The Megyn Kelly Show - Secrets of the Night Stalkers, and Rescuing Marcus Luttrell, with Army Master Aviator Alan C. Mack ｜ Ep. 1324

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00:00:59.460 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:01:12.300 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Memorial Day.

00:01:16.820 Every year we take time to highlight a veteran who sacrificed for our country.

00:01:21.040 And this year we have an extraordinary guest for you.

00:01:23.760 Alan C. Mack is a master aviator who served more than 35 years in the U.S. Army.

00:01:28.820 Alan spent 17 years flying Chinook helicopters as part of the elite 160th Special Operations

00:01:36.520 Aviations Regiment, better known as the Night Stalkers. Alan and his team were among the first

00:01:42.160 men to enter Afghanistan after 9-11. Their mission included flying special forces teams to the ground

00:01:47.680 in the dark of night. Among those Alan delivered into combat were the special forces known as the

00:01:53.820 horse soldiers. Their story became a major motion picture in 12 Strong. Alan also planned the heroic

00:02:01.280 rescue of Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, better known to some as the lone survivor. Alan's many combat

00:02:08.280 operations tell a story of bravery and determination, but his journey came with personal

00:02:12.360 struggles, struggles he has spoken about openly in an effort to help his fellow vets. In 2022,

00:02:18.720 he wrote the book Razor 3, A Night Stalker's Wars. And he has a new book out in August called

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00:03:27.240 Alan C. Mack, welcome to the show.

00:03:29.060 Oh, thanks for having me.

00:03:30.060 Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you for your service.

00:03:33.100 You know, like I said earlier, I enjoyed almost all of it.

00:03:36.020 All right. So take us back to how you became attracted to joining the Armed Forces.

00:03:42.960 Did you come from a military family?

00:03:45.260 No, not really.

00:03:46.300 I grew up in coastal New Hampshire in Portsmouth.

00:03:50.060 And in the late 60s, early 70s, obviously the Vietnam War was still going on.

00:03:56.820 And you had the nightly news, Walter Cronkite and all that kind of stuff.

00:03:59.940 And they'd show videos of helicopters zipping across the screen.

00:04:04.180 And I said, that's what I want to do.

00:04:05.420 And that kind of dropped off after a while.

00:04:08.500 and eventually the be all you can be commercials uh caught my attention really yeah they worked

00:04:15.020 on you they did we actually pulled it let's watch it let's see what what what it was

00:04:19.620 a ranger never takes the easy way out

00:04:23.260 you're reaching deep inside you for things you've never known that's why getting into the rangers

00:04:32.080 is tough and the training is tough. Be all that you can be. So it makes me feel like I'm part of

00:04:39.840 something really special. Be all that you can be. And I'm not the only one. You can do it in the army.

00:04:50.220 Be all that you can be. You can do it in the army. So what was it? Just the mood, the message that

00:04:57.060 Like, the training's tough.

00:04:59.240 I don't know.

00:04:59.900 Getting in is tough.

00:05:00.940 It just was something I wanted to do.

00:05:01.980 I wanted to fly.

00:05:02.980 Okay.

00:05:03.780 And did you have, was there a reason for that?

00:05:06.200 No, I just thought it was cool.

00:05:07.440 Wow, okay.

00:05:08.140 So I go to the Army recruiter, and I'm like, hey, I want to go,

00:05:12.380 I'm graduating high school, can I go fly helicopters?

00:05:15.500 Because that's one of the things that they had.

00:05:17.080 They call it street to seat, high school to flight school.

00:05:19.260 Okay.

00:05:19.840 And he's like, no, it doesn't work quite that way.

00:05:23.100 You don't already have a pilot's license, you know, that kind of stuff.

00:05:25.580 So he said, why don't you just join as an aircraft mechanic and then you can get used to the aviation community and then put in for it, right?

00:05:34.500 And it was kind of a twofold thing.

00:05:36.680 Number one, he didn't get credit for officers, you know, but he was correct.

00:05:42.100 You know, it was good advice, you know, because I was 18.

00:05:45.020 Yeah, right.

00:05:45.960 And I needed to.

00:05:46.660 Did you know anything about airplanes or how to fix them at that point?

00:05:48.900 No.

00:05:49.280 So they teach you right from scratch.

00:05:50.660 Oh, yeah.

00:05:51.140 That's kind of amazing.

00:05:52.640 Yeah.

00:05:53.060 No, it was great.

00:05:53.580 So when you join to become an airplane mechanic on his way, ideally, to becoming a pilot who can jump out of helicopters and et cetera, what branch of the military is that?

00:06:04.280 For me, it's the Army.

00:06:05.460 But does it have to be?

00:06:07.700 No.

00:06:08.340 Yeah.

00:06:08.480 You could do it in the Marines, the Air Force.

00:06:10.080 You were just attracted to the Army.

00:06:11.260 I like the Army.

00:06:12.200 Okay.

00:06:12.600 It was just the commercial again.

00:06:14.040 Yeah.

00:06:14.520 All right.

00:06:15.040 So they say, we'll take you.

00:06:16.820 All right.

00:06:17.480 And you've got to do the basic training.

00:06:19.120 And do they go right off to fixing helicopters and airplanes?

00:06:22.640 What's called Advanced Individual Training, AIT.

00:06:26.260 So I went to Virginia for that.

00:06:28.180 It was like four or five months.

00:06:29.820 And then my first assignment was the Republic of South Korea.

00:06:33.360 Oh.

00:06:33.960 Well, I didn't realize that you could declare that you want to be like an airplane mechanic.

00:06:40.740 Well, that's the key, too.

00:06:42.220 The Army is the only service that did that and still does.

00:06:45.320 Oh.

00:06:45.980 So the other services, you take a test, and they tell you, here's what you're eligible for, which the Army does as well.

00:06:51.240 but then they say okay pick your top three and you're likely to get one of those three whereas

00:06:57.460 in the army they'll guarantee the job and i believe your first assignment this story like

00:07:03.840 the way you started because you would go on to become this incredibly well-known revered pilot

00:07:09.880 but it's kind of like somebody told me a story about elon musk one time and it they were saying

00:07:15.120 that if you went to tesla in the early days uh that you know they were building tesla you would

00:07:20.900 see elon out there on the floor kicking the engines like taking them apart putting them back

00:07:25.940 together he was not hands-off like he he really felt he needed to know exactly how this engine

00:07:30.740 was going to work in order to have this this thing be successful and so it probably i mean don't you

00:07:36.680 think that that was the advantage you had over all the other pilots oh definitely you just knew

00:07:40.600 it so well from your years as a mechanic yeah so i did nine years as a mechanic and then nine wow

00:07:46.080 i decided i was in germany at the time west germany and i was like all right i'm gonna put

00:07:50.620 for flight school and if i don't get accepted i'll get out and if i do you know go fly and when i got

00:07:57.140 there the army had transitioned from the th-55 helicopter which is a little two-seater to the

00:08:02.960 huey uh-1 uh because they were transitioning to blackhawks so they were had no use for the hueys 0.98

00:08:09.260 so they oh let's go teach people in that so i had all the advantage because i worked on them 1.00

00:08:14.860 So while other students, my peers, were studying about how the transmission, the engine, the avionics worked, I already knew that.

00:08:24.300 So I could focus on meteorology, aeromedical, aerodynamics, that kind of stuff.

00:08:29.720 So I had the advantage in that case.

00:08:32.240 So was it hard to elevate up to becoming a pilot?

00:08:36.220 What do they do to you?

00:08:37.000 How do they make sure you're worthy?

00:08:39.420 Well, I mean, it takes about eight months to get through flight school.

00:08:41.720 and back then you were a warrant officer candidate a walk the entire time until you graduate nowadays

00:08:47.540 you're a walk for four to six weeks and then they make you a w1 so the warrant officer ranks go

00:08:52.900 w1 2 3 4 and cw5 and which didn't exist at the time it was only four but they um

00:09:01.040 they spoon feed you i mean they know how to teach and they've been doing it for years and it just

00:09:07.460 works really well the the process you know they so within eight months you went from being a

00:09:13.220 mechanic to being a pilot yeah that's crazy although you're not very good pilot you know

00:09:17.780 so what do they let you fly oh you're you fly as a co-pilot okay so you're you know a two-seat

00:09:23.120 aircraft you're the junior guy so it's like driving with your 16 year old when they first

00:09:27.540 learn yes i'm doing that right now yeah it's a little scary yes i could use that break that

00:09:32.100 they used to have in driver's ed yeah that's it right that's the that's the thing you have

00:09:36.500 in the helicopter they've got another set of controls so if you're not that is good yeah

00:09:41.120 you're not the one making the decisions there's a senior guy next to you saying all right let's go

00:09:44.580 here and was it always helicopters for me it was okay yeah so not the uh like the fixed wing

00:09:49.680 whatever aircraft um and was it always hueys when you were learning when you were training yes okay

00:09:54.720 because i know those would eventually be phased out and as you mentioned and then you'd be 1.00

00:09:58.440 graduating what to the chinook right so i was lucky enough because of the advantages i had

00:10:04.060 with the academics i was a distinguished honor grad so the army at the time like the airline

00:10:11.800 industry today kind of aged out you know the pilots were all retiring at the same time and

00:10:17.620 especially in the chinook community so the chinook community is very at the time was very

00:10:22.740 top heavy very senior oriented so all these guys were older and they were leaving and the only way

00:10:28.840 to refresh that with any kind of longevity was take new guys like me which was you know kind

00:10:34.040 of unheard of at the time. So there's no metric to say, okay, he's going to be a good Chinook 0.97

00:10:39.600 pilot. So they just look at grade point average and all right, this guy is number one, this guy's

00:10:44.260 number two. So me and one of my peers in class, we got selected for Chinooks right out of fly

00:10:50.660 school. What year is this now? So this is 1989. Okay. So long before 9-11, like what do they send

00:10:58.180 you off to do after that? Like, well, you bored? No, because it just so happens. 91 something

00:11:03.720 happened right so i actually so i started 89 really i graduated 90 and in the summer of 90 i

00:11:11.720 get to savannah georgia which is my first assignment and saddam hussein invades kuwait

00:11:17.280 and we're designated we're part of the 18th airborne corps and our headquarters was at

00:11:22.660 fort bragg and we were designated to go there which was interesting because as a new pilot

00:11:30.360 There's a readiness level progression that you have to go through.

00:11:33.700 And to make sure you're a competent co-pilot,

00:11:35.960 you have training that usually takes four or five months as you get to the unit.

00:11:41.320 And they're like, all right, we're sending our helicopters away.

00:11:44.480 So we flew them up to Wilmington, North Carolina.

00:11:47.420 They sent them on an old ship over to Saudi Arabia.

00:11:51.020 In the meantime, we had nothing to fly.

00:11:53.160 So the 160th was right next door to us,

00:11:56.100 and they were going to go by airplane, by C-5.

00:11:59.040 So they lent us a helicopter for me to get trained.

00:12:02.280 Oh, my gosh.

00:12:02.720 Which is funny because then, you know, I spent 17 years with them later on.

00:12:05.760 Yeah, right.

00:12:06.500 Yeah.

00:12:06.860 But meanwhile, it's like, I don't know.

00:12:09.260 To me, that sounds so daunting that here's a loner.

00:12:12.220 You're going to have to learn how to fly this helicopter, this new one, before you go off to war.

00:12:17.640 It's actual war now.

00:12:18.920 And good luck. 0.97

00:12:20.500 Yeah.

00:12:20.780 Well, the nice thing is that, once again, you're the junior guy in a two-person crew.

00:12:24.820 And then you've got actually crew chiefs in the back, three, maybe four of them.

00:12:27.780 that can tell you what to do.

00:12:29.540 Or who you could also take down.

00:12:31.180 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:12:32.620 You see how I'm looking at it.

00:12:34.180 I'm generally more positive,

00:12:35.740 but when it comes to flying,

00:12:37.180 I've definitely got a fear.

00:12:38.440 So I just, this is so foreign to me

00:12:41.120 that you would ever-

00:12:41.880 Oh, flying is so fun.

00:12:42.440 Oh my gosh.

00:12:43.400 That you would ever volunteer to do such a thing.

00:12:45.380 It's just such a dangerous activity,

00:12:46.780 but I know it's, it is and it isn't.

00:12:48.880 It's not dangerous, it's unforgiving.

00:12:51.400 Yeah, yes.

00:12:52.400 Perhaps a little risky, but you can mitigate risk.

00:12:55.120 Yes, well, clearly you've done a good job of that.

00:12:57.780 Okay, so you fly Chinooks in Desert Storm.

00:13:02.940 Right.

00:13:03.380 And how did that go for you?

00:13:04.420 For me, it went great.

00:13:07.600 You had Desert Shield preceding Desert Storm,

00:13:10.960 so about six months or so of just flying in the desert.

00:13:14.780 And because I was the new guy, they flew me every day with a senior pilot.

00:13:19.980 And then we flew at night.

00:13:21.820 And the interesting thing about me being a night stalker eventually

00:13:26.120 is that you fly at night, night vision goggles.

00:13:29.120 And the goggles at the time were,

00:13:32.740 you would wear them,

00:13:35.220 kind of stuff you see in some of the older 90s movies.

00:13:38.220 Great big things, surgical tubing,

00:13:41.120 holding them on your helmet and counterweights.

00:13:43.360 Looked like an alien.

00:13:44.260 It was quite a mess. 0.56

00:13:45.500 But the older guys that had flown in Vietnam and such,

00:13:49.240 they did not want to fly these.

00:13:51.060 They would much rather fly what we call a nighthawk

00:13:54.460 or unaided, right?

00:13:55.840 So just what you can see out the window.

00:13:58.260 And in Saudi Arabia, it's pitch black if there's any kind of cloud cover.

00:14:02.640 There's no cultural lighting out in the desert.

00:14:04.200 So you can now fly like that just by the eye.

00:14:06.360 Right.

00:14:06.720 So they're like, well, send the Woj, which is Warrant Officer Jr., to go fly. 0.99

00:14:11.660 And I got good at it.

00:14:12.960 I got a couple hundred hours flying at night in the Saudi desert.

00:14:16.440 With the night vision goggles on.

00:14:18.080 Whereas the older guys didn't.

00:14:19.580 So out of 16 air crews, we had six that actually flew at night.

00:14:24.040 Okay.

00:14:24.680 And is it incredibly challenging?

00:14:26.920 It can be, yeah.

00:14:27.840 The flying isn't so bad, it's the landing and takeoffs because you get all the dust, right?

00:14:32.600 And you can't see out the window.

00:14:33.780 Yes.

00:14:34.200 No, that doesn't sound safe.

00:14:35.720 You're in a place where the word desert is in the title.

00:14:38.840 Yeah, that is less safe than being able to see out the window for sure.

00:14:44.020 So did you see any action while you were over there?

00:14:46.120 Like what did you do?

00:14:47.180 No, I mean, we hauled cargo and the famous Norman Schwarzkopf left hook.

00:14:54.340 We were part of that.

00:14:55.640 So we were part of, I think it was 100, 125 Chinooks in flights of five

00:15:00.860 flying up into Objective Cobra, bringing up artillery, resupply, fuel.

