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0:37
This is Undaunted Life, a Man's Podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:50
Let's get into it. Hi guys, today I've got a special guest on the podcast. His name is Eric
0:54
Maddox. So Eric is a speaker, a consultant, and a sales and negotiation trainer, but he's also
0:59
United States Army veteran where he did eight deployments as an interrogator. Now, this is a
1:04
really, really awesome conversation because when you're sending questions to a person who is doing
1:09
questioning professionally for as long as he did, it's kind of a daunting task, but I wanted to make
1:13
sure I took that on. This guy did over 2,700 interrogations during his time in the United States
1:18
military, but he was embedded, and this is what he's known for mainly, but he was embedded with a
1:22
Delta four special operations team into Crete, Iraq. And during a six month deployment, when he
1:27
was in Iraq, he did over 300 interrogations, which led him and his team to finding the most
1:34
wanted man in the world at that time. So to put it simply, Eric Maddox is the guy that figured out
1:41
where Saddam Hussein was hiding. Yeah, he was the guy. He's the guy that figured out where we could
1:48
find one of the most brutal dictators in the history of planet Earth. It's an absolutely crazy story.
1:54
He details a story in his book called Mission Blacklist. Number one, the inside story of the search for
1:58
Saddam Hussein as told by the soldier who masterminded his capture. So guys, in this interview, we get
2:03
into all of that. And so there at the beginning, you know, we talk about kind of why he wanted to
2:07
get into the military, then we transition to kind of what he's doing now as a civilian. He's kind of
2:11
training other people to learn how to do these techniques that he learned how to do as being
2:15
an interrogator over there. But then we got into the nitty gritty of how they found Saddam Hussein,
2:20
because this was the thing everybody wanted, right? You know, every single one branch of the
2:24
military wanted them, the CIA wanted them. The other countries wanted them. They wanted this guy,
2:28
but nobody was even getting close until Eric Maddox popped his head into the process and decided he
2:33
was going to do things a little bit differently. So guys, great, great interview. Make sure you
2:36
stick around to see how he was able to find Saddam Hussein. But I'm not going to keep him from you
2:40
any longer without further ado. Let's get into it. Eric Maddox, welcome back to Undaunted Life
2:46
of Man's podcast. Thank you, Kyle. Good to see you again. Yeah, it was good. It was great to have
2:51
you be a part of the botching Afghanistan series because we were able to kind of utilize a lot of
2:55
the stuff that you had learned and kind of taken in. And so that's how our audience got introduced
2:58
to you. But now as promised, we're going to get a lot deeper into everything. But I'm going to start
3:02
this the way that I start almost every podcast I do with somebody that used to be in the United
3:06
States military is for you specifically, Eric, why did you decide to join the US military? What was
3:12
it in you that that did that? And I guess why specifically join the army? So I didn't want to
3:19
join the army. I never had dreams to join the army. I always loved my country. I had a calling.
3:24
And it was coming up into my senior year at the University of Oklahoma. Everything was going great.
3:30
I was going to graduate, go to law school, and I was out jogging. And I had a very clear inner feeling
3:37
that said, go join the army and go figure out what a ranger is. I had no idea. And I stopped where
3:45
I was in my tracks and went to the recruiter. Well, when you get to the recruiter, I mean,
3:50
I've heard so many horrible recruiting stories. And you know, then I've heard a lot of people
3:54
are like, yeah, I just kind of walked in and did my thing. So for you, was it a good experience?
3:58
Do you feel like you got your questions answered? Did you maybe get sold a bill of goods that didn't
4:02
end up being real or what? It wasn't a great experience. I'll always tell people recruiters have a job.
4:07
They need to sign people up for the army. You have a job. Get what's right for you. It's your last
4:12
moment of freedom. So I told the recruiter, um, think I'm supposed to be an airborne ranger.
4:19
And he looked at me and he said, you don't want to do that. I said,
4:25
well, you are a recruiter, right? So we, that's what we started the process.
4:30
Okay. So in your book, which we'll get way more into your book a little bit later,
4:34
I thought it was interesting because you talked about, if I remember correctly,
4:37
how you kind of wanted to become a grunt, like you, you didn't have these kind of grandiose
4:41
aspirations of, you know, Delta Force or any type of other special operator or something like that.
4:45
Like, you know, you, you almost wanted that. And you don't, especially in a modern context,
4:50
hear that a lot. You're people that are maybe trying to get into the military so that they can
4:54
do this grandiose thing and maybe get a medal, a medal of honor someday, even though they don't
4:57
really realize what comes with that. But you talk about wanting to do that, but you eventually found
5:02
yourself, uh, training to be an interrogator. So that, that is not a direct line for me. So if
5:07
you could like explain how you went from that attitude of just want to do the grunt thing to
5:11
be an interrogator, which is a very niche thing. So Kyle, it's because I didn't know about all
5:16
those cool things in the military. I just knew grunt infantry. My goal was airborne ranger.
5:23
They signed me up as an infantry with an 80 second airborne division contract and said I could go
5:28
to ranger school when I was there, which is what I did. I didn't even know there was a 75th ranger
5:33
regiment. So when I say airborne ranger, I need to be clear. I'm a graduate of ranger school,
5:38
but during that first three years, what I started to see was, man, the army can teach you anything.
5:44
And I struggled with basic Spanish and high school. And I thought, I wonder if they can teach me a
5:51
foreign language. Chinese Mandarin is the hardest one. So in the middle of my first enlistment,
5:56
I went and took the test for Chinese Mandarin. They said, you're, you can, you can do this.
6:00
I thought, well, with the army's help, I bet I can. So I re enlisted to be a Chinese Mandarin
6:06
linguist. And they said, by the way, you got to pick a job at MOS. And they had, you know,
6:10
the voice interceptors, and then they had an interrogator. And I said, well, what's the
6:15
difference? And they said, you'll never do interrogations, but it's a shorter training. So go
6:20
learn Chinese Mandarin. Don't worry. You'll never do an interrogation your entire career.
6:24
And that definitely didn't end up happening because I, the understanding I got is you would
6:29
have been like this. If you had gotten the other job, you would have these on all day long. You'd
6:32
be listening to people talk in another language for hours on end. And obviously the role of
6:37
interrogator suited you. And again, we're going to get way more into that here in a second. But
6:42
what I wouldn't want to actually do is I want to skip over your entire military career. I'm
6:46
going to do a weird interview here for you guys, but we're going to skip over your entire military
6:49
career. Because what you did in the military, fed directly into what you're doing now as a
6:54
civilian, which is interesting. But I guess the easiest way to kind of tee that up is how did you
7:00
come to the decision to leave the military initially? And at that time, because you know,
7:06
now we can kind of look back and you can connect connect the dots pretty easily. But did you have
7:10
a fully formed idea of what you wanted to do when you got out?
7:15
So, great question. My military departure happened really quickly after the capture of Saddam.
7:22
I was never going to leave the military. I'd been in for two years, 10 years with the capture of
7:26
Saddam 10. And I had this opportunity because of the capture of Saddam, the Department of Defense,
7:31
the Defense Intelligence Agency created a civilian interrogator. I was being hired as the first one.
7:38
So, I transitioned to the DIA and kept doing same office, same everything deploying with the joint
7:45
special operations command for the next 10 years. And it's at that 20-year point that I knew what
7:54
I wanted to do. I wanted to go teach this thing that I had discovered that I had learned that builds
8:03
trust. It's a communication process. I believe it's profound. And I knew that business leaders need
8:11
this because we try to build trust by doing all the talking, making about ourselves. But I had
8:18
learned this thing to gain cooperation from prisoners that said, there's a better way to talk.
8:23
There's a better way to listen. And the results are crazy. So, at that point, when I left the
8:29
government, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And so, what you alluded to there was actually the
8:35
system where, you know, I don't know if this is what you call the system, but it's empathy-based
8:39
listening. And so, I've been through a million different sales trainings in my life. And a lot
8:44
of them have been garbage. And some of them have actually been useful. But this is the approach
8:48
that typically works for people because the thing is, is you don't get paid on the information you
8:52
give out. You get paid on the information you bring in, right? And you can't do that unless you're
8:56
listening, right? So, I guess tell us what empathy-based listening is and kind of how did you develop that?
9:02
So, one of the things that to be clear on what this empathy-based listening is,
9:07
it's not just listening to get better information. So, we make better decisions.
9:12
It's an empowerment of people that you have partnerships with. So, if you imagine, when a group of
9:20
people, one or two people, when they are going to partner, they got to share resources. And the big
9:24
question that people have is, what, when we come together and I trust you with resources,
9:31
what are you going to do with them? Because you can be really good at your job. You're going to,
9:36
you can be dependable and do what you say you're going to do. But are you going to do it for your
9:39
goals first? Or are you going to do it for mine? And the only way that somebody internally believes
9:46
that is during communication, if the conversation is about them and not yourself. Now, naturally,
9:55
we're selfish. We're self-centered. We think we're listening for the other person. But every time
10:01
awareness, you can watch any conversation. When somebody hears something, when they respond,
10:05
it's clear they're making it about themselves. And really, they're making it to what I say,
10:11
feeding their core identity. So you can imagine, you're talking to somebody, they have a problem.
10:18
They reveal their problem. Somebody hears it. They give a solution. You're like, look,
10:23
I solved their problem. The problem is the person who gave the solution sees themselves
10:29
as the ultimate problem solver. They're wise. They have great vision. They're feeding their
10:36
identity. What they're not doing is seeking to understand what's the depth of the problem.
