Ep. 214 | Ken Kraus | Marine Taken Hostage in Iran

All right, man ken Kraus, Welcome to the podcast. I really appreciate it. United States Marine Corps veteran, did all that stuff well known? I brought you on today because you were part of the nineteen seventy nine Iranian Revolution. You were taking hostage and all that wild stuff. Wild stuff. But I want to start before we get to that. I want to figure out, you know, more about you. I understand you're from Pennsylvania.

What drove you to join the Marine Corps. Well, it's basically I was born and raised New Jersey, South Jersey, just across the river from Philadelphia. So I mean, you know what you pick. It's just that I thought I thought you were from Lansdale. That's what I had written down. That's sir, That's where my mom and sisters were living. And I basically, when I came home from Iran, long story short, I was stayed, reapplied, I mean restationed at the Naval Air Station at Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, gotcha. So basically I was just living at home at my mom's house to the Marine Corps can figure out what they wanted to do with me, because they weren't going to post me back out to embassy duty, of course, so that's where all the news and everything came. And we were

living at that time, so it just went out that I was from Lansdale, Pennsylvania, but William from South Jersey, Oh Jersey guy. All right, So what made you want to join the Marine Corps? Then? Well, I come from a military family. My dad was a World War Two Korea Vietnam VETT in the Navy, and so it has put him both his brothers, my uncles. So I mean, I had a military background, and then went to Catholic school of course, and you know that right there about as paramilitary and the elementary school as you can get. How did your dad ever tell you about World War Two and being in the Navy. Just a couple of them, a couple of stories that were there what he did in the Navy, But basically he was a combat storekeeper and then he went

into combat construction ceabe's and some of the stories I heard him talk to my uncles about was in the Pacific because he's first they put him over in the Pacific. He was first generation German. I don't know why they should have put him over in Germany. But anyway, some of the stories I overheard when I was a young kid, is that some of the things he was doing when he was assigned to the grave registration and just digging holes and digging the graves of Americans and Japanese on Island by Island by Island, And it was really, you know, shocking to listen to that and you realize what he did. So actually battles that he was in in Okinawa and other ones.

No, he wouldn't talk too much about him. That's crazy, man. I have a buddy. I've talked about him on the podcast. He's been on a couple of times. He was in the Battle of Fallujah, Michael Hanthorne, and he was doing what did they call it casualty? He was basically cleaning up dead insurgeons for like a month. And he was like, as they were going house to house clearing how out, they were right behind them pulling dead bodies out of the house. And that's all he did.

They got a sign to do that. And I think he said his platoon cleaned up like over six hundred bodies in that month, and I'm like, dude, that's so fucked, you know. And most of the guys had guys and girls had severe PTSD and a lot of them got out of the military because of it, because I mean, how could you not after something like that. You know, you can't train for that, sir, You can't train your mind. You can train to expect it, but when you actually see it and smell it, and it's crazy. But anyway, to get back to your questions, how I got into Milkerry. My dad passed away in nineteen seventy two and it was devastating from cancer, and it really screwed up my life. And uh, before then, I was a

real good, straight a student, you know, no problems with sports or anything. And two things really drove me to where I ended up being. And one was my mom to get me off the streets of near you know, Philadelphia and whatever it was. It was nineteen seventy two, seventy three, and I had a basically wrestling scholarship or reduced a scholarship to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Because we were able to do that, it would I think it was a godsend because it kept me out of the street, kept me away from the gangs, and I was I had a chip on my shoulder and out in the book that I write about. You know, I was having a problem. So they sent me to the military Academy, very prestigious military academy. By the way, they made that movie

Taps Tom Cruise's very first movie with Sean Penn, and that movie they changed the name from Valley Forge Military Academy to Bunker Hill. But I was there when when I came back in seventy nine, they were shooting some of the scenes. It was really kind of neat. But anyway, seventy nineteen seventy three came around and for the economy overall, the Yam Kuppur War in the Middle East, you know, started up, and the Arabs overran or almost over ran Israel. And because we supported Israel in that, they cut the opek, cut the oil valves. You know, back we went from like what fifty five cents a gallon or three dollars a gallon, and the crippled the country. You couldn't find a job. You couldn't anywhere. I mean,

airline pilots were you know, furlong, and it was a bear to try to find any kind of work out there. So when I graduated in seventy four. I mean, I'm looking for, you know, where to go to find a job. And so Vietnam had not fallen yet. We hadn't we had lost or given up Saigon, the embassy in Saigon until April of seventy five. So when I was looking at it, they were winding down Vietnam and uh, you know, peace with honor thing whatever they wanted to call it. And so I thought it was a good time to join the join the military. At the point. It's funny because I went down to the a FEE Station and Fellladelphia one afternoon just to ask questions and things like that. Both my brother in laws were were veterans and had served in

Vietnam, so they had given me some advice when I went down there. And it was weird because I got down there at lifetime and long story short, Uh, the AFEE station had all of the brick the five branches you know, represented there in their office, and I guess one day out of the five they always had one n CEO or some one recruiter for the most part, always manning the offices while I went out to lunch. So I went in there and I just sat down, and that happened to be that day was a Marine sergeant that sat down and of course, you know, he gets you a cup of coffee. What can I do? And next thing you know, you're looking at the blues. You're looking at places where they're going to send you what you can do, you know and see travel

to all the exotic you know land places in the world and meet new, you know, fun people and kill them. It's funny. I've interviewed multiple people that only joined the Marine Corps because that's who the recruiter was. Was that was in their office. Nobody else was in the office. That's the fact, sir. So for all the recruiters out there, and never leave your office. You have to live there. Now, So I said, I was very staunched and saying, look, I don't I got I took the ASVAB tests. I blew it out of the water. I'm not smart, but I just had to take tests. Valley Foroyd's Military Academy should be how to take a test, you know what I mean? Yeah, anyways, I scored off the chart and said, you could be just about anything

you wanted to be if you had a college education. He we you know, we know a lot of what I'm looking to get. I said, we could make you anything, and I said, well, I need to get a contract signed, something that I don't want to go in there, you know, just driving around the tanks painting tanks for four years and get out and have you know, no job skills. So you know, basically I got the He talked me into. He was in the air wing before he went in recruiting, and so he showed me, you know, spots and things that I could be once I got in the air wing. So I was Air seventy forty one one eleven air traffic controller when I went in.

Guaranteed, now that being said, you have to pass the schools. You got to pass away your age schools, B schools or you flunk out your ass still balling to them for the length of that contract what you were watch you know, so it's an incentive to do well graduating. So with that, also, the funny thing is that at the time, this was nineteen seventy four, okay about October, I could go in on a ninety day delayed enlistment, which is good because I wanted to. I want to spend my last Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas at home. The January seventy five start. So you know, my hat will say, you know, seventy five, but really, you know, three months earlier, no big deal.

And I knew that. I was also totally informed from brother in laws and whatnot that I didn't have to go to Paris Island. It's almost a guaranteed thing that if you were joined the Marine Corps, enlisted or draft that you had a eastern in Mississippi, You're gonna end up in Paras Island, South Carolina. And heard a lot of the nightmare stories about that, saw some of those movies, and I go, is there any place else we can deal with this ship? So he said, no, we have a certain amount of billets that uh that they can every month. If you want to western of Mississippi, you can go to San Diego, you know.

So you know, did you want sand, fleas and chiggers and swamps and heat and then there all that stuff, you know, where you get the same training and become the same qualification to become a marine. I said, hew, san Diego, it's uh nice and sunny. It's a you got the mountains out there. Never been there before. I've never been out of the you know, New Jersey for the most part and up until that, up until that time. So I said, yeah, you know, I'll take that. So that's right with the boot camp out Hollywood. Nice.

Yeah, it's funny. I actually requested Parris Island because I had read about it all the books I'd read about with like Carl's Hathcock, who's a snipe sniperscuse me, Chesty Pooler, you know, the famous Chesty Pooler. Yeah, he went to Paris Island and he was actually a drill instructor at Paris Island, so all these things. I was like, you know, this is like a historic place. I want to go there. So I told my recruiter because I'm from Indiana, and anybody that lives in Indiana goes normally goes to San Diego, and even though we're east of the Mississippi, that was always kind of a weird thing. So I told my recruiter. I was like, Hey, I want to go to Paris Island. And he's like, well, you know, there has to be a reason that we

send you there, rather than they're not just going to send you. He's like, so write me a one page paper about how a family member of yours went to Paris Island, and now you want to follow on their footsteps. He's like, I don't care if they actually did or not, just write the paper. And I was like, oh, on our courage of commitment starts early, learned to work the system. And so he had me do that. And I went to Paris Island and I spent I went there at the beginning of summer and spent the entire summer dealing with the things you spoke about. Yeah, it was miserable, funny you should say that justin because uh, I didn't want to go down there. And then once I got I went to my a school, you know, in uh ritty Mississippi,

Memphis, and you said, that was really kind of neat. And you graduate. Where do you think they set my happy ass? Oh? No way. Did you go to Bufort Beufort? I think it was mag thirty one Marine Air Station, Mclair Station bufordh South Carolina. And I looked over, I said, right across the river. Yeah, right next to each other. Yeah, what what a hole in the wall. Damn man.

It's not a bad place though, you know, it's a good it's a nice place. It's just in the summertime, the heat and humidity is so much. I mean, it's so bad. It was not good. I saw a coyote chase and a rabbit and they were both walking. It was that hot. We got there, and I remember our droll structors were like, you fucking butchers came out the worst time of the year. Some of you were gonna die, you know. And it was like, oh man, this is gonna suck exactly, Yeah, and I believe them.

What was so you joined right after Vietnam? Did this is kind of similar to people that are joining now that the global War on Terror is over. A lot of people were getting out or a lot of people were hesitant to join now because they're like, hey, there's no war going on, Like what am I joining for? You know? Did that ever kind of cross your mind? Was there any kind of weird post Vietnam vibes in the Marine Corps at the time. Well, the psychon hadn't fallen yet, but we were pulling it back okay basically you know, all all intense purposes. Yeah, it was. It was over technically, and they were they were pulling reback, which I thought it was a good deal because I wasn't looking to go into the grunts. You know, I wasn't looking to get shot at,

you know, per se if I probably would not have even joined the Marine Corps if the Navy recruiter someone else was sitting in their office that day and loans something. You gave me a good contract with a job. That's what I was looking for, you know, to serve, to serve as what I was looking for and was proud of, you know, for the for the most part. But no, it's uh going going in. I have just about ready, uh almost signed up for the draft, had to sign up for the draft. But then when they stopped the draft, I was just so happy that day. But when he talked about going to a war, is that it was? I was in boot camp when the magues if you google that. It was a ship that was taken off a cal tying island near Cambodia, I believe, And we were in boot camp at

the time. I think it was March or April when they when they had they took the ships and uh what was it, the kim E Rouge. Yeah, and I captured the ship with everybody aboard it. And it was a merchant ship and you know, American you know, sailors and merchant marine. So anybody we had a U we got to listen to, uh some of the broadcasts of where they had an amphibious operation. We're go in and you know, and rescue them. So when you say you know there's no war going on, I mean, you know, you want to get on paper and say the Korea wasn't a declared war and it's not over. It's just an armistist Let me tell you something, motherfucker. When you shoot at me within and my men with a tent to kill us, that's a goddamn

war. I don't give a fuck how you look at it. Yeah, yeah, no, I guess you. There's always something going on. That's the thing. A lot of people don't realize, Like I look at it now and it's like people don't eat today. Don't even realize how many people we have in like Africa, you know what I'm saying going on over there.

We got people in Syria, Like people didn't know for the longest time that we had people in Syria. I mean, there's stuff going on all over these little fires that detachments are sent out to take care of. You know, well, you got proxy wars being fought for when by state sponsored terrorism like from Iran. Okay, I'll use them specifically because I know about it. And you got the heads, belah, and they're the ones that are collecting the monies, okay, and training these guys, get ain't them the weapons and let them become the insurgents and supporting them all around the world wherever there's Americans, American lives, property and interests. So you never know, you know, when they're going to blow up in a synagogue, or

they're going to attack a church, you know, a soft target, or whether they're going to hit a military base. It's a hard one, you know, So you could call out a war or not. I'm telling you, you know, you got to be ready for it all the time, whether it's a declared one or not. Well, got came back from in seventy nine and we were trying to tell the news back then because there was no member there's no dot com, there's no Internet, none of this, no cell phones. That shit didn't exist. Yeah, okay, and we're trying to tell them. They said the State Department was caught with their pants down, And I said, you have no idea Okay, what you're dealing with over there, and all my different kinds of uh classified or declassified debriefings,

we told them that. They shook their head, they took the notes, videoed it, and I said, you got mother. Motherfuckers. Can't even find Iran or Iran or Iraq on the map. Okay, you don't even know who the players are. Maybe some of your intelligence people do, but you know what, for the most part, you don't even have maps of some of this place out here. You had to reconfigure your satellites to draw the maps out there. You ever see a map of Iran, it looks brown, looks like you know nothing. And then when the wind blows and it changes the geography all the time. You're talking about an ancient Persia, right, and Iran geographically is two and a half times the size of Texas. So wrap your head around that one. I didn't know that two

and a half times beside Texas. That's a lot bigger than I thought it was. It's a lot bigger, okay. And then you're looking at you know, this is the historical The Iranians are not Arabs, the Muslims, They're not Arabs, the Persian, Persian yeah, absolutely, they're damn proud of that. And unlike their their their neighbor next door that they can't stand Iraq at the time, you know, with that sodamn insane over there playing the game. Well he was. You gotta remember we were. Now we're still talking about the Iron Curtain that people don't even know what the fuck that is. They need to google that one too. When I went in, it was still NATO versus Warsaw Warsaw a pack all right, they had Berlin was still a divided city. You know, checkpoint Charlie. This was not

friendly Russians were talking with today. This was the Soviet Union. And you know, you got countries like East and West Germany that now it doesn't they can't remember that back then. All the countries are now Remainian, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, etcetera, et cetera, Yugoslavia, all of them. You know, that was a different world back then. So if there wasn't any shooting at going on, thank god, because it wouldn't take much to start that ship up again in the middle of Europe. This all came under the influences of how important oil was and the locations of all the oil between Iraq and Iran. Now, Iran being run by the Shah was very pro American pro West. It's probably the only one over there that was. At a time

Iraq and the rest of them were arming themselves on the on the Soviet side. Okay. So when you're talking about the strategic arms limitations, you know, the Salt Salt Wan sawt two agreements. You know, we're trying to wind down the nukes so that you know, somebody doesn't ge it, you know, blindsided with a nuclear attack or anything. And they they with the advent of terrorism coming around, they said, hey, you know, we learned guerrilla warfare over in Vietnam, okay, and then we started learning what it was like and watching the Israelis have to deal with, you know, their terrorism, and he goes, it's not gonna be you know, much farther away. Then they start to realize we can do this kind of shit

to anybody anywhere that they're any soft target, that they're not ready. So when you're looking at that, you know, you look at it and you say, damn, man, why didn't we see this coming? You know, And the whole thing when we lost basically lost Iran to a theocracy with the iototal comeaning. We told them when we came back here, guys, you have no idea what you're dealing with over there, the fanaticism of it, and how dedicated these people are. And overnight, literally overnight, they changed their whole entire country. And we saw the guts ripped out of that country. And you're talking about a civil war. You're talking about civil war between brothers and fellow Muslims, one being Site, one being Sunni. It's

kind of like saying, my Jesus is better than your Jesus. You know. Yeah, that's that's where it is. And shortly after nineteen seventy nine, you had Iraq assuming that they speculating, that is, is that they could take over Iran because it was all it was basically a bunch of tribes that all got together to elst the shop and community was having a hard time, you know, getting them all back together again. So so they am insane, you know, attacked that country and within about sixty days they the Iraqi army which had all their Russian stuff, and the the Iranians that had you know, pretty much the American tanks and planes and things like that.

