What Happened on the Third Floor | Matt Bissonnette | Ep. 458

dude let's start with the easiest question we'll ease our way into this ready who's lying you or rob see what you did there who i know i'm joking i know everybody wants me to open with that and i it's the same thing i said when rob sat down i actually i care very little about the the actions in that moment but i am utterly astounded surprised i don't know the right word i've never seen a military operation that at a certain intersection of a certain floor at a junction it goes and all these different directions i don't think so well i think it's pretty straightforward i think it's for a lot of people pull that thing closer to you keep it about a fist away i think it's i think it's pretty straightforward i don't know in my opinion my i don't know i hear there might be other people with different thoughts but um what do you think it would take for the navy to specifically address it or if they ever even i don't think they will i don't i think the better option is uh a savvy attorney out there to file some foia requests for some audio recordings of debriefs and i think the audio recording though i think i'm sure they can be denied but i think there's an angle to it because it was recorded on an unclassified cell phone so if you have i don't know i think there's some classification issues i think some savvy lawyers could maybe say hey we at least want we want the debrief what do you think the impact is community-wide or do you think that there is even an impact i don't know i don't care yeah i i didn't write the book give my version of events to start any drama i i literally gave my version of events and wanted to disappear and be left alone yeah no and i'm not sure the reason i'm even on the radar now is because of the drama that happened not not the drama of who shot who yeah no and i'm not trying to pin any on you by any stretch i'm just curious i think about stuff like the maduro raid where the cad guys launched from naval vessels i'm like wait a minute you sons of bitches first off congrats i mean awesome and those guys are i still some of my best friends are from that place they're awesome love them to death no shade whatsoever yep i do think that the powers that be do look backwards and say if they're equally capable is there any other cascading bs that we would have to deal with in one versus the other is one of these guys going to be live streaming or betting on polymarket huh just kidding green breaks it was an intel guy he wasn't on the operation which i don't know if that makes it better or worse was it an intel guy i believe so i believe he was in an operator i don't think it was on the raid itself i think it was a green beret that was and i'm attached attached i think at jsoc in the intel loop gotcha which if you think about it the operators it's kind of like every senator and congressman yeah trading on stocks and inside information well the squadron guys would have probably had less actionable betting information i don't know i don't know a dude in the intel circle who maybe had a better understanding of the bigger pieces moving around was like sure maybe these are all colliding to this you know sure uh inside trading i mean he was allegedly classified four hundred thousand dollars where was he though he was a special forces soldier stationed at four brag was involved in the planning and execution all right dude i don't even know what i'm talking about this is the danger of believing what you see on the internet don't believe any of it what are your thoughts on that should we be able to polymarket on the maduro stuff i mean in general should operators be able to polymarket on their uh gosh we're way outside of our expertise here yeah that's way out now i don't know it's like maybe bet on your own survival i don't know i don't know i don't know man i don't either i like saying i don't know i have deeply formed opinions on very few things yeah yeah i don't know that that wasn't available to us when i was in i guess i was always too focused on other things than to think of like wow i could i could actually bet on this op to and i guess right the bin laden rather there was effects in the markets and you could read into that and i don't know it's good questions to think about though i don't know if it's i don't invest like that so i don't invest at all because i'm basically scared of just about everything monetarily wise yeah i'm too busy paying all the money i have to the government so i'm i don't got time to invest it talk me through how that works how what works i don't even want to say negotiating with the doj just interfacing with the is it a person do you meet multiple people has this gone gone through proxies with your lawyers oh my gosh it was 10 year this is a 10-year process so yes i've been through um lots of lawyers lots of different doj folks lots of different levels half of the doj folks we dealt with were like officers in our community no offense to the one sitting at the table yeah but they're they're temps right they're there 18 months they move in the next position yeah and so then you're dealing with the next one i've stretched close to 10 over 10 years now so we've had what 10 different reps we've dealt with through the whole process um different types of personalities some take it personal others professional every single one that i dealt with was was injected into the situation to to play the the asshole role very well and and poke the bear how was it when you finally came to a settlement with them i mean it's a large number obviously there was so much that got to the number it wasn't about giving the money back that wasn't it it was uh it was not about that it was just about the the whole process the to me it was about the hypocrisy of it all i mean yeah there's a lot to unpack there but yes yes to me it was it was hardest for me to process of just the hypocrisy of it because when you break down the facts and when you really look at everything that happened right the the seal leadership sponsoring acts of valor and all sorts of stuff mcraven's written books yeah and and i write a book and they come after me right i don't know there was just a lot of hypocrisy that was hard to hard to take hard to understand and how do you feel about it now because you have entered into the agreement with them right so i guess there's a very long pathway towards being done with them what was the actual title of the or the name of the agreement because i thought i thought the settlement agreement said there was no there was no charges ever filed there was no nothing there was just accusations lots and lots of accusations and threats and if you didn't do this we're going to do this and if you didn't do this we're going to do this and so where they settle on the dollar amount for then what is that associated directly with all the money the book made okay every penny the book made they wanted back so right this is why i thought easy days made okay millions of dollars we did our whole thing back and forth back and forth and they wanted me on criminal charges for anything they wanted me on criminal charges for anything they wanted me on criminal charges for anything they could get um i just said okay prove it prove it where where's the criminal behavior the first thing i did was hire an attorney with the proper bona fides to help me through this process if there's anything i know i know i'm not an attorney and i don't know the legalities here not an expert now so i was literally the first person i hired on my team was was this lawyer podlaski former army uh jag who'd worked in socom he'd represented a uh uh army um uh adult a guy um dalton fury wrote written a whole bunch of books yeah delta force officer yeah uh this was the attorney that helped him publish all his books so i assumed when i got him on my team i followed all of his advice to a t um we did not get the book reviewed because he said literally in his engagement letter to me he could review it so i didn't think anything other oh he was the reviewing authority yeah oh that's literally what he told me in the in the engagement letter to me he said look i can review this and make sure it's not in blah blah blah blah i'm like okay check sign boom let's go so the so so yeah yeah long story but the book comes out government goes high and right i'm like talk to my attorney right i keep questioning my attorney he's like no you didn't have to get the book reviewed i'm like well these doj assholes really sound serious and they say i should have so then i hired a second attorney um got him involved first attorney still telling the second attorney that uh i had no no obligation to review my second attorney's like i don't think that's i don't think that's quite accurate um kind of move the first one to the side second one takes over and i'm like hey listen i have i have nothing to hide i didn't do this maliciously let's engage with government and so i i sat down with them and said look i'll give up attorney client privilege you can go through all my emails go through my computer see my emails of me corresponding with these lawyers so you see exactly how this happened today's episode is brought to you by montana knife company let's the blades are made in montana that just makes sense founded by josh smith the youngest master bladesmith in the history of blade smithing or recorded history we should say to be safer they have an amazing guarantee on their craftsmanship they'll give you lifelong sharpening if you send them back in they now have a black rifle coffee shop at their facility their new facility on the western edge of missoula montana so if you were here for the summer i can't recommend enough driving down highway 93 and going to visit them their blades are really hard to get sometimes, and they come in a variety of types. 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and i'm like okay you're going to have to pay the government back and i'm like okay you're going to have to pay the government back and i'm like okay you're going to have to pay the government back and i'm like okay you're going to have to pay the government to cover large legal have to pay the government back and i'm like okay you're going to have to pay the government to cover large legal payments and when we're talking large i was writing 50 60 70 thousand dollars a month for bills they're not cheap i've never written a check like that in my life and so thankfully the book had sold made money and i had that money in a savings account so for years i spent out of that to pay my legal fees after years of the government trying to get me some criminal finally they came back said okay we'll leave you alone but we want all the book money back nothing criminal happened and by the way there's nothing criminal classified in your book yeah like oh so there's nothing classified in my book you agree to that you just the only thing that i failed to do the only thing they got me on was failure to seek pre-publication review we can talk about book review stuff i picked up a copy of your book at the coffee shop this morning there's a process there right um and that is the one piece i did not follow and i said well look my attorney that i hired is responsible for me making that decision they're like well we don't care we want all the book money back so so after they said when when they gave me that offer just return all the money and we'll leave you alone i'm like fine take it wrote him a check but i was short just under 1.5 because i had spent that on my legal defense i hate it when i'm short 1.5 million on things yeah i've never seen the number 1.5 million in an account ever is it cool to at least see that number no because it's all funny money it's all fake why do you have to why do you have to crush my dreams like that so yeah reality sucks it is kind of all fake i mean you might get that up front man you better put 50 of that in an account for your taxes to begin with everything else it sat in a savings i was going to donate it so all good give it back to the government but the government says hey you're short 1.5 we want all of it back i'm cool guys i don't i clearly don't have that you've taken you've seen my accounts you've gone through everything um i don't have it like isn't my attorney culpable to some degree in my decision making to not and you've seen my emails they didn't go through the emails to to to make sure i was in the clear they went through my emails to dig up anything they could yeah um so yeah uh at the end of that once you satisfy the debt like there's you're good you're free and clear yeah yeah yeah okay i just have to satisfy the debt so so gave them the money back and then they said you got three years to pay off the rest that's when we negotiated with them i'm like i turn over all my taxes and my guys i can't pay this in three years like okay yeah you're probably right yeah math is kind of math yeah um so they came back and they said okay we'll give you the 14-year payment plan what's the interest rate there's no interest rate on this but in the agreement it says there will be one if i miss a payment it would be like 87 probably they they give me a discount they're like hey if you make all these payments in in the 15 years and don't miss one yeah um we won't charge you back interest and we'll knock off 300 grand or something at the end so i then made them made that agreement with the government and they said okay we'll give you the 14-year payment plan and they said okay we'll give you the 14-year payment plan and they said okay we'll give you the 14-year payment plan and they said okay we'll give you the 14-year payment plan and i went and sued my attorney how'd that go i won took three years but three years of the whole legal process of and and if there's anything i've learned about lawsuits so what i learned from my my malpractice attorney is the first casualty of a lawsuit is the truth right it doesn't become about the facts of the case it becomes about statute of limitations and where you filed your motions right we filed in new york it got dismissed we had to refile in different states they didn't file in new york they do everything they can to get it to not go to trial and the day we got a trial date they came and settled really because we had them dead to rights right but then it becomes an insurance game of what's the money in the insurance and how do the lawyers get paid out etc interesting so man i made a i made a winning chuck for that but i had to pay my attorney i had to pay taxes and then i had a piece left and i gave that to the government are we just stuck in a mousetrap yes um you know what i'm going to do i'm going to go to court and i'm going to go to court and i'm going i mean i don't know i don't i'm not going to sit here and claim that i deeply understand money and wealth and how it's generated i understand that i was having this conversation with my middle son over the fourth you can be broke on the street and you have money problems you can be really really rich and you have money problems the problems don't leave you it's the what they end up looking like yep i don't know i feel like if you were rich at least you could sleep on a really comfortable bed those money problems are probably better or easier to deal with than not having any money at all problems but sometimes i wonder i don't know i know some rich dudes who run pretty tight on on you know going bankrupt or not because they're making such big moves with with their or their cash flow or their asset rich and cash poor which is a different problem to have and fortunately i have neither of those problems so i can pay my bills yeah let's just say recently i was having a call with the county council and i was like i'm going to go to court and i'm going to go to court and i was like i'm going to go to court and i'm going to go to court and i'm like i understand far less than i thought i did about business so yeah it's it's going to be an interesting next few months as i navigate my way through this particular season but i guess that's what we get to do that's why i just bought some cows what was your stress level like in this 10 years that you were going back and forth with the doj dude not good is it ever not in the back of your mind or you're trying to do are you ever able to set it down and be at peace are you always worrying about it i have i have i have not been able to do that i've been able to do that i've been able to to transition probably wrong term i know what you meant we'll let others take it for what they will people may read it right into that a little differently but um i have not been able to transition out of my military service because i have still been in the fight right i've been in the fight with the doj right i i couldn't right every other veteran that gets out goes through their normal process right and we can that's a that's hard enough as it is um we're absolutely institutionalized doing what we did for as long as we did that transitioned out hard enough divorce all the other craziness and have the government coming after me suicidal you talk about mental health issues yeah i i got out before they even started talking about that stuff right now it was like an evil word if anybody talked about mental health yeah i don't know if you remember right the pre and post deployment surveys and all this nonsense and they were trying to get what year did you get out 2012 okay yeah i got out in 13 they were trying to be better with it you know they were trying to be better with it you know they were trying to be better like the third they were involving the families at the retreats afterwards the third location decompression stuff which can be argued if getting shit faced for three days straight actually helps you do anything thank you two days in germany coming home smelling like good german beer does nothing for your your reintegration with mama it checks a box somewhere though i think on a risk matrix so that people can say that they did something and maybe it's they don't know what to do but it was at least getting a little bit better i hope that it has continued to i wouldn't say was some evolution, because there was zero for a long time. Zero. yeah zero discussion zero help zero anything and and they started instituting some stuff towards the end of my career i hope they have continued with that i hope so i think so because i mean i went to the i did the the brain treatment center okay i heard of that stuff the tms yep um i did that and i heard that from you know buddies of mine at the command who the command was covering it after i got out yeah for guys that were in or for guys that were out guys that were transitioning out they were covering it for them okay and that's where i heard about the brain treatment center i'm like wow you guys are hearing about this active duty i i want to know but this all transpired like in the year two years after i got out has it helped with your stress at all now that you at least have the deal with the doj you got a new book coming like is it giving you stress relief at all is there a little steam coming out of the kettle i had a big release when when we finally got to the point where it was like we were done fight not done yeah done fighting it might be a good way to put it and the ink was on the paper for lack of a better but what a year year and a half ago horrible dates when my deal finally kicked in and i started paying and it was like okay yeah that's when i was like all right this is it this is this is the deal they gave me this is it i'm i'm coming to peace with it um i was angry confused better very very all the natural cycles of grief actually all of that yeah combined and pressurized with all the other shit that i was going through and just transitioning out and everything it was just pressure going up and up and up and uh and i finally got the uh the final settlement agreement was like all right here's my plan here's my payment plan okay check shift focus from dealing with that war or that battle same war different battle totally okay boom next battle next battle is okay i gotta pay this debt off 15 years i do not want to be 65 70 i'd still be paying on debt from my military career i'm gonna pay more money back than i ever made in my 14 years of service oh we should actually do that we should do the math right enters an e3 got us an e8 you know run the numbers i don't know did i make a million and a half don't forget the hazardous duty pay it really helps it yeah that's what the big bucks are that buck 50 and it was tax free so you didn't have to get 135 you got the whole 150 yeah i bet you it would be incredibly close within a couple hundred thousand dollars yeah yeah man and and knowing the military they probably did the math on that to come up with the number that i needed to pay how do you feel today you're doing i mean are you at peace i guess that's where i was going earlier um i think once once i shifted from one one battle to the next and like okay i gotta write this but i'm gonna tell the story i've never told it i've been very private i've been very quiet right i'm the guy who did the disguise on 60 minutes and the fake name and then went underground there was no in my opinion no value add to be out there and the talk people figured it out real quick who you were though yeah there's not that many people from alaska there's actually a handful of seals from alaska but when you start with a handful of potential candidates and then people go nope nope nope who's this guy why is it oh it starts west coast now is um i think we figured it out yeah yeah yeah um suggestion next time make up where you're from yeah yeah the uh i don't know how are you today though how are you feeling as a person today better yeah better better better much um like you have i'm at peace with it like okay i've got to tell the story i've never told it um i've been very private and very quiet about it so okay let's do it i wrote the book like okay that was me fighting back my new battle okay i'm gonna tell the story because i don't know any other way to go make a million and a half dollars i gotta i gotta get the story out there to to get it going um wrote the book submitted for review very important step what does the government do go cold they sit on it for almost nine months right which is short and some of them i've heard i've heard up to 18 months my last book over a year 50 grand in legal fees like oh to like needle them to get them to keep moving my second book no hero i wrote to help pay my legal fees yeah um when i submitted that for review um and in that iteration i had an attorney helping me with it and that took almost a year to get that reviewed and 50 grand in legal fees to get that process done the system has now evolved not any better but now there's no longer lawyers involved i do the back and forth with the government on the on the redaction stuff um submitted the book waited they weren't reviewing it or they weren't approving it i just kept hey what's the status what's the status they were just didn't want to didn't so that's when i did the sean ryan interview yeah and lo and behold then then a couple weeks after the interview i got an email from the review office and they're like hey uh there's been progress on your book and uh here's here's it's cleared for approval but there was a whole bunch of redactions in it yeah and and the redactions that are words that you say are words that are in your book are are words that will slip out in this conversation but they're like nope redacted can't say it they're openly accessible on the internet all of it and and so we did another round of probably three to four months of going back and forth of saying hey look here's the whole here's where vice president said this here's president said here's all the direct correlations here's nope nope nope fight through all the redactions some they'll let you change some they won't um in no easy way i left all the redactions in there that we couldn't come to agreement on because any any person with a fourth grade education will be able to read through and say we know exactly what that word is as i was reading and i can't imagine my brain was still in the redaction as i was reading it through 100 percent yeah yeah i'm not able to do that because i understood where you were going and what you were alluding to to a civilian reading it it they'll have to use their imagination but your imagination is probably going to be pretty close i think there's enough sealed books and podcasts and everything out there that that lingo is well established and developed and and for yeah so they they wanted to take words out um so yeah we we did that we got it approved finally and uh and yeah it it starts up in this week do you enjoy writing it has been therapeutic it has been therapeutic i use a kevin mauer a co-author on the first two phenomenal right don't know the punctuation spelling all that good stuff dude i'm very thankful my editor had multiple reviews for grammatical usage i don't know how to use a semicolon at all and i pluralize words that they're not