Break Out of Quarantine Mode with Clint Emerson

[Music] hi welcome to break out of quarantine mode with Clint Emerson I'm Amanda all key director of adult education at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC though I'm coming to you from my dining room and we are so excited to have Clint Emerson with us thank you for being here Clint no not a problem hey you know it's uh I've got coffee you know I'm ready let's do this we'll try an inner clone some people while we're you know I've been staring at paint for you know 50 some days you're definitely better than staring at pain we've done a ton of really cool in-person programs over the years and we wish this was in person but this is the next best thing Clint is featured in our tools of the trade exhibit at the Spy Museum and he might even show you something behind him later that relates to that exhibit Clint is a former Navy SEAL oh yeah savvy handwork Quinn is a former Navy SEAL 20 years of service he's written some great books the right kind of crazy and 100 deadly skills the SEAL operatives guide to eluding pursuers evading capture and surviving any dangerous situation the titles truly say it he's going to share some stories from his very interesting career and life so I'm going to disappear I'll come back when you're ready for questions thanks so much yeah thank you so hey thanks for having me it's always it's always cool to be hanging out spy museum I've been out there a couple of times in the past several years and the truth of the matter is is I had a presentation lined up when this book came out but you know there was more important people at the spy museum so they canceled me know no one is the one and interrupt you so for those that were supposed to go to that and now you're here tonight I'm sorry you didn't get to you know experience this in person but I'm glad you stuck with the Spy Museum and now you're here and so what I've heard is there's you know some of you that are in the crowd tonight and that's cool I appreciate the support okay so you know we've all been sitting around you know in our pajamas and like I said watching paint dry it's already dry it's been dry for about 30 days now and I figure I just kind of go through a very Illustrated based presentation that has represents a lot of the stories that are in the book and for those of you that have already got it hey thank you for the support those of you that have listened to it I'm sorry you had to hear my voice for I think it's about eight hours straight but I will give you a taste of it tonight and maybe fill in some details that you didn't get to read in the book so I'll just kind of start it off this first illustration has a lot going on but when I was a kid I grew up over in Saudi and my dad worked for a ramco-4700 [Music] dive with my Scoutmaster okay so I'm 12 and he's probably in his late 30s and he's supposed to be a responsible adult but he we drove out there we got set up with our tanks and everything and we went out to the end of a pier at Korea Beach Korea beaches is basically in a ram co-owned beach on the Persian Gulf side of Saudi and you can literally walk out to the end of that pure you know jump off and then down at the bottom of that pier is a rope that you grab and then you follow it all the way out probably at the time when you're a kid you feel like it smiles but it was probably only you know a couple of football fields so we get we get down the the first thing is we show up to the pier and there happen to be a migration of jellyfish so there was this huge swarm literally you know bordering the entire pier and let's get my Scoutmaster was like hey well just you know as soon as we jump in instead of you know coming to the surface and giving the thumbs-up or the okay just go right through it sink to the bottom and so I was like okay and so we 1-2-3 off we go we hit the water we sink to the bottom and within minutes you know of course anybody who's been in water where there's been jellyfish you still get stung right even if you didn't touch the jellyfish and their little micro needles or floating around the water so immediately I started burning but the only thing that really neutralized it made it bearable is once you get down the bottom it's nice and cold so it was probably only like 30 40 feet down but we were using the 64 60 you know typical diving rules where it's 60 feet for 60 minutes and you know if you're if you're down there less than 60 feet then you know you got a little more time on your side but the bottles are the other piece of the equation they tend to not last that long depending on what you've got going on so we go through the jellyfish and that was for me a little odd and certainly scary because once you got under him it was pretty dark then we get down there we find the line he's leading the way I'm just following the basically the dust trail the silt from him kicking his fins so I'm blind most of the time but I knew if I'm blind that means I'm right behind them so I felt okay and then we finally get out to Tyre reef and it's basically if anybody's seen the desert you know oil base like any any kind of vehicle that work the desert has these tires on them that are just massive literally probably the room you're sitting in right now the tires would touch the ceiling they're that big and so what they did is Aramco created at what's called tire reef and it's been there forever and it's they're big ones that are stacked there standing upright and they're kind of an all these different hodgepodge of obstacles if you will you can even get up on the ones that are sitting upright you can get up inside the tire blow a bunch of bubbles create a you know create a bubble and then poke your head through take your mask off and take a break it's not the smartest thing to do but we did it well anyway we start kind of cruising around the the reef and I had a you know one of the more popular things to do when you go diving is you carry like some hot dogs with you we pull up on out and then you'll get a swarm of fish eating right out of your hand so I'm kind of mesmerized by all these different colored fish and everything that are eating out of the palm of my hand and I lose track of where my dive buddy is right and so when I'm done I kind of start looking around for him and I can't find them and I'm circling this tire reef and the reef in itself was probably about you know probably covered half a football field right spread out all over it wasn't it wasn't huge but there was enough stuff spread out where you could lose sight of one another behind the tires and so I felt like I circled this thing I don't know how many times you never could find the guy and then I started looking for the road because I was like alright I'm out of here I'm gonna go back to the pier just I started to freak out and then I couldn't find the rope we came in on so at that point I was like well I guess I can go to the surface I looked up and I didn't see him up there and if anybody's been diving you can go to the surface and then you know literally within seconds look down and lose track of where you were one depending on tides and currents and everything going on you could be above the tire reef one second and then look down and it'd be gone so I kind of just took the risk