Welcome to iHeartRadio Communities, a public affairs special focusing on the biggest issues impacting you. This week, here's Ryan Gorman. Thanks for joining us cre on iHeartRadio Communities. I'm Ryan Gorman, and we have a very important conversation lined up for you for this show. I'm joined right now by Brian Stern, founder and CEO of Project Dynamo, a veteran, led donor funded international search, rescue, aid and assistance nonprofit organization. You can learn more about all
their work and support their work at Project Dynamo dot org. Brian, thank you so much for taking a few minutes to come on the show and let me start with your personal background and what led you into this line of work. Well, yeah, thanks for having me. I started off life in the army, and somehow in the middle of all that one in the Navy. The bulk of my career I came in into the late nineties and the Bill Clinton, so I've been around a long, long, long time standards
of the dinosaur. I started off life as as an infantry guy, carrying a rifle, doing regular army stuff. But it was pre nine eleven. There wasn't a luck going on. I got recruited into Army intelligence, and I've been in the intelligence community pretty much ever since. That's taken me all
over the world doing all kinds of weird things. And my career is basically either has been predominantly in either the national level intelligence community, different agencies and programs and different kinds of things like that, or in the darker side of special operations. So when you think about special operations, guys, you think about, you know, bearded dudes with sleeve tattoos and machine guns and all
that stuff. That's the easy stuff that we do. The real hard stuff is in places where you can't bring in helicopters and machine guns and that kind of thing, and that's really where my specialty has always been. I've worked. I've worked in every continent. Actually that's a true I've never worked in Australia. I always wanted to go. But I've worked all over Africa, all over Latin America, all over Europe, and of course the Middle East.
I've been Afghanistan enough times before I think I qualified for citizenship. So again, even when we talk about things like Afghanistan, during my time in Afghanistan, most of my targets were not in Afghanistan. Most of my targets were to the east and to the West, or Chinese issues or Russian issues, and I'll kind of senior leadership too, but guys like we don't really focus on the Taliban because they're not a high enough level frankly from a strategic
impact perspective. So most of my careers been based in those kinds of weird and really hard target, hard problem sets. I was the first responder in the morning in nine eleven. I survived all collapses. I was. I was in New York while in the Army, so I was of both collapses. I'm a two time loser. That is what we call it. And again, you know, as it relates to Diamo, people forget that on the morning in nine to eleven and the original first responders, many of them
were just civilians. They were just people on the way to work dealing with a very terrible situation and catastrophic events and they fell compelled to help. And that leads to Diabo. Dynamo is an international We're an international rescue organization. I'm not an assassin, I'm not any terrible thing. We're very simple. We're a rescue team that goes in where the US government isn't the best way to think about US. So if they leave, like in Afghanistan, we
show up, which is kind of how we started. If they're never gonna come, like in Ukraine, We're never going to send a seal team into Ukraine to rescue an American. We're not going to do that, or until they show up, like they're in Hurricane Ian in Florida. We were in the water in the first few hours on day one. Once the coast Guard and everyone showed up, then we peel out. We're first in, first out in that context, and then in places like in Russia where the diplomatic
relationship is so poor. Yes we have an embassy, and yes we have it's not a war zone, but that presence is so bad and the relationship is so bad things that need to happen. That's also where we step in, and we're the first organization to ever do that on Russian soil and history. I'm Ryan Gorman here on iHeartRadio Communities, joined by Brian Stern, founder and CEO of Project Dynamo. You can learn more at Project Dynamo dot org.
So let's talk about the creation of this project and you mentioned it was tied to the situation in Afghanistan. How did this all come about? Well, well, if we go back to August twenty twenty one, the u US withdrawal of Afghanistan, it's not a political thing. But bottom line is it clearly wasn't going well right. That's not a Republican thing. That's on the democrat thing. It's the fact life. I was watching on TV and a lot, like many of us, were trying to and as an Afghan
invent trying to understand what do I do. I spent a lot of time there. I buried a lot of friends there, American I lost American friends there and Afghan friends there. For what I do. I'm on the streets with the Afghans. My last time getting shot at in Afghanistan, it was actually the Canadians and brit shooting at me. I'm thinking that I was a bad guy. So when I tell you that we're invented with these folks who
live and die with us and take it very personally. So I was watching it on TV and uh and literally I was trying to figure out what to do. And I was very upset, very emotional thing. And people are calling and saying help me, help me, help me people who I knew, and I was out of government. I don't do this anymore. I was in business. I was living my next chapter in my life and having
a good time. Frankly, and as there was this moment where I was literally working on my keynote speech for the twentieth anniversary of September eleventh, which was just a few weeks later. This is August twenty twenty one, mid August. We're just a few weeks away. So I was working on my keynote and I'm watching TV and I see the C seventeen the airplane take off, and I'm watching Afghans fall from the landing gear. Remember the last time.
