Navy SEAL Makes Shocking Claims About Prominent SEALs | Eric Deming | Ep. 281 - The Team House

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
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Operations, Coberts Spionage, The TeamHouse with Your Hopes, Jack Murphy and
David Bark the episode two and eightyone of The Team House. I'm Jack

(01:03):
Murphy here with Dave park. Ourguest on tonight's episode is Eric Deming.
Eric served as a diver in theNavy and then went on to also served
as a seal afterwards, almost Ithink twenty seven years in the Navy all
told twenty of them as a seal. And he's also a bit of a
whistleblower, so we'll talk about thatas well. Before we jump into the

(01:27):
interview, I just want to tellfolks about our Patreon. There's a link
down the description and you can subscribefor just five dollars a month and you
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(01:49):
we really appreciate it. So thankyou, Eric, Welcome to the
show man, Jack Dave, thanksfor having me on. And I liked
the introduction a little bit because itwent to the Navy diver's side a little
bit, which it was a greattime of my career. Also it was
you know, it wasn't that long, but it was long enough for me
to really enjoy it. And thenas a seal and then here recently,

(02:12):
yeah, a whistle blow Actually,even when I was in the time,
you know, acted there was Ifollowed an IG complaint against some of these
you know guys that were doing somethings wrong in my community. And I'll
get into that here. Yeah,yeah, I'd like to start off first
off if you tell us a littlebit about like how you grew up and
how that took you into the Navyand kind of what your your path was

(02:34):
there. Yeah. So I wasborn in Boston, Massachusetts, but grew
up most of my life in Florida. When uh, fifth grade, my
parents got divorced, I moved backup to the Boston area. Uh,
right outside of Boston. It's calledChelsea. It's a it was. I
was a minority, being a whiteguy there, and uh so it was

(02:55):
a lot of street fighting things alongthose lines in the inner city because I,
you know, I came from Floridaa little bit different than them,
so I kind of stood out.So there's a lot of you know,
fighting that got involved with as akid growing up. So I was kind
of a little bit roughy, andmy my dad wasn't the best example of
a father, so I learned alot of what not to do. But

(03:16):
then at a point in my life, I go back down to Florida and
my stepfather had a good friend.His name was Buck Buckles, and uh
he kind of took me under likea grandson. And this was the first
person that in my life that Iconsidered a mentor somebody that I looked up

(03:37):
to. He had perfect family life, somebody that would just stood out,
did everything right, and and Iwanted to emulate somebody like him. And
he was the one that encouraged methe whole military and was the example.
And you know, his whole familyjust great people. One of the best
you know families that I could eversay in America is you know, the

(03:57):
Buckles family and all his kids andgrandkids and anyway, so that's who encouraged
me. And uh, and Ithink put me on the right path.
And what was that path? Soso I joined an eighty coming from a
small town in Florida, when whenI say my graduating class was one hundred,

(04:23):
right at one hundred, we werewhen I say we're agricultural, we
were out in the middle of thesticks, and we were pretty much redneck,
you know, as far as butit really you know, taught me
how to fix my own stuff,how to shoot, how to swim,
how to you know, do alot of different things to survive. And
so I appreciate it. And heI call my grandfather buck He grew up

(04:47):
during the Depression, so he taughtme a lot of these skills. And
a lot of these different things.So it was a great time in my
life, you know, learning allthat stuff. So when it was time
for me to graduate high school,I was just like, okay, college
wasn't probably you know, the rightthing for me. And he said,
well, maybe should think about,you know, the military, and that's

(05:09):
what encouraged me. I had anuncle that was in the Navy, so
I joined the Navy and I endedup he talked me into the electronics,
which was you know, a behonest electronics, which was not something that
I took to very well. ButI got to work up on a flight
deck sending aircraft off as far asbut you know, you start off as

(05:30):
a plane captain up there in asquadron. Then you get to work on
your aircraft, and then you getto be the guy if you're doing everything
right, and you get your headon the swibvel and you can operate up
on the flight deck with a lotof dangerous stuff kind of happened, and
you can be the final checker,which is a guy wears a white shirt
and checkered and you basically as it'sup on the catapult getting ready to launch
off, you go into it andyou check certain things and make sure everything

(05:55):
looks like it's going to go offthe front of the pointing end and actually
fly. Are you the guy thatto the guy? That's the guy that
you tell him that he could dothat? So I tell him that,
I give him the thumbs up,like you know, on my side of
the aircraft. Another guy on theother side. They tell them that guy
like, hey, this plane's goodto go, and then he he sends

(06:16):
it off. So yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the guy you see.
You'll see the supervisor. Yeah,well we're running in there. Well,
this thing's under full throttle you asfar as things can happen or whatever.
But it was it was an excitingtime. I enjoyed it. But
then I I got into the divingNavy after that, and so in ninety

(06:40):
when I joined in eighty seven.In ninety one, I go to dive
school, second class dive school,and become a Navy diver. And that
was another great part of my careerthat I really loved and enjoyed. And
if I didn't get accepted into thesealed teams, or if I didn't make
it through buds, I would havebeen happy just doing that. The rest
of my life. Even though Ias a diver, I worked at an

(07:01):
EOD command as far as and Igot in. I was in reserve for
a short period of time also,and I went through an EOD reserve course
that they had and uh and youknow, during that time I was,
I had was there stale of theyear and it kind of advanced up a
little bit further to different levels.And when it was time for me to

(07:24):
decide what I was going to dowith the rest of my life, I
wanted to go back into the Navyactive duty. But I had already screened
positive to go to BUDS. Ihad all the screening tests done, but
the diving detailer at the time said, nope, if you're coming back in
the Navy. Because I was inthe reserves, I was a first class
petty officer, and I said,hey, I'm rulling to come in.
I'm ready to go down to Efive. I'll sign whatever contract you want

(07:46):
me to sign. I just wantI get the chance to go to BUDS.
And the diving dtailer was just like, Nope, if you're coming in,
you're go into a junk boat,which is a salvage recovery boat,
which is A, it's a it'srough duty. And I was just like,
no. The only said I'm comingin is because I've screened, you
know, and Buds is willing totake me. And uh and luckily that
commands as far as Mark Verado andsome other great shot and some great you

(08:09):
know people there said that they wouldsend me to Buds and basically as an
activated reservist. So I got,you know, instead of going down one
rank, you know, which Iwas willing to do, and I was
willing to sign a contract for fouryears or whatever they wanted me to sign
it for, I got to goto Buds as an activated activated reservist and

(08:30):
if I failed out, you know, I could go back to being a
reservist. And uh so I didn'thave any like real weight over my shoulders
other than not letting my my grandfatherdown as far as buck or my family
down. So that's when I gotthere. You know. I classed up
with Buds class two fifteen shortly nowsort of in the Hell Week Hell Week
area. I took over as theLPO, and we almost had the biggest

(08:56):
class graduate as far as we were, just a tight class, great group
of guys and a lot of successfulteam guys can you know, out of
that class and done great things.To back up a little bit, Eric,
could you talk talk to our audiencea little bit more about the navy
diver profession, because I think there'sa lot of people out there who don't
understand, you know, there's differenttypes of Navy divers right even within that

(09:16):
career field, right. Oh.Correct. So you start off as a
second class diver and then you're ableto dive down to one hundred and sixty
five feet with just come you know, with air, not mixed gas.
And once you get a little bitexperienced, then you can go to first
class dive school and that's when youcan get into you can go deeper and

(09:37):
that you can get into mixed gas. There's more responsibilities to come a dive
supervisor and you do more technical diving. You're just not you know, a
guy on the end of an umbilicalanymore. You're kind of more technical,
uh, you know, background anddealing with the mixed gases and all that
type stuff and running chambers and thattype stuff. Then from there you become

(09:58):
a saturation dive where you can staydown for you know, a much longer
period of time, and that's whereit gets a lot more dangerous, and
you know, you end up withlong term effects from that sometimes. And
you can become a master diver onceyou get to you hold so many qualifications,
you make chief and you become amaster diver. So it's kind of

(10:18):
the progression of different things, andyou got special product. You got a
lot of different things you can doas a Navy diver. I ended up
at an EOD Mobile Unit six commandand we you know, at that they
were training sea lions, they weretraining dolphins, you know, as far
as all those programs you know thatthat divers and EOD guys do or some

(10:39):
of the stuff that I got tobe around and participate in and got to
do a lot of diving, alot of bounce diving off the coast of
Charleston. Also did a lot ofspear fishing, and you know, artifact
diving, which was you know,pretty beneficial too. I enjoyed that the
correct me for long eric. Butlike from talking to people in the past,
my understanding of the Marine Animal programand then going on with that,

(11:01):
what the EOD divers do is thatthey kind of act as like the pathfinders,
so to speak, go out thereand find the obstacles that the Navy
is going to have to take theirships through, and then you guys go
out and destroy them. There's differentprograms the uh so they the sea lions
were mainly used for uh things thatwere on the bottom that we knew were

(11:24):
down there that we wanted them togo down to attach you know, a
rope to it so we can pullit up because they could dive down to
like five hundred feet, be downthere a couple of minutes and come back.
Where for to send a diver downthat deep was you know, pretty
difficult to do. Then, youknow, with the dolphin programs, there's
ones that do cameras. There's guysthat are you know, there's dolphins that
are anti swimmer, which you know, those things will kick your ass.

(11:48):
As far as and my EOD buddies, you know, after I made it
through buds, of course they presentme with the it's basically got a dolphin,
it's got to like a frog inhis hands squashing it, you know,
the Mark seven program because it's justlike because we were trying to swim
against these dolphins all the time,and uh yeah, it's I've heard there.

(12:11):
I've heard, I've heard they're nojoke and they find you every single
time. Yeah, it's like it'slike a no win situation. And yeah,
it's a no win situation against runningagainst those and and the dolphins get
pretty smart because they're wearing like aharness with like a bangstick on it.
They get pretty smart. You're downthere with a helmet and pat it up

(12:31):
and you know these things. Allof a sudden you hear the click click
click, and all of a suddenit comes in there. It just knocks
the ship out and it's just likeyou're coming. You ball up a little
bit, but they get they knewhow they hit the soft spots and everything
else. Just like I don't thinkyou can get up to like five six
hundred pounds, right you know yeahyeah, yeah at least that size.

(12:52):
Yeah, they you it's no joke, considering that like a pot of dogs
to fuck up a great white likeit's yeah, it's like, oh people,
no doub Yeah yeah, yeah,this is easy for him. Yeah.
Yeah, it was pretty funny.But yeah, it was a great
time in my career. I reallyenjoyed it. You know, it got
to you know, do that andyou know, and I just felt like

(13:13):
I had to, you know,do another challenge, something more, you
know, I was looking for,and that's when I decided to go to
Buds. So no offense, Eric, I don't want to hear about how
hard your Buds class was. I'vebeen told it's very difficult and that you
guys were very cold. We allknow that. No, I'm just kidding.
I know, I know it's avery challenging course. But what year

(13:35):
did you graduate? Buds? Ninetyseven? Oh? I went in ninety
seven, ninety eighties when I graduated. Okay, so when in you know,
it's basically going through the winter.It was like Buds class two fifteen
February. Shit, I should knowthis date, but it was like February
twenty first or twenty eight or somethinglike that when I graduated. Did you

(13:56):
just to ask a question about budgetis to you? Did they make you
because you had been a diver?Did they make you like maintain the die
locker or do do some stupid bullshitbecause like you're previously because of your prev
experience. Okay, so you knowyou first thing. Luckily I had other
divers that were in my class,so there was I think we started off

(14:18):
with like four divers that were youstart off with like one hundred and sixty
whatever with our number was, andmost of the divers got through. So
just good good on the divers,you know, for getting through it,
because it was challenging. But sinceI was kind of senior guy showing up
there already, you know, inE six, which is high, you

(14:41):
know, pretty high ranking, youknow, at the time in the community,
the instructors were mainly E five's andyou know E six's and chiefs and
stuff like that. And so ifif you don't realize that you don't know
shit about being a seal, andyou come in there and you try to

(15:03):
throw your rank around as far asyou know. So I was just like,
and I'm consider myself a humble guy. They read me. I think
they read me correctly. Did anyother E six is graduate in my class?
You know? They all got rolledout at some point? I think
no, there was one other sixin my class. I graduated. And
so long story short, a lotof E sixes don't make it through and

(15:28):
because of they're not sure if youcan handle not your rank doesn't represent who
you are because you don't have theexperience so if you can't basically put your
rank to the side and basically say, hey, I'm a FNG, I'm
willing to learn. You know,I'm coming in with a lot of experience,

(15:48):
you know, different aspects and everythingelse, but I don't know what
it is to be a seal yet, so, you know, and they
could see that I was willing tolearn and that I wasn't you know,
relying on my rank for respect orwhatever. I was going to earn it.
And so that's I guess, youknow, if I had to say
something, you know, as faras you know, getting through buds,
but that's when it was, youknow for me. So well, I'm

(16:12):
getting off on a tangent. Butas any six, as the LPO of
the class, you're the guy withthe watch, and so you're the and
if whatever you know, So meand Clint Tippings, you know, he's
a class leader. We have tomake sure that the class is on time
to all do different events. We'rerunning all over the base all the time
for these different things, whether it'sgoing to the pool, going to the

(16:33):
dive tower, going wherever. Youknow, it's our responsibility to make sure
that the class is there on time. And I got the watch to do
it well. On my watch,I had a dive helmet on it,
and I was just like you,so you don't want you you don't want
to stand out in buds and sobut now I'm forcing into the role of
the LPO, which you know,it wasn't I would have been happy not

(16:56):
being that job also because that addedattention or whatever. But whenever the class
made a mistake, it was alwaysmy mine and the class leaders you know,
responsibility to unfunck it, sorry ifdouns through it to and uh so
we ended up doing lots and lotsof push ups for the class all the

(17:19):
time. And so we got reallygood at doing a lot of push ups
for making up mistakes that h thatwe might have caused and or the guys
in the class did it. Andso anyway, as far as they gave
me extra attention going through pool compand going through the die phase of it,
because they were just wanted to makesure that I was comfortable in the

(17:40):
water, and it was they itwas challenging, trust me, even as
a diver with you know, atthat time probably had close stuff seven hundred
dives, you know, honestly,and uh and so when I went through
pool comp you know, with adouble hose regulator and uh, they're being
instructors, wanted to make sure Iwas comfortable in the water, and luckily

(18:03):
I got through it. You gotsome extra attention. Yeah, so you
get to the teams and uh,something I'd love to ask you about that
not a lot of people I thinkknow about is that you guys did have
a real world mission going on priorto nine to eleven, which was the
oil smuggling in the Persian Gulf.Yeah. Great point. So because I

(18:26):
was LPO of the class, theysaid, hey, you get, you
get you get to pick a team, they said, you know, just
like so I chose Seal Team Too, which was the most operational command at
the time that I knew about fromwhat from the little bit of knowledge I
had. It was the next challengetrying to get there. Luckily I was

(18:47):
able to get Seal Team to.Seal Team Too had a great reputation now
that I'm at Seal Team Too.You go through Seal Tactical training. That's
where you actually learn how to doyour job as a Seal Buds as a
leading out process us make sure thatyou have the mental fortitude to get through.
You won't quit and you'll persevere throughwhatever. You know, obstacles are

(19:07):
thrown in front of it. Sealtactical training, which got changed to Seal
Qualification training later on, but Sealtactical training is where you learn your job
as a seal. I was thehonorman for that class. So then because
of that, you know, yougo into like a draft or you know
something along to the platoons are tryingto pick the guys coming out at st.