10:41
What is the reason behind the reason we can even say, what's the why? But there is a process. And
10:48
when you do this, it's not that you're going to get better information. It's that you're going
10:53
to empower this individual to say, not only do I want to partner with you, I want to partner with
10:59
you forever. And by the way, I'm bringing you, I'm going to make sure you're not allowed to leave
11:05
what I call their stage. And that has value. Well, you forged this through a lot of interrogations
11:12
and some pretty extreme circumstances. But one thing that I was noticing when I was reading your
11:17
book and I promise guys, we're going to get to the book here in just a second. But one of the things
11:19
that I was noticing, because I've done a lot of business reading, I've done a lot of operating
11:23
in business environments, I felt like there were similarities where maybe people wouldn't be looking
11:28
for. And so the question I have is like, what are some of the similarities and differences
11:32
in working with business owners and managers in America and members of terrorist organizations
11:37
and terrorist cells in the Middle East? So I love that question. The thing we have to
11:43
look at when we see the stories, there's a problem, right? Everything that we had known in the past
11:50
about fighting wars was different. There was something caused a change. And the change was that these
11:57
weren't enemy military on a battlefield with uniform and a chain of command. They had,
12:04
they worked at home, they had jobs, and at night they blew us up. When you bring in that person and
12:11
you say, tell me what you know, they have choices, they have options, they have plausible deniability.
12:19
So we had to pivot from the standard psychological techniques of, hey, you're busted. Just make this
12:26
good on yourself too. They have deeper needs. They have family members. They saw today, they had
12:33
businesses they're running today. You've got to build a level of trust that doesn't say,
12:40
tell me what you know. We had to build a level of trust that says, tell me where you think this
12:46
is going. We had to give, we had to cause them the trust required to speculate, right? So when
12:52
you look at businesses, the problem with businesses, there's so many changes going on in their environment,
12:59
whether it's virtual, where it's open communication. The biggest problem businesses have right now,
13:04
they're being commoditized. The availability of information to normal consumers of services
13:09
and products is so much greater than it was in the last 20 years. They can't run business that way.
13:15
So we have to look and say, how do we make this pivot not to keep our strength with this information,
13:23
but how do we go on the stage of our consumers and say, now that they have this, what is the
13:29
higher level needs? It's that communication where businesses are going to succeed moving forward.
13:35
Absolutely. And so I think that was very interesting because as I was looking through this, people
13:40
forget these are organizations. Now we're not trying to say that, you know, Al Qaeda is like GE or
13:45
anything like that. But at the same time, there is some level of hierarchy. And there are people
13:49
that kind of follow that. Now there's, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years of tribal experience
13:53
and all that that undergirds that. But that's not what today's podcast is about. But let's go
13:57
ahead and get into this book. So this is Mission Blacklist number one. And we'll get into what all
14:01
that means here in just a second. But it's the inside story of the search for Saddam Hussein,
14:05
as told by the interrogator who tracked them down, which is you. So it's literally impossible,
14:10
right? No matter how much time we have this morning for us to get into all of the detail
14:15
of how you masterminded the capture of Saddam Hussein. So guys, you're gonna have to go get this
14:19
book. It will be in the show notes. You can check it out. It's it's readily available. But I guess
14:23
the most generic place to start Eric would be why even write a book and why indigo why go
14:28
into this much detail? Like why not just give it to a ghostwriter or let it kind of be some sort of
14:33
make even a nonfiction book or a fiction book rather. You know, why even go into this much detail yourself?
14:40
Well, I mean, I guess the first reasons I was I was very proud about how it went down.
14:45
I thought it was a very unique. I know the military, I know military history. The tracking
14:52
down of Saddam Hussein, that had never been done before, not just capturing a high value target.
14:57
I'm talking about going down this direction, because Kyle, you have read the book.
15:03
I was with an eight man Delta Force team, and we were put in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit.
15:09
And the United States military, the United States government did not think he was there.
15:13
They just assumed a little lady town. We've been through all the houses. He must be somewhere else.
15:18
I was assigned to this Delta Force team as sort of a help them fight their local war. Help them.
15:26
And when I began these interrogations, I realized everything I was taught. This wasn't going to
15:30
work. I wasn't going to get the trust and cooperation from prisoners. So for me, the purpose of writing
15:36
the book was I'm proud of how this went down. And no one else can tell this story. But I'm also
15:43
like that in the military, they teach us SOP, right? We learned battles. This is the way it's done.
15:50
But the key to all great military units is they've got to know how to pivot.
15:56
It's called commander's intent. When a unit, a commander gets a mission, and it doesn't go well,
16:03
you can't just do what you've always done or do what you've trained. You've got to pivot
16:08
to accomplish the mission. That's what I love about our military. Our great leaders go,
16:14
this isn't working. Let's pivot. And our pivot was the way I did the interrogations and the way that
16:20
the commander, his name is Bam Bam, said prisoners aren't supposed to just be used for whether you're
16:28
guilty or innocent on a capture. They should lead the hunt. The intelligence from the enemy,
16:36
which was never done before. 2003. 2003. We never used enemy information to drive a hunt.
16:44
And Bam Bam just pivoted and said, no, they're going to drive the hunt. Heck, you remember at the end of
16:50
the hunt for some, those prisoners were living at our house. They were with us every single day.
16:57
And so what I really would like to take out, people to take out of the story is you don't know
17:03
what's the future looks like. But if we're aware enough and humble enough and realizing,
17:10
we don't have to know everything, but we're going to pivot to the battlefield. I think that's a great
17:16
lesson. Yeah, absolutely. And we'll get into the intricacies of what you actually did on the
17:22
on the battlefield to kind of make this happen. Because I think for most of us, we look at it as
17:26
old hat information, whereas y'all were living it. Like it was unfolding before your very eyes,
17:31
right? That's a completely different scenario. But as I was reading this, and I told you this
17:35
off air before you hopped on, it almost feels like there was a lot of poetic license that you use
17:40
with these stories. And I don't mean that to be offensive at all, but it's like the stories
17:47
were so crazy and the timelines were so dramatic and all that. And so I guess, did you take any
17:52
poetic license with the book? And I guess the other part of it is, is I know most guys have to go
17:57
through a DOD review Department of Defense, so that you don't reveal or accidentally divulge trade
18:02
craft. So how hard was that to write a book that was readable, which it's supremely readable,
18:07
but at the same time, not give away any secrets. So two questions, and I love them both, right?
18:12
First of all, every quote, every dialogue, every story, it's 100% accurate. I said, if I'm going
18:20
to write this, if you walk around and say you tracked down Saddam Hussein, that's better.
18:26
Have the receipts and better. No, we've all met some military people who maybe like, man,
18:31
I think they make some stuff up. So I know I'm dealing with that, right? I'm having to deal with
18:36
some of you really. So I said, we are only writing this, which was difficult for my, because I did
18:42
have a ghostwriter, but I said, this is staying to the book. This is staying. This is a military
18:47
historical document. Now, with the get it cleared with the DOD, you have to write a 350 page book
18:57
and send it to them through the public affairs, and then they send it to all the units that are
19:02
mentioned, dealt before CIA, joint special operations command, all those units and say,
19:08
declassify this, write what stuff is possible, trade craft. It was almost nothing. The only unit
19:16
that pulled things out was CIA. And it's because they really were ups. People don't know this,
19:22
and the intel world's very competitive. Who found the high value target? The army found the high
19:28
value target, joint special operations command, ban ban, my commander, Eric, the interrogator.
19:33
That's a hit on the CIA. That's not good for it. So they pulled out some just conversations
19:39
after the capture that revealed they had no idea where he was, and they thought we were crazy.
19:45
But everyone else said, this is good to go. And it's because Kyle, I wrote this very clearly. I
19:50
knew him. I know Intel. I know what's classified. And I said, Eric, keep this in your bubble.
19:56
This is my story. I'm not right in Delta Force's story. I'm not right in Jay Sox story or see,
20:03
I'm writing my story in my bubble. I knew when I wrote this, they're not going to pull anything
20:07
out. I have 20 years. I know it's classified and what's not. So that process was actually really
20:13
easy. Okay, I've talked to some other guys that I even have some friends that are in the process
20:17
right now. And it is just an absolute, you know, what show. But you know, we're not going to get
20:22
into what the DoD does. They got their own things to worry about right now. All right. Can I interrupt
20:26
you for one second? I want to say one thing. I challenge anybody on this show. I challenge
20:31
anybody in the world to find a military soldier, an intel soldier, an intel officer who wrote a book
20:38
and kept their job, their top secret clearance for the next six years. I did deployments
20:48
after the publishing of the book. I kept the top secret clearance I operated in alias after the
20:54
publication of the book. So one of the things I had a benefit with is the DIA came to me and said,
21:02
write this thing. This is great for public, you know, matter of fact, this is great for recruiting.
21:06
It's great for congressional funding. So when you write a book and you're struggling,
21:11
you got to think on their what's benefit to them. And I wrote it saying, I'm going to stay in my
21:18
bubble and I want to keep my job. I'm not done being an interrogator. And I don't know of any
21:24
other person who wrote a book actually while they were in and then continue to keep the job.
21:28
Yeah, that'd be hard. I mean, I, I don't read a lot of things in this, in this vein, but that
21:32
doesn't sound like something that would definitely happen. One thing that was interesting to me,
21:36
Eric, is just from the very, very beginning, the dedication of the book caught my eye.