00:15:07.420 And that's kind of what we did.

00:15:08.460 That's probably, as starts go, not a bad one.

00:15:11.700 No.

00:15:12.220 No, that's not bad.

00:15:12.920 Right?

00:15:13.240 You're not like.

00:15:14.460 Oh, we were very excited.

00:15:15.540 Over Fallujah.

00:15:16.380 You know, right.

00:15:17.040 I look back now, and it's like that was pretty tame compared to what came later on.

00:15:21.000 But we also, I had more experience later on.

00:15:23.980 i had better equipment better training um so what went on between 91 and 2001 so 91 and 2001

00:15:31.880 uh so i get back so so the army had this saying we own the night right because the night vision

00:15:39.000 goggles and what we found out in saudi arabia is we did not own the night we were as we joked

00:15:43.640 leasing it or renting it because everybody was flying into the top of these dunes so the dunes

00:15:49.880 in Saudi Arabia.

00:15:50.660 You see them in the movies,

00:15:51.460 Lawrence and the Navy,

00:15:52.060 all that stuff.

00:15:52.920 They come up

00:15:54.040 and then they have a second lip.

00:15:56.260 And with the goggles,

00:15:57.200 you'd see the first lip

00:15:58.060 but not the second one.

00:15:59.420 And guys were flying into that

00:16:01.000 and ripping off their landing gear.

00:16:02.860 So they decided to do the big assaults

00:16:05.840 during the day

00:16:06.740 because it was insane,

00:16:08.880 the airspace that we were in.

00:16:10.980 And had we done it at night,

00:16:12.540 it would not have gone well

00:16:13.560 in hindsight.

00:16:15.500 So that was strategic.

00:16:17.200 Right.

00:16:17.380 Oh, so anyway.

00:16:17.960 so now when we get back to the states the army intends to own the night so every exercise we do

00:16:25.980 includes night vision goggle cruise and remember i said out of 16 we had six well i'm one of the

00:16:32.180 six so everything we did was you know i was at the national training center the joint readiness

00:16:37.300 training center other places out over the water whatever it is and we got really good at it and

00:16:44.120 about the time we did that i got assigned to korea again but as a pilot instead of a mechanic

00:16:49.440 and when i was there i became a night vision goggle unit trainer which is one level below

00:16:54.980 an instructor pilot and i flew the border of north and south korea back and forth uh for memory so

00:17:02.040 you had to teach people the border that's risky yeah it is and the reason they do it it was always

00:17:07.740 kind of you know we're always like what we're going east west you know it's not the same as

00:17:11.820 going north south but you're seeing the landmarks and the idea is remember um what's his name bobby

00:17:18.140 hall was infamous for he flew across the border him and his co-pilot and they got shot down by

00:17:24.580 north korea and he was held for a little while and eventually released but that's what that's

00:17:30.760 responsible for is to teach guys what to look for well i know to turn around when i was reading up

00:17:35.880 on you i all i could think about was what just recently happened in iran with you know we're

00:17:40.820 told these two pilots who went down and you know the one was like hiding there in the in the

00:17:46.080 mountains of iran for the better part of a day yeah before we sent in all these planes to go

00:17:51.740 rescue him what did you make of that story that you know it's kind of a little bit of irony there

00:17:56.080 that the 160th was involved in that because the 160th was invented because of the iran hostage

00:18:01.560 crisis right so operation eagle claw which was a failure in desert one when the uh the helicopter

00:18:08.580 flew into the refueling tanker on the ground blew up president carter aborted it everybody came back

00:18:14.640 and you know it's all over the news you know a tactical mission now is a strategic failure

00:18:19.720 so what they did is they reformed the entire task force and created the 160th out of that

00:18:25.960 and the second hostage rescue attempt wasn't required because president reagan came in they

00:18:31.320 released the hostages and everybody stood down but what they decided was that they would keep

00:18:37.020 the Army Roto-Wing SOF Special Operations Forces intact,

00:18:41.660 and that was the 160th.

00:18:42.940 So formed from the ashes of Desert One,

00:18:46.620 they go into Iran to rescue this guy doing their mission,

00:18:51.300 and they did well.

00:18:52.560 They ran into some problems, as you will,

00:18:56.120 but there's always contingencies, and they had contingencies.

00:18:58.580 You're exactly the kind of guy they would call in

00:19:00.520 to advise on how we're going to do this, right?

00:19:03.120 That's exactly the kind of thing they'd call you up about.

00:19:05.300 And how risky was that?

00:19:07.120 I mean, just flying into this mountainous territory,

00:19:11.400 trying to retrieve our guy over enemy territory.

00:19:15.000 You know, the environmental conditions are usually more dangerous than the threat.

00:19:22.180 So running into the mountain, the weather, that kind of stuff,

00:19:25.380 because there's no weather reporting out there,

00:19:26.980 so you're kind of making an educated guess based on the overhead assets and stuff.

00:19:31.140 But, you know, they are penetrating some pretty hefty enemy air defense, you know, because I think the Blackhawks, the Air Force Blackhawks were shot at the day before with manpads, heat-seeking missiles.

00:19:43.780 Oh, that's terrifying.

00:19:44.920 Yeah.

00:19:45.500 I mean, how do you get in a helicopter knowing that that could be a possibility?

00:19:49.900 A heat-seeking missile could get fired at you or surface-to-air?

00:19:52.820 Like what?

00:19:53.280 Well, I was thinking about this this morning, actually.

00:19:57.060 You were?

00:19:57.580 I was.

00:19:58.020 every aircraft the special operations aircraft in particular have uh countermeasures right for

00:20:05.780 you're not just a sitting duck a flying duck up there so every weapon that's out there designed

00:20:10.860 to take down an aircraft has what's called a probable kill ratio or a pk so let's say a man

00:20:16.080 pad is fired at you blue sky background no terrain between you and the thing and no countermeasures

00:20:22.060 it probably has a probable kill of like 99%.

00:20:25.240 Oh, geez.

00:20:26.120 So you add countermeasures like flares or lasers

00:20:29.560 or any of the stuff that they're using nowadays.

00:20:31.740 And the probable kill ratio drops to like 20%.

00:20:34.940 And then if you add technique and tactics to it,

00:20:38.200 you might get it down to 1% or no percent.

00:20:41.340 Do you have the, like in the movies where if they lock on you,

00:20:44.540 something on your bird starts going,

00:20:46.760 and you're like, okay, you do.

00:20:49.380 Have you ever had to listen to that sound?

00:20:51.480 Plenty of times.

00:20:52.340 Ah, plenty.

00:20:53.400 But I did have two, in 2001, I had two manpads fired at me on the single day.

00:20:59.260 I was flying General Franks into the embassy in Kabul when we took it back over in December

00:21:03.180 of 2001.

00:21:04.820 And it was a daylight flight.

00:21:06.880 And what we think was an HN-5, which is a Chinese variant of the SA-7, was fired at

00:21:13.180 us.

00:21:13.320 It went right between my aircraft and Chalk 2.

00:21:15.840 Flares deployed, decoyed it, and off we went.

00:21:18.560 What does the flare do?

00:21:19.760 The flare, well, without getting into too many details,

00:21:23.900 it matches your heat signature.

00:21:26.120 And so when the missile locks onto you, right?

00:21:28.260 So when a guy fires the man pad, he looks at you,

00:21:31.780 it locks on, and he fires it.

00:21:34.140 And so the missile is going to seek,

00:21:35.900 it's going to home in on your heat signature that it locked on.

00:21:39.260 So the idea is to throw another heat source

00:21:42.360 that is first a little hotter and then more matches you, right?

00:21:47.800 And the idea is that a more sophisticated missile, I hope I'm not getting too technical here.

00:21:51.400 No, no, I love this.

00:21:52.280 It's fascinating.

00:21:53.000 A more technical missile, a newer missile, will see the flare launch and say, it will start to follow it.

00:21:59.560 And we'll go, that's a flare.

00:22:01.460 Ignore it.

00:22:02.380 So now it goes back to the other heat source.

00:22:04.280 But you've sent out more than one.

00:22:06.840 So a different temperature flare is out there to get it.

00:22:10.860 And the idea is to get your engine exhaust out of their field of view, their decoys.

00:22:15.460 And it works.

00:22:15.600 But for you as the pilot, it's just like, fingers crossed, those two things work.

00:22:20.260 It happens at low level.

00:22:21.960 It happens so fast that you don't know it's coming.

00:22:25.760 Like no one says, oh, there's a missile coming.

00:22:27.660 The flares go out.

00:22:28.740 Automatically?

00:22:29.500 Automatically.

00:22:30.140 Oh, great.

00:22:30.840 And then you go, was that an inadvertent launch?

00:22:33.640 Because sometimes they go off on their own.

00:22:35.120 Yep.

00:22:35.600 And no certain missile went between us.

00:22:38.020 And so if they didn't work, if the missile was not fooled by those flares, you'd just be blown up?

00:22:43.140 Yes.

00:22:43.580 Okay.

00:22:44.240 That's not a bad way to go.

00:22:45.380 Well, I like to say miss by an inch, miss by a mile. 0.84

00:22:49.460 A miss is a miss unless there's a proximity warhead, in which case you're screwed. 0.57

00:22:53.960 Oh, okay. 0.94

00:22:54.760 All right.

00:22:55.200 That's like our Burna less lethal protection that we advertise.

00:23:00.340 They advertise on our show where it's like it looks like a gun and it fires these pellets.

00:23:04.820 But unlike a gun, you don't actually have to put the bullet in the bad guy.

00:23:07.880 If you can just like hit the wall behind the bad guy, it goes off.

00:23:11.360 And it's like this very toxic fume stuff that will like incapacitate him for a half an hour.

00:23:16.580 Close enough.

00:23:17.280 It's good for somebody who may not be the greatest shot in the world.

00:23:19.740 Yeah.

00:23:19.940 So the goal when the missile comes at you and misses, which it's going to with the countermeasures, is to get out of the engagement zone.

00:23:29.100 So either you put terrain between you and the guy that might have another missile or, well, that's really all you can do.

00:23:38.480 That's it.

00:23:39.080 That's the option.

00:23:39.580 And so I dropped down.

00:23:40.900 So I had on board General Franks, who's in charge of all of the CENTCOM, AOR, his wife,

00:23:47.520 General Harrell, the whole entourage of staff.

00:23:50.160 He's relying on you to keep him safe and to get him.

00:23:52.220 And they're on headset, right?

00:23:53.240 So they can hear the conversation.

00:23:55.460 And the next day, so we dropped down about 10 feet off the ground.

00:23:59.360 Like, I mean, pretty much no higher than the ceiling here.

00:24:02.240 Because they can't find you?

00:24:03.360 The missiles can't get you when you're low?

00:24:04.580 They can't get a lock.

00:24:05.960 So if you have terrain in the background, the seeker head has a tendency of not being 0.96

00:24:10.620 able to pick you out of the clutter oh at least that's the goal or okay you know if you get down 1.00

00:24:15.440 in a low enough swale or a stream bed you might be able to block them you know with some kind of

00:24:21.180 terrain yep it doesn't take much but we came in doing about 170 miles an hour and uh dropped

00:24:27.460 into the embassy the press wasn't ready yet they were inside we were a little bit early now

00:24:30.600 and i was like all right sir get out he's like all right chief you know he didn't know what was

00:24:35.840 going on oh and so i they got out i took off and um out over the the city of kabul which is i don't

00:24:43.640 know if you've ever been there no it's very sprawling it's not like la you know like not

00:24:49.020 real tall but really wide and there's um tv antennas all over the place and uh i got another

00:24:56.340 one fired at me on the way out on the way out yeah so the next morning i go over to talk to the

00:25:01.160 the general and i say hey sir what'd you think he's like we had no idea you guys sounded so calm

00:25:07.600 on the radio or you know we're just let me ask you a question is anything was something done

00:25:13.920 wrong in that situation for you to have been subjected to that on a normal mission should

00:25:19.360 somebody have known we flew in the daylight uh to an area that was well known that we were going to

00:25:25.040 So this is a known risk, and you, like, the chopper handled it.

00:25:28.780 Yeah, I suggested to CENTCOM that they drive, which, you know, in hindsight is just as dangerous.

00:25:36.120 Yeah, I was going to say, based on my own reporting of what happened over there.

00:25:39.800 You could drive or you could fly with me, you know.

00:25:42.260 And when I say me, right, I want to start this right now, is that, you know, I was just one of many, just like me, you know.

00:25:49.720 And the guys, I was reminded after my very first podcast, one of the guys called me and said, hey, Al, I noticed you said I did this, I did that a lot.

00:25:58.260 As I recall, I was sitting right next to you.

00:26:00.200 I was like, yeah, yeah, okay.

00:26:01.880 Oh, that's sweet.

00:26:02.780 I actually think it's sweet that he wanted to be remembered, and it must be an important memory to him.

00:26:07.500 Yeah, well, but also, they were taking the same risk and doing the same things as me.

00:26:12.860 I just happened to be the decision maker.

00:26:15.080 Yes, well, you were a very important one.

00:26:16.940 And for good reason. Now we're sort of, we're seeing sort of the building blocks of what makes you, you and why you would become so special and so important to them. Um, and stone cold too. Like, I don't, can you speak of the nerves? Like, was there a career as an air traffic controller? It's not like, how are those guys have a job that's stressful.

00:26:33.960 That's extremely stressful.

00:26:35.360 That's like the height of stress.

00:26:36.500 But this is very stressful too, surface-to-air missiles or whatever.

00:26:40.340 Man pads are coming at me.

00:26:42.840 Was there something in your background?

00:26:44.720 Did you meditate?

00:26:45.720 How did you handle that?

00:26:46.680 It's the training.

00:26:48.520 Well, it's selection, who the unit takes.

00:26:53.100 And then there's certain personalities that work in this situation and others that don't.

00:26:57.500 And then they just train you, and then you train very realistic.

00:27:02.580 And it's funny.

00:27:03.560 I was talking to Jerry Bruckheimer at the premiere for 12 strong and he's

00:27:07.400 like, ah, you know, I hope you liked the movie. And I said, uh, well,

00:27:10.140 as long as you didn't make us look like I've seen in every other movie,

00:27:12.960 which is you get the bad-ass special operations guys coming in and they're

00:27:17.720 flying low.

00:27:18.820 And all of a sudden someone shoots a pistol at them and they all run into

00:27:21.240 each other and they're shooting at us. Um, and he goes, nah,

00:27:25.120 I think you're going to like it. And, uh,

00:27:28.500 my point to that is the general and his staff heard us talking on the internal

00:27:33.300 comms and they didn't know we were being shot at because the conversational tone is you know

00:27:38.920 missile two o'clock evading you know descending speeding up i think even i would know that's okay

00:27:45.120 i understood enough yeah but you know what happens is you you do the mission and then you come back

00:27:53.720 and when you've done the after action review and you kind of sit down you know at the mess hall

00:27:58.540 and you're eating, you know, that's when it dawns on you. 0.92

00:28:01.800 You say, oh, crap, we almost died. 0.99

00:28:03.480 Yeah. 0.99

00:28:04.040 You know?

