There's only one game in the Marine Corps and that's to seek and kill the enemy. And they're starting to use drones to do reconnaissance on the camp right there where we were at. And they run drones over and find out where all the UTVs and stuff are parked.
We see them. They're crept down outside of one of the barriers outside the camp. And they're sitting there and it looks like they're setting the drones up.
And the guy that's on the sticks is like, "Okay, I'm going to zoom in. " And Sean zoomed in. What I saw, I was like, "Oh my god, dude.
" You know, I was like, "I don't want to be a part of this no more. I don't want to hurt no more people. There's no way I could justify for myself anymore that us being there was doing any good.
" I got an opportunity where one of my good buddies went to the GRS program and he hit me up one of these days. I'm at the library and I just feel like I'm gonna lose my mind and he's like, "What? How you doing, bro?
" That's my boy Jesse. And I was like, "Dude, I'm not not okay, dude. Like, I'm holding it together, but I'm not okay.
Like, I don't know what's going on with me. I don't I feel lost, you know? I lost all my money from the military.
I don't have any money. My family's like stressing. " And I'm like, "I need to make money.
" He's like, "Okay. " So he ends up hooking me up and telling me where to send my resume. He puts in a good word for me and I end up, you know, going to GRS.
>> So GRS for the audience, uh, there's the global response staff contracting for CIA. At least I contracting or >> Yeah, contracting. >> Okay.
>> Yep. So here I am again back in the shoot, right? Um, are you excited?
>> I am excited. >> Are you coming back? >> Yeah, I'm excited.
I am. I remember being excited and I remember like not really knowing. I never heard of it before, right?
So, I had no clue. I knew who they supported, right? I knew that a lot of my friends got out and went that direction, but I had no clue about it.
I just didn't pay attention to that type of stuff. And um yeah, I end up going to TDC and it got real real quick. Like I realized really fast like one, I should have prepared better, right?
And two, um, the gravity of what I was signing up for was about to get real. >> What year is this? >> This was 2017.
>> Okay. 2017. >> Yeah.
>> What' you think of the vetting? >> Vetting. TDC.
Yeah. TDC. What' you think of it?
>> Very good. Very good. Yeah.
Very good. We started with 13 or 14. We graduated four.
>> Yep. The only first time go guys there was me and another dude from Mars. Right on, guys.
Yeah. Everyone else like, dude, it was crazy. Uh, I'd overcome a lot there, too.
That was the first time I felt like, um, I was going to fail. Yep. That's the first time where I was like, dude, I don't think I'm cut out for this.
Like, I came grossly underprepared and I'm not in a good space. >> What were you underprepared for? >> Just the the pace of it.
Just similar to 18 Delta. It's like, here's the standard. Here's the time.
You either shoot it or you don't, and we're not going to be angry about it, right? No one's yelling at you. It's a it's a gentleman's course and the standard's the standard and you're either going to pick it up or you already got it or you don't.
And that was a lot of pressure. Whereas everywhere in the military outside of those first two years like I knew people there. I went to a school I had a homeboy there, right?
It's like there was no confusion about what the standards were. It was like I I knew enough people that it was like different and that's where I'm showing up and I'm like they don't know me from Adam. I have a call sign now.
They don't even know who Steve Bunting is. They don't care. And you're either going to make it or you're not.
And >> it was a lot of pressure, man. >> Doesn't sound like much has changed. >> Yeah.
>> Where was your first deployment with the agency? >> Uh, Cobble. >> Cobble.
>> Yep. >> Anything significant? >> Yeah.
Um, not much, but because I was a 18 Delta grad, I got to do some cooler stuff there. So anytime there was an opportunity to push out to Missouri Sharief or push out to uh uh anywhere in the country, I got to see the whole country. So anywhere there was a site or a team there, I was I was flying around and got to kind of do that type of stuff.
So my eyes were open to that was pretty interesting. >> Cool. What did you what did you think about the culture at CIA versus the culture within a a Mars platoon?
>> Yeah, I'll bet that was a staunch difference for you. >> Well, dude, yeah. when it came to the GRS teams themselves, like there's just a lot of disgruntled people, man.
Yep. A lot of disgruntled people were people really angry, right? And I I don't blame them, but you could see you could see it on their eyes.
