Exposing Lies at NATO | One Officers Battle Against Corruption- S.O.S. #237

 This episode pulls back the curtain on a NATO headquarters usually seen only through press releases. Marine officer and Foreign Area Officer Andres Caceres explains how honest analysis on Afghanistan, ISIS’s rise, and Russia’s moves toward Crimea collided with a staff culture that valued appearances over results—and what happened when he refused to go along. 

 Andres contrasts early command lessons—where clear standards cut alcohol incidents to zero in Japan—with a Joint Operations Center focused on tracking numbers instead of real effects. He outlines overlooked signs of the Afghan Army’s fragility, how Maliki’s repression helped ISIS reemerge, why Mosul fell so quickly, and the pre-Crimea indicators many ignored. His point is stark: when institutions avoid hard truths, surprise becomes inevitable. 

 The conversation’s second half tackles the personal cost of speaking up. After asking for a fair reassignment aligned with his FAO role, Andres faced a complaint, a limited investigation, and pressure to accept punishment without full access to evidence. He describes selective witness lists, a suspended clearance, a late allegation that swayed a board, and a later letter admitting coercion. We also discuss altered medical records, downgraded PTSD diagnoses, and why due process must be real, not rhetorical. 

 For those focused on NATO accountability, leadership, and whistleblower protections, this episode offers practical reforms—from enforcing perjury penalties at boards to safeguarding medical documentation—and a reminder that integrity still matters. 

 If this resonates, subscribe, share, and leave a review with the one reform you’d prioritize. Your ideas help push this conversation into the rooms where it needs to be heard. 

The stories and opinions shared on Stories of Service are told in each guest’s own words. They reflect personal experiences, memories, and perspectives. While every effort is made to present these stories respectfully and authentically, Stories of Service does not verify the accuracy or completeness of every statement. The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the host, producers, or affiliates.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Taking On NATO
• 1:32 Guest Intro And Career Overview
• 8:20 Early Leadership And Standards In Yuma
• 27:30 Becoming A Foreign Area Officer
• 39:20 Command In Japan: Culture And Discipline
• 55:50 Arrival At NATO: Broken Accountability
• 1:08:40 The JOC And Empty Briefs
• 1:18:10 Afghanistan Reality Vs Reported Metrics
• 1:27:10 ISIS Rises While Intel Shrugs
• 1:41:00 Ukraine Warnings Pre-Crimea
• 1:50:30 Retaliation Starts: Shut Up And Sit Down
• 2:00:40 The Complaint And The Witch Hunt
• 2:15:20 Clearance Pulled And Evidence Blocked

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:00

Now, you guys know I've been giving you a lot of stories about people who have served in very difficult situations and have been faced with very challenging circumstances from their chain of command. But today's going to be a little different because we are going to take on NATO. And a lot of our military members will serve at some point or another at a NATO command. And while I had a wonderful experience at NATO, and so did my guest in some levels, there are a lot of things and challenges that are never ever spoken about when we talk about serving on a NATO staff. And what was surprising to me about this story is that the same things that I talk about that need to be fixed in the regular military happened under NATO, which is of no surprise because a lot of times, as we found, the NATO does follow the United States lead in a lot of these situations. So, Andres, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01: 0:49

Good, I'm doing well. Thank you for having me over.

SPEAKER_03: 0:52

Well, thank you so much for being on the Stories of Service podcast, ordinary people who do extraordinary work. I am the host of Stories of Service, Teresa Carpenter. And as we always do, to get these shows started, we will do an intro from my father, Charlie Pickard.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07

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, here from ordinary people from all walks of life who have transformed their communities by performing extraordinary work.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32

And U.S. Marine Officer Andres Caceres shares a sweeping and difficult account of service integrity and the consequences he faced for raising warnings that senior leaders did not want to hear. He has served combat tours in Iraq and the southern Philippines, as well as me, by the way. Later taking on the humanitarian leadership as a commander during the Fukushima to tsunami and radiation disaster relief operations, and as a foreign area officer, better known as a FAO, specializing in Southeast Asia, he built a career at the intersection of security, diplomacy, and regional expertise. Then from 2013 to 2015, he was assigned to NATO headquarters in the Netherlands, the higher headquarters responsible for overseeing the U.S.-led mission at that time in Afghanistan. During this period, he repeatedly warned of growing Taliban momentum, the weaknesses of the Afghan National Army, the emergence of the Islamic State, and signs of Russian activity preceding the 2014 invasion of Ukraine. And his efforts to raise the alarm were met with resistance. He was told to stop briefing on these issues, watching his point papers and analysis destroyed, and ultimately facing retaliation for assisting senior leaders confront the realities on the ground. And what followed, and what we're going to talk about today, is a series of accusations he describes as fabricated disobeying orders, mutiny, dereliction of duty, and sexual harassment. When leadership discovered he was gathering evidence, his own evidence, to challenge these charges, he was stripped of his clearance, removed from the command building, and accused by a senior female officer of threatening her. Later sent to a board of inquiry, he maintains two senior officers lied under oath. And although he's presented evidence, evidence, which is, by the way, in this book right here, criminal negligence in command. Despite this evidence, he later discovered his medical records had been altered and including fabricated medical appointments. And two members of that board voted to remove him from service, despite the fact that, by the way, there was a member on that board who did not vote to remove him from service. So today we're going to talk more about that. And how are you doing?

SPEAKER_01: 3:34

I'm doing well. I'm doing well. A little cold here in the Netherlands, but yeah, I'm doing well.

SPEAKER_03: 3:38

Yeah. So we did this show a little earlier in the day. So you notice I'm usually on later in the day, but today, because of the time zone with you, we're we're doing it a little earlier. So hopefully people can catch the replay if they can't join us in person. But first off, as I always start all of these podcasts with anyone who serves, which is the majority of my guests, where were you born and raised and what inspired you to join the Marine Corps?

SPEAKER_01: 4:00

So I was born in Lima, in Peru. And uh my family migrated to the United States legally. Um, we settled in uh Puerto Rico for quite a while. And my mother always talked about how impressed she was with the Marines. Uh, she mentioned uh walking very close to one of their trajectories, I think university or whatever it was, and walking by the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires. And at that time, Marines were posted outside the doors when it were days, safer days. And she would see the uniforms and the times that she had to go in because of visas, she was always impressed at how sharp they looked. So I was always kind of sublimally bombarded with, you know, if you're gonna join, if you're gonna join, do the Marines, you're gonna join. So I blame my mom. Right, right. Yeah, that's that's that's how that came about. Then uh I went to uh college in the States in New Hampshire. And uh there they had Army ROTC, they had Air Force ROTC, I started with the Army One until a buddy of mine told me it's like, dude, just forget ROTC, do OCS. I'm like, what is that? And he told me all about it. I walked over to he drove me down to Portsmouth, uh, where they had an OSO office, office selection office. I walked in there and we started the paperwork, and yeah, it was a fantastic decision.

SPEAKER_03: 5:11

What a different climate from going from uh Peru and Puerto Rico to New Hampshire.

SPEAKER_01: 5:19

Very much so it was the first time I saw the snow, and it it was the first first snow was usually in November, usually the weekend before Thanksgiving. Yeah, and it didn't leave until like June. I remember it was May, we would have Sprinkling. Sprinkling was a big party, and there were still chunks of ice on the floor. I mean, that was it was yeah, big chunks of ice. Uh not that they've been piled up, but like really had not melted yet. So yeah, it was oh yeah, it was definitely uh yeah, and and and culturally I was gonna say culturally too.

SPEAKER_03: 5:44

There's a song called New Hampshire, it's it's in the same uh theme as New York from Jay-Z. You should watch it, and it has like all these cultural references to New Hampshire because New Hampshire is kind of like one of those places in the United States that's its own country all by itself.

SPEAKER_01: 6:00

Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, I went, I went ice fishing. I mean, I had the local stuff. I remember we used to go down to uh the uh in Maine right across the border, very close. Um, is it Kittery? I believe, or Algonquet, wherever they had the ports, and the fishing would come back with with last this and they would start sorting out the lobsters, the funky ones versus the good ones, the ones that couldn't sell. And for a couple of bucks, I mean five, six bucks, we could get two or three funky looking lobsters, which is fine, it's just for us. We film in the well, and we do that a couple of times a year. It was always it was a great time. It's a great time.

SPEAKER_03: 6:31

So you joined the Marine Corps under the OCS program?

SPEAKER_01: 6:35

I did.

SPEAKER_03: 6:35

Okay. And what was your first few years like in the Marine Corps? Tell me a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01: 6:40

Uh it was interesting. So I went to uh I went to OCS and after that I finished back to college for my last year, and then I went to um I had about a six-month delay uh to enter because they just didn't have orders for me. So I went to Germany. Um I was learning, I was learning German it uh at uh the university. And uh I could at the time the German government had a program that if you could pass it into media level of German uh and a and a standardized test, not college credits, a standardized test, then you could get uh working permit in Germany up to six months. So I took it, uh, I applied, I got it, so I went off to Germany to work until I had orders. And then by October, that's when I had a ticket, very flexible ticket at the time. Um, and then by October, my OSO, the officer, the my recruiter, was like, hey, November 28th, I think it was. You have to report after Thanksgiving. No problem, no issues. So I flew back and uh yeah, and that's when I went to the Marine Corps. I started, I did TBS, I went to Lago School, logistics school, and then I went to Hume, Arizona, and that place was um interesting. It's called the armpit of the Marine Corps by many, many people for a reason. Um a lot of uh a lot of alternative lifestyle people that don't certain that don't quite square up with the UCMJ. Let me put it that way. Um yeah. Um they have a cup, they tie through the whole fruit upside down kind of thing. So yeah, uh a lot of those. Uh we also have yeah, a lot, a lot. But but the thing is that because Yuma is so hot and it's such a crappy place, nobody from the headquarters wants to come visit.

SPEAKER_02: 8:23

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 8:24

Our headquarters either Pendleton or Miramar. And they go to San Diego, they go to Miramar, they go to Pendleton, but they never come to Yuma. So all this stuff was going on. Uh it was really disheartening to see a lot of very heavy officers. I mean, they look like 19 months pregnant, um, uh, mass sergeants the same way. I mean, it was it was it was bad.

SPEAKER_03: 8:43

So it was a lack of standards and discipline.

SPEAKER_01: 8:45

Oh, it was disgusting.

SPEAKER_03: 8:46

And I'm putting you on full screen just so people can see you better, but uh yeah, so just in general, just a lack of standards and discipline.

SPEAKER_01: 8:51

It it it was disgusting what I saw. And uh it and then uh, but I remember our my we had our first uh we had a chin you command and we had a fantastic battalion commander who ended up being a three-star. And I was a training officer at the time, and when he checked in, he came and screwed and I within two days, three days, I had to stand in front of him, in front of center, and he chewed me a new one because how come all these you know, I'm walking around and I see all these people, you know, that I'll definitely meet standards. He asked, he asked me how many people do you have on weight control, and I was like, We got two. And then he started screaming for not doing my job, and I just stood there and took it. And once he told me you have anything to say, it's like, sir, I tried. But neither the sergeant major, who was obese, nor the CEO, who's also obese, and the XO was involved in these, he was in shape, but it's involved in these alternative lifestyles. I was like, Would allow any of these guys to be in control, on weight control? He's like, What? So that I think that was like a Wednesday, and then he pulled in the new XO, uh, a good guy, and uh told him, XO, I want a uh uh battalion run, a squadron, a squadron run uh on this Friday. And uh and it was his pace, and this battalion commander was in was in good shape. Uh I think lieutenants and Lance Corpus could keep up with him, essentially, and the XODS was a good runner. Uh so I remember he was like, You staying with me right next to me. I was like, I was right next to him. I was like right next. I was getting I would do the whole run. It was like a three, three, four-mile run, I think it was. Uh, I was literally right, I could smell him the whole way. And uh once we got to the battalion headquarters, he's like, Come on here, and he put me right there. And he I he prior, he told me to grab a notebook and have it ready. And afterwards, like, now he's like, anybody that passes by this line, now you put him on the list. And I jotted down like 70 names, and most of them were sergeants and above, uh, some chief foreign officers. I mean, people that were severely out of shape, and in the pre previous regime, they were just like, I can do whatever I want because the old CEO's gonna help me up and the new CEO's probably gonna be the same way. Oh no.

SPEAKER_03: 10:56

That's an amazing story. Like wow, that's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01: 11:01

But but that was like the first time that was like, Oh, oh, this is the real Marine Corps they're talking about.

SPEAKER_03: 11:05

Yeah, and this is somebody who's not afraid to be a leader and not afraid to hold a standard and say, I'm accountable, and this is my problem, and I'm going to fix it.

SPEAKER_01: 11:16

Oh, yeah. And this it was me, and I had uh two training Marines, I had a corporal and a sergeant, and we had a line. I mean, it looked like the unemployment line for people to get weighed in and get their names and start the program. And we were, I was, but we were doing those packages. The corporal was typing, I was typing, the sergeant was typing, and we were happy. We're like, finally, we're finally finally. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 11:36

It's such a relief when somebody comes in and actually wants to fix problems. And sadly, as we'll discuss throughout this call, there's so few people in the military these days that are willing to do what you just said, and that's that's part of the problem. That's why so many of us got out because we were just tired of seeing what exactly you were talking about.

SPEAKER_01: 11:58

Yeah, he cleaned up the squadron. Okay, he cleaned it up, he cleaned it up, and I was so thankful and grateful.

SPEAKER_03: 12:04

Yeah, that's a great early example of leadership.

SPEAKER_01: 12:07

I was a first lieutenant, brand new first lieutenant at the time, and I was just like, so this is what they're talking about. This is this is what I actually learned. This is what they preached me at TBS. It's not just completely BS, right?

SPEAKER_03: 12:16

Okay, yeah, yeah, it's awesome. So tell me a little bit about how your career progressed because at some point you decided to go into FAO as a Marine, which is also a really rare thing for a Marine to become a FAO.

SPEAKER_01: 12:30

Not yeah, there are not many of us. There's we're we're uh we're a dying species, uh um, and we have a problem a problem with reproduction. Anyway, so uh I applied for the first time when I was a young first lieutenant. I had I had PCA to another funny thing is that they were the previous the FAT CEO had arranged to get me to get rid of me to another unit within the base, and I didn't know about it. There were orders that were kind of hidden from me, and all of a sudden I got PCA orders because I was I was right on the cages. I was shaking up the system.

SPEAKER_03: 12:59

You were shaking up the system, and people are threatened by that.

SPEAKER_01: 13:01

So when the new CEO came in, the arrangement was already done, and I didn't know about it, and I was told like later on. Anyway, so I moved over and I went to a um Max 1. It's uh uh a lot of former hawkers, hawk system, the anti-aircraft missiles that we got rid of in the 90s. Okay, and they were still there, and uh a lot of these guys were waiting to retire and so on. So I applied to become a foreign air officer, but uh later on I find out that the group commander, but you know, the squadron, the group commander, um, not recommended me. And the reason why he not recommended me was because he had a major he was buddies with who didn't have half of my qualifications. At the time, I could pass two defense language proficiency tests, both German and Spanish. And so I could prove hey, if you give me any language, I can learn it. Uh and uh, but he couldn't speak any other languages other than English. And but he was a major, he's a former, he couldn't promote because his MOS had gone away and he was his buddy. So they gave him the recommendation, they not wrecked me, so I didn't even make it to the to the board. He got picked up.

