#235 John "Tig" Tiegen - 13th Anniversary of the Benghazi Attacks

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John Teigen, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me.
You might regret it, but we'll see. I don't think I'll regret it.
But

yeah, so we've talked a lot about Baghazi on the show. And, you know, we've had our former colleagues on, the people that you were there with, the ones that came public, anyways.

And so you're kind of the last one of the stack. And

I've been really looking forward to this, man, ever since we talked what a couple months ago yeah it's been yeah so i appreciate you coming up thanks for having me on man appreciate it my pleasure my pleasure you ready to get into it no but i guess i got no choice i'm here now so

all right everybody starts off with an introduction john teigen a Colorado native and former United States Marine Corps sergeant, a seasoned private security contractor starting with Blackwater in 2003, later joined the CIA's elite global response staff, also known as GRS.

A hero of the 2012 Benghazi attack. You are one of the six GRS operators who defied orders to stand down, fought through 13 grueling hours of chaos, and helped save dozens of American lives.

Co-author of the best-selling book, 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi.

A dedicated husband and father of twin sons. And most importantly, out of everything, you're a Christian.
Yes, sir. Am I missing anything?

I don't think so. Well, I can think of something I'm missing.
You're running for mayor in Colorado Springs. Yeah, I am going to be doing that.
So we'll definitely hit that up. And a musician?

I'm not a, well, definitely not a musician. Or should I say a magician? Is that what that one?

You remember that interview?

I don't know if you saw that one. Anyways, oh, yeah, yeah.
Anyways,

I would say more,

I don't know, I wouldn't call myself a music writer. I just kind of wrote some stuff down.

I think I posted a couple of the poems online, and actually David Corlew

got a hold of me. He said, hey, you need to do a voiceover on this.

So I was like, you know, I hate hearing myself because I don't watch my own interviews. Me neither.
Yeah.

So you do have to fill it. So I'm like, okay, fine.
So I started reading it and I didn't like the way it flowed. So I started changing it up a little bit.

Then I had a buddy, another buddy hit me up, said, Hey, you should throw it in, you know, make it to a song. I was like, I don't know how to make anything to a song.

So he told me about a program, said, put it in here, it'll actually, it'll like sing it to you.

And that's kind of how it came that he started changing the lyrics around and kind of make it sound good. And that's kind of where it came from.
Oh, it sounds good.

Not really a, I don't think I'm a writer, music writer, but David Corlo, he's, he's, yeah, he's going to work with me, I guess. Right on, man.
He's a good dude. Oh, he is.

How long have you known David for?

Probably since like,

when did we meet him? I think it was in the book tour. Met him and Charlie.
We went to

the Grand Opry. I think it's 2014 when we first did the book tour.

Damn, right on. So

2014, 2015, sometime around there. 10, 11 years.
Yeah. He's a good man to know.
I've been buddies with him for,

man, I don't know either. Less time than that it was right when we moved here so probably around 18.
yeah but what an awesome guy oh he is he's really good he's a really good cat so

well a couple things to knock out here before we get into the interview so

i have a patreon account it's a subscription account and um kind of like only fans It's kind of like OnlyFans, except I keep at least I keep the majority of my clothes on.

So now if I was in my 20s, you know, we'd probably go the full gambit.

You do the foot thing at least, you know.

That's a fetish. But they've been with me since the very beginning.
A lot of them have, and it's turned into quite the community.

And so one of the things I do is I offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. And so this is from Ian Lane.
It's a good question.

You've seen firsthand what happens when politics and hesitation cost lives.

Do you think America is any better prepared today, or are we doomed to repeat Benghazi in a different place at a different time?

Yeah, I would say, yeah.

Because if you look at, I mean, just through the history of what things have happened, when I would say leadership is not truly held accountable, nothing changes.

But, you know, we got

it really just depends on the administration that's involved and, you know, what their mindset is actually changes it.

But until people are actually held accountable and for the even just for somebody being killed, when they just promote somebody or just reprimand them, again, your leadership and you're in that position, and that is your responsibility to make sure that they have what they need to make sure they come out alive.

And, you know, if somebody gets killed, because of your lack of leadership, your lack of oversight, you should be held accountable to where, again,

on voluntary manslaughter. It is what it is.
Until stuff like that happens, it will happen again.

yeah i mean

it's sad man it is i mean it's a tough decision to make but again you're

you're responsible for the lives of the people on the ground you know like lamb they're requesting for stuff and i was in benghazi since 2011 they were requesting for more support you know talking to the security guys because we'd go over there almost every week you know and uh

They would say, yeah, we always get denied. And asking why.
They would never tell us why. And again, this is from their mouths.

And, you know, when the concept was attacked the second time over there, there was only two security personnel over there at that time.

You know, I believe this was like in April, and it happened about one o'clock in the morning. So I was there that night, so that's how I know.
And we got told to stand down then. But again,

when stuff like that happens, you know it's a security risk, you know there's failures and you don't do anything about it. Until you people are held accountable, nothing will ever change.

Man, it's just crazy. You know, do you remember when the coast bombing was

yeah what what year was that

i want to say 20 2010 2011 or something no i think it was 2010 it was like around it was christmas

man i just

i remember working over there and it was just the same mistakes everywhere oh yeah and you'd bring it up i did it too you know and i was i actually went somewhere else

i was supposed to go back to there

and uh

yeah we kept telling him it's like we got to search these guys when they come on no no they're our friends. They're our buddies.
So again, it's like,

yeah. It was like, I can't remember, excuse me, I can't remember if it was your event in Benghazi or if it was the coast bombing, but I remember deploying in a

Christmas timeframe. I think it was right after Christmas.

I feel like it was the coast bombing that had just happened. It may have been Benghazi, but I remember getting over there and I was just like, guys, like, we're time and place predictable.

We're doing the same shit every single fucking day. You know, and I was brand new.
It was probably Coast.

It might have been Coast.

But whatever it was, I brought that up and I was like, we can't be doing this shit. Like, this is, I was new at SOC.
I just went from Blackwater to Sock and then I eventually went direct.

But I was like,

we're going to get fucking killed. Like, you guys just saw what fucking just happened.
You know, we got it. I'll be damned 24 hours later, Safe House got hit.

And, you know, luckily, nobody got killed. But,

dude, it was just the same thing over and over. And the same excuses like that.
Well, no, we don't search them because they're our friends. Or, oh, well, you know, we've been doing this for years.

And it's like, yeah, that's exactly what we need to switch it up. Exactly.
So

I wouldn't never understood that at Coast.

Never understood that at all. Were you at Coast when it happened? No,

I went to another location, but I just

I was at Coast three trips in a row. Normally you go back four times, but then I ended up getting, I had the golden visa, so I went over there.
Oh, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, yeah.

Man, I can't believe we never worked with each other. Yeah.

That's, I mean, it's, yeah, it's crazy. I went to more

foreign bases. I was at in Kabul like my first trip.
Then after that, it was out the other locations, did Iraq twice.

And yeah.

I hated Kabul. Yeah, I hated it, too.
I like the outstation. Oh, yeah, way better.
There's a lot more, a lot more going on than

too much flagpole crap. Yeah, man.
But, well, a couple other things. Everybody gets a gift.

Oh, yeah. He perked up for that one, didn't you, Axel? All right.

Easy fellow.

That's money.

So, yeah, those are vigilance league gummering bearers, legal in all 50 states. Not that you have to worry about that in Colorado.
That's right. Yeah.
But, yeah, it's just candy.

And then I got another thing for you.

All righty.

So I got a buddy over at SIG. His name's Jason.

And I told him you were coming on, and he got all excited. He wanted me to give you this.
So that is the SIG P211 GTO.

It is SIG's first 2011-style pistol.

And

they did a damn good job. I like it.
Damn, good job.

It's heavy, isn't it? I like it.

I carry the Legion. You do? The 365?

Which Legion? The X. Oh, nice.
Yeah, it's a big... This is, I mean, it's about the same weight.

I just like heavier guns, man.

Feel that trigger, man.

Yeah, they got the compensator up front.

Redid their optics line. Hey, buddy.

That is nice.

Ooh, the reset's nice. It's crisp.
It's good to go. I like that.

Not that you need that with this guy running around you all the time. You know,

he's a very good deterrent.

I'll bet he is.

He's got my acid line, that's for sure. Oh, this is sick.
Appreciate it, man. Yeah, man.
You're welcome. You're welcome.

We'll break it in on a break. Right? Heck yeah.

It'll be my first

one.

Nice.

Yeah, I got the compact and the X, and now I have this one. Nice.
Nice.

I did. I've liked SIGs.
Me too, man. Me too.
They make a great firearm. They do.

But, all right.

So let's get into the interview. So like I, like I mentioned.
Oh, I thought we were done.

Thanks for coming.

Yeah. So like I said, I want to get into

my favorite thing to do, my bread and butter is to do life stories on gentlemen like yourself. And so do life story, get into your military career, how you got into contracting, GRS.

I would love to talk about obviously what happened in Magazine and then everything that you're doing now, including running for mayor. So

where did you grow up?

Well,

I was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. So I lived there pretty much until about third grade or something like that.
So, and that's actually where I wanted to join the military.

Not really having the good, I guess, structured family life. You know, mom worked at a bar, just all that stuff.
So she was there, never really there at night and always slept during the day.

So I guess it was kind of fun.

But

oh yeah, I got some, yeah, maybe some stores I probably shouldn't say on here as a kid. But so there was a recruiting army recruiting station across the street and we lived

like on the main ave, not for a long time, but one of the main ones on the main ave. So right across the street was a recruiting station.

So to and from, usually from school, I'd always go there because, you know, parents went home anyways. Plus, they always had snacks and posters and, you know, patches they'd always give you.
Yeah.

So so I was always hang out there, and so that's kind of but it was with the army.

Um, and it was actually I wanted to fly the Apache helicopter, no kidding, yeah, that thing was just badass, man, you know, then plus Airwolf was out, I think, at that time, too.

So, if you don't know what Airwolf is,

go look it up,

but TV show, but anyway, so uh,

but uh, unfortunately, about fifth grade, I had to start wearing glasses.

So, yeah, that's kind of when I decided, you know, I was done flying. I'm like, no, can't fly.
But no, so I grew up in Iowa,

did a lot of stupid stuff as a kid there, even young. We used to jump trains.
Used to do what? Jump on the trains to go from like one part of the town to the other.

Because like our cousins lived on like the south end. We lived on the north end kind of thing.
So the trains weren't going, they'd go like 10 miles an hour. They weren't holiday ass.

So you just jumped the train. We knew the schedule.
Again, you're looking like a third grade. Damn, dude.
Yeah.

Damn.

So, Cedar, I mean, it's a pretty good-sized city. And, you know, go on the other side.
Time get late. You knew the train was coming.
You had to get down the train.

Otherwise, you had to pretty much walk back. It sucked.
Damn. Sometimes the family would give you a ride back, but not always.
They're kind of douchebags in a way. Was your dad in the picture?

No, he left, I think, when I was born or something like that. Have you met him?

Yeah. I think I finally met him the first time, like in sixth grade, I think is what it was.
Holy shit. What was that like?

And just, you know, it was awkward. It was weird, but,

you know, I actually went out. I think it was,

it might have been fifth grade, I think I met him the first time. But anyways, I went out there one time and I was going to try to stay out there and live, but that didn't turn out very well either.

Why not?

It kind of goes back to, well, growing up, getting violent, kind of

being

physically abused and stuff like that as a kid. So when I went to my dad, kind of on a different kind of scale, but he kicked me one time because I spent $2 more than I should have.

And I said, I'm not going to live here. I can just go back home.
At least I got more of my friends. So, because at the time he was in California.

So then kind of went back from California back to Colorado. That was in seventh grade.
You were physically abused as a kid? Mm-hmm.

By who?

three different people. Adults? Yeah.

Well, no, I'd say one was more of a, it was a, this was, uh, the first one, it was in Iowa. Uh,

I would say

kindergarten time frame, but it was a babysitter.

What happened? Uh,

I don't know if we're gonna detail into it, but um,

she would just kind of show uh, just do things, I guess. Sexual? Oh, yeah.

And then, well, the physical side was more from our stepdad. You know, he'd beat the shit out of us.

Sometimes he'd come home drunk, and if he had a bad night, pull us out of bed and whip our asses.

I just remember the belt, and it had metal rings in it. So he said he used it because they with the holes because it would fly through the air faster.

Just for no reason. Yep, he just had a bad night, or we left dishes in the sink or something like that.

Jeez, dude. Who was the third?

Well, the other ones was more of a sexual abuse kind of stuff, but

my mom's boyfriends used to pretty much hit all of us.

You know, I mean, we were unruly for the most part, but...

How many brothers and sisters do you have? I've got one older brother, older sister, and a younger sister. And they all got it?

Not my younger one. I don't think she really did.
What about the sexual abuse?

I don't think they did. I think it was just me.

So,

and the other one, again, was in Iowa as well. It was, again, close friend.
And then the last one was in

Colorado.

I think I was

going into fifth grade. Jeez, Tig, you had three different fucking sexual abusers by fifth grade

yep two of them the family didn't know about they only knew about the last one

what did they never got caught what's that what did they do so

how that guy got caught we're uh up in uh gold camp road in colorado and actually my cousin was there and the guy you know he would bring he bought his liquor he was actually he was a stock car driver or something like that one of those little short speed track racers so he was pretty well known i guess we didn't really know because it was like our second year being in colorado for the most part and uh but anyways so we were up there and he started playing like a truth or dare game and

he was like you know truth or dare i can't remember exactly what it was but i think he pulled his pants down that's when my cousin grabbed me and we took off you know

people in colorado know where gold camp road is you know we pretty much went from gold camp road and we hiked it back to manitou springs and i had the cops call and that's kind of how that went but

come to find out, he was doing that to a couple of other kids, but they let him off, saying there was not enough evidence.

Do you mind if we dive into this a little more? Go ahead. You know, it's just, I totally wasn't expecting this to come up.

In fact, when we just reviewed the interview, he said, oh, no, he had a great childhood. And,

but, you know, it

I can't believe

how common this is in people's childhood. And, you know, I just, I found it out through interviewing.

I'll bet 50% of the, of the people that have been on here have, have been through physical or sexual abuse as a kid. I think that's why it's probably more than that, just ones don't talk about it.

You know, like the mill, if you look in the military, a lot of the, I bet you majority of them that had a semi-rough childhood were probably abused in one way or another.

I mean,

and out of that, I mean, there's only so many.

A lot of times, this will come up after the interview or before the interview, and they don't want to talk about it because they've made amends with the abuser

or whatever. But

I mean,

so, anyways, kind of where I'm going with this is, you know,

I've learned like how common this is through interviews, diving into childhood. It just keeps coming up.
And it's always

almost always is a shock because it just comes out

and so I started

I hate hearing that and I started diving into child sex exploitation and child trafficking and abuse and all that stuff and and kind of exposing how how common it is it's bad in today's society.

But you know,

what I want to ask is if you don't want to go into detail, that's fine. I totally understand and I'm not going to press you on it.

But, you know, one of the things i like to do uh because we've had so many of these stories come out is talk about you know kids that are in that predicament right now as we're sitting here talking yep you know and fuck man three abusers by the time you're in fifth grade yep

how do you get i mean

Well, I mean, for the most, I mean, the first two, you don't really

think anything's wrong, honestly. I mean, hell is so damn young.
I don't know if anything's wrong or not. Um, I think that the first one stopped just because we moved,

you know, she was, again, she was the babysitter.

And, you know, again, she, I don't remember exactly why, but you know, you know, she was babysitters during the day, mainly during the summer.

Um, could have been maybe because school started and she couldn't come over no more. Um,

but, you know, for

me,

You know, even though I was running for mayor, you going through and they're teaching you about the things that's going on in here. And I'm like going, you know, when these things happen to me,

none of this stuff was brought up when I was a kid, I remember, you know, going through the problems and stuff. And

for like kids that are going through it, my biggest fault, I originally didn't want kids because I didn't want to have to deal with,

you know, my own kids going through the same shit that I did. So

that's why I waited till 35 when I had enough close calls to say, well, you know, I better have kids if I want my genes to continue.

So again, that's why I decided other than that, it's just like, man, society is just fucked up. Yeah.

And we don't protect our kids. You know, you do have some parents, again, they'll see somebody doing something to their kid and they'll go kill them.
And then what do they got to do?

They got to go spend time in court, which I think is horseshit. Somebody's hurting your kids.
You know, that's our number one asset in this world is our kids. That's our future.

So to allow things like that to happen, that's why I was kind of afraid to have kids because if somebody did that to my kid,

I'm going going to kill him.

So,

you know, I talked to my kids about it. You know, they don't know my history, but I always made sure I let them know.

You know, that was the biggest thing about the last guy was he would use, you know, again, you know, what, fourth grade, you're what, eight, nine, or something like that. You still don't really know.

So in here, again, he was like, you know, if you tell anybody, I'm going to, I'm going to kill you or I'm going to kill your brother and sister because it was in an apartment and they he just lived like right upstairs.

And he was a pretty big big guy you know um he's bigger than my uh mom's boyfriend so you know as a kid you don't know so my biggest thing is telling my kids if anybody ever tells you to keep a secret on let me know because you know who i am i'm gonna kill him i got no problem telling my kids that that way they don't have to fear somebody else

geez so with the with the sitter was this like an everyday occurrence or or every time she'd been every time so it was pretty much just during the week

how i mean what would she say to you would she say don't tell anybody or oh yeah

they they all said that don't tell anybody that's the biggest thing about telling the kids anybody tells you do not tell anybody there's a problem especially as a kid they shouldn't have to have a secret as a kid

geez so again that's just parents actually having those conversations with their kids just to make sure you know even going back to the whole crap that they're teaching kids in school forcing that lb et all that hidden stuff same thing if anybody says don't tell your, you should be telling your parents because they're doing something that is wrong, period.

Did you wind up telling anybody?

About the first two, no.

And the second guy was upstairs in an apartment? No, that was the third one. Who was the second guy? That was in Iowa.
He lived down the street. And I just remember it was

that would only happen twice only, but it was just because I spent the night. He had a kid the same age and stuff like that.

You know, I think they worked in the bar with my mom or something like that.

And the third guy lived above you? Yeah.

How would that happen?

So he had,

again, take you, they'd say they're going to take us to the racetrack or something like that. And that's when it would happen.
Or again,

he said he could watch us. or watch me.

He never did anything when the other kid, brother and sister, were around.

So take you to he had a

used car lot right on film

Not Fillmore right on Platte kind of next really close to Union. The building's still there, but obviously he's not.
But that's where, again,

he'd try to, that's when things would happen mainly there. So I try to not go,

but again,

sitting there telling you, you know, don't tell your parents or I'm going to kill you, kill them. So you don't tell them why you don't want to go.
so sometimes you still had to go

shut dude so

and physical abuse

fucking hey man

yeah there's people that had worse than me

but that's probably why I was so kind of protective I guess and violent growing up so who are you protective of

uh just like other friends other people being picked on and bullied and stuff like that so did your mom have any idea that this was going on?

No, but I do. So when she finally, well, when everything kind of did get out in the open, the cops are called and all that.

I do remember when

I think I was, I took off. When was this? It might have been like in eighth grade or something by now.

You know, as a kid, we don't really have a curfew or anything. And I think I was out and I remember coming back.
And I was coming in through the garage.

And usually they're up and partying almost all the time. So they're up.
I remember, I just, I don't know why they were talking about it, but I know my sister was there talking to my mom about it.

And, you know, she was kind of, you know, because I was getting in a lot of trouble.

And my sister is probably, you know, trying to explain to my mom, I was like, well, it's probably this stuff. You probably need to go see somebody.

I just remember her sitting there saying, he needs to quit using this as an excuse and just get over it.

Your mom said that?

Of course, they didn't know I was out there. And then I was just like, I just kind of said, fuck this, and I just took off and went to my best friend's house and just stayed there for a few days.

Jeez,

are you close with your mom now?

No, I really haven't talked to her since like

2000,

maybe

four or five.

Why did you quit talking to her? That's another story.

So got a step, had a stepdaughter.

I'm on my second marriage, but my previous wife had a stepdaughter. And she was getting into a lot of trouble and just kind of doing her own thing for the most part.
And we were disciplining her and

came to a point. I think her mom was actually, she was in Kuwait at this time.
And so I was kind of at home and we were getting ready to go back to Kuwait.

Because I think I came back to pick her up to bring her back to Kuwait.

Something like that. And well,

she was constantly running away and stuff like that.

