Lima Charlie Episode #27 with Rudy Denke

Marine Corp Counter Intelligence

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hmmm hmm. I've got no reason.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
The chief of a killing scene with a need to
blease you with the light goes dream lest believe them,
and the zone to be from a end of a
kom aane.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
To see good. Agree Amus here when.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
You call the belice, because I'll weird.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
I'm a one of a kind and I'll bring death
to the glacier about.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
To meet another river of blood running under my feet.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Orson I fold long ago, stand next to me.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
You'll never stand alone.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
My last to leave, but the first to go.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
The Lord make me dead.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Before you make me old a fee on the fear
of the devil inside of the enemy faces in my sight,
being with a hand or shoe, with a mind, quill
with a.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Heart like artive grice.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Soldier Mary, I am a worry and this is my song.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
Of the race to the ground of an enemy.

Speaker 4 (01:23):
Sure I read you, Lima Charlie, loud and clear. Welcome
to another episode of stew And then unpresents Lima Charlie.
I'm joined with my guest, Rudy Denky. Welcome, Rudy, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (01:41):
So tell us a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
I'm the chief executive officer of a corporation with multiple
suppordinate companies. We own Lady Legacy, Bedford and Saturday Morning
Westerns dot Com.

Speaker 4 (01:53):
Okay, uh so your former marine, well, I guess you're starting.
You're always a marine, always amne. It was never never former.
So let's talk about what you know. You went into
the Marine Corps. What brought you to the Marine Corps?
What made you choose that?

Speaker 3 (02:09):
The love of this country and the hope for the
future that we have and the need to be able
to protect what we do have.

Speaker 4 (02:17):
Good did you think about any other branch? Did you
think it? Look at the Air Force, Army, Navy.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
So I actually started out in the Army. I was
in the Army from nineteen eighty six to nineteen eighty
eighties and eleven Bravo, and then did an Inner service
transfer and spent the next twenty two years in the
United States Marine Corps.

Speaker 4 (02:34):
That's awesome. That's awesome. So did you have to go
back through basic training or was that just a kid
you did to go.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Through boot camps. Well, in the Army, I went through.
I got caught up in the mid eighties where you're
supposed to go through college and you know, you go
to basic training one semester and AIT the next, and
airborne the next and RIP after that. Well you get
in for it Benning and they don't let you off.
So basic training, AIT, airborne, and RIP and that went
back to my reserve unit in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, and

(03:00):
then active duty shortly after that.

Speaker 4 (03:03):
Okay, so so you did go activity after that? Okay,
So what what what made you choose to transfer from
the from the Army. I mean, you're already in You're
you're an eleven bang bang right, yeah, yeah, you're you're
Let me let me back up a little bit. So
when you when you went to Benning. Uh so when
when eleven series goes through basic training, they usually go

(03:26):
usually separates out and they go, okay, your eleven bravo, leven, Charlie, leven, Mike.
You know. So I'm assuming they did the same thing
for you and and you just lucked out to get
eleven bravo?

Speaker 3 (03:34):
And is that what you wanted out to get eleven bravo?

Speaker 4 (03:36):
Okay? Okay, so then what what made you transfer to
the Marine Corps.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
The reserve unit that I was with was in an
Arctic light infantry brigade, and they did a lot of
things at the time that in in my estimation, if
they ever went to combat, they were going to hurt people.
And that truly scared me at that point in time.
So we did a hump and it was a twenty
two mile hump in some blows zero temperatures with full

(04:05):
combat gear, and they didn't have vehicles for support, they
didn't have medics or anybody else. When somebody dropped by
the whend somebody dropped out of the hump, they up
to sit by the side of the road. And that's
just not anything I wanted to be a part of.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
Do you think this was was maybe because it was
a reserve unit or do you think.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
It absolutely was not reflective of active duty at the time.
It was the time of just a reserve unit in
the mid eighties when they were still when we were
still fighting the Cold War, and it was just in
my estimation part timers who had a lack of planning.

Speaker 4 (04:41):
Okay, okay, So you get done with with a forbidding
and you went to rip, you said.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
I did, What did you think of that?

Speaker 4 (04:51):
What was that?

Speaker 3 (04:52):
Like? A lot of work and a lot of and
very little sleep.

Speaker 4 (04:57):
Yeah, so you graduated that, right, and then you go
you go back to your reserve unit, and then that's
when you transferred from reserves to active in the Marine Corps.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
That's exactly right, okay.

Speaker 4 (05:09):
And so then were you Hollywood Marine or were you
paras Isgmond, Hollywood Diego, San Diego?

Speaker 3 (05:16):
All right?

Speaker 4 (05:17):
So when when you get to when you get to
San Diego, and uh, I'm former Army, but i come
from a family of Marines, so I've got a little
bit of understanding of some of it. So you get
to San Diego and uh, were you thinking, oh, ship
would why did what did I choose? Why did I
choose this?

Speaker 3 (05:37):
It was it was quite a wake up, especially since
you know, I went to I went to boot camp
in the Marine Corps, and I'd already been to the
School of Airborne. So I had a set of wings
on my chest, which for which for a private was
already you know, putting me on the skyline. And then
my senior drill instructor was a rigger. He was a
parachute rigger. So he decided to have a lot of

(05:57):
fun through the throughout the course of basic through camp.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
So is that a Marine Corps rigger. Is that a
former Army rigger? Went Marine Corps?

Speaker 3 (06:04):
It's a Marine Corps parachute rigger.

Speaker 4 (06:05):
Okay, okay, I'm familiar with it, with the Army riggers.
I didn't know the Marine Corps had riggers. I thought
they just used the Army.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
No, okay, we have our own riggers.

Speaker 4 (06:14):
So you get to you get to San Diego, nice, Sonny.
What time of year is it in San Diego?

Speaker 3 (06:19):
I went on. I left on the on the eighth
of February of nineteen eighty eight, So.

Speaker 4 (06:24):
Still cold in Wisconsin, still snow on the ground, probably
for another couple of months. Get in California. Had you
trampled outside of Wisconsin? Much other than basic training and
benning and stuff like that, No.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
Not much.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
So.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
The very first time I was on an aircraft was
going to Fort Benning, Georgia. The second time I was
jumping out of an aircraft.

Speaker 4 (06:41):
Okay. So you get to sunny California. You're looking out
over the beach. You gotta you gotta, you gotta uh
uh do I screaming at you and you're thinking, oh shit,
what did I do? And damn it's probably hot?

Speaker 3 (06:56):
It was, you know, you go through all the things
that you see with every boot Camp movie. And this is,
you know, the nineteen eighties, so things were still in
a different generation than they are now, that's for sure.

Speaker 4 (07:08):
Sure was was it pretty easy for you since you
had already been through Army boot Camp?

Speaker 3 (07:16):
It was? They were challenging in different ways. Sure, So
in the Marine Corps everything revolved about being mentally tough
and and one hundred percent it didn't matter who the
enemy was or how they were equipped. Your role in
life was to take them out. And they inculcated that

(07:36):
from day one all the way to to the point
when you graduated from boot camp.

Speaker 4 (07:41):
Okay, and when you went to the Marine Corps, did
you go three eleven?

Speaker 3 (07:45):
So colorblind? So I started off as an admin clerk,
and I spent eighteen months as an admin clerk. I
got meritoriously promoted three times. So I got meritoriously promoted
to private first class, lance, corporal, corporal, and sergeant four times,
rather four times meritoriously promoted. Eighteen months later, I did
a lateral move into the counter and tolden human community, Okay, so.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
They being colorblind, you can't do three eleven in the
Marine Corps, but you can do infantry.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
In the in the army, I could do infantry in
the army.

