking about endurance. And he just reads the Bible by himself.

He'd study by himself. Another week he'd go, there'd be two people today. This is eight years ago. He has 13 outposts in Brooklyn, Oklahoma. 300 men meet once a week there. He's still team leading for us. Team leading, instructing for us. He's broken into Tulsa police department. 130 police officers from Tulsa police department have come to mighty Oaks because of him and the people he's brought through. The chief said it's changed the culture of that complete department. On top of all that, this guy who couldn't get on a plane to come, California program last year, gets on a plane with me from Houston, flies to Krakow, Poland, gets in a car, we drive across. When everybody's coming from out of Ukraine, he drives across the border into Ukraine. We go all the way across, 18 hours across to Kiev, spend the night in Kiev, then drive to Kharkiv, which is under attack every single day. We drive into Kharkiv. I remember driving to Kharkiv in the middle of the night, and Reid and I in a car, and a ukrainian guy with us said. He comes across the radio and he says, the only thing that lives in Kharkiv is Will Smith and his dog.

Everything's just blown up and dead, and it's like the end of the world. And we spend the night in this old bunker. We get IDF, indirect fire in the middle of the night. It's about 400 yards from us. And I wake up and I go out and reads cool as a cucumber. The next day, we go out behind russian lines to speak to these ukrainian troops. And Reed pulls up a chair and starts sharing his testimony in front of these ukrainian troops. I was sitting there watching him thinking, this guy couldn't fly to California. He went all the way over there to share his testimony with these guys in Ukraine. That's the full scope of find a purpose again, a mission again, and what we want to do. And when I seen that, it was the most full circle moment for me to watch Reid do that.

That's incredible, brother.

Yeah, that's super cool. Super cool. I get to work with some amazing people, man.

Yeah, I'll say. Wow, that's. I mean, that's one of the most impressive organizations. That's after the suicide epidemic that I've ever heard of. Congratulations.

Thank you, brother. It's really is like we've always said from the beginning, we want the hardest cases. We want the guys that when the wounded warrior battalion from Marine Corps calls and said, hey, man, this guy tried everything, he's gonna kill himself. Instead of locking him behind a glass. Piece of glass, like, we want to send them to you to have that confidence from the Marine Corps wounded war battalion to know that they could send him to the psych ward or send them to us and trust him with us. Like, that's. That's a. That's. That's a privilege.

Yeah, we have.

We haven't, uh, one, you know, to reference one of your guys, a seal. We had a guy, colin Fields. You get so many judges that send people to us. Wives and judges. And, uh, you know, he was. He was his wife. And the judge said, you go to this or. Or you go in the jail and you're getting divorced. He's facing jail and divorce. I don't feel Colin. Colin Field.

I think I do.

So he. He.

Was he an east coaster?

What's that?

Was he an east coast guy?

He's an east coast guy and a corpsman. He was a corpsman. Well, he's been Ukraine a lot with us, but he would allow me to share the story. But he tells the judge and tells his wife. Tells the judge for his wife and tells his wife for his kids. But he's driving, so he's gonna drive to mighty Oaks. We wanted to fly him, but he said he didn't want to fly. We wanted to drive. The reason he wanted to drive is because he was telling them that, but he was gonna crash his truck into a tree on the way there and make it look like he killed himself. Make it look like he accidentally died and killed himself. Took a seatbelt off, left, and drove 10 hours to our ranch and looking for a tree the whole time, he said, I kept looking. Kept looking. I ended up at this ranch and he was a graduation speaker at our class and became one of our best team leaders and has been going to Ukraine with us and sharing that story.

You know, God is definitely working through you, brother.

I never hit that tree.

Wow.

Yeah.

Let's move into the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Yeah. Yep.

You brought out not just you, I don't want to make you uncomfortable by giving you all the credit, but you guys, a very small number of you guys evacuated over 17,000 Afghans when the US government had completely failed and decided they're going to start working with the Taliban.

Crazy.

I just. It feels. I can't even believe this is coming out of my mouth, you know, and. But it was the veterans that served there that made shit happen. And you were a huge part of that.

It was. I'll start off with saying, yeah, like crazy to think that the entire international community were participating in the fighting in Taliban and Afghanistan. Bakram air Force Base arguably is the most strategic place in the globe between Iraq, Iran, Russia and China in today's current climate. Right? That is the most strategic piece of land. The entire international community were participating there supporting and advising the Afghan National army and afghan national police to fight the Taliban. So this all stems on this lie that the american people, in the mainstream media, american people were told by the mainstream media and the White House that America was in a 20 year war, in this endless war and we have to withdraw from Afghanistan immediately. The right thing to do, if they actually cared, would have been to claim a victory. The war in terror is over. And share, and continue to share that Balcom air force base with the international community, turn it over to the international community and continue to support and advise the afghan national army. Like, you know, like we do in that all over the world, right? We had 2500 troops there at one time.

We had 4000 at the time. With withdrawal, I can name twelve places right now that we have 2500 troops all over Africa, everywhere, right? So they'd lie to american people, would say, we have to. We can't keep killing America's sons and daughters. Total, total bull.

We can't keep killing America's sons and daughters. Let's start two more wars.

Let's start two more wars, right? We. I mean, in contrast to people that people, some people may listen and be like, oh, you just want to stay in Afghanistan. Like, look, there's 80,000 troops still in Japan since world war. 240 thousand troops in Germany since world war. 245 thousand troops in South Korea sitting on that 38th parallel, keeping the North Koreans from coming over. America having contingencies like this doesn't keep us in wars. It prevents wars. It creates international stability. And it's very important America's the leader in that. Whether we want to be a leader or not, we are. And one of the things you said was, you know, we worked with the Taliban. We didn't tell the international community we were withdrawing. We didn't talk to the afghan government about it. We coordinated. When I say we, the White House coordinated with the Taliban and they signed what's called the Doha agreement which means the Taliban will not allow terrorism to happen in Afghanistan in exchange for us leaving Afghanistan. Now, that's a conflict of terms. Right? Because the Taliban is a terrorist organization. If I go over there and give the Taliban a bag full of cash to do.

To move Siv out of Afghanistan, I'm going to jail because I'm funding a terrorist organization. But the White House is able to say that they are a legitimate government, so they plan it both ways. And so we should never have left Afghanistan. We could have declared the war over. We should never have left Afghanistan. And I believe the american people were lied to. And the only beneficiaries of that, and I know this would be a whole separate episode, the only beneficiaries of that were Iran and China. And, you know, all of our, you know, the world, the enemies of the United States and of freedom. You know, China wanted this Hindu Kush. The Hindu Kush mineral rights. I said it. I said it in 2021, the beginning of 2021, that that would be the beneficiary of. They would be the beneficiary of this. And I was called the conspiracists. And then what happened? The day we left, the Taliban gave China the mineral rights for the hindu kush. Trillions of dollars worth of worth of lithium. They were able to. They were able to move sanctioned oil.

When we're trying to do a green initiative.

Right, right. Yeah, exactly.

We could have used that.

Yeah.

And shows who's pulling the strings here for sure at the White House.

Yeah. China is.

Yeah.

