#230 Keith Stansell - Operation Jacque & Surviving FARC Captivity

The Conjuring Last Rites.

On September 5th.

The Conjuring Last Rites.

Only in Theater, September 5th.

Read it R.

Hey, it's me, shakable, breakable, unmistakable, clapjack.

But don't break me, break free in Borderlands 4, the newest, fastest looter shooter you can play with friends.

Everything's better with friends.

And I went totally no.

Pre-order Borderlands 4 now.

Rated mature.

Keith Stansel, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

I'm very humbled to be here.

Man, I've been looking forward to this.

I've been really looking forward to this.

So thank you for coming.

It's an honor to be able to share your story on what happened down at Columbia in captivity.

So I appreciate you being here.

I appreciate you and what you do for the community.

And that's why I'm here.

Not to see my face on a show anywhere or promote anything.

It's what you do for the community.

And I told you,

some of my friends, and we brought you a couple little trinkets, right, that said, hey, and one of the text messages from a ranger to you, just say thanks for what you do.

Just don't stop.

And so, you know, when I got the invite, any effort to support this, I'm all about it.

That means a lot.

Well deserved, sir.

That means a hell of a lot.

So everybody starts off with an introduction here.

You ready?

Yes, sir.

Keith Stancil.

Former United States Marine and Northrop Grumman contractor who flew anti-drug surveillance missions in Columbia as part of Plan Columbia to intercept FART communications and support counter-narcotic efforts.

Survivor Survivor of one of the longest hostage ordeals in modern history, enduring 1,967 days of captivity in the Colombian jungle after your plane crashed in FARC-controlled territory.

Co-author of the book, Out of Captivity, Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle.

Two-time air crash survivor, received the Secretary of Defense Medal of Defense of Freedom in 2009.

Dedicated husband to Rebecca, father to your daughter Lauren, son Kyle, and twin sons Keith Jr.

and Nick, who were born after your capture and whom you first held upon your return home.

And most importantly, you're a Christian.

Thank you, sir.

So, a couple of things to knock out here.

Actually, real quick.

So, you had twins.

Yes.

How'd you decide which ones?

You know what?

I didn't.

Their mother named them.

while I was in captivity.

They were born while I was in captivity.

I didn't see them until they were five years old when i got rescued

so

their mother being latin

the joke was

i just saw what are they going to be named

then when i saw nicholas and keith and it wasn't something you know some crazy wancho or something you know like just it's a fun you know it's a funny deal and when i was in captivity we heard on the radio what their names were a colombian major it was a buddy of mine that spent 10 years in captivity

He goes, he got lucky.

She named him Keith Nick.

So, yeah.

Damn.

Well, we'll get into more of that.

We'll definitely get into more of that.

So, a couple of things to knock out real quick.

I've got a Patreon account.

It's a community that we've built since the beginning.

They're the reason that I get to be here with you today.

And so, one of the things that I offer them is they get the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question.

This is a good one.

It's from Jesse Martin.

After years of freedom and time to heal emotionally and physically, if you could go back in time to any specific moment when you were in captivity to share a message with yourself, what moment would you go back to and what would your message be?

Wow, that's a really good question.

It is a good question.

What would my message to myself be?

If I knew that I was getting the message from the future,

this too will pass.

That would have been it.

I learned one thing in captivity.

We're bred, whether we like it or not, as human beings, to survive.

That's the way we were created.

We don't have a choice.

I think the survival instinct is stronger in some than others, but we don't have a choice.

So one thing that the three of us always said to each other, my

co-page sit there, Mark and Tom, that were captured with me, was, we're going home one day.

And I used to to tell Mark,

I'd rather die on a tarmac, you know, after a rescue in the United States than die here in this jungle.

I just wanted to get back home one day.

Obviously, you want to see your family, and that's what really gives you the strength to keep going, those ties and all.

But for me, I wasn't dying on foreign soil.

That was my biggest fear.

Damn, it's a good answer.

It's a damn good answer.

And then to continue on, a lot lighter here.

Everybody gets gets a gift.

Uh-oh.

Oh, wow.

Those are

the Vigilance League gummy bears, legal in all 50 states.

She's just candy.

Awesome.

She's candy.

At least they're legal right now.

So they're not from Colorado.

They're from Michigan.

Fantastic.

No, thank you very much.

Thank you.

But Keith, so

I want to do a life story on you.

I mean, obviously, we're really going to focus in on Columbia and captivity and what you were doing down there, how you got captured, all that stuff.

But I always like to start with, where did you grow up?

I grew up in a place called Green Meadows, Florida, US 27 and Griffin Road in Broward County, right next to the Everglades.

My father was a director of a vocational education center.

My mother was a guidance counselor at school.

And Green Meadows was

one of those first developments where people had horses.

So you had like an acre and a half or two and a half acres and a middle-class ranch home.

And my father made a good living.

My mom, but we were kind of upper-middle-class.

We weren't well-to-do, but

spent a lot of time.

When I say traveling,

we had a camper.

So my parents would always take a couple trips to camp somewhere, summer, excuse me, summertime, do those things.

So really up until I was 14,

it was Mayberry for me.

I was a nerd, big buck teeth.

I wasn't very athletic, got picked on a lot, but I had good friends,

but liked to fish and camp out around my house all the time.

And it was just a great place to live.

And I remember my mother had a dinner bell in front of the house.

It was an old train station bell that my dad had put on a four by four post.

Back then, obviously, nobody had social media anymore stuck inside.

You know, there was three channels on the TV.

You get home from school and you pop smoke and you're outside.

So the rule was, we don't care where you're at, but you better be able to hear that bell.

Because my mom would cook dinner and she'd go outside and ring the door, ring the bell, right?

And ding, ding, we could tune in and we'd, you know, haul ass back to the house.

So it was fantastic.

And the only thing that sucked is my friends on the weekend.

If we're out somewhere, they couldn't find me, they'd ring the damn bell.

You couldn't haul by like something, you know?

And so I,

yeah, I have really fond memories.

Everybody in their life has tragedies, right?

So mine, the earliest on was at 14.

My mother came down with lung cancer and she was gone in six weeks.

In six weeks?

Six weeks, yeah, in six weeks.

So that started

a period of instability in my life.

Really, I was very angry, hit the world, and I had just started school at a military academy in Melbourne, Florida called Florida Air Academy.

I was going to go into their flight school program there with Embry-Riddle, and my plan was to go into the military as a pilot.

But after her passing,

I ended up in five high schools in four years.

And it was a lot of, you know,

being unstable.

My father was an old school depression era kid.

He wasn't Mr.

Lovey Dove, you, hey, I love you, yada, yada, just a serious guy, good provider.

But all of a sudden he had two sons, right?

That wasn't really his group.

You know, he was the provider and he taught us many things, but my mom was the caretaker of everything.

So I moved around to a couple of different high schools with family members.

And, you know, it really hurt my feelings leaving Florida Air Academy because I already had this plan mapped out.

And

it changed everything.

For my father, too.

I remember my father,

he picks me up one day from school.

And my school principal had worked for my father.

My dad hired him.

And this was a few months after my mom had died.

And my father was drunk.

And my father was a normal cocktail in the afternoon, but I'd never seen him get in a car and drive drunk.

And I remember we're listening to George Jones, and he's in the seat, and he's pointing at the radio, and she's gone, she's gone.

I was so brokenhearted for my father.

It's the first time I'd ever seen him cry, the first time I'd ever seen him weep, you know?

And,

you know, we just drove home and I remember he just went in, sat down on his recliner, and went to sleep.

But I'd never seen any behavior, nor did I see it again but it just I was worried I was worried he had a few drinks and picked me up which he would never do and he you could just see he was just he was destroyed you know and

it uh it marked me for a long time and we had our rough times too.

You know, you're a teenage boy, you're coming into puberty, you're gonna,

I was never good with authority.

The older I got, that didn't get any better.

But that's the first tragic time in my life is a memory that I think would shape shape me the way I look at things forever.

And so I would say from then on until maybe,

hell, in my 20s, even though I was in the military, I was bitter from that inside.

I didn't realize it until actually, really didn't realize how much it affected me until captivity.

But my mom was the stabilizer in the family, right?

And it put me on an unstable path.

Now, I wasn't.

robbing banks or, you know, in police cars or anything.

I was just an angry kid.

And

I remember

my dad's upset with me because I had been taken out of school and put in a place called Nova University, an adult college.

I academically was very gifted.

But I said, I just don't want to go to class or do anything anymore.

And I think my salvation,

and I hope he's still alive.

One day I'm a senior at school, American Senior High School in Miami, Florida, and Sergeant Armando Yearwood walks into our classroom as a recruiter

and

he started giving us the Marine Corps pitch.

And I asked him, what are they going to do for me?

He said, we're not doing shit for you.

What are you going to do for me?

You know, very straightforward guy.

I was like, delayed enlistment right there.

We've got to go talk to my dad.

I was 17.

I signed a year delayed enlistment until I graduated high school.

And that was one of the best decisions I made in my life.

And I, by far, was no star Marine.

Imagine you go in the Marine Corps and you don't like authority.

It's just like, you know, maybe not so well thought out.

But the Marine Corps set me on a different path.

And

like someone who works for you, who went in the Marine Corps at 17 years old and then became an officer, enlisted guy first, I went in Paris Island at 17.

And my drill instructors gave me a really nice birthday gift at 18 at Parris Island, which was about an hour workout on the quarter deck till I puked.

But

even though I was not some star

Marine, I was good at my job in the Marine Corps,

it turned me to a path

that would really

help me in the long run and guide me.

And everything I have today,

surviving captivity, where I ended up, maybe working outside of my pay grade, is because I went to Paris Island at 17 years old.

I got the Marine Corps to thank for everything on that.

What did you do in the Marine Corps?

So I was an avionics guy, aircraft, electrician, aircraft, avionics.

You know, know, in the Marine Corps, when we went there, you do ICT infantry combat training no matter what you do, if you're in the wing or not.

So

went through there, then I went to Millington, Tennessee, to my aviation basic course,

and started off in Cherry Point, North Carolina.

And I was working on aircraft there.

Then I got sent into the OB-10 Bronco World.

was out in Oceanside, California for a few months before I finally got stationed at Marine Corps Air Station New River.

So I was at VM01 Marine Observation Squadron 1.

And the OB-10, for the people that don't know, is just a twin-engine Ford air control bird.

The rear seater is usually a lieutenant out of the grunts, you know, an infantry officer in the front seater, not even a pilot, and the front seat is a naval aviator up front.

And that mission went away, but

that mission of working and the association with OB-10 is what would lead me to the counter-drug operations in Columbia years later.

So

I got out after four years

and a little bitter again because I was going to re-enlist.

And we had a thing called MISEP, Marine Commissioning Enlisted Program.

Basically, you apply to MISEP if you can get, you know, approved, you'll get tuition, you go to school, you can get your commission, and then you

will owe them six years of your life afterwards.

That was my plan.

But then we had legislation that came down, grand Rubman.

There was no promotion, no bonus, no anything.

And I was like, well, why am I staying here?

Right?

It wasn't the Marine Corps' fault.

It was, you know, D.C.

legislation at the time.

But one thing that marked me was one day I was in the hangar and I was just coming in from the flight line.

And there's this lieutenant standing there that had gone to Florida Air Academy with me.

And he sees me, and his call sign was Bones, but that was his nickname in school, Tall and Thin.

He he said uh he goes stanza what are you doing i said hey sir he goes what's up with this sir i just have my t-shirt on

i go what are you doing he was he was there he was uh i think he was flying um

you flying harriers

and he goes you flying broncos i'm like no bones i'm not

i'm a lance corporal This is about getting busted back to PFC if I don't get my shit squared away.

But it really stung me that that time of instability after my mom's death what I had not taken advantage of damn yeah I wasn't embarrassed at all nothing like that

so when I got out of the Marine Corps I ended up going into the Georgia National Guard full-time for nine years

and

that was an experience the guard is a an adventure to say the least

But learned a lot there

about a lot of stuff in the sense that not necessarily military, but there's that transition in the guard.

It's all, you know, very nepotistic.

The full-time guard is an interesting, interesting

deal.

It is, you know, in the military, we get transferred out, right?

Every two, three years, somewhere active duty, you're moving, you know, a different change of people, change of command.

Well, at a guard facility there,

it's

nobody ever leaves.

You know, you're there full-time.

Yeah.

So,

and I was in a transition in the Guard time when it went from no real mission to all of a sudden active duty Army started tasking you with missions.

And so

you got

your summer camp every year.

You bring in the part-timers and go out in the field and do all that stuff.

But I'll never forget, I'm in the Guard just a few months.

We go to Fort Stewart, get all the part-time people in there, you know, and we got two weeks out in the field and everything.

And

my first sergeant said, hey, Stanzel, do me a favor.

he said take this jeep here and remember the old jeeps with little flat trailers little small trailers yeah he said go to the px and load this fucker with beer

i'm like okay

so

it was uh

a bunch of rednecks flying ch-54 sky crane helicopters and doing a damn good job of it now right moving stuff for the army but they're at fort stewart and then uh there's a big tent and we're watching movies and drinking beer and all the movies were not exactly pg rated in the woods So, some of my buddies in the Marine Corps are like, What's the guard like?

I said, It's a little bit different.

It's a little bit different.

But that ended shortly because we ended up getting Chinooks, getting new aircraft.

And then the standards, I would say, picked up.

And there was a change from kind of the old guard to the new guard, a much higher level of professionalism and people coming off active duty, you know, joining that were, you know, kind of tier one folks.

So it was a totally different guard, and I got to see the transition, but interesting.

Interesting.

Did you, did you, I mean, in your days in the military, did you ever, and

being in captivity, did you ever, did you ever go to sear training by chance?

So we had

the guard had this thing I call seer late.

You know, the army would send trainers around and give you your training, but nothing like going to Brad and Bragg and completing the course.

You know,

I'd get a course later on and copy.

Yeah.

And it was, you know,

it was interesting to me that when I started working downrange,

all this time in uniform, training, all the stuff that we did, and I was an aviation guy, right?

But

I would never see any hard stuff or hear gunshots until I was a civilian on the dark side.

I always laughed at that, you know.

And

what got me from the guards of the State Department was when I was in the Marine Corps, there was a program called Nimbus.

And it was a drug interdiction mission run out of Homestead Air Force Base when it was still Homestead Air Force Base.

And they used our OB-10s to support U.S.

customs and DEA on takedowns.

So I got sent down there.

It was just a small debt to support stuff.

And

that's really where we...

My counter-narcotics connection started.

And the customs guys had a couple jets down there.

They had no FLIR operator.

So

kind of undercover darkness, I'm flying doing the FLIR with them and then our OB-10s are down there.

And, you know, we were doing some cool stuff.

And that later would later on lead me to getting recruited by the State Department on an OB-10 spray program.

You got recruited.

Yeah, I had a friend of mine in the State Department.

They were looking for OB-10 Bronco guys.

There's not many of us, right?

And so they were at a Patrick Air Force Base and they ran the spray program in Columbia.

And then there was another interdiction program going on.

And so he said, hey, you're an OB-10 guy.

You want a rear seat for us?

And I was brought on to be in a really small group of about 15 people to do interdiction and, you know, just get in at night and chase guys.

And, you know, it was going to be a blast.

So I signed the paperwork and came on, but in the middle, that got shut down.

And so my boss from the State Department calls me and it was Dying Corps with that contract.

And he said, hey, Keith,

how about you go to columbia and rear seat ob 10s in columbia for me and i was like okay

you know

i'll do it so then i wind up downrange in columbia and we're spraying mb ob i'm sorry

spraying coca

with ob 10s that were you know had spray booms on them and tanks inside and i was running the sar bird in the back which was basically an OV-10 that had no spray equipment on it, but still had the FLIR system.

So with the spray package, i'd be behind and overhead with with my pilot then you'd have a sar package with a couple super hueys and some ex-folks like you that were riding in case somebody went down you had to you know take the penetrator down and get them out of the jungle then our spray package it'd be anywhere from three to six birds and we'd spray coca

sprayed them with what roundup

you're just killing basically roundup cocaine yeah and when i first started it was as far as you could see no shit it was as far as you could see yeah once you got over the rocks you know down in the andesound south it was just coca everywhere and what they did to counter that was they broke up the big coca fields into small coca fields you know the big fields we just come across for the three four five six birds and just make a long spray run it was a lot easier but uh

that again politics you know we'd be spraying and doing a good job and we knew our job that we were doing was too good

shut down shut the program down something happened we'd have to stop spraying because it was having too much effect.

So, too much effect on what?

On the coca,

you're stepping on toes there, man.

I mean, that's the thing.

You know, you think everybody up in the government there and La Casa Daniño, you know, that's the White House.

Do you think that that's not the influenced by the coca trade and the money that's there?

And then the politics.

So,

one of the spray pilots that I knew used to say, is it yucca yucca in a coca field or is it coca in a yucca field?

So they would always put on the news, this poor Campesino, his yucca was sprayed.

That's bullshit.

The Campesino was paid by the gorilla to go plant some yucca plants in the coca field and pretend like that was his food source and it wasn't.

Wow.

And it wasn't.

So at every

circle and turn,

we were being stopped from being effective but i flew with a great group of guys everybody from the maintenance people the pilots you know were just fantastic what was special about the ob-10

um

it was a ford air control bird

so it was heavily armored reasonably heavily armored super maneuverable super maneuverable and just a really capable aircraft and

i think because it was free also would the State Department be able to hand that off down there and run it but it was very effective at the mission I mean you want to fly a single engine crop duster with almost no armor spraying something or do you want a high performance twin engine turboprop that's got armor on it right

what's the survivability yeah that was the deal and you know we actually um

we actually sprayed coke on mbgs

Didn't work very well because the OV-10 at the time was not MVG compatible.

So you're going across at night across a coca field, you just see streaks of light, just attracted small arms fire.

But did you guys take a lot of fire?

Yeah.

But when I say take a lot of fire,

mostly small arms, AK, stuff like that.

You know, there's always a bullet hole here or there, whatever.

You know, a couple aircraft we lost, but they weren't OB-10s.

You know, I see the Air Force now with this air tractor, single-engine air tractor.

They've got it armored up and it's like going to be a close air support.

And I'm like, man, you're dead in that thing.

I don't know who wanted to waste that money, but that thing in a,

it better be total air superiority because anybody in a contested environment, that aircraft is not survival.

I don't believe it is.

I've seen them down with an AK-47.

Now it didn't have all this armor, but it's slow and it's got one, you know, it's got one motor on it.

And one of my Air Force buddies and I, who retired, were talking about that the other day.

He's a retired F-15 pilot.

And he's like, I can't, I wouldn't fly that thing in a contested environment anywhere.

But OV-100 was a great bird.

I really enjoyed it.

A lot of fun.

It's a lot of fun to be able to rear seat that aircraft.

And it was a really good experience.

What was the Optempo like down there?

Depend upon the spraying.

If we were, it would go through cycles.

And so if we were on kind of a hard new spray time, you know, it's every day, you know, it's a rotation down there, two to three weeks on, 10 days off.

You're spraying every single day.

Every single day.

And, but then politics would shut it down or speed it up.

And, you know,

we did other things too.

I got a mission one time.

It was kind of interesting to support some Colombians.

It was a lot of fun.

And we went out, basically we're using our systems to locate, you know, targets for them, for them at a time, just to record, not to actually attack at that second.

So you got to see some other stuff, right?

But we had some aircraft down there that were just doing mapping.

We'd map coca fields.

Everything would be geolocated, then we'd come back, and that would help us direct the spray on them.

Interesting.

So interesting program.

I think my experience with the drug enforcement down there,

just take the gloves off.

Take the gloves off and if we're going to fight it, let's fight it.

But you can't fight with one hand tied behind your back.

Sounds like every war I've been involved in.

Yeah.

Every single one of them.

Every one.

And, you know, half of our pilots weren't military pilots.

I remember I used to be MBG qualified to repair goggles and stuff, right?

So I'm in the hangar at Patrick Air Force Base in the State Department, and my

boss comes down.

He's like, hey, Keith, he goes, what, you're going to, you want to train some pilots tonight?

I figure I was just going to give an assimilation class, right?

Just hands-on.

And so I knew they were crop dusters, they were these guys were from Louisiana.

So the sun's going down, I go upstairs in the hangar, they're there, and I'm like, Hey, would you fly in the military?

Like, military, we've never been in the military

right, right?

So, the three guys that were there were fantastic pilots.

Now, I'm not knocking,

but I thought I'd go upstairs and you know, you flew an A-10, or you know, I thought that was what was there, and it wasn't.

And

so, we're out there

outside of Patrick at night practicing.

They were low level on MBGs, kind of do-it-yourself thing.

I was like, damn, this has never happened on active duty.

But the guys were really good.

But I used to mess with one of the lead pilots there.

He'd say, what can a military pilot do at 100, 120 feet that I can't do?

And I said, well, you're running 90 knots.

He's running 400.

That's what he could do.

You know, so there was always a friendly back and forth.

And we brought in some, you know, some experienced ex-military guys, fixed-wing guys.

And

it all worked out.

It worked out.

It was a group of Americans down there that, you know, although they were contracting, and you saw this in your life after, you know, you got out, they still want to do the job.

Yep.

Everybody there wanted to do the job.

I didn't fly with a pilot or work with anybody there that didn't want to do the job.

Man, that sounds like such a cool mission.

I did not realize this was a State Department mission.

Yeah.

I thought this was an agency mission.

No.

State Department.

It was run out of Patrick.

No shit.

Where were you guys staged out of?

LaRondia was one of our San Jose and LaRondi were two of our bases that we were staged out of.

And, you know, we had some air tractors there and OB-10s and a mix of mechs from all different services and pilots and people that do a job and do a good job.

You know, it was...

All patriots, right?

And, you know, Dying Corps used to get a bad rap about, yeah, you got a bunch bunch of ex-enlisted beer drinking guys down there partying all over Latin America and doing a counterdrug mission.

Well, yeah, that's what you attract.

Yep.

You're not looking for choir boys because you're not getting them.

I've had this conversation so many times.

But those same guys

will do a kick-ass job, and they did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Were you guys, was it specifically Columbia?

Were you going into Peru?

No, no, there was Columbia.

When I was on that, that was all.

We never left, we never left Columbia.

That That would not start until I got on with Salcom reconnaissance systems.

Then it was a different mission.

Then it was a different mission.

But I mean,

you know, even sometimes I know you must have been in places just like, man, this sucks.

But if you think about it now, there were some lessons there you were learning, didn't realize, you know?

And I've got some great memories of some really good people there.

I've got some really sad memories of one of our guys getting killed by accident with a minigun on his own, by his own best friend there on the base, which was really, really sad.

You know, we had a, we had a,

he wasn't an indigen.

He was, I can't remember if he was from Ecuador.

I think he was Ecuadorian.

He was one of our Huey mechanics, great guy.

And one of his buddies was a retired Marine E7, and they were armorers.

or the one E7 was an armor.

And so at San Jose, we had a little pad, and we had the aircraft there.

And

you know, in that minigun, I don't care what it is, if you just turn those barrels, if there's something in there that's going off, right?

So his best, they were best buds.

So the Ecuadorian was standing right in front of the minigun.

And his buddy just turned.

We all heard boom,

ran outside, and bullet went in under his right armpit.

As I remember, he came out here, just dropped dead like a stone.

You know, and it was

sad, really sad, because

it was an accident and it would become a whole legal thing afterwards.

But two really close friends

and the American that was a former Marine there,

he was stuck on base for months until they cleared it.

It wasn't on purpose, right?

You know, I felt so terrible for him, you know, because he was just crushed.

I mean, crushed.

So, you know, it was a reminder, this isn't a joke, you know, these SAR birds and, you know, they get it on sometimes there'd be somebody shooting at them and just giving the guys and the SAR aircraft a chance to get some rust off the mini guns but uh yeah it was just uh it's just a sad sad event yeah you know

I mean for base security we had a

seen old yellow tugs on a flight line you've seen them a million times right and we had to come up with a base security plan

So we got a portable power generator that we used to used to

start aircraft with, hooked it to the tug, then got a seat off of a bass boat and welded a mini-gun mount on it.

So we had power for the mini-gun and put ammo racks on the side.

And when we passed the base security plan for that, did you guys

was there a lot of engagements?

No, not really.

No, any?

When I was saying engagements,

it would usually be

the gunships, if there was reported fire on a pass, they would dive down to engage, but who could you see?

One or two gorillas in the side of a jungle in the coca field?

So full-on, head-to-head combat?

No, no.

They didn't want that.

Those guys and those helicopters were looking for that.

You know, they took it very serious to protect the package.

So you'd come back, you'd even know you got hit sometimes.

You know, there'd be one or two or three holes in the aircraft.

But there was no full-up, you know, Wild West gunfights with that let's go into

I want you to educate the audience on who the FARC is

okay

Fuerces Armadas Revolucionados de Colombia

Fuercas is forces armed revolutionary forces of Colombia so the FARC manifested itself in 1964 same year I was born

and led by a guy at Campesino called Tito Fio which is fixed bullet or fixed shot.

And in the late 50s and early 60s, when the whole communist plague was taking over Latin America,

they were basically an out

derivative of that.

And you have to think about Colombia as two different countries at that time.

You've got Bogota at 8,800 feet where the wealthy and the political class lived.

Then you had the rest of the country.

country at sea level.

No real infrastructure in the country to get and drive drive a truck here or there, mostly

I'm painting 1964, right?

So you had a basically a campesino kind of working class, as they called it, you know, maybe the proletariat want to pronounce it that way, against the elite class that had the money, right?

But then they also owned all the big ranches and property in the countryside.

So The fart came about as a way to maybe,

or I would give them legitimacy there, to fight the political class and the elites for some fairness in the country.

Definitely a class system, right?

No doubt about it.

But over the years, what infiltrated the FARC was the drug trade.

So they became, I would say, I hate to use the word victims, but their

revolution, you know, like any communist revolution is all a bunch of bullshit, right?

You just, you trade one ruling class for another, right?

And

it really, really,

in the late 70s, when the cocaine trade started and that became the big money, then it became just a cover for the largest cocaine trafficking network in the world.

And that's all the FARC's about.

It's all now that kid you've brainwashed as a 14-year-old campesino to become a gorilla.

He believes in the revolution.

But there's an interesting thing.

When I got rescued in 2008, I saw a newspaper article that came out and it showed the FARC leadership called the Secretariat, right?

This was the Brain Trust, right?

Where all their children were.

Their kids weren't in the jungle.

They were at universities in Europe and in Florida.

