S.O.S. (Stories of Service) - Ordinary people who do extraordinary work
From the little league coach to the former addict helping those still struggling, hear from people from all walks of life how they show up as a vessel for service and drive for transformational change. Hosted by Theresa Carpenter, a 29-year active duty U.S. naval officer who found service was the path to unlocking trauma and unleashing your inner potential.
S.O.S. (Stories of Service) - Ordinary people who do extraordinary work
From Battlefield to Policy | Troy D. Carico - S.O.S #210
The remarkable journey from combat Infantry officer to veteran advocate unfolds as Troy Carrico shares his extraordinary path of service beyond the battlefield. A highly decorated, service-connected disabled Army veteran, Troy reveals how childhood dreams of becoming a fighter pilot evolved into a distinguished military career after learning his eyes weren't suitable for flight.
Troy's storytelling captivates as he recounts his transition from Infantry operations to tactical human intelligence following 9/11. With refreshing candor, he describes his work with the elite Iraqi Survey Group—traveling on blackout flights with "suitcases full of money" while searching for weapons of mass destruction. These operations, now declassified, provide rare insight into the complex realities of intelligence gathering during America's most challenging military engagements.
The conversation shifts to Troy's innovative leadership at the US Army Corps of Engineers, where he established an intelligence fusion center that revolutionized collaboration between engineers and intelligence agencies. His matter-of-fact descriptions of creating unprecedented partnerships between traditionally siloed organizations demonstrate the practical impact of service-minded leadership. Perhaps most surprising are his revelations about Fort Knox, where he discloses that more foreign gold is stored than domestic—a testament to international trust in American security.
Now focused on veteran advocacy through Alabama Veteran Nation, Troy is mobilizing the state's 444,000 veterans into a unified political voice. His investigation into misused suicide prevention funds highlights the critical need for veteran leadership in policy decisions. Troy's straightforward leadership philosophy—"If we have a dog food factory and make dog food, we better be feeding it to our dogs"—encapsulates his commitment to authentic service and accountability.
Follow Troy's continuing mission through his political commentary at 1819 News Alabama, and join the movement to ensure veteran voices shape the policies affecting their lives. His story reminds us that true service never stops when the uniform comes off—it simply finds new battlefields.
*Sorry we got cut off at the end, but we appreciate all of you who watched or are watching the replay!*
Visit my website: https://thehello.llc/THERESACARPENTER
Read my writings on my blog: https://www.theresatapestries.com/
Listen to other episodes on my podcast: https://storiesofservice.buzzsprout.com
Watch episodes of my podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheresaCarpenter76
Good evening everyone and welcome to the Stories of Service podcast Tonight. I am so excited. I am talking to a former Intel guy turned news commentator, dia. There's just so much that we're going to go over tonight. I can't wait to get into it. Troy, how are you doing tonight?
Speaker 2:I'm better than I deserve, Teresa, better than I deserve.
Speaker 1:Well, it is such an honor to talk to you. And before we get started, as I always say, welcome to the Stories of Service podcast ordinary people who do extraordinary work. I'm the host of Stories of Service podcast. We are now in episode 210 after four and a half years of being on the air, and what I love so much about your career is the diversity of assignments that you've had and the ways in which your career just went from combat deployments to Army Corps of Engineers, to the US Mint, to Intel officer and now even in the political world. So I just I really can't wait to get started. And before we do get started, as I always do, here is an introduction from my father, charlie Pickard started, as I always do.
Speaker 3:Here is an introduction from my father, charlie Pickard. From the moment we're born and lock eyes with our parents, we are inspiring others by showing up as a vessel of service, we not only help others, we help ourselves. Welcome to sos stories of service hosted by Teresa carpenter. Hear from ordinary people from all walks of life who have transformed their communities by performing extraordinary work.
Speaker 1:And before we get started, I could not waste this opportunity to talk about somebody special who is near and dear to your heart, and he is actually the unexplained aerial phenomena whistleblower. So a very well-known gentleman, and you can pronounce his name better than I can, so go ahead, pronounce his name.
Speaker 2:Luis Elizondo. And yeah, good friend, and you're going to get him on your show. He's already confirmed that he will come on. Your audience will get to hear him.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to talk to him because, of course, I was the public affairs officer on USS Nimitz when the TikTok event happened and people at a certain command afterwards thought I was crazy when I was talking about these issues and those people know who they are and they remember. So it'll be an amazing opportunity to talk to him. But here's a little bit about what he said about working with you.
Speaker 4:Really one of those guys who you'll never hear talk about his. You know detail about his former exploits but he is truly an American hero. I had the honor and privilege of working with him same organization as him. He was legendary back then and he's legendary now. Our country owes him a great deal of gratitude for his service and what he's done. So I just want to say that, because you know Troy's kind of a humble guy and he won't ever tell you himself, but coming from a guy who's actually been there, done that and seen the stuff he's done and his sacrifices for our nation, he's owed a great deal of credit. Brother, I love you and I'm so proud to be your friend.
Speaker 4:Feelings very mutual, Troy. Well, I appreciate it, Lou, and yeah, best wishes, sir, you got it guys.
Speaker 3:Go get some sleep, go get some sleep.
Speaker 4:I'm going to. Can you see this face? I need some sleep.
