Ep. 220 | Round 2 w/ Kirk Spradley | Blackwater Contractor and Paramilitary Officer

Kick it off. Kirk Spradley had you back on here. I really appreciate it. Man, got your book War Junkie. Thank you for sending me that after the last episode we did. I think people should go check it out. It's really interesting. It starts out with kind of where we ended, I think, where you talk about your friend Bama that got killed while you were with Blackwater over in Ramadi. That's right, So let's talk about I want to ask some more about Blackwater itself and then some of your stuff in Ramadi. Like at Blackwater, you were a driver, How were teams comprised, What were the different like because there were I imagine there were different teams like helicopter teams, like raid teams, maybe snipers. There were snipers,

I know that. So what were like some different roles for Blackwater contractors and how did you guys employ them?

Sure, in Blackwater, for all intents and purposes started in four. Now there was a training section back in the nineties and they had some guys do some work in Afghanistan. And I want to say two and stuff like that. But Blackwater as we know it, as you know it kind of really start well, let's call it three but it really got kicking in four. The majority of the programs were the State Department Diplomatic Security Service, which was what I was trying to do as a federal agent after I got out of the Marines. And generally speaking, you have about and it varies, but let's just say for easy math, that you have four to five vehicle motorcade.

You have a principal or a protectee, and he's usually he's a State Department, a US State Department person, he's AS fifteen or higher, and he's the ambassador's representative in that area, like a regional MC office or rio rio. So let's say, and if you look at this picture over here, I don't know if if you can see it very well, but that's about a twelve man team.

It was pretty standard for a State Department gig. Now in four, what you had was you had a driver for each vehicle, you had an agent in charge, you had a shift leader, and then you know, the protectee, and then everybody kind of had a job. Now they had to adjust that because that came from the Diplomatic Security Service that was normally in a high thread area but not a war zone, and they kind of adopted it from the Secret Service, the US Secret Services Presidential Protective Detail, so it had to be adjusted. And what we adjusted is we had a machine gunner and my first job was the machine gunner on what they call the Diamond. Because of the threat, we needed someone with a belt fed weapon and during an attack, I would

move up as close to the threat as I could and just start, you know, man laying down, suppress a fire. And the members of the Diamond, which is you know, four people with me the machine gunner in the back, and a shift leader and a agent in charge. There's really six people, but it looks like a diamond as it's walking and they get him off the X. They it was just kind of an unwritten rule, like hey, Kirk, you know, man, you're the machine gunner. You understand what that means. And it's like, yeah, man, I have to be the one guy fucking shooting and everybody else gets off the X man, and it's just I mean, that's that was the job. But I wanted to do it. Absolutely.

I was picked for it, but I also wanted to do it. So that was unique. Now, about six months after that, they started what they call the DDM, Designated Defensive marksmen. We weren't allowed to have snipers, but we had snipers, just had to call them defensive marksmen. But it was the same thing. No one had helicopter support.

We had a couple of Little Birds MD five thirties, which I flew for the Kurds by the way, But we had those, but they were assigned to the ambassador or they were signed to the CPA. I forgot what his title was, but Paul Bremmer, he was the head of the Coalition Provincial Authority. But because they were privately owned by Blackwater Eric Prince, they were kind of a QRF for everyone else. It was kind of an unwritten rule like, hey, we're Blackwater. If we really need air support, we can call the Little Birds and then they'll talk to the detailed leader, which was Frank Gallagher of former recon Marine as well. He was the he was the team leader there, but he would always allow the aircraft to be tasked out because they had so much support

for Bremmer, so that was kind of that was kind of the way. The team was about four or five vehicles. One was the limousine or the limo and then of course we had to have a cat truck counter assault team, and we always called it the hate truck because it was all the guys with guns and stuff in the back, but officially it would be called a cat truck, a counter assault team truck. And that's the last vehicle in the in the motorcade. So you have a lead car, you know, you have an advanced car, a lead, a limo, a follow, and then the cat truck. You could have four or five vehicles. And then each person has a duty in that business. They consider the driver to be the most prestigious position because you can you can always

find work somewhere as a security driver. It's a lot of responsibility and it's it's an expensive vehicle and everyone's life is in your hand. Now. I didn't really want to be a driver, man. I loved being the machine gunner. But the first driving job I had was driving the cat truck, the hate truck, and man I was like, oh yeah, brother, this is this is you know, this is the ticket dude, I mean, I mean guns, brustol.

We had a p KM and the Backman, it was just crazy. It was it was as close as you could get to driving a tank without you know, driving a tank. So I loved it. The thing about, like I said, in that business, if you want to if you want to have a good career, you have to be a good driver. Now, if you're a good medic or you know, if you're a good guy, you're you're going to find work. But the most prestigious job was was to be a good driver. And so when I went to uh Ramadi, I dare say my reputation preceded me, and so they immediately gave me the limo driver in Ramadi, which was the most prestigious job on that team.

Was it an actual limo or is it you just call it that?

No, that's just what you call any anywhere that the the boss is in and is referred to as the limo. It can be an armored suburban. It could be an armored land cruiser. I just happened to have a sedan in Ramadi. It was a Mercedes benz uh A six hundred series. I think it was weighed about nine thousand pounds.

It was a level seven armored vehicle. You know, as I ran off the road man trying to catch up to the uh to the lead car we were going down to well, we were going to Bagdad via Falujah, and we were taking these back roads and we couldn't do training, so you just had to go out and do it on the on the on the fly. And I'm trying to catch this because I don't know where the hell I am. And I got the boss in the back, and I got this DEV Group guy with me, and and he was no. He wasn't. I don't want to I don't want to speak ill of that community.

He specifically just was no, no help. I'm not saying DEV Group is a bad group of he just he was one of those guys. Man. I was like, hey, man, I could really use your fucking help. It was just like, well, you should know where you're going. No, man, I've been here a week. I don't know where I'm going, but you've been here for three months, so you can help me.

But anyway, I ran off the road, man, I ran off the road. I took a turn too fast, and you know, nine thousand pounds doesn't turn on a dime, and the shocks went up into the thunderwheels. I was like, well that's oh yeah. I was like, oh that's bad. And I'm correcting to try to get back on the road and again, nine thousand pounds. Man. I slid to the other side of the road and there's these kids and like, I'm in a dust storm basically that I created.

And I'm sliding back to the other side of the road and I see these kids in their eyes of this because I'm about to run them over, and they jump out. I mean it looked like somebody, I don't know, doukes a hazard or a movie or something. I get it back on the road and man, this thing is all jacked up. Man, there's just no way. But you know, what are you gonna do? Man, you can't just stop at the you can't. You can't go to the Triple A in Falluja. So man, I drove it and it was, you know, just I could hear it, hear the shocks and the tires rubbing, and the steering wheel was like this to keep it straight. I was like, man, this is just bad. And uh. We wound up going down to Bagdad after we did everything and drop it off

and they were like, you know, you came from where with this thing, and I was like, yeah, we came from Ramadi. They're like, dude, you're fucking nuts. Man, this thing is all fucked up. But they always tell you, man, you know, your your first line of defense is the vehicle and drive drive drive. That's what they always tell you whenever something goes bad. Drive drive drive. That was kind of the standard.

Yeah, that's crazy. I was going to ask how hard they were to drive, and I imagine the different vehicles had different you know, like a high suburban is going to be weird because it's got that high center of gravity, right with all that weight. You know, for those that don't know, like you're talking about that level seven armor, that's thick ass doors, glass, everything. How I mean, even with that armor though, that's not very protective against IEDs, right, Like, there's not very much undercarriage protection and it's kind of too low to let the blast blow out like you have with the m wraps.

That's exactly right, and that's why our defense was not looking like a motorcade. The State Department wanted us to look like, you know, because they were the customer and they're like, hey, this is how we do business, and we would shake our heads like yes sir. Then they'd leave because nobody wants to hang out in Ramadia or wherever, you know, anywhere in Iraq, they go back to DC, so we would just go back to doing things the way we should. With about a five to in a city, about a five car interval between each vehicle out on the roads ten ten plus man, you really want to spread out. And we drove extremely fast, so they couldn't really time us. The most dangerous thing we could do, generally speaking, was to come up on a US Milk

convoy because they're doing about forty five miles an hour, and once you kind of unmask, you know, like you can kind of blend in with traffic to an extent until you come up on a convoy if you're with the State Department. Because you're not. It's not like the OGA stuff where you're wearing local dress. You're wearing you're obviously an American. You know, some guys wore helmets, you know, stuff like that for Varietys or whatever. Contact. But so you come up on this convoy. In fact, we were going down to Fluijah one day and again I was the limo driver. I didn't have the boss with me this time, and so I'm the number three vehicle and we come up to the rear of the of the convoy and you always you do. What's you know, You

put on your flashers and you put the the VS seventeen panel in the American flag in the front of the car to let them know, hey, you're an American. And hopefully it's a guy who's you know, been around, and he'll he'll wave you forward and he'll he'll allow one car at a time to pass because they don't really know that you're American. I mean they you know, you know what I mean, I get it. I understand their uh, every everyone, you know, everyone's trying to kill those guys, so they're letting us up one at a time. Well, the rear gunner allowed me to pass when it was my turn, and for whatever reason, he decided he didn't want me to pass, and man, he just starts shooting at my car and all the rounds go underneath the

car and I was like, you know what the fuck? Man? So I get you know, the uh the Devin Group guy. He gets on the radio like, hey, man, we're being shot at by the army. So we pull off on the side of the road, you know, up you know, outside of Fallujah. Man, you know who does this? You know, I'm pulling off on the side of the road, and uh, our team leader would talk to their convoy commander. I believe he was a East seven, a sergeant first class, and he was like, hey, what the fuck, man, you just cleared us to pass. Now your guy just shot up our car. You know, three hundred thousand dollars car, man, that's our limo. And he goes, man, I'm really sorry.