At fourteen's whatever. You know, they had decimated each other in a matter of weeks, and they went back to trench warfare like World War One, digging trenches in the middle of the damn sand and then shooting at each other back and forth. The world was appalled crazy. It was crazy. And what I draw this analogy to is that how fanatically they would take kids anywhere from the age of eight to about fifteen. The Iranians would take it all Runnians at that time after the Shah and just they're called a bassiege, and they would run them across open mindfields, blow them up, clearing the minefields so that the hardened troops could get through and get out. The iraqis no way. That's so crazy. Google it. It's out there, and you

know people didn't realize is how barbaric it really was. So when you were talking about, you know, seeing the dead people and whatnot. When I landed in Iran, it was, like I said in my book, I know, I mean, I got the bad part of it, I got the misinformation. I travel them and I show up in a suit and a tie, and you know, by briefcase that you normally do when you get trans for a marine security guard to another embassy. That's the you know the dress travel protocol. No by jacket off. Gave me a flat jacket, a helmet, put me a one thirteen and then one thirteen armored passonnel APC armed personnel carrier and drove me from the airport to the embassy. And I got to look out the bulletproof windows and say, God, the city was

in flames. There was cars burning, people were shooting at each other. I mean, if you check pictures of or followed it back when you could, what was going done day going on day by day in downtown bay Root, Lebanon, That's pretty much what it was. Yeah. Bay Root is now like a destroyed country and when we look at it as this like crazy third world country, But before it was a beautiful like vacation spot for a lot of Europeans and everything else. They called it the French Mediterranean River era.

It was, it was beautiful. Yeah, before I want to talk, I want I don't want to talk more about the and stuff. But you know a question I have for guys in your era, because you came up during the draft. You know you were talking about the draft. Did you know guys that were drafted, and what was kind of the feeling amongst people when like these draft notices would come out, like hey man, you got to join, like it's your call, you know, like cause it's hard today to think of that, like, oh man, I'm watching TV waiting to see if my number pops up, and now I got to go.

You know, can you kind of explain how the sentiment behind the draft was and what it was like for people that were drafted. I'm sure you met Draft Eve through your time. Absolutely. I had a couple of friends that were a little bit older than me at the time. So I was just barely turning seventeen and still in high school at the Valley Fritche Military Academy when that was going on. So other guys that were at home that I grew up with in New Jersey, they were a year or two older than me. They had the register and then when the news came out, they go, God, damn man, I got my know, got my ready, my numbers called. He says that I said they had a choice of either joining right away before they got processed, or once they're noticed they were

served, they would be drafted into whatever service that you know they needed at the time, he didn't get a choice. Most of them got drafted, went into the army where it was going on. But I think it peaked about about the seventy three seventy four, that's when it peaked where they still had the draft going. But they weren't once you got drafted, they were they were dragging the dragging most of the vets home, especially the army vets.

They were breaking them down because they knew they were getting ready to find some way to shorten the war. But the nerves, everything you talk about is that no one was There's no again, no Internet, there's no instant palm pilot information that we got today. So it's just it was just rumors and where people were making phone calls. They got, Hey, I'm going down to the recruiters office tomorrow. I'm going to ask and see, you know what my options are, et cetera. And may be in a military academy, uh more or less protected me because I was still you know, in high school and great school. So I tell a guy, one of them is his name was Roy Muth, you know, another Mike Reagan, And he said, man, we're going to go down what do you think

we should do? I said, Well, what do you want to do? I said, you know, you can't fly. I mean, so if you have some skill set that they can use, and it depends all upon how well you do it, you know, testing and physical wise, if there's nothing wrong with you, you know, vision, you know, et cetera, et cetera. I said, But they were worried, they really were. They didn't want to go over there, and they didn't get answers to anything they see because at the time, I think we only had NBC, ABC, or and three three states. Yeah, you know for the most part, So you know that people re searching for answers of where their options could be, and you know, they didn't want to go down to sometimes to the recruiters afraid and get talked in or you know, scooped

up times. My brother in laws were really good at it because they they've been in and and in the game and out of it, so they were they were able to give be tapped for some advice and some devices. Look, they're winding it down, I said, they're no longer putting uh that much time and money and resources and ammunition and things over there. As there as they're pulling out. So they said, okay, look we're still going to go with the draft. But I remember them saying that we don't have to report until a certain date. So when their date came to report, uh, I think they had Roy went over to Fort Dix, New Jersey, and uh, you know he got in there. He remember. I remember a conversation where once he got there. I don't know if it's some

basic training or indoctrination or inducted, but they were telling them that there they were not going over to Vietnam in a combat situation becausese of what their mos or specialty was. They're winding it down, so you know, to answer your question, Uh, there was some anks about it at first, but once you got it, but you didn't really worry about it until your number come up. Yeah, from my friends and my contact, so once it was we didn't learn about it. Most of them didn't worry about it until seventy three, seventy four, and again they're winding down. So once they got some good scoop and you know, the scuttle butt was you know, tossed away and they could deal with facts and options, it kind of relieved

them a bit. Now we know that there is no longer a draft, but high school men have to sign up for the Selective Service, which is essentially a list of people that would be drafted if if needed. Uh, what are your thoughts on how they are wanting to push women into that. Well, yeah, I was at first against the women wanting to go into combat you know, operations years ago, you know, but I think it was seventy eight, seventy nine when when they started that. Only because it's not their qualifications or that they couldn't be trained that way. It's gonna just you were changing the whole way the American the average American soldier, marine, sailor airman, you know, dealt with their their sisters, their moms,

their wives, The way they looked at you know, America and American women. Nobody wanted to see them over there, you know, having their arms and legs blown off, or you know, being being abused, if they were you know, captured, things like that. Although that's part of war, I mean, is it absolutely necessary from a political point of view to do that. We didn't have enough men to continue to do it, but you know, the the provocations at the time and the pr the political you know attitudes. They they won their way and you know, Congress allowed them to be in there. So with the women coming in, you just said, since I wasn't in an active combat you know situation. My first four years was Beaufort and then the company and a couple of cruises and some deployments,

but never in any any hotspot. Not as an air traffic controller. I sit in the tower of the radar room with a cup of coffee in a handset. You know that that was my game, you know. But you know, once I get tired of that, and you know, reenlistment was up. The you know, the world's just starting to see what terrorism was like, and you know, viewing it through US helping Israelis and you've seen it all the time, and they go, you better start paying attention to this over here, you know, because they could be hit any time anywhere. You know, you don't you don't have to have a uh a decided identified enemy in a uniform. Okay. We started, you started back in the late fifties with the VC, the Viet Cong and and then basically

they you know with China and UH communists, China and Chicoms and Russia supporting them and training them. They become the n v A, you know, a uniformed, organized, well equipped, trained army, you know. So you know, once we got the women in there, I was glad to see that even though we had them. Let me see, I graduated in seventy eight from Marine Security Guard Battalion School MSG Embassy, and I think it was then that was the last class in Henderson Hall that if I remember correctly, and that was a headquarters Marine Corps and Herdson Hall in Washington, d C. And then they transferred it over to Quantico, the MSG Battalion the schools of Quantico, and that's when they started female wm s women marines into

Embassy you know, guard school. And so really I wasn't around the females and much wherever I went because I didn't get to go to too many grunt bases. But you know, I ran into them. I've never seen one or met one that was in a female MSG, nor have I ever for the most part, No, not that time. There are quite a Now, there are quite a few infantry women. There are quite a few in the artillery world there. I mean, there's a lot in combat arms now, you know, not as obviously not as many as men, but they're enough compared to ten years ago. Even when I you know, when I was in there were no women in combat arms. And now you have women's squad leaders, you have women fire fire team leaders in the infantry and stuff

like that. Yeah, women's seals, women recon. Well, I don't think any women have gone through seal or past seal training yet. There is one female that finished recon training that I know of, as she is a sniper in recon or if she's still in I'm not sure if she is or not. But yeah, they're making their way into different fields. And I think me and I think a lot a lot of other people agree with the sentiment is that hey, man, if you can carry your weight, then that's cool. But the problem that a lot of people have is if if we're going to lower standards to allow women to be part of these fields and and people won't want to hear this, but the problem a big difference that we have between men and women in the Marine Corps. And the reason that

women constantly one of the reasons that women and constantly get not disrespected, but maybe not the respect that they deserve, is that they have different standards than the men do. And that's just true, you know what I'm saying. So if I want to go get promoted to corporal, or I want to go get promoted to sergeant, then I need to do the best I can on my physical fitness test. Well me, as a male, to get one hundred one hundred a perfect score on my physical fitness test, I have to run three miles in eighteen minutes. I have to do twenty two pull ups, and I have to do one hundred crunches. This is from when I was in I think it's changed some now, but that was that was the standard for women. They had to run a three mile and like twenty

three or twenty four minutes. They only had. They didn't even have to do pull ups. If they didn't want to, they could do three pull ups and get a perfect score, or do what we call flex arm hang where they just jump up on the bar and see how long they can hang there, and then less crunches. But they but so, so let's say I run nineteen minute three mile, I do eighteen pull ups, and I do one hundred crunches. Well, this woman that's a marine can run twenty two minute three miles, do five pull ups and one hundred crunches, and she gets a better score than me, and now she can get promoted ahead of me. And in my own opinion, until the physical fitness standards are even across the board and every standard there's no different standard for different people,

then they're always gonna get crap about being in the military and about how they have it easier and stuff, because it's true. And people will not like me saying that, but it's true when you have an easier physical And I know women and men are different, but you can't say men and women are different, but they're also I don't know. To me, that's that right.

There is a catalyst for there always being animosity in the military is the physical fitness standards are different between men and women, and it causes women to get promoted faster than men. That when when you're out on a run, let's say we're on a company run. This chick runs slower than me, but scores higher. And we're out on a company run and you see her fallout of the out of the run. You know what I'm saying. But somehow her score, her physical fitness test score is higher, and then she gets promoted faster. And I know this too, and people will counter with well, now, in combat arms mos is they have a job specific physical fitness test that they have to pass. That's fine, and that's cool,

and I think they should do that. You know, like for artillery men, they have to lift like one hundred pounds weight a certain amount of times to simulate lifting up rounds because the rounds weigh one hundred pounds. However, until the actual physical fitness standards that help you get promoted or changed, women are still going to get crap because they're getting an easier shot at getting promoted to corporal and sergeant and above than the men are. And it's just not fair. And combat you know, we don't care about fair, so like you should be able to do everything that the men are doing. But I will say there are women that are in the military that do great at their job. And again I think anyone that comes and pulls their weight and does

everything that the men do and can and can keep up and do everything like that, then you know that's awesome. But I was I was a mechanic for my first three years and I at MLG, so I had females and my platoon sometimes and I saw how that was an issue. Though dudes are always trying to have sex with them. They're if they're good looking at all, they get pushed jobs, they have them come work in the office as a clerk and stuff. You know, it's like it's a weird game.

But I don't know, I just wanted to get your opinion on that. Go ahead. No, that absolutely is when it comes to not just the physical standards, but look at the I'll say the mental standards of it. I mean, when you put a woman behind a rifle and you get the basics in line, you know, you got side alignment, site pictures, squeeze that trigger. That trigger doesn't know any gender, any sex anything at all. For sure, that up taking every all the considerations you know, as a not just a sniper, because the sniping part is easy. It's it's being if you ever been a sniper'school, it's the waiting and trying to get up to where your your target's going to be. But if you put all the mechanisms together and you're online with that scope, it's gonna work.

Male or female, same thing is going to be. In my opinion, I can speak from that but here, and I'll speak from an opinion that I don't have background. Put them in a jet, Put them in a navy jet, any kind you know, combat. If they can physically take the you know, the force of the g force on them, if they can think under under that kind of stress, then when they pull that trigger, they move that, they move that throttle whatever. That bird, that bird doesn't know anything. Okay, your religion, your race, your creed, your color, doesn't matter. It's going to respond to what your mental capacity is to make that decision. So fine, you know, if you want to make it so that the job, like you said, job specifics

for the mental capacity of it along with the physical, I'm all for it. But that's for each and every job. You know. Did you think every woman could, you know, fly to space shuttle? So what are you supposed to do? Just like every man? Can't? You know? We have standards for a reason, thank you. Yeah, I mean that's the thing. We wouldn't lessen the standards and be like, well, this dude ran his three miles and twenty three minutes, so we'll go ahead and give him a perfect score. Like that would never happen, But we do that for women for whatever reason. And again I don't want to keep beating on it, but that right there is why I think that they're going to continue to get looked down upon until the standard is the standard. It's not

different for anybody, no matter what your sex is, no matter what your races, no matter what you know, anything like that, like no difference in standards. You come in, you meet the standard or you don't. You know, And there's a lot of men that don't meet the standard, and there's a lot of women that don't meet the standard. So it's just the name of the game. You know, you're dead on, spot on accurate with that. And you know, again we won't beat it to death, but you can just take it one more stepped into different a different direction.

