this is jocko podcast number 292 with echo charles and me jaco willink good evening echo good evening august 2nd 2006 was the worst day of my life ryan jobe had been gravely wounded by a single enemy round that hit his weapon as he looked down its sights and then ripped into his face rendering him blind and critically injured and then soon after ryan was wounded mark lee who had stepped into the enemy line of fire to engage the enemy and protect his teammates while assaulting a building was shot killed mark was a larger than life character in every aspect smart athletic charismatic charming talented tough and also hilarious and faithful and loyal and obviously brave now he was gone and in task unit bruiser we closed ranks to get through it we celebrated his life we mourned his loss and then we loaded him on his last flight home his angel flight and we got support from our chain of command from my commanding officer at seal team three our command master chief the operations master chief and the rest of seal team three backed us up and assisted us as we worked through this devastation but it didn’t stop there i got a i got a call in my tactical operation center it was from admiral joe mcguire the senior seal officer in charge of in charge of all of naval special warfare in charge of the seal teams in charge of the boat teams in charge of the training center in charge of everything and i had previously worked for him directly for 13 months as his aide to camp and i knew how busy he was and i knew what his daily schedule was like and i knew the demands that were upon him but i also knew that he cared he cared deeply about the seal teams he cared about his seals and he cared about me and he called to check in with me and to check on me and when he called he he told me that he was reviewing the silver star that i had submitted for mark and he was about to send it directly to the chief of naval operations for a signature based on my recommendation he told me that he was sorry for our [Music] loss and he assured me that he would take care of mark’s family he also told me that we were doing the right thing and to keep doing it to keep taking the fight to the enemy to keep eliminating enemy fighters to keep protecting the local populace to keep the pressure on because the war wasn’t over and the enemy wasn’t going to stand down we still had work to do lots of it and he knew that and so did i and that meant a lot to know that the admiral in charge of all the seals was there for us was there for mark was there for mark’s family about three months later october 21st 2006 my plane landed at naval air station north island with the last members of task unit bruiser to come home and admiral mcguire was there to welcome us home to be sure that we were okay because he cared about his seals he cared about his troops and that meant a lot and and soon i was hugging my wife and kids on the tarmac but even as i embraced my family i knew i hadn’t brought all my men home and that that burden will always be present but it helped to know that leaders like admiral mcguire were there we’re there to help shoulder that burden to support us and to take care of the families of our fallen and it’s an honor tonight to have admiral joseph maguire here with us to share some of his experiences and lessons learned from his 36 years of military service and his experiences in the civilian sector admiral thank you for coming by jocko it’s an honor to be with you it really is um it’s been entirely too long since you and i’ve been together we’ve been through an awful lot together but um it’s an honor to be with you and an absolute honor to be with you on this podcast so thank you so much for those kind words and thank you for the warm welcome well i’m sure we’ll get into that a little bit more but uh to start off with let’s start at the beginning which i believe is in brooklyn that’s where you were born right you got a problem with that no jungle forget about it that’s where i’m from yeah you know america’s fourth largest city four million people i was a street rat you know grew up uh grew up in new york city and um you know people don’t understand that actually brooklyn is on long island so i spent my time in the ocean i started surfing when i was 16 with the money that i bought my first surfboard with the money i got from shoveling snow that’s pretty wetsuits or at least pretty good wetsuits well they were loose you know but i’ll tell you this though jaco when i went to uh you know buds and the you know folks out there i’m sure you know this from listening to jacob’s podcast but you know when you show up they they shave your head completely bald and uh when i had my head shaved by the instructors all of a sudden they were calling each other over to take a look at my skull because it’s clearly a city kid i had three concussions but uh yeah no but uh between growing up in brooklyn and uh going to catholic school uh the sealed instructors were easy absolutely nothing to do with that but yeah what would your parents do well um my dad was a world war ii veteran and uh what are you doing he was he was uh military police so my father was uh in patton’s third army which till the day he died was the proudest thing he ever did in his life and um but you know war was different back then that my father was there but i mean everybody was there my uncles were there uh flight surgeons and they went to war together uh and um he spent about uh he actually joined the army in 1940 before the war started and came home from europe after being deployed for four years and in the end of july and married my mother a week and a half later they’ve been engaged and on the 15th of august he was shipping out to the pacific for the invasion of japan uh and uh so fortunately he didn’t have to go and do that but my father then joined the uh reserves after that and he spent 30 years in the united states military and my brother ben uh spent 26 years uh in the navy as a supply corps officer he retired and my other brother bob was an enlisted guy for for six years as well and when i took my uniform off in july of 2010 it was the first time in 70 years that an immediate member of my family was not wearing the cloth of the nation so uh then i could say we haven’t won them all but but the meguiars were integral in winning the cold war there’s absolutely no doubt about that so yeah so you’re going up to high school what did you play any other sports besides surfing no i swam yeah no i was a swimmer and um it’s one of those things not so much in high school but um i would say if it wasn’t for swimming i never would have gotten a bachelor’s degree so um you know the season would go in the fall into the winter and i would you know be on the dean’s list uh while i’m swimming and disciplined where you know about discipline you teach you the whole time but once the swimming season took a lapse so did i and i just kind of got by in the spring semester but um uh nope i spent i swam for you know my college i was the captain of the the college team and i also swam for the new york athletic club and uh be honest with you um i thought like most new yorkers that i was going to just live and die in new york city so being a member of the new york athletic club uh we were all on scholarship and the new york athletic club um they just took the top swimmers from all of the colleges and put us together after the college season and back then it was aau and we’d have a swimming practice uh at the new york athletic club we’d have to go and coat and tie to practice but it was right next to central park south but we had a stipend a credit card for x amount of dollars a month so after swimming practice we went down to the bar to refuel oh it doesn’t so so the car over the course of a couple of years from the new york lavella club i’m graduating from college and there are a couple of businessmen that i knew there uh and they said joe we want to take you to dinner okay you know so we’re at dinner in one of the steakhouses in manhattan and uh you know my friend made the pitch he said we want you to come into the advertising firm well you know guys i’m not even a business major what is it that you want me to do joe all we want you to do is entertain the clients i will teach you the business i could do that man so you know i’m getting ready to be a madman and i’m going into madison avenue my brother what year is this this is 1974 so so when when you were growing up i mean vietnam is going on my brother my brothers served vietnam yeah both my both my brothers um and uh obviously you know i’ve had to make that decision either graduate from college or you know go into vietnam as an enlisted guy but my father being a colonel and my other just said look um you’re not that just i mean you know you were enlisted man yourself that’s the hardest part but in vietnam it’s the ncos that are the military and it’s the ncos that do the fighting and dying um but uh my father encouraged me to finish college and then go if you if you really want to go into the service you know then go in with your college degree so i graduated in 1974 but the war was was over by then and uh so my brother from my father heard that i was going to go into madison avenue so he was stationed here in san diego on the uss ranger and flew to new york city and arranged for an officer candidate school test for me and i did not participate in this decision so i was sitting at the kitchen table and um my father goes ben what do you want to tell your brother you’re going to take the test for office of canada school tomorrow he’s five years older my father’s looking at me okay you know so uh i mean so i went down there now keep in mind i’m swimming i got hair down to my shoulders back then it’s all bleached blonde from the chlorine and so so i go down and i take the test which i like the sats and um i’m very deliberate actually slow there were a lot of big words that i had to sound out in the test and so you turned that you turned the paper in and they graded the paper and debriefed the individual based on and i was one of the very last ones to finish and it was a crummy office there in manhattan it was downtown manhattan right by city hall and all they had was little little crummy office dividers that you know it’s like 18 inches below and it only goes up about four and a half feet and they’ve got folding chairs in the other side and you can hear everything on the other side so they’re bringing them in and the guy sits down he says well you know mr smith you could take the test again next year oh gee mr brown you could take the test again so nobody was passed to the test so up there i said to my brother i i don’t think i passed he said well we’ll see so i go in and i sit down and the recruiters go so joe you want to join the navy no man i just took the test [Laughter] my brother smacks me in the head he goes you’re joined in the navy okay uh and then the recruiters are looking at me like what do you want to do now my brother was a supply corps officer he wants to be a supply corps officer so yeah that’s what i wanted to do so they look at the score and i look at my brother this is my brother’s proudest moment your little brother didn’t score high enough he can’t be a supplier officer so and they said well what do you want to do i mean this has only been about 15 hours so i got the wheels turning and now back then we were doing the apollo recoveries and the the the uh the the astronauts would land in the water and sometimes the recovery carrier wasn’t there they had so they had these b-roll human interest stories so recently there was a human interest story about the recovery and there were two seals uh you know uh and who were on the olympic team now i was not on the olympic team not at that caliber but because they were i knew of them and one was in seal team one and one was in udt 13 and they did a two they did a human interest story on the seals and now keep in mind jaco this is 1974 we have less than 800 people in the community nobody knows what it is and um they said so what do you want to do you know what i want to do i want to be in udt and clt [Laughter] give them a hard one right so the two i mean they’re just looking like what now these guys were aviators in surface warfare guys so they just turned to my brother um they said well we’ll be back so now they went back for about 10 minutes it was probably like you know buying a car where i got to go talk to my manager they come back 10 minutes later they talk to my brother meanwhile he’s he my brother hasn’t sat down he’s still standing over me and i’m sitting in the chair because i was told to sit right and they talked to my brothers first and they turned to me they say oh sorry joe but there’s no commission officers in unity or seal team and i proceeded to tell them that’s bs but i didn’t say bs right and of course my brother smacks me in the head again and he goes joe they would lie to you now here i’m a civilian i’m turning my brother i go they’re recruiters that’s what they do you know and they were lying to me as you know so uh they i wound up going to surface warfare to the uss coronado and i spent you know time on that to become a surface warfare officer before i got to coronado california to become a seal and i will tell you this that um uh the demanding life on board ship by the time i got to bud’s training i thought that was good duty and when guys were quitting i was putting my arm around them and give them a counseling session it’s just like you don’t know what it’s like out there look we got a mini mart down the street life is good did you have to go to did you go to ocs i did that what you did i did yeah and how was the how was that shock and awe experience uh well you know you realize like in the first couple of days that you’ve been duped it’s five o’clock in the morning and they’re waking you up and you’ve got to be outside in five minutes and you’re pt gear pt you know come on you know said um no that was a great experience actually um and it was the beginning it was a tremendous maturation start for me to actually join the military go to ocs uh have drill instructors uh teaching you they had expectations they had standards uh and then also you know you were measured and you had to live up to something and really it was transformational for me and i wound up doing pretty well in ocs and did well on board the ship and um you know when i got by the time i got to uh you know bud’s class 93 uh we had his usual bet you know we started off with 147 guys in the class and finished with 17 and i was standing there and you know be honest with you choco nobody but nobody was more surprised that i wanted to be in the yard of man because i told kathy i was married oh you were the honor man oh yeah but i mean i told cathy i mean we came back from san clemente she goes how you doing oh they’re going to catch up to me this week i know i’m going to get canned this week you know you just never know until you graduate and when they announced where the honor man was it was just kind of like it must be some mistake you know but yeah so that was that one that was a great experience as you know blood buds is a defining thing and hell week is a defining thing for all of us but the one thing about that is it all starts there it all shapes it and you know every one of us whether you’re the admiral with his folks in ramadi in fallujah or the guys in ramadi in fallujah whether you are the guy with stars in his collar or the guys with chevrons on his his collar we all wear the same warfare insignia there is no difference between a seal officer and a sealed enlisted man as far as what he had to do to earn that now the career is different over the time but it’s one thing that we all understand it was the crucible it’s a defining thing and you go through that and um you know it starts your journey that doesn’t really make you a seal when you get your tried and pinned on you that’s your beginning of learning how to really become a seal and it takes and i’ll tell you until the day i took off my uniform i learned every single day and as you know the saying goes you’ve got to earn it every single day was there anything at buds that was hard for you because if you were a collegiate swimmer the swims must have been like a jill a br for you yeah next question what about rob were you a good runner oh no no so so so that’s the point that really really upset me chaco is that buds is a running club it’s not a swimming club you know but that is what saved me uh because i don’t think i ever told you this either but i wound up with a broken leg um in third phase so a severe stress fracture and um uh you know i was not a bad runner we were up there the third phase we probably had about 20 guys 24 guys in the class and i was up in the top five uh whenever finished time runs or you know when you do your running that’s run back to the compound you’re on your own um but um i was having a lot of trouble and um i didn’t know what it was uh by by a lot of trouble i’m 10 minutes behind the class in the classroom but i’m running and you know you know you know the instructors watch this stuff so uh back then we did not have the facilities and the help that our young uh candidates have and uh we had an e6 uh corpsman uh and uh he told me he said i want you to come in i had to leave the class no uh we’re well into third phase we hadn’t gone to the island yet but um uh he said i want you to go across the street and get an x-ray yes instructor you know you that’s that’s always the right answer so i i come i come hobbling out of the the third phase office and um the senior enlisted guy uh senior chief johnny johnson outside smoking a cigarette like any good seal bank and all of a sudden he says you know mr aguirre stop you know and when instructor tells you to stop you stop he said get over here so i go over to he says where are you going i said well senior chief i’m going across the street for an x-ray no you’re not of course i’m not senior chief he goes what’s up i said well you know i got a little trouble he says i tell you what mr mack you got a broken leg he said there’s no doubt in my mind you got a broken leg so here’s the deal you go back in there you put your medical record in there i’m not gonna guarantees but if you’re willing to gut it out we’ll see what we can do yes senior chief uh and so went back in there and i actually you know was able to i was always behind in the runs but i was able to hop on the uh obstacle course and still finish in a top five in that because that’s all technique but we used to run as usual choco from the compound down to the center center beach and coronado which is probably a little over a mile something like that and then you know and then in the water so i would be the last one in the water by light years but i would be the first one out of the water so at least the instructors knew that hey i’m pointing out but the other thing i think that they were thoroughly entertained that they really didn’t want didn’t want me out of the classroom but you know um uh you know the folks who are out there instructors um uh are the ones that really they are the gatekeepers for who’s going to wind up going to a seal team and they are instructors for just a limited period of time and then they go back to the seal team and the young men that they’re training are going to become their teammates so for the most part they’re sizing them up not only to meet the standards but also to kind of say is this somebody that i want