supposed to be yeah i talk like i write like a caveman and then somebody else comes in is like all right let's let's i'm very familiar with the structure yeah the the latest one i did pretty much on my own um because it was not a warfare style book it was more of a hey personal i talk about my mental health i talk about my faith i talk about a lot of that um i had a publishing deal with my same publisher um gave them the book in the process and and uh got some pushback that they didn't really like what i was talking about so i was like all right let's walk away from that book deal and i'm gonna now self-publish so so this book is self-published instead of using the the big new york guys that could be wildly beneficial depending on how it goes and you crash and burn it could but at least you have more agency and control over it that that's what i want directly that was exactly what i wanted right i wanted to be able to write exactly what i wanted right i didn't want some new york editor telling me hey well didn't didn't you think this way weren't you feeling this way when you did this and like no i wrote exactly what i was feeling that's why i wrote it this way i feel like they would want you to just make the entire book about chapter one the 10 pages i feel like that that's what they would want the vast majority of it either to be or to constantly tie back towards yep and it and it's it's for the commercial masses and i'm like i'm not writing a book for the commercial mass i'm writing a book about my story i'm writing something different so that's why we uh we took the control everything back in our own hands we're selling it off our i think you're going to be okay you already have a dossier of work that's through the new york publishing houses you're already an established i think it would be really hard to do if it was your first one well given the subject matter of your first one it may not have been that hard to do it was a little bit of a unique circumstance for sure for sure for sure but we and i don't say that negatively at all i'm just saying it could have worked there too but i think that was just a timing aspect i think you're going to be okay i think for you the self-publishing aspect is going to be good we'll see i hope so we'll see yeah it just bottom line it allowed me to take all the control back i'm like no i'm going to write exactly what i want i call out some names i call out a lot of leadership i'm pretty uh yeah pretty honest with my feedback but but again back to your earlier question the the writing of this book was very therapeutic and it helped me get over a lot of the hate that uh that i had bottled up inside um where did the hate start where i've never known you to be an angry person you and i have we cross paths peripherally yeah and like we were talking about before we started it might have been an island the last time we saw each other and the last time either you and i were there or in a different century for sure so you know it's uh it was a it was a bit a long time ago but i've never known you to be an angry person or a hatred i've tried to be very positive yeah i'm always trying to be positive i always see the optimistic side of things um it's hard to deal with the guys in our world that are very pessimistic right it's always negative i'm like we deal with enough negative stuff already I'm going to try and stay on the positive side. Do you mean in or out when you were in the service or out of the service? Both. They're more vocal out of the service than in, I have found. Okay. It's a pressure cooker on both sides. I wouldn't say it was around a lot of negative Nancys, but our previous community is very, very vocal and we'll say judgmental. And I don't mean they always land on the negative side of the house, but they have very deeply held opinions about anybody who is publicly facing. Sure. Sure. It's tough. They call it SEAL Team Six-Year-Old for a reason, right? If I'm even allowed to say the SEAL Team SACE on the- That makes it legal, I think, because nobody- On the mic. Nobody will know. Isn't it the official name? I swear if you go to Google, it pops up as the- I'm not allowed to say it. It gets redacted. But what if the president says it? He's allowed. I am not. Put it in my book. They'll redact it. President can say it. No problem. They redacted every reference to it. I feel like that's almost ridiculous. Well, okay. So that's where the hate comes from. That's where the bitterness and the hate, because it was such blatant hypocrisy. You're like, wait a second. Leon Panetta, within two weeks of the Bin Laden raid, right? We go to Langley, Virginia. Go see Panetta give his retirement speech, because he's leaving Langley. He's going to go over and be sec-deaf. A handful of guys from the raid go up to Langley, watch him give his little retirement speech. He gets off the stage, and he's like, hey, guys, I got interviews. I already sued a couple people. And brings over Catherine Bigelow and Mark Boll, the Hollywood producer, screenwriter, director. Zero Dark Thirty, right? Zero Dark Thirty. So within weeks of the mission, they have full access to CIA. Hold on here. So a few weeks after that, they are already at Langley. When did they start having discussions with them? Because that's a real quick flash to bang. Yep. You tell me. And they had already put together a screenwriter and a producer? Yep. That had already. They had already got full approvals to meet with the female from the movie, right? She was the mastermind behind putting all this together. And the CIA had approved her to sit down and talk with Hollywood for the movie. We knew this. We knew this very open, honest, publicly. We knew the movie was coming out, right? We knew that immediately after, within weeks of the raid. Fast forward a little bit. There was an author by the name of Mark Bowden. He wrote Black Hawk Down. Yes. And he wrote a book called The Finish. About the Milan Raid. I never read that book. Or actually ever heard of it. He contacts me shortly after I get out. He's like, hey, I'm writing a book about the raid. I've already interviewed Admiral McRaven for his perspective. I've just interviewed President Obama for his perspective. Hold on. This is within weeks? This has been a couple months. You get the movie first, right? That's still a really quick flash to bang. Oh, for sure. And getting access to those people. Yep, yep, yep, yep. I agree. I agree. Yeah. It's all set up behind the scenes here. So Bowden says, hey, we'd love your ground truth perspective. You know, we got Admiral's perspective, White House perspective. I'm like, wow, OK, well. I mean, Craig, when I'm wrong, both of those perspectives, those are very distant. I mean, McRaven wasn't, he was with you guys in Afghanistan. And obviously, last I heard, you know, the president wasn't on the chalk list. But, you know, so watching from distances. So, I mean, I guess I get that. But that's still incredible access. Well, if you want to paint a narrative in a positive flavor for possibly yourself, for your administration, you're going to allow people to go out there and start talking and sharing the thoughts. So I asked Mr. Bowden, I say, look, you know, when is your vote coming out? He's like, well, we're trying really hard to get it out before the election. There you go. That's also very fast. So to me, a lifelong operator that wasn't. Interested in politics or any of that nonsense. That's when it kind of started hit me in the face. I was like, motherfuckers, like every leader. Panetta, Obama, McRaven, all of the leadership in our country. We're now lining up to tell all their stories, right. To get it out before the very soon upcoming election, presidential election. Yeah. Right. So so I have a book that now pops on the radar. All those people. People have not approved, right. They've approved their own versions and their own narratives. My book pops on the screen and they have not read it. They have reviewed it. So what do they do? Spin up the machine and come after me. Right. If you have a Hunter Biden laptop that pops on the radar before an election, what do you do? You crush it. Depends on what side you're on. Agree. Right. But, but there's sides and one side is going to try to crush the other side because there's a lot of. Pressure hanging on a presidential election and certainly a lot of pressure hanging on right approvals and all this great heroic decision making that the administration had done that they wanted to leverage for their next election. So if my book comes out and I make two political shots and no easy day, I don't like all any politics. I'm a politician. I'm not a fan. Yeah. Agreed. I make two shots. Right. One. When we met. President Obama and Vice. President Biden at the time, Vice President Biden was very handsy, right? Like coming up behind the team guys and like rubbing them on the shoulders and like trying to tell bad, bad jokes. You're like, very awkward. Who's, who's the handsy guy that's telling really bad jokes. Like, so I reference him as the drunk uncle that Thanksgiving dinner. Like who? Super creepy. Who invited the creepy guy? It's just, he was, it was just odd. So I say that. And then of course, when we met President Obama, right. Shake his hand, get our photo op. He gives us. And he's like, guys, I want to, I want to invite you to the, to the residence for a beer. I'm at the residence for a beer. I'm like, okay, I don't care where you sit politically. If a sitting president invites you to the white house, you got to do fucking put your uniform on. You get dressed up and you go up there and you do it. Do you think he ever followed up with that invite? Probably not. No. That would have been cool. So I end the book with, well, I bet you voted for change too. Right. So I've heard the secret service guys don't even really get to see the residents. It's kind of a, it's just a bubble for them to maintain some semblance of being a human being. Makes sense. Yeah. Makes sense. That would have been very cool. But that was, those were the two political shots I took. Right. Small little jabs. And that was before the presidential election. So then, right. A lot of people got mad because my book came out. It was a surprise. There was a lot of political pressure against who is this guy that just wrote a book that wasn't approved. We, how did he do this? Why did he do this? Boom. So that, that, that began the spiral. Was it, was there an essence of you guys being used a little bit as a dog and pony post-raid going up to those things? For sure. How, what was that like? Were you, were you kind of voluntold to do those things? Had that happened to you before in your career? No. Cause we hadn't done anything that big. Yeah. I'm trying to think of a historical precedent. Maybe some other little dog and ponies for like, Congressionals. Sure. People, something like that, but nothing. Well, a lot of times they would come to the beach too, right? Or they would, but it, it just seems like, I can't imagine you guys wanted to do that. I can't imagine. Yeah. If you were to put on your, you know, your. To like post-raid? Yeah. Yeah. No, everybody just want to be left alone. Well, and it probably didn't feel great to the other people in the squadron who were not selected to go. And like other people are getting to go to these places and see these things and they're not. I mean. Hey, that's going to happen no matter what, right? It is going to happen. Well, again, outside of your control. But it's still a real thing, you know? Yeah. That's weird to be used as, as a dog and pony show like that. That they didn't bring the leadership too, or just mostly. No, they brought leadership for sure. Majority leadership. Yeah. Trust me. There was a follow-up question to that. Yeah. Lots of grass. That wasn't just the sled dogs invited to those. No. No, man. So, yeah. Yeah. Is there a historical precedence that you know of, of another book, TV show or movie getting access? Like that, that quickly? Oh, not that I know of. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to think of what other political style event. Now I have heard that, what's the fighter pilots that got shot down in Iran recently and they were on the run. And I think my old squadron got them. The, I think they're already planning a movie for that, but that is. Oh yeah. They already got directors. So there you go. That would mean, I don't mean, this is not, nobody consults me for anything for clarity. But if they were to, I would say this is not necessarily a good idea. There's no benefit to rushing that. I hesitate to try and judge what the leaders are trying to do with their position for their reasons. Right. I was very happy and enlisted guy that doing my thing. Right. I did that until, right. I was, I was on my first deployment when nine 11 happened. Last thing I did was crash into the man's compound. To me, those were good. Was that your last operation? Yep. I hurt my neck real bad. That's not true. That didn't happen in zero dark 30. There was nobody complaining about their neck. I didn't complain a couple of weeks later. Joking. Obviously I didn't realize they had such incredible access that, that quickly. Yeah. Nobody does. You, you assume, right. Right. It's yeah. Yeah. No, there is shady stuff happening at all levels to reinforce. Michael Bay. Boom. What? two pilots, and that was, Michael, how long ago was that? Two months ago? Not that long. Let me see. I think they announced that like within weeks of the mission and the rescue. That is how quick, right? And who is it? Is it politics? Is it military leadership? Is it recruiting? What is it? I don't have an answer for any of that. I don't know. It was in April. You need to interview. It was in April, so four months ago. Four months ago. Yeah. Pretty much right after it happened. I mean, I'd heard Luttrell got pressure to do his movie from NSW because they wanted to tell the story. I have an interview recorded that's not out yet from Ross. Wes, what's his last name? Schneiderman. He wrote the political article, the recent political article about Red Wings. We talked for three and a half hours about, I mean, Merck chats, communication logs, what more than likely happened, all those things. The pressure associated with it. The velocity with which things came out, multiple after actions. Why would you do that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. A lot of it, in my opinion, was swept under the rug. We never heard a lot of AARs from that event. Which is insane. Absolutely. Because that was super early on. Again, it reflects the value of a good AAR. Oh, my God. Maybe we can talk about that. I have an entire chapter dedicated to AAR. I read it today. Because it's, how can you evolve as an organization if you don't sit down? Or as an individual. Dude. Dude. Those were some of the most uncomfortable rooms to ever be sitting in. Especially if you knew you might have had subpar performance, but you hadn't gotten to that phase of the operation yet. And you were just waiting to be like, hi, guys. Remember that? Yeah. My bad. I said my bad. Yeah. Yeah. But how else are you going to evolve? You don't. You don't. You get stuck in your own little happy circle because nobody ever calls you out for anything. Or saying, hey, Andy, you probably should have tried this or tried that. Or, hey, you fucked this up. Or try that. Or something, right? That conversation with Ross was an interesting one. And we opened with, I don't want to take away anything from what either those people had to deal with on the ground. I met Marcus twice. I played paintball with him one time, of all things. And I don't want to take away anything from what they had to fight their way out of. And obviously, the loss is real. But you can't bury the truth in that. Because, at least from my understanding, Red Wings, in the SEAL community, correct me if you've heard something else, is not viewed as a success. It's a failure along just about every phase of military operation to include the planning of sending, I don't know, four dudes without a chief in the Kunar? Like, I'm sorry, what? Out of pure respect for the loss of human life, we owe the Dead Brothers to debrief that. And pull out every dirty thing under the rug and say, all right, let's address this so this doesn't happen again. At least to the community. I don't give a shit if none of that makes its way public-facing, but the community should have access to it. I never saw it. I never saw anything. It went under the rug. It still is there. Oh, I'm sure. There's a lot of that falling around. Do you think that that will ever be corrected? Do you think? That's what worries me the most. I'm exceptionally proud of the time I spent in the military. And I am very proud of the community. But I think. The integrity of the community is of what is of the most importance. If people are going to respect it and view it externally, the civilians, the people we're supposed to be serving, right, and serving for, we have the community has to maintain its integrity. And to me, that means being honest. Again, don't TTPs, all the sensitive stuff. Yes, that's internally facing. Sure. But we don't have to have a tactical failure be portrayed as, my words, not theirs, recruiting posters. Or, you know what I mean? Yeah. That, to me, goes in the opposite direction. Yeah. And then you wonder why people are losing faith in the integrity of not only just the SEAL community, but military communities. It's like, guys, we're our own worst enemy. And you can't point at somebody else if we're the ones behind the scenes facilitating the access. Yep. You know? Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. All part of the broader hypocrisy of, like, where I was sitting in the moment of writing the book, going through everything. I have been going through. It's just challenging to wrap it all around in my tiny little brain. How's the hatred and anger feeling now? Better? Good. Good. Good, good, good. Decreasing? I definitely had my comb-to-Jesus moment, right? Yeah. Where I was like, look, this is 100%. The things that I don't understand in my life is because maybe it's God challenging me to see how I act and if I'm going to be turned into a little bitch about it or not. And so. So, to me, once I started my new little battle, I was like, okay, I got rid of the hate. I freaking let it go. I was like, all right, I'm going to write the story and we're going to go with it. And here we are. So, no more hate. Yeah. I'm going to get through it. I'm going to get this paid off and move on with my life. What will you do afterwards? Let's go with the assumption the book is going to crush and that you'll get it paid off quicker than the 15 years. What would you want to do with your life? Well, I recently bought some bread heifers. Yeah. It's a technical term for a pregnant. Okay. And I'm going to raise some Wagyu beef on my farm and let the world melt away. It's not a bad plan. Yeah. It's not a bad plan. Yeah. Did you think that growing up in Alaska, that's where you were, your goals were going to end up leading you? No, I had no idea. I was just a little punk kid in Alaska. All I dreamt about was getting out of the village and going to be a SEAL. I mean, I read about it in junior high. I was like, man. I bought my first AR-15 from my history teacher at school. I was like, all right. I'm not sure that's legal, but we'll just. Definitely not. Definitely not. I put it in my locker until the end of the day. I was very proudly walked out of school with my AR-15 on my back. Nobody tried that in this modern era. Please, please do that at a gun store or just at a private residence. Yeah. We don't need to be storing that in school. Only in Alaska. God. What a 14 years is an interesting time to get out. I got out at 17 or just under, but I was medically retired. So I had at least preserved the health care and the pension. Did you think about, I mean, where you were at at that time, obviously I'll describe as an F1 car pegged out in the red, going as fast as it can around. Did you think at all about or even consider finding a place outside of that, but doing the additional six or you just didn't think you'd be able to do it? No, good, good question. Yes, of course. I thought about all that. Six years is a long time. As you and I know in that world. Yes. And that pace. Six years is a chunk. Where was I in my career, right? I'd been there. I'd never taken a break. I'd never done anything but deploy. That was it. 13 straight pumps. My longest break was green team, which as you know, is not a break. I was cooked, bro. I was cooked. Start doing the math here. 14 years. Okay. Three year enlistment, four year enlistment. All right. This gets me this far. Okay. That gets me to this point. The 19 years, do I want to go to 25 years and take the blood money at 19 that they were offering a lot of guys, the big money? I looked where I was career-wise, team leader at the command. That to me was like the apex of anything that I ever wanted to do because everything outside of that started getting into the political world. Maybe troop chief would have been cool. But even then, there was a lot of, that was starting to get into the political infrastructure at the command. Leadership-wise. And man, I'd always very happily been the sled dog doing my thing in the team. Such a beautiful role. That is where I loved it. And so I did my math. I looked at all the options. I looked at, okay, if I stay, what are my options at the command? I remember sitting down with my master chief and being like, hey, what are my options? He gave me one. I'm like, thank you for all my options. Yeah. I'm like, well, that, okay. I've got one option at the command. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go out to Bud's. I was just like, man, if I'm going to stay in, I want to stay operational. I want to do something that I wanted to do. Even after 13 straight and recognizing you were just ragged. Yes. My ask. I made one request. Thank you for calling me out on that, Andy. You were correct. Well, it's tough because what's a guy who has done 13 straight, who is operating at a level they want to operate at a place that they want to be. They're going to say, of course, I'm fine. Ready for more. How many more can I have? I'll do this until. 20 that's, that's what, yeah, I get it. Oh, trust me. I get it. I only recognize those things now in myself looking into the rear view mirror. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, Hey, I, I remember I was going to talking to my master chief. I'm like, Hey, can I, can I go to air ops? A whole bunch of air qualls. Not as many as you, but I'm like, Hey, maybe I can, maybe I can contribute there. I'm like a couple of my buddies had got like master's degrees online in their spare time. I'm like, master chief, I'll get my master's degree. I'll do it on my own. I'll do a work air ops or something. There's green training. One of these, give me a, give me a spot for like 18 months. That 18 months is all I need. Yeah. I'm like, get my fan and get, get things settled down. Like decompress a little bit. And he's like, Hey man, I need to send somebody to a squadron. Um, and, and, and your name's on it. I got to send the most qualified person here. I'm like, well, that wasn't the type of squadron that I necessarily wanted to go to. It was not like where I went and came from. And he was like, well, it'd be great for your career. I'm like, I know, but that's a deployable billet. That's I'm not getting my master's degree. I'm not decompressing. I'm not anything. I'm just jumping right into the next thing. And, and I was like, listen, I've. never asked for anything ever i've been the guy who shows up early raises my hand like i'll go take me and i'm so here i am about to pop and i'm like i need a break and he's like this is your only option so that very clearly and and to be honest i was becoming very frustrated with the leadership i saw not all not all leadership some leadership and uh i saw the rules of engagement changing in afghanistan right i'd been i've been doing this war thing since the beginning and i'd seen the whole you guys were kind of the last to have an impact of that what were they changing were they just tightening things up roef you're uh no canines on the mission don't go at night no assaults surround the building and call them out on a bullhorn so why are you spending a a very high-end top tier unit yeah to go basically surround the mud hut have interpreter on a bullhorn say hey come out come out and like and that's an hvt that's not a tier one job no it's it's really not and i'm not saying this is an important job but if you're going to have the tears to the cascading organizations and you are consistently using the apex tiers for things that could readily be handled by other traditional special operations so to me being utilized in that position having been utilized in all sorts of different positions and and seeing them take the some of our assets away and limit our night raids and all this i was like why yeah why why are we putting ourselves in this additional risk for what um and then of course a couple months after the raid extortion that was a shitty day that was my old troop yeah gold yeah i knew almost everybody i mean kelso was in buds with me and then he departed and went to college in texas you know i had seen them when i uh deployed with team three i took him out there for an interoperability trip and it was like lou and jonas they totally facilitated him just hanging out with those guys yeah when they started slowly releasing the names on that one that was a that was not an awesome day that was a huge huge gut punch right you think of the any type of high whatever you want to call it coming off the the success of the bin laden mission to to that was absolutely devastating and and i'll be perfectly honest i'm not uh i have not processed any of the dead friends that i have i haven't i i did not go to any of their funerals i hit out yeah no i was reading that section in your book this morning and people may not understand that but i totally do i have struggled i have struggled at the funerals one of the first funerals i went to is my good friend jason lewis and uh he died in a in a pretty violent way not that i think there's a lot of combat deaths that would be considered um non-violent but it's pretty aggressive and uh i've had this conversation with a bunch of people i don't know if it's and i think it's an individual thing but is it better to remember somebody how they were or see them at an open casket funeral for how they i'm not doing the open casket nope nope nope nope so i struggle with me call me a pussy all you want i'm not doing it i struggle with it too he they had a uh i have too many positive memories of my friends i don't need to see him that way yeah i wish i hadn't seen him at his open he was still jason for sure but there was a uh they had a i don't know what they call it i'm gonna call it a viewing i think that's the wrong term though and i went there but it stayed in the back and then the funeral there was kind of a procession walking in to get your that was in bobby charm that was in connecticut where they where they buried him and uh but there was kind of a procession and it was just slowly moving along and i wasn't really paying attention to where we were and the next thing you know next thing you know i was standing there with him and his you know and donna his wife was there and his kids and i'm and it's uh i knew him well enough to know like that's still jason but he looked different you know and maybe that's just the way that it is but that is the last memory that i have of him even though i have so many other memories i didn't go to all the funerals either man and i don't know what again does that make us just bitches is it and is it i don't know the answer to that but i understand i'm not ready to process it i don't even know how right i don't know how i would i have straight hid from that i don't know if there's a i don't know if there's a right answer to that i think that's dependent on the person yeah yeah it hit me again when we with the pull out of afghanistan and all that it was just like another big gut punch it was like for what why i've mentioned this before i have 43 contacts in my phone that are right that's that's a lot of different dudes that i knew through the teams in my career and and half not i won't say half the wrong wrong wrong number i know where you're going because i was going to ask you a handful of all been post career i bet you probably 10 of those are probably post not quite but close i had heard a stat that recently the green beret community has now lost more members to suicide than combat operations wow yeah i don't know where the seal community is in that but i bet you with a long enough timeline ours will catch that we'll cross is a horrible statistic i don't yeah i don't have 43 contacts in my phone of people that i i knew at that level but i mean yeah extortion again like that was a very buzz with with uh heath and rob and yeah i turned over departments to them in when i left gold no like i handed over the end uh in the eo department all night vision and stuff to him it's uh i don't know what to make of it especially the ones who are making the decisions to end their lives afterwards the things that they were able to tolerate it's tough right i got close i got close i had a gun to my head really yeah fuck yeah how long did it take you to get to that not long really yeah no right after i got out the book came out and immediately after all the drama with the book i was like fuck it i'm out do you remember the first time you that crystallized as a thought where it was actually a viable option yeah yeah had you ever thought about it in your life up until that point no no what do you think it was about that just the pressure the asymmetrical pressure well of the friends that we know that have killed themselves a lot of them were associated with that as well too there's a there's a very close tie to that i'm not going to say causality but there's a correlation there i think yeah i mean i think the during my time in the teams the only outlet for some sort of release was i don't know if it was a release or a release of a certain kind of release of alcohol yeah buddy's dies go burn it down right that that was the yeah that was what you used to to fix things or process or whatever come on so then process so then you get out and you go through the same thing and i'm cut off from all of my buddy i mean the the the command my former command our former command um they went after every single one of my friends right like they threatened guys at the command if they talked to best they would pull their trident kick them out of the command post book you're talking about yeah yeah the book came out it was like cut me off completely so like i'm getting texts from guys burner phones being like yo dude i'll hit you when i get out they're gonna they're they'll they'll kick me out if they catch us talking to you so i went they literally isolated me on purpose cut me off from any of my support structure and and the military knows how hard that is already in any veteran and then they on purpose cut me off isolated me and probably hoped i would continue on with bad thoughts i don't know you go to yeah i wasn't getting a lot of support at that moment from anybody other than being cut off and so so to jump to with a little alcohol to jump to some stupid ideas goes quick what stopped you i just chickened out chickened out thought it through enough put it to the side of my head cocked the hammer back and was like that doesn't feel right put it down and that was it damn dude i mean then i was like all right all right all right check not doing that let's get smart yeah and then uh and then just the the that was that was boom that was within months of the book and everything and then it was like okay let's get back in the fight i've never quit another fight let's get back in the fight so i buckled down and was like all right let's get back in the fight and as i as i fought uh through my legal battles i fought and cleaned myself up i wasn't drinking anymore and just got healthier eating better there's all all the things i needed to had five neck surgeries yeah traumatic or the tms stuff i've done stem cells i've tried to do anything i can to evolve get better try to not be the same thing i used to be did it scare you that you got to that point that you were literally that close or was it shocking to you that you almost got there no because i think i saw enough death in my career it's just it's the thing it's a quick no i get it i mean i yeah i totally get it the uh i mean statistically the community is very hard to get into the command even harder right sure the things that they ask you to do are tremendous and it's not as if that was your first day encountering hardship it is a career defined by psychological and physical pain and the only currency people can get is the money and the money is the only currency people can get and the only care about is your unwillingness to quit and to perform. That's why. And it's tough. I loved that though. I love that about the space. That's why I joined it. Cause I knew it would be hard. And I, I like to work hard. I assumed wrongly that the civilian world was going to be easier than this. And as I stepped into this, I got run over with a Mac truck. Oh, do you regret writing the first book? No, no, I really don't. I regret how it went down, but I think telling the story, I think the way I went about it, right. I don't know too many other team guys that have tried to stay out of the limelight when writing such a big topic and story. Right. I, I was really trying to not make it about, Oh, look at Matt Bissonnette and all his heroic Navy SEAL shit. It was like Mark Owen. Yeah. That guy. Great. It's that guy. It's not this guy. It's who, who Matt Bissonnette is, is irrelevant. Right. Like, Hey, tell, is there a guy who is irrelevant? Is there a guy who is irrelevant? It's a, it's a, it's of the team, right? I tried to really tell that. So I don't, I don't regret that. I regret hiring the attorney that I did and, and, and that whole piece. But again, I I've come to my understanding is, Hey, that was just part of God's plan. And I had to go through that. I did not. So I was, I set up my tactical plan. I put my team together. I hired my experts, right? We came up with our plan based off the experts and we executed that plan. And then the helo crashed just like, you know, metaphorically on the mission, we had a great plan, the helo crash. So things can go sideways. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you learn from the hardship? And that is what I've tried to write about in the book and why I'm trying to be positive now and not, not the bitter asshole that I was for a period of time. I think we all go through that for sure. I definitely have had, there's seasons of life, man. Sure. There's seasons of life. We all go through that. What did you think that the command's reaction was going to be to the book? Uh, varying opinions because I have to assume you bounced it off some of the guys for sure. Yeah, for sure. 100%. Um, how many team guys, you know, read books when they grew up and that's what inspired them to start. And I say this all the time. There's a difference between a quiet professional and a silent professional. Boom. Well said, you know, it, I love again, the community very, opinionated. There was people, uh, in the 53 26 Facebook page. I don't know if you're a part of it. I don't do Facebook. Do they have a page? Basically it's a skiff. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's not. But some of the thing I'm like, don't invite me to that. I'm like, guys, I'm inviting you as soon as we leave. I'll figure out a way to sign you up because I know you're not going to look at it. So I must get you in there to people in there talking shit about the book. Never read it. Sure. And I'm just like, guys, of course, everybody's got opinion, but they'll say this fucking guys out there selling the Trident. Why can't guys just do their job and shut the fuck up? And I'm like, Hey, just so you know, I know you and I've been with you at a bar where you're trying to pick up chicks by telling them that you're a seal. So what are we talking about? Zero TT. That book that I wrote is about me falling all over my dick, just stepping on my dick, getting in trouble, making mistakes. The only story I told was the single worst jumping experience of my life. And I'm like, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. That's it. Even the night I talked about getting shot. I was like, yeah, a guy raised a gun up and I was on the ground. End of war story. That's all I got for you. Nothing. Right. But you can't do anything, but they won't read the book. They won't read the words. They won't process the words to then judge you upon the words you put on there. They'll judge you on the action of writing it in and of itself. Yeah. The, yeah, the hypocrisy there is interesting. So I know I'm a fine with criticism, but like read the book before you try to, but as you know, lay me on the post, there's going to be what a third, a fourth half. I don't know what the percentage is, but there's going to be a contingent, a percentage of the seal community or the soft community. That's going to hate all book writers. Yeah. So I could assume that knowing some of the people that come in and the old school, oh, fuck you. Nobody writes books. And I bet they all read men with green faces. I bet you that was, that was the book I read. Same. That was the first book I could find. Yeah. Then I found rogue warrior, which I thought was nonfiction. My mistake. I don't know. I think they said something about bench pressing 500 pounds and like eating grass. And I'm like, man, I'm never going to be a dev group guy. Cause I, I can't. Ponytail 70 pounds. Stop. And when I'm not benching 500 pounds. No, it was ponytail in the snow. I'm pretty sure he said that was his first set. No warmup wrapping 500. Yeah. Yeah. My mistake. I'm thinking that was a nonfiction. I met him at the shot show one year. I'd never met him. He's a little guy. He's a lot smaller than I imagined in my mind. I've heard stories of him and then stories of people running into his daughter at bars in Virginia beach. I don't know. Never met either, but the book thing. Yeah. Contingent of guys that are going to hate it no matter what that's that's the teams. Okay. I didn't care about them. Cause I knew there's no, there's no maneuvering their opinions. They're guys. I'm probably less interested in their opinions. Anyway, the guys I valued their opinions the most, I absolutely went and talked to all them. I was like, Hey, here's what I'm doing. Here is how I'm going to approach this. I'm not putting my face and my name on the book and trying to get out in front of this and say, Hey, look at me. I want to tell the story the best way I can. Um, I want to support the special operations community by donating the money to this. This is a broader story. This is not about me. Um, we all knew that there was broader movie and book stuff going on. So there was another author at this time creating a manual script as well. Were you guys aware that there was another author? He's been on the show, Rob, Rob, who? No, I had no idea he was writing a book then. Okay. Didn't they come out relatively same time I have no idea when his book came out officially. I did well after mine, I think. Okay. Several years. Okay. I don't know. Okay. Uh, Michael, I hate to Google this, but I don't know the name of his book off the top of my head. Can you Google, Google when the Mark Owen book came out and the Rob O'Neill book came out? I'm just curious on the timeline. Cause I thought that there were people who were aware he was working on his as well too, at that time. Darrell, um, you talked to about it and were supportive. What were their thoughts? All right. Well, you know, you're going to do it. Do it. Eyebrows up probably. Oh, for sure. For sure. You're like, ah, you know, you're like, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, uh, Oh Jesus Christ. 18. Yeah. 18. Oh yeah. Your book came out way before that. Yeah. Okay. Damn. I thought for some reason that, uh, those were way closer tied. There is a, uh, on the internet, and I don't know if this is true, but I did find it on the internet that you two were supposedly yelling at each other in the team room or in the, in the cage area as to whose book was going to come out first. Don't believe everything you read on the internet. That's not how a fun way to live life is. Believe everything. No, absolutely not. There, there was none of that. Okay. Not at all. Were you, did you already know you were going to get out? Was that your plan to, or if it had gone perfectly the way that you wanted it to pre-op or post? What do you mean? It was coming out. Did you, had you already decided that you were going to eject or not eject? I got out before I started writing the book. Okay. I knew my enlistment was up. Okay. I knew I had to re-enlist by January. Yep. And, and that's, we got, we'd just come home from a deployment. Yeah. We'd just gone home. Like 10 days later, they spent us up for this mission. I had been talking about getting out on my last deployment because it was very slow and Afghanistan rules, all the rules of gate, everything was changing. And I knew my enlistment was up and I'm like, I was weighing all my options very open. And I ever publicly speaking of, okay, what, what moves am I going to make? Um, we got back, the mission spun up. Yep. Boom. And then by the time January rolled around, I was like, okay, so you're already out. Okay. I was wondering if you had it. And then I, then I started the book. Okay. I was wondering if you had still been in at that time. Cause I was going to say if in a perfect world where the Mark Oden, Owen, what would that be? A nom de guerre, nom de plume, pseudonym, whatever it is, the name. One of those, one of those, all three or none. Yeah. Nom de something. If it had worked the way that you wanted it to, what would have the perfect execution of that looked like? The book would have been a historical record of what happened, raised money with which you would have donated. And you would have been able to just kind of stay at an arm's distance to that through the name. Yep. There you go. How quickly after the release day, did you go, Oh, or was it release day? Oh, dude. Um, cause the book did well. I don't know if you know this. It's sold a few copies. Um, yeah, just how that whole once, once it hit and how it hit and how it went public. And then all the initial craziness was, was nuts. Um, how quickly did it make its way back to you as in people started trying to reverse engineer who Mark Owen was? Oh, my name. I think it was a Fox news producer that ran my name, uh, online, ran my real name. Real name came out immediately. Like we're talking 48 hours. Yeah. Pretty, pretty damn quick. Um, I was, I was fine, but you know, and everybody else showing up, my parents, family house, how to get them kind of off the grid. And then, uh, and then we just started dealing with hiring the lawyers and engaging with the government. Was there ever interviews for hours and hours and hours, freaking interrogations. They're telling me I have American blood on my hands for writing the book. Who's telling you that? The DOJ. Oh, they were already coming to talk to you. All the spins up. I'm like, Hey guys, simmer down. I didn't do any of this on purpose. Here's my lawyer. Talk to him. He's the one who advised me on the book publication. application process and the review process. - Are we talking a matter of weeks or days? - Whenever it kicked off, it was immediate. All that conversation was, I'm like, we're not gonna hold back here. If you have a problem with the book, here's exempt, talk to my attorney or attorney, talk to them, like explain this. - Do what I pay you for. - Right, but he kept shooting himself and saying the same thing over and over that he could approve it and I didn't have to, and the DOJ is getting more and more heated. So that's when I hired the second attorney and we completely cooperated immediately the whole time. Again, I had no reason to sit here and think I did anything wrong. All the advice I'd been getting was, hey, we did it right based off the attorney. There was nothing classified in the book and this was just gonna get ironed out. And the longer it went on, I was like, okay, well, let's sit down, let's go through my email. So we had two different sessions with the DOJ, two different occasions, going to the little skiff, San Diego NCIS building, and they grilled me for 10 hours. - Do you guys have a lawyer present for that? - Oh yeah. - Okay. - Yeah, I had my attorney present. Not the first one, my new, much better one. And all it was was a fuck Matt Bissonnette session. - What were they looking for? - They weren't looking for anything. Well, first meeting, they were looking for everything. Second meeting was they'd gone through everything and now they wanted to give me the exam, whatever. And that was where they were just like, well, see this right here? You talk about the mission you guys launched from Jalalabad, a base in Jalalabad. You know, Jalalabad was mortared and an American service member was killed after your book came out. - I mean, draw the breadcrumbs for that. - Sorry, sorry, sir. Have you ever been to J-Bed? And he's like, well, no. I'm like, okay. Well, I've been there like 12 times. And every time I've been there, J-Bed's been mortared. Right? It's a big base. Everybody knows they're there. I'm like, we have Russian contractors cooking our food. We have Afghans cleaning the shitters. - Yeah. - And you're telling me nobody knew we had a base there? But you're gonna put American blood on my hands for writing a book? - Let alone the assets flying in and out of there. I mean, come on. - Next page. They're like, see this picture of four tube night vision goggles, highly classified. - Airsoft players are running around with those. - I'm like, do you have internet down here in the basement? Please pull up GPNVG night vision goggles. The manufacturer's website pops up with all the specifications. - Aren't they just PBS 34s or something like that? - I don't even know the name. - Yeah. - But I know on their website, they list all the specs. But these guys are like leaking classified information. It was just a constant barrage. - Okay. - Of trying to belittle, to inflict as much pain as possible. It was DOJ reps and NCIS, not a single NSW person in the room. I've never spoken to a single NSW rep in this entire process besides McRaven here at the end. And he was retired when I got on the phone with him. - Would you want to talk with him? - Oh, I did talk with him. - No, no, I mean, in that process, would you have wanted to talk with NSW reps? - Yes, I reached out to them and said, listen, I'd like to discuss this. You guys in these meetings, no show, no response. - Really? How many years of that occurred? - Two years of dealing with No Easy Day book. After two years, right? They were like, we want you on felony charges. Felony for what? Okay, we want you on misdemeanor charges. Misdemeanor for what? - Yeah. - They leaked, I had told them I had pictures of Bin Laden. Right, I took all the photos on target. And when I got out, the digital camera I had, they hadn't deleted the photos off the SD card. - That conflicts with another narrative, just so you know. Who took the pictures? - Who took the photos? They were on my phone. I had a lot of, not my phone, my camera. When we got back from the op, right, SOPs, you turn in the cameras, which everybody had, to the agency folks who were downloading them, and they didn't delete any of the photos like our SOPs were. I never looked at my digital camera again. I threw it back in my kit. They had issued a digital camera. I get out nine months later, half my gear I get to keep, and they're like, "I'm gonna keep the camera." My daughter's running around taking pictures with it on the weekend, I go to download it, and I see all the photos are still on the chip. - Probably good that she didn't look through the photos. - Yeah, well, I disclosed all this in my multiple, 'cause the government was gonna go through my computer, and I was like, "Hey, I wanna make sure I'm. " So I disclose all this. They're like, "Oh yeah, no problem. Did you delete it?" I'm like, "Yes, I deleted it. You can confirm it." They're like, "Okay." So as they're trying to get me on a felony or a misdemeanor. - Would having those pictures be either of those? - I don't think so, but- - I'm not a lawyer. - They're pressuring me into some sort of deal, and within the week that they're pressuring me, all of a sudden there's an article that comes out in the paper that says, "Matt Bissonette retained, photos have been logged." Now, nobody else knew that information but the government, and the week they're trying to pressure me like, "Hey, if you don't cop to a misdemeanor, we're gonna come after you." Now, all of a sudden in the press, they start talking about how I had the photos. I'm like, "Nothing illegal with that. I've destroyed them. I've confirmed I've destroyed them. All of them. Shared them with the press. Didn't sell them. None of that nonsense." - I'm actually amazed, by the way, that those pictures never did get leaked by anybody or sold to the press. - I don't know. I mean- - I'm gonna make an assumption- - The government controls them all. I had the extras, and I deleted them. So I don't know. - I'm gonna say that you probably didn't have all the extras. - I don't know. I don't know. I can only assume. - I'm just saying, I know how things work. And again, you're not the only person who might not have looked, you know what I mean? Or a deletion or all that stuff. - Sure. - Eventually, at some point, somebody goes, "Man, these are worth something." And I'm not saying it'd be a team guy. Maybe it's a guy who literally throws their digital camera into a recycle bin and somebody pulls out and is like, "Oh, if the photos were ever released, it would help clear up some questions, I believe." Very quickly. Because you would see that there is no, no gray hair in the beard. Very clearly, very quickly. Just like you see in some of the videos we pulled off Target where you see Bin Laden sitting there watching TV and he's got the black beard, right? Exact same, looked way younger. I found, just for men, hair dye in his bathroom. Little box of it. - Didn't this CBS, it might not have been CBS, NBC, we'll call it one of the alphabet soup, and I don't mean intelligence apparatus, but somebody walked through there within 24, 48 hours. And I think in the background of their footage, you can see "Hair Club for Men" in the background. - In the bathroom, yeah. - There you go. - I'm pretty sure you can visually see it. - That's amazing. Is that the same guy who talked about the blood splatter above the door on the ceiling? - I believe so, yes. - Peter Bergen? - I believe so, yeah. - Yeah, I think he was the only reporter to actually tour the compound before it was torn down. - Oh, is that what they eventually did, was tear it down? - Yeah, it's all gone. - Yeah, that makes sense. What do you think of the burial at Seathing and the controversy that surrounded that? I'm assuming you guys had no- - It only became controversial because it's gone. Now, to one hand, I like that. Because it's just gone. There's no shrine, no memorial, no place to go. And on the other hand, it's a conspiracy theory. On the other hand, you bury him at sea, it opens it up for, well, you know, he lives on the moon with Elvis or something, I don't know. - Did you guys know that was gonna be the end state when you launched, or was that a decision made later? - I don't. I don't know that I remember thinking through or worrying about what we were gonna do with the body after the fact. - That's a downstream problem. - I was like, "I gotta get a few other people "on the upstream to worry about." Like, let's get the raft to the end of this stream. - I feel like there's a few things we gotta work through before we figure out where we're dumping the body and who. Like, at that point, I do remember the army rangers coming up and grabbing the body and. - I was gonna say, 'cause I would imagine they just, at some point, there's gonna be, we'll call it a chain of custody handover for that way. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a. I remember very specifically army rangers coming out, grabbing them, and they flew them out to the carrier, from what I was told. - Oh, man. - But yeah, the photos, if they ever got released, I don't know. I think that would help clear some stuff up. I think you'd also see very quickly it's high forehead shots. His face is not all fucked up. You can very clearly see his bridge of his nose, whole face, mouth structure. - So that's the other narrative. - Easily identifiable. The idea that there were extra shots or any of this, that his face was distorted, released the photos. High forehead shots. - Do you think there's any benefit to the community or the world in general? - To release photos? - To, I mean, just to get to finality, or clarity. To have either the military come out and be like, listen. - Finality or clarity for what? - In, I think there's a lot of people are pretty final and clear on this, except a few other people are not final and clear on it. And there's some confusion of. - Listen. - I don't even, I don't know. It's final and clear in everyone's mind, depending on, depending on what version of the story. And let's say there are two competing narratives to the story. - Okay. - What I don't want to do is put on the thread, 'cause I don't want, you know what I mean? In a world where somebody who was involved in this, who still remains nameless and wants to be so, I don't want to change that for anybody. I don't want to pull the thread on anything, expose anything. I want the SEAL teams to maintain their integrity, but there are two competing, slightly different narratives. Everything's largely the same until the threshold between the second and third floor. At that point, it's, there's some deviation. I don't know, A, the dude's dead. Huge victory for the United States and for the command. Like, dude, you guys, 24 guys went, right? Something like that, mid-twenties. - 24 that went to the compound. There was additional SEALs involved. It was not just 24. - And hundreds of thousands of support personnel to make all that happen. You're not trying to diminish it, but for those guys, fucking operation of a lifetime, like awesome, dude. can't even imagine. And at the same time, I'm just glad the dude's dead. You know what I mean? The actual trigger puller, it doesn't, I think change. It's irrelevant. It is irrelevant. It doesn't matter because most, how many times you pulled the trigger? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to most guys. And if somebody truly wants to maintain their anonymity, of course, I'm going to absolutely respect that. I'm not going to pull on that thread ever because to me, there's nothing to be gained from that. I would love for, at some point, the stories to be able to overlap because without that, it allows space in between the two. And that's where the internet goes crazy. My problem is I don't see a lot of space between the two. I know what I saw. I know what we witnessed. And then I know we all came back and did a debrief with everybody in the room that was audio recorded. So if, if, if the other version says there was lying going on in the debrief, I don't know what the fuck that means. I've never lied in an AAR debrief because it's not lying. It's, you may have your perspective, right? We all know you might have your perspective of the mission, but that is exactly why you do the debrief is so everybody else talks about their perspective and how they match up or how they don't. And you work through that. So when we did the debrief, it was right. Different people talked in different areas, but then when the point man came up, that was the first guy going up the stairs. He's the one who talked through all of the final sequences. Nobody interrupted. Nobody, nobody talked about, nobody talked about a second train. Nobody said there was a delay. Nobody talked about, Hey, there was only two guys. The point man talked about shooting and moving into the room, right? This, this whole question of the point man missing. I don't, I didn't see a mess. Right. And I don't know why we would need to lie about him missing or lie about recover up any form of there was a woman killed on the first floor. Yeah. That we talked about in the debrief on the first floor. 00:01:00:00 - 00:01:11:07 Unknown In the movie. Right. So now we're not going to talk about a woman being wounded on the third floor or talk about somebody missing a shot. That doesn't make any sense. Plus, you're going to have to get everybody in the room to go along with that story. You're going to have to coordinate a whole bunch of people to lie. Yeah. Right. To, to, to act like they didn't see what they actually saw. That's why a debrief is what it is, right? Everybody in the debrief shares their opinion. 00:01:11:07 - 00:01:29:07 Unknown If you talk about your movements and, and it's pretty simple when you're going up a set of stairs, right? It's not. 00:01:29:07 - 00:01:39:07 Unknown I mean, I haven't cleared every set of stairs, but I've cleared a lot of stairs. Right. But if you're a point man talking about you clearing up a single set of stairs, that's not a lot of leeway for other people to see different things. He just talks through his actions. 00:01:39:07 - 00:02:00:07 Unknown The shot that the point man took, right? What seal out there is not going to follow his shots? 00:02:00:07 - 00:02:10:07 Unknown No question tactically. That is what we're taught. Your threat matrix. What's your biggest threat out there? Unknown male. Yeah, right. You know, everybody knew Bin Laden most likely lived on the third floor. He had just eliminated Khalid on the second in the landing with a gun. You have to assume right. The guy on the third floor is armed, right? So he takes a shot enough within the rules of engagement to shoot at that head. Yeah. And he decides to stay in the hallway. He decides to come 00:02:10:07 - 00:02:19:07 Unknown out. The known threat that he just shot at and chase women and kids. What team guys doing that? Why? Where? And then where are the kids? Where's the women and kids? I've heard 38 different versions from other people of where the women were. The women were in the room, right? That's where the chick was wounded in the leg. Women were in the room, not out of the room. So if the first one we can pull up the sketches and the layout of the third floor. All right. Up the set of stairs. Open door on the right. Yeah. Shots go right. Point man follows his shots to the doorway. He doesn't stay in the hallway. He doesn't come off of where he just shot at an adult male head in Bin Laden's compound on the third floor. Tactically, what you're saying, who is all of a sudden going back? Okay, shoot. Okay. I'm going to go check this way. There's just nobody that does that. There's not a team out there that does that. You follow your shots. And that's exactly what he did. 00:02:19:07 - 00:02:49:07 Unknown He entered the room. Stairwell. Were you guys able to be double stacked? There's a picture of it. Pull it up on. Are you serious? Yeah. Shows you a little. I've been looking at it. Jesus, Michael. This seems pretty good. If you're thinking of a different man has been typing away with their little fingers. That's not the best picture. You can pull some up from my book and then there's an actual live shot of the stairwell. Okay. I'll see where they you see blood on it from where they drug them down the stairs. But the reason I ask about a pretty narrow hallway and so or stairway. And again, if you're thinking so, if you're a point man and you're up front in the stack behind you, a single file and you take that shot, you might be the only person to see what it is you had taken the shot at. 00:02:49:07 - 00:03:00:17 Unknown So, yes, tactically, what you're saying is it would make unless you had some other incredibly compelling reason what you would have to follow that because what's the higher threat than that? 00:03:00:17 - 00:03:11:19 Unknown You're they've told you Ben lives on the third floor. They might. 00:03:11:19 - 00:03:23:08 Unknown Stick out the male head on the third floor. You you're willing to take a shot at it. 00:03:23:08 - 00:03:26:08 Unknown But now all of a sudden something changes and you're going to stay in the hallway or you're going to stay in another room or you're not going to follow your shots. 00:03:26:08 - 00:03:37:10 Unknown Doesn't make sense. Tactically, it doesn't work. That's why he would have been the first person in the room. Yeah. And any other versions don't work. 00:03:37:10 - 00:03:46:10 Unknown Where were you? Just so people I mean, you did an excellent job describing all this on the Sean Ryan episode. Fantastic episode, by the way. 00:03:46:10 - 00:03:56:10 Unknown So people can understand what I don't think they often understand. 00:03:56:10 - 00:03:58:10 Unknown So many things. Wait, people don't understand things. Well, I think they want to believe that it's it's running around and yelling and ultra high speed. And the reality is oftentimes it's slow and quiet. And well, let's talk about the pacing. Yeah. This was not a hostage rescue style mission where it was burned through the house. 00:03:58:10 - 00:04:13:10 Unknown Yeah. Where you absorb the maximum amount of risk as you're trying to save a hostage. That wasn't it. We had we had evolved our tactics a little bit. I talk a lot about, hey, don't don't run to your death, right? Let's be slow and methodical. There was no rush. The only sense of urgency was, OK, do they have SFS? Is the house rigged to blow and are they prepping some? But that's still not dictating our tactics to just sprint upstairs. 00:04:13:10 - 00:04:39:10 Unknown So it was slow and methodical. The two trains going up the stairs, I just don't understand. I don't see. I don't. You can talk and maybe I'll get him to come to an interview with you. He was the the breacher that breached the bottom of the stairs. He's the point man that led up to the to the second floor. And he'll tell you, he's like, yeah, I stood there and called for more bodies for a handful of minutes, minutes, probably a long time. But yeah, because everybody was gone busting right by him to go to the third floor. So he says everybody was going by. He got some guys to help him clear the second floor because we all blew right past him to the third floor. 00:04:39:10 - 00:04:56:10 Unknown Which is the opposite of the other publicly recognized narrative where it was. There wasn't enough bodies. And all of a sudden, the split happens because they had gone to clear the second floor. So they were left holding on the third. Right. And in a proper debrief, you hear from all these different angles and you hear from the guy there who was like, Yeah, man, everybody was like, Bess, you were a fucking train jumper. You blew right past. You went upstairs. I'm like, Oh, I guess I did. Sometimes you have to jump the train sometimes. Sometimes. Where were you in the train? And the reason I wanted to talk just so people again, you can do the deep dive. 00:04:56:10 - 00:05:29:10 Unknown The deep dive was Sean was fantastic, but I want people to understand what you would have been able to see versus what you wouldn't have been able to see just to encapsulate that. 00:05:29:10 - 00:05:33:14 Unknown If you guys can find the picture of the hallway stairs. Try it. Where would it be? And actually, if we can I take a break? Good. 00:05:33:14 - 00:05:44:10 Unknown Michael, do your research. Today's episode is brought to you by better help. Man, there are so many things in life that can cause stress or anxiety. It could be relationship based, personal based, professionally based, whatever it is. But it can often lead to sleep disruption or even depression. And anxiety, in addition to those things, can be the leading sources of conflict for couples or for individuals. And it doesn't have to be that way. Counseling in therapy is not magic. It's not the easy button. It's actually a lot of hard work. But having somebody that you can talk to to help work through from an external perspective has been so tremendously helpful in my life that I'm never going to stop talking about it. If you feel you would benefit from talking to somebody, I cannot recommend better help enough. The therapist work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the U.S. Better help has a therapist match commitment. They do the initial match working for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. There's a short questionnaire that helps you identify your needs and preferences, and they have 12 plus years of experience in industry leading match fulfillment. If you're not happy with the match, you switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. Better help has over 30,000 therapists and is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over six million people globally. And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of five for live sessions based on over 1.7 million client reviews. Life is going to feel overwhelming at times. Therapy can definitely help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/clearedhot. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash cleared hot. Back to the show. I was going to give Michael props for finding this, but both you and I know he didn't. So teamwork. Yeah. Oh, that is true. It is from the unreleased book, so. No, no, no. That was from my first book. Oh. I did you send the uh stairwell picture as well because there you go okay yeah so that's pretty tight stairwell um so where were you at in the train just so we can make it standalone what were you able to see versus not able to see not a an enormous amount but enough to see so that 180 goes up to michael go one more image uh back so does that 180 lead to okay got you right there okay yep this is why i said when the point man took the shots yep the wives were not in the hallway the wives were not across the hallway the wives were in the bedroom behind the man and you were saying there is uh so why would why would the point man take shots and then stay in an empty hallway that he can very clearly see as an empty hallway right very easily see or why would he take shots and then go into another bedroom how would he let anybody around him to now enter the room in front of him i don't know i don't know and you would say rules of engagement yeah right capture or kill this was not a kill only mission right we were if he was did not present a threat right i think other versions have said the women were in the room right bin laden was hiding behind one of the women so bin laden was hiding behind one of the women where are the women that were outside the room that the point man diverted to i don't understand that was the bear hugging thing afterwards right that the other version talks about he basically took a shot but then corralled the winner hugged right yeah but the women were in the room the women weren't in the hallway so if he if he took a shot and then stayed in the hallway sure but there was no women in the hallway there was no women across the room the women were in the room so he would have had to enter the room after he shot the guy on the ground which is what i say shot him he's on the ground now he enters the room and pushes the two women back i listened to your interview with the other guy the other day he mentions in that interview i don't remember that the point man jumped on the two women and the women had grenades did he say that on that he said that listen to it your interview he said i should have recommended for the medal of honor he jumped on they didn't go off those women did not have grenades they didn't have anything there was no s fest there was no explosives one of the women had been some shot something in the leg in the calf area i didn't deal with her much i was taking photos of the body and doing all that yeah um but somehow she had been wounded so i i just if you can explain to me where the women were because a lot of the versions i've heard from the other people are the women were in the room and bin laden was hiding behind over whatever yeah where's where's the threat the rules of engagement where's the gun i know they've actually found one in the room but it was in the uh trip she found ssc uh above the door on a shelf bin laden standing in the doorway right above the shelf troop leader found an ak five minutes into the search so where's the threat for the rules of engagement to enter the if if you entered the room saw him face to face where's the gun where rules of engagement wise right where's the threat to engage there's he doesn't have a gun if the point man engaged coming up the stairs and he only saw a head sticking down looking at us yeah right khalid had just been shot down 10 feet with a gun in hand we just stepped over his body we're both going to assume that the next head popping out further up the stairs probably has a gun or the device to clack or a grenade or something i would agree that's within the rules of engagement the point man took shots yeah i see that we're under hostile but if you now enter the room and bin laden standing there unarmed which we know he was where's the threat rules of engagement i don't have answers to those questions i don't either i i'm just saying i always go back to what i saw what we talked about in the aar right the point man talks through his actions nobody counters those right nobody saw anything different to counter it unless you're telling me and and you did the interview where somebody said they had not told the 100 truth or whatever okay that that's on them i don't know anything about that yeah i've certainly never done a debrief where you don't tell the whole truth because you've got enough people around who saw other pieces they're gonna bring it up so nobody brought up the you know in the debrief nobody mentioned anything about a second train nobody mentioned anything about a delay nobody mentioned any of that in the audio recorded debrief we have our debrief that was fine change come back to the states and all of a sudden the story had had changed and and now you have other people stepping out in front of this other narrative but here's the problem why did you lie to the the one group that's the most the group you should be honest with but then come back and tell the whole world and everybody at the bar or wherever else a different story that's the confusion right there was we got back from the ray there was a lot of confusion going around because there was people saluting rob when we met the president there was there was stuff that was just really odd and it kept like wow this is interesting um and at one point our master chief pulled the first four guys that were in the room into his office and this is after we got back from the mission uh and and o'neill's even talked about this um master chief pulled us all in his office right one by one questioned each of us i don't know if they re-listened the audio i don't know what they did they talked to all of us a couple weeks later rob moved to another squadron so i don't know i don't know i i don't know i don't care i'm not trying to how many people could have realistically seen what happened right there where the shots were taken because i know you were you uh third or fourth in the train at that point how many people could have seen the shots from where and which shots the talk about just the schematic that we're looking at right now so we'll say the top the initial point man shots yeah from the top of the stairs how many people could have seen it yeah maybe your first three but but still you probably would have heard it more than seen it for sure and you would have had to been cockeyed way off yeah decide to try to get this ability and if you're saying seeing the guy shoot or seeing the guy get hit i mean that's just actually see what happened because that's where the the divergence again seems to come from no the divergence seems to come from the second deck where now all of a sudden there's this this gap that that allows for separation and allows for this gap between the two of them and then there's this gap between the two of them and then there's this gap between the two of them and then there's this gap between the two of them that's appeared yeah and i don't think the gap ever appeared i don't think the gap is ever addressed in the aar which it would be addressed if it happened unless you're telling me there was some sort of massive cover-up and you got all the assaulters to to cover up a story for what now now that's a that's a much bigger issue right and if there's other versions of while we're taking the photos somebody comes in and canoes the face another massive cover-up that you need to be able to pull off to get everybody to now not talk about it somebody coming in in the middle of an ssc photo and shooting him in the face so that was sorry that is a major major issue if somebody does that and and that's not going to be just brushed over in the debrief i'm sorry well and again so i'm going to reference exactly what rob said and you can address it or not but he basically said that he was the one doing the ssc photos when that person came in shot him at close range but you're saying you were doing the photos on your camera there is a rob said it was his hand holding the i i i don't know brother i don't know okay fair enough i'm gonna i'm i'm not gonna guess what rob says i don't know i haven't watched all his interviews i haven't i'm only going to speak to what i saw and what i know is in the debrief right with everybody there that was audio recorded and so that's what's hard for me to understand is if if this was some type of cover-up to change the story then okay that that's on rob and he can explain that. That's not on me. My version has always been what we debriefed. And I don't think the debrief was a setup or I don't think, I don't know. And I don't know how it could have been. I don't, I've never been to debrief. And I don't know how, I don't know how you would set up a debrief like that either. How often do you guys audio record the debriefs? It's the first one I've ever done. I was going to ask. I don't ever remember doing it. Well, I would think because of the historical significance. I'm not saying it shouldn't have been done. This is the type of AR that historically should be recorded for posterity sake. Yeah. Kind of a, kind of a big moment. And it's probably why the commanding officer pulled out a cell phone and was like, all right, let's record this. So we've got this. Should the skipper really have had his cell phone? I mean, listen, I'm not here to judge. I'm not here to judge. But as somebody who got a whole lot of trouble from the government for classification. Unclassification issues, recording that debrief on his unclass cell phone probably could have been done in a smarter form. I