Delta Force Operator, Green Beret & CIA Officer | Gary Harrington | Ep. 226

Hey, folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in rate this podcast, let the Team House know how you think we're doing. Go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Teamhouse and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the

stream and well as get access to our bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're gonna give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us another secret view, why don't you just send us an email. We'll talk about special operations covert, ask me an the Team House with your hopes. Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey everyone, welcome to episode two hundred and twenty six of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy who at David Park, and our guest in studio this time is Gary Harrington.

We had Gary on the show once remotely were really happy to have him here in studio this time. I think Gary had a pretty extensive career serving in the Marine Corps and special Forces in Delta and then another governmental agency and yeah, we're just really excited to have you here. Man. Well, thanks, I appreciate you guys letting me be on last time, and hey get to come up to New York and see you in person. So we're to begin. We covered a lot last I think we did three hours last

time. Okay, we're gonna give a quick shout out to to one of our sponsors tonight. If you need accurate medical evidence and can maximize your VA benefits, then check out re Medical r EE Medical and their teams specialist our spat, our passionate and experienced about helping veterans. Find out how they can help you at re r EE medical dot com slash teamhouse. That's r EE medical dot com slash teamhouse. So Gary, I mean, I think like

let's start off a story about a young Gary Harrington. When you said you were talking about being a young lieutenant in the Marine Corps, you had some a story about a CS grenade that went awry. Yeah, well I was the typical young lieutenant. Everything's black and white in the Marine Corps. Hey high diddle, diddles straight up the middle, a lot of motivation. I don't know if I said it last time, but I never was a great person for or a respecting authority, And so right off the bat in my

military career I sort of bucked the trend. I think I talked last time. I had a mustache as a marine officer, which wasn't looked well upon. And in the basic school one time I challenged an issue that I thought was unjust, and uh called the commander out on it and in front of everybody, and he said, you know, Lieutenant Harrington, some day, if your brains ever get as big as your balls, you might go somewhere

in the land Corps. And uh, you know, of course I ran into him a few years later, but uh yeah, I was, you know, I was a infantry platoon commander, and I thought, you know, I was pretty hard on guys. I wanted to be a taskmaster. I had worshiped, no, maybe worships a strong word, but really admired Yoni net and Yahoo, and I read the book Yoni Hero of Entebbi, and I wanted to emulate his training style and the things that he did to

prepare his people for what they did and then Tabby. So yeah, I ran pretty harsh training scenarios and one time some guys weren't doing everything as they should. They got lack of daisical on a tactical side. So I decided to hit him with some CS. And I had the CS grenades or from a grenade launcher, and I thought, it's CS, it can't hurt anybody.

And it was in the woods, and I didn't really think about being a young, stupid lieutenant that hey, when his CS round hits a tree trunk and starts ricocheting around, you know, winds up hitting somebody, it's uh, you know, I mean that's almost like an ad right, So yeah, that was a lesson that, hey, you know, things can

can hurt. What seems harmless is not. You know. Several years later, I was in a training exercise and you know, it turned if you ever done force on force, sometimes it turns into that argument, no I shot you first, No you shot me an argument and I had some you know, I was an officer. I had some young guy and his sergeant standing there holding grenade launcher at me, you know, arguing with me.

Ever, who was right on this on this tactical call and I said, moved that grenade launcher off my stomach, and he goes, it's just an a loom round from from you know, from two feet away. That's going to leave a forty millimeter hole in my yea. So you know, you don't have to think about those kind of things. I think often when you're really young, you know, then later many years later in SF, after you've made enough mistakes that you've survived, or your senior friends make those mistakes.

I was the guy that when the new team guys had this, you know, like, hey, what if you know, like in Kuwait, we find a old bombed out mortar, sixty millimeter mortar, so we st people start dropping a loom and grenade simulators down it to make all these things happen. You know, I was smart enough in my old age to walk over to the side and sit on this bank and look at him, go, I'll patch you up when you when you need it, because I ain't doing that. So going back to the CS and the forest, so you

shoot the CS this forty cus around it starts bouncing off trees. Did did this CS actually deploy? Actually I don't remember that part because what I remember is it hit a guy in the cheek? And then so did you tell him to like, how did you responded? You apology? You tell him to suck it off? No, I ran over to him and to see how hurt he is, and I don't I can't remember if it knocked a twoth out or you know, it wasn't a serious hurt. And to be

honest, you know, you know this was the whole Marine Corps. We kind of just shook it off. And I was like, hey, you know, I didn't know do that. You know, I planned on it shooting it into the ground and deploying to see us and yeah, that was

it. So after that I learned my lesson, and like in the foxholes, if I would crawl around in the middle of the night, foxhole to foxhole, if I put him on fifty percent alert, and I would softly call out the names of the people in the foxhole, and if I didn't get an answer, I'd just pop a see Us grenade and drop it into foxhole, which works really well when they're zipped up inside their sleeping bags. As you probably all know, I don't you get away with that anymore.

Probably there's a lot of things yeah, yeah. You know, when I was in the Corps, I it was the old days. You know. I went through the PLC where you know, the sergeants took the young candidates around the corner, and I thought, that's how things are done. And you know, my first my first company in the Marine Corps infantry, I mean, you know, the commander wanted to play rugby, so it was his chance to to put you know, some licking on people. I might

have used physical inducement a few times in the Marine Corps. I got called on the carpet for that. And you know, I understand all that now, but at the time, you're you're taught that's how things are. And in those days, again you're young. Everything's black and white, and it was I have to get these people ready for combat. A weak person, a person that doesn't pay attention is somebody going to get other people killed.

Therefore, anything I do to prepare them for that is justified. Right now, of course, I don't view it that way anymore, but when you're young and idealistic, I mean, that's that's how you think, right It's how you justify doing those things, because it's like everything is so important,

well and especially in a peacetime military. I think that that the idea of how to make somebody hard or how to make them ready is very different than what the reality is because in a wartime milits are often they don't even they don't have time for that. You know, it's like get them trained up and get them deployed, and that's that. But in a peacetime military,

like that's what, that's what everybody thought. That's you know, the hazy, the smoking all that is, like, yeah, that's how we form unity, that's how we form a bond, and outside of combat, like, how else do you do that? A lot of times, well, it's part of ritualization and a crucible that everybody goes through which forms cohesion in

a shared bond. Absolutely. I mean it might sound sick to some people that aren't used to that to the extremes that it can go, but you know, it was all part of that going through some some ritual just as like uh Indian braves were supposed to go through when they reached maturity. Right, yeah, that's fascinating. So what And unfortunately I wasn't here when you were on so I might if I ask you any questions that you've already talked

about. You know, I apologize and apologize, but or she doon't matter. I won't remember. Great, I wouldn't remember either. So but so what led you from the Marine Corps to the Army. So as a I went from the regular infantry to recon and fib Recon school, Special Forces Scoop of school, scout sniper instructor school, and deployed to Beirut. You know, thought life was great. I'm living during the adventure twenty six years old.

Then I finished my time. I was on the platoon. They said, oh, now you have to go be the training officer, like the what the training officer up in the three shop? Yeah, so I went to there reviewing other people's training instead of doing it. So that was a big blow to me and what I thought I should be doing. And to be honest, I started envying the sergeants and the corporals that were on my recon team because they were doing the do and running things and leading the patrols.

And in a Marine Corps, you know, was foolish enough to promote me to captain. And so I got to notice, oh, congratulations, you're a captain, and now you get to go to Marine barracks duty and I was like, not feeling, but that's not that's not me, and you know, we're young. I thought my role in life was to die in car you know, it's it's hard, and it's tied to some religious beliefs I had and some events that I thought that was my role in life,

and like, you're taking that away from me. You're going to go make me do what? And then yeah, there's a command path to follow as an officer if you do that. But I at that time didn't want any of that. So, you know, I looked for a way to get out and I so I resigned and went to enlist in the Army.

I think last time we talked about I was in the middle of a map station enlisting for Special Forces on an active duty when an officer recruiting officer ran in stopped me from swearing in and said it showed us a line in the rags, saying former officers of other branches of military may not enlist in the United States Army. Oh wow. And I kind of was like what,

And you know, it was a shock. I came back. I'm pretty good at workarounds, so I think, as you pointed out last time I found I looked at the Army Reserve, that line wasn't in their rags. So I enlisted in the Army Reserve Special Forces, got qualified as a medic and then the Army had, uh I think R two ten dot whatever said that if you got qualified in a shortage MOS, which as seth metics were,

you could come on active duty in the Army. So now I showed up like and they said, wait a minute, aren't you the same guy that we I said, yeah, but here's the difference. Now I'm this so how do you want to look at it? And uh? When you resign a commission, when you you know, resign you were a captain? What what enlisted? Right? Because like if you're a college grad, don't they give you E four or something like that? Like what what unless you

got E five five? I think the Army did me better than the agency because later on life, you know, agency was telling me, you know where I was out in the field when I was detailed, Yeah, GS twelve you know like that, And I come in and they go eleven at the very bottom eleven, Oh and case oo, case offcer operations officer. No, but that's what the No, you can be a support officer and maybe you work your way someday two to be in an operations officer. Yeah.

So uh so you go to SF, you go to SF Guard and then you get active and I'm sure you guys talked about all this, so Jack, oh, I'm just bad to w Yeah, I mean we can cover briefly. So you find your way to s F and then from the reserves into active duty. Right, seventh group And what year was this? I probably showed up for it because I resigned Marine Corps in late eighty four, went through SF training and medic course and all that. So eighty five

and probably six so probably no active duties seven group eighty seven. So seventh Group at that time is like doing a lot of pumps down a like Honduras and places like that. Yeah, I did the Honduras pumps training their special there. There's a counter terrorism unit they trained, and I mean there's a lot of going on down there at the time. But yeah, you know

when when I went, I actually went to Honduras as a Marine. I think we mentioned last time, saw a secret one of those secret black sites that had been active and in those times and I went back in the Army. The first time, we were up at Lake Atchoa, way up in the mountains. It's big lake because they actually for a while had a Honduran Special Forces unit and we were training them and I was the medical on the team and got to dive up in that lake for my first high altitude kind

of dive in a lake. Yeah. So I mean that was kind of like also your first exposure probably to the special ops, but also what the agency was doing down there in those days. Yeah. When when I went as a marine, I somehow wound up in the little village one late one night with a bunch of old former military guys who were applying me with drinks. And they were people that were sort of working that program that was going

into Nicaragua. I think Frank McClosky we've had on here, Rick Prato, Yes, well, and then not trying to drop down they were if they were the ones applying you with drinks, well it was a lot, you know. I was again, I was a Marine lieutenant and you know, that's my first time with all these foreign people and sitting around at outdoor table and and they just had lines of beers lined up and up plying me with him. I remember I maybe in my life there had been five or six

times I've actually been knocked down drunk. That was one of them. I remember getting back to where the platoon was, where the rest of the Marines were, and getting my poncho and walking over to this mound of dirt and just falling over on it, on top of the poncho, and that was it. So this is just a very specific question, but which wings did you choose to wear when you went to SF. Oh So, I had not been to airborne school as a marine, but I went to Special Forces

Scuba School. So one of the pleasures I had during airborne school was I showed up wearing a scuba badge and those instructors started calling me on it that saying that I was a liar, that you can't get to scuba school unless you've been to airborne school, and I said I was a marine and I did so every day I got to pay some extra punishment for my badge and did that. You know, But again, I think at airborne school they're

just looking for a reason to do that. One of the funny stories about my time I went to Honduras a couple of times, but one of the trips there, and I think I went down a third time for a medical

mission where yeah, one of the medcaps. And in one of the missions there with my team, we were down in La Saba, down on the coast, and I met this old coat in a bar, some old American guy and I we were that's it's when we were training the guys up at Lake Achoa and to get to Lasaba to have like a couple of days off, I had ridden in the back of a steak bed truck for like six

hours, just some local guys truck to get there. So I'm trying to figure outw I'm gonna get back back up to the end to the mountains, and this old little guy says, Hey, I got a plane down here I fly. He goes, I'm flying up to an airfield near there. You can fly up with me tomorrow. And I was like, well, hey, that that I mean that I would save a lot of trouble. But but then I thought about it. I was like, something doesn't seem

right, so I didn't and it turned out this was that flight. I don't know if you guys remember, but there was a guy that flew his airplane and crossed into Nicaragua and was forced down and was held prisoner for a while. He was kind of like a wannabe guy, I guess it turned out. And you know, some people thought he was a contractor or something

with some of the activities going on. And I was thinking afterwards, like, holy cow, if I was a US Special Forces guy on this plane just trying to hit you ride, why so I could go to look Town and have a few beers do a little recreating. Now I'm in a prison in Nicaragua. The you know, thank god. So we got to give a shout out to our sponsor here for the show you want to do the Yeah, okay, for all you veterans out there, let's take them on

and tell you about our sponsor, re Medical. We know how difficult it can be to get accurate disability rating and proper benefits despite your best efforts and multiple doctor visits. Connecting new or worsening debilities to your service just adds to the frustration. This is re Medical's wheelhouse. The documentation and process they've designed to help veterans is unmatched, and the experience of the doctors in their network

is invaluable. Now, every case is different and Remedical can't guarantee what the VA is going to decide, but ninety five percent of their clients reported receiving a disability rating of seventy percent or higher. Re Medicals nationwide, disability specialists and medical professionals are ready to help veterans across all fifty states and those working

or living overseas. So if you need an evaluation of your disability rating accurate medical evidence to support your VA claim, turn to the team at re Medical. Head over to remedical dot com. That's slash teamhouse. That's r eemedical dot com slash teamhouse for more information. And our other sponsor fatime of Show is PAVPN. I think most of you guys are probably familiar with VPN services. If you're not, you probably want to check them out. They anonymize

your Internet browsing. Again, we're not asking what you're looking at. We don't want to know. But if you're traveling overseas or even in the United States. But if you're traveling overseas, you're maybe doing something spooky. Maybe you're just a private citizen, a businessman, maybe you're an NGO worker and the government, there's a little authoritarian You may not want them checking up on your Internet browsing history. Those are just a couple of reasons why you might

want to use p a VPN. So do you ever feel like you're being watched but everyone out there but you're you don't really have any options for how to deal with it. There are lots of titles available in certain regions making the most Oh, I'm sorry this is about your streaming subscriptions. But Private Internet Access is the or. PIA is the leading VPN provider that works with all major streaming services, so you can access more content than ever before anywhere

in the world. All you have to do is connect to a server and you're good to go. It's really easy since Private Internet Access offers fast servers and over eighty countries in every US state. Plus VPN is really user friendly. There are apps available for all devices smart TVs included, and one subscription can be used to protect an unlimited amount of devices at the same time.