Speaker 2:You texted me at 2.30 in the morning, like I made it home. I'm like it's only about four.
Speaker 4:I know I'm missing. I'm getting over COVID. I feel terrible.
Speaker 1:I've been sick really. Love it, love it, love it Great man.
Speaker 1:Great dude. Yeah, I can't wait to talk to him. Well, I got to read his book first and then we'll talk. But Troy Jericho is a highly decorated, service-connected, disabled US Army officer and combat veteran who has continued his mission of service beyond the battlefield. As a political and military commentator for 1819 News Alabama and founder of the Alabama Veteran Nation, troy is leading the charge to engage and activate Alabama's veteran community to influence meaningful political and social change. Today he's going to share his insights from his distinguished military and civilian career, including key leadership roles with the US Army Corps of Engineers, the US Mint and as an intelligence officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency. And today we're also going to talk about his time with the Elite Iraqi Survey Group and how those experiences shaped his work in veteran advocacy and national security. Welcome again. Thank you, honored to be here. Well, first off, I always ask every guest where were you born and raised and what led to you initially joining the United States Army?
Speaker 2:I was born and bred in Dayton Ohio, a little farming area outside of Dayton Ohio, and as a child I would remember standing out and watching F-4 Phantoms come and go at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, home of Strategic Air Command at the time in the early 70s, and that's all I ever wanted to do was to be a fighter jock, like my friend Cinco, who you had on the floor. And at 13, I found out my eyes were no good and I had a retired o6 from the air force optometrist who was now a civilian, say son, you ain't gonna be able to fly because you can either be a navigator navigator or you could jump out of an airplane, be an airborne ranger. And I said that's what I ended up doing. So I ended up, uh, growing up, went to, I was an Eagle Scout, I went to Explorers, received a lot of scholarships through scouting. Scouting and scouting without a doubt shaped my very being and my success as a young officer and my ascension was very, very important, being a scout and helping. Go on. I enlist and I go through infantry officer infantry, basic training and advanced training at Fort Benning, georgia. At the time I was 11, bravo was assigned to a mechanized infantry unit and then went back to school, got commissioned and was a General George C Marshall Marshall scholar, which is a top cadet in your battalion and you go compete with the other top cadets at Virginia Military Institute and was always testing my mettle and I always go back to. I always go back to scouting as giving me that grounding. I was the area nine representative for scouting when I was a young scout, which meant I represented like three states and I had to go do speeches, so it really helped me when it came time for officer candidate selection to go through and be able to speak in front of people, to be able to breathe, and it just it was. It was very humble. It was very, very humble, growing into it.
Speaker 2:Went to law school for a year, wanted to be an international lawyer at the university of dayton. I have a professor there visiting who says to me mr carrico, he knew I was in the reserves at the time. He's like what are you doing here? And he said you're a very bright young man and I know you're in the military. What would you? What? What brought you here? And I said, well, I want to. I want to, I want to help the world, I want to do international law, he goes. Mr Perico, there is no international law, he said. He who has the most bombs, bombers, weapons and Navy makes the international law. So go, go, take the foreign service exam or get your master's in. You know international relations, which I ended up doing. University of Mississippi. Airborne school, aerosol school pathfinder, school ranger, school expert, infantry badge, combat infantry. I checked the boxes.
Speaker 1:You've done everything Like you've done everything you could do in the Army. That was challenging. It sounds like Well, it was Listen, here's the deal.
Speaker 2:It picked me. I didn't pick it, I would find myself going into one thing to another and I would get a call from command. Hey, I'll say this, I'll tell you this story. It's kind of embarrassing. The hardest school I ever went to teresa was, uh was, mortar platoon officer course. And I had just come out of ranger school. So I was just fried. I mean, I was literally fried. I had lost I don't know 19 pounds, uh, just, but I could run to china, but I just, just I had lost my.
Speaker 2:I was just saying and I get a call and they're like hey, we got a spot that opened up at MPOC. It's three weeks, why don't you go take it? Okay, I'm a second lieutenant, I'm drawing my BAQ, I'm living large, you know it's fine. Great, I go into that course. And it, listen it was. It was a hard-ass course, it was math-heavy, it's fire, retriangulation and redeclination. I remember in the second week an instructor came up to me and goes hey, this is Carrico. He says tell me, you're not the primary mortar officer for the battalion. I said no, I'm a scout leader, I just got stuck in. He goes good, we're going to get you through the course, but don't ever get behind them one or two.
Speaker 1:So that was I I think you're just resilient and I do think that's being a eagle scout, uh is an excellent, excellent training ground to be someone who serves and is active in civic civics later on. It reminds me of 4-h or Girl Scouts or any of those other organizations that are really invested in the community as children and then you get that in your blood when you're young and I think it stays with you.
Speaker 2:You know, and that's kind of where we and we this is a whole different show we could talk about. Where has americana changed or gone? And you know, one of the things that I think is evident to me is that when you're grounded and for instance, civics, do you remember, did you take civics course in high school? Did?
Speaker 1:they have that in california oh, I'm from ohio, okay, so you're not. You never. You never told me you're from columbus. Yeah, I thought you were like a californ. You're a, I'm from Columbus? Yeah, I thought you were like a California girl no, I'm from Columbus Ohio.
