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(upbeat music)
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- This is "Undaunted Life" a man's podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
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Let's get into it.
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All right guys, we got a special return guest
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on the show today.
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His name is Chad Robishow.
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So he is a retired force recon marine
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in Afghanistan combat veteran.
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Also a former pro MMA champion.
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This dude's a third degree black belt in Jiu Jitsu.
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At least the last time that I talked to him
0:38
was third degree, he may have got another stripe or two,
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but he's also a best-selling author, a speaker,
0:42
the founder of the Mighty Oaks Foundation
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and a founder of Save Our Allies.
0:46
And if any of that sounds familiar
0:47
and if his name sounds familiar,
0:48
it's probably 'cause you've been listening to the show
0:49
for a while 'cause he was on last year on episode 302.
0:52
But he's on today to talk about a new book he has coming out.
0:54
And if you guys are listening to this on time,
0:55
it is out right now.
0:57
It's called Saving Aziz,
0:58
how the mission to help one
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became a calling to rescue thousands from the Taliban.
1:03
So this is going into a lot of detail
1:05
about what I talked to him about last year
1:06
and also talk to Sarah Varayro and Tim Kennedy
1:09
and all these other folks about the mission
1:11
that started with trying to get his interpreter
1:13
that was with him on all eight of his deployments
1:15
to Afghanistan when he was on Marine Recon
1:18
and trying to get him and his family out.
1:20
And this was in the months before the fall of Afghanistan
1:22
in August of 2021, but also everything that was going on
1:26
after the fall of Afghanistan and our complete withdrawal.
1:29
We get into a lot of detail in this podcast
1:31
'cause we get into how you even met Aziz
1:33
and how do you even know if an interpreter
1:35
is gonna be good for you?
1:36
And why was he so good with him
1:39
as opposed to maybe somebody else?
1:40
And why did some people have bad luck
1:42
with other interpreters?
1:42
But on this particular show,
1:44
we get into the detail of withdrawal.
1:46
When he knew he was gonna have to put together a plan
1:48
and a team to get Aziz out,
1:50
how that kind of ballooned outside
1:52
of just saving Aziz and his family
1:53
to what they ended up doing, which is saving about 17,000 people
1:58
from Afghanistan, second only to the Department of Defense
2:01
in terms of getting people out of Afghanistan
2:03
during the withdrawal process.
2:04
And we get into all that detail.
2:06
We take a few side roads.
2:08
Some of the stories he tells are about
2:10
what the Taliban does and what they're currently doing.
2:14
It's astonishing because the mainstream media
2:16
is not giving you the narrative
2:17
of what's actually happening on the ground there
2:19
in Afghanistan and what the atrocities,
2:22
the atrocities that are happening in the negative things
2:24
that are befalling the people of Afghanistan,
2:26
especially young people, especially women,
2:28
it's absolutely astonishing.
2:30
But I do wanna talk about something from the dedication
2:32
of this book before we get into the interview.
2:34
In the dedication to this book, it says this,
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"Lest we forget, Marine Corps Lance Corporal David Espinoza,
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Marine Corps Sergeant Nicole G, Marine Corps Staff Sergeant
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Darren Taylor Hoover, Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Naus,
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Marine Corps Corporal Hunter Lopez,
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Marine Corps Lance Corporal Riley McCollum,
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Marine Corps Lance Corporal Dylan R. Marola,
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Marine Corps Lance Corporal Kareem Nakuli,
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Marine Corps, Marine Corps Corporal Deacon Williams,
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Tyler Page, Marine Corps Sergeant Johanna Rosario,
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Marine Corps Corporal Umberto Sanchez,
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Marine Corps Lance Corporal Jared Smiths,
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and Navy Hospital Corpsman Max Soviet.
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Those were the 13 United States military members
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that were lost at the suicide bombing
3:23
that happened at the gates at H. Kaya.
3:25
This was at the Abbey Gate.
3:27
Something that gets lost in all this Afghanistan stuff
3:30
is not only just the threat of Afghanistan.
3:32
I talked about that earlier this year on the show
3:34
and also at the end of last year
3:35
where I'm talking about the wrap-up,
3:36
how we've already forgotten about the Afghan people,
3:39
we've already forgotten about the Taliban,
3:40
a terrorist organization retaking that country
3:44
and doing what they're doing to it
3:46
and what that's gonna look for us in the future
3:48
and the negatives that are gonna come from that.
3:50
But we forget about these people that lost their lives
3:53
during this nonsense that shouldn't have even been there.
3:56
They should have never been in the position
3:58
where they would have been anywhere near a suicide bomber
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that could have killed them as they were trying
4:03
to evacuate innocent Afghans from the predations
4:06
of the terroristic Satanistic Taliban.
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So again, I may have not pronounced all those names right.
4:13
I hope you'll forgive me on that,
4:14
but it's always good to remember
4:16
those 13 folks because we're not gonna get them back.
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And in a lot of ways, that is the best of us.
4:21
And that is that thin line that keeps us from ruin
4:24
and keeps the wolves at the gates.
4:26
And so guys, we're just so thankful to have Chad
4:28
and I'm so thankful for his friendship
4:29
and the things that he's done in his career
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and for his time to come on here
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and talk about these types of things.
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So guys, without further ado, let's get into it.
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- Seven hours, right?
4:38
- Seven hours, starting now.
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Start your timer, son.
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I'm not messing around with you.
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All right, Chad Rose Show.
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Welcome back to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
4:47
- All right, thanks for having me on, man.
4:48
- Hey, we said off air.
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I may have just caught it before I hit the recording.
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I asked you how much time you had today
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and you're like, "Hey, you know, I got as much time as you need."
4:55
I mean, we can't go like six hours like Jocko.
4:58
So I'm not one to be outdone.
4:59
So we're going for seven hours today.
5:01
I hope you're ready.
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Did you pack a lunch?
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- Let's do it.
5:04
- Okay, I will say this from the very beginning though.
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I don't know what the problem is here,
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but what's going on in your face right now, Chad,
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is pretty fantastic.
5:12
You've got a beard.
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I saw you messing with the mustache beforehand.
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And I think this is only the second time
5:17
that I've been out bearded on my own show.
5:20
The first one was Pastor Joby Martin.
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And now this, are y'all like meeting behind my back?
5:25
Is there like a cabal of bearded people
5:27
trying to like take me out?
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I don't appreciate it.
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- Yeah, we're like, man, we got an out new cow
5:31
and we got to make sure that we had the coolest lashes.
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I actually did this to be kind of funny
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and I like had a period of time, wasn't gonna speak.
5:40
So I'm like, I'm gonna grow my mustache
5:41
and I got the little curls going.
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- Yeah, and then everyone liked it.
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So I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna kind of keep it.
5:46
- I say you should keep it.
5:47
And you maybe even trim the beard down a little bit more
5:50
to make it even more prominent.
5:51
That could be something that you would do.
5:53
But I would say I'm mad enough to fight you,
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but I know how that would turn out for me.
5:57
So we're just gonna leave that alone.
5:58
Although we do have a date where you and I are gonna roll
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and we're just gonna figure out just how far behind you
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I am in the world of danger.
6:07
But today we got to get down to business at some point.
6:09
We're gonna be spending essentially all of our time today
6:11
talking about your brand new book,
6:13
which guys, if you were listening to this on time,
6:15
the book is out now.
6:16
It's called Saving a Z's,
6:18
how the mission to help one became a calling
6:20
to rescue thousands from the Taliban.
6:22
Now, you were on our show not that long ago, episode 302,
6:27
where we talked a little bit about some of these things,
6:29
about what was going on in Afghanistan and Ukraine,
6:31
but we couldn't get into a ton of detail
6:33
because you're in the process of writing this book
6:36
and it's got to be with the Department of Defense
6:38
so that they can check and see what can actually be
6:41
in the book and what can't be in the book.
6:42
And we'll get into a lot of the content of the book.
6:44
We'll walk our way through it.
6:45
But the new book's out.
6:47
I guess why write a book?
6:48
Why not just tell the story through speeches
6:50
and why not just let the documentary
6:52
that we talked to Sarah Verardo about last year?
6:54
Why don't we let that stand on its own two feet?
6:56
And then I guess, how did you get hooked up
6:58
with David Thomas to co-write it?
6:59
'Cause I'm pretty sure, didn't David Thomas write
7:02
the Fox catcher book, which ended up being okay.
7:04
So how did all the other come together?
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- Yeah, he did three New York combat sellers,
7:08
Fox catcher is one of them, two of us New York combat sellers
7:11
put in the movie.
7:12
I mean, well, first of all, to me,
7:13
like I'm kind of a, maybe like ladder in life,
7:17
I start journaling.
7:19
So, you know, I do a lot of stuff
7:20
and I get very privileged to get to be involved
7:23
in a lot of things.
7:24
So I kind of keep track of things I'm doing.
7:26
And so when Afghan evac started,
7:29
I started keeping notes and records of what we're doing.
7:31
I just keep a notepad in my phone
7:32
and kind of journal entry, what would happen,
7:34
what's going on in my life.
7:36
And I'm really early on my publisher, Thomas Nelson,
7:41
Harper Collins, who I just did, you know,
7:44
have a contract to do a couple of books with,
7:45
where like, hey, will you keep track
7:48
of everything that's going on Afghanistan,
7:49
we'd probably love to do a book on this.
7:51
And so I just kept better notes because of that.
7:54
So I knew early on that I may turn this into some kind of,
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I don't wanna say a book,
8:00
but just like a record of what happened
8:02
and it would be publishing a book that great.
8:05
But, you know, when it was all said and done,
8:08
there's a lot you could do in a 30-minute documentary
8:10
or an hour-long documentary or a podcast,
8:13
but there's a certain thing that a book does
8:16
that allows you to really get into details
8:17
and the weeds of all the things that happen.
8:20
And, you know, and there's no limit.
8:22
You could write up, you know, 250 page book,
8:24
you could write a 500 page book,
8:25
you could write as much as you need to write.
8:27
And it gives you the opportunity to share with the world
8:30
things that, you know, author or person believes is important.
8:34
And I believed what happened in Afghanistan
8:37
was so important that people need to know.
8:39
I mean, as an author, of course,
8:41
I wanna sell books and I love writing.
8:45
I never thought I'd read a book in my life at one point,
8:47
but now I love writing.
8:49
And I wanna share and wanna sell books.
8:51
And it's something I really enjoy doing.
8:53
But for this one, for saving Aziz,
8:55
my goal is to share this story with as many people
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as possible so people know the truth
9:00
about what happened in Afghanistan
9:02
because the mainstream media not only misled the American people,
9:06
even before the evacuations,
9:07
but during the evacuations, the mainstream media
9:09
did not tell the truth and they quickly swept it under the rug.
9:13
And so it's very important to me personally
9:17
that the world knows the details of what happened in Afghanistan.
9:20
They understand the relationship,
9:22
the United States military service members like myself
9:25
who get eight deployments in Afghanistan
9:26
had with these interpreters
9:28
that served by us for 20 years,
9:30
who we actually were, like Aziz is the most incredible example
9:34
of that in the moments that they saved our lives
9:38
and helped American service members.
9:39
They protected the freedom in America
9:41
without having ever been here.
9:43
So it's important to tell those stories.
9:45
It's important for the world to know the mistakes
9:48
and I would say mistakes loosely
9:50
because I believe there's some deliberate,
9:52
some deliberate nefarious actions that the White House took
9:55
and President Biden took to hastily and inappropriately
10:00
exit us from Afghanistan.
10:01
It's important the world knows these things
10:03
and the timeline is sequence of events
10:05
because this can never happen again.
10:08
I mean, right now because of what happened in Afghanistan,
10:11
the world is a much more dangerous place.
10:13
We have empowered our enemies because of leaving Afghanistan.
10:17
We have created a hotbed of terrorism.
10:19
We have sold out the people who fought alongside of us
10:22
for 20 years and I don't understand how anybody
10:24
would ever trust United States military again
10:26
in any part of the world to serve alongside of us.
10:28
And so this needs to be righted
10:32
and I think one of the things that I have the ability to do
10:36
to make all these terrible things that happen
10:39
during the evacuation of Afghanistan right
10:41
is by sharing the truth in a story.
10:43
And like you said, I did all my due diligence.
10:47
It went through the Department of Defense
10:49
and went to the Pentagon.
10:50
The Pentagon held it for five months
10:52
and it redacted the things they want to react.
10:54
And so I did my, my full due diligence to those share,
10:59
the most accurate truth.
11:00
And everybody knows I'm conservative person,
11:03
but I really don't want it to be unbiased truth.
11:05
It's what happened in Afghanistan.
11:06
So this never happens again.
11:08
That's why I wrote the book.
11:09
Oh, and that's your question on Dave Thomas, but I will.
11:12
- Well, I was just going to tell you,
11:13
if we're going to be here for seven hours,
11:14
you can't be spitting that much fire from the very beginning.
11:16
You have to kind of pace yourself as we get into it.
11:18
But yeah, how'd you get hooked up with David?
11:20
- Well, Thomas also came back
11:23
and they said, okay, I want this to be out quick.
11:26
So can you write in eight weeks?
11:28
I said, back in eight weeks.
11:30
And they end up giving me two extra weeks,
11:34
give me 10 weeks.
11:35
And they said, we want to have somebody help you
11:37
and to organize this and put it in a good sequential format.
11:41
And so Dave Thomas was one of three people
11:43
that gave me the pick from.
11:44
I interviewed three different writers,
11:46
all phenomenal writers.
11:47
And Dave Thomas said, you know,
11:50
not only did you write three New York time best sellers,
11:52
but he previous to him being a writer, he was a journalist.
11:55
And he investigated journalists.
11:56
He's a seeker of the truth.
11:58
And we felt like we aligned in that sense
12:01
that I wanted to tell it from a journalistic perspective
12:03
of just unbiased truth.
12:05
And so he was the right fit.
12:07
And, you know, we spent some time together in my home
12:10
and we worked back and forth.
12:12
So I would write a section.
12:14
He'd write it and organize it, send it back to me.
12:15
It was just, it was just back and forth.
12:17
And we just worked in a tandem and a really good team
12:19
and got it knocked out in 10 weeks.
12:21
- Well, and you got that journalistic sense as you read it.
12:24
It doesn't just read as a,
12:25
and so there I was with my M4.
12:27
It doesn't read like a book like that.
12:29
So there is a little bit more of a journalistic quality.
12:31
So we're going to get into all the details of the book,
12:33
but the foreword of the book was written by the great
12:36
and I guess you can call legendary Glenn Beck.
12:38
And I'm not blowing any smoke.
12:40
Again, he's not here to even hear this,
12:41
but it was perhaps the greatest foreword that I've ever read.
12:45
'Cause I've read a lot of books and, you know, forewords
12:47
and a lot of times I just kind of skip them
12:49
'cause about halfway through it's like, okay,
12:50
you're just basically lavishing praise upon this person
12:53
and it's just kind of vapid.
12:54
It's not, it's kind of meaningless.
12:55
But the fact that he wrote such a great foreword is one thing,
12:59
but he was integral in helping you and the team pull off
13:03
the rescue of these afghanistan of these afghans rather.
13:07
And, you know, with the Nazarene fund,
13:09
obviously with his radio and podcast audience,
13:11
you know, you see this in the book.
13:13
They raised $20 million in about three days
13:16
to help evacuate these afghans.
13:17
And, you know, a few weeks later, I guess the total ran
13:20
to more like $46 million, because, you know,
13:23
he's got this enormous microphone and this enormous audience.