to be a teammate with and if i get into the trouble and i’m and i’m a left is it i got one of these guys in my left and my right and i think that even if i was having a difficult time there i was most fortunate to have good instructors and and back then um i mean everybody was vietnam veteran yeah everybody everybody had a silver star um and uh i was blessed to have a medal of honor recipient as one of my instructors mike thornton and um and that helped shape me as well in more ways than one but these guys had known the crucible of combat and uh they were looking at students and nobody really cared if nobody graduated back then but uh they were looking at um you know can we trust this guy in combat and i think that was the standard and but i have to say in retrospect it wasn’t me uh it was the instructors that really showed me tremendous kindness but um you know just uh it was not easy uh being able to do the stuff that we needed to do at the end of training there was a class most of it just before it wasn’t wasn’t class 85 or 86 where literally no one made it that’s correct what what class do you know what class number that was i don’t but i think you’re close but the other one was uh admiral eric olsen’s class uh wound up uh with four people in hell week and these the instructors had to help them carry the ibs because they could four guys could carry an ibs and instructors made up their mind we’re never to let we’re going to keep in mind there’s got to be at least six guys here to get through all week but yeah eric had four guys when he was his graduation picture and one of the uh one of the uh students is a foreign student in his class so three americans and one foreign guy but it was a different different different time back then but you know the instructors out of the back of their belk uh the um um ball cap we made them quit you know so uh there were standards uh but they were pretty much on their own as far as what they wanted to do but i’ll be honest with you these are instructors that i had tremendous respect for and uh respect for their combat experience and they were they were great instructors because they were intense and if you didn’t have the standard uh even if you were making the standard and it was tough to see a classmate go but in retrospect you know they were right this guy would not have fit in to us but yeah and then um so graduating and then off to jump school which was always airborne yeah that’s it you know one week cost crammed into three so you hit airborne school i’m sure it was the uh the the challenge to keep your i’m sure there’s a lot of challenges at airborne school for you i can imagine the runs were not as challenging as trying to control your mouth talking to the army folks no no i i got called into the colonel a couple of times so actually so uh for those of you out there have been to fort benning you understand this um uh you know the the the the army is a little bit different than the the the seal teams uh to some degree and um uh uh they’d have an evolution and then what they would do is they would have the the class line up and you go online and you’d pick up trash and well these guys are walking picking up trash and the black hats say miss mr guerrero what are you doing you’re supposed to be picking up trash i’m not picking up trash pick up i’m not picking up trash off to see the colonel okay so i met the colonel you know i’m standing there attention puts me at parade rest what’s up i said well uh colonel i’m a commissioned officer united states navy uh did you ever see bridge on the river kwai yeah what’s that got to do with it i said you remember when the colonel wound up in the cooler because they were making his officers work because it was a violation of the geneva convention and he’s looking at me i said so to have your commission officers picking up trash you realize that you’ve got a violation of geneva convention so he threw me out of his office but me and the other seal officers with me did not have to pick up trash oh that’s insane all right so you get done with airborne school and then it’s off to what udt21 off to udt21 so it was underwater demolition team 21 and um but uh just like in seal training uh all of the guys there for the month now there were guys there from the korean war who just stayed udt didn’t go to vietnam they went to vietnam as udt but they were former seal team two guys so we had seal team two and uh udc 21 and they went back and forth but uh so you wind up getting five or six jumps at basic airborne and um then we had a jump schedule shortly after uh i got uh back to the team from from fort benning and we went up to fort lee to um uh to do do because in the teams back then you get your 10th jump and you had to buy a keg of beer so they got the lieutenant jg the nugget there who’s so they’re gonna get me four jumps today and uh so it was an old uh-one vietnam single engine and uh they they take the doors put them all the way back and you’re sitting there this is a static line jump and they take your static line and they hook you into a cable uh just below the transmission on on the helicopter and you sit with your legs outside the helicopter and there’s just a little um uh tape that goes across you and you you get on board at first and uh the aircraft is not doing any turns up so then the aircraft commander starts doing the turn up and the helicopter starts racking back and forth as they you know and all of a sudden i look around now these are all senior enlisted guys and they one by one take their teeth out of their mouth and put it in their pocket for the jump i was the only one in the stick of eight that actually had teeth in his mouth we went out there and i’m thinking to myself what did i get into it’s just in the udt are they hockey players so well make long story short it was a long day but i bought a cake of beer at the end of that day and then what was that what was the what did you do at udt21 did you go what were you doing for deployments were there shipboard deployments yeah it was shipboard deployments uh it made quite a few deployments to the caribbean uh you know back then we had a much more robust fleet so we actually made uh caribbean deployments european deployments northern european deployments so um i made several caribbean deployments in south american deployments but in addition to that uh we also had time uh to be able to go to schools and uh you know just to some of our uh uh cia schools and these other things in regard to you know how to do targeting and and uh really because it was all explosives it was underwater demolition and cia were really good at uh their combat timber kitchen demolition and these other things but uh i also then at that point in time uh choco uh with some courses decided to take some intelligence courses and just kind of well i think that intel and naval special warfare kind of go hand to glove so i want to learn as much as i can about the intelligence community uh while i’m there but uh i had an opportunity to um you know be a department head there as well and then uh you know be in charge of a udt platoon which back then was you know uh 25 men so uh it was good and of course my uh chief and my lpo you know both of those guys who got silver stars and um you know they school was in session yeah you know you’re in charge as the officer there is absolutely no doubt about it but you better know what you don’t know and be willing to listen to those who do and these guys very lovingly um i mean necessarily uh took me under their wing uh and adopted me and i’ll be honest with you even back then um rudy bosch who is the command master chief uh at seal team two he he became the command master chief in 1962 and left in 1987 you know talk about basketball ball hogs but i mean you know rudy um but uh even if i was in uh udc my lpo and my my chiefs who were sealed team two guys that’s how i met rudy and rudy and his wife then mentored kathy and me until you know we were close friends until until he you know started suffering from alzheimer’s disease but it doesn’t hurt to be a young officer who wasn’t in vietnam you know to have these folks here who take you under their wing and teach you uh and uh the best thing that was not necessarily the operational things but i think the thing that i owe them most for jaco is like at two o’clock in the morning when they put their arm around me saying it’s time to go home sir time to go back thank you the new york kicked in then new york comes out around two o’clock in the morning after x number of beers so you did man so you were married to kathy before you went to buds absolutely well i tell you what you know you you know people ask well you know where did you honeymoon coronado california out of california no so um um they uh it’s kind of interesting that uh you know i was on the ship and were deployed to the mediterranean i held orders to uh to buds and i came home flew in on a mack flight into philadelphia kathy lived in new jersey and i went to see her first now this is a dangerous thing clearly uh i’ve been overpaid all my life and at that point in time i was making the princely sum of eight thousand dollars but uh when you when you when you transfer a pcs uh you’re able to take what’s called an advance pay oh yeah which is sort of an interest-free loan except you got to pay it back so um i got i don’t know what i got i probably got a thousand dollars twelve hundred dollars or whatever so um now i’m in i’m in in new york um walking down fifth avenue with my honey and we walk into tiffany’s and i say let’s get engaged so she picks out a ring i get engaged in tiffany’s we get married two weeks later we go on a short honeymoon to uh to saint croix come back pack up the car and drive out to uh to seal training and um it’s kind of a shock when you go off to work one day and you come back after the instructors have shaved your hand what happened to my boy you know but i will tell you this um no no i mean it was uh it it was a different thing back then um people didn’t know about seal training and but uh it was helpful to me to be married uh in in in that during that time frame but as i said later on years on when we went through so much stuff that she’d been there from day one and she understood the community she understood how the community was built um and people even today rely rely heavily uh on on her for that but um yeah it um it’s not something i would uh recommend for everybody to be honeymooning as you’re going through seal training but um we did god bless her well the thing about it is that neither of us had any idea we’re getting into you know yeah you must have known very little about seal training back then yeah i mean even i when i went through i went through in 1991 yeah and i had seen one you know the be someone special video that’s it there were no internet there was no books talking about it now i mean there’s so much information out there you can watch all of buds and guys know what the schedule’s going to be and all that yeah back then it was just blind they just ripped the blindfold off you and shave your head that’s it oh yeah so um fast forward 20 years and now i’m the commander commanding officer of the naval special warfare center of buds so um kathy comes to meet me for lunch we’re going to go out to coronado and have some lunch and i’m on the telephone you know she comes to the office and um the secretary says you know he’ll be with you in a few minutes so she’s standing on the balcony overlooking the grinder as the instructors are motivating that’s how we speak first phase class right and so come out off we go go to lunch sitting there at lunch now we’ve been married 20 years went through training with me and she said uh i need to ask you a question yeah what sweetheart did you have to do that when you went through training no i said sweetie even then they knew 20 years later i was going to be the commanding officer of this place and of course i did that i’m so sorry because i’d come home and she’d go let’s go to dinner okay so how long did you do at udt 21 uh i did i did i guess about uh two and a half years maybe three years and then back then uh again we were for the longest period of time just we we got decimated after vietnam not just udt but the whole community so we all know the whole navy you know safe to say the whole navy and the whole military after vietnam yes that’s true but then the the target was russia and we were going to handle russia with the ballista with the nuclear triad got it right and so if you’re not part of the nuclear triad although i was in a nuclear weapons program at udt i mean we had to deliver the b-54s adam um and um so uh the we had 306s then that’s it and the three of them got together and decided that we needed to send some junior officers out into the fleet as flag lieutenants and so uh now this is always a bad sign when i’m i’m deployed down to the caribbean and the xo tom richards uh you’ll run up tom ridges comes down to this i’ve hit that this is odd that the exo is gonna so we he spent the day with us doesn’t say anything and we’re flying back up to norfolk on a c9 we’ve got the whole plane to ourselves and i’m sitting against the window and the xo comes and sits next to me i mean i mean like i’m a popular guy i know that but you know and i think i knew something was up he goes hey joe um have you ever thought about being a flag lieutenant no sir no you seriously think about that no sir you know and i tried to be persuasive to him and said look i was in the fleet for a couple of years i’m in udt right now i need to get right you know after this i got to go to a seal team he says well the commodore wants to see you tomorrow all right this was stormy norman olsen who got busted we just had a memorial service for norman and really he’s one of the guys that shaped this he said you’re going to be a flag lieutenant it’s as simple as that yes commodore it’s true so i wound up going to japan uh as a flag lieutenant and wound up working for uh the first admiral that made uh a helicopter pilot that made admiral and he made all of the apollo recoveries and um every day was a space mission for me with this guy here it had to be exacting ahead of it and you know we’re driving along one day and he goes i’m going to make you the best flag lieutenant in seventh fleet even if it kills you i turned him i goes sir you’re well on your way but i will tell you this um you learned you learned as you know yeah you learned and um but the interesting thing is now i endured myself to all of the admirals out there and um we had the fleet readiness board up in yakuza hosted by the seven fleet commander so there’s about 13 14 admirals there and at breakfast you know they sit there together and all you know all of us bag carriers we go off to the side and as i’m walking by with my tray the fleet commander goes hey joe come join us it would be an honor what’s wrong with this picture right so they went around the table and they’re telling me that and this was really true at the time you can’t go back to seal team right now you’re surface warfare officer you’ve got tremendous potential if you go back into the seal teams you will never ever ever get promoted this was in 1981 and true at that time most of the commanding officers of seal teams were lieutenant commanders passed over for commander we only had a handful of captains and there was no real career path you know for that but i i told them i said well uh look i’m going and the only advice they gave me then well go to pg school okay that was that was a good trade-off but um that was true at that time and you know backing up a little bit about my father being a colonel in the reserves uh he said the same thing back then uh that you know you’ll have a couple of good years but you know you’ll never never be promoted past lieutenant commander it’s as simple as that and uh you know i went to his grave one time and put my three star shoulder boards on his on his tombstone so that that’s uh how long are you doing that how long are you doing that job as the aide the flag aid 100 years i know the feeling no that was uh 25 months but i will tell you i’ll tell you man jacob one of the best things about that i mean this is surely um is that i was the aide for ctf 76 and uh a young first lieutenant uh named joe dunford was the aide for ctf-79 and joe and i spent 25 months together in the pacific traveling everywhere together and um then after we both finished that tour you know just during the course of our careers we stayed close and um you know we’d see each other on deployment uh he’s a battalion commander he wound up you know being the speechwriter for the commandant and a lot of other jobs that it well deserve but it was actually joe dunford uh and jim mattis that asked me to come back into government and uh i hate them both for that no but but no but the thing about it is with with both those those of two men that i hold in the very highest esteem and i also figured well you know uh general mattis secretary mattis came back into government and joe’s been there for 39 years and you know i just said to them well if you guys do it taking one for the team i’ll give it a go and we’ll see how it goes but i just could not say no to those two men but just want an honor and then to actually get into the administration uh and be the director of national intelligence sitting at the national security council meeting with joe dunford to my right um it’s just you know you just it’s a small world and you just don’t know but yeah but you didn’t take their advice and you did go back to the seal team that was your next i did i did uh as a matter of fact and um you know so the journey continues so i went into uh to seal team two and at that time uh uh uh commander rick willard was the commanding officer of seal team two and rightfully so he wanted to develop an undersea capability so we wound up uh now to be honest with you back then uh we were not very good we had good swimmers we had good athletes we had rotten equipment we didn’t have tactic techniques and procedures we really didn’t know what we didn’t know and rick through our senior officers and the chief of naval operations we’re able to establish a personal exchange program pep billet uh and bring over a french commando from commander uber and uh in my estimation commander you bear the best combat divers uh in in the world military combat divers and um uh francois was charged with uh establishing a combat swimmer program that uh to this day was the most arduous uh program that that i’d ever been through um and um it would extremely high attrition rate but not everybody could do it but not everybody could swim oxygen either but in addition to that program then rick also you know looking back on this it seems hard to believe get permission to buy foreign sales uh um i think so we were able to we were the first was to get the dreger the german and then we of course the drago life jackets french and there was a prohibition against that because we buy american but it was the best technical undersea combat swimmer uh stuff that we had and um we did extremely hard work up and i was just most fortunate uh that you know i had a department head tour there and then a platoon commander and in october of uh 1982 we just got fast ropes so hard to believe and fast ropes were classified insertion means uh and we got it from the british sas used you know spend the night not a fortune so we’re up at ap hill and uh rudy bosch uh brings the rope