(19:30):
T. I got selected for awinter Warfare platoon, which is a
very you know, another hard challenging, you know environment. You know that
you're going to go to. Wegot to go up to Alaska and train
and that was you know a guyfrom Florida, you know, basically going
up there and surviving was pretty interestingand learn all the you know, telemark
skiing and all that type of stuff. Took to it. It was great,

(19:53):
loved it. So I did thatdeployment. Then we can I come
back off of that deployment. Iget into a strike platoon and that platoon
basically gets deployed to the Persian Gulf. When Saddam was saying was smuggling this
all prior nine to eleven, andthat platoon we start taking down oil smuggling

(20:17):
coming out of the Tigers River.There was a small little window where they
hit international waters because if they wentinto Iranian waters, you know, then
there's an international incident. You werebasically we were not supposed to be in
their waters and you know, getinto a gunfight, you know with guys
with bigger guns. Yeah, maybenot so much so anyway, but as
far as it can get challenging.And so we did. Five or six

(20:42):
real world boardings took control of theseships and that was pretty exciting because they
were welded it. They had bobwire on the outside of it. They
had they were welded into these things. It was all blacked out. You
basically it was hard to find them. You know. They had you know,
helicopters flying around with great or justtrying to locate them, trying to
Then you had a small window toget on it, and you had to

(21:03):
cut into it with quickis and brocotorches and that type of stuff. So
you got sparks flying all over theplace in the middle of the night and
he's like just getting on board theship was challenging. And uh and you
know, we were just had agreat time doing it. It was ridiculously
hot as far as it was onehundred and twenty during the day and one
hundred and ten at night. Andyou got you got your flotation on,

(21:26):
you got your body armor, yougot all this equipment on. Then you're
climbing up there getting in. Thenyou get into the engine room or trying
to go through the ship and there'smost of them didn't have ac or it
wasn't like a Navy ship, youknow, comfortable you know environment to be
in where they had to get controlof it and not get you know into
hopefully into shot or get hurt orsomething along those lines, and then get

(21:49):
control of the ship and then moveit to a safe area that was controlled
by the big Navy. And wereyou guys broken it of b or climbing
the caving ladder? It was cavingmainly caving ladder as far as we were
hooking and polling. You know,we had snipers that were circling around,

(22:10):
you know, in the helicopters,but we were we were using a hooking
caving ladder to get on board.And is this this is the old school
days of like O D Green coveralls, Nomac's gloves, the Oakley goggles,
and MP five's oh yeah, yeah, we're all in flight suits at the
time. So there is actually,well there's there's a picture floating around on

(22:32):
the internet with a bunch of guyson the back of the Mark five with
their shirts off, and I'm inthat picture with those guys. As far
as uh that was, that wasthat platoon that we're doing it, It
was just that was really before theinternet really took That was somewhat taken off,
but we didn't realize if you sentthe picture to somebody, you could
get posted all over the place,and so you know, like we're getting

(22:55):
shipped from the commands, like youguys are fucking all over the internet,
and you know we're just like,didn't you know the guy that did it
didn't mean to do it? Yeah, anyway, it was just like so
that picture floated around for a longyou know, for a period of time.
How would were some of your guyslike qualified to pilot like these larger
ships or would you get a piloton there in order to help you get

(23:18):
like how did that happen? Onceyou so you do the VBSS right,
and and for people who don't knowit's is it, it's visit board search
and seizure maybe exactly it. Andso you do the VBSS, you take
over the ship, and then whosteers the damn thing after that? Yeah,
it matters what size of the shipit is, because you know,

(23:41):
the real big ones have an engineroom and a control room down and they're
the ones that are actually they're justgetting relayed information down to them. These
ones were mainly smaller ones. Sothe helmets up there on the bridge and
uh, so we had you know, naval officers that were seals also and
slow qualified or you know, anduh and then if they were small enough

(24:03):
and plus we you know, wejust got control of the crew and told
them to get on this heading andwe just make sure they were on the
right heading, and you know,didn't do anything shady. Most of them
were pretty compliant, scared shit,listen. Yeah, they were just you
know a lot of them weren't evenIraqi or Afghani or or Iranian or anything.
We were just guys that were contractedbeyond there. Okay. Uh and

(24:27):
then nine to eleven happens while you'reover there, tell us about that what
that experience was like and then leadingus into you know, you ended up
doing three deployments to Iraq and threeto Afghanistan. Yeah, so we just
get finished up, you know,with all the boardings where we have already.

(24:47):
You know, we were a strikeplatoons, so we had all our
stuff in what we call trywall boxesand they was all getting ready to be
flown back home on c. Seventeenor whatever it was going to get,
you know, onto our deployment waspretty much done. The aircraft carry and
the whole battle group was already goingdown around the Horn of Africa. Then
all of a sudden, the towersget hit. We're in Baha Rain enjoying
liberty for a little while, andand next thing you know, the towers

(25:11):
get hit. The battle group getsturned around, comes back up there,
we get thrown onto a frigate oryou know a couple of small ships before
we can get to the aircraft carrier. Then we get on the aircraft carrier
waiting for the bombing campaign to startoff, and we're a ceestar package on
top of you know, on theaircraft carrier. But unfortunately they couldn't refuel

(25:33):
in flight, so the helicopters couldn'tgo, you know, like as far
as the army helicopters could go intoyou know, in the country, into
Afghanistan, and so we were limitedon what we could do. So we
set out in the Persian Gulf thinkingwe're going to the show, and pretty
much all we did was do circlesout there. And yeah, board team
Guys is not a good thing.And uh, and just because we we

(25:56):
got some of our stuff on theship and we stopped in France for a
period of time, so we hada bunch of French wine and some of
our guys decided to you know,drink some of that while they're on there
and getting a little bit of troubleas far as anyways, So board Team
Guys is not a good thing.And luckily it didn't you know, it
didn't really affect too many guys,but we did get in a little bit

(26:18):
of trouble for that, for havinga little bit of alcohol on the ship
that we shouldn't have had on thereat the time. So anyway, we
come not to get on off ona tangent there, but we come back
off that deployment. That's when theydid the whole force redal work as far
as they went from seal teams tosquadrons and the whole force twenty one.

(26:41):
So all the guys coming back fromI was that Seal Team too. Next
thing, you know, we're allgoing to because you know, the war
kicked off and they reordered how we'regoing to basically deploy. So all those
guys that came back off that deployment, whether it was the ARC or the
Strike platoon, all went the SealTeam for So now you've got most of

(27:03):
the Seal Team two is now atSeal Team four. And so we start
the whole workup process. And I'mdoing my l p O. Now I've
got two platoons underneath my belt,some experience, I'm a dive supervisor,
I'm a freefall jump master, Igot you know, different qualifications that I
can be an l p O.Now I'm the l p O of that

(27:26):
platoon. So we deployed to Germany, you know, as far as we
still had those commitments going on withyou know, Bosnia and you know,
and all that type stuff kind ofhappening, and uh, then the Liberia
as far as uh, the rebelforces overran the capital of Monrovia, in
Liberia and so we get on thehook to do these the UH NEO in

(27:55):
Liberia and honestly, you know,so after three deployments to Iraq and redeployments
to Afghanistan, the most scared youknow is I was is in Liberia really
because we flew in. The firstthing was you know, we had three
different ways of the inserting, youknow at the time, because Big Army

(28:15):
couldn't get down there. They hadclosed off the airport, so we were
going to have to come from thesea. So we're either going to do
in M cats, which we werein M Cats platoon, and we'd already
been in the air one time beforeready to do an M cats drop on
an Iranian ship that was doing somestuff or bringing some stuff that they shouldn't
have been bringing to it, ora ship that was going to bring stuff

(28:36):
there, and we basically they turnedat the last minute, well as we
were at the end of the rampready to jump out before doing free fall
with the AM cats, you know, left meat ribs and now we're getting
rid. Now we're down in Liberiadoing a neo. You know. Basically
one of our insertion methods was Mcats and they were going to just sink

(29:00):
those things after we swam to thebeach, and you know those things aren't
you know, cheap things, orwe're gonna do rubber ducks. As far
as that's was somewhat limited to.And then the last thing is we hit
Free Town. It's just like wemight be able to get some contracted aircraft
from other agencies, and luckily theywere able to fly us in there with
some of those well, one ofthose helicopters flew in a small group first,

(29:25):
and you know, I think eightor now there's probably ten of us
on that first flight. And whenwe hit the ground there, the French
embassy had already been overrun. Theyhad all the people that were in the
American embassy. I don't know ifyou've ever been to the American embassy,
and you know, Monrovia, thewalls were only maybe seventy foot tall,

(29:45):
just a single block wall, notvery well fortified. And you can see
the terror on everybody's face when weshowed up there, how scared they were,
and we didn't know what we're gettinginto. We go up to the
front and there's thousands and thousands ofpeople just trying to get into the embassy
and some of them saying they're Americancitizens, some of them. Then you

(30:07):
got the rebel forces that are drivingby with AK forty sevens and RPGs and
giving you the stink eye. You'rejust like shit, they're gonna you know,
they're just probing us the whole time, trying to, you know,
see what kind of weakness we had. To the point where the second helicopter
coming in was supposed to bring infood, water, plus the rest of
the guys, we said, forgetthe food, forget the water, and

(30:29):
bring AMMO. It was just itwas good. We didn't have enough AMMO
if it if it came over toa bad situation. So for you know,
a little over a week we stayed. We were awake, and we
had to keep from rotating from oneposition to another position, changed our looks
a little bit, make it looklike we had a much bigger force.
We only had eighteen guys, andbut we had to make it look and

(30:52):
we had to cover a lot ofproperty as far as the embassy where they
could attack us from, and sowe had to make ourselves look a lot
bigger than what we were, moreintimidating what we were. So we were
constantly changing how we looked and whatwe looked like. So it is a
fresh face every two hours somewhere else. But we didn't sleep for honestly,
very very little sleep for about aweek until finally other guys got in there

(31:17):
to help us out. We hada State Department official on the show recently,
Dante Paradiso, who is here.He actually wrote a whole book about
the evacuation. He was there whenit happened. But I also know that
there were like six or seven evacuationsat the time of Liberia, right,
So I'm not sure which this onewas. Which, Yeah, this was
two thousand and three, Okay,two thousand and three, I think,

(31:41):
as far as I remember correctly,I'm pretty sure it was like right around
two thousand and three. Yeah,we're so. So after I was going
to ask you had the you hadmentioned that the French embassy had already been
overrun. Do you know if theFrench civilians that were there had they had
they made it to the American embassyor were they caught up by the Liberians?

(32:02):
No, they were, Yeah,they were in the American embassy.
You had all the missionary type peoplethat were I mean there's I mean,
they would you know, the rebelforces roll by and just throw bodies you
know, on the ground and basicallytrying to intimidate us. You know,
they start of human life isn't worthvery much over there in their eyes,
and so it was it was aneye opening experience for me. And so

(32:27):
that was when I was just likeat this, you know, in the
ros was anybody comes over the wall, you could shoot them where I was
just like, man, some ofthese people are just scared trying or just
you know, they might be youknow, an American who who's trying to
get into the embassy. So justbecause they're on the wall, just like,
hey, realize what a real threatis. You know, it's overwhelming
and we got to you know,we have to make a point, make

(32:52):
a point, you know, butif you don't have to, let's not
do it. And luckily we didn'thave to fire any shots. Everything went
super smooth. It was you know, I was very proud of how the
guys, how professional they were withthat overwhelming force in front of them,
and that guys didn't get triggered eachyear or try to do something stupid that

(33:14):
causes the situation for us and soall the guys were super professional and did
great things. So then from therenow I just finished up my OLPO and
and I was able to stay,you know, I pick up chief,
you know, so East seven,you know, I have a successful combat
you know, or tour, andwe did the anyway, So now I'm

(33:37):
a chief. I stay at Sultinefor I pick up a platoon and now
we're doing a new work up.We're deploying to This will be my first
time going to Iraq. And atthat time, the number one strategic mission
was protecting the interim government of Iraq. So we're all doing we're all gettingtting

(33:59):
trained up in PSD as far aspersonal protection you know details, and and
so we're all in competition as faras you know, trying to do that
job correctly and on top of thediving, the jumping and everything else you're
doing. Now we got a newtasking kind of somewhat we're getting up to
speed on it. I had alreadydone a couple of Potish trips when on

(34:20):
that last platoon that I was justtalking about, and we went when he
went to Africa, I went withGeorge Bush all over that we had you
know, that was another great storywe can get into another time. But
because of the experience and how wellthe platoon was doing, we got the
number one guy you know in Iraq, doctor Lowie, the Prime Minister of
Iraq, so we were my platoonwas protecting him and he was a busy

(34:45):
guy, you know, as faras lost people coming to see him and
things along ago. But he wouldalso go out of country from time to
time, and whenever he went outof country, we could go up and
help out, you know, Dannyand Bill's platoon who were doing direct action.
So our guys were getting doing PSDmissions and they were going out and
helping with direct action missions at nightor you know, be up there for

(35:06):
a week or two, and andthat's where you know, that's where you
know, you really got to honeyour skills a little bit better and got
experience on direct action missions up there, and the guys were were doing having
great time doing that type stuff upthere also. That's where you know,
and we'll get into this later on, but my where CPD starts coming to

(35:29):
effect for me close quarters defense.And I was talking to you guys a
little bit you know about it earlier, but that's when we were That's when
it all kind of came to ayou know, oh I got it now
as far as why we're doing thattraining and why prisoner control and and why
we're you know, it's why it'soperations focused and things along those lines.
So now that you know, greatsuccess on that deployment come back off of

(35:52):
that. That's my fourth platoon workup and deployment. They said, Eric,
you got to go to training.You can't you know, you're you
can't stay here, you can't doanother platoon chief, which honestly, most
guys in the teams that's where theywould like to stay because that's when you're
directly, you know, with yourguys and your decisions, you know,

(36:14):
and how you you have a directeffect on guys' lives that you know,
and they on yours too, andso you're the closest and so the platoon
chief is kind of the sweet spotwithin the sealed community. Finish that up.
You know, they got people inthe pipeline that need to do it.
You know. Also the next leadershipblock or whatever they said, you

(36:34):
got to go to training. Ihad the CQD course Close Course Defense course
had a great reputation if you wantedto get operationally focused, better qualified,
understand how to operate as an operator, trying to become a CQD instructor.
So I put my name in thehat. I got selected to basically to
be an instructor. Shortly after that, I pick up EA, my mentor,

(37:00):
Noel Harris leaves and I take overas a course manager on the East
Coast for you know, close quartersdefense. Now, this is in the
middle of war and you're sending youknow, the guys that you're training are
going, you know, could beleaving in a week to go over there.
So what you teach them can eithersave their lives or get them killed.
So that's the the amount of responsibilitythat's thrown onto the CQD instructors.

(37:25):
And it's you know, the CQDinstructors most of them all came from a
mixed martial arts background of some sortor boxing or grappling or wrestling, So
it wasn't like you know, whenJOCKO on his podcast he said, hey,
there was this system for a littlewhile that was in the pipeline.

(37:45):
He misleads the public because that systemhas been in the seal community at that
time for over twenty or twenty twoyears, so longer than Jocko was actually
in the Navy. CCD has beenare one of our most important courses that
we could go through. Whenever wedid a dog and pony show for at

(38:06):
Congress or anybody coming over, theyshowed that's what they would go show them
would be the CQD course. That'show well respected and how operationally focused it
was. So to become an instructor, you know, was an honor.
You know, it's something that itwasn't easy. He had to go through
this and you know this instructor forgingprocess. And Dwayne Dieter who came up

(38:31):
with the system, he would trainthe instructors directly for seal CQD level one
and two. You go through thisforging thing and you know, to be
honest with you, like log ptat Buds was was like the hardest thing
I had ever done up until thatpoint. Fighting for your life going through

(38:54):
CQD forging and how you know,as far as your mistakes, things you
did right, but fighting until youwere totally exhausted and then then fighting for
another five minutes more because you're aboutto get your head cut off, you
know, and you know if youdidn't, basically you were, and so
you knew how important the training wasis because it was making you operationally focused.

