The Medal, the Memos, and the Mountain | Mitch Hall & Brian Bloom | Ep. 472

0:00Okay, got the red smoke. Come on, come on, go up the south! Where's the smoke? Where's the smoke? Okay, copy, where's the smoke? I'm looking at danger close, now. I don't want it, man, it came into me. I made it. It came out hot. Can't be clear hot. We were discussing... You're going to start already leaning back away from the mic? Oh, shit. God! How many times? Is it a dozen yet? I think it's a dozen. It's over. It doesn't. We were discussing just how... How much we liked where that conversation, where the rangers went. Like, there was a... I was asking Brian while you were taking a piss, whether he felt it way, it went the way it went. I wanted you to have the opportunity to lead the conversation, but absent that, I just asked questions that are interesting to me. I never know where it's going to lead. People always ask me, do you know everything you're going to ask people? I always say, only know one question, and that's the first one. And then from there, it goes where it goes.

1:00Yeah, there was a level of humanity in that conversation that was unplanned. And we're really happy. It went that direction because I think that's one of the elements missing from this entire story. I think it's a reflection of what those guys wanted when they agreed to sit down with us too, because they were very serious about making sure we got it right. And obviously, we all didn't know each other, and still don't know each other well. But to make sure we weren't sensationalizing this, make sure we weren't ambulance chasing this story, and to make sure that we were going to do right by their brothers. They, in my personal opinion, undersold some of the absolute heroism and difficulty of that day. That's those guys. I could see it in them in the way that they wanted to talk. And I just didn't, it seemed as if the only thing they didn't want to do was oversell it. Right. And as I was listening to them talk, just looking up at that picture, trying to imagine what that entire day was like.

2:03And I hope, as thinking about this last night, I hope that those guys and their willingness to talk about it rattles the cage a little bit about what Josh was saying of people being very hesitant to tell their stories and allows them to at least consider it. Because, again, it was telling Brian when you were in the bathroom. I would love to facilitate those stories, but I can't tell them. Because I don't know the names. And you, I mean, they're just rattling off the names of all of those. But I'd never heard the name of the guy who was running across, you know, the predator footage and doing all these things. Yeah. I don't know what it takes to earn more than a silver star. But if that guy didn't, I don't understand how the military award system works. Right. And like you said, there was more than just that one. Oh, yeah. So I'm really happy. We had the chance to sit down with them. Sam, Sam. Where would you guys like to start today? I think, you know, we've gone eight or nine hours now,

3:03something like that. And it's just worth saying, like, we're just scratching the surface. Like, there's so much more that we are not discussing. I mean, this should be a two day, 48 hour long podcast. To really get to the bottom. I mean, we have five or 600 hours of footage. Yeah, for this entire project. And we're just showing you the tip of the iceberg. What did you guys, what do you think the final run time will be on the documentary? Four to five hours. Okay. That's, I mean, about four episodes. So it's tough. It's, I was also thinking about this last night. This is a very, it's a dense topic. And I mean that in a positive nature, it's just a very, very layered and nuanced topic. And I think for some people, we'll have no interest, but for those that do. I think that they will definitely enjoy the deep dive on it. But I mean, how do you guys go from 500 hours of footage and all of the interviews you've done over six years and reduce that to five hours? You take your editor's hostage.

4:03Yeah, you make tough choices. You make really tough choices because there's so much. Yeah, like, we, you know, and we know the marketplace doesn't want a 12 hour documentary. So we have to make some, we have to make tough choices. And I think what's, you know, we live in a different world. Now you're a part of that world. We were just talking about some of the ancillary products that are connected to the process. Right. That goes for all kinds of products games. Those five or six hundred hours, obviously, talk about the, I think we brought it up the other day, cutting room floor. But there's stuff that's so good. Cutting room floor devalues it. So we have a lot of plans to create and keep this conversation going. And it's not just about the plot. The story is teased out some really important aspects of human nature and the human condition. And, and war does that better than any kind of story, right? Characters and conflict, how they're resolving conflict. So, you know, we spoke to some incredible people.

5:03And we had some long form conversations. And this is all about a long form conversation. And we don't want to let those go to waste. Then I don't mean go to waste. Like we don't want to exploit them. We want to share them. Yeah. And we, you know, on that note, we brought in other people like, you know, this story, at least for me personally, the most interesting thing about it is not who zigged or zagged, who went right or left when they were supposed to do something else. For me, you know, having been in this game, this, this, this, you know, in the military for a long time, what's more interesting about this story is how this story took all its twists and turns over the 25 years. We will describe how that happened through the lens of the battle. Of course, because I think people will be very interested in, you know, the details of what happened there. But for me personally, I think that's the most interesting thing that I've ever seen. I think that's the most interesting thing about what happened there. But for me personally, over the last five and a half years, what's more interesting is why this story has turned out the way it did.

6:07And that's why I think you might have been alluding to this. You know, we brought in other people outside minds. We brought in Malcolm Gladwell and Karl Malantis. Sebastian Younger. Sebastian Younger. Let's talk about what heroism is. I, you know, we asked every single person that sat in the chair. What is a hero? And these heroes would just sit there and look at you and say, um, and they wouldn't really have an answer, although they define it. And so we decided to bring in all these other minds, journalists, intellectuals, and start saying, well, tell us, you know, how do you define heroism? What does it mean to you? And Sebastian has some amazing answers. Malcolm Gladwell had some amazing information on how journalists work, what's the difference between a truth and fact. How does your memory work? How does memory play a surprise? At what point, you know, and this is a part of this story as well, not necessarily from the testimony we got from across the board, from our subjects.

7:17But when you ask people a question, sometimes they're stopping to make sure they're getting the answer right. But one of the files that they're going through, I'm sure you've seen this a hundred times here, is somebody's going, how light a minute? Did I hear that? Learn that part after? Or did I remember, or am I remembering it from what it happened? Yeah, they're really, is it first source? Or is this something that I've filled in for myself since it's not a matter of its accuracy. It's almost a matter of what's its origin of this memory. And that's an interesting part of it. And obviously we didn't invent that conversation, neither did Malcolm Gladwell, but he wrote a great book about it, and he helped us unpack that as well. And so we're going to share longer form conversations that aren't going to make it into the foreign half. We could absolutely spin off its own episode just on, you know, the philosophy and the underpinnings of this story. We call it the story. Well, you guys still have the content. And again, I don't know how it works when it comes to IP, if you guys sell, when you sell the documentary or how that works, if they have everything,

8:19you could have a never ending, you know, the story being the base of the tree, but never ending branch system, where you do 20 to 30 minutes of shorter form content on a YouTube and building it at all. I bet I don't know who ends up opening or owning the IP. Yeah. What's your guys' answer to what heroism is after asking people that question for five and a half years? I don't think there's one answer. I think part of the answer might be that there's big-age heroism and little-age heroism. I think heroism requires risk. It doesn't mean physical risk. It could mean, you know, a whistleblower could be a hero. If they're going to do something that might risk their reputation, risk their job, risk their place in society. So there has to be risk. I personally went back and forth on if the outcome matters. I don't think I still have an answer. You know, so for instance, persons walking by a pond, they see someone drowning.

9:25They decide to go for it, but somehow they don't make it. So if the person drowns, are they a hero for trying? I would say yes. I don't think that's a little-age heroism. And big-age heroism is if they actually do it. And trust me, I've thought about this for a long time. Superman, the idea of Superman, he's a superhero because he went and did things. He changed the outcome. Imagine Superman if he never succeeded. He just always tried. That would just be called man. Well, flying man. It's still man. So it's a complex topic. How do you define truth? People have been arguing over what truth is since the beginning of time. It might be it's the most complex version of the question right now. When we have my truth, your truth, narrative truth, objective truth.

10:25You can have your other truth. That doesn't mean it is the truth. Right. Right. And what's the interplay between truth in fact? The flatter of society. So there's some complex topics that we tapped into these people that are smarter than us to help us explain, help the audience understand. We found it fascinating. Yeah, I think one thing that's apparent as the word has been abused and stretched out and wrapped around to fit some subjects, some people, some scenarios. It's been adopted, exploited, overused. Well, probably he's never been precisely defined. And so if it's not precisely defined, it can be broadly used. And then diminish what it actually means. You know, truth, the definitions of truth in fact, often most times used. The other word in their definition. I'm not smart enough to understand exactly what that means, but it seems circular. Well, that's it. You nailed it. It's circular.

11:26Yeah. No, but heroism, yeah. You know, that's a tough one. Where do you land on what it means now after five and a half years? I think my definition and maybe we've spent too much time together because there's a lot we don't agree on. But I think I agree, which is a healthy part of what makes this project work, I think. But I think I agree with all of those things. I might say them a little differently. I think there's a degree of sacrifice. The question of whether or not there's so mortal sacrifice versus moral sacrifice. Is there a level of moral sacrifice? You know, think whistleblower that rises to the occasion where you're essentially risking your reputation and therefore your well-being, your livelihood in order to stand up for something. But you see, I've just done something circular and I'm well aware of that, which is I start asking a question within the answer. So it's worth discussing. And I think the best part of the conversation is there are people who define it different ways.

12:28It's nice to look at it. I also think it's nice to strip it away from the idea that that means you're wrapped in the flag or that there's some direct sort of patriotism connection here. It's not that there isn't. But I think some of these lanes and some of the places that the word has been marked potentially. For the right reasons sometimes, but I think there again, it's not only stretched around places where it doesn't belong. It might be overused in places where it certainly does belong. So I think that's an issue too. We had a very interesting conversation over time on whether St. Michael Jordan or LeBron James are heroes. Because you often hear them, you know, you heard kids calling, that's my hero. And I think we asked them how come that question. But are they? You know, I'm from Chicago. Like I grew up in that time. And I probably would have called him a hero back then. But I don't think hero is the proper word. We might call him idle.

13:29But idle is a weird word because it can't be changed. Yeah, I'd have to ask more questions because I would ask the person what do you mean by that? To define what the role that they actually feel for you. Are you picking a word that you is commonly accepted and it fills that? Or is it imprecise somewhat? Are they inspirational for you? They're inspirational. Yeah, they're entertained. They are the absolute best at what they do. But are they risking something? Are they sacrificing something? If they, you know, the chances of... Yeah, there's nothing really at stake. Maybe the reputation, but there's just a really at stake. Mortal. Right. One of the interesting things that came up, I think, with several of our, we call them big brains, that we were talking to, was if you're being paid, and there's nothing wrong with being paid to do great things, but if it's your job, how much is that a factor? In other words, the person who has volunteered in advance to go into the burning building if and when necessary.