The last time I saw that was on the morning of nine eleven, and it struck a chord, And I said to myself, how is it possible? Literally, as I'm working on my speech as a first respondent for nine to eleven, where twenty years later, almost to the day, this whole thing is screwed up. The Taliban are back in charge. How did that happen? And there are innocent people jumping to their desks. Is a better idea of staying where they're at caused by the same people. This is
wrong. I've done a lot of this kind of work. I've done a lot of hot to rescue of my career. I always work in strange places. I'm used to dynamic environments. So there's no help. So I called some friends of mine. I said, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna get the band back together. We're gonna do one last last We're gonna pack our Lots of different veteran groups were kind of coming to life trying to help, but we were the ones that went forward. That was always
different about Dynamo, which we packed our stuff. We flew into Uzbekistan, which is how we evaded the country to O one. We went all the way to the southern border, started doing cross border operations. As that happened, Secretary of State Lincoln and Secrety Defense Austen got on TV and they said
August thirtieth is the last day for Americans in Afghanistan. At that moment, I knew that the prior to you know, between now and then, we have plenty of work to do. But the reality is the air forces they're flying people out. The real work will begin on September one. That's when this party first starts. Clearly it's not going well. Clearly people will be left behind. Clearly there's going to be people that need help. What do
we do September one? Once the military is gone, that's when the real talent is going to be neat and that's where guys like me to really specialize where there is no help, where there is no at help. The problem with this is is that we were set up to rescue our Afghanalys, the men and women who fought with us, the human rights activists, that judges, the commandos, intelligence officers. It never occurred to me that we'd be
rescuing Americans left behind. That's what we didn't plan for. And I will tell you two years later, almost literally two years later, in August twenty twenty three, you would not believe it, but I am still pulling Americans out of that gift still two that's a long time to be in hiding. That's a long time. That's how we started. I'm Ryan Gorman here on iHeart Radio Communities, joined by Brian Stern, founder and CEO of Project Dynamo.
You can learn more about all their work and support their work they're doing at Project Dynamo dot org. So and you can explain this in a very general census to not give you too much way, but how does this work? You get what a tip or you hear directly from somebody, let's say in Afghanistan they can't get out, they need assistance, and then where do you go? How do you navigate that from there? Yeah, it's uh, it's complicated. It's just a you know, a semeister's law class at
the War College and how did you discristionary warfare? But what we do is number one, we don't break the law. Ever, I have not in all the countries that we've worked in by now, you know, I understanding the fact that Afghanistan is one country of many that we've now could call up the servant from Ukraine to Russia, to Sudan, to Haiti, to preparing for Taiwan, to other places that are on other places where there's no USMB
the c president. We do. It's not like TV where when you see that, you know Liam Nisan in a taken moment, he's doing donuts in this car, spinning around. When I'm on the street, I drive the speed limits right, I wear my seatbelt, I used my blinkers. I never want to give anyone an excuse to get mad at me because I can't afford to come under scrutiny. Number one, that's a great way to get
your head chopped off or arrested or tortured or whatever. But more importantly, if I get rolled, what's not happening is the operation, and that's why we're there in the first place. That's the point. There's no one else coming for these people, but dynamo we've got. We've rescued over six thousand people from twenty nine different nationalities. We've broken American We've broken Americans out of jail to Russian intelligence. And then people will say, well, you know
I have a broken watch and it's right twice a day. Well, we've done it multiple times. Never the CIA hasn't done there, So how do we do that? It's a lot of magic. Right, How did David Copperfield make the statue of liberty disappear in front of three thousand people? Probably he didn't actually make the section? Probably not right, Probably not, I don't know. I wasn't there. Maybe he did, but what I hear
it's still there. But there are three thousand people that those that don't pass a polygraph and testify under oath that they totally saw it disappear in front of their very eyes. They were there and it happened and whatever. Look, that's very much until we do a lot of these things where it's a lot of subtexts, it's a lot of pretext, it's a lot of wazzle dazzle, it's sometimes slight of hand. But what it's never is breaking the law because where we work there is no help. That's me And I want to
follow up on that point. When you're in a country like Afghanistan, you are on your own on these rescue missions. So, like you were saying before, it's not like what we would see in the movie because you don't want shots to be fired because then it's all eyes on you and what you're doing, and that's probably not gonna end with and be a great example.