00:28:04.520 And I remember about that in the book,

00:28:05.820 that in the first week or two, the other flight lead,

00:28:09.260 there was two of us flying out of Task Force Dagger

00:28:12.040 in K-2, Karsha-Kanabad.

00:28:15.000 We snuck off to discuss how we thought we were going to.

00:28:21.060 With the liquor?

00:28:21.960 Yeah, the CIA brought us a bottle of Jack.

00:28:24.500 Yeah.

00:28:24.980 And we each had a little.

00:28:26.640 This humanized you.

00:28:27.580 They each had a little snort.

00:28:29.980 So set the scene.

00:28:31.540 You were about to go off on a mission.

00:28:33.300 Well, so we're back now.

00:28:34.340 So we've done a couple of missions into Afghanistan.

00:28:38.380 And really, I talked about the environment being one of the most dangerous parts of flying.

00:28:44.740 We're flying into the mountains of northern Afghanistan.

00:28:47.660 This is now post 9-11.

00:28:49.580 9-11, yeah.

00:28:50.420 And we're flying using equipment that we've never been allowed to use for real.

00:28:55.040 you know you could train with it but you couldn't go in the mountains in the clouds

00:28:58.540 and it was donald rumsfeld that actually called us and said uh you know you will get those teams

00:29:04.240 in tonight period and that's a whole story on its own but so you know we we get through these first

00:29:11.440 like you know two three missions and each of them was like by the skin of our teeth like

00:29:17.220 both the other flight lead and me you know took the aircraft right to its limit i mean they were

00:29:22.300 up at 22 000 feet oh you know how high can the aircraft go about 25 oh jeez you're on oxygen 0.97

00:29:28.940 the doors are open you know because you got miniguns hanging out aren't you a little worried

00:29:32.180 about a big a big wind or something i mean like that's so close to tops yeah the wind the wind 0.93

00:29:36.840 sucks yeah coming off the mountains a lot of turbulence but we came back and both of us had

00:29:44.280 near misses on all the missions where we just didn't think our luck was going to hold out and

00:29:49.980 And we sat in the back room there with a little shot of Jack.

00:29:53.480 And I didn't remember who initiated the conversation,

00:29:55.780 but it was like, hey, what do you think?

00:29:57.440 I was like, I think we're going to die in the next mission or two.

00:30:00.720 And he said, yeah, I agree.

00:30:02.000 And they were like, what do we do? 0.77

00:30:03.840 Fill her up.

00:30:04.620 Well, the answer was we do the missions because who else is going to do it?

00:30:08.500 It's right after 9-11.

00:30:10.140 I mean, I've talked to so many of you guys, and that's the attitude.

00:30:13.380 It's shocking to hear, but it's actually not

00:30:15.260 because you all seem to feel that way.

00:30:16.580 It's like Rob O'Neill told me when they were flying over to,

00:30:19.980 um about abad in those helicopters and they all thought you know probably gonna die doing this

00:30:25.720 this is yeah going in to get bin laden in the middle of the night he's probably pretty well

00:30:29.600 protected and we're taking a lot of risks and he tells an amazing story one of my favorite ever of

00:30:34.480 how one guy sort of said not like he was chickening out but basically like so what are we what why are

00:30:40.900 we doing this again because like it's near a certain death and um they had a discussion about

00:30:46.300 a woman who was on, I think, the South World Trade Center

00:30:50.820 and was holding her dress down for modesty.

00:30:55.960 I remember watching that.

00:30:59.100 You know, it's funny, as you tell the story,

00:31:00.420 I'm getting a little teared up here.

00:31:01.720 Yeah.

00:31:01.960 Yeah, I was at Camp Beauregard, Louisiana.

00:31:07.100 We were doing a training exercise,

00:31:09.240 and I heard guys in the hallway making a bunch of noise.

00:31:14.240 Like, holy crap, did you see that?

00:31:15.460 you know they were watching the news they saw the first plane hit yeah so i turned on the tv 0.94

00:31:20.260 started making a pot of coffee and you know i watched the second plane hit i was like okay

00:31:25.280 this is no this is an attack it's definitely attack so i'm gonna run out getting everybody

00:31:30.180 you know together and we ended up driving back to fort campbell because they wouldn't let anything

00:31:34.520 fly right that was like a 12-hour drive and then the next day i was in tampa you know another 15

00:31:41.060 hour drive you know just a plan uh what was initially called um infinite response or something

00:31:49.380 like that i can't remember the indefinite indefinite yeah i donald romsfeld came on they read us the

00:31:54.720 right act do not talk about this at all infinite justice infinite justice that's right and so

00:31:58.780 they're like don't you talk about this at all and we're driving back to campbell listening to npr

00:32:03.440 it's the only radio station we could get like all the way up reliably i forgive you you gotta do

00:32:08.540 No satellite radio at the time.

00:32:10.060 No cell phones.

00:32:10.760 That's right.

00:32:11.660 We had pagers.

00:32:13.220 But it was just, oh, he comes on for the press conference,

00:32:20.160 and he says, where are you starting Infinite Justice?

00:32:22.340 Like, well, so much for OPSEC.

00:32:24.080 And then they changed the name.

00:32:25.160 Yeah, like, thanks to Rumsfeld.

00:32:26.820 Yeah.

00:32:27.180 Okay.

00:32:27.960 You knew right away you were going someplace.

00:32:29.880 Oh, yeah. 0.94

00:32:30.680 Did you know right away it was Bin Laden?

00:32:33.700 I didn't, no.

00:32:34.660 I didn't know that right away.

00:32:35.580 A lot of the military guys had guessed, you know.

00:32:37.940 So people who are tuned in.

00:32:40.160 We were going after him,

00:32:41.840 I might have even put it in the book,

00:32:43.060 in 99, 2000,

00:32:45.920 you know when they did the big T-Lamb strike,

00:32:47.480 the Tomahawks?

00:32:48.420 Yeah, you did put it in the book

00:32:49.760 and Bill Clinton did not authorize the strike.

00:32:52.140 Right, so the Clintons wouldn't authorize it.

00:32:55.100 In hindsight, I write that-

00:32:58.380 You thought it was an okay call.

00:32:59.660 The equipment and the techniques at the time

00:33:02.080 were brand new that we ended up using in Afghanistan.

00:33:06.160 but i don't know that it would have gone well you know in 99 yeah but it might have been okay

00:33:11.960 when you think about what might have been you know my gosh good gracious to to have thought

00:33:15.680 yeah you know to have gotten him if we if we could have in 99 and spared the world

00:33:20.700 everything that would happen trust me you know we i was at tora bora in 2001 uh i saw you did

00:33:26.780 an interview with mcphee yes so fun right so he was amazing i was carrying in and um you know

00:33:35.180 they did that crazy ceasefire for some reason and he got away you know i mean we had him on the

00:33:41.180 ropes yeah injured but uh you know it's you know when they got him i remember just thinking

00:33:49.740 finally yeah that was such a moment it was crazy it's like and i know in the steel community there's

00:33:55.780 a it's controversial like you bring up rob's name and i adore him because they're all like

00:34:01.020 you don't take credit but meanwhile it's like okay that happened through a series of events

00:34:04.660 And it was such a historical mission.

00:34:06.800 I think it's much better that we know.

00:34:08.500 I really think there's so much value to him in particular

00:34:13.040 because he's an incredible storyteller and communicator

00:34:15.820 to have come forward and said, this is what we did.

00:34:18.820 And he didn't make it all about himself.

00:34:20.500 He talked about his role, but he talked about everybody's role.

00:34:23.080 I just think he did us all such a service

00:34:24.980 because it only increased our respect for the SEAL community exponentially.

00:34:29.800 If you never tell any of the story,

00:34:31.840 right this is what i i struggled with writing this book and you know i sent it through the

00:34:36.900 pentagon they did their little cuts on it but essentially they didn't really change the story

00:34:41.920 but if you know when i was talking to the public affairs at the 160th you know like we're uh you

00:34:46.540 know we're quiet professionals which is true but you can't be what they call a silent professional

00:34:52.060 i mean you don't tell anything because you know where's your tax so quiet professional is one

00:34:56.620 thing. Silent is a different. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I'm probably one of the more vocal for

00:35:01.960 the Night Stalkers. You know, Mike Durant did something, you know, after Mogadishu. He had two

00:35:08.560 books. You know, Rob, you know, he always speaks highly of me, so I got nothing bad to say about

00:35:14.180 him. That's good. I will not have Rob besmirched in my presence because I just adore the guy. I

00:35:18.980 think he's so great. He's done so much for our country. But I understand that within the SEAL

00:35:23.080 community and i'm sure beyond um there is some consternation about talking you know about the

00:35:27.760 missions or anything you know most military guys are so against anything that would sound

00:35:32.100 self-aggrandizing which is why you know we love them and we're all we admire that we're all

00:35:37.940 volunteer force you know so if you don't have somebody want to join you because they just

00:35:43.640 don't know anything about you they're not going to join yes exactly what a better what better

00:35:48.360 way of recruiting is there than to tell at least a few of the stories or what you can tell around

00:35:54.520 the stories. Okay, so let's go back. So 9-11 happens. You mentioned you're in Louisiana.

00:35:59.200 You're watching it. You know you're going to get deployed, and you do get deployed.

00:36:03.660 And tell us about the horse soldiers, horse soldiers.

00:36:08.100 Right. So ODA 595, Operational Detachment Alpha 595. They're our fifth group,

00:36:14.280 which is at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

00:36:17.360 And ironically, there were Marriops team,

00:36:20.320 Maritime Operations.

00:36:21.920 And the mission I was doing at Fort Polk

00:36:25.340 when the towers came down was Maritime Operations,

00:36:28.440 which is kind of funny.

00:36:29.120 They end up in the desert.

00:36:30.620 But we get to K2, Karshi, Kanabad.

00:36:35.460 Where?

00:36:35.980 Karshi, Kanabad.

00:36:36.980 So it's Uzbekistan.

00:36:38.460 So it's just to the north of Afghanistan.

00:36:41.040 And we've got this old Soviet air base

00:36:44.120 that turns out had radioactive materials left behind.

00:36:48.360 So my arm's a little shorter now.

00:36:50.640 But our mission at the time is personnel recovery or PR. 0.99

00:36:57.060 The idea is we're going to go bomb the heck out of the Taliban 0.63

00:36:59.800 and a little bit of retribution. 0.81

00:37:02.160 Because the idea is to get through the Taliban to bin Laden.

00:37:05.080 So first you have to soften them up a little bit.

00:37:07.720 So our job was if somebody were to go down in Afghanistan

00:37:10.340 or what we call denied territory, we would go rescue them.

00:37:14.120 that lasted a couple of weeks just other pilots yeah other pilots other you know the bombers and

00:37:19.340 and uh at the time you had b-52s b-1s b-2s and f-14s off the carriers that's all it was flying

00:37:25.960 over the twos are aren't the the stealth fighters the stealth bombers okay wing yes that isn't that

00:37:31.700 what we used in iran you know like in the first yeah in that in in june yeah the b-2 bomber yeah

00:37:37.000 that stealthy looking scary spaceship kind of thing they were taking off they were taking off

00:37:41.700 out of the U.S. and come into bomb.

00:37:44.020 Right, not stopping for refueling.

00:37:46.360 Right.

00:37:46.660 So anyway, we were going to rescue them

00:37:48.060 if they were to go down.

00:37:48.940 Oh, wow.

00:37:49.660 And what we did not know

00:37:51.380 was that there was a,

00:37:53.400 what they call a UW campaign,

00:37:55.240 unconventional warfare with the Marine Berets.

00:37:57.980 And they're going to come in,

00:37:59.260 link up with the Northern Alliance factions

00:38:01.120 and fight the Taliban.

00:38:03.080 Our NATO allies.

00:38:04.360 Well, I wouldn't call them,

00:38:06.000 well, the NATO allies came in to the fight,

00:38:08.000 but the Northern Alliance is Afghan forces. 0.93

00:38:10.280 Oh, the Afghanis, okay.

00:38:11.140 Kostum, Fahim Khan, you know, those guys.

00:38:14.440 As a matter of fact, what's his name?

00:38:17.420 Masood, I can't think of his nickname.

00:38:20.260 It was like the Wolf of the Mountains 0.93

00:38:21.460 or something crazy like that.

00:38:23.360 The Al-Qaeda assassinated him a day or two before 9-11

00:38:26.940 because they didn't want us to have an ally

00:38:29.760 to fight them in Afghanistan.

00:38:32.100 They knew it was coming.

00:38:32.900 So they killed him with a fake film crew, right? 0.98

00:38:34.060 They blew up the camera and killed him.

00:38:36.080 And there was no clear successor.

00:38:38.060 It's diabolical.

00:38:39.340 And there was a problem.

00:38:40.340 is no clear successor for us to deal with which is so their plan sort of works yeah but not really

00:38:45.300 because the CIA had been embedded around the country and they hooked us up with four or five

00:38:51.420 different warlords uh General Dostum was the one that we had at Mazar-e-Sharif in that area

00:38:56.620 so the horse soldiers if you will but they didn't get that name until they infilled and I'll tell

00:39:01.680 you why in a minute but uh so my job was to take them in this was uh October 19th they took them in

00:39:08.840 and there was another set of chinooks as in 2001 2001 right so we typically operate in teams of two

00:39:16.600 helicopters right as you know shock one shock two and they were going up to the big mountains the

00:39:22.440 22,000 foot mountains i was going to like 12 or 14,000 so i could carry the entire team which is

00:39:28.960 12 guys and their equipment as opposed to normally would split them up for redundancy and just more

00:39:34.820 performance for the aircraft in the mountains and so they ended up what's his name uh fahim

00:39:40.720 was the other warlord and he said if he didn't get his green berets first he would not only not

00:39:46.340 cooperate with us but he would attack dose them you know and then throw our these are our friends

00:39:50.700 yeah it's great he ended up being like the defense minister or something when they formed the

00:39:56.480 government but anyway so they go over uh they turn around the first night for weather they can't

00:40:02.200 I can't get through the mountains.

00:40:04.060 Next night, they go back again.

00:40:05.480 Same thing happens.

00:40:07.100 And that morning, you know, I'm all pissed off at my buddies

00:40:10.580 because they can't get the guys in.

00:40:12.060 I wasn't very supportive.

00:40:12.940 And these guys, the ones who were trying to drop,

00:40:15.740 are meant to be taking on the Taliban in an effort to get one step closer to bin Laden. 0.94

00:40:20.180 This isn't the 595 guys.

00:40:21.440 They're working with me.

00:40:22.240 This is triple nickel, 555, out of the same battalion.

00:40:25.540 But the mission is take out Taliban, get closer to bin Laden.

00:40:28.640 Yes. 0.93

00:40:29.000 Okay.

00:40:29.200 And so Donald Rumsfeld, personally, well, actually his secretary, calls the planning area.

00:40:35.600 We're all asleep in the day.

00:40:37.760 And this major, I'm going to call him Major Mark, answers the phone.

00:40:42.500 And he hears, is this the dagger ops sound?

00:40:45.980 And he's like, yes.

00:40:46.980 Who's this?

00:40:47.400 And he said, please hold for the secretary.

00:40:49.000 He's like, secretary.