13:26
So I guess just talk to me a little bit about, you know,
13:29
not only him writing the foreword,
13:30
but how integral he was to what y'all were doing there.
13:33
And then obviously we'll get into what exactly happened.
13:35
- Yeah, well, we've been, we became friends years ago
13:38
through him helping with Mighty Oaks Foundation.
13:40
He's, he had a heart for Mighty Oaks Foundation
13:42
to work that we do at Veterans.
13:43
And so him personally, and then Mercury One,
13:45
his, he has two charities, Mercury One and Nazarene fund.
13:48
Mercury One ended up being, you know,
13:49
a pretty good partner of ours
13:50
and had been his radio program quite a bit.
13:52
And so he did what everyone, everyone,
13:55
when I say everyone, like most people in the world said,
13:57
what's happening in Afghanistan isn't right.
13:59
I need to do something.
14:01
And everybody did what they could.
14:02
Glenn Beck has a microphone.
14:04
That's his tool, that's his weapon of choice.
14:06
And what he's good at.
14:07
So all he did was what he had available to him.
14:09
He got behind that microphone and said,
14:11
let's raise some money and do something.
14:13
He thought he was going to raise a couple of thousand dollars.
14:15
And it ended up in, like you said, three days,
14:17
was like 20 something million dollars.
14:19
And so he didn't, he didn't know how to respond to that.
14:21
He called me Rudy Atala, who works for him, Mercury One,
14:25
does a lot of his international operations,
14:27
put me in touch with Rudy Atala and said,
14:29
hey, we raised all this money to evacuate people.
14:32
We don't know what we're gonna do with it.
14:34
And I'm like, I know exactly what you're gonna do,
14:35
is that you're gonna start helping pay for planes
14:37
as we get people out.
14:38
'Cause everything else is aligning at that time.
14:41
And so we partnered in that way.
14:44
And he's, so like you said,
14:47
he's not just someone that wrote the forward.
14:48
He was the integral part of this operation.
14:51
Him, Rudy Atala, the Mercury One Foundation,
14:54
have been incredible partners of the Mario X Foundation
14:58
and the work that we do.
14:59
And when I asked him to write the forward,
15:02
it was like a no brainer who was gonna write the forward,
15:04
was Glenn Beck.
15:05
And in fact, when I did the audio book,
15:07
I met him like three days later.
15:08
And he's like, how's the book coming?
15:09
And I said, just did the audio.
15:10
And we were talking about how hard it was to do.
15:13
And I said, yeah, and I just did your forward.
15:14
He's like, what?
15:15
I'm gonna do that.
15:17
He actually did the audio read.
15:19
- Oh, wow.
15:20
- What, so we got the great voice of Glenn Beck
15:22
on the audio for the forward.
15:24
- Does that make you feel a little bit weird
15:26
that they're gonna start with that silky smooth voice
15:28
and then go to this gravelly guy from Southern Louisiana?
15:31
- Yeah, I would even say my Cajun accent,
15:35
my Cajun speech impediment.
15:38
So yeah, he's the soothing voice of Glenn Beck
15:42
and then he got to listen to me
15:43
for the rest of the next six hours.
15:45
- Hey, it could be worse.
15:45
It could be worse.
15:46
But it's awesome that you did do that.
15:48
Obviously, that's a big space that's growing,
15:50
the audio book space.
15:51
So I'm glad you're able to put that together.
15:52
But let's go ahead and get to the book.
15:53
And again, we're gonna pop around
15:55
and hop kind of in and out of the timeline.
15:56
But this quote is very appropriate
15:58
and a great place for us to start.
16:00
On April 14th, 2021, President Joe Biden announced
16:03
that all U.S. troops in Afghanistan
16:05
would be out of the country in a time
16:07
for the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
16:09
Two thoughts immediately came to mind.
16:11
This is going to be a disaster,
16:13
Aziz's life is in danger.
16:15
So I want you to just go back 'cause we know what happened
16:18
and maybe the people in the audience don't know right now,
16:20
but by the time we're done, you will know.
16:21
So obviously you knew that this was going to be a disaster
16:24
because anybody with two brain cells
16:25
that they could rub together would know
16:27
that this was going to be a colossal failure
16:29
on a military front, on a foreign policy front, we get it.
16:32
But then Aziz, your interpreter,
16:33
and we'll get more into Aziz here in a second,
16:36
a guy that you felt like was closer than family.
16:38
His life was immediately in danger and you knew that.
16:41
You knew that in April,
16:42
even though all of the craziness went down in August.
16:45
Take me back to your brain in mid-April 2021.
16:49
What were you thinking?
16:51
- Well, I mean, you know, exactly what that quote says,
16:53
I was thinking like, man, this is going to be
16:57
not only terrible for me and Aziz, but for the world.
16:59
Like, I mean, we have been keeping the Taliban at bay
17:03
in the mountains of Afghanistan for the last 20 years
17:06
and had matured to the point.
17:08
And I think this is what the problem
17:10
with the mainstream media had stopped reporting.
17:13
It had matured to the point to where it was the international
17:15
effort where the entire world was participating together
17:18
in this joint coalition force
17:19
to support and advise the Afghan National Army
17:21
and the Afghan National Police
17:22
to keep the Taliban in the mountains of Afghanistan.
17:25
And it was this joint effort that the world was participating
17:27
in that was actually working.
17:29
One of the first times we've seen in my life team,
17:32
my lifetime was actually working.
17:34
And we were doing that with only average
17:36
of 2,500 to 4,000 troops from the ground
17:39
and holding the most strategic location in the world
17:43
at Bagram Air Force Base.
17:44
It sits between Iraq, Iran, Russia, and China.
17:46
And so when this was announced to give this up,
17:50
I was like, it's not ours to give up anymore.
17:53
This belongs to the world, the international community.
17:56
And we're gonna forfeit this strategic land space
18:02
to our enemies.
18:03
And I don't just mean the Taliban.
18:04
I mean, the enemies of the world, China, Russia, Iran,
18:07
we're gonna forfeit that Pakistan ISI,
18:09
which I know the United States doesn't call Pakistan an enemy,
18:12
but trust me, from the ground,
18:14
Pakistan is the enemy of the United States,
18:16
especially ISI, which they're CIA.
18:20
And all these people want us to leave Afghanistan
18:24
and we have no reason to leave.
18:26
The big push, the big lie that the media propagated
18:30
and I think propagated through, especially in the end,
18:33
through the White House, was this lie
18:35
that we were in this 20 year war.
18:37
It was the endless war.
18:38
America's sons and daughters were dying.
18:40
It had to end at some point.
18:42
Maybe we could do it, maybe it could be done better,
18:44
but we had to get out at some point because the endless war.
18:46
That's baloney, like it was not endless war.
18:48
We had not fought conventionally for two years
18:52
since President Trump dropped that mauve
18:54
and then the mother of all bombs and took out the Taliban.
18:57
After that, no US troops were being killed.
18:59
No US troops were outside of special operations,
19:02
which we do the special operationalized missions
19:04
that would happen Afghanistan happened in Africa,
19:07
Syria, all over the world.
19:08
It's just what we do to defeat terrorism,
19:11
but traditional conventional fighting was not happening.
19:13
It was being done against the Taliban
19:14
by the Afghan National Army.
19:16
So we were supporting and advising.
19:18
And so it's a pull us out because we had too many troops
19:21
there, 2,500 to 4,000, I mean, anybody with a brain,
19:25
like you said, two brain cells could sit back
19:26
and look at what we do in the rest of the world.
19:28
We have 80,000 troops in Japan still since World War II.
19:32
We have 40,000 troops in Germany and 35,000 troops
19:35
in South Korea, those kind of sustaining efforts work
19:38
and protect not only America's and our national interests,
19:41
but keeps the world, the security of the world in place.
19:43
And so I knew like that political,
19:46
and it was a political, not a strategic move,
19:48
that political move to remove us from Afghanistan
19:51
was gonna be a tragedy for the world.
19:53
And then the other thought was Aziz.
19:55
I mean, Aziz, because of some specific things
19:57
I knew about former teammates in that turned Taliban
20:02
that were now had Aziz's life and threat.
20:04
- Well, Chad, let's back up there.
20:06
I appreciate you giving us all the context there
20:08
on that decision 'cause it certainly was a political decision
20:10
because again, does it feel like we're at war with Germany?
20:12
Does it feel like we're at war with Japan?
20:13
Does it feel like we're at war with any of these other countries
20:15
where we have tens of thousands of troops?
20:17
Of course not, but it was an easy talking point
20:20
for anti-war, you know, Democrats, libertarians,
20:24
Republicans, what have you.
20:25
But going back to Aziz, we keep mentioning Aziz
20:27
and maybe not everybody knows exactly who that is.
20:30
So as a Zula Aziz, this was your interpreter over there
20:33
in Afghanistan for the eight deployments
20:35
that you did over there.
20:36
But I guess take me through briefly
20:38
how you got connected with Aziz
20:41
and what it was like working with him
20:42
because I've read a lot of stories
20:43
and heard a lot of guys talk about their Terps
20:45
being Terps, right?
20:47
I mean, they're just bad, bad dudes
20:48
or maybe they had a second phone
20:50
that nobody really knew about
20:52
and they're giving coordinates out to the enemy.
20:54
And like, it's not always a Simpatico relationship,
20:57
but it seemed to be with you and Aziz from the beginning.
20:59
- Yeah, well, from getting, I mean, Aziz is a person
21:03
I think understands liberty and freedom
21:04
more than most Americans even do.
21:06
He, when he was eight years old, his father told him
21:09
that he should learn English.
21:10
And so he went to a bookstore
21:11
and that eight years old started learning English on his own.
21:13
No one in his family spoke English.
21:15
By the time he was 14, he was teaching about 800 people,
21:19
English and hiding from the Taliban.
21:21
And when a Taliban caught him, he had to flee to Dubai
21:24
and it worked for a, as a house boy
21:27
for a Christian family in Dubai.
21:29
And then when the United States retaliated for 9/11
21:33
went to Afghanistan, he thought it was this opportunity
21:35
to go back to Afghanistan and use his English
21:37
to support an American military
21:39
and fight for freedom of liberty for his country.
21:42
And that's what he wanted to do.
21:43
So he went back to Afghanistan after being gone
21:45
for a year hiding from the Taliban.
21:47
Ended up going to work first for a third special forces
21:50
group as an interpreter and then worked for the,
21:52
made his way on to be selected
21:54
for the anti-terrorist assistance program
21:58
at the presidential palace.
21:59
And then we, then he earned his way to come over
22:02
to our JSOC task force,
22:04
joint special operations command task force
22:05
as a combat interpreter.
22:07
And as a combat interpreter, he was assigned to me.
22:10
This is my first deployment of eight in Afghanistan
22:13
that supported at JSOC task force.
22:15
And really quickly we noticed something special about him
22:18
and he went from interpreter to becoming a,
22:20
going into a more winning program,
22:22
meaning we let him know a little bit more.
22:24
He got a little bit, we got some background on him,
22:26
polygraphed him, ended up becoming a partially winning
22:30
teammate and it got trained to operate with us.
22:32
Eventually it became fully winning, fully polygraph,
22:36
fully background and it became my sole teammate
22:39
which a lot of people may not understand that.
22:41
My job was AFO, advanced force operator,
22:44
which meant I worked in a singleton capacity by myself
22:46
to go out in mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan
22:49
and really build the clandestine infrastructure
22:51
to put my assault or teams on target
22:53
to capture kill bad guys in that capacity.
22:56
It's kind of like working a little bit in the cover.
22:58
You have to work by yourself and blending it with locals
23:01
and you have an Afghan counterpart
23:03
and as easy as my counterpart.
23:04
That's why I had the same interpreter
23:06
for all eight deployments,
23:07
which is uncommon in traditional military
23:10
but conventional operations.
23:11
But for me, I had the same interpreter,
23:14
my whole employment, again, he wasn't just my interpreter
23:16
'cause my teammate, but you spend that much time
23:18
with someone, they become your friend
23:20
and he became my friend and you put his life on the line
23:24
for me every day, saved my life tangibly like three times.
23:27
I've seen him this day, the lives of,
23:29
he just was recognized by Congress yesterday
23:31
for his courageous effort to save four Navy SEALs
23:38
that were trapped in Taliban village.
23:40
He and I, he and I, I'm one of the person
23:42
went into this evacuation, clandestine evacuation
23:45
and even though I was in charge of him,
23:47
he led the effort and put his life on the line
23:50
and to risk his life to save these four Navy SEALs
23:52
and prevent a traditional QRF
23:54
which would have cost civilian and military life likely.
23:58
And so just an incredible human being,
24:00
I say he saved my life on three occasions
24:01
but when you work on the guy like that,
24:03
he probably saved my life every day,
24:05
like don't talk to that person, don't walk there,
24:08
don't eat that.
24:09
If you talk right now, they're gonna kill us.
24:10
Like he was like just the most incredible human being
24:13
and when we weren't operating, like I didn't go back
24:16
to the base and he went home,
24:17
I actually lived in his home at times.
24:19
I ate dinner with his family.
24:20
I was there and his oldest son, my shoe was born
24:23
and my shoe I was born.
24:24
And we just love this guy and he's family to me.
24:27
- Well, that's the thing Chad that was so apparent
24:29
as I'm reading the book is like, okay,
24:31
if he was just a good tarp and he just did his job
24:35
and he was squared away and he was part of, you know,
24:38
supporting the mission and wasn't, you know,
24:40
giving any intel to the enemy or something like that
24:42
would have been good enough.
24:44
But the fact that there was a bond between the two of you
24:47
and between him and the American forces
24:50
and the allied forces, like that was a very, very apparent
24:53
thing that that was important to a different degree
24:55
than what maybe I've seen in some other memoirs
24:57
where it's like, okay, this was a tarp
24:58
and he was really good at it and he got us out of trouble.
25:00
And, you know, we'll let the readers of the book guys,
25:03
it is in the show notes, you should go pick it up yourself.
25:04
We'll let the readers, you know, check out, you know,
25:07
the times that he helped save your life and all that,
25:09
the ones that you at least specify.
25:10
But there was a very interesting thing in the book
25:13
where you describe Aziz being very interested
25:17
but also very excited in the election
25:20
between George W. Bush and John Kerry.
25:22
And he was so elated when George W. Bush won re-election
25:27
but you really couldn't understand
25:28
why that was so important to him, okay?
25:30
But then he finally said, he finally said to you,
25:33
I'll show you.
25:34
So what exactly did he show you to prove
25:37
why that was so important to him?
25:38
- Yeah, 2004 election.
25:40
We had to invite him over to his house
25:41
to this election party and there's like,
25:43
and everyone there is like wall of the wall.
25:45
I describe in the book as like a Super Bowl party
25:47
and never something I've never seen, you know,
25:50
until recently I think this last,
25:52
the first time I've ever seen a party like that
25:53
was like this last Trump Biden
25:55
but I've never been to anything like that before,
25:59
especially in Afghanistan and I'm this huge party.
26:01
And then everyone just elated when Bush wins.
26:05
And, you know, their fear was that if Kerry got elected
26:10
they would withdraw troops just like President Biden
26:13
from Afghanistan and Taliban would do exactly
26:15
what we just saw them do.
26:16
And in his, and he thought it was important to show me
26:19
so he took me to some place, took me to this apartment
26:22
building where the Taliban would go and shoot up the building
26:25
and persecute women and rape women there and women
26:28
would throw themselves off the roof of the building
26:31
to prevent from being raped by the Taliban.
