What Happened on the Third Floor | Matt Bissonnette | Ep. 458

Summary

Cleared Hot Ep. 458: “What Happened on the Third Floor”

Guest: Matt Bissonnette
Host: Andy Stumpf
Date: July 13, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this candid and deeply personal episode, Andy Stumpf sits down with former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette (aka “Mark Owen,” author of No Easy Day) for a wide-ranging discussion on the fallout from the Bin Laden raid, the complexities of truth and legacy in the special operations community, and the huge personal toll of both combat and public controversy.

Bissonnette opens up about the “third floor” controversy—competing narratives on who shot Bin Laden—and the years-long legal and emotional struggle resulting from his decision to publish his story. The conversation ranges from tactical details about the raid to honest explorations of betrayal, mental health, life beyond the teams, and the search for new meaning.

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. The “Third Floor” Controversy & Competing Narratives

Timestamps: 00:16–04:15, 79:00–99:00

• Opening Joke ("Who's lying, you or Rob?"): Andy breaks the ice referencing the well-known controversy over accounts of Bin Laden’s death—particularly between Bissonnette and Rob O’Neill (00:16).
• Andy: “I am utterly astounded. Surprised... I’ve never seen a military operation where at a certain intersection, on a certain floor at a junction, it goes into all these different directions.” [00:30]
• Matt expresses his bewilderment at the divergent narratives on the raid and points to a recorded, audio debrief after the mission.
  • "I know what I saw, I know what we witnessed. And I know we all came back and did a debrief with everybody in the room that was audio recorded." [80:58]
• Matt breaks down his own recollection with razor-sharp tactical specificity:
  • Asserts that the lead man (“point man”) on stairs took the initial shots at a male head (Bin Laden), and followed those shots into the room as tactical doctrine dictates.
  • "He takes a shot enough within the rules of engagement to shoot at that head..." [83:40]
• Disputes the alternate narrative (associated with Rob O’Neill) that describes a “gap” or delay between trains on the stairs, or that he (Bissonnette) entered and finished Bin Laden:
  • “I don't see a lot of space between the two [stories]. I know what I saw... If there was a massive cover-up, that’s a much bigger issue.” [97:59]

2. The Fallout from No Easy Day & DOJ Legal Battles

Timestamps: 05:06–16:00, 69:00–75:00

• Bissonnette recounts an exhaustive 10-year legal ordeal with the DOJ over publishing without pre-publication review:
  • “This is how the government fucks you, is they outspend you on attorneys...” [11:46]
  • Lost all royalties, had to pay millions back for the book’s proceeds, and entered a 14-year payment plan with the government [14:08]
• Shared the financial realities: tens of thousands in monthly legal bills; final settlement forced him to sue his own attorney for malpractice—with only partial recovery.
• Underlines the hypocrisy he perceives:
  • Senior military and administration figures like McRaven, Panetta, and Obama could freely tell their versions of the story to authors and Hollywood, while he was prosecuted:

    “McRaven's written books...I write a book and they come after me.” [05:59]

• Notable Story: Photos of Bin Laden from the raid were found on his old camera; he disclosed this to DOJ and was accused of “having American blood on his hands” [71:30–75:31]

3. Mental Health, Isolation, and Reintegration

Timestamps: 18:09–59:00

• Matt describes the immense psychological toll of the legal fight and isolation from his SEAL community:
  • “I have not been able to transition out of my military service because I have still been in the fight...I couldn't...” [18:32]
  • "The command went after every single one of my friends...they threatened guys at the command, 'if they talked to Bis, they'd pull their trident.'" [57:21]
• Reveals his own suicidal crisis after the drama surrounding the book release:
  • "I got close. I got close. Had a gun to my head." [56:27]
• Finds some healing through therapy, writing, new relationships, and spiritual faith:
  • "Writing has been therapeutic. It helped me get over a lot of the hate I had bottled up inside." [29:17]
  • Credits his late father's stoic example: family, friends, fun, and faith [125:52]

4. The Challenge of “Quiet Professionalism” and Truth-Telling

Timestamps: 62:26–68:03, 184:09–185:15

• Grapples with the SEAL community’s judgment of those who write books or go public:
  • Andy: “There’s a difference between a quiet professional and a silent professional. Boom.” [62:38]
  • Matt: “There’s going to be a contingent…that’s going to hate all book writers.” [64:18]
• Challenges to integrity in the community regarding institutional narratives and the mythologizing of tactical failures (ex: Red Wings, “recruiting posters” vs. honest AARs): [43:11–44:15]
• Consequences for teammates who associated with him post-publication [57:21, 153:11]

5. Transition, New Purpose, and Life Today

Timestamps: 145:27–167:05

• Reintegration to civilian life is examined, with Matt moving to self-publishing, speaking, and even cattle farming (“raising some wagyu beef and letting the world melt away”) [45:19]
• Reflects on the difficulty of relationships and family, divorce, and the need to discover new purpose after the military:
  • “Purpose and community are the two things that, in my process...If you surround yourself with the wrong people, then it just spirals.” [120:16]
• Open about the challenges of maintaining family life, the cost of repeated deployments, and the reality of post-service divorces [171:00]
• Finds solace and purpose in “creating new things” and maintaining a private, quieter life, focusing on his kids and business ventures [166:59]

6. The Future of the Special Operations Community; Legacy and Integrity

Timestamps: 113:25–137:16

• Thoughtful critique of combat exposure: Should there be limits to operational stints for SEALs to help preserve their long-term health?
  • “Had they mandated maybe a little more of a break or built it in and said all right, hey, anybody over 10 pumps in a row, you have to take a break—probably would have been something smart.” [115:48]
• Discussion on military awards, institutional hypocrisy, and the importance of after-action honesty for real improvement [175:43–183:25]
• Strong message to the next generation: The job will change you, but it’s still worth serving—just do it with eyes open and seek mentorship [134:40–137:55, 172:34–173:47]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“I didn't write the book, give my version of events to start any drama. I literally gave my version of events and wanted to disappear and be left alone.”
— Matt Bissonnette [01:58]

"They outspend you on attorneys...I got out with no retirement. I got some disability and a plaque with my name misspelled. Right. 1T."
— Matt Bissonnette [12:11]

“We break down the facts...SEAL leadership sponsoring all sorts of stuff...McRaven's written books...and I write a book, and they come after me. Right? There was just a lot of hypocrisy that was hard to take.”
— Matt Bissonnette [05:59]

“The hardest thing looking back was staying positive through that, continuing to learn and evolve through it, not getting disgruntled.”
— Matt Bissonnette [186:25]

"Purpose and community are the two things...When I lost both, it really put me in a bad spot."
— Matt Bissonnette [120:16]

"Have you ever read a BV from like Korea?...Sounds like a Medal of Honor citation. I bet. Well, alone in a trench, batting away grenades with a shovel for 48 hours...Navy Achievement Medal, No 'V.'"
— Andy Stumpf [180:07]

“Never have so few been led by so many so poorly.”
— Matt Bissonnette [173:59]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening & The Third Floor Question:
  [00:16–04:15] The controversy over “who shot Bin Laden?”, diverging accounts.
• Legal Ordeal & DOJ Negotiations:
  [05:06–16:00] Ten years of legal battles, hypocrisy in the system.
• Mental Health and Isolation:
  [18:09–59:00] The emotional cost of betrayal, thoughts of suicide, healing.
• Red Wings, Integrity, and AARs:
  [41:13–44:15] Why honest debriefs matter for the community.
• Family, Divorce, Civilian Life:
  [145:27–167:05] Effects on family, new beginnings, raising wagyu.
• Quiet vs. Silent Professionalism:
  [62:26–68:03] Should SEALs write books? Navigating judgment.
• Military Awards & Institutional Drift:
  [175:43–183:25] How the awards system became detached from actual merit.
• Looking Forward—New Purpose:
  [120:16–125:52; 166:59–167:32] Building a life after war and controversy.

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Closing Thoughts

Matt Bissonnette’s story is one of resolve, grit, and remarkable honesty. He refuses to play into mythmaking, even if it costs him acceptance by some in his old circle. The episode is a powerful case study in the personal costs of service—both on the battlefield and in the politics that follow—and a reflection on how to find peace and purpose when your old life falls away. It’s also an inside look at unresolved controversies and the unvarnished truth of elite military life. As Andy summarizes, “life’s problems have solutions—as long as you don’t make decisions that are...life-altering, you’re going to be okay.”

For anyone interested in the realities behind headlines, how warriors make sense of their journey, and what honesty in legacy really requires, this episode is a must-listen.

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Find Matt’s new book (No Easy Way) at mattbissonnette.com.