Not just a military and the jobs they have, how about law enforcement office roofs and street cops and deputies. Okay, I mean, there's no reason why, in theory or in principle why a woman couldn't be when they when they put him out there on the street. Okay, but now you have to counter it of saying is she big enough, is she tough enough to take somebody on? She's going to take somebody on on her grounds.

Okay, man demand unless she's got special tactics in a close quarter battle or a black belter. She's an MMA trainer. Other than that, you know, you got something, you know, five foot six, five foot seven, she's in decent shape. She's twenty five years old. But she's going to take on some you know, a drunken maniac that says, no, I ain't going to jail to day, honey. So now they get an altercation. If she loses that, she loses that fight, gets sucker punched, or she gets behind in it. Now she has to go to a more lethal force, you know, or or at least if it doesn't have to be lethal the next one, you know, and that's where we come out with the pepper spray, and then you know, the force continuum,

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And now you know why I know that's that I remember, lookout, things change along the way. There's so many videos that have come out of like women cops getting like beat down. It's like, fuck, man, that's so crazy, Like you feel bad for them. You're like, man, they had no chance. And that there was one I think there was like a dude who got out of a mini van and just beat the crap out of a woman, ye police officer, and like left her for dead. And I was like, man, she had no chance there. Like, it's just it's rough out there.

But anyways, back to you, man, you mentioned Chesty Pooler. You said that was in your book. I haven't had a chance to look at your book. I actually didn't even know you had a book until I was doing the research about you and I saw it. I was like, oh, there's a book, So what's the title of your book. There we go. I'm Marine endures Hell, the first marine hostage at the embassy in Tehran in nineteen seventy nine. Nice, what did you meet Chesty Poorr before that incident or after you? No? You yeah, we we broke in. It was it was in the book. It was another marine.

It was a gunny long story short that had trained with Carlos Halfcock and when uh lundy, oh my god. Uh And I've met him, okay, when I worked for Department of Energy in a nuclear swat. He came in and overlooked how the uh the the swat training was going for our snipers and it was amazing it's just amazing to meet that man before he passed away.

But it was the gunnery sergeant that was assigned to me as more or less like a valet when I first got out of the country to Frankfurt, Germany. Now I know people aren't gonna understand that until they read the book or get the uh the timeline. But when I was evacuated, they said evacuated, kicked out, uh, deported from Iran uh to Germany. Had my wounds and and and whatnot? Looked at it was it was a gunnery sergeant that had actually served a he was E two a corporal and served as a I guess a spot or you know the scout snipper's ligne with latrange. That's awesome with the damn man you bring back, yeah, if you just bring back good memories. So and then he told me it's we talked about the conversation of the book. I said, you absolutely worked with them, yep,

on combat patrols. It's like sixty eight sixty nine. I said, holy cow, because he had asked me, I said, I what broke the conversation up is he says, uh, you don't realize what's what's what's been happening for the last week. You've been kidnapped, You've been you know, beat tortured, you've been underground. We couldn't find where you were.

Do you have any idea what's happening right now and the plane that you're going to get on to take the United States? You have any any clue? I said no, none, And he gave me a little reader's digest version of what's going on. I said, are you kidding me? No? Way? And I said way man. He said, so what do you see what's going on? You got You're going to get a bigger and a more in depth briefing on board the on board the bird, and I went, wow, that's where I'd asked him. I said, you know, he had told me that, you know, basically, you know, I was. I was bitching that, you know, the uniforms and stuff they were putting on me didn't fit me, you know completely, you know, and you know, he says, he said, you should just shut your

fucking mouth, and you know marine they said, suck it up. He said, you're lucky, you know, you got a chest to put a metal on for the most part. And I said, what are you talking about, and that's what we got into the store and I said, oh my god. So I asked him, you know he's been around and uh, I said. We got in a conversation and I said, you know, so what he was he was basically assigned to the embassy there. I don't know if he said MSG or not, but the way he wore his uniform, you could tell he was about as fit and as sharp as a drill instructure, the same thing MSG's are. I mean, you know, it takes just immaculate. So i'd asked him, I said, how long you moved to MSG? And we got on the subject and I said,

and he says, I said, what's your mos? What was remos before you know MSG? I said, what was my Amma asked? Or what was my job? There's two different things. And when he told me what his job was and related to Carlos Hathcock, I went, what, so you know he's historical and just like I said, it's just like chesty pull or a few more and then you mentioned that together and that's when I jumped in. I go, I have to add this into my book. Is it now? That's seventy nine? And then I think it was nineteen eighty eighty six eighty seven when I was working for the Department of Energy Nuclear Squad and he started their own academy called the CTA Central Training Academy out in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And after the first few classes, they started an advanced

sniper school and that's where Carlos came out to one of the graduations, and I know it was it was a big thing. That's awesome. I didn't know how much of a legend he was. I didn't know if it happened after his book came out or if it was something that people knew him beforehand. So it's interesting to know that people knew about him before he even had a book. Yeah, oh yeah, we've we've heard he wasn't as popular, but we had heard his name before when we were at the shooting range at p M I, you know, Edson range out there. You know, they would they did the gunnies and the master sergeants that the cops would make reference to him, and then you'd have to say, well, there was again no Internet. You're not gonna go you know, google it.

You just say, oh, you know, who is he? And you ask around and you know, you got to you get the background of some of the war stories or you know what was going on, But not until uh, yeah, I believe you're right the book comes out and then the movie or whatever, and they can actually talk about how many confirmed kills some of his missions because he didn't always work for the Marine Corps. He did some side work for the agency three letter agencies. Yeah, he And it's crazy because like he wasn't even the like deadliest sniper there, like Chuck Mahani was the for the Marine Corps, had more kills than Carlos Hathcock did, but he was very much from what I understand reading his biography and stuff,

Chucks is that when he got out of the Marine Corps he kind of just let it all go and never talked about it until way later in life. Like I guess, he had a whole nother career and all the people he worked with, no one even knew he was in the Marines. So you know, it's it's a tale of two different guys. I guess it's kind of interesting me. It's forty five years ago, it's been Iran do the mass seventy nine. Yeah, taking this all get through the facts to figures what's what is able to be written about? And really with my post traumatic stress and the nightmares, I had all these all these decades of notes and memories like that just put away and I had to actually be talked into, you know, put it down as a book let people know what happened,

you know, not so much to make money or anything like that. He said, No other motivation, he said, I said, uh, take some of the money that you make, some of the royalties, put it back to dav and you know, helped the ones that are going through. But we're seeing coming over out out of this end of the sandbox. I mean, look how many we did. We had to come up with Pungy Stick's ideas or Puny sticks in the Vietnam that was something new to us.

Now we're over there in the sandbox. I eds, you know, we have to come up with these words because there are things we have to learn the hard way. And when you see your veteran sitting there with no arm, no leg, and you know, you want to say, God, damn, what can I ever do at now? You know post you know post Marine Corps, you know, to help out. So that was more of a motivation too. After all these years of this thing eating at you, and not just eating at you at times, but forming you, formatting your life and your your concepts and you know, your values and things like that in life. And it affects you, man, it really does.

So when they want to come back and don't want to talk about it at certain times, I can totally understand that. By at times you do want to talk about it, I know, please give them the time. Sit down, have a drink with them, sit down and break bread, pray with them, whatever it takes. Because it as you changed. I mean this happened to me. I was twenty two years old. So you know, your twenties, your thirties, your forties, you changed normally on this planet if you didn't go through stuff like that. So once that sets your base, that will go with you every decade as the news cames out.

I mean again, you can't find we didn't know what Hesbola Hamas and all the other series going on in some of the players. As those players change, you know, you say, hey, how do you think you know? When you walk back now nine to eleven, you know, and then you went over there and say, ye, we're going after Osama Bin Laden and then from there we get into Iraq, and then after Iraq we get in Afghanistan. You know, I mean, it just it propels itself.

Yeah, it's a big mass. Man. Let's talk about your time. Then let's talk about your MSG duty. Let's so, for those that don't know, MSG's Marine Security Guard. Every embassy around the world is guarded by Marines. They come from all different backgrounds. They applied to go to MSG school, They go through the course, get trained on how to do all the stuff that is required of them, and then they get sent out to different locations. I think normally MSG guards go to three different locations during their tour, usually a year each. From what I've understood, and yeah, I mean, I've always been told by people that have done that job that it's one of the best jobs in the military. I've never talked to someone

that did the job and would not recommend it to someone else. They loved it, Like everyone that did it loved it. They're like, you get to go to these different countries. Sometimes there's shitholes, but you get these different experiences and meet people that you would never get to do on normal opportunity.

Can you explain to us. Can you tell us about MSG, what your training was, what you guys were trained to do. And then I understand before you went to Iran you were in Cyprus. That's correct. Now the MSG battalion is that it's not automatic that you get there. You have to qualify to get in there. And usually part of the qualifications is you just have to remember the pros and cons you know of your fitness reports.

Okay, how you got your how you got your numbers, Okay, those have to be outstanding to even apply for the for the position. Okay, it's the MSG, believe it or not, or the drill field. So when my my first four years are up in seventy eight, I was looking either getting out or you know, staying in the Marine Corps. I had.

I had gotten U E three E four and HE E two, E three and A four meritoriously. And then to re enlist, I said I would get sergeant. I be promoted to sergeant for another four years, but you had to commit another four actually six in including another two reserve if you get out. So you have to be nominated before, say, by your command to go out that way. Uh, you got your monitor up there and in uh, in Washington, d C. That you know has to look that way and say, well, you know you're not a critical MOS at that moment, so you're good. If you're in a critical MOS, they're not even going to let you apply. So you've got to get a luck of the draw on the ratio of where you're coming from to where you're

going the needs of the Marine Corps imagine that, and so you apply, You'll go through you go through psychological testing, physical testing, medical testing, et cetera, et cetera. You have to be qualifications, you have to be single. Okay, you have to have at least thirty six months left on active duty on your enlistment. That's because basically when you at the time in nineteen seventy eight, back in the seventies, anyway, MSG Battalion, Resecurity Guard Battalion, Henderson Hall, Headquarters, Marine Corps, you would need thirty six months left because normally when you graduate going the assumption you graduate is that you will go your core of duty on the embassies and consults whatever would

be eighteen months at a hardship post and then eighteen months at a luxury post. So the MSG Battalion was broken up and I think it was five companies. A company A was Europe, company B was uh the Middle East, company C was South it was Asia, uh D was South America. Uh E was Vietnam. But you know that they disbanded that and I think F company was up in Canada, North America and things like that. So you if it was up you run by the State Department. You work for them.

They have absolute operational control over you. The Marine Corps does nothing but take care of your admin. You know your pay and your your your service record book, et cetera, et cetera. So you're if you graduate from the from the academy, as it was basically an academy where you know, I'll get into the training a minute. You would depending on where you where you graduate your numerica standing in the class, you would you would be able to pick your post. And you know, for me, uh, you go to these different posts and we again you didn't have any We didn't have the click down windows that you have today to look and see what the embassies were like or anything. They had books at the Marine the Marine House and

the and the post where they send pictures of what it was like in everyday life. There and what the duty was in each and every spot. So you had to pick your hardship post. Now, a hardship post would be something that was in a third world toilet country, you know, like one was, you know, Dhaka, Bangladesh. And the only reason it was the State Department would call that a hardship post because the Marine corpsuld say they're all luxury posts to the Marines. You know, it would be because of the the amount of disease and the lack of good qualified medical care that was there for the most part, and I mean the weather that was there, it was just terrible at the time. There wasn't you know, any uh, any specific or generic threat of terrorism or anything like that you could go

to like brasenvillea congo when when it was there, it was out there and they had to put That's funny. One guy that was sent out set out there. He came almost at the bottom of the class, and he was he was a lot of fun to be with and drinking party with, but he came on to the bottom of class. He got sent to the Braziel with Licago. He said he got there and the marine house was a dirt floor. I mean it was a hard dirt floor they had there was people that had been been They assumed that there was people that had been breaking into the marine house there and stealing items. But really when they put up a video to try to catch these folks, they found that that they were actually wild monkeys coming in front of the jug and stealing your lives and you're getting

through in the windows. So they had to put wire cages around the marine house. Now it looked like you were living in a brig in the jail. Oh, it was. So it was things like that. It would be a make you have to go your first eighteen months at a hardship post. And then depending what company you were in, you could put your paperwork in to go if I was in Europe, if I wanted to go to Europe, and I was in Nicosia, okay, and I wanted to go Cyprus, and I wanted to go from this company, I put my paperwork in. You wanted to go to Stockholm, Sweden, you know, everybody wanted to get a blonde girlfriend, take her home, you know, and the or Dublin, Ireland, Paris, they were what they call the big contingents. I mean in Paris, I think they had almost thirty msgs that

were there, and you know it was it was a lot better. So depending about where you wanted to go. And you know, if you were your background in your family was South America, you want to go see the history of South America. You know, you'd put in for that. So you needed the eighteen months to do a successful tour in a in a hardship post. What made my post Nicosia a hardship post was that there was a green line between the Turks and the and the Greeks. Now, dig this, what do you mean by a green line? Yeah, I'm just gonna explain that what happens is the un line. It's a green line. It's not black, it's not white. It green for peace. Right Anyway, So, nineteen seventy three seventy four, while I was in military academy,

there was a political problem between the Turks and the Greeks and the little island of Cypress. And that's all the way over in the southeast corner of the med and it's just below Turkey. Anyway, long story short, there was a the Turks had used their military to actually invade Cypress and take over half of it. If you google it, you'll figure it out. And they could. They split the island in half. Now you're talking about they did it when right after we the United States had given them a whole bunch of new armament plains. And because they were NATO, so was Greece. By the way, how about that. So the Greeks wanted to start a bunch of shit over that. But the Turks took that island in a week, took half the island, then stopped. That's where the UN came in and

go, okay, buys, you know, knock it off. It's like two brothers going at it, you know, would Turks and Greek has been at each other from day one, you know, so there's no love loss between those guys. So because there was a green line, which is the contingents, they the u N came in and all the checkpoints, all the roads between the two like North and South Korea, you know, similar there's an armistice, and they said, okay, this side of your island is yours, and this side of the islands you know Greek. So yeah, so you would have if you're driving from one side the Greek side, you'd have to go through a checkpoint, a Greek checkpoint, then you'd have to go through a un checkpoint. Then you have to go through a Turk you

know, on the other side, and it all might be a mile long. So just because you have you have contingents, like the Cancan Canadian contingent, it would do this location. The dan Con Danish were here, Swedish you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And because the Brits have two bases there, they had ACQUITII sovereign air base and Episcope.