So think about you know what shows you're watching or interested in watching. Now that you have private Internet Access, you know you can use the Private Internet Access to watch shows from the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, etc. Shows that might not be available here in the United States or elsewhere in the

world where you happen to be located. So if you're looking for a product like that that can help you view this type of content, private Internet Access is a great place to go. So if you want to enjoy all the benefits of private Internet access, now's the time to subscribe. Head to pia

vpn dot com slash teamhouse to get an eighty three percent discount. That's seriously in eighty three percent in three percent discount, which is just two dollars and three cents a month, and you also get four extra months completely free. But you have to go to pia vpn dot com slash teamhouse for a truly

private digital life. One more time pia vpn dot com slash Teamhouse. So any other misadventures down in the Honduras that we should probably know about, uh, not that I'm willing to talk about on a live screen without protection from vpnout protection from a lot of people. So let's uh let's jump forward a little bit on what would a seventh group What could a seventh group guy do in a South American or Latin American country that they would be not want to

talk about we don't. There are a lot of there's a lot of church or physics down there right there are very Catholic religion. Yes, And I'm gonna stay away from the jokes that come to mind when I come to a couple of kilos that go on the punching bag on the way home. Don't do it, guys. I did. I did get stopped coming back out of Honduras or Panama one time. Now I've been delayed. So you're there and before you get on the bird to come home, I think they had

to change the engine on an aircraft. So we were stuck a few days. And you know how they line all the bags up and bring the dogs through. So we're all waiting, we're ready to get home. We've been delayed and delayed and delayed. And then the dog hits on something, and you know, we're all laughing. You're like, yeah, what stupid you know, blah blah blah did whatever to cause this. And then they come

over there and they're holding my Bagio who owns this bag? And hey, it's me and I went over there and they go a dog hit on it for cocaine and I was like, well, I was open it. There's snow cocaine, and they well, it was that a dog wouldn't hit on it unless it had been cocaine in it, or it had been close to cocaine. I go, it's not, it's you know, I didn't have cocaine. They said, you know, well, of course the dog can't be wrong. So somewhere you were there must have been cocaine there at some

time or other. I'm like, yeah, I mean I was I brushed all that off, yeah, because I mean those dogs. I mean because I think later when I was in Columbia with Delta in ninety two, some DA guys brought some drug dogs through and they were like just old. They were not I know, they were old, but joints laying around on the ground, and the dogs never hit on any of that. I'm like, really, are these dogs that good? Yeah? Or is the stuff that

old? I don't know. Right, Well, let's let's over to that, because I think that's like a fascinating period of a Special Operations history. In particular, is you know, the whole hunt for Pablico Escobar down there in Colombia. At that point you were with Delta got the PoID down there. I mean, can you tell us a little bit about you know what that was like. I mean, it's it's like one of these things that has entered into like mythology, the amount of in some cases nonsense that people

talk about it. But I mean, you guys really were down there, you know, looking for him down there, looking for him my role there, and I went because I spoke Spanish. To be honest, I was fairly young in Delta time to be picked to go on a classified mission, but it was because I spoke Spanish, and so I went. And I was staying up at the prison that had the nice prison that I guess Pablo

funded. They had been built for him. And you know, I was with person from a Sister Jaysucky unit that was had some cigin equipment, and I was doing some surveillance with a long range lens on a couple of houses that were, you know, a couple a few miles away down in the valley and you know, take turns pulling security for each other to sleep fifty two people. It's yeah, it's not really a great life. You're either on a crashper you know, and uh uh, And I couldn't run the

cigate equipment, so we did that. And yeah, eventually I did get down to Mediyan on my way out and got to go on the streets of Mediyan. I remember that in those days, the local the cops, you know, the local police had been getting hits because people right up beside the trucks or the vehicles they were in, and they need to have a guy on the front of a motorcycle, and the guy on the back of the motorcycle was the gunman. And you know, I know, I rode in

the back of one of those trucks with these guys. So I decided the first thing I need to do is they're all sitting on the outboard side facing in, and I said, okay, the first thing is I need to put you on the inside facing out. And at first, you know, it's just like any traffic anywhere in a big city. Some people didn't want to stop. And it first had bothered me because I was like, you

know, what can you do? Then I started thinking about it. I go, hey, this is in America, so it's okay to lean over the side of the truck with the with your rifle. And you know, if somebody still has the guts to want to come up you maybe a round or two in the hood. You know, nobody's gonna no care here, right, So we didn't have to go to the rounds. But being able to you know, drop the rifle over the side and was able to stop vehicles from coming up beside you. So, uh, you know, I

felt that helped keep those guys. Yeah, the very similar tactics that they use, like you know in Iraq and Afghanistan and stuff, when they you know, with the VBID threat, they weren't as many like sparrow teams in those countries, right right, But but the v the v BID, the vehicle born I d s were a big threat. But in Colombia it sounds like it was similar to like what it was like in the Philippines and uh and whatnot where they had those sparrow teams that yeah, one of them got

row right yeah, yeah yeah. At that time, so this is ninety two, Papulo's not in his custom made prison at this point right here, So he left the prison and you guys are looking for him. Yeah, well, what was your perception at that time about you know, where where he was or where you guys were at in regards to the hunt for him. You know, I'm I'm probably wasn't aware of all the the the details, you know, because I'm the on the nug end of this frame out

there. But yeah, he was long gone. You know. The one of the things I did was like look through the huts, just looking. I'm I'm looking for intel. It's like, hey, wait a second, has anybody really gone through this? Because I'm finding stuff like here's uh, checkbooks that have account numbers and stuff like that. Has anybody done this? And and and I don't I'm not sure that that had been done. But

again, you know, we're talking nineteen ninety two. You know, a lot of that stuff didn't develop until after nine to eleven, so and nobody had an idea where he was. And a lot of the local populace they loved him, and you know, I wasn't sure we were going to get him. And again, in nineteen ninety two, we did not have the robust ability to track phones and and you know, to my knowledge, as we certainly developed later and particularly with the army or with the military, that

capability out the guy with me had stuff he could listen to. But I think that was much more refined and improved over that next decade. And I mean it was a small team too, right, It was like what ten guys down there? You know, initially two of us were where I was, and then there were some it was there were some seal It was a mixture of a few Seals and some Elta guys down in Metayen. But the trail had had gone cold at that point. The trail had gone yeah cold.

I mean it's it's I mean when all of that did go down, what the next year? I mean, did you have any like insights or any any kind of takeaways from from that sort of campaign down there? No, that campaign is where I actually wounded up getting kicked out of them so or as a result of things that happened there. So you know what happened after Yeah, having been there, I was curious and I looked at stuff and then, uh when was it Bowden wrote the book and all that.

You know, some of that I felt accurate, some not. Yeah, I was interested in it, but it's kind of like, uh, yeah, yeah, then they sent you down there to do a job. You did the job. It was out Yeah it's not. And that wasn't as personal, like the whole thing with al Qaeda and been laden after nine to

eleven, it just seemed a lot more personal. And I mean, even though you know, I think these stories are also interesting in regards to like how we look back at a quote unquote peacetime military when guys like you were like pretty active. There's that and you came you'd just come out a couple of years prior or year prior from the Gulf War, right, yeah, and the Gulf War. I yeah, I didn't deploy in the Gulf War.

I was doing training new and Delta, you know, so at a certain point in OTC, I think when you've been through the enough shooting and basic infantry tactics to where you're like a really good ranger, they say okay. And I know Delta at the time had been talking about, you know, Delta going in on a if they could locate Saddam Hussein and getting him.

And they said, okay, you guys in OTC, you're now trained enough to the point that the rangers will be the outer security, but then the inner security to hold off the Iraqi big Iraqi units, yeah, or will be you and you're gonna fast rope in to these does on these street junctions with a whole bunch of NI tank weapons and you're gonna hold them off.

And it was like, hey, that's a one way to It didn't look like it had a real high survival rate, but you weren't a CQB qualified operator yet, so it was like you're really, you know, high speed cannon flotter. I think how I kind of looked at it at that point, but in the in the run up to it though, before before that, I mean, weren't either there with a Fifth Group in Kuwait.

I was. I didn't go to Fifth Group until nineteen ninety six, Okay, okay, So in ninety six I was my first deployment to Kuwait. Okay, okay. So that's what I want to mix it up. So you're sort of going through training during during the Gulf War and then ended up there during like the no fly zone years yep. And and then I went,

yeah, that was back after we had the Iraqi war plan. Everybody assumed that Saddam was going to retake Kuwait at some point, so it was you know, how can we slow how can the SF people here work with the kuwaitis to slow them down? And give other forces a time to come

and you know, establish a beach hid and get in there. And you told the story last time about you know, the how the Saddam had erected this huge berm over there and there's this big trench line and you kind of got stuck in it when you were moving an asset over back across the border. You said, there's another time you went in there and you found a skeleton. Yeah, so this is uh when I was detailed to the agency

from two thousand two to two thousand and four. So now it's after Afghanistan in two thousand and one and two and I'm doing cross border stuff with some Kawiti like their equivalent of FBI and a case officer and my job was to get assets coming out of a rack and go into the un no goes on and get those assets and bring them back to a secret debriefing place where the agency could debrief them and then to get them back into a rack and the

you know, so there was this big berm and a fifteen foot deep, fifteen foot wide trench along the border that part of Kuwait, and you had to negotiate that if you wanted to get you know, the other side of that ditch was I rack. So yes, technically, if you wanted to

get on a racky soil, you had to cross that ditch. And you know, we got to the point I worked with that when I first got there, I had to work with them just to get them out in the desert, and then work with them and get them up to the berm, and then work with them to get them, you know, further. And so one of the times we were down there in the bottom of this trench,

one of the guys comes across a skeleton. They bring me over there, and you know, here's this old dish dasha, which is the you know, the flowing robe thing that men wear there, and there was a skeleton inside it. There was no skull, and I don't think there were hands or feet, but it was the torso of a of a skeleton. And I looked at the you know, I remember looking at the label on

the dish dash of trying to figure out was it Iraqi or Kuwaiti. And so I thought, well, so either somebody murdered somebody and dumped them out here, or some person got in this ditch and you know, tried to cross the border and got stuck in the ditch and eventually you know, expired. Well, I thought where it's probably animals right, had taken it off, or maybe not. And you know, when you when you've been pushing a long time. We've all been on deployments where it's been a long time.

For me, you know, nineteen ninety eight and ninety nine, I was in Yemen pushing hard. Two thousand, Kuwait on a classified thing, pushing hard, two thousand and one two interrac our Afghanistan, pushing hard straight to Iraq or Kuwait now two thousand and two. Three. You lose a little bit of your objectivity and maybe just a scoche of your judgment. So and you know, we're military guys. Your sense of humor is sometimes a little different. So I'm like, well, what am I gonna do about

this skeleton? And I started thinking about the CIA chief back there in Kuwait, and he was always you know, one of the games was predicting when the war would start, because we'd had George Tennant come out and everybody talking about, you know, what date will the war kickoff? Will it kick off? And he goes, oh, yeah, it's gonna kick off. But you know when and you know, I just kinda again, it's sort of the thing about me in authority. I thought it would be funny.

