#230 Keith Stansell - Operation Jacque & Surviving FARC Captivity

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Speaker 5 Keith Stansell, welcome to the show.

Speaker 6 Thank you very much. I'm very humbled to be here.

Speaker 5 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 in Columbia in captivity.

Speaker 6 So I appreciate you being there. 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.

Speaker 6 It's what you do for the community. And I told you.

Speaker 6 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 just don't stop.

Speaker 6 And so, you know, when I got the invite, any effort to support this, I'm all about it.

Speaker 5 That means a lot.

Speaker 6 Well deserved, sir.

Speaker 5 That means a hell of a lot. So everybody starts off with an introduction here.

Speaker 6 You ready? Yes, sir.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And most importantly, you're a Christian.

Speaker 6 Thank you, sir.

Speaker 5 So, a couple of things to knock out here. Actually, real quick.
So, you had twins.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 5 How did you decide which ones?

Speaker 6 You know what? I didn't. Their mother

Speaker 6 named them while I was in captivity. They were born while I was in captivity.
I didn't see them till they were five years old when I got rescued.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 their mother being Latin, the joke was

Speaker 6 I just thought, what are they going to be named?

Speaker 6 And then when I saw Nicholas and Keith, and it wasn't something, you know, some crazy wancho or something, you know, like it's a fun, you know, it's a funny deal.

Speaker 6 And when I was in captivity, we heard on the radio what their names were. A Colombian major is a buddy of mine that spent 10 years in captivity.

Speaker 6 He goes, he got lucky, she named them keys a nick.

Speaker 6 So yeah.

Speaker 6 Damn.

Speaker 5 We'll get into more of that. We'll definitely get into more of that.
So a couple things to knock out real quick. I've got a Patreon account.

Speaker 5 It's a community that we've built since the beginning. They're the reason that I get to be here with you today.

Speaker 5 And so one of the things that I offer them is they get the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. It's a good one.

Speaker 5 It's from Jesse Martin.

Speaker 5 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?

Speaker 6 Wow, that's a really good question.

Speaker 5 It is a good question.

Speaker 6 What would my message to myself be?

Speaker 6 If I knew that I was getting the message from the future,

Speaker 6 this too will pass.

Speaker 6 That would have been it.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 co-patriotists there, Mark and Tom, that were captured with me, was, we're going home one day.

Speaker 6 And I used to tell Mark,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 5 Damn, it's a good answer. It's a damn good answer.

Speaker 5 And then to continue on, a lot lighter here. Everybody gets a gift.

Speaker 6 Uh-oh.

Speaker 6 Oh, wow.

Speaker 5 Those are

Speaker 5 the Vigilance League gummy bears legal in all 50 states.

Speaker 5 It's just candy.

Speaker 6 Awesome.

Speaker 5 Just candy. At least they're legal right now.

Speaker 6 So they're not from Colorado.

Speaker 5 They're from Michigan.

Speaker 6 Fantastic. No, thank you very much.
Thank you.

Speaker 5 But Keith, so

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 But I always like to start with, where did you grow up?

Speaker 6 I grew up in a place called Green Meadows, Florida,

Speaker 6 US 27 and Griffin Road in Broward County, right next to the Everglades.

Speaker 6 My father was a director of a vocational education center. My mother was a guidance counselor at school.

Speaker 6 And Green Meadows was

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 My mom, but we were kind of upper-middle class. We weren't well-to-do, but

Speaker 6 spent a lot of time. When I say traveling,

Speaker 6 we had a camper.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I was a nerd, big buck teeth. I wasn't very athletic, got picked on a lot, but I had good friends,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 It was an old train station bell that my dad had put on a 4x4 post. Back then, obviously, nobody had social media and you weren't stuck inside.
There was three channels on the TV.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You could pop by, like,

Speaker 6 you know. And so I, I, uh, yeah, I have really fond memories.
Um,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 5 In six weeks?

Speaker 6 Six weeks, yeah, in six weeks. So that started a period of instability in my life.
Really, I was very angry, hit the world.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And my plan was to go into the military as a pilot. But after her passing,

Speaker 6 I ended up in five high schools in four years, and it was a lot of, you know,

Speaker 6 being unstable. My father was an old school depression era kid.
He wasn't Mr. Lovey-Dovey.
Hey, I love you, yada, yada, just a serious guy, good provider. But all of a sudden, he had two sons, right?

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 so i moved around to a couple 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 uh

Speaker 6 uh it changed everything and for my father too i remember my father um

Speaker 6 he picks me up one day from school and my school principal had worked for my father, my dad and Ireland.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And,

Speaker 6 you know, we just drove home and I remember he just went in, sat down, 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.

Speaker 6 I was worried. He'd 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

Speaker 6 it, 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 going to, I was never good with authority.

Speaker 6 The older I got, that didn't get any better. But

Speaker 6 that's the first tragic time in my life is a memory that I think would shape me the way I look at things forever. And so I would say from then on until maybe,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But my mom was the stabilizer in the family, right?

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 I remember

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But I said, I just don't want to go to class or do anything anymore. And I think my salvation,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 he started giving us some 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?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 It's just like, you know, maybe not so well thought out. But the Marine Corps set me on a different path.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 like someone who works for you, who went in the Marine Corps at 17 years old and then became an officer, enlisted guy first,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 even though I was not some star

Speaker 6 Marine, I was good at my job in the Marine Corps,

Speaker 6 it turned me to a path

Speaker 6 that would really

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I got the Marine Corps to thank for everything on that.

Speaker 5 What did you do in the Marine Corps?

Speaker 6 So I was an avionics guy, aircraft, electrician, aircraft, avionics.

Speaker 6 You 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.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Then I got sent into the OB-10 Bronco World.

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 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 VMO-1 Marine Observation Squadron 1.

Speaker 6 And the OB-10, for the people that don't know, is just a twin-engine Ford air control bird.

Speaker 6 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 seater is a naval aviator up front.

Speaker 6 And that mission went away.

Speaker 6 That mission of working and the association with OB-10 is what would lead me to the counter-drug operations in Columbia years later.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 I got out after four years

Speaker 6 and a little bitter again because I was going to re-enlist.

Speaker 6 And we had a thing called MISEP,

Speaker 6 Marine Commissioning Enlisted Program. Basically, you apply to MISEP if you can get

Speaker 6 approved, you'll get tuition, you go to school, you can get your commission, and then you

Speaker 6 you know, will own six years of your life afterwards. But that was my plan.
But then we had legislation that came down, Graham Rubman. There was no promotion, no bonus, no anything.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And he sees me, and his call sign was Bones, but that was his nickname in school, tall and thin.

Speaker 6 He said, he goes, Stanza, what are you doing? I said, hey, sir. He goes, what's up with this sir shit? I just have my t-shirt on.

Speaker 6 I go, what are you doing?

Speaker 6 He was there. He was,

Speaker 6 I think he was flying,

Speaker 6 you flying Harriers.

Speaker 6 And he goes, you flying Broncos? I'm like, no, Bones, I'm not.

Speaker 6 I'm a Lance Corporal. This is about get busted back to PFC if I don't get my shit squared away.

Speaker 6 But it really stung me that that time of instability after my mom's death, what I had not taken advantage of.

Speaker 5 Damn.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 I wasn't embarrassed at all. Nothing like that.

Speaker 6 So when I got out of the Marine Corps, I ended up going into the Georgia National Guard full-time for nine years.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 that was an experience. The Guard is an adventure, to say the least.

Speaker 6 But learned a lot there

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 The full-time guard is an interesting, interesting

Speaker 6 deal.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Well, at a guard facility there, it's

Speaker 6 nobody ever leaves. You know, you're there full-time.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 you got

Speaker 6 your summer camp every year, and 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.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 my first sergeant said, hey, Stanz, well, do me a favor. He said, take this Jeep here.
And remember the old chiefs with little flat trailers, little small trailers? Yeah.

Speaker 6 He said, go to the PX and load this fucker with beer.

Speaker 6 I'm like, okay.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 it was

Speaker 6 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 there's a big tent.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 you know, joining that were, you know, kind of tier one folks.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 it was a totally different guard. and I got to see the transition, but interesting, interesting.

Speaker 5 Did you, did you, I mean, in your days in the military, did you ever, and

Speaker 5 being in captivity, did you ever, did you ever go to SEER training by chance?

Speaker 6 So we had

Speaker 6 the guard had this thing I call seer light. 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.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 I'd get a course later on.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And it was, you know,

Speaker 6 it was interesting to me that when I started working downrange,

Speaker 6 all this time in uniform, training, all the stuff that we did, and I was an aviation guy, right?

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 what got me from the guards at the State Department was when I was in the Marine Corps, there was a program called Nimbus.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So I got sent down there.

Speaker 6 It was just a small debt to support stuff.

Speaker 6 That's really where

Speaker 6 my counter-narcotics connection started. And the customs guys had a couple jets down there.
They had no FLIR operator.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And that later would later on lead me to getting recruited by the State Department on an OB-10 spray program.

Speaker 5 You got recruited.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 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 OV-10 guy.

Speaker 6 You want a rear seat for us?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So I signed the paperwork and came on, but in the middle, that got shut down.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And I was like, okay,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 I'll do it. So then I wind up downrange in Columbia and we're spraying MD, OB10, I'm sorry,

Speaker 6 spraying coca

Speaker 6 with OB-10s that were, you know, had spray booms on them and tanks inside.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So with the spray package, I'd be behind and overhead with my pilot. Then you'd have a SAR package.

Speaker 6 There's a couple of super Hueys and some ex-folks like you that were riding in case somebody went down. You had to take the penetrator down and get them out of the jungle.

Speaker 6 Then our spray package, it'd be anywhere from three to six birds. And we'd spray coca.

Speaker 5 Sprayed them with what?

Speaker 6 Roundup.

Speaker 5 You're just killing. Basically, Roundup.

Speaker 6 Cocaine. Yeah.

Speaker 6 And when I first started, it was as far as you could see. No shit.
It was as far as you could see. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Once you got over the rocks, you know, down in the Andy Sound South, it was just coke everywhere. And what they did to counter that was they broke up the big coca fields into small coca fields.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Shut down, shut the program down. Something happened.
We'd we'd have to stop spraying because it was having too much effect.

Speaker 5 So, too much effect on what?

Speaker 6 On the coca,

Speaker 6 you're stepping on toes there, man.

Speaker 6 I mean, that's the thing. You know, you think everybody up in the government there and La Casa da Niño,

Speaker 6 that's the White House.

Speaker 6 Do you think that that's not the influenced by the coca trade and the money that's there?

Speaker 6 And then the politics.

Speaker 6 So,

Speaker 6 one of the spray pilots that I knew used to say, is it yucca in a coca field or is it coca in a yucca field?

Speaker 6 So they would always put on the news, this poor campesino, his yucca was sprayed. That's bullshit.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 circle and turn,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 5 What was special about the OB-10?

Speaker 6 It was a Ford air control bird.

Speaker 6 So it was heavily armored, reasonably heavily armored, super maneuverable. super maneuverable and just a really capable aircraft.
And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 What's the survivability?

Speaker 6 That was the deal. And you know,

Speaker 6 we actually sprayed Coke on MVGs.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 5 But did you guys take a lot of fire?

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 But when I say take a lot of fire,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.
You know, but the OV-10 was a great bird. I really enjoyed it.
A lot of fun.

Speaker 6 It's a lot of fun to be able to rear seat that aircraft. And it was a really good experience.

Speaker 5 What was the Optempo like down there?

Speaker 6 Depend upon the spraying. If we were, it would go through cycles.

Speaker 6 And so if If we were on kind of a hard new spray time, you notice every day, you know, the rotation down there, two to three weeks on, 10 days off, you're spraying every single day. Every single day.

Speaker 6 But then politics would shut it down or speed it up.

Speaker 6 And, you know,

Speaker 6 we did other things too. I got a mission one time that was kind of interesting to support some Colombians.

Speaker 6 It was a lot of fun.

Speaker 6 And we went out, basically we were 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 just take the gloves off.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 5 Sounds like every war I've been involved in.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Every single one of them. Every one.
And, you know,

Speaker 6 half of our pilots weren't military pilots. I remember I used to be MBG qualified to repair goggles and stuff, right?

Speaker 6 So I'm in the hangar at Patrick Air Force Base in the State Department, and my

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 Just hands-on.

Speaker 6 And so I knew they were crop dusters. 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?

Speaker 6 Like, military? We've never been in the military.

Speaker 6 Right, right.

Speaker 6 So the three guys that were there were fantastic pilots. Now, I'm not knocking,

Speaker 6 but I thought I'd go upstairs and, you know, you flew an A-10.

Speaker 6 I thought that was what was there and it wasn't.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 so we're out there

Speaker 6 outside of Patrick at night practicing. They were low-level on MBGs, kind of do-it-yourself thing.

Speaker 6 I was like, damn, this has never happened

Speaker 6 on active duty.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And I said, well, you're running 90 knots. He's running 400.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 it all worked out. It worked out.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Everybody there want to do the job. I didn't fly with a pilot or work with anybody there that didn't want to do the job.

Speaker 5 Man, that sounds like such a cool mission.

Speaker 5 I did not realize this was State Department mission. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I thought this was an agency mission. No.

Speaker 6 State Department. It was run out of Patrick.

Speaker 5 No, shit. Where were you guys staged out of?

Speaker 6 LaRondia was one of our San Jose and LaRondi were two of our bases that we were staged out of.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 All patriots, right?

Speaker 6 And, you know, Dine Corps used to get a bad rap about, yeah, you got a bunch of ex-enlisted beer drinking guys down there partying all over Latin America and doing a counter-drug mission.

Speaker 6 Well, yeah, that's what you attract. Yep.
You're not looking for choir boys because you're not getting them.

Speaker 5 I've had this conversation so many times.

Speaker 6 But those same guys

Speaker 6 will do a kick-ass job, and they did.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Were you guys, was it specifically Colombia? Were you going into Peru?

Speaker 6 No, no, there was Columbia. When I was on that, that was all.
We never left, we never left Columbia. That would not start until I got on with Salcom reconnaissance systems.

Speaker 6 Then it was a different mission. Then it was a different mission.
But I mean,

Speaker 6 you know, even sometimes I know you must have been in places like, man, this sucks. But if you think about it now, there were some lessons there you were learning and didn't realize, you know.

Speaker 6 And I've got some great memories of some really good people there.

Speaker 6 I've got some really sad memories of one of our guys getting killed killed by accident with a minigun

Speaker 6 by his own best friend there on the base, which was really, really sad. You know,

Speaker 6 we had

Speaker 6 a,

Speaker 6 he wasn't an indigen. He was, I can't remember if he was from Ecuador.
I think he was Ecuadorian. He was

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And so at San Jose, we had a little pad, and we had the aircraft there. And

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 ran outside, and bullet went in under his right armpit. As I remember, he came out here, just dropped dead like a stone.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 and it was

Speaker 6 sad, really sad, because

Speaker 6 it was an accident and it would become a whole legal thing afterwards.

Speaker 6 But two really close friends and the American that was a former Marine there,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 There'd be somebody shooting at them and then just giving the guys in the SAR aircraft a chance to get some rust off the miniguns. But, yeah, it was just

Speaker 6 a sad, sad event.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 I mean, for base security, we had a

Speaker 6 seen old yellow tugs on a flight line. You've seen them a million times, right?

Speaker 6 And we had to come up with a base security plan. So we got a portable power generator that we used to used to

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And then we passed the base security plan for that.

Speaker 5 Did you guys

Speaker 5 was there a lot of engagements?

Speaker 6 No, not really.

Speaker 5 No, any?

Speaker 6 When I was saying engagements,

Speaker 6 it would usually be

Speaker 6 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 inside of a jungle in the coca field? So full-on, head-to-head combat?

Speaker 6 No, no.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So you come back, you'd even know you got hit sometimes. You know, there'd be one or two or three holes in the aircraft.

Speaker 6 But there was no full-up, you know, Wild West gunfights with that.

Speaker 5 Let's go into,

Speaker 5 I want you to educate the audience on who the FARC is.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 6 Fuerces Armadas Revilucionarios de Colombia.

Speaker 6 Fuercas is forces, Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia. So the FARC manifested itself in 1964.
same year I was born.

Speaker 6 And led by a guy, a campesino called Pito Fio, which is fixed bullet or fixed shot.

Speaker 6 And in the late 50s and early 60s, when the whole communist plague was taking over Latin America,

Speaker 6 they were basically an out

Speaker 6 derivative of that. And you have to think about Colombia as two different countries at that time.

Speaker 6 You've got Bogota at 8,800 feet where the wealthy and the political class lived. Then you had the rest of the country at sea level.

Speaker 6 No real infrastructure in the country to get and drive a truck here or there, mostly

Speaker 6 I'm painting 1964, right?

Speaker 6 So you had a basically a campesino kind of working class, as they called it, you know, maybe the proletariat want to pronounce that way against the elite class that had the money, right?

Speaker 6 But then they also owned all the big ranches and property in the countryside.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 The FART came about as a way to maybe,

Speaker 6 or I would give them legitimacy there, to fight the political class and the elites for some fairness in the country.

Speaker 6 Definitely a class system, right? No doubt about it.

Speaker 6 But over the years, what infiltrated the FARC was the drug trade.

Speaker 6 So they became, I would say, I hate to use the word victims, but their

Speaker 6 revolution, you know, like any communist revolution is all a bunch of bullshit, right? You just, you trade one ruling class for another, right?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 it really, really

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 It's all now that kid you've brainwashed as the 14-year-old campesino to become a gorilla. He believes in the revolution.

Speaker 6 But there's an interesting thing.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 Where all their children were.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And so you had the Secretariat, then you had the Commandantes, and you have different fronts, right, around the country that were divvied up.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Now, from a certain level below, those worker bees believed in the revolution. But the ones up top,

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 they were just corrupted with their own money. Yeah.
My belief.

Speaker 6 I think many people support that.

Speaker 5 Is the FARC still active? Yes.

Speaker 6 This is what's sad.

Speaker 6 So,

Speaker 6 let me see, seven or eight years ago, we had a peace process. No, nine years ago.

Speaker 6 So, President Uribe, who was a hardline,

Speaker 6 right-wing guy, basically brought the FARC to their knees.

Speaker 6 Then the president that followed him decided to have a peace process, which they'd failed before.

Speaker 6 So, we take the leadership to Cuba. They get fanfare.
Some of our major politicians go down there and

Speaker 6 they negotiated a peace process. And I think,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But they really didn't do that. Some groups stayed and refused to turn themselves in.

Speaker 6 The FARC were promised six seats, I think, now I can be off on this number, in the Colombian Congress called a Karul.

Speaker 6 So you take these guys out, you forgive them of crimes against humanity, then you put them into Congress.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 6 And, you know, this whole peace deal was... When was this?

Speaker 6 Gosh, park peace deal. This would be

Speaker 6 10 years ago, 14 and 15, I think. So I'll never forget

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And this, you know, it's just kind of like the Taliban being a B team, right?

Speaker 6 You know?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I was up in D.C. and I did an interview and I can't remember if it was on CNN or Fox, but

Speaker 6 one of our senators,

Speaker 6 very famous, and he's deceased now and was a POW from Arizona.

Speaker 6 I don't want to disparage him, but he was making comments about the PARC and the peace deal. And I was on CNN and I shot back at him and said, hey, would you like like to debate this?

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 he was so far out

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 it was disappointing to see that peace process. People that

Speaker 6 should be in jail for life at a minimum get forgiven, but I get it was for a greater good.

Speaker 6 Well,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And now we have an ultra-liberal government

Speaker 6 that

Speaker 6 believes in this talk stuff, right? And it just buys them time. And so the FARC dissidencia is what they call it, has really has grown.

Speaker 6 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 know?

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 it's just a cycle. I think the peace process gave a lot of FARC members a chance to escape the jungle.

Speaker 6 Some of the young people.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 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 Goffas.

Speaker 6 When we got captured and he was captured, our government tried to extradite him, but the Colombian government wouldn't play ball.

Speaker 6 So Goffez was put into

Speaker 6 jail. He was released under the peace process.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 He just went back to his old tricks. He was just on the news a few months ago.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 like this to a

Speaker 6 female congresswoman saying, don't come back here again. Just released.
And

Speaker 6 now he's else sequestered open.

