Denied Areas: How Elite Operators Conduct Recon in Secret Sectors

0:01 Welcome to Stories of Special Forces Operators podcast. Listen to some of the bravest and toughest people on the planet share their stories, Sit back and enjoy.

0:27 Welcome back, folks for another episode. Today, we have a great guest, Clark Impostato. He served eight years in the United States military. From nineteen ninety five to two thousand and one. He served in the US Navy on the USSS Shiloh and at Seal Team five Fox trop Platoon. During that time, he deployed to the Persian Gulf in Southeast Asia. After separating from the Navy, he served with the nineteenth Group Special Forces from two thousand and two to two thousand and three. From two thousand and three to two thousand and seven, he continued service as a private military contractor. He deployed multiple time to Israel, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Upon returning home to the US, though he didn't stop, he continued on and he's served with the

1:07 Phoenix Police Department from two thousand and eight to twenty sixteen. He says, now after all that he's been rocking and rolling, joking and living, you can find him a good vised podcast with Clark and Pastato and Ryan g By the way, his last name is I am past at O. Before we get started, to make sure to share, subscribe and hit that like but you know we like it. It's not waste any more time. And welcome the former Navy CeAl Clark and Pistada.

1:30 Welcome Clark, Hey, thanks for having me. I'm stoked.

1:33 Thank you so much for being here. This is so much now. I've learned so much interviewing special forces, whether it's Navy seals to Green Berets. And I think next week we have sas coming on. Oh nice, because people don't really understand who you people are. They have a misting representation. But the amazing thing is how how would I put this? How amazing you individuals are not just because of what you did militarily but also psychologically, how much you've endured and how much you've overcome and your lives outside of that world. But before we get to all that, I guess my first question is always is whatever made you want.

2:11 To be a Navy Seal.

2:13 I think it was kind of a gradual increase to that decision I always attributed to My mom was a huge fan of World War Two. She was a kid during World War two. But as far as like when I was a kid growing up, she loved to watch World War two movies, you know, the Battle of Midway and all this other stuff. The Black Sheep Squadron, there was a TV show about the fire pilots, and so I just watching TV with her, I just really kind of fell in love with World War two and the concept of it, and you know, we're going to fight this Hitler dude, and then broke out in Pearl Harbor and we went out west and bought the Japanese and so I was just at our early age mesmerized by it.

2:52 But then that it continued further with the course growing up in the eighties with all the Rambos and the commandos and the Schwartzeneggers. I mean, who didn't want to be a Greenberry army dude running around.

3:03 Saving the world.

3:03 And so I just it was always kind of on the back burner until I was in high school in the first Golf War kicked off, and I was glued to CNN at the time because that was the first for our news network, and so when.

3:17 The golf War popped off, I was just like, I have to do this.

3:21 This is amazing, Like I'm watching this almost real time, and I just thought, when I'm done with high school, like this is this is now off the back burner on one of the front burners, like this is gonna happen. I didn't have a timeline or anything like that, but when that kicked.

3:35 Off, I this is something I gotta do. You know.

3:37 I don't know how long I'll do it for or where I'm gonna end up, but that's when I really caught the bug.

3:41 Was the first golf for what's a fascinating story. So your mom was the one that motivate I can't remember. It was Robert cottrad of that blank sheep squadron.

3:50 I can't remember.

3:51 I was so young, but I just remember watching that shows. I really would love to be an old school fighter pilot. That would be like my dream job. If timeline wasn't I could go back in time. That would be just you know, the Western specific campaign flying airplanes and shooting down zeroes and that just I was like, that's the bees and ease Man's that's cool stuff.

4:11 That's so funny you mentioned that because I think it was just last weekend I visited the Lions Museum down in Orange County and they have all those warplanes from.

4:19 The World War Two. Nice.

4:21 It was really a trip. And I think some of the guys were there.

4:25 Oh wow, they were old enough.

4:27 I mean, no offense to them, but yeah, it's.

4:29 Getting harder to find them. They're getting they're getting older and older, those guys.

4:33 Yeah, that generation is disappearing, unfortunately. And I know later on in the interview, I wanted to ask you a little bit about Hollywood, sure, and some of them movies. Maybe we'll get back to Rambo. I'm trying to think of some of the Navy Seal movies but just can't remember when off the top of my head.

4:45 It really wasn't except for the Charlie Sheen one that came out like in the nineties, and that was well, that's right, Yeah, that's what we thought the teams would be.

4:53 Like you're saying, it's not, well, I'll get into that. Let me ask you this about buds training. Everybody's always curious. You see the videos on YouTube and things of that nature, and it's one thing to watch a video a six minute clip, that's another to endure it. Tell us, Kyle, walk us through your very first moments of going into BUDS training. Did they shake your hands, say how you're doing pallor.

5:21 Yeah, orders waiting for you in a cancierge service and say hey, we're stoked to have you. No, it's it's very overwhelming, and there wasn't a lot of information. I showed up to Buds in ninety seven, the summer of ninety seven, so.

5:37 The internet really wasn't in full swing. There wasn't a lot of info.

5:41 The Navy recruiter laughed at you and showed you a ten minute video called be Someone Special, and it was like an old black and white UDT diver video.

5:48 It wasn't a lot of info.

5:50 So what I liked about it is it was kind of a Scooby Doo adventure. You just each day was this new mystery that was unfolded in front of your eyes. Whereas now there's so much info out there. I think it kind of obviously you can't prepare for the real experience, but you have a heads up. I think it takes away a little bit of the mystery, the charm to it.

6:10 When I showed up, you had no idea. I did have a neighbor when I was in the regular Navy that was a sniper at five and so I could ask him questions, but it wasn't enough pieces of the puzzle to really get that kind of bird's eye concept of what I was up against. Whereas now with all the documentaries and stuff, it just, in my opinion, kind of spoils it.