00:40:50.580 He's like, this is Donald Rumsfeld.

00:40:51.980 Who am I talking to?

00:40:53.120 And he's like.

00:40:53.900 Like the scariest man in Washington, by the way.

00:40:55.860 Tell Mulholland, who was our colonel at the time, now a general,

00:40:58.920 because you tell him to get those teams in tonight.

00:41:02.460 You've been given a lot of equipment, a lot of training,

00:41:04.440 a lot of money spent.

00:41:05.300 You do it, and he hung up.

00:41:07.440 That game changed from there forward.

00:41:10.180 Why hadn't you gone?

00:41:12.340 Why was the plan not to do it that night?

00:41:14.680 Well, this was in the day,

00:41:16.200 and it would have been a repeat of the next night, 0.63

00:41:18.880 and I wouldn't have brought the 595 guys in

00:41:21.420 because we were always trying to leave an aircraft as a spare,

00:41:25.180 and we don't like to fly a single ship so if i gave i had to give one of my chinooks to the

00:41:29.880 other team to carry what they needed over the big mountains oh so that's why you had everybody so

00:41:35.580 now the game changed i'm going to fly a single ship yep so by myself with all 12 guys in their

00:41:41.800 gear yep and i'm not going to have enough gas to do it so we do air refueling but we at the time

00:41:48.380 never planned on air refueling

00:41:50.340 being an only way to get gas.

00:41:54.160 You always had a spare gas somewhere.

00:41:56.780 In this case, you didn't.

00:41:57.740 It was, you either got your tank or you didn't.

00:41:59.920 That's life or death.

00:42:00.820 Yeah, so what they did is they gave me

00:42:01.980 a couple of armed Blackhawks.

00:42:04.080 They're called DAPs, direct action penetrators.

00:42:07.340 Fantastic aircraft, very, very deadly.

00:42:10.400 But it doesn't have the performance

00:42:11.620 to go into the mountains

00:42:13.060 where I have to take these guys.

00:42:14.360 So he's gonna take me as far as he can.

00:42:15.500 And you have to go alone.

00:42:16.300 And I like to describe this as like I was reading a book on World War II,

00:42:21.000 the bombers, and it's like the fighter cover would go only so far

00:42:24.280 and then either turn around or wait for you to come back out.

00:42:28.240 What was left would come out.

00:42:29.940 So that was the goal.

00:42:31.900 We're going to go in.

00:42:32.720 He'll hang out wherever he can, and that started the night.

00:42:38.280 So we took off.

00:42:41.420 oh and by the way uh the country of uzbekistan their military didn't agree with us being there

00:42:48.360 so they threatened to shoot us down oh and so they had all these you know radar guided missiles i

00:42:54.760 mean really nasty things so why did it have to be done that night why was he so hasty we were

00:42:59.500 we were in afghanistan for 20 years well we were supposed to be there a couple weeks yeah at the

00:43:03.480 beginning yeah we were we were told that old chestnut yeah that's raised its ugly head again

00:43:08.620 recently get bin laden get out yeah that was our plan and um so we uh you know we take off

00:43:17.440 and uh i get the jammers running you know so if they they lock onto me i can jam them with

00:43:24.480 radar jammers and i'm flying down low on the train in friendly territory but not so friendly

00:43:29.440 yeah frenemy right so then i get across the first set of mountains i meet my tanker i get

00:43:33.700 my first air refueling. And then I go across the border. The Amudari is a river on the northern

00:43:39.100 border. And I remember saying, all right, it's 10 minutes to cross the border. And my heart was

00:43:46.400 just jumping out of my chest. I mean, externally, we talk about sounding and being calm. So the

00:43:52.680 teams are hearing 10 minutes to border crossing. But in my mind, it's something much more insane.

00:43:59.660 And can I just jump in and say, how do you know where to go? Is there a GPS? Is it like,

00:44:03.460 is there an actual gps it's telling you where to go yeah it was like is cartography important for

00:44:10.160 a pilot like you've got to understand the maps and oh yeah that's what would kill me i might be

00:44:14.560 able to fly in an airplane if i were on like some sort of a drug that calms you down but um well

00:44:19.060 then you just let the you couple it press the button let her fly you i just can't i can't have

00:44:22.260 no sense of direction i would definitely have been in north korea when i was doing that north

00:44:26.020 korea so i like hi hi sorry i my bad well night stalkers are known for their navigation skills

00:44:31.760 as part of the...

00:44:32.480 I admire that.

00:44:33.800 I deeply admire that.

00:44:35.080 It must be wonderful

00:44:35.760 when you go to the mall

00:44:36.660 and you can't remember

00:44:37.320 where you parked.

00:44:37.740 No, I can't.

00:44:38.440 It doesn't happen to you.

00:44:39.620 Talk to my wife about that. 0.97

00:44:40.800 I can't get out of a parking lot

00:44:41.920 to save my life,

00:44:42.740 but I can get there.

00:44:43.860 Right.

00:44:44.480 And if anybody locks on you

00:44:45.840 with a man pad,

00:44:47.200 you're good.

00:44:47.700 You know what to do.

00:44:48.440 Get that flare

00:44:49.240 in the back of the car.

00:44:50.360 Yeah, but I'm still stuck

00:44:51.220 in a parking lot.

00:44:52.220 Okay, so back to you.

00:44:54.680 And your heart is racing,

00:44:56.300 but you're projecting

00:44:56.960 calm and cool.

00:44:57.920 You got 12 night horses.

00:45:01.300 Well, they're Green Berets, right?

00:45:03.860 Okay.

00:45:04.880 And they're going to be called Horse Soldiers.

00:45:07.140 Horse Soldiers because after I get them in,

00:45:10.900 they end up riding horses in cavalry charges with the Northern Alliance.

00:45:15.560 So they're doing GPS and laser-guided munitions while riding horses.

00:45:22.140 That's next level sophistication.

00:45:24.320 That's what they make their movie about.

00:45:25.560 It's pretty insane.

00:45:26.480 And old school as well, all at once.

00:45:28.360 so when you actually drop these guys off are you so relieved i mean it do you have the moment of

00:45:34.160 like dear god thank you yeah so it but before that we're flying along my daps with me right

00:45:40.440 they're they're at my five and eight o'clock so for part of it anyway but we you can't see out

00:45:45.660 the window like it's dark and it's really dark and it's like wow i don't see the mountains anymore

00:45:50.400 so i turn the searchlight on and there's a saying in flying that if you don't like what you see in

00:45:55.800 the church light turned off because what we saw was dust just what do you mean we're in a dust

00:46:01.440 storm we're in a dust storm so you know i've got the radars up and i can see the terrain with the

00:46:07.060 radar and the daps are tucked in as tight as they can on me because their night vision goggles can

00:46:13.020 see the heat from my engines right so there's two circular orbs in the back right that the engine

00:46:17.720 exhaust and as we increase power obviously they get hotter and they can tell we're on a climb so

00:46:22.720 they just sort of climb and stay with it well one of them uh couldn't see us anymore so he had to

00:46:28.540 break off and then the other one turned around as well and then the colonel the battalion commander

00:46:33.860 is in my jump seat so the jump seat is like i'm sitting in the left seat there's a right seat

00:46:37.500 pilot right about here and i could hit him and right between us and just behind us is the air

00:46:42.080 mission commander so he's the you know guy really responsible for the decisions that are being made

00:46:47.040 and he goes al what are we going to do and i said sir i think we just tf

00:46:51.900 train following radar and he goes what train and following 0.97

00:46:55.160 so the you know i'll tell you in a minute i thought it was turn the fuck around this is 0.97

00:46:58.840 terrifying we're all gonna die we're gonna tf and he goes uh okay execute right and i'm thinking 0.93

00:47:04.740 holy crap i didn't know the sec def had just called and said get those in no matter what 0.65

00:47:08.900 oh so i'm like all right jethro my co-pilot from west virginia i said uh i press the button

00:47:14.280 the cues come up and the cues for the radar keep you 300 feet above the terrain right so it'll

00:47:20.760 descend you climb you in the mountains uh fly in between the mountains and but it's all a little

00:47:26.460 video game that he's he's moving the controls based on the cues that he's seeing so it's not

00:47:31.940 automatic pilot it is nowadays but it wasn't then it's all what we call uh commanded so he's flying

00:47:38.900 this thing and the reason we weren't allowed to use this at the time for real is because in training

00:47:44.580 was because like um your iphone ever bricked up on you like just sort of locked up and you had to

00:47:50.360 do a hard reset or maybe a laptop yeah the radar would do that just out of the blue oh my so here

00:47:56.520 you are in the clouds in the mountains at three and you're like rainbow wheel rainbow wheel and so

00:48:01.820 all you can do and we trained for this but once again not for real and uh the pilot slows back

00:48:11.480 to what we call the best climb airspeed pulls in all the power you got and you climb like your

00:48:16.280 life depends on it because it does you know and because remember i told you about the pk the

00:48:21.780 probable kill yep uh so a missile may have you know 10 20 you know with countermeasures uh the

00:48:28.860 ground has a pk of 100 yeah you run into the mountain you'd never even got to know yeah and

00:48:34.600 the mission has failed and our goal is to succeed so he's climbing i'm pulling circuit breakers and

00:48:42.000 resetting things we get it back and then i figure out what it what the problem was and we kind of

00:48:48.160 do some things to get around control i'll delete pretty much yeah and we end up going over the last

00:48:54.700 ridgeline with these guys we're going to meet up with the the northern alliance soldiers if you

00:49:00.420 want to call them that fighters and what's interesting is there's a zpu 23-4 that's a

00:49:06.440 four-barreled 23 millimeter anti-aircraft gun on the other side of a small hill so we had done

00:49:14.560 this is what's waiting for you that if i don't if i screw this up that's what's waiting for me

00:49:19.100 so there's a group of guys and then the gun and in between them is a small hill that as long as

00:49:25.120 they can't see me they can hear me all they want but if they can't see me they can't shoot me

00:49:29.340 and the idea you know i did the math and the the navigation route specifically so that when i came

00:49:34.640 across the final ridge they wouldn't have a line of sight on me so they couldn't shoot me but

00:49:39.740 we've got to descend you know four or five thousand feet in about a mile which is really

00:49:44.400 difficult to do and if you go long which you normally would that gun's going to tear us to

00:49:49.160 pieces so instead we do these like we call them s turns right and you just s turn it back and

00:49:54.560 forth so you're losing your altitude laterally instead of going long and so my co-pilot is i'm

00:50:00.180 doing it and then we get to the bottom and i'm on a left hand turn i know he's out to the right but

00:50:06.680 i'm at like 100 feet now and i should be what we call in short final set up with all the controls

00:50:12.840 kind of centered up and you press these little buttons that the magnets will keep the controls

00:50:16.880 where they're supposed to be. So you have, you just fight the springs, you know, as opposed to

00:50:20.820 moving the hydraulics. And I go, Jay, Jethro, can you, can you see the

00:50:24.580 LZ? And he's like, yeah. I said, what's the LZ? Landing zone.

00:50:28.840 Oh. Right. So this is where we're supposed to land. And I said, all right, you have the controls.

00:50:33.320 And I just screwed him because now he's got to

00:50:36.900 take the controls after I just whip this thing around and he's got to get us lined 0.71

00:50:40.880 up set up the thing he's like i i've got him you sure what you're doing so well but i will tell

00:50:46.300 you he was one of the best dust landing pilots i've ever met so he's better than me well maybe

00:50:53.120 but no he's he probably is he's up there to me so he he does it and as we come in it's like a

00:51:00.780 talcum powder talcum powder dust and i'm convinced i'm looking at the display and i'm like we're

00:51:07.420 going backwards we're going to crash you know so we the idea would be i'm getting jfk jr vibes here

00:51:12.440 yeah it's along those lines you don't know whether you're up or down just like oh wow except i feel

00:51:19.540 the aft landing gear touch the ground oh you know and i just told him to go around so he's starting

00:51:24.880 to pull the power and we're going to take off again and try to come around hopefully the gun

00:51:28.340 doesn't get us and uh now i'm pushing on the controls to make it go down to land right because

00:51:35.700 Do you realize you are landing?

00:51:36.700 It's like, he got us on the ground.

00:51:38.080 I just got to get the forward gear down.

00:51:39.620 So he realizes at some point what I'm doing, and he lets it go.

00:51:45.380 And then the dust kind of settles, and we're surrounded by, you know,

00:51:49.180 Afghan fighters in traditional Afghan.

00:51:52.340 So now what? 0.90

00:51:53.640 Well, now I got to wonder who's the right guys, right?

00:51:56.120 Because there's no, you know, so the team leader gets off.

00:52:00.440 And, you know, in 12 Strong, they get off, and I all hug and stuff.

00:52:03.480 You know, he gets off.

00:52:04.840 They go talk.

00:52:05.700 And we're all on guard.

00:52:07.360 We're ready to defend ourselves.

00:52:09.280 And he looks back at me and just gives me a thumbs up.

00:52:13.560 That's a ballsy guy who went out to have a little chat not knowing.

00:52:16.980 Yeah.

00:52:17.420 What if it's not friendly?

00:52:19.060 Those guys are amazing.

00:52:20.520 So we took off.

00:52:22.340 We went back, repeated the same thing back, got air refueling again from an Air Force tanker.

00:52:27.100 And then he came back.

00:52:28.320 And I remember landing at Karshi Kanabad.

00:52:30.860 When you went out and came back on those first days, everybody came out to see you off.

00:52:37.380 You know, the base commander, the chaplain, you know, all the people wanted to see you.

00:52:41.840 And we come back and everybody's like a big, you know,

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00:54:08.280 Craig, who stood out?

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00:55:10.040 My references are so weird.

00:55:11.880 Forgive me, Alan.

00:55:13.060 All I'm thinking about is Little House on the Prairie and Mary Ingalls.

00:55:16.300 She married Adam.

00:55:17.280 they were blind and she was leaving and he said i'll be waving as you drive away that's what they're

00:55:22.160 saying to you it's a dust storm you can't see them they can't see you but they want you to know

00:55:26.140 they're rooting for you they're there i love that they show up you know as a matter of fact when we

00:55:30.340 left on the mission they they had to tug the aircraft out from parking right so they have a

00:55:35.560 track aircraft tractor called a tug and they pull it out with a tow bar and they put it where you

00:55:40.360 have a clear you know spin up your rotors and stuff and i'm walking along with my hand on the

00:55:46.240 fuel tank it's dark i'm looking up at the stars it's crisp night and i can see orion so orion is

00:55:53.880 my favorite constellation because every time i saw it life went good you know so it's got to be my

00:55:59.880 lucky thing you know but as i'm walking out everybody's watching me walk by in the mud you

00:56:06.880 know the taxi was all mud it's that uh you must have felt like a badass yeah yeah i mean this is

00:56:14.160 right after 9-11. We're going to take the fight to the enemy. FNA. And it felt good. Yes, I'm sure

00:56:19.860 it did. It really did. Can I ask you, when you were in school, were you really good at math?