He's eighteen years old, he's been here two weeks. He's right out of infantry school. You know, hey, man, what were you doing when you were eighteen? You know that type of thing. And so I always try to give those guys sympathy and kind of giving them their due. You know, man, everybody had a tough job over there, for sure. Nobody had a cooler job than the other person, and everybody was under stress. And at the end of the day, man, I didn't get killed, so I kind of blew it off. But it was just shit like that was kind of the dangerou stuff for us.

Part of the game. Yeah, yeah, I mean for those that don't know, yeah, they used to. There was like all kinds of protocols for passing a convoy. I know, for civilians they would have I know, for a little while they had like red and green flags, you know, they had the signs on the rear vehicle like do not pass, and then they would sometimes shoot pen flares at them if they were getting too close. And the threat is you know, the threat is those car bombs, and that really was a threat. I mean we even had that in Afghanistan. I remember a British vehicle got blown up and killed five of their soldiers not too far from where we were at and sang it and I was just like, man, that would be and after you hear, like especially if you're there and you hear

about an incident like that happening, and then you're in a convoy and immediately you start thinking about that all the time because you're like fun, because there's not much you can do when a car pulls up on you and decides to blow up. I mean, that's just yeah, it's a that's a tough that's a tough gig. And definitely, you know, eighteen year old kid just got there, like of course the snakes can happen. Yeah, man, you know when something like happens to the vehicles, I imagine you guys had mechanics or whatever in country that would work on them or how did that? I know before on the I think on the last interview you said that if a vehicle got destroyed, it may not always get replaced, or it may not get replaced for months because you

got to wait for a new one to come into country. So how did that work?

Yeah, basically you had the official and then the unofficial. Officially you went through KBR in Baghdad. So if you could get your vehicle down there, or if you could put it on a a flatbed convoy going down or something like that, you would just I think you tell the team leader and maybe you send an email to somebody and if your if your vehicle is all jacked up, it would go out on the next convoy or whatever.

They'd put it on the back of a flatbed. That's the official way to do it. The unofficial way was, uh, you know, we're blackwater. We could get booze and nobody else could get booze. So man, you would just go make friends with like the guys at motor Tee or guys that, you know whatever contract company, be like, hey Bob, how's it going? Man? Hey cool man? Aymen, I see you got some you know welding stuff or whatever. Yeah, man, hey man, what can I do for you? Man? I've never shot a machine gun. I'd love to. Well, man, fuck, how about Saturday we take you out to the range. Man, you shoot them? You want to shoot a grenade lunchery?

Oh fuck, you know that type of thing, or maybe they'll want booze? Hey man, what do you drink? Well? I like Jack Daniels, Well, shit, man, I got a case man about to break you off a couple of bottles. Man, And you know, well, what can I do for you? Man? I would love if you weld some big spike things on the front of the bumper or you know whatever.

So so you had the official and then the unofficial way of getting stuff done. Man.

When I was in Iraq and nine, we had this British security contractor that would bring in his vehicle every once in a while, and he'd always bring in a flat of like Starbucks coffee drinks and be like, hey, hey, can I get an oil change? And like we would do nothing crazy, but like, you know, a couple of little things. We're always like yeah, man, like we probably would have done it even without that, because we're like we're all fascinated. We're motor t guys on fucking TQ.

You know, we're like, well, you're out there doing it, you know, like that's crazy, look at this badass truck. But yeah, that was definitely an unofficial way of doing it. I mean there was nothing any anything track. But yeah, that's funny, man. Yeah I had I don't know if I asked you this. I'm sorry, I don't know if I asked you this last time, but did you Blackwater made watches for guys. Did you get one of those that has like the beacon in it?

No? Uh, I'm not totally familiar with that. They they were really put on the map because of what they call the Battle of the Najos in four. Yeah, yeah, in four, and they were given all the guys that were on that team were given custom rifles. I want to say with the Blackwater logo, but but no, I never I never got the Blackwater watch it. Yeah that's right. Yeah, yeah, I don't know how to say it. No, I never got one.

Yeah, that would have been sick to go. I think they said I saw I think I saw an interview with Princess said they made like one hundred and fifty of them, so not too many people got them, but yeah, I always thought that would be pretty cool something like that. It has like for those I don't know what I'm talking about, it has like a kind of like you have with a if you're a backcountry like hiker or something like that. A lot of people carry like a garment beacon. So if they like break their leg you don't have any cell phone service, you just activate the beacon and they'll send an SOS signal out over the whatever the band is that you guys use as pilots that open air band and they'll basically get someone to

come help rescue you. And so they had these watches made that had a beacon in it they could be activated.

Yeah, he's a smart guy. Man, He's he's got a he's got a phone out now that he's trying to sell. I don't I don't know the details, but I think it's uh, it doesn't spy on you, and that type of thing is kind of what he's trying to push. You know, this a personal phone that you can use on the whatever cellular networks. But he makes it. Eric Prince makes it.

Did you ever meet him?

Oh yeah, yes, several times. When I graduated the second training class that they had that was they called it Blackwater Academy. It was kind of a catch all training course that would supposedly qualify you for every program that they were looking at. So you were he was trying to have this plug and play an infantry. What he wanted was an infantry battalion of guys that he could plug and play around the world. And so he standardized training and everything, driving everything. And I went to the second class. So he came around and shook everybody's hand that graduated. And if you got time for a quick story, just and I may have told this last time, I can't remember, but a real very personable. I mean, he's

a former Seal Team guy, you know, so he's been around. He likes being around manly men, but he comes from money and he doesn't he doesn't get along with those people, is kind of what I gather. Well, he's a lead from the front kind of guy. And I can't remember who it was, but we came back. We were on uh.

I was on the Mambas. That was my first job. It's a it's a big armored South African vehicle and we would drive up and down route Irish take people to the airport before we got helicopter support. But but you know, you pick up supplies, food, water, AMMO and people. And we were coming back and you know, we had we lived in a uh he was renting a house for us, a couple of houses in the green zone, and we had local security guards and stuff, but a relatively secure compound. But anyway, we had a bunch of MR boxes stacked up. Well, you know, man, you come back from a run on Route Irish, man, you're and you don't get blown up or killed. Man, You're hey, that's that's a that's a win. Right, So everybody's all motivated,

you know, coming in and there's this dude in there, man kind of like stacking boxes, trying to clean up the place, trying to help out. And he bends over to grab a box m R E's and I forgot who did it? Man, uh, I'll think of it before the end of the episode. Just a kind of a loud, brazen dude. Man. He double he double fists this guy's ass.

He just grabs this guy's ass. He's like, you got a great ass, you know what you been feeding cock? And the guy stands up and turns around and he's like, hey, I'm Eric. It was Eric prince Man, the owner of the company Billionaire Man. They're stacking Ri's and this guy double double fists his ass cheeks. Man. So that was that was That's pretty funny to see.

He's got a he's got a people like either love him or hate him kind of kind of thing out there, you know what I'm saying, Like, does he even live in the US anymore?

He's over in the UAE, I think, right right next door to US.

I know, when the whole I know, when the piracy thing was going on off of off the coast of Africa, he was talking about building a small navy to help protect you know, the shipping lanes and stuff like that. They're there, and he he like gets involved with these like I mean, he's all about contracting, right, He's all about building like these little armies for different things and stuff.

And obviously some people are cool with that and some people aren't. You know, I guess it depends on if it's supporting their cause or not, if they like him or not.

But yeah, he's very much about efficiency because he sees so much inefficiency in government, and you know, man, I could talk about this for hours. You know, a lot of times these companies that are efficient get bad reps. I think it's counterintelligence from people who are making money. Like for example, Executive Outcomes went into uh Sierra Leone to say in that I can't remember if it was the sixties, seventies or the eighties, but they went in there with about I want to say, an eight hundred to twelve hundred man force and they defeated this rebel army within thirty days with twelve hundred men or less. Now, that same situation had been a stalemate for a decade with like five thousand government troops. So now somebody I'm

sure was making money and you know, the bureaucracy and this, that and the other, but they wanted to keep the five thousand troops there. And I don't know the whole story, but Executive Outcomes was like, hey, look, if you want to end the civil war, we can do it. We can do it with you know, twelve hundred guys. So the five thousand guys couldn't do it, the twelve hundred guys could do it. They went in within thirty days and they solved the problem and that's efficiency. The problem is once you start dealing with some of these people high on the food chain who run governments or who are high high up the food chain in a government, they're getting money from that job. Like you don't want to solve a problem because now you've eliminated your job

if you will. Yeah. So I think that's where a lot of the hatred of Eric Prince comes from. He could probably replace a lot of those bureaucracies, you know, just using common sense, you know.

