Latest / 6 Ranch Podcast / 7 Years of Deep Undercover with Luke Kennedy

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7 Years of Deep Undercover with Luke Kennedy · 6 Ranch Podcast

• 0:00
  James Nash: You know, everybody wants to be a special forces guy until they have to do what they do or train like they do, and you know it's.
• 0:07
  James Nash: I look at those guys and some of them are my friends currently and some people are just born for it.
• 0:15
  James Nash: Man, I mean, I was an intelligence guy, I worked with them, but I don't know if I could do as efficiently as they are, as some people are, who are just like able to focus on the mission and live that, and that's what probably helped me the most when I got out.
• 0:37
  Luke Kennedy: These are stories of outdoor adventure and expert advice from folks with calloused hands.
• 0:50
  Luke Kennedy: I'm James Nash and this is the Six Ranch podcast.
• 0:54
  Luke Kennedy: Four years ago, I bought a new truck for the first time ever and I was so excited.
• 1:10
  Luke Kennedy: It was incredible.
• 1:12
  Luke Kennedy: It smelled good, it felt good.
• 1:14
  Luke Kennedy: I wasn't constantly afraid of breaking down, you know, it was awesome.
• 1:18
  Luke Kennedy: But after I drove it for a couple of weeks I do the same thing that I always do and the backseat started it just started to fill up with stuff.
• 1:26
  Luke Kennedy: You know I'm guiding elk hunters and deer hunters and I'm duck hunting and I'm fly fishing and all that gear just accumulates and pretty soon I wasn't able to take people with me anymore and I was embarrassed.
• 1:38
  Luke Kennedy: You know People would ask for a ride and like no sorry man, I've got too much stuff with me, but I couldn't put it in the bed because then it gets damaged by weather.
• 1:45
  Luke Kennedy: So I go to the internet and I'm looking for options and I ended up buying a deck to drawer system.
• 1:50
  Luke Kennedy: Now, this was a big purchase for me, but it's something that I felt like I needed and it looked like it was gonna be a good product and it really was.
• 2:02
  Luke Kennedy: Debt came out with a new drawer system this year and they've made some meaningful improvements over the previous one.
• 2:09
  Luke Kennedy: You have almost no wasted space in your truck bed now so you can access the sides of the drawers.
• 2:15
  Luke Kennedy: And then the drawers roll a full 18 inches farther out so you can actually access the back of the drawer even if you don't have a lot of arm reach.
• 2:23
  Luke Kennedy: There's some really strong tie down points on top.
• 2:25
  Luke Kennedy: They have a 400 pound load rating.
• 2:27
  Luke Kennedy: So if you're gonna haul something like a motorcycle or big coolers or whatever, you can really strap your gear down and make it secure.
• 2:34
  Luke Kennedy: You can lock these drawer systems so you can lock the drawers.
• 2:38
  Luke Kennedy: Or if your tailgate locks, then nobody can access the drawers anyways.
• 2:43
  Luke Kennedy: So I actually feel like my stuff is more secure inside this drawer system than in the cab of my truck.
• 2:49
  Luke Kennedy: That's a big deal to me.
• 2:51
  Luke Kennedy: The complete deck system is made in America by Americans, and you know that that's something that I love and appreciate.
• 2:59
  Luke Kennedy: They've got one that will fit in any truck or van that's been made in America in the last 20 years.
• 3:05
  Luke Kennedy: Plus you can go to deckedcom slash six ranch and get free shipping.
• 3:12
  Luke Kennedy: But just being honest with you, they get free shipping to everybody.
• 3:16
  Luke Kennedy: I also.
• 3:17
  Luke Kennedy: While you're there, I want you to check out their deco line.
• 3:20
  Luke Kennedy: So they've got a bunch of different boxes and storage containers that either fit on top of or inside of the drawer system and those are built really robust.
• 3:30
  Luke Kennedy: I saw the prototypes at an event this summer.
• 3:32
  Luke Kennedy: I'm impressed.
• 3:33
  Luke Kennedy: I'm excited to get my hands on them.
• 3:35
  Luke Kennedy: I haven't yet, but the prototypes were super badass and the ones that are in production model they're available now over at deckedcom.
• 3:44
  Luke Kennedy: So even if you just need a place for some tools or you need a new bow case or something along those lines, go check that out.
• 3:52
  Luke Kennedy: And if you're driving around right now and your back seat is just full of gear and you can't haul people around, maybe you should consider looking at the full deck drawer system, because it's a good piece of gear.
• 4:03
  Luke Kennedy: It was a good purchase for me and I hope it helps you.
• 4:06
  Luke Kennedy: Hello everybody and welcome back.
• 4:08
  Luke Kennedy: Today I've got a very special guest and we're recording this remotely, which I don't typically do, but you're gonna understand really quickly why that is and I think that you're really going to enjoy this conversation, because my guest today is one of the most incredible people that I've ever had the privilege of talking to.
• 4:25
  Luke Kennedy: Also in the middle of the show you're gonna be hearing from Christy Marshall.
• 4:30
  Luke Kennedy: Christy's 15 years old and she did a wildlife bio-shoot piece that she's going to be doing as a guest in the middle of the show, so hang out for that Without further ado.
• 4:39
  Luke Kennedy: Welcome to the show, mr Luke Kennedy.
• 4:45
  Luke Kennedy: Such an honor to have you here.
• 4:47
  James Nash: Thank you, I mean, I don't think I really didn't think I was worthy of your time, but thank you so much.
• 4:52
  James Nash: It's very humbling to be your guest and it's privilege is all mine.
• 4:59
  James Nash: Truly, Thank you.
• 5:00
  Luke Kennedy: Dude, you've got you've got an incredible story, and the more I think about it, the more I feel like you are multiple people in the same life, and what a privilege that really is, because, regardless of what anybody believes, what we know for sure is that we at least get this one life, and you've got to spread yours in so many different directions, with just flatitudes of I don't know, just flatitudes Like.
• 5:32
  Luke Kennedy: You've got incredible depth in your experiences and what you've been able to contribute, not only to our own country, but to others as well.
• 5:40
  Luke Kennedy: Can't wait to get into it.
• 5:42
  Luke Kennedy: Where I would like to start, though, is with water polo, like because that's a crazy sport.
• 5:49
  Luke Kennedy: That's a sport that a lot of people they only interact with about every four years.
• 5:54
  Luke Kennedy: They see it on the Olympics and they go, wow, that's kind of crazy.
• 5:56
  Luke Kennedy: I wonder how they do that and they go, wow, that's kind of crazy.
• 5:59
  Luke Kennedy: I wonder how this ever came to be, but I'm curious.
• 6:04
  Luke Kennedy: It's the first team sport at the Olympics.
• 6:05
  Luke Kennedy: It was, it was the first team sport at the Olympics.
• 6:08
  Luke Kennedy: That's amazing.
• 6:11
  Luke Kennedy: So how old is water polo?
• 6:12
  Luke Kennedy: Where did this get its start?
• 6:16
  James Nash: It's kind of a funny story because technically the Brits invented it because they're sailors, right, and it's been played with pig intestines and then sheepskin balls and then the soccer ball, but then it got spread out with all the sailors around the world that worked for the great India and all these companies, that all the sailors around the world.
• 6:43
  James Nash: So it's kind of like it's got spread by the naval silk express, if you will, and mostly for whatever reason.
• 6:51
  James Nash: Man, I mean, the country that has been the strongest in water polo is the country that has no shores whatsoever.
• 7:01
  James Nash: Hungary owns water polo.
• 7:04
  James Nash: They're everything.
• 7:07
  James Nash: I mean you can go to Hungary and water polo will be on TV and their players will be gods.
• 7:15
  James Nash: They're pools and everything else very little.
• 7:17
  James Nash: So all those Eastern European countries, mediterranean countries, the most Yugoslavia, ex-yugoslavia and every faction of that part just became huge and Greeks, but all the Mediterranean countries are very, very involved in it We've talked about this before, but the stresses that a human endures when they're in water polo that a human endures when they can't breathe, are unlike just about any other.
• 7:50
  Luke Kennedy: So we can go for a long time without sleep, but that's a great way to stress people out is to keep them from sleeping.
• 7:58
  Luke Kennedy: We go quite a while without eating, but that's another way to cause stress.
• 8:02
  Luke Kennedy: We can go several days without drinking any water but without breathing.
• 8:07
  Luke Kennedy: That clock runs down really quickly.
• 8:09
  Luke Kennedy: And then if you add stress on top of that time, like if you're just laying in a pool and your face is in the water, most people can get north of three minutes with a little bit of training relatively quickly, Like in the first few days of practice, they could probably get there.
• 8:27
  Luke Kennedy: But if you start stressing them out while they can't breathe, that's gonna get down to that 20 second, 30 second time frame really quickly.
• 8:35
  Luke Kennedy: So I think being able to control your body while you can't breathe and while you're exerting yourself gives you a control over who you are that almost nothing else can do.
• 8:51
  James Nash: I mean absolutely.
• 8:51
  James Nash: Yes.
• 8:52
  James Nash: I couldn't agree more and I think most of the I mean I promised myself I wouldn't give them that much credit, but here we are, seals, the way that some of their evolutions are.
• 9:06
  James Nash: It's truly humbling to see that they teach themselves and they have the drawn proofing where they're completely tied down and it's just that element of mind over body completely.
• 9:21
  James Nash: And when you stress your water it becomes survival, much faster than just any pain that you have when you run or I don't know if you do pushups.
• 9:33
  James Nash: The lactic acid is much different pain than being without oxygen.
• 9:39
  Luke Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, and really exerting yourself hard, like that's crazy, but you played it at a really high level.
• 9:48
  Luke Kennedy: So tell me a little bit about your water polo career, that which you can.
• 9:53
  James Nash: Sure, of course I played.
• 9:54
  James Nash: I started when I was young, the partial grief parts of my family.
• 10:01
  James Nash: It's a national sport from that part where my mom is from and it's just it's been something that you played, there's nothing else.
• 10:10
  James Nash: There's no soccer field, there's no basketball field.
• 10:12
  James Nash: It's funny and it's really timing.
• 10:15
  James Nash: There was a gentleman that plays for Kansas City, whose father and I forget his name, and I should, as a fellow Greek, but he's in the Super Bowl and he played water polo all the way until he moved to United States and now he's a Super Bowl and he gives a lot of intel of how you can catch the ball.
• 10:38
  James Nash: It's always one hand.
• 10:39
  James Nash: And it's funny to me when people say how you, you have to be super coordinated to play basketball.
• 10:46
  James Nash: You try having a dude yank it on you and get that ball.
• 10:49
  James Nash: That's coordination, man.
• 10:53
  Luke Kennedy: Tell me a little bit about your water polo career.
• 10:56
  James Nash: That's what we're talking about.
• 10:57
  Luke Kennedy: So you started at a super young age.
• 11:00
  James Nash: Yeah, I started at a very young age and I think, well, I was a swimmer.