went to the surface and didn't see anything right yeah I was I was I was a little kid so I had to kick really really hard to get my chest out of the water so that I could see land and finally I did and I just decided to turtle back it in and once I got into Shore I kind of washed up on shore with all that gear on my back and everything and there he was sitting at the picnic table like hey what's up man like it was no big deal at that point I realized you know like it was probably at that point my life the most stressful event I'd ever had and I was glad to get back to you know land like I was happier then than ever before to get back to land and his nonchalant attitude as an adult diving with a kid for the first time made me realize you know it's really tough to one trust most the people you come across these days but probably the bigger piece was that he just didn't he that he was so blind to it why Here I am a 12 year old thinking to myself why am this adult like think that that was wrong when one of the biggest rules in diving is never leave your buddy behind and he did it so nonchalantly and so clear lessly that that basically increased my level of awareness any time I was in the water and I feel like that experience did nothing but benefit me once I got to buds and you're getting shark attacked by buds instructors during dive Bay's but that was kind of my intro to diving it was uh yeah I never had another event really like that I was kind of glad but uh you know and as an adult diving for a living it really made stressful situations a little easier but I don't recommend you know going diving with that guy all right next slide so then we moved back we moved back from Saudi for says I could go to high school most people know it but you know the the school system over there really only goes to the eighth grade and then you've got to either go to a boarding school which I was lined up for one in Switzerland which I'm kind of wondering how things would have gone if I would have done that because I heard they just ski and smoke all day even back then that's what kids were doing now it's just normal right so I came back to Texas to the Dallas area got in high school and one day this blond-haired blue-eyed lady comes knocking on the door one day after school and so my mom answers the door I'm in my room I can look out the window and see kind of the front door the way my house was designed and so I hear my mom basically say get the [ __ ] out of here and I'm like huh and I hear the door slam and I see this woman go out to her car open the trunk pull out all this paperwork and she comes right marching back to the front door right and ringing the doorbell the mom opens the door and I hear some talk it sounds hostile at first and then it kind of calms down and then before you know it the woman sitting in our living room with all this paperwork spread out all over the coffee table and that that was basically a long-lost sister all right so my mom and that moment finds out that she was adopted with her twin sister by an Air Force colonel and this is like in the 50s post-world War two these two little girls were German they didn't speak a word of English and was brought back to the states to you know go to school and so my mom knew that you know parts but didn't know that there was a long-lost sister the long-lost sister then goes on to tell her that there's actually 12 of us and so all of these siblings from the same mother and different fathers some of them German soldiers and some of them American so so basically my mom found out that her real biological mom was a hooker and died in prison that day and so this illustration represents the midlife crisis that my mom went into after that she became a race car driver and she got sponsored by a zoo zoo and so she got handed some zoo zoo impulses that were that she raced on the s-e-c SCCA circuit which is kind of like the starting area before you move on to the big leagues and she she left me and my brother a little high and dry and at this moment you're wondering where was your dad well my dad when we got back decided that his old job took him back which was teaching down at Texas A&M and this was after we had already bought a house in North Dallas so if anyone knows Texas geography that well Texas A&M as I correctly oh I don't know five hours south of Dallas so he was working down there during the week and coming home on the weekends and still trying to figure out what were we gonna do well that ended up basically all of high school and so I was raising my brother the entire time driving one of his motorcycles around with my little brother on the back taking him to school and in this picture it just kind of demonstrates I was taking my brother out to my grandparents house to basically dump him off so that I could have free time with my friends from time to time but my mom she was a unique unique woman she died last last year surprisingly because it the whole time me and my brother would joke with my mom like this is a woman who'd been smoking since she was you know a teenager and never had an issue and so we would always call her the cockroach because you know cockroach is the only thing that would survive a nuclear fallout but you know the most unlikely thing got my mom and that was stripped right and you can you get strapped in your heart it's very rare but you can get it from brushing your teeth and it makes its way to a heart valve it vegetate it takes over your heart and it's that happens over time before you even you're basically walking dead there's you don't know that you've got it going on until it's too late and but she was a tough woman 100% German and she's a good she's a good mom she had she made her mistakes but in the end we had a we've made up and because you know me and my brother really didn't like her for a little while but years later once you and as we all know once you become an adult and you start making mistakes on your own then the decisions that your parents sometimes may you really understand and I've certainly made a lot of bad decisions if you read this book or this book you know they there's a saying out there right you know bad decisions make for great stories which is pretty much this book cover-to-cover alright next color so in just some background these illustrations were done by an illustrator named Tom Mandrake and he's a DC Marvel guy and he's the guy who created Swamp Thing he created black mask he also illustrated the entire Batman vs Superman series so he's been around for a while he's an awesome guy and I feel like he did just a great job at this book so if you have it you know that about every five pages there's an illustration there representing whatever you're reading so for those of you don't know seals you know it stands for sea air and land and this illustration represents our capability in the maritime environment so of course we we've got jet boats and we come from ships I love the fact that he used I'm sure right now I'd be asking everyone in the crowd you know what ship is that and where is it right now and those of you that live on the west coast know what that ship is and where it's located and you got the submarines you've got the mark-5 you've got our riverine boats there that are basically like tanks that