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welcome to episode two forty three of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park and our guest on tonight's show. Is the author of Common Sense Leadership Matters. This is book three in the series Toxic Leadership Destroys
by Pete Labor. Pete served as a officer in Ranger Battalion and then in Delta Force and has gone on to have a successful career after the military, and we're really excited to have him here on the show to talk about his series of books and his career, especially his most recent book, which is about the operation in which Pat Tillman was tragically killed. So, Pete, thank you for joining us tonight. Thanks for having me, guys. So
as usual on the show, we'll start off at the beginning. Pete, tell us a little bit about what your upbringing was like and that what led you towards military service. Sure so, born and raised o Park, Illinois, suburb outside of Chicago. Great place to grow up. I was a middle kid of nine kids. Still to this day, I amazed my parents and how the heck they did it. But my mom was an amazing task master. She used to have a big matrix of jobs that we had three
days a week. I usually had to wash them, clean the bathrooms, and mop the floors, swabbing the decks. At an early age and you know, just a normal upbringing. Played baseball, football, hockey, probably my favorite pastime. Favorite what I think should have been a sport was bombing cars, throwing snowballs at cars. You know, it's the beginning of my I think infantryman life. I realized, I, you know, loved both the thrill of the hunt and the thrill of the chase. And so you
know, I took it pretty seriously. UH and probably again UH caused my parents quite a few heartaches, you know, running home, hiding. Why are you hiding? Some guy would come flying through the yard, UH search it for us. In high school, I ran across country. UH, played hockey and ran cross country, and you know, the cross country was kind of an extension of that bombing cars. Uh, I used. People would go, why why are you running cross country? Uh? I said,
well, I want to. I want to get to a state where nobody can catch me. And uh, I just I can run forever and and no one has any chance of catching me. And UH. You know, I think cross country does that. It gives you an incredible endurance. UH. You know, teaches you to deal with pain, uh in your own way. And you know it, it was, unbeknownst the time, one more step uh in the process on the way to uh, you know, join in the military and becoming an infantryman. I was not you know,
like a lot of guys you talked to on the show. I certainly was not a model of scholastic excellence. Uh you know, I just just being in a classroom. All that stuff was not for me. My brothers and sisters were you know, super smart, straight A students, So you know, I was like the uh you know, the unspoken, semi retarded brother. Uh, you know, special led guy. You know. It was really just I could not stand, had no academic discipline, and just
did not like being in the classroom. So I graduated high school, it was time to go to college. I went to Southern Illinois University, which is at the bottom of Illinois. It's the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. And I chose Southern Illinois not for its athletic programs, certainly not for its academic programs. I chose it because it was surrounded by the two
hundred and seventy five thousand acres Shawnee National Forest. And you know, my first time down there, coming from a suburb of Chicago, I was, you know, just it was like Nirvana, you know, just this endless rolling hills, a place you could get lost in. You know, camp out, do whatever you wanted. And it was pretty much the you know, the focus of my college career too. Every weekend I was out hiking
in places like Panther's Den and Devil's Kitchen. Uh, you know, just wilderness in every direction, explored it, and you know, just learned to navigate things like that. You know, right when I graduated high school and got into my first year of college, that was the Iran hostage rescue mission. And from that point on, you know, that was that was the thing that turned me towards the military. As I mentioned, I didn't know
anything about the military. There was no military around Illinois. I don't think I ever even saw a camouflage truck when I was growing up, So I really knew nothing about it. But when that happened, and you know, the news came out about what up, and it just had an incredible effect on me. That that eight you know, American heroes died in the middle of desert one. They gave their life to save to save the hostages in Iran. And so, you know, I was again a runner. I
was doing triathlons in college by that point. So I would just go on long runs and and think about my future and think about, you know, what a great country I lived in, what an unbelievable upbringing I had, And you know, my conclusion was, I need to pay something back to the country. And you know, in my last two years of college, I started going to recruiters to try to figure out what, you know,
what was out there. And you know, Jack, I heard you on one of your podcasts say you didn't know anything, and I was the same way. I just did not know a thing about the military. So the first someone told me to go, you know, to the Air Force and fly jets, and I didn't want to do that, but there was an Air Force recruiter right there, and I went down talk to him, and it didn't take long for me to come to the conclusion that I was in
the wrong recruiting office. So I started going to army recruiters and I put plural because it took me four recruiters to get one that would just give me what I wanted. They were all trying to get me to sign up for things I never heard of. And you know, I will add that I was shocked at the time because I, for some reason, I thought everyone, if you're in the Army. You're an infantryman. So when they started talking about tankers and artillery and medical corps and I was like, what,
who does that? You know? And that's what they all they tried to get me into. And that's why I kept going to new recruiters and I finally found one. I still remember his name. The name was Terry's Story and he said, what do you want to do? And I said, well, I want to join Delta Force and he goes, well, you can't do that. You can't sign up for that. You could do that
when you get in, but you got to have an MOS. And I said, well, like what and he said, well, you probably should go infantry and I said, yeah, that's what I want to do. So I signed up. My contract was for Infantry OCS, that's what it was called back then. And you know, when I graduated, I hopped on a train and it took me off the basic training. You have to make it through basic in order to go to o CS and then you know you're a PF. And if you make it through OCS, you get commissioned.
If you don't, you go back to being a PFC. And you know OCS is at Fort Benning, so I would have gone, you know, across the post uh to a I T but I didn't. I made it through uh OCS. It was also a great experience, Like I said it was. It was torturous, but I was a an endurance athlete, so I could do like a thousand push ups at the time and uh and
you know, never even wins, so it was uh. It was fun for me to go to o c S. And then of course my first while I was there, I started picking brains of prior service guys or guys who were going to o CS prior enlisted. They were. There were a couple of E seven's in there, and uh, I would ask them, Hey, how do I get I want to go to the rangers so that I can get to the unit. How do I get to the rangers? And they said, yeah, well you can't go to the rangers. You
got to go somewhere else first. And I said, well where? And I said the quickest way is to go to Korea. Do a year in Korea and you can get to the regiment. And I did that. I went to first of thirty eighth Infantry CAMPOVI, Korea. Again amazing first tour of duty. I had, you know, great battalion commander, great Company commander Freddie Ruolf, great first sergeant, First Sartin Johnson, Vietnam veteran, did my three months on the DMZ. You know, you get to patrol
with live ammal and layout live claymores. So really a cool thing, you know, in nineteen eighty six to be able to do that. And you know, I say that because in the eighties the prevailing was and was there
would never be a war again. You know, you'd kind of missed everything, and a lot of us didn't really accept that, but you know, in the back of our heads we were like, oh my gosh, you know, I may never get to do see combat in my time in and so being able to patrol with live animal and layout live claymores was was a really really cool thing. And sure enough, you know, I applied to go to the regiment, I got accepted, came right back from Korea to
Oakland, and then drove up to Fort Lewis, Washington. I was assigned to second Ranger Battalion. And back then they didn't have you know, RASP or RISP or whatever it's called now. You just went right to the battalion and you know I went there. I served four years. It was an incredibly formative period of my life. Uh. The both the battalion commanders I had, we were amazing. Uh. Colonel Ellis was my first one.
My second one was Colonel John J. Mayer and uh, you know, he had an effect on me that would stay with me for my entire military career. Uh. He was just a fantastic battalion commander. Approachable. He would talk to PFCs the same way he would talk to the regimental commander when he when he came down. I was a you know, a junior lieutenant. Uh. And you know in the in the regiment, junior officers usually fear there battalion commander. I had no fear of my battalion commander. He
was funny, he was full of wisdom. Uh. You know, he would he would uh he would correct you when you were wrong. But he was just an amazing guy and that permeated the entire battalion. It taught me what a command climate is. You know, command climate is based on the sum total of choices made by the leaders in that climate system. And it's a leader's job to monitor that climate. And he did that incredibly well. You know he would he would fire bad people, get rid of them right
away. And you know, everything he did he had kind of a principle to And he once told me, you know, you could be the funniest, best guy to hang around with in the world as a commander, but if you turned a blind eye to toxic, tyrannical subordinates, you guys will despise you just as much as they despised that tyrant. And he said, one of your primary jobs is to get rid of those guys. That's what the guys are depending on you. They're going home every night miserable, going
man, I hope the boss does something about this. And again, you know that stuck with me my whole career. He was incredibly tactically astute. You know, he taught me you never moved with any element without leaving us stay behind ambush, And my entire military career, I was always leaving stay behind ambushes. But his the real wealth of knowledge was not so much military
but life knowledge and a spree to core knowledge. He would say, the best formal welfare for the troops is to get them home in time to eat dinner with their families. And has both been in the range of regiments. So you know, the tracks a lot of these, you know, borderline psychotic type A personalities who you know, they'll stay till ten thirty at night, you know, pushing pencils, pushing papers, uh, and trying to stay a little later than the guy you know in the next the next company
or whatever. Uh. And so he would he not only said that, he enforced it. He would go around at six o'clock and and go, why why are you still here? You know, who's telling you to stay here? And he'd kicked you know, guys out of their out of their company areas, and you know, everyone, not just me. Uh loved
that about him. Uh. You know. The other thing he caught me was to always talk calmly on the radio and uh, you know he did that during a big FTX where we were searching for you know, precious cargo. It was a nuclear device and I was a platoon leader and we found it and I got so excited. I got on the radio and squeeched, you know, I found the precious cargo. And you know it's embarrassing,
uh to say the least, but only retrospectively. When he pointed it out to me, you know, after the mission was over, and he he said to me, look, it happens everybody. Just remember any time you go to push that, you know, you push the talk button, take a deep breath first, and speak calmly. When we speak calmly, we calm the way we act and calm like. Panic is contagious. And you
know he's right, that's that's been proven by science. But you know, in aggregate again, Uh, it just had this amazing effect on me. My everywhere I went after that, I tried to you know, not mirror, but recreate that dynamic, that positive you know, command climate dynamic. And you know, along with that, you know, be in my behavior b like he was, which is you know, humble, unassuming you're not the center. It's these guys, the guys on the ground. Your job
is to take care of them. And it served me well. My company command was the seventh Infantry Division, ford or At, California. Again one hundred and thirty of the greatest guys I could ever have asked for in a company. My first sergeant, another Vietnam veteran, first sergeant Carba Hall, fantastic guy. Taught me a lot two months into my command, we invaded Panama and we were seventh I das, so we didn't jump in. We flew in, uh and you know, I ended up in the center of
the city. I got the mission to protect the new presidential uh palace president and Darrow was the president who had been in exile. He took over Panama and all of his exiled subordinates, and we just ran missions for about four or five days straight using the intelligence from these guys who were in exile. They just come to us and say, hey, you need to go over here to this uh, this grid, this location. Uh some of uh, some of Noriega's lieutenants are hiding there, and we captured a number of
his subordinates. On one mission we were going it was a tipper that Noriego was hiding in the Communist Party headquarters and uh, you know, to get to our targets, we basically jogged down the street. We didn't have hum V's, and even if we did, I probably wouldn't have used them. You know, imagine trying to get a bunch of light infantrymen in and out of Humby's in a city. It was much quicker to just move it a
fast pace. And it was on that mission that we were I had a platoon plus and then me and the first sergeant in the back, and we were about halfway there and all of a sudden, all held broke loose, you know, a firefight. Every guy in the platoon was firing his weapons. We were in the back, you know, so probably at that point strung out like an accordion, about a block and a half behind the lead guys. And you know, I was taught be patient, don't get right
on the radio and start yelling sit rep. Let the front guys figure out what they got. Give him some time. So you know, I gave him, uh what seemed to me like a minute. Uh and uh and I just said, you know, one to six, this is zero six? What he got up there? And no answer. I tried it again, no answer. So me and the first sergeant started making our way to the front, which is incredibly difficult to do, uh in an urban environment, Uh, in a firefight, because you know, you're not a line
of troops anymore. Everybody is all over the place. There's guys under cars, guys in doorways, guys behind garbage cans. Uh, and they're all shooting, so you know, the the potential to get shot was pretty high, but we weaved our way forward and until I came to the lieutenant and he was the front guy, laying down, you know, shooting his M sixteen, and uh, you know, I tapped him on the shoulder and I said, hey, man, what's going on? What do you got? What do you got? He goes, I'm not sure, sir,
there's an enemy up there? And I go where and he's up there? And I said what do you mean up there? And he said that window over there. I said, you mean one of those curtains are flapping and he goes, yeah, he's behind that curtain. I said, you know they don't have air conditioning here that they keep their windows over that. That's just a curtain flapping in the wind. He goes, oh, I didn't know that. I said, why didn't you get on the radio and give
me a sit round? And he said, well, it's too busy shooting my gun. So we immediately called ceasefire to the platoon, and you know, I didn't think much of it. I will add the building burned down, but we went to our target dry hole, got back and about four years later I was in the unit at the time. I was in an airport and I ran into a guy who I knew from the se with Ida and we started talking, and you know, you always search for common ground
when you when you meet somebody. He was like, yeah, and I was in Panama and I was like, wow, I was too, and he said yeah, I was in the city and I was like, yeah, me too. And they started talking about this massive firefight he was in. I was like, where was it? And he gave me the intersection and that was the intersection between our two elements, the demarcation line. And from talking to him, I realized that it was his company on the other
side of that building. I don't know if someone had an ad or someone saw something, but you know, one shot started it and it was a you know, friendly firefight. Very luckily no one was injured or killed in
it. But you know, I totally at the school off it. It changed my mindset about firefights from that day forward, including you know all I was in the unit at the time, so it really changed every every situation I looked at differently and you know, asked hard questions of myself if I was in it or you know, if it was a kind of lesson learned historical thing, and you know, I started realizing how common friendly fire was and how easy it is in a combat environment to get into a friendly firefight.
Pete. Let me let me just take a quick moment. We got to give a shout out to the sponsor of tonight's show, which is Vitamin One Water. I really hope you guys will take a look at them. We drink it here in the studio. It's veteran owned business and they make a sports drink that is similar to other sports drinks you may have heard of, except it doesn't have all of the sugar in it, but it does
have the electrolytes and all the things that you do need. And you can go and find Vitamin One on Amazon right now, best place to go and get them directly, So please go and check them out. We really appreciate it, and please also take a look at our Patreon the links down the description if you want to get these episodes ad free. We also want to do a couple of quick shouts Posterity side of works. Thank you very much. We were drinking you last show and we didn't call you out because we
were too busy and enjoying your cider. But it's posterity side of works. This one. It's like I think small best sider, right, like it's good cider, kind of homemade in a way. It's this is in the garden and it's it's actually dedicated to our friend Dave Man who is on the show, who recommended this brand to us. And also want to thank Brett Allen for sending us his books Slide, Fox, Hollow and Coroy is here.
We have not had a chance to read these yet. They have great resoot views on Amazon, so check them out if you look for something good
to read. Thanks Brett. Actually I wanted to because a lot of your books are your books are about leadership, and you know, and you've talked about a couple of the influences, but I want to ask you, sort of going back in your leadership journey, what is it like showing up uh As as a butter bar, you know, lieutenant in an infantry unit in in Korea, which is at the time was the hottest thing going right, the like like you said, live ammunition and you like, were you given
guidance in terms of because a lot of these guys are as old, if not older than you in you know, in your you know, in your platoon things like that. How does how does a young lieutenant manage that? Or were there things that you learned while you were there. It's got to be challenging, right, Yeah, yeah, it's you know, it's a great question, Dave. It's I mean, I think it's the right of passage, and it's it's a little tougher on those new guys for a reason.