6:29 But when I was there, it was just overwhelming.

6:33 You can't believe I had to fight my way there from the regular Navy. It's been a year and a half in the fleet, chip and paint, so I was super pumped to be at seal training and we'll never have to grab a paintbrush again.

6:44 So I was pretty pumped about that.

6:46 And to be honest, that kind of did me a favor because a lot of guys go from boot camp to buds and I don't think they realize how special that opportunity is, and they throw it away a lot quicker than the guys that come from the fleet, because you know, if you quit that floating prisons waiting for you, you're going right back to the fleet. So for me not to get ahead of myself, anytime I was having a bad day and feeling sorry for myself, I would see a ship just off the coast of San diego and think I'm good. I don't want to go back to that.

7:15 I'll sit with cold water and be happy. So I turned that negative into a positive and used my fleet experience to motivate me to get through the tough time. But I can't reiterate enough the awesome effect the first day of BUDS has on you.

7:32 It's just like it's just this epic thing that's in front of you.

7:36 But what I did realize is once you get settled, the instructors really do give you the keys of the castle.

7:43 They tell you how to succeed.

7:45 They tell you, don't look at this as a six month program because you'll freak yourself out and quit.

7:51 They taught us how do you.

7:52 Eat an elephant one bite at a time, And what they meant by that was survive the day. Maybe you just survived getting to lunch. Or more importantly, what I did is I just focused on the task at hand.

8:04 Whatever evolution we were doing, that's all I worried about.

8:07 So if we were doing a four mile time to beat run, I wasn't worried about the evolution after lunch, which might.

8:13 Be the obstacle course or you know what I mean.

8:15 A lot of guys are like, shit, I failed this and I got this company. They psyched themselves out. So I took on board early on what they taught us to focus on it. And really that's the entire mindset of the sealed community. You don't really realize that at the time because of budge're kind of especially first phase.

8:34 You're kind of in kindergarten, if you will.

8:37 So any little nugget of wisdom they gave me I latched onto and I realized these documentaries and YouTube videos, it makes it seem almost a little bit marine corpus. They kind of ham it up a little bit for the camera and they yell a little bit more. But I thought of Buds as more of a gentleman's course.

8:56 In fact, sometimes it's so evil that they're being nice to you.

8:59 You're kind of like, why.

9:00 Is this kind of like whispering at me, Like it's just kind of instead of all this shouting energy, like they just whisper in your ear light.

9:08 Now you look cold and wet. I got them purple in the van. All you got to do is quit like it's creepy, you know what I mean?

9:15 They really they get inside your head because as a human being. You can only do so many push ups and run so far, and some so far. They'll physically break you. But they even told you this little key for success. Never let us break you mentally. That's where you have to win. We're going to break you physically.

9:32 I don't care who you are.

9:33 They've had Olympic athletes, pro football players, all walks of life have gone through Buds, some successful, sometimes success. But the key ingreeting is you must never be mentally defeated. And I think that's something it's calmon in special operations. But Buds is different because of that cold water that will get inside your head when you're sitting in the drink for hours and hours and hours and the water.

9:56 Temp is like fifty degrees and you're shivering.

9:59 You could be the toughest dude in the world, Mike Tyson, but you don't want to sit in that cold water, so you quit. So that's unique, and it makes us a little different than other special operations selection processes. That cold water really has nothing to do with your physical ability. It's your state of mind, and you have to develop that early on and realize this is just a new part of my life.

10:23 And I either accept it or I'm going to go away. And you start to see people go away, some.

10:28 Bigger guys, some very athletic guys can't mentally handle that cold water, and so you realize early on, Hey, the key to this shit is your state of mind, your mental fortitude. And so luckily for me, I latched onto that pretty quickly and that served me.

10:43 Well throughout Buds.

10:44 It's just to remain calm, as they say, embrace the suck, except that this is your reality for now, and you're going to be wet all day, every day for six months if you're lucky. If you get injured or roll back, you could be in BUDS for over a year if you don't get through in one shot.

10:59 So oh wow.

11:00 Kind of an open ended course, depending on your success. You have to complete certain things along the way. If you get hurt or you get performance dropped. If you're a good dude, they might roll you back. They might not, they might drop you from the program. So it behooves you to.

11:14 Do it right the first time.

11:15 So's I did my best to stick to that, to that philosophy.

11:20 So that's the fascinating thing. I do these interviews, and I'm sure folks have heard it before. Is the psychological mindset of people in special forces. And I don't want to overgeneralize your guys, but everybody has a similar mindset. Sure you'd already did it early where you reframed the scenario you were in and then able to strengthen your mental fortitude as well, which is something I've I found sometimes when I've interviewed I think we're a similar age.

11:47 Are you familiar with Larry Holmes, a boxer, No homes okay, Larry Holmes. He fought Mike Tyson and he fought Muhammad Ali. Oh okay, and same thing with him. And I asked him, what do you think about when you got knocked down? I expected him to say something like, oh my gosh, I got knocked down whatever he did, and he said, I got to figure out how to get back up and knock him out. And I thought, that's a whole different mindset. What a lot of people have. They just don't give up. And the Olympic athletes told me the same thing. Every time they failed or they didn't get somewhere.

12:21 What they always came back to is how do I get it? I'm going to move aside? What just happened and go back to how do I get that goal?

12:28 You have to compartmentalize your defeat, and they teach us that. For example, when I went through buds, you were allowed to fail something twice, So if I failed a four mile time run, they would retest me, but if I failed a second four mile time run, you're gone. So if you fail something, you know the safety net's now gone.

12:46 You have one more chance at this.

12:47 But what they teach you is to to you have to data dump that. It's kind of like in advanced training when you're doing CQB and cleaning rooms. If you have a bad run and let's say you know, you sweep a guy or you to hostage target and then make you reset, you have to completely wipe that from your mind that you just screwed up. You have to go back in that house and have a good run.