• 11:04
  James Nash: I started swimming and with my little anger management issues as a little kid, as a young boy, I did not compute that people who are swimming with you in the same lane that their waves are normal, so I always thought they were making waves to offset my swimming.
• 11:23
  James Nash: So I started jumping on them and the coach realized I think water polo is for you, my friend.
• 11:29
  James Nash: So as he pulled me back and put me in a water polo practice, I got punched in the face that first practice and I said this is it, this is where I belong.
• 11:37
  James Nash: So that's how I started.
• 11:39
  James Nash: I played high school all throughout State finals, state championship Division I, ncaa finals, third place.
• 11:49
  James Nash: And then after that I got up to the Olympic trials, Olympic squad European championships two of them won in Greece and one in Italy and got injured, came back home, lived the dream as an investment banker for a little bit and after that joined the Chicago Police Department, transferred to California Highway Patrol this is kind of executive summary at this point and then from there I got recruited by the Bureau and the rest is, I guess, history.
• 12:28
  Luke Kennedy: Now you've operated in war zones all over the world.
• 12:30
  Luke Kennedy: How does the war zone of, say, Iraq compare to that of Chicago?
• 12:40
  James Nash: Yeah, is that?
• 12:42
  Luke Kennedy: even a fair question to ask.
• 12:43
  Luke Kennedy: I never know what to trust when I see on the news, but what I see looks bad.
• 12:47
  Luke Kennedy: I see a holiday weekend where there's 30 or 40 or 50 people who get shot and go through the emergency rooms in Chicago Like that would be an incredible day of fighting in Afghanistan.
• 13:01
  Luke Kennedy: Something that I frankly never saw were that many people getting shot in a day, so it seems like a lot, but you were in it as Chicago PD, so what was that like?
• 13:16
  James Nash: Well, prior to that, I'll just give you a little fact.
• 13:18
  James Nash: That's almost scary, but it's just the fact of life, of living in Chicago, living in Chicago in your time, during your time of Afghanistan, every single medic, no matter what branch, no matter what rank, has been prepared and trained in Chicago's Sight Night Hospital because there is never shortage, ever shortage, of any caliber possible.
• 13:50
  James Nash: They can get Bullet ones, so 22s, 9s, 556s, everything in between.
• 13:59
  James Nash: I mean they loved Dracos, but it's just that they, every single military deployed medical personnel, has been trained in Chicago's Sight Night.
• 14:12
  James Nash: Because there was never shortage of gunshot wounds.
• 14:17
  James Nash: And as a Chicago police officer, I've been in more gunfights in Chicago than I did in Afghanistan, and that's a fact.
• 14:25
  James Nash: I mean I kind of wear it with kind of badge of honor, but on my third day in Chicago I was in a lethal gunfight that I did not have to do in Afghanistan.
• 14:43
  James Nash: And even the gunfights later on that I've been in have never been in such a close proximity and never, I mean, we were almost ambushed as a Chicago uniform police officers and that's a daily thing.
• 14:58
  James Nash: I mean it's the.
• 14:59
  James Nash: You know one thing that doesn't really happen in Afghanistan all the time is we were not, I guess, base and forward observation bases were, you know, bombed and murdered and murdered.
• 15:16
  James Nash: But Chicago, I mean you are a cop, you are a target all the time.
• 15:20
  James Nash: I mean you are a target just like everybody else.
• 15:24
  James Nash: And then you know it's difficult to be in a place such as Afghanistan, where you're going to, you know secure the rights and you're going to win.
• 15:39
  James Nash: You know hearts and minds.
• 15:41
  James Nash: And you come home and it's worse and that's something that I struggled with when I was leaving and I mean when I would come back.
• 15:50
  James Nash: It's just.
• 15:50
  James Nash: It's just.
• 15:51
  James Nash: It's a different understanding of what freedom is and how people don't value it back home as much and it's kind of almost like a it's not a treasure thing anymore.
• 16:04
  Luke Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:05
  Luke Kennedy: I even saw something recently where there was a gunfight in Chicago and nobody was charged because they just declared it as mutual combat, whatever that is.
• 16:14
  Luke Kennedy: And that's wild times, that's wild, that's wild west stuff, but it's right now.
• 16:21
  James Nash: So yeah, and so, and also a fact I mean I was a federal agent, so I kind of understand how this goes Chicago will report death and or woundings if the accident happened in Chicago and ended in Chicago.
• 16:39
  James Nash: So if they got in a fight in Chicago and they went to a hospital nearby suburb no data.
• 16:47
  James Nash: If they fought in suburbs, which is not that difficult in Chicago area, then you come to Chicago Hospital no data.
• 16:53
  James Nash: The police report doesn't.
• 16:55
  James Nash: So it's just you can I mean you can be your own, you know, you can make your own speculations of how much that is.
• 17:05
  Luke Kennedy: So bottom line, it's not going well in Chicago.
• 17:08
  Luke Kennedy: Then that moves you to.
• 17:12
  Luke Kennedy: I'm glad you won your gunfight, by the way.
• 17:13
  Luke Kennedy: I would like to congratulate you on that, thank you.
• 17:16
  Luke Kennedy: And then then you move on to California, and that was California Highway.
• 17:25
  Luke Kennedy: Yes, sir, okay, but they realized really quickly, because you're you're acumen with language, that you are going to be undervalued there.
• 17:35
  Luke Kennedy: How many languages do you speak?
• 17:38
  James Nash: Well, to just give a little caveat, everybody well most personnel in in on California Highway Patrol is bilingual, or at least understands it a little bit.
• 17:48
  James Nash: So in order to get paid for anything more at my time, during my time, you had to be certified as a federal translator or you could be asset to a translator to any of the agencies or task forces.
• 18:02
  James Nash: So I went to sign up to be certified for Turkish at the time, turkish, russian, greek and Bosnian, serbian, creation, all those and during that process they kind of said, well, would you like to be a FBI agent?
• 18:22
  James Nash: I mean, they, you know, we can kind of transfer you around and it was.
• 18:27
  James Nash: It kind of was an offer that I could not refuse at the time.
• 18:32
  James Nash: I wasn't going to wake up with any you know horses in my bed, but I was.
• 18:35
  James Nash: Just the offer they made was very lucrative at the time and this is 2009-10.
• 18:40
  James Nash: You have to also kind of get into my space.
• 18:43
  James Nash: Prior to that, I was an investment banker in Chicago and I didn't see a future.
• 18:49
  James Nash: I mean, if you remember 2008-9-10, economy was in such a place that you, you really had to kind of think really, really, really in advance of what you're going to do what you're going to buy?
• 19:02
  James Nash: Where can you live?
• 19:03
  James Nash: So, knowing what federal agency could provide, I went there.
• 19:11
  Luke Kennedy: Yeah, I graduated college in 2009, and I was already going into the Marines.
• 19:16
  Luke Kennedy: I had a plan, I had a job, but for a lot of the kids in my class, man, they were hosed.
• 19:21
  Luke Kennedy: It did not look good for them at all, like they're.
• 19:25
  Luke Kennedy: The job market was just nothing, and especially in something like investment banking with you know the way people were viewing hedge funds and everything else at the time like that, that seems like a dead end street.
• 19:37
  Luke Kennedy: So you get picked up by the FBI and, by the way, these language tests folks are incredibly difficult.
• 19:45
  Luke Kennedy: I'm fluent in Norwegian because I lived in Norway for a year.
• 19:48
  Luke Kennedy: I say fluent, but when I went to take this test that you're talking about for the Marines so that I can make a little bit of extra money, when I got to that fourth level, what I had to do was listen to radio conversations, so I couldn't see people's lips moving.
• 20:04
  Luke Kennedy: I had to listen to radio conversations and they were like talk shows where they were talking about recent politics, and I hadn't lived there for a decade at this time and I failed that completely.
• 20:17
  Luke Kennedy: So I only made it to level three, where I could conversationally just crush it.
• 20:22
  Luke Kennedy: I could go anywhere in Norway and understand everything and make myself understood no big deal and I felt like I was fluent, but when it got to that stage, buddy, it's really hard.
• 20:31
  Luke Kennedy: So if you make it to that level four, that means that you are like a natural language speaker, where you may not even have an accent in that country and can just completely blend in.
• 20:42
  James Nash: Yeah, I got all my just I am.
• 20:46
  James Nash: I understand a lot by DOD standards and by DOJ standards so I could hold the conversation and or listen ease drop at nine online.
• 20:56
  James Nash: But six is where I got four, so I'm ranked four as a native speaker in six of them, which includes writing and reading.
• 21:06
  Luke Kennedy: Wow, Good job.
• 21:08
  Luke Kennedy: That's incredible.
• 21:09
  Luke Kennedy: Okay, so currently we have somebody who is one of the best water polo players in the world, who becomes an investment banker, who gets in a shootout in Chicago, wins the shootout and then goes to California and then gets picked up by the FBI.
• 21:25
  Luke Kennedy: Dod DOJ, which now moves you to the meat of what we want to talk about, which is ending up with you acting as a deep undercover officer.
• 21:38
  Luke Kennedy: Is that the correct word?
• 21:40
  James Nash: Sure, I mean, there's certain, and actually I really want to clarify this yeah, fbi has agents and analysts are nothing and or officers are nothing.
• 21:53
  James Nash: And CIA has officers who are an analyst for everything and agents are nothing Gotcha.
• 22:03
  James Nash: So it's kind of you know.
• 22:06
  James Nash: People always say, well, are you an agent or your CIA spy or a secret agent?
• 22:09
  James Nash: Well, you know, and you know, there's a lot of other members of our or my community, of our community, who come out and give out, you know, certain spills and stories.
• 22:19
  James Nash: It's just you are.
• 22:21
  James Nash: There's no one on this planet who really is a deep undercover who can tell you I'm a spy, all right, I'm working undercover.
• 22:29
  James Nash: I can tell you why.
• 22:31
  James Nash: Right, once you go undercover, you assume that legend and that's it, man.
• 22:36
  James Nash: I mean, you don't even know what you.
• 22:38
  James Nash: You know you become whoever the fuck they tell you that you are at that time.
• 22:42
  James Nash: So if you become a Mickey Mouse, you're a Mickey Mouse.
• 22:45
  James Nash: You're not a secret Mickey Mouse, you're not.
• 22:48
  James Nash: You know you don't identify as Mickey Mouse.
• 22:50
  James Nash: You are the Mickey Mouse and the other one is the fake one.
• 22:53
  James Nash: I mean, that's how you have to operate.
• 22:54
  James Nash: So, with that being said, I was.
• 23:00
  James Nash: And also to the second caveat just so people can kind of understand every crime that begins and or results in within the US territory is under federal bureau of investigations jurisdiction.
• 23:17
  James Nash: So if it begins, if it's planned in Chicago but it happened in Spain, fbi will be on it to make sure what that bridge was, who funded it here, all that stuff.
• 23:29
  James Nash: But it becomes an FBI thing If it began in Spain and Barcelona and that dude or ladies or whomever flies to Chicago and does it.