(39:19):
But it was also physically demanding becausewhen you get exhausted, that's when
you could your mistakes started coming outand that they could correct. The instructors
would yeah, I'm sorry, I'mjust gonna ask you, can you can
you walk us through who Deeter was, how CQD came about, and what
what CQD and sort of its breadthwas, and then how it came to

(39:43):
the seal teams. Okay, that'sa great point. So Dwayne dieter H
was working with the DA Task Forceup in Maryland Baltimore areas taking down the
big drug houses that were happening up. There's a lot of drugs being run
up in that area at the time. He had a roommate when he was
in college that was a team guy. And Dwayne comes from a huge mixed

(40:07):
martial arts background. He was highlevel fifth or sixth degree black Belts and
multiple different things, and so hehad that background. His steal buddy was
getting trained in some mixed martial artstype stufft Dwayne would be kind of happy
to kind of guess what we're learningin type situations. Well, Dwayne's been
developing CQD on the side because hisstuff wasn't working when he was taken down

(40:30):
daight drug houses and a person thathe called him his teacher, but he
was a master. He said,your purpose was did he come up with
his system? And so when Dwaynecouldn't get trained at any higher level on
that side, his teacher said,what you want doesn't exist, you have
to develop this. And so that'swhen Dwayne started developing close quarters defense.

(40:52):
And he was only doing it forhimself and for you know, maybe his
select buddies that were doing the daightyou know, task force type stuff.
But his seal buddy basically said,hey, this is something that we probably
could use too. So we dida demonstration for him and next thing,
you know, at Seal Team six, he's down there teaching. They gave
him an office down there. Hewas such a well respected guy down there,

(41:17):
he was made an honorary Frogman.He does deployments, you know,
he goes to Iraq and Afghanistan.I mean this is he's embedded, you
know, really deeply with us,and as enough guys leave dam neck at
the time, we had the combatFighting course and we had scars. We
had a conglomeration of mixed martial arttype stuff that didn't really mesh well together.

(41:39):
It wasn't operationally focused, and itwas sports based. And so even
though we got a lot of ourguys that come from martial arts background that
are CCD instructors, we all understoodthat that one was sports based, which
is one on one in a ring. The environment in the rings not very
dangerous. You have to worry aboutsomebody shooting you from a distance. You

(42:01):
don't have to worry about multiple adversaries. You don't have to worry about a
guy pulling a knife in the middleof your boxing match or trying to stab
you. So all these things thatyou that you training in this false environment,
you know, as far as thesports ring doesn't really correspond to what's
operationally out here. So it wasvery tight hold. You know, CPD

(42:24):
is you know why you guys don'treally know much about it. Why it's
interesting to you, it is becauseDwayne is the ultimate you know, choir
professional. He just wanted to giveit to us and so that we could,
you know, after nine to eleven, you know, things were dynamic
for the United States and we wantedwe needed to We need the guys with

(42:45):
that training out there on the battlefield. And so he was having a great
time. We were having a greattime, and ckd was just you know,
crushing it overseas. And that's whywhen I was doing the das and
you know, my guys are doingit, I realized, you know,
Tom Boston was up there tanging theguys. I was just like, that's
where I wanted to get to ifI had to go to training and get

(43:07):
myself to be a better operator.So that's how it ends up in the
Seal team. So Dwayne was teachingdown at dev group and when it went
to the rest of the teams,he that's when he started training the trainer.
So when Jocko says I wanted sealstraining seals, you know that was
already happening. He was he wasmisleading the public, like you know,

(43:30):
contractors were training seals. And that'swhy we had Dwayne train, you know,
at the higher levels as far asyou know entry and you know,
vehicle takedown and you know, youknow much you know broader, you know,
spectrum of different things that he couldtrain and the Seal instructors are doing
Level one and two, which wasbasically, you know, mainly direct action

(43:52):
prisoner control and you go from unarmedto arm to shooting to a prisoner control
to operational physical training and and theone unique thing that no other training system
had was the internal Warrior. Theinternal Warrior was after you got trained and
all these different things, you gotthese skills and you basically you validated.
You went through a hooded box drillto validate. You knew that these skills

(44:15):
are what you needed to learn.That's why it was having so much success
in the Seal teams. But afteryou went through validation of that hooded box
drill, that's when you know,come clear to you what you need to
be doing as an operator. Andso yeah, sorts. So now that

(44:35):
you got all these training and yougot this the internal Warrior. The ethical
part of the training that you coulduse these skills for a lot of bad
things if you wanted to. Youcould you know, take advantage and you
know, do different things just likewhat's the purpose of your fight? And
so it was our it was ourescalation of force, it was our first
control. It was you know,and it helped guys personally, I D

(44:59):
what the higher threats are, makeright decisions. Shoot no shoot, held
them accountable because if they didn't dothings right underneath the hood. The role
players, we had role players someof these some of these exercises we did,
we had like hundreds of role playersthat were attacking guys, shooting guys.
Some guys were compliant, some guysnot compliant. Uh. It was

(45:22):
just a time in the seal communitywhere we were just excelling. And that's
why we had made such a goodname, you know, on the battlefield
early, you know, and youknow in our you know, kind of
in the beginning of after nine toeleven in the war. That's why we
had such a solid reputation. Sowe got that going on. But then

(45:45):
on the side note of which yougot roberts Ridge. And why I bring
that up because that comes into aconflict here in a little bit, and
I'm going to connect some dots forpeople that don't understand it, and even
some seals don't understand it, andthis is going to educate him on some
things. So you got roberts Ridge, you got Tim Samanski who pushes slab
to basically land on the ex todo a WRECKI on top of there.

(46:07):
He thinks he's gonna get Osama binLaden and he doesn't give a shit about
the guys in the helicopter. TimSamanski says, no, don't abord land
that thing up there, and that'swhen they start getting shot up and they
have to. Neil Roberts falls outof the back of it, and the
helicopter does a control crash, landinga couple of clicks away. Another helicopter

(46:27):
comes in. They convince that helicopterto go back up there to try to
get Neil Roberts. They didn't knowthat Neil Roberts had been fighting valiantly up
there by himself for a period oftime, but he'd been they'd been able
to kill him. But they thinkthey're going up there to save him,
and you know, great, youknow guys willing to step up there and
do that. And he's just like, that's that shouldn't that should have been

(46:50):
the story, and you know that, you know, the great things could
happen. It's sort of tactical messup. He shouldn't have landed on the
ax at that point, you know, Tim Samanski pushed him in there,
said, you know, shitty leadershave been shit canned and got rid of.
You know. At that time theyland up there, Chapman basically starts
going forward because slab falls, youknow, going out of the helicopter whatever,

(47:13):
there's five foot of snow. It'syou know, it's a it's a
harsh environment. Chapman basically goes upand starts taking down a machine gun bunker,
you know, as far as abunker want or whatever it's called.
And you know, if you watchon there's a pread feed on YouTube,
you can watch it. It explainsthe whole thing in my community. You
know, as a seal, youknow, a CCD instructor, you get

(47:35):
guys cycling through, and you know, and first thing you're you're getting after
action reports of exactly what's happening inAfghanistan, happening in Iraq, and you're
trying to create these scenarios when theguys go through, what the guys are
running into on the battleground up thereright now. So you've got guys that
are telling you their stories, youknow, that are over in country and
just come back. But you alsogot guys that are on these different platoons.

(47:58):
And so when we start talking aboutroberts Ridge and you know some of
the them that guys that rolled theireyes and like, what's the way you're
rolling your eyes about? You know, and they start telling me the real
story about what kind of happened,just like, yes, Lab left the
guy you know, left Chapman upthere. I'm just like, so I'm
kind of hearing it, you know, as far as on the side,
but you know, it doesn't comepublic for a long period of time.

(48:21):
Well, tim Semanski's you know,instead of them holding him accountable for that
debacle and then all the lies thatthey tried to cover up later on,
as far as that he does,he advances his career and he ends up
at Group two as a commodore.So now I'm a CCD instructor. I'm
at you know, which my CEOis over at the center on the west

(48:45):
coast, even though I'm on theeast coast. But I got Tim Semanski,
who is the commodore of Group two. And next thing, you know,
as far as and I didn't knowthat he had failed so miserably as
a leader at dam Neck, waskind of pushed out of Damn Neck and
pretty much that you can go away. You don't really fit our need here,
and we didn't know that Slab andleft Chapman behind. You know that

(49:08):
he was on the wall of theRock of Shame at you know, over
there that for all what he haddone wrong over at dev Group. So
who does Tim samansk you pick upto be his command master chief, Slab.
So now you've got two guys thatare covering up what actually happened at
Roberts Ridge, you know. Andnow you know at that time they're trying

(49:30):
to stop Chapman from getting a CongressionalMedal of Honor and as far as and
they're basically trying to cover up.They're changing their stories and what actually happened,
you know, from what their originalstatements were. And so now you
know, in my community, you'rejust like they didn't. We didn't realize
these guys had messed up so much. It was kind of just a dev

(49:51):
Group secret up until that point forthe most part, because we didn't,
you know, have firsthand information.When that information comes finally gets to be
public, you know, as faras I was just like, well shit,
and I wonder I was having sucha hard time with this guy because
he was he had tried to bribeDwayne Deeter because he wanted Dwayne Deeter to

(50:12):
basically teach CQD or mixed martial artsand put a Seal tried in on it
and say, hey, you're theSeal Martial Arts trainer and or CQD trainer
or whatever. He wanted to sellDVDs and go out to the do franchise.
Say when you say, he whoare you talking about? Tim Semanski
basically tries to bribe Dwayne Deeter tobasically franchise his schools and try to put

(50:37):
this out to the public, andDwayne says, hey, that's not why
I'm doing this. That's not whatI'm about. You know this this these
skills, you know, need tostay close knit for the good guys.
If we put it out like you'retalking about, the bad guys are going
to get it and they're going touse it against us. So he doesn't
take the bride. He doesn't youknow, he doesn't go. You know,

(50:59):
he doesn't get in bed with TimSemansky, which he kind of knew
was kind of shady, but didn'tknow to how level of the shadiness he
was. So that's when they haveto work to get rid of Dwayne out
of there, because everybody would talkto Dwayne and come clean with everything.
He he he worked with all thesquadrons, whether it's gold, red,

(51:20):
you know, blue gray, andso he cross pollinated everybody and made everybody,
you know, a cohesive, youknow, kind of a group.
And because Dwayne wouldn't take the bride, you know, Tim Semanski tries to
put it basically, tries to getrid of him out of damn neck.
But at that point it was,it was already spread to the teams.
It was already going everywhere. Andso why that's important to me, or

(51:44):
why I'm bringing it up, isbecause now I'm the course manager of CQUD,
and I got guys that are goingto combat tomorrow, and I got
everybody that's going to the course rightsa critique and they say great stuff.
I think, I wish we needtwo more weeks of it. You know,
we should have gotten this early.You know, we need to do

(52:05):
this right before we deploy. Justthousands and thousands are sealed operators saying nothing
but great things. And all ofa sudden, I got Tim Sumanski,
who's the commodore, and some ofhis cronies underneath them saying, oh no,
that's you know, it's not operational, it doesn't work, it doesn't
do this. I'm just like,what are you talking about? As far
as this is, here's a thousandcritiques, here's all the after action reports

(52:28):
of guys saying how they used it, how effective it was, how they're
going to get more of it,how I used it when I was deployed,
Just like, what the hell youguys talking about? I had no
clue that he tried to bribe Joindtyou know anything, you know really about
it? And so I'm I'm runninginto some heat from the the from the
guys that Undergroup two, as faras trade at who basically Assault Cell,

(52:52):
and some of those guys have gottenin trouble at Damn Neck and now they're
over in Assault Cell. So they'rein a time out box because they've gotten
in trouble. And now since TimSemanski saved them from getting maybe kicked out
totally, they're going to do hisbidding whatever he wants them to do.
So they're putting a spare campaign againstDuayne Dieter, saying that he sued the

(53:12):
teams, which he never did.That's all bullshit. He tried to say
that, you know, Duayne Dieteror CQD won't let us do mixed martial
arts. We had no say soon what they did as far as trade.
That could do whatever they want.We were just we were part of
the center teaching CQD, which everybodywanted. So they kind of put this
They tried to make it like therewas a fight between next martial arts guys

(53:36):
and CQUD, which there wasn't.All of our instructors were mainly come from
that same background already, and weall knew the difference between what was operational
and what wasn't operational. One wassports base if one wasn't, So all
of our guys, you know,they tried to you know, so for
the unwinning person, you got acaptain, you know, level officer who

(54:00):
is basically putting out this smear campaignagainst you know, a very highly successful
course. He was the most soughtafter. We had more instructor of the
years come out of CQD, andand like I said, it was one
of the the courses that they usedas an example for whenever they did a

(54:20):
dog and pony and things along thoselines. Had congressional level people if they
wanted to, you know, showhow awesome seals were. They showed them
CQD and a small little thing.So now that so I'm running into problems
here on the East Coast with CQD, you know, with with Tim Sumaski,
who I didn't know was a turdat the time. I didn't know

(54:44):
how bad he was at the time. I just didn't understand why he was
basically doing this. So I'm talkingwith Dwayne. Dwayne said, yeah,
I didn't take a bride. Dwaynetells me that stuff, and he says
he he says, really kind ofdon't worry. We weren't really worried about
it because Tim Semanski wasn't really Ididn't not a lot of respect you know,

(55:07):
through the community. I don't knowhow he ended up in that position
after he screwed up roberts Ridge sobad. So I'm running into problems with
it. The West Coast guys startrunning the problems over there, and so
I was just like, you know, they're having similar issues kind of going
with some of their trade at guys. Well, it just happens to be

(55:28):
that the guy that's in trade,you know, in charge of that trade
at is Jocko. So now,so I got Tim Semanski and I got
Jocko, you know as far asand they're teamed up trying to get rid
of close quarters defense. So I'mjust like, so, Jocko, I'm
just like, okay, why ishe going against CQUD. So I pull
up his critiques, which I can. I can put those all over the

(55:50):
internet right now. I got accessto all those critiques. You know,
I was a course manager. Igot all the after action reports, and
so I look at you know,Jocko's his critique when he went through training,
great stuff, highly recommended, theGrood stuff. Now, Jocko comes
from a jujitsu background or whatever hedoes that, but he understood the operationally

(56:10):
focused of the training. All hisguys that went through in Task Force Bruiser,
as far as Leif Babin for asergeant, all those guys that I
got their critiques, they said greatthings about it when they went through the
training. Now Jocko is in chargeof training on trade at and so I'm
just like, well, you know, he was that team too with me,
you know, for a period oftime before they did the whole four

(56:31):
tournament, before he became an officer, so I knew a little bit of
his background. I'm trying to figureout exactly what's going on. Then I
started hearing about Task Force Bruiser andeverything that kind of went on with Task
Force Bruiser. And at the time, I didn't know was Jocko and those
guys down there in Ramadi. Ijust knew that it was seals doing daylight
patrols and daylight raids and they're gettinggood seals killed, and we're just like,

(56:53):
what the fuck is going on withthese guys down in Ramadi, And
so at the time, I didn'tknow exactly who it was to what was
going on the West Coast instructors,you know, as far as you know,
they're getting those guys that went throughtheir training, they came back off
that deployment. They're telling all thestories about Chris Kyle shooting people that he

(57:13):
shouldn't have been shooting, as faras people off of bikes. He was
trying to get a body count.So Chris Kyle goes off the rails.
He works directly under Jocko. Jockois basically pushing him out there because Jocko
the platoon that Jocko relieved, Youknow had great success doing DA Mission night
raids and basically they you know,Ramadi was a much safer place when they

(57:35):
were there. Jocko comes in andhe has to try to beat their record.
So the only way that he thinkshe can beat their record is basically
getting a body count count. Sohe tells Chris Kyle basically get a body
count. So Chris Kyle starts goingout there and to get the numbers that
Chris Kyle ended up with he shota lot of people he shouldn't have shot,

(57:55):
and his platoon starts reporting that typestuff up, and Jocko wasn't a
short period of time before Jocko wasjust like, you can't approve an op
you can only approve logistical runs.And when you say people started reporting it
up, do you mean that peoplestarted reporting as numbers up or people started

(58:15):
reporting up that he was shooting peoplethat he probably should not have been shooting.
So when Mark Lee, yeah,that's good, great points, and
I can I can jump around alittle bit. But so Jocko's in the
country before Mark Lee gets shot oryou know, before that situation happens.