The one was a naval base and the other I think was a sovereign air base. Anyway, they kept that there for you know, since World War Two for the most part. So just because you had the troops at each other that green line going there, everything else on the island was fine. And we were unique because no Greek could go over to Turkish side, No Turk could go to the Greek side, but we could, especially because we had a black passport and we worked at the embassy. We could badge our way through on either side, you know. But you gotta be careful because if they think that you're you know, bringing stuff over to one side, that's not allowing the other or passing those things back and forth. You know,

you can get your tit in the ringer real quick over that one. Yeah, I get wrapped up for like espionage or something like that. Inga. Yeah, my grandfather actually served on checkpoint Charlie and uh And when you were talking about earlier that East Germany West Germany kind of deal sounds very similar to that very much. Man, that's a crazy time. Turkey is not the greatest NATO ally. You know, sometimes I question our U why we keep them around. I know during the were on Terror, they were pretty vital because they allowed us to use their airspace to fly over. I think we had a base there too, an air base for drones. I can't remember, but I know their big contribution was that they allowed us to use

their airspace to access like I think northern Iraq. Yeah, but I don't know, so was is it? I mean, you're in you're in an area that is just ripe with ancient civilization relics and stuff like that. What was that? Like? I that was amazing? And then remind me to go back to some of the training at the MSG, what we went through and whatnot. But that's when you're dead right. That's the cradle civilization Mesopotamia.

You know, ancient Babylon. You know you're looking at the Tigris Euphrates river. I mean, just pick up your Christian Bible and read some of the areas both all the New Testament of what it was like. You got the Xerxes Darius, you know, uh Nabucha, Chenezer Cyrus, you know all these great Persian kings that were back and forth, the one Persian the Means, and the Persians come in the Babylonians and who else was there?

Alexander the Greek, you know, great walk through that place and the battles and everything that were. Then you got places over there from World War one, world War two. I mean you've done Dutch talking about wars, but you're talking about you know, the hanging gardens of Babylon, going all the way back to the hieroglyphics, and you know when they first started writing on tablets, it was all right there. I mean, it's a biblical proportions.

And when it's a Turkey's part of it is that you have ancient Turkey. Was World War One, was the Ottoman Empire. You still to this day can't get that ship right, you know. And they said, oh, no, this is Palestine. I said, well, not my opinion, but can you show me where the borders of Palestine are or were?

Nope? Can you show me what government they had? No? Can you show me what flag or what money, what currency? No? They were a territory of the Ottoman Empire, okay, And once the Ottoman Empire took sides on on Germany in World War One, they lost, They lost that area. A lot of people don't realize that. That's something that a lot of people don't even know, is that the Ottoman Empire ruled that whole area until World War One. And then once we beat the Axis of Evil or whatever you want to call them, you know. So that's when Saudi Arabia and all those places got their countries back basically and were able to uh re establish themselves. That's why they didn't really, they didn't really get them back.

It was it was the U n the and the victors over there, the French and the British that drew the lines in the sand. This will be Iraq, this will be Syria. And take a look at the way some of those borders are written out there. You know, there's nothing. None of them looked at square or anything that was you know, tangible from our point of view. We we're over there. For the most part.

The Americans probably had very little say so in that except you know, running running it through the Balfour Declaration and and and where that went. So you know, what's left the Turkey. Turkey's always been uh I wouldn't even a unique area in the sense that they are Muslim ninety percent of them at least, you know Muslims. But once what was left to Turkey Now they always kind of be. You see a part of it over in Constantinople. Istanbul is in Europe. Okay, the other part of it is in the Middle East. So they've always wanted to be they call him. The nickname they joked over there we learned about is the poor man of Europe? Is that always you know, he's he's in the back of the bus. Nobody wants

to, you know, really like them or trust them. They don't have oil, they don't they don't have gold. They don't have anything but turks and pots and pants and a lot of opium. Okay, well that was another back door. But that being that being said, when you started squaring off now with the Soviets, and we now you know, got rid of the Nazis, and now we're facing the Communists, the very communists. Okay, they came in and they said they hold the area that is strategically important, the Boss Pirits or the Straits that are there, you know, go right into the Black Sea, and that's the Russian fleet. You know, you bottle them up right there, they're going to have to attack and NATO country. And then but next to them that the people they can't stand are

the Greeks. And also you're trying to keep the two of them shaking hands at the same time, but at the same time you're trying to keep those ten hands from the going at each other all the time, you know. So there's what you get with. And when you're talking about Turkey. And then of course you got little pockets like the Kurds that you know, for the most part, don't like the Turks, don't like them. You go back to nineteen fifteen when the Turks massacred several million Armenians who are predominantly Christian.

Okay, so you got a lot of players over there, you know, to a point. You need a score card, you know, to figure to figure it out. And you can't only play one against the other. But we've always need turkey tongue in cheek to watch Russia and keep Russia bottled up. Okay, Then once Russia's the iron curtainment down that now they started redrawing the boundaries of Bulgaria. Oh, Yugoslavia, there was another shithold, you know, after Tito. You know how they chopped that up, which led directly you know with Clinton's you know, and the Serbians and everybody else having to deal with that. So those countries are now and then he had Czechoslovakia, and now there are two separate countries. So as they pair

off, you know, how do you become a Croatian and a Serb and a Muslim? And I know these people just walked in and went right down the street on the map with a cut them up. So you're gonna have these problems when you just walk in and say you can't be there, and here's your new border. But my cousin's little over there, but you can't go over there. I mean, there's gonna be there's gonna be animosity no matter which way you look at it, and that's that's a state department's job and a policy for every administration that comes in here. And when you put your bases out there, you know, now look at you got Opera, you know, which is where the embassy was, and then we got the in Turkey, and then you have Constantinople or Istanbul what everyone you want to

call that, that's where the you know, the uh, the uh, the the consulate was was there. You have nuke bases in there, you know, Now what are you going to say? You know, you've got nukes that are nuclear bombers that you know, inst the Air Force base boom And for the longest time that was class information until they put it out, you know, on the news and they put it out with people coming back and movies so in books. So now you know, not like the Russians didn't know that you were there. Then everybody's alphabet agency knows what's going on for the most part. When you you can't hide nuclear bombers, you know, where you're going to hide a B fifty two or a whole squadron of them. Come on, Yeah, it's time for espionage as well, you

know. Over the time, Yeah, that would have been a cool time to be like in the CIA working against the KGB and stuff like. That's like classic spy stuff that you hear about. Oh that's the stuff that we learned in embassy school is we were the police. We are the cops that the uniform cops that do that provide the security and defend the and the embassies.

Now we have what you got fourteen weeks, Well it was twelve when I was there, and then they extended, you know, fourteen weeks. Besides just a lot of the show we say prim and proper parade ground stuff where you see they had the best uniforms, tailored fit. You had to be in shape, you know, you couldn't have too much body fat.

I mean things, you know when it comes to the physical. Plus you realize that in different areas. You'd see them in Paris and Rome and the nice you know dress blue dress, blues, Alphas and Bravos in charge you are really nice. But then you get you know, same kind of embassy over there in Beirut where they're in flack jackets and camouflage. You know.

So that's it, and we control, we control the bodyguarding and the safety and security of the Americans that are there, and anybody that doesn't realize that, and every embassy anywhere in the world or consolate is the best of people that work in intelligence. No, they're not spies per se, but you know I've seen that embassy. You have CIA, DIA, Defense Intelligence agencies, NRO, nationalconnaissance guys. They work on the satellites. Okay, FBI, Secret Service, DSS, this Department of State Security. There was alphabet agencies. I couldn't even tell you what the hell they were. Okay, there's times that we walk in and we at our post and we at these times. Remember this is nineteen seventy eight, seventy nine. Half of your

technology you have today did not exist or wasn't a clickably applied out there. And I would there's times that I've had actually seen people come in, get signed in, their their visitors, their visital logs, whatever, call them down, and I know for a fact that the last time I saw this person, he was not the same person on the idea that's here. As I was gonna say, back then, I bet it was super easy to make fake IDs. Now you can't do it as much. No, No, now that you put a chip in your hands, so you got a you know, a little that information is out there, but I had never seen that, and I've been only told that, so I don't know exactly how it works. But that's interesting. I've never heard that. Oh yeah,

they chip them. They chip them down, just like a dog. You got a dog, a thoroughbred racehorse. It's worth half a million dollars. Jesus, how about this, you know? I mean they told us that at some places, if it was a station chief to see ice station chief, they chip him or her so they get you know, they get captured or taken, they can find out whether at That's not surprising, to be honest, I mean, I get it. It sucks. That's a weird thing to think about, especially if you're the one that's getting the chip embedded into you. Yeah, but I also understand when you see stuff like what happened in like Benghazi and stuff like that, where you know, these attacks do happen. There was an embassy earlier this year that got evacuated.

I think it was in I want to say it was in Africa, but I could be wrong about that. There was You know, this isn't an uncommon thing. It does happen where either strife against the Americans in the country gets too high or there's like a civil war, some kind of civil unrest, and the Americans are just kind of caught in the middle of it, you know, and like the danger is definitely there, especially in some of these uh less stable countries. Now when you move from when you went from Cyprus and you got orders to Iran, what were you thinking, Well, I thought a couple of things, but they put out a request that when you just back up for a second, this this folds in is that when they decide to evacuate a country, usually the Americans that are there. In

this case Iran, you had it was getting dangerous. They were getting shot up, beat up, locked up, and very seldom, especially in the sandbox over there, and any revolution of any type, you never have just one faction against the government. You will have several tribes or factions that come together, especially if it's if it's going against the pro West, okay, pro American, because the Soviets are gonna get in there now, his bollah get everybody and his brother now wants to get into the fight. First of all, they're gonna make money, Okay, every time you stir the pot.

You're gonna have people that have, Oh I can sell weapons over there, I can sell dope over there. I mean there's all kinds of information that you know, you know, it's a it's a bed of nothing but opportunity for good, bad and indifferent. Okay, now you get that there, and then you've got players on both sides that will play both sides of defense. Who can you trust, who can you not trust? You know, who do you pay for? And how do you keep how do you keep your hand you know, on their throat and and and then tickle their nutsack at the same time and get them working with you. I mean, I don't I just don't get it. So what happens is that coming back on to to get in and out of that country's you know, you have

to probably go through being an American, you go through a consulate, I know, or like you on there's two there's three, there was two or three consulates out there, plus the embassy you come back on. There's a lot of paperwork, there's a lot of processing, and it really strains the security. Remember, these are not fire bases, these aren't base camps is They're not meant to be defended. There are diplomatic missions and a lot of times there's there's no way to you know, unless you harden them and surround them like an alamo. There there's you know, you can't do it.

The embassy itself in Tehran there's twenty seven acres. It was beautiful, it was it was wide open, it was it's been there for es I don't know's fifty years that they talk about before I got there. So anyway, when you have this, that's you have what we call the fat embassies, the ones that are you know, Rome and Madrid and you know all the fun spots that you're looking forward to, you know, in the future.

So they were a lot big, bigger. So we only had we only had twelve msgs in Nicosia, Cypress, that was it. You got thirty or forty in Paris. So they can afford to have one or two sent over there for temporary duty. T a d well travel around drunk, but it's temporary additional duty. And so anyway we get uh, you know, they put it out for Cypress, can you uh Nicosia contingent, can you uh, you know, spare one and uh the gunnery sergeant at the time.

Who's the n C O I c at the time. The Nunnies put it out, put it out at a at a meeting, and long story short asked for a volunteer and gave us a little bit of a synopsis of you know, Iran and stuff like that. And I went in and you know, read up that I could on it, and I said, hey, if you don't mind, Gunny, I'd like to put my name in on that. You know, I said, look, get over to Iran.

You know, ancient persias that we were talking about. You know, see all the you know, the time and the signs and a part of the world I wouldn't see because then, you know, when I come back, I'm back here in my little Greek islanders. Yeah, sign me up. You know this would be fun. They said, yeah, sign right here. Next thing, you know, yeah right. So next thing I know, I got orders cut Boom, I fly out to Athens, spend a couple of days there, and then boom, you know, get an asshole background briefing. It was useless. And then so I said, I was in a three piece suit and I landed and met or bought airport in Tehran because it was it was. It was hell. They were shooting everywhere.

I mean again they they said, don't worry about your bags and things like that. He said, who told you to dress like this? It was a the representative from the embassy. I said, hey, you know, this is what I was told to do, and you marine follow orders. So anyway, I lost my jacket. They put a flat jacket onto the M one thirteen and I couldn't believe it. I'm down the street and they're crunching over things. I mean, it looks a third world country.

And I said, it says nothing like what I saw. Civil War burned out. There was still cars that were on fire. There was you can when they stopped to make a turn, there was a we could see a body still in the car burning. Holy shit, different factions going at it. How long had this been? How long had this been going on before you got there? It started late seventy seven. Oh so this was not this was not within the last few weeks. This had been going on for the last year or two at that point. Oh yeah. In my book, it's especially if you get the special edition parts. I've got pictures and photographs and dates and times from there. Their newspaper, the Cayenne or you know the Teyrun Journal. Pictures seen before people that weren't getting it out because

again no internet. Yeah, three news stations, no internet, like you get what they give you. And that's it. The rest of its speculation AP and you know, I don't even knew if Freud's is around then it was AP or you know wire tresses BBC. Maybe I know that was it. So you know that's uh when I got there. And then we got to the embassy and they said, okay, I checked in with the gunny that was there, the n C I see, and he says, uh, you know, he said, don't worry about your shit, your stuff at the uh at the airport. You know, we'll get it later.

You won't need it. What. So he got me, uh, he got me all the gear that I needed for and got me assigned to you know, the marine house there. So we had about let's see, I think they had a contingent of fourteen, and they brought six more including me, from other embassies. One was from Madrid, one was from Rome, and I forget, I just can't remember where they're all from. So you have the normal uh continuency that's there, and then you have the six extra so it made us up to be nineteen uh and then plus the gunny with MAINK twenty and that was just the MSCH you know, for the for the area that we were and we were supposedly. Yeah, that it's a the embassies are. You're there by invitation and treaty, okay. And what you're

talking at school is you know that that's his sovereign territory. You got the wall, you got the gate, you got you sidewalk or whatever, and everything on that wall and inside is yours American sovereign territory. You own it, you run it. Outside outside of that belongs to the host country. And they're supposed to provide uh services, you know, security services, police, especially trained police. You see them up there in Washington, d C.