• 23:40
  James Nash: It's still an FBI jurisdiction to go to Spain and do whatever they have to do to put it together.
• 23:46
  James Nash: So it's either it begins or ends, or both.
• 23:49
  James Nash: If it's none of those, then the agency, the CIA, has more I don't see a jurisdiction because they don't technically, but they have more leeway of having more access to funds and or assets necessary to investigate, hence it's intelligence agency at that point.
• 24:11
  James Nash: So, with that being said, my job at that time was or the way that I got in one I spoke Russian and I wrote.
• 24:19
  James Nash: I was able to speak, read and write Russian, which, funny enough, prior to us being in Afghanistan, it was Russians.
• 24:26
  James Nash: So they had this oldest maps, or old dated but factual maps that they fought on, and at that time, if you remember, we were in good terms with Russia, we weren't on the bad terms.
• 24:39
  James Nash: So I would meet up with the most old school, your Ivan Drago, dad, kgb agents and review their maps and then make that package available to our intelligence and then we will triangulate on what we had from before, what they had before.
• 25:04
  James Nash: What has it evolved?
• 25:05
  James Nash: Has it moved?
• 25:06
  James Nash: Are Russian trying to mess with us?
• 25:08
  James Nash: Are we not having as detail as they did, or is it perfect and funny enough?
• 25:14
  James Nash: I mean, russia got me to Afghanistan, yeah, but when I was in Iraq, I was put in to operate within refugee camps.
• 25:26
  James Nash: There were, there were, there were people you know, it's also a thing that's happening in Gaza now but a lot of people, a lot of Americans, everybody, I mean my family included.
• 25:38
  James Nash: I know nobody's really doing on purpose, but people are really oblivious of how many refugees and how those refugees work and how many they are per little cities.
• 25:51
  James Nash: I mean, you know, if you live in a city of 100,000, and you have a football field and you go to a football game, those bathrooms are trashed by the end of that day.
• 26:04
  James Nash: Now, imagine those people that have to live in that football field, living there for two, three years.
• 26:11
  James Nash: Yeah, I mean you've seen the lines for the food.
• 26:14
  James Nash: I mean that's just super easy to kind of put into perspective.
• 26:18
  James Nash: You just go to anything basketball, it doesn't matter.
• 26:20
  James Nash: You know they don't get much space, you know they got as much as a blanket and there's food lines, there's all the personal when data they have in between.
• 26:31
  James Nash: So you know, even though they're refugees now, the beef sort of say they had from prior still exists.
• 26:37
  James Nash: So they kind of there's this oldest criminal aspect in this now eco chambered and kind of combusted places so they cannot leave for their security reasons, or what are security reasons.
• 26:49
  James Nash: And so what happens is there's a lot of vulnerable youth.
• 26:55
  James Nash: There was a lot of anger.
• 26:57
  James Nash: There was a lot of anger of anybody men, women, everybody who either is really hating the position they're in or they're really trying to understand why they got in there, how they can resolve it.
• 27:16
  James Nash: So it's a best place to radicalize anybody for good or bad.
• 27:22
  James Nash: So my job was to operate in Iraq within the refugee camps to operate English schools.
• 27:29
  James Nash: As a plate by UN they were kind of to give these refugees who have no place to go back.
• 27:37
  James Nash: So there's immigrants and there's refugees.
• 27:39
  James Nash: People who become refugees, really don't have place to go back anymore or for a longer time.
• 27:45
  James Nash: So by Geneva Convention you need to kind of it's like an arrest, like when you arrest somebody you are responsible for them.
• 27:55
  James Nash: So when you have a refugee, you are responsible for them, for all their.
• 28:01
  James Nash: There's a big difference between immigrants and refugees that people should look into I don't get too much into here but to make them better citizens of future and to make their assimilation easier.
• 28:14
  James Nash: Every camp has a school English, french, german, norwegian and I ran English schools 14 of them by the end of my career where my job was to identify who was vulnerable, who I thought was vulnerable for two aspects One for us, if they were kind of hating their government and they were more favorable to what we can do.
• 28:46
  James Nash: So those people would be able to explain the situation to me better, culturally of what's happening amongst them, not really to work for us, but it just to give me intel that I can package it and send it forward.
• 28:59
  James Nash: And then also people who are really angry and blaming the Americans then, who are vulnerable to the groups that will use that against us.
• 29:10
  James Nash: So one and then identify who were the groups and individuals who come to do such things or who are the recruiters, so to say, and then make that package available to interested parts.
• 29:25
  Luke Kennedy: And to an extent that's what we do here.
• 29:26
  Luke Kennedy: So if somebody was to get a top secret security clearance who was working for DOD DOJ, whatever NCIS would send investigators back to their community to talk to everybody who'd been involved in their lives.
• 29:44
  Luke Kennedy: So, like when I got my security clearance, they talked to my teachers, they talked to coaches, they talked to everybody.
• 29:50
  Luke Kennedy: They look really closely.
• 29:52
  James Nash: That's girlfriend, man, that was the worst.
• 29:55
  Luke Kennedy: Yeah, they look really closely at your financial records and the reason that they do that they want to see if you have a bunch of debt and it's not like, oh, this person is financially irresponsible so we can't trust them with secrets.
• 30:08
  Luke Kennedy: It's oh, do you owe $60,000 on a credit card?
• 30:12
  Luke Kennedy: If somebody comes in and says, hey, I'll take care of that for you, if you just provide me this piece of information, well then that person is vulnerable, right, and that's exactly what you're looking at there, just with different triggers.
• 30:25
  Luke Kennedy: Just with different triggers than what we would look at here.
• 30:28
  Luke Kennedy: So you don't want to have a way that somebody can get a lever underneath of you, and if you do, then we're going to probably not give you that security clearance until that's taken care of, sure?
• 30:43
  James Nash: or not at all because it's too deep.
• 30:45
  Luke Kennedy: Right, right, but just to provide a little bit of continuity for the way things actually get thrown around, because the stuff that we're talking about with special warfare, with DOD DOJ, fbi, cia, most of what people actually interact with that is just garbage that comes across in movies.
• 31:11
  Luke Kennedy: That is incredibly inaccurate, and the same thing with security clearances.
• 31:15
  Luke Kennedy: So we're just trying to bring that back down to ground level to talk about what it actually looks like.
• 31:21
  James Nash: Sure, absolutely, and that's 100% exactly the same across every agency there is.
• 31:26
  James Nash: It's you know.
• 31:29
  James Nash: They interview you for a reason and then they do a background check one to see if you are who you said you are, and two to see if there's anything that you either omitted and or missed to your advantage or disadvantage.
• 31:45
  James Nash: It's really you never kind of know why they ask questions.
• 31:48
  James Nash: They do.
• 31:49
  Luke Kennedy: Yeah, ok, tell me about the Taliban financier.
• 31:58
  Luke Kennedy: This is a heartbreaking story.
• 32:01
  James Nash: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:02
  James Nash: So again, you know, I want to paint a picture for everybody as a veteran, as somebody who's been through it and who's signed up truly with intentions, of Captain America.
• 32:18
  James Nash: So I didn't go in with any romantic illusions of you know, maybe they're good or maybe they're bad or they're all bad.
• 32:28
  James Nash: I mean I went in to make sure that nothing comes back to United States.
• 32:35
  James Nash: I mean my job, I took it extremely seriously for seven years was I was devoted to eliminate anyone who was trying to come to United States and do anything wrong.
• 32:48
  James Nash: It didn't matter to me.
• 32:50
  James Nash: I mean, I went in with you know that, like a mission, it's just like 9-11 never again over my dead body and I'm going to stop it, no matter where, no matter how.
• 33:01
  James Nash: So during working at the camps I was, this was in Afghanistan.
• 33:09
  James Nash: So this is not the first four years.
• 33:11
  James Nash: This is the last of the three years that I lived there.
• 33:16
  James Nash: I had a student who comes from the mountains and comes to the school.
• 33:22
  James Nash: I'm sorry he came to the school I had access because it's kind of like a jurisdiction, like I could go and ask the indigenous people do you need help?
• 33:37
  James Nash: Would you like to learn how to I mean, blow glass, all these things that we want to kind of bring that to them, enrich their lives and also, you know, weighing in minds and hearts.
• 33:48
  James Nash: That was the only thing that we had to do at the time.
• 33:50
  James Nash: And I was asked to scout a person.
• 33:57
  James Nash: He was a shepherd, a herd, he had a lot of sheeps, four kids, he had a brother and he lived in a top of a mountain and in the middle of this mountain was a clam or a sect that was not aligned with his people and his people were all like high, they're like highlanders, they're all other tops, just his families.
• 34:25
  James Nash: But this specific crowd right here just did not like him for their own territory, wars, like, because he would bring his sheep down and they wouldn't like it and it's, I guess, petty, but that's just politics of their everyday life.
• 34:41
  James Nash: And then the town where everything was happening, meaning that the sales and, you know, the bazaar, was below this specific crowd and there was only one road to go up and down and my job was to make sure how many sheeps he has, how many visitors he has, who are his visitors, and or if I could recruit his kids to come to our school, which will then, at that time show because Afghanistan is a conservative place, it's just.
• 35:18
  James Nash: You know, if they will allow their kids to go anywhere, you will understand that they're conservative, but less.
• 35:25
  James Nash: They're all conservative.
• 35:27
  James Nash: There's no liberal Afghan, but this is just a less of a I guess more open-minded.
• 35:34
  James Nash: And I went and approached them and I said you know, we have a school.
• 35:37
  James Nash: I would love for your kids to come there was.
• 35:40
  James Nash: You know, if there's any lessons that you don't want them to be in, that's free of choice.
• 35:45
  James Nash: If you don't want your or your brother's daughters to like walk with men, that's not a problem.
• 35:51
  James Nash: It's divided, segregated that way.
• 35:54
  James Nash: And to my surprise, he was extremely willing, said no problem.
• 35:57
  James Nash: So for I watched him for 67 days and every Friday he would sacrifice a sheep and come, send it with his brother to the camp and feed.
• 36:11
  James Nash: I mean whatever meat will suffice, we will feed everybody and he will leave.
• 36:17
  James Nash: You know the post.
• 36:17
  James Nash: And I mean it was just this regular man, I mean no different than my father If I went to school and he was a butcher, sending me to feed us in time of war like nothing, prayed five times a week, I mean five times a day, the reason why I had to count his sheep is it's, it's that's his kind of bank account.
• 36:42
  James Nash: So the sheep account never went anywhere else, up or down, like so that means that he wasn't doing any illicit business or paying anything that wasn't being sold where it was.
• 36:52
  James Nash: So the only problem that there was and it was in my package that the logistics guy that goes between his top of the mountain and now to Bazar also was known to carry Taliban stuff.
• 37:08
  James Nash: He wasn't Taliban himself, but he was Taliban friendly enough that they will hire him to transport their stuff.
• 37:17
  James Nash: So in a way he was kind of a fanboy who kind of greased around to do a lot more business because nobody could mess with him because he was Taliban but he wasn't.