Speaker 2:I went to University of San.
Speaker 1:Francisco. Yes, right now. I just got accepted in the University of San Francisco. I've also gone yeah, I've also gone to SCSU at San Diego State University, and then I've also gone to the naval war college. So I have two masters now and I'm on my third master's, uh, with university of san francisco, so okay, okay, I stand corrected.
Speaker 2:I stand corrected then, hey, buckeye girl. Uh, so you're a westerner, like I am, and I think we had civics right and it just taught you some of the basics. And today I've talked to my steps. They don't take civics anymore. It's not really even.
Speaker 1:That's just crazy to me. I mean, I just did a post on LinkedIn about, apparently, in 2004, there was a law that was passed that everyone had to have constitutional training in the federal government.
Speaker 1:And there were some people that were like you're doing misinformation, you've never had it. I was like I've never. I don't recall. In fact I take that back when I did extremism training. We at least talked about our oath. That was it. I mean, that was the only part of the constitution that I remember having training on. But I do know that people who understand the constitution or people who are minded in civics are more likely to be involved in their community. They're more likely to do things within the community. I mean, I just joined the local VFW here in Ocean Springs, post 5699. And we did a school like handout on Saturday, which is really neat, like all the kids showed up and they gave out free school supplies. I guess they do this every year, and so so I just it's wonderful to have these organizations with people who are coming together on behalf of the community. But enough about that. So back to the army. So you now are a military officer, you are uh what? What path are you on now You're?
Speaker 2:I'm infantry, I'm, infantry, I'm straight up a tree.
Speaker 2:Uh, and then, come September 11th, my life changes. Uh, I am branch, detailed and activated as an IMA individual mobilization augmenty. I was, you know. I basically was a reserve officer most of my career up to 9-11. And then they got their pound of flesh out of me and we always joke about that. They're always going to get it and they got it. And so I get activated.
Speaker 2:Go to support the 101st Downrange Operation Anaconda. I joined them and there I got branched and detailed into tactical human intelligence and I went to Fort Huachuca and there that's the home of the Army Intelligence School and got a badge and credentialed as a counterintelligence agent. I speak multiple foreign languages, which helped. And so I found myself when everybody was suffering during 9-11, it seems like my career was burgeoning, it was prospering, and I hate thinking about that. In the midst of this terrible, terrible cauldron of just disaster, you're able to parlay that into something beyond or greater, and that's kind of what happened. And next thing I know I'm finding myself assigned to a. I am, I am a dual hatter, I am a captain in the army and I am a. I'm a GS-13 by day.
Speaker 2:And that was working for something called MICEF, the Military Intelligence Civilian Accepted Courier Program, which is a great skills program from DIA which puts critical people in critical positions where there's shortages. So I was Mr Carrico and I was also Captain Carrico. Then I go down range. I did assignments. I did a lot. I worked with ISG on two different separate occasions for Scott Ritter's group that was looking for weapons of mass destruction. That's a whole different podcast that we can talk about on different things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the thing that I just get from all this, though, is that, when there is a mission and there is something that is critically needed, the cream rises to the top, and the people that are going to jump and do the things that matter just do it, and it sounds like from what you're telling me, troy, that you were just that person that was tapped to just do certain things, and you jumped at those opportunities because you knew that's what our nation needed.
Speaker 2:Well it's funny you say that because you played the interview with Lou. Lou would tell you that he said Carrico's a cleaner, they send him in to go clean up mess. I had a reputation for that and that's what he knew me. He was a reports officer, I was in operations, I was an operator outside of work and he was very adamant about you know, he's like I know you go hatching jobs if you will and I did what I had to do. Nobody is above anything. If I have to suck the vending machines and clean the bathrooms, I do what I do I love it, I love it.
Speaker 2:Here's the thing. Here's the thing, the motto of the army, infantry, and I learned it very early. There's Iron Mike. He's out front of the infantry hall, he's got his bayonet and his M1 gerand.
Speaker 1:I'm going to put you full screen so people can see he's got his bayonet and his M1 gerand, I'm going to put you full screen so people can see.
Speaker 2:He's got his hand forward like this. He's got his rifle here. It says follow me. That is the motto of the infantry. And so if you have that kind of mentality, lead from example, lead by example, lead from the front, not from the rear. Cool, Don't push.
Speaker 1:That's really I think People respect that. I mean, like I always say this like the flag officers that I respected the most were the ones that could get their hands dirty, were the ones that loved public affairs and like wanted to get in on it and wanted to, like you know, research the media that I was trying to set them up with or would offer constructive criticism to something I'd write for them. That's what I wanted.
Speaker 2:Tell me about your job. Right yeah, let's get into it.