And one time she just kind of disappeared. So we're calling, calling, you know, calling my younger sister, my mom, trying to figure out where she might be, calling her friends.

Well, got a hold of her friends, and her friends were saying that my sister was picking her up from school every day.

This is why her grades were failing. So he called her and said, do you know where she is? And she's like, I haven't heard from her, yada, yada, yada.

Well, me and my buddy went over there at night and just kind of went around her house because we just kind of assumed that's probably where she was sure enough we heard her voice in there and uh

so we called the cops cops came and i just remember my mom coming and she didn't say hi or nothing to you know me and my buddy at all you know the cops just sitting there as we're talking explaining what was happening And, you know, she did, my mom just comes walking by really fast and cops like, who's that?

And that's my mom. You know, she's not even going to say anything.

probably because she knew she was there. She had been gone for like a week now.
We've been trying to look for her.

Well,

obviously, cops get involved, child protective service gets involved, they start talking to her. Next thing you know, I'm being looked at for

molesting stepdaughter.

What?

So they had convinced her that if they if

she told them that I was touching her, that they, that she could leave and come live with them.

And that's when I was like, fuck you, I'm done talking with you guys.

Because that just, that, that does more than what they think they thought it would do. Because that destroys somebody's life.

This is when, again, I was getting ready to actually

start working with

Blackwater and all that, doing all my background

something like that. You're done.

Jeez.

So,

how would you internalize all the abuse as a kid?

Um,

it's just kind of one of those things that you can't control it. You know, one thing I knew wasn't my fault, so I was never, I never had that, never felt anything like that.

My thing was just like, where was the protection that you're supposed to have? Where are all the adults, you know, especially after when they let the dude off?

And I was just like, this is just fucked up.

You know, it was just

this when I kind of knew like I have I had to be my own protector and pretty much from that moment on I was

when did you realize it was wrong

uh when my cousin yanked me out of the car and I think I kind of knew because I didn't want to go anymore but again I didn't know what to do what to say to anybody so

I think during that time, I think I knew it was wrong.

Why did your cousin yank you out of the car?

He was two years older than I was, and I think he's just kind of like, you know, like, yeah, fuck you. Plus, he's kind of party Indian, so he has that mentality.

Damn, man, damn. So,

so, what did you know where I'm kind of going with this is there are a lot of kids out there that go through this. I have no idea how many, but it's an overwhelming amount.

And, um, I mean, one is too many. What advice do you have for kids that are dealing with this right now?

My

Tell some, find somebody to help you until you do, honestly.

If you don't trust your parents, you know, again, you can call 911 and you can tell them.

Find somebody.

Damn, man. But the lot of the problem is there's so many people that cry wolf out there that it hurts the true people.
It really does. Yeah.
Yeah.

Again, don't just because somebody's,

I guess, don't, you don't like them, don't do that shit to them either because it destroys their lives.

Man, I'm sorry I had to go through that. Yeah, I mean,

I would like to change things, but it also made me who I am, so it's kind of hard to say, would you? Yeah. You know, because I may

went a whole nother direction and did something else. And

so.

Damn.

Would you talk about it with your siblings?

Any of the abuse?

Sexual or physical?

No, we talked about getting beat by our stepdads and stuff. I know he was an asshole.

Did you ever stand up to him?

No.

I know I didn't. I think my brother might have, but then he just

beat you harder. That's all they would do.
I mean, we're kids.

The size difference, you know, it's amazing. You ain't not much you can do about it.

I know my mom tried to stand up for us a couple of times, but I know he put her in the hospital a few times um threw him down the stairs and all that stuff you know separate and separating her shoulder and all that

shit man

have you witnessed all that

that's heavy stuff dude yeah foster homes ain't that great either same same thing they're very abusive you've been in foster homes yeah

How did you wind up in a foster home? Mainly, I think the babysitter once left us as when I was in first grade,

around first grade. And we were, again, we were asshole kids, man.
We were intense. You know, no discipline, no supervision.
And she couldn't deal with us no more. So she called the cops.

My mom, again,

she was at the bar. Nobody could get a hold of her.
So the cops came and got us. Foster home for about a week

for that one. Again, that they were just, again, kind of same thing.

Very, very abusive physically. And then

the second one was physically and sexually again.

So the worst one, though, is that one, my mom was in the hospital. I don't remember exactly what for,

but I remember them walking us there so we could see her from the hospital room, which was kind of cool, I guess, as a kid.

Walking back, I didn't have any shoes, and I stubbed my toe, and I ripped it open pretty good. It was pretty gnarly.
Screaming, crying.

Couldn't walk. So they were nice at that time, but then we got into the house.
They beat the shit out of me because I was crying.

Damn, man. Yeah.

That's a rough childhood. Jeez.

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Well, again, I think I already kind of had it from the recruiting station. You know, just kind of seeing them, you know, compared to my own family life, seeing how they

portrayed themselves, I guess. Yeah.
And that's kind of what i wanted um but again how i kept wanting to do it from pretty much you know you're looking

like second third grade time frame when this is going on and then still wanting to do it you know all through all the other stuff i think i just always

wanted you know i did like a lot of reports in high school on vietnam war and stuff like that did a lot of look into that how they fought and stuff and

It just always intrigued me. Did you, I mean, I'm just, what's your relationship like with your dad now? Is it non-existent? Do you know?

He, uh, so he actually was, he was, he lived with me for a long time. Um,

and uh, he was actually watching watching one of our house when we were overseas doing a lot of contract work and stuff like that.

Uh, but then I got divorced in uh

2023, and then he's kind of out on his own now. So, pretty much about like 2006 till 2023, he lived with us.

so i had a you know property out down in uh pueblo county i had an you know in-law house that's kind of where he stayed so he kind of watched you know with the cattle and stuff like that while i was gone and you know so he did some help around the house or around the property how do you think that abuse is affected if it has your adulthood

i'm pretty sure it has in one way or another i mean i don't see how it couldn't yeah i mean i don't think i have that my wife would probably say

the romantic lovey-lovey thing.

Pretty rough on the edges for the most part, but

definitely don't, you know, trust really a whole lot of trust.

In anybody? Not really.

You know, so.

I mean, I trust her and my kids.

But, you know, just been so, again,

betrayal, it's been there forever. You know, even one of my other, my, I would say the second stepdad,

he, uh, so when you're a kid, you get a job, you can't open a bank account, you have to have a cosigner.

So he was the co-signer on the account. And I started work when I was like,

when he first, when he could, like 15 or 14.

And so I was just saving up money. You know, making a lot of money, but I was saving up.
I think I was supposed to have like four to six thousand dollars in the account.

And I was probably the only kid in ninth grade that had a car.

But I went to go because the battery died. So I went to go buy a battery and I was getting denied.
So I called the bank. There was no money in it.
He stole all my money.

Damn, dude. So my boss actually, he would just cash my checks for me and just give me cash.

I quit my bank accounts until I could actually get my own account.

What are your relationships like with the rest of your siblings um

we talk here and there but they don't my like i don't talk to my younger sister she was part of the whole uh problem with the stepdaughter uh my older one and she lives in ohio and then my brother he works for the post office so he's always working it's kind of like somebody in the military you just never see him

but you know just kind of like with oz and tanto we just kind of talk every now and then hit each other up yeah so yeah

do you guys talk about what happened nowadays?

No, I think we did once, me, my brother, when we were drunk.

It's usually when you're drinking, talk about it.

Man, I hate hearing this shit.

Didn't expect that, did you?

Not at all. Not at all.
But I'm glad we went there, so thank you.

Again, my thing is, so

I used to kind of keep almost everything to myself, but you always hear like, you know, you got to tell your story because, you know, somebody else is probably going through it.

They're going through something worse. They don't know how to deal with it.
Don't know what to do, especially with kids. Yeah.

You know, so my biggest thing is, you know, my best thing to do is tell it because more kids might hear it because of who I am.

And Morgan likely to finally say something is happening and it shouldn't be happening. So it's really, it's it's better for them.
I mean, for me, healing, it doesn't really heal me at all.

It's just, it is what it is. There's nothing I can do about it.
Can't change it.

I dealt with it. It is what it is again.
But it's for me, letting kids know,

or even adults know, like, again, it's not your fault. At least I did know that growing up.
I knew it wasn't my fault. But talk about it, get it out.

Otherwise, that demon is just going to destroy you. And for kids, find somebody to protect you.
Talk. Tell somebody it's happening.
There's nothing wrong with you.

Just make it in. Stop it by telling somebody.
What were your grandparents like?

My grandpa.

Is this a generational thing? That's what I'm getting at. I don't think so.
I mean, I didn't really, I mean, my grandpa, he World War II vet, my grandma, they were just stubborn.

stubborn people.

That's on my mom's side. I didn't really know my grandma on my dad's side.
I knew my grandpa.

He was a Christian guy the whole time, you know, that I've known him or knew him.

My grandpa, he was just a stubborn old guy. You know, just a mean, grumpy guy.
Sounds like my grandpa. Yeah.
This dude, oh my God.

I don't know how he lived as long as he did either. He was in so many accidents.
He fell down. So he worked at Quaker in Iowa.
He fell down an elevator shaft

down like all the pipes pipes down below i think like four stories

lived walked out um they got in a major car crash again metal just wrapped around him lived walked out he's just this dude would not die

i remember when i stayed them one one summer

what was it some i was listen to i think i wanted to I was watching a TV show. He wanted to listen to music, so he would turn his shit up.
I would turn the TV up.

And he would tell my grandma go tell that little i could hear him go tell that little to turn that off and get outside

he wasn't but he was i mean he was a he was a happy guy but no i mean that's it never they were just kind of mean they were never abusive they're just you know disciplined i would say old school yeah just old school you know the the reason i was bringing that up is you know you see a lot of families

if that's what you want to call it but um

you know this gets carried on from generation to generation to generation. It becomes like a generational curse.
Yeah. In fact, I got

somebody on my team who's been through a lot of that kind of stuff. Sounds like a very similar situation.

And so, you know, what I want to ask, and I always commend him because I know where he came from.

And, you know, I guess I can't say I know where he came from and know what it's like to go through that because

I was fortunate. I didn't have to go through that but I always tell him how proud of him I am that that he broke the curse yeah and that his kids are his kid is uh is

is doing awesome and won't have to experience any of that

do it that's their a lot of their fear I think so what I want to ask is and that's why I was asking about your brothers and sisters too to see if they

were able to break that and so with you I just want to ask, you know, what, what does it feel like to

break that in

the family lineage?

I mean, knowing my kids, it feels great knowing my kids have to go through that.

I mean,

it's something that I'm glad they never have to experience. But

a lot of times when you do break it, if you never talk to them about it, they can come right back.

So I think that's, that's all,

it's, it sucks to have to talk about it, but talking to your kids about it, even if you because you don't know if they're going through it or not. I guarantee my mom had no idea,

obviously. So, I think having those conversations with your kids and letting them know, like, hey, people shouldn't be touching you here, touching there.

And if they say, don't tell anybody, you better tell somebody,

regardless if they threaten your life or someone else's life, because they can't do nothing to you. I guarantee you, they can't.
It's just an empty threat, especially no one I know now,

Man.

Scary shit, man. Scary shit.
Yeah, because the moment law enforcement gets involved in the scene, it's not a Hollywood movie. They're done.

I mean, they may get away with it, but you're going to be pulled away from that environment completely. So either way, you're still protected.
Yep.

Man.

Well, once again, man, I just thank you for going into that because I think it's important to talk about, you know,

for the upcoming generations.

And

it seems to be happening more and more and more

as time goes on, or at least it's exposed a lot more. And well, it goes back to the, like I was saying, the accountability.
They think people cannot be,

there's no rehab for that.

They should never see daylight ever again when they do that. Yeah.
That's the problem. I'm with you.

So let's get into military stuff.

When did you join?

So I decided to join the Marine Corps when I saw Full Metal Jacket.

So I think I was, what, 89 or something like that when that popped out? So I knew I was going to join. I still kind of was going to do the Army.

But being the hoodlum that I was, I saw that. I was like, you know, I need more of that.

I knew it.

So I'm talking talking about the boot camp scene, not the after. Actually, I don't really watch the whole combat part.
I just like the boot camp and it's awesome. Maybe I'll see if I can find it.

But I got a picture of my kid.

I still watch it

downstairs watching it. And it just kind of started.
My son literally stood there during the whole entire boot camp part of the movie and was just watching. Then I stopped it just before

Gomer freaking whacked himself. So I was like, okay, you know, how'd you like it? He said, that was cool.
I'm like, see?

Oh, shit. So I ended up doing the delayed entry program in the Marine Corps.
You don't go to boot camp, but it does kind of help towards promotion.

So I did a, you kind of sign a thing saying you're going to do it. You have to go through like the weekend stuff.
So that kind of helped me stay out of trouble.

And then, yeah, then November of 95, I went to boot camp. And I'm going to tell anybody, if you cherish holidays, don't go to boot camp during holidays.
It'll ruin it for you.

I used to love Christmas.

Now it's just kind of like, eh, our Christmas tree was a, was a red light, red lens flashlight in the tree. Nice.
And we had a single old Christmas tree to it.

So boot camp was, I thought it was easy, man. I mean, if you're physically fit,

to me, it was a cakewalk. I mean, I didn't mind getting yelled at.
I got slammed a few times, but I just giggle. She's like, this is awesome.

What did it feel like to get the hell out of your family predicament?

So

I kind of left when I was in ninth grade. I moved in with my best friend's girlfriend's parents.
So I was, actually, I was,

when I got my job after my dad, my stepdad stole that crap from me, I kind of just said, I'm done. And I left.

Moved in with a stripper when I was 16.

What? Yeah. And how did you meet a a stripper at 16? One of my mom's friends.
Was your mom a stripper? No.

I don't know how they met. I think it was over drugs.
Holy shit, dude. So moved in there with them and then with her.
And it was all normal at first. And then it turned to more of a relationship.

But then I ended up moving out. and actually moved into the back of the restaurant that I was working at.
So I had a bed back there and I'll just go there and I'd sleep.

Did that for a while and then I moved in with my best friend's

parents,

his girlfriend's parents. So you met a stripper who was a friend of your mom's and moved in with her.
Yeah, she tried to, yeah, she called the cops on her and tried to get her for all kinds of stuff.

But again, at the like statutory rape was what it was. But nothing was actually happening at that time anyways.
I just wanted to get the hell out of that place.

You know, she had already had drug raids done on her and stuff like that. So I just had to get out of there.

So,

yeah.

How old was the stripper? 24.

And this turned into a relationship? Yeah.

What's going on in the house that you're living in when you're living with a stripper? What?

What do you mean?

I mean, is it like

what the hell was happening? They come home and there's a party every night? No, actually, she didn't throw any parties in her house at all. Um, in the apartment, she never had any.

We they're always across the across the hall, so I used to go over there and hang out with those guys more than anything.

Geez, dude, yeah, um, but no, I mean, it was again, it was just a good way to get out. My actually, one of my best friends ended up moving in there too, as well for a while.
Um,

yeah, it was a week, again, weird upbringing, but

why did you leave there?

It just

wasn't very good. You know,

I don't really know how to explain it, but it just kind of

think it was more of the relationship side of it where, again, you couldn't go out and she was going out kind of a thing. And then I noticed she was, she had drugs.

Again, I just hated the drugs scene just because of my parents.

So I was like, I'll screw this. And I moved out.
My boss, again, he said, you can go stay back here in the storage area. I mean, put put your bed, put, I sat a bed, a dresser,

everything back there. Man.

I'd just take a shower at school

until I moved in with my best friend's parents. And then

I was really jacked up in my junior year, and I was playing football, you know, staying with them.

I had a third-degree separation on my shoulder, and I had to have surgery.

Well,

it came to a point where they actually had to go and yell at my mom because obviously they don't really have custody over me. So she had to sign the paperwork for me to actually get the surgery done.

So here I am. I have my bones sticking up like this for about three months and I'm in a sling.

And I finally got the surgery done.

But yeah, they had to force her to sign the paperwork for me to get the surgery.

How the hell did you find Christianity through all of that?

I think it started as a kid. We always went to church and stuff like that.

So I always liked the music, it was just weird. All this is going on, and you guys are going to church.
My parents, not really, it was mainly my um

my grandma, um, god, I can't remember, and then some other people in the family, um, some of the older ones that would like take us to church and stuff like that. So, we did a

we're on welfare, so like if we wanted Christmas, Thanksgiving, all that stuff, we always had, we always went to the church to go get food, go get presents and stuff like that, and see Santa Claus, who's always at the church.

That's where we we got stuff from.

So

damn Tig.

But, you know, I always believed in God and Jesus, always didn't really understand it.

Got baptized as a kid.

The second time I did it, I did it because of a girl.

Man, I'm just

whatever it's worth, man, I'm just really proud of you and getting out of that shit. I mean, a lot of people never make it out of that.
And

I think I had one, so

getting a lot of trouble.

I had to go see counselors and crap.

I remember my mom was inside. This is before they had the white noise machine outside the counselor's office.

I remember the office building was. It was on Academy.

I think I remember exactly which building it was, but it was actually right next to the recruiting, the Marine recruiting station I ended up going to.

But I was sitting outside the office, you know, my brother, my sister, we're all always in trouble. So again, it was just that family, you know, just getting in trouble constantly.

I won't tell their stories, but I was there. And I remember,

you know, the mom talking about us really not in a good way. But and then the counselor just said, you know, talking about me.
He's like, you know, he's going to end up just like them.

He's going to be in jail. He's not going to amount to anything.

And that's, I just kind of sat there. I heard that and I I got up and I left.
I never went back there, but I was like, fuck you, you ain't going to tell me who I am and what I'm going to do.

So

that was probably part of the motivation.

But I still got in trouble, but I also kind of knew that fine line of what you could do and what you shouldn't do.

So. How do you think you learned that?

Just

from other people around you, what kind of, you know, the crap they got into, you know, what would happen to them.

So I just learned like you can only push things so far.

Like I never like got into,

you know, robberies and stuff like that.

You know,

I don't know why this just popped in my head. So in Iowa, when just when it was before I got into first grade, we had moved to this new house from the other one that were that I had the babysitter at.

I would sneak out like at midnight before first grade.

And I learned that. Before first grade? Before first grade.
And we live next to a college, so a bunch of apartments and stuff like that. A lot of people didn't lock their cars back then.

So I'd open a car and I steal all the change. I did this for a while.
And probably, I think it was about the second month because I wasn't smart enough.

I'd probably do it like almost like every weekend, like every Sunday, I think is what it was.

Or something. I was consistent.
Well, these college kids decided to hold a sting on me.

I think they caught me like a three in the morning.

What do you do to a pre-first grader that's

taking change out of your car? Oh, my God. So

they grabbed me, right? I'm just like, I'm just a little shit. I'm just like, let me go.
I'm cussing up a storm and this and that. What are you, like, six? Oh, yeah.

Probably five.

Dude. And

they're just like, what the hell? Are you the one in here? You know, tell us the truth. Are you the one stealing it? We already called the cops and

like, you know, we'll help you out. I'm like, Yeah, I've been the one doing it.
It's like, why are you doing it? Well, I want to eat because, again, we a lot of times we didn't.

That was usually we go to the grocery store to steal and steal food from the produce section. You know, we got kicked out of high-vee a lot just because we'd sit there and eat.

At least I did, especially if the strawberries were good. But then they're just looking at me like, are you serious? Like, yeah, just, you know, usually I just go buy food with it.

So the cops got there. They said, oh, no, he wasn't.
They told him that I was out wandering around.

They didn't tell me that.

They told me, don't ever do this again. And I didn't.

Damn, Tig. But no, the cops kept me.
They brought me back to the house.

I learned a lie pretty good.

My mom and

the stepdad, like, what the hell are you doing? What's going on? I just, I just started wanting to go for a walk.

So I got my ass beat, but not as bad. Just a couple spankings, a couple slaps, not the normal beating.
So it wasn't too bad.

I forgot what I was talking about before that, but no, I just, I don't know, just that just kind of made me talk about. Oh, yeah.
So I didn't, like, wasn't no grand theft auto.

I didn't do no armed robberies, didn't, you know, kind of quit stealing after I left Iowa. You know, we used to break into people's houses and garages and steal stuff, but

kind of getting went to Colorado, stopped doing that stuff.

Mainly for me, it was just a lot of fights.

That was really it. It was about the only biggest thing I was, because once I, especially, when I started working, I was more about making money than doing anything else.
I mean, hell, I was 14.

I had a Mustang 2. I bought for 300 bucks.

The only thing I had to do was put new tires on it. and

traded that and

got a 84 blazer. You know, I was always, you know, from a kid, I was working.
I was always trying to make money. You know, even mowing lawns, I always try to figure out how to make money.