21:40
And so the dedication of the book reads this way, quote, to all those who have served,
21:44
fought and sacrificed and to all those who yearn for a seat at the bar. Unquote. And so the yearning
21:49
for a seat at the bar thing caught my eye. And that quote seemed to attach directly to something
21:54
that you talked about later on in the book, which is where you had a lifelong friend of yours from
21:58
growing up in Sepulpo, Oklahoma, a guy named Casey, he passed away in 2003, suddenly, you know,
22:03
was very unexpected. But your friendship with him seemed to have a lasting impact on you,
22:09
you know, since his passing, but also up to that point. And, you know, you talked about, you know,
22:14
getting a seat at the bar, you talked about that several times throughout the book. So can you tell
22:17
us a little bit more about that? Sure. So when I think of a seat at the bar, you know, when you
22:22
join the military and you go around other veterans and military people, it's basically a urination
22:29
contest, right? And everyone's like, I did this, you did this, this, and I didn't ever want to be
22:35
the one who's saying, here's, here, look, I did better than you. I just wanted to earn a seat.
22:43
And that means different things. And I, for me, it meant going to war. And I don't think that
22:50
should be the case. I wish I didn't feel that way, because I look at all the people who maybe
22:55
didn't go on a war deployment, not because they weren't willing. They spent whole careers, but they
23:00
carried the tour to the United States military, which made it for people like me to go out there
23:05
and succeed. But for me, I had to earn the war. And I told myself, but when you go,
23:14
you got to give everything you have. Either it's hard, I don't know what it's going to be like,
23:19
but until the last day, you got to fight. So when people always say, how bad did you need to find
23:26
Saddam? What if you didn't find Saddam? And I say, it's great. It's awesome. I love that I found
23:29
Saddam. I didn't need to find Saddam. I needed to fight to the last minute, the last second to
23:36
know I didn't stop. I didn't just get my war and not fulfill it. And my friend Casey, we grew up
23:42
together. He joined the year before me. And he was, he was a badass, right? Like, he smoked ranger
23:49
school. I recycled three times before I graduated. He became special forces. He was beloved and
23:55
admired. And he was always took care. Like he always looked after me. So I admired him. But he
24:00
literally was the, he was the chairman at the bar of all these veterans. And I always thought,
24:07
what would he do? Would he be proud of me? Am I doing it for him? And when he dies,
24:12
he had some medical shots or something. He just died, right? And I always thought,
24:24
he died before I proved it to him. He always loved me. He always took care of me. He didn't need to
24:31
be, he didn't need me to prove, I needed to prove it to him. So that mission, I wanted to be at the
24:36
bar. And when my man Casey was going to be there at the bar, I needed him to go come on in. And I
24:42
know it, it's not stupid because there's a lot of military people who feel that way. And when we
24:47
gather for veterans events, we just want to feel like we deserve to be there.
24:53
No, that makes sense. And I know a lot of guys that have kind of transitioned out of the military,
24:57
and they want to make sure that they continue to earn that spot at the bar as they move forward,
25:01
not just looking back on the good old days, but actually what they're doing now. So I appreciate
25:04
you getting into that detail, Eric, but let's go and dig into the tracking down of Saddam Hussein
25:09
in Iraq. So during that time in Iraq, and you can go into the years and we'll get into all the
25:13
different details as we go back and forth. But there was something that was called the Blacklist.
25:17
Okay, so what was the Blacklist and who was on it?
25:20
So the Blacklist was the infamous deck of cards when we invaded Iraq, the Department of Defense
25:25
created that deck of playing cards. And then based on, you know, what suit and what number
25:31
the card was, it was one through 55. I think there were three jokers. So they took those 55
25:37
individuals and they made a black list. Number one, that was Saddam Blacklist. Number two,
25:43
I believe it was his youngest, youngest son, Qusay, then Blacklist number three, and then all the way
25:49
down, you had chemical Ali and Tariq Azee all the way down. Well, for the Joint Special Operations
25:57
Command, their mission was to take on everybody on the deck of cards. So they just kept a Blacklist
26:04
one through 55. And all their mission was to tackle anybody, go capture, kill anybody on that Blacklist.
26:11
Blacklist number one wasn't just the ace of spades. You'd rather have Blacklist number one than
26:18
all the other 54. So when I get there, join this team. And I wouldn't expect it to be there. I didn't
26:26
know what was going on. It was all about this Blacklist. It was all about Saddam. But the reason I named
26:32
my book Mission Blacklist number one was because they, you never heard the word Saddam Hussein
26:39
spoke within the Joint Special Operations Command. And by the time I got joined the unit,
26:47
three months in, there had been so much false information that had led to false hits, wrong
26:53
targets, that if you were an intel officer and you gave information, she said, I think Saddam is here.
26:58
You were looked at like a complete moron. It was as if you were telling somebody,
27:03
there's a leprechaun in that room. Let's go find them. Right? So it was almost like, don't,
27:08
we will trust you. If you use the word Saddam, that means you're too stupid to know that he's not
27:16
there. So our challenge for my five months was dealing with the fact that they wouldn't even use
27:22
this person's name. And they wouldn't even use the word Blacklist. It was B01, B01. And you couldn't
27:28
even really use B01 because there have been so much wasted resources on bad information.
27:34
And I just wanted to highlight that was the greatest challenge was to fight through this idea.
27:40
He's not there. He's not there. Well, it's almost as if if you say his name above a whisper that he
27:48
would disappear like a fart in the wind. And so you don't want to be the person that makes him
27:51
disappear that way. But even just from the very beginning, I thought that it was, it's a very
27:55
quick story, but it was just by sheer dumb luck that it allowed for you to go from Baghdad to
28:01
Tikrit in Iraq and to join the Delta Force team on the ground there. So tell us about that and
28:06
also tell us about what you understood your orders to be when you got on the ground in Tikrit.
28:11
So when I get to Baghdad, I joined this unit. I didn't know anything. They said on occasion,
28:20
interrogators will have to go out on raids, on missions. I was set to Baghdad, having never done
28:29
real interrogations before, because I'd been in the infantry. I was a graduate of Ranger School,
28:35
right? I could theoretically hang around these people. Well, this mission came up in this town
28:42
of Tikrit. There was a team of interrogators. They didn't love going on missions, but they
28:49
especially didn't want to leave the wire go on a mission up in the place where Saddam was not
28:54
located. That was a waste of time. So we got this rookie, but he's infantry. He's a graduate of
28:58
Ranger School. Send him up there. That's how I got up there. I get enjoying this Delta Force team,
29:08
and the team was like, we're going to go on this raid, do the interrogations, kind of hung with them,
29:14
did the interrogations. They didn't hate the way I did them, even though it's probably brutal.
29:19
But they like stay another day, stay another day. Well, I kept staying with the team. They liked it.
29:27
But I didn't speak native language. So I didn't speak Arabic. I was using their interpreter of
29:34
brothers that have burned him out. I was using him too much. They were going to send me back to
29:39
Baghdad because they were getting the opportunity to get a native linguist interrogator. They brought
29:44
the native linguist up. I'm supposed to leave Tikrit. We're nowhere close to Saddam. I hadn't
29:49
figured out how to do interrogations yet. We go on this raid, and this native linguist interrogator
29:55
had an accidental discharge. He's out. Right. Got him. They sent him back and they said,
30:02
I guess we're stuck with you. Chinese Mandarin linguist never been to war. And that at least
30:11
extended my stay. And eventually I was able to gain the trust to figure out how to do interrogations.
30:16
Well, and hey, you would have been completely ready if there were some Chinese terrorists that
30:20
found their way over to Iraq. Like you would have been, they would have been so super thankful that
30:23
they had you at that moment. But I guess, Eric, take us through your initial process of interrogating
30:29
the men captured by the Delta Force team, kind of what you learned. And then the methods that you
30:35
developed as time went on, because how you began interrogating is not how you ended up interrogating.
30:40
So my initial prisoners that they brought in, I said, okay, I was trained to do interrogations,
30:49
use the process. And basically the military interrogation process is with conviction and authority
30:56
convinced them, you know, everything about them, get them scared that you know, everything about
31:02
them is rope, they're going to spend the rest of their life in prison. And they'll eventually go,
31:06
uncle, here's everything I know, clearly it doesn't work. They weren't talking. And they hadn't talked,
31:12
the prisoners weren't talking before I got there. And I told myself, I do not know how to gain
31:17
cooperation. But I got to figure out who these people are. And as I'm beginning to interrogate
31:23
them just to figure out what does it mean to be a Rocky and Sunni and Shia, that's where I discovered
31:28
the empowerment of seeking to understand someone's perspective, not knowing what you're doing,
31:38
not even knowing where you're headed, but absent of your own biases, goals and agenda,
31:43
it empowers anyone, but especially prisoners, to the degree I had never imagined. So it was
31:51
that discovery of empowerment, which is the foundation of interrogations. It's not to gather
31:58
information to make better decisions, go track people down. It's the demonstration that right
32:05
now this conversation, I'm just trying to figure out what it means to be you. And the purity of that,
32:10
it's, it's, it's, it has so much energy that that gains cooperation far beyond any of my threats,
32:20
any of my knowledge, any of my wisdom. Because I didn't have that at the time.
32:24
So I guess since it works so well for you, were you an anomaly? Was your situation an anomaly?
32:33
Or I guess why weren't you trained to do that from the beginning? Why did you have to kind of go
32:37
off script? You know, I've thought about that a lot. Why wasn't this the way?
32:43
And I think the problem, people in the military can relate to this. They set these basic standards
32:51
to become this job, right? A basic infantryman out of basic training. They're not really good,
32:58
but it's a standard. The basic standards for an interrogator, they said, well, we can't make
33:05
them super complicated. We need them. And quite frankly, they didn't need us to do interrogations,
33:10
they needed to learn foreign language. They love that I learned Chinese Mandarin. I was never
33:14
going to do an interrogation. So we didn't have anything pushing us to actually figure out how
33:22
does this work? Now, we also had historical experience of prisoners on the battlefield.