Speaker 4 (08:14):
Yeah, that that doesn't make any sense to me.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
It didn't make any sense to me either. I have
no idea. I have no idea. I just and you
don't really have a lot of choices in the matter.
So this is what you're going to do, all right,
this is what I'm going to do. So yeah, and
made the best of it and got promoted a couple
of times until I was until I made sergeant and
then I was eligible to do a lot moving into
the counter and tolden human community.

Speaker 4 (08:35):
That was That was one of the reasons why I
chose the Army and didn't choose the Marine Corps was
because I got to choose my job. I knew what
I wanted to do, and the Marine Corps is like, Nope,
We're going to put you where we want to put you. Yeah,
so at the knees of the Marine Corps, which I get.
I get it.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (08:50):
So So you graduate boot camp? Where did you go? What?
What did you do? What do you call it? We
call it a t in the army. What do you
call it?

Speaker 3 (09:01):
Is your MOS producing school?

Speaker 4 (09:02):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (09:03):
So I went through my mos producing school as an
admin clerk as a service record book clerk. Did well
in school and then went on to my first duty
state duty station at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina.
I stayed there, did a couple of small diplomas. So
we did a diployment back to Wisconsin for in preparation

(09:25):
for Northern Wedding Boulguard. So we went back and did
more Arctic like infantry training in Minnesota and Wisconsin, right
and then but yeah, we were back home, you know,
six hours away from where.

Speaker 4 (09:38):
I grew up, Right, So do you hunt? Do you hunt? Fish?

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Hunt fish?

Speaker 4 (09:43):
Okay? So the outdoors and the cold is you're there's
nothing new to you.

Speaker 3 (09:48):
Yeah, life doesn't stop because it gets cold. Life stops
because you know, other things happen, but not because it
gets cold.

Speaker 4 (09:56):
Okay. So you're in Beauford, South Carolina. I for jere
no idea where that's at? And I did basic training
and yeah, so where.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
Where's between Savannah and Charleston?

Speaker 4 (10:09):
So you go from one coast to the other. I did.
What what was it like at Buford?

Speaker 3 (10:17):
It's the air wing, so it was a little bit different.
You you come out of boot camp and and everybody
expects you to be tough as woodpecker lips, and uh,
you know, you go to the air wing, which is
a little bit more laxa daisical than than I think
what most people expected. But I did well there and
did well and well. I did well in part because

(10:38):
of my aptitude for things, and I did well in
part because I had a guardian angel. So the guardian
Angel was a very funny story. I'm checking into the
to my unit and the staff startan comes running up, says,
the start major wants to union his office now, and
I'm thinking, dang it, I didn't walk across his grass.

(10:58):
I didn't touch his daughter. Why does the sergeant major
want to see, you know, a newly promoted, you know,
meritoriously promoted private first class in his office and right now.
It turns out that he served with my dad and
they were both in Vietnam together, and after that he
took care of me pretty well, which is part of
the reasons that I also got promoted as quickly as

(11:18):
I did.

Speaker 4 (11:19):
I was going to ask that do you come from
a military background, So your dad was a marine in Vietnam?

Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah, dad was a marine in Vietnam. Grandfather was in
the Army Air Corps and also a pow in STALOGLUF four.

Speaker 4 (11:32):
Okay, interesting, wow, okay, so you get you see the
start major I did, and again you're thinking, oh shit,
what I do? That's exactly So what was the what
was the outcome of that conversation.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Well, the outcome of the conversation was typically a Marine
Corps sergeant major right there. They're six hundred pound gerrillas,
and so the conversation went like this, You're either going
to do what I tell you to do or I'm
going to crucify. You get your choice. I'm gonna do
what you tell me to do. And so I listened
to them, and we did really well. We had to

(12:07):
completely revamp the section that I worked for at the
time and implement a lot of policies and correct a
lot of things along the way. And it was very
nice to be able to have the sergeant major's helping
correcting some of those problems.

Speaker 4 (12:21):
Nice. Nice, Okay, so you you did that, you said
for eighteen months?

Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yep, So got married, I got promoted to sergeant in
eighteen months, and then made my lateral move application to
the counter Intelligence Human Community in counterintelligence in the Marine
Corps the counter intelligence community, you have to be a sergeant.
They'll accept corporals on a case by case basis, but
there's no it's not an entry level MOS. So you
go into and you do an application, you do a

(12:47):
formal board, you have to write things, you do uniform
inspections and other things to be able to come into
the community, and then after that you go into a
six month O eight period and then you go to school.
The school is seven months uh huh okay, that is
in Damn Neck, Virginia, Virginia Beach. Okay, Okay, So from there,

(13:10):
once you get your credentials, then there's really three different
tiers of support that the Marine Corps counter Intelligence does.
They do strategic, they do, tactically, do operational, and I
did all three. In addition to that, they also span analysis, production,
dissemination they do and we do investigations, operations, and then

(13:32):
a whole boatload of kind of of direct support missions
along the way as well.

Speaker 4 (13:37):
Okay, did you did you consider any other job or
was that just one of them? You said that looks
that looks like a pretty good job and a pretty
good fit.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
Being colorblind, I was pretty limited. So when I was
eligible to do a lot move and I desperately wanted
out of the ADMIN field, I could have become an
MP or counterintelligence, and counter intelligence seem to have a
bigger appeal to it than being an MP.

Speaker 4 (13:59):
So you can be an MP color blind, but you
can't be infantry.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
I don't know what to tell you about that.

Speaker 4 (14:06):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
It's just one of those crazy rules.

Speaker 4 (14:09):
I guess as long as you're not. I mean, I
don't know blue green, red color.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
I don't know right exactly.

Speaker 4 (14:16):
So you go, you get, you choose this a lot
of Obviously you made it through. You're kind of training
your OJT and then off to school. What was that
school like compared to what you've already been through.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
It was extraordinarily tough. So they try and teach you
a lot of things in a seven month period, so counterintelligence,
human intelligence, and interrogations during that period of time. So
you come out as a certified interrogator, you comes as
a certified counterintelligence special agent, and you come out as

(14:52):
somebody who can do at least rudimentary human collections. So
they're trying to throw a lot about you that seven
month period. Of time, and it's it's a tough school.
There are a lot of people that don't make it
through the academics. There are there are people that don't
make it through because of their their temperament. So you've
got to have, for example, a very specific temperament to

(15:14):
be able to make it through as an interrogator, and
in doing interrogations in the booth, you have to do
and and be able to communicate at a level far
beyond what your rank is. So as a sergeant you
could could easily communicate with a colonel or a general
about counterintelligence matters. They're expected to be the subject matter

(15:36):
expert as soon as you come out of school, and
that it takes some time to be able to get there.

Speaker 4 (15:40):
Sure, sure, how I mean, the Marine Corps is a
pretty small group anyway, it is how many how many
intelligence I mean, it can't be that many of you.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
No, When I came into the community, there were one
hundred and forty one counterintelligence specialists in the Marine Corps
on active duty at that point in time. It's sense
growing pretty significantly after that, but extremely small community. So
you either knew somebody or you knew them by their reputation,
long before you ever got to the community and long
before you ever deployed for the first time.

Speaker 4 (16:08):
Okay, So you graduate this school seven months yep. Then
then where'd you go from there?

Speaker 3 (16:14):
I went to Camp La June, and I took out
the twenty second, the twenty fourth, and the twenty six
mews different periods of time. A MEW is a marine
expeditionary unit.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
It is a.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
Long one second, sorry about that, It's okay. It's a
six month It's intended to be a six month deployment,
although some of them don't go six months. They go
longer than that, depending on what's going on in the world.
So the very first deployment that I did was with
the twenty six Marine Expeditionary Unit. We cut gator squares.
That's when you're on a naval vessel and they're they're
making circles in the adraa XC and watch Yugoslavia fell apart? Okay,

(16:52):
So what's that is?

Speaker 2 (16:57):
Two?