Usually that's how you bought your toys, especially G.I. Joe's.

So I always worked for everything that I had. Nothing was really given, even during Christmas and all that crap.
Damn, man.

So you were surviving

from

a very early age.

Jeez.

all right let's go back to the marine corps yeah so went to boot camp again it was it was fun i enjoyed it it wasn't to me it wasn't hard but we had 84 recruits and only two drill instructors so we got away with everything i mean normally it wasn't wouldn't it be that way it would normally be like 50 but uh bill clinton had a shutdown during that time so everybody got backlogged so anyways

Got in there, wanted to do infantry. It was just a bullet catcher.

Picked up rank pretty fast because, again, I just knew what I wanted to do. I enjoyed that stuff.
You excelled at this. Yeah.

You know, became an infantry squad leader, you know, became sergeant within like three years.

So I was a squad leader within two years.

So.

What was it like for you? I mean,

let me rephrase that.

How close were you with your guys in the Marine Corps? I think for the most part, we were fairly close. I mean,

obviously, you had to separate the rank for the most part. You know, you kind of did, kind of did it.
Sometimes

I think it's more hurtful to a unit than it is helpful.

But a lot of guys can't keep that separation of the rank. You get too buddy-buddy, and that's where they want that because they're like, oh, I don't really got to listen to him.

He's my best bud, even though he's your squad leader.

So that's kind of the separation. But the most part, I think, you know, we'd always hang out.
We'd do things and what we could. But my biggest thing you know

was

again doing a lot of things i did in school the wars and all that

reading what a lot of the problem was was the guys the junior guys didn't know what to do if the squad leader got whacked or the platoon sergeant got whacked so when i went in my goal was to make sure like my team leaders knew what a platoon sergeant's job was

So they always knew like ranks above them. And I told them, you got to tell your guys what your job is and what my job is kind of thing.
Because again, war happens, people die.

If you don't know how to handle things and move step up, it makes, you might not know everything, but it starts guiding them in the right direction. So I always made sure, you know,

that,

again, like, yeah, they knew other people's jobs, even radio. So even on the Marine Corps, we saw a radio like maybe once in four years.

Of course, that was back in the 90s. Now I think everyone has a radio.
But

me being a leader is just making sure that they're, that your juniors are capable of doing your job and somebody else's job above you that's what a leader does it doesn't make doesn't you don't stand there and just be like oh i'm the all-powerful like no they need to be able to step up and take your spot if something happens

so i enjoyed it i mean it was a lot of fun i've they kind of made me the remedial uh guy because i was kind of i was an asshole it wasn't nice um

but So like all the guys who would fell PT, I was the one they send to in the whole platoon. It was fun.

what did the stability feel like i mean coming from an environment like that into oh the consistency was awesome i enjoyed it

it was way better so i mean but i was in 29 palms so that part kind of sucked but i didn't really it doesn't bother me too much because i already had a vehicle if you didn't have a vehicle it really sucked

so i don't know if you know where 29 palms is but It's a miserable base, but training. I've never been there.
Training is awesome. You can't get any more better training.
Everything's live fire.

nice yeah so a lot of well a lot of guys that come from like pendleton and other locations they end up whacking other guys because they're not used to adjusting fire and it's all live fire

so you know it was cool being able to call you know mortars we got to actually i got to call on a cobra one time you know you usually don't get to do that as a squad leader yeah but out there it's different it was really cool Did you deploy with the Marine Corps?

No, we just did, I just did

deployments. Well, I did, but not to combat.
I did Okinawa, Thailand, Tinian, and Guam.

That was it. That was just all peacetime stuff.
How long were you in the Marine Corps? Four years. Four years? Yeah,

I was going to re-up

and I was going to do MSG duty. I didn't want to do boot camp crap.
I didn't want to be a drill instructor. Even though it was fun, I didn't want to do it.

I didn't want to do recruiting duty because I would come home and I would do recruiting duty so you can stay home longer. And

so I want to do MSG duty. Well,

I went, went to the school and

about a month into it, then you go in because you do all the Psyche Val stuff and then they're looking at everything over. It's a three-month school.

Go down, I have my interview and you know they're bringing up things.

Again, protecting people for the most part. Well, I put one kid in the hospital for about three days.

And I think it was my junior year or senior year.

And they asked me, okay, what happened? I told them, well, the guy punched a kid in a wheelchair.

And, you know, he was like some

number one wrestler or something in Colorado at the time. And,

you know, nobody wanted to step up to him. But my,

I'm just like, nobody's going to hit a kid in a wheelchair. You know, and

the kid's name was Richie. You know, he's kind of like a, he couldn't really move himself either.
You know, he kind of could and stuff. So even from junior high, I'd push him around to his classrooms.

If I saw him, anybody picked on him, I would thump him.

Nobody really picked on him like that, but like this guy did. And so, my buddy's like, dude, there's no way this guy punched him.

And he's like, He's right over there. So, you go ask him if he says something.
I'm gonna floor him.

And I remember my buddy Josh asked him, Hey, I heard you hit you punched Richie in the chest. And he started laughing, Hell yeah, I did.
And I was blacked out,

yeah.

And I guess they for what they said, it took 10 teachers to pull me off of them

Good for you, so they brought that up and then they brought up my childhood thing with the with the guy molesting me So they actually used that against me to kick me out of the MSG school.

Are you fucking serious?

That's what I was like that's and that that's when I said fuck this. I'm leaving the corps

holy shit. Why the fuck would they use that against you? I have no idea.
How did they find out about it? Because it was in the police records.

Because it's even though it's your kid, but they can look it all the way back.

Shit, man. Yep.

So you felt betrayed again. Mm-hmm.

And you got out. Yep.
And then once she, well, once she knew I, well, that kicked me out.

Because what they said, they said, you need to go see a shrink and get this dealt with before you can go over there. I'm like, deal with what? It's not my fucking problem.

It's not my fault. And I said, fuck this.

So then I got shipped back to my unit. My

ex found out. She got a hold of me.
And then we have when I was in Okinawa.

And then I came back and we got married.

Shit, man.

So you left all that stability for what felt like a betrayal again.

And then

what did you do from there?

Well, it got out.

She got stationed in Washington. She was in the Army.
She had joined. And

so I was stationed in Washington.

I tried to do the whole

dependent thing.

Try for about two months.

Dude, I had to work.

I was like, man, I'm going to go to Subway. I got to go do something.
And finally, I just went into heating air conditioning, actually started off as a gas piper.

So just, you know, doing gas lines and stuff like that and then

9-11 hit um i remember you know getting ready to go to work and watching you know hearing about the first plane and watching the second plane i just looked looked at her said we're going to war this is an attack

and uh

so i told the um i called my boss or my boss said hey i'm not coming in i'm going to the recruiting station

so

Went the recruiting. Of course, they were pissed.
They're like, oh, this ain't no big deal. I was like, you guys no idea what's going on, do you?

So I went there and, you know, they're talking with them. And they just kind of look at me.
I already had a 10% disability rating. They're like, we ain't going to need you.
We don't need no broke.

I don't, I get it. They're like, we got, we don't need no broke dick.
We're going to have so many people join us. I was like, man, it's fucked up.
So, look, whatever, went back.

And she ended up getting orders to go to Kuwait, move back to Colorado.

This I didn't really know about contracting yet. So I actually started going to school for heating and air conditioning.
The money was good.

I mean, I was making between five to a thousand bucks a day.

So it really wasn't money why I did the job. But

I just hated it. I mean, it was, it just felt like something was missing.
I'd just be pissed off every day at work.

Like, you work at your own pace, so it ain't like I had so many things because you got paid by the job. Whatever you got done is what you got paid for.

So

when she was over there, she found out about contracting. And that's when, and then

she came back

in 2003, I think early, but I still had to finish my school. Still wanted to finish it.
And then she went, and then I stayed.

And once I graduated, I went over in July 2003 to Kuwait for my first contracting. And I was only making 13 bucks an hour.
Well, what was the first contract?

Doing the gate guard stuff for Camp Doha.

I got a lot of trouble there, too.

What kind of trouble? Well, you'd have guys coming back. You'd have dudes coming from Kuwait, from Iraq, you know, from the combat zone.
You know, you could see their combat units.

They're coming down just for like RR.

Well, if you didn't have some kind of thing, piece of paper from some colonel or something saying, you know, you're allowed to come on the base, they wouldn't let you on.

So I'm just like, you know, these dudes are driving, you know, from there to here. I'm like,

and you see your highest-ranking individuals here, and I tell them what's going on. I just let them on.

I just say, you know, you're going to have a big issue getting off if you don't get this. They probably won't let you off, but

have a good time. And when I was like, just please do me a favor.
Just don't tell them who let you on because I won't be able to do it for anybody else. Well, they finally figured it out.

Right on, man.

So

they put me out. They took me off gate, put me interior stuff, and it was just like, like, whatever.

But to me, it was just bullshit. It was like, these are coming.
You guys are here in Kuwait. You can go out in town at the freaking mall and hang out.
These guys are coming from a combat zone.

You can't let them come here and hang out and do some R ⁇ R for a day. Like, screw that.
Yeah.

So, yeah.

So, where do you go from there?

That's when you started looking at the contracts that are going on. Again, you're looking 03 to 04.

You know, that's when Blackwater really blew up with the four guys who got dragged and hung on the bridge and stuff like that.

So trying to find companies that were reliable contract companies because there are so many fly-by-night ones. I mean, ones that would actually

do drive-bys on military bases. I don't know if you heard about that stuff.

Yeah, some of these contracts, I mean, Americans doing, it's like, what are you guys doing? So

many drive-bys. Yeah, like going by a military and shooting at them.
Are you serious?

when the hell was this happening oh like the 0405 like really the wild west stuff holy shit yeah it was stupid man so a lot of it's just like so you had to be careful um there's one that i know one a couple of the guys that i was doing security with one of them was named little he actually ended up going with blackwater but

um

But he was going to go in there and do security work. And I was like, dude, you're not,

you don't have enough training for that. You know, know you you're going from an admin guy in the army to doing psd work over there and only going to do give you a two-week train up

now him and his own team have getting whacked like a month in

damn um but

it was some of the other ones again they're paying you like 90 grand like for a month two months at a time but some of them they're not even going there with real guns they're going like broomsticks painted as guns and all kinds of so you had to be very careful yeah i remember i mean i fell into one of those not quite that that bad but uh i remember my first contract was this one with armor group did you ever hear armor group it was at uk yeah i lasted about two weeks there and i was like get me the out of here now

and um

and then and and then i wound up getting picked up for you know for the oga program but

but geez dude yeah so end up going with uh blackwater put my resume in just before my,

because I could have left earlier. I mean, a lot of guys, they would break their contract.
Again, to me, you sign up for something, you finish it.

So I just finished it out, went home, went to the training

after July. So sometime after July, in 2004, or something like that, I went to BW, did it.
Didn't know who I was going to be working for.

Blackwater just picks you up, you know, and then did the training. And next thing you know, I'm overseas doing work.
What contract contract was this?

This agency. This was this was GRS? No, Cobra.
Gate. Cobra.
So I didn't know about GRS at the time.

Because you're supposed to, so yeah, so I went there and then they kind of, they were talking about it, you know, like, I was like, what else is this GRS thing?

They're like, oh, you know, they're doing like the mobile stuff.

Okay.

So

I get over to

Afghanistan and that's when, you know, you start learning things and, you know, knowing what's going on. And I actually ended up getting airport duty.

I don't really say a whole lot was going out there, but there's some fun transfers going on. But so, we actually got it was a benefit to me.

So, we would actually do some escorts for some of the agency personnel as Cobras, even though you're not supposed to because they're they're going, we're going out the airport, so they would just kind of jump in with us.

We do, you know, we still had to do the SDRs there and back and stuff like that. So, I got to know the town as a Cobra.
Normally, those guys don't see anything but to and from the the airport

well

when somebody says you can't do something

i'm gonna say well i'm gonna prove you wrong so every time i would come i'd go to the the tl for the grs here's my resume this is my background like dude you have to be eight years sf like i can do better i can do what you guys can do

so 07

They finally said, all right, go and do it. Because I got tired of it.
I mean, I was coming all the time. I was like,

I can drive around, right?

So, I mean, but I had in the Marine Corps, I went to urban warfare. So I was an urban warfare instructor and stuff like that.
That's like my highest speed thing I did. And I was an assault climber.

So you set up the lanes for the battalions and climb cliffs and stuff like that at night. So I had, you know, some specialized, but, you know, nothing like SF guys.

But anyways.

So we went to Blackwater. I did, I think at the time, it was like a four-month train up

for the. Real quick,

I just want to educate the audience. So when we're talking about,

back in those days, I don't know, it might still be like this. There was the COBRA contract and the CAPO contract

under the OGA umbrella of their government agency, which is the CIA contract.

And so the COBRA sector is basically a static security base.

You're assigned to a specific base and you do all the perimeter and internals

for that specific location and with that being said before we move on to the capo program let's take a quick break

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All right, Tig, we're back from the break. We're getting ready.
You just got picked up for the Capo program, the

mobile program

at the agency.

it wasn't

really smooth because this was like 07

and

I had LASIK done when I was in 2002 because my eyesight was like really good, like 2015 vision.

So we start going through it, start doing all the track. I can't remember exactly the

how did it the flow, but I think we did like the house stuff with the qualification at the last week of it and everything else like the shooting. So I was doing really good and all that.

I was passing, you know, the hardest one, I don't know if you remember, was the 25-yard shot from concealed four seconds, two shots.

That was a kind of a pain. I was never really good with pistol, but I was good enough to pass.

Dude, I'm just, I just want to hear your whole training experience because, and I don't want to diminish anything that you've done or any conventional guys at all, but I mean, I came out of the SEAL teams and I had maybe

about a year-ish

break where I tried to do some business stuff and failed miserably and then wound up at that shitty armor group one and then wound up getting picked up.

But I thought that that training package, I think, I think it was about a month long then. Yeah, it was tough.

It was right around the same time frame because I left in 06, so it was 07, 08 maybe that I got in there. Yeah.
And

that was fucking tough, man. Dude, those drills were the walls were stiff.
Yeah. And the timing, holy crap.
Working with new people, working with other branches that did things different.

I mean, that was, that was challenging coming from where I came from with all that training. And so

for you, I mean,

what did you think of that? I mean, for me, it was, I guess, maybe just being molded by the core. You just kind of adapt and just do it.

Is this how they want it done? I just do it that way.

Because I think even though, like, even that night, I think even like Ron, Ron and Jack kind of went back to their seal stuff

for the most, like, just kind of like, because they were moving on the side of me going down. It was a little bit different than what we were, but I just started kind of flowing with them.

They started flowing with me.

And then they kind of broke off and did their thing together, which again, I still think

because what Ron was 20-year SEAL. So I think you're still going to go back to some of that stuff.

But you still have, I think, since

the training of it is so long, you all have a base to fall back on so you kind of have an idea what the guys to the left and right are going to do so I think that's what helpful but you know me doing like the vehicles and stuff like that I mean that was all new but um you know who Jake Banta is yeah

so I met him doing Cobra

so I had a little bit of insight on a lot of what TRS was doing the training wise so He kind of told me, okay, if you're going to go do this, here, here, take this, go practice this stuff.

So I had 40 acres. I had more gun range, so I did a lot of practicing.
Back, you know, you got paid pretty good, but ammo is a lot cheaper then, too.

So, I had a bunch of ammo, I was just training every day, getting my speed up, getting all that, doing my pistols.

So, when I went there, I already had an idea, I pretty much knew what they were going to do, except for vehicles.

CQB, I wasn't worried about because you know, that was a month-long train up I did just in the Marine Corps for CQB.

Um, so that's for me that was easy. It's just, I just couldn't shoot everybody like I did in the Marine Corps.

So,

you know, then the hooded box drill, that was freaking epic. Yeah, that was fun.
I did enjoy that part. Yeah, I thought that was a really good exercise.
That was.

That was, that was what did you find to be the most challenging?

Um,

I think dealing with the staffers,

other than that, I mean, the training. Um,

just trying to remember all the all the stuff so fast and you know, just the

wording on the vehicles, you know, content, just getting that, knowing what to do, how to protect the package, and stuff like that. That was kind of the hardest stuff.

Um, because a lot of that stuff kept changing from class to class for the most part. You know, tie them, do you don't tie to them, keep moving, you know.

And then the deeter thing was kind of a pain in the ass.

Yeah, but it is what it is. Um,

so we get to the final,

and my eyes started going bad.

Like I woke up and I couldn't like see that glass right,

your water bottle right there.

I was like, holy crap. So I went into the eye doctor.
I paid like 500 bucks to get a prescription right away so I could see. So I went through it, got it going.
Next morning, changed.

So every day I had to keep going back to the eye doctor

to pass. And then finally, my eyes, I don't know, about a month later, finally settled down.

And

so I kind of fought with that all the way up through, even through Benghazi eyeballs. But I could always make sure I could see and stuff like that.

So I ended up getting like the hard, soft contact lenses and that really. So I worked with contacts over there quite a bit.
But it was that, dude, that week, I don't know what

was going on, but come to find out.

And sorry, and I think it was 2017,

about three months before I had to have uh transplants in my eyes i had cornicosis

what is that deterioration of your cornea

so

i had to get uh uh for intacts and there was something else i forgot exactly what it was but

so they take these two plastic things and they reshape your eye so both my eyes got these plastic things in them

And then they put,

oh, I forgot, anyway, they put some other drop in there, hardens up your lens and stuff like that.

My eyes just kept fluctuating. And finally, my right eye really started getting bad again.
And they went in. My right eye is an artificial lens.

Damn.

So the fact that I could even still see, even the eye doctor, you know, they put, I guess they're doing like, oh, they did a whole study on me in the eye doctor school

now.

In the eye doctor school. Whatever they want to call it.

I had like school of optometry. Yeah, that one.
I had like seven different surgeries on them.

So.

How many people made it through your vetting? Do you remember? Or was it TDC? It was

TDC.

I think only one person didn't pass. No shit.
Yeah. Damn, when I went through, there was only about three or four of us that made it through.
Yeah. And everybody else failed.
It wasn't very bad.

I think it was only like five of us anyways. Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Wow. But so I almost failed because

they gave me a mask where I couldn't wear my glasses.

So when I was going in,

they had the package dressed almost exactly like

the aggressor. So I went in the room.
I was a 50-50 shot and I ended up shooting the package.

But I remember, luckily, the other guys backed me up and they said he kept asking you guys for a mask for his glasses.

So they didn't send me home. I had to go back through it one more time.
So I got it one more chance to go through it. And they said, you better make it 100% clean.
I was like, fuck me.

Talking about tents, dude. Yeah.
Like, now the eyes are just on me. Yeah.

So, but I ended up making it through clean. And it was a, they, they, they, they ran me through the ringer on those, man, because again, they're like, you can't shoot the package.
Yeah.

I mean, there's no second chance. You're done.
Yeah. That's, I think you're the only person I heard that got a second chance at that.

Who was it? I want to see, I think it was Dusty was doing the train up.

I remember him. So, oh, yeah, he was running me the what the I was like, dude, and all the other guys stepped up, say, hey, he asked you for

wouldn't fit.

Damn.

Well, what did you think of the job when you got over there?

Pretty boring. Where did you go?

Actually, so my first two trips were actually in Iraq. Okay.

The first one was the V V I P and then I was at the villa. The villa was just dumb.
I think, no, I think they might have done three trips,

two trips were at the villa. It was just dumb.
I was just, I didn't do anything, it was just going to the gym.

I mean, I did like a midnight shift just in case the chief of station woke up in the middle of the night and somebody had to take him.

But they wouldn't, they wouldn't call me anyways. They'd just the other guy, so I was just like, whatever.

So, but you know, it was uh, we had a couple rocket attacks. I remember

it was July and

I don't think any of the GRS guys knew I was even there as GRS, honestly. Because I would just go hang out with the Coper guys because they're, you know, they're the cool guy crew.

I was just, you know, anyways.

So I remember being in the gym and they're getting, we're getting hit. And, you know, you go into the bunker and I heard this one and just come and you knew it hit.

So I come out of the bunker and, you know, the staff's like, get it back in here. I was like, you know, whatever.
So I go out and you can see went went down. I ended up hitting one of the trailers

and it's still smoky, still all that crap. So I start yelling, anybody in there, anybody in there, start going in and end up being,

I forgot what company you work for now, but he ended up having a piece of shrapnel just sticking out of his chest. So I kind of grabbed him.
He was stumbling. He was trying to find his way out.