33:29
We also had historical experience of getting intel to fight a war. We did not have experience
33:36
of doing interrogations to track down high value targets. So I just look at it as like,
33:41
they didn't need to make us great. They didn't have experience to figure out how to do this so well.
33:47
And that was really a great moment for me when I said, what you were taught
33:52
was never expected to help you achieve what you're being asked to do. Therefore,
33:58
I had the right at the freedom to go figure this out.
34:02
Yeah, I think that that was, you don't really think about that when you think about the military.
34:06
You don't really think about this tremendous amount of like latitude or freedom to kind of
34:10
figure stuff out. But when you do talk to people, there is a little bit of that that you are able
34:13
to do without going too crazy, you know, off the deep end. But I want you to kind of get into now,
34:18
Eric, the first big breakthrough that you had as an interrogator that at least put the idea in your
34:26
mind that you might actually be able to track down, you know, blacklist number one. Because
34:33
it could seem like you're doing these things, you know, hey, they're bringing people into you,
34:36
and you're talking to them. But maybe that's not really ever a reality. When did you feel like,
34:41
oh, no, we're on to something. So great. I'm going to first say, you know, we did a couple of
34:47
hundred and terries. It took months before I thought we were tracking Saddam. So during the first two
34:53
months, there were a lot of breakthroughs that said this works for Intel. This helps us track
34:59
down bad guys. It was probably in late October, early November, where I was interrogating this young
35:11
man. And he had an uncle that was a senior bodyguard. We believe the senior bodyguards were running
35:19
the insurgency. I'm talking to this young man. And I noticed he's willing to talk about his other
35:26
uncles. But when I got to this one particular uncle, his name was Muhammad Ibrahim, the man that
35:32
eventually took us to Saddam, he was hesitant. And I also noticed when he talked about his cousins,
35:38
second cousins, the uncles, kids that were his age, he'd say, oh, we have a great relationship.
35:44
We have a great, I talk to him all the time. When I got to the sons of this bodyguard, this one
35:50
particular bodyguard, the prisoner looks at me, this kid looks at me and he goes, you don't understand.
35:56
I don't even know that kid. And I'm like, what? He lives less than a kilometer. He said, you don't
36:05
get it. I can't talk to him. I can't even look at him. And that that's the point where I said,
36:12
that's not a bodyguard. That is a connection to Saddam. You don't have that fear of your cut.
36:19
This bodyguard was not a mean person. He was not threatening. And is that breakthrough that said,
36:24
this is the bodyguard. His connection to Saddam is what creates this power, which creates this fear
36:30
in the second cousin. That's when I knew we might be onto something.
36:35
Okay. And so you feel like you're maybe onto something there, but not everybody was on the
36:41
same page as you in terms of the feeling like they were maybe getting closer to that. So
36:45
can you speak to that a little bit before we get into the more of the details of how you actually
36:49
traverse through that of what it was like dealing with the team and trying to, you know,
36:53
constantly convince them and sell to them that, hey, let's let's continue going down this path,
36:57
because my understanding is that nobody was really looking at the bodyguards before you got to tick
37:01
rate, right? So I would say all bodyguards were important into create for the war. Bodyguards were
37:11
not thought of as an access to Saddam, because Saddam wasn't there. So when we had to make that
37:17
transition, there was a lot of feedback. And I would say most of it was outside of my house,
37:25
my Delta Force team, most of it was external of that house, because my commander, Bam Bam, was very
37:32
receptive. Bam Bam was able to look at the other Intel and say, who says they're right? They hadn't
37:41
found him. Now, when we have to put so many resources into tracking down one bodyguard,
37:48
now the team, the Delta members would get frustrated because they were going on raids
37:53
quite often that were putting their lives in danger. They were having to actually watch over
37:58
and pull guard on prisoners in our house. Delta guys don't pull guard, right? So that was definitely
38:06
becoming stressful. And so I had this challenge where I needed the lead. I needed to really give
38:13
emphasis, but I had to remember who I was. I was an interrogator working for a Delta Force team.
38:20
I was the lowest person by a long shot. So it was always a struggle to say, where do I put my
38:27
foot down? Well, you don't. You don't put your foot down with Delta Force. But how do I influence
38:32
with conviction and not [inaudible] him off? And so really I had to use Bam Bam and his conviction,
38:40
because Bam Bam, he was a leader, he did everything. So I believe, you know, Bam Bam was the reason
38:48
that we were able to fight through this, really just questioning of what the world's saying versus
38:54
what I was saying. And the thing is, is those questions can be powerful enough to stop you
38:59
immediately in your tracks. And luckily, we're not sitting here talking about, you know, what
39:02
might have been, we're talking about what actually happened. So let's get more into the what actually
39:06
happened part. So so you get the with this bodyguard, you kind of sense this fear that's going on with
39:12
some of the other prisoners. So take us through more of that process of how you were working your way
39:16
closer to actually finding him. So we're going after this one bodyguard, his name is Muhammad Ibrahim,
39:21
and we were going after business partners, close friends relatives, and we captured his driver,
39:28
captured his driver on December 1st, 2003, brought the driver in, which was controversial in itself,
39:36
because this driver was related to, you know, a close ally of the United States related to the
39:43
governor of concrete, right? So so we're having some political issues here, but we brought in this
39:48
driver, and it took me about six or seven hours to gain his trust. But the driver finally looks at
39:54
me and said, my boss, this bodyguard, this Muhammad Ibrahim, who I drive for, he delivers all the orders
40:01
for every attack in Sunni triangle. He delivers million dollars a week. I came the money millions
40:07
of dollars every week to the insurgent leaders. And this bodyguard is taking the orders from Saddam
40:13
Hussein. At that moment, I knew in my heart, the bodyguard does know where Saddam is the driver.
40:20
He's on our side. He's completely on our side. He wants to live with us. He wants to go on raids
40:27
with us. And he gave us five hard targets. He said, I dropped the bodyguard off at one of these five
40:32
safe houses every single night. And I thought, cool, we're done. We're school hit all five. Bambam
40:37
hit all five of those safe houses. No bodyguard. From those safe houses, they said, hey, you actually
40:45
have to go down to this town of Samara, your bodyguards, you know, fled to Crete. So now we're
40:52
hitting insurgent leaders in Samara, no bodyguard. That led us to the person that that house says,
40:58
well, your Muhammad Ibrahim, your bodyguard, he actually rented this house in Samara.
41:03
We raid that house. No bodyguard, but we captured his 20 year old son of the bodyguard.
41:09
I bring the 20 year old son in. I'm 48 hours from me. My tour's up. Nobody thinks Saddam's into Crete.
41:15
Bambam's hitting every raid I can get him because he knows I'm leaving. They're not going to keep me.
41:20
I talked to this 20 year old son. He won't. He didn't know where his dad is. He said, Eric,
41:26
my dad, the bodyguard, the man you're looking for was at the house you captured me two hours
41:31
before you came. How would I know where he went? We start talking. He started talking about a fish
41:36
farm. This son tells me, my dad doesn't like me and I wish he would take me fishing and they go
41:44
fishing at this fish farm. And that's why I put connected the dots. Kyle, one of my early interrogations
41:50
I did, we interrogated Saddam Hussein's chef. It was his cook. And the cook was, he didn't care.
41:58
He's a cook. He's like, man, being Saddam's cook is really easy. Saddam loves this dish,
42:03
this fish dish called Maz goof. Cook said, I make the best Maz goof in the world. I'm Saddam Hussein's
42:09
cook. When the boy told me they built a fish pond during the war, why are you going to build a
42:16
fish pond during the middle of war? Unless you need to stock it with fish for your brutal dictator
42:20
boss, because that's his favorite meal. So on my last night, we raided a fish pond thinking
42:28
the bodyguard will be there. There was no bodyguard. Bodyguard was not there. We had two prisoners,
42:33
two fishermen, and I'm headed back to Baghdad. Bambam tells me, take these fishermen, take whatever
42:38
prisoners you need. He says, Eric, you'll be in Baghdad before you leave country to have two or
42:42
three days. Get me another target. I fly to Baghdad. Say goodbye to the team. I'm done. Two or so.
42:49
I get to Baghdad and interrogate the two fishermen. One of the fishermen breaks says, Eric,
42:54
I catch fish out of the river. I put it in this pond. He says, the bodyguard, he has a deputy,
43:04
the deputy is my distant cousin, my cousin, and that bodyguard are always together. He said,
43:10
they came and got the address of our mutual aunt and uncle in Baghdad. I think they're in Baghdad.
43:16
I called the Bambam of Baghdad, begged him to go on one more raid the night before. Now I'm leaving
43:21
the country. I'm leaving the country at eight o'clock in the morning on December 13th, 2003.
43:25
The night before I'm leaving, the Bambam team in Baghdad raided the aunt and uncle's house
43:33
in Baghdad, no bodyguard. No bodyguard. They bring me back to prisoners, wearing the first one in,
43:40
I start interrogating. Oh my goodness, he's the deputy. He's the deputy of the bodyguard.
43:47
Took me a little bit of time and he reveals, he said, Eric, the bodyguard that Muhammad Ibrahim,
43:54
he was sleeping in the bed next to me when you captured me last night. I thought, oh my gosh,
44:01
did they get my man? One guy I thought could take some time. We don't even know we have him.
44:06
I start lifting up hoods of all the prisoners on the last hood. We didn't have a picture of
44:11
Muhammad Ibrahim, but I knew who he was supposed to look like. My bodyguard was supposed to have a
44:14
John Travolta chin. For I even got the hood off, I saw him. There's my bodyguard. So now I'm leaving
44:24
in less than four hours. I had to be at the flight a little bit early. They weren't going to keep me
44:34
and I finally was going to get to interrogate. The one guy I thought could take us to sit on.