Speaker 6 He's kidnapping people again. What he should have had was a fucking bullet between his eyes.

Speaker 5 This shit happens all the time.

Speaker 6 Look at all the people we've released from Gipmo.

Speaker 6 These are not good people.

Speaker 6 You know, I worked.

Speaker 6 I worked at Northrop Grimm with an interesting character,

Speaker 6 former 82nd Airborne, one-star Harry Axon. God rest his soul.
He's buried in Arlington right now.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I had a picture of him when he went into Panama. He was sitting behind Norie's desk holding his sword.

Speaker 6 And I said,

Speaker 6 I said, Harry, like, what's your opinion? And he just looked at me and said, you know, Keith,

Speaker 6 unfortunately, some people just need killing.

Speaker 6 And it wasn't,

Speaker 6 it wasn't animosity. It wasn't anger, but he was just like, these people are just going to do what they're going to do, right?

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 so what do we do? I mean, I guess on the right of being human and humane, you want to

Speaker 6 maybe give them the benefit of the doubt or whatever it is, right? But some people are just murderers, man. And that's just, they're never going to change.

Speaker 6 And we have this way of always hoping to negotiate with the unnegotiable.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Never seemed to learn a lesson.

Speaker 6 I don't understand it.

Speaker 5 How strong was, how many people were involved in the FARC at the time? Do you have any idea?

Speaker 6 I don't know. We've heard different numbers, right?

Speaker 6 I think they were probably

Speaker 6 maybe more than 30,000 strong at the height.

Speaker 6 So there's a very famous takedown of a post called Me Too.

Speaker 6 So, the Colombian police and soldiers that were in captivity with us, the majority of them were taken from Me Too.

Speaker 6 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 Columbia, right?

Speaker 6 They were much weaker then. So, a few thousand FARCs around an outpost, man, and just

Speaker 6 start killing and capturing. And at one time, in the Despeje,

Speaker 6 right, in the Despehe,

Speaker 6 the FARC had over 400

Speaker 6 police and soldiers in captivity.

Speaker 5 Are you serious?

Speaker 6 400. Now imagine this.
Imagine this.

Speaker 6 Let's just say in this county in Tennessee,

Speaker 6 you had 400 American men and women in captivity because you were some security force.

Speaker 6 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 it was the size of Rhode Island. And on the night,

Speaker 6 families, American families have to see their own kids and grown men behind fences in their own country as they negotiate.

Speaker 6 And then we have American CEOs and

Speaker 6 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 do they do?

Speaker 6 They just use that to grow stronger. Then

Speaker 6 they let

Speaker 6 the few hundred go of the soldiers and police, and they kept the officers and the politicians that they had captured.

Speaker 5 Damn.

Speaker 6 So they always wanted el entrecambio humanitario. That's the humanitarian exchange.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And so they always wanted a dispe

Speaker 6 to have another humanitarian exchange. But they were now a named terrorist organization.
So what was the strategy?

Speaker 6 You got to declare us a legitimate military force. Then you have to openly negotiate with us and a disbay hay, and then we'll exchange prisoners.
They were never exchanging money.

Speaker 6 We were just political currency.

Speaker 6 Just political currency. And I remember

Speaker 6 Rumsfeld, I heard it on the radio.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 our subject came up. He goes, we don't negotiate next.

Speaker 6 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 that's a fantasy.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 you know, I always,

Speaker 6 all we wanted, and we stated in our first proof of life,

Speaker 6 we wanted to be rescued, but I wanted our guys coming to rescue us.

Speaker 6 not the Colombians. And I remember, because the whole plan was

Speaker 6 during a rescue op, the first time they hear the Hilos, there's a disembark, they're going to, they just start, they did it.

Speaker 6 You know, in the first Colombian rescue operation, how sad is this?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So the Colombian military flies over the camp.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 What happens? They just walk in there and they kill every single one of them. Not only does the FARC execute him and haul ass, then they send a guy back to shoot everybody in the head again.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 What kind of.

Speaker 6 So do you want to rescue you from that group?

Speaker 5 You heard that while you were in captivity that suffered.

Speaker 6 It happened, yeah.

Speaker 6 Shit. And what they were,

Speaker 6 they were a group of municipal legislators

Speaker 6 dressed up like police.

Speaker 6 drive into a little town, right?

Speaker 6 Run into the little courthouse where they're having them and say, hey, outside, you're at risk. Get them on a school bus.
Start driving out the countryside and say, oh, by the way, we're not police.

Speaker 6 We're far.

Speaker 6 How about that?

Speaker 5 Damn.

Speaker 5 Damn.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 6 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 into that. It went from

Speaker 6 terror

Speaker 6 to anger. It was so deep into it.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I mean, if you want me to say it now before we break real quick or not, let's do it. So

Speaker 6 being a crew chief for a long time, writing Chinooks and cranes, whatever,

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 and this would affect me

Speaker 6 in Freedom afterwards, but the biggest fear we had was to disembark at night that wasn't done right.

Speaker 6 So Condoleezza Rice, when she was Secretary of State, was visiting Colombia. And she made a very poignant statement.
It was on the radio.

Speaker 6 Planned Colombia, we're going to have government presence everywhere. And she was right.
That's what we needed. She's 100% correct.

Speaker 6 But while they were down 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,

Speaker 6 we hear these two black hawks.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So there's a couple hundred guerrillas guarding our camp because we had Colombian police and military on one side of of the fence and then the politicians and us, the Colombian politicians and the three of us.

Speaker 6 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 this pandemonium in our compound.

Speaker 6 And Mark actually, we had a little escape route planned. Mark was actually just,

Speaker 6 he slipped out under the fence.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 We called him Big Cat, you know, whatever. Anyway.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 The guards were nervous because they knew they were going to shoot us.

Speaker 6 And so I went from being terrified. But when I say terrified, I mean,

Speaker 6 I didn't crap in my pants when I was close,

Speaker 6 to I got angry. And I don't know why.
It was not a macho decision.

Speaker 6 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 Farnay, who was the evil

Speaker 6 boss of the guards, I said, you're going to fucking kill us?

Speaker 6 You're going to kill us? I said, motherfucker, shoot me like a man.

Speaker 6 And the congressman, Big Cat, grabbed me. He said, Keith, don't say that.
Don't say that. I mean,

Speaker 6 it's total chaos.

Speaker 6 I said, you shoot me like a fucking man i don't you know and i 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

Speaker 6 and then the radio goes off and they shut it down and the black hawk 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 because the macho commandante who is escaping right now okay is talking to him on the radio whether or not to give him the order order to kill all of us.

Speaker 6 Because we are the HVT

Speaker 6 of

Speaker 6 hostages.

Speaker 6 I was terrified, man. Terrified.
And then I just got angry. And I don't know.
I wish I could tell you why.

Speaker 6 There's no training, no matcha, no thing. I was just furious that you were going to kill me.

Speaker 5 How long after you were in there did this happen?

Speaker 6 A year and a half.

Speaker 6 Yeah, a little over a year and a half.

Speaker 5 What happened to your buddy that slipped through the fence?

Speaker 6 His ass finally got back in the drink.

Speaker 6 I said, man, you almost fucked up.

Speaker 6 Marked us hung by the heat. We didn't know what to do, right? And he slipped back in, tore his t-shirt over.
I was like,

Speaker 6 I talk about it now.

Speaker 5 Damn. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Keith, let's say a quick break. Yes, sir.

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Speaker 5 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?

Speaker 6 As far as,

Speaker 6 well, it's on your head,

Speaker 6 Southcom Reconnaissance Systems.

Speaker 5 Isn't that wild?

Speaker 6 Under Plan Columbia. And when I saw your hat and it said SRS, at first, just for a second,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And so for a second, I'm like, oh, no, Sean Ryan Show.

Speaker 5 I wish I was that switched on, Keith.

Speaker 6 Otherwise, I would have said yes. Oh, my God.
And so when I saw it, how

Speaker 6 just, I don't know what you'd call it, right?

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 5 Well, we got you one. This is company only.
Nobody else has them.

Speaker 6 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 was like, oh, I said,

Speaker 6 did he do that for, oh, no, Sean Lynch, you know, you know, so.

Speaker 5 All right, Keith, let's move into it. So what was happening that night

Speaker 6 that you were doing? It was actually very early in the morning.

Speaker 6 So we had,

Speaker 6 as a mission commander, I'd get an intel box for the embassy for my mission of targets.

Speaker 6 We'd all meet at the airport, usually an hour and a half before we'd take off, and

Speaker 6 confer with the pilots. And, you know,

Speaker 6 Mark, who was new, we had brought Mark into the picture to streamline our collection, right?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So he was training to be a mission commander because the funny thing about our bird was it's a Cessna Caravan.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And people think, oh, the Americans run a Colombia doing what they want. No.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Up front, and breaks my heart, but CW-5 retired Tommy Janice, we're here because of Tommy, you know,

Speaker 6 30 years, retired Delta.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 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 his very first mission.

Speaker 5 That was his first mission.

Speaker 6 Young guy, wife, kids. And

Speaker 6 what's a bigger heartbreaker is he came with his buddy that morning.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 and uh he'd never come back damn and so it breaks my heart

Speaker 6 remembering moments after the crash the conversation um 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 go over what we're going to do.

Speaker 6 Take off out of Bogota, across the rocks, it's a little bit high, and then we'd get down the flatland and go do our mission. So we were going into

Speaker 6 a fixed base to get fuel and right before,

Speaker 6 right before the runway there, some rocks about, you know, we call them small hills, about 3,500, 4,000 feet.

Speaker 6 So we had a combination, I call it shoot-down engine failure.

Speaker 6 We were coming down out of 15,000 feet. We were 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.

Speaker 6 We crossed it every day, but it was just a mountainous stuff and no man's land.

Speaker 6 And I remember Tommy saying, 12,000. I had altimeter in the back, but I knew, so we all took our oxygen off.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I hear the birds

Speaker 6 do

Speaker 6 no motor.

Speaker 6 So I said,

Speaker 6 Tommy, what was that?

Speaker 6 He goes, that's an engine failure, sir.

Speaker 6 Cool, calm, collected, like

Speaker 6 nothing's going on.

Speaker 6 So they start trying to do a restart on the motor.

Speaker 6 And I hear Tommy tell Tom in the right seat, run the numbers. He wanted to know if we,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 I tell Mark,

Speaker 6 make the Mayday call.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 wait. So

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I cannot tell you.

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 unbelievable piloting skills.

Speaker 6 And he was inducted last year. I come up here into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame.
Well deserved.

Speaker 6 I'm here only because of his piloting skills.

Speaker 6 We should have be dead right there on that.

Speaker 5 Damn.

Speaker 6 So I tell Mark, I said, Mark, make the Mayday call. Mark steps on the foot bike and his voice cracks.
I said, give me the mic. You get the target stuff.
So Mark starts organizing what's on there.

Speaker 6 I start making the Mayday.

Speaker 6 So our boys in Key West and the boys in the embassy, I'm on a satcom. Everybody in the world is listening to us, right?

Speaker 6 And a friend of ours was in the office that morning in the embassy, and he gets on and he's he's upset. All I'm doing is just giving grid coordinates as we go down so they can find us.

Speaker 6 I told them how many souls were on board, just the standard stuff that you train to do.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I don't think any of us,

Speaker 6 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 stuff in the aircraft so it just doesn't kill us when we crash in.

Speaker 6 But I remember Sardin Cruz, he couldn't speak English. He's right in front of me.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 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 is going right.
We're just doing what we have to do.

Speaker 6 They're shooting the hell out of us right then. We didn't even know it.

Speaker 5 Now, did you guys, did you guys have any type of a crook reactionary force ready to come get you?

Speaker 6 Yeah, they did. They had at the base, you know, they had

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And I remember

Speaker 6 Tommy saying,

Speaker 6 as we're,

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And we hit first, broke off a landing gear, then we dug in.

Speaker 6 What I remember most is the side of the aircraft just opened up like a, you know, just a can opener.

Speaker 6 Debris and dirt and everything are coming in.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So behind me is a cargo door.

Speaker 6 So I said, Mark, you get the gun bag, get the target deck, right?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 The whole flap of his forehead was cut open and covering his eye. And he was out of his straps and twisted up in

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 start moving.

Speaker 6 So we run around to that side and get the door open.

Speaker 6 And Tommy,

Speaker 6 how do you describe Tommy Janice, man?

Speaker 6 56,

Speaker 6 probably weighed a buck 60, buck 56, ran six to 10 miles a day, had a six-pack,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 He really, he fits in there.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 we get Tommy out.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 He just puts his hands to his hair like this.

Speaker 6 He goes, how do I look?

Speaker 6 No way. I swear to God, I'm alive.

Speaker 6 Then he reaches over and he always flew with 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.

Speaker 6 Holy shit. That's Tom Janice.

Speaker 5 Damn.

Speaker 6 Like if you want to write a movie about a guy that flew, was 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?

Speaker 6 Who else does that shit at that moment?

Speaker 6 So Mark gets around and Tom comes up and Tom gets out. Tom's alive.

Speaker 6 Mark gives me just the gumbag of my M4, and we had our, our, just our bread. I threw that fucker over the cliff.
And Sergeant Cruz was getting mad at me.

Speaker 6 He's like, shoot, shoot, because there's like 60 or 70 guerrillas coming up the hill. I said, fuck, no, we're not shooting.
We ain't dying today. We're not dying here.

Speaker 6 And we can't, I mean, we were uncovered ground. They were coming.
There's nothing. It was over.
Game was over.

Speaker 6 And Cruz is crying, but not out of like being,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And the scary thing was, is Mark looks Latin.

Speaker 6 And at first, they thought Mark was a Colombian, too.

Speaker 6 You know, so

Speaker 6 I turn around and then there's... A couple guys on our face with AKs in our face.

Speaker 5 It happened that click.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So they split us up, right?

Speaker 6 And they took Mark and Tom and I downhill first.

Speaker 6 And they took Sardin Cruz and Tommy in another direction. That's what they do.
They split you up so if a Kuref or somebody gets there, they don't get all their golden eggs.

Speaker 6 And I'll never forget, I remember this. I looked over

Speaker 6 and I see Tom, you know, Tom Janice dragging his right leg like he can't can't walk.

Speaker 6 He's got serious sear training. He all knows one thing.
That first 30 seconds, 60 seconds, whatever,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 That's what he was doing.

Speaker 6 Tommy's just, he was at a different level.

Speaker 6 And so we never heard the gunshots. But what we would later discover,

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 we wouldn't find that out for months. So they take us down a hill to another side.

Speaker 5 Hold on, let's rewind.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 5 You speak Spanish?

Speaker 6 Si, mucho.

Speaker 5 So what were they saying when they... Here's the problem.

Speaker 6 I didn't speak Spanish then. I learned it in captivity.
Shit.

Speaker 6 So,

Speaker 6 but I'll never, I watched Tommy. Tommy, Tommy,

Speaker 6 once they separate and Tommy's already planning, hey, I'm, I'm out.

Speaker 6 They take us down a hill to like a shack and there's a couple lemon trees and they strip us to search us and they make us flipping lemonade

Speaker 6 a big bowl of lemonade for us for everybody to drink and we're sitting in our underwear on the side of a hill right and i look up the hill

Speaker 6 and there's a uh a girl who was leading the group who would later be killed um

Speaker 6 i've never seen a woman as physically capable as 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 one will do it.

Speaker 6 There'll be no pushback on her. She was a physical freak and had been leading Gorilla Columns for years in her early 30s and a killer.
She was a fucking killer. We'd find out about it later.
But

Speaker 6 we get dressed, we're finishing up lemonade, and all of a sudden you can hear, wop, bop, wop, bop, bop. Here come the Hueys.
They're coming to the crash site.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 she took an RPG

Speaker 6 and shot it through the bottom of the fuselage after they got all the stuff off of it.

Speaker 6 When the Hueys got there,

Speaker 6 there was two, but one was like in trail. One got there, starts circling us, right?

Speaker 6 But they can't shoot the gorilla because the gorilla grab up around us.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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 are on the side. We don't want to fall further down, just slide.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I mean, right? So,

Speaker 6 so.

Speaker 6 I've never talked to him, but I'm assuming the lead bird realized we're in the middle of that, so they just had to stop shooting. So they just start circling us.

Speaker 6 And I don't know how we got separated,

Speaker 6 but we were coming out onto a little coffee bean field on the side. And on the top of the field was a little pen hut that the Campesinos lived in.

Speaker 6 And I look up and I see Mark and Tom making it to the hut.

Speaker 6 And they're telling me, go, go, go.

Speaker 6 So I'm pushing up the hill.

Speaker 6 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 or four feet around.

Speaker 6 And all of a sudden,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And I get down next to the tree trunk because I'm thinking they're just going to shoot me before they let the helicopter, you know, hoist me out.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 That fucking sucked.

Speaker 5 Damn.

Speaker 6 And then that just started a nightmare three-week march into the Amazon basin.

Speaker 5 Real quick, before we go farther in,

Speaker 5 what were you guys collecting on these targets?

Speaker 6 Here's what really sucked on that target. God, this couldn't have been worse.

Speaker 6 We were collecting.

Speaker 6 on coca fields in illicit runways

Speaker 6 and labs.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And they captured that.

Speaker 6 So not good.

Speaker 6 And I remember

Speaker 6 one last pass by the bird. I think Tom and Mark and I were all together.

Speaker 6 I believe we were. We're on our backs, and there's a gorilla got his arm around each of us.

Speaker 6 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 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

Speaker 6 the girl i said the bad was a badass her name was sonia

Speaker 6 and uh

Speaker 6 i've just never seen a woman in the field this physically impressive. I mean,

Speaker 6 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. Had 7,500 people.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And she goes, your fucking micro switch, your micro switch. We're all laying there on the ground.

Speaker 6 She said, what? She goes, do you have a micro switch? Like, what? She goes, if you have a micro switch, I will will kill you

Speaker 6 so she thought

Speaker 6 this was how

Speaker 6 like dinosaurs they were right primitive but they're scared of american technology

Speaker 6 she thought that we had micro switch micro switches in our bodies maybe you know injected somewhere that could hear our conversations and locate us no

Speaker 6 and i'll never forget I grabbed her hand. She had a Casio like G-Shock watch on.
I I said, that's where your micro switch is at. But they didn't even know what a micro switch was, right?

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 you know, that's, that's not a good thing at that time, right? You know?

Speaker 5 You just came up with that on the fly.

Speaker 6 I didn't know what to say. I just said, nope.
You got a micro switch right there.

Speaker 5 What'd you do?

Speaker 6 Just kind of calmed down.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 One of those guys is carrying our vests, and I'm thinking, fuck, is the EPERB on?

Speaker 6 Is it on? I didn't say nothing.

Speaker 6 Mark, and if I remember, I'm like, what, what, what?

Speaker 6 And then a few minutes later, I see him taking it apart and taking the batteries out of it.

Speaker 6 So I don't know if it was ever on or not.

Speaker 6 They had, I think, did we have a a set of MBGs on? I don't remember.

Speaker 6 And then it just was a death march.

Speaker 6 You know, it was just a death march.

Speaker 5 What do you mean by a death march?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Right? You're not keeping up with them. I'm sorry.
I mean,

Speaker 6 you're just strong, right?

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Then they'd just turn us over to another group.

Speaker 6 Right? And we just keep daisy chaining like that.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 we got separated in the march at times. But I remember it was a point where if we ever physically stopped, I'd just fall down on the ground to sleep.

Speaker 6 I've never known exhaustion like that before.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 my particular difficulty was I had a pair of Danner mountain boots on, and they were worried about tracks.

Speaker 6 And in Ecuador, they make these cheap ass black rubber boots that even the Colombian Army uses.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And it works in the mountains so they couldn't get me a pair of rubber boots that were big enough

Speaker 6 and because they're 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.

Speaker 6 And so I always thought, and Tom did too, were like,

Speaker 6 are they

Speaker 6 just going to take us somewhere, try to interrogate us and kill us or something? We didn't know. We didn't know really

Speaker 6 how primitive they were,

Speaker 6 you know.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And on my two lower ribs, you could take and just stick your fingers through the ribs into my stuff.

Speaker 6 Mark was really strong on the march. Tom was much stronger than me.

Speaker 6 I was just going downhill like every hour. I couldn't figure out what was going on.