• 37:29
  James Nash: So that's the only way that the sheep from the top of the mountain will go down from this praying dude that in 67 days I couldn't notice anything wrong.
• 37:42
  James Nash: Who on Fridays will send food to feed complete strangers?
• 37:46
  James Nash: Had I mean Afghans all have weapons on site, but nothing crazy that I could.
• 37:54
  James Nash: You know I would be suspicious and you know, at that time I'm already, I'm already better enough to kind of realize what's going on if I'm being set up and not, and just one of those days, the direct action people showed up and they were just like hey, man, we need you to identify someone to Bazar with us and I'll be.
• 38:15
  James Nash: You know it's just it's us.
• 38:17
  James Nash: So no problem.
• 38:19
  James Nash: I mean, once direct action shows up, you know it's it's.
• 38:22
  James Nash: You know that's why.
• 38:23
  James Nash: I mean, that's truly what I'm there for and I am an extension of the existence and I am their limb.
• 38:29
  James Nash: So just kind of go in.
• 38:32
  Luke Kennedy: And for those who don't know what is direct action.
• 38:36
  James Nash: Direct action is, at that time, killer, capture.
• 38:40
  James Nash: You know the special forces guys, seals, sometimes Delta.
• 38:45
  James Nash: So it's just they are.
• 38:48
  James Nash: They come from direct orders from either Pentagon or or CIO, whoever, with a mission to be finished then and there, they're not really in there to manipulate anything.
• 39:04
  James Nash: They had the intel, they, they practice for so long they go through everything and when they show up they're going to execute.
• 39:15
  James Nash: There is there is no mission fail with those guys.
• 39:18
  James Nash: So when they show up, it's just like whatever that they're for is going to happen, rather, whether you want it or they want it or it's happening, I mean it's.
• 39:25
  James Nash: There is no stopping that at that point, right?
• 39:28
  James Nash: So when they show up, I you know he wasn't my only target, so I was just going to like let's see if the citizens might be fun.
• 39:41
  James Nash: And when they showed, when we got in and they showed I mean I was scope I saw the guy.
• 39:45
  James Nash: I said what is this for?
• 39:47
  James Nash: And they said, well, man, he's a.
• 39:50
  James Nash: I mean, at this point, you know this is the guy, you know, you do, you know, but this doesn't make any sense.
• 39:57
  James Nash: This makes no sense, like none.
• 40:00
  James Nash: I mean, if you guys need to talk to this guy, you need something I have.
• 40:04
  James Nash: I mean, I can walk there right now and speak with him and they just plain said he is a Taliban finance here.
• 40:12
  James Nash: And I couldn't, it's not.
• 40:17
  James Nash: It's just not possible.
• 40:18
  James Nash: And I know for a fact I'm the only one where I thought I was the only one, but then I realized this guy is indirectly financing Taliban by employing logistics guys.
• 40:34
  James Nash: So it's no different than us.
• 40:35
  James Nash: You know, I hired in your trucker from West Virginia to like send something from Virginia to you and that guy being a, you know, clan member, and all of a sudden me or you being accused of being a clan members, right, or even worse, financiers, and at that moment he didn't make you back.
• 40:58
  James Nash: I am Torairs very good.
• 41:04
  James Nash: Yes, I'm a father today, man, and it's so difficult for me, you know, just like I do nothing wrong, you know, I have a business, I do charity.
• 41:15
  James Nash: I have, you know, friends, families, and this dude prayed five times a day.
• 41:27
  James Nash: Man, I mean, he lived within the structured environment that he was born, raised and lived.
• 41:33
  James Nash: He believed in his God, our God, one God.
• 41:37
  James Nash: It doesn't matter, this is not his or my God, it's just like he was a devoted believer, a businessman, a local man, a giving man and gone, just like that.
• 41:50
  James Nash: Right, and it is, and I carry the guilt of did I?
• 41:59
  James Nash: You know, it's a man I always think maybe I put wrong explanation or maybe I didn't explain enough, or maybe you know it's difficult to live with this that you know.
• 42:21
  James Nash: Wait, I had his life, man, I mean, it's just like.
• 42:24
  James Nash: It's just like you know my nickname I'm on direct action People was you know, I don't like it, but was Angel of Death.
• 42:33
  James Nash: Because it's just like you live with this authority over people's life.
• 42:39
  James Nash: That's manmade man.
• 42:41
  James Nash: I mean, it's just like you know, I identify or don't identify through a scope Someone who either lives or doesn't live.
• 42:49
  James Nash: I didn't even know, I mean, when I said that's him.
• 42:51
  James Nash: It could have been.
• 42:52
  James Nash: There was a spirit of life.
• 42:53
  James Nash: So it's not every time that direct action shows that they take somebody out.
• 42:57
  James Nash: You identify him and they start following him because they know that he's and I need somebody else who they need.
• 43:04
  James Nash: So it's just like it's not really.
• 43:06
  James Nash: You know they show up and you point that guy and he's dead.
• 43:11
  James Nash: But it's just being on that scope and like watching a man that I just watched for 67 days and pure, pure man, like did he die for him?
• 43:23
  James Nash: Nothing, I don't know.
• 43:24
  James Nash: I like to believe that I wasn't the only one watching him and that they had different intel.
• 43:33
  James Nash: And I live with the guilt that what if my package let somebody to misunderstand what I wrote and take that guy out just because I didn't do good enough job of explaining what that was and what that wasn't?
• 43:49
  James Nash: And he always had?
• 43:55
  Luke Kennedy: It's a it's a tough thing to be the one to decide who dies right, and you know I had, I had my my fair share of that as well, and you and I have talked about this before.
• 44:10
  Luke Kennedy: But I, I firmly believe that it's easier to pull the trigger or issue the fire command to to kill somebody than it is to to give the order for somebody else to do it right.
• 44:26
  Luke Kennedy: And in this scenario, you weren't giving somebody the order, you were just playing your role and you were asked hey, I just need you to identify, to make sure that this is the correct person.
• 44:36
  Luke Kennedy: And it's not only likely, it's for sure that there was other intelligence on that individual that you did not possess.
• 44:45
  Luke Kennedy: So somebody knew something that you didn't know.
• 44:47
  Luke Kennedy: And you know you were, you were a piece of that puzzle, and it's a terrible thing to be a piece of a puzzle where it doesn't make sense to you.
• 44:56
  Luke Kennedy: And you know I was definitely in scenarios as well where it's like I don't think that's right, like I don't think that that guy needs needs to get shot right now, but that's not up to me, right, that's, that's not my role and it wasn't your role either.
• 45:12
  Luke Kennedy: It doesn't change how you carry that guilt or how you carry that burden.
• 45:17
  Luke Kennedy: But you know, the reality is you're not guilty of anything.
• 45:21
  Luke Kennedy: It just doesn't feel good.
• 45:23
  Luke Kennedy: It just doesn't feel good.
• 45:25
  Luke Kennedy: But I'm sure there was also times where you had a package on somebody who was the worst of the worst and you got to point them out and be like that guy right there and he has earned it.
• 45:39
  Luke Kennedy: He's earned it twice, you know.
• 45:42
  James Nash: Yeah, and and, and I, I, I, at one point of time doing my career and doing those experiences, you know, you almost kind of want to have.
• 45:54
  James Nash: If you know, when you had that bad feeling, you want to have a good one, to kind of offset it.
• 46:00
  James Nash: And in with that euphoria, at the time it feels good because you kind of you can forget what this is.
• 46:06
  James Nash: But just like when you play you know any, I mean you wrestle anybody who's competitive will tell you that they will remember all of their mistakes they made in a game.
• 46:19
  James Nash: They want yeah, and and and and.
• 46:22
  James Nash: Coming back, you know, I mean every time I, you know, I live in in Virginia and those, those mount tops are not that much different at times and I just keep thinking I mean, it's really.
• 46:36
  James Nash: You know, I allow myself to not live with the guilt but have it.
• 46:44
  James Nash: But it also is something that I strive to tell everybody that it's just it's, it's.
• 46:50
  James Nash: It's not that easy.
• 46:54
  James Nash: You know everybody wants to be a special forces guy until they have to do what they do or train like they do and and and and.
• 47:01
  James Nash: You know it's.
• 47:02
  James Nash: I look at those guys and some of them are my friends currently and some people are just born for it and I mean, I was an intelligence guy, I worked with them, but I don't know if I could do as efficiently as they are, as some people are who are just like able to focus on the mission and live them, and that's what probably helped me the most when I got out.
• 47:30
  Luke Kennedy: Yeah, well, you know, I wanted to be a seal at one time and when I took the test, they realized immediately that my test scores were way too high, so they sent me to the Marines instead.
• 47:42
  Luke Kennedy: I understand.
• 47:44
  James Nash: I understand man.
• 47:45
  James Nash: I knew the moment I saw you I'm like yep, no way this guy could be.
• 47:49
  James Nash: I mean, seal was just like yeah, no.
• 47:51
  James Nash: Plus, you don't have a book, so I don't know if you know you were saying that that's an obvious joke.
• 47:57
  Luke Kennedy: I never wanted to be a seal.
• 47:58
  Luke Kennedy: I love, I love some of my seal brothers.
• 48:01
  Luke Kennedy: I think need to pipe down a little bit.
• 48:04
  Luke Kennedy: They are incredible humans, but I will never stop making fun of them.
• 48:10
  James Nash: They're true, and you know we've talked about this before.
• 48:13
  James Nash: There are certain conditions in certain scenarios where there's nobody else you would call, and there is certain places what they do is it's they are the best of the best.
• 48:27
  James Nash: On denial, yeah, you know, if somebody needs, I'm, but I'm going to flip it, man.
• 48:32
  James Nash: I mean, in Afghanistan, or even today right here, if I needed to call anyone, like if I needed someone, I would rely on Green Berets a lot more than seals, and it's not because seals are better looking, it's just.
• 48:48
  James Nash: It's the way that the whole unit works.
• 48:50
  James Nash: With Green Berets, I, I, I'm forever impressed with everything they do when they're fully on.
• 48:59
  James Nash: It's just, whichever way you turn that that team around, it's able to go forward without any compromises.
• 49:06
  Luke Kennedy: I feel the same exact way and if I was jammed up someplace in the world, pick a random country and I got one phone call my phone call is probably going to be to a Green Beret, and they're they're.
• 49:19
  Luke Kennedy: Their skills are a lot more broad, you know, if you need somebody to swim somewhere sketchy and then blow something up, once they get there, the seal is the perfect tool for that job Right.
• 49:30
  Luke Kennedy: If you need a group of guys to show up and break everything and kill everybody, call the Marines.
• 49:37
  Luke Kennedy: Right, they're going to do that really, really well and then they're going to leave.
• 49:43
  Luke Kennedy: If you need some type of really specialized mission done, there's somebody within the Green Berets, within one of those groups, that is going to be better at that than anyone else in the world and and their teamwork's phenomenal.
• 49:56
  Luke Kennedy: They're incredibly humble.