I mean, they would have moved. They moved sanctioned oil from Iran through Afghanistan. That was blocked by us, Bill, or it's not now into China. So China's able to move sanctioned oil without having to do it by ship. So there's lots of things that I was upset about with the withdrawal, and I think everybody who gets it or pays attention was. But I couldn't change any of that. The one thing I could do was not allow my friend Aziz to be there, be left behind, him and his wife and six kids. I had been putting through the Siv special immigrant visa process for six years to give them their visas. And by the way, then in 2009, we had an agreement, a contractual agreement with our interpreters, that if they completed their commitment to service, that they would be in a nine month process to have access to the United States under special mega visa. We did not uphold that promise to them. And Aziz had been in a process for six years. Someone who served at a tier one special operations units for 16 years, saved Americans american lives, was not given that. So I knew people in Congress, I know people in Senate.

I was pulling out. As strange as I could, it wasn't going to happen. And so I made a decision that I was going to go get Aziz, his wife and six kids. And in that decision I knew that the people at the call would be veterans that I trust from the special operations community that had a couple, and there's a couple of key criteria. I was looking for mature guys who already had their combat lust zone and cared about actually going and getting Aziz out and not going there and getting the fight with the Taliban. And that was, that was super important to me. The first person that I called was, you know, you know, recently came on a show was Tim Kennedy. And, you know, and Tim, I've known Tim for a long time. A lot of people don't know. Tim's like not just a green beret. Aso level three guy has done clan log stuff before. Very mature human being, very mature combat experience. Tim, everybody thinks Tim like is a big braggadocious guy. Tim does not brag because if Tim bragged, you would probably believe half the stories of some of the stuff he's done.

He's got some amazing experience in combat. And man, he just, I remember calling him and he had, I knew like he was getting asked to be like some jobs with Afghanistan. He was turning stuff down because he has so many businesses he runs and he's busy. And when I told him, I'm going to get disease and his wife and family, he was like, I'm in. Where do you need me to be? Let's go get him right away, no questions asked. And we ended up putting a team together. Probably about twelve guys initially built a little more time. I don't know exactly how many at that time. And Sarah Virardo contacted Sarah Virardo of the end of. She runs the independence fund. Her husband, the, was a catastrophically wounded guy from Afghanistan. She knows a lot of people in DC, started putting this plan together. Go get Aziz, his wife and six kids. And as we were putting it together, one of the guys brung up the fact that there was these 3000 orphans that were being left behind. And that was kind of a game changer of information because everybody was fleeing, people were surviving because that thing was happening faster and faster.

And we knew at that moment that we had to do more than help, just as easy as family. I think everybody that was involved in this thing was, people were faith. And so we all felt like God really burdened our hearts to help as many people as we could. And that's why we originally called it mighty oaks. Started the Save our allies coalition, which ultimately, we used the save our allies coalition from mighty oaks and found it save our allies as his own entity. But it started as that in the operation force that we call, we call the task force six eight from Isaiah 68, Hieromais and me. And that's why we called it that, because we all felt God just burned our hearts to go help those people. And we made a decision like, hey, let's just lean in and see what happens. Let's help Aziz wife and six kids. But as many Americans, as many interpreters, their families, women, children, Christians, every person, let's see how many people we could, we could help. And so the first thing was, see, can we get on Hkaya Amee Karzai International Airport and built to go outside the wire and rescue people.

Because right now we know that the White House took the neo operation non combatant evacuation operation away from the DoD and gave it to the State Department, which, by the way, that should never have happened. If you want to know why a lot of problems happen, it's because of that. Because now the State Department treats hkaya like an embassy and the military is used as a protective force of the embassy or the airport. And then the outer perimeter is given the Taliban. Well, when the Taliban was given the outer perimeter, anybody that knows combat knows that whoever controls out of ground space controls access to that ground space. And so now they have the White House telling Americans, if you want to leave, go to the airport. Well, you got some 21 year old girl who went there to teach English or be a humanitarian aid worker or be an evangelist, and she's going to show her blue passport to the Taliban, who's executing people in the streets because that's what was happening. Of course not. So that's the environment. And then the military is not being allowed to go outside the wire to go rescue their own civilians.

And so how are they going to allow us? It's an impossibility. So the reason I say that is this, and I appreciate you saying that about not putting the onus on me about doing this. We felt that burden and we were obedient to lean forward. But what happened in rescuing Aziz wife and six kids and 17,000 other people? I want to make sure everybody hears me talk about this, knows this, like, I am not smart enough, capable enough to pull that off. Logistically, it was impossibility. There were so many obstacles that made this thing impossible. And the only thing I could point to when people ask, how did we do it? It was a modern day miracle from God. God orchestrated something that was completely impossible, starting with us being able to have access to the airport. So many amazing veterans and organizations wanted to move people, and a lot of people did a lot of great job, great jobs doing that. But for some reason, we were the only ones that got access to get on the airport and go outside. And the reason why is because we, we had got permission from the joint chief's office to do that.

And again, I don't know how you would think, why would they not allow the military to do it? Why would they allow us to do it? Maybe Sara Verror has pictures of General Milley in high heels. I don't know. I don't know why.

Not the only one.

Yeah, I don't know why. But we got the permission to both to do that and Sean Gabler and sea spray on the ground, able to get our own air airstrip to be able to move people. All this stuff was happening at one time. But now that we have permission to do this, right? And not only that, but vet people, manifest people through those protocols, now we have to move people who don't have visas outside of. Across another country's border. That's illegal, right? I get people in airport. Once they get to the airport, what good is it that us government's going to? They'd only be there for a little while, right? Eventually they could leave and those people that got inside the airport would be gone. We have to be able to move them out. And without visas, I can't move them. A lot of people gave us a lot of crap in the beginning. Cause everybody's armchair quarterback. You guys are moving people who you bring into the states. Like, we don't even know who these people are. First of all, I'm not the State Department. I don't have any authority to bring anybody to the United States.

I could get somebody out another country, but I don't have any authority. Only the State Department could do that. So secondly, we vetted more people than the US government did. So the people we were moving were vetted. The people that are going on those planes that did are moving. No fault to the troops, fault to the White House. The State Department, they were not vetted. So we were moving people that we were vetting. We had a process to do it, and we're doing our due diligence, but now we have to move them across border. How do you do that? We need to build a. Find another country. The only place you can move people across border without a visa is Laredo, Texas. But in the real world, you have to follow rules, laws. And so we contacted the UAe, the country of the UaE. We had a connection there. We had two connections, actually. But Joe Robert, who's a recon marine, that I knew, and then Sean Gabler had another backdoor connection. Joe Robert grew up with the royal family, with the prince, and he was able to secure me a phone call. I got a phone call.

Santa six. Santa six. Dan O was on a phone call. Joe Robert was on the phone call. We had. I think Sean Gabler was on the phone call. We had a couple of senators and congressmen that I got on for credibility, and we got on the phone with the UAE and the officials there and the royal family and presented the plan, and they listened. And at the end, they said, not only will we support you to bring them here and give you a humanitarian center, we're going to give you a C 17 plane and pilots. Let's help.

You've got to be shitting me.

Yeah, that.

That plane was a UAE plane.