I mean, they, you know, and you've got these guys that are ultra wealthy and running this big cocaine trade.

And so you had the Secretariat, then you had the Commandantes, and you have different fronts, right, around the country that were divvied up.

And so it just manifested itself into a type of cancer, I think.

And what was once a revolution that I think they actually believed in.

Now, from a certain level below, those worker bees believed in the revolution.

But the ones up top,

I mean,

they were just corrupted with their own money.

Yeah.

My belief.

I think many people support that.

Is the FARC still active?

Yes.

This is what's sad.

So,

let me see, seven years, eight years ago, we had a peace process.

No, nine years ago.

So, President Uribe, who was a hardline,

right-wing guy, basically brought the FARC to their knees.

Then the president that followed him decided to have a peace process, which they'd failed before.

So we take the leadership to Cuba.

They get fanfare.

Some of our major politicians go down there and

they negotiated a peace process.

And I think,

I don't know what the number was, maybe 20,000 or so.

They turned in their arms and they came out of the jungle.

All right.

But they really didn't do that.

Some groups stayed and refused to turn themselves in.

The FARC were promised six seats, I think.

Now I can be off on this number in the Colombian Congress called a Karul.

So you take these guys out, you forgive them of crimes against humanity, then you put them in the Congress.

Wow.

And, you know, this whole peace deal was.

When was this?

Gosh, Park Peace Deal.

This would be

10 years ago, 14 and 15, I think.

So I'll never forget

Kerry's going to go down there and talk to him, and other people are going to talk to him.

And I just saw our politicians going, man, you guys know nothing about these guys.

And this, you know, it's just kind of like the Taliban being a B team, right?

You know, and

I was, I was up in D.C.

and I did an interview and I can't remember if it was on CNN or Fox, but

one of our senators, very famous, and he's deceased now and was a POW from Arizona.

I don't want to disparage him, but he was making comments about the FARC and the peace deal.

And I was on CNN and I shot back at him and said, hey, would you like to debate this?

or could I at least talk to you I don't know who's briefing you who's you know and he wouldn't do a debate with me or even anything CNN tried to get us to do it together but the thing was

he was so far out

of base and some of the things that Carrie said I was like who are you talking to what's going on you know and so It was disappointing to see that peace process.

People that

should be in jail for life at a minimum get forgiven, but I get it was for a greater good.

Well,

now what they call the dissidents fled back to the jungle and restarted the FARC.

But now they're splintered.

So they're not as powerful as they once were, but they're still there.

And now we have an ultra-liberal government that

believes in this talk stuff, right?

And it just buys them time.

And so the FARC dissidencia is what they call it, has really

grown.

And you can look up a guy named Mordisco right now as one of them.

He's in leadership.

They're backed by popular demand, you you know?

And so

it's just a cycle.

I think the peace process gave a lot of FARC members a chance to escape the jungle,

some of the young people.

But

in my capture, there's a guy, we all had nicknames, right?

But he was a guy who had us in the jungle personally for longest.

His name was Goffez.

When we got captured and he was captured, our government tried to extradite him, but the Colombian government wouldn't play ball.

So Goffiz was put into

jail.

He was released under the peace process.

And the liberal president down there now wanted to make him a special envoy to the FARC dissidents, right?

What did he do?

He just went back and kidnapped a Colombian congresswoman.

He just went back to his old tricks.

He was just on the news a few months ago.

And it was sickening to me to see this guy that was in handcuffs, right, next to the helicopter after our rescue sitting up like this

like this to a you know female congresswoman saying don't come back here again just released and now he's now he's you know else sequestral he's he's kidnapping people again what he should have had was a fucking bullet between his eyes this shit happens all the time

look at all the people we've released from get mo

these are not good people

you know i worked standard I worked at Northrop Grimm with an interesting character,

former 82nd Airborne, one-star Harry Axon.

God rest his soul.

He's buried in Arlington right now.

And he made a comment because he was asking me about some of the leadership down there, and he was our corporate lead up there for SOCOM.

And

I had a picture of him when he went into Panama.

He was sitting behind Noriega's desk holding his sword.

And I said,

I said, Harry, like, what's your opinion?

And he just looked at me and said, you know, Keith,

unfortunately, some people just need killing.

And

it wasn't animosity.

It wasn't with anger, but he was just like, these people are just going to do what they're going to do, right?

I mean,

so what do we do?

I mean, I guess on the right of being human and humane, you want to.

maybe give them the benefit of the doubt or fuck whatever it is, right?

But some people are just murderers, man.

And that's just, they're never going to change.

And we have this way of always hoping to negotiate with the unnegotiable.

Yeah.

Never seemed to learn a lesson.

I don't understand it.

How strong was, how many people were involved in the FARC at the time?

Do you have any idea?

I don't know.

We've heard different numbers, right?

I think they were probably

maybe more than 30,000 strong at the height.

So there's a very famous takedown of a post called Me Too.

So the Colombian police and soldiers that were in captivity with us, the majority of them were taken from MeToo.

Way down south, there was no way for the Colombian military to really get down there.

And they were much weaker.

This is before Planned Colombia, right?

They were much weaker then.

So a few thousand FARCs around an outpost, man, and just

start killing.

and capture them.

And at one time in the Despeje,

right, in the Despeje, the FARC had over 400

police and soldiers in captivity.

Are you serious?

400.

Now imagine this.

Imagine this.

Let's just say in this county in Tennessee,

you had 400 American men and women in captivity because you were some security force.

And the government or the state of Tennessee had given a Despehe, like, you know, it was much bigger than, let's say, I think it was the size of Rhode Island.

And on the night,

families, American families have to see their own kids

and grown men behind fences in their own country as they negotiate.

And then we have American CEOs and

business people wanting to do business with the FARC and flying down there and visiting them.

And it's just a, they just gave them their own state.

So what did they do?

They just use that to grow stronger.

Then

they let

the few hundred go of the soldiers and police, and they kept the officers and the politicians that they had captured.

Damn.

So they always wanted el entrecambio humanitario.

That's the humanitarian exchange.

We want all the FARC you have in prisons for our people.

And that's what as Tom, we got captured always said.

So we're just hanging meat.

And so they always wanted to

to have another humanitarian exchange but they were now a named terrorist organization so what was the strategy

you got to declare us a legitimate military force then you have to openly negotiate with us and a dispe

and then

we'll exchange prisoners they were never exchanging money we were just political currency

just political currency and i remember

Rumsfeld, I heard it on the radio.

They were talking about the three American hostages.

And it was a news thing.

And it was a press conference.

And Rumsfeld, our sect at the time, was just holding it, right?

And

our subject came up.

He goes, we don't negotiate next.

I was like, damn, today sucks, right?

You know, did I want them to negotiate for us and trade us out?

Yeah, of course I did.

Who doesn't want to go home?

But I knew that's a fantasy.

And if you negotiate and you trade for me, then who's next after Keith?

Or Tom or Mark?

That's what's going to happen, you know, if you can leverage them.

And so,

you know, I always,

all we wanted, and we stated in our first proof of life,

we wanted to be rescued, but I wanted our guys coming to rescue us.

Not the Colombians.

And I remember, because the whole plan was during a rescue op, the first time I hear the Hilos, there's a disembark, they're going to, they just start, they did it.

You know, in the first Colombian rescue operation, how sad is this?

You had a group of political prisoners.

I think there was 20 or so of them in a, basically in a cage in the jungle, hidden in the jungle.

So the Colombian military flies over the camp.

flies over the camp.

You could see the boots hanging outside the black ox.

Then they fucking disembark like a mile away in the jungle.

What happens?

They just walk in there and they kill every single one of them.

Not only does the FARC execute them and haul ass,

then they send a guy back to shoot everybody in the head again.

One of those guys survived.

He was a like, you could call him like a state legislator, wasn't a national.

And he survived by hiding under the dead bodies of his friends.

Shit.

And he told a story.

What kind of

so do you want to rescue from that group?

You heard that while you were in captivity, that stuff.

It happened, yeah.

Shit.

And what they were,

they were a group of municipal legislators

dressed up like police.

drive into a little town, right?

Run into the little courthouse where they're having them and and say, hey, outside, you're at risk.

Get them on a school bus, start driving out the countryside, say, oh, by the way, we're not police.

We're fark.

How about that?

Damn.

Damn.

Well, Keith, let's take a quick break.

Yeah.

When we come back, I want to talk as descriptive as you can about the night you went down.

Oh, yeah.

And then we'll go through the next five years.

And I will say one thing.

They did come in to execute us one night, but the order got pulled off and we were this close.

I mean, they were right there.

Holy shit.

That was an end to that.

It went from

terror

to anger.

It was so deep into it.

And I mean, if you want to say it now for a break, real quick or not.

Let's do it.

So

being a crew chief for a long time, writing Chinooks and cranes, whatever, I can hear, I could just feel a helicopter from a long way.

You get used to it, right?

Everybody's like that.

So the biggest fear we had,

and this would affect me

in Freedom afterwards, but the biggest fear we had was a disembark at night that wasn't done right.

So Condoleezza Rice, when she was Secretary of State, was visiting Colombia.

And she made a very poignant statement.

It was on the radio.

Planned Colombia, we're going to have government presence everywhere.

And she was right.

That's what we needed.

She's 100% correct.

But while they were down there, we noticed a lot of air activity, but it'd be way off.

So we just figured it was just more aircraft mobilizing people.

So one night,

we hear these two black hawks.

Then it breaks into one and it starts circling the camp.

But a giant, giant circle.

We did not know, would not find out until later that they didn't have our camp spotted.

So there's a couple hundred guerrillas guarding our camp because we had Colombian police and military on one side of the fence and then then the politicians and us, the Colombian politicians and the three of us.

So they come to the gate to kill us and they bring the guards.

Every guard has one person assigned they're responsible to kill.

So there's just pandemonium in our compound.

And Mark actually, we had a little escape route plan.

Mark was actually just,

he slipped out under the fence.

And

everybody's screaming.

I sat down because we're in a box like this.

And I said, man, they're just going to whack us.

And there was a Colombian congressman with him.

We had a nickname.

We called him Big Cat, you know, whatever.

Anyway.

So I was terrified.

I'm like, they're just going to shoot the fuck out of us.

And I heard the guards talking.

Man, is this real?

Is this real?

The guards were nervous because they knew they were going to shoot us.

And so I went from being terrified.

But when I say terrified, I mean

I didn't crap in my pants when I was close,

to I got angry.

And I don't know why.

It was not a macho decision.

Sean, I'm not saying I was a badass, nothing like that.

I got fucking pissed because I felt like I was laying there like a rat.

And I got up and I walked to the gate and Ferné, who was the evil

boss of the guards, I said, you're going to fucking kill us?

You going to kill us?

I said, motherfucker, shoot me like a man.

And the congressman, Big Cat, grabbed me.

He said, Keith, don't say that.

Don't say that.

I mean,

it's total chaos.

I said, you shoot me like a fucking man.

And I don't know why I said it.

It wasn't like I was being a badass Sean or whatever, but I just went from terror, absolute terror, to just anger.

If I could have got my hands on him, I mean, you know, and then the radio goes off and they shut it down and the Blackhawk went away.

But we were this close.

And Fernay had his radio on and they're waiting.

They're talking back and forth because the macho commandante, who is escaping right now, okay, is talking to him on the radio whether or not to give them the order to kill all of us.

Because we were the HVT of

hostages.

I was terrified, man.

Terrified.

And then I just got angry.

And I don't know.

I wish I could tell you why.

There's no training, no matcha, no thing.

I was just furious that you were going to kill me.

How long after you were in there did this happen?

A year and a half.

Yeah, a little over a year and a half.

What happened to your buddy that slipped through the fence?

His ass finally got back in with their markup.

I said, man, you almost fucked up.

He marked his hung by the heat.

We didn't know what to do, right?

And he slipped back in, tore his t-shirt away.

I was like,

I talk about it now.

Damn.

Yeah.

Keith, let's take a quick break.

Yes, sir.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

These days, it feels like there's advice for everything.

Cold plunges, gratitude journals, screen detoxes.

But how do you know what actually works for you?

Using trusted resources and talking to live therapists can get you personalized recommendations and help you break through the noise.

Therapy from BetterHelp is helpful for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries.

It empowers you to be the best version of yourself and it's for everyone, not just those who've experienced major trauma.

With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally.

And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews.

It's convenient too.

You can join a session with a therapist at the click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life.

Plus, Switch Therapist at any time is the largest online therapy provider in the world.

BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise.

Talk it out with BetterHelp.

Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash SRS.

That's better

H-E-L-P dot com slash SRS.

There are a lot of choices out there when it comes to cell phone service, and it feels like more are popping up all the time.

But Patriot Mobile isn't just another option.

They're different.

A company built by people who actually share your values and who are committed to doing things the right way.

They're also ahead of the curve when it comes to tech.

Patriot Mobile is one of the only carriers with access to all three major U.S.

networks, which means reliable nationwide coverage.

You can even have multiple numbers on different networks all on one phone.

A true game changer.

They offer unlimited data, mobile hotspots, international roaming, internet backup, and more.

Everything you'd expect from a top-tier carrier.

And switching couldn't be easier.

Activate in minutes from home, keep your number, keep your phone, or upgrade if you want to.

Go to patriotmobile.com slash SRS or call 972 Patriot.

And don't forget to use promo code SRS for a free month of service.

That's patriotmobile.com slash SRS or call 972 Patriot.

All right, Keith, we're back from the break.

We're getting ready to get into the night that you guys crashed and got were held in captivity.

But what was the name of the outfit you're running with?

As far as,

well, that's on your head.

Southcom Reconnaissance Systems.

Isn't that wild?

Under Plan Columbia.

And when I saw your hat and it said SRS, at first, just for a second,

I wasn't thinking Sean Ryan show because I was thinking back to Southcom Reconnaissance Systems.

I said SRS because that's what we were.

We were SRS.

And so for a second, I'm like, oh, no, no Sean Ryan show.

I wish I was that switched on, Keith.

Otherwise, I would have said yes.

Oh, my God.

And so when I saw it, how

just, I don't know what you'd call it, right?

But I'm sitting here doing the show with you with basically the same hat that I wore when I got captured.

Kind of a little different, right?

Well, we got you one.

These are company only.

Nobody else has them.

Oh, really?

Yep.

Well, I won't share it.

But small community, but it really is, it kind of boogered me up a little bit because I said, oh, I said,

did he do that for?

Oh, no, Sean Lynch.

Yeah, so.

All right, Keith, let's move into it.

So what was happening that night

that you were doing?

It was actually very early in the morning.

So we had,

as a mission commander, I'd get a...

an intel box from the embassy for my mission of targets.

We'd all meet at the airport, usually an hour and a half before we'd take off, and

confer with the pilots.

And, you know,

Mark, who was new, we had brought Mark into the picture to streamline our collection, right?

He was an analyst in the Air Force, an Intel analyst, and he also worked with our stuff in the embassy.

So he was hired to help us, you know, make a better product, essentially.

So he was training to be a mission commander.

Because the funny thing about our bird was it's a Cessna Carradine.

Everybody knows, you know, 10-place bird or whatever, but we had one Colombian that's a host nation rider that always flew with us to see what we're doing.

And people think, oh, the Americans run in Colombia doing what they want.

No.

We had somebody on board that knew what we were doing, was working with us, you know, and we didn't just go somewhere without permission and collect on targets.

Up front, and it breaks my heart, but CW5 retired, Tommy Janice.

We're here because of Tommy, you know,

30 years, retired Delta.

Guy was in unit forever.

Right seat was Tom House, who had never been a military pilot, but he'd done a lot of work in Latin America in these type of missions.

And

Mark was next to me to the left, number one side of the bird, I was on the right.

And the sad, sad thing was Sergeant Alcede's cruise was up front on this very first mission.

That was his first mission.

Young guy, wife, kids.

And

what's a bigger heartbreaker is he came with his buddy that morning.

They thought they both were going to fly.

And I said, I can't take two of you.

I've only got space for one.

He was super excited, his first mission, right?

And he'd never come back.

Damn.

And so it breaks my heart

remembering moments after the crash, the conversation.

It was really bad.

But to start off the mission, we, you know, we get in there, uh, show the target to the chief pilot and left cedar, and then we'd go over what we're going to do: take off out of Bogota, across the rocks, it's a little bit high, and then we get down the flatland and go do our mission.

So, we were going into

a fixed base to get fuel, and right before right before the runway, there, some rocks about you know, we call them small hills, about 3,500, 4,000 feet.

So, we had a combination, I call it shoot-down engine failure.

We were coming down out of 15,000 feet.

We're on oxygen.

And we're in a place where I used to look down and go, If we ever go down here, we're dead.

We crossed it every day, but it was just mountainous stuff in no man's land.

And I remember Tommy saying, 12,000.

I had altimeter in the back, but I knew, so we all took our oxygen off.

And

I hear the birds

do

no motor.

motor.

So I said,

Tommy, what was that?

He goes, that's an engine failure, sir.

Cool, calm, collected, like

nothing's going on.

So they start trying to do a restart on the motor.

And I hear Tommy tell Tom in the right seat, run the numbers.

He wanted to know if we...

If there'd have been no hills in front of us, no small mounds, we could have glided in.

It would have been a non-event.

Tommy had already suffered a similar event off the coast of Columbia a year before and brought the aircraft back like it was nothing and landed at an airport on the coast.

So

I tell Mark,

make the Mayday call.

And I remember telling Tommy, I don't know why I did it, but just comedy.

I said, Tommy, do some of that pilot shit, please.

Just, just

wait.

So

Tom in the right seat, the numbers were not adding up.

And Tommy just said, fuck it, which he did the right thing.

He looked and saw a valley next to us, and he just broke, and we started circling.

And he was just burning off speed.

And essentially, what he did is he'd burn off airspeed until we actually crashed going uphill to slow the aircraft down.

I cannot tell you.

I mean,

unbelievable piloting skills.

And he was inducted last year.

I come up here into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame.

Well deserved.

I'm here only because of his piloting skills.

We should have be dead right there on that.

Damn.

So I tell Mark, I said, Mark, make the Mayday call.

Mark steps on the foot mic and his voice cracks.

I said, give me the mic.

You get the target stuff.

So Mark starts organizing what's on there.

I start making the Mayday.

So our boys in Key West and the boys in the MBC, I'm on SATCOM.

Everybody in the world is listening to us, right?

And a friend of ours was in the office that morning in the embassy, and he gets on and he's upset.

All I'm doing is just giving grid coordinates as we go down so they can find us.

I told them how many souls were on board, just the standard stuff that you trained to do.

And

I don't think any of us,

I know Tommy Janice wasn't.

was really scared when we were going down because we were just focused on securing stuff and mark securing securing stuff in the aircraft so it just doesn't kill us when we crash in.

But I remember Sardin Cruz, he couldn't speak English.

He's right in front of me.

So I explained him as best I could what was happening.

I strapped him in the seat.

He was upset.

You could tell he was upset.

What we did not know

was that there was a column of guerrillas and they were on the mountainside right under us.

They were there waiting for aircraft on approach trying to shoot them down.

Shit.

We didn't know.

We did not know at that moment that our aircraft was getting filled with holes because we're just the adrenaline's going right.

We're just doing what we have to do.

They're shooting the hell out of us right then.

We didn't even know it.

Now, did you guys

have any type of a quick reactionary force ready to come get you?

Yeah, they did.

They had at the base, you know, they had a

the spray reaction force.

They had those guys, but no, we were in Indian country on our own.

There was no QRF for us at all.

And I remember

Tommy saying,

as we're,

you know, now I'm looking at jungle side above us, but he's just burned off airspeed.

And Tom says, he said, you better put it down because

about 15 feet in front of the aircraft was about a 400-foot cliff.

That's how close we came to the edge of the cliff.

So Tommy goes, hey guys, this is going to hurt.

And we hit first.

broke off a landing gear, then we dug in.

What I remember most is the side of the aircraft just opened up like a, you know, just a can opener.

Debris and dirt and everything are coming in.

And

we come to a stop.

Mark and I are yelling at Tom and Tommy up there.

We didn't know they were unconscious.

Sergeant Cruz was okay.

So behind me is a cargo door.

So I said, Mark, You get the gun bag, get the target deck, right?

And I'll get the pilots.

So Cruz and I jumped out to get to the pilots.

And the first thing I saw on the right-hand side, and I thought Thomas House was dead.

The whole flap of his forehead was cut open and covering his eye.

And he was out of his straps and twisted up

in the windshield of the aircraft.

So I start pounding on the windscreen.

He's not moving.

I said, I thought his neck was broken.

I said, he's dead.

He's fucking dead.

I see Tommy next door, right,

start moving.

So we run around to that side and get the door open.

And Tommy,

how do you describe Tommy Janice, man?

56,

probably weighed a buck 60, buck 56, ran six to 10 miles a day, had a six-pack,

as vain as vain can be, man, had his hair all blonde.

I mean, Tommy was, but vain in the healthy way.

Just,

Tommy Janice was a character and a half, and he's a product of his community.

He really, he fits in there.

And

we get Tommy out.

He stands right there.

I said, Tommy, fuck man.

Thank you.

Like you just saved us, right?

He just says like this.

Then we hear him gunfire coming at us, right?

He just puts his hands to his hair like this.

He goes, how do I look?

No way.

I swear to God, I'm alive.

Then he reaches over and he always flew in polo socks over his danters.

He straightened the sock up.

He goes, how do I look?

He jumps up and down.

I said, you look fucking awesome.

Holy shit.

That's Tom Janice.

Damn.

Like if you want to write a movie about a guy that flew, was you know, a unit guy for years and that was Tom Janice.

That's why he's in the Aviation Hall of Fame.

It's not by flipping accident, right?

Who else does that shit at that moment?

So Mark gets around and Tom comes up and Tom gets out Tom's alive

I

Mark gives me the just the gumbag of my M4 and we had our our just our bread is I threw that fucker over the cliff and Sergeant Cruz was getting mad at me he's like shoot shoot because there's like 60 or 70 gorillas come up the hill I said fuck no we're not shooting we ain't dying today we're not dying here and we can't I mean, we were uncovered ground.

They were coming.

There's nothing.

It was over.

Game was over.

And Cruz is crying, but not out of like being

and i don't want to disrespect him but he was crying out of frustration he wanted to fight and he knew we couldn't

you know and he says tell them i'm an american tell them i'm an american i said we will but they know who you are right and the scary thing was is mark looks latin

and at first they thought mark was a colombian too

You know, so

I turn around and then there's a couple guys on our face with AKs in our face.

They happen that quick.

Yeah.

Oh, they were on top.

We crashed right in the middle of about 100 and some odd gorillas.

The guys that were shooting at us, we crashed in the middle of them.

Holy shit, man.

So they split us up, right?

And they took Mark and Tom and I down the hill first.

And they took Sergeant Cruz and Tommy in another direction.

That's what they do.

They split you up so if a QRF or somebody gets there, they don't get all their golden eggs.

And I'll never forget, I remember this.

I looked over and I see Tom, you know, Tom Janice dragging his right leg like he can't walk.

He's got serious sear training.

He all knows one thing.

That first 30 seconds, 60 seconds, whatever,

if there's ever time to pop smoke, you're going to escape.

He had a plan.

I knew it would end up getting him killed, but there was nothing wrong with his leg.

My theory is this.

Tommy was dragging his leg, trying to give distance between a group of gorillas and just the two gorillas that were with him, trying to buy himself time.

That's what he was doing.

Tommy's just at a different level.

And so we never heard the gunshots.

But what we would later discover,

Tommy popped smoke, they shot him in the base of the head and the shoulder.

Crews turned around, they shot him in the chest and through the hands and into the chest and killed them both.

And

we wouldn't find that out for months.

So they take us down a hill to another side.

Hold on, let's rewind.

Okay.

You speak Spanish?

Si, mucho.

So what were they saying when they...

Here's the problem.

I didn't speak Spanish then.

I learned it in captivity.

Shit.

So,

but I'll never, I watched Tommy.

Tommy, Tommy,

once they separate and Tommy's already planning, hey, I'm out.

They take us down a hill to like a shack and there's a couple of lemon trees and they strip us to search us and they make us flipping lemonade,

a big bowl of lemonade for us, for everybody to drink.

And we're sitting there in our underwear on the side of a hill, right?

And I look up the hill

and there's a girl who was leading the group who would later be killed.

I've never seen a woman as physically capable

as this woman leading a guerrilla group.

You know, if there was ever going to be a woman that, and I may not, people may not want to hear this, but if she legitimately wants to pass the Ranger course, this woman will do it.

There'll be no pushback on her.

She was a physical freak and had been leading guerrilla columns for years in her early 30s and a killer.

She was a fucking killer.

We'd find out about it later.

We get dressed, we're finishing up lemonade, and all of a sudden you can hear, wop, wop, wop, wop, bop.

Here come the Hueys.

They're coming to the crash site.

And so

she took an RPG

and shot it through the bottom of the fuselage after they got all the stuff off of it.

When the Hueys got there,

there was two, but one was like in trail.

One got there, starts circling us, right?

But they can't.

shoot the gorilla because the gorilla grab up around us.

As they circle around a head of bushes, they light up.

I guess I don't know if anybody died or not, but they shot at another group of gorilla.

So they pushed us on the ground.

Then the gunfight starts between the other gorillas and them.

And in the middle of that, I grab a tree to hold on.

Mark and I on the side, we don't want to fall further down, just slide.

It wasn't like a cliff, we're going to get hurt.

And this gorilla looks at me, he sees my watch.

In the middle of that shit, he steals my watch.

I mean, right?

So,

so

I've never talked to him, but I'm assuming the lead bird realized we were in the middle of that, so they just had to stop shooting.

So they just started circling us.

And I don't know how we got separated,

but we were coming out onto a little coffee bean field on the side, and on the top of the field was a little pin hut that the Campesinos lived in.

And I look up and I see Mark and Tom making it to the hut.

And they're telling me, go, go, go.

So I'm pushing up the hill and there's a giant, I don't know how big the tree was, but there's a tree stump that must have been about four foot tall, but probably three or four feet around.

And all of a sudden,

the bird gets back on top of us.

Well, the gorilla like 60 yards behind me and 40 yards ahead of me.

There's all these guns pointing on me.

And I get down next to the tree trunk because I'm thinking they're just going to shoot me before they let the...

the helicopter, you know, hoist me out.

And

I remember the gunner looking at me, and we're, I mean, he's blowing shit all over me, right?

We're this close.

He just goes, sorry, man.

That fucking sucked.

Damn.

And then that just started a nightmare three-week march into the Amazon basin.