Speaker 6 But I knew I had to have something internally screwed up with me. And at one point, like two weeks in the march, I just laid down.
I told Sony, you can shoot me. I can't move.

Speaker 6 She goes, what do you mean? I said, I can't move.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You know, and

Speaker 6 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. And, but, um, yeah, I had some pretty severe intestinal and injuries in my ribs.

Speaker 6 And then, for comedy, if you want to hear a light note, right?

Speaker 6 Um,

Speaker 6 we're all waiting for Tommy Jay and Sardin Cruz to show up, right?

Speaker 6 We didn't know that they had been executed.

Speaker 6 And so they stop at this one spot and

Speaker 6 the three of us lay down. And the way they make a bed is they cut these palm trees just like

Speaker 6 a

Speaker 6 piece of wood, a stump. They stack it up about two feet high, then they fill it with dirt and put palm fronds under it.
Then they'll put like a little, you know, just a tarp over it.

Speaker 6 And that's what they sleep and live in.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And these two young gorilla girls take their clothes off. and just have their brawn panties on and they start giving me a hand bath in this fucking stream.
I'm like,

Speaker 6 is this like

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And so I'm thinking, fuck, I bet they're going to take pictures of this

Speaker 6 of them bathing me in a stream. I thought it was just my mind's, you know, something like that.

Speaker 6 So I go,

Speaker 6 I go back up 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.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Like, you know, it's like, you know, he didn't know.

Speaker 6 So Mark got a bath and came back up. And Tom, the next day, how he looked before the bath? Oh, God.
So the next day, Tom's like, really? I said, yeah, motherfucker.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 I think, especially with Americans, with our sense of humor in the worst moments, sometimes you just make a joke, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 But yeah, the death march was unbelievable. And,

Speaker 6 you know, we were going to be turned over to

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 but that was physically the hardest thing that I ever

Speaker 6 put myself through ever.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 it was, I remember one night we're in a river, it's just

Speaker 6 I mean, just freezing, right?

Speaker 6 And,

Speaker 6 you know, we're up in the mountains,

Speaker 6 and they finally found a pair of sweatpants, put on me a t-shirt, and these boots. And they put Mark and I on a rock in the middle of the river.
And it's freezing.

Speaker 6 And Mark and I are huddled together like this, just trying to stay warm all night, you know,

Speaker 6 and survive.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 it, it,

Speaker 6 it was

Speaker 6 shocking to me how freely they could move through the jungle without any,

Speaker 6 you know, they knew where the military was and where it wasn't, you know, and I was thinking, shit,

Speaker 6 these guys can go where they want to go to. And I'm not talking eight or ten of us, I'm talking 75 or 80.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 it just, it was

Speaker 6 eye-opening to see how much freedom, or not freedom, I guess

Speaker 6 how much of control they were of where they were at.

Speaker 6 You know, and there's no finding them.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 We thought they were going to take us somewhere, somewhere, interrogate us, right?

Speaker 6 And then just get rid of us. We weren't sure what was going on.
We didn't really understand

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Damn.

Speaker 6 You know?

Speaker 5 What was it like going through the jungle? It was a, were you guys on a

Speaker 6 pulldown every square inch of jungle if I could?

Speaker 6 Um, the jungle bites,

Speaker 6 it's not a friendly place. Every tree has a thorn.
I mean, it's a difficult environment. And

Speaker 6 it's tough

Speaker 6 because it's like this, where we were. We were in the mountains.
We weren't down low.

Speaker 6 It's hot. It's sticky.
You know,

Speaker 6 it's a miserable place.

Speaker 6 And I'm sure, you know,

Speaker 6 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 And she's, how do you feel? I said, I'm okay now.

Speaker 6 That would have wigged me out a few years ago. But yeah, the jungle's, jungle's tough, man.
And that was really

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 jail.

Speaker 6 You know, I mean, it wasn't.

Speaker 6 What do you do when you're hundreds of miles from nowhere in a basin in the jungle? You have no anything. You don't know where you're at.
You don't have a compass, GPS. You don't have a squat.

Speaker 6 Where are you going? Even if you get away, where are you going?

Speaker 6 So Mark and I came up with an idea

Speaker 6 that

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I think it proved to be the right choice.

Speaker 6 But it's a harsh environment.

Speaker 5 Well, especially, I mean, even with

Speaker 5 those guys that are grown up and humping around those mountains in the jungle, I mean, they're going to get you.

Speaker 6 I think if we could have got enough separation,

Speaker 6 we could, because it's so vast that we could have got away from them, but then what are we going to eat?

Speaker 6 Right? I mean, there was stuff there we could eat, but after a while it'd make you sick.

Speaker 6 Which direction are you going to go?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You know, and it's not like,

Speaker 6 you know, I used to teach LAN nav and NCODP and all that bullshit, right? Well.

Speaker 6 There's no reference.

Speaker 6 If it's overclassed and cloudy, 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.

Speaker 6 You can't see where you go. Yeah.
You're going to walk, you know. And so

Speaker 6 it was,

Speaker 6 we knew we were up Shitt's Creek, that's for sure.

Speaker 5 Before this, had you ever thought about what you would do if something like this happened?

Speaker 6 In a casual manner, I never believed in the mountainous terrain that we'd survive a crash.

Speaker 6 And our program was in the midst of transitioning to twin-engine aircraft just to make it safer.

Speaker 6 But what we were victims of at Southcom Reconnaissance Systems was our own success.

Speaker 6 We take this simple bird,

Speaker 6 and then we take two simple birds, caravans, and we're down there 24-7.

Speaker 6 So competing Intel platforms will come down for 45 days, then go come back a few months later, that was our backyard.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 let's say some other platforms that we collected with,

Speaker 6 they'd pipe their data back to the States,

Speaker 6 get everything redacted,

Speaker 6 then send it back for us to analyze and to use. Well,

Speaker 6 we were only final secret.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 our

Speaker 6 mission creep became mission creep. Damn.
And we were also too aggressive. We pushed it.

Speaker 6 You know, we wanted to be that platform and we were lobbying and they were on the way for Twin Engine for King Aeros to get there, but we pushed it too. You know,

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 and it was not good.

Speaker 6 So I called Tommy on the phone. Tommy and I had brought the aircraft back, right?

Speaker 6 And Tommy had just faced an engine failure where he came back and we had a pane.

Speaker 6 I said, Tommy, what do we do? You're the chief pilot.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And what I wanted to do was shut down the bird that was downrange and do

Speaker 6 an inspection on the aircraft, which doesn't look good, you know, on the contrary. You're supposed to produce for your customer, right?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 everybody wanted to keep the program going.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 hindsight's 2020, right?

Speaker 6 But we should have never been doing what we were doing.

Speaker 6 You know, should have never been doing.

Speaker 6 But you got a bunch of guys that are like doing a mission, and I would have paid to do that job,

Speaker 6 right?

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 one day we go to Cali.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And so a really nice house hidden in a warehouse district. So our bird doesn't draw any attention.
It's a hide in plain sight. And so we have this mission plan.

Speaker 6 And actually, Tommy Janice flew it with me.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 was there room for a black hawk to sit sit down on top of this that was the whole purpose right not an american of columbia

Speaker 6 so a week later

Speaker 6 i'm in the

Speaker 6 in the embassy lunchroom and my boss steve walks up and he throws their version some on a magazine of time

Speaker 6 he said good job and there's our target deck right

Speaker 6 there's the house and there's they're disembarking on top of that motherfucker

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 because when it went through the columbian pipeline someone in the columbian intel side sold it to the magazine

Speaker 6 you know so stupid things you saw

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 6 the

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 we had

Speaker 6 a friend of mine that was, I won't say which agency he worked for, but he was handling this intel person.

Speaker 6 And we had to go out and

Speaker 6 find

Speaker 6 their missing person.

Speaker 6 Well, it ended up be two of them. What had happened is they had given him

Speaker 6 a pickup truck

Speaker 6 and some intel, and he and his buddy had gone to a party where this stuff was going on.

Speaker 6 Man, it fucking sucks to remember this shit.

Speaker 6 He uh

Speaker 6 while he's at the party,

Speaker 6 some people go out to the truck, start searching the truck, and he left his fucking ID in the truck.

Speaker 6 So the house was on a hill.

Speaker 6 So they shot both of them in the head

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 If I remember, I'm trying to remember. I mean, this is 13, 14 years ago.

Speaker 6 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 neighborhood.

Speaker 6 And you're like, and his handler who was in, he was just

Speaker 6 sucked, right? You know?

Speaker 6 And then we didn't get that story. He didn't, once they did the investigation, they didn't find out, but we're just looking at this guy.
So, I mean, there's a real price in the drug war.

Speaker 6 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 throwing down, but there was a continuous price.

Speaker 6 And we might go on the north coast and do operations or go to other places, but

Speaker 6 people got killed, you know, and was

Speaker 6 the Columbian span of Price on the ground there, you know.

Speaker 6 So, but to see that guy,

Speaker 6 I just remember the blood just, I mean, it was like 20 yards maybe down this hill, and then it was pulled up,

Speaker 6 you know, and it was just

Speaker 6 wow,

Speaker 6 you know.

Speaker 6 And so it makes an impact, right? And, you know,

Speaker 6 I think the thing I would take away from captivity

Speaker 6 is you see,

Speaker 6 and in your formal job, you saw it too,

Speaker 6 what people are really capable of. And it's really disgusting.

Speaker 6 You know, so when you see stuff like that, that just motivates you to

Speaker 6 work even harder.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 but

Speaker 6 people

Speaker 6 pay a dear price on the front line of the drug war.

Speaker 6 What bothers me personally, but it's,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 you know, X amount of cocaine gets to the States.

Speaker 6 X amount of cocaine goes here and goes there.

Speaker 6 And I'm like, yeah,

Speaker 6 well, if we can't fucking stop it, how can we count it?

Speaker 6 Right? Good point.

Speaker 6 If we can't stop it, how do we count it?

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 this was a couple of years after our captivity, if my memory serves me correct.

Speaker 6 Up on the north coast of Colombia, 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.

Speaker 6 Then it got all then back from Europe into the States.

Speaker 6 But I was, 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?

Speaker 6 Were you pulling these numbers out of your ass to justify program needs or money? I get it.

Speaker 6 But how do you stop it?

Speaker 6 Semi-submersibles, right? When they first kind of came out, everybody goes, oh, there's... one or two,

Speaker 6 it's a knockoff. No, there's fucking hundreds of them, right?

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 They don't want to get into Texas to sell drugs. They want to get into Texas to hurt people, right?

Speaker 6 You know, chemical weapons, stuff like that. That's my theory.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 Why?

Speaker 6 I mean it's pretty open knowledge

Speaker 6 you look at Iran and its proxies what they do over there on their doorstep

Speaker 6 well look at their relationship with Venezuela

Speaker 6 really

Speaker 6 you know

Speaker 6 and I saw

Speaker 6 I can't remember when it was,

Speaker 6 but I remember the women from Black Lives Matter

Speaker 6 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 then it's uncovered that they have a plan to distribute cheap drugs into minority neighborhoods in the states to destabilize local political infrastructure.

Speaker 6 But you're down there kissing ass to this person because you want five minutes of fame. That's destroying your own community.
It's part of their, you know, they fight the long game, we don't.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 See it time and time again with all these terrorist organizations and the alliances that go on behind the scenes.

Speaker 6 What has come through?

Speaker 6 Look,

Speaker 6 I was raised a southern conservative Democrat. They don't exist anymore.
My parents were Dixiecrats. They were conservative educators, Democrats.

Speaker 6 I'm a Republican.

Speaker 6 I don't see why we should be fighting over right or wrong,

Speaker 6 or

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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 it. You know, but then

Speaker 6 go down and see where the stuff starts at.

Speaker 6 Just my observation doing the job, not trying to poke somebody in the eye and say, you should believe this way.

Speaker 6 You know, if our border's open, let me ask you a question. Do you have a front door in your house?

Speaker 6 I mean, when your little kids are at home, do you lock your door at night? Or do you, I mean,

Speaker 6 that whole thing for me is personal because I know what goes on the other side of that border.

Speaker 6 You know?

Speaker 6 And, and

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 5 Well, I think a lot of people share that sentiment.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Let's go back to the camp.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 5 So what was it like

Speaker 5 after the three-week death march?

Speaker 6 They

Speaker 6 put us, we were fairly stable for the first year and a half. They put Mark and Tom and I

Speaker 6 into what was an old camp.

Speaker 5 What did it look like?

Speaker 6 Oh, man. So this old camp was just rotten.

Speaker 6 So think of like a little pole barn barn with aluminum roof. Instead of walls, this is where we stayed.
This was chain link fence everywhere. Okay.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 We didn't realize till we got locked up inside this cage that there had been 20 Colombian police and army.

Speaker 6 hostages in there years before us. We saw

Speaker 6 the writing on the wall. We saw stuff that they scribbled.
And behind one door, and

Speaker 6 I think this is what caused Mark his inspiration to carve the chess pieces, was a chess piece stuck in the door.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 they take us to this camp. We meet Mono Hohoy,

Speaker 6 he was basically

Speaker 6 their bin Laden, right?

Speaker 6 One of the most wanted people in the world. He was the military leader of the FARC, an absolute assassin.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And they point to Martin Sumbra.

Speaker 6 You can look up Martin Sumbra. He just died of natural causes here a few weeks ago in Colombia.
He would be a cartoon character, terrifying, right? Nails about this long, whatever.

Speaker 6 So they load us in these

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 We got a giant camp with a couple hundred gorillas and cars and trucks. There are trucks everywhere.

Speaker 6 So we get there. Sumbra is sitting on a beach chair and he goes, We have opened all of this for you.

Speaker 6 We're here to take care of you. I'm like, okay.

Speaker 6 And I said, well, who's in charge?

Speaker 6 Summer goes, we're all equal here. Oh, bullshit, man.
We just,

Speaker 6 right. But we're destroyed.
We just want to

Speaker 6 get some food and get some rest. So the first couple nights they stick us in this big box.

Speaker 6 They build a bed off the ground, which when I say a bed, was just 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.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 they throw in a couple magazines that were printed by the FARC, you know, when they were strong. And they're talking about the Conhay, the exchange, humanitarian exchange, humanitarian exchange.

Speaker 6 So the FARC's big hope was, oh, we've never touched Americans before.

Speaker 6 Now the government's going to negotiate, right?

Speaker 6 Which was,

Speaker 6 I don't think that, you know, Rumsfeld and Bush are negotiating. That's that wasn't the guys you want to talk to, right?

Speaker 6 And then the most right-wing president in years with a rebay, they were like, fuck that.

Speaker 6 So we're trying to educate ourselves on what's going on, but we're just, we're,

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And you're trying to figure out what's going on.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Well, they stop 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.

Speaker 6 It's lengthwise, and you squat over it and kick the dirt in it and keep going.

Speaker 6 Well, I'm covered like from my belly button to my knees. I'm covered in my own feces.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I mean, it's not insanity, but you start, when I say, you start just figuring out shit to do. Well,

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 So I just start killing cockroaches and stacking them up and counting them.

Speaker 6 I just wait for them to get there. It's all right, motherfucker.
Here you go. And stack a cockroach.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 hung my feet up on the wall

Speaker 6 and would hang me up there for hours thinking that was going to cure my stomach.

Speaker 6 It's insanity. I mean, I don't know what else to say.

Speaker 5 It's just pure insanity. What was it? What were you drinking?

Speaker 6 I don't know. Some concoction they came up with.

Speaker 6 And finally, after,

Speaker 6 I don't know, four or five days,

Speaker 6 I started feeling better.

Speaker 6 But I'm laying there covered in my own feces, just counting roaches, trying to keep my mind busy.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And you just start daydreaming.

Speaker 6 You want to keep this turned on, right?

Speaker 6 And just start to try and check out.

Speaker 6 I don't know how many businesses Mark and I came up with to run.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And for some reason, and I don't know why,

Speaker 6 I had the ability to just sleep like a cat for hours. So I'd just sleep,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You know, they use sugar water to power themselves when they're marching right so there was always sugar you know and kool-aid

Speaker 6 but um yeah luckily my

Speaker 6 my uh 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

Speaker 6 to

Speaker 6 Three little buildings inside of like a horse corral, if it makes sense and we were locked in there at night.

Speaker 6 And we could sit, you know, obviously we were undercover with guards with guns, but then we could sit outside of those on the old plastic chair or something during the day.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 it was,

Speaker 6 it was just, we started to kind of get to know the guards, who was nasty, who wasn't so nasty, because we were.

Speaker 6 We were like something out of a movie to them. And these are young guys, you know, men and women, women, but only the men and gardeners.

Speaker 6 So we were like, this, it was like being in a zoo, but on the other side, you know. Damn.
And

Speaker 6 I remember

Speaker 6 some would creep up at night and

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And they might bring us a couple of pieces of yucca and we'd trade them cigarettes.

Speaker 6 You know, it was just crazy and in that camp is where we we got bombed

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 6 there must have been and i'm only guessing because of the trails and the activity but about

Speaker 6 i don't know i'm going to guess 500 yards away must have been an old camp because one night um

Speaker 6 there were kefirs jets then the OB-10s,

Speaker 6 and they came in and bombed the shit out of the camp. And that was pretty scary because

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.
was precision-guided weapons. Shit can go astray.
That was pretty terrifying.

Speaker 6 Scared the shit out of me. I'll bet.
You know, and

Speaker 6 what started scaring me worse was

Speaker 6 how open these guys were to detection. But I was surprised that nobody was detecting our camp.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 they had a cistern.

Speaker 6 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 water.

Speaker 6 So for us, inside this little corral, they built this platform. And the platform had a black cistern filled with water.

Speaker 6 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 feet off the ground, or maybe 10 feet and a toilet.

Speaker 6 So you do your business sitting on a toilet. Hey, Tom, Amark, what are you doing here? Sitting there.
And

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 Anyways, out in the middle of nowhere, open.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 a couple aircraft would be circling our camp.

Speaker 6 And I'm like, there's no way they can't see this.

Speaker 6 There's just, so what I was scared was they're going to see it and come back and bomb us.

Speaker 6 They didn't know if we're there or not. But they never did.

Speaker 6 They never did. And then after that, we were moved to a larger camp where we put in with the politicians and the Colombian military.
And they were separated. It was a big fenced in area.

Speaker 6 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 in the other side and um

Speaker 6 as big as it was it was never found i'm i'm i just

Speaker 6 i mean

Speaker 6 i'm just dumbfounded because i knew in our aircraft if we got even anywhere in the vicinity of that

Speaker 6 we'd have seen it so i just didn't

Speaker 5 what's going on you know i mean

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 6 To be

Speaker 6 just open honest here,

Speaker 6 she was a Colombian flight attendant that I met.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 she ended up pregnant.

Speaker 6 And so, yeah, we weren't even married.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 i'm thinking oh that's on my mind right

Speaker 6 what am i gonna do you know what am i gonna do and uh

Speaker 6 i uh

Speaker 6 i uh

Speaker 6 it was a lot lot

Speaker 6 and all you could do is think

Speaker 6 right

Speaker 6 all you can do is think and i remember one day

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 We 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.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 what I understand now,

Speaker 6 it's almost like decompression in the sense.

Speaker 6 You're having to get used to and cope with your new environment, and that's a learning process, right?

Speaker 6 And I think

Speaker 6 as Americans, we are used to being control of our environment and making decisions. There's absolutely no control.
You're a rat in a cage.

Speaker 6 And you have to make an adjustment. Some people call it prisoner brain.

Speaker 6 That might be an accurate statement.

Speaker 6 But there are big changes. Thank God at the time

Speaker 6 that somebody didn't say, hey, you got 1,950 more days.

Speaker 6 I wouldn't have wanted to know that.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 I would say

Speaker 5 Did you have any idea the concept of time?

Speaker 6 Yeah. Yeah, we had a rough idea of time.

Speaker 6 The guards had watches. They'd tell you what time it is, whatever, you know.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 dates,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 6 And the thing thing for us is we have no information.

Speaker 6 We would not get to where somebody had a radio and some news for

Speaker 6 nine more months. Holy shit, man.
So we had no idea what the status of our families was.

Speaker 6 You know, it would be...

Speaker 6 Let me see.

Speaker 6 A year into it, a year and a half till we did our first proof of life.

Speaker 6 Then we found out Tommy was dead, Sardin Cruz was dead. You know, we had news about our families.