00:56:24.260 Did you take physics? No, I was terrible at math. Really? Yeah. Because I feel like while you're

00:56:29.000 up there, you are doing calculations by the millisecond. You do. I mean, I can save my life

00:56:35.000 with it, but no, I'm not any good at math. So, but I think you are good at math. I was more into

00:56:39.720 history and you're good at it maybe you just you weren't taught right or you know well i was good

00:56:45.980 at the math that mattered yeah you know yeah yeah because that clearly seemed to have been geometry

00:56:50.420 that was kicking in for you up there yeah so so how does that conclude so the so they go do their

00:56:59.260 thing uh the oda and a couple of days later um they take mazari sharif which is the key to the

00:57:06.680 north and the taliban um withdrew to kabul and then a couple of weeks later now in the meantime

00:57:15.040 we're still doing you know in the movie it's like one oda out there one team of green berets but i

00:57:20.800 think we put 21 teams in total over the course of like the first two three weeks and then general

00:57:27.320 dostum decided to take kabul so everybody back in our command is telling the green beret captain

00:57:33.840 And tell him no, advise him no, we're not ready to do that.

00:57:36.880 Maybe in the spring, right?

00:57:38.120 And this is a November, December timeframe of 2001.

00:57:42.640 And he is, we can't stop him.

00:57:44.900 And so all we can do now is support him.

00:57:47.180 And he took Kabul in like a week.

00:57:50.380 Wow.

00:57:50.800 And they were expecting, you know, a year or so.

00:57:53.000 But the Taliban just fled.

00:57:54.500 And that's how we got the embassy back in Kabul.

00:57:57.380 Okay.

00:57:58.060 Yeah.

00:57:58.320 And then we just kept doing, I told you, we did 21 teams total between the two flights of two.

00:58:02.400 and we just kept doing it night after night,

00:58:05.680 pushing the aircraft.

00:58:06.740 The aircraft crews kept those things up.

00:58:08.460 It's amazing when you think about the fact

00:58:09.900 that it would be another 10 years 0.84

00:58:13.060 before we actually did get bin Laden. 0.91

00:58:15.380 You know, it's like we were pushing pedal to the metal. 0.94

00:58:19.000 We weren't wasting time.

00:58:20.720 We were getting the job done, but the big gorilla.

00:58:25.600 So it was November of 2001.

00:58:28.800 We get told, hey, send two aircraft

00:58:30.200 to Bagram Air Force Base down in Afghanistan.

00:58:32.840 We get this thing called Tora Bora. 0.91

00:58:34.540 We think we got bin Laden, right? 1.00

00:58:36.260 So they start that. 1.00

00:58:37.800 This is when we actually did get them?

00:58:39.940 No, this is when we got them.

00:58:41.080 10 years earlier, okay.

00:58:42.000 Yeah.

00:58:42.700 So this is 2001.

00:58:44.300 And while those guys go down there,

00:58:46.420 my job is to fly around Afghanistan 0.99

00:58:49.400 and move all of the Green Berets to C-130 capable airstrips, 1.00

00:58:53.900 meaning they can be resupplied now by Air Force airplanes instead of us,

00:58:59.340 meaning we're going home.

00:59:00.300 this is november like thanksgiving 2001 we're gonna go home as soon as the tour of war campaign is

00:59:08.320 done and then uh the guys that were down there only packed like a three-day bag they stayed for

00:59:14.360 about five days and then they're like hey we got to swap out so i took my flight down there with

00:59:19.680 a better supplied group you know to stay longer and we're going to finish this up and then he

00:59:26.120 He had a ceasefire, he gets away, and we just keep going.

00:59:30.020 We didn't stop for 10 years.

00:59:31.680 I did 10 years worth of deployments.

00:59:34.280 Really?

00:59:34.800 Yeah.

00:59:37.040 Back at home, you had some troubles in your personal life.

00:59:42.180 Yeah.

00:59:42.820 With your wife, your first wife, Linda.

00:59:45.860 Yeah.

00:59:46.960 Was this the period that you write about in the book 0.93

00:59:50.040 where she started to deteriorate? 0.78

00:59:53.740 Yeah.

00:59:53.980 Yeah, it started not at the end of that deployment, so March 2002,

01:00:00.840 I was shot down during Operation Anaconda.

01:00:03.880 Yes, right.

01:00:04.460 That's where the two medals of honor were issued for Brett Zielinski and John Chapman.

01:00:09.020 So it was interesting because I get shot down, I get rescued,

01:00:13.680 I'm brought back to a forward operating base,

01:00:16.180 and one of the CIA personnel comes up and hands me a satellite phone.

01:00:21.220 he says Mr. Mack you probably want to call your wife

01:00:23.940 this is going to hit CNN in five minutes

01:00:25.640 and I can't

01:00:27.520 because if I let her know I'm

01:00:29.940 okay because here's what the

01:00:31.880 report was we had

01:00:33.520 it was

01:00:34.860 two Chinooks shot down eight killed

01:00:37.680 was what CNN reported

01:00:39.440 what year? 2002

01:00:41.680 March 2002

01:00:43.000 and

01:00:44.460 the odds are that's me because I'm the

01:00:47.860 senior flight lead and 0.99

01:00:49.900 my wife is going to hear that but the problem is if she knows that i'm okay and all the wives are

01:00:56.220 hanging out at the commander's house watching the news coverage and waiting for news if she's calm

01:01:01.560 they know it's not me so i can't i can't do it right this is my professional

01:01:07.380 because the odds go up it's one of their guys yeah and and there's a process to notifying somebody

01:01:13.020 that they have a killed in action and um we get out of there and we're coming home and she found

01:01:21.580 out that i had an opportunity to call her oh and it did not go well and she never understand never

01:01:27.540 forgave me oh and so after that she was addicted to prescription opioids you know pink methadone

01:01:36.880 was her her thing and then that wasn't enough so she augmented it with alcohol and this is all

01:01:42.120 you know taking place over years you know but it's it's slowly getting worse and had ups and

01:01:47.220 downs and i'm still deploying and coming home and deploying and coming home and even when you come

01:01:50.940 home you're not really home you're out in what we call the environments training you're out on the

01:01:56.300 atlantic landing on ships you're in the mountains of colorado getting good there you're flying in

01:02:00.420 the cities in la new york so you're always gone anyway you know and so she you know good example

01:02:09.800 when people thank me for my service,

01:02:11.840 it feels a little odd

01:02:12.700 because I feel like I don't really deserve that thanks

01:02:15.520 because I did it because I wanted to.

01:02:17.860 The families kind of got dragged into it.

01:02:20.640 You know, I mean, they had a vote to an extent,

01:02:23.080 but, you know, they're the ones

01:02:24.780 that really need the thanks.

01:02:26.560 I mean, the spouses generally enter into it willingly.

01:02:30.400 The children get dragged along.

01:02:32.080 Yeah.

01:02:33.360 So you're dealing with that,

01:02:35.440 like your wife's not doing well

01:02:36.780 and the marriage is not doing well. 0.94

01:02:38.620 can we should we should back up and talk about operation anaconda okay um because the the little

01:02:47.000 radars the flares did not work no but okay so there are different threats to an aircraft you

01:02:55.880 have um ir threats infrared and that's the heat seekers you have radar threats which is radar

01:03:02.000 guided equipment both of those you have countermeasures for right you you can tend to

01:03:08.020 mitigate or even defeat those systems most often then you have a ballistic threat which is machine

01:03:14.600 guns rifles uh rocket propelled grenades right those are not guided if somebody shoots at you

01:03:21.180 depending on how good they are how good their gas was how far you are you're going to get hit

01:03:27.280 you know and uh that's what happened to me it was a rocket propelled grenade came through the side

01:03:31.580 of the aircraft while the SEALs were getting off

01:03:33.800 on the top of this mountain.

01:03:34.780 Tucker Gar, now called Robert's Ridge to many people.

01:03:40.220 Yeah, it wasn't anything I could do about it once it hit.

01:03:44.000 How many were on board?

01:03:46.160 Let's see.

01:03:46.760 So my crew of seven and then seven SEALs.

01:03:56.040 Yeah, so 14 people on board.

01:03:57.820 And so it hit, not your side.

01:04:00.140 Yeah, hit on my side.

01:04:00.900 I watched it come in, and it came in slow motion almost,

01:04:06.540 like that time compression.

01:04:07.840 You could see it.

01:04:08.320 You could see it?

01:04:08.780 I could see it coming at me, sparks coming out of the back,

01:04:11.480 and it hit about two feet behind me.

01:04:16.720 Now, behind me is what's called the flight control closet.

01:04:19.660 It's this closet full of actuators and hydraulics that,

01:04:25.180 when you move the controls, they go through this series of bell cranks

01:04:28.660 and gizmos, and they go to the top.

01:04:31.020 It's called this PFM, right? 0.86

01:04:32.440 Pure magic, is how the Chinook flies.

01:04:36.860 But it missed that.

01:04:39.500 If it had hit it, we'd have been done.

01:04:41.100 If they had shot forward, they would have hit the cockpit.

01:04:43.560 We would have just died.

01:04:44.620 That would have been done.

01:04:45.980 And if they had gone another foot backwards,

01:04:47.600 they would have hit the main fuel tank,

01:04:49.260 and we probably wouldn't be here.

01:04:50.620 So they ran it right through the one spot.

01:04:52.540 They could do the minimum danger,

01:04:55.140 and it came through the aircraft, exploded inside.

01:04:58.480 Now, typically, when these things hit armor,

01:05:01.540 the overpressure is what kills everybody inside.

01:05:04.000 But the doors are all open.

01:05:05.840 And so there's no real overpressure.

01:05:07.820 So it came through this side, hits the ammo can,

01:05:10.600 metal and bullets are flying everywhere,

01:05:12.940 and it goes out the other side,

01:05:14.420 put a couple of big holes in the rotor blades,

01:05:16.380 and it took out three separate electrical systems

01:05:19.500 as it all went through.

01:05:21.140 They're geographically placed so that you have redundancy

01:05:24.960 and battle damage can be kept to a minimum.

01:05:28.160 In this case, they got it.

01:05:29.880 It was like a shotgun blast.

01:05:31.020 Had them all?

01:05:31.540 All three of them gone.

01:05:32.600 So the cockpit of an MH-47E model, an Echo,

01:05:38.380 is four television screens

01:05:40.340 for multifunction displays, MFDs.

01:05:43.020 And all of the information for the flight,

01:05:45.640 the engine operations, the rotor RPM,

01:05:47.780 all the things that are important are displayed on that.

01:05:50.840 And the guns, we have these things called mini guns.

01:05:53.640 It's a six-barreled electric Gatling gun.

01:05:56.120 That's our self-defense.

01:05:57.360 Those are AC-powered.

01:05:59.160 They run off the generators.

01:06:00.280 They shoot 4,000 rounds a minute.

01:06:01.620 So, I mean, they're deadly when they work.

01:06:03.800 But with no electricity, they don't work.

01:06:06.180 Now, since then, we've put them on batteries instead of the aircraft power.

01:06:10.300 But anyway, so now I'm sitting in the cockpit, and it's nighttime.

01:06:14.560 This thing comes through.

01:06:15.860 The screens all go blank.

01:06:17.840 And you know how your desktop computer, especially your older ones,

01:06:20.880 you can hear the fan, you know, the cooling fan?

01:06:23.200 Yeah.

01:06:23.640 well all these black boxes have cooling fans so they make a lot of noise and all of a sudden

01:06:28.080 they're just spooling down you know and i'm like oh that's even worse but the rotor blades are

01:06:32.480 still spinning so the engines will run in what's called reversionary mode it's a backup mode

01:06:37.460 so i could still fly so we're in the middle of a engagement here where we can't defend ourselves

01:06:46.160 so we go to take off and that's when neil roberts who was getting out of the aircraft at the time

01:06:51.540 he was not plugged into the communication system uh and he fell out on top of it with with my crew

01:06:57.520 chief so the crew chief fell out but he had a tether so oh my gosh he was able to be retrieved

01:07:03.540 uh so we dove down the mountain trying to get out of the enemy fire regain rotor rpm and my

01:07:10.100 intention is to crash on the floor below you know a controlled crash because i got one engine i think

01:07:15.100 yeah and the crew chiefs are telling me sir we've both engines are running you can level off

01:07:20.740 I'm like, are you sure?

01:07:21.660 Because I have no indications in the cockpit.

01:07:23.240 And they say, yeah, yeah, we hear both engines.

01:07:25.240 So I pull in the power, we level off,

01:07:28.080 and now they tell me, you know, Neil fell out the back.

01:07:31.780 So I'm like, all right, we've got to go back.

01:07:33.120 So we turn around to go back into the top of this mountain

01:07:35.980 and the controls stop moving.

01:07:41.080 I can't move any of the controls.

01:07:42.460 Uh-oh.

01:07:42.900 Right?

01:07:43.220 So I always give the example of your car

01:07:46.240 when you still had a key in the ignition.

01:07:47.740 Yeah.

01:07:47.900 If you pull the key out, you can't move the steering wheel.

01:07:49.540 Yeah.

01:07:49.900 no hydraulics no move controls so uh i'm like guys i'm sorry we're done i can't do anything

01:07:58.720 so for a minute there it's very surreal i kind of look up at the stars i look down and i can see the

01:08:05.520 battle down below me the big the 101st is down there fighting taliban and uh i can see tracer

01:08:11.940 fire going back and forth and it's kind of cool thinking this is my last view and then all of a

01:08:18.020 the controls work again so one of the crew chiefs in the back had a can of hydraulic fluid which is

01:08:23.580 you know not much bigger than this glass and he's pouring it into a fill module which is meant to

01:08:28.740 top it off not to service it and he's got this little handle and he's like pumping it like

01:08:33.240 feverishly and he's getting hydraulic fluid back into the system now i can fly and i'm like all

01:08:37.440 right here we go we're back in the game guys and i turn back toward the hill again for how long

01:08:42.100 50 seconds whoa so 50 seconds goes by i can't move it again he puts another can in

01:08:50.320 are there a lot of cans he's got three cans holy cow so now i realize i can't reasonably land on

01:08:58.340 top of the hill and get everybody back off and i'm still responsible for the other seals you know

01:09:03.020 in my crew i can't just go down there and you know hit the meat grinder so my second aircraft

01:09:09.000 razor 04 is still out there so i'm hoping he can go do the rescue i can't do it i'm gonna need to

01:09:16.560 be rescued so instead i turn now back to battle and the idea is to identify a friendly position

01:09:23.820 and land near it so i set up a rated descent i'm sorry for being a technical but you know about

01:09:29.460 300 foot a minute about 70 knots and the idea is that maybe if i lose the controls again when we

01:09:37.440 get to the bottom maybe that's a survivable impact you know i mean it's going to be ugly but maybe

01:09:42.920 somebody lives and we get down to the he puts the fluid in the last time and we get down to the

01:09:48.620 bottom and what looked like nice smooth terrain as i got about 75 feet off the ground turned into

01:09:54.060 these you know hills you know rolling so now i've got my landing area in sight but the aircraft is

01:10:02.060 now sliding to the right and i cannot move the the control that would stop that so there's a

01:10:07.160 saying we have in aviation, never quit flying the aircraft. So what else have I got? I have other

01:10:13.000 controls. So now I push on the pedals and the aircraft swings in the direction that we're

01:10:17.480 sliding. So now I'm straight onto the hill and then I can't move those anymore. And we hit the

01:10:23.040 ground at a reasonable speed and rate of descent. And I pushed the last control down and we settled

01:10:28.220 on a slope and we lived. I remember thinking a little bit of an expletive, we're alive.