Audiobook also available, read by Matt himself.

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Transcript

[Matt Bissonnette]

Okay, I got the red smoke. Sun runs north and south. West of the smoke. West of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm looking at danger close now.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Give it to me.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, it cleared hot, dude. Let's start with the easiest question. We'll ease our way into this. Ready? Who's lying, you or Rob?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I see what you did there.

[Andy Stumpf]

Who? No, I'm joking. I know everybody wants me to open with that, and it's the same thing I said when Rob sat down. I actually. I care very little about the actions in that moment, but I am utterly astounded. Surprised. I don't know the right word. I've never seen a military operation that at a certain intersection of a certain floor at a junction, it goes into all these different directions.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't think so. Well, I think it's pretty straightforward.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think it's.

[Matt Bissonnette]

For a lot of people.

[Andy Stumpf]

Pull that thing closer to you, keep it about a fist away.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I think it's.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think it's pretty straightforward.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't know. In my opinion, my. I don't know. I hear there might be other people with different thoughts, but what do you

[Andy Stumpf]

think it would take for the Navy to specifically address it? Or if they ever even.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't think they will. I think the better option is a savvy attorney out there to file some FOIA requests for some audio recordings of debriefs. And I think they can be denied, but I think there's an angle to it because it was recorded on an unclassified cell phone. So if you have. I don't know, I think there's some classification issues. I think some savvy lawyers could maybe say, hey, we at least want. We want the debrief.

[Andy Stumpf]

What do you think the impact is community wide, or do you think that there is even an impact?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't know. I don't care.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I. I didn't write the book, give my version of events to start any drama. I. I literally gave my version of events and wanted to disappear and be left alone.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. No.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And I'm not sure I'm even on the radar now is because of the drama that happened, not. Not the drama of who shot who.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, no. And I'm not trying to pin any on you by any stretch. I'm just curious. I think about stuff like the Maduro raid where the CAD guys launched from naval vessels. I'm like, wait a minute, you sons of. First off, congrats. I mean, awesome. And those guys are. I still some of my best friends. Are from that place. They're awesome. Love them to death. No shade whatsoever.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yep.

[Andy Stumpf]

I do think that the powers that be do look backwards and say if they're equally capable. Is there any other cascading BS that we would have to deal with in one versus the other? Is one of these guys going to be live streaming or betting on polymarket? Huh? Just kidding. Green breaks. It was an intel guy. He wasn't on the operation, which I don't know if that makes it better or worse.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Was it an intel guy?

[Andy Stumpf]

I believe so. I believe he was an operator. I don't think it was on the raid itself. I think it was a Green Beret that was attached. Attached. I think at jsoc in the intel loop.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Gotcha.

[Andy Stumpf]

Which if you think about it, the operators.

[Matt Bissonnette]

It's kind of like every senator and congressman.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Trading on stocks and inside information.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, the squadron guys would have probably had less actionable betting information. A dude in the intel circle who maybe had a better understanding of the bigger pieces moving around was like, sure, maybe these are all colliding to this, you know.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

Insider trading. I mean, he was allegedly classified. $400,000. Where was he, though? He was a Special Forces soldier stationed at Fort Bragg. Was involved in the planning and execution. All right. Dude, I don't even know what I'm talking about. This is the danger of believing what you see on the Internet.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't believe any of it.

[Andy Stumpf]

What are your thoughts on that? Should we be able to polymarket on the Maduro stuff? I mean, in general, should operators be able to polymarket on their.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, my gosh.

[Andy Stumpf]

We're way outside of our expertise here.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, that's way out now. I don't know. Just like to maybe bet on your own survival. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, man.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't either. I like saying I don't know. I have deeply formed opinions on very few things.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that. That wasn't available to us when I was in. I guess I was always too focused on other things than to think of like, wow, I could. I could actually bet on this op to. And I guess. Right. The bin Laden. Rather. There was effects in the markets and you could read into that and I don't know.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's a good question to think about, though. I don't know if it's.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't invest like that.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I don't invest at all because I'm basically scared of just about everything. Monetarily wise.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, I'm too busy paying all the money I have to the government, so I'm. I don't got time to invest it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Talk me through how that works.

[Matt Bissonnette]

How, how what works?

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't even want to say negotiating with the doj, just interfacing with. Did. Is it a person? Do you meet multiple people? Has this gone, gone through proxies with your lawyers?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh my gosh. It was 10 year. This is a 10 year process. So yes, I've been through lots of lawyers, lots of different DOJ folks, lots of different levels. Half of the DOJ folks we dealt with were like officers in our community. No offense to the one sitting at the table, but they're temps, right. They're there 18 months. They move to the next position and so then you're dealing with the next one. I've stretched close to 10, over 10 years now. So we've had what, 10 different reps we've dealt with through the whole process.

[Andy Stumpf]

Different types of personalities. Some take it personal, others professional.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Every single one that I dealt with was, was injected into the situation to, to play the, the role very well and, and poke the bear.

[Andy Stumpf]

How was it when you finally came to a settlement with them?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Tough.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, it's a large number. Obviously.

[Matt Bissonnette]

There was so much that got to the number. It wasn't about giving the money back. That wasn't it. It was, it was not about that. It was just about the, the whole process. The. To me it was about the hypocrisy of it all. I mean, yeah, there's a lot to unpack there, but yes, yes, to me it was, it was hardest for me to process of just the hypocrisy of it because when you break down the facts and when you really look at everything that happened, right. The, the SEAL leadership sponsoring acts of valor and all sorts of stuff. McRaven's written books. Yeah. And, and I write a book and they come after me. Right. I. I don't know. There was just a lot of hypocrisy that was hard to, hard to take, hard to understand.

[Andy Stumpf]

And how do you feel about it now? Because you have entered into the agreement with them. Right. So I guess there's a very long pathway towards being done with them. What was the actual title of the. Or the name of the agreement? Because I thought, I thought the settlement agreement. Settlement.

[Matt Bissonnette]

There was no, there was no charges ever filed. There was no nothing. There was just accusations, lots and lots of accusations and threats. And if you didn't do this, we're going to do this. And if you didn't do this, we're going to do this.

[Andy Stumpf]

And so where they settle on the dollar amount for then. What is that associated directly with all

[Matt Bissonnette]

the money the book made?

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Every penny the book made, they wanted back. So. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

This is why I.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No easy days made.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Millions of dollars. We did our whole thing back and forth, back and forth. And they wanted me on criminal charges for anything they could get. I just said, okay, prove it. Prove it. Where's the criminal behavior? The first thing I did was hire an attorney with the proper vota feeds to help me through this process. If there's anything. I know, I know I'm not an attorney, and I don't know the legalities here. Not an expert in that. So I was literally. The first person I hired on my team was. Was this lawyer, Podlasky, former Army jag, who'd worked in socom. He'd represented a Army Delta guy, Dalton Fury. Written a whole bunch of books.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Delta Force officer. Yeah. This was the attorney that helped him publish all his books. So I assumed when I got him on my team, I followed all of his advice to a T. I, um. We did not get the book reviewed because he said literally in his engagement letter to me, he could review it. So I didn't think anything other.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, he was the reviewing authority.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. No, that's literally what he told me in the. In the engagement letter to me. He said, look, I can review this and make sure it's not. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, okay, check sign. Boom. Let's go. So the. So. So, yeah, yeah, Long story, but the book comes out, government goes high, and. Right. I'm like, talk to my attorney.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I keep questioning my attorney. He's like, no, you didn't have to get the book reviewed. I'm like, well, the. These DOJ really sound serious, and they say I should have. So then I hired a second attorney, got him involved. First attorney still telling the second attorney that I had no. No obligation to get it reviewed. My second attorney's like, I don't think that's. I don't think that's quite accurate. Kind of move the first one to the side, second one takes over, and I'm like, hey, listen, I have nothing to hide. I didn't do this maliciously. Let's engage with government. And so I sat down with them and said, look, I'll give up attorney client privilege. You can go through all my emails, go through my computer, see my emails of me corresponding with These lawyers. So you see exactly how this happened.

[Andy Stumpf]

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[Matt Bissonnette]

It would seem it's who's yes to both. Right. I'm liable for it because I've got to pay the government back.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

The government gave my attorney no copability in my decision making. Right. They said, okay, we want 100% of the book money back. I'm like, okay, you can take the book money, take it all back. I don't. I don't care. Yeah. I had spent, Brian. And we can get into this. This is how the government fucks you, is they outspend you on attorneys. Right. I would have had to take some sort of settlement. Right. I got out with no retirement.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I got some disability and a plaque with my Name misspelled. Right. 1T.