The main plane that we had was UAE two, and we got two. And then. So now we have. We have ability to go rescue people. We have a place to bring them. We have aircraft to do it. But we knew the problem is going to be bigger, and so we need it. We. This is not going to cost thousands of dollars. It costs millions of dollars to pull something like this off. We don't have time to ramp up for. This is happening, like, now. And I'm going to need more aircraft. And those aircraft, by the way, are like $500 to $800,000 a flight. So I'm like, now, how do I solve this problem? And all this happened in three days, by the way. I get a random call from someone I've known for a while, Glenn Beck. He had heard I was getting involved, and so Glenn called me, and Glenn said, chad, I want to do something. I didn't know what to do. I just felt like it was wrong, what was happening. I got in the radio to raise money. I thought I'd raise a few thousand dollars. He's like, I already had $21 million come in.

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Thank you.

Like, what do I do with it? Ultimately, he had over $40 million come in and I said, we need to start chartering planes. And so Mercury wants his organization. They partnered with us at Mighty Oaks. They made him a great partner at mightyoaks. And a guy named Rudy Atala started working aircraft for us. And so that was a lot of the other NGO's and veterans that were working. They were getting people in aircraft were all in those aircrafts, like coordinating through us to get on those aircraft. Man, everything happens so fast. But when I say like a series of miracles happen, none of those things independently are possible, and they all have to happen in the right sequence. And that allowed us the ability to be able to logistically pull this off. And we got in the UAE, and we were in the UAE, in Abu Dhabi, at the humanitarian center, running operations. We have a team back in Washington, DC, taking people that are sending information. People are coming in, help us get out. Veterans are hearing about it, so veterans are sending their interpreters. We're telling them, hey, this is the paperwork we need, and they're getting us the right paperwork on the ground.

We're doing the bona fides and making sure there's the right people. Our ground team on the ground at H Kaya, Sean Gabler, Tim Kennedy, Dave Johnson, Sea Spray, underground. Sea spray and Sean Gabler are like the main heroes of this thing. They were underground, going outside the wire, like, literally, like, from the guys in Abu Dhabi to the ground force to the guys. If anyone stopped for five minutes, like, you were literally trading five minutes sleep for someone's life, like, that's how fast everything was happening. Like sea spray. He lost 37 pounds in ten days. He just would not stop. And talking about a guy, like I told you a little bit yesterday, I can't say in details, but traded his career that he worked his whole life for to stay on the ground and help those people. He didn't know himself, like, the level of desperation. Like people seeing airplanes, people falling off airplanes. The best description I have is imagine 100,000 people swarming a gate to get in that kind of chaos. Women get trampled to death. Not everybody was, you know, not all Afghans are good. Like, not all. Everybody's anywhere is good.

So you got the men pushing to the front. It's just chaos. Taliban are in there shooting people. It's total chaos. And women are so desperate that their babies won't grow up to be sex slaves as little girls or Taliban as little boys, that they take their baby, kiss it goodbye, no one will see it again. Put in a crowd of 10,000 people. Crowd surfer like a beach ball to the wall. And then someone grabs that baby and throws it as hard and as high as they can, hoping a us service member catches it on the other side of that wall. What they didn't know was on the other side of that wire was 6ft high and about 20ft deep of constantino razor wire. My buddy Joe counted six babies that were bled to death in that wire. Like, that was the level of, like, desperation on the ground there. And we just kept. Kept pushing to get as many people as we could. And then at day ten, we didn't realize the time. We had got 12,000 people out by day ten. And a suicide bomber hit abbey gate. 13 of our service members were killed and the US military was forced to weld the gate shut and the ground evacuations there were over.

I remember when that happened, Tim was just at that. Tim and Ceasebury were just at the abbey gate and we thought. And then we got a thumbs up. They were good. But at that time we, you know, when that ends at Hkaya, I thought, man, like, the US military is being forced to leave, but, hey, we don't have to. And my big thing at that time, because Aziz is already out, his wife and kids are out. But at that time, like the White House is saying, there's 100 Americans left out there. And I knew anybody on the ground knew there was thousands of Americans still out there. In fact, the White House before had said there was 16,000 Americans there, which they were guesstimating because they don't register. No one ever registers with the State Department. They were saying 16,000, but we got 6000 out. So I'm not that great at math, but 6000 -16,000 isn't 100. But the truth is, even if they were 10,000 or 100, you don't leave one American behind, like, ever, anywhere like this.

America does.

Yeah. Not me, and not where we came from, right? Like, I mean, man, I can't believe.

How much the country's changed yet.

Where I come from, we'll scorch the earth to go get an American.

Yeah.

Like, you. You trade, you know, like, there's American somewhere, right? You know, like a team run, like, hey, we're gonna lose. We could probably lose somebody. Yeah, let's go get them. Like, that's the promise that every American should have.

That was another time.

Yeah, well, I mean, the president had gotten on television and said that right before, we're not leaving american behind. Well, how'd that change so fast? Like, you know, so I don't know how those numbers were okay, and 100 would be acceptable, but we knew there were thousands. And by the way, it came out later in the Senate hearings, there was thousands Americans we left behind. And that's not to mention our allies, right? How do we ever have. How do we ever defend our position in the world again? When we come into a place and say, hey, we're going to be in this region and we need wartime allies, we're going to do you right. No, you won't. Your word means nothing. Like you did right for the people in Afghanistan that you fought aside for 20 years. So we chose to stay and everything shifted to a place called Maza Sharif. We led a coalition there, amazing organizations, task force Argo, you know, Scott Mann, Pineapple Express guys, like, all. Everybody was participating and helping to get people out. And we get another, I think, total in that coalition got another 5000 people out. That's where, you know, total number of 17,000 people.

But when that was over, we had heard that the northern, the. The resistance force, Ahmad Massoud's son was leading a resistance force, and they were moving all the women and children to a place called the Panjeer valley, and they want to cross them over into the country of Tajikistan. And when I heard that, I was. I'm very familiar with that region. I operate in a region before mountain. Mountain peaks are like 20,000 foot peaks there. You might make it through a valley and get to the Panjay river, which is the border, and it might be a thousand foot cliff. If you make it in the river, it's category five rapids, ice melt water. Afghan women, by the way, don't swim, end up going out in the bikinis and the weekends and usually the pregnant or have a kid. So, like, geographically, to belt across that river would be like, impossibility for afghan women. And then in addition to that, the Tajik border guard was there, the Taliban saturated there to prevent that. Exactly that. And then the russian military was there in force. That wasn't on the news. The chinese military was there, chinese special operations was on that border.

So what I knew we had to. That was the best thing we could provide, was to go on the other side of the river, come into Afghanistan, and help provide information of where to cross and how to cross. And, you know, in our world, that's called forwarding reps. Forwarding rep is how to, you know, telling people how to cross the information needed to cross a river. And so there's a guy named Dennis Price, who's staff sergeant, Marine Corps force recon sniper, and he really wanted to be involved, and he was. He was really bugging me to be involved, and he. I felt like he had the right skill sets to do it, and so. But the problem was, he was still in the reserves, and because he had just switched from active duty to reserves. And I'm like, man, you're not about to go because you're in the Marine Corps still. And so I called this commander, I know his commander well, Lieutenant Colonel Tommy Waller. He was commander of third force recon company, and I was a sir. Like, I get this marine for Shrikon team later. Like, he's a stud. Like, he really wants to get involved in help.