But I mean, it jacked up the whole front. There was no stairs, no nothing no more.
So I pulled him out, got him out, and I set him down. I was like, hey, is there anyone else in there?

I said, just kind of sit down, relax. You know, I didn't want to lay him down.
So I sat him. I said, don't move.
Stay here. Is anyone else in there?

He's just kind of like, you know, his bell was wrong. You know, because they're, you know, you got two pods attached.
So I go back in there and I start yelling. Hey, anybody in here?

Go back the other one. Anyone in here? Nobody was in there.
So I go back out. Dude's gone.

And I'm thinking, oh shit. So I'm like, now I'm looking for this guy.
He's got this piece of shrapnel stucking out. And then go around the corner.

And actually, a couple of the GRS guys are headed that way and got a hold of him and sat him down. So I'm just kind of standing there, you know, kind of watching.

You know, you just kind of like, you know, kind of listen to everything going on. I already knew the trailer was kind of clear.
I was the only one that got hit.

And I don't want to say his name. I remember him looking up me.
You ate GRS, you get the hell out of here. I'm like, okay.
I went back, went back to the gym, started working out again.

So it was funny that

I went to go back to do the recall and he was there. He's like, were you GR? He's like, he remembered me because there's just some dude just standing there.

He's like, were you GR? I was like, why don't you say something?

I didn't need to.

He already had him.

What else am I going to do?

Jeez.

So, and then

at the

again,

didn't do anything there. Then over at the VVIP, really didn't do anything there either.
What's the VVIP? It was just like the

just part of the airport where they would fly in and fly out and stuff. Oh, okay.
But we would just run people to the airport. I mean, we do some what they call black ops.

First time I learned about what actual black ops are. I was like, oh, okay.

Anyways, that's the only thing we did out of there. And,

but

one of the they called it the White House is where they did a lot of the,

can't really say what they did in there, but a lot of explosives were in there.

Well, one of the guys was in there welding and a spark hit one of the RPG blankets and just

so we went over there. We had to get that guy out.
And really, that was about the biggest thing, but that was over at the

I mean, he got jacked up.

Not the front of him, but the whole back side of him just got cooked. Damn.
Yeah, so he was pretty jacked up. We got him out of there.
But what was that one

GB base, Eagle base?

So I was there doing,

I think I get it in Iraq. I got all the shit details.
I mean, I was the only non-SF guy there.

So like, you know what, this is in tag, whatever.

So I got to work out, you know, with those guys quite a bit. And that's when I, I can't remember his name, but

what'd they call him, the wolf of Baghdad? That one tank commander, Marine. I don't know.

We have to look him. So I was there on watch that night when they were, because it was kind of cool because they had to be on the radio.
I kind of helped,

because sometimes their comms wouldn't be all that great, so we kind of transmit it. They couldn't hear.

Well, I was there that night when he was in the lead and he am getting whacked, one of the GB guys.

And so that was, you know, he was a pretty well-known Marine at the time. And I just, that was like when I first,

when they were like saying, oh, he was a Marine, but I knew where he was working at. But when I saw it in the paper, it didn't say anything about what he was.

I was like, okay, this is how they're doing this stuff.

Gotcha. So it was kind of a weird.
Yeah. Like, oh, okay.

So that's when I finally,

my wife at the time didn't know who I was working for. You didn't tell your wife?

But after I saw that, that's, I said, I'm going to tell her.

Just because. What'd she say?

He's like, oh, okay,

you know, no big deal. You pull up for the CIA, all right, whatever.

I want to go play tennis, you know,

so but no, that was, yeah, so that was an experience, but again, those two trips, I was just like, this is so stupid. Then I got sent to Afghanistan for the first time as GRS.

And again, I'd been in Afghanistan for a couple years now, you know, know, so I knew the area. So when you get there,

the newer guys usually they have to go out, you know, they're driving around knowing the town.

You know, my hardest thing was like knowing this, knowing the street names, the circles and all that stuff. But I got it fairly quick.
And I remember,

I don't really say who it was again. I don't like putting names out there, but I was, you're not supposed to be playing, you play a lot of Call of Duty.
You know you play a lot of Call of Duty.

He was GRS. So I was in,

you know, I'm sitting there playing. He comes in.
He's like, what the fuck, Tig? What are you doing? What, you think you know the roads now? I'm like, yeah.

It already been like, only been like a week and a half.

He's like, that's it. You're doing your test now.
If you fail, you're out.

Okay.

Well, and he tried to get me. He tried to stomp me as best he could.

He goes, because he didn't realize, I think he had, I think he had just kind of shown up, but that was when I was over in,

actually, I started going to Herat. I was doing all, I did a lot in Herat.

So I don't think he ever. I got a feeling I know who that was.
Yeah. Heavy cop.

Yeah. He was second on my list.
Yeah.

So

anyway, so he goes, he's like, how the hell do you know the city so well? I was like, I've been doing this since 04 out here.

Oh.

You know, I knew the damn city pretty. I just didn't get, didn't really know the names and the circles.
I just knew how to get around.

So the hardest part for me was just knowing the names and the circles

so

so how long were you you went direct right you you so i didn't go direct um

until

actually it was like mid 2011

so i was over in uh pakistan when the concept got attacked there

And I guess from that one,

a couple other guys that were like

high in the food chain for GRS that were direct or whatever saw my actions there that day and that's when they said they want me to go and do direct. What happened that day?

The consulate got attacked. Nothing really major happened.

It was a

dude came in with the car bomb initially, blew up. Then there's a second one that came in.
There was a, I think, six attackers came out and they were just kind of shooting in the air.

So we're inside the consulate and trying to figure out, okay, we're trying to get a hold of the uh the state department guys hey what's going on what do you see on your cameras they told us uh post one had been already breached we're like that's this that's serious so they're already inside the compound

so me and the other guy you know our gear was technically in our vehicle that's where we just left it you know after that day we never left our stuff in the vehicles no more So we end up rounding up our own, some other body armor, another weapon system.

Then we go out.

They haven't even breached the freaking outer perimeter yet.

So we come out the door like we're ready to shoot. You're like, well, they're talking about bad intel.
Holy crap, guys.

So he goes to the front. I go to the back.
You know, they're just kind of shooting up. We're being told that the attackers, they're in police and military attire.

So I got the back corner of the consulate and it's pretty close to some other buildings. And I'm seeing dudes running around and cops in military uniform left and right.
I'm going,

these are bad guys or not. I mean, they're not looking up.
I I mean, they got their guns, but they're moving people.

So we're just kind of standing there, and there's a big ass tree, so we couldn't engage.

There's a couple DS agents that was up there. I think there was two DS agents up there with me and the other guy.
And then

a couple more on one of the other buildings. I think there's only like three buildings at the consulate, maybe two.
But

then

probably about five minutes into this thing, just

they lit off like 1,500 pounds of TNT,

collapsed the building. Dude, it was pretty crazy.
And then

they asked me if I got knocked out or not. I remember getting up off the ground, but I don't remember if I was knocked out or not.
I just remember a guy got smacked by one of those big AC panels.

And yeah, that was other than that, that's really all that happened. Me, body parts from these guys are flying all over the place.

The funniest one, actually, it's two, maybe not funny, but it is funny.

One of the dudes got, you know, the fences had the the gaps in them one of the dudes body was just like impelled the other guy had his his upper torso finger in his nose and it was just kind of funny

yeah that's all they always are is finger in the nose

oh geez

but i mean that that was really it that happened but after that i guess they

then again you don't hesitate i guess they're like oh you're all right you can go to direct and that's kind of when i went to direct where did you go when you did you go right to Libya? No,

I pretty much went back to PAC,

went there a couple more times and then it was over to Libya. So from there

we flew, flew in, flew into Magazine that evening and actually we started driving with the chief of station from Benghazi when we landed up to Tripoli. So we stopped in Mostrada, stayed the night.

Again, I've never really knew anything about Tripoli except for freaking the Marine Corps song.

You know, so we're just kind of driving, taking turns, you know,

through that hotel. I don't think anybody slept.
You know,

it's just a hotel. It ain't like it's a safe location.
Yeah. You're just trusting the locals, man.

So, you know, we did the fire watch thing.

And, yeah, get up to Tripoli.

I think we stayed in like another hotel. Then we opened up a compound.

Then you opened it.

Yeah.

I didn't realize that. Yeah.

So the agency was there first. Actually, we went to the old embassy, went around there.
I picked up a couple of the security procedure books that they left behind.

It says classified on it. Whatever.
I picked them up, made sure I brought them back. I don't know how, yeah, I mean, everything was still in them.
Like, I guess they couldn't read English.

So I brought those back to our compound. But now then,

stayed there. They found, yeah, then helped open up the embassy.
Then I left. And after, then I went back.

When I came back, that's when I went back down to Menghazzi, which is good because I don't like the flagpole.

So at the time, it wasn't the flagpole because there was only

four of us that did all the GRS guys that went up there.

Then as I was leaving, two more guys came in because they were getting ready to open up the, I actually got to walk through the other the permanent CIA annex

and again I think it was like eight houses all had pools I mean it was nice

so that's the one that they uh they aired on TV saying it was the embassy that they broke into they're jumping off the the balcony into the pool that was the agency's compound interesting I never went over there yeah it was it was nice I heard it was

but yeah then I went down there and yep did a lot of stuff down there they went down and we did one of the

yellow cake sites, I guess, for Gaddafi, where you had a bunch of the nuclear crap down there. And other than that, we did some runs to,

and I would think I'm going to say,

well, I don't remember, but the city close to Egypt. I can't remember the name of it now.

But other than that, I mean, it was pretty relaxed. I mean, even in Tripoli.

Didn't really get too many stink eyes like you did in other places, but Benghazi was different, man.

They would shake, they'd come and shake your hand

like,

thanks for your help. Thanks for getting him out.
You know, if you're in a coffee shop that you're getting food, somebody probably tried to buy it for you. No kidding.
It was weird.

They were very grateful.

So, definitely a different environment anywhere else. I've been.

How long were you there before that happened? So, the first two trips,

the first trip was three months, and then the second one was two months then my twins were born premature so that kind of pulled me out early so probably if it wasn't for that i probably wouldn't have been in benghazi when 9-11 happened um so

yeah so i was on my fourth trip down there when uh when 9-11 hit And that last time, I mean, it was fairly quiet for the most part. I think Iran had just

kidnapped a few people

at that time.

But a lot of some politicians, you know, they're trying to kill him. This is their first election in like 30 years.
The police chiefs, I think a couple police chiefs got whacked when I was there.

Other than that, I mean, threat towards us really wasn't there.

But Bob, you know, he was just, I don't know.

It's hard to explain out what.

Yeah, it's just hard to explain Bob. Just very risk adverse.
Didn't really, I don't think he understood our capabilities.

Can you tell the audience who bob was so bob was the chief of base in benghazi the head guy yep the head guy so well in benghazi then he had the chief of station which is oversees the whole country but yeah

he was the head guy in benghazi at the time and you know when i talked about earlier about the con even before the consulate you remember when the the british ambassador got attacked No.

So he got attacked in between one of my trips.

And again, Bob was there, but a different team leader and Bob told him no you can't go and the team leader at that time told him to pound sand and they left and they're the only reason why the one of the security guys even survived because they were able to render him medical aid right on so and there was a time when we had

the deputy chief and a linguist They were probably almost about an hour away from us and they got hemmed up at a checkpoint. And

we're like, you know, we need to get over there. We get in the area.
I mean, we don't go in or guns blazing. It's just, you don't do that.

It's just in case something goes south out there at the checkpoint, we can help intervene. He wouldn't even let us leave the compound to go help to get in the area.

That's just the type of person he was. Man.
So, again, for like the stand down order, it was just him.

And, well, there are more to it now that I know of, thanks to Sarah.

So.

Did you know Sarah when you were over there? Oh, yeah.

Worked with her in a few other places.

She likes getting people whacked. Yeah, she really does.
She really does.

She still likes getting people whacked.

I see people trying to go after her on like, especially on X and stuff. Oh, you're fake.
You're freaking.

Dude, she's far from that. And I worked with her at a lot of different places.
We got some people whacked.

We just brought her on the team. Yeah.
Did she tell you that?

Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. We've gotten pretty tight ever since that first interview.
She's freaking,

she knows what she's talking about. Yeah, she does, man.
She does.

That's awesome. Yeah, I'm really excited about it.

So you've worked with her several times in different locations. Where else did you work with her at?

Mainly in Pesh.

I think that was my funnest place.

Why do you say that? Oh, man, because we got...

We got some HVTs whacked in that place. Nice.
And it was cool. A lot of the places you go, they don't tell you about what you're doing, why you're doing it for the most part.

They're like, oh, yeah, we're going after this guy. This is how we're going to do it.

I need you to take this, do this.

So he got more involved in actually getting these dudes whacked.

It was awesome. Nice.

So I think it was just like always working. I mean,

it was always work.

You liked working. Oh, yeah.
It was great. You didn't like the flagpole booze.
booze cruises no

time just goes by too slow yeah i didn't like that either i like to work yeah

so that's what you're over there for man they're over there to work get things done you know i remember we almost got we almost got uh killed at a restaurant but an asset called about a half hour before the meet and said it's it's an ambush they're gonna kill you when you're there so we pulled we still went and did counter surveillance and sure as

they they pulled in there and went in but they didn't their head their lead guy we see they're stupid because they all got out of like uh the hodgie van and they're like standing there and the one guy walked in then walked out and he you can tell he's like throwing his hands up and they got back in and they left there are six of them all ak's hodgied out

yeah

well let's get into the night of the september 11th

you ready what day is that

Yeah,

what do you want to know? The short version or the long version or just the long version.

So,

well, Sarah was there and actually I was doing this one,

kind of like gathering stuff. She showed me how to use this one of the equipments.
And I ended up actually having that there when we went.

I took the deputy,

the chief of base, deputy chief of base, and another case officer that morning over to a meeting. with the local intel service, which is the first time they ever met them.

And it's the first time they ever been to this location. It actually happened to be right across the street from the consulate on the second floor

and so i had this thing you know it was running you know collecting all the data people are on their phone and stuff and you know and i actually i took it in the office with me because i went upstairs and just kind of because i just want to see what they could see and i'm just remember and red flags going off like they have this thing right across the street they can see inside the company can see everything It's like, this is just weird.

And, you know, I sat there for a little bit, then I went outside. Because the vehicle is just out in the parking lot, unsecured for the most part.
So I didn't want to leave it alone.

I was the only one.

So

I went back out there, kind of hung out in the vehicle, just watching the door and watching, you know, whatever you could.

Well, they come out and they're talking and, you know, and we're like, hey, you need to take us over to the consulate. It's like, I'm like, okay, no problem.

And as we're going, I can come to find out that they got

intel that there was going to be an attack on a government facility that day.

So when the ambassador was there, he just got in there the night before. So it was kind of like to inform him.
This is early morning still. I think it was even before breakfast.
It was pretty early.

Go over there, let him know, just in case he was going to plan on doing any more ops off base. Because I think Roan

and

Jack had a movement with them that day because we were augmenting our security. We shut everything down so we could help them on their moves.

So I think that kind of shut one of his moves off that was supposed to be off base.

So I kind of come back and, you know, I take the

thing that I had and I was like, that's probably pretty good.

And I download it all into a USB drive and I put it in my locker waiting for Sarah to come back because it was, you know, that's the targeting package kind of a thing.

And so anyways, not thinking anything of it. Rest of the day goes by normal.
I think Oz was the only one who had a movement that day besides me with

the female case officer and it was like some kind of meeting she couldn't cancel.

And the next morning, me and Roan were supposed to be part of the detail that took the ambassador to the Persian oil golf company. And when

Ron was talking with them and they're like, well, we're just going to let the local driver drive us.

do the route. We're like, no, we're not.

So I was like, I think I know exactly what they're talking about. You know, because again, I've been there longer.
I've drowned, you know, and actually, I think I did a meet there once.

But anyway, so I went there. We found exactly where it was at.
We did a couple routes, kind of checking

like checkpoints or block roads because they were still kind of doing each neighborhood had its own little click. So we're trying to make sure which neighborhood we could flow through nice.

We figured it out on our way back. Ron calls the DS agent.
He says, hey,

we got the route. Do you want us to stop by now and we can go over it? Or do you want to wait till the morning? Because we're like, we're not, the driver is not going to dictate how we're going to go.

I mean, you had an HVT with you and you're going to let a local.

Like, oh, hell no.

So,

so they said, nah, we'll just wait till tomorrow. And we were driving by the consulate and, you know, it's nice and quiet.
And

nobody's out in the road. There was no big protest.
And, you know, you're looking between 8.39 or something like that. We go back.
We get to the team, the team room.

Team leader hushes in there and kind of let him know what's going to happen because we're probably going to leave early, you know, so we can go and explain to them our route and time it and all that stuff so that they know where we're going in case something happens.

I go to bed. They're still out there jibber-jabbering.

Jack, he's on the computer talking, Skyping with his wife. And, you know, he just found out that

his wife was pregnant, I think, with their third kid.

And, you know, I'm just kind of getting undressed. And next thing you know, here, hey, I'll GRS to the team room.
Just that calm. This is from Hush is on the radio.

It's kind of like, okay, so I just kind of get out of bed, you know, and go to put my flip-flops on. And like, I need all GRS to the team room now.

So I start moving a little bit quicker. So, hey, Jack, I'll go figure out what's going on.

Go out there.

And so I'm in building four. And then you have building three, which is the command post.
And you have building one or building two,

which is

Tonto and OD's

house and then building one which is actually what's where Oz was staying which was the chow hall that was in the very front of the compound or the front gate I guess you could say you could hear gunfire going off stuff like that you can hear a couple explosions but it's been ghazi there's a wedding hall trying to tell people the wedding hall right there you'd hear people gun you know they would shoot stuff off and he

then he comes up to me say hey we need to get ready to roll the console it's been overrun

A lot of people kind of, they don't understand like they think it's being attacked. No, he's saying it's being over.
It's been overrun.

So that means they're already in the compound by the time we get the call. Inside the gates.
Inside the gates. So that's how fast it happened.
So I run back, tell Jack, we get our stuff on.

We come out.

Tonto and OD, they were the QRF. So they're dressed, ready to go.
And I think Rome grabbed one of the vehicles and the Tonto grabbed the other one.

So they were already staged staged by the time me and

Jack finally came out. And that's when I overheard, you know, how many attackers are there? They're saying anywhere between 50 to 150.
So there's, they're all over the place. And I'm thinking,

you know, we got to have four. So I ran into the team room.

I grabbed the grenade launcher and the, and the belt-fed machine gun, brought them out, you know, started doing function checks on that, waiting in the vehicle. I'm in the back seat.

Roan's the driver. Jack is the passenger, you know, just kind of checking, checking the trigger.

okay, making sure I know which way's safe, which way's not safe, you know, then, you know, checking Dane Launcher, checking the trigger.

And

we're just kind of still sitting there and it's like going, you know, these guys, you know, they're digging in. You know, they're, they're going to, they're going to get the initiative.

We're going to lose it.

So I get out of the vehicle and I

remember it's, it's, it's a... Bob, Hush, and the deputy chief of base.
They're all on the front porch. And I was out on the passenger side.
I said, hey, you know, we got to get over there.

We got to get over there now. We're losing the initiative.
It's going to take us a lot harder to get onto this compound and rescue these guys. And Bob goes, no, stand down.
You need to wait.

I'm like, what the fuck? What the fuck are we waiting for? You know, there's nothing to wait for. We need to get over there.
And he's like, we need to come up with the plan.

We can't come with the plan fucking sitting here. We got to come with the plan with our eyes on the target.
There's nothing we can do from here. We know the layout of the compound.

And that's when Hush goes, Tig, you know, shut up, get back in the car.

So,

fine, I get back in. And, you know, it's armored, so they couldn't hear what's going on.
I closed the door and I got out. I said, hey, Bob just told us to stand down.

And you can just tell right then, they're like,

he's not going to let you go. That's what it meant.
Well,

what Sarah and what OD would have been doing throughout the years is he's actually

digging into actually what happened more of the investigation. Well, weeks prior to the attacks, 17 Feb had told Bob, the commander, had told Bob that if something ever happened,

they were never going to show up.

That night, Bob actually got a hold of him before he told me to stand down, that they weren't going to show up.

That's why we were told to stand down. And then, you know, for them to sit there and say, oh, there's no evidence of a stand down order, what the hell is that?

But again, how can you rely on it's a hostage rescue is what it is. You're going to send 17 Feb in there, which is, which is worse than sending the Boy Scouts in to do a hostage rescue.