26:33
And he took me to this place we refer to as the killing pool.
26:37
And I've wrote about it in an unfair advantage
26:40
and I've written articles on the killing pool
26:41
and it's part of this book in saving Aziz.
26:43
It was just, it was such a life altering perspective for me
26:48
because before that, I think I was in Afghanistan,
26:51
you know, fighting for our country in brutality for 9/11
26:54
but after seeing the killing pool and what took place there
26:57
I matured in my life at that in that moment
27:00
to have a more global perspective and understand
27:02
the impact America has on the world.
27:04
And when we're strong America,
27:07
how the world's a safer place
27:08
and people like Aziz and his family face less oppression
27:12
because of the strength America has
27:14
and maybe realize how important America's position
27:17
and strength is in the world.
27:20
I mean, Aziz showed me in a killing pool
27:23
where people were thrown off the,
27:26
by the way, the killing pool is this,
27:28
I'm kind of going ahead, it's this old Russian swimming pool
27:31
that when the Russians had occupied
27:33
Afghanistan built this pool on the top of this mountain,
27:36
the hilltop in the middle of Kabul
27:38
and there was an Olympic sized pool,
27:40
three tiers of a diving.
27:42
So, you know, the Russians have really big
27:43
in the sports Olympics games.
27:45
So they had put that pool there
27:47
and now it's empty and drained
27:48
and the Taliban used it for executions.
27:51
So Aziz took me there to see that
27:53
and see where people were lined up in a deep end
27:55
and mass executed.
27:56
People lined up in a shadow and kids level height
27:59
of people like, and then how people had a new,
28:03
so steel news hanging off one of the platforms
28:06
where they would throw people off
28:08
and Aziz talked about, you know,
28:10
watching people being thrown off the top
28:13
and hitting the concrete,
28:14
like just tossed off like garbage about a Taliban.
28:16
And just seeing that firsthand,
28:18
I remember even taking my Leatherman
28:20
and pulling some casings out of the wall
28:21
where it's just riddled with thousands of bullet holes
28:24
and it just changed my perspective.
28:26
I mean, it made me realize that,
28:27
hey, this isn't just about the United States
28:30
going and doing some payback for now 11.
28:33
These people are really oppressed.
28:34
The Taliban is evil.
28:36
And we have the opportunity through our strength
28:39
to help people around the world that can't help themselves.
28:42
And I think it grew a lot that day.
28:45
- Well, Chad, isn't it so interesting
28:47
that while all this is going down in August of 2021,
28:51
we weren't hearing very many stories about that
28:53
on most mainstream news media.
28:56
What we were hearing is that this,
28:57
yeah, it's the same Taliban in name,
28:59
but they're reformed or they're an actual government.
29:03
You know, not basically a group
29:05
of a century barbaric terrorists, right?
29:08
Like we got this idea,
29:09
like we didn't hear about those stories
29:11
and a lot of those things were kept under wraps,
29:13
but don't worry, we'll get to the mainstream media
29:15
a little bit more here in a second.
29:16
But I mean, go ahead.
29:17
- This is anybody with a brain would ask this question.
29:22
The United States, the white,
29:24
when I say the United States, the White House negotiated
29:29
the surrender of that country with the Taliban,
29:31
the enemy with the fight for 20 years,
29:33
the United States White House did not talk to anybody
29:37
in Britain, anybody in Germany,
29:39
none of our international allies,
29:41
not even the Afghan government that we put in place
29:44
over 20 years, they didn't negotiate with anyone else
29:47
except the Taliban, our enemy of 20 years.
29:50
How can that make sense to anyone?
29:52
Put politics aside, how can that make sense to anyone
29:54
that the White House would negotiate with our enemy?
29:57
It wasn't their country to turn it over to.
29:59
I mean, it's just crazy to me.
30:01
It won't lie into that.
30:03
- Oh, no, I'm absolutely with you.
30:04
You know what's interesting to me?
30:05
It just occurred to me even after reading this book
30:07
and talking to you a lot about this off air
30:09
and even into now.
30:10
Isn't it so interesting that there are even diseases
30:13
out there because if those people were not oppressed,
30:16
then why would they work with the Americans, right?
30:18
And you could save money and opportunities
30:21
and the opportunity to go somewhere else.
30:23
But if their country was the land of milk
30:24
and honey to begin with, and if the Taliban
30:27
were just a group of people that just wanted to come in
30:29
and help everybody and make everybody whole and good,
30:32
then why would they wanna work with y'all so badly?
30:34
Because the disease wasn't unique, you know what I mean?
30:37
- No, no, I mean, I remember just having conversations.
30:41
I mean, when you spend months in the mountains with someone,
30:44
you have a lot of conversations
30:46
and the conversations that would just blow me away.
30:48
Like, I want my daughters to go to school.
30:50
I want my daughters to be safe.
30:52
I want my daughter to be forced into marriage and raped
30:55
at nine years old by some 50 year old guy.
30:59
And, you know, everything he talked about fighting for,
31:02
and he did, I watched him fight for it.
31:03
And by the way, like, I've seen so many Afghans
31:06
like fight for their country.
31:07
I think one of the biggest insults that I ever heard
31:10
in my life was when President Biden got on the media
31:13
and said, we can't help these people.
31:15
They won't fight for themselves.
31:16
What an insult to those people.
31:18
They, over 60,000 Afghan warriors died fighting
31:22
for this country in the last 20 years.
31:24
That's not counting the civilians.
31:25
60,000 Afghan soldiers died fighting for their country.
31:29
And we pulled the rug out from them overnight
31:32
without notifying them.
31:34
Took away their air support, took away their military,
31:36
handed it over to their enemies.
31:38
They went and fight in the Taliban.
31:39
They're fighting ISI and Iran and all these proxy people.
31:43
And we just sold them out.
31:44
So to say that these people didn't want to fight,
31:47
they were fighting for their freedom.
31:48
And they, within days, we saw, we saw,
31:55
people, the imams coming in and saying,
31:59
we want a list of all your women from 14 to 45
32:04
because they're going to be war brides.
32:05
Within days, like, this is not even,
32:07
that's not even the end of August.
32:09
We're seeing this happen.
32:10
And this the new Taliban, I mean, this the new Taliban,
32:13
the new Taliban takes 20 Afghan commandos,
32:17
our Afghan commandos that we train,
32:19
puts them out in the street and executes them, that's the new.
32:21
This is, this is in mid-August, this is happening.
32:24
Yeah. - New Taliban, right?
32:26
- They're reformed, right?
32:27
So we're supposed to believe they're reformed.
32:29
But here, the funny, the only reason why a Joe Biden
32:31
can get up there and say something like that
32:33
is one, because he's a simpleton at this point,
32:35
his brain's not functioning properly.
32:36
But also, you only get by with that
32:39
if you can give a univariate analysis.
32:41
And what I mean by that is if you say,
32:43
hey, the Taliban just marched their way through Afghanistan,
32:46
didn't even have to fire off a weapon
32:49
before they got to Kabul and you're like,
32:51
oh, well, these people just laid their weapons down.
32:53
But that's a univariate analysis.
32:54
If you go one layer deeper, it's just like you said,
32:58
well, they had their entire defense structure
33:00
around having the aid of the United States military
33:03
and our air assets and something like that.
33:05
And then all of a sudden you take that away,
33:06
that would be like you back in your MMA career,
33:08
going into the octagon after you have your arms
33:10
and legs chopped off.
33:11
It's like, okay, I guess technically you can fight,
33:14
but this isn't the way that you trained.
33:16
It's not anything that we would have wanted you
33:18
to do moving forward.
33:19
So again, that's the only way
33:20
that you even get to something like that.
33:22
I mean, they didn't lay their weapons down,
33:25
we laid our weapons down.
33:27
And I think when someone says something like that,
33:32
they have to really understand the perspective
33:33
of being in those shoes, right?
33:34
You always put yourself in those shoes.
33:35
I've seen Afghan soldiers like crying,
33:38
not wanting to hand their rifle over,
33:39
but these aren't guys that are like,
33:41
will they fight to the death?
33:43
Of course they would probably fight to the death,
33:44
but guess what, like a block down the street
33:47
is their wives and children.
33:49
- Yeah.
33:50
- This isn't like me being on deployment.
33:52
And my wife and children are safe at home
33:53
and I'm like, let's go to the end.
33:56
We're going to fight to the end.
33:57
These guys have that kind of grit,
33:59
but in this scenario, if they kept fighting,
34:03
they're going to watch their little children
34:05
be raped in front of them.
34:06
They're going to watch their wife
34:07
be stuffed feet first in a wood chipper.
34:09
Like this is the kind of stuff that they're facing.
34:11
This isn't like, oh, how tough am I going to be?
34:13
How much do I want to fight for my country?
34:15
Total detachment from reality
34:18
and understanding the situation
34:19
and comments like they were made.
34:20
- Well, that's not the only thing you could say,
34:22
detach from reality in terms of the Biden administration,
34:25
but we'll digress from there.
34:26
I do want to go back to something
34:27
that's a little known thing about this story,
34:29
but also the plight of many Afghans
34:32
is again, going back to April of 2021,
34:35
you knew things were getting hot.
34:36
The moment Joe Biden said what he said,
34:38
but something a lot of people don't know,
34:40
even the folks that know this story,
34:41
is that you guys were trying to get Aziz
34:43
and his family out of Afghanistan
34:45
long before the Taliban took over in August.
34:48
So months before,
34:49
but y'all were going through the United States
34:51
as special immigrant visa process
34:53
or what people probably heard of the SIV process.
34:56
And if anyone knows anything about our immigration process,
34:58
obviously it's super broken.
35:00
It's ran by the federal government,
35:01
which is not an efficient thing in any way, shape or form.
35:05
And especially when it comes to immigration,
35:07
you know, you have things that shouldn't take
35:08
as long as they're taking, taking 10 times
35:10
as long as you would even expect.
35:12
So just very briefly, take us through the SIV process
35:15
and what y'all are trying to do well before August of '21.
35:19
- Well, in 2009, an act goes past
35:22
that would allow anybody to fulfill their contractual
35:24
commitment to the United States government
35:27
as an interpreter would take nine months
35:29
to get their process through
35:31
and have a path to citizenship in the United States,
35:35
them and their immediate families.
35:36
And so Aziz was in that process.
35:39
And again, you look at a semi like Aziz.
35:41
This has got to did 15 years with special operations,
35:44
background checks, polygraphs.
35:47
We know who he is.
35:49
And it had been in that process
35:50
that's supposed to take nine months.
35:51
He had been in it for six years.
35:53
So when President Biden made that announcement,
35:56
I knew that, you know, I need to pull every string I could.
35:59
And I know a lot of people in Congress,
36:00
I know people in the Senate.
36:01
And even with the connections I had,
36:03
we still could not navigate this broken system.
36:06
And so that's when we began doing alternate means
36:10
to about to get him out,
36:12
even if it didn't mean him coming to the United States,
36:13
just get him out, get him as wife and kids out.
36:15
And we had to put a couple of plans in place
36:18
to clandestinely go in Afghanistan,
36:22
build a cover, kind of like, you know,
36:24
the things we did before and find reasons
36:26
to get him out that way, by the way.
36:30
- So you had the plans in place,
36:32
but those were like the, you know,
36:33
breaking case of fire plans type of a thing.
36:36
When did it become apparent to you, Chad,
36:38
that you were going to have to actually put together
36:41
an operation and do an operation to save Aziz and his family?
36:44
And like, where in the timeline did that become like,
36:46
okay, this is what we're going to have to do.
36:48
- Probably like late June is what I knew.
36:50
We're going to have to do something,
36:55
you know, we're going to have to do something physically
36:57
to get him out, because, you know,
36:59
I knew, when President Biden put this timeline in place,
37:04
you know, look, anybody knows any kind of negotiations,
37:08
you don't give somebody a timeline and say,
37:11
we're going to be out by this date,
37:12
you lost all the negotiate, you empowered at that point.
37:14
You know, you could put terms,
37:16
and again, I don't agree with the withdrawal,
37:18
we talked about that, but if you're going to do it,
37:20
you could put terms like, when we get our people out,
37:23
when we get our allies out, when we get our equipment out,
37:25
then we'll leave, but don't say we're going to leave by
37:28
this date, then the timeline only has to do is wait,
37:32
obstruct and wait, that's exactly what they did.
37:34
They executed it as a barbaric, you know, cavemen,
37:38
as they are, they negotiated as much more brilliantly
37:41
that we did.
37:42
- I mean, Chad, you have to think about it this way.
37:45
Let's go back to the ancient wars.
37:47
Whenever they had, you know, people running letters
37:50
or taking horses and taking letters to the front lines
37:52
and things like that, if someone had lost a letter
37:54
and it ended up in the hands of the enemy
37:56
and it let people know when the withdrawal was going to happen,
37:58
the exact same thing would have happened
38:00
in ancient warfare has happened today.
38:02
They're just going to pause everything they're doing,
38:04
they're going to batten down the hatches,
38:05
they're going to play defense and wait for that day to come.
38:08
I mean, again, this is not, you know, 3D underwater chest
38:12
type of thing, like this is pretty basic.
38:14
So you realize around June that this is going down,
38:17
then we got August and everything's popping off.
38:19
Everybody certainly knows that.
38:20
We don't need to do a retread of that right now.
38:23
But you had to select a team of people that you would trust
38:26
to be able to help you do this mission.
38:28
And again, at this point, you're thinking,
38:29
it's a season as family and nothing beyond that.
38:32
So take me through, I guess, how you went through
38:35
the process of selecting the guys that you did
38:37
and then obviously, a lot has been made
38:38
about the fact that Tim Kennedy was a part of that mission,
38:41
which led to some other incidences
38:43
that weren't so nice later.
38:44
Don't worry, we'll talk about the bus incident.
38:46
Then you also get connected with Sarah Varardo at this time.
38:48
Guys, we had her on the show last year go and check that out.
38:51
But I mean, how did you select your team
38:52
and then how did Sarah kind of come in?
38:54
Because this was a, you know, for occasion,
38:56
this was some gumbo that was happening right now
38:58
and everyone kind of had their own place in it.
39:00
So how'd that come together?
39:02
- Well, the original team I was selecting was,
39:04
we contact Richard McGinnis from Tuck Colson's team,
39:09
the Daily Caller.
39:11
We were gonna go in as a media team.
39:15
I was gonna take the Daily Caller in
39:16
and they were gonna actually capture real media.
39:19
But we were gonna, the cover for us was,
39:21
we were gonna be his security and advising team
39:22
and Aziz is gonna be our cultural consultant.
39:25
And then let them, we'll help them get their coverage
39:28
and then we're gonna do all the interviews back in Dubai
39:30
and I would be able to move Aziz and his family out.
39:32
That was the original plan, the Daily Caller
39:34
to approve to do it.
39:35
Richard McGinnis was gonna, on board,
39:37
he's like been undercover with Antifa and stuff.
39:39
Super cool guy.
39:40
And so that was the original plan.
39:42
And so I pulled guys together
39:44
that would just do that, a guy named Dan,
39:47
who was in Afghanistan before,
39:49
did a lot of amazing special operation stuff.
39:51
I had asked Tim Kennedy to be part of it.
39:54
And so as this plan started unfolding,
39:57
it was to take a little bit longer than we needed to
39:59
and I've seen things escalating.
