Latest / So There I Was / We’re Here - You’re There - Just Clear us Hot! Episode 141

Transcript

We’re Here - You’re There - Just Clear us Hot! Episode 141 · So There I Was

• 0:00
  Music.
• 0:12
  On the tanker, through the weather.
• 0:16
  Oh, and to the tanker crew who did that. Thanks a lot. We really appreciated that.
• 0:18
  Music.
• 0:24
  I'm just kidding. No matter.
• 0:34
  Well, there I was, crossing the pond, and you could see that I wasn't exactly
• 0:39
  fine. It was September 11th, 2001.
• 0:44
  So there I was, deep underground at the White House,
• 0:47
  standing shoulder to shoulder with Vice President Cheney inside the President's
• 0:52
  Emergency Operations Center during the attack in America when he ordered two
• 0:57
  F-15s at Otis Air National Guard Base and told them to get airborne.
• 1:03
  And as soon as they were airborne, they were weapons free to engage and to shoot that airliner down.
• 1:10
  Whoa whoa,
• 1:14
  speechless already absolutely speechless already
• 1:17
  oh my god that's how all terrifying aviation
• 1:21
  tales begin greetings everybody happy 2025 repeat here coming to you from new
• 1:27
  hampshire tonight and my co-host fig where art thou hey i'm home for one more
• 1:32
  day corny missouri and it is It's our pleasure to welcome Shyster and that, my friend,
• 1:40
  has my palm sweating already.
• 1:43
  Strap in, ladies and gentlemen.
• 1:48
  Right? Oh, my God. Well, I'll tell you what, I'm tempted to go right into that,
• 1:52
  but no, we don't do that here. We don't do that here.
• 1:56
  When's the first time you looked up in the sky and saw an airplane and went, oh, I want to do that?
• 2:02
  You know, it's funny that you say that, repeat, because I went to college.
• 2:05
  I wanted to be a stockbroker.
• 2:07
  I wanted to be so rich I didn't have to talk to the same two people twice.
• 2:11
  And, you know, my mediocre grades and my economics courses. Hold on.
• 2:15
  Does that include wives and girlfriends, too? Just asking for a friend.
• 2:21
  Believe it or not, October 23rd, 1983, everybody's running around campus talking
• 2:27
  about this huge bomb that went off in Lebanon, Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
• 2:33
  And the upperclassmen were now on the hockey team. I played hockey.
• 2:37
  I was a Division III hockey player. They were talking about joining the Marine
• 2:41
  Corps to go and fight Hezbollah.
• 2:43
  And I'm like, where's Hezbollah? What's Hezbollah?
• 2:45
  And where's Lebanon? And what the hell is going on?
• 2:49
  And all of a sudden, I got invited down to meet this captain,
• 2:53
  this recruiter, this oso. So and he pretty much had told me to go away and said,
• 2:58
  hey, listen, the Air Force is down the hall. We make leaders here.
• 3:02
  You know, you're a freshman. You're not serious. You're just,
• 3:04
  you know, you're probing.
• 3:06
  Once you go back, when you find out what you want to be, when you grow up and
• 3:09
  I'll be here waiting for you.
• 3:11
  That reverse psychology just shook me to the core, literally.
• 3:14
  And I went back and I wanted nothing more than to become a Marine Corps aviator.
• 3:20
  Outstanding. Wow, man. Yeah, the Air Force is down the hall. I don't think so.
• 3:27
  A little against the Hoover, you know, that page went right there.
• 3:30
  But they were telling me the Air Force was down the hall. How about that? Nice.
• 3:36
  Did you say no? I want to join the military?
• 3:39
  Yeah, exactly. Obviously, that worked for you. When did you go to OCS?
• 3:44
  So my junior had to, you know, get myself scored away. Between my junior and
• 3:49
  senior year, I did a 10-week PLC program, Platoon leaders class.
• 3:53
  Went back to college, got all my credits, and off into the way I went.
• 3:58
  Was that the summer of 1986 by chance?
• 4:02
  Yes, it was. Were you in Charlie Company?
• 4:05
  I was Bravo Company, 3rd Platoon.
• 4:08
  You know, we were there at the exact same time. Wow.
• 4:12
  I was living on the other side of the railroad track. Unbelievable.
• 4:17
  How about that? The world just got a little closer. Because I knew when you
• 4:20
  said you were a freshman in 1983, I'm like, well, okay, I was a freshman in
• 4:24
  1983. Yeah. There you go.
• 4:26
  And you've always lived on the other side of the tracks, Figgs.
• 4:29
  And I've always been on the other side. Yeah. And not the good side. No.
• 4:36
  Wow. Okay. So what TBS class were you? I was Fox 87.
• 4:43
  Son of a bitch. I was Echo 87. You had Sinbad in your company.
• 4:49
  We had Sinbad. We had a lot of Naval Academy grads. They put up with the Naval Academy. That's right.
• 4:56
  Nice. Wow. How about that? The world just got really small. Okay. Yeah. Sweet.
• 5:02
  So you did the air contract thing to go in?
• 5:05
  You know, I didn't know whether I wanted to go Jets or Helos.
• 5:08
  I was under an air contract.
• 5:10
  Okay. And literally at TBS, we're doing our nine-line briefs,
• 5:14
  and I'm all nervous now, and it's my turn on the Fox mic, and I'm calling in
• 5:19
  a section of Cobras to try to hit a target over at the Quantico somewhere.
• 5:24
  And this Marine captain goes, hey, Lieutenant, stop talking.
• 5:28
  Where are you? And I said, I'm an Alpha Bravo one-on-one. He goes,
• 5:31
  I'll be right there. And I shut up, and this Cobra landed right in the weeds.
• 5:36
  His co-pilot jumped out and said, we're here. You're there.
• 5:40
  Just clear us hot when we give you a call, and we're going to have no problems.
• 5:44
  And I went, I want to be you. I want to be you.
• 5:48
  We're here. She's pointing on the map, right? We're here. You're there.
• 5:52
  Just clear us hot, okay? Just clear us hot when we give you a call. We'll give you a phone.
• 5:55
  That is money. I want to be that guy.
• 6:00
  I could be wrong, Fig. I think we just got a show title. We're here.
• 6:04
  You're there. Just clear us hot.
• 6:07
  Yeah. yeah yeah that's outstanding oh very cool yeah you know.
• 6:14
  The one thing I regret, and of course, it's much easier now than it was then
• 6:19
  because we didn't all carry the Instamatic cameras around with phones. It's obviously easier.
• 6:24
  But so many pictures with some of the cool equipment we got to be around and things we got to do.
• 6:31
  Yeah. Those pictures, I got those snapshots in my head, but nowhere else.
• 6:35
  Yeah, same. That's pretty awesome.
• 6:39
  Okay, so you knew what you wanted. That makes it pretty easy.
• 6:42
  I knew what I wanted off to flight school, and now I'm competing to try to become a Cobra pilot.
• 6:48
  And they're like, hey, settle down, big shifter.
• 6:50
  You've got to get through flight school first.
• 6:53
  You're going to select jets, props, or helos, and then you're going to go recompete for that helo slot.
• 6:58
  That's a year and a half, two years down the road. So, roger that.
• 7:02
  So, I'm going to repeat this. AI in Pensacola, off to Corpus Christi,
• 7:07
  became a BT-27 boomer, a BT-27.
• 7:10
  And then from there, I went back to Pensacola to fly helos and then selected cobras.
• 7:17
  They had one cobra east coast, one cobra west coast.
• 7:23
  And the guy who was number one ended up going Hueys for some strange reason.
• 7:31
  And then I was number two, so I picked the east coast guy, the slot.
• 7:35
  And a friend of mine got the west coast slot, and life couldn't have been better for anybody.
• 7:44
  Very nice very nice i'm surprised
• 7:47
  that you didn't pick west coast and go east
• 7:50
  and you pick east coast to go west you know because the needs
• 7:54
  of the marine corps yeah i mean white yeah and it comes down to it was a girl
• 7:58
  it was a girl on the east coast i didn't want to go all the way out there to
• 8:02
  the west yeah there you go since yeah we've all done sillier things yeah good
• 8:09
  thing it paid off. She's behind me. You see the picture behind me.
• 8:12
  So, uh, married 33 years. Congratulations.
• 8:16
  We got through the whole deployment thing and, and, uh, got married 91.
• 8:21
  That's outstanding. Perfect. Very cool.
• 8:25
  Well, that's, it takes a special breed to, to, to do all the,
• 8:30
  what they call it in the civil war,
• 8:32
  do the camp following that's required to be a military
• 8:35
  spouse that is a special breed of person that manages
• 8:38
  to do that i i don't know how they do but i digress so you wound up going cobras
• 8:45
  east did you where was the rag for cobras i don't remember it was camp pendleton
• 8:51
  303 okay all right everybody had to go out there and then you came back to the east okay.
• 8:58
  And did you deploy right away or what was your time in the gun squadron like?
• 9:03
  So I got there in March of 1989, March 89, I guess. Yeah.
• 9:11
  And, you know, as soon as Desert Shield kicked off, we were pretty much, we deployed right away.
• 9:16
  11 days after he invaded Kuwait, we were sitting in Dara on Saudi Arabia for Desert Shield.
• 9:23
  Literally reading the attack manual, trying to figure out how to fly Cobras.
• 9:27
  I mean, we were out there.
• 9:29
  How do you start this thing? Yeah, exactly.
• 9:34
  Wow. Well, while you were doing that, we were watching everything on TV.
• 9:41
  We were trying to figure out how to tune in CNN at the human base ops.
• 9:45
  We were in the only Harrier squad on the East Coast that didn't know why.
• 9:49
  You know, we were in Dharan for a good six, seven months, August to like February.
• 9:56
  And thinking okay we're going to go north and then all of a sudden,
• 10:00
  They packed us up and said, go out and be part of 5th MEB.
• 10:04
  You're going to be part of an amphibious landing on Falaka Island and everything
• 10:08
  else. So we went running out to 5th MEB.
• 10:11
  And next thing you know, they attacked from the west all the tanks and cobras.