SPEAKER_03: 14:00

Totally relate to this. I I ended up almost in getting selected for a deployment when I was a lieutenant because of the fact that somebody had been passed over for deployments because they were not qualified and the people didn't want him, but they felt sorry for the guy and they wanted him to make 04. Yep, and they were going to swap me at the last minute and send him instead of me. And I was so upset because I still had all my stuff in storage and I was ready to go on this deployment. I went walking into, I'll never forget it, Russ Wolfkill's office, the PAO, and said, You have to give me the I broke down crying. I was so upset. I was like, You moved me here, had me change my orders and come early to this unit in Pace West so that I could go on this deployment. And now you're telling me that you're gonna replace it with somebody that just needs to promote. No, and and thankfully, in in that case, I I was but the fact that they even threatened that just upset me and sounds like that's what happened.

SPEAKER_01: 14:59

Yeah, it's it's it's the buddy, it's the buddy system. So it and it was very frustrating. So then I had a I remember I had a gunnery sergeant that pulled me to the side. He's like, sir, I know that clown. You know, I work with him. He's nowhere near near you. You say, but you know, look at it from this way. You you know, you you you got time to prepare. Prepare for the next time.

SPEAKER_03: 15:20

And it makes you it just makes you want it even that much more.

SPEAKER_01: 15:22

It's like it won't be it won't be next year, it won't be the following year, but you know, you have this time to prepare. Okay, it's like you know, see it as as as as you miss varsity, but you stick on some time. Next time come back stronger. And I and I kept that in mind, and then years went by, I went to Okinawa. Um, and when I was Okinawa, I was constantly gone. I went to Iraq, I went to Southern Philippines combat, blah, blah, blah a whole bunch, a bunch of deployments. Uh right.

SPEAKER_03: 15:44

And you mentioned even in your podcast, I think with Adam, or it might have been in your book even, like you were never like that kind of person in combat that was like, Oh, I just want to stay in the rear, and I want to just you were always in front, it sounded like.

SPEAKER_01: 15:57

Yeah, I I I originally was sent to uh work and live in the puzzle palace, and I was able to squeeze my my way with some of the patrols with uh with the eight with 10th Mountain Division. That's great and some of the other National Guards, the National Guard Units Social Assigned under 10th Mountain. Um, I went out also with the I was with the Iraqi security forces, so it's closely training. So as much as kind of I, you know, I I I went through several pairs of boots.

SPEAKER_03: 16:20

And you wanted to see what you guys were doing. Like, if you're gonna be the one that's supplying all the logistics and the supplies for it, you want to see. I was the same way as a PAO. I never wanted to be the PAO stuck at headquarters. I was like, nope, I want to go out there, I want to be with the EOD techs, I want to be with the Navy SEALs, I want to be taking the pictures, I want to be writing the stories on the ground.

SPEAKER_01: 16:39

Yep. And and exactly. I mean, I'm not interested in Subway, I'm not interested in Burger King or they didn't have Starbucks, so they had whatever else was the little coffee place. I'm not interested in that stuff, you know. Right. Whatever. I went to I stay, I went, I went several times with the Ukrainians, it was a province, and I stayed with them to see what they were doing. Because, you know, if I if I'm providing the equipment and the training, that's one thing I didn't do. I did everything, not just logistics. I mean, we did personnel, with the manning, with the training, actually hand-on-hand training, uh, training manuals, getting them translated and so on. Um uh establishing and also, you know, coming back and okay, what's the effect? We were able to do this now. What can they do? Okay, we do we have a platoon level train. Can they do individual platoon level operations? Uh yes, they can not just report it, sir. I actually witnessed it and I went on a patrol with them. You know, those that kind of interaction, being able to brief it, I was there. Yep. I did it with them. We we did passage of lines, we did passage of danger areas, you know, and I was there with them. So it was not just you know, some guy just reading the briefs. So um, and uh then on my last year, then I went I went on to the Mew uh uh two pumps, and uh I mean I was never I was never in Okinawa. I a good a good evidence that I was didn't spend much time in Okinawa was that I didn't when I left Okinawa, I spoke more uh Taosuk than Japanese. Taosuk being the language of the southern Philippines, uh one of the many languages in the Southern Philippines and the Little Islands. Uh so I spoke more of Taosuk, which eventually allowed me to uh um uh from what I understand, my time in Southeast Asia allowed me to then be selected to be an Indonesian fail. So, which I did straight out of Okinawa and then went to Monterey for two years.

SPEAKER_03: 18:20

Um now you've you're speaking how many languages? Like you're already up to like three or four at this point.

SPEAKER_01: 18:27

At this point, officially on paper, only three English, Spanish, and German. I had not passed any other difference language uh proficient test until then I went to Monterey. I did my master's. And in the master's program at Monterey, if you're a fail, you don't have to do a thesis. So you can forgo the thesis because you're gonna go to language school right after. So they say, you know, it's it's not the same academically, but it's it's similar in effort. Okay, or worse. You could it depends which way you see it. Uh, but being the son of an academic, my dad's a PhD. I was like, I cannot tell my dad I hold a master's degree without a thesis. I unless unless it's an MBA, you know, or law school. Right. You know, it's I just I just I I I just I I know he'll embrace it, I know he'll be fine with it, but I just can't.

SPEAKER_03: 19:16

Your dad being an academic, I didn't catch that in any in your book or the other show I listened to. So that's also a really interesting detail that explains your kind of warrior monk, slash yeah, because very few people have this combination. I would say my buddy Bill Brown has it, uh, where where you're sort of kind of this, you're kind of in both worlds where you can, you know, kill things and break kill people and break things, I guess, and your ability to do that, but then your also ability to be a very deep and intellectual thinker. And I think really those make the best warfighters.

SPEAKER_01: 19:46

I I try. I try the latter. I can do it for a very well, I try the latter. So yeah, my my dad's a PhD in math. Uh yeah, not not having an A in math in this in high school was not an option. At all.

SPEAKER_05: 19:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 20:00

And and and I'm still very good at math, even though I'm an I'm an international lawyer now, I'm still very good at math. Um, so in fact, my my my I finished my PhD a year and a half ago, and I used a lot of math reasoning and logic to do my legal arguments.

SPEAKER_05: 20:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 20:15

Uh, you know, it's it's Spider-Man. What's what's that movie? What uh Spider-Man No Way Home when he gets strapped or he's fighting uh Doctor Strange, he says, you know what's cooler than math? What's cooler than the magic? Math.

SPEAKER_05: 20:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 20:27

Because he discovers the geometrical uh uh parameter. Anyway, so um I volunteered at NPS. I want to do a I want to do a thesis. Oh well, you're crazy. You know, you only have one year. I'm like, the German students do, right? The Turkish students do, yeah. You know, uh uh I'm I'm a muricant or an American.

SPEAKER_03: 20:48

Yes, right, right. Well, and I saw that too at NATO. Like, honestly, like these other countries, they are so much stricter on like how their people can take leave and the less benefits that they get. I mean, they don't get like these comfy retirement packages that we do, they don't get all this disability that we do. I mean, I'm grateful for all this, don't get me wrong, but but we really need to be kind of thankful. And if you haven't served on an international staff, you don't really understand like the the level of work that some of these guys have to put into just to get the same opportunities that we take for granted. Oh, yeah, they I totally understand it.

SPEAKER_01: 21:25

The the Brits, uh, they have something similar to like the GI Bill, but it only covers if you're gonna go be a teacher.

SPEAKER_05: 21:30

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 21:31

And like if you're gonna be engineering, nah, not even like an extra year if you're doing math or whatever, science. No, no, no, barely anything. But I mean, you can go to a bar and a veterans bar and grab a drink, but that's about it. It's very minimal compared to what we have. So um, so I was like, you know, I'm I'm here, I've got the all the time in the world, you know. I I'm gonna do, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a thesis. So I finished it, and then I went to DLI and I had a nine-month um uh program for Indonesian, which I finished early in six months. So to finish early, you have to do all the trimesters, right? And you have to pass the reading, the listening, and the speaking with a two plus maximum being three. Um, and uh I finished that in six months.

SPEAKER_02: 22:15

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 22:16

So I finished all my academics, everything in six months. Simultaneously, I self-taught Malay, which is very similar to Indonesian. Um, it's it's considered older, right? An older form of Indonesian in some aspects. Um, and uh I also I had a friend of mine that uh told me about it. It's like, dude, you know, have have you passed the DLPT for Portuguese? I'm like, uh I don't speak Portuguese. It's like you should give it a shot. It's like I did for both Brazilian and Portuguese Portuguese. I was like, really? And uh yeah, he tells me, it's like, yeah, just just get those. It wasn't duolingo or something else. Just take this, practice it for a while. I know what you like, and then take the test. And sure as hell, before I left Monterey, I had passed, um, I have I was fluent officially in German, Spanish, obviously English, Brazilian, Portuguese, Portuguese, Portuguese, Indonesian MLA.

SPEAKER_03: 23:08

Wow, that's a lot. Yeah, that makes you very valuable as a FAO. And so now you're and your FAO tours, is that what it happens next?

SPEAKER_01: 23:18

Yeah, it's the payback. It's the payback. Well, they'll call it payback, they call it the utilization tour.

SPEAKER_03: 23:22

Okay. It's a payback. What so where do you go?

SPEAKER_01: 23:26

So I went to well, and actually, no, back. So the program, in order to keep you current with your MOS, I send you back to your MOS. So I became a commander in Iwakuni, Japan.

SPEAKER_05: 23:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 23:35

So I was a commander in Iwakuni, Japan, I inherited a unit that was marred with nepotism. And there was an unofficial chain of command. So the if you were friends with a lady that was married to at the top, yep. Um, then your husbands had direct access to that particular person. So uh you had sergeants disrespecting gunnies, sure. And and land scorpals doing whatever they wanted because they hung out with the spouse of this particular person. Um, there was an illegal fund. Uh, it was for the spouses that was being supplied by government funds. Uh, and I was like, you know, I've never heard of this. And when I when I took over, I asked, I asked the uh senior list, I was like, I mean, okay, can you look into this? And I bounced up with a couple of lawyers and they're like, yeah, that that's like heavy illegal. Like this rates and investigation. I'll get rid of it right now. And we did. So we use the funds for a barbecue for the Marines. Um, and yeah, I I there were a lot of spouses complaining, whatever. This and this, like uh I'm a CEO of Marines and Sailors, not all spouses.

SPEAKER_03: 24:45

Yeah, and I remember you re-writing in the book, the book right here, highly recommend it, um, about how the discipline problems in your unit dropped like drastically during your time there.

SPEAKER_01: 24:59

Yeah, so one of the issues that we had, we had a lot of problems with corporals getting in trouble. Not so much the last corporals on PFCs, it was corporals getting in trouble. So they had they were having a hard time. They will pick, they were pin on the rank, but they had a hard time disengaging with hanging out with the last corporals. I understand you're gonna have friendships. Sure. Like I told, I I totally get that. I totally get that. You know, senior captains are senior captains, they pick up major, and there's you know, there's still a relationship with that captain, yeah, who's probably very junior because they were captains together. But there's a point that you know we you gotta you gotta stop, you know, maintain the warmth, maintain the respect, maintain the love.

unknown: 25:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 25:38

Little L. No.

SPEAKER_03: 25:39

Yeah, but be but be a professional.

SPEAKER_01: 25:41

But let's be professional, and you know, yes, sir, yes, ma'am, you know, and but but you know, we we gotta respect gotta respect the structure, gotta respect the rank, both ways. So um, and so what's happening is these corporals were picking up a rank and all of a sudden making their former friends or the the friends, Lance corporals, making them drink excessively and you know, abusing that rank. So I decided to um put in uh I created uh what they call it, the CEO's book club. And what I would grab, I would grab a book and I will make them read a chapter. Not a whole book, but just a chapter. And it'll be about somebody, you know, a marine or a soldier or an ermine or a sailor making a critical decision in a battle in the Philippines. And we go through it, and then I would we we will uh go to the child hall. The child hall manager loved me because I'll bring in you know, every other week all the corporals and the sergeants, sometimes the sergeants, sometimes a corporal, sometimes all together. We sit around with the NCOs and we have we have we the child down, and then halfway into the child, I start asking questions. Tell me about this, tell me about this. And uh it became really embarrassing for them if they didn't read or if I called them out and then they participate because of the read. So it was it became a self-policing unit.

SPEAKER_03: 26:52

Yeah, you basically use positive peer pressure to turn the unit around.

SPEAKER_01: 26:57

Exactly. And I had a couple of corporals that never read the like, sir, I want to argue this, this, and they kept going back, kind of like trying to try to make up. And I'm like, good, you know, hey, you know, hey, HMR, you you good, I love that point. And that I asked some really, really tough questions out there. You know, these these are tough questions, you know. Don't it can go either way. Don't don't don't try to kill somebody because it's it's it's an answer that you don't want to hear. So and uh I did that, and I also started making my corpus and above wear colored shirts on leave, on liberty, on liberty. Say you're wearing a colored shirt because if you dress professional, you act professional, you'll be treated like a professional. Absolutely, and you act professional. And our we, I mean, we had a lot every weekend. We had an issue, and we dropped we went through 364 days without a single alcohol-related incident.

SPEAKER_03: 27:47

That's awesome. That's that's unheard of. That is for how many people? How many people was this?

SPEAKER_01: 27:51

Uh, we had 150.

SPEAKER_03: 27:53

Yeah, that's that's absolutely unheard of.

SPEAKER_01: 27:56

Going 10 days, going double digits, uh is unheard of. Yep. It's unheard of. And we went through 164 days. Um, and then what I was started doing was I was like, look, you know, when it came to the winter, because we had MWR at the time, had old Marine Rec, whatever it was, had uh snowboards and uh snow equipment. And I was like, hey, I want I want the the smaller units to go out to the ski slopes, which are not halfway. They could rent a van at a minimal price from base, pack it up uh with all the equipment that got free from base for three days, and then go over there for a whole day and uh get you know discounted passes, and they loved it. I mean, they came back sore, limping, you know, you know, full just giving a shit.

SPEAKER_02: 28:40

That's all this is. This is leadership that cares.

SPEAKER_01: 28:43

Yeah, they were they were hulling around because they landed on their butt so many times on the ice, but you know what? They were fixing those vehicles and they were taking those videos with a smile, laughing and joking and showing pictures, but our our productivity improved dramatically. Yep, and uh, you know, it it it's while fellow units would restrict their weekends on Fridays, like you know, you're gonna work until six, because at the time we also had a curfew uh in Japan, and you had to be if you were a landscope, you had to be in by nine, I think it was, or eight thirty. So what a lot of these guys were doing, they were they were making it work on weekends, and on Fridays they had to work until 6 p.m. Until 1800, which meant that these last corpus would run to the barracks, get dressed, go out, and in an hour and a half, they would do eight hours of drinking.

SPEAKER_02: 29:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 29:32

So they went in trouble out there, or they would get in trouble at the gate, or they get in trouble on the side. So uh I I talked with my CEO. I was like, sir, we're we're essentially done by noon. You know, my regimental CO is like, I would like to let them lose at at 1300. You know, or or I was like, you know, out of 1300. No lunch. 1300, you're gone. And then what happened was like these guys were like, well, I can I I can go to the gym.

SPEAKER_05: 30:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 30:01

I can grab chow.

SPEAKER_05: 30:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 30:03

Lay chow. I can I can take a nap. I can take a shower. And then I'm gonna go see my girlfriend in Osaka.

unknown: 30:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 30:11

So they be so they had these girlfriends in Osaka and Kyoto and all these faraway places, and they would go there and not get in trouble, and then come back on time. And I never had anybody going through the wire because I mean you could you could go out and you didn't have to be on base if you're on special liberty. I was signing off special liberties for left and right. And uh yeah, these guests were having a time, and we never had an issue. And I remember the the uh the um our group, our our general, um our one star come over with a group Sergeant Major, and he's like and they and they asked, How do you get these guys from nuggets into trouble? And I was like, Sergeant Major, I treat them like human beings.