Speaker 5 How'd they do the proof of life?

Speaker 6 They took us into a village,

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 there must have been a couple hundred far, a 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 there,

Speaker 6 Enrique Botero,

Speaker 6 who's a liberal left-wing reporter, had been in the States trying to contact our families, but then he brings us newspapers.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 what a piece of shit.

Speaker 6 Left-leaning reporter.

Speaker 6 And so I remember they bring us to this like

Speaker 6 just a jungle kind of cabin, couple cabins. And we see these important people or people who we knew or, you know,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So he flies in on a Cessna and lands on a strip, bringing gifts for us out of the airport in Miami and shit.

Speaker 5 What?

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 he could have dynamic and yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 How about that?

Speaker 6 How about that?

Speaker 5 Are you fucking kidding me?

Speaker 6 Nope.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And what do you say? What do I know about my family? What's going on? Who's alive? Who's dead?

Speaker 6 You know?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 it was just for propaganda purposes.

Speaker 6 But sick to me that a reporter has this much info and doesn't.

Speaker 5 Have you ever met him?

Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 How did that go? I'd kill him

Speaker 6 if I could.

Speaker 6 I mean, it's...

Speaker 5 You mean met him since then?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 5 What would you say to him right now?

Speaker 6 I fucking kill him.

Speaker 5 What's his name?

Speaker 6 Botero.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Tanya Niemeyer. She's a Dutch girl, and she's, I believe, she's got a red notice on her travel.
I just talked to my FBI

Speaker 6 supervisor. Basically, they watched us

Speaker 6 a few months ago. and Tanya was she's Dutch

Speaker 6 and she taught English

Speaker 6 so she came to

Speaker 6 Bogota

Speaker 6 and became an urban gorilla

Speaker 6 are you shitting me nope nope nope and join the fucking gorilla and

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I'd hang her from a tree.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And her English was very, very good, perfect.

Speaker 6 And so I said,

Speaker 6 What color is your passport?

Speaker 6 She was like,

Speaker 6 That's funny, isn't it? I said, What color is your passport? I know you're not Colombian.

Speaker 6 What I thought she was, was the Cubans train students, right? And then they bring them in. So I thought she might have been

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And she's teaching people English in Colombia. Nothing, you know,

Speaker 6 just out there going to, you know.

Speaker 6 So she was there to interview us in English. She conducted the interview.
And

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 the reason that they're

Speaker 6 keeping us hostages, we violated Colombian airspace.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

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Speaker 5 What kind of questions did they ask you?

Speaker 6 Nothing. They set us up.
They told us, Mark, they told us that Tom and

Speaker 6 they got us in a room and there's other gorillas behind us, right?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And they put camo on us, which I didn't want to wear, but then everything else to wear.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 they start filming and she does the interview and Botero said, oh, Mark, here's a message from your mom.

Speaker 6 You don't think Mark didn't break down?

Speaker 6 You know, and then,

Speaker 6 oh, here's a Miami Herald.

Speaker 5 Oh, you're fucking. What was the message from his mom?

Speaker 6 Just, I love, you know, just

Speaker 6 news, right? And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You know, they're just using our pain for, so we just said, basic stuff, we love you.

Speaker 6 We didn't do anything more than that.

Speaker 6 When Otero handed the fucking Miami Herald to us, I want to kill his ass.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 What would you do?

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 6 And I've always had a special

Speaker 6 kind of distaste for Niemier

Speaker 6 because

Speaker 6 she came to a country of her own free will, educated,

Speaker 6 and decided to become a terrorist, right?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 5 That's fucking enraging. That is fucking enraging.

Speaker 6 So people say, do you hate him? I'm like, no,

Speaker 6 because it would eat me alive. I had to let it go.

Speaker 6 But,

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And then you see all these people get online and they're just, I don't know what they are, protesters, whether, you know, I'm like, there's a reason he's in a supermax.

Speaker 6 It's not because he's a sweetheart.

Speaker 6 So for me,

Speaker 6 if you get too wrapped around the axle, it's just going to drag you to the bottom, right?

Speaker 6 You got to step back.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 I've talked to other

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And so I have spoken with some folks who spent time in the Hanoa Hilton and stuff like that. You know,

Speaker 6 funny how our minds kind of did the same thing just to survive.

Speaker 6 But,

Speaker 6 you know, it,

Speaker 6 you know, we're just lucky to be here, man.

Speaker 6 You know, I mean,

Speaker 6 two of us didn't make it after the crash, and then a few of our friends afterwards died in another crash looking for us in Colombia. Close friends.

Speaker 5 When did you hear about that?

Speaker 6 I didn't hear about that until, I think, the proof of life, but I'm not sure.

Speaker 6 I mean, we're, you know, we're just, we're in a box.

Speaker 5 So. How did they tell you that your comrades had been, that they assassinated your comrades?

Speaker 6 They just let us know.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 they were dead. But then she also told something.
She goes, you know, you guys are probably going to die. And I'm looking at her, like, what do you mean?

Speaker 6 She goes, well,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 5 That's what she said. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. What would you do?

Speaker 6 Like,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You know?

Speaker 6 So that's when I say the cruelty of people

Speaker 6 can be,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 unimaginable.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you guys are going to die.

Speaker 6 I was like, wow.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 6 And then.

Speaker 5 What did you think when she said that?

Speaker 6 I remember Tom leaning over me and telling me,

Speaker 6 he said, Keith, just remember, they're filming us right now. I think they're filming us.
I said, yeah, okay, that's fine.

Speaker 6 I thought the odds are that we might die in a rescue if it wasn't done by the right people.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 So I was just trying to process everything.

Speaker 5 Where did you think your buddies were at before that? Before you found out?

Speaker 6 We didn't know. Well, maybe they're in another camp.
Maybe they just separate us. We didn't know.

Speaker 6 We didn't know.

Speaker 5 Why did they kill him?

Speaker 6 Because they tried to escape. I knew Tommy's...

Speaker 6 There was, and Tommy would have never survived captivity. Hell no.
He'd have killed him.

Speaker 6 You couldn't put Tommy in a cage. Sorry.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 I actually, his wife just recently passed. And

Speaker 6 I was talking to one of his sons.

Speaker 6 And,

Speaker 6 you know, I said, Tommy would have never made it.

Speaker 6 He couldn't have

Speaker 6 never been caged, my belief.

Speaker 5 Why do you say that?

Speaker 6 It's his personality.

Speaker 6 There was never a second,

Speaker 6 never a second. I know, you know, and he was my mentor.
He's the one that got me hired.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 That was his personality.

Speaker 6 You know, I mean, and

Speaker 6 he would have never,

Speaker 6 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 what was the

Speaker 5 sorry for all the questions coming up from previous but my mind's just spinning I mean

Speaker 5 when you threw the m4 and the beer and the Berettas down the hill,

Speaker 5 and I know the the the

Speaker 5 Indig guy that was with you was pissed off. What did the rest of them think?

Speaker 6 Nobody. Nobody was really it was just it was just Cruz and I look there was

Speaker 6 are you gonna fight a fight you can't lose

Speaker 5 Right? Fight a fight you cannot lose?

Speaker 6 No, fight a fight that you're not, I'm sorry, no, you can't win. That you can't win.

Speaker 6 Are you looking at surviving or just going out? And I wasn't looking at committing suicide.

Speaker 5 I get it. I'm just killing it.

Speaker 6 I wanted to live to fight another day. Yeah.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And I remember we're at the bottom when they gave us lemonade.

Speaker 6 And they took my wallet. And the only thing I had in there I wanted to keep was a picture of my little 10-year-old son.
And they wouldn't, it still makes me cry now.

Speaker 6 I said, can I have the picture? No. It's all right.

Speaker 6 And Tommy looks at me and he goes,

Speaker 6 what do you think, Keith?

Speaker 6 I said, we're fucked.

Speaker 6 He goes, what? I said, we're fucked. But maybe tomorrow we're not.

Speaker 6 All we're going to do is fucking live.

Speaker 6 My mindset was

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And you have a choice, step in a hole and just give up, or just keep rolling. And all three of us did that.

Speaker 6 You know, we have very distinct personalities,

Speaker 6 but

Speaker 6 you know, we all did it in our own way, you know.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 5 What kind of stuff are you guys arguing about?

Speaker 6 Stupid shit. Like what?

Speaker 6 Mark and I had an argument one night over which fighter was better in World War II. It's like something stupid, right?

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I remember

Speaker 6 we finally got a radio because we started negotiating with the guards.

Speaker 6 And, you know, we had a covert headphone and we, there was a it's really sick but there was a 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 sunny nights between 12 and 2 everybody's family would go down there and leave messages and it was shortwave

Speaker 6 so you get messages from your family we didn't get any not for years only occasionally but how sick that every

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 We live for those things.

Speaker 6 Yeah,

Speaker 6 that's the political situation, right?

Speaker 5 What kind of messages were coming in?

Speaker 6 People dying, birthdays, Christmas, love you.

Speaker 6 You know, hey, your father died.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 we had a

Speaker 6 police captain.

Speaker 6 He was dying.

Speaker 6 And the Pope

Speaker 6 and his daughter got on the radio live, begging the FARC to let him go. He had been captured when she was like seven.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And when we had real pressure on him, us and we were on a death march, he was marching with us.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 It was too much for them to see.

Speaker 6 So they took him out of chains. And he's sitting on the ground next to me and Mark.

Speaker 6 And we had in our little bowls,

Speaker 6 We had five spoonfuls basically of watery red beans and rice like every 24 hours to sustain it.

Speaker 6 Then he goes here.

Speaker 6 You two eat

Speaker 6 mine. And we're like, no,

Speaker 6 what the fuck's wrong with you? He goes, I'm dying, man. You guys aren't.

Speaker 6 I'm dead. I'm already dead.

Speaker 6 And he fucking died. Soon later, we were separated.

Speaker 6 He was a 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.

Speaker 6 He knew he was dying.

Speaker 6 Did you hear his daughter on the radio? Please, can you just let my father go? And the Pope, the Pope himself, asked

Speaker 6 that's crimes against humanity, you think.

Speaker 6 So you see this stuff, and it's like,

Speaker 6 mercy on you, motherfuckers?

Speaker 6 You know.

Speaker 5 When you got to the final camp,

Speaker 5 where they had the

Speaker 5 politicals

Speaker 6 yeah what a welcome that was

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 6 it's a big fixed fence fixed 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

Speaker 6 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 it's tied inside a 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

Speaker 6 i was going to bring it to show you

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And so I'll send you a picture of it.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 I was like, fuck, chains. Mark spotted and Percy goes, those are for us, Dean.
I was like, fuck it.

Speaker 6 So they tour us around the little walkway, and all the Colombian soldiers come running up to the gate, right?

Speaker 6 One guy in particular, his hair was all the way down to his calf. He had not cut his hair since he had been captured.
And he says to us in broken English,

Speaker 6 I'm glad you're here, but I'm not glad you're here.

Speaker 6 I said, why? He said, because Americans never leave their people behind. So if you're here, they're going to find us.

Speaker 6 Kind of poignant, wasn't it?

Speaker 6 It'd take a few years, but it happened.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 so they did not want to be separated from us.

Speaker 6 I would have been the same way.

Speaker 6 You know, I'd have been the same way.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 5 What kind of pressure?

Speaker 6 Just presence on the ground, cutting off routes on, you know, the rivers were like a road, right?

Speaker 6 So there's a... There's a video on YouTube of these three gorillas and kayucas, which are their aluminum canoes with a 40-horse motor on the back.

Speaker 6 And they just turn, they got supplies, they're bringing to a camp, and they run into Colombian Army sitting on the river. And it was a massacre, man.

Speaker 6 I mean, they just, it was a massacre. What started to happen was

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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 Cotex pads for women and uniforms.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 but Plan Columbia changed a lot because it put the money and the horsepower behind the Colombian army to do things. But I think

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Because under Plan Columbia, we couldn't, right?

Speaker 6 I saw 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.

Speaker 6 I said, you gave present, 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.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And intelligence side, militarily, it was the worst mistake they could have made.

Speaker 6 Because when you start flipping rocks looking for us, you find other things.

Speaker 6 You know, and that's what happened.

Speaker 5 How many camps did you wind up in?

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 mosquito net, and a tarp over your head.

Speaker 6 We were just on the move.

Speaker 5 And how long was it before you guys could talk to each other?

Speaker 6 Oh, by the time we got to the politicians and all, we were talking then.

Speaker 5 How long had that been?

Speaker 6 Seven months, maybe?

Speaker 5 Eight months? Seven months? Eight months, yeah. Seven months of no talking.

Speaker 6 Pretty much. Nothing.
I could be off. Mark's memory is way better than mine.
He always says, no, you know, but yeah,

Speaker 6 we lost our voices, basically.

Speaker 6 And, you know, I,

Speaker 6 there were frustrating things too. Like for poor Tom, okay, this is what sucked.
Tom spoke fluent Spanish.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 it was pretty evil.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 when we got to the camp of the politicians, that was even worse because they thought the

Speaker 6 One politician said, please don't let those nasty Americans in here.

Speaker 6 One motherfucker?

Speaker 6 Oh, they sleep with whores.

Speaker 6 We sleep with whores. You're a Columbian politician.
You haven't slept with a whore? You know what goes on? It's good.

Speaker 6 But there 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.

Speaker 6 Talk about a class system?

Speaker 6 That's the way they treat their own people. Well, they have it.

Speaker 6 And I remember...

Speaker 6 I remember old Lucho, he's a senator, senator, right? You know,

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 we nicknamed him Big Cat. He's a big dude and he's heavy, but he move like smoke.
Just a joke. So we just named him the Big Cat.

Speaker 6 So he's kind of trying to talk to me one day and he's feeling me out to see, like,

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 So I drew a picture of this fucking giant, like, you know, Viking sport fish.

Speaker 6 And I watched him swear. She knew I was sucking him down.
Just, you know, the hook was going, the hook was gone.

Speaker 6 And they care about platica, money, and what's your last name.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 Big Cat goes, holy shit. And he runs into the little hoosh and he shows Lucho what's going on.

Speaker 6 And Lucho goes, Keith, you know, like what? He goes, what does an American contractor make?

Speaker 6 I said, a whole lot more than a Columbian senator. That's a motherfucker.

Speaker 6 You fuck stick, you know, but that's how they judge people, right?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 some people did stuff in captivity and said, oh,

Speaker 6 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 you find out who you are and i remember

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 6 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 then a big bowl of rice and you know a bowl of lentils or which i still love hate them i love lentils man

Speaker 6 so um we get into a line the dirtbag americans right we're not politicians or any stuff and so

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And they take a couple of the politicians that take vegetables and I'll not even eat them. Let them rot.
We're starving.

Speaker 6 Well, I need those.

Speaker 6 I'm different.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Now, I said, no, I know how they kidnapped your ass, you know, but

Speaker 6 disappointing too in humanity.

Speaker 6 You think in something like that, we'd all kind of bond up?

Speaker 6 No. No shit.
No.

Speaker 5 I never would have thought that.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 what's wrong with you? You know?

Speaker 6 And that's where one of them was pregnant.

Speaker 5 That's where I was going next.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 how she stayed sane,

Speaker 6 what she went through.

Speaker 6 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's a few women there, right?

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 Clara was an attorney and she was working on Ingrid Betancourt's presidential election. And then you had another woman there, Consuela, who was next to us.

Speaker 6 We called her Big Bama, but just like I said, she talked to Mark and I was very kind. Like we, she had to listen to her husband die on the radio, or her daughters tell her, your dad's dying.

Speaker 6 And then, you know, another woman, one of the senators.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 Clara is a little eclectic. She's a little different, right? But she was a decent person.
And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Mark goes, I bet she's pregnant. I said, You think so, man? He said, Yeah, she's pregnant.
Mark saw it first.

Speaker 6 And so, um,

Speaker 6 as it became obvious she was pregnant,

Speaker 6 she got no care, no anything. I think her prenatal care was an extra box of crackers and some fucking canned milk.

Speaker 6 And um,

Speaker 6 I remember

Speaker 6 you know, she was taken hostage with Ingrid Bettencourt, right? And

Speaker 6 just trying to protect reputation,

Speaker 6 Betancourt's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, there are some other hostages, civilians, and they had a relation. She slept with a gorilla.
She was just trying to get free.

Speaker 6 She thought, if I get pregnant, they got to let me go. Fuck no, they don't.

Speaker 6 And so.

Speaker 5 So they didn't rape her.

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 6 It was a plan. No, no, it was a plan.
That wouldn't have been allowed. Not allowed at all.

Speaker 6 Not given the credit, but that wouldn't allow.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 they take her out when she's about to deliver, but she's not delivering.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 one night we hear a baby screaming in the fucking camp.

Speaker 6 Now, of course, the women that are with us are either grandmothers or moms.

Speaker 6 They're, you know, their radar is up.

Speaker 6 Like three days later, maybe I could be off four four or five days. And we would hear the baby screaming.

Speaker 6 They bring the baby back with Clara into the baby into the camp, right? And the baby is wrapped up from head to toe

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 they give it to us.

Speaker 6 Well,

Speaker 6 here's how Clara gave birth.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 They shoot her up with 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.

Speaker 6 You got to give.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 in trying to get the baby out, Milton, who would later take over for us, never spent a day in a school or anything,

Speaker 6 broke the baby's arm in half trying to get around her stomach.

Speaker 6 So when they bring the baby back to us, the baby's drugged up and the arms wrapped.

Speaker 6 Emmanuel is what Clara named him.

Speaker 6 How Clara stayed sane with that,

Speaker 6 I give her kudos.

Speaker 6 And so Clara,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 There's a reason that he was an Intel analyst.

Speaker 6 I was pretty good, but he sees me, they're drugging the baby up. So they took the baby from Clara.

Speaker 6 So here's Clara laying in a bunk next to me, just hard wood. When I say bunk, it's just wood pallets, right?

Speaker 6 And the baby's crying at night, and she go call his name at the fence, amenuel, amenuel.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And you fucking stay sane, give that woman credit. We didn't agree on a lot of things, but

Speaker 6 give her credit. They cut her, they cut her up.

Speaker 6 She did a C-section on a table in a fucking jungle.

Speaker 6 And when they sewed her up, it was like this, oh, oh my God. And she survived.

Speaker 6 I got to say tough, man.

Speaker 6 She survived. And here was the worst thing, or no, it was the best thing.

Speaker 6 They went and gave the baby, when they separated Claire from the the baby, they gave the baby to some campesinos that were FARC sympathizers. You know what the campesinos did?

Speaker 6 Straight to the fucking government and handed the kid over. So the kid got care, got everything.

Speaker 6 And a little while later on the radio and all the government's talking about, hey, Manuel, they don't even know that the kids, that the government care. You know, here's what we did for the kid.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But to see a woman go through that,

Speaker 6 I got a lot of respect for her, man. I got a lot of respect for that.

Speaker 6 You know, and

Speaker 5 how long was the baby in there before they gave it away?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 They might have got a reward, or I don't know. But Emmanuel,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Right? Got fixed. I mean, so a happy ending.

Speaker 6 But that's what animals are, and they're animals.

Speaker 6 You know?

Speaker 6 So for me,

Speaker 6 just sitting there watching that, you know, the pain that that

Speaker 6 person would go through was just unbelievable.

Speaker 6 More disgusting stuff that people are capable of. But how could you do that to a baby? Right.

Speaker 6 You know?

Speaker 6 I mean, so for us,

Speaker 6 another one of the Patreon folks had a question, the initial setup out there. about what is captivity like in the jungle with the fark.

Speaker 6 The best 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.

Speaker 6 You're going to eat rice, lentils, lentils, rice, maybe some fish if they catch them in the river. Hopefully a little fried yucca.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 It's Groundhog Day. It's just what is going to come up next.
You know, what problem is going to come up next?

Speaker 6 you know we were being moved

Speaker 6 and uh

Speaker 6 my company makes i retired from i have to say northrop did the right thing for the families northrop ribbon i can't say enough about what they did for the families while we were gone

Speaker 6 but um

Speaker 6 what did they do for the families a good example my son said to me he said dad

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 The government was like, well, we'll take this over. And they're like, nope, nope, nope.
They're our employees. We're going to do right by then.
So I have to give them credit.