Yeah, I mean I guess, as an example, like you mentioned before, if a vehicle got broke, you have to contact KBR, get it, convoyd over, have them work, you know, probably fill out a bunch of paperwork, wait on them to get the parts and stuff. Whereas or you could bring in a flat of coffee or a couple handles of jack and be like, hey, can you take care of this, and it gets taken care of, you know, like without all the bureaucratic red tape. I mean, I don't think anybody is unaware of the military industrial complex that we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, I mean when you show up to like a base and they have a burger king and a fucking pizza hut.

It's like, what are what?

How are we?

What are we doing here? Like where we're so established, we have fast food joints, you know, like multiple coffee shops. I remember, where did you go to Afghanistan at all?

I did? Yeah, So if you.

Were on on Bastian, they had a place I remember going over there one time. They had a place on it called the Blue I think it was like a steakhouse on the fucking base and they had like dance nights and shit like this. I'm like, what the hell I mean. I wasn't on Bashian. I was only visiting. I would only be passing through. But I saw that, and I'm like, what the hell is this? Are we fighting a war here or like? And I get it, you want to like improve TRUP morale and shit, But I think a good way to improve TRUP morale is to not be in a country for twenty fucking years.

You know what I'm saying, Like get in and get out, Like having all that, having all that kind of stuff set up is I don't know, man, And I think it probably honestly, I think people that only were on like a big like bashing and stuff. They probably questioned, like what am I doing here? Like I get up, I go do my office job, I go get coffee at the coffee shop, I go to the PX, and I could buy a TV, and like, you know, I don't know. It's so yeah, there's definitely a lot of people that stand to lose money if these wars are like fought quickly and efficiently. It's oh, yeah, it's such a crazy business.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely right.

Yeah, I don't know, man, it's so I don't know, and I don't know what we can do about it because so many people in high positions of government make money off these things that I don't know. It's just such a wild to me. It's so wild. I remember being because when I was when I my first appoyment was to Iraq and I was a mechanic at the time, so I was on t q alta Cottam air base the whole time. Yeah, and that was relatively good living because we had a chowho maybe had a shitty little PX that was like really small and it had like three month old magazines and like you know, stuff like that.

But like the guys that were out in the cities and fighting and stuff like we had a we were living in luxury, and even I was sitting here like, man, this fucking sucks, Like this isn't what I signed up for. I remember. I remember one time one of the guys that was with us, we had half our unit at maintenance battalion. When you deploy, half the unit came from the reserve side. They'd activate a bunch of reservist mechanics and then attach them to your unit. And I remember one of the guys complaining because the Wi Fi wasn't working in his can or something like it was either the WiFi or the air conditioning. And I'm like, bro, where in Iraq? Are you fucking serious? Like there's dudes out there fighting and you're bitching about your WiFi? Now,

Like what are we doing here? Yeah, it's pretty wild, man.

We had a you know, we had when I went over to the special Programs. You know, we had something everywhere, but there was this one particular place in Baghdad and uh we had like I think we had like two doest chefs or something. Mean. They treated us nice. Man. There's no doubt I'm never gonna speak ill about the guys, but I remember there was a guy he was kind of he was a team guy. I think he did like six years. He got out because the contract boom was happening, and you know, man, he had been there about a year off and on, and I think we were out of like chocolate covered strawberries in the you know, the deef of the chowhul, the little buffy, the fruit buffet thing whatever. Yeah, and man, he just went high

into the right bro. I mean it was like six thirty in the morning. Man, He's just coming out of the gym or whatever, and by god, he was his only purpose in life was to get of these chocolate covered strawberries. And we were out and like, dude, I'm telling you, man, he had a freaking conniption right there.

And we're all looking at him, and at first we're like, you know, yeah, man, what the fuck? Man, we should have chocolate covered strawberries. Why are we out? And then it's like, dude, we're in the middle of Iraq and we're bitching about chocolate covered strawberry. We need to maybe, you know, kind of reassess.

That I've been on both sides. I've been, like I said, I was a TQ which had a dfact. You know and and for those that don't know, those are like established chow halls with TCNs, these third country nationals that come in I think mostly Indian dudes that worked there as cooks. And you have you have steak night every week, Steak and lobster night every week. They had Mongolian barbecue night every week. You had like, uh, baskin Robbins ice cream, like the Pralines ice cream was the one I always got if I got any, and like that kind of living.

And then I did an appoyment to Sanging as an Afghan advisor, and we were living in these like dirt huts basically, and we would get one scoop of fucking food out of like the trey rats, you know what I'm saying, where they boiled and it's basically a big a smri. I remember starving and saning. But but I honestly that deployment was so much better than the one where I had all the luxuries, because the one where I had all the luxuries, I was kind of like, what the fuck are we doing? Like I don't feel like I'm in the war. I don't feel like I'm you know, I'm like what am I what is my role here, you know, And as a mechanic it's hard sometimes too. You are definitely having an effect because you're keeping trucks running. We were upgrading m raps, we were

putting new turrets, and we were doing stuff like that. So it was definitely a positive impact. But it's like I'm not out there in it and seeing the in state of the work and what's going on and kind of feeling the effects of the war, whereas as an Afghan advisor and saying it, and it was like, I'm directly involved with these guys. We're going out on missions together, We're getting shot at together, you know, we're we're living miserably together. And but I see the mission and I feel like I'm doing my job, and you know, I don't know. It was just two different sides of the coin there. And I really liked living the spartan living, you know. I had the prison gym set up with like chains and shit. Yeah, I don't know, it's just

a different It's two different worlds, man.

I don't know.

And I'm sure a lot of people out there have had that same kind of experience that did multiple deployments, But I don't know. The military industrial complex thing. I get. I see why we need some of it, you know, because especially when you're talking about equipment and stuff like that, because you're constantly wanting innovation and new equipment and better equipment.

Sometimes I think we overinnovate, you know, and I think we make stuff that's too technologically dependent, you know, like it's stuff can easily be broken, can easily become no longer usable, and it's highly expensive gear. But I also know what it's like again, like being insane and not having some stuff where it's like, man, I really wish we had better food, you know, I wish I wasn't eating two MRIs a day or whatever it was, because this is there's only twenty four meals in those boxes.

So this is getting old real fast.

But oh yeah, man, yeah.

It's crazy dude. When you were with you know, you were with Blackwater in what were what were like did you guys eat at the defects and stuff and like Ramadi or was there a defect like what what were your living conditions.

There as a contractor Yeah? When I went to UH when I first got to the the teamhouse in Baghdad, we had a local cook and we just ate what they gave us, you know, because you were in transit status there, so it was like, hey, man, you only get two meals a day, but you know you're gonna go to a team somewhere. When I got to al Hilla, it was we had our own. There was a defect down there for the embassy, so you know, again you're kind of working for the embassy. And then when I got to Ramadi, we were kind of, uh, we were kind of guests of the Marines. We were considered the State department, but we didn't have like a big, huge compound.

We were just kind of because Ramadi, man, it was like, uh, you know, real estate was at a premium and nobody wanted to go there. Honestly, only the Marines, you know, would go to a place like fucking Ramadi. So we were guests of the Marines and we ate at the defect in Ramadi.

It's crazy, even in a place like that, they can have a defect going. Yeah, imagine being one of those TCNs that gets sent and you're like where am I at. I'm in Ramadi and like shit's happening all the time and there's nothing. You're just there to fucking make food, Like what a what a shock that would be?

Oh yeah, man, yep. I told a story in the book about a guy. He was a It was in Ramadi. He was a technical guy. I'm not sure what. I can't remember exactly, but he was supposed to go around and set up these cameras and they were going to help us monitor you know, kind of like an outer layer of security. But it was Ramadi, man, so he had to wear body armor and all this type of stuff, you know, and he's not really sure what's going on.

He just sees me and this guy named Pat uh uh Pat Bablick going out with him. Interesting guy, Man, A lot of funny stories about Pat. Anyway, we're out there, man, and you know, man, it's Ramadi man. But we've been here, you know, several years at this point, man, and it's weird what the brain gets used to. And man, there was a massive explosion, man, I mean it looked nuclear. Bro.

I think somebody drove into a gas station and cooked off an I d and man, it probably killed twenty people. Man, I mean it was it was just crazy shit. You see there and me and Pat looked at it, you know, Man, that's that's pretty crazy huh. And then we went back to telling stories, you know, because we're just kind of taking this guy around so he can do his his set up these cameras. We're sitting there and I'm listening to one of Pat's stories. Man, man, he had the funniest stories. Anyway, here comes the tech right, He's running towards this man mock speed, and it's it had been several seconds since the explosion, so our brains have not come to the conclusion that he's running because the explosion,

because the explosion is done. You don't get in our mind, you know, like, oh, let's focus on something else. Tell us, let's tell stories. So we're freaking out that this guy's freaking out. We're like, man, what you know, what's going on? Right? He runs over and he's like, what the hell was that? And I, honestly I didn't know what he was talking about.