13:10 You have to be able to just compartmentalize that. You can revisit that failure later. There's a time and a.

13:14 Place for that, but it's not right then and there.

13:18 So they really are good at like you're saying, the athletes can do. There's lessons to be learned from failure, but oftentimes you have to reperform immediately and you can't dwell on that, and.

13:29 So that actually ends up serving you well in life.

13:31 For example, if you're having problems at home, you have to compartmentalize that, go to work and be a professional. Or if you're having financial problems, you got to compartmentalize that, go to work and be a professional. So it really a lot of my buddies that are civilians, they dwell on things, and I'm like, dude, just put that in your back pocket for now. Get through the day. When you're done with work and get home, that's when you can analyze what happened. You know why this happened or that happened. And so buds really taught me that if you mess something up, you can't let it eat you up.

13:59 You have to to learn from it when the time is appropriate and then come back stronger. You've got to Failure is not a bad thing. Everybody has a bad day, has a bad week, messing something up. We all have talents, you know. For me, I sucked at swimming. I had to swim scared, I had to basically run on the water.

14:16 I'm from Colorado, I'm just a little hillbilly that grew up at eight thousand feet. I probably should have been a ranger or a Green Beret, but I got the seal shit in my head. So I honestly had a friend in college that taught me how to swim the sidestroke so I could back fire.

14:32 Had no idea beyond that.

14:34 And obviously there's a lot of water evolutions and buds and I was the worst swimmer in my class for a long time, but I didn't let that beat me. We would swim laps at the pool and I was the last guy to get to the edge. These guys had already been resting for fifteen twenty seconds. I hit the edge and they say go. So I had no rest.

14:54 I was just back for just sucking in water. Thought I was gonna die. But in the true sp of buds and the instructors wanting you to be successful, they said, for those of you that suck at swimming, instructor so and so we'll be here Saturday at noon. I suggest you'd be here and every Saturday there would be an instructor there at the pool and they would completely come out of character and be cool, and they would teach you how to swim and it behooved you if you were struggling to be there every Saturday and learn how to swim, And eventually I became a middle of the pack swimmer once the technique set in and I was fighting myself in the water. You know, it's just like if you try to run sideways, you're not going to run.

15:32 Very far, very fast.

15:33 But if you learn the proper technique for anything, it becomes pretty easy. So unlike a lot of selection processes I've been through, buds has the time because it's six months to really if you're a good guy, that'll work with you and they'll get you.

15:48 Up to speed. And in my case it was the swimming.

15:50 So they do set you up for success, but you do have to compartmentalize those failures and not let them meet you up. And it does eat a lot of people up because it gets in your.

15:58 Head, say it really helped a lot in your life.

16:02 Yeah, it does.

16:03 I mean I still use that philosophy today. Like I said, if something happens on the way to work, I'm able to just put that in a little box, do what I got to do at work, and then go home, or or something happens at work, I don't have to bring that home and bring that nastiness into the home, and I can compartmentalize it and.

16:20 Think about it the appropriate time.

16:22 So Special Operations specifically because it's and they taught us this too, it's ninety percent mental, ten percent physical. And that's in any Special Operations unit. It's just such a vast variety of tasks you have to become an expert at, you know, any special operations. Guys is kind of a Swiss army, and I have kind of a jack of all trades. We're not just a screwdriver or.

16:46 Just a hammer.

16:47 You have to learn a bunch of stuff. So there's a level of intellect that's required. But more importantly, it's the psychological part of it. Being able to control your emotions, being able to maintain your professionalism in multiple challenging environments desert, jungle, snow.

17:04 All that's a mental game.

17:05 When you're extremely hot, extremely cold, the mission's impossible.

17:09 You have to convince you so if you can do it.

17:11 So that's why they say it's ninety percent mental, ten percent physical. And when they first told me that, I'm like, there's no way, because Buds is brutal.

17:18 I mean you're running with boats on your heads.

17:20 You got hell week, you're you know, log peet, you're doing two mile time to open ocean swims and second phase you do a five point five nautical mile swim. Took me four hours and fifty seven minutes to do for the four hours, almost five hours, four hours, fifty seven minutes, and it's just a complete there's no time requirement.

17:38 You just have to do it.

17:40 And of course it was in the wintertime and the water was freezing and you're cramping up and you see the pier down an imperial beach you have to swim around, and it's this tiny little blip on the horizon not getting closer to you. Of Course, I'm convinced that there's like five hundred great white sharks around me at all time.

17:56 So there's always this mental battle of you just have to accept it and go for it, and like we've talked about, that really gives you some tools for later in life that you don't realize at the time. So I just very blessed to buds in and of itself is really a very pure selection process, and it.

18:16 Is mainly you versus yourself versus nature. There's not a lot to the buds compound.

18:21 There's an obstacle course, there's some pull up bars, dip bars, rope climb, and so when you get there your first day and you're looking around, you're like, there's not a lot to this place, Like, I mean, really, how hard can this be? You know, they're trying to psych yourself up right the pregame Jenners, You're like, you know, whatever, I could do this, But then you realize it. It's the soft sand, it's cold water, it's the long runs, the boats on the heads. They just do this stuff forever, for hours and hours, and that's when it shifts to that mental piece, how long can I tolerate this? They might have you do something and they will say we're gonna do this until somebody quits. It could be just

19:00 walking down the beach with the boats on your head. There's no time limits. We're gonna do this until somebody quits. And eventually somebody does quit. So it's that that they want to see somebody break mentally, how that affects you?

19:14 Well, you saw somebody break, does they are like, uh, does it give you? Like, oh, jeez, he broke. I can't believe he broke or something like that.

19:20 No, it motivates you. You know, uh, day one of buds.

19:23 They line you up in a heightline from tallis to shortest, and I remember, I've always been kind of a middle of the road guy, you know.