14:32How different is that than the innocent bystander or neighbor who does it? Yeah. Again, it's a rabbit hole, and I don't think what's beautiful about it is if you can make it binary, try. Yeah. Yeah. Today's episode is brought to you by Ridge. How is it that we are nearly in 2027? But if you have a variety of electronic devices, you have to travel with essentially a satchel full of all their charging cables. I mean, we're essentially at the point where we have AI robots, but I have to travel with five different cables to charge the items that I have. At least that is what I thought until I found the Ridge 5-1 travel power bank that has built in cables and lets you charge all your devices at the same time with just one power bank and no extra cables. Ridge's 5-1 travel power bank has MagSafe wireless charging, an Apple Watch charger, lightning and USB-C. Every way you could potentially need to charge all in one premium device. Like everything else that Ridge makes, it is built to last with free shipping, a 99-day risk free trial and a lifetime warranty.

15:34This is the last power bank that you were ever going to need. Not only do these things look pretty badass, they come in a variety of colors to include Mount Olive, Base Camp Orange, and Matt Black. They come with an LED charge status indicator that displays battery and charge levels at a glance, and it has an integrated kickstand for effortless hands-free viewing while on your phone as it powers up. Only one thing to pack, but five ways to power. You can find Ridge's power bank at Best Buy or listeners can get 10% off at Ridge.com by using the code ClearDot at checkout. Just head to Ridge.com and use the code ClearDot in your all set after you purchase. If you're going to ask where you heard about them, please do me a favor and tell them that I sent you from the show, speaking of the show, back to it. Okay. Now that we've started on a complete tangent, where would you like to go from there? Let's go to Afghanistan. Okay. Like you physically did and didn't tell me about you son of a bitch. Yeah. Yeah. Drop that bomb on me. Well, let's show you. Okay. Can we pull it back a bit? Why did you want to go?

16:36I almost attempted to say why do you think I wanted to go, but... Well, yeah. I mean, obviously it would give you the ability to talk about it from a firsthand experience of your own eyes, but also so many years have passed that it's not as if you're probably going to be on an evidentiary journey, even though you might be able to find some things that were still there. Am I saying that's impossible? The blades are still in the hole to this day. No, I get that. But what I'm saying is there's a lot of passage of time. So there is things that you find could lead to more questions than answers. Let me answer the first question. Right, and I'll just be first. Or one thing in there if you'd like. Why we wanted to go. You know, there was so much to this story, so much mythology, so much uncertainty around it, and so many books written about it. And I think only in all the books, and itself obviously was there as the Ranger Platinum Leader, and Sean Naylor was in the vicinity.

17:36Everyone else that took stabs at this story had never even been to Afghanistan. Much of the actual mountaintop. And we kind of looked at it like if you're going to solve a crime, you should probably go to the crime scene and understand what's possible, what's not possible. Walk the ground, look around, and you will just have a deeper understanding of what's true and well not true. And at the time we hadn't engaged with CST, Center for Special Technologies. So, you know, the practical way to get your 3D view of the mountain. Wist of going to do it yourself. Right, because when you're looking at that, and others have said this, but we haven't said it here, when you're looking at that drone footage, you're seeing a signature that gives you some, gives the average person, which is most people, a kind of false sense of what you're looking at. I don't mean the plot of what the people are doing in it.

18:38The geography, the lighting conditions, that reversed, you know, you're seeing white, where snow is, you're seeing black blobs. That presents more like how somebody might and black and white footage from far away. You're missing terrain features. The geo is flattening on you. The angle of depression, the look angle from the drone is being dictated by a flat image that's not giving you, you've lost a sense of what flat is there. You're not seeing sky. You see to deal with parallax. Right, so as a pilot, you know, this is, you know, a lot more about this than I do, but I think you're picking up what I'm putting down, which is that this is not a fair way to assess what you're looking at. Again, not only for the plot, you don't understand what's happening in terms of the terrain. You don't see a berm. You don't see if something separated by eight feet of close defalade.

19:40And a lot of what people are, you know, when they look at this, they say, could this person see this person? What are these sight lines and other things? So it was an amazing opportunity for, you know, to wear, I don't know how many GoPro's were you wearing, Mitch? It wants to. Two. Oh, I'm just honest, too. And it had, that's a rookie numbers. Right. When you asked, I don't think it double ankle, double wrist chest. But we also, there was also, you know, what would talk more about this, but we had a, I didn't go and Mitch went. So we as the project, and I don't want to take any credit for taking the, we want, it's a version of we, but let's be clear. We had a local crew. We talked more about that to some degree, but as far as the cameras go, you know, drones all over the place. And you'll see some of that footage here, but the point was to get out of the 2D world. Yeah. And to stop solving this from people's desks and make sure that we weren't guilty of doing the same thing.

20:43I think you would agree, Mitch. I mean, between the two of us, we probably have thousands of hours of professionally looking at ISR. It's a great tool. It's a great macro tool. And sometimes you can get micro details. But man, even when you have been watching, like, just say you're doing a pattern of life and watching ISR for 72 hours, you land there. You still have this moment of, oh, that's a little bit closer or that is not it. Yeah. So what you're saying is correct for sure. It's a great tool, but there is no tool that provides the complete and total picture. It's how we came up with the name of the project. You know, shortly before we left to go there, the idea was, let's go get ground truth. Let's go put eyes on this thing for real. And stop relying on second hand, third hand. This 24-year game of telephone. At that point, it was 23 years of telephone. And just go see it with our own eyes. And lock it. You're going to hear some voices.

21:44We'll talk about what voices you're hearing. There are some, you'll have questions. Okay. There'll also be answers. Can you hear her? Can you hear her? I can't hear her. I can't hear her. That's hurt. Yes. You're all right. You're all right now. You're all right now. We're trying to be on top of top of your life. You're in the desert. It's not just me and George going in there. We have two videographers, Peter and F.K. We have a suit and a fixer. How? How? How?

22:44We're all specific George. That's a bad day that you're fine with. Yeah. How? I don't know. We're going to go to the top. And do some filming and understand the battle war. And then we'll see you tomorrow. See you tomorrow. Okay. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good.

23:44We're going to go to the top and do some filming and understand the battle war and then we'll see you tomorrow. See you tomorrow. We're going to go to the top and do some walking. Some walking. Some walking. Some walking. Some walking. Some walking. That's about it. That's about it. Yeah. That's roughly how we're probably just passing it up in across one. That's where John Dynex has that tree. Yeah. The first tree. The second, the second tree. Look at it. Get your position right over the top. Is the other marker blanks? Yeah. It's the valley. Shot down. To hell with an OP. Before I forget, George, will you download a copy of that to the actual computer? Because I'm just going to insert that as opposed to having the screen capture. We'll just put that into the actual show itself.

24:44Right. Thank you. So when we got there, actually, let me do that. When we got to Dubai, it's like our, the last stop and this trip went to the consulate. Had a funny experience there. We were the only two gringos in a line of, you know, you can imagine that line in like 50 people. And so we looked very much out of place. It took all day to get to visa. Weird phone calls happening. And when we got back to the hotel, leaving the next morning at 4am for Kabul, my phone just started lighting up with a bunch of government agencies. You can imagine, including some old teammates that were in some weird position saying, hey, what are you doing? Your name just popped up. And you know, that's representative of that call. Obviously, it's a much longer. That's one of the calls. But there's a fascinating trip,

25:45fascinating experience. Oddly, it was good to be back. How did it risk? Did you feel being there? Not at all. So I figured your answer would be, actually. Not at all. And I'm not saying that to sound cool at all. But obviously, we were warned. And when we went there, you know, my research before, you know, we started the, we started the real machinations to go back in like late December. So we like two, three months to get ready. And I'm sitting here doing searches for, you know, who are the unlawful detainees that are right there right now? Am I walking into it? Am I being foolish walking into a trap? There was something I should I tell them my old job, right? Dennis says loving your normal search history. Right. And so, and then I would look at the articles of these detainees. Okay, there's no region guy or whomever it was like, okay, can I try to read the article and figure out what he did wrong? So that I don't fall into the same, you know, trap. You know, one journalist who was wrapped up there

26:49when we were there, not an American, they told him, okay, you can come in. Do not go where Zawa Hiri was killed by a hellfire missile. And the first thing, one of the first things he did was go right to the intersection where Zawa Hiri was blown up. And they're like, let's go to jail, you know? So I wanted to make sure we didn't do something like that. The very first meeting we had, we went straight from the airport to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I'd already had some email exchanges with them. You know, this is the Taliban government. And, re-explained what we were doing. He said he appreciated it because he had read the Wikipedia page on the Battle of Tucker Gara. And they also had problems with it. You know, they felt they won that one. By which metric? Shooting out three helicopters and, you know, they felt, I mean, there's argument to be made like who won that thing? You know? Yeah. What is winning even really mean?

27:50But at the end of that conversation, I said, okay, I've explained to you again what our intentions are. I mean it. Now tell me what I can't do. You know, like, and he didn't say anything, but I wanted to make sure like I didn't fall into the same pitfalls that, you know, smart. You'd be surprised and a lot of people have asked along the way like, how did you obviously, how did you do that? What are the risks and other things? Yes. And again, yeah, the answer, the cheat code of the answer is wrote a letter to the Taliban, told them exactly what we wanted to do and why we were doing it and did decide to say what Mitch's old job was. And just told the truth in very few lines, work to make sure as best we could that linguistically, the translation we work with somebody would carry through in a way that made sense culturally on the other side.

28:51And their answer was wildly simple. Yes. Can we come? Yes. Have you guys seen the latest documentary about Black Hawk Down? Yes. Where they interview a substantial portion of the Somalis? Yeah. I think a lot of times the other side is more than willing to talk and facilitate the exchange of information. Yeah. Because they sat down and talked with a lot of people who were on the other side of that battle. And it was kind of fascinating to hear their perspective as well too. We did, I mean, we saw it there. We did, we did as well. You know, we're sitting in the villages below the mountain. Where Operation Anticon was happening. Some of those people, you know, older men like us now fought in that battle. And, you know, we're scrolling through pictures of dead Taliban, dead Uzbekis, like, hey, and literally saying, do you by some stroke of luck recognizing these people? They didn't. But, you know, they're willing to sit here and, you know, someone like me coming back there probing around asking questions.