People always ask people what kind of guns do you carry when they're overseas, and most people are surprised to find out that I work on armed right, which is kind of strange. Right, when you think about these things in your head, you think about face masks, Yeah, you know, right, that's like a mental visual right in the day, you know, yeah, like those kinds of character. Right, it's not that at all.
I'm I'm completely out of shape. I eat like crap, Gray, my body, my knees is sort uh, you know, I don't really run at all. It's not that kind of thing. It's not And if you think about it, and they'll give me a good example. We broke a kid out of jail from the place called Hersan in Ukraine, in southern Ukraine, which is occupied by Russia. He was a raised an American from Detroit. He was arrested by the FSB, which is like the Russian FBI.
Pretty terrible people. There are dozens of them, are sanctioned, hundreds of them are dieting from war crimes. Is a very terrible people, right. You don't want to wind up in their care. He is a twenty nine year old American for Michigan, who's the first American victim of war crimes. Right. He was tortured. He was beaten every day, mock executions everything. I mean, you know John McCain level torture, beating up, broke his back to him and his wife was brutalized all kinds of stuff. A
very terrible situation. Right, if I would have gotten into a gunfight, if I would have gone in hard the way you would imagine we broke him out of jail, if you would imagine that I broke if I did it that way, from where he was to the closest thing that looks like a friend is twenty one hours away by car, and you can't fly in Ukraine, which means I would need a dump truck of apple behind to survive that gunfight. Right, I would literally need a semi truck to fight half the
Russian army. What do one hours in a running double fight? And they have helicopters and the airplanes that were not going to work. So we got to do it in a different way. We have to do it in a different way. And for perspectives, were the ones that told the bad guys that we got him, they went to go check on him. They didn't even know that we had Wow. Okay, that was also cool about dynamo. Right. What's also cool is in my government life, we can never
show anybody any of these things. I didn't invent any of these tactics nothing. If I had an original thought, it would die alonely. I was trained to talk by the best right in my old life. We can never tell anybody about these kinds of things, Dynatamo. We're private. We record everything, so when I talk to donors, you need to hear these stories. I say, don't take my word for it. Watch this video and you could see the Russian sent a hit man to kill me right after this
operation. We at him on with a GoPro on a roof of our van. We got that on video, found him on Facebook, sent the video to this guy's mother in Russia after the Ukrainians killed it. Oh my god. Now that you know that brings me to another question. Are you were as you're you're telling these stories and this is on the radio, so we're good here, but you know your face is out there you're telling these stories. Are you concerned that it could make the missions more difficult moving forward?
It does a little bit. We've had We've had my team and I have had some really post calls. We've been blown up, we've been shot at all kinds of things. But at the same time, Number One, we do media because we're donor funded and we need help. And you know, you can't be a famous smuggler, which is why I'm not a smuggler. But I need the public to go to Project Dynamo dot org and click the little donate button because these these airplanes don't pay for themselves. I can't get
Russians to commit espionage because I'm a really nice guy. It doesn't work that way. Uh. You know, these things cost money, you know, So that's why we do media. If we had some big monster, you know, if the if the CEO of American Airlines and he's listening and he gives us an adoptment for twenty million dollars, I promise will never be on TV ever A yet I hate you know, but we don't. We don't have that benefit right now, and our demand signals to the roofs. So
we got to do the media. Isn't a risk, absolutely, But at the same time, and a lot of people have a hard time understanding this fight, especially in the Russia. In the in the context of Russia, half the war is kindetic. The other half is about messaging. As an American, it is a good day when I can say, not only did I kick your butt, but I put it on Facebook. Yeah. You needs don't even know how I get it. Yeah, No, I get that right, right, there's a there's a benefit there, but there's another
way of fighting, you know. I'm Ryan Gorman here on iHeartRadio Communities with Brian Stern, founder and CEO of Project Dynamo, of veteran led donor funded international search, rescue, aid and assistance nonprofit organization. You can learn more and support the work that we're talking about, and you just heard it from Brian. They need your support. Project Dynamo dot org is the website Project
Dynamo dot org. So you get a call or a message someone needs rescuing in Afghanistan or Ukraine or all these other different places that you operate, how long does the planning for that operation take? So these operations we've done five We were rescued over six thousand people. Yeah, in twenty three and a half months, almost twenty four months. We're about to have our two year birthday. Some of those we've done one hundreds at a time. Right,
we flew into Afghanistan. We got the first landing clearance from the Taliban after the Taliban took control. Who knew that was a thing. We landed an Airbus eight three twenty in cobble no runaway lights with legitimate landing clearance. Wow, Okay, it took one hundred and seventeen Americans that out in one shot. So some of some of these operations are big numbers. And then there are things that the jail breaks that are one that are onesies. So it
depends. Each of these things have a life cycle. Just like children, there's a we you know, we find that we're pregnant, we deal with the pregnancy, we give birth. There's an infancy thing in there which is always a pain. There's a coming of age thing we wind up at our teenage years, which is more painful. That's what everything goes wrong. And then at some point you know, it's on its own and then it's done. So each of these things are there's no recipe, there's nothing cookie cutter
about it. If I had to land a plane in Afghanistan today, that's fundamentally different than how I did it two years ago. So it really depends. But I'll give you a great example. We did it. We did this case called Pathfinder inside Russia. Okay, we got really big into the into surrogate baby. So what that is is, you know, you're an American man and I'm an American woman. We're trying to have kids. We can't. We try IVF, rounds of IBF doesn't work. We try donors
and stuff that doesn't work. There's this thing called surrogate pregnancy, which I didn't know anything about until I got bombed. In this thing where they take you know, my egg, you're a sperm, they stick it together, they make an embryo, and they stick it inside of a Ukrainian woman. Okay, and she's the baby of it. Genetically, that baby is American.
