Ep 246 | EMERGENCY PODCAST: Save ‘Baby Sparrow’ from the Taliban | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, No, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with a class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah, aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

And now, a Blaze Media Podcast.

Today I want to tell you a story of a five-year-old that is right dead center, the heart of an international controversy involving al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the U.S.

State Department, even Hunter Biden's law firm.

But

everybody seems to forget she's a little five-year-old girl.

She was actually recovered as an infant during a U.S.

mission in Afghanistan.

Her mother was a suicide bomber.

She survived even though mom was clutching her at the chest.

Military didn't know what to do with her.

The Afghans that were on our side said, you got to kill her.

because she's just going to become another terrorist.

But a good Marine

and several Marines and several people in the hospitals around the world

remembered she was a child and she now lives in America with her adoptive parents who are now fighting to keep custody of her.

They claim that their daughter is the child of foreign terrorists in Afghanistan.

And without the intervention of the U.S.

Rangers who rescued her that night, she wouldn't be alive today.

Even if they would have given them to the soldiers from Afghanistan that were on our side, she wouldn't be alive today.

And if she were in Afghanistan today, she would be under the rule of the Taliban.

How would that work out for a young girl?

The only problem is,

is that if this little girl is who they claim she is, then her mere existence unravels the foundations of a peace agreement between the U.S.

and Afghanistan, which stipulated there were no foreign fighters in Afghanistan.

But you see, this little girl proves once again the Taliban lied.

These are the shaky foundations that set the stage for our disastrous withdrawal, and with the fall of Afghanistan in the background, Two Americans fought against all odds to rescue their adopted daughter before she was crushed in the collapse of a nation.

Now,

perhaps without you, her future hangs in the balance.

She needs help now.

I want you to spend time and really listen to the American parents fighting for this little girl, Joshua and Stephanie Mast.

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Thank you guys for coming in.

I think I've done a lot of important shows that felt important when I did them.

This might be

the biggest possible injustice I have ever reported on.

Your story is remarkable.

It's very complex.

And so I want to take it carefully, linearly.

So we'll just tell the story.

And the first part needs to be, who are you?

Introduce yourselves.

Well, first, thank you for having us on.

We really appreciate it.

It's, you know, growing up listening to you and rush, it's just a surreal to be able to sit here and talk with you.

Thank you.

So I'm an active duty Marine.

I'm a major in the Marine Corps.

Active duty.

Active duty.

So all this is my opinion, not on behalf of the government or anybody else.

In fact, a lot of it will be kind of focused on some government action that's happened to our family.

I would say, describing us, we're a family of five,

grown up traveling with the Marine Corps.

I've had a child born at every duty station.

I'd say we're a pretty archetypical military family.

Yes.

You've been in for 14 years now.

So we've been married for 18 years.

So our entire married life, most of our married life has been in the Marine Corps and proud of, I mean, love the experience.

And

our four, we have five kids.

Four of them are boys.

A lot of them want to grow up to be a Marine, or that's what they say at this age.

And so just red-blooded patriots through his...

how's mom with the idea of the Marines.

I tell them to be open to,

but absolutely.

I mean, I'm proud of the Marine Corps and just, you know, even our service members in general.

And so I love

the community.

And so we've been happy to be a part of it.

You guys have been together for how long?

18 years?

Well, married 18 years.

I met him when I was 11 and he was 12.

So we've prayed

childhood sweethearts, you know, grew up together, started dating in high school and have been together ever since.

So really, I mean, truly best friends and been through everything together.

Okay, so now we have to introduce your daughter.

Four boys, one girl.

Yes.

She's the center of a lot of controversy.

And to protect her, we're going to have to use

John Doe's, Jane Doe, and her name is not a real name, Sparrow.

That's right.

Tell me about Sparrow.

Who

is she?

Where did she come from?

Where did the nickname come from?

Okay.

Well, first of all, I'll tell who she is today.

So she is a five-year-old girl that loves just like any other girl, loves baby dolls and anything girly, pink, purple, coloring, just loves life, loves dogs and playing outside with her brothers.

And she's just a blessing and a true joy, just the most gracious little girl that you could possibly imagine.

She has a remarkable past, and if you saw her today, you would never believe what she has been through.

So I don't know what your parameters are as a Marine, but

you claim.

that

she is the child of a foreign fighter in Afghanistan, correct?

Can you tell me what

tell me that scenario?

What happened?

Sure.

So I was deployed in 2019 in Afghanistan.

I was attached at operational headquarters of the 4-star in overall command of both U.S.

and NATO forces.

And so I will never forget, I was walking to dinner one night with our staff.

My colonel was a senior staff judge advocate, phenomenal leader.

Really appreciated my time under him.

But

he said, what the heck are we going to do with this baby?

Walk into dinner.

And what baby, sir?

And he said, oh, the operators had knocked over an al-Qaeda facility last night, and

there was only one survivor.

It was a baby.

And we didn't know it was boy or girl or much details about it, but it sounded like it was bad.

And so like your gut reaction and the reaction of like folks from the Rangers on the ground to medical staff to us was like, well, what can we do?

Like, you immediately volunteer, like, how do we make sure a safe outcome for this child?

And it kind of developed from there.

And we learned more about it over time.

And now we have eyewitness testimony and declassified information from the most sophisticated unit in Afghanistan at that time in a 19-year-developed theater with,

I guess, a significant amount of intelligence about exactly who was there, exactly what were they doing, and where they were from.

Okay, but the actual mission that night has been classified, right?

So

portions of it have been declassified, and two eyewitnesses have testified

that they were there and they

were there and saw it and recovered her.

So how did

mom and dad die?

Well, I guess I should probably just give you an overview of the mission.

Okay.

So

it was 6 September 2019 in the period of darkness between the 5th and the 6th at night.

That's when they owned the night.

So it was a Ranger Regiment mission, which was one of our most sophisticated units in Afghanistan at that time.

And so they infiltrate to an area where there's a known al-Qaeda compound, and they're trying to capture or kill three al-Qaeda leaders.

And they also had another series of compounds nearby that had more fighters in them.

And so they had two platoon-sized elements of Rangers in the cover of darkness.

basically sneaking up on these compounds, surrounding them, and then issuing a demand to surrender or die.

And they were briefed.

And what happened exactly as they were briefed, they expected them to fight to the death.

And that's exactly what happened in brutal close combat over an hour and a half, where they sustained multiple U.S.

casualties.

Two guys partially paralyzed,

almost a dozen, I believe, Rangers wounded, and then a dozen of the Afghan partner force were also wounded in a very kinetic engagement.

So

our Rangers are there.

But when does Sparrow come into the scene?

She with mom, dad, both?

What are mom and dad doing?

So a little bit of both.

So the multi-purpose cannon handler, or dog handler is how we colloquially refer to them.

He described when they initially breached the structure, seeing a man

holding a little baby, which we believe was her.

and having AK-47 and firing at them, engaging them.

And then that weapon jammed.

And so

the man disappeared, the baby was no longer with him, and a grenade rolled out.

So he says he had a distinct memory of looking down and seeing this grenade.

And as he described it, it was like a homemade explosive.

And

so he says, I covered my dog and I yelled grenade because there was Rangers stacked up on the breach.

And he said, even though I was the closest one, somehow I didn't get hit.

And several of his buddies did, got fragmentation wounds.

And so they had to, they were forced to, with knowing there was a child in there, throw grenades back in in exchange.

So there was an exchange of grenades at close range, and they had sympathetic detonations of other explosives going off from the grenades they threw into the room.

And from there, they did a series of what they call barricaded shooters.

So it is a suicidal terrorist who will barricade themselves in with the presence of their family in a room and engage whoever's coming in that room and not surrender no matter what.

They will even, you know, blow up their families rather than surrender.

And that's exactly what they experienced in room after room after room through this relatively small leadership compound.

And so you asked

where did where did she where did she recovered so as they culminate and they get to one of the last rooms in this structure they had uh run out of breaching explosives and so they used what's called a carl gustav or a goose gun which is a bazooka for for lack of a better descriptor And they use that to blow a hole in the final room to clear it of the remaining terrace.

And that blast killed that original,

what we believe was the biological father.

And the ranger testified under oath that he observed what ended up being her biological mother run out of that hole that they created, screaming at him as he's like obliquing around a corner, covering whoever's going to come out, and exploded a suicide device about 15 feet from him.

So that was his.

So on her.

She blew herself up.

Correct.

And she was holding Sparrow?

So he didn't realize that at the time.

So as an American, we treat, you know, friendly, enemy, we treat wounded.

And so she was incapacitated.

He dragged her out of berm, checked her medically, noticed that

she had the signs of like recently giving birth.

And he's kind of looking around with his night vision to like what, and saw her moving out of the corner of his eye.

And so she was about six weeks old.