44:38
I mean, at that point, I'm not going to, I'm not going to stop you here. You keep this ball rolling,
44:42
baby. Keep going. I bring the bodyguard in and I tell myself, I'm short on time. You really want
44:51
this. You got to relax. And when I say relax, and then one thing I had to do was don't force this.
44:59
You don't know what he needs, but he'll tell you, he'll tell you what he needs. If you'll shut up,
45:04
clear your brain and listen to the man. So I sat him down and I said, there's only one thing
45:11
we can talk about. And that's the exact location of Saddam. And he kind of looks at me. His bodyguard,
45:19
he's just a fun, loving guy. He said, you give me way too much credit. He said, the president?
45:28
I don't know where he is, but I knew when he said that, I knew exactly what he needed. You give me
45:35
way too much credit. Credit for what? And I looked at him and I just very casually said,
45:43
I didn't give you any credit. I didn't know who you were before I came to this country.
45:49
I said, but the 300 prisoners that we've captured, the 40 of your family members that are having
45:55
this prison right now, they give you credit. They give you credit for ruining their lives,
46:01
because you got them involved in this insurgency. And they're here and they're never going to leave,
46:06
not because of anyone, but you. And he kind of rolls his eyes, but he was not rolling his eyes
46:11
at me. And I knew I had him. He was rolling his eyes at Saddam, who's saying he blames Saddam
46:17
for picking him as the one guy that was going to know where he was and run this insurgency. And
46:23
as a result of that, my bodyguard had to get his entire family members involved in the insurgency
46:28
and we had captured him. And we're going back and forth. And I was waiting on this piece of
46:33
information, right? I knew I had a piece of information and he starts getting emotional. And I looked
46:38
at him and I said, your wife had a baby. And my body guy, he was shocked, right? He did not know
46:45
I knew about his wife and the baby. I said, your wife and that baby, they live at this house.
46:53
It's actually her father's house. My prisoner's father and I said, the house is right here.
46:58
I said, it's less than a kilometer from our base. I never sent the soldiers to that house.
47:05
I never sent them to go on that raid. Where else would you go to find someone?
47:09
Then there are spouse and I never sent the soldiers there because your baby would never
47:13
survive that raid. I said, what will he do for you? What will he do for that baby? At this point,
47:22
he's crying in tears running out and he looks at me and he says, I don't know if I should do it.
47:27
He said, he couldn't do it. I don't know if I should do it. In my mind, I'm thinking,
47:31
oh, I really do think you should. Yeah. He said, I can't. I've got to think and I'm out of time.
47:37
And I told him, I'm like, I'm leaving. I have to go. He goes, I've got to think. And I take him to
47:43
his cell. And I'm like, I need it. I need it now. He goes, I can't. I've got to think. And I put
47:47
him in a cell and I said, you're going to die in here. They're going to leave you here. They
47:51
don't know what you can do. You can't give anybody else the information because they don't think
47:56
he's up there. I need it now. And I, he said, I can't. And I told him, when you change your mind,
48:01
you got to go crazy. Go nuts. I said, if you go nuts, these guards will actually come talk to you.
48:07
And you can tell when you're going to take us to some, you got to go crazy. Put him in his cell.
48:12
I left. Went and packed my bags. A few minutes later, they're taking in my flight. I'm leaving
48:18
in the country. And as I'm going, another interrogator, my buddy, he was like, what'd you do to your
48:24
prisoner? I said, I didn't do anything to him. He said, guards are really worried. They think
48:32
he's trying to kill himself. He won't stop yelling and screaming and banging his head against the
48:37
wall of his cell. And I knew he broke. And Kyle, I jumped out of the truck, which was moving to
48:44
the, I'm looking at the plane. I jumped out of the truck and it's going really fast. I wiped out.
48:49
And I got up, my buddy's laughing. I was like, just hold the plane. And I ran back to the prison,
48:54
got the bodyguard out, set him down. I said, where is he? And it looks at me and he says,
48:59
we got to go. We got to go right now. So where are we going? He said, I'm going to help you
49:04
find some, and I grabbed him, put him up against the wall. I said, you're going to help us do
49:07
anything. You're going to take us. He goes, you want to go? He goes, you and me, let's go right now.
49:12
I said, where are we going? He said, we're going back to Tikrit. He said he's in this village of
49:19
Adwar at the farmhouse of a man named Kyle's name, and I got the sketch and the map. And I go
49:24
outside and the interrogators back, I'm like, think, go get on the plane. I said, you don't understand,
49:28
and he said, you don't understand, Eric Saddam Hussein's not to create. Go get on the plane. And I
49:34
said, please call Bam Bam. Tell him the bodyguard's dying to take him to the Ace of Spades. Kyle,
49:42
they didn't believe me. They put me in the truck, took me to the flight, and I leave. I leave the
49:48
country. And on my flight is Admiral McCraven. He's the head of the Iraqi task force for the
49:55
Joint Special Operations Command. We fly to Doha Cutter because there's a top secret briefing
50:03
where Admiral McCraven's going to brief his any knowledge of where Saddam is. He didn't know
50:11
really any information, but he liked my theory. By the time our plane landed at the headquarters
50:19
in Doha Cutter, they had called Bam Bam. And Bam Bam had told him, do not touch that prisoner.
50:27
We'll be there. Bam Bam and the team fly back to Baghdad. They pick up the bodyguard. They go
50:33
back to our house. Admiral McCraven, when we land in Doha, he comes to me and he goes, I'm going back.
50:39
We're doing a raid. And I'm like, let's go. He goes, I need you to stay and give this briefing.
50:44
No, come on, man. Come on. Well, I didn't say that to an Admiral. I just said, okay. So that
50:54
night I go to sleep. I wake up. I'm thinking I'm just giving a briefing. They take me to the
51:01
headquarters of the Joint Special Operations Command. They knock on a door. And this officer
51:05
pokes his head out. And he says, all briefings today, a big cancel clunk. And my mind's spinning.
51:13
And I can't breathe and a sergeant knocks on the door. And he said, staffs aren't Maddox. I actually
51:22
can't leave the country till he gives this briefing. And the senior officer looks at me and he said,
51:28
you're Eric Maddox. I said, yes, he pulls me inside. And he said, all briefings today are canceled.
51:35
Because we got him. We got him last night. Your bodyguard did it. And he takes us inside and he
51:42
shows us the initial pictures. And I said, how did it go down? And he goes, when you left, we call
51:46
Bambam. Bambam, the team came, got the bodyguard, went to our house, planned and executed the raid.
51:51
Kyle, they couldn't find it on. They look for an hour and after an hour, Bambam goes to the truck,
51:56
pulls the bodyguard out, says, where is he? And the bodyguard looks around, sees where he is.
52:03
He's terrified. He won't say anything. Asked to hold one of the operator's hands,
52:08
walks around the backside of the house, the homeowner of the the farmhouse owner
52:15
will not give up the location. It was the farmhouse of Kai Snamic Jossing. Kai Snamic Jossing
52:23
is just standing there terrified. The bodyguard's grabbing this farm owner and saying, show him where
52:29
he is, showing where he is. And this farm owner is like, I don't know, I don't know. The bodyguard
52:34
starts walking this farmer over to a certain section of the sand in the backyard. And the bodyguard
52:43
is yelling for him to give him up. They notice that he's kicking at the sand and he's starting
52:47
digging it up. And they're like, the Delta guys moved him. They start digging and they found a rope.
52:56
They cleared it off and the rope was connected to a lid. At that moment, that farm owner
53:02
starts yelling, Saddam's in there. Saddam's in there. He won the $25 million bonus.
53:07
And so the team's sitting there ready. They reach down, they lift up the lid and they look
53:14
and they are staring at him. Saddam Hussein. I mean, absolutely flabbergasting. I remember being
53:21
in school and like hearing about all this going down. And of course, none of us had this amount of
53:25
detail. So I guess take us through what was going through your head whenever you found out, you know,
53:32
kind of casually that, you know, we had captured Saddam Hussein using the intel that you gathered,
53:37
but also take us back to that moment to where they open up the top. And he's just sitting right
53:42
there. I mean, what do the guys do? Like, did he put up a fight? You know, there's a lot of rumors
53:46
about what happened, but like what actually went down and also what was going on in your head.
53:50
So I'll tell you exactly what went down because I got to hang out with the guys on my team afterwards.
53:57
So for me, when I found out in Doha at the briefing, so it's the first time in my life,
54:04
I ever had an out about experience. All right, I think I could see myself and I was on the ceiling
54:16
looking down. My brain went blank and I'm watching this scene and I'm in the scene.
54:23
And my buddy, who's another interrogator on the task force, we were leaving at the same time,
54:29
so he came with me. He's shaking me and he's going,
54:33
why? He was using different words, but he was saying, wow, you did it. Wow, you did it.
54:42
And when I came to, I'm just sitting there getting shook and he's like, you did it,
54:48
you did it. And I was in shock and they pulled me inside and they brought everybody from the
54:54
headquarters task force and we sat down and they were like, walk us through. What exactly happened?
55:00
I started from day one and went all the way through. And at that point, they were like,
55:05
you're going to the Pentagon. You're going to breach secretary of defense on run sale.
55:10
And for the team, when they, when I heard that with their story,
55:16
when they had the whole cleared off and they're going to reach down, they opened up the lid and
55:23
Saddam is standing at the edge of this hole, like he's in the hole and he's looking up at him,
55:29
right? And his hands are down here by his waist, his crotch. And they said, they had their weapons
55:35
wrong. They could have shot him. They didn't shoot. They said, raise your hands. Saddam does this.