up we got a helicopter and um we’re doing um we first we’re doing rudy is the repel master he’s the rope master talks to us about this and now i used to be on the ship you know as a deck officer so i know lines and stuff so i said hey yeah rudy what’s the tensile strength in this how many can hold ah don’t worry about it so hold your hope dude forget it you know if that was rudy right so um uh now rudy at this point he’s probably knocking at the door to 60 um so we did a couple of runs and he’s the first one out and um then after about four or five runs i just said he master chief this isn’t too damn hard you know we could figure out how to curl a rope and throw it out with a helicopter flares all right so he sits this one out and um so uh my chief bud dennehy uh is is gonna do it i’m following bud then i’ve got you know i’ve got four or five knuckleheads uh you know behind me on you know and um we go out and for some reason or another you know buddy the operative word is fast rope you know so he’s just kind of going slow and then all of a sudden i don’t know what was going on um i thought the helicopter was crashing and i just knew that i was in free fall and uh you know getting back into fort benning i kind of criticized a little bit there but the thing that saved me is just going to a good plf i put my legs together i put my arms in and for one brief second i avoided the chief below me and i hit and for one nanosecond i go i’m good then i had five big frog men land on top so i broke my back uh and that broke my pelvis uh so we’re all lying there uh as a bunch of um uh rag dogs and it’s dead silent i still don’t know what happened so obviously when the rope broke uh the helicopter went up because of no longer had that weight and then he just flared and went off but all i could hear then was uh you know my teammates my platoon everybody’s just kind of quietly moaning and and i just say to the guys don’t anybody move all right and then he goes mr maguire we can you know and then all of a sudden i realized i can’t move my legs uh and so typical back then our ambulance was a nine passenger van and the only thing we had on the only thing we had on on the lz was one body board you know so you know we had to have ambulances come in so i got rigor taped to the body board uh you know with your head down and just to so that your spine’s not moving but every time they moved you it was like with the pelvis was like cracking your knuckles you know you could hear you know um and um then the helicopter goes back in this land so the colonel from ap hill comes and typical back then we never told him we were doing air ops which he did i think was a good idea uh but he directed uh the helicopter pilot to take us to mary washington uh hospital which is close up there not not the closest to closest up to trauma hospital and uh so there were five of us loaded into the uh the helicopter and uh you know i’m a lieutenant these guys lieutenants and i i said to the pilot command you know meanwhile i’m strapped to the body board and i said take us home i said take us to portsmouth i said we’re going to be in the hospital for a long time i said i don’t my wife have my wife in a motel i said you know just going to take a little bit more but take us to portsmouth naval hospital so we flew there and you know we got uh taken in and taken off and um they cut your uniform off and do all sorts of stuff but uh as we’re waiting for x-rays we were all in this little waiting room together the other guy’s in wheelchairs uh and you know there were two of us with broken backs and uh one one guy kevin blake uh kevin wound up breaking both of his legs but when he came down he then hit but his face went into his knees uh and but you know we still didn’t know what was what so we had one corman from the hospital helping us out and kevin says man my nose is so stuffy he says hey doc do you have a tissue can i have a tissue so the coreman gets him a tissue and kevin blows his nose but he broke all of his sinuses in his face and his whole face came away from um you know from from the skull and we’re all laughing like you know and and the corpsman just running out just like it was it was like a jim carrey movie there his face is out here we got broken bones and broken backs we’re all left you know always look for the bright side of life right yeah so what everyone eventually was able to heal up no no permanent injuries no no a couple of those guys left but uh it was a different time back then uh i’m sorry to say that um i wound up being admitted into an officer room with some retired navy captain uh but the troops wound up being on a ward and uh there were probably 20 patients on the ward to include some sailor who had been in a motorcycle accident and he’s on a rotisserie but it’s pretty much a death watch right so george ann mcraven uh and kathy uh no the two of them were the very best of friends and as you know bill and i are best of friends and uh they come to visit me and um now kathy’s requested me with me the whole time at georgian i said hey do me a favor i can’t get out of bed would you go down to check on the guys and see how they’re doing so they went down and um kevin blake is in traction with two hair dryers on his um on his cast and um kathy said kevin what are you doing the doctor said i could get out of here as soon as my castra but neither of them had been washed so they’ve been we’ve been in the field for eight to ten days they had camouflage on them your hair so i mean no these are two sailors mothers sons that been in the hospital for a couple of days and they’ve still got their matted hair i mean so kathy uh and george mcraven you know got shampooed the guys washed their camouflage off them and um uh you know just do what you need to do for for a fellow teammate and um you know uh uh i’m glad to say you know when i’ve been in the hospital since then unfortunately and um uh navy medicine is really superlative now but it was again once again after vietnam where the entire military was suffering but um i deployed uh that was in halloween of 82 and i deployed to europe in march of 83 five months later and jumped into macrohandy scotland and then also conducted a major exercise a flintlock exercise with my swim partner uh chuck williams and uh we from a a u-boat german u-209 uh that we you know we it was a so we had to lock in and lock out through the german torpedo tube which was um an excellent adventure it’s not for everybody uh but uh when we left the submarine uh we were in the water for 13 hours in the baltic so this is in uh you know late march uh or early april of of 83 the surface temperature was 39 degrees but obviously went down about 10 feet and um i was just really glad that you know i had a an olympian towing me but uh yeah we were able to do everything that uh you know we were taught to do and uh the two american swim pairs successfully completed the mission uh and the germans who the conference were very very good this woman neither this one pair were able to do it uh one swim pair wound up not finding the harbor and wound up in the hospital with hypothermia and the other swim pair bailed and it was really kind of a defining thing for the seal community uh to be able to just say you know we did that but uh the germans couldn’t speak english and i couldn’t speak german to be able to do lockout from a german torpedo too yeah something got lost in translation a couple of times and you were diving draggers yeah man and so that’s like eight yeah so the wetsuits back then were junk yeah so i grew up surfing in maine and and i had seen that explains a lot i had saved all my money and and bought one of these modern wetsuits at the time was an o’neill source was what it was called and it had an it had an embedded hood or a hood that was part of the rest of it it had a dry suit zipper even though it was a wetsuit it had a dry suit zipper just to keep as much water in there as you can and i showed up to seal team one with this wetsuit which was like the most modern technology and we were doing swimmer lockouts and i remember just i was in heaven with this wetsuit because the wetsuits back in the early 80s which you were wearing just junk yeah well and even when we went through buds initially you didn’t get a wet shoe you know you guys get no wetsuits during boats you did eventually after uh as you know jock will tell you folks though one of the big defining things there in seal training is the cold and um you know you you if you show up to southern california to see palm trees yeah don’t be deceived that water is cold uh yeah and um you know there it was probably several weeks into training yeah before they get and of course it was just pick something off the shelf whether it fits or not well we got wetsuits but the what’s again i knew from surfing in maine and i was kind of uh on the forefront of wetsuit technology and then i show up at buds and they’re issuing these wetsuits which they don’t fit you it was an old-school beaver tail with a zipper up the front i mean they barely helped they barely i mean they provided some some bit of warmth but barely what’s a swimmer lockout so you’re in a submarine and then underwater you get out of the submarine and you go and it’s a it’s a very common was like on the u-boat but for the american subs they have an escape chamber which is a little ball it’s a little it’s a little sphere that you’re sitting in and it’s probably what six or eight foot diameter oh it’s not that ball it’s smaller on the ballistic missile submarines it is but on the attack boats it’s probably about four feet across it’s tiny and you’re in there and so you get in there from inside the sub and then that thing fills up with water and as it fills up with water the pressurize the pressure equalizes with what’s outside and you end up with just a little bit of air a couple inches and then then it equalizes and then you can the door opens up and you you swim out of the submarine so i i i deployed on 12 submarines so uh but back then once you get you know no good deeds goes unpunished you know that but so that’s how i wound up doing the german u-boat and it was different now uh the u-boats up in uh the baltic they’re electric so uh it’s shallow up there as well our our submarines are deep deep draft but they’re silent just like trying to listen to a battery and um so uh it was a completely different experience in that german 209 have got eight torpedo tubes up in the bow and what they did is in port they took a torpedo out of the port side and the starboard side so there’s no torpedo now keep in mind folks that this is only 21 inches wide and i guess about maybe 21 feet in length so we had to link up with the german u-boat uh in the middle of the um uh the baltic so now this was you know planned exercise uh so we fly out of macrohandy scotland in a air force penetrating aircraft low level uh over europe and then over the baltic by low level i’m talking about 100 feet or so and um we get ready to go you’ve got your your parachute on you’ve got your your your limpets you’ve got your weapons and um the door opens you’re still at 100 feet and they tell you to get ready because you stand up and then the aircraft comes up just think like a bell curve it gets to about 900 feet or so and everybody just jumps out soon the last man’s out the aircraft dives back down all right so you know you wind up in the water ditch the parachute you link up and we all get together and then i start taking one of my weights and banging it against uh the oxygen bottle so that the submarine can can through you know sonar pick us up so we’re in the water for about an hour and a half to two hours and all of a sudden as out of nowhere periscope periscope up it just scares the daylights out of you so this is the best part about it then right so now we’re in the middle of the baltic the submarine is there i’ve got to go to the side of the submarine and tap on it in a certain signal to let them know that it’s us who else is it going to be who else is out there besides us right so so so that the when they do that uh they’ll uh they the torpedo tubes have already been flooded they open the shutter doors and uh this is uh not without great risk so the the first swimmer went in uh to feed first and that was be my swim partner then i would go away that was chuck williams chuck williams who’s a beast in the water for sure he’s that team too when i was a teeth dude [Music] taught him everything he knows and then i would go in next to chuck and we’re right next to each other that i mean we can kiss each other now keep in mind we’ve probably had 300 hours together underwater so far now then the second swim pair comes in feet first and that he puts his fins on top of my thighs uh and then the last guy comes in and once he comes in once he’s clear of the shutter doors you know he squeezes his buddy who taps me on my thighs i’ve got the weight and then i tap the submarine so they could close the shutter doors so all right we’re in now the torpedo tube is designed to let absolutely no light escape so even if you had a flashlight you can’t see anything inside that now keep in mind it’s 21 inches we’re next to each other and you have to take your draeger off to get in there no okay so i mean so no because the thing is so now it comes to the life or death situation so so the reason why we figured we could do this is because an oxygen bubble is smaller than the nitrogen bubble because of what’s going to happen next so um we now we’ve got to lock into the submarine and come into the uh torpedo room now the torpedo room and the submarine is pressurized to sea level but we’re at 14 meters so um it was so you depressurized then you do water so i got a tap signal we’re all in and then he said you know whatever it was get ready to go so get ready to go means we all had to breathe our our airbags are you know down to as thin as uh paper now our folks out there our bags are about the size of a football but that’s it but it had to be you know really sincerely the paper and once you had it down then my partner would squeeze me and then the guys would kick me right and then it was a and then i would squeeze are you ready to go are you ready to go and then i would tap them we’re ready to go right and he goes here we go and then they would pressurize the torpedo tube that would take us from 14 meters to the surface in one second so with the gas expansion um you know that so it was equivalent to me necessarily i could do you know it was equivalent to you know having a a small quarter pound half pound block of tnt go off in the in in the um uh torpedo tube it picked the four of us up uh and just the pressurization just radishes all right and you can hear the other guys so but it was dead you’re okay you’re okay you’re okay so then then they have to do water and you come out so um you know chuck williams comes out and then i come out the other guys come out and look at me like mr mcguire you gotta do something about this you know and that’s just your that’s what we’re just gonna just getting into the boat you’ve done you haven’t done anything yet oh no this is showing up oh no so now we got a now we got a three-day transit to the target on board this you know german u-boat which is if you’ve seen dust boot i mean all about it every everybody in the submarine is at a i mean the captain is 35 years of age he’s got the white turtleneck he’s got the beard he’s got the he’s got the jack boots um and there’s sausages hanging back and forth now uh it’s a small crew it’s probably only about uh maybe 30 and around the clock these guys are working but we were supposed to be trying to sleep right right by the uh torpedo room which is also the mess deck so we’d get about two hours sleep they’d wake us up because they’d have to set up for a meal and then you know go back so we didn’t actually sleep you know for a couple of days but then as we start getting into the target they take mattresses and blankets and put them all on the deck now uh and you know we have our wetsuits and everything which was a mistake in the torpedo you know you’re putting on a wet what wetsuits that you know in 30 degrees but we can hear the um uh asw craft um overhead so as the submarines coming in you hear the ping ping ping and then submarine would just sit on the bottom and then you hear the propeller going by once the propeller went by the submarine would come up and take us a little bit further now the germans are helping us get dressed putting our stuff on and because the mattress is on the floor and the blankets on the floor so the sonar for the surface ships they’re not picking any of that up and then uh one by one they pick us up to slowly you know load us in to so i’m the last guy to go in and um i mean it’s just so as i’m going in the captain comes and you know to wish me well and he could say a couple of things you know you know joe you know target bears one three zero at certain good luck and good hunting then he gives me a plaque [Music] i got a stick in my wetsuit right so we you know so we go through the reverse and then we’re you know we’re 14 meters and then we have to go uh get pressurized or no where surface then we have to get pressurized so that was not that wasn’t as bad because you’re getting pressurized as opposed to depressurized you didn’t have the gas expansion on that but you had to worry about squeezes and some of the other things and then you come to the surface and you know we’re probably about oh maybe five miles out and we weren’t supposed to be five miles out what happened was that uh he couldn’t speak to me on that that uh he uh viewed the threat from the asw boats and the picket boats too great to bring the submarine in and get uh uh get without getting compromised and we’re out there and you know now you’re five miles off the coast and you’re in the water and you’re looking and you know you’ve got your little ben’s compass you’re trying to figure out and you know where is it where is it where is it where’s the target and i and i i said to chuck that’s got to be it buddy you see that one area that’s totally black that’s a giveaway that’s got to be the target so we started going towards that and sure enough there were picket boats there so we had a planned dive that was supposed to start pretty much at the mouth of the harbor and we had to start way before that so we actually spent uh a little over three hours uh submerged uh in in this harboring openness and um as we’re coming out um chuck no we didn’t need to talk anymore i mean we could squeeze anything and uh you know we we did what we needed to do we put the the the the packages on the ships and he signals to me i’m fried which was you know as an olympian and uh i just said so okay let’s go over to the side so now we go to the side of the harbor and he takes his mask off he goes i’m screwed he said i’ve got this pounding headache i’ve got narrow vision i can’t i can’t see much of anything what we did we screwed up we brought additional oxygen bottles on board the submarine but we didn’t bring in additional sodasorb the scrubber so what chuck had done working so hard for that much time in the water is that um he over breathed his rig i mean we’re working hard uh and then the uh the scrubber that takes the nitrogen out of your rebreathing although he had more oxygen in the bottle was no longer working so he was having a tremendous nitrogen buildup and he said i just can’t go on any further now we’ve only got about a maybe a little