She suffered a fractured skull.

a fractured left femur so bad they had to put a rod in to put it back together and second degree burns on her face and neck from from the Carl Gustav round or the mom's vest cooking off you know it's it's hard to say with that many kinetic events happening around her what exactly caused it but i mean we're talking six inches and she's you know six inches higher and and she's she's in vital areas and an inch an inch deeper into her skull and she's she's she's dead and um

what was more remarkable is there's an afghan partner force there And they were engaged in clearing that room that they just breached.

And

they sustained a casualty and um were very angry about that.

And so, they wanted, they they literally came to our rangers and they're like, Let us shoot her in the head, like

the baby, like let's let's just throw her in the creek.

And so, they didn't want her to grow up to be a foreign terrorist in their country because they're engaged in a brutal civil war at that point with a lot of foreign terrorists.

And these are the cultural experts, it's their culture, who knows better than them.

And so, our guys like physically resisted murdering our little girl now

on objective.

And like, honestly,

the moral courage, while you have your own guys bleeding and you're in a kinetic firefight, they still have that instinct as an American soldier to protect innocent life.

I mean, I'm humbled.

So

why did no one step forward?

I mean, was it known that this baby was retrieved from this compound?

I mean, I don't know what the situation is on how you, you know, put an ad out.

Hey, are you relative to these people?

I mean, you couldn't.

Well, that was some, so we've gotten to meet a bunch of phenomenal Americans at every level of government over the last five years in this.

And one of them was the

He was what's called a civil affairs officer for the Special Operations Task Force Afghanistan.

And I had some of those same questions as I'm kind of researching this.

And we didn't know all this at the time, but over time we've learned.

And he had asked the same question, well, how do you safely, you know, advertise in an area controlled by al-Qaeda or Haqqani network in Afghanistan?

How do you safely advertise that you've recovered a child?

And then we had a lot of reports of foreign children, you know, doing very poorly in the Afghan orphanage system or being treated prejudicially, you know, just because of the brutality of the war going on there.

And so he had actually asked some of the ICRC staff like, that were like, oh, we found somebody who might be able to take her.

And he's like, well, are they related?

They're like, we don't know.

And so he was very concerned that they were having to rely on the word of basically Taliban local nationals in this Taliban-controlled area for any sort of potential claimants.

And that was a huge concern at our level, at the headquarters level as well.

It's like, how do we safely vet people?

So you're walking

with your fellow Marine.

And he says, what are we going to do with this baby?

When did it occur to you

maybe we should adopt?

Honestly, like, I think the gut instinct was we wanted to ensure the child's safety.

Like, initially, it was just a, as an American, you know, anybody downrange, I bet there's a million guys out there could close their eyes and say, hey, like, I can remember someone I was trying to help on deployment.

Right.

That was, that's what this was for us originally.

What happened was, is we were trying to,

as the legal shop, guarantee a safe outcome for her.

And I think DOD did a great job of doing that initially.

And then we had, we'd hit some interference later on with some other agencies.

But what really caused us to seek adoption was getting her a visa.

But I'll never forget the phone call that I got because after that initial talk, walking to Chow Hall,

he called me and it was in the afternoon, my time.

And that was not the normal time for him to call me.

So initially, that scared me.

Like, okay, what's going on?

It wasn't very long into his deployment.

And so I picked up the phone and I'll never forget the tone of his voice.

It just sounded different.

And I guess the searching, like instantly, like, okay, what's going on?

And he said, hon, there's this baby.

And I was standing in the kitchen.

I just stopped and I was just listening to him describe that it was a lone survivor of an al-Qaeda raid and they don't know what they're going to do with this baby.

And so just trying to sort through that.

And

I mean, as a mom, my heart goes out.

We didn't know at that point, boy, girl, we just knew baby, and it was injured, and its future is you know up in the air.

And so, I was like, Well, we can do something, we will volunteer for it.

And I mean, I'm already a stay-at-home mom, have young kids right around that age range.

I know how vulnerable and just, you know, how precious children are.

So, I was like, we'll do something.

And he's like, Well, I'm glad you said that because I already volunteered.

He's like, But, you know, they're going to do a family trace and there's still a lot of things to figure out.

So he's like, we'll see.

So this was at a time at first, you weren't thinking adoption.

You were just thinking maybe.

Well, I mean, it wasn't, it was more of like, if there's, I mean, it, it was.

like he said, guaranteeing a safe outcome.

So whatever that is, long-term commitment.

It wasn't just like make sure the baby's bandaged up and okay.

It was like, absolutely, we'll open our home to a child that has a need like that.

Yeah.

And I would say that we were very aware at the time of like the negotiations negotiations going on that they're going to, like our presence is going to end very rapidly.

And then what's going to happen?

Because a lot of the funding is going to be attached to that.

And so our concern, you know, is just asking basic questions like, how bad is she hurt?

What unit picked her up?

Why do they say she's foreign?

And then as I used kind of the skill set that I had to pull some of that information for decision makers, it was very clear.

exactly who she was and where they came from.

And so there was all, and then as you did research on, hey,

what does an orphanage in Afghanistan look like?

And then add to that, what does it look like when the U.S.

leaves?

That was.

Especially for a girl.

Yes.

Especially for a foreign child.

So she was not from Afghanistan.

Yeah.

So all of the U.S.

intelligence and everything has been declassified, and there's a significant amount that's still left that has not been declassified pointed to a foreign origin for her.

This specific group is

a Turkestani or Uyghur al-Qaeda branch.

Okay, yeah.

So you decide to adopt,

right?

Well, initially, it was just seeking guardianship and what Joshua said.

It was, it was at the, it was like one step, just what's the first step?

And like Joshua said, it was getting a visa so that she could, because she did have ongoing medical needs.

Well, she'd actually back up.

It was the initial conversation.

And then a couple weeks later, we see the very first photo.

And we call it the baby in the box.

And there's this little little girl in a Home Depot box on the floor of a hospital wrapped up in blankets and so that was the first time we found out basic age that it's an infant and that it's a girl and then it just when you see a put a face to it that is just where you're like okay what can we do So initially it was just trying to guarantee safe, like ongoing medical care in the United States.

And we were seeking guardianship.

But that was, you know, after you found out what the requirements are going to be.

Yeah, I'd say, Glenn, that we initially just advocated to elevate the priority of this child's life in the U.S.

government's eyes.

So when did you decide

she needs to be with us?

She's ours.

Well, I think it was in the midst of pursuing all the administrative requirements to get a visa.

They kept saying, oh, well, she needs a name.

Well, how do you get a name for a Jane Doe baby that got blown up on an objective?

And that was what the problem was.

And then there was like, well, how do you arrange medical care in the U.S., which was a requirement for the visa?

How do you pay for that?

How do you authorize surgery on a child, a minor child?

Well, you have to have some sort of legal rights.

And so as this developed, we're like, okay, well, I'll volunteer to be the financial sponsor for the visa.

I'll volunteer to try and get some sort of legal ability to order medical care.

And so it really evolved pretty organically from that.

It was very organic.

But it ultimately, I think, stemmed from our worldview for it.

I mean, in that every life is precious.

It doesn't matter race, ethnicity, background.

I mean,

she was an innocent caught in a terrible war.

And so it was just a protective instinct.

And we were put in the position, there was, like he said, dozens of Americans.

This was not just us.

This was across the board, the medical staff at Bogram.

There were several people trying to protect and advocate for this one.

Was there anybody who was stepping up saying, you can't do this, you can't do this?

Or was everybody pretty much on the same page?

So I think initially there was a perspective that this is like, it's an Afghan problem, it's a distraction from operations.

And they were trying to use our command's influence to force the Afghans who'd multiple times said, we don't have the capacity to care for a child like this.

Like, I was in some of those meetings, but they were trying to force them to take them anyway.

And so that's when we did a little bit of advocacy, trying to find to elevate

status.

Yeah, her priority of this life because we had options.

And that was successful.

And then the administration, the first Trump administration reached out and directed us to act in her best interest and try to get her back to the U.S., which is pretty reasonable under the circumstances.

And so we were thinking, hey, that's good to go.

She's going to be safe.

And as we're working that new direction, that new U.S.

policy as an office, and then I was volunteering with some of my skill sets in my free time

to get a visa.

That's when all those kind of developed.

And then I would report that back to my husband: hey, great, great news.

We got guardianship.

Great news, we got her added as a DOD dependent.

Great news, she hasn't a military ID.

Like we had everything lined up to get her home.

And

then we just had some significant opposition at some point.

And that was kind of the first from the Department of State.

Yeah.

But I would like to say that, and I already alluded to this, is is that she

was loved by so many people.

It wasn't just Josh and I doing it.

It was the medical staff and, like you said, the Rangers.

And there was people pulling together to the fact where we called her to answer your question, Sparrow,

after those initial phone calls.