You've got to prove yourself. You've got to earn your credibility. And you know, I always felt that way. I always felt, you know, not not like deficient, but I knew I didn't have experience. And you know, my upbringing taught me I'm wrong more than I'm right. So, you know, in order to flip that ratio, you tap into this wealth of knowledge around you. And you know, I mentioned my first sergeants
for a reason. I when I talked about my tour as a lieutenant at two seven five, I did not mention that the start major there was the same sergeant major for my whole four and a half years. Start Major Leon Guerrero, and he took it upon himself. You know, his job is to train all the n c os in the battalion and to mentor them. But he he took it to another level. He also, I believe,
saw that his duty was to train the lieutenants, and he did. And I think that should be in you know, most certain majors should include that in their in their duty description. He's the guy who taught me, don't be in a hurry to die, you know. That's what happened on l Z x Ray. That lieutenant ran off his helicopter into the jungle. He saw a vietcom right on the edge of the jungle who took off running, and he ran after him, and his whole platoon ran after him. He
never told them what he was running after. And when he finally stopped, they were surrounded. And l Z x Ray was really the you know, the battle to save the wayward platoon. And he taught us that, you know, and he would say to me all the time, and I was, I was that lieutenant. I was overly aggressive, uh, you know, subject to my aggressive impulsiveness. And he taught me, you know, don't be in a hurry to die. Leaders who are impulsive lead their people
to their deaths. And uh, I never forgot that. You know, I packed that with me through my whole career and it saved me and my guys countless times. So, you know, as a butter bar, it's kind of the same thing. You got. You've got to earn your credibility obviously physically tactically, but you got to listen and you know, you've got
the wealth of knowledge around you. Uh so it's only a matter of tapping into it, asking the right questions, and you know, be impatient because you're not gonna you're not gonna be a combat you know, hardened wise veteran in a few months or even a few years. You just got to keep
building on that knowledge. Yeah, were there, whether it was in Korea or RAI battalion You've mentioned like some good leadership examples, were there, some blatantly whether it was on the officer side or in coside, some blatantly bad examples that were learning experiences for you. Well all my I think all my battalion commanders. I was very lucky. So my battank commander in Korea was an amazing Vietnam veteran. Uh you know, just I can't say anything but
good things about him. Same thing when I got to the Ranger Regiment. Both my battalion commanders were great, you know, probably peers. You know, I learned more from peers and as a lieutenant captains, and there were plenty of those. There were you know, guys who were hypocras's, guys who you know, were a holes to their people. Uh, guys who were tactically incompetent. And you know, you learn vicariously from those guys, just like you do from the good guys. You you know, I'm never
going to be that way. I'm never going to do that. I'm never going to treat people that way. And you know, you can really go to school off of off of those incompetent people, just like you can off of the incredibly competent ones. So, you know, most of my early military career, though, I'd have to say, I was just blessed with
great senior leadership and senior noncommissioned officers. And by the the time, so you were in seventh IDA a company commander, when does when does the idea of like going to selection kind of come come to your head and you start thinking about going and making the leap. Yeah, so it was it was already in my head. I knew, you know, the criteria was you had to have a successful company command as an officer to go to selections. So you know, I was I would have stayed in that company for as
long as they'd let me stay. But you know, the military, it's two years and out. And so as my two years were coming up, I started the process contacting the unit, you know, going through all the prerequisite stuff, and you know, seventh Idea was at Ford or so about a month before I finished command, the unit selection team was came out to California and I did my psych and PT test at the Presidio of San Francisco.
It was still open as a military base. I ran my two mile part of the PT test underneath the Golden Gate Bridge with boots on, and you know, I was kind of a running machine at the time, so I was, you know, going to max Vio two, trying to set you know, my personal best record. But I can still remember running under that bridge, just going, man, I love the military. It's just such an amazing place to be. And you know, sure enough things worked
out for me with the psyche and the PT test. I went to selection right after I got finished command. I think I'd finished command in August or September, and then I went to select the next selection, which was I believe October, and again fortunate didn't get injured, made it through that. And you know, I was in the unit in nineteen ninety one, so it was I was only at ord for the shortest possible period of time. I didn't have to serve as a staff officer. It was just command,
go to tryouts, and then you know, off to the unit. And for a long time, I was, you know, the only one who in the unit from the Seventh Idea. Two more guys came a few years later before they shut it down, But yeah, that was that was my transition. I you know, it was because I I was influenced by Desert One before I even got in. I knew that was dealt on the ground.
So even though I knew nothing about really what they were or how they operated, I knew from that day on that that's where I wanted to go in the military. So, you know, it worked out. So in nineteen ninety one, you get there, I mean, tell us a little bit about like what the vibe was in the unit at the time, what the mission was like, I mean, like if you can take us a little back in time, you know, to the mission and the culture of
that era. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting time and it's uh, you know, it's it's there are some senior n CEOs who can explain it much better than me. They've explained it to me and you know, enlightened me on it. It was kind of a transitionary time, uh, because the military was still kind of transitioning. You know, you had the old the old school guys who were there in the early early days and you know,
fire and MP fives and wearing those black watchcaps things like that. Uh. And this was definitely, you know, the step into the future. Everything was modernized, you know, weapons, como nods, uh had you know, we're taking those massive leaps in the nineties. So it was it was a really cool transitionary time. Uh. You know, my first I went right to a troop. I was a troop commander of my first job.
And again, because I've seen a number of your episodes, two of the guys in my troupe, Harry Harrington and Dale Comstock, were both in there at the time, and I'm sure many more that you'd recognize, but those are the two I saw on your program. Just you know, A I think the unit was kind of you know, finding its its new way at the time. And uh, you know, missions were changing, uh, but a lot were staying the same. That you know, aircraft hostage
rescue, aircraft takedown, those type things were the same. But you know, new missions were coming on the counter narcotics was you know, became the biggest mission for the military. A lot of people don't know that, but Bill Clinton you know, signed a Presidential decision directive making that the number one prior already uh for the military, and uh inevitably, you know, showing the changes. Uh, that's what ended up driving my first big missions.
Uh. I went down into Colombia with the first groups after Pablo escaped. I did uh four tours in Colombia. I spent two Christmases there, uh and again incredibly incredibly formative. Uh, just you know, learning how to deal with embassy people, uh, learning up close how the CIA operates. You know, I was I was still a I was a senior captain at the time, which is rare and you'd usually the junior officers are majors. But because I had that you know, fast paced through command. I was
still a senior captain. But here I was down in Colombia, you know, working out of an embassy. Uh I, you know, blending anywhere as one of the principals. So you know, I would wear a suit in the embassy and then I'd go out, you know, to visit my guys and spend time with them operationally. Uh in Metagine and Cali and all over that country. It was incredibly dangerous time to be down there. Pablo was blowing the ship out of the country. Uh So, you know,
there were there were car bombs, there were mailbox bombs. We were armed all the time, you know, uh, even whether you're in a grocery store in Bogata or you know you're you're down in Medazine or or Cali. And so you know, again, just the building blocks I think of the future of the unit we're there, you know, forming teams based on you know, competencies, so you know, teams like a homogeneous team was not sent down there. Guys were picked from different squadrons. Language was a big
part of that, but disposition was a big part of it too. You guys know this, you know, you get the full spectrum of people in any unit you go to. Uh, some guys are just not really capable or wired to be, you know, interacting in an embassy or interacting with foreign you know generals kernels, and you know, other guys are incredible at it. They're just you know, you you watch them in awe as they deal with these people. And so I learned a lot down there. Mostly
it was it was about, you know, human hunting. Most of the lessons were how you find people who don't want to be found, you know, this tireless search for clues, and always tapping into anyone who has any kind type of information. Uh, you know, totally open mind about it, uh, not getting caught up in you know, a military approach to
things. We saw ourselves down there. We we would often talk about, you know, what a cops do in America when they when they find you know, a futative they don't you know, call in uh two swat teams surround the place and then you know, begin an aerial attack. They just two or three guys, you know, figure out what they got. If it's a if it's a fleeting opportunity, they go in there and they and they interact with the environment. And that's what that was the big lesson for
me, you know, and also patients. It takes time to find people is very difficult. You gotta have guys on the ground and you've got to listen to those guys uh religiously or you're never gonna You're never gonna find who you're looking for. Uh So just uh again, great tours I went. Uh, I actually went left Colombia on one tour, flew to New York and then flew to Mogadishu, Somalia for Somalia, and then when that ended, I flew back to Colombia, uh for another tour going after I believe
the Cali cartel on that one did. Did did some of those like man hunting techniques that you your unit was developing and Colombia kind of transfer over to the the hunt for a deed and all those guys in mogod issue. Yeah, totally. And now you know again you had kind of uh, you
know, your question about the the and the transition. You had, you know, these competing schools of thought and so you know, my school of thought in Mogadishu was different than you know, the Special Operations Command above us and the way they wanted that prosecuted, which was helicopter centric. And you know, if you talk to guys who were there at the time, they know, you know, I was already anti helicopter. And that's not anti
helicopter pilot or anti get on a helicopter. I just don't believe. I believe it's the last resort as an assault platform. If you can get there on the ground, if you can sneak up and achieve surprise, do not default to the helicopter. And so my thing with Somalyu was, these helicopters are going to get us, are going to get blown out of the sky. We did before anyone went over there, before Sea Squadron went over there, we all did rehearsals, and in our nighttime rehearsals we did we timed
infilling on a black op and infilling on a little bird. And you know, a little bird can break flair and hover in about five seconds. So if it's a roof or a balcony, you can unask those guys in about a total of ten seconds. A black op it takes forty five seconds for the best pilots to blake, break flare and hover, get the ropes down, or you know, land and so it's a huge amount of time, and you know, you're dealing with in a place where everyone has a gun.
So our thinking was, you know, we should be going to the targets hidden inside. They were called SST's shit sucking trucks because they drove throughout Somalia and they were like garbage trucks. No one bothered them because they were sucking up all the shit. And uh, you know, my thought was in a bunch of the guys, It wasn't my idea, a number of a number of my guys came up with. It was, you know, let's let's go in low Viz, let's swing all the way around. Mogadishu
is like an island, uh very abruptly turns into scrub desert. So you know, if we need to get to the other side of the city, let's make all huge arc around and then come in through the desert on the other side. But you know, the helicopter mentality, the the kind of Vietnam direct assault mentality was very prevalent with senior ranking people at the time, and and and you know that that kind of one out, but it was, you know, the same thing the guys uh were amazing. I know
you've talked to guys before. You know, when we were in Mogadishu, we had pro tech helmets, plastic protech helmets. So the unit's always been at the forefront of research and development. You know, most of the you know, equipment and rigs that you see today were developed by guys in the unit, either sewing them up themselves or buying them off the shelves and then sewing and modifying them, which is the way the whole army should be in
my opinion. And you know that was the other thing going back and forth between the Unit and the Rangers. I always thought the Rangers should go back to you know, the old school Rangers of the of the you know, early eighties, where they still had five point fifty cord in their boots, and you know, they too were allowed that leeway to uh, you know,
where their equipment to different ways. And I know there's probably some senior ragers gas feed with me saying that, but I really believe that, you know, guys should be allowed to modify their equipment so that it's ergonomic.
You maximize that ergonomic efficiency. You know, everyone's chest is different their arms, so uh, you know, let guys h explore, invent, you know, and let them build better equipment constantly, and that's what the unit did, uh, And that's what we did start even in Mogadishu, you know, the that was the last of the pro tech helmet modishu. They were never worn again. Pete. Uh. You know, just one thing
I wanted to ask you, why have you here? Is something I was told ways back, but I never really got the whole story on was about Columbia and that before Pablo Escobar was eventually you know, killed by the Colombians, that we made like several attempts to like ramp up capture kill missions for him. I was just wondering if you had any like visibility on that.
Yeah, you know, I'm not sure what exactly there might have been times that guys in metagine thought that was you know, the best course of action. But what I remember, uh is we were and no one told us this. We were being micromanaged down there by SOUTHCOM, which was in Panama at the time. So you know, you had a four star general in Panama with a bunch of two star general underlying staff officers and again you know there's no combat, so uh, this is like the only show in town,
and they could not keep their fingers off it. But you know, we still operated very freely down there, and we came to the conclusion ourselves that uh, you know, unless it can't be avoided, we should stay out of any direct contact, direct action like mission. And that doesn't mean we can't take them all the way up to the breach point. We can't advise them. We had we had shared radios with them, uh, the
a group on their HRT. But we, you know, in our own minds decided, hey, we're here to lead them, and these guys need to be the ones to get Pablo. And it makes the most sense for them, it makes the most sense for the mission and for their country. If it's us, it's going to open up Pandora's box of problems. So we were we were very much you know, said on that, and ultimately that's what happened, you know Pablo. People still are not clear on that,
but that was one of percent you know Colombian mission. Those the young captain who was the son of the colonel who was in charge. He was out there. He was using you know, us provided direction finding equipment, but it was not any kind of magical technology. It was, you know, literally driving around helping you pick up a frequency and helping the voice on that frequency, the you know, the the troughs and the peaks on it match up to his voice profile that we had already embedded in the system.
And that's what happened. And they, you know, they direction found him on his phone. Then they happened to see him up in an upstairs window called in the rest of the Colombians and uh and they they did that one hundred percent on their own. And then bouncing back to Somalia. I mean, were you there when the battle took place. We got there that night, so I was in a and that was c so we were it was
actually the change overnight. We were there to relieve them. They were going home that next day, so we were there and then we took over. They were pretty much you know, decimated by the mission, so we took over the uh you know, hostage rescue mission to find Durant and rescue him. We flew, uh, you know, I don't know how many missions in and out of there, all on little birds. We didn't use any black Hawks. And you know, again a lot of breakthroughs and technology there
lasers. We learned just how incredibly lethal and valuable lasers were, you know. I we were flying on one mission. We had four little birds. I was the second little bird, offset from the first, and we were flying nap of the earth and I looked forward. It was it was it just dark, you know, it just turned dark. And so I had my nods on and I saw ahead of the first helicopter this person run out of a house into the yard, and you know, it was a woman.
She had something in her hand, and you know, I didn't know. I knew it wasn't a gun, but she had something in her hand. It could have been a spear or anything. And you know, with a helicopter at that height, you never know. And she pulled it back. It turned out it was a black frying pan, probably her most valuable
possession. And she pulled this thing back to throw it, and I put my laser on it, and at the exact second I put on it, three other lasers zeroed in on it, and somebody shot and that frying pan flew out of her hand as she tried to throw it at the lead little bird. And I'll never forget that shot. I'll never forget, you know, seeing it that I could still see that picture in my nods and see
those lasers converge on the frying pen. And so, you know, a lot of that technology was experimental at the time but just took off after that, and you know today every four as a laser on it. I don't think we ever have really talked about this aspect of Somalia. But so you get there right after the big battle, and were you guys like trying to keep the pressure obviously looking for Mike Durant, but also keeping the pressure on the militias. Was that the mission at the time, Yeah, it was.
You know, it was crazy because there was a lot of political pressure coming down on the whole thing. If you guys remember, uh, you know, we wanted to go after our deed, but we didn't want, you know, to kill anybody or get anybody killed. It was crazy. There was no AC one thirty up. Uh, you know, just senseless decisions made at the national level. So it was kind of a flux period. No one knew what was going to happen with the mission. Uh, and so we just did what you know, any military guys to do.