29:54They're willing to look at, you know, and have a look. They actually wanted to see. It's funny. They wanted to see, do you have, okay, now do you have pictures of the dead Americans? They wanted to like trade like, show us our dead, but then also show us your dead. It was a, it was a fascinating experience to your original question. Did I feel threatened? Oddly no, not one time. And you saw like there was a, there was a, there was a scene right out of Sicario where we were supposed to meet the former governor of Kabul, whose brother led the battle here. And we're on a four hour or six hour trip. And we were running behind because everyone wants to have tea, you know, the deal. And, and all of a sudden, you saw a, a quick clip of it, our two, two vehicle convoy of just like, you know, land cruisers gets enveloped by gun trucks. Yeah. And now here's the governor and here's a security and we're like, okay, keep going. You know, can you get the drone up and so we can get this, you know, and, uh,

30:54but fascinating, valuable changes, understanding of it, you know, again, even after we've explained how small this place is, that that helicopter's 50 feet, that rocky outcropping to the top of the mountain is something like 150 meters. And I think standing there is like, holy shit, this is small. Yeah, all this happened right here. Yeah. So you'll see these guys, they tested specific sightlines that are associated with the fight itself and another experiment that I think we, we, I think it went fairly well. It's hard to do it perfectly. It was lighting conditions, sunrise, sunset, what's going on there? You know, we talked through this conversation we've mentioned that that's a factor who can see who went everywhere that sunrise and, uh, it is not, it's not just the sun breaking up, uh, coming up over, uh, you know, a flat horizon line. Yeah. There's, there's mountains and other things that are including the light and, um,

31:54you'll see some of that and, and to be honest, again, we talked before about some of these ancillary products. There's a, there's a documentary or a movie or a, there's a long form piece here as well. Um, what, what kind of blew me away in looking at the trip from home and, and seeing the footage, uh, and we were, you know, Mitch was constantly uploading footage in case there was any problem with getting the footage out. So we did our best to make sure we captured all this and didn't lose it. It looked to me the thing that blew my mind was how many people were, and, and I hope our audience doesn't take this the wrong way. Um, because it's, it's just a fact how many people wanted to help and be a part of it there. How many people, how much there was, there was too much bread, too much tea, too many donkeys, too many batteries, too many people trying to give what they had to facilitate the process. They all thought of it initially that we were Russian because they hadn't

32:55seen an American in, you know, three years at that point. Um, and so when they found out, they, you know, one guy, we stayed the night in a, a police station, not in jail, but at jail because it, but the safest place. And the second and command of that police station just wanted to show me a TikTok all night. Like, okay, we're done. And yeah, I gotta get some nice. Good following. I don't recall. Okay. But it was just, it was comical. Like they just wanted to be, you know, they wanted to be friendly. They were super interested like, Oh, American holy cow. Was he doing dance videos? What kind of content? I can't remember. Unfucking believable. Yeah. Um, I don't even think you're supposed to have it. Uh, he was, yeah, he was smuggling some TikTok around. This is the world we live in. Right. It's no longer currency. It's TikTok. Um, but, you know, we had, again, we had the brother of, uh, Montseure, I forget his first name now, uh, who was killed in the battle. And his younger brother assumed command of the battle of Tucker Gar from the Taliban

33:59perspective. And he was walking us around and he took us to his brother's gravesite and explained the story and you know, that his brother was a hero. Um, and how they found, they didn't, they found his body parts scattered in some bushes and didn't know it was him until they kind of reassembled it and saw some certain scars and like, Oh, shit, he's dead. I guess I'm next in line. Um, you know, and again, just to hear their version of, you know, how they felt they want. I think the day we were there when we were going through doing the province, provincial checkpoints, we went into what would be considered the governor of the mayor's office. And I was looking at one of the papers. And there's some, I could read something like it was something American and I'm like, what is this? And he goes, Oh, I think it was like two days ago was like our victory over America day, right? Not wrong. Not right. It's a complex, it's a complex answer.

35:00But um, just for clarity, you saw something written in English. No, it was, it was, I forget what key me into it, but there is no language called American. Oh, you're right. You're right. Oh, American. I'm guessing it was written in, it was written in Mexican. It was written in Mexican. Yeah. That's great. Um, All right. Moving on. Yeah. Sorry. I want to say that one of the, there's one more thing that's that I think is important here is they also affirmed, confirmed and, and of their own accord helped us understand a few things that, um, we read about, but this was the horse's mouth just in terms of the factions that were on the mountain. Mm hmm. And what some of their roles might have been and just how separate some of these forces and some of these fighters are, yes, one enemy. But we talked about Uzbek Chetchen, uh, Tajik, and other things, uh, Pashdu.

36:01How many people did they estimate were up there? The interesting thing was they weren't quite sure they were disconnected to some extent. And that's part of that affirmation. And there were at least three up to five nationalities on top of that mountain. Mm hmm. It was Taliban led, but when the people, the foreign fighters started to flood in to Afghanistan for their common enemy, Americans. They're like, where do you need us? And they're like, oh, that's, that's the interesting thing. Yeah. They're like, okay, if you want to help go up there. Because they think the hard one. You saw that scene where we were just getting ready to demharn and walk up. They couldn't believe we were going up there. Like it's cold up there. What are you doing? Like, no, no, we have to go up there. That's we came to Afghanistan to go up there and like, are you sure you want to go? And so it made it make more sense when they're like, hey, okay, foreign fighter. You want to get your G hot on go up there. And so they sent to, you know, a skeleton crew of Taliban augmented with whomever else wanted to, you know, wanted to fight and fight the Americans.

37:01And they marched up the mountain. And then we watched them. What was also revealing was how fast and how many different ways they could scurry up the mountain. No, for sure. Like we went up one path and we're looking over in another bridge line and our donkeys are going up that path. And then later in the night, we're seeing someone come up from, you know, from the east. And, you know, they're running around in slippers. And, and they, by the way, they brought enough. We said we were going up there for one day. We were going to spend about, they were there for 22 hours. And they brought enough shit on those donkeys. We could have lived up there for, for two weeks. And I was trying, at some point I just said, I told our fixer, I'm assuming I'm like, we're leaving in five minutes. I don't care. I'm a backpack. We're good. Break down the chai tent. Yeah. And they lived in another camp and they had you could imagine what this camp looked like. You know, we just did, like, don't pollute the top of talker guard, but they were off to another hillside over here with all the things you can imagine, you know, ready for a couple of weeks.

38:05Leave me through it. Take you away. What do you think we should go next? Let's do red and red. Let's close that up. Really? Okay. So going back to actually what actually happened, you know, did John get back up? Did he fight for an hour? Did he save the helicopter? Save his teammates? The answer is no. He was shot in those first few minutes and never moved again. And we again, we challenge anyone. Show us. Show us where he got back up. But to the question of then, so then what did happen? You know, it tell us then explain the edited video and all the machinations of that video. Explain what's happening around 614. Then who is that fighting?

39:06It is enemy fighters. The middle of that video that we showed you is not represented in anyone's story here. The Air Force's story is key to understanding enemy movement. What they were doing when they went from the rocky outcropping and finally pushed over back to the bunkers. The project, you know, we're not going to go into a lot of detail here on this because we are finishing up with CST and some other things. How to visually represent that. You'll have to watch the docuseries to get the final answer, but we're giving it to you. What we're going to show you in the doc. You want to just run through the basics? Yeah. It's, and this is something that you can see any, you know, in the full footage. And this is why the place where we started was what's missing from the footage, the place where we need to. When do you guys plan to put that full ISR footage online? Not to be cagey, but we're not sure. There's, there's what we need to finish for the actual series, which were about eight weeks away.

40:09And then when we build out this ground truth universe type thing, where we put the full footage on a site and allow the public to spin them out and around. To see certain things that they've never seen before. We want to take another minute. Want to make sure that people have the context as well and the delivery system for the context right now is the is the documentary project. So they need to be aligned in some way. I don't think it's right to leave people. Of course, we need to give them room to interpret it and look at it closely. And that's the point of this whole thing is not just to define and tell you exactly and only what you're seeing. But I think it needs some context. It's, we talked about how looking at that footage is difficult. It's, it's not fair to throw more gas on this fire without some direction. But when you, the loose answer is months, not years, but like soon, but, but again, there's a lot of work. Our primary focus is wrapping up this series. Very close second is the things we're talking about. Yeah.

41:09And when you do look, you know, we've talked a lot about CST. We've talked about 3D. We've talked about the trip. We're looking at incredible pictures like this. Let's get back to the 2D footage for a second. If you watch the footage, you will see two enemies come from the rocky outcropping. That way on the picture. You got that over here? Mm-hmm. You'll see them work their way toward the area now known as the bunkers. We've talked about whether the bunkers are not. You will see them trying to assess. They've been out of the fight for some time. It's dark. The last known position of the Americans was somewhere around these bunkers. They're approaching the bunkers trying to assess who's in them. One of them takes fire from the area and others. They should be clear. Unaware. You know, night vision. Unaware that the Mako team dumped over the side. Mm-hmm. That's what the last known position of the Americans is there.

42:09They're doing, you know, they're IMT to this position. They're approaching cautiously. It's there for individual movement technique. And one of them takes fire from bunker two. A place that no one has ever suggested that John Chapman was ever in. Kills one of them. It's very clear that they are not de-conflicted in the darkness and they do not have the same information on who is where. And the other enemy moves into a position relatively close and eventually on top of where John Chapman was. And he is then continuing into some kind of engagement back and forth with bunker two. And they eventually de-conflict when the QRF comes in and turn both of their guns toward that helicopter. And I think it here, as you can imagine, as you know, they get here from the way they're out. The big bus in the sky. I want to clarify one thing.

43:09You said darkness. What I'll say is low light. And we took a time lapse when we were there. When we, you know, the morning of, I think it was March 8th. So that the light conditions would be nearly identical as they were 22 years ago at that point. We took a time lapse so we could at least understand what the lighting conditions were. We moved around, you know, played, did some role playing. See what could be seen. What couldn't be seen. But it wasn't darkness. Right. And I didn't mean to imply that. Yeah. That's moments were darkness that it was the genesis of their movement and their genesis of their situational awareness came from the conditions of darkness before they made the scene. But it was low light. And like we said earlier, the sun had to pop up over another set of mountains, you know, for their closer to Pakistan. Yeah. Before sunrise at 619. Effectively, the person that you're seeing is that second enemy I described. The actions in that are bracketed in the small box are this enemy.

44:14And the person you're watching is an enemy and they're telling you that it's John Chapman. So based on the conversation with the Rangers in the conversation we had before that, the Rangers did take fire from the bunker one area. Correct. And established that they killed two enemy fighters there. Correct or incorrect. I believe correct. The question is when. Yeah. Well, earlier in the video, when John is making movement towards that, the narrator says that he killed two enemy fighters. But if I mean correct me if I'm wrong, four bodies were not found. That's correct. That's right. Okay. And if. As you just rightly pointed out for that story to be true, there should be four deceased.

45:17There's been a lot of attention on and rightfully so on who is moving where and when and who they are. As you can see, a big part of this is who is not moving where and when and who they are. And I think there's been a lot of attention on the one piece and that's somehow obscured the other half of the story. So what you've gotten to here is key to understanding this. Okay. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your budget. And potentially lower your bills. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates, price and coverage matched limited by state law, not available in all states. Oddly, I think that's all we want to say about Red on Red at this point. Okay. I'd like to add something to this. Go ahead. Let's see how we feel about it.