19:29 I think at that time I was six.

19:31 Foot probably one seventy five point eight, so just kind of your average build dude. But there are some bodybuilder Towartzenegger looking dudes and you're.

19:38 Like, oh my god, look at that dude. He's going to crush it.

19:41 He's the first guy to quit because he can't manipulate his body weight on the obstacle course. He can't run, he can't swim, he's just a big powerlifter dude. Or so when you see those bigger guys quit, you're like, it kind of motivates you.

19:53 It gives you energy, Like that guy looked like he would fucking.

19:56 Take your lunch money. But he's the first one to quit. Like holy shit. Pretty soon it's a bunch.

20:01 Of little wiry guys that are left. You're like, damn, look at us.

20:04 Then we're still So anytime I heard the bell ring, it motivated.

20:08 Me in that I'm still here now. It was sad.

20:12 They also teach you don't make friends with people right away because if your friend quits, you're likely to follow. So there's a little a little bit of stand offficseness at first. Obviously you bond with your boat crew a little bit. But if someone in your boat who quits and you're real close with that guy, maybe your roommates, maybe your carpool, maybe you knew each other before, that has a huge effect. If your battle buddy quits, you're like damn, because you really relied on them and their energy.

20:38 And so it's it's tricky. You got to the further along you go, the smaller and closer the class gets, you know, second third phase. Then you're just this little little band of pirates and there's nothing they can do to you, and and you you're kind of safe. But first phase is we started with one hundred and seventy four.

20:56 We graduated thirty nine originals. Just to give you an idea of how many people do spirit, it's about eighty percent attrition rate seventy to eighty percent historically, So that's a lot of your friends.

21:08 They're gonna go away. So and that's that's fairly common.

21:10 If you look across the the specops selection attrition rate. Whether it's SAS or Green Beret or Delta, they all have very high attrition rates and it's mainly due to that that formula of ninety percent mental ten percent physical.

21:25 People just mentally can't wrap their brains around it.

21:29 So if you just kind of focus on the task and at hand, it's right in front of you, accomplish it.

21:34 Then the next one, the next.

21:35 One, you're just gonna trudge along, and before you know it, you're gonna pick your head up and you're a week away from graduation.

21:41 You know, it's like, holy shit, I can't believe that was six months.

21:45 Fascinating stuff. Again, we're talking to Clark and postaal I m p A S t A t O. You can find them a good vibes with Clark and Postyle and Ryan G. Can listen to that podcast. Clark, really amazing stuff. Can you share whether it's a story of whatever you mission or you went out that you were able to benefit from your training at BUDS. I'm sure there's plenty of them.

22:07 You stand out, Yeah, no, absolutely, you know, not every mission is successful or happy. We had a situation in the Philippines in two thousands that we were involved in really in a support role for a Seal Team one and some Green Berets.

22:23 There was a hostage situation.

22:25 The ABUF had kidnapped some Western hostages and we had basically a task force trying to sort.

22:31 It all out.

22:32 And I tell you, we never found them, and so it was really hard psychologically. I mean, it's almost it's a needle in a haystack. I don't know if you're familiar with the geography of the Philippines, but there are just tons of islands that are part of this.

22:45 Did you go to mind the now, No, we're actually based out of a Cubic not a longapup.

22:53 We're based out of a longa pot of a hotel there, and so we linked up with our Filipino counterparts and you know, we trained up a little bit. What was funny is we were a Winter Warfare Team win a warfare platoon and we were poised out of Okinawa really to respond to anything.

23:08 That might happen in North Korea, China, Russia.

23:10 So we were a Winter team, Mountain Warfare Team, Team Wons jungle Dudes, but they were just overwhelmed and so we were in the area. We were out of Oki and I think we're actually training in Thailand at the time, and they flew us in.

23:24 I remember telling my chief like, what are we doing in the jungle?

23:27 Man, Like, we don't even have the right camouflage, and he was kind of getting snippety with me, and I'm like, one last question, Chief, So we're not going to need our snow shoes, is what you're saying, Like for us to go into the jungle, it was. It was weird because I've never been exposed to.

23:43 It before and now we're just thrown into it.

23:45 And again we're with our Filipino counterparts and they're trying to spin us up on jungle warfare, and they put us through ambush courses and we died every time simulated.

23:55 Of course, you know.

23:55 And these little booby traps they set and you realize, oh my god, a crazy place and at night there are all these crazy noises and shit, and we didn't know is that or is that like a tiger about to eat me?

24:08 Or is it punky that's gonna steal my shit? It was, it was. It stands out because it's it was a failure.

24:17 You know, we never located, you know, our target, no fault to our own geographies just against you. But it was very surreal, It was very weird. I felt very vulnerable being out there in the jungle. Obviously, the bad guys it's their backyard and they know it very well. Here we are not even trained up in this type of warfare, and so it kind of showed me the reality of the battlefield.

24:41 Did you get more of an appreciation for the Vietnam veterans?

24:44 Well, I thought about that a lot. I thought about, this is a very tough environment to fight in, and I'm sure they felt the same way. They had no idea where they were at. It was very difficult to navigate. You couldn't see the stars. You can't use GPS, not that they had GPS, but our GPS was ineffective. We had to do map and compass. We had to rotate pointment out because you had to keep slashing through the you know, the vines and the canopy and all that. So, I mean, you were moving maybe a mile a day, and you were just completely I had a bad rash down my back because the moisture and the mosquitoes, and you're worried about these snakes. You know, they say, oh if you're bit by one of these, You'll last about

25:21 thirty seconds and all this shit going through your head.

25:23 I wasn't even.

25:24 Worried about the bad guys. I was just thought, Oh, the spider's going to kill me. The snake is going to kill me.

25:29 They got bears and tigers.