• 10:14
  And the west coast guys got all the medals.
• 10:16
  And we're sitting there, you know, eating TV dinners on board the Shreveport, the Wasp.
• 10:21
  Not the Wasp at the time, the Nassau, whatever else was out there.
• 10:25
  And then finally we got our chance to get in there and take.
• 10:28
  I tell everybody when I got in, I shot, you know, 35 millimeter all over the place.
• 10:33
  And they're like, I thought the Cobra had a 20 millimeter cannon.
• 10:35
  I go, yeah, it does. I shot 35 millimeter all over the place,
• 10:39
  you know, taking pictures. Taking pictures.
• 10:43
  Very nice. Yeah. So we've had a couple of the bumblebees on VMA 331.
• 10:47
  Those guys were on the NASA too out there.
• 10:50
  But let's back up a little bit. A couple of terms you've covered. What is a MEB, please?
• 10:56
  The marine expeditionary forces of
• 10:59
  math right and then we had the brigade was
• 11:02
  it the brigade the med and then we were down with the
• 11:04
  new the marine expeditionary unit right yeah now it used to be a mao and now
• 11:09
  it's a mu yeah yeah it was the in the magtaf the marine air ground task force
• 11:15
  yeah yeah anyway so yeah all right and then it occurs to me we haven't told
• 11:20
  people what on earth a Cobra is.
• 11:23
  So if you would describe that, because Sticks put up that we're up to the Zulu
• 11:27
  variant now, which is a cool bird.
• 11:30
  You know, when I started in, you'll appreciate this, the J model,
• 11:33
  which is pretty much a Vietnam.
• 11:35
  Holdover, and we moved to the T's right away in the training command,
• 11:40
  and then all of a sudden we got the W's as we were going out to Desert Shield out there.
• 11:45
  That's why we're reading the TAC manuals. And now we're all the way up to the Zulus.
• 11:49
  Two pilots, all the bullets you can carry 4,000 shaft horsepower of just romping,
• 11:54
  stomping, death and destruction. It's just the greatest platform known to man.
• 12:00
  Zuni rockets, sidewinders, cannon. That thing just looks mean.
• 12:05
  It looks pissed off if you're on the business end of it, no doubt about it.
• 12:08
  So the front seat is the gunner?
• 12:11
  Yeah, that's where we put the gunner in the front seat. We pretty much give
• 12:14
  him the tow missile responsibility, the wire-guided.
• 12:18
  The tows, that's right. And then the pilot in the back will shoot rockets,
• 12:22
  and he may shoot the gun in a fixed position where the pilot in the front can
• 12:26
  use the TSU, the telescopic sighting unit,
• 12:29
  and aim that 20-millimeter cannon at anti-armor,
• 12:34
  anti-personnel, whatever you want.
• 12:37
  And that's the gun that is somehow slaved to the helmet, if I recall?
• 12:42
  It is. There's a reticle that will snap down over your right eye.
• 12:46
  And you'll love this repeat. And you can see what you're shooting at, and it's boar-sided.
• 12:51
  But that thing rattles the helicopter so much, you don't hit a thing with it.
• 12:56
  But a building is going on what you're trying to kill type thing.
• 13:00
  It just wipes out the whole area. And your fillings are coming out.
• 13:04
  Your helmet's coming off. It's just brutal. So it's adding vibration to something
• 13:08
  that's already vibrating the shit out of it. You'd think it would smooth it out.
• 13:13
  Who's actually flying the helicopter, the front seater or the back seater?
• 13:18
  You have to go in either seat. We got flight controls in both seats.
• 13:22
  The primary pilot's in the back. Okay. And the front seat gunner is primary weapon.
• 13:28
  So do you, Rochambeau, for who gets to run the gun? I mean, how's that?
• 13:34
  Yeah you know and they do it's up
• 13:37
  to the pilot command to say what seat he wants
• 13:40
  you're you're if you're carrying tow missiles it's funny how
• 13:42
  they all want to be in the front but you know if you're doing a
• 13:45
  nav route at nighttime on goggles you know they all want to
• 13:48
  be in the back so you get a rush first type thing so they
• 13:51
  make the choice of what seat they want based on the
• 13:54
  mission you're going to go flying i see fair enough
• 13:58
  okay yeah like dizzy says just put the thing
• 14:00
  on the thing exactly right radical put
• 14:04
  the thing on the thing pull the trigger it'll work yeah but
• 14:07
  you didn't have to hit them to kill them you just scared them
• 14:10
  to death with that thing starts firing shit yeah they were smart enough to give
• 14:14
  us you know area area you know detonation type weapons where you didn't have
• 14:19
  to hit anything you just got to get close and let the strap so the j model was
• 14:24
  that a two-bladed main rotor yeah the same same two-bladed main rotor,
• 14:29
  but it had none of the fancy avionics or weapon systems stuff in there.
• 14:33
  There was a, there was a 20 millimeter cannon on it, but the TSU didn't have
• 14:38
  the power. The engines didn't have the power.
• 14:41
  It's nothing like the Cobra of today.
• 14:44
  I can only imagine. So, so did you, after the first gun squadron tour and the war, did you, so how,
• 14:57
  I mean, how did you get into this job that you were in on the day that you opened
• 15:03
  this store? I mean, what was your career?
• 15:06
  Yeah, it takes down your career path there.
• 15:09
  So interesting that we jumped right there. But I came home from Desert Shield, Desert Storm, right?
• 15:15
  I deployed again, this time on a regular MUSE schedule with HMM 263.
• 15:21
  What was that turnaround time?
• 15:23
  Probably a year. Oh, wow. That's pretty quick. and turned it right around.
• 15:27
  Yeah. And it was good. You were in the mode.
• 15:29
  You know, you just wanted to, you just wanted to keep going.
• 15:31
  It was, it was a good cycle.
• 15:33
  And then now we ended up in, and I think you'll appreciate this story because
• 15:36
  how things come down to feet and seconds in our life and our business.
• 15:42
  We deployed again and we went to Somalia after going to the Persian Gulf on
• 15:45
  the way back, we went to Somalia because General Adid, the warlord was becoming
• 15:52
  an enemy of the United nations.
• 15:54
  We were delivering food and trying to help the people of Somalia who were starving.
• 15:59
  And so we went out there and we were escorting food, big convoys of food into the villages.
• 16:05
  And all of a sudden the mission came down that General Adid needs to be arrested.
• 16:10
  And the CIA was on the ground. We had all the hockey helmet special ops guys on board the ship,
• 16:16
  hueys and cobras ready to go 46 is
• 16:20
  carrying special ops and we took off and
• 16:23
  the the intel was general adid travels
• 16:26
  in three white land cruisers he's
• 16:29
  in the middle land cruiser so right away time on
• 16:32
  target don't hit him too soon don't let him don't hit him too late we need to
• 16:36
  let him get out of mogadishu proper because too many people too crowded well
• 16:41
  marines ran in there and we hit the first vehicle and the third vehicle we got
• 16:45
  fires going explosions and now a thousand somalis are running down the road.
• 16:52
  Next thing you know, Adid gets out of his car. We can see him sprinting back towards the masses.
• 16:58
  Hockey helmet guys get off. Everybody's trying to get them.
• 17:01
  The Cobras were hovering over the high-speed avenue approaches,
• 17:04
  ready to take out anybody that tries to help them.
• 17:08
  Lo and behold, all the helicopters are being hit with rocks and bottles.
• 17:12
  They're all on the ground. They're all taking real damage.
• 17:16
  And we ended up hurting 14 Somalis. These special ops guys obviously ran over
• 17:21
  them. We aborted the mission, got the Somalis on board. We're flying back to,
• 17:26
  at that time, we were on the Wasp now.
• 17:29
  And we have broken windscreens and things like this. And 14 Somalis injured.
• 17:35
  But because of 30 seconds too soon, because we didn't wait those 30 seconds more,
• 17:42
  we turned the mission back over to the Army, and they had Black Hawk down in
• 17:47
  October because General Adid and his forces were waiting for him.
• 17:54
  So it comes down to a sliver of time and space between success and failure.
• 17:59
  Inches and seconds and snapshots and sound bites and the world goes by. Damn.
• 18:07
  Well, then I came home. They made me a Cobra flight instructor.
• 18:10
  I went to Pendleton. I flew next generation pilots, taught them how to fly the Cobra.
• 18:15
  Got selected for recruiting duty in New York City to go on back home where I
• 18:19
  was from, where I grew up in Newburgh and I went to Iona.
• 18:22
  And my job then was flying college kids around. So I had a government purchase
• 18:28
  card and I can rent Robinson helicopters and jet rangers and give college kids
• 18:32
  rides to try to convince them to become marine aviators.
• 18:36
  Greatest job in the whole world. And I put a package in for HMX. That's fantastic.
• 18:42
  I was selected to fly to Quantico at Marine Helicopter Squadron 1 in support of President Clinton.
• 18:50
  And literally, I did that for two and a half years. Very cool.
• 18:54
  So I didn't realize, I'm sorry, we got a bit of a lag there,
• 18:59
  but I didn't realize that you, so any helicopter, marine helicopter pilot can
• 19:04
  apply to HMX-1? And that was a change.
• 19:07
  At some point, it was a cargo helicopter mission. If you were flying 53s or
• 19:12
  46s, you could apply for HMX.
• 19:16
  And somebody said, no, we'll take probably a personnel shortage.
• 19:19
  You know, everything ebbs and flows. And they opened it up to all of us.
• 19:23
  And I put a package in to go and fly with HMX.
• 19:27
  I'm going to run a name by you. Okay.
• 19:32
  Steve Belser. Oh yeah. Great American. So, you know, we were roommates in college.
• 19:38
  Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
• 19:39
  We grew up together. His dad was my dentist. Oh my God.
• 19:44
  I'm sure you didn't get a breath of fresh air living with him.