What's the chances you cut him loose? He's like, impossible. Like, he's marine Corps not allowed to send anybody. So, like, I kind of went in a little bit longer, and he's like, you know what? Just put it in writing. So I did, and he approved it. God bless him, he approved it.

Oh, shit.

So. So Dennis Price came with me to Tajikistan. In fact, he's, he's, uh. He got. He's been nominated, and he's gonna get the Marine, Navy Marine Corps medal, which is the highest non combat award for military service. And, uh, for this. So, Dennis. Dennis Price and I fly into Tajikistan, and, uh, and we go about 12 hours through the Tajikistan mountains and get on that border. And for ten days, we did about 97 miles of border reconnaissance, route reps, lots of spot reports. I had to border a deal with our intelligence agency to say, hey, I need imagery on that river, because they want to spot reports of the Russians and Chinese there. And I'm like, I'll give you spot reports, but I want something in return. I want imagery. So we were able to get some imagery of where that river and get some good real time imagery of where the Taliban checkpoints were and stuff like that. So we had that going into it and able to trade that information back to, you know, to our intelligence agencies and then provide it to other NGO's and to the resistance force that were trying to get their women and children out.

And so for over those ten days, every night we went, we identified a spot that we thought was a good crossing. And when under darkness, Dennis and I would swim across the Panjer river into Afghanistan and do a fording rep, you know, figure out how deep the river is, how fast the water is, how cold it is, how wide it is, where's the COVID and consuming on both sides, what do the entry points look like, where are all the bad guys, what's the routes to and from, and where the anchor points are for rope bridges. And then if we identified that as a crossable place, then we'd stage the right equipment for them and give a ten point, ten to grid coordinates of where that equipment was staged with instructions out across. And so we did that every night for ten days.

Wow.

And it's close. Like sometimes. I mean, we've had some. It's in the kind of outlining the book savings ease. We had some very close proximity within 30 yards of the Taliban at one point. And it was. It was a. It was a pretty. It was a pretty. The buildup to doing that was I had to really, like, deal with Afghanistan from the first time. In dealing with that. Go and get Aziz, you know, by the way, who actually grabbed Aziz, was a PJ unit, so we were able to. We were walking. It took Aziz, like, eight attempts. And you got to hear from Aziz's side of the story of him getting to the airport and his personal story with all this. His perspective and story is amazing. But when we had got Aziz to the gate, Shawn gave. There was an other side of the airport. Aziz went to the wrong side, and he was not going to be able to make it. His wife was bleeding. She had a ruptured appendix surgery. The kids were scared to death because they were getting shot at. And so we had a PJ unit that was working with us and went outside the wire and got him in through the gate.

And so getting Aziz was like one thing, but staying. There was something else on me personally, and especially on my wife, because my original intent was just to get Aziz, his wife and kids. This all kind of grew and developed. And as God kept opening doors, I'm like, man, God's opening his doors are creating this opportunity. I got to keep helping. I got to keep helping. And it just kept growing and kept growing. And then it came point to where we're going. We're just moving forward, and we're going to cross that river. And my wife's driving me the airport for Dennis and I to go to Tajikistan, and she's like, what are you doing? Like, why are you doing this? You got Aziz, you got his wife and six kids. Like, you guys got 17,000 people out now. Like, what are you trying to prove? And she was scared, and, why are you doing this? And I'm like, if God's opening these doors, we have to keep helping. And she just couldn't understand that. And I said this, and this is best way I know to explain. What if it. I was like, what if it was us?

What if it was our sons that would be forcing the madrasas to become Taliban? What if it was our daughter Hailey, that be raped and sexually enslaved the rest of her life? They'd already started taking girls as nine years old to be sex slaves the rest of their life. 20 million women and little girls left in Afghanistan to be subjected to that. Like, what if it was us? Wouldn't we. We be praying that someone somewhere would come help us? I know I would be like, somewhere there's a dad, there's a mom, that's a little girl praying that we're going to come. As long as God opens these doors, we're going to walk through them. And if the door gets shut and it feels like I'm making it happen from my own pride or ego or my own desire to do something, then I'll stop. And she actually, at that moment, she's like, you know what? Like, with that, she's like, you need to go. And I got on a plane, and because of what she was saying, I remember flying, and I had this fear come over me. And, you know, anybody that's dealt with anything like that knows when fear starts creeping in, if you let it take root, it'll destroy you.

And I started the fear was, what if I get out there in those mountains and I have a panic attack again and Dennis is out there with, what if I have a stroke? Like, right? Because I've been in ER with blood pressure 200 over 130 than when I was having those panic attacks? Like, what if Dennis wife and four little kids at home? Like, I started thinking that. And then when that fear came in that pillar, right? That pillar, that fourth pillar, I said, man, I've been for twelve years, or at the time, ten years, I've been going bases around the world, speaking, hundreds thousand troops, selling in this story that with the four pillars, you have all four of those pillars, mind, body, spirit, social, that you're about to endure anything. And I talk about a time when I was in Afghanistan. I had just the mind, the body, and the social, but I didn't have the spirit and almost cost me everything. But now if I had the fourth pillar right, I could do it. And I'm like, now here's my chance to test it. And my mind's not quite where it used to be.

My body certainly isn't. I tore my freaking muscle off the bone right before this operation, by the way, my longest muscle off the groin, off the pelvic bone. So I'm going out there injured. You know, mind's not there. Body's not where it used to be socially. I love Dennis, but he's not JSOC. Right? And. But the only pillar I do have is that spiritual pillar. And in that moment, I just said, I just prayed in that fight. I'm like, God, if you're burdened in my heart, like, you're burdened in my heart to do this, I feel called by you to do this. If you want me to be here to help these. These women and little girls, like, you need to take away this anxiety. I need to be able to do this without fear, without hesitation. I need to be able to be focused and do this. I'm not gonna sleep while I'm there. I need you to give me energy, keep us safe. And when I prayed that, like, I just had this tremendous peace come over me, and I told dennis in that moment, like, we landed, and I told dennis what had happened, I wanted to share with someone.

He's like, bro, I'm dealing with the same thing. Like, let's pray. And we prayed together, and we got on that plane and we flew there, and then there was one moment we were gonna swim across, and, you know, I know there's arm track quarterbacks everywhere. Somebody listen to us and probably tell us we were stupid for doing it. I've heard it all before, but we were about to swim across, and there was a point in the river, like, when you're doing a four rep, it has to be that Goldilocks spot, because the road bridge has to be close enough for the road bridge to work. It's too far. Right then it's too far. It's too far for road bridge. If it's too narrow, the current's too strong. It has to be at goalie. So this is like the perfect spot. Perfect cover and consuming on both sides. It was like a little mud wall and there was a tree line. This spot's perfect. But right now, in this moment, there's three Taliban on this roof. About 100 yards from that crossing to the left, to the right on this side of the river, there's a chinese BMP with a PKM heavy machine gun on the roof and a spotlight for people swimming across the river.