We just uh, Charlie Mike, let's let's continue with the same thing and search for both Adeed and Durant at the same time. You know, we had some there were just some amazing lessons learned on interoperability there. Uh, you know, a lot of things happened, uh with the rangers. They created a lot of uh, you know, a lot of conflict with those guys and uh, you know those interoperability things and a lot of them were
personality driven. Again. You know, leaders who instead of being open and you know, accommodating, were rigid and narrowly focused on, you know, what they were going to do and how they were going to do it. And I think that ended up causing a lot of the chaos that occurred during that firefight. What so, do you think of a lot of that was
personality driven? And again, and I'm gonna like throw some stuff out which may or may not be true, but were there like, were there officers that were of the rank higher whichever unit that thought that that should be respected. Were there rangers that were sort of the old school, were the best light infantry and you guys are long hairs and that should be respected. Were there any Delta personalities that were like we're Delta, shut the fuck up and
and do what we say? Like what what were some of the elements that were going on if you if you know them? Yeah, I think you know the most were going on with the There was a company commander, ranger company commander, and the ranger battalion commander, and you know, the movie alludes to it a little bit, but uh, you know they were they were just they were they were I guess you said old school. They were old school. Uh. If we're going to do it our way, and
that's it. And you know the rangers. Uh, when the firefight started, we're out there in a in a convoy, parked in a convoy and uh, you know, just everything was set up to go wrong. The battalion commander in his vehicle is leading that convoy. You know, that makes no sense when you know who puts a battalion commander in the front vehicle, you know, as a navigator and as a convoy commander. Nobody and that you know that, Uh, that caused a lot of the problems, certainly
a lot of the casualties. Uh. They went back and forth through that kill zone I think three times. Uh, because he could not figure out he was getting he was being told where to go from a helicopter. So you know all of us have been in helicopter circling. No, you can't tell a guy in a city to take a left turn or a right turn and then you know, make your arc around to come around the other way. They they took a bunch of wrong turns. Uh. I think that
front vehicle split from the convoy. Uh, you know, on its own, went down an alley away from the convoy. Uh. The only thing that stopped it was Uh, a Somali with an RPG at the far end of the alley popped out. So they threw the reverse and went back, and you know then there was just I'm not I can't speak credibly about the personality at the at the company level. I just know that there were unit guys in in that same building and that company commander would not answer his radio
when guys were calling. Uh. One in one ranger bled out in there, and uh Scott Miller was the troop commander at the time. Uh, he was trying to call him and he wouldn't answer his radio. Uh. So you know who, I'm not being judgmental here, I'm just saying it was a huge interoperability problem. Yeah, and you know personalities. You can't come to any other conclusion than personalities because you know, in those situations, you know, rank means nothing. Your job is to make the best decision
and solve any problem using logic and common sense that comes up. And if you've got to subordinate yourself to someone of lower rank or of another unit, who cares. You know, you're doing it in the name of of you know, the mission and your men. And so it always just amazes me when I hear stuff like that. And that had a big impression on me too. You know, I went to school off Somalia. It was the
final nail for me. On helicopters, it was, you know, also a nail for you know, always search for that asymmetrical approach, that auto box approach. Do not default to what every enemy in the world expects America to do, which is to come in on our shiny helicopters and fast rope on the targets. Yeah, you know, just like Jack and I saw this in the in the g Y and I'm sure you know everybody else that too. How Like tactics evolved, like things that used people used to think
where the standard sort of went by the wayside. Did you see that happen with Somalia too? Were there are just some like wake up calls uh in the community for you for you guys, Yeah, I think, uh, you know, our our professors, which is all the you know, troops are majors and team leaders. They totally went to school off on CQB.
A number of things changed on CQB tactics and techniques. Uh, certainly, you know, you know, the probably one of the biggest lessons was, you know, never go on a daytime mission without your nods and without expecting you're going to be going on a nighttime mission. So you know, a lot of little things, a lot of equipment things I already mentioned the pro
tech changed after that. And you know, I think the I think in general, the mindset because you know, it's very clear that that was the most intense combat since the Vietnam War, and it was kind of a wake up call, you know, to everybody that this is the new way, this is the you know, insurgent warfare. Total you know, asymmetrical sounds
trite, but it's true. You're fighting against guys who aren't they don't have doctrine and they don't have tactics, techniques and procedures, and why you know, while you can smoke those guys and you know incomprehensible numbers, they're still very effective. They're swarming you, and you've got to be ready to defeat the swarm. And you know, there were a number of teams, unit teams who did that. They they did not stay put, which I which I also went to school off of. They they said, well, I'm
not staying in this place. Let's go out and just move and destroy the enemy instead of letting them creep up and uh and destroy us. And they did that. Paul Howe who wrote a book about it, but he's an incredible warrior. And to me, did you okay? So he he I never forgot him. He gave a aar. He wasn't in my UH squadron,
so I didn't know him that well. But you know, my my lesson from Samaria was almost everything he said about it and uh, and he the way he prosecuted, the way he reacted, the way he adapted with his team was the way I thought everyone should have should have performed why they were there, and uh, you know, he's you guys know, because you know him. He's an unbelievable warrior, unincredibly competent, incredibly intelligent and uh. And his his approach to me was the takeaway, never sit against
the swarm. You know, it's like when you're being swarm by bees, you don't just sit still. Uh, you swat them back, you move around, you haul ass away from the swarm. Uh. And he did that. He took the fight to the enemy. And you know, he's very modest guy, but uh, you know what they what they did accounted
for a lot of the casualties that the Somalis took there. And so after Somalia, you make it, you said, you went back to Columbia one more trip looking at the college cartel after the whole Escobar thing was settled, and and sort of what what was like the rest of your duration there before moving on to the next assignment. Yeah, so just you know, we went right from Colombia. Bosnia popped up next. And so you guys asked earlier about you know, influences on GAT. To me, the you know,
the PhD in human hunting came in Bosnia. We called it the Living Laboratory. We now technology. We were able to operationalized technology. So there were no Google Maps at the time, but you know, there was special mapping software that you could put on a laptop, a Mini Libretto laptop and you know, hook it in inside your vehicle in a low vis way. We you know, we learned how to rig Lovis satellite antennas on top of
our vehicles. The blending thing was huge. You know. You you were always basically undercover and you know, same thing just like just like police,
you're not going to be successful unless you're out there hunting for clues. Uh, you know, piecing together clues, just like it's a case uh going back sharing everything you learn with your team, you know, picking up the knowledge, the understanding of the environment collectively, not individually, and you know, doing it while undercover in a you know, it was it was dangerous,
but it was a fairly forgiving environment. So you know, we we could test anything out and test any concept out and we did and you know that went all right up really till nine to one one. Uh, that living laboratory. And so I've said this, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I get you to scoot like a little closer to the camera and do you have like a white and front of you if you can flip that around or
something, because you're just like so washed out. I'm afraid we got you looking like a space alien on this uh, which I guess we could talk. I don't mind that. That's much that's much better. We can we can actually see you now. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, thank you for the yep. So what were we what were we talking about there about how things evolved during the Bosnia campaign and all the TTPs and technologies that
you guys evolved. Yeah, so you know that's where we learned the Lovaz comms, the operating in a Lov's environment, and you know, guys on a continuous mission. We were there for a couple of years, two or three years, so you were rotating in and out and it was all pretty much n c O run our Our certain majors were the guys ran the safe houses. And it was very complex because you had all these low viz vehicles,
you had a lot of weapons. A lot of us were you know, under aliases, so it took a lot of of of highly involved organization to keep things from you know, falling apart and to keep the continuity because you had to go out of your way to pass on knowledge. Uh, with each tour, each you know, new team that came over, we ended up settling on ninety to one hundred and twenty day tours, which we thought was you know, about the right number. Anything less was a little
too short. Anything more, you know, started really burning guys out. But it really everything you know that I did with AFO, or a lot of what I did with AFO in Afghanistan was based on knowledge I learned in low V's Environment in Bosnia, and I, uh, you know, I want to turn to your book soon here, so I'm not going to go too deep into Afghanistan. But when that, uh, are you in Sean
Naylar's book Not a Good Day to Die? Yes? Okay, so yeah, I'm I'm friends with Sean, So I mean maybe I can direct people towards his book because I not that I wouldn't love to talk to you about it here, but since like an hour and ten minutes in, I want to make sure that we have plenty of time to you know, unpack everything in your book. But before moving on, I mean, is there any anything about about the Bosnia campaign? Is there any particular operation that you'd like
to highlight before we move on to the next thing. You know, I yeah, I think, uh, the the one of the big ops that I write about in my first book. Uh, the highlight is just how important humor is to imagination. And this kind of goes back to, uh, the climate that I talked about initially, and how important having that kind of climate is. Uh. You know, you guys know this. Every
military guy who's watching this knows this. You know, we we survive off laughter, and you know, without laughter, Uh, you know, you're going to be stressed out, you're going to be a zombie, You're going to be frustrated. Uh. Military guys are you know, like a bunch of uh amateur comedians, you know, always trying to get a laugh out
of even the you know, some of the darkest circumstances. And so when you're trying to plan an out, you know, one of the most famous uh you know bits of advice that old school senior leaders always give you is they say, all right, knock off the crap, we got to get serious. It's time to plan. And it turns out that's exactly opposite of the way our brains work, you know, humor and insight are indelibly linked. So humor makes you think of creative ideas and insights you'd never come up
with unless you were laughing. And a lot of that has to do with contrarian thinking. The brain natural is a natural contrarian like machine. If I say black, you think white, just naturally. So what that emphasizes is even some of the dumbest, like most foolish ideas in history probably gave birth
to some of the greatest and insightful ideas, especially in the military. And you know, we kind of I kind of knew that just from experience, that was always the way we operated, but Bosnia we took it to another
level. And so, you know, trying to figure out how to stop a vehicle with a very one of the top three principles that we were going after over there, who is in the vehicle with this security detail and his daughter, you know, how do you stop it in a non kinetic way that will ensure that you're not going to kill that daughter while you're trying to capture this guy. And you know, we sat in a safe house, it was probably two three in the morning, and we just started brainstorming,
and any idea was a good idea. And you know that's where I talk about like the idea of you know, a gorilla costume, and the idea was get some guy out there who just you know, makes them go, so pull their face up to the front windshield and go what in the fuck is that? And it's that moment where we had a special round. It was called a slam round. And I don't know what happened to this thing. It's a fantastic device. I believe the Austrians came up with it.
It's like an RPG round. It's about that big the round, but it has a stick on it that fits right into your M four barrel and you fire that thing just like you fire a normal round. And it's called a slam round. It's like a RPG concussion grenade, so when it hits something, it's like a flashbang. It creates a concussive effect that knocks people out for about ten to fifteen seconds or knocks them incoherent. And you know,
that ended up being the concept we came up with. The mission ended up changing based on whether and a few other things, but only through lap after and hilarity did we come up with that concept. And you know, anybody could come up. One of the one of the great ideas was came from one of the most junior guys in the group, which again shows that you know, you know, making good choices is about options, and the more options you have to choose from, the better your choices are going to be.
And that's what we learned on that mission. It really that too stayed with me all through Afghanistan Iraq. If you're planning, you know, get comfortable, be like you guys are right now, sitting down in a good chair, having something to sit on, seriously and just you know, laugh because humor and insider and double link. So next time you hear someone say knock off the ship, it's time to get serious and start planning, you know, raise your hand and tell them that's not how the human brain works.
I also like before we move in the book, because the book is you know, a lot of it has to do with later on the Gwat Uh well with uh Pet with Tilman. But I want to say that from from the unit, you went back to Ranger Battalion UH and you happened to be there at the same time I was. And I remember, like the whispers around the chow Hall because you know there was Pistol Pete, the guy
you know who had you know, who was who was there. But also I think that your presence because that was a time when when Ranger Battalion was in the regiment, but particularly I think second Battalion, and I think part of it had to do with you being there and your influence is like you you mentioned like you got Jerry Barnhart there, you know, which was you know, a resource that Rangers hadn't had access to up unto that point in
time. You know, the grace is like bringing civilian experts for these things that when you were there was also when we were allowed to go to the town actual Taylor and have Wooly Pete bags so in sewn into our rucksacks and you know, and have our web gear like altered. But that wasn't something that Rangers were that. That was something that there were people in range of Battalion that were actively resisting and fighting because it wasn't dress right dress. Yeah,
now it's a great point. And uh, you know I was fortunately going back there because I knew now the you know, platoon sergeants and first sergeants were guys I was who were team leaders and squad leaders when I was there the first time, and so knowing them and being able to connect to them and uh and talk to them about you know, hey, what do we really need? What what do you what does the battalion need to you know, take that next step? Uh? So their feedback was amazing.
Uh. Ted Kennedy, who's in my book, was incredible influence on me. You know, just one of these guys. You just cannot believe the wisdom that comes pouring out of them. So, you know, most of those things you mentioned, Dave were you know were uh ended up being executed
because of feedback I got from those NCOs. You know. On the equipment side, since we've been talking about that, you know, I came back and showed did a demo of why the Rangers need to switch to an AK forty seven vest, which is you know what we used to wear before it was part of the mole system, before it was part you know, embedded in your body armor. We did a demonstration of trying to imt trying to get magazines and just showing you know this thing that the only reason the Rangers
didn't have AK vest was because you know, they were too cool. And this is where the rangers, you know, the old school NCOs begin working, some of them against the system. You know, they just do not want to change. And you know, these guys would tell me that, they're like, hey, we've been telling them, you know for the last couple of years, we need to do CQB, we need to do target discrimination. And you know it's the sergeant majors who regiment and whatnot who come
back and say, no, no, no, we're rangers. We kill everything on the target. We don't need to learn how to you know, discriminate targets. We don't need to shoot and move. And that was one of the other things that we did while I was there. We set up the first maneuver live fire shoot and move maneuver live fire range on Fort Lewis, where you know, you started on a fast rope that was between two trees about one hundred meters apart. You had to crawl that thing and whatever
technique you wanted with your weapon. You came out. You shot from one hundred meters down a road at a target. You shot ten rounds, you picked up, you sprinted forward, you climbed up on top of what used to be. You know, they had those sheds over all the shooting positions. You climbed up on top of that, you took shots from Annealy position on that, you climbed back down, ran over, went through a pipe,
and you know it was the purpose. When we brought in the regimental commander and the regimental staff, they were like, yeah, well, why do we need to do this? And the reason you need to do it is because you need to teach yourself how to shoot when you're out of breath, how to find that respiratory pause. And like, so we've been training all those years, we the entire military, you know, laying on ranges in a prone position, which is not how you shoot. You're all amp
up when you're shooting, and that's the way you should train. And so we did. And again, you know, everything we did there was based on feedback from those senior n CEOs. Same thing with Barnhardt. You know, they've been trying to get someone to come and teach them shooting techniques, advanced shooting techniques for a while and so when I came, you know, they said, hey, how can we do this? And I was like, you know, we can do it. And since I was the S
three. You know, it was only like twenty grand to get Barnhart or something, and we were spending you know, one hundred grand to rent them out site, you know it some obscure post and so you know, I just use that money to spend on Jerry Barnhart and new equipment and stuff like that, and so, you know, I think more than anything, it speaks of you know, the value of of you know, going back and forth between units, you know, especially on the NCO level. Greg Birch
did that at the end of his career. He was the battalion and regimental I believe he was regimental stars major two. Yeah, he was in small in Afghanistan. So he he did that of his own accord. You know, he had already accomplished everything you could accomplish at the unit, and he did it because he started, you know where I started a company two seven five, and he wanted to go back. He's still to this day.