SPEAKER_03: 30:48

Yeah, you gave a shit. I mean, that's the bottom line, and and you spent time with them and you developed them and you did all the things that we're we're taught to do as leaders, but so few take the time to actually do. So you had a successful command, and you left there on a very high note, and I believe JFC Brunson was your next command, correct?

SPEAKER_01: 31:10

Yep. So I uh arrived and without a sponsor because the lieutenant colonel who was a Marine Lieutenant Colonel over there refused to sponsor me. He didn't want another Marine there. It was very obvious. So I arrived, I had to do everything on my own. I had to, he wouldn't, he would refuse to pick me up from the airport. So I had to rent a car, which is non-refundable, as he will know in a PCS. When you change stations, it's not refundable. So I had to make my own uh reservations.

SPEAKER_03: 31:34

Yeah, you don't get a rental car at overseas duty stations, even though you will a lot of times not have your obviously not have your car shipped there. Some places won't even let you ship your car because if you're driving on the wrong side of the road or whatever. And they London was the same way. They would not they don't provide a rental car or they don't pay for a car. So yeah, so you're already kind of like you go into this job, you're excited to be there because you've just left on a good and a high note, but then all of a sudden, like you're just already at the beginning getting bad vibes.

SPEAKER_01: 32:06

Oh, yeah, and I mean that was excited because that was the higher head course to ISAF. Sure. That was the higher head course to Afghanistan. Yeah, it's just the security force of Afghanistan, the US mission there, and that was also, you know, these guys are overwatching what's happening in the Mediterranean, these guys are watching what's happening in the Red Sea, these guys are watching what's happening with the with the hybrid wars with in between Russia and the Eastern Bloc, you know, uh our Eastern partners. So I was so excited, but it was obvious. I mean, and and whoever I called was like, no, we don't want to deal with you. And I'm talking US. I'm not talking partner nations, I'm talking US.

SPEAKER_05: 32:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 32:41

So it was um uh, and getting a reservation was tough because there were only a handful of hotels you could stay at. But in order to make the reservation, it had to be the sponsor coming up with not orders, but a letter from the command. And I couldn't get that letter from the command. So luckily, by the grace of the Almighty, one of the lady managers of this particular hotel, uh Adel, I think I forgot the name. Uh, she's like, look, I I understand, got it. You know, I'll make a reservation for you. Just make sure that you get this kind of letter later on.

SPEAKER_03: 33:10

I was like, Yeah, you just had to work around him, sadly. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 33:14

Thank you. So I arrived. Uh and uh anyway, um, I checked in, and to find out that one of the first things that I found out was we there were there's a US senior national representative, a two-star general is in charge. And then as you as you all know in NATO, you have the the uh senior members, the senior representatives for every single service.

SPEAKER_05: 33:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 33:38

So you have the army element, the navy element, the air force element, and you're supposed to have a marine element. Well, this Marine Lieutenant Colonel, he illegally, irresponsibly and shamefully gave up the command of the Marines to the Navy guys.

SPEAKER_03: 33:56

Probably just because he just didn't want to be bothered with it, or he thought it would be easier, right?

SPEAKER_01: 34:01

He didn't want to be a leader, right?

SPEAKER_03: 34:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 34:04

Essentially, he didn't want to be a leader. Didn't want to be all so all of a sudden we fall under the Navy guys, and the problem with falling under the Navy guys was a lot of problems. Uh, one of them, they were uh at the senior level, they were very round. These guys, uh, these guys were 20 months brand. Um, they could hardly move, they were so obese, uh, all you know, senior enlisted senior officers.

SPEAKER_03: 34:28

And and by the way, this just got even way worse under COVID. I mean, you were serving, this was in 2014, 2015. 13 to 15.

SPEAKER_01: 34:37

13, 15, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 34:38

13 to 15. But this just got 10 times worse over COVID because people didn't even have to take a PT test.

SPEAKER_04: 34:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_03: 34:45

And I will say that's one of the things I'm very happy about when it comes to Pete Hageseth is the fact that he has instilled this warrior ethos which emphasizes fitness and working out. And that's something that all of us can use at any age and at any time. So I'm grateful that has happened. But I can tell you, having served 29 years and four months myself and just retiring this past September, I too saw an erosion of standards. And I too saw people who were way out of standards and getting way too fat and get and getting away with it. I mean, what would we just saw like the Army National Guard land in, I forget where that was, somewhere in the United States, and they got off of a van and everybody's gonna be able to do it. They were all like huge, and that was just an accidental photo. And so you you just really the Billsbury Guardsman. Yeah, yeah. So okay, so so now you're you're working for a name the Navy element, okay.

SPEAKER_01: 35:48

And so I um administratively on the Navy element, right?

SPEAKER_03: 35:52

But then you're working as a land operations officer in the jock.

SPEAKER_01: 35:55

So the jock being the joint operations center, and that is the that is the heart of the entire institution. You're looking at what's currently happening, the past you're reporting on the past 24 hours and the next 24 hours. Uh, if anybody needs to know what's going on with operations, you go to the jock. Essentially, that is that is the heart. That is what everything is going on. That is, it's like it's like the Wall Street office. It's like the the Wall Street, the the where the trades are happening, and people go with little tickets and everything and other graphs and everything.

SPEAKER_03: 36:24

That's a great metaphor. Yeah, and there's a jock in every headquarters command. So any any headquarters that you go to, whether it was they can call they might call it the joint operations center, the jib, the joint information center sometimes. But basically, it's the hub of activity for all things operations at any military command.

SPEAKER_01: 36:42

Correct. And and so I get there, and one of the first things that they do is they like, well, okay, you know, we're we we're herding for people to the watch officer. So there's the the jock only has two positions that are 24-7. Um, the watch officer and the watch chief. And it's like it's like a duty, but you're watching operations, you're not picking up the phone call because somebody got in trouble. Um, and uh you're getting reports from Afghanistan, you're putting a component together, and then you're briefing as part of the what was called this the um situational awareness brief, the SAB, which was pitched every morning between 8:30 to 9. Um, and uh my part as out my job as a watch officer was to compile everything together, including my portion. After that was the Intel portion, after that was the components, the land component, error component, uh of other stuff not Afghan related.

SPEAKER_04: 37:30

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 37:30

And uh so I put us so I I started training to get whatever, and as I'm noticing, you know, what information do you put there? And it was like KIAs, you know, killed in action, wounded in action. Um, this unit participated in this operation, this unit Afghan unit participated in this training, and that um that wasn't what it so basically a cut and paste of whatever higher headquarters was saying. It was kind of paste what it well, whatever higher quarters, and also what ISAF was reporting. So, but not into a whole lot of detail. And you know, having spent time with a lot of artillery folks, I learned effects. So, yeah, this happened. So what? Sure, you know, you okay, you destroyed this node of the Taliban, so what? Now we destroy their capability to recruit, pass information, create sick car. You know, we killed uh three ID makers, which are responsible for all the IDs and all these promises, whatever it is. So, what are the effects of what you just did? Don't tell me what you did. What are the effects of what you just did? I mean, similar to sending uh uh a sportsman to a particular training, okay. What are the effects? Okay, now this guy can can can can instead of just doing the the 200 meters, and he can do the 300 meters and he can jump on the hurdles. These the he went to the training, good. So what? So and that the effects, so start asking those questions, and then no, we don't we don't brief that here. So I was like, okay, well, that that's a problem. And uh, you know, at the time, you know, it was just a brief and and nobody showed up to the briefs, which didn't surprise me.

SPEAKER_03: 39:01

Well, yeah, because it wasn't providing any value, and so but also uh to paint this picture even more clearly, tell me a little bit about the level of discipline and to to show up to work and to do your job.

SPEAKER_01: 39:16

So I didn't start noticing this on the spot, uh, but I started saying with time. Um, the jock would have the jock director, an army colonel, would have uh jock barbecues uh from time to time, which is great for camaraderie, it's great for team building, it's great, you know, we're the jock family, whatever that means. It's fine. But the drinking was out of hand, and it resulted in uh personnel ending up with their driving privileges restrained because they're gonna trouble with the cops, the UIs. Um, and I mean if that wasn't a red flag in that one particular party, it continued on.

unknown: 39:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 39:56

So once again, this this is not led by, you know, blame it on the French or blame on the British or blame the Italians. No, this is this is US Army led.

SPEAKER_03: 40:03

Yeah. I mean, there's most all these countries are following what we're doing. And sadly, the United States uh tends to think, well, we're the big bully in the China shop, we can do whatever the heck we want. And so sadly, these other countries will see what we do, and then they see that we're not setting the example, and they're like, Well, well shit, if if they're not gonna do it, then I'm not gonna do it. And so then you start to become have this culture, and and I saw it. I don't get me wrong, I've told my audience many times I had a good experience at Marcom, but one of my frustrations working for NATO was the fact that you couldn't hold other nations accountable for anything. Well, you couldn't hold people accountable for anything. I had to treat my employees like volunteers or my people because I felt like if I pushed them too far, which you couldn't do, there was no mechanism in place to hold them accountable because people could just go around the system and get their country off, you know, their lead officer for that nation to intervene. And nobody wanted to have an international incident, so everybody was walking around eggshells around each other.

SPEAKER_01: 41:10

Yeah, and and and how how can I how can I hold other nations accountable when I've got US lieutenant colonels passed out drunk during an exercise in their seat. Right.

SPEAKER_03: 41:22

Yeah, there's that.

SPEAKER_01: 41:23

What and even even we had the SAB, the director of operations, a two-star U.S. general Air Force, wouldn't show up.

SPEAKER_03: 41:30

Right. And see, the problem too was the fact that because it's NATO, people are like, oh, you know, you don't have like any like DC oversight, you don't have any any any real like combatant command. I mean, they're loosely like remotely leading, like UCOM, but really it's up to whatever we wanted to do and however we wanted to lead our departments. And I just found that the only way that I was going to survive that place, and thank God I had had an incident on the USS Nimitz where I learned firsthand that you can't hold anybody accountable in the military. And so because of that, because I had learned that hard lesson that nobody has your back if you want to hold people accountable. I was like, okay, well, the people that work for me, and some were great, don't get me wrong. I had some awesome, awesome people that worked for me that just were motivated to work just for the sake of doing the job. But then I had some other people that worked for me that knew that they could just get around me and they knew that all they had to do was get to somebody higher than me, and then they wouldn't have to do their job. And there was nothing I could do about it.

SPEAKER_01: 42:31

Yep, and and that, and that's and that's how it worked because the junk director at the time had his favorites. Right. And his favorites could not show up to work because they were too drunk, or be passed out on their seats because they were too drunk, or you know, do whatever, take off whenever, or whenever it was, it was it was a complete, it was the Wild West, as as they as they pleased, right? So, so so I as some as some I then again in the briefs, and this once again is early on the first few months, and they start asking questions regarding the Afghanistan because I'm also getting a lot of back chatter from people that have been in Afghanistan telling me, look, the ANA Afghan National Army is not as strong as they're saying. Because what happens is that the report, a Afghan general would report, I've got 30,000 people, I've got 30,000 soldiers. In reality, he would have like 10,000. But he reported 30,000, so he gets 30,000 paychecks. He will pocket 20,000.

SPEAKER_03: 43:23

That's just mind-blowing.

SPEAKER_01: 43:25

On top of that, he would get 30,000 worth of money for chow for money for food, and then he would buy crappy food for 10,000, say on that extra 10,000 and keep the other 20,000. Same thing for firewood to keep him warm. He wouldn't even buy it was let him freeze. We don't care, let him freeze.

SPEAKER_02: 43:43

Terrible.

SPEAKER_01: 43:43

So this corruption was, and I started telling that started doing a lot of research on the on the on some of the old reports on the South Vietnam Army that the uh the all the way from the Mac V all the way to 1973, that the reporting on on the Vietnamese and how corrupt it was, and these paper tigers were the units that in reality were very fragile. And I was like, you know, this is exciting. I I was I was extrapolating this exciting.

SPEAKER_03: 44:08

Yeah, you were like history's repeating itself. Look at this. Look at this.

SPEAKER_01: 44:12

I mean, you we're not we're not briefing capabilities, we're briefing numbers, we're briefing KIAs, we're briefing all the IAs. Got it.

SPEAKER_03: 44:17

That is why aren't we actually doing our job? Why aren't we doing this analysis on this? And what and the thing was, and I said this to you in a text message, is the fact that even JFC Brunson and JFC Naples, I kind of just saw them as monkey in the middle, like in my mind, because the and here's how I'll explain it. And it your ISAF metaphor is is is really apt because ISAF knew that really they just have to get to shape. Like shape and and shape just has to get to NATO HQ. And all NATO HQ and Shape care about is is reports. I mean, they don't really, they're not a change agent, they're there to do their meetings, to do their conferences, to make sweeping statements about things. And and don't like, and I hate to I love the people I worked with, and I had a different experience than you did because I really became friends with some of these people and I think they're wonderful people, but they're they weren't there to change the status quo or to move mountains or to make NATO better. They were there because they get a lot of money from all these countries, especially the United States, and they have an image to portray and they have a a look to maintain. Yep, and it was like again, it was like peeling behind the curtain and going, is this really why I'm here?

SPEAKER_01: 45:33

Yeah, you know, uh and it was considered a three-year European tour for a lot of the US guys, a three-year European vacation, right?

SPEAKER_03: 45:41

And that's why that's why people would joke with us. Like before I went there, I was at UCOM TAD, and people were giving me crap about it. They were like, Yeah, you're gonna go a European vacation for three years. And I didn't want to see it that way. Like, I thought like I'm gonna be doing all these international exercises, I'm gonna be a part of these major events, and and and and the people I got to meet were amazing, but it didn't, it didn't move the mountains that I thought it was supposed to do. So you were basically there thinking you were gonna do all those things, and then you were met with the reality of what NATO is really about.

SPEAKER_01: 46:15

Yeah, I well, I was I was met with resistance and laziness from U.S. senior officers.

SPEAKER_03: 46:21

So and they're setting the tone, and they're setting the tone for the rest of the nations.

SPEAKER_01: 46:25

They are and and uh so I'm I'm briefing this events in Afghanistan that the Intel section's not briefing. So and the Intel section was led by a U.S. colonel, Air Force. And people so people start looking at me for Intel in Afghanistan and another Intel guy. I was just at the time the watch officer eventually became the land uh operations guy. I was not the Intel guy, but now I'm briefing all these events that we need to see. You know, if we're talking about all these great things about the ANA, however, the Taliban is gaining control in all these provincial areas. Yes, and the biggest thing is that, well, we still hold in the capitals. But you're absolutely right. But in that in a state, in a nation where most of the GDP, if any, comes from the agricultural side, the agricultural areas, the rural areas is where the power is held.

SPEAKER_02: 47:13

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 47:13

The cities are just a token. So this is not like an industrial country where 80% of the GP is urban-based. No, this is 80% of the GP or even more is uh what do you call Abrarian-based. So I was thinking that this is how important it is, you know, holding the problem, Professor Gabriel doesn't mean Jack.

SPEAKER_03: 47:29

Right. You were basically trying to brief what the problem set was. And during this time, you were pissing off, especially members of the Intel department, correct?

SPEAKER_01: 47:37

Oh, every single one of them, every single one of them, and eventually I was ordered not to brief on Afghanistan ever again. And they went back to the same monkey show off wounded in action, killed in action, and a good news story. You know, we we they we cut the ribbon on uh no this particular clinic, and that's that that essentially is.