46:17The idea that Red on Red is impossible. Do you just mean enemy shooting and enemy? Yeah. Okay. Why would anybody think that's impossible? That should have all the time. Back claim that. That's the reason I wanted to bring it up. That claim is not in the, you know, dark web shadowy corners of this conversation. It's out in the juicy center of it. These are some of the headlines. If you were to list read articles, watch the podcast. There are hours and hours. And part that are dedicated to this. Obviously, this very subject. And part of it is. Are they based on the eight and a half minute video or the nearly two hour video? What do you think? Well, if you guys are saying that the nearly two hour video has never been seen, then they are drawing that conclusion based off of a very, I'm going to say edited for a time. Where have I never been seen? Never been seen by the public who are now weighing in heavily on this, and have been weighing in heavily on this. Yeah, the dark. With no shortage of opinions and feelings about it.

47:19The dark don't get to see the movement that occurred in those hours. Then yes, you could paint the picture that it would be impossible. But that's like painting a picture and only using half of the colors. Well, we've talked about, you know, so red on red is enemy on enemy, but let's, it means, it means it's fratricide. People killing each other by accident are on the same side. So when we look at it that way, this story has several of those from the western side of this conflict in it within the first 24 hours of the battle and a few other almost. And I think again, you guys are much more qualified to talk about this, but I think it's fair to say if with all those sensors, if with all of that intelligence, if with all of those radios and all of those other pieces that are designed to prevent that from happening among other things, to de-conflict and to give situational awareness, not only to fight

48:20the enemy to make sure that people aren't hurting each other, it's certainly possible that people with five languages and no radios and no particular cohesive leadership in the same situation. And scurrying up the mountain from every side because they're understanding that we've had success up here. Two helicopters have been shot down. So now everyone's coming in from different angles, different places with different awareness of what's happening up here. So if blue on blue can happen with all the tech that he just described, then it is absurd to say that red and red is impossible. Even in low light. And again, what we know will be said is, the sun was up. How could they possibly watch the documentary? We'll explain it. Again, as I've gotten older, I try to ask myself, how do other people see the world through their eyes? Some of those people who are vehemently arguing that it's impossible may need to take a moment and ask themself whether or not they have the full picture with which they are basing

49:22their opinion from. Agreed. And that's a tough one, especially the more bought in you are on that. And I think we opened this whole thing many hours ago, you fuckers, talking about bias, we all have it. That's a tough one. It's a tough one to look through around. Yeah, if that hour is cut out and there was substantial maneuvering and people got to places that then that maneuvering was, again, I'm going to call the eight and a half minute edited for time. I'm not going to claim that it was edited for content, but for time. But if those things are removed and then smashed together, I'm not going to say that it's not a lie, but it may not be an accurate representation of what the totality of truly happened. And yeah, if you only saw that, you could say, yes, of course, based on what I'm seeing, this is not possible or likely. But if you're not seeing the whole picture, we'll go back to that judge, you know, show me the raw video, show me the whole thing without any tricks, without any edits, without

50:22any arrows, just let me see that first before we move on to anything else. And I would, you know, this is my new rule and how I consume news. The next sensational video I see on TV with shooting a crime, a questionable incident. And the news shows me the, you know, 22 seconds of it. My first question is, where's the rest of this? Yeah, we're showing the context. Yeah. Before I buy into whatever version of the story you were presenting, is there more video? What's interesting is we're having a practical conversation about the validity of a, of a piece of footage and whether it's been cut, compressed, sped up other things. Um, this is not an AI conversation. And let's make sure the audience that's new to this, um, understands that there's a lot of demarcation here, which is this is, we're having a new school, old school conversation because there are old school things that play here. That we're not, no one is suggesting here. And just again, this is for the uninitiated. This is not a question of people making up what's in a video using modern technology.

51:26Um, so just to make sure what we're talking about to remind everybody or people who are late to this or just to reinforce it, we're talking about things that are cut up manipulated, taken out of order, shortened, sped up, omitted. We're not talking about creating content from an AI model at all. Right. Can we tell you about, um, our conversation with the former secretary of the Air Force? Please. We, you know, she's part of this story. She's, you know, if you go back hours in our conversation, she's the one that, you know, by her own admission, you know, saw one of those articles, circled it, said, let's, let's look into this, you know, lack of metal of honors for the Air Force. Her name is Deborah James. She agreed to interview. We danced around the schedules and where this is going to happen. And finally, we just had to fly out to Florida where she was.

52:27And, um, and we had a lot of three hour conversation with her. And the first hour and a half was very cordial, friendly. She kept saying some things. She kept referring to a third party that, uh, confirmed their understanding of the story, you know, as, as you can imagine, when this package started to go up to the higher levels of government, they needed signatures, approvals, yeses, metal of honor package. And then with honor package, you know, upgrade package. And, um, and so one of the things that they, they leaned on, she kept saying this third party validator, her findings. And so we took a break. And, um, you want to play the clip here. By the way, she, she wasn't, she wasn't ambushed. We took a break. And I want you to understand that, um, was she still active to the time or to know?

53:28No, no, she was, uh, I believe, you know, 15, 16, maybe into 17. She was a secretary. Okay. Because there was such a difference of opinion, secretary Mattis sent this video off to other forensic experts in the government, not in the department of defense. So there would be no argument as to, well, the Navy is just backing this point of view. Air Force is just backing that point of view. The secretary of defense at the time, Mattis, reached out to the Department of Justice. And for time this year, they've requested the UJ specifically the FBI, the FU, the Fridge, and provide a unbiased third party analysis. And the FBI, as far as I was told, took from the sent head of the Air Force sent. They reviewed the material and provided their response in an unbiased, applied email. And they were not able to conclude that the government is trying to find a new occurred.

54:31And two, they were unable to conclude that the Navy's determination of events during this refining, or two, time there is a occurred. Okay. So they're right in the middle. Yeah, they're not going to get in there. So that's when you're like, we're not getting involved in this, something, you're a conversion of that. Is that the music that was, is there something else where they did conclude? I was led to believe that they had supported, well, maybe my interpretation was, Senator and I, is sent forward. So, but I have understood that they, temperate. It's tough to be in. So for context, two or three times in that first hour or a half or so, she referenced that third party. I asked her the third party, are you talking about the FBI? She said yes. And that's what led to that exchange, how did the interview end with her?

55:34You said the first 90 minutes was relatively cordial. Well, this was in the second hour and a half or so. It wasn't that the second part wasn't cordial. It just got more tense. Yeah, but here's what's amazing and we'll talk about how it ended because that's important, but it's the support and parcel to it. She had every opportunity to do what you've seen a million times where somebody says, look, I don't know what's going on here. This is not what I agreed to. Take off the mic, get up, leave. She's come to a house to sit down with the two of us and a crew of people she hasn't met. She's not asked to see the questions in advance. She did not do any of the things, any of the hallmarks of, I want a canned, controlled, contrived, constructed interview. She did the opposite. She came and sat with us. She knew what Mitch's former job was. And she sat through it. And she did her best. She, her level of diplomacy and professionalism remained, as you could see. She was flustered. Anybody would be. And it wasn't designed to fluster her.

56:35That's why I said it wasn't an ambush. The hope was that there was an answer to these questions. This was not planned gotchas, right? We weren't what they used to call door stepping her into like, have you seen this? We knew you hadn't, you know, ultimately when it comes to anybody's on the other side of this story, if they have an answer and it's real and it works and it's got a verifiable veracity to it, bring it. So she had ever, if she, if she saw it or knew something different or had something else to say, she had every opportunity to do it. I think as you guys did yesterday, whether his medal of honor was based off material finding two or one, and you essentially said it was based off of one. So does it matter that the FBI can't confirm that material finding number two didn't happen? Well, that's when they realized there's a longer story here, but when they realized two wasn't working, I'm going to read very short with this, but there's a much longer story. They resorted to one that was also a push because there was an administration change.

57:39And so they realized they didn't have time to continue this campaign case research, whatever you want to call it. And so they just shifted and focused on material finding one, which no one, even the Navy and the board, no one disagreed with that part. All the points of contention and the fiction and the disagreement was material finding two. Now, does the Navy and the board agree that there were two enemy fighters, the John? No. But I want to say something about, I want to double down on what Brian just said, total credit for her to her for coming and having a conversation with us. You know, we're going to talk about here in a bit how to talk about who hasn't agreed. Who hasn't come. But, you know, she, she met us. We had a real conversation. I don't think I know I'm not everyone agrees with me here. I don't think she, this was a calculated diabolical effort on her part.

58:47I think the people underneath her gave her information. She probably didn't know exactly where to push in and ask the right questions. She trusted the people underneath her to give her good information. And the same way that, you know, we're not, we're not putting Mattis on trial either. You know, but, you know, they do like, by the time she gets that high, like, this is good. Did the work? Yes. Okay. And we're going to get an executive summary on it probably. And so it feels more official to the outsider who doesn't understand these systems or these establishment of these institutions. As it climbs the flagpole, it feels like, oh, it must be more real. The problem is the executive summary level up the flagpole is really abbreviating the information. And there's a lot of trust and delegation to the people who delivered it up the flagpole. You know, case in point, there is a version of the story. We haven't confirmed this, but it's been repeated enough. I think I trusted a version of this went down.

59:49That by the time Mattis was briefed, they said something like, yeah, the Navy or someone's pushing back on this story. And it's just ridiculous that, you know, two enemy fighter would fight each other in broad daylight. That makes sense on the surface, unless you know all the other details. But that comment, like, how would two people that know each other shoot each other? And he's like, yeah, that sounds ridiculous. Continue on. So, you know, trusting the people underneath you that they're giving you good information, you know, leaders are undermined all the time by the people that work for them with them. In fact, we have another piece of footage. If you want to look at it, yeah, that is... So, pull up the documents. Yeah. Again, same conditions, not designed to be anything other than if you have an answer, share it with us.

1:00:49Help us understand what we think we see. These are the documents separated by a day. I was asked to find independent subject matter assessment to many words there. subject matter seems like this is the first thing that has been suggested since the field. It means that it says, I don't know if you can handle this game. Well, I was looking at all this. I was like, wait a second, what? They're signed by different people. But they look like they're the exact same. I was just saying this is the same type of thing. So, I just sounded the other huge problem, the same amount of the different amount. It's also a data I think. What is this prepared for them to sign? Because they're not way to come up with the exact same words. Again, I don't exactly know what this is. I'm the wrong person to ask about this. So, I just want to be clear that I believe the expert said I listen to this. So, I absolutely stand by this decision.