• 19:49
  He's okay i i have
• 19:52
  to i have to tell you a story that i know you
• 19:55
  will appreciate so he gives me a call he calls
• 19:59
  me out of blue i haven't talked to this dude since we since
• 20:02
  and by the way i graduated a year before him because
• 20:05
  he had to stay back because he got in the plc program and
• 20:09
  and needed to delay a little bit so anyway he
• 20:13
  calls me and says hey listen i applied to hmx one
• 20:16
  i put you down as a reference so somebody may
• 20:19
  be calling you or whatever and i'm like okay cool so flash forward about six
• 20:23
  months i totally forgot this conversation happened i got i'm in kingsville texas
• 20:28
  as an instructor i'm in between flights i i just finished debriefing and i'm
• 20:33
  getting ready to go rebrief and fly again and there's this dude in a suit standing
• 20:37
  in the middle of the passageway and,
• 20:40
  Are you, you know, are you Fig Newton? And I'm looking around and I looked down at my name tags.
• 20:49
  Crap, I forgot the alias name tag today. Is there someplace we can talk?
• 20:54
  I'm like, my mind's racing. I'm like, sure.
• 20:57
  So I take him out of my briefing room the whole time. Oh yeah,
• 20:59
  I'm thinking, what have I done in the last week or two?
• 21:02
  So as soon as he starts talking, I know what this is about. Because he says,
• 21:06
  so how long have you known Steve Belzer? Ah, so he's really straight.
• 21:10
  He's got his notepad out. He's asking me all this stuff. And I said,
• 21:14
  listen, I think I know where you're going with this. And I think I can save us both a lot of time.
• 21:19
  After he got over his cocaine and gambling habit in college,
• 21:22
  he was a straight shooter.
• 21:24
  This dude looks up at me, doesn't even crack a smile and then goes right back
• 21:28
  to writing and says, okay, so when was this that, you know, and I'm like, God.
• 21:32
  So I, I call Bell, sir, after this event that evening and I told him that story
• 21:38
  and he shit a brick. What?
• 21:42
  And he goes, dude, he knew I was kidding. And he goes, no, he probably didn't know I was kidding.
• 21:47
  You son of a bitch. He called me like five years. Anyway, you know,
• 21:51
  obviously he got the job.
• 21:52
  Yeah, and you know, seriously, he's a great officer, great pilot.
• 21:56
  Everybody enjoyed him in the squadron. He did real well there.
• 21:59
  You know, so good for you.
• 22:02
  That's fantastic. Okay, sorry to interrupt. So you got the job at HMX One.
• 22:07
  Yeah, so now from HMX, we had one position,
• 22:11
  Inside the White House military office, airlift operations. And this position is logistics.
• 22:17
  Everywhere the president goes, he only rides on our helicopters.
• 22:20
  He's driven in our limousines, speaks on our phones.
• 22:23
  So all that gear has got to be moved in advance of Air Force One.
• 22:27
  And that doesn't happen by magic. There's a big airlift operations department
• 22:32
  inside the White House. So I went up there to represent the squadron.
• 22:35
  And just as the Bush administration was coming in. So this is October of 2000 timeframe.
• 22:41
  I thought I was going to hate that job, you know, repeat. But when President
• 22:46
  Bush came in, he said, all the military members, what color badges are theirs?
• 22:51
  And they went, those are blue badges. He goes, blue badges can go anywhere on
• 22:55
  this campus they want to go any time of day.
• 22:58
  And then he literally put us in the bullseye. You can do anything.
• 23:03
  But we were smart enough not to. But other people couldn't go where we could
• 23:09
  go. But we weren't that, you know, we weren't.
• 23:11
  We weren't foolish with that. Oh, okay. He really elevated our status.
• 23:18
  That's fantastic. That's what you were doing there on September 11th.
• 23:23
  Yeah, so you're jumping into it. Yeah, well, what I wanted to find out,
• 23:28
  because what I want to do is then talk briefly to our sponsors and then get
• 23:32
  into the nitty-gritty of the show.
• 23:34
  But can you tell us, what can you tell us about the military structure at the White House?
• 23:40
  Who's there? What are they doing? What are their missions? That kind of stuff.
• 23:43
  And again, I realize some of that may be sensitive and you can't chat about that.
• 23:47
  Sure. But we have all services are represented at the White House under the
• 23:51
  White House military office banner, if you will. So the Navy is running Camp David.
• 23:56
  They do the cooks and all the stewards up there for the first family. They run that.
• 24:02
  The Marines have the perimeter up there. They're the guards.
• 24:05
  Back in the White House, airlift ops, to the joint office.
• 24:08
  And some days you're doing POTUS, President of the United States type logistics.
• 24:12
  You're making those cars, limousines, helicopters get shipped out.
• 24:15
  And other days you're doing first lady or you're doing congressional missions.
• 24:19
  It rotates on a weekly schedule, if
• 24:21
  you will. I just happened to have the president during the week of 9-11.
• 24:26
  I was responsible for that logistics. And listen,
• 24:30
  when I take you down into the bunker with me and we talk about those events
• 24:33
  it's you're not going to want to stop for oh i believe it i absolutely believe
• 24:39
  it i'm just like holy smokes because we because we were talking pre-show well
• 24:44
  fig and i were talking last week i'm like well he was a cobra guy but he was
• 24:48
  at the white house and i know he's at hmx1 but.
• 24:52
  That was all we knew. It was just the periphery of it. This makes more sense now. Yeah.
• 24:58
  I'm getting to understand how this all went, how you got there.
• 25:02
  And that's probably a pretty, I mean, that's probably a pretty cool job.
• 25:06
  It was a cool job. Yeah, it was really cool. It was intense when you're on the
• 25:10
  hook for all the logistics for the president. I mean, you're moving.
• 25:14
  I'll give you an example. President
• 25:16
  Clinton, for example, wanted to go to Morocco to attend a funeral.
• 25:20
  And we sent 22 C-17s full of limousines, helicopters, phones,
• 25:26
  snipers, doctors, no trauma, one center. We had to fly one in.
• 25:30
  It is just an enormous logistics package. Well, because you can't send one limo
• 25:35
  and one helicopter and hope they work when they get there, right?
• 25:38
  I mean, among other things.
• 25:39
  We got backups to those aircraft.
• 25:42
  It's just an unbelievable, it's an honor in the sense where you get what you
• 25:48
  asked for. There's no one in the supply chain telling you, I'm sorry. Can't help you.
• 25:54
  Yeah, sorry. Can't work that out for you. And so that's a pretty high visibility job.
• 26:02
  Yeah. That's where you screw it up, Jake. All of a sudden, you're someone that
• 26:08
  everybody wants to get to know.
• 26:10
  How'd Bart put it? Everyone loves you until you punt one into the stands.
• 26:15
  I'm guessing if everything goes right, well, you did your job.
• 26:18
  So nobody's going to slap you
• 26:19
  on the back, but as soon as something's not right, it's, oh, fuck. Yeah.
• 26:24
  I didn't think about plastic forks for the cake. Crap.
• 26:27
  They're going to eat it with their hands. I think you guys would enjoy this
• 26:31
  quick story. Even when I was flying President Clinton around, he would come on.
• 26:36
  We'd land on the White House lawn. It's very cool. We're on the boards. You did a good landing.
• 26:40
  He comes out and comes up the stairs right to the cockpit, and he's leaning in.
• 26:45
  He's going, Fig, it's good to see you. But repeat, happy at you. I'm glad it's you guys.
• 26:50
  And he goes back and you go, man, I think the president just might be buds.
• 26:54
  When Hillary got done, there's no hello, no goodbye.
• 26:58
  She's in a terrible mood. She was back to the helicopter, off the helicopter,
• 27:02
  steering young Chelsea by the shoulders.
• 27:04
  And we used to joke up there going, hey, it's not our fault.
• 27:08
  I'm sure he pissed her off.
• 27:10
  You know, whatever he did, put her in that kind of mood. because they were at
• 27:14
  it all the time. Yeah. The two of them.
• 27:17
  Yeah. I heard some of that from Steve. So, yeah. I got some inside baseball.
• 27:24
  Yeah. In fact, Secret Service agent, Bill Doyle.
• 27:28
  Oh, yeah. Yeah, I don't remember. No? Okay. All right.
• 27:32
  Head to ask. Bill and I were in flight school together, and he left and went
• 27:34
  to the Secret Service. So, all right.
• 27:38
  Hey, it's called Secret for a reason, dude. Yeah. Come on. Okay. That's right.
• 27:43
  I meant Schmil Hoyle.
• 27:48
  Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. All right. So, you guys want to go in the bunker?
• 27:53
  Let's say a quick thank you to the people who make this show possible.
• 27:58
  And this week we've got HelloFresh back. We're super thrilled that they're here
• 28:03
  helping us make these stories come to you.
• 28:06
  And HSI Wealth Strategies is back as well.
• 28:12
  So there I was standing in my kitchen thinking about how to make dinner a little
• 28:17
  more special over the holidays.
• 28:20
  Normally, my wife handles most of the cooking in our house, but this time I
• 28:24
  wanted to give her a well-deserved break, and that's when HelloFresh saved the day.
• 28:28
  I took over in the kitchen for the evening, and I cheated.
• 28:32
  In a good way, though. I cooked a HelloFresh pork carnitas tacos meal,
• 28:37
  and let me tell you, even my kids were amazed.
• 28:41
  My wife got a break from deciding on a meal, shopping for everything,
• 28:44
  then preparing it, and we all got to enjoy a delicious meal together.
• 28:49
  It's these moments that make HelloFresh special for us.
• 28:53
  If you're tired of figuring out what's for dinner night after night,
• 28:56
  especially on those busy weekdays, HelloFresh makes it so easy.
• 29:01
  With farm-fresh, pre-portioned ingredients, and 50 wholesome,
• 29:06
  hassle-free meal options to choose from delivered to your door every week,
• 29:10
  it's no wonder they're America's number one meal kit.
• 29:13
  One of my favorite things? Their new ready-made meals go from fridge to fork in just three minutes.
• 29:20
  The same high-quality ingredients and restaurant-worthy flavors, but none of the work.
• 29:25
  Perfect for those nights when you just don't want to spend time in the kitchen.