01:10:34.780 yeah yeah never quit flying yeah and we shut it down razor 04 came picked us up about 45 minutes

01:10:41.740 later uh bringing the seals back in you were a hero they knew what you had done yeah well it's

01:10:48.920 funny because brit slavinsky one of the medal of honor recipients uh he's rallying his guys like

01:10:54.220 all right we're gonna go back up the hill and i'm i got our map out and i'm like that's not the

01:11:01.800 mountain that's the mountain and he's like no we were only flying for like three minutes i said

01:11:07.140 yeah like you know 90 miles an hour yeah right for three minutes they said we were like 10 miles

01:11:12.200 away and he's like oh it's a good thing you knew that yeah back to the map knowledge yeah that

01:11:17.920 would come in very handy yeah sure did so that was operation anaconda

01:11:21.980 is the biggest mission you were ever part of the retrieval of marcus

01:11:28.780 as far as what i can talk about yeah oh yeah there's you know yeah you can tell me you have

01:11:36.460 to kill me yeah and all of my listeners too i'd get in trouble i don't want to do that you don't

01:11:41.120 want that but um yeah that was a biggie i mean that's probably the toughest flying i've done

01:11:45.460 in my entire life one of the most well-known and shocking incidents it was about two weeks of

01:11:53.160 of hell you know flying into there because we were trying to find all the bodies because

01:11:58.200 Well, the audience may not be familiar.

01:12:01.700 So what's the first you heard about, is this guy missing?

01:12:04.480 Or was it when the helicopter went down to rescue?

01:12:06.040 Yeah, so it starts out Operation Red Wings,

01:12:09.680 which is a conventional operation with the U.S. Marines.

01:12:13.280 But in order to get our helicopters, the special operations helicopters,

01:12:18.440 you have to have a special operations component in the mission.

01:12:22.880 So they said, well, it would be great if we got some special forces guys

01:12:27.000 up on the hill overlooking the village

01:12:29.220 because what happens all the time

01:12:30.520 when you come in with helicopter assaults

01:12:32.780 is people hear you most of the time

01:12:35.600 and they tend to run.

01:12:38.240 So if you've got five different buildings

01:12:40.700 where the bad guy could be and they run,

01:12:43.420 now you've got to find these what we call squirters.

01:12:46.020 So the idea was these four guys tend to be SEALs,

01:12:49.720 Marcus Luttrell was one of them,

01:12:51.920 are going to establish what we call pattern of life.

01:12:54.440 They're going to watch the village from a distance and see if they can identify our HVT, our high-value target, and decide which building he's actually in.

01:13:03.660 So that when we come in, if somebody squirts from there, you kind of narrow down where to look.

01:13:08.300 So they're going to do that. 0.99

01:13:10.660 And we had two different types of Chinooks at the time.

01:13:14.780 I was flying the MH-47 Echo, which had the terrain-falling radar and all the stuff I talked about.

01:13:20.120 And the 3rd Battalion out of Savannah, who was doing the mission, had MH-47D AWC, or Adverse Weather Cockpit.

01:13:29.240 So it's a fairly capable aircraft, but it's on the way out.

01:13:33.480 It's one of our original high-speed aircraft.

01:13:36.540 But the difference is they don't have all the same equipment that I have for survivability,

01:13:41.660 but that means the aircraft is lighter and has more lift capability.

01:13:45.720 so they're going to take all these marines in while i sit on what they call qrf quick reaction

01:13:51.020 force and so uh the team is compromised and marcus's team marcus's team is compromised

01:13:58.440 during the daylight and i walk into the the tactical operations center and there's you know

01:14:05.540 a lot of attention going to the big tv screens you know we call isr uh intelligence surveillance

01:14:12.000 and i don't even know what the r stands for reconnaissance there we go um and i sit down

01:14:17.580 next to the colonel who's in charge with the my cup of coffee my hey sir what's going on he goes

01:14:21.460 oh team's compromised uh we launched the qrf quick reaction for us well i'm the qrf starting it you

01:14:29.020 know a couple hours ago and i was like hey sir that's me why who's who's flying oh it's major

01:14:34.940 right you know the guys that were on it previously because they decided to launch part of red wings

01:14:40.240 early and that's what they were going to do so like it made sense in their mind to do that so

01:14:45.500 they go running down there and i'm just sitting there watching my coffee watching the the tracker

01:14:49.460 you know showing their aircraft position and as they come to a hover to kick ropes they're going

01:14:55.020 to fast rope fast rope is about a you know between 60 and 90 foot rope that's about you know this big

01:15:01.840 like like the old-fashioned fire poles you know in a firehouse and they're going to slide down

01:15:05.580 that because there's no place to land and when they come to a hover i watch them kick ropes

01:15:10.300 from the there's an a-10 flying around with uh what they call you can see this how again through

01:15:16.020 the there's a an airplane overhead with a uh a fleer uh forward looking infrared so it's a okay

01:15:24.700 uh it's like night vision but it sees differential in heat it's like what we see sometimes they show

01:15:30.280 us the situation room video it's like that what that looks like okay yeah so i'm watching that

01:15:36.840 i watch the aircraft come into a hover on the terrain they're kicking ropes and all of a sudden

01:15:42.980 i see uh what looks to be an rpg shot and the aircraft explodes and limps off uh off frame

01:15:50.960 and it came apart oh my gosh all those those men down the slope the aircraft came apart in

01:15:57.080 lots of little pieces and you know yeah and so the chalk to the second aircraft calls us back

01:16:03.660 on the satellite radio and he's like hey you know leads down you know what do you want me to do

01:16:08.220 and so they told him to back off because got to assess the situation and now they're going to 0.94

01:16:14.580 launch my qrf my quick reaction force with the seal team out of damn neck and so we run down 0.90

01:16:21.600 the aircraft crew chiefs have already got it up to engine start for me i get in strap in start the 0.95

01:16:26.200 engines i don't have to go through any other process there's not like a big planning meeting

01:16:30.100 prior to that no this is get there as fast as you can and respond which is what they did

01:16:35.460 you're trying to save lives you're trying to i mean that's why you're trying to put shooters on 0.60

01:16:39.260 target you know uh so they can use their weapons but the thing is you know i'm hauling ass there

01:16:45.280 now with these guys like 21 you know uh dev grew seals but i'm thinking to myself what am i going

01:16:53.080 to do different than what they did that was the only clearing on top of that mountain yeah and

01:16:58.600 i'm doing you know close to 200 miles an hour you know i'm doing 170 is that fast for helicopter i

01:17:03.800 don't know that's really fast for i'm shaking the rivets out of this thing and i'm just thinking

01:17:08.100 i'm gonna be there in like 10 minutes what am i gonna do and then i got called and got told to

01:17:13.500 divert to a ford operating base at jalalaband or jbad which is where they did the bin laden raid

01:17:18.760 out of but uh we got there and the idea god the idea was to come up with a better plan

01:17:23.380 which i'm glad somebody thought that through yeah because that we probably would have just

01:17:27.740 done the same thing oh so so so then what happened you you you go to g over the course

01:17:34.320 of the next two weeks we continue to bring rangers and seals in and green berets to search

01:17:40.260 the area for bodies and the original four seals yep so what we don't know yet is that marcus

01:17:48.040 latrell has been uh taken care of by a local yeah he's being protected

01:17:53.680 interestingly about a night before that we saw infrared strobes all over the valley

01:18:01.820 right so each each pilot has an ir strobe to identify yourself and you can only see it with

01:18:07.380 night vision goggles and you have a survival radio at a certain frequency and i remember telling my

01:18:14.020 crew if we see an ir strobe we're going to go check it out and if they give the right visual

01:18:18.920 signals we are going to land and pick them up okay no one disagrees we're flying along the crew

01:18:25.920 chiefs see what they think is an ir strobe i fly around i look and i'm thinking i don't i don't see

01:18:31.160 it i'm not going to go down unless i know for sure so we go back and i store the coordinates

01:18:35.860 in the computer you know he's pressed a little button says okay here's what it is we get back

01:18:40.640 to bagram and i remember thinking yeah that wasn't anything so i don't retrieve the coordinates from

01:18:48.400 the the aircraft so we go back you know we we do an after action review take a shower go to bed

01:18:54.480 and now i'm like what if it is so i had to go wake somebody else up because i wasn't allowed

01:19:01.000 to drive on the flight line because i can't drive in a parking lot and uh he drives me down i pull

01:19:06.280 the coordinates out i give them to the intel guys and i say well i don't know if this is anything

01:19:10.060 so they sent those coordinates to a team of green berets who went to check out the coordinates and

01:19:15.820 it turns out it was a trap for helicopters the ir strobe was out in a small opening oh my gosh

01:19:21.440 there were a group of taliban underneath a waterfall of all things uh with a clear line 0.77

01:19:27.300 to the landing zone so had i landed they'd have blown us to pieces thank god you didn't do it

01:19:32.980 yeah thank god you your instincts told you no yeah and but you know it's one of those things

01:19:37.280 where you know had it been one of our guys and i landed you know all of a sudden yay yeah but in

01:19:42.720 this case not so much do you are you a man of faith do you feel like there's any divine

01:19:47.780 intervention yeah i mean i don't consider myself like overly religious but i believe in god and i

01:19:54.100 believe in you know some kind of intervention and i think many times in my life i have been saved by

01:20:00.320 some power beyond me that's for sure yeah it certainly sounds like that so we've retrieved

01:20:06.020 all of the bodies but one from the blackhawk from the previous chinook and the original team so we're

01:20:12.800 still missing somebody and uh actually we might have been missing two but we're doing what's

01:20:18.560 called a dignified transfer practice so to send the bodies of our fallen home there's a you take

01:20:26.660 a casket with a flag and you march it over to the c17 there's a ceremony that happens we've all seen

01:20:31.780 the receiving end over yeah so we're practicing this right and one of my good friends uh master

01:20:37.600 sergeant trey ponder so i was the senior um mh-47 pilot in the entire regiment he was the senior

01:20:46.440 non-commissioned officer so he and i were the guys that were responsible for making sure the

01:20:50.920 air crews were always up to standard and always up to date in their techniques and we did their

01:20:56.200 evaluations and all that kind of stuff and so i i sat this far away from him for six years you know

01:21:03.060 and he was the one kicking the ropes out the back and he was killed so i'm carrying his casket oh

01:21:08.440 gosh and uh our officer in charge comes running i say al someone's gonna take your place i'm like

01:21:15.700 damn sir you know we're doing dignified transfer and he's like come on we got a survivor 0.88

01:21:21.120 so somebody takes my place we come back we're in the the rescue operations center and we get 0.99

01:21:27.960 presented with okay uh somebody walked into a little marine corps patrol base with a the correct

01:21:36.020 information that we need that that it's likely to be him we uh had his beacon location from his radio

01:21:41.880 so you knew it was marcus yeah you know and not one of the other three yeah because it's a specific

01:21:47.600 Like, yeah, each person in a threat theater like that

01:21:51.900 gets what's called an ISOPREP, isolated personnel report.

01:21:55.120 And on it, you've got these little numbers.

01:21:59.080 You know, it's called a 10-digit number.

01:22:00.880 And so you tear off the end or you write it down,

01:22:04.040 you give it to somebody and say,

01:22:05.000 hey, take this to somebody that can help me. 0.99

01:22:06.860 And there's instructions on the back of the blood shit, 0.99

01:22:11.880 you know, not the ISOPREP, blood shit, I meant. 0.99

01:22:13.780 isoprep is the questions you want to be asked right so they ask him those questions over the 0.95

01:22:21.920 radio they verify so they've got him verified and so now we got to go get him and the problem

01:22:30.020 with where he was is there's you know mountains and there's essentially three ways in to where

01:22:36.640 he is one of them has clouds on it all the time so the third battalion chinooks the d models can't

01:22:43.760 fly through that they don't have the radar that i have so i can do it but i only have two

01:22:47.900 helicopters the other the other six are these older versions why why is it bad to just have

01:22:53.520 the two helicopters like because it's not enough uh i don't know firepower you know you can't carry

01:22:59.920 enough people so because you're trying to get actual like shooters to go protect right you

01:23:05.340 protect marcus they have to be you expect engagement when you get there right yeah you're

01:23:09.080 And it's not going to be you because you fly the plane.

01:23:10.920 Right.

01:23:11.200 Okay.

01:23:11.460 So I did end up one of the nights coming in that way with only two.

01:23:17.800 And I had the other guys go the other way.

01:23:19.300 And the idea was to have noise from different directions, which comes into the Latrell thing.

01:23:25.180 So we're all talking about, you know, he's on this building on a terraced field at the bottom of the mountain.

01:23:30.720 We're going to send the Blackhawks from the Air Force in there to get him.

01:23:34.240 And I threw a fit. 0.85

01:23:35.380 And I was like, no way are they coming in to do that?

01:23:39.420 Because I happen to know, you know, I can do math, you know, not very good, but I can do math.

01:23:44.780 And I know that the aircraft are too heavy.

01:23:47.040 They don't have the performance to get in there and get him out.

01:23:50.580 The Blackhawks.

01:23:51.200 The Blackhawks.

01:23:52.120 And they said, well, they stripped him down.

01:23:54.660 They took out the armor, the guns, the equipment, and they now technically, mathematically could fly in there, you know, totally undefended.

01:24:03.840 and they go

01:24:06.180 Al we're still missing somebody

01:24:07.440 we were missing one still

01:24:08.640 and we have to bring more people in

01:24:10.840 to the top 12,000 foot mountain 0.87

01:24:12.440 and you know the Blackhawk can't do that 1.00

01:24:14.520 so if you don't let them pick it up

01:24:17.900 if you do the pickup of Luttrell

01:24:19.560 you're not bringing another

01:24:21.420 30 guys to the top of the mountain

01:24:23.900 because the weather is bad

01:24:25.760 the weather is kind of coming in

01:24:27.360 waves, thunderstorms

01:24:28.940 and I said okay

01:24:31.260 they can't do that

01:24:31.960 so these are your choice Al

01:24:33.660 and this guy was smart he he appealed to my professionalism you know okay i'll buy off on

01:24:42.040 that but i'm planning the mission and i'm bleeding the whole thing you know they'll pick him up but

01:24:46.520 i'll lead the mission and the air force guy's like yeah okay so we came up with a very what i consider

01:24:53.620 one of my artistic pieces of work of deception uh brute strength speed you know and uh

01:25:03.340 everybody worked together it was a wonderful operation you know marcus puts in his book he's

01:25:07.180 like you know i walk out the door and the taliban positions are blowing up and yeah i plan that

01:25:12.840 and the air force delivered one of uh i love these interviews every year and we always do

01:25:19.280 we love military and we one year did um marcus and his identical twin all right together morgan

01:25:27.540 Yeah, Morgan. And it was unforgettable exchange. Those two are incredible together as they talk

01:25:34.300 about their experiences. But Marcus was telling us his piece of it. And then Morgan was telling

01:25:39.440 us what was happening down in Texas at their ranch. And they were getting, everyone's there

01:25:46.800 praying around the clock. And they didn't expect good news at all. And the moment when they got

01:25:55.560 the call that he was okay thanks to you and your guys on the other side of the world yeah just

01:26:01.300 everyone went crazy like the family the friends like the scene down there you know i i talk about

01:26:09.760 this all the time where i get asked what's the most rewarding missions that i do and does it

01:26:15.500 feel good to take out a bad guy yes but i like when i say like it's the most rewarding to do

01:26:21.540 CASAVAC, Casualty Evacuation or Personal Recovery,

01:26:25.780 like in this case, bring somebody back to their family

01:26:27.960 that didn't think they were gonna get them.