[Andy Stumpf]

And Matt, your name is hard to misspell.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I know, it's pretty long.

[Andy Stumpf]

And the front part, though, I would have missp the Bissette. Not that two S's here, two T's on the tail end. Yeah. So from the command, they misspelled your name?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, yeah. From. From my former squadron.

[Andy Stumpf]

Strong.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, yeah. Very caring. Yeah. Where were we. Where were we going with that?

[Andy Stumpf]

We were talking about how the government will.

[Matt Bissonnette]

They'll outspend you. So I had, thankfully. Right. I. No pension, no retirement. So where did that come.

[Andy Stumpf]

You got a 420.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, yep.

[Andy Stumpf]

What years did you have?

[Matt Bissonnette]

14, 14 out. And so no. No ability to cover large legal payments. And we were talking large. I was writing 50, 60, $70,000 a month for legal bills.

[Andy Stumpf]

They're not cheap.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I've never written a check like that in my life. And so thankfully, the book had sold, made money and I had that money in a savings account. So for years I spent out of that to pay my legal fees. After years of the government trying to get me something criminal, finally they came back, said, okay, we'll leave you alone, but we want all the book money back. Nothing criminal happened. And by the way, there's nothing classified in your book.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Like, oh, so there's nothing classified in my book. You agree to that? You just. The only thing that I failed to do, the only thing they got me on, was failure to seek pre publication review. We can talk about book review stuff. I picked up a copy of your book at the coffee shop this morning. There's a process there, right? And that is the one piece I did not follow. And I said, well, look, my attorney that I hired is responsible for me making that decision. They're like, well, we don't care. We want all the book money back. So after they said, when they gave me that offer of just return all the money and we'll leave you alone. I'm like, fine, take it. Wrote them a check. But I was short just under 1.5 because I had spent that on my legal defense.

[Andy Stumpf]

I hate it when I'm short 1.5 million on things. I've never seen the number 1.5 million in an account ever. Is it cool to at least see that number?

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, because it's all funny money. It's all fake.

[Andy Stumpf]

Why do you have to, why do you have to crush my dreams like that?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Reality sucks.

[Andy Stumpf]

It is kind of all fake. I mean, you might get that up front, man, you better put 50% of that in an account for your taxes to be.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That's everything else. It's not a savings. I was going to donate it. So all good. Give it back to the government. But the government says, hey, you're short 1.5. We want all of it back. My cool, guys, I clearly don't have that. You take, you've seen my accounts, you've gone through everything. I don't have it. Like, isn't my attorney culpable to some degree in my decision making? To not. And you've seen my emails. They didn't go through the emails to, to, to make sure I was in the clear. They went through my emails to dig up anything they could.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So yeah, at the end of that,

[Andy Stumpf]

once you satisfy the debt, like, there's, you're good, you're free and clear.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just have to satisfy the debt. So. So gave them the money back and then they said, you got three years to pay off the rest. That's when we negotiated with them. I'm like, I turn over all my taxes. I'm like, guys, I can't pay this in three years. Like, okay, yeah, you're probably right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, math is kind of math.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. So they came back and they said, okay, we'll give you the 14 year payment plan.

[Andy Stumpf]

What's the interest rate?

[Matt Bissonnette]

There's no interest rate on this, but in the agreement it says there will be one.

[Andy Stumpf]

If I miss a payment, will it be like 87%?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Probably. They, they give me a discount. They're like, hey, if you make all these payments in, in the 15 years and don't miss one. Yeah, we won't charge you back interest and we'll knock off 300 grand or something at the end. So I then made them, made that agreement with the government because I had no other move to make. And then I went and sued my attorney.

[Andy Stumpf]

How'd that go? I won.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Took three years, but three Years of the whole legal process of. And if there's anything I've learned about lawsuits. So what I learned from my. My malpractice attorney is the first casualty of a lawsuit is the truth. Right. It doesn't become about the facts of the case. It becomes about statute of limitations. And where you filed your motions. Right, we filed in New York. It got dismissed. We had to refile. In different states, they do everything they can to get it to not go to trial. And the day we got a trial date, they came and settled.

[Andy Stumpf]

Really.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Because we had them dead to rights. Right. But then it becomes an insurance game of what's the money in the insurance and how do the lawyers get paid out, et cetera.

[Andy Stumpf]

Interesting.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So, man, I made a winning chuck for that. But I had to pay my attorney, I had to pay taxes, and then I had a piece left and I gave that to the government.

[Andy Stumpf]

Are we just stuck in a mousetrap?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yes.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, I don't know.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm not going to sit here and claim that I deeply understand money and wealth and how it's generated. I understand that I was having this conversation with my middle son over the fourth. You can be broke on the street and you have money problems. You can be really, really rich and you have money problems. The problems don't leave you. It's what they end up looking like. I don't know. I feel like if you were rich, at least you could sleep on a really comfortable bed. Those money problems are probably better or easier to deal with than not having any money at all. Problems. But sometimes I wonder.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't know. I know some rich dudes who run pretty tight on. On, you know, going bankrupt or not because they're making such big moves with, with their.

[Andy Stumpf]

Or their cash flow or their asset rich and cash poor, which is a

[Matt Bissonnette]

different problem to have.

[Andy Stumpf]

And fortunately, I have neither of those problems. So I can pay my bills. Yeah. Let's just say recently I was having a call with accountants. I'm like, I understand far less than I thought I did about business. So, yeah, it's. It's going to be an interesting next few months as I navigate my way through this particular season. But I guess that's what we get to do.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That's why I just bought some cows.

[Andy Stumpf]

What was your stress level like in this 10 years that you were going back and forth with the DOJ dude?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Not good.

[Andy Stumpf]

Is it ever not in the back of your mind or you're trying to do? Are you ever able to set it down and be at peace. Are you always worrying about it?

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, I have, I have. I have not been able to. To transition, probably wrong term.

[Andy Stumpf]

I know what you meant. We'll let others take it for what they will.

[Matt Bissonnette]

People may read it. Read into that a little differently, but I have not been able to transition out of my military service because I have still been in the fight. Right. I've been in the fight with the doj. Right. I couldn't. Every other veteran that gets out goes through their normal process. Right. And that's hard enough as it is. We're absolutely institutionalized doing what we did for as long as we did that. Transition out hard enough. Divorce all the other craziness and have the government coming after me, suicidal. You talk about mental health issues. Yeah, I got out before they even started talking about that stuff right now. It was like an evil word if anybody talked about mental health.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't know if you remember right, the pre and post deployment surveys and all this nonsense.

[Andy Stumpf]

And they were trying to get. What year did you get out?

[Matt Bissonnette]

2012.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay. Yeah, I got out in 13. They were trying to be better with it, you know, like the third. They were involving the families, the retreats afterwards. The third location decompression stuff. Which can be argued if getting shit faced for three days straight actually helps you do anything.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Thank you. Two days in Germany, coming home smelling like good German beer does nothing for your. Your reintegration with mama.

[Andy Stumpf]

It checks the box somewhere though, I think on a risk matrix so that people can say that they did something and maybe it's. They don't know what to do, but it was at least getting a little bit better. I hope that it has continued to.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I wouldn't say better. There was some evolution because there was zero for a long time.

[Andy Stumpf]

Zero.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. Zero discussion, zero help, zero anything. And. And they started instituting some stuff towards the end of my career.

[Andy Stumpf]

I hope they have continued with that.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I hope so. I think so. Because I mean, I went to the. I did the. The Brain Treatment center.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Heard of that stuff, the tms. Yep. I did that. And I heard that from, you know, buddies of mine at the command who. The command was covering it after I got out. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

For guys that were in or for guys that were out?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Guys that were transitioning out. They were covering it for them. Okay. And that's where I heard about the Brain treatment center. I'm like, wow, you guys are hearing about this? Active duty. I want to know. But this all transpired like in the year, two years after I got out.

[Andy Stumpf]

Has it helped with your stress at all now that you at least have the deal with the doj? You got a new book coming. Like, is it giving you stress relief at all? Is there a little steam coming out of the kettle?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I had a big release when we finally got to the point where it was like we were done fight. Not done. Yeah, done fighting might be a better way to put it.

[Andy Stumpf]

And the ink was on, for lack

[Matt Bissonnette]

of the better term, but what a year, year and a half ago, horrible dates when my deal finally kicked in and I started paying and it was like, okay, yeah, that's when I was like, all right, this is it. This is. This is the deal they gave me. This is it. I'm. I'm coming to peace with it. I was angry, confused, bitter. Very, very.

[Andy Stumpf]

All the natural cycles of grief, actually.