You know, he loves rangers and sot Why because we see them, you know, as the future of the warrior class in the military, and so you know, they need they need sanity. Most of the time, rangers have all the right ideas. They just can't get those ideas and operation and uh, you know, sometimes you need a little bit of help to Yeah, it was a fascinating time because it was being pulled like taffy, you know, where you would have people like you come in and sort of be
innovators and these other people who understood what needed to happen. And at the same time I had a platoon sergeant who said, we don't need to be doing this CQB. We need to do patrol based activities, right, that's what rangers do, you know, And it was a fascinating time for rangers. Yeah, yep, Pete. I would love to have you back again
at some other time to talk about the rest of your career. I just don't I know if we get into it or I'm not gonna have any time left to talk about your book here, which I definitely want to get into. But if people your first book is The Men, the Mission in Me,
Mission the Men and Me. Yep, the Mission of the Men and Me, So people can go and check that out if they want to hear a bit more about Afghanistan, and maybe I'm sure we can have you get a lot and if I remember right, you did a lot about Bosnia in there too, right and yes, yeah, big Bosnia. That that story that I just told is in there, and uh and then and then Nail Arts book is uh not a good day to die. So but what we didn't have peepe back again to talk about that stuff. So let's launch into
this into book three common sense Leadership Matters. Tell us about like what was the genesis of this book, Like how did it come about? And why did you write it? Yeah? Thanks, it's uh so you know indirect strange thing, but uh, you know it started for me uh in Bagdad International Airport two thousand and three. Uh we Uh, I was actually commanding the unit. I went over to uh you know, our staging area for a RAQ as the ops officer. The unique commander had a brain aneurysm while
jogging on like the second day we were there. So I became the unit commander for Iraq. And you know, of course Jaysuck was you know, waiting with baited breath as that happened. And you know, we ended up in filling into Iraq a huge indirect route into Iraq after the invasion, which was I don't know we were we were behind enemy lines and out in the field for I think twenty twenty six or twenty eight days, something like that. And when we came in, we went to Baggan International Airport, so
it had just been taken you know, by the thunder run. We occupied that to begin going after you know, high value targets in the city, specifically Saddam and his henchmen. And so I was commanding, you know, in byapp and we were conducting NonStop ops. And the reason I you know, I recounted in the book, the reason I remember it so clearly is because on the thirtieth, yeah, thirtieth of May, we had what ended up being the biggest casualty producing you know op that we had had up to
that point. Neither war and nobody died, but four guys were injured, two of them seriously on a target. And it was a target that you know, is they did everything right. They got in there, they took out the first four or five guys, and then you know, some craze dude came running out with his ak on automatic and spraying everybody and he hit four guys on that target. So those guys were flown back to Buyapp that
night, and it was you know, a typical unit staff. I had like three guys with me, and so we ran out to the helicopters to take those four guys off the helicopters, and obviously, you know, we couldn't get four stretchers off quickly. And all of a sudden, all these rangers ran out, twelve rangers and started helping us, and we transloaded. We brought them into we had a j MOL set up there. We brought them in to be triaged. They were going to be flown out to Germany
Critical Care Unit. But they were three iged right there. And you know, before one of the guys was put under with anesthesia, he said to me a panther, we sure could have used a few extra guys on the target. Some of these rangers for security would have would have been helpful. I was like, got it, Chris hanging in there, and I'll get working on that right away. So I you know, they put him under.
I went back immediate request to Joint Special Operation Command. Hey, we would like a minimum of a couple squads put a platoon worth of rangers to help us out to isolate these targets. And you know that was I sent that mission up that night. Now, those guys carrying the stretchers in unbeknownst to me, and as they came out, I thank each one of them. I shook their hands, said, hey, really appreciate it. And you know when you when a unique guy like talks to a junior ranger there,
you know they think it's they They were taken back. They were like, wow, this guy's thanking us. But I was genuinely appreciative of it. And that turned out to be. They were all from second Platoon, a company, and Tillman was one of the guys who was there. Wow. So the next night I was I was, you know, we were doing more ops. I was on the radio and I saw a ranger come
in to our area. I was coincidentally, my top was set up in the Delta ticket counter area and so I heard his voice and I was like, I know that voice, and it was, you know, one of the guys I mentioned. I'm not gonna say his name because he's still active with another government agency, but I knew his name. He was a guy I work with in both my tours in two sem five and you know,
I'll call him STARTINXT and I was like, startin next are you. You know, I was really happy to see him because not like personality wise, I was happy to see him because I thought it meant he was coming over as the lead NCO to be my isolation force. But that's not why he was over. He just looked at me and he said, Sir, can I talk to you in private? And I was like, yeah, sure. So I grabbed my long gun and we went out and walked, you know, along the inactive runway, and I said, what's on your mind?
And he just went into this long litany of about the command climate in the second Battalion and how toxic it was. And you know, he gave me in numerous examples. They're in the book, and you know, he was very clear it wasn't it wasn't just one individual, so you know, and I try to get that across in the book. This is why climate is so so important to understand. It was multiple and you know, I said to him, well, what can I do to help. I've been
out of the Rangers. You know, I left Dave while you were there. I left in ninety eight, so this is two thousand and three, so I've been out five years. I was like, you know, sur next, what can I do? And I'll do anything, but what do you need me to do? And he said, I don't know. Can you just talk to someone in our higher headquarters, maybe get someone to come down and take a look. Anything will help. And he was very apologetic, you know, about bothering me. I'm like, dude, you're not
bothering me. Senseless leadership in a combat zone is as deadly serious as it gets. And so I told him I had to go back. We had a mission going going on on a target, so I had to go back. And I said to him, hey, look, you have my word. I will. I don't know what I'm going to do or how I'm going to do it, but I will find someone and I'm going to make it known, and we're going to get someone over there to check out what's
going on. And you know, again back to this theme, because we've talked to two seven five, We've talked about, you know, our initial battalion. Like when he told me that it wasn't just a thing, you know, all these faith is, you know, went flying through my brain. I could see them and I just was like, man, you know, those guys are struggling, they're sucking. Those are good people. They don't deserve that. And again, you know, it's deadly serious when that
shit happens in a combat zone. So and after him, two more NCOs grabbed me on the way to the chow hal and said the same thing. So that's three senior NCOs crossing command lines to tell someone about a problem. So you know, internally, I only thought about this later, not at the time, but it, you know, it tells you how serious it is, right because ranger NCOs, I mean, you got to be like
waterboarding them to get them to complain about anything. They don't complain. H you know, you got to coerce a ranger NCO to tell you what's bothering, because you know, you learned to suck it up, and you learned that, you know, you don't complain. And so I knew, because I understood that about about you know, ranger noncommissioned officers, I knew this
had to be pretty serious for them to do what they did. And you know, two nights later, I saw a senior ranger officer and I'm anonymizing him just because I anonymize a lot of the guys in the book with rangers. Know who he is, and I approached him. And I had a great relationship with this guy, you know, I had. I had been in l and O with him when I when I was the S three of the Rangers five years earlier. I knew him then he was in the Rangers, then he was a rank above me, and I knew him that whole
time leading up to that. Uh never you know, I never served with him or anything like that, but I knew him and had a very good relationship. And I saw him and I said, he was the most senior guy and he was the only guy who was at byapp from our higher headquarters. So I said, hey, can I can I talk to you? And I pulled him aside and I said, look, here's I want to tell you what three very competent NCOs told me. And I think it's pretty
serious, and you know, you can tell me what you think. And I laid out very carefully, trying to use their words, not to you know, in any way, throwing anything that wasn't said to me, anonymizing their names because I understood the ramifications and how you know, the regiment sometimes reacts when people complain, So you know, I told him all the examples. And he wasn't saying a thing, and it was dark eye and he
was smoking a cigar at the time. I couldn't see his face. So I just stopped and said, you know, to let him talk, and he, you know, took another hit off his cigar, you know, blew the smoke out, hit me in the face, and then he stuck his finger in my chest and said, you don't know, you've been out of the regiment for five years, and you don't know anyone in that chain of command, So go back and tell your anonymous NCO sources to stay in
their lane, to do what they're told to do. And if I did a nickel for every time a ranger in CEO complained about what he was told to do, I'd be a rich man. And he turned and walked away. And you know, I was not like, I had no expectation of what was going to happen there. I'd never done that before in that type
of situation. But I was confident, you know, I felt like that was an emotional reaction by him, and I was confident that even the most selfish leader would with time consider what he had just said and consider the imp the implications of doing nothing, and from a selfish standpoint, go, hey, I probably need to look into this because you know, this guy could make me look bad. Uh, And so you know that's what I just I just trusted that something would happen, he would do something. Well,
you know, I went back to commanding the unit. Within a week or two, Uh, someone came up and told me, hey, you know two some five just redeployed. By the way we are, request for augmentees was denied by a higher headquarters. So, uh, these guys were sitting around doing nothing. They they ended up doing nothing, but for some reason we you know, they weren't allowed to come and do missions with us.
Wow, and they redeployed back to Fort Lewis. And my thinking at the time was that he must have looked into it, must have found this was going on, and that's why, because why else would you leave in the beginning phases of the Iraq War. Why would you fly back to Fort Lewis, especially when you know I've got guys getting shot because we don't have enough guys to isolate targets. So that was my conclusion, and I didn't think anything of it, you know, anytime after that, I did a tour.
It was my war college year. After that, I was I was promotable to full colonel. I you know, pinned on when they gave me command of the unit. So I had to do my one year off and I so I basically was off the grid. And that next year I didn't know, you know what, if anything happened. And it was many many years later after I got out where you know, Krakauer wrote that book.
And I finally read that book in twenty fifteen. And as I was reading it, and I didn't read it because a friend of mine said it was too political, don't waste your time with it. But I read it in twenty fifteen and I came across this passage where crack Hour had Pat Tillman's diaries, and he printed three of his passages from his diary and they were a byapp and so I'm reading it, and you know it's they're in the book. But he says, last night we helped carry in four wounded Delta Force
guys. Somehow, you know, combat became more real. I never thought it would happen ever, know. And then his next passage was we're flying home at zero three point thirty tomorrow. I'm not sure at the time, thank fucking God. And so I read this and I was like, holy shit, Pat Tillman was. I didn't even know he was in second rate in battalion at the time when they were in Iraq, much less did I
know he was one of the guys who carried the stretcher in. So, you know, I started talking to Ranger NCOs and going back and trying to piece this back together. Hey, whatever happened you know during that time, And again one of the guys I mentioned, Ted Kennedy, was you know, a huge source of enlightenment for me. He told me about you know, them returning to Fort Lewis what happened. And he also told me for the first time that the same chain of command that those guys came and complained
about to me was in place in Afghanistan one year later. And that's when you know, I kind of realized, hey, wow, this is you know, what do I do with this information. He also told me that Missus Tillman was still investigating what happened. She was, you know, talking to a bunch of the guys. She she wanted to know anything anyone knew about it, And so I felt compelled to provide her with this information,
not thinking it was some key clue or anything. I just felt compelled to tell her, you know about it, and to tell her that Pat carried my guys in and you know what a great guy was in Iraq. So you know, that conversation led to her reading my book and then saying to me, hey, you know, can you I have this these investigative documents. I know you were in Afghanistan, you were a ranger, you know all these people. Could you take a look at it and tell me what
you think? And I said, you know, the only thing any of us could say to the mother of a fallen comrade, I said, you know, of course, And I drove up there that next day, four hundred miles and picked up the investigative documents, met her. You know, my first words to her were an apology for the army, and you know, just to tell her that we're not You know, everyone I've ever talked to is embarrassed about that. And you know, I have no idea what
happened. But I'll read these documents and I'll tell you what I think, even if it's not what you may want to hear. Because at the time she was you know, she had been twisted into, you know, just wild ideas about what happened, and not not because she was delusional or something, but because she'd been lied to multiple times. She'd been told multiple stories about what happened. And so you know, that's human nature anytime, you
know, when you're punching the nose. Once you learn when you're punching the nose twice, right, you know, it was like, hey, I'm done right, yeah, And so she was. And so I started reading the documents, talking to every ranger I could talk to. That was twenty seventeen. And you know, Jack, I think I said this to you in a separate conversation. You know what was a very difficult thing. I knew when I told her I'd look at it. When I got home.
You know, three thousand, five hundred pages of documents. I spread them out my office and I just was like, hey, you know, I might as well get started, and I started reading one binder, and nine hours later and about one hundred sticky notes later, I was like just captivated
by it. Uh, And I knew there was something there. I knew I needed to go talk to the rangers who were involved, and uh, you know that began my journey uh talking to those guys and and you know that that you know, uh, collectively both talking to her uh and talking to those rangers, UH just became one of the most rewarding things that I've ever done in my career. And you know, along the way, UH just fascinated by you know, the terrain, the circumstances, everything we've talked
about already in this Uh, you know, was was very obvious. Uh was very obviously going on on the ground that day. You know, guys making great recommendations, common sense recommendations, being denied, being told no, you can't do that, or not even being answered on the radio, you know. And so as I accumulated that knowledge, it kind of came together
with what I already knew about bad leadership and toxic leadership. And the more guys I talked through, the more it became, you know, just completely obvious. But the real breakthroughs, you know, were we're from talking to them and then just diving into the terrain, the timing, the radio logs, seeing what people really said, and you know, I started talking to the guys. It was a slow process at first because not many guys wanted
to talk about it. It was difficult to find most of but with each guy I found, that guy led me to a couple more guys, and you know, patterns started to evail, just shocking patterns. You know, I don't have PTSD, so to me, it's I don't know what I can't like imagine what it is, just like depression. You know, people used to think depression is fake. We know it's not now and you can't imagine depression if you don't have it. And what shocked me was how many
of these guys were absolutely devastated by what happened. And most of that devastation was built on guilt and frustration. And the frustration was they had no idea what happened. They never were allowed to see any of the investigative documents. They didn't know these decisions were being made behind the scene. They didn't know their opportunity was being told, no, you can't blow up the vehicle, keep going, uh, you know, just senseless ship on top of senseless
ship. And uh, you know it had an effect on me, it really uh you know, instead of detouring me, it you know, hardened my uh resolve to get to the bottom of it and UH and help these guys out, Pete, can you because I think a lot of people now are very familiar with with UH Patowman being killed in fractricide. But can you lay out what the mission was, what the scenario was, and where these command decisions and the refusals of certain IT requests work. Can you sort of
lay out what the scenario was for us? Yeah? Sure, so terrain. It starts with terrain. And you know, coincidentally, this area that the rangers were driving around looking for weapons cachets is what I believe. There might be another one. It might be tied, but there's probably no more dangerous hostile place in Afghanistan tribally terrain wise, same thing. There might be another chunk of terrain somewhere equally arduous as this area, but not more arduous.