Some of these guys watching the State Department train don't even know how to reload a freaking rifle.

So it's like we are the only, and like in the movie, we are the only help that they had. We're the only support that would, that could have made a difference.

And that stand down order is 100% guarantees why Ambassador Stephen and Sean Smith didn't make it. They're dead because of that stand down order.
Damn, man.

Well, people say, well, how do you know that for a fact?

Well, they would have been engaging with us instead of setting the buildings on fire. They died of smoke inhalation.

They didn't die from

blunt force trauma, a gunshot. They died from the smoke from the fire.

So

we ended up, you know, it came down to,

I think it was Alec on the radio, the State Department guy said, if you guys don't get here now, we're all going to fucking die. And that was it.
Rowan just put it in drive. We started driving.

hush gets on the radio wait wait wait i'm coming

we were leaving his ass

we were done waiting we were done asking for permission and hush is the team leader for the audience hush is the team leader for the jrs unit at the benghazi and his name's not classified because it's it's in the uh congress uh congressional

so it's a call sign anyways yeah

So

we leave, we get over there. I immediately engage with the grenade launcher,

fire three rounds, which that disperses the attackers, which has allowed us to move on to the compound. Who did you fire them at? The attackers.

So they were away out of range from the grenade launcher, but it's still, they didn't, I think they may have thought it was mortars coming in.

They don't, you know, from what I heard, they had no idea what it was because they've never been shot at like that with something like that before. So it was just a 40 Mike Mike's.

So

they dispersed. I went back to the vehicle, put the grenade launcher in because I had no sling for it.

Normally I had to attach,

just those things, you know, you do your own debrief for yourself, right? I should attach it right back to the gun. So as what happened,

normally it was attached to one of the rifles, but we had a temporary team leader that came in and took him off, took it off the rifle because he's like, well, nobody else can use it.

Just grab the damn gun that's had it. It doesn't matter.

Anyways, so I put it in there.

Otherwise, I'd have had it with me too, the whole night, night. But grabbed the belt fed and then Roan and Jack just followed me.
We went down the road.

Paused just outside because, again, we haven't really heard from the State Department yet. I just kind of got on, because now we're on the same channel as them.

I got on the radio just to let them know, hey, we are coming on. Kind of like, hey, don't shoot us.

So when I said that,

Roan got up and just started taking off. Jack got up and moved in.
As I was starting to follow behind them, because, you know, the agency, we have all the high-tech gear, right?

You know, we got the throat things, the brain things that feed the radio, right?

No, we have to still, we have the old school clip-ons, worse than freaking law enforcement. So I'm trying to clip this radio back on my gear because for a whole high speed.

So they're running in front of me. Next thing you know, I start getting shot at.
So I dropped down.

The militiamen that were with us, well, actually at that corner when we showed up, they actually followed us down. I didn't realize that at first.

They opened opened up on fire and whoever's firing at at me because I was just kind of looking down so I didn't know where the gunfire came from so I dropped and well while they were firing I was able to move up to a jersey barrier get the machine gun up and I was getting ready to start to put my nods back I was ready to put my nods down when some local just walks out of the darkness hands up 17 feb don't shoot don't shoot it's just like Where the fuck this guy just come from?

You know, again,

I don't know no uniform, no nothing. So he could have been the one shooting.
I have no idea.

So I look at the guy next to me, a little hodgy guy, you know, just he looks at me and he just kind of shrugs and like,

okay, whatever. I don't durk a durka.
So I just kind of got up, moved in the compound.

And first thing you see is the main village is engulfed in flames, black smoke coming out.

The building off to the right, which ended up being the 175th Martyrs Brigade,

that was the QRF that the State Department was relying on in case something happened.

So

they had four guys that stayed there. But from what I heard, those four guys actually did shoot back a little bit before they took off.
So from what I heard, they actually did try to fight.

I don't know for sure. But anyways, that building was completely engulfed.
And I just kept, you know, going as I'm going forward, there's a guy walking from that building.

I don't know who's all in the State Department compound. No weapon, no nothing.
Just walking, you know, flip-flops, white shirt, just nonchalant.

I'm just like, this is so freaking had this out here just happened.

Oh, and before we got down there, all the way, we had a local came out of his house and was had a cell phone in his hand, was yelling at us in Durka, Durka.

We're just looking at her, like, telling him to get back, get back. And finally, we just had to keep going.

Again, so that guy shooting at us, this guy here, I'm like, what the hell? It's just some weird stuff. So you can't just shoot anybody.
You know,

we're not cops. We just don't shoot anybody.
anybody.

Just kidding.

So I go up and I hear banging going on.

I don't know where anybody's really at. So now I'm out here by myself.

Some local dude behind me.

I'm watching him, just making sure he doesn't pull anything. He never did.

And there, you know, they had like a horseshoe fighting position.

So I go up there and I'm just kind of sitting there, kind of just assessing, listening to sounds, watching this big orchard area that's all pitch black i go to put my mvgs on i couldn't because some of the spotlights were kind of like shining up high so it just floods them out so you can't the night vision goggles are pretty much worthless

um

maybe if i had your super secret you know 10 goggle ones it would have been better but

doubt it

but uh so i'm sitting there

Getting no no communication on the radio. Next thing I know, I hear a vehicle starting up.
I'm thinking like, what the fuck? Oh, somebody's stealing a. They're all up armored.

You know, they don't have any like we did, you know, up on armored. So I'm thinking, oh, yeah, I got a belt-fed machine gun, got it up armored.
Oh, I'm gonna shoot the shit out of this car,

right?

So I can see it, it's coming down the road. The lights are off, there's no lights on it.
So I'm thinking, oh, yeah, they're trying to be sneaky or something.

So I come out from the side of the sandbag and I kind of got it up.

Vehicle comes, it turns. Dude, I got the slack coming out of this freaking

the saw. And I'm like, oh, that's going to be awesome.
And next thing I know, I see dude lean forward and end up being debuffing. State Department guy.
It's like, God, you got to be kidding me.

I mean, how many people could blast a government vehicle and not get in trouble?

Dude, I was like, yeah.

So,

yeah. So that didn't happen.
And then

they backed up. I moved up, kind of followed because I didn't know what the hell was going on.
I mean, no comms whatsoever going on.

And that's when I ended up linking up on the Roan. He was standing up on the front porch and I kind of talking with him.
And he's like, Yeah, they don't know where the ambassador is.

And I kind of look over off to my right, and there's a, they have one guy laying there, and then Jack's kind of over the top, you know, kneeling down over him, looking like he's trying to provide first aid.

And I go, you know, who that is? Is it one of ours? He says, I have no idea. And I was like, well, hopefully it's one of theirs.

You know, and then like, kind of goes like, well, I guess we got to clear this area now. and that was like the main villa area and it's i mean it was huge inside

so we kind of move in pitch dark hotter than hotter than hell i mean it was so freaking hot it's kind of like being uh

like just like a major bonfire but being right next to it the whole time that's i mean it was just intense heat um moved couldn't see anything you know flashlight made it even worse so you're just kind of going by feel i go in um i think three times i went in and out i don't know if i don't know know if Rowan ever came back out that many times, but last time I went in, I was like, okay, I'm just going to, because I had kind of the layout because I'd been there a few times already.

So I just went to where I knew where the safe room door was.

It was kind of like the outer door was open, but the bars were closed. And I yelled for Chris,

I think twice as loud as I could. And actually somebody named Chris outside, I could hear where it's coming from.
He's like, oh, I'm out here.

That's not, you know, Stevens. So I start moving back out.
I get out and, you know, just that shouting, you know, taking those breaths and shouting. I took in so much freaking smoke.
So I'm hacking.

Then I hear Roan, he's inside saying, I'm lost. I can't find my way out.
I'm lost. So I go back in and we just did a little Marco Polo thing and got him.
Then we kind of just moved out.

And they're still going in and out of the safe because when we come out, the safe room's like right here.

And the you know they're still kind of going in and out of that room and that's when uh um

tanto gets on the radio say hey we're getting ready to jump the back gate

so myself and roan we moved from there over to uh

the the road that separated the two compounds and started you know putting security up there remember ron coming up said hey you know thanks you know i hope you know thanks for saving my life and i'm like well i hope you know i hope we can all make this out alive it was kind of like something like that because initially i didn't tell anybody anybody about the Roan incident because to me, that was just

who would believe it, anyways. Well, I guess Ron ended up telling Oz about it because when I told the story to the author, he's like, well, what about this?

I was like, how the hell do you know about that?

So, but to me, it's like putting stuff in that to where it's only my word versus a guy who's not even here. So, I was just kind of like, well, I'm not putting that in there.
Yeah.

But, anyways, so they end up jumping over.

But unfortunately, when,

well, nothing really major happened, but from it. But the locals that went with Tonto and them didn't want to jump the back gate.
So they had Tonto open up the back gate.

Tonto said, hey, you know, when you come in, close the back gate. Well, they didn't.
So we went over there, cleared the other side, came back.

I started searching in the safe room.

didn't really know the layout of the safe room whatsoever.

I kind of went in there a couple times trying to get the blast, the blast shield things open so we can open up more windows to flood the smoke out so we can search easier.

Because honestly, I didn't even think we'd get a follow-on attack. I figured that had been kind of hit.
Like, you know, again, thinking 17 Feb's going to show up. The police are going to show up.

They're going to lock this place down, right? He's had a U.S., he's had an embassy, regardless if it was U.S. or not, but an embassy, a foreign embassy in your country just got attacked.

In my mind, you're going to shut this city down, right?

So I wasn't honestly wasn't thinking too much about a follow-on attack.

So went in a couple times, kind of came back out.

Hush at the time, I think it was like the third time I came back out.

Well, the first time I went in, I smashed my night vision goggles because, again, they're up here, not thinking about it, just trying to go into this window, freaking smashed, shattered them.

So lost those, jacked my neck up, but.

Came back out and he's kind of, you know, he get all the

State Department guys

and they're gathering up, trying to figure out what they're going to do. He's getting them in the vehicle.
He's kind of like, I get on the radio and say, hey, I'm going to go in one more time.

And he says, no, I'll just stand by.

I think because we're probably going to evacuate or something. I just said, you know, fuck this.
You know, I took my helmet off, took my body armor off, grabbed my flashlight, put my weapon down.

Finally learned what I was taught in elementary school. Get on your freaking belly.

Get on your belly if there's a fire. It works.
I mean, I could see. I mean, it wasn't, it was only like this much, but I could see pretty far.
I could see the other doors.

I crawled, went into out of that room, went into the bathroom, looked around the shower, the tub, went into the other room,

looked under the bed, you know, felt on top of the bed. There was a couple of cabinets open just in case they went into it, the closet.

And then as I was coming out, an RPG smacked the wall with the room I was in. That was, that was, that was loud.
And that's what counted, that started the

second attack on the consulate.

And it was pretty much just kind of kiddie corner.

It was just like the door was here the other safe room door where i was at was like over here so i just you know kind of got up and just ran that way jumped out put my gear back on um then i peeked around the corner see where the the fight was coming from and it was coming towards the back gate there's a ladder that went up to the roof got up on the roof um and let the

just let the let everybody know hey i'm on the roof just in case something happened i got shot they don't have to go searching for me um so i started moving to where the fire was coming from you know they all have like the three foot walls around the top so it's pretty easy to move up as i came up the guy who was shooting the rpg was coming came back into the front of the gate and getting ready to launch i just did about a 10 15 round volley of fire he drops and all the fire stopped um oz and who else got to see oz and actually hush uh said that i guess that volley of fire that i did nailed the rpg and actually did a whole ramble thing thing went off in a 90 degree angle so that's how good a shot I am I can hit an RPG fly through the air

so

that stops you know everybody kind of starts coming up on the roof because we're still trying to figure out what we're going to do the State Department guys

one thing that kind of irritated me was

while the attack started, Tonto went and got behind their vehicle for, you know, protection. It's an up armored vehicle.

Well, they actually honked a horn so they can get him off the vehicle so they could take off. So again, this is their compound.

They didn't even think of jumping out and helping us defend their compound. They took off.
Jeez.

So they leave. They end up going the wrong way.

They got ambushed. I mean, they made it to our compound, but

they got followed all the way to our compound.

We're still there. Nobody still, no, no, they didn't know if the ambassador was kidnapped.
He took off on foot. no idea if he was still in the building so again we had no idea um

so we're just trying to figure out what we're going to do then uh they got word from the drone that came overhead that there's about 100 150 people moving towards us

so again we had like six of us and a linguist that looked like a turtle because of the you know the body armor and the helmet were just way too big for him and then two three dozen unknown people with us some in uniform some not, some in shorts, some with guns, some with no guns.

It was just weird, man. So it was just like one of those moments that, you know, they made the call.
We got to go.

So we all get down. We loaded up Sean's body into our vehicle.
State department guys left him with us.

So we had Rome was driving. It was Hush.

Jack, the linguist, Tonto, myself,

OD, and Sean's body in the back. So we we go, we pull out, we go back the way we came in.

The other vehicle that we had, we had to leap. We left it because the three of us went on foot.
So that vehicle got stayed. But that's also where the grenade launcher was.

So if you watch the damn movie, I didn't lose a grenade launcher. That was bullshit.
I knew exactly where it was. But there was like, again, dozens, so people around the vehicle.

We had no idea who they were.

you know they could have been part of the attack so instead of us breaking seal potentially all getting killed right there because they had you know gun trucks with discas mounted to them there's you know nothing we can do with that so we just kept going right on by them like we're just neighbors so what's going through your head when they tell you 100 to 150 people are moving towards you it's like oh that's a lot of people

you know it's you're just like hoping they don't hit you i mean One thing I've learned, though, is

what I try to tell people is they're shooting at you. You're probably not going to get hit.

It's the ones that's shooting at somebody else is the ones that's going to hit you.

Because I've really rarely seen them just kind of shoot like we do. They kind of do the whole spray-pray thing.

So, yep, so we get back to our compound, we dismount, and we get attacked probably within about an hour.

What's the discussion like when you get back to your compound? Really wasn't.

It was just, we just dismounted and kind of went to pre-designated positions to defend the compound, you know, especially since they just came came back and tried to hit us.

You know, well, they're coming back for a third time at the consulate. So it's like, there's no way, this is going to be a long night.
So we just got out and we just kind of jack went.

Oz, he was already there. So he had the State Department guys when he got there.
He put, he put one on each of the buildings besides building one.

The two other guys, one of the guys got pretty jacked up from the smoke inhalation that was with the ambassador.

and Sean Smith.

He made it out alive.

But then the other, I don't know why the other guy didn't come out. But anyways, so there were

three State Department guys up on the roofs. We had four local guards, and then we had two

SPOs with us as well. So they did all the gate stuff and

the monitoring of the cameras. So they were kind of, so the base was kind of secure for the most part.

But we just kind of went and filled those gaps. I went to tower two.
Oz went to tower three. Rome went to building three.
Jack four.

And OD and

Tonto went to building two. So we can kind of cover the zombie land is what we called it.
That's where we kind of figured, because the other ones was just chuckpoints coming up that road.

I mean, you didn't have to be in the front to really take care of that. I mean, it's just really easy.
So,

but I end up moving from tower two to tower three, and during this move is when we got attacked. I was actually carrying water to Oz

when something came over the wall, probably exploded about 25 feet from me. Something like that.
It was pretty close.

Didn't get hit by nothing but dropped the water kind of like trying to protect myself and i'm pat you know gunfire is going on but i'm just adrenaline's rushing you and sometimes you know you're hit so i'm just checking myself saying okay i'm not hit uh

get up in there you know and just start returning fire

lasted you know felt like forever but probably like five ten minutes um you know maybe 20 15 attackers you know but unlike the movie they had a lot of um

concealment so a lot of times you can only see the flashes they're just again they're just shooting through shrubs they're not like in front of it they're behind it so

um even even the night vision you couldn't you couldn't see them

so you know we didn't have the uh the cool infrared crap just night vision um

but

and repelled that one and that was probably about i think they said like 1.30 in the morning or something like that 1 1 30 um that's about the time they found the ambassador's body.

He was inside the consulate in his room is where they found him

And the locals didn't know who he was, but the

neighbor was there when he saw him. He actually grabbed him and I got to see the actual

camera footage from a cell phone. You can see it in his eyes.
He was already gone. He wasn't alive.

But from the moment he grabbed the ambassador, dragged him up, threw him in his car, took him to the hospital. You know, pretty much the camera was just almost on his face the whole time.

I mean, he he was moving around but yeah you know that whole there's a lot of things that people said you know that he was raped mutilated and tortured that never happened to him that's all bullshit none of that stuff ever happened that's one of another thing that kind of forced us into the book is that stuff never got corrected um

so

anyway so they found him about that time but it wasn't verified until about three in the morning that it was actually him when we got the uh the pictures of him in the video um So as we're sitting there, we heard that the team from Tripoli had just landed at the airport, but the militia that was supposed to show up didn't show up yet.

And this is when we got the second attack. It's about three in the morning now.

Same type of attack, but RPG started, come over the back of the wall. There was a car actually that pulled up.

Yeah, I wasn't in the tower. I was actually talking with the TL

at the time.

And because what I was trying to do, because

they had everybody else kind of going to the rooms and getting their personal belongings. So I was like, if we're going to evacuate, we need to get our own stuff.
So I went and got my stuff.

And I was kind of talking with the TL at the time. And that's when I knew about the ambassador and all that stuff.

And then a car somehow got towards the back gate where the jersey berries were. So it couldn't get to us.
It was about 50 yards or something like that.

Dude gets out. Oz sees him.
He goes to go throw something. Oz drops him.
And that's when the RPG flies over and I head back over to the tower, engage. That's when I end up getting

some guys moved around from the they flanked us. That's the only maneuver they did.
And so I end up getting shot in the side. Plate stopped it.
Still hurts. Let me tell you, it still hurts.

Now, I like the movie.

I didn't lay down and sit there for five minutes like a little baby. You know, I kind of buckled me, put my hand up underneath, making sure I didn't fill a hole.

I mean, it was wet because I'm freaking sweating.

I didn't fill no hole, but it hurt. It felt like I was still shot.
Didn't fill a hole, and I just got back in it.

Then

ended up checking myself after,

you know, after it was done, making sure I wasn't actually shot. But

and that firefight probably lasted a little bit longer. It was probably double the guys that showed up.

But I think Tonto and OD and even the camera guys said they could see them, you know, some dudes crawling on their hands, some people getting dragged out. So we were hitting them.

But, you know, it was pretty, pretty quiet. Then the team from Tripoli, the militia showed up.
Tonto moved from building two over to building one to guide them in.

And that's where the whole laser, we were, you know, I lasered two guys, but it wasn't to

identify them as targets. It was to let them know that they were my target.
If they keep coming closer, I'm going to shoot you.

And then Tonto used it because that was actually, that was just a live laser. It was let them know, like, you need to walk in this way.
Because they had no guns, but we had, again, the sheep herders.

They were still coming. Dude, it was weird.
They were still coming, showing up and herding the damn sheep. Are you serious?

Dude, it was so weird.

While all this is going on,

man.

I know. So, but anyway, so Tomta moved up.
He did the lasso thing so they can kind of, they had our coordinates, but just to guide them in a little bit better.

So he was just lasso when we came in with the IR. So that's where that whole we're lasering targets.
No, we weren't. Anyways,

so they come in, they get there.

They go in. The team from Tripoli and the militia commander go into the compound and go to the, you know, inside the command post.
Why they let this militia guy in there, I don't know. But anyways,

then Bub, you know, he knew that Ron was there. I guess they worked in the teams together and stuff like that.
He said, hey, you know, where he's at. And, you know, so he went up.

Ron was there introducing him to

Dave Ubin and Oz and kind of, I guess, explained what was going on when

what I heard was sounded like a mortar going off.

It's kind of like that thump.

You know, it's kind of hard to explain, people. When you're next to it, it's really loud.
When you're not, you can kind of tell what it is, especially when you're in infantry. You do a lot of mortars.

And I get on, I'm getting ready to click the radio. When Tonto gets on, it beats me to it.
Hey, I think I just heard a mortar. Anyone wants to hear that? And I key the radio and said, yeah.

And that's when the round hits.

And it hit probably you know 25 I would say yards west and 20 25 yards north from building C

small arms fire opened up same time and then those guys opened up so I just kind of look and I see the explosion so I go back to my area just in case again you're waiting for more attacks like we're just you know you got to trust the guys they they trust me to watch that side so then I hear another one going off don't ask me how I can hear these things but that one comes in.