40:00
So we were like, hey, we're just gonna go in
40:02
and get him.
40:03
We're just gonna go in and get him.
40:04
So I'm gonna need a bigger team.
40:06
And so I was looking for guys specifically that one
40:09
had already been, had extensive on a combat
40:12
because I didn't want anybody that was looking to fill
40:15
their wild oats in something like this.
40:17
Like this isn't the time to go fight the Taliban.
40:19
This isn't the time to be a tough guy or a cool guy.
40:21
That had an idea about their system.
40:23
So it's looking for mature guys like that.
40:24
Obviously it couldn't be,
40:25
they had to be veterans, why active duty?
40:27
And why veterans are not active duty
40:28
because active duty wasn't allowed to participate.
40:30
So we needed veterans.
40:32
I wanted guys that had ASO level training,
40:34
advanced special operations,
40:35
meaning they had been trained in the ability
40:37
to be more single-tenant independent
40:39
and not rely on a unit.
40:42
That's where guys like Tim Kennedy came in.
40:44
Tim's popular, everybody knows if he's being popular,
40:46
but what people don't know is Tim's,
40:49
not only a green beret, he's your sniper,
40:51
which gives you a lot of independent training
40:53
and he's ASO level three trained.
40:55
So he has like the independent special operations.
40:58
So he's very experienced.
40:59
And I wanted guys that I've known for years
41:02
that I knew I could trust personally.
41:03
And I've known Tim for like 14 years.
41:06
And I needed somebody that could help me be a platform
41:09
and a face for this to raise money
41:10
because it cost millions of dollars.
41:12
And so a lot of people were like, why Tim?
41:15
And for all those reasons, Tim was the perfect guy.
41:17
I knew I was gonna have to raise a lot of money.
41:19
I knew I was gonna have to have a public platform
41:22
about to pull this off.
41:23
I knew I needed guys with that experience,
41:26
not overly gung ho, mature,
41:29
and had that ASO level three type experience
41:32
that I had.
41:33
My Glover was on the list.
41:35
If you guys know my Glover,
41:38
he's came from the unit, the Delta Force,
41:42
had a CIA background.
41:44
And so we started pulling together
41:45
all these guys, Navy SEALs,
41:48
some of the four Shri Khan Marines, green brace.
41:52
We had some guys from the CIA's paramilitary unit,
41:56
a ground branch and wartime branch on board.
41:59
So we put together a really, really great team.
42:01
And as we're putting it together,
42:03
to go get Aziz, I think was one of our teammates said,
42:07
"Hey, what about this group of 3,500 orphans?"
42:11
And I think that was the moment
42:12
where we just kind of sat around and looked and said,
42:14
"Look at this experience we have.
42:15
"We have the most qualified guys on the planet to do this
42:18
"that are not currently still doing it on the veteran side.
42:21
"And we all have clearly have the passion to do it.
42:24
"We all felt our hearts were burdened by God
42:26
"to go do the right thing when the governments
42:28
"of the world wouldn't.
42:29
"And so we're like, why are we just going to get a,
42:33
"as much of the love of Aziz?
42:33
"Why are we just going to get a family of eight people,
42:36
"a husband, wife and six kids?
42:38
"Let's get as many Americans, interpreters,
42:41
"their families, vulnerable people, groups like women,
42:43
"children, Christians, our gay, persecuted.
42:46
"Let's get as many people as we can."
42:47
And I think that decision,
42:49
I think being obedient to that calling
42:51
that we felt God was putting on our heart.
42:53
From that moment on, we just seen what I would say
42:57
as a divine miracle.
42:59
'Cause what happened in the next few days
43:01
was something that I'm not smart enough to pull off
43:03
or capable enough to pull off.
43:05
And it just is bringing together of Sarah Verado,
43:09
who had knew from previous veteran's policy stuff
43:14
and Tim and a guy named Joe Roberts
43:16
and there's a couple of guys named Sean,
43:20
a C-spray, I guess, a C-spray, Nick Palmishano,
43:23
like all these people had different things
43:25
to bring to the table, my son, Hunter,
43:28
the Marine Afghanistan veteran.
43:29
All these, we just all had different things
43:31
to bring to the table that Miraculously brought
43:33
the perfect team together to pull us off.
43:35
Not only did our skill sets, but our relationships.
43:37
Like when I say this, Miraculous, the series of events,
43:40
Sarah was able to get the joint chiefs.
43:44
Everybody hates Milly and I'm a big fan of Milly myself
43:47
and Sarah will probably be mad at me for saying that.
43:49
But the truth is, as much as a lot of us
43:54
don't like General Milly, he gave us permission
43:57
to get on that, I mean, to get on H. Kaya
44:01
and be the only civilians on there
44:03
to be able to extract people from the airport.
44:05
So we had those permissions from the joint chiefs.
44:07
A lot of people were like saying, you know,
44:10
man, we were like a rogue.
44:11
People were suggesting like this is rogue operation
44:14
and we were just going there getting in the military's way.
44:16
Just if you pause for a second,
44:18
think about how ridiculous it is that a bunch of veterans
44:20
would have that Billy to get C-17 planes
44:24
land on a DOD-controlled airstrip
44:27
and go outside the wire, evacuate people,
44:30
on their own in this rogue operation.
44:32
How ludicrous does that sound that we even be allowed?
44:34
I'm not that capable of doing that.
44:36
We had all the permissions, all the coordination.
44:39
We had permissions from the joint chiefs.
44:41
We landed there and was able to pull off this operation.
44:44
All the people that we put on that airport
44:47
were cleared by the joint chiefs
44:49
and manifested, sent to another country
44:51
to be screened by the State Department.
44:54
We don't have the power to do anything
44:55
to get anybody's way.
44:57
So that all happened.
44:58
Glenn Beck came in with money
45:01
within this period of three days.
45:03
And then we need a place to bring people
45:05
'cause you can't move someone from a country
45:08
without a visa to another country.
45:09
That's called human trafficking.
45:10
The only place you could actually do that
45:12
is in Laredo, Texas, by the way.
45:13
But we had to get permission.
45:18
We contacted the Royal Family of United Arab Emirates,
45:21
told them what we were doing.
45:22
And because some of our teammates
45:24
had relationships with the Royal Family,
45:26
they allowed us to bring people
45:28
to the humanitarian center, provide us doctors
45:30
and air all the resources that you would imagine
45:32
to do something like that,
45:33
including giving us planes, C-17 planes.
45:35
And so when I say it was a divine miracle,
45:37
like that all happened in like three to four days.
45:40
That's like, if each one of those are impossible.
45:43
Well, yeah, and Chad, as you're reading the book,
45:44
that becomes apparent.
45:45
It's like, okay, you can chalk everything up to accidents.
45:49
If you're one of those people, like God doesn't exist,
45:51
we're just highly evolved chimps that used to be fish,
45:53
that used to be goo, great.
45:55
Like that's fine.
45:56
Like that's where you'll come to that.
45:57
But you see all these people pop into your life.
45:59
And again, going back to the Tim thing,
46:00
if he was only a social media influencer,
46:02
he would have been useless to the cause.
46:04
If he was only an operator, you probably could have used him,
46:06
but you got an influencer and an operator
46:08
that has a couple of million people that follow
46:11
his every workout and his every suggestion.
46:13
And so it was, it was a good group of people.
46:15
But throughout all this, you do see the hand of God
46:17
in the work that you were doing,
46:19
but that actually brings me to a quote in the book.
46:21
In keeping with military tradition
46:23
and as a unique identifier among the other groups
46:25
with similar aims, we came up with the name for our team.
46:28
Task 468, the name was inspired by Isaiah 68.
46:32
And I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
46:34
"Whom shall I send and who will go for us?"
46:36
Then I said, "Here I am, send me."
46:40
So this is where we get into a lot of other areas
46:42
where there are people that get very, very uncomfortable
46:45
with Christians that are doing things
46:47
that could potentially be violent and they're Christians.
46:50
As if those things couldn't possibly go together,
46:53
Bill Rapier and I, a Navy SEAL,
46:55
we talked quite a bit about that, about killing
46:58
and then what that means in terms of his Christian faith
47:00
and all those types of things.
47:01
But that does make Christians uncomfortable
47:04
because there are Christians out there, Chad,
47:05
that they're like, I wanna be known for what I'm for,
47:07
not what I'm against.
47:08
And so they basically take this philosophically
47:11
pacifistic approach to everything in the world.
47:14
And what they would do, Chad, is they would much rather
47:16
send thoughts and prayers to Afghanistan,
47:18
as opposed to cheap dogs,
47:20
they're gonna go and get people out of danger.
47:22
So talk to me a little bit about,
47:24
obviously coming up with that name,
47:25
it's a cool name, Task 468, you should tell T-shirts.
47:27
But at the same time, like being a Christian
47:30
and feeling that as your basis for your calling
47:32
to go and do what you're doing.
47:34
- Yeah, I mean, what I would say to those Christians
47:36
is actually reading the Bible.
47:37
- That would be helpful, yeah.
47:39
- Because, you know, the Bible is full of people
47:42
who actually didn't just sit back and pray,
47:43
but took action.
47:45
I just spoke yesterday on the subject
47:49
and one of those things I spoke on was Gideon.
47:51
You know, Gideon's the most unsuspecting warrior,
47:55
most of the people that God has used
47:56
has been unsuspecting people because, you know,
48:00
he uses the unexpected, do the unimaginable
48:02
because he'll get the credit for it.
48:04
I mean, Gideon was the weakest person
48:05
and the weakest tribe of Israel.
48:07
And the many nights it overtook it
48:08
and God calls him to go do this incredible thing
48:12
and compare that to the 12 of us,
48:14
a bunch of gray hair veterans going out
48:16
do this impossible thing.
48:17
Could the United States military have done it?
48:19
Sure they could have and they could have done it better,
48:21
but, you know, the military would have got the credit.
48:22
But I think when the 12 of us old-timers did it
48:25
the way we did it, the only thing I could do right now
48:27
and truly the only thing I could do right now
48:29
is point to God to perform this miracle
48:31
to allow us to be part of it to rescue these 17,000 people.
48:35
You know, and, you know, so the Bible is full of stories
48:38
like that and, you know, I don't think
48:41
Christians should be passing us.
48:42
I think Christians are the ones that stand up
48:44
when things are principled and it's time to do the right thing.
48:47
There's a huge difference between having a murder
48:50
and having a murder as hard and doing things
48:52
unethically to take human life
48:55
and going actually killing people and extinguishing evil.
49:00
I mean, throughout history God has used, you know,
49:03
good men, good women to stand up and extinguish evil.
49:06
And sometimes that means killing and violence.
49:10
You know, that story of Gideon, you know,
49:11
the Israelites were oppressed for 10 years
49:14
and Gideon gets called up
49:15
and he puts 35,000 of his friends together.
49:18
Obviously it's more popular than me
49:19
'cause I was able to get 12, but he gets 35,000 of his friends
49:23
against 135,000 Midonite army.
49:26
And God takes the 35,000 and keeps telling us too many.
49:29
It's too many and the story goes,
49:31
he brings down 300 men.
49:33
And in a overtake the Midonite army
49:35
and kill everyone and this is an amazing story
49:40
of a guy calling people to stand up against evil
49:44
and give this example that God's hand
49:49
is always gonna be on those oppressions like that.
49:52
And I think in this case, you know, God called us,
49:54
unexpected group of people, orchestrated all together
49:57
in a way that I keep getting credit
49:59
for pulling us together.
50:01
I got the Bonhoeffer Award and Congress just recognized me
50:03
and stuff like that, but the truth is,
50:06
I wasn't capable of pulling us together.
50:07
I look back and God orchestrated the perfect team,
50:09
the perfect plan, and we were able to help a lot of people.
50:12
And, you know, when the governments of the world
50:14
failed to do the right thing,
50:17
it was just people that were willing to,
50:19
were obedient to that burden that God put in our hearts
50:22
and said yes.
50:23
And then honestly, I feel like God orchestrated the rest
50:26
that we were just long for the ride and doing it
50:28
and just being obedient the whole way.
50:30
And, you know, I'm super thankful that have been a part of it.
50:33
And, you know, my heart does still break though.
50:36
We got to do a lot, we got 17,000 people up,
50:38
but I mean, there's still 40 million people there.
50:42
- Well, and there's so much more to talk about
50:44
when it comes to those things.
50:45
But I mean, here with Undaunted Life,
50:47
we are here to equipment to push back darkness.
50:49
Not to equipment to think about darkness,
50:51
not to equipment to look at darkness and lament it
50:53
and go, oh, isn't that so terrible?
50:55
It's to push back darkness.
50:56
And that could happen in a lot of different ways.
50:58
Again, you said, you know, Glenn Beck's weapon
51:00
is his microphone.
51:01
Your weapon is a little bit different.
51:03
Other people's weapons are their brains
51:04
or their connections like Sarah Verardo
51:05
or something like that.
51:07
But part of the reason why some people can hide
51:10
behind this veil of, oh, I'm just going to pray
51:14
for these people and that's all anyone can really do.
51:16
And I certainly don't want us to be violent
51:18
is because the news media,
51:19
and we talked about this a little bit earlier,
51:21
did a decent job of showing the downfall of Afghanistan,
51:24
but there were tons of stories and tragedies
51:26
they refused to cover.
51:27
And that was likely to make the Biden administration
51:29
not look so terrible because they were taking it on the chin
51:31
and for good reason.
51:33
And so I don't mean this question
51:34
to be voyeuristic in any way,
51:36
but I want it to put a finer point
51:38
on the stuff you were talking about with the killing pool
51:40
and some of the things that happened thereafter.
51:42
But what are some of the stories that you know of
51:45
that the general public was never told about
51:48
as it pertains to just the horrifically satanic
51:52
and evil things that the Taliban is capable of
51:54
and the things that they did before
51:56
and after the withdrawal?
51:58
- Yeah, I mean, I think one of the most grotesque things
52:01
to me is the abuse of children in Afghanistan,
52:06
not just keeping them from going to schools.
52:09
I mean, everybody would agree that it's horrible
52:10
not to let little girls go to schools
52:12
and force little boys to go to Madrasas to be taught hate
52:15
and go and become terrorists.
52:17
Those things are terrible, right?
52:19
But the direct rape of children,
52:23
and not just little girls, little boys in the Taliban,
52:27
the culture of the Taliban is permissible
52:31
and very systemic to rape little boys
52:36
in the Taliban culture.
52:38
Little girls are being,
52:42
by mid September, little girls were already being sold
52:47
for 500 bucks, nine year old little girls
52:50
were being sold for 500 bucks,
52:51
the 50 year old men to become child brides.
52:56
This was happening and we had video testimony of it
52:59
and we were sending it to mainstream media
53:01
and they would not play it.
53:03
They would not report on those stories.
53:05
And by the way, all outlets,
53:07
I don't just mean the left-wing ones that we hate,
53:10
all outlets would not play it.
53:12
There was a story that we had
53:13
in first-hand testimony, a story that this man was incable
53:19
and he had five daughters and he was,
53:21
he killed murder suicide at all five of his daughters.
53:26
He killed all five of his daughters
53:27
and then killed himself because he cannot bear.
53:30
He thought it was a better way for them to die that way
53:33
than to become raped the rest of them.
53:35
Anybody would think like,
53:36
"Why would you murder your five daughters?"
53:37
And I'm not saying he should have, but to him,
53:40
it would have been worse.