You could hear it in their story where it's like they're on their fifth divorce, right? They they don't know what to do outside of that type of work. And it's almost like they're very good what they did.
And I know they took pride in, but it almost for me looking in looked like they were prisoners to this process now. And that was in the very beginning I realized I was like, "Oh, dang. " like you can become a slave to the money, you can become a slave to this lifestyle.
And it's almost hard to do both to >> to work at that opo and have a family and anything else, right? >> And then when it came to the agency themselves, I learned a lot there as well, right? Just how deeply political things are, >> right?
It was different than the Marine Corps side of Dallas. There's only one game in the Marine Corps and that's to seek and kill the enemy, right? M >> and here there was very much a political thing to everything that we did and it that became revealed to me pretty quickly as well.
>> Yeah. Yeah. >> How many tours did you do with uh >> I did three with him.
>> Three? >> Yeah. >> You want to go into it?
>> Yeah. Um that first one really was just you know how it is. Drving around a lot, just giving people rides and things like that.
Um the second trip because I was a 18 Delta, they gave me the opportunity to go out to coast. >> Mhm. >> And I I was asking dudes around.
kind of like, "What's up with that? " And they're like, "Yeah, it's the real deal out there. " All right.
It ain't the city life. You're not doing the, you know, taxi cab driving out there. You're out there figuring out some stuff.
>> So, I jumped on it. I was like, "Okay, cool. " I didn't really like, you know, cobble so much.
Anyways, just too dynamic. You know how it is. >> So, I get out to coast and it's a smaller team, right?
And the things that you're doing have greater consequences. And then there's other aspects of the people that are on that camp that make it a little bit different of an experience. So, I get out there that first trip with them and it was in the winter and it was kind of dead, but I start getting to know some of the directs, start to build a relationship with some of the the other guys that are working there that I'm working intimately with and um start becoming friends with them.
It was like kind of a cool little camp there. Also, you know, for the ground guys that were out there, I had friends from the Marine Corps that were in there. >> So, I was like, "Oh, man.
I got homies here. " Like, everyone's not as miserable >> here. It seems like everyone's out here like wants to be out here.
And it it was kind of good. And so that trip was like a little uh unremarkable. But then the third trip I went was like kind of where things changed for me.
Yeah. It was it was in the summer. It was in um the summer of 2019, right?
And the Afghanistan's kind of falling apart at this point, right? Just due to the politics, some of the policies that are pushing in there. It was it was this the secret rumblings of what we saw happen with the fall of Afghanistan is I found myself at the very edge of that.
I was kind of watching that happen and you know seeing it being facilitated around me and uh you know for me as a Delta on the on their team some of the other guys that were leaving the wire and doing more kinetic stuff I had friends there so they'd hit me up and they hey slide lock will you go on will you go on um QRF with us so I'm like yeah okay y so I caught myself kind of going on QRF a few times trying to help them out and things just kind of shifted there uh their partner Nation Force was didn't shoot up, dude. And um I just kept finding myself like jumping on some of those ops and and running out there. Next, you know, I'm elbows deep in in blood and just doing the medical stuff and being in that environment again that I I wanted to be in so much, but it was just hitting different this time.
>> What was different? >> It's just I I think it was to be honest, I think it was just my body was just worn out, dude. I think the nervous system was gone.
You know, in the beginning, you get that rush and it it it's like the adrenaline hits and all this stuff. And now even at that level, it's just the numbness was becoming greater than anything, right? Where I catch myself doing situations that used to light me on fire and have me fired up and I'm just like kind of numb to it.
>> Did you realize that immediately? >> I didn't, but it it started to it started to raise its head pretty quickly, right? And >> what did you notice?
>> Well, for me it was the insomnia started happening really bad, right? Where I couldn't sleep at all. like I was struggling every single night to go to sleep and it was just uh again severe insomnia where I couldn't stop my mind from racing.
It's like no matter what I was doing, I couldn't couldn't get any peace from that. And um that's when I started kind of meditating at this point to try and figure out how to get to sleep. But um was worn pretty thin um at this point.
>> Still on the bottle heavy? >> Yeah. Anything else?