So I took part of this skeleton and put it in my backpack, and I took it back to station. And of course I always roll in at night after everybody's gone, because I'm up on the border, you know, I do a regular day's work, and then late that afternoon I jump in a car, drive fast as I could up to the border and do this stuff and get back like one am. So maybe sometimes midnight. Anyway,

I went. I came into the station and went into his office, and I piled the bones up on his off desk, and I left a note said, hey, you're always trying to read the bones about when the war's gonna start. Maybe this will help you. I thought it was hilarious. As a military guy, I'm like, it's hilarious. How how did that go over with the CIA? Yeah? The next day, you know, I remember, you know, he come on. I'm you know, I typed with two fingers and I'm sitting in my desk waiting for Zzy comes in

the office that day and goes back to his desk. I think this is gonna be funny. And then I hear her screaming, Garry Harrington, come here. You know, it's like and they and I thought, you know, it should be something to laugh about, but they did not consider it a laughing matter. And it was where did this come from? And then it was like, well here, because you tell me it's real, and I'm like, well, yeah, it looks like it's real. And then it turned into this, you know, and look now I do see a

different side of things that I didn't see in those days. In hindsight, well, in hindsight, that is desecrating, you know, a dead person. I feel whoever killed him and dumped them there and took away their extremities might have desecrated them more. But you know, then they were it was a big deal because then it was like, we're gonna get caught with this

in the embassy and it's going to be a big international incident. So then it was you know, I got yelled at for a while, and then it was you have to get rid of this immediately, and you have to do it in a respectful way, in accordance with the traditions of this country. And I said, understood, and gathered the bones wrap the mecca up and I left and then I went to the nearest dumpster and dumped it. I'm gonna wage hazard. A guess that this didn't make it up in the

cable traffic. That that no, no, no, it did not make it into cable traffic. And then all I said it was like, is that taking care of? I just said, it's taken care of. Oh my god, I can imagine the entire office is freaking out. Yeah, but you know, in the army it would be a whole different thing. But again, you know, that's one of those lessons you have to learn your environment, and that's a differnt. It's a very different environment. Especially

Oh yeah, it's different. Like sitting there in the embassy. Like in Kuwait, Saddam was was launching scuds towards the embassy, and the chiefs of all the different departments had those uh warning devices that would give them a signal when they go off, and then you know, everybody in the embassy would sound the alarm. You had to duck and cover and get under, put

a mask on, gas mask. Everybody practiced that. So here's embassy personnel, State Department personnel, CIA officers that have never done this before, you know, putting on gas mask, you know, and the times where those alarms went off, people were really frantic because they weren't military, they hadn't really trained it, and was always I know, I remember sometimes when it went off, having to help people, you know, particularly women that get

the scraps caught in their hair and they're now they're frantic trying to get it in. And it was having a hard time to get people mask because I really wasn't in a hurry to get mine on. And I'm hoping I didn't tell this last time, but one time, I'd been at the border the night before, so I got in at like one or so in the morning and came into the office at eight the next morning to start writing up what

happened at the border, and you know, you're smoked. I was tired, and about mid day at lunchtime, I thought, I'm going to go outside and this quate one hundred and twenty five degrees and I'm gonna get in my car in the parking lot and turn it on and turn the air conditioner on and take a nap. That's what I'm gonna do it for lunch. And so I was walking to exit the embassy doors and one of those alarms

went off. Everybody had been on break because it was launched, and people were outside, and I remember thinking, well, do I duck and cover or if technically, if you're going somewhere and you can get there quickly enough, you can duck and cover wherever that is. So I think I'll duck and cover in my car in the air conditioning instead of paying attention to this. So I get ready to go out the big heavy, you know doors

on the front of an embassy. And as I got to the door to open it, I looked, and here came everybody from the office with eyes when we say see the whites of their eyes. Eyes were like this, mouths were open and gone like that, and it was like the running, and it was like a stampede coming at me, you know, to get inside to get in. So all I did was hold the embassy doors open and let them all pass to go in and and duck and cover. And then I went out to my car and got in there and turned on the

air condition reclined the seatback and was asleep like this. And after a while I thought I heard a noise and I opened my eyes and I looked, and all around me were these guys with gas mask on and white white suits. And it was the marine security people that in the duck and cover. They were doing their swear sweep and found me out in the car. I don't you know, we're in the ship right now. Well, they by

that time they knew I was former marine. Is like we did people carry their gas mass on them or did they like leave it at their desks and stuff? Left it at their desk If you went out in a car, you were supposed to, you know, take it. But so you had mentioned a bit that you were on one of the ASOT teams and kind of

that got parlayed into Yemen, which then got parlayed into Kuwait. I mean, you talk a little bit about like how that kind of progression took place because your your career, like even as an operator or Green Beret or marine, it's a little bit unconventional. It's more on the intel side. I think, I feel like all along, Yeah, well, someday I'm I want to write a book and it's going to be called against the Grain and unconventional Man in unconventional War. And I don't know I it kind of goes

with my personality. I just I don't know, I don't like to. I kind of follow along, but not all the way. You know, I can't always buy into everything. And so with a soot you know, I talked last time that my former Delta commander had asked me to help take part in this push towards more UW with maybe a U twist to it.

And fifth group had some of the original guys I mentioned before, Steve Potit, but Mark Vorpaul, David Stevenson. Those were guys that had been you know, kind of pioneers and helping trying to formulate where we would go with that. So you know, I went to a scot and maybe because I had the TS clearance from having been in Delta and whatever else, I graduated and again I was pretty lucky in in uh As. I think ASID you know, trains you to be an effective pilot team member and they back in

my day and it was really emphasized that. So after graduating aside, just a couple of months later, I got contacted by Socks Scent to come down and talk about, you know, a program. So I wound up going to Yemen to be the first SF person to employ the legally employee some of the things taught in a side or you know, it was a test case

to see what what can we do? And that was in order to enable me to make accurate assessments for the security of a O D A. I think a ST at least in its original stand up, was so that you know, your small detachments like a like a special forces team in a foreign country has the ability to establish ways to gather information and make its own assessment and and protect itself, uh from you know, coup, terror attacks or

whatever it might be because you don't have that big support force protection mechanism. And so yeah, I was the first guy for the people who don't really know what we're talking about out there. And I mean to the extent that you're comfortable talking about about it. I mean, can you describe a little bit about like what a SOT was if if I understand the history of it right? I mean before that there was oh and I right, Operations and

Intelligent. I had been to that, which is more teaches you how to be a good intel officer on an O day, and they had the rsts AT group, which was the one RST that did the surveys. But yeah, for so for ASOT, like they really did focus on like the final exercise is you're you know, you're you play the role of a team that has been inserted into a country that we used to have relationships with but abandoned. So they'd been in guerrillas. You're supposed to re establish contact with this.

Come on, it's just like so and you know, they're a way we learned the ways to communicate, let's say sort of the old uh, you know, sticks and chalk mark things that that people did back in the day and during the Cold War. So communications techniques and I would say, and maybe some other stuff that you learned how to employ we can say human and as a broad term, and trade craft like you essential trade craft, essential trade yeah, right, yeah, And so they deployed you to Yemen

as sort of like a test bed to see like can we can we develop this capability? Yes? And you you know, it's really an honor to be the first person and an E seven to show up in an embassy and tell the defense attache, the ambassador and the chief of station there that guess what I'm here to do? Right, And I'm an E seven Army guy, right, and and and they go no, yeah, no, none of you. And uh it took a lot of doing, uh to try to get permission to get them on board with them, get them on board

with that. But you know, but but if I think again before, well, you know, and I think, you know, we talked last time about about my assessment in Yemen and predicting that something like what happened with the coal could happen and going against the status quo and all the other UH

intelligence entities and State Department and analysts there. And so I believe that that sort of bears out that having that experience that I seasoned military person who's deployed a lot and seen a lot can bring to bear with the proper clearances, so you can see the right information and skills to be able to have the freedom of movement and get out and operate and make your own personal assessment on

the ground. You know, I think it offers a different view. It's not that you know, where operators an operators view isn't the only view, but it's an important view. I think in a low intensity conflict, uncertain

environment, or hostile environment. To have other than that straight State Department SEI, right, And with things like that, you know, both having a background in UW and uncomming sure offer and counter terrorism, you know, you have this experience that say an analyst or you know, any any other type of surveyor wouldn't have in the sense of if I, if we were my job to attack this thing, like how would I do it? And and

or if it were my ODA coming in would I want to do? And there's I think that people who don't have that experience think that they can imagine those things, but that often they don't necessarily have the on the ground experience

to actually understand how those attacks. And especially when you talk about like the cool or you know, suicide bombings, like you can imagine you can kind of push it out, how would I how would I attack attached or strategic target if I weren't afraid of loss of life, if like, if if I had people just willing to like to to kill themselves or whatever. And in my career, I think I learned that with the military, we have

a preemptive and solutions based mindset. And there's a problem or here's a potential problem, I'm going to solve it. Here's how I want to do with a lot of the federal government and including you know, love the FBI of a lot of people in there, but there there and after the coal it was a lot of what we here comes from FBI investigation. But those are

more police oriented after the fact organizations. They are built that once a crime has occurred, to preserve evidence, investigate and find somebody to prosecute and hold accountable for that. And that's their role and it should be. And as I think as a military person, you come again with that more red cell, here's how I would do it, so I know better how to prevent it, and and and and I'm going to treat it as an attack. I'm going to go after a solution, right. And I'm not saying that's

always the right answer, I believe you know. I'm glad we have civilians in the ultimate places of authority in countries and other places we go because hey, if it's me, I'm going to give you that military answer right all

the time. You know, there's nothing we can't do, not given enough uh resources and materials and personnel, we can make it, right, right, yeah, And that's just not feasible, right right, And and so how did you eventually, like, how did you because obviously, especially like the chief of station here, you are somebody with with trade craft and you want to go out and you know, maybe set up a little little sources or do whatever, but you know, sort of do this advanced force type

of operation. How do you sell the chief of station on this when at this point in time, obviously the agency in the military didn't necessarily have the same working relationship that they do today. You know, the first time, I'll be honest, I got told no. And even though I showed them the the paperwork and all that said yes, they said no. So I waited and I refigure, you know, I told the party line, did

stuff made myself valuable? Then I waited a few weeks and I you know, went back through that rag and highlighted a few key phrases and all, and came back and said I'd like to readdress this and here's this. And then then I said, hey, look, I'm not trying to be you. I'm not you. I don't want to do what you do. I just had this little thing here and I'm not going to step on any toes.

I'll tell you and show you everything I do were they a little more receptive if you did it pitch it as more of like a force protection and I always from the beginning, you know this is I think things change much later. But it was a forced protection issue because D miners were going to come in a few months and a D mining contingent and another ODA to do some train some FID or some training of some Yemeni unit. And it was for forced protection for that and and and to be honest, the first time,

I'm a new person. They don't know me, and so it's no, this looks funny and wonky. It's never been done. We're not doing it right. And that's why you know, you need to be on the ground a while and let them see who you kitchen and get to know your some and then you know you need long enough to be able to pull the wool over their eyes before you can get it past them. Right. But ultimately that was the mission was successful. Yeah, you know I was allowed

to be on my own more and travel around and do stuff. And yeah I got corraled once that Hey, you know, what are you doing driving around yem and yourself and nobody does that, and you know you need to get in your you know, you need to stay make sure you stay here

in this box. Yeah. But but I was able to, you know, cut my teeth, get my feet on the ground, and talk to people, which led to my assessments that predicted, you know, what might happen regarding the attack on the coal And I remember you telling me that like that was not well received. Nah. No, the ambassador. In all my training, nobody told me that if you write anything, the ambassador has the right to review it, change it, edit it. I mean,

it doesn't matter what it is. They have that right. And I thought I could by pass ambassadorial comment and review by just sending a a area assessment back, and that turned out not to be the case. The Ambassador was angry. She flew down from SNA to Aiden and called all of us in a room and you know, talked, talked to me specifically about my report.

But she reiterated, you know, some of her contingencies about now we were just there to do a job and shouldn't have rifles we were, you know, in her view, it seemed like just as much as a threat as anybody else in the country because we might do something that might cause a problem. Because her her line of diplomatic effort was more of like, I

don't want to say normalizing relations, but building diplomatic relations. Uh, you know, you know, be honest, My opinion is her line of thought was, I can't have anything that will in any kind of report that comes out that makes this a dangerous place that causes Hillary Clinton to cancel her planned trip here. So I mean, to be honest, that's I believe that, and I don't. I don't think I could be convinced that was any

other reason for that. Yeah, I mean, and I understand I guess the political implications, but this is also like the makings of the scandal too, Like if if they do come there and then an attack happens, and then there's a big, thorough review like the nineteen eighty three Bay Route bombing. I mean, this is a big thing where there were people, you

know, we talked to Mike Taylor about this. I mean that you know, there were people warning that, you know, something was percolating here, something bad was going to happen, and then a bunch of people die and after him. Yeah, and after the fact, it's like, oh, we should have seen this coming. Well, and things on the ground and Beirut changed over time, and it wasn't the place we first went into,

right, but where what? And and but yet but that that becomes that that yin and yang between the civilian authorities, the ambassador and the military people on the ground. I don't know if last time I told the story, but in Beirut, you know, I was covering the beach and it had my recomplatoon there on the beach outside the airport. It was down on low ground and there was a big berm and a big highway right beside that.