SPEAKER_03: 48:00

We did this and basically it was we did this exercise. We did this exercise that we do every single year. There's zero learning that I saw in a lot of these exercises, to be honest. It was more just hey, we came together and we sung Kumbaya, and that was great, and now we're gonna move on and do the next exercise. Yep. And let's get all the publicity we can for these exercises, let's get all the people together. And by the way, we did so many conferences that I felt like could have been done remotely, but there's this entire culture around doing conferences and going to as many conferences as possible, which feeds into the narrative that it's a European vacation.

SPEAKER_01: 48:44

Could have been an email. A lot of these conferences could have been an email.

SPEAKER_03: 48:47

Yes, a lot of them.

SPEAKER_01: 48:48

Like I like I went to one conference, well, one training, one training event, it was about a week event, and they had a one day off scheduled for a trip to a couple of places. I understand the cultural value of that.

SPEAKER_03: 49:00

Me too, and I understand the cultural value of networking. I understand that.

SPEAKER_01: 49:04

Absolutely, because you would do it, you're those who you start doing network, you start making friends, whatever. I understand that. But when you I didn't have a problem with that, what I did have a problem was with the out-of-control drinking events. And I and I I I drink beer, I I have my wine, but to get drunk to the level that I can't show up to work the following day and not even show up, AWOL. I mean, we we sent PFC's privates to jail for the landscope studio for that, but officers can do that. Um, it got to the point that they the jock just didn't care. Um, so I went back to be the land operations guy and I was like, you know, okay, I cannot bring up brief on Afghan again because I've been ordered not to pre-fill Afghanistan ever again. Um, another watch officer anymore. I was the watch officer just temporarily to fill in anyway. So I'm back to land operations, and I still I've already been tracking what was happening in Lambar province in Iraq. So when we left in 2011, we left uh Iraq with a power sharing deal between the Kurds, Shias, and Sunnis. So there were a lot of leadership positions that were mapped to a person from each group, you know, like in Bosnia, to the equal power sharing. And our biggest worry was Maliki, the prime minister at the time, Shia, he was so scared and so paranoid that we're like the moment we leave, he's gonna jail all the Sunnis and the Kurds that are that are in position of power. And sure as hell, he did. So Alamba province, where Fallujah and Rahmadi are were fought for heavily. A lot of bloodshed, a lot of the Nazi battles in Iraq took place over there. And there was a process of the Alamba Awakening in 2007 to 2009, where the Sunni tribes decided, okay, we're not gonna side with Al-Qaeda in Iraq anymore. We're gonna side with the US. Because if we side with the US, we get rid of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and then the US leaves, so then it's just us. If we keep siding with Al-Qaeda Iraq, we're never gonna get rid of Al-Qaeda. Plus, they were doing some pretty pretty bloody stuff that even these Subini tribesmen leaders were like, okay, this is out of control. So the and that was the victory in Alambar, while the Marine Corps had a great deal to do with it, it was something that was native. The tribesmen did it. So we essentially were able to leave Elambar in a place of peace. And you could walk in Fallujah, you could go walk in Ramadi. I mean, it was safer than Chicago in many instances. So um, and when we left, when the Sunnis there saw all their Sunni leadership being thrown into jail, they took it to the streets in a peace in peaceful protests. And then Maliki responded by shooting at them. At the time, Al-Qaeda in Iraq was everything but gone. I mean, they were down to like a handful of guys, they were minimized. They were like, there were there were barely a couple bacteria left. And what that did was that the tribesmen went back to Al-Qaeda and Iraq were like, hey guys, um, yeah, sorry for switching sides. We need you guys back.

SPEAKER_02: 51:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 52:00

And it fed the ranks of Al Qaeda and Irak.

SPEAKER_02: 52:03

Sure, of course.

SPEAKER_01: 52:04

So I was briefing this all the way through the fall. This happened and this happened. It's gonna morph Al Qaeda back again. And I was briefing all the way to the point that they changed franchise and they created their own, the Islamic State. So I was briefing all this stuff, and as I'm as I'm briefing on it, this was happening, you know, Ramadi has fallen, Fallujah has fallen. Um, it wasn't even in the news yet. Uh, I was getting a lot of my reports, they were not Intel reports, they were a class of four reports from the open internet.

SPEAKER_03: 52:28

I mean, it's sure you were doing research online.

SPEAKER_01: 52:31

Blogs and everything. If you have four, five, six, seven different blogs telling you the same thing, it's worth taking a look at.

SPEAKER_03: 52:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 52:36

So I was briefing it, I was showing pictures, you know, I was showing the uh these Iraqi reprisals, and I remember saying them them telling them a couple of colonels telling them telling me that those are a bunch of pissed-off Arabs that are never gonna amount to anything.

SPEAKER_03: 52:51

Right. You're just being blown off and then told not to brief about it.

SPEAKER_01: 52:54

But and and uh I remember when it came to June, I think it was June when ISIS took Mosul. When ISIS took Mosul, all of a sudden it hit the news because of a major city in Iraq, I think the second or third largest, have fallen to ISIS. And my brief was, yeah, they fell into ISIS, but this taking Mosul is not the biggest thing. The fact that the original intention of ISIS was not to take Mosul, but to liberate their compadres in a Mosul prison. And as they're approaching the Mosul prison, which is in the outskirts of the city, the fact that the entire Iraqi army and police dropped their weapons and fled. Taking Mosul became a target of opportunity. They're like they handed us in the city. Yeah, let's take it. There were so many weapons. I'm talking artillery pieces, tanks, up armor humbies, plenty of M16s, AK-47s, you name it, RPGs. So many weapons fell in the black market hands and the in ISIS hands that the price of weapons in Iraq dropped significantly.

SPEAKER_02: 54:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 54:06

That's a fact. That's a fact. 30,000 30,000 percent worth of weapons fled. And I'm briefing this, I'm briefing this, I'm briefing this. Uh eventually people start catching on, and uh it got to the point that I was starting to get a lot more, a bigger audience, and people started calling it the Marines ISIS brief. And I was getting a lot more people in the job listening. And the Intel section was not even briefing a bleep.

SPEAKER_03: 54:33

And they were threatened.

SPEAKER_01: 54:35

So, yeah, they were very threatened. They were uh they were pissed off, they didn't even know where ISIS was. And then embarrassingly, the the general in command, a four-star, Dom Rose is his name, uh, he wanted, I want an ISIS brief. I mean, that's it's kind of embarrassing for the Intel section to be asked, I want an ISIS brief or something that's actually happening all over the news. Um, so I would so they assigned it to this kid that I call him major gamer, uh, in the book because all he did was play video games. That's all he was interested in. Uh, we had to leave our phones outside the building at the first opportunity he would go over there to play on that was like bad bad bird, no angry birds or whatever it was. He'd be outside playing Angry Birds, and then I'll have to go to a meeting and pull it up. That's what he did. Uh, and I know at home that's what he did. He played Xbox until like you know two in the morning, whatever it was. So Major Gamer was signed, and I was like, this guy cannot even even put point at Texas in the US map.

SPEAKER_03: 55:30

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 55:30

And and I knew that. So I approached him and was like, look, I know a lot about ISIS, you know, I like to see the brief. No, no, we got it. Like that that scares me. Um let me see it. And so we can agree to it. And uh he showed me the the following day, the brief, uh, the day prior to the briefing. And I'm looking at it and I showed him the all the cells all over northern Africa, the Middle East. At the time, the cells were growing in Afghanistan, the reports, so remote reports of ISIS cells uh growing in Afghanistan, and some cells being appearing in Europe. So I told him, so you know, what happened to the North African ones? Oh, it doesn't matter, they're not Muslims.

SPEAKER_03: 56:10

I was like, Yeah, so he's basically just blowing you off and and not wanting any advice because it was obviously a threat to his authority or his job. And so he just said, Okay, I'm not gonna take your help. So then what happens next?

SPEAKER_01: 56:25

So so his brief was incomplete, was inaccurate. And when I go and I go flip it, I go to this, I'm looking for the center of gravity slide. I'm like, Where's your center of gravity? He's like, doesn't have one. And anybody that knows a little bit of warfare knows that everything has center of gravity.

SPEAKER_03: 56:43

I mean, a business has a center of gravity, everybody, which is the the biggest vulnerability spot in a problem set. And if you attack that center of gravity, then you basically win the problem set. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 56:56

So and it's almost like not knowing the center of gravity is like a real estate agent not knowing how many bathrooms and bedrooms there are in a house that they're trying to sell.

SPEAKER_02: 57:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 57:05

Or or the zip code, or or the schools. I mean, this is basic stuff. So it tells like, you know, going to the oriental into super secret squirrel, which I had no access to, websites and finding out because I'm sure somebody's done a brief on center of gravity. So the following day he pitched it and it was a mess. The guy he didn't have a clue. And as they're pitching, I mean, my the guys that are there listening, a lot of them have listened to my briefs, which are very much in detail with a lot of information and very completely updated. I had a map, you know, where that was a briefing on advances, you know, that's a tax here, this tax here is current advances. This is currently being fought for, this is already taken by ISIS. And uh, they were like, you you could hear them going like Andres, you need to say something, and you know, what is this crap? So all of a sudden, the brief ends there's no center of gravity slide. And uh it goes to questions. And I'm like, there, I'm like, please, please don't ask for center of gravity, please don't ask for center of gravity, please don't ask for center of gravity. And what does the general ask?

SPEAKER_03: 57:58

What's the center of gravity?

SPEAKER_01: 57:59

What's the center of gravity? And then so this clown didn't have the answer. The leadership of the intersection got up there and said, We don't know. And I could see the US general, the one that never showed up to our briefs, kind of sunk in the seam, kind of like, and people were and all of a sudden people were looking at me.

SPEAKER_05: 58:20

Oh my god. I know that on the day.

SPEAKER_01: 58:22

I remember a British officer going like chat, you need to say something. And I'm like, screw it, you know, I'll jump on that grenade. I rose up, and then I can see the US general and another general going like pointing at me, I'm like, gentlemen, they do have a center of gravity, it's called popular support. And then it doesn't what? Like, look at me, like, how can you know they're killing how come they have popular support? And I explained to them in detail, I'm like, the people, the Sunnis in Iraq had to turn to something because Maliki is persecuting them, and Al-Qaeda, while being a bad option, is better than Maliki.

SPEAKER_03: 59:01

So you basically embarrassed them and they embarrassed themselves, right? Right, but but I'm getting at is this I open the door. This is the beginning, this is what I call sort of and I like I some of my shows are gonna go way over an hour. This is gonna be one of them. You're this is basically the the the turning point in your story, in my mind, this whole center of gravity issue of where they are like, okay, what can we do to get rid of this guy?

SPEAKER_01: 59:27

Correct. And then simultaneously, I was also briefing over Ukraine. So in Ukraine, there were the political issues with the European Senate agreement. And one of the things was like, I remember it was November timeframe, it was before the decision. It was early November before the decision, because the press the president at the time had to decide whether it was he was going to sign the agreement with the EU or stick to being friends with Putin. And I told him, like, this is not an easy situation. I told him why. It's like if he says no, he's gonna get a revolution. And um, and also at the time, it's like I told him Sevastopol is on a lease to Russia's Navy. The Black Sea fleet is stationed in Sevastopol in Crimea. And they have a lease. A Western, pro-Western government is going to get rid of that lease, which is going to force Russia to do something with their guns to maintain that base. I'm like, Ukraine is in a bad, tough position. Whether the leader is pro-Western or pro-Eastern, he's screwed. I'm like, this is a bad position to be in. This is not an easy decision. And got blown off. Until um, I remember being January time frame, December, January time frame, and I started briefing on some of the uh advances of the uh some of the uh uh activity of the Russian army on Ukraine's borders, which was uh they were claiming it was an exercise at the time, and I was like, you know, the amount of personnel and the amount of gadgets that they're moving, this is beyond normal. And also the the amount of people that were calling up for uh the um uh what do you call the constructs? I was like, this is beyond normal. So uh I pitched it, you know, the this is gonna be blown off, blown off, blown off, blown off, um, until Crimea got invaded. And when the moment that Crimea got invaded, all of a sudden we see General showing up at the at the briefs.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:16

It was so ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:17

It was so they had an emergency meeting, and a lot of these high-ranking individuals, they started asking, where is Ukraine on the map? And what currency do they have? And one person said, I think they I think they use the German mark, which had not been in use since 2002, worldwide. So it was it it was it was pathetic. And um shortly after this is we're talking in 2014 right now, um, this spring. Uh, you had all we had now the generals were in in the conference and this getting briefed on a daily basis, and I am taking all the equation because then the Intel guys want to take over. And what they're briefing, and all these high-ranking, all these colonels were briefing us like they were literally sit back on the chair, sir, you know, Russia's gonna collapse in a matter of a couple of months. 1991, all over again, they're gonna disintegrate, we're gonna win this war, we'll even have to shoot anything. And I was sitting in the back, like, and I talked to Adam De Rito, and I was like, you know, you don't understand, it's like Russians can take economic decline like nobody can because of culture, you know. Right, right. That was part of your book. Yeah, they've been through rough times. I mean, it right.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:33

They can they can lose tons of numbers and just keep replenishing because that's their culture to die.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:38

Yeah, it's if in in France, if you raise the retirement age by one day, the entire France goes paralyzed with strikes. In Russia, if you race it by 10 years, or you would eliminate eliminate all Russians just keep on going like that because they're built to suffer. Russians are built to suffer. That's and that's a big cultural paradigm that you need to take into account. Sure. And also, I mean, I mean, some stupid things that we had an economic expert, a so-called economic expert in the Intel section, who I was they were arguing, well, the ruble is collapsing, is is it's lowering in value, that means that the economy is collapsing. It's like not necessarily. Yet they're in economic trouble.

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:26

And and remember, after September 11th, we devalued our currency for what? To make our exports more attractive.

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:34

Yep. So basically to kind of keep the story on onto the tracks. I I love the geopolitical stuff, and I know that this is a huge part of it, but I also want to really make sure that we go back to the fact that you were basically sidelined because you were pointing out problems and analysis that they needed to consider, and there was no appetite to do so because they weren't going to be the ones to fix the problem anyway. That's really the bottom line of all of this.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:05

They didn't want me around. I was selling the alarms, I was showing the evidence. They didn't want me around.

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:09

They didn't want you around. So then what happens next in terms of this complaint that suddenly happens?