quarter mile more to get out of the harbor but we’re in we’re not going and now there’s there’s pickets up on the sea walls waiting for us so we just kind of sit there and you figure all right so this is a northern europe uh harbor and the sea wall is probably um 12 feet high maybe six to seven feet wide and um i figured the only way we’re going to do this is we got to get over the seawall get to the ocean side and see what we take it from there so chuck’s a tall guy and i was able to get on chuck’s shoulders and jump up to the top and then you know he handed me you know my drager his dragger and then i was able to you know pull him up and that the two of us just you know lying there then we rolled over to the other side and it just kind of dropped down uh with with all of our toys and just laid there for about 10 minutes to see and you know nope i mean they had flares going off and other things there and now the um rendezvous we had a um a fishing boat that was from uh danish intelligence that was supposed to be at a certain place and um you’re looking there and they’re not at that certain place but there is one boat out there that is another couple of miles away right so um i go now if we didn’t make the rendezvous then you had to go into the e e nets and then these are folks they fought world war ii so this was you did that they mean you know i think i don’t want to go with it so i said chuck it’s not where it’s supposed to be but that’s about right that’s enough i said but i said that’s got to be it so let’s go so we take off surface swimming in on our back and now he’s kicking out with olympic quality and i know now my my hip from my broken pelvis uh is is kind of i’m spent so all i’m trying to do because my swim is getting to trim and not hold him up that much so we get to this boat and before we get to the boat we have to go back on back and then we have to go underneath the uh this uh the the fishing boat and um underneath the fishing boat there were chem lights that displayed that told us this is the right boat now here it gets fun again right so we go up to the fishing boat and there’s a ladder over the side and the guys in the fishing boat danish um you know we had to give them a certain bona fidi you know no i’ve got a gun you know as opposed if we’re compromised right i figured there’s two things one i’m getting i don’t care if it’s russians i’m getting on that boat and two if they won’t let us on i’m shooting myself that’s it you know so now here you you’re you’re you’re freezing you’re dehydrated you’ve been in the water for 13 hours they take it below deck it’s a real fishing boat so they got an artificial side of the boat um that they take off and put against the skin of the ship and they put the two of us leaning against the skin of the ship and give us a couple of these big beers and chocolate bars and then put them back on there and then put fish on top then no i want a blanket i want a gallon of water so the two of us just had to hug each other all the way into denmark but you know um it’s one of those things that uh you know the recruiter doesn’t tell you that stuff sounds like a navy achievement medal at least maybe oh no they didn’t give out metals back then you know no no i got the breastfeed leaf with bronze oak leaf palms i think that’s what it was oh that’s brutal it was brutal but but you know you know this jocko sincerely uh it was but just to be able to come back in and just go mission accomplished yeah we did it man and we did it the hard way but but we did it just the tremendous satisfaction you get from being a seal and being able to do a really hard mission and you know even in my fitness report you know when that and uh you know rick willard brought in there there are very few people if any in the world that could do with what these guys did this exercise so yeah that’s that’s that’s a freaking rough one oh yeah i did a was on an art platoon i did a a a recon we dove into a harbor we took pictures and of whatever ship it was up here at camp pendleton you know we dove in we got out the water we took pictures and this was the old school you know film and we come back out and i i had gotten that i had gotten like perched in the perfect spot i was able to keep the shutter open for like minutes and just hold it perfectly and so i took a bunch of pictures we came back and then and then the report i got back from from my platoon commander was that you know the the the amphibious ready group commander said i thought these guys went in there during the night and the platoon commander said they did go in there at night this is this is good photography but yeah same kind of feeling and i just tell guys when you’re doing a water op it’s a real world up like there’s a there’s all kinds of things that can kill you when you’re out there especially in 30 degree water and 40 degree water and on you know doing the in and out of the submarine no joke yeah i mean the class ahead of me and buds we lost a young trainee uh doing surf passage with those big heavy rigs that we had through the plunging coronado surf he hid his head on the back of his regulator and knocked him out and then picked up the swim pair and uh tore the buddy line and they lost him and finally got him some time later but uh yeah i mean it’s it’s it’s for real and the ocean could kill you or the weather you know it used to be the patrol leaders card that we had years ago uh the first thing you’d start off was listing enemy and the first thing we listed was weather so so what’d you do after that deployment uh well i that’s when i went to um uh graduate school okay so i i went to uh the naval postgraduate school and studied uh scientific and technical intelligence and i thought all right i got 18 months of surfing and screwing off and um so my brother went to the university of michigan got his mba for 24 months he took 40 credits i went to the naval post graduate school and in 18 months took 96 credits of which i had three electives and three three credit electives that’s it and a good portion of it was in the physics lab and you know we’re designing the shape of scientific intelligence i kind of missed that you know so um but uh it was a great education and uh you know i really one i enjoyed living in central california dude i mean we went up doing triathlons and some other good stuff but um being able to complete that uh curriculum then and then leaving there and getting all of the intelligence accesses that you don’t realize that those things exist until you get into the secret clubhouse and then i was in the secret clubhouse and i left there and went to naval special warfare group 2 in virginia beach which is the oversight group command for the seal teams on the east coast as the intelligence officer there so it was a very very good time to be the intel officer because we were involved in 1986 el dorado canyon the libyan campaign we had the central american wars and also we did a significant amount of uh work uh in other areas there but um you know that really is when i first got involved in deeply involved in intelligence but to me it just went hand in glove with being a seal that you know what to ask for that we didn’t we didn’t really know what the menu was because we didn’t know and then we just kept ordering burgers and fries once once you realize exactly what the intelligence community has gotten this capability you can really refine and the other thing as well more importantly is you know this jocko it doesn’t matter what you got in your collar uh it doesn’t mean it’s who you know in relationships it’s all about relationships and when you had you know folks who were there the n2 of second fleet and said and i went to graduate school with this individual you know that that really paid off great dividends uh you know for the community but you know when it came to what we were doing in you know benghazi and all these other places you know i mean we had built target folders for for all that stuff and when it comes to final jeopardy if it’s a geographic question i probably had a target folder on it [Laughter] and then didn’t you end up going to now back to sdv or when did sdv when did sdv form up sdv team 2 uh sdv team 2 formed up uh in about 1979 79 or 80 because we had a udt we had an sdv detachment in udt21 and that was siphoning off so much of our money and so much of our time because a great idea but we did not have the technology and the guys spent a great deal of their time switching out the bow hulls because they kept crashing into piers and rocks and some other things but cold and miserable but the other thing as well it was a really good time for me to go to sdv because that’s when we first started to modify the nuclear-powered submarines to carry us as opposed to just having us go on there and putting towels on the deck and telling us not to make a mess and we just we just had the dry deck shelter we had the mobility improvement project which was a national mission uh to the first uh dry deck shelter which is this is a garage folks that we put on a nuclear submarine uh and we put our submersible boats in there and we we come out of the submarine and into that it’s like a garage and then we go off on a mission probably about 10 to 12 hours and um uh in a cold wet submarine and um uh it really i’m glad that i had that other background uh in that that i was able to bring an awful lot to comfort the uh commanding officers of the submarine that you know what you guys are gonna ruin my career it’s gonna be okay captain we probably will but it’s gonna be okay you know but uh yeah and then bill mcraven was there just before me as uh as a platoon commander and evan thompson but um you know also at that point i didn’t want to be that ambitious uh jocko i mean necessarily but i just figured you know if i ever do wind up being in charge of the community i’d like to know something about everything in the community and i and i really strive to at least have one tour and have a good sense of what it’s all about at what point did you realize you were just going to do as long as you could do oh uh when my wife told me that so i mean this sincerely so um i i guess i was at the 10-year point uh we we just we we you know we we did grenada uh vietnam is over and we’re going to do anything ever again and it was kind of unlikely i mean we’re doing exercises and everybody was bored and i was not oh well i don’t know if my old former senior guys listened to this but you know we’re not a whole lot of folks who are inspirational leaders in anatomy let me put it to you that way and i just figured okay uh i’m gonna go to law school so i was applying to law school and um uh i’m dead serious i’m gonna go be a lawyer and i finally get this counseling session from kathy she goes you’re not going to be a lawyer she said you are a seal you’re a good seal every friend we have are seals i’m not going to give that up for you just to become another crummy lawyer sorry counselors but so so i just said you know just like any good husband okay so i just decided to you know jump back in with both feet and then you know you take it as it comes you know at the 20-year point we’ve all got to decide whether or not we’re going to retire but uh as you know the service is like they put that carrot out in front of you you know okay i’ll take that promotion and then i’ll get out then they put another card next thing you know you’re old and ugly and you got 36 years in the navy so was that your was that your exo tour at sdv team it was it was and a lot of time at sea uh you know on board the submarines and doing uh operations uh so yeah that was good that really was a really really good tour uh really become um uh was that was the first deployment that we ever made with the drydex shelter and you know when you we do do the first uh there’s nothing you mean you had to write everything you had to write the tactic these procedures and the procedures working from a submarine or life and death procedures and you really had to know and be extremely cautious and it really was the unknowns and you just like you go back and forth and in the community you know we we are a risk-taking community but you never take a risk you don’t have to so we really had to put you know pros and cons of most experienced folks and then sometimes honestly uh pretty much we knew it uh it’s gonna be okay but you’re still we’re rolling the dice sometimes but the credit really belongs to those guys uh you know the pilot navigator uh and and the stvs to be able to go from a nuclear submarine submerged in the middle of the ocean and go you know into do a target and come back 10 hours plus later and find that submarine uh is a remarkable feat it really is so you know really the credit goes to those young operators hard men i still think that you know that is probably among our hardest missions that we’ve got and as you know there is not a wetsuit thick enough to keep you warm and so then what did you go is that when you went to detailer after you got done with that tour you became a no no i became the maritime special purpose force commander so i deployed yes yeah so i deployed for a year uh with uh with the you know the marine detachment and with our detachment and uh got over to the mediterranean got involved with another submarine operation there uh for the evacuation of the embassy and uh of beirut oh okay this was the second time that i was in beirut i evacuated when i was an ensign onboard the ship in 1976 because the uh they were at war and the ship pulled in the middle of the night and all of beirut was on fire and the palestinian liberation authority gave us permission you know be able to have one boat come in and a junior officer uh to take the americans out to include the united states ambassador and i’m in my my whites with my little shoulder boards and uh you know the the plo were pulling these guys out from uh line not let them get on board our boat and i’m on the walkie-talkie calling back to the ship and talking to the exo i said sir you know they’re they’re pulling people out just there anything we could do don’t do a thing joe just just don’t don’t leave that boat and you know don’t do anything until the americans are on board the ambassador’s on board but it really to me uh this was in july of 1976 with the you know 200th anniversary of our nation and i think here we are the united states of america and we got these folks dictating to the american ambassador who represent the president of the united states and us whether or not he can get on board an lcu um and that was a pretty defining moment for me but so then did it again at that time frame and i had the opportunity to go back to beirut when i was the socom commander with the json commander and had lunch with the lebanese commandos and it was a great lunch we’re sitting there and i’m talking to the lebanese commander who’s you know hosting the the the lunch i said well i’ll tell you general this is my fourth trip uh to beirut and uh the other three times i’ve been here um i never spent more than an hour out of the three trips you know we’re in and out and you know so we spent probably a you know better part of a day there in beirut but it was just interesting when i went into 1976 to see it as a collapse city on fire and to go back in in 2019 i guess and just see it looks like hong kong except that they’re they’re bankrupt um but uh no it’s funny how from ensign to political appointee um but at all you know it’s always been a troubled spot what was the uh this when you when you went there and pulled guys out or did the embassy evacuation with from a submarine what was that operation like we can’t talk about that right now yeah yeah um so there was after that so you did that deployment with the with the with as the special force commander yep and then and then from there up to uh uh to dc so uh it was my first washington tour and as the assignment placement officer for the community and it was an awful lot of fun that you know you’re the one person in all community making all assignments from ensign to captains and everybody hates you [Laughter] hard to believe isn’t it you know but um that was that was a really good one i did the best i could to even the playing field and distribute uh but the other thing is i had an opportunity to work and serve on selection boards so you’re a junior officer and you’re supporting the senior of the captains uh and the admirals as they make their selections and you see the selection board process and then you see who gets selected and who doesn’t get selected and you could just sit back there after a while ago don’t sweat the load man just do your job it’s as simple as that you know because everybody’s record you know when you’re up for flag just about every one of those captains uh their records are like manicured lawns but not everybody’s gonna get it and he just forget doesn’t matter if you’re gonna get it you’re gonna get it but if not just relax and just do your job and really took an awful lot of pressure off there but um yeah that was a time uh uh that then we went up with um uh uh first gulf war so wound up leaving there and going down to uh dev grew as the deputy commander and then how many how many years did you spend down there i spent uh two years down there and then um uh left to take over commanding officer seal team two now during this time would you say that this is a time where you know you had uh the first gulf war happen are seals starting to kind of kind of become popular yet i mean i came in in 1991 as we mentioned as i mentioned earlier i mean there was the the navy seals movie which i’m sure echo charles likes the navy seals movie i think came out in nineteen ninety one yeah mike said chuck forrest movie yeah yeah but there was still not a lot of not a lot of popularity wasn’t a big deal yet no so you know um um don’t want to have a history lesson for everybody out there but because of the failure of the iranian hostage rescue mission uh in april of 1980 and then compounded by what happened in grenada that the civilian side of the house and made the decision that especially because of the failure of the iranian hostage rescue mission that if we as a nation want to have an organization that be able to conduct no failed missions that we need to be serious about this and there has to be one command that’s organized trained and equipped to be able to do that that started shaping the the community but we were still in the navy the army was still in the army and through the department of defense appropriation act of 1987 senators nun and cohen tacked on the end of that appropriations bill the establishment of united states special operations command and bringing in the navy seals army special forces rangers and as uh 160th uh and air force commandos under united states special operations command so then we had our own line of money for for for unique but be honest with you um at that time um my friend tom coulter who mentioned that okay once once the seals came into united states special operations command tommy goes well congratulations we’re now in the bottom of two food chains pretty much we were you know um but um uh we still in spite of that uh the resources didn’t flow and um the active duty military did not necessarily want to have this and if they did they wanted to have it three-star command you know it’s close to washington and it was our civilians that said no we know the military it’s got to be a four-star and um well actually probably had an awful lot to do