And we started to get more information about her origin.

genuinely started to care about her.

You know, I had young kids at home and it was, we were still early in the deployment, like getting used to him being gone and you know me juggling life at home with young children and I was finishing up my last semester at grad school and just trying to juggle life and

when we found out about her I at first I wasn't gonna tell the kids because it's such a yeah yeah yeah it's just like no we're not gonna get them involved yet but as it started to pick up momentum and actually look like it could happen I remember mentioning it to the boys one night and I was tucking them in bed and I told them that there was this baby and that was prior to to us

seeing the original baby in the box photo.

And I said, there's a baby that's been hurt and daddy's trying to help

see what can happen.

So I said, well, let's pray for the baby.

And there's a old hymn that's called His Eyes on the Sparrow.

And so we, that's how Sparrow came to be was we just prayed for baby sparrow.

And it was just kind of something that we would, you know, when they we would pray in the morning or at night, we would pray for baby sparrow.

And so there was a little bit of initial hesitancy involving our family.

Sure.

And it's still to this day because they're seeing us live this out.

I mean, they're in it with us.

Oh, I know.

And as a family, we're going through this together and seeing us through the highs and lows of all of it.

But at the at the core, it was,

for me, at that time, it took my attention off of myself and even kind of a little bit if I had the opaque me

syndrome.

Always does.

Yeah.

And realizing that there was a real person out there with needs much greater than mine and that we we could potentially make a difference.

And so that was, I think, all of a sudden that it had purpose and meaning.

And

you on that side, you were working it nonstop.

So 2020 comes.

State Department gets involved.

What happens?

So

I guess it would be important for the viewers to understand is the Trump administration reaching out was like a lightning bolt.

It was,

I'm a junior officer.

I'm a captain at the time.

I kind of got the like, don't do that again, but you know, it's a baby, so it's okay, we'll keep, keep doing this.

And so I got yelled at a little bit, which was, it was relief not to get fired, but

we pretty much turned around and said, okay, yeah, that makes sense.

We're going to, we're going to act in this child's best interest.

We're going to try to get her to the states.

And we were working that problem.

But to coordinate with the Department of State, because you need that for visas, we had reached out to the embassy and set up a meeting.

And I distinctly remember staying up to like three in the morning, pouring over the classified intel, pulling it together for a briefing.

And we went to that meeting, DOD did, to brief them on exactly what we knew.

And the reason that was important was because if this was a, if this is a foreign child, we wouldn't turn a British or a French or a German foreign fighters over to an Afghan orphanage.

We would repatriate them at a minimum.

And also, if you're going to actually do a family trace, you'd have to go to the country of origin to see if there's anybody alive and who is safe.

Because here's the reality.

We were targeting this group.

There was hundreds of them with their families coming back from Syria into this other war zone for a safe space.

And we were hunting and killing them.

And so one of our biggest concerns was like, even if you got a family member, if we give this child back to them, is she going to be on another objective and not be so lucky this time?

I mean, that's understanding how sophisticated this unit and this intelligence gathering apparatus is, they're killing this entire network.

And they're doing it that month.

And that was the priority in Afghanistan.

So like we are very aware just because of my background well our two main our two main concerns early on was her ongoing medical needs because she did suffer trauma but also like Joshua said just that she would be put back on the X again and she'd be targeted right or she's even taken by guys who are on our side and killed because of we don't need another foreign fighter so the the the state department tries to repatriate or tries to put her back with people they claim were her family so um going back to that meeting so instead of what was supposed to happen of an informational meeting where we're supposed to inform them of what our classified intelligence says, they essentially ambushed us.

They brought Afghans to this meeting where we can't brief on a classified level.

And they basically tried to do a fait accompli where it's like, hey, how soon can you take the baby?

I mean, like two days after the Trump administration reached out, that's what they were doing.

I was in the meeting.

And there's been a lot of,

we'll get to that later in the story, but the Department of Justice under the previous administration has filed court filings saying, oh, Major Mesh knew there was known family at this particular meeting.

But in reality, that was the detainee that our guys had taken off of the op.

And I was there to tell you that this guy said he brought these people here from a foreign country and has been moving them around and identified these specific people in this compound as foreign fighters.

So that was just some rumor because somebody didn't have the right clearance.

And we were going to clear that up.

And so all of this could have avoided if you're not insubordinate to the administration.

Back with more in just a minute.

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So who did they hand Sparrow over to?

So

there was about a

two-month period after that meeting where the State Department kind of was like, we're not going to help you, but we're not going to get in your way.

And we had successfully negotiated a recommendation from the then existing Afghan government to send her to the states.

The DOD had done that, and it was ready to go.

And so what happened is the State Department came back in

and I have a colonel sworn testimony.

They lied about me and my family, like, oh, we've done something improper with this, or we didn't tell people.

literally testified under oath here just in October

that the State Department official had said or lied about us.

Then he said it was the most unprofessional meeting he'd ever been in.

And he's the acting staff judge advocate for a four-star command who's in charge of the theater.

And he gets told, stand down, State Department's got the lead, they're going to handle this.

It's exactly what we were told as a charity at the Abbey Gate.

Stand down.

State Department has this.

And that's when everybody loves that.

Yeah, great job.

Anyway.

And I'm not trying to ding the entire State Department.

I think that there's a lot of hope for the future in how we're moving forward with this.

I agree.

And

morale is high as far as I'm concerned, at least in our unit.

But I will say that there are some people that don't reflect our values and they don't reflect,

I don't think, a proper representation of what America is about, sometimes in foreign countries.

And we experienced that.

And so

what we thought at the time was if we just get the facts in front of the right people, they'll do the right thing.

Like that was it.

We were very optimistic.

And so it's like, they just need to know the truth.

And then there's not a question.

And so we advocated during that time hard for her.

And unfortunately, what we come to, what we've now come to realize is that's not the case.

And so it was literally.

It is with some.

It is with some.

But what Joshua said with that, the colonel testified to is

when it came down to where they determined, and it came out in Joshua's board of inquiry, is they primarily saw her, there was a few key figures that primarily saw her as, like he said, an Afghan issue, an Afghan problem, or a distraction.

And fundamentally, though, there was one female that testified at his board of inquiry, a service member, and she basically, she was upset that service members came to care for this child.

Like

at the hospital staff in Bagram, that they were buying baby supplies with their own money.

Like they were trying to take care of her her and make her comfortable and just help her.

What else would you do?

That's the question that we've always wondered: why wouldn't you?

But they saw it as a distraction, something to be done away with.

And

I would say, Glenn, when I reached out to the hospital, I said, Hey, we're trying to see if there's other better options for her.

They were overjoyed.

Like, they were like, let's go.

We've been hoping somebody would help.

And so, we had what we called Operation Starfish, which was kind of a grassroots level to try to get a safe outcome for her.

And the story behind, so she has two pseudonyms that it was either sparrow, or we called her sparrow, they called her starfish.

And there's a poem where there's a boy walking along the ocean and he's bending down, picking up and throwing the starfish back into the ocean.

And so the line at the end is an adult comes along and a question is, like, how can you possibly make a difference?

The boy bends down and picks up another starfish and throws it into the ocean.

He's like, well, it made a difference for that one.

And for starfish, is what they called her, she was a symbol of the one that they could help because in a terrible war where they're seeing unspeakable tragedy all the time, she was the unique one that they could help.

And so there was this rally cry around her to protect her and to keep her safe.

Yeah, to the point where we were waking up people when the president visited Bagram for Thanksgiving in 2019.

We were like waking people up, like, go find the president, have him meet her.

Because

she was in the hospital to meet her.

100 yards from where she was.

And we were so close.

And that was when U.S.

policies tried to get her back.

So we're like, wouldn't it be cool if they go home on Air Force One?

Right.

But we were,

I guess from an intelligence perspective, there was never a question of where she came from.

This is totally like a gloss made up of her.

So how did

this Afghani, these Afghanis get entangled in all of this?

Okay, so I think the best way I can explain this is

the terms of the peace, strategically what's going on in September 2019 is the peace deal literally blew up.

The president said this is a bad deal.

The Taliban's not acting in good faith and announced a canceling of the peace deal.

And from there, both the Taliban is trying to get back to the negotiating table and the embassy is rightly trying to negotiate a peace, a legitimate peace.

But I think we were fed a bad deal in case nobody saw like 2021.

But the Taliban is specifically denying the presence of this group.

They formally announced it on their website.

Like these reports are false.

This group isn't in Afghanistan.

The Uyghurs group.

The Uyghur group.

Possibly.

Possibly.

Yeah.

But I guess they called him Turkestani, but this Al-Qaeda group, which is a condition of the peace deal.

So the Taliban's not dumb.

Like they fought us for 20 years, right?

Right.

So they have a strategic interest in this not being a thing.