So both the terrain and the enemy are as bad as you can get at any time. And how do I know that? Because I thought, you know, the Battle of Shahikot known as Anaconda, and when we chased the foreign fighters, me and my RECKI guys followed the trail of tears on the thirteenth day as they the last remnants of the l KAEDA fighters fled. They fled west and it turned out, you know, I figured this out
about a month in looking at the map. Where kat Tillman was killed was eight kilometers west of Takergar, which is, you know, the mountain where all those guys died in the you know, the medals of honor and everything. So we chase them right to the border, right through this area. And is we were in that area, we knew from intelligence, but we knew firsthand from being in it how hostile that area was. I had a safe house in Oregon as the AFO commander, and I also had waned Coust.
So to get from Oregon to Coust, the straight line is to go right through this area. We would not go through it, and when we had to, which was twice, i'd go through twice. We only had one rule. Never go through in a convoy. Go through in lobiz vehicles by as much time as you can get through quickly, but do not look like an enemy convoy. Because these are the hardest core posh dunes that there are, and it's a smuggling haven between Pakistan and Afghanistan. So it's not
just those tribes. There's other people passing through there all the time, and so I knew how dangerous and daunting it was. And so when I read their mission, you know, I still remember the moment. It was actually
in this office, all the papers were on the floor. I dropped the binder that it was in, and just you know, shook my head in disgust that they were just randomly driving around to find weapons cachets and hoping that Osama bin Laden might be out back feeding one of the goats or something. And you know, it was the exact opposite thing we should have been doing. And it's not even so much the Rager's fault as it is the overall Afghanistan you know, strategy. Just the fact they were allowed to go in
there to do that for no specific intelligence is mind boggling. And so these guys, the platoon and second Battalion, flew into flew into Bogram and within three days they were in their vehicles out driving around in the field without coming back into their base. What ended up being eight days. So these are brand new guys, most of them, a few of them had a prior tour. They were there for a couple of weeks in November of two thousand
and three. But other than that, no real on the ground knowledge, and not just that the baseline ground elevation of this area is six thousand feet. So you know, lesson learned from Battle of Shahi code is you don't go into any area above three thousand feet unless you're proper acclimated. And you know, unknown lesson from that battle is most of those follow on forces that
came in were also flown out with altitude sickness. And that's a lot of these foreign forces, the you know, other units, conventional units, and we were telling people that, we were saying, look, you need to come to gardens first and acclimate. It's you know, it's right at I think foury eight hundred feet and acclimate and then go in. But you know, we were blowing that off. So I would have stopped them just for lack of acclimation. But to go into that area and not understand how dangerous
it was was, you know, already a formula for disaster. And when you read the interview notes, you know, you read the S three, the commander, these guys talking, they talk about this firefight they got in. They say, well, you know, it was just a you know happenstance. We had been in that area for eight days and all dry holes, you know, no enemy contact, and I feel comfortable sending guys back.
Five hum v's back in there today. Well again, I dropped my binder when I read that, because in Afghanistan, if you're a history you know, if you've read the history of Afghanistan, you understand that eight days of no contact means they've been studying you for eight days and you are eight times more likely to be ambush because that's the only tactic they were using at the time. That's their tactic of choice, the far ambush. You know, you can go look online at the videos of how they did it to
the Soviets. They are sizing you up, and you bet you can bet they were s those rangers up. So you know, on the day this mission happened, they had an inoperable hum V and they were at a border control point called Border Control Point five, right on the Pakistani Afghan border, and the platoon leader called it in and said, hey, this thing's deadlined, it won't start. Recommend we leave it here, or you can come pick it up in a helicopter and take it back to Couse. You know,
deny, drag it with you. You guys have been your behind schedule, and you know the sink matrix, your platoon on the sink matrix is all red and we need to get back green. So you know, common
sense and the response is senselessness. So these guys hooked up a deadlined hum V to another hum V using nylon straps and took off from that border control point five with a helipad, which, by the way, you know, a helicopter flew in the last spare part flew in the company commander and the is XO to tell the platoon leader, hey, you need to get back on schedule. The old man's really getting pissed, so off they go, and you know, guys, you can watch the video online. I've posted
it online. It was the fourth investigation video the entire canyon. When you see this canyon, they literally were dragging a Humby through the equivalent of the Grand Canyon, like trying to get through the Grand Canyon with a Humby. And by this time it had no front wheels. It couldn't be steered, so it was elevated. It was just two wheels rolling and anyone who's done off roadwork knows. You know, trying to get a jinga truck with a
hum vy on two wheels through that stuff is an exercise in futility. So their requests to blow the vehicle, you know, I should say they dragged it for four and a half hours that morning. Their average speed was one point five miles an hour, So you know that's important not just for understanding the futility of it, but think of the stress levels in those guys. You're in enemy territory going one point five miles an hour in the middle of
mountains. Yeah, and to paint it for people, because those BCPs were generally on elevated locations. So when you say, like the Grand Caynans like
they're they're towing something down switchbacks. Hand carved roads, yes, like that, hand carved roads that are one vehicle wide that when you're in the driver's seat or the past one one Toyota Tacoma wide, not one home right right exactly, you can look over the edge and see like the precipice, like it's right there was was the was the no to blow it in place and no to HeLa back it out? Was that coming from the battlespace owner was
that coming from their direct chain of command? Where was that coming from? Yeah, so again important lesson year, which you know, was illuminated to me once again by these senior NCOs who whose comment was, if you want to know what went wrong in Afghanistan, start with the way we tried to command and control it. And in this case, here they were they had
just switched this. Remember this is only two thousand and four, so we're only really two years into it, and we've already pretty much lost our way because I was, you know, with the first guys in in the winter of two thousand and one two. This is the spring of two thousand and four. And here's how the command and control was set up at the time.
It was called the CFT concept, the cross functional team concept, and the cross functional team stipulated every staff was exactly the same around Afghanistan, and there were no more company talks, battalion talks. There were just these CFTs where everybody you brought all your staff officers, everybody was in one place.
They lived off their VTCs that drove their schedule every day. So this platoon who on this day is they leave Border Control Point five, is the only platoon or so we thought out in the field at the time, the only rifle platoon, the other eight rifle platoons are back in planning the next dry hole. Their chain. The way they report is back to the first CFT, which is at Salerno and Cowst And it looks like all of them. There's ten everyone has a U table. There's ten staff officers on each side.
Ten of them are supposed to be working on current ops and ten on future ops. Don't ask me how that, ever, was explained to anyone. I don't know. Every op is future in my opinion. So ten and ten and then the CFT commander behind him is the lower level command. So the CFT is a battalion commander or battalion S three in this case it was the S three, and behind him is the company commander and company XO.
So when the platoon leader he drove I told you the four and a half hours out of BCP five, they pull into this town called Magara. It's a Pashtun town, you know, something out of the history books. One hundred years back. They've you know, barely ever seen a Westerner. And suddenly this convoy of ten vehicles with rangers in space age combat gear get out with a busted up vehicle, and that's where he's calling back for help and his you know, his first call is, hey, we got a
deadline vehicle. It cannot go any further. Recommend we either blow it or you bring in a forty seven to lift it out. They said, Roger, got it. They reply an hour later. Okay, so you know this is another binder dropping moment for me as I'm reading it. One hour later they reply, you know, permission to blow the vehicle denied, and we don't have any helicopters. Well, you know, in the interviews, remember I'm reading present and you know future, I'm reading the interviews of what
the chain of commands said about their decisions to investigators. In that interview, you know, the battalion commander said, hey, we don't blow vehicles. It's against army policy. You know, it's a it just provides propaganda to the enemy. And so you know that's why we denied it. Well,
that's you know, preposterous. I had just blown up an M one a two tank, four point five million dollar tank in Iraq one year earlier because it flipped over and we were it would take about a week to get that thing out of the hole that was in right so I knew right away that was BSU and the helicopter. You know, no investigator could ever find a record of a request for a helicopter. I just told him no, keep dragging it. You know. It's very clear they were mad at this platoon
because it had fallen behind scale and you guys know the sync matrix. And this is where I go back to. These are lessons we have to internalize
for the future. This modern command and control model is not modern, it's antiquated, and in my opinion, this is an example of the first time in modern military history where we've gone backwards, and we've gone backwards because of technology in Vietnam, if those guys were out there driving around with those hum vis, their company commander, his FO, his two rtos and a small security team would have been on the highest centrally located hill, camping out until
they came back in with a PRC seventy seven radio. But he would have been on that radio all the time and anything they needed he'd be giving him guidance or relaying it the hire to help them out. And in this case, this CFT concept looked exactly against that, because, as it turns out, many of these these lags in responses are in part due to the fact
they've got these vtc's going on with the commanding General. So they're sitting in this talk Tactical Operation Center, you know, just enthralled with the VTC hanging on every word of the general. Right, these guys are struggling with the real world combat problem in the field, and they're either not answering them or going tell them to keep dragging it. Right, then, you know what I mean? What are they pussies? Right? And so and so these guys are told, no, you can't blow it, we can't lift it.
We can get a wrecker out there, but the wrecker is not allowed to go off the KG highway. Again, some obscure someone made a sop for the wreckord, which is a tow truck, that it could not leave the Colsta Gardez Highway, which was fifteen kilometers from these guys. So what they come back and tell them after four and a half hours in Magara being sworn by civilians. It's hot, there's biting flies, they're out of water,
they're low on food. And again for both you two and anyone watching this, you know, you can just imagine they're also probably red hot pissed off at this chain of command for the senselessness. They're told, not only do you got to keep tolling that vehicle, we want you to split the platoon because we need half the platoon to get to this other town called Mana as quickly as possible. No reason, no enemy. You know, it wasn't like they just saw Ubl there or one of his underlines. It was
because the sink matrix was still red for Mana. So they told them, rush off, get the Mana. And you know that's it. We don't want to hear anything else out of you. And the lieutenant, you know, in my opinion, did a fantastic job. He gave three reasons why that didn't make sense. And one of the things I recommend in my book is we go to a new concept called logic of why that you don't just give an order. You always have to explain the logic of why it makes
sense. And that's how our brains work. You can't persuade anyone unless they understand the logic of why. And that's usually threefold. Firstly, Secondly, thirdly, and the lieutenant, this is why it's a case study. He did exactly that. He said, here's why it doesn't make sense. First of all, we'll be splitting up the platoon and we don't have enough.
We only have one satcom radio, so we're going to have we're not going to be able to talk to each other, and if something happens, one of them is going to be one of us is going to be left out there without any comms. Second of all, we can get to the target. Second of all, we can't even clear Mana until tomorrow morning, as per Battalion SOP. So why are we in a rush to get there before the sun goes down just so we can sit outside the town to clear it
the next day. And thirdly, it's much faster if we all move together, go drop the vehicle off at the KG Highway, then turn around and come back and clear the town. And the answer was no, no logical. Why just know, do what you were told to do and continue mission. And so they did. They split the platoon up. It's a random split. They wanted certain guys back in the rear for planning. They wanted
the mortars, the snipers, and a couple other specialty guys back. Well, the problem with that is when you're doing motorized ops, every vehicle is set up in a certain way with certain guys doing certain tasks. You know, there's gunners, there's guys who sit in the seats next to the gunners, and over time they come up with their SOPs of how to operate. They're also organic. You know, squads are together. There's half a squad
in one vehicle, half in another. So when they split the platoon and they had to split it based on random criteria, they just disintegrated the organic nature of these teams. So now you had team leaders working for squad leaders they'd never worked for before. You had soldiers like Pat Tillman working for different team leaders and squad leaders. You had guys attached to different groups. Look,
we trained to do that. That's not a kiss of death, but it's a very subtle yet important degradation of that unit's ability to deal with chaos and complexity, and in a in a situation where there's no time to even rehearse, to sit there and go okay, you you know, squad leaders, you're gonna do this. If this happens, you do that. They didn't even have time for that. They just took off because they had to get to Mana before sundown. And uh and you know that that takes us
into the canyon at that point. What I don't understand, you know, from a leadership position, is how can you have an element out there? If you've only got one Satcom radio for this element? How can you have whether you're you know, your lead element or the element the stay behind. How can you have an element out there? Do you have no idea, no idea in the world, what their situation, you know, what their
set rep is, they've on you know, same thing. That's why I said it's another binder dropping moment important And that's why you know, that's why the book is important, because it's a tactical book, and we've got to not just in this incident, but others like it. We've got to memorialize those lessons. You know, this is basic stuff, you know, transplanted into modern warfare. But it tells you that these principles are unassallable. You
cannot divide your force randomly and arbitrarily. You can't send someone out to a place that doesn't make any sense just because you want to change a color on a sink matrix. You can't ignore your men in the field, you know, in the unit. When I got to the unit, one of the start majors gave me a briefing on it, and he said, hey, look, you know right now, we're not a war, but we send out a lot of singleton missions. When one guy is out is deployed,
everybody back here in the rear is in support of that guy. So you might get a call at zero three in the morning to come in and it might be something incredibly you know, minimalistic, like this guy might need special laces for his boots that are in one of his kit bags in his locker, and we need to get them on a FedEx plane as quick as possible. When that happens, you you that's your mission, and you take it as serious as possible. And because I served in Columbia, I understood that.
I understood both ends of it, you know, between my tours and while I was out there, and the unit always lived by that everybody in the rear is there to support the guys in the field. So this is one rifle platoon is in the field these CFTs, which I'm sorry, I you know, we got distracted. The command and control Arrangement's important to understand. You've got this CFT ten ten command in Salerno, which is COUST.
They can't do anything unless the main CFT in Bogrum, which is set up the exact same way but on steroids because it's regimental headquarters, they can't do anything without its permission. And it doesn't stop there. They're connected with the CFT in ballod Iraq, which is our Joint Special Operations headquarters, and they
can't do anything without the CFT in Blode telling them it's okay. So you know, it's untraceable, but it's it's not you know, it's it's not speculation to say that each of these requests, we're not just going to cows. They were going back to Bogram, back to Ballade, back down to Bogram, back down to cows, back out to these guys in the field. Yeah, and no, and it's uh and this is where you know,
it becomes to me such a historic lesson. And you know, Jack, I saw a podcast you did where you talked about when you joined uh, you know, motivated by nine to one one and you know, I think you said on it people forget after nine one one, it was like World War three. Uh, you know, everyone was like, hey, we're at war. We're a war with the world. You know, this is this is it? Well, it was also like World War two, right, it was like Pearl Harbor. And it was also like Vietnam Gulf
of Tonken, you know when when the ship hits the fan. In America, we're a freedom loving country, and most of us grow up like you did, Dave, like you did, like I did. We have our hardships, but we we have an unbelievable upbringing and we appreciate the freedom we're given. So when the time calls for someone to come protect those freedoms, patriots rise up and they say send me. And you know, I didn't fully appreciate it till I did this research. How two thousand and one did
the same thing. And many of the members in this platoon were those guys, were those patriots, including Pat Tillman. And you know we're all young
at that age. Okay. So I've heard people say, you know, you were a fool if you volunteer for Vietnam, And whenever I read that, I was like, man, I would have volunteered for Vietnam in a second, you know all the way through, and not because you know of some like policy principle, but because we want to protect freedom, and so you cannot understand the logic of why war happens or why our country goes to
war. We trust that our civilian and military leaders are thinking those thoughts and are telling us the truth that we're going to war for a good reason and that this makes sense. So it's a contract. And those guys, those guys like that, those guys like Jack, that's our national treasure. These are the finest humans in our country. You know. There's only certain guys who will raise their hand to protect freedom, especially the freedoms of those who
won't stand up and protect it themselves. So it's a small cohort. And when they do that, they don't really know what they're getting into. And that's just reality. It's not you know, it's not like a reflective of any of our intelligence. We have no idea whether you're eighteen, nineteen or twenty five when you're joining, and let's face it, when you're forty five in the military, you still don't fully understand why we're doing what we're doing.