with a powerful florida delegation more than anything else that we wound up in mcdill but um it it took quite a while and we would just be calming and uh but uh the leaders of the community made very very good decisions on with the limited resources we had uh and we had other opportunities to do away with certain types of things that we as a community did and one of them was you know unconventional warfare that the special the green berets were going to do away with that and luckily they decided not to so when 9 11 happened and they were able to send the fifth special forces in you know with john mulholland as the group commander and the other young folks that wound up being the horse soldiers but that war was a defining thing for the community unfortunately we paid a heavy toll to be where we are today but when the opportunity presented itself for both afghanistan and iraq special operations mentality and capability was at a premium and we were ready at that time to do that and luckily the active duty military had come around as well as the senior civilians and completely changed the resourcing for united states special operations command and i have to say really gave us all the tools necessary and bent over backwards to make us as successful as we possibly could be and we were carrying all the water and um so she said back then nobody knew who we were now everybody knows who we are but that also has got to do with the tax that we paid and the brave people that you mentioned a little bit earlier who you know and if i could talk about that just a little bit um with mark lee uh and and ryan so uh you know jaco mentioned about uh me welcoming the uh the men home from combat but i also giaco was already deployed to iraq and i would also see all of the guys off before they got on the plane and left so jaco’s got a bunch of guys from his task unit i didn’t want to bother them they’re talking to their wives and then it’s time to kind of go out to the plane and um so we’re standing around went out of the plane i said look guys one last thing i said the genie’s here rub the lamp make your wish you know and and guys some folks are reluctant to talk to a guy with two stars in his collar and now mark lee was a new guy this was his first deployment and mark lee comes up he says hey admiral i want to talk to you all right what is it there petty officer lee he says you know we’re over there we’re fighting the war and we’re these humvees and these humvees are not air conditioned we need air-conditioned humvees well mark i tell you what you know you’re in a war and you just can’t stick an air conditioner in there because if a bomb goes off you might wind up eating it so let me do this let me go to united states special operations command i’ll talk to general brown and see what we can do and i went back to my office i called general doug brown who was our socom commander he says look got it i got it that was his big i got it but he said but we have to do this smart and we wound up with air-conditioned humvees in iraq because mark lee asked for that now um and to me you know as the admiral you work for the men and if that’s what they needed that’s what they got but one of the most moving things in my life um was when mark came home uh to san diego so when you come home you get flown into dover uh and then from dover to san diego so there were a bunch of us that went down there to meet his body as it came off this commercial plane and um there were folks at san diego airport were very kind to us and let us uh you know come down so now everybody had to remain on board the plane with the exception of our escort officers that escort mark’s body back uh and i’m down there with the master chief and um and the body comes off and i mean all of a sudden i realize it’s dead silent in the airport there’s no planes moving there’s no cars moving i mean i just i was so focused on the coffin coming off and then i look up in the terminal and everybody’s pressed against the glass i mean everywhere and i one of the report i said what’s going on i said we stopped everything we stopped everything and they made an announcement in the airport uh the first seal who was killed in iraq is coming home why don’t we all go out there and welcome him home and um that really that was that was remarkable and as far as uh you know ryan jobe i mean you had to know ryan folks i mean ryan was just indomitable absolutely indomitable so now here he lost his vision and he’s in a bethesda naval hospital so i just coincidentally i had to i was going to be there anyhow because we had a navy cross ceremony for uh two of our uh uh seals that were with uh michael murphy uh in um operation red wings who were killed or not they were they were posthumously receiving the navy cross we had a big ceremony planned uh at the navy memorial so a few of us in town we go to visit uh ryan who is at the bethesda naval hospital now we go there and kathy’s with me uh and he’s asleep and there’s a woman there it turns out to be ryan’s mother all right so uh go up and he wakes up and he goes hey hey hey guys so of course all the knuckleheads go in and we start talking now he’s blind um and but he’s he’s himself and even maybe a little more yeah yeah yeah i don’t know i don’t know who did this i’m talking to you know mrs jobe and you know taking care of your son and we still didn’t know what his disposition was going to be i mean he just came out of combat he’d only been in the hospital for a couple of days and um so somebody says to him hey ryan we’re going to have a major ceremony at the navy memorial for the couple of guys they’ll receive in the navy cross you want to come yeah i’m in now he’s blind so he can’t see this his mother just points to me with the old you outside so she drags me into the lobby and she has got her fingers in my chest right my son just lost his vision yes mr job i got yes mr joe we got it he does miss a job we got it so um uh i said mr joe look i’m not gonna but if if our teammate wants to go i mean it’s up to you i’m not going to get involved but i guarantee you we will have a car for him we will have a place for him and we will have a big bad seal who will escort him do you remember who you sent home to bs escort i sent three guys home i’m not sure which one well one was the american sniper right so um so um so i i don’t know what’s going to happen but i mean this is a very moving thing because we got the gold star families there and everybody was there it was a sunset ceremony in washington dc and um the secretary of the navy the sec the chief of naval operations all of washington senators uh and i come out and the lights are on me and it’s a semi-circle amphitheater and as i’m talking welcoming everybody i start over the right where is he where is he where is he where is he where is he and as i’m talking and i’m scanning the crowd and all the way over the left at an end seat there’s one individual who has his head turned to the side i realize it’s ryan so he can hear me all right and i’m kind of looking i figured all right and then who stands up behind him right i got him chris i got him chris kyle oh my god okay he’s in good shape there you know so uh we went we went through that and i got to tell you um the ceremony was moving but we had a reception after that and then we went down to the memorial for reception and you know don’t frogmen that we are you know we got you know he’s blind you know put him in a chair so it was almost like animal house when they come into the delta house you’ve got the nerds that they just got to stick to the side just sit you know so we keep trying to get ryan and meanwhile now keep in mind he’s two weeks since he’s lost his vision um and there are hundreds of people there and he’s just walking around the crowd and of course i’m on him now and everybody’s gonna i’m on him and and he bumps into this woman and you know she goes oh excuse me you know hi i’m ryan who are you hi ryan i’m barbara boxer he’d have a clue that it was a senator and he just started chatting her up i think my god you know so um uh it was a wonderful reception and i stayed till the last gold star parent left and i’m fried i gotta be honest with you because i had to do navy business there today and then you know and you’re on it and it was emotional as could be as you can that emotion is just raining so um um i i forget if it was danny dietz’s uh family or uh axelsson’s family that that left the last and i just figured okay i turned to kathy i said all right baby let’s let’s get back to the hotel she goes oh no she says all your men are at the irish pub you got to go have at least a beer with the boys you know you know my name is maguire it didn’t take so i go into this bar and it is packed packed so of course the guys are being nice to kind of make a way for me and kathy and up against the bar with the beer in his hand and his elbow on the bar is ryan job drinking a beer just being one of the boys but one of my favorite stories about ryan um after he he got medically retired he became very good friends with our four-star commander general doug brown and so he calls up demo brown and he says hey sir um i’m going to climb mount mckinley i’d like you to come with me uh well you know ryan um i’m i’m in my 60s right now i don’t know if i could do that did general brown told me this he goes general brown i’m blind you’ve got no excuse you know so just i mean i said indomitable just wonderful just an inspiration yeah one inspiration both with chris chris as well an inspirational person yeah i i remember you know you said he was medically retired but there was a time where he was not sure if he was going to medically retire right and you know i he he said to me he said well you know can i stay in and i said well i don’t know but i know someone that does know and i came by to see you and i said hey there’s a chance that ryan wants to just stay in and you looked at me and said then he stays in yeah now my thought was um when you look at your mirror and you see yourself you see a seal and my thought was i don’t and have any one of us telling our teammate he no longer can do it our teammate has to come to that realization on his own and i just thought sooner or later i mean it’s just hard to make that break especially you know you’re coming from combat going through all this stuff sooner or later you realize you know of course i learned that from tommy norris uh tommy was one of our medal of honor recipients from vietnam and uh tommy was severely wounded uh but because he was a medal of honor recipient that you know tommy you could stay and tom made the decision uh i could stay but i don’t think i’m a full-up round anymore and i just you know and so he made that decision as well so i learned that years ago and i just thought let my teammate decide when it’s time for them to go yeah that was that was awesome for him to have that option and for him to know that we as long as he wanted to be in the teams he would be in the teams that was freaking awesome um where were we we were at what you were you were about to take over seal team two well i took over seal team two and uh left there and uh i had the misfortune of getting deep selected for captain but um yeah so i’m i’m deployed on another submarine uh with the with the seal team down in the caribbean so we’ve been we’ve been at sea now probably submerged for a week and you know as you know giaco we when you finally finish you come to the surface they put the uh antenna up and you download the the traffic so um we’re just we’ve gone admit now we’re up in the sale that the submarine is running on the surface and you know you folks you see pictures like that and recruiting things where the folks are up there so i’m up in the sale with the commanding office of the submarine and the guys are in the uh just aft of the sale putting our you know boats together and some other stuff and um uh the uh sound powered phone rigs which on the on the submarine the captain picks up the phone you know captain and um he’s listening and he starts looking at me and i figured oh god what did my guys do now you know and um uh he hangs up the phone uh and he looks at me goes we just got to message um you you just got selected for captain i said that can’t be i’m not eligible for another two years he goes well what’s your year group i told him because damn chose so is mine so so with that um i wound up you know not staying as long as i would have liked to but uh i left there and then went to uh uh uh got selected for uh harvard as a national security fellow up there and that was another remedial education program for me you know the part that guts me about harvard really i mean it’s got a good reputation but who knew the spelling counts [Laughter] so what are you how long are you up there for 13 months so it was a one-year fellowship but it was remarkable so i had i had um officer rank i was a member of the faculty club uh and it was just great to be able to have my mother take my mother to the faculty club and just tell her you know even c students can make it to the harvard faculty clubs you know so but um it was really great because it was small seminars focused on what i was up there really to do is advanced research in national security but the folks that i had up there at the kennedy school is really the holding tank for government uh they were either former secretaries former ambassadors and i became because one you’re a seal and i just and had the rank that i was included in everything there um they’re just really remarkable uh that um you know some of the seminars i was in i had to put a maybe once a week because we had to take turns submitting a memorandum and uh that would then go to the two professors who one would be the former deputy secretary of state and then was you know an undersecretary of defense and they’d go through this dart they’re going to go joe you dope you can’t say that they’re going to leak that to the washington post and honest to goodness like here’s how you say it without you know indicting i mean just really good practical stuff but um because i got included in everything this is at a time when um ted kennedy was still alive and the senator from massachusetts and uh john john was around and they’d come to the kennedy school all the time but senator kennedy’s sister was the ambassador to ireland and the kennedy family invited jerry adams to come to boston and then he gave a lecture in the evening at the kennedy school and and then a small dinner so you know these were all meredith professors would you like to come joe boy would i you know and we had dinner there were only about eight of us at dinner and he was holding court and i got to tell you i was just sitting there watching and thinking no wonder i mean this guy these are all senior emeritus harvard professors and they were eating out of his hand uh and i think this guy’s good this guy’s real good um so then our our four-star at that point in time general downing came up to visit he came up on a regular basis to harvard and so what have you been up to well i did it with jerry adams that didn’t go good you know because it’s just you know joe he’s one of the biggest terrorists in the world i said well you know the thing about it is boss what an opportunity to learn about them you know i mean you just can’t i’m here to learn and even if it’s an unpleasant or you’re here to learn and i learned an awful lot just about maybe the couple of hours that i spent there listening to that guy just how good these folks are but tremendous education and then from there i went to become the deputy sock pack so i had all of these beautiful suits and overcoats and things that i wore at that at harvard and then you’re not and then i’m in you know aloha attire don’t throw anything away you never know and then what you’re doing the deputy what’s the deputy position like out there in sock pack what are you doing it was wonderful um so uh in in in the pacific uh sock pack was co-located in the same building as the pacific commander so we actually were although as separate subunified command admiral prier who was the pacific commander actually made us a part of his staff so well we we had the best of both worlds that in the morning you know it’d be up there uh because the general traveled a great deal and i would be the one that represented sit there you know with the four star and his his staff getting the all of the classified briefings up in the skiff and then down to uh another conference room where a broader audience with the um less classified things were discussed but going through um interesting things uh with uh sending two carrier battle groups into the taiwan strait um and it’s just seeing that unfold but we also had a a a situation where uh this was the first time i really became aware of beheadings uh we had a group of westerners this is in august of 95 on vacation through the hindu kush and this was up in the line of control in srinagar and they were captured and held ransom by muslims up there and one of the captures of norwegian [Music] ran away and they caught him and they cut his head off they put one his body on one part of the town and the head on the other part of the town with a ransom note you know on either and the indian military then came to the ambassador who was the senior ranking ambassador in the united states state department then who went to the secretary uh and we had to deploy a delta force uh assault team there with general pete schumacher who was the jsoc commander so uh we were doing uh not commanding control for them because the specific command was doing that but there was nobody in the pacific command that understood that so i was standing next to the four stars this before admiral prayer showed up this was admiral mackey and he had to draft a personal form message to the secretary of defense and to the chairman every day and i drafted those messages for him and you know he changed a little bit but it was that time i had in harvard i mean necessarily i never would have been able to do that before as i said spelling counted and uh but you know he would change a couple of things um and uh they were deployed there for 40 some odd days and um um uh we i we never got the hostages back so uh when when just they um were there this now it is um september so it is the anniversary of uh uh the end of world war ii and the the president is there uh the secretary of defense everybody’s there to this is bill clinton and and this is so this is 95 so um and now i’ve been locked up for 30 40 days i’m as white as a sheet uh but because i wasn’t going anywhere you know i’d go home for four hours and sleep and shower and come back i’m in my you know aloha i mean i’m in my flip-flops i’m on my board shorts and i’m in my t-shirt now the pacific commander is down there with the president and everybody having breakfast but his aide uh is up there and i’ve gotta run all of these things by him and i’m explaining said okay bur you know what they’re asking for is they want to go forward and be with the the indians are gonna do a takedown and they want to have our guys to be with them during the takeout and i’m trying to explain it to him uh and and he’s a you know an attack pilot and he finally know keep in mind he’s in chokers with all of his medals and the big gold aguilettes that the eighth wear and he finally says to me i can’t get this you got to come with me all right so i’m following him again flip-flop i got you know this bag handcuffed to my hand right