We have to get this information now. And when that BMP moves and the Taliban aren't there, this could be the perfect spot to cross. And so we're gonna have swim between these people. And. And that was the first. That was the only time during that whole week that I felt that. That fear creeping back up. And I walked off by myself and I stood on the bank of the river and I didn't have my bible, because you don't want to bring a Bible, obviously, that part of the world. I had a burner phone. And so my Bible app, my bible verses that I have this little verses on it there. And so I went to memory, and I always tell people, like Victor Frankl talks about in the book, I said earlier, you got to memorize God's word, because if it's in your heart and it's in your mind and your soul, then nothing can take it away from you, right? Because you control that. And I recite it. Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me besides quiet waters. He refreshes my soul.

He guides me in the right path for his name's sake. And even though I walk through a darkest valley, I will fear no evil because he is with me. His rod and his staff, they comfort me. And he prepares a table for me in the presence of my enemies. And he anoints my head with oil and my cup overflows. And surely his goodness and level pursue me all the days of my life, and I'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And one of my favorite parts of that verse is the very first words. The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing. I don't need anything else. If he's my shepherd, I don't need anything else. And that gave me a tremendous peace. And Dennis and I swam across the river that night in our underwear, clothes and rafting bags, and did that route. And that ended up being, from what I know best of my knowledge, the route that ended up being the most fruitful. Damn.

Damn, man.

And so that's why I went out that pillars of resiliency to me. Four days after I came out of that water, I went straight to a speaking event at Marine Corps boot camp, San Diego, and gave that same speech that I gave all those times before. And I felt like, this isn't theory anymore. I'm telling you something. I know. I just came out of that river, like, a few days ago, and I'm sitting at Marine Corps boot camp. Like, I feel. I feel just fine. I'm fine, right? I'm not shaking up like, I'm here telling you something. I believe that's real. The Lord is your shepherd. You lack nothing.

Good for you, man. Wow, that's. You did what no government could do. Your team, you guys, as a collective. I mean, you know what?

You know what?

You saved so many lives. What did it feel like when you saw Aziz here in the US and you guys reconnected?

Well, I first saw him in Abu Dhabi. I came back from that. I came back from. There was a time in between. I went there. Nick Pomoshino was with me, and I went to see his. We coordinated it. Knocked on his door. He answered the door, and we just grabbed each other, man. Hugged each other. He's a big old dude. And we just both start crying. And then his son, Moshkaur, who calls me Uncle Chad, we've been teaching each other English over the phone for a while. And he comes and he's like, uncle Chad. And he wraps his arms around me, his legs around me, gives me a big, like, monkey hug and put buries his face in my neck. And, man, I just started crying more. And the other kids came, hugged me, and. And then Hatra stood in the backside of the room. And here's part about that. When back. Back in time, when. When I'm in Afghanistan, Aziz sees my wife on WhatsApp mess. Oh, yahoo. Messenger. And. Which is a big deal for Afghan to see someone else's wife. To him, it was a big deal. He felt very thankful and privileged.

And she just said in passing, like, hey, take care of my husband. And he's like, oh, like, that's. I have to protect your husband now. He took that very seriously. And he felt indebted for me to see his wife. And which is, if you know anything about afghan culture, like, not only. Not any other afghan, especially a foreigner, especially, like, an infidel, right? To see your wife. He wanted me to see his wife. So it was like, a big deal. Like, orchestrated this. He's nervous. I'm nervous. She's at the end of the hole in a bedroom, she's got a burke, like, not a burka on, but, like, her face is covered. She's got her eyes showing. And so she pops out, and I see her, and she's gone, and everybody's nervous, and I'm like, oh, my. I'm, like, super uncomfortable. I'm like, I just committed a lot, like, a crime. And that's how I first met her, and it was super funny. So over the years, I've seen her more and more, and then she, like, sneak out, make us some food, and I'd see her and her face, and she, like, you could tell, like, let's just see her face a little bit and cover it up.

Like she was. It was just pushing the limits over. So. So now I come there, and I'm in Abu Dhabi. Give Aziz a hug. His kids are there, and she's on the other side of the room in the back corner. Stays. It stays in the back corner. Her face is uncovered, and she's huge smile. And she puts her hand over her heart and says, tasha kerr, which is, thank you. I say, tasha Kerr nest, which is, you're welcome. And. And she holds her hand over her heart for a long, extended time. And that was, like, even all those years, that was the closest we ever been. Fast forward. They finally land in Texas. I'm coming back from Ukraine. I rushed back from Ukraine, almost didn't. I did. Almost like a weekday without a shower, and I'm like, I'm not gonna have shower time to get a shower to make my flight, and everybody's got to smell me the way home. But I had enough time. I got a shower, flew back to Cs and them, because they had just got back, my staff picked them up, therefore intercepted them from USCIS so they wouldn't get stuck in that freaking horrible process.

They had my staff picked them up, took custody of them, brought them to my house, and started waiting in my driveway. And I come back from Ukraine, and Aziz comes out and hugs me. And little Mashkar is running through my yard with my visla dog playing in the front yard of Texas home. It was so cool to see that. And Hatra comes up and throws her arms around me and gives me a giant Texas hug and says, thank you, brother. Like, man, that's. That's the full. And, man, she's so fun. Like, this woman's been caged up her whole life. I was telling her earlier, like, she's like, I want to ride rollercoaster. Took her to New York New York, we're gonna roller coaster her hands up. She's, like, wants to do zip lines and, like, everything. She just wants to enjoy America and freedom. She's so cool.

Yeah, man. I loved hearing that.

Yeah. Yeah. Aziz is working for Mighty Oaks. He's in our international team. We. One of the things that. So you said earlier, right. We did what we did with the american government wouldn't do. Yes. And when the governments of the world failed, especially later on, good people, good patriots, stood up and did the right thing. And I was upset at first. I remember sitting in a meeting, minister of interior for UAE, all these lawyers, all these generals. I'm, like, super. Like, I'm very patriotic and proud, and I'm having to apologize for our country. I'm having to thank them for helping me get Americans out. And Ken Isaac from Samaritan's purse told me, you know what? Like, yeah, our government did this, but look who's here doing it right? Like this. Our government did this, but Americans are doing it or doing the right thing spite of our government. And I was like, you know what? I was embarrassed about government, but I've never been more proud to be an American in that moment, to see Americans coming up and doing the right thing in spite of our government, it was really like a kind of paradox thing for me to see that.

Yeah. Yeah, man.

And. Oh, yeah. So I wanted to say that one of the other faults of our government in the sibs that we did get here, that special immigrant visas, like Aziz that did get here. You gotta think these. You did, you know, 20 deployments. I did eight deployments, like, my Ian did, my buddy Ian at workshops. 16 deployments at Delta force, like, all these deployments. But the Afghans, like, they didn't do deployments. They did 20 years straightaway.

They did one diplomat.