Speaker 4 (16:58):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (16:59):
So watch yugoslav A fall apart? Who were the first
forces to go into Yugoslavia In September of nineteen ninety two,
there was an Italian seven forty seven that went down
outside of the mountains of Sarajevo. We went in and
my unit went in and did the star trap on
that mission.

Speaker 4 (17:14):
Okay, okay, So how long were you assigned this campus.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
I was there three years, and during that time I
deployed two different times, three different times.

Speaker 4 (17:27):
Okay, okay. So to that twenty fourth you said twenty.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
Fourth twenty That one was a twenty six marine next
for the experience.

Speaker 4 (17:36):
So then when was the next deployment.

Speaker 3 (17:38):
The next deployment was to Northern wethern Bouleguard that was
in Norway, and that was a training exercise. Again, we're
training for you know, the Cold War had this point
in time, it just ended. Nobody knew what the Russians
and the Soviets were going to do at that point
in time. So we were training with our allies to
be able to make sure that we had to show
a force overseas and showed the world that we were

(18:02):
still capable of deploying in support of in support of
allied interests.

Speaker 4 (18:08):
I spent three years in a NATO assignment and working
with the Dutch and the and the Belgians and the Netherlands.
And I'm not a very tall guy. I'm only like
five eight and a lot. Even even the women were
like six foot six foot one six cow.

Speaker 3 (18:26):
That's crazy.

Speaker 4 (18:29):
So you do that and then you you I'm swimming
back to La June and then.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
One back out on another one than we did provide comfort,
provide promise, provide comfort and promise were in the Balkans.
So we're in and out of coast and vote in
and out of Macedonia, in and out of Croatia, Slovenia,
in and out of the the entire range out of
there to do support in the Balkans with the kind

(18:57):
of support that I was able to provide to combat
operation missions.

Speaker 4 (19:02):
Okay, out of those three deployments, anything anything stand out,
anything kind of you know, this was unique or I mean,
of course, being still fairly new to the Marine Corps.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
It's fairly new to the Marine Corps.

Speaker 4 (19:13):
But I mean, I remember when that plane went down.
I was I was stationed the Fort Knox at the time,
but or back in ai T I don't remember. But uh,
but anything anything else and those three kind of you know,
stand out, that's you know, you know.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
There's so there's always something funny to laugh at. Sure,
and you go to camp bondsteel and and and you
find burger king in a conics box. It's just not
something that you would expect, you know, when you're in
when you're in Kosovo, to find burger king in a
conics box, right, Yeah, So there was always something to

(19:49):
laugh at.

Speaker 4 (19:51):
Well, I mean, if you don't laugh, you tend to
go a little crazy.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
I mean that's true.

Speaker 4 (19:55):
Soldiers like to you know, like to laugh and cut
up and stuff like that. Anything I'll stand out of
any of those that anything of the Croatia or the
any of.

Speaker 3 (20:04):
That Croatia and specifically Kosovo. You go up in the
mountains and it was snowing. You go down into the
valley and there was no snow on the ground and
it was you know, sixty degrees. So you would go
from from one climate to another just by driving for
a couple hours. And that was always kind of unusual,
especially as you're going through mountain passes, you know, trying

(20:25):
to go from one area to the next.

Speaker 4 (20:27):
What parts of Croatia were in I was in Split, Split.
I spent a lot of time in Split. I spent
a very long time in Split. I used to run
one of the Commo sections down there when I deployed
for with Bosnia. So my unit I was on loan

(20:49):
to at the time what was called AV South or
NAV South, which was Naval Force to Southern Europe, and
did my first employment to Bosnia. And then my unit
took over which was land Descent, and I deployed and
spent a lot of time in Crolatia and to Bravnik
and down the coast. So yeah, a lot of times gorgeous,

(21:11):
absolutely gorgeous. What a lot of people don't understand is
just how clear the Adriatic is. It is so I mean,
it's one of the top diving spots in the world.

Speaker 3 (21:20):
It is so yep.

Speaker 4 (21:22):
Okay, So you get back to La June after this
this third trip, and then you said you spent three
years there, where'd you go after that?

Speaker 3 (21:29):
So from there I went to Okinawa, great diving location there.
Took out the thirty first MEU there. So that was
another deployment. So I'm deployed to Okinawa. They FAP you
or put you in a temporary assignment to go to
the MEW and support the mew there. Again it's supposed
to be another six month deployment. This was another show

(21:50):
of forest deployment. So we were doing some joint ops
with the Russians. We're doing amphib landings and near the
islands outside of a lot of ostark so we had
quite a bit of contact with them. And then from there,
because of events in the world, the United States government
was looking for another staging location in the Pacific Rim

(22:13):
and they were exploring other opportunities for an alternate Okinawa.
So I ended up getting dropped in Indonesia, and I
spent the better part of six months, seven months in
Indonesia and all over Indonesia, from all over the island
of Java, so all the way out from Jakarta to
Surabaya to even crazy places like bongy Wogy which is

(22:36):
a little itty bitty you know town that goes as
There's there's a ferry that goes between bongyu Wangi and
Bali and the only thing there is the ferry. They
don't have electricity, they didn't have running water or anything
like that. So all over the Indonesian islands, my actually
unit disbanded went back to their parent units at that

(22:56):
point in time, and I was still down range. So
then the math so for US Marine Expeditionary Force is
one of the senior commanders are A three in the
Marine Corps. One MATH, two MATH three MAUTH. One meth
is in California, two meth is in Legune. Three meth
is in Okinawa. So they they checked me out of
my unit and I was put in direct support of

(23:18):
the meth while I was still downrange. Interesting, the whole
unit went away and I'm still downrange.

Speaker 4 (23:23):
Was it was it just you? It was it you
and a couple of others, me.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
And one other person. And then we had some oversight
over an engineering platoon, So we were doing some good
will gestures down there to see what the temperament of
the people was, to figure out what if any threats
were there that would that would prohibit considering Indonesia as
a staging location in the Pacific rim okay.

Speaker 4 (23:46):
Other than the Russians any and of course you spent
some time in Norway and then now you're in Indonesia.
Any work would like, say the Australians or any anything like.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
That much later in my time in the service. But yes,
I did some work with the Austriel unions and the
Kiwis and a boatload of other governments as well.

Speaker 4 (24:06):
Okay, so you finish in Indonesia. I mean, now you're
not going back to Okinawa.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
Yeah, So I flew back to Okinawa, and then again
it was a short period of time, and three months
later I was sitting at the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity
in Quantico, Virginia, and I spent the next four years there.
This was probably the only four years in my career
where there weren't any consistent diplomas, but rather a lot
of interface with national agencies and with a lot of

(24:38):
policy makers to be able to make sure that we're
doing the right thing. So the worst thing that happened
during this period of time is we had policy wonks
that wanted to control operations by policy by writing policy.
So they'd write it to policy, You're going to do this, this,
and this, But it makes absolutely no operational sense to
do that. And so the role at the Marine Corps
Intelligence Activity was to be the the interface for operations

(25:04):
and the national level community to make sure that policy
reflected operations and operations drove the policy, not the other
way around. It even got a little bit more complicated
than that because at the at this period of time,
we also had our comptrollers, our budgeteers that tried to
get involved in operations and do some really weird stuff

(25:25):
with funding and everything else. Well, you know, if you
don't do what we tell you to do, we're going
to cut your funding for this, for this, for this
period of time. And so just trying to corral people
into the right way of doing business where you're not
going to get people hurt.

Speaker 4 (25:40):
It doesn't matter to me whether it's the military or
Fortune five hundred. When the finance guys are the ones
driving your operations, you're in trouble. That's right, there's there's
a problem there is. You need operations guys driving operations,
that's right, and just tell us when we're either over

(26:01):
budget or closed over budget.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
That's it. Well, and that you know, that's that's that's
one hundred percent crew. That's not the way it was
at the time. You know, there were people that were
and there were communities that were trying to be more
assertive in operation in the operational domain, and it it
just never worked out the way it should have.