The problem is is that that Ukrainian woman is stuck in this thing called a war zone, which is very complicated and generally speaking, the women that do this are from the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. They're doing it for money. It's a service that they provide. Nobody likes to be nobody likes to be pregnant. Who wants to be pregnant with someone else's kid for
that matter, right, So it's a service for money. Those women tend to come from the places that are now occupied by Russian So imagine you and I are trying to have kids for years and years and years and years and years. Finally, we're pregnant, but jokes on us. The war starts. Every country around Ukraine. Surrogacy is a felony, so you got to give birth inside Ukraine. So that's a problem. They can't leave right,
all these issues, well, we had a case. We had a case called Pathfinder where there was this kind of thing and the surrogate was in don Bess and couldn't get through the front lines. And she's pregnant with twins from Texas, from right outside Dalams. She's got a baby boy and a baby
girl from Texas. In her belt was getting so terrible she fled south into Russian occupied territory, into Crimea and then up into Saint Petersburg, Russia, where surrogacy is surrogacy is illegal, and being a Ukrainian in Russia doesn't go over too well. And it's not like you can say, but don't worry, I have two Americans and that doesn't go over well. Either doesn't work. He gives birth to two kids on September. The fifth baby Benjamin and
baby it was Whip gives birth and then disappears. So now you have two American kids abandoned in Russia with Russian birth certificates on it and a Ukrainians mother's name on it. We's now gone. Those kids become wards of the state as you would imagine, right, normal stuff, and they find themselves in a Russian state run orphanage whole week out from I mean, this is like an Apollo thirteen level, Like what is good about this story? Yeah?
Right? The babies were pin in September five. The US government, everyone is trying and trying and trying. The parents go to Estonia, which is the closest NATO country to Russia. It's on the border and the closest country to Saint Petersburg, and they're trying and trying, and they're their kids. These are mommies. You know, they've been trying to have kids for eight years. Eight years. It must have been topic of breakfast, lunch,
and dinner for every meal that they've ever had. Is let's be a family. Let's be a family. Yeah. They get a hold of us in November, right before Thanksgiving. We plan for eleven days. We executed operations on Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Thirteen hours later the same day. They are a family in a NATO control country. That is unbelievable. I want to bring it back home domestically, because you mentioned an operation that you did that's different
from these stories that we've been talking about up to this point. And again I'm Ryan Gorman, joined by Brian Stern, Founder and CEO of Project Dynamo. You can learn more and support all of this tremendous work at Project Dynamo dot org. Tell us about the work you did in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, which devastated the southwest coast of Florida. So I was in Ukraine a month before the war, started building things and getting set up ahead of
the work. I'd come out of Afghanistan, came home for Christmas, and then went to Ukraine in January. The worst started February twenty fourth, so and then I stayed all the way until October. I'd come out of Ukraine because the hurricane was coming to Tampa and I'm from Tampa. I also needed to do my taxes. I all of a sud needed some downtime. Yeah, I've been at war in the war zone for ten and a half months. I needed, you know, a little bit of quiet and peace and
spend at my pool for a little bit. So I came home the hurricane is supposed to hit Tampa. My family and I we prepare, are in the sand bags and all that stuff and whatever, and then jokes on everybody, the hurricane stopped short and looks to bang a right. Well, as that was happening, most of my crew were Tampa Bays, so most of my crew we were getting ready for. Okay, well we're here. We've been rescuing Americans ten thousand miles away and all kinds of people ten thousand miles
away. Let's see what we can do here. You know, I mean, you know, how hard could it be. It's trees and wind and water. I mean coming from artillery and Christmases and fire plane Yeah yeah, no, I mean, and it's our neighborhood. We speak the language. There's a lot of things about this kind of operation that are more in our favor than that. Well, jokes on us. It stopped short and bangs are right, and it goes through naples and fort Byers in that whole area,
and a bunch of barrier, right. So as we saw that, I spun up my crew and I said, this is what we're gonna do. Right, We'll see how bad it is. But as the sun comes up, you know, right around two three o'clock in the morning, let's get in our trucks. Let we have friends with boats, and let's get down there, because surely, if it's bad, all the bridges are going to be walked out to the barrier. Yep, that's exactly what happened, right and Tampa wasn't hit. So we got so all my shand bags of