Well, so to defend against that, because we're down in the low ground, I built two giant sandbag machine gun placements up parallel to the road. And at one point we took these big giant shipping crates, plywood shipping crates that came off a ship and put it up on the machine gun emplacement and put the sandbags around it. But then I was able to put a roof on it and put three layers of sandbags on top. Why because I'm protecting from RPG and grenades, and you know, I'm standing again. I'm a

second lieutenant in the Marine Corps and I'm I'm there. And one day this probably a suburban or pulls up and some guy in a suit gets out and he comes over me. He goes, who's in charge here? I am? And he said, what's that's a machine gun in placement? Yo? What's that on top of there? I said, that's a roof? He

goes, is that wood in there? I go it is? He said, well, that looks like you're planning to make a permanent It makes us look like we're establishing a permanent presence here, and I might know it's to protect against this. He goes and he said, well, I want you to take it down. I said, who are you? He said, I'm ambassador to Crockett And I said, yeah, well I'm Lieutenant Harrington, I said, And he goes, why you take that down now? I go, know that protects the Marines. He said, I'm ordering you to

take it down now. I said, why don't you go on from here? And when a competent authority in a marine corps tells me to take it down, and I'll take it down. But you don't know, I know, ambassadors have the ultimate authority. Yeah yeah, I thought, yeah, I'm being just like yawning that yahoo. Yeah, I'm doing the right thing. Yeah, when he leaves in about twenty minutes later, I get a call in the radio from the Marine commander who's really upset and who informs me

that, hey, you know you need to take that down. But that, for me was that whole thing of here, we are now putting personal safety at risk for political messaging, and it's not even messaging. No one in Beyirut believes that your little bunker's thing for your machine gun is a permanent, persistent presence of marines. You're not building a headquarters bunker. What's not

a pill box carved into the mountain side. Yeah. I would like to say that stuff can't happen in the military, but there have been a special Forces aren't made or two who have wanted guys to go out and paint rocks. Yeah, yeah, to beautify they Oh yeah, yeah, we know so and so while I might be hard on, you know, that ambassador for that thing at that time, and I'm pretty hard against uh about Ambassador BNS Bodine's choices. Yeah, maybe there's a few military people that have done

the same. Oh yeah, I think area beautification is specifically a military term. Yeah, they don't, they don't have Foreign Service officers out painting rocks. Yeah, that doesn't happen. Yeah, So what what year was it when you wrote this report that you know that the ambassador didn't. That was nineteen nineteen nine. I went there. I went to Yemen in ninety eight

and stayed over into ninety nine. That was pretty prophetic. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, and remember in January two thousand was the attempt by the same guys on the USS, the Sullivans, and it didn't you know, it didn't work out for them, and you know, so then they retried and regrouped and retried in October. And the fact that they could that they could try it once and not be successful and then do it and then that

that doesn't level, that doesn't raise like the threat level and everybody's defensive posture. And maybe it did and it just didn't work. But the fact that then they could turn around and do it on the coal you know, after their tests run. Yeah. No, I understand that push pull between diplomacy and military security, but I mean, come on, at a certain point, it's like, no, it's not well. I think I told you

before that that the Islamic Army of Aiden I showed up. I'm told the accepted story was it's three guys and a fax machine that just make threats against Western and Western and there are very few Westerners there at that time. So then you know, things go on, there's a few car bombings, they get more active. I talked last time about the arrest of the Aiden's six while we were in Aiden, you know, and you know their direct tie

to potentially trying to to hit us and where we were staying. And then the hostage standoff, you know, in a fight and some hostages were killed. So to me, all the analysts and the intelligence agencies failed to take into account this escalation and again that whole thing of where we're military people. So you know, again I have people. I have people that are dedicated, that have proven that they have access to weapons, have proven they will

take violent action against Westerners and have a stated interest. And yes, I did see the segent that you know, so I understood that why people said it wasn't an al Qaeda place and there's never been any operations there and there

were no direct operational ties to al Qaeda at that time. Okay, I get that, but I still have a bunch of inept guys that will do whatever they're right told, they're getting better and yeah, and so again, my my ultimate assessment with military experience was, Okay, what if they ever accept operational control from delta, I mean from from the from al Qaeda, and al Qaeda provides training and operational develops the operations, or they host a

cell right from al Qaeda. Well, and guess what the whole thing was a cell that was hosted. Yeah, and a lot of those, a lot of those what we would call like minor league or you know, third tier whatever like organizations out there in Africa and you know in in the Middle East who I mean in the Philippine wherever, who we would say, well, they're not a Q, it's like, but but they want to be.

And so they're trying to make their mark so that a Q will like send them funding and send like they're trying to like step on the stage. So they're willing to go a little bit further. That's what happened with isis isis quote unquote in air quotes isis in the Philippines. I mean they're really just bandits, but they're trying to get the attention. Same thing and the again quote unquote isis groups in Africa. They're trying to get the attention of

the bigger players. Get the money at the recognition, get the funding, get the training, the exposure. So the way they do that is they go out and they try to make these big things happen so that the parent organ you know, they're the organization, will look back and go, hey, yeah, we'll pick you guys up too well. And even on a smaller scale like go to go to Syria. Right when you first had the trained terrorists coming in from Afghanistan, the Khakistan uh To into Syria, the

people they hooked up with became successful in the battlefield. Right. So now here's this guy. Now, the local that has brought in, you know, a host of a cell is becoming successful. He's becoming bigger and more popular and more powerful. So now his competitor fifty miles away, hey I need one of those night and and and so now you get this and people

are welcoming these franchises, yeah, because it grows their power. It's really that much different than us going into Afghanistan with suitcases of money and right, and more lords today on our side. Right. So, speaking of which I mean well, jump a little forward ahead. I mean, we talked about Yemen, we talked about Kuwait the last time we spoke the previous episode, we talked a lot about going in Afghanistan and Tora Bora, some really

incredible stories there. But I want to jump a little bit further forward into the Cowst bombing and sort of your your awareness of that. I think we've had a number of guests on the show who have talked about the Cowst bombing. CIA personnel. Do you want to talk about it from from your point of view and what happened in the aftermath. Sure. So this is one of those incidents, right that it's a very siminal incident, and it's very emotional to a lot of people. So you know, I want to capiat

to anybody out there that this is my personal view, all right. You know, we had FBI has or in law enforcement. There's this saying the lust for the bust. So it's sometimes you get ahead of your skis lean too far far forward because you want to make that bust. So here al Qaeda played the agency masterfully, right, Yeah, they dangled this guy, they let photos leak of him with very senior Al Qaeda people you know, so the whole thing with you when you have an asset, you know,

who is this guy? What does he claimed to be? Can we verify that? Okay, he's who he says to be. What is his access? Okay, how we verify that access? So who? What is everybody looking for? Access to the top tier? So oh wait a second.

If we have what we think of his proof that this guy has access to the top tier, now, then you know that desire to do something becomes very strong, and you know there are a lot of patriotic reasons that we all want to do that too, right, But then in any bureaucracy, I think there's also some career minded people that like to latch onto things that that have a big result because of what it does for their their their careers.

And I'm not pointing to any person in specific on this, but because of the desire to get a big hit against a big person, the standard precautions, a lot of those were thrown to the wind. I'm sure your other guests have talked about just the tactical part, not not searching the guy

before he came in. That can't be you know, I've I've brought assets and some of them were bad guys onto A, you know, the Ariana hotel compound, but not until I or the GRS guys the with me searched them to make sure they did not have anything on them before I would ever bring them somewhere where I would risk other people to them. And in this case, right, you have this guy that gave a reason he did not want to be searched, so they call was made not to search him,

and of course, you know he that enabled him to detonate himself. And then what compounded that was because you know, I worked on another top five al Qaeda targeting event and I saw how that that draws people. And if it's a top ten person or you get some help from headquarters and you sometimes help you don't ask for, and help that you can't refuse, and a lot of them and everybody's coming in and giving their expertise and chipping in and a lot of that stuff is helpful, right, a lot of it is,

but there's just a lot of it. So the day that he came, there are a lot of people that you know, finally, finally we have someone. So it's just sucked in, which would never happened. No, No, and why is that? I mean that kind of goes to

the bigger question. One of the things I loved about Special Forces and particularly Delta was that it was an NCO driven operation and that you know, if you were if you as an we're in charge of this part of a takedown wherever it was left to you, well, you know, they don't have that same mentality or ethos in somewhere like the CIA, so you know, and and like taking if you're in a regular infantry unit in the military and you get this sort of big thing, Okay, the senior officers are gonna

come in, right, yeah, the general going and uh so, yeah, I think you know it. It drew people in and it was this big deal. And then when you I think maybe some people excused or you know, you you rationalize in your own brain why we're not doing this that we would normally do because well, so and so is senior and they're here and they're buying off on this, So okay, I buy off on it.

And you know that that happened, you know, so it was you know, it was Yeah, it was a shock throughout and then that I think that's the first time it really hit the agency hard because we've lost people, of course in different assaults and different attacks, and going back to Beirut and throughout the history, you know, we have the wall where people in

the agency, you know, have have given their lives. But here it was like in the War on Terrace since nine to eleven, here's a time where they actually targeted and attacked us in a larger scale and it was successful. So there was a lot of anger and and and angst about that.

You know, the agency was able to through different through multiple sources of intelligence to figure out after the fact where that attack came from or where the guy that in charge that was in Pakistan, and you know, it took a while because you have to verify and just that whole process to verify I was involved in trying to verify that it was. It was a rough time because every single day I was getting pink from head quarters. You know, have

you verified? You know, you know, because people really really wanted to do something in response to that attack. But yes, eventually the agency was able, that's out in the press, to go after and get Hussain or who's saying al Yamini, who was the person responsible for the who did they

tag him in a drune strike. Is that how that? Yeah, it tagged him in a compound in in Pakistan, and you know it was a compound that was attached to you know, a housing unit, so you know it was but then over time, you know, they saw what we're al Qaeda coming in and out of that house. So eventually the strike was taken. Uh. You know, at first, there were quite a number of people in that building, and we think about the bombs and how efficient they

are. I think there there were a number of missiles fired into that building, and yeah, it's a mud you know, the buildings that we've all seen in Pakistan and and Afghanis and Afghanistan. So it destroyed a lot of the building. But let's see, I think there were like nineteen people in that building. As they got ready to shoot, two walked out like five seconds before. And then you know, if you think everybody's done for but a lot of people were just shaken and rubble and got up and walked away.

But the focus of the attack was on the It was during cold weather, so on the central room, and you know, the the people in that room were you know, perished. So and then they al Qaeda comes and all came out with that guy getting getting killed. So so the CIA did get some measure of revenge for on the people that helped initiate the attack

on coast. You know. On that note too, I mean, since since we have you here, I can't help but ask if you had any situational awareness on all the stuff that went down with the bin laden targeting. Uh I did not. You know, the we all at some point and when I was chasing after some top tier al Qaeda personnel, of course bin Ladden was always a discussion, and I spoke with some analysts from that team flew out and talk to me about what I was doing. So we talked

about that. But I don't know that. I do know, like there is a guy, a former u SF an Orange guy that was one of the key people that for many many months helped put together that target package. And this is a guy and a al out there. I'm not gonna say your last name, but you know, this is that guy. That's that guy, does he al is? You know, he's a he's a really

really nice guy, and you know that. You know, I just wish that people could know that here's this guy who's never gotten any credit or acknowledgement for you know, all that work that he did, and yet you know he's that guy. You know, I talked about being the guy with the experience to be in the right place at the right time, to be able

to make calls like on the coal and stuff. Well, here's the guy that had all that experience and knowledge that was able to be in that role to help put together that which I think, you know, helped lead to that successful take out of Ben Ladden, right, And uh, I just wish that that guy was the kind of guy you guys could have. Yeah,

I know we would. I mean, it's it's interesting. We've also talked on the show about the the guy who was the first one to that shot Ben Ladden, who has never gone public, never said anything about what he did, and the dev Group operator, and it's just it's it's interesting and uh to hear that there are these guys out there that like, did my job and that's enough walk away from it. And I mean, I hope they're sitting on the beach drinking my ties somewhere enjoying life. Yeah,

yeah, that's true. But with that said, al and Red, I guess, yeah, if you ever want to go to the show. Could you talk then a little bit about like the secrecy around it, like when it when it when it went down, I mean, did you know it was coming or was it like so compartmentalized you were just like what no?

After after the fact, Yeah, right, Uh, sure everybody was really happy, everybody on the inside, you know, I'd say, I'm sure all the intelligence and law enforce maidencies, you know, you get you before the headlines hit, you get that first reverberation through, and and there was

a lot of happiness, excitement. I wasn't smart enough as some people were to save and use papers with with the h excuse me, the headlines and stuff and so yeah, but but the other details and and that's one of those things where I didn't I'm not one of those people that I wanted to try to dig and call the people I knew and try to get him and talk about it, because it's like, hey, I have somebody else's gig

and they did it. And and it also sometimes it makes people uncomfortable, right, like to you know, when when you're friends with somebody, you try to pry that you know that's you know, secret stuff out them or whatever. They're like, you know, it's it's almost like you're leveraging your friendship right in that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because you know, and and you know, and I was busy doing other things too, So yeah, it was a great day. And part of it, part it

let's let's be honest. And in some ways it's like this, we're in for a change now that parts ye over and and and and it does change. Certainly the war on Terror didn't end with him, but it turned a page I think in the hearts and minds of the American people. And maybe it's important right that we need to you know, we're on our end in the military and intelligence agencies. We're out there pursuing those goals and those objectives

to lead that way. But then there comes that time when it's time to turn the page on that, right, And you know, if you give us like right right with MacArthur ever stopped in Korea, right, we're out calling in China. But but we need those people to say no, it's time to turn the page on that. And I think that's I think it's

so doing this. This podcast has been like so cool because getting to talk to people like you who are there early on and Mark Paulmeropolis gave us that print that's behind you about the invasion We've had justin sapp and j R. Seeger on the show those like initial teams that went in Afghanistan and we're kind of all you guys were there for American like a very dark time. Whether there's this period of time like are we just helpless? Yeah? And I

feel like you kind of showed that like no, we're We're not. We're definitely not helpless, like there is a way to fight back. And then the chapter on that part of American history closed with the Bill Laden Rate. I would say, I think it did did the two again to a large and and that whole part of answering are we helpless? Right? And and you know, and I go back, what what whatever people think about George Bush. You know, we will get to and you know a lot of

us believe that, and we would never stop. It's true that sometimes our government says no stop, but but there are Americans that will give the best years of their lives to pursue these goals and the efforts right right well, and you know, you it's interesting to me when people talk about Afghanistan, how we lost in Afghanistan, because if you were just to take what our initial goal was in Afghanistan, which was to eliminate al Qaeda, like we

did that fast. Like we achieved that goal in Afghanistan very quickly, and then it became sort of this you know, sort of nebulous, ambiguous sort of war against the Taliban and other elements. But when it comes to what we set out to do initially there, we did it very quickly, you

know. So it's uh, yeah, it's you know, you talk about bush and like when we went into Afghanistan to elemit al Qaireda, you know, like talk about justin sapp and you know, the guys we've had on like you know, like Jared' cigarette, like they rolled through that country quickly. It was so I was on four of those teams and with and last time we talked about it, I stood in Tora Bora on top of the mountain with in my op and I was telling those guys, yeah, you

know, this is easy. Now. It's like playing King of the hill. We've got the aircraft, we're knocking them off the hill. But to stay here, right And at the time, I said, ten years from now, we'll still be here, and it's not going to be this easy. I didn't realize it'd be twenty right, right, right, But and you know that's just the way it goes. Yeah, you know, we we we're talking about some serious things here. And I mentioned before to you

that I would tell you some funny stories about frank Tony. Frank Tony, so General frank TONI. When I met General frank TONI was when this coincides with that whole ASOT thing we talked about. So he was the commander of SOXEM and I go down and and meet frank Tony, and frank TONI is known he was a hardcore, uh military guy, you know, more rangerish than special forces. Yeah, you know, I'd say I was gonna see like a marine in an army Union. Yeah. And the famous quote for

frank TONI was I don't need to speak no foreign language. I speak five five six, Right. He's like, yeah, I don't need no blankety blank foreign language. You just shoot people and that's all the count So, I mean that's the way he was. And he would he liked things more of the way a rangers liked things. So you know he's you know, I go off and I go to Yemen to be this guy. Well, I'm in Yemen, so I'm wearing civilian clothes. My hair grows out.