But at that age, you have no idea and you're trusting. So that's a contract with the leaders, the military and civilian leaders that from here on out, you're going to make good decisions and to the best of your ability, solve complex problems. That enabled those individuals that was national treasure to accomplish their purpose. And that was not the case here in Afghanistan and not
the case here. And so when you hear about Pat Tillman, and you know, you can go on and look at his videos and they you know, your eyes of water as you listen to this great American after nine one one saying, Hey, my grandfather served, my uncles served. You know, my family has served throughout history. I love this country. I love the freedom it's given me. You know, my job is just it doesn't matter. And he was a pro football player and he joined he left that
behind and he joined up and same thing. He's he's a metaphor for all the rest of us. That contract was in place there. But in order to make that contract legitimate, we've got to start holding these decision makers feet to the fire with accountability. And they have a job to do. And like I said, it's to make good decisions and solve complex problems in a way that takes care of the people that have volunteered, and that did not
happen in this case. Pete, you mentioned, Sorry, Jack, Pete, you mentioned before the show that you know, people will raise issues, saying that the only people the only reason people care about this issue is because Tullman was a professional football player, he was a national figure, he was known. That's the only reason people care. And like you said, it's like, yeah, maybe, like that's a good thing though in the sense
of there there's a personality that's showing the issues. Because if it weren't somebody who were known, these things happen. These things happen, you know, on a on a more regular base, on a more regular basis, that we would like and that and that people know, and the fact that there's a celebrity that is sort of like leading the way I was about to say, Dave, like, maybe the reason why it's so well known is because
the government lied about it. Right, Then you're you're absolutely you're absolutely right that the government unfortunately lies about a lot of things. And maybe the reason why this story came to the prominence was because the government lied about someone who has had a level of notoriety and fame, right, Yeah, no, guys, that's that's it. And you know, he he's a great American. You know, he was already a great American before he joined. But
you know what he did when he joined. That's why I used the comparison of World War Two, where you had you know, professional baseball players joining up, you know, flying bombers and stuff. That's a sacrifice. You know, he made a sacrifice. And you know, you can go back and look on YouTube. He never gave another interview after that interview he gave before he signed up. Even while he was in the Rangers, they were
constantly pestering him. The battalion commander would call him in, and in fact, right before they deployed the Afghanistan, he called him in and and said, hey, look, got a great opportunity. We'd really like you to be in the army calendar. And you know, Tilman turned that down. And don't ask me what the army calendar is. I have no idea. I can't even imagine what it is today. But he didn't give an interview.
He never wanted any attention, right, And when you talk to the guys, you see he's like, you know, he's one of the guys. He's but he's a guy everybody liked to talk to. Even the NCOs, the staff sergeant's squad leaders will tell you, you know, you he was just one of those guys. He was a great conversationalist. He was not a problem in any way. Uh, as I mentioned with myself, and I'm sure you guys were the same way. He was a warrior.
He was aggressive by nature. He wanted to take the fight to the enemy. Uh. But you know, this guy made made an incredible sacrifice and he didn't want any credit, very humble, and so again it's not so important that he was a pro football player or you know anything about his background. He's a metaphor for all of these guys who joined to stand up for freedom. And if it weren't for him, if he was just Joe Schmidlap, we wouldn't have learned the lessons we learned from this, and we wouldn't
have learned that. You know, toxicity destroys toxic leadership, and we've got to stop sticking our heads in the sand around toxic leadership. You know, how many of us and how many conversations have you had where guys go. Yeah, at that time, my Battalian commander was a fucking asshole beyond belief. Well, that guy should have been fired. Someone should have done something about that guy. Same thing, sergeant majors. You know, it doesn't
matter what level for TOOM leaders, sergeants, it doesn't matter. Yeah, if you're toxic, you need to be out of here, because toxic leadership destroys. And that's what happened here. They just bad decision on top of bad decision, which just led these guys into chaos, into a situation where they you know, by the time it happened, there was really no hope for getting out of it. So can you, to the best of your
ability, can you walk us through the events of that day. Yeah, So they took off, you know, at eighteen hundred exactly the so they split the platoon, as I said, into what they called two cereal Serial one, Serial two. Serial one took off first, they were that Pat Tillman was with them, the platoon leader was there, and they had to
get the man out. So you know, I have maps in the book, and when you come on the comes to a y intersection, you got to go left to go to Mana and they took the left, and about a kilometer and a half after the y intersection, you come to the mouth of a canyon and it's one of the most dramatic terrain features you can imagine.
You can watch it live on my YouTube channel. Just go to Pete Labor dot com or go to firefight dot Pete Labor dot com and you can watch a drive through during the investigation of the entire canyon and you just will not believe this terrain. You will not believe how difficult it is to drive any vehicle through it, much less a Jinga truck with a hum Vy. So they take off, they pass through that canyon, it's uneventful, nothing happens. They come out the other end of the canyon, Horseshoe Canyon,
and they're at another creek intersection. If they go left, they're going down to Mana. They go right, they're going back up toward the KG Highway. They were a little bit disoriented, which is totally understandable. They did what all infantrymen do, They did a map check. While they were sitting there in their vehicles with their map check, the second platoon had taken off about seven to ten minutes after them. So they flew through the canyon Serial
one. But Erio two, remember is got a Jinga truck dragging a humbe and they're in the lead in this cereal And now I don't even think they were going one point five miles an hour. I think it's less than that because some of the to get through this creek bed, you literally have to make right angle turns back and forth. And just imagine a Jinga truck to viewers who ever seen one, is the same as a dump truck, same size as the dump truck or the garbage truck that picks your garbage up each
day. That's how big it is. And the weight's about the same. It's pulling a Humbye on its back wheels, so there's no maneuverability there, and so they're struggling to get through. But they were barely into the canyon Serial two when two explosions happened off to their right, which is cardinal direction north on the slope. There's you know, no one knows what those were. They could have been RPGs, they could have been mortars. If you
read everyone's account, some guys say one, some say the other. It doesn't matter two explosions. One of them dislodged a rock you know, about the size of a humbee came flying down and so you can imagine watching this rock make its way down the side of this canyon wall, and you know, they they use common sense and and zeroed in on it, and it
ended up going right between two vehicles. And about thirty seconds later RpK fire opened up from the ridge line, and you know, there's there's numerous accounts guys saw guys moving up there. Five guys in zero two and seven in zero one said they saw the guys running around. So Serial two's in the canyon. They're lined up behind this jinga truck TONAHMBE and they return fire. You know, deploy, suppress, report, that's what you're doing in ambush.
But remember your first immediate action in an ambush is to drive out of the ambush or run out of the ambush if you can. They couldn't do that. So you know, all of that accumulated rests from BCP five through Magara is already you know, flooding their brains. Now the worst, the most traumatic stress inducing event that can happen to the human brain is occurring, and that's claustrophobia. They can't go left, they can't go right, they
can't turn around, and they can't go forward. They can't even see forward, and they can barely see the tops of the canyon. Only around certain bends can they even see the trees that outline the crest of this canyon. So they do what they should do, which is, you know, suppressed the target to get them to stop shooting. Most of the guys just thought, you know, we're walking dead men, We're trapped. And literally when you watch the video, you can see that the enemy could have killed them
with rocks instead of bullets. They could have just started avalanches and dislodge large boulders to do the same thing the bullets would have done. But they, you know, rangers being you know, expert machine gunners, they opened up with everything they had. Now it's important the terrain is just like every military engagement always comes back to terrain. So when I did my research on this,
I spent over one hundred hours on Google Earth. And I don't want to make that sound like it was some really hard thing that I had to suck up. I was addicted to it. And if you go on Google Earth, and look at this slot canyon. You'll get addicted to it too, because it's absolutely amazing. But what you see in the slot canyon is it's shaped like a mushroom. So it goes up, over comes back and down, so exactly like a mushroom, up, out and over. And
so they're driving and these are remember non gyro stabilized weapon systems. They're just on a stiff anchory, right, So the vehicle is in the toughest off road terrain on the planet, which means it's bouncing up and down. The driver is, you know, scared shills. He's doing what he should do, which is drive, but he's got to navigate left right, like you know, literally like a Formula one driver to get around these rocks and foulders
strapped behind this jinga truck. So the guys in zero two, you know, it's it's when you understand what they went through before they came out, you begin to understand what happened when they came out, and you also understand what was happening to their fires. You know, the brain can't keep track of directions unless it has a known point to base it off of. So the you know, our neocortex. Our thinking brain has these things called grid
cells that tell you where you're at based on a known location. So think north Star, snowcaped Peak off in the distance. It has to have that. But they're in a canyon, so they have no known point. They really can't tell anything unless they're looking at the risk compass, which you can't do because you're being shot at. So as they go around this mushroom, their bullets are, you know, going in directions where you know, they can't really predict where they're ending up. Now, let's cut. Let's leave
those guys in the canyon to go to Serial run At one. Remember they were doing a map check when they heard those mortar or RPG rounds. As soon as they heard them, they hopped out of their vehicles and they were like, what the hell is that. They didn't know, but they could see the tracer fire arcing up out of the canyon. They knew it was
coming from the canyon. Some of the guys just suspected it was Serio two, but most of them had no idea Serio two had turned around and was coming back in the same direction as them, So nobody knew that The other half of the platoon was the one in that firefight. Some guys suspected it, but no one knew it. So in the heat of the moment, they said, hey, let's go up to a position where we can get overwatch, where we can see what's happening and conduct overwatching fire in case it
is Serial two to support them. So they ran up this path that was right next to their vehicles, a smoker run. It was about seven hundred feet and they ran until the path petered out, and then they had to stop because they were taking fire. They could see the enemy on the same northern ridge line that Seial two was shooting at, so they started shooting two. But as they did that, they began taking unbelievably heavy fire, which
you know, the first investigation suspected was Serial two. And in my analysis, I believe the majority of those fires that were raining down on them were the crossfires from Serial two. Remember fifty KL two, forty G and saw along with mortars eighty fours. So all this ordinance is, you know, flying up and over these ridge lines, we can't discern which is enemy which is friendly, But they were definitely underneath the crossfire from Serial two. So
these guys were in the canyon for about twelve minutes. You know, I told you it was less than one point five miles an hour. They're literally moving that slowly. The stress is building up. Zero one now is up on this spur, this elevated high ground. Unfortunately, the way the terrain is, you cannot see into the canyon from the top of this spur. And unfortunately if you do a line of sight analysis, their line of site
radios also did not work, so they still had no comms. There are two purposes for running up there, to make comms with Serial two and to provide overwatch fire support were now you know, mixed by the terrain. But they didn't have a lot of time there wasn't you know, they were smoked. Remember I talked about equipment. They ran up there with flat bests and helmets. I believe you know that was the sop that anytime you left the vehicle you had to have that on. I would never you know, U
less and should be. If you're running up into mountains after an insurgent enemy, you do not wear a flat best or a helmet unless you want to. You know, I think it should be personal choice, but you can't run up a mountain at six thousand and six thousand, five hundred feet with a flat best and helmet. So they were smoked when they got to the top of that ridge. Remember now they'd split the platoon. So Pat Tillman, he's a team leader. He's got one guy that's with him from his
team and Afghan who decided to follow them up to the spur. And that's who he's in charge of. This squad is not his squad. He hasn't worked with them before. Squad leaders amazingly competent guy, you know, as good as they come. And Pat got up there, he assessed situation. The squad was already a raid by its two fire teams as per their wrestle. You know. That left Pat's team. What am I gonna do? Pat said, Hey, I'm gonna go down this this south side. There's
a couple of big rocks over there. We're gonna get behind those and see what we can see in the squad leader. Yeah, sure sounds good. Uh he you know, he looked up. It looked like a good position and uh, Pat, a young private named O'Neill, and one Afghan ran down there and they took position behind a boulder, two boulders. As soon as they got there, they started taking fire from the south and Pat directed fires south. So this is now the opposite direction, other side of the
canyon. Then everyone else is firing on the north side, and they're firing at it, you know, to no avail. Pat turns around he said, hey, I got an idea. When back up to the squad leader said hey, you mind if I drop my we drop our gear, we run down to the canyon and go up the other side to see if we can engage that enemy. Now, he never would have gotten up the other
side. But as I point out the book, his idea to drop his you know, his helmet and his flat best and to go down to the canyon road, which is a creek, was actually a good idea, and you know, especially in retrospect, because the spot they were in was the most dangerous and deadly spot you know that could have been chosen. So the squad leader told him, no, you know, we don't. Those guys
don't know where you're at. Stay put, and he did. So their imposition, they're they're down the spur about twenty five meters from this squad. The squad had stopped behind the military crest of the spur. Pat went over the military crest down to these boulders. No way, you know, for him to know what was about to happen, or the squad leader. So it's it's only a lesson, a retrospective lesson for infantrymen in the future,
you know, in uncertainty. Uh, never give up that military crest always, you know, stay behind it, stay protected because you got options. And the problem with going down off the military crest is you have no options. And so they were down Pat Private O'Neill and the Afghan. Now the Afghan had just joined him that morning. No one knew him, no one knew anything about him. He would not he obviously didn't speak English, but
you don't need to speak English in a firefight. There were thousands of rounds at this point, including mortar rounds arcing over their heads. Uh. You know, you could hear the sonic crack, which we all know. When you hear the sonic crack, that means the bullets under fifty meters above you.
That's the noise it makes is it breaks the sound barrier. So these rounds are arcing over their heads mortar and two of three rounds are blowing up, and this Afghan is ten feet in front of the boulders, standing there with his AK forty seven, just unloaded with his magazines. And Pat and O'Neill tried to get them to come back to no avail. You know, they tried waving, which again is universal. They tried using their weapons, you know, to get them back, but he would not come back.
He stood out ten feet directly in front of those two boulders, standing up, firing his AK across the road. Well, now we go back to Serio two in the canyon. They've been in there ten minutes, changing out barrels. Some guys have fired their basic load. They're coming out now going west, so they they've gone in every cardinal direction inside the canyon, so they're they're you know, uncertain of which way they're pointing. And remember they
have no idea where Sereal one is and Serio one has no idea. That's even Serial two. So when they come out of the canyon, it suddenly opens up and the creek turns around a small spur that is, you know, a finger off of this larger spur they'reon, and that's the first time they turn and look in the same direction they've been shooting at the same main direction, which is north. They look north again and there's this Afghan bearded
Afghan AK forty seven firing on auto right over their head. And as the first investigator says, he might even have been fired at that mistaking them as you know Taliban. So the squad leader, you know, comes around that corner and he's in that front passenger seat, in my opinion, and in a lot you know, a lot of the other squad leaders said the same thing. You know. He did what almost anyone would do. Who's been shooting at an enemy on the northern high ground for ten to twelve minutes and
season Afghan on the northern high ground shooting in AK forty seven. He looked through his a COG site and dropped that guy. Unfortunately, his crew were all guys who hadn't worked with him, so they have no preset verbal and handing arm signals. All infantrymen know this. You shoot where your team leader or squad leader shoots. Went a dout, shoot where your team leader or
squad leader shoots. So all of the cruiser weapons in the back turn earn to where the squad leader's shooting, which is at the Afghan who is ten feet directly in front of Pat Tillman and the range of private, and they open up and in that fuselage. Which happened. You know, I don't even think it was a full minute that they were shooting in that fuselage. Right at the end they Pat was hit and killed. And so in the investigative documents, you know, there's all this conjecture about you know, Pat
and the private. They were yelling, they were waving their hands. Well, every guy in Serial two was deaf at this point. So you know, in the book, I point out that they had no ear protection on. They didn't have Pelkors on, which would have saved them. But the human ear can only take sound waves that are over one hundred and twenty seven deaths for thirty seconds. Anything beyond thirty seconds at one hundred and twenty seven
decibels leads to temporary deafness. And that temporary deafness can last depending on the length and how far over one on twenty seven decibels you go, can last from a minute to an hour, to a day to a week. And so remember they're they're shooting everything they had for twelve minutes and with no ear
protection. So they're all deaf, and in there it's right in all of their you know comments to investigators, you know, squad leaders saying well, and then I turned to you know Jones, but Jones was death, so I had to shake him, and every guy says the same thing. My my hearing didn't come back for five hours. You know. Some guy's ears were bleeding when they came out, So they're deaf. That's number one.