• 49:59
  Luke Kennedy: You probably know a Green Beret in your life who's never said anything about it, and that's also incredibly uncommon amongst these special forces folks.
• 50:07
  Luke Kennedy: So lots of admiration to all of them.
• 50:10
  Luke Kennedy: But yeah, this is this is me giving a nod to the Berets.
• 50:14
  Luke Kennedy: I've got a knife right here that that a Beret made for me and I have it in front of me on every single show that I record and I just admire it and I think about who he was as a person and it's something that's very special to me.
• 50:31
  Luke Kennedy: And yeah, you'll also find that the Green Berets almost always have have a relationship with sharp objects, which, which?
• 50:41
  James Nash: I appreciate, yeah, they do.
• 50:43
  James Nash: And I want to give a little example.
• 50:46
  James Nash: I was one of those schools when taught, you know, it was just a remote area and and, and you know internet exists but it really doesn't exist and there are certain things that you claim you know, so you really cannot look it up.
• 50:58
  James Nash: And I needed to know a bit more about a Persian poet, rumi.
• 51:08
  James Nash: And as direct force was coming, direct action was coming through, they kind of asked me like, hey man, you know, do you need anything that needs to be sent this way, because you, literally there's no door dash for for undercover agents in Afghanistan.
• 51:25
  James Nash: So I said, yeah, man, I do.
• 51:27
  James Nash: I actually really do.
• 51:28
  James Nash: I need some books, some, some literature on this Rumi dude.
• 51:32
  James Nash: He's a poet and it just like I mean out of nowhere, this blue eyed blonde kids, the show.
• 51:39
  James Nash: I was like what do you want to know?
• 51:42
  James Nash: And I'm like you know, get the fuck out of here.
• 51:44
  James Nash: I mean like I need to know a lot, like because they joke.
• 51:47
  James Nash: I mean you know this is downtime.
• 51:48
  James Nash: It's like no man, this was on my you know, this was from my work up.
• 51:52
  James Nash: I'm what do you want to know?
• 51:53
  James Nash: So I'm looking at this guy, but, like you know, I'm also waiting.
• 51:59
  James Nash: Thank you, I'm waiting for them to walk out and walk away, so like I'm not really engaging him to much as much as I should.
• 52:07
  James Nash: So I just said, well, you know, I like this guy, rumi, and the dude man I mean, he just like from memory, started Well, is it this?
• 52:15
  James Nash: Is it this?
• 52:16
  James Nash: Is it this?
• 52:16
  James Nash: You know, some people put it on this angle and I was just like, dude, you look like you're from Minnesota.
• 52:25
  James Nash: How the fuck do you know Rumi?
• 52:26
  James Nash: I mean, like how much was your work?
• 52:27
  James Nash: Like what did you?
• 52:28
  James Nash: And apparently that's what he did, man, I mean, he was there for the cultural reasons and you know, a lot of Afghans are heavily influenced by Persians on the West side and you know, pakistan is on the East side and that was his thing.
• 52:50
  James Nash: I mean, he and I, you know, I'm not going to say I don't know a SEAL team that would have that in their, you know, in their agenda coming up, but I for sure, even as an intelligence agent, was not ready for it and I thought I was the best.
• 53:07
  James Nash: So it just it really humbled me and it gave me respect towards these people who took every mission as their only mission, and that's also something that's just.
• 53:18
  James Nash: It's so, it's so impressive to watch because, like you know, I just want to like give them this credit.
• 53:26
  James Nash: It's just like those are the guys that are humbled perhaps not all of them, but you know even the ones that are super humble and super quiet and like or joke with you or even will cuss here and there Once they turn on men.
• 53:41
  James Nash: It's like you have those like Belgian, mellanoise, it's just like you see there in the element and it just I mean it's like the most beautiful synchronization of characters that just there to do one job that they like all think alike it's been, it was very impressive to watch them, as somebody who's been in the teams a lot of boys, a team or any teams, even like being a part of them gives you this confidence of like yeah, man, we can do this.
• 54:10
  Luke Kennedy: Yeah, now that is pretty cool.
• 54:12
  Luke Kennedy: It's amazing what you know a platoon or a squad can do right Of like-minded and well-trained, motivated individuals like they can take on the world.
• 54:26
  Luke Kennedy: It is absolutely phenomenal what a small group of guys is capable of.
• 54:34
  Christie: Well, hi guys, welcome to Chrissy's Crash Course on Barbarie Sheep, otherwise known as the oddad.
• 54:40
  Christie: Okay, so, to start off, I have always been fascinated with this particular species, ever since my first time hunting along with my dad up in Texas, and let me tell you, they are not the easiest animal to stock down.
• 54:52
  Christie: Okay, particularly because of how well they can camouflage into their surrounding environments, such as desert-like areas with rocky mountains and jagged cliffs, as well as the fact that they have a keen sense of smell, so they can detect your scent before you are within range.
• 55:06
  Christie: So you guys don't even give you a chance.
• 55:08
  Christie: Also, through hearing is immaculate, so lots are betting against you when hunting these creatures, so I wouldn't even attempt to bring my bow at this point.
• 55:17
  Christie: I would bring my rifle instead.
• 55:18
  Christie: Unless you like a challenge, then go for it.
• 55:20
  Christie: You know, no one's stopping you.
• 55:21
  Christie: But anyway, what's something that stood out to me about the oddad when I was researching about them is how they can move around the way that they do on such steep and sharp rocky cliffs with little to no edges.
• 55:34
  Christie: I mean oddad are able to balance their own body weight, which can range from 175 to 320 pounds as adults.
• 55:42
  Christie: I even did some research of my own on how this is even remotely possible and come to find out it's all in the way their hooves were created, which allows them to maneuver a certain way.
• 55:51
  Christie: The hooves on an oddad are pointed and upright that help to balance themselves on abnormally weird little nooks and crannies on side of cliffs.
• 55:59
  Christie: But oddly enough, this is almost like an advantage for them.
• 56:02
  Christie: Initially, because where they are able to support themselves on these sketchy high up cliff edges, other animals don't even dare follow or step foot.
• 56:10
  Christie: It deters them away.
• 56:12
  Christie: Oddad are uniquely equipped for this type of environment because of their origins and their native habitats in Northern Africa, morocco, the western Sahara, sudan and Egypt, although their own native habitats are being commonly threatened, more so there than here in the US, because you have poaching, habitat loss and destruction, as well as overgrazed lands due to the domestic livestock over there.
• 56:33
  Christie: Those are the Barbary Sheep's main threats outside of the US, though.
• 56:37
  Christie: So you're probably sitting there wondering well, how did the species of sheep from Northern Africa show up in the Northern United States, right?
• 56:45
  Christie: Well, before I answer your question, you guys should probably note that, even though they are called Barbary Sheep, they aren't really sheep.
• 56:54
  Christie: They are not from the sheep family.
• 56:56
  Christie: They are from both the goat and the sheep ancestors, but somehow make up their own category.
• 57:02
  Christie: Therefore, they are their own species of animal, crazy, right Like what the word Barbary also stems from, where they are native to, which is in North Africa, along the Barbary Coast.
• 57:14
  Christie: Now to answer your question on how they got here in the first place, this all started during the 1900s, when Barbary Sheep were first recognized to be included in DeZoos.
• 57:22
  Christie: What happened was a couple of XGIs, who had earlier served in North Africa during the time of World War II, had come to a conclusion that maybe these creatures would make for a possible game animal to hunt here in the United States.
• 57:34
  Christie: It's something different and new, you know.
• 57:36
  Christie: So later, after 1950, was when they introduced the odd add to Texas and New Mexico, and they had been thriving in this new terrain.
• 57:44
  Christie: You can since then now find them in West Texas, california and New Mexico running wild in free range or just on ranches.
• 57:51
  Christie: Since bringing them from Africa to America, they have developed and adapted to their new habitat.
• 57:56
  Christie: Incredibly, they can withstand both extremely hot and cold temperatures and jump up to two meters high when climbing on the sides of cliffs, like how.
• 58:05
  Christie: In other words, these animals are pretty strong.
• 58:07
  Christie: You'll find them grazing around on the sides of mountains with a few others in a group, eating all sorts of plants, grasses, flowers, leaves and shrubs, which they also get their water intake from, since in desert areas, as we know, water isn't fairly common everywhere.
• 58:22
  Christie: A fun fact about the Barbary Sheep is that they can go about five days without a drink.
• 58:27
  Christie: Like how?
• 58:28
  Christie: This is crazy.
• 58:29
  Christie: The species travels in almost like a small family type group.
• 58:33
  Christie: They tend to wander at night and can travel relatively far in just one night.
• 58:37
  Christie: In the daytime, though, you may find them grazing alongside mountains and around the outer edges of cliffs.
• 58:42
  Christie: During the hottest parts of the days, they will be under trees, in the shade or underneath overhanging rocks, and sometimes even in caves to get out of the heat of the sun.
• 58:52
  Christie: With all this being said, odd add, being another species to live in the United States comes with its own new threats, such as hunting and possible risk of loss of agriculture.
• 59:02
  Christie: This can happen, since they aren't originally from here.
• 59:05
  Christie: The lifespan for these animals, though, can differ on either being in captivity and being taken care of, or being on their own but in the wild, with multiple different contributors to threats and illnesses.
• 59:16
  Christie: Odd add that live in containment or captivity can live up to 20 years, and odd add that are wild and on their own can only live up to 10 years.
• 59:23
  Christie: Another fact you should know about Barbary Shade is their mating season and exactly what that entails.
• 59:29
  Christie: It's from September to November where they're at their peak breeding point, and each female will give birth to one or two lambs in between the months of March through May.
• 59:38
  Christie: Rarely.
• 59:39
  Christie: Some females may have twins or up to three lambs, rather than just one or two.
• 59:42
  Christie: At the age of 18 months old, they have made it to sexual maturity and can then on go on their own, already adapted to the environment since having to learn and keep it up at such an early age.
• 59:56
  Christie: But can we take a minute, though, to just admire how rare and interesting the odd add are?
• 1:00:00
  Christie: I mean, what's so fascinating is how males aren't the only ones that have horns, like females have them too.
• 1:00:05
  Christie: In order to tell them apart, though, is based off of their horns, is to notice how the males have usually thicker, longer, more rigid horns, while the females have more of a slim look to them.
• 1:00:16
  Christie: The females are also more mean and aggressive than the males, right Like how ironic is that those species aren't considered to be aggressive creatures?
• 1:00:25
  Christie: They seem to co-inhabitate with other hooked animals that they cross paths with just fine, and come across as actually very social animals towards others.
• 1:00:33
  Christie: I mean, sure, their eyes are far apart and they look like a big goat, but the way that they have evolved and were able to adapt to the environments in the US and to now be thriving here and spread throughout is just simply amazing.
• 1:00:45
  Christie: I know I may sound biased, since I have a love for hunting Barbary sheep, but if you ever get an opportunity to do so, I would just say take it Like.
• 1:00:53
  Christie: Just take that opportunity, you'll see.
• 1:00:55
  Christie: After You'll see what that feels like.