actually float with a whole ton of firepower and then you know us SEALs we we come in you know we what's called over the beach operations so OTB we can basically swim in combat swimmer or we can dive in combat diver hit a target and then extract back out through the ocean so we have a lot of capability at sea and that is where our foundation is as Special Operations guys we are really good in the water but we've had our moments right I mean most of our operations have been on land for such a long time that the maritime piece kind of went way but you know it adds inflows but we always maintain those qualifications because it's the one thing that separates us from everyone else I really liked abs and flows that went really well thank you all right so the next piece of seal is air so yeah we can jump out of airplanes I think most people know that you can static line and freefall these days freefall really is the only thing you're doing you have to kind of check the box on static lines and then eventually you get to your your freefall qualifications which basically means you're pulling to get your chute open whereas with static line you're actually hooking up inside the aircraft and when you jump out the parachute is pulled for you most of the time and then of course air also represents other infiltration and exfil platforms like helicopters rappelling fast-roping out of the helicopters those helos there represent TF 160 which you know of course they make every SEAL movie great when you've got those what we you know those little birds you know cruising through an urban environment they're really made popular in I just lost the movie everyone's probably saying it out loud right now the Rangers Mogadishu Black Hawk Down Black Hawk Down so little birds and black hawks in that movie I think that was the first time people were like whoa those things are cool and they are and sitting on the outside of one of those little birds with one of those warrant officers flying it is better than any rollercoaster on the planet and those dudes are the best at what they do they can literally land those things on anything and there was one time we were doing an exercise in Kuwait we're on the outside and he would took a he banked that thing we were literally you know flying just above the earth he banked it and you could see the props almost hitting the sand and creating little divots it was probably just the wind those from those blades but a man it was it's it's a it's a cool ride without a doubt but we also called them whistling [ __ ] cans of death because anybody who knows helicopters knows they're not supposed to fly so anyway they're it's uh it can be a crapshoot getting on board those things all right and then land so sea air land this kind of represents the land piece right you know at the beginning before 9/11 land for seals was carrying a hundred pounds of crap on your back and humping in ten klicks and then some Wars started breaking out and we started really realizing that our mobility was horrible we were nowhere near the conventional forces and so we had to play catch-up pretty quick the only things we had in inventory were those dune buggie looking things right there those are called DPP's desert patrol vehicles and we found out the first time we used him in Iraq we would basically launch him from the back of a helicopter the helicopter would land then these things would roll out and they were worthless because we landed in these mud flats and and these things were loaded down with all of our gear guns and bullets that they they just sank they were useless like they just sat there and we were basically stuck you know humping on land again so after the first couple of tours through our you know Afghanistan and Iraq and SW started spending some serious money putting together some incredible vehicles that were AED proof and I say NSW was probably like it's so calm and so we were all given incredible vehicles that could take some pretty decent blasts they were all armored up the Humvees that we had you know during the first push and Iraq literally had the plastic or fiberglass doors had zero armor and we were driving through the middle of Baghdad with those things was crazy but we got lucky you know we we came back with Humvees full of holes but none of us actually took any hits but uh anyway mobility got better and that represents a big chunk of our land capability these days but it also represents the things you do and how you operate on land so that's you know our nests or reconnaissance or recce it's it's changed and had a lot of different names over the years but that's basically when you watch a target and then direct action that's when you go and actually enter that target and hopefully do bad things to bad guys and then of course you've got snipers and everything else that's associated in an operation that's you know on land there's a lot of other stuff but this captures the big stuff of how we operate on land another thing this is probably one of the coolest mission seals get to participate in and that is this was all pre nine eleven which is VBSS right vessel board search and seizure and there was a time when we had all these embargoes against Iraq especially pre 9/11 and it was our job to basically track down hunt the vessels that were coming out of Iraq through the KA the the river they would come out and then they would come into the Persian Gulf and immediately turn out all their lights they were smuggling oil smuggling weapons rockets whatever and then they would hug the International with twelve nautical mile international Iranian water line right and back then and even now you cannot go into those Iranian waters because they were always looking for a reason to shoot someone and so it became an incredible game of cat-and-mouse of us trying to always outsmart these smugglers and they were pretty good I mean sometimes they could get past you because they knew how to navigate that that that international water line and so then we couldn't board him or if we boarded them then they would you know immediately start steering into Iranian waters in that map and Aris and our basically our SOPs our engagement is you had to then get off the boat so that's it's much harder to get off the boat moving in the middle of the night at 20 knots in rough sea state completely blacked out I mean it's it's it's it's quite the feat to board it it's another one to get off of the boat so when you're climbing up the side of these things in the middle of night it's it's no easy task and so this restoration does a good job the best part was showing up to the bridge because usually they had no idea how we got there and you'd show up to the bridge with your you know with your ninja hood on and night vision a gun and tell him to hit the deck and they did they would they would get down immediately and then also usually pee their pants literally pee their pants and then we would take control of the bridge steer the steer the boat into international waters hand the boat over to either NATO forces or whatever coalition forces were in the area to then basically do the investigation everything that was going on that vessel the big eye-opener for me personally that terrorism was something to take seriously was the USS Cole and approaching