It hits,

kind of tags the top of the wall, but blows up on the other side. So, you know, I'm looking at the explosion.

That ended up taking out Dave Ubin because he had taken his helmet off and he got a bunch of shrapnel through the forehead. So that dropped him.
Then I heard another round going off.

And to me, from my angle, that one hits here. That one hits here.
I'm thinking because they want to come to this area. They're trying to take out the tower.

So I jump out of the tower and I start moving back to where we call the prison gym. and the round comes and it hits the top of the building and I guess two more hit right behind it

and You know, everything just goes quiet

So I'm looking at the building like holy shit. So I get on the radio immediately say hey you guys up on building three you guys okay

Hush gets on the radio says yeah, we're okay in here I'm like, you shut the fuck up. I'm talking about the guys on top of the building.
Jack gets on the radio.

He's over on building four, which is closest to building three. He's, hey, Tig, I got no movement.
I can't see anybody moving. So I start sprinting over there.

Start going up the ladder. Again, with the small arms, you know, the wall, you know, it doesn't go all the way up.

So as I start getting the crest of the wall, I'm checking my six and, you know, as much as I can to still go fast. And then I just kind of jump over.

Over here on the left-hand side is one guy. He's got his pistol out.

So I start talking to him immediately.

Say, you know,

say, hey, man, you're going to be okay. You know, say, calm, I got you, I got you.

I actually ended up having Oz's go bag instead of mine

because mine got left in the vehicle over at the consulate. I didn't lose that either.
He got left in the vehicle.

So I start going through Oz's stuff, trying to figure out where his tourniquets are and stuff like that. Because

Jack.

Ubin, his left leg, left arm almost completely served off. I mean, it was just shredded.

So if you actually watch the movie and they show Oz's arm and stuff, that's what Dave Ubin's leg and arm looked like. It was just shredded.

So

I go for his leg first, start getting it on, you know, and then

before I started this, I got on the radio and said, hey, guys, I need, I got men down. I need help up here.
Then I started going to work finding things and got the tourniquet on him.

I got the second tourniquet on. I'm trying to look him over.
It's still dark out. And it's kind of like the blue light kind of a thing.

So it's not light enough to really see, but you can kind of see shadows.

So I'm trying to look at them as close as I can without busting the flashlight out because those are pretty accurate freaking mortars. So there's got to be a spotter somewhere.

So for the audience, again, a spotter is somebody who sees what we call a splash, which is the impact. And then they tell the mortar team how to adjust.
So that's what I was afraid of.

So they see movement, they're going to relaunch them or something. So I have no idea why they stopped.

So I look them over as best I can.

I said, all right,

right now it's the best I can do. I got to, because I know there's dudes with other stuff, got to be blown up.
And I grab my stuff, get on the radio, say, hey, I got guys down. I need help.

I go to turn. That's when Dave said, hey, give me back my gun.
I'm thinking, oh, fuck. You know,

you always, you know, you're always taught, you know, don't give somebody back, especially when they're give back their gun when their bell's been rung that bad. But

I also thought, you know, it might help keep him calm and stop and give him something else to think about besides going into shock.

So I just unloaded it, you know, took the mag out, racked the round out, and just handed it back to him.

I doubt he realized I did it because, you know, still dark. I mean, I had my back turned towards him, but to me, again, it was just that try to keep him calm kind of a thing.

So I got up, started moving across. There was one guy just laying flat in the middle of the building, not moving.

Keep moving.

There's like a... We had a little water tower thing.
Water, you can just hear it flowing. I didn't know what it was at first, but I could see somebody kind of laying against the wall, moving.

Somebody else was laying down in the fetal position but you know it's gonna went straight to the guy that was moving ended up being oz

um he's just kind of sitting there i think he saw me coming and he had his tourniquet out i think he was starting to do it to for himself but i think he saw him he's like ah i got you know he'll i'll just let him put it on oz is kind of lazy i mean you interviewed him you kind of know

so he's just kind of you know Just like bouncing his wrist up and down hey tig check this out like literally I mean it's kind of limped It's pretty jacked up, but he's just like hey i think it's messed up i'm like yeah quit playing with you're gonna make it even worse man stop and he's like yeah but look you know it was just it was just one of those moments and uh i ended up just

last time get on the radio said i got guys down i need help and that's when od gets on the radio says hey if nobody's going gonna go over there and help i'm gonna get off this damn roof and do it myself

That's when I hear Hush get on the radio again. It says, no, just stay where you're at.
We're on our way. Not that they're coming up.
I guess they're just now leaving the the building.

So I get the tourniquet on Oz. I get him up.
Say, hey, can you walk to the ladder by yourself? And he's kind of like, you know, he's seeing Roan kind of right there next to him.

He's like, well, I guess I got no choice. And so I kind of guide him a little bit just to make sure he didn't like

collapse, I guess, you know, because, you know, they got to be

that brain's got to be wrong pretty bad. So he moves on.
He was able to walk. I go over to the third guy, which ended up being Roan.

Flipped him over onto his back, checked for a pulse.

Never got a pulse, but his throat moved. So, you know, for me, adrenaline could have been pumping.
I don't really know.

So I kind of sat for a second, two, another second, didn't feel anything, ripped off his body armor, lifted up his shirt, you know, try to, you know, do a look, listen, feel.

Again, couldn't really see too much, but I was at least trying to see if I can hear or feel a breath. Couldn't feel anything.

And that's at that point when I was like, okay, I got to break out the flashlight.

Got the flashlight, checked his pupils, no dilation. So right there, I kind of knew he was gone.

And then with Oz,

he was just going down the ladder. One of the Delta Force guys was just up there.

And I was like, Oz is going to go down there. They're going to start screaming because Ron was our only medic on the base.

So I just got on the radio and said, hey, everybody, Ron's gone.

Went over to

the fourth individual,

again, rolled him over. And initially, when I saw him, it was still kind of dark.

I thought it was Jack.

The process of everything really quick, but I'm like, oh, wait a second. Now,

I can, because I was just talking to Jack. He's over on that building.
So, but did the same process to him.

Did a pulse check, look, listen, feel.

People dilation, there was nothing. But this time, after I'd finished this, I could hear,

I don't know if it was a team leader or it was the country team leader, but they're like, hey, we got to hurry up and get off the building. We got to hurry up and get down.

so this time you know the whole time i've been up there was no fire you know no shooting going on no nothing in my mind though i'm just like at this point i'm

there's no rush mortar keep coming in we're all dead these buildings can't are not designed to handle freaking mortar strikes and you know it was by the grace of god that that building even stood by getting those three 81 millimeter mortars they say it got hit by I mean, that's that's insane.

But

where it hit was directly because the walls over there, they were like, you know, about a foot and a half concrete walls. And that's where the mortars hit right in a row on those walls.

I think that's the only reason why it stood.

Wow. So

I went over, you know, again, they're like, hurry up. We need to get off.
I saw them. They kind of, they had Dave Ubin, you know, the Delta Force guys.

And again, about the only thing they really did was they built a backpack. kind of human backpack to get Dave Ubin off the roof.

So they got him down and I'm just collecting the weapon systems i'm going over went over to rhone uh and grabbed his guns checking his pockets for like wallet or anything just in case we had to leave him because it may have happened right so then you know before i left i knelt down said a prayer over him

went over to uh uh bub at the time again didn't i really didn't know who the hell he was never worked with him but again same thing checking his pockets checking for wallets case wedding ring and didn't know trying to check as much cure as i could uh said the prayer over him then I got down at this time they're just getting a stretcher around for Dave Ubin

so I go in I drop all the weapons off I go back Ozzy they got him laying on the ground so I'm stepping over him they're cutting his clothes off

I go straight to the back which ended up being our uh our medical room I guess it was the kitchen but it was our medical room and I'm trying to open up the blast doors that way they could bring him in through the back versus the front because he was jacked up you know

avoid the the staffers from seeing it i guess from seeing him couldn't get the doors open and got up like a fraction of the way and it was just too i mean that those mortars jacked it up so i go and i just grab three uh four more tourniquets and i got my pocket i put them in the backpack start walking back around

and

Two other GRS guys actually end up having Dave Ubin and they were walking in front,

passing by the two Delta Force guys. Again, at the time, I didn't know, I didn't know, I thought they were just GRS guys.
And they're like, hey, where are you going?

I said, I'm going to go back towards the tower and watch that sector. And they're like, oh, you can't do that.
It's too dangerous. I'm like, what the fuck you mean I can't do that?

I've been up there all fucking night. It's not too.
So we're like having a shouting match.

That's when the country team leader comes out. He's like, what the hell's going on? He's like, I need to go over there and watch the fucking sector because it's unprotected.

And Delta Force guy's like, oh, it's too dangerous. You can't go over there.

I'm just like, fuck this. This is stupid.
And then that's when uh teamless just just just go right here just you know just stand by right here

i'm just like again i got you know walls higher than the ceiling in here and i'm like going this whole freaking area now is completely unprotected when did the delta force guys show up uh just before the mortars hit how did they get there uh with uh with the team from tripoli

so

Yeah, so any so we're just kind of just again like this is fucking stupid.

I mean, this is the dumbest security position ever because people would be literally sneaking up to our wall right now and coming in.

We wouldn't even know it.

All of our cameras got shot out in that whole corner.

All of our lights got shot out. So it's completely unprotected.

Boone might be able to see some of it over there, but again, he still had a bunch of shrub. He had a bunch of, again, sheep pens.
They could be sneaking up on us and all kinds of shit.

It's just like, this is so stupid.

But then I think one of the

offers case officers got a hold of another unit that was down there and they had about 300 strong gun trucks all that stuff they showed up um again i think 7 38 in the morning something like that

and

that's when the you know again i'm just standing there like this is so freaking stupid the two delta force guys come back said hey we got to get the guys off the roof and i'm like okay we you know there's a we got a tow strap that we use to pull the tires and as we're walking and telling them we can i can go get it we can lower them down like oh don't worry about it we got this so we just need you to come and pull security for us so i go and i start going up the ladder pull security right like no what are you doing just stay down here and wait

so how do you want me to pull security for you while you're up on the roof while i'm down here and i got a wall that's like 10 feet from me This is fucking, again, this is like, this is stupid.

So they're up on the ladder and I'm just kind of sitting there again, like, this is so freaking dumb.

And

in my mind I'm thinking okay they're gonna you know probably do the whole back backpack thing you know bring the guys down because we got time now we have we have like three a 300 man militia surrounding our compound they got gun trucks they're in uniform they're very well organized very well structured so you know again we had time they lower them down and next thing i know you know as i'm sitting here i'm getting up I'm looking this way, back this way.

Again, it's another like a shed.

So all I can really do is look forward. But even in front of me, I got a big ass generator house.
So I really can't see shit.

And next thing I know, I see a body get put up on top of the ledge. And, you know, I'm still probably, I don't know, a good three feet, you know, from the outside of the ledge.

And next thing I know, they just push him off. He comes down.

right next to me smacks i can hear the the shoulder crunch his head hit and then uh you can see where he ran ran into the, because we had like

really thick kind of rose bushes, kind of sliced his stomach open a little bit, and that ended being Bub.

And I'm just like, holy shit, I can't, they just did this.

And then, you know, I'm still standing there and I go, oh, I know it's fucking coming next.

You know, the first one was kind of a shock. The other one was just fucking miserable.
And again, you just hear him come down, smack, you know,

you can hear the shoulder hit and then the head hits.

And again, in my mind, at least try to lure them down by their hands, something, let them drop, but just to shove them off like that was fucking disgusting.

Um, and then you know, what they told the

Rhone's wife and everybody's family was, oh, we got them off respectfully.

That's not respect. That was

that was a fucking disgrace.

Um,

you know,

there's nothing you could do about it, it was done. So

a couple of the guys came around. I ended up grabbing

Bub's arms. And the other year, S guy grabbed

his legs, carried him around, got him up on the bed.

And I know the, well, we'll go back to a little bit more because about the fight that we had sitting there that they, that they're saying that I lied about what they did.

They're saying, again, they're trying to tell everybody that they got him off dignified and all that crap.

they're trying to say that uh the delta force i hate bashing on guys kind of like the those dudes that got that kind of started this whole thing again

um but they said you know they got an award saying they went up on the roof under fire and all this shit there was no fire i was the first one up on the damn roof you know they got an award for that they got the second highest award both of them

second highest for going up on a roof yep and getting dave ubin off that's all they did and throwing ronan bubb off

You know what? So when they came out and started attacking me, saying, we lied about that, that I lied about it. Oh, I was pissed.
So I started going through all the congressional reports.

Well, there's actually another eyewitness proving that they threw the bodies off the roof in that report because he saw it

through the back door. He talks about it in Congress.

And so now they're actually trying to up, they're trying to get upgraded to the Medal of Honor as well. They're trying to upgrade that to the medal of honor yep

for showing up late and in in uh again reading through his uh congressional report they waited two to three minutes after the mortars hit to even come out dude i was up on that fucking roof in like 30 seconds

so anyways So if you guys are, yeah, there was a whole fight. I mean, you know about that big fight, and I was pissed.
I was going off.

They were trying to slander, saying that, you know, anyways, so

just get him, get him up on. And then me and Jack were supposed to be the drivers for the flatbed.

Well, he, he kind of, he kind of came. Obviously, he heard about Roan, but again, he didn't know anything about Bub either.
And I guess he worked with Bub in the teams.

He was on, they were on the same team together and he saw him and I just saw him go white. He was just kind of like, holy shit.
So he kind of got in the driver's seat and just kind of sat there.

And I looked, he's like, dude, do you want me me to drive? He's like, yeah.

So we kind of swapped.

We covered up. We covered them up with sheets the best we could.

So

we ended up going out. Everybody else is like, they're all in these sedans and shit, all these fast freaking vehicles.
And we got this hodgy flatbed two mile an hour truck.

And we're fucking just trying. I'm trying to drive this damn thing.
You know, we went the long route. We went through the city, which ended up being 13 miles.

but i just remember the militia

coming up next to us like on the main highway they're like like the cars were gone we're like back me and jack are just back by ourselves with two militia trucks and i'm like i'm going as fast as i could in this damn thing you know so i'm just like we're gonna get hit going to the airport so

we finally we finally catch up while they were still sitting at the gate trying to get in well the militia controlling the uh airport didn't like the militia that was escorting us a lot of people don't understand is that militia that showed up that kind of that actually rescued us from that attack in the compound was gaddafi's military

so they didn't even know again our intel service didn't even know they were there had no idea jeez

so we get it we finally get in there We pull up to the, you know, the bird that Bub had come down in on and

State Department guys start loading all their

uh equipment that they pulled out of the consulate, start getting loaded up.

Actually, I went on the bird and I took my body armor because my side was killing me, just kind of took it off, came back because I thought we're all gonna get on this bird and uh

end up well. I did it, so my body armor left with without me.

So, again, one of those other things I'll never do again. But so, we get everybody on all the non-essentials, and

Oz

kind of gets

he he was being,

I think he might have the picture of it. I think I found it at one point.
Anyways, he's in the back of the truck laying down, kind of bandaged up a little bit.

I think one of the militiamens took a picture of it. But anyways, so very expensive jet, very nice jet.
It had a stewardess, very nice cabinets.

And so when Oz starts walking up to get up onto the plane, you know, she's standing there and just kind of looking at him and just eyes get wide.

Next you know, she takes off you know i'm kind of standing with oz i'm just kind of like i don't know what's going on you know and i kind of i turned and started doing something else when i guess

because he was going up on the he was just kind of going up there and what happened she was she ran to the back to get a bunch of towels to come up oz you know he tells it he's like well i thought she you know okay i've still got you know a bunch of pot marks all over i'm bleeding kind of all over these little holes and

He's kind of thinking like, okay, he's going to wrap him up and cover him up.

Nope, she started covering up all the seats and the floor and stuff with all these towels so he went and dripped blood everywhere

so

oz is kind of like well if you think i'm bad just wait till the next guy comes on they end up we end up they end up having to like rip the cabinets out of this plane so they can get dave ubin in because again he's on the stretcher and stuff so they end up getting him in getting him on the plane they bolt the plane up About five minutes later, the door comes flying back open.

Dude, the pilot jumps out. He's running all over the bottom of the plane.
We're just like, what the hell's going on?

Well, you know, everybody that works in a high-threat environment has to qualify with a pistol. You know, they got to carry a gun, right? Doesn't mean they're technically qualified.

Well, the maintenance guy pulled the trigger while he was on the plane, fired the gun.

So now they're looking for this bullet.

But as the pilot's out there looking for it, they found it. It actually, right where the seat post is, it hit right there and just stopped.
There's that gap like this

The bullet would have went left or right. It would never took off

They said that when they finally got up the tripoli That if Dave Ubin would have been another 10 15 minutes He'd have been dead Just because of so much blood loss.

We couldn't they couldn't stop the bleeding because again stopped a lot with the arm. I think they they ended up adding another tourniquet to his arm because it wouldn't stop.

But then he just had, again, he was just blistered all over the place. So, again, one of those God things, man.

So we stayed back. We had the two Delta Force guys with us, a country team leader, our team leader,

a linguist, Jack,

Tonto, OD,

and one State Department guy. Yeah, so there's nine of us that stayed back.
So as we're sitting there, the plane had taken off,

you know, then the militia, they started coming over.

They wanted, the you know what are we gonna do with the vehicles we started diving out the vehicles and i'm looking at the back of the bed and i'm like i thought there was three guys you know we got our two guys where's the other guy at and i started looking and

i'm thinking holy shit they left they left sean's body in the fucking car

so i see the suv starting to pull away and i'm just fucking running for this suv and the delta the the blonde uh air delta guy i think he was i think that was the marine and he's just like dude this sean and help me get sean's body.

So we had to start, you know, luckily I stopped him.

Otherwise, we'd have not had Sean's body with us.

So ended up getting Sean's body, grabbed it.

You got it? Yeah. He ended up getting it out and getting it onto the flatbed.

Again, I don't know why. Again, it's just like we're doing all the State Department's job, you know, but luckily I was in the mind to actually like think.

Otherwise, who knows what happened?

So

after the vehicles left, the commander came up from that militia and said, hey,

we can go and recover the ambassador's body. They had the numbers and they had the firepower because at the time it was Ansara Series

that was actually commandeering that hospital because that's where we were sending them to.

So the militia commander, he went,

took him about 45 minutes or so, came back.

We stopped the vehicle, you know, kind of away from us, myself, that same Delta first guy, and Tanto walked up, you know, looked the ambassador over, just lifted up the shirt, just make sure there was no incisions or anything like that.

So, again, that's how I know for a fact he wasn't tortured or mutilated, and, you know, he wasn't raped. So he still, you know, said, oh, his belt buckle was over.

Well, yeah, I mean, surprise the belt buckle wasn't on backwards. Who knows? I mean, shit happens in combat.

But, you know, again, I went over that morning and saw him, and he was wearing the exact same suit. You know, he had the same suit pants and, you know, he had the white undershirt.

So he never even had it. He never even got out of his work clothes.

so

we brought him over got him onto the flatbed and then that's when you know i don't know about 10 o'clock that that morning a libyan c-130 landed pulled off to the side um the team leader and the country team leader and the linguist went over there and uh

i guess talked him into flying us out of there because at the time we had no idea we had no idea if we're going to have to drive up or wait here that bird's going to turn around come back and and pick us up nobody really knew

so

one thing was fun dude the airport was open

so we're sitting out there we got belt feds you know it was kind of i still had you know our guns were there just not my body armor you know the airport planes are landing we're just kind of sitting out there big militia groups standing out there people are just kind of looking out It's just, it was just so real, man.

Just like, holy, like, going on. Like, that's life, man.

So we take off. off um

we land and uh i think it was like like taking off that's when everything started hitting me kind of like okay we're kind of safe you know and then to me it was just replaying them getting thrown off the roof over and over and that's what fucked me up

um yeah i talked to

tanto and oz about it and they said that that really really

haunts you yeah

So, yeah, we landed,

got them off, and then that's when,

you know when we put them on the plane, you know, we had their arms, so their arms were kind of suck. I think Tonto talks about it.

We had to snap them to get them to lay down to put them in the body bags and stuff. It's just one of those things you're not really thinking about at the time, honestly, the rig of mortars.

And so, that, you know,

that was pretty shitty, but you know, at least we got them home. There's a lot of guys that didn't make it back home.
So,

um,

then we get to

the annex, the CIA compound, and we pull in, dude, just the road is just lined with luggage. I'm just like, what the fuck is going on?

Well, they pulled everybody from the embassy and told them all to pack up. So all their luggage was outside waiting to get evacuated.