• 1:00:57
  Christie: It feels amazing.
• 1:00:58
  Christie: I still think about that hunt and those times I spent with my dad though spotting and stalking one.
• 1:01:03
  Christie: I sit there and I reminisce on how I felt when I was about to take my shot, like I remember the adrenaline and how nervous I was because I literally did not want to mess up on my one chance at a good one.
• 1:01:13
  Christie: And how it felt after making that climb up this steep mountain slope to see my animal Like it feels so good and to be up close and personal.
• 1:01:24
  Christie: It's you're.
• 1:01:24
  Christie: You're in awe of it.
• 1:01:26
  Christie: My dad instilled at me at a very young age, though, to always have gratitude for an animal into no matter what.
• 1:01:31
  Christie: Treat every animal with respect, if it being dead or alive, so we use every part of it as we can so that killing it doesn't go to waste and it goes towards feeding my family, which, honestly, that's another feeling like I wish every child and person that has not been able to hunt or hasn't hunted before could feel, because it feels it feels really good that you're able to provide for your family, and so, whether you are interested in hunting odd add, or just simply admiring such a unique creature from afar, now you'll have the information you need and some interesting facts to go along.
• 1:02:05
  Christie: So thank you for listening to my little crash course about Barbary sheep and, yeah, bye, guys.
• 1:02:14
  Luke Kennedy: Okay, let's get back to Afghanistan a little bit.
• 1:02:18
  Luke Kennedy: Our our ex-fil from Afghanistan when we left as a country.
• 1:02:25
  Luke Kennedy: You know that's been highly, highly criticized, probably hasn't been scrutinized well enough, but to to provide a little bit of context around it, I left in 2013 and I would.
• 1:02:38
  Luke Kennedy: I would watch on Google Earth all the places that I had previously been and I would watch them slowly get taken back over by Taliban and I could see, you know, the vehicles change.
• 1:02:50
  Luke Kennedy: I could see the structures change, even, in some cases, see that like the walls begin to erode and the deserts taking it back over again, and it was hard for me to look at that and think this has been for nothing, or for very little, I think, if nothing else, I went to a place where, where militant people hated Americans and I said I'm here if you want to fight, if you want to come after an American, you don't have to come to America to do it.
• 1:03:16
  Luke Kennedy: I'm here for you right, right now.
• 1:03:17
  Luke Kennedy: Right, I do believe that there's value in that, but it's hard to see everything that you fight for just go away.
• 1:03:26
  Luke Kennedy: We fast forward a couple years and then it happens to the entire country.
• 1:03:29
  Luke Kennedy: We're leaving Afghanistan moving a ton of people all at once and there's always going to be chaos involved with that.
• 1:03:37
  Luke Kennedy: But were you in Kabul at the time?
• 1:03:42
  James Nash: Not at the time of X-FIL now, okay, but that X-FIL has.
• 1:03:50
  James Nash: It is one of the things that I have the hardest time stomaching, for many reasons, and but not just political or even operational.
• 1:04:07
  James Nash: It's just, as I mentioned before, kabul airport is right next to a, the tallest tower of Kabul, and it's called a Azizi tower.
• 1:04:21
  James Nash: And it's right next to the airport.
• 1:04:24
  James Nash: I mean it's, you cannot miss it.
• 1:04:26
  James Nash: You know, everybody who's ever landed in Kabul has seen Azizi tower.
• 1:04:32
  James Nash: And Azizi tower is a place where if you're an expat, if you're anybody that's not Afghan, and anybody that's valuable to their country, for whatever reason, that's where you would stay, eat, meet, whatever.
• 1:04:46
  James Nash: It's kind of like off base.
• 1:04:48
  James Nash: It's like a speak easy base for everything else that's not military.
• 1:04:56
  James Nash: And the more important you are to your country or to your cause or you know, the higher the floor you stay and, again, within that, the more important you are, the further away from the airport you're placed, because the noise of jets, it's just.
• 1:05:14
  James Nash: I mean you are right on the, you are closer to the air, to the runway, than the tower is, and I faced that gate man for three years, like I mean, I was pretty low and I watched that gate and passed through that gate for more than a thousand days, man, and all of the 13 people who there was, 11 Marines, a sailor, corpsman and, I believe, an army personnel who died that day were there for three days.
• 1:06:04
  James Nash: Three days, man.
• 1:06:06
  James Nash: I was there for a thousand days during active, busy war as a deep undercover asset, essentially being hunted at all times because you know if, if Taliban ever understood who I was, there was no coming back and those kids been a third day.
• 1:06:30
  James Nash: I mean, if you're ever traveling anywhere, if you travel from San Francisco to New York, the first three days you don't know what the fuck you are right along.
• 1:06:38
  James Nash: If you travel from United States, germany to Afghanistan, you know, I mean, there was no way that they knew their body, knew where they were when they were there.
• 1:06:49
  James Nash: They just, I mean the smell, the, the, the oxygen, the, the altitude, everything that's there.
• 1:06:56
  James Nash: Three days is not enough for you to compute where you are.
• 1:07:01
  James Nash: It's just not if you've never been there before.
• 1:07:04
  James Nash: And two, I mean when I realized they were just there for three days, man, and I was there for, you know, a thousand, three years, man, more than thousand days.
• 1:07:14
  James Nash: I, I just didn't know how to handle it, man.
• 1:07:18
  James Nash: I mean, it's just something that I mean.
• 1:07:23
  James Nash: You know death when we sign up for this duties or this platforms, it's, it's a possibility and you always think it's not gonna happen to me or anybody that I know.
• 1:07:34
  James Nash: But you know that it could happen.
• 1:07:36
  James Nash: But then when you I mean when you just put it in in in a, on a paper, and you realize three days, man, that's 72 hours, today's Friday by Sunday, think about like how much you you can't even get your house chores done by now.
• 1:07:54
  Luke Kennedy: If you really wanted to listen to what your wife wants you to do by Sunday will not be done, like how much there is to be done and you know when I I vividly remember stepping off the plane, uh, into Afghanistan, and it felt to me like I had just just walked onto a planet from Star Wars.
• 1:08:15
  Luke Kennedy: Like it was so hot, it was so bright, the air felt thick, there was, there was this incredibly fine dust that was just all throughout the atmosphere.
• 1:08:27
  Luke Kennedy: There's so much dust that you can barely see a star at night in helman right it's.
• 1:08:32
  Luke Kennedy: It's incredible just how thick and and crippling that air is and it takes your breath away.
• 1:08:38
  Luke Kennedy: It was, you know, over 120 degrees and nothing is a color that I've ever seen before.
• 1:08:44
  Luke Kennedy: It's just incredible.
• 1:08:46
  Luke Kennedy: And that shock, that culture shock, uh, and and the terrain and everything else, and then combine that with with jet lag and stress, like you don't have the chance to be operationally effective and to be on your game that quickly, you know, for for me I felt like it.
• 1:09:04
  Luke Kennedy: It took three or four months before I was any good at being there, and really I wasn't that good at it until six or seven months when it was time for me to leave.
• 1:09:13
  James Nash: So three days is really setting those troops up for failure oh yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes I take pictures on Instagram and there is that one filter that kind of makes everything orange.
• 1:09:26
  James Nash: Mm-hmm, dude, that's Afghanistan.
• 1:09:28
  James Nash: Well, you get off that plane and all of a sudden you are in a different filter and everything looks orange, like I mean that dust, that, that that thing is just like that brown, it's like it's, it's I mean, you put it perfectly it feels like you are on a different planet, you know it.
• 1:09:49
  James Nash: Just, I mean even the cars that you see kind of move differently, and the first three, four days you just like are not, you're not.
• 1:09:58
  Luke Kennedy: I mean it's not real yeah, totally, uh, so an absolute tragedy that that those troops died could have been a lot worse, could have been a lot worse, but I don't want to take away from from how bad that is, because that's just, that's just.
• 1:10:15
  Luke Kennedy: The charismatic portion of it is that we lost 13 of our own there.
• 1:10:19
  Luke Kennedy: There were so many Afghans that were killed, so many of whom had had worked for the US, who'd worked for allies, and you know them and their families, like a lot of them, didn't make it and I wouldn't even dare put a number on it, but it would.
• 1:10:36
  Luke Kennedy: It would horrify you, it would be more than that number is, more than all of the people that you know.
• 1:10:42
  Luke Kennedy: So imagine everyone that you know getting killed horribly.
• 1:10:47
  Luke Kennedy: And that's probably not even scratched on the surface of what actually happened in Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan when the Taliban took over and we left and you know this is public knowledge, but it's just.
• 1:11:02
  James Nash: I don't think people understand what truly happened when we left everything there.
• 1:11:07
  James Nash: Um, I think it was August 28 or 29 I was still in that shock what's going on?
• 1:11:16
  James Nash: Because you didn't make sense.
• 1:11:18
  James Nash: And I got a phone call from a friend of mine who, at when I was active, was on the offer on an admin side and we would just remain friends in them you know different agencies, but good contact and he just said hey, man, I don't know where you are, but listen, wherever you are, you're compromised.
• 1:11:42
  James Nash: I'm like um no man, I'm, I'm out, you know I'm married, I'm not, I'm compromised because I, you know, I'm married now.
• 1:11:49
  James Nash: But it's uh why?
• 1:11:52
  Luke Kennedy: and he just said well, we left all of the biometrics of all you guys behind, and they have it now, and every single one of you that operated there is it's covert, no more so every deep undercover person that we had, we left the biometrics, which means your fingerprints, your retinal scans, your face, your teeth, all that stuff, all those ways it's so easy to identify you.
• 1:12:24
  James Nash: Yeah, holy shit and you know the way that that works is just, it's like a large, it looks like a credit card machine.
• 1:12:34
  James Nash: I mean the biometric data was at the airport or the base and anywhere else.
• 1:12:42
  James Nash: But every single one of those gadgets that looks like a credit card scanner when you take took a picture of someone, or take their, if they had an ID, or if you took their fingerprint, will show on the screen if the guy is friendly, not friendly, known, friendly, known, help and or adverse.
• 1:13:07
  James Nash: So at that point of time, taliban literally had a full list of people who were friendly to Americans, with all of their information, man, I mean everything to the point that you know we all have, and this is the truth.
• 1:13:26
  James Nash: You'll have a safety question of, even if you get captured and when they are saving you, if you don't look the way that you do, like what is your question?
• 1:13:35
  James Nash: You can make up whatever you want, and I mean, down to that question, everybody was out.
• 1:13:44
  James Nash: Now people might say, well, who the fucking cares?
• 1:13:46
  James Nash: It's Afghanistan, it's Taliban.
• 1:13:49
  James Nash: Well, taliban has an embassy in China right now.
• 1:13:55
  James Nash: I mean, yeah, it's, it's, it's it's.
• 1:13:58
  James Nash: It's more than fair to assume that whoever was an undercover asset and or any kind of asset.
• 1:14:06
  James Nash: It doesn't matter.
• 1:14:07
  James Nash: I mean it could.