I was like, you know, what the hell was what? And then Pat's like, hey, Kirk, I think he's talking about the explosion. And I was like, oh, well, welcome to Ramadi and he quit. He quit right there. He's like, fuck, I'm done, broke, I'm fuck this shit. Really, and he was like I ain't. Oh yeah, He's like, I ain't fucking getting out fuck this. I was like, okay, well, hey man, I get it. Man, Uh all right, well I guess we're done for the day. You know. He literally quit. Man, But you know, man, and I'm not shitting on those guys. Man, that's not really what a lot of people signed up for. Now. Me and you would be like, man, that's crazy. Some people like, man, fuck this. You know, it is what it is, man.

You know.

Yeah, it's crazy how when you're in a place like that you get so accustomed to like, oh man, then it's like anyways, like not my problem, Like that's I'm not involved, So someone's gonna deal with that. I remember we were when I was in sanging, me and this uh me and my buddy John Eisley were sitting there and I think it was John that I was sitting with, and a they they made like a like a mini car bomb on like a moped basically and put it in the bazaar and saying it which was right out not too far from our camp, and we just hear the boom and I'm like, oh shit, like that's that was ied. But then like I think I was playing Xbox or something. Then it was like, all right, well back to the game, you know, cause like I'm not involved,

you know, there's not that's not my it's no. I totally get it. Man. If you show up and you're like, you know, cause some of these contract jobs are kind of vague in their description. Oh yeah, you know, and if you don't know anything, like a lot of military guys get it. You get out, you read the description and you see the pay and you're like, hmm, that's high pay. This must be a really shit the area.

Whereas a dude off the street that may just be, like you said, a technology specialists, like we had guys that work the bats and hides the uh the ID stuff, and you know, if they don't know anything about they've never been in the military, and they're like, yeah, I'll do this contract and they get sent over. I mean, they know they're going to a war zone, but it's hard to imagine. Like you're you're probably told along the way like, oh, you're pretty safe, you're gonna be on base the whole time, and da da da da dah.

So something like that occurs, you're like, oh, what the hell is this? This is not worth it.

Yeah, yeah, man, man, oh good.

When you So, when you finished contracting, you moved on to what do you call it? I mean I wouldn't say it's special mission unit, but what what kind of organization? How would you describe it?

Yeah, it's it's a lot of people have said, uh, special mission unit because it's military terminology, and it's and that's the easiest way to explain it. It was called the special programs and you were always co located with one of the military special mission units. Well almost exclusively. It depended on where you go. But yeah, that's where I've moved on to after Ramadi.

Now, a lot of those guys, I guess the way it works is to meet like some of the was it Title nine or one of those title like restrictions, they would kind of you know, like ominous Dominus, you Tier one operator, you are now part of this group so that you can go legally do whatever it is that we are going to go have you do. And that kind of how it works when you work with those guys.

That's exactly right. We all got we got diplomatic passports which were real, and then we got a bunch of different fake id's I don't know if I sent you the one the Captain Phil McCracken when I was in h somewhere in Afghanistan. But it's an Ice AFF badge and it's it's a legitimate ADS. But when you look at the bottom, it says Captain Phil McCracken and uh, and that was literally my ID wherever I went, Man, I was Captain Phil McCracken on that on that particular deployment.

But you would have an actual diplomatic passport to kind of get you through a lot of trouble. Are a lot of problems. It didn't solve every problem, but it solved a lot. And then you had the official fake IDs, you know that because you didn't want with Ice Aff, with any coalition. Man, you don't. You're doing shit that you don't want everybody to know about, even your partnered countries, because not all of them need to know what what you're doing. So you had to assume that people were collecting on you, you know, and and you had ship you know, depending on how far it went, but you had things like cover stories and uh, cover for action, cover status.

I think it was the phrase, but that's just people you kind of interact with. But then there were people that you were working with, and they may come from like the sas, the British and the Australian Sas. I worked with them, the cans Off guys. The uh, there's a guy he has the I believe he has the world record for the longest sniper kill. He was in Yeah, he was in can I think he was in Kandahar with us in two thousand and five or six. And uh, And I didn't know that the Canadians had a Tier one unit. Man and man, these guys were just super squared away and they were always doing crazy shit and they were very good to us because at this particular time we were, on the one hand, it's good to be below the radar, and we were pretty pretty far

below the radar. Unfortunately, we were too far in this particular case, and the US military Aviation wouldn't support us. They're like, we don't know who you are, and it's like, well, I can't really tell you who we are, and we're like we're not. We're not giving you helicopters. But they would support the Canadians Tier one unit. So we worked a drug deal with them. They would give us four seats on every schnook that came in to support them, they would give us four seats, so we could kind of plan logistically speaking. You know, hey, man, birds coming in on Tuesday, Do we have anybody that needs to go over to calf or something like that, because you know, when you're talking about the the bids, My buddy Don

headshot Don Bradley. He got blown up a week before I got to Kanada ar and it was they were doing an admin move because we didn't have enough helicopters and they wouldn't support us. And he got t boned by a car bomb. It detonated, it blew him over on his side. Now they all lived, but that was just another example of what can have happened. Man, if people find out who you are.

Man, you know, yeah, and I think so. I think the Canadian one is JTF two.

If that's if I.

Had one of their guys on, I'll have to look and see I had one of the JTF guys on, not the one he was also a sniper. Uh, Jeff Dallas d'pati epis, I probably said his last thing wrong. Sorry Jeff, if you if you hear this so bad? Who knows but that's so interesting, like walking around with all these I mean, if you get caught and you're rolling around with multiple IDs, that's that's obviously not good news, right do you have you know, when you're working in that kind of I guess when you're working like that, how far does diplomatic community carry for you, because you can easily be charged with like espionage and you know, taking to some dark hole and fucking thrown in there.

You know. Yeah, absolutely, we did have one guy get rolled up and he did I think nine months in a Pakistani prison. Yeah, I Man, I can't remember his name now I can see his face, but he got he got rolled up in somewhere in Pakistan, and you know, he tried to do the you know, hey, man, diplomatic passport.

I worked for the embassy. And the story I heard and I can't confirm this or haven't confirmed this, but the story I heard was because I actually went to Seer school after this, but I think they talked about it in Serier school. But he stuck to his cover story and everything. Man, he had the diplomatic passport and he was like, hey, I'm I work with computers. I'm an advisor to the US embassy, and I think they were going to let him, let him roll. And the story I heard was that they did a Google search on his name and came up like on his Facebook profile and his girlfriend was like, you know, hey, my boyfriend's at Green Beret and he works for the CIA and he's gonna kill those motherfuckers or something like that.

So like, oh, really, you're a fucking computer guy. So he did nine months in prison in Pakistan and eventually they negotiated him out. And there's been other in that was the I'll say that because it's open source there, there's been other stuff that's happened.

Knowing knowing that that kind of thing happens. When you see a news story about an American that's like supposedly a contractor or a tourist that gets captured in another country that's being held, are you does it make you question why they were actually there?

Absolutely? Are you?

Like, Yeah, I don't know if this dude actually is a tourist there or I don't know if he is or whatever.

Yeah, it's and I'm not saying everybody's you know, lying or what. I'm just saying it. It does make me question it, man, Absolutely, makes me question it.

That's so crazy. I mean, working in an environment like that and with a group like that probably makes you question a lot of things that you're told, you know, by by official sources. I mean even me being in the military, having having had access to like secret stuff, and and just not even not even access to secret stuff, but like being on operations and seeing operation being it talked about on the news and then getting it wrong and being like that's not what happened or that's not how it went, Like what are they talking about?

You know?

Knowing like I don't, I don't know. It's so weird, Like that's one thing I do kind of miss. It's kind of being where you're like you have to peak behind the curtain, you kind of know what's happening, you kind of know. I don't know. It's a it's a weird. It's a weird way to think about stuff after you've and I'm not saying like there's all kinds of espionage and all this, like you know everything is everything is I mean there is, right there, there's quite a bit, but not everything is a conspiracy or not everything that conspiracy theorists believe is true, and stuff like that a lot of it, Yeah, because we overclassify stuff in the military.

A lot of stuff that's just completely ridiculous gets some legs underneath it because nobody will come out and deny it because of whatever.

You know.

I don't know. I always thought like a lot of the stuff that's classified is just like, why is this classified? Why can't we tell people about this, or why even down the road, like five years later, why can't this be discussed like the American taxpayers are paying for this or whatever. I mean, obviously, uh, obviously, like sources and methods and stuff like that are secret for a reason.

But I don't know. Some of this stuff is just kind of ridiculous. But yeah, I could see how working in an environment like you were where it probably makes you question a lot of stuff.

You're like hmmm, oh yeah, man, hmmm.

And again you don't even know, like you can't even be like, oh yeah, I'm sure that guy was a tourist or I'm sure that was the official story is correct.