Speaker 4 (26:19):
What are the years we're talking here, when you're at.

Speaker 3 (26:22):
Quantico ninety four to ninety seven.

Speaker 4 (26:26):
Okay, so during that time Somalia happened, yeah, and Bosnia
kicked off with NATO taken over from the UN. So
there's a lot. I was going to ask you about
Quantico because that seems like a logical fit for that job.
You know, it seems like that that's a large quantity
of people in that field in Quantico.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
There are so Eventually, what ended up happening is they
put two companies a counter intelligence human guys at Quantico too,
and they were subordinate to the Marine Corps intelligence activity.
They supported operations all over the world, but they were
home based out of Quantico. That's a function of some
of the policy discussions that we had at the time

(27:08):
to grow the counterintelligence community. Also at the same period
of time, a little bit before this, but it certainly
rolled over into this deployment. We also decided to get
rid of our ldos, so our ld O was a
limited duty officer. You could go from private to warrant officer,
to an unrestricted or to a restricted officer. We got
rid of the program for the restricted officers and we

(27:28):
started bringing in second lieutenants into the community. Now, the
second lieutenants, the smart ones would listen to the guys
that have been around for a while, but they were
still lieutenants. And there were times when the lieutenants didn't
always do things in a counter intelligence human intelligence way.

Speaker 4 (27:49):
Sure. Sure during any of this time, is there any
collaboration or work with US Army intelligence?

Speaker 3 (27:57):
Yeah, there was quite a bit of work. So we did.
We did joint training and as a TIAC as as
a technical Controller of Operations UH to be able to
do these joint exercises. And what we would typically do
is we'd go to Brag or we'd go to Benning
and and hey, listen, we're now in a combined environment.

(28:19):
We've got multiple teams on the ground, there's overlap in
their mission and in the in the in the people
that they're talking to. How do we deconflict this, How
do we prevent circular reporting? How do we make sure
that we vet the information that is that is coming
in to make sure it's true and genuine and that
an operator can make a decision based on this intelligence.

(28:40):
And so we did quite a bit of work with
with the Army specifically to in in doing and preparing
for combined operations, which obviously helped out as we got
to Iraqi freedom and enduring freedom you know later on
after this where they knew that the capabilities where we

(29:00):
knew the capabilities and limitations of each other's teams. So
for us at the tactical level, everything revolves around what's
over the next hill and how does it affect my
operating forces. So it's not uncommon to have a marine
counterintelligence guy out in Indian territory and and talking to

(29:23):
people to be able to find out where the bad
guys are, where their weapons, cash they are, what their
plans are, how they plan to do business, what they're
what they're what they're they're operating tactics are, and what
they plan to do. So that's a little bit different
in some ways than than what Army counter intelligence is.

(29:46):
So Army counterintelligence tends to to they gravitate real quickly
to to to the theater level stuff, where for us
it was what's over the next year and how does
it affect us. So between the two of us who

(30:06):
worked as a good team in this case, but there
are capabilities and limitations of both that you that you
need to understand if you're going to employ these teams correctly.

Speaker 4 (30:14):
Sure, I think it was after nine to eleven the
Army decided to move that counterintelligence under the Special Operations command.
Before they were they were outside of that and would
just be kind of tasked. But I think then they
moved them underneath that soft umbrella. Right, So anything anything
stand out while you're there, I mean you're making a
lot of policy, a lot of a lot of driving,

(30:36):
a lot of documentation. Yeah, you'll stand out with your Quantico.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
The standout period of Quantico was, first of all, it's
it's it's a non deployment post, so you've got some
time to be able to concentrate on other things. For me,
it was going through those those schools necessary in order
to be able to build your counter intligence resume. So
there's things that you have to do in order to
be able to to do an investigation. There's things that

(31:04):
you have to do, and an investigation is different than
an operation, and you've got to build the necessary acumen
to be able to successfully operate in those environments. So
it was we're interfacing with the national level and including
up to including you know, the National Security Council on
some matters, and then building the repertoire and the the

(31:28):
networking capability to be able to make sure that you
can pick up the phone when needed, and and and
get what you needed to get done.

Speaker 4 (31:38):
A little bit of politic and going on.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah, there's a little bit of politic and going on
something that I'm not particularly good at, but you do
learn to do it if you're going to be successful.

Speaker 4 (31:49):
Well on that location, I mean, being where it's at.
I mean, that's a brass hit, you know, brass heavy.
You're not only seeing just the you know, the military brass,
but you're seeing all the congressmen and women. You're seeing
a lot of politicians in that area, a lot of lobbying,
a lot of just all of that, right, Yeah, And

(32:09):
as a counterintelligence person, you're looking at this going and
as a bullshit Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
Yeah. Well we always try to avoid the bs, that's
for sure, and make sure that even if there were politics,
it didn't affect the operating forces. So much as we
could influence. There's always going to be politics, and politics
are are divisive and sometimes silly, but for as much
as we could act as an insulation between those politics

(32:36):
and the operating forces in our operating forces is really
what we try to do it every single venture, cut
the bureaucracy, do what has to do, do what has
to be done, and do it in the most efficient
means possible.

Speaker 4 (32:54):
Right, anything else stand out while you were there?

Speaker 3 (32:57):
I think no, you know, went through national level schools.
It was my first exposure to the folks at Langley.
It was the first exposure to you know, the big
silver abyss up by the Anacostia.

Speaker 4 (33:15):
Okay, So where'd you go after this?

Speaker 3 (33:19):
From there? I went into a external billet, so I
was in I'm still on active duty, but I carried
n CIS credentials as a Marine special Agent for the
Naval Criminal Investigative Service. I was stationed in Soul, Korea
to do this, and we were doing espionage investigations. Okay,

(33:40):
So there where were circumstances all around the world where
it where we we knew with a fair degree of
certainties as somebody was passing information onto the bad guys
and the enemies of our nation, and it was our
job to find.

Speaker 4 (33:56):
That's a big army place that I don't I've never
heard of any marine getting stationed in Seoul.

Speaker 3 (34:01):
Yeah, actually young Son too, which is an army garrison.
So most Marines if they do go to Korea, they
go to either pou Soon or one of the southern
like cheng Dou. But they don't normally go all the
way up into Seoul, so this was truly an external billet.
I didn't wear a uniform. I wore civilian clothes. I
carried in CIS credentials and a weapon in handcuffs, and

(34:26):
we were doing these very high level investigations as to
people that we know that we're helping.

Speaker 4 (34:34):
Our enemies, right right, So how long was that?

Speaker 3 (34:37):
Were you in Seoul? I was in Seoul for two years.

Speaker 4 (34:42):
Two years. That's a good amount of time.

Speaker 3 (34:44):
Yeah, especially for an on the company tour you know,
was supposed to be a one year tour tunes into
a two year tour because they don't have anybody to
replace you in the in the mission was so critical
that and frankly, I think people forget about you when
you're in an external billet like that. So you're there,
you're doing well. You know, you haven't done anything to
piss off the command, and so we're going to keep
you there until you know you you raised the flag

(35:06):
saying hey, y'll forget about me.

Speaker 4 (35:09):
So were you able to bring your wife over at
any point or no? But I'm sure you got to
go home. Let me get some vacation out of that right, No,
two years straight, no, no break, wow, a break.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
So it was, it was. It was one of the
longer deployments of that kind. So you're O, Konis, it
counts as a deployment. It's not a combat deployment. But
we were doing things that were truly at the national
level at that point in time.

Speaker 4 (35:37):
In any travel outside of that sole area while.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
You're yeah, well, all over the Korean peninsula, and then
I was also in Thailand, and I was also in
Hakaido okay, Japan.