[Matt Bissonnette]

All of that.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Combined and pressurized with all the other. That I was going through and just transitioning out and everything. It was just pressure going up and up and up and. And I finally got the. The final settlement agreement was like, all right, here's. Here's my plan. Here's. Here's my payment plan. Okay, Check. Shift focus from dealing with that war or that battle. Same war, different battle.

[Andy Stumpf]

Totally.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Okay. Boom. Next battle. Next battle is okay. I got to pay this debt off. 15 years. I do not want to be 65, 70 and still be paying on debt from my military career. I'm going to pay more money back than I ever made in my 14 years of service.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, we should actually do that.

[Matt Bissonnette]

We should do the math. Right. Three got us an E8. You know, run the numbers.

[Andy Stumpf]

Don't forget the hazardous duty. Pay it. Really?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's a big money, that buck 50. And it was tax free, so you didn't have to get 135. You got the whole 150.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I bet you it would be incredibly close. Within a couple hundred thousand dollars.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, man. And. And knowing the military, they probably did the math on that to come up with the number that I needed to pay.

[Andy Stumpf]

How do you feel today you doing? I mean, are you at peace?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I guess that's where I was going earlier. I think once. Once I shifted from one one battle to the next. And like, okay, I gotta write this, but I'm gonna tell the story. I've never told it. I've been very private. I've been very quiet. Right. I'm the guy who did the disguise on 60 Minutes and the fake name and then went underground. There Was no. In my opinion, no value add to be out there. And the.

[Andy Stumpf]

The top people figured it out real quick who you were, though.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

There's not that many people from Alaska.

[Matt Bissonnette]

There's actually a handful of seals from Alaska.

[Andy Stumpf]

But when you start with a handful of potential candidates and then people go, nope, nope, nope. Who's this guy? Why is it. Oh, starts west coast now is. I think we figured it out.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. No. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Suggestion. Next time, make up where you're from.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, yeah. The. Yeah. I don't know.

[Andy Stumpf]

How are you today, though? How are you feeling as a person today? Good.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. Better. Better. Better. Much. Like you have a. I'm at peace with it. Like, okay, I've got to tell the story. I've never told it. I've been very private and very quiet about it. So. Okay, let's do it. I wrote the book. Like, okay, that was me fighting back my new battle. Okay. I'm going to tell the story because I don't know any other way to go make a million and a half dollars. I got to. I got to get the story out there to. To get it going. Wrote the book, submitted for review. Very important step. What does the government do? Go cold. They sit on it for almost nine months. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Which is short in some of them. I've heard. I've heard up to 18 months.

[Matt Bissonnette]

My last book, over a year, 50 grand in legal fees.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like. Oh, to like, needle them to get them to keep moving.

[Matt Bissonnette]

My second book, no Hero, I wrote to help pay my legal fees.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

When I submitted that for review, and in that iteration, I had an attorney helping me with it, and that took almost a year to get that reviewed and 50 grand in legal fees to get that process done. The system has now evolved. Not any better, but now there's no longer lawyers involved. I do the back and forth with the government on the. On the redaction stuff. Submitted the book, waited. They weren't reviewing it or they weren't approving. I just kept, hey, what's the status? What's the status? They were. Just didn't want to. So that's when I did the Sean Ryan interview. Yeah. And lo and behold, then. Then a couple weeks after the interview, I got an email from the review office, and they're like, hey, there's been progress on your book. And here's. Here's. It's cleared for approval, but there was a whole bunch of redactions in it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And. And the redactions that are words that you say are words that are in your book. Are words that will slip out in this conversation, but they're like, nope, redacted. Can't say it.

[Andy Stumpf]

They're openly accessible on the Internet.

[Matt Bissonnette]

All of it. And so we did another round of probably three to four months of going back and forth of saying, hey, look, here's the article. Here's where vice president said this, here's president said that. Here's all the direct correlations.

[Andy Stumpf]

Here's.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Nope, nope, nope. Fight through all the redactions. Some they'll let you change, some they won't. In no easy way. I left all the redactions in there that we couldn't come to agreement on because any, any person with a fourth grade education will be able to read through and say we know exactly what that word is. As I was reading and I can't

[Andy Stumpf]

imagine my brain fill in the redaction as I was reading it through 100. Yeah, because I'm not able to do that because I understood where you were going and what you were alluding to to a civilian reading it. It. They'll have to use their imagination, but your imagination is probably going to be pretty close.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I think there's enough sealed books and podcasts and everything out there that that lingo is well established and developed and. And for. Yeah, so they wanted to take words out. So yeah, we did that. We got it approved finally. And. And yeah, it starts shipping this week.

[Andy Stumpf]

Do you enjoy writing?

[Matt Bissonnette]

It has been therapeutic. It has been therapeutic. I use a. Kevin Maurer, a co author on the first two. Phenomenal, right? Don't know the punctuation, spelling, all that good stuff.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm very thankful my editor had multiple reviews for grammatical usage. I don't know how to use a semicolon at all. And I pluralize words that they're not supposed to be.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, I talk like I write like a caveman and then somebody else comes in is like, all right, let's, let's.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm very familiar with the structure.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, the latest one I did pretty much on my own because it was not a warfare style book. It was more of a. Hey, personal. I talk about my mental health. I talk about my faith. I talk about a lot of that. I had a publishing deal with my same publisher, gave them the book in the process and. And got some pushback that they didn't really like what I was talking about. So I was like, all right, let's walk away from that book deal and I'm gonna now self publish. So. So this book is self published instead of using the. The big new York guys.

[Andy Stumpf]

That could be wildly beneficial depending on how it goes and you crash and burn. It could, but at least you have more agency and control over it.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That, that's what I wanted. That was exactly what I wanted. Right. I wanted to be able to write exactly what I wanted. Right. I didn't want some New York editor telling me, hey, well didn't, didn't you think this way? Weren't you feeling this way when you did this? And like. No, I wrote exactly what I was feeling. That's why I wrote it this way.

[Andy Stumpf]

I feel like they. To just make the entire book about chapter one, the 10 pages. I feel like that that's what they would want the vast majority of it either to be or to constantly tie

[Matt Bissonnette]

back towards Y and. And it's. It's for the commercial masses. And I'm like, I'm not writing a book for the commercial mass. I'm writing a book about my story. I'm writing something different. So that's why we, we took the control everything back in our own hands. We're selling it off our website.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think you're going to be okay. You already have a dossier of work that's through the New York publishing houses. You're already an established. I think it would be really hard to do if it was your first one. Well, given the subject matter of your first one, it may not have been that hard to do. It was a little bit of a unique circumstance for sure.

[Matt Bissonnette]

For sure. But.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I don't say that negatively at all. I'm just saying it could have worked there too. But I think that was just a timing aspect. I think you're going to be okay. I think for you the self publishing aspect is going to be good.

[Matt Bissonnette]

We'll see.

[Andy Stumpf]

I hope so. We'll see.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, it just, bottom line, it allowed me to take all the control back and be like, no, I'm going to write exactly what I want. I call out some names. I call out a lot of leadership. I'm pretty. Yeah. Pretty honest with my feedback. But. But again, back to your earlier question. The, the writing of this book was very therapeutic and it helped me get over a lot of the hate that, that I had bottled up inside.

[Andy Stumpf]

Where did the hate start?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Where.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, I've never known you to be an angry person. You and I have. We cross paths peripherally.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And like we were talking about before we started, it might have been Nyland the last time we saw each other and the last time either you and I were there were in a different century.

[Matt Bissonnette]

For sure. Maybe a couple centuries ago.

[Andy Stumpf]

So, you know, it's, it was a, it was a bit. A long time ago. But I've never known you to be an angry person or a hate.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I've tried to be very positive. Yeah, I'm always trying to be positive. I always see the optimistic side of things. It's hard to deal with the guys in our world that are very pessimistic. Right. It's always negative. I'm like, we deal with enough negative stuff already. I'm going to try and stay on

[Andy Stumpf]

the in or out. When you were in the service or out of the service?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Both.

[Andy Stumpf]

They're more vocal out of the service than in, I have found.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's a, it's a, it's a pressure cooker on both sides. I wouldn't say I was around a lot of negative Nancy's, but our, our previous community is very, very vocal. And we'll say judgmental and I don't mean they always land on the negative side of the house, but they have a very deeply held opinions about anybody who is publicly facing.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Sure, sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's tough.

[Matt Bissonnette]

They call Seal Team 6 year old for a reason. Right. If I'm, if I'm even allowed to say the SEAL team says on the.

[Andy Stumpf]

That makes it legal, I think because

[Matt Bissonnette]

on the mic nobody will know.