You know, everything is compartmentalized for one thing, so even if you do know the truth, you only know the truth about one particular, very small event. I played a very small part in recovering a Stinger missile in two thousand and I think it was six or seven, and we were just told to go by dismissile. That's what we're told to do. And we weren't watching the news just because of the place where we were. But like I said, I played a very small part in it, but I was involved, me and two other guys, and I was like, fucking cool, man, we just bought a Stinger missile. Man, that's fucking crazy. Well years later I found out that was almost I can't say one hundred percent, but we probably bought the Stinger that shot down Flipper

seventy five. And like I said, I didn't know this. The military covered it up, but they're admitting it now. Flipper seventy five was a Chinook that was shot down by an American Stinger missile and it's the first confirmed to shoot down of an American aircraft by an American missile. They traced the missile back to the Afghan Ward and like I want to say, nineteen eighty two is the lot number. So everyone killed on this aircraft were killed by a Stinger missile that was provided to the Afghans by the Americans and that was the first time it happened.

It wasn't the last. The second time, I can't remember the call signed, but it was a age of the latest generation Stinger and instead of exploding near it, which is it's kind of like a shotgun blast is the idea behind missiles. Well, the latest generation Stinger was actually good. It went right into the engine and the engine ate it because the engines are made out of titanium. So actually that was a good thing. And the second Shinook was able to make it back on one engine, so no one died. But that was the second confirmed shootdown of an American aircraft by an American missile. And I have I have my own theories about Turbine three three, which is red Wings and I'm not saying I know this to be a fact, but it may have been.

I wonder if it was a Stinger missile that shot them down in not an SA seven. And that's a whole other conversation.

But well, some people even say that it was an RPG. You know, there's a lot of debate out there again amongst us non non ts SCI holders and right into that kind of thing. Someone knows obviously, but there's a lot of like people that think that it was a lucky shot of an RPG. I've heard people say I had ed Derek On who wrote Victory Point, which is kind of like the full the rest of the story behind Loan Survivor, and he covers that extensively as well.

He's got a couple books about all of that. And yeah, Operation Red Wings and everything. And I think he also said that a lot of people know that it was not I could be wrong. We talk about it in our interview. People have to go back and look. But s A seven was also brought.

Yeah, what's the he did talk about that.

What's the Flipper flight? What was that one? What was the call signed? I don't even remember that?

Yeah, and no, and nobody does. And they they they covered it up for many years, Flipper seven five. And it's at the point now where you can google it or web search it and you can find out the details. But the Pentagon covered that up for many years. And so when we got the missile, and like I said, I can't say for sure it's but I was I was told, hey, man, this is the one that got that Shinook. I didn't even know if Shanook had been shot down. Like I said, everyone is very compartmentalized over on that side. They just kind of give you a mission and you go do it. But but what year was a shot down? Six? I believe it was. Yeah, I think it was six, two thousand and six.

I have to look that up. I've never even heard of that.

Yeah, flippery, Yeah, and no one does. But it's it was covered up and then the Pentagon admitted to it. You can find it, but they're not advertising it, if that makes sense. So, like like we were saying, you know, not everything is a conspiracy, but aren't advertising And you know, there there's a lot of stuff out there.

Now when you say you bought you bought that missile, do you mean the spent like the the act was shot or just the law.

Okay, Now, so a man pad has a launcher and a battery and then you put a missile inside of it that that's that's the stinger miss or that's any say seven or whatever. That's how it works. And there was a lot of disinformation which was easily disproven years later in the Syrian Civil War, but at the time there was a lot of disinformation being spread to the military that don't worry about the stingers because the battery life is only ten years. Well, that's not true. And you can get on a number of video sites. I don't know if they're still on YouTube, but I used to watch the ones of the Syrian Civil War where they would take a motorcycle battery and connect it to the SA seven whose battery had you know, the life was,

you know, like I said, five years, ten years, whatever the battery shelf life is. It was beyond that. But they would hook these motorcycle batteries to it and give it just because it's just looking for electrical current to spend the nitrogen in a seeker, So it doesn't matter if it's a year old or ten years old or you know, I think thirty years old at that particular time, two thousand and six, nineteen eighty two, do the math whatever, twenty five years. But there was a lot of disinformation out there like, oh, don't worry about stingers because the battery was someone't work. Well, that was that was false.

That's crazy. Yeah, I've never even that's one I've never even heard about. I'll have to look into that. I'm sure we'll get some comments and with people that have some details that have been researching, But that's who was on that flight? Do you know was it a was it just a regular fly? Was it special operations.

Flight or that? I'm not sure. I think there was. I think there was a I think there were some Brits and a military working dog team on board, and I think it was My first guess is some guys in the eighty second, but I could be wrong. I'm not sure if they were going on a raid or if it was like a what do you call a like a ring route or something, because chinooks were used for everything in Afghanistan because they're the only ones that had the power to get over the mountains.

Yeah, what do we call those? Not transit flights, but like you said, like a ring route, it's basically for those that don't know, that's like, hey, you know flipper seven five, if that's the call sign, you're gonna be flying from Canda Hard to Bastion to freaking Sooning and you're basically just hitting all these bases and taking people from one place to another. And that's what they do.

There's like a schedule, there's like a regular, regular schedule for that so that people that need to move around the country to do certain things, can move to different places. Yeah, that's that's crazy. Yeah, man, that's that's intriguing. I'm definitely have to look. What's it like to be involved in something like that where you've purchased like that's some like movie shit, right, like where you're out undercover buying Stinger missile parts.

Yeah. Yeah, and we didn't know what. Again, they're very compartmentalized. They were just like, hey, man, go you know, this is your mission today type of thing. We didn't know about this being shot down, and we didn't get this information. I can't remember when we found out or when we heard through the grape vine. But so you don't really you don't always know what you're doing when you're doing it.

And that's just the way that that game is played. You know, you try to get as much information as you can. But I think it was such a high priority because the military was worried that people would find out that they lost an American aircraft to an American missile. I think that was kind of the because I remember that day, man, just everything stopped and they're like, hey, man, come come to the team room. Get everybody in here.

We got to brief some ship and uh, and we were close to the Iranian border, so I thought it was more aligned with the Iranians, but but it wasn't, or or it might have been. I don't know, but but they were just like, hey, man, you got to make this shit happen today. This, this is the highest priority today. And as yeah, Roger, Dad, you know, you.

Know when you say that you go into some of these missions and you don't you don't really have all the info. Do you feel like you're do you ever feel like you're put being put on like a maybe a suicide mission, Like you feel safe? Obviously there's a known level of danger all the time when you're doing these kind of operations, but do you feel like that the safeties that could be put in place are in place when you're going out and doing these Are you just hoping that you know someone out there is looking out for you kind of deal?

Yeah, I mean that's a great question. On some level, man, You do you do kind of wonder what I will tell you, Uh, I can't talk about the selection process or anything, but you do you do go through a selection process and you have to be vetted. Someone on the program has to say they have to vouch for you in such a way that that you're worthy of being taken a chance on. And then you go through the selection process and it's not always physical. It's not always like you know, like road marches or whatever. There's a lot of shooting, but there's a lot of psychological a lot of psychological stuff, a lot of scenarios and questions.

But but they tell you early on because it's all the Tier one guys that run the selection and it used to be and it still is a Tier one mission. During g WATT, they didn't have enough guys that could do the mission, so they had to say, we need to create our own unit. They can do just that mission, and then we do the raids, you know, the raids and the hostage rescues and stuff. But they kind of tell you early on, man, They're like, look, this is the highest threat. It's also the highest paid, but it's the highest threat mission you can get into on this side of the fence. And some guys walked away from it after a trip, you know, some and I never faulted those guys, but they kind of tell you up front.

They're like, hey, man, air support, and you know, like when it went to Candahart, Man, we didn't have any air support. We were driving out through the mountains in the middle of the night, man, and if we would have got caught, man, it would have been you're done. But they kind of tell you up front and you just have to kind of ask yourself is this what I want to do? But they're pretty up front about it, man, They're like, hey, man, you were absolutely fucking hanging it out there, man, and we did it. If you don't want to be here, and not everybody stayed, even if they made the selection process, not everybody stayed.

Yeah. You know you talk about like rolling through Candahart at night or wherever, rolling through anywhere in Afghanistan. I mean you can get stopped by a Taliban checkpoint or something that kind of situation. Is it just fight your way out of it? And I mean are you able to contact a QRF or anything or is it just hey, dude, you're on your own, man, Ben Man.

Yeah, we were on our own, and I guess I shouldn't say where, but but we were on our own. And then in certain places if if if you could and if it like if you were in a safe house, you know, you're not gonna have a QRF. But if you're on a base somewhere and you can, you can build a local QRF. There were places where we had vended local nationals as our QRF, and you're like, you know, man, I hope they want our money more than the Taliban money, man, because there's only two of us. So there was only four of us, you know, but a lot of times, man, like when you rolled out, man, you had a vehicle that was capable of damn near doing surgery on somebody.

