Mayhem in Ramadi | Lee Deckleman | Ep. 364 - The Team House

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Special Operations, Colbert SPI and I.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
The Team House with your host Jack Murphy and David Park.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Hey, everybody, welcome to Team House episode three hundred and
sixty four. I'm Dave Park. Joining us tonight is Lee Deckleman.
Lee is a former ranger, former SF plankholder at Triple Canopy.
Has done a lot of great things, a lot of
wild things, a general man about town, international man of mystery,

(00:45):
as it were.

Speaker 4 (00:46):
Thanks for joining us tonight, Lee.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
NICs, Dave.

Speaker 5 (00:51):
I appreciate you having me.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
I'm grateful anytime I can unpack my life story and uh,
you know, among.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
My trod it it is a hell of a story too.
Lee wrote a book about his life, I mean, going
all the way back. Actually your birthday is only one
day after mine.

Speaker 4 (01:14):
Uh so yeah, oh yeah. But uh the name of
the book is Internal Volume.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
And as we get more into your story, you can
tell us where Internal Volume comes from, because it's really
it's not just a story about your life, but it's
a story about uh I don't want to say your dysfunction,
but but your trauma and not just you know, trauma
from war or trauma from combat, trauma from security or whatever,

(01:47):
but just the trauma is a childhood like your childhood
was not was not a pleasant one, and sort of
how that manifested throughout your life and things like that.

Speaker 4 (01:59):
You also founded B Yoga Strong, and right B Yoga
Strong is.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
The name of your right. Well that five years ago
when I founded B Yoga Strong. COVID hit right after that,
and so I've struggled to kind of hold on to
the foundation and and grow that. And so where that's
at right now is is kind of on pause. But

(02:30):
that was outside of just getting healthy and getting my
own internal volume to a real low and good place.
You know, the only other purpose I had was wanting
to provide free yoga to my community, you know, you know,
as a form of free therapy seven days a week

(02:52):
where people would have a soft place for free to
land at the end of a hard day. Yea.

Speaker 5 (03:00):
And so that that's the goal.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
You know. We'll probably get into it a little bit
later when I can explain how that's kind of shifted.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Sure, absolutely, So let's start from the beginning. Uh, we
like to ask everybody, what is your origin story? What
made you the man you are today?

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Well, I started out in life below average, so not
even average when I was born. I was two and
a half months premature, and I was cross eyed, and
I spent months in an incubator in the ICU before
I went to foster home. At about age six, my parents,

(03:46):
my birth parents, came back and got me and along
with my other sisters who were also in foster care,
and we moved from Baltimore, Maryland, to Tennessee. A couple
of years after that, and just a couple of days

(04:07):
after getting to Tennessee, at age nine, you know, my
father died, so I was on another planet. We were
Jewish in Middle Tennessee in the nineteen seventies. I was
nine years old, had just come from foster home. I
really hadn't even got assimilated with my new family properly,

(04:29):
and my dad was gone. So that was a really
that was the first trauma. I remember. That was a
real tough spot, and my mother was homicidal and suicidal,
and so it was a very dysfunctional situation. After that,
it got worse instead of better once we moved here

(04:52):
and football. My father was really good at football. And
I didn't know my father, but I knew he was
a World War two veteran and he was really good
at football, and so I wanted to be really good
at football. The only problem was is I was the
smallest kid in my grade every year, and I talked
funny because I was from up North and you know,

(05:16):
a little Jewish boy, and everybody was Christian.

Speaker 5 (05:19):
So I did feel like I was on another planet.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
And that led to really focusing on football, and that's
really kind of what saved me. And when football was
over and I didn't have the size or the grades
to go to college, that was a real low spot
in my life. Right after I graduated high school, and
so I decided to join the army. I never wanted

(05:45):
to be in the military. I didn't like discipline, you know.
I was kind of a wild eyed Southern boy, a rebel,
you know, in my nature, and so I didn't want
to go in the military, but I did. And since
I was going to go in, I decided, well, I'm
not going to just go in. I want to do

(06:06):
something special. Because when you grow up as a traumatized
kid with nothing and you feel like you're nothing, you
have to become something, right, So that's your ego, like
you have to attach yourself to something. I have to
be something and so being a ranger was important. That
was my life mission.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
So, you know, you talk a little bit about the
trauma of childhood, and you go into a lot of
depth in the book, but I'd like to kind of
rewind a little bit because when your parents came, you
were with your foster parents for seven years correct.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
Well, for the first year there was a lot of transitions,
so about six years.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yeah, okay, and the first year you were one year old,
so right, right, so yeah, so you weren't really keeping
a die or anything. But you know, if you don't
mind me talking a little bit about what's in the book,
because I do want people to understand sort of like
the depth of the trauma and where it started and
then you know, because it gets you know, it ends

(07:11):
up with yoga. But your mother was on volume and
a number of other things or whatever when you were born,
which is why your premature. She went into a deep
depression and you were made wards of the state. You
never like, you never really lived with your parents. Your

(07:33):
foster parents were your parents. And you know, you said
that your parents came at your biological parents came and
got you. But you in the book, you talk about
how they came and got you. And it wasn't just
traumatizing for you, it's traumatizing for your for your foster parents.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
That's right. My my foster mother was crushed. A rose
was crushed. That's all I really remember labing was she
was crushed.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
Because they just showed up, right, they just showed up
and said, here we are, come on kids, And that
would show this woman who had been raising you for
six years as.

Speaker 4 (08:13):
Her children, just wanted you to walk out the door.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
That's right. And the unfortunate part is is, you know,
they tried to find me my whole life and get
back in touch with me because my parents cut off
any kind of They never spoke of them, never mentioned
their name. And so it was through social media that

(08:37):
my older foster and brother from that family finally found me.
And it wasn't that long ago. It was around twenty thirteen.
I was working at Facebook at the time, and they
contacted me, and you know, it was kind of magical
to be able to talk to them and fill some

(09:00):
some voids, fill some gaps and get some ques, you know.
Uh and and so I ultimately went and took my
son and went and met them, and uh so that
that was nice, but it Rose had already died, so
I didn't get an opportunity to see her as an adult.

(09:21):
And you know, if anything makes me sad about that,
it's it's that.

Speaker 4 (09:28):
So, you know, you.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
Feel a drift. You get out of high school, you
join the army. What was that like for you?

Speaker 4 (09:37):
You know, joining the army you didn't want to be disciplined.
You're kind of a wild one. And now you know,
you don't just join the army, but you go to rip,
you know, you do all this stuff and then you
go to battalion. What was that that that like for you?

Speaker 1 (09:56):
Well, as much as I didn't like discipline, I hated
being a nobody. I hated just being empty, you know,
and so I had to feel that. So it's kind
of like you do things you normally wouldn't do when

(10:19):
you want something bad enough. And so I was willing
to do and put up with whatever they put me through.

Speaker 5 (10:27):
I would have done practically anything.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
And so the hardest part for me about becoming a
ranger and getting into regiment was just getting there. You know,
the problems are how problematic that can be when you
sign up for the army thinking that you're going to
range a regiment and you find out that you're just
going to an infantry unit, and you don't realize that

(10:53):
until you're in basic training. And so that fight to
finally get into regiment against the army in the original contract.

Speaker 5 (11:02):
Uh, you know that that was the hardest part.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
So, as your book kind of lays out fairly, well,
you're a bit of a scrapper and you're you're not
crazy about authority or people abusing their authority or speaking
to you, you know, in disrespectful ways.

Speaker 4 (11:26):
How did that mesh with you know, being young Cherry Lee?

Speaker 1 (11:32):
You know, yeah, yeah, that's a good question. So when
I was growing up in the seventies in the South,
you get fist fight.

Speaker 5 (11:40):
Like that was that was just normal behavior.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
Like the teachers would would just go out on the
playground and they would gather and talk and you'd sort
out whatever you needed to do. So being violent, being monstrous,
of behaving like a sociopath wasn't unacceptable. And so getting

(12:03):
into the military, especially into range regiment, you're almost it's
almost an advantage to be a sociopath or to have
be on that spectrum to the comart to be able
to compartmentalize in that sense. And the difference between a
good ranger and a bad ranger, or a good seal

(12:25):
or a bad seal is are you wearing a white hat?
Are you wearing a black hat? Because we're almost all
on this on the spectrum of being sociopaths. So and
every now and then you meet a psychopath, he's like,
you know, it's like, wow, that guy has ice going
through his veins.

Speaker 5 (12:44):
Like I don't want to ever cross him.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
But yeah, that was it was a dream come true
and it was you know, the eighteen Delta course. Graduating
an eighteen delta course was definitely a highlight of my
military career. But my time in Ranger Battalion and my
squad in Ranger Battalion Bravo Company, third between Second Squad,

(13:10):
you know, out of my military career, that's my most
beautiful memory. Yeah, you know, I cherished that. And so
it's kind of tough watching some of these g Watt
Special Ops guys kind of make us look like idiots
with Lion and making up these stories. You know, the

(13:31):
best way to go about telling your war stories is
leave a few things out and that way you make
sure you're not you're not gonna get in trouble or
or or be called out for exaggerating too much. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
So you did your time in Ranger Battalion. Are there
any highlights that you want to cover when while you're there?

Speaker 1 (13:56):
Well, I've I've got a pretty funny story I had
to do with my son being born while I was
in Rage Battai. But other than that, no, it was
it was peacetime. Yeah, so being a Ranger Battalion peacetime
was hard. It was just straining, you know. When I

(14:16):
finally went to combat, it was like, Okay, it's only
hard when it's hard. It's not just hard on purpose.
You know, people aren't trying to make combat hard. Your
leadership isn't trying to make it harder on you. You know.
So combat was a break for me. I thought peacetime
Ranger Battalion was the hardest thing I had ever done. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (14:36):
So you, uh, do you want to tell the story
about your son?

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Yeah, So when I was in when I was in
the battalion, I had my second child, and Josh and
he actually ended up going to Bravo Company, First Range
Battalion after you graduated high school, but he was born
there and the way that happened. You know, Uh, well

(15:06):
it's not it's it's kind of a long story. Okay,
so we might want to it's in the book, but
it's kind.

Speaker 5 (15:13):
Of a long story.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
So all right, buy the book. Oh where can people
find your book?

Speaker 4 (15:17):
Is it on Amazon?

Speaker 1 (15:18):
It's on Amazon? Ok. Just if you put internal volume
or put my name in you'll see that beautiful art
on the front covering. And that's the logo for the foundation,
which again it's on pause and not doing anything with
it currently. But I have been teaching over the last
five years for free.

Speaker 6 (15:40):
Hey guys, I want to think a new sponsor that
we have today. It's front Work where they make great boots,
great work where if you're if you're a worker like me,
if people who know me know I love to work
with my hands like a man, my hands and my body.
Uh and when you work with your hands in your body,
you need a good pair of boots. And honestly, I

(16:00):
was so excited that we had Brunt as a sponsor
because I bought a pair of boots a year and
a half ago from them. Look at that these are used.
WARN love these these are called the Marins. I love them.
Super comfortable, super waterproof, so if you're out there, you
could sit and stand in standing water and mud or

(16:22):
whatever gets the job done. Bront workwaar incredible product. So
if you're a man who works or a woman right
who cares? Right, babe, If you're a man or a
woman who works with their hands and their bodies and
you need a great pair of boots, you got to
bruntworkwear dot com. You use the code teamhouse for ten

(16:42):
dollars off. That's bruntworkware dot com with the code teamhouse
and you get ten dollars off. They're gonna ask you
who sent you? You know who sent you? Who's the teamhouse
brontworkware dot com. Teamhouse is the code for ten dollars off.
I love you, Thank you, Thank you a brunt workwork
for supporting the show.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
So you leave Ranger Battalion and you leave the Army,
right you ets, and you joined.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
No No the So the first time I was in
the Army, I went to ranger school as an infantryman.

Speaker 4 (17:18):
Oh okay, I couldn't.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
Get into regiment. I had to get out and then
go back in. Okay, So get right to ultimately being
range of battalions Okay, through Desert Storm after twentieth Special
Forces Group.

Speaker 4 (17:31):
Okay, that's right, because you went to Desert Storm with
a conventional.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Unit, right, with a National Guard unit. Yeah, a disaster.

Speaker 4 (17:44):
Yeah, yeah, that's right. So then you.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
Because you got out a couple of times, so you right,
So you go to range battalions.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
I did. I did. I went in in eighty five
and ats and eighty eight. I got activated for Desert
Storm in ninety to ninety one, and then I when
I got back from there, I joined the twentiesth Special
Forces Guard Unit and then in ninety five went back

(18:15):
on active duty to first Range of Attack until I
was medically retired.

Speaker 4 (18:20):
Hey, I got a.

Speaker 6 (18:21):
Question, because we never really have too many a ton
of people that I asked that talk about Desert Storm.