Speaker 4 (35:53):
Right, So anything go on while you were there, anything
you know that you can talk about or stand up.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
The only thing I can say during this period of
time is that we were directly involved in some of
the things that you saw on the news.

Speaker 4 (36:07):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
So we brought people back in handcuffs, and those people
made the national news and in a bad way.

Speaker 4 (36:15):
Okay. Well, I mean, if you're in handcuffs, it's never
a good.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
Way, right, Well, you know, maybe maybe maybe right, that's right.

Speaker 4 (36:27):
Yeah, So two years in Korea, where'd you go after this? So?

Speaker 3 (36:36):
While I was in Korea, I got selected for a
Warren officer. I had pinned on Gunny. By this point
in time, I had three years time and grade as
a gunny. I was on the list to be a
first sargant the same year I got selected for Warren
officer and so now I'm an old guy sent back
to Quantico and going through we combine Warren officers with
second lieutenants and we all go through TBS to get together.

(36:59):
And so going through TBS, as you know, somebody that's
north of thirty with the second lieutenant was an interesting experience.
You know. Fortunately they don't mess with the Warren Officer
company very much. They all know that, you know, you
have you're a little bit salty by the time you
get to be a Warren officer anyway, and I'm a

(37:19):
pretty senior guy when I went through TBS to begin with.
So from there I went to I graduated from TBS,
went back to Campbella June as a platoon commander for
the second counter Intelligence Human Company as we were ramping
up for Iraqi Freeomen Enduring Freedom?

Speaker 4 (37:38):
Did did the Marine Corps ever do away with the
warrant officer ranks and then bring it back.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
Well, so they went there was a period of time
there's a there's two different kinds of warn officers in
the Marine Corps. There's a gunner, and what a gunner
is is they wear a bursting bomb on one of
their their afflets and they're an expert infantryman. So that
went away for a at a time. The warran officers
stayed around, but the gunners went away, and then General

(38:04):
Gray bought the gunner program back. So there's a functional
difference between a gunner and a Chief Warrant officer. One's
an infantry expert, the other is a technical expert.

Speaker 4 (38:16):
Sure, sure the Army doesn't doesn't differentiate, but I mean
they're they're technical experts in their field. So does the
Marine Corps go all the way up to c TB
five or is it that.

Speaker 3 (38:27):
Was the takeaway or that was the concession that the
Marine Corps made when we got rid of our ld
O program, is that we rogered on to bring c
W fives and then exchanged the ld O. The LDO
community kind of aged out of existence, so you could
go from in the ld O program, you could go
from private and you capped out of lieutenant colonel Okay. So,

(38:52):
and what a lot of them did is, you know,
by the time that you're a staffs argent, he applied
for a warren officer, he became a Chief Warren Officer
two or three or even a four in some cases,
and then they brought you in into the LDO program
and so a CW three would go to major, but
you capped out. You couldn't be any more senior than

(39:13):
a lieutenant colonel. And by the time you got to
be a lieutenant colonel, most of those guys had more
than thirty years in any So we got rid of
that program and then we brought in and rogered into
the CW five. So that was all part of the
transition period that we had. We now have lieutenants, we
don't have the the lderl lieutenant colonels are you know,

(39:33):
phasing out and aging out and they're not replacing them.
And so that was a pretty serious transition period for
the community in for the Marine Corps at that point
in time.

Speaker 4 (39:43):
So you get there, you get you get warrant, you come.

Speaker 3 (39:45):
In W one or Yeah. So I was a warrant
officer and then I got promoted to chief warren officer
in the Marine Corps, a warrant officer is an appointed officer.
A chief warren officer is a commissioned officer. And it's
a little bit different. The attitude is a little bit different.
So the chief warn officer community is not treated like
a third lieutenant. Instead, we're we're peers with the captains

(40:12):
and the majors. So it wasn't uncommon. Well, I graduated
from TBS, I got a phone call from my commanding
officer saying, hey, Rudy, you know, we don't have anybody here.
I have no other officers on deck whatsoever. We're going
to the field. Can you forego your leave after TBS
and come help me out? Yep, Roger that will come
and help you out. And that's kind of how it was,
you know. So we never violated the rank structure of

(40:35):
the Marine Corps. So you know, my commanding officer would
call me Rudy, and I'd call him sir or captain,
depending how irritated I was with him. But there was
never the the the reciprocity of being on a first
naming basis with your commanding officer. But we weren't treated
like lieutenants either, right, So.

Speaker 4 (40:55):
In the Marine Corps do you call it? I mean,
how do you address a warrant officer normally? So, yeah,
so sir, sir, okay, yeah, because in the in the
in the army, it's either sir the rank or you
can call them mister or missus, so you can say
you know by their by the last name. Now, in

(41:16):
the Army, once you're above W two, I mean you're
god with a little G status. I mean I've seen
I've seen a W three tell an O six to
kiss his ass, and uh yeah, the two stars sitting
there went, I don't know what to tell.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
You, right. That's kind of the expectation of the worn
officer community anyway, is that, you know, you're supposed to
be the curmudern that walks into the commanding officer's office
and put your fists on the desk and say, damn it, sir,
this just isn't right. We need to fix this. And
that's and that's that's something that transcends both the Army
and the Ring Corps. In this case with the warn

(41:54):
offster communities. Damage you're the subject matter expert.

Speaker 4 (41:57):
You're subject matter expert. You have for the mosts in
that field. You're you know, so you're given that the
the credit is due, right, So so you're now now
a worn officer.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Now I'm a worn officer. I'm the platoon commander for
the interrogator platoon before our interrogators went away and we
had to ramp up and fix some things with the platoon.
We had some some issues with our interrogator community and
then and they needed some they needed top down cover

(42:33):
to continue to exist, and so we gave them as
much top down cover as we could within the lawful
boundaries of doing things, but still had to correct some things. Right,
you're shaking your head. So I'm sure that you know
about you know, the interrogator translator communities.

Speaker 4 (42:50):
Well, I mean that's every branch and every I mean,
it's just about every post on this planet has uh
has those groups. Right, There's there's certain groups that everybody
knows about. That's the rumors are there? Rumors because part
of them are true, right you know? And I'm sure
that's no different. So what years are we talking about? Now?

(43:11):
What years?

Speaker 3 (43:12):
We are now into two thousand, two thousand, So my
tenure as a platoon commander was cut short. We stole
up the twenty fourth Marine Expeditionary Unit. So before I
did the twenty second and twenty sixth, we're now at
the twenty fourth Marine Expeditionary Unit. This is two thousand
and two thousand and one timeframe. Again supposed to be

(43:32):
a six month deployment, but we knew in advance that
things were going to happen. We were informed of that
when we did the Whirlwind tour of DC and Europe
before we before the main body deployed. So what started
off as a intended to be a six month deployment
ended up being almost a two year deployment. Again. So

(43:54):
this one we started off and we deployed initially to Kosovo.
We were doing in some interdiction operations in the mountains
between Kosovo and Macedonia. Doing those interdiction operations, we got
the call to redeploy. We redeployed, We picked up everything,
redeployed from Kosovo to Djibouti after some events happened in

(44:18):
the world where they had to where we had to
do an embassy reinforcement in Djibouti. From there, my team
the counter and told this human team and my interrogators
did some stuff on the prison ships and we were
doing the interrogations figuring out what the Iraqi thought and
you know, where they thought the amphibious landing was going

(44:39):
to come and what they thought. Our plan was pulled
from there, initially designated as a theater reserve, but when
the focus of main effort hit hit really stiff resistance
and the Republican Guard near annas Aria, we launched. We
fought through inass Aria. We went north of ann os
Aria to an airfield about three under click south of

(45:00):
Baghdad called Coltsakar. We seized co lots of car and
from there Colts of Car served as a lily pad
for future and follow on operations all the way into Baghdad.