I mean, you had medgear, you had water, you had, man, you had so much fucking ammo. Man, holy shit, you could really you wouldn't want to try it, but you could hold off a small army man for sure. You hope it never got to that, because that's with that's if everything working right, What if you're injured, What if you're shot. I wasn't there when it happened, but we had a guy they blew through a checkpoint. It just happened to be a legitimate checkpoint, but they weren't wearing uniforms and it was it was a it was a perfect storm, but they blasted through it, man, and they just got the ship shot out of them. Well, one rounds went through the vehicle because again it's armored, but it's not armored forever if you're shooting at it with

machine guns. And he had a round go through his uh, through his leg, and eventually the vehicle went down. Right, and you're just you know, one or two guys in a car. I mean, how how I mean you could be the best dude in the world. Man, your two guys facing ten twenty guys. I mean, it's the odds are not in your favor. So the vehicle went down, and they were trying to E and e and they grabbed the saw and the grenade launcher and it's starting to get and they get behind this like little burm. Well, it's two guys, man and an interpreter, and he puts on a no he sees that he's shot and he's bleeding, and he tells the other guy like, hey man, I'm shot. Well, the guy tells he's losing consciousness. So the guy tells

the interpreter, hey man, put a fucking tourniquet on the guy and fucking I'll hold off this group. They didn't know who it was. Well, eventually they got more or less overrun by these guys and it was just like fuck, man, we're done. Here we go. And then they realized it was a green on blue situation and they de escalated.

The guy bled to death because the interpreter was scared and didn't know how to use the tourniquet, and he didn't put the tourniquet on like he had been instructed. So here's an example of I mean, you're you're just out there on your own. Man. I'll say his name is Greg Wright, and I'm sure you can find his name online or something. But man, it was just it was just a perfect storm. And it was just one of those things man, that you know nobody's coming for you and you really have to. Not everybody's comfortable with that.

And I'm not saying I'm not better than anybody or anything like that, but I had been on the big teams in the State Department, and I felt like I was a sitting duck. I would much rather sneak around, man, and just try to go where someone least expects me to go. Yeah, so it worked for me, but it didn't work for everybody. You know.

When I mean, obviously the missions are extremely dangerous in a situation like that, when someone gets killed, I mean, do we ever hear about that? Or is that like name on the wall, star on the wall at the CIA or something, you know, like that's one of those things you just don't I mean does their family even find out what happened to them? A lot of times.

Usually not.

Just a very like generic like hey, killed during an operation kind of details.

Yeah, because today is like the digital age, it's hard to uh, it's hard to keep secrets now. Yeah, when when Scott Roberson was killed in the coast, that was man, it made you know, international news. That was the deadliest day in the intelligence community in history. I think they lost nine people in one suicide bomb.

And was that when they were bringing in what they thought was an asset and they were trying to get info on Ben Lawden's location.

That was it? Yep Belawi? Yeah, and and he had been overruled. He was with me in Ramond he actually I don't know if I told him. I put it in the book. I was I was a bouncer. I couldn't I couldn't get a job anywhere. And uh, the bartender comes up to me one day and he's like, hey, man, that guy there's by drugs. Man, you got to throw him the fuck out of here. We'll lose our license.

He was a pretty jacked up dude, and I didn't want to fight this guy. So I go over to him and I put my hand on him. I'm like, hey, brother, time to call it a night, you know. And if he would have done anything squarely, I was going to choke him out right. Well, he goes out. I never saw him again. I'm like, you know, hey, man, I was you know, whooped him again? Josie A couple of years later in the team room in Ramadi. It's the fucking guy, right, I'm like, hey, man, where do I know you from? He's like, you threw me out of a bar in fucking Atlanta. I'm like, what the fuck.

He was an undercovered narcotics agent, so he was in there buying buying drugs as part of his cover and he just happened to get seen or whatever. Well that was Scott Roberson and he was the team leader in Coast and UH and a lot of experience. Man, guy had a lot of experience. All those guys did. And this was the case of someone chasing that next rung on the ladder and uh, you know, SP's written in blood, man, And everybody had sperience and everybody said no, but they were they were overruled by the commander. You know. The commander was like, hey, you're a bunch of fucking contractors, you work for me or whatever. And they all got killed, you know, because of that decision.

So yeah, because the decision was they were trying to they didn't want to offend them, right, so they weren't doing like full searches of them or their vehicles. And that one time they just brought in an explosive and blew them up right there at the gate or something like that.

Fu inside the compound. Man.

Yeah, that's crazy, dude. It's so crazy to think you went from being a bouncer to doing all this crazy. Did you ever imagine that's the that's the you know, the path your life would take.

Oh, no fucking way. I mean yes, And no, I was. I was so mad that I was a bouncer because it was like after the first year, you know, I got a lot of stuff out of my system. But after the first year, it's like, Okay, I need to be in my career. I'm a four street com marine. I got a college education, I got a pilot's license, I speak pretty decent Spanish. Why am I not where I'm supposed to be? You know? So I was pretty pissed off. But when I finally got out of the business, it was like, holy shit, look look what I'm doing now, man.

I mean six months ago, I was breaking up fights for ten dollars an hour, and now I'm carrying a machine gun.

So careful what you asked for?

Also, you know, careful what you asked for? Man. A cautionary tale.

Yeah, for sure.

You know.

I think a lot of guys that get out of the military, to go back to what you were talking about, being a bouncer and stuff, there's a lot of guys that get out of the military and expect that with their with their whatever technical experience that they gained while they're in the military, whatever prestige that comes from being a veteran, and the discipline that comes with that, that they're going to have a probably a pretty easy time finding the job that they want to do when they get out. And that's not always the case. What how do you how do you keep from going down a dark road because you it took you a long time to get to get to do what you wanted to do, right.

Yeah, oh yeah, man, Yeah, that's you know. I definitely went down dark roads man, many many, many times. I was one paycheck away from being homeless. Many times. I remember I got off I didn't have a car. At one point, I got off the I got off the train, it's called the Marta train. It was too late at night for the buses to run, so I had to walk back to my apartment. And I remember seeing these homeless guys underneath the overpass the bridge, and I was like, man, with all of my credentials and all of my training, I'm one paycheck away from being one of those guys. Man.

And you're just like, you know, what, what did I do wrong? Man? Who did I piss off? You know? You just yeah, Man, you can really get into some dark thoughts.

Yeah, you start blaming yourself, like what is it me? You know? Am I am I a problem? Like why can't it even when you get credential, you know, because you were in chellege, right, you got a degree and everything like and it's still I mean I'll tell people for real, like I've looked for jobs before and just don't ever get a response, and it's like, dude, yeah, what the fuck am I doing wrong? You know? And you start questioning like is it is? Am I a piece of shit? You know what? How am I coming off? Like?

I'm not even getting a callback on forty resumes getting submitted, I don't even get a callback you know?

Yeah? Well I know, man, yeah, absolutely, uh no, man, it's it's it's the civilian life was the toughest thing in my life. Man. Absolutely, Man, it's it's and I'm not downplaying people's military service or anything, but it's like, dude, if you want to get your nuts crushed, man, try civilian life. Man. It's just fucking you get your ass kicked, man, ten times a day, you know. I mean, it's it's yeah, it's tough, man.

I think it's a hard pill to swallow some people too, because it's like most of the time, you can get a job, but it's not gonna be a job that you want to do. Like you went and you were a bouncer for a long time. I doubt you wanted to be a fucking thirty year old bouncer or something like that. You know what I'm saying, like that's usually like a college kid or someone you know that's doing a gig like that or someone.

Oh yeah, and what it's like.

Yeah, when you look back, you're like, I get why some guys get super depressed or become homeless or whatever, because they're like, you know, in the military, you had like this cool job you were maybe if you were good at your job, you were well respected and people wanted your opinion, and you know, you had a mission and everybody was working towards that mission. And then you get out and that's all gone, along with all the support structure. You know, I'm an Afghanistan. I don't worry about where the food's coming from. It's coming someone's bringing us food. You know what I'm saying, Like, it's gonna be there. The paycheck is gonna get is gonna get deposited.

You know, those are things you just don't even can or because it's that's part of the whole gig. And then you get out and all of that is gone, and now it's like what the fuck?

Man? Man, Absolutely, you're exactly right. I mean, you're you're one hundred percent right, you know, Yeah, you can see why it affects guys.

Yeah, it's I just thought it's it's so interesting how you went from, like I said, being a bouncer to like working out buying Stinger missiles at Fort Plane. Oh you know, like that's just such a crazy, like what a trip, right, And it's you. I guess it's a reinforces that you never know what the next door is going to open. You know, the next door that you open, what's going to come with that? And and maybe everything you wanted it might not be, But you got to be kind of flexible to to work in something like that.

So I don't know, is there anything else that you could talk about from your time working on these special missions?

Man? I just I just really loved it. Yeah yeah, I mean, if I get you know, if you had specific questions or something. Man, I had a great time. I loved it. I was very proud of what I got to do because you got to see firsthand the efforts of your the fruit of your labors, if you will. But man, you get used and again, man, you get used to this autonomy and responsibility and like we you know, we didn't have support, like you know, maybe there's no qr F, but man, we had our own satellite, bro.

Nobody has her own set. We had our own satellite. We had our own I can't say the name of it, but we had our own transportation airplanes from stateside over and it was all business class, bro. I mean it was. They took care of you. Man, you knew you were at the top of the food chain. That was about as good as it was every gonna get unless you won the lottery, and even then, I mean it was it was just great. I loved it. I loved the people.

Holy shit, man, I just I just had a greareat time. It was. It was absolutely what I wanted to do, what I'd always wanted to do. I did it for twelve years. Like I said, not every day was you know, like a gunfight or something. But man, I got to do some awesome stuff, met incredible people, learned a lot.