Speaker 4 (18:26):
What was that trip like for you?

Speaker 1 (18:30):
For my unit and for my experience, it should have
just been, you know, considered a training exercise. You know,
we really weren't. My my unit didn't have a purpose there.
And so when you're in a situation like that and
you don't have really a functional purpose, you're not really

(18:51):
participating in the war.

Speaker 5 (18:54):
They have to make up something for you to do.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
And so that's kind of what our unit, that's the
space our unit landed in. And so I think the
what I got out of Desert Storm was what the
news says about war can be one hundred percent opposite
of what's really going on at the time.

Speaker 5 (19:18):
I think that's the.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
First time I ever realized that because of what CNN
was putting out versus what I was seeing with my
own eyes. And the other thing I think I got
out of Desert Storm was, you know, you just get
that first combat deployment out under your belt. You know,
it's it's a little unless you don't have a center

(19:44):
in your brain that gets scared, you know, the migula,
unless you don't have one like some of those cliff climbers.
It's a little nerve wracking trying to keep it together.
And you know, your first time going into a war
where it's just an unknown, it's a complete unknown, and
so getting that out of the way really helped.

Speaker 4 (20:07):
So, uh, you you come back from Desert Storm, you
you go to Ranger Battalion because you didn't do the
Q course while you were in twentieth.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
Group, Right, that's right, I just dis selection.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
Okay, so you go to one seventy five.

Speaker 4 (20:26):
That's right, okay, sorry about that. And then at the
end of that time, do you get out again or
do you go? Do you roll right into essef from
there I leave?

Speaker 1 (20:39):
I was gonna. I became I was impa first bat
and became a team leader, and I wanted to stay
and become a squad leader because you know, I kind
of wanted to go to the unit. And my patuito
sergeant at the time was a real dick. And I'm
not gonna call him out on here, but uh, everything

(21:04):
else about my batoon and everything else about battalion I loved,
except this guy. And so I just decided to put
in a forty one eighty seven to transfer to the
Q course. Since I had already been to selection and
I had already been selected, it was just time to move.

Speaker 4 (21:25):
On, okay.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
So so you don't get out, you you roll into
the Q course.

Speaker 4 (21:33):
That's right, okay? And how is that for you?

Speaker 1 (21:40):
It was the best it was. I spent almost fifteen
years total in the military. It was the best two
years of my military career.

Speaker 4 (21:48):
Yeah, San Antonio, is that good?

Speaker 1 (21:51):
No? No? I was the first class at brag Oh really,
I was the first class where it was all at
brag You had to pass the National Register Paramedic course,
so sock them became this beast of a medical course.

Speaker 5 (22:07):
To get through and so it was very challenging.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
But if if something's done right, you know, being challenged
is a good thing. You know, a certain type of
stress is a good thing, you know, in the right environment.
So great instructors, very professional operation. Everything that was done

(22:37):
there was you know, respectable, honorable.

Speaker 5 (22:39):
There was you know, there was a there was a.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
High standard, you know, the opposite of anything that Tim
Kennedy has been putting out there. You know, the Ranger Regiment,
the Green Brace community, you know those are really special places.

Speaker 4 (22:57):
Yeah, so you fin the Q course like top Medic
right out of the eighteen delta course.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yeah, well it was there was eighteen teams. So out
of my class, I think there were no fourteen teams,
fourteen or eighteen teams, but it was Seals Green Berets.
That was back when the PJS still went there, the
Independent corpsman. So everybody, everybody went to the short course

(23:27):
of long course there and so out of my class,
everybody was divided up and it was a twenty six
mile land that course, and every couple of miles or
kilometers there would be a medical scenario, you know, and
it was a pass or fail, and the fail added

(23:49):
fifteen minutes to your time of pass. You just continue
to move, and it's kind of like the Tordy France.
The first group to finish with the lowest time or
the shortest amount of time wins. And so I was
with the team that that won. It was four. It
was four rangers. So it was two guys from third

(24:11):
Ranger Brittalion, myself, and then a stud of a ranger.
I can't think of his name right now, but he
was in Best Ranger competition. He placed in Best Ranger competition,
but I can't think of his name right now. But yeah,
so we won the Best medic competition. I don't think
they did it. I don't think they do it anymore logistically.

(24:34):
I think it was real hard, and I think a
lot of students didn't like it, Like the Seals did
not like it. I'm pretty sure the pj's didn't like
it either. The pj's just had their own way of
doing things, so I think that's why they ultimately came
up with their own eighteen Delta course.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
And so out of the eighteen delta course, what group
did you get assigned to?

Speaker 1 (24:56):
Third Group? Okay, I wanted I wanted Seventh Group because
it was peacetime as Seventh Group was the only guys
going down range with magazines and their guns. Yea, and
so that's that's what I wanted to do. You know,
I didn't mind j Setz or anything like that, but

(25:19):
I wanted to go shoot back people.

Speaker 4 (25:21):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
I wanted to be that guy.

Speaker 4 (25:23):
Sure. And the Seventh Group was getting on you know.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (25:29):
With their second families down in Panama.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, yeah, they could do They could do a Netflix
series about Seventh Group during that time, last about ten years.

Speaker 4 (25:42):
So you go to Third Group focused on Africa. How
was that for you?

Speaker 1 (25:53):
It was a disappointment. So, you know, I can be
a purist sometimes, or I can be you know, on
my high horse sometimes, or you know, I went through
a lot to get there, and I had.

Speaker 5 (26:06):
A high expectation.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
And so when I went to Swaziland, Africa for the
first time, I wanted to cure everybody. And you know,
if there was somebody in the village that was having
complications with a delivery or whatever, it was, and that
was the scenario that happened that I'm that I'm was
first upset about. You know, I want to be able

(26:29):
to go and and and at least help and you know,
not being able to do that, you know, having.

Speaker 5 (26:35):
Those kind of restrictions.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
You know. Uh, I just didn't understand it. It didn't
make sense to me to have the type of restrictions.
Just like in wartime sometimes the roe is geared towards
favoring the enemy. And I don't care about the political
or or what the narrative is. You know, the guys

(27:01):
on the ground know and what's right and what's wrong,
and so uh yeah, anyways, I get getting inside.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
It's interesting because you're not even complaining that you guys
would get a creative MRIs while tenth group was eating
foy grid and brought worst. You're you were just more
taken back by the fact you couldn't do your job.

Speaker 7 (27:28):
Oh yes, yes, no, I I thought the ship with
the sugar was part of the beauty of being you know,
an elite operator, was you know, being able to take
the ship with the sugar.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
I was fine with that, not you know, being lied
to or being manipulated or ultimately being bullied, uh, which
would happen sometimes in your career. Yeah. I I the
the the part of me that wanted to be successful

(28:03):
in the military couldn't control the part of.

Speaker 5 (28:06):
Me that you know, wasn't going to put up with that, right,
And so you know.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
I'm not the best example. If you read my book,
I give some good advice, but I'm not the best
example of how to be a great soldier.

Speaker 3 (28:19):
Well, advice comes from learning, and you've done a lot
of learning.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Right, Yeah?

Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yeah, So what was it like? So what timeframe? What
years are we talking about right now?

Speaker 1 (28:32):
For which job?

Speaker 4 (28:34):
For SF? While you're in third group?

Speaker 1 (28:38):
Okay? Okay, So I joined twentieth group in ninety one
or ninety two. I went on active duty in ninety five.
I went to the Q course in ninety six, and
so I got medically retired in two thousand.

Speaker 4 (29:00):
Okay, So so about four years bouncing around Africa?

Speaker 3 (29:05):
What what was the what was your mission? What was
the situation like? Because you talk about these restrictions, what
were the concerns at the time?

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Well, we had before you know, how s F guys are.
I mean, we went over there and everybody around us,
you know, was in love with us. You know, we
we went over there won the parts and minds of people,
and not through just pure manipulation, but through just actually caring,
you know. I mean, you know, if you're gonna be

(29:35):
a great arreat, you should actually care about helping people
because that's part of what your you know, job is,
and so it's not just killing people. It might be
healing them and just helping them might be the mission.
So well, what specific I forgot that.

Speaker 3 (29:52):
That's okay, I'm just saying for for you, because we
don't hear about the GYT as much anymore, or we
don't hear about the time prior to the GE as
much anymore. So in Africa at the time, you know,
isis wasn't a concern like what what was your mission
in Africa?

Speaker 5 (30:08):
Training?

Speaker 1 (30:09):
Training? Training? Yeah, training, you know, you you might do
medical support, but it was usually a training mission or
adjacet mission, and there was just a lot of downtime
for the medics to do medical stuff, you know. I
mean I had one person in Swaziland bring their grandfather

(30:35):
in a wheelbarrow like eight miles through the mountains in
Swaziland to be seen, and you know, he had polio,
so there was nothing I could do. But that was
the environment I was in. And I wanted to be
a doctor, you know. That was a phase of my
life where I wouldn't it wasn't important to run around

(30:58):
to shoot people like. I wanted to heal people like.
I really loved being a medic. And usually when I
love something, i'm really good at it. So and then
I kind of lost my love for it over time,
and and and just moved on.

Speaker 4 (31:18):
Was that burnout or was it due to bureaucracy just
the army doing the army thing?

Speaker 1 (31:25):
It mainly the medical field with the paperwork. That would
be the biggest thing. Is the paperwork in the medical
field has gotten so bad. If paperwork or school worker
sitting still and writing and thinking like that and behaving
like that, if that stresses you out because you're too
much like a chimpanzee like I am, then then it

(31:49):
wasn't attractive anymore. If I could go treat people and
not have to do the paperwork, I would stand on
my feet and treat people from daylight till dark. So
that was that was the main thing. The other thing
was to trauma is over time, when I became a
nine to one one paramedic. I didn't realize how traumatized

(32:15):
I was. I didn't realize that I was walking around
with an internal volume that was so high that I
was constantly stressed out. My blood pressure was constantly up.
And uh so I started seeing you know, murder suicide

(32:38):
stuff and veterans coming home and you know, dying, and
and uh I just didn't want to see anymore. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:49):
Now, are you talking about when you were after you
were out or when you were right?

Speaker 1 (32:54):
Right? This was? This was after Ramadi. So this was
after killing a bunch of folks, surviving a bunch of attacks,
feeling like Superman, coming back home and realizing that you're nothing.

Speaker 5 (33:07):
Okay, yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
You got medically just charged in two thousand. Now I
don't want to go the story of your medical condition.

Speaker 6 (33:22):
Is.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
People have to buy the book, people have to read
it like it is. I had to take it in
chunks because I could feel everything.

Speaker 4 (33:37):
It's amazing, it's amazing.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
Do you want me to give a sample?

Speaker 3 (33:42):
You can give a teaser, but I really no, No,
that's right, that's right.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
We talked about that earlier. Yeah. Yeah, well we'll wait.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
Yeah, okay, Oh, it's just it's just what you're going
to talk about in the.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Case you did, but if you wanted to just just
mention it. I was medically retired from the Army because
they did a surgery on my bladder and went sideways
and they had to go back in and do an
emergency surgery right after the initial surgery, and when they
did that, they ripped open the head of my penis,

(34:19):
and multiple surgeries came after that.

Speaker 5 (34:21):
I was discharged with incontinence.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
And you know, I was still in my thirties and
a Green beret and when all that was going on,
so and it led to a divorce with my wife
and kids, and so it was the worst, most traumatic
time in my life. And it's a story that you know,
I've never heard anybody else tell from that aspect of

(34:47):
having trauma to your penis. Short of that guy that
had his penis cut off by his wife or girlfriend.
Find me down the road and throughout the window. He's
got me beat. But he's the only guy I know
of that's got me beat.

Speaker 4 (35:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:01):
Well, I mean, I guess he made a recovery because
didn't he.

Speaker 4 (35:04):
Go on to do porn or a porn after that?

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Well, you know, with today's technology, they could put a
big old black penis on you, you know, and you
could being porn and and uh and have a and
and and have a make a lot of money doing that.
I'm sure.

Speaker 4 (35:22):
Everybody's got a path. So yeah, and and and.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
What you just described is the perfect kind of teaser
for it. But you go into some some detail that,
like I said, I could feel it.

Speaker 4 (35:43):
But anyway, so.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
You leave, Uh, you leave in two thousand and two
thousand and one.

Speaker 4 (35:51):
What did you do between between that and nine to eleven?

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Oh? Okay, So I got medically retired in May of
two thousand. The next day I went to work as
a paramedic in Rutherford County in Middle Tennessee in Murphysboro, Tennessee.

Speaker 5 (36:12):
The next day I went to work.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
I was of the generation in the mindset that if
you didn't have a job, you were worthless, you were
sorry as hell.