And so a colonel who is the action officer in the Pentagon testified in our board of inquiry in October.

He said that six to eight false claimants came forward.

They tested them for DNA and they were negative.

So Glenn, why would six or eight people who are not relatives of this child come forward?

And I think the answer is they were sent forward.

Correct.

And so

our concern at the time was that, hey, this is, it could be someone who is being sent forward as a proxy of the Taliban.

It could be someone who is just profiting off of like somebody trolling through a non-U.S.

controlled area of Afghanistan and saying, want a baby.

You know, because at the time there was pretty, pretty severe conditions in Afghanistan.

It's getting to be the fall into the wintertime.

And we were getting reports that, at least in Kabul, they were eating cats and dogs.

They were selling their youngest children to pay for the rest of their family to make it through the winter.

And so there were some significant economic conditions at that time.

When did

John and Jane Doe

come into the picture?

So it really wasn't, it was

John Doe's father.

He was.

These are the people that this is where the real battle begins.

Yes.

And I would say at the outset of this is I don't blame these particular Afghans.

Everybody wants to come to America.

You know,

we blame the Americans who know the truth and are covering this up.

You know, they're coming from an environment where you're living a little more hand to mouth and you have to survive.

And I don't.

I have a lot of great Afghan friends that we've fought with and I respect.

And so this isn't about really Afghans, but it's about what the State Department did that was dangerous, like objectively dangerous.

So here's how it fits in.

We get told to stand, DOD gets told to stand down in December of 2019.

There is a meeting, a critical meeting on December 31st between the embassy and the Afghan that we've been mentoring to basically have basic child safety procedures.

He worked for a Ministry of Labor.

And so

we've been basically training, advising, and assisting them that you do a DNA test if there's somebody that comes forward and you vet people for terrorism, like not rocket science here.

And they were very on board with that.

And so they had a claimant come forward.

And so they requested the embassy, who's the new lead, to do a DNA test of this person.

But somehow,

the embassy reports to the Trump administration and their own agency that The Afghan DNA test, I think the white lie was it's not part of the Afghan process.

And they've confirmed there's family members.

And in reality, we spent two years to get this Afghan to America.

He got here three days before our board of inquiry, as far as like, if you want to talk about the providence of God, but this guy said, the only person in the world who could contradict what the embassy is saying got to America a couple of days before we needed him to be here.

And

he said they asked for a DNA test and they denied it.

They personally, this particular Afghan or embassy employee personally denied a DNA test.

And so he said there was nothing else.

Like they didn't have a photo ID.

There was like some guy saying, I'm a family.

And that's what the embassy forced them to go through with.

And

so this man ended up being a,

his claim was a lie.

Like over the last three years, we can document, we've documented that.

He claimed to be a farmer, right?

Well, so the person who claimed to be a relative, who she was ultimately turned over to,

claimed to be related to

a dead, a person who was killed during that mission.

I believe that's a lie.

I think we can document that.

So he was just lying.

That's why you have precautions in place to vet people.

And so

Baby Sparrow

is,

where is Baby Sparrow at this point?

So

at that time, when they were told basically this is the new course of action and to stand down, what we learned at Joshua's Board of Inquiry is literally one of the generals, he had the entire, like, the medical staff footprint at Bagram.

He sat them down and said, this is what's going to happen to her.

Like, this is the course of action.

This is the decision.

And this is what we're going to do.

And he ordered everybody.

And that's what the colonel testified.

It was the most unprofessional dressdown he's ever been a part of.

He basically yelled at everybody and said, this is what we're doing.

And so they turned her over with armed,

what do you call it, armed guards?

Personal security detail.

Personal security detail.

And the reason why the personal security detail, they were there, was because they were concerned about a resistance among service members.

So if this was family, if this was like for her best interest and she was going to be okay,

why were they worried about a resistance among young service members?

Because ultimately,

everybody knew what her outcome was going to be and they knew it was wrong.

Yeah, they flew a flag over Barbara in her memory because they thought she was dead.

It was so dangerous.

And there was just no vetting at all.

And what I think that

sometimes powerful people don't realize is, you know, there's a lot of regular people out there that can show the homework on this stuff.

And I just thought that I don't think they ever thought it would be, they'd be held accountable for any of this stuff.

And now, oh, fortunately, for the last few years and some of the process we've gone through has been brutal, but we have the evidence now.

And

we're excited about the opportunity to, you know,

I guess, what, show that.

So

when did Sparrow and how did Sparrow get here?

That's a miracle.

That is a miracle.

The one thing I would like to add is the night that, because we scrambled and we literally did everything we could to stop that turnover because all we knew it was to a person that wished to remain anonymous.

And we knew that they weren't DNA vetted and that they were likely terrorist affiliated.

And so we did everything we could do to stop that from happening.

And I remember, I'll never forget when you came in and you got the call.

It was very late at night.

And he came in and he's like, she's gone.

And I remember I was just like, I felt like I was kicking the gut.

And I was just like, so devastated because I thought Trump or somebody would come through and save the day and she would not, you know, be turned over like that.

And I was heartbroken at that moment.

But I'll never forget you said, and it was the room was dark.

And I just remember your voice.

And you said, I don't know why.

I have no reason to think this, but it's going to be okay.

And I was like,

and I just accepted at that point because I had no words.

And I was just like, okay.

And so that brings us to how she got out.

Two days before the peace deal signed, the U.S.

government, you know, through the embassy's representations, turns her over to an unvetted, what's turned out to be a non-relative terrorist-affiliated person.

Like the guy's got a Taliban flag on his WhatsApp profile.

And so everything we'd feared, everything we, I mean, as a captain, my wife and I soothed the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State.

That's how convinced we were that this was objectively dangerous.

Like, I'm thinking my career is over, but I can't, like, sit here and not do everything.

We were legal guardians.

Like, we had legal standing and we were her.

Well, our government recognized our rights, right?

She was recognized as our daughter by Headquarters Marine Corps.

I'm calling on the phone, explaining what we're doing.

I mean, we're talking to the White House Chief of Staff.

We're talking to the director of USCIS.

Like, as far as for a crazy situation, we're doing it as by the book as we can for a unique one-off situation.

And

what I think it's very important for the listeners to understand is

if all of the U.S.

intelligence was actually correct and the people that we sent our special operators to capture or kill were foreigners, all of this is a lie.

Because if she really is who we thought she was the whole time, then all of this gloss is just smoke and mirrors.

They had no reason to do what they did.

And the only reason we don't know about the DNA is because these people now won't take a DNA test.

And the State Department denied taking a DNA test before.

And to me, if you think that there's a valid claim, it the first thing you do is a DNA test.

It's the most biometrically enrolled society on earth.

So again, let me go back to John and Jane Doe.

Yeah.

Who are these people?

So John Doe is the son of this older man.

Okay.

So So he, she was.

So we know that's real.

I believe that's real.

Okay.

So this older man gets her, and we, um, there's a, a phenomenal human rights attorney named Kim Motley, and she's got experience like, uh, dealing with like trafficked children in Afghanistan.

She finds her.

That's a miracle in itself, but I'll gloss over it for time.

Um,

this, this older man says, or we get uh, some information that He's hired a young girl to take care of her.

He's paying her a salary.

A teenager.

A teenager.

That teenager is Jane Doe.

She's like 16, I think, at the time.

She's going to finishing up high school, but it's a war zone.

We're told that it's a slum.

It's in southern Afghanistan.

It's so dangerous that the ICRC won't go there.

And we immediately get reports that she,

Sparrow, starts shaking at night in the day, and her eyes are twitching.

And so we were very concerned about her TBI.

Because like in the military community, especially, we're very aware of like the long-term ramifications of getting blown up.

And so we're like we were even trying to get her taken back to kandar airfield or some of our other hospitals at the time but then covet happens and everything gets like shut down and you can't even go out on the street in afghanistan and all that craziness that ensued and um we were trying to kim was trying to get the her brought up to be evaluated at a hospital in kabul that had more capability um so 18 months passes by the yeah teenage girl gets married to the son the son of the son okay and so I so I think it's very important for people to understand we only spoke to this guy directly six weeks before the fall of Afghanistan and 2021 in 20 in 2021 and

Kim is an expert in Afghan culture and like she's been operating there for a long time and she's like look I think this is a real possibility to send her out because of her needs but I can't get custody of a child without a way to get her out of Afghanistan.

Like I can't like have a, you know, another child in my care.

And so we were just creating a path to the United States for her before the Taliban took over.

Because we were very aware that after that deadline, there's going to be a brutal civil war.

And at best case scenario, maybe there's a shared government, but that's not ended up what happened.

So I talked to this guy on July 2021, first time.

You, this is me.

Here's who I am.

Here's what I did in Afghanistan.

We believe she's a foreign child.

She was an orphan.

We had sought legal responsibility for under U.S.

law.