55:41
They said, raise both hands. He just, well, he's holding the Glock. He's holding the Glock pistol.
55:50
They said, raise both hands. And he drops the Glock and he raises both hands. They launched
55:56
the yank team. He hits his head and they put him on the ground. Yes, that linguist who punked,
56:03
they got nobody who probably cared, but there was linguist who punched Saddam. That was my
56:07
linguist, right? He was native Iraqi. Saddam had it coming. And that's how they got him. In the hole,
56:15
they found the Glock, found $750,000 cash and there's a box of Cuban cigars. President Bush
56:23
was given the Glock by the commander of the Delta Force. $750,000, that goes to the army. The Cuban
56:31
cigars was split by me and the team. That is seriously, like, whenever I was reading that,
56:38
that was actually in the epilogue of your book, I thought that was one of the coolest things.
56:41
Number one, that, you know, Bush got the Glock that he had down there with him in the hole.
56:46
But to be able to sit there and smoke one of one of his cigar, I'm assuming you smoked it,
56:50
but to smoke one of Saddam's cigar. No, you didn't smoke it. So where's this?
56:56
So I gave it to my uncle. Okay. And he was the only person I knew that like cigars,
57:02
and he was kind of a one of my father figures growing up, and I knew he'd keep it and he keeps
57:06
it in his office and he has it. That's awesome. So it has, he's kept it. He hasn't smoked it either.
57:12
No, okay. No, no, that's what I'm smoking that. I'm a cigar guy, but at the same time, I'm like,
57:19
what sweet or tobacco could there be on the planet than that single cigar? But, you know,
57:23
maybe we'll talk about that later and figure that out. But one of the things that I thought,
57:27
you're obviously a very introspective guy and you like to kind of look back and you even described
57:31
in your book, most of your mornings was spent going over for hours, the notes from the previous
57:36
days, interrogations and things like that's your thorough guy. But looking back at your time,
57:43
in that six month deployment into Crete, what if anything, would you have done differently?
57:48
Because because I know we got the guy, like we got Blacklist number one, we got the Ace of Spades.
57:52
But what would you have done differently during that time period?
57:55
Nothing. So go for it.
57:59
So let me, let me, let me, I didn't know that question was coming. So give me a second, okay?
58:04
Sure. I even think you hate to do this, right? Because honestly, the most important things
58:12
in my life are my family, my faith, my salvation, my relationship with Christ.
58:17
But on occasion, something happens professionally and you're like, I wouldn't even want to go back
58:23
to being a kid because I'm going to screw something up and not find Saddam. I would love to have told
58:29
Admiral McCraven, he's there. Let me come with you. I would have loved to have not even gotten on
58:34
the plane. This is, I'm not getting on this plane because we're going to go find it. But maybe I
58:38
screw that up, right? There's so many, I would have loved to have seen Saddam. I didn't, but I didn't
58:45
need to because Bam Bam completed the mission. I didn't need to because Jason pivots. I didn't
58:52
need to because Admiral McCraven being told this is not there, but he said, no, go ahead and do it.
58:57
So I can't look at my mistakes and then go, but maybe I would have screwed something up.
59:06
It's not like I didn't make mistakes. We found Saddam. I can't look at anything and say,
59:14
this is what I would have done different unless I'm looking at it in a selfish manner saying,
59:18
yeah, but if I was there, but if I could have, wish I'd have gotten a selfie. Like, okay,
59:25
that's pretty selfish. You got Saddam. I know my role. I tracked him down. I created this
59:32
interrogation technique. I didn't need to be there. And if I do want to be there, that is selfish.
59:37
Yeah, that makes sense. I've thought about that before kind of that butterfly effect thing,
59:41
like looking back, like, Oh, I wish I would have zigged when I should have zagged like at this time.
59:45
But then it's like, maybe I don't meet my wife and then we don't have our son. And then your entire
59:49
trajectory of your life is different. So it's good to hear you say that. Now one thing that I know is
59:53
kind of on the tip of people's brains and certainly was for me as well, because this has been talked
59:57
about a lot. And then that is, you know, enhanced interrogation techniques, you know, otherwise known
1:00:02
as torture, there's been a lot of debate in the United States about whether we should use that,
1:00:05
whether we have the moral high ground, oh, it's used anyway, there's movies, whatever. So how much
1:00:10
of enhanced terror interrogation or torture techniques did you see or participate in over there? What
1:00:16
could even be misconstrued as that? And overall, now that you're a civilian, okay, now that you can
1:00:21
kind of look back and you can kind of hover over your career and hover over the military and kind of
1:00:25
look, do you think in your heart of hearts that the US should be using these techniques when we're
1:00:32
dealing with our enemies? So it's a great question. And it's always up for debate. And so I think
1:00:38
the most important thing is we should be able to have these conversations and not go, Eric,
1:00:43
are you accusing people that they tortured in the past? Eric, are you saying they don't work? So
1:00:48
I want to be very clear. Okay, everything the army taught us does not work with regards to
1:00:53
terror gations. They're ineffective. Now, if I can live with that and say, okay, let's take that as a
1:00:58
truth, right? Percentage of prisoners that broke prior to empathy based listening was 4%. From 9/11,
1:01:06
till now, if you use the old army techniques prisoners cooperate 4%, I would say that's failure
1:01:10
on any measure. Now, if you're being asked to do a job as an interrogator and your success rate is
1:01:15
4%, and you're not a commander, you're not an infantry, you're not one of the cool guys,
1:01:20
you're going to have so much pressure to get the job done. And what soldiers don't do is sit around
1:01:24
and go, yeah, it doesn't work. That's okay. This is what I'm supposed to do. What are they going to do?
1:01:29
They're going to put on pressure. The techniques they teach us are put on psychological pressure.
1:01:34
You know, the greater psychological pressure? Add some pain to that. Add some torture,
1:01:39
some coercion, right? That's what naturally this is like, this is the fun way to do coercion,
1:01:45
but you do it the real way. That's how torture gets implemented, right? Now, my argument is it does
1:01:52
not work, and I will take that on with anybody. Anybody that tells me it works, I'm going to have
1:01:57
to say maybe it works better than what they taught us, but it's a level of ineffectiveness
1:02:01
that can we do it a different way. That's why I'm saying can we use empathy-based listening?
1:02:07
The problem is this, to use empathy-based listening, you have to form some sort of partnership with
1:02:12
the enemy. And I'm going to argue our job as interrogators, intelligence collection officers,
1:02:18
is not to punish the enemy for doing something wrong. We have to accept the fact they're trying
1:02:23
to kill us and we're trying to kill them. The higher mission is to gain intelligence to win the
1:02:28
war, to win the battle, to push it forward. And if we can accept that's the higher mission,
1:02:33
and then we can accept, you know what, maybe we have to partner, maybe we have to collaborate,
1:02:37
maybe we even have to take care of them, minus their punishment for what they did. If you want
1:02:42
to punish prisoners for what they did on the battle field, go for it. Do what you got to do.
1:02:47
Don't mix that with interrogations and intelligence collection, which I tell interrogators, hardest
1:02:53
part of your job is you better be nice to the enemy. Not just as a rule, you better use every tool
1:02:59
in the toolkit to gain cooperation. That means being cooperative. So I've seen everything.
1:03:04
I'm going to leave it at that. I've seen everything. And if do I sit here and go, I can't believe they
1:03:11
did that. Absolutely not. They were being told to do a mission. They weren't giving the resources
1:03:16
to do it. And unfortunately, there were people who said enhanced interrogations are okay sometimes.
1:03:23
I can't even blame them for doing that because they needed to complete the mission. But now that
1:03:30
we have this ability to do it a smarter, faster, better way, now I need us to come in and go,
1:03:36
that's not an option. I get why you went there. It's not an option. I don't know if that answers
1:03:42
your question. No, it absolutely answers my question. But I do have a follow-up because you're
1:03:46
very definitive in saying that those enhanced interrogation techniques don't work. And I mean,
1:03:51
you you're seemingly unequivocal about that. So why don't they work?
1:03:55
Because think of the psychology, right? You're a prisoner. You don't trust this person to give
1:04:04
them up information. They're going to try to do it the nice way at first. Say, I know what you
1:04:10
did. You're going to spend the rest of your life in jail. And then they're going to go,
1:04:13
I know what you did. You're going to spend the rest of your life in jail. If your goal is something
1:04:20
good for you, which is not pain, not extended prison sentence, but most important. You know what
1:04:29
the most important thing for a prisoner is? I'm going to let you guess. I don't expect you to know
1:04:34
what's the most important thing for a prisoner? I would think self-preservation.
1:04:39
It's not actually, it's they want to take care of their family, their friend, what matters to them.
1:04:51
Now, freedom would seem like the obvious way to do that. But if giving up information that
1:04:57
prevents them from getting beaten is going to result in the kill, capture, confinement,
1:05:02
or even just the labeling of their family as related to the person who gave it up,
1:05:08
that's far more damaging than a broken bone, a suffocation, a waterboard.
1:05:14
So, in order for a prisoner to truly give up information willingly, and like I said,
1:05:21
we're asking them to hunt down people. They don't know where they are. We're not saying,
1:05:26
give us what you know on your unit, how many people are in your chain of command. We're asking them
1:05:32
to speculate. In order for someone to speculate, they must believe and know that the information
1:05:39
they give is not just going to keep them out of harm, but it's going to prevent and help the
1:05:44
people that they care about, period. That is period. And that includes radical people like,
1:05:50
what would it be when you get real radical? It's a different need. They don't care about their family,
1:05:57
but it's still their vision of what they represent. They don't want to scar their brand,
1:06:04
their reputation. You can't beat a prisoner because they're going to know if I give it up,
1:06:12
they don't really care about me. And they're not going to be careful. The United States is
1:06:15
not going to be careful to protect my reputation, my brand, my people. Does that make sense?