Speaker 1:I remember when Admiral Brad Cooper he was my CO on USS Russell when I first got there and it was just like a match made in heaven, because I wanted to be a public affairs officer. He wanted to really promote the ship and he's like okay, pao, what is our strategic communications plan? And I'm thinking to myself I don't even know what that word means, right, let alone. But I was like I didn't teach me that Well, I hadn't been a PAO yet I was still a surface warfare officer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I, I, I transferred. So I started off as an aviation electricians, made enlisted, then I became a surface warfare officer upon commissioning and so he was my first CO when I was still a SWO. But he knew I wanted to be a PAO and so his previous, his predecessor, john Kirby, who's actually the deputy who's who's the SEC nav I mean SEC nav acting CNO he's right now the Acting CNO and he was the previous. He was my first commanding officer on Russell and then Admiral Brad Cooper took over and it was just so wonderful to meet with someone like that who was so dynamic, so visionary and just would get in there and do the things that were at his level to do, and then everything else he had such a positive attitude about, and that's it really reminds me when you're talking about how you led. It reminds me of the way that that he he led us.
Speaker 2:You know it's infectious.
Speaker 2:You know I that that you think about it. I learned more from. I learned just as much from officers and from leaders that I didn't want to emulate as ones that I did want to emulate Right, but you have to match and marry that with your style. Everybody's style is different. Mine is a, I am a. My wife will tell me, to my detriment, and my mom too, that I am a. I'm a hopeless, hopeless optimist. Everything will work out, it always does. And when you've been to but listen, teresa, when you've been through the, to the fire right, you've been through the fire, like I have. And the things I've seen, this isn't a, that's no big deal, okay, okay, so, all right. So we have a major major car accident. No, no bombs. No, no ieds. No, no, no snipers. Everything's fine, we'll get through it. And that puts a perspective into things. But sometimes it can be detrimental, because then my wife says you're an underreactor.
Speaker 2:And I'm like no, I don't know. Here's my thing. God has sent Salt Fit to give me a legion of angels wherever I go and they travel with me and they protect me, and my job is to protect others and to lead others, and I've done it both in private sector, public sector. The bottom line is this I would go through hell in a gasoline suit for my people that are under me, and that usually is reciprocated by your people when they see that and they believe that's genuine.
Speaker 1:I agree it is. It is. So you're a captain in the Army. Let's go back to your story, and you are also a civilian at the same time and tell me a little bit about that tour and what you were doing.
Speaker 2:Oh, so I would suit up as Mr Carrico or go down range as Captain Carrico Ended up as a major Got out because I had a. We'll talk about the next transition, the US Army Corps of Engineers, which heavily recruited me to help stand up an intelligence fusion center for them near headquarters. We'll talk about that in a minute. My final tour I was at Fort Leavenworth after coming back from Iraq.
Speaker 1:Tell me a little bit. What was the Iraqi survey group? Let's touch on that. What is that?
Speaker 2:The Iraqi survey group was a quote. It says elite, but that doesn't really describe it. It was a small group of about 300 Bajan credentialed individuals that were going around Iraq looking for quote, weapons of mass destruction, and there were some other things we were doing too, but if I, you I'll go and tell you this story. Uh, weapons of mass destruction, we did not find anything. Uh, though, we did get a lot of red mercury, which was just ut32 out of like smoke. We traveled around to black blackout, g6, uh golf streams, with a suitcase full of money and access to anything in an incentives locker that you wanted. What do you want? You want heroin, you want. You want whores, you want weapons? What do you want? We'll give it to you if you give us good intel. That's, that's a true story, and that that happened, that's very much happened, and we were using incentives to to try to bring in intel.
Speaker 2:Um worked out a perfume palace over at canton and then worked at Camp Slayer there. Then I went to Abu Ghraib Prison that Abu Ghraib Prison, which is infamous for the photos of the MPs, but that's a different story. That wasn't going on when I was there, though when I was there, there was a terrible, terrible incident. We were in a briefing room and we had they had constructed connexes in the courtyard with bars and they had overflow prisoners in there and someone had come in part of the uh insurgency group, did a plugger GPS coordinate right in the middle of that courtyard and they dropped heavy mortars into there and it was. It was a slaughter unlike anything I've ever seen and I it was. It's pretty brutal.
Speaker 2:We carried a lot of people out that day and my point is been there, got coffee, breath close, got my arms sling with mud and blood and the thing is that, um, everywhere I went, it seems like there was another opportunity and you, you know. The thing is this what is it with organizations? You have processes, you've got principles, you've got people, you've got priorities and you get a product out of that. And a lot of times good organizations that have great people make great products, and then the ones that don't, you have a really convoluted product at the end.
Speaker 2:And I think that's just something I learned through my experiences, whether I was an Intel guy, whether I was a grunt, whether I would talk about a little bit at UCS and all that it just have a good attitude. That's half the battle. Show up, be five minutes earlier or you're 10 minutes late, in my opinion and be there and be ready to do something and you know, I think we talked offline about this At the end of the day, at your job, and you're a war fighter if what you're doing is not helping people downrange, deployed or out at fleet or whoever, wherever they may be then you're not doing your job right, you're not working right.
Speaker 1:And I think the problem is is that what I've observed as I got more senior is that there is a lot of people in positions where they may not be doing anything illegal, they may not be um insufferable, but they just kind of keep the train on the track and they don't put forth any initiative.
Speaker 1:And the things that they do have ideas about don't really further the mission. They're just ideas for the sake of having ideas. And that political nature was eye-opening to me because I worked my whole junior officer career to get to this point. And then, when I got to this point, it was like a curtain was peeled back and I was like, why are we doing certain things? Cause, like you said, they aren't really feeding an impact to the war fighter. And I realized that there was just so many things we were hamstrung about and so many things that were especially as, as PAOs, there were so many things that we couldn't be transparent about. That I felt that we should be transparent about. But it's just, that's the nature of the beast when you get to certain levels within the military and working with certain people.