53:41
It's better to murder his five daughters
53:43
than to watch them be sexual slaves the rest of their life.
53:48
And this Me Too movement that we went through
53:51
the last few years ago,
53:52
all the the wokeism that we've seen
53:56
and people stand against sexual atrocities,
53:59
which I mean, we have to have voice against sexual atrocities.
54:03
They were all silent though.
54:05
When 20 million Afghan women and Afghan girls
54:09
were immediately turned over to be sex slaves,
54:12
no one has spoke out,
54:13
no one is willing to speak out for these women.
54:17
And right now, as we sit here doing this podcast,
54:20
little girls and women are being sexually enslaved
54:23
day by day, hour by hour,
54:25
minimum and Afghanistan and the world won't even,
54:28
not only won't do anything about it,
54:30
but they won't even speak about it.
54:32
And it's so hypocritical and it's unconscionable
54:37
that we wouldn't wanna silence this.
54:40
- Yeah, Chad, where are the second, third
54:41
and fourth wave feminists wearing their pussy hats,
54:44
going over to Afghanistan with their cute signs
54:47
and their funny t-shirts and all that?
54:48
Where are those people at?
54:49
Because we love to talk about the casting couch,
54:51
which should be talked about.
54:52
I don't wanna be little of those things,
54:54
but that's quite a bit different than somebody
54:57
that is being forcibly raped on a daily basis
55:00
by multiple men and doing so in line with Sharia law
55:04
and everything like that.
55:05
So obviously it's a very different thing.
55:06
- It's a different sexual oppression.
55:07
- Yeah, it's very sexual oppression, it's real.
55:10
I mean.
55:11
- Yeah, they wanna complain about being cat called
55:13
as they're walking down the street
55:14
with a DV shirt that they wore on purpose
55:17
so that they could get attention.
55:19
And then when they get at that attention,
55:20
it's like, ah, what are you doing?
55:22
Talking to me, whistling at me, I'm not a piece of meat.
55:24
And so I don't wanna, yeah, I'll digress from there
55:26
so I don't get us in any more trouble.
55:28
But I think it goes back to a point
55:29
you were making earlier, Chad, about the fact that
55:31
we were negotiating with the Taliban
55:33
as if they were a legitimate government.
55:36
And so to give you a sense
55:37
of what this legitimate government, major air quotes there,
55:39
I wanna read this quote from the book.
55:41
President Biden knew he had placed himself in a position
55:44
not to keep his word to the American people
55:46
at the cost of our citizens and allies.
55:48
So he and the State Department entered into negotiations
55:50
with the Taliban to extend our withdrawal deadline.
55:53
The Taliban said no.
55:54
If it wasn't clear before, the world now knew
55:57
that the Taliban, a terrorist organization,
55:59
was calling the shots on the withdrawal,
56:01
not the United States or President Biden.
56:03
We had already given away negotiating power.
56:05
We never should have asked the Taliban for an extension.
56:08
We only needed to tell them,
56:10
we will leave when we are done with our evacuation
56:12
end of discussion.
56:13
If your Taliban soldiers get in the way
56:15
or harm any Americans, we will respond with force
56:18
and it will delay our departure.
56:20
Stand down, stand aside,
56:21
because we will evacuate every single American
56:24
and ally we choose to before we go.
56:27
Now, that would have been a nice message.
56:30
That would have been a quote
56:31
that you certainly would have heard
56:32
from the previous president, from Donald Trump.
56:34
That would have been a quote that we saw,
56:35
you know, Jocka Willink recorded a video
56:37
that went viral around this time
56:38
where he basically said the same thing to where it's like,
56:41
oh, no, no, no, no, no, you're confused.
56:43
You don't get to tell us what to do.
56:44
We get to tell you what to do.
56:46
But the Taliban said no and Joe Biden said, okay, I guess,
56:50
I guess we'll just go on with that whole idea.
56:53
And this gets into the whole discussion
56:54
about the State Department was put in charge
56:57
with the withdrawal and not the Department of Defense.
56:59
And there's other things there
57:00
that we can't exactly talk about.
57:02
But just take me through this idea like,
57:05
because I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist.
57:06
I promise I don't want to.
57:07
I've no tinfoil hats near me that I can grab and put on.
57:11
But it's like, it's almost as if they wanted it
57:13
to go this poorly.
57:15
Because how else could it have gone this bad?
57:18
I don't know that I could have planned out a way
57:20
for it to go as poorly as it did, Chad.
57:23
- Yeah, I mean, I've heard a lot of terminology used
57:28
like botched withdrawal or the mistakes that were made.
57:33
I don't think it was botched at all.
57:34
I don't think any of these mistakes were made.
57:35
I think this was deliberate decisions.
57:38
As much as you or I don't like the decisions
57:42
that are being made in the White House,
57:44
they aren't dumb people there.
57:46
These aren't accidents.
57:48
These aren't mistakes.
57:50
These are deliberate decisions with consequences
57:53
and being known in advance when they make them.
57:57
And the President of the United States
57:59
has the advice and wisdom of the Joint Chiefs
58:03
and all the people around them from the intelligence communities
58:06
that were telling them what was gonna happen.
58:08
But he chose to do those things anyway.
58:10
And so it's what the motivation is behind it.
58:14
That's where the speculation comes in.
58:16
I certainly have my assumptions with the motivations were.
58:21
But to tell the Taliban a date
58:27
and let them call the shots like that,
58:32
it cost, I mean, there's no other way around
58:34
than I'll just say it, it cost American lives.
58:37
The decision to do that cost American lives,
58:41
it cost the lives of our allies.
58:42
And now because of that,
58:44
I do believe that we present day still
58:47
have Americans trapped in Afghanistan
58:48
because of that decision.
58:50
Certainly we have over 80,000 of our interpreters
58:54
still there.
58:55
And then their family members account for about 300,000,
58:59
all people that have contractually,
59:02
that we're contractually obligated to as a country
59:04
to fulfill their promise that we had an SIV system
59:08
to bring them to America, they are trapped there now
59:11
and victims to the Taliban.
59:13
And so the President's decision to handle things that way
59:15
and put the decision making in the hands of the Taliban
59:19
and not stand up with strength and to say that quote
59:22
you said earlier, that we'll leave when we have our people
59:25
out, when we're done with our evacuation,
59:27
that's when we'll leave, cost lives.
59:31
And I believe that the President of the United States
59:35
should be held accountable to that.
59:37
I believe the Secretary of Defense
59:40
should be held accountable to that.
59:42
I believe that there's a lot of people
59:43
that should be held accountable to that
59:44
because these are American lives that were caused.
59:48
These are our allies' lives.
59:49
And then not to mention, and not as important,
59:52
but not to mention the 80 plus billion dollars worth
59:54
of equipment that was left behind.
59:55
I lost a pair of MVGs in my day, I'm going to jail.
59:59
But we leave in billions of dollars in equipment
1:00:01
and we know that they went into the hands of our enemies.
1:00:05
And I don't just mean the Taliban.
1:00:06
I mean, China, Iran, Pakistan, ISI have access
1:00:11
to have our equipment and our technology.
1:00:14
And so someone needs to be held accountable to this.
1:00:16
I'm not optimistic enough that believe that's going to happen.
1:00:21
Well, Chad, I would not advise you
1:00:23
to hold your breath on that because accountability
1:00:25
is something that needs to be passed around,
1:00:27
that we're certainly not seeing pass around,
1:00:29
especially in the swamp that is Washington.
1:00:31
And so we've taken a few divergences away
1:00:33
from kind of the central point.
1:00:35
Again, the name of the book is "Saving a Z."
1:00:36
So we should probably keep talking about a Z is a little bit.
1:00:38
But eventually, spoiler alert for anyone
1:00:41
that doesn't know the story.
1:00:42
You guys do save a Z and his family.
1:00:45
But a lot of people thought that you were in there
1:00:47
running through bullets and tank fire
1:00:50
and grabbing him and running them to safety and all that.
1:00:52
And that's just not quite how the story went down.
1:00:55
I do want you to take us through a Z is family being saved
1:00:59
from your perspective.
1:01:01
Yeah, so I mean, the way that the initial operation went to,
1:01:06
I went to Abu Dhabi, myself and some of the other senior guys
1:01:10
were in Abu Dhabi, kind of planning out the operation
1:01:13
and building target packages.
1:01:16
Sarah Varro's in Washington, DC, helping clear those packages
1:01:19
through joint chiefs, sending us, we built those packages.
1:01:22
We're coordinating with the ground team, which was C spray,
1:01:26
Sean G, Tim Kennedy.
1:01:27
We're outside the wire, moving people into the airport.
1:01:32
And then we had a guy named Dave in the airport
1:01:34
managing those flights on and off H Kaya.
1:01:38
So that was the airport evacuation.
1:01:41
We had moved a Z's eight times to try
1:01:43
to get him into the airport.
1:01:47
And the day that I actually coordinated with him,
1:01:50
I was on WhatsApp with him at the time,
1:01:54
moved him to a point to where we were trying to get him through
1:01:56
with Sean G. He went to the wrong side of the airport.
1:02:00
And we ended up using an amazing group of Americans
1:02:04
that worked with us from a power rescue unit.
1:02:07
And they were able to help get him through the wire
1:02:10
and into the gate.
1:02:11
And I will forever be grateful for those team members
1:02:16
that were able to get him inside the gate
1:02:17
and get his family in there.
1:02:19
We got that day, we got 180 people out.
1:02:21
The next day, 800, next day, 1,000.
1:02:24
And then we kept just moving as fast as possible
1:02:26
because we had no idea.
1:02:28
I mean, for the team in Abu Dhabi that was working 24/7
1:02:30
and a team on the ground, no one stopped.
1:02:32
No one stopped asleep because we stopped for like five minutes.
1:02:35
You're like, someone's going to die
1:02:37
because I was selfish enough to take five minutes sleep.
1:02:39
And C spray lost like 37 pounds in 10 days.
1:02:43
And I mean, it was just nonstop.
1:02:44
And at the end of the 10 days, when Abigay blew up
1:02:46
and we lost 13 of our service members,
1:02:49
the gay troll that shut, we knew the military
1:02:53
was pulling out at that point.
1:02:55
And the airport evacuations were over.
1:02:58
At that time, we had got 12,000 people out
1:03:01
and moved into Abu Dhabi.
1:03:03
And we knew in that moment that while the military had
1:03:06
to leave, we couldn't leave.
1:03:08
The White House was saying it was 100 Americans.
1:03:10
I was on the ground, you know, and our team was in Kabul
1:03:15
saying it's probably thousands of Americans still here.
1:03:18
But the truth is, it doesn't matter if there's 100 or 1,000,
1:03:21
one American doesn't get left behind.
1:03:24
And so we chose, I mean, that's a promise
1:03:28
that the United States military, I think,
1:03:31
has to the American people.
1:03:32
Like we would not leave you behind,
1:03:34
even if it's one person, even if it's Joe Birdall,
1:03:36
an idiot trader, like we willingly sacrificed
1:03:39
American lives to go get him.
1:03:41
Like that's just something that every American
1:03:43
should rest assured that if you're in danger,
1:03:46
if you're in a combat zone and get stuck there,
1:03:48
we will scorch the earth around you to get you.
1:03:50
And that was the mentality that we had to stay.
1:03:53
We worked with so many other nonprofits,
1:03:56
a lot of them listed in the book,
1:03:57
all credit to so many people came together
1:04:00
to get another 5,000 people out,
1:04:02
totaling the effort to about 17,000 people.
1:04:05
We were flying people out of Mazah Sharif,
1:04:07
a remote area of Afghanistan.
1:04:11
And that's when we decided we had to do some other unconventional
1:04:14
things to help get more people out.
1:04:15
And we put together a two-man reconnaissance team
1:04:17
to go into Tajikistan, myself and dinner,
1:04:20
staff showing dinner's price,
1:04:21
went into Tajikistan, spent 10 days there
1:04:24
doing a, we did 10 days on the border there
1:04:27
to build routes out.
1:04:28
What had happened was, I don't know how much detail
1:04:30
you want me to get in this, but what happened,
1:04:32
but what had happened was all the Afghans
1:04:34
had pushed the Panjir Valley.
1:04:36
And the Panjir Valley was like the last resistance
1:04:40
where a Mademah suede's son had built the resistance there
1:04:44
and everybody's holding out there.
1:04:45
And they went across the border to Tajikistan,
1:04:47
families went across into Tajikistan,
1:04:49
but anybody familiar with that geographic,
1:04:50
the geography of that area is this 25,000 foot peaks.
1:04:53
So it used to take a week long,
1:04:55
you get a family through one of those valleys
1:04:57
to the Tajikistan border.
1:04:58
Once they get to the border,
1:04:59
they may run into a 1,000 foot cliff
1:05:01
or the Panjir rivers like category five,
1:05:03
and some points, I smelt waters like a slushy,
1:05:06
like a giant slushy if the water even stops, it freezes.
1:05:08
In addition to that, the Taliban's all through there
1:05:10
trying to block that border,
1:05:11
the Chinese military was there blocking that border,
1:05:14
the Russian military was there,
1:05:16
and Tajikistan border guards were there.
1:05:18
So it was very difficult to cross
1:05:20
without knowing what you were getting into.
1:05:22
And so we knew that we had to get eyes on the other side
1:05:25
and be able to give routes to those people to get across.
1:05:27
And so we went to put a small team together to do that.
1:05:31
And I picked a couple of different people
1:05:34
and we ended up just going down to me and Dennis Price.
1:05:36
Dennis Price was a staff sergeant
1:05:37
at Third Force Recon Company,
1:05:39
and he had just switched from active duty to reserves,
1:05:41
another looking at the background,
1:05:43
tons of combat experience,
1:05:44
no ego left to have.
1:05:46
He was a scout sniper who taught,
1:05:48
he's taught all over the world
1:05:50
that British S.S. sniper and S.F. Army S.
1:05:53
I think he's one of the only non-green brace
1:05:56
to teach at Army S.F. sniper school.
1:05:58
And then he's, you know, he worked at JSOC unit.
1:06:01
So he had a lot of experience,
1:06:02
and I asked the Marine Corps to cut him loose
1:06:05
and I wrote his commander, Lieutenant Colonel Tommy Waller,
1:06:08
"Hey, we cut Dennis Price loose
1:06:10
"coming a humanitarian mission."
1:06:11
And he was kind of an impossible ask,
1:06:13
but back to those miracles that got performed,
1:06:15
he said, "Put it in writing, and I put it in writing,
1:06:16
"and they approved them to come."
1:06:18
And so that was a pretty incredible thing.
1:06:21
And he and I, he and I took off to Tajikistan,
1:06:25
did about a 12-hour drive through the mountains
1:06:26
and spent 10 days on that border,
1:06:28
literally swimming in Afghanistan every night,
1:06:30
building those routes out.
1:06:31
And it was a crazy, crazy 10 days.
1:06:35
And, you know, a lot of people that knew about that
1:06:38
thought it was nuts and reckless that we did that,
1:06:42
but I mean, I'm a pretty experienced guy,
1:06:44
I've been around a long time.
1:06:46
I knew the risk.
1:06:48
Tim Kennedy knows the risk.
1:06:51
Dennis Price knew the risk.
1:06:52
We're not naive to say, like,
1:06:53
"Hey, let's just go out and do it."
1:06:54
Like, we've assessed the risk.
1:06:55
We knew what we were getting into.
1:06:58
This was not haphazard, dangerous.