(58:39):
Seale Team six operator goes to Jockosays, hey, they know that you're
leaving the When you're leaving the wire, you got your punisher patch, you
know, thing on your body arm, and they know who you are.
They're id in you when you leave, They're following where you're going to.
Your guys are putting up a hugeAmerican flag, you know when you get
out there, because you're supposed tobe in a sniper hyde. You're exposing

(59:01):
who you are. And you guys, you're gonna get guys killed doing what
you're doing. And Jocko tells thissenior Seal Team six operator, fuck you,
I'm taking it to the enemy.And so Jocko basically so this Seal
Team six operator basically warns them.And I don't know if Jocko told his
guys before they went out that they, Hey, they already know who you

(59:23):
are. They're watching when you leavethe wire. They know what your vehicles
look like and everything else. Idon't know if Jocko told his guys that.
But since I've done my last podcast, more and more guys are talking
to me from there, so I'mgetting more and more information as that kind
of happens. So most of themdidn't know that he was warned the guys
that I'm talking to so far rightnow, So Jocko was warned. He

(59:47):
sends him out anyway, still doingdaylight patrols and you know, and that
type stuff as far as trying toget into gunfights, trying to basically cause
situations that they don't need to killinginnocent people that they don't need to kill.
Mark Lee ends up getting killed.Some of those guys in the platoon
come back with the body, goto the funeral, and they're complaining,

(01:00:07):
basically letting everybody know, hey,Jocko is basically Chris Kyl's killing innocent people,
and Jocko is basically just sending usout on daylight patrol stuff that we
didn't do during the work up andjust kind of just putting us out there.
And they're starting to call him acoward. They're saying, Jocko,
you're a coward because you're making it. And most of the time our task
unit commanders, you know, wentout with us as far as a lot

(01:00:28):
of different times because you're going toyou know, you had a ground,
you had you know, anyway,you had those guys route on the battlefield
with us. Most time, Jackowasn't going out. So another senior guy
that he goes through him says,hey, your guys are calling you a
coward because you aren't going You're sendinghim out and you're not going out with
him. So Jacko said, well, I'll go out. He goes,

(01:00:50):
and I'm going to shoot the firstand he said sand and he used the
N word that I see, andhe just shows you what his intent was.
So he basically tells that go ahead. I just want to I just
like, I know you were gettingthis information somewhere, but I also want
to be very cautious about sort oflike like he said, she said,

(01:01:13):
because you you didn't hear him saythat, correct, So like I just
want to be very one other guyin the office with him at the time,
yeah, or there's other people thatwere in the talk, uh that
you know knew it too. Butas far as so, yeah, as
far as these are all, what'swhat's great about it? Because you know
what, as a person who isnot on the you know, the internet,

(01:01:34):
yeh does yes, I can overextendmyself and say something that gets myself
in trouble, right and slander orsomething along those lines. Luckily I got
the truth. So it's so it'sit's I'm not concerned. I'll put it
yeah, so real quick, becauseyou know this is this has come up
when you've been on other shows anduh, and I want to ask you

(01:01:59):
do you hate No? No,I'm just do you hate seals? No?
No? And the reason why thenno, It brings up a great
point because the reason why I'm doingthis is because if you let leaders like
Jocko who got guys killed, andyou don't expose them for what they did
and what they who they are becausewe knew it in our community. That's

(01:02:22):
why he that's why he ended upin training. He didn't you know,
he should have been going to anexo position to if they wanted him to
be in charge of men in combat, he should have progressed his career in
another manner instead of going to training. Uh. And and so he went
to he says he went to training, but he was the writing was on

(01:02:42):
the wall that you were not goingto put up No. I get it,
I get it. Eric. Imean, if if you hated the
Seal teams, you would disappear,and there's no reason for you to be
public right and putting this pressure onyourself and I get it that you're doing
it because this is something that youcare deeply, right, this is something
that you know, and like wetalked about with the show that that certain

(01:03:08):
things within the community are the thingsthat everybody points out as seals are bad,
but seals aren't bad, and sealshave done amazing things, and unfortunately
a lot of the amazing things thatseals have done get overlooked by the things
that you know, you know,we've we you know, before the show,

(01:03:29):
we talked about Melger and I'm surewe'll get to that, but you
know, we talked about Chris Kyleer, we talk about other things that not
taking away from maybe the good thingsthat Chris Kyle did do, but there
were things that maybe he didn't dothat were not so great. What happened
on that patrol that you started youstarted to mention that that he went out

(01:03:50):
on Jacko decides he gets shamed intogoing out and uh, and of course
he doesn't go out on a daylightthat he goes on a helo insert at
night. And so when you youknow, you guys know you land you
got a brown out situation and uh, you know you're waiting for the dust
to settle. See what who youhave learned? You're not landing on the

(01:04:11):
X. You're meeting up with somebody, a source, you know, see
a source that's going to take youto the target where the bad guys are
at. So the disk, thedust settles are sources there. And Jocko
sees a guy with a slung aK and he shoots him in that face.
Basically, well, that just happensto be our source and we're basically
were supposed to take us on target. So so that's what happens, you

(01:04:36):
know, on his first day.That's what he how he you know,
because he had That's why he gotthe term a murderous soul, because he
shot somebody because he said he wasgoing to do it, not that he
was a threat, not that hewas somebody. He was just trying to
make a name for himself. Andso it was just ridiculous that he you
know that he did it. Ofcourse, you know, you can you

(01:04:58):
can say, well he had aweap and here, you know, I
was felt threatened. You know,It's just that Jocko doesn't didn't go out
very often, didn't know exactly whatthe protocols. Yeah, and so he
he makes a huge mistake and youknow, and a guy dies because of
it. They have to the entireoperation because of that, I imagine I'd

(01:05:20):
have to ask exactly what happened.More likely, I'm pretty sure that's what
happened. And so where are yougoing? Yeah? Where? Yeah exactly,
And so so it's not it doesn'tpain us in a good light,
and that's just kind of that's notnormal. I mean, our guys before
him had huge success on that onthat same exact battlespace and and you know,

(01:05:44):
so Jocko, that's why he getspushed the training, and that's why
now that he's pushed the training andhe's just like, you're not going to
make your next advancement, and hegoes, well, shit, I got
to start lining up something for whenI get out of the Navy. So
that's when he starts victory Jim.He teams up with a no drug fellon
you know as far as him,and he gets in trouble because he teams
up with enlisted guys and they starttrying trying to push contracts to his own

(01:06:08):
gym. That's when I get involvedwith CQD. I'm just like, who
the fuck is this Jocko guy onthe West Coast, and why is he
trying to get rid of CQD.You know, as far as when the
critiques are saying all these great thingsand all his guys are saying great things,
Well, it's because Jocko started upa gym when he wants contracts and
him and Tim Sumanski. So nowyou know, we've got East Coast and

(01:06:30):
West Coast guys teaming up against puttingthis mirror campaign against CQD and Dwayne Dieter
and just like and a lot ofguys don't know where you know, unless
they talk to me personally or theytalk to the CCD instructors, they don't
know the whole background and what's goingon. So they're just like the team
guys are just like what direction arewe going? What are we doing?

(01:06:51):
It reminds me a little bit oflike the Element was I think it was
Element one out at Damn Neck andthat that resulted in a huge, like
ig complaint where they it was likean insider baseball kind of deal where people
within the unit were selling stuff,you know, privately back to their youth.
Yeah. Yeah, and that's that'syou know, as far as so

(01:07:13):
Tim Samanski was trying to push contractsto his guy, you know, on
the East coast, which was anothergym, Lynx Academy, as far as
Frank Cauci another turn that tried tosell DVDs like learned the secret fighting techniques
of Navy Seals and all this stupidridiculous stuff. This is who he teams
up with on the wet on theEast coast, Jocko at his gym on

(01:07:35):
the West coast, and they're justput on this smear campaign against a true
quiet professional who has done who's youknow, at that time, probably eighteen
nineteen years of already training us andwe had thousands and thousands of critiques of
nothing but positive, great things.One of the most successful courses NSW ever

(01:07:55):
had. So how did it allpast? These guys are leadership positions and
training. They really had a lotof you know, basically pool on which
way contracts went or who they wentto, and so the guys are just
busy operating going overseas. They're notreally worried about what's kind of happening on
on the training side of it.So a lot of them didn't even know

(01:08:15):
that they were doing this, andso At some point I run into the
corruption so bad and the CEO onthe West coast, who was my CEO,
Spence goes, hey, it's youknow deaders won the contract every time.
I mean he's every time he's goneup forbid, you know, every
couple of years and whatever, andhe competes against these other people. It

(01:08:38):
won by fifty, you know,plus points over the closest competitor, Tim
Semanski's guy as far as was thelowest ranking one as far as Jocko because
he was trying to push contracts tohis gym, got found out and got
exposed and that's why he got thecontract ethics fraud. So you know,
he's still now that we basically he'sfailed on the battlefield as a seal leader

(01:09:02):
as you know out there now he'sfeeling as a training guy. Yeah,
just like unpack a little bit howthat happened. You said that there was
a like an ethical violation came upwithin NSW or War com. I mean,
could you tell us a little bitabout how that came about. Yeah,
so, I you know, atthat point when you know, Spence
says, hey, this is kindof going above him, and the contracts

(01:09:25):
were already won. He says there'sthere's some corruption of He didn't say corruption.
He goes, I don't know what'sgoing on above me, but if
I were you guys, i'd filea fraudways and abuse claim. So that's
when you know the CEO basically,you know, even though Sect had won

(01:09:45):
all the contracts they had to,you know, they were still trying to
get rid of it. Even thoughwhen it went up for evaluation, you
had still seemed six. You hadevery team put somebody in there to evaluate
all these different things to make surewe're doing the right thing, even though
we had already been using it forlike eighteen years at that point and everybody
was already validated, and Super wouldjust get getting further and further skill sets

(01:10:10):
because Dwayne was training us to ahigher and higher level. It goes up
to ten and so as we gotmore and more experienced with CQD, we
could get higher and higher levels.They tried to get this says they didn't
win the contract. They tried todo away with all contracts as far as
within NSW and so they tried toAt that point, that's when I file

(01:10:31):
an IG complaint against it. Andthat's where I named Tim Sumanski and I
named Jocko. Not knowing how screwedup they were at roberts Ridge or Bruiser
at the time, I just knewthat these guys were pushing contracts to their
buddies who and they were selling aproduct that was going to get guys killed
or they weren't going to be assuccessful on the battlefield. They also didn't

(01:10:56):
have any ethics as far as theseguys that were training them, you know,
as far as Jacko was teamed upwith a known drug fell and we're
having drug issues in the teams.Tim Semancy was teamed up with already a
guy who sold the seal, triedbrand to learn the secret fighting techniques of
a Navy seal. So not verygood quality battle that was that? That

(01:11:17):
was Frank Cucci. Frank Cucci,Yeah, remember okay, And so I
mean, first off, I haveto throw out I would love to read
a copy of that i G complaintif you still have it, Eric,
Oh, yeah, I got it. Yeah, I'd love to read that.
But so what was the result ofthat IG complaint when the investigators got
involved? So at that point,so I had pushed out the IG complaint.

(01:11:42):
It came back, you know,as far as people in that chain
of command, as far as itwent to I had had to deploy to
Iraq, So I went immediately toIraq shortly after I filed it, and
pretty much it went it stayed withinNSW, And since it stated within NSW,
nothing really happened. As far asI say, nothing really happened,

(01:12:06):
Jocko ends up happening to get Basically, you retire at twenty or ago,
or you're gonna be court martialed.Pretty much was his options as far as
they actually they actually told them thatyou were going to be court martial That's
what I was told. He wastold. You know, okay, the
knowledge I have is basically, heretires at twenty what kind of you know,
if he's such a stand up sealand wants to operate and just like

(01:12:30):
you know, Extreme Ownership or whatevercrappy book is, you know whatever,
you know, a seal wants tooperate, a seal wants to deploy.
It, Sure, a seal wantsto basically to get out at twenty.
The only reason you do that isbecause you're not happy with what's going on
in the seal community and you're saying, I'm getting the fuck out of this
canoe club. Me. I lovedit. Would go back in and do

(01:12:53):
it all over again, exactly thesame, except for I would fight harder
against Tim Semanski and Jocko as faras because they were able to have success,
you know, and getting rid ofCQD, you know, and it's
going to come back around. It'sgot to, because it's the most operationally
effective training that we've ever had.And once they do, because they'll bring
in the ethics and we won't won'tend up with the Melgar situation. We

(01:13:15):
won't end up with Jocko's, wewon't end up with Tim Sumanski because that
system exposes those guys. And whenit exposes them, because they can't hide
from the hood and you know theycan't, they find out what their sport
based stuff doesn't really have a positiveeffect in the operational world. And so

(01:13:36):
those guys would be found out toeither be psychopaths or a guy that can't
control his anger correctly because he endup with guys on steroids that shoot everybody
in the room. And the amountof stress that CQD brings when you're doing
the hooded box drill. It's asreal as you can get as close to
combat as anything about I experienced.I've had some hoods where I was more

(01:13:59):
stressed out and hitting any target,you know, in Iraqi Afghanistans. There
was a lot of ethics incorporated inthe Deader's program. Correct exactly the last
part of so you got you hadunarmed, so you had to handle yourself
unarmed first, and then that wentinto arms. Now you've got a gun
and you got your kid on howto properly you know, respond to.