feel like he could get issued a sensitive recording device that could have been used. I would, one would think. Where do you think that recording is today? I don't know. That's why I set up a savvy attorney with some good FOIA skills. I'll just deny it on national security grounds. Yeah. Yeah. Again. Yeah. Then I don't know where it is. I brought it up to the government multiple times as they were coming after me. I'm like, look, he's got it on his cell phone. Do you guys have it? They'd never, they'd never admit that they had it or heard it. Yeah. I don't know if one. necessarily has to do with the other but oh how was that helicopter crash scary first one yeah um how high off the ground and did you guys kind of bounce in about 40 feet oh 40 feet pretty good amounts did they at least say hey grab your ass no nothing man um no indication i was in the left door had the rope getting ready to like release the bag and uh and then all of a sudden we started rotating and then kind of going in with me sitting there that's not a great visual we just got here dude did you pick your feet up i did i did my little chicken legs were gonna get we're gonna hit and roll like maybe maybe if i hang my feet get my feet up god the guy behind me is holding me in we we got so lucky with the we got lucky with the crash right like first off those pilots are spectacular i'm sure they did everything they i'm sure they fought that thing to the last moment going in there yeah rumor has it the uh the pilot right he's propped up against the wall we get out we're doing our thing while he's trying to get it unfucked whatever he's trying to do out there yeah he uh made the comment that maybe he could try and like take it off and reset it down into the courtyard only those guys would think you're like a forever a forever love your style but uh only those guys would think that let's let's just blow it up i gotta be honest when i saw some of those pictures i had never seen those helicopters in person i'd always heard the whisper rumors and which are now probably what they were probably in china within 48 hours would be my guess pieces of the technology i remember seeing those and i was thinking the bin laden thing is pretty cool but the actual bigger secret out here is those things sitting in the courtyard no comment well at this point the pictures are already out there but at this point the government would still fuck me for totally comment about it so yeah i'm not saying it went over but i get it and i'm sure there's other tech at this point um but man i'm like oh boy that's kind of a big deal those are sitting there or not those that thing what was remaining of it was one of the coolest things i've seen in my career for sure i had only ever heard whispers i'd never seen in person so again you lucky bastards or not well or not so i was gonna say yeah yeah five neck surgeries and i think i think eight guys on that bird have had a lot of neck and back issues now yeah now that i fly relatively hard yeah now that i fly helicopters man if it uh man again i'm not incredibly familiar with that platform but there's a lot of things like vortex ring state where you're descending into your own downwash and you can't stop it you need the laterally move which over the top of the courtyard i'm telling you i guarantee those guys fought it to the best of their ability and stuff that thing in there it's a i would say it's a testament to them that people were able to actually walk were the pilots okay too yeah yeah no okay they all walked out um yeah again again i give all credit to them and then the big guy upstairs right your time's up your time's up it's not it's not um it was not our time in that moment um i had heard rumors right about the temperature we had been delayed a day yeah and the temperature was warmer that next day you're a helo pilot so maybe you can explain it better to me but the density altitude uh think of the air particles just farther apart and the blades are essentially wings very similar to an airplane wing so they create lift with the difference in high pressure air going underneath and the low pressure air going that's so warmer you're losing ability so there's the altitude what you see on an altimeter but the density altitude is essentially what your engine and the blades think you're at okay and so up here in the summers we had two fatal accidents at a runway a grass runway just by the entrance to glacier national park last year wasn't directly involved in it but both of them it's a high and hot day meaning high altitude hot temperature so your density altitude we might be at four thousand foot here but your airplane might be trying to fly as if it was eight thousand feet and that's where you can run into performance issues i had heard and again you're a pilot i am not um it was eight we got delayed a day yeah the next day we went the temperature was warmer and that played a role oh okay in the crash because our weight and balance was already super close as it was just because we wanted as many assaulters in the bird as possible one guy carried a pistol nobody else carried a pistol like we put little camp chairs in the we ripped out all the seats we bought like so you were just going absolute minimum weight to make yes and if you can get the helicopter or aircraft flying let me tell you it flies better at those maxed out than it does hovering so they were probably flies better than hovers it's called effective effective transitional lift you'll feel it tomorrow when i fly you down to missoula the transition between vertical flight and ford you feel this bump where you're not able to fly all of a sudden now it your energy is being directed forward as opposed to just fighting gravity straight up okay the hover is the heart is well you're at the highest power setting and if you were maxed out in weight and that's where you're pushing the maximum and i have never walls compound and i've never done that so who knows what that has to do with it yeah and if those guys in a fancy aircraft a lot of at night yeah looking through toilet paper tubes and like and i think that's again giving props to the helo pilots when we went in there was no radio call that was like hey mayday mayday you know chalk one going in it was just boom we're parked yeah chalk two was coming in and they were supposed to land on the roof right lip land on the roof guys were supposed to get off as that pilot's coming in a lot of stress a lot of pressure lots going on looking through toilet paper tubes he notices there's a helo parked in the compound i like how you say parked yeah yeah so he's like that's not good and he makes the best call of the entire night right had he tried his lip landing i i would argue he knows who knows right maybe maybe they didn't because that would have been higher than where we were hovering at at 40 hot high it kills people again i wasn't directly involved in those but both of the incidents were overruns of the runway into the tree wow and burned you know i don't know if they survived the impact with the trees however both were engulfed in fire afterwards and i believe there was passengers in both wow but again it's there's the difference between what you see on your altimeter and what the aircraft actually thinks it's trying to fly at and there it's just yeah hot and high will kill you well again we got lucky second helo pilot you know caught that we had crashed and was like okay i'm gonna make a safe set it down outside the company he went across the street and set them down they were supposed to be on the roof now they're outside the compound so um again helo pilots really made a lot of great saves good decisions they didn't push bad positions yeah um they got us on the ground and they got us on the ground and they got us on the ground and safely so we could do our thing and then when it was time to go it was they sent us out on the we had the body um so they sent us out on the on the blackhawk yeah um and then they pulled some 47s in what do you think if you had to estimate from the first guy getting into what's called entering the compound in not even the initial clearance 38 minutes total time on target how about was it from time on target till target secure oh i don't know 10 minutes maybe because you guys spent most of the time i'm assuming trying to just ssc your asses off with the limited time you had your ability i mean the clearance took a little bit of time but nothing no massive delays other than the breaching problems just getting up the stairs um yeah i i would hesitate to guess on an exact number of of targets secure but yeah the ssc thing was was huge of course um i stayed on the third floor did did all the photos dna uh all that um the second floor i guess was a lot more lucrative from a uh a stash standpoint they had all his computers and all of his stuff down there and so they were sscing um i can remember the mass chief getting on and be like everybody exfil now like because we'd already gone past our numbers and he's like everybody leave the building now drop what you're doing grab what you've got and leave now or you're walking home so everybody hauled us out i remember running out with my stuff and looking over and there's one of the or a couple of the the pilots you know they got their big aviator helmets on and they got their army uniforms on these big helmets and like a right one of the just sitting there like traditional m16 standard jobs like look completely out of their element you're like good for them though good for them dude can't say a bad thing about them you should have thrown them in the train just on the bottom floor like follow us to the helos we're leaving grab a hold but come with me sir yeah you get your first ride in the back you can see what we get to experience yeah tell you what we got in the black hawk and i remember the whole cockpit was flashing red i'm a little sensitive because my one crashed that evening and it was the gas gauges but it was still fresh you know yeah too soon so yeah we flew the short distance uh refueled on the ground right nobody talks about the young army refueler kids that came out and refueled us got gas took back off and then hauled us to the border were guys pretty chill about it even on target was there a sense of elation while you guys were there was it just professionalism screws tight just get the job done i'll speak from my opinion and what i saw and witnessed i didn't see any high-fiving i didn't see around around any of this nonsense i saw everybody just trying to get out and get on the helos and get home i was what what time did we have to fuck around yeah i didn't realize it was 38 minutes from 40 was our drop dead time 30 was planned exfil 40 was drop dead or you're walking home 38 we lifted off so we were that close and then when we landed to refuel i was told we had something like two minutes of fuel left in the helo when we landed at the farb that's not fun as a pilot i'm out of it at this point i'm back on the helo like yes all right let's just get out of here yeah until you stay here you're like ah it sounds like one of the engines turning off and you have your second controlled landing of the evening again two minutes of gas not my problem at this point i'm like the helo pilots they got to do their thing right everybody had a key role to play and we were we were done doing our job for the night we were just sitting there now that i fly helicopters and a lot of this flying with your ass feeling but it's also hearing things and understanding rotor chop or noises now before that i i'm so thankful i had no understanding of what those noises when you're in or the shuddering yeah because my favorite position was the front right of a black hawk with my feet up on the wheel because i'm right-handed so i'd have that and you'd come in and i just when it was shuddering the noises it could now i'm like you sons of bitches almost killed us every night oh because now you understand the the noises you're like that's how i'm almost crashing that's okay they're just they're flying on the razor's edge and i have such and at night in brownouts in conditioned and stuffing guys in places like landing where there's so i get to fly when i want to i can set up i'm oh i'm gonna land here here's my seven outs when they're flying into downtown baghdad and it's like you have to hit this intersection because there are no outs i mean i did my rotation with green um and we were like we were the little bird team for a rotation man and like baghdad swat little birds to the roof every night twice a night yeah um i i just a whole mad respect for okay you're flying over baghdad big city and you're like okay one minute out 30 seconds out and they already have eyes on which rooftop they're gonna put you on dude i don't see it until we're four seconds out and then i'm still confused which house we're gonna land until they land and i'm like okay i'm going that way um yeah just a whole different skill set one that i can appreciate but i don't i understand a little bit of it and i can appreciate the the amount of skill that goes into it coordination right from the assets appointing the house and the landing and the outs and the second helo and ground assault force it's insane man it was it's pretty pretty cool when you think about and then what's their standard plus or minus 15 seconds it's just ridiculous or more like five i've never had them yeah late yeah man huge respect for i mean that that was what i enjoyed about the teams right we're working with people who were at the top of their game whatever they did whether you're intel or comms or operators or pilots or whatever i i enjoyed that uh i'm sure like you did right putting a team together and going solving some complex problems you'll never be able to replicate it either at that level i have found outside of the military no no and i think that's part of the problem with vets right we get out and we hope well we're going to find this yeah find this feeling or find this enjoyment on the outside and and if you're seeking that same thing on the outside i don't think you'll ever find it and i think that's not to that level i don't think it's unhealthy i don't think it's healthy to actually chase it but i mean that goes back to and i've asked a lot of guys this especially guys who spend a lot of time at the command do you think that there is an argument for limiting people's combat exposure so they don't get to the 13 pumps in a row ragged edge but still volunteering and they're going to be the first person because you know the residual say that one more time do you think it's worth limiting that well is there an argument here's the thing the person that you would approach and say listen you are getting close to a threshold of where later in life statistically you may have some substantial issues psychologically emotionally whatever it may be do you want to take a break that person's always going to say no so i under because i look at myself if somebody were to try to limit my experience i would argue against it but now years out of the military the neck surgeries the understanding the psychological the physiological the emotional burden of that job even though you know as the person you would have argued against it would your life have the chance to be still ongoing or better if they were to put a limit to that exposure it may it may good luck into the guys to agree to it sure sure because when you're there right you've gone through all the selection where they try and get you to weed you out so it's it's ingrained in you that you have to be the guy no no we're good we're good we're good we're here um it probably would have been helpful it it might have provided some some longevity to the operator right it would have uh would have kept us healthier for longer would have kept me operating longer right had they worked in some sort of beneficial break type thing but then but then allowed me to go back right i'm not trying to get out i didn't want to go to training i wanted a little bit of a break and jump right back in it um so had they had they mandated maybe a little more of a break or built it in and said all right hey anybody over 10 pumps in a row you have to take a break probably would have been something smart i think there but there's take a break i don't even know if i would use that vernacular because guys would say fuck you i don't want to take a break well and i'll be honest um i won't say his name he was a guy at your old squadron um he took a four-year break and then came to my squadron and was a train wreck because a four-year break in the middle of a very high up tempo war yeah is a freaking you mean from a currency perspective yep yep four-year non-operational break worked at the command different different departments didn't he wasn't but from the ability to make savvy combat decisions under stress and pressure understanding the enemy understanding the tactics and where exactly they'd evolve to if you take a four-year break sorry i can understand that one especially in the pace that we were operating at for a decade right well the tactics four years we evolved a lot in six months so four years yep okay i understand what you're saying for sure pulling guys out for too long is a is a detriment making it quick mandating it a quick one keep them healthy you know maybe teach them some meditation right i would have laughed at that before but now my hippie wife has got me meditating and is it working for you it helps all right let me try right i've never um have you ever sat around and tried to just uh self-reflect for 20 minutes or sit and sit in silence for several seconds yes yeah that's right right yeah i go to like burning in a car in two seconds i'm like i'm this is supposed to be a calming thing and i'm always like going the wrong way with it but um i just wonder if some of our friends would be alive if they the residual tbi stuff the concussive exposure whether it be in training real world test parachute jumping that stuff i i wonder if it would save some lives to mandate a break to mandate maybe and again i don't know if break is the right idea maybe just a mid-career assessment because also from what i can determine and i'm not a doctor much like six people could go into a compound and they all have their experience their lived experience and the stories might be slightly different but they're more focused towards those things than others for sure so maybe that mid-career assessment maybe some people they say actually yeah you've done 10 pumps these are the things you're exposed to but for whatever reason genetically you're tolerating it better we're going to give you that choice for the other person dude maybe it does end their career but maybe they don't walk off into the woods and kill themselves you know what i mean like i just don't know the answer um no it's tough it's tough i think the way if a person chooses on their own accord believe and get out like i did right i made the cognizant decision to get out um right our good friend jimmy hatch right he was shot in front of me you know on an op and uh he did not make the decision to get out right that was not on his terms not at his time and if you've read his book right he he had his demons that he needed to fight to get through that process and i think that's got to play some sort of factor with a lot of soft guys right whether they choose to get out how they choose out on what terms were they wounded forced out medically retired i think that's got to play a role somewhere in the in the mindset of hey what am i going to do now that i'm out am i still an operator you know how do you define yourself all of that stuff that we all have to go through and process um i've i've because i chose to get out i have not at all hung on to this so i'm still a seal i want to still do seal things i don't do steal things anymore i not what i want to do anymore i chose to leave that and pursue and yeah learn other new things so yeah i don't know if you could get the guys to agree to it i just i just wonder i mean the job is unique in many ways the impacts from the job it's very unique it is but then so are the things that come from it you know and so are the the ways that it can materially change you or in the gray areas of your brain you know that it changes you to make life-altering decisions later on i don't know i wish that there was a way that we could figure out a solution to that one i don't know what it is purpose and community are the two things that i've i've in my transit process process. You go from a job where your purpose is at a high level. You're willing to give your life for this purpose and this job. I think there's very few of those careers and environments in the civilian world where that translates. And so this is very special in and of itself. And I think that's very tough. I think, too, in the teams, we're surrounded by somewhat like-minded individuals. And when you get out, it's harder to find that new community that relates to you. Because few civilians that haven't had your experiences or our experiences can relate. We can relate on a certain level that other people can't, period. We could have conversations that most people should not be involved with. For sure. Absolutely. Without a doubt. Yeah. Yeah. So I think when, for me, when I got out, I was cut off from my community, right? I lost everybody. No friends. No friends from the community. And that's grown back. And now I'm reconnected with all my boys. So that's great. But there was a period, a long period of time where that was cut. And I think getting rid of the purpose and losing your community really puts that guy in a bad spot. If you can step out of purpose, find a new purpose, okay, it may not need to be taking lives or whatever, but a new purpose. All right. We could be saving puppies. Find a new purpose. It's important. And a new community around that. And I think that would help. And I think when you lose community and lose purpose, it's dangerous. What's your new purpose now? I got to get out of debt. I got to get this government shit behind me. I mean, I've been fighting this since I got out. I'm not out of the battle. I am still in the war. I've just gone from firefight to firefight to firefight. And hopefully, I'm in my last. Last firefight. That's why I'm doing the podcast. And I'll do my little circuit, hopefully sell some books. And then I'm going back under the radar. After that, though, I mean. And I'll tell you what I've determined mine is. And this is after years of getting out and struggling, I think, to find it. I think that is the identity piece, the identity and purpose. The identity, I think, is talked about more because you physically take a uniform off, whatever you hang it up. Who am I without this uniform? The purpose one is tougher, man. What do you want to do with your life? And for me, I realized probably within the last few years, and I think what got me over the hurdle of being willing to write the book that I did through the lens that I did was, I just want to try to be a value add. I want to try to make the world around me a slightly better place. Is a little hippie coming out of you? No. I mean, dude, we broke enough shit, if you think about it. I don't agree. We broke enough shit. And I wonder often about the long-term impact. Of the things that we broke. And the history books long enough out how they will judge us. I wouldn't take back any of the actions. And I wouldn't change anything about it. I made the best decisions I could in the moment with the information that I had, period. That's how that job works. But I think trying to be as positive as possible, to make as much of a difference as possible is what I want to do, the purpose. I'm not sure how I'm going to. The book falls in line with that. I think you're doing that. I'm trying to. You're writing about it, writing about it. So I'm not necessarily prescriptive or have a mechanism of how I'm going to do that. But I've identified that as what I want to do. And it's been very helpful to do. You'll get through this stuff with the DOJ. You'll pay the money back for sure. Yeah, for sure. And that's where I got over my negativity. I'm like, oh, listen, this is, I 100% believe, my opinion, this was something that God set in my life. There's a reason I survived everything I survived. There's a reason the book, drama went down. And there's a reason I've kind of reconnected with my faith. I mean, like, look, this is, I had to go through this for whatever reasons I had to go through this. And I am now positive and I can share the positive message moving forward. What do you want people to get out of your next book? The book that, when does it release? You said you start shipping when? Well, the 8th. So two days. Indeed. Okay. Two days. It's called No Easy Way, because it turns out no easy day. It's not long enough, right? The point being is life's journey will always kick you in the nuts at some point. You're going to have your ups and downs and it's how it's your perspective on that process, right? And it's, you know, it's to your point. Like, hey, instead of focusing on the negative