Real quick, before we go farther in, what was the, what were you guys collecting on these targets?

Here's what really sucked on that target.

God, that's getting worse.

We were collecting on coca fields and illicit runways

and labs.

So each of the bosses had their own area, but the worst boss, Monohohoy, who was their military leader, we were collecting on his shit.

And they captured that.

So not good.

Yeah.

And I remember

one last pass by the bird.

I think Tom and Mark and I were all together.

I believe we were.

We're on our backs, and there's a gorilla got his arm around each of us.

Like we're interlocked, and we're in a little coffee bean field.

The plants are small.

The helicopter comes back and hovers over us.

What can they do?

Right?

Then we made it into the canopy.

And it was just a three-week death march.

But I'll never forget

the girl I said the bad.

was a badass.

Her name was Sonia.

And

I've just never seen a woman in the field this physically impressive.

I mean,

I've seen about 90% of guys I know could not keep up with her.

We would find out who she was later.

But she was, I think she was the only female column leader.

I had 7,500 people.

And

the sun is going down and we are all just hunched up together.

And you can hear aircraft everywhere, right?

They're looking for us.

And she goes, your fucking micro switch, your micro switch.

We're all laying there on the ground.

She said, what?

She goes, do you have a micro switch?

Like, what?

She goes, if you have a micro switch, I will kill you.

So she thought,

this was how

like dinosaurs they were, right?

Primitive.

But they're scared of American technology.

She thought that we had

micro switches in our bodies.

maybe you know injected somewhere that could hear our conversations and locate us no shit and And I'll never forget, I grabbed her hand.

She had a Casio like G-Shock watch on.

I said, that's where your micro switch is at.

But they didn't even know what a micro switch was, right?

But our ass was on the line for it.

That's quick thinking.

And Tom,

who spoke fluent Spanish, explained to her, no, we don't have it.

But that's,

you know, that's...

That's not a good thing at that time, right?

You know?

You just came up with that on the fly.

I didn't know what to say.

I just said, nope you got a micro switch right there what you do just kind of calm down

and then I watched and I didn't want to say anything but you know we had our vests with our e-perb and radio and all this stuff right

one of those guys is carrying our vest and I'm thinking fuck is the ear perb on

is it on I didn't say nothing marking if I remember I'm like

what what

and then a few minutes later I see him taking apart and taking the batteries out of it.

So I don't know if it was ever on or not.

They had, I think, did we have a set of MBGs on?

I remember.

And then it just was a death march.

You know, it was just a death march.

What do you mean by a death march?

So I'll just say this.

Take a 14-year-old kid, put a rucksack on his back.

He's from the mountains anyway.

He's not from the flatland.

And just put beans and rice and bullets on his back.

And all he does for five or six years is just walk the mountains every day.

Right?

You're not keeping up with them.

I'm sorry.

I mean, they're, they're just, you're just strong, right?

So

it was almost three weeks where they took us to where some members of the secretariat were to turn us over to them, where one fresh group would walk us for eight nine, 10 hours.

Then they just turn us over to another group,

right?

And we just keep daisy chaining like that.

And

we got separated in the march at times.

But I remember it was the point where if we ever physically stopped, I'd just fall down on the ground asleep.

I've never known exhaustion like that before.

And

my particular difficulty was I had a pair of Danner mountain boots on, and they were worried about tracks.

And in Ecuador, they make these cheap ass black rubber boots that even the Colombian Army uses.

They'll put their combat boots over their neck, but in the wet stuff in the jungle, you put that rubber boot on, it's worth 10 bucks and it's the perfect, that's what everybody wears, right?

And it works in the mountains.

So they couldn't get me a pair of rubber boots that were big enough.

And because they're all small people, I wear a size 12.

So they took a pair of rubber boots and they cut the front of the rubber boots off and made me wear those.

And I lost eight of my 10 toenails in that three weeks marching like that.

Three weeks.

Yeah, we never stopped.

We stopped to eat or something or whatever, but there was, yeah, just never stopped.

Yeah.

And so I always thought, and Tom did too, were like,

are they

just going to take us somewhere, try to interrogate us and kill us or something?

We didn't know.

We didn't know really

how primitive they were,

you know.

And so

I was super weak on the march and I kept getting weaker every day.

I didn't know I had internal injuries.

And my ribs were separated from the front here.

And on my two lower ribs, you could take and just stick your fingers through the ribs into my stuff.

Mark was really strong on the march.

Tom was much stronger than me.

I was just going downhill like every hour.

I couldn't figure out what was going on.

But I knew I had to have something internally screwed up with me.

And at one point, like two weeks into the march, I just laid down.

I told Sony, you can shoot me.

I can't move.

She goes, what do you mean?

I said, I can't move.

I can't do anything.

You shoot me.

I can't do shit.

And I couldn't.

I didn't want to stop.

There was nothing.

I wanted to survive.

I physically was incapable of doing it.

I was broken.

Those guys built a stretcher for me and put eight guys on it, and they carried me through the damn mountains for almost two days.

You know?

And

I wouldn't know what kind of injuries I had until I got back, was rescued, and we got, you know, were taken care of.

But

yeah, I had some pretty severe intestinal and injuries in my ribs.

And then for comedy, if you want to hear a light note, right?

We're all waiting for Tommy Jay and Sardin Cruz to show up, right?

We didn't know that they had been executed.

And so they stop at this one spot and

the three of us lay down and the way they make a bed is they cut these palm trees just like

a, you know,

piece of wood, you know, a stump.

They stack it up about two feet high, then they fill it with dirt and put palm fronds under it, it, then they'll put like a little, you know, just a tarp over it, and that's what they sleep and live in.

So we got to an old camp that had been young, but they put Mark and I and Tom in there, and they just lay us down in there.

So they get me and take me down to the stream, and they take my clothes off.

I mean, they left my underwear on, but they take my clothes off.

And there's like, you know, a dozen gorillas just looking at us like, oh, these are the gringos, right?

Because we're like aliens.

And these two young gorilla girls take their clothes off and just have their bra and panties on and they start giving me a hand bath in this fucking stream.

I'm like,

is this like

it was nothing physical, but they're just cleaning me up.

We didn't know that we're just like pets to take care of and keep alive until they can trade us, right?

But I can hardly walk.

And so I'm thinking, fuck, I bet they're going to take pictures of this.

of them bathing me in the stream.

I thought it's just my mind's, you know, something like that.

So I go,

I go back up the the hill.

I'm just like, what the hell?

This is surreal, right?

We're two weeks into March.

We don't know, you know, this is La La Land.

And Tom's grumpy, and he's, I said, Tom, I said, what?

I said, you're an old man.

I said, go down the stream.

He goes, what?

I said,

a couple of girls down there, they're just in their panties and they're underwear.

They're about 18.

They're going to give you a hand bath.

Shut up, motherfucker.

Like, you know, it's like, you know, he didn't know.

So Mark got a bath and came back up.

Tom, the next day, how he looked before the bath?

Oh, God.

So the next day, Tom's like, really?

I said, yeah, motherfucker.

But

I think, especially with Americans, with our sense of humor in the worst moments, sometimes you just make a joke, right?

Yeah.

But yeah, the death march was unbelievable.

And,

you know, we were going to be turned over to

a group that was going to take care of us from that.

Well, I call it taking care of us, right?

Just keep us alive for the next few years and um

but that was physically the hardest thing that i ever

put myself through ever and uh

it was i remember one night we're in a river just

i mean just freezing right

and uh you know we're up in the mountains

and they finally found a pair of sweatpants put on me a t-shirt and these boots they put mark and i on a rock in the middle of the river and it's freezing and mark and i are huddled together like this, just trying to stay warm all night, you know,

and survive.

But

it was

shocking to me

how freely they could move through the jungle without any,

you know, they knew where the military was and where it wasn't, you know, and I was thinking, shit,

these guys can go where they want to go to.

And I'm not talking to eight or ten of us.

I'm talking 75 or 80.

And

it just, it was

eye-opening to see how much freedom, or not freedom, I guess

how much of control they were of where they were at.

You know, and there's no finding them.

And the thing that was kind of disheartening, I can't speak for Tom or Mark, but I think the same.

After a few days, the aircraft were going away.

We knew we were getting deeper and deeper and we weren't being found.

So we didn't know.

I mean, were they just going to take it?

We thought they were going to take us somewhere, interrogate us, right?

And then just get rid of us.

We weren't sure what was going on.

We didn't really understand

that there were a group of other Colombians that had been ahead of us at that point.

They already had been in five years and would be in five and a half more.

Damn.

You know?

What was it like going through the jungle?

It was a, were you guys on a

bulldozer every square inch of jungle if I could.

The jungle bites.

It's not a friendly place.

Every tree has a thorn.

Every, I mean, it's a difficult environment.

And

it's tough

because it's like this, where we were.

We were in the mountains.

We weren't down though.

It's hot.

It's sticky.

You know,

it's a miserable place.

And

I'm sure, you know,

my wife and I just came back from a trip in Costa Rica and we rode ATVs up into some nice jungle for like a little lunch and all.

And she says, how do you feel?

I said, I'm okay now.

That would have wigged me out a few years ago.

But yeah, the jungle's, jungle's tough, man.

And that was really

our opinion was people said, well, why didn't you escape here?

Why don't you escape there?

When we got deep into the basin, the jungle was the real

jail.

You know, I mean, it wasn't,

what do you do when you're hundreds of miles from nowhere in a basin in the jungle?

You have no, no anything.

You don't know where you're at.

You don't have a compass, GPS, you don't have a squat.

Where are you going?

Even if you get away, where are you going?

So Mark and I came up with an idea

that

we would never just, at some inopportune moment, if we got a moment to escape, escape, we would only try something if we knew our chances were good or we were near something or we weren't just going to blow out, you know?

And

I think it proved to be the right choice.

But it's, it's a harsh environment.

Well, especially, I mean, even with those, with those guys that are grown up and humping around those mountains in the jungle, I mean, they're going to get you.

I think if we could have got enough separation,

we could, because it's so vast that we could have got away from them.

But then what are we going to eat?

Right?

I mean, there was stuff there we could eat, but after a while it'd make you sick.

Which direction are you going to go?

You know, I'd read stories, and there were a couple stories of a couple of Colombian prisoners that had escaped and spent the weeks and then finally came back because they couldn't find a way out,

you know.

And it's not like,

you know, I used to teach LAN Nav and NCODP and all that bullshit, right?

Well,

there's no reference.

If it's overclassed and cloudy, it's not like I can look across and find another mountain to hold a reference point and I could motor to that and then get on top of it and do another one.

You can't see where you go.

Yeah.

You're going to walk, you know?

And so

it was,

we knew we were up Shit's Creek, that's for sure.

Before this, had you ever thought about what you would do if something like this happened?

In a casual manner.

I never believed in the mountainous terrain that we'd survive a crash.

And our program was in the midst of transitioning to twin-engine aircraft just to make it safer.

But what we were victims of at Southcom Reconnaissance Systems was our own success.

We take this simple bird,

and then we take two simple birds, caravans, and we're down there 24-7.

So competing Intel platforms that come down for 45 days, then go come back a few months later,

that was our backyard.

And

let's say some other platforms that we collected with,

they'd pipe their data back to the States.

get everything redacted,

then send it back for us to analyze and to use.

Well,

we were only final secret.

Our

what we collected was you could disseminate it.

So when we came back that afternoon, I had a target deck that was processed and ready to be used,

right?

It wasn't compartmentalized, it wasn't USIs only, whatever.

And so we were a very simple, basic platform that collected real-time intelligence.

So

our

mission creep became mission creep.

Damn.

And we were also too aggressive.

We pushed it.

You know, we wanted to be that platform and we were lobbying.

And they were on the way for Twin Engine for King Airs to get there.

But we pushed it too.

You know,

we had an issue that was a mechanical issue.

And I was supervising an engine breakdown in the States at a little site we had.

And it was not good.

So I called Tommy on the phone.

Tommy and I had brought the aircraft back, right?

And Tommy had just faced an engine failure where he came back and we had a canoe.

And I said, Tommy, what do we do?

You're the chief pilot.

He goes, man, what's sitting in the hangar next to you?

I said, the replacement bird, and it's got two motors.

He goes, let's keep it going.

And what I wanted to do was shut down the bird that was downrange and do

an inspection on the aircraft, which doesn't look good, you know, on the contrary.

You're supposed to produce for your customer, right?

And uh,

everybody wanted to keep the program going,

and uh,

hindsight's 2020, right?

But we should have never been doing what we were doing,

you know, should have never been doing.

But you got a bunch of guys that are like doing a mission, and I would have paid to do that job,

right?

I mean,

one day we go to Cali

and

I get a little target.

It's totally different.

And there's a warehouse in a warehouse district, but it's not a warehouse.

It's a house.

And so a really nice house hidden in a warehouse district.

So our bird doesn't draw any attention.

It's a hide and plain sight.

And so we have this mission plan.

And actually, Tommy Janice flew it with me.

And we circle.

And we get some really good measurements on this house.

And the whole point of getting the measurements on the house was

was there room for a black hawk to sit down on top of this that was the whole purpose right not an american of columbia

so a week later

i'm in the

in the embassy lunchroom and my boss steve walks up and he throws their version some on a magazine of time

He said, good job.

And there's our target deck, right?

There's the house and there's they're disembarking on top of that motherfucker.

But then you want it sucked

on the bottom of the damn picture is all of our coordinates, all of our info.

It's not supposed to be let out public.

Because when it went through the Columbian pipeline, someone in the Columbian Intel side sold it to the magazine.

You know, so stupid things you saw.

One of the most heartbreaking things I ever saw was our drug enforcement folks and FBI had informants with inside the Columbia Intel that would put themselves at risk.

So again, outside of Cali, there was this neighborhood in the hills,

and it was not nice.

You know, it was kind of, it was what you expect of maybe an impoverished area of Latin America.

But there was like a meeting group where what they called the urbanos, which were the urban guerrilla, they get together and play soccer and stuff.

So

we had

a friend of mine that was, I won't say which agency he worked for, but he was handling this intel person.

And we had to go out

and

find their missing person.

Well, it ended up be two of them.

What had happened is they had given him

a pickup truck

and some intel.

And he and his buddy had gone to a party where this stuff was going on.

Man, it fucking sucks to remember this shit.

He, uh,

while he's at the party,

some people go out to the truck, start searching the truck, and he left his fucking ID in the truck.

So the house was on a hill.

So, they shot both of them in the head.

And

it looked to me like the truck was halfway on fire, but it didn't burn.

They flipped the truck at the beginning of the neighborhood on a hill upside down, and they hung him off the tire.

If I remember, I'm trying to remember.

I mean, this is 13, 14 years ago.

And so, we get there, and the first thing we pick up is 30 yards of blood just going down the hill and pulling up at the bottom of the road there in the the neighborhood.

And you're like, and his handler who was in, he was just

sucked, right?

You know?

And then we didn't get that story.

He didn't, once they did the investigation, didn't find out, but we're just looking at this guy.

So, I mean, there's a real price in the drug war.

So this is not, you know, it may not be, hey, I'm a soft guy kicking doors and we're, you know, everything's thrown down, but there was a continuous price.

And we might go on the north coast and do operations or go to other places, but

people got killed, you know, and it was

the Colombian spanned price on the ground there, you know.

So, but to see that guy,

I just remember the blood just, I mean, it was like 20 yards maybe down this hill, and then it was pulled up,

you know, and it was just

wow,

you know.

And so it makes an impact, right?

And, you know,

I think the thing I would take away from captivity

is you see,

and in your formal job, you saw it too,

what people are really capable of.

And it's really disgusting.

You know, so when you see stuff like that, that just motivates you to work even harder,

you know.

But, you know, people pay a dear price on the front line of the drug war.

And And

what bothers me personally, but it's,

you know,

I don't know who are the large groups in the U.S., right?

We know who controls it down south.

And people would always say,

you know, X amount of cocaine gets to the States.

X amount of cocaine goes here and goes there.

And I'm like, yeah?

Well, if we can't fucking stop it, how can we count it?

Right?

Good point.

If we can't stop it, how do we count it?

And I've always wondered who's on the other side?

Who are the big distributors, especially in the Coke side of the world?

But then,

this was a couple years after our captivity, if my memory serves me correct.

Up on the north coast of Colombia, they...

They took down one of the largest distribution networks of cocaine in history there.

None of that shit went to the States.

It went to fucking Europe.

Then it got all then back from Europe into the States.

But I would always see these experts that this is what's going on.

I'm like, well, wait a minute.

We're trying to stop it.

We can't stop it.

How can you count it?

Were you pulling these numbers out of your ass to justify program needs or money?

I get it.

But how do you stop it?

Semi-submersibles, right?

When they first kind of came out, everybody goes, oh, there's one or two it's a it's a knockoff no there's fucking hundreds of them right

or

we catch some bad guys from the sandbox that come in through Venezuela and they're tagged with the Mexican cartels well why do they want to get into Texas they don't want to get into Texas to sell drugs they want to get into Texas to to to hurt people right

you know chemical weapons, stuff like that.

That's my theory.

They don't give a shit.

They're not going to go into El Paso and start a war.

But why are they embedded with the cartels?

Why?

I mean, it's pretty open knowledge.

You look at Iran and its proxies, what they do over there on their doorstep.

Well, look at their relationship with Venezuela.

Really?

You know?

And I saw,

I can't remember when it was,

but I remember the women from Black Lives Matter

either they went to Venezuela to meet with Maduro and Sean Penn and all these guys, you know, they're talking about, look at this, you know, Maduro, Maduro, Maduro, you know, and and then it's uncovered that they have a plan to distribute cheap drugs into minority neighborhoods in the states to destabilize local political infrastructure.

But you're down there kissing ass to this person because you want five minutes of fame.

It's destroying your own community.

It's part of their, you know, they fight the long game.

We don't.

Yeah.

See it time and time again with all these terrorist organizations and the alliances that go on behind the scenes.

What has come through?

Look,

I was raised a southern conservative Democrat.

They don't exist anymore.

My parents were Dixiecrats.

They were conservative educators, Democrats.

I'm a Republican.

I don't see why we should be fighting over right or wrong

or

if you shoot somebody and kill them, should you pay for it?

This whole discussion and fight politically in our country right now about crime.

But I can tell you now that border is where it starts.

But nobody goes down to where I worked to see what's at the other end.

Or when you're buying cocaine in the States, do you see the death and destruction that it causes in other countries?

And I'm not talking about guerrilla versus government forces.

I'm talking about death and destruction on kids, on small, poor people, and what it does to them.

You know, it's when they say drug war, it's a war.

It's a very serious thing.

And there's very serious consequences paid for.

You know, but then

go down and see where the stuff starts at.

Just my observation doing the job, not trying to poke somebody somebody in the eye and say, you should believe this way, you should believe this way.

But, you know, if our border's open, let me ask you a question.

Do you have a front door in your house?

I mean, when your little kids are at home, do you lock your door at night?

Or do you, I mean,

that whole thing for me is personal because I know what goes on the other side of that border.

You know?

And

I don't know.

And I'm not rooting for anybody to win political favor over border control.

I'm just saying we need it.

Yeah.

Well, I think a lot of people share that sentiment.

Yeah.

Let's go back to the camp.

Okay.

So what was it like

after the three-week death march?

They

put us, we were fairly stable for the first year and a half.

They put Mark and Tom and I into what was an old camp.

What did it look like?

Oh, man.

So this old camp was just rotten.

So, think of like a little pole barn with aluminum roof.

Instead of walls, this is where we stayed.

This was chain-link fence everywhere.

Okay.

And it's probably 12-foot by 20-foot.

What we did not understand, and there's two big poles going down at about four foot tall, that's where you tie your hammock.

We didn't realize till we got locked up inside this cage that there had been 20 Colombian police and army hostages in there years before us.

We saw the writing on the wall.

We saw stuff that they scribbled.

And behind one door, and

I think this is what caused Mark, his inspiration to carve the chess pieces, was a chess piece stuck in the door.

So

they take us to this camp.

We meet Mono Hohoy,

he was basically

their bin Laden, right?

One of the most wanted people in the world.

He was the military leader of the FARC, an absolute assassin.

And he's all polite to us, and they fix his empanadas and they said, hey, we're going to open a camp just for you.

And they point to Martin Sumbra.

You can look up Martine Sumbra.

He just died of natural causes here a few weeks ago in Columbia.

He would be a cartoon character, terrifying, right?

Nails about this long or whatever.

So they load us in these pickups, Toy to Land Cruisers, and take us to this old camp.

Samila Day, we're just driving in a dirt road.

I mean, there's no threat.

I'm like, damn, these guys just moved.

They got a giant camp with a couple hundred guerrillas and cars and trucks.

There are trucks everywhere.

So we get there.

Sumbra's sitting on a beach chair and he goes, We have opened all of this for you.

We're going, we're here to take care of you.

I'm like, okay.

And I said, well, who's in charge?

Summer goes, we're all equal here.

Oh, bullshit, man.

We just,

right.

But we're destroyed.

We just want to

get some food and get some rest.

So the first couple nights, they stick us in this big box.

They build a bed off the ground, which when I say a bed, which is palms cut, like poles, like fence posts, put some palm trees on it, put a tarp over it.

and a mosquito net and you lay in there 24-7.

So they took Mark and Tom out there and left me inside the big box until mine was just going to get finished last, right?

We were not allowed to speak to each other.

And we actually, it was months before we could, we actually lost our voices because we couldn't talk.

And so

they throw in a couple magazines that were printed by the FARC, you know, when they were strong.

And they're talking about the Conhe, the exchange, humanitarian exchange, humanitarian exchange.

So the FARC's big hope was, oh, we've never touched Americans before.

Now the government's going to negotiate, right?

Which was,

I don't think that, you know, Rumsfeld and Bush are negotiating.

That wasn't the guys you want to talk to, right?

And then the most right-wing president in years with a rebay, they were like, fuck that.

So we're trying to educate ourselves on what's going on, but we're just, we're,

I mean,

it's like walking out to the grocery store.

Somebody hits you in the head and you wake up and you're bound and you got, and you're blindfolded, and they stake out in the sticks, and the world's cut off.

And you're trying to figure out what's going on.

So

they come and they give us journals.

This is a month into it, right?

Because we're just sitting there.

I mean, we're counting bugs.

We're just, I mean, we're, you come from a world that we live in and you're in that in that box and your mind is just speeding up.

So I get sick

and I'm shitting all over myself.

I can't stop it.

And I didn't know if I had malaria or not or what I had.

So

Tom and Mark are moved out and they put me back inside this box.

It's just chain link around a wall.

Put me on a black piece of plastic and put a mosquito net over me.

Well, they stopped taking me to the bathroom every hour or so because they were tired of doing it.

And you use the bathroom, what's called a chunto.

They just dig a hole in the ground.

It's lengthwise and you squat over it and kick the dirt in it and keep going.

Well, I'm covered like from my belly button to my knees.

I'm covered in my own feces.

And

I mean, it's not insanity, but you start, when I say, you start just figuring out shit to do.

Well,

I look over.

I'm laying there.

I look over and I see like half a dozen roaches just coming to me because they can smell me, right?

So I just start killing cockroaches and stacking them up and counting them.

I just wait for them to get there.

It's all right, motherfucker.

Here you go.

And stack a cockroach.

That's what I did, probably for a week.

And they finally came in and hung me upside down.

They tied ropes around my stomach and forced me to drink this shit and

hung my feet up on the wall

and would hang me up there for hours thinking that was going to cure my stomach.

It's insanity.

I mean, I don't know what else to say.

It's just pure insanity.

What was it?

What were you drinking?

I don't know.

Some concoction they came up with.

And finally, after,

I don't know, four or five days,

I started feeling better.

But I'm laying there covered in my own feces, just counting roaches, trying to keep my mind busy.

You know, and I'm thinking, what do you do?

Like, what did a POW do somewhere in Vietnam or somewhere else?

We're just in a, you know, a seven by seven on a concrete floor.

You just start.

daydreaming.

You want to keep this turned on, right?

And just start to try and check out.

I don't know how many businesses Mark and I came up with to run, you know, we got back to the States.

You know, you're just, your mind goes into this mode to where it's kind of taking you out.

And we would just spend days in there daydreaming.

And for some reason, and I don't know why,

I had the ability to just sleep like a cat for hours.

So I'd just sleep.

you know, wake up for when they fed us, and then that'd be it.

And food then was lentils and rice, maybe some fried yucca, Kool-Aid.

They loved Kool-Aid.

You know, they use sugar water to power themselves when they're marching, right?

So there was always sugar, you know, and Kool-Aid.

But

yeah, luckily, my

stomach got better, and I was able to eat.

And then they moved us about five, we heard chainsaws going, right?

They were building a more permanent camp.

So they moved us probably maybe a click away

to

three little buildings inside of like a horse corral if it makes sense and we were locked in there at night and uh we could sit you know obviously we were undercover with guards with guns but then we could sit outside of those on the old plaster chair or something during the day

and

it was

it was just We started to kind of get to know the guards, who was nasty, who wasn't so nasty, because

we were like something out of a movie to them and these are young guys you know men and women but only the men and gardeners so we were like this it was like being in a zoo but on the other side you know damn and um i remember

some would creep up at night and uh

they would bring us cigarettes right the boss would bring us cigarettes like we wanted to smoke so the guards would come because they wanted cigarettes you know at like midnight or whatever And they might bring us a couple of pieces of yuca and we'd trade them cigarettes.

You know, it was just crazy.

And in that camp is where we got bombed.

There must have been, and I'm only guessing because of the trails and the activity, but about,

I don't know, I'm going to guess 500 yards away.

must have been an old camp.

Because one night

there were Kafirs, Jets, then the OB-10s,

and they came in and bombed the shit out of the camp.

And that was pretty scary because

you'd hear the shrapnel from the bombs just ripping through the leaves and the trees.

And Mark is locked in a box.

Tom's locked in a box.

I'm locked in a box.

They weren't letting us out.

And they're bombing the shit out of the camp right next to us.

Well,

it wasn't like the U.S.

with precision-guided weapons.

Shit can go astray.

That was pretty terrifying.

Scared the shit out of of me.

Oh, bad.

You know, and

what started scaring me worse was

how open these guys were to detection, but I was surprised that nobody was detecting our camp.

So

they had a cistern.

Anywhere in Latin America, you see black tanks, 250, 500 gallons, and people put them up on the roof or something, and they fill them with water, and that's how you walk.

So for us, inside this little corral, they built this platform.

And the platform had a black cistern filled with water.