Speaker 6 You know, they did right by us.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I remember,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 this guy walks up with this tube,

Speaker 6 you know, and he said, the commandant wants to know what this is. Well,

Speaker 6 it's a camera system that sits on the ground. You guys have installed places.
Well, this one was called Scorpion. And it's made by my company, proudly so, right?

Speaker 6 So I was like, fuck, where did you get that? So he's trying to take it off.

Speaker 6 And I said, don't do that. And he goes, well, I said, because it's pressurized.

Speaker 6 And he said, well, will you explain this to us? And I said, yeah, can we have some coffee?

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 I was thinking, fuck, our people are here.

Speaker 6 And we had just heard on the radio, and the U.S. government admitted that

Speaker 6 some of your folks in the seventh group were on the ground with the Colombians.

Speaker 6 I was like, shit, they're finally fucking here.

Speaker 6 So there's a GPS antenna that goes with it or whatever.

Speaker 6 The office is there and he's like, can I plug this into my GPS to make it better? I said, no.

Speaker 6 And he goes, this is one of your cameras. I didn't say it was one of the north that we made, or I said, yeah, it's a camera system.

Speaker 6 He said, well, how many do you guys have, you know? I said, thousands.

Speaker 6 I was trying to, right. But essentially, what happened was,

Speaker 6 But I found out later that a Columbian team had put this camera in

Speaker 6 and I will leave,

Speaker 6 You don't just have one camera. I'll just leave it that way.
You're walking into

Speaker 6 a net of shit.

Speaker 6 But it was fucked up. This camera was still white.

Speaker 6 They didn't even fucking paint it green or black or anything. And so it's buried in the riverside under some leaves.
And the gorilla goes to take a piss and he's peeing on it.

Speaker 6 I was like, fuck.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 Goffas is looking at me. He goes, Keith,

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But it's, you know,

Speaker 6 it's just a, it's a ground sensor. It's no big top secret deal.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 because

Speaker 6 the Columbians would never operate in small teams, you know.

Speaker 6 You know, our doctrine being a little bit different.

Speaker 6 Everybody was like, hold, and I, as soon as I got back, I told everybody what it was,

Speaker 6 you know. And so

Speaker 6 there were some mistakes made in trying to get to stuff, but

Speaker 6 and that camera actually didn't even get good pictures of us, and we all passed by it.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 and we were like i had a woody dude i was just like hell yeah how many years in was that

Speaker 6 four and a half over four and a half years yeah about a year before we got out yeah what kept you going just want to get home yeah

Speaker 6 All three of us, we just want to get home. Maybe for different reasons.
I just,

Speaker 6 I wasn't dying there. It's just that I, I, look, I love my family.
I miss my family and things like that. And you would do whatever you can to get back from that.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You know, obviously you want to see your kids, right?

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 You know, you don't know anything.

Speaker 6 I just wanted to get home, Sean.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 and everybody has their own personal drive. I think,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 I just think we're different.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 It was just,

Speaker 6 I'm not fucking dying here.

Speaker 6 That's like to coach each other? Oh, we would both be up and down.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I said, Tom, you know, your jokes were so bad before he got captured. It took his four years in the jungle to start laughing at your dumbass jokes.

Speaker 6 And then we figured out that Tom's really funny.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 you know?

Speaker 6 So, you know, everybody had a drive to get home. That was it.

Speaker 6 And I'm not necessarily going to say it was just their loved ones. It was just something amongst the three of us that

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 yeah

Speaker 5 any torture

Speaker 6 um so what do you call torture planned torture like our pobs went through in vietnam no but i remember like one day

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So the medic there, who 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,

Speaker 6 just making it hurt on purpose, shit like that.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 you know, human needs.

Speaker 5 So five years.

Speaker 6 Right? Torture is no food, no medical care. You know, there's a psychological component.

Speaker 5 I guess I've been interrogation type torture.

Speaker 6 No, they never, they were, 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.

Speaker 6 We're just a commodity. And that's all we were.
I would have thought,

Speaker 6 like I told, one of the commandantes,

Speaker 6 I'm like, you think we didn't see you all the time? They wouldn't believe me.

Speaker 6 We could be over you and I just have one push of the SATCOM. I could report live position, hit it with a laser and give away your coordinates.

Speaker 6 I wasn't allowed to do that. We were on a planet.
We couldn't do that. We couldn't fight against the guerrilla directly.
We were against drug targets.

Speaker 6 And the moment they captured us, that rule handcuffs were off.

Speaker 6 They didn't believe it.

Speaker 6 I've seen them a million times. No, not a million.
That's exactly, but we saw them frequently.

Speaker 6 And I really didn't realize until captivity, some of the stuff we saw that we didn't think was gorilla was gorilla activity.

Speaker 5 Like what?

Speaker 6 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 of campesinos.
Nope. Nope.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I could have looked a little closer at them, especially the area where you're at, they're the only ones operating there.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 sad story

Speaker 6 was i think it was four or five fishermen were murdered because of us they saw us

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 5 did you see it no

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 6 one of i would say the most intimidating gorillas i ever saw hands down was hentile hentile duarte

Speaker 6 supposedly he was killed about 10 months ago mark and i wondered if it was fake.

Speaker 6 He was part of the peace process

Speaker 6 in Cuba, but then went back to the jungle. He didn't agree with what was going on.
He left Cuba to go back to the jungle to talk some guys in to some other leaders.

Speaker 6 Hey, quit fucking around, get a part of the peace process. And he just stayed with them.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 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 motor on it.
And they put me right behind Duarte and Mark right behind Duarte.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 There's no, and he was one of those.

Speaker 6 So he was joking around and

Speaker 6 kind of laughing.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So a few nights later, they pick us up at night and they're running us down the river.

Speaker 6 We're in the same boat that was his boat, but there's nothing in it. It's just some junior guys moving us.
They're just moving us to a more permanent camp.

Speaker 6 Well, somebody yells, helicopter, helicopter, helicopter. And we look behind us in the jungle, man, there's an ambient light.
You're not around a city or town, right?

Speaker 6 It was a bright full moon, but it looked like a fucking spotlight from a helicopter. It was unbelievable bright.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 the guy that was driving just beaches

Speaker 6 the boat. in front of this fisherman's little shack.

Speaker 6 And they take us out of the shack really quick, and the fishermen walk out and they see us face to face

Speaker 6 they hide us behind the shack and everybody goes no it's the freaking 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

Speaker 6 and uh

Speaker 6 another fisherman comes up in a little canoe

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So they take us to this little place that 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.

Speaker 6 Three days later on the news on that river, it's live.

Speaker 6 Five fishermen executed by the FARC.

Speaker 6 And so I look at Big Head, who is one of our guards. We nicknamed all the guards.
He had a Google head on him.

Speaker 6 He goes, yeah, I know.

Speaker 6 Big Head didn't feel good about it,

Speaker 6 but they killed him because they saw us.

Speaker 6 Shit.

Speaker 5 Did you develop relationships with the guards?

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 How can you, 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,

Speaker 6 right?

Speaker 6 Do we have Stockholm syndrome? No.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 right?

Speaker 6 You're going to develop some type of relationship. Our theory was:

Speaker 6 if we could treat them with respect, number one, we'd stay out of chains, which didn't work.

Speaker 6 But maybe, maybe

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 That was our theory.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 a few of the guards

Speaker 6 secretly, secretly

Speaker 6 apologized for us being there,

Speaker 6 but said, hey, this is,

Speaker 6 it's not in our control, right?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Well, if the guard's girlfriend is small, take 10 pounds of her rice and sugar, put it in your ruck.

Speaker 6 He's sneaking you in leftover food at one in the morning when he's on guard duty.

Speaker 6 You know, just basic stuff.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And I have to admit, I felt a little like, damn, Mono, you could have been, because he could have been something different, right?

Speaker 6 But I remember one night he comes in, he sneaks in. This was a, if you would have got got caught sneaking in, man, it would have been his ass.
He brought Mark and Tom and I some sausages.

Speaker 6 He goes, This is all I can do, guys.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You can't have a little empathy for that.

Speaker 6 He's never going anywhere. We get rescued or not, he's there for life right there.
He's never going anywhere.

Speaker 6 So,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 they were very curious about the outside world.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 we would tell them stories.

Speaker 6 They're like little kids.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I remember

Speaker 6 one of them was at Fort Campbell when the Herc or the tornado came through and we lost like half a dozen Apaches or something.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 they just didn't understand

Speaker 5 the world.

Speaker 6 Tom came up with a fucking genius move.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 there was a

Speaker 6 reward for us, each one of us, millions of dollars.

Speaker 6 So one night, Big Head says to us, He goes, Hey, man,

Speaker 6 if I can get you out, would you manage my money for me?

Speaker 6 I don't know what $5 million looks like.

Speaker 6 But he was serious.

Speaker 6 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. And he was dead serious.
It was just like a business there, right?

Speaker 6 So Tom realized, we knew it, but Tom came up with this genius thing. He starts drawing in his book.

Speaker 6 He drew like 10 pages of just cows, little bitty cows, 10 pages of of cars, then a few pages of hot women, right?

Speaker 6 Trying to go, you see all this, Bighead? That's what you get with this money. Boom, I got it.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And so I'm telling the story about what Tom wrote. She gets pissed off because I mentioned the women, the Tom drew women, and you could have women, right? She just gets all offended.

Speaker 6 I'm like, the fuck? I'm not putting women down.

Speaker 6 Tom figured out a way to connect with these people. Right?

Speaker 6 And what do you think a 19-year-old guard wants? I could tell you what he wants. He's in the jungle by himself for years, hasn't had a date, right?

Speaker 6 But I thought Tom's idea, and they were furious at a briefing. Are you serious?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You know, he drew cows, women, trucks. But I thought that was pretty

Speaker 6 heads up,

Speaker 6 right?

Speaker 6 But they don't know anything. They asked us one time.

Speaker 6 This was really

Speaker 6 when I knew one of the guys that I have a distaste for only because of his stupidity, but he was like a recruiter.

Speaker 6 So he would go out in the countryside and he would spread the communist word and recruit these young people in, right?

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 one time he's sitting there and he goes, hey, we want to know about your special forces.

Speaker 6 And,

Speaker 6 well, what do you mean you want to know about our special forces? We need to know something about your special forces. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Did your special forces people teach Keanu Reeves those moves in the Matrix so we can't shoot him?

Speaker 5 I tell Keanu Reeves.

Speaker 6 I know that.

Speaker 6 But in the movie, when he's going like this and the bullets are going past him. They really fucking thought that? He was serious.
Holy shit.

Speaker 6 What? I'm not bullshitting. Ask me if you get to meet Mark or Tom.
We're like, are you shitting me? Now, not all were that ignorant, but that was it

Speaker 6 i mean that's what you're dealing with

Speaker 6 so i would say now 15 16 years later it's not like that but they were still pretty primitive

Speaker 6 and uh it was

Speaker 6 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 a pep talk one day in front of the other guards and he wants to impress them

Speaker 6 and he's talking about riding in a box

Speaker 6 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 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 or i don't know it was bogota one of the cities one time He got to ride in a box and all his little minions around him.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 It's a fucking elevator.

Speaker 6 Wow,

Speaker 5 sounds like Afghanistan.

Speaker 6 I'm just saying, you don't know. Yeah,

Speaker 6 we assume that somebody else uses our logic. That's our first mistake.

Speaker 6 That's our first mistake. So we didn't really understand.
I don't think,

Speaker 6 I don't think that

Speaker 6 we really understood the gorilla like we should have.

Speaker 6 I think we do now, but

Speaker 6 unless we're going to gauge against them directly.

Speaker 6 What would the

Speaker 5 you guys were planning stuff a little bit?

Speaker 5 I mean, how would you do that? Were you monitored all the time?

Speaker 6 So here's what I thought was our hope one time.

Speaker 6 So one of the guys comes to us, us and he's got a little handheld GPS, a little garment.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 he also has a radio.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 he goes,

Speaker 6 I got an idea. It was Big Head, actually.

Speaker 6 He said,

Speaker 6 when we have our communal center, which every night they get together and do their little cultural hour and talk, you know, it's brainwashing, right?

Speaker 6 He said,

Speaker 6 I'll get weapons and we'll kill everybody here. And I've got this radio and GPS and we can leave.

Speaker 6 And I'm like, how many people

Speaker 6 all armed during the thing? He said, there are about 30 down there armed.

Speaker 6 I said,

Speaker 6 okay, so we're going to get this. He said, I get two AKs.

Speaker 6 We'll just kill them all.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 right that they're going to hear the shooting i'm like hell no

Speaker 6 mark and i looked at 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 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

Speaker 6 And Mark, I think, I don't want to take credit because Mark and I, I said, we get the radio and the GPS.

Speaker 6 We don't go towards town. We do.
We go deep and we go high.

Speaker 6 And we'll get on the radio because they're going to think we're going to town. And we don't kill anybody.

Speaker 6 One night when you're on guard duty, we're just gone. How about we do that?

Speaker 6 Because that way, if we get caught, we're not going to get executed ourselves. I didn't think it was possible.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 5 I think it depends on who you're with.

Speaker 6 Well, like I'm saying. But

Speaker 5 with all those camps around.

Speaker 6 Right?

Speaker 6 So I said, why do we have to kill anybody? Why attract attention? Why don't we just disappear?

Speaker 6 There's a little confusion there.

Speaker 6 But then he didn't want to,

Speaker 6 he backed out on that.

Speaker 6 You know, then they come by one day and they say, hey,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I'm like, it's not Americans. Said

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 But they thought it's Americans of them. No, it was Colombian pilots in a spray package communicating back and forth in English.

Speaker 6 So just strange stuff, Sean, out there.

Speaker 5 At what point did they present you with the M4 that you had tossed?

Speaker 6 They never presented it.

Speaker 6 We went to Miami and we're in there.

Speaker 5 I don't mean them. I mean the gorillas.

Speaker 6 Oh, so

Speaker 6 this had to be a few months into captivity. We're being moved.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 this guy rides up with the ponies and he's on it. And he's got the M4 and he goes, you recognize this?

Speaker 6 It's like, oh, fuck. He's like, thank you.
I'm going to kill your guys when they come.

Speaker 6 So he was carrying it,

Speaker 6 you know?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 then

Speaker 6 they were asking about horses and we were each getting on a horse. So I had horses.

Speaker 6 I was making fun of being a pony, not a horse. And the guy had a sense of humor, right?

Speaker 6 But he wanted to talk to us. He wanted to engage because we're like this oddity, right? They've never met Americans before.

Speaker 6 And so I got up on the horse and he goes, I said, man,

Speaker 6 this is not magic what you guys do.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You know, they're very simple. It's not a, you know,

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 6 I don't know.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 but to see the M4 in the evidence room, Miami, that was, especially with a hole in it, that was nice.

Speaker 5 We'll get to that

Speaker 5 at the rescue.

Speaker 5 Yeah. And once you talk about Mark and his carbs, too.

Speaker 6 Oh, my God. And now Mark's,

Speaker 6 he's all super fit now.

Speaker 6 You may do that an hour later.

Speaker 5 Mark's to it now.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 we're starving and what we did to keep just

Speaker 6 if you stop, you're rot, right?

Speaker 6 So we would build what we call the jungle stair-stepper, and it would just be two steps.

Speaker 6 And you'd get on it for hours.

Speaker 6 But you could work up a real good sweat if you're holding ass. You'd built the steps high enough.
So Mark

Speaker 6 gets some vines. The guards would give it to us, right? And

Speaker 6 they want to see us occupied.

Speaker 6 They're good at keeping people like this, right? So Mark ties up a pull-up bar

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 One day after he gets his pull-ups, he turns around and he's like, fuck, I said, Mark, you got a six-pack,

Speaker 6 right? And we get these little mirrors, you can't see anything, right? And he's like, holy shit, you know? So,

Speaker 6 so I don't remember that day or whatever, Mark's not eating his rice.

Speaker 6 Like, we're starving. He's like, yeah, we just got to cut on the carbs, man.

Speaker 6 He's like, all yoked. We're skeletons, you know? And he's lentils, man.
It's good. The linels.
No, we got to ease up on the rice. We're going to get fat.

Speaker 6 I was just, you know, we're insane at that point. But he was.
He had his, you know,

Speaker 6 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.
It's like we're on beach on vacation, you know, but we're

Speaker 6 there, you know.

Speaker 5 Damn,

Speaker 6 yeah. I mean, you know, you're sitting there in your underwear with rubber boots on

Speaker 6 and you're walking up and down like a homemade stair climber for hours, just trying to stay sane.

Speaker 5 You know, is there anything else you guys would do?

Speaker 6 Hmm.

Speaker 6 That was our main exercise thing.

Speaker 5 What about the chess pieces?

Speaker 6 Um, I want to show you

Speaker 6 there's a picture in this book.

Speaker 6 This is super impressive what Mark did.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 the chest sets in here, I believe. I haven't opened this up for a while.

Speaker 6 If not, he just sent me a picture. Here it is.

Speaker 6 So he got a piece of a machete

Speaker 6 from a gorilla with permission.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Right?

Speaker 6 And then we got all the chess pieces done. The gorilla gave us a piece of cardboard and tape.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 5 We'll put this up on screen.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 6 I'm like, Mark, you're a woodworker, dude.

Speaker 6 He's got that at the house now.

Speaker 6 How amazing.

Speaker 6 You know, he'd get there, he'd just start carving.

Speaker 6 He'd just start carving. He'd just start carving.
I'm like, man.

Speaker 6 And I will tell you what, we owe Mark, seriously,

Speaker 6 this thing's going to do here.

Speaker 6 Everybody there in the jungle, probably some of the gorilla too.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 We'd just sit there chained up in hours.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 yeah, that's what he did.

Speaker 6 Amazing.

Speaker 6 It's,

Speaker 6 I don't know, people are capable of a lot.

Speaker 5 What are those Bible verses?

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 one of the best things that we got to read in captivity was a Spanish to English New Testament.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And he, um,

Speaker 6 something interesting was: obviously, the Bible wasn't written in English, it was written in Latin.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And then, I had a copy of Don Quixote,

Speaker 6 Latin English.

Speaker 6 Then I taught myself to read read Latin,

Speaker 6 which I can't read now while I was in captivity reading Don Quixote.

Speaker 6 So, the windmills, motherfucker. Yeah.

Speaker 6 So, you're,

Speaker 6 if you have time, you can do a lot.

Speaker 5 Did you guys pray?

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Not as much as Mark.

Speaker 6 Tom, I don't, Tom, Tom, no.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 I think.

Speaker 6 My view on the Bible, right, especially the New Testament, changed when I started reading in Spanish versus English.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 you know, my closet's filled with skeletons. So I'm as imperfect as I get.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 I think,

Speaker 6 and Mark and I would discuss this,

Speaker 6 especially the New Testament, if you take out

Speaker 6 what I call the fluff, maybe,

Speaker 6 and you go about

Speaker 6 how do you treat your friends? How do you treat your family? How do you live as a person?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 If you get through some of the stuff that's a little more,

Speaker 6 I don't want to offend anybody here, that's a little more, more,

Speaker 6 I call it a sales pitch. Maybe a little more,

Speaker 6 maybe we're not talking about somebody 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.

Speaker 6 But when it comes to the basics of how you should live and conduct yourself, that's what I think the strength is.

Speaker 6 And I would say Mark was a little more deeper into it than I was, for sure.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 it gave us a,

Speaker 6 I don't want to use the word comfort,

Speaker 6 kind of a clarity about stuff, if that makes sense. Who gave it to you? I can't remember.

Speaker 6 Did the gorilla give Mark the Bible first?

Speaker 6 I don't know if he got it from the gorillas, or

Speaker 6 I'm not sure.

Speaker 5 I can't remember. I mean, that's interesting.

Speaker 6 It's a guidebook, right?

Speaker 5 For what's interesting is, I mean,

Speaker 5 they're holding you in captivity. They're

Speaker 5 giving a woman a C-section in the jungle,

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 they're reading the Bible.

Speaker 6 I don't think that

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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 hostages?

Speaker 6 I can't remember where he came from.

Speaker 6 But,

Speaker 6 yeah,

Speaker 6 it was a strengthener for sure. There's no doubt about that.

Speaker 5 It's interesting how people convince themselves that they're doing the right thing. But I remember when I lived in Medellin,

Speaker 5 went to this church that the Sicarios, the assassins, would go pray at before they do a hit. I know.
It's like,

Speaker 5 never occurred to you not to do the hit.