01:26:29.920 And what I write in the book there, I talk about,

01:26:34.340 this is the kind of stuff you don't necessarily see

01:26:35.920 in the movies with all the cool guy stuff, is, you know,

01:26:39.560 so I'm going in night after night,

01:26:40.940 what I consider the toughest flying I've ever done,

01:26:43.020 you know, evading the threat, evading the weather

01:26:44.740 all at the same time.

01:26:46.180 And we get back, we did a memorial service. 1.00

01:26:50.700 I walked off between two B-huts. 1.00

01:26:52.260 B-huts are like these plywood barracks that you stay in. 0.64

01:26:55.100 I was in the dark, and I just sort of slumped down and cried.

01:27:00.000 And I didn't want anybody to see me.

01:27:03.380 But so a couple of days later, I'm flying back to the States,

01:27:07.580 and they send a crew chief with me, one of the very junior guys.

01:27:10.340 He's like, I'll go with Mr. Mack.

01:27:11.380 So we stopped in the Netherlands on the way back.

01:27:15.980 And so I said, hey, let me buy you a beer.

01:27:17.380 So we're sitting there, and he goes, hey, sir, I've got to ask you.

01:27:19.220 how how come you weren't scared because when we went on that first mission he goes i was scared

01:27:24.960 shitless i was like i was too he's like but it didn't seem that way i was like well would it

01:27:31.240 have been any better he's like no the rest of it i'm sorry tear up a little bit it's it's emotional

01:27:36.800 why does that make you emotional what is it well i think

01:27:41.160 you know when i talk about doing the mission you know it's always very objective very sterile it's

01:27:49.980 like oh you do it you know the training but it's people right and that's why we have memorial day

01:27:54.480 is to um you know honor them yeah oh god bless you for saving so many no no i hear all that

01:28:03.320 no this is the this is but this is the side that uh you're a hero with a heart

01:28:07.900 this is the side that um you know once again guys like me are out doing the mission and now

01:28:16.680 they're doing it you know i'm done and there's guys rowing the boat without me you know and

01:28:22.100 that's the thing you never really want to leave you know you feel like i'm gonna miss the next 0.68

01:28:27.700 thing you know and like i ended up i was in the training company training new chinook pilots

01:28:31.940 when they got bin laden and got by the very guy the very flight lead that i always thought would

01:28:39.220 get him really yeah because we we would uh all through the years we kind of knew where he was

01:28:44.220 you know and i say that you know with understanding how intel works right you know we knew you know

01:28:50.220 if you put your hand on a map he's in that area but you can't actually yeah right unless you know

01:28:56.940 where he is, so as you rotate out,

01:29:00.440 your replacement comes in, you give him the intel,

01:29:02.180 and okay, we're thinking, you know,

01:29:03.640 here is where he is, you know?

01:29:06.400 And it's like, that guy's gonna get him.

01:29:09.540 And the guy that always followed me

01:29:11.560 turned out to be the guy that actually got him.

01:29:13.020 Oh, wow.

01:29:13.860 So were you jealous, or were you-

01:29:15.700 A little bit.

01:29:16.540 Yeah, a little bit.

01:29:17.380 You know, I mean, I don't know, yeah.

01:29:19.180 Yeah, of course, you wanted to be you.

01:29:20.380 Yeah, yeah, I wanted to be me.

01:29:21.220 I was just so glad they got him.

01:29:23.340 Yeah, but it would've been thrilling to have been there.

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01:32:51.540 hey everyone it's me megan kelly i've got some exciting news i now have my very own channel on

01:33:00.300 Sirius XM. It's called the Megan Kelly channel and it is where you will hear the truth unfiltered

01:33:05.140 with no agenda and no apologies. Along with the Megan Kelly show, you're going to hear from people

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01:33:22.640 So my team actually pulled the soundbite that I was just talking about.

01:33:32.020 Let's take a look.

01:33:33.520 Master Chief Gothro was out there, and he's the one that would answer the phone.

01:33:36.160 And by this time, there's anywhere, there's about 40 SEALs out there.

01:33:39.660 And we would all pile into my father's bedroom, which was little bitty.

01:33:43.620 And shoulder to shoulder, and Master Chief's on the phone.

01:33:46.100 He's like, yes, sir, roger that, understood.

01:33:48.160 Roger that, yes, sir.

01:33:49.080 And he drops his head.

01:33:50.320 and i mean we lost it right we was like oh my god you know the worst case scenario i'm sitting

01:33:57.100 there staring at him everybody was crying around i was in there staring at him and he he he gives

01:34:01.720 us a thumbs up anyhow my parents came walking in and then some of my best friends came walking in

01:34:08.000 they saw everybody else crying mom loses it dad losing they're like no no no they found him he's

01:34:12.380 rescued so um i mean i don't remember who it was walked out to the crowd and said they found him

01:34:18.920 And I mean, it sounded like the Super Bowl.

01:34:20.560 Like I could hear it from Afghanistan.

01:34:21.660 But the problem with that was all my friends and family were celebrating the fact that we found my brother.

01:34:28.340 But all the SEALs that were out there and there were some Marines and Army and everybody just started to come out and spend time with us.

01:34:35.580 We were still very stoic because we're down.

01:34:38.280 We're down men.

01:34:39.200 what a moment of like the greatest joy you can possibly feel but always as in with the military

01:34:49.060 worry always concern always care for others yeah and you know that's the thing you know the families

01:34:55.520 are back you know um there were nights where the weather was terrible and you couldn't fly

01:35:01.780 right and the ground force couldn't go out because there's no stack overhead you know the uh the

01:35:05.740 supporting you know the fighters the isr the drones all that stuff can't fly in this horrible

01:35:10.540 weather so what we're doing is we're all playing call of duty right all the computers are linked

01:35:16.620 together playing call of duty and or watching movies on the server and just kind of a downtime

01:35:21.800 like the notebook yep guys we're very we're very uh you know emotional sentimental sentimental is

01:35:27.740 the right word but um oftentimes somebody will say hey guys do you realize right now our families

01:35:35.440 think we are out getting a crap shot at us right now and they have no idea that it's not like that

01:35:43.320 all the time you always think that people overseas that they're uh yes you know it's terrible all the 0.53

01:35:47.140 time every second they're in harm's way you know oftentimes it's unpleasant you know the heat the

01:35:51.040 cold being away from your family especially on holidays and you know birthdays and christmas

01:35:55.920 and stuff like that i mean it's just like the constant worry and the constant adrenaline you

01:36:02.700 know that's what comes back to haunt so many of the guys upon return home you know like talked

01:36:08.140 about dakota myers struggle to reintegrate and how he almost ended it all he was gonna do it

01:36:16.640 and an angel from heaven took the bullets out of his gun he had the gun he was gonna do it

01:36:22.580 it's very hard for a lot of the guys and gals to reintegrate for all sorts of reasons yeah and one

01:36:30.460 of them is just with a constant like years of being worried about getting killed and that the

01:36:35.760 anxiety that that can create in you and then also there's a different type that like needs the

01:36:40.240 adrenaline hit and can't find it then you got guys like McPhee who are just stunk old he's like

01:36:45.920 you know the sheriff of Baghdad's like I'm good I was good there and I'm good here so where where

01:36:51.020 did you fall where would you well you know the interesting thing is in that 10 years of combat

01:36:55.620 deployment so i did 17 deployments by my count good gracious um the right at the very beginning

01:37:03.000 i decided i was going to die doing what i was doing yeah and so i just kept that mindset

01:37:09.140 the whole way through now that doesn't mean i wasn't scared but i was often convinced that i

01:37:15.000 just was not going to come home and so what i tried to do and my kids both served one's still

01:37:20.720 in the navy um is i tried to create experiences and memories when i was home so i tried to be

01:37:29.240 present when i could be and and the cool thing for me is well unfortunately you know linda died

01:37:36.760 you know she overdosed and the regiment was super with me you know the 160th they they were like

01:37:43.580 all right look what job do you want you can deploy or not you can now you've got two boys still at

01:37:49.780 Well, no, they're in the Army.

01:37:51.200 Oh, this is where they were already grown.

01:37:52.920 Yeah, so this was in 2012 when she passed.

01:37:57.240 So one was a crew chief in the 160th, a Chinook crew chief,

01:38:00.240 and the other one was an F-18 WIZO, a weapons systems officer.

01:38:03.800 WIZO, yes, I know the WIZO.

01:38:05.460 Yeah, he's basically a goose.

01:38:07.640 Yeah, right, right.

01:38:08.760 But so they came back.

01:38:10.940 So now I'm alone with my dog, Scooter, who probably saved my life,

01:38:15.320 the fact that I could just talk with this little guy.

01:38:18.040 But the regiment was great.

01:38:19.560 They were like, hey, what do you want to do?

01:38:21.860 And I really had two jobs that were interesting.

01:38:25.340 One was the chief of the aviation shoot-down assessment team,

01:38:29.920 which is kind of like the NTSB, but for the Army.

01:38:32.520 So if somebody gets shot down, they send a team,

01:38:35.120 they investigate the wreckage,

01:38:36.260 they try to figure out what shot them down.

01:38:38.320 That seems interesting for you.

01:38:40.160 You know, it was the next best thing.

01:38:42.440 But then I got offered to be the flight detachment commander at West Point.

01:38:48.000 So that's essentially a VIP mission.

01:38:50.680 You're flying the general around, you know, superintendent to, you know, college campuses.

01:38:54.900 The Pentagon's his big thing, you know.

01:38:56.980 And the skydiving team.

01:38:59.820 Oh, that's right.

01:39:00.440 Which turned out to be critical for me.

01:39:02.100 So what I find interesting for this with the people that have trouble, you know, reintegrating

01:39:09.720 is i considered west point assignment an off-ramp it was if i had just stopped being a flight lead

01:39:17.340 like just okay no more i don't know how well i would have done you know not well at all i don't

01:39:24.780 think yep but i went to west point as the commander i had enough responsibility to kind of keep me on

01:39:31.040 my toes but yet it wasn't the same kind of life or death decisions i was making and i met the

01:39:36.660 cadets the jump team my very first mission as a you know as the commander we got to west point

01:39:43.420 we land you do the season beginning safety brief and all these uh these two seniors come up to me

01:39:49.240 the first these and hey sir we've heard all about you um will you be our leadership mentor

01:39:55.520 i was like uh sure i had no idea what that entailed right and then he went yeah they run

01:40:01.800 off turns out you know my responsibilities were to essentially uh be a mentor to them

01:40:09.640 to what to expect when you get out because they were going to graduate you know what's it like

01:40:13.020 to deal with you know uh people you outrank like sergeants who have a lot more experience

01:40:18.140 we're going to be in aviation how do you deal with warrant officers who have all the experience

01:40:23.480 right and so we would and and they taught me how to skydive which is funny i got my b license with

01:40:28.720 these guys. You're a thrill seeker. You're like, you don't care. You don't have the same fear

01:40:33.660 factor as the rest of us. It was just amazing. But those guys, both of them ended up flying

01:40:36.960 Chinooks on the 160th, which is interesting. Wow. Oh yeah, your unit. You know, back on the

01:40:41.740 subject of when you said, I just decided I was going to die, you know, and accepted that, which

01:40:47.500 is sort of how you were able to do all the risky things. It reminded me of a conversation I had

01:40:52.440 with the skier Bodie Miller, he once told me that,

01:40:58.340 you know, because I asked him, like,

01:40:59.160 what made you so good?

01:41:00.880 Like, how are you so much better than everybody else?

01:41:03.160 And that's extremely risky, too.

01:41:05.120 I mean, extremely risky.

01:41:07.200 And he said, like, I just decided,

01:41:10.460 like, I was never going to fear falling.

01:41:12.720 And he said, to this day, when I know,

01:41:15.340 you know when you're falling,

01:41:17.880 I just relax my whole body and let it take me.

01:41:21.260 like he didn't fight it he didn't you know his he didn't tighten up yeah and that's why he you

01:41:28.920 know of course he did get hurt over the course of his career but less so he thought than otherwise

01:41:33.240 and it was what in that sort of acceptance right up front is what allowed him to take these big

01:41:38.320 risks in his field and it sounds like you and yours right and the guys that i served with were

01:41:43.140 all pretty much the same same thing you know when i do you ever get the nervous guy who's like this

01:41:49.120 is so dangerous like that the missile the flare what they wouldn't get well i take that back

01:41:55.680 so my wingman when we um the embassy story where i said we had the two man pads fired at us in 2001

01:42:02.980 you know what i didn't tell you was the the story of the kites right so we we take off

01:42:07.300 out of the um the the embassy yard uh missile comes at us we drop down and now i'm as low as

01:42:15.580 i can get dragging my wheels through the uh the tv antennas and all that kind of stuff you know

01:42:20.380 it wasn't satellite dishes back then and to my front are hundreds if not thousands of kites

01:42:26.500 the taliban had banned kite flying and these kids were flying kites what and the problem is they

01:42:34.840 don't uh they don't use kite string they use fishing line to make sure that because they 0.92

01:42:38.840 fight the kites you know it's the kite runner okay so now i'm dodging the damn kites and uh 0.91

01:42:45.560 my wife told me not to tell the story, 0.97

01:42:47.920 but I'm going to tell it.

01:42:48.580 Yeah.

01:42:48.980 So there's this one red kite off to the front

01:42:51.320 and it turns this way.

01:42:53.620 I go away, it goes over.

01:42:55.360 And if this thing wraps around the rotor system,

01:42:57.640 it could actually cut the rotor system off

01:42:59.360 with this filament.

01:43:00.560 Oh, we're not getting around here.

01:43:02.420 So I couldn't quite get away from him,

01:43:04.660 but it wrapped around the landing gear

01:43:06.120 and I'm dragging this kid like a mile.

01:43:09.160 We're holding on his,

01:43:09.720 he's not letting go of that kite.

01:43:10.740 He's getting a little joy rod off of your helicopter?

01:43:13.260 Well, he'd lasted about a hundred meters, I guess, but.

01:43:15.560 like lasted as in lived or no he was fine he's fine okay but um but so we get back to bagram

01:43:24.560 and now we still gotta go back and get the general and my copot not my copot the pilot

01:43:29.480 in command of the second aircraft is named uh willie he's from puerto rico now willie is known

01:43:35.120 for being very animated and the more animated he gets you know whether it's fun or anger or

01:43:41.600 whatever it is, it doesn't matter, any emotion, his accent thickens up a little bit.