They'd pump water, have a little generator, pump water out of the river to it, had a toilet up there on top of it.

You're like 15 foot off the ground or maybe 10 foot and a toilet.

So you do your business sitting on a toilet.

Hey, Tom, Amark, what are you doing here?

Sitting there.

But I'm like, I saw those.

from my aircraft all the time.

I could tell you how much water is in.

It's just a heat signature, right?

So if it's half full, you could tell, right?

And it was out in the middle of nowhere, open.

And

a couple aircraft would be circling our camp.

And I'm like, there's no way they can't see this.

There's just, so what I was scared was they're going to see it and come back and bomb us.

They didn't know if we're there or not, but they never did.

They never did.

And then after that, we were moved to a larger camp.

where you put in with the politicians and the Columbia military and they were separated.

It was a big fenced in area area where there was like 20 of them inside like a little cabin that was built.

And then, you know, the seven Colombian politicians and the three of us on the other side.

And

as big as it was, it was never found.

I just,

I mean,

I'm just dumbfounded.

Because I knew in our aircraft, if we got even anywhere in the vicinity of that,

we'd have seen it.

So I just didn't,

what's going on.

You know, I mean,

something we skipped over is your wife is back home in the States pregnant with twins, correct?

She wasn't my wife.

She wasn't my wife.

To be

just open honest here,

she was a Colombian flight attendant that I met.

And

she ended up pregnant.

And so, yeah, we weren't even married.

And my moral compass didn't look so good because I had a girlfriend in the States too.

You know, that wasn't, you know, I was wrong what I was doing, but nonetheless, that's the truth.

And so

I'm thinking, oh, that's on my mind, right?

What am I going to do?

You know, what am I going to do?

And

it was a lot, lot.

And all you could do is think,

right?

All you can do is think.

And I remember one day,

I was worried about the three of us because I saw Mark and Tom in this little corral and they had their plastic chair that we could sit on.

Each got a plastic chair and they got toothbrushes and they're just cleaning their chair because they can't, there's nothing.

It's like, where are we going here?

You know?

Shit.

And

what I understand now.

It's almost like decompression in a sense

you're having to get used to and cope with your new environment and that's a a learning process, right?

And I think

as Americans, we are used to being in control of our environment and making decisions.

There's absolutely no control.

You're a rat in a cage,

and you have to make an adjustment.

Some people call it prisoner brain.

That might be an accurate statement,

but there are big changes.

Thank God at the time

that somebody didn't say, Hey, you got 1,950 more days.

I wouldn't have wanted to know that.

So

I would say.

Did you have any idea the concept of time?

Yeah.

Yeah, we had a rough idea of time.

The guards had watches.

They'd tell you what time it is, whatever, you know.

But

dates,

weeks, months, no.

We had a rough idea, but the concept we live on a day-to-day basis here where you live here whatever no

no

and the thing for us is we have no information

we would not get to where somebody had a radio and some news for

nine more months holy

man so we had no idea what the status of our families was

You know, it would be,

let me see,

A year into it, a year and a half until we did our first proof of life.

Then we found out Tommy was dead.

Sardin Cruz was dead.

You know, we had news about our families.

How'd they do the proof of life?

They took us into a village

and

there must have been a couple hundred farks, little town.

We drove in a truck.

They had us in the back of a truck.

But they took us by river through the jungle.

And I'll never forget the bridge.

And I thought, if I ever get out and I'm back airborne again, this is my, we find this fucking bridge, I'm going to find this motherfucker.

It was over the river, I'd recognize it today.

And

there,

Enrique Botero, who's a liberal left-wing reporter, had been in the States trying to contact our families, but then he brings us newspapers, Miami Herald and all from the airport in Miami when he flew back because he knew he's going to film a proof of life with us.

Didn't give a

what a piece of shit.

Left-leaning reporter.

And so I remember they bring us to this like

just a jungle kind of cabin, couple cabins.

And we see these important people or people who we knew or, you know,

and Botera comes in and talks to us for the proof of life.

But the night before, Sumbra comes in and goes, hey, if you hear an airplane tonight, don't worry about it.

It's all good.

So he flies in on a Cessna and lands on a strip, bringing gifts for us out of the airport in Miami and shit.

What?

Yeah, yeah.

He's a reporter that works with the FARC.

They let him come into the jungle and film us for political purposes.

Yeah,

he could have dined him out and yeah, yeah.

How about that?

How about that?

Are you fucking kidding me?

Nope.

You know, and we get there and they make us mashed potatoes and steak and, you know, but still in the jungle, right?

And they're giving us what we want.

And we saw ice for the first time in almost a year.

Here's ice water.

Like, the fuck's going on.

It was just a setup to do the proof of life.

And what do you say?

What do I know about my family?

What's going on?

Who's alive?

Who's dead?

You know?

And

it was just for propaganda purposes.

But sick to me that a reporter has this much info and doesn't.

Have you ever met him?

Yeah.

Yeah.

How did that go?

I'd kill him

if I could.

I mean, it's

yeah.

You mean let him since then?

No, not after that.

Not after the interview, no.

No, no.

He actually wanted to after we got out.

I was like, no, I'm sorry.

What would you say to him right now?

I'd fucking kill him.

What's his name?

Botero.

I think it's Jorge Enrique Botero, yeah.

You know, and he thinks he's doing some kind of job, but he's a lefty, you know, out-communist sympathizer.

Tanya Niemeyer, she's a Dutch girl, and she's, I believe, she's got a red notice on her travel.

I I just talked to my FBI

supervisor.

Basically, they watch us a few months ago.

And Tanya was, she's Dutch

and she taught English.

So she came to

Bogota

and became an urban gorilla.

Are you shitting me?

Nope, nope, nope.

And join the fucking gorilla.

And

yeah,

yeah, Tanya Niemeyer.

And so I don't know if she's been able to get out of Colombia or not because the FBI, we've got a red notice on her.

She can't not travel because she wants to go home,

you know, I guess, back to the Netherlands, but she's living in Colombia.

Yeah, I'd hang her from a tree.

And I remember when we met her at the proof of life, and here comes this woman all dressed clean in like new camo and got her sidearm on, like she's a model or something.

And her English was very, very good, perfect.

And so I said,

what color is your passport?

She was like,

that's funny, isn't it?

I said, what color is your passport?

I know you're not Colombian.

What I thought she was, was the Cubans train students, right?

And then they bring them in.

So I thought she might have been

one of the student.

communists out of Cuba that was brought in there, which turned out not to be true.

She just got recruited in Colombia, was a left-wing sympathizer and joined the guerrilla as she's teaching people English in Colombia.

Nothing, you know,

just out there going to, you know.

So she was there to interview us in English.

She conducted the interview.

And Mona Hohoy, and there's a great video of him getting bombed and killed.

He reads a pronouncement to the United States of America.

And

the reason that they're

keeping us hostages, we violated Colombian airspace.

Yeah.

According to new reports, central banks around the world may be buying twice as much gold as official numbers suggest.

You heard that right.

Twice as much.

And get this, some are bypassing the traditional markets and buying gold directly from miners in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

That means no U.S.

dollars, just straight physical gold.

The shift isn't just symbolic.

It could be strategic.

They could be looking to bypass western financial systems.

So if central banks are scrambling to reduce their dollar exposure and hold more physical gold, should you do the same?

That's where the award-winning precious metals company Goldco comes in.

Right now, you can get a free 2025 gold and silver kit and learn more about how gold and silver can help you protect your savings.

And all you have to do is visit SeanlikesGold.com.

Plus, if you qualify, you could get up to 10% back in bonus silver just for getting started.

Go to SeanlikesGold.com.

That's SeanlikesGold.com.

Performance may vary.

You should always consult with your financial and tax professional.

When I started this podcast, it seemed like I had to figure it out all on my own.

It was overwhelming.

When you're starting something new, it seems like your to-do list just keeps growing and it can overrun your entire life.

Finding the right tool can be such a game changer.

For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify.

Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S., from household names to brands just getting started.

I use Shopify to power my own business so I can keep bringing you Vigilance Elite gummy bears.

With hundreds of ready-to-use templates, Shopify helps you build online and is packed with helpful AI tools to accelerate your content creation.

And like a marketing team, Shopify can create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are.

Shopify is your commerce expert with world-class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping and beyond.

If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify.

Turn your big business idea into

with Shopify on your side.

Sign up for your one month, $1 per month trial period and start selling today at shopify.com slash srs.

Go to shopify.com slash srs.

Shopify.com slash srs.

What does feeling safe at home really mean to you?

For a long time, I thought it was enough to have good locks and maybe an alarm that would make a lot of noise if someone actually broke in.

But I've realized that true security takes more.

A system that works to prevent that break-in from ever happening in the first place.

That's why I trust SimplySafe to protect my home and family.

It's about security that is proactive, not just reactive, and I've been using their system for years.

Now, I feel confident knowing I'm protected with SimplySafe's new active guard outdoor protection that helps stop break-ins before they happen.

Their AI-powered cameras and live monitoring agents can help detect suspicious activity around your property.

And if someone's lurking, agents talk to them in real time, turn on spotlights, and can call the police proactively deterring crime before it even starts.

There's no contracts, no hidden fees, and a 60-day money-back guarantee.

Visit simplysafe.com/slash SRS to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan to get your first month free.

That's simplysafe.com/slash SRS.

There's no safe like SimplySafe.

What kind of questions did they ask you?

Nothing.

They set us up.

They told us, Mark, they told us that Tom and

they got us in a room and there's other gorillas behind us, right?

And they purposely put a couple small female gorillas armed behind us to make us look big and them, you know, like to make them like we're weak Americans.

And they put camo on us, which I didn't want to wear, but then everything else to wear.

And

they start filming and she does the interview and Botero said, oh, Mark, here's a message from your mom.

You don't think Mark didn't break down?

You know, and then,

oh, here's a Miami Herald.

Oh, you're fucking.

What was the message from his mom?

Just, I love, you know, just

news, right?

And

they didn't, I didn't have anything from my family or Tom's.

And so they wanted us to give a message back to our families on camera.

You know, they're just using our pain for, so we just said basic stuff, we love you.

We didn't do anything more than that.

When Botero handed the fucking Miami Herald to us, I want to kill his ass.

You know, he knows he's coming to see us.

You're in the states trying to get info from our families, so you're facilitating our captivity by helping our captors.

What would you do?

You know,

so

and I and I've always had a special

kind of

distaste for Niemeyer

because

she came to a country of her own free will, educated,

and decided to become a terrorist, right?

And when the peace talks were going out in Cuba, she was there and all this stuff, but she's had a falling out with the FARC ever since.

And I don't know what she's doing, but last time I saw a couple years ago, one of the liberal universities in Colombia gave her a fucking honorary degree.

Wow.

That's fucking enraging.

That is fucking enraging.

So

people say, do you hate him?

I'm like, no,

because it would eat me alive.

I had to let it go.

But,

you know, when I see a guy's in a Supermax now and you got an American lawyer saying he's a victim and he's all this stuff.

And I'm like, a victim?

When he supervised what's been done to us?

And then you see all these people get online and

they're just, I don't know what they are, protesters.

I'm like, there's a reason he's in a supermax.

It's not because he's a sweetheart.

So for me,

if you get too wrapped around the axle, it's just going to drag you to the bottom, right?

You got to step back.

You know,

I've talked to other

POWs from Vietnam because I was a hostage.

We weren't.

I always tell people, we're the longest, at one point, we're the longest held hostages in the history of the United States.

We're not the longest held POWs, and there's a difference.

I don't want to take anything away from the POW community, right?

You know?

And so I have spoken with some folks who spent time in the Hanoa Hilton and stuff like that, you know.

Funny how our minds kind of did the same thing just to survive.

But,

you know, it,

you know, we're just lucky to be here, man.

You know, I mean,

two of us didn't make it after the crash, crash, and then a few of our friends afterwards died in another crash looking for us in Colombia.

Close friends.

When did you hear about that?

I didn't hear about that until, I think, the proof of life, but I'm not sure.

I mean, we're, you know, we're just, we're in a box.

So.

How did they tell you that your comrades had been, that they assassinated your comrades?

They just let us know.

I think, I don't know if it was Botero or if it was Tanya speaking English to us.

Let us know.

Oh, yeah, it was her.

They let us know that

they were dead.

But then she also told us something.

She goes, You know, you guys are probably going to die.

I'm looking at her, like, what do you mean?

She goes, Well,

we had some other folks that were killed during a rescue, and they're planning to rescue you, but you're probably going to die.

You're probably not going home.

That's what she said.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What would you do?

I mean, like, well, you know, it's beyond insanity, Sean.

It's not like, you know, it's, it's, you're sitting here.

This shit is actually going down.

This isn't a story or a movie.

We're here in the middle of it, you know?

So that's when I say the cruelty of people

can be,

you know, unimaginable.

Yeah, you guys are going to die.

I was like, wow.

Wow.

And then

what did you think when she said that?

I remember Tom leaning over me and telling me, he said, Keith, just remember, they're filming us right now.

I think they're filming us.

I said, yeah, okay, that's fine.

I thought the odds are that we might die in a rescue if it wasn't done by the right people.

But

we were so overwhelmed with emotion at that moment that you're over a year in captivity, whatever, and here's information on your family, your buddies are dead.

It just all hit us at one time, right?

So I was just trying to process everything.

Where did you think your buddies were at before that?

Before you found out?

We didn't know.

Well, maybe they're in another camp.

Maybe they just separate us.

We didn't know.

We didn't know.

Why did they kill him?

Because they tried to escape.

I knew Tommy's

there was, and Tommy would have never survived captivity.

Hell no.

He'd have killed him.

You couldn't put Tommy in a cage.

Sorry.

You know,

I actually, his wife just recently passed.

And

I was talking to one of his sons.

And,

you know, I said, Tommy would have never made it.

He couldn't have.

He could have never been caged.

My belief.

Why do you say that?

Just his personality.

There was never a second, never a second.

I know, you know, and he was my mentor.

He's the one that got me hired.

I knew as soon as he walked away from that plane, I know Tommy.

He was just looking at the right moment to pop smoke.

That was his personality.

You know, I mean, and

he would have never,

let me put it this way.

Tommy could do anything he wanted to do, but he would have never let himself choose to be a captive.

What was the

sorry for all the questions coming up from previous, but my mind's just spinning.

When you threw the M4 and the B and the Berettas down the hill,

and I know

the

Indig guy that was with you was pissed off.

What did the rest of them think?

Nobody.

Nobody was really.

It was just Cruz and I.

Look, there was.

Are you going to fight a fight you can't lose?

Right?

Fight a fight you cannot lose?

No, fight a fight you're not.

I'm sorry.

That you know you can't win.

That you can't win.

Are you looking at surviving or just going out?

I wasn't looking at committing suicide.

I get it.

I'm just killing it.

I wanted to live to fight another day.

Yeah.

And so

that was just, I looked, Cruz is like, we got to start shooting.

I looked and I'm like, no, we don't.

I mean, there were ants everywhere.

I said, no bad decisions.

And I remember we're at the bottom when they gave us lemonade.

And they took my wallet.

And the only thing I had in our one to keep was a picture of my little 10-year-old son.

And they wouldn't, it still makes me cry now.

I said, can I have the picture?

No.

It's all right.

And Tommy looks at me and he goes,

what do you think, Keith?

I said, we're fucked.

He goes, what?

I said, we're fucked.

But maybe tomorrow we're not.

All we're going to do is fucking live.

My mindset was Mark's was the same way.

Tom, all of us, we just wanted to live.

So I didn't care what it took to survive.

I just, I wanted to live.

I mean, it's not complicated.

And you have a choice, step in a hole and just give up or just keep rolling.

And all three of us did that.

You know, we have very distinct personalities,

but

we all did it in our own way.

You know.

And so

I remember the three of us

being tied up in a box a quarter the size of this room that was just a cage, right?

You know,

hard to get along that way 24-7, isn't it?

You're going to have some arguments, you know?

That's just the way things are, but we made it out.

What kind of stuff are you guys arguing about?

Stupid shit.

Like what?

Mark and I had an argument one night over which fighter was better in World War II.

It's like so stupid, right?

You're like this, you're this, no, motherfucker, no, motherfucker, no, fuck you, no, fuck you, you know, like it's just, it's got to let off somewhere, right?

And

I remember we finally got a radio because we started negotiating with the guards and

you know, we had a covert headphone and we, there was a, it's really sick, but there was a

radio station called Voices of the Sequestros, Voices of the Hostages.

And it was run out of Bogota.

A guy did this.

And on Sunday nights between 12 and 2, everybody's family would go down there and leave messages, and it was shortwave.

So you get messages from your family.

We didn't get any, not for years, only occasionally.

But how sick that every

Saturday night or whatever, you go down at one o'clock in the morning and you leave a message for your son or your husband, who's been held in your country for six years.

We live for those things.

Yeah, that's the political situation, right?

What kind of messages were coming in?

People dying, birthdays, Christmas, love you.

You know, hey, your father died.

You know,

we had a

police captain,

he was dying.

And the Pope

and his daughter got on the radio live, begging the FARC to let him go.

He had been captured when she was like seven.

And

he was a fighting motherfucker, but now he was sick.

And I don't know what the condition was, but his legs were purple all the way up to his chest.

And when we had real pressure on him, us, and we were on a death march, he was marching with us.

He couldn't march.

So he's crawling through the jungle with a chain around his neck on all fours, trying to keep up with a column.

So the Colombian soldiers were going to go fucking nuts.

It was too much for them to see.

So they took him out of chains.

And he's sitting on the ground next to me and Mark.

And we had in our little bowls,

we had five spoonfuls basically of watery red beans and rice like every 24 hours to sustain it.

Then he goes here,

you two eat

mine.

And we're like, no,

what the fuck's wrong with you?

He goes, I'm dying, man.

You guys aren't.

I'm dead.

I'm already dead.

And he fucking died.

Soon later, we were separated.

He was just skeleton.

Couldn't just let him fucking go.

He had no political value.

We weren't eating his red beans and rice.

We forced him to eat it.

But he was giving it to us.

He knew he was dead.

He knew he was dying.

Did you hear his daughter on the radio?

Please, can you just let my father father go?

And the Pope, the Pope himself, asked

that's crimes against humanity, you think.

So you see this stuff, and it's like,

mercy on you, motherfuckers?

You know.

When you got to the final camp,

where they had the

politicals,

yeah, what a welcome that was.

So

it's a big

fenced in area with a fence between it, living on one side for the soldiers and the police, and living for the seven politicians.

So we get there by boat, and they bring us up.

And I remember as we're walking up, we see all the Colombian police coming up, right?

And they were playing soccer.

Little soccer ball.

That's all I did all day long and inside

a fucking cage.

And Mark goes, look at the chains.

So outside the gate to get into each side was a rack.

And these chains are not like something you have a dog on.

I mean, these are big, heavy chains.

Chains and locks, chains and locks, chains and locks, chains and locks.

I was going to bring it to show you,

but I don't want to lose it anywhere on an airline flight.

But I have my lock that was around my neck.

And it's a paperweight on my desk.

And so I'll send you a picture of it.

But

I was like, fuck, chains.

Mark spotted them first.

He goes, those are for us, Dean.

I was like, fuck.

So they tour us around the little walkway, and all the Colombian soldiers come running up to the gate, right?

One guy in particular, his hair was all the way down to his calf.

He had not cut his hair since he'd been captured.

And he says to us in broken English,

I'm glad you're here, but I'm not glad you're here.

I said, why?

He said, because Americans never leave their people behind.

So if you're here, they're going to find us.

Kind of poignant, wasn't it?

It'd take a few years, but it happened.

You know?

So they did not want to be separated from us.

I would have been the same way.

You know, I'd have been the same way.

But yeah, we were in that camp for, gosh, nine months or so.

I might be off by a month or two before we were moved and split up because the pressure from the military just got too much.

What kind of pressure?

Just presence on the ground, cutting off routes on, you know, the rivers were like a road, right?

So

there's a video on YouTube of these three

gorillas and Cayucas, which are their aluminum canoes with a 40-horse motor on the back.

And they just turn.

they got supplies, they're bringing it to a camp, and they run into Colombian Army sitting on the river, and it was a massacre, man.

I mean, they just, it was a massacre.

What started to happen was

the Colombian military started doing more permanent operations.

Usually they go into an area for 45 days or 90 days, and they leave.

Well, now they're moving into areas, and we ain't going over.

We're here for six months, right?

But it upsets the logistics network for the gorilla who need beans and bullets and rice.

And, you know, you need Codex pads for women and uniforms.

Like, you break up their ability to live comfortably.

And they started pushing.

Now, I don't know if that was pushed by our people, but Plan Columbia changed a lot because it put the money and the horsepower behind the Colombian army to do things.

But I think

that we, the three of us, are one of the big factors that everybody got rescued.

And it's not because Keith and Mark and Tom were politically important people.

The moment you took the three guerrillas or you took the three Americans hostage, you opened up the U.S.'s ability to work against the guerrilla directly.

Because under Plan Columbia, we couldn't, right?

I saw a guerrilla all the time.

I couldn't do anything except report it when I got back.

And I told the bosses, I said, you guys fucked up.

I said, you gave president, your president that you hate so much, you gave him the biggest gift in the world.

You captured us.

Now we can help you guys freely.

And that's what we did.

That's what we did.

It was a total miscalculation on their part.

If it would have been me and I was running the FARC,

I would have hand-delivered us freshly shaved and showered with some extra cash in our pocket to go home to Disney World right to the embassy steps and said, sorry, I'm not fucking with you.

And intelligence side, militarily, it was the worst mistake they could have made.

Because when you start flipping rocks looking for us, you find other things.

You know, and that's what happened.

How many camps did you wind up in?

Shit, I can't count them.

Okay, I'll count the main camps.

First one, second one, third one.

There was another one, maybe four main camps.

A camp after that was just a hammock,

mosquito net, and a tarp over your head.

We were just on the move.

And how long was it before you guys could talk to each other?

Oh, by the time we got to the politicians and all, we were talking then.

How long had that been?

Seven months, maybe?

Eight months?

Seven months?

Eight months, yeah.

Seven months of no talking.

Pretty much.

Nothing.

I could be off.

Mark's memory is way better than mine.

He always goes, no, you know, but yeah, we lost our voices, basically.

And, you know, I...

There were frustrating things too.

Like for poor Tom, okay, this is what sucked.

Tom spoke fluent Spanish.

We didn't.

So Tom was a translator.

24-7, we got to get him to ask for stupid shit for these guys, which put more stress on him, right?

You know,

it was pretty evil.

And

when we got to the camp of the politicians, that was even worse.

Because they thought the

one politician said, please don't let those nasty Americans in here.

One motherfucker?

Oh, they sleep with whores.

we sleep with whores

you're calling politician you haven't slept with a whore do you know what goes on it's good i was like but it was just this arrogance this arrogance that no we don't want them in here they didn't want to share any space they wanted us out in the mud instead of saying space inside there

talk about a class system

that's the way they treat their own people well they have it

And I remember

I remember old Lucho, senator, senator, right?

You know,

one day we're sitting there in the compound and there's a table.

So Consuelo was a congressman, had to listen to her husband die on the radio.

And Big Cat, what we nicknamed him big cat, he's this big dude and he's heavy, but he move like smoke.

Just a joke.

So we just named him the big cat.

So he's kind of trying to talk to me one day and he's feeling me out to see, like,

you know, do I have any money or what's it like in the States?

And he's like, do you have a boat?

And I'm like, yeah, I got a boat.

He said, can you draw me a picture of it?

So I drew a picture of this fucking giant, like, you know, Viking sport fish.

And I watched him swear.

She knew I was sucking him down.

Just, you know, the hook was going, the hook was going.

And they care about platica, money, and what's your last name.

And so

big cat goes, holy shit.

And he runs into the little hoosh and he shows Lucho what's going on.

And Lucho goes, Keith, you know, like what?

He goes, what what does an American contractor make?

I said, a whole lot more than a Columbian senator.

That's a motherfucker.

You fuck stick, you know.

But that's how they judge people, right?

And

some people did stuff in captivity and said, oh,

I was in captivity.

It caused me to do those things.

Bullshit.

You find out who you really are in captivity.

It's like peeling that onion layer back.

You find out who you are.

And I remember

they would bring bowls.

This camp, we actually could sometimes get like tomatoes and onions.

They bring a big bowl of like cut tomatoes and onions and maybe some yucca and a big bowl of rice and, you know, a bowl of lentils, which I still love, hate them already.

I love lentils, man.

So

we get into a line.

The dirtbag Americans, right?

We're not politicians or any stuff.

And so

if Mark and I are there, we're like, okay, well, just take what you need, right?

We get there, everything's gone.

We're all living in a box together, right?

And so finally, the gorilla put a stop to that and said, hey, fuck that.

And one of us would dish out the food so we could do it fairly.

And they take a couple of the politicians that take vegetables and I'll not even eat them.

Let them rot.

We're starving.

Well, I need those.

I'm different.

I thought we're all human beings here.

So it was very disgusting, you know, some of the elitists, what you'd see them do.

Now I said, no, I know why they kidnapped your ass, you know, but

disappointing too in humanity.

You think in something like that, we'd all kind of bond up?

No.

No shit.

No.

I never would have thought that.

I don't want to sit here and like disparage them personally or whatever, because I've said some very nasty shit about one of them in particular.

But it's like, hey.

What's wrong with you?

You know?

And that's where one of them was pregnant.

That's where I was going next.

And

how she stayed sane,

what she went through,

I mean, we got into the, if you want to ask me the question, set it up.

But, you know, we got into that camp and there was a few women there, right?

And so

Clara was an attorney.

And she was working on Ingrid Bettencourt's presidential election.

And then you had another woman there, Consuela, who was next to us.

We called her Big Bama, but just like I said, she talked to Mark and I was very kind.

Like

she had to listen to her husband die on the radio, or her daughters tell her, dad's dying.

And then, you know, another woman, one of the senators.

So

Claire is a little eclectic.

She's a little different, right?

But she was a decent person.

And

Mark goes, hey, man, take a look at her.

I'm like, what?

He goes, look.

And she had sweats on.

She had that little egg shape.

She's a very small, petite woman.

Mark goes, I bet she's pregnant.

I said, you think so, man?

He said, yeah, she's pregnant.

Mark saw it first.

And so

as it became obvious she was pregnant,

she got no care, no anything.

I think her prenatal care was an extra box of crackers and some fucking canned milk.

And

I remember,

you know, she was taken hostage with Ingrid Bettencourt, right?

And

just trying to protect reputation,

Betancourt's like, oh no, no, no, no, there are some other hostages, civilians, and they had a relationship.