[Andy Stumpf]

Isn't it the official name? I swear, if you go to Google,

[Matt Bissonnette]

it pops up as allowed to say it gets redacted.

[Andy Stumpf]

But what if the president says it?

[Matt Bissonnette]

He's allowed. I am not. Put it in my book. They'll redact it. President can say it, no problem. They redacted every reference to it.

[Andy Stumpf]

I feel like that's almost ridiculous.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well, okay, so that's where the hate comes from. That's where the bitterness and the hate. Because it was such blatant hypocrisy, you're like, wait a second. Leon Panetta within two weeks of the bin Laden raid, right? We go to Langley, Virginia, right. Go see Panetta give his retirement speech because he's leaving Langley. He's going to go over and be sec. Def. Handful of guys from the raid, go up to Langley, watch him give his little retirement speech. He gets off the stage and he's like, hey guys, I got to introduce you to a couple people. And brings over Katherine Bigalow and Mark Bow, the Hollywood producer, screenwriter, director, whatever, dark 30. So within weeks of the mission, they have full access to CIA.

[Andy Stumpf]

Hold on here. So a few weeks after that, they

[Matt Bissonnette]

are already at Langley.

[Andy Stumpf]

When did they start having discussions with them. Because that's a real quick flash to bang.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yep. You tell me.

[Andy Stumpf]

And they had already put together a screenwriter and a producer.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yep. That had already got full approvals to meet with the female from the movie. Right. She was the mastermind behind putting all this together. And the CIA had approved her to sit down and talk with Hollywood for the movie. We knew this. We knew this. Very open, honest, publicly. We knew the movie was coming out. Right. We knew that immediately after. Within weeks of the raid. Fast forward a little bit. There was an author by the name of Mark Bowden. He wrote Black Hawk Down.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yes.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And he wrote a book called the Finish about the Milan raid.

[Andy Stumpf]

I never read that book or actually ever heard of it.

[Matt Bissonnette]

He. He contacts me shortly after I get out. He's like, hey, I'm writing a book about the raid. I've already interviewed Admiral McRaven.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

For the. The. His perspective. I've just interviewed President Obama for his perspective. White House.

[Andy Stumpf]

This is within weeks.

[Matt Bissonnette]

This is. This is been a couple months.

[Andy Stumpf]

We'll see.

[Matt Bissonnette]

We get the movie first.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right. That's still really quick. Flash the bay.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, for sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

And getting access to those people.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yep, yep, yep, yep. I agree. What's being set up behind the scenes here? So Bowen says, hey, we'd love your ground truth perspective. You know, we got Admiral's perspective, White House perspective. I'm like, wow, okay. Well, I mean, correct me if I'm

[Andy Stumpf]

wrong, both of those perspectives, those are very distant. I mean, McRaven wasn't. He was with you guys in Afghanistan. And obviously, last I heard, the, you know, the president wasn't on the chalk list. But so watching from distances. So, I mean, I guess I get that, but that's still incredible access.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well, if you want to paint a narrative in a positive flavor for possibly yourself or your administration, you're going to allow people to go out there and start talking and sharing the thoughts. So I asked Mr. Bowden, I say, look, you know, when is your book coming out? He's like, well, we're trying really hard to get it out before the election. There you go. That's so fast. So. So to me, a lifelong operator that wasn't interested in politics or any of that nonsense, that's when it. It kind of started hitting me in the face. I was like. Like every Leader, Panetta, Obama, McRaven, all of the leadership in our country were now lining up to tell all their stories. Right. To get it out before the very soon upcoming election. Presidential election.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Right. So. So I have a book that now pops on the radar that all those people have not approved, right? They've approved their own versions and their own narratives. My book pops on the screen and they have not read a NAB review. So what do they do? Spin up the machine and come up. Right. If you have a Hunter Biden laptop that pops on the radar before an election, what do you do?

[Andy Stumpf]

You crush on one side you're on.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Agree, right?

[Andy Stumpf]

But.

[Matt Bissonnette]

But there's sides and one side is going to try to crush the other side because there's a lot of pressure hanging on a presidential election and certainly a lot of pressure hanging on, right? Approvals and all this great heroic decision making that the administration had done that they wanted to leverage for their next election. So if my book comes out and I make two political shots and no easy day, I don't like all any politics. I'm politicians. I'm not a fan.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, agreed.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I make two shots, right? One. When we met President Obama and Vice President Biden at the time, Vice President Biden was very handsy, right? Like coming up behind the team guys and like rubbing them on the shoulders and like trying to tell bad, bad jokes.

[Andy Stumpf]

You're like, very awkward.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Who's, who's the handsy guy that's telling really bad jokes? Like, so I reference him as the drunk uncle that Thanksgiving dinner, like, who super creepy. Who invited the creepy guy? It's just, he was, it was just odd. So I, I say that. And then of course, when we met President Obama, right, Shake his hand, get our photo op, he gives a speech and he's like, guys, I want to, I want to invite you to the, to the residence for a beer. Residence for a beer. I'm like, okay. I don't care where you sit politically, if a sitting president invites you to the White House, you gotta do it. You fucking put your uniform on, you get dressed up and you go up there and you do it. Do you think he ever followed up with that invite?

[Andy Stumpf]

Probably not, no. That would have been cool.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So I end the book with, well, I bet you voted for change too, right?

[Andy Stumpf]

So I've heard the Secret Service guys don't even really get to see the residents much. It's. It kind of. It's just a bubble for them to maintain some semblance of being a human being.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Makes sense.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, makes sense. That would have been very cool.

[Matt Bissonnette]

But that was. Those were the two political shots I, I took, right? Small little jabs. And that was before the presidential election. So then, right. A lot of people got mad because my book Came out. It was a surprise. There was a lot of political pressure against. Who is this guy that just wrote a book that wasn't reproved? How did he do this? Why did he do this? Boom. So that, that, that began the spiral.

[Andy Stumpf]

Was it. Was there an essence of you guys being used a little bit as a dog and pony post raid, Going up to those things?

[Matt Bissonnette]

For sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

What was that like? Were you kind of voluntold to do those things? Had that happened to you before in your career?

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, because we hadn't done anything that big.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. I'm trying to think of a historical crisis.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Maybe some other little dog and ponies for like Congressionals.

[Andy Stumpf]

Sure. People.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Something like that. But nothing.

[Andy Stumpf]

They would come to the beach too, right? They would. But it just seems like. I can't imagine you guys wanted to do that. I can't imagine. Yeah. If you were to put on your, you know, your.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Until like post raid.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No. Everybody just want to be left alone.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well. And it probably didn't feel great to the other people in the squadron who were not selected to go and like other people are getting to go these places and see these things and they're not.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I mean, hey, that's going to happen no matter what. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's going to happen. But again, outside of your control. But it's still a real thing, you know. Yeah. That's weird to be used as a dog and pony show like that. They didn't bring the leadership too, or just mostly.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, they brought leadership for sure. Majority leadership.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Trust me. There was a follow up question to that. Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Lots of grass. That wasn't just the sled dogs invited to those.

[Andy Stumpf]

No, no, man.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So. Yeah. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Is there historical precedents that you know of of another book, TV show or movie getting access like that that quickly?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh my. Not that I know of.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. I'm trying to think of what other political style event. Now I have heard that what's. The fighter pilots that got shot down in Iran recently and they're on the run and I think my old squadron got him the. I think they're already planning a movie for that. But that is. Oh yeah. They already got directors.

[Andy Stumpf]

So there you go. I don't mean. Oh, this is not. Nobody consults me for anything for clarity. But if they were to. I would say this is not necessarily a good idea. There's no benefit to rushing that.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I hesitate to try and judge what the leaders are trying to do at their position.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

For their reasons. Right. I was very happy. An enlisted guy that Doing my thing. Right. I did that until. Right. I was. I was on my first deployment when 911 happened. Last thing I did was crash into the man's compound. To me, those were good.

[Andy Stumpf]

Was that your last operation?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yep. I hurt my neck real bad and

[Andy Stumpf]

that's not true. That didn't happen in Zero Dark Thirty. There was nobody complaining about their neck. I didn't complain a couple weeks later, but joking obviously. I didn't realize they had such incredible access that. That quickly.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, nobody does.

[Andy Stumpf]

You.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You assume. Right, Right. It's.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, there is shady stuff happening at all levels to reinforce Michael Bale.

[Andy Stumpf]

What, two pilots. And that was Michael. How long ago was that? Two months ago?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Not that long. Let me see. I think they announced that like within weeks of the mission and the rescue, that that is how quick. Right. And. And who is it? Is it. Is it politics? Is it military leadership? Is it recruiting? Is it. What is it?