1:07:00
I've done reconnaissance missions in border recon
1:07:03
all through the world and forward to operating.
1:07:04
I had already worked in this region before,
1:07:06
14 reps, I knew the danger we're getting into.
1:07:10
We just assessed it and we were like,
1:07:11
and this is something I said to my wife,
1:07:14
we were like, "What if this was us?
1:07:16
What if this was my daughter that was gonna be
1:07:18
raped the rest of her life?
1:07:19
What if my kids that would be go through this?
1:07:21
I would be praying someone would come help us.
1:07:23
No one was going and we assessed the risk and said,
1:07:27
"You know what, let's go help."
1:07:29
- Yeah, that was a very interesting part of the book
1:07:31
because it's like, you can't expect Mrs. Roba Show
1:07:33
to understand exactly what you're going through
1:07:35
because she hasn't had the same experiences.
1:07:37
Obviously, you've detailed Y'all's story before
1:07:40
on this show and in books and in speeches and things like that.
1:07:42
And so you go through all that as a couple,
1:07:44
you come out as a new man, and then here you go,
1:07:47
doing this thing that seems crazy to the generalized populace,
1:07:50
but to a guy like you, it doesn't seem as crazy
1:07:52
because you've seen behind the veil, at least a little bit.
1:07:55
So yeah, that's a great thing about this book guys,
1:07:57
about saving Aziz, is it's not just about Afghanistan,
1:08:00
but you spend a lot of detail, you get into a lot of detail
1:08:03
about what went on into Jigastana
1:08:05
and why you had to do those things
1:08:06
and how that's gonna benefit everybody moving forward.
1:08:08
So you guys should check out the book
1:08:09
to get even more of those details.
1:08:11
I do wanna go back to the moment that you actually reunited
1:08:16
with Aziz because at this point,
1:08:18
you had not seen Aziz and his family for a very long time.
1:08:22
Okay?
1:08:23
And yet here you are interacting with him and his family
1:08:26
and they're safe and you know that they're safe
1:08:29
and there's no question that they're safe.
1:08:30
They're in a different country.
1:08:31
What was that like for you?
1:08:33
- I mean, it's surreal, it's still surreal.
1:08:34
I mean, he's been in Texas now for almost a year
1:08:38
and it still feels surreal.
1:08:40
Like, I mean, when I've seen him, I just,
1:08:42
I mean, right away, it's just like,
1:08:44
it was a breath of relief when I got the word,
1:08:47
when I got the text from Sean G,
1:08:48
got a picture of him with him in the power rescue guy
1:08:51
that got him across and that was a relief.
1:08:53
And then walking up to the humanitarian center
1:08:56
and walking in his room and just seeing his face
1:09:00
and we gave each other this hug and held each other
1:09:03
and we both started crying and that was just so surreal
1:09:06
and his kids came and they called me Uncle Chad
1:09:08
and they put their arms around me and started crying again.
1:09:11
And it was just so surreal to see that.
1:09:14
And I think one of the most beautiful moments
1:09:16
is Haftra, his wife because we have this story
1:09:21
that goes all the way back to 2000 and four
1:09:25
where Aziz saw my wife on a, not FaceTime,
1:09:28
but Yahoo Messenger hit back and then
1:09:31
and he seen my wife and my wife,
1:09:33
like he was like blown away, he got to see my wife.
1:09:34
So he wanted me to see his wife,
1:09:37
which if you go to anything about Afghan culture,
1:09:38
like other men don't see your wife,
1:09:40
Afghan men, family members, much less American,
1:09:44
but we had this relationship and he wanted me to be his wife
1:09:46
as a super awkward thing.
1:09:47
Like, I'm sitting in the kitchen and he's in there,
1:09:51
he's like nervous sweating and she comes out
1:09:53
she's like kind of wrapped up, it comes out like really quickly
1:09:55
like pokes her head around the corner and she goes away
1:09:58
and I was like my interaction with her and it's like this.
1:10:01
And then over the years I got more and more, you know,
1:10:03
I'd see her in the kitchen and over time,
1:10:06
but now we're in Abu Dhabi and Aziz hugs me,
1:10:09
the kids hugs me and Haftra's in the back corner away
1:10:12
like appropriately in Afghan culture
1:10:14
and puts her hand over her heart.
1:10:15
And that was like, and she could tell
1:10:18
like she looked at me eye contact like really embraced
1:10:20
that moment and she was like, thank you.
1:10:22
And then months later, nine months later,
1:10:25
after the humanitarian center,
1:10:26
I come back from Ukraine, I was in Ukraine,
1:10:29
I was in, I was in Kharkiv and I come back
1:10:31
and I'm like trying to make it 'cause Aziz is gonna be
1:10:34
at my house, so I'm like driving through Ukraine,
1:10:36
gets a pole and I'm like, oh man, I hadn't shouted
1:10:38
like 10 days 'cause I'm in the Ukraine border
1:10:41
and I'm like, oh man, I'm not gonna even get the shower
1:10:44
before I get into my plane
1:10:45
'cause I'm not gonna miss this flight
1:10:46
to go see Aziz in them.
1:10:48
I did, luckily I didn't get the shower,
1:10:50
that would have been, and then I get into the plane,
1:10:53
fly back and they're waiting for me in my yard.
1:10:56
And I pull up in my yard in Texas
1:10:58
and I see Moshkor, the little one,
1:11:03
seven years old, running around in New York, my dog
1:11:07
and I was like, oh my gosh, it's like this real,
1:11:09
like he's here and they're all in front of my house
1:11:12
and my wife's there with the family
1:11:14
and Aziz runs up and hugs me
1:11:16
and then a little Moshkor comes wrapped around me
1:11:19
then Hotra just walks up to me and wraps her arms around me
1:11:23
and it braces in this big hub and says, thank you brother.
1:11:26
And so the evolution of this friendship with Hotra
1:11:30
is like, it's just incredible.
1:11:32
And then she's like so funny,
1:11:35
like she's never in Kabul, there's no trees there.
1:11:38
- Yeah.
1:11:39
- So Texas is trees everywhere.
1:11:39
So I think the jungle and some of the town here.
1:11:42
So Aziz is out of town, so I took her and all the kids,
1:11:46
I took them to see Jurassic Park
1:11:47
and didn't realize how real it's same to her.
1:11:50
And so she's like, it'd be hard to, she's like hilarious.
1:11:52
And so we just had, we've just had such a great time
1:11:54
with them and so many first, like first hamburger,
1:11:57
first pizza, first time going fishing.
1:11:59
I took it, I took, I've got to have a lot,
1:12:01
so I take Aziz, got to have an Aziz,
1:12:03
oh my god brother, like you say me from Afghanistan
1:12:05
to die, die in Texas, but so many, so many.
1:12:09
It's just so surreal.
1:12:10
We were in a hunting, we were in a,
1:12:12
we were in deer hunting the other day and it was like,
1:12:14
we actually went deer hunting when the Texas cold front
1:12:16
came through and it's like six degrees outside
1:12:18
with windshield and we're like sitting outside
1:12:20
and he's like, can you believe we're here brother
1:12:23
in Texas?
1:12:24
Like, I think this is like so crazy.
1:12:25
And I'm like, man, that's just so crazy.
1:12:26
He's like, well, at least nobody's trying to shoot us
1:12:28
right now, who's the boy shooting back at us?
1:12:31
- Hey, that's a great thing about reading about this
1:12:34
and following all this on social media.
1:12:36
And we're going to be talking to Aziz later
1:12:38
in releasing that to you guys to kind of get it
1:12:40
from his perspective,
1:12:41
but it is such an unbelievable blessing.
1:12:43
Like, I can't imagine the smiles.
1:12:46
Like, you've been in those situations in your life
1:12:48
and certainly you guys listening to this right now,
1:12:50
where you're smiling so much, where your mouth starts
1:12:52
to hurt and you're not doing it to be fake,
1:12:54
but it's just like, you're so happy, then you're so relieved
1:12:57
and you feel God's blessing in a different way
1:12:59
because that's the thing is Americans shed.
1:13:00
How many Americans have to pray, give us this day,
1:13:02
our daily bread, not many.
1:13:04
How many Americans have to do that?
1:13:06
But, you know, billions of people all over the globe
1:13:08
do have to do that and they're, they're very unsure
1:13:10
about where their next meal, their next batch of water
1:13:12
is going to come from, whether or not the government's
1:13:14
coming to take them out today or whether rebels
1:13:16
are going to come and take them out tomorrow.
1:13:18
And so it's a big, big issue and it's a tremendous blessing
1:13:21
and that's a message to every American listening to this
1:13:23
right now is, could y'all stop complaining?
1:13:25
I know things are tough.
1:13:26
I know when you don't get 100 likes on your Facebook photo
1:13:28
of your kid, then it doesn't make you feel good,
1:13:31
but at the same time, like, there's real persecution
1:13:33
and then there's whatever negative comments
1:13:35
someone left on your Instagram post
1:13:36
and they're just not equal if we can say that.
1:13:39
To go back to Afghanistan, to the expansion.
1:13:43
So obviously you guys expanded out from Aziz
1:13:45
and his family and you had all the stuff in there
1:13:47
and I don't want to give away everything in the book.
1:13:49
Guys, you have to go by saving Aziz,
1:13:50
but there's one particular story that I wanted you
1:13:52
to give us at least the SparkNotes version of
1:13:54
because I, you know, being around you
1:13:56
and around Tim and around Sarah
1:13:57
and around all the other people that we can't even name,
1:14:00
I never heard the story.
1:14:01
And so first of all, I'm mad at all you guys.
1:14:03
Why didn't you tell me this story?
1:14:04
But it's a story of the first successful rescue operation
1:14:09
that you all did and it was of a young woman named Narna
1:14:13
and just an absolutely crazy set of circumstances.
1:14:16
And when you want to talk about God's timing,
1:14:18
it certainly came through in this story as well.
1:14:20
So can you tell us that story?
1:14:21
- Yeah, I got a, the emails were just pouring in
1:14:24
and at the time, I mean, you got to think like,
1:14:27
we didn't, what we did, like the system we set up,
1:14:31
being around the government, it would took,
1:14:33
we would not, if I was in the government,
1:14:34
we were never gonna pull this off.
1:14:36
There's too many red tapes and we, you know,
1:14:38
so we were building a system in place
1:14:41
and Sarah's building this process to get,
1:14:43
'cause in the first week,
1:14:44
we had like 15,000 requests for evacuation.
1:14:47
And we had the event to make sure they had either SIV
1:14:50
or P1, P2, they had, you know, been an interpreter
1:14:53
or they were legitimate, legitimate orphans
1:14:57
or, you know, Christians that we persecuted,
1:14:59
they were member green court holders, American citizens.
1:15:02
So we're going through these emails,
1:15:03
everybody's getting emails, Tim's starting to get emails,
1:15:05
everybody that knows me's getting emails
1:15:07
and when people start finding out what we're doing.
1:15:09
So I was forwarding emails to Sarah
1:15:11
and just, and her and her team were just busting through them.
1:15:13
And I caught one caught my attention
1:15:15
'cause I said, American U student trapped
1:15:19
and the U was meant to be university, but it was a typo.
1:15:23
And so I thought that U was a typo
1:15:26
and it was an American student.
1:15:30
And so I caught my attention
1:15:31
'cause I thought American student
1:15:32
is an American girl caught there.
1:15:34
And I forwarded to Dan who was helping coordinate there
1:15:39
and they had a cell phone number on it, we called it.
1:15:43
And then she was literally at the time,
1:15:45
she was just outside the airport
1:15:47
in a cam air office hiding
1:15:50
in a Taliban early quarter once and she ran away.
1:15:53
They had targeted her because she was a,
1:15:55
she worked in the presidential palace,
1:15:57
English speaking, Western, World Western close
1:16:00
and they even sent her a picture of herself saying,
1:16:01
we know who you are, we're gonna rape you and kill you.
1:16:04
She had got a picture of herself.
1:16:05
And so they had already tried to catch her once.
1:16:07
She got away.
1:16:08
Now she's hiding in this cam air office
1:16:10
and the Taliban's actively looking for her.
1:16:12
And so we coordinated with a JSOC unit
1:16:16
who was willing to leave the airport.
1:16:19
I don't wanna say if they did it against permission
1:16:21
or whatever, but they were willing to leave the airport.
1:16:23
And as the Taliban was catching her
1:16:25
and dragging it out there and they came in
1:16:27
and had this moment where they had this standoff
1:16:31
with the Taliban and the Taliban gave her up
1:16:34
and JSOC guys were able to bring her back
1:16:37
in the airport and rescue her.
1:16:39
And so it was just total guy timing.
1:16:43
She's here in the United States safe.
1:16:45
And one example of a credible story
1:16:48
and that was the first person that we actually coordinated
1:16:51
to get on, our guys didn't grab her,
1:16:54
but we coordinated to get her safely in the airport.
1:16:56
- Just, I mean, again, like you said,
1:16:58
that's just one example of the hundreds
1:17:01
and thousands of stories of these different rescues,
1:17:04
but then there's also unfortunately the stories
1:17:06
of the rescues that didn't happen.
1:17:08
And so obviously we're talking about the bus incident
1:17:10
and there are certainly others of people
1:17:12
that you couldn't get to, people messaging you,
1:17:14
people that you literally just could not get to.
1:17:16
So I talked to Sarah about that last year.
1:17:18
I talked to Tim about it off air
1:17:19
and I'm talking to you about it now,
1:17:21
but for those that aren't aware of what happened,
1:17:24
describe the bus incident and what exactly happened
1:17:27
and then specifically 'cause you were hearing about this
1:17:30
as it was happening live and all that.
1:17:32
So take us through all of that
1:17:33
'cause it's literally something
1:17:34
that makes me so angry I could spit nails.
1:17:36
So go ahead.
1:17:37
- Yeah, I mean, I wasn't on the ground
1:17:39
and people at the time I was in Abu Dhabi
1:17:41
and I was on the coordinating end of it
1:17:42
and we had worked all night to coordinate these buses
1:17:46
to load up these, I think it was 25 or 27 American
1:17:51
blue passport holders, like you and me,
1:17:54
blue passport holders, green card holders.
1:17:56
We had a couple of, a couple of hundred, our friends on the bus
1:18:00
and then the families of the pilots
1:18:03
that have been flying evacuations.
1:18:06
So the family members of the pilots
1:18:07
that have been flying the evacuate.
1:18:08
These are guys that didn't tend to their families.
1:18:10
They're working for everyone else flying everybody else out.
1:18:12
That was their families.
1:18:13
And some of those people on the list
1:18:15
were people that US Congress members, US Senate members
1:18:18
had special lists of people that were like
1:18:21
had relationships with the government,
1:18:23
that's like secret relationships with the government
1:18:24
that had to be on this list.
1:18:26
So these are all like vetted people
1:18:28
and we had them in these buses coming through gates
1:18:32
and as they're coming through the gates,
1:18:35
they made it through all the checkpoints, a colonel,
1:18:39
and I don't think I'm allowed to say his name right now
1:18:42
who was in charge there.
1:18:44
Basically had a beef with him.
1:18:46
He didn't like the fact that Tim was popular.
1:18:49
I mean, that's basically what it came down to and said,
1:18:52
hey this, who are you guys?
1:18:54
Why are you guys here?
1:18:55
This isn't a Tim Kennedy show.
1:18:56
He was, you know, his search saying this isn't
1:18:58
Tim Kennedy shows.
1:18:59
He had a personal issue with Tim being there.