Speaker 2:How many days we got left. Oh, wait a minute, you're retired, aren't you? I have like a month and a half.
Speaker 1:Okay, month and a half okay, or a month actually, you're so short you can parachute off the edge of a dime we say yeah, yes, five weeks, all right, all right, good, I know I'm.
Speaker 2:I've been following me. I've been following. I'm happy for you september 1st the thing is.
Speaker 2:The thing is this no matter where you go, no matter what you do, no matter who you do it with, you have to stay true to your mindset. And here's the thing I had when I came to the court. This is transition. So I get out of the service and I go to the Corps of Engineers. I was recruited heavily by them. So I hang up my boots, I come in. I already know I was going to get 100 percent due to the wounds that I've had and all this. And so I go through the process and they bring me on to the Transatlantic Division, which is a very unique division in Winchester, virginia, that handles all military construction percent downrange and it's. We have projects in the I'm talking in Indian territory, indian territory and they had problems because they could not do quality assurance. They couldn't even get to the sites, they didn't know what the status of the projects were.
Speaker 2:So a very bright individual at the Waterway Experimental Station, dr Larry Lynch, a good friend of mine who handles all the flood planning for the Mississippi, was also. He was involved in a lot of geospatial intelligence, a lot of ArcGIS kind of stuff, lidar. He saw my value and he brought me on along with a guy named Scott Lottemilk who was the G3 Chief of Operations for Major General Ken Cox at the Transatlantic Division. So I find myself inserted as a major now into an equivalent of the 06 position as a G2 Chief of Intelligence and Security for the Transatlantic Division, and the first thing I did was get funding which this is back when there was GWAP money, global War on Terrorism which was magic. It was just magic. It just appeared and then it disappeared.
Speaker 2:It's like ah yeah, we got more of it. Keep spending it or we're going to lose it, right, right, so we did and we built a skiff in winchester, virginia, and here's what I found out this was a. This was an epiphany in my career find and leverage best practices with disparate actors that have a common goal but no commonality in communications change. What I mean is find people in organizations that need this but don't normally coalesce or talk with one another. So engineers had all the intelligence on critical infrastructure on the ground. Dia or NGO and NRO and NGIA now used to be the National NRO, now it's NGIA. The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency is flying all these birds overhead and they're looking at stuff on the ground, but they don't know what it is. They're like what is that? Let's get into that. So I start talking in my community and I'm like, all of a sudden I'm getting calls from CIA, nro, ngia. They're like well, we want to partner with you, we want to know what's in Pakistan that's being built, or in Afghanistan. So I was able to take that and leverage that to my advantage. I'll give you this quid pro quo. You give me that I was getting. I know it was, it was. It was. Listen, I had a very I think. I sent you the flyers and the stuff we did and the products we did on it. We were, we were at the forefront of critical infrastructure, data, data center, uh, storage and manipulation. Here's the thing I learned today.
Speaker 2:Today, in this environment, so much intelligence is open source. There's so much out there. It's just you've got to synthesize it. You have to, you have to, you have to retrieve it, you have to store it, you have to process it, you have to analyze it, then you synthesize it and then you make a product. That's the intelligence side. And the thing about it is that I realized I'm sitting on a proverbial gold mine. Right now, I can get whatever I want from people because they want what I have. And so the Corps of Engineers all of a sudden becomes this pivotal place. In about 2000, from 2009 to 2011 was at our peak. 2009 to 2011 was at our peak.
Speaker 2:Hillary then Hillary, the Honorable Hillary Clinton, which was the Secretary of State at the time, called us and flew us to Department of State headquarters when the floods were going on in Pakistan that were really bad, and we brought our team and we did all these hydro overlays and all of these LIDAR and all this two color, multi-view and coherent change detection. It was just high tech stuff, multi-spectral dominance in product, and they were really impressed. And then I get approached afterwards by this girl from CIA. She identifies herself as a CIA operator. She's like look, we'd like to partner with you. And I had to do it. I had to walk a tightrope because, like I said, paos don't want to be. They don't want to be, uh um, pigeonholed into. Hey, you've been very careful. They also are collecting intelligence on people. You know that you lose your bona fides as a pao if you really are a quote quasi operator and reporter for intelligence.
Speaker 3:The same thing with engineers.
Speaker 2:Well, same thing with engineers. The engineers are like no, I'm here to do my project, I'm not here to click. Well, worked out a deal and what happened was the general at the time, major general ken cox, great american, excellent. The general at the time, major general ken cox, great american, excellent. First calvary division, uh, engineer just, was just a great man. He got it. He understood what we had and why it was important. The cia was concerned about nuclear weapons being moved around during the floods and not knowing where they were going to. So what they did is they approached us and this has been declassified, thank god, because it was pretty classic. They they took.