Speaker 6 I grew up in a Southern Baptist family. My grandmother was a fire and brimstone Southern Baptist.
You were going to hell for anything.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 6 I think that

Speaker 6 my father was a student of

Speaker 6 history, primarily really the Civil War, a little bit of world history and world religions.

Speaker 6 And he always would say, it's not, I'm trying to remember how to say it right.

Speaker 6 Basically, he didn't like how

Speaker 6 man distorted the word from the Bible.

Speaker 6 He wasn't a fan of organized religion. He thought, well, you see these mega churches now, how they really just,

Speaker 6 it's a money issue, right?

Speaker 6 It's not,

Speaker 6 it has

Speaker 6 nothing to do with what the scriptures really say, I think.

Speaker 6 You know, like what are the things about the big televangelists and their private jets? Can't fly them back with the heathens. Come on, man.

Speaker 6 You know, so

Speaker 6 just look at the book of of Eli, the movie, right?

Speaker 6 The bad guy knew that could be used to control everything.

Speaker 6 There is the Bible.

Speaker 6 So I think,

Speaker 6 like you're saying, it can be used in bad ways. It can be used in good ways.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 I'm amazed, and my wife and I speak about this a lot,

Speaker 6 at the things that people are capable of doing.

Speaker 6 And they think they're okay. They're totally okay with it.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 it's scary stuff.

Speaker 6 You know, and

Speaker 6 I don't know. I don't know.
But you have to remember, I mean,

Speaker 6 Latin America is a Catholic continent, right?

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 do those gorillas that were probably brought up in very humble places and ingrained by their parents go into a little, any little village. It's got a church, right? The church is a big part of it.

Speaker 6 Can they totally escape escape that upbringing i don't know

Speaker 6 you know

Speaker 6 i mean

Speaker 6 i never really thought about that in captivity because we didn't really have a time to really engage with them on that level

Speaker 6 but i'm sure i you just have to think you know that some portion of them can't escape that upbringing yeah

Speaker 6 you know But the communist salesman will try to erase it.

Speaker 5 Well, they get them young. It's an indoctrination, right?

Speaker 6 Well, you know, the little communist manifesto, it's only about that thick. I don't know if you've ever read it.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 Milton handed me the manifesto

Speaker 6 one time, and he can't really read. And

Speaker 6 I said, plus value, Marx Engels.

Speaker 6 He goes, you read that? I said, yeah, I did a book report on it. I was in junior high school, man.
Yeah. I read this.

Speaker 6 They were like, oh, you've read it. Yeah, I read it.
Well, what do you think of it? I said, it doesn't work. It's a pipe dream.

Speaker 6 And I started started reading back to him, and he's like, you can read in Spanish? I'm like, yeah.

Speaker 6 I'm not a doctor, but I'm not a, you know.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 the level of,

Speaker 6 you know, people that are,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But a person that's ignorant can really be taken advantage of pretty easily if you're smart enough to do it.

Speaker 6 And so that's what I see much of what the young gorillas were

Speaker 6 basically just sold a bill of goods and brainwashed. You know?

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 How often were you guys chained up?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And before that, they put 550 cord around our necks, and they have this thing

Speaker 6 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 knot on the back.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 That was much more comfortable than the chains.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 the chains were when times were getting desperate. And

Speaker 6 Mark actually figured out, we figured out how to

Speaker 6 break out of the locks with a with a

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 shit

Speaker 6 yeah

Speaker 6 Just depending. I mean, they come and take the chains off or put the chains on, you know?

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I don't want to risk losing that.

Speaker 5 I get it.

Speaker 6 You know, I'll send you a picture of it when you get home. And the worst thing was, 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.

Speaker 5 Damn. Yeah.

Speaker 6 What about holidays? I mean, what would Christmas be like? You know what they celebrate it.

Speaker 6 But you got to remember in Columbia, the big holidays is not Christmas. It's New Year's.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 they bring in candy. They'd bring in liquor.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I'm a drinker, but I wouldn't drink in captivity because I was scared about what I would do.

Speaker 6 And I remember Tom one time getting liquored up on this cheap Chinese wine.

Speaker 6 He put an ass cussing on the commandante in that camp. We're like, you're going to get shot.
He's just standing there just cussing his ass out, man. What he was, he'd had this, oh, you know,

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 worst stuff in the world. But

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 you know, give us some extra food and things.

Speaker 6 Really?

Speaker 6 You know?

Speaker 6 Strange, strange, strange.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 5 Well, Keith, let's take a break.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 When we come back, we'll get into the rescue mission.

Speaker 6 Super.

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Speaker 5 All right, Keith, we're back from the break. I want to get into the rescue op.
All right. How it went down, what happened, as descriptive as you can.

Speaker 6 Okay, a little outline on the rescue.

Speaker 6 I went back in the FARC, capturing us, opened the door for the U.S. government, especially Intel inside,

Speaker 6 to buddy up with the Colombians, right?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 Elvin rebuilt their Intel system. They did a lot of stuff.
They did a lot of stuff.

Speaker 6 But what happened with the rescue,

Speaker 6 we had an enlisted guy

Speaker 6 and he had a suggestion

Speaker 6 and it was about communications and the way the FARC handled us

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 every FARC group that we're with had an HF radio.

Speaker 6 They'd use an extension cord they'd cut up and go string an antenna, you know, because it's got to be long, HF waves are much longer, and they would talk. All right.

Speaker 6 And they would talk to the Commandantes run by the Secretariat. And the Secretariat would talk to our guys, and they'd say, you guys move here, you guys move there.
They had their code, right?

Speaker 6 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 um

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 and so

Speaker 6 The official story goes, which is true,

Speaker 6 I believe it was a sergeant that he basically said, Hey, folks, why don't we cut off the communications link?

Speaker 6 Let's talk to the secretariat, to the commandantes, and pretend we're the guys that have the hostages. All right.

Speaker 6 And then let's talk to the people that are holding the hostages and thank them, make them think that we are the secretariat,

Speaker 6 right?

Speaker 6 Just cut it. And then we'll just tell them to let the hostages go.

Speaker 6 No shit.

Speaker 6 That's a simplified version of what happened. So they broke the comms link

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And that was what was going to morph into the rescue. And you got to remember, well, you can't remember stuff that I've talked about here.

Speaker 6 Every little small group, the commandante of the group will have a girlfriend, and she's the radio operator, right?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So essentially, it was just a really good Intel spoof by...

Speaker 6 I believe it was a Colombian sergeant. I know it wasn't enlisted, but I think it was the sergeant that did that.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 the story and the debrief that we got was we removed a few times, and then our guys were told that they were going to take us and turn us into

Speaker 6 the Secretariat. Now, here's what was interesting.

Speaker 6 During that time,

Speaker 6 President Rebe

Speaker 6 let it be known publicly, and this was part of the spoof,

Speaker 6 that they were going to allow the Red Cross to come in and get access to to us and assess us. They were going to allow the FARC to do that.
And that came out in the news.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So I think it was one of

Speaker 6 really the best Intel coups ever. Wow.

Speaker 6 It's a really interesting story. Slick.

Speaker 6 And then it.

Speaker 5 So they were basically playing HQ. Yep.

Speaker 6 That's what they were doing. And then in the international news, in the news,

Speaker 6 the president's saying, hey, we're going to let an international commission come in and have access

Speaker 6 to the FARC and the hostages to check them out. So the FARC were going to get recognition also politically.
It was brilliant.

Speaker 6 Where we were rescued at, it was kind of funny.

Speaker 6 It was basically a whorehouse. That's what it was.
So you have what's called a raspachine,

Speaker 6 and they're the guys that pick the coca leaves and the women, right? They're going to pick them.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 we were being moved and hearing this news on the rivers.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And next thing we know, we end up in a coca field.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So Wancho, my buddy, who's a major, had enough time to go from lieutenant to major and lieutenant colonel in captivity, 10 years.

Speaker 6 There's all of these mattresses in this jungle bordello, man, with plastic. And we're like, holy shit, we haven't laid on a mattress in years.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I said, are you kidding me? He goes, no, Keith, what they do

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And we're out in the sunshine. We're not undercover.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And we had staged on the river farther down about,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You know, it makes me want to cry because he was like, he just, I just want to, you know, so everybody's, but

Speaker 6 we're like, want coffee? What do you want? I mean, so we're in this place for a couple days.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And we're all, what's going on here? And right across the river is another cocoa field where the helicopter sat down with a little house. But we have not been out undercover for five and a half years.

Speaker 6 There's no, we're not hidden. We're in the open.
You know, they're talking on the radio to each other. I'm like, what's going on? We knew something was going on, but we didn't know.

Speaker 6 And we had heard news, us also,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And one thing that happens in captivity, any little bit of hope, man, is like filling your gas tank.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 they

Speaker 6 come in, tell us that more and 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So they get us up one morning and they put us out there. Everybody get in a line.
Everybody get in line. And then there's a guerrilla, a hostage, a guerrilla hostage.

Speaker 6 And the commandante goes, hey, folks, if you hear helicopters, don't worry, it's cool. There's no problems.

Speaker 6 I'm like, what the fuck is going on here?

Speaker 6 Mark and I are looking at each other.

Speaker 6 We're just trying to process this, right? All of a sudden, here they come.

Speaker 6 Helos.

Speaker 6 So we see the MI come overhead,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So we're like, holy geez, what's going down here?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 There's a film online of this going down of me, Bar, we're all talking. So

Speaker 6 helicopter lands while we're all standing there, and a fake news crew gets out. out.

Speaker 6 We're like,

Speaker 6 you know, and

Speaker 6 the lead

Speaker 6 Colombian officer from the operation,

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I think the pilots, all they had was a pistol stuck in their boot. That was it.

Speaker 6 They were on their own, man. If this cover was blown,

Speaker 6 everybody's dying.

Speaker 6 So the crew walks up and starts interviewing Cesar, the Commandante, and Goffes is there. And we're all like, what's happening?

Speaker 6 He walked away with the Commandante for a little bit, and they came back and they had large zip ties,

Speaker 6 which we'd already been trained to break out of, right? But still.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So this one guy is in front of us. He's got red hair, and it's Mark and I and Tom.

Speaker 6 And he goes, he walks up to me and he's almost in tears.

Speaker 6 And I said, who are you? He said, I'm from Australia. So I grab his ID

Speaker 6 and I said, this is bullshit.

Speaker 6 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 General Hutmacher.

Speaker 6 He said, yes, Dance almost ruined the whole fucking rescue being a dumbass.

Speaker 6 So Mark gets next to me. He goes, I'm from Australia.
I said, you're,

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 I said, yeah, he goes, I mean, he was almost in tears. He goes, please come with us.
We're taking you home.

Speaker 6 So I yelled, Mark

Speaker 6 or to Tom, I said, Tom, put those fucking tie wraps on. And we, you know,

Speaker 6 but we almost blew it right there because Mark and I did not believe this guy, which we smell about in a second.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Once we put the tie wraps on, and you can see us, and it's, you can, you, you can, it's on YouTube. The video is there.
I just say, Keith Stansel, fine enough, here's the jungle.

Speaker 6 I didn't know who the fake news crew was, but they legitimately filmed. And we got on the

Speaker 6 on the bird. And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I was in a troublemaker category. A couple other guys were.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 I sit down for a second

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And so I broke out of my.

Speaker 6 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 going to get in trouble.

Speaker 6 I said, break out of the raps, break out of the raps.

Speaker 6 And then

Speaker 6 Goffas and Cesar were supposed to give up their pistols, but I can't remember what Goffez did, but Cesar kept his.

Speaker 6 And he's right behind us.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 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 those for those guys and wave at them. And

Speaker 6 they pulled up the doors and we just pulled up, you know. And

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 So we just all jump on Cesar because Cesar pulled a pistol.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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 a pistol and he disarmed him.

Speaker 6 And it was 30 seconds and it was over. I mean, it was just, it was over.
And we're clapping and yelling. They're yelling, Colombian Army, Colombian Army, police.
And I mean, the euphoria.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 He didn't put up a fight at all.

Speaker 6 And he had been very abusive to Tom, you know, making Tom put 15 meters of chain, three five meter chains around his neck and marching and threatening to shoot Tom one time.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And they've basically shot, I don't know what kind of sedative they gave to Cesar. And, you know, they're taking pictures and everything.
And

Speaker 6 Tom goes over to the goffice and Mark and I are looking and he kneels down. I know, man, he's just going to,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 He just leans over, gets in his face, and he taps on my chest, he said, good luck.

Speaker 6 It was the coolest thing in the world, man. Wow.
And then we're just, you know,

Speaker 6 Then they flew us to

Speaker 6 a fob there. Then 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.

Speaker 6 Um,

Speaker 6 um, he, I think, all the guys there,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I just walked up to him, I just put my arms around him.

Speaker 6 You know, I saw that flag.

Speaker 6 And I I guess like, I was like, we made it.

Speaker 6 We made it.

Speaker 6 And, um,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And we're all going home. So we jumped onto 130 and

Speaker 6 you know, we

Speaker 6 they got us to

Speaker 6 basically another base and we jumped on a rebase

Speaker 6 uh Air Force One, you know, that flew us into Bogota.

Speaker 6 And we got off of that and then we got on the C-17 and headed home. But it was, it was,

Speaker 6 I mean, it's still emotional.

Speaker 6 You know, I think

Speaker 6 basically four of my friends died looking for me.

Speaker 6 You know, Tommy didn't make it out. Shard and Cruz didn't make it out.
You know, so there's a little bit of

Speaker 6 apprehension, maybe a little guilt, you know,

Speaker 6 in there that we made it and they didn't.

Speaker 6 But I remember getting off them I

Speaker 6 and they've got

Speaker 6 Goffis and Cesar and cuffs on the ground, you know.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I was just like, wow. But as I'm getting off

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So I grabbed my lock and my chain, getting out of the helo.

Speaker 6 I said, this is coming with me.

Speaker 6 So they cut off the majority chain for me. I got on the bird.

Speaker 6 But how sick you recognize your own lock. Man.

Speaker 6 You know.

Speaker 6 And then it was off to the races, right? You know,

Speaker 6 it's like what you do here on your show, Sean, is

Speaker 6 you give a voice to the community.

Speaker 6 That's why I came to do the show.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

Speaker 6 You know, where people can hear what's really going on.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 we tried to give a voice, Mark and Tom and I, to the families of those that didn't make it out with us.

Speaker 6 And we, and it's a perfect example,

Speaker 6 The Colombian hostages did not have the same kind of support that Mark and Tom and I did.

Speaker 6 You know, we get on the C-17,

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 basically a DOD mission.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 some can disagree with that, but we know who directed things.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 there is my old neighbor on the the bird I haven't seen in 20 something years, Doug Sanders, a former Ranger and Army helicopter pilot.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I hadn't seen in 20 years in Savannah when the call got. He even told him that he was going to be bringing us home, right? They're waiting on the op to go down.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 it's a small community.

Speaker 6 And there's people are patting us on the back and there's the Air Force crew. And it was fun.
It was kind of funny.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 This thing is too stiff.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 He said, shit, yeah, we changed right there on a bird. I put his on because it was broken in.

Speaker 6 And then

Speaker 6 they let us calm down on the C-17 for a little bit, But there was a lot of excitement on President Rebase Bird between the field and getting to Bogota and the capital.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 we were taken care of.

Speaker 6 And then you start catching up on the real news, right?

Speaker 6 Stuff that's been going on since you've been gone. And that's a whole nother wave of

Speaker 6 reality.

Speaker 6 But the rescue,

Speaker 6 I've looked in the 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.

Speaker 6 Not a shot fired. Total coup.

Speaker 6 That a young sergeant, it was his idea, and then obviously support behind it.

Speaker 6 And the thing that I remember,

Speaker 6 the Colombians were in the back of a rebased jet and they had us up front. And we had some people from our government, you know, up front.

Speaker 6 And I'm like, you got a map? And they're like, why? I said, we know where all the groups are here.

Speaker 6 And they had them surrounded.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 They could have swooped in there after the rescue and taken out half of the first front easy. Instead, they just let them roll.

Speaker 6 I don't understand it.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 6 We had them in the had them, had them, had them. A few hundred guerrillas right there.
And they had the packages around.

Speaker 6 Now, ours, I don't think, would have participated, but our folks were there. Our Intel folks were there, you know,

Speaker 6 and they walked.

Speaker 6 I don't understand that political decision there at all.

Speaker 6 We had them.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 the flight home was,

Speaker 6 you just kind of opened up the radars on. And

Speaker 6 our two FBI agents

Speaker 6 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 elite to have one cold beer.

Speaker 6 And then it disappeared. So I always say, hey, you guys stole this from us on the flight home or whatever.

Speaker 6 But we had to get a physical on the plane, you know, check us out medically and bring us into San Antonio. And

Speaker 6 you're just, everybody's talking to you and they're giving you news. And it's just,

Speaker 6 but what they did have,

Speaker 6 what they did have

Speaker 6 was pizza.

Speaker 6 And we ate pizza.

Speaker 6 And a wild ass story

Speaker 6 was

Speaker 6 Mark,

Speaker 6 and I'll let Mark correct me. I might mess this up.

Speaker 6 Mark made a comment in the morning of our rescue. He said, man, you know what I want?

Speaker 6 So what? He goes, I want some homemade chocolate chip cookies and I want pizza.

Speaker 6 I'm sorry, just brings the moment back, right?

Speaker 6 And so we get on the plane and we're like, fuck.

Speaker 6 I said, dude,

Speaker 6 you call this. We had fresh pizza on the plane.

Speaker 6 You know, they come out of Bogota like Domino's pizza or whatever.

Speaker 6 So the pilot in command was a female.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But she walks back and she goes, hey, guys, I go what?

Speaker 6 I don't know if you want these, but I got a gift for you.

Speaker 6 She's what?

Speaker 6 Here's a bag of chocolate chip cookies. Oh, shit.
I don't bake.

Speaker 6 I don't know why, but I baked these and I brought them with me.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 6 How about that, man?

Speaker 6 Hmm.

Speaker 6 Hmm.

Speaker 6 The cookies were the shocker. That's why I like it.
It was a very intense feeling. That's why I tear up.

Speaker 6 Here's your chocolate chip cookies. You like to bake? No, I just, for some reason, reason, bake these.

Speaker 5 Bake that was.

Speaker 6 Man, you better start thinking if I have to explain it to you. You know, I mean, so.

Speaker 5 God patting me on the back.

Speaker 6 Can you imagine that, though?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 6 And it wasn't me.

Speaker 6 It was Mark. It was Mark said, yeah, I want pizza and chocolate chip cookies.

Speaker 6 I was like, dude. And then I remember

Speaker 6 an embarrassing thing.

Speaker 6 And my wife is upstairs watching. I don't know if I've told her this before or not.
So

Speaker 6 I look like a bag of shit. I'm a skeleton.
You know, I'm 230 now. I was 154, 156, me, 154.

Speaker 6 So there's a flight surgeon. There's like a little room on the C-17 behind with two bunks.
It's just a crew restroom, right?

Speaker 6 So we each have to

Speaker 6 get checked out.

Speaker 6 So we walk in, there's this flight surgeon, probably just this young, very attractive female flight surgeon.

Speaker 6 And she closes the door and she goes, you got a strip down. I'm like,

Speaker 6 in front of you?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I'm like, ma'am, I mean, really?

Speaker 6 Is this

Speaker 6 like, this is,

Speaker 6 you know, I'm wearing fucking bikini underwear.

Speaker 6 I said, you guys have like an ugly doctor or something, you know?

Speaker 6 So I was embarrassed, but I did it. I followed through, but it was funny.
I'm like, fuck, I'm wearing bikinis, rubber boots. I mean, that is, you know, and I didn't say anything to Mark.

Speaker 6 I said, Mark, let's go under flight surges in there. You know, he's like, oh, shit, you know,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 and, you know, it was just a little embarrassment there. You're like, really? I mean, don't you have like an old guy, you know, like an old 06 with a big beard or something, you know, you know, but,

Speaker 6 and then Doug was laughing about that.

Speaker 6 And so we get through this and it's all happiness on the plane. And it's really kind of a just a

Speaker 6 blur getting into Texas. And we land and I remember General Huber getting on the plane and, you know, here's his big ass Green Bray.
And hey, gentlemen, and we roll to the Black Hawk.