So these guys on the spur, when you look down at the creek bed they came out of, it's clear as day because the creekbed is you know, all one, one monochromatic color. It's all can So the hum by, you can see that humb clear as day. When you look from the creek bed back at the spur, it's the exact opposite. The spur is this modeled rock formation of you know, both sandstone and lava. It's got
black rock. It's all cracked up, so it's got shadows in between the cracks, and it's full of foliage, you know, rare in Afghanistan, but it's it's covered with foliage, green foliage. And so when I got to this part you know, I was, you know, up till I researched that part of it, I was pretty much yeah, you know, it sounds like then they made a mistake. They didn't do proper target discrimination.
But what you learn when you see the video and you see the pictures that CID took, these high resolution pictures, you cannot see anybody on that spur. They're invisible, totally camouflage, even at one hundred, even at seventy five meters, even at thirty five meters. And then you add in the human eye. When the human eye is moving rattled up and down,
left and right, it can't lock on to a specific target. So they're bouncing in a creek bed, firing their weapons, looking up at something that's completely camouflage, and all they can make out is in its last light. So that's the final thing. It's minutes before you had to flip your noods down and all they can see is this bearded Afghan fired is Aka, and they just did what they had been doing for twelve minutes and fired. And it's not you know, it's not saying they did the right thing or anything
like that. It's not making excuses, it's just reality. And you have to apply reality in combat, especially if you're going to be judgmental about it. And you know, the chain of commands seized on that. It was a fat a company. It was an open and shutcase from the beginning. These guys fucked up. They they should have known, they they should have
target discriminated, They should have seen them. How can you not see and hear someone yelling from one hundred meters away without doing any of the you know, the research, without applying practical common sense to a firefight. You know, they convicted these guys and set off, you know, a series of lies because I believe the chain of command saw it is Hey, this is the easy out. You know, it's not our decisions. It's not us telling to drag it, to split the platoon, to go to Mana for
no reason. Uh you know, in the middle of the night. It's in the middle of the dusk. It's them for not properly. I told this to Steven Elliott, who he wrote that book Worse Story. He was
on this mission. And I mean they fried the lowest ranking guys possible, the pl and a couple of privates and e fors right they did, and and so The really sad thing Jack about that is you know, I'm not a psychologist, but it's my belief from talking to all these guys that the majority of the PTSD in Steven's book, I think is a is a great uh you know, a piece. If you want to understand what happened, to read what he wrote in it. The peat TSD is more about the
investigations and what happened to those guys because they got back to battalion. Remember Pat Tillman, the most famous soldier since you know, Elvis Presley was killed and they they fucking killed him. And you know, two guys who are unwitting and who don't have the knowledge, they end up doing the chain of commands dirty work and you know, basically ostracizing and outcasting this platoon. Uh
you can read it in the book. Uh. You know my interviews with these guys, no one would talk to him, no one would look at him. Uh. They immediately began disintegrating. Guys you know who weren't forced out of the regiment left because you know, they couldn't They just you know, couldn't take the the that ostracization and the guilt that came along with it. So you know, on top of everything else, you know, these guys became additional casualties. And because you know, to a man, the
guys I've talked to are you know, incredible human beings. They do what incredible human beings do, and they take that responsibility. They know they didn't do it, but they can't explain why it wasn't their fault. But even though they can't, they still take responsibility because they were there, they fired, they should have known, and then they got to live with that.
And as the months and years go on, the only way you can live with that is through a bottle, is through drugs, is through depression. And you know that guilt adds up to PTSD. And you know, when I would talk to these guys and you know you can talk to Stephen about this, you know they'd be going along. I go, wait a minute, did you read any of the investigations? No, okay, let me tell you what was going on. Let me tell you what happened to set
that up. And then I go through step by step and tell them, and then you know, I always ended up telling them you have nothing to be ashamed of. You were put into a situation where you had no way to get out of it. You had no way to figure out what was happening. You did what you were trained to do, and unfortunately you were put into a box that once you were in that box by the time they came out of that canyon. You can watch that video that I referenced and
then ask yourself would I have fired? Because in the video it's a re enactment. The Humby comes around that last mini spur, looks up at the spur where the Afghan is in front of Pat Tillman, and they have a guy standing there, you know, an Afghan role player firing his weapon. You'll hear the weapon firing. It's an a k uh firing away. You cannot see anything, You have no idea what's up there, and so you
have to ask yourself would I have shot? And you know, when I asked myself, uh, my answer is almost assuredly I would have shot. I can't and ylied to the American public. And then they kick these young men out of the regiment. Yeah, told them that they were being released for standards. Yeah, and ruined. Just again. The casualties jack are still occurring. You know, two of the guys still have suicidal thoughts. Uh, there's a number of them who can't work. They're in the prime
of their life, they're in the prime of their earning life. These are go back to what we started with. These are are you know, national treasure. These aretriots who signed up after nine to one one And that's where that contract comes in. And that's why accountability. There should be accountability, and we need to make it the standard for the future. Yeah, you can be you can be a commander, you can be a general officer. But let me tell you, and you'll get all the accouterman that comes along
with that, But let me tell you something. Something else comes wrong with it. Accountability. You better make good decisions, You better be able to solve complex problems, or you're going to pay the price as you deserve to. And that needs to happen because my suspicion is there's one hundred more examples of this or more in Afghanistan, in Iraq. And I've had a number
of guys contact me. I've had Canadians contact me and say, you know, hey, this was the most enlightening thing I was in this firefight, this friendly firefight, and that's exactly what caused it to it was a toxic chain of command. You know, I've had guys from other units call and say the same thing, and you know, it's it's cathartic for them to hear this, But you know, the rest of us got to quit sticking our heads in the sand and start, you know, accepting that toxicity has
no place in the military. It needs to be the number one priority for eradication. When you see toxicity, it needs to be reported. You have a duty to report that, you have a duty to do something about it. And we got to weed these people out before they kill more of our national treasure. That's that's the first aspect of it. But then in the aftermath of it, you have that the cover up is worse than the incident
itself. Right that had they come out and said we made mistakes and this is what really happened this, this would have been a very different thing then had they lied about it for so long and tried to cover it up. And that's what as you mentioned earlier, you know, after you've been lied to once, it sets off the sort of perpetual feeling of like, well, what is the truth? Like am I lying to you? Now?
Like? What what's going on? Here. Yeah, I know sput on and uh, you know there's a there's a moment in this it's you know, a huge crossroad. It's when Kevin Tillman, who's part of Serial two, uh and you know, his best friend and his brother in arms and brother in blood, he finds out he's been killed. He's back at Seleno. He's flown back with the bodies and the injured platoon leader and RTO and he's about to accompany patch by he backed to Bogram before it goes back to
Germany and then the States. And he's standing on the ramp of the helicopter and the battalion commander and the S three come up and talk to him and they don't say anything about friendly fire. And this is forty hours after the event, and everyone suspected immediately, and within twenty four hours knew pretty much beyond the shadow of a doubt. Within thirty six hours in the er, you know, the squad leaders who did not shoot him were all taking responsibility
for what happened. And so you know, in the initial hotwash, they knew that somehow they killed Pat Tillman. They could not describe it, but they knew it. So these guys know it, the battalion commander, the S three, and what do they do. They, in conjunction with the regimental commander, who they've already talked to and agreed, hey, don't tell Kevin, not yet, we don't know enough. They send him off without telling him everything they know. And all they had to do right there was
go Kevin. You know, first off, there's nothing I could say that's gonna suage the sorrow that you have and you know, for the death of your brother. But I want you to know everything I know about what happened. Right now. The man next to your brother is convinced that he was killed by friendly fire. We don't know because this was a massive, chaotic firefight. We won't be able to confirm that until we get the ballistic the
forensics back from the autopsy. But right now we believe that Pat was killed in the crossfire between zero one Serial two in the enemy. As soon as I get more information, I will call you and tell you what it is. And you know, good news bad news doesn't get any better with age. The only thing that could happen right there was you know, Kevin would have gone Buck And if anyone could understand the chaos. It was Kevin Tillman.
He was in the rear of Serial two. His primary weapon malfunctioned, his secondary weapon had its butt stock torn off by the wall of the canyon, so he was firing his nine millimeter in the canyon up at the enemy fired eight rounds from a nine to mil. So if anyone could understand the chaos of that moment, it would have been him. And instead, you know, they didn't tell him. And you know, these are guys who loved to quote the Ranger Creed, but I'm pretty sure there's a line in
the Ranger Creed where a ranger never lies through another ranger. And so to me, Robert Rogers standing orders. Yeah, so not telling Kevin right there is to me beyond comprehension, Like, you know, that's the moment. And if they'd done that, as soon as Kevin got back to Bogram, he got on the phone to his mom, Pat's wife Marie, he would have told them. You know, they want to know everything he know,
which he told them at the time. You know what he knew, which was the beginning of this fake story, you know about what happened, and so even he was given you know, unwittingly giving misinformation. But he would have been able right there to tell you know, his mom, Pat's wife what really happened. And you know, they deserved that, They had every right to that knowledge, just like anyone else did. But they were deprived of it. And then somehow the chain of command thought it was a good
idea to keep it secret for another thirty five days. So you know, this, this adds to the problem. You know, the platoon has internalized that they shot him, but they have no connect they have no contact and communication with Kevin, so they can't tell him. They've been told. The one guy that flew back to accompany Kevin and the body he was told do
not say anything about friendly fire till we get all the facts. And you know, it just went on and on, got worse and worse, and you know, thirty five days turned into thirty five months, turned into almost twenty years because you know, this book just came out, it's nineteen years from when had happened. And the truth was always there, it was always
in the guys, and you know there that's the added casualties. So none of these guys, there might be one two guys who had PTSD from this, not twenty or twenty plus guys, some who've had nervous breakdowns blaming themselves, were not allowed access to the truth, the information, and like good soldiers, took responsibility themselves and you know, had to live with that guilt
and that frustration for almost twenty years. You know, we mentioned what happened to the pl and the enlisted that we're on that has there ever been any blowback for the senior leadership that were not on the mission that created these conditions? Did they just are they still getting promoted or were they still getting promoted through the system? Yeah? So the commanding general, so you know, the commanding general who was in charge of the investigation, the JASA command or
read every had access to everything I had access to. So when you read those, you can read you can pick one investigation all except the one done by Regimental headquarters, So you can pick any of the other three. And you can't read that without going what the f man? How who makes these decisions? You can't not come to the conclusion that this chain of command was was toxic, uh, and that these guys were put into a situation that there was no way to come out of other than you know, the luckiest
of luck in happenstance. I mean, they were set up to fail right there, and you know they didn't. They didn't say anything. They had the same information, they didn't say anything about it. And to me, you know, they went on the the The Jasi commander became a four star general, the regimental commander became a one star. Battalion commander became a two star. So they were not just promoted once or twice, some four or five times. And yeah, there was no accountability on any of them.
And you know, still to this day what I would always you know, if I was to meet one of them face to face, I would say to him, Okay, even if you claim somehow ignorance, how could you never check up on the rest of the guys in this platoon. Anyone who hears this story knows how devastating this was. Anyone who honestly understands Pat Tillman in his place in this platoon in that he wasn't just admired, he was revered. And he was revered because he was a guy who was doing what
all the rest of these guys did from all kinds of backgrounds. He had options, he had a multi million dollar contract. He gave it all up. And did he ever act condescending toward them, did he ever act like he was superior. No, he would go out of his way to help anyone out there, to give him advice, to give him some water, some food. Again. Steven Elliott's book, My favorite part of it is
when he arrived in the regiment in two seven five. His first day, he's wandering through the battalion trying to find someone to tell him where to go, and he runs into the Pat Tillman and the stairwell, and you know, Pat's I can eat flour at the time, who normally would smoke the shit out of you, but Pat's like, hey man, welcome to the battalion. What do you need. Hey stand stairwell, come up, I'll show you where your room is. I'll get you in there. So no
it sees you, so you get smoked. I mean, when you read this, you know your admiration for the guy just skyrockets. He was the kind of leader we need in the military, carrying humble, all those things. And you know, yet we we go and we we treated these leaders treated this thing. Uh, you know the way they did and allowed this to happen, and unfortunately it happened to a guy, uh you know who
we have questions epitomized everything good about our military. Yeah, do you do you see a you know, as I think that you know, we've we've read and we've talked about the idea they're more like staff flag officers. They're more generals now than there ever have been. And and you know, the number of like you know, officers and Jay Socket, you know, at the at the staff level is incredible and stuff like that is there. Obviously
offser you know, offscers are very important. Quality officers are very important. Officers make all the difference in those elements. But we also, like you know, we'll about the treatment of ofscers versus enlisted a lot of times in the sense of nobody's getting a SilverStar unless the officer gets a SilverStar. And then you know, wars are often based on rank. And then then we see times where these senior level officers can do no wrong right that that their
careers are not going to be inhibited by any mistakes they made. Do you see a solution for sort of bringing the officer core and not all offscers? And I don't want to say this because a lot of officers are war fighters. But is there a solution to the admin officer, the political officer, to that kind of equation. Yeah, I think it's cultural. You know, we have to change the cultural where we look at it. To your point, in World War Two, I believe there were four four star generals
in the army and today they're forty four. In World War Two we had I don't know the exact number. I believe it was like four million soldiers. Today we have four hundred and twenty five thousand, So we definitely have too many general officers. You know, in two thousand and two, two thousand and three in Afghanistan, you couldn't have The standard was no element can
operate in Afghanistan nless it has a general officer in charge of it. And that's why, you know, my group and Anaconda Shahikte ended up with a one star Air Force general commanding us because you had to have a general. And I think we need to culturally eradicate that idea and go in the opposite
direction to power down. You know, your history proves your you know, combat happens at the battalion level and below I'm not saying brigade commanders aren't important because they should be training battalions, but they're not the ones who should be running ops. And it should be company commanders, platoon leaders, platoon sergeants, and squad leaders who are making battlefield decisions. So we you know this again, one of the things that motivated me to memorialize it was as a
historic lesson. We need to take this away. Our model is not the right model. If we're exporting that to Ukraine right now in these other places, then we're sabotaging them because this is not the model. The CFT massive talk with you know, a million dollars worth of fifty four inch screens and computers running the whole thing. That's not the model. We need to go backwards to the guy on the hill, uh, you know, who can talk and who feels the cold, who feels the altitude, who feels the
threat of the enemy making the decisions. And so to me, it's a cultural thing, and culture happens from decisions you make. We need to make those decisions. We need to you know, make up our minds we're never going to allow this to happen again, and and also make it known to everyone that the reason that this thing went south Afghanistan was more to do with this command and control monstrosity we created than the enemy itself. Thanks Matthy,
that's it's very insightful. Okay, so questions, cessar an Omen, Thank you very much, love the show, Thanks for making this happen. Has the gorilla idea or something similar ever been used outside of Bosnia? I don't know, I hope so I'm sure other I'm sure plenty of other guys have, uh have similar ideas. But you know it's uh to me, it's disguises, deception and diversion. Uh, you know, that's what it's about. Any form that takes uh you know, contextually should be open Uh.