You can't hardly ever get to find a barber anyway, So who cares, you know, I'm and I'm working the position they gave me in the embassy, was working in the Defensivettache's office as the operational NCO because they they didn't have one. So it's just like two guys and a warrant officer, a colonel and me. And yeah, I'm in civilian clothes. I'm trying to fill that job while I'm trying to learn about Yemen and and make my assessment

about the security situation there. And General frank Toni's coming out for a visit. So the embassy, you know it, gets it, gets all ready for this visit, and a defense attache and the major and I because I'm the NCO. So I'm going to carry suitcases and stuff go out to meet the General coming in on his little airplane. And I'm like, whoo, you know, I know the stories about frank Tony. I really need to

get a haircut and shave my mustache, but I was too busy. I didn't have time, so you know, I'm i'm I'm I'm not looking like a soldier would look. And he lands, and now I'm nervous because he's known to be pretty mercurial in his temperate as well, and I'm just trying to stay out of his vision and line might and not talk to him.

And they he comes, he gets off the plane, they greet him, They come over with with that, with his bags, and they're sitting there on beside the tarmac and then the major from the Defensive tache's office says, Sarin Harrington, take his passport over and get expedited and get get that through. And I start to go, and he goes, did you call him

sergeant? And this major, who didn't like the fact that I was Special Forces and didn't like the fact that I claimed to be allowed to do some of the things that I said I was going to do because of a side, took that opportunity to say, hell, General, he's one of your special forces boys. And Frank Tony looked at me. He just went like he went, I just started staring and looking and uh, and he goes,

you are special Forces. I say, I'll get your passport and I took off to go expedite his passport, and I think for the next couple of days and I just tried to like, he just would stare at me, and I just tried to stay. The next time you saw him, did you have a hind tight na? I couldn't get it right, But

then you know, if some things happened. The embassy didn't really want to deal with him, so they kind of like and it was a holiday coming up, so they were all like planning on taking off and he's there. He's like, I'm gonna be taking around and showing around, and every right turned to me and goes, he's kind of your responsibility, and we okay. So I became his driver and try to take him around, and I

think one of the first times he really did not like me. And I think the first time we started breaking ice was there was a Special Forces detachment that was training a Yemeni unit down on the Red Sea on the coast, and he was going to take a helicopter down to visit them. So I drove him out to this base and we're there and it was just chaos. The Yemeni military was It was just a group of dudes. And eventually a hip started coming in and there was like nobody knew, there was no guidance,

no anything. So hey, I do what a Special Forces guy would do. I get out there, I start providing guidance to the helicopter and trying to get it to land, and of course it's it's not, but it eventually lands, and so we're gonna get myself, General Tony and a few Yemeni officers are going to get on this aircraft and fly down to the

coast. And so they get on. One of the Yemeni generals has his kid with him and he's smoking a cigarette, and you know, they all just get on this aircraft and there you could see from inside the door there was a big, like fifty five gallon drum painted red head JP fuel in it, and the guy's leaning on it like this, smoking a cigarette and his kids in there. And then they decide that we need to send some

security guys. So I don't know what they say to everybody, but then next thing, you know, everybody wants to be the person to do that. So they all rushed the helicopter. I mean like eighty people rushed the helicopter. And yeah, the n CEO and you comes out. So I'm like, you know, blank this. So I waded into the people and I start Yemenis are not real big, right, and so I start grabbing people and throwing them to the side. And I get my way to the

door and I'm grabbing guys and just pull them and throwing them out. And I climb up on the aircraft and I look and everybody looks at me like that, and so I'll start walking down And the first thing was that Yemeny general leaning over the fuel with his cigarette. I went up to him and smacked his hand and face with the cigarette and to knock it out of his hand, and I, you know, stumped out the cigarette and went like

that. And I walked down the line, and you know, there were guys that had their rifles facing up, and so I grabbed their rifles and turned them down and h walked back in. General Tony was sitting at the back and when I got back there, he just looked at me kind of laughed like, yeah, that's my guy. And we got on this aircraft and I don't know how we ever made it to where we were going and coming back. But then while we were there at this unit. I didn't

want to encroach. There was an odia there. They hosted the general. They were in uniform. They all went in this room where the officers were gonna eat this luncheon, and so I stayed out because I went in civilian clothes with all the juneys, you know, the really low level Yemeni guys, and hey, I'm in there in the middle, you know, with my hand, go grabbing and rice grabbing and eating with my hand and having a good time. After that, I said, well, nothing speaks the

language like training. So I went outside and was doing some disarming techniques and I was letting people with knives try to, you know, see if they could attack me. And I was doing some takeaways and stuff like that. So I had this big group around me, and I guess the luncheon finished in there and they came outside, and I guess the general came outside and sees this crowd of people around there, and then he comes and I'm in

the middle of it, and he goes, what are you doing? And you know, he saw what I was doing, and I think, you know, and he was like okay, And so he looked at me a little differently from that point because he didn't see me as this filion guy with long hair, right stuff. And we go back and it was funny because

it's a holiday. We get back and he's supposed to go to some dinner, some big dinner that night, and we are late and it's running behind and I'm driving him, and so I pick him up after he give him a chance to get cleaned up, and I pick him up in the car and he wants to go to the Marriott Hotel and go to the gift shop.

He said, I was here six months ago. And so we go in the gift shop and he's looking for a souvenir to take home, and you know, we're looking and looking and I'm looking at my watching like he's, you know, I'm supposed you're supposed to be at that dinner like already, you know, And and he's looking and looking and he's now and now he'll talk to me, and he goes, sertain Harrington, what do you

think of this? And what are you think of that? And I'm like, yeah, okay, sir lt. And then then he tells me, you know, and I just want to think about that. But somebody, because he's passed now then you know. At some point he looked at me and said, yeah, you know, I got to buy something to take home because you need one of those uh things that it's not at his exact words, but that lubricates things to h to take home and h. He used a different terminology, but uh. And I was like okay. And

then I go away. I'm like, moh man, it's getting late. And he calls me over there again, like the third time, and he goes, oh, I sorry, herts, I can't decide on this. He goes, I swear I was here six months ago and this thing was forty or fifty dollars cheaper, and they want uh ninety dollars or one hundred dollars for this this painting or whatever it was at that point, and we were so late at that point, I'm like, hey, I guess i'll throw it all on the line now. So I said, so he said

what do you think? And I looked at him and I said, I don't give a flying f about that. I goes, you're a g D general And it seems to me if you want to buy a blanking one hundred dollars painting to take home and get the effect, you said you wanted, then you want to be able to buy it. And at first I thought, oh my god, I've overstepped my head because he looked at me like he went red like that. He glared at me, and and I was

like, oh, I have really stepped into it. And he stared at me, and then he broke out laughing, and he goes, there, you're right, he goes, and he bought it. And then and then we get in the car and I started driving like hell, I'm you know, cutting across mediums and driving, and he was I guess he was nervous. He was doing like this in the seat and I was like, what's up, sir, And he goes, well, I need to stop and get a gift for the hostess. I go, you have that bag of

stuff that your aid has. The'll just give her something some of that. We don't need to stop, and he goes, yeah, sometimes I just get keyed up. He goes, man, I just wish I could have a beer. I go the only place to have a beer is back at the Marriott where we just left. He goes, well, I wish I and I and I turned a car across the medium and we went back and grabbed a beer at the Marriott, and then I took him to his dinner and all that, and uh, you know, it was funny because after

that, you know, my my thing and yemming ended. I went home. Oh oh, more and more thing on frank Tony. So he gets that, he gets ready to leave the country. He goes down to the sook and he buys this big sword. Everybody came through buying stuff. Matter of fact, General Zenny had a plane that came through with all his staff and they simply to go souvenir buying in Yemen. It's okay, but he couldn't get his sword on the plane to go a commercial plane to go home.

So he left it with me, can you get this home? And it was a few months later he was already home and General Zenny's small plane came through for because he came in for a visit. And I was like, I'll get your sword at home, So you're going to Tampa, okay. And I made a deal with the pilots and I'm gonna stick his sword

on the on the plane. So I sent a note back. You know, of course, as I've already put this into play, I sent a note back to Tampa that hey, I got that, and then it came back do not put that sword on that plane because he did not want to be perceived as impinging on General Zenny to get a personal thing back. And I was like, yeah, too late, it's gone, and I sent

his sword back. But you know, after that, you know, I did a follow on classified thing where I went to Kuwait to do the first AFO office thing where I supervised some oda's doing some battlefield you know, preparation of the battlefield activities and uh and General Tony was the guy I had to brief, you know, And it is interested because I you know, he we got were we knew each other, had a long time to get a haircut at that point in time or well, of course I did get a

haircut at that point in time, but it was just that funny. Yeah. Well it's interesting too because you know, prior to the g Watt right, like, you know, you'd see guys from maybe debt A and Germany or whatever that, but but relaxed grooming standards wasn't a thing. And and and you know maybe with like Delta or whatever, but but in general, lack grooming standards was like like people didn't like it. They didn't. It

wasn't a thing. And it wasn't until we became more active, I guess, you know, as a force on the world stage, where where it became just more of an accepted practice. Dude, I had I had a memo from my commander that said, I was'm relaxed grooming standards and like I got kicked out of post gyms, like you can't work out here really. Well, it's like the SF guys at Fort Campbell, you know, if you didn't wear the ankle over the ankle white sox, Serge majors would chase

you down and and that. But what like what it's so crazy like the things that especially a peacetime military, I mean even in the wartime. I remember I remember uh a uh bogram how once like major commands that settled in how everybody was supposed to wear a PT belt at all hours and that's the nature of it, right, But let's be honest. When when I went

to Delta, right we say relaxed groomy standards. What you want to do anywhere when you go when you're a new person, is you want to fit in right and you want to assume the identity of the people ahead of you. So back in the day when I went, you know, talking about nineteen ninety ish, that the Delta uniform was to grow your air longer. And you couldn't have a beard, but you grew that mustache out further than

you could. Now. It wasn't supposed to go down like this, but you could go past the ends of the borders of your lips, which the military, you know, the rest of the military, uh didn't allow. And then what else the polo shirt and the straight legged, three button five oh one jeans and the hush puppy high top shoes. So what you're doing

is I'm not wearing a uniform because I need to blend in. But what I'm doing is wearing an exact form, right, just a different uniform, right, and and and and we did that religiously, and we thought, and what did I tell myself, I'm blending in? Yeah, like that, But what I really wanted to be do was to be identified with those people other people that I saw, right and then, and I think that was true. I mean that was true of like every organization and that tried

to blend in. Is that all of their here was either from Arii or North Face like it was. It's also it's also here, but it's also yeah yeah, yeah, that's yeah. But it's all five to eleven and Arii and you know, and well that used to be the thing in the agency when I was out there that you know, then you the agency before somebody would go to the war zone. They give you this uh payment to go out and buy clothes. So a lot of people went to Orvius or

like you said, Arii, but a lot of to Orvius. And you see that guys show up. It's wearing the Fisherman shirt, the car new Cargo pants and Keene or whatever brand boots and all that stuff. It's all brand new stuff. And you that you know, and that's and and look

what they're doing their job. One of my favorite stories is about it's from the Indians and the Pakistanians went to war in Kashmir and I think it was nineteen ninety nine and the Indians, like their mountaineer troop shows up at an Arii in the UK and they're like, yeah, we want this and we're going to be in the mountains. We need this and that, and they're like, oh, you need this, this, and this, and they're like, oh, how do you know that? They're like, oh,

the Pakistinians, we're here a week ago. Yeah, what it's like in Uh, when I went to coast to open up the Coast base in Afghanistan, we parachuted in all these the cias sent all these crates that we parachuted in that had you know, in addition to the arms and ammunition, we're clothing winter clothing because nobody had winter clothing. So we're getting all these things that have the parkas, the field jackets, boots, Uh, what's the browns? Poly polypro, wool caps, booney caps, all that stuff.