Yeah. It was 20 years long in their backyard. Right? One of the most disgusting things Joe Biden said was when he said, if they can't fight for their country, why should we be there fighting for them? 60,000 of them died fighting for their. 60,000 of them, like, died fighting for their country. And so when they come here, they don't have a. They don't have a VA. They can't go to the VA. Who's gonna help them deal with PTSD, combat, trauma, not to mention that the withdrawal, losing their home, losing everything, and not have to start a new life in a new culture. There's nothing for them. And so when we recognize that at Mighty Oaks, we said, you know what? No one's gonna fill that gap and that amazing donor step in and support this big time. We're going to start an SIV program. So Aziz, for the last year, helped build the Siv program. And so we just ran our first program. We took 170 CIA interpreters through our program. All but 117 Muslims, one Christian, all went through our Christian Mighty Oaks program, and it was phenomenal results. And they're all sending. When they went back, they sent tons of other people.

So we got all kinds. We had a huge, huge demand now for. And we're going to keep serving those guys and loving those guys. They can't go to the VA. We're going to have a place for them to help integrate them the right way in America.

Damn, chad, you're an amazing human brother.

I'm so sorry.

I mean, you, the people working with you, like, everybody that's put this together, I wish there were more people like you in this world.

I feel the same for you, man, is, uh, especially with the, you know, everything you're doing with this platform and in. And, man, I tell you with that, though, my son, Hunter, who's on our international program, you know, he's afghanistan's close to his heart as a. As Afghanistan veteran. Aziz, our team there, man, they just knocked out of the park with this. They worked so hard to build that program.

Yeah, yeah.

As a quote, Mother Teresa said, God will never give you more than he can handle. I just wish you didn't trust me so much. That's been the last few years of my life.

Well, Chad, I want to sit here and dwell on that and talk about all the positivity, but we're running out of time, and I want to get to your next book, which is coming out of mission without Borders. Some of the stuff you guys are doing over in Ukraine, especially the rescue mission, you know.

Yeah. So I want to start off with that. So, first of all, this is the first time I'm mentioning this book, so I thank you for allowing me to. It's a. We're, you know, pre sales on books are everything. If you can't pre sell a book, you're not gonna. You're not gonna sell, sell opening day. So pre selling books are important to the success of a book, and why I care about the success of any of my books is because it's tied directly to our mission and what we do. This book, I even did an author's note because it's about Ukraine, and a lot of Americans, myself included, are frustrated with Ukraine. Hundreds of billions of us taxpayer dollars are going to Ukraine in a prolonged war that could be ended in a week if we had the right leadership in our White House. Meanwhile, our southern border and all the things that we have in our country, it's a disaster. Right.

How does this even get cleaned up?

I don't know if you can.

Eventually, the herd's gonna be thinned.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's how it gets cleaned up.

Yeah. Yeah. I do not support that money being sent there. Not a. It's corruption in Ukraine. Ukraine's been corrupt for a long time, but so has Washington, DC. And a lot of the corruption in Ukraine is directly tied to Washington, DC. But we said earlier, right, like. Like, I'm not gonna ever let politics get in the way of my compassion, heart for people. I was in. I went into Ukraine. Sea spray was in Ukraine a few days before because we knew it was gonna happen. When the Russians came across, sea spray was already there. I went there to meet him there initially, we went there not in the capacity. What mighty oaks does. We went there to help get Americans out, because White House had pulled our embassy, pulled our troops out, which green lighted the Russians across, by the way, in my opinion. And so we were there to help move Americans that were stuck there out, and that's what we did. And I get into all the different things that we've done, but one was the rescue of Benjamin hall, and I'll share that story. But when I started this, Hunter, my oldest son, had really was really a little sour with me because he wanted to be more on the ground, involved in Afghanistan evacuations.

When he went. When he first went to come to Abu Dhabi, which I took him to Abu Dhabi with me, he ran the operation center there. He was like, I want to go there. I'm like, no way I'm taking you. You're my son. Like, he's like, I'm an Afghanistan veteran. I had an interpreter. It's important to me, too. And I'm like, okay, well, I'll keep you where it's safe. And then he wants to come to Ukraine with me, and I'm like, not happening. Right? And why am I doing that? Because I'm his dad, and I love him, and I want to protect him, and I care about him, and I fear for him. Man. When he went to Afghanistan in 2018 and deployed to Afghanistan, I knew he was getting bored. He wasn't going as a support and advisory role. He's getting better with the georgian infantry. Like, he's gonna see combat. And he did kinetic combat. He shot. He shot a v bet he and then his old, his old sort, his sergeant major was a recon ry with me so they like, right me bragging your son just shot a vbid and I'm like, I'd rather not know that.

Like, I appreciate that. I'm proud of it but I appreciate not knowing that. Like, so, like and you know, he's just, he's very much like me and he wants to go out there and get after it so I'm like, I gotta put the reins on him and, and so all that really is, is fear. I mean, when he was in Afghanistan, that's my only time I ever had a panic attack again outside of coming home in resurface again because but look, look, I got amazing people around me. I mighty oaks I leaned on them and I addressed it and I use the same thing. I'm not ashamed to say that either. As I found there of an organization that runs that I struggled again. Why my son's in combat and I'm worried he's gonna die. Like, I've been buried for 15 friends from there. Something would probably be wrong with me if it didn't bother me and, but I had just leaned into what we do at mightyoaks and just use the support I have and, you know, snapped me back out of it and, but there was realization that I had during that time that my friends mentored me to was like, hey, you love Hunter, but as much as you love Hunter, God loves him more.

And yeah, as a dad, you could protect Hunter, but God could protect him more. And Hunter could die driving to the grocery store or he could die doing what God burdens is hard to do in Afghanistan. And I had to really accept that as a father. But I was still on the fence about it when things had control over being the running mighty Oaks foundation. And I'm like, I'm going to keep you safe because it's my job. So I wasn't letting him come to Ukraine. So we ended up building this network, this communication network, all Ukraine, which ended up being pretty profound. We were able to connect all the NGO's and everybody through building this communications network because we were like, what's going to happen? How could Russia really take them out? If they knock out the communication network, none of these NGO's could get fuel, they get food. They can move people. So we need to build a clandestine communication network. So we built that right out the gate and we got thousands of comps packages all over Ukraine developed so people could communicate and, and I needed someone to that new comps equipment to be able to go around the US and procure their equipment because you can't go by, you can't go by 200 iridium sat phones.

You gotta now you gotta go around and get them, especially when everybody's buying them up. So I tasked Hunter out to do that. He's a comp. He showed up in Ukraine with, I think. I think 21, 21 of those big duffel bags he flew. He got all the equipment, went on a country bowl of equipment, flew that stuff there himself. Gets there and all that equipment said there, and I'm like, all right, thanks. Go home and see sprays. Like, you gonna set this stuff up? Like, I'm not setting this stuff up. So Hunter's like, I'll set it up. So he works his way into staying and setting all that comms equipment up. And then now he's building our talk, the flat screens. You could track all this equipment now. I could watch all this equipment real time going to Ukraine. As we're distributing it. We could see, hey, somebody needs to be moved here now. I don't have to go get that person. They got somebody else right here. Right?

I'll be damned. Just like his old man, huh? The work ethic.

Yeah, he's just out there.

Got him in there.

He's grinding. Yep. He's just grinding, man. He's just grinding it out. And see, spray's like, you know, you can't send him home. We need him now. I'm like, God dang it. But we're in Poland, right? So I'm like, we're good.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, huh, Chad?