• 29:28
  And here's the best part. You can try it for yourself.
• 29:32
  Get up to 10 free meals with a free high-protein item for life at HelloFresh.com slash SoThereIWasFM.
• 29:43
  That's Fox Mike.
• 29:44
  One item per box with active subscription.
• 29:49
  Free meals are applied as a discount on First Box. New subscribers only. It varies by plan.
• 29:55
  That's up to 10 free HelloFresh meals. Just go to HelloFresh.com slash so there I was 10FM.
• 30:05
  Take it from me.
• 30:06
  HelloFresh makes cooking easy,
• 30:08
  fun, and affordable. No more grocery store runs. No more dinner stress.
• 30:13
  Just great meals and more time with the family or friends.
• 30:16
  HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit.
• 30:20
  Oh, and don't forget to share your creations with hashtag HelloFreshPix at HelloFresh.
• 30:27
  I'd love to see what you've whipped up.
• 30:32
  Hey, Fick. So, there I was. Oh, here we go.
• 30:37
  Flying high, thinking I had my retirement strategy all lined up.
• 30:42
  Then I learned the hard way how quickly turbulence can shake that plan up.
• 30:47
  Let's face it, folks. Planning for retirement is a lot like flying IFR in a storm.
• 30:52
  Without the right instruments, if you're just one degree off course,
• 30:56
  before you know it, you're way off course.
• 30:59
  That's where HSI Wealth Strategies comes in. HSI, which stands for Horizontal
• 31:05
  Situation Indicator, that's the trusty gauge in your cockpit that keeps you
• 31:09
  on course, just like their team keeps you on course for a secure retirement.
• 31:13
  And the folks at HSI know a thing or two about the cockpit. These aren't your
• 31:18
  average wealth advisors.
• 31:19
  They're also pilots, just like us.
• 31:22
  Air guard and civil aviators who don't just fly the line, they now guide the bottom line.
• 31:28
  Plus, they're seasoned at working with airline professionals,
• 31:31
  high net worth individuals, and business owners to ensure financial plans that
• 31:34
  can withstand any headwind. Absolutely.
• 31:37
  And they know the ins and outs of the airline retirement plans like nobody else.
• 31:41
  From maximizing your accumulation while you're earning those high altitude salaries
• 31:44
  to minimizing your tax liabilities when it's time to pull back on the throttle.
• 31:49
  Because let's face it, taxes and inflation are like headwinds working against
• 31:54
  your glide path to a smooth retirement. It don't fall into the trap of conventional
• 31:58
  wisdom when it comes to retirement planning.
• 32:01
  That kind of advice is like asking someone who's never flown to land the plane for you.
• 32:06
  We as pilots have unique challenges and HSI gets that.
• 32:11
  They know how to help you avoid a hard landing on your financial future.
• 32:15
  And let's talk about the golden rule of pilot retirement.
• 32:18
  Hey, Fig, how does a pilot make a million bucks in his retirement account?
• 32:23
  Well, he starts with $2 million and manages it himself for six months.
• 32:29
  Bingo. And sadly, I've seen that happen.
• 32:33
  Oh, dude. So true. That's why you've got to get a team in your corner who actually
• 32:40
  knows what they're doing.
• 32:41
  And with HSI, you're not only getting financial advisors, you're getting fellow
• 32:45
  pilots who still fly, who know exactly what it's like to be in your seat.
• 32:49
  HSI can save you serious money. On average, they're fining their clients a million
• 32:53
  to a million and a half dollars just by making a few course corrections.
• 32:57
  Imagine what a little trim and rudder input could do for your retirement account.
• 33:01
  So whether you're in the thick of your earning years or just about ready to
• 33:04
  enjoy your time in the jump seat, HSI Wealth Strategies has your six.
• 33:09
  Don't wait until you're ready to make your approach to realize you're off course.
• 33:13
  Give HSI a call and see how much they can help you save. Because folks,
• 33:17
  when it comes to retirement, you only get one approach.
• 33:19
  Make sure it's on GlidePath. To get your extra million or so in retirement,
• 33:24
  email robert.walling at nm.com.
• 33:28
  That's robert.walling at nm, that's novembermike.com.
• 33:36
  Or call 214-538-7030. That's 214-538-7030 to get started on your path to wealth and retirement today.
• 33:48
  Remember 214-538-7030. Think of it as 214-JET-7030 to keep you flying high in retirement.
• 33:58
  HSI Wealth Strategies, guiding pilots on and off the runway to a smooth landing in retirement. Boom.
• 34:10
  Outstanding. Thank you both HelloFresh and HSI Wealth Strategies for helping
• 34:14
  bring these cool stories. And when I said at the beginning of the show,
• 34:18
  strap in, I think I was right. We're about to go into the bunker.
• 34:25
  Let me ask, in retrospect,
• 34:29
  before you get in and go through all of this, how mind-blowing was this whole
• 34:35
  experience to your 22 23 year old self when you're actually sitting there was
• 34:40
  it almost out of body going oh my god am i seeing what i'm seeing,
• 34:45
  Yeah, that's exactly right. I think at the time I was 32.
• 34:49
  I was 30 years old. Ripe old age of 32. And being that close to our national
• 34:56
  leaders, vice president and then Dr.
• 34:58
  Rice, who is our national security advisor, talking to the president on board
• 35:03
  Air Force One and hearing them talk the same way you and I are talking.
• 35:08
  Just normal people trying to ascertain what the heck is going on and making
• 35:14
  those critical decisions to save lives and watching them really.
• 35:18
  And I know I'm going to take him to the bunker, but they were willing to take
• 35:22
  lives out of the sky to save more lives on the ground. Right.
• 35:28
  That's, you know, a level of courage that few people probably would ever have.
• 35:34
  Right. A call no one should ever have to make, but obviously someone does have to make it. But wow.
• 35:41
  So, yeah. So you got out of bed on a Tuesday morning in September.
• 35:46
  I did. Clear day. Going to work. Another day at the grind.
• 35:51
  Yeah, I went over to the slug lot. Repeat, you know, we got this HOV system
• 35:55
  going. You can jump into a stranger's car and they don't have to pay the tolls.
• 36:00
  They go right on up. We drop them off.
• 36:01
  I was driving. I dropped them off at the Pentagon.
• 36:04
  Two people drove over to the White House, parked. I had just done the logistics
• 36:08
  for President Bush in Sarasota.
• 36:11
  All the cars were there, the limos, helicopters, phones, snipers,
• 36:14
  doctors. He was down there executing his academic agenda.
• 36:18
  We had our eight o'clock morning meeting. We're in the Eisenhower building adjacent
• 36:22
  to the West Wing. And we're talking about the president's schedule.
• 36:26
  How's it going? He's PTing right now. He's got some meetings.
• 36:29
  He's due to get wheels up at 1300, one in the afternoon.
• 36:32
  He's coming back to Andrews. That was our morning meeting.
• 36:36
  Everything changed at 846. All of a sudden, somebody ran into the office,
• 36:40
  the airlift ops room, and said, hey, quick, turn on CNN.
• 36:44
  Apparently, a small airplane hit the North Tower. We worked our way over.
• 36:48
  We could see the hole in the building, crystal blue, clear day.
• 36:52
  First thing out of our mouths is, why would a pilot careen into a 110-story
• 36:55
  landmark? You've got the East River. You've got the Hudson River.
• 36:59
  Most of us could glide and reach LaGuardia Airport.
• 37:03
  It's that close. There's got to be so much more of the story. The phone is ringing.
• 37:07
  American Airlines Flight 11 depart out of Boston and Logan on its way out to
• 37:12
  LAX, lost communications over Albany, New York, down the Hudson River at over
• 37:16
  500 miles an hour into the North Tower.
• 37:20
  Things are starting to heat up now. Phones are ringing. People are moving around.
• 37:24
  All of a sudden, we're watching the TV when we saw United Airlines Flight 175.
• 37:29
  I yelled up at the TV set going, what's this moron doing? Trying to get a look
• 37:33
  at the hole in the North Tower.
• 37:36
  And before he circles to land and all of a sudden it hit the south tower at
• 37:40
  full power literally my boss air force full bird colonel came in,
• 37:45
  Just like talking to me and you and said, everybody, stop what you're doing.
• 37:50
  Eyeballs on me. We have a full-blown terrorist event unfolding right before
• 37:56
  our eyes in the city of New York.
• 37:59
  Stand by for a lot of White House designated missions.
• 38:04
  And you go, what the heck does that mean? Well, we have a national tragedy.
• 38:09
  Everybody wants to be there, whether it's FEMA, Treasury, Interior.
• 38:13
  They all have a role to play. And you're talking about resources or expertise.
• 38:18
  But if they call the Department of Defense for airlift, you get put into a queue.
• 38:23
  No one government agency is more important than the other.
• 38:27
  But if you call the White House and go, hey, boss, this is FEMA,
• 38:31
  the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
• 38:32
  I got 75 doctors, all the medicines I can carry. I really need to be on the
• 38:37
  ground up there in New York. And the White House says go.
• 38:40
  Then you become what we call a one alpha one. We will push baby food out of
• 38:46
  the back of the next available C5, C17, 141, 130.
• 38:52
  Whatever we got in the inventory is yours because the White House wants you to be in New York.
• 38:58
  So everybody was scrambling at that point.
• 39:02
  Let me fast forward. We got two towers burning. We're doing the one alpha ones.
• 39:07
  An airliner overflies the White House.
• 39:11
  So low and so loud, we all froze in our tracks.
• 39:16
  Somebody ran to the window and goes, holy mackerel, big white jet,
• 39:21
  hard left-hand turn, heading west. Breaking news.
• 39:26
  Fire and explosion over at the Pentagon. The Pentagon just hit by American 70s Flight 77.
• 39:33
  But that was not the plane that overflew the White House. If you remember on
• 39:37
  9-11, we were doing a large Air Force nuclear command and control exercise.
• 39:43
  We put one of our national level assets in E-4B, NAOC, the National Airborne Op Center. Yeah.