So you know, we start giving it out. Well here we are used to Americans, and we had to hold a class because next thing you know, here it comes guys out wearing polypro on top of their of their other clothes and there's a guy wearing a booney cap and on top of that is a wool cap stuck on top of that. And when it was like comical, stuff is like, okay, we have to give him a class on

how to wear the globes. Yeah, it's crazy, it's you're you're absolutely right, that like it becomes a look and by the time it ends up on like twelve inch action figure g I Joe's that it like it's a look

A lot of people are trying to repel. Well, I wouldn't even I mean by the time it, you know, ends up in Brooklyn where all of a sudden, beards are super fashionable again and everybody's wearing some sort of everybody's wearing a schimager, you know, some sort of you know, something around their neck, you know, when it's like part of hips or culture. Like, Wow, this is really progressed from you know, because we you know, it's about that we all want to be part of some group

and identified with some way. Sure, and it's I think even some ways

subconscious that we sure. Absolutely, Yeah, Gary, I'd like to like, since we're a little bit jumping around, but I would like to jump back into into your time dealing with Syria, because like that's a period that I'm kind of fascinating but fascinating and have some experience in precisely because you tell us about like what your intersection was with the Syrian conflict, civil war, whatever you'd like to call it a little complicated, but we're when did that

come up on your radar? Sou for me in as early as like twenty eleven, super earlier that I came back from the country I've been in for the last two years and was assigned to New East Division and the office that handled three countries, Syria and a couple other countries, a couple other No Iraq it did. It did not include Iraq, and it did not include Turkey, and it did not include Lebanon because that was that EU r U

europe Folk base. So but they said at the beginning, well, you got all this wartime experience, and things in Iraq aren't going well, and we think that will become the next hotspot, the next place. So we want you on to be here early to be able to set the table, you know, sort of like I did in the military, right to to step into to build this up, so to transition ultimately when things get bad enough, into a task force to you know, to focus on Syria.

So so that's what I did, and you know, regular stuff for a while, and then gradually things started deteriorating in Syria. What does that look like as you move from like phase zero operations to like, you know, kind of phase four. Maybe you know, I really think your Special Forces training really helps you see that. Maybe we're people around me didn't so you

could see that. And I think one of the first things for me, and given my experience in Yemen and given my experience in Afghanistan, one of the very first things I said was, Hey, this eventually is going to get big enough, it's going to shift to the military. So what I want to do is from the beginning, I said, I want to include so calm and socks sent in on what we're discussing. We can get people the right classifications to talk about it, but we need to engage them from

again, because how does it always start in a conflict? The CIA comes in first, it's under covert action authorities, so we start right, and then we go up that ramp and hostilities escalate right and then at some point it turns over generally too special forces first and then to bigger army. So having been in the conflicts I'd been, and I was like, let's make this a little less difficult. Let's make it. Let's include them at the

beginning. So there's a smooth transition, but you know, organizational differences and the folks above me in the CIA, We're like, no, we can't know, we can't do that. And you know, at some point I went with somebody down to brief at at at SITCOM and in later so calm. But the first time I was like, let's just share and talk about it. It's like, no, we're not gonna tell them everything, and uh. And I was a little bit disappointed with that. But you know,

I understand. You know, the military has it's it's uh in some areas, doesn't trust the agency completely. You know. It was my experience in Afghanistan with John mulholland and the whole reason I got put in there, and it's the same with the Agency in the army. And having been in both, I see why there is some justification for each of those. But I feel that the overall effort for the United States suffers one of the humorous things. And I hope that whoever this guy is, sorry, I don't

remember your name, or maybe it's a good I don't. But you know, I'm sitting now in this Agency office when we're gonna detail a fifth group team to the Agency to go do some initial stuff there. So I'm like, wow, things have changed. I'm not that guy. Now I'm on this end, you know. And this team shows up and you know, I'm I'm I'm proud of my fifth group guys, and I want them to

show a good face. And and they come in and they start processing, and then like the second or third day, there's a guy that comes in in a suit and he's wearing those five fingered and a suit that's we didn't tie. Yeah, And he came in and I'm like and and of course people and astre looking at me, like, heyse are you And I was like, what are you doing? And he said, I got blisters because I don't wear dress shoes. And I bought those dress shoes and game here

and I got blisters the first two days, so I'm wearing knees. And I said, oh no, no, no, you go home. You're a hotel whatever, and get on. I don't care what other shoes it is, but you're not coming in here that way. I said, you represent your group and uh and he so we sent him back. No, I'm gonna tell you, I hate to say this haven't been one, but if it wasn't an officer, who's the next guy? You would guess the

next position on a team warrant officer. It was the medic So so the five fingers, if you guys haven't seen them, they're they're basically like athletic shoes that have a slot for each toe, but they're just it's like it's they're like wearing like rubber ballets birds with with us with each of the five time. At that time, there was a there's an artifact of the time that Yeah, I mean they were great for the gym, you know, they were they were great for what they were for, which was working out

that that's what they were. You know, then that might might be old school, no, but but to where when the suit is ridiculous, you'd be better off whar in your O D green jungle boots. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, Yeah, that was so there's a bit of a culture clash, is what you're saying. And the whole serial thing for me with just reminiscent of of of Lebanon as as a marine of what happened with the coal, of what happened with Yemen, it will Yemen,

and then thirteen hours oh Benghazi, Benghazi. It was you know, sort of the same thing that I got feeling I was somewhat more experienced and unconventional warfare. At the very beginning, I was arguing about how we were

going to prosecute the war in Syria. And there was this big group of people led by I think a lot of people on the National Security Council and Hillary Clinton at the State Department, and senators like McCain that were really pushing the Free Syria Army as the people that the America needs to tie up with. And the Free Syrian Army was of a group of retired Sunni generals that lived the good life in Turkey, and they claimed they had all this access

and influence inside Syria. And the appeal to people, to senators and senior government officials was that hey, here's somebody in Turkey that I can fly into Turkey, go have a nice dinner and sit down with these people and talk about mutual goals and how they can help, and I can promise them money and I've achieved what I need to achieve for my personal and national political right. And you know, I was arguing that based on my experience, that

it's not that general outside that used to be out there. It's the guy on the battlefield that's going to gain influence. And then when we started seeing I forget what we called them at first before they became liceis the trained guys trained at the Afghan terror camps, the Corussian group. Yet the Corrossan group came into Syria that those it helped, those local commanders become the people that

had the influence on the ground. And we all know you lead from the front and that you know, politicians may talk about the big picture and guys in in Turkey, but it's the other people that are in the game popularity. And I disagreed with the way we prosecuted that in you know, I felt that if we're going to get involved, we should send teams to go and you stay and you live, and you you're there for the duration and

you go. But you know, we've just morphed as a society, as a in the national defense arena where it's easier to build bases in Jordan or surrounding countries and pull people out and you send people for ninety days, you know, because that's not disrupting everybody too much. And so I can go here and I can have my gym and my chow hall and train people for ninety days and you know, we'll all feel good about sending them. That's exactly what happened. And I was against that, but you know that was

main interagency programs in Turkey and Jordan. And I mean, I've had a lot of people from CIA, and I don't think there's really such a controversial view, but I'd be interested here your take on it. People said that we got involved, that we got invested in the civil war, the Scherian Civil War, way too late, that maybe if we had invested a little bit earlier on, we could have found quote unquote moderate rebels, but by the time that we did get involved, it was kind of too late.

All those so called moderates had all the defected to extremist sides because they were the ones that had the cloud, they were the ones who had the funding from the Gulf States, and that, like we had just gotten involved, we missed the ball on it. And well, if we're going to get

involved, we gotten involved in a real way too late. But even in the beginning I questioned why, And I'll tell you that from what I gathered coming from the National Security Council and the White House and the State Department, was that the people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and other people that are still players in National Security Council, that they all considered Libya a big, a big win for them because the President said he should go they're a little

they're a little And so I know some of the details about how and what happened in Libya, and so from my standpoint, it was an abject failure. And there and we had no influence in Libya right after zero with our boy after well and and and here's the reason why. Again, my whole thing about these generals in Turkey is that the US wanted to be involved, but not really involved. So when you're the guy that whispers in the guy's ear that you should do this and that, but you're not the guy that

will go out with him and do it. Yeah, you're not the guy he's going to turn to when it chips her down. So when Libya ended, we had no influence. And but then politically and in the press at home, Libya was a success. Right, President says this, The good daffy went down, and we didn't do a whole lot other than wink air strikes and right, yeah, but then it was like so this is what we're gonna do. And because I was like, do we really need to

get rid of a side? Right? Do we really? Because we have this, But then there's that the I think the backside of that that I don't know how many people talk about, is that we upset a lot of our allies in the Arab world, particularly in UAE and Saudi Arabia and cutter because we took you know, Iraq, which was Shia majority but ruled by Sunni minority, but somewhat stable, right, and we flipped it, and we flipped it all right, and it was it was it was mostly secular,

you know, like say what you want, like Saddam. Saddam was a horrible person, Yeah he was, but then he and and he liked to talk about his heritage back to you know, through the Quran and everything. Right, But but and it was and it was a Kiran. I'm in no way saying that he was a good person or there were benefits to him, but but it was but it was a it was a mostly secular like he didn't care about religions so much as he cared about Stath Party,

Communist party guy. Yeah. Yeah, But but when we when we look at that at a side, people saw the opportunity and and and to me, yeah, yeah, I really try to stay out of the political realm. But I view I became to view this as all political right that there were people that we're looking at possibly potential future presidential runs, and and a current president that like that, wait a minute, If I make this statement and he must go or here's my line and we make that happen, then

I've won a political It's a big farm. And and like I said, those three Arab countries put a lot of pressure on us that you took a Sunni ruled country and flipped it over to Shia. Well, next door here is a Sunni country ruled by Shia. So let's balance the legend. The other interesting wrinkle in that too is the Russians also that we told them that this is not going to be a regime change operation in Libya, but pretty

much from day one we were engaging a regime change operation. Libya was the biggest, if not maybe the second biggest client state of the Russian military hardware after Gadaffi's gone. Next one up is Syria right where they where they have they're only well yeah, they're only warm water port. Yeah yeah, and it's and it's Russia's second, Yeah, I believe second. Yeah, it would have been second large just quine of military hardware. So and they got

involved in both of those countries. And then the whole Iran thing was yeah, yeah, it was Yeah, it was a mess. And you know, I didn't understand why we really had to go with that. But but I'm a military at heart, a military person that if we're going to do it, then here's the way we should do it. And I'm I'm for let's go for it, all right, and not this let's pressure from the

borders right here and are on my and and it's never gonna work. Yeah, and and and it's weird that we have this, this fascination with the Middle East, and is you know, overthrowing these regimes, these tyrants,

and they are you know, they they are dictators. But we don't provide a viable solution after that, like if if when we look at Libya, like not saying that life was great under Kadafi, but it didn't get much better after him, when you consider that they reopened the slave markets in Tripoli, like it got bad, and you know, even Libya, which we

would consider a third world country, refused American diplomatic efforts at first. We won't even see him, right, So yeah, yeah, and now, and it's really funny that I think during the Obama administration, we people like to ridicule the Bushes uh foreign policy with Bush rice, where it was, let's make the places that are hot beds for terrorists, uh, for for building terrorists and and creating terrorists and make them into viable countries where that people

can have are in a living and be more democratic, and then we won't have the things that So that was all the Bush doctrine because was ridiculed. But yet here we went in stay that's sort of the same thing. We go to Libya to do this. Now we go to Syria right right, and it's like in these places that that are dictat it's almost the opposite where the Bush doctrine was naive and the idea that we can go in and sort of you know, give these places like a means to not be these terrorist

hot beds. You know, we flipped it with the Obama administration too. Let's go to these places that you know are stable but not not sort of our definition of stable or the way we want them to be stable and make them unstable and then and then we've got the same issues. Yeah, it's our foreign policy. I think throughout history has been just very misguided. You know. I feel like in World War One and World War Two, we

understood, like we understood what need to be. If you break it, you buy it, and then you said it right, and and since then we've just been kind of this half, you know, toes in until we we decide that it's too cold, let's back out, leave it to it to themselves. That might almost be like not the worst thing in the world to like see like, well, who's gonna win and then we'll bat But instead it's like we kind of go all in and it turns into a big

shit show. I think last time I had mentioned that I had an argument with a Taliban guy. Before that, I was seeing this guy and he was really pissed with me, and he said, you know, in the a these we work together and we defeated the Russians, and then you abandon us, so now you're here fighting us. It's not our fault you abandon us. And I said, yeah, but that's America. Yeah, right, just you know, if you if it's China, okay, you got a twenty five year and a fifty year plan. But in America we have

a four year or eight year plan. Yeah, and we're That's just the way it is America, and honestly, we shouldn't apologize for it. And I have come to think that the way American politics is the way our society runs, and and and I'd say politics, but it's politics as it affects our national defense strategy, that we would be better off at a opting a more a stance, more like Israel does, which is to tolerate x amount of punishment or aggression, and then when it reaches a certain point, we're