all I stip that I bought actually nothing. I bought work gloves and goggles and a lot of stuff. I actually had a lot of supplies and short than everybody else. And that's exactly what we did the sun. Before the sun came up, we were fine. I wanted to make sure that by the time we got down there that we could seek because then we're going to be down threes. All that stuff we got in the water, we got in the water within a few within an hour or so of the sun coming
up. On day one, we had already done two rescue operations by boat. As Florida Fish and Wildlife were first showing up and getting in the water. We were there before the coast Guard, We're there before the state Police, before everybody. What the idea was is there's lots of resources on the mainland, but these barrier islands Stanta Belle mat was, shay Pine Island, they were cut off, going to be cut off. Yeah, so let's do our So let's do boats. And then we started thinking about how we're
going to do this because with the wind and the and the water. As a career as a Navy officer, I know that all the maps and charts aren't going to match. All the navigation lads are going to be gone where communications, communication is down all the self when towers are gone, and in the little in the island, on the islands, there's all these little like channels with people who have boat docks in the back of their houses. Well,
yeah, let's not go there because you'll find off. You know, you'll find a pickup truck, you know, summers before the water RiPP over the bottom of the boat. Let's not do that. This is what we're gonna do, right, We're gonna beach our boats D Day style and assault the beach like D Day because that at least we can't see and probably the DePree fields won't be terrible on the beaches, it'll be all in wind and all that stuff. And sure enough we were right with exactly what we did.
We started getting eating people. People knew us in Florida and people would say, my grandmother's at one twenty three Happy Street on Sante Belle Island. She's eighty five years old and a diabetic. We haven't heard from her. Uh, you know, can you check bring her out? You know we're calling, there's an answer because there's no cell phones. So that's what we did. I got my crew together. We started beaching boats like this and
we did dozens and dozens and dozens do some operations. If you're watching me the video of the Coast Guard helicopters landing on day one, what you'll see is Dynamo patches who were the Coast Guard boats didn't show up for a few days. The helicopters are flying around, but they don't they can't talk to anyone. There's no cell phones. So we would bring people to the beach. And we were landing helicopters on the beach and there are a bunch of
older people. It's Florida, you know. Well, some people called Santa Belle Island God's waiting room. You know. You guys were there and look a lot of people got taken by surprise at the severity the storm and what came along with it. Just another incredible story. Real quick, we have a little less than a minute. Just tell us how people can help support all of these different things that you're doing. Project Dynamo dot org. Please
go to our website, Please donate. I'm looking actively for corporate sponsors. If you're a business and you want cool branding stuff, I'll help you. We need help. Our demand is through the roof. Also number two, go to our social media, follow us and share our stuff. Awareness is key. If every one of your listeners gave one dollar, I can go rescue Americans tomorrow, no problem. We have Americans all over the place. I'm on my way to Haiti, We've got Taiwan. We need help.
Our plane in our plane that we did in Sudan, we rescued one hundred and forty six Americans from Sudan cause about half a million bucks. I went going to go in seventh Triple seven, the only airplane for Americans to go to Sudan. The US government to throw people out. We went in and took our people out, our civilians out. It turns into three grand ahead for that trip. You cannot go to Africa for three thousand dollars. We're a good deal. Yeah, we're a good deal. We're cost effective,
we're really leaning mean. There is no Dynamo Marvel covered lobby where we put all the money into the operations, so we need help again. The website is Project Dynamo dot org. Project Dynamo dot org. Brian Stern, founder and CEO of Project Dynamo, of veteran led donor funded International Search, Rescue, aid and Assistance nonprofit organization. Brian can't thank you enough for all the tremendous work you're doing all around the world, and thank you so much for
coming on the show. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Thank you all right. That's going to do it for this edition of iHeartRadio Communities. I'm your host, Ryan Borman. Want to thank all of you for listening. We'll talk to you again real soon.