this thing was unreal just we we arrived you know within days of it happening we happen to be in a seal platoon that was part of an Arg which is an amphibious Readiness Group which is basically boats full of Marines and one seal platoon and we just would just basically you know cut squares in the oceans of the world ready at a minutes notice to go do whatever needs to be done well so in the middle of this deployment was the USS Cole and approaching it was surreal to see a hole and at that time one of the most advanced destroyers one of the most advanced vessels that the United States Navy had put together and dealing with me being a combat medic you know quickly my role as a therapist was the most surprising piece I'm already a you know a young ceil but giving some of these sailors someone to talk to after witnessing their friends die or just the just the pure trauma that's associated with with a blast to a ship anybody who's been in the Navy anybody who knows vessels made of steel the the blasts are ten times worse because the because of how compartmentalized ships are you know and everything is metal right the bulkheads I mean everything so the shock waves that went through this thing you know blew hundred pound plus doors off their hinges and took out sailors legs I mean you had 17 sailors died um and the numbers were that high because they hit the ship right where the galley near the galley and it was like lunchtime and so it was dramatic it was one of the saddest sights to see and you know it gave me personally this overwhelming feeling of the unknown and I think a lot of us have felt that and when this pandemic kicked off like you know what does this mean and we certainly get that feeling as our economy gets hit you go home what is this what does it mean for our future I mean is there gonna be a bounce-back is there gonna be a sharp V in the economy who knows right but I definitely have had this feeling before and it was certainly approaching the USS Cole because for the four terrorists to use such a low-tech system if you will and pull off such a devastating result was eye-opening you know but there were some some signature things about this day you know in retrospect talking to the sailors and everybody the signs were kind of there and some of you may have heard me tell this story before in podcast or other lectures but you know it's worth it because it all rolls into situational awareness and that day when the ship pulled in that harbor was empty you know and there it wasn't alive and anybody who's been in the Navy knows when a u.s. vessel pulls into or everybody shows up some people are looking for free handouts others just want to wave and clap and yell and scream and say USA or chant USA and say America and and then our job is you know to be that we are a it's a show of force but we also you know sailors will be throwing you know cases of water MREs whatever they've got and or we buy we spend a lot of money when we pull in these ports whether it's the Dolphin pier buying fuel or or if a ship has to restock on consumable items you know we're spending money when we pull into these countries and so people show up but that day it was silent it was eerie they would that's what they told us and the other the other telltale sign to was it's it's like Navy tradition when you pull into a harbor of port the captain of a US Navy vessel will invite the Harbormaster on board for a dinner and no one no hardware master says no to that but that day he be gracefully backed out of that opportunity to have dinner with the captain of the USS Cole so a lot of lessons learned you know and but the big thing is you know pay pay attention and when things don't look right then they probably are not right but there was a an eye opening and of event everybody knows where they were this day right and this is another moment where you have that feeling of of the unknown right it's kind of an awkward like whoa what does this mean right we just witnessed these planes flying into buildings and this is where I was you know I had just gone over the Coronado Bridge in San Diego and my wife at the time calls and says hey the u.s. is under attack and I think I laughed out loud what are you talking about and as I pull into SEAL team three I walked through the quarterdeck and everybody was surrounding the television on the quarterdeck and right when I looked over one of the one of my buddy's shoulders there was the second plane went into the second tower and within weeks SEAL team three was packing its pallets and heading to Afghanistan SEAL team 3 at the time was focused solely on the Middle East so I was fortunate that even pre 9/11 we were always kind of the team that was operating because we focused solely on you know the Middle East was our region shortly after that so that all SEAL Teams could get combat experience Admiral McRaven who most of you have probably heard of he created force 21 which which basically allowed SEAL Teams to rotate through different areas of the world and we didn't concentrate anymore on SEAL team three concentrated solely on desert operations now we were capable in all environments and so we rotated all teams to all environments and that basically helped with the op tempo operation tempo so the guys wouldn't get burned out so quickly but we found out we still got burned out even with doing force 21 in Iraq so Iraq kicked off and you know as part of the platoon that took down the largest gas oil platform in the world which was May but and and this at this point I was in a leadership position and it was it was pretty cool I mean it was the largest simultaneous like multi prong operation in Naval Special Warfare history a whole lot of seals taking down may bot and another kay bot which two different offshore platforms or what we know is gas oil platforms short you call them go Platts it also happens to be the greatest like frogman operation to you know where you're you're you're waterborne and you're you're going out in the middle of the ocean and you're taking one of these things base way back from the bad guys there's a lot of ways to do it you can dive in you can use you know your jet boats and kind of motor and quietly we trained for every single possibility to take these down we rehearsed for several months and then then it was it was time you know most people don't know but this really was the kickoff to the Iraqi invasion because securing the oil was priority number one because Saddam had a history of blowing up anything that was oil related and creating environmental disasters so our job was to prevent an environmental disaster by taking these things down before he could blow them up and so we motored in very quietly we knew that there were several ladders that went all the way down surface level so we motored up and we I was the number one guy I had a camera on my helmet and it's too bad the footage it's it looks pretty cool but it didn't turn out that great I wish it had because it was a pretty fun take down but we basically went up the ladders we knew that we were gonna take berthing first because we figured that's where the trigger would be if they had any explosives wired and then the CIA you know back then the CIA had a lot of horrible Intel which they fed to us he said you know hey this