It should be open season. And that's what we need to train our future leaders to think out of the box, uh, to not be constrained by the you know, helicopter, the you know platoon, company, battalion, brigade model. Uh, you know, understand the problem and solve it uh in the most economical, efficient and sensible way possible, and sometimes that involves dressing up like an ape. Thanks again for the very generous donation, Sessa
Omen. The Daily Mail ran a story that in early two thousands, the SAS was chosen over Delta for having more experience, was sent in to rescue a CIA agent in Afghasian britt tabloids. So grain of salt. But you have any thoughts on this in the year two thousand, that's in the early two thousands. Oh well, I mean two thousand and one was you know, my frame of reference starts at two thousand and one. We were the you know, along with the SF guys in the north, We were first
in down in the dry lake beds south of Konda Heart. You know, I never heard of any mission like that. It was actually very difficult. The Brits were there, you know, in our staging base, but they were given very restrict guidance. They were only allowed to remember this is before anyone's on the ground. They were told they could only engage at target if it was had to do with poppy production and heroin trafficking. Wow. So the essays was, you know, begging us to find a way to get
them in into the fight. And I don't know what happened there. You know, their commander I didn't deal with them much after that, but their commander, when I you know, when I went up to him and said, you know, this doesn't make any sense. You know, he was defending the anti drug mission pretty vociferously, so of course, yeah, I never heard of any other any other mission than that. I also want to give a quick shout out to one of our audience members. You may remember
Paul Cunningham. He was my first pl when I was in Ratis. Oh yeah there, so uh good to see again, Paul. I hope you're doing well, buddy, Radioactive Lama. Thank you very much. Great content, guys, better than watching primetime TV. Well we should hope. So good job, guys. We need that primetime TV moolah. Uh, Mike, you're gonna get it. Thanks, thanks for this more peak. Mike Montgomery, thank you very much. Question, what was the conventional wisdom regarding
Los Pepees while he was in Columbia hunting Escobar? Like conventional wisdom, I mean, the conventional wisdom was what they were doing was, you know, what should have been done. That was to my knowledge and and you know I was probably as close to it as any American, me and my guys. Uh, there were all kinds of c i A takes on who the lost Pepees were Dea. So they'll remember those two were kind of in charge of the mission down there and battling each other all the time. We were
down there, you know, walking this fine line between them. We didn't care who got credit for anything. The Lost Pepees to me, was an uprising. It was Colombians, police officers, they're members of their federal law enforcement and their military who off duty, were getting together going, hey, you know the government's not going to stop this. The only way is for us to stop this, and we've got to take these guys out ourselves.
And the Lost Pepees did just that, and they, you know, of all the things that brought Escobar to his knees, I believe the Lost Pepees was probably the most formidable. They took out a number of his lieutenant. It's there he did not feel safe, His family was not safe, and so he took all kinds of measures to get them safe, and ultimately those
measures of what ended up getting him captured. So the Los Pepes to me, was just an organic uprising of people who had had enough of this guy blowing the shit out of airplanes, blowing up you know, cars in the middle of huge intersections, assassinating police officers by the hundreds. Uh, and they took matters in their own hand and uh and we're very effective. Sephar an Omen, thank you again. Were there Delta snipers on Overwatch when they
took out Escobar? What are your thoughts on Mark Bowden's theory it was a unit bullet that killed him. I didn't know that was Mark Bowden's theory, but uh, and normally I would not comment, you know, so the fact I'm commenting should tell you that it wasn't our snipers. And I've already
said it. You know, people who who you know, deny did the Colombians accomplish that on their own are people who you know, just cannot believe that other countries have freedom loving you know, warriors that can be just as effective when motivated as as we are. And that's what happened there. There was no snipers, you know, there was no unique guys anywhere near there at the time, and anyone else who claims there was is just you know, engaging in uh in in theory and you know, trying to trying to
guess what happened and make it a little sexier than it was. J just gotscha. Thank you very much would you happen to know the origin of advanced force operations? Did that concept come from Meadows when he went into Iran nineteen eighty ahead of the Delta Force or the Delta Rescue Force. Yeah, I you know, so since you know I was the first AFO commander, I would just say it rose up organically. It was just common sense. We didn't even care. You could have called us soap dish, and you know
it would have been this. We would have done the same thing we were before. That Advanced force operation was a verb, not a noun, right, and so it just meant going ahead of the main the main effort and prepped in the battlefield. And for clandestine ops, that means setting up safe houses, getting vehicles, doing you know low as rekis so that when the guys come in, you can you know, greet them, tell them the lay of the land. Uh, they have resources so they can operate.
We turned it into a noun. We just called ourselves a fou. We were a conglomeration of all four services and some other government agency guys. So it was you know, necessity is the mother of invention, and uh common sense is the father. And and that's what you know, that's how AFO was born out of necessity and common sense. You know, you you mentioned Columbia, and then we talked about Bosnia. You know, you talk about like the c I A and the DEA who both had a lot of undercover
sort of cover type work. And then in Bosnia, did you guys have a good working relationship with like the c I A, the d I A, uh, other intel units in common and whatnot where you weren't like creating this stuff. You weren't reinventing the wheel, but people were there kind of teaching you guys how to do this stuff. We had a great relationship. And you know after nine one one with the CIA, and that again was
born out of Bosnia. We had worked with them extensively in Bosnia and so we knew each other and uh, many of the personalities knew each other. In my book, I talk about a guy code named Spider. You know, he was a very good friend of mine. We had we had operated together in Bosnia multiple times, along with other guys in the unit. He was a warrior, former marine. Uh, you know, we we trusted
him, he trusted us. We shared information even you know, even information people were telling us not to share and you know, so that relationship worked because of you know, of personal relationships, and it stayed that way Afghanistan in the early phases, all the way to Iraq. He was in Iraq. He came up from the south, I came from the west and the north. We ended up meeting in bag Then International Airport right before the other
event I talked about. So it was a good relationship. And it's always emphasized to maintain those relationships and to make sure that they they flourish. But they're very personality dependent, and so when you get someone in there who doesn't like whether it's an agency guy who doesn't like the army or the you know, navy or vice versa, then that relationship falters. Sessah Noman, thank
you very much. Were there any other note? Were the innovations that came from the unit that you could that you can talk about during your time or after other than the police spike matts, well, dogs, we brought dogs, dogs, operational dogs. So a lot of people don't know this. There were operational dogs were the use of operational dogs was ended at the end of the Vietnam War, so I think that was seventy five. From seventy
five to ninety eight, there were no operational dogs in the military. There were drug sniffing dogs, right, everyone remembers the you know, drug sniffing dogs. There were bombs sniffing dogs the MPs had. There were no operational dogs, you know. Back to Dale Comstock. Dale Comstock was a dog trainer and when he was in my troop, he he had a number of and I forget what kind of shepherds they were, but he had me out to his house, showed me these dogs, and he was like a lot
of guys in the unit. They were saying, hey, we should get dogs. Look at all these things they could do. And so they planted that seed in my brain. When I became a squadron commander, I had in my squadron I had one guy who had been classically trained at Lachland Air Force Base. He was certified dog trainer, and I had two guys who
were just kind of like amateurs. We did a brainstorming session. One of the big missions at the time was underground tunnels, and it was pretty obvious that, you know, dogs would make an incredible impact on that mission. So we flew out to Lachland Air Force Base, met with the colonel who was in charge of dog training and again no one gave us approval for this. We just did it and we told our concept and he was luckily he was a historical believer in dogs. He was like, finally, you know,
somebody sees the light. He was, We'll support you guys whatever you need. Uh, just you know, And we had to get approval from him because in the DA PAM you can't have dogs unless Lachlan, the dog command at Lachlan says you can have him. So he signed off on it. My unit commander Cary Harrell, fantastic guy just recently passed away. He saw the you know, the potential in it too. He said, do it. You know it sounds kind of crazy, but go ahead and do
it. So a week later we flew two guys off to Belgium, but to the finest Belgian melonise that money could buy. Began the training process and it was a process of discovery. You know, who's going to handle these dogs. If you bring in a dog handler, he's going to take a seat on a little bird, take a seat in a vehicle. You know what about small missions? And we quickly concluded that we needed to make operators
dog handlers. And this was a controversial decision. There were a number of people even in the unit who thought it was heresy, but we did it anyway, went off the dog handling school, got some proof of concepts done right away. You could see the potential of these animals, and we got money to build kennels. And like I said, that was ninety eight. It took a while. The program was not solid. We went to Afghanistan, we took the dogs with us, but there were no specific uses immediately.
Then Iraq happened two thousand and three, we took the dogs with us. We infilled with dogs. We had special vehicles that had air conditioners built into them because dogs are very heat sensitive. They were worth their weight in gold. As think about setting up a patrol base, a hide site in the desert. If you've got dogs that can detect by smell and hearing anyone, you know, five hundred meters away, that's an amazing force multiplier.
And they were. But they made their mark back at our safe house, you know, once we got established in our safe house, once the country fell, we had a weird like I don't know if it was a suicidal attack. Two guys came in Ak's got into the perimeter. We had a big compound and we released the dog. Those were the first, uh you know, that was the first operational use of the dogs. I was there. I remember running up. All I could hear was gurgling and there was
a guy laying there. Uh and AK forty seven five feet away and his face was in the Belgian Malinoi's mouth. It was Arco and he that was the gurgling. And from that point on it was dogs were on every raid. The first two dog casualties happened on the Oude and Cuse raid. Oude and Cuse were that are Saddam's sons. They were barricaded on the second floor of the house they were hiding in. The team went in, cleared the first floor, came to the stairwell, went up two steps, fuselage about
automatic AK fire just pounded the top with the steps. Uh. They released the two dogs. Two dogs went up there. They could hear them. Uh you know, they could hear the dogs make contact with Udi and Kuse. The team followed after, uh you know, finished them off and uh. One of those dogs was the first casualty. He was hit by an a K round when he got to the top of the stairs. But again, you know another example, it's c QB. If you can have a dog, you know, uh move through these uh uh you know, fire
funnels and and to tell you whether there's an enemy. They're they're worth their weight in gold. And uh they were and today everyone has them. You know, we probably got more dogs than we can handle in the military, but they've got their place and we should keep them there because they're they're an invaluable asset. Yeah, there's malano. They're no joke, like they are so courageous and yes, you're fearless. Yeah, yeah, very loyal. Uh. You know, they a lot of breakthroughs in training. Like I
was skeptical that. You know, when you walk around one of those things, it's like walking around a mine field or a hand grenade with its pin pulled out and the spoon still and uh. You know, no matter how comfortable you are dogs, it's it. It'll shake you. But you know, these guys train these dogs, they acclimated them to the squadron and you could walk through the squadron, walk you know, through our bar area.
Uh, and they were you know, they were they knew they were one of the team and that that did a lot for building trust of everybody. But it was a training breakthrough because up to that time, you know, dogs were you know, just just the handler and no one else could be around them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that we have another mutual from two seven to five Kelly, who was very involved in the dog program, right. Uh yeah, yeah, yep. Uh. Nation would
thank you very much for the donation. Clayton Jensen, good to see you, buddy. If you haven't watched Clayton's show, you should watch it. Uh he he caveats this question. He says, no specifics needed, just your overall opinion, and then he says, uh, you touched on sigan stuff used in Colombia, et cetera. What do you think about the evolution of the io guys, Ranger Ost and Jays Sauds over time? Uh? Yeah, well, the evolution is just natural. You know, they've they've
they learned as they go along. They've become you know, more uh, you know, more mission focused and uh you know that's the key with all that all that electronic intelligence, you got to get it down in the hands of the operators. You got to test it out, you got to give it proof of concept, and if that all works, you know you can you can share it with larger groups. Jin Kelly, thank you very much. And this is the last question. Shuts up real quick. Yeah,
I'm listening. Any plans to bring back the operational donkey like Merrill's Marauders. Well they did bring them. They bring them back in Afghanistan, the mules. I mean, SF was experimenting with them even before nine one one. Uh. We one of the teams in Shahiko, UH thought, you know, hey, the way to get our equipment up into the mountains is with
the donkey. And I have a video of it. It's, uh, it's the team and me and two others chasing this donkey, uh, trying to you know, trying to corral it to see if we could use it. And it turns into just you know, a Keystone cop moment of hilarity. We're laughing so hard we can't even chase it anymore. And uh, and that's when we gave up on the donkey idea. But I think it's
still has potential. All ideas like that, you know, I know they're they're trying to create robots now to carry equipment into uh, into difficult terrain. But you know, I think that's a long way off. And if the situation's right and you've got a well trained donkey and a guy who's handled donkeys before, I don't see why you wouldn't use it. Uh. And that's it. Ud, did we have anything on Patreon? So next uh, actually, the next the next episode is not going to be Friday.
It's going to be Saturday, and we're gonna have John Dovey on the show, served in the s a d F and then say and really excited to talk to him. It's going to be a very unique interview. Pete, thank you for coming on the show spending your Friday evening with us. And again, his latest book is Common Sense Leadership Matters Toxic Leadership Destroys, a Case Study Book three. I hope you guys will go and check it out.
And also the mission The Men and Me and then Common Sense Way, The Common Sense Way, right, yeah, yeah, so and it's a trilogy right in the sense that all focuses around the idea of leadership, both
positive leadership and toxic leadership. Yeah. Just common yep, Common Sense leadership applied using military stories, real world military stories and uh, you know the last one brings up the toxic leadership destroyers point in it perfect And yeah, Pete, I'd love to have you back some time talk about the rest of your career and anything else. We'll have to do it again sometime. But I mean, thank you for coming on and doing this. Yeah, it was great tonight. Yeah, I enjoyed it too. Guys, you got
a great show, and keep up the good work. Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. And before we roll out anything else you want to plug websites, anything else, people should go check out. Where can they find it? You know? Yeah, I mean on that book, there's a lot of good stuff. Pictures of the spur. You can see, you know, the view that I described as the squad leader in the lead gungee
looking up at the spur. Their color pictures. It's on Pete labor dot com and you can watch the video on firefight dot Pete labor dot com. I would recommend anybody who is interested in not just that event, but you know, driving off road or terrain to go watch that video. It's it's pretty amazing. And I also have the maps on there. That lay out up the sequence of events leading up to the firefight. So check it out and uh enjoy the terrain while you're checking it out, all right, thank
you, and uh we will see all of you next Saturday. Thank you, and people will talk to you next time. Sounds good, Jack, Thanks, Thanks Dave, Thanks having a good night. You too,