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:16

So um I had so we had a team-ish of people that we kind of worked together. We had an Intel guy in front of me, uh an air guy that worked, an RFI guy, and next to me was this British officer. She was the naval um person. And we worked together. And we're very good friends. Um, we uh at first she was dreadfully shy. Um, after her briefs, we will go grab a coffee, the European thing to do, grab a coffee, but it was like grab a coffee from the from the little machine rather, not go to a cafe, like grab a coffee from the maybe machine there, sit together. And what went well, what didn't go well, what should we brief next time? Like as we're having a coffee, you know, because that's the way they like to do, and that's fine. You know, you can get a lot of work done that way. Doesn't have to be the you know, in front of a whiteboard, everybody shut up, you know, in line. Um, and uh at the beginning she didn't want to partake, but I said, you know, I'm I'm I I don't want to exclude her, but I'm still gonna invite her. And with time she started warming up and we became very good friends. Yep. Very good friends. Um, I had dinner parties at the house. Um I invited her along with the rest of my colleagues. Uh we would get together for things, um, we would go to conferences together, uh, we grab dinner together. We were very, very, very good friends. Uh, very nice uh group of work colleagues in friends. Um uh there was uh I had a family uh event, a very, very personal family event, and I invited her along with my other colleagues, and they were too part of it in their uniforms and everything. Uh when one of my other friends got promoted, we put a little box together of little gifts from our nations to give it to him as a percentile. Um, so we became very, very tight. And she was desperate to leave the jog as much as I wanted to, uh, to move within the command, but she couldn't because I wanted to go, I wanted to go to uh J9, which is um um military exchange, well, mil intermilitary cooperation, partnerships, yeah. Exactly. Uh and I I had more languages than she did. I had the degree, she did not, and I had a lot more time at the jock and a lot more time in in the command than she did. So I had more seniority.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:21

So all of a sudden, there is a complaint, a third-party complaint, which oh, by the way, this before the complaint, you had already tried your best for months to get moved, right? And and the letter, and then you wrote a letter to the Air Force general that was in charge of the US element. And the only reason you did that was because you saw repeatedly that others were getting moved out of the jock to other departments at their request who were more junior than you, or and you were like less time, and you were utilizing the open door policy that people say they have that if you are not able to resolve a difference with certain people that you were working for, you wanted to highlight that it wasn't fair that all these others who wanted to move and were getting moved were able to do so. And you felt like at this point, you're sidelined, like your briefs are not going to go anywhere. Nobody wants to hear what you have to say in the jock. And you're like, if I go over to partnerships, J9, I might, which works on like international uh training, like they the J9 goes and does training with other uh nations and other things. So you thought that'd be a better use of your FAO skills. And at that point, when you got the complaint, before you got the complaint, did you hear back from the general or did you where was that? Where was the letter?

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:00

So so so the tipping point for my letter was when we went to Poland for an exercise, and in the in the schedule of the exercise, I saw the last day was Friday, was was dedicated for an uh uh um a discussion on what was happening in Ukraine and what's supposed to be happening in Ukraine and the results and side effects. And I was all excited, I'm like, great, we can we forget they're not talk about this. To find out that Friday morning, after a week of seeing of being uh seeing a bunch of lieutenant colonels and colonels passed out drunk on their seats by their desks. Um, all of a sudden I I uh I we're getting into the discussion and the discussion being canceled. I was like, what happened? This general, this two-star that you're talking about, and one of his lackeys decided to break up some guitars and play a really bad fifth-grade version of Brown Eye Girl in front of everybody. No discussion on Ukraine. Ukraine is getting slaughtered, which at the time, which we called it, it caught us by surprise, and here we are, two clowns overpaid, playing Brown Eye Girl in their guitars and casting the discussion. And I was like, this is a clown show. So um I wanted to move, and a lot of guests, in order to get moved, you had to get blessed by the two-star.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:11

Yeah, two-star had to know it, you had to bless it. It didn't have to be a written request, it could be a verbal request, but the two-star had to bless it. And a lot of people were getting moved under his radar, which pissed him off. And I was like, I can do that and they get busted. Sure. Or I can do it the proper way. So I I I initialed a verbal request. This Marine Lieutenant Colonel blocked it because he was doing his own illegal moves and uh without approval. And uh eventually it got to the point that you know uh uh you know, all these people are moving around. I'm getting I'm getting shafted because of my briefs. I've been told to shut up. Everything I said was gonna happen is happening. Right. Every everything that they said that was gonna happen is not happening.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:57

Uh, and I decided to, I I requested mast.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:59

Yeah, you blew the whistle. You basically blew the whistle.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:02

I blew I blew the I whistle blew on the favoritism. Right. And the laziness. Yeah. And I wrote a letter, which I actually have it on my uh on my book.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:10

Yeah, by the way, uh in his book, at the very end of the book, you have receipts for everything that he's talking about. And I found it to be really helpful because as he was telling the story in the book, you you would refer to the appendix and to whatever it was you were talking about. And I when I read your book, that's what I would do is I would go straight to the appendix and I'd go, okay. And I'll tell you the truth. Like the only thing that got me, caught me off guard was the complaint. When I read, and we'll get to that here in just a second, but when I read the complaint, it was shocking because it didn't go, it didn't jive with anything you had said up to that point, which was why it didn't make any sense to me. But now I'm starting to understand as we're talking, this wasn't the the complaint was a retaliation, was a way to weaponize against you for blowing the whistle. If you hadn't sent that letter, no, I guarantee if you had not sent that letter, this you would have never gotten the complaint.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:12

Absolutely not. So I sent the letter, I requested mass, and the general had to do something about it. So the general had, so what I was saying is like, look, I am about to my report, my my my evaluation is coming around. My last evaluation was submitted so late I missed the command board. And the command didn't care.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:29

That's right. You were also up for 05. Oh no, you're up for command.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:34

I I was up for command, I was already selected for 05.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:36

You were already selected for 05, but you were up for command. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:38

I was up for command. And I was and I was had a very competitive package, and they needed to submit my reevaluation on time. And they did not.

unknown: 1:11:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:47

They submitted two weeks late after the board, which meant my my package was incomplete, so I got passed over.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:52

Yep, and it's and that was just due to incompetence because your first your first evaluation was glowing. That was the other thing that was thrown through that that just shows you what it was, what is such a bullshit this was. Is that your first evaluation from these people were you can walk on water, you're so great. Yeah, and then the second evaluation.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:09

Yeah, I was a top major of all of them. I was, I was, uh, I was uh even my volunteer work was being highlighted. I was called a humanitarian, I was called this guy's a top of a top 20, top 10 of all majors across the board that I've ever seen, no reported on that I've ever seen. So um then I I just like you know, I I'm I I'm done with this. And I'm sick of the favoritism. I'm sick of, you know, uh if if I drink and get drunk with the colonel or or drink with the general, then I get to move. I'm like, I I'm a lot of things, but I'm not an asker. Never never been one.

SPEAKER_05: 1:12:43

I hear you. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:44

And never never been one, just not know my nature. Uh, and that's the way I raise my kids, you know. Never ask is kick ass. Don't ask ass. Um, and if you see somebody kissing, kick him in the face. You know, it's it's um it's something that really enraged me. So I submitted a complaint, you know, highlighting a bunch of stuff on the butt on top of that, you know, I want to move. Uh oh, by the way, I'm reprisal is coming my way because I am writing this letter. So um despite complaining to the general, reprisal took place. So they lowered markings on my finished report. It was still a decent report, but lower markings. All the markings are not really comments.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:21

And I want to just jump in and say this is what happened. The complaint was originated from somebody who was a low performer, somebody who you knew was not performing to the standard, somebody who, oh, by the way, wanted an in with Intel, and I think eventually went and worked with Intel. He was another member of the jock, another member of the jock. So this was somebody who just didn't like you. So this should have been squashed because in a real investigation, it would be borne out that this person had it in for you. But because this is a clown show, they entertained the investigation and said, Oh, this person must have said these inappropriate things. Now the witch hunt begins to find other people that will substantiate what this person said. And what this person said was that you said inappropriate things around your British colleague, and you made your British colleague feel uncomfortable by saying inappropriate things.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:27

Sexual content.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:28

Sexual content.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:29

Sexual content, context. So um, so then as time goes by and I'm like in this tether of what's happening, what's you know, my my finished report, I couldn't submit a complaint of um whistleblower reprisal because that finished report that lower markings had not been submitted yet.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:46

Right. They they sat on it, they sat on it, they sat on your fit rep so for months, so that you weren't able to say this is a whistleblower issue. And and oh, by the way, during this entire time, they're now questioning witnesses, they're going around and and asking all these other people in the jock, uh, what have you heard? What's going on? And they're picking and choosing. This is my understanding, they're picking and choosing who they interview. Yeah, they're not interviewing everybody who is working with you, or the people of all the people that sat around me, the only ass two folk.

unknown: 1:15:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:23

And there were a total of four or five around me.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:25

Yes, and there were two men who who who said that the same thing happened. We'll go later into your colleagues, but the two friends who backed each other up, which of course, that's what friends do. The drones. Yes. And then at first, your British colleague said, I I wasn't harassed, right? That was her first initial like there was nothing.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:48

So I didn't know there was an investigation up until I started getting getting the idea that it was an investigation, kind of framing things. It was end of April, uh, when all of a sudden she sends me an email to my personal Yahoo account. And I when I checked it, she said the intel, the senior intel officer, the Air Force Colonel, who wanted me out of there, who wanted to shut me up.

SPEAKER_05: 1:16:15

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:16

Uh, because I'm I'm I'm I'm embarrassing him with my work.

SPEAKER_05: 1:16:19

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:20

Uh she's like, you know, he was over here asking strange questions about you. And she sent me an email. And the funny thing is that she was at the same building where I was, and for some reason, because she I know she I think I think she was in a in a workshop, in a work group, whatever it was, and she had to send me that email. Like she couldn't wait until she saw me a couple of hours later. She like really needed to tell me right now. She sent me to my my uh personal account, uh my yeah, my private account. And I was like, what? So then I saw her, and then she tells me, let's go outside, and she tells me, it's like, look, Colonel Kerry's asking these questions about you know, you saying sexual things in front of me and doing this and doing that, make you feel uncomfortable, blah, blah. Everything revolves about, you know, you taking off, not coming to work, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:08

Uh yeah, you're leaving early, you following the side.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:10

Leaving early, not coming to work, um, uh, taking off to for for sexual encounters with random people out in town, um, uh, making uh inappropriate comments in front of her, apparently inappropriate sexual stories in front of her, uh, just every just sexual, sexual, sexual, sexual, and not coming to work. And I was like, I was like, okay. I asked her, it's like, okay, I I think you know the answer on the not coming to work. You know, I'm always here. She's like, Yeah. I was like, you know, the only time I leave the jog is to go to the gym, which is still in the base across the street from the building, still within the same base. Uh, and I'm here sometimes on weekends. And she's like, Yeah, you're here before everybody comes in. Because I used to come in very early around seven in the morning, because yeah, uh NATO time frame to start is 8:15. But I used to come at 7:30 in the morning, uh, or 7 in the morning, because a lot of the international officers wanted to practice their briefs with me because of pronunciation or intonation or whatever. So I was like, Yeah, sure, no problem. You know, if and that's the whole thing of NATO. It's like if you're a U, if you're if you are from a nation, you can give a helping hand to another partner. That you know, that's how you build an alliance. So I was like, you know, I'm here before everybody, and I leave after everybody. So, you know, don't I don't know where this is coming from. And then I asked her, I said, you know, I I don't remember everything I've said, but have I at any moment said anything that made you feel uncomfortable or that could potentially have made you feel uncomfortable, whether it made you uncomfortable or not. She's like, No, you never have. I'm like, have I said any sexual stories, sexual context, or any other stuff in front of you or to you or across from you? She's like, No. I'm like, okay, I mean, case closed, but I'm gathering. She's like, Yeah, that's kind of odd. Um and then I get a phone call from one of these friends. So he he got a hold of this a couple of days later. We were walking, uh, and he's like, Hey, I need you to call me at home. I was like, Okay. Well, yeah, I got something to tell you. I'm like, we can just go outside or just talk right here. He's like, No, no, I need you to call me. Okay. So when I got home, I called him. There was no answer. Hung up. My phone record shows like I think one or two seconds uh because it went into his answering machine. Um, and then the following day, he I believe it was yeah, the following day, he tells me that he was asked by the jock director now, just his Air Force Colonel, not his army colonel, uh, about if I am leaving from work during the day to engage in sexual activities and then coming back and bragging about them. And I'm like, okay, where's this coming from? He's like, you know, please don't tell him. I didn't hear this from me. I was like, no problem.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:58

Wow. And this is one of the two that were vouching for each other, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:20:02

So he was basically breaking his brotherly bond to at least tell you something's going on.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:09

Well, the funny thing is that he asked me to call him because as I gathered the evidence later on, I found out that before he talked to me, asked me to call him, he had said in the investigation that I called him five times.

SPEAKER_03: 1:20:25

I saw that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:26

And on the fifth time, we had an extended conversation. So having said that story, now he needed to see, put it somewhere in the record that I called him five times. So he was hoping that I would call him five times, and I didn't.

SPEAKER_03: 1:20:38

Right. Well, and also he was basically playing both sides. He knew he's playing both sides because he knew that you were honest and he wanted to give you a heads up just like the British lady did. But at the same time, they were being pulled into something that was bigger than they were, and they felt to save their own asses, they had to do what they had to do to comply with this witch hunt investigation.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:05

Yeah, and at the same time, it's like this particular guy, here we see the DUI. So in terms of standing in the command, he was at the bottom.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:14

Right. So he had he had to do whatever he could do to just preserve his reputation. To rebuild his reputation and to rebuild his reputation. So if he cooperated with this investigation and backed his buddy up with what his buddy was saying went on, which were these inappropriate conversations, then he could raise his profile.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:32

And one one and one of the things is that I mean, this is a guy, I I don't know how many times I had to pick him up from from from because he lived relatively close from me, still out of the way, but pick him up from his house to take him to work and then take him back because he had lost his privilege, his driver privileges.

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:49

His driving privileges.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:50

He lost his license. He lost his license. So um because of DUI or DWI work. Uh so and then his so the then it came to light that the person who actually started this investigation, the this complaint, the actual main complaint, was the guy who sat in front of me, and he was the Intel briefer. And the Intel briefer was desperate to get out of the drug. Yep. Because my briefs were also embarrassing him.

SPEAKER_02: 1:22:14

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:15

And this guy also had a problem with alcohol and showing up to work. Another clown.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:23

This this story is just so ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:25

It's it's such a mess.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:27

And and I'm gonna try my best to just kind of keep it on because we could talk about this for five hours. So, what I'm gonna try to do now is go move on to this investigation's playing out. What turned the British uh colleague?

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:42

So um the I didn't hear anything for several weeks. Most of the investigation takes place in two weeks. It was like four or five weeks, and I had anything. And I was like, you know, they're probably asking questions that people are telling the truth. And all of a sudden, um, when when I get interviewed, you know, I had nothing to hide. And so going through the questions, one of the things that have you ever left? You know, the judge's like, you know, and I told him, sir, I'm sure you can go to the security office and you can pull on my blog, my logs, you can see that I'm here probably before you, and I'm here probably after you. And and and and all of you, gentlemen, all of you, because there were three colonels trying to intimidate me. Um, and he's like, No, no, no, no, no, that's fine. And every time I suggested I've got this piece of evidence because one of the accusations was that I was reading off sexual stories from a particular book that has short stories. I'm like, sir, that book doesn't have a single sexual story. It's called Shit My Shit My Dad's Ass, which is a funny book about a relationship between Asana's dad. There's no sexual stories there. So I was like, I got a copy at home and I had it in my office because I was gonna give it to somebody. Somebody asked me, I'm gonna go for a copy, and I just read a couple of stories. You can read through it, there's nothing sexual about it. They're funny stories between Dan Hassan. So no, no, no, no, that's fine. Everything was like, No, no, no, that's fine. So it got to the point that you know, I was like, you know what?

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:54

Uh I I went to the security guys and I pulled, hey, could you pull my entry and exit logs for this particular time for like you're now having to do your own evidence gathering because you know at this point that chances are you are being targeted unfairly, and you know this is just a dog and pony show, and you know this is gonna be a clown game. So you say, Okay, I'm gonna pull my logs. Now I've got proof that at least on this charge for now, okay, and what happens?