thing's got you know like 28 bad guys and you know some hostages and we're like alright cool or not no no I'm sorry it was it was supposed to be three bad guys in one hostage and then when we got on board there was 28 bad guys no hostages and it was like I can't remember there was like 14 or 20 of us so the numbers were fair I would say in the frogman world we say when it's one seal versus you know three bad guys that's that's basically even but that's just probably our ego talking right any time you go hit a target you definitely want to have the numbers on your side especially with this we didn't have we were you know at a disadvantage because we're down on the surface and there everybody that's on that go plaid is in an elevated position so we joked about it that oh wow this is great so you know basically a suicide mission because if they blow the thing up I mean we're going with it and if they start shooting or launching rockets at our boats then we're sinking you know so but you know we we ended up taking it down and no one got hurt but there is a funny you know at the time it wasn't funny in retrospect it's now funny you look at the illustration you'll see that there's 50 cows mounted to the front of these these ribs which is a rigid hull inflatable boat and highly maneuverable and so there was a very new sailor that had gone through the swing program which is you know a program that gives these guys the ability to drive these boats very well and and then they also man the gun so that then we can you know go on to a ship or going to a go plant and do our job the guy Manning the 50 Cal once we get on to the go Platt it's we overcomes I hear shots fired shots fired you hurt me obviously we've heard the shot and then you hear people say it and so that means the gig is up right and so we go 100% dynamic and we're just gonna start we're taking this thing down there's no more stealthy when gun shots are fired and uh but in the end once we got done and we were able to debrief it turns out that first shot fired was that nervous kid on the fifty Cal he accidentally pulled the trigger and the funny part not funny at the time but the funny part was he launched a 50 Cal round right into one of the pipes that contained all that oil that we were there to prevent from leaking into the ocean so needless to say that kid was put on a plane as soon as we got back to Kuwait and what we call he was ship hand so that was I don't know where that guy went but I know he probably he probably lives in shame to this day unfortunately all right well you know no story no seal story is good unless it includes an ambush right so we were fortunate enough to get ambushed but it was kind of a unique one because we had already been going without sleep probably you know we rolled in with the first part that first wave of invasion into Iraq and so sometimes we were behind the conventional forces doing whatever needed to be done but a lot of times we were ahead of the conventional forces and we would go and do reconnaissance and then report back to the Marines which some more popular names you know general mattis and general Kelly you know these guys have obviously were part of trumps staff at the beginning since gone great guys general Kelly I mean he was on the ground in Anan Surya I'll never forget the moment when we showed up there and this is separate from the ambush but we we roll in he walks over there's helicopters Apache I mean not Apaches there's Cobras in the air launching rockets on on masseria that's where Jessica Lynch was and there was I mean a hundred percent combat going on he comes out walking out a general on the battlefield over to us he's like you my seals were like uh-huh and he's not flinching to anything that's going on right artillery you name it tanks they have everything running in on Austria during that time and we're like yes sir and he's like all right good we're glad you're here we got some some I forgot what he called him you know we got some ship bags south of here that are killing my Marines I need you to go in there kill him more like Roger that and so he turned around and walked away it was probably the coolest thing for her and he's a hard dude you know and so for any Marines out there that was probably one of the best leaders that we had a chance to work for okay so fast forward after on Masseria after Jessica Lynch and all that we're sitting in a marine perimeter I'm about to go into Tikrit which was the most northern city it's supposed to be a bloodbath it's Saddam's birth city and they also thought maybe he was hiding there so we were planning for the worst so we're like well let's finally get some sleep before we go in to Tikrit the next day so we pull into a marine perimeter that secure it's the middle of the night and it's surrounded by these what you see in the background are basically light armored vehicles they look like tanks but they have though they basically have tires on them they can move really quick and they've got motivated eighteen-year-olds Manning the guns which is which is horrible for the bad guys but sometimes it can be just as bad for us too but you got to love the Marines man they will just smoke everything in sight so we get into the perimeter and it's like alright you know we set up a watch even though you're inside of a perimeter you still set a watch so it's me and a couple of guys taking the first watch everyone else is like finally getting some sleep and right when things are quiet the whole sky lights up with tracer fire and anybody who's been you know and like any of these situations tracer usually does not represent the bad guys right we use tracer fire so you know there's tracer fire going off and then also ak-47 lighting up our Humvees and so what had happened is these guys came in they set the perimeter and if you look in the picture off to the right there there's like some trees and there were spreading in guys that were actually dug in and hidden at the base of these trees so when the Merc when the Marines set the perimeter they they probably even noticed that there were bad guys already hiding there so essentially they set the perimeter around the bad guys and then we pulled inside the perimeter and before you know it you know the bad guys are shooting us and also it's just the Marines are also shooting in that direction because we happen to park right next to the bad guys but it was a it was a little crazy there for a couple of minutes and uh two Marines that happen to be doing a roving patrol somehow got shot and and then me and a very popular seal who has now passed away Glen Doherty who died in Benghazi he and I were both the medics on those two guys I've always wondered and if anyone listening knows what happened those two guys I'd be curious cuz one took around I think into the chest and at the time he didn't have body army had those old-school velcro in the middle flak jackets and I remember his magazine you hear these stories all the time of the magazine you know magazine not for those of you that don't know like you would call it a clip but it's a magazine full of bullets not a paper magazine but and he also had something else yeah like a one of those many Bibles that help stop stop the round and then the other guy was shot in the leg but we ended up