gathering intelligence and we're doing that, we're gonna go and we're gonna make a strike and we're gonna decimate some centers and disrupt and set you back, and then we're pulling out. Now, we're not going to fix your country. We're not going to try to stabilize it, we're not going to try to rebuild it, we're not going to try to do any of this. It's

really punitive and disruptive. But then you don't wind up in the twenty year conflict and you we're in right now with Niger and the coups happening, and we have a couple of drone bases there that we I don't want to maintain, and yeah, it becomes a foreign entanglement. What right we are? Wrong? Way? But I mean we keep doing it. Yeah, So towards the end of your time at the agency, you had a senior ops job. I don't want to put any words in your mouth, but what

can you say about that? So, you know, I think I made, you know, with the agency a lot of things going on. I think religiously, I was being pushed. My faith was pushing me towards things that were unsettling me. And I became discouraged after I had some success on some pretty high level operations in the agency. You know, That's where I started really seeing what the folks in the National Security Council and at the from

the White House and the Department are saying. And I'm up on, you know, in briefs on the seventh floor and and I'm like, it's not What was that conflict for you? Was that a question of like the truth isn't being told? Or was it a question of like your morality feeling like it was well, I would say it's some of both. I think the morality part was more maybe personal, and that I was a person very focused on getting a mission done, so I believe the I would do whatever it

took to get a mission accomplished. Now that sometimes came into conflict with who I believed I was on the inside and spiritually. And there comes a point where you've if you've lived that life for so long, that you've become in so much conflict with yourself. It starts manifesting itself and emotional, mental,

physical as that outreach. But then for me, just the hypocrisy of it all that we all want to believe that we're doing the nation's work, we're defending the people were there, and we're willing to give our lives for our fellow citizen. And then when you start seeing that the weight or impact that politics has over that, and when you see lives lost, and some of that may the root cause of that may have been political or personal professional and

you know greed or you know desire to get ahead reasons. It starts. It's not a good feeling bad right, Like I ate that steak, but damn it was something wrong with it, so that you know that that all started having its impact on me. And you know, I was in this job where you know, I came back from this country. I thought, yeah, I think I'm gonna look at something different. So I took a job that was a senior leadership job. It was the ops officer for a

group uh in the agency. But but it was not it was not one of those get ahead political jobs that you need to have to move to the senior levels in the agency. And I, you know, a lot of friends said, why aren't you doing this, because like all my buddies and people at I'd done some stuff with We're in really key positions in the agency, and so you're doing this And I was like, yeah, because I'm

doing it because I got a change. And you know, I think I knew that I wanted to get out, but I sort of needed some time and space to do that. Also, like moving a little bit away from the kinetic operations. Yeah, for me, yeah, I'd been in super high stress. Now it's it changed. I was in operational stress, either from being undercover or chasing a significant target and having everybody in the from the president down in my business every day that that you know, super high stress

too. Now it shifted where I guess I took that energy and focused it back on the leadership of this group that was hurting. The agency does not develop doing a good job developing leaders And I went back to the basic leadership that I learned as a Marine officer, and I felt I was making an impact. There were you weren't using CS on them though when they weren't, I know I didn't. I didn't use CS and I did. I would like to say that it was a hard and long learning curve for me,

but I think I did eventually learn. And uh so, you know, I just focused on the leadership thing, and but I kind of used that time to to start thinking about there's got to be something different as as somebody who you know had a pretty illustrious and unique career in the military. I mean, you were an officer, then you went enlisted, and then you know, you were in the agency, and you saw sort of both sides

of that. Do you we like I get the impression, I don't want to speak for Jack, I get the impression that it's very hard to move into the general officer arena or the sis arena without I don't want to say selling your soul, but without becoming a sort of a spoke in the wheel. If it were you know that that play the game, that you have to make certain compromises, would you say that's true? Or would you say

that my impression is false? Like what was you? Because you have a lot more persiand knowledge than I ever would on this, you know, so I would say a that that is true, there are compromises. Is that much be reached? But I think my life experience says that you know, it is this constant give and take between close end focus and a wider focus. When I was a young lieutenant, my focus was like this, and that's what Marine Corps wanted from me. My focus is like that. Then

you start getting more senior, you start looking wider. You know, as a platoon commander, there were times I ordered my people to do certain things or adhere to certain things, and sometimes I did not really believe in what I ordered them to do, but I was ordered to do that, and so my vision went wider. And then, through either your seniority you rise in authority and rank, you have to have that wider vision that a leader has to see not just what needs to be focused on, but what's to

the left and right and what's over the horizon. That worked for me in

Yemen, and it's worked for me in some other places. The I think the challenge of senior officers is that you can get so focused on that wide thing that then when something key comes up that needs to be narrowly focused on, you might miss that and it's like do we have That's where I feel like a lot of foreign militaries and places like the agency fall short, is that there's not enough development and that nco lower level leadership thing where that these

people can leave it to them and trust them like you know, uh, you know in a delta squadron, that troop that's gonna do this part of that hit, they got it, you know, And this troop's going to make that assaultant aircraft that that that's it. You know, officer, you can come under this aircraft after we clear it and tell you to come up, and and that's you know, we need that wide view of leadership,

but you also have to have it tied to here. And uh, I think that's that's the the challenge for senior officers, you know, And and you know, God help them. There's some that do a damn good job of that and there's some that that don't. And I feel, you know, I can say, you know, I personally don't think that people in charge now do that. I think they've sold their souls to the political side.

And you know, one of the things that we wanted to ask you about, and I think you wanted to talk about a bit, was with that you just touched upon, was, you know, some of the key takeaways from your experience across the Marines, the Army, Central Intelligence Agency, you know, even philosophically speaking, What were some of the big things that you came away from that experience with that you don't have to share with people. For me, one of the things is lessons I think I learned.

It was about judging people. Again, we mentioned earlier that when you're younger, everything's black and white, and I think I used to make pretty snapped judgments about people. I think my first lesson that that might not be the right approach was as a Marine officer. I had a guy in my first infantry platoon who was overweighted. Now we're talking to the eighties, right, and he parted his hair in the middle. Now, you know, in the eighties, if a guy parts his hair in the middle, he's a

doper. And I mean that's how you know he parts his hair in the middle, he's a guy to be a doper. And and he was a little overweighted, and he just wasn't that image of the marine. Yeah, and he was a problem at guy, always gotten trouble and getting arrested. And this I, you know, had to go down to the jail and see him a few times, and you know, so I made certain judgments about him, and I put him on my list of I'm going to do

my best to get this guy out. But then I looked into his record and I'm like, hey, well this guy, you know, his first assignment is in Okinawa and he goes into a burning laundromat and saves some old Okinawan woman that was watching people's clothes in there and out, you know, and he gets some award for that. And I'm like, wait a minute, here's this and here's that. And then my young in my youth, I thought those two things can't go together. You have to be the squared

away guy. That's that's strack and and this way to be that, and then you know, I had to reevaluate my assessment of this young guy. And you know, I remember calling him in and saying like, hey, I read this about who are you? Because here's what I see, but who are you? And then I learned he just didn't fit that mold or

think the way I thought. So I gave him some kind of like kind of admin duties and stuff and quit expecting what I thought I should out of a young hardcore charging marine and he performed well, and I was like,

wow, I didn't know that. And then if you go forward a bunch of years later to being me being kicked out of Delta and having to go places or want, you know, explain myself and my career to other people that I want to to trust me and and and give me jobs, that I was like, wow, you know, I really hope people don't judge you just parts of their hair in the middle. Yeah, as the guy

that parts the hair in the middle. I just want to say that in the eighties, front of you here in the middle and feathering was very fashionable. I'm I'm not saying there are any photos of me like that going around. I'm just saying it was fashionable and it may it may have been, but but it's young marine. Yeah, So you know, I think that was a big thing for me. The other thing was, you know, just different different perspectives, like, I'm lucky enough to be here with you

guys and telling my story. But there are tens of thousands of people and they all have those stories, and they may be different in the detail and the location, but their stories. And we're in the military, right, so we're we all got a really focused life experience for whatever number a year in some peculiar incubators, and but we're no better. There's no delta operator

that's any better than any cook in the army. Different job, different motivations, different drivers, but if both do their job well, that man is no better than the other man. And those of us in the military or intelligence agencies who have been fortunate enough to go forth and live these dreams and these these adventures, but what about the people back here that are sitting at home working in the factory. They're really no different than we're no better than

them. And I think sometimes we can close ranks about what we've done and who we are and say that other people aren't the same as us. They don't know, they haven't lived it, so they're not there to speed.

Yeah, yeah, and yeah that's true. But you know, when when I first you know, I think in the first episode, I talked about my rural background, my family, and when I was traveling around the world and seeing the sights of the world, and I've been to the Great Buddha, I've been to Shinto shrines, I've been to some of the biggest things sites that a person should see, and and thought, wow, how fortunate am I and how disadvantaged are my relatives that are living back in you know,

Stony Point or Taylorsville or Hickory, North Carolina, and that I'm really seeing the world as it is. Then I but eventually I realized, no, you know, they have lives, they have family, they have church, they have community, they're happy, they're contributing to life. My life is really you know, in some ways my life is different, but in some ways it's not as good as theirs. You know, the person I admired the most is my brother, who never started a day in the military.

He's been a great family guy, worked for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, been a pharmaceutical salesman for a lot of years, never did any of the things that I did. But you know, you know, I feel very privileged to be where we are and the brotherhood that we're in. But you know, I don't think it's it's any better than other people. Is different, and it's fortunately we don't see those guys, and there's no podcast

focusing on this, right not right. I think that and we've talked about this for I think one of the things that you know, people in our field have to admit, is it there there was an amount of selfishness to our lives that we we were doing exactly what we wanted to do, and we left family, We left people behind, with wives behind, some of the left kids behind, Like we left people behind to go do Like we can say it was all for the service and was all for the count,

and it was but for us, but but we also did it for us, like we all either grew up wanting to do this or at some point, you know, some way alongline, decided we wanted this life of high adventure or whatever, and we did it. And it's like you could look at Lewis and Clark and say, yeah, you know, they did these things by exploring the States. But they also wanted to do that, like

they weren't nobody compelled them to do that. And and so you know, and one when you're talking about people in the conventional military or parts the agencies, in the intelligence community, the logs people, the cooks, the mechanics, the people that don't get any credit but were especially like out in Afghanistan and Iraq. They were out there working in a one hundred ten degree weather.

Or cooks who like get up at three in the morning to start food prep, like nobody appreciates them, but but they work their asses off, you know, mechanics out there fixing vehicles in Iraq. Nobody wants to be that person the air conditioning Yeah. Good guy, Yeah, a good guy. I like him. Yeah. And they were every bit as as you

know, as significant to the war effort. And then even outside the military, you're right, like people who are grounded and who have roots in who have just dedicated their lives to their families and to their careers and to their community. Like there's no superiority that I think the people from the military and the special operations community can like ward over we we we chose our paths just like they choose their past, and no neither path is superior to the other.

I think our stories are generally more fun, you know what I mean, they're they're they're different, you know if you like, have you ever like when I went to the agency, you know, you try to blend in. Okay, So I was a little bit older than most of the people I was around, and people are sitting around telling stories, and you know, eventually, like I generally asked the quiet, but eventually you wouldn't

tell a story. So here's people telling stories about this time where I was doing this where I was almost scared to death and all that, and then so like then they turn to you, so you won't tell a story. So you tell a story about somebody dying on a free fall, like or somebody splatting on a free fall accident, or don't like that, and then they all go and then you realize and everybody just shuts up. Yeah,

and it's like and then like, here's another subject. Well, well one time, you know, I did this thing with these women, and you're like, yeah, well one time, and then like and everybody it then't after a while you're like, yeah, it's like it's like, but but

it's that context thing. It's like people tell these stories but like, well, okay, maybe not everybody came into contact with dead bodies and other things, and so it's like, yeah, yeah, you have to learn to like yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's uh that's come into cont A lot of people have learned when they get out of the military. Is it your stories are not like the same? Yeah? Literally, like you really need to read the wrong But that goes with the other.

I'm curious as to your two transitions. Like for me, I was so mission focused and and let's be honest, my when I went to Asot was right after my first wife left me and took off with my kids, and uh, I was I was not in a good place right, So adventure, excitement and all these other things come my way, and it's a way of putting all that behind me. I was mission focused for from nineteen ninety eight until two thousand eleven. I was just mission, mission, mission mission.

I would go to a place and I would focus my life on that mission, and I would live that mission, and I don't care what happens back home. I've given my parents power of attorney whatever happened, happens, and I'm just here to do this mission and I was successful. And then in the government I got in the agency, I continued being successful. But it's like, Okay, I can write a proposal and get funded for this, and in the government, given permission, authority and money, I can

make all kind of things happen, really successful, good things. When I left the agency, I thought, I just apply that same focus to civilian life and I'm going to be successful. And I was like, and that's not the way it has worked for me. And I'm used to life doesn't matter mission and then well, I think the struggle I've had over the last but seven eight years after leaving the agency is that, Wow, it's not the mission and end result isn't as important as that daily grind, routine and

process. And it's like, wait, I'm never a processed person. I'm a mission focused, results oriented person and I'll do this And it's like, yeah, well, you know what I know. And you also have time to fill your life with something the whole rest of your life. And it's

like, what does that consist of? Yeah, well, and for me, you know, to be honest, at this point, some of that is cooking and cleaning and shopping and real trying to establish a business and doing this and that and all the other things and taking care of the dog and all that stuff, and it is like, you know, and and to be honest, for years, it's like, ah, I'm crazy because I need to focus on a mission. Yeah, and like how I do it? Like this, I gotta stop, you know, Yeah, And it's

it's a hard, hard transition. And I think some of the issues we have with PTSD and the suicide rate for veterans is is tied in some respects to that. You know, I agree with you, Like I don't. I don't even know if, like if we can split between TBIES and post traumatic stress and then the lack of purpose and mission, Like I don't even know how those threads can be entangled to say what is post traumatic stress?