(01:14:21):
Then he got into prisoner control.How now that you've detained somebody or you've
got somebody in your site and they'rethey're being compliant, they're listening. Now
you've got to cut from search themand transport them. Then he got into
operational you know, got into shootingand some tactics as far as house entry
and that type of stuff. Thenhe got into operational physical training, which

(01:14:42):
is now that you if you're goingto use these are up you know these
are you know, how do youexplain it as far as how like CrossFit
is functional fitness, Well, beforeCrossFit, we had before CrossFit, we
had opts operational physical training. Sothat was those things, those skills,
those physical exercise we did directly correlatedto how you would perform striking, shooting,

(01:15:08):
and you know, doing prisoner andcontrol, all that stuff as far
as was incorporated into operational physical training. Then now you've got all these different
skills. Now you get the whatwe call the internal warrior. What are
you going to do with these skillsthat you have. You're a freaking Navy
seal and you're getting ready to goon the battlefield and you can't shoot and

(01:15:30):
get away with it a lot oftimes. But is that the right thing
to do? Are you shooting theright person? Are you shooting one of
our own sources? So if you'retrained at to a high enough level,
you can sit there and let thesituation kind of evolve a little bit without
shooting first, because you're that confidentin your skills of what you can take
that shot when you need to andremove somebody from the planet that needs to

(01:15:55):
But you could sit there and letit develop to where you're just like,
Okay, this guy's being somewhat compliant, and just like, okay, now
he's actually being fully compliant. Nowwe're gonna you know, we can get
a lot of good intel off thisguy. So when you have these skill
set, the ethical side of itis, yeah, you can go out
there and shoot everybody you want,but or you can sit there and do

(01:16:15):
the you know, because you're goingto live with that bagage the rest of
your life. When you ask awarrior just like, well, how many
people have you killed? I hateit when somebody asks those questions to a
green breat ranger seal because what they'regoing to remember is the one that they
wish they didn't do. And soand so when you get when you're trained

(01:16:36):
to a lower level, you shootsooner than you need to sometimes. And
so what Dwayne's system did for usis that allowed us to basically have more
success on the battlefield because we couldlet we're more mature. We could we
had the internal warrior. We coulddial it up as fast as we needed

(01:16:58):
to protect ourselves and our buddies,but we could also let it mature and
make sure that we're making the rightdecision and making those right decisions. When
you come home five six years laterand you got all this baggage, you're
just like what happened on the battlefieldas far as that's when the internal warrior
really becomes an important part. That'swhy we got the suicide situation that we

(01:17:20):
have within the teams because a lotof guys got mentored by Jocko's or Tim
Semanski's and did some things or slabyou know on the battlefield, did stupid
things on the battlefield that they're nothappy about. And now they got that
bag show go ahead. I'm justsaying, or they saw some things that

(01:17:43):
they're not happy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, and then that
puts them in and that gets toa good point because you know, for
why am I coming so hard againstthese guys that you're exposing him? Why
am I? Like, you know, it's embarrassing to the Seale community.
It really is that these guys youknow, have been able to progress their

(01:18:03):
careers and that and that they're puton such a pedestal. But if we
allow these things to go unchecked andwe go let these guys get away with
it, it produces other guys thatdo very similar stuff and they think they
can get away with even more differentthings. That's why you're talking about contracts

(01:18:24):
going to their own buddies that hadthey you know, within our community,
you know, it was who canwho's got the most dirt on who so
that they could get a contract orget something you know, special to themselves.
So your your ig complaint didn't reallygo very far, is what you're
telling them, Not as far asI wish it would. But Jocko does.
Jocko does go away, you know, as far as and he was

(01:18:47):
named in it. Tim Semanski doesn'tgo away right away. But you know,
one of the great things as faras when Matt Cole's book came out,
you know, Code over Country,and I highly recommend, and I
had nothing to do with that book. I wasn't down at damn neck.
His all his sources are frigging orstellar. Team recommend watching his Team House
interview by the way, Yeah,And actually I when I did my research

(01:19:13):
on you guys, that was oneof the ones I watched, and it
was and it was interesting because hetalked about the hooded box drill a little
bit and and he says that,you know, it was funny because the
guys that basically failed in the hoodedbox drill that or or they wouldn't go
through it. They're afraid to go, you know, And I had guys
that would avoid it. Jocko ona second time going through CQD, I

(01:19:34):
got to go to dential, youknow, just like and that's the the
Hooded Box drill was what every teamguy just loved doing. It was just
like it was testing your skills.And then we did a video review right
at you know, of all thebecause you go through individual first and you
go unarmed. Then we do avideo review of it of how what success

(01:19:56):
you had, all your teammates watchyou against all the role players, how
you performed going through you know thatdrill, and you get all these like
you know, let's say anywhere fromeleven to fifteen scenarios of being attacked and
how you handle it. So youget the value with this the you know,
the one eye that tells no liethe video camera and which is great

(01:20:19):
because that's why the Predator feed isso important to Marcus Latrell's story and slab
and all that stuff, because whenthose videos come out, it's just like
its points, it tells the realpicture and there's no hiding anymore. So
just like the Hooded Box, youcan't hide, and the video review slows
it down so that you know exactlywhat mistakes you made, so that you

(01:20:42):
don't make them again, and everybodyloved it because they made them such a
better operator. And the guys thatmade mistakes that pointed him out just like,
Okay, maybe that guy needs tobe basically not the first guy in
the train, or he might beoutside security or something because he's shooting everybody
in the room, or and youmediate them you basically say hey, why
you know? And so the ethicalpart comes into, you know, play

(01:21:04):
or if you're prisoner abuse that you'reyou know, mishandling the role players because
you feel like they got one overon you or something along those lines.
You know, you were able toid those guys, and because you could
id them, you could point themout to the leadership say hey, keep
an eye on them. You knowthis, or they understood you talk to
them. We talked to them directlyfirst, just like, hey, you

(01:21:27):
understand right why that's bad and whythis doesn't you know, it could have
a negative effect not only on yourteam, but it might be you know,
you just shot the guy that weneeded or that had the information or
something because you were just overwhelmed byall these different threats are in the room
and uh, and you decide toshoot more than you needed to shoot.
You see, that guy didn't havea gun. You see, you know,
in the video review, you caneasily see who's a threat and who's

(01:21:49):
not, and they're just anyway.And that so the hooded box drill does
a great job of pointing out someof our psychopaths and it makes us way
better operators. And you know,and the instructors that were seeking the instructors
took their jobs so seriously because whatwe were teaching those guys, they might

(01:22:12):
use it tomorrow out in town,you know, basically, or on a
subway or you know, or downrange in Iraqi, Afghanistan, and you
better make sure what you're teaching theseguys is they got the best chances of
succeeding and saving them and their buddies'lives. Eric, Eric, you mentioned
it briefly, and I would liketo kind of put more of a point

(01:22:33):
on it and talk about it abit more. Is Operation Red Wings,
and you know you mentioned it inregards to Tim Sumanski. I have to
just preface the conversation a little bitto say that I do have some empathy
for Marcus latrell as a as ajunior guy in a firefight and I'm hesitant.

(01:22:55):
I mean, we do our afteraction reviews, right, but it's
professional, not personal, and II do have some empathy for a guy
who is in that moment and dealingwith that. But there's this whole higher
level of essentially cover ups that we'vebeen talking about, and there was a
cover up around Operation Red Wings,and that's something that I really just find

(01:23:17):
kind of reprehensible. Yeah, solet me just I'll get to those points
too. Sure, we'll back upa little bit because you know, Marcus
is going through BUDS and he's gota twin brother as he's going through BUDS,
and his twin brother is you know, so when you're in first phase

(01:23:40):
of BUDS, if you get aday, if you get even like eight
hours of sleep, you know,or you know, or more sleep because
you got to be there so earlyand everything that to just basically to recover
is you know, is a chore. That's why the attrition rates so high
because you never really get a chanceto recover a lot of times, you're
just basically grinding and grinding every dayis to just the times are getting less

(01:24:02):
is getting harder, and so ifyou got four days to recover, that's
that's huge. So his brother comesin and fills in for four days,
and and and those instructors, ifthey would have known that Marcus was going
to quit on the battlefield the wayhe did, and and I understand these
stories. You think he's a juniorguy, and you know and that.

(01:24:25):
But the problem is is that allhis magazines were full. He ran down
the hill and left his buddies.So I have a hard time for giving
him for that. You know,he didn't respond as a guy that should
have. You know, that didn'tget through buds correctly in my opinion.
Uh. And and if those guyswould have known that he would have quit

(01:24:46):
on the battlefield the way they did, they probably wouldn't have let him graduate
or get out of face. Theywould have probably made him redo that whole
phase. He might not be asealed today. Wait wait, okay,
so I had to get that outnow, go ahead, Hold on,
Marcus Patrol had an identical twin brotherwho filled in for him. Yeah,
you didn't know this. I didnot, congress, I did not.

(01:25:09):
I I don't. I don't keepup with them. He's a seal too,
And was he already a seal whenwhen when no, he was he
was a civilian going through college,came down to visit his brother, and
his brother was having a hard time. Marcus is having a hard time,
and so he basically something and hisbrother's in great shape, identical twin.

(01:25:31):
What was funny about it was,you know, Marcus was in the goon
squad in the back. He wasa slow runner, big guy, and
uh, all of a sudden,his brother shows up and he's running up
there where the instructors are at andhis you know, Marcus's budd glasses.
Basically, hey, get back here. You know you're doing too good because
you're fresh and got fresh legs andyou're not injured or whatever. So the

(01:25:55):
instructors never knew about it until almostthe end of first phase, and so
when it got exposed, they werejust like holy shit. You know,
they were embarrassed that it happened.They were just like, okay, there's
a we use the term if you'renot cheating, you're not trying, yeah,
and that's it's a bad saying.What they're trying to say is,
hey, think outside the box.It's not have your brother fill in for

(01:26:19):
a period of time, yeh,cheat you know, or do something that's
not ethical or or not correct.We want you to get through buds.
We want you to get through budswithout steroids. We want you to get
through buds, you know, onyour own merit. And and every instructor
when I went through, wanted asmany seals as you guys to get through

(01:26:39):
it, but they wanted to makesure that, you know, you were
the right mental fortitude to get through. And and so when they found out
about it they had they were kindof put in this weird position, do
we expose it or not? AndI decided to kind of keep it under
wraps. It's funny because that islike the if you ain't cheating, you

(01:27:00):
ain't trying, which is which isif you get caught, you're not trying
to that. And that's that's thesecond part of that saying, though is
it is it? It's only cheatingif you don't get caught. And and
if you get caught then oh well, like that's that's the second part of
that saying. You know, that'sit's both admirable and also and also he

(01:27:27):
got caught that should have been That'snot a huge issue for me, per
se per se, I just wantedto get by, but I wanted to,
you know, he said, becausehe's a junior guy out on the
battlefield. He had already had anincident before that, one that you guys
don't know about where he kind ofran did some stuff, and he was
and he wasn't fitting in well withhis platoon. He was out chasing ass

(01:27:50):
at the at the on base youknow, hospital or whatever, because he
was a core man. And soinstead of prepping in and they're team also
failed multiple what they call, youknow, final training exercise or you know
for STV guys, that might bea little bit different, but they had
failed it like three times, andthey weren't they weren't taking their job seriously,

(01:28:11):
you know, for the most part. Marcus definitely wasn't. And uh,
now they're in Afghanistan. They getbasically put on the side of a
mountain, they get in their firstfirefight, and Marcus does exactly what you
know, somebody who really wasn't reallytested, you know, and didn't really
apply himself. He runs away fromit with pretty much with a fully loaded
down you know, chess, youknow, harness and everything else and leaves

(01:28:34):
his guys behind. The situation mighthave been different if there was a solid
team guy up there fighting with him. It might be a whole different story,
right then, So it happens,You're right, So it happens.
And then then it's called for youknow, a q RF. The Red
Wings you know, gets launched inthere, they get shot down by an

(01:28:55):
Essay seven. For some reason,the leadership didn't want you know, they
were saying is an RPG when itwas all just like no eye witnesses counts
on multiple different people from different helicoptersand different you know, said no,
it freaking it wasn't an RPG.But for some reason they have to basically
the other team guys that were onthe other helicopter have to basically say it

(01:29:18):
was an RP. You know,it was an RPG, and they you
know, are anyway. So Idon't know why they held that information,
covered that up, and they shouldn'tknow because that just exposed it other helicopters
that didn't know what they were doingor that they were running into that situation.
I think that is the thing.You know, you talk about this
cover up, and you know,there are a lot of very heroic and

(01:29:44):
very capable seals, and and Iwonder at what level in the leadership,
though, these cover ups or thesethese desires to hide the mistakes and hide
these things dishonor dishonor everybody else.Because even with Chapman, I could be
wrong, and you you guys canprobably correct me if I am. But

(01:30:05):
I thought that Slabinsky originally said that, you know, he originally told the
story that put Chapman in a goodlight or that I didn't know or whatever,
and then then Special Warfare Command basicallycame down on him and his story
changed. No, So what whatoriginally happened was they they talked highly about

(01:30:30):
Chapman. He got whatever the AirForce like a silver Star or something pretty
high metal or whatever. They hefought valiantly. He was like awesome.
But but what slab says is thathe checked on me. He said he
was dead right, that's why heleft them behind. And well he doesn't
even get close to the body.He never checked, you know, gets
it, And so you know,Chapman might have been you know, so

(01:30:55):
here's a nothing. Chapman had gonethrough CQD training. All those guys have
gone through CQD training, so hewas well, you know, trained as
far as operating with US he takesthat machine gun bunker, thinking those guys
are going to be on his leftand shoulder because he's done entry. He's
expecting them to respond with the trainingthat he has had, and so he
might have been just laying quietly tryingto snipe somebody and didn't realize the seals

(01:31:18):
were basically, you know, acouple of them gotten hit and that they're
escaping down the mountain. But lateron, for whatever reason, Chapman basically
starts fighting again. Some people saidhe might have been knocked out, but
you know, in my opinion,he's probably just laying almost bread and trying
to snipe somebody, and when hefinally got the shot, he probably did

(01:31:39):
it. So he foughts, youknow, for hours, you know,
after the guys escaped down the mountain, and it wasn't until the third helicopter
came in where he exposed trying toprotect that helicopter is when he finally gets
shot and killed. So he's he'son the first assertion with the helicopter crashes,
then he's basically on the second onewhere he takes machine gun bunkers,

(01:32:00):
kills, goes hand to hand fightingmultiple different people. Because Slab convince them
not to take a pistol for whateverreason, or that's what I was told,
you know, as far as thingsthat you know, that we learned
after the fact that we would youknow, you're going to take with you
and Slab leaves them, Slab leavesthem, and Chapman fights, you know,

(01:32:24):
by himself, and that's what Andwe didn't a lot of us knew
bits and pieces of the story,yeah, you know, the full detail
until until the pred feed comes outand exposes it. And Chapman's you know,
sister, you know, basically getswith the PJ writes the book.
And there's a whole other chapter thatwasn't in the original book that I and

(01:32:45):
I want to say, chapter seventeenor twenty seven. There's a whole other
chapter that you should read about howTimson as he tries to stop this congression
his Congression medal, like in arevised edition of the book. Yep.
Interesting they left so they didn't sothey didn't want to be a seal bash
in book. They just wanted torecognize their guy, right. They didn't

(01:33:06):
realize that the you know, slaband Tim Semanski were going to put this,
you know, try to stop itand to be a kid. So
they were, they were trying todo the honorable thing by not exposing this
part of it. They were justlike, well, shit, if you
guys are going to do that,you know, as far as I wish
they would have had it in there, because they would have exposed our guys.
It wasn't until Code over Country exposedto Tim Semanski that he doesn't advance

(01:33:30):
anymore. He might be in chargeof Jaysak today and you would have the
super turn in charge of the mostelite fighting forces you know on the world.
I'll tell you, because yeah,the whole, the whole if you
read the actual like administrative procedures thatNaval special warfare tech. And I'm not

(01:33:51):
even talking about Slovinsky and Slevinsky's testimonybecause yeah, because his testimony about Chapman
changed, uh from you know,Chapman was this to Chapman was. But
when the Air Force relooked, lookedat Chapman's award and went for the upgrade.

(01:34:15):
The fact that the Navy and NavalNavy special warfare and I don't and
this isn't Slovinsky, this is abovehim. But the fact that they I
you could you probably know more thanI do. But the fact that the
Navy initially blocked they tried to blockChapman's upgrade after the facts came out of
what he actually went through, theytried, who tries to block the upgrade

(01:34:41):
of somebody's award a different service,And then they said, we will give
it to you if Slovinsky also getsit to me. That was like,
that discredits the entire Naval Special Warfarecommunity. And there are a lot of
good operators in the Naval Special Warfarecommunity, but it's it's a blight.

(01:35:02):
Yeah, And that's what And you'reone hundred percent correct. Everything you just
said is exactly spot on, exactlywhat happened. And that's why I'm on
here saying, hey, there's abunch of us in our seal community that
have been fighting these guys. Ifiled my IG complaint back in two thousand
and eight, you know, callingout this turn back. Then guys down

(01:35:24):
at Damn Neck should have held himaccountable. He should have gotten shit canned
right after that off. And thenbecause he was able to stay in,
then he messes up NSW even morebecause he tries to stop a Chapman award
because it's going to expose him fora shitty leader that he was. And
so instead of us holding our guysaccountable, and I'm just like, this

(01:35:46):
is this is like a warning orderto you know, all active duty seals.
Don't be a fucking turn. Don'tdo these things like Chapman and Jocko,
because it's going to come out.The truth is always going to come
out eventually, and if you're goingto do these things, you're going to
get exposed. And and I hopethese guys, you know, they look

(01:36:08):
at I feel sorry for him.Yeah, I feel sorry for Marcus,
I feel sorry. I feel sorryfor Jocko. I feel sorry for Tim
Samans. To be that's shallow andput your personal prestige or money above your
teammates is as low as you canpossibly go. And they got to look

(01:36:28):
at themselves in the mirror and theycan't be happy what they see. They
can't because you just do you thinkthough, because I don't. I don't
watch Shako, I don't know jock. I don't know anything about Jocko other
than what people say. I doknow that there are people who say that
you know who he is now haslike changed their lives helped them out things
like that. Do you think thatthere's a redemption arc for for people regardless

(01:36:58):
of mistakes that they have made duringservice or or whether it's mistakes or shitty
behavior like I don't know, butdo you think that there's a redemption arc
for people? Of course, ifyou make a mistake, you know,
as far as trying to keep itin house, mistakes are made, guys
learn from it and they move onand they don't do the same thing over.