No, she slept with a gorilla.

She was just trying to get free.

She thought, if I get pregnant, they got to let me go.

Fuck no, they don't.

And so.

So they didn't rape her.

No.

It was a plan.

No, no, it was a plan.

That wouldn't have been allowed.

Not allowed at all.

Not given the credit, but that wasn't allowed.

So

they take her out when she's about to deliver, but she's not delivering.

And so

one night we hear a baby screaming in the fucking camp.

Now, of course, the women that are with us are either grandmothers or moms.

They're, you know, their radar's up.

Like three days later, maybe I could be off four or five days.

And we would hear the baby screaming.

They bring the baby back with Clara into the camp, baby into the camp, right?

And the baby is wrapped up from head to toe

and

they give it to us.

Well,

here's how Clara gave birth.

They got a guy who's supposedly the medic that's never had medical training in his life, just self-taught guy of a book.

They shoot her at

morphine, stick her on a fucking table, and they cut her guts open to try to get the baby out.

Holy shit.

I got to give a woman strength.

You got to get whatever, man.

You got to give.

So

in trying to get the baby out, Milton, who would later take over for us, never spent a day in a school or anything,

broke the baby's arm in half trying to get around her stomach.

So when they bring the baby back to us, the baby's drugged up and the arms wrapped.

Emmanuel is what Clara named him.

How Clara stayed sane with that,

I give her kudos.

And so Clara,

eventually, we couldn't stop the baby from crying.

And Mark goes, I think they're drugging the baby up.

Mark was pretty on to it.

There's a reason that he was an intel analyst.

You know, I was pretty good, but he sees, he said, they're drugging the baby up.

So they took the baby from Clara.

So here's Clara laying in a bunk next to me, just hard wood.

When I say bunk, it's just wood pallets, right?

And the baby's crying at night, and she'd go call his name at the fence.

Emanuel, Emanuel.

And then you see another gorilla girl carrying your baby when we're marching and leaving, and you're sitting there on the ground, and they won't even let you touch the baby.

And you fucking stay sane, give that woman credit.

We didn't agree on a lot of things, but

give her credit.

They cut her.

They cut her.

they cut her did a c-section on a table in the fucking jungle

and when they sewed her up it was like this oh oh my god and she survived

i gotta say tough man

she survived and here was the worst thing or no the best thing

they went and gave the baby when they separated Claire from the baby, they gave the baby to some campesinos that were FARC sympathizers.

You know what the campesinos did?

Straight to the fucking government and handed the kid over.

So the kid got care, got everything.

And a little while later on the radio and all the government's talking about, hey, hey, man, well, they don't even know that the kids, the government care, you know, here's what we did for the kid.

He's in good shape.

And the president comes out.

Yeah, he's in good shape.

We've had him.

We've had him for a fucking year.

So mud on the face of the leadership, right?

And they released her on just like trying to gain some, yeah, but they released Clara.

But I don't care.

You know, I thought Clara was a little odd and a little different, but she was an attorney.

And,

but to see a woman go through that,

I got a lot of respect for her, man.

I got a lot of respect for that.

You know, and

how long was the baby in there before they gave it away?

I think that once they separated the baby with Clara, I think from what I, maybe months until that couple got out and turned it into the government, which was the right thing.

I mean, they do.

They might have got a reward or I don't know.

But Emmanuel,

well, I haven't heard in a few years, but after we're freed, he's with his mom.

He's healthy.

They're living together.

He's okay,

right?

Got fixed.

I mean, so a happy ending.

But that's what animals are, and they're animals.

You know?

So for me,

Just sitting there watching that, you know, the pain that

person would go through was just unbelievable.

More disgusting stuff that people are capable of, but how could you do that to a baby, right?

You know?

I mean, so for us,

another one on the Patreon folks had a question, the initial setup out there about what is captivity like in the jungle with the FARC.

The best way I can say it is groundhog day for five and a half years or 10 years, no matter how long you're there.

It's all green.

You're going to eat rice, lentils, lentils, rice, maybe some fish if they catch them in the river.

Hopefully, a little fried yucca.

Okay.

And you're just going to move from spot to spot to spot to spot, hiding.

That's all you do.

And you can never see more than 20 or 30 yards unless you're on the move and you see something.

It's Groundhog Day.

It's just what is going to come up next.

You know, what problem is going to come up next?

You know, we were being moved,

and

my company makes, I retired from, I have to say, Northrop did the right thing for the families.

Northrop Rubin, I can't say enough about what they did for the families while we were gone.

But

what did they do for the families?

A good example, my son said to me, he said, Dad,

you want to know how to tell what size corporate jet you're on?

I said, what's that?

He said, the size of the flat screen TV, making a joke.

But they took care of the families.

They paid us, which they didn't have to do.

The government and Longshoreman's Act could have come in and paid it.

They said, no, they're going to get full pay.

They have their jobs.

They had a family service person that would come and visit with each family regularly, update us politically.

I mean, they did what they did all that they could do.

And they could have cut us loose.

The government was like, well, we'll take this over.

And they're like, no, no, no.

They're our employees.

We're going to do right by then.

So I have to give them credit.

You know, they did right by us.

And

I remember,

you know, we're on the run one day, and this is getting close to the end to the rescue, maybe a year out, maybe less.

And so this guy, we're sitting there on the side of the damn river, and we're just going down a river.

We're running, though.

We know there's pressure on us.

And

this guy walks up with this tube,

you know, and he said, the commandant wants to know what this is.

Well, it's a it's a camera system that sits on the ground.

You guys install them places.

Well, this one was called Scorpion, and it's made by my company, proudly so, right?

So I was like, fuck, where did you get that?

So he's trying to take it off.

And I said, don't do that.

And he goes, well, I said, because it's pressurized.

And he said, well, will you explain this to us?

And I said, yeah, can we have some coffee?

Small trade.

But this is one of our little ground sensors, right?

I mean, you can just Google it on.

It's nothing.

It's no big classified system, but

I was thinking, fuck, our people are here.

And we had just heard on the radio, and the U.S.

government admitted that

some of your folks in the seventh group were on the ground with the Colombians.

I was like, shit, they're finally fucking here.

So there's a GPS antenna that goes with it or whatever.

The office is there and he's like, can I plug this into my GPS?

Will it make it better?

I said, no.

And he goes, this is one of your cameras.

I didn't say it's one of the North that we made.

I said, yeah, it's a camera system.

He said, well, how many do you guys have, you know?

I said, thousands.

I was trying to, right.

But essentially, what happened was,

but I found out later that the Columbian team had put this camera in.

And I will leave,

you don't just have one camera.

I'll just leave it that way.

You're walking into

a net of shit.

But it was fucked up.

This camera was still white.

They didn't even fucking paint it green or black or anything.

And so it's buried in the riverside or in some leaves and gorilla goes to take a piss and he's peeing on it.

I was like, fuck.

So

Goffas is looking at me.

He goes, Keith,

is this good?

I said, not for you.

What do you want me to tell you?

I mean, I've been with him for years.

I mean,

he says, okay.

So they gave it to a Cayuka to take to the bosses.

I learned later that Cayuka got whacked and they got the camera back.

But it's, you know,

it's just a, it's a ground sensor.

It's no big top secret deal.

Really, employment stuff is stuff that I'd never talk about, but it's, you know, but I was like, fucking hey, motherfucker, someone's here.

And that made them nervous

because.

The Colombians would never operate in small teams, you know.

You know, our doctrine being a little little bit different.

Everybody was like, holy, and I, as soon as I got back, I told everybody what it was,

you know.

And so

there were some mistakes made in trying to get the stuff, but

and that camera actually didn't even get good pictures of us, and we all passed by it.

So it's even better that they found it because the psychological impact on the gorilla was the boss was like, oh shit, they're in our backyard.

They're fucking here.

And we were like, I had a woody dude.

I was just like,

hell yeah.

How many years in was that?

Four and a half?

Over four?

Four and a half years.

Yeah.

About a year before we got out.

Yeah.

What kept you going?

Just want to get home, yeah.

All three of us, we just want to get home.

Maybe for different reasons.

I just,

I wasn't dying there.

It's just that I, look, I love my family.

I miss my family and things like that.

And you would do whatever you can to get back for that.

But me, my drive was I felt defeated dying there.

I don't know if that makes sense, but that's the only way I can, you know, put it.

You know, obviously you want to see your kids, right?

I didn't know if my dad, my dad, and I had had kind of a rough relationship and weren't on good speaking terms like we should be, just stupid arguments, right?

It's like, is my dad still alive?

You know, you don't know anything.

I just wanted to get home, Sean.

You know,

and everybody has their own personal drive.

I think,

you know,

I think, I just think we're different.

Look around this room, look at this country.

I just think we're different.

I just want to get back to this.

I didn't care.

I didn't care if I was working somewhere hauling wood at a construction site, living in an old beat-up trailer.

I just want to get home and have some ice.

It was just,

I'm not fucking dying here.

That's like to coach each other?

Oh, we both be up and down.

Somebody's strong one day, somebody's weak the other day.

Sometimes, you know, Mark's strong, I'm down.

He's like, no, bro, no, bro.

Tom, we called him the curmudgeon.

I said, Tom, you know, your jokes were so bad.

Before he got captured, it took us four years in the jungle to start laughing at your dumbass jokes.

And then we figured out that Tom's really funny.

And you've heard every story that you can tell when you're face-to-face locked up with somebody, right?

So there's nothing new,

you know.

So, you know, everybody had a drive to get home.

That was it.

And, and, uh,

and I'm not necessarily going to say it was just their loved ones.

It was just something amongst the three of us that we ain't, we're not digging a hole here.

I don't care.

We're going one more day.

You know, and that was day to day.

That's the way you get out of it.

Yeah.

Any torture?

Um, so what do you call torture?

Planned torture like RPOWs went through in Vietnam?

No.

But I remember like one day

I'm sliding into the river and through my boots, all these spines, they're about two inches long, go into my bed.

There's like seven or eight of them embedded in my bed.

So the medic there was a real asshole, what they called their medic was fucking with me when he'd take the spines out of my toes and my feet and all, just making it, they're like blades on them, just making it, you know,

just making it hurt on purpose, shit like that.

But I think torture comes in many ways.

It's not necessarily breaking somebody's hands or hooking a battery up to them like in the movies or something.

Or, you know, torture is denial of basic,

you know, human needs.

Going five years.

Right?

Torture is no food, no medical care.

You know, there's a psychological component.

I guess that's been interrogation type torture.

No, they never, they weren't, they didn't give a shit about what we knew.

We were just, and Tom said it.

Tom said it perfectly.

He said, we're just hanging meat.

They don't want anything from us.

We're just a commodity.

And that's all we were.

I would have thought,

like I told one of the commandantes,

I'm like, you think we didn't see you all the time?

They wouldn't believe me.

We could be over you, and I just have one push of the satcom, I could report live physician, hit it with a laser and give away your coordinates.

I wasn't allowed to do that.

We were on a plane.

We couldn't do that.

We couldn't fight against the guerrilla directly.

We were against drug targets.

And the moment they captured us, that rule handcuffs were off.

They didn't believe it.

I've seen them a million times.

Well, not a million.

That's exactly.

But we saw them frequently.

And I really didn't realize until captivity, some of the stuff we saw that we didn't think was guerrilla was guerrilla activity.

Like what?

Um,

I can tell you what a Cayuka, which is a big aluminum canoe, you'd see it and where they're dressed.

You thought, oh, that's a couple campesinos.

Nope, nope, those are gorillas dressed like campesinos.

I could tell by the way the boat is, what they've got in it, what they're hauling.

I could look a little closer at them, especially the area where you're at.

They're the only ones operating there.

So,

sad story

was, I think it was four or five fishermen were murdered because of us.

They saw us.

So.

Did you see it?

No.

One of, I would say, the most intimidating gorillas I ever saw, hands down, was Hentile.

Hentile Duarte.

Supposedly he was killed about 10 months ago.

Mark and I are wondered if it was fake.

He was part of the peace process

in cuba but then went back to the jungle he didn't agree with what's going on he left cuba to go back to the jungle to talk some guys in to some other leaders hey quit fucking around get a part of the peace process and he just stayed with them

but we meet duarte one morning we're all uncovered just in hammocks tied to trees right next to a river and they're going to move us

so uh They put us in a boat.

It was like a runabout, some weird, you know, just, but it had like four benches in it, 200-horse horse motor on it.

And they put me right behind Duarte and Mark right behind Duarte.

And then Tom was next to us.

And I look over there and the whole fucking floor, there must have been a dozen RPGs.

Their boots are on top of them.

A couple M60s that I remember, ammo, and I'm like, fuck, I didn't know who this guy was, but he had a presence about him.

I'm sure you've seen guys that you know are serious guys.

There's no, and he was one of those.

So he was joking around and

kind of laughing

and he took us and dropped us off at this spot on the river which is basically the island felt like it was floating.

We're just going to be there for a few days So a few nights later they pick us up at night and they're running us down a river

We're in the same boat that was his boat, but there's nothing in it.

It's just some junior guys moving us and they're just moving us to a more permanent camp

Well, somebody yells helicopter helicopter helicopter and we look behind us in the jungle man There's no ambient light.

You're not not around a city or town, right?

It was a bright full moon, but it looked like a fucking spotlight from a helicopter.

It was unbelievably bright.

And

the guy that was driving just beaches

the boat in front of this fisherman's little shack.

And they take us out of the shack really quick.

And the fishermen walk out and they see us face to face.

They hide us behind the shack and everybody goes, no, it's the fucking moon.

It's not a helicopter.

We get back in the boat and everybody's looking at everybody and the fishermen are two feet from me looking at me.

I'm like, hey, amigo, you know, we get in the boat

and

another fisherman comes up in a little canoe

and they're saying, well, the army's here, the army, because they're questioning, where's the army?

You know, they're trying to avoid the army.

So they take us to this little place, like a concrete boat ramp in the jungle on like a little field, but had, you know canopy over it.

And they put us there

three days later on the news on that river.

It's live.

Five fishermen executed by the FARC.

And so I look at Big Head, who is one of our guards.

We nicknamed all the guards.

He had a booglehead on him.

He goes, Yeah, I know.

Bighead didn't feel good about it.

But they killed him because they saw us.

Shit.

Did you develop relationships with the guards?

Yeah.

How can you, you and I can hate each other, and they can chain you to that chair and chain me to this chair.

At some point, we're going to start talking.

Right?

Do we have Stockholm syndrome?

No.

But when you got a guard that's like 17 years old or 18 years old and he's with you for years and you watch him grow up,

right?

You're going to develop some type of relationship.

Our theory was

if we could treat them with respect, number one, we'd stay out of chains, which didn't work.

But maybe, maybe

that would buy us a second or two of hesitation for them killing us if a disembark came in there trying to get us out and a rescue.

That was our theory.

And so

a few of the guards

secretly, secretly

apologized for us being there,

but said, Hey, this is

not in our control, right?

But we were together for years, so hey, if we had extra smokes, because I didn't smoke, but I'd take the smokes they give us all the time, pass it off to the guard.

Well, if the guard's girlfriend is small, take 10 pounds of her rice and sugar, put it in your ruck.

He's sneaking you in leftover food at one in the morning when he's on guard duty.

You know,

just basic stuff.

And I remember one of them that got killed, he went looking for food.

His name was Mono.

Little, you know, if you're dark, they call you Negro.

If you're light skinned, they call you Mono.

It's just a Latin culture.

It's not a racist thing or whatever.

And Mono got killed.

And he was walking with one of the bad guys, Rogelio.

And I have to admit, I felt a little like, damn, Mono.

You could have been, because he could have been something different, right?

But I remember one night he comes in, he sneaks in.

This was a, if you would have got caught sneaking in, man, it would have been his ass.

He brought Mark and Tom and I some sausages.

And he goes, this is all I can do, guys.

And he said, if you heard that I said something about it in our little communal meeting, if I said something bad about you guys, well, I have to.

He was risking his ass to give us food or sneak us a radio or batteries for a radio so we could hear the news.

You can't have a little empathy for that?

He's never going anywhere.

We get rescued or not, he's there for life right there.

He's never going anywhere.

So,

you know,

they were very curious about the outside world

so we would

we would tell them stories

they're like little kids

and uh

i remember um

one of them was at fort campo when the hurrican or the tornado came through and we lost like half a dozen apaches or something And so the guy goes, man, all your helicopters are gone.

I said, we have more than six helicopters, right?

But their concept was not,

they just didn't understand

the world.

Tom came up with a fucking genius move.

So

there was a

reward for us, each one of us, millions of dollars.

So one night, Big Head says to us, he goes, hey, man, if I can get you out, would you manage my money for me?

I don't know what $5 million looks like.

But he was serious.

He was like, could you help me with that?

We're like, Big Head, if you get us out, yeah, we'll help you with the money.

But he was dead serious.

It was just like a business there, right?

So Tom realized, we knew it, but Tom came up with this genius thing.

He starts drawing in his book.

He drew like 10 pages of just cows, little bitty cows, 10 pages of cars, then a few pages of hot women, right?

Trying to go, you see all this, Big Head?

That's what you get with this money.

Boom, they got it.

And

so we thought, oh, it'd be Big Head's money manager, right?

So I will never forget, I'm giving a debrief, and this is political correctness gone fucking just stupid.

And there are two women from the agency.

And one was a handoff from England working with, it's like a, you know, a trade.

trade.

And so I'm telling the story about what Tom wrote.

She gets pissed off because I mentioned the women, that Tom drew women and you could have women, right?

She just gets all offended.

I'm like, the fuck, I'm not putting women down.

Tom figured out a way to connect with these people, right?

And what do you think a 19-year-old guard wants?

I can tell you what he wants.

He's in the jungle by himself for years, hasn't had a date, right?

But I I thought Tom's idea, and they were furious at a briefing.

Are you serious?

Dead serious, dead serious, dead serious.

I couldn't make that shit up.

But I thought, what a genius idea.

You know, he drew boats, you know, he drew cows, women, trucks.

But I thought that was pretty

heads up,

right?

But they don't know anything.

They asked us one time.

This was really

when I knew one of the guys that I have a distaste for only because of his stupidity, but he was like a recruiter.

So he would go out in the countryside and he would spread the communist word and recruit these young people in, right?

So

one time he's sitting there and he goes, hey, we want to know about your special forces.

And

well, what do you mean you want to know about our special forces?

We need to know something about your special forces.

Yeah.

Did your special forces people teach Keanu reeves those moves in the matrix so we can't shoot him

i tell kiana reeves i know that but in the movie when he's going like this and the bullets are going past they really thought that he was serious holy

what i'm not bullshitting ask if you get meet mark or tom we're like are you shitting me now not all were that ignorant but that was it

i mean that's what you're dealing with

So I would say now, 15, 16 years later, it's not like that, but they were still pretty primitive.

And

it was,

I came up with a torture, though.

I came up with a torture for Martine Summer, the ignorant gorilla guy.

Martin comes to give us a pep talk one day in front of the other guards, and he wants to impress them.

And he's talking about riding in a box.

Like, what?

Riding in a box.

Well, he just built a box over us.

It's barely enough for three guys to lay down in, which was bobbed wire

and a chain-link fence.

And he said it was to protect us from the lepers.

It was for our own protection.

So he sits down.

He tells us a story about he was in Bogota.

I don't know if it was Bogota, one of the cities one time.

He got to ride in a box.

And all his little minions around him, I'm like, tell us about the box.

Tell us about the box.

He said, yeah, we went in the building.

We just push a button.

We go up.

We get up, and then we're on top of the building.

It's a fucking elevator.

Wow.

Sounds like Afghanistan.

I'm just saying, you don't know.

Yeah.

We assume that somebody else uses our logic.

That's our first mistake.

That's our first mistake.

So we didn't really understand.

I don't think.

I don't think that

we really understood the gorilla like we should have.

I think we do now, but

unless we're going to gauge against them directly.

I mean, what would the

you guys were planning stuff a little bit?

I mean, how would you do that?

Were you monitored all the time?

So here's what I thought was our hope one time.

So one of the guys comes to us, and he's got a little handheld GPS, a little Garmin.

And

he also has a radio.

And so

he goes,

I got an idea.

It was Big Head, actually.

He said,

when we have our communal center, which, you know, every night they get together and do their little cultural hour and talk, you know, it's brainwashing, right?

He said,

I'll get weapons and we'll kill everybody here.

And I've got this radio and GPS and we can leave.

And I'm like, how many people

all armed during the thing?

He said, you know, about 30 down there armed.

I said, okay, so we're going to get this.

He said, I get two AKs.

We'll just kill them all.

Do you really think that we can walk down there with 30 armed motherfuckers and just kill them all in two seconds and walk out of here?

And there's other camps around us,

right?

They're going to hear the shooting?

I'm like, no.

Mark and I looked at it.

That's not a good idea.

That's not, it's not like we're on a mountain with five people and we could just shoot them and be dead.

We're surrounded by, there's other, you know, yeah, and I'm like, Bighead, you got to come up with a better idea.

So I said, here's my idea.

And Mark, I think, I don't want to take credit because Mark and I, I said, we get the radio and the GPS.

We don't go towards town.

We do.

We go deep and we go high.

And we'll get on the radio because they're going to think we're going to town and we don't kill anybody.

One night when you're on guard duty, we're just gone.

How about we do that?

Because that way, if we get caught, we're not going to get executed ourselves.

I didn't think it was possible.

I mean, do you really think it's possible for a couple guys in that situation to go into about 30 guerrillas at arm and just kill them all and get away smoothly?

I think it depends on who you're with.

Well, like I'm saying.

But

with all those camps around.

Right?

So I said, why do we have to kill anybody?

Why attract attention?

Why don't we just disappear?

There's a little confusion there.

But then he didn't want to.

He backed out on that.

You know, then they come by one day and they say, hey,

why are you Americans down here flying around?

I said, what do you mean?

Well, all these helicopters are manned by Americans because they're speaking on the radio in English.

I'm like, it's not Americans.

Said

they're doing spray operations and they're talking to different aircraft.

Well, the number one language is English.

Even here, it's not Spanish, right?

But they thought it's Americans over them.

No, it was Colombian pilots in a spray package communicating back and forth in English.

So just strange stuff, Sean, out there.

At what point did they present you with the M4 that you had tossed?

They never presented it.

We went to Miami and we're in there.

I don't mean them.

I mean the gorillas.

Oh, so

this had to be a few months into captivity.

We're being moved.

And

this guy rides up with the ponies and he's on it.

And he's got the M4 and he goes, You recognize this?

It's like, oh, fuck.

He's like, thank you.

I'm going to kill your guys willing to come.

So he was carrying it,

you know.

And

then

they were asking about horses and we were each getting on a horse.

So I had horses.

I was making fun of him being a pony, not a horse.

And the guy had a sense of humor, right?

But he wanted to talk to us.

He wanted to engage because we're like this oddity, right?

They've never met Americans before.

And so I got up on the horse and he goes, I said, man.

This is not magic what you guys do.

I said, everything you do in the jungle, you could teach us in two or three weeks i said what we do in the outside world you couldn't do it in years

you know they're very simple it's not a you know

so

i don't know

you know

but uh to see the m4 in the evidence room miami that was especially with a hole in it that was nice we'll get to that at yeah at the rescue Yeah.

I want you to talk about Mark and his carbs, too.

Oh, my God.

And now Mark's, he's all super fit now.

You would do that an hour later.

Mark's good now.

So

we're starving and what we did to keep just,

if you stop, you rot, right?

So we would build what we call the jungle stair-stepper, and it would just be two steps.

And you'd get on it for hours.

But you could work up a real good sweat if you're hauling ass.

You'd built the steps high enough.

So Mark

gets some vines.

The guards would give it to us right and they're

they want to see us occupied they they're good at keeping people like this right so mark ties up a pull-up bar

and he goes i'm going to get to 20 pull-ups and he did he got to 20 dead hang slow pull-ups right and he's lost all his weight one day after he gets his pull-ups he turns around he's like i said mark you got a six pack

right and we get these little mirrors you can't see anything right and he's like holy shit you know so

so

so i don't remember it was that day or whatever mark's not eating his rice like we're starving he's like dad we just got to cut on the carbs man

he's like all yoked we're skeletons you know and he's lentils man it's good lentils no we got to ease up on the rice don't get fat i was just you know we're insane at that point but he was he he had his you know he he did his 20 you know pull-ups and he had his six-pack going and he's like there in the camp like this you know it's like we're on beach on vacation you know but we're we're there you know Damn.

Yeah, I mean, you know, you're sitting there in your underwear with rubber boots on

and you're walking up and down like a homemade stair climber for hours, just trying to stay sane.

You know, is there anything else you guys would do?

Hmm.

That was our main exercise thing.

What about the chess pieces?

I want to show you.

There's a picture in this book.

This is super impressive, what Mark did.

And

the chess that's in here, I believe.

I haven't opened this up for a while.

If not, he just sent me a picture.

Here it is.

So he got a piece of a machete from a gorilla with permission.

I don't know how long it took him.

This took him shit.

A year, maybe less.

And every time we'd stop, Mark would start carving chess pieces.

Right?

And then we got all the chess pieces done.

The gorilla gave us a piece of cardboard and tape,

and Mark made the chess, the board.

And the board would fold in half, and he had a little bag he put his chess pieces in and carried them everywhere.

And then the gorilla wanted to play chess, too.

So they would borrow it during the day if we were in a fixed camp, and everybody would play chess.

Is that amazing what he did?

Yes.

By hand.

We'll put this up on screen.

And the most impressive thing about those chess pieces, there was so much oil on them for people just playing them for years, they were smoothed out.

Wow.

I'm like, Mark, you're a woodworker, dude.

He's got that at the house now.

How amazing.

You know?

He'd get there, he'd just start carving.

He'd just start carving.

He'd just start carving.

I'm like, man.

And I will tell you what, we owe Mark, seriously,

this thing's going to do here.

Everybody there in the jungle, probably some of the gorilla too.

You know, Mark should get billed as a doctor because the therapy that that chess set brought to us was amazing.

We would have chess tournaments that would last like days over a pack of crackers.

You know, and Mark be a smart ass.

He'd start screwing me.

We're playing chess and he'd save his coffee.

We'd just play for hours, hours, and hours, and hours and hours.

We'd just sit there chained up in hours.

Mark would take his leftover coffee and he'd set it out on my side of the chessboard and just leave it there and not say a word and keep playing, trying to do a little psychological work because he knew I wanted that fucking coffee.

But

yeah, that's what he did.

Amazing.