How you know they're I don't really know what they are, but they're you know, government service employees of some type, armed police that you know, have lethal force and risk powers. But their job is make sure that nobody attacks a foreign service mission. That's pretty standard, right. Most countries have a dedicated local police force that helps support embassy operations or embassy security.

Absolutely, and some of them are trained real well and you know, pro American, and some were just there because it pays better than what their normal police you know, job would be, or they couldn't find anybody else. So is that what it was like in Iran? They were just there because or did they actually feel like they should protect you guys? That there was a mix right there at first one when I got there in seventy eight, they were pro American and most of them spoke real good English and we used them for interpretation when we had open posts where you got posts that allowed people to egress and ingress into the embassy and everything was because the whole embassy isn't secure. And I'd say secure, it's not all classified. There's people that

you know, come and go in areas local workers. We call them TCNs now I don't know if they call them then third country nationals stuff like that. Fsl e's Foreign Service local employees got a mix of anybody anywhere now, only they wouldn't be able to go into probably the chancery building, I know, where you know seep with squirrels work or anything like that. But a lot of the other areas that were there, you know, they did maintenance, like this and cut the grass and whatever. All the logistical support stuff, all of it. So they provided they provide a lot of that.

So we we were basically the the Regna Marines that were their station. They were their station. They knew the chancery and they worked at the Chancery building where the ambassador and all the main officers were. We would have the compound area and the outer gates and things and basically just you know, watch what was going on and uh, we would be the focus of when you when it got really bad, and uh they were. The rebellion actually became a shooting revolution. You're talking to July August seventy eight, and I've got pictures of, you know, showing the bodies of you know, people that had stood up against the Shah's troops and called they didn't usually really call them terrace back then, but although that's exactly what they were by the sheer definition of

it, but they would they started down the down the street about two miles at the Giant Soccer stadium. Hell, it'd be thirty forty thousand of them, you know, getting you know, hyped up, ramped up, amped up, and then you know walking down uh uh talk to John she Boulevard which is basically embassy road. There as several embassies on there, and uh, they rant and rave and scream, throw maltof cocktails and shoot a few rounds in the you know, into the place. You know, big deal.

As long as they didn't come over that wall directly threaten us, There's not a whole lot we could do about it. Okay, kind of you've seen some of the stuff that was going on up in you know, Minnesota, Seattle, and you know some of the you know, the problems that we had, you know, with with the with the riots up there a couple of years ago. Very similar there. I mean no less you know, dangerous or deadly. I mean you could you could catch a brick or a bottle or you know, a straight round all the time. So you know you had to you know, keep your covered consumement, you know, intact for the most part. So but you see in Iran they had a Tehran. I'll just I'll go down because that's where I know is that you

have a lot of they are literally tribes, and then tribes also have factions all over Iran, Okay, and their mixed their mixed breeds and although a lot of them didn't like the Shah, a lot of them did and that was a split in the family like North and South, you know, civil war in the United States, and what else would be going on would be that you have the players in there, the Russians, their stirring the pot, the PLO coming in, their stirring the pot. And while were they there, they're Palestinians. Don't be one of them. Well, or fat was good friends with the Ietotal Komeni and some of these actions. Although you're run in the middle, you say, I really don't like the Shah, but I know, I don't think he's going to last much longer. I'm

really not all pro comeni either with the you know, you know, go from a Western nice uh you know concept and culture to an overnight, you know, uh Muslim theocracy. And nobody wanted to you know, just you know, jump in from one one end of the pendulum to the other. And you know, with that being you know, you couldn't you couldn't depend on In the military over there, there was such a big country in the military that some at their air force bases at Toppendopi Airport air Force Base, they wouldn't. They wouldn't help the show. They wouldn't do anything for them, But they wouldn't do anything for COMMUNI either. They'd show up and they just sit around. They wouldn't do any maintenance on the on the airplanes or

the birds. They wouldn't pick sides other other ones did. And the FA ying was was one of those groups that we were informed about and briefed about from the intelligence agencies and are saying on the feed they are a communist faction of a Muslim tribe. How did that work? But nonetheless they are paid for anything you want to pay them in poppies and drugs. You don't want to give them, uh you know clout, you want to give them military weapons just paying cash. You know, Dell jump into bed with you.

So the Russians were just righting checks left and right. That these guys and I alluded to before, to the Salt Strategic arms limitations, the saltmar and Greet agreement with the nukes that we were trying to you know, download and get rid of, dismantled with the Russians and everybody else. I think from what I remember right is that they were trying to congress in all their wisdom, What is it going to go for it unless we could trust but verify And so how do you verify that? I mean the northern part of Iran, up near Tabreeze in the Elsborg Mountains, right across from the Caspian Sea is the Russian underbelly of where they do a lot of their missile testings and everything like that, kind of like our Vandenburg Air Force Base, NASA Cape

Canaveral, Cape Kennedy, whatever we're calling it this decade. So a lot of secrets, girl military counter intelligence guys were up there, and they worked out of our embassies and traveled back and forth up there, and they were passed up, from what I understand, tasked with watching Theirusians and making sure that, you know, they could politically convince people in Congress that yes, we're all well, will be able to account for I pretty much know when the Russians were lying and bullshit and et cetera, et cetera, which would have been salt strategic on its limitation too, and the Russians didn't like that.

So it was in their best of interest to harass or you know, bother the Americans intelligence any anywhere that they could, and I guess they got the opportunity one time when you know, they to assault the embassy. And it took years later, after nineteen seventy nine to figure out that they were behind it and that who they used a fat ay in to assault us that day. Because once they lose that embassy and they control it now, well all the intelligence people were working out in these little uh satellite areas that had shut down. But you know they got no no mother home to go back to or to get into. And now you know, you just you just don't fly in the metabarred airport and you know, like you're going on vacation.

Now you've got to serept your serah teptious slee go through Turkey and all the other areas. You know that now pay everybody off if you want to continue running those operations. So once you take out a consulate or an embassy or make it you know, useless to anybody, it really, you know, kind of puts a damper and a monkey engineer game. Yeah, for sure, how did the assault on your embassy start? When you get that book and I'm going to send you a copy of it, sure is that it starts out with the assault. But it was it was February fourteenth, fal Thing's Day. And anyway, thank you seventy nine. We had ever since about October, we've been getting shot at drive bys and it was getting more and more so we say prolific at times. And actually the apartment complexes

and a high rise apartment complexes and office buildings around the embassy, and the mission was we were we were really concerned about them because, uh, from up there, they can assault us from a from a elevated position, and you're shooting down in an open con open area, an open compound. It's just like shooting you know, fish in a barrel. It is very very untactical. But at that point, you know, what are you gonna do with it? It's outside the embassy. You don't have a whole lot to say so on it. You can pist moon and ruin you want to the local government, who at that time was falling apart and had other things to do, because give it about the American embassy. You know. Anyway, we had we'd have we had people, they drive by, they throw a

few Matov cocktails over top of the over the wall, and sometimes we walk out there in the morning we go out there, they hadn't even lit the rag or the wick on it yet, so we were just selecting these up and you knows they're putting on it. I mean, they weren't the top of the line, you know, uh rocket scientists in the of the terrorist genre, you know to say. But there were some that you know, knew what they were doing, and they caused a lot of problems with us.

The Eventually it got so dangerous that we had to shut the Uh we had a satellite constantly right down for visas and things like that just down the street that we named we nicknamed eventually for the Apache because we couldn't protect that anymore. They shoot good drive by shoot it up so much it was useless.

Non people want to used to one be at one time, people standing in line, you know, to get the services there. Now it was it was you know, why you even have anybody out there. So we shut that down, brought those marines back onto the onto the post. But uh, it was I believe Monday, the twelfth February is that normally we've turned when you when you're done with your your tour duty out there, eight ten, twelve hours depends what section of the embassy you're at. You would go to the armory, turn in, turn in your M sixteen, any grenades, any smoke, anything you had, but you kept your you kept your your side arm and you know, uh, the next time I came on duty, they had they had given us a briefing and we went to

the armory and they wouldn't issue us I'm sixteen's or grenades or anything. They ishued us shotguns, Remington a seventy p shotguns, police, the p being and the police where it was a pistol grip once you once you folded the stock down. I said, what the fuck is this? I said, shotguns. We can't do dick with shotguns. Now. They're great during the hallway close range, you know, thirty yards in or less. I know, great for riot, but you know, maybe down the hallway if you're you know, shooting room to room. But I mean we are going to engage. We get the technical, the most high probability of engaging multiple series that will probably outman Us. And they have thirty caliber seven point sixty two weapons, all bought by the United States. What's down at about a quarter

of a mile away was the Armish mag which was a joint operation National Guard armory between the Iranian Army under the Shaw and ours, you know, the American military Army. And I said, you know, they just rated that thing last week, so these guys are out here running around with you know, there was Belgian fn J three's or G three's they called them the chase a and in Persian in FARSI and I said, and I pissed a moment and grown. Now I was one of the senior sergeants, although I wasn't in rank in pay grade although compared to the other Marines, but I wouldn't have any any rank structure there per se, because the regular Marines that were stationed there, you know, basically came first. Unless it's a different rank,

it makes sense. So any other sergeant that was there, you know, regardless, he'd be in charge of command or whatever. But anyway, I went, I went to Gunny Sutton, the n c U, I see. And I may not pissed him. I pitched a fit a bitch. I gave him everything that was that was logical, that was that was moral, and what the hell was this? And he, you know, he knew about it because of Richard Thomas, the r s O Regional Security Officer, our boss from the State Department had fought fought against. Also, the order said where's where's the order of gunny? Where did freaking order come from? And who the fuck is making this order? I said, they're not here. They don't know what's going on. This is this is mentally

incompetent. Okay, this is not going to work. This is setting us up for failure. So that was, you know, tough shit marine, suck it up. I said, here's your shotgun. And that's two days before everything goes down, right for eight hours. By the way, we're twenty four hour alert, which normally you keep your weapons and you know, when you get off you can't drink. You know, you're not off of what we do. You got you're on standby, So get your ship, shower, shave. What do you want to do but be ready for you.

So they knew, justin they knew. Somebody knew. I don't know who the fuck they were, but they whoever was that had a come who gives the ambassador? Who gives an ambassador orders his boss in fucking Washington? Come on, do the guy, damn math, will you so nobody could explain to it why and you're not going to you know, do or die, Marie. That's it. You just do okay, okay, fine, you know that being said, I said, uh, the next time we went to post, I'm sitting here looking at this and I go, damn.

Now. The the saving grace of it is that you can have all the AMMO you wanted. Okay. We had the old BDU's battle dress uniforms of fatigues, so they used to call, remember, and the cargo pockets and we would just dump mean there was handing whole boxes of shells to you, as much as you wanted to carry, and you just dump them in there. So you'd have h double lot buck, I mean trump a lot buck number number five, five shots, six shot, nine shot, skeet.

You know, for the most part that we would use, you know, to keep skate was probly good because you could actually not use it as a deadly force, you can, you know, we're trained to, you know, shoot it down in near your angles, blow your knees, things like that, lesson the needs for force whatever anyway. But and slugs, you know, if you were lucky enough to get a box of slugs, so that in your a handgun, so I could probably have about one hundred rounds on me, you know, and I know you carry more than that.

We didn't really have the bandoliers of it, you know, of AMMO back then. I mean again, this is only four years after Vietnam. Yeah, yeah, see what I'm saying. And the old uh, the old what literally we call a flak jacket that was. It was a hard ceramic deal, I know, and it wasn't the soft cavalar ones that we had today. You know, I don't know what the difference was was.

You know, if if at seven point six two hits you direct on it doesn't it's going through, It's gonna get you. So that being said, I said, okay, well what's wrong with this picture? Uh? Take away our our our M sixteens where we can fire automatically if we needed to. We can also engage people well over one hundred yards, which is cover anywhere in the embassy. We can shoot back. If they were shooting at us in the high rise apartment complex, what they will be doing? And I said, uh, why would they do something like this if they didn't know it? And then why don't we you know this twenty four hour alert.

So Monday came and went, Tuesday came and went, and where I started wrote my book, I'm standing post and winding down. That morning there was just me at my at my post where uh in the morning, I would be relieved by two during the day because there's a lot more pedestrian traffic, but uh relieved by the post. And there was something weird about it.

And again I referenced the book because it'll put your mindset when you read it, because it's first person, second person or third person. And I'm talking to myself like I'm talking to you. So when you read the book, you're gonna be You're gonna be listening to me talking to myself. I said, there's something wrong here, justin I said, many Krause, what's what's it's too quiet? It's it's the middle of the week. I know, it's Wednesday morning, February fourteenth, And I said, it was awful quiet. Normally we have dry bike shootings and people prowl around, throwing things over the over the over the wall, just harassment or you know, testing our response. I don't know a little bit of all. So I said,

is that morning Sun's come up, and so the two Marines relieved me, and I said, you know, it's something weird about this, and I told them that the UH just recently within the last few minutes UH two people, two females that I know that were I had no other code names. I don't know if I can use them now, but anyway, well, well I'm gonna make them up for this, I said, I would tell them that they came in that morning. My post was in between.

It had an hour area towards the pa x Okay where the Foreign Service local ones and a gate with the caravans. Right restaurant, real nice restaurant and open to the embassy, you know, embassy personnel, but we had the the the area, the ingress and egress, and the back part that led onto the embassy compound itself. So you know, we had we had to watch that, you know, during the day. If you weren't clear to come on the embassy, you could use the restaurant and you could use the p X, but you couldn't get by us because we were the We were the checkpoint. Anyway, so to the to the UH operatives when we came in that morning for for breakfast and right through check the credentials that ran in.