Speaker 2:We had jersey barriers, those big concrete pieces that you see in front of buildings right, well, you use that. Also, what to direct traffic? Right, you can direct traffic to using them. They hollowed some of these out and they put sniffers in there, electronic sniffers that could detect any motion of any nuclear product going by it. So they would put them outside the bases, where we knew there were, and that way we could track them and ensure that there was no uh proliferation or movement anywhere else. So that was kind of a peak, and that's when I realized I was sitting at that. I was sitting at the pinnacle of multi-spectral intelligence because of what our mission set was, which was critical infrastructure in foreign countries and, and primarily in sent time. Um, so yeah, it was, uh, it was a wild ride and uh, it was like the ride at Disney, mr Code's Wild Ride. We had a great time and we got off the ride and then I went on to the United States Mint, where there I was tasked as the deputy CIO and I was responsible for all of the critical infrastructure for the West Point Mint location, fort Knox, philadelphia and Denver.
Speaker 2:And I can tell you a couple of things about Fort Knox. This is interesting. My perception of what it was versus what it was. There's more foreign gold stored in Fort Knox than domestic gold. I'll leave it at that. Countries do not trust their own Countries do not trust their own vaults. We have Cameroon Over here, we have Cote, d'ivoire, we have oh, over here is Cambodia, or whoever it is. It's just room after room after room.
Speaker 1:They trust us with their gold. They trust us with their gold. That's a true story. Wow, I actually know a gentleman Gosh. He's an admiral and he wrote a book. He's a retired PAO and he was the PAO for the US Mint. I don't know if he was the PAO when you were there. Oh, what's his name? What's?
Speaker 2:his name.
Speaker 1:He's a retired rear admiral. Yes, Jerozki.
Speaker 2:Jerozki was great because we were serving under the director of the men, who was a former ranger. He was a retired, I think, two-star, uh army general. So we had a really we had a very good, healthy group. They were emphasizing bringing veterans into the men and that was one of their. So, yes, I do know small world once again. Right, yeah, tom dorosky.
Speaker 1:Yeah, his name, he's a retired, uh, one-star chief of information and uh, I I did a uh a, not a podcast. I did a webinar with him for the Public Relations Society of America not too long ago. So great, great, great American, great patriot. So this is just really interesting because you've done so many things that are seemingly unrelated, but in my view they're all related to mission and service to this country. And you didn't just stop there. Then you moved on and started doing a lot of veteran advocacy and other things in the veteran community, which is where you also find yourself today. So tell me a little bit about how you went from these professional roles in the military sector in the civilian sector and then you started going okay, well, what do I need to be doing in the political arena? Or what do I need to be doing on a civic level?
Speaker 2:So that's a barrel of monkeys, so let's tear into it. Number one let's back up to John Kirby. Are you familiar with an individual who was the naval PAO chief? That's what it meant. His name is Kent Davis, admiral Kent Davis yes, that is my mentor, that is Cinco. We are tight, we are the Trey Amigos.
Speaker 2:Kent Davis is a great American, you know, and he worked for Kirby and they just did people and he and I he was the former commissioner of the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs did remarkable things built care homes that we never had before, expanded the cemeteries top-notch he was when he was at the helm a year and a half ago. For those six, seven years he was here, I saw him full screen. Yeah, he did remarkably lead-like things. He was a best practices model for a lot of states that came here. Well, he kind of got sideways with our Supreme Executive Authority high-stepping governor.
Speaker 2:We have here Katie Ivey, who is not a Republican. She is a yellow dog Democrat wearing the jersey of a Republican and she does not give two hoots about the veterans. Uh, she, she helped, author, believe it or not? Yeah, I said author. She authored a bill out of her office and then was sponsored by a senator and a uh a representative, uh from alabama, uh andrew jones, senate, and then Ed Oliver, representative. It was SB 67, which proposed that they were going to revoke the commission's independent status and the admiral and they were going to replace it on the governor's staff with appointed individuals at the leisure of the governor so they want to control, they want to control that.
Speaker 2:Well, here's what. Here's what happened. So the reason we got to this kent davis is his. His biggest probably championing is on suicide, on veteran suicide. It's pretty bad. Alabama ranks amongst the bottom uh for opioid addiction and for suicide. I think West Virginia is the only state ahead of us. We don't want that honor, but at any rate that's where we found ourselves and they got $7 million. The Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs got $7 million from the ARPA, the American Recovery Project Act, for suicide prevention. He did not have a contract he could use so he trusted the Department of Mental Health, who is very close to the governor's office, gave them the $7 million and that $7 million went missing. It was used in some other form or fashion, not for veterans suicide prevention.
Speaker 2:Wow, he was able to scrape up some money, finish some contracts. But he filed an ethics complaint and now he has a federal lawsuit which is going to be heard here any day now. I think he's got two weeks to respond to it. It's in federal court down here in the middle court of Alabamaabama, and he's going to prevail. I mark my words, he will prevail because the facts are damning against the governor. But I watch a system fail so thoroughly, so callously, to destroy the power of the veteran voice here. So what I did is I came up with a concept and it's in. It's still in its formation stages, but it's alabama veteran nation and the idea is this what is wrong with? We have 444,000 veterans. That's just veterans in the state of alabama. That identifies veterans. We probably have a slew of some that aren't even yeah, don't even, I don't even need to.
Speaker 2:Just, they serve three years. So I'm not a veteran. Yeah, you are. You're a veteran, you serve, you got skin in the game. So we're trying to draw that project. We have probably close to a half a million people.