Speaker 4 (36:23):
So, you know, when.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
I realized I was getting put out of the military,
the only certification I had was being a nationally registered paramedic.
Everything else that I had done in the military wouldn't
get me a job doing anything. So you know, you
can't even get a job as a call anymore being
a Green Beret or a arranger unless you have a

(36:47):
college degree. So I just did I just I just
went with it. And so the next day I was
working as a nine to one one paramedic and I
did that for the next two years until ultimately I
went to become a Federal Air Marshal because of nine
to eleven.

Speaker 4 (37:05):
And I do I want to say that we are
skipping a lot of personal stories and anecdotes and everything,
because while you were a paramedic at the station, was
the I believe second ass kicking you delivered that is
detailed in this book.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
In that year.

Speaker 4 (37:26):
Yeah, I used to in that year.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Yeah, I think most people from our community either were
like myself, or you know, their best friend was like
me or something. You know, we're not too far away
from being that or whatever. And so, you know, I
grew up fighting. I didn't like being bullied, and so

(37:51):
I had just got put out of the military. The
trauma from that surgery, the trauma from my divorce. My
best friend was having an affair with my wife. I
let that go and the divorce was going fine, and
as soon as I started seeing this hot female cop,

(38:13):
my ex wife started causing drama, and my ex best
friend started causing drama. So it's very detailed in the book,
but I just told him, I said, well, let's just
meet and settle it. So my best friend in my
life had become my nemesis and I put him in
the er. And so maybe six months after that, my

(38:34):
hand had healed up pretty good. You know, being a paramedic,
short of being an air marshal, being a paramedic was
the best job I had for getting dates that would
be appropriate web putting it. And so I was getting
all the dates I wanted. And this one nurse that

(38:56):
I had contacted, one of the other paramedics was seeing
her and so he had a problem with it, and
she was cool.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
I was like, I was like, I'm sorry, No, you
said you contacted her, but she gave you her number
and told you told you she was single.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
That's right, Yeah, that's an important part. Yeah. So so anyways,
she was just one of three or four nurses or
paramedics I was messing around with at the time, and
he was engaged to somebody and seeing people on the side,
and so when that conflicted, you know, he called me

(39:41):
up and addressed it and I actually liked the guy
like I liked him, and he was just being a
real jerk to me, just talking down to me. And
so within a minute or so, I just got mad.
And once, once, once a fighting age mail crosses me,
all I want to do is kill them, right, So

(40:02):
I just become a chimpanzee, a sociopath, and so all
I wanted to do was after that, So there was
no rush. I was like, Okay, all right, that's how
you feel about it. That's your woman. I need to
stay away. I get it. So about two weeks later,
I bump into him as shift changeover and I tell
him to meet me out in the garage and we

(40:24):
sorted it out.

Speaker 6 (40:26):
Hey guys, our show is sponsored by ghost Bed. Check
them out. Please to make awesome mattresses, awesome pillows, awesome betting.
Ghostpread provides high quality, is super comfortable, award winning mattresses
crafted in the US and Canada. Did you know that
sixty percent of US adults report being too hot when
they're trying to sleep.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
That's me.

Speaker 6 (40:46):
I'm a sweaty little baby. That's why we designed all
of our products with cooling features so you stay comfortable
in asleep All night long Pair any of our mattresses
with ghost Beds Award winning adjustable base and get the
ultimate sleep experience. Ghostpared rules the family owned business sixty
thousand plus five star reviews. They have sleep experts on

(41:07):
staff with twenty plus years of experience. If you have
any questions, you can hit them up and ask them,
you know, maybe what kind of mattresses work for you.
Twenty plus year warranty that's two times the industry standard.
Free shipping and returns on mattresses. Most of the products
ship out within twenty four hours. They have in house
customer support and sleep actress sleep experts Chilling in Plantation, Florida.

(41:31):
It rules it's the best. They give you one hundred
and one night's risk free to make sure that these
beds are right for you. If you don't like it
after one hundred and one nights, you could send it
back full refund. When you purchase a ghost Bed mattress,
you're comfort guaranteed. I'm reading it right now, and it's
capital letters guaranteed. Okay, they do the right thing and

(41:52):
they're a great company. If you're not sure which ghost
bed's right for you, like I said before, you could
take you could take their Mattress quiz online, or you
can give a call to one of their sleep experts
and they'll help you with exactly what you possibly could need,
what works for you, and what doesn't. And the best
news about this is Teamhouse listeners and viewers you get
an extra ten percent off sitewide for a limited time.

(42:15):
You just go to ghosped dot com slash house and
use the code house at checkout one more time. That's
go sped dot com slash house with the code house
ho u se at checkout for an extra ten percent
off site wide. I want to thank Goho Sped for
their continued support. I want to thank all the fans

(42:35):
that listen and watch for their continued support. Without you, guys,
we are nothing. So thank you for supporting the show,
and thank you for supporting the companies that help support
the show. Go sped dot com slash house for ten
percent off, made in the US, made in Canada. Shout
out to our brothers in Canada. They rock. Check them out.
I love ghost Sped. Thanks guys.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
Hey guys, I want to tell all of you today
about a new newsletter that launching that encompasses both the
Teamhouse podcast the eyes On podcast and The high Side
News outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter
is gonna be once a week. It's gonna come into
your inbox and you're gonna get the most current podcasts

(43:17):
on eyes On and the Teamhouse and whatever's topical or
current on the high Side. So it's another way for
us to get the information out to you as social
media algorithms are pretty iffy and you never really know
what you're gonna get. So this is a once a
week email. It'll slide into your inbox and it will
have you know the greatest hits of that week.

Speaker 4 (43:37):
It's really good man. Checking it out.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
The website for it is Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot com,
slash Join, Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot com slash join.
You go there and you enter into your email list,
or you enter your email into the little thing on
the website and you're good to go, and that'll be it.
So we really appreciate your support and I hope you'll

(44:02):
consider signing up.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
The link.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
The link will also be down the description if you're
looking for it there.

Speaker 3 (44:08):
And that's Teamhouse Podcast, dot Kit, k I t Kilo India,
Tango dot com. Backslash joint.

Speaker 4 (44:21):
Yeah, yes, so from there, from being a paramedic.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
And that's it's in the book. Guys, get the book.
It's entertaining it sol you'll love it. So nine to
eleven happens. There's that big surge for air marshals. And
initially before they started lowering the standards, they had incredibly
high standards, right and in a lot of former soft

(44:49):
guys were going into it. It was kind of a
network and uh, and so you went through all this training.
They have very precise shooting standards. Because you're an air marshal,
apparently you also meet a lot of women on the job.

(45:09):
And what happened with you is what happened with a
lot of the guys, which I think is one of
the reasons why the standards lowered. Was triple cannot be
starts up. It's kind of word of mouth. It's all
like tier one, Tier two, tier three. Guy, it's all
soft guys initially, that's that's all they're taking. The pay

(45:31):
is what six hundred twelve a day? Like the pay
is outrageous, right.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So you're you're you're exactly right.

Speaker 5 (45:44):
I mean, the two things that I think.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
Removed all the good people are most of the good
people from that program or pushed them out. Was when
the Secret Service took over and kind of changed the
way they ran that department. A lot of people were like,
I'm not you know, we're not doing this. This isn't

(46:10):
what we signed on for. And I was part of
that group, and so there were so many opportunities, you know,
because they recruited so high for the Air Marshal program.

Speaker 5 (46:25):
The standards were so high that a.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
Lot of people that became Air marshals qualified in that
initial push in two thousand and three, two thousand and
four to Iraq in Afghanistan is contrast, which you know,
met that standard. So it was an easy.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
Transition because Triple Canopy people may not know this, but
Triple Canopy was known as the the soft like Triple
Canopy was the elite security company and they had a
very very rigorous qualification course.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Yeah, well, I don't you know. This is the part
of my career that I think, you know, is more
interesting to me. So but I was there from the
beginning and I know all the key players very well.
And my last deployment with Triple Canopy I started in

(47:25):
February of four and my last deployment with Triple Canopy
was in twenty twelve. So I saw the beginning and
the ending of Triple Canopy and the company that I
started with. There's nothing I've done in my lifetime that
compares to that organization. It was amazing, I mean absolutely amazing.

(47:49):
I was a very average guy that was very grateful
to be there twelve. You know, in twenty twelve when
I went back, it was the most budget, bullshit company
I had ever deployed with. Yeah, you know, so it

(48:12):
was a shell of itself. And so what happens is
is they what Triple Canopy did in the beginning was
they said, we're going to have the best men, the
best pay, and the best equipment. And for the first
seven months they did that. The next seven months they
lost sight of that. Fourteen months into it, they started

(48:36):
changing and each year over time, they got further and
further away from what they initially started as. And because
in the beginning they cared about the guys on the ground.
When you have a corporate office that's full of operators
that knows that they're there to support the guys with

(49:01):
body armor on, it's different than because I worked in
corporate with the ODT later on, the corporate security culture
thinks to corporation is the important part, and the guys
on the ground need to listen up and do what
they're told. And it's the complete opposite. If you want
to operate the right way, if you want it to

(49:22):
be non toxic, healthy, if you want everything to be
on the right frequency, Triple Canopy did it right for
the first seven months. And now I'm not saying Blackwater
because I worked several years with Blackwater, and Blackwater and
Eric Prince was a great company to work for, but
they still weren't Triple Canopy in the beginning. Nobody did

(49:44):
what they did right well.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
And you know when you just think of I guess
the economics of the You know, you have all the
g watch starts, and you have all these soft guys
that are within three to five years of getting out
right maybe you know, staying up on their skills whatever else. Well,

(50:07):
that pool dries up eventually. And not only that, but
where Triple Canopy can pay guys eight nine hundred dollars
a day because they're they're giving like the cream of
the crop there pitches, well, it's allsoft like these guys,

(50:27):
they're all professionals, you know, they all know what they're doing.
But then you have companies like cust Battles and these
other like shit, I haven't heard that name a long time, right,
you have these other shit show.

Speaker 4 (50:40):
First off, you need more and more people and you
need the faster.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
The second thing is you have all these other companies
coming in and going, well, you know, they say they're
going to do it for you know, twenty two hundred
dollars per manday. We can do it for you know,
twelve hundred per manday, and we can get those same
guys they can't, But nobody ever checks that afterwards.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
You're absolutely correct. It becomes what they call lean management
style from a corporate aspect, it's just about the margins
of profit and it literally becomes just a business model.

Speaker 4 (51:16):
Yeah, and like.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
EODT, like whoever thought it would be a good idea
to take South Africans, white South Africans and put them
in charge of black Ugandans. But that's what they did,
and other companies followed. Because you were once paying an expat,

(51:37):
whether it be you know somebody from America or you
know a qualified person from Britain or wherever else. But
you were once paying that person. Let's just say you're
paying them five hundred dollars at the low end to
do the security at the front gate or whatever. You know,

(51:58):
shit worked that nobody to do. That needs to be done,
and it needs to be done by somebody that cares
just enough to stay awake and do their job. And
so when you can pay you Gandan's five or six
hundred dollars a month to do the same job, and
they'll actually take more pride in it because it's so

(52:20):
much more money than they can make. It's an opportunity
worth leaving you Ganda to be away from their family,
to be in harm's way. It makes that big of
a difference. But yet they're being managed by South Africans.
So I was actually involved in I don't know if
you remember, but in a Baghdad there was a South

(52:43):
African that was killed by a Ugandan and then the
Ugandan killed himself at one of the bases. And I
did the investigation on that, and it was it was,
it was that whole concept of just racism. You know,
they just harass those guys so much, and all those

(53:03):
guys wanted to do was pull security, make money for
the family, go home right right, and and so you
know they would do things like have them up all
night running from one guard shack to the other. Five
minutes later, you know, run again. So they would just
run them okay, so they couldn't fall asleep. You know,

(53:27):
just just real brutal kind of things. So again I
can get off track on that and get into a
whole different chapter of life. So it was pretty awful.
After two thousand and four, two thousand and five, In
two thousand and six, I went to work for the

(53:48):
for Uses with the ATA program. And that was other
than being part of Team Miami and Ramadi Iraq with
Triple Canopy, you know, an original member of that team.
This was the next best job I'd ever had, working
with that anti terrorist Assistance program. It was wonderful. But

(54:09):
after that I started bouncing to sock. I went to
EOD Corporate. I went to Blackwater. You know, I've been
with Tiger Swan with Olive Group, and I may be
missing a few unfortunately I can't remember all of them.

(54:30):
But but but most of it was ship, most of
them ship Blackwater. When Eric was there, they had it right,
They did some cowboys stuff. But I'm not you know,
I'm not gonna judge how savage people are gonna be
in a scenario because I know the scenarios I had
to be in. The what I criticized people and what

(54:53):
I can't stand and what I'm against is people lying
about what they did or didn't do, especially to profit
from it. So I don't have a problem people that
trained all their life to go kill folks and they
go over there to kill folks, because that's what we
sent people to do, and we should support that a

(55:14):
little bit more than what we did.