So they're gonna they're gonna sit down, you have breakfast, And I told you, I told them. He was relieving. I said, uh, Windmill and Peanut are having breakfast inside. So I said, okay, great. You know they weren't really our big fans of us, and them either, they don't like tab They couldn't carry weapons, and you know, they're supposed to tell us what to do. I said, no, you're and tell people and if they do something wrong, we have the authority, you know, write them up, lock them up, you know, and then let let it, you know, let it go from there, because we're the cops in it, you know, in that place. You're not going to call a Farsie police for him, you know. So there was mixed feelings about it, but this used always when when any of those that

ILK or genre was around, you let the other Marines know. So we were laughing, joking, you know, bullshit, and then you know, say things we're not supposed to politically say. Yeah anyway, so yeah, anyway, and these these said just had to be female at the time. So I mean, back then, it's really taboo. I told him, I said, you know, something's weird about this. I mean, I just don't know what it is. And he said, maybe I'm just tired, you know, I haven't slept, you know, like you know, fourteen sixteen hours. And they said, okay, we'll take care of it.

But I could smell the cook in the UH in the in the kitchen. I said, yeah, that that ship. I won't eat again until four o'clock, you know, sixteen hundred hours. Well, anyway, I went in and got my breakfast. So I saw the my favorite UH waiter in there, and uh, you know, it's eyeball who was there. And again something was weird about it. There wasn't as many people in there as it was normally really quiet. And the waiter's name was Manachi. And he says, hey, good morning, Sergeant Ken. How are you da da da da? And I say, well, what's up? He says, He says, he asked me. He says, what's up? He says, the Farsie police, the jen Domerae or whatever the fuck they call him. Back then, I said, the Farsi cops I were just out

supposed to be outside our wall would sometimes come in the ones that on that side of the embassy would come in have their breakfast before they went to post, before they did their their patrol whatever. And I said, that's what it is. I don't know. We didn't see them outside. We checked the we checked the cameras at the side, and I went back out to the post and told the two Marines. I said, here's what it is.

They said, there's no far see the police outside. And what we checked it. We checked the cameras and clothes, character TVs and sure ship sidewalks empty, the street's empty. This is this is like seven thirty eight o'clock in the morning. Okay, you should have traffic, you should you should have something on a major street like this. Knew something was wrong and I said, oh, that's called Post one, which is a command of control for the MSG's up there. And he said, yes, they've been alerted to it because obviously a main gate is having the same, you know, unique situation. And they said, yeah, we're aware of the situation.

We're letting the RSO know. And he's going to be you know, calling whoever he calls on his side of the fence over there, and you know, uh diplomatic side, say hey, where the fuck are your cops. You know what I mean, There ain't here, They're a wall. And so I said, okay, fine, did my job, give him the report, and I moved on and I went back to the marinehouse.

And I was dead tired. Man. I remember this like it's yesterday, and it's about ten o'clock in the morning, maybe ten ten. I tucked my gears off, I had stowed my weapons, and I just laid down on my bed and I still have my flatjacket on and go, man, don't fall asleep with this on. You know, you'll regret it, you know, have a stiff neck and whatever. And just put my radio into the into the charger. When all of a sudden, I hear a crack on the radio and it said they're coming over the wall. They're coming over the wall. I'm taking rounds. I'll take it around. And just when they hear that, I hear the rounds themselves. I hear a gunfire, and I think it was at that time it didn't alert me because it was

the only thing that lurned me about it was that it was it was small arms fire. And we've we've heard that a lot, you know, pistols, but it was a lot closer. So, I mean it was like on the compound, like, man, who the fuck shooting at each other? And it was It was a corporal Downy. He was at the front gate. Well, there's four of them up there at the front gate, the motorpool gate walked through and that's where everybody come on the embassy and right in front of the chancery. And he said they're taking fire, taking fire, Christ permission of fire. And I said, what the fuck? And the next few seconds, while the radio was going, radio traps is going back and forth. It went from hand handguns to rifles, and you start

hearing the crack of a rifle is a lot different than a pop of a handgun. And here said he's got rifles. Who the fuck? And then it went from rifle fire to sustained automatic weapon fire. I said, what the fuck's going on? It's all like at thirty seconds and I said, what fuck? What's going on? This ain't no drill. Marines don't have the rifles. Who the fuck is shooting at us? And sure a ship that come out of the wall taking rounds And I said, this ain't no goddamn drill, This fucking real. This gun goddamn gun battle. So I grabbed my I grabbed my gear, grabbed my radio, grabbed my chotgun and uh following Uh SRT will use a special response training or your your protocols basically is for us to get back when we aren't onren't post to manage your post.

Is to get back to the chance you building engage any body on the way that's an enemy target or three you know threatens your life. Get back to the chancery, button it down, turn it on an alamo and call for the cavalry. That's our job. Get the ambassador. Basically, you know you're you're playing save the ambassador and buy them time and then follow the orders of who's ever in charge over there. Well, there's no way to get across this open field. You're talking twenty seven acre compound and the din and the noise was just so loud. I mean, you've been in the firing range before, even with the earphones on, and it's just the phone times every every once in a while when you you know, put your your

ear protection up and somebody you know fires nearbuying of shit, man, I'll put my ears back on. It rattles your case. You know, we don't have any any ear protection there. It's all shit, live fire man. And you can just look across the uh the compound, you say, man, that's like one hundred and fifty maybe two hundred yards to the chancery and everywhere around the uh the compound outside that we knew before and were afraid of. Sure, shit, they're all compounds all the area up there, the high rise apartment complexes, the business offices, things like that. They were in balconies and just shooting down indiscriminately randomly, trying to keep our heads down so that you know, that's cover fire, and we couldn't fire back.

And shit that they had us that arranged with three hundred yards. We couldn't fire fifty yards with a fricking and that's if you had a slug or something. So we were outmanned, outgunned, you name it. They had this element of surprise. We were covered from elevated position. We had nothing going for us at that time, and trying to look across and survey.

Getting across that, I said, there's no way I could actually see rounds or see rounds hitting the trees that were there and the leaves falling down I could see them bouncing off the windshields of cars. I said, that's suicide. There's gonna be no way I get across them. The only place I could go back to, what's my secondary fallback is the last post that I was at. So I went back there and the two Marines that were there, they were hunkered down, and I said, I said, we can't get to the chance. You're not from here. I said, we're cut off the old motorottle bricks that they had for radios. They had to push the talk the channel. You pushed that down. As long as you had that there, you got that little turkey chirp they try to talk. You

held that down, you opened up the net and nobody can Everyone could hear what was going on, but nobody else could use it. So that started the That started the assault, and we could we could hear indiscriminately. You know. That went on and on for about ten to fifteen minutes of just automatic sustained weapons fire, and we didn't know. We weren't hearing anything, no command, no control, no coordination. And I said, oh, so what's the next best thing we need to do? And I discussed it with the other marine was a sergeant and any one was a corporal. And I said, well, we can't hold this position here, I said, because now we understand why the Farsi police were on the other side. Nice of that, you know, that morning, and nice of them not to

give us the heads up. The bastards, you know, And that's why a lot of people knew what was going to happen. That's why they went around the embassy walls on the outside a big surprise. And so I made the decision. I said, look, we can't hold this place here. I said, we can't let these people into the embassy. We can't let them back out on the street. So the people that were working with Foreign service local employees, they're Pakistani's Filipinos or whatever, some of them females, they were working over the PX, I said, some of their shoppers, you know whatever, and get them out of there, and said, let's get him back into the Karvar restaurant. We'll border that stuff up here, we'll hunker down. And that's where chapter two starts, is that now we

are separated from the arrest of the embassy and we're locked up in the restaurant and we're waiting to see what's going to happen. I understand that the Iranians came in and you confronted them in the restaurant itself. Correct, that's correct. Now, yeah, tell us about that if you can. Okay, so we barricade ourselves up. There's three ways to get into the in and out of the car advance our restaurant two or in the non non classified areas A classified area. Really we call it that, but it's not. It's just the way you get from the restaurant into directly into the embassy, not in that little area where we were. I know it's confusing, but when you look at the map and you read what I'm saying in my book,

is that makes sense. So it's a half moon and you can come and go into the doors into the restaurant. You weren't going to get into the embassy. You have to come out of the restaurant and to my post and to get into the embassy, we'll be controlled that. So we're waiting. We're trying to We try to call Post one on the hard line. Nothing, no, there's no answer. So we're no again, no command, no control. We have no idea what's going on in the rest of the twenty seven acres that are out there. Okay, you can hear in between some of the I say, for the lack of anything else, reloads or whatever they were doing. You can you can hear the pop of shotguns.

So I know marines are firing back. Okay, so this is a full long on, but we don't know what condition are where all over all over the place. Couldn't get through the post. One on the hard line said we're in Comnicado. We're done, We're on. So I talked with the with the other two marines and I said, hey, I said, here's the way it is. Here's the sitrap situation report. I said, I don't know what the fuck's going on. We have no clue. I said, give me a headcount of how many we got and and I just tell me how many you know, women besides in the headcount. And so I took I we barricaded the doors, and I talked with Manachi and the local area guy. He's been there, his dad's been there. I mean, he was just a staple of the embassy. He's been there forever. He

knows everything everybody. So he's my interpreter. And he was a really good, nice guy, just down to earth and uh waiter. He couldn't get a better waiter server. It was like he took being a server to next professional level. I mean that was his pride and joy to be that way anyway. So he was just saying, he said, I said, what's hap and said, I don't know, Hang tight here, I need you to, you know, talk what's going on. Well, and shortly there after, I mean shortly you talk another ten to fifteen minutes. Uh.

Some type of vehicle. It looks like I'd say that it's a jeep, but it looks like a jeep, but it built like one. And it crashes through the back gate that led into that little half moon area and inpoured about thirty or forty uh armed insurgents. Someone was in military gear, some were in plain clothes. You get a copy of the book, you'll see them. I got pictures of them there, and you look at them and say, yeah, the way they're carrying their weapons and the way they're dressed, you know, they look need a hardcore I said, yeah, but there's a few hardcore in there. But the way you can tell that, the way they walk, the way they manipulate their weapons. I said, but you know what, in a firefight really doesn't fucking matter when it's forty

of them and three of you, you know, and you're carrying shotguns. Oh yeah, you know, now shotguns are applicable because if in when we get into it with them, we're gonna shooting with less than fifty yards. So we got to we got a you know, a working fighting chance. I still would have preferred them sixteen, but you know, not there.

So they busted down the gate. They came in right away. They just swum the area. They they could see they couldn't get it. There's a secondary wall to get over into the chancery that we could cover fire. And they went right away. They went running into the PX and just rated that place. I go go in. Take all you want, leave us the funck alone and I'll get in there. They're you know, having a guy dan good time, and uh, you know, a couple of them, uh started walking over the to the restaurant and checking the doors and checking the windows and looking in and you know, I tolt M very quiet, you know, play dead nothing, and uh, you know, I guess I'm speculating at that point. That's what I said, in my book is that

they figured out there was somebody was in that restaurant. Their movement or looking in the windows, I don't know, but they come to the conclusion there's some people in there, and they started speaking to far See. I guess again assumption that was Iranians that we're in there. So Manachi translated for me, and I said, you know what's up and he said, this is not good, Sergeant Ken. He said, these are fine kalk k h a l q bad guys. Uh. I said, what's that mean?

And he says they're communists and he says they're paid terrorists. They says, they're like if you had a if you had a muscile, part of a mafia, that's what these guys would be. Okay, paid, Hey, you know, they don't care who they worked for and who do you want dead? And how much is going on? Here's what it's gonna cost you.

So that's where they're at. And he says, very bad. He said, very bad man. He said uh. And he said if they get in here, he said, they'll they'll kill you and then they will abuse everybody in here. They'll kill almost everybody in here. And I said, well, shit, I let, I let the other two marines. I called him and he said, here's a situation from what Manacchi says.

And he says, well, now they're banging on the doors and they know somebody's in there, and while we're talking, we're discussing, you know, our options and whatever. He said, well, do we surrender because these guys are demanding in in uh in FARSI that if there's any if there's any military, any marines in there, I said, they will be shot and killed. He says. Otherwise, if you let the if you open the doors and let them, let you know your audience, they're trying to make a deal, Iranians could go free. And that's why I'm getting a shorthand version from Manachi. So I live the other Marisa to hear that guys.

I said, that kind of rules out the chance of us surrendering. We have a post, we have no orders to surrender, I said, And we got these people's lives in here. We ain't surrendered. And they looked both in the eyes, and they we looked at each other. Reason we knew what that meant. I said, holy shit, So anyway, that's hardcore man. A bunch of early twenty year old's going through something like that.

Oh yeah, and it's still the firing and the shooting is going on, like you know whatever. And I could look out the window and and get get a glance of where the flag pole was over, but the chancery flag was there a couple hours ago. American flag's gone. I said, fuck so without command control but anything, I said, I said, Okay, here's what we're gonna do. We've had everything barricaded. And I said, talk to him in FARSI they know we're here, and then speak all to them also in English. Okay, say yes, there are Americans in here. Don't say anything about being the military Marines. All right, let's just see if they buy this shit go away. So we're gonna chisel away and negotiating as best we can. They ain't gonna have no fucking part of

that. So they're back and forth in farsing the English and English farcinging. And I said, okay, his name's Jack, And I said Jack. I said to one of the marines, I said, post you here, I said the other one, I put another post that we have a crossfire and I'll be in the middle. I said it feels a fire, et cetera, et cetera. Gave him their directions, and at that point they kept banging on the door, banging the door, and somebody had taken a an automatic weapon and just out of nowhere and just shot the ship out of the lock that was that was there, the locking mechanisms to lock the doors, and there are two wooden doors. He just shut. It took him like three magazines to do it. He's a shitty shot, or it was

the hell of a goddamn good lock. But anyway, he eventually shot it, and you could see that, you know, and that it was given way. And I said, well, once that lock goes, you know, it's going to be holding that door. Is the barricades, the tables and chairs, everything we could find it to throw up there. And I said, ship, well, I said, what do you want to do?

I said, they're going to come through there. Well, they're going to breach that door, even at that vehicle in they're going to breach that door. I said. At that point, I said, where's it going to be? And while I was talking to that saying that, this clown puts his hand through and pushes what's left of the lock right through. So now I got a hole wherever he's putting his hand in trying to figure out, you know, what's holding the door. I shot the lockout and I still can't at the door open. Well, I don't know. Even in my book I said, I don't know what the fuck I was thinking this instinctively, I drew my pistol. And at that time I was a distinguished expert in pistol, and this is one in twenty feet. I couldn't fucking

miss my tribe. But my eyes closed, you know, I pulled my pistol and I shot out his hand. Now, I had a smithon Wess in nineteen. It's three fifty seven, and I had hollow points in it. And when I can see, it hit right on his knuckle and it just blew. That thing turned in turned into a stump. He pulled that back out, and the yell and the screen that I heard was just incredible.