and we jump in the car and as i’m in the car i’m trolling i don’t get it you’re just gonna have to explain it yourself now i i i completely forgot what was going on but as i get down there you got all the secret service agents you’ve got metal detectors right and and you’ve got two air you’ve got an aircraft carrier on one side of the pier and two cruises on the other right and they’re all a dressed ship and everybody’s standing along manning the rail so bud jumps out of the car and he just runs through the metal detector and they’ve seen him for several days and i know he’s good and i come after him and there was the secret service guys that come i’m with him with him he’s with me so we’re walking down the pier and um uh so we’re standing there and again everybody’s address ship i mean folks you got to understand just how impressive this is you know you’ve got several hundred guys at an aircraft carrier the cruiser you’ve got the flags up and then uh the armored vehicle comes down initially and these guys jump out it’s all the secret service guys and then down comes um the beast so the president and the first lady are in that and then you hear from the aircraft carrier a bugle everybody for attention right so everybody’s attention and in bud langston you know he’s saluting i’m in my flip-flops and stuff and the president gets out of the car and i figured be inappropriate to salute so i’m just waving and the president comes up and he shakes my hand yes thanks mr president you know so so if they go he goes on board the ship the meanwhile uh they he went on and then the rest of them had to walk down so down comes the secretary of the navy the secretary of defense the four-star commander so bud goes okay you got to brief the admiral so we pulled him off to the side and i tried to give him the disposition of what they’re asking for and um what is your recommendation captain i said sir i think you need to support the guys and approve the decision well that’s about the stupidest thing i’ve ever heard life do i get a second guess he says no he said that thing will go south and who are they going to blame you know no joe you go back and tell the general permission denied on that time again i think in retrospect he’s probably right but you know what do you think i guess strong but it was it was an interesting job and the last thing that we did before i left um is we had to evacuate cambodia so there was a coup in cambodia and uh the the embassy needed to be evacuated um so we deployed uh to cambodia and um uh that was the last thing i did then i finally uh left and then took over the center and uh so you know i was sleeping in my office working around the clock just an operational command and now i take over the training command and um you know i’ve probably been there for a month and a half and one of your previous guests bill mcraven is driving along the strand it’s about 7 30 at night he’s going one way and i’m on the other side he takes his jeep and he makes a u-turn he says joe what are you doing coming home from work get in the car so get in the car joe it’s 7 30 at night you’re on show duty you’re driving everybody crazy you got to take a deeper breath and maybe just kind of pace yourself a little bit more but joe they can they they they’re not keeping up this pace here but thanks for the feedback buddy i appreciate that you know but you come from an operational command when you’re doing something like that and it takes you a while to decompress and become a human being again and how is buds from from now from the perspective i mean the last time you were there was as a student yeah yeah now you’re back there as the as the senior guy you know people talk about the changes it bugs yeah and there’s other people that go hey look doesn’t matter there’s little changes here and there but the outcome is the same yeah would you say um yeah i mean it changed dramatically and that as i said nobody really cared about the numbers back then um that if nobody graduated nobody graduated but at that time we actually inappropriately so people were looking for return on the investment and um you know we we still had a really terrible attrition rate but we also had some other things that we did that um you know when when i finished hell week you know i had to cut my boots up so my feet could fit in the boot um and you know i had cellulitis uh and just that’s it i mean so and and that was inappropriate that you know we had to do that but and then you know the the young troops back then you know every day that they’d come in and they changed their socks out for them and give them dry socks and just some other things but i mean the mission of the command is to qualified uh to to graduate qualified individuals to go to the seal team not break them and bust them so you know whatever it’s going to take to get them there but um it was it was really still pretty much the same but um uh it needed a little bit of tightening up just a little bit so you know we had some instructors there and what i just thought we needed to do uh you know you know i’m not too into this as you know choco but i’m thinking you know i kind of have to drive a little bit of fear into these guys just being a little bit too relaxed so i went to um you know the guys at the development group and i said can you send me a couple of warrants or maybe some senior guys that would like to come on out here and help shape the community for the next couple of years so um we had some of the devgrew senior realistic guys come out and um so one of the guys showed up a warrant officer uh who’s a dear friend of mine um and we were one of the final days of hell week and the kids are in the demo pit and the kids are in a demo pit we’re setting off explosives around them uh and these kids are still singing now this is probably thursday or so i kind of forget and they’ve already lost about 100 people in the class so these kids aren’t going to quit but they are they are beat up and the instructors are doing their thing and i mean he just arrived at the command and i said hey danny we’re down there you want to come with me down to the demo pit and watch i said sure i’d like to come along so you know i’m just doing there i’ve got the master chief and i’m again i’m not interfering i’m watching and i look over at this guy who is a dev grew warrant officer and he’s got tears in his eyes all right didn’t say anything on the way back uh oh yeah i said danny how’d you feel about that i forgot he says i forgot what it was like he said i forgot he said i for a little while i was there and he said you know it so yeah it’s the same um and you know master chief defelski who was a streets streetwise uh forced master chief um and uh he really mud sucked our instructors so you know we all go through training and as we look back on it in the rear view mirror we were faster smarter stronger better and so he’s the the master chief in charge of all of the instructors uh at bud’s training and they’re constantly complaining to the master chief about the quality of the individuals they’re not making this and if they don’t do this they shouldn’t be able to contribute so really is smart guy uh on a friday afternoon we have one big classroom uh it probably seats about a hundred so he’s got all the instructors uh in there he made everybody come it was mandatory and he’s got the the chalkboard up there he said all right first phase what is the minimum standard that you need to have for the fourth time for the four mile run here and it went down for the swim the yo course then and the second phase third phase and everyone wants everything to be you got to do better got to be faster got to be stronger so so he he really mud sucked them so he said let me understand this now he said chris i’m going to go talk to the captain and we’re going to change things here he said so but i want to make sure that everybody agrees if you can’t do this in first phase if you can’t do that in second phase if you can’t do that in third phase you should never be a seal is that correct that’s right master chief you’re right well gentlemen it just happens i have every one of your training records here and what i’m going to do is i’m going to give each and every one of you your training record i’m going to walk out of the room once you finish looking at it and you see what you did just put it back in the box and i’ll see you monday no because it was true they you know it’s humbling to go back and look at your own record and see what the instructors said about you you know okay they stole it we still have the same we’ve got we’ve got this we’ve got every single record from day one uh on and so as a matter of fact when i was there i i tried to burn down the uh the the room there that i kind of said hey when did you leave buds what’s that when did you when were you done at buds as the commander well uh i i was i was there for 39 months which is a really good you know and honestly uh it was uh just a fantastic uh tour not one that i wanted to do because i was gonna go someplace else in virginia beach and um uh we had trouble with our attrition rate and getting folks through so i got uh changed from uh going out to virginia beach to uh to to the center but it turned out to be uh probably the most rewarding tour i ever had to have people like marcus latrell uh go through training and uh you know i remembered marcus uh because not many students break their femur uh in in training and uh so you know it’s not a good time when you know the the senior instructors and the doctor and the master chief come to talk to you about um all right uh he broke his what he broke his femur uh how stress fracture well bs right so i mean we went through and i’m going through this stuff right so what happened was i mean right i mean and they were covering for him and he did break his femur so i mean marcus if you listen to it so the instructors you know and if any of you think that you could beat me of course marcus raises his hand this is the obstacle course so um we have it’s all technique and now you’re dealing with a seal that’s been doing this obstacle course for years it you know and um now marcus was good but you’ve got a guy who you know these guys are like pixies going over this darn thing so you climb to the top of the uh cargo net was that about thirty feet jacob’s yeah right and you throw yourself over and and but you do it in a technique that then you drop down a little bit and you could grab onto the rope and work your way down so uh marcus got that he knows that’s the technique and he threw himself over the only problem was um he didn’t grab it and he went down to 30 feet and hit and he broke his femur so i mean to his credit though went out got rolled back and came back but i mean that that that’s a good old boy there but they lied to me as any good teammates should do because you know because they didn’t want the instructor in trouble and and i bought it unfortunately it wasn’t until later on that actually marcus told me the story that i broke my life he’s the one that came clean you know oh that’s epic yeah this must be like the uh the the glimpse that you get at human psychology one year because i never worked at buds you know i went through it but i never saw it from the other side yeah the glimpse at human psychology of what people are capable of and what breaks them and and that’s got to be a yeah that’s got to leave a mark well absolutely and you know you literally learn a lot i mean now you know you and i go through it but you go through it it’s different you’re experiencing it when you have an opportunity to watch class after class after class you know i just remember you know the my first hell week class and um this is monday night of hell week so they start off at sunday they’ve been at it for about you know 22 hours 23 hours they’re having their evening meal and uh the class you know outside and there’s a couple of students staying behind in the chow hall putting the chairs back into the table now i thought that this was somewhat odd so i’m sitting there with the instructors having uh uh dinner i said so what are these guys up to yeah they’re just waiting for the rest of the class to leave so they can quit um and and and it was true so you could just say but what it was is nobody ever quit in the evolution everybody quit before the evolution in anticipation of what was gonna happen and just now uh you can argue whether or not it is the most demanding physical course in in the military if it’s not it’s close all right so i won’t argue with anybody but i will tell you this it is a far more psychological program than it is a physical program because it’s designed to keep you off foot uh and that the standards are raised and raised and raised or the the you’re told that this is going to be the evolution today and then they change it but specifically to that can you adjust to that can you adjust to that um so it really it is most of the people who fit quit no i had a three and a half hour briefing today down there with our teammates an update on what the community’s up to and uh beef dressler uh gave me the pitch and beef just took over the center on um on on friday and um they bring in uh close to 900 uh students a year to get 180 out 187 is his demand signal and 900 so it’s still in spite of everything that we’ve done in preparation as you said you know when you went through nobody knew when i went through it was a trivial pursuit question you know but now these these guys are prepared they know what he’s doing and they all i said to them today what is the what is it they they self-select they raise their hand and they know we lose a couple from academics uh we lose some from pool comp but the vast majority of it this is not for me and when i used to get the young men in the you know now i was not an instructor and um and i would get them all after the instructors talked about hell week i’d go in there and i would just talk to these guys and marcus talks about that in his book uh i just look it’s as simple as this guys you know every one of you guys can make it through otherwise you wouldn’t be here i mean you’ve already been here now for several weeks if you’re not going to make it you’re the one who decides you’re not going to make it it’s not going to be us at all and you know it’s as simple as this guys i mean this is surly the secret to life is just don’t quit just don’t quit i said don’t doubt yourself um and um you know these guys they they doubt themselves but it’s why am i here and i used to say that when they first came what do you you know buds is not the seal team buds is buds it is where why do you need to spend 26 weeks to get where you want to go but don’t even think for a second that this is a seal team but i will tell you this you put up with this for 26 weeks and you get to that seal team it will make everything that you did here worthwhile trust me i was down there a little while ago and uh you know i was walking around and there was just with one of my friends that works there and there’s a hundred helmets by the bell 100 helmets by the bell and he says you know what i said i said that’s a lot of quitters this you know whatever it was two weeks in i said that’s a lot of quitters and he says you know what every one of those guys is a stud yeah a st and he’s he’s basically referencing compared to us when we went through you know when i went through i thought if you did a a pull-up workout where you did 30 or 40 pull-ups that that was a pretty good workout and you don’t realize when you get the buzz you’re going to do 300 or 400 or 5 you just didn’t know we didn’t know back then but every one of these kids now they’re studs physical studs but they still quit oh yeah yeah but the difference though physically i would say is um you know when i went through eric olsen bill mcraven was two classes behind me um the way eric put it and i think this is right back then uh it depends on your parents were if you’re gonna make it two buds because it was endurance everybody had to run forever and everybody had to swim forever back then so it was a different type of body type now not everybody looks like you john but but yes you know when you know when when i took over the center and these young men lined up next to the pool in just their their swimsuits it was a completely different physique on those young men uh but we were preparing them for different things as opposed to no long-range patrols you know no no no 10 to 12 days in the field no 13-hour swims you’re going to go to the hindu kush and you’re going to go to balad and you’re going to go to ramadi and you’re going to go to fallujah and you’ve got to wear heavy equipment and you’ve got to carry a lot of stuff so it changed and i don’t know what’s going to happen now that you know we’re we’re changing and admiral howard rightfully so is going back into uh strategic competition great power competition and putting the community back uh into a maritime focus get those wetsuits ready boys absolutely uh did you you know it’s interesting you know people always ask who’s gonna make it through who’s gonna make it through and i would never put a bet on anybody one way or the other of who’s gonna make it through or not i don’t care where they came from what their background was i remember one of one of my commanding officers uh uh captain o’connell he had he he told this story to me and i i never forgot it he had he there was some officer that was put in a package to go to buds and he said i’ve never backed anyone before i’ve never i’ve never backed anyone i’ve never said this guys to make and this guy had this pristine record he was an athlete this he was captain of that he was all these things he spoke two languages maybe even three languages just a complete that and finally o’connell you know signs off his package and says yeah take this guy to buds and the freaking guy quit on him and he said i will never ever back anybody again and to me that you know that was a captain that had been in the teams forever and denied all these packages and even with that level of discretion you can’t tell who’s going to make it and who’s not going to make it there’s jim jim yeah yeah no no you really can’t because you really don’t know what’s going on behind the eyes so um we’ve got members who are on the national teams um whether it’s the national swimming team nice you know these are very accomplished people division one athletes and but the other thing as well you get some kid that comes out of high school goes to boot camp uh did intramural sports and he’s standing tall on graduation day yeah that’s me 100 100 and i had a i had a i had an olympic alternate gymnast in my buds class quit and i had the ncaa water polo team captain in my class quit yeah and like like i was that guy that i was an average if not slightly below average athlete in high school and hey stuck it out they weren’t going to make me quit that’s the way it is yeah where were you when uh when september 11th happened i was assigned united states special operations command um and excuse me i was assigned the united states special operations command and you know we talked a little bit earlier choco about the community uh and what the fleet commander said what my father said and here i am i got promoted to one star um at the end of august uh of 2001 wow and um a little more than three weeks later i’m sitting in my office united states special operations command and um you know one of the the troops comes and he leans against