1:01:49This is not an independent review. What are those memos? What are we looking at? Can you pull up the... I think we have the second page of them. These were presented as independent witness statements with people with expertise and how to evaluate these images. And they were both submitted. Yes. In the Air Force's package to continue pushing this story. They're verifying the... Actually, they are the kind of... They're signing off on the findings with pixel tracking and other... As opposed to this package, they're trying to get evidence and get support and get statements from people. And so, these are just a couple. We have a bunch. But you can see here, there's some lines there about leaning on or hinging this on...

1:02:51What we talked about earlier, pixel tracking. So, again, just to make the point, in these early days, when they're forming this case, they are leaning heavily on pixel tracking. It says, based on the in-depth ISR video analysis of my subject matter expertise, I affirm beyond reasonable doubt that the automated pixel tracking functionality mirrors the ISR analyst conclusions. In conclusion, I state the following with full confidence and beyond a reasonable doubt that the methodology represents an industry standard. The software we talked about that yesterday utilizes... Utilized for the Chapman Review meets the same benchmark, etc., etc. This is seven ways to say that the pixel tracking technology is accurate, and this person is verifying and signing off on it. But what's... There's two things, and we want to talk about... Mike, can we line out the phone number there? I already was going to make them happen.

1:03:52Yeah, we'll make a time notation. Okay, but what's actually more important... Put it down, we'll change it to Mitch's cell, but that's fine. Yeah. But what's more important about it, is there a way to go back to the two documents, just a still of the two documents? These are... The key point here, these are supposed to be independent statements from two experts. So part identical. The opening paragraph and the closing paragraph, you know, with the individual phone numbers and emails are, you know, unique. Everybody else, the digital content. Somebody else wrote it for them. It's signed here. That is not an independent review. And what's generally... In fact, it might not even be a review. I would say those are not independently derived documents, hard to say what the review process was. All we're looking at is the actual paperwork certifying it, right? Which I would agree that the paperwork is essentially a carbon copy, which means that it was produced by somebody else and handed to these individuals. At least one of them to sign.

1:04:53Because the likelihood of, let's say, the person on the left did write this, the likelihood of the person on the right having identical language, I'm going to put that... Possibly. Yes, statistically impossible. Right. There's also, you know, as we pointed out, as we, you know, asked in the video, there's something about them being separated by a day that I think is a issue here. It seems like there's a process and everything does have a process. So, again, we were asking the question and looking for an answer. There are some things that are, let's say, difficult to understand. It's not our job to make the case for why these would be the same. It's somebody else's job to explain to us why they're the same. How did it happen? How were they presented? Who wrote them? Are there... And is the information in there now reliable if they're prepared? Is it an individual witness statement anymore? Because in order for someone to sign the statement, it appears as if they're signing off on what the statement certifies. But inherent is that in that, is that they're signing off on the way the statement

1:05:55has been prepared if they didn't write it. And there's no place where they're signing off. They're signing off on the way the handcock on it. You're certifying both of those things. You're saying that what I'm looking at and what I'm putting my name on, I agree to. I mean, I... We don't know the answer to this, but I suspect they don't even know that they signed the same statements. Could be, right? No idea. If they're separated by a day, you know, were they in the same room at the same time? Are you signing this? Are you signing this? Yeah, sure would sign it. But my gut tells me that they probably don't even know they did this. Okay. This happened. Haven't seen enough military paperwork. I think we know exactly why they are such carbon copies. Yeah. But again, yeah, these statements, I mean, that is a tough one to explain. And what sucks is, because those are so identical, it does bring into question whether or not there was a review or not. Because you can demonstrably say, yeah, that the likelihood of these things being generated independently incredibly low. Zero.

1:06:55Going beyond that is a little bit more difficult. We start making assumptions at that point. Sure. Sure. You know, there's one of the things we've talked about at length, you know, there's a difference between proving something true and proving if it is true. You know, having your goal already in focus as you build your case or let's just see where this goes. Yeah, confirmation bias. Yeah. One of the more interesting things at the very, very end. I want to say one more thing about those videos that I think is important. The other page that we showed focused highly on pixel tracking. But Mike Wendellkin told Mitch essentially that there was no such thing as pixel tracking. So what we have here is we're not just looking at these siloed in their own, right?

1:07:55We're gathering, we're putting together a full picture of the information. So either there was automated pixel tracking software that these experts. So let's say the review process, let's go in the other direction that you're implying is possible. And I don't mean you're implying. And like that's unusual. You're advocating for and reminding us that there may not be something to fairies going on with these memos. So we go there for a second. But we have a different problem because the memo is telling you that there is automated software and pixel tracking technology that was used. They are verifying that that technology presented findings that were worthy of the Medal of Honor. And that's what they were signing off on. But Mike Wendellkin told us there was no such thing. So somewhere we have a problem and we have an issue and we have a question. Have you guys found a confirmed utilization of pixel tracking anywhere?

1:08:55And we will stand down if someone presents pixel tracking and can tell us it existed then. Yes, now, but then in 2016. Which is an important delineation. We'll stand down. Someone show us. Okay. It would be hard to say it's, I guess, the system's capabilities could be classified, but you're referencing it in an unclassified document. So, okay, I'm just curious. I mean, if it exists, it should be easy to show another use case in which it was utilized. Probably many. Could you imagine if this existed how many different places and cases it would be used in? Okay. Okay. So again, full credit to her for dealing with us. Yeah, nothing but respect for none of the chair. Well, what she said at the end, and this will lead nicely in the US to question how to do.

1:09:55You know, the first hour and a half were nice. The last hour and a half were more tense, not unfriendly, but more tense. And as she's leaving, you know, we call her an Uber. The Uber is taking for some reason an unusual amount of time. And I think we were discussing, you know, how we got some of these documents. And her question to me was, I gave her the answer. And then we were talking about something else related to information. And her question to me was, you know, who broke ranks? She wanted to know who. And that's how she phrased it. Who broke ranks? That's just weird language to me. You know, it sounds, it sounds wrong in my mind. My initial assessment of you saying that with that language is that this was not unknown to her.

1:10:58I'm going to give her more charity than that, but fair point. I think she was just raised that question. Yeah. But if she was misled, right, the way that she phrased that would lead me to believe that she may have known that she was misled. Well, maybe she knew some facet of it, not the complete. Yeah. And again, this is my snapshot. When you first said that, I'm just thinking about the position that she was in. You know, not every form of communication comes out perfectly, of course. That's an odd choice of words. Agreed. Yeah. Agreed. It points to something. It's hard to say exactly what it is. It points to either potentially protecting a narrative of some kind or already knowing that there were issues and hoping that it wouldn't get out there. Or perhaps it's just a turn of phrase that didn't work out right or that we are now pixel-fucking that phrase. And it doesn't deserve to be pixel-fucked somewhere.

1:12:00The answer lies. I think what's interesting about this process over these six years, and I think we've said it a few times during this. We're not here to necessarily answer every single piece of that. The point is to share our findings, the information that we've gathered, and that's data as well. You know, it's interesting. It's so much data that you asked at the top, how did this interview end? So it's obviously a curious and important thing to look at. Yeah. Today's episode is brought to you by Spartan Forge. I just hosted a three-hour conversation with the founder of Spartan Forge, Bill Thompson. We talked about it exactly zero seconds, as we always do. We got lost talking about other things. I describe Spartan Forge as the most useful aviation app that I have that is not designed for aviation purposes. Now, we did it at the very end because I forced them to talk about his business a little bit. There are some updates that are coming that will have a little bit of utility for aviation.

1:13:00I may or may not have had a hand in pestering him until he did so. But until then, if you are interested in mastering the outdoors, or at least trying to because I don't think that's possible. And you want to have the highest level of technology in your hands. I really recommend checking out Spartan Forge. They have things on there like LIDAR and UAV mapping, which they just updated. If you're a hunter, they have deer movement prediction. There's pin sharing, there's battle boards. If you log on via their desktop portal, it has its own cyber scout app is what I'm going to call it. Bill may not call it that. But essentially think of it AI tool, a coach, a mentor that can help answer questions that you may have, caliber of round, how to cite an arrival, things you should look at, impact for a hunting trip, all of that type of stuff. This tool has everything that you need if you go outdoors, whether that's sunrise, sunset, where the shadow is going to be, where things going to be illuminated, property boundaries, national parks, all of everything you need for hunting. And like I said, I use this as part of my pre-flight process to take a look at where it is I'm going to fly the helicopter.

1:14:03It's the single most valuable tool that I have for off-airport operations. Spartanforge.ai. Go check it out and take your technology to the next level. Okay. So Deborah James came and sat with us. We had... Did she talk into the mic? She did. Better than me. She had the last mic. She came and sat with us. You know, we had General Tribune and Air Force General at the time in charge of Task Force 11. We had the Predator pilots or one of the Predator pilots come speak with us. Do we have anyone else on Air Force? No. I think that was it. But nobody else from the Air Force would participate in this. Could you reach out to everyone? Not literally everyone. But so many people. And we reached out to Dan Schilling. We reached out to... We talked to a public affairs department in Hollywood that had the keys to the Kingdom and could probably get us in anywhere.

1:15:06We talked to... I think we showed you Rob Harrison yesterday who's making the podcast rounds. What did Dan Schilling say? We're going to show you. Let me just keep rattling off the list. We talked to Laurie. I've text threads with her. Which for clarity is John Chapman's sister? Which is John Chapman's sister? Um... Who else? I mean, it's pretty extensive. Through the public affairs officer, we requested talking to the gunship pilots. Right. We reached out to F-15 pilots. DJ. Turner. You know, trying to get to DJ Turner and the crew. Um, no shortage of effort over years. Not just one attempt. Oh, it's not working. Over years. Multiple emails. Long email chains. Did you guys FOIA a bunch of stuff as well? Yes. Okay. It hasn't been mentioned at this point, but I figured you did. And, um... And... In the beginning, Rob Harrison, you know, this kind of guy, this vocal guy who's, you know, making the rounds,

1:16:06was... Friendly. Interested. And I, you know, my pitch was, we're going to talk to everyone. I don't care what side of the story you're on. If you had a meaningful participation, or you have a meaningful opinion on it, that means something, let's talk. We don't have to agree. Is our audience clear on who he is? Um... Rob Harrison was... We talked about him yesterday for a minute. He was the signals guy on the gunship. We're in the Mako 300 Charlie shirt. Yes. And, um... Well, can you... Can you pull up the picture of that exchange we had with him? The text exchange. The text exchange, yeah. Yeah. Okay. While that's coming up, and I think it's safe to say you asked who. I don't think there's any name we've named here, or any faction we've named here, that we didn't reach out to multiple times. Yeah.