And I looked over Jack and he goes, oh, it's time to dance. He said it in Spanish, and I've written it. I wrote it in Spanish in the book. And he goes, oh, time to dance now, and the other marine, the corporal, he was from He's from New England, so I got this hispanic is from Texas and his accent, and I got a guy that pocks his car in the yacht up here from Boston. It's the throw the levity in the Marine Corps levity into it.

It's it's it was kind of funny. And so it all happened in like seconds. Okay, justin he pulls his stump out, and I can just imagine. Not then I didn't, but over the years and decades I could. I can imagine what those guys who were standing out there around when he put his hand, when he pulled that thing back, and it was a bloody stump, you know, squirt and blood. What their look on their face would have been. Sure they opened up on, They opened up on. There's at least a dozen of them, and they everybody fired automatic just and the din the noise. I say, get out, take cover.

We jumped down, hit the floor and got everybody else's We had already put in the way back, uh, near the in the kitchen, near the cooler, because it's the most ballistically protected place in the whole probably the whole compound except for the chancery. We had him back there. It was just the three of us out there in that dining room area, so we knew what was coming. Once I fight take that shot, we dove down.

All the bullets came through and you could and Hollywood couldn't get you know, do this any better. You get to see the glasses and everything, and then just coming through the windows and shooting the ship out of everything, and it's just popping, and you get your you're all hunker down and just go. I just hope I don't get shot in the ass in the back of the head, you know, with a ricochet or something. Glass down And I said, oh that, and the noisey is that close just outside the windows. It was the ding. You couldn't even hear his own think justin, I'm telling you. And just then the lull comes and I know it was there reload. They're so they're out there, you know, fumble fucking with their magazines and I don't know what it's. This came up over

top and order the other marines. I said, let him have it. Fire fire fire, fuck boom boom boom. Man. We just fucking laid into him. Eight seventy piece you got, you got eight and one in the chamber, give you nine rounds boom boom, boom, and then you you scream, you know, cover fire. Real. So somebody come out with their with their pistol and they they'd cover you. Well, you reloaded back up, boom boom, boom and he then So it's just like rolling thunder, and that's what you practice like that when you're in that situation.

Damn well, some of the schmucks that were out there that were standing out in the middle of the in the in the compound area, standing out there fumblefucking with their magazines, it didn't realize. Oops. At least six to eight of them we dropped like that. There was a couple of them that knew to get behind cover, behind that jeep or behind the dumpster, the steel dumpster that was there behind you know, their reloads. So then we ducked down the back and forth, back and forth. They're firing, We're firing. You got dead and dying laying out there screaming and yelling. I go, this is a motherfucking firefight. Holy shit. So we have at least three volleys back and forth, and for some reason, they they stopped,

they stopped their firing maybe they were shot on mags or they were getting low and Ammo also, who knows. I don't know, but there was a bit of a lull and you can see the ones that were already dead, you know, they were hitting the face, they were hitting you know, in the chest. None of them that I saw had any ballistic on it. Back then, this is like I said, seventy nine. Yeah, it's weren't you know, bless vests were only for the elite, not these morons. And uh so then there's a couple of rolling around rything in pain and you know, screaming. I said, holy shit, So that's that's you saw it. There. We we go through this for about half an hour, three or four rounds, and uh you know, there's a lull in that action. And I get hold of the other two marines.

I said, okay, Ammo check and I said we did. We see who's got what Ammo left, and we divvy up in between so we all have about equal amount. And I said, the dude's we're fucked. I said, here, here's here's a situation. I said, we're we got about enough Amma for more assault, and then we're going to be at Ammo and then they're going to get through that door. They're gonna bereach that door, and then it's gonna be hand in hand and motherfuckers. Yeah, I had a k bar on me my mud. I had my my cave bar type and uh, you know, I looked at I looked at Jack and look at Henry, and I look at him and I'm gonna saying I'm looking at you. And what I'm saying you know what that means. I'll say, yeah, close quarter of battle, hand to hand, you're gonna have

to And I looked at Jack and I said, you got a knife? Again his humor, he goes, hey, man, I'm Mexican. What do you think he did? He had a hit a KNIFINNY. I looked over Henry and said you got one. He goes, nah, but there's some nice kitchen knives, but your knives in the kitchen. I go, yeah, right on, I go get one, and uh, you know, so you're trying to put this in the perspective is that, oh, you've got trained with that, and you have a residual every year training in it. But man, if you ever gone face to face with two or three, and it's gonna be at least two or three per per per marine.

And I mean you're gonna have to stick somebody with intent to kill and move on. And what I'm saying without getting stuck yourself. Well that's if when they come to the door, they just blow you away for sure. So I mean you're boning assumption. So what do you want a quick bullet or you know, getting stumped and beat the death then you know, stabbed like a porcupine. Hmm, that is dead, all bad, all bad circumstances. So so they tried one more assault and and we repelled that one.

And that was one in the book that to this day when you read that book, I want people that when they read it to contact me and I pick out seven miracles because it's a book about miracles what it is, and and not so much religious and per se, but miracles of anythings. When you read that book, that line that don't line up, anything that goes left, the sideways, the whole thing that dominoes all fall, I'd not be here today. Nobody be here today. It's amazing. They were just happen the stance of circumstances. It was incredible, man, I'm telling you so anyway as they as they try to cut, you know, fire and maneuver, manure the three of us, we just stood there by the windows and we just gave it back to them. Boom, boom, boom.

You're talking about a gun battle in less than fifty yards and it's all rifles and shotguns, not even pistols in this point. I talk about it justin because I said it was. It took years later of going through the feelings of it. Was absolutely petrifying, terrifying, you know, you don't even know if you pissed a shit on yourself. But it was also exhilarating because there's bullets flying past you, past you, and you know it's it's the ultimate video game. It's the ultimate game. I look at today and you're just looking at it. You're going from a bead, do a bead, Do a bead do ahead to a beat to be like that. Boom boom boom, and we peld them one last time and they pulled back.

And I don't know how many dead are dying now. Shit, I can't count because you're not just standing. I shot you and you're watching now, You're you're moving your head, you're you're trying to assess. Anyway, one of the one of the guys that I had out there, one of the terrorists, uh that I had pegged a little earlier that was given orders.

Looked like he was, you know, directing things as the leader. I nicknamed him Mustache just because I say, you know what he looked like. That was my Russian version of mustache, because he had a big ass mustache. Anyway, Uh, see some details that come back in that like a flashback. It's amazing. It is, man, oh god, smells even worse. But anyway, so somehow he had gotten up over the wall and across the steam pipes that were above ground and got it rin kind of like behind us, but in an area where he was he was checking the other door. And now as he walks around the corner, I see the shadow and go, who the fuck is that? You know? And as he walks around, I stick my shotgun right off the brooken window and it was

five feet maybe eight feet, you know, I said, freeze. Now, this clown is in a semi suit. Okay, he's carrying a bandolier or seven points two thirty col but he's holding a newsy nine millimeters and these guys hate the Israelis and hate Jews anyway, So once he carrying Israeli, you know whatever, it's a clown show, it really is. And I hold on him a shotgun point and i'm I said, one of something in the book. When you read it, it'll say why I didn't pull the trick and blue his brains out? And he froze. I froze, and we'll move along the story. And I said, look, I don't know who you are, I don't know who you represent, but I said, this is not going the way you thought it was going to be. And I'm sure they did. They didn't expect the Marines to give them, you

know, a hell of a fucking fight. And I said now, I said, look, we got a lot of non combatant here, Americans, your people, my people, foreign service, local people, a lot of people. You understand English. He spoke pretty good English. And I said, I said, here's whay it's going to be. I said, you were either going to back off, let these people out, let them go out the back gate, down the Coultchibe Jehan gate and they go free, I said, or not combatants. They got nothing to do with it.

You can look at me and check out they have no weapons. I said, they go free, and I said, I will surrender myself, my marine's and our equipment over to you. I remember this every time I even talk think about this. And he said, and what if I don't, I'm gonna blow your fucking head off. You better make a decision real quick because the shotguns getting mighty fucking heavy. So it was in pass for a few seconds, and he did the most unbelievable thing, justin he calls another guy over from from yeah, yeah, yeah, this way, come on, and he comes over from behind the jeep and you know, now, I can't believe what this guy did. He just put another another target in front of me. Two. You know, I can't miss. It was

a Bogo blast one get one. It was beautiful, you know that some I'm sitting there and they converse, and when he's done talking with his boyfriend in there, they said, okay, you know they made a deal. Well we made the deal, and uh we we put them ring and put one of the rings up above the door so that when the door's opened, one by one, they were they were frists, they were checked and they were allowed to go out the back door. Because he had a bead right on, right on his head. And I had told him, told Manachi to tell this guy, if he groups one female that leaves here, he's gonna get shot in the fucking face. Splain it to him in that vernacular.

And they knew. I mean, they still got dead and dying laying out there, blood splattered everywhere, so they knew we weren't fucking around. They didn't realize how little amma we had left. I mean, it was nothing. And but they didn't even know how many you know, of us were in there. They just know that it's it's costing him dearly to get the fuck in there. Yeah, so m one by one by one they get out, and those two intelligence of us excitement. I looked at him and you know, they were scared of shitless, and they said, you know, finally we got the one upsman on them. They go, now you see why we're here. Your whole I didn't say it, but in my mind, I mean, your whole fucking life is in my hands, bitch. Remember that if you ever get it out. And you know,

you can see that they had the look in their face, and I remember their eyes and now they were they were glad that we didn't let them get their hands on them, because sooner or later, according to when they take the embassy upstairs, they're going to find out who these people are. It's not well for them at all because see supposedly the Savac which is the Shaws Gestapo police, we're supposed to be trained by the CIA, and people know that the CIA was, you know, put the peacock throne back there.

When the shows that shows in power, etcetera. They got a real hate for them. Anyway, so they they coordinate the two of them together, so they were pretty pretty happy, and you could see that they were very appreciative of, you know, what we did. And I said, there was no other way to do it. I mean, that was that was That was That was miracle number three. Go through the book when you see because if that guy had done anything, said anything, or went for his weapon, he was dead. I couldn't miss it with my eyes closed, and not that not that range. It's not a shotgun anyway. So I said, okay, and I told the other Marines said, here's what's going to happen. I said, and this is what negotiated. He goes that

just as good you know, and we had no guarantee that when they breached that door and they come through, they weren't going to kill us anyway, because now they don't have anybody else to abuse or anything. So, I mean, we were going down. We figured it out and I said, you know, make peace with your God because you were about to see him.

And the adrenaline dumps that you know, we're not having to sleep and uh uh and just the adrenaline dumps that come in and out of here, and they just they just wear you out, man, I mean they just complete you. And all the noise in you that we've been shooting through, I mean everything time frame you're looking at, it just went crazy. So we took after the last and asked least uh non combatant got out. We took our shotguns, we beat we beat the barrel down and bent it anything we could, took the radios apart, got rid of the antennas anything could be used against us, and put in a pile in the middle of the room. That's our protocol. Okay, leave the end me nothing that they could be used against you. And then uh we we stepped back and we

said, okay, come on through the door. We moved the stuff that was the barricaded the door, and uh, they kicked the door and I said, okay. I had asked, Manachi, how do you say, you know, surrender, How do we surrenders? Toslem caslam Cone, And that's what we were chanting when they came through, and our hands were up.

And just as they came through the door, this guy, the first guy that came through, big guy, he let loose with a burst from a subgun, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move, and God, until this day it was Manachi. He didn't leave with the other ones justin. He had hidden in the in a little alcove there that it served as a linen closet, and he was hiding there.

We didn't see him. I had not directed the other two marines or the corporal to do a head count when when they left. I guess we just mixed up over the over. It was my responsibility. We had the headcount when we come in, but we didn't count the ones going out. I don't know if it was just the noise, the all the confusion, so much going on in your head, but we just assumed. Also, I guess that presumed everybody had a chance to like a fucking rat getting out a guy. Damn sinking ship was out the back gate. They couldn't wait to get out of there. Yeah, so we didn't check. We didn't do the headcount. Manachi had stayed for whatever reason. He stepped right in front of the right in front of the guy with the sub gun and took the

blast that would have hit me in my hands. I fell on top of him and I just screamed. In the book, you see, man, every time I think about it, just like I failed him. Nah, Man, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that. That's that's being too hard on yourself. But anyway, so I know, I know nothing I could say or anybody else could say. We'll change your mind on that, But that's being too hard on yourself. You know, imagine no one can imagine a situation like that where you are three dudes against a superior military force and you are having to not only survive an onslaught of them trying to get into the building, but also you know, get to the point where you can negotiate the surrender and save all these hostages. I mean, I

don't how could you have done a better. How could you have done it better? It's just not I don't think that's possible. Man, I don't think. And I know again again there's nothing I can say will ever change your own mind and stuff like that. But just know, you know, I don't think anybody would ever question anything that you did in that moment.

It's weird because you think that. From that day on, Whenever I think about that, I get so anal about everything. And you know, fast forward years later, when I worked for Department Energy and then I became a law enforcement officer on the street, I would check and double check and real and I said, I have to check it. I have to see it.

I was so anal that I have to know. I had to know. I got to see, I got a test fire, I got to know for a fact, not just assume. I'd never hardly ever make another assumption like that again anyway. So that clown that was Mustafa, he his guys came in, grabbed hold of the two marines, start beating in, rough men up, checking them out, and then and and uh he said something Farsie and his guys went through and cleared the buildings and ramsacked whatever they wanted to. And I just I was just beside myself holding anachi and saw his eyes glaze over and his blood got hit right in the chest. And I just look up with this bastard and he walks in, and this motherfucker hated me. I mean, I've never seen hate in my life, like

because I just made an ass out of him out there, well in front of all his people. And then when he came in, he walks in and he sees a pile of shit that we left, I know there, and he was livid, I mean justin he just he just hit. He came un fucking glue. He went berserk. He's screaming and yelling back and forth, and this is how you Americans make deals and break treaties, no wonder everybody in the world wants to kill you. Then he got real quiet and he just stared at me, and I looked at him and I said, and I said, hey, I don't know if I said it in a comical way. It comes out in the comic away Uh Liberty in the book, but it was meant to kind of like, you know, calm him down. Did the opposite. When I said, hey, look,

I said, you get my marines. You get me my marines on our equipment. I didn't say what kind of condition to be in. Oh fuck that him? Oh well, out of nowhere. He said something to in farcie, and I thought, this kick on the side of my face rolled me back, and then they just put the boots to my ass. Uh and they picked me up. They picked me up. My hands were up in the air and I'm trying to talk to him. My my, my, my face is all contorted. Uh. He said something else to them, and it hit me with a with a gun butt right and it was at ak by the way, because remember the wooden stop and cave didn't broke a couple of my ribs. So that put me down on the ground.