Speaker 4 (45:11):
So where will you when one to leven happened?

Speaker 3 (45:14):
I was on templagen. I was commander at the time,
so as that day happened, I'm a platoon commander. Now
things get kicked into high gear to be able to
make sure that everybody's ready to deploy, and all of
the tag gear had to be you know, surveyed and functional,

(45:34):
and they had to be proficient with weapons. And in
the counter intelligence community, we're a little we were autonomous,
so we have our own motor pool, we have our
own armory. We have for example, you know, a counter
intelligence guy who could be an embed into an infantry
platoon and he could be a saw gum. So you
need to figure out how to work and you know,

(45:56):
do a how to fire and employ assauw when some
people didn't, So we really ramped up the efforts to
be able to make sure we people were to go
ready to go down range.

Speaker 4 (46:07):
So jack of all trades. Yeah, okay, so you're obviously
everything goes on lockdown, right and campus, I mean Campbell
Jium was a closed post before unlike BRAG when you
had been there at that time, it was an open post.
It was an open post when I was there too,
So everything goes on lockdown when when that happened? What

(46:29):
was your first thoughts?

Speaker 3 (46:33):
My first thought, Well, first of all, when the towers fell,
there was a tremendous sadness with everybody that watched them fall.
So I wasn't anywhere near New York City, but I
was equally affected by it, and and the sheer loss
of life, and the and the situation as they developed,
and then the misinformation that came out. They didn't know

(46:57):
initially what was going on, the confusion the plane landed
in a field in Pennsylvania, the two the other ones hit,
you know, the the towers, and then we had the
one hitting the hit the Pentagon, and the first thought
is our gear is already packed. We're just waiting for
the word to go. At this point in time, we
don't know where we're going, but we're going somewhere. And

(47:19):
we launched people downrange that night.

Speaker 4 (47:22):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
So it was an extremely long day. You know, you're
you're thirty or forty hours into the day and the
following day before you even have a chance to catch
your breath, and we're already launching people down range at
that point in time.

Speaker 4 (47:42):
So when you when you launch, I mean you're you're
relying on the Air Force. I'm assuming what did you launch?

Speaker 3 (47:48):
So it depends where we're going. We put people on
commercial boards, we put people in the Air Force. However
we could get them overseas to the point where we
needed to get them for and for whatever mission that
that came in those first couple of days, whether it
was an embassy reinforcement or whether it was anything else.
They had to be prepared to go down range and

(48:09):
they had to be prepared for whatever mission stood there
waiting for him at the end the other side.

Speaker 4 (48:13):
So nine to eleven happens and you're immediately out out
of the country.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
So I wasn't. I launched most of my platoon out
of the country, but I stayed back for another I
stayed back for another four months, and then at that
four month mark is when I joined the twenty fourth
Marine Expeditionary Unit. And where was that at Campla June.
They deployed out of Campla June. That's where we started

(48:38):
off in Kosovo and then Jibuti and Persion Golf. Yeah,
so that brings us all the way to We stayed
and we were going for just about for just about
two years between the workups and between the deployment itself.
So the work of Force Marine Expeditionary Unit has to
earn their special Operation qualifications before they go down range.

(49:02):
And there's twenty eight missions that AMU can do from
embassy reinforcements to star trap missions to other things. The
Marine Corps is was still playing in the shallow into
the of the of the of the specops community. We
didn't have certainly not anything like the Army had and
certainly not anything like the Navy had. In fact, you know,

(49:23):
Marsok at this point in time was still pretty new
and we were still trying to figure all that stuff out,
But in the in the in the delta between you know,
marsk standing up, we would take our CI guys and
we would embed them in these various missions. Some of
them were shooter missions, so you would go down, for example,
the any in either an extremist hostage recovery or any

(49:48):
of the other shooter missions and we would take them.
And your role with this team is first and foremost
to be a shooter. Second, you know, you're going to
go on site and you're going to do doc X
and exploitation. You're going to interrogate anybody that's left alive
at the end of this to get all the tangible
information that you can bring it back to the command
for following operations.

Speaker 4 (50:03):
So any high value targets at this point. Yeah, okay,
So you said there was there was a qualifications that
you had to reach the met before you get deploy
What all of those qualifications entail, So.

Speaker 3 (50:16):
The normal work up from you is six months long.
During that period of time, you've got to be you've
got to certify in each one of the missions. So
it could be an over the horizon insert, or it
could be it could be a star trap, it could
be an embassy reinforcement and you've got to get qualified
with every one of those missions before you go down range,

(50:36):
and so it's not just a check in the box.
You actually have to do missions, and it's a pretty
a pretty serious training regimen, so everything is simulated as
real as possible. So if you're going to do an
embassy reinforcement, they had set up embassies. They had former
embassy staff members there where you had to communicate and
coordinate with the embassy staff, specifically the chief of station

(51:02):
to deconflict any activities that were going on that you
had any role in whatsoever. And so all of these
qualifications you had to earn and during the six month process,
you're running from start to finish, seven days a week.
During this period of time, you're often out of the area.
The capstone exercise for this is where you actually earn

(51:23):
your qualifications, and there's a lot that goes on when
you're earning these qualifications. We had as one of the
spec Op missions we had to do, we had guys
in an urban hide and we had to figure out
how to resupply them using Intel assets to resupply them.

Speaker 4 (51:43):
Okay, so can you do all of this at at
le June or do you have to travel a little
bit to do a little bit a little bit different
than terrain and stuff.

Speaker 3 (51:51):
Yeah, so some of it you do at lejun like
the weapons packages you do at La Joon, other things
for your capstone. You're in a in a way city.

Speaker 4 (52:00):
In the United States, any trips back to for Bragg
because I'm assuming i mean spec ops at this point,
Green Berets.

Speaker 3 (52:07):
Right.

Speaker 4 (52:08):
Plus you've got what it's now called KAG used to
be called Delta Force, I mean huge training operations, right,
I mean that's they have. They have anything and everything.
I mean, like you said, they they they've been around,
you know, a lot longer than Mars Socar. They have
they have large budgets as.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
Well, they sure do.

Speaker 4 (52:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
So so, and we did a lot of stuff with them.
We actually would send people, for example, through the Army's
breacher school. So if you're going into to take out tangos,
you're not going to go through a fatal funnel, Okay,
So you know they had manual breachers that went through
the Army school to be able to do that and
maybe have guys for training them, right.

Speaker 4 (52:45):
Yeah, And uh so one of the questions I always ask.
And with these deployments, you know a lot of guys
that have done multiple deployments, you can see how tactics evolve, right,
and so that and it doesn't It's not just the
US military, the US but the military usually when they

(53:07):
go into combat, they're usually fighting with the previous wars tactics,
previous wars equipment. So how did you see that those
tactics and that equipment change and modernized as you went through.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
So we were actually privileged enough to be able to
This is one of those situations where operations drove policy,
and so we changed some fundamental operations based on how
we did business in the past. And how we did
business in the past is we kind of had a
defensive posture in the counter intelligence community and it went

(53:39):
to a more offensive posture. So my commanding officer would
come to me and say, hey, Gunnard, go get me
some information. So go outside Google wherever you got to do.
I don't care what you have to do. Bring me
back some tangible information. And we were very successful in
doing this. So we would take out bad guys and
we would take out their weapons cage, and we would

(54:01):
take out there they're operating funds and a whole lot
of other activities. So it really was a complete shift
of mindset to be able to go from you know,
this is how you look at the security of a compound,
which was at that point in time, early on in
the day's counter intelligence, it was a defensive posture, and

(54:21):
we took it to a complete offensive offensive mission. And
so what would end up happening is we'd go get
the information, we'd go back to the outskirts of whatever
village that we were in, we'd brief the Rainforce commander
on the on the mission itself, and then we'd lead
them on the raid.