So we go in, we get debriefed, we tell them, you know, our side, what happened,

all this crap. And,

you know, to me, I didn't, I didn't really talk about the standout order because that was just more of an internal thing anyways.

You know, but the more you know about things, you're just like, you motherfucker. But anyways, so we go back and we kind of go, we get a little bit of lunch,

take a little nap. And I think that's when Hush kind of came around and got us and said, hey, you guys are going to evacuate.
We're like, why?

Just fucking stay here. Now they're going to send you guys back home.

Makes no fucking sense. We'd be better off standing here just in case something happens protecting the compound.
You know, like, okay, whatever.

So we ended up borrowing because, you know, my shit was all tore up, blood everywhere. Um,

so we ended up borrowing clothes from everybody else

and uh

get there, we get flown into into Tripoli. Here's what I want to tell you:

we get flown into Tripoli, Tripoli, General Ham was there, he greets us off the bird,

and uh, we go in, USO is there, they have you know, all kinds of stuff for us, right? But we got the whole entire embassy, which, I don't know, like 100-something freaking people.

And uh,

remember,

they had all their stuff,

but we didn't even have our backpacks, we didn't have time to grab it,

so we ain't got shit except for the clothes that we're wearing. And

they, you know, they start, you know, because I guess they didn't want to let people know who we were or anything like that.

Even the State Department guys that were, they were kind of sitting with us, not even with the State Department.

And, you know, they said, okay, come up, you know, grab the stuff that you need, you know, and you know, just take what you need.

Dude, by the time the guys were actually in Benghazi, everything was gone.

All the MC staffers fucking took everything.

Clothes, socks, underwear, toiletry,

everything was gone. And when we walk up, you could tell, like, oh, you guys are the ones that were down there, huh? Like, yeah.

So they ended up giving us like each of like of us like $500

credit cards, you know, but that wasn't the point. I was like, holy, you guys got all your shit.

And they literally took, I mean, pants, socks, underwear, shoes they fucking took it all

it was like you motherfuckers that's the state department for you though

so we wake up

the the the stat the state department security guys they were pretty much ordered to go talk to the FBI we were asked if we wanted to go talk to the FBI and to us why

There was no for us, I mean it was it was an attack on a it is what it is I mean it was an attack How is this an FBI investigation?

we're in a you know a high threat environment not really technically a war zone but it's a war zone what's the fbi gonna do so we never talked to the fbi there um they kept us there until after they brought um the guys home the moment the ceremony was over with they came down said you guys can go home but you got to buy your own ticket

so

We were able to finally leave the following day, flew to DC, stayed there for about three days, debriefed twice, solid medical because my lungs were just cooked from the smoke and the fire.

And I think it was about a week after that when I was able to finally go home. So it was about a total week before I actually made it home home.

So

that's the story. How were you greeted at HQ?

Pretty good.

I mean, yeah,

it was a pretty good greeting at that time. And they were showing us around.
I think they had uh um

no not at that time it was the second time i came back i mean i had no negativity really from them until i think until until tanto started the rumors about him doing a book him and ox that's when it kind of the treatment got a little bit different but i was it wasn't part of it initially i didn't even know they were doing it but because i went back two more times

so i mean it was

you know you do it for long enough there's a lot of little scrapples you kind of get involved with it's just that's the one that everybody knows about.

So did these Delta guys, did they see

it was over when they showed up? Yeah. Was it all the way over?

I mean, they were there when the mortars hit, but that was it. They didn't come out.
They didn't shoot a gun. They didn't fire.
They were never out in the open under fire. Nothing.

And

they got the second highest award. Yep.
For Army and Marines.

What is the Navy Star, I think, or something like that? Navy Cross. Navy Cross, yeah.

And they're going to be upgraded to the Medal of Honor.

Yep, I read it. Yep, they're trying to get upgraded to the Medal of Honor.

Which to me is just a slap in the face. It's a disgrace to that award.

So I'm doing my best to fight it, but again, it's you can only, I mean, I've even told a couple of the Medal of Honor recipients, it's like, this is bull, it degrades what the purpose of it is.

What do they say? They say they can't really do anything, it's it's up to some committee and crap, which again, you try to get a hold of, try to email nothing.

So,

and it goes like if those guys get that award, I would never be able to look at a medal of honor the same way ever again

because I'll be thinking the same thing: like you didn't fucking earn that,

and people came after you for this?

Yeah, I mean, I had

the other Delta Force podcast came at me.

Some other journalist that

does Fox News came at me for it,

saying that we lied because they're saying the Delta Force guys are saying that I lied, that they got them down respectfully. They were up on the roof under fire, all this horse shit.

Again, I was up there.

I was going to a third individual, put on two tourniquets, looked one over, putting on another tourniquet, looked one over, getting him up, moving him, going to the third individual before anybody got up on the roof.

So, I mean, I was up there for a while.

Have they stopped coming after you?

I haven't heard anything yet, but I mean, they could just have blocked me again.

I only saw it like last, it was, again, it was on Fox News. I was scrolling through it.

It was like saying that we fabricated the book the book was full i was like what the hell is this and that's what i read a dealt the force guy saying this and this and i was like oh hell no

so i kind of went in um

went at them and uh you know they're trying to say you know we we put this out there nobody reached out actually they talked about on the show how boone's team

and they laughed it off all that he tried to reach out and again it was just a bunch of horseshit all they do is try to tear guys down i mean

and

you got other operators trying to tear other operators apart, which is horseshit.

In my opinion,

if somebody does, says, over-exaggerates something, I don't really care.

But again, if you're going to sit there and tell me that I lied about it, I'm going to have a big problem with it.

And so, again, I went through, that's a lot of congressional hearing stuff to read through.

Again, found his statement contradicts what he says, even in his own freaking citation that he was given.

What he testifies in Congress contradicts his own citation.

And then this other guy, again, he says, well, I contacted the Special Forces Operations Command within 24 hours. And he said, no, his awards are good.

Nobody's going to get back to you that fast. Period.

Who is that?

I forgot what the guy's name is. He's like the big usually, I guess he does more sports crap, but he's buddies with the Delta Force guys that do that podcast

so this is the anti-hero podcast yeah but it's the other guy that they they use i think too also

this is some kind of big podcaster as well i can't remember his guy's name but um so far when when i when i did my whole like i did a whole video on it and stuff even roan's mom got a hold of me because she heard about it she's all hell no because she did her own investigation into shit so she knows the truth because i told her she and they were telling her that that they got Roan off respectfully

so when I went when we got a fake award from the agency they came up to me and they're like hey hey you know you remember we were under fire up on the roof no

they tried to they tried to tell you that we were under fire on the roof to basically manipulate you into saying that they were under fire on the yeah on the rooftop Yeah, and then Rowan's wife wanted to talk to me, but I couldn't talk to her at that time because

I was still dealing with them getting fucking tossed off the damn roof. How am I going to tell the wife that?

But I guess they had already told her that they got them off respectfully. Who are these guys? Do you have their names?

I don't write off the head. Their awards are public.

So

it's disgusting.

So, but you know, we did get a really good coffee coaster award from the agency.

What? A coffee coaster. We got an award that's probably about as big as this, maybe, maybe bigger.

They gave it to the cook and the maintenance guy and the staffers, too.

You know, with this podcast coming out about all these guys, I mean, there's a, there's, it's fucking, it's tricky, you know, and, and, um, one of them that just got hammered,

I mean, he came in here and

over-embellished, lied about his entire fucking service record.

And I think that's disgusting. And

it takes away

from people like you and every other person that's come in here and sat across me and documented their service, what they were a part of, historic events like Benghazi.

And that takes away from the story. And I can appreciate that.
You know, at the same time, if you don't have your fucking facts straight, straight,

people commit suicide over this shit. No.

They commit suicide over this shit. It's crazy.
And it is.

Destroying lives.

Yeah, it destroys the whole community. It does a lot of damage.
Again.

And at the same time,

some of the records needed to be set straight. No, I agree.
But to go out and...

But you have to be very

fucking careful

when you broach

these type of topics. Because if you do it wrong,

you are the fucking problem. Yep.
Kind of like what they did to me.

Do you have anything to say to them? No, I think I've kind of already have. Again, they're like, well, you can come on the podcast.

Like, why would I come onto your podcast when you couldn't have the balls to reach reach out to me initially and ask me? They didn't even reach out to you? No,

none of them did.

I'm easy to get a hold of.

I'm pretty much a public figure. So for them to have an excuse, so we couldn't bullshit.

They did this. They did this.

So I don't think I

saw what they did until like April, and they did it like in November of last year.

I had no idea until I saw that guy's report on Fox News. Why do you think the the journalists targeted you? Where did this stem from? So I went after him because he, again, he slandered me

on Fox News. So I came after him.
And then that's when

the other podcast popped in. And so I was actually doing both at the same time.

I'm very,

I won't, yeah, I won't back down. I really don't care.
Good for you. So I went at him.

Yeah.

And I, you know, obviously their community came at me and I was fired right back. Fuck you.
Who's their community? Well, whoever watches

podcasts. Yeah.
There's some other people or what? Other Delta Force guys that came at me. And again, I kind of threw their whole

motto back at them. And, you know, forgot exactly what their motto is.
But then some other guys, like, well, you can't be using that. You're not this.
Like, I'm not saying I'm not. That's their motto.

It's like, you know, their own motto is like, you know, don't go after your own brothers. But what are they? That's their whole podcast.

So, but yeah, there are some other people in their community. Not a lot, but again,

whatever. I'll stand.
I know where I stand.

Good for you, man.

Why do you think these guys are chasing this award anyways?

Both guys. I don't know.
Again, I didn't know they even had the second highest award until this. I had no idea what they got.
Like, whatever.

What does it claim in the award?

They were they rendered aid under fire

and the biggest one again they rendered aid under fire and they escorted unarmed civilians to safety Both of those that's all a lie. They didn't render aid under fire.

Yeah, they rendered aid and but they never even escorted any all of us were armed. I mean we're all agency personnel and State Department in a high-threat environment.
Every one of us were armed.

But for me, I mean, it's the whole rendering aid under fire crap. No, he didn't.

Because even if you rendered aid afterwards, it definitely wasn't under fire.

Even all three of you guys have the same story because I talked to all three of you about it.

Yeah, well, again, if you read the book, how we did the book,

none of us ever talked to each other.

That's that's the the thing about that book.

We never talked to each other.

We never like discussed anything never had a chance to because i went back to work i think maybe oz and tonto did but even then i don't know how much they would have so when i said yeah i'll finally do it the authors what he wanted us to do is just tape record what we saw what we did and send it to him

again jack is over here

tantos and again i never again i never talked to Jack, Tonto, or Od

until after I sent my recordings in for the book.

So what he did, he took all our recordings and just meshed them together. And that's how he came up with the book.

This is probably one of the most factual books that I know of you could have done between five people.

Why do you think some of the guys never went public?

Jack is still working. He's still doing

it. Not for the agency or anything like that, but plus he has a little

small mom and pop kind of a business. So he just kind of wanted to keep that out.
But yeah, he still does

high security stuff in the States.

His seals are just nuts, man. He just like to keep working.

So, yeah, that's why he didn't. And then

boom, he finally came out. Yeah.
I think he was just stuck in the closet, lost the key or something. I don't know.
Just did want to revisit it. Yeah.

But I think he went, he was working too. He was still doing stuff as well.
And I think that's why. Yeah, I met him and young.

So,

but yeah, I mean, initially, I was, I was going to be,

I wasn't going to come out public either. Why not?

Just didn't really want to deal with it. I killed kind of wanted to work still too.

And I was, I would say I kind of got talked into it by the author because, you know,

Because I was kind of like in every major portion of it, but also I was the one that got told to stand down. So it's kind of like, you know, it's going to be their word.
You know, they're going to,

they did kind of attack us, but not as hard as we thought.

But he was like, if you don't, it's going to be kind of like they're going to have to use your word to defend themselves versus you coming out and being able to defend it directly.

So it was like the day before, it was like I had to tell him yes or no.

How long did you take off before you went back to work?

It took me about six months to heal up.

What was it like going back to work?

Pretty normal. I mean, I went back and then

had, I actually did a video testified in front of the Senate committee, which was weird because they actually, when I was testifying, to tell us they actually had

Bob and Hush on the video conference.

So it was just kind of, I don't know, it was just... They had those two on the conference call? Mm-hmm.
How was that? So they would answer.

I could tell they would hurry up and answer questions that I would probably going to say different to. And I just sat there.
I was like, whatever. Especially the stand down order.

Bob answered that one really quick.

And then. What did he say?

He pretty much said, well, I don't remember if there was this. It was probably because of like, I was waiting for support.

Yeah, that's what it was. It's because all there wasn't, you know, that's not probably, that's not really what I said, or if I did, I didn't mean it that way.

way and then when I went and testified in front of Congress Hush answered it really quick because when I went and testified I was with Hush

again I'm just kind of like they don't yeah and I'm not personally like if you don't ask me I'm not gonna answer it for you kind of a thing

I mean is it a big deal I mean it's a big deal because two people got died from it because you had somebody who was a who was a in the league actually both of them if hush didn't know I don't know if he knew or not that that sending Feb wasn't coming at that time.

But, I mean, his decision to make us wait when he knew nobody was coming got two people killed

directly.

So,

again, at the time, I think that's why they were doing what they were doing. Because, again, he was retiring.
He was a 30-year agency guy. And everybody...

was trying to cover their own asses for the mistakes that were made.

And again, instead of holding people accountable, they got promoted. I mean, they all,

the team leader, Hush, and Bob, the country team leader, they all got the Intel star.

And if people don't know, that's equivalent to the Mother of Honor.

They didn't give us shit.

And we don't do it for that, but again, it just goes back to like a slap in the face.

Yeah

It definitely goes to show you what this is actually all about

Maybe it's just that's all it was is just them bureaucracy.

Yep them covering up each other's asses That's why you watch you know Don Bangino and it's what is the post like the shit that I've seen I'll never forget like this country is fucked.

That's kind of what I got from that

Just because of the corruption.

I'm sorry, man.

How are you doing today? No, I'm good. Yeah.

Got a, you know, got, you know,

got divorced and got remarried. You know, did a 180.

Again,

she's a very

religious Christian lady.

But she's been really good.

She's been helping me quite a bit you know dealing with a lot of different things because you know when i was going through you know pretty much like in 2020 kind of started my own divorce path and just kind of really taking a more of a big shitter and then you know 2023 found her when i was running for mayor the first time and just kind of turned turned everything around how did you meet her

she

was did an interview with me

then she did an interview with you yeah so she's got her version of how it happened i got my real version of how it happened.

So,

so again, I did, I jumped in the mayor race in 23 like the last minute. I mean, I didn't really know what else.
I just wanted to throw a wrench in the system and just try to

get things actually done. And I don't like, I don't bullshit.
I'm just going to be direct. I don't, like, if I don't really know something, I'm going to tell you.

I'm not going to, like, a lot of these, when I was up there, when I, when I started doing the interviews or the panels, whatever, their answers started changing to what my answers were.

It I was like, you motherfuckers, they're all like all these politicians, they just, they're all fluffed. They change their answers for the audience.
I don't change for anybody.

I don't really care. But anyway, so I was doing my coming out of the closet launch and she found out about it.

Normally she wouldn't show up to the local races and stuff like that, but you know, she got hit up by like three people. And so she finally came.
And then my manager and

my manager, yeah, I guess my manager kind of hit her up to do an interview with me. And then we kind of did an interview and then she started stalking me.

She won't sing it. That's the truth.

So she started coming in, doing some training. So I was doing a training also at DCF Guns.
And so, and she was actually going over to another

magnum that was there. She was there.
And then she canceled that membership, joined DCF.

And then, you know, we kind of started talking a little bit more.

And she'd use excuses like, hey, the security team at Karis Bible college wants to meet you i mean they did but it was her just stalking me is what it was

and uh

and then we just kind of kept on from there and then eventually we had lunch and just kind of kept going and

yeah then once i got married she stopped training so that's how i know she was stalking me

right on dad well no that's kind of how we met i mean it was

Yeah, she's been a big blessing.

Good for you, man. It was probably actually, you know, all the, I don't know if we go on the music stuff yet, but kind of started pushing that stuff out.

Yeah. Let's take a break real quick.

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All right, Tig, we're back from the break and we're getting ready to get into life after

contracting. But, you know, one of the things, I don't know if you've watched any of these, but one of the things I like to do is talk about

all the struggles that veterans and contractors have coming home, how to fit back in with society.

Most of us, it's not a positive story, you know, and

being

through something like what you went through in Bughazi, I mean, how did that affect your home life and

reintegration?

How was it coming home? I mean, you had seven-month-old twins.

I mean, it was nice because I was able to see them. I mean, we were talking about a little bit on the break, but, you know,

it was a first time having kids and dealing with something like that. So, you know, when I remember just being in the back of the car, my biggest thing is like, you start going back home.

Normally never, you just deal with it. You know, you don't, I never thought about home.

This time it's just kind of like, holy crap, I might never see the kids again. They'll never knew who I was, you know, never get to see them growing up.
That shit starts playing in your head.

Were you thinking about that that night? Yeah, I mean, again, sitting in that car just waiting to roll. And it was just like, now you got to squash it out.
You know, you got to stay focused.

Because, you know, again, having kids for the first time, it was just, it was weird. It was different.

But, you know, once we started actually rolling, it kind of went. And then

when I was in the tower, like during the intervals,

you know, your mind starts going back home sometimes. And just like you try to get it out.
That way you can just focus.

Because, you know, if your mind's wandering, something comes up on you, man, that's bad. Yeah.
So I'm just trying to stay focused on it. But, you know, coming back home.

Real quick, I want to ask one other thing. Yep.

What prayers did you say over Bub Simron?

So I wrote it down at... Kind of when we were doing the book.

I did write it, but I didn't say what it was because at the time

it to me it just felt like it was just something that was between me them and god

but it was uh you know uh

lord watch over our fallen warriors for they have made the ultimate sacrifice

um guide them

guide them to guide them to your side and

Help your angels ensure that no more fall tonight because again, we'd now we just lost four

and then I and i don't know like verbatim right off the top of my head but and it was a watch over their families for what they're gonna what they're what what they're gonna experience um

and you know just what they're gonna face just the turmoil they're gonna go through and my thing was just trying to guide them you know

back with as much light as possible so they can heal fast and go forward because again roan he just found out also that he was just having a kid so that's kind of some of the stuff that was going through through my head was just the stuff that their family is going to have to deal with back home.

You know, because, you know, to me,

I think

somebody dying is not, and to me, it's not really a sad thing

because they're actually going home. We're all the way from home.
I'm ready to go home. You know,

but when the time is the time. And so, but for me, it's just the

turmoil that we kind of deal with when we do lose people.

So, for them, it's not sad, you know, because, again, they're gone, they're home.

But for us, again, we are, you know, we're just kind of dealing with how do we move on from saying, so what I was kind of thinking about us just being protected

because I didn't know what was going to happen.

And just for the family, me having kids, knowing he was just getting ready to have a kid and stuff like that.

Again, said the same thing over, Bub, but then didn't know him, but still, same mindset. yeah man

thank you for sharing that yeah so again just listen to people again the wife kind of drives certain things out that i usually wouldn't talk about

uh but again it goes back to like just stuff like that may help somebody if it if it only helps one person that's enough yeah

so that's you think about them a lot

Yeah, I would say so.

But again, it's,

you know, when I do my speaking events and, you know saying their names for me It just it keeps them going forward. It keeps them alive.

You know, they always say you know you you're only for truly forgotten when your name's spoken for the final time

so were you close with Tyrone? No

again just

He was he was that that normal like I would say for everybody calls him Master Chief, but to me he's like a gunny He just had that gunny attitude, you know, always had a coffee so I can only relate to as a Marine Corps side.

So,

but no, he was always cool, laid back. You know, we talked a lot about cows.
I had cattle at the time and stuff. They were actually going to buy some beef from me.

But

again, 30 days,

you kind of get to know people, but not really. Again, my background, I'm very kind of still,

I'm more open now, but I was back. Even back then, I was more kind of quiet, standoffish, didn't trust anybody.
Well, I think we've established why.

So, like me getting to know people, it takes a while.

So what was it, what were your struggles coming back?

I never had nightmares.

I did have a hard time sleeping and getting a pretty good, I think I had actually had the TBI from the

one in Pesh, that attack. Again, never received medical attention for that whatsoever, but I felt weird after that one.
But this one,

I think just being around the explosion so close to him and just consistent more,

I just couldn't sleep. Again, didn't have nightmares or nothing like that.