I couldn't get up. They put the boost to me again, I mean they could they and I just bawled up, you know, to try to save my uh, save my vitals absorbing blows. Oh my god, yeah, knees and boots and everything. Uh. They uh, they had a little Later on, I found out they had fractured my sake from cocks and bone. So I didn't I couldn't even feel trying to get up and like your your legs are on fire. So you know, after that stopped, Uh, you know, she he grabs one of the eight seventy p's and shotguns and he's finger fucking this thing and trying to figure out how to get the slide open. And uh, I'm laying there and my one eyes open, and I'm looking over at Manacchi and he's he's laying there and almost face

to face with him, and uh, this Mustapha guy. He figures out how to get the how to get the slide open, and he drops around in the chamber and you know, like like everybody tells you, have you ever heard you know when it's mustly quiet? And it was, but at that time it was just them mad maneuvering around because most of the uh, the shooting and everything had debated by now. And uh, the other two marines were outside. And uh when they say you hear when it's quite enough you can hear around go in a chamber, getting chamber and a shotgun, it is very very unnerving. And then when he points his finger and he puts his finger, he I see him put his finger inside the trigger well and on on the trigger, and he looks at and he looks down at

the barrel of it, and he's pointing it at me. You want to talk about irony, listen to this one. I look up and I see that the barrel had been bent. It beat it on the ground, it had been bent, and mine especially had to be missing off the front. So when he's pointing it, he's putting my shotgun at me. What the fuck? You know? And I heard his little voice and side and saying, it's gonna shoot you, Ken, He's gonna fucking shoot you. And I'm talking to myself. I said, I know, that's just like it happened. Damn alled over shot fast forward now he takes uh. I come to. I don't know how long it was, minutes, hours, I don't know. And I can feel somebody at least being carried by my arms and my len on my limbs. And they weren't walking in uni sitting.

They were pulling me, dragging me back and forth each way. And I remember walking dry, being brought out into the light, and because it's like it was like midday and it was ice cold in February up there in the mountains and freezing like crazy, and I remember the blood in one eye, and I'm trying to get trying to open my other eye, and I remember seeing the two Marines that were standing up. They had put them up against the wall. Their hands were behind them as if they were going to execute them. I remember saying, God, please don't let them get killed.

Please don't let I already lost Manachi today, Man, I can't lose these guys. And then I went out. I don't know where I went. I don't know how I got there, who brought me there, but timeframe I think A couple hours later, I woke up in a hospital or a makeshift hospital. It was an army field hospital per se. It wasn't quite a hospital, but it was a medical facility. And I went I was in a bed and I had ivs on both sides, one clear liquid, one dark liquid, and I went to I went to sit up in the bed and I couldn't move. I couldn't move I should So I pulled the covers back and looked down and right in my chest area was a bunch of bandages and looked like duct tape or some type of surgical tape. And I'm

looking at that and I'm like, oh God, I came and move the blast basically had my flat jacket was on but open. But whatever hit me, the blast had hit me, most of it was stopped by the black buddy buddy flat jacket. I only I got a shrapnel and what happened. But because we fast forward when we go over the story, several times I talk with people in ballistics and the ATF guys and the etcetera, et cetera, they had done h say, how come your head doesn't on some blown off of what had happened, and they almost kind of reenact in it.

And they figured that because one he had to stock forward. He's only got the pistol grip. So he's not in a good shotgun position. He's not. He's not, he's not. He's not breaching buffer in there. I said too, So it's in your shoulder too. Whatever round was in there, who knows what the caliber it was, hits the end of that tube and instantly blows up the you know, the the end of it. Because when I got home and later on when I got home, they said, yeah, they had you know, the two or three surgeries. They go, hey, look at this piece of metal. I mean, it's not even a you know, it's not even let or everything, no piece of fucking shotgun. But anyway, in a hospital and I got to sit up and I pulled back and I said, okay, I got my skivage wars

on and just and that's just it and the blankets and I pull them down and it's got pictures of me that went around the world. They're in the book and uh, dog tags are gone, uniforms gone, nothing that could identify me is there, and no one's around me here. The places it's a hospital smells, you know, antiseptic and ammonia whatever they're they're working with alcohol. And I happened to just talk to one of the nurses that were they had me coming by. Her name was Susan, and she spoke a little bit of English, said hey, hey, hey, where am I?

Well, you know, asking questions now, I'm telling you that's a lot of pain from everywhere that I got beaten shot and you know, the uh whatever they had in that iv it wasn't pain medication. I mean, if they gave me paid medication, it wasn't anything more than aspirin, trust me. And you know, so she's saying, you know, talk, you know talking, I said, where am I? Who? Am I, what's going on? No? No, no, should I'll be back.

You hush, don't talk. She came back a little while later and the room, remember now is no windows, so I have no idea if it's night or day. Outside time deprivation starts. TikTok, TikTok. Now Okay, got no idea. She came back later on. She's her English was quite good and and she said, uh, I says uh. I said you'd be quiet. He says, don't talk. He said they come for you. And I said, who's that? And he says, you know they. I said no, I don't know who they is. And he's said they they think you CEI what see? I what's that? Cia?

I said, what? Basically? When you fast forward through this nightmare? Whoever they were on the embassy and the Colque at that time took that part of the embassy and I got shot. I don't know why they wanted to save my life. Here I am. They handed me over to some people that were run the running the hospital. Okay. People in the hospitals don't know who I were, but speculating that they heard that I came from the embassy, Okay, stripped me down did the minimum, take care of my wounds, to keep me alive whatever. And now here the talk's going around. He oh, he's come from the embassy, and the embassy has been a tall you know, a tactics et cetera. So in an income around the famous picture that saved my life, here'll gome number four. This

guy from uh the ap British and he worked for British Broadcast Company sticks his head in and he says, hey, uh, you from the You from the embassy. And he's he's an American or English at least, you know, a British accent. And I know he's not one of these guys and he says, I need He says yeah. I said yeah. I said what happened? And I said, uh, we got assaulted and he said, I said I got shot. He said uh. He said you military, And I might as well say, you know, it's look down my haircut and everything. I said, yeah, I'm marine. And he says the embassy has been assaulted. I said, there's no the flags there, the flags down, there's no communication going out the chance rebuilding. There's smoke coming from it. I said, we can't. Nobody can get in or

out. Or near it, and uh, he says, he might have just killed everybody. We don't know. We're trying to get the information. So he goes, let me get a picture of you. So he takes a couple of pictures of me, and that's the one that is U that goes around the world. And what's so important about that picture? Justin and I'll fast forward through it. But anyway, god man, it's just people talk about any one of these things that would have went wrong. And he took off. I said, oh, it's great, come back, come back, I want to talk to you. I never saw him again, and so I pass out short time later. I guess because I didn't.

The blood had been cleaned off of me, and I looked pretty good shape. The photos that he shows, you know, shows a different situation and conditioning me. Anyway, So these these goons come in later on and UH pushed their way through uh SUSA and pulled the pull the countter back, and you know, start speaking to me in Farsi and I don't speak Farsie.

I mean, I knew the bare basic slogobydrop dead, stop, halt you or whatever. And uh. But and if you talk about the intel encounter intel. What you're looking at is they'll say something to you to see if you understand it. Even if you don't, they'll say by your your your facial expressions, they'll know whether you understood what they said or not. And how they know you, you know, speak Farsie like the fuck they were saying. They anyway? The uh, so I know I couldn't answer them.

They ripped the inter venus out of my arms, and you know, just whatever's there is now squirting everywhere. Well, Susan pushes them back, she bandages it up, and they put handcuffs on me and try try to get me out of the bed. Then they can see when they when they start to get out, I can't even stand my my my ribs are broke.

They're purple. I don't know if they're broken or what. But you can't even take a breath. And hers so bad. I couldn't the muscles of my stomach wouldn't support me. My sacred cock and bone and been cracked. So I mean, I was a pathetic pile of puppy piss. I was useless, So that's crazy, he's uh. They put a blindfold on me, and I said, oh god, when you listen. And then they put a hood on top of that, and they hooded me up, and I said, that's when I knew I was being kidnapped. And because usually when they put a you in survivors escape school, and you learn when they put a blindfold on it, because they don't want you to see what's going on or where you're going, and it serves a disorient you a bit.

You know, when you got your you know, close your eyes, WI walk around, it's it's the same thing. But when he put that, when he put a hood over your top of your head, that's because they don't want anybody else to see who you are when you leave, so completely disorient you and and make you incognito per se. So drag me out and throw me in, throw me in a vehicle, and it's I mean, it's freezing freaking cold. I got nothing but this little gown on my ass hanging out the back, you know, and you know, for the most part of the way I go, I'm kidnapped, and short drive later, I end up in as in prison. You can google that one, buddy, and that'll that'll that'll give you something to read about ev I end.

Yeah, I looked it up. Yeah, it's sounds like a pretty sketchy place to be at. You know what I'm saying, Like it's the sootbox tore your prison in Iran. I just can't imagine, like what was going through your mind. I mean, because at one minute you're getting ready to you come off post and you're going to lay down and take a nap, and the next minute you're in this crazy firefight actually taking people out at close range, negotiating the release of hostages, and then yourself being shot, kidnapped and then taken to the hospital and then on your way to basically going to be tortured for a few days. You know, it's just such an insane like nobody can understand what that's like. But you you know what I'm

saying, Like, no one can ever relate to that. And that's got to be tough for you to know that almost anyone you talk to cannot relate. You know, maybe POW's from Vietnam maybe and other conflicts and stuff like that can, but ninety nine point ninety nine percent of people can never understand what that was like and stuff, and it's just it's wild. Man.

When you got to the hospital. Excuse me, when you got to the prison, you know what was going on there, because from my understanding, they took you there and you were tortured to they were trying to get any kind of information they could from you. Is that correct in the most sense from what I understand now? Not back then, the people that assaulted the embassy had turned over turned me over to people that were running the hospital.

Whoever was in the hospital told the people in the event prison, Hey, there's this guy over at the hospital, and now that I was talking to, they're not on the same team. Okay, you're talking different different factions per se. Yeah, tell the people in the event prison. I said, hey, uh, you know the embassy was taken et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Uh yeah, one of one of the people that from the embassy, Uh, he's in the hospital over here, and said, who is he? I don't know. What do you mean you don't know is the ambassador? Is he? Is he a janitor the c I A, oh, we don't know. When to get his fucking ass back over here and go snatch his ass up and we'll give them, you know what four and two for uh talking to so that's probably what their their game

plan was. And he says, well, you know what can we do this, well, Evan prisons. You know we got it for years no ship, so you get a front row seat crass and uh at that point in that prison where I mean in the book is really graphic. Bro Let me tell you, uh, you know they you had this prison is something back from the medieval days. They say, pictures of it. If I can open a book and show you pictures. You've got people hanging upside down getting gutted. I mean, you've got people being uh their teeth broke off and and the gumb lines, beatings, their feet being you know, whipped to a point where it looks like Hamburger. I said, you know, it's you've got to read this, that fourth and fifth chapters of there,

because it's it's it's barbaric. I've never seen any anything like it. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, the fucking Nazis didn't know. The Gestapo didn't have anything on these sons of bitches. And for the most part, the beatings, the slappings and just my wounds were so bad they wanted to know who I was and what I knew, Okay, what of value could I be of me? I didn't know any of this. Then I've since come to talking with people and that have been like that, that have been in the State Department and eventually helped me, you know, write the book. And I said, what do you think about this? Why would they have done it this way? Because you don't think about the back that. You know, you just think, great, they're going to fucking

shoot me, but fuck me or eat me. You know, that's the only things you were concerned about at the time. So, uh yeah, There's there's a lot of torture that I go through in the book, and it's tough to put here, but for the most part, it was the it was the intimidation factor, the terror factor, and that whether they get information out of you or not. I was forced to sit and watched what they did to their own people, and I mean it was barbaric, it was in human. I don't even think it was so bad. If you you google the named Torquemato, okay, the Spanish inquisitor, the Grand Inquisitor, That's that's what I nicknamed. This torture guy is named Tomato or Torque.

When I talked to him in my head. Uh in the book. So you were watching him torture other people, his own Iranians. Oh yeah, damn dude. And then oh yeah, and then the crazy they came out then came out and see uh huh broken off? Uh back then? How do they break your teeth off? Or they like punch in the face.

They know what happens is that you'll you'll, you'll see me, you'll you'll you'll read in the and the have a chair. They in this chamber, they have this chair. It's a steel chair. It's bolted to the to the floor. Right below it is a drain. You know. When I'm looking at they said, you know what it was just for. But once you see you when they strap you in that and they veult drums and they strapped you and they put the uh the waist eye I called a waste chain, but it wasn't. It was a It was a leather harness around it. You couldn't go anywhere. So at one time, after I had been watching several poor bastards being being tortured. These were people that the Shaw had supposedly worked for. The Shaw. They when it came in, like

any other rebellion, they clean out the crazies, they clean out the political prisoners, and then they refilled up with the new people that they don't like, don't trust until they can find something to do with them. In this case, you know, you know, just torture them. And when they were God, it's so sick. When they they were tortured, some of these people, it was out of revenge. It was just out of being a barbaric, fucking maniac maniacle murdering bastards. They weren't trying to extract information.

It was no There was nobody there taking notes, nobody taking pictures, nobody taking a video. So what good would any of their information give them? They didn't care. This was this was just payback. This was this torture being inhuman to somebody. And you know, you're forced to sit and watch that smell, the burning flash, listen to the screams, you know, and watch what happens. And I realized, I said, oh, now I understand. Well, you know why they had that drain at the bottom of the chairs, because all the blood and the pists and the urine, everything coming out of these people's bodies going is going is going down.

Ep. 214 | Ken Kraus | Marine Taken Hostage in Iran

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