Speaker 2:And here's something interesting for you For every veteran vote that's passed, the US Election Commission says the Federal Elections Commission says, for every vote cast by a veteran, federal elections commission says, for every vote cast by a veteran, 1.75 votes follow from family and friends. That's a powerful block of voting. Think about it. That's 1.5 million now in the state of 5 million. And so the problem is we have been disjointed, we have been fragmented, we have been parochial. We have not. We have groups here, we have groups over here. We have to coalesce them together to be a strong voice in 2026, and that's what we're working on. The Admiral will be running for office soon. I'm not at liberty to tell you what office he's running for, but he will be and he is going to be an advocate and continue to be an advocate for the veterans of Veteran Nation. As I designed it is that it's exportable to Mississippi, to Ohio, to Indiana. It's a grassroots plan to bring fellow veterans into the fold and activate them for critical junctures, when we need votes and we need activity.
Speaker 1:I love it. That's kind of what we're working on.
Speaker 2:We've got a lot of sponsors we're not there yet, but we're coming very soon. You'll see more on it soon.
Speaker 1:Well, I can tell you that it is so important for veterans to have a voice in politics and I do believe, unlike some of my other friends on active duty, that military members, even active duty, off duty, can be involved in political activity and, uh, there are ways for them to have a voice in politics and be be a concerned citizen and stand up for issues. Um, and not and not evoke the uniform and and, and that was something that I was always very careful about. You know, I'm still on active duty now talking on this podcast, in my off duty capacity, of course, but I had never wore the uniform, I never disrespected senior officers. I just knew there were ways to do this and speak up and speak out and not lose my job, not get fired, because I believe that this is the way we should be.
Speaker 1:If we see something, we say something and we do it in a way that's polite. We do it in a way that explains the facts of the issue, and people are free to disagree with us. People disagree with me all the time on my LinkedIn. I'm okay with that. In fact, I want them to disagree with me. I don't want to be around a bunch of syncopats and be in an echo chamber of my own, doing with everyone who agrees with everything I say. How boring of a life would that be if?
Speaker 3:we all lived that way. Some people like that.
Speaker 2:I know Some people with a lot of ego like that, not me.
Speaker 1:I want someone to challenge me and I want them to call me out, and I want to be able to call them out and be better.
Speaker 2:Well, you know you hit a point there you talk about. This is the way it should be Openness, transparency, accountability. You know think about, and I know, the Navy. I don't know what they are, but I'm certain they're similar to the Army's core value system. We have a core value system. It's leadership, duty, responsibility, selfless service, honor and personal courage. Those are our guidons, right, and you have those two.
Speaker 1:Honor, courage and commitment.
Speaker 2:Yep, there you go. So I'm going to give you. This is one of my favorite stories. My wife is cringing right now. So when I was with the Rangers, I had this great commander. He said a lot of things. The one thing that stuck with me was this Gentlemen, if we have a dog food factory and we make dog food, by God we better be feeding it to our dogs, because if we're not, then we're not doing it right. If we are making dog food and don't give it to our dogs, then unsatisfactory for us and I try to always live that motto is you know, practice what you preach, do what you say, but walk, talk right, and do it, but eat the dog food. Man, you got to eat the dog food. I say, and my wife's like can you use a different analogy?
Speaker 1:No, but it's true, it's absolutely true, and thank God there's people like you who step up and get involved and be a part of some of these events, cause I will tell you, especially the in-person stuff, like I think I saw that you did a press conference, uh, a few months back, uh, and I love that the rally. I love that because there are so few people that are willing to do that. You realize, when you go to these things you're like, wow, there, there needs to be more people here and there.
Speaker 1:just sometimes isn't, and and then you were like wow, if not us, then who?
Speaker 2:If not now, when, if not this, what, if not us, whom? And the thing is, you know who was right there? Cinco Colonel DeMeo, your, your, your former interviewer, you, one of my, my, that's a guy I'd go through hell in a gasoline seat for too. He's just a great, a great human being and a great American and a great warrior. That's been wrong, but I'm getting ready to launch a story on 1819 News.
Speaker 1:Oh, I can't wait.
Speaker 2:That's going to. That's going to. It's going to call into question a lot of things and I have a feeling it's going to be a home run. But back to that, and there's Admiral Davis right there, and the thing is, leaders have to lead, leaders must lead, and the thing is, I think we find ourselves in today's society even more disjointed and more disconnected, despite all of technology, all the great things that, as a deputy CIO, I was pushing through this. There's a digital divide. Sometimes I call it the digital divide. You have the analog value, you've got the digital divide. Absolutely, I just see that being the case. The thing is we have skin in the game and that's what makes it for us. It's very much not just an option or an opportunity for us. It's our responsibility, it's our duty to keep talking and doing things, and that's really what happened?
Speaker 1:I agree, and I mean I look at it like I worked my whole life to be financially independent in retirement, and so once this moment hit well, now it's game on for the things that I need to step up and talk about, and I'll tell you that it's been a crazy ride, even these last four years, having the podcast and seeing the different causes and issues that have come my way and figuring out which ones I'm really going to promote or try to make some sort of a dent on, and then learning the whole social media game, because doing it at this level is different than doing it as a PAO.