25:30 I'm like, what else is I mean that our predators in these jungles, these you know, the from the movie Predators, that one of them, Dude's gonna show up.

25:38 You know, That's exactly what I was thinking.

25:40 To be honest, I was overwhelmed because that was the first time, well not necessarily, I was said that the first time I was put in a real world environment. In ninety six, we did some ship takedowns in the Gulf, but that was mainly administrative. We were enforcing UN sanctions against Iraq, so it was different. I felt a lot more comfortable climbing up the last out of a ship and you know, taking down the crew.

26:03 In the jungle.

26:04 I felt very, very scared, very vulnerable, way out of my element, and so for me that it just stands out because that was very pivotal as far as UH maturing as an operator as a shooter, because you realize, damn, there's a lot of things that are out of your control, and not every mission is a success, you know, like this one on paper is a failure, even though we did our best.

26:25 I mean, we were just pounding away.

26:27 We'd hit a different island every day, patrol through it, lay up at night, patrol around the next day, and then usually we would xpill and H. Yeah, it was it was. It was a tough one to walk away from, but I'm glad. Like we talked about before, you have to kind of compartmentalize your failures. Obviously we had debriefs and and uh again it.

26:47 Really was no fault of our own. There was just too much area to cover.

26:50 All you can do is pick an island, hit it for a day or two, and then go back and reset. So it was, uh, that was my first, my first real where the rubber meets the road type moment. Obviously, things changed after nine to eleven and I ended up bouncing around the Middle East quite a bit. I got nine rotations in and out of the Middle East, and so I saw the evolution of what was going on, the evolution of the battlefield, and did different ao and things like that. So I felt very lucky to kind of ride that wave. In the years, I did some pre nine to eleven stuff and then post nine to eleven stuff, and so I saw dramatically how the mission statement changed, how the tactics changed, the weapons changed. Our

27:34 state of mind as a country and as a fighting force is very different during peacetime versus wartime. Not that peacetime really exists in special operations. I mean, you can look at the Blackhawk down incident. That's during quote unquote peacetime. Peacetime is probably the best time to be in special operations because then you're doing the sneaky peaky ninja shit right, because you're your places, you're well, you're in places you shouldn't be. There's a lot of eyes on type missions, a lot of reconnaissance type missions. One of our missions we got in that same deployment was to identify a target on this island. So we had a recon team free fall in and then pose as tourists, literally throwing

28:13 on the Hawaiian shirt shorts and flip flops and just kind of cruising around this island until they located somebody. And then we passed off that intel to the appropriate individuals and so off like that is kind of how I envisioned special operations, you know what I mean.

28:27 When a war kicks off, you kind of become a navy ranger.

28:31 Everybody armors up, everyone hops in an armored vehicle. You go smash down doors and snatch up bad guys. To be honest, everyone kind of has the same mission. You're going after high value targets. During this peacetime era, there was a lot of creativity. There was a lot of indigenous work where you went in and blended in with people, and a lot of you might you know, recon the beaches of North Korea to see if any of their fortifications have moved, or to see, hey if we have to land marines, or there are a bunch of rocks in the way. So you got to do a lot of digital imagery. And I found that stuff. It's not the cool, sexy gunfighting stuff, but that's the stuff that raises the hair in the back of your necks when

29:13 you're creeping around a place you shouldn't be and you know, if you get compromise, you're screwed, and they'll even deny that you were there.

29:19 That type of stuff.

29:20 So that was kind of the pre nine eleven vibe was really like I said, you're sneaking through someone's backyard and you hope you don't get snatched up. That to me how I envisioned Special Operations more so, and throwing on your body armor, rolling out in the vehicle.

29:35 And kicking down the door.

29:36 I mean, that's everyone kind of blended into one type of operator overseas as the war went on throughout the mid two thousand, so I saw that shift, probably because I was brought into the community pre nine eleven. I always kind of missed those days, and I don't know if they're back now with the young operators out in the field. I think a lot of it is more of that indigenous type stuff, more of the stuff like we were doing in the Philippines, trying to look for hostages, low level stuff that doesn't make the news. Hopefully the community has gotten back to that stuff, because I think that's really the bread and butter of what Special Operations is, very small surgical stuff that nobody knows about, as opposed

30:16 to you're basically doing the stuff that Marine infantry guys should be doing, smashing down doors and snatching people out.

30:23 Let The infantry guys do that stuff.

30:26 That's fascinating, fascinating take on it, And you're right, it's one of the things. People don't get to hear those stories about the seals or the Berets and all the stuff that they're doing, or extractions or anything of that nature. They just don't hear it. They see a movie or two then that we'll talk about that a little bit.

30:42 That changes perspective. I guess my other question would be you also worked as a military contractor, so I'm sure you can't say much about that, but was a different because you're not operating necessarily under the military per se. Now you're a private military contractor. Who knows who your boss is. But we won't get into that either, But how different is that for you?

31:05 Yeah, it was very different, and it was a very strange.

31:11 I got into that in two thousand and three, so that was really sort of the infancy of it. There were a couple guys already on the ground that set it up, but we were really the first wave of sled dogs to come in and it was very weird.

31:25 When I heard about it, I was very suspicious of it.

31:28 It sounded like some Soldier of Fortune type shit, like what are we doing And how much are they paying?

31:33 Like, that's weird.

31:34 They're going to pay you that much, it must be dangerous if they're gonna pay you.

31:38 You know, more than you were making as an E five. So I was very suspicious of it.

31:42 But I had some buddies that were in it and assured me that as long as you got with the right group of.

31:48 Guys, you were good to go. But it was very weird. It was very mysterious because.