(01:37:20):
My problem with like Jocko and likeTim Semanski is that after the fact,
you know, it got exposed,they've been you know, they've been
lying for years to the public ofwhat actually happened. As far as so
like Chris Kyle. Chris Kyle workeddirectly under Jocko. He said he shot

(01:37:42):
Juba, he said that he killedguys, you know, looters and the
under you know, the the domein Louisiana said he you know, he's
You've got all these false claims thathave been found out to be Well,
you don't have Chris Kyle without Jocko. You don't have Jocko without Chris Kyle.
So when when Chris Kyle says he'snot making a name for himself.
He's got a book out there,so he has to basically say yeah,

(01:38:04):
and he's on a book speaking things, says yeah, I knocked out Jesse
Ventura and just like total bullshit,you know, he said, yeah,
he did these things. So nowJesse Venture is like a way And because
Jesse Ventura was one of the mostwell recognized, well respected seals and you
know as far as congressman in Minnesotadoing great things, represented us well,

(01:38:28):
and so Chris Kyle hits him sayingI knocked him out and makes tries to
make a name for himself. It'sjust it's embarrassing. The same thing with
Jocko and Tim Semanski against you know, Dwayne Peter. Dwayne Peter is the
quiet professional that they wish they couldbe right, and so they have they
have to attack guys like that totry to make a name for themselves.
And Jesse had to basically defend himselfin court. I think he had the

(01:38:53):
other team guys piling on saying,oh, you're you know, because Chris
Kyle gets killed by a marine andI karma, you know, I very
sad. Yeah, I mean it'svery sad. Regardless you know, very
sad and just like the situation.But Jesse, you know, as far
as he's got to clear his name, he's already in court and it's and

(01:39:14):
it's really him fighting against the mediacorporation that basically sold American Sniper, which
we all find out that story isall bullshit. So the media is trying
to protect Chris Kyle even though he'sdead, because it's going to tarnish their
book and their name and the movieand all that other type, you know,
And Jesse's just trying to clear hisname. He's not going after the

(01:39:36):
widow. He's going after the peoplethat basically that supported Chris Kyle to do
this in the first place. Thatthat kind of gets back to yours,
Jack as far as the people,like with Marcus Latrell, Marcus Latrell fails
and does some bad things on thebattlefield and you know could have recovered from
it, just like, hey,this is what I did wrong. But
he gets it, he gets theoption. He's like it's like, hey,

(01:39:58):
it's over three million dollars if yousign off on this book that was
written for you. He didn't writeit, and he just like, do
you want to be known as theguy who ran away and left his buddies
or do you want to be knownas a loan survivor? That you know,
basically the story and you know,presents a look that makes NSW look
better, and so he chooses todo that. So he has to sit

(01:40:21):
there, go to these speaking engagements, he has to lie, lie,
lie, lie, and he gotsome bad you know, senior leaders within
NSW basically pushed him to do thisand to write that book, and that's
where the story really needs to go. All these investigative reporters, there's a

(01:40:45):
target rich environment in the sealed communityto expose all this stuff. And the
only reason I wanted exposed is becauseso it doesn't happen again and it cleans
us up. The reason why guysare talking to Matt Cole Alpha, you
know, with the you know,all these books that are out there,

(01:41:06):
Dave Phillips, the reason why allthese guys are talking to those guys is
because they've been trying to do itinternal for a long period of time and
they're getting no results and the corruptionkeeps going and so the only way to
clean it, unfortunately, is forus to go outside of it. And
so that's why I'm talking with youguys tonight. And that's why I've been

(01:41:29):
on the Green Green Beret Chronicles andanti hero podcasts and and I've been offered
to go on not on the jockos, and if you wanted to come on
to yours and you know, andtalk to me on yours, that'd be
great. So I'm not shying withbut I'm not going to go on to
I'm not going to go on totheirs, you know, on these other
ones that are out there. Andthere's a lot of guys that found religion

(01:41:50):
all of a sudden there and paintinga picture like I'm redeemed and you know,
and all this stuff. It's like, well, how many team guys
you do you fuck up the firstplace? You know, you know now
that you've come out that I wasa drug dealer and you know all this
other things that kind of are thingsthat you did, you know, while
you're active, but now you foundJesus all of a sudden, which,

(01:42:11):
hey, I'm a I'm a religiousguy. I'm not. I don't go
to church. I just lived bya moral compass that my grandfather taught me.
And you know, and I saygrandfather, but Buck Buck Buckle's who
I told you guys about made mewho I am stand up for what's right.
And I was only encouraged more andmore by the CCD instructors and you

(01:42:33):
know Dwayne Dieter himself to do standup and you know, have a purpose
behind your fight. You had mentionedearlier about like if we say that ninety
five ninety nine percent of the Sealedcommunity are just solid stand up dudes.
But you were talking earlier about thisculture, this small subset, but the

(01:43:00):
culture of sort of not necessarily blackmail, but I've got dirt on you,
You've got dirt on me type ofthing that happens amongst these individuals. Can
you tell us about that? Yeah, So, so when we got into
the ASoP world, well, firstthing, damn neck. It kind of
started down at damn neck with TimSemanski and you know who he basically kept

(01:43:24):
promoting down there. So it's likeAndy Stump says on one of his podcasts
that he didn't see any of thiscorruption and he didn't see anything negative or
whatever. But the one thing hesaid that he's where he saw corruption was
the advancement in the awards. Soif you control who gets the awards,
and you control who advances. Asfar as who do you think, are

(01:43:45):
you going to put it if you'rean if you're Tim Semanski or a Jocko,
are you going to put it?Are you going to advance somebody who's
got an ethical moral compass? No, you're going to promote somebody who's a
urd that's like you, that's notgoing to basically say anything or that you
know you can control. So withthe Aesop world, this stuff as far
as you learn how to get leverageover people. For the viewers who don't

(01:44:09):
know ASOT Advanced Special Operations and Tacticsis teaching special ops guys how to do
source handling and skills that are moreassociated with the CIA. Yeah, yeah,
but you learn how to basically getguys that do what you need them
to do, whether they do itbecause you motivate them, or you do

(01:44:30):
it because you got leverage over themin some sort and so it's it's you
know, it could be we're allin the same fight together, we're all
fighting the same cause, great stuff, or it could be it could be
like, hey, I'm gonna telleverybody. So just like with the Melgar
situation, what they were gonna doto him was fucking disgusting and and it
just like and I can't imagine anybodyever doing that to somebody and those anyway,

(01:44:56):
it bothers me that those guys didsomething like that and they thought they
could get away. That's irruption.Yeah, yeah, so that's so they
use these asot type you know,technical you know, skill sets and try
to manipulate and try to get leverageover people. And so a lot of
guys don't want to lose their trident. They don't want to get kicked out

(01:45:18):
of the teams. So if youdo something you know bad, you're you're
glad to get a lifeline and you'regonna do whatever that person kind of needs
for you. The problem is thatthe lifelines that they send you know that
they'll give something. Let's say yougot a young guy that gets a DUI

(01:45:39):
and he's definitely could learn from hismistake and kind of move on from it.
But if they didn't think that theycould control you as far as they
thought that you you're at the yourmoral compass, like I'm sorry, you
got to go shit can sorry youmade a mistake. But if we got
master chiefs over at damn neck that'sgot like four or five d UoS.

(01:46:00):
So how many times do you geta g UI before you realize that,
hey, you're you're just making amistake after mistake after mistake. And you
know, when it comes to tacticaldecisions, you know, bad things happen,
like extortion seventeen. Yeah. Soas far as the same guys that
basically make these are the problems forthe command that some people save end up

(01:46:25):
causing huge problems like extortion seventeen Redwings, yeah, Ridge Melgar, So
I hear you say in a coupleof things, One like guys like Stump
wouldn't have seen it because they weren'tin the Bad Boys Club, Like they
were kept out of that sort ofloop where they would see the effects of
it in the awards or whatever andthe promotions. But but they wouldn't necessarily,

(01:46:51):
Yeah, I can't say that hedidn't see it, Okay, And
I don't know how I can't.I don't know how he would have missed
it, and so honestly, Ican't say. And then we have other
situations like your sources have team wherethese these you know, confident like like

(01:47:11):
you know, heroes end up dyingbecause of a poor leadership decision, and
then that leadership doesn't get punished forit. They get promoted exactly so they
to hide their mistakes. The guysthat were you know, that are there
that might basically tell on them,They give them high awards with these and

(01:47:32):
basically just like, yeah, there'sa bad mistake, we learned from it,
and you know, they covered upwith awards. So our biggest mess
ups, our biggest failures, havegot some of our highest awards Congressional Medal
of Honor for for somebody. Comeon, I mean, it's it's ridiculous.
Do you imagine if if it's atthat level, can you imagine all

(01:47:55):
the smaller you know, bronze starswith these that are out there. And
that's there's another target rich environment forthe investigative reporters to figure out. This's
like, well, how many awardsdid Naval Special War forget? Because if
you got it, you wanted toearn it and you basically and I think
you should fucking wear it proudly.But if you didn't, you know,

(01:48:17):
it's it's something and you did it, just keep your mouth shut. There's
something that needs to be you know, because that situation ends up to other
guys not you know, same thingshappened to him. Red wings turns into
extortion seventeen. Right, So whatis like? First off, I think
you're very bright because I don't know, like I never saw any of this

(01:48:40):
stuff when I was in the radioof Itttalion or when I was deployed or
stuff like that, Like I neversaw Had I seen it, I don't
know if I would have. Idon't know. If it's the moral fortitude,
I don't know. Uh, Idon't know if I would be like,
well, shit went down, stuffhappened, and I'm going to cross
that. You know, in thecops it's the thin blue line, Like

(01:49:03):
I'm going to cross that because thereis, because you don't want to,
at least for me. I'll say, like, it's tough to throw the
entire brotherhood to the wolves when youknow it was just a few people.
And what's an operator who's still onthe job, you know, who's still

(01:49:30):
doing it supposed to do when theywant to keep operating, but they know
that if they do come forward thatit'll probably be the end of their career.
Yeah, so I think it couldbe you know, in two thousand
and eight. You know, Idid my IG complaint, right, but
I didn't retire to twenty sixteen.I'd made multiple deployments after that. So

(01:49:56):
I got for me getting the truthout there, knowing where you stand right
basically encourages other people basically to dothe right thing and illegal by the way.
Yeah, just like, here's anotherthing, and how did I get
here because I never had a platform, and I don't have a platform.

(01:50:17):
I'm on your platform. But Iwas watching somebody told me and say,
hey, this guy Matt Kugler whobasically did a thing on Joe Price.
Joe Price was myttashing the commander beforehe became the Seal team for commander.
You know, he did XO anddidn't commander there. So I know Joe
Price personally. I worked for himdirectly. And there's no way. When

(01:50:40):
I was told, you know,in Afghanistan, Dad he killed himself.
I'm just like that is there's noway Joe Price will ever commit suicide.
It doesn't make any sense. Thisis all bullshit. What's the real story
here? Knowing that, you know, there's a little bit of you know,
some guys in our community, andthen I would listen to Matt Kugler's
you know podcasts that he did on. I don't know if he's bringing Green

(01:51:03):
Beret Chronicles or Anti herod whatever oneit was on. I watched it and
I was just like, I fuckingknew it, and this is this is
a civilian who is just his highschool buddy, who is basically the parents
know that Job didn't kill himself andthey're trying to get the real story.
Matt Kubler just happens to be amarshall who investigated suicides and knew a lot

(01:51:27):
about it. Just happened to beJoe Price's high school buddy and job.
So he goes to the investigation andshows how there's no way Joe Price could
have killed himself. And I'm justlike, I fucking knew it. And
here's a civilian that's basically, youknow, calling it out. He's got
more mental fortitude than a lot ofthe team guys that basically I was just
like, how can I stand byand not? Basically and I said,

(01:51:49):
hey, really appreciate what you're doing. Matt. I think you hit the
you know, the nail on thehead there and goes, well, he
goes, if you want to doa podcast and you know, expose any
stuff it goes. I just happenedto know the anti hero, you know,
you know Tyler and Brent, andthen you know, then Jay later
on, and Jay's been you know, they've all been great. Jay's been

(01:52:10):
phenomenal. And so that's how theball got rolling. And it's not that
I'm that I'm happy I'm doing it, not that I'm you know, it's
as soon as I can go backinto you know, going away into the
sideline. That's why I'm not goingto do my own stuff. I'm not
trying to brand myself. I'm nottrying to do anything other than exposed to

(01:52:31):
America that we got some turns.Don't put them in the leadership positions.
Don't follow them, you know,for these reasons, and be be aware
that. You know, like whenJocko does a podcast, he sits there
and reads from a script. Whenhe did the one rebuttal against me,
like four thirty four zero point fiveor whatever, him and the other guy

(01:52:54):
are sitting there, they're flipping thepages at the same time, reading the
same script, and they don't evenaddress you know, they don't Jocko didn't
address that. He warned his guysthat the Seal Team sixth operator came in
there before Mark Lee got killed.Before Mark Lee got killed, he said,
hey, don't do this stupid shit. Then Mark Lee gets killed,
and then he says, guy goesin there and says, say you should

(01:53:15):
be fucking court martialed, and shitcan he says, fuck it, I'm
taking the TV and me he doesn't. He has he got no empathy for
his guys. He didn't give ashit about his guys. And and and
so for people to put him upon a pedestal and think that this is
a leader that we should follow orget behind, I bet you if you
know an investigative reporter, and thisis my you know, because I don't

(01:53:38):
know anybody how to do it.If you look at if you could figure
out if his books are plagiarized,I bet you they're all plagiarized. I
bet you would be. I don'tknow that for sure, but my opinion
is because he's not a good leader. He was never a good leader.
He's never been a good business operator. You know, he teams up with
a drug dealer, you know,to open up his gym. He starts,

(01:54:00):
you know, echelon front trying toteach businessman how to run a business.
He's never run a business. Allhe does the only thing that he's
done is being able to scam thepublic on his persona. And he's got
a great voice, talks like Batman, you know, blah blah blah.
He's a big meat head. Andso anyway, Eric, I I would

(01:54:23):
like to get into the death ofMelgar because I feel like you know,
like you I suppose I've been tellingpeople about some of this stuff for like
ten years, and I'll tell you, ten years ago, people looked at
me like I had a dick growingout of my forehead when I talked about
this. They're like, you arecrazy, Like you are just batshit delusional.