My interpreter uses the strongest words in Pashto, Wally, Masuliat, Sarprost.

And my Afghan friends will probably make fun of me because I probably butchered those.

But what does it mean?

It means guardian, responsible one, like the strongest legal term for a non-parent being responsible because they don't have a...

She's an adoptive parent.

Right.

We would say adoptive parent in the states, but they don't have a similar legal concept there.

And so he's using the strongest terms.

And this guy's,

this guy, I mean, honestly, what he first wanted was a visa.

Like, hey, can you give me a visa for me and my brother-in-law?

Everybody wants to go to America.

I don't even blame them.

But no, there's no, like, no one could predict the evacuation.

I mean, that was a historic event.

So we're sitting here saying she has everything she needs to fly out.

We're legally responsible for.

Send her before the Taliban take over.

And so this guy,

this is what he tells me.

He's like,

I'm like, how's she doing?

There's a battle going on in southern Afghanistan.

There's a campaign.

There's artillery rounds going off near them.

There's people getting shot around them.

He's worried about his teenage wife, who's about eight months pregnant, and about the artillery rounds near their house, like hurting their unborn child.

Like that's, this guy's like in a bad way.

And he says he's bringing tears to his eyes how Sparrow's condition is.

And, you know,

and so as this is all happening, I asked, like, where is she?

Like, that's a pretty good question, like in a war zone.

And he's like, oh, she doesn't live with me or my family or my dad.

She lives with this other family.

And they become like parents to her.

And so like, that's what's so hilarious about, not hilarious, it would be funny if it wasn't like

so tragic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is that this guy tells me she doesn't even live with him.

That's the first thing.

Well, one of the first things he says to me, he tells me his father is responsible to the Taliban for her.

And then in fact, he's like, oh, I think she should go live with you.

And, you know, that's so kind, that type of thing.

And he's like, I have to ask my dad.

He's the responsible one.

And he has to ask the Taliban.

So during the middle of the war, his dad travels about 100 miles from where they live in southern Afghanistan to where she was picked up.

And they talked to that Taliban commander who was responsible for those camps of whether they can send her to be evacuated.

Because it taken a couple weeks.

And of course, the Taliban says no, like not, not a big surprise.

And so he comes back and says,

The Taliban said, no, they'll kill us if we disobey them.

Sorry, basically.

And so, you know, as we're developing, you know, as this situation is developing, there's thousands of IDPs getting into place by the battles.

They're all centering on Kabul.

Like we all know the history now.

Right.

It's August 16th when this guy comes back to me.

The evacuation just started.

And

I had the privilege of helping a friend of mine with one of his interpreters outside the wall.

And he was at the Naval War College and didn't actually have access to a lot of our systems.

And I was at a special unit where we could directly call the airport.

And so we got this one guy out.

Like, I saw it on Facebook.

Hey, send me that.

I routed the request, ad hoc, right?

He gets out and that hits the news.

Some of the, and they wrote a book about it.

And so he gets, my, my friend, who's another Marine officer, gets flooded with requests to help other TERPs.

And so we get sucked into, you know, all the people Mercury run funded.

Like it was totally ad hoc, totally heroic how these Americans pulled together.

It was amazing.

Like Concilium, No One Left Behind, Pineapple Express, Team America.

I mean,

it was incredible.

But

as that's happening, I'm like, disobey the Taliban, bring her to U.S.

forces.

She's viewed as a U.S.

person because of her U.S.

identity.

We sent them her military ID to identify her, right?

At the same time, the interpreter that I'm using to speak Pashto to this man, he's like, sir, my sister, she's 15.

She's in the Northern Alliance areas.

They've just passed an edict saying that they have to marry them off to their fighters.

Can you help us get her out?

And so I'm like, this is not my expertise.

It's all ad hoc, right?

Just like every other like service member at the time.

And so I'm like, okay, man, like we'll try, but it's super dangerous.

Like, are you willing to risk their lives traveling 180 miles?

He's like, yes, sir, it's better than, it's better than being left to marry the Taliban and take him back to Pakistan.

So we move his 15-year-old sister, his, I think, eight-year-old brother at the time, and his teenage brother, all three of them, and we rent an Airbnb online in Kabul, Afghanistan during the evacuation as a safe house.

I get word that they're bringing Sparrow from southern Afghanistan.

We move them 280 miles through Taliban checkpoints and all that stuff in the middle of war, like right around August 22nd or 3rd.

As soon as I get word they're moving, that they're disobeying the Taliban, I go to my colonel.

Like I'm standing on his desk, sir, I got a crazy story for you.

The State Department dumped our child two years ago.

We've been working to get her out.

We have all the paperwork.

Here it is.

Permission to fly emergency leave into Kabul, Afghanistan.

And my colonel is crazy enough and a great enough warrior.

He's like, that's what I'd do if I was a parent.

Permission granted.

And so I got a ticket and I was on my way before I got shut down by CENTCOM.

They're like, no way, we're not letting people in on emergency leave.

But we ended up, it was such a unique experience because we were able to go to Ramstein and find her because they got out.

I mean, he's glossing it, but as you know, like that period of time, it was just what he was doing was

as a wife.

I will say heroic because it was around the clock.

There was a photo I took of him because he couldn't even take a shower without his phone just going off.

And he jumped out of the shower and he was sitting on the floor wrapped up in a towel.

And I think at the time, you were on the phone with the general.

And I just thought it was hilarious that here he is on the phone with the general, can't even get a shower.

But it was just, it was that high tempo.

I think it is one of the most incredible points of a 20-year war.

Yeah.

I mean, it was insane.

And especially since we were working against, in some ways, our own State Department.

It was really bad.

But I'll save that for some other time.

So it ended up being, like he said, that we realized

the plan quickly changed from him going.

And I mean, he was literally, you were prepared.

And I didn't know this after the fact that you wrote a video in case you died in the process of trying because he was fully prepared to pull them over the wall.

That was his plan.

I didn't realize at the time that was probably a good thing.

But we end up, he's like, because we didn't know where in the world they were going to go.

It was, there was no plan.

It was just like they were getting on a plane and then it was just a guessing game as to where they were going to go.

So at the last minute, I had a nine-month-old baby at the time,

and I gave my baby to my sister.

And we're like, we were her adoptive parents.

We've got to go.

Like, we have all the original documents.

We have all of her documents, everything to make ensure that she comes to the United States, not some other country.

Right.

So, well, and what was so amazing, Glenn, is this same little girl that got carried off an objective by a special mission unit in 2019, it happened again in the evacuation because my colonel got her put on JSOC's targeting list and a special forces squadron operating out of HKIA went behind Taliban lines and grabbed her and my three interpreters' kids and these two poshions.

She was eight months pregnant.

So we were very concerned of having four kids and a pregnant lady getting through this crowds, right?

And so like to say that that was like a lightning bolt again.

No, that was a miracle.

That was a miracle.

That was a miracle.

And

so we were over the moon.

Okay.

So

these, the 18-year-old and the

pregnant

mom, if you will, the one that were

and were not taking care of Baby Sparrow, they're with you.

They're coming to the United States

because

that way

they can help.

So it was solely to get them away from the taliban.

Okay, okay.

Because if we left them behind, they would get burned.

So

they get on the plane.

There's a problem on the plane, if I'm not mistaken, where

John and Jane are not happy with each other or something.

So that was actually over a couple-day period at Ramstein, Eric.

So that was the first time that we realized that there was something going on between them.

Because, you know,

what John Doe told me a couple of times, like, hey, she's attached to the baby, but when she has a baby, it'll be fine.

Like, it'll be good.

And then what she was saying when we had everything arranged, and it wasn't a guaranteed go to America type situation, right?

There's 80,000 people going all over the world.

And so we're advocating, like, saying, hey, like, you have to send, like, these people helped us.

They disobeyed the Taliban.

You have to send her to America.

And so we had successfully arranged that.

And once that happened, it became, well, he promised me that if I came, I didn't want to come, but he said if I come, I wouldn't have to like let her go with you.

And so like, that was the first time I realized there was any disagreement at all.

And, you know, I don't know what this guy, I don't, I don't know if they have the same culturally, the same page as spouses, right?

Because typically in my training and experience, the, the Afghan men leave their home and they don't really care what their wife says.

And so there was, it was a unique

dynamic.

A unique dynamic.

So, and when do you find out he's on a watch list?

Oh, gosh.

Yeah, I'll probably get yelled at for that.

So

this is what happened.

We get to the states about 10 hours before their official flight comes in, like that the president had commandeered with basically the commercial fleet.

So they're pouring into the country.

They're doing the best there.

Our people are vetting them as best they can, right?

There's obviously been some failures with that.

So we get to Dulles and

we have all the documents, right?

All of our documents.

So I go back there.

It takes like seven hours to process in.

And it's crammed full of of people the whole time.