01:43:45.160 Okay.

01:43:45.840 And so he's yelling at me, you know, Al, I can't believe this, you know.

01:43:52.080 Oh, my God, it just missed us, you know.

01:43:54.700 And I was like, Willie, we still got to go back.

01:43:58.800 And he's like, no way, no way.

01:44:00.900 And he's just, you know, he's-

01:44:02.340 Willie is the only sane one in this pairing.

01:44:05.260 I just want you to know that.

01:44:06.520 But so there's a movie, a book, really, Flight of the Intruder.

01:44:10.160 and the main characters fly into North Vietnam

01:44:13.880 in that conflict when they're not supposed to be there

01:44:17.320 and they go to drop bombs

01:44:20.180 except the bombs don't drop

01:44:21.980 because there was a problem with the airplane.

01:44:24.640 So they fly away and they get all this stuff shot at them.

01:44:28.340 They almost don't make it.

01:44:30.700 And the navigator, the bomber says,

01:44:33.360 oh, I got it fixed because let's go back around

01:44:36.700 and do it again.

01:44:38.760 And the guy goes, what? 1.00

01:44:40.160 are you nuts? 0.99

01:44:40.800 He goes, they'd never expect us twice. 0.99

01:44:42.860 So I tell that to Willie.

01:44:44.440 I'm like, Willie, they'll never expect us to come back.

01:44:46.400 They'll never expect us twice.

01:44:47.440 And he's like, oh, hell.

01:44:49.040 And he hadn't seen the movie.

01:44:50.400 I said, it's a movie, Willie.

01:44:52.520 We'll figure out something.

01:44:54.600 So there are some with the nerves.

01:44:56.440 Yeah.

01:44:56.940 But I say that that was that situation.

01:45:00.160 But he went with me on many, many very dangerous missions.

01:45:03.640 That's good.

01:45:04.060 So he had to overcome it.

01:45:05.140 And think about the crew chiefs, right?

01:45:06.360 So the pilots are up front.

01:45:08.580 both of us have access to the controls right so if something happens to me the co-pilot can do

01:45:13.420 something if something happens to the two of us the guys in the back are screwed oh my right they

01:45:20.140 have no say so i mean they can speak up but you know they're not in charge yeah they feel

01:45:26.100 powerless at least that would be nerve-wracking i mean then you're jumping out of airplanes just

01:45:31.600 to like find something that's close

01:45:33.880 to the adrenaline you had over in Afghanistan.

01:45:38.660 You, I mean, it doesn't sound like you and Linda

01:45:41.380 had a happy marriage.

01:45:43.320 No, it really was.

01:45:44.360 It was happy. 0.99

01:45:44.980 It was happy with moments of suck. 0.99

01:45:47.840 Okay. 0.98

01:45:48.540 You know, and.

01:45:49.460 When she died by suicide, were you in love?

01:45:53.340 Were you together?

01:45:54.300 Was she still? 0.99

01:45:55.020 No, I was pissed at her.

01:45:56.720 I just moved out of the house 1.00

01:45:57.800 because I caught her driving drunk. 1.00

01:45:59.840 she had three drunk driving stops and she hadn't only been punished for one of them and she was 0.99

01:46:07.300 out still driving and i came home at lunch and saw her at a stoplight you know lights out her eyes

01:46:12.980 there was nothing behind that and so we got in a big fight and she called my unit commander and

01:46:19.140 said you know maybe alan shouldn't come home tonight and then he tells me that and so instead

01:46:24.560 Well I did come home

01:46:27.320 With a escort if you will

01:46:30.480 Packed up all my stuff

01:46:31.620 Grabbed the dog

01:46:32.320 And left 1.00

01:46:32.900 She was passed out 1.00

01:46:33.580 On the floor the whole time 1.00

01:46:35.460 And then she lasted

01:46:36.620 About another week 0.79

01:46:37.360 Two weeks

01:46:38.040 Before she

01:46:39.680 Just drank herself to death

01:46:41.620 You weren't surprised?

01:46:44.880 No

01:46:45.100 No

01:46:46.440 Is there

01:46:47.020 I tried to get help for her

01:46:48.540 From the insurance

01:46:51.000 That they use

01:46:51.460 In the military

01:46:51.840 Is TRICARE

01:46:52.420 And she had used up 0.88

01:46:53.760 all her benefits you know she went to rehab a couple of times and that'll do it i went in and 0.99

01:46:58.940 said hey she's got she's got to have rehab or she is not going to live another month 1.00

01:47:03.740 and the ladies were very nice but they're like we can't can't force her and uh yeah she didn't

01:47:10.580 didn't last so when she died were you resentful like what what is the feeling then given all that

01:47:17.400 preceded it well that was 2012 uh and i'm happily remarried to a wonderful woman patty

01:47:23.000 uh today today i've got a great life and i'm still angry at her you know i try not to be i

01:47:31.000 try to come to peace with it but you know just when i think okay i kind of come to terms with

01:47:35.660 it i'm still mad that she couldn't get better really i mean like don't you see that it was

01:47:41.740 clearly out of her control yeah you still feel the anger yeah for your boys yeah i mean i have uh

01:47:49.340 i have five grandkids she only got to see one of them you know and uh you know it's amazing

01:47:56.800 did you watch her become an alcoholic yeah i've i've watched somebody i love become an alcoholic

01:48:03.080 not a family member but it's it's terrible it's like the slow moving car crash that you can't stop

01:48:10.440 no matter how hard you try

01:48:13.500 no matter how badly you want it to stop

01:48:15.060 you can't stop it

01:48:16.620 and even if you have endless

01:48:19.360 conversations with the person it seems like

01:48:21.200 they can't stop it either

01:48:22.320 you know what movie best describes the situation

01:48:25.140 I had and I just saw it

01:48:27.100 a couple months ago was

01:48:28.460 Hillbilly Elegy

01:48:29.960 of course our vice president

01:48:32.340 the whole time he's trying to help her 0.89

01:48:34.920 she's promising

01:48:35.680 this time I'm going to do it

01:48:38.560 you know, and you, Beverly, yeah, you keep trying and eventually doesn't work out. 0.98

01:48:44.620 No, I know it's fool's gold. And the promises, you know, too many times of I'll get help. I'll 0.67

01:48:49.180 go to rehab. Cause you want it to work. Of course, but it's fool's gold. I mean,

01:48:53.400 for some, for some, some actually are able to turn their lives around. Thank God. But

01:48:57.280 when you're on the losing end of it, as you were here, it's, I can understand it. I hope for your

01:49:03.120 own sake, you can get to the place where you let that go. So that's not haunting you any longer

01:49:06.940 than it needs to be.

01:49:08.520 So now you're living your life.

01:49:11.700 You're at West Point.

01:49:12.880 You're jumping out of airplanes.

01:49:14.420 And we then leave Afghanistan under President Biden.

01:49:20.540 And it's official.

01:49:21.840 We've now lost that war

01:49:23.560 and given up all of our positions there.

01:49:27.480 We've betrayed the translators who helped us in the war. 1.00

01:49:31.360 We've betrayed the Afghans who we made promises to 1.00

01:49:34.340 that we didn't live up to. 1.00

01:49:35.380 This is not we, the soldiers, but we are our leaders.

01:49:40.880 Thanks to him, we have a humiliation,

01:49:42.700 a humiliating departure with the people grabbing onto the airplanes trying to come.

01:49:48.240 We lose 13 service personnel in the attack that happened.

01:49:52.340 And so where does that leave us?

01:49:55.780 Where does that leave you?

01:49:56.960 I've talked to so many Afghanistan vets who have strong feelings about it.

01:49:59.960 You know, it's a complex set of feelings.

01:50:03.280 I mean, first of all, when they gave up Bagram Air Base before the whole thing even happened,

01:50:09.540 you know, a couple of weeks before, all I could think of is why would you give up the

01:50:12.820 one piece of terrain?

01:50:13.780 We took that first for a reason.

01:50:16.760 And you could do what's called a NEO, noncombatant evacuation order, out of Bagram, screw any

01:50:22.260 timelines that they agreed to.

01:50:24.100 You know, the Taliban is not coordinating.

01:50:26.320 You're going to, hey, we're going to get our people out.

01:50:28.580 We're leaving.

01:50:29.180 You can watch.

01:50:30.060 But we're leaving from Bagram.

01:50:31.780 It's got two runways.

01:50:33.380 The whole valley is basically secure.

01:50:36.020 And instead, they didn't give the mission to the military who plans and executes NEOs.

01:50:40.740 They gave it to the State Department.

01:50:42.560 And the problem with the State Department, as I understand it, is they viewed H-Kaya as essentially an embassy.

01:50:48.320 What's inside the fence is like embassy.

01:50:51.200 H-Kaya?

01:50:52.560 Kabul Airport.

01:50:53.700 That's the identifier for it.

01:50:55.080 and you can't have multiple rings of of you know defensive positions like you could at bagram

01:51:03.420 because they selected bad terrain you know i mean that's a story as old as warfare itself

01:51:09.220 and they tried to stick to a timeline that was untenable and in doing so you know when the soviet

01:51:16.980 union left afghanistan they left all of the forward operating bases fully stocked ready to go with

01:51:24.720 people they considered capable of doing it i want to say within a week they were all ransacked and 1.00

01:51:31.160 empty which is what happened once we left because the afghans were only doing as good as they did 1.00

01:51:38.180 because they were working with us you know we gave them intelligence we gave them air assets we give

01:51:43.000 them isr platforms to see things and they you know to whatever degree you can agree is their success 0.93

01:51:49.260 we took that all away and now they're just like taliban and they're gonna just melt right back 0.57

01:51:55.740 in it has that feel now i mean you lost it sucks you lost guys you you cared about i think you know

01:52:01.240 i want to say i lost 21 friends in the course of that time two of them really good friends

01:52:07.180 and i feel like it's a waste for sure we didn't get out of that what we thought we were gonna

01:52:15.740 and had we left you know the hindsight part you know we were supposed to be gone

01:52:20.240 november december 2001 right and then we would do what what they call the over the horizon fight

01:52:25.760 we'll just come back when we need to you know we've proven we can do it we're having this same

01:52:30.320 talk right now yeah around around same same thing i've heard that same thing like we'll go back if

01:52:36.420 we need to yeah but you know once you get your foot in the door you know it's uh it's much easier

01:52:43.340 to do something once you've achieved the success of taking terrain and you know establishing a

01:52:50.380 foothold if you will you know life is so much easier i mean you have to you know resupply and

01:52:55.980 all that kind of stuff but you know if you turned bagram into you know ramstein germany

01:53:01.680 you know and just kept it and just support them but without doing all the big combat operations

01:53:07.080 but just supporting the afghan military yeah you probably could have i don't know if they could

01:53:12.220 Well, it would have been better than where we are now.

01:53:14.140 Oh, it certainly would have been better than that.

01:53:15.260 Do you look back thinking that was a waste?

01:53:17.540 I still am not there.

01:53:19.240 I know we were lied to about the government, about how the war was going, and that there

01:53:22.820 were inept leadership decisions.

01:53:24.920 But as a civilian who was back here the whole time, I feel like you guys kept us safe.

01:53:29.560 You did keep the enemy focused in a faraway, remote region of the world and not on the

01:53:35.040 homeland.

01:53:36.820 People would ask me, in the military, you can retire at 20 years.

01:53:40.840 and when the GWAT kicked off I was at like 21 years so I could have just retired and a lot of

01:53:46.920 my peers did when their families were you know their wife had had enough they retired and they

01:53:53.300 would say Al why are you still doing it and I'm like so my sons don't have to right let's keep

01:53:58.340 the fight going I felt like I was making a difference the whole time you know and maybe I

01:54:04.220 did maybe I didn't but I felt like I was and unfortunately for me my sons decided to follow

01:54:09.520 in my footsteps anyway they both have deployed to combat uh numerous times i'd love them thank god

01:54:16.320 and they're fine yeah yeah thank goodness good well you set an amazing example for them for your

01:54:22.300 troops for the guys you mentored at west point for me for this audience i'm so so grateful to you and

01:54:28.760 to your family and i'm thrilled that you did find love again you're not you're not back here

01:54:33.860 succeeding as a civilian-ish alone like you have oh no i got a great partner in life and this was

01:54:40.880 awesome is she but she was wrong about that story it was okay to tell that story about the kid with

01:54:44.740 the balloon yeah she hears it all you know there's certain stories i do speak on occasion for some

01:54:49.960 fundraisers uh at the night stalker foundation yeah helps with the families does she know about

01:54:55.660 the super secret mission that you're not allowed to tell us no she doesn't she knows there are

01:55:00.080 missions but it's funny you know gosh we'll go years where she doesn't hear a story you know

01:55:06.080 she's never heard a story and and we'll be at a night stalker reunion or something and we get

01:55:10.600 talking hey remember that time this oh yeah and she'll hit me in the arm and go you never told

01:55:14.940 me that oh come on well you never asked you know i mean it just didn't come up in casual conversation

01:55:19.420 will she have learned anything new from this interview okay what's her name uh patty patty

01:55:25.500 Well, please send her our love.

01:55:27.360 She sounds like a great person.

01:55:28.560 I'm thrilled that she's in your life.

01:55:30.360 You need that.

01:55:31.520 Is the dog still around?

01:55:33.040 No.

01:55:33.580 Sadly, he passed this year.

01:55:35.160 He was 18.

01:55:35.760 What kind of dog was it?

01:55:36.620 It was a Jack Russell Terrier Beagle Mix.

01:55:39.280 They call him Jacoby's.

01:55:40.460 Very high energy.

01:55:41.340 Oh, now would be a great time to get one from Ridgeland.

01:55:44.500 Right?

01:55:44.900 With a dog?

01:55:45.420 Yeah, to rescue a Ridgeland Beagle, since you're inclined anyway.

01:55:48.580 Just throwing it out there.

01:55:49.980 Alan, thank you.

01:55:50.680 Thanks for everything.

01:55:51.680 It's an honor to meet you and to know you.

01:55:53.900 Thank you.

01:55:54.380 We really appreciate it.

01:55:56.020 All the best to you.

01:55:57.140 Wow.

01:55:57.780 Alan Mack, everybody.

01:55:58.960 The name of his book, the last one, is Razor 03, A Night Stalker's Wars.

01:56:04.540 And the new book is called, again?

01:56:06.300 Chinooks in the Dark.

01:56:07.280 That comes out at the end of the summer.

01:56:09.460 They can preorder on Amazon right now.

01:56:10.880 Oh, good.

01:56:11.220 Please do it.

01:56:12.080 Chinooks in the Dark by Alan C. Mack.

01:56:14.240 You've got to do it.

01:56:14.780 Let's support Alan.

01:56:15.440 My God, it's the least we can do.

01:56:16.640 Please, I think everybody's feeling that right now.

01:56:18.840 God bless you.

01:56:21.140 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:56:23.040 no BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:56:31.220 At MedCan, we know that life's greatest moments

01:56:33.960 are built on a foundation of good health

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The Megyn Kelly Show - May 25, 2026

Secrets of the Night Stalkers, and Rescuing Marcus Luttrell, with Army Master Aviator Alan C. Mack ｜ Ep. 1324

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