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't have an answer for any of that. It was in April.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You need a. You need an interview.

[Andy Stumpf]

So four months ago?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Four months ago? Yeah, pretty much right after it happened. I mean, I'd heard Latrell got pressured to, you know, do his movie from NSW because they wanted to tell the story.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I have an interview recorded that's not out yet from Ross, Wes. What's his last name? Snyderman. He wrote the political article. The recent political article about Red Wings. We talked for three and a half hours about, I mean, merc chats, communication logs, what more than likely happened, all those things, the pressure associated with that, the velocity with which things came out, multiple after actions. Why would you do that?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, yep. Yeah, it's a lot of it, in my opinion, was swept under the rug. We never heard a lot of AARs

[Andy Stumpf]

from that event, which is insane because that was super early on and it

[Matt Bissonnette]

reflects the value of a good aar.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, my God.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Hey, we can talk about that.

[Andy Stumpf]

I have an entire chapter dedicated ar. I read it today because it's. How can you evolve as an organization if you don't or as an individual? Dude, those were some of the most uncomfortable rooms to ever be sitting in. Especially if you knew you might have had subpar performance, but you hadn't gotten to that phase of the operation yet and you were just waiting to be like, hi, guys.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Remember that? Yeah, my bad.

[Andy Stumpf]

I said my bad. Yeah, yeah, but how else are you going to evolve?

[Matt Bissonnette]

You don't. You don't. You get stuck in your own little happy circle because nobody ever calls you out for anything. Or saying, hey, Andy, you probably should have tried this, tried that, or hey, you this up or try that or something. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

That. Like, the conversation with Ross was an interesting one because. And we opened with. I don't want to take away anything from what either those people had to deal with on the ground or Mark. Like, I met Marcus twice. I played paintball with him one time, of all things. And I don't want to take away anything from what they had to fight their way out of. And obviously the loss is real. But you can't bury the truth in that because at least from my understanding, Red Wings in the SEAL community, correct me if you've heard something else, is not viewed as a success. It's a failure along just about every phase of military operation to include the planning of sending, I don't know, four dudes without a chief in the Kunar. Like, I'm sorry, what?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Out of pure respect for the loss of human life, we owe the dead brothers to debrief that and pull out every dirty thing under the rug and say, all right, let's address this so

[Andy Stumpf]

this doesn't happen again, at least to the community. I don't give a. If none of that makes its way public facing, but the community should have access.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I didn't. I never saw it. I never saw anything. It went under the rug.

[Andy Stumpf]

It still is there.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, I'm sure somewhere there's a lot of. There's a lot of that falling around.

[Andy Stumpf]

Do you think that that will ever be corrected? Do you think that's what worries me the most? I'm exceptionally proud of the time I spent in the military, and I am very proud of the community, but I think the integrity of the community is of what is of the most importance. If people are going to respect it and view it externally, the civilians, the people we're supposed to be serving. Right. And serving for the community has to maintain its integrity. And to me, that means being honest again. Don't. Ttps all the sensitive stuff. Yes. That's internally facing, sure. But we don't have to have a tactical failure be portrayed as my words, not theirs. Recruiting posters or. You know what I mean? Yeah. That to me, goes in the opposite direction. And then you wonder why people are losing faith in the integrity of not only just the SEAL community, but military communities. It's like, guys, we're our own worst enemy, and you can't point at somebody else if we're the ones behind the scenes facilitating the access, you know?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yep, yep, yep, yeah, yeah. All part of the broader hypocrisy of like where I was sitting in the moment of writing the book, going through everything I was. Have been going through. Just challenging to wrap it all around in my tiny little brain.

[Andy Stumpf]

How's the hatred and anger feeling now? Better.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Good, good, good, good.

[Andy Stumpf]

Decrease.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I definitely had my, my come to Jesus moment right where I was like, look, this, this is, this is 100%. The things that I don't understand in my life is because maybe it's God's challenging me to see how I act and if I'm going to be turn into a little about it or not. And, and so to me, once, once I started my new little battle, like, okay, I got rid of the hate. I freaking let it go. Like, all right, I'm gonna. I'm gonna write the story and we're gonna go with it.

[Andy Stumpf]

And.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And here we are. So no, no more hate. Yeah, I'm gonna get through it. I'm gonna get this paid off and move on with my life.

[Andy Stumpf]

What will you do afterwards? If you let's go with the assumption the book is going to crush and that you'll get it paid off quicker than the 15 years. What would you want to do with your life?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well, I recently bought some bread. Heifers. Yeah, it's a technical term for a pregnant cow.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And I'm gonna raise some wagyu beef on my farm and let the world melt away.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's not a bad plan. Yeah, it's not a bad plan.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Did you think that growing up in Alaska, that's where you were, your goals were going to end up leading you?

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, I had no idea. Well, punk kid in Alaska, all. All I dreamt about was the. Was getting out of the village and, and going to be a seal. I mean, I read about it in junior high. I was like, man, bought my first AR15 from my history teacher at school.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's like, all right, I'm not sure that's legal, but we'll just.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Definitely not. Definitely not. I put it in my locker till the end. I was very proudly walked out of school with my AR15 on my back.

[Andy Stumpf]

Nobody try that in this modern era. Please, please do that at a gun store or just at a private residence. Yeah, we don't need to be storing that in school.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Only in Alaska.

[Andy Stumpf]

God.

[Matt Bissonnette]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

[Andy Stumpf]

What? 14 years is an interesting time to get out. I got out at 17 or just under, but I was medically retired, so I had at least preserved the health care and the pension. Did you think about, I mean, where you were at at that time? Obviously I'll describe as an F1 car pegged out in the red, going as fast as it can around. Did you think at all about or even consider finding a place outside of that, but doing the additional six or you just didn't think you'd be able to do it?

[Matt Bissonnette]

No. Good. Good question. Yes, of course I thought about all that.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, six years is a long

[Matt Bissonnette]

time, as you and I know in that world.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yes.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And that pace, six years is, is a chunk. Where was I in my career? Right? I'd been there. I'd never taken a break. I'd never done anything but deploy. That was it. Thirteen straight pumps. My longest break was green team, which as you know, is not a break. Those cooked, bro. I was cooked. Start doing the math here. 14 years, okay? 3 year enlistment, 4 year enlistment. All right, this gets me this far. Okay, that gets me to the 19 years. Do I want to go to 25 years and take the blood money at 19 that they were offering a lot of guys the big money. I looked where I was career wise, team leader at the command. That to me was like the apex of anything that I ever wanted to do because everything outside of that started getting into the political world, maybe troop chief would have been cool, but. But even then there was a lot of that was starting to get into the, the political infrastructure at the command. Leadership wise and man, I'd always very happily been the, the sled dog doing my thing in the team.

[Andy Stumpf]

Such a beautiful rule.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That is where I loved it. And so I did my math, I looked at all the, the options. I looked at, okay, if I stay, what are my options at the command? I remember sitting down with my master chief me like, hey, what are my options? He gave me one. I'm like, thank you for all my options.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I'm like, well, that. Okay, I've got one option at the command. I didn't want to go out to buds. I don't know. I was just like, man, if I'm, if I'm going to stay in, I want to stay operational. I want to do something that I wanted to do.

[Andy Stumpf]

Even after 13 straight and recognizing you were just ragged.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yes. My ask, I made one request thank you for calling me out on that. You were correct.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, it's tough because what's a guy you don't know who has done 13 straight, who is operating at a level they want to operate at, a place that they want to be? They're going to say, of course, I'm fine, ready for more. How many more can I have? I'll do this until 20. That's.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That's what.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, I get it. Oh, trust me, I get it. I only recognize those things now myself. Looking into the rear view mirror.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. Yeah. I was like, hey, I remember I going to. Talking to my master Chief. I'm like, hey, can I. Can I go to Air Ops? A whole bunch of air quals. Not as many as you. But I'm like, maybe I can. Maybe I can contribute there. I'm like, a couple of my buddies had got, like, master's degrees online in their spare time. I'm like, master Chief, I'll get my master's degree. I'll do it on my own. I'll do a work Air Ops or green training, one of these. Give me a. Give me a spot for like, 18 months. That 18 months is all I need. Yeah. I'm like, get my fan, get things settled down, like, decompress a little bit. He's like, hey, man, I need to send somebody to a squadron. And. And. And your name's on it. I got to send the most qualified person here. I'm like, well, that wasn't the type of squadron that I necessarily wanted to go to, is not like where I went and came from. And he was like, well, it'd be great for your career. I'm like, I know, but that's a deployable billet. That's. I'm not getting my master's degree. I'm not decompressing. I'm not anything. I'm just jumping right into the next thing. And. And I was like, listen, I've never asked for anything, ever. I've been the guy who shows up early, raises my hand like, I'll go. Take me. And I'm so here I am about to pop, and I'm like, I need a break. And he's like, this is your only option. So that very clearly. And. And to be honest, I was becoming very frustrated with the leadership I saw. Not all. Not all leadership, some leadership. And I saw the rules of engagement changing in Afghanistan. Right. I'd been. I've been doing this war thing since the beginning, and I'd seen the whole.