the the door jamb and i said what’s up he said a plane just hit the uh twin tower so you know you know being a new yorker and i’m thinking okay you know this is foggy day and you got a small aircraft there and he’s not leaving uh yeah and i’m just figuring okay i got a tv i said do you want to turn the tv on i guess i’d like yes sir so i’m behind the desk i’ve got the tv over there and i look up i go it is a perfectly beautiful day in new york and i mean shortly after that i mean with moments i see the other plane flying south on the hudson river you don’t fly south in the hudson river the plane’s going into newark you got to fly north or you got to go around and i’m thinking what an idiot that guy’s flying that plane around just to get a better look at that how stupid and then boom he goes into the second tower uh and i mean immediately and i get up and i ran into the socom commander’s office uh general uh holland and i said general we’re under attack we’re at war he said what are you talking about joe i said turn the tv on i said we’re we’re at war and um so obviously that was a long day to kind of sort everything out and i finally got home uh about maybe one o’clock in the morning two o’clock in the morning of um of the 12th and uh so i’m just having a little bit of orange juice and maybe an english muffin or something try to get a couple hours before i got to go back into work and the phone rings and uh i pick up the phone i figured it was the headquarters and there’s the shrill voice on the other side uh it just kind of screaming and all of a sudden i realize it’s my brother and my brother was at 220 church street which is a block down from the twin towers and he was at a meeting and saw the first bill he didn’t see the plane hit but he saw the the building on fire i said well maybe we should adjourn if you know i mean again nobody could believe that it was happening and you know he said so by the time they adjourned he went out to the street you know he actually you know viewed you know the people jumping for their lives out of the twin towers which is pretty traumatic but then he had to walk home across the brooklyn bridge all the way to his home which probably wound up being well i don’t know maybe about 12 to 15 miles uh because there was no transportation everything shut down so by the time he got home that’s when he calls me and it kind of broke down to joseph get them i know what you do it’s up to you guys get them i think i’m just trying to calm them down um because oh okay bob i’ll do my best you know and um so uh one i never thought i’d be an admiral never uh and i certainly never thought i’d be an admiral when our nation was at war and uh to have that opportunity to you know actually be a flag or general officer serving in the united states military when the nation’s engaged in decisive combat operations was you know quite an honor but also a you know quite a challenge and you know it took us a while but we finally we finally did it and after it and uh may 2nd of 2011 i called my brother and it took a while bob but we got him and i’ll tell you what when that happened i know i retired uh in july of 2010 and um i’m up early in the morning uh not as early as you but probably about 5 30 and um i’m i’m in the kitchen and uh you know got a little bit of cup of coffee as i’m putting my running shoes on and i thought i heard something on the radio about bin laden i mean i just wasn’t paying attention that doesn’t i so um i just waited till six o’clock to hear the news and you know folks who stayed up late the night before they knew and i still had no idea and i heard what had happened and um i was just thinking i mean i just sat down there i couldn’t go for a run i mean i just had tears in my eyes um and that i know full well and so do you the heavy road the toll that was paid to get to a badabad all of the blood and all the lives and all the the brave men and women you know who got there and so and by the time i got to work you know everybody’s jubilant and um as saying you know i had quiet pride it was probably because it was our teammates and then the 160th and the cia but um it was really emotional for me just thinking about whether it would be matt axelson danny deeds uh or all of the other folks that uh you know uh bourgeois uh uh all all the men that we lost there uh in afghanistan and um so yeah that was uh you know people be getting my hair cut and how long you’ve been in the navy uh 36 years well how’d you stay so long you know we’ve been at war for the last 10 years buddy you know and uh it was on our shoulders uh but um you know when you know full well this war was personal to you and me and to many of us and the other thing as well it’s just hard to explain to people how you could become friends through death that you meet parents and you meet family members that you never knew but you knew their son and you buried their son and you were on your knees giving a mother the flag that was on her son’s coffin and you get to know these people and you stay close to them you know for for a long long period of time so um and i wound up there at socom and um you know it was an interesting time for me it was a baby baby one star and it was a small place we uh only had five uh five flag of general officers then the four star the three star two green beret two stars and me i was the baby uh but um we it was a great place to learn and one of the offices there eldon bargewell uh was a special forces general officer and up until that point eldon was the most highly decorated uh soldier in the united states army and um you know school was certainly in session uh for me uh you know work working with eldon so that when i left there and then um went to naval special warfare to take over the community i left there as the deputy commander under admiral eric olsen and came back you know close to four years later and i just remember uh you remember captain barbara ford uh just said after that she goes oh my god you turned into an admiral you know you had to yeah so my uh my commanding officer at seal team seven i was on deployment i was in iraq having just the best deployment ever just having a great time doing a bunch of operations and and he says to me the last thing i do as commanding officer of steel team seven is i’m gonna make sure that you become the admiral’s aide he pulled it off so that’s why that’s how that’s how you ended up with me well i tell you what it was wonderful you know um you know between uh you and um you know and beef dressler uh you know folks out there you know you’ve got a good idea what choco looks like i’m sure but uh beef used to be the center for navy and uh he’s also uh a pretty pretty strong guy well my name is jaco his name is beef i know kind of says it all but when when when when uh jocko uh beef was replacing jocko we had the families over for dinner and uh we’re there at dinner and my daughter uh is sitting there and she’s probably about 10 at that point time and she looks at the two of these guys and she honestly asks beef and jocko uh are you guys my daddy’s flag lieutenants or you guys my daddy’s bodyguards and the two of them go yes i said you guys screwed up you should have told me my daughter your daddy doesn’t need a bodyguard but the truth of the matter is i sure did and if i had one these are the two guys that could do it but um no i you know what what i what i always asked i never interviewed anybody to be the the the flag lieutenant out there folks what i would do just go to the senior officers i go send me a champion send me somebody who’s just come out of combat somebody somebody who’s got a future ahead of them somebody somebody who’s willing to work really hard and because i you know don’t use the flag lieutenant in the aid to carry my bag i carried my own bag what i needed was to bring a lieutenant into the meeting to hear what was being briefed or what was needed to be resourced and be able to turn to that lieutenant and say do the men need this is this what they want well what do they want that we haven’t and you know i rick because that individual whether it was uh you know choco or beef came right out of the battlefield uh and had that credibility it was only a year their they’re turning the barrel and it’s a very demanding job i had been a flag lieutenant myself i understand that but um it was just choco was a tremendous resource for not only me but the community and then as well when choco then went back into you know his seal team and became a test unit commander he almost becomes like an apostle to the rest of the community to explain why we do what we do because now he knew he’d been to the inner sanctum but uh it was an absolute honor and you know the way i considered to be uh you know you and me our relationship is just like in any relationship in the teams we were swim buddies and necessarily we had each other sex we had each other’s back but i leaned very very heavily on you and you never never never let me down you always came through choco yeah and then um obviously when we were going through that deployment in ramadi it was just awesome like i s like i started off you know this the support that you gave me and there there by the rest of my my task unit was just it was awesome well you know we were a community at war it was on our shoulders and i know that you were taking it very hard uh because you know we were taking some heavies but um when you’re at war you have to realize you’re at war and um you know there’s going to be um casualties and but you know at the end of the day uh you were highly successful in your mission and you came out of that with extreme high regard but um you know to me you know several years later as you know um we’re christening a navy land attack cruiser up in bath maine and one of one of the great honors that i’ve ever had was normally when you christen a ship i mean everybody’s there senators congressmen and the secretary of the navy is the guest speaker the main speaker and because of my relationship with with with mikey monsoor uh and with you and test test unit bruiser uh that the secretary of the navy asked me to be the guest speaker there but uh i think i also mentioned to the speaker you know it was tasking the bruising if you got any questions on why we call it that look at lieutenant commander wellington well that’s awesome uh i know we probably could talk for another few hours and i know that you got to go which pretty much to me means at some point you got to come back and we can tell the rest of your story uh because this was not the end of your career of service and you ended up doing much more and um yeah we you’ll have to come back and next time you’re in coronado we’ll come up and finish the rest of the story yeah well i’ll tell you jacko i’d i’d love to come back and we’ve had a great visit here in coronado with the uh center change of command visiting uh our teammates uh spending you know three and a half four hours getting briefs from on the committee this morning it’s just inspirational but um you know i believe in a life of of service and um uh and as far as a leader is concerned you know you’ve got to be a you know a leader who sacrifices of you know and when i was asked to come back in the government wasn’t on my scope at all but uh i came back in and uh you know wound up being the director of the national counterterrorism center which i was very comfortable in that it was my strike zone uh but then when the president asked me to become the director of national intelligence not necessarily my strikes on him there but i will tell you uh to to start off and have a rubber boat in your head uh and and then years later you know you’re sitting there as the president’s intelligence officer uh at the national security council and even you know i had a an interesting time there as i’m sure you know that i i had a testimony uh there for three and a half hours on the house um select committee on intelligence it had to do with the whistleblower complaint but you know for three and a half hours you’re on camera and you’ve got some you know very very bright and talented people asking you some demanding questions but it was uh the very first time that i was really really happy that i went to high-risk seer and understood interrogation techniques so i’ll tell you what uh even as that i knew that was happening and i sat down to watch it and i and and you can you know they look like sharks in the water you can see them they’re they’re thinking they’re gonna go you don’t know who you got number one he’s from brooklyn number one number two he’s in the teams harvard the whole nine yards i said this isn’t gonna go as well as they think it’s gonna go no i didn’t uh you know i’d say what um no i may not uh it was it was because i will tell you this though uh choco there um not only was i representing the the entire united states intelligence community but having spent 36 years in our community you know i really feel like you know here i am i know i’m on national tv and it’s going to be a a pretty important hearing which probably would lead to what it did um and i just forgot i’m still representing the united states navy and our special operations community so i just figured all i’m going to do is tell the truth and play it straight it’s as simple as that and and and i did and um i i think at the at the end of it i felt like i did my job and i was able to leave with my head held high yeah well that was the other thing i knew i knew you were from brooklyn i knew you were from the teams i knew that you went to harvard in the whole nine yards but i also knew that if they were looking for something that you had done that was immoral illegal or unethical i knew that they could not find it and they would not find it because i i know you and i know that you do the right thing and so that’s why i watch that with uh with great joy yeah well well just before i got the job it was uh the white house chief of staff mick mulvaney did the the vetting uh and uh you know mick told me said you know i’ve talked to everybody especially everybody in the special operations community and i couldn’t find one person to say something negative about you now i hadn’t been offered the job yet i said mick give me a day i’ll give you a list of people i did i don’t necessarily want that job but i got it and it went okay but jaco has been a great honor it’s so good to be with you uh and it’s always good to be with the teammate but i’m so proud of you for not only what you did when you were in uniform but uh you know what you have accomplished as far as just not only personally but the way you’ve been offered to give back with your leadership and what you’re sharing with the world whether your books your podcast and there’s so many people that i know that listen to this podcast read your books and really learn a great deal about leadership and you know folks i tell you um when people ask me do i know him i do is either you know is he is the real deal he’s the real deal and uh uh i’m honored more than i could possibly tell you to be with you today and folks you know i do plan on taking choco back up on this offer and come back and visit with you sometime in the future so thank you my friend be outstanding and and the things i say today are the things i learned from people like you from our great community and thanks for coming to talk to us more important thank you for everything that you’ve done for america for the navy for the teams and of course for me it was an honor to serve with you and i look forward to talking to you again likewise jaco thank you and with that admiral joe mcguire has left the building and echo you didn’t even get a chance to sort of ask a question we were moving pretty quick and he had another event to attend so you have to save your whatever did you have any questions uh not at the moment i actually asked the one what’s the the lockout thing there’s a lot of little stuff man that you know that i’m like hey wait what is that not even necessarily because i don’t know what it is and i need clarification a lot of times it’s like i don’t know what that is but it sounds kind of interesting maybe not to you guys because that’s part of your guys everyday thing at the time but for me it’s like man even that lockout thing bro that’s interesting and i’d i think it’s one of those things where imagine if you were hearing a jiu jitsu story about like you’re caught in an arm lock and you were then they had the triangle too and you were and you all i would need to tell you since you know jiu jitsu if i was like hey i was caught in the arm lock and the triangle both at the same time i started having the walls close in you would know what that meant yeah someone that doesn’t understand jiu jitsu is just like oh like kind of it doesn’t really mean that much to them in fact it almost means nothing to them so when the admiral was talking about that whole walk out thing in the german u-boat yeah that is a crazy story that is a crazy story the cold the the the claustrophobia the changes in pressures did that come across could you recognize how freaking crazy that was yeah so it it did come across but you know what else was clear to me that that what you’re explaining right now that was the case and and i did not want to interrupt at all i mean aside from at least so i can grasp an understanding of what the lockout procedure is so i know even more but yeah so the claustrophobia thing anytime you guys talk about submarines i do remind myself because my friend jared jeremy would tell me about like these submarines and there’s those little diver vehicle things or whatever so seal delivery vehicles yeah so he’d tell me about that and it’s like bruh it’s not like it’s not like cool like on the movies you guys are cruising in the office with the thing bro the thing is like super cramped and super and brad i don’t like that claustrophobia stuff yeah i know you don’t we’ll put it this way i’m attuned to certain cramped yeah um 21 inch tube yeah i see 21 inch tube yeah yeah so you guys are talking about that and i’m like boom and then yes then you guys are talking about like these procedures like kind of like oh we all know what those procedures are i’m like wait a second we have claustrophobia you got freaking the submarine you’re underwater you’re doing all this stuff bro i kind of want to hear more it’s kind of nuts you know but that’s not that wasn’t the point that he was making at the time so it’s like i don’t want to derail the momentum for the conversation yeah well uh at some point maybe we’ll go into a little more detail about what those types of operations are like i was lucky because when i came in to the teams we still did that in the normal teams and once the war kicked off we didn’t really do submarine lockouts in the normal teams very often if at all not to mention we used to just dive like it was going out of style like it was going out of style and once again once the war started we’re fighting in iraq and afghanistan we’re not doing a bunch of combat swimmer dives to prepare training dives to prepare to go to iraq like there’s some rivers but we’re not doing harbor infiltration on draeger’s that’s but i was lucky enough to be able to do that a bunch a bunch and just get some of that get some of that it is a freaking hard job man it’s a hard job you mentioned something uh kind of kind of in passing like kind of quick where you you have the operation but all the steps to go through the operation are just complete painful like completely