Speaker 6 I just news cameras everywhere, right?

Speaker 6 And I'm like, shit, you know, I mean, it's just everywhere news and it's dark, you know, but there's lineup from the flight line.

Speaker 6 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.
Just going across town going, I'm going to eat there.

Speaker 6 I'm going to eat there. I'm going to eat there, you know.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 we got down on the ground

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 I said, Mark, is the sec dev checking on us? I said, this doesn't really happen that often, right?

Speaker 6 So we get into the hospital

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 People are from behind the glass.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 each one of us, they kept us in the same room. They're worried about separating us.
They had to evaluate us, right?

Speaker 6 They're worried about separating us because we'd been together for so long.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And then next to that headline is the three hostages are out. I said, man, we're famous.
A-Rod, Madonna?

Speaker 6 They're headlining with us. It was funny.

Speaker 6 You had to laugh at that, right? You had to laugh at that. But one thing that I was nervous about

Speaker 6 was you have a smell in the jungle, right?

Speaker 6 One of the first things is when the gorilla captured us was their smell. You could smell them.
It's a group, a big group, right? And it's just a smell of, you know, BO in the jungle and whatever

Speaker 6 that doesn't work. It's a humans.

Speaker 6 It's something you had to get used to.

Speaker 6 And I worried, I said, man, am I going to smell like that when I see my family?

Speaker 6 I know it's a small thing, but in the back of my head, so

Speaker 6 we each get to take a shower. And you know, in the hospital, you got that green disinfectant.
So

Speaker 6 I got in that shower, man, and

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I turned the shower off. I got out and I was like,

Speaker 6 I went right back in. I took two showers.

Speaker 6 I took two showers. And so we all got showered.
And

Speaker 6 General Huber comes up and there was a black female colonel. She was an Army doctor and

Speaker 6 very kind.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 Huber's like, gentlemen, this French restaurant's open. He had all these really nice restaurants open at midnight for us.

Speaker 6 And I'm like, sir, I appreciate it, but I don't want that. He goes, what do you want? I said, I want a cheeseburger fries and a fountain coke.

Speaker 6 That's what I want.

Speaker 6 To me, it's just the American meal.

Speaker 6 That's the thing I could think of. And that female colonel, who was a doctor, she just leaned over it and she tapped me.
She said, baby, I'll take care of you.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 I said, I can't remember when I was a sergeant 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?

Speaker 6 And they took unbelievable care of us, right?

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 one of the guys that was a

Speaker 6 psychologist or counselor, because each one, we've got one assigned, everybody's looking at us. He comes in.
I think it was Mark said, damn, that clone smells good.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 he said, you got any?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And that was the part where the reunification started.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 So it was kind of odd that everywhere you went, people are like,

Speaker 6 you couldn't, you know, that's why I say the five minutes of fame. I was so glad when that was over.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 anonymity is a big thing, right?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I'm sure you're learning that.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 unbelievable care for us and took care of us,

Speaker 6 housed our families, you know, and we had to reintegrate with the families, which that was a a big deal.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 that brings out a

Speaker 6 lot there. I remember my father,

Speaker 6 you know, Korean war vet, he's standing there wobbling when I get to see him, you know.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 What do you do when you,

Speaker 6 you know, I heard a message from my son. My son's 6'7.
He's 245. He's a big dude.

Speaker 6 He was a little 10-year-old when I got captured, you know, and a year and a half and we got into the jungle with the politicians. I hear a message from him.

Speaker 6 Like 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 it,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And we,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 I think all of us handle it in our own way, right? You know, like the funny thing was, is

Speaker 6 Mark's mom was the squeaky wheel, man.

Speaker 6 Every news show, every politician in Columbia flying back and forth, riding President Rebe's ass and all. So he gave her a special presentation later on in D.C.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And, you know, a lot of good stuff to come after that. But

Speaker 6 it.

Speaker 6 Five and a half years, man. I mean, you're like, wow.

Speaker 6 And I remember my son

Speaker 6 uh i had heard about ipods a little bitty one but i've never seen one

Speaker 6 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'm just being 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 passes by

Speaker 6 You know, do you remember back in the day, a Motorola little Starlink, not the Starlink modern today,

Speaker 6 opened a flip-floan

Speaker 6 60 or 90 characters of text, and I carried a big sat phone. And we were, that was like cutting edge, right?

Speaker 6 You know, I remember my company

Speaker 6 coming to the hospital, bringing us each a laptop, and they're like, log in. And I'm like, well,

Speaker 6 how do I do that?

Speaker 6 You know, we had,

Speaker 6 you know, things had happened.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 6 it took a little time for the wheels to catch up, you know, I think.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 A guy that I want to give thanks to, Chuck Norse, he calls us and goes, hey, guys.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 we're like, what?

Speaker 6 You know, he goes, listen, a lot of people are going to be coming at you, dudes and everything.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Wow. He wanted nothing out of it.
Nobody even knew he called us. But the funny thing is, here is a funny story.

Speaker 6 I didn't know how much Mark like is 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 he's the shit man

Speaker 6 and and tom goes tom is just needling mark right he goes shit

Speaker 6 That's all bullshit. And Mark's no, because, I mean, Norris is a legit karate guy, right? It's legit.
Tom's outside. He says, shit, if I saw Chuck Norris, I'll whoop his fucking ass, right?

Speaker 6 Mark's like, you could never kick his ass.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Well, then on the phone, holy shit.

Speaker 6 Tom confesses to Norris. He said, Chuck, I got to tell you, I'm sorry.
So what I told Mark in the jungle for, I saw you whoop your ass, he said, I'm going to take that back.

Speaker 6 So, I mean,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 come on. Damn.
You know, I mean, come on. And then, you know, in the jungle, the whole time it was like, Tom's like, I could take Chuck Norris.
You know, just silly shit.

Speaker 6 This is triggering me remembering stuff here, you know. But a lot of people

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And he said, we'll get you out here, get your family out of here. You guys need a piece.

Speaker 6 You got all the 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

Speaker 6 you know that was

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 6 I did not have any fears.

Speaker 6 Obviously, my significant other that I wasn't married to, she moved on and got married. That was okay.

Speaker 6 I

Speaker 6 that

Speaker 6 captivity buried the hatchet with my father and I,

Speaker 6 So it repaired our relationship there.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You're like, oh, shit, you know, they were young. And then the whole thing where you guys were at, the whole thing of the sandbox,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Just like I'll give you an example of the CEO at the time of Verizon.

Speaker 6 We made comments. something about cell phones or whatever.
And

Speaker 6 just to knock at at the door one day, and this backpack with all the skiffs and the latest and greatest, which then they called it a smartphone, it wasn't compared to today,

Speaker 6 was from the CEO. And he's like, hey, welcome back, guys.
Maybe this will help you a little bit.

Speaker 6 Some anonymous people did some things for us, not necessarily monetarily, right? But did some things. You're like, wow, somebody's really thinking.

Speaker 6 But just

Speaker 6 trying to adjust to life and something that I was talking about at Hilo was difficult for me.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 my parents have a house rented for me

Speaker 6 and it's a big, a bigger, more beautiful home than I've ever lived in.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I roll in there and I'm like,

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 So, you know, our company took care of us.

Speaker 6 The son of a bitch about that thing was the instrument holding pattern for rotor wing aircraft. So the airport was right over my flipping house.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 you know, the Army each had a psych force.

Speaker 6 Mine was a wonderful guy and we had a wonderful chaplain that really helped us.

Speaker 6 And so we were followed and we were helped. The company gave us six or eight months off, I think.

Speaker 6 And then

Speaker 6 they really took care of us.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 we all had jobs.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 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.
And

Speaker 6 so,

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 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 the bottle.

Speaker 6 It's like, well, I can get up and go to the bathroom on my own. I don't have to ask anybody.
But this thing is ingrained in your head, right?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And then we knew our future was going to change, right? For all of us.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I have not done.

Speaker 6 I can't remember the last time I did a television interview, but the first couple of years out,

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 it was the five minutes of fame.

Speaker 6 And I will tell you this, when that was over, it was fine with me. I learned one thing

Speaker 6 after you, especially up in New York City and you're doing these talk shows and all this stuff, right?

Speaker 6 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 wanted to support our mission and what we were about

Speaker 6 and our book and all of that stuff.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So I walk into a bookstore in the airport, and there's 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.

Speaker 6 I just stood there in front of it.

Speaker 6 Not a person recognized me.

Speaker 6 I'm on the news, we're on the news, you know, we're doing the, you know, I'm just standing there. I'm like,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You know, and

Speaker 6 I'll never forget

Speaker 6 I I walked into a Target

Speaker 6 and I didn't know that Starbucks is a Target or whatever, and I got a cup of coffee.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 this guy walks up behind me,

Speaker 6 and he just whispers in my ear. He goes, hey, bro, I got the coffee.
Welcome back.

Speaker 6 Wow. And walked away.

Speaker 6 Didn't want to do anything else, you know, so I was like, wow.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 then I got rolled up into the whole basically,

Speaker 6 you know, reintegration for other people and a guinea pig for the Bergdahl thing. And, you know,

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 it ended up working out.

Speaker 6 But I think

Speaker 6 just that transition back.

Speaker 6 And it was a few months into where, you know,

Speaker 6 it was just a lot going on. I mean, you go to a,

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And so I asked everybody, I said, hey,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And I went in with my old man. I sat out back with him by the pool and just, you know, he had that clarity of thought, kind of telling me what I needed to do.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And when we came back in, there was a reporter, her and her cameraman were

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 then it's like hey can i have a little space or a little piece or everybody wants to touch the magic right?

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 So where's your responsibility to kind of tell your story and support, but then keep this straight?

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 I think we did a good job of it.

Speaker 6 You know, we're all healthy and happy. And, you know, Tom's up in Tennessee

Speaker 6 somewhere. He's got a little cattle farm.
He's raising cows. And I think his son's up there with him.
We don't talk to Tom as much. I mean, every few months we check in or whatever.

Speaker 6 Mark lives, you know, less than an hour south of me. So my wife and his wife and him, we're close.
One of the seventh group guys retired down there, CW5. And

Speaker 6 a couple of my peers, you know, that were at SOCOM and all are close. And we've got a good network of friends.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's been, this is really coming to do this show was kind of a reawakening sense where I were, and I know after this interview is done,

Speaker 6 stuff's going to pop into my head that I remember. But,

Speaker 6 you know, I think we all came out okay.

Speaker 6 You know, we always said,

Speaker 6 and I told,

Speaker 6 told Mark and Tom this, I said, look, we're affected. We just don't know until we get home.
Right.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I don't think anybody

Speaker 6 I think everybody came out good.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 our lives are changed forever. I think in the long run, this was a gift for me.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You know, we have to forget some people that make it out.

Speaker 6 And unfortunately, the world's upside down, right?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 That's why just doing the show is just to give back to the community, you know, what you're already doing.

Speaker 5 What was it like to see the twins?

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 my father was the hardest.

Speaker 6 The twins were kind of emotional for a few minutes, but then

Speaker 6 they had brought so many toys and gifts in for those two little kids, and they brought us into this room.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But it was whether with my children, the twins, my father, any of my family there, right?

Speaker 6 I could only take about 10 minutes and I had to get out. It was the, the,

Speaker 6 I'm looking for the right word, um, the energy overwhelming, overwhelming. And they told us that, you know, and when I walked in to

Speaker 6 see everybody, I was very happy,

Speaker 6 but then it got to where I almost couldn't breathe and I, 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

Speaker 6 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 i remember uh

Speaker 6 the first night having my own room being by myself

Speaker 6 uh

Speaker 6 in my room in the hospital just laying there kind of breathing you know nobody around you

Speaker 6 solo for the first time in years i was able to kind of decompress

Speaker 6 you know and i remember talking to mark the next morning our rooms were too far apart and said how you feeling he said yeah man this is a lot right it's a lot

Speaker 6 so um and then you know

Speaker 6 the reunification with your family then the reintegration process but something that really shocked me was um

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 bamsey has an unbelievable burn unit for

Speaker 6 paraplegics, everybody, all wounded veterans, right?

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And as we're rolling in there, there's this kid, and he was a guardsman. He was like a spec for.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 5 You guys, you came. You guys came.

Speaker 6 We've been waiting for you to come. And his mom was with him.

Speaker 6 He goes, man, I'm sorry for you guys. I hate you guys had to go through it.
And he's like, This, you know.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 once they get all these fractures done, he said, I'm, I'm good. He said, the guys inside aren't.

Speaker 6 And when I actually went in the unit and we just started shaking hands or stumps or, you know, and saw those guys,

Speaker 6 that's when the war set in, like, whoa, this stuff's been going on now, you know, and to see the care

Speaker 6 that

Speaker 6 those servicemen were getting, you know,

Speaker 5 in there,

Speaker 6 tier one, just tier one.

Speaker 6 But to see, I remember the next day we had

Speaker 6 a tour of the facility, and they had a wave machine.

Speaker 6 Right? And there was a sergeant in there

Speaker 6 Young black guy. I think he just had one arm.

Speaker 6 And he's the fucking wave machine instructor. That bitch got on the surfboard.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Right?

Speaker 6 And just like his attitude and everything, he had, I can't remember. I think he

Speaker 6 was below the knee

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And the one guy in the server was burned over like 80% of his body, just head to toe. And his attitude, man,

Speaker 6 was like,

Speaker 6 holy geez.

Speaker 6 Just like,

Speaker 6 and I'm looking at all these people, I'm like, we didn't go through shit.

Speaker 6 You know, so to see

Speaker 6 what all those men and women went through, right? And they're scarred forever, right?

Speaker 6 They're going to adjust the way they do things forever.

Speaker 6 It was very humbling. I was like, we didn't do anything.
You know,

Speaker 6 we didn't do anything. But I'll never forget the kid

Speaker 6 who's this young spec four. And he's like this.
And he's like, no, I'm good. When they get this shit out of him, we'll hit fun.
I'm like, okay. But, you know, he said, they're waiting for you.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 5 It's amazing what the human mind can overcome

Speaker 5 you guys

Speaker 6 look at that i i think five years yeah

Speaker 6 yeah

Speaker 6 it's uh

Speaker 6 it's it's amazing what so many of those people just went through but to come back to everything that had been happening was

Speaker 6 you know an eye-opener An eye-opener.

Speaker 6 You know, just taking for granted, getting in your truck and going and getting a burger how long did it take you to reintegrate

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 i think we reintegrate reintegrated pretty quickly within months because we were so busy

Speaker 6 right

Speaker 6 and so

Speaker 6 we were going and

Speaker 6 visiting places, speaking, legal stuff started to happen. So we were, you know,

Speaker 5 I had

Speaker 6 to

Speaker 6 find a house and everybody had needed furniture and clothing and I mean, start from scratch, right?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You know, I wasn't married, so I didn't come back to a divorce like Mark and Tom did.

Speaker 6 So for them, you know, they had a lot to take on personally when they got back.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 they did amazing.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So, I mean, worrying about, of course, we had a job, right? But we didn't know what's actually all gone on.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 I remember my father sent me down by the pool the night that I got back. He goes, take a deep breath.

Speaker 6 You got no more worries.

Speaker 6 He said, just let it unfold.

Speaker 6 You're okay. Just let it unfold.
And then my father saw from A to Z, man. He just, he was like that.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 we had good support support around us.

Speaker 6 And we had each other, and we had an amazing legal team. You know,

Speaker 6 we've got

Speaker 6 two attorneys. One's never been in the military, and one is a 160th plank holder.

Speaker 6 So I told Mark and Tom, because I'd been through something with our attorneys before, with one in particular, when, you know, we saw the guy shot down there.

Speaker 6 He

Speaker 6 basically

Speaker 6 I was telling

Speaker 6 a friend of mine is retired 75th regiment guy about this and he said oh my brother is the attorney representing him down there

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So those two guys have taken care of all three of us.

Speaker 6 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 done anything.
This is who I have confidence in. It's who I'm going with.

Speaker 6 And they've made a difference in our lives. But they're patriots, too.

Speaker 6 So, you know, kind of funny in the community,

Speaker 6 your lead guy is the 160th plank holder.

Speaker 6 And then the other guy was a college swimmer, U of M, brilliant. And those two

Speaker 6 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.
Yeah, that's good. And it made a difference.

Speaker 5 What happened to the

Speaker 5 guy that took the M4 and said he was going to kill anybody that rescued you with it?

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 the last time i saw him

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 and so um

Speaker 6 we're with the fbi in their offices in miami and uh

Speaker 6 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, wonderful woman.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 There's a hole through the, you know, through the magazine well. And I'm like, that's my M4.
Obviously, Mill Group signed out for Mill Group. He goes, yep.

Speaker 6 And I said, well, where'd the hole come from? Your boy, when they went into

Speaker 6 bump his camp, he said, that's where he took around.

Speaker 6 So for me to see the M4 there with a hole through the magazine well

Speaker 6 that the fat guy was carrying,

Speaker 6 You know, I was like, I told him I wouldn't want to fight our people, you know.

Speaker 6 And I told him, I said, I don't want to fight our guys. Why do you? Which is, it was bravo, right?

Speaker 6 And I asked, asked him if I could keep the rifle. And obviously, it's evidence, so I can't keep it.
But I had to write a letter. You know, I wish they could demill it or something or let me have it.

Speaker 6 I mean, you know, put it above the fireplace, but that's a heck of a story, you know. Damn.

Speaker 6 But yeah, I guess he,

Speaker 6 you know, I guess he had it on him when he went down.

Speaker 6 Damn.

Speaker 5 And you went back to work.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5 You were on the bird dome list.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 So I was a guinea pig.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 the reintegration folks, along with other government folks, were always training. to bring him back and others.

Speaker 6 I was used with reintegration guys as kind of a guinea pig, like, how would I react?

Speaker 6 If you and your buddies come in to get me, what do you think I'm going to do?

Speaker 6 So it was all a profile issue.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 what I learned about what really happened with Bergdahl,

Speaker 6 it wasn't the story that the news was painting.

Speaker 6 Did he do something wrong? Yeah. i'm not agreeing with the way it went down

Speaker 5 but um real quick why don't you paint the story of what the media was saying

Speaker 6 well

Speaker 6 he basically deserted right which he did he rolled up and he you know he he rolled out

Speaker 6 i did not learn until reintegration and a few soft guys that were in reintegration that handled his reintegration

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 6 he had some legitimate

Speaker 6 concerns about what was going on. And I don't think that they were handled correctly.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 Doug calls me one day from Bamsey and said that Bo had handed out a few gifts to everybody.

Speaker 6 And I never met him face to face. I was just the interview.
Now I interface with his parents.

Speaker 6 And so he said he brought us all a compass. to give us so we never lose our way, right?

Speaker 6 Some kind of, you know,

Speaker 6 you know, kind of deep stuff there.

Speaker 6 And those guys who are hardcore, soft guys,

Speaker 6 their job was not to judge.

Speaker 6 Their job was to reintegrate.

Speaker 6 And I always told everybody the mission there, although difficult because the actions that were taken, you still got to stay mission focused, right?

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 I said, our job, he's got a green ID card is we bring him back.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 friends of mine care for this guy.

Speaker 6 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 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

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 i thought that was an important mission to support now

Speaker 6 I really didn't think it was going to take as long as it did to get him out.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I remember getting a call, and I have to be delicate on this,

Speaker 6 from the green side.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I had a phone call with his mother, his father, and their attorney.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 it was,

Speaker 6 it was interesting. It was interesting.
And I don't want to

Speaker 6 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 him.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 I remember there was a funeral, and

Speaker 6 he was standing around a bunch of active duty guys who were at this funeral. Nobody even knew he was.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 If you want the truth, Sean,

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 What do we do? We get them out. How do we do that? And the same with Levinson in Iran.
We did the same thing with him.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I just thought it was very difficult to see two of my friends have to take on that mission, right?

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 command can take over what they're going to do.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And, you know, guys, I have tremendous respect for, but to be put in that position, right,

Speaker 6 you're going to catch a lot of heat, but you still have to do your job.

Speaker 6 So,

Speaker 6 yeah,

Speaker 6 I

Speaker 6 don't agree with what happened at all. I don't support what he did at all, but I can understand the mindset.
And

Speaker 6 it

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I don't think he handled it correctly, right?