loops, let's focus on some positive stuff. Let's stay very focused on the positive. It is tough. I'm not saying it's not easy. Yeah. But focus on the positive, surround yourself with other positive people and then keep digging out. If you surround yourself with wrong people, then it just spirals and it's, I don't know. At the end of the book, anything in particular that you would want people to walk away from? A better understanding of who you are, perhaps? Your journey in life? Man, my father passed away about a year and a half ago. I'm sorry. And a 30-year battle with Parkinson's. But he was a guy who called me out, literally, like a couple months before he died. He's like, he just called me out in my whole pity party that I was having over the situation I found myself in. And he was a guy who fought a disease that took his life and never complained once. Like 25, 30 years of Parkinson's, he knew exactly what was coming and he never complained. And so when he called me out for that, I was like, motherfucker. Damn, that hurt. That hurt so bad. Stinks like a bitch. All right. I cannot be negative and I've got to move through it. And so I guess my point with that is I spoke at my dad's memorial and the biggest things I took away from him are things that I now try to apply to my life. And it's his four Fs, his family, his friends, his fun, and his faith. Those were the things that kind of guided him and kept him on track. And I was like, I don't care what career you are, whatever. If you surround yourself with a good family, good friends, have some fun in whatever fashion, and then have some sort of faith in the bigger picture. So when you don't understand something, you don't just automatically think the sky's falling. You can have a more positive spin on it and be like, hey, maybe I'm just being tested and I need to move through this smartly. You think you'll write another book? God, I hope not. I really just want to sell this one. Pay my taxes, pay the government, and go to my farm. Although cows can be a bitch to deal with. I've heard that actually. Yeah. They seem like they would be kind, but I think they probably can be assholes. They're a little dumber than I thought. I was hoping they'd be smarter, but no. Did you have a history of doing ranching type stuff? Where did you land on this Wagyu? No, none of it. An Army Ranger friend of mine, he owns a company called Valor Provisions. It's an anti-consumer protein seller, right? More about your healthy chicken, beef, all this stuff. You buy it through there, skip the grocery store, and it's healthier. And so the more I got to know him, he's like, Bisc, I know you got this little farm. You need to put this into action. And then he started sending me YouTube videos and a whole bunch of stuff about cows and Wagyu, and here I am. You're remarried now as well, right? Yes. How long have you been married? Oh, God. You really want me to. Listen, Michael, make a note. We're going to edit this out so his wife doesn't get mad at him. No, she won't. You're supposed to know this answer. We've been together for a while, but we've been married for less than that. I was never getting remarried. I was over that institution, and then eventually I folded. My divorce was not awesome. I'm actually yet to meet somebody who said that theirs was, and I'm just leaving space out there for that person. It doesn't leave you looking for your marriage, for sure. I found the right person. That was the difference for me. I went five years, and then we were finally like, all right, let's get married. Did she know you at all when you were in the military? Nope. That's why it works. Yeah. Mine has no object of being in the military as well. That's why mine works, right? We would not have worked when I was in, 100%. But yeah, she doesn't know anything really about. She's seen what she's seen, but she doesn't. She ever ask you about your old job? Very little. Same with my wife, too. Because it's irrelevant almost, right? If it comes up, it's like, if I have issues, she'll ask me questions. Otherwise, it's, say, let's talk about modern day things. Well, she doesn't know what to ask. Every once in a while, though, I'll run into an old friend, and they'll tell a story about something, and she'll say, were they talking about you? Were you there for them? Like, yeah. I don't know that, Andy. Yes, I was. That was not my best moment, but yeah, it's a different. We all evolve. We all evolve, and I was a different person. I was a different person when I was an E3 than I was an E5, when I was an E7 than I was a civilian. And hopefully, I continue to evolve, right? Hopefully, I'm not stuck. What would you have changed about your career looking back now, if anything? Nothing. Man, I fucking loved it. Do you think you still would have gotten out at 14? Or would you have found a mechanism? No, I said earlier, some of the leadership was. I was bumping against. the rules of engagement I was bumping against. We'd had a massive loss of life that it was really affecting me because it's like, okay, for what? Right. That was a they were going to help some rangers who had gotten troops in contact for in full loom. From what I understand, the team guys had passed on the target the night before. So you start thinking about those decisions that led to a lot of death. And then we pulled out of Afghanistan. Right. And then just process all that. Do you think that the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which I think we can call a massive tactical failure, has anything to do with, though, the service and sacrifice that people put into it leading up to that? No, but it was an optics thing. It was just like, man, we left in such a fucked up manner with dying on the way out. Agreed that they just made it feel wrong where I my opinion. Right. I thought we ran Al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan on the first nine months of the war. I was going to say days. Right. They're all in Pakistan. The smart ones. And then we fought the Taliban for the next 10 years. Like to me, the Taliban is not flying planes into the World Trade Center. Right. The Taliban has a different set of rules. But who are we to be world police running around the world? You know, like maybe we don't need to go to war with the Taliban. I don't know. Think of the money we spent. Think of the lives lost for what? Eventually leave. Like we probably could have taken what we spent on the war each month. Gone to every tribal leader in Afghanistan and bribed him for a fraction of the cost. I think peak spending in Iraq and Afghanistan when they were both going on was a billion. Yeah. Okay. Let's let's divide that against the main warlords in Afghanistan. And you go to each of them and say, hey, listen, we're going to give you 100 grand a month or whatever the math is. If there's any attacks, if there's anything that happens in the tribal region that you control, we're pulling the money back and we're carpet bombing your village or 100 grand a month, 500 grand a month, whatever it is. Keep the peace. We'd save money. We've been out of there sooner. I didn't certainly seem like we had an exit strategy. No. And then it was confirmed when we exited the fucked up way we exited. And I think that's why you get the the veterans that are that are bummed about that. I get the optic, but it has nothing to do with what they did. It's a tough one. I get the optic, but one has nothing to do with the other. One highlights. I mean, how many times have you ever been in a leadership role where your job is to execute a plan? Maybe it wasn't your plan like the with. And that's the thing about the withdrawal. Everybody wants to blame it on either Biden. But the reality is our entrance and exit from those countries span multiple administrations. I'm not sure any of them really thought about the exit. And it really looked like it wasn't going well. And I don't know about you, but if you're in a leadership role and an objective and things, here's what the plan says we have to do. But the real world is saying this isn't working. I'm like, hey, this plan sucks. Yeah, we're orienting. We are now going to change. Turn the steering wheel. Totally. Something. That is basic leadership. To me, the withdrawal highlights. A leadership failure at a governance level, not a military level. They were doing the best they could trying to get out of there. Very constrained. It's everybody that was upstream. I think that's what I was seeing with the whole everything that was going on in Afghanistan. The drawdown, the changes, rules of engagement, all of that was all getting more and more sticky. And you could see where it was going. And I was just smart enough because I'd been around the whole time. I was like, let's see where that's going. I don't. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't need to do this. I've checked every box there. I don't. I'm not. Definitely not chasing it. I've been there the whole time. What would you say to somebody now who a young man who will listen to this and is considering or wants to go down our previous career field? And they hear you talking about the leadership and the arc like that. Would you recommend service to somebody or a pursuit of that career path? Of course, of course, of course I do. And I. And I. I do it all over again, right? Like why, though, if you saw the arc like that and you saw the community bending the knee, not that they don't have a it's it's a rock, paper, rank organization, obviously the military. So it's not bending the knee, it's following orders. But you would still recommend somebody go down that path, even though you have the disdain for the direction you saw it was going. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this disdain wasn't constant. The disdain was at the end of my career where I was like, OK, I don't need to be here any longer and I'll remove myself from that leadership changes. Right. Yeah, leadership changes, time changes a lot. Next thing you know, prior different country priorities, whatever, we're doing different things, different places. So, yes, we absolutely still need people raising their hands, standing up, serving and be like, yeah, I want to join an organization like the SEAL teams because of what it stands for. And I and I I'm proud of that and everything I accomplished at the ground force level and anything above the actual operator level is where I was. I was an operator, right? I was the guy on the ground. I was not a guy that spent any part of my career at that operational on. And that's not my happy place. So it may not be a happy place, but it's where you could have the most impact. Agree. And I talk about that in my book. That was I could have stayed in. I had my degree, right? I could I could have done your. Would you get your degree? I don't have a degree. How did you become an O? Are you an LNO? Listen. Oh, you're an LNO. LDL. Oh, LDL. Sorry. No, because they got rid of the LDL program. So they made me an 11:30. It's not a big deal. We don't have to celebrate it. What's an 11:30? I don't know. That's the official coding for a naval officer with no degree. Some of us know how to use Google better than others. Yeah, I had my degree before I came in. What's it in? Criminal justice. How'd that work out for you, you criminal? Look at you getting misdemeanors and felonies. You should have. Didn't you learn about these things? Yeah, apparently not. Yeah. So trust me, I thought about that. I had I actually could have done the OCS. Yes, thing and applied and that that was a that was a real lane of thought that I went down for a period of time. I was like, all right, I can be the guy who bitches and moans, right? Because, you know, there's that enlisted level where you can just bitch and moan and you can get away with it. But then you mature through that and you're like, OK, it's called the E5 mafia. We both know what it is. Yeah. But then eventually you got to mature and grow up. And actually, some people don't not just bitch and moan. You got to bring solutions, right? Yeah. So. It was time for me to evolve. I get hit up a lot from people recently asking me whether or not military service is still worthwhile. That's why I asked you that particular question. It's tough to. What I don't want to do. Ever to people is paint with the rosy brush. Look at the excitement, the challenge, all of these things in the commercial. Yeah. And then leave out the shadow because. You really need to let people know. People know what they're getting into because people. How old were you when you knew you wanted to be a team guy? Fifteen, sixteen read a book. Yeah. Did you even really could you even really articulate what it was or was it this just gravitational pull? I read every book under the sun. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, anybody, special operations, whatever seals. I was reading all of that to try and understand. The culture of the organization and what I was getting into. But this is all pre-war, too. Yeah, right. All of that changed drastically. 9/11. And then it was like, oh, OK, this isn't just the books and historical. This was like, OK, not now. We're now there's a real job. I probably would have got out at 9/11. I would have gotten out sooner had had 9/11 not happened. I've done a couple of pumps and I've checked nothing to do. I think it was beneficial because I so you probably went through Bud's and what about 2000? Ninety nine. Ninety eight. OK. Graduated in early 99. I think it's good that we saw the pre-9/11 teams. I think the people that struggled the most were the ones who entered post-9/11 early GWAT. And then as it kind of came over the bell curve kinetically, they were struggling. And I saw that I was like, oh, I've been part of this community before. And it was a good balance to see it kind of going back to that. Yeah, but that's a special perspective. Well, and it takes time and maturity to have that perspective. And the luck or dis-luck or bad luck. To enter into I mean, there was generations of guys in our community, people post-Vietnam, pre-9/11, spectacular guys. I mean, the command that we were at was founded on those people. When I went through selection in 2002 and got upstairs late 2002, I mean, they had been on combat deployments. But I'm not going to say that they were looking back at it now. I mean, laughable levels of combat exposure. I don't mean that negatively. It just was what it was. The reps. They were earlier in the rep cycle. But those reps picked up and they ran for a long time. And that's where I got to see it all. I got to see all the freaking change in leadership. I got to see it all right to where I saw it too and was like, all right, I'm good. I'm cooked. I'm full. I wonder what it will look like because I think the senior most members of people that were in our generation are now largely in the senior most positions. Are getting close to the senior. Our friend who may be the mick pond soon. I swear one time he told me he was going to get out at 20. I said, I'm thinking. He's already well past 20. I know. I was thinking about it. Did you mean 20 times two? Yeah. I'm not sure what the retirement calculator is, but I think it's only 1.5% per year, buddy. But also, if that's the thing, like if you love that stuff and you want to do that and you're the person for the job. Yep, yep, yep. To each their own. To each their own, for sure. But I mean, I wonder when those people eventually hang it up. If there is going to be a change in the community, either it will come under the their guidance and leadership, or it will come after them when the next generation of people who didn't have their experience comes into it. And maybe it'll, maybe that's just the balancing act of that ebb and flow of the world. Right. I don't know. I don't either. To be honest, I try not to think about it anymore. Not my problem. What would you say to somebody though, who asked you, they don't know whether or not service is worth it anymore, but they're considering it. What would your answer to them be? Yes. A hundred percent. Neighbors where I live. Good friend just went to buds, made it through buds, just graduated Corman school, checking in at his team. I've helped mentor him through the, through the whole process. And, and right. It was never saying, don't do this. This isn't worth it. This is worth it. But think of this, this, and this think of balancing your family in a way time. Here's, here's some lessons learned from a guy who's been. There a long time. And here's a little perspective for you. What was your strategy for balancing family time? Cause I failed. I didn't have, I didn't have any of that. I figured that out way later. So that's why I could be the guy to, to tell the young kid, like, Hey, think through some of this stuff. Right. Like, um, when, when my, I guess it was my, when my son was born, um, the squadron had blown out or was blowing out for some stuff. Um, you know, we won't talk about where, but the whole squadron was blown out. They were going to do some things. Thanks. And, and I was like, I'm not missing this, but it was over the, when my son was due and, and I'm like, no, I'm going, I had my gear packed. I was like on the chalk lists and everything. And then, and one of the team leaders came back. He's like, you're not going, what are you talking about? I'm like, no, I'm good. I can, I can miss it. This was fine. And he's like, no, you have to stay. I was like, oh, geez, he took me off the load. I didn't go. And then, uh, and then of course I stayed and, uh, Lance Vaccaro, uh, from my old squadron, who's a tandem bundle course, uh, burnt in and died. Um, and so then of course I didn't do the blowout. I'm there waiting for my son to be born. And then I have to go do the notification. That is rough. Yeah. Yeah. How do you even prepare yourself for that? I mean, it's like half the other shit we did that we've never done before. And you just jump in the deep end. Or you try to just hold your shit together to get the information across in the most compassionate way possible. I mean, what's the game plan going into that? Um, we found out he passed the, you know, an old command spins up the Keiko casual casual assistance calls officer. There you go. Uh, they had somebody, you know, it was one of the officers or something with the command, uh, attached. And then they were like, Hey, and, and his parents were split. So we needed two teams. Um, so I went, uh, with one of the Keikos and we notified his dad. Um, but yeah, dude, I mean, putting your uniform on at a freaking, you know, you fly up to the local area, civilian clothes. Yeah. I go change in a, you know, bathroom at the seven 11, put your uniform on and then drive to the house and knock on the door and deliver the worst news. And you know, that there is no confusion. No confusion about why you are there. No. As soon as you open the door, they know what it is. Open the door. He sat there for two seconds and he fell to his knees. So yeah, no prepping for that. No training, no nothing. Talk about it. Like the mental health aspect of the backside of dealing with everything we dealt with. No training, no ability, all the front load of like how to blow something up, how to jump out of a plane, how to do this, how to do this, how to do this. Where was the, Hey, when this happens, here's, here's some strategy off ramp, something, here's some stuff to think about. Um, none of that, man, never. All right. Hey, you just, you just went and notified your buddy's parents that he died and now you've got to process that. Yeah. Or go back to work or deal with your family or still keep working or whatever. And so that's all of those things. Right. And so that, that is why, and I mentioned it earlier with, with all of the death that I had to deal with through my career. I hid from it. I buried myself in work because that to me justified the, the skip like, okay, what's your plan to deal with it? If you have one or if ever, I, I got to figure it out. I don't know. I, I, unfortunately I still feel like I'm in the fucking battle with the government that I can't let my guard down to process anything. I got to keep my fucking guns up and keep fighting until this is over. And I feel like I can have a letdown. And then when I have a letdown from like, okay, the war is over. Okay. Let me, let me go process some of this war. Unless you repeat your previous behavior and find another battle to fight as opposed to processing. I don't want to know. Another battle, unless it's with some fucking cows. I'm trying very hard to avoid any battles. Yeah. I'm a living a much slower, more comfortable, less stressful life, hanging out with family and friends. And that's it, man. And, and trying to sell a book so I can get out of debt. You're going to be okay. You're going to work your way out of that one. Like all life's problems have solutions. As long as you don't make decisions that are, you know, life-threatening. And I hope that you have, I mean, I would feel like a small victory is the DOJ. Like here's a deal. Let's sign the deal. Now we can execute on like, that's a good step. The fact that you got to there and then you can, at least the breadcrumbs are out there. There's there. And I don't even, I hesitate to bring this up because every time I've seen a crack of opportunity that there may, something could change or whatever. I've been literally shot in the, not literally, but shot in the face. Every time, right. Every opportunity has gone nowhere. After the, the Sean, because I've been very quiet, right. I've never shared any of my story besides the books. After the Sean Ryan interview, people within the current administration reached out to my legal team and have engaged with them. We'll see where that goes, but the consensus has been, wow, BISC got fucked. We want to see if we can help you. So we'll see where that goes. I don't know. What else were you doing after you got out other than the books? I mean, you were, there's kind of a interesting palette of occupational stuff you got involved with. Oh, dude, I've tried everything. I wasn't, I didn't want to go work for somebody else. I was done working for the man. So I was like, all right, I'm going to go just swing away at what I've done. That's the game I'm in. It's again, there are self-employed problems. And there are working for other people problems. The problems come with you. So just don't think that one of those choices is absent problems. But I'd rather bitch at me being the boss than my other boss. I'd rather be the warden of my own prison where I can shift the view. Or if I need to find a person to blame, it's a bathroom walk away into the mirror. Like, Hey, what's up, buddy? I love my weekly personal AARs when I call myself out for all the things I missed or fucked up or whatever. I'm like, okay, I live way happier there and go from there. So, speaking, done a handful speaking. Do you enjoy it? It's been therapeutic. That's been helpful. I had an opportunity to sit down with the president of CBS, the SEAL team CBS show that was on for a while. I'm aware of it. I watched zero episodes. Yep. There you go. As I think most team guys have. You should take a look. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying it's horrible. I'm saying I'm, I'm at least proud of it for, from a few takeaways. Um, what was your role there or interaction there? I had a meeting with the president of CBS and, and the topic came up, what does Hollywood do wrong with military content? And I was like, yeah, basically I was like, well, first of all, you don't hire any veterans to actually portray the stories. Or if you do, he's the technical advisor. You don't give him, you know, the technical advisors to make sure we're all wearing the uniforms and run around with the right stuff and the right look, but he doesn't give you the right look and the right look and the right look and the right look and the right look. And I'm like, listen, I, I might've done all the, the seal Rambo shit, but you know, we all tried to stay married. We had kids. There's a lot of other balancing act that goes on here. And then there's mental health stuff. There's a, there's a lot more than just the Rambo that's always been portrayed. And so, um, CBS guy was like, all right, well, would you help us put a team together? Sure. So I, uh, an executive producer on it and involved from day one, um, helped hire a whole bunch of people. Um, and then we had Tyler Gray, um, literally the show would not have worked without Tyler on the show. Cause Tyler was the tech advisor. We got him directing. He was, uh, invaluable. We had some other character. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Uh, we had another, we had a couple other characters. I went through green team with, um, we had writers in the writer's room, right? If you understand the Hollywood stuff, you get the whole bunch of writers that write the script. And by the time it gets on set, you, you can't go change it. So we were getting these nuclear hand grenades and, you know, parachuting from space. I liked both of those ideas. Phenomenal, very realistic. Um, but that was the Hollywood machine spinning up in the typical wrong direction. And so we were able to put people into the all aspects of the production and that just grew and grew and grew um and it made the show more authentic and successful we talk a lot about mental health we have a we have a character commit suicide in a va parking lot i mean we we pretty good we hit a lot of that the the central focus is mental health um and so i think the veterans that have watched it can connect yeah it's hollywood yeah but it's it's in my opinion it's been a very good version and it's portrayed uh some decent messaging around the community so that ran its course um trying to get another one going right now about the coast guard we'll see how that plays out but yeah do that a little farming little uh i went through the brain treatment stuff i opened up one of those clinics for a minute i've um yeah a whole bunch of different stuff what happened with the video game the video games yes mostly because other people got did you google that i knew people directly involved oh cool don't names yeah um guys from the command i was actually asked if i had wanted to be a part of that my schedule didn't align for me to be for the jump stuff correct my schedule didn't align for me i would have said yes okay and i don't know what trajectory that would have had in my career that the the video games um dude i got out and like two weeks after i got out i knew all these guys and they're like their work with ea sports video game company and they had uh medal of honor warfighter i think was the game i don't know they're like hey will you uh help us make some promo videos like tactical promo videos that are all over online these days um like sure so um i was out but i had reached out because they were paying really well i reached out to a whole bunch of my friends and i said hey uh if you guys want to come shoot some videos over the weekend or whatever jump stuff whatever we didn't borrow any rigs from the command we rented everything um rented c-130s did the whole thing um those videos those videos were out but as soon as my book came out and they were looking for any way to hurt me they then knew i was involved in those videos and they knew other people were involved in those videos so then they started tracking down all the guys all the active duty guys that participated in those they came down with the hammer them they came down with a heavy hammer on those guys yep they i'm telling you they our other good friend that you went to buds with they basically told him not to come into work for his last year in the navy because they had seen that i had uh sent him an early copy of the book via email i mean they anybody who was associated with me got fried where do you stand now with the community do you think obviously you reconnected with your boys don't care the community don't care the boys the guys i served with that actually i care about that i went to war with these guys and they're my friends connected great reconnected with all the ones i care about um and slowly they pop back up on the radar so the community i don't care have you been back to the command at all why i don't know i get invited to go to the stealth monster i haven't been back since i left i've never seen the new facilities the new compound i've never even seen it that'd probably be worth checking out i don't know if i want to go i feel like at this point they've probably taken my name off the gold squadron wall just because i host the podcast and talk openly about my experiences i'm always i always say the same thing though i didn't do and i was happy and i did the minimum amount of time yeah i moved on i don't know that the judgment from who and where is so hard to get like it's impossible happy healthier person like i said not worrying about it i don't care value would that add to me to go back to a command like i all my best friends now are former team guys yeah and those that i they're in my closest community they've all transitioned out they've all had their ups and downs they've all um tried to move into the civilian life in a positive mental way and those are the guys that i hang out with so to go to a stump muster and see a whole bunch of i've never been to well i've never even been to a seal reunion that was never just my thing i'd rather go spend holiday weekends with my family as opposed to going it's like i'll see you at work on tuesday dude yeah you know yeah yeah yeah no i've never gone back there i don't think no i did my time i was happy to do it but i'm happy i'm done i don't i don't feel the need to go back right i i left on my terms i don't feel like i need to go i'm good i'm happy i did my time was it tough for you getting over the uh because up until you went on sean's like you had done jack's podcast a few times filmed from the back of your head black my better side um when you were doing those though that was mark owen right it was like yeah okay yeah how the only reason i chose the matt bisonette to come out of the shadows on this is because i had to right i needed to it was part of the story it was like hey my real name's been leaked for sure the only thing that was not out was my face the only thing was out was my face was it a tough decision for you to make they intentionally be the one to and obviously a great platform to do it on with sean's but and was there any hesitation in being able to do so or just kind of this we have to do this sean talked me into it i was like hey sean you know i'd like to come on promote my book and you know can you not show my face he's like no you have to show your face like sean can we talk about this he's like this if you wanted to sell books and if you want the podcast to be a success you've just come on it's been 10 years get over it and we had a conversation about it he's like what value add do you have by continuing i'm like so we had a whole conversation i was like okay he gave you good advice if if i need to come out of the shadows own you know i was played by the mark owen stuff if i did speaking events it was mark owen and and no photos allowed whatever like because the story's not about this it's about mark owen and whatever it's fictional um oh yeah has it been almost a sense of relief to not have to balance between those two and you can just be this or is it what you thought it would be stepping out of the shadows like that i very much enjoy the position i put myself in right like some people enjoy the being out there there's other people you've interviewed that like all of that i don't i chose for 10 years to avoid that very strategically and yeah judge me for my actions i did not want to get out in front of this and okay look at me i wanted to tell the story and and be left alone and then i got in the fight and had to get through the fight and then that's the only reason i popped up back on the radar was okay i gotta get through this fight and this is probably the best way to help kick that off how'd you explain to the 60 minutes people you needed an intricate disguise they're like so well i'm gonna do this i used again all all very early on i used um my attorney that gave me all the bad advice he was dalton fury's attorney dalton fury the delta guy he used the disguise on 60 minutes when he did his interview ah yes and so he was like oh yeah i helped dalton disguise we could we could do this and so when we sat down with 60 minutes i was like hey i don't i don't want to look like myself i'd i want some anonymity here um and i'm like just a fake beard and sunglasses it makes me look like i'm going to look like a homeless person maybe we could try something different and so they they had the disguise people come in and put it on that had to have been very bizarre yes very bizarre enough to do it twice yeah i actually did it a couple more times for different speaking events did you really for large groups because i've never had my i tried very hard to not have my photo taken for 10 years moving around in the public space i do it smartly so i would limit audience size or whatever i'd take people's phones like you can't take photos i don't want my photo taken and so for bigger audiences for certain things i'd be like all right if you want me to do it you put the disguise back on and then we don't have to worry about photos man okay never thought about that doing a public speaking event so i don't know the uh i'm in small town where i live now yeah i'm not gonna name where it's definitely definitely good not to yeah yeah yeah yeah um and uh don't tell people like this little dive restaurant and have dinner with my wife we go home like the next day on instagram i get this dm from this this random dude and he's like hey man i don't want to be weird but did i see you at this restaurant in such and such and such location yesterday and i'm like motherfucker so that's that's the stuff that i don't necessarily like because i very much enjoyed the fact that nobody knows anything all right i walk around everybody it's it's nice um right it's nice our our good friend jack car right hit the shot show with him this year and he can't go five feet without six million people and they talk to him and have no clue who i am so it's great like jack you go take care of that i'll go i'm gonna go hang out i move there as you just grab people's phones and take like i'll take pictures and that way you're then you're out of it yeah that's the move yeah oh hey did you want a picture hand me your phone yeah i got it i got it totally yeah it it solves the problem no that's good you're just immediately out of it they don't even think about you correct yeah you're just you're just a polite friend that takes the photo oh jeez man he's crushed it he's done great it is awesome to see i hope he gets some downtime i feel like he writes when he's asleep i feel like he writes when he's awake i feel like i don't think he gets much downtime i don't think he does either yeah no he's he's a very very busy man i can't wait to see the next terminal list that pops no they're all going to be great i mean he's proven to be a spectacular author does that just go on for the rest of your life i think so for guys like that i mean that's that's the man world that he's wants to be in and has put himself in and is is certainly putting a lot of work and effort into it and and doing very well in that space so yeah respect to him um right everybody's to choose what what they want to do and how they want to go about it seriously yeah he openly said and openly says he only wants to do two things he wanted to be a seal and an author that's it kept that second one to himself while he was in yeah yeah but you know you you probably know him pretty well yeah he was one of the best most well-read seals oh yeah right most seals don't read books i mean some of us well maybe we didn't you're right right maybe in middle school but active duty guys read less and less where yeah jack was always the guy reading tons of books and you know a big thinker and i think it's perfect one-two punch how old do you know 51 51 yeah fucking old how does that feel old no i don't know age is in the head man age in the head i feel healthier now kind of real though i've gotten i've gotten i went through my my fat post-navy stage unhealthy i've had five neck surgeries now yeah i fucked up my neck really bad in the crash a couple artificial discs a fusion that's that's helped a ton just medically yeah um are you able to attach that obviously to disability i mean those are directly service related i've got my disability rating but the va did none of the work i went to the va for a year and a half yeah trying to get an mri and all i got fed was pain meds and never got to an mri that's rough the last time i came back with a bag full of pain meds i'm like i'm not doing this so i just didn't take any um and just dealt with what i was dealing with um through a friend of a friend in sandy or in la connect me with a neck doctor out there former air force trained guy um he's like yeah best come on out i'll see you show up at his office i got x-rays i got an mri and i met the doctor in like two hour time span he's like dude you're c4 c5 or not looking good millimeters offset like you hit the wrong way you're probably not gonna walk i need to fuse that immediately so like a week 10 days later oh damn yeah i've had three through the front or a fusion um two artificial discs on either side of that so he's reconstructed a lot um i've he started a foundation to work on other veterans i've connected him with three other guys who were on my helicopter that that he's worked on them now he's worked on other guys from team five um damn so he's he's uh a doctor who gives back and and so that was that was a key part of my kind of my medical health transition right as he was working on my neck and getting me physically fit there that was about the same time i went through the brain treatment stuff that was about the same time i cut back on my alcohol and you know started eating healthier working out again just all the the needed things yeah and uh yeah so healthier happier all good what are the cows aren't enough do you think the last time you fucked with a cow there's a lot to do never no i eat them come out and visit um what if it's not enough for you what do you do you are you hoping that that will be enough and that's what you want to occupy your time with i i'd like to think i have plenty of things to do i don't think i'm gonna be bored um outside of the cows right i making money in other ways business ideas other opportunities i'm pursuing a million different things um those aren't gonna stop um and actually when we're off this i've got a uh something we need to talk about business-wise um viagra did it no um it's this new idea more about how you chew on less viagra more archery okay anyway okay maybe there's a tie over there i'm not sure of but arrows do have a shot um yeah i'm not gonna pursue that uh yeah serial entrepreneur i like it but i'm not gonna do it but i'm not gonna do it but i'm not gonna do it but i'm not gonna do it so yeah i'll do other things but but the cows are a nice escape right the cows i get to go to my farm and i get to their it's not people that talk back and helps me i only ask because i have found i don't even know the easiest answer when people ask me what i do is i say i own a coffee shop because it's the easiest one to talk about when they if you say oh i host a podcast to say what's it about and then i have to say i don't know it depends on the guest yeah and then they say who is your favorite guest oh and it's not that i mind it they ask questions that are you know when somebody says who's your favorite guest like dude i've had 500 of these at this point that's tough that's not fair you know um so i don't i don't know what i necessarily do but i know i like doing a variety of different things i don't know if i'd call that being a serial entrepreneur but i enjoy the brief attention in certain areas and and consistently trying to learn new stuff and figure it out i think that's the i like being challenged in new areas and learning figuring it out yeah because i've never done cows right that that's a new thing i gotta go learn i i do not want to go back to what i've always done right i'm the last thing you're gonna see me doing is teaching shooting right i'm i'm not interested in doing that i want to evolve outside of that world um so yeah and whether it's cows or something else there will be a million different things right yeah and and now honestly my kids are a lot older so it's i'm putting energy and effort into them not how uh were you able to stay connected with them as you were going through this pressure cooker or was there an aspect of time where you needed to reconnect with them um mine were super young when i was in like my daughter i kissed her in a crib the last point i did in 2010 and zero recollection of my military time maybe my oldest son remembers a little bit of coming and going yeah so i didn't have to that would be cute can you imagine our our old job and you had teenagers no or no i mean no no no no no no i can't i can't you'd be a phantom in their life yeah you'd have to reconnect with them as an adult i think yeah yeah my mine were seven and four when i got out so my my daughter knew long trips or short trips totally deployment or training trips and um you know she knew if we went to home depot she saw somebody with a beard it was probably daddy's friend or something you know what i mean um virginia beach small town beard gotta be a team guy yeah um but no so got out got divorced all that um i'd live in the same very close proximity to them um still now you do yeah awesome so very good relationship lots of all the right steps were taken at the right time thankfully to your point had they been teenagers when i was in no freaking way you how would you be home enough to even i wouldn't be oh yeah and then when you were home to be able to put any energy into them that they need so no i'm i'm very happy looking back when i got out of the timeline from from them from a family aspect of being able to put energy into them during right because once they're out of high school which they now are they're flying on their own now and that's that's the that's a wow that's your that's your area of impact and once once that area of impact leaves you've got very small windows of any impact dude it's such a wild phase i have uh my middle son is turning 21 next month my daughter just turned 18 my oldest is 23 wild how long after you got out did you end up getting a divorce i mean i was getting it before i got out it just it that was that was that was in process for a while mine was a few years later and and uh i've noticed that you know statistics are sometimes accurate sometimes inaccurate are they online because they're always accurate if they're online i feel that way when i fight them or i'll make up studies to support my opinions there's the families that don't survive the military service and then there's this weird jump where about two years later they fall apart there and if you think about it it's probably because they're spending more time with each other and i can only speak from the community we came from they're now actually spending more time with the person than they were married with before like who are you i don't like you yeah yeah i don't get to see you in seconds before now i get to see you in minutes way too many and let's be honest coming back from that op temple you're a disruption to the life that they've created to be able to facilitate while you're gone and now you're back and you want to be like i have to you want to inject yourself i'm the hero of my own story and i demand to be the hero of yours as well too and then the marriage just goes whack but yeah it's about two years afterwards it spikes up there again that's kind of uh there were my marriage wasn't doing great when i got out of the military but we divorced shortly after that a couple couple more years beyond that but it was all the residual things that we didn't deal with with the nucleus of all called the merry-go-round of things that we would i don't want to say fight but ruminate over all was the origin of that time period and yeah the more time with each other it's like oh maybe we just don't like each other that much i think how for me personally right that job is gonna change you somehow some way um in lots of ways and that's you're changing your spouse may not or maybe they're changing in their own ways but but you are maybe arguably changing in more dynamic ways because of the environment you're in um and that stuff i can remember coming home and like the biggest arguments i'd have with the x or what the sprinkler setting was going to be because i'm like it is great 40 minutes twice a week yeah more water gets the gets the roots yeah yeah she'd be like well i think 30 minutes three times a week you know she's like fine set it so i'd set it and i'd leave again in a day and i'd come back a week later and it's gone and it's switched back and you're like stupid little things that and then you're just you're not connecting and i just i found myself just moving further and further and and it was really hard to reconnect um and and again it was arguably my fault well if you lay a resentment to raise my hand and continue to volunteer here and i never volunteered to just stay here i volunteered to go here and so if you lay a resentment into that man you are loading up a poison pill towards the end yeah it's a tough one to get over how do we prepare people for what you said that that job will change you because i agree i don't think it has to make you a worse version of yourself i think in many ways it can make you a better version but it will change you i wish i had an older mentor i wish i had an older mentor i wish i had an older mentor someone anybody in my career path that was above me and i had a few don't don't think that i didn't have any but i wish i had a few more good mentors that that could come back and say share a few words of wisdom and and but they'd have to be guys that i respected enough to listen to were you mentoring anybody when you got out in that role that you had looked well i mentioned it earlier that the young kid getting in is just past corpsman school he's going that's where i'm going to volunteer for the trips yeah right he's young and he's married already i'm like oh strike one you already got married all right well if you're already married well let's let's not make more mistakes yeah let's keep that marriage but there's there's some things you need to think about and your ego is going to be telling you you want to go to that next school and you want to go on this trip and you want to do all these things but you need to understand there's going to be side effects that come with that that are going to that are going to counter your true love know that yeah calculate that into your equations and your decision making and then make smart decisions but i never i never really had too many people lay that out for me um because honestly there wasn't that war going on before we got i was going to say they may not have known i think a lot of this stuff is still they're figuring it out it's not a lack of desire to try to figure it out some of this stuff is just evolving at the speed of war i think though too early on a lot of our senior leadership in the community hadn't seen any combat so now i remember early on iraq when iraq kicked off what was the motto and it might have been a team three thing um when we turned over with team three in kuwait it was never have so few been led by so many so poorly wait say that again never have so few been led by so many so poorly and you looked around the the the seal base in kuwait and there was more worn officer fives and fours and all these crusty old team guys no no disrespect no judgment but they were there to get their war on and and okay great but that that ended real quick and they moved up in the ranks and those were they there to get their war on or were they there to get their war award so they could advance both i never saw i mean i don't know what depends on who they were with yeah it was top heavy at times and i'm i'm speaking specifically at the very beginning because i think everybody thought the war was going to be over three weeks and this is a one hundred we gotta get our we gotta get our end now because it's gonna be over and then it just stretched and stretched and stretched and so a lot of those senior moved up in rank so they stopped deploying and my brand new guy my first deployment 9-11 happens you were talking about sitting in a freaking home run position to then keep doing what i did yeah i was there for oif one and uh i don't know probably oh bf very low single digits as well too it's interesting the i'd love to get your take on the military award system oh god no comment well here's the thing early on i do believe and i think it's fair to say that most people thought that it was not going to be 20 years that we'll just say that for a war 20 years of combat wasn't going to be 20 years yeah i remember and it wasn't leadership talking but i do remember conversations people saying and oh i have better get it in now because it's probably going to be over thursday you know so awards come out though at the end of that and i'm not here to judge the award system but in my opinion and i can only speak for my opinion the award system started getting broken because certain awards were associated more with rank than actual actions which made them more competitive on advancement boards and so then every subsequent person if that becomes the new standard to be competitive it now detaches itself especially for which ranks specifically i'm talking about officers you said it not me i am always speaking from my experience that's all i can speak from yeah i witnessed firsthand awards very high awards that have very specific guidance that have to be awarded for you singular acts involving combat action yep being awarded to people that i was on deployment with and knew where they were and i'm not trying to say