And what's the downtime, Like, you know, you say, you're not in a gunfight every day. Obviously obviously you're getting paid well, you're getting treated well, and because of that, they're going to use you when they need you. Sure, what is it like? Is it like you know, we got used to in the Global War on Terror, these rotations of deployments like seven month outs come back or rangers go out for like three months and come back and then go back out again. Do you guys have like a deployment schedule or is it just like, hey Bobby, this thing came up you, we gotta take you.

Yeah, it's each person. So you had you had the either the federal employee or the active military. Then you had what's called a direct contractor, which meant you worked you were contracted directly for that organization and they controlled your schedule. Or you could be an industrial contractor, which is what I did, and you get to pick your schedule, but you're the first one to go if there's budget issues.

I always usually did sixty sixties because I liked to plan for that, and that was kind of the standard deployment because the optempo was so high you couldn't go over I think it was ninety days. They would cut you off at ninety days. Now, if it was like, you know, the end of the world or yeah, the end of the world or something, they could extend you to one hundred days. But I never I didn't know anyone who was extended beyond ninety days. I would normally do sixty days. Now I did a twenty nine day trip.

I've done forty five day trips. But usually they liked sixty sixty and I loved sixty sixty. Man. That was that was a good mix.

With a weird schedule like that, where you disappear for two months at a time, come back for a couple of months, and then leave again. Is it even possible to have a family in that kind of thing, you know? I mean, how many guys actually have families? And what do you tell them that you're doing. I mean, I imagine you can't tell them anything at all. There's probably I don't know, like, how does that work?

Yeah, everybody's situation is different, man, But generally speaking, man, there was a lot of divorce. There was a lot of alcoholism, there was a lot of there's drug use, a lot of PTSD, a lot of Superman, a lot of fucking suits. I couldn't believe how many people committed suicide. Man, It is good, man, it's just fucking sobering. With regard to my first wife, you know, not a smart move on my part. I met her in the bar business.

I was a bouncer and she was a stripper, you know, and you know marine stereotype. I mean it into the eyes, don't Yeah, very marine of me, just trying to make chesty, pull her proud. You know. Obviously I couldn't trust her with too much information. But over time she kind of figured out that I probably wasn't, you know, painting houses or some shit like that. You know. Now she had a pill problem and she spent a lot of the money, which is another story, but that was not you know, that was my situation, and I thought it was unique, but it wasn't. Mean. You talk to the other guys on the team, and you know, man, the wives had depression or alcoholism, or the guy had alcoholism. The kids you're getting in trouble. I can't remember the exact numbers,

but you're one of about I think there was about one hundred, one hundred and twenty of us in the world at one time that were assigned to the special programs. So it was this very very unique skill set group of people that could do these jobs. And man, the phone was always ringing. The phone was always ringing, and I don't know what it is, man, I'm off to a flame or whatever. But you just they kind of get the hooks and you you know, they look for this certain type of person that's mission oriented and they can definitely abuse you. And and I'm not a victim, you know or anything like that, but but they would definitely, uh, they would get their money's worth out of you. Man.

For sure, I can understand.

I can understand how like it's hard on families, wives, kids, because one they have no idea what you're doing for real, you know. And two it's so chaotic. It's not like even in the military. It's tough on the families, but in the military, they at least can relate to each other. Like if I'm deploying, my kid is in school with other kids whose dads are deployed. You know, the spouses have other spouses that they can talk to, relate to.

They kind of there's that support system. I imagine that's not really there for Yeah.

It doesn't exist, man. And if they don't have a fam you know, if they don't have family. My wife, now, man, I mean if I were if I had married her the first time around, I'd probably still be doing that job or you know, if I could pass the fucking PT test and everything. But but she's solid and she has you know, like her parents and you know, like she's got a solid family, So you have to have that.

The spouse has to have the solid backing, and the the operator has to have that as well. I was never in the you know, my goal was to go to the unit, and I should have pulled the trigger when I was younger. But but in any case, as I understand it, one of the one of the portions of the Delta selection early on in their process is they look to make sure that you have a stable family life because the demands of the job. You know that that's kind of like the weak point if you if you don't have that, then it's going to come unraveled somewhere down the line. Yeah.

So I remember talking to the one of the marsk Fires guys about going over there as a jaytach and they almost want to They're almost trying to talk you out of doing it. They're like, hey, man, you need to understand you're going to be gone two hundred plus days a year. You know, like are you ready for that?

You're married? Is your family ready for that?

You know?

And it's almost like when you're talking to them, you're like, are you a recruiter? Or are you like giving me a warning? Like what is this? You know, it's kind of a but I get it because that's the last thing. You can't be out on a mission and worrying about something going on back home, you know. And it's like, because you're now, you become a liability. And when you're talking about high stakes missions, like you're talking about liabilities just can't be accepted. So I guess that leads in on my next question. You know, you talk about guys or alcoholics or on drugs and stuff, how are they not weeded out? Like how is that not identified? Like hey, Bobby drinks a lot? Like how is he still here?

You know?

Like do they just not see it or they kind of keep a blind eye to it? Because this guy's a good dude on the mission, so you know, as long as he can keep it together overseas and we don't care what you're doing when you're back here for sixty days.

Yeah, it really depends a lot of guys. Some guys hide it overseas, some guys don't. I saw a guy man I knew the I knew he had probably been in a lot of shit, and he just said that look about him man, and he had that demeanor and I could tell this guy I probably needed some help, but I was new to the team and I didn't want to say anything. Man, he was a raging alcoholic and and he would he would pass out and sleep until noon, and he would he would miss There were some sometimes you got to do some admin moves. You know that it's not always you know, dress up like a local and go sneak around and take pictures or whatever.

And he missed a couple of men. And and he was a good guy, I think, And I think if there was like a real serious gunfight, man, you would want this guy around. But Man, eventually, man, you burn your bridge and they're just like, hey, bro, man, you're a solid guy. Man, we're gonna get you some help. But you are no longer on the team. You're you're you know, we packed up all your stuff while you're asleep.

You know, we gotta we got to send you home to today. Man, we're gonna we're gonna put you on a plane. You're not a bad guy. And and look, you're gonna call this number when you get back, or someone's going to meet you at the airport. And you're gonna do thirty days and whatever, you know, program of a what do you call it a resident? Yeah, yeah, an in resident type of d d uh aa type stuff, you know. And we're we're you know, they don't just sell them down the river in most cases. But man, you can never come back to the to the team.

Uh And. And Man, that's the guy that gave me my call sign, James Flynn. Man. Love the guy, man, But but he had some injuries and some other issues that built up over time, and eventually they're like, man, you're just you're onto too many meds and stuff and and your injuries. We got a fucking man, you gotta you gotta call it good man. And and he killed hisself, you know, because he could he couldn't be on the team anymore. Like I said, Man, there was a shocking amount of the suicides.

But do you think that's do you think that's a lot of it is the is the I'm never gonna do anything this, you know, crazy like this was this was the peak. This was my peak. Like anything after this is going to be mundane for me.

I think so, Man, Yeah, I think so. I had a buddy uh And and his his name is out there his his name has been on a couple of podcasts, Drew Dwyer. He was marine man. He was he was my team leader in Afghanistan in one place. Man, solid man. And he retired, you know, and he was like, man, I'm done, and and I found out. Uh, he actually went out to Hollywood. He got he was uh and I can't remember the movies he was in, but he was a technical advisor and he was well paid and he was well treated. He has his retirement and everything, and uh, I mean he had it man, he was he had you know, he had made it. He was dating one of the I can't remember what team, but man, the smoking hot, fucking cheerleader. Man. It was like, holy shit,

did you see who it's called out? A saint. It's like, man, do you see who's Saints dating. I'm like no, man, I'm like, holy I mean the smoking hot chick. Man. So he had money, he had retirement, he had he had an ultimate job in Hollywood. Man. Everyone was looking for the guy man and just one day, man, he's just like, you know, man, this this sitting, this isn't what I wanted. He killed hisself, you know, despite having all that, So you just never know.

Yeah, and you see it's crazy because you on the outside looking in, you're going, You're going, man, he's got everything, you know, He's got everything i'd ever want. A good job, you know, cool girlfriend, fucking making money, probably got a cool house, cool cars, you know, And that's why most dudes are like, that's what I want. But I think it's like you hear, especially here from celebrities and stuff.

It's like, you know, at the end of the day, you're just a regular person and all those things are nice, but they don't fulfill you, you know, and if it's like something's not fulfilling you, yeah, I don't know, man, that's it's a crazy world. I don't know. I don't think we're ever gonna figure out how to stop suicides.

I think it's just I think it's an unfortunate side effect of life, right, I mean, you're gonna go out one way or another. And I think some people just have that, Like like I said before, you know, this is it for me, this is my peak. I think one issue is that a lot of people think that they've peaked before they actually could have. You know what I'm saying, right, they sell themselves short. You know, like you could have easily gone down a dark road as a bouncer looking back on, man, I was a force recon marine and fucking doing cool stuff. And now I'm kicking dudes out that have drank too much. You know, I'm trying not to get puked on by this drunk check, you know, and like I can see how that would

lead down a very depressing road that could lead to something like that. But you kept up the mindset that there's something else out there for.