Speaker 3 (55:17):
Let's talk about your time, because you know, you talk
about being in combat, and for anybody who thinks that
you weren't in combat because you were working for Triple Canopy,
let's talk about your time. And you know t Miami
Ramadi at that time. How many how many ambushes or

(55:38):
contacts would you say you were in during that like
three or four year period.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
Okay, So in two thousand and four in Ramadi and
not just in Remady, but we were the team assigned
to Ramady. We were attacked over twenty times. And when
I say attacked, it involved an RPG a machine gun.
We were attacked. It wasn't like somebody walked across the
street with AK forty seven and looked at us hard.

(56:05):
You know, we were attacked over twenty times, and uh
so our principal was attacked even before the team got
there in Ramadi and the limo was his limo was
down hard and there was a DC reporter in the

(56:26):
vehicle as well. And it was after that event, I
think that was January or February oh four. And I
don't know that a news reporter after that ever went
to Ramadi. They would go to Fallujah, they would go
to Camp Fallujah, but I don't know of one single
reporter or anything that after Remadi. I mean, nobody wanted

(56:48):
to go to Ramadi.

Speaker 4 (56:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
Now, in the book, you tell a funny story about uh,
your principal, the ambassador ray Would. It needed to be
a lot of the meetings that Mattis needed to be
at and that he was. I don't want to say
he was your canary in the coal mine because basically,
you guys wanted to get out. Hey, you wanted to

(57:12):
get out ahead of.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
Him, right, Yeah, it's a funny story. Now, but you know,
when when you start realizing that every time you go
to a meeting that jennerifal General Madis is at, he
gets attacked going or coming back from every time. And

(57:38):
so when you realize that pattern, you know, operating at
tier one level, you have the freedom of going, we're
gonna change tactics. You know, when you're in the conventional
military and they say the convoy speed is going to
be forty five to fifty miles an hour, or you
can't come in and say, hey, dude, we're doing one
hundred and twenty today. We're gonna have a kilometer in

(57:58):
between us. You make contact, I'll be rolling up far
enough back where I can dismount take the attention off,
you know what I mean. We started doing things different
and it worked.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
But with Mattis, you guys started like leap making sure
that you always left before his convoy did.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
That's right, that was our That was our primary launch
indicator was we had to leave Camp Ramady, we had
to leave the government center, we had to leave Camp Fallujah,
wherever it was we were meeting. We had to leave

(58:37):
before General Mattis because he stopped and fought. So in protection,
you're taught to run right, to go against your instinct. Well,
for some people it's their instinct to run. But you know,
when you're attacked, you're supposed to fight back. You're supposed
to be trained to that level that your instinct is

(58:59):
to fight back. And uh, General Maddis, I don't know
if he'll ever write a book, but you know, tell
me another two star general that you know of that
every time he got attacked, which was regularly, they stopped
in fault and he was right there with his marines

(59:20):
doing that. So and and I've got a story of
General Kelly also. You know, we took him down the
hill and he told a story about uh, you know,
the first guy he killed over there from his hum
V And so you know, these are general officers that
are getting out there with their men and participating in
the war. And so I have nothing but respect for

(59:42):
General Maddie. But yes, we got attacked a lot, but
he got attacked every time he left the base.

Speaker 5 (59:50):
As far as I can remember.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
What was that because you know you had been arranging battalion,
you had been an sf all sort of in a
peace time. I'm military. What was that first contact like
for you?

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
The first contact I was in, it went great at first,
so when when we got ambushed, we had the principal
with us. I was in the follow vehicle and I
saw four gunmen out my out my window and so

(01:00:34):
and we were going pretty slow, and so the call came,
you know, RPG gunners, reverse out, reverse out, and so
one guy the videos online of this attack, but it's
from one vehicle, so you're only hearing him on the
radio in his vehicle because it's being recorded by the camera.

(01:00:59):
There's five know, there's five vehicles totaling five different versions
of what's going on. But unlike with Tim Kennedy, everybody
basically tells the same story just from their perspective.

Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
How many how many grenades did you guys throw that day?
I want to know how many grenades you threw personally?

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
Well, I had there was only three or four, No,
just kidding. I had one grenade and it was strapped
you know, to my to my kit and uh, but
I never used that in battle.

Speaker 4 (01:01:36):
Amateur hour, amateur but I was.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
I was literally taking the slack. Now, we're an armored vehicle,
so if you're going to crack the door, you better
know what you're doing because you don't want to unbutton
your armor. Unless you really need to, and you thought
that through. And I had them dead to right and

(01:02:01):
we were starting to turn around, and I literally have
the perfect scenario if you're right handed cracking the back
door on the left side, looking back at three gunmen
on a porch and one in the yard, and they're
both you know, kind of at the they're all at
the low ready, So I kind of had them deads right.

(01:02:22):
So I'm taking the slack out and then he hit
the gas and that slung me And so now I'm
sliding across the seat and the BMW in the leather
seat to get to the other windows so I can
keep an eye to the so I can still see
them because now we're turning around, and that's when the
RPG hit the road and shattered my window and flattened

(01:02:45):
all the tires.

Speaker 4 (01:02:47):
Yeah, and so I mean, I assume you guys had
run flats.

Speaker 3 (01:02:51):
You didn't need to do a recovery, You didn't have
to do a recovery or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
You could like that we would have been dead. Yeah, Dave,
that out of all the scenarios I've been in, and
from a protection standpoint, I've been in a lot of
scenarios from a protection standpoint of how to play these
things out. And if if any of our vehicles that
day would have stopped rolling, everybody in that vehicle would

(01:03:18):
have been in trouble. Yeah, it would have been in trouble.
They had us on both sides of the road. It
was a it was a major ambush that they were
setting up, and uh, it just looked like we caught
them off guard. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
So you know you talk about internal volume, and you
had mentioned it a couple of times like before this, uh,
before this, since an interview, before this time of your life.
Can you tell us what the the the internal volume
meant for you?

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
Yeah, So if you, I guess the best way to
explain this if you you go sit in a room
where it's quiet, turn your phone off, turn the TV.
It's just quiet. There's nothing that's sit there for fifteen minutes. Now,
if that seems like torture, your internal volume is probably high.

(01:04:16):
You're probably gritting your teeth. You're probably well, what animal
in nature can't just sit and be calm and relax
and the quiet? So if you can't do that, which
I couldn't, that's an example of you know, you're so
We've got all these lies and excuses and these biases

(01:04:38):
we tell ourselves to justify our behavior. Our self taught
can justify almost anything we wanted to. And so what
I realized was my internal volume. It wasn't whether I
had a new car, It wasn't whether I had a

(01:05:00):
great job, It wasn't whether I had the beautiful, hottest girlfriend.
What made me happy was how I felt on the
inside that internal volume, and when it was low, those
were the best times in my life. And it was like, so,
how do you have a low internal It's like, oh,
you have to be mindful. What does that mean? Well,

(01:05:23):
so then you start down that road. And so I
took the path of mindfulness by walking the Appalachian Trail.
And that was when I woke up to what to
actually recognize that what's going on inside me is my life.
What everybody else thinks and what everything else is going

(01:05:45):
on is something totally different. This experience. Whether you believe
in the Bible, whether you believe were a computer program
like the Matrix, no matter what you believe, you know,
at the end of the day, how you feel about
this experience. You know how you feel in your container.

(01:06:06):
You know we all look a little different, some fat,
some tall, some gifted, some not. Whatever. It's a temporary
container made up of bacteria, fungus, all kinds of stuff
from the universe that we're in right now, traveling through
this experience, and how you feel is what mattered. And
I discovered that on the Appalachian Trail, walking that spending

(01:06:29):
that four months by myself, you know, I found.

Speaker 5 (01:06:35):
Organically how to just be present.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
Like I got to a point, Dave where I couldn't
think about the future or the past. Now, imagine going
to sleep and not thinking about what happened today. Imagine
going to sleep and not thinking about your childhood. Imagine
waking up and not worried about work, Like I got
to a state of nirvana naturally by just being in

(01:07:01):
the woods. And if you look historically at mythology and
all teachings from the East, people go out into the forest,
They go out into the woods, they go out into
the desert, they go and spend time alone as something happens.
And that's something that happens is real, and it's a detox.

(01:07:23):
So your ego is toxic, and the bigger your ego,
the more toxic. And so I want to mention this.
What I love about your podcast, Dave, you and Jack
is you guys are the real deal. But you guys
don't have an ego. Like your platform, your mannerisms, your attitudes,

(01:07:45):
the way you guys do things. It isn't from this
egotistical place. And I dig that. So killing the ego
is what my life is about now. And the hard
thing with killing your ego is it's the most painful
thing you'll ever do, because to kill your ego means

(01:08:07):
I'm not a green brain anymore. I'm not a ranger.
I'm not some badass fistfighter from back in the day.
You know, I'm just an organism in this universe.

Speaker 5 (01:08:21):
And how I feel is what matters.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
How I the energy I put out, the frequency I operate,
how I interact with animals and humans, all that matters.
And so it's a it's a paradigm shift. It's a
complete awakening where you just search for truth. There's no
more manipulation, there's no more room for lives like it's

(01:08:46):
the truth and and that's all you want.

Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
So it's it's very interesting, and I you know, look
forward to when we like get into sort of that
that journey of self discovery. But one of the reasons
I asked you about internal volume is because I think that,
you know, there are a lot of like ideas or
terms around it, but I like the idea of internal volume.

Speaker 4 (01:09:09):
And I think that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:12):
For a lot of guys in the soft community, or
a lot of people.

Speaker 4 (01:09:16):
Not guys but girls, a lot of people who.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
Join the military or high performing types of jobs, that
they have that drive and they have that internal volume,
and they're always kind of like seeking right. And I
think one of the things that many of us loved
about war was that finally the external volume massed the
internal volume, and finally, right, finally, we're finally the world

(01:09:43):
has come up to our standard and it's not screaming
anymore because now there's equilibrium. And I think that so
many people when they finally find that and then they
lose it, it's worse than not having found it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
Yeah, I like that. I think I'm glad you kept
talking about this because what I failed to connect with
the militaries we're familiar with inflate and deflate. You got
to be able to inflate deflate be a tier two god,
especially at operate a tier one level. You got to
be able to inflate and deflate well. And so what
does that mean? So internal volume, think about a volume

(01:10:24):
nog set on zero or set on ten. When you
set that on zero, just peace, just calm, just stillness.
And that's what we really want. We all, deep down
want to feel safe. We want to feel value, you know, worth.
We want to be calm, you know, like you feel

(01:10:46):
when you're romantic or having a nice meal. That parasympathetic
part of your brain. We don't want to live in
that chimpanzee part of our brain, that sympathetic response, that
fight flight, you know, freeze, fawn, you know high, you know,
we don't want to live in that. So learning how
to inflate and deflate properly is something we learn well.

(01:11:08):
And since they promote a monstrous side of us. So
when you have that rage, that internal volume, that unpacked
trauma from your childhood, you know, all this stuff that
you're suppressing so that you can be successful, because if

(01:11:28):
you couldn't suppress that, you be in prison, right right.
The guys that can suppress it become cops and military guys.
The guys that can't suppress it become criminals, you know.
And so Yeah. When you think about that knowledge, you know,
it's like, Okay, I'm at it. I'm flying into the objective.

(01:11:49):
If I'm mindful, I'm at a two. I'm focused on
my breathing. I know my job.

Speaker 5 (01:11:54):
When I step off, I'm going left.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
I need to make sure I don't do this next
phase we're gonna be here. I need to make sure
I don't do that. You know, you're calm, you're thinking
it in, you're ready, You're ready for anything. You're ready
to flow and go right. But when that guy comes
through that door, you know you need to go from
A two to eight. You don't need to go to ten.

(01:12:16):
You don't need to freak out, but you need to
get on it right, and then you need to come
back down, go back to your breathe and go. So
that's a mindful approach to being an operator in combat.
And so I think when you get the green light
to be monstrous, that monster and everybody has it. And
Carl Jung, you know, talks a great deal about the shadow,

(01:12:40):
you know, the monstrous. Jordan Peterson talks about you know,
the monster or like us monster killers. You know, when
you get the green light to do what you've been
trained to do and the freedom to do it. It's intoxic, Katie.

(01:13:02):
It was the highlight of my life. That there's absurbing
in Ramadi with triple canopy was the highlight of my life.
If I would have died there or died when I've
got home, I would have lived a complete life. So
everything I'm doing now is is extra is a cherry
on top. Okay, like you said, once you come home

(01:13:24):
and you don't have that, it's tough. And it was.

Speaker 5 (01:13:26):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:13:26):
You know, I spent a couple of years homeless. You know,
it hasn't been a hugs and singing sweet songs. You know,
it's been tough.