• 39:50
  They moved one to Andrews. When the second tower was struck,
• 39:55
  they activated that air crew and said, get to the president of the United States.
• 40:00
  So if he wants to get off the flying White House and climb on to the flying
• 40:04
  Pentagon, these two 747s need to go figure out where they're going to make the switch.
• 40:09
  When they took off out of Andrews, they put a laser line to Sarasota,
• 40:13
  Florida, and it took them left, and they flew right over the White House.
• 40:18
  That's what got – there you go. That's what got Cheney picked up by his elbows
• 40:23
  by Secret Service and now being through it.
• 40:30
  No shit uh so you know what shyster i've never heard that story neither have i,
• 40:37
  literally that 747 and then hijacked 757 passed each other in flight as one
• 40:44
  was racing to the president and one was hitting the west side of the pentagon
• 40:48
  that morning wow so so i i i'm,
• 40:55
  It doesn't happen very often, but I'm speechless right now. I'm slack-jawed, yeah. This is amazing.
• 41:02
  Well, for the second time in history, repeat, the White House was ordered to evacuate.
• 41:07
  First time being 1814, Dolly Madison carrying a print of George Washington out
• 41:13
  the back door while the British are burning down Washington, D.C.
• 41:16
  Here it is 187 years later.
• 41:20
  They're ordering the evacuation of the White House for the second time.
• 41:24
  In history man and so
• 41:28
  and then to an undisclosed location yeah that
• 41:30
  girl came in i worked for said that's it shut it down
• 41:33
  lock up your classified information it's true
• 41:36
  we used to lock that stuff up now now you can put it
• 41:39
  in the back of your corvette and put it in your garage but we used to have to
• 41:42
  lock that stuff up way back pull the pin on that one brother you're rolling
• 41:48
  under the den flap well played sir well played well played well that's it so
• 41:57
  my boss is trying to get me to.
• 41:59
  Go to the alternate site and i said listen president bush is not
• 42:02
  coming back wherever they're going to take him today he had
• 42:05
  snipers doctors helicopters and phones and he
• 42:07
  ordered me down into the underground bunker under
• 42:11
  the white house called the pioch or president's emergency operation center
• 42:14
  this is not the situation room that's right this is
• 42:17
  your communications hub this is a deep underground nuclear
• 42:21
  hardened facility listen on 9-11 95
• 42:24
  percent of the staffers didn't know this place existed they never
• 42:27
  have a reason to be there and on 9-12 they did so i
• 42:33
  imagine what my understanding is is there's there's all manner of ins and outs
• 42:37
  underneath there that uh no no one saved the secret service and and the highest
• 42:43
  elected officials and cabinet members are aware of so at least any any details
• 42:49
  i'm aware they exist but i have no idea.
• 42:52
  The intricacy of it and all that, I'm sure.
• 42:56
  And when I got cleared to tell you this story that I'm telling you,
• 43:00
  they were like, you can talk about the PIOC.
• 43:02
  Don't tell me how deep it is, how thick the walls are, or how to get there.
• 43:06
  It's a national level secret.
• 43:07
  We don't want to replace it. We need to protect it. But it's the main hub of
• 43:11
  operations at this moment in time.
• 43:13
  I'm guessing it's deep, thick, and really hard to find. Just a guess.
• 43:20
  So is that where you is that where you went to
• 43:22
  operate out of from i went to operate to do logistics for
• 43:25
  the president move cars helicopters phones when you know
• 43:29
  you're standing outside a bank vault on steroids right now the door you and
• 43:33
  i pull on i request permission to enter you go into this place the first person
• 43:37
  i see is vice president cheney's military aide an air force major a friend of
• 43:41
  mine and i said hey tom i know you're busy i'm here to do logistics for the
• 43:46
  potus i'll stay out of your way.
• 43:48
  Well, listen, fake egos, Bob, forget logistics. Help me out.
• 43:52
  The phones are ringing off the hook. And I literally looked around and I see
• 43:57
  these military members doing their jobs, empty consoles.
• 44:01
  I took a console. The phone was ringing.
• 44:03
  Seven minutes after the White House was ordered evacuated, this was my first phone call that day.
• 44:09
  I picked up the phone, Major Darling. It was a situation room upstairs that
• 44:13
  said, Major, we have another hijacked airplane 16 miles south of Pittsburgh.
• 44:20
  Inbound, Washington, D.C.
• 44:23
  And I turned to my right to tell the mill aide, and Vice President Cheney is
• 44:27
  standing four inches from my face going, what do you got?
• 44:30
  I snapped, too. Mr. Vice President, situation room reports, 16 miles south of
• 44:36
  Pittsburgh, we have another one inbound.
• 44:39
  And he turned away from me because on the wall down there are these landlines or speaker boxes.
• 44:45
  He can be patched through to talk to whoever he needs to talk to.
• 44:48
  The first person he asked for was, get me the Herndon, Virginia Command Center for the FAA.
• 44:54
  The supervisor's name was Rick. He came on the network. Mr. Vice President, how can I help you, sir?
• 44:59
  I was just told we have another hijacked aircraft somewhere south of Pittsburgh.
• 45:04
  Can you confirm that for me? He goes, yes, sir. They're not talking.
• 45:09
  They're not squawking the transponder code. They're way off course.
• 45:12
  That's a hijacked aircraft.
• 45:15
  He turns to the second speaker box and he goes, hey, Don, are you up?
• 45:20
  He's looking for Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense.
• 45:24
  There's only two people in the U.S. government who can give offensive lethal
• 45:29
  instructions to the U.S. military.
• 45:31
  That's the president and the SECDEF. Anybody can defend themselves.
• 45:35
  What if we're going to cross a border, kill a terrorist, wipe out an army?
• 45:38
  It comes from the National Command Authority.
• 45:40
  We have a president trying to get airborne, and the Secretary of Defense is
• 45:44
  somewhere now lost among thousands at the Pentagon parking lot.
• 45:50
  Oh, right. There's no one at the helm of our national military command and control
• 45:56
  structure to defend America.
• 45:59
  It was awkward when Vice President Cheney talked to a one-star general,
• 46:04
  and he said, General, get me two F-15s at an Otis Air National Guard-based Cape Cod.
• 46:11
  Let me know when they're airborne.
• 46:14
  Stand by to shoot this aircraft down.
• 46:19
  Next thing we heard, in my 14 years of Marine Corps, I thought that only the
• 46:24
  president could give that order.
• 46:25
  And right out of the vice president's mouth to get our country going forward,
• 46:29
  in lieu of the absence of Secretary Rumsfeld, the president trying to get airborne,
• 46:34
  he ordered our military forward.
• 46:36
  The Pentagon called Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, home of NORAD.
• 46:40
  The NORAD commander calls the Northeast Air Defense Sector two-star.
• 46:44
  They scrambled two F-15s, probably somebody you know.
• 46:47
  Next thing you know, they are supersonic over Long Island, New York,
• 46:51
  reporting eight minutes till weapons free.
• 46:55
  Eight minutes out for weapons per hour.
• 46:57
  They can close the gap of 300 miles in eight minutes and be in parameters.
• 47:02
  And he said, you are cleared hot. You are weapons free to engage.
• 47:08
  It was like the air sucked out of the room. Everybody standing by.
• 47:12
  At 10.05, all the satellite radios blared to life. Aircraft down.
• 47:17
  Aircraft down. 60 miles south of Pittsburgh.
• 47:21
  No survivors. Vice President Cheney turned around.
• 47:25
  He walked right over to me and
• 47:27
  he goes, Major, for the congressional investigation, state your full name.
• 47:32
  And just then I was thinking to myself, no.
• 47:37
  Hold on did i wear the wrong name tag to work today crap,
• 47:42
  it's now a good time to tell you i came here to do logistics why
• 47:45
  i snapped my heels to get i said mr vice president it's major darling
• 47:48
  goes from major darling to the vice president to the national military
• 47:51
  command center we just shot that plane down i
• 47:55
  really need to talk to the president and as we were trying to get the
• 47:57
  president on air force one the same satellite radios
• 48:01
  blared back to life but the f-15s never fired they
• 48:04
  never fired flight 93 was on the
• 48:07
  ground in shanksville pennsylvania when they got
• 48:09
  here yeah i've got his widow's book
• 48:12
  let's roll yeah not todd
• 48:15
  beamer's widow but oh i i
• 48:19
  almost feel hollow i having never heard this is this is connecting a lot of
• 48:25
  dots it is so fascinating to you know see how it how it all had to come together
• 48:31
  too and it never occurred to me that Secretary Rumsfeld was out of the loop
• 48:36
  after the Pentagon got tapped.
• 48:38
  Yes and that uh and i am because the one
• 48:41
  question and this may not be the right time to get to it
• 48:44
  but at some point i would like you to talk about you know
• 48:47
  they were flying all over the damn place with president bush and
• 48:50
  at some point he went screw this we're going back to dc and everyone's telling
• 48:54
  him you know you can't go there it may be unsafe and he's like yeah no this
• 48:57
  is this is where i'm going it's home and yeah and people need me there yeah
• 49:03
  you know and he was fighting with the Secret Service all day long to try to
• 49:07
  get back to Washington, D.C.
• 49:09
  But, you know, there's protocols and we've got to keep the president alive and
• 49:13
  we've got to keep the government functioning.
• 49:15
  And he was up against those protocols.
• 49:17
  And finally, from Strategic Command out of Offit, he made the call that there
• 49:22
  is no continuity of presidency in effect right now. I'm coming home.
• 49:27
  He ordered a second presidential daily brief. The CIA briefs the president every
• 49:33
  day at eight o'clock in the morning on worldwide threats.
• 49:36
  He got a brief that morning in Sarasota, obviously inadequate.
• 49:41
  He's coming home. He wants to know where they are and what options he has available
• 49:47
  tonight to take action. What are his options? Where are the troops?
• 49:51
  Where's our strength? And it was incredible.
• 49:54
  Dr. Rice was scrambling black suburbans all over Washington,
• 49:57
  D.C., going, if you got actionable intelligence, it needs to make it in.