It's,

I don't know, people are capable of a lot.

What are those Bible verses?

So

one of the best things that we got to read in captivity was a Spanish to English New Testament.

So we read it cover to cover, cover to cover.

So Mark, I would say, was the most religious out of everybody in camp.

Like he really kind of got deep into it.

So we would just share the Bible back and forth, reading and studying it.

And those are some verses that he wrote down just for inspiration for himself.

And he,

something interesting was, obviously the Bible wasn't written in English.

It was written in Latin.

So the understanding when you started translating stuff, when you read a verse in Spanish versus English, kind of came through a little bit clearer.

And then I had a copy of Don Quixote.

Latin, English.

Then I taught myself to read Latin,

which I can't read now while I was in captivity reading Don

So the windmills, motherfucker.

Yeah.

So you're,

if you have time, you can do a lot.

Did you guys pray?

Yeah.

Not as much as Mark.

Tom, I don't, Tom, Tom, no.

But

I think

my view on the Bible, right, especially the New Testament, changed when I started reading in Spanish versus English.

And

I look at it as a moral compass.

Not to say that I always followed that moral compass.

I don't want to sit here and hold my hands up and look, man,

you know, my closet's filled with skeletons.

So I'm as imperfect as I get.

But

I think,

and Mark and I would discuss this,

especially the New Testament, if you take out

what I call the fluff, maybe,

and you go about

how do you treat your friends?

How do you treat your family?

How do you live as a person?

It talks about how you, if you look at it, how you pay your bills, what kind of neighbor you are, what kind of brother, what kind of caretaker.

It's just a simple moral compass for life.

If you get through some of the stuff that's a little more,

I don't want to offend anybody here, that's a little more,

I call it a sales pitch, maybe a little more,

maybe we're not talking about somebody's being in the belly of a whale okay maybe we're not talking something that's on a threshold for somebody that's hard to captivate but when it comes to the basics of how you should live and conduct yourself that's what i think the strength is

and i would say mark was a little more deeper into it than i was for sure

but

it gave us It gave us a um

I don't want to use the word comfort.

Kind of of a clarity about stuff, if that makes sense.

Who gave it to you?

I can't remember.

Did the gorilla give Mark the Bible first?

I don't know if he got it from the gorillas or

I'm not sure.

I can't remember.

I mean, that's interesting.

It's a guidebook, right?

For what's interesting is, I mean,

they're holding you in captivity.

They're

giving a woman a C-section in the jungle.

And

they're reading the Bible.

I don't think that

many of the gorillas were reading the Bible.

I think some were, but they finally got it to Mark permanently.

And I don't know where it came from.

I can't remember.

But Mark carried it, and it's his.

You know, we shared it, but Mark carried it and i don't know if did consuelo did she give it to mark one of the one of the hostages i can't remember where he came from

but

um

yeah it it it was a strengthener for sure there's no no doubt about that but it's interesting how people convince themselves that they're doing the right thing But I remember when I lived in Medellin,

went to this church that the Sicarios, the assassins, would go pray at before they do a hit.

I know.

It's like,

never occurred to you not to do the hit.

I grew up in a Southern Baptist family.

My grandmother was a fire and brimstone Southern Baptist.

You were going to hell for anything.

But

I think that

my father was a student of

history, primarily really the Civil War, a little bit of world history and world religions.

And he always would say, it's not, I'm trying to remember how to say it right.

Basically, he didn't like how

man distorted

the word from the Bible.

He wasn't a fan of organized religion.

He thought, well, you see these mega churches now, how they really just,

it's a money issue, right?

It's a, it's, it's not, it has, has nothing to do with what the scriptures really say, I think.

You know, like what are the things about the big televangelists and their private jets can't fly back with the heathens.

Come on, man.

You know, so

just look at the book of Eli, the movie, right?

The bad guy knew that could be used to control everything.

There is the Bible.

So I think,

like you're saying, it can be used in bad ways.

It can be used in good ways.

You know,

I mean,

I'm amazed, and my wife and I speak about this a lot

at the things that people are capable of doing.

And they think they're okay.

They're totally okay with it.

You know,

it's scary stuff.

You know, and

I don't know.

I don't know.

But you have to remember, I mean,

Latin America is a, it's a Catholic continent, right?

So

do those gorillas that were probably brought up in very humble places and ingrained by their parents go into any little village.

It's got a church, right?

A church is a big part of it.

Can they totally escape that upbringing?

I don't know.

You know?

I mean,

I never really thought about that in captivity because we didn't really have a time to really engage with them on that level.

But I'm sure you just have to think, you know, that some portion of them can't escape that upbringing.

Yeah.

You know,

but the communist salesman will try to erase it.

Well, they get them young.

It's an indoctrination, right?

Well, you know, the little communist manifesto, it's only about that thick.

I don't know if you've ever read it.

And

Milton handed me the manifesto one time, and he can't really read.

And

I said, plus value, Marx Engels.

He goes, you read that?

I said, yeah, I did a book report on.

I was in junior high school, man.

Yeah.

Read this.

They were like, oh, you've read it.

Yeah, I've read it.

Well, what do you think of it?

I said, it doesn't work.

It's a pipe dream.

And I started reading back to him, and he's like, you can read in Spanish?

I'm like, yeah.

I'm not a doctor, but I'm not a, you know.

But

the level of,

you know, people that are,

I don't know if it's right to use the word ignorance.

I don't think that's maybe the right word to use.

But a person that's ignorant can really be taken advantage of pretty easily if you're smart enough to do it.

And so that's what I see much of what the young gorillas were

basically just sold a bill of of goods and brainwashed.

How often were you guys chained up?

It was really not until the third year, I'd say two and a half, the third year that we got into it, that they started chaining us regular.

And before that, they put 550 cord around our necks, and they have this thing.

That goes on, it's a knot, just a harness that they make that goes underneath your arms and around your neck.

And there's just a hangman's hangman's knot on the back.

So you're walking in front of your guard through the jungle.

And if you try to run, he's got the 550 cord.

He just pulls it that chokes you out.

You can't do anything.

That was much more comfortable than the chains.

You know,

the chains were when times were getting desperate.

And

Mark actually figured out, we figured out how to

break out of the locks with a with a

fingernail clipper.

The cheap Chinese locks were so terrible, you could just run the tumblers enough and they'd open up.

So we'd open them at night and kind of undo a link so it was a little more comfortable to sleep.

So it would be all the time.

What's that?

So you were chained all the time.

At one point, yeah.

Shit.

Yeah.

Just depending.

I mean, they come and take the chains off or put the chains on, you know?

Yeah.

Mine's, I've got about six inches of my chain and the lock that I use for paperweight on my desk.

And there's some places I've gone to speak.

I'd love to have brought it here or whatever.

I don't want to risk losing that.

I get it.

You know, I'll send you a picture of it when you get home.

And the worst thing was, it sucks, it's a Chinese lock, so it's big and heavy.

It's not like a nice little master lock that's worth a shit.

Damn.

Yeah.

What about holidays?

I mean, what would Christmas be like?

You know, they celebrate it.

But you got to remember in Colombia, the big holiday is not Christmas, it's New Year's.

And so

they bring in candy, they'd bring in liquor, and

I'm a drinker, but I wouldn't drink in captivity because I was scared about what I would do.

And I remember one time getting liquored up on this cheap Chinese wine.

He put an ass cussing on the commandant in that camp.

We're like, you're going to get shot.

He's just standing there just cussing his ass out, man.

He'd had this, oh, you know, like it was, it was, it was from China, and this stuff was just horrible.

And so, and then they have aguardiente in Colombia, everybody drinks.

I couldn't,

we're stuff in the world.

But

they would, for New Year's or the holidays, they would bake breads and cookies if we were in a place you could do it and kind of like throw us a little,

you know, give us some extra food and things.

Really,

you know,

strange, strange, strange.

Wow.

Well, Keith, let's take a break.

Yeah.

When we come back, we'll get into the rescue mission.

Super.

I really can't say enough good things about my Helix mattress.

Seriously, before I got it sent to me to try, I just wasn't sleeping well.

I couldn't believe how much of a difference just getting a good night's sleep has made in my life.

I feel rested every day, and it's all thanks to Helix.

I don't toss and turn or wake up with aches and pains anymore.

Get the best sleep of your life with Helix's breathable and full-body supporting mattresses.

They can even match you based on your body type and sleep preferences.

And right now, you can save when you decide to buy your own Helix mattress with this exclusive offer, just for my listeners.

Go to helixleep.com/slash SRS for 27% off site-wide.

That's helixleep.com/slash SRS for 27% off site-wide.

Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you helixleep.com slash SRS.

The most important action you can take today is to help protect your family's future from cyber criminals and online predators.

And Bunker, that's B-U-N-K-R, can help you do just that.

Bunker was developed by experts with 25 years of experience catching criminals and fighting cybercrime.

They created Bunker to help protect their own families and now they're sharing it with you.

Bunker even offers a family plan.

With the family plan, you get a private messenger to share messages, photos, and files with your spouse and children, connecting only with people you approve.

No spam, no surveillance, no imposters.

ever.

You also get a password manager to help safeguard your family's online accounts, including financial, shopping, streaming, and social media.

You even get a vault to help securely store important documents like photos, IDs, birth certificates, and passports.

Visit their website bunker.life/slash SRS and use code SRS for 25% off your family plan today.

That's BUNKR.life/slash SRS and use code SRS for 25% off your family plan today.

That's BUNKR.life/slash SRS and use code SRS for 25% off your family plan today.

All right, Keith, we're back from the break.

Want to get into the rescue op.

All right.

How it went down, what happened, as descriptive as you can.

Okay,

a little outline on the rescue.

I went back in the FARC, capturing us, opened the door for the U.S.

government, especially Intel inside,

to buddy up with the Colombians, right?

And

help them rebuild their Intel system.

They did a lot of stuff.

They did a lot of stuff.

But what happened

with the rescue,

we had an enlisted guy

and he had a suggestion

and it was about communications and the way the FARC handled us

And this is something we don't do anymore and I worked on it afterwards, we don't HFDF high freak direction find radio signals

So every FARC group that we're with had an HF radio.

They'd use an extension cord they'd cut up and go string an antenna, you know, because it's got to be long, the HF waves are much longer, and they would talk, all right?

And they would talk to the commandantes run by the secretariat, and the secretariat would talk.

to our guys and they say, you guys move here, you guys move there.

They had their code, right?

But that's how they handle our movements.

Or they would send a person in in a certain area and just, you know, paper to paper.

And I remember

Cesar, who's in the first front commander, he's in the Supermax now.

He said, can you guys hear everything?

I said, yes, sir.

He said, what's the best thing for me to do?

Just write an order on a piece of paper and send it to my guys?

I said, that's what I do.

And so

the official story goes, which is true.

I believe it was a sergeant that he basically said, Hey, folks, why don't we cut off the communications link?

Let's talk to the secretariat, to the commandantes, and pretend we're the guys that have the hostages, all right?

And then let's talk to the people that are holding the hostages and thank them, make them think that we are the secretariat, right?

Just cut it, and then we'll just tell them, Let the hostages go.

No shit.

That's a simplified version of what happened.

So they broke the comms link

and they started talking to the bosses because you got to remember they listened to them every day.

These analysts knew who the individual people were, what was going on.

And they basically broke the comms link and then made some experimental moves with us.

to see if we'd follow the orders.

And they found out that they had broken it successfully.

And that was what was going to morph into the rescue.

And you got to remember, well, I can't remember stuff that I've talked about here.

Every little small group, the commandante of the group will have a girlfriend, and she's the radio operator, right?

So even in camp for years, I would hear other groups talking.

If the radio was up, it'd be the same voices and the same names.

So essentially, it was just a really good intel spoof by...

I believe it was a Colombian sergeant.

I know it's in the list of, but I think it was the sergeant that did that.

So

the story and the debrief that we got was we were moved a few times, and then our guys were told that they were going to take us and turn us into

the Secretariat.

Now here's what was interesting.

During that time,

President Rebe

let it be known publicly, and this was part of the spoof,

that they were going to allow the Red Cross to come in and get access to us and assess us.

They were going to allow the FARC to do that.

And that came out in the news.

So then our guys who were physically holding us, who weren't talking to their bosses anymore, like, oh, shit, this is true.

We're going to go turn these folks in.

They're going to see them.

So I think it was one of

really the best Intel coups ever.

Wow.

It's a really interesting story.

Slick.

And then it.

So they were basically playing HQ.

Yep.

That's what they were doing.

And then in the international news, in the news,

the president's saying, hey, we're going to let an international commission come in and have access

to the FARC and the hostages to check them out.

So the FARC were going to get recognition also politically.

It was brilliant.

Where we were rescued at, it was kind of funny.

It was basically a whorehouse.

That's what it was.

So you have what's called a raspachine,

and they're they're the guys that pick the coca leaves and the women, right?

They're going to pick them.

So

we were being moved and hearing this news on a river.

And all of a sudden, we're seeing other FARC members, which we were never exposed to anybody.

It was a deep secret where we were and who we were.

And next thing we know, we end up in a coca field.

Giving us Coca-Colas.

They brought us blue jeans and shirts and stuff from a store, and they're like being happy with us.

And the whole group is moving to the Coca Field.

And next to the Coca Field was just basically two big cabins.

One looked like a bar where there were some pool tables right there in the jungle.

And another had all these beds in it.

So, Wancho, my buddy, who's a major, had enough time to go from lieutenant to major and lieutenant colonel in captivity, 10 years.

There's all of these mattresses in this jungle jungle bordello, man, with plastic.

And we're like, holy shit, we haven't laid on a mattress in years.

Everybody gets, you know, we're laying on a bed and we're like this.

And Wantra goes, you know what we're laying on, don't you?

He goes, no, this is a whorehouse.

I said, are you kidding me?

He goes, no, Keith.

What they do

is the Raspuccinis come in here and they pay them to pick the leaves.

Then they set up a cheap bar and they bring in these girls and basically they get their money back.

They're paying it for them.

So we were like, well, you know what?

Cover the mattresses with plastic.

We haven't been on a mattress in years.

We're sleeping good.

So

everything gets lax all of a sudden.

Guards are there, but like they're, you guys want some soda?

Like, when do we get a Coke or cookies or extra food and all this shit?

And we're out in the sunshine.

We're not undercover.

And I was like, we're out.

We're uncovered.

And other FARC members were coming through and they were looking at us and we're like, something was going down, right?

we didn't know and we had staged on the river farther down about

i don't know how many miles for like a week and they were bringing us blue jeans and tennis shoes and shirts and all this stuff and i remember i told mark i'm not taking any of that stuff but tom took a nice set a nice shirt on nice set of jeans because he goes my wife hasn't seen me in years i just want to look presentable to my wife

You know, it makes me want to cry because he was like, he just, I just want to, you know, so everybody's, but

we're like, want coffee?

What do you want?

I mean, so we're in this place for a couple days.

And I go out, I hadn't seen sun forever.

And I take my shirt off and I just basically got a pair of underwear on and I'm sitting in a chair in the sun just cooking like a clam.

And we're all, what's going on here?

And right across the river is another Coca-Field where the helicopter sat down with a little house.

But we have not been out undercover for five and a half years.

There's There's no, we're not hidden.

We're in the open.

You know, they're talking on the radio to each other.

And I'm like, what's going on?

We knew something was going on, but we didn't know.

And we had heard news, us also,

that we were going to be able to get seen by some people outside the gorilla group to check on us, get messages to our family.

So there's an air of expectation.

And one thing that happens in captivity, any little bit of hope, man, is like filling your gas tank.

So

they

come in, tell us that more, just make sure we're packed.

And one thing they did is they took our rucksacks from us.

And we just had little bags, nothing to carry, nothing big.

And they come over and the death knell for us was hearing helicopters.

It was terrifying, right?

Because we knew that's a disembark, infill, whatever.

So they get us up one morning and they put us out there.

Everybody get in line.

Everybody get in line.

And then there's a guerrilla, a hostage, a gorilla hostage.

And the Commandante goes, hey, folks, if you hear helicopters, don't worry, it's cool.

There's no problems.

I'm like, what the fuck is going on here?

Mark and I are looking at each other.

We're just trying to process this, right?

All of a sudden, here they come,

helos.

So we see the MI come overhead,

just doing a circle.

Nobody, there's no panic, there's no anything.

Other gorillas were there standing around watching us that had never seen us ever before.

So we're like, holy geez, what's going down here?

And did they look like Red Cross birds?

There's been a lot of criticism about that.

Yeah, they did.

White and red.

I get it.

And I'm glad they did.

So

they go down and get us in the canoes and we cross the river and we go up into the coca field and we're all standing there.

And there's a film of us, there's a film online of this going down of me, bar, we're all talking.

So

helicopter lands while we're all standing there and a fake news crew gets out.

out.

We're like,

you know, and

the lead

Colombian officer from the operation,

and you got to admit, this is all volunteer, right?

So you just had a handful of guys and a woman who was a nurse,

a Colombian, was she naval or army?

I can't remember.

A woman married with kids volunteered to go in.

as a nurse.

They're all in civilian clothes.

I think the pilots, all they had was a pistol stuck in their boot.

That was it.

They were on their own, man.

If this cover was blown,

everybody's dying.

So the crew walks up and starts interviewing Cesar, the Commandante, and Goffes is there.

And we're all like, what's happening?

He walked away with the Commandante for a little bit, and they came back, and they had large zip ties,

which we'd already been trained to break out of, right?

But still.

So

I said, man, look at that.

So some of the Columbian soldiers said, you're not putting those on me.

A couple of the soldiers said, I don't care.

You're not zip-tying me before the helicopter.

So this one guy is in front of us.

He's got red hair, and it's Mark and I and Tom.

And he goes, he walks up to me and he's almost in tears.

And I said, who are you?

He said, I'm from Australia.

So I grabbed his ID

and I said, this is bullshit.

I'm about to blow the whole thing actually up with the unit.

When I did the briefing, the Columbian colonel was up there with the general, General Hutmacher.

He said, yes, Dance almost ruined the whole fucking rescue being a dumbass.

So Mark gets next to me.

He goes, I'm from Australia.

I said, you're,

I said, Mark, you're not, you're not Australian and you're not from Australia.

And he gets nervous and he starts to almost cry.

And he goes, look, he said, yeah, you want to go home?

Said, yeah, he goes, I mean, he was almost in tears.

He goes, Please come with us.

We're taking you home.

So I yelled, Mark or to Tom, I said, Tom, put those fucking tie wraps on.

And we, you know,

but we almost blew it right there because Mark and I did not believe this guy, which we smell about in a second.

And when we did the debrief and saw him again and Caroline's like, man, you just terrified me.

I didn't know what to say to you guys.

But I said, put on the tie wraps.

Once we put the tie wraps on, and you can see us,

it's on YouTube.

The video's there.

I just say, keep stand so fine after you're in the jungle.

I didn't know who the fake news crew was, but they legitimately filmed.

And we got on the

bird.

And

so they're taking us to certain spots.

So we were psychologically profiled.

Like, who's going to be a troublemaker, who's not, you know, who's going to be a troublemaker, who's not.

I was in the troublemaker category.

A couple other guys were.

So

I sit down for a second and

I start to stand up and this Colombian soldier who was basically dressed like a civilian, he just grabs me, slams me in his seat.

He said, here next to me, man, next to me, bro.

I said, all right.

And so I broke out of my.

Out of my wraps, just the same trick we're taught, you know, to do that.

I

start yelling at Mark.

Mark's like, what are you doing?

You're going to to get in trouble.

I said, break out of the wraps, break out of the wraps.

And then

Goffas and Cesar were supposed to give up their pistols, but I can't remember what Goffez did, but Cesar kept his.

And he's right behind us.

And so

it was just a flurry, right?

Everybody gets on the bird and then they drop a like a case of beer off next to the aircraft for the for those guys and wave at them and and they pull up the doors and we just pulled up you know and uh i remember the guy looking at me next to me he's you know columbian sf guy but he's obviously and he's like colombian army motherfuckers right so we just all jump on cesar because cesar pulled a pistol and mark has the med kit next to him and they're yelling at mark take the needle out and stab him stab him stab him with the needle I just happened to be closest to Cesar, so I got on his chest, and that's what your assistant was showing my bloody hand.

I mean, that got pictures.

I just, I hit him in the head a couple of times and then the Colombian really took over doing a number on him.

But he had his hand with the pistol and he disarmed him.

And it was 30 seconds and it was over.

I mean, it was just, it was over.

And we're clapping and yelling there, yelling, Colombian Army, Colombian Army, police.

And I mean, the euphoria,

I mean, I got to be careful not to cry right now.

It's just incredible.

And I look at Tom.

I said, Tom, man, we're on this Russian piece of shit helicopter.

I hope we get back.

We were just, it was a high.

It was a high, right?

Then Goffus, the abuser, the nasty guy, right?

The old man, Cesar, pulled his, he was going to go down fighting in the helicopter.

Goffus, just like a little bitch, just hit the ground, you know, and they pulled his pants down around his ankles.

And he's in his own wear, his little bikinis, you know, and they're holding him.

He didn't put up a fight at all.

And he had been very abusive to Tom, you know, making Tom put 15 meters a chain, three five meter chains around his neck and marching and threatening to shoot Tom one time.

And, you know, and so it's a couple minutes into it.

Everybody's kind of calming down.

We're all hugging and high-fiving.

And they've basically shot, I don't know what kind of settings they gave to Cesar.

And, you know, they're taking pictures and everything.

And

Tom goes over to the goffice and Mark and I are looking and he kneels down.

I know, man, he's just going to,

he's going to like, and Tom's an old curmudgeon, man.

He grew up Cape Cod, coal hogan, paid for flight school that way.

He's a grumpy old bastard, man.

He, you know, he's just a no-shit kind of guy and stuff.

I thought for sure that Tom was going to do something Cesar.

He just leans over, gets in his face, he taps on my chest.

He said, good luck.

It was the coolest thing in the world, man.

Wow.

And then we're just, you know,

Then they flew us to a to a fob there.

And we got off of that, you know, off the helo, got onto a 130, then we went into the capitol.

And I remember, I'd like to know who the guy was.

Um,

um, he, I think, all the guys there,

I don't think there were any seals, I think it was all Delta that was on the ground right there for our bird.

I'm not sure.

Big old dude, he had an American flag on.

I just walked up to him.

I just put my arms around him.

You know, I saw that flag.

And I guess like, I was like, we made it.

We made it.

And, um,

but when I saw him, it was one of our people, I wish I knew who he was.

You know, he was laughing at me.

He's a big old jerk.

I jumped on his ass and just hugged him.

And we're going home.

So we jumped onto 130 and, you know, we

they got us to

basically another base and we jumped on a rebase

Air Force One, you know, that flew us into Bogota.

And we got off of that, and then we got on the C-17 and headed home.

But it was, it was, um,

I mean, it's still emotional,

you know, I think

basically four of my friends died looking for me.

You know, Tommy didn't make it out.

Sardin Cruz didn't make it out, you know, so there's a little bit of, um,

apprehension, maybe a little guilt, you know,

in there that we made it and they didn't.

But I remember getting off them I

and they've got

Goffas and Cesar and cuffs on the ground, you know.

And

I was just like, wow.

But as I'm getting off

the helicopter, I look down and there's a pile of chains and locks on the floor.

And this is sick.

I recognized my lock, I'd been wearing it for so many years.

So I grabbed my lock and my chain, getting out of the helo.

I said, This is coming with me.

So they cut off the majority chain for me.

I got on the bird.

And

but how sick you recognize your own lock, man.

You know,

and then it was off to the races, right?

You know, um,

it's like what you do here on your show, Sean, is

you give a voice to the community.

That's why I came to do the show.

Thank you.

You know, where people can hear what's really going on.

And

we tried to give a voice, Mark and Tom and I, to the families of those that didn't make it out with us.

And we, and it's a perfect example,

The Colombian hostages did not have the same kind of support that Mark and Tom and I did.

You know, we get on the C-17,

the ambassador is giving us a big hug.

We got a medical team, FBI's there.

Now, we're civilians, and this is a new thing.

We're kind of the guinea pigs, right?

So, but we're doing basically a DOD mission.

And

some could disagree with that, but we know who directed things.

And so

there is my old neighbor on the bird I haven't seen in 20 something years, Doug Sanders, a former Ranger and Army helicopter pilot, and he's in charge, you know, there in San Antonio of the reintegration program for hostages.

I'm like, holy shit.

And he was having dinner with a friend of mine I hadn't seen in 20 years in Savannah when the call got.

He even told them that he was going to be bringing us home, right?

They're waiting on the op to go down.

And so

it's a small community.

And there's people are patting us on the back and there's an Air Force crew and it was fun.

It was kind of funny.

This Air Force, the flight engineer was on there, and I wear 44-long in a flight suit.

And they gave me a brand new flight suit.

And I'm like, I got to wash it like 10 times, man.

This thing is too stiff.

And the flight engineer, I said, I still got his name tag.

I said, man, is your flight suit broken?

He said, hell yeah.

I said, you want a new one?

He said, shit, yeah, we changed right there on a bird.

I put his on because it was broken in.

And then

they let us calm down on the C-17 for a little bit, but there was a lot of excitement on President Rebecca Bird between the field and getting to Bogotan, the capital.

But when we came off the aircraft, we didn't want to do this and be like the political scene in Columbia.

We were hustled off and we rolled.

And

we were taken care of, you know, and then you start catching up on the real news, right?

Stuff that's been going on since you've been gone.

And, you know, that's a whole nother wave of

reality.

reality.

But the rescue,

I've looked in a modern history, military rescues, I can't find one that matches it without a shot.

Not to say that there hadn't been other stuff that's gone down.

Not a shot fired.

Total coup.

A young sergeant, it was his idea, and then obviously support behind it.

And the thing that I remember,

the Colombians were in the back of a rebase jet and they had us up front.

And we had some

people from our government, you know, up front.

And I'm like, you got a map?

And they're like, why?

I said, we know where all the groups are here.

And they had them surrounded.

And the government said, you know what?

We're going to give you a chance to turn yourselves in.

We didn't go after them.

They could have swooped in there after the rescue and taken out half of the first front easy.

Instead, they just let them roll.

I don't understand that.

Wow.

We had them in the had them, had them, had them, a few hundred guerrillas right there.

And they had the packages around.

Now, ours, I don't think would have participated, but our folks were there.

Our Intel folks were there, you know.

And they walked.

I don't understand that political decision at all.

We had them.

And so

the flight home was,

you just kind of opened up the radars on.

And

our two FBI agents

I talk to occasionally every year or so, one Eddie, about once a year, they have a six pack of beer, cold beer.