And at the very end, at like, I don't know, one in the morning,

they're, they're like, oh, you're all done processing.

You need to take a COVID test.

I'm like, COVID test?

Okay, let's go take a COVID test.

And I, people got tuberculosis, but let's go get COVID tested.

Right.

And they, they take about 20 military-age men and they put us in and me.

Yeah, because I'm this, my guy.

And they drive us out into the middle of Dulles Airport.

And there's this huge hangar, almost like a bond, maybe like where like a prototype plane is going to be revealed.

And there's like 500 beds.

And it's the only place that has not been crammed full of people this whole time.

And there's like uniformed customs and border patrol guys with like plate carriers and ARs.

And I'm like, this doesn't look like a COVID place.

Right.

And so I'm

trying to figure out what's going on.

And so then this uniform customs and border patrol agent comes in.

It's like, what were you doing in 2014?

Like, what are you doing?

Like, going at my guy.

And I'm like,

like, I told you, I talked to this guy like five weeks before.

Right.

And so what concerned me is he was in this detention facility and then he's sitting there talking to another man in Pashto.

And most of our allies were like Dari speakers.

Like there's some Pashtuns, but for the, predominantly the Pashtuns are Taliban.

And so

he had not really talked to anybody in four or five days that I've been around this guy.

And he's like chatting away.

And I'm like, who's his friend to somebody who spoke English?

And they're like, oh, this guy's from his home village.

Like they know each other.

And then when I find out about 10 minutes later,

I went up to the Border Patrol agent.

I'm like, hey, man, like, what are we doing here?

He's like, oh, this is the inconclusives where people flagged for a match on the terror watch list and we're vetting them.

And I'm like, holy cow, right?

Because I have a child from a capture or kill mission of al-Qaeda.

I've got a dad who went to the Taliban shadow governor.

Oh, and I forgot to mention this guy tells my TERP before he comes to American Lines, like, hey, I have a lot of militants in my phone.

Will this be a problem when I come to American Lines?

Don't tell Joshua, though.

He's like, don't tell Joshua.

And I'm like, you know, task force is already tracking this guy.

So, no, it did make a difference because we know where you are.

And like, and that actually was corroborated in my board of inquiry.

I had someone come from JSOC and test like, yep, we knew this guy had dirt.

And so, um,

I had some red flags going on.

Yeah.

You send me a video.

I have a video of it.

I'm sitting there at Dolos waiting for him because I thought same thing.

She's like, we're ready for the COVID test.

I'm like, it's we hours of the morning.

I'm like, where are you?

And he sends me a video.

He's like, you're never going to believe where I am.

And I'm like, get out of there.

You don't belong in there.

And yeah, that was the first time any of this, like we realized.

And so again, kind of thinking that facts matter and like, you should report stuff like this.

Right.

You know?

See something, say something.

So I immediately reported to my chain of command through our NCS liaison.

And

it kind of like nothing happened.

And obviously that is when we like immediately requested like,

they're going to get vetted.

They're probably going to get deported.

We should probably, like, now is a good time to separate her.

And my interpreter's kids also came with that.

So it took them a couple of days to get their act together and actually do that.

But like, I think it makes a lot more sense to the American people how this conflict started with if they know the guy flags and the context behind that.

And so like that really was the turning point where we're like, hey, maybe I was projecting some compassion I had for all these allies that went to war with us.

And maybe I should have been a little more cautious at the outset.

Because to be honest, like.

We faced a decision point in the evacuation where my colonel's like, hey, you're going to probably have to choose between these Afghans and your little girl because the assets we're using to get them don't give a crap about Afghans and they'll probably just stick a gun in their face and take her and not, like, they're not going to waste their resources getting these random people.

Right.

And I literally had to advocate to take all of them.

You delayed it for 24 hours.

Yeah, we actually had a team that was funded by the Mercury One funds with like volunteers to go get them all, like that were paying, they had $9,000 a head or whatever for the private aircraft

set to go.

And I think they had an incident at Northgate that night and they canceled all the volunteers going out.

And that's when my colonel got them picked up by a National Administrative Force unit.

And so so, like,

I guess the peace of mind, knowing that there was Americans who were volunteering to go behind lines when it sounded like no one else was doing, oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

But I would touch on it in hindsight, even though it was devastating losing her for not, for her not coming home in when she was supposed to in 2019.

We had a crib.

We had everything ready.

We were ready to go.

We thought she'd be handicapped child.

We were anticipating taking in a baby with special needs, and we were ready as much as we could be.

And then for that to be delayed for that period of time.

But as a result, because of the fall and because of honestly how everything providentially was woven together the way it was, how many, like how many people?

Let me rephrase that.

So I want people to understand.

We were so devastated when she got turned over and we couldn't understand why.

Why would that happen?

But when this historic event kicks off and you're getting texts and calls from people and you're able to get real people moved inside to safety and a new life,

I mean, especially from like 8,000 miles away, it's so weird.

You're so far from it, but you're, you're, you're changing lives and all these volunteers are doing that too.

It was very clear that that was a larger purpose.

We had a vision to save this one child just because we were in a place to do it.

But there was a bigger plan that ended up her life, her existence saved dozens and dozens of American interpreter, like interpreters that worked with us and their families.

And I'll tell you one story for your audience.

There was one group.

They had Australian visas.

Glenn, I worked with one Australian ever in Afghanistan.

And I call this man as I'm dangerously driving and texting all the way up to DC to fly to Afghanistan.

That's on my first attempt to go.

I'm like, hey, sir, remember me?

Like, I'm at Marsock.

I'm working with these, I'm working volunteering to vet all these groups.

Do you know anybody running the Australian response to the Kabul evacuation?

And he goes, oh, my brother is running the Australian Army's response in Doha.

Here's his number.

And so I then called, I call Australia.

I called Doha while dangerously driving to D.C.

And they're like,

we have bad comms right now.

We can't reach them.

We'll send an email.

And I've got like 14 people in a ditch of water at two in the morning outside Abbeygate.

And they got like a two-month-old and like a 60-year-old, like in a range of people here.

And they're Hazaras.

They're Shia Muslims.

They're both ethnically and religiously persecuted by the Taliban.

And the matriarch of the family is an advocate for women's rights.

Like they're dead.

They're dead.

They're so dead.

And so I'm like,

you see any Americans around?

And because we were using like a signal on a phone, right?

Like everybody else was doing.

And my guy wasn't at the gate at that time and he wasn't able to get the Marines to.

So she hands the phone to an American.

And I heard this female voice like, hello, like super weirded out.

And I'm like, hey, my name's Major Mask.

I've been vetting these people.

They have Australian visas.

Are there any Australians?

And she's like, sir, the Australians aren't doing 24-hour ops right now.

They don't come on until six and it's two in the morning.

And I'm like, oh, I was like, she goes, what do you want me to do?

It's like, I want you to pull these people in and sit them down and wait for Australians.

Come.

So she hands me off to a captain.

I do the same spiel.

And this is what he says to me.

He's like, sir, he goes, I'm looking at 15,000 people and I'm playing God on who gets out.

He said, what what do you want me to do?

And

I was like, I want you to pull these people in and sit them down and wait for Australians to come because wouldn't it be awful if these people die when they have visas to Australia?

And

we were in the air to Ramstein when the Abbey gate happened.

And, you know, in the moment, you have so many groups you're working and we would name them very like 14 packs or passengers, 14 packs and the gate.

And I was like, what gate was that?

You know, because I talked to that girl.

She was a Marine.

And, And,

you know, I'll never forget sitting in the USO, watching them pull all the bodies off the plane at Ramsdyne because they were taking them to Longstreet all the wounded.

And wondering, like,

did that, that girl that just helped these people die doing that?

And it was.

It was her.

And for when.

I was in the car when you were on the phone with him on the ground.

And it was that moment.

It was just so historic know, that he's sitting there talking to someone on the ground, pulling this grade through.

For whatever reason, I had the instinct.

I pull up my, I didn't want him to see me.

I pull up my phone and I record.

And so I actually recorded that conversation, not knowing any of that was going to happen, but recorded that conversation that he had with that Marine on the ground.

And the, and, and that pulled those 14 people through as a result.

Have you met her parents yet?

No.

No.

I have not.

But if you like to meet them, I know them.

I would love to.

But we've always, I mean, he can't, I mean, I've known him ever since he was a teenager, and he never cried.

I could count on one hand how many times he cried.

But since this whole situation, especially Abbey Gate, he can never talk about it without crying because you feel it so deeply.

And what we saw there and the evacuation, I remember calling back home to family and I was like, is this on the news?

And they're like, no.

And at the time, there was one Getty photographer and one CNN reporter.

And it was historic.