1:17:06Now, you know, we talked about our Afghanistan trip. We've described how many different people from different units, elements, you know, in various parts of the chain of command, you know, we had so much participation on this project. And I think that's because they understood we were approaching it faithfully, truthfully. And we were going to go wherever this thing took us. And again, like we talked about, you know, I love the CO teams, but I'm not in love with the CO teams. If this turned out... If this story five years ago would have turned out that, oh, you know, we would have made that documentary. You know, and... But to have the Taliban interview with us and not have the Air Force for various reasons which we'll explain is ridiculous to me. Again, we don't have to agree, but have a discussion. And I don't even... I'm not even saying debate, have a discussion. Okay. So this is a... I mean, again, this started way back.

1:18:07This is from 2022. And after some days and days, weeks and weeks of exchanges, I think he started to feel threatened by the fact that I was in the Navy or maybe didn't like some of the things I'm saying. I can't speak to exactly what was in his mind. Because at that point, I don't think you were saying anything out loud. And we didn't know a lot. Yeah. Let's talk. Yeah. And you have to put this back early in the investigation in 2022. And we... We're year in. Look, today and yesterday are the first days that we've shared any of this. So anybody else's view here is coming more from tribalism than it is coming from any kind of fact in terms of... If it becomes... If it seems like he knows what we think or what Mitch thinks, he may have turned out to be right, but going back in time to the prism of this moment. There's no reason for him to know, because we didn't know yet. Okay. What's... I think important here is that he's attempting to shape the...

1:19:07How the conversation might... How the interview might happen. And he's starting to express the desire to have a public affairs officer involved. Is he still active? No. No. That's an interesting request. Right. Well, I think he... Well, I know this. What he started to believe was that we might not support blindly the story or the side he was on. I mean, as a rule, it's good not to blindly support anything. Right. Okay. It's a good point. Yeah. So you can see in there in the middle, would you be willing to enter a legal agreement that this project won't go down any path arguing medals or justifications behind medals? So... And if you can step... You know, you can continue to read there. What he's trying to do is shape the conversation ahead of time and have guardrails in it. And nobody else in our process had a public affairs officer present or was entering a legal agreement for an interview.

1:20:11And initially, you know, you can see my response down there, a raptor for the rest of the day. And I'm just trying to think about how to respond to this. Like, I don't want that interview. I don't want an interview where it's someone else's governing how it goes. I don't want to have that discussion. That's not a real discussion to me. And this is indicative of... I mean, I can show you so many of these types of texts. We're not going to go there, but this is just indicative of the rest of the process. And we're going to show you some other emails that we had. There's an accusation, I think, from him towards us that, you know, we didn't liaise on with the public affairs officer. We did. We did. We're going to show you emails many, many times at length describing our position, describing how we would go about the process. But any in and yet, well, can you pull up? I don't know. There's a bunch of them pull up. Pull up the one with Derek and Sarah. And you identified something that, as a, let's say, here as a filmmaker, storyteller, and someone who helped continue to design and direct the way we were going to do this process here and the way we approached it and what our ethos was.

1:21:29We weren't going to suddenly invite public affairs officers into the conversations because that would mean crafting or controlling a conversation. But you'll see that we even acquiesce to that at some point. Yeah. They were asking for who did you, who have you spoken to so far, which, you know, I didn't want to tell them that. I don't want this, I don't want someone controlling, you know, how we investigate this. This is a little bit out of order. We're going to go back to another one. But finally, we, you know, we re-lented and said, OK, well, here's a list of the admirals and generals we've spoken to you so far. And, you know, you can see the day here. This is 2024, you know, as we're still trying to put a pry bar in this and get someone to talk about story. Two more years past the text. We're still trying to work the problem. But again, this is out of order, but I'll just, I'll just go with this. I had a call with Sarah Francis from your office after presenting many of the same requests she stated, it wouldn't matter funding distribution or interview list because if we were discussing John Chapman, the Air Force would not support.

1:22:36So what they, what they initially did was put up a bunch of hurdles for us to get over. Do you have distribution? Do you have funding? Who have you spoken to so far? Right. Disclose. And then eventually on a phone call with her, you know, she just said, basically, if you're going into the John Chapman story, we're not participating. Can you pull up the other one? Yeah. So what you're starting, we're the picture that's being painted here and the way we've interpreted this over time is they presented a moving target. There was no way to hit it. It went from distribution and went to what's the funding? It went from who's in it? It went to PAO's offices. And here's where we agreed to even that. This is part of that same thread. It's a very long thread of emails. You can see we blacked out the email addresses, but I believe there were nine people, ten people, including Dan Schilling, Rob Harrison, some other people, all included that.

1:23:36At this point, we're like, we're not going to have siloed conversations anymore. Everyone's going to hear everything. No more hiding. And so this is us re-lending. Okay, fine. However, if a public affairs officer presents his dean necessary to facilitate interviews with the Air Force, we'd be open to considering it at this late stage. So that's us saying, all right, let's talk about it. And the next line, additionally, our interactions with the Air Force liaison Hollywood office initially indicated reluctance to participate in projects without distribution, later shifting to rationale to avoid any discussions related to John Chapman. And I'll finish it. Although he is not the primary focus of this docuseries. That's a true statement. A lot of the centers around what happened with John, but a lot of this is about, you know, our big brains conversations, how I operation on a connolly came about, our interactions with the Taliban. So our in 20 minute episode dedicated entirely to the rangers piece of this battle.

1:24:42So to the question of did we try to get Air Force participation, I hope we've demonstrated we did. And there are, you know, just I didn't tell you this, but August 10th, you know, just a few weeks ago, I reached out to these guys to Laurie to rob to another gentleman named Matt Kubler. And said, hey, I'm going to go on a pretty high profile podcast here soon. Do you want me to ask if we could have, you know, a discussion on the show. And it gets the first response from Laurie was very polite and they just devolved into no hell, no go ahead and protect the brand, do your thing, which will be, you know, their response to this podcast. You know, they will do some character assassination or attempt to, but they won't answer the questions.

1:25:45Though, though, though, accuse me, probably even you, you're just whitewashing the brand. That seems to be their mantra and a lot of their conversations. I think I hope we've to have a clarity. Yeah. Open invite to Laurie or anybody else. Well, it's just, I don't want to pitch this is on the other side of the table. Open invite to anybody who wants to sit down and have a similar conversation and work through the information just as you guys have. That's always the way that I operate because people ask me that all the time. We had this guy. I want you have the other guy. Absolutely. I mean, I think that's you've done it. That's what discourse is supposed to be about. So that invite is open. Take it if you want to. That's the quote. Disagreement is the basis of all knowledge. I would say I would add to that and what happens if I disagree with your quote. Wow. That's how we get smarter. The person will make it. I'm not worth making. Yeah.

1:26:45But I would just, you know, again, if they choose to go on the next podcast, your podcast, wherever they go and you respond to this, because they almost certainly will. They'll be in the comments sections. I know they'll be. I know they'll be there. Say whatever you want to say about us, our efforts just show us facts. Demonstrate something that is compelling that matters instead of just, make sure just protecting the brand and Brian, your lackey or whatever they're going to say about Brian here, who knows how it's all there or George's participation in our project or people labor participation, you know, Pete Labor was their friend for years in this project until recently he interviewed with us and went on a couple of other podcasts and said something that they didn't like, you know, the counter narrative. And now Pete is, I guess we own Pete. Is there is their assertion? That's crazy. I don't know what to say about that. I can't fathom the loss in a family like that.

1:27:48And again, what I said a little while ago is, you know, I do my best to try to see the world through other people's eyes. I can't even fathom that one, you know, and maybe the conviction in depth of belief is beyond even something that they want to consider. And having not lived through that or have that been in my life for 20 years, I can't even comment on that. But if they do want to talk, open invite. I hope to do. I think the reason we went through this again is it this could be interpreted or in my estimation, misinterpreted as petty. I hope not, but we have all watched hundreds of hours of documentaries and other such things news magazines and things as we were growing up that doesn't exist as much anymore. And you'll often see a card or hear somebody say, you know, we reached out to X and they refused.

1:28:48I've always wondered what was behind that. And I always thought, man, that's a story unto itself, isn't it? Because there's a lot of, a lot of metrics around reached out to what it looks like. And it's not necessarily any of our business and they do their projects their way. This is a disclosure and a transparency thing. That's a word tempting to do. If it's, if you see other things in it, they may be there. They may be unintended consequences of having this kind of conversation about this kind of thing, maybe not. But the point is, you look at those few words on the screen or you hear somebody say we asked them and they refuse to comment. That's not enough here. So that's why we wanted to share this. One more order of business here, I think, in this email world. Can you pull up some of the exchanges with the dance showing? I'm not sure which one you're going to come up with here first, but we can speak to any or all of them.

1:29:50I'd love to talk about also, you know, eventually gold star families and truth. I think it's important here. Okay. This email, and again, please, Mike, you know, desensitize it if we need, I don't think his email address is there, but if you guys feel it's, you know, treacherous. It looks good so far. But, you know, this is from February of 2017. This is in, you know, we can assume Dan's research phase of his book. That's what the premise of the email is about. If you're just joining us here, Dan Shelling wrote the book, made the videos, the movie is coming out. Lone Thon is based on his book as far as we understand. Okay. A couple of key points. I mean, there's a lot of stuff here, but the key points we want to highlight here are, you know, the Air Force is officially collaborating with the project. So, you know, they're, you know, aligned enough for him to make that statement. But then something that we think is interesting is the next one.

1:30:55In referencing John Chapman, he says, I know he had shortcomings. I also know you did your best to look after him in country and on ops. That is not represented at all in the book, alone, it done. If you read that book, if you read the part about Robert's rich, and you know, in this email, he's not wrong. Most of the book is about combat control and history of combat control. And how great they are. And I don't disagree, by the way. But nowhere in that book does it represent anything where John had an issue, a problem. In fact, it's quite the opposite. That in the book, John is better than everyone around him. He is leading the charge. He's more qualified than any of them to be there. He has more training than all of them. And again, I hope I'm trading very lightly here.

1:31:58And I'll just repeat, we're not celebrating what happened here. We're not trying to trample John's grave at all. But the book just embellishes so much. And what shortcomings. What are you referencing? What were the issues that you want to address? We're not sure. The question is, where is that part of the story? Yeah, we'd love to ask him that question. I think that's what's important here. And this is an effort to have this leads to another email that we may or may not show, which basically says, hey, I'm not going to talk to you. There's some stuff in the doc that we are deciding whether we're going to put in or not. That addresses this idea of shortcomings. But it raises some questions. Like what? What are they? Like what are they? Do you have shortcomings? Of course I do. We all say. Were you ever taken care of in country by a leader? Sure. Same. I'm not. But why state that?