Speaker 1:Doing it as a PAO is very scripted it goes through a million different people very methodical this is like well, if you can do, do it, but you better be good at it and you better understand the tech. You better understand how to properly package the information. There's so much to it. I mean, I look at people like Sean Ryan and some of those people like Megan Kelly and it's just, it's incredible what they're able to do with tech and with just being able to learn the craft of communications. And so I always knew that if I wasn't going to be a communicator for the Navy, I'd still be a communicator in some other capacity. But you're a different animal because you've done the infantry. You've done, you know, corps of Engineer work, you've done intel work, and now you're in this like space of media Cause you do a radio show as well. I do a radio show.
Speaker 2:Joey, joey Clark live. I'm getting ready to launch my own podcast too soon, at the behest of 1819 news and Brian Dawson. I'm very fortunate and very blessed to be backed by 1819 news, which is a very conservative Alabama organization that puts family principles nationally. It just checks all the boxes of what I believe in. So, very blessed in that regard and I'm a regular contributor on 1819 News. You can find my work at TerricodeTroy on Twitter. I am on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:I told you this, I think before we started. I was forbidden from ever having any social media when I was with BIA and it just kind of carried over that. I never really had a lot of experience in it, but I've recently gotten into it. Yeah, that's their website and I've got dozens of stories on there and op-eds and I think you'll find my writing style is quite confrontational, but in a measured way, as close as a ranger can do. I'm just. I got dummy sticks. We say cross rifle, rifle. We call them dummy sticks in the army. I'm not I you know, I'm strong like bull, dumb like ox.
Speaker 2:so uh the thing is my writing has a little bit of. I've had to, I had to learn a little bit, but I think I try to speak truthfully and heartfelt in ways, because if not us, then who? And the thing is, you can get a steady diatribe of just just mediocre, just flavors, vanilla, nothing. How many times do you read something that motivates you passionately or emotionally? And the thing is, I try to appeal on people. Is this not a time where we should be doing this or that? And and I've got a very good response I've started to develop a pretty good following. Um, and I do the radio show, uh, which I enjoy. Uh, we've had lou on a couple times and it's funny because lou will bring out the, he'll bring out the.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of people that are out there that are in in a different world tinfoil and contrails and things that are being done. But yeah, listen, I'm gonna tell you this story is compelling and I urge, I think you'll enjoy having them on. But I come from a, a I say I come from a long line of distinguished, broken assignments, but I've tried to parlay them into the best that I can. And here's the thing 10, 80, 10, the old rule, 10% of your. You got 10% of your people in organization that are outstanding. They are, they're demigods. You just point them in the right direction and off they go. They're going to go do it. And you got that 80%, the top 80, they're close to being like them, but they need a little more coaching. And then you get that bottom 80, and it's like I got to go check in on them and do that.
Speaker 2:Then you got that bottom 10, right, that's counseling. You got to do improvement plans and it just takes away from developing people. The key is this you hit it about tech and stuff. The reason I was successful in the Met when I shouldn't have been successful because I didn't know. I knew contracting a little bit but I didn't know. I didn't know what enterprise system and enterprise architecture management was. They knew that when they hired me. They knew I would be a leader and I would select good people. And I got people much smarter than I am to run those contracts.
Speaker 2:And that's what you do.
Speaker 1:You just got to find people that are better than you. You got to find people that are better at you at certain things and let them run with those things that they're better at you. They're there that they are better at than you and you from that oh, can you hear me? And now we're talking about tech, in the middle of I think you're muted. You're muted by accident oh no, well, muted. You're muted by accident oh no, well, the good news is that we are almost done with the show, so, but we'll see. He's, he's. Let me go full screen real quick and see if you can get that, uh, going there. But sometimes we have technical issues when we do these live shows and this is just what we have to do.
Speaker 3:But I'm just loving this conversation with Troy, oh, there he is, I can hear you now there you're back.
Speaker 4:No, I hear you no.
Speaker 3:I hear you.
Speaker 1:I hear you. No, yeah, can you hear me? Oh, he can't hear me, darn it. All right, sorry, well, all right, sorry, well, we can.
Speaker 4:I didn't touch anything.
Speaker 1:I can hear him, and I think the audience can hear him too. So Well, folks, I will go full screen just for a moment and thank you so much for your patience.
Speaker 4:Can you?
Speaker 1:hear me, I can hear you. Can you hear me?
Speaker 2:It just died out again. It went. We're done. I think it's over. Yeah again it went.
Speaker 1:We're done. I think it's over, yeah, yeah all right, all right, all right yep, try that. No, okay, can you hear me? I can hear you. Can you hear me? You can't hear me all right. Well, hey, I going to go full screen and close out the call, but I wanted to, as I always do, thank everyone for joining tonight. I know sometimes we'll have these unexpected issues, but I believe it's so important for you guys to see these shows.
Speaker 2:They died, I think.
Speaker 1:And to see exactly what I'm hearing and to watch the show that I'm recording, because in an age of media saturation and media spin, sometimes you aren't going to see the whole show and I think it's important for transparency and for truth that we show you guys the entire episode. So with that, I want to thank all of you for joining the story. Series of service podcast. Please take care of yourselves, take care of each other and enjoy the rest of your evening. Bye, bye now.