Speaker 4 (01:13:37):
Yeah, So let's talk about that then, because you know,
you you spend that time in Ramadi, and then then
you do more of the chase set, right, you do
more of the training, the supervision, the corporate stuff, and
you know, and I think one of the things that
you said hits on.

Speaker 3 (01:14:00):
Why a lot of veterans have a hard time dealing
with the trauma and not just trauma from war, but
trauma that's been carried forward and then just sort of
like condensed in war, is that.

Speaker 4 (01:14:13):
It was the highlight of your life. And it's hard
to find anything.

Speaker 3 (01:14:16):
And so, you know, guys and girls come home from
that experience and it was the highlight. And now they
have to deal with paying bills, they have to deal
with you know, taxes, they have to deal with like
social etiquette, all this other stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:14:33):
And I think.

Speaker 3 (01:14:35):
A lot of them, for a lot of you know,
like it all gets lumped under post traumatic stress. But
I think for a lot of the misych, I think
for a lot of it'sch I did what I wanted
to do, Like what do I got now another thirty
forty years?

Speaker 4 (01:14:47):
Like what am I going to do for thirty or
forty years?

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
Right, that's a great point. I think it's all under
the umbrella of PTSD. I agree with you when people
talk about it, but like you're saying, there's there's lots
of subcategories that fall under that. And yeah, I can
tell you from experience that part of the reason why

(01:15:12):
veterans are blowing their brains out in the VA park
a lot is because the way they're treated at the VA.
I can tell you that when you come home from
killing folks and almost being killed several times, and everybody
on your team makes it home and you're so grateful
that that's your story that everybody on your team came

(01:15:34):
home after all that, and you struggle to get medical
care and dental care and and and end up not
getting those things. But then illegal people, like it's being
promoted on television like half of America or a third

(01:15:59):
of America's supports illegal people in this country getting full
medical benefits and combat veterans aren't. You know, if you're
not one hundred percent disabled, you don't have dental care
in the VA. And so unless you have a job
that provides dental care after that, which you know, there's

(01:16:24):
problems there. So from a mental health standpoint, when you're
looking at okay, I'm getting older and getting old is
not for sistis like it's tough getting old and not
being able to do what you used to do when
your mental you know, your mental health is challenged as
you get old, and so it's a lot tougher. When

(01:16:44):
you turn on the news and you see Americans fighting
politicians fighting for illegals and you've been left out there
basically to rot. It makes you question everything.

Speaker 3 (01:17:00):
So during this this high part of the g R,
not just you know, not just your time in Ramadi.
But when security is still like a very thriving industry, right,
there's still they're still throwing money at it. The pay
for the individuals have gone down, uh the equipment's gone down,
but the contracts are bigger, right, And you're you know,

(01:17:24):
finding your way through this.

Speaker 4 (01:17:27):
What are you thinking?

Speaker 3 (01:17:28):
Are you looking for a career, are you looking for satisfaction?

Speaker 4 (01:17:32):
Are you looking for a rush?

Speaker 1 (01:17:34):
Like?

Speaker 4 (01:17:34):
What are you doing?

Speaker 1 (01:17:36):
Well? When when I was with Triple canop you know four,
I thought I was going to spend the rest of
my life with them, and then just you know, Blackwater
won the contract and they offered me like three hundred
dollars less to do the same job in Ramadi, and
I was like, no, this was a new team. I
knew how dangerous. I'm like, oh, I'm good and so

(01:17:58):
I you know, that's the only reason why I turned it.
And uh so when I left there and went to
useless ATA program, I was like, I'm going to spend
the rest of my life doing this job. I mean
I loved it and it was sustainable, like, it wasn't dangerous.
It had everything that that you would want, except you know,

(01:18:24):
not being shot at or blown up like I was
a remodie, which I enjoyed, but long term, you.

Speaker 4 (01:18:31):
Know, that's not sure.

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
You don't want to keep doing that long term. So
it was a great you know, I did what I
wanted to do. I proved to myself that I was
a man. You know, that's what we want to do, right,
We want to prove we want to be somebody. You know,
at the end of the day, if you really slow
down and look in the mirror, deepen up, there's still
a little boy in there, you know. And so if

(01:18:55):
if if you don't bring that little boy with you
along the way, he's still in there somewhere, curled up
and uh, you know, that traumatized little boy. So you know,
all that came to fruition. Everything culminated in my life.
And so it was like being a professional football player

(01:19:16):
and winning the Super Bowl, Like I know what it
feels like now to be that person. It's the same
internal feeling to be at the top of your game
and the top organization in the most dangerous little city
in the world, doing what you do at the highest level. Yeah. Uh,

(01:19:38):
and then to walk away from that and have another
opportunity was great. So after but I'm getting sidetracked. My
ex wife sent me an email and said if I
didn't come home, what had happened? And she had got
pregnant with her my ex best friend, and they we're

(01:20:00):
going to get married, and so now everything changed. So
the deal I made with her for child support, my deployment, rotation,
everything was perfect, everybody was happy. And then she got
pregnant and decide to get married and everything changed, and
so I had to resign from that position, come home
and be a full time parent so that I wouldn't

(01:20:22):
lose custody in my children. And so I left that job,
probably the best job I could have ever had, because
I didn't want to give up custody in my children.
And I know a lot of guys with our background
would have kept working, but I just, you know, at
that time, my kids meant everything to me.

Speaker 4 (01:20:42):
Sure, can you tell us a little bit about the job,
because you know a lot of people may not be
familiar with USTUS or ATA.

Speaker 1 (01:20:49):
Or oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's nine week deployments
for the bomb teams or the instant countermeasure teams. So
what we would do was we'd go into a place
like Indonesia or India a place where friends of our country,

(01:21:13):
and this program had been around at the time for
twenty something years and it's just kind of a a
report builder with nations, a nation builder. So we would
go over and teach the Indonesian Special Operations Bomb Unit
how to build and how to disrupt IDs of all

(01:21:39):
different origins. And then after they learned how to disrupt
those IDs, we would teach them post blast scene analysis,
you know, how to come in. So like when we
were in Indonesia, Bali had the second attack and I
was actually in Kudah and Bali had the time of

(01:22:00):
that attack, and so for that team to go in
there after the Rajah restaurant was blown up, you know,
they would go in and look for evidence of bomb
parts and things of that nature. So we would teach them,
uh those basic things and then just go to another country.

(01:22:22):
So you would set up, get your equipments set up
for a week, and then you teach them for eight
weeks straight and five hundred and it was great money,
great work, environment, great mission. And I could have done
that until retirement. But again, you know, life takes you

(01:22:44):
where it takes you, and you got to meet life
where it takes you and That's something I've definitely learned now.
So I really fought it at the time. If it
was to happen again, I wouldn't have. I would have
just you know, went along with it and not got
so upset and tried to you know, work from that

(01:23:06):
from a more mindful place. But I just I just said, Okay,
I'll just resign and go home and just sit at
home to Spider because now that I'm home, I don't
have to pay two thousand dollars a month child support.
So she just cut her nose off to spite her face,
and so did I.

Speaker 3 (01:23:24):
So so you come back to the States, and what's
the job market like for you? Here's what what is
the future for Lee when he looks at it if.

Speaker 1 (01:23:37):
I don't deploy, see it. I was. I was in demand,
you know, I've just come out of remody for fourteen months.
There was a lot of things going on in Israel
and other places. There was a lot of opportunities that
I turned down because I couldn't deploy anymore. I mean

(01:23:58):
really really good Abichi the agency stuff a lot of stuff,
and uh, I just couldn't do it. So Luckily, when
I was in twentieth Group. A buddy of mine, John Nettles,
was working with Alan Braslan. Alan owned teas in West Memphis,

(01:24:21):
which became Olive Group and then all of sold it
back to to Alan.

Speaker 5 (01:24:27):
But uh, where.

Speaker 1 (01:24:30):
Was I going with that?

Speaker 4 (01:24:32):
Like like your your future? Like right?

Speaker 1 (01:24:35):
So, so because of my relationship with John, because John
knew we're over in Iraq at the same time doing
different things. He knew I had been at Ramadi and
Fallujah shooting folks while doing protection work. So they got
a contract to teach pre deployment training for the Seal

(01:25:02):
teams in West Memphis, and so they contacted me to
be the lead instructor for all their pre deployment PSD work,
their protection work, high threat protection work. So I put
together a live fire eight eight day live fire course
from scratch specifically for the Seals. And if it weren't

(01:25:27):
for that, I wouldn't have been connected to the community
at all anymore. And so I was working part time
as a paramedic again. Luckily I left there on good
terms and they welcomed me back part time, and so
I was teaching part time, doing paramedic part time, and
I did that for a couple few years until things

(01:25:50):
had changed enough to where she allowed me to start
deploying again.

Speaker 3 (01:25:58):
And you know, it's interesting because you met men like
high Threat PSD, uh, like personal Security Detail.

Speaker 4 (01:26:09):
That's that was something new that came out of that you.

Speaker 3 (01:26:13):
That came out as you want, right, you can't go
to Executive International or whatever whatever those schools are and
learn how to be a bodyguard in that kind of
environment like you have. You almost have to have a
military background in order to do that job.

Speaker 5 (01:26:31):
You have to have a soft background.

Speaker 1 (01:26:33):
I think I'll go a step further and say you
have to have a soft farm. High threat PSD is
a thinking man's game. Doing PSD in a combat zone
is a Tier one mission. And so you were one
hundred percent correct prior to g Watt. I know, maybe
maybe dev Group did some stuff like that, but you know,

(01:26:55):
Delta was the only guys really doing uh PSD, you know,
like they did Schwartz Costs Detail. So mad Max that
ran the first two selection classes for Triple Canopy. So
if you were in the first class or the second
class in the original Triple Canopy in the beginning and

(01:27:18):
O four, you had to pass mad Max's standards and
they were very high. They were Delta standards and they're
no joke. Anybody went through there or tell you they
were Delta standards. They couldn't get enough people through the pipeline,
so they removed mad Max and put him in another
capacity so they could get larger classes through because the

(01:27:42):
contract group, and that would be the second that would
Then that's when you start looking at the second seven
months of triple canopy in the beginning. And that's when
you start talking about things you talked about too, you know,
start getting a different level of guy in four or

(01:28:03):
from four to five, from five toh six, you start
the pay gets less higher level guys go do different things.
Lesser qualified guys replace those guys, and by the end
in Afghanistan and Iraq, you had guys that didn't have
soft backgrounds, some guys that just had law enforcement doing

(01:28:26):
jobs that once were only held by soft guys. And
there's a reason. Now I'm not saying, let me let
me caveat this. My experience in Remady the two four
Marines and two five marines that infantry did more than
the special ops and what we did ever did so

(01:28:49):
these infantry guys that we send a war to place
like Flush and Ramadi that fight day and night every
day in their deployment, saw a lot more and did
a lot more than anybody like me ever did. So
I'm not trying to say that, I just want to
make sure I make that distinguished. But for these skill sets,

(01:29:10):
these tier one type jobs, you know, you need to
have a soft background because you need to be able
to lead a team or be the bottom man on
the team. You need to be able to do you know,
you need to be able to inflate and deflate to
the full spectrum of whatever might happen. Because like when

(01:29:33):
we were protecting Ambassador Stu Jones going to Hillo, going
to Baghdad, going to Flujah, going to downtown Ramody, going
crossing the border into Jordan, we didn't have military support.
We were five vehicles, fifteen men with one principal, roaming

(01:29:56):
all of Iraq, you know, and a lot of times
we got shot. I got shot at four different times
by friendly fire. And somebody from I was on a
podcast once and I said this wrong. Somebody from Cornell.
I said Stanford, but it was Cornell. Somebody from Cornell

(01:30:18):
that was doing their doctorate or whatever on fraticide contacted
me because they had heard that I had four different
incidents where I had been shot at by friendly fire
and they so they wanted to talk to me about that.
But yeah, it was. It was four during that time,

(01:30:39):
really was. It was a it was a crazy time.

Speaker 4 (01:30:43):
Oh yeah, a friend.

Speaker 1 (01:30:45):
Oh, I gotta point this out. I gotta point this
out because I don't want to forget it. It's in
my book and it's driven me crazy. The Devil Overramady
sniper was not Chris Kyle. Okay, in two thousand and four,
the devil Vermady sniper was killing marines and army men
and contractors left and right. And the Devil of Vermadi

(01:31:07):
was Juba and Uh. He ultimately killed one of the
replacements Bama that replaced me when Blackwater took out replaced us.
He ultimately killed him about two weeks later. But Chris
Kyle was not the Devil of Ramadi. That was a

(01:31:29):
sniper that was killing Americans, not an American that was
killing bad guys. That was a bad guy that was
killing Americans. Was the devil of Ramadi.