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:22

So so, um, so I I hold the logs and I'm like, you know what? I'm just gonna go ahead and hand it to the investigator.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24:28

That's how this particular because this is something that you can easily prove, and you thought, and and I bet you thought too, like, this will make this whole thing go away, because this is one particular aspect of the investigation that's just baseless. And if and here's the thing this pulls at the credibility of the accuser, because if he's lying about this, then what else is he lying about? Correct.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:51

And I and I also I also expected that if Michelle was asked these questions, she'd be like, no, this that's never happened.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24:57

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:58

My female colleague. So then I presented these logs. Uh, I didn't I couldn't get a hold of him. I had I left it to one of his uh officers, junior officers, and then I walked back. And I remember that was like on a Friday, and that was the Friday of Memorial Day weekend of 2015. And I got home and I get this angry phone call from the senior Marine in Brussels, who um was the one sitting on my finishing board for the longest time.

SPEAKER_03: 1:25:23

And that's shape, by the way.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:25

Yeah, in shape, sorry, in shape, uh Supreme.

SPEAKER_03: 1:25:28

That's the higher headquarters for all NATO for the military side. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:32

So, and uh, he lost it and he starts screaming over the phone, uh order me not to gather evidence on my behalf.

SPEAKER_03: 1:25:40

By getting so mad.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:42

Which is illegal, and also I was like, sir, I would like a copy of the investigation. It's like you will never get a copy of the investigation, I'll never give it to you. And luckily, I have that conversation witnessed.

SPEAKER_03: 1:25:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:54

And I got it in writing that conversation was witnessed.

SPEAKER_03: 1:25:56

And you still didn't get a copy of your freaking investigation until like I think like hours before your board of inquiry.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:04

I was uh before the NJP.

SPEAKER_03: 1:26:06

Or I'm sorry, before the NJP. Oh, this whole this whole system just pisses me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:11

So comes the uh Memorial Day weekend passes, and I believe it was the Wednesday or the Tuesday, I'm not very sure when it was, come back to work. Uh, I get pulled in. So I'm sitting, I go back, I go back to my seat. My female partner, colleague, is sitting next to me, and I see her like incredibly nervous. And she's like touching me on the shoulder, are you are you okay? Is everything okay? And I was like, um, yeah, I hope so. But I noticed her like like she had just seen a ghost. And then she gets yanked, disappears. I remember on the Friday, like she was gone for several hours shortly after. I handed in my my my evidence early in the morning on the Friday, and all of a sudden she had like disappeared for several hours. I remember that because I remember that because we had we had to do the work together. So where the hell did she go? We need to finish a couple of things, so because we want to build a brief or the majority of it, so you know we could enjoy the weekend and not have to work for the weekend. Uh, you know, I just add in in new information that comes in over the weekend.

SPEAKER_04: 1:27:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:18

So she was not around. And then that particular day was Tuesday or Wednesday morning, whatever day it was, because we had the long weekend, she was like nervous like she had just seen a ghost, like she had just murdered somebody and she was trying to get rid of the body. And and then she was like completely shaken. And I was like, Are you okay? She's like, I I think so. And like shaking and really sad, looked like she was she'd been crying. So, anyway, so that afternoon I get called over to the jock uh director's office, and they're like, Your claims has been suspended. Uh, you're being escorted out of the jock. And they grabbed me by the arm and they took me outside of the building. They forcefully, forcefully, forcibly extracted me outside the building. I couldn't even grab my gear.

SPEAKER_02: 1:28:03

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:04

My per my my personal stuff. Even a lot of the evidence that I had was secret, so I was hoping to be able to pass it to another secret uh drive so I could hold it. And then if I had to go somewhere, you know, hey, I got evidence, but it's secret. Um, no, obviously not printing and walk it out with me. Uh, which was a problem in the jog because we had uh several people that were transferring files and sending them uh on uh private on a on the regular um Yahoo email. Oh yeah, and though and and nothing happened to those guys. So um, and then I discovered so the investigation the recent in the entry on the JPASS, which is the joint whatever Intel system that gives you the clearances, says that uh clearance has been suspended because he's under investigation. That was the 28th of May. But the investigation finished on the 27th. The day before. So that was that was a big red flag. And then the 28th is when all of a sudden I'm in my my new desk in a building, it's like a little it's a base lock bit, logistics building. And then my my my former boss and some of the other guys were like, dude, I heard the investigation's over. Have you heard anything? I'm like, I haven't heard anything, but who told you the investigation is over? He's like, the drug director. I'm like, that's odd. When did it finish? Yesterday. I'm like, that's odd because I apparently I got my my clearance suspended because of ongoing investigation. You know, this doesn't make any sense. And one of them told me, it's like um that my female colleague, days later, was brought into an office that had a lot of windows that was in the jock, and they had given her a stack of papers, and she was there just like if you don't read them, and you're signing them. You're signing them. And there were a couple of senior officers around her, make you know, like sign them.

SPEAKER_03: 1:29:57

So your thoughts are that she was basically co worker. Coerced into make I mean that's what you're alleging is that she was coerced into making statements against her will because what they could do is they could threaten her career, correct? Correct if she didn't stand up and say, No, this didn't happen, he didn't make me uncomfortable, he didn't speak about any of these things. So she was in a put in a position to say, okay, I'm gonna have to sign these statements, correct?

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:26

Yep, and then and then so uh I'm not getting the investigation, all I'm getting is word, bits and pieces over here because if I had the investigation, I could see the statements. So, but enough people are telling me the same thing. So I contacted Michelle. It's the investigation's over, I can contact her, and I was like, Can I can I invite you for a coffee?

unknown: 1:30:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:43

On base by the by the little NATO PX. Yep. Where it's completely open, it's not a closed room, it's in front of everybody, there's cameras all over the place. So we sat down and I told her, she's like, Have you heard anything? I'm like, no, not officially, but I have heard that there's allegations that I allegedly have sexually harassed you. And then she was like looking away, and I'm like, you know, I I told her, I remember the first thing I told her was like, look, I if at any moment if I ever said anything that insulted you, harassed you, sexual nature, non-sexual nature, um I just want to I just want to tell you that I apologize. I couldn't even finish that sentence when she said you never have. She's like, you never did. I'm like, okay. I was like, that's what I thought.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:39

I'm like, however, I believe there's stuff written out there that's like, that's say that says differently and you're asking her by someone's yes, saying that she did feel uncomfortable and felt sexually harassed. So you basically say, make a statement, please.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:56

Could you put what you just said in writing?

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:59

Because you want this to go away and you want this to finally be done. And what is she saying?

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:03

I want I want the right to be done.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:06

I'm like, what right's wrong? Somebody's saying this.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:10

And she looked away and she's like, I can't. I'm sorry. I'm like, Michelle, do you understand the impact of this?

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:18

Like, do you know what this is gonna do to me?

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:20

You know, you know, do you know what you not standing up for the truth? It's gonna result in. And she's like, I just can't. And she got up and said, I have to go. Good luck. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02: 1:32:35

That's so sad.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:37

And she walked away. Um, and uh then, so I am still fighting at this moment for a copy of the investigation, and you know, they give me the intent to uh impost Article 15 on judicial punishment, and I'm like, I'm not saying anything. I want a copy of the investigation. I'm not saying they come in with every excuse and the clock is sticking because you get 10 days to make a decision, court martial NJP. And I'm like, uh I'm like, I want to sign anything. And then all of a sudden I get a uh this senior Navy officer who so the Navy got really involved in this because they were under the impression that I was making an illegal investigation on their weight control program, on the physical fitness program. Um, during the time frame that I was there, I was getting word. Uh a couple of sailors were complaining to me that there were some senior guys that were falsifying their records.

SPEAKER_03: 1:33:28

They're heightened their height and weight standards or PRT, their physical fitness tests and physical fitness scores.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:35

And I was like, I you know, this is none of my business. You you I don't fall under you guys. You know, this is this is what I will do. Gather evidence, make a complaint. There's channels for this. End of story. Don't get me involved. In fact, I reported this conversation. I'm like, no, I didn't mention names, but I reported to this particular C Marine that wanted shape, the colonel, uh, who eventually turned against me. I told him, sir, I'm hearing this. We need to stay away from the Navy element because there's some funky stuff going on. And uh and I had that conversation actually witnessed that I was actually mentioning that I was being approached. Because in the colonel, in a statement, he said that I was saying that I was making an illegal investigation on my own. But luckily, the conversation the way actually happened, I got a witness, and it's actually I got a statement from a person that witnessed it, and it's in the book. Um, so the Navy's really getting involved because they're afraid that they're gonna get busted.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:28

Everyone just wants to cover their butt. That's all this is about.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:31

Literally, cover the butt, especially Navy guys. So um, I am uh so then this particular Navy commander walks in and he's like, Hey, talk to you. It's like, Yes, sir, took me to the back room, and he's like, and at this up until these days, I started hearing that the senior Navy officer, a female, who was also out of physical standards, heavily out of physical standards, was starting going around saying that I have threatened her. And she feared for her safety.

SPEAKER_03: 1:35:02

And I want to back up and say why she would be motivated to do this, because this is also part of the story. Because people are gonna hear this and go, well, why did she where did she come from? Why, why is she now saying something that's bad about you, too? This is also because you were a threat to her authority as a Marine who did not want to fall under the Navy element. And she knew that having the Marines under her, under her purview, was something that would make her career look more polished on paper. And so because you didn't think that your Marines should have to do all the same things that the Navy was doing, because you had instructions that said, and this is all in the book, you had certain things, certain policies, like certain procedures. I mean, if anyone knows anything about the military, they know that there's a ton of GMT and these all these admin requirements, and you were basically pushing back on these admin requirements to her saying, No, ma'am, this is not what we Marines do. So she was already in her mind conditioned and biased against you because she was like, This Marine just wants to do whatever the heck he wants, and I don't have any control of him. And so she so she in my mind, she kind of piled on, she was a pile on, she piled on.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:21

And and the thing is that she believed she was fully convinced that the Marines fell under her, right?

SPEAKER_03: 1:36:26

So she felt like you unsurped her authority, but and so we did not, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:31

We had we had our own element, we had our own chain of ground, and it's in her mind, she did feel threatened.

SPEAKER_03: 1:36:36

That's the thing that people don't talk about either, is the fact that people believe what they tell themselves. And I think in her mind, she was mentally threatened, but she transposed that to a physical threat and said, I'm scared about what he's going to do.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:53

Yep. So she she started saying that I physically and verbally threaten her. And that's what that's what I was hearing.

unknown: 1:37:00

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:00

And they had colonels and lieutenant colonels approach me, and I was like, and I was like, sir, it's like I'm not, I know I'm not hearing that I'm hearing that's what she said, and nobody believes her shit. I'm like, okay, because I mean she this person was very emotionally unstable. Um, and I, in fact, I wanted to stay away from her as much as I could. And in fact, and the at the board of inquiry, I should actually stated that our contact was to the bare minimum, if that, because I wanted to keep my distance away from her. You know, some people you want to keep your distance away from?

SPEAKER_03: 1:37:31

That was true. Sure. You just knew she was somebody you just didn't want to have that many interaction with.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:35

I was like, no. Um social media, I'm like, you know, I I I hardly ever kept any professional contacts, even on social media. I'm not the kind of guy that has an entire platoon on social media now. Um, so I wanted to stay away my you know, away from her. And she was also, um, there were several, there were a couple, a handful of people at the senior level, that if there was an investigation on the over fraudulent entries in the physical fitness program, they will pop. Um, and she'll be one of them. Anyway, so um then she starts saying that. And you know, when when you start making accusations, when you start being accused of physically or verbally threatening somebody, that lands you in jail. That is one of the reasons why they put people in pretrial confinement. When you become a physical threat to somebody, when you threat a physical harm to somebody, it's it's a very easy way to land up in jail. Either that or a flight risk. So and that's when I was getting really scared. Because where's this coming from? You know, and I keep hearing this, I haven't heard it from her directly. You know, once again, I'm saying to stay away from her, but um then this particular uh commander walks in, pulls me to the side, and he's like, if you don't take NJP right now, and you don't send off this form today, and you don't plead guilty, those allegations of verbal harm and physical harm and all that are gonna result in you being imprisoned.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39:12

That's just disgusting. By the way, I just for the audience and for your purposes, I lost my uh camera. I'm working on getting my backup camera, so it's just gonna be on you right now for full screen, but I know you can still hear me. So go ahead.

SPEAKER_01: 1:39:24

And at that point, you know, I had a lawyer, but my lawyer was very like an ISICle. Uh six hours, you know, time difference. Um, he wasn't too interested in me getting uh um a uh uh the copy of the investigation. I attempted to reach other lawyers, they were either too busy or no, I don't deal with this, or whatever it is. I was like, oh no, you need to find a local lawyer. I can't find a local lawyer, you know, local Dutch lawyers don't do UCMJ. So it um with that piling on and knowing that look, if I take a court martial, I I'm not gonna be able to uh to get any evidence. The people that will be able to tell the truth are under duress. Um, looks like the person that allegedly sexually harasses is refusing to change a statement or clarify anything. I you know, if I ended up in jail, I would have been, you know, I have I have a European family, and uh I the time I had a uh house of Spain, I would lose all that or any access to come back or even travel.

unknown: 1:40:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:28

Or to go into other countries. I'm like, I'm done. So um I knew of some cases at the time of some NJP people that have been in JPs that were able to then they played a guilty, took the NJP, but eventually were able to gather information, you know, feminists to say, you know, this is an injustice. And a reasonable commander was able to overturn it. I've seen it. I I was actually one of them commanders one NJP. Uh that I didn't impose it, the guy be prior to me. And uh, if I know that, you know, it was not her fault, it was her husband's fault, but it fell on her. And she, you know, she had to be blame to try to protect her husband. Anyway, and I've seen in many other cases. Um so uh it just you know to keep my my butt from landing in jail unjustifiably, uh pretrial confinement, I play guilty.

SPEAKER_03: 1:41:16

So this and this just pisses me off so much because basically you just didn't have time to prepare a defense, you didn't get the investigation in a proper amount of time, you didn't have lawyers that were proactive in advising you. You tried to gather your own investigation and you tried to get your own evidence to prove your case, and you were blocked at every turn. So I was punished for it. Yeah, in the morning of your NJP, that's when they decide to give you your investigation. That is just so ridiculous and so wrong and such a violation of your due process protections.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:54

Yeah, in fact, I reported several times that I had not received this, and it's in the evidence of the book, you know, and and and it got to the time. Even my lawyer asked, and the morning, the morning that I took off to draft to Germany for the NJP proceedings, she replied this the JAG replied, Oh, he didn't get a copy. I I'll let him see when he comes in. So that was an acknowledgement that of violation of procedure, should have stopped proceedings right there and go, like, here's a copy, you got another 10 days. Right. But of course it didn't happen. So um I made some pretty strong statements during the NJP proceeds. I claimed I have not sexually arrested anybody, I haven't seen the investigation. Uh, and that was supposed to be recorded and transcribed to the report of NJP, but it did not. All it said was guilty, proceedings ending, and that's it. So, and that there's two, um, there were two witnesses. I don't know their names, I don't remember the names, but uh, I would love to get a hold of those guys because they will be able to tell that of the of the statements that I made uh regarding the whole procedure. So then I get I get forced transfer to Norfolk, Virginia, to Marine Forces Command, where I have to stand in front of a board of inquiry.