And like, I would echo what Josh was said, what the service members and the uso what they were doing on the ground during the evacuation remarkable it was it was heroic

and and on the flip side

what the state department was doing on the ground at the same place was the greatest evil i've ever seen absolutely i i talked to my my my uh

I guess, friends that I've worked with in the past that were the SJs on the ground there.

And like, he's telling me things like, you would not believe what we just went through.

I'm a major in in the Marine Corps.

I'm a judge advocate.

And I just cleared an airport and ran concertina wire around it.

And we're probably going to get overrun again.

Things are not going well.

And like, just what they went, he said it's the worst thing he'd seen in five deployments in the GWA.

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Okay, so let's get back to Sparrow.

Okay.

You're coming over here in the United States.

How long is she with you guys?

Because the

John Doe, he's kept out, right?

Or does he get in?

No, they so this is what they tell me.

He's held for about 24 hours.

And then a Border Patrol agent says, hey, man, this is a really bad dude, but he brought your daughter to the U.S.

forces and your organization got him in Afghanistan, so we let him through.

And I'm like, whoa, no.

Like, that's not, that's when I reported it up the chain.

And my command was like, you know, get your daughter and get back here.

Let's, you know, because I've been gone for like a week working.

So that's what we did.

We just did what we were told.

And

we were, I guess.

So, I mean, short version, they're here in the United States.

And

we've, we've had Sparrow in our custody since, what, September?

2021.

Like, yeah, almost three and a half years going on, you know, and did, and, and, I mean, and we started exactly what we were going to do back in 2019.

It just went through and

same doctor, went through every medical appointment that was recommended, everything that we could possibly do.

And to see her, when we did get her finally,

she wasn't the same baby as she was in the hospital.

Like she had in the hospital with all the, the service women took a lot of pictures of her and she had these big brown eyes and big smile, just happy baby, just would smile with her whole body.

And when we saw her, when I saw her for the first time, I actually wondered if it was the same child because her face was closed off her, and she was very fearful and scared.

She would hardly look up.

And I mean, just the fear and trauma on her face was just, I've never seen that in a child before.

And it wasn't until I saw, like, she had a dress on, I saw the scar on her, like, she has a very distinct scar on her leg.

And I was like, that's her.

And I just, I could not believe it.

But, you know, when she came home, I mean, she had lice, parasites, just emotional trauma, just everything.

So it was kind of like the

peeling back layers of an onion, just loving on her and pouring into her as much as we possibly can.

Very much so.

So now today, she looks like her baby photos.

It's like, you can see it's the same person, big eyes, just very expressive.

And it's like, there, there she is.

Like, that's the true.

her.

But what she endured during that time, there's one story that just, I mean, our life, we are so blessed here in the States not to know the degree of violence and just that other parts of the world have.

I was carrying her out to the car.

We were picking up our voice from school, and there was a community that was being built next to us.

And they're roofing, and they were going pop, pop, pop, pop, pop with a nail gun.

And I had her on my hip.

And when she heard the sound of the nail gun, she went, oh, and she looked at me.

And

the look on her eyes, her eyes were fear: like, are we going to run?

Is it danger?

And she was looking to me to see how I was going to respond.

And when I, and I, and I saw that, I was just like, it broke my heart.

Like, that she knew that, that she has obviously been exposed to that.

And then, just, you know, like any other parent would just be like, it's okay, and explained it.

And uh-oh,

move on.

But she's amazingly resilient and comes so far.

So, I'm a dad of an adopted child, and

we adopted in Texas, which was a very good thing because Texas adoption laws are so very clear.

That's your child.

So is Virginia, actually.

Yeah.

But it's not working out that way for you.

No, it's not.

When you sign adoption papers, I know, I think it was two years, the mom could come back and say,

I've changed my mind.

And in Texas, Texas, that's hard, but still able at the two-year point.

I know what my wife was like and what I felt like at the two-year point, worrying,

because two years in,

that's not my child.

That's my child.

You know what I mean?

Rafe is my son at that point.

When did you

How did this happen to where Virginia comes in and says, oh,

forget that adoption thing.

So I think that, first of all, we have some restrictions on commenting on the state court cases.

So I can't answer all the questions relating to that.

Here's what I want to know.

How did you feel and how did you hear that this might be over?

Well, the first...

thing that comes to my mind is the day the FBI showed up at the door.

And

as a mom, literally bringing my kids in through the door from school, door keys were still in the lock.

And I get a knock at the door and there were two agents there.

And

I had a baby.

I went to my oldest son.

I was like, take him in the room and watch him.

I've got to talk to some people outside.

And my son wanted to play outside.

He's like, I don't want to do that.

I was like, honey, the FBI is here.

And I need to go do this.

And he's like, they're real?

Like, almost like it was the Avengers or something.

And that was the first moment where, and it was actually, they were there because of the terrorists.

And like,

there was a whole, like, it was them trying to sort through what Joshua had reported.

But at that time, that was the first, like, that was when it started to change of, like, oh, there's going to be conflict.

And

that was heartbreaking and brought fear, obviously, natural fear, because it's not about us.

It's about her.

And so

the whole time, I mean, when she was initially turned over,

what I wrestled with for the longest time is that she could go through her whole life in Afghanistan with a completely different identity and never know that she had another name and that she wasn't anonymous, that she was loved by hundreds and prayed for by hundreds of people.

So for her to be at stake again after all of this, blood, sweat, tears, prayer, everything that we've invested, for that to be up for grabs again, it's just the natural instinct is fear, protection, just wanting to do everything you can to keep one person safe and just wonder why people can't see the facts.

Like, like we said, we're open books.

Like, sure, you want the facts?

It's all here.

So, tell me, this went back to Virginia Court

and they overturned the adoption, right?

So,

I'm nervous about getting into too much with it.

Don't say anything about it.

The legal stuff.

But

I guess what would be important for folks to know is if someone,

you're an adoptive parent, if someone came along and said, we're related to you and we're going to sue you to get them back.

What's the first thing you'd ask them?

DNA.

DNA.

That's the first thing we did.

And then kind of hemmed and hauled and the story changed about how they were biologically related to them.

And that just kind of backed him into a corner of this is a lie.

And so I honestly think that big picture, these people don't have authority over her.

If she went back to their custody, it's really...

We're talking Jane and John.

Yes, they don't have legal authority.

They told the FBI that we finally got their statements where they said, oh, her two uncles are the authority for her life.

I don't have the authority to let her go to America.

But we have now,

and I'm going to focus on the government's actions this.

We have the Department of Justice filing, parroting what these mega law firms have been representing them saying

based on information they have that is directly contradictory to what the DOJ has filed in court.

So to the FBI, they said, we're not in charge.

But the DOJ is filing saying they are.

How is that possible?

How do you have statements that you haven't disclosed to the courts in the United States?

You can't have...

Is it true it's Hunter Biden's law office?

I believe one of the firms, there's been several law firms that have represented it.

I believe it was the same one that represented the president's son.

right

um so now this is at the virginia supreme court yes so next next week we have uh oral argument in front of the virginia supreme court and they make a decision but you know our biggest concern is that there has been a successful effort from the very same bureaucrats that tried to shut us down in 2019 about telling the truth i mean essentially looking back we were whistleblowers like this is

like not in accordance with everything we know.

And we were right.

And I think they're very concerned concerned about that getting out.

And that's why I've had my military orders change about what we can talk about.

We've experienced like over-classification of information, like clearly unclassified documents marked secret, no foreign.

We've had federal agencies telling us what we can and can't talk about, and honestly, absolute abuse of power to shut down the evidence.

I was in a court case

where

it was against the government, and

documents were a question.

If you're fighting the United States government, they can classify, they can redact,

they control everything.

There is no way to win against the United States government if they have

the will

to make sure that that truth never comes out.

Well, and what was amazing is that early on, there was a well, we're impartial.

We're not going to tip our, you know, fingers on the scale of justice.

But what we have experienced is the exact opposite.

They very much have the federal government.

They have.

So is there any difference between the Biden administration and the Trump administration?

Is Trump, is his people back on this?

Do you have...

So I would say that we're hopeful that that'll be the case, but there's so much they're correcting that was just

broken in our system before

that for us, it's an issue of priority.

I think that if an objective person looks,

I guess, let me caveat with one more thing.

We went through a board of inquiry and you said you can't fight the government.

That's true unless you have a little bit of due process.

Then they have to give you stuff and it's harder to hide things.

And so they ran our family through a recycled allegations, exactly what these mega law firms, we defeated them in court, proved were false.

And so we went through that process and it was brutal.

But you know what happened?

They had to give you the evidence.

And so now it's consolidated in one place and there's classified, all of the classified information that I had on deployment is now in one place.

And then all of the unclassed, we had 14 gigabytes of data that we never had before.

And so like, although that was a brutal process, that was one way you can fight.

So

what happens to Sparrow should it go wrong in Virginia?

Well, we've explained it as a Taliban-Lee Taliban-elemental situation.