So for me, it was just kind of just getting medical issues taken care of because I couldn't go to the VA for it because we were contractors at the time.

And technically, they didn't want you going to the VA because it was still classified. So they picked the doctor that you went and saw.

So just dealing with that, I mean, I had all kinds of weird stuff. Like, dude, my body would just swell up kind of like I had diabetes or something

um it was just weird like i couldn't wear watches or nothing because my wedding ring couldn't wear because my whole body would just it would just swell up like just weird just at random

what was it from did they figure it out they didn't figure it out they kind of they gave up pretty much reboozin nope

drugs nope nothing nope that is almost unheard of yeah it was it was weird man um but then the va

they gave me some kind of, they did give me a, like a sleeping pill, but it was like a psychotic sleeping pill. And dude, that's when I had it, I actually started dreaming.
And

I was dreaming about the Benghazi, but it never happened the way, like one time I was climbing through freaking rafters with Roan and even Oz. I'm like, Oz, what the fuck is going on?

We didn't climb through. Oz wasn't even here, you know, kind of thing.
I mean, he was there, but he wasn't like in the, over at the consulate and stuff.

And then, again, just weird scenarios that were going on, but it was all in Benghazi. And then the last one was, I don't know how my kids showed up.

When my kids showed up, I ended up chopping their heads off. What? And that was the last time I took it.
I woke up and said, fuck this.

I never took any sleeping aid ever again. Shit.

So, again, I think a lot of veterans, they sit there and they say they have this kind of stuff, but they keep taking it.

Because you do sleep. I mean, I was sleeping.
Yeah. But I was like, fuck this.
It ain't worth it.

So I've never took anything for sleep since and then uh

it was just that i mean just

weird medical problems um

and actually i got a thing called a relapsing polychondoritis which they don't even know where it comes from only like

10 american 10 people in our country even have it so it's uh it's an autoimmune that attacks your cartilage and uh usually it's already attacked my ears the next is usually the nose then after that it goes for your uh your esophagus, and that's when you die.

So,

but I still, I mean, they say within about 10 years, if you're still alive, you'll be good. I got another five years because that was diagnosed in 2020.

Jeez, so for me, coming back, it wasn't really difficult. I didn't really have a

hard time.

Um, again, for me, honestly, for the whole thing, it was just

hearing them getting tossed off that roof. Honestly,

everything, that's that's the hardest thing for me.

So.

No depression, suicide attempts?

Nothing.

No.

I mean, I'm pretty sure I had some depression. I mean, kind of quit doing what I wanted to do.

We got pretty much screwed over on the book and movie deal. How'd you get screwed over on the book?

Well,

we get no residuals. from book sales or movie or anything.

Is that from them or is that the agency agency intervening i dude we don't know according to them the book didn't sell enough the movie didn't make enough

so we don't get

number one new york times bestseller it's right on the

cover yep according to them nope it's one of the only movies i've ever watched that has to do with what we used to do Well, dude, if you look at the reviews, it's got like 15,000 reviews.

It's still almost five stars.

But no, the actors,

they're making a shit ton of money from it. We don't make, again, it's just how we got screwed over.
I guess, you know, the same people that helped us do the, do the book

kind of did the movie as well. And we kind of thought we had everything covered in there.

But again, just,

you know, liberal Hollywood fucked us over. I mean, we didn't do it for the money.
It's good that story's out there. It's permanent.
You can't change it.

But yeah, a lot of people think, oh, you get, you know, well, they call it blood money, but even if it, whatever,

we don't get anything from it. Unless we sell it, unless you buy it from us directly, we don't get anything.

That's a shame.

What?

You guys were involved with the making of the movie, though, correct? Yep.

How involved?

So once you do the movie, or they're going to do it, you have to sign your life rights. So you can, they're only going to do so much because they have 100% control.

So I like to laugh because anyways, because I stand my ground on shit. I don't care.

Anyways, so, you know, we went in, we talked to Michael Bay.

They gave us like the movie script the day before.

I don't know how to read a movie script. I don't, you know, I'm reading this stuff and I'm like, I don't know what the hell they're even talking about, you know, because they're talking,

because again, they're leading up to it. And I'm like, yeah, whatever.
I'm not going to be able to read this the whole night before. We're just going to see them tomorrow.

We're going to walk through it, talk through it.

So we did.

We walked through things they showed me you know what the set was gonna look like i'm like yeah the set's not right so that the movie set for the annex that's dude it's pretty accurate i mean that's probably 99 accurate i was like well there's trees here there's it's like we're not doing that dude so but for the most part the the our the annex is pretty good the the consulate it's pretty far off but again they you know you got to deal with the layout of the land and stuff like that so

when we're there we got to go on set for 10 days and uh

um

i was sitting there they were doing the uh this the attack scene so it was kind of cool to watch but again i don't really know like because they're doing like the same thing like for an hour straight i don't know how people do it um

but anyways and michael bay as they're filming whatever they're doing the whole actions he comes walking up and he says hey so you got shot and again like yeah i got shot you where'd Where'd you get shot?

I got shot in the side. He goes, okay, you're going to get shot in the chest.

Okay, whatever. You know, so it's just things like that that you just really can't control.
But

so they did it all. And then I think I went home and then Jack calls me.

And

he's saying, hey, I just found out that they're not going to put you up on the roof. I'm like, what do you mean? So

it's just going to be me up on the roof. And I'm like,

no, that ain't going to happen.

And it's like, and they're not showing that the Delta Force guys threw them off the roof.

And I said, well, if they're not going to put me on the roof and show the truth, I don't want nothing to do with it. You can tell them all the fuck off.

So

next thing you know,

I think I forgot who, like the producer guy calls. He says, hey, you know, we just, this is why.
I'm like, I really don't care. Why?

If I'm not on the roof and you're not showing what they did, you can fuck off. And I hung up on him.

Michael Bay calls, said the same thing to him and then finally the president the param president paramount whatever dude's name was at the time called and i hung up on him yeah i don't really care i'm will not be on if you don't put me on the roof don't show what they actually did you can all off

well they fixed it

that's what i mean it goes back to like

i really don't care it's like we there's a certain ground where people just need to stand and they didn't do it then i just wouldn't promote the movie i wouldn't want nothing to do with it good for you man so

even more now that we don't really get anything from it, but it was just about, you know, like you need to show what really happens.

And a lot of things in Hollywood, like Michael Bay is like, well, we're doing it this way because we need to have more action. I'm sorry.

I didn't know you were, I didn't know we didn't have enough action for everybody.

Like, holy shit.

So.

Yeah, it's just, but I mean, they did a good job with it. It honored the four guys, and that was their biggest thing.
They left politics out of it.

That was another goal with the book and the the movie. We didn't want politics in it because politics were not involved when we're in the middle of the fight.
Politics came from politicians.

We didn't invite the

politics into this. It was everyone else that did it.
So again, we get, you know, we were doing the book tour and all this, even the movie, we get hit up, you know, bashed by the left a lot.

See, oh, you're doing this because it's political. You did that.
I'm like, what the fuck are you guys talking about? It's like, like, we're not going to watch.

It's all, it's like, they don't even give the book or the the movie a time because they think it's political. There's nothing political in the book or in the movie, but that's, that's their mindset.

And, you know, I remember we got this old lady one time, we were in Boulder and she came at us saying, I can't believe you guys left the ambassador to die. You just abandoned him.

And I'm just like, he wasn't our job. We risk our lives to go and save them.

It's like a lot of people don't even know what happened, but yet you get yelled at.

You know, you get like degraded for something you had no control over.

What the fuck, man? Yeah. The book tour was interesting.

Sounds like it.

So,

but no, I mean, again, coming back home, to me, the hardest thing was just getting the medical treatment.

And

then trying to do speaking events. Because, again, I was a quiet guy.
You met Boone, right?

Met him several times. I was quieter than he was.

Are you serious?

That dude does not talk. Yeah.

Wow.

So, yeah. So, again, it took me a while.
Like, I mean,

like the first six months, I think Tonto answered every question that was asked to me.

So, I think, you know, I've come out of my shell quite a bit.

Well, you've got to if you're going to run for mayor. Chief, right?

You better start talking.

I'll probably still not be a typical politician. God, I hope not.
We got way too many of those. Yeah, I mean,

you know, then I, you know, get involved in a lot of these other veteran organizations and foundations.

And I think that helped quite a bit, you know, because then you're more, you're not focusing on yourself. You're kind of helping other guys.
And it kind of helps you at the same time.

But then you do got some guys i mean i still i did a couple um

what was um like with saw special or save a warrior you know went to their uh retreatment so i did my own things as well as helping other guys because again you you want to sit there as a vet and say oh you need to go do this but if you don't do it yourself you're kind of doing everyone else a disservice you're being dishonest yeah so you still i mean if you're going to be part of it you still got to help fix yourself otherwise you know you see guys that take their own lives and stuff like that and it's because

you know, was that one? Uh,

I think his name was Jocko.

He was a pretty

vet that was like in the whole 22 kind of thing, helping guys out constantly. The next thing you know, he's gone.
It's just like, again, if you're gonna

see other people help, I think it's been for me, it helps me knowing that I kind of help them in a way. Who's this?

I know Jocko, but

it was a different one, though. Not the one, again, he was from Texas.

Yeah, for some reason, that's the name that's coming in my head, though.

There's been a lot. Yeah, it's not a lot of it.
It's sad, you know, but

some of it I don't always think it's combat-related. I think it's home life-related.
They just don't know how to deal with that portion of it.

At least that's what I've kind of seen. I think sometimes not to

go off on the spouses, but again, I think sometimes the spouses aren't truthful of what happens in their inside their family life, which again keeps this thing going forward without actually being able to

truly fix it.

That's my opinion. Just because I've been around it so much and I see so much stuff.

Yeah, guys suffer, they see things, but I think it's a lot of it's just that stress of the home life, and that's what gets to them. Yeah.

Yeah.

Did you deal with any type of survivor's guilt or anything like that? No,

because my mindset kind of goes down to like we all knew what we're getting into. We all knew what we wanted to do and we were, we volunteered to go there.

We'd always want everybody to come home when we can, but also I think it goes back to like we didn't have that solid brotherhood either.

Like I'm not again, like, I don't want active duty guys to say, off, you know, kind of fuck you will.

You know, we weren't there for a year, four years, five years, six years together, you know, 30 days. You know, you didn't have time to build that kind of camaraderie.
So it's a little bit different.

I mean, it still hits you regardless. Yeah.
I mean,

you're still a brotherhood. You want to fight for each other.
You're Americans. You're fighting for the same thing.

But, you know, I just don't want to take that away from other guys that have that. And that's not what I'm saying.
Just we didn't have that ability to build that type.

But you also got to remember, y'all signed up for that job. That comes, death comes with it.

It's just, it sucks. But having that survival guild, I mean,

if if you passed, would you want him doing the same thing you're doing

for me? For

it's more about

doing better or keep going. I have the thing that always says, always move forward because if

you degress versus progress, it does them a disservice. It dishonors their sacrifice, in my mind.
So maybe it's just trying to keep on doing it. I mean, you're always going to have failures.

I mean, you're always going to, you know, it's not every day, everything's perfect, you know, but it's just trying to do your best, you know, to honor them by doing better, keep going forward, make things better for our country, make their sacrifice mean something.

What advice do you have for guys kind of getting out, coming home for today?

Have a plan. Have, you know,

a lot of guys you talk to, it's like they get out. They're like, I don't even even know what the hell i'm gonna do

if you don't know don't get out that's the worst thing you can do have something have something in mind to go and do

you know

because

that's what i hear the most out of a lot of guys even retired guys but they don't have to worry about income but they're just kind of like i don't even know what to do it's like yeah you knew you were getting out at least a year before he got out.

And I think you have to start planning for something.

Don't go to college. Go to a trade school.

Just if you don't have an actual skill, that's, I mean, I started in HVAC. It was all, you know,

hands-on labor stuff, but I'm not a college kid. So I went to a trade school, but you learn the job you want to know versus, you know, a lot of college, you got to take 20, 30 other courses.

That's going to cost you an extra 200 grand. It doesn't have nothing to do with what you want to learn.
But

for guys,

just have a plan, man. Don't just get out.
That's the dumbest thing you can do. If you don't have a plan, you better stay in.

Because that's my opinion.

I think that's good advice.

So you're running for mayor

in Colorado Springs. What prompted that? I love chaos.

No, so you know,

it stemmed initially from 2020, but yeah, from 2020. So it's why I kind of jumped in in 2023.

I was very vocal in 2020. I hated the shutdowns.
I hated that stupid socialism, lockdown, just infringement crap. It pissed me off.

So I did a lot of things in Colorado, trying to tell business, just open up. They can't shut you off.
And they can't. They can't shut you all down.
They can't.

Otherwise, they destroy the whole entire city anyways. So I did things up in Denver, pissed off

the polis up there. I think One time he called me a stupid, selfish bastard because I wanted, I was up there, I think I had like 4,000 something people show up, a bunch of dudes on motorcycles.

I mean, it was a bike ride from all four corners of Colorado. It was pretty cool.
And

because for me, for the government to tell us that we can't do something is bullshit. We tell the government what it can't do.
It doesn't tell us what we can't do.

So I started really pushing back on that. And, you know, cops arresting parents in parks with their kids.

No.

Oh, hell no. To me, that's the, you as a cop, you should retire.
You need to throw away that badge because you're a disgrace. I'm with you on that one, man.
I can't, I can't listen to another

person

that's just saying,

I'm just doing my job. Oh, no, yeah.
Then fucking quit. Yep.
I'm on 100. And get a new job.

Your job, she, well, that's just, if you're just following orders, well, you can can just go enjoy prison the rest of your life, in my opinion, because you're violating somebody else's rights.

That's how I am. I'll back the blue, but again, that doesn't, you're,

yeah, your lack of knowledge does not supersede my freedoms. Yeah.

So,

so then, you know, 23 came around. I was

starting a new job because I got tired of like traveling so much.

And

I was taking lunch. And I saw on the news, you know, you have like so long to sign up and then so much longer to get the signatures you need to, you know, to run for mayor.

I think I had like two days to get my packet in and then I had to, you know, like two weeks to get my signatures. It was right before shot show.

I was like, shit, I'll just do it.

So I got up, went down to the, again, I had no. no idea what I was gonna do.
I was just gonna do it.

Went down there, got the packet, came back, had a friend come over, filled out the paperwork, finished it that night, turned it back, turned it in the the next morning, got my

stuff to go get my signatures. You know, the 200, you had to get 200 signatures.
And that's, and then I had to come to SHOT Show.

So they're doing that. I got like 200 signatures the first weekend when I was gone, came back, got another 200, turned it in that Monday.

And then I got on the ballot, and then they tried to remove me from the ballot. Why'd they try to remove you from the ballot?

Because supposedly two people came in to the administration's office and said, I didn't live in Colorado Springs. So I asked them, so who are my accusers?

Apparently, you can't face your accusers in those incidents. People can just accuse you, whatever.
So I had to prove that I lived in Colorado Springs for over a year.

It wasn't hard. Seems pretty easy.
Yeah, but I'm just like, this is stupid.

And then they tried to fight me on putting John Tig Tigen on the ballot. I'm like, well, that's a trademark name.

Actually, I can put anything I want on the ballot. So I got to fight.
Everything I did in the first round was a fight.

So So anyway, so I got on, you know,

I think it panicked a little bit of the other.

It's a bipartisan, supposedly, or not a, yeah, it's

unaffiliated run. But I think I still think the Democrats kind of freaked out and they saw me jump on.
And I think it went up to like a million-dollar race.

I raised like, I raised like 20 grand. You know, but again, I knew I didn't have a chance.
That wasn't the point. The point was to do what I did.

And this time i'm doing it again for the same reason again my my goal is

the mayor can only do so much and i think people need to realize that which you know when i was running the questions they're asking you even from the media the mayor doesn't even have no control over

you know so that's the hard part for me was trying to figure out what what can the mayor actually because i'm not a politician i never wanted to do it and now i'm just like screw it i'm going to do it now he can piss me off but you know they're asking things like a mayor can't control that's more like a city council or that's the county commissioners commissioners.

It's just like, what's wrong with you people? So, but I want to give more control back to the people, back to the community, and even back to the police.

Because if you look and see what happens around this country, especially with police chiefs and certain mayors,

they'll tie the hands of cops and they can't do anything with criminals. They can't do anything.
Again, like this mayor, he's tying our police chiefs' hands.

I regard as he wants to admit it or not, because I know people too.

He won't allow the local law enforcement to work with federal agents to wrap up these criminals, these illegals.

To me, it's like, no, they're one police, the number one job is to protect the community. Anyone who's violating our community needs to be wrapped up.

And again, if they're healed illegally, they violated it.

So

my goal in a way, I don't know, again, still looking into things, but

trying to make it to where even though the mayor may still pick the police chief, he can't dictate what he does. Like as long as he's within the Constitution, the mayor has no control.

You shouldn't have to control that police chief, just like a sheriff. You can't control the sheriff.

But people say, well, you need to build a make sure your town's taken care of. It's like, as long as you put in there, like, he has to abide by the U.S.
Constitution, the state constitution.

That's all he needs to do. That's what you should be doing, anyways.

The mayor shouldn't be stopping, shouldn't be hindering, shouldn't be influencing, shouldn't be doing a damn thing with law enforcement.

So, again, it's just like, it's just like the president kind of having control over the FBI and having them do a raid on a former president because he wants to. That's bullshit.

You shouldn't have that type of control because that's what happens.

During 2020, you had the Seattle police pulled completely out and you had a nation of Chaz show up. You know, it's like, no, they're there to protect the community.

The mayor should not be telling that police chief to pull. The police chief should be doing their damn job protecting the community.
And then, you know, just the infrastructure and all that stuff. And

yeah, it's, I mean, I got, I got a little ways to go, but I got two years to prep. And I already, I have like eight issues I'm looking into that people complain about.
But,

so.

Well,

I'm sure you're going to do well.

So I'm excited to see how it goes. You know, people say, well, it should be easy.
It's a military town, but

yeah, we have five military bases. But again, it's the military don't vote.
They're, well, they, they vote, but not for Colorado Springs. They vote for the state they come from.
That's the problem.

Yeah, it's a military issue. You get an announcement and get them to register.
Right.

I know when I ran the first time, I think it was about 100 people came up and said, I'm voting for the first time ever because you're running. Good.
So that felt pretty good. I'll bet it does.

What's your wife think about you getting into politics?

So

she was actually, she was going to run for a seat for a a second. She was hidden.

And she would have won. I mean, she would have smoked them.
Anybody that was going to run against her.

I mean, she's, she's been involved in the political community across the whole state for about five years now.

She, she helps organize like churches and stuff to kind of get more involved in politics because they've been too scared. They don't realize the rules and stuff.
It's a big voting block.

Oh, yeah, it's huge. Actually, I'm doing, well, I'll get into that in a second.
But so she's been involved with that. And she got asked to do that.

And I was like, I was like, well cool because i'm gonna run for mayor i'll win mayor you'll be up there with good powerhouse but then she's kind of like yeah i don't i'd rather just stay home and i'll just help you because i get it i mean that that would cause a little bit of a separation between us her doing that me doing this

so she's like and plus you know She, you know, she does a lot of prayer, praying and stuff. And she's like, it never came to me to actually do it.
It was more of my decision.

And it's not something that God's leading me to. So I'm stepping back.
I'm not going to do it. So now she's just pretty much like just going to help me do it.

And she's actually going to business school right now, too.

Right on, man. Yeah,

she's a blessing. I got a good feeling about this.
Yeah, I think it's going to be strong. I think you're going to get it.
Yeah, now I'll have a team.

I mean, we're getting a solid team because it's not just about the one person.

To me, the mayor is just a leader. Everybody else does the work.
It's just making sure like that everybody does

what the constituents want. Where nowadays it kind of seems like politicians just they get in there and then just kind of do what they want.

Yeah, it sure as hell does seem like that, doesn't it?

On both sides. Yep.
It's a fucking disaster because they want to please everybody. You're not there to please please everybody.
It's favors. Yeah.

So just get there, do what needs to be done, what should be done. And what the voters want is what they get.
Yeah.

So

we'll take we're wrapping up the interview, but

you know, out there we were talking about your son or your kids, twins.

And

just want to see if you have anything you want to say to them.

Never give up.

Always push forward. Life's hard.

Sometimes you get knocked down. Just always got to get back up.
Well, Tig, I wish you the best of luck, man. And I just want to say thank you for coming.
Well, thank you, man. Appreciate it.

It was an honor, truly.