31:52 The book hadn't been written, the rules haven't been written yet, a lot of these government agencies figured out that their own full time employees have rules, but as a contract employee, you are technically a civilian. You don't have to abide by any of those rules. Nothing applies to a civilian. Not that you didn't have a conviction, not the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Nothing applies to a civilian. So technically, as a civilian, you could do things that their own full time people couldn't do. So basically what would happen is you would have one full time guy it was kind of your boss, and then you contractors would do his bidding. And it was very much known to you that if you ever got snatched up. They would just

32:37 straight up deny you, like, we don't know who this guy is. He's a civilian, he has no affiliation with US government. So you knew there was a weird You knew you were a fall guy if something went bad. In fact, when I was in Afghanistan, there was a Green Beret dude who was a contractor who got snatched up supplying weapons to one of our friendlies, but the State Department hung them out to Part of our mission was to check on him in prison. I think he got like a seven year prison term out of it for gun running in Afghanistan and he had to serve it in a local prison. The State Department basically denied his existence. So part of our mission was once a month we would go with USA and make sure he

33:16 wasn't being tortured or abused or starved and things like that. And he was happy as a pig of money. He said, when I get out of here, I'm writing a book. I'm gonna be a millionaire. So I'll just sit here for seven years.

33:24 And think about it, you know.

33:26 And he was always happy to see us, to see your brother, and a really cool dude. But it showed me as a contractor, if the wrong people catch you doing something, the government will just leave you out to drive real quick.

33:38 So in the military, you.

33:41 Know you're a valuable asset, whether you're a seal of Greenberry whoever. They have spent millions of dollars to train you. You're very valuable to them. Where as a contractor, they didn't spend shit to train you. They might have put you through an evaluation course, a two three weeks selection to make sure you can still shoot in PTE you're not an old has been, but that's it. They don't have to spend the millions of dollars in years and years to train you. They're just going to get you in the field and have you do their their bidding, oftentimes things they can't do. So a lot of it's reconnaissance work, a lot of it's intel driven, a lot of it is diplomatic security, protecting important people in dangerous places.

34:19 Later on in Iraq, I got into the training side of things with the Department of Defense, so we were probably accidentally created isis looking back on it, A lot of our students our motto was training tomorrow's terrorists today, because who are these guys they're not vetted, and so a lot of these Iraqis we were teaching I you know, it was it was tough, and I think the US has a history of that.

34:46 We basically will train our future enemies.

34:49 For example, Osama bin Laden was CIA trained and funded to fight the Russians in the eighties and he ended up becoming Yeah, I mean that became out CADA, and so a similar thing happened in Iraq. Here we're teaching these guys sniper initiated assault CQB, explosive preaching. All of our tricks are now out there in their community. For example, when we taught them how to long run, we taught them sniper stuff. Sniper attacks on US troops skyrocketed throughout Baghdad almost immediately after we put on that long range course.

35:24 So what do you think these students are doing.

35:26 They're going back to their villages and they're teaching this skill set to you know, the people out there, the insurgents or the locals that are fighting against US. So I just I've seen that repeat throughout history. Why we continue to do that. Eventually ended up leaving that mission after a couple of rotations out there, because I just I didn't agree with it. I just thought, damn, we're teaching these guys pretty much our entire playbook. I mean, I can't think of anything that we haven't put them through in a course.

35:51 So it's just.

35:53 Yeah, So that that's a slippery slope with contracting.

35:58 Is you find yourself.

35:59 For example, when I was active duty and we were training the Tie Seals, I was allowed to teach them shotgun breaching, but I wasn't allowed to teach them anything through the doorway, no CQB, not how to take a room, none of that. And I'm like, these are Tie guys, Like, no one's mad at Tie dudes. Fast forward, as a contractor, I'm teaching iraqis how to blow up shit, CEQB, all of it, motivate operations, attack on, motivated, attack on principal, defensive measures, defensive driving, basically our whole playbook. But we weren't even allowed to teach the Seals more than shotgun breaching.

36:32 So active duty, there's a lot of rules and regulations in place. As a contractor, quite honestly, it's the wild West. You could do anti piracy shit off the horn of Africa, a lot of intel driven stuff. So it's It always reminds me of you open a door, you walk in a room, and across the room there's three more doors.

36:55 So you pick a door, you walk through it, there's another room with three more doors. It's just like, yeah, you just it's a twilight zone. It spends how deep you want to go with it. So for me, that was a turn off. I missed sort of the nobility of the active duty days. You know, you are held to a standard, you are monitored, you are held to an ethos or a code. If you go haywire, you could be charged with war crimes and stuff. Whereas a contractor in the early days, if you did something squirrely, they would just send you to another country. They would just get rid of you. And I thought, that's bizarre, Like there's no repercussions. For there were stories I never witnessed it with my own eyes, but there were stories

37:36 of a triple canopy guy in Iraq that was going to the airport to fly out and he said, oh, I haven't got a kill yet, pull over and he just shot up a car driving by and then went to the airport and flew out. So stuff like that, You're like, what is that dude, that's chicken shit, you know, that's that's contracting is this big gray area. When I came in, you had to either be sealed, delta SF that was it. But unfortunately they tapped that resource and so then they opened it up to this and opened it up to that, and then Blackwater flooded Iraq with thousands of dudes. So now anybody who is a security guard for half a day is running around Iraq with an AR doing weird shit. So contracting got watered down

38:20 very very quickly, and in my opinion, became a big problem.

38:23 Now. Being special operations guys.

38:26 You always knew where your guys were at, so you knew which detail to avoid, or hey, these guys have this going on over here. It's diplomatic security, or it's a training gig or intel. So we we always clicked up and had it. I was always on good teams. Nothing squirrely happened.

38:41 It was all sas dudes, Delta dudes, sealed dudes.

38:46 But you could get wrapped up on a detail that just had these shit bags doing really bizarre stuff. Like you know, basically, as a contractor, you're supposed to be a defensive mechanism.

38:58 You're not supposed to be offensive. It's the active duty guys.