• 1:14:08
  James Nash: It doesn't have to be undercover, just like they could have all of their information forever.
• 1:14:14
  James Nash: I mean, like what am I gonna do now?
• 1:14:16
  Luke Kennedy: you know, change everything so look, I mean, we've got thousands of people crossing the southern border daily right now.
• 1:14:24
  Luke Kennedy: We know that a good number of them are from the Middle East or from Afghanistan.
• 1:14:29
  Luke Kennedy: Are you worried?
• 1:14:32
  Luke Kennedy: Are you worried that somebody's gonna show up at your door or, you know, find you and and seek reprisal um?
• 1:14:41
  James Nash: no, I'll put it this way man, I, I, I, um, I never look over my shoulder.
• 1:14:47
  James Nash: I have faith and I've done everything I could at the time that I did it with good intentions.
• 1:14:57
  James Nash: I never went to hunt anybody or hurt anyone or face anyone who I was not sure was out there to hurt my people, you, your family, any American race, gender didn't matter to me.
• 1:15:17
  James Nash: If you were an American in Afghanistan, for whatever reason, you could have been kidnapped by cartel and traffic in the middle of Kabul and then be somewhere in any province.
• 1:15:28
  James Nash: And I got a call.
• 1:15:30
  James Nash: There's an American and you could have been the LGBT Black Lives Matter president, for that matter.
• 1:15:36
  James Nash: I will gladly die to save you because you are an American and we are what we are, but we stand together.
• 1:15:44
  James Nash: So when I was there, my main job, my mission, was nobody harms my people, nobody.
• 1:15:50
  James Nash: And here at home I live a peaceful life knowing I mean, if somebody comes to my door, man, come and get it.
• 1:16:00
  James Nash: Man, I'm Spartan, right, more than love eggs, just like you want my weapons, man, more than happy to share, I'm gonna get it.
• 1:16:06
  James Nash: But I am worried in a different spectrum because I know how difficult it was to get in certain countries untraced to appear in a country, and in the most advanced country, that's not the case.
• 1:16:26
  James Nash: I mean you can just walk over.
• 1:16:27
  James Nash: I mean, when I went to certain countries and cities, it was planning months in advance of how am I gonna get in there and then resume life?
• 1:16:40
  James Nash: That's not the case for us here.
• 1:16:43
  James Nash: I mean, one of the biggest obstacles that any adversary has, it's not present entering to our country.
• 1:16:49
  James Nash: That's the problem, that's the fear that I have.
• 1:16:54
  James Nash: It's not what they can do, because once they're here it's fair game, but it's just like it's so easy to come here.
• 1:17:02
  James Nash: I mean it's harder to get into fucking Afghanistan, from Afghanistan to here.
• 1:17:07
  James Nash: That's my bottle.
• 1:17:10
  James Nash: We have the most advanced technology of surveillance in the world, yet it's a lot easier for Taliban to go to Mexico and walk over than for me to go to Afghanistan to save any of those guys that were there.
• 1:17:25
  James Nash: It's crazy when you think of, when you put it in that perspective.
• 1:17:30
  James Nash: Right, yeah, so yeah.
• 1:17:36
  Luke Kennedy: So this loss of these troops affected you extremely personally.
• 1:17:39
  Luke Kennedy: You did something very special to commemorate that.
• 1:17:43
  Luke Kennedy: Tell me about your 13 mile swim.
• 1:17:51
  James Nash: I normally swim every day for an hour, which sometimes ends up to be two hours.
• 1:17:57
  James Nash: It's in between two and three miles and the Sunday.
• 1:18:01
  James Nash: So last year the 25th wasn't a Friday and Sunday a private Friday.
• 1:18:08
  James Nash: I was just swimming and I had this urge, man, I was just like I need to honor them, I need to do it, it's not for anybody else, I need to get in space to be with them.
• 1:18:24
  James Nash: And I just didn't think really much.
• 1:18:30
  James Nash: I just said I'm going to swim 30 miles and I called our mutual friend, ben Ben Winner, and I just said hey, man, listen, I'm going to swim this Friday.
• 1:18:41
  James Nash: It's going to take like seven and a half hours for this event, not knowing what his schedule is, and I think at the time the reason why I called him was we were going to sell our patches he has a company, tier 1, or make t-shirts, and I was just I didn't have enough time to kind of make it happen or I didn't have a website.
• 1:19:08
  James Nash: I still don't have a website.
• 1:19:09
  James Nash: Can we host over Tier 1?
• 1:19:12
  James Nash: Or whom, whom should I call?
• 1:19:14
  James Nash: Ended up to be through a very, very close friend of mine, blake Cook, who works with Blueberry, and Kyle Morgan.
• 1:19:25
  James Nash: Kyle Morgan is the delta from Mali Attack and they helped me with t-shirts within four days, man.
• 1:19:32
  James Nash: I mean we had t-shirts ready for everybody.
• 1:19:34
  James Nash: But Ben, who is a commercial pilot for mainstream airliners, moved around his schedule, flew in to where I live at night, drove with me to the close by lake, watched me swim for seven and a half hours, fed me as I stopped, got back in his uniform.
• 1:19:59
  James Nash: We drove him back to the airport and he, you know, welcomed award, you know Flight 7447, and took everybody away.
• 1:20:06
  James Nash: So that's how you and I met.
• 1:20:09
  James Nash: For everybody else, but that swim was probably one of the hardest swims mentally and I can go into a little bit in detail how wrong everything went during that swim.
• 1:20:23
  James Nash: I had three days to prepare.
• 1:20:26
  James Nash: I didn't have a permit.
• 1:20:28
  James Nash: I couldn't find a buoy that goes behind me, because you need to have a buoy as you go in open water.
• 1:20:35
  James Nash: So I went to a scuba shop and they gave me a diver below Lody.
• 1:20:43
  James Nash: Yeah, that's supposed to stay stationary.
• 1:20:46
  James Nash: So as I'm dragging it, it's actually trying to stop me.
• 1:20:49
  James Nash: Oh, wow, I had combs in my ear.
• 1:20:54
  James Nash: I have a little Bluetooth that had a walkie-talkie with Ben if I needed anything and he will check up on me and also music, because it's seven and a half hours.
• 1:21:08
  James Nash: Within four strokes that thing died on me, man, it just stopped.
• 1:21:15
  James Nash: I had these goggles that show me the direction of where I'm going and kind of distance that I'm going and my pace, and they had a yellow.
• 1:21:25
  James Nash: They have a yellow screen in my right eye.
• 1:21:32
  James Nash: But I was swimming a quarter of my laps and there was a yellow boat on other side of where I was swimming and I kept zigzagging.
• 1:21:43
  James Nash: Man, I kept zigzagging because I didn't know which way to orient, because it's just like if anybody swims, you don't have that much time to look up.
• 1:21:51
  James Nash: You kind of look for something first and kind of aim for it, and I mean everything went dark.
• 1:22:01
  James Nash: I had no combs, it's like, so the visibility was two feet and I had no music, no visibility.
• 1:22:10
  James Nash: I was dragging this thing that later on we found out it was like around 70 pounds of pullback that I had the whole time and I don't know how, like mile five, right before I swam, I let.
• 1:22:27
  James Nash: Hunter Diaz is one of the Marines and I got in contact with his mom and she told me how Hunter, before he went, he liked swimming, he really enjoyed swimming, and I'm not going to, I'm not here to tell you like how it was euphoric.
• 1:22:45
  James Nash: But as I went back with those strokes, every strokeman, every stroke I took, I pictured the elevator down from Azizi Square.
• 1:22:57
  James Nash: I lived for 7 and 1 half hours in Afghanistan.
• 1:23:03
  James Nash: I was there with them and I mean I just went back and I just like and at one point of time I remember vividly, I remember explaining this strokes to Hunter just like this is tactical swimming, this is technical swimming, this is where you go slower.
• 1:23:22
  James Nash: But it's just like I went into this euphoric stage where I just connected with being there and I just, in a way it's hard to explain and I'm sure I don't want to sound like being at that horse here but it felt like if I can finish this 13 miles, I can rewrite the history and there'll be a lot.
• 1:23:45
  James Nash: That's how I swim.
• 1:23:46
  James Nash: It was just like it wasn't the, it was not fast, it was not impressive to at all, it was just I in my head, like in my mind, felt like if I can do this, if I can do this, there'll be less pain, like their families will have less pain, which is not the truth.
• 1:24:05
  James Nash: I mean, they're not coming back.
• 1:24:08
  James Nash: But I connected with that loss and I really, when I stopped, when I got out, I probably cried for half an hour.
• 1:24:18
  James Nash: I didn't know how to stop, like my family was looking at me and I was just I couldn't stop crying.
• 1:24:24
  James Nash: It was one of those things.
• 1:24:26
  James Nash: I wasn't tired.
• 1:24:28
  James Nash: I mean I was tired, but I wasn't tired.
• 1:24:31
  James Nash: I completely kind of needed to cry because my body gave up.
• 1:24:36
  James Nash: My soul was so aching that I just cried, man.
• 1:24:42
  James Nash: I mean like I didn't know how to stop and I looked for you.
• 1:24:48
  James Nash: Know what man I mean?
• 1:24:49
  James Nash: I know you and I have talked about this before, but I would like to invite you to choose a place for 2024.
• 1:24:58
  James Nash: Anywhere you want open water, and I'll swim 13 miles and I would like to start planning it somehow better this year that we can do some charity work for Hunter Lopez Foundation, ran by his mom, which is she's kind of like a spokesperson for those 13 families that have lost.
• 1:25:27
  James Nash: I mean they're all.
• 1:25:27
  James Nash: She's the one that's they're all active, but she's the one that's going to manage it and all proceeds go to them straight.
• 1:25:36
  James Nash: I mean we can just pack team and I'll be more than happy to have you.
• 1:25:42
  James Nash: I mean I'll be honored to have you by my side.
• 1:25:44
  James Nash: You don't have to swim, but it's just like as a Marine, I'm sure it will touch close to home with you and whomever you wish to invite.
• 1:25:57
  Luke Kennedy: Well, look, I'm not.
• 1:25:59
  Luke Kennedy: I'm not a great swimmer, I'm an effective swimmer.
• 1:26:03
  Luke Kennedy: I guess for the purposes that I've, that I've used it, which you know is mostly like swift water rescue and white water.
• 1:26:11
  Luke Kennedy: And trying to get back in my bow and then spear fishing and swimming 13 miles is pretty intimidating.
• 1:26:19
  Luke Kennedy: I've never swam that far in my life Officer candidate school and in her nose at the basic school in Quantico.
• 1:26:28
  Luke Kennedy: I had to get to the I think it was the third, the third of four levels for swim qualification.
• 1:26:35
  Luke Kennedy: Highlights had to get that fourth level.
• 1:26:38
  Luke Kennedy: But I failed that test 23 times in a row.
• 1:26:42
  Luke Kennedy: I drowned twice, had to get water pumped out of my lungs twice and, folks, I don't know if you've ever failed something that many times in a row, but it starts to get at you.