[Andy Stumpf]

You guys were kind of the last to have an impact of that. What were they changing where they just tight rules are always.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You're no canines on the mission, don't go at night, no assaults, surround the building and call them out on a bullhorn. So why are you spending a very high end top tier unit to go basically surround the mud hut, have the interpreter on a bullhorn say, hey, come out, come out and like unless it's

[Andy Stumpf]

an hvt, that's not a tier one job. No, it's really not. And I'm not saying that's an important job. But if you're going to have the tiers to the cascading organizations and you are consistently using the apex tiers for things that could readily be handled by other traditional special operations.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So to me, being utilized in that position, having been utilized in all sorts of different positions and, and seeing them take the, some of our assets away and limit our night raids and all this, I was like, why?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, why?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Why are we putting ourselves in this additional risk for what? And then of course, a couple months after the raid, extortion.

[Andy Stumpf]

That was a shitty day. That was my old troop.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

At Gold.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I knew almost everybody. I mean Kelso was in buds with me and then he departed and went to college in Texas. You know, I had seen them when I deployed with Team three. I took him out there for an interoperability trip and it was like Lou and Jonas, they totally facilitated just hanging out with those guys. Yeah. When they started slowly releasing the names on that one, that was a, that was not an awesome day.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That was a huge gut punch. Right. You think of the, any type of high, whatever you want to call it, coming off the, the success of the bin Laden mission to, to that was absolutely devastating. And, and I'll be perfectly honest, I'm not, I have not processed any of the dead friends that I have. I haven't. I, I did not go to any of their funerals. I hid out. Yeah, no.

[Andy Stumpf]

I was reading that section in your book this morning and people may not understand that, but I totally do. I have struggled. I have struggled at the funerals. One of the first funerals I went to is my good friend Jason Lewis and he died in a, in a pretty violent way. Not that I think there's a lot of combat deaths that would be considered non violent, but it's pretty aggressive. And I've had this conversation with a bunch of people. I don't know if it's. And I think it's an individual thing, but is it better to remember somebody how they were or see them at an open casket funeral for how they.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I'm not doing the open casket. Nope, nope, nope, nope.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I struggle with it.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Call me a all you want. I'm not doing it.

[Andy Stumpf]

I struggle with it too. They had a. I have too many

[Matt Bissonnette]

positive memories of my friends. I don't need to see him that way.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, I wish I hadn't seen him at his open. He was still Jason for sure. But there was a. They had a. I don't know what they call it. I'm gonna call it a viewing. I think that's the wrong term though. And I went there, but it stayed in the back. And then the funeral, there was kind of a procession walking in to get your.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That was in Bar beach. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

That was in Connecticut where they. Where they buried him and. But there was kind of a procession and it was just slowly moving along and I wasn't really paying attention to where we were.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And the next thing you know.

[Andy Stumpf]

Next thing you know, I was standing there with him and his. You know, and Donna, his wife was there and his kids and I'm. And it's. I knew him well enough to know like that's still Jason, but he looked different and I. And maybe that's just the way that it is. But that is the last memory that I have of him. Even though I have so many other memories. I didn't go to all the funerals either, man. And I don't know what again does that make us just. Is it md. Is it. I don't know the answer to that, but I understand.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I'm not ready to process it. I don't even know how. Right. I don't know how I would. I. I have straight hid from that.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't know if there's a. I. I don't know if there's a right answer to that. I think that's dependent on the person.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. Yeah. It hit me again when we. With the pull out of Afghanistan and all that. It was just like another big gut punch. It was like for what? Why? I've mentioned this before. I have 43 contacts in my phone that are right. That's. That's a lot of different dudes that I knew through the teams in my career and. And half. Not. I won't say half the wrong. Wrong, wrong number.

[Andy Stumpf]

I know where you're going because I was going to ask you a handful

[Matt Bissonnette]

of all been post career.

[Andy Stumpf]

I Bet you probably 10 of those are probably post.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Not quite, but close.

[Andy Stumpf]

I had heard a stat that recently, the Green Beret community has now lost more members to suicide than combat operations.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Wow.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. I don't know where the SEAL community is in that, but I bet you with a long enough timeline, ours will catch that. We'll cross.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That is a horrible statistic.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't. Yeah. I don't have 43 contacts in my phone of people that I knew at that level, but, I mean, yeah, extortion, again, like, that was a very.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Buds.

[Andy Stumpf]

With.

[Matt Bissonnette]

With Heath and.

[Andy Stumpf]

And Rob and I turned over departments to them in when I left.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Gold.

[Andy Stumpf]

No, like, I handed over the NVO department, all the night vision stuff to him. It's. I don't know what to make of it. Especially the ones who are making the decisions to end their lives afterwards. The things that they were able to tell.

[Matt Bissonnette]

It's tough, right? I got close. I got close. Had a gun to my head.

[Andy Stumpf]

Really?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

How long did it take you to get to that?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Not long.

[Andy Stumpf]

Really?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, no, right after I got out, the book came out, and immediately after all the drama with the book, I was like, it, I'm out.

[Andy Stumpf]

Do you remember the first time you. That crystallized as a thought where it was actually a viable option? Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Had you ever thought about it in your life up until that point?

[Matt Bissonnette]

No. No.

[Andy Stumpf]

What do you think it was about? That. Just the pressure. The asymmetrical pressure. Well, of the friends that we know that have killed themselves, a lot of them were associated with that as well, too. There's a. There's a very close tie to that. I'm not going to say causality, but there's a correlation there, I think.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. I think the. During my time in the teams, the only outlet for some sort of release was alcohol.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Buddies dies, go burn it down. Right? That. That was the. That was what you use to. To fix things or process or whatever. Come on, process. So then you get out and you go through the same thing, and I'm cut off from all of my buddy. I mean, the. The. The command. My former commander, former command, they went after every single one of my friends, right? Like, they threatened guys at the command. If they talked to Bis, they would pull their trident, kick him out of the command post.

[Andy Stumpf]

Book you're talking about.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, yeah. As soon as the book came out, it was like, cut me off completely. So, like, I'm getting texts from guys, burner phones being like, yo, dude, I'll hit you when I get out. They're gonna. They're. They'll. They'll kick me out if they catch us. Talking to you. So I went. They literally isolated me on purpose, cut me off from any of my support structure, and the military knows how hard that is already in any veteran. And then they on purpose cut me off, isolated me, and probably hoped I would continue on with bad thoughts. I don't know. You go, yeah, I wasn't getting a lot of support at that moment from anybody other than being cut off. And so. So to jump to with a little alcohol, to jump to some stupid ideas goes quick.

[Andy Stumpf]

What stopped you?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I just chickened out. Chicken out. Thought it through enough, put it to the side of my head, cocked the hammer back and was like, that doesn't feel right. Put it down. And that was it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Damn, dude.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I mean, then I was like, all right, all right, all right. Check. Not doing that. Let's get smart.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And then. And then just the.

[Andy Stumpf]

The.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That was. That was. Boom. That was within months of the book and everything. And then it was like, okay, let's get back in the fight. I've never quit another fight. Let's get back in the fight. So I buckled down. I was like, all right, let's get back in the fight. And as I. As I fought through my legal battles, I fought and cleaned myself up. I wasn't drinking anymore and just got healthier, eating better, just all. All the things I needed to. Had five neck surgeries.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Traumatic or the TMS stuff. I've done stem cells. I've tried to do anything I can to evolve, get better, try to not be the same thing I used to be.

[Andy Stumpf]

Did it scare you that you got to that point, that you were literally that close, or was it shocking to you that you almost got there?

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, because I think I saw enough death in my career. It was like.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's just. It's the things. No, I get it. I mean, I. Yeah, I totally get it. The. I mean, statistically, the community is very hard to get into the command. Even harder. Right. Sure. The things that they ask you to do are tremendous. And it's not as if that was your first day encountering hardship. It is a career defined by psychological and physical pain. And the only currency people care about is your unwillingness to quit and to perform. That's why. And it's.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I loved that, though. I loved that about the space. That's why I joined it, because I knew it would be hard, and I like to work hard. I assumed, wrongly, that the civilian world was going to be easier than this. And as I stepped into the civilian world, I got run over with a Mack truck.