39:01 What we're doing in theory is freeing up all their shit so they can go do big boy stuff so that they don't have to train locals. They don't have to provide security for diplomats or generals or admirals.

39:13 We're doing all of that stuff. We're not out there looking for a fight.

39:17 Oftentimes we got ambushed and we would we call it the death blossom. We would give them the hornet's nest and get off the X. We're not there to fight. That's the difference.

39:26 Now.

39:26 Sometimes if your vehicle's disabled, you might have to dismount, take down a building, wait for big army to roll in and save your butt. But the mission statement's very different, and some contractors didn't get that, Like, bro, you're not an offense. It's not your job to light this car up for no reason or you know it just there's some gray area with contracting, and so eventually that's why I left. In addition, I realized I had been away from home for eleven years and my toddlers were now teenagers.

39:54 That was an.

39:54 Epiphany moment because you get tunnel visions.

39:58 And like they taught us at Budds, you're so folks.

40:00 Just on the task in hand, you can oftentimes forget about things back home because you're halfway around the world. This is before video chats and all that stuff. So it was letters. Eventually, I think there was a couple Skype was coming online and what's another one I used to use. But anyway, communication was very limited, so your family wasn't necessarily on your mind all the time. It was very easy to get wrapped up in the culture of the men, the mission, all that type of crap.

40:28 So for me, I saw contracting slipping and I realized, holy shit, my kids are teenagers.

40:35 You know this this mess is now someone else's problem. I got to get back home.

40:39 My conundrum was what am I going to do when I get back to the States. You know, I've been running a gun and for you know, my first deployment was ninety six. Here I am seven in Iraq, not knowing any other way of life, and it's a very tough transition for people.

40:57 Amazing, I mean, you gave me so much insight into all the different worlds, and I'm sure everybody out there has learned so much I know, we got about about ten minutes left. Got to bring it back, Clark, got to bring it back. We learned so much from you. I'm trying to see which questions I want to start wrapping up this interview with. I guess one would be the Phoenix Police Department. I've talked to special forces who've worked in police as a police officer, and thank you again for both services as well, military and law enforcement.

41:28 Thank you.

41:29 We're definitely indebted to you for that. How different is it, all of a sudden games change? You can't do things like you can't. You can't just draw your weapon and fire at certain individuals anymore, even though it may be a threat to you. How different was that?

41:45 It was an eye opener. I had some buddies that were contracting that were.

41:50 Cops, some swat dudes, one of them from Chicago, and so he recommended, Hey, if you're going to be a cop, go to a big city because it's busy and they want kind of crazier dudes. Not some small town in Nebraska. They don't need an ex seal there. They need you in you know, Chicago, Detroit, PI, Phoenix. My brother was living there. I applied for them to answer your question.

42:10 The academy, to me, was amazing because I realized how smart cops have to be in a life and death situation. Okay, you're a spec ops guy overseas. You perceive a threat, you neutralize it, no questions ask no one gives a shit. For example, in Iraq, if we got in a gunfight, we would type up what we call a foxtrot report.

42:29 It was basically three sentences. We email it to our team leader just in case state department or the Prime Minister wanted to inquire what happened.

42:36 Otherwise that was it.

42:38 Now, as a cop, if you shoot somebody, it's way more than a three sentence email to your boss, which I did get an officer involved shooting. We can talk about that the other time. But in the academy, I realized, holy shit, when a cop is faced with a threat, they have to use that use of force continuum and they have to be very accurate, very quickly with it.

43:01 Am I using verbal skills to de escalate? Do I gotta go hands on? Do I have to go to the tool belt? And ultimately do I have to use my firearm? And if I present my firearm, I better be prepared to use it. So our academy, it was a multi jurisdictional academy called the Leah, and they were very good at their scenarios and the main firearms and tactical guy really he liked me.

43:23 He knew my background, and he.

43:25 Liked to see how I reacted to these scenarios. And one thing he said early on was Clark, you can't solve every scenario with your handgun.

43:32 Dude.

43:33 All right. There was some rewiring, for sure, but they did a great job at doing that, and I think it was interesting for them to watch. I think I was the first person of a special operations background that had been through the academy while that staff.

43:49 Was in charge.

43:49 I'm sure there's been other guys that had gone through, but while that cadre was in charge. So they were very interesting to see how I would react to these tactical scenarios. And I really had to learn to the dial it back and rewire it. So they did a good job. By the time I got to the street, I felt very comfortable with what's my mission statement as a cop. Obviously it's not as an operator or even a protection specialist contracting, which you're still allowed to be very violent, very fast. If someone's trying to attack the first lady, yes you're allowed to fuck.

44:19 Them up very violently.

44:21 As a cop, you see two people fistfighting in a parking lot, and even if they come at you throwing punches, that doesn't mean you can shoot them. You have to really adjust your response. And so I credit that.

44:33 To really good training at the academy.

44:35 I think it was about four months long, and so they did a real good job. But I also liked that I still had a little bag of seal tricks in my back pocket that if shit did get violent, I could, you know, break glass in time of war. And my squad mates appreciated that. And I also shared a lot of knowledge with my squad mates. If we had a double squad day, I would tell my sergeant, Hey, there's an abandoned house.

44:57 Let's do some TQB runs, let's do some room clearing.

45:00 And so our squad was able to do additional training and get more comfortable with each other and movement and stuff. And so I think my background benefited my situation with Phoenix for sure.

45:12 Absolutely amazing stuff on that one. Again, folks, Good Vibes dot com. So we can find more information good Vibes dudes dot com. Good Vibes dudes dot com. You can find more information about Clark. I guess in our last few minutes. I didn't want to miss this part either. There's been I guess more recently. I think maybe in the last decade, and I haven't actually even looked because I'm not a huge movie guy anymore. But there's been some Navy Seal movies out there. I think I think they're classifying the Navy Seal movies. Whether or not they are, I don't know. But Zero Dark thirty, I think thirteen hours MM. Can't look more for the older ones, I can't remember.