• 50:01
  ASAP. The president is getting a brief at 6.30 tonight.
• 50:06
  And they were scrambling to build this book.
• 50:11
  How about that? I want to tell you a couple of major milestones,
• 50:15
  major events, you know, and I won't keep you all night long, that's for sure.
• 50:19
  But at one point- I can sit here all night not to worry about that.
• 50:22
  This is fascinating. And I know your listeners will really appreciate this.
• 50:28
  At one point, you know, So we lost the South Tower and literally we called the
• 50:33
  president and this is this is about 10.0.
• 50:36
  I guess we lost the South Tower at 10.03 or I don't remember the time now,
• 50:41
  but we called the president and said we had 20,000 dead Americans in the city of New York.
• 50:47
  And when we lost the North Tower, we told the president of the United States
• 50:51
  is our best guess that we have 40,000 dead Americans, most likely in New York City.
• 50:58
  President Bush all of a sudden got his sea legs at some point underneath of
• 51:02
  him, and he was having an air threat conference.
• 51:05
  I mean, a cabinet level official, you've got to call in on your iridium radio
• 51:09
  and brief the president.
• 51:10
  You've got 15 seconds to tell him what's happening in your area of responsibility.
• 51:14
  They're going around the horn, and we're patched into this. This is about 1020 minutes.
• 51:19
  In the morning. And it was Donald Rumsfeld who said, I recommend we take our
• 51:24
  nuclear weapons from defense condition four up to DEFCON three.
• 51:31
  Five is peace. One is imminent nuclear war. We're worldwide DEFCON four.
• 51:35
  They're saying, you know, I recommend that we move it under these circumstances to DEFCON three.
• 51:41
  President Bush goes, you know what? Have them stand by for DEFCON too.
• 51:47
  And Dr. Rice sitting next to me was amazed. You know, she's holding on to me
• 51:52
  why this is all happening.
• 51:53
  Vice President Cheney goes, Condi, make it happen.
• 51:56
  She picks up the red phone hotline to the Pentagon executive order of the president
• 52:01
  of the United States, move our nuclear forces from DEFCON 4 to DEFCON 3.
• 52:07
  Stand by DEFCON 2. The Pentagon called Cheyenne Mountain, in Colorado,
• 52:13
  the four-star out there, buttoned up the mountain for the first time in history in anger.
• 52:19
  And he calls our four-star combatant commanders around the world.
• 52:24
  And I want you all to know it took three minutes and we heard,
• 52:27
  this is Central Command, Pacific Command, European Command, Southern Command,
• 52:33
  Special Operations Command, Joint Forces Command, strategic command. This is NORAD.
• 52:39
  We are DEFCON 3 standing by DEFCON 2.
• 52:44
  We're going to war. We just don't know who we're going to war with.
• 52:49
  I turn to my console. My phone is ringing.
• 52:52
  I pick it up. I go, Major Darling, situation room upstairs.
• 52:56
  It goes, I have President Putin
• 52:58
  holding for the President of the United States. Will you take the call?
• 53:04
  And I'm thinking, No, tell the president My Russian isn't that good I'm going
• 53:08
  to do logistics And sure enough I yell to the vice president Who tells Dr.
• 53:14
  Rice to take the call And I'm like, are we going to do this in Russian?
• 53:18
  How's this going to go down?
• 53:19
  Plain English, just like you and me Thank you, Mr. President,
• 53:22
  for the phone call Through an interpreter
• 53:24
  He's in motion, we don't know the size and scope of the attack We don't even
• 53:27
  know if it's over yet But I can tell you this much He's going to call you the
• 53:31
  first chance he gets And by the way, sir Thank you for standing down, your nuclear forces.
• 53:38
  So we went worldwide DEFCON 3.
• 53:41
  They decided to stand down and stay at their 4. Normally, they would match if we went to.
• 53:47
  They wanted to be 2-1-1. And they stayed at their worldwide DEFCON 4 while we
• 53:52
  went, ultimately, everybody to DEFCON 3.
• 53:57
  Wow.
• 54:00
  Talk about being on the brink.
• 54:05
  And you know, long story short, it it was not a good day for the U.S.
• 54:10
  Military. We were slow to react.
• 54:12
  We thought we had 40,000 dead Americans. We had calm problems with the president
• 54:16
  on Air Force One. We couldn't get hold of Rumsfeld at the Pentagon.
• 54:20
  We had, you know, Vice President Cheney making orders, giving out orders that
• 54:24
  he really wasn't authorized to do to get us moving forward. forward.
• 54:28
  But yet the American people rose up that day. Ordinary people carrying strangers
• 54:32
  down the stairs in those towers.
• 54:34
  Todd Beamer, Tom Burnett, others, hand-to-hand combat with terrorists on board planes.
• 54:39
  We heard shopkeepers and everybody open up their homes to take in strangers
• 54:43
  to get them out of the battle damage area.
• 54:47
  Unbelievable stories of the American spirit, how everybody rose up to fight back.
• 54:52
  And it was a horrific number at 2,996, but it sure wasn't 40,000.
• 54:57
  That's great. Staggering, right. And that was due to the heroics of the American public.
• 55:03
  It was right there where the people that we serve really rose back up and served us that day as well.
• 55:12
  Oh, yeah. That's outstanding. It really is.
• 55:15
  You know, I'm going to disagree with you slightly in that the American – was
• 55:22
  it a great day for the American military?
• 55:24
  It was a hard lesson learned, but how long had we been without expecting that?
• 55:29
  I mean, for instance, you know, having jets take off with the thought that they
• 55:33
  were going to have to ram that flight because they didn't have weapons on a
• 55:38
  hot pad standing by to go shoot anything, that sort of thing.
• 55:44
  So I would argue that that complacency was built out of a long time of peace
• 55:52
  and thinking that the oceans were big enough to protect us.
• 55:56
  But I would argue that also the military stood up that day and did an amazing
• 56:02
  job of, you know, keeping things together and reacting and not taking over.
• 56:09
  You know, again, listening to
• 56:10
  the civilian leadership, the way it was designed to be. But, oh, my God.
• 56:16
  No, repeat, I'll tell you, I agree with everything you just said.
• 56:19
  We were slow to react. We were looking outward.
• 56:22
  This was an attack that happened inside of our country. And,
• 56:25
  you know, I'm not going to get political with you, but just something to think
• 56:28
  about. We just had the New Orleans attack and the attack in Vegas.
• 56:32
  Well, these 19 terrorists were living amongst us. They were here in our country.
• 56:37
  How many did we just let walk across the border over the last X amount of years?
• 56:43
  We probably have seven and a half million bad guys now in our country for all we know.
• 56:47
  So our country needs to be vigilant and it needs all of us, our people, our military.
• 56:53
  Obviously, if you see something, say something. But this is an all hands on
• 56:57
  deck time in American history to make sure that this does not happen again.
• 57:03
  Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's just, it's just jaw dropping.
• 57:10
  Let me ask a, an inane question.
• 57:16
  When'd you go to bed? no going
• 57:19
  to bed there was no going to bed because uh literally after
• 57:22
  the president got home he wanted his cabinet home from over
• 57:25
  these locations he wanted to have an emergency cabinet meeting
• 57:29
  at eight o'clock in the morning and he wanted everybody
• 57:32
  home and we had even the former president clinton was stuck in australia and
• 57:36
  we had to do an emergency mission to get he and his wife flown out of australia
• 57:41
  so they can be on the ground up there uh senator york wanted to be on the ground
• 57:46
  at ground zero as soon as possible. So there was an all-nighter.
• 57:49
  Everybody was just doing incredible things. He kicked off the eight o'clock
• 57:55
  emergency cabinet meeting.
• 57:56
  They came down and said, find a place to sleep. You got 24 hours. We need you back.
• 58:01
  It was at that time I was able to run down the road, you know,
• 58:04
  to see my family, to turn around, get some shut eye, and then turn around and
• 58:07
  get right back to the White House.
• 58:09
  But nobody went anywhere. We were taking our country to war.
• 58:13
  Right. No, exactly. So, so one of the longest days, much like your first day at OCS, right?
• 58:20
  You think we're going to go to bed tonight? No, no, not till tomorrow night at the earliest.
• 58:26
  And I'll probably similarly, similarly chaotic, although this time it was for
• 58:31
  real instead of, instead of some staff shard and screwing with you.
• 58:36
  It was, you know, when I, and I've been blessed, I'm allowed to travel around
• 58:38
  and tell this story and, you know, and you, and you go and you,
• 58:42
  People are grateful for the veterans. They're grateful for the sacrifice.
• 58:46
  You know, when you talk about wives earlier on tonight, how military wife.
• 58:51
  But think about those special operations forces that, you know,
• 58:54
  we have two deployments and you're back and you're done. They've been deploying 10 times.
• 58:59
  They've been deploying nonstop for the last 23 years.
• 59:02
  They lost that. That was the first wife. They're probably on wife number three or four.
• 59:08
  If they're even still doing it or just going, yeah, no. They're dedicated to
• 59:12
  keeping our country safe.
• 59:13
  It's an incredible group of people that we call, you know, fellow citizens that
• 59:20
  just doing just unbelievable things on behalf of this nation.
• 59:24
  Great. Let's talk about your book. When did you author your book?
• 59:31
  You know, it was funny because I, you know, Fig, I never wrote a book before, right?
• 59:36
  I got permission. I had the PowerPoint slides. I went to the National Security
• 59:40
  Council and they're like, hey, Maureen, we don't approve PowerPoint slides.
• 59:44
  You're going to have to write a memoir and then give us blackout authority.
• 59:50
  I'm like, you know, memoir, what the heck is that? And they,
• 59:52
  you know, pretty much told me it's this is what you got to do to get it done.
• 59:56
  And it took me a year and a half. And it was an incredible journey reliving it and organizing it.
• 1:00:05
  And it came out in August, October of 2010.
• 1:00:10
  And I've been running around talking about crisis leadership and decision making,
• 1:00:14
  using my story of 9-11 as a backdrop to those learning the framework of what
• 1:00:22
  it means to handle and respond to a crisis.