my service was any different than theirs but i'm also not trying to say i was deserving of that award either but when that award is issued to leadership what does that then do and what does that say to everybody coming after that if you don't do that or close to it you're not going to compete you're not going to compete and so then it breaks the system yep i didn't join for awards nor did i you didn't join for awards most guys i served with and actually went to combat with the only award i ever received in person was the uh was the one post bin laden mission every other award i got i think i got just set in my cage at work like just whatever yeah um we had they do a big award ceremony for you guys for the raid guys uh yeah yeah um i wouldn't say big it was uh official like yeah it was a very official fly somewhere a whole bunch of brass was there and everybody got a better award um what did you guys get silver stars yeah um i'd say deserved the uh we had a commanding officer squadron commander um i was not on this mission the uh he's on the op they get no troops in contact uh very good friend of mine there's like four dudes flanking their formation he's he's at the far right flank and happens to see them flanking them he maneuvers on them and eliminates all four very heroic very strategic life-saving for the group they write them up for a silver star very deserving actions were pretty gnarly um commanding officer because i was the ground force commander and overall responsible and he got a silver star i need one too he wrote himself up for the silver he got it award he got it so specific i know but they wrote around it enough and and i saw the award to exactly your point i saw that game being played by lots and lots of people enlisted an officer because it did help with well if if commanding officer so-and-so led so many missions and his troop did this many missions and had this many awards under hit well he must be a better strategic leader and he should be promoted this guy had half the missions and half the awards well maybe because it was wintertime yes but that's not what they did that's not what i know i know and uh that that is why from the beginning it's never about awards it's never about self anything it's about just get the job done do the thing have you ever read a bv from like korea no it sounds like a medal of honor citation i bet well alone in a trench batting away grenades with a shovel for 48 hours right right out of ammo navy achievement medal no v yeah they were handing out i mean a bronze star with no v yeah it was like fucking hard candy for everybody now right like oh do it up oh i think there's a ton of people with bronzes with no v um which for people listening that is the highest award that is allowed to be given for if it's without a v your certificate will say for merit notorious achievement. If it is with a V, it'll open with for heroic achievement. But above that, they're all, they are by doctrine supposed to be for actions under combat. The bronze star is the highest one that can go either direction. Yeah. So you got a lot of people like, oh, I'll get a bronze, but for leadership or for whatever. Yeah. Um, I don't know. I really don't care. Yeah. That was just interesting. It was some, it was something that I saw and I, you know, I even remember it in the moment thinking, man, if you guys start this, there's no end. Do you have a, uh, shadow box type setup with your like awards and trident and all that stuff? You know, a lot of guys like retire and get to like the, the, the wall at home with the flag and the trident and their awards and everything in there. I don't know where any of that stuff is. I've, I've never done that because I, again, to your point with the awards, I'm like, I don't, I don't care. I didn't, I didn't join for that. That's great. I've got some. Yeah. Sure. No, I have, I have a three ring binder that has like school certificates. And stuff. And I think I have, those are more important than the awards. Yeah. Well, I have the, you know, the little folding thing. They give you the award. Like it has a little picture of whatever it is. And then the little site, I have that in the three minor, I pulled a piece of the paper out and I did that while I was still, I'm glad that I did because my kids have never asked to see it, but maybe one day they will be like, make sense of this. If you can, you know, like, but as far as the physical awards themselves or any memorabilia, I actually think the, one of the few things I have is the gold squadron line behind, which was my departing gift. And other than that, that was, I found that at our lake house in the garage in a box. Yeah. And I was thankful because I was looking for it. Cause I knew I wanted it to be there. Yeah. And the paddle, the paddle that the team five game, those are the two things that I actually, that I have physical. I never got a paddle from five, just left without one or whatever. Just, I don't know. And then team five, I got the plaque when I left or a damn neck when I left with my name. And when they handed it to me, they're like, Oh, we noticed. I'm like, we'll get it fixed. I'm like, no, no, no, no. I think this is way more fitting. Just leave it with one T. It's a power move for sure. So yeah, again, I didn't do it for awards, accolades. I did it for the boys and to do it. I agree. I did it for exactly the same reason, but I also, again, if, if you go back and if what you care about the most is the community and the integrity, you have to have conversations about the awards. You have to talk about, what can happen if it detaches itself from what they're supposed to be and becomes a metric of a leadership position. I'm not saying that always happens, but I have a hard time finding people who are around it who say, yeah, I never saw that. Right. I will say, you know, because I'd been around for as long as I had and seen a lot of the change, right. I was only an E8 when I got out. Only an E8. Yeah. There's only one more to go. Well, but there's a ton of E9s floating around the command. So I'm, you know, I'm still an E8. That is true. Yeah. I'm sorry. I just lost my train of thought. What were you just talking about? Awards. Awards. Because you had been there for so long and you had seen the ups and downs is what you were saying. Oh my gosh. I just lost my complete train of thought. I'm sorry. Probably because you have TBI type stuff. I'm not cutting that shit out at all. This is the cost of going to war. Where was I going with that? I don't know. We were just talking about it. I mean, the bottom line is I wanted to talk to you about it because I, I do believe that the integrity of the community is of the utmost importance and you have to have those conversations about the reality of it. Conversations. I was getting more and more verbal with some of the, my disdain for a lot of the award stuff or a lot of the other stuff that was happening around the command, right. Or just in the community in general. And a lot of the guys that I'd served so long with were, were, getting more vocal as well. And, and we'd call out a lot of these ridiculous things that we saw. And, and then it finally got to the point where there was a lot more pushback for anybody being mouthy. And we're like, okay, we've been around long enough. We can get away with it, but we can only get away with it to a certain point. And we'd always try the best to kind of poke the bear and poke the leadership. They were like, Hey, the enlisted guys are watching and we see this. And, but eventually, you know, we just get overrun and they do their thing. It is a rock paper rank world in that community. Yeah. So again, you know, you can only push as far as hard as you can. And, and again, I could have put in for OCS. I could have gone and been an officer. I could have, could have been involved in those conversations and added, added context there, but I chose not to. So I based off my position, I can only push it so far and then go back to work. Yeah. We think the hardest thing you did was during your career or in your, in your career. In your perspective, from your perspective was the most hardest, like operationally mission wise, mentally what either, or what was the most difficult thing that you think you were able to accomplish while you were in or that they asked you to do? To, I mean, maybe looking back now, I see it as probably, it's pretty challenging, but to, to stay as positive and to stay as fired up and to stay as motivated and to stay as all the things I tried to very much stay on the positive side of things. Right. It's a slippery slope. Um, the hardest thing looking back was to stay positive as positive as I could be through, through 13 straight pumps. It's a lot, man. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you see things and then they don't get, you see things, in a different way from different perspectives. Yeah. Talked about that all day. Um, and, and I think the hardest thing looking back was, was staying positive through that. Um, continuing to learn and evolve through it. Um, not getting disgruntled, right. There's plenty of old dudes floating around the community that are just the old curmudgeons. And I saw those looking up and I was like, I'm not doing that. I'll get out before I reached that level. Sure. So that, that was probably the, the hardest thing. The hardest. I love the work. So that wasn't hard. It's hard not to love the work. It was busy. Work was good. Right. Like, man, you're like living the dream, right? Everything I read about, I left at the time where it was ramping up for you guys. I mean, we were busy in relative terms, but I think Oh six and beyond until probably Oh nine was substantially busier operational tempo wise. Yeah. Just the savviness of the enemy as well to them, changing their tactics, information passing back and forth. Yeah. I feel like there was a slow down come 2010. It was slowing down a little bit at 11, 12. It was just a slow nosedive. Um, yeah, it's, and I talked to a lot of my, all my best friends are guys that I served with that whole chunk. And, and we talk about, we're like, I, you know, there's not too, too many guys in the overall community that literally operated that long. Yeah. Um, and you had to have almost gone to dev group, you know, cause if I'd stayed at five, they would have pulled me out and sent me to training cell or something after two deployments or three or whatever it is, but to stay operational for 13, um, I don't know. It just adds a different perspective and there's not too, too many guys. I feel like you should have augmented the squadron for one more operation and not had a helicopter crash on your last one. Oh, that was good. I'm good. Just like, just put me on the C2 element over here. Just, just drop me off and come get me. We'll just go, we'll go out with a thumbs up. You guys went out with a huge thumbs up, but like, just we'll skip the helicopter wreck. Yeah. Yeah, no, it was a good, I mean, if you're going to go out on top, that's a hell of a one to end it on for sure. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we got, we got very, very lucky. Yeah, for sure. What makes you happy? What makes you happy in life now? Hmm. My family, friends, fun, and faith. Right. That's a good answer. Not, not talking about old work drama, right? Um, oh, talking about new, exciting, fun stuff. What people are up to now. Sweet. Creating new things, what they're doing. Well, we had a ton of veteran buddies that are getting out. They're all, you know, doing new fun, exciting things. So it's cool to see the guys reinventing themselves. Those that can and those that choose to. Yeah. I'm excited to see, you know. For the ones who can, and it gets all personal choice with the trajectory you put your life on. And some people, I think, I've heard them say this and it breaks my heart. Well, I don't know how to do anything else. And I understand why they say that, but also you can teach yourself. And I say that as a barely functioning human being from an intellectual capacity that has stumbled their way through enough things in life. If I can do it, you can do it too. You are going to fail. It's going to be embarrassing at times. You're going to make mistakes. Easy out. Come on. Team guys, since you made it through buds, all you've done is evolve through your career and learn new things. So to then leave the Navy and be like, oh, I can't evolve. And that's the only thing I know. You're like, you know, not saying that's an excuse, but I think it's the easy out to just be like, well, I don't want to evolve. I don't want to go learn anything. I just, I just want to do this. And no judgment. That's easy. You've worked hard to earn the right to go do what you do. Zero. I, you and others just don't want to do that. We chose another route. Well, there's also a shelf life. On the tactical prowess, you know, in for, so for guys, Shelf life expired a while ago. As did mine. And I don't have any desire to extend that shelf life. And again, no shade towards the people who do. But that evolution of what's going to be next will come for them at some point. Because you will. I got to be honest. Do you watch these drone videos from Ukraine? It is an entire different warfare, dude. It's a different level. It is not what we did. Future war is drone on drone. It is not what we are used to. But here's the craziest thing about Ukraine. It's the cutting edge of electronic warfare, drone on drone. And still, they're fighting in trenches like they were in World War I. So is that the solution to a drone battle? Is we get shotguns and go into trenches? Which, holy shit, hard pass, by the way. No, that's my point. I'm glad I'm expired. Yeah. And the drone stuff, even harder pass. Yeah. You see recruiting videos now. It used to be like the guy pulling the nods down. Now it's an FPV guy. Yeah, and now he's flying a drone. Yeah. As I said, it has evolved a lot. And I'm happy with my time. I'm happy I evolved out. There's an amount of evolution going on that I can't keep up with. There's new, smarter, faster, way more tech-savvy kids going through that pipeline. Have you ever seen the videos over in China and Taiwan where they'll have a dragon flying through the air because there's thousands of drones that are synchronized? Yeah. What does that look like? First off, keep it looking like a dragon because that'll terrify everybody. Yeah. But how do you combat that? I mean, I'm sure we have people thinking about that stuff. Oh, boy. Yeah. Damn, Michael. Now, first off, if you could get the front of this to spew fire out of some of those. But, like, come on. Yeah. You're telling me that if you launch that over a hill in Afghanistan, that that's not going to have a psychological impact? That'd scare the shit out of everybody in the valley for sure. If I could call that in for close air support just to fuck with somebody. Pre-assault fires. All right. Send in the flying dragon. No, dude. That's pre-assault fires. But it doesn't have to land. It just flies over the battlefield just to scare people. Just up the valley and have it cruise back. Maybe one pass over the target. If that didn't make the bad guys run away, I don't know. Point being, way over my head. Totally. Look at this shit. Yeah. You're telling me there's. Oh, my God. I mean, yeah. That's. Just weaponize that. Yeah. And I'm sure this is dated technology and ability. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I'm, again, happy I did my time. Yeah. Happy I rotated out. Happy I live kind of in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. Yep. Because when the power grid goes down. Bro. Yeah. I know, man. Where can people find your book? We've been at it for three hours. I'm on my website. It'll be available on Amazon to service that market. But Amazon takes a huge piece of that. What do they take percentage-wise? A very large amount. More than 30? Depends on different percentages for my audio book or written. But. Do they take it because they produce the book? Or are you talking about having them just physically. They're just physically the distribution for Amazon markets. Okay. Because everybody. Amazon's such a big powerhouse, right? Of course. So they want their pound of flesh. I've tried to sell directly through my website. So mattbissonette.com. People can get it. And then that helps me. That helps me the most because it's no Amazon fees. Audiobook? Audiobook. And this time, I actually read the audiobooks. The last one, I had the voice actor. Yeah. I was like, all right, this is personal enough. I want to read this one. Gives you an appreciation for people who read other people's books, especially if they go into it blind. Because I did my audiobook as well. Did you? Okay. And at least. I did it right here. But at least I wrote the thing and I know where I could. Put a pause or some reflection. But for a voice actor coming in blind? Well, then the voice actors have to do all the other voices. And I'm like, no offense, but I'm not playing every other voice either. That's going to be the worst audiobook ever. If you want me busting into. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Master Chief. Oh, yeah. No, not. So yeah. Yeah, I did some stuff and then we used AI to do the other voices. Sweet. So yeah, that'll be. So the main portal, mattbissonette.com? mattbissonette.com. And then on socials? Are you active-ish? Peripheral? I am, but I hate all social media and all that stuff. I just. I do it. I have a Matt Bissonette official, I think, Instagram. Yeah. Those are. That's it. That's my two. That's my one social media outlet. I'm not on Twitter. I'm not on anywhere else. You're not missing anything. I do a horrible job servicing my Instagram stuff. I like it because. I've got a ton of different kids that have hit me up. They're like, hey, I'm thinking of going to Buzz. What do you think? And I've engaged with a lot of them. And so that's been a fun way to actually be able to engage with some young folks looking to serve. Otherwise, how would they find me? How would they ask those questions? And so there's an actual outlet and I actually try hard to answer all those. So. Imagine if we had had. I didn't meet my first team guy until I was in the military. Really? I did. I was from Santa Cruz, California. Traditionally not a hallmark of military enlistment. Yeah. Santa. Not servers, professional. I mean, it's just. I didn't. I mean, I had an idea, but the first people. I was a dive motivator at Great Lakes. Yeah. It was a guy who was rotating through there. I can't even fathom having these anxiety rectangles in your pocket, but you can occasionally use it to reach out to a guy and say, what was it like for you? I've got none of that. Yeah. I get a ton of those guys that hit me up. I think that's important. I do my best to answer those as well, too. Back to your point of giving back and. Yeah. Right? With your book and writing. And I'm like, okay. If I'm in this position where a person wants to reach out and ask a legitimate question, I'm not going to be rude and ignore them. I'm going to try my best to. Yeah. And I say I'm obligated to tell the truth, not just the shiny stuff, but, hey, this is probably what you're seeing, but consider that here's the shadow of what that could be. Your decision to make, I'm not talking you into it or out of it, but let's give you as much information so you can make a total decision that will serve your life better. That's what I go for. Okay. Question for you and your book. Fire away. Did you go through a. It was clear. It was cleared. Review process. It was cleared. Okay. How was that for you? Pretty easy. Was it? Yes. Did it take a while? No. No? It did not. Did you have a back channel way in? It's hard to say. Mm-hmm. You know some people may listen to this. I knew the right people. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I knew the right people. Okay, good. Cool. I'm glad you didn't get. And I get it. I read half of yours this morning already. Yeah. You don't get into any. Nothing. drazy stuff. No, it's literally like, hey, this is how I lost my trident first time. I did notice you have a picture of a trident in there. And when I went through my review process, they were like, you have to. They wouldn't allow me to do the trident. Really? Oh, yeah. Are they aware you can get one on Amazon? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, but you got to remember, too, that through the process of the community coming after me for writing the book, they tried to take my trident. I'd been out of the Navy four years, five years. They tried to, after you were out of the military. Retroactively, as part of my. As part of my punishment for No Easy Day and all the other nonsense, they were like, oh, yeah, we're going to retroactively pull this trident. Oh, that's just a straight F-you move. Well, that's what I was dealing with for as long as I was. And my attorney's like, they can't do that. You're out. You can't take a warfare insignia after you've already left. But this was how bad they were trying to be like, hey, if you do this, we're going to come after you. So, yeah. Greener pastures. Fun, fun. Yeah. Greener pastures. Old news. Onward and upward. I like it. Cool. What do you want to close it out with? Like I said, we've been out for three hours. No. Hey, just thanks. Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. Open invite. For sure. Anytime. Definitely. I did not come here to bring up any drama or any of the stuff. I don't like naming names. I just want to talk about what I remember, what I know was audio recorded, all the stuff we talked about. And then I want to leave it and move on. I don't think it's ever going to be clarified at a level institutionally. I think there's enough guys that are coming out. You know, I mentioned it on the Sean Ryan interview, the Admiral McRaven Netflix documentary, right? I got to talk to Admiral McRaven about that. I was like, you know, sir, what's the authority? What's the approvals that you got to sit on a Netflix documentary and talk about this? How does that work? Did he point to his collar and his stars? Yeah. They're right here in case you don't have these. I can make my own decisions. Actually, these days he'd be like right here in this. See, yeah, he's like, you know, I explained to him, I said, look, this Netflix producer, he's trying to get any of the other operators that participated to sit down and talk. And for years now, they've all been worried about sitting down and talking because they've seen what's happened to me. But if you're OK with it and just to sit down on Netflix and I think Rob was on the thing, I'm like, well, is it cool if why don't we get everybody? Sure, I could make some calls and there would be some people who'd more than willing come share their story if you said it was OK. And he immediately was like, oh, oh, oh, you know, Matt, you know, nobody should feel obligated to do this. Michael, they don't feel obligated. Nobody said the word obligated. Nobody felt obligated. But if you are doing it, sir, and leading from the front, then people feel like it's OK now. Is this you opening the gates? And they want to care. They want to share their story. And can you help me with this? Help me justify the decision making in my head whether I'm going to participate in this interview or not. He didn't help me. with anybody. He's like, oh, I'll transfer you to somebody I know inside War Comm. And, of course, I talked to a few people inside Warcom, and they never once gave me advice on how to deal with Netflix. They just wouldn't engage with me because Warcom didn't want to be seen engaging with this event. So there will be others, and it's only a matter of time, right? If we're all allowed to have these conversations, I know the seal that I mentioned that was the breacher and made it to the top of the second set of stairs, right? He's going to come share his story at some point, I'm sure. And I think slowly through different people, you will hear enough to make your own decisions, and people can make their own. That's what it'll come down to. It'll be the totality of the information. And as with a lot of things, let's say there's a road and you have to pick the side of the road you're on. If things are trending in all in this direction, the totality or that, then, yeah, people can make their mind up based off of that. That's the world we live in. I agree. Who's going to uptake the information enough to actually? Make a smart decision, or I feel like in today's day and age, if you're just, you're stuck on one side, you're always stuck on that side. In politics, I think it's that way for sure. Very team sport. Yeah. Which I know very little about, the politics aspect. Cool, man. Hell yeah. Thanks for making the trip out. I appreciate it. It was a process. Cowell spell's not easy. It's not hard, though. I mean, you also live in a small place, and this is, your origin story and where you're landing were two small places. So, there's some hops in between to get to this small place. Yeah, that's it. Well, I appreciate it, brother. Yeah, of course, man. Thank you. Yeah.