1:32:58That's true for every single person over there. Because he's humanizing him. Okay. There. There. I mean, I guess you could look at it as if he skipped over those things in the book. And the unlikely event that somebody writes a book about my life. I hope they skip over my shortcomings as well. Okay. Like some of them. Yeah. You know, like the shortest of shortcomings. Right. I'm just, to me, as, I mean, I can see you viewing it from that lens. I can see him also just humanizing him. Okay. Is it necessary for him, again, this is a question. You know, you see that and it's not that I don't see that. Is it necessary for him to humanize him to, to, to slab? You think there's that, you know, the first time slab had ever been contacted by him?

1:33:59No, unsure. I think we can assume it's one of the first when you read the entire email. My, my suspicion would be, is he was probably just trying to connect with slab on a personal level. That's how I, at first glance, this, having looked at this for two minutes. Yeah, sure. That is how I would probably read that. Okay. Um, but we'd love to talk to him about whatever he, yeah, I think, thinks he meant by that. Okay. Here's another key point. He could also be talking about personal shortcomings as opposed to professional and tactical ones. Sure. You know what I mean? There's a lot left out there. Yeah. Um, the email provides some context, but again, more taken. Let's, uh, let's move to the last one. Here he says, as he's trying to get slab to interview with him, he says, uh, I'm not interested in talking with the other seals in the op, just you, which, you know, this is from, this is from Dan Schilling to slab directly in February of 2017.

1:35:01Mm-hmm. Can you pull up the other email we have, the other email we have from, um, from Schilling to the group? In an effort to lower beef prices, 300,000 metric tons of foreign ground beef are entering the US market without the normal tariff. The craziest part, when that beef reaches grocery store shelves, you'll have no way of knowing it came from another country. And where your beef comes from matters because if there's no accountability and sourcing, there can't be transparency and quality. At Good Ranchers, we partner exclusively with local farms and ranches where quality is the standard, not the exception. Every cut of our beef, chicken, pork, and wild-caught seafood is 100% American-born, raised, and harvested right here in the USA. And for a limited time, you can get $123 off when you start a plan. That's $41 off each of your first three orders, totaling in $123 off. Visit GoodRanchers.com to claim this offer today.

1:36:01GoodRanchers.com. American Meat Delivered. Okay, this is part of that long thread. This was, you know, again, I think I mentioned this email was to about nine or ten people. Dan was one of them. He responded. You can see the date there. I can relate, Mitchell, the only people who would not speak to me about the events when I conducted my research and wrote the book, Alone It Dawn, where the seal is involved from your unit and any of the other members from the same. Not one. So, one email, he's telling Slav, I don't want to talk to anyone else, I just want to talk to you. And in this email, he's saying that he, I mean, he's implying that he tried to get everyone and they wouldn't speak to him. So, there's a gap there in what's being communicated, I'm not sure which one is true. I don't think we have any, in the people we've spoken to, no one said that he reached out to them.

1:37:05But again, we'd love to talk to Dan and find out what's true about this. It's interesting in the other email he referenced, he didn't want to talk to anybody else. That would be like me sitting here and saying, I only want to talk to you too, because this is a story about your documentary and nothing else. I don't consider myself to be a journalist, by the way, but if I was going to write or, and the reason that there is an open offer for anybody who wants to talk about this is because I am interested in trying to find as many different POVs as possible. Why not gather those POVs, you can still tell the story of just the CCTV. I think those different angles are very important. Having said that again, I'm not a journalist, Dan can write his book however he wants to. I would have approached it differently. Yeah. And that's how we, I mean, again, I think we've proven it, we want to talk to everyone. I think this is part of that same, that's why I brought it up. I like to look at these things thematically so that somebody can put a hook into something other than the plot of this story and the plot of the blowback and everything else.

1:38:06And if the idea is, again, to look at what it means when you say we reached out to people, you know, this is more transparency about the reaching out. And there's some things here that like to understand a little bit more. And it seems like the people we sat down with never mentioned that they had contact with them. Perhaps they didn't see those contacts. Perhaps they didn't make it through to their email box. This fam, no one we talked to said that, you know, he reached out to them. Okay. So let's talk about this movie. Is it called Alone A Dawn? We don't know. So there is a feature film coming out, helmed by Ron Howard, backed by Amazon NGM. The film is shot. It's in post-production right now. There are articles out there describing the film, you know, with who's in the cast.

1:39:09We haven't seen the film. We haven't read the script. But I think it is safe to say it is based on the book Alone A Dawn. Dan will tell you, Laurie will tell you that. And if it is, if that is true, it is based on the book Alone A Dawn. It is demonstrably false. Based on the hours of conversation we've had over here. We can imagine, we don't know, but we can imagine, you know, similar to lone survivor, at the top of that movie, there will be a card that says something like based on a true story or inspired by true events. And, you know, what does that really mean? Maybe there's not one. Maybe they just take complete liberty and they're going to tell us they're going to take some liberties. But we do know it is connected to the book Alone A Dawn. I think we understand the budget to be something like, I think I heard 59 million.

1:40:10We'll see. Maybe we won't see. But that movie is supposed to come out, was announced, it might come out this fall. A more recent article implied hinted that it might be pushed to next year. Who knows? But, you know, I think now based on what we know about lone survivor, you know, if we could have a do over, I think some people would probably go for that. I would tend to agree. But I think that, you know, the movies that we're mentioning are, you know, you had Ross on. Schneider-Man, you talked about lone survivor. Again, you say you're obviously willing to talk to anybody about this topic now. This would not be an exception to the rule that films are entertainment products and they take a lot of poetic license.

1:41:13I think where the exception to the rule might be if it's based on a premise that is entirely untrue or events that didn't happen, that's something else. It's difficult, but at the same time understandable that the public learns a lot of their true stories through movies. And that, that prison is probably not the best way. Don't know the movie. Don't know exactly what's in it. Look forward to seeing it. In many cases, we'd have been the first people in the front row to see that film for other reasons and we'll be there and look forward to seeing it. I think it's problematic to see what, after what we, our findings are to see the mythology here presented as a, as a, as a true story.

1:42:14Now, again, that wouldn't be the first time that that's happened. And there's a podcast to be had about, you know, there's four hours to be had about what based on a true story, actual events, etc. It's said remains. It feels like there's something again binary going on there. It feels like it's a statement that has the power of truth in it, a foundation of something meaningful. I'm sure it does the question as to what degree. I'm very curious. I don't think we have the bandwidth to, to dive into this, but, you know, the writer's guilt has some words to say about, you know, how based on a true story, what that actually means, what the right and the left of that are. Maybe at the end of this, I'll dig into that, but what do you want the impact of your documentary to be? Well, first and foremost, we want the truth.

1:43:15You know, we're, concisely, what do you believe the truth to be? The John Chapman was shot and killed within about three to four minutes of their second insert and never moved again. Do you believe he deserved the Medal of Honor? No. No. I don't say that lightly, but, you know, I think he made, I think it was heroic for them to return to that mountain because not everyone did. I think there were some errors made, but I don't think the Medal of Honor was wanted. I mean, I know the lightning rod that I just made myself by saying that, but based on what we know and removing all the politics and removing all the moat that's been formed around this story and all the pitfalls objectively.

1:44:18Is the goal of your documentary to have as many people as possible also know that? Of course. Yeah. Yeah. We wouldn't make this to not distribute it and get it out there. And, you know, of course, we want people to see it, but we want the lessons to be learned. Right. So there will be more of these stories. I just don't see there's any way that these conversations are going to be viewed as anything other than an attack on John himself. And the worst part about that is that he isn't here to speak for himself and to defend himself. He did none of this. John did none of this. He had no hand in this and all the stuff that's happened in the in the last 25 years. It's everyone around him. So let me, this is something that my ring true, I know it'll ring true to you. You know, this is not the first time this has happened as Brian just said, we have loan survivor.

1:45:18We have the Pat Tillman story. Another what's what was good about the Pat Tillman story is it didn't take 25 years to figure out what happened. They did it in about six weeks. But you were on the Jessica Lynch op. I'm going to read you something from her mouth. You know, after that operation and maybe I should just let you speak to this, she was framed a certain way. Do you remember? I personally described it as like weaponized propaganda. She was described. I remember hearing people talk about this will be the first female metal of honor recipient. She fought into her last round in her magazine, this heroic stand. And I sat and talked with her and she was knocked unconscious almost immediately. Okay. Let me read what she said in a statement from 2007. Okay. And there was a testimony before the House committee. And she goes, at my parents' home in Wart County, West Virginia, it was under siege by media, all repeating the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills of West Virginia who went down fighting.

1:46:28It was not true. I've repeatedly said when asked that if the stories about me helped inspire troops and rally nation, then perhaps there were some good. However, I am still confused as to why they chose to lie. We should talk about who they is and try to make me a legend. When all the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were in fact legendary and she added, the bottom line is that American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes. And they don't need to be told elaborate lies. The truth of war is not always easy to hear, but it is always more heroic than the hype. And the very last thing was in reference to being labeled a hero. She goes, that wasn't me. I'm not about to take credit for something I didn't do. I'm just a survivor. Now she's still alive to say these things and correct the record. John is not. That one was interesting. It speaks to, and I don't know if the information about her fighting to the last round in any way came from the DOD, or because there was so little information about what happened.

1:47:42There was a void and it got filled by talking heads. They wanted to get people to tune in. But regardless, that is an example of how a void is filled with bullshit that becomes real because it's repeated over and over and over again. I think one of the issues here for me, again, the civilian side for me, because you guys are looking at this little differently for a host of reasons that are established here, that we no longer need. First of all, we look at our heroes through the prism of Marvel movies, nothing against those movies. I enjoy some of them as well. And I don't mean to just use Marvel. There's plenty of movies like it. Let's say superhero movies. We also get a lot of our sense of what a hero is. We talked about that earlier from mythology. 2000-year-old blind wanderers writing incredible poems like The Odyssey that become epic films that we all love and debate. And talk about for damn good reason.

1:48:44I don't know if we need to get our better angels all the time from myths. It seems to me that we've got enough real accomplishments around us to aspire to to be inspired by that are exemplary of our better selves, our best selves, whether they're physical, spiritual. Our effect on each other is powerful, negatively and positively. And I think what she said there is important and it obviously we feel has some overlap with this situation. This is very difficult. And we continue to take no joy in studying this closely. But at some point if we're immortalizing people so that others aspire to do what they did, what separates us from 2000 years ago, 200 years ago, 20 years ago, should be that we have the power to look at the truth.

1:49:46If Laurie was sitting in my seat, how would you explain to her what you're doing through the lens of it's not an attack on her brother or his legacy? When you answer, please answer into the microphone. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to answer that. That's a complex question. I actually don't know. I think I'd have to be in that situation and see her and just see what happens. I do think the truth matters. I think we have to believe in our heroes. I think when that's when that gets compromised and again this isn't the first time, it causes problems. I mean, there's a reason. There's a reason everyone's been arguing about this for 25 years. Something feels wrong about it. Otherwise, it would have been settled and we'd just be celebrating it instead of podcasts and podcasts and movies and books and things.