1:06:21
Yeah, absolutely. So, because I've heard a lot of these debates, and even recently,
1:06:25
Jordan Peterson had a guy on his podcast. This guy apparently had no connection to any type of
1:06:30
terrorist cells whatsoever, but the United States government thought that he did. This guy was
1:06:34
kept in Gitmo for over a decade, and he was tortured. He was sexually assaulted, assaulted,
1:06:39
otherwise, and he's describing this like he's ordering dinner. And he's talking about how he
1:06:43
doesn't hold grudges and all these ever things, which is a pretty incredible thing. So, you guys
1:06:47
can go check that out on his on his feet, but it did bring up that thought. I mean,
1:06:51
I literally listened to it yesterday, right before I was talking to you today. And it's just like,
1:06:55
man, that that seems like something that even as someone that loves America
1:06:58
and wants us to win these wars, because I think we're on the right side of these wards,
1:07:02
you know, I am, I am torn to where it's like, you know, what if this does work? And what if they
1:07:08
do give us the good information? But obviously, you've been in those rooms, but I think that kind
1:07:11
of dovetails nicely into the thing I want to talk about next, because you brought up just a little
1:07:15
while ago, and that's your faith, because you obviously talked about having a relationship with
1:07:19
Christ. And so you have this discipleship set up with with Jesus Christ. But I'm just wondering,
1:07:24
with that worldview, and the work you did overseas and dealing with the people that you dealt with
1:07:30
and seeing the evil things that you saw, how did that affect your faith? Because I only see two
1:07:35
roads for that. It's either going to solidify it and drive it home further or make you question
1:07:39
everything and deconstruct. So I'm going to take that question on, right? It definitely
1:07:46
does not break up or hinder my faith. But I also want to make sure we're careful with the word evil,
1:07:55
because I don't use that word evil. I just want to make sure we're clear. I've just never,
1:08:02
I've dealt with al-Qaeda, ISIS, Taliban, high level, low level, people that I know have killed hundreds
1:08:09
of people. I just don't see evil. It's just not evil. They have a reason for doing what they're
1:08:17
doing. They think they're right. They think they're doing it for the right reason. I mean,
1:08:22
we want to know, we want to figure out why the Afghan National Army lays down their arms and
1:08:26
joins the Taliban with Taliban's evil. You know what? For them, the Taliban serves a much better
1:08:31
purpose than the Afghan government was going to serve. There's no Darth Vader and there are no
1:08:36
Luke Skywalker. They're just aren't. I've interrogated these senior level al-Qaeda. They're not evil.
1:08:44
They're wrong. I think they're mean. I think, but they have a battle plan. They have a business model
1:08:51
for what they do. I just don't see evil in what I've described. If we got psychopaths who are serial
1:08:59
killers, definitely. I think we're going into evil places. These people are business leaders.
1:09:06
They just are. They're just using radical Islam to fulfill their goal and their agenda.
1:09:13
And it's against ours. I want to be clear on that.
1:09:16
No, I'm sorry to interrupt. I do want to kind of press you a little bit there because as you're
1:09:22
describing this, I'm thinking about specifically Holly McKay's book where she describes what she
1:09:27
saw on the ground with ISIS whenever they were basically taking over and how they're cooking
1:09:32
babies on cooktops and raping children in front of their parents before they slit their throats.
1:09:38
And so it's like, you mentioned psychopaths. So I'm wondering where the line is because
1:09:42
these people are being told to do these evil things by someone. But also, I would think the
1:09:47
person that's even running the organization, if you will, that's got to be an evil act. I don't
1:09:52
see how it could be anything else. So I want to take a look at ISIS, right? When you saw that,
1:09:56
that is real. I'm so let me correct that. Yeah, that's some evil stuff. It was so apparent ISIS
1:10:03
was going to fail. ISIS was going to fail the first time we put any sort of decent threat on them.
1:10:10
The problem is they were left alone to do whatever they wanted to do. So it turned evil. So I want
1:10:16
to correct myself. Yes, that's the example of evil. That is the most unsuccessful run of any
1:10:22
organization that was never going to succeed. ISIS was going to collapse. President Trump got
1:10:27
them to collapse and they're done. I'm not saying what he did was easy. All I'm saying is that's
1:10:34
not an organization. That was not. It was no level of organization. That was chaos. And they were left
1:10:41
and nobody took them on, right? I'm talking about al Qaeda, the way they run their business model.
1:10:47
Those leaders of al Qaeda are angry and they see the benefits in IEDs. They see the benefits in
1:10:54
beheading, especially when it comes to recruitment of people to completely give up everything come to
1:10:59
it. But there's a difference. ISIS was messed up, but they weren't doing well. This didn't have
1:11:06
anybody to take them on. Right. So there seems to be a, and I hate to kind of belabor the point,
1:11:11
but there seems to be a difference in sophistication, obviously, between what ISIS was doing versus
1:11:16
al Qaeda or the Taliban or whoever you would have want to talk about. But I guess still, like,
1:11:20
I'm a little taken aback that you wouldn't think that what those people are doing,
1:11:24
even though they're more sophisticated in their processes of what they're doing is evil. Because
1:11:28
even if you believe you're right, there can only be one truth, right? Because as a Christ follower,
1:11:33
I would assume that you don't believe in this postmodern idea of, you know, everyone's truth is
1:11:36
their truth, because they're what they're doing is either wrong or it's right. It is either morally
1:11:42
acceptable or not, but go in. No, you're right. There's right and there's wrong and there's truth
1:11:47
and there's not truth. But for somebody to do the untruth, I don't believe is necessarily a place of
1:11:55
evil. It's just a place of misinformed. I think it's their strategy to do this. If somebody believes
1:12:04
that what we do is wrong, I don't know how we can blame them for being misinformed.
1:12:11
They're wrong. They're misinformed. It's not the truth. I still don't place that in the category
1:12:17
as evil. A place that is misinformed. Okay. So you would say that you don't think they know what
1:12:24
they're doing is wrong because they believe, you know, the bloodiest parts of the Quran, the
1:12:30
night, sir, the hadith, they believe that those things are legitimate. And so they're called to
1:12:34
that. They're called to jihad. They're called to those things. Is that kind of what you're saying?
1:12:39
They are called to it and their experience has demonstrated. But doing those things, those
1:12:47
killings, those beheadings can benefit their cause and their positioning. When you're trying to gain
1:12:53
position and power in an organization in their organization, the more you you behead, the more
1:12:59
you slaughter, the more you mask, they're moving up a chain. I did not say it was right. Sure. But
1:13:05
they're not they're not coming from a place of evil. They're coming from a place of power.
1:13:09
Okay. I don't expect everyone to agree with me. I don't need anyone to agree with me. It's just
1:13:19
my perspective is it's it's it's about position. It's about power. And it's about winning more than
1:13:25
it is from a place of evil. Okay. I appreciate you going in a little bit more detail on that. So
1:13:31
before we get towards the end here, we're going to take a little bit of a left turn, but we're
1:13:35
going to stay in the world of the military. And my goodness, we could have spent the entire time
1:13:39
speaking just about the subject that I'm about to ask you about. But there's something that's
1:13:42
very, very concerning to me as a civilian. And that's wokeness being introduced into the modern
1:13:47
military. So we had Matthew Lomire on he was the guy that was in space for us who kind of, you know,
1:13:51
talked about how, you know, there's a lot of critical race theory and different aspects of
1:13:54
wokeness. And you know, critical theory and Marxism that's being taught in our military
1:13:58
academies being taught on bases and things like that. So I don't know how familiar you are with
1:14:03
all of those things going on, because you have been separated from the military for a while. But
1:14:06
even just as a civilian, is it concerning to you seeing that some of these woke ideologies
1:14:12
are now being taught in the one place of all places that we should expect it not to be?
1:14:16
So I think there are two different questions, right? Do I do I agree with those ideologies versus
1:14:24
what I believe is truth, right? So I mean, I'm totally accepted. In fact, I believe one thing,
1:14:30
those are different. But I also believe that people are have the right to believe whatever they want,
1:14:36
right? I do. It comes to the military. What my concern is, is that we are asking people to give
1:14:47
up who they were, right? We want to take what they capable of. And we're asking to join this
1:14:53
organization, this team, and to put their lives on the line really put sacrifices, be away from
1:14:59
their family. We're asking for this major sacrifice. We're not going to pay you a ton to do it. There's
1:15:04
a really good chance you're going to get hurt, right? And so when we do this, there's got to be a level
1:15:10
of uniformity. There's got to be a centralizing, galvanizing vision. And what has gotten us to this
1:15:18
point in history, right? Or at least up to, you know, 10 years ago, let's say, is this idea that
1:15:26
you can be part of this vision of America. You can be a contributor into this vision of America,
1:15:33
this idea that now we're going to bring in our great young Americans. And we want to get away
1:15:40
from that vision and really just allow people to be themselves with this idea that that'll that,
1:15:47
you know, if you're yourself, hopefully there's a level of empowerment, it's going to make us even
1:15:50
greater. I don't know that that's going to happen. This is not based on bottom line and great jobs
1:15:57
and promotions. This is an ultimate sacrifice, not the, but it's a great sacrifice, right?