1:19:01
And you know, for those people that don't know Tim,
1:19:04
Tim has a personality on the media, right?
1:19:08
But Tim is like a super humble, like cool dude.
1:19:12
And he didn't go there for attention or anything else.
1:19:16
When he showed up there, you know, I asked him to come.
1:19:19
He said yes.
1:19:20
He was offered a lot of money about other people to go.
1:19:23
We didn't pay him anything.
1:19:24
I didn't pay him anything.
1:19:25
He didn't make anything.
1:19:26
So he chose to pass up a lot of money
1:19:28
to go there to do something for free
1:19:30
because he thought it was the right mission
1:19:32
to be a part of and he trusted me to come.
1:19:34
And when he came, he was just like, he showed up like,
1:19:37
hey, where's the broom?
1:19:39
Like what can I do?
1:19:40
Like that's his attitude when he showed up.
1:19:41
Like what do you need me to do?
1:19:43
I'm doing this.
1:19:44
We need you to go and support the ground team.
1:19:46
And he did, you know, that was where his best fit.
1:19:49
And so he was just homely there.
1:19:50
He was trying not to cause incident with this guy.
1:19:53
This guy had a big attitude towards him.
1:19:55
And the guy's telling him to turn the buses around
1:19:57
and take him back through the checkpoints.
1:20:00
Now what that means is turn the buses around,
1:20:02
take them back to the checkpoints,
1:20:03
means go back to the Taliban.
1:20:04
The Taliban had to add a perimeter
1:20:06
'cause that's through the State Department
1:20:07
allowed to have that out of perimeter
1:20:09
with as them being in charge of neo operation,
1:20:12
the non-combatant evacuation operation,
1:20:13
the Taliban had out of perimeter.
1:20:15
So basically take these people,
1:20:16
these orphans and these American citizens,
1:20:19
the green card holders and bring them back to the Taliban.
1:20:21
And so obviously argument ensued with,
1:20:24
hey, we can't do that.
1:20:25
Can we at least take them out and let you look at the paperwork?
1:20:29
Can we at least pull the American citizens out
1:20:31
with the blue passports?
1:20:32
And he adamantly said no.
1:20:34
And ultimately he was in charge of that base and that entry
1:20:37
and was able to turn those buses around
1:20:39
and send them back out to the Taliban.
1:20:41
And those people were never seen again.
1:20:43
I mean, we knew that at that time
1:20:45
they're not gonna come back through.
1:20:47
And, you know, it's a tragedy.
1:20:50
I mean, it's a tragedy among many tragedies we've seen.
1:20:53
And we get a lot of credit for the success of this,
1:20:56
but there was a lot of tragedy.
1:20:58
There was this, you know, right before that,
1:20:59
there was this group of 300 orphans
1:21:01
that we couldn't move one more mile.
1:21:04
And I remember us finally saying we can't,
1:21:08
we have to move on and tearing that,
1:21:09
tearing that paper off the wall of our operation center
1:21:12
and 300, you know, there's 300 human lies.
1:21:15
We had the ball at the paper and move on to the next operation.
1:21:17
And, you know, it was a lot of victory, a lot of success.
1:21:23
But equally as much tragedy.
1:21:25
- Yeah.
1:21:26
Just, it's a crazy story.
1:21:28
And I get the sense that that is a story
1:21:30
that we're not gonna be done hearing about.
1:21:32
And we'll go ahead and leave it there.
1:21:34
- And then everything like that.
1:21:36
- I think I've heard a thing or two
1:21:39
about an investigation into what exactly precipitated
1:21:42
that ridiculous response from that Jack Wagon.
1:21:44
So, you know, we'll see if justice has served there.
1:21:47
But one thing that is very concerning for a lot of Americans
1:21:50
and, you know, a lot of people all over the globe
1:21:52
is the relocation process of the Afghan refugees
1:21:55
and the vetting that was in place.
1:21:56
And so here's a paragraph that I wanna read from the book
1:21:59
because I thought this was appropriate to address that.
1:22:02
The government and military were not following
1:22:04
anywhere near the same vetting processes
1:22:06
as the NGOs like Save Our Allies.
1:22:08
I've had the privilege of talking face-to-face
1:22:10
with Afghan refugees now in the United States,
1:22:12
including some who were evacuated on our flight
1:22:15
and others on the Department of Defense flights.
1:22:17
They tell me how individuals they recognized
1:22:19
as Taliban and ISIS members were boarding department
1:22:22
and defense flights at H.Kaya.
1:22:24
They saw prisoners who were released from the Bagram prison
1:22:27
waiting among the crowd outside the airport gates,
1:22:29
especially in the initial days after Kabul fell,
1:22:32
when the White House needed positive numbers to report
1:22:34
the military would crack open a gate
1:22:36
and let a specific number of people through.
1:22:38
Those who managed to secure a spot at the front of the gates
1:22:41
were the strongest and fittest, basically the men,
1:22:43
which is super bigoted of you to even say, "How dare you?"
1:22:46
But we'll get back into the quote here.
1:22:47
They were getting in ahead of the women's children, families,
1:22:49
passport holders and SIVs.
1:22:51
Those getting through, like the Taliban and ISIS members,
1:22:54
were only getting a pat down
1:22:56
before being brought straight to America.
1:22:59
That's a big concern.
1:23:00
Whenever I talk about the Southern border
1:23:02
and the stuff going on in Arizona and Texas,
1:23:04
one of the things I'm concerned about
1:23:06
is not migrants that want a better life in our country.
1:23:09
I'm worried about what my senator from Oklahoma pointed out
1:23:12
last year when he addressed the Senate,
1:23:13
which is we have arrested, we have apprehended somebody
1:23:17
at the Southern border from every single country
1:23:20
in the world since Joe Biden has taken over as president.
1:23:24
And if you didn't know that,
1:23:25
not everybody from every country across the globe
1:23:27
loves the United States of America.
1:23:28
So they've apprehended North Koreans and Iranians
1:23:32
and Afghans and people from Eritrea
1:23:34
and every different country you could think of,
1:23:36
that's what concerns me about the Southern border,
1:23:38
fentanyl and everything else.
1:23:39
But that also concerns me about these relocations,
1:23:42
where you're relocating people that you don't really know
1:23:44
who they are just because you want your numbers to look good.
1:23:47
Like, was it really that simple?
1:23:48
Because, I mean, initially I thought
1:23:50
that's what Save Our Allies was doing
1:23:51
and I was really terrified until I realized
1:23:53
what y'all's process was like and how different it was.
1:23:55
So give us a little bit more detail on that.
1:23:57
- Yeah, and not only that, you know,
1:23:59
and that quote kind of captures it,
1:24:01
as they went through the gate
1:24:02
and the strongest and fittest made it through,
1:24:05
they're getting packed on these planes.
1:24:07
And these planes are coming straight to United States.
1:24:09
They're going to several different locations
1:24:13
around the country and there was no state
1:24:15
department process there.
1:24:17
And they were not obligated to stay on those bases.
1:24:20
And so many of them just left
1:24:22
into the populace of the United States
1:24:23
and we don't know where they are
1:24:24
or where they're gonna be.
1:24:25
And we don't know who they are, most importantly.
1:24:28
And, you know, by the way, like I think it's important to say,
1:24:31
this is not something to depend on our U.S. troops.
1:24:36
Our troops to me are victims in this and forced to do a job
1:24:40
but they didn't want to do it that way.
1:24:41
They want to do the right thing
1:24:42
but, you know, they're having to be, you know,
1:24:45
forced to use in this way.
1:24:46
But so I hate to, the DOD and the military
1:24:50
is even so associated with this.
1:24:51
But they were, you know, they had to put people
1:24:53
in these planes, they flew them right to the United States
1:24:56
and the state department was not part
1:24:58
of that process of betting them.
1:24:59
And so they did not go through a process of,
1:25:02
and maybe never will, the NGOs were not allowed
1:25:07
to bring people to the United States.
1:25:09
I don't have that power to put people in a plane
1:25:10
and fly them straight to the United States.
1:25:12
The NGOs had to find a third, had to broker a relationship
1:25:16
with third party country that would allow them
1:25:18
to come into humanitarian center,
1:25:19
would it be locked down and controlled
1:25:21
in the U.S. State Department would come there and vet them.
1:25:25
And, or maybe not even come to the United States.
1:25:27
We didn't, one of the things I think is a very important note
1:25:30
to understand about what we did at Save Our Allies
1:25:33
and what NGOs did is we didn't just evacuate people
1:25:37
to bring in the United States, we don't have that power.
1:25:39
We evacuated them from Afghanistan.
1:25:40
Where they ended up after that is not up to us.
1:25:44
If they came to the United States,
1:25:45
if they went to Canada or Brazil or wherever else,
1:25:48
you know, that was, we were not, we don't have that power.
1:25:51
We were getting them out of Afghanistan.
1:25:53
We were working with countries, other NGOs worked
1:25:55
with other countries, us at Save Our Allies,
1:25:57
we worked with United Arab Emirates and brought them to Abu Dhabi.
1:26:00
We were working with places to bring to humanitarian centers.
1:26:05
We brought, for us, we brought to Abu Dhabi
1:26:07
and then we also did that Albania.
1:26:09
And, you know, beyond that,
1:26:11
that's up to the United States State Department
1:26:13
to take them further.
1:26:14
We don't have that ability.
1:26:15
A lot of people, I think we're really nervous
1:26:17
when they saw us evacuating people and they're like,
1:26:18
"Oh my gosh, Save Our Allies is bringing all these people
1:26:21
"to America, they don't know who they are."
1:26:22
Again, we don't have that power or capacity
1:26:24
to be able to do that.
1:26:25
We've run what's called a Lillipad
1:26:28
in the humanitarian center
1:26:30
and in the State Department process from there.
1:26:32
- Well, I certainly appreciate you giving us that
1:26:34
because, man, that was the anxiety that I was feeling
1:26:36
along with a lot of other people at that time
1:26:38
because, you know, it's crazy to watch what you're seeing,
1:26:40
but then when you see these plain loads,
1:26:41
I remember seeing the pictures on Twitter
1:26:42
and so do you, of these plain loads,
1:26:44
full of only military-aged males.
1:26:47
And I'm like, is it a shock to anybody
1:26:49
that there's Taliban on that plane right now
1:26:51
or ISIS or ISIS-K or al-Qaeda or Boko Haram
1:26:54
or somebody is randomly snuck onto that plane?
1:26:57
But again, we'll have to see how the dust settles from there.
1:27:00
- But I do want to research as the same concerns.
1:27:03
I was like, I do it with you.
1:27:04
People were like asking me about it.
1:27:05
You guys doing that?
1:27:06
I'm like, no, I got the same concerns.
1:27:07
I go, I'm right there with you.
1:27:09
But you should not be just...
1:27:11
- Well, that's why there is a process.
1:27:12
And that's why you have everybody that you described it
1:27:14
as earlier.
1:27:14
Like you have all the different people in the team
1:27:16
that are helping you with that vetting process.
1:27:17
Like again, you know, talking to Sarah
1:27:19
and some of the people, Sarah Ferraro
1:27:20
and some of the people on her team, you know,
1:27:22
with Save Our Allies and then the Independence Fund
1:27:24
and really all these people that were coming in
1:27:26
to help and volunteer.
1:27:27
Like that's how y'all were able to do
1:27:29
the stuff you were doing so efficiently
1:27:31
as well as the actual tangible stuff happening on the ground.
1:27:34
But at the end of the book, you have this quote,
1:27:35
which is a really good wrap-up
1:27:36
of at least the Aziz section was,
1:27:38
but over 10 days when the dust settled,
1:27:40
we had rescued more than 12,000 people out of Afghanistan
1:27:44
with the best I can estimate over 50 recovery operations.
1:27:47
Only the Department of Defense evacuated more people
1:27:50
and we saved Aziz.
1:27:52
And as you said, that number ran up to about 17,000.
1:27:55
Y'all started the work in Ukraine.
1:27:57
You have work going in other places.
1:27:59
So that's what I kind of want to get into.
1:28:01
Now I want to look a little bit towards the future
1:28:03
before we let you go for today.
1:28:04
The future focus of Save Our Allies.
1:28:06
So is there still work to be done in Afghanistan
1:28:10
that y'all are still actively doing again,
1:28:11
only talk about what you can talk about here on air?
1:28:14
But is this just going to be a standing organization
1:28:16
that when crap pops off anywhere in the world,
1:28:18
Save Our Allies is going to be there taking care of business?
1:28:21
- Yeah well, for me, my D.O.X. foundation is the,
1:28:25
that's my baby, that's what I do.
1:28:27
I helped stand up.
1:28:29
I was the founding member of Save Our Allies.
1:28:32
One to Afghanistan mission was over.
1:28:33
I kind of worked in the kickoff of the Ukraine,
1:28:36
but I stepped away from Save Our Allies,
1:28:38
not for any other reason,
1:28:39
and my D.O.X. were my focuses.
1:28:41
And so best, I'm very close to Tim and Sarah and Nick still.
1:28:46
I do believe they're going to keep the organization going
1:28:49
and be able to do humanitarian stuff around the world.
1:28:51
I know they work in the Ukraine right now.
1:28:53
I'm focused on the work that my D.O.X. foundation
1:28:56
is doing in the Ukraine.
1:28:57
We're bringing our spiritual resiliency program
1:28:58
to the front lines of the Ukrainian troops there.
1:29:01
I think one of the big things I could hit on,
1:29:03
there's always a drama with these things is,
1:29:06
why would you go and support Ukraine?
1:29:09
You know, Zwinski's corrupt.
1:29:10
My reply is, so is President Biden.
1:29:13
And I don't care about President Biden's corruption
1:29:16
or Zwinski's corruption, I actually do care.
1:29:19
But what I care about in the effort of humanitarian
1:29:21
work is I care about the people there.
1:29:23
And people there are victims of being invaded by a third,
1:29:27
by a war superpower and having ballistic-sized missiles
1:29:30
to the telephone poles, blown into the civilian apartment
1:29:33
buildings and chemical weapons of being used and mass graves,
1:29:36
which I've seen on my own eyes, or being
1:29:38
filled with executed civilians.
1:29:41
And so I have been in the Ukraine 10 times since February,
1:29:46
worked in some evacuation operations.
1:29:49
It would be Benjamin Hall, we didn't have to save our allies.
1:29:52
And I'm taking our mighty--
1:29:54
taking veterans from mighty Oaks Foundation
1:29:56
and bringing our spiritual resiliency program
1:29:58
in the front line, providing medical support
1:30:00
with equipment and instruction on how to use that support,
1:30:04
kind of filling in the gap where those billions of dollars
1:30:06
are not reaching.
1:30:07
And then bringing our mentor and spiritual resiliency program
1:30:10
to the freedom fighter.
1:30:12
So in the front lines, defending our homes and families
1:30:14
and weigh a life.
1:30:15
And so that's what we've been doing there.
1:30:17
And we've got mighty Oaks, we do so much for our first responders
1:30:21
and veterans and active-use service members back home.
1:30:24
And we have our separate international division
1:30:26
for stuff like this, nothing new for us.
1:30:28
We've been doing this since 2016, before the Ukrainian war
1:30:31
kicked off, we had already been here three times.
1:30:33
Yeah, absolutely.
1:30:34
And guys, there's a link in the show notes
1:30:36
to the mighty Oaks Foundation, so you
1:30:37
can check out a little bit more information on that.