treating them and once all the once all the gunshot all the gunfire was done and we helped him out and then they left they were they were taken by some other Marines in the middle of the night and I don't know what happened but that was myself and Glenn and you know tribute to Glenn man what a great guy that guy I always try to plug fallen guys and he was he had lived the life long before he came in the Navy I always tell the story about how he followed the Grateful Dead you know across the country hitchhiking ended up in Alaska worked on a fishing boat then he ended up on a beach in LA around a campfire where there happened to be a couple of seals and they're all exchanging stories and they told Glenn man you should be a seal he's like okay and he literally like went and joined the Navy the next day so then he became a seal and anyway great guy great medic we did several deployments together he died in Benghazi movies and books now sure most of you have heard about it but he's a good dude all right so you know you go through all the combat and stuff and then I kind of transitioned into there was a program that I asked hey you want to screen and I said well what is it and they're like we can't tell you and I'm like well how am I supposed to screen for something if I don't even know what it is and the only comparison they would give me and then I'm gonna give you today is really this the Jed Burke's right the Jed Berg's were these very small coalition teams it usually was a three-man unit consists of American Frenchman and a Brit they were part of the OSS which is the predecessor to the CIA and they would jump in behind enemy lines and do sabotage and all kinds of fun stuff right and this picture demonstrates there was a couple operations where they blew up main supply routes that the Nazis were using and so in this you know the bottom of the illustration is a bridge you know blowing up but they also would you know train the locals you know how to do what they needed to do to fight the Nazis but a majority of their work really was a lot of like clandestine covert stuff and it was a I mean still to this day the stuff that they got to do blows me away really cool stuff I mean back then static lining right jumping out of a plane in the middle of the night and to Nazi Germany like they say there are no other men than the men of World War two I mean it's just just a bunch of badasses that did it to save the world you know representing America at the highest levels just so cool so basically you know you were like yeah it's kind of like this modern Jedburgh thing and I was like I'm in right I'm sold I want to do that whatever that is so but it took me around the world you know operating in a lot of different locations you know I found my in different areas of the world you know either in a like a couple of guys or by myself in the details of all that when you read the book was you know redacted unfortunately by the Pentagon because none of it was actually classified but the review process at the Pentagon is sometimes very subjective and so you can assume like when a seal puts in a book you know it's gonna get heavily redacted just because they don't like us doing it and I know I get it I totally understand it I don't knock it so anyway you can buy the book and you can hold the pages up to the light and see if you see anything but so I find myself over in Africa one time and it happened to be you know in the middle of all kinds of stuff going on around the globe and one night I get a phone call on my on my local phone that's like basically frantic like you've got to get out of here you got to get out of here and I'm like why no like just leave you know and so you know like a good you know operator I knew what my plan was if there needed to be like if in in time of an emergency right there's a lot of planning that goes into that kind of stuff but when there's an emergency in the middle of something you you have a plan and you activate it and you get the hell out of Dodge and so that's what I did and it was until afterwards I found out that this was the reaction to when a Danish guy decided to illustrate Mohammed in a very insulting way in an end up getting printed in a bunch of newspapers across the globe and anyway the entire Muslim world basically like lip their country's on fire I mean most of you if you if you knew if you've heard of this or you remember it you know what I'm talking about and so but the funny part of the story was that that day my contact and that she happened to introduce me to everyone as a Danish veterinarian and I didn't know that till the end of the day right I was asking like so what even telling people all day he's like oh I told him you're a Danish veterinarian everybody loves the Danes and I'm like oh okay well I wish you would have asked me ahead of time because I don't speak that language and you know I mean he's like I don't worry about it so once again don't trust anybody right I mean this guy totally screwed me over I had no idea he was telling people his stuff because it was in a language I didn't speak and and of course in a small town in a country like that word travels fast so basically the entire town came out on the streets that night to come you know probably cut my head off but I'd gotten out of there quick enough so it wouldn't happen but yeah more on the story don't be a Danish veterinarian all right so you know you guys know I've done a couple of books called hunter deli skills and you're probably the first ones that I've that I'm going to tell that hunter deli skills book three looks like it's gonna happen and I start the research next week so if you follow me you'll be seeing some posts of this journey it's going to be an epic research road trip across the United States visiting the most dangerous men America has and collecting their skills and putting it in a book for you and so you know follow me over that over there at a hundred daily skills so that you can kind of see the trip it should be a lot of fun the most dangerous road trip ever but in one of the books you know and a skill that you know I enjoy is dealing with locks right and so a five-pin tumbler is the lock that you probably have on your door it was invented by a guy named Yale in the early 1900s and it's been the one lock that we've been using ever since it has five pins inside that correspond to the key cuts on your key so when you put that key in the properly cut key will then open the lock and one of the skills that I enjoy is impression locks which means you take a blank to that particular cylinder you a blank key means it has no cuts on it but then you can put your key in there you can basically put tension to the right or to the left and kind of bounce it up and down and then it will leave marks on the blade of that key blank and then you file those marks away and then you do it again you do it again you do it again and before you know it if you've done it right you have cut your own key to that lock and it'll open right up and you're probably going what about lock picking well in certain worlds lock picking is not the first choice right it's uh it's it's a it's a crapshoot and what most people don't know is if you pick a lock in order to lock it you have to pick it again to lock it right so you