Speaker 4 (01:31:42):
Thank you for clarifying that. So sorry, I lost my
train of thought. Okay, So you start to work fill
Olive group, or you get in with that, you get
him with Tiger Swan with some of that sexy pipeline infiltration,

(01:32:04):
yeah or well yeah, uh so I was.

Speaker 1 (01:32:09):
I was living like John Jay Rambo, you know, I
was homeless, working for cash, you know, on construction jobs
or whatever else.

Speaker 5 (01:32:17):
You know, that's where some of us, did you know,
end up.

Speaker 1 (01:32:22):
And so uh a guy from Blackwater reached out to
me and said, you know, there was this apple protest
at Standing Rock and they were paying like five hundred
dollars a day to pull security. And I was like, heck, yeah, man,
I was. I was in bad shape, you know. And

(01:32:45):
uh so that was a chance for me to try
to get straightened out financially and and.

Speaker 5 (01:32:52):
Get my feet back under me.

Speaker 1 (01:32:54):
And I went to work there and in a few months.
So if I go somewhere and I like it it's
something that want to it usually goes well. And when
I go somewhere I don't usually does it. So I
went there and it went well, And the next thing
I know, I'm the deputy project matter manager for Tiger
Swan running the entire state of Iowa where the pipeline

(01:33:17):
ran through, where the valve sites run through and during
twenty seventeen, there were two females that were leading this
band of domestic terrorists who were doing millions of dollars
of damage on the valve sites with the pipeline, the
control centers, and putting holes in the actual pipes. So

(01:33:40):
the FBI finally closed in on them and they finally
arrested them, and that job just went away. So, you know,
I had been promoted up to a deputy project manager JP,
who I worked for, who was the program manager. Like
I was like, okay, Like this is gonna work work out,

(01:34:01):
Like I'll stay with these guys. This is another Delta
operated company like Triple Canopy. Like I'm doing well. I've
been in well. They like my leadership style and I'm happy,
and I really was. My mental health was great. And
so people like us. If we're in a position where

(01:34:24):
we feel good about ourselves, we release good hormones, we thrive,
we lose our belly fat, you know, we get off
of our ass. We we you know, and and when
we don't, when we're in a job where we don't
feel like we're high enough, or we're in a job

(01:34:44):
we don't want to do and we have to do
or whatever. You know, we we have a lot of
negative energy and negative self talk, and we can lie
to ourselves and ignore that, but it can make us,
you know, not a good version of ourselves. And that's
where a diction and separating from our suffering, that's where
all that stuff plays in. And that's where yoga and mindfulness,

(01:35:07):
you know, that's where I was able to wake up
to just how monstrous I am and just how much
in denial I was about all that.

Speaker 3 (01:35:20):
So after Tiger swanp like that goes away, was Facebook
next for you?

Speaker 1 (01:35:27):
No? Facebook was before that. Facebook went away because of
two reasons. And I'm gonna say the first reason because
I don't want to sound like I'm making any excuses.
They politely asked me to leave. But the secondary reason for.

Speaker 5 (01:35:44):
That is is DEI.

Speaker 1 (01:35:47):
So Facebook was operating by DEI before there was d I.
They just didn't know it, but I did, you know,
So they didn't want They wanted guys like me and
guys like Steve that I won't mention his last name
because I don't.

Speaker 5 (01:36:03):
Know if he would like that, but Steve.

Speaker 1 (01:36:05):
From up in Washington State, came down from Paul Allen
and Bill Gates's detail to work at Facebook, and I
came there at the same time, and I worked the
day shift and he worked a night shift. And our
job was developed facebooks how to operate as a protection
to detail, and they didn't want to We we helped

(01:36:30):
get them to kind of a basic level, but they
didn't want to really do things right. And after two
thousand and four with Triple Canopy, I was going to
do things right or I was going to bitch about
it and leave. You know, I couldn't not do things
right anymore.

Speaker 5 (01:36:48):
I couldn't. I could not do it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:50):
So I made things kind of hard for some people there,
and they were frustrated with me, and and they you know,
they they asked me to lead, and so.

Speaker 5 (01:37:03):
You know, that was part of that not being a
good place.

Speaker 1 (01:37:06):
If I would have went to Facebook and they would
have said, the way you are is exactly what we're
looking for, which is what tigers Wan did, which is
what Trimple Canopy did, which is what Blackwater did. If
I would have got that reception, I'd still be at Facebook.

Speaker 4 (01:37:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:37:23):
A lot of times, you know those those companies, you know, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Adelson.
Adelson is his name right out in Vegas, Like, you know,
they they want the soft guys, but they want more
of a cop mentality.

Speaker 1 (01:37:43):
Well, yes, yes, in a way like McDonald's details. Some
of those details are very cop secret service kind of oriented.

Speaker 4 (01:37:53):
Right, So you're all.

Speaker 1 (01:37:54):
Right, but but I don't mind saying this, and I
know what I say, your channel doesn't represent. But what
Facebook wanted was gays and lesbians and blacks and whites
and Korean. They wanted their protection detail to look like Facebook,
and that's what they did. So there was there was

(01:38:16):
lots of unqualified people that I vetted coming into the
team that were voted in that we're not qualified. They
weren't qualified to be on a local a little local garden,
you know, like a Verizon cell phone story, you know,

(01:38:38):
much less, you know, protecting billionaire CEOs and CEOs of
corporations that have the intellectual properties of Facebook in his brain.
You know, you're protecting that and so, and not to
mention the embarrassment, like who wants to be on a

(01:38:59):
protect in detail. And the only thing guys remember is
you're the guy that let that happen to Huckerbird, Like
I remember that everybody in the world remembers that, you know,
so you don't want to be working with idiots. And
uh so my standard was high and it still is.
So if I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it right.
If not, you know, just do it without me, I'll

(01:39:21):
go do something else. But uh yeah, they wanted and
they did. They There was one black guy that was
gay with one female that was a lesbian openly. They
were all young, and it was just chaos. People didn't
you know, you would drive the client to San Francisco

(01:39:43):
with no backup vehicle. So we literally had Sheryl Sandberg,
the COO, self made billionaire, herself on the side of
the interstate, broke down with the shift leader because the
shift leader came from seat for service and didn't even

(01:40:03):
have the wherewithal to have a backup vehicle. But I've
been screaming that stuff, you know, having ghost vehicles, doing.

Speaker 4 (01:40:10):
Things right right.

Speaker 1 (01:40:12):
You know, the money was there, let's do it right.
But it's kind of like the government, like people just
want to just get along. Everybody be happy and if
something terrible happens, just point fingers and then fix it.
It's like, well, let's be proactive, yeah, you know, and
and you know.

Speaker 3 (01:40:31):
And I think that like a lot of people misinterpret
like the idea of it doesn't matter if somebody, if
a guy's a black, gay guy, or a woman is
an open if they know how to do the job.
The problem is is when you start hiring because of
who they are instead of what they know and what

(01:40:52):
they can do.

Speaker 1 (01:40:54):
Let me clarify that because I know that could be
sensitive to people. You're exactly right, That's what I meant.
You know, I grew up a poor little Jewish boy
in Tennessee. Like I don't have some kind of racism
towards you know, anybody. I've I've been bullying and had
my own experiences in my own life and my own problems.

(01:41:16):
I'm about being qualified. So yeah, every everybody on the
team could have been gay here or lesbian if they
were qualified, if they if they had the qualification that
these people didn't. And so the motivation, just like with
d I, the whole problem with d I is do

(01:41:37):
you and here's what I asked people. You're in a
bad car accident and you look up and there's a paramedic.
Do you want a paramedic that is highly trained or
do you want a paramedic that is hired because of
the way they look and their ideology. Now, if you

(01:41:59):
ask anybody this in a life or death situation, what
do they want? If you're on an airplane and it's
getting hijacked? Do you want somebody like me that's gonna
stand up with a pistol and do whatever I gotta
do to get between you and the threat and get busy?
Or do you want somebody that just looks and believes

(01:42:22):
in a certain audeology in that position? Because I went
through the Federal Law Enforcement Academy with a black female.
Now I've worked with black females that can outdo me
in a lot of things. But this black female couldn't
get out of a first class seat, that's how big
she was. She couldn't pass the basic shooting standards that

(01:42:45):
were drapped to the FBI standards from the initial it
was the TPC, the tactical pistol course reduced out to
the whatever the Federal standards pistol for. So it's a
much lower standard that she couldn't pass it. So, but

(01:43:07):
guess what she graduated. So people can think whatever they
want to, But when you're on an air when it's
a job a fireman has to carry you out of
a burning building. You got to ask yourself. You got
to stop all this fighting and ask yourself, what would
you want Who would you hire to do those jobs?

(01:43:31):
Do you want them to meet a standard or you
do you just want them to look a certain way?
And so, you know, I grew up with common sense
and I'm gonna hold on to that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:43:45):
So face so Facebook is four tiger Swane So Facebook,
and then uh and then the yacht detail, right the
or the uh that?

Speaker 1 (01:43:57):
Man? I you know, we could do a podcast, but
just one these like there's so many things when you
mentioned them, I'm so glad you read the book, you know,
because there's so much in there.

Speaker 3 (01:44:08):
That you get one once again, I want to say.
It is highly entertaining, like your personality shines through.

Speaker 4 (01:44:16):
It's it's it's an enjoyable read.

Speaker 1 (01:44:19):
Yeah. So, the so the yacht thing was out of desperation, uh,
and and it turned into the Facebook thing. So to
go to the yacht thing, we have to back up
before the Facebook thing. But let me tell you, doing
yacht security and protection is shit work, man, It's shit work.

(01:44:39):
If you have to live with the crew, just watch
a couple of episodes of Below Deck. It's it's a
it's a tough life. It's for somebody like us to
go spend a couple of months on a yacht. But
I got to work with several billionaires in my life

(01:45:00):
in that capacity. I got to see them with their
you know, literally with their you know, their shirts to
offer their you know, drunk, with their guard down, and
you know, I got to see personal sides of them.
You know, you get to hear them in the backseat
talking business with other people. You know, you're just privy

(01:45:23):
to things that I won't obviously share those type of things,
but it's really it's really interesting. You know, I got
to meet the father of the DVD, uh Liber Farb.
He was the father of d B D and he
spent about a month on the yacht, and you know,
he's good friends with Kevin Coster and he just had

(01:45:45):
you know, you get to hear all these amazing stories
from these people and exposed to different things, and then
you get to see that, you know, billionaires can be miserable.
You know, there were some people that I work with
and I won't point out who because I worked with several,
but there were. Some of them, like Cheryl Samdberg is
one of the probably the best human beings I've ever

(01:46:06):
met in my life. I've also met some of the
worst in that group. So being a billionaire doesn't mean
you're happy. There is no correlation between being a good
person and being happy. There's no correlation with those things.
Putting these people on pedestals like we do is ridiculous,
Like when you get to see them who they really are.

(01:46:28):
Most of them you wouldn't hire to mow your yard.
Most of them I wouldn't hire to babysit my children,
like you know. So yeah, it helped me wake up
to a lot of things.

Speaker 3 (01:46:41):
So so the yacht facebook Tiger Swan, and then Tiger
Swan goes away.

Speaker 4 (01:46:47):
So what's next?

Speaker 1 (01:46:50):
So I take I work overseas a couple gigs during
the hurricane disaster. Nothing noteworthy there, just typical arm security,
shit work, twelve hour shifts, seven days a week, good pay,
ship work, shit leadership. You know, good pay, and you're
working with good guys, guys you've worked with before.

Speaker 5 (01:47:11):
So just just another gig, no big deal.

Speaker 1 (01:47:15):
You learn what not to do usually on those type
of gigs, and that led to I'm not doing this
no more. I'm gonna There's an air force base in
my hometown, Arnold Air Force Base, Tellahoma, Tennessee's my hometown.
It's mainly civilians to work there. They work on you know,
rockets and weapons systems and things like that out there.

Speaker 5 (01:47:37):
So it's mainly civilians.

Speaker 1 (01:47:39):
And I'm going to get a security job out there.
They pay twenty something dollars an hour. It's easy work.
There's never been a threat there. It's my hometown. It's
no big deal, right, I'll just do that. They have
good medical insurance, and so I did that, and about
a year and a half into it, it turned out
it was shit work. Terrible word the one of the worst.

Speaker 5 (01:48:02):
Jobs I've ever had.