• 1:26:52
  Luke Kennedy: But if I didn't pass that, it was disqualifying.
• 1:26:57
  Luke Kennedy: I was not going to be able to continue.
• 1:26:59
  Luke Kennedy: So I I swam at night, I swam on weekends, I went out of state, I got swim lessons.
• 1:27:08
  Luke Kennedy: I went to colleges and got swim lessons.
• 1:27:10
  Luke Kennedy: I worked at it extremely hard and, you know, on my last chance I did pass it.
• 1:27:16
  James Nash: Wait, 24 is the limit.
• 1:27:17
  James Nash: At that point I will say you know what man you're good and I'm here to take as many as you want.
• 1:27:23
  Luke Kennedy: Yeah, now, well, it was the end of the course.
• 1:27:25
  Luke Kennedy: It was a six month long course and that's that's how many times I failed.
• 1:27:30
  Luke Kennedy: I failed every single week.
• 1:27:31
  Luke Kennedy: So, anyways, eventually I did pass on my.
• 1:27:36
  Luke Kennedy: I think it was my 23rd attempt that I passed.
• 1:27:38
  Luke Kennedy: I could be off on a number two, but it was pretty close to that.
• 1:27:41
  Luke Kennedy: All that said, I'm in.
• 1:27:44
  Luke Kennedy: So August 26th this year, I've got the lake, I've got the support boat, we're going to do it.
• 1:27:51
  Luke Kennedy: I'm going to get in the water and I'm going to get those miles in.
• 1:27:55
  Luke Kennedy: I'm probably going to wear a wetsuit and fins and a mask and a snorkel and I might have to stop and sit on my boat and eat a bologna sandwich from time to time.
• 1:28:05
  Luke Kennedy: But I'm in, let's do it 100%.
• 1:28:11
  James Nash: Oh, we're amazing.
• 1:28:12
  Luke Kennedy: We're going to make this into something.
• 1:28:14
  Luke Kennedy: So that much is done and we're going to get tier one kinetics involved.
• 1:28:22
  Luke Kennedy: I want to talk about that a little bit, because Ben did make this introduction, which I'm very grateful for and put a lot of value in.
• 1:28:30
  Luke Kennedy: So Ben winner started this company called Tier One Kinetics, and you can find that on the internet.
• 1:28:39
  Luke Kennedy: What that is is a place for you to buy tactical and hunting equipment and a bunch of other stuff, and everything that he sells has been vetted by a combat operator, so not just a veteran, not just somebody who's in the military, but by somebody who, who was an actual operator, or by somebody who's a professional hunter.
• 1:29:00
  Luke Kennedy: So everything in there has been vetted as a good piece of gear, certifiably Very special, and, yeah, and Ben's a tremendous guy.
• 1:29:09
  Luke Kennedy: So if you need stuff, buy it there, and that's who we're going to be doing this swim with as well.
• 1:29:17
  Luke Kennedy: I'm both excited and terrified at the prospect of it.
• 1:29:21
  Luke Kennedy: I'm going to build up to it and we're going to get this done, and I'll probably be crying for at least half an hour at the end of this as well.
• 1:29:29
  James Nash: I'm all about hugs, man.
• 1:29:30
  James Nash: I train with Swicks, so it's all about that touchy, feely stuff.
• 1:29:33
  James Nash: Man, I'm in.
• 1:29:34
  James Nash: Well, between that and being Greek, I think hugging is just part of who you are All the way.
• 1:29:45
  Luke Kennedy: Yeah Well, I want to end in this with a question.
• 1:29:50
  Luke Kennedy: You've seen a lot of the best and more than more than your fair share of the worst of what humanity has to offer.
• 1:30:01
  Luke Kennedy: Both inside the United States and outside, you could live wherever you wanted.
• 1:30:05
  Luke Kennedy: Wherever you want, you choose to live here.
• 1:30:09
  Luke Kennedy: What is something that is special and valuable to you about living in America?
• 1:30:23
  James Nash: That's very personal to me and I tell everybody I am an American through and through and I do not apologize for any of it.
• 1:30:36
  James Nash: And this is the only country in the world.
• 1:30:42
  James Nash: And to give context of how I know this is doing my career of seven years, I went through five passport books.
• 1:30:52
  James Nash: Every passport has 24 pages.
• 1:30:54
  James Nash: Each page, back and forth, can hold up to seven, 14 stamps.
• 1:31:00
  James Nash: So you did a math of how much traveling in countries I've been to get five passport books.
• 1:31:07
  James Nash: There is no country on this planet now or before ever, that you can come with nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing, and you can enjoy success in your lifetime.
• 1:31:22
  James Nash: It just doesn't exist.
• 1:31:23
  James Nash: You can go to France, to Germany, to all those places and if you come from nothing, if you're lucky, your third generation after you might be a decent citizen.
• 1:31:38
  James Nash: This is the only place where you can practice everything you want.
• 1:31:44
  James Nash: Everything you want, I mean you can even say that this country sucks as you come here and you'll still be allowed to say it.
• 1:31:51
  James Nash: That doesn't exist in 99% of the population.
• 1:31:59
  James Nash: We have a constitution and it's my most favorite document, because I don't read the people as a limiting contract when I read it the way that.
• 1:32:15
  James Nash: I read it, the way that I take it I mean it's tattooed on my body is it's a platform for success.
• 1:32:25
  James Nash: It's a blueprint of what you can do to live the way that you want, if you choose to.
• 1:32:34
  James Nash: I mean, you know every other country, every other country, their laws are putting you in kind of boxing you in to be able to do what you want.
• 1:32:48
  James Nash: Here we're not boxing.
• 1:32:50
  James Nash: Constitution does not box you in.
• 1:32:52
  James Nash: It allows you to do anything, man.
• 1:32:58
  James Nash: I mean, you know, pursue of happiness exists is the only place I get.
• 1:33:05
  James Nash: I get really emotional man, because it's just.
• 1:33:06
  James Nash: I've seen, I've seen so much of people around the world dying, willing to die, willing to kill so their kids can be here, willing to die just to have a chance to live here.
• 1:33:23
  James Nash: And I've also seen so many people here who don't value it at all, who choose not to value it.
• 1:33:32
  James Nash: It's not because it's not valuable, it's not because he doesn't carry any value.
• 1:33:36
  James Nash: They just choose to ignore the value of it.
• 1:33:39
  James Nash: They're just assigning values to different platforms that don't exist.
• 1:33:45
  James Nash: It's just.
• 1:33:48
  James Nash: It's not even crypto money, crypto value it's like monopoly value.
• 1:33:51
  James Nash: It doesn't exist.
• 1:33:53
  James Nash: The freedom that you think, as an American, that you don't have, nobody else has anywhere else.
• 1:34:00
  James Nash: I mean it doesn't exist.
• 1:34:01
  James Nash: You know, and I can put this in many ways, if you want to have the life that you have here as a mediocre income family in most of the world, you are top 1% of that population with education that you don't have here, with the sacrifices of families that your families have not done I mean third, fourth, fifth generation, college professors, surgeons in many countries do not have the life and the luxuries that we have here.
• 1:34:36
  James Nash: My joy, when I came back, I remember I'm not a big like super music fan, I like stuff, but I just remember when I first came back Justin Bieber, sorry, and that music was on I was just like this is fucking it, man.
• 1:35:01
  James Nash: I mean this is it.
• 1:35:04
  James Nash: You know.
• 1:35:04
  James Nash: I mean imagine, man, I mean you can listen to whatever the fuck you want anywhere, right, and I'm not.
• 1:35:11
  James Nash: You know I understand people are going to say well, that's Afghanistan, how about different countries?
• 1:35:14
  James Nash: I guarantee you, from starting from zero, if you leave everything that you have here, without any transfer of income or money, there is no other country.
• 1:35:26
  James Nash: You will make it to the point where you are now leaving and that you enjoy it within your life.
• 1:35:32
  James Nash: So it's life type, so it's just, it's not just privilege to live here, man, it's just such luck, I mean it's beautiful.
• 1:35:42
  Luke Kennedy: Yeah, I completely agree, and I often hear this perspective either from people who have spent a lot of time elsewhere or from people who have immigrated here.
• 1:35:54
  Luke Kennedy: They're like this is this is the greatest opportunity in the world, and it is a special thing and it's good to have that reminder.
• 1:36:03
  Luke Kennedy: Luke, I am extremely grateful for your service and for for your sacrifice and dedication, not only to our country but just for the good of people everywhere.
• 1:36:15
  Luke Kennedy: And you know, you've given.
• 1:36:18
  Luke Kennedy: You've given more than can be understood.
• 1:36:20
  Luke Kennedy: You've given more than anybody could ever ask and having spent seven years undercover in war zones, dude, I cannot even imagine the toll that that has taken on you.
• 1:36:32
  Luke Kennedy: And I'm so glad to see you, you know, living well with your family back here in the States, and it it's truly, it's truly a privilege just to get to talk with you.
• 1:36:43
  Luke Kennedy: And when we take on this, what is to me a gargantuan challenge of putting on these water miles in honor of those troops who are killed in Afghanistan, I'm looking forward to that as well.
• 1:36:58
  James Nash: Thank you for having me.
• 1:36:59
  James Nash: Man, it's, it's, it's.
• 1:37:01
  James Nash: I'm lost for words.
• 1:37:03
  James Nash: I truly am.
• 1:37:05
  Luke Kennedy: What can people do to support you?
• 1:37:08
  James Nash: Enjoy your every motherfucking day.
• 1:37:11
  James Nash: As an American man, you know, have that latte or don't have that fucking latte, and it just like remember that you are living the dream that most people will kill for Amen.
• 1:37:33
  Luke Kennedy: Thank you all very much for listening.
• 1:37:34
  Luke Kennedy: I'm going to keep bringing you these stories from normal people just like you, who have done extraordinary things.
• 1:37:45
  Luke Kennedy: Everyone is an expert at something and they have interesting perspectives on life and work and the environment and all the things that we care about.
• 1:37:57
  Luke Kennedy: I'm going to keep bringing that to you and I want to thank you so much for making this show possible.
• 1:38:03
  Luke Kennedy: I also want to thank Emily Bratcher for producing this show.
• 1:38:07
  Luke Kennedy: She does a great job editing.
• 1:38:09
  Luke Kennedy: Really appreciate her.
• 1:38:10
  Luke Kennedy: I want to thank John Chattelin he did the art for the six ranch podcast and Celia soon to be Harlander she digitized that so that we can get it out there on the internet for you.
• 1:38:22
  Luke Kennedy: Also want to thank Justin Hay for writing this original music and the beautiful whistling that you're listening to right now.
• 1:38:29
  Luke Kennedy: You guys are awesome.
• 1:38:31
  Luke Kennedy: Thank you so much.
• 1:38:32
  Luke Kennedy: Please keep listening to the show, write me a review if you feel like it and just keep doing your thing and we'll all learn from this together.
• 1:38:41
  Luke Kennedy: It's been fun and we're just getting started.