Yeah. Yeah. He's like a little mini me.

You had mentioned that's how you got into all these places, was the work ethic.

It's true. It is. It is. He just earned it. He earned it. He earned his right to stay there. And then the call comes in for Benjamin Hall. I know you were interested. And when the US government can't do can't or won't do something, they could use surrogates. A surrogate would be someone outside the government, meaning not paid. So there's no attribution to the US government and they could do it. And there's patriots all around the world that. That do use their companies, use their other things. The nonprofit world, if you think of government, government organizations, right, the government institutions. And then you have Ngo's. So I'm not telling anything as a secret here. Government organizations, NGO's, not government organizations. Nonprofits. Do things outside the government. The government could at any time request an NGO to do something as a surrogate for them. And it happens all the time. Especially the intelligence agencies do it all the time. And so, as we're there, you have relationships and friendships, and people know you. And so as we're there setting up, we had got a request from special operations liaison officer of the Central Intelligence Agency to go get Benjamin hall.

At the same time, simultaneously, we had a call from the Pentagon, from Fox News correspondent, because Benjamin hall worked for Fox News, and that request was to go get Benjamin hall. For those that don't know, Benjamin Hall's Fox News correspondent. He was in Kyiv at the time of the heavy attack. And so when Kyiv was under heavy attack, his vehicle got hit. Whether it's intentional or not, his vehicle got hit, and the two Ukrainians in a vehicle with him were disintegrated. His combat correspondent, Sasha, lost everything. The only thing remaining of her was her arm. Pierre, his 25 year old, 25 year Fox cameraman, amazing guy. Covered a lot in Afghanistan. Just want to. Everybody talks about him. Talks about an incredible human being. He was killed instantly in. Benjamin hall was catastrophically wounded. Lost a foot, lost a leg. Should have kept his hand, but it's pretty bad. Lost an eye. They didn't think he was gonna make it. Brain, traumatic brain injury. He was blown up really bad. A ukrainian troop saw him. They took him to a military hospital. And so the call was, and I remember we were in the living room.

There was nine of us in the living room, and sea sprays on the phone. And we see him start to write. Like, everybody be quiet. Something serious is going on. You know, everybody knows right away. Like, everyone's laughing, it's goofing off, but something serious is going on. And sea spray starts writing stuff down. He hangs up the phone. He's like, hey, Fox News correspondent Benjamin hall been catastrophically wounded. He's got a wife and two little girls at home. Us military's not gonna go get him. The agency's not gonna go get him. If we don't go get him right now, he's going to die. Who's in? Nine people in that room. Eight former military guys. One professional baseball player just happened to be in the room at the time, Adam LaRouche. And everybody's like, let's go get him. Not one person hesitated, including my son. Let's go get him. You know, I always talk about these things being miracles, but you can't argue. And God does something to set something up. An hour before that phone call, we had just got two ambulances, yellow EMT vest, badges made, and paperwork to make us look like emTs, because we knew that was the only way to pass through checkpoints at night.

An hour before that call, if we wouldn't have had those assets in place, we were building those assets in place to be able to have access, you know, access in placement. If we didn't have those assets in place at that time of that call, we wouldn't have been able to do it. An hour before that call, Dakota Meyers was there. Radic, doctor Raddick, like, all these guys, like, we had doctor radic, who's a surgeon, a trauma surgeon, who ran a. Ran a. I think he was a jack JML unit, like, like all these. Everybody, everything was in the right place to be able to pull the trigger and just say, grab your bags, let's go. And I believe God orchestrated that. We. Within about 30 minutes, we got in the vehicles and loading up, and as we're loading up, I've seen Hunter throw his bag in the back of that ambulance to go. And sea spray looks at me and goes, is Hunter coming? And I'm like, if you say he's coming, I'm not going to make that decision. If you say he's coming, he's coming. I was going to relinquish that. Sea spray said, man, I need somebody to run the talk.

Shawn's gonna stay back and run the talk. The solo from the jason, the solo guy is gonna come sit in the talk, but I need. I need Hunter here, because he knows how this stuff works. And I'm like, if I tell him, he's gonna think I'm holding him back. He's like, I'll tell him. And so Sea spray told him he had to stay back. And I could tell he was just like, hey. He said, you know where you need me? That's where I'm gonna be. But he wanted to come. And, you know, it tore my heart out to see him. I know he wanted to be there. And we got in the vehicles. We drove across a vehicle. Sea spray was leading one vehicle, I was leading the other. Me, Adam, and Dakota was in one. We stopped outside the city as a kind of backup element, QRF backup element, sea spray, and went into the city, grabbed Benjamin Hall. I can't say exactly how it all happened, because there's some things that I don't think I'm. I think I'd probably get in trouble for saying, but got him. Got him in the vehicle and got him eventually.

I mean, he. He was. His feet were gone. He's shrapnel through his throat. Damn his brains. They have a tube in his brain. His hands blown off, not blown off bone pretty bad. And. And he's like, doctor addicts. Like, he's. He's. We have to move him. And we knew in that moment, like, if we didn't move him then, like, he was. He was. He was going to die. And sea sprayed him. Had to. Have to move him out of the hospital. And the hospital was like, hey, we can. All recent. So they just stole him. Just stole him at the hospital because they were, like, arguing. Are you guys doctors? Who are you guys? And we're just like, took him out, and so, got him across the border. And got him across the border. The 82nd airborne was waiting in a helicopter, sea spray. And Bo loaded him on the helicopter and flew him to aeromedical c 130. Got him on that air America c 130, and flew him to launch dual Germany and eventually to Brookharman medical center in Texas, where he recovered the next day. We were asked to go get their body of Pierre, and I was like, I'll make the call.

Like, no, we're not gonna go get a body. Kiev's still getting rocketed. Us under a heavy attack. Russia's trying to circle the city. They were trying to close in on it. We're not gonna go. And, I mean, we've been to other cities since then, but we're not gonna go in just for a body. And then his wife Michelle showed up and was like, I want my son. I want my husband. And we were like, yes, ma'am. And we went in, and I actually drove Pierre's body out in a hearse. He was in a hearse, and the guy was trying to use the hearse to get out of. He's like, hey, I need to drive modest my hearse. And I'm like, hey, we're gonna. We're gonna buy your hearse from you. And he's like, no, I'm not selling my hearst. And I'm like, yeah, you don't understand. Either you're selling your hearst, or we're gonna steal your hearse. We're taking this. We didn't want to remove that casket from the. From the hearse. And I put them on. I'm like, hey, get on the phone, Fox News. Make the deal of your life. They're gonna pay you for whatever you want for this car, and they'll transfer you money.

And we got that hearse. But I remember, like, going in the back and we had to open it and verify it was his body. And at this moment, he's from Ireland, and they had an irish flag, and they had really set him up with dignified, but they had irish flag in the back. And I remember it made me realize our guys when they come home and how on the casket, we put the blue at the head and the stripes go down to the feet. I quickly googled, how's the irish flag go? It's a green orange in the head. And so I looked it up on Google real quick, and I started putting it over, and I actually got, like, really frantic, and I was trying to tape it on, and sea spirit came back and he grabbed my hand and he's like, you all right, brother? And I'm like, yeah, I just want to do this right, man. We were taking him to his wife, and we took our time, we put the flag on and we drove. I drove the hearse and sea spirit anywhere in front of me, an ambulance, and we got him across the board border and delivered him to his wife.