• 1:00:25
  And I've been busy for the last 13 or 14 years just on that subject alone.
• 1:00:30
  It's been therapeutic and something I'm really proud of.
• 1:00:35
  Okay. Awesome. Yeah. Well, that's fantastic. I bet it was therapeutic.
• 1:00:39
  Yeah. Speaking of books, have you read any of Jack Carr's books?
• 1:00:43
  I don't think so. I'm a big Vince Flynn guy. I've read everything that he's ever had.
• 1:00:48
  Vince Flynn is fantastic. Got down by cancer all too soon.
• 1:00:52
  But so Jack Carr is a retired Navy SEAL who decided he wanted to write books. And so he did.
• 1:00:58
  And he had a Chris Pratt in mind as his protagonist hero. And a friend of his gave his...
• 1:01:06
  The transcript or actually the finished book was about to be published,
• 1:01:09
  gave it to Chris Pratt and then
• 1:01:10
  Chris Pratt started in the movie or the series on Amazon and all that.
• 1:01:14
  And I just be curious what you thought, if you had read it, what, how about the accuracy?
• 1:01:19
  Seems to me pretty accurate from what I know of it, but haven't been at the
• 1:01:22
  level of the year at, but yeah, terminal list. Yeah.
• 1:01:27
  Unbelievable. And the movie was unbelievable. Great. So I, I, you know, I loved it.
• 1:01:31
  And there's, you know, there's, But there's some fiction in there and there's some reality.
• 1:01:35
  It's, you know, and what brought me to that was, you know, the blackout redaction
• 1:01:40
  authority that they want on how much of your book got redacted.
• 1:01:45
  You know, interesting. I went to the National Security Council before I wrote
• 1:01:49
  it and the lady gave me the rules and she said, hey, you know what?
• 1:01:52
  If you follow the rules, we're not going to have a problem.
• 1:01:54
  I don't want any classified programs, covert people or undisclosed places.
• 1:02:00
  Tell me about the PIOC, that you were there.
• 1:02:03
  That's it. I don't want to know any capabilities, how to get there, anything about it.
• 1:02:07
  And all the people that work here that you know are special people,
• 1:02:11
  I don't want them mentioned at all.
• 1:02:14
  Follow the rules, and you and I are going to have no trouble at all.
• 1:02:17
  She approved my memoir in six weeks.
• 1:02:21
  Wow. Nice. That seems pretty fast. That's impressive. Yeah.
• 1:02:26
  Yeah. Okay. You must have followed some... You must have followed a rule or two.
• 1:02:32
  That's why it's only four pages long. I followed the rule. Yeah,
• 1:02:35
  there's lots of pictures. You know, pictures are good for us.
• 1:02:39
  So you can't... In fact, I wouldn't want you to, but I would like to ask this question. What...
• 1:02:47
  And this is another inane question, I'm sure. What was the biggest...
• 1:02:52
  What positive leadership you saw on that day or lesson you learned that day
• 1:02:57
  about leadership, about crisis management, that sort of thing that you carry forward?
• 1:03:02
  And again, I don't need a name. And what was the biggest mistake you saw by
• 1:03:05
  anybody that day? And again, no names.
• 1:03:10
  Well, you know, I think it's safe to give you a name on the front end there.
• 1:03:13
  But let me tell you, the leadership that no one will ever forget that we all
• 1:03:18
  witnessed down there came from Dr. Condoleezza Rice.
• 1:03:21
  She was a national security advisor. She is such an important person.
• 1:03:26
  And yet she sat next to me and then she stood behind me and all those military
• 1:03:31
  members. She's like, you're the experts.
• 1:03:33
  Do your job. Does anybody need water, food? You need to talk to the vice president.
• 1:03:38
  Should I get the president on the phone so you can talk to him?
• 1:03:41
  She was willing to do what we asked of her.
• 1:03:45
  Her humility and professionalism just transcended that room.
• 1:03:49
  And everybody was just, if she ever ran for president, I have no doubt everybody
• 1:03:53
  who witnessed her that day would be on the bus. She was unbelievable.
• 1:03:58
  At the same time, we had a couple strap hangers, political strap hangers that
• 1:04:04
  tried to get into the bunker and automatically tried to insert themselves.
• 1:04:08
  And really they embarrassed themselves and they were kicked out of that room.
• 1:04:12
  They didn't belong there and they stood out like a sore thumb.
• 1:04:15
  And we don't need to name them, but they knew who they were.
• 1:04:22
  And they still do. 24 hours inside the President's Barker, 9-11-01, the White House.
• 1:04:30
  Lieutenant Colonel Robert J. Darling, United States Marine Corps, retired.
• 1:04:35
  God bless you, Colonel. God damn. I'm just, I'm in awe of what I've just heard, Fig.
• 1:04:42
  Holy shit. it's going to be while processing everything i just yeah and i know
• 1:04:48
  there's a lot more to this this is just scratching the surface.
• 1:04:52
  Yeah. And, you know, I do the I get the privilege of telling this story and
• 1:04:56
  lots of law enforcement and patriots who want to relive it and want to be reminded
• 1:05:02
  that what they do matters.
• 1:05:04
  And we've been safe for the last 23 years because of their efforts.
• 1:05:08
  So, listen, I want to throw it right back at you. Fig and repeat what you're
• 1:05:11
  doing today isn't just giving a guy like me an opportunity to talk.
• 1:05:14
  What you're doing and your listeners are doing is getting a refresher of why
• 1:05:18
  we're all called America. You know, why we're, you know, what is it,
• 1:05:21
  what is it to be a patriot and serve and to serve others and to be grateful for those that we serve.
• 1:05:27
  So I thank you both for, you know, having your show and your podcast and inviting
• 1:05:31
  me to be a part of it, not just to relive our military time,
• 1:05:35
  but to remind everybody how grateful we are for the citizens that we serve in this country as well.
• 1:05:42
  Thank you, Chester. Yeah, that's, that's it. That's something coming from you.
• 1:05:47
  Right. I mean, Fig and me just.
• 1:05:51
  Look at that, handsome Marine.
• 1:05:54
  Handsome young Marine major. Wings on his chest and standing there next to the
• 1:05:59
  President of the United States.
• 1:06:00
  And being asked by the National Security Advisor, can I get you some water?
• 1:06:07
  Yeah. What can I do for you? But, man, I'll tell you what. When you said that,
• 1:06:11
  I'd send a chill up my spine.
• 1:06:13
  That's real leadership there. You let the experts do what the experts do.
• 1:06:17
  And don't micromanage them, get them out of their way, back them up,
• 1:06:21
  clear the obstacles and provide support.
• 1:06:26
  That's impressive to hear.
• 1:06:31
  Wow i'm i'm
• 1:06:35
  i'm actually blank on what else to ask i know there's more
• 1:06:38
  and i'd love to have you back at some point in time just to talk more
• 1:06:41
  you know flying stories stupid shit you did in the airplane and so did you finish
• 1:06:46
  after that tour at hmx one did you go back to a squadron did you go to school
• 1:06:54
  what happened yeah i you know it's interesting to say that because i thought i was
• 1:06:59
  extended the white house they they wanted to make
• 1:07:01
  me a military aid after this experience for
• 1:07:05
  vice president cheney but the marine corps said hey he's been
• 1:07:07
  there he's got to get back and do marine corps stuff but they
• 1:07:11
  sent me to naval postgraduate school and i got an mba in finance financial management
• 1:07:15
  back to the pentagon i served four years at the pentagon and i retired in 2007
• 1:07:22
  after my 20 and a half year career very nice very nice so did you do any flying at hmx1,
• 1:07:31
  so i yeah i transitioned to the 53 echo when i first got there and then eventually
• 1:07:37
  i got to the 60 and the h3 and i did presidential missions and lots of vice
• 1:07:42
  presidential missions so but i instead of it being a four-year tour for me it
• 1:07:46
  was a two and a half tour and the other year and a half to two years was up in airlift ops.
• 1:07:52
  Gotcha, okay. Okay, because when we had Duber on, he was talking about how you
• 1:07:56
  basically have your freshman, sophomore, junior, senior year in that squadron.
• 1:08:01
  But not doing, not making sure it all gets there or all gets loaded or all gets unloaded.
• 1:08:09
  Yeah, because I can't imagine the headaches. Although I can't imagine also the,
• 1:08:14
  you know, with great power comes great responsibility.
• 1:08:18
  You got to be careful what you ask for when what you ask for is what you're
• 1:08:22
  going to get. Because you put a lot of people out, a lot of people into a lot
• 1:08:27
  of trouble to make sure you get what you want or need.
• 1:08:31
  But how what was that like getting
• 1:08:35
  to you know realizing all you had to do was
• 1:08:38
  ask for it and it was like waving a magic wand really empowering
• 1:08:42
  and you know it was just it's never it's never an authority that we would abuse
• 1:08:48
  right it's an authority level that you were so grateful that you had at that
• 1:08:53
  time you need to get real things done you know so it was it was great.
• 1:09:02
  Right oh yeah ask ask what happened on
• 1:09:04
  12th 12th of september well that's when you got back for the briefing right
• 1:09:07
  for the eight o'clock briefing the next we had the eight o'clock briefing and
• 1:09:10
  then i went home for a day and i was back in the
• 1:09:13
  office on the 13th and it was just you
• 1:09:16
  know get our nation prepared for war the intelligence brief was all about al-qaeda
• 1:09:22
  where are they where's bin laden phone intercepts just as you can imagine lots
• 1:09:27
  of intel agencies doing overseas type important work setting the groundwork
• 1:09:32
  for 350 000 troops to go halfway around the world,
• 1:09:37
  wow and and there we went there right right,
• 1:09:46
  When was President Bush in the wreckage of the tower when he said,
• 1:09:51
  you know, the rest of the world is going to hear from us pretty soon?
• 1:09:55
  How soon was that? That was within a week, wasn't it?
• 1:09:57
  Yeah, it was about September the 23rd, about 10 days after, or 11 days after.