1:30:39
Again, speaking about the future a little bit,
1:30:41
and you've alluded to some of this,
1:30:43
the strategic ramifications of giving up
1:30:46
Afghanistan and specifically giving up Bagram Air Base.
1:30:50
I actually had a discussion with somebody who works.
1:30:53
I've got to be careful.
1:30:54
He works in Washington, DC.
1:30:56
And he's not an unimportant person.
1:30:58
He and I are having dinner at some point in the past.
1:31:02
There you go.
1:31:03
Have I covered all my bases?
1:31:04
And we were talking about the giving up of Bagram Air Base.
1:31:07
And I mentioned-- and he goes, Kyle Bagram's
1:31:08
not that big a deal.
1:31:09
And I was like, wait a minute, just strategically
1:31:12
where the thumbtack is on the map makes it strategic.
1:31:15
And he's like, and this is a guy that knows a thing or two.
1:31:17
This isn't just some guy that plays whack-a-mole
1:31:20
with his opinions.
1:31:21
And I was like, he's the only person I ever heard
1:31:23
say that Bagram wasn't that big a deal.
1:31:25
But obviously, the future of the Afghanistan
1:31:27
hinges on the door that's now been
1:31:29
open for Iranian interests in the country and in the land,
1:31:33
Chinese interests in the country and in the land,
1:31:35
giving the rights up to the land and its natural minerals
1:31:39
and metals and things like that.
1:31:40
So talk to me strategically about the future of Afghanistan
1:31:43
because I don't want to be the guy that's just
1:31:45
looking up to the sky that's falling and saying, hey,
1:31:47
this is just going to be--
1:31:49
we're going to get Taliban 2.0 an X amount of time
1:31:51
or we're going to see a terrorist attack an X amount of time.
1:31:53
Our China is going to take over and it's
1:31:54
going to screw up the world.
1:31:55
But what are we looking at for the future
1:31:56
because of what we did in the summer of 2021?
1:32:00
Yeah, I mean, well, Afghanistan has always
1:32:01
been a big deal.
1:32:02
People have fought for that land for thousands of years
1:32:04
for a reason.
1:32:06
Alexander to Great wanted it.
1:32:07
Russia's wanted it.
1:32:08
All these places-- it's called the graveyard of empires
1:32:11
because people have fought for control of Afghanistan.
1:32:14
It is a strategic part in the globe.
1:32:16
I think in today's world, it's the most strategic place
1:32:18
in the globe.
1:32:19
And there's a lot of motivations and reasons
1:32:21
for people to have it.
1:32:23
I mean, one motivation for America
1:32:24
would be to have that strategic location
1:32:26
to provide global security as far as NATO as well,
1:32:31
just to have that strategic location in the globe.
1:32:33
But that's motivations for places like China.
1:32:36
I mean, China wanted those mineral rights
1:32:38
to the Hindu Kush mountains.
1:32:39
They've wanted it for a long time.
1:32:41
I was calling it conspiracy theorists for saying that.
1:32:43
But in September 1, Taliban gave the mineral rights
1:32:47
to the Chinese government for the mineral rights
1:32:49
and the Hindu Kush mountains.
1:32:50
And that's worth billions and billions of dollars.
1:32:53
That's where all the lithium comes from for all these car
1:32:57
batteries and all that stuff for the Tesla and all these--
1:33:03
that's where it all comes from.
1:33:04
And that's where the most abundant source of it is.
1:33:07
And then you have the interest of economically,
1:33:10
you have the interest of Iran who has sanctioned oil,
1:33:12
can't sell it anywhere.
1:33:14
And China, who needs oil, and wants to buy cheap oil from Iran,
1:33:17
the only thing that's sat in between those two
1:33:19
that transaction was the United States military
1:33:22
at Bagram Air Force Base in the middle of Afghanistan.
1:33:25
And so they needed the United States to be pulled out
1:33:28
of there so they'd have that free traffic route
1:33:31
to build to move our sanction, Iranian oil to China.
1:33:34
And we already know that's happening now.
1:33:36
And then there's Pakistan ISI that
1:33:38
wanted to have that strategic location in Pakistan intelligence.
1:33:43
And now we already know that both China and Pakistan
1:33:46
have a place on Bagram Air Force Base
1:33:48
and are pretty much essentially a two countries partnered
1:33:51
in running that base.
1:33:53
And so there's a lot of strategic interest in that location.
1:33:58
We've already seen it.
1:33:59
Anybody that follows the intelligence, open source
1:34:02
intelligence information, can already
1:34:04
see what the Taliban's doing there.
1:34:05
And then within months, you've seen
1:34:07
it become the hotbed for terrorism, Al-Zahiri from ISIS
1:34:12
was freely walking around Kabul, felt comfortable enough
1:34:15
to walk around.
1:34:16
I kind of got irritated when that White House was high-fiving
1:34:18
that we killed him.
1:34:19
I'm like, of course, we should kill him.
1:34:21
I mean, I agree with killing him.
1:34:22
Of course, we should kill him.
1:34:23
But why was he walking around freely in Kabul?
1:34:27
Because we created that situation.
1:34:28
We allowed him to be there and create a hotbed of terrorism
1:34:32
for Al-Zahiri to feel comfortable walking around Kabul
1:34:37
as an indication that we made a bad decision by opening it up.
1:34:40
And by the way, that Doha agreement
1:34:42
that shows the Doha agreement, which tells the Taliban
1:34:45
that they can't have any terrorism happening there,
1:34:48
which is a contradiction of terms because they
1:34:50
are a terrorist organization.
1:34:52
It shows that it means nothing.
1:34:53
Wait a minute, wait a minute, Chad, this is breaking news to me.
1:34:56
You're telling me that terrorists don't pay attention
1:34:58
to international laws?
1:34:59
I was told that they would get a slap on the wrist
1:35:02
and that they didn't want that to happen.
1:35:04
Are you saying that's not how it works?
1:35:05
Taliban 2.0 is supposed to follow the rules.
1:35:07
But yeah, there's Doha agreements, a joke.
1:35:09
And not only is there a joke, but where are the consequences?
1:35:13
Are there any consequences to it?
1:35:15
I mean, why are you going to have an agreement
1:35:17
if there's no consequences?
1:35:19
Yeah, I would certainly agree with that.
1:35:22
There's so much here that we could talk about,
1:35:24
but I was totally kidding when I said we would go seven hours.
1:35:26
If you were here with me in my studio right now,
1:35:28
we would certainly do that.
1:35:29
We got a secondary studio over there just for guys like you.
1:35:32
But as much as I don't think I've gotten you
1:35:34
into enough trouble today, I'm going to leave you
1:35:36
with this last question because you mentioned
1:35:38
your son Hunter earlier.
1:35:39
So he's actually a third generation Robocho Marine
1:35:43
to be very specific.
1:35:44
So this was a guy that went over there with you.
1:35:47
You basically couldn't stop him from going overseas
1:35:49
with you during this entire thing.
1:35:51
He says this because he wanted to watch your back,
1:35:52
but I think it's because he wanted to watch, you know,
1:35:54
trip and fall or do something bad
1:35:55
that he could always bring up a Thanksgiving dinner
1:35:57
or something like that.
1:35:58
But the question I have is kind of in the vein
1:36:01
of what we were talking about, about the future of Afghanistan,
1:36:03
the future of the world really,
1:36:05
but also the future of the United States specifically
1:36:08
as it pertains to the state of the military
1:36:10
and really the wokeness therein.
1:36:12
You see the vice president of the United States
1:36:14
here recently posted this photo of her
1:36:15
with a bunch of, you know, people in uniform.
1:36:18
And it looked like they were all picked for a specific reason.
1:36:22
Like they were women, you know, people of color.
1:36:24
They were like this, you know, array of people
1:36:27
that, you know, are basically democratic voters,
1:36:30
which isn't to say they're not going to be good soldiers,
1:36:32
which isn't to say that they're not courageous,
1:36:34
none of those types of things.
1:36:35
But it seems like the focus on the military
1:36:37
is we want more people that have a non-binary mom
1:36:41
or have two daddies or something like that
1:36:43
to be in the military as opposed to.
1:36:45
We want the people that are gonna be the best
1:36:46
at killing people and breaking stuff,
1:36:48
which is what I thought the whole idea
1:36:50
of the United States military was,
1:36:52
is at the threat of us killing you
1:36:54
and breaking your stuff, don't attack us.
1:36:56
And if you do attack us,
1:36:58
we're going to kill all of you and break all of your stuff.
1:37:01
- I'm very, very concerned about the future of the military.
1:37:03
I'm concerned about my sons that are, you know,
1:37:05
two and below one years old right now that, you know,
1:37:08
18 years down the line, will the military even be something
1:37:11
that a young, virile testosterone filled boy
1:37:14
will even want to go into at that point?
1:37:15
So what do you think?
1:37:16
- You should be concerned and everyone should be concerned
1:37:19
because we're already seeing in that now.
1:37:20
I mean, the recruiting numbers have never been so low.
1:37:23
They're 28% down, they're 28% down on average.
1:37:27
And that's considering that they're already cutting positions
1:37:29
to try to skew those numbers.
1:37:31
The Army just cut 15,000 positions.
1:37:33
The morale of the military has never been lower
1:37:36
because of COVID, because of all this woke stuff
1:37:38
and not focused on training.
1:37:40
You know, everyone needs to realize
1:37:42
that the purpose of the United States military,
1:37:44
regardless of your political position,
1:37:46
the purpose of the United States military
1:37:47
is to win wars and protect the national interests
1:37:50
of the United States.
1:37:50
That's the purpose of the military.
1:37:52
That purpose is not what we're seeing take place right now.
1:37:56
I mean, the White House just spent $2 million to do a study.
1:38:01
By the way, the study was done by two PhDs
1:38:04
out of, I think, Pennsylvania or Pittsburgh
1:38:07
that never served in the military.
1:38:08
And the study was on removing the harmfulness
1:38:12
of using sur or ma'am in Marine Corps boot camp.
1:38:15
- Yup.
1:38:17
- And I mean, so things like this have no place
1:38:19
in the military, it's wokism is no place in the military.
1:38:21
It harms our national security.
1:38:23
And, you know, the last I checked, it is not a right
1:38:27
to serve in the military.
1:38:28
We keep hearing that people have a right to serve,
1:38:30
you don't have a right to serve.
1:38:31
My son, well, Hayden, who was the,
1:38:36
my youngest son, Hayden, who was the 84 years
1:38:39
of service in our family in 54 years in the Marine Corps,
1:38:44
he just, you know, my son, Hunter was a Marine
1:38:47
and my son, Hayden, he was put out in the Marine Corps
1:38:49
because he didn't take the vaccine.
1:38:51
He didn't have a right to serve, right?
1:38:53
But he can't take an vaccine, but he, if he took a,
1:38:56
but if he wants to take, you know, gene altering,
1:38:59
hormone altering medicines or anything like that,
1:39:02
you know, then he would have a right to serve.
1:39:04
You apply for the military.
1:39:05
You get accepted in the military.
1:39:07
If I don't have flat feet, I don't get in the military.
1:39:09
If I was missing my pinky finger,
1:39:11
I wouldn't be able to get in the military.
1:39:13
If I have color blindness, I don't get in the military.
1:39:16
It's not, you don't have a right to serve in the military.
1:39:17
You have to be qualified to serve in the military.
1:39:19
And at qualifications based on our ability
1:39:22
to put the best of our nation forward
1:39:24
to protect our nation from our enemies around the world.
1:39:27
And this social wokeism is not only destroying our country,
1:39:32
but it's extremely dangerous to our national security.
1:39:36
I don't feel our military's morale right now
1:39:38
is where it needs to be to have our nation,
1:39:42
you know, in a position to defend itself.
1:39:45
And it's terrifying.
1:39:46
It should be terrifying to every American.
1:39:48
Well, Chad, I certainly agree with that.
1:39:50
And I don't know what can turn it around,
1:39:52
but it needs to happen quickly.
1:39:54
And obviously, I don't think that's going to be
1:39:55
because your favorite, you know, politician
1:39:57
that wears a red tie as opposed to a blue tie
1:39:59
getting in the office is going to fix all of this.
1:40:01
But the trends are not good
1:40:03
and the trend lines need to change.
1:40:04
And we certainly want to be there for that.
1:40:06
But Chad, we've covered an unbelievable amount of ground.
1:40:08
This is a new record for you coming on our show.
1:40:11
This is the longest time we spent together.
1:40:12
Again, I know seven hours was the goal,
1:40:14
but we made it about 90 minutes.
1:40:15
I hope you're satisfied with that.
1:40:17
But that's all for me, is there anything else
1:40:18
you want to get off your chest?
1:40:19
No, no, I'm excited for everyone to read "Saving a Z's."
1:40:23
I'd like it with any other, any other book reviews help.
1:40:26
So if you read it and I like it, shoot a review.
1:40:30
If you don't like it, then keep it to yourself.
1:40:32
So that's the thing guys, only leave five star reviews.
1:40:35
If it's four below, just move on with their life.
1:40:38
You don't need to waste your time
1:40:39
leaving a review saying you didn't like it very much.
1:40:41
Leave your five stars.
1:40:42
Guys, it is in the show notes, saving a Z's.
1:40:44
It is well worth your time.
1:40:46
Chad Robocho, thank you for coming back
1:40:47
on Undaunted Life Amanda's podcast.
1:40:49
- Thanks, bro.
1:40:50
Appreciate it.
1:40:51
God bless.
1:40:51
- There you go, guys.
1:40:52
I hope you enjoyed the return appearance of Chad Robocho
1:40:54
on our show, but before we let you go,
1:40:55
we are gonna do a quick resilience boost.
1:40:57
Add Undaunted Life, our mission is equipping
1:40:59
men to push back darkness with content
1:41:01
that forges spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
1:41:03
So here are the links I've got for you today.
1:41:05
I've got a link to the book, "Saving a Z's,
1:41:06
How the Mission to Help One" became a calling
1:41:08
to rescue thousands from the Taliban.
1:41:10
I've also got links to the Save Our Allies
1:41:12
and Mighty Oaks website.
1:41:13
And then I've got a link to Chad Robocho's Instagram page
1:41:15
and his last appearance on our show, Episode 302.
1:41:19
Thank you guys for listening to this episode.
1:41:20
Wherever you're listening to this,
1:41:21
please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five star
1:41:23
of you.
1:41:24
If you want to come speak live at your event
1:41:26
or on your podcast, you shoot me an email
1:41:27
to info@undaunted.life.
1:41:29
That's i-n-f-o@undaunted.life.
1:41:32
Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook
1:41:33
and check out our website for everything else,
1:41:35
including how to donate to keep more content
1:41:36
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1:41:38
Just go to www.undaunted.life.
1:41:40
And as always, we want to thank the band,
1:41:42
August Burns Red for allowing us to use their music
1:41:44
for our content. The music on this podcast
1:41:46
is our song, "Cutting the Tides,"
1:41:47
which is off their 10th anniversary re-recording
1:41:49
of their album, "Leveler."
1:41:50
The links are in the description.
1:41:52
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:41:54
Remember, keep pushing back darkness,
1:41:57
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
1:42:00
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:42:03
(upbeat music)
1:42:06
♪ I love my land ♪
1:42:08
♪ There's a heart in life ♪
1:42:10
♪ And all you want is a sign ♪
1:42:14
♪ It may stand ♪
1:42:15
♪ And I'll find you ♪
1:42:18
♪ You will be revived ♪