Speaker 1 (01:48:04):
And from a security standpoint, the leadership and the tactics
and the mindset was the worst I had ever had
up until that point. And it was a military base,
an air force base. So what are you gonna do.
I just show up and get your paycheck. And it's
a joke. It's a joke. And so about a year
and a half into it, I hurt my shoulder from

(01:48:26):
an incident in Iraq and then an incident in Africa,
and then I heard it again during this job, and
so I took leave. And as soon as I took leave,
Workman's callum they started trying to fire me. Well, when
you're trying to fire me, are you trying to do

(01:48:46):
anything to me? And you don't have a good reason,
You're gonna bring out my monster and I'm gonna feel
like I'm getting bullied. And when I feel like I'm
getting bullied, I don't care who you are, I don't
care what it is. I'm going to fight back. And
so I got a lawyer and I fought back, and

(01:49:07):
they decided that they didn't want to.

Speaker 5 (01:49:09):
Fire me anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:49:11):
And the day I was supposed to report back to work,
I resigned because I was going to resign all along
after that because of that ordeal. It went on for
a few months. I was going to resign all along
after that, and I got contacted about protecting the president
of Haiti in twenty nineteen, and so I jumped on

(01:49:36):
that and that that's the last job I ever took,
except for becoming a yoga teacher. So twenty nineteen, the
deployment to Haiti, it turned out to be the worst
deployment of my life, and I resigned.

Speaker 4 (01:49:55):
Yeah, what what was so bad about it was that
the leadership.

Speaker 1 (01:50:00):
Later, So the mission was real. Like President jovan l
got assassinated like a year later, so the mission was real.
The threat was real. I knew it was real. I
was brought down there as the senior not the not
the senior leader, but the senior expert on protection. I

(01:50:23):
was the person that dealt with the president and his wife.
I was the only person, including on our detail and
including on his detail. I was the only person that
was allowed to be with the president with an weapon.
So that was my role. I was the a I see,
the agent in charge, but I wasn't overall in charge.

(01:50:46):
I couldn't make the ultimate decisions. And so we were
doing some cowboys shit when all we really needed to
be doing was keeping an eye on him and his wife.
And we were doing everything but that. And it was
some of that cowboy stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:51:03):
It was some of the stuff that you know.

Speaker 1 (01:51:05):
Blackwater it got accused of in the early days.

Speaker 5 (01:51:08):
It was some of the stuff that.

Speaker 1 (01:51:11):
Custer Battles was accused of back in the early days.
Just some cowboy stuff. And this was a mature group
of men down there doing this mission. We had the
right people, we just didn't have the right mindset, the
right leadership, and we were focused on the wrong part
of the story. And I'm glad that I resigned and

(01:51:33):
left there because one of the guys that was on
my team I fired because of how bad he was.
And he and another guy that I had worked with
a couple months later killed a couple in Nashville for
money and they're doing life in prison and Tennessee right
now to two marines, one Force Marine and one what's

(01:51:56):
the other organization, MARSAC one WARSOK and one for uh. Yeah,
I've worked with both of them, and so that was
the kind of people some of the stuff that yeah,
And I was just like, no, I'm I'm leaving on
my terms. I'm resigning. I'm going home. You guys can
have this if that's how you're going to operate. And

(01:52:19):
so so I'm glad I.

Speaker 3 (01:52:21):
Did so through all this and through you know, all
these years, you have this internal volume, you have this
trauma that that.

Speaker 4 (01:52:31):
You haven't dealt with. I don't even know if you've
recognized it.

Speaker 3 (01:52:34):
What what started you on this path first to walk
the appalation trail and then what took you to yoga, of.

Speaker 1 (01:52:41):
All things, I was gonna kill my boss. I'm glad
you brought that out. I left that out, I think,
I don't think I brought that up. So when I
walked to Appalachian Trail, I felt healed. When I got
back off the Appalachian Trail, I slowly became me again.

(01:53:04):
The busy world, the noise, distress, it all worked its
way back in, and I had forgotten how to be,
to just be. I had detoxed, and now I had
got back on the.

Speaker 5 (01:53:20):
Hairine, so to speak.

Speaker 1 (01:53:21):
Sure, And so the other pivotal point was, as I
had had it. I was finally done. I was done
with the stress, the hot blood pressure. I was done
with being told what to do. I was, you know,
by stupid people. I was done with all you know.

(01:53:41):
I was done with all this stuff. Now I'm not
saying I was right about anything. I'm just answering your question.
I felt like I was just completely done. And when
my boss, who was a little retired Air Force officer,
when he tried to fire me for using innerpro language
at work. That's what they were trying to fire me

(01:54:03):
for a bunch of security guys and cops at an
Air Force base and he's trying to fire me for
inappropriate lightage. So of course when I got my horse anyways,
So but when he called me in the office and
told me he was gonna, you know, fire me, And
when I left there, I was so upset that I

(01:54:26):
decided I was gonna wait for him to get off work.
I was gonna follow him home and kill him. And
that's what I was gonna do. Well, and I didn't
have another They wasn't There wasn't another thought on my mind.

Speaker 4 (01:54:41):
And you know, we didn't you know, we didn't cover
this to send the book.

Speaker 3 (01:54:46):
But when we talked about those two fights you had
in that one year, the first fight almost ended that
way too. The guy was saved by families showing up
in the park.

Speaker 1 (01:55:00):
That was the first time in my life. So that
was after being a green Bereat, but before Ramadi the
Triple Canopy. It was in between there. That was the
first time. That wasn't the first time in my life
i'd chase somebody with a gun or something like that,
but that was the first time in my life where

(01:55:21):
I knew I gave myself the green light to kill somebody.
When you get when you're somebody like us that have
all these skill sets, all these abilities, all these experiences,
but you obviously keep those things and check. When you
give yourself the green light to do whatever the fuck

(01:55:45):
you want, it's liberating. It's liberating. And when you feel
like it's just because it's a really bad person that
was trying to do something bad to you, it's just
it's like, just because the rest of society won't fight
back and and teach you a lesson, I will. So
when I hear about a coworker goes to work and

(01:56:06):
kill somebody, or like when that guy killed that insurance
god in New York, I don't go, oh my God,
go catch this guy or whatever. I go. I wonder
what the story is because I bet half the time
the person getting what they god might have had it coming.
That's how you know, That's how I look at those things.

(01:56:28):
So I was in a scenario where I was gonna
be that god ex everything goes and kills his boss,
and I'm gonna be the bad guy. You know, his
story are My story is not gonna be the narrative.
His story is gonna be the narrative. He's gonna be

(01:56:48):
the government. He's gonna be the media in this scenario,
and I'm gonna be on the ship end of the stick.

Speaker 5 (01:56:55):
And that's you know, that's how those things work.

Speaker 4 (01:56:58):
So you were show this was your planneror this was
your thought and what changed.

Speaker 1 (01:57:08):
So in twenty fourteen, when I worked at Facebook, the
guys that came down from Washington State, from Bill Gates's
detail and Paul Allen's detail, they were used to smoking
and doing marijuan because it was legal and the corporations
don't have a policy against it. So Facebook was the

(01:57:31):
same way. So it's legal in California to do weed
if you have a medical marijuatera card, and it's legal
to do weed if you work at Facebook. I mean
they the campus at Facebook. Each section has its own bar,
you know. I mean, it's a very liberal kind of

(01:57:53):
it's interesting, it's fascinating kind of the dynamics out there.
But back to back to the point. I got back
to my camper. I was living in a camper at
the time, and I got back to the camper and
I had been doing Oshtonga yoga. It's a type of yoga.

(01:58:17):
I won't get into it because it's not important. But
I was doing an oshtonga practice. It takes about ninety minutes.
So I thought, okay, if I do yoga, I usually
feel better after yoga. If I do yoga, maybe i'll
feel better. Because my internal volume was out of ten, right,

(01:58:39):
like I was gonna kill him, and I wasn't just
gonna kill him. I was gonna hurt him, and then
I was gonna kill him. I was as upset everything
in my life that had ever pissed me off, any
everything in my life that I wanted to do or
say to get back at somebody, he was going to

(01:58:59):
get it. And I knew it. You yeah, I'd do it.
And since I had, You know, once you kill a
few people in a few different scenarios, you realize how
easy it is. That's not the hard part. Killing people
is not hard. It's giving yourself to greenlight to do it.

Speaker 4 (01:59:20):
And so that's the hard part.

Speaker 1 (01:59:23):
And yeah, well that's that's where the conundrum came in.
So I did ninety minutes of yoga and I still
wanted to kill him, and I started thinking, okay, if
I go kill him. At that time, there was about
three people or four people I.

Speaker 5 (01:59:42):
Wanted to kill honestly, that had done me wrong in
my life.

Speaker 1 (01:59:46):
And you know, if they made it legal, I'd go
kill those people and sleep like a baby. So I
started thinking, do I go kill those people? If so,
in what order? So my mind starts getting really busy.
And the only thing that ever worked for me was weed.
And so I called up a friend of mine and

(02:00:11):
I got some weed, and I smoked a bush of weed,
and I got really high, and I did some more yoga,
and I felt like giving people hugs. I didn't. I
didn't want to hurt him, but I didn't want to
go back to that job. I didn't know what to do.
I thought, you know, maybe I should commit myself. You know,

(02:00:34):
I need help, like I noticed in that moment, like
I got to do something, Like you got to do something, dude?

Speaker 4 (02:00:42):
Is this is this?

Speaker 3 (02:00:43):
So I decided I want to ask you real quick
before you move on, is this the first time?

Speaker 4 (02:00:52):
You know?

Speaker 3 (02:00:52):
Because you know, a lot of spiritual development, uh happens
after or potentially a lot of the spiritual development happens after.
I don't I don't want to call it a nervous breakdown,
but after people like after the ego is destroyed, right,
once when the ego blows up, it gives us some

(02:01:14):
clarity for a little while, or it can, it doesn't always.
But was this the first time that you had I mean,
I know you'd been angry before, you know, you you
jacked up those guys in the fire, stuff like that,
But is this the first time that it got to

(02:01:34):
that point to where it was just like like a
bubble bursting for you.

Speaker 1 (02:01:40):
No, I had been that mad before, but it was
before I killed people. So going and killing them wasn't, like,
you know, in your multiple choices, it just wasn't a choice.

Speaker 3 (02:01:52):
But what I mean is this the first was this
go ahead, go ahead?

Speaker 1 (02:01:57):
But what you said is a very very valuable point
for everybody when you have an ego death. This is
the hardest, darkest thing. And that's where I'm at now.
So that was the beginning. So that was the beginning,
the segue into enlighten the enlightenment, the awakening, the higher consciousness.

(02:02:19):
There's a lot of ways of talking about it, the darkness,
embracing the darkness, becoming one, becoming the real you, you know,
because most of us don't want to admit, you know,
I'll say something funny, simple, but it can be profound.
Like most people don't want to admit they masturbate, right,

(02:02:39):
so the lie about it, Well, there's a lot of
things that people don't want to admit that to lie about.
But once you wake up, only the truth can work,
you know. And so when you kill your ego and
you only operate with truth, there's no facade. I'm not
going to be this fake person. I'm not going to

(02:02:59):
go try that act. I'm not going to try to
make this person happy. Like when you elimit all those
you know, it's a game changer. But when you kill
your ego and I'm in the process of doing that,
the depression or what feels like depression is that stuff

(02:03:22):
that you have to go through. And when you end
up on the other side of an ego dead, you're free.
You don't live in this material world in love. You
don't respond to the news and the ups and downs
and all this nonsense in this fake world it's been created.
You're grounded in your body, which means you're not in

(02:03:45):
the future of the past in your mind. So when
people say, what do you mean grounded in your body?
Of course I'm in your body. It's like, no, you
spend ninety five percent of your conscious day unconscious and
better in the subconscious. So are in the unconscious mind?
You know, there's about five percent of the time the

(02:04:06):
average person is in their body. And what I mean
is grounded and right now, right now, this podcast is
forcing me to be grounded and right now and pay
attention to you. But how many times during the day
are we thinking about something else? Driving down the road,
thinking about the future, past, laying in bed thinking about it.

(02:04:27):
You're not in your body. Once you're grounded in your body.
That's mindfulness, your present. And people read all these books
and do all these things. It's like, that's all you
have to do. You don't have to read anything. Just
start being present, stop being distracted, stop being you know.

(02:04:48):
And so that's my still on that you had already
been doing yoga up to this point.

Speaker 4 (02:04:55):
Was yoga just initially?

Speaker 3 (02:04:57):
Was it just you know, away for an older guy
with a beat up body to kind of stay in sheep?

Speaker 1 (02:05:08):
That's a great question that we didn't talk about. So
when I finished the Appalachian Trail in twenty fifteen, a
friend of mine bought me the book. And every veteran
should read this book. Everybody with childhood trauma should read
this book or listen to it. The Body Keeps the
Score by Bessel Vandercoke. I read that book, started reading

(02:05:31):
that book in twenty fifteen, and I started crying and
I wasn't ready. And so in twenty nineteen, I was
ready to read it. And when I read in that book,
Bessel Vandercoke or some of his colleagues or people in
that realm did a study in twenty fourteen with traumatized

(02:05:56):
sexually assaulted, abused, rate incest women, a large group of that.
They did an extensive study in twenty fourteen, and they
found out that yoga does more to help trauma than
any medication on the market. And so I'm a very logical,

(02:06:18):
critical thinking type person in this phase of my life,
and so it was like, oh, okay, well I need
something to do. I need a passion of purpose in life.
Sheryl Sandberg's foundation lean In is this beautiful thing. She's
this beautiful person. Well, I want to be a beautiful thing.