Like these are not.

That's the first thing that came to my mind when I heard the story.

Yeah, it's these are not relatives.

They probably knew they weren't from day one.

They were probably sent forward by the Taliban shadow governor to collect her from the Americans.

And so they can't go back without her.

Like this guy's told me personally, like, yeah, we want to go back.

Like everyone wants to come to America for the money, but everybody loves home.

I don't judge people for that.

But this is really the Taliban is going to decide her future.

Like this guy, his entire family is under their sway.

If he says, if they're like, hey, I'm going to kill your family if you don't come back with a little girl, they put us, the Taliban denounced us on their social media.

They've talked.

They called you out by name.

Yeah.

We've had the statement.

They called you guys out by name.

Yes.

Yeah, on their website, little talking head saying,

you should make a t-shirt.

Absolutely.

My buddies were like, how'd you do that?

I've been trying to get that for years.

It was kind of a joke.

But what's more concerning is the State Department has filed affidavits against our family, basically insinuating the Taliban has asked them to do this.

Like the Taliban doesn't like this and it's hard to negotiate with them.

Like, I'm really sorry that my child is inconvenient for you negotiating with the terrorist organization that you're funding, but like, I don't care.

Like, get out of here.

What U.S.

agency files to void someone's parental rights because the Taliban asked them to?

And then I get the whole like, oh, well, we're asking you not to talk about this.

Right.

Sure.

I'm not going to talk about this.

Like, the American people should read some of these affidavits.

Well, and

I mean, on a personal note, to an extent,

they did do a good job in silencing us.

And the reason why we haven't gone out guns blazing before is because we're trying to protect her and our family.

No, I know.

Like, just parental instincts kick in.

I know.

And to answer your question, what would happen to her?

It would devastate her.

She's five and a half.

She's no idea who these people are.

She has no idea who they are.

We are her family.

And her brothers are her family.

Her brothers are her brothers and her life.

life and the freedom.

Well, and

like the freedom she has that now she, I mean, it took a while for her to loosen up, but like she enjoys that now.

It would be absolutely devastating to her.

And I want to add one thing.

In this process, you know, these mega firms don't care who gets hurt, right?

It's winning at all costs.

And they have gotten a letter-writing campaign going, not just the mega firms, some other related organizations that support that type of thing.

But they've wrote over 7,000 letters to Congress.

And in this, they're talking about supporting their narrative, holding Major Mass accountable, and insinuating that our Rangers, who like bled doing what we tasked them to do to go rid the world of these terrorists, they're calling them war criminals and they killed an innocent farmer.

And honestly, that just burns.

You can say

that's the part that was classified, right?

They could get away with saying that for a while, right?

No, these, these, these rangers came and testified

in a public proceeding, right?

It was, it was sealed from as far as like it's a public record now so it's a matter of record and then that was all placed into our board of inquiry and so that is a public record available for foia and privacy act so like now you can go read their 200 page testimony but before correct that was that was hidden so you couldn't defend correct and and so what we're we want is we think these guys own the tree they're under non-disclosure agreements because of the unit they're serving in so when you can't when your guys can't defend their own actions who should do that Well, I think it should be the sec death.

I think they should come out and release everything.

If these folks want to attack our veterans and say that they committed war crimes and we have video of them engaging in hand-to-hand combat and grenades and shooting people at point-blank range and having guys wounded and pulled off on stretchers off the objective,

paralyzed.

like release that stuff and defend these men.

Like they should be at the White House getting awards, not getting called

war criminals by lesser men than themselves.

What's next?

We don't know.

No.

Story's yet to be told.

We have hoped that there's a lot of folks when they actually hear the truth that have jumped on and tried to get it to decision makers.

We're hoping that her life again is prioritized by the administration.

They did it the first time.

And honestly, the only reason she didn't

come back

this is one of the most disturbing things of our time.

We're a republic.

We have a

constitution.

We have a Bill of Rights.

We have 200 years of law behind us.

And it feels like we have to go to the Avengers.

We have to go to Donald Trump or someone of his team

to

defend our basic rights.

And it really bothers me.

It really bothers me.

That's not the president's job, but it is

because

the whole system is so corrupt.

It really is.

And what it's become is bureaucrats will say whatever the law,

they'll say that the law is whatever they want it to be for that particular instance to get whatever outcome they want.

And it doesn't matter if it's true or just or right.

And, you know, and that's really hard for someone who like, I really mean it when I swear an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

As a prosecutor, I would not even dream of prosecuting someone that wasn't, I didn't believe violated the law.

And then you would try to pursue an appropriate punishment for that.

Like I was a government hack and seeing that system weaponize and abuse the way we've gotten to do that firsthand,

it's been incredible.

But on the flip side, it's so encouraging to see progress in those departments.

And I think the louder people squeal in resistance to those, that progress, you're probably on target.

Keep up the good work.

So New York Times magazine did a story.

How did this man think he had a right to adopt the baby?

This, this, you adopt this baby.

Army Rangers killed her parents.

A Marine is raising her in America, but her Afghan family says she was taken under false pretenses.

Wow.

Yeah, and there's a lot of fallacies with that.

First of all, they're not her Afghan family, and they never were, and they probably knew that from day one.

Like, that's the unfortunate reality.

And I don't know what their why is, but it's just not true.

So what do you want me to do with that when this guy flags on the watch list and we are legally obligated to take care of our child and told them that from day one?

What do you want me to do?

What would you do if you're like, oh, this guy flagged after all of that

context?

You would immediately exercise

what?

Care for her, which is what we did.

And that was the plan the entire time.

In fact, what I think was most telling was Every single person who had first-hand knowledge of this backed us up.

Like the FBI interviewed all these people.

And so from day one, they're like, oh yeah, they knew.

They just.

And I would say they have done the media, they've done a good job at painting a narrative that's not true of the story.

They have no record of that.

But

they've made it about him or us.

Like we are just off.

It's about her.

Well, it's about her, but we're one of many people that have cared for her.

Yes, we are her adoptive parents and we have advocated for her, but we represent a lot of people that do that.

So it's not just like, who do they think they are?

This is

many people that have stepped forward to protect her.

Yeah, and the ranger who recovered her off the battlefield, he said something that struck me.

He said,

they asked him, why do you remember that night?

And he said, it's because it's the first time I could put a face to evil.

And he was talking about her biological mother.

We're talking about 20 years of war, you know, pretty much culminating in the evacuation of Afghanistan, right?

And

to tell you how encouraging it is to them, it's like their why.

Like, I helped that person.

And when they found out that she's safe and home in America, they were over the moon.

They're like, I always wondered what happened to that baby.

What can we do to help?

Well, we appreciate your prayers, first of all, because, you know, she's been preserved time and time again.

And so we're confident, seeing that providential hand, that that'll continue to be the case.

You can advocate, you know, call your congressman, call the White House, ask the president to change U.S.

policy.

Because really, all we need is the truth to come out and lift your thumb off the scale there, Department of Justice.

What policy needs to change?

So the United States, air quotes, some bureaucrat in the DOJ, has filed parroting these claims.

And so I really think they need some adult supervision and to go pull this clock.

You talk to Pam Pondi.

Not directly.

We have had a whistleblower complaint formally routed.

We routed it to the president via Congress.

And we've had several congressmen sign on to that and send it to the SECTAF, SEC State, and

the AG's office.

And my understanding is the Department of Justice has reached out to state and DOD and asked them if they want to continue to stand beside the Biden administration's attack on our adoption.

The DOG DOJ has done that.

Because they're basically the lawyer for the other federal agencies, right?

So they're like, hey, you guys want to keep doing this?

And so we would ask in the name of justice and all that's good and right to stop lying.

for these mega law firms and release everything.

We've asked that.

I asked them to declassify all of this three years ago.

I've asked repeatedly and just gotten shut down, denied, like witnesses denied, documents denied, like nothing.

Like it's, they want you to in the dark and gagged as they're beating you.

And

all I need is the truth to come out.

That's all she needs.

But really, it's not, like Seffi said, it's not about us.

She's not chattel.

It's not between us and them.

It's what is in the best interest of this real five and a half little girl that went through so many terrible things.

She deserves what's in her best interest.

And what the previous administration's DOJ has has done is tried to preempt even considering that question.

And I can tell you as a fact, there's like 8% of the information available to the courts to make this decision.

And so I really think the United States owes a duty of candor to the courts of the United States, and they need to release all of this.

You can't omit key facts, critical evidence, and pretend like this is justice for this little girl.

when you find out about the case

I don't need a camera there but I would love to meet Sparrow sometime to celebrate

and if it goes the other way

I don't know what I would do as a dad

I know what I'd want to do as a dad but I don't know what I would actually do as a dad.

But

your journey doesn't stop

in Virginia, perhaps.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We really appreciate it.

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