And here's the joke.

We used to have one cold beer.

And then it disappeared.

So I always say, hey, you guys stole this from us on the flight home, whatever.

But we had to get a physical on the plane, you know, check us out medically and bring us into San Antonio.

And

you're just, everybody's talking to you and they're giving you news.

And it's just,

but what they did have,

what they did have

was pizza.

And we ate pizza.

And a wild ass story

was

Mark,

and I'll let Mark correct me, I might mess this up.

Mark made a comment in the morning of our rescue.

He said, man, you know what I want?

So what?

He goes, I want some homemade chocolate chip cookies and I want pizza.

I'm sorry, it just brings the moment back, right?

And so we get on the plane and we're like, fuck.

I said, dude,

you call this.

We had fresh pizza on the plane.

You know, they come out of Bogota like Domino's pizza or whatever.

So the pilot in command was a female.

And

I remember, if I correctly, there was also a training flight going on.

So I think they had an exchange pilot that might have been a Marine.

But she walks back and she goes, hey, guys, I go what?

I don't know if you want these, but I got a gift for you.

She's what?

Here's a bag of chocolate chip cookies.

Oh, shit.

I don't bake.

I don't know why, but I baked these and I brought them with me.

Wow.

How about that, man?

Hmm.

Hmm.

The cookies were the shocker.

That's why I like it.

It was a very intense feeling.

That's why I tear up.

Here's your chocolate chip cookies.

You like to bake?

No, I just, for some reason, bake these.

Like that was.

Man, you better start thinking if I have to explain it to you.

You know, I mean, so.

God patting you on the back.

Can you imagine that, though?

No.

And it wasn't me.

It was Mark.

It was Mark said, yeah, I want pizza and chocolate chip cookies.

I was like, dude.

And then I remember.

An embarrassing thing,

and my wife is upstairs watching.

I don't know if I've told her this before or not.

So

I look like a bag of shit.

I'm a skeleton.

You know, I'm 230 now.

It's 154 or 156.

I mean, 154.

So there's a flight surgeon.

There's like a little room on the C-17 behind with two bunks.

It's a crew-rest room, right?

So we each have to

get checked out.

So we walk in, there's this flight surgeon, probably just this young, very attractive female flight surgeon.

And she closes the door she goes you got a strip down i'm like

in front of you

i said you have a fat girl on the plane i'm just so i'm sorry with her i was like you got a guy like you know you you have it like you're you're just you look like a bag i'm like ma'am i mean really

is this

i was like this is

you know i'm wearing bikini underwear

i said you guys have like an ugly doctor or something you know

So I was embarrassed, but I did it.

I followed through, but it was funny.

And I'm like, fuck, I'm wearing bikinis, rubber boots.

I mean, that is, you know, and I didn't say anything to Mark.

I said, Mark, just go under flight surgeries in there.

You know, he's like, oh, shit, you know, but, you know,

and, you know, it was just a little embarrassment there.

You're like, really?

I mean, don't you, like an old guy, you know, like an old 06 with a big beard or something, you know, you know, but

and then Doug was laughing about that.

And so we get through this and it's all happiness on the plane.

And it's really kind of a, just a,

a blur getting into Texas.

And we land and I remember General Hubert getting on the plane and, you know, here's his big ass Green Bray.

And hey, gentlemen, and we roll to the Black Hawk.

I just news cameras everywhere, right?

And I'm like, shit, you know, I mean, it's just everywhere news and it's dark, you know, but there's lineup on the flight line.

And we get on the Blackhawk and boom, we pop to head over to Bamsey to the hospital.

And I remember just looking down at all the fast food places.

They're going across town going, I'm going to eat there.

I'm going to eat there.

I'm going to eat there, you know.

And

we got down on the ground

and got into the general's.

I don't know if it was a suburban or whatever, or was it a van or something?

But I remember the sec deaf calling him while we're riding over to the hospital.

I said, damn,

I said, Mark, is the sec deaf checking on us?

I said, this doesn't really happen that often, right?

So we get into the hospital

and they put us in a room.

And it was funny as we're walking down to the ICU.

These guys are in spacesuits.

like to handle us.

They don't know what to do with us, what we have or whatever, right?

People are from behind the glass.

And

each one of us, they kept us in the same room.

They worried about separating us.

They had to evaluate us, right?

They were worried about separating us because we'd been together for so long.

But the TVs were on without the volume.

So they were introducing stuff to us.

And I remember I look up on the TV and Mark's next to me.

And there's A-Rod is dating Madonna.

And then next to that headline is the three hostages are out.

I said, man, we're famous.

A-Rod, Madonna?

They're headlining with us.

It was funny.

You had to laugh at that, right?

You had to laugh at that.

But one one thing that I was nervous about

was you have a smell in the jungle, right?

One of the first things is when the gorilla captured us was their smell.

You could smell them.

That's a group, a big group, right?

And it's just a smell of, you know, BO in the jungle and whatever that doesn't work.

It's a human,

it's something you had to get used to.

And I worried, I said, man, am I going to smell like that when I see my family?

I know it's a small thing, but in the back of my head, so we each get to take a shower.

And, you know, in the hospital, you got that green disinfectant.

So

I got in that shower, man, and

you've got the handicap handle up there in the showers of the hospital.

I wet a towel and I tied that towel.

I hadn't had a hot shower in five and a half years.

I bet I was in there an hour.

I turned the shower off.

I got out and I was like,

I went right back in because I took two showers.

I took two showers.

And so we all got showered.

And

General Huber comes up and there was a black female colonel.

She was an Army doctor and

very kind.

And so

Huber's like, gentlemen, this French restaurant's open.

He had all these really nice restaurants open at midnight for us.

And I'm like, sir, I appreciate it, but I don't want that.

He He goes, what do you want?

I said, I want a cheeseburger fries and a fountain coke.

That's what I want.

To me, it's just the American meal.

I just, that's the thing I could think of.

And that female colonel, who was a doctor, she just leaned over and she tapped me.

She said, baby, I'll take care of you.

Like it was like your big sister, the most kind thing in the world.

And I said to General Huber, I said, you know, sir, this is pretty good.

And he said, what do you mean?

I said, I can't remember when I was a sergeant when a colonel and a general would cook me a damn cheeseburger at one o'clock in the morning, but I'll take it.

You know?

And they took unbelievable care of us, right?

And so

one of the guys that was a

psychologist or counselor, because each one, we've got one sign.

Everybody's looking at us.

He comes in.

I think it was Mark said, damn, that cologne smells good.

And

he said, you got any?

And he goes, I'll get you guys a bottle of cologne.

So he came in later.

We each had like a bottle of cologne so we smelled decent and got us some clothes.

And that was the part where the reunification started.

And there'd be a lot of debriefing and, you know, head to toe

taking care of us, even though we were civilian, we volunteered.

And so DOD there and Bamsey took care of us.

And then we really started catching up on the news over the next 48 hours, right?

But everybody in the hospital knew where we were.

There's news trucks surrounding the place out there, right?

So it's kind of odd that everywhere you went, people are like,

you couldn't, you know, that's why I say the five minutes of fame.

I was so glad when that was over.

And

anonymity is a big thing, right?

Yeah, I'm sure you're learning that.

And

unbelievable care for us and took care of us, housed our families, you know, and we had to reintegrate with the families, which that was a big deal.

And

that brings out a lot there.

I remember my father,

you know, Korean War vet, he's standing there wobbling when I get to see him, you know.

And I just, you know, I just put my arms around him and he said, son, I knew you make it.

I knew you'd make it.

But

what do you do when you,

you know, I heard a message from my son.

My son's 6'7.

He's 245.

He's a big dude.

He's a little 10-year-old when I got captured, you know, and a year and a half until we got into the jungle with the politicians.

I hear a message from him.

He's 11 years old and he's, you know, he's apologizing for missing my birthday and Christmas.

Like, I've done this, or he's done something wrong.

It broke my heart in captivity, you know, but that was the big thing there.

I knew, you know, we were going to have a hurdle, an emotional hurdle for the first time to get past.

And

it,

I mean, even now, I'm not much of a crier, I don't think, but the emotion comes up and you just, that, you kind of relive that.

And we,

you know,

I think all of us handle it in our own way, right?

You know, like the funny thing was, is

Mark's mom was the squeaky wheel, man.

Every news show, every every politician in Columbia flying back and forth, riding President Rivé's ass and all.

So he gave her a special presentation later on in D.C.

and gave her citizenship in Columbia for being such a pain in the ass trying to get her wife's house.

The president of Columbia, she actually broke his ass.

That was good.

And, you know, a lot of good stuff to come after that.

But

it's...

Five and a half years, man.

I mean, you're like, wow.

And I remember my son,

I had heard about iPods, little bitty ones, but I'd never seen one.

And so he walks up to me and I said, what do you have?

It's an iPod, Dad.

I said, give me that son of a bitch, right?

I said, I just mean, he said, dad, he said, what?

He might not like all the music that's on there.

I said, I'm good.

Don't worry about it.

But technology, it also passed us by.

You know, do you remember back in the day, a Motorola little Starlink, not the Starlink modern today, opened a flip-flop on 60 or 90 characters of text, and I carried a big sat phone.

And we were, that was like cutting edge, right?

You know, I remember my company

coming to the hospital, bringing us each a laptop, and they're like, log in.

And I'm like, well,

how do I do that?

You know, we had,

you know, things had happened.

And

so it took a little time for the wheels to catch up, you know, I think.

And there's a picture here of Tom on the phone in a restaurant that opened on a Sunday that was closed.

And he's on the phone.

A guy that I want to give thanks to, Chuck Norse, he calls us and goes, hey, guys.

And

we're like, what?

You know, he goes, listen, a lot of people are going to be coming at you, dudes and everything.

And he knew the reintegration folks.

He's a behind the scenes supporter, doesn't say a word.

He said, my ranch is ready for you guys and your families if you need privacy.

You can meet me there or not.

It doesn't matter.

You're welcome to come here.

You're welcome to come here if you need a place, a safe haven.

Wow.

He wanted nothing out of it.

Nobody even knew he called us.

But the funny thing is, here is a funny story.

I didn't know how much Mark like Norris as an actor.

So as we say, we're arguing about everything.

We're laying in the jungle at night, and this starts a fucking war.

Mark's talking about how awesome an actor Chuck Norris is.

And I'm like, Mark, he's a B movie actor.

He's not an A movie.

He said, he's the shit, man.

And Tom goes, Tom was just needling Mark, right?

He goes, shit.

That's all bullshit.

And Mark's no, because, I mean, Norris is a legit karate.

He got legit.

Tom's outside.

He says, shit, if I saw Chuck Norris, I'll whoop his fucking ass, right?

Mark's like, you could never kick his ass.

So this is, they're yelling, right?

Mark's like, if Tom's like, if I ever get to see him, I'm kicking his ass.

Well, then on the phone, holy shit.

Tom confesses to Norris.

He said, Chuck, I got to tell you, I'm sorry.

So what I told Mark in the jungle fire saw you whooped your ass.

He said, I'm going to take that back.

So, I mean,

I mean, come on.

Damn.

You know, I mean, come on.

And then, you know, the jungle, the whole time, it was like, Tom's like, I could take Chuck Norris.

You know, just silly shit.

This is triggering me remembering stuff here, you know.

But a lot of people that didn't want any,

any credit and Norris didn't want any.

It was basically a secret call through actually Doug Sanders, who knew him.

And he was just going to make that offer.

And he said, we'll get you out here, get your family out of here.

You guys need a piece.

You got all the time you want.

So I thought that was pretty,

we didn't accept it because we, we didn't need it.

But the fact the guy took his time out to make the offer and I found out later he's done a bunch of stuff, doesn't say a word.

You know, I mean, come on.

You know, that was.

And then afterwards, laughing at Tom about apologizing to Chuck Norris about wanting to kick his ass.

That was funny.

You know, obviously Chuck took it, was laughing, and that was a whole joke.

I mean, I would imagine coming back's just a whole

mix of feelings and maybe some new fears.

I mean, did you have any fears about coming back?

About maybe your family had moved on?

I did not have any fears.

Um, obviously, my significant other that I wasn't married to, she moved on and got married.

That was okay.

Um,

I

that

captivity buried the hatchet with my father and I,

so it repaired our relationship there um

some tragedies you know people dying I had a first cousin who was like a big brother to me really more an uncle and I wanted to see him and

you know my dad asked to pull me aside and said no he got killed you know in a car crash but you know truck crash and then some of your friends you know, some trap people had passed.

You're like, oh, shit, you know, they were young.

And then the whole thing where you guys were at, the whole thing in the sandbox,

I mean, we weren't there watching it on TV every night.

So the whole escalation of the war in the Middle East for us was like, holy shit, you know, to really see it.

Just like I'll give you an example of the CEO at the time of Verizon.

We made comments.

something about cell phones or whatever.

And

just to knock at the the door one day, and this backpack with all this gifts and the latest and greatest, which then they called it a smartphone, it wasn't compared to today, was from the CEO.

And he's like, hey, welcome back, guys.

Maybe this will help you a little bit.

Some anonymous people did some things for us, not necessarily monetarily, right, but did some things.

You're like, wow, somebody's really thinking.

And,

but just

trying to adjust to life and something that I was talking about at Hilo was difficult for me.

So

my parents have a house rented for me

and it's a big, a bigger, more beautiful home than I've ever lived in.

And

I roll in there and I'm like,

can I afford this?

And my dad's like, yeah, you can afford it.

And, you know, I mean, the best savings program in the world is get six years of pay, right?

So, you know, our company took care of us.

The son of of a bitch about that thing was the instrument holding pattern for rotor wing aircraft.

So the airport was right over my flipping house.

So I'm laying in bed the first night and I hear a helicopter and I sat up like, holy shit, you know, but then it became a joke, right?

It actually helped me.

But,

you know, the Army each had a psych force.

Mine was a wonderful guy, and we had a wonderful chaplain that really helped us.

And so

we were followed and we were helped.

The company gave us six or eight months off, I think.

And then

they really took care of us.

And

we all had jobs.

And so

Mark basically retired almost immediately.

He did some security work for the company, but Mark was ready to retire.

Tom retired a little bit too.

I was the only one that really stayed on.

So,

but just getting your feet on the ground, just trying to, you know, get up and turn on a stove, just look at, oh my God, I can turn a stove on.

Or,

you know,

we used to urinate in a plastic bottle.

So if I sat up out of my hammock, I had to ask guard permission to urinate, and he'd put a flashlight on you.

You'd pee in a bottle.

It's like, well, I can go to the bathroom on my own.

I don't have to ask anybody.

But this thing is ingrained in your head, right?

So even though you know you can get up and go to the bathroom or go to the kitchen or do something, you're still kind of like psychologically, you're just decompressing.

So

there was a large adjustment on that.

I can imagine.

A large adjustment on that.

And I just thank God for the help that the three of us had compared to other people, you know?

And then we knew our future was going to change, right?

For all of us.

And

I have not done, I can't remember the last time I did a television interview, but the first couple of years out,

there was a lot of demand.

And we wrote our book.

We had to do like a book tour and stuff like that.

And then, you know,

it was the five minutes of fame.

And I will tell you this, when that was over, it was fine with me.

I learned one thing

after you, especially up in New York City and you're doing these talk shows and all this stuff, right?

There are some people who just eat that up and they want to just be in front of the camera.

They just want to.

I want to support our mission and what we are about

and our book and all of that stuff.

But

I didn't really necessarily want to do that.

And I'll never forget, I'm leaving New York City, I go to the airport and our book has just been launched.

And they say number one New York Times.

No, it's number two.

And the publishers are, you know, going back and forth and arguing.

So I walk into a bookstore in the airport and there's like a hundred of our books stacked up in this big, elaborate display.

And there's a cardboard cut out of pictures of us.

And I just stood there in front of it.

Not a person recognized me.

I'm on the news.

We're on the news.

You know, we're doing the net.

You know, I'm just standing there and I'm like, it's kind of funny.

And I'm sitting there, people picking up the book and buying it and looking at it.

And I'm really humbled.

But I was like, wow.

You know, and

I'll never forget

I walked into a Target

and I didn't know that Starbucks is in Target or whatever, and I got a cup of coffee.

And

this guy walks up behind me,

and he just whispers in my ear.

He goes, hey, bro, I got the coffee.

Welcome back.

Wow.

And walked away.

Didn't want to do anything else, you know, so I was like, wow.

And

then I got rolled up into the whole basically,

you know, reintegration for other people and a guinea pig for the Bergdahl thing.

And, you know,

there were other things that were happening.

And then you're balancing your professional life.

And my company gave me a lot of leeway, right?

And a lot of support.

And so

it ended up working out.

But I think

just that transition back.

And it was a few months into where, you know,

it was just a lot going on.

I mean, you go to a,

I was delivered to my parents' house first, right?

We come off a private jet.

There's a security team.

And there must be 50 news trucks out there, right?

And so I asked everybody, I said, hey,

I'll send my daughter, my son out to talk to you.

I just need a little downtime.

But you can talk to my kids.

So they interviewed my children.

And I went in with my old man.

I sat out back with him by the pool and just you know he he had that clarity of thought kind of telling me what i needed to do

and uh

looked outside a couple hours later the new trucks were gone so the security guy from our company actually drove us i don't know what it was to get um

oh i know what it was windy's chili my dad and my son would always make a run with my dad like windy's chili So we went to get that and when we came back in, there was a reporter, her and her cameraman were there, but the van was closed up and all.

And they said, hey, we don't want to put a camera on it.

We just want to just give you a hug and thanks.

And they left.

I thought it was very human of them to do that.

But that's a lot of stuff, right?

I mean, for you, Sean, taking your show to where it's gone, right?

A transition where nobody knows you, you're in your garage doing your thing or whatever.

Then it's like, hey, can I have a little space or a little piece?

Or everybody wants to touch the magic, right?

And I don't fault them for it, but, you know, how many touches can you get before they start stripping stuff off you, right?

So where's your responsibility?

Kind of tell your story and support, but then keep this straight.

So

I think we did a good job of it.

You know, we're all healthy and happy.

And, you know, Tom's up in Tennessee

somewhere.

He's got a little cattle farm.

He's raising cows.

And I think his son's up up there with him.

We don't talk to Tom as much.

I mean, every few months we check in or whatever.

Mark lives, you know, less than an hour south of me.

So my wife and his wife and him were close.

One of the seventh group guys retired down there, CW5.

And

a couple of my peers, you know, that weren't SOCOM and all are close.

And we've got a good network of friends.

But

yeah, it's been, this is really coming to do this show was kind of a reawakening, a sense where I were, and I know after this interview is done,

stuff's going to pop into my head that I remember.

But,

you know, I think we all came out okay.

You know, we always said,

and I told,

told Mark and Tom this, I said, look, we're affected.

We just don't know until we get home.

Right.

And

I don't think anybody

I think everybody came out good.

You know,

our lives are changed forever.

I think in the long run, this was a gift for me.

But it's enabled me to do some things that otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do.

I don't think so by the odds.

But I wouldn't go back through it for anything.

You know, we have to forget some people that make it out.

And unfortunately, the world's upside down, right?

So some of the stuff that I did to support...

Sear when I came back and go talk to DOD folks in active duty was just a win for me as if I can give them anything that may help them if it happens to them or somebody else, it's a win.

That's why.

Just doing the show is just to give back to the community, you know, which you're already doing.

What was it like to see the twins?

You know,

my father was the hardest.

The twins were kind of emotional for a few minutes, but then

they had had brought so many toys and gifts in for those two little kids, and they brought us into this room.

They were just like, you know, hey, dad, you know, whatever.

And their mom had put a picture of me by the bed, so they knew who I was.

But it was whether with my children, the twins, my father, any of my family there, right?

I could only take about 10 minutes and I had to get out.

It was the,

I'm looking for the right word, the energy.

Overwhelming.

Overwhelming.

And they told us that, you know, and when I walked into see everybody, I was very happy.

But then it got to where I almost couldn't breathe and I had to roll out.

I had to do it, you know, over the next day or so, I had to take it in

in just chunks and pieces.

And, you know, the psych was there saying, this is totally normal.

You're going to be overwhelmed.

And we were, you know.

And I remember

the first night having my own room, being by myself

in my room in the hospital, just laying there, kind of breathing, you know, nobody around you, solo for the first time in years.

I was able to kind of decompress.

You know, and I remember talking to Mark the next morning.

Our rooms were too far apart.

And I said, how you feel?

He said, yeah, man, it's a lot.

Right?

It's a lot.

So,

and then, you know,

the reunification with your family, then the reintegration process.

But something that really shocked me was

one of the psyches said, hey, Keith, the guys in the burn unit want to see you.

If you guys can make time for them,

Bamsey has an unbelievable burn unit for

paraplegics, everybody, all wounded veterans, right?

And so

I'm like, okay, let's go see him, right?

They saw us on TV.

They know we're in the building.

These guys have lost arms, limbs, eyes, you know.

And as we're rolling in there, there's this kid, and he was a guardsman.

This is like a spec for.

And he's in a wheelchair with all four arms and all four legs.

And there's screws down every single leg and every single arm, right?

You guys, you came.

You guys came.

We've been waiting for you to come.

And his mom was with him.

He goes, man, I'm sorry for you guys.

I hate you guys had to go through it.

And he's like,

you know.

And

I said, how are you?

He was at an IED.

His truck got hit by.

He said, I'm good.

He said, why?

He said, because I'm going to walk.

And he didn't.

He said, I'll, once they get all these fractures done, he said, I'm, I'm good.

He said, the guys inside aren't.

And when I actually went in the unit and we just started shaking hands or stumps or, you know, and saw those guys,

that's when

the war set in like whoa this stuff been going on now you know and to see the care

that

those servicemen were getting you know

in there

tier one just tier one but to see I remember the next day we had

a tour of the facility and they had a wave machine

Right, and there was a sergeant in there

Young black guy i think he just had one arm and he's the wave machine instructor got on the surfboard he's on his stumps and he's like what are you doing he's got a purpose right he said i'm rehabilitating people

right

and just like his attitude and everything he had i can't remember i think he

he was below the knee

And totally one arm.

He got up, put on, he's talking to us.

Then another guy's in there.

He's a shooting instructor.

And the one guy, sir, was burned over like 80% of his body, just head to toe.

And his attitude, man,

was like,

holy geez.

Just like,

and I'm looking at all these people, like, we didn't go through shit.

You know, so to see

what all those men and women went through, right?

And they're scarred forever, right?

They're going to adjust the way they do things forever.

It was very humbling.

I was like, we didn't do anything.

You know,

we didn't do anything.

But I'll never forget the kid.

He's this young spec four.

And he's like this.

And he's like, no, I'm good.

When they get this shit out, I'm walking fine.

I'm like, okay.

You know, he said, they're waiting for you.

And his mom was thanking us for taking the time to talk to him.

I'm like, no, man, that guy's, you know, talking to you guys.

It's what it's about.

It's amazing what the human mind mind can overcome.

You guys.

Look at that.

I think.

Five years.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's amazing what so many of those people just went through.

But to come back to everything that had been happening was,

you know, an eye-opener.

An eye-opener.

You know, just taking for granted, getting in your truck and going and getting a burger.

How long did it take you to reintegrate?

I don't know.

I saw a counselor probably for a year.

I transitioned from the Army counselor to civilian counselor.

It was more like checkups.

I think we

reintegrated pretty quickly within months.

because we were so busy,

right?

And so

we were going and visiting places, speaking, legal stuff started to happen.

So we were, you know,

I had

to

find a house and everybody had needed furniture and clothing.

And I mean, start from scratch, right?

So there were things that kept you occupied.

If we would have just come back sitting in a hospital somewhere, I don't know what would have happened.

But I think we all, now we all had challenges.

You know, I wasn't married, so I didn't come back to a divorce like Mark and Tom did.

So for them, you know, they had a lot to take on personally when they got back.

And

they did amazing.

But you have personal challenges and your professional challenges or what are we doing?

Or we have a job.

And, you know, it sounds funny, but it wasn't funny to us, you know.

So, I mean, worrying about, of course, we had a job, right?

But we didn't know what's actually all gone on.

So

I remember my father sent me down by the pool the night that I got back.

He goes, take a deep breath.

You got no more worries.

He said, just let it unfold.

You're okay.

Just let it unfold.

And that my father saw from A to Z, man.

He just, he was like that.

And it did.

And it was bumpy.

You know, some parts are, Aunt Saint was like a kumbaya.

We're all dancing in a rose garden.

But

we had good support around us and and we had each other and we had an amazing legal team you know um

we've got

two attorneys one's never been in the military and one is a 160th plankholder so i told mark and tom because i'd been through something with our attorneys before with him one in particular when you know we saw the guy shot down there

he

basically

I was telling

a friend of mine is a retired 75th regiment guy about this and he said oh my brother is the attorney representing him down there

so I met him like a day later and I was doing some other stuff he helped me with and so when I was in captivity I told Mark and Tom I said I don't care what anybody does but this is the guy I'm going to

And I'm not going to mention him now, but people in the community know him, and he's a genius.

And his other part that was civilian, his whole life, brilliant too.

So those two guys have taken care of all three of us.

And you had somebody that had your back, but I told those guys, I said, that's, I don't care if my family's anything.

This is who I have confidence in.

It's who I'm going with.

And they've made a difference in our lives.

But they're patriots too.

So, you know, kind of funny in the community, your lead guy is a 160th plankholder.

And then the other guy was a college swimmer, U of M, brilliant.

And those two

took care of us.

But like I said, see, we had this team of people that just kind of fell in around us that were there to help us 24-7.

Man, that's good.

And it made a difference.

What happened to the

guy that took the M4 and said he was going to kill anybody that rescued you with it?

So

the last time I saw him,

he had the M4 around his chest and he's all proud.

And he rides off with these ponies, right?

Short guy, probably 5'9, but a big fat belly.

And so

we're with the FBI in their offices in Miami.

And

we had a wonderful female agent down there who sees family care.

Like, that's what she does.

You know, she looks after victims, crime victims.

Her name's Dahlia, a wonderful woman.

And then Eddie, one of the guys that's on the plane, is down there.

And he goes, let me show you something.

He brings in the M4.

There's a hole through

the magazine well.

And I'm like, that's my M4.

Obviously, Mill Group signed out for Mill Group.

He goes, yep.

And I said, well, where'd the hole come from?

Your boy, when they went into

bump his camp, he said, that's where he took around.

So for me to see the M4 there with a hole through the magazine well

that the fat guy was carrying,

you know.