But some they've called it the operator syndromes, the combination of PTSD and t B I. But but also, but again, like you say, there's also that existential thing of even if I find a mission, even if I find a purpose and something like that, the stakes are so much lower, Right, how do I how do I care about something where the stakes are so low, you know, you see and and not in look like human

suffering is all relevant. So it's not to say when you're under heavy fire that that somebody undergoing office drama that they're not feeling the same stress levels because there's almost there's only so much stress we can feel. And I had those of the agency that you know people I supervise that and you know, and

it was hard for me. Yeah, it's hard to relate and you're okay, yeah, it's it's hard to relate, and it's hard not to dismiss sit, you know, because you do have to have that empathy to realize it. It looked just because their life is an online doesn't mean that they don't feel like distress and things like that. But yeah, I agree with you, like, but there there is an element, I believe, and I certainly don't want to be misinterpreted or to come across as as implying that

there's an ego factor to PTSD. But but there's a thing of and I get this from former Marines they you know, before combat, you know, back recon Marines. I know that that was my life. That was when I was my best best, That was when I was who I was, and that's when I met everything and nothing I've done since counts or matters,

and I just wish I was back there. And I think that it's and particularly for people in roles that aren't maybe combat related, but that are adjunct to that or close to it, participants in it, that that here I am now and everything I do is valued and worthwhile and means this and now after I'm this, yeah, and this is and this is who I am,

and that's you know, that's that's a sad thing. And and and what bothers me now is that as veterans, it seems like we have taken on a tenor of like almost this power of darkness, and that our service needs to be couched in the damage it's done to us and and and the hardships we face, and that those are real, They are real people suffering

every day. But what I hope that that we could do as a group of veterans is to focus on the experiences I have equipped me for this world that is changing, this world that faces some probable uncertainty and difficult times to come. And no one is better able to face those and meet those challenges than we, Based on the experiences we had, so I am not crippled by my experience. I am am prepared empowered by it. Can also provide

like a contrast to appreciate, like our lives today. How fortunate are we to live in a country like this and to be able to like raise a kid in a world like this or in a country like this. Yeah, and it might not be like perfect, but yeah it's pretty good. Yeah. Or I might not be the guy that's out doing it, but I might be the guy that's explaining this experience too much, right so that they well, you're you're honestly right now you're also explaining it to other young soldiers

and giving them a sort of pathway. Yeah, and civilian. And you know, it's interesting because you mentioned something that I don't think is like brought up enough. Is that like we talk about you know, combat arms, particularly special operations, but combat arms in general, like going from sixty to

zero into the civilian life. But if you're if you're like a cook who loves your job, like a military cook who loves your job, and you know the people you're cooking for, and you like you know what you're doing in particularly in a combat zone, where like food is literally like it's a huge it's a huge morale issue, right, or you're a mechanic out sweating your ass off for a logs officer who's moving or logs person who's like moving

stuff constantly, and then you like and you know you're contributing to the fight, even if you're at trading lead, you know, downrange or whatever, but you know you're contributing the fight. And then you come out in the civilian world and you have a job, like you can get into logistics or into the culinary field or whatever. Does it Does it have the same feeling for somebody who's cooking for a restaurant, you know what I mean? It

has something, there's something there. But but but the thing is, is it I'm sure that you know, we haven't really talked about that much, but I'm sure there's something for those people too who have who have you know, gone from use support roles in those environments and feeling that same purpose and that same I'm given one hundred and ten percent for you know, for this effort, and then I'm out and you know, you deal with the world

is feeling. Yeah, it's it's a challenging environment. Do we have questions? For Gary? I just realized, actually real, Quicky, what are you working on now? Like what's uh where are you now? And what are you working on? Because you're working on some kind of exciting things right, Well, I hope they're exciting. Uh. So you know, for me, you know, we've been talking about our past experiences and what that does for you, and and I guess I believe that it's not like why

did I go through the things I went through? The good things, the bad things, the hardships. Uh, there are many, you know, some we didn't talk about over these two podcasts and your death experiences where I somehow made it through and came out, What's what's the reason for that? And you know, I guess that I came to view that as that the lessons I learned from those experiences. You know, we all went overseas to

fight against terrorists or what we perceived as bad people. Why because we wanted to go over there and fight the enemies so that the people back here would have a peaceful, relaxing life, so that people could be safe and have peace of mind here. Well, so we all learned special skills and principles

and techniques to do that. But then things changed doing when we started, you know, back, you know, some years ago, with a few with terror attacks here, you know, I'm telling Post nine eleven, like the couple that shot people and in San bernard San Bernardino and some of the other terror attacks. Well, now due to changes in law enforcement and policing and stuff, we have random violence. We have more acts of random attacks

and mass shootings and all these things. So now the things that we all fought for to keep away from home, they're here, and any of our loved ones are a turner two, or a neighborhood or two, or an incident or two away from running into a potentially deadly conflict or action or circumstance.

So I started thinking that how do we take what we all earned, all those principles that you learn through all your training and all your expertise and techniques, and convert that over into a system or a way that families here can take advantage of those you know, I think it's not just that we that our society has become more violent and there's more animosity towards each other, but it's also a fact that our youth are more distracted and have less learning

opportunities than we did. So we have, on one hand, a group of potential victims our families that are less prepared, and on the other hand, we have a society that is more inclined towards violence, and those two

interact. So what I did was trying to take the lessons and the principles and techniques that I learned and developed both for myself and then later when I had a family living undercover in some foreign countries to keep myself and my family safe, provide for security and self sufficiency right into a system that we call the Power of Prudence. So that is all those principles and techniques that we learn adopted to families here, and we'll be releasing that soon a course from

the Power of Prudence that's called the Prudent Parenting Course. So what that does is walk people like us or younger parents through the process of how to mentor those same principles and some of the habits and techniques that we all know into their children's daily lives so that they are more able to take care of themselves. That'stic. How do you like, how do you sort of divide that teaching kids prudence and being that parent from just being paranoid and worried all the

time about everything. You know, one of the things I teach people like I travel and work with individual families and some family offices to teach these subjects. And I said, no, you know, when I tell you these things and I show some random attacks and stuff, I'm not saying that you live your life like this looking around all the time for an attack. You can't live that way forever and be saying or healthy. So you have to

learn when to relax and when to dial it on. But but yet some of the things that we're teaching our kids, like today, Hugo and I were driving up here from Virginia and we stopped at a rest stop to eat, and there was a mother that had her stroller with twins in it, and I would say they were maybe one and a half two years old. And these twins each had identical iPads them from and they were just like like

this. So, you know, we we start at an early age of indoctrinating our kids, pacifying our kids to be involved in this and not what's around me. And part of that thing is that that you know, and like, so I teach like I have two young daughters, they're now fourteen and twelve. That Hey, when we go to a public place, here's our checklist we always do when we as we settle, let's look for exits. Here's the exit we came in, were alternate exits. Next thing we

look for is cover. Here's what cover is is something that protects you from bullets or projectiles. So here's what cover is, and here's what cover isn't. And then we look for concealment. So what happens if something bad happens. We're moving towards that exit, but we're using cover and concealment to get to that exit to get out. And then I you know, it just

progressives. You teach them more, and you know, those are the things you know that maybe a generation or two ago, we're inherent in people's lives, but now our society became so reliant on somebody else taking care of our safety and security that now that that's crumbling or falling apart, we're not We're not prepared. So yeah, we're are people going to be able to find these courses? Well, one of the places they're going to be able to

find it is through you. Okay, and we're gonna offer your listeners a discount to be able to pre buy this course. I haven't. Finally we have the course finished and most of it finally edited, and it will be coming out in a couple of weeks. But you know, we want to offer that to your listeners first, and then we will, you know, offer this course called the Prudent Parenting Course for sale and the other the so

at Gary Harrington dot net. They can find the Power of Prudence right, Uh, like they can find you there and some of your stuff there. But Parenting with Prudence is a prudent parenting course where parents will come out and I haven't we we haven't really put that out on social media yet and uh, but yes, that will be coming out in the next few weeks.

Fantastic. Let's hear cool questions. I did see one question or like, we can't watch the chat, but I saw somebody ask something that sounded like an inside baseball question because they wanted us to ask those They wanted us to ask you if a hot dog was a sandwich? Is a hot dog of sandwich? Yeah? Is that not a Is that not an inside Maybe they were just I figured that was an inside thing. You know, I don't know what a question, but I'm gonna say no for my personal opinion.

Yeah, but because explain your reasons scary. I think my reasons and and and God help me. I'm I'm sorry to all my friends out there who know me as a nice person. You have an opinion, it's okay, go with it. This is it, okay. So I think the hot dog versus sandwich thing is sort of that Asian versus Caucasian equation. Is the white say that one time Asian versus Caucasian equation, but the hot dog is like pretty uniquely American. I think the hot dog is kind of vertical,

uh huh, and the sandwich is kind of holding on. So is a hamburger sandwich? So a hamburger is a sandwich. It is sandwich. Yeah, I mean it makes sense. It's a hamburger sandwich, right, But it's it's all depending on perspective too, because like, how do you I mean, granted everyone you all the hot dog like that, I'm it is it is meat between two pieces of bread. Yeah, yeah, that I mean that really is like we're peeking behind the curtains into the mysteries of the

universe right now. Yeah, I'm sure that the Earl of sandwich. Yes, they did not have the technology yet to make dogs, so they made sandwich. But at that time the earl of sandwich. But in Germany at the time, were they're making brons and putting them on bread? What are they making brons or beaners? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I don't We're gonna happen. But here's the question. We're gonna next. What what we're the Chinese doing? Dude, this is racking my brain right now. We're

creaking out. I mean, pork buns, but those obviously are not a sandwich because they're enclosed. That's true. Well, come on, no no better questions than that. There's no better. Actually, we only have Louis uh Lewis Basquez with thank you your donation saying thank you. I mean he just appreciates the content. Are we talking New York NYC Ballpark hot dogs? Chicago style? I mean Chicago stat hot dogs are really the only way to

eat a hot dog the pepper. I think that the pepper on it is well, the only the only true like real sandwich is the sandwich used to get at a small race car track in southern America and that's the fried Bologny silence with onion and pepper on it. Well, I'm I'm equally a sacrilegious. I think the sausage, peppers and onions is better than a hot dog probably probably true. Yeah, well Gary, thanks, and you know again check out GARYT. Gary Harington dot. Now are you on social media?

People finding on social media? I'm on social media at on YouTube and on yeah, pretty much all the social media, not ticktime and not some of them weird ask things that but the real Gary H And you know, on YouTube and put out a lot of YouTube content. I put out YouTube content every Friday I have. Okay, so you're pretty regular. Check out Garry on the real Gary H. And you LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram. Yeah, but no, only fans. I think that's what our guests are.

Our only fans. Yeah that I mean the fans only stuff. Uh No, I I don't personally, I'm not a purveyor and yeah and I'm not yet. It's okay. You use your VPN service, not only that stuff. You know, we don't even know, we don't heard. There's some good VPNs available. VPN everybody do that, you know, and and and if you carry that the next step further, there is some good medical resources

that can help check your records to and that's important. That's important because the VA, everybody you get it to V acts like the money is coming from their pocket. So so getting medical, getting re medical is like, so actually, I actually want to note that because you know, I've I probably need to address that issue myself. Re Medicals your place, like I we did some research into them. They've got great people have said that that they've

really helped them out. Like just if you go on Reddit and see like people remdicals really help people out, It's good. You know that, either that or being a three or four star general really helps that. Yeah, if you don't have a Congress one in your pocket, medically the way to go. Why is it that all the three and four stars get one hundred percent this ability and a lot of people know did you? I didn't realize this until recently. Some told me when you're a retired four start you get

base paid for life. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. So coming up this Friday, the next episode, I'm not gonna be here. I'm going to be absent. You guys, have a story. Yeah, we have First Special Forces. That's really good. D thank you, Yeah, thanks thanks for that. Yeah we have sty Yeah you really you really hype that, you really hype that hype that for the viewers. Thanks man, Gary, thank you so much for spending a Friday or Tuesday night.

Tuesday. Yeah, thanks for driving up man. I appreciate it. To have you up again sometime. No, thanks, Hey, good to see you guys, Good to meet d and uh look forward to working with you guys in the future. So yeah, yeah, absolutely, I'm watching you guys now, so seeing but no, you know, it's it's it's interesting content and I'm also uh somewhat curious as I'm watching your podcast and your publications and I'll develop and grow. Yeah, and it's kind of good,

you know. I I kind of pull for everybody that's been one of us and doing us and trying to do something different now yeah and see how that goes. Yeah, it's it's odd. I mean throwing darts. Yeah yeah, yeah, but it's fun. I can't complain. But it's good to be throwing them instead of catching them. Yeah, there you go for sure, for sure, So uh, Dave and d will catch you guys on Friday and Gary again. Thank you so much man, and we'll see all you guys next time. Thanks everybody,