SPEAKER_03: 1:43:06

And that's when it first is also where things start looking up again. I'm gonna just break in real quick because this is when you finally start to work for leaders again. That's what I love about this part of the story, isn't it? This is the first time since you've been uh deployed and you had your own unit with 150 people that you you have a taste of what leadership really is about, once again, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:29

Yeah, so I I end up working for a civilian guy, a GS14, I believe it is, and he was a civilian guy, Marvel Comm, logistics guy. And then but the ultimate boss was a Fulbert Colonel, uh Matthew, Matthew Travis. Great person, uh, as straight as an arrow as it gets. And when I taught when when I checked in, I ended up in the G4 where they were working. I met the Mr. Lane is the name of the civilian uh guy, and I took and he's like, Look, I understand you're facing a BOI, you're priority in life from now into the BUI is to get ready for the BOI and hopefully pass it. Got it. And then he took me to see Colonel Travis. Colonel Travis asked me to sit down, and he was very blunt with me. He told me, I don't want, I don't want you here. When I heard you were coming, I I told him I didn't want you.

SPEAKER_02: 1:44:20

I love that kind of honesty, though.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:22

I I don't want people like you.

SPEAKER_02: 1:44:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:25

And and and I was like, maybe what can I say? That yeah, I can tell him I'm innocent, but I don't have anything to prove. So, and uh, and then he he tells me directly, it's like I don't want to hear any bullshit from you. I don't want to uh I don't want to hear any bad behavior from you. I like if not, the hammer will drop. And most people would take that as uh as a legitimate, well, uh as a lawful threat within the bounds of the law. He's not threatening me with killing me or anything. The hammer drop is very figurative. So it's obviously he's not threatening with a hammer.

SPEAKER_03: 1:44:56

I think honestly, he was just saying what where where you stood with him, and I think that you are the kind of person that respects that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:45:03

I did, and that's and that for me was a blessing. Most people would fear that for me was a blessing. This is the kind of guy who's gonna see things for what they are, right? And I was like, all it's gonna take me is is time and being who I am.

SPEAKER_02: 1:45:16

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:45:17

So this was gonna take time and being who I am. So um I met my defense counsel, my dufo defense counsel, and he was irate the fact when I showed him evidence that they never gave me the investigation, they blocked my every single effort. And my previous game I had violated every single inch of procedure. So he then told me, it's like, okay, look, you know, we have to defend the BY, do you have any evidence? And I was like, you know, I don't have a whole lot. So, because the people that want to talk, you know, you can't they should talk, cannot talk. And he got to the point that when he's reading through the statements, particularly these two uh the the two the two the two buddies who stated against me, he asked me, he told me, you know, you did this, apparently you did this. I was like, no, I did not this. And they he asked me directly, it's like why would they lie?

SPEAKER_02: 1:46:00

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46:02

And and I was like, I I only have my word with me.

SPEAKER_03: 1:46:08

So it got to the morning of the BOI, where all of a sudden uh I had sp I had been speaking to a couple of my friends before, but they they did not want to make any statements because and by the way, you were only relying on military defense attorneys, right? You didn't hire civilian counsel, which you shouldn't have to do, by the way. Like you should not have to shell out tens of thousands of dollars. I mean, Bradley Geary is a great example. I think that guy's probably spent, and I have no idea what the real amount is, but I'm going to guess he spent upwards of$100,000 on his defense. And that is sad because his case was so high profile and it was such a travesty of justice. But that's what they want to do. They want to bleed you dry financially so that you can fight your case, and you weren't going to do that. But the problem was is that you got an overworked defense attorney who doesn't even sound like they believed you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47:03

Well, this particular guy, he was a new guy, and he did a good job, he was doing a good job, but he didn't believe me, and rightfully so. I didn't blame him for that. So it got to the point that it was like the morning of the BOI. Well, he was dumb and said, Look, you gotta fall on your sword, you gotta take, you gotta take the blame. I was like, I didn't do any of this.

SPEAKER_03: 1:47:20

Yeah, like how are you gonna take the blame for something that you didn't do?

SPEAKER_01: 1:47:22

And he's like, and it's like, and it's like it's just it this is the way it works. And I I was having a hard time with that. And anyway, so it was I had been speaking to a couple buddies of mine, and they mentioned a couple of things that when it started matching things together, according to what they were saying, one of these guys who said who witnessed it, according to the time that the other one said it happened, this particular person alleged to witness it wasn't our work. And I was like, hmm.

SPEAKER_03: 1:47:48

I remember that. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47:50

I have to get the logs because if in in order for him to witness, he should have witnessed it before 8:15 or be like 8 in the morning, or between 7:30 and 8 in the morning. And and I was like, hold on a second. So I called my security uh office buddies, and uh, it was the morning. I spent the situation, I was like, Look, I need logs on this person. I mean, the chances that they're gonna give it to me were probably zero to none. And but I tell them my story, and they're like, Look, you know what? I'm I'm I'm putting my neck on the line, but that's great that they do. I will send you an email with information. How about that? Yeah, and you can use my.

SPEAKER_03: 1:48:23

I remember this. And it's in the book.

SPEAKER_01: 1:48:25

And it's in the book, and I and I went through this particular time and it showed that this guy had not swept his badge until about 8.15, and this other guy was saying that he went this thing, it happened around eight in the morning.

SPEAKER_03: 1:48:37

Yeah. And I mean, that can be explained away as somebody saying they didn't get the times right, but it was just another example, once again, of things not being as they seem. And oh, by the way, at this point, had the um had had I I know that you also got a phone call from the 06 Navy captain to your old boss. Had that happened yet? Where basically you just said, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:05

So so that was that was after the BOI. So all of a sudden, then uh I'm starting mapping things out and I started showing, you know, and the A15 part is because at A15 the brief's closed.

SPEAKER_02: 1:49:15

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:15

Before A15 is brief prep. So apparently, this happened during brief prep when I apparently started busting out some sexual bounter. And but this guy couldn't come into work, it proved that he wasn't even at work until 820, late for the brief already ongoing.

SPEAKER_05: 1:49:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:31

So I get that and a couple of pieces of information, and in that morning, I called my defense counsel who had already traveled from Quantico down to Norfolk, and I told him, Remember that conversation? Yeah. I got a piece of evidence that shows that he wasn't even at work. And he's like, Really? He said, Yep. And that's when he began to believe me.

SPEAKER_03: 1:49:50

So then that's the turning point. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:53

So that's when his defense was like, okay, we had to prove wrong.

SPEAKER_03: 1:49:56

We're gonna fight this because he saw. He saw you were able to do your own investigation. Right, but get the get the information finally. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:03

But but but my issue was that you know, I a lot of my evidence had been ripped apart from me. And also a lot of the guys who were able to tell the truth until otherwise were scared to write anything.

SPEAKER_03: 1:50:14

Yep. And that's difficult in these investigations. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:18

So so all of a sudden, then I go to um we go to the BOI and they call the lieutenant colonel who uh Marine Lieutenant Colonel who didn't want me there in the first place, and who I busted for lying to the general. Um uh and uh lying to two comp two different generals. And then they called also the Navy captain, the female Navy captain. So they put him to speak to me. Oh, everything was telephonic. They swore under oath that we're gonna tell the truth. And I got it in the book, the I think five, six different counts of perjury that the Marine Colonel said accused me everything from um I would park my car on an illegal spot uh and violating uh ATFP uh anti-terrorism force protection procedures and uh parking on reservice spaces. Funny thing is that I used to ride my bike to work.

SPEAKER_03: 1:51:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:14

I've been riding my bike to work since 2011, 2010, I'm sorry. Uh writing my work to work.

SPEAKER_03: 1:51:20

What makes me so mad about this is that they know they can get away with lying, too. They know that they can say whatever they want, even in an official board of inquiry. And isn't it like anyone's gonna go back and accuse them of false official statement or do an investigation or per I'm sorry, perjury and do an investigation on the fact that they committed perjury. But okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:42

So which is which is jail time. Perjury is jail time.

SPEAKER_03: 1:51:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:46

Perjury is jail time. So um he also accused me of uh um getting a lease on my own and not clean not clearing it through housing office, so you know, violating procedure, uh, that I just got a lease on my own and you know, I uh screw the housing office, which is it's a big no-no because if you live overseas, wherever you live has to be clear by the housing office.

SPEAKER_03: 1:52:04

Yeah, exactly. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:06

Um he also accused me, he accused me that I fabricated that I spoke all these languages and that I fabricated that I was a foreign air officer of three different regions. Um, and they never showed him evidence. In fact, during his staying, he also contradicted himself by saying, Yeah, I remember when he showed me all his um what do you call certifications and and and and and and and excess pass and showing that he didn't have these regions. So he contradicted himself several times. And during the break, and oh, he also when he was asked where, you know, you were his evaluator, his reporting senior, you wrote his evaluation. Where does he position in comparison to all the Marines of his rank that you have written? And he said, I was the second from the bottom of a total of I believe six majors, I was second from the bottom, and I was only second from the bottom because the one underneath me allegedly he got fired in Iraq and sent back. So the BOI had my finish reports that particular evaluation that he wrote that he signed, glorifying me not only markings, but also in verbal, saying the top of all majors I've written for, right? They had it right there. So the senior member of the board, a colonel, uh Russell, his name, uh attacked him, saying, Have you looked at your profile? Have you even looked at it? Oh, well, and then he says, Oh, I was forced, but you know, I dinked him on the comments. He said, The comments here say that he stopped 20%, you know, uh uh what do you call promote for command and and I mean all these great oh, and then he's he started just dancing around, oh, that's a standard that I always write at, whatever. It was obvious that he got caught in a lie and he was lying to the senior member of the board. Senior senior member of the board had the duty to stop proceedings right there, because he has the duty to and the the right to the duty to rule on all evidence and all proceedings, or at least make a statement, or write something that this guy committed perjury, nothing of course, of course not. Then came the Navy captain, and the Navy captain, that's when she accused me in the board that I made her feel for her safety. So when you when a female senior says that to three senior conservative uh persons, marine officers, of a Judeo-Christian background, that's never good news. The the mood turned very dark, and there was nothing I could say against because it the the accusation was not in the it was not in the investigation. It was new, and it completely coughed me off guard. Um and from what I understand, the member of the board who later on I showed him a ton of evidence, he said that that took a lot of that that was a lot of weight in the decision to kick me out of the Mary Corps.

SPEAKER_03: 1:55:15

I'm so upset about this for you. You should have never been kicked out because what the audience doesn't know, and I'll try to get to I'm so sorry guys that this is going on for as long as it does. Normally I have an hour-long show, but there was no way I was going to be able to tell this story properly and and really hear out all the ins and outs without us going a little bit over or a lot over. But the point being is that not only did they vote to separate you from the Marine Corps, later on, she retracted her statement, the 06.

unknown: 1:55:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:55:46

She retracted your boss. Yeah. So uh after the after the board, I went to my boss, my both, my my civilian boss, Mr. Lance, like, sir, I was accused of this. And in this office here in G4, there's a lot of females, um, low ranking and seniors, whatever. And I think that's something that the colonel needs to know. I want to be completely transparent. And we went to him, I'm like, sir, this is this is what I was accused of. You know, sure. If you ask me, I'll tell you everything happened, but I have every reason to lie. So, and he's like, Are you gonna be a threat here? I was like, Sir, I'm not, but once again, I have every reason to lie. So, what I'm asking you, sir, is to please call this Navy captain and ask her. And at that moment, he was like, Okay. So he called her and she confessed.

SPEAKER_03: 1:56:36

Why? Why do you think she did that? Like that part so fascinating to me is the fact that she retracted it. What did how did she explain at the time the reason that she lied at the BOI?

SPEAKER_01: 1:56:47

So she had retracted because one of the things that the BOI said that she accused me of mutiny and uh refused to fall under her charge because I was one of her Marines.

SPEAKER_00: 1:56:56

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:56:56

And then the day or two days after she started trying to clean up, well, like she was obviously scared that she could probably be charged with perjury, and she sent an email saying, Oh, well, there was this one document that says that um they don't belong to me. So uh maybe this is the reason why he didn't want to, you know, fall under my command. Hello, we have a different channel command. It was written on paper. Um, so then she started backtracking uh her statement.

SPEAKER_03: 1:57:21

She started walking it back. I can't remember what ethics that was, but that was fascinating when I read that in here about how she basically went from saying, Yeah, she was threatened, to I I never thought he should get out of the military. Um, you know, and I was like, Oh my god, this is insane. She would she would backtrack like this. Try to find it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:57:44

And then and then she talked to my colonel, and then she sent the email. She's like, Let me clarify. No, he's not he wouldn't, he's not a threat, he never threatened me. And then my colonel wrote a letter saying, I had this conversation, right? And her statement is dubious at best. So she backtracked me, which then for her to make an accusation so blasé in a BOI, it really brings me to question has he done this to somebody before?

SPEAKER_03: 1:58:15

Right, right, absolutely. Like she knows that this works, and that's the part that just is so disturbing about this entire thing is that obviously these people know that this is the silver bullet. If you want to ruin somebody, all you have to do is say that they sexually harassed you, yeah, or that you felt threatened by them.

SPEAKER_01: 1:58:37

And this is and this is where Hexa talks about the repeated offense, the repeated complainers.

SPEAKER_03: 1:58:42

Right. And and the thing is there's people that really need justice, and then there's people that are weaponizing the system, yeah, and both things can be true at the same time. And unfortunately, we're we're trying to pit one against the other, which is absolutely not what the issue is. So they vote to separate you, and then you have a whole nother saga with how soon they want to get you out, and basically they're trying to rush you out without being able to do all the proper medical checks to make sure that you have all the proper documentation for claiming all of your injuries.

SPEAKER_01: 1:59:19

So having being a TBI, two TBIs and uh and having uh a PTSD, the Marine Corps order says very clearly, I have to go through this particular medical extra medical steps. They refused to submit me to that. Uh, and I fought that. Um, when uh my package went all the way to a secretary of the navy. We my lawyer contacted Secretary of the Navy saying, This is illegal. And they kicked it back twice.

SPEAKER_03: 1:59:42

Yep. And they actually did delay your separation so that you could complete all of your proper medical procedures to ensure that you were properly taken care of before you got out. But not before they fabricated PTSD. And this is what people don't understand, too, about the medical system. If you say someone has adjustment disorder, or you use some other term, personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, you don't get the same benefits or the same uh VA claim as somebody who has PTSD. And if you're diagnosed with PTSD, as I was as well when I was in London, you can't just decide later that it's now adjustment disorder or it's now something else. I had to do the same thing as I was separating. I saw that my doctors here uh in Mississippi try to say I had adjustment disorder. And I'm like, no, I've been diagnosed with PTSD with anxiety. And I feel I have PTSD, and I am going to separate from the Navy with PTSD. And I'm also very aware of why other people want to say adjustment disorder or borderline personality disorder or all these other diagnosed diagnoses. And that's exactly what they did to you.

SPEAKER_01: 2:01:02

Yep. So and so I was I had PTSD diagnosis. And then um, when uh when I shared this with a with a friend of mine, he's like, Do you have it in writing? I'm like, well, it's in my record.

SPEAKER_03: 2:01:13

He's like, and you don't even think about it. You're like, of course I have it in writing. The lady said I had PTSD. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 2:01:18

He's like, he's like, I have it in writing. He's like, get a cop, get a written copy. I was like, well, yeah, sure. I mean, I'm sure. It's like, no, get a written copy right now. And I was like, why? It's like the command, his command is known for altering records. I was like, what? That's illegal.

SPEAKER_02: 2:01:32

It's just crazy. It's just crazy to think that that can happen.

SPEAKER_01: 2:01:35

He's like, he was like, leave the this UNI right now and go get a copy. I was like, I was like, okay, so that's exactly what I did, and I got a copy. To find out that they um they they changed my uh diagnosis to reaction to severe stress.

SPEAKER_03: 2:01:54

Yeah, which is a lesser form diagnosis that will be rated differently by the veterans of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and they know this.