And, you know, in a dignified way. And, you know, since then, we've gotten some other bodies. Dan Swift, the Navy SeAL, who his mother reached out and the US State department were total, told her terrible, terrible. Treated it terribly, treated her terribly. Some conflict with his service and, like, who cares? He's a navy seal that is there trying to help people. We're gonna, we're gonna get him out and get him home to his mom and his kids. And so we got his body out, and then, you know, we've gotten to do so many amazing things, and our team's been all over. I mean, but through that, through that process, I kind of fast forward into this. There was a moment where things progressed, and Hunter eventually got to come across the border into Ukraine. He and I went, and I was like, it's a pretty safe kind of trip. And I took him, just me and him, and I watched him. His composure. I watched that handle it. And I'm like, you know what? God doesn't just call me to do these things like he's calls other people to, including Hunter. And if God has a calling on hunter's heart to do these things, who am I to keep him from doing these things, right?

I don't want to spend my whole life keeping him from doing the things that God's called him to do. I wouldn't want anybody doing that to me. And so I had to relinquish it. I had to go back to the promise in 2018 to realize God loves him more than I can. God can protect him better than I can. And God has a call in his life, too. And I made the decision to relinquish that as hard as it was as a dad to do that and let him kind of run. And, man, we got asked to go to a place called Izum sea spray, and I. Izum, Ukraine. And the Russians had occupied Izum for about six months. And the Ukrainians were claiming that they had executed about 1400 women and children and put them in a mass grave. And the agency was worried that that was propaganda, that they were just using it for propaganda for the get more money. And so we were asked by the solo, hey, will you make sure that this is for real? Make sure this is real? And in that same area, there's a marine that was fighting for the Ukrainians.

He got shot in the stomach. We had. We had. We heard that he was captured and we potentially could get him. So me and sea spray started heading that area to do those two things. The marine went Mia. We couldn't find where he went. And then Hunter, at the same time went to a place called Bakmut. Bakmut probably since the invasion is every minute on the minute since the invasion has been bombed. And he was going there to bring some medical equipment to some troops there as four guys, like a CaG, a CaG guy, Hunter, a Marsau guy, and I think a force recon guy, like all pretty experienced guys, they were going. And Hunter was leading that team in the Bakmu. And so me, so I'm in. I'm in a zoom. Hunters and Bakmut, two separate things about 3 hours apart. And we go in and we identify those mass graves, which those were mass grace, by the way, there. And. And then we go to this other place with the national chief of police for all of Ukraine. And while we're there, the Russians close the line behind us. And when they close the line behind us, we get caught in the middle of them.

Probably the most kinetic, some of the most kinetic stuff I had ever seen. We were driving and I seen two Migs fly over and I was like. And I was in a toasty. Well, those Migs. And he's like, yeah. I'm like that ever. You ever see that before? He's like, no, bro, those are Migs. And they hit. They did a bombing run. Like, I don't know how far away, but enough. We seen the plume come up and then sort of have IDF and. And then we were caught by this building, and. And then it got pretty. Pretty, like, within 100, 200 yards, indirect fire. I mean, dirt flying over, like, dirt landing on us. We got against this building. The windows got blown out of the building. Like, literally, like, I was showing you some of the pictures earlier, some of the russian troops that was that day. Like. Like, I could hear the. I remember hear. I could hear the buffer springs in the. In the a case. Like. Like, as the rounds were. As they were. They were functioning. Like. Like I could hear. I could hear no weapons functioning.

Damn.

And it was. It was. And so I call Hunter on the phone. On the sat phone to tell him what's going on. And when I call Hunter, I could hear the indirect fire landing around him. And so at the same time, uh, me and him were taking indirect fire and about 3 hours apart. And, uh. And I went to being worried about me to being worried about him and, uh. And. And then seeing after how he handled himself in that situation and just instilled the confidence in me that, uh, that I'm carrying with me right now. He just got back, like, a few days ago from another trip in Ukraine. I think he's been there 1313 or 14 times now. And, uh, and he just, you know, does an incredible job at what he's doing. He's leading a team now. They're doing more, taking people out to train the chaplain teams and stuff like that. And at this point, we've reached a point to where we've done everything we could do there. Now it's train the trainer and let them have it. So it's pretty much a mission complete for us there and focus on other areas of the world.

But he's made me just extremely proud. And so this book is telling that story. It's a story of fear to faith. The fear is a father to the faith and saying, you know, sometimes there's things we have to let go and that we can't control, and we just have to have faith that God can control them better than us.

Man. A mission without Borders is for pre sale right now.

For pre sale right now. And I would so much appreciate people. People supporting it. Everything I do, by the way, all my books and stuff like that supports the work that we do, and so.

That'S all goes to the Mighty Oak foundation.

Yeah, yeah. Supports the work that we do. And, you know, so it's getting minor support. And, you know, when you pre order a book, people like, I don't want to wait for it, but any. Not just me, any author, like, I mean, I know you, whenever you do something one day and you know any of these guys you support, when you pre order a book, what it does is tells the vendors that, that people are interested in the book and it helps get the advanced purchase, which gets to put more marketing behind it. So one of the best ways to support authors, especially in our community, that want to is always pre order the book for them. Yeah. So, yeah. And you know, I want to close with one thing on this. There's a lot of verses I love in the Bible. I probably have a different favorite verse all the time, but I think the most powerful verse in all the Bible is Genesis one. One. And I've read the Bible cover to cover, right. And it makes, makes some pretty bold claims, by the way, all of which I believe are true and I've read it cover to cover.

But the most powerful verse in all the Bible to me is Genesis one. One. The first ten words of the Bible. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Like in the beginning, God created the heavens and earth. Why would I say that's the most powerful verse in all the Bible? Because if you believe that, if you believe that first ten words that God created all, then you have to understand that God has authority over all. And if God has authority over everything, well, then he's sovereign. And if God's sovereign, then he holds all of our fears, our insecurities. He holds everything in the poem by our hands. And that knowledge of knowing that God holds all in the poem of his hands, what actually do we have to be scared of, right? If God's in control of all. So to me that's the most powerful thing to understand, that God created the heavens and earth, he created all. He has authority overall. He's sovereign and he's good and he loves us and cares about us and he loves and cares about our kids too, even if they're in a place like Ukraine.

Right?

God bless you, Chad, you're doing amazing stuff. God's working through you. It's a real honor to have you here.

Oh man, I appreciate you being here. This is something I looked forward to for a long time and I'm glad, glad it's. And I believe podcasts aside, like it, I believe it's the beginning for a friendship. So.

Me too.

Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you for coming out.

Absolutely, brother, absolutely.

And link will be in the description on that if you want to support Mighty Oaks foundation links down there too. Everybody check it out. Very apparent you are doing amazing things. So thank you. And once again, Chad, it's an honor.

God bless.

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