Speaker 4 (54:39):
Oh wow, that pretty interesting.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
It had to be timely enough where the bad guys
couldn't move, so initially you know there was a transition
period here. Then you get so accustomed to R two
P two rapid response planning process where you know you
have six hours to make a decision and they present
courses of action to the old man. When that happen,
and the bad guys had already moved, right, and so

(55:04):
you go to the outskirts of town, you break the
Rainforce commander, and then you lead the raid portion and
commander and take out the bad guys and there and
their instrumentsal war.

Speaker 4 (55:13):
So you spent a lot of time on foot, I did, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
Well, so on foot. And then remember I told you
that we have our own autonomous we have our own
motor pool, we have our own vehicles down range and
everything else. It wasn't always on foot, but there were
times where it was.

Speaker 4 (55:28):
So what what's your what was your impression of Iraq
at this point? I mean, it's.

Speaker 3 (55:36):
A lot of external influences in Iraq. So we had
the Iranians, and we had Saddam fed Een and they
were undermining us at just about everything, at every venture.
You know, when we're at Klatsakar. We had some direct
contact with them, we had some we had some Saddam

(55:57):
fat A probing of our areas. We we had lots
of interrogations at that point in time, trying to you know,
figure out exactly what they're doing. But we did see
and we did recognize that foreign nationals were in the
area and that they were directly trying to subvert not

(56:21):
only our mission but our presence.

Speaker 4 (56:23):
Okay, so your tempo, I mean is pretty pretty up
at this point. I mean, you're you're pretty busy so
I mean time, time usually flies when you're pretty busy. Yeah, right,
So at this point, when when did you leave? And
I'm assuming you go back to le June this point.

Speaker 3 (56:39):
So I went back and I went back to Campla
June in June of two thousand and three. I stayed
there for thirty days and I got one of those
phone calls from headquarters ma reinecoursing, you're going to go
back overseas. We need you to go again. It wasn't
exactly what I expect. So their version of going overseas

(57:02):
this time was again they put me in the Naval
Criminal Investigative Service Again. I'm wearing civilian clothes. I have
NCIS credentials and a pistol and handcuffs, and I'm assigned
to one of the Washington d C Field offices and
they embedded me in the State Department. So we take
one counter intelligence sman guy, we drop him in the

(57:25):
Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the counter intelligence Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
We are in the same command with the RSOs Region
security officers and traveling around all the way around the
world to be able to support various various activities all
around the world to give you an idea for traveling

(57:49):
this one. When I first checked into the State Department,
they said, hey, listen, you know, we understand that you
just came off a combat deployment. We understand that you
haven't had a lot of time to transition, but we
want to expose you as much to embassy culture as
is physically possible. So I went to all five diplomatic
posts in China, I was in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand.

(58:09):
When I was in Thailand, they called up and said, hey,
we're sorry about this, but we need you to go
to Sydney, Canberra, Auckland and Wellington. Long flight by the way,
to go from Bangkok to you know, Sydney, you get
two meals, three meals. You get three meals during that flight,
really long flight. But there were some matters that really
needed the attention of a federal criminal investigator at that

(58:34):
point in time.

Speaker 4 (58:36):
Okay, and any of that, can you talk about her?

Speaker 3 (58:40):
Not really? Okay, not really for that one.

Speaker 4 (58:43):
So anything, So let's back up just a little bit.
Your first your first down range anything anything happened during
that that's you know that maybe stood out more than
anything else. Did you want to talk about.

Speaker 3 (59:08):
So as I told you about how we embedded counter
intelligence guys, and I was in embed during that deployment.
So during that deployment and during the first deployment, during
the first Marine Expeditionary Unit, the twenty sixth, I was
a counterintelligence human intelligence in bed for second Force Reconnaissance
and sealed teammate, And that's my job was to be

(59:31):
a beyond site collector and do everything else. But it's
kind of unusual to straddle both communities and look at
both different cultures between Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance and the
seal teams, and watch the seal teams with all the
money you could ever possibly imagine and all the cool
things that you know, from weapons to everything else, and

(59:52):
then watching Force recon do you know, get by with
what they had? Sure, So probably the oniest thing that
happened we had because that one was a long deployment.
We had a couple of sailors that broke into the
connex boxes and they stole the repelling ropes. So we're
on the us S E Regima and it's a nine

(01:00:14):
hundred and thirty two foot ship and you know, we're
cutting gator squares in the Adriatic, and they decided that
they were going to go swimming, so they repelled off
the back of the e Regima and and they're dipping
themselves in the water above the screw. And so the
the both the commodore, who's the the commodore is in

(01:00:34):
charge of the arg the four ship compliment, and then
you have a ship's captain, and then you have the
mew commander. And they're all they're all six's but by billett,
one a senior to another. Right, So these guys are
still dripping wet, and they were discharged from the navy
right then and there. Wow, yep, So silliness happens. You know,
Bored people get in trouble, sure, and you know whenever

(01:00:55):
somebody's board, that's why they try and keep people busy
on these deployments. So sailors, you know, they to paint
the inside of the ship. And they've got four hundred
coats of paint on the inside of the ship. Because
it keeps them busy. They do their fire drills and
everything else. Because board sailers get in trouble.

Speaker 4 (01:01:09):
Sure, well so do board marines.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
That's true. That's true. You're that's a fair assessment.

Speaker 4 (01:01:16):
Yes, my dad was a marine in Korea. He used
to say that a marine aboard a navy ship spends
his time in two places. A bunk that's too small
of the brig Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
Yeah, So on the E Regema, the E Regima was
built in I guess the nineteen forties, and so they
still had nineteen of forties acutrements on the ship. So
in the marine birthing you had six racks. All it
was was a canvas rack. Well over the years the
canvas has sagged down, so you've got about you know,

(01:01:49):
four inches of room between you and the guy above you.
And you're really hoping the guy below you doesn't have
the running man dream, right, because you're just not going
to be able to get out.

Speaker 4 (01:01:57):
Of the rack or beans for lunch the day before.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
Yeah, exactly right, yeah, yeah yeah. And then you see,
you know, bored people do silly things.

Speaker 4 (01:02:07):
Sure, sure, so you get this this civilian closed deployment again,
anything from that standout, I mean, I mean you're traveling
all over that's a lot of time, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:18):
So probably the biggest thing with that particular assignment was
I've now been on or at this point in time,
I've been on six of the seven continents. The only
continent I hadn't been on was Antarctica. I've been in
more than one hundred and fifty countries of the world,
where some of them you most people couldn't even find
on a on a map. Very first, very first one

(01:02:41):
that I went out on my own, I had to
go down to the travel office and get a No
FI visa and they say, already, where you're going. I said, well,
I'm going to a Jean and Waggadub. She goes, no, really,
where you're going. So I'm going to a and Wagadub.
She goes, those aren't real places, ma'am. They are real places.
There's an atla behind your desk. And if you look
on the west coast of Africa, there's two countries. There's

(01:03:03):
Burkina Fosso and quote dea War And I'm going to
the capital cities of those two places. She goes, Oh,
they are real places, yes, man. They are so just
kind of crazy, you know that, the fact that some
of the places they ask you to go, especially doing
the job that I did, Like I said, there are
people that that couldn't find it on the map. Where

(01:03:25):
are you going, Rudy, Well, I'm going to Tablisi, Azerbaijan,
Baku and Armini Yevan. Okay, where are those places at? Okay? Well,
here's where they're at. Okay, where are you going this time? Well,
I'm going to Riga, I'm going to Talland and I'm
going to Vilnius. Where are those places at? So you know,

(01:03:49):
that was the funny part of it, right, because just
the sheer travel of it was okay, and going to
some places that you know, I had only peripheral heard,
peripherally heard about in the past. And now I'm sitting
in Waga.