No, at this point I think um I was having severe back pain and this stuff calledratom. Have you heard of that? >> Mhm.
>> Yeah. That was kind of a hot thing back then. It's an uncontrolled substance and you know it was supposed to be good for pain.
It was better than you know opioids and I remember that's I started kind of dipping in on that stuff. Started consuming that and um yeah was not helping anything. It's actually making everything worse.
Well, kudos to you for being a medic that's not self-medicating from the uh supply. Maybe the first time I've ever seen that, to be honest with you. >> It's very common, man.
It's very common. It's hard not to when it's right there. >> Yeah.
Yeah. jungle >> between the tramodol and new bane and all that. >> Mhm.
>> You know, we had a few people die along the way from that that were medics. Um, so I I knew better than to mess with that stuff, but the booze and the the cratom was something I was probably hitting pretty heavy back then. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah. >> But there was this one situation that happened there that kind of turned it like turned me away from the whole process is um at this time they were starting to use drones to do reconnaissance on the camp right there where we were at. And they run drones over and find out where all the UTVs and stuff are parked and then that night they would either mortar or shoot rockets in.
So part of this the static guys like part of their job was shooting the the uh drones out of the sky. Um I was also a cryp I was the uh a radio guy a comm guy because I'm a newer guy right? So like slide lock you're on all the calm.
I'm like great thanks. So I'm in charge of rolling all that stuff every other day. So as part of my routine I would grab all the radios and I would go into the the uh the static side of the house.
They're always happier. They seem like they had a better life. The GRS guys were disgruntled, angry.
I could barely have conversations with them. And those guys were always having a party. >> No [ __ ] >> Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, there's some good dudes. They're not all bad, but you know, it was different energy.
And then guys didn't want to sit in the team house in the team room there, whereas the static guys were always hanging out, having a party in there. Yeah. So, I grab all my stuff and I bring it in there to their room.
And I'm just coking and joking with them, talking [ __ ] watching all the cameras. And um they had like this little game that they would play. They had a barrel of shotguns, right?
And whenever a drone would come over, whoever got to the shotgun first could run out there and they could they could take the drone out, right? So I'm sitting here at this little it's their little comm desk and I got all my damn, you know, radios and the truck radios and I'm sitting there just jamming radios and um like we got we got some drone guys. I'm like, "Okay.
" So everyone stops. They kind of zoom in the G boss or whatever and we see them and they're crept down outside of one of the barriers outside the camp and they're sitting there and it looks like they're setting the drones up. So we're waiting we're waiting for that drone to take off, right?
right? Cuz then someone can grab a shotgun and whoever gets out there can do it. This is before they were using exploding drones and stuff.
Thank God. So we're all sitting there waiting and the guy that's on the sticks is like, "Okay, I'm going to zoom in. No one gets to go yet.
" Like, "I'm going to zoom in. " All right. So he zooms in a little bit further.
And Sean, when he zoomed in, what I saw, I was like, "Oh my god, dude. " It was a mom and her child and they were squat squatting down and they were fishing food out of our gray water. >> Yep.
>> [ __ ] And I saw it and I was like, "Oh man. " I was like, "What am I doing? What am I doing here?
" Like, "I don't want any of this anymore. " You know? I was like, "I don't want to be a part of this no more.
I don't want to hurt no more people. " Like, there's no way I could justify for myself anymore that us being there was doing any good. And it killed me, bro.
It killed me. I was so sad. And um I got back from that trip.
We had pretty rocky trip after that. A lot of attacks on the camp and things like that. And um I resigned.
Yep. I resigned. I called called the company said, "Hey, I made up an excuse that it was over some AFAM pay or something.
They had shorted me like 200 bucks. " So I used that as my reason to to, you know, resign. And I resigned.
>> Why didn't you just tell them? >> I don't know. I didn't want to feel weak.
Like I didn't want to feel like a coward. Like for me to come to terms with that, I I didn't know how to sit with that either, man. But that's absolutely what it was where it just it killed the warrior in me.
like I couldn't justify that behavior anymore and I didn't even want to explain it. So I knew arguing about money was was an easy argument. They're used to having that argument.
So I used that as my scapegoat to just say it ain't going to work out for me no more. Damn. No matter where you're watching Shawn Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can.
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