(01:54:46):
Here we are a decade later,and a lot of stuff has come
out, and I think people aremuch more primed. They're much more open
to understanding that, yeah, wehave a problem. And even the Chief
of Naval Special Warfare I think saidin a memo, we have a problem.
We've at least gotten to that pointand Melgar. I mean, one

(01:55:08):
of one of the frustrations I encounteredin the veteran community was that a lot
of people when I would bring upsome of the war crimes. You know,
it's this sort of like racist attitudeof like, well fuck them,
they're Muslims, they're brown people,whatever, which is pretty angering. But
then okay, we start tracing theethical and moral lapses, and that goes

(01:55:29):
on and on and on, andthat gets us to the point where we
as Special Operators are murdering one ofour own, which is Melgar and Molly.
And I don't know. I mean, if that's something you're going to
defend, you are just a despicable, reprehensible person. I mean, I
don't even know what to say tothat. So I would like to hear

(01:55:50):
your you know, what you knowabout Melgar's death and what happened there.
Unfortunately, I don't know much aboutthat one. So that was, you
know, some guys down to danNeck and so I'll tell you if I
know more information, but other thanthey were found guilty and that they,
you know, did something they shouldn'thave done. And anyway, I wish

(01:56:13):
I had more information, but Iam as equally disgusted by it, especially
finding out what they intended to doto him before they actually you know,
they killed him, you know,accidentally or what ho or whatever you want
to say it, that's not afucking hazing when you just when you what
what what I've what I've read,and I also don't have like like inside

(01:56:34):
information per se, but what I'veread about it is that Melgar became aware
that they some of the other guyswere using the op fund to pay sources,
they were embezzling some of that money, and he was not happy with
it. And these other guys concoctedthis scenario where they're going to you know,
essentially sexually assault him in his barracksroom and uh and in the process

(01:56:59):
of of them taking him up andchoking holding it down, Yeah, they
choked him and they killed and expiredon accident. Yeah, and that's you
know, doing the rear naked chokeas far as inappropriately not doing because this
guy was a mixed martial arts guythat you know anyway, when you're in
that type of a fight for yourlife, you fight for you. If

(01:57:20):
you know that's gonna happen to you, you're gonna fight so fucking hard to
make sure that doesn't happen to you. So Melgar fought fucking valiantly as long
as he could. But there wasit was two seals and multiple Marines that
were basically you know that was inthat situation, and that what's bad about
it is that those Marines were probablyhonorable guys thinking that, ok, you

(01:57:41):
know, I didn't know to theextreme that they were going to take this
too or I hope. Yeah.Yeah, they were just like maybe you
know, a these are seals,and you know, thinking that they're we
we do we do haze each otherquite a bit. Yeah, but they're
but they're all limits and crossed somebig ones. Yeah. Yeah, anything

(01:58:06):
penetrating is that I was gonna saythe same thing. Paint, our markers
and tape are fine. Uh,but penetration of any time, yeah,
it's probably probably we'll just say it'snot only a step too far, that's
a way, it's yeah, it'scriminal. Yeah yeah, and I would

(01:58:28):
kill somebody. Yeah, I wouldfight that hard to make sure that didn't
happen. I'm sorry. So I'mapologizing to you guys, because that should
never happen. These guys should haveyou know, that stuff should have been
id. They should have never beenputting those positions, you know, uh,
to to where they had those fundsthat they felt like they would basically

(01:58:53):
could take advantage of that situation.They weren't mature enough to handle that responsibility
representing the United States and a foreigncountry with you know, with US tax
payer dollars, thinking that they couldbuy hookers and drugs and do whatever,
and then when they get exposed,they're like, oh, ship, I'm
just gonna do something really extreme.And there's a challenge in the special operations

(01:59:17):
community. And this isn't just seals, this is all special operations that we
all love, uh. And I'mmaking a general statement here, but I
think that we all to some degreeembrace the hooligans and brigands type of mentality
and label. But there's also whenit's just outright theft and crime and fraud.

(01:59:45):
And you know, like huligan isn'tbrigands. We mean it in a
very sort of I think, lightheartedman. You know that the yes,
uh, the lines aren't always soclear. Yes, But if it's for
personal enrichment, like everybody steals likea one hundred mile and hour tape from

(02:00:05):
supply for their squad or for theyou know, for for their team.
If you mess something up on target, you may have been one hundred mile
an hour tape to a stretcher orsomething like that. Right, But but
there there's this idea of being hooligansand brigands but they're but but I think
that it is when it's for whenit's not like like morally reprehensible and it's

(02:00:30):
for the team. But the ideawhen it's for personal enrichment is when that
idea uh goes too far. Sowhen you're taking ops funds, when you're
trying to like uh finagel contracts,you know through you know, dubious means.
You know, when when you're stealingship from you know, from the

(02:00:51):
supply locker and selling on eBay,that is not that is not The hooligans
and brigands mentality goes along with specialoperations. Yeah, and and and again
it's like hazing. I think hazingis an important part of sort of the

(02:01:13):
special operations legacy because it's sort oflike it's it's in a way or ride
a passage. It's also like it'salso like seeing if a guy can take
the stress and pressure of it andstill like and not because there's a lot
of stress and pressure on combat.And if you can't take the stress and
pressure of hazing, can you trusthim in combat, which is also why
hazing really for a lot of unitssort of went away during the g WATT

(02:01:38):
because now it's like everybody's gonna bein the stress and pressure of combat anyway.
So what's the point of taping themto a tree and pulling down his
shorts? You know? Do wewant to take some picture? Yeah,
questions, We'll take pictures too,But yeah, I bet ive got a
bunch of questions. I can onlyimagine we covered a lot of time.

(02:01:59):
We've got to pull them up.So so Eric with this, because I
know you've gotten a lot of criticismabout, you know, being a jocko
hater or being a seal hater,or being this or being that. From
talking to you, it seems asthough you're you're just trying to bring light
to these situations for a small percentage. Yes, all that, I've got

(02:02:26):
a lot of hate meal within mycommunity, which I didn't as far as
a lot of guys are just like, thank god you're doing this and thank
god you're coming out. As faras I know, it's embarrassing and it
kind of hurts us as this,but everybody knows it already. It's already
out there. You guys all knowyou know this is there's there's little information
that I've people fined for you,but you everybody knows it, and so

(02:02:51):
we got to own it ourselves.And this is us owning it. And
they're just like and a lot ofthem, you know, they're in the
military contracting thing. They're just alot of them. Wish they could come
out and do exactly what I'm doing. I don't have to rely on anything,
you know, for my living fromNSW or military or anything else like
that. I'm living. I'm livingmy best life and having a great time.

(02:03:14):
Eric. I'm happy I have todo this, but I think it's
important to do it. And Igot to look at myself in the mirror
and all the good team guys,well, you know the group of us
that we that are calling us thetrue brotherhood or want this to come out
and we want to expose it.That's why Code of a Country is so
successful. That's why alf all theseit's a cry for help. And if

(02:03:38):
NSW is not going to do itthemselves, then us prior frogmen and active
duty frogmen, we're going to goto investigative reporters and get it cleaned up
and I encourage it to happen becauseuntil that happens, we're not going to
be the Seal teams that we usedto be. And I want the Seal
teams to be the Seal teams thatused to be because we're solid, professional

(02:04:00):
Guy Anders, ninety percent of theSeals are just great fucking dudes crushing it
out there, and we got aten percent that's just fucking destroying us.
So and unfortunately, there are alot of big leadership positions. Eric.
This question we got in kind ofspeaks directly to this Christian asks, I
would like to know what your objectivesare by spreading this message. Is it

(02:04:24):
that you simply wan want to preventJocko's book sales? Two, want to
state that Jocko's message is wrong?Or three? Is it that Jocko is
simply the wrong messenger? And hesays, I'm not a Jocko fan in
the slightest, But Jocko did comeback with a twenty hour response. So
I just wanted Eric's thoughts. Yeah, so my I could care less,

(02:04:47):
you know about his books and whathe does and all that type stuff.
My thing is that I just wantedto expose him for what he is because
when he does go off the railsor he does do something here in a
few that's because it's his tendency.He failed multiple different times. He's going
to do something. Once I comeout with this, I bet your there's

(02:05:08):
going to be like twenty people thatwork for him are going to say,
well, guess what, Jocko didthis. Jocko did this. So it
just it's going to come out eventually. It's just that I'm you know,
getting in front of it and saying, hey, he doesn't represent the seal
community. He never represented the sealcommunity correctly. And just because you guys
got duped doesn't mean that you know, it happens to the best of us.

(02:05:31):
And if you just watch them,you'll find out, like, holy
shit, Eric's Eric's kind of spoton on this, you know, calling
him out the way I am.I got another question here. This one
is actually a very in depth questionabout Iran. Is that is that a
particular focus for you or something thatyou're prepared to like speak to Iran.

(02:05:54):
Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't knowmuch to tell you truth. Okay,
then we we did a funny wellnever mind, I won't get into it
on the boardings a funny story.Come on, well, we accidentally took
down an Iranian ship one of thoseoperations and we had to get off of

(02:06:15):
it really quick, but I dohave the flag from it. Yeah.
No, I'm sorry m D whoasked this question. This is like a
super specific, in depth question aboutIran and I don't think Erik's prepared to
answer that what we got on theYouTube. So M Corbyn, thank you
very much. Uh he says you'rea sexual Tyrannosaurus rex. Sir, thanks,

(02:06:43):
I'm not I'm not sure who thatwas you. I think it's talking
to I think it's for D.I'm not sure, but thanks, uh
yeah, thank you. Uh.I mean I'm just imagining the small arms
trying to get it, you knowwhat the you know what the no,
seriously, paleontologists they think the littleORMs. No one knows what they were

(02:07:05):
for. But there's a theory thatit was for mounting the female. Oh
just a hook on. There yougo, true story. Yeah, there
you go. Fun fact for youout there here today. Anonymous, Thank
you? Oh uh, Anonymous,thank you very much. What advice would
you give to women that want tobe Navy seals? A woman made it

(02:07:27):
today for a budget first phase thisyear. But she quit. So I'm
a little conflicted because it does changethe dynamic of the guys around you when
you got a female around you.So it so we had the female engagement
teams, which were you know theydid They crushed it on the battlefield,

(02:07:51):
they did great things and we hadsolid operators. I just don't know if
they should be the same pipeline,you know, as far as you know,
going along the side of the guys, I think they can make it,
you know, a women's side ofit, you know, equally as
challenging as demanding, but be allaround women. I'm kind of conflicted on
it because I think there's a hugepositive to having them along with you on

(02:08:13):
a lot of operations. And uh, but I don't know how the the
interaction with the guys around her,you know, going through training would be
would you say that for the women, like I mean the advice would be
to get through a selection, theadvice would be the same for the guys,
like be in shape and don't quit, like suck it up. Yeah,

(02:08:35):
well you could. And honestly,I think anybody that wants it bad
enough can get through buds as faras this matters how bad you want it.
You know, when I was goingthrough buds and we had to sit
there and tread water with the uhdouble, you know, aluminum's on
my back. As far as andI was an experienced diver, I'm just
like, I said, fuck it, I'm just gonna drown it. I'm

(02:08:58):
not gonna quit because we're tread andwater and got the guys pulling you under
water, and you know, it'sa beehive situation. Everybody's kind of panicking
a little bit cause everybody wants tobut you've been tread and water for now
fifteen twenty minutes with these huge fuckingtanks on your back, and you're just
like, I'm exhausted. I can't. I'm just like, so I had
made decisions. I said, screwit, I'm just going to drown and
go under water and the instructors aregoing to come in and save me.

(02:09:20):
I'm not quitting, though, Butthat was the dedication that I was willing
to drown myself. Not that youhave to do that. It was just
that's I don't recommend it. Luckilyit didn't happen. You know, I
got to the bottom of the pool, and I was just I didn't like
it down there either, So Icame back up one more time and that's
when they secured us. Yeah,but I was going to drowned. Yeah,
So I don't get me. Itwas like in high school, I

(02:09:43):
was a little better than an averageathlete. I broke my high school record
for the most tackles or what.We had a great you know, I
peaked in high school because I hada great high school you know, football
career. But but I'm saying Iwasn't you know, when I showed up
to do the first diving screening testor whatever, and the Seal motivator was
basically said, all right, yougot to swim this distance and you've got

(02:10:07):
to use their side stroke of thebreaststroke. And he goes, if I
see your hands come out of thewater, and I point to you,
get out of the pool because youfailed. I'm like, how the hell
do you swim without your hands comingout of the water. That's how how
kind of stupid I was, orignorant I was. And so you can
learn all that stuff as far asto get better at it, get better,

(02:10:28):
running better, that's all that's trainable. It's the mental side of it
that you're just like, you're goingto do what it takes. You're going
to prep yourself. You're going toprepare, You've got to do all the
droundproofing stuff. It's going to besecond nature to you because you've done it
a hundred times. It is notlike the first time you do it is
when you're out at buds. Sothat all this stuff is known what you
should do to prep for it,and it should be to get through,

(02:10:52):
and we should have huge success gettingthrough because because everybody knows what you need
to do to get through. Somebodyasked, I haven't. I don't know,
like I don't follow uh sort ofmilitary like the drama and what.
I don't know anybody, but somebodyasked, Uh, somebody said that don
Champley Shipley had a response to you, Uh do you have what did you

(02:11:16):
think of his response? I don'tknow what that is. Yeah, I
don't. I don't know what thatis either. I don't see your response.
I think what what I have heardis there's a lot of because he
calls out phony seals, right,and and so you've got a lot of
guys out there, So what's what'sworse to me, is you got a

(02:11:39):
guy claiming that he's the seal that'sin this you know, small little bar
somewhere or doing. You know,somehow he's got some acculates saying he's the
seal and he's not, and he'ssomehow he's been able to benefit from it.
But it's it's on a small thing. What's worse to me is a
Tim Sumanski who is an Avy sealand he uses his run and he uses

(02:12:01):
his position to try to stop Chapmanfrom getting a fucking Congressional Medal of honor.
So what's worse tim Semanski or aguy claiming him is the seal over?
Yeah? Yeah, to get laidyou know, as far as it's
just it's childish, you know,it's just like okay, this day and
age. You know, it's theglobal War on terrors. When we're actually

(02:12:22):
in war, that shit doesn't matteranymore. Those guys aren't going to out
there doing it or whatever. Andif they do, it's another person I'm
feel sorry for. Just like,oh my god, you gotta look at
yourself in the mirror. Uh.Magnus Red, thank you very much is
a regiment and mconnais company officially partof officially a part of Jason. I'd

(02:12:43):
have to ask, Yeah, yeah, you check Wikipedia. I'll tell you
what. The Marines were awesome,yea. And every time I've worked with
him, I've been around him asfar as some of the most stand up,
solid guys. The two Marines thatcame on you know, that spoke,
you know what they saw from taskinga bruiser while they were there,

(02:13:05):
you know, just solid, greatguys, and they did it because they
do just doing the right thing andthey do it. And those are just
two of the Marines of the manythat basically have spoken to me. Since
then, and since I've done thesepodcasts, there's people reaching out to our
network of not only me, butmultiple other seals and exposing more and more

(02:13:26):
stuff. So if you're a teamguy and you don't like what I'm saying,
it's probably because you're one of theturns that need to go away.
If you're not, and you're justlike any exposing, just like I'm helping
you out by basically trying to makesure this stuff. These guys like Tim
Semanski and Jocko don't get in chargeof men that get them killed. Both

(02:13:50):
those guys got good seals killed becauseof their poor leadership and their poor decision
and they didn't care about their guys'lives that they put out there. Joe's
gotcha, thank you very much.Do you think because of how big and
successful the seal brand has become thatit's attracting the wrong type of candidates into
the teams? One hundred Well somewhatyes, because a lot of people don't

(02:14:18):
know that the ones that the branders, the people that are out there branding
it, aren't the norm. It'snot our quiet, professional, good guys,
the ones that are willing to goout and to do this type stuff.
And now me being one, youknow, kind of out there doing
it, but I'm not doing itfor any personal benefit. I'm not trying
to brand myself. All I'm tryingto do is expose the branders that are

(02:14:43):
doing it so that other people don'tdo it. So, yes, if
we got guys that are getting intothe teams thinking that they can become a
movie star or do podcasts or writebooks, do one platoon and then write
a book about being a Navy sealand just like and so that's what you
know. The investigative reporters needed.Just like all these books that came out

(02:15:05):
sale books, who who backed them? Who backed Loan Survivor, who backed
you know, American Sniper who youknow? These who are the puppet masters
that are controlling Marcus Latrell right nowdoing a podcast Team Never Quit. I
mean that the worst slap on theface is the guy that quit on the
battlefield has now got a podcast?Who is you know? And you know

(02:15:28):
Marcus isn't capable of running that himself. There's there's puppet masters that are controlling
Marcus and making him make some baddecisions and not expose what he's doing trying
to make money. And then yougot all the you know, all the
false awards, and these guys dospeaking engagements. You know, if you
get Congressional Medal of Honor and comesspeak at your your your event, it

(02:15:52):
brings some cloud that you could bringin somebody of that. Well, if
it's a false award that this guyis getting money for, just like who
promoted that award, who's getting thekickback from promoting that award? Well,
and then you have then you havethe majority of the guys who you know,
people like Red who you know youwill probably you know hopefully we hear

(02:16:13):
from him someday. Hopefully he comesout and tells his story. But he's
drinking my ties on the beach somewhere. But yeah, or you know,
or growing weed or doing doing whatever, you know, whatever he wants to
do. You know, like he'syou know, you have people, and
there are so many of those guysout there. And look, there's nothing
wrong with developing a public person Imean, Jack and I both have public

(02:16:37):
personas. You know, there's nothingwrong with that. It's just there's so
many guys out there who are justcontent to live their life and and not
or you have somebody like what's thatpodcast or that mister Ballin who he was
he was a seal, but hejust does weird shit video. It was

(02:17:00):
like creepy stuff for cool stuff,you know, and it's not about it.
Yeah. Yeah, but I'm sayingthat, you know, it sounds
like he's not representing us too wellNo, no, no, you know,
he's great, he's great. Youknow what I'm saying though, is
that is that, you know,it is interesting. For instance, I

(02:17:20):
think the people that really build theirbrand on what they did and not taking
anything away from that, because ifyou did it you you deserve it and
you have to make a living.And if you went to Harvard, you're
going to tell people you went toHarvard, right, like, there's nothing
that it's true and it was allaccurate information. I supported one hundred percent.