Me, right, yeah, I mean and trust me, man, everything you're saying about the darkness, it was there. Man. I had, you know, depression like you would not believe. Now, this was pre g WAT, so I didn't really have that big community to kind of not that. Not that it's easier being in g WATT. I'm just I felt totally alone, man, and depression, absolutely fully full on depression and everything. Man, it was. It was very dark. I honestly don't know how I got through it. Man. I just put one foot in front of the other. I tried to build up my flight time. I got involved in bodybuilding, you know, so i'd have a hobby. I competed in bodybuilding. Just just things to take your mind off your scenario, your

situation was the best way that that I got through those years. But absolutely, man, it was very very very dark, very dark time man. For sure.

I think believing in yourself, man, knowing that you know, if I keep grinding away, good things are going to happen. You know, I don't know. It's it's a tough world out there. And I got one last question and we'll wrap it up. You know, when you leave a unit, like like you were talking about, especially if you're there for an extended period of time, five years, ten years, whatever, Yeah, how do you go find another job? What do you put on your resume for that?

You know?

How are you referred to? Like are you are you destining yourself into being just a security guy for the rest of your life or being some kind of contractor for the rest of your life if you do that kind of job or I mean obviously you said you knew a guy that went on and was a technical advisor and all that stuff for the so there's there's something out there. But yeah, how do you go away from that and move on to a different job?

You know? Yeah, no, you and that and that's that's that's the question everyone asked themselves ten times a day. What what did it for me? I knew I had to get out not now, I physically would not be able to pass the selection course over and over or the standard that we did. At some point, I would just get too old, you know, because it's it's very high standards. And so I knew, or I would get killed, I mean honestly, man, or get injured, you know. So so I knew I had to find something else. But what did it for me was, you know, you always want to do a good job and be that solid guy.

But but I remember one time I was I was home and I got a phone call and they said, uh, they said, hey, hey, Tadpole. Has you know we'd go by call signs usually Mom's Tadpole. They said, hey, Tadpole, ha's going Hey man, your name came up for a team leader position in a particular location that we haven't been in in a long time. And I was like, fuck, that sounds badass, man, Hell yeah, I mean me, yeah, okay, And they're like, we're going to open up mog Ishu again and we would like for you to be the team leader of the guys going into Mogadishu and you're going to be running operations in Mogadishu. And man, it hit me, man, because you know, I watched I watched Black Hawk Down, you know, on TV on CNN. That

was like this big, tremendous you know, I knew what at least I knew what they went through, at least you know, watching it on TV and the movie, you know, of course, of all the crazy shit, and just all the guys that I've talked to they've been there, And I'm like, man, how far down this road have I gone?

When I'm the guy that people think of that it should be the team leader of the first team to go back into mogad issues since you know, nineteen ninety four, you know, the last time they were there. And so I, man, I really had to look myself in the mirror and be like, fuck, man, If I don't quit now, man, I'll never you know. So, so I in the back of my mind, I was like, I've got to figure out a way to get it. I can't be because if you, I think, if you can go too far, you know what I mean? And perhaps perhaps I went too far again. If I'm the name that comes up to lead the team going into mogod issue. Man, I've probably gone too far. I found out about, you know, flying helicopters for the military, and I knew I could

do that later in life. And I knew that I could still support, you know, these units and stuff like that. I could still be around the people that I had so much in common with, that that I loved so much, But my name would not be coming up to be a team leader going to Mogadi shoot, you know what I mean? So I could I could have my cake and eat it too, if you will. And not everybody finds that answer. Man, everyone's looking for that answer, and know what, not everybody finds it. I was very fortunate I found the answer to that question. But man, not everybody does.

Yeah, yeah, I feel like, you know, for me, the podcast is really good because I'm I'm not in the military obviously, but I get to talk military stuff with people all the time. You know, a lot of guys get out and they're running a PFT or running a range, you know, shooting machine guns or you know, in my case, doing close air support blowing stuff up one day, and then a week later they're sitting on their couch back in their hometown, like time stopped and started again, and they're back to where they were, and they're like, what the fuck am I doing? You know, and it's I don't know, it's from me. That's been my kind of outlet, is to kind of maintain a pulse on what's going on and talk to people and kind of you know,

because it's I think that's what a lot of guys miss is that camaraderie and that just that not even like the conversation is good because you understand, like we can talk and we know what. We've never served together, but we have done probably a lot of the same training. We both went to Marine Corps boot camp right there.

I can relate to somebody about that, you know. Yeah, And I think that's what the like VFW and the American Legion and stuff kind of used to serve that purpose. Yeah, it's kind of falling off now. That's more of a World War two, Korean War, Vietnam veteran kind of or it seems like organizations. You know, I'm a I'm a member of the American Legion here in San Diego, and I'm like the youngest dude for sure, and you know, and I'm like, for sure the others guy, and it's I don't know. I think people have to find something where where if they're missing the military, they got to find something that's military adjacent, you know, or at least or at least join a group or get into something where they can have those conversations and joke around and understand.

I think. I like going on Reddit and reading like there's a USMC subreddit and stuff like that, and it's funny reading some of the stuff that's going on nowadays. It's depressing reading some of the stuff that's going on nowadays, but at least I understand what they're talking about, you know what I'm saying.

You know.

It's just like, uh, I don't know. I was always a military guy, you know, even when I was a little kid. My dad was in the Army. So that's all I ever wanted to do. And that's kind of someone leaving It was really hard because it's just I don't know, it's like a huge part of your life you're leaving behind. You know, it's very impactful, and I don't think people really understand the impact of getting out until they do get out. And I'm sure that I'm sure that just amplifies every time, Like in a case like yours, where you you move up to the ladder of like intensity and like you know, and and where you're doing a job where you feel like you're really having an effect. You know. Maybe there's a lot of marines

that do the Marine Corps do four years and never deploy or maybe deploy once, and they're like, yeah, that was cool, not really what I thought it was gonna be. And I don't know what kind of effect I had, Whereas like a job like you're talking about, there's like specific events. I'm sure you can look back and be like, man, that was crazy, like and this was like a little legitimate national security thing that we took care of, you know, and you can be proud of that. So I don't know, Man, it's a weird world out there. I think people should take take a second and take a look at your book, War Junkie A Cautionary Tale. I think it's aptly titled, you know, I think it's I really appreciate you. Coming on.

We're gonna have to do another one because we haven't even gotten into your your helicopter flyinge. You know, you're rated on multiple helicopters and stuff like that, and you're currently overseas right now and doing stuff, so it's like we'll have to do another one down the road and catch up and maybe, you know, I'm gonna try to for the listeners, I'm gonna I'd like to start trying to do live stream every once in a while and have people that have come on before come on and let people ask questions because obviously, you know, yeah, you know that way, because there's people that have questions that I don't think about until afterwards. Or sometimes I'll see a question in the YouTube comments and I'm like, oh, yeah,

that would be cool. I'll ask him next time I'm I have them on. So maybe we'll try to figure out something like that. But where can people pick your book up?

You can get it on Amazon. It's a war junkie cautionary tale. It's on Amazon in hardcover, softcover and ebook. Just you can go to my website and get it there, but it'll just take you to Amazon. Kgspradley author dot com. I just released a video this morning on YouTube KG Spradley Author and it's essentially the guy that's gonna do the voice of the book. His name is Ron Savak.

He is a former Army medic and now he's got his own business and he's done a lot of radio and stuff over time. And he reads the forward to the book, which was written by Jason Morrison for Shrekan Marine. And he's got a website and a book called The Perfect Fucking Life and it's kind of his life story.

And he was in Ramadia as well, So that's where they can get the books. And let me just say just what you were talking about. I don't think you understand how much of an impact you make to veterans because we all want to talk about this, we all want to share our experiences and kind of relive it and have the camaraderie. We don't know how guys like you have figured out how to how to kind of bring us all together with the podcast. Man, you've got a solid product. So just from all the veterans out there man that are looking, thank you because you're you're one of those few guys that made that happen, that can kind of bring everybody to this team room if you will.

I appreciate it, man, it's it's you know, it's my honor. I'm humbled by guys like you and you know, some of the lot of the dudes I've had on the stories they've told that being willing to open up and share some of the stories because I know some of it's tough, you know, to talk about or remember. And I'm glad that people feel like I'm okay to talk to you about that kind of thing. I feel like they can relate, you know. I'm glad that we can have this back and forth. And it's just and I'm glad too that the average person that's never served in the military gets to hear these stories because they don't never know, you know, they don't know what's going on out there. They don't realize what the military is doing

or what some of these contractors are doing out there. And it's their tax dollars that are paying the salaries, so they should know what's going on. Again, like I said before, I think a lot of stuff that the military does is overclassified for no reason. And it's just not fair the American public, especially when we're asking the you know, mothers and fathers of people to send them their kids into the military service. They should know what they're getting themselves into. They shouldn't go in blind and you know it's again, it's my honor to have you guys on and have have all these guests and great people to come on and share their stories. As always, people can check out my website it's jacrimographics dot com.

My instagram is Former Action Guys and Former Action News. Check those out and uh, that's it, man. I really appreciate it.

Awesome. Appreciate it, brother, Yeah, dude,

Ep. 220 | Round 2 w/ Kirk Spradley | Blackwater Contractor and Paramilitary Officer

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