SPEAKER_01: 2:02:02

But not only that, but then it doesn't require me to go through this extensive medical checkup that they didn't want to do.

SPEAKER_02: 2:02:09

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01: 2:02:10

So, so, and then apparently it's on a particular day, it was according it. I was diagnosed uh to uh with reaction to severe stress or downgraded from PTSD direction of degree stress on a particular day was 26 September, and nowhere in my records does it show that I had a 26 September appointment. Because if you print out your logs off, yeah, this is so similar to what happened to Adam Dorito. All your appointments I can show. I I never had an appointment this day. I was at work.

SPEAKER_03: 2:02:37

I don't know that's why I wanted you to connect with Adam, because this is exactly what happened to him.

SPEAKER_01: 2:02:41

So then, um, so then they uh so then they actually turn the gears for medical examination, they submit the battery test and all this other stuff. And then these other naval doctors, like, you know, this guy obviously does have PTSD, and they actually wrote it. So I had I have even more another committee something that this guy fixed it, so you were able to fix it. So they're fixing that, and the command is getting right. So then we're looking, we're gonna submit the battery test, and then they show show that because I had TBI and PTSD at the same time, they're like, look, we need to reduce your anxiety levels so then we can treat, figure out your TBI, and then hopefully treat both. But we need to reduce your anxiety levels. So uh I was like, that's fine. And they told me it's like, look, we're gonna start come the fall of 2017 because we're gonna start, we're not gonna start right now. You know, summer break, everybody's gonna be gone to the winds. You're probably gonna take vacation, so we're gonna start with treatment, and then we're gonna re-revamp you for another um what do you call that battery test come the spring of 2018? So I'm like, great. So anyway, at this point, I am 19 years in service. So this will take me too closer to 20, my retirement. And uh then all of a sudden, that particular May of 2017, 19 years of service, I am cycling to work. And I get in an accident. So I this guy hit me. I was on this on the sidewalk, he came out in a looking, he was on his phone, hit me. That's where I got my second TBI. So I was down for the count. Uh, I got diagnosed with a secondary TBI. I am down for the count for several days. And the command knew that the clock would have to start again because they didn't do the proper checks prior to.

SPEAKER_03: 2:04:23

Well, they tried to separate, but you were already safe for the 20 years, right? Like, because I think you have to only do like 17 years to get the 20 year.

SPEAKER_01: 2:04:31

Nope. Nope. They can they can separate you before the 20 years. Yep, they can.

SPEAKER_03: 2:04:36

Right. But I know they can, but were you already in like, I don't even know if you want to call it the golden parachute or whatever you I was at 19.

SPEAKER_01: 2:04:42

I was at 19 years at that point. You were not at 19. I was, I was at 19.

SPEAKER_03: 2:04:46

Okay, okay, okay. So you were, so you were able, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01: 2:04:49

I was at 19 years. So then all of a sudden, uh, I am recovering from being hit in the head by a vehicle and then the road.

SPEAKER_04: 2:04:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 2:04:58

And then right on right behind my back, a three-star general wrote that a couple of days before the accident, there was a full check, and a bunch of psychologists or a psychologist, psychiatrist, whatever it was, wrote off that my PTSD and TBI is fine and had nothing to do with accusations or whatever. Events that never happened. Because they had to have that particular check before my accident. Because any kind of evaluation after the accident, they would have to start all over again because they didn't do their job. So they fabricated entries regarding my medical, which by the way, they're not even in my medical record.

SPEAKER_03: 2:05:42

So that's a show. That's the second time they fabricated.

SPEAKER_01: 2:05:46

That's the second time they fabricated, and this is a three-star. It went all the way to the assistant secretary of the Navy, Mr. Woods, who then fabricated more things, saying that so I got radiation in my body from Fukushima, and it's in my medical records. And then he was saying that uh I was fabricating um radiation that was for the very first time discovered in 2017. So it had nothing to do with the time that I was in in Brunswick in the Netherlands with the accusations. I'm like, the discovery in my record, the discovery of the radiation is 2011. Where this 2017 comes from?

SPEAKER_02: 2:06:19

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 2:06:20

Where does it come from? So the Assistant Secretary of the Navy fabricated uh documents too. And then, well, I got forced out, I get kicked out, I had the civilian world. Uh and then in 2007.

SPEAKER_03: 2:06:34

But you're able, now you were able though to collect a 20-year retirement, though, right?

SPEAKER_01: 2:06:38

You were able to collect No, no.

SPEAKER_03: 2:06:41

Even though you were at 19 years, even though I was 19 years.

SPEAKER_01: 2:06:44

I even I submitted a package for their retirement and it was denied.

SPEAKER_03: 2:06:48

Oh my god, I I that's part I didn't catch in your story when we when I read the book is that you didn't get a full pension for retirement.

SPEAKER_01: 2:06:55

No, not at all. Okay, all right, zero. So I was able to get some VA benefits. Um, so you know, I'm in the civilian world, starting all over again, trying to find my case, um, and uh still, but you know, working in the civilian world. And then 2019. So I moved, bought a house, I'm repairing it myself. Um, I was working on the attic, uh, a beautiful attic where I'm sitting right now. Um, and uh I I would start working. I was going to law school as well. So I would start working the days I didn't have to go to school, I start working at eight until about noon, two or four hours. And I would take a quick lunch break, 30 minutes, go downstairs, and then come back again to work. And on my way downstairs, I would go to the my mailbox, open it up, pull out, and I saw a letter addressed to me without a return address. Opened it up. It was a letter from Michelle.

SPEAKER_03: 2:07:49

Which is the British officer?

SPEAKER_01: 2:07:51

The British officer who made the accusations. So in the investigation, she wrote three different accusations that I approached her several times, that I asked her to lie, that I sexually harassed her, that I made uh uh I I uh um made her feel uncomfortable, she has to shut up. And then between those accusations and through the process of the BOI, she it's in my book as well. She wrote four to five communications where she began to change her tone. And one of the communications was, yeah, it happened, but it I didn't feel sexually harassed. Um I it was joking, but I guess somebody could argue there was sexual harassment, but it was really not. And then another communication where she was saying, No, you didn't do the what was it, the alleged sexual performances or sexual acts in front of her, or saying these particular stories or whatever that never happened. She began to change her tone, short of admitting fully that this never happened. The conscience was biting her, her conscience was killing her. Uh, I had several friends that actually wrote this also in the book saying that they had conversations with her, and she was, she had expressly explicitly told them, Andres, never sexually harass me. But she was too afraid to put it on paper. And she was being forced by the power to be British high-ranking officers to tell her to you're gonna sign this, you're gonna shut up, and you're not going to provide any evidence or speak on his behalf in the BOI, which is illegal.

SPEAKER_03: 2:09:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 2:09:26

So it came 2019. Uh, so when I when I moved back over here, back to the Netherlands when I bought this house here, um, a lot of people were still around. And I will bump into them. It's a very small community, it's a very small community. I mean, I live 12 minutes from where I used to work. Sure. So like two villages over, and these villages are tiny. And I bought a very old house that you know, if you describe it, you can find it. Very small villages. Villages are like 850 people big. I mean, they're tiny.

SPEAKER_03: 2:09:55

Sounds like paradise.

SPEAKER_01: 2:09:58

It's beautiful. So my friends, my my my friends were like, hey, you know, Michelle is still here. She was able to extend. And she went to work at the position that I wanted to work at.

SPEAKER_05: 2:10:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 2:10:14

So it it all really sounded like she didn't want to make the statements, but then it threw to the bound. Oh, you want to extend? You don't want to go back to the UK? No problem. We'll let you do it now as soon as you sign the statements. And we'll and we'll move you to the position that Andreas wanted that you really wanted, but you couldn't go to. So we'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_03: 2:10:30

It's disgusting.

SPEAKER_02: 2:10:31

It's absolutely disgusting.

SPEAKER_01: 2:10:32

So I opened the letter and it's in the book. I think it's appendix 89.

SPEAKER_03: 2:10:37

It is.

SPEAKER_01: 2:10:38

And it says clearly right there that she, I mean, I don't know it by heart, but she says that um she felt pressured, obligated, forced to make the statements, and she should have stood up for what was right, but she was coward. But she coward.

SPEAKER_03: 2:10:54

Yeah, I'm gonna can I read it just because I really think it's powerful. I'm just gonna go full screen, and my audience is just gonna have to humor me because I've never done this full anatomy of what it really means to be falsely accused of sexual harassment. And this is this is her letter, the letter of the main person that was feeling sexually assaulted, or sexually harassed, rather. Dear Andres, I am happy to hear you are back in the area knowing how much it means to you and your family. It is understandable you do not desire to chat and catch up. I hope you were able to sort through this mess. I feel terrible. I could not help you as much as I wanted to, but I was in a precarious position. By the time I was interviewed the second time that May, they knew well I had approached you. It was rather clear it would fall on me if I did not blame you and answered as they wanted. Days later, I was given several statements to immediately sign without being afforded time to read. I was then told it would bring this process to an end as far as it concerned me, and was ordered to ignore any request to be a witness. I finally was able to read these shortly before I wrote my last letter, but was worried of repercussions if I recanted. I always thought I would be much this thing makes me cry when I read it. I always thought I would be much braver, but I discovered by true colors when I feared for my career. At the time, part of me urged to recant and tell the truth, but regrettably I kept silent and remorse has haunted me since. I never witnessed you express sexual banter, acts offensively, or anything which can be misinterpreted of the sort. You always treated me with respect, stood up for me of the good friend you were, and now I feel ashamed that when it was my turn, I cowered. I could only hope you were able to clear through this and hopefully someday forgive me, Michelle. The whole thing is just so sad.

SPEAKER_01: 2:12:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_03: 2:12:40

So sad.

SPEAKER_01: 2:12:42

So it's uh I applied to the Board of Correction and Labor Records twice. The first time was before that letter arrived, and they told me to pound sand. And uh the second time was with the letter, I'm like, here I have uh uh a confession of not just it didn't happen, but the situation that she was in to make this she was coerced, and that she was telling me to pound sand. And the funny thing is, I that letter sent me for a spin uh for several weeks, and it wasn't but it wasn't until August 2021 where I saw that Kabul fell to the Taliban that I felt enraged that all the warnings that I was trying to give ended up being translated to the Taliban caught us by surprise by the highest ranks of the US military. It caught us by surprise. And what this you know I was told to shut up about ISIS because there are a bunch of pissed-off Arabs that wouldn't mount to anything. I was told to in 2015, I was told to shut up about ISIS because it wouldn't mount to anything. In 2016, ISIS put a bomb in the Brussels airport and it took the life of a wife of a member of the Brussels command. And that's a fact a bunch of pissed-off Arabs that wouldn't mount to anything. ISIS K in Afghanistan put that bomb at Abby Gate. They killed all those service members, and the command knew about this for years, but it told me to shut up. I don't know, September 2nd or 3rd is when I started writing that book.

SPEAKER_03: 2:14:41

Well, I think your book is a work of art. I think it's a masterpiece. I think everybody should read it. I applaud you for writing it. I also admire the fact that you probably didn't get pre-publication review and this bullshit process that was talked about during Matt Bissonet's podcast, by the way, with Sean Ryan. I highly recommend it. It was where a Navy SEAL was thrown through the ringer and charged all of his book profits that he had already spent fighting the military. He they then went after him, won, and now he's on Sean Ryan with Tim Parlatore pleading his case and trying to get this thing to go away. And it's all because the military wants to silence any whistleblower. And so they use these administrative procedures to silence people like yourself. And I think it's disgusting, I think it's reprehensible, and I think that until we see due process properly applied within the military justice system, I will continue to talk about it. And at this point, I just advise everybody to go public with their story because I don't know what else they can do at this point. And I hope you put in for another board of inquiry. I hope you keep on just pummeling them with this information and the proof that you do have, because it has to stop and it starts with us and it starts with the ability to speak up. So I want to thank you so much. I like I say, I know we went way on, way beyond time.

SPEAKER_04: 2:16:19

Yeah, we did.

SPEAKER_03: 2:16:20

But but uh I knew that this was the way the story had to be told. And I I think as we close out the call, what advice would you give to somebody who is in a similar situation? Because I would imagine since you've gone public with your story, you've had other people contact you and reach out. And and what advice would you we have for them?

SPEAKER_01: 2:16:42

Uh I I would, you know what? Um Stuart Scheller wrote um a few weeks ago, I think a few months ago, he said that if you kept quiet about what's happening in Afghanistan because you were felt worried about your career, you're a coward.

SPEAKER_03: 2:17:02

I remember that.

SPEAKER_01: 2:17:04

Uh he wrote that a few months ago. I would love to be able to talk to Stuart Scheller and share my story with him.

SPEAKER_02: 2:17:09

Um I would love to be to be able to as well.

SPEAKER_01: 2:17:12

Uh I would tell you, you know, stand up for what's right. Because a lot of people with a lot of shiny stuff, there's a lot of them that are cowards.

SPEAKER_02: 2:17:24

I agree.

SPEAKER_01: 2:17:25

There's a lot of them that uh they will kiss anybody's ass to get that rank, to get that position. Even with everything that's happened with Timmy, I can stand tall. I got my honor.

SPEAKER_03: 2:17:35

Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. And I really admire what you did.

SPEAKER_01: 2:17:39

I have I have my honor, and I gave the warnings and I told them. And I would I would love to have the opportunity to stand in that Afghanistan commission. Show my book, show my evidence, and tell them this mess didn't start in 2021. This mess, according to Marok and according to who I saw, it started as early as 2013. Probably even before that. Yeah, gentlemen, ladies, please read my book and go after these names because these people are responsible and they collected the nice pace checks and they went to the very nice places, and it was all about spring break, drinking parties. Do what's right. That's what I would say.

SPEAKER_03: 2:18:26

Do the right do the do the right thing. I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_01: 2:18:29

Do the right thing. I mean, I was in a position that I remember the jock on May 2015, when the Taliban was taking control of Kunduz province and making some serious advances. The jock shut down because the junk director, army colonel, took a bunch of his preferred officers on a multiple-day drinking trip to France. The job as the Taliban is advancing, the jock shut down on a drinking trip. Do what's right.

SPEAKER_03: 2:18:57

Do the right thing. I love it. All right. Well, I'm gonna go full screen, say goodbye to my audience. I want to thank you so much, uh, Andreas. I hope I pronounced it right. I'm still not great with uh accented names, but I am working on it. However, please, please, please um listen to this full podcast. That's all I want people to do. I really want people to hear what you have to say. We'll we'll cut this up into some shorter reels and we'll make a blog out of it to hopefully get some more interest. But this is an important story, and you have really broken down how this happens. And I really believe for those people who say, oh, this could never happen. Of course, you don't make an allegation unless it's true. Obviously, that's not true. And this is exactly how it goes down. So I'm gonna go full screen. I'll I'll meet you backstage to say goodbye. I'm just gonna say goodbye to my audience. All right, guys, that is a wrap. Thank you so much. You can see I'm even on a different camera now because this one went a little over time, but that is okay because it was that important to get this kind of story out. And sometimes when I need to hear a full story, this is just what we need to do to get that story out to the public. Tomorrow we will have another incredibly hard story. Uh today, this week is a military justice week. Uh, I am having a former Army commanding officer from West Point come on and bring his story of a false allegation. So we will once again revisit this issue and we will talk about it in another context. Because, as you guys know, I'm not going to stop talking about changing the process by which we adjudicate problems in the military until the process is fair. So, guess I'll be talking about it for a while. Anyway, hope you guys enjoy the rest of your day. As I always say, take care of each other, take care of yourself, take care of each other, and enjoy the rest of your day. Bye bye now.