I was like, I told him I wouldn't want to fight our people, you know.

And I told him, I said, I don't want to fight our guys.

Why do you?

Which is, it was bravo, right?

And I asked him if I could keep the rifle, and obviously it's evidence, so I can't keep it.

But I did write a letter, you know, I wish they could demill it or something or let me have it.

I mean, you know, put it above the fireplace, but that's a heck of a story, you know.

Damn.

But yeah, I guess he,

you know, I i guess he he had it on him when he went down

and

so you went back to work yeah yeah you were on the bird dome mission yeah

so i was a guinea pig

so um

the reintegration folks along with other government folks

were always training to bring him back and others.

I was used with reintegration guys as kind of a guinea pig, like, how would I react?

If you and your buddies come in to get me, what do you think I'm going to do?

So it was all a profile issue.

And

what I learned about what really happened with Bergdahl,

it wasn't the story that the news was painting.

Did he do something wrong?

Yeah.

I'm not agreeing with the way it went down.

But

real quick, why don't you paint the story of what the media was saying?

Well,

he basically deserted, right?

Which he did.

He rolled up and he, you know, he rolled out.

I did not learn until reintegration and a few soft guys who were in reintegration that handled his reintegration.

He had some legitimate

concerns about what was going on.

And I don't think that they were handled correctly.

And

Doug calls me one day from Bamsey and said that Bo had handed out a few gifts to everybody.

And I never met him face to face.

I was just an interview.

Now I interfaced with his parents.

And so he said he brought us all a compass.

to give us so we never lose our way, right?

Some kind of, you know,

you know, know,

kind of deep stuff there.

And those guys who are hardcore, soft guys,

their job was not to judge.

Their job was to reintegrate.

And I always told everybody the mission there, although difficult because the actions that were taken, you still got to stay mission focused, right?

So I remember I was on CNN doing an interview and Cuomo asked me, Chris Cuomo asked me about Bergdahl and what he'd done.

And I said, it doesn't matter.

And they said, what?

I said, our job, he's got a green ID card is we bring him back.

Then we judge him for right or wrong.

Not the Taliban, not anybody else.

But we judge him.

And I saw my guys

that had to actually...

friends of mine care for this guy.

And they come from your community and all, but then they also know what went down.

Tough mission for them because they took a lot of criticism, right, or a lot of heat.

A lot of people did not care for what he did.

Understandably so.

And I'm not justifying what he did, but imagine being in those shoes.

But I believed in the reintegration mission that

I don't care if you're a mass murderer or you're innocent.

We judge you by our standards here, right?

Guilty or not guilty.

And so

I thought that was an important mission to support.

Now,

I really didn't think it was going to take as long as it did to get him out.

And

I remember getting a call,

and I have to be delicate on this,

from the green side.

And, you know, his father was kind of living vicariously through his captivity.

And, you know, they wanted me to do the first initial talk.

And

I had a phone call with his mother, his father, and their attorney.

And

it was interesting.

It was interesting.

And I don't want to

criticize anybody here.

I don't think it's necessary, you know.

But there was a reluctance on the active duty side to engage with them.

And I understood why once I spoke with them.

But

I remember there was a funeral and

he was standing around a bunch of active duty guys who were at this funeral.

Nobody even knew he was.

So

I think that I've heard a lot in the community about how many people died looking for him.

I think that's been exaggerated.

And I'm not demeaning any of that, but that's the truth.

If you want the truth, Sean, I'll just, that's the truth.

I just remember we'd do a workup.

I'd fly out.

I was the guinea pig.

And you had your HRT folks.

You had your guys from the different places and those guys, what's the plan?

What do we do?

We get them out.

How do we do that?

And the same with Levinson and Iran.

We did the same thing with him.

And

I just thought it was very difficult to see two of my friends have to take on that mission, right?

Because everybody's supposed to hate this guy, right?

You're supposed to, he's a deserter.

We hate him, all this stuff, right?

Well, their job was to look past that, get this finished, and then

command can take over what they're going to do.

And it was tough.

It was tough in one, Doug Sanders, God rest his soul, he's deceased now, but he, he, you know, he led that up with some other guys.

And, you know, guys I have tremendous respect for, but to be put in that position, right,

you're going to catch a lot of heat, but you still have to do your job.

So,

yeah,

I

don't agree with what happened at all.

I don't support what he did at all, but I can understand the mindset.

And

it

was, that's another casualty of war, right?

In a sense.

People are put in extreme positions and they do extreme things.

Not everybody handles it the same way.

I don't think he handled it correctly, right?

But

you ask me,

right?

Hey, are you willing to be a guinea pig?

Would you come back?

And we, well, of course.

That's the mission.

My mission is not to judge, right

your folks hey whatever i can do i still believe i made the right choices i think the guys that reintegrated him did an unbelievable job

would i've wanted to be in their shoes no

no

i mean would you no

but given that mission

right

So that was pretty dicey.

And,

you know, a lot of people paid a price with that.

I do think it might have been exaggerated.

Some of the stories I heard did not fit with what I saw,

but why argue about it?

You know?

And

I was in no position of authority either.

I was a supporter, right?

Didn't make a rat's ass, what my opinion was.

I wasn't a decision maker, right?

But

people who I greatly, greatly respect,

you know, from the soft community,

I would say, man,

but they did their job.

They did their job.

And

I respect them for it.

But, you know, how hard was that?

Because

that was a bad deal.

Yeah.

You know?

But,

I mean, I don't know.

I just said, you want me to go do this?

I'll do this.

You know,

I never thought my position was to make a call.

They needed somebody to do something for them.

And like I said, I was just a guinea pig.

That's all I was.

You know, and then a couple debriefings

with some folks.

How would I react?

What would I do?

What do you think?

Well, all I can do is give you my opinion, right?

Another person may do a totally different thing.

You know, but the effort,

and this is what I do respect, and this is what I think maybe is a better answer to your question.

The effort that we put to get

an American back,

regardless of what he's done, is what makes us different.

It can be distasteful, and I know it was for many, right?

But

that's what separates us.

That's what makes that flag different than other flags.

And so I always stood by that,

you know, you got a green ID card, we'll bring it back.

What happens after that?

That's on you.

But it also says to me,

how about the future people?

Hey, if we'll go to this effort to get that person back, for sure, I'm coming back.

Right?

If you were rolled up under other circumstances.

So there's a bigger message sent there that I believe in.

That's a damn good point.

You know, that's a damn good point.

You know, and I'm not saying to agree or not agree.

I'm looking at a bigger picture.

But I know one thing when those Colombians are saying, we're glad you're here.

Why?

Because Americans are never abandoned.

You know, there was,

was it a year and a half ago?

And I haven't followed the Africa thing too much, but didn't we rescue a female American missionary with,

was it your, one of your, some of your guys?

A group of SEALs or was it a unit?

And a British guy, right?

And I don't know if you know the people that were in on that or whatever.

But I saw the guy's interview and he said, you know what I was happy about?

He said, what?

He said, she was in America.

Thank you, America.

That was my biggest hope.

I don't know if I have that story confused, but I was reading about it not too long ago.

But I thought it was in Africa.

Wasn't she a missionary or whatever?

There's been a couple.

Yeah.

But his interview, all he did was thank the U.S.

Armed Forces.

That's all he did.

He couldn't say enough about us.

He goes, if it would have just been me, shit, I'm still there.

So

that is,

I think,

the message that I would want to send, that no matter the what,

we're going to bring you back

because that means others are going to believe in us and that we're coming to get them, right?

You know?

So I think that overrides

what he did

because it's not about him.

It's about us and what we do.

And it's about sacrifice.

It's a damn good message that I've never heard.

I just happen to be around there, you know, watching the whole thing and play my little part, but I believe in that message more than

like, how do I get justice?

How do Mark and Tom and I really get justice?

How do the people that were looking for me that died get justice?

I don't have the answer.

I want to get healthy.

I want to have happiness.

What is justice?

Like if I killed every person that had me in captivity, is that justice?

Would it make me feel any better?

No.

You know, surviving is my justice, but that's the definition for myself.

So

unpleasant or not, I think we send a bigger message.

Now,

if I'm a family member that lost somebody that was doing an op,

It's probably not acceptable for them.

But I'd ask that same family member, what if you got got somebody else and goes down, it's a family member, they know we're coming.

There was no win in that either, I don't believe.

How do you win in that?

Right?

No matter what you know,

we're going after them, right?

We don't know what the price is.

We don't know who's going to pay, but we're going.

And I think when you sign a dotted line,

you accept that responsibility.

Right and wrong?

I mean, shit, Sean, your show is all about what's right, what's wrong, right?

How do you define it?

So, I don't know.

But I think our message that we send is most important.

And my heart goes out to anybody that made a sacrifice on that.

I don't want to discount that at all.

But I'm not making that judgment.

Does that make sense at all?

It makes perfect sense.

It's an aspect I've never thought of.

It's a bigger message in that.

I mean,

and they're not all public.

There was,

I'll just leave it as a foreigner that was rescued by our people

less than a year after me and was reintegrated, okay,

through our own folks.

that I got to work with

and,

you know some operators showed up and got him out

and all he wants to be is a u.s citizen with him and his family and when i say patriot and an appreciation

and i was only working with him for a little little bit mainly telephone calls right got to meet him and all but he called me i was really a part of a support network I'm like,

I called Doug.

I said, Doug, I said, he goes, yeah, we do a lot of people.

He said, we don't advertise it, right?

And I said, what's he want?

He just wants to be a citizen.

He's the biggest convert ever, right?

And so,

you know, how many undocumented, let's say, or unadvertised

have you and your friends done?

Right?

So that's a bigger message.

But now,

let's just say I had a spouse or a brother or somebody that paid a price during that mission.

It'd be pretty hard for me to stomach.

Yeah.

If I even could.

Yeah.

You know.

Well, Keith, what are you doing now to keep busy?

My wife says I'm getting fat.

I retired about four and a half years ago.

And so we lived out in Sarasota, and I love to hunt and fish.

And my wife is a foodie,

craft cocktail person, excellent cook.

I never enjoyed anything as far as traveling or eating.

So she's kind of exposed me to that.

So now I drink some foo-fu drinks that I would have never drank before

and eat some food that I never ate before.

You know, I never ate a salad.

I was 54 years old.

I never ate a salad until I met my wife.

And

so we travel and

we've got some real estate rental stuff that we dabble in.

You know, we built a few things just for rentals, but we um

we are considering a move everybody's moved to florida thank you i appreciate that whatever right

but uh

we're looking at maybe um moving somewhere a little more rural we had some property up in georgia that we just sold to my best friend a few weeks ago actually it says s and s properties and his last name starts with an s and i He's a redneck genius.

He's a redneck that has a chemical engineering degree and had a third generation tow truck company and took it to a different level.

So that's his logo.

He came up with it.

That was our LLC.

I wear this hat everywhere.

But

going to travel, get a little healthier.

And we just came back from a great fishing trip and, you know, whatever else she puts on the calendar.

Enjoying life.

As best we can.

as best we can, which is, but that sounds negative.

No, yes, we are.

We are enjoying life.

It's funny, though, I'm 60 now.

And I don't feel 60 until I look in the mirror.

You know, I imagine myself a different way.

And so

it's kind of that time of change, you know.

But I want to make memories now.

We're in a position where life is good and we can make choices.

But I wonder, and I talk about my good friends with us, I said, can I make it to 75 before she puts me in an orange flag wheelchair and remote controls me around?

Or will I make it to 80?

but there's like there's this physical window now right it's the fourth quarter

and I um

I was on a mountain last year on a sheep hunt and I finished my sheep grand slam

my mentor in the sheep world 74 years old he was out doing me on the mountain right I'm a flatlander whatever but with some of the stuff that we do what's really been in my conscious now is

How long will I be able to physically enjoy it?

Now, I don't think in a year or two I'm out and I don't feel, I know people doing a lot of different things, but talking to my friend, I'm like, my best buddy, and I said, what do you think?

He said, no, Keith, it's the fourth quarter.

And I don't know how long it is or how good we do,

but things start changing physically a little quicker as you get older, right?

So

we want to travel and we want to make memories.

And I've been lucky.

health-wise.

I've got great health.

I've been very fortunate.

But,

you know, we've had a few friends that have died, you know.

Someone we know now is just a few years older than me, just come up with a stomach cancer issue.

You know, so at this age, things start to drop, right?

And so

I want to take this time while I can still do things physically.

And I don't think it's running out in 10 years or anything, but the point is, it's got me thinking different,

you know.

You've been through what you've been through

thousand nine hundred and sixty-seven days in captivity.

Yeah.

No getting that back.

Do you value relationships more than you used to?

Ooh, that's a tough question.

I don't think so.

This is being a little mercenary.

I value a real relationship more than I used to.

Well, that's what I'm getting at.

Yes.

Relationship with your dad, your son.

Yes.

A real relationship, yes.

Wife.

Yes.

Yes.

Those in the peripheral,

it's a fact of life,

people move in and out of each other's lives, right?

And so,

where's your circle?

Where's your circle?

You know, my problem is I have too big of a mouth and I'm too open.

I don't think it's changing.

I'm trying to, but let's see how that works out, right?

my openness has cost me

it's cost me and

you know um i'm working on that i think my circle will only become smaller

not that i don't like people or a social thing or making friends but you know it's uh

it makes you kind of define is this a real true friendship or not or is this just something i'm with casual i mean the way i think about it is you know if you had

24 friends yeah

you're awake for let's say 12 hours a day

you want to develop those relationships you can only give 30 minutes a day to each person right but as your circle gets smaller And you get more particular about who you care about and who you give your time to,

Whittle that down to 12, then

it's an hour for each person a day.

Right.

You whittle that down to six, that's two.

Two.

You know, and so, you know, what I've noticed through, through my journey is, yeah, everybody,

everybody wants to be your friend.

Everybody wants, you know.

Yeah.

And you got to be careful because the relationships that really do matter, they suffer because then you start divvying up time

and nothing really grows.

But when you do whittle it down to what really matters, family,

close, close, close friends.

For me, my team here, we're like a family.

I mean, when you can invest in the relationships that

you truly value, then they'll flourish beyond what you

ever would have thought.

Yeah, I think that,

look,

we'll take your position.

So you've earned a lot of respect in the community for what you've given back on your show.

Probably some animosity too for your success.

And you meet like-minded individuals all the time.

That if it was just Sean by himself, no family, no, you guys are hanging out all the time.

Hey, I'll go fish tomorrow, let's roll.

Life, right, starts to take up time, which you're talking about,

and

effort.

So, where do you focus your effort?

And it is

it's just normal for people, right,

to kind of want to be around certain things like we were talking about and, you know,

be a part of something.

But

you got to whittle down

where there's going to be real results, you know, because

I know.

You know, I've got some friends of mine.

I would call them friends.

We don't see each other very often, right?

Not my close.

I've got three very, very, very close friends, okay?

But outside of that, there are people that I've met, especially through this captivity and everything, that are just awesome folks, man.

Men and women, that I have tremendous respect for.

And if there was time to hang out with them or something, probably would.

But I think

maybe.

Understanding,

this is going to sound a little shallow, but I believe in it.

Loving yourself first so you can love those around you, understanding

what you can manage and not manage is part of defining that circle and those relationships.

And let's face it, time becomes a commodity also.

And when I turned 60 last year, my wife surprised me with a beautiful trip.

to Ireland.

We were fly fishing for brown trout, which I wanted to do for years.

And I'm looking around and my wife's with me and I'm here and just this gorgeous place.

And I said, you'll never erase this from my head,

this memory.

You'll never erase it from my head.

So I want to focus on those in this second half, right?

And you can't always please everybody, even though you may want to.

Then you get straggled out and then those that you need to be like yourself are dividing up your time.

And I think it's okay to be a a little selfish.

I didn't say be unappreciative thing, but sometimes, you know, I went through something here recently.

My friend said to me, my best friend goes, it's okay to be selfish.

It's all right, you know?

And sometimes you got to, you know, kick back and take care of yourself.

And I mean, like, how many people in the best way, especially with what you do, hey, Sean, come do this.

With the best intentions, right?

They really appreciate you and what you do.

Come, just come on.

Let's come do this.

What kind of invites do you get?

All this stuff, right?

You can't always just go do it.

You know, and I would imagine for you, the demands on your time now must be astronomical.

I guard it very carefully.

But you're growing something, right?

And so I say I value relationships, but also

just because you're family

doesn't mean you're more valuable than a friend, who's a true friend.

So sometimes family can disappoint you more than your friends,

right?

And

that becomes a challenge also

because there's a deeper, you know, maybe love or connection there.

And that hurts worse too, right?

It hurts a little worse.

So

I don't know.

I think about that now because in this time, in this quarter, where are you going to cut up your time to be?

Every time you say yes to somebody, you say no to somebody else.

so if you're saying yes to people that

not that they don't matter but it's not going to go anywhere it's a dead end then you're saying no to somebody that you love right

and

starving them of their time and overcommitting yourself yep that's what i'm

in the past have been guilty of and i'm trying to maybe when i make a commitment to something does it have real value is that just being a nice guy

That could be noble or whatever, but it does have real value.

And so

my wife has helped me with that.

Say, hold on a second.

What are you doing?

Got a good woman.

She's got an instinct for that stuff.

But,

you know, I mean,

I can only imagine for you.

You've become a known quantity now, right?

What about those days when nobody knew who you were when you pulled out out of your driveway oh i think about that but this will all end one day no i know i know

you know and the five minutes of fame was funny i

i it's not real it's not real i i i was on an interview i think it was good morning america

and uh

we were doing a few talk talk show things and so i get an elevator and there's a I'm not going to throw rocks at anybody, but she's left the country and she's over where I was fishing.

She's standing there.

Oh, I know who you're talking about.

And she's standing there in front of me and she wasn't rude or anything, right?

And then Rob Lowe's there, right?

He's just cracking me up and

I just see this throng of women, man.

Like there must have been a hundred women outside the studio, Rob, Rob, Rob, you know?

And

I looked at him.

I know he'll never probably remember me.

I was on the show show too, whatever.

I said,

careful with that film.

We got caught, you know.

He goes, yeah.

I was like, you know, but I was just watching him and he was sincerely nice, right?

But there was just this throng of all these women of all ages just wanting to get next to him and touch him, you know?

And so you get to meet some celebrities and I've met a bunch more or whatever, but man, imagine just going somewhere and being yourself,

you know?

Like, and I won't drop names here, but we're mentioning one of my best friends and who his best friend is, right?

And I said, what's it like when you go somewhere with him, right?

And he Sikitese, he's very humble, but like, you can't move 10 steps without,

and people don't mean anything bad.

That's never gone away, right?

And now with social media and all this stuff, wow.

Wow.

Nothing's free, right?

There's no free lunch.

That's right.

My father always said, if you said fair or free to to my father, argument was over.

Nope, done.

We're finished.

We're not going to talk about this.

Well, Keith, we're wrapping up the interview, but

so I got one more thing for you.

Yeah.

You know, you've seen the show.

You see the majority of who I interview.

Right.

We talk a lot about reintegration after combat, after service.

Right.

What do you have?

It's a big struggle throughout the veteran community.

I mean, suicide's at an all-time high.

Okay.

So what I'm going to ask is, you know,

I've never met anybody like you.

You've been through it five years, captivity.

What advice do you have for people that are reintegrating?

It's a network.

It's a network around you.

I was surrounded.

So was Mark and Tom.

We were surrounded by people

that were there to support us legally,

professionally, emotionally.

Don't be

the lone man on the hill by yourself, right?

And I think especially type A's

from this community tend to be that way.

They don't want to accept help

and recognize you do need help.

So it's a network is the biggest thing.

And my fear,

so

I'm set

and I could go be on my own.

I'll be okay, right?

You know, my wife and I can just go off into

the distance there and we're fine.

What about that vet who is not set,

right?

That every day for the rest of his or her life,

they'll put on, you know.

Prosthetics.

Yeah.

Every day they'll have that physical challenge, right,

of

just getting through the basics in life.

And what scares me is,

as I called it the sandbox, right?

But as the war wound down,

do the networks and the support for the vets start to wind down too?

Because they're carrying it for the rest of their life.

The rest of their life.

Well, when it's not

24-7,

all the new fights on YouTube or on the news or whatever, and it's not in the public's eyes.

Does the support, although not met in a bad way, dwindle?

So the recognition of what sacrifices these people have made,

I think, is an important

key to keeping the support networks going.

Right.

When you see all this stuff on the news every day and they ask for a donation for vets, oh, they're coming.

I mean, you see an organization like Tunnel the Towers, right?

Or

it's created something long-term.

Is our long-term care for our vets there?

I mean,

when I see illegal immigrants in a hotel with a check, a cell phone, and I'm not trying to hurt these people, right?

All the support, and then I see a homeless vet, and I'm like, what's going on?

Right?

And then also the psychological side of it.

Not only do some of our folks have to deal with the physical trauma, but the mental trauma, right?

Is that support going to remain a priority?

Is it five years after the war, 10 years after the war, 15 years after the war?

Is that still going to be there?

That's my fear for people who have paid a price.

And this focus on...

And not trying to go political here, but this focus on immigration over people that, okay,

protected the right for that to even happen.

I think they should be front of the line.

I don't think the military is a place for social experimentation.

I think the military is a place where it makes our country safe so we can have social experimentation, right?

And

I just,

like your show does,

you keep the light on.

And

I'm lucky.

not everybody's lucky

so that's my worry personally for those folks is how how does that stay relevant i think it's just natural that people start to see other things and move on and think oh we were in a war 15 years ago well that person still doesn't have any legs right they're still struggling with long-term health issues physical we don't even know about psychological how can they make a living what can they do you know so

how strong is that compared to five years ago right now?

I don't know.

But I would say that's my fear, keeping the light on.

And, you know,

you see it, especially here with this, what it goes on.

So I hope that, I hope that we as a country can

keep that going.

But it scares me.

It scares me that those people will be forgotten after time.

But they're living with everything that they have until the end of their time.

You know, so some of these big organizations that have become well-organized, you know,

I like that.

But

I,

you know,

I just don't know.

You know, I just don't know.

I mean, how do you feel about that?

Do you think that the support is waning with time?

I think that there are

some great organizations out there

that will continue to develop and do the right things.

Unfortunately,

I don't think that's the government.

Right.

But

it's the

how do I say this?

It's the giving back.

to the community that's going to keep it alive.

Right.

Taking care of each other.

That's what's going to keep it going.

Right.

It's mentoring guys.

You know, I got out,

I quit contracting in 2015.

That's 10 years ago.

But I'm still giving back.

I'm still coaching.

I'm still

bringing exposure to guys that have done amazing stuff like yourself that can transform their business.

And

there's a number of other organizations out there that do that.

And so, you know, if you're asking, you know, what my advice would be, it would be to seek those organizations out.

Exactly what you said, a network, build a circle that you can lean on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lean on each other.

Accept some help, man.

Because nobody's going to take care of us except ourselves.

Yeah, that's it.

And, you know, and it's not just us, it's our families that suffer too.

You know,

you know, I've had a couple of relationships that were just

damaged just by my absence.

And so, you know, do those ever get back?

You don't know.

But,

yeah, I don't know, Sean.

I think keeping the light on, isn't that norm that says that in the hotel thing?

Hey, we leave the light on for you, right?

But the light's a beacon.

Yeah.

And I think it's important.

And, you know,

I like seeing

folks, men and women, that have come out

and turned it into a positive.

You know, for me, whether writing the book or we wrote the book i didn't write the book on right

or um

going to teach a class somewhere or to speak to a group of people that's that's that's me being selfish winning for myself right just giving back and that's a way to defeat those that that at one time had me defeated so that's you know that's where i'm at with that

and

you know but we got a lot we got a generation of really young folks that have suffered greatly and they're going to need our support for a long time

and i don't think they're looking for a handout i think they're looking maybe just for a little leg up

you know yeah and it's it is um

it's

it's tough to see

some of the folks that uh you know

are will you know are have gone through some things.

I met a guy that's a wounded warrior when I was at Northrop Grumman and he was a program manager.

He was a Marine captain

and he was at Fallujah.

Big guy, but he had a limp and he was getting on a plane with me.

We had an RPG round

go through his thigh and not go off and get stuck.

Right?

And

he was working for our company, totally fine.

You know, he has a little bit of a limp, but you know,

I said, well, tell me some stories about there because he was on the first end ramp.

And wow,

you know, he's like, man, I'm lucky.

His attitude was unbelievable.

You know, he's an officer, came back,

whatever.

And I was like, wow, wow.

You know, so when you see it firsthand,

when he's like, hey, I'm one of the lucky ones, you know, because there's a lot of his guys and other people, I mean, they're never, you know, what are you doing?

So I, you know, maintain the respect for our service folks.

And I

like what's going on now, not to get

political, but to shake up.

And kind of, I would see it as a return to our core value of what we're about, right?

Not a social experiment, not a DEI experiment.

I mean, we're here to do one thing, defend this country.

And that doesn't get done with a quality of outcome.

And as noble as that might be, you know, I remember a cartoon years ago,

and it showed this little kid and he was kind of nerdy and his dad was a little bit older and overweight and he couldn't get on the football field.

It was at high school.

I can't remember why he married this.

And

his dad said, don't worry, son.

He goes, what?

He's about 10 years.

He'll be working for you.

Right?

But we all have our strengths, right?

We all work to our strengths.

So I like seeing what's going on.

You know, I mean, not everybody's everybody's smart.

Some people are stupid.

Not everybody's good looking.

Some people are ugly.

Right.

But this whole, you know, hey,

I don't even want to even see what my 40 time would have been when I was 18 years old.

Probably wouldn't have been that fast, right?

I just wasn't blessed with certain things, but I did have other strengths.

So

I'd like to see that stuff erased and us, everybody be.

who everybody is and accept who what you can do and you know understand what you can't I think that better prepares people for the future.

I do too.

It's called a reality check.

The truth isn't always sweet.

It rarely is.

It rarely is.

Well, Keith,

it was an honor to interview you, man.

Honor to meet you, brother.

I really, really, really,

you know, I...

Welcome home.

Thank you, and thanks for the invite.

I hope I can,

you know, do justice to your show.

It was awesome.

Got a lot of impressive individuals here lately, so you're one of them.

Appreciate it.

Thank you for being on that way.

Thank you.

This is Larry Flick, owner of the floor store.

Labor Day is the last sale of the summer, but this one is our biggest sale of the year.

Now through September 2nd, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus, two years' interest-free financing, and we pay your sales tax.

The Floor Stores Labor Day sale.

Don't let the sun set on this one.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your area flooring authority.