Speaker 4 (01:04:06):
Do you well, I mean most most Americans don't know where,
you know, even cities are here in the States, right,
I mean like I'm from a small town called Anniwhak
and most people couldn't find Aniwhac on the map. So
I just say I'm from Houston.

Speaker 3 (01:04:21):
Yeah right, yeah? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:04:25):
So how long was how long was this one? Was
this another two years?

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
Or now that one was almost five? So that's the
job that I retired out of. But it's again where
people had forgot about me. So I'm in this job
for five years and then I put in my retirement paperwork.
And then the day that I put in my retirement paperwork,
one of those l e os that I knew and
considered a friend at the point in time, said hey, Rudy,
I got a job for you. You're going to be

(01:04:49):
the program manager for you know, this particular thing up
at at de I A. And then so stated. For
the next sixteen years, stayed in the defense contracting industry,
and then once I retired for the second time, that's
where we accumulated enough to buy the corporation and the
various companies that we own.

Speaker 4 (01:05:07):
Now very nice, very nice? Was that kind of a
I mean going into retirement, I mean you kind of
went right back into work, so there wasn't wasn't much there,
but I mean you're kind of walking away from the
Marine Corps a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:05:23):
So yeah, the hardest part when you walk away is
when you're a chief Warren officer in the Marine Corps,
you have a level of authority and you have a
level of respect. When you retire and once you enter
the workforce again, now you're the new guy on the
block and you don't instantaneously have that credibility. So there's
a transition period. Sure, The other thing that I learned

(01:05:44):
real quickly is that marines are profane invulger, especially in
combat zones. Right. And the more profane invulger you are,
the more instantaneous a response to whatever order that you're
given at that time. Right. Well, that's not a skill
set that civilians appreciate, right, mure. So you've got a
transition period, especially when you go when you retire and

(01:06:04):
once you get done with your you know, job hunting,
house hunting, and you transition to a civilian environment and
you're the boss. Now you've got to you're the boss
of the people in the contract. Now you've got to
to try and figure out the civilian environment and all
the nuances for it and all the other things. So
that's a transition period that that took a little bit
of time to get used to.

Speaker 4 (01:06:25):
Well, you're dealing with individuals that, you know, although they've
probably been around the military, have never been in the military.

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
Right, that's true.

Speaker 4 (01:06:32):
So it's a little bit of a shock and awe
to those indents.

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
And and you know, you've got to set the reasonable
expectations to So at one point in time, I had
a discussion with one of the government employees and they said, well,
you know, you were a chief warrant officers, you're the
equivalent of a GS seven. Stop, just stop, just stop.
There is no equivalency. First of all, you're a civilian
and military authorities and rank don't carry over very well.

(01:07:00):
But a GS seven is an entry level position, and
you're not going to look at somebody with at this
point in time that's got you know, thirty years of
experience and tell them that they're at the entry level position.
So just stop, just stop. And so, you know, setting
expectations for the people around you and doing so and
trying to help them out, because the worst thing they
can happen is one of these government employees goes into

(01:07:21):
a combat zone someplace like Kosovo, right, and they think, well,
I'm a GS seven. By god, I'm the equivalent of
a major in the United States Army. No, you're not stop,
you're not stop. Stop. So send expectations so that they
don't make a fool of themselves when they go down range,
for both for the people that work for me and
for the government employees.

Speaker 4 (01:07:39):
Growing up as the son of a marine I was
always told that a private first class in the Marine
Corps is equivalent to a major in the Army.

Speaker 3 (01:07:47):
Now they would still render a solution and everything else.
But you know, so the Army is a really good organization,
and we started off as conversation, and I didn't intend
to be that way about you acting why I left
the Army. I wasn't bashing the Army at that point
in time. It was just a different time in a
different place. The Army really is a respectable organization, and

(01:08:10):
you've got some phenomenal units. Second Ranger Battalion is squared away,
the SF teams. For everyone that I've ever been exposed to,
every one of them could could was more than capable
in any environment that they were in. Well, we do,
both of us, you know, have our goofballs, right, but

(01:08:33):
there are few and far between.

Speaker 4 (01:08:35):
I just think the Army, by sure size, has a
lot more of them.

Speaker 3 (01:08:39):
Well, you know, so there's a little bit of you
know that there's we tell jokes at each other's expenses, right,
and I'm sure that you've heard the jokes about you know,
marines can taste the color of colored crayons and everything
else like that. We typically respond with something like this,
have you ever seen the mess the commercial messing with
Sasquatch where they dangle beach turkey in front of Bigfoot. Well,

(01:09:00):
the United States Army is a lot like that commercial.
First of all, you have a massive footprint. Again, you know,
you're the only organization that I've ever seen in my
entire life that will put burger king in a a
conics box and ship it to Camp bond Steel, right,
because it's morale, welfare and recreation. And by the way,
you know, if you want a soldier to if you
want to get a soldier to fight, tell a second
ranger battalion that they're not getting hot ratch after three

(01:09:21):
and a half weeks in the field. Find out how
many people want to throw punches. Yeah. Absolutely, So we
you know, we tell the jokes all the time, the
good Nacre joke. But I do have a lot of
respect for with the active duty guys.

Speaker 4 (01:09:34):
Okay, So, did you spend any time in Afghanistan at all?

Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
No? No, I was never in Afghanistan.

Speaker 4 (01:09:40):
So, I mean, but this probably affected you. And this
is one of the questions I ask everybody because I
know there's kind of this, there's a pretty widespread of
how it affected people. When you saw the fall of Afghanistan,
what was your thoughts?

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
So heartbroken? And here's why. So I was never in Afghanistan,
although I did have some contact with Afghanies and others
outside of Afghanistan South. But here's the people that had

(01:10:26):
they've just been trodden upon for decades, right, they had
a glimmer of hope to be able to have a
better place, and then and then a lot of them
were abandoned. And so you look at people, Yeah, you
have some people that were freaking some people that were

(01:10:49):
Turks over there, as you do with every single culture, right,
but you also have a lot of good people. And
so here's a glimmer of hope for something that's completely different.
And when it felt the old rulers came right back
in and things went right back to the way they were,
and they're worse off today than they were, yeh a

(01:11:10):
long time ago.

Speaker 4 (01:11:11):
Well, it's it's almost worse to go from no hope
to hope back to no hope, right, right. And anytime
there's a anytime there's a vacuum created, something's going to
sell that something's going to sell that void. So okay, well,
so we've been going for quite a bit an hour,
it goes really quickly. Is there anything any parting words,

(01:11:37):
any any stories, anything you want to you want to
leave our audience with.

Speaker 3 (01:11:41):
Just I hope future generations have the same love for
America that I do. Our land, our culture is worth protecting.
And I hope you know that the guys like me
that are now graybeards can pass on that that America

(01:12:05):
is worth defending and and that and that we can
find a way to be able to get past all
of the trivial divisions that we see now. And just
it doesn't it doesn't matter to me if you're a Republican,
an independent, a libertarian, or a Democrat. It should be

(01:12:25):
that you're an American first, And I think a lot
of people have forgotten about that. And once we get
back to that and the honorable service that we have
to defend this great nation against all enemies, foreign and
domestic is a worthwhile mission.

Speaker 4 (01:12:38):
A generation taught to hate a country will refuse to
defend it should the time arise. That's right, and that's
that's something that you know. I I see some glimmers
of hope in the new generation. So do I.

Speaker 3 (01:12:52):
I think We've got some growing pains to get passed.
But I still believe to this day that our nation
is worth defending.

Speaker 4 (01:13:00):
Absolutely absolutely, well, thank you, sir, thank you for coming on.
I appreciate absolutely I appreciate it. So hang on and
I'll get you on the other side, all right, h