(02:06:39):
I want to do beautiful things. So I'm going to
have this foundation and I'm going to teach yoga for free.
And it started out great at first, and COVID hit
and COVID, which I truly believe then and now, was
a false flag attack. COVID crushed people that were doing

(02:07:04):
things like me, hairdressers, people that owned gyms MMA, so
you know, it crushed people that were doing things like that.
So I was trying to give back something free to
the community. I was teaching six times or two times
a day, six times a week at the American Legion,
and so that's where I got that idea. It was

(02:07:26):
from that book. Somebody that could speak our language, that
had dealt with veterans for forty something years. He invented
the term PTSD. So we're better to learn about what
that means. Where does that come from?

Speaker 5 (02:07:40):
What's that about?

Speaker 1 (02:07:41):
And so you want to talk about why we act
the way we do or why people act the way
we do. It's like if I'm present and you say something,
there's a gap between what you say and how I respond.
If I'm not present that door right now start screaming boom,

(02:08:02):
I'm not present anymore. That ninety five percent, that chim
panze part of my brain is now in charge. And
now I turn and I rapped to the door. And
if it's trouble. I'm ready to meet it. I'm ready
to inflate to ten just like that. Well, you can't
operate in the civilized society like that. So that's what

(02:08:23):
we're dealing with. That's what we're dealing with. It's that simple.
It's a part of our brain that operates how we
behave and if we're not mindful and stay in that
other part of our brain, the part I'm in right now,
that's when those things are gonna happen. And so practicing
through neuropress through neuroplasticity, and through time. What is neuroplasticity.

(02:08:49):
It's the same thing Ivan Pavlo did with his dogs.
He would ring a bell, they'd salivate and then he
feed them. It's conditioning people. That's what they do. The
human You know, we were conditioned to act a certain
way during COVID, right, you know. It's a conditioning. So
you can condition yourself to do good things as well

(02:09:11):
as bad things. So what you do and what you
think about on a daily basis will change you through neuroplasticity.
And the younger you are, the easier and faster that
change will happen. But you still can be my age
and change. Do I think at fifty nine years old,

(02:09:31):
you know, I'm gonna be as you know, have zero
violence inside of me and be this totally different person. Know,
I'm always going to be me. I just need to
be mindful. And that's the purpose of my book, you know,
where a monster and mindfulness become one. You know, that's
the subtitle of the story of mine book.

Speaker 4 (02:09:54):
So when you have this moment, you're like, something has
to change, and you'd already been practicing yoga, so you
are already aware that, Like obviously you knew that you
had trauma in your past, but it's coming, it's bubbling
up and becoming you're more aware of it.

Speaker 3 (02:10:17):
How has your practice of yoga? How has anything else
that you've been doing?

Speaker 4 (02:10:25):
How has that.

Speaker 1 (02:10:29):
All right?

Speaker 4 (02:10:30):
I should say, has that have you? Have you worked
through some of that?

Speaker 3 (02:10:36):
Has have you purged or cleansed or or even you know,
made friends with with with your past or with that trauma?

Speaker 1 (02:10:48):
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I've been at
this five years and then the last year I would
say it's been the biggest breakthrough. I'd say in the
last year two years, but more the last year I
would say I'm really feeling the effects of the ego debt.
You know, I practiced meditating. You know, I have animals

(02:11:13):
and a hobby farm, and you know I don't focus on,
you know, doing great things anymore, you know, getting attention anymore,
and you know earlier, you know, especially last year. You know,
it's like I'm a minimalist. I got on social media
to try to promote my book because if the book
does good, I can have the money for a free

(02:11:35):
yoga studio and pay instructors to give yoga for free.

Speaker 5 (02:11:39):
You know, it'll all come to fruition.

Speaker 1 (02:11:41):
But what I found out was chasing that was wanting something,
and that's my ego, you know, And you start going, well,
hold on, it's like no, Like, if you really want
to get down to it, if you really want to
do this right, That's what it's about about, just being

(02:12:02):
just being right here, just being calm, being mindful, not
letting everything else affect you. And I'm not there yet,
Like I still deal with anxiety and depression and I
have really bad days sometimes. But what I'm doing right now,
I'm at the part of the ego death. If you

(02:12:23):
look into what Carl Jung or a lot of the
experts talk about the ego death, you know, and it
was great that you understand that, and we're talking to that,
but you know, when you get to that, there's an
anti social isolation, quiet stillness aspect of that that can

(02:12:46):
make you not want to be around humans. And so
I kind of realized that in my quest I was
being a little hypocritical. I was talking about being, you know,
killing my e go and I'm out here trying to
get on podcasts and trying to promote my book and
I'm on social media and whatever. It's like.

Speaker 5 (02:13:08):
I'm lying to myself.

Speaker 1 (02:13:10):
So that's where you have to back up and with
those biases and that self talk and that justification and go,
hey man, you know, if I if my book's supposed
to do well, it's just gonna do well. I wrote it.
And that's karma. And karma's not punishment. Karma is what
you do. And so if you do great things, great

(02:13:35):
things are gonna happen in your life. You reap what
you sew. It is a cause and effects. It's a
real thing, and I believe in it one percent. I
think when I die, everything that I did to somebody else,
I'm going to experience, and that's karma. I'm gonna experience

(02:13:57):
myself what I did to people. Everybody I killed in Iraq,
I'm an experience and what it was like to get
killed by me. Every girl that I ever lied to,
or cheated on or hurt you or monstrous towards, I'm
going to experience what I did to them, you know.
And that's what hell is to me. You know, That's

(02:14:18):
that's how I look at things, and so you know
when I look at Carmen, now, it's serious. And I
want to make sure that whatever I'm putting out and
whatever I experience with animals or humans or other living
things is as beautiful and kind and as loving as

(02:14:38):
I'm capable of. But there's no guarantees. I'm still me,
and if I'm not mindful and things get crazy enough,
I'm gonna I'm gonna act like a an alpha team
leader and ranger battalion or a you know, a shooter
in Iraq.

Speaker 4 (02:14:55):
Yeah, thank you so much. Leave for for sharing well,
first off, for writing this book.

Speaker 3 (02:15:04):
It's it's amazing. And also for coming on and sharing
your story with us. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (02:15:11):
Have it's my it's my pleasure. You know, out of
the there's some great podcast out there with UH and
within the special ops community, but you know, within that realm.
You know, you guys have been my favorite for a while.
I just like your style, like the way you guys
do business, very respectful. Uh. There there's no ego, even

(02:15:32):
though you guys could. You guys have incredible backgrounds, and
what you're both doing right now is still doing great things.
So you know, I appreciate you know, I'm nobody, you know,
to be somebody in our community, you gotta do something
that gets in the news and do something for valor.
And so I'm just grateful that I could unpack that

(02:15:56):
I could have an honor an opportunity to say that
you can be a below average person and then find
a way to catch up to the group and spend
the rest of your life just surrounding yourself with good
people and try to work above average even if you
started out below average. You know, you can manifest whatever

(02:16:19):
you want, but you got to start paying attention to
your internal narrative. If you're talking negative and talking shit
but acting nice to people, you're full of shit. You're
two different fucking people. You know. The outside's got to
match the inside, and if it doesn't, you need to
look in the mirror until it does.

Speaker 4 (02:16:40):
It's so true Internal Volume. Find it on Amazon.

Speaker 2 (02:16:49):
You know.

Speaker 3 (02:16:49):
Uh, you guys, it's a hell over read. I'll just
say that it is. It is quite exciting. Is there
anything that we missed? Anything that I failed to talk
about or ask you about that you.

Speaker 1 (02:17:07):
Uh, we were probably We've probably gone a long time,
so I don't want to drag it out. I just
want to say a shout out to Joe Price. I
hope that we can get justice one day for job
Price and John Chapman and folks like that. I hope
we can clean up the special ops community a little better,

(02:17:28):
like with what you guys are doing with Tim Kennedy.
You know, guys like me really appreciate that. It's really
triggering for things like that to happen in our community.
So seeing people pleasing that up quickly and holding a standard,
it makes me proud again that I was a green
brat and that I was a ranger. So I really

(02:17:48):
appreciate that. And I just want to say that if
anybody you know, I just finally got one hundred percent
VA after twenty something years of fighting. I got a
great guy at anybody wants to reach out at Lee
Decleman at gmail dot com, I'll hook you up with
a great god. He got me and my sister one
hundred percent, you know, in about a year a year

(02:18:11):
and a half. And so I know, I got a
lot of guys are fighting to just get the basic
care and if you need help, please reach out and
tunnels to towers, that's where I give my money. They're
doing great things for homeless veterans, and so I just
want to shout out to them. You know, anything we

(02:18:32):
can do is veterans to help veterans, lift them up,
and the veterans that have been lifted up by lies,
let's bring them back down and let's bring that harmonious
balance back to our community.

Speaker 5 (02:18:45):
And that that would be a great thing to see
happened for my die.

Speaker 4 (02:18:51):
It would be amazing.

Speaker 1 (02:18:53):
Uh D.

Speaker 4 (02:18:53):
Do we have any questions?

Speaker 1 (02:18:55):
No?

Speaker 4 (02:18:56):
Okay, where can people? Are you on social media? Or no?

Speaker 1 (02:19:01):
No? If somebody wants to reach out to me about anything,
I'm living small. You know, I'm not going to be
a public even if this book does real good.

Speaker 5 (02:19:10):
You know, I just want to kind of do my thing.

Speaker 1 (02:19:12):
But if I can help anybody or anybody has any
questions or you know, Lee Decklman D E C K
E L M A n at gmail dot com, you know.

Speaker 5 (02:19:23):
How to help anybody in any way I can.

Speaker 1 (02:19:25):
But you know, my book's about a traumatic life that
has a little bit of war in it.

Speaker 5 (02:19:30):
It's not a war story.

Speaker 4 (02:19:32):
Oh, it's a worst story. Like the whole book is
a worst story.

Speaker 1 (02:19:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:19:37):
Well, in a way there may not. There may not.
It may not be an Iraq or Afghanistan vate. It's
a war story.

Speaker 1 (02:19:44):
And well, the last thing I want to say is
I'm no hero. I've never done anything heroic. But everything
in that book is true.

Speaker 3 (02:19:52):
Yeah, and I think you know, you know a lot
of our viewers are history bossed, or they like the
military or you know, the intelligence community or special operations community.

Speaker 4 (02:20:03):
If you know, this.

Speaker 3 (02:20:05):
Is a book honestly, because it's not just about the military.
It's a book that like everybody can relate to in
one way or another. You know, it's it's your story.
So you know, I really hope people do pick this
up and read it. We're going to go now, uh,

(02:20:29):
we are going to do a uh team house after
dark Uh, for our patron subscribers after this.

Speaker 1 (02:20:37):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (02:20:37):
So if you're a patron subscriber and you want some
spicy tales, uh, that's where.

Speaker 3 (02:20:43):
You'll find them. So thank you everybody. We really appreciate it. Lee,
thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 5 (02:20:49):
Thank you so much, Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (02:20:53):
Hey, guys, I want to tell all of you today
about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both
the team House Podcast, eyes On Podcast, and the high
Side News outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The
newsletter is gonna be once a week. It's gonna come
into your inbox and you're gonna get the most current
podcasts on eyes On and the Teamhouse and whatever's topical

(02:21:18):
or current on the high Side. So it's another way
for us to get the information out to you as
social media algorithms are pretty iffy and you never really
know what you're gonna get. So this is a once
a week email. It'll slide into your inbox and it
will have you know the greatest hits of that week.

Speaker 4 (02:21:33):
It's really good checking it out.

Speaker 2 (02:21:37):
The website for it is Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot com,
slash Join Teamhouse Podcast, dot Kit dot com slash Join.
You go there and you enter into your email list,
or you enter your email into the little thing on
the website and you're good to go. And that'll be it.
So we really appreciate your support and hope you'll consider

(02:21:59):
signing up.

Speaker 1 (02:22:00):
Where's the link.

Speaker 2 (02:22:01):
The link will also be down the description if you're
looking for it

Speaker 3 (02:22:04):
There, and that's Teamhouse Podcast, dot kit k I t
Kilo India, Tango dot com, backslash joint

All Episodes

Mayhem in Ramadi | Lee Deckleman | Ep. 364

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Mayhem in Ramadi | Lee Deckleman | Ep. 364