(02:17:41):
If you're not giving away TTPs forSOPs and you're not exposing you know,
people that you're not supposed to beexposing, as far as you're just
telling a story, that's interesting thatwe need heroes, we need guys that
basically that represent the community correctly anddid the right thing on the battlefield,
did the right thing in life,did the right thing in training. And

(02:18:03):
those guys, you know, Igot no problem with them doing and capitalizing
on their experience in the team,so that that's great. And if they
wrote a book and it's accurate,great, shut on them, like or
Cayle Mullins, Uh seel wrote agreat book. He did it, not
Kyle Mullens. That's I'm sorry.He was the seal or the candidate got
killed mixing up things Milligan and uhsorry, sorry, Kyle. Kyle should

(02:18:30):
have been a you know we've hadwe've had on you know, and he's
a great Okay, I mean wewouldn't have a show if people weren't willing
to share their stories. And sharingtheir stories is an important part because you
know, it's just like these historiesneed to be told, they need to
be remembered, they need to beaccessible. Uh you know, and he
was I'm pretty sure he was thatteam for with me. And he was

(02:18:52):
a good operator, so as faras uh, you know, on top
of being a good author, youknow, he was a good operator.
So a good dude. So yeah, I'm glad that we shout out we
love you man. Uh, we'lleven let you come back even though you
were a seal. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, that's what that brings up
a great point. There are greatguys out there doing that, are steals

(02:19:16):
doing great stuff. I know I'mbashing, I'm bashing some of them,
but it's a small percentage. Andthat's what you know. Unfortunately, the
public has put these small percentage becausethey're willing to brand themselves and in a
false way. And and I'm justbringing light to hey, they didn't do
what they said they did when theywere active doing it's all. It's also

(02:19:37):
interesting what like people pick up onher when they pick a side, because
like when uh. You know whenwe talked about Eddie Gallagher, right,
and and people are like, oh, you know, you guys are bashing
seals. It's like, well,but there were seals who testified against them.
So which which which side are weon? Which which vet are we

(02:20:00):
supporting? You know? And withshields? Do we hate? You know,
do we hate Eddie Gallagher? Dowe do we hate the seals that
we're testifying as m Like, youknow, we don't hate any veterans,
you know, it's like we wejust want to explore the truth. So
for for that many guys to bandtogether to and too to call out hit

(02:20:24):
their leadership as far as Eddie Gallagher, that's that's that speaks volumes to me,
right and uh so one guy's wordover this many you know, many
other guys and then, knowing whatit takes to call out your own right,
actually gone down that trail. Iknow how hard it is, and

(02:20:45):
I know that it ruined their careers, you know as far as that,
you know a lot of them gotout because they were just like, screw
this. You know, I'm anhonorable guy, and you guys are bashing
me for standing up and doing what'sright, and just like and you guys
are taking this guy's word over mine, and just like, just like not
taking Jesse Venture's word over Chris Kyle. Now everybody knows what a liar Chris

(02:21:09):
Kyle was, but at the time, there were so many Team guys bashing
Jesse and it was unjust uncalled forand it was sick. You know,
It's it's bullshit, right because he'syou know, he was an honorable frog
man that basically did great things forus. So I got no, I
got no. You know, afterreading Alpha, I kind of have to

(02:21:35):
and when when in the book andis well sourced or what he would have
been sued, you know, asfar as it would be, you know,
So it's it's a well sourced bookin my opinion. And when the
ego d guy gets shot and youknow, and can die, and they
instead of calling for a meta backto that spot, they basically they hide

(02:21:56):
where they're at. They basically transportthem all the way back with a chance
of him dying. It's like overbecause he doesn't want to get exposed for
doing something that he wasn't supposed That'swhere the line was was drawn for me.
That was when they left their blueForce trackers behind right so that they
they turned them off. And he'sjust like, especially with close in air

(02:22:18):
support, and You're just like,and how easy it is to misidentify a
group, and just like, sothose guys could have gotten blown up,
you know, by our frintly fireeasily. That happened even on Jocko's deployment.
They got you know, blue andblue situations because they're doing stupid ship
not telling everybody what they're doing.And those guys are all talking about that
stuff too, breddy good, Thankyou very much. Uh. Has Eric

(02:22:41):
seen Men of Honor with Cuba gettingJunior? And is it his favorite or
second favorite Navy Diver movie? It'smy I don't know of any other named
diver movies, but it's an awesomeone. Yeah, I said, you
have the that was more Navy Seals? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I

(02:23:03):
would so Navy Seal with Charlie Sheenor you know the Diver movie. Would
you know? Carl was a truehero And I think I think he died
recently, like within the last likefifteen or twenty years. I think in
out in New Jersey, right,I think it was it. Yeah,

(02:23:24):
Like no, he was a truehero. For sure, and if you
have not seen Men of Honor,you definitely need to because it's an amazing
movie and it's a true story.It's funny because I got a it's a
replica, but I got a Markfive dive helmet. Is because I love
my navy diving career, you know, as far as you should see.
I I'll purposely don't put all thepaddles and plaques and do it with this

(02:23:48):
thing behind me. But I gota lot of cool memorabilia stuff that I
just cherish. Yeah, my Markfive dive helmet, you know, is
one of them, and it's youknow, I'm pretty crowded. I unfortunately
onto my plaque with the the oldMark five dive knife I had. I
had a plaque you know when Ileft with with one of those, and
those are like almost impossible to findnow. But yeah, I got one

(02:24:09):
of those too, and I gotit, you know. So I was
telling you earlier about it. Mynavy dive buddy Ted, and uh,
we were both high school buddies.He become a navy diver, I became
a Navy diver, and but hehe gave it to me because you know,
when I was telling you he dida lot of stuff with subs,
and they would be inside subs sometimesin some of the lockout things till you
could bang on. Yeah, thisis a screw motion. It's like in

(02:24:33):
this heavy brass. It's a heavybrass. It's a heavy brass round sheath
with you got you got your storydown day, yeah story. Yeah.
Yeah, it's it's a solid yeah. Yeah. It's a cool knife to
have. Yeah yeah, Kyle Pee, thank you very much. Has the

(02:24:56):
relationship between n s W and AFSCimproved after the Chapman Medal of Honor?
Probably not. I mean, Ithink the way we handled that and didn't
call out our guys as far asand I'm hoping this will start to repair
that situation because I'm telling you rightnow it should never have happened, and

(02:25:20):
unfortunately we didn't weed out people thatwe should have earlier make sure that stuff
didn't happen. It's embarrassing to itto our community, and I apologize for
my community. That is, ifwe don't have anything else on, No,
I think that's all we got.There's more, I asked them,

(02:25:43):
Yeah, I think we might haveone more. Well, God, damn
it? All right? For sure? Oh, Okay, I got it.
Uh okay. From the outside,it seems like soft a try at
the most true believers in service inaddition to weeding out psychopaths, et cetera.

(02:26:05):
Did you spot an excess of patriotismor however you would describe it and
try to correct it. Thank youfor sharing these insights. Yeah, I'm
not sure how to answer that one. Yeah, I don't know what an
excess of patriotism is other than ifyou know, you get so far out

(02:26:26):
over your skis that you're losing trackof reality. But yeah, I'm not
entirely sure what he I don't thinkyou can have I don't know how you
could have too much patriotism. Youknow, as long as you're justified in
your actions, your your escalation offorce, you're doing things correctly to the
threat that's presented, and you're doingit for America, you know, as

(02:26:48):
far as I can't think of it, I've been to a lot of other
countries in the world, and byfar, we're the best. And and
I love America and I would Iwould go through everything I've gone through exactly
almost identical. Seal community. Ithink it's the greatest community out there.

(02:27:09):
It's just the most solid guys thatyou ever want to go be in a
wartime situation have on your shoulders,left and right behind you. Is that
I never had the work the guysthat I did platoons with the guys that
I were tasking, I never hadto worry about what they were doing.
I knew they they controlled their zoneresponsibility. They knew I had mine and
that we could. You know,we did great things and we're all solid

(02:27:33):
guys, and so you know,all the platoons I did were greatly love
them. Do you want to teaseout Friday's episode? Yes, So on
Friday, we are having uh,we're uh, yeah, we're having pad
O'donald back thanks with his book andVanquished, which is about special operations during

(02:27:56):
the Civil War. You know,presently cans attempt to like, yeah,
the special operations, the attempt tofind most of these rangers, like a
lot of very cool stuff. Ihaven't finished the book yet, but I
will. It's getting a ton ofgreat reviews. And I know Pat was
researching this. We've had pat Onbefore. He's a historian author, and

(02:28:18):
I know he was researching this bookfor a really long time. So if
you want to hear about like specops way back in the day. We
haven't had Pat on the show inlike three years. Yeah, yeah,
so check them out on Friday.Eric, thank you so much for spending
your Friday night or Monday night withus. We really appreciate it. Yeah.

(02:28:41):
I appreciate you guys having me on, and I hope so for the
people out there that, especially ifyou're people that are going to start bashing
me because of this. It happens. As far as I read the comments
I respond to. You know alot of them, especially if they're just
kind of pissing me off, butI and they shouldn't bother me. But
you know, you know, someof them are just so childish and so

(02:29:05):
whatever, and those ones all ignore. But ones that come from it,
I can tell it comes from ateam guy who's trying to paint, you
know, a picture. At leastdon't be a pansiasmatherfucker puts your name on
it. I'm putting my face outthere, and I'm willing to stand behind
what I'm saying. Don't be apiece of shit and basically make a comment
as being like coming from you're anoperational team guy. You know, as
far as without putting your name onit. And then you know, so

(02:29:28):
anyway, you know, I'll standbehind what I'm saying, stand behind what
you're saying, and that's when youmost of them won't do it. So
you know, if you're if you'reopen to it, maybe on our Patreon
if you we could put the complaintand I'd be happy to you know,

(02:29:50):
and you know, maybe some ofthe some of the course reviews, if
you're open to it, Yeah,yeah, no, I'll put some stuff
together as far as some after actions, as far as the critiques of you
know, some of the key guysthat you know basically that talk shit,
you know, or that might saysomething negative because I'll tell you honestly,

(02:30:11):
the biggest Travis D that you knowhas happened because of Jocko and Tim Sumanski
is when they got rid of CQDand just so everybody, So just so
that everybody out there, as faras that's active duty right now, Dwayne
is still training everybody and everybody nothe's selective, you know, and it's
still quiet professional but he's got atraining site up with kill houses and three

(02:30:33):
hundred whatever acres of property of LongRanges and he's still busy as as he
can possibly be. He does alot of great stuff for kids and you
know, a heroes programs. He'sstill crushing it up there, and we
need those ethics brought back into NSWand he doesn't give a ship. He'll

(02:30:56):
start training tomorrow. You know,people reach out to him like ourselves that
need that training. And I'll tellyou right now, it is life changing,
life saving training. And that's whyit was for twenty two years and
why these two turns had to getrid of it because it exposed them for
being turns. Well, it's interestingbecause what was that old video cause because
like when you mentioned like Frank Kushi, like, I know that the teams

(02:31:22):
training under like Vernac Runac or youknow the j the JKD stuff, and
you know, and then Frank couldbut a lot of those guys were coming
out with those was it Panther videos? What was the video company that you'd
see in Soldier of Fortune and BlackBelt Manguts over a few but but they
would always have those huge like pageads about the secret hand to hand you

(02:31:46):
know techniques and Navy seals and they'dbe like armed with only a knife,
and I'd be like why would theygo into combat armed with only a knife?
You know, Yeah, but thetactical failures of just like, how
did you end up in that situationin the first place? Just like and

(02:32:07):
so it's it's when you when youget into the operational world and you start
understanding what's operational and what's not.You quickly find out that why in the
hell would I be doing Why wouldI be carrying a hatchet? You know,
going on target? You know,as far as it doesn't there's a

(02:32:28):
lot of not you know, itlooks cool and some I don't know if
you some of you, but youquickly realized there's no tactical when we are
trying to shred ounces on our bodyarmor and we're trying to make us because
we got to carry all this stuff, and you got to and you're carrying
a one or two pound friggin somethingthat's not tactically sound to use when you

(02:32:50):
would ever have to use it wouldprobably you've made so many tactical infractions that
you probably shouldn't have a gun inthe first place, in my opinion.
So I'll tell you that I carrieda tomahawk my first few ops because I
grew up and like idolizing the LURTguys and you know, the guys in

(02:33:15):
Vietnam that carried stuff like that,because there was an operational use for it
in Vietnam for those guys. Butin my mind, I had it,
you know, that was what Ithought. I also have mentioned before that
I had a magazine full of tracersbecause they did. The tracers got me
almost shot the fuck up because ittold the enemy exactly where I was,

(02:33:41):
and it's unnecessary in a time whenyou have IR lasers and ye and that
the tomahawk went away after I figuredout it was really hard getting over a
wall with shit hanging all over yourgear, and the fact that once your
primary goes down and your second earhe goes down, it's probably not time

(02:34:01):
to pull out. You know.First off, if your primary ant secondary
gone down, there's something wrong.And then by the time you'll get a
Tomawk out, things are really thingsare really out of control. Yeah.
Yeah, Now it brings up agood point because when we when I first
started a sw you know, everylike tenth round was you know, a
trace around because we didn't have theyou know, the MDGs and stuff like

(02:34:22):
that. So as far as youknow, as we evolved, we get
better, and we started we alldid we all did stupid things when we
were young, and then we weren'treally in a war situation as drastically and
we start to realize that thing,you know, white light compromises you as
far as not having a suppressor,you know, basically muzzle flash when you

(02:34:43):
when you when you get the IDthe bad guy because of the muzzle flash,
you appreciate that you don't have muzzleflash. Yeh yeah, Well,
Eric, thank you so much forcoming and spending a few hours of your
time on the show with us andspitting some some tough pills to swallow,
but I think it's important for peopleto hear them. Yeah, and to

(02:35:07):
my community out there, I'm justtrying to help us, so I hope
this helps. I really do.Thank you man, appreciate I appreciate you
know, the integrity and we'll seeall of you guys on Friday with Pat
O'Donnell be there, b Square.Thank you thanks for having me on

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Navy SEAL Makes Shocking Claims About Prominent SEALs | Eric Deming | Ep. 281

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Navy SEAL Makes Shocking Claims About Prominent SEALs | Eric Deming | Ep. 281