1:50:50There's something wrong with the story. There has been. How did you answer it, Brian? I feel that I would, again, have to be in that situation. It's not something I want to skirt or try to wiggle away from here. There are five guys who are alive and there's a big difference from being alive and not being alive. We can't agree so far. It's a gigantic factor. Tell me more. But at some point, it's not a pure metric for our humanity. But it definitely has an effect on how we express ourselves. There are five guys who, in order for this to be true, means that they participated in leaving John behind. And I think there's some work to be done there in terms of looking at whether that happened or not accurately.

1:51:56And we're not here to take the albatross that they wear in their separate and personal lives away for them. But it's also not fair for the truth not to stand or to be protected by our really important piece of our culture that has to do with defying the dead. What is the list of stories that we would silo off and evolved because they can't be talked about. It shouldn't be a long list. I don't think that that works well for us. I think there should be a list. Well, so we agree there. And this one appears to be on it. And there is a list. Do you think that Laurie wants it to be true? Not the valorous actions, but that members of the Navy left her brother for dead. What's the function? What's the utility of blame?

1:53:03It's a good question. It does tell us nicely into it. I was just thinking about this topic just a few days ago. What is the function or utility of blame? And I think at least part of it is its deterrence. You know, when someone gets blamed for something, they are probably, hopefully, less likely to do that again. There's probably some shame associated with it. It's social engineering. But it's also a place and a way to direct your energy or something. And so again, we can imagine how much it must hurt to not have a brother here. Imagine the Rangers looking at their empty costs, slapping, considering that Neil is not with us anymore, and how he might have played into that, and factored into that. So blame it provides, it should be deterrence, but also allows you to direct energy.

1:54:09I told you I raised motorcycles. The scariest crash is on your bike, on your motorcycle, or when you don't know what happened. So, and I just had a good bang up like two years ago and had some surgery, and never could fully understand the crash. Was it that I get out of the throttle too soon, too much lean angle? Unsure, and that's when you don't know what to do next time, how to correct it. You want answers. So I want to look at the dad and say, this is what happened, don't do that again. And so I can blame something. That's what I did, my mistake. And when you don't get that, there's a lot of static electricity. There's a lot of, I get the idea. There's a lot of potential energy that needs to find a release to find the place to go. And I just described a motorcycle crash. Now imagine a family member is gone.

1:55:10Yeah, I can't. Okay, and I think there's an important thing, which is the way you frame the question is fine. You frame it over, you want the answer of we want, and that's fair game. I know that there would be some kind of... I'm sure I would tell her that I'm also sorry, but also sorry for them, because if these things aren't true, and they have been perpetrated, popularized, and become the record of note, and they're not real, not sure that's fair either, because that's part of what this blowback is. It certainly would be fair if that is true. You're right. I think it's important to note that that's a factor in all of this, that the narrative is a two way street, and it does damage. Everybody who's touched the story is scarred by it, in some way, shape or form.

1:56:14Some more than others. Nobody is playing fast and loose, or intending to with anybody's feelings. It's a painful process, and I can't imagine what Laurie has been through. At one point, we have to remember, and this is a whole separate conversation, but let's try to sum it up. At some point, this piece of the controversy, although there were questions, had not reached this level of this temperature, this barometric pressure around it. Do you know when it did achieve this relative temperature? Was it around the upgrades? Yeah, I think that's fair. Okay. Sometime around, 18, 17, 18. Yeah. So that's a factor in this, and we are demonstrably adding to that, but that's not the intention. It's a symptom. It's a factor. That's not the point of doing this.

1:57:15When you ask what the point is, and you've asked it a number of times, and anybody who we talk to says, why are you doing this? Because the truth matters, and not having it does some kind of damage. I agree. There was a moment in time in the Pat Telemann story, and again, from manufactured lie to the truth in that story, I believe it's around six weeks. At some point in that six weeks, the media caught on that this former NFL star was killed, and not only was he killed, he was killed by heroic fire, by enemy fire, and he died heroically. At some point, we don't know the details of this. Although Pete did do a story in this, I don't know the answer to this specifically. We certainly added a lot of details to it, and that may be in there. But it's a matter of time. I think it's a matter of time. We certainly added a lot of details to it, and that may be in there. But at some point, someone said, wait a second, that's not what happened.

1:58:19We weren't in that room, we didn't have that conversation. And I can imagine at some point, someone also said, this is the Pat Telemann story, man. This is making national news. And a week two or three after this narrative has already hit the airwaves. Do you really want to do this? Do you really want to do this to the family? They already believe one thing, and what you're saying, if it's true, and maybe you were there, like, I don't know. And they had a decision to make. I find it hard to believe, in fact, I know this isn't true. But that the family didn't want to know that bad news, that in fact, Pat Telemann wasn't killed by enemy fire, and died heroically. Although I think he did die heroically. He died tragically as well by friendly fire. And I believe, and I know the family would want to know that piece of information.

1:59:19I look at that through the lens of my own three children, and I can't think of a lie that would comfort me as much as the truth, if something like that were to happen to my own children. There's no lie in the long term that's going to provide, at least the closure and comfort that the truth was, regardless of how hard it may be to chew and digest. And, you know, there's blowback up to now. There's blowback coming here. There's blowback coming for us, based on sitting here with you, having this conversation. I think it's important to look at, and you just started to touch on a mitch. At some point, there's a, well, maybe it's always there. There's a spectrum between an actual lie, and the place where there's hopeful optimism that something feels like it would be great if it were true. And there's the kind of done and kruger effect, the idea of the, you know, the study that those guys did in 1999, the Medicognition study that said,

2:00:19hey, the low information individual, a byproduct of that is not knowing your low information individual. I'm not accusing anybody here in our audience or clarifying. The heuristics around what a low information individual is, are not being applied to any particular person in this process. Again, this is a spectrum that applies to truth and lots of stories. But there's a place where a lie is manufactured and is knowingly told. But there's a place where people are complicit in it, but they're well outside of the cadre that might have created it. And in some paradoxical way, they're complicit in it because it's a beautiful thing, because you want to believe it, because it points to something amazing, and then they want to protect it because it points to something amazing. And that's difficult, but that's human.

2:01:20And that's what we've looked at in this whole thing. I mean, there's a section in the dock where Mitch is coming down the mountain, coming down Taker Garne, he says, the story is about human nature. Now, that could just be a shitty platitude that somebody throws out about their project. You could say it about anything. But this is part of the human condition, is looking at truth and painful truth. You know, one time we talked about, as we talk about this, and again, this is a little bit different, but we talk about, at a eulogy, you may know that the person who's being eulogized has done some shitty things in their life. That's probably not the place for it. But it doesn't mean that it should be walled off forever, and that the family shouldn't work out, or adjudicate whatever that thing is, and find healing. And there may be some painful truths and all of that. My family has them, lots of families have them. If you don't, you're seriously lucky. I think we can say all families have them. Just may need to go back a little bit in the family tree.

2:02:22There's going to be another one of these. You know, after Black Hawk Down, after Mocha D's shoe, I'm sure people said, never again, let's learn these lessons. There's going to be another moment in the military where a tragedy happens. It's a disaster. And there's going to be, you know, uncomfortable truths out of that story. And I hope that, you know, when people are figuring out how to protect their careers or figuring out what's true about the story or who's going to be hurt by it, that it just happens faster. They say, you know what? We're going to take this out front. We're not going to create some fiction. We're not going to create a tellment situation. We're not going to create a Robert Street situation, and we're just going to say what's true out front. Out loud and be done with it and learn from it.

2:03:23And the issue is that may have happened in this story 20 years ago. And, you know, when we say things like this, we also notice that, well, that's what the other side would say has actually been done. The truth has now come out. Right? The people who believe in that version of the story or those events, they believe that too. So again, that points to this human nature, human condition aspect of this. We talked before about, you know, my truth and the difficulty with truth, in fact, and that's not a problem that this documentary or this project is going to solve. You know, we were warned to talk into the mic. To talk into the mic, but we were also warned. Multiple times. We were warned. We were warned not to do this project many, many, many times. Yeah, I bet. You know who one of those people, one of those persons was? Probably Slab.

2:04:23You. Yeah, definitely. Again, this has been going on for years and years. I don't expect you to remember. I think you guys had a text exchange. Yeah. I don't know. You can describe it to your conversation with the other person. Yeah, I don't remember it perfectly, but it was basically, you know, there's a tough thing to touch at whatever length pole. And there's no way to touch it without it going off. Yeah, but you also said you weren't advocating for it not to be told. Right. Yeah. You said that something like, again, I'm paraphrasing. I hope I'm getting this right. You said something like it's a shame that a story with this much heroism around it. And that's this tragic is also associated with some of these other problems. Yeah. Uncertainty and tribalism. I think that's something like what you said. And that still counts. But it's interesting that we're sitting here talking about it with you.

2:05:23And you've given us, you've platformed this much of the conversation. And I'm glad we got to that place. Sam, what else do you have? I think we're good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Do you have anything? It's a lot. It's, uh, to me, there's nothing more valuable than integrity, which is intrinsically tied to the truth. I think sunlight is the best antiseptic for anything regardless of how difficult the conversation is. And I'm in your boat, like I was involved in the documentary process, but if we had been sitting here talking about how your findings found that slab had left a man alive on that mountain top,

2:06:29I'd still be willing to add that conversation. It wouldn't change how much time we'd spent together. The depth of the research, the questions that I would ask, because the truth to me is more important. So, I hope people can see that. It's just such a land mine. Right. And I just, I just don't see how anybody can touch this topic without it going off. Well, we trust and hope that, you know, people haven't seen this stuff. They haven't seen our final product. Again, like we said at the top of this conversation, there's so much more. There's so much more. And we understand changing people's minds, you know, with a current narrative. It's anchored after a quarter century is tough. But we trust that we've begun the process. And that there will be some value in understanding what really went down there.

2:07:31Okay. Okay. Appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks Andy. Cool! Diesel prices just hit a record high. There goes my margin. Not mine, brother. I switched the mudflap. But those other fuel carts just nail you with the fees. No, not mudflap. They don't have any fees. They'll monthly, annual, out of network. Not a, what I say, I keep. That's what's up. Mudflap has your back. Carriers like you save thousands per year with mudflap. Get $100 in pre-fuel credits after approval when you sign up at Muddy.com slash podcast. Spailed MUDDY.com slash podcast. Terms of restrictions apply. C-Mud-lapping.com Mud-lapping.com is issued by Celtic Bank or Community Federal Savings Bank. Resumant to a license from Visa USA.