45:54 My own Survivor Active Valid was one under Yeah. Yeah, yes, Steven Sagal Casey Rye Beckett.

46:03 That's about It's all this thing is, You're gonna get.

46:06 Right, Yeah, that's what I was hoping.

46:12 What's your take on those type of movies. Do you think it hurts or helps or it's just so far fetch it doesn't even matter.

46:19 Yeah, I don't think it does.

46:21 I mean, I remember seeing the Charlie Sheen movie Navy Seals, and even as a kid, I'm like, I just enjoyed it for the entertainment value.

46:29 The thing that I wish they would capture.

46:31 And I will admit I've never seen the TV series Seal Team, which my mom watches. That a lot of people love it, and I think they try to hit it on more of a personal note, and I think it's a it's a good way to finish our conversation. Is any Seal movie that I've seen. They make the Seal seem too militant, too marine corpus, if you will.

46:51 What I learned in special operations across the board and even in naval special warfare, the personalities of these due it's the funniest people I've ever met in my life. Like just almost like a violent Robin Williams. I mean, these people are hilarious. The personalities, even the way we talk with each other. There's really no difference between a Seal officer and a Sealing listed guy. If we're doing our thing, it's first name basis, like, it's very We're the most non military military unit out there. It's very casual.

47:26 Yeah yeah, no, it's like hey dude, what's up?

47:29 Bro?

47:29 Yeah dude, you know, it's just it's they don't capture that in the movies, they make.

47:33 It seem too militant, too.

47:35 Yes sir, no, sir, hey go over there and do this, and bark park Park Park. That's not how the community is. It's it's a very laid back community. And other special operations are very similar, maybe not quite as laid back as they called my team a Seal Team five.

47:50 They call it Surf Team five because we were so laid back and we would surfer pt.

47:55 I wish the movies would capture that camaraderie, that bonding. They've tried to couple times. But we are very very human. A lot of seals specifically, and Special operations in general, very intelligent. They seem to portray us as kind of the Schwarzenegger dumb, muscle bound, you know, kill them all.

48:17 Type people, very very capable.

48:22 In the Teddy Bear world, A lot of my buddies, for example, when I was going through my first divorce, would kick in my door with bags of groceries and say, hey, I know you're hurting, so I picked up some groceries for you. Like there's really a hoggy Bear side to the community. We love each other. We always said I know more about you than your mother does because you spend so much time training together, You help each other through divorces, you help each other through all kinds of scenarios on and off the battlefield. It's really this bond that I wish they would capture. I don't know if you it's like capturing lightning in a bottle. I don't know if you can do it. But I have not seen that in a movie. All the tactics and the gunfights,

48:59 and that's just it's really the behind the scenes, how we take care of each other through the ups and downs, the sense of humor, the pranks, the hazings. I've caught little snippets of it in these different movies, but it's just I just felt like I was at a stand up comedy show the whole time. These guys are amazing, intelligent, funny people, and so I wish Hollywood would would get that right.

49:24 And the only thing I've ever seen close to that would be maybe Apocalypse Now had a little bit, but you know, that was kind of carried off a little too far too But yeah, yeah, Jarhead did okay with some of that.

49:36 I saw the first one. I think they did pretty good.

49:38 Yeah, And I did like Blackhawk down. The one thing they got well was they got the fog of battle. Remember when the dudes were lost, Hey are the Humpies coming to us? And we're supposed to go to the Humpies and they're kind of running around lost in a little village looking for the motorcade and yeah, and how loud the gun was and the dude couldn't hear, Like all that stuff in the eighties movies, everything had like little silencers and suppressors and everything. It's like pre picture perfect coming out of the repel from the ceiling and kill everybody, you know, and then you know, for real, you're just running around lost, tripping on ship, you lost this and that and you know. So I sometimes they

50:15 get certain aspects of it correctly. But again, if they can capture the personality of Special Operations guys, I think they would have a hit movie on themselves, because I.

50:25 Think people want to know who are we really? You know, there's these myths and urban legends about who we are.

50:32 But I think if they saw that we're just kind of goofy, normal people, like it's we're just.

50:37 That's our goal here, hopefully they'll get the different side of your personalities one.

50:42 Of the Goofy your seals, So I'm a good ambassador for the Goofy to the team.

50:46 So hopefully that comes through in the interview to your listeners.

50:51 I guess it's a little bit of a throwback to mash and Hogan's heroes.

50:54 Right there, you go.

50:55 Yeah, or maybe a little poly Shore in the army now if you ever.

51:02 Oh man, that's intense. Thank you so much again, Clark for doing this. We'd so appreciate it very much.

51:07 Yeah, no, absolutely, I had a blast, Thank you very much, so much fun.

51:11 Clark and Pastado, I don't know what they got that came by that. I am p A S t A t Oh. You can find them at good Vibes dudes dot com. He really does have good vibes. I have Good Vibes podcast with Clark and Pistata and Ryan g Uh do you want to send anybody anywhere else? Clark's is that good?

51:28 Uh? Yeah, that's good.

51:29 I mean, if you guys want to DM me, my personal Instagram account is Clark Underscore m Pistado. A lot of younger guys will will hit me up with questions about, you know, how to prepare for this or that or Hey, I'm married with a wife and kids. Should I be a sealer green Beret? How does it affect family and all that stuff? And so, if you want to send me a personal message my personal Instagram account, I reply to every DM I get and I'm happy to try to pay it forward if I can answer your questions.

51:56 If not, I can hear you in the right direction, So feel free to hit me up anytime.

52:01 Cool against Clark, Underscore, Impastado, and I am P A S T A t O. Thank you so much again, Clark, Thank you everyone for joining us. Make sure to share a subscribe, hit that I like button and leave a comment if you can. Thanks a lot, everybody,