know for me personally I don't want to have to you know pick a lock twice I want to basically have a key to that lock so that I can open it anytime I want so anyway it's in one of the hundred le skill books if you like that kind of stuff it's a it's a cool skill but I bring this up because the Spy Museum does a great job doing courses teaching you kind of the basics of this type of stuff and if you're ever find yourself in DC should check it out they they do a good job giving you the basics right they don't want you to be you know to criminally in Vance anyway I want to take this moment to kind of come to a stop say thank you for signing in tonight and listening to my voice for however long it's been you can find my whole ecosystem at Glen Emerson calm and I will field any questions you have over to you Amanda all right Clint you have a ton of questions rolling in throughout this but and so we'll go a little bit longer um if you can stay with us a bit more clan yeah yes we're yeah we're closing it on 6:30 but um first and foremost one that's near and dear to our heart at the Spy Museum what is that eerie mask lurking behind you let's see so I donated some things to the spy museum if you go you'll see them on exhibit and they are their masks right people have seen Mission Impossible things and I wish that the technology was that good but I gotta say the technology actually is pretty good when I talk about math I like to refer to Jonah Mendez who is also a key person for the spy museum and she will tell you that you know disguise is a pretty cool part of a lot of operations overseas mainly really just to protect anybody who's wearing right it's all about preventing identification and so I was fortunate enough to you know learn some of this stuff and kind of play around in it and in any way I donated some of that stuff to the museum so yeah Anna Mendez will answer all your questions for you we really appreciate all the things that you gave and anything that comes our way again we've got in the future we've got lots of training questions and sort of some personal questions that are easy but we want to answer them you know how many languages do you speak a lot of people want to know that okay so I grew up you know when you're living in set when you live in Saudi it's mandatory to take the language so you know from the second grade to high school I was forced to take Arabic I really didn't because I was a kid and I was like man and I had this in a you know teacher his name was mister Kaleem and if you didn't get done yes correct he would literally chunk a book at you so it wasn't great for learned it was a it wasn't not a great and learning environment you know my left you know locket is neethu letter but comes to sit I mean to this day I know my numbers I know general Arabic and everything but that's it Arabic in English people want to know if you had to be a certified scuba diver to get into buds no no you don't you buds will teach you everything you need to know and you will you actually you will come out of buds far better diver for I mean for obvious reasons than you ever would going through an alley or paddy course then I add on question in the realm of diving have you ever been concerned about sharp reefs or oyster shells or are there any natural barriers you know that served as defenses that you were concerned about in landing from a dive oh yes so there there's certainly a lot of obstacles that you could run into and you know if you're doing a combat swimmer operation that usually means you're coming in on the surface combat diver you coming in as a diver and through different reconnaissance whether it be satellite imagery or other in I would say other intelligence out there you decide what's best for that particular over the beach operation so that you avoid obstacles you know but if you look back in history our main job when we were underwater demolition teams was taking out obstacles so that the Marine Forces could land and so it's one of the things that we definitely look at before we go across any Beach making sure there's nothing there that could surprise us injure us or take out any of our you know zodiacs or inflatable boats when we go in and people also want to know was there anything special or unusual crap in the neck in psychological training for seals um I mean a lot of it I think probably gets used against you but you know I think the psychological train the closest thing that we probably touch on is you know deception operations you know that's basically you know how do you how do you trick your adversaries and so you can do it through tactics that are you know somewhat unconventional you know and so you know we certainly definitely do that kind of stuff yeah well since you mentioned deception I had a question from the chair next to mine my son wanted to know did you guys ever use captured kalishnikov rifles during infiltration to confuse enemies or in other situations that's pretty good question yeah you know I probably don't know the answer to that I'm gonna just go ahead and yeah I don't know all right to the speaker but it was well here's an easier one that you'll know the answer to did you ever suffer with sleep deprivation and how do you handle that during a mission when you you know just have to keep going oh yeah I mean you during training everyone's heard of hell week where they you know sleep deprived you and that's kind of your first dose of what it's like because after 72 hours of sleep deprivation somebody can be literally you know considered clinically insane how do you deal with it you know you just continue doing it you do the job you know there's been a lot of you know I would call them even experienced experiments on us and they use hell week and they try caffeine a lot of different things to see what can help increase your your level of awareness and stuff when you're sleeping because that's really what you want right you want to be able to still pay attention when you're when you're tired and you don't want to fall asleep though I tell stories in the book about us falling asleep at the wrong time so sometimes you know it gets the best of you if you stay up long enough but train train train is probably the best way to learn how to deal with it yeah were you ever injured you know I I was fortunate enough to you know never take an injury whether it be ie D or you know a bullet you know obviously I know friends and had friends that paid the ultimate price but you know no seal comes out after 20 plus year career uninjured right I mean my neck is definitely got issues my shoulders I mean you get you you get you have your fair share of injury just because of the job itself so yeah people have some questions about coronavirus they want to know are there ways to be stronger and more resistant to something that's invisible how you know if you have any tips on on that um I only give you what you may already know before this pandemic with my company escape the wolf we do crisis management one of our offerings is pandemic policy planning best practices and I'll tell you right now you know we obviously didn't take it seriously enough because there was plenty of Fortune 500 companies that I would go to and say hey this is one of the things we do and I had one global security director