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 you ask me,

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 would I want to be in their shoes no

Speaker 6 no

Speaker 6 I mean would you no

Speaker 6 but given that mission

Speaker 5 right

Speaker 6 So that was pretty dicey.

Speaker 6 And,

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 but why argue about it? You know?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I was in no position of authority either. I was a supporter, right?

Speaker 6 Didn't make a rat's ass, what my opinion was. I wasn't a decision maker, right?

Speaker 6 But people who I greatly, greatly respect,

Speaker 6 you know, from from the soft community,

Speaker 6 I would say, man,

Speaker 6 but they did their job.

Speaker 6 They did their job.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I respect them for it. But, you know, how hard was that? Because

Speaker 6 that was a bad deal. Yeah.

Speaker 6 You know?

Speaker 6 But,

Speaker 6 I mean, I don't know. I just said, you want me to go do this? I'll do this.

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 6 I never thought my position was to make a call.

Speaker 6 They needed somebody to do something for them. Like I said, I was just a guinea pig, that's all I was.
You know, and then a couple debriefings

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 and this is what I do respect,

Speaker 6 and this is what I think maybe is a better answer to your question.

Speaker 6 The effort that we put to get

Speaker 6 an American back,

Speaker 6 regardless of what he's done, is what makes us different.

Speaker 6 It can be distasteful, and I know it was for many, right?

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 that's what separates us. That's what makes that flag different than other flags.

Speaker 6 And so I always stood by that,

Speaker 6 you know, you got a green ID card, we'll bring you back. What happens after that? That's on you.

Speaker 6 But it also says to me,

Speaker 6 how about the future people?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 5 That's a damn good point. You know, that's a damn good point.

Speaker 6 You know, and I'm not saying to agree or not agree.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 you know there was uh

Speaker 6 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 uh was it was it your one of your some of your guys with a group of seals or was it a unit but and a british guy right

Speaker 6 and i don't know if you know the people that were in on that or whatever and but i saw the the guy's interview and he said, you know what I was happy about? He said, what? He said, she was in America.

Speaker 6 Thank you, America. That was my biggest hope.
I don't know if I had that story confused, but I was reading about it not too long ago. But I thought it was in Africa.

Speaker 6 Wasn't she a missionary or whatever?

Speaker 5 There's been a couple.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 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'd have just been me, shit, I'm still there.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 that is,

Speaker 6 I think,

Speaker 6 the message that I would want to send, that no matter the what,

Speaker 6 we're going to bring you back

Speaker 6 because that means others are going to believe in us and that we're coming to get them, right?

Speaker 6 You know?

Speaker 6 So I think that overrides

Speaker 6 what he did

Speaker 6 because it's not about him. It's about us and what what we do and it's about sacrifice it's a damn good message that i've never heard

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 like how do i get justice

Speaker 6 how do mark and tom and i really get justice how do the people that were looking for me that died get justice

Speaker 6 I don't have the answer. I want to get healthy.
I want to have happiness. What is justice?

Speaker 6 Like if I killed every person to have me in captivity, is that justice? Would it make me feel any better? No.

Speaker 6 You know, surviving is my justice, but that's the definition for myself.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 unpleasant or not, I think we send a bigger message. Now,

Speaker 6 if I'm a family member that lost somebody that was doing an op,

Speaker 6 It's probably not acceptable for them.

Speaker 6 But I'd ask that same family member, what if you got somebody else and goes down, it's a family member, they know we're coming.

Speaker 6 There was no win in that either, I don't believe.

Speaker 6 How do you win in that? Right? No matter what you know,

Speaker 6 we're going after them,

Speaker 6 right?

Speaker 6 We don't know what the price is. We don't know who's going to pay, but we're going.

Speaker 6 And I think when you sign a dotted line,

Speaker 6 you accept that responsibility.

Speaker 6 Right and wrong?

Speaker 6 I mean, shit, Sean, your show is all about what's right, what's wrong, right? How do you define it?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But I'm not making that judgment.

Speaker 6 Does that make sense at all? It makes perfect sense.

Speaker 5 It's an aspect I've never thought of. It's a bigger message in that.

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 and they're not all public.

Speaker 6 There was,

Speaker 6 I'll just leave it as a foreigner that was rescued by our people

Speaker 6 less than a year after me and was reintegrated, okay,

Speaker 6 through our own folks. that I got to work with

Speaker 6 and,

Speaker 6 you know some operators showed up and got him out

Speaker 6 and all he wants to be is a US citizen with him and his family and when I say patriot

Speaker 6 and an appreciation

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 And I said, what's he want? He just wants to be a citizen.

Speaker 6 He's the biggest convert ever, right?

Speaker 6 And so,

Speaker 6 you know, how many undocumented, let's say, or unadvertised

Speaker 6 have you and your friends done?

Speaker 6 Right?

Speaker 6 So that's a bigger message. But now,

Speaker 6 let's just say

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You know.

Speaker 5 Well, Keith, what are you doing now to keep busy?

Speaker 6 My wife says I'm getting fat.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 craft cocktail person, excellent cook. I never enjoyed anything as far as traveling or eating.
So she's kind of exposed me to that.

Speaker 6 So now I drink some foo-fu drinks that I would have never drank before

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 so we travel. And

Speaker 6 we've got some real estate rental stuff that we dabble in. You know, we built a few things just for rentals, but

Speaker 6 we are considering a move. Everybody's moved to Florida.
Thank you. I appreciate that, whatever, right?

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 we're looking at maybe 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.

Speaker 6 Actually, it says SNS property since his last name starts with an S.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 That was our LLC. I wear this hat everywhere.
But

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 5 Enjoying life.

Speaker 6 As best we can. as best we can, which is, but that sounds negative.
No, yes, we are. We are enjoying life.

Speaker 6 It's funny, though, I'm 60 now.

Speaker 6 And I don't feel 60 until I look in the mirror. You know, I imagine myself a different way.
And so

Speaker 6 it's kind of that time of change, you know, but I want to make memories now.

Speaker 6 We're in a position where life is good and we can make choices.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 But there's like,

Speaker 6 there's this physical window now, right? It's the fourth quarter.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I was on a mountain last year on a sheep hunt and I finished my sheep grand slam.

Speaker 6 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 on my conscious now is,

Speaker 6 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, you you know, I know people doing a lot of different things, but

Speaker 6 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 know how long it is or how good we do.

Speaker 6 But things start changing physically a little quicker as you get older, right?

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 you know, we've had a few friends that have died, you know.

Speaker 6 Someone we know now is just a few years older than me. He's just come up with a stomach cancer issue.
You know, so at this age, things start to drop, right?

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 you know.

Speaker 5 You've been through what you've been through

Speaker 5 thousand nine hundred and sixty-seven days in captivity yeah

Speaker 5 no getting that back do you value relationships more than you used to oh that's a tough question

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 6 i don't think so

Speaker 6 this would be a little mercenary

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 6 I value a real relationship more than I used to.

Speaker 5 Well, that's what I'm getting at. Yes.
A relationship with your dad, your son. Yes.

Speaker 6 A real relationship, yes. Wife.
Yes. Yes.
Those in the peripheral,

Speaker 6 it's a fact of life.

Speaker 6 People move in and out of each other's lives, right?

Speaker 6 And so, um,

Speaker 6 where's your circle?

Speaker 6 Where's your circle?

Speaker 6 You know, my problem is I have too big of a mouth and I'm too open.

Speaker 6 I don't think it's changing. I'm trying to, but let's see how that works out, right?

Speaker 6 My openness has cost me.

Speaker 6 It's cost me. And,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 I'm working on that. I think my circle will only become smaller.

Speaker 6 Not that I don't like people or a social thing or making friends, but, you know, it's

Speaker 6 it makes you kind of define, is this a real true friendship or not? Or is this just something

Speaker 6 casual?

Speaker 5 I mean, the way I think about it is you know if you had

Speaker 5 24 friends yeah

Speaker 5 you're awake for let's say 12 hours a day

Speaker 5 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,

Speaker 5 Whittle that down to 12, then

Speaker 5 it's an hour for each person a day. Right.

Speaker 5 You whittle that down to six, that's two.

Speaker 6 Two.

Speaker 5 You know, and so, you know, what I've noticed through my journey

Speaker 5 is, yeah,

Speaker 5 everybody wants to be your friend. Everybody wants, you know.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And you got to be careful because the relationships that really do matter, they suffer because then you start divvying up time.

Speaker 6 Right.

Speaker 5 and nothing really grows.

Speaker 5 But when you do whittle it down to what really matters, family,

Speaker 5 close, close, close friends.

Speaker 5 For me, my team here,

Speaker 5 we're like a family. I mean, when you can invest in the relationships that

Speaker 5 you truly value, then they'll flourish beyond what you

Speaker 6 ever would have thought. Yeah, I think that,

Speaker 6 look,

Speaker 6 we'll take your position.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And you meet like-minded individuals all the time. That if it was just Sean by himself, no family, no, you guys hang out all the time.
Hey, I'll go fishing to wireless roll.

Speaker 6 Life right starts to take up time, which you're talking about,

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 effort.

Speaker 6 So, where do you focus your effort?

Speaker 6 And it is

Speaker 6 it's just normal for people, right,

Speaker 6 to kind of want to be around certain things like we were talking about and, you know,

Speaker 6 be a part of something.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 you got to whittle down

Speaker 6 where there's going to be real results, you know, because

Speaker 6 I know. You know,

Speaker 6 I've got some friends of mine. I would call them friends.
We don't see each other very often, right? Not my close.

Speaker 6 I got three very, very, very close friends, okay?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And if there was time to hang out with them or something, probably would.

Speaker 6 But I think

Speaker 6 maybe

Speaker 6 understanding,

Speaker 6 this is going to sound a little shallow, but I believe in it. Loving yourself first so you can love those around you.

Speaker 6 Understanding

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 this memory. You'll never erase it from my head.
So I want to focus on those in this second half, right?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And I think it's okay to be be a little selfish. I didn't say be unappreciative thing, but sometimes, you know, I went through something here recently.

Speaker 6 My friend said to me, my best friend goes, it's okay to be selfish. It's all right, you know?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 With the best intentions, right? They really appreciate you and what you do.

Speaker 6 Come on, let's come do this. What kind of invites do you get? All that that stuff, right? You can't always just go do it.

Speaker 6 You know, and I would imagine for you, the demands on your time now must be astronomical.

Speaker 5 I guard it very carefully.

Speaker 6 But you're growing something, right?

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 I say I value relationships, but also

Speaker 6 just because you're family

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 right?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 I don't know.

Speaker 6 I think about that now because in this time, in this quarter, where are you going to cut up your time to be?

Speaker 5 Every time you say yes to somebody, you say no to somebody else. So if you're saying yes to people that

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 6 Right.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 5 starving them of their time.

Speaker 6 And overcommitting yourself. Yep.
That's what I'm,

Speaker 6 in the past, have been guilty of. And I'm trying to maybe want to make a commitment to something, does it have real value? Instead of just being a nice guy,

Speaker 6 that could be noble or whatever, but does it have real value? And so

Speaker 6 my wife has helped me with that.

Speaker 6 Saying, hold on a second.

Speaker 6 What are you doing?

Speaker 5 Got a good woman.

Speaker 6 She's got an instinct for that stuff.

Speaker 6 But,

Speaker 6 you know, I mean,

Speaker 6 I can only imagine for you.

Speaker 6 You've become a known quantity now, right?

Speaker 6 What about those days when nobody knew who you were when you pulled out of your driveway?

Speaker 5 Oh, I think about that.

Speaker 5 But this will all end one day.

Speaker 6 No, I know. I know.

Speaker 6 You know, the Five Minutes of Fame was funny.

Speaker 6 It's not real. It's not real.

Speaker 6 I was on an interview. I think it was Good Morning America.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 we were doing a few talk show things. And so I get in 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.

Speaker 5 Oh, I know who you're talking about.

Speaker 6 And she's standing there in front of me and she wasn't rude or anything, right?

Speaker 6 And then Rob Lowe's there, right?

Speaker 6 He's just cracking me up and

Speaker 6 I just see this

Speaker 6 throng of women, man. Like there must have been a hundred women outside the studio, Rob, Rob, Rob, you know?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I looked at him, I know he'll never probably remember me. I was on the the show too, whatever.
I said,

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 you know?

Speaker 6 Like, and I won't drop names here, but we're mentioning one of my best friends and who his best friend is, right?

Speaker 6 And I said, what's it like when you go somewhere with him, right? And he's Sikitzi's very humble, but like, you can't move 10 steps without,

Speaker 6 and people don't mean anything bad. And that's never gone away, right?

Speaker 6 And now with social media and all this stuff, wow.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 6 Nothing's free, right? There's no free lunch.

Speaker 5 That's right.

Speaker 6 My father always said, if you said fair or free to my father, argument was over. Nope, done.
We're finished. We're not going to talk about this.

Speaker 5 Well, Keith, we're wrapping up the interview, but

Speaker 5 so I got one more thing for you. Yeah.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 What do you have? It's a big struggle throughout the veteran community. I mean, suicide's at an all-time high.
Okay.

Speaker 5 So, what I'm going to ask is, you know,

Speaker 5 I've never met anybody like you.

Speaker 5 You've been through it five years, captivity.

Speaker 5 What advice do you have for people that are reintegrating?

Speaker 6 It's a network.

Speaker 6 It's a network around you. I was surrounded.

Speaker 6 So was Mark and Tom. We were surrounded by people

Speaker 6 that were there to support us legally,

Speaker 6 professionally, emotionally.

Speaker 6 Don't be

Speaker 6 the lone man on the hill by yourself, right?

Speaker 6 And I think especially type A's

Speaker 6 from this community tend to be that way. They don't want to accept help

Speaker 6 and recognize you do need help.

Speaker 6 So it's a network is the biggest thing. And my fear,

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 6 I'm I'm set

Speaker 6 and I could go be on my own. I'll be okay, right?

Speaker 6 You know, my wife and I can just go off into the, into the business there and we're fine. What about that vet who is not set,

Speaker 6 right?

Speaker 6 That every day for the rest of his or her life, they'll put on, you know. Prosthetics.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 Every day they'll have that physical challenge, right,

Speaker 6 of just getting through the basics in life.

Speaker 6 and what scares me is

Speaker 6 as I called it the sandbox right but as the war wound down

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 the rest of their life well when it's not

Speaker 6 24-7

Speaker 6 All the new fights on YouTube or on the news or whatever, and it's not in the public's eyes,

Speaker 6 does the support, although not meant in a bad way, dwindle?

Speaker 6 So the recognition of what sacrifices these people have made,

Speaker 6 I think, is important

Speaker 6 key to keeping the support networks going.

Speaker 6 Right?

Speaker 6 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 the Towers, right?

Speaker 6 It's created something long-term. Is our long-term care for our vets there?

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 when I see illegal immigrants in a hotel with a check, a cell phone,

Speaker 6 I'm not trying to hurt these people, right?

Speaker 6 All the support, and then I see a homeless vet, and I'm like, what's going on? Right?

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 That's my fear for people who have paid a price. And this focus on

Speaker 6 And not trying to go political here, but this focus on immigration over people that, okay,

Speaker 6 protected the right for that to even happen.

Speaker 6 I think they should be front of the line. I don't think the military is a place for social experimentation.

Speaker 6 I think the military is a place where it makes our country safe so we can have social experimentation, right?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I just,

Speaker 6 like your show does,

Speaker 6 you keep the light on.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 6 I'm lucky. Not everybody's lucky.
So that's my worry personally for those folks is how does that stay relevant?

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And, you know,

Speaker 6 you see it, especially here with this, what it goes on. So I hope that, I hope that we as a country

Speaker 6 can keep that going.

Speaker 6 But it scares me. It scares me that those people will be forgotten after time.

Speaker 6 But they're living with everything that they have until the end of their time.

Speaker 6 You know, so some of these big organizations that have become well-organized, you know,

Speaker 6 I like that.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 I,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 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? Or

Speaker 5 I think that there are

Speaker 5 some great organizations out there

Speaker 5 that will continue to develop and do the right things.

Speaker 5 Unfortunately,

Speaker 5 I don't think that's the government.

Speaker 6 Right.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 it's the

Speaker 5 how do I say this?

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 6 Right.

Speaker 5 It's mentoring guys.

Speaker 5 You know, I got out,

Speaker 5 I quit contracting in 2015.

Speaker 5 That's 10 years ago. But I'm still giving back.
I'm still coaching. I'm still

Speaker 5 bringing exposure to guys that have done amazing stuff like yourself that can transform their business. And

Speaker 5 there's a number of other organizations out there that do that. Right.
And so, you know, if you're asking, you know, what my advice would be, be, it would be to seek those organizations out.

Speaker 5 Exactly what you said. A network.
Build a circle that you can lean on.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Lean on each other.

Speaker 6 Accept some help, man.

Speaker 5 Because nobody's going to take care of us except ourselves.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 6 And, you know, and it's not just us, it's our families that suffer too.

Speaker 6 You know, you know, I have a couple of relationships that were just

Speaker 6 damaged just by absence.

Speaker 6 And so, you know, do those ever get back?

Speaker 6 You don't know.

Speaker 6 But,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And I think it's important.

Speaker 6 And, you know,

Speaker 6 I like seeing

Speaker 6 folks, men and women, that have come out.

Speaker 6 and turn it into a positive.

Speaker 6 You know, for me, whether writing the book or we wrote the book, I didn't write the book,

Speaker 6 right?

Speaker 6 Or

Speaker 6 going to teach a class somewhere or to speak to a group of people,

Speaker 6 that's me being selfish, winning for myself, right? Just giving back. And that's a way to defeat those that at one time had me defeated.
So that's, you know, that's where I'm at with that.

Speaker 6 And,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And I don't think they're looking for a handout.

Speaker 6 I think they're looking maybe just for a little leg up.

Speaker 6 And it is

Speaker 6 tough to see

Speaker 6 some of the folks that

Speaker 6 have gone through some things. I met a guy that's a wounded warrior when I was at Northrop Northrop Grumman, and he was a program manager.
He was a Marine captain.

Speaker 6 And he was a Fallujah.

Speaker 6 Big guy, but he had a limp. And he was getting on a plane with me.
We had an RPG round

Speaker 6 go through his thigh and not go off and get stuck.

Speaker 6 Right?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 he was working for our company, totally fine. He has a little bit of a limp, but

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 whatever.

Speaker 6 And I was like, wow, wow. You know,

Speaker 6 so when you see it firsthand, when he's like, hey, I'm one of the lucky ones, you know, because a lot of his guys and other people, I mean, they're never, you know, what are you doing?

Speaker 6 So I, you know, maintain the respect for our service folks. And I

Speaker 6 like what's going on now, not to get

Speaker 6 political, but to shake up.

Speaker 6 And kind of,

Speaker 6 I would see it as a return to our core value of what we're about, right?

Speaker 6 Not a social experiment, not a DEI experiment. I mean, we're here to do one thing, defend this country.

Speaker 6 And that doesn't get done with a quality of outcome. And as noble as that might be, you know,

Speaker 6 I remember a cartoon years ago,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I can't remember why he married us.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 his dad said, don't worry, son. He goes, what? He's about 10 years old.
I'll be working for you.

Speaker 6 Right?

Speaker 6 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 smart. Some people are stupid.
Not everybody's good looking.

Speaker 6 Some people are ugly, right? But this whole, you know, hey,

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 I just wasn't blessed with certain things, but I did have other strengths. So

Speaker 6 I'd like to see that stuff erased and us everybody be. who everybody is

Speaker 6 and and accept who what you can do and you know understand what you can't I think that better prepares people for the future.

Speaker 5 I do too.

Speaker 6 It's called a reality check.

Speaker 6 The truth isn't always sweet.

Speaker 5 It rarely is.

Speaker 6 It rarely is.

Speaker 5 Well, Keith,

Speaker 5 it was an honor to interview me, man.

Speaker 6 Honor to meet you, brother. I really, really, really,

Speaker 6 you know, I.

Speaker 6 Welcome home. Thank you, and thanks for the invite.
I hope I could,

Speaker 6 you know, do justice to your show. It was awesome.
Got a lot of impressive individuals here, right?

Speaker 5 So you're one of them.

Speaker 6 Appreciate it. Thank you for being that way.
Thank you.