• 1:10:03
  And this was a great story, too.
• 1:10:06
  We were watching. They were getting him prepared to go to New York.
• 1:10:11
  And they were worried about Marine One landing on the South Street seaport.
• 1:10:15
  Is there any potential for vibrations that might affect some of those teetering buildings?
• 1:10:21
  The last optic they wanted was the president's landing, debris is falling over.
• 1:10:26
  Knocking down another building? Yeah, and killing a firefighter.
• 1:10:30
  So they were worried about things just down to the granular level.
• 1:10:34
  He wrote his speech, and he was nervous, right? The whole world's watching.
• 1:10:40
  And his speech was going to be about 20 minutes long about rah-rah America.
• 1:10:44
  But when he got up there, he couldn't deliver it. There was no podium.
• 1:10:47
  He's on the pile. And he tries to just grab a bullhorn and say something.
• 1:10:52
  And they said, we can't hear you. And his 20 minute speech went down to about
• 1:10:56
  33 seconds, the most powerful 33 seconds he's ever delivered.
• 1:11:01
  When he said, but I hear you and the people that knock down these buildings
• 1:11:05
  are going to hear from all of us.
• 1:11:06
  It rallied the world and
• 1:11:09
  it was just a moment in time that i'm
• 1:11:12
  sure he'll never forget but the world that america will never
• 1:11:15
  forget for sure right oh my
• 1:11:19
  goodness yeah i
• 1:11:21
  can hear you i can hear you the rest of the world hears you yeah
• 1:11:26
  and the people who knock down these towers are going to
• 1:11:29
  hear from us soon oh man and were
• 1:11:33
  you did you stay in washington for that i mean it seems like you
• 1:11:36
  were your own plate was washington okay yeah did you ever travel with the president
• 1:11:41
  at that point uh on the backup airplanes sometimes when you're doing advance
• 1:11:45
  work you'll go up there before him and make sure that's done but during this
• 1:11:50
  time i was still back at the white house when They flew him up to go get that speech.
• 1:11:56
  And did he go all the way up on HMX-1 or did they take a jet?
• 1:12:00
  They took a jet to JFK and flew him from JFK over to the country pad.
• 1:12:05
  Yeah. Man.
• 1:12:10
  But, you know, President Bush is just like you repeat. It's just like me.
• 1:12:14
  He gets nervous. He needs to be prepared. He studies.
• 1:12:17
  He goes to work every day trying to do a good job. This is a man who really
• 1:12:21
  put the time in to overcome any anxiety and to really do the best he can for all of us.
• 1:12:28
  We were proud to be that close to him and see him work as hard as he worked
• 1:12:33
  on behalf of all of us. Yeah.
• 1:12:37
  That's, that's fantastic. What a, what a, what a unique perspective you had
• 1:12:44
  to see that from an angle that nobody gets to see. Right.
• 1:12:48
  Not, not a lot of Marine majors running around chatting with the VP and the
• 1:12:52
  national security advisor.
• 1:12:54
  Answering phone calls from Putin.
• 1:12:57
  Yeah. You know what else that really affected me is when Vice President Cheney
• 1:13:01
  was given those orders, right? Those emotional orders to do that.
• 1:13:05
  His wife, Lynn, was down there. She wasn't at a table in the corner.
• 1:13:09
  She was standing right next to him, propping him up, whispering to him,
• 1:13:13
  do your job. Do what you need to do.
• 1:13:16
  Do what you think is right.
• 1:13:20
  Inspiring him or coaching him going, I know this is hard. I know this is heavy.
• 1:13:24
  I know that what you're doing is emotional.
• 1:13:27
  Do your job. And watching that power couple. she
• 1:13:30
  lifted him up so he could get moving forward it
• 1:13:34
  was it was a sight to see it goes
• 1:13:37
  back to where i talked i don't know if we had talked about it before we
• 1:13:40
  opened the show or right after it goes back to again the
• 1:13:43
  military wives who make this all possible it isn't
• 1:13:46
  just the military member the ones that hang
• 1:13:48
  in there for 33 years like years you know it's
• 1:13:52
  because it's it's an incredible
• 1:13:55
  personality that it takes to be constantly in the shadows and support somebody
• 1:14:02
  who is doing something important and realizing that that's something important
• 1:14:07
  wouldn't be getting done if you weren't there offering that support.
• 1:14:13
  It takes a special kind of person, and I'm deeply grateful to all the military
• 1:14:18
  spouses and then the sons and daughters who who, you know,
• 1:14:21
  give up birthdays and that sort of thing to their parents who are out there
• 1:14:26
  doing important stuff to keep this thing moving forward.
• 1:14:31
  Interesting. Was there ever a thought in anybody's mind that,
• 1:14:34
  you know, hey, the vice president can't do this?
• 1:14:37
  I think it was whispered, but nobody was going to bring that up.
• 1:14:42
  I don't like to die. Mr. Vice President?
• 1:14:46
  Hey, I hate to be a, you know, a wet blanket here.
• 1:14:50
  But so but
• 1:14:53
  it all came out and then you know he came out later and said the
• 1:14:56
  president gave him the authority to to do
• 1:14:59
  what he did but just so your listeners know that's not how presidential authority
• 1:15:04
  works you don't give it away to your closest friend when when you're right yeah
• 1:15:08
  that's something that can be transferred without you know the 25th amendment
• 1:15:12
  so right i'm going into surgery uh it's yours for a few hours and i'll be back you know yeah.
• 1:15:20
  Wow. He did what had to be done.
• 1:15:24
  And right or wrong, we were really proud of Vice President James.
• 1:15:28
  That's fantastic to hear. Oh, man.
• 1:15:31
  Well, you know what I think we ought to do, Fig, is I think we ought to land this airplane.
• 1:15:35
  But as we always try to give an extra, and this is our first show this year, I'd like to do an extra.
• 1:15:42
  So for those folks who have lost all sense
• 1:15:45
  of judgment and what's right and what's
• 1:15:48
  wrong and throw money at us hard-earned money to keep these shows coming to
• 1:15:52
  you we're deeply grateful and we're going to try to do an extra and what i would
• 1:15:56
  like to ask of you shyster is to spend three to five minutes with us and tell
• 1:16:01
  us about that fine call sign of yours shyster how'd you get it.
• 1:16:07
  I was still close I was so close there we go so we'll land an airplane here
• 1:16:14
  we'll do an extra and only the people who are Patreon supporters and direct
• 1:16:18
  owners to our website will get a chance to hear how the shyster became the shyster,
• 1:16:26
  very well yeah so in the meantime we've got a couple other quick thank yous
• 1:16:30
  we've got to get out Dave Hamilton over at backbeatmedia.com He handles all
• 1:16:34
  of our advertising for us, and we're deeply grateful to him.
• 1:16:37
  He also gave us the knowledge and the know-how how to put this show together.
• 1:16:42
  We've got to thank Sticks and Bago, both of them here tonight,
• 1:16:44
  helping produce the show.
• 1:16:46
  Sticks actually did some flying. One of the first few people flying after 9-11
• 1:16:52
  is a Coast Guardsman flying guys down to the White House to help get the country
• 1:16:58
  back in the air again, as it were.
• 1:17:02
  Bago, a fine Marine, helping support us with production work in the background.
• 1:17:06
  We're deeply grateful. We see badass BDS Aviation Photography here tonight.
• 1:17:11
  We're grateful to all the folks who are supporting us.
• 1:17:15
  Fig, help me out here. What other thank yous have I forgotten here?
• 1:17:18
  Because I'm just trying to – I haven't written it down tonight.
• 1:17:20
  I'm just doing it off my head.
• 1:17:22
  Dude, you're doing great. Keep going. Yeah, we got HSI Wealth Strategies, a sponsor tonight.
• 1:17:29
  We're deeply grateful to them. Hello, Fresh is back.
• 1:17:33
  Yeah. So, and I expect we'll probably hear again from AFTIRatings.com and probably
• 1:17:40
  Robin's Bird, Brain Designs.
• 1:17:43
  Hmm. Seems to me there's just one or two other people I might be forgetting.
• 1:17:48
  Well, we better say thank you to the Dos Gringos for letting us use their awesome music.
• 1:17:55
  Those are the two Air Force F-16 pilots that make them sound good in the Air Force, that is.
• 1:18:02
  They could have joined the military, but they joined the Air Force instead.
• 1:18:06
  It's down the hall. Down the hall. It's down the hall. They're down the hall.
• 1:18:11
  Might be a good fit. Right. Hey, go to stherowoves.us slash rate.
• 1:18:16
  Give us a five-star rating. If this show doesn't give us a five-star rating,
• 1:18:21
  you have lost your damn mind.
• 1:18:23
  Go do it right now. And while you're at it, share the show. Tell a friend.
• 1:18:29
  No, it doesn't at all.
• 1:18:31
  So, I don't know, Fig. What do you think? Oh, the merch store. Real quick.
• 1:18:35
  So, there it was, dot us slash merch. Go get yourself a bikini before spring rolls around.
• 1:18:40
  Get that body into bikini shape. Get yourself a bikini. Get yourself a beach
• 1:18:44
  towel or a coffee mug or a hat or a shirt, a hoodie.
• 1:18:49
  The hoodies are warm this time of year. Love mine. Yeah.
• 1:18:52
  Yeah. Shot glass. Yeah. In the meantime, I don't know.
• 1:18:59
  Helicopter Pilot here with us tonight. All I can say is, don't sit on the collective.
• 1:19:04
  Don't. Don't sit on the collective. Don't.
• 1:19:05
  Music.
• 1:19:12
  Don't. Well, there I was, crossing the pond, and you could see that I wasn't
• 1:19:18
  exactly fond of all the shit I was wearing on that day.
• 1:19:25
  Now an F-16 is cramped enough, But it's even worse With all that stuff supposed
• 1:19:31
  to save your life But we knew there was no way Because when you're going down
• 1:19:38
  the North Atlantic, man, it's over,
• 1:19:41
  Hold on, it's what, Fig?
• 1:19:44
  He said it's over Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room And we're out.