laugh at me and say planning for a pandemic yeah right that's like planning for an alien invasion and so that kind of gives you the climate that I was dealing with prior to the pandemic you know dirt prior to the pandemic I could tell you social distancing and you'd probably like what's that now the whole world knows what it is which is which is a good thing so the education process has worked I would say you know with the different studies that they've got going on and you know whether chloroquine the malaria drug is gonna work or it doesn't I can tell you being a former medic and I can tell you that on the the homeopathic side or you know the more natural stuff you know the way that chloroquine works is it breaks down the lining around the virus or the round the cells that a virus occupies and but what actually can prevent that virus from replicating which is what your ultimate ly trying to do is zinc right it's ultimately your body's level of zinc that prevents the virus from replicating so if there's one little trick that has been proven time and time again is that zinc is like a natural antiviral and that's why if you if the malaria drug happens to be something prescribed to you they'll probably say hey take sink with it because it increases your the ability to prevent replication and if it can't replicate then that prevents you from actually getting more sick so until then take your zinc each day stay healthy because I think it's been proven time and time again that if you're healthy the odds are more on your side than not thank you yeah that's pretty good tip I don't know if you want to comment on this or not do you have any thoughts about the dismissal of the skipper of the Theodore Roosevelt that you want to share oh no I mean I you know I can only tell you this right whether you're watching CNN or if you're a fox person I can tell you that 85% on both [ __ ] networks is [ __ ] right I've been overseas enough to see them report on operations I've been part of to know that they never get it right okay so one just take everything with a grain of salt I always tell people it's probably better to watch the news being put out by other countries than watch home country's news they tend to stick to the facts but you know so my point is is you know I wasn't there if he was trying to do the right thing great if he did the wrong thing then it's on him you know he'll be dealt with accordingly or he'll be reinstated you know I just you never know what's really going on when you hear it you know through the media yeah what I know you were talking about the illustrations but a lot of people really want to know again the name of the artist we were googling behind the scenes the artist yeah Tom Tom Mandrake Tom Mandrake he is uh he's been a DC Marvel guy for a very long time and he's he's really good at what he does they are really gorgeous so we have two final questions that are kind of tied in with each other one any of these TV shows or movies that depict the seals that you know which are the most laughable and are there any better semi-realistic or any movies that you're like that kind of gets the feeling um well I got to say my favorite seal that in Hollywood is definitely magnum p.i Tom Selleck right that's most people don't know magnum p.i the character not Tom Selleck himself was you know a former seal before becoming a private investigator working for the millionaire in Hawaii but um and that's probably going over you know I don't know how many people that are watching what that is but you know Charlie Sheen or something yeah there you go go look it up it's you know but um yeah I mean if you're watching the show SEAL team you know I gotta say like when you watch like how they carry themselves attitude some of the problems that they face back home with their families and stuff it's really well written because they have Tyler gray he's actually an Army Ranger but he is the lead he's basically the main consultant along with Mark Owen who wrote no easy day and was on the bin Laden operation so if you didn't know it SEAL team has actually got some really experienced guys advising on the show and of course there's the Hollywood aspect that you just never can get away from and the exaggeration of explosions and gunfire and everything else but I would say the gear and you know how they carry themselves and kind of the the the banter that goes back and forth between those guys I've only watched it a couple of times at times I've seen it I'm like you know it's actually you know we [ __ ] with each other just like that and you know just like that on the show so you're gonna I just want I'm gonna read this quick question verbatim cuz I love it what has life been like transitioning back to civilian life and now kind of as a celebrity oh yeah right know the wedding gift to you you're kind of a celebrity right no I mean I don't know anybody that wants any slice of publicity but I learned really quickly that you kind of you have to embrace social media these days if you really want to you know move anything forward I mean it's what while I was in sitting in a squadron space I made fun of guys like me right and it's not until you get out and you're kind of in it for a little bit you're like oh now I know why right I mean sometimes you stumble into this stuff other times people kind of tell you hey you need to do this do this and do that but you know and I didn't know any of that you know getting out I've been you know this has been a I've been out for five years retired and and I don't want really anything to do with all that what you would label celebrity but it's not even close to that it's a it's a very small piece of publicity that personally I don't like like I don't even like this right now but you know you can't get anywhere without doing podcasts and doing these kinds of things and promoting your world or people will never know about it and I'll be sitting in a cubicle stabbing myself in the eye with pencils so I'm just yeah I don't want to stab myself in the eye with pencils my goodness we thank you for your service we thank you so much for doing something you don't like very much which you are awfully good at which is going up for us and telling I can't tell you how many comments were getting from the audience about how mesmerizing and riveting and then people typing up the things that you've said because you are a wonderful storyteller and I have to I have to do my little commercial now to tell people come back to the Spy Museum tomorrow afternoon at this same time you've got an incredible happy hour talk with Morton storm who is a double agent and Monday on may the 4th be with you come and talk to us about Star Wars or spy Wars and look maybe you should visit violent Nomad look at that jet I'm not saying anyway as always it's been a pleasure thank you for your support of the Spy Museum and and thanks everybody for tuned in thanks bye-bye [Applause] [Music]

Channel: IntlSpyMuseum

Views: 24,402

Rating: 4.9105692 out of 5

Keywords: Clint Emerson, spy museum, International Spy Museum, NAVY SEAL, seal, 100 Deadly Skills, special operations, special ops, quarantine, DC, spy, spies, Amanda Ohlke, evading capture, survival skills

Id: dN7zuWxopcY

Length: 71min 12sec (4272 seconds)

Published: Sun May 03 2020