painful so like you know you talk about the temperature of the water if you haven’t swam or been in 40 30 something degree weather i have ice bath scenario whatever but nonetheless i know what that feels like on that pro what if that was just your world you know what’s your world that’s your world and that was what was interesting he was talking about getting into the submarine after jumping out of an airplane and then landing in the middle of the ocean then you lock into the submarine going one person goes in fin first it’s crazy and by the way then you’re just on the submarine you still haven’t even done the mission yet you’re not even close darkness you’re not even close you haven’t even started the mission yet yeah but yeah and so yeah so it’s like that kind of stuff where it’s like man you could elaborate on the feeling of like a 10 second period for a long time and really paint that picture that would be interesting that’d be nuts yeah we’ll have to get to it at some point nonetheless as you like to say we uh we we might not be in those scenarios but we want to be ready for various scenarios we want to improve our capabilities for diving swimming shooting living fighting whatever we’re doing whatever we’re doing that’s true how do we how do we improve our capabilities a little bit here and there what do you think echo charles where should we start interestingly you talk about diving and swimming i bought a madness a few months ago so i didn’t know that masks for like you know diving stuff had like that many levels too no there’s less you know bro there’s like some good masks anyway but i got a good one and i was like all right makes you kind of want to go swimming more too by the way so it’s like when you get these things you it kind of pushes you into the game a little bit more right i’ll give you an example all right so what are we doing we’re working out we’re reading we’re listening true when i say working out there’s various kinds of workouts obviously there’s jiu jitsu there’s weights running cardio med cons all this stuff nonetheless you can take some damage on the way got some doms right now by the way squats yesterday and conditioning nonetheless you might need supplementation so good news is jaco has supplementation so first we’ll start with the cognitive and physical stuff discipline go kind of groundbreaking in a way very yes so let’s start with the cans so energy drink boom it’s the new energy drink already established already yep the new one the new wave the new paradigm isn’t it funny there was all these other companies making quote energy drinks and none of them saw this big just giant gap in the market they were just saying oh we’ll put more sugar and more caffeine yeah and and and more people will buy it yeah and they didn’t see this big hole a bunch of people actually wanted to drink things that were healthy and actually gave them real energy not just a freaking sugar rush multiplied times a a caffeine jitter and call that energy so anyways they didn’t see it cool we did here we are yeah and i get it cause like you know as a company or whatever like you kind of some let’s just say some groups kind of play off of weaknesses of our brains or whatever and go for that superficial um you know whether it be palatable you know just that easy that easy win you know tactical and they can play off of that and you can get some good numbers with that that’s the thing so they play on like people’s weakness in a way play on the short term gratification of human beings yes so if you could you know if you call that a weakness will play on their weakness right but the good thing about this is you don’t play on people’s weakness you actually play on their strengths to be honest with you you help their long-term strategic goals oh yeah but you but the good thing or one of the many good things about this is that it’s both short-term and term it’s amazing discipline go the energy and actually the one that is the most short term payoff as far as taste goes is the mango factually speaking even though you’re drinking a whoop ass watermelon you ran out using short supplies i will say this one thing that’s cool about these drinks the different flavors taste actually taste different it’s not like the some other quote energy drinks that you can there’s a bunch of flavors but they’re all just basically tastes like sugar water yep whatever yeah you know um it’s been a long time since i had any other energy drinks but yeah i can remember that that was kind of the case one way or another nonetheless okay so this lingo this is if you haven’t gathered already it’s a healthy energy drink that you will you will literally be better off after you drink it than before you drink it and it fulfills all your energy drink needs very legit very legit there’s also like the mix discipline go the mix mix it up with water whatever on the go and capsules so keep this in mind first cognitive and physical supplementation in general also get your immune system in check vitamin d3 we got some cold war we got the joint maintenance and repair kind of both in one get some joint warfare get some krill oil uh and of course of course glory be to the protein gods we have monk yep that’s true brad if you’re trying to and here’s the thing i don’t know if we talk yeah we talk about this where yeah if you’re trying to like build muscle which i think is a very worthy goal but we’re we are in support of building muscle you want more muscle you want less muscle right the not dichotomy what do you call the simple decision what do you call that kind of decision binary decision right you want more you want less all right so if you want more you need extra protein to add to the muscle that you’re trying to build so do you know the minimum amount of protein you need uh one gram per pound of lean body mass oh jaco coming off the top ropes with some bro science from 1996 from what i understand that’s on the high end for sure okay well but keep in mind let’s round it up right well let’s say what let’s say the average let’s say someone weighs 180 pounds okay so you need a 180 grams of protein you know how much protein that’s a lot there’s a lot of protein there’s a lot of steaks in one day and steaks are pretty high in protein so i’m saying yeah so the milk this serves is this serves that purpose very well here’s a good thing about milk like we already know it actually tastes good like an actual dessert so now you can have two desserts in one day you’ll be better off than you were and if you’re trying to build muscle boom facilities you can have breakfast dessert lunch dessert dinner dessert snack dessert get yourself some mold but you get all this stuff jackalful com if you subscribe if you want to get it shipped to your house for free subscribe at jockofield com we’ll send you all the stuff that you order for free you can also get the drinks at wawa on the east coast vitamin shop you can get all these products as well and and a lot of people hitting me up like hey can you get this drink you know in milwaukee and in tucson and in la we’re working across the country we’re literally having meetings all the time to get this stuff propagated throughout the nation because we don’t want we want everyone to be stronger faster smarter and better yeah so we’ll let you know as we as we get out there yeah it is about the long term and being prepared 100 also origin usa so you go to originusa com this is where you can get your american made stuff apparel got some boots on there boots and jeans they’d say that’s the what he called a flagship kind of scenario yes there’s some jiu-jitsu stuff on there pete was on there he’s demonstrating or how should i say displaying showing whatever some new pants the new orc pants yeah i got them [Music] they’re freaking legit bro they’re so stoked brothers so there’s some you were talking about wet suits earlier today and to me this is kind of the the image i got is like you were talking about those old wetsuits and your new high-speed wetsuit it’s kind of like a source yeah yeah so these pants that’s pete pete was showing their little video that’s the new work yeah so it’s like oh if you get regular work pants cool and it’s cool it’s better than your workplace it’s actually not it’s like having one of those old wetsuits yeah but it’s better than no wetsuit is what i’m saying marginally okay they’re that and that’s my point and there’s no reason to it’s not like there’s going to be um you know there’s no reason to back in the day it was hey this is the cheapest government contractor that can build us wetsuits that suck and then other manufacturers are out there making bad ass wetsuits but we didn’t get them yet so there’s no reason for that oh yeah so now you got the same deal boom you want the new the the updated effective work pants this is this is the kind of stuff origin does straight up that’s the game we’re gonna make everything by the way oh yeah everything uh also make geese and hey if you want to put your ghee to the test come to the origin main jiu jitsu camp retreat intensive immersion yeah immersion camp that too and here’s the thing about that too because some sometimes people be like oh is that is that thing just super intense or like what is that that’s freaking fun what’s up like three you just did three times two times whatever a day they’re like man like i like jiu jitsu but i don’t know if i’m down for these you know this hell weak navy seal uh 30 of the people that are there will have less experience in jiu jitsu than you even if you only have two weeks of seriously yeah and there’ll be some freaking awesome badass black belts and brown belts and purple belts for sure but there’ll be a lot of people that are just getting their start in jiu-jitsu so come and check that out if you want to origin check originusa com yeah and it’s not like it’s this big competition training all the bra and i’m not going to name any names and actually it’s cool you can go there and not not spar with people go there just learn learn the technique talk with some people go swim in the lake straight up like it’s a jujitsu vacation that’s what it is straight up we should have called it the jujitsu vacation yeah yeah and and you could even call it depending on your your your intent going there you could call it a vacation with some level of jujitsu depending on what you’re curious about whatever level jiu jitsu you are you can go level 10 you go level 10 yeah you can train three times a day you can travel you could train probably 14 hours a day if you want to yeah and you just you know you could train zero zero it’s up to you yeah and it’s just kind of a it’s a vacation with some level of jiu jitsu involved if you want and lobster and lobster and steak so check it out originusa com also uh we have a store by the way yes what’s that store called echo it’s called jackal store so anyway jocklestore com is where you can get your shirts and hats and hoodies light and heavy rash guards on there some shorts on there i’m gonna update some shorts get some new shorts on there too are the ones that i’ve been asking for yes okay that’s good to know as soon as those come out i need five pairs okay just kind of fyi you got it just kind of fyi hundred percent there’s a lot of cool stuff on there discipline equals freedom good anything when you want to represent while you’re on the path are the new shorts gonna be the same material as the old shorts you tell me i say yes because their material is good to go yes sir i agree i agree um yeah so yeah some shorts on there as well um yeah if you want something get something that’s a good way to represent also we have the shirt locker it’s a new shirt it’s a subscription situation new shirt every single month different designs that is they’re good designs you’re hired for sure that was a great week we collectively have been struggling to demonstrate or to explain the the uh the quality of these new designs did you say we got some cool designs they got some we do you could have said that yeah well said you said there but that does something that doesn’t capture it they’ll see because every time people are like hey that design is cool can i have it and i’ll be like well that was two months ago okay that’s what i’m saying so i got to convey it accurately so people know going in it’s an element of trust for sure check it out the shirt locker yep it’s on jocko’s store hey also subscribe to this podcast don’t forget we have some other podcasts we got jocko unraveling with daryl cooper we got the grounded podcast which we haven’t done in a long time we got the warrior kid podcast and we also have the jocko underground podcast jockowunderground com if you want to subscribe to that thing and get on board and help us build the underground where we’re going to be laying in weight in things if things go sideways we’ll be there we’re stockpiling material sure we got food we got water we got content yep jocko underground com if you want to check it out out eight dollars and 18 cents a month some people know what that eight dollars and eighteen cents represents not many though take a guess and if you can’t afford it hey look we we want you in the game even if you can’t afford that eight dollars and eighteen cents a month we’ll still just email assistance at jockowunderground com and we’ll take care of that also we have a youtube channel we have a youtube channel where uh a lot of the videos some of the videos i should say some of the more premiere videos have i’m the assistant director on and it’s very obvious when they’re awesome you know’s funny they uh i i released a video recently mango mayhem mango man so people are catching on to the whole assistant director thing why are you saying like that because well because people i think give might give you uh well then again i guess it’s not undue credit because the author i know you say this is kind of a joke but like every once in a while you’ll add like a little detail i had a critical detail that turns out to be kind of critical so okay so in that video it hurts you so bad it hurts you so bad that whatever i add is usually critical okay so here’s the thing you’re you’re right in a way it doesn’t hurt okay we’ll use the word hurt it hurts me not because oh joko did it thought of it i didn’t it’s more that jocko thought about it it’s hard to be like if i was writing a book about leadership and then you added you’re like hey you need to discuss this thing right here and i couldn’t not do it because it made so much sense i could and and you know what my ego would be affected by that that’s okay that’s where you’re at that’s the part like i’d well maybe it is but i don’t feel overtly that it’s my ego it’s more that like oh shoot i didn’t even see that like frick how can i be so stupid how can i be so stupid how could i be so pathetic no no no how can i not be better better not a loser so you know you know like you you walked up like in that video you walked up right at the beginning when you walked up and you’re doing this this part yeah yeah like that that was pretty good i gotta give it to you i’ll send it to you assistant director jocko over here you can subscribe to that and we also have an album that’s called psychological warfare that will help you get little moments get through little moments of weakness i’ll kind of get in your head a little bit press play go to your mp3 platforms to get some of that if you need a visual representation of the path cool we got that for you too well dakota meyer does flipsidecampus com got all kinds of cool stuff to hang on your wall i’ve written a bunch of books the the latest edition oh i don’t have it on my table it’s final spin it’s a book i mean it’s hard to describe it’s a transcript it’s it’s a novel it’s a poem we don’t even the publisher doesn’t know what to call it they never seen anything like it all they know is that it it they they are impressed all they know is that they are emotionally moved by this piece of work so if you want to get some of that order it now final spin get that first the dish you’re going to want the first edition of that because listen hey i’m going to write another leadership book but guess what that’s another leadership book so even though you get the first dish of a new leadership book it still is the first of a dish of a series of leadership books if you want to get in early on the novels the first dish leadership strategy and tactics field manual the quality evaluation of protocol displays freedom field manual way of the warrior kid one two three and four mikey and the dragons about faced by hackworth i wrote a little forward to that what an honor that was and then the og’s extreme ownership and the dichotomy leadership that i wrote with my brother leif babin we also have a leadership consultancy called echelon front where we solve problems through leadership go to echelonfront com for details ef oh sorry extreme ownership academy go to extreme ownership dot com if you want to get if you want to go to the leadership gym leadership you don’t learn leadership in one day or by reading one book you got to get in the gym you got to be consistent go to extremeownership com check out our online training platform all kinds of activities going on there we also have a live event next one is phoenix august 17th and 18th we are not sold out yet people are a little bit nervous some people i guess about miss rona but we are getting close so that’s phoenix august 17th and 18th after that is las vegas october 28th and 29th those have all sold out in the past these will too get him in on it early go to ashlandfront com check the events and if you want to help service members active and retired you want to help their families gold star families check out mark lee’s mom you heard about mark lee today what a freaking hero he was and his mom has been carrying on his heroic attitude with her charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to america’s mightywarriors org and if you well let’s face it if you want any more of my tedious testimonies or you want to have for some reason you want to hear more of ekko’s ridiculous reflections you can find us on the interwebs on twitter on instagram which i can only refer to as the gram and facebook echoes that echo charles and i am at jacqueline lincoln thanks once again to admiral joe mcguire for coming on for sharing his experiences but more important and i think you realize this thank you to the admiral for your incredible service to our great nation and the rest of the military out there right now army navy air force marine corps thank you for your service as you protect freedom and democracy around the world and the same goes to our police and law enforcement firefighters paramedics emts dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service and all the four first responders out there thank you for protecting us here at home and to everyone else out there think about the impact that you can have and and yeah think about it your own life and you want to have a positive impact in your own life but think about the positive impact that you can have on others think about what you can do by reaching out to people by supporting them by doing like admiral mcguire did for me by being there for people by helping them shoulder some of that weight it isn’t about you it’s about the team support your team support your family your friends your community by going out there every day and getting after it and until next time this is echo and jocko out
My WordPress Blog