1:16:03
I don't see those two working well together. And what I've seen in my knowledge of other units and
1:16:09
where this is progressing, there's a lot of unhappiness. There's not, people just don't know
1:16:15
how to do this thing. So for the purpose of the military, I think this is going to be a failed
1:16:22
direction. So I would agree in your assessment that it would be a failed direction. But would it be,
1:16:29
I'm trying to think of the best way to word this because it sounds so stupid even in my head,
1:16:34
but I'm just going to say it, will it lead to an ultimate failure? Because it's one thing to focus
1:16:39
on things that have nothing to do with the lethality of the military. And it's another thing to lose
1:16:44
an important war, which could send us all back to the Stone Ages. And I'm trying not to be extreme
1:16:49
and hyperbolic here. But could this lead to something to where it's like, okay, we're doing
1:16:53
an experiment in culture that ends up leading to the loss of the Republic?
1:16:56
That's a great question. So here's what I think. This is Eric Maddox's opinion, right?
1:17:02
We're never going to fight another World War before again. We've got so much unnecessary
1:17:10
resources in the United States military. We need to be these, we need to be increasing our
1:17:16
cyber security. We need to be increasing our intelligence capabilities. We need to be
1:17:23
increasing our research into the smarter weapons. But this idea that we're going to go to war
1:17:30
against China, there's too much connection in the global economy that neither side wants that.
1:17:36
We're not going to have 2 million on 2 million spread across the planet. You can do it much cheaper,
1:17:43
but the connection of the global economy does not allow for what we see a conventional warfare
1:17:49
against two established governments. So what I see is happening is we're letting this kind of
1:17:57
not historically consistent way that we're turning our military. You can say it's woke, but we're
1:18:06
using that for the bottom 80% of the military and say, you know what, it doesn't really matter.
1:18:11
Because at the top, we've got the Joint Special Operations Command. We have these elite missions
1:18:15
and they're smaller and they're harder and they're more important. And that's what we're staying
1:18:20
consistent. So we're going to stay consistent here. We're going to continue to get the Congressional
1:18:25
funding and kind of keep the people who like this idea of this wokeness. We're going to keep that
1:18:30
and the hundreds of billions of dollars we spend on natural, but it doesn't really matter.
1:18:34
So I'm like, I think we need to take a real look at if we're going to turn it into that and we're
1:18:39
going to be ineffective, how bad do we need it then? Because we're spending a ton of money on it,
1:18:45
but it's not going to be useful. So I think there's going to be a, there it is. There's such a huge
1:18:49
separation between the special operations units, kind of like a pyramid and then down, there's a
1:18:56
huge gap. And then it's all the money that's spent. We're not going to use that anyway.
1:19:00
Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. And again, there's no, from where we're sitting right now
1:19:05
here in, you know, October 2021, no one can actually say what what's going to happen. It's,
1:19:11
you can either be worried about it or not be worried about it. But at the end of the day,
1:19:14
there's not much that we can do as civilians to kind of push those things in certain directions.
1:19:18
Now there's the whole political aspect and all that, but this isn't going to be a 10 hour long
1:19:22
podcast. So we're going to have to shift away from that. But as the, as we get to the end here,
1:19:25
there is a segment that I do like to do, and this has been a pretty serious interview,
1:19:28
and I've really enjoyed it. But we're going to make it maybe not a little bit more lighthearted,
1:19:31
but we're going to go a lot faster here at the end, because I like to do a segment called
1:19:35
what would you say to someone that said, and I'm going to fill in the blanks.
1:19:39
And then you've got 30 seconds or less to give me your answer to that question. So we can't go
1:19:44
off into detail. There's no follow ups. It is lightning rounds. Are you up for it? You're saying
1:19:49
error, tighten it up. No, hey, I told you off air, like where I want you to get into detail,
1:19:54
you did. But now at the end, it is meat and potatoes. So you're ready for lightning round.
1:19:58
It's lightning round. Let's get into it. First one here. What would you say to someone that said,
1:20:02
I want my kids to join the US military? I would say that's fine. Your kid won't come back the same,
1:20:10
and they may come back messed up. So I love it. Somebody's got to do it. I don't want my kids
1:20:16
join the military and talk because I don't love this country. Okay, well, your child may not come
1:20:21
back the same. Okay, well, here's the next one, which is attached to it. What would you say to
1:20:25
someone that said, I don't want my kids to join in the US military? I say, that's fine. That's great.
1:20:30
We better be appreciative that those that do those that do are giving more than we know.
1:20:36
All right, next one here. What would you say to someone that said, Eric is wrong, torture works.
1:20:41
I would say I would love to sit down and do a debate. And as long as we are going to use
1:20:48
accurate available information, then I will take that argument on every time as a matter of fact,
1:20:52
that argument should be had. Okay, fair enough. Maybe we can make that happen someday. All right,
1:20:58
what would you say to someone that said the war in Afghanistan was a huge waste of time,
1:21:02
money and blood? Yes, enough. There were moments where what we were doing was consistent, right?
1:21:14
And I think the military operation was fantastic. We had a failure to understand the people,
1:21:19
the government, the culture, and we spent too many resources trusting people that should have
1:21:23
never been trusted. And ultimately, it turned into a failed mission. But the execution from the
1:21:29
military was fantastic. The relaying of information, the fear of giving accurate information to our
1:21:34
decision makers caused us to make poor decisions. Okay, what would you say to someone that said,
1:21:40
the war in Iraq was a huge waste of time, money and blood? I would say I may be too biased
1:21:46
that I thought it was a very good use of time that I'm not sure I should be the one up for that
1:21:50
debate. But I'm going to argue that during the Arab Spring, we see what happened to those
1:21:55
Middle Eastern countries who were being led by dictators and the ones that executed it properly
1:22:00
now are moving forward. And those ones like Syria, who would just let them fight it out,
1:22:04
they're an absolute mess. So something had to be dealt with bruiser dictators before that Arab
1:22:09
Spring. And the way we handled it in Iraq, we look at it now, we have much better
1:22:14
chance that that country is going to survive than a place like Syria, because the Arab Spring
1:22:18
was coming and nothing was going to stop that. All right, next one here, just a few left.
1:22:22
What would you say to someone that said, I don't need to listen empathetically, I can close the deal
1:22:27
regardless? If you can close the deal regardless, then go for it. I'm going to say I don't know
1:22:31
regardless and closing that deal means I'm just going to say if you're an empathy based listener,
1:22:35
you're going to close up more a better deal. You're going to close more deals in the relationship
1:22:39
that you're going to have with the deal that you close is going to lead you to future deals. So
1:22:43
shortsightedness and really underestimating what closing the deal is is the only way that
1:22:48
that statement can be accurate. All right, what would you say to someone that said fundamentalists
1:22:53
Islam is a worldview that cannot be defeated? I'm not in the business of trying to change
1:23:06
somebody's views. I have no desire to change anybody's views. I didn't know that was a mission
1:23:17
to defeat it. Okay, last question of the day. What would you say to someone that said,
1:23:23
I would never break if I was being interrogated by Eric Maddox?
1:23:26
It's just not true. It's not true. I don't know what to tell you. I think somebody
1:23:34
comes to me and they don't have anything up for grabs. I can't break them. You bring me somebody
1:23:40
who's got something on the line. I'm breaking them. And you know what? Here's what I can promise
1:23:45
you. The afterwards, they're going to go, man, I'm glad I did that. I'm so glad I broke.
1:23:51
That is next level stuff. But obviously you were in the rooms and you got to see it firsthand.
1:23:56
But Eric, we've gone all over the place. I appreciate all the time you've given us this morning,
1:23:59
but that is all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
1:24:02
No, I appreciate your time. What I want to say is it doesn't matter that we associate
1:24:08
ourselves with people that agree with us. That's too easy. That's boring. We need to get to the
1:24:15
other side. Not as the Trojan horse, right? But we need to get to the other side because that's where
1:24:22
power is. We start empowering people that disagree with us and we start working together. They won't
1:24:29
let us leave because they want us over there, not to change who we are because they respect the fact
1:24:35
that we're willing to seek to understand, to listen to them. And that goes across the board.
1:24:39
If you want to make a difference, don't get stuck on. This is what I believe, and I'm staying here.
1:24:44
Get over there and be more powerful. All right, Eric Maddox, thank you for coming back on
1:24:49
on Daunted Life of Man's podcast. Thank you. All right, there you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed
1:24:54
my interview with Eric Maddox. I just got to tell you, I really enjoyed my time with him,
1:24:57
and I enjoyed the conversations that we had before and after. This is definitely a guy that you should
1:25:00
be keeping an eye on and make sure you can support him in any way that you can. All right, guys,
1:25:03
before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost. As you know, by now,
1:25:06
at Undaunted Life, our mission is equipping men to push back darkness. And specifically,
1:25:10
we do that with conversations like the one you just heard and also other content that helps you
1:25:13
forward spiritual, mental and physical resilience. So here are the links I've got for you today. I've
1:25:17
got a link to Eric's website. So if you want to check them out, if you want to see how you can help
1:25:20
your business or your company, you can hit them up there. And also, I've got a link to his book,
1:25:23
so you can check that out for yourself. All right, guys, thanks so much for listening to this podcast.
1:25:26
We do appreciate it. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, right, and leave us a
1:25:30
positive review. If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me
1:25:34
an email to info at undaunted.life. That's i-n-f-o at undaunted.life. You can follow us on Instagram
1:25:39
and TikTok and like us on Facebook and you can check out our website for everything else,
1:25:42
including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way. Let's go to www.undaunted.life.
1:25:48
We also want to thank the band August Burns Red for allowing us to use their music for our content.
1:25:52
The Interalto track on this podcast is our song "Cutting the Ties," which is off their
1:25:56
10th anniversary re-recording of their album "Leveler." The links are in the description.
1:25:59
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual,
1:26:07
mental, and physical resilience. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:26:37
[Music]