[Andy Stumpf]

Do you regret writing the first book?

[Matt Bissonnette]

No. No, I really don't. I regret how it went down, but I think telling the story, I think the way I went about it. Right. I don't know too many other team guys that have tried to stay out of the limelight when writing such a big topic and story. Right. I. I was really trying to not make it about, oh, look at Matt Bessonnette and all his heroic Navy SEAL shit. It was like, Owen, yeah, that guy. Great. It's that guy. It's not this guy. Who. Matt Besanetta is irrelevant. Right? Like, hey, tell. It's a. It's a. It's of the team. Right. I tried to really tell that. So I don't. I don't regret that. I regret hiring the attorney that I did and. And that whole piece. But again, I. I've come to my understanding is, hey, that was just part of God's plan, and I had to go through that. I. I did not. So I set up my tactical plan. I put my team together. I hired my experts.

[Andy Stumpf]

I.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Right. We came up with our plan based off the experts, and we executed that plan. And then the Hilo crashed, just like, you know, metaphorically on the mission. We had a great plan. The helo crash. So things can go sideways. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you learn from the hardship? And. And that is what I've tried to write about in the book and. And why I'm trying to be positive now and not. Not the bitter that I was for a period of time.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think we all go through that. For sure. I. I definitely have had. There's seasons of life, man. Sure. There's seasons of life. We all go through that. What did you think that the command's reaction was going to be to the book?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Varying opinions.

[Andy Stumpf]

Because I have to assume you bounced it off some of the guys. For sure. Yeah, for sure.

[Matt Bissonnette]

100. How many team guys do, you know, read books when they grew up, and that's what inspired them to start.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I say this all the time. There's a difference between a quiet professional and a silent professional. Boom.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well said.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know, it. I love, again, the community. Very opinionated. There was people in the 5326 Facebook page. I don't know if you're a part of it.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Facebook. I don't do Facebook. They have a page.

[Andy Stumpf]

Basically, it's a skiff.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, my gosh.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, it's not. But some of the thing, I'm like,

[Matt Bissonnette]

don't invite me to that.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm like, guys, I'M inviting you. As soon as we leave, I'll figure out a way to sign you up because I know you're not going to look at it, so I must get you in there. The people in there talking about the book never read it. Sure. And it was just like, guys, of

[Matt Bissonnette]

course, everybody opinion but.

[Andy Stumpf]

And they'll say this guys out there selling the Trident. Why can't guys just do their job and shut the up? And I'm like, hey, just so you know, I know you and I've been with you at a bar where you're trying to pick up chicks by telling them that you're a SEAL. So what are we talking about? 0tt that book that I wrote is about me falling all over my dick, just stepping on my dick, getting in trouble, making mistakes. The only story I told was the single worst jumping experience of my life, which was with the Terp in Afghanistan. That's it. Even the night I talked about getting shot, I was like, yeah. Guy raised a gun up and I was on the ground. End of war story. That's all I got for you. Nothing.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

But you can't do anything.

[Matt Bissonnette]

But they won't read the book. They didn't read the words. They won't process the words to then judge you upon the words you put on there. They'll judge you on the action of

[Andy Stumpf]

writing it in and of itself.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. The hypocrisy there is interesting. So I know I'm fine with criticism, but like, read the book before you try to. But as you know, filet me on

[Matt Bissonnette]

the post, there's gonna be what, a third, a fourth half? I don't know what the percentage is, but there's going to be a contingent, a percentage of the SEAL community or the soft community that's going to hate all book writers.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So I could assume that knowing some of the people that come in are like the old school. Oh, yeah. Nobody writes books.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I bet they all read faces. I bet you that was.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That was the book I read.

[Andy Stumpf]

Same. That was the first book I could find.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Then I found Rogue Warrior, which I thought was non fiction. My mistake, my mistake. I don't know.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I think they said something about bench pressing £500 and like eating. I'm like, man, I'm never gonna be a dev group guy because I can't £70 stopping wet. I'm not benching five.

[Andy Stumpf]

It was ponytail in the snow. I'm pretty sure he said that was his first set. No warm up repping 500.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. My mistake. Thinking that was a non fiction.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I met him at the Shot show one year.

[Andy Stumpf]

I never met him.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Little guy, a lot smaller than I. I imagined.

[Andy Stumpf]

In my mind I've heard stories of him and then stories of people running into his daughter at bars in Virginia Beach.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't know.

[Andy Stumpf]

Never met either.

[Matt Bissonnette]

But the book thing. Yeah. Contingent of guys that are going to hate it no matter what. That's. That's the teams. Okay. I didn't care about them because I knew there's no. There's no maneuvering their opinions. They're guys. I'm probably less interested in their opinions anyway. The guys I valued their opinions the most. I absolutely went and talked to all them. I was like, hey, here's what I'm doing. Here is how I'm going to approach this. I am not putting my face and my name on the book and trying to get out in front of this and say, hey, look at me. I want to tell the story the best way I can. I want to support the special operations community by donating the money to this. This is a broader story. This is not about me. Yeah, we all knew that there was broader movie and book stuff going on.

[Andy Stumpf]

So there was another author at this time creating a manual script as well. Were you guys aware that there was another author? He's been on the show. Rob.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Rob who? No, I had no idea he was writing a book then.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay. Didn't they come out relatively same time period? Ish.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I have no idea when his book came out officially. I did well after mine, I think.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Several years.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Some days I don't know.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay. Michael, I hate to google this, but I don't know the name of his book off the top of my head. Can you google when the Mark Owen book came out and the Rob o' Neill book came out? I'm just curious on the timeline because I thought that there were people who were aware he was working on his as well too at that time.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Darl. I don't know.

[Andy Stumpf]

The guys who you talked to about it and were supportive. What were their thoughts

[Matt Bissonnette]

like? All right, well, you know, you're going to do it. Little do it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Eyebrows up probably.

[Matt Bissonnette]

For sure. For sure. You're like, you know, like. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, Jesus Christ.

[Matt Bissonnette]

18.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, 18. Oh, yeah. Your book came out way before that.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay. Damn. I thought for some reason that those were way closer tied. There is a. On the Internet you can find. And I don't know if this is true, but I did find it on the Internet that you two Were supposedly yelling at each other in the team room or in the. In the cage area as to whose book was going to come out first.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's not how a fun way to live life is.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Believe everything. No, absolutely not. There was none of that.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Matt Bissonnette]

None of that at all.

[Andy Stumpf]

Were you. Did you already know you were going to get out? Was that your plan to. Or if it had gone perfectly the way that you wanted it to pre op or po.

[Matt Bissonnette]

What do you mean?

[Andy Stumpf]

Post. When your book was coming out, had you already decided that you were going to eject or not eject?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I got out before I started writing the book.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I. I knew my enlistment was up.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I knew I had to re enlist by January.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yep.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And. And that's. We got. We just come home from a deployment.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

We just got home like 10 days later. They spin us up for this mission. I had been talking about getting out on my last deployment because it was very slow in Afghanistan. All the rules, everything was changing. And I knew my enlistment was up. And I'm like. I was weighing all my options. Very open. And I publicly speaking of. Okay, what moves am I going to make? We got back. The mission spun up.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yep.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Boom. And then by the time January rolled around, I was like,

[Andy Stumpf]

okay, so you're already out. Okay. I was wondering if you had any.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And then I started the book. Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

I was wondering if you had still been in at that time. Because I was going to say if in a perfect world where the mark Odin Owen, what would that be? A nom de guerre, nom de plume, pseudonym, whatever it is. The name one of those. One of those all three or none. Yeah. Nom day something. If it had worked the way that you wanted it to, what would have the perfect execution of that looked like the book would have been a historical record of what happened, raised money with which you would have donated and you would have been able to just kind of stay at an arm's distance to that through the name.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yep. There you go.

[Andy Stumpf]

How quickly after the release day did you go, oh. Or was it release day?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, dude.

[Andy Stumpf]

Because I don't know if you know this did well. I don't know if you know this. No.

[Matt Bissonnette]

It's sold a few copies. Yeah. Just the. How that whole once. Once it hit and how it hit and how it went public and then all the initial craz craziness was. Was nuts.

[Andy Stumpf]

How quickly did it make its way back to you? As in people started trying to reverse engineer who Mark Owen was.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, my name. I think it was a Fox News producer that ran my name online, ran my real name, Real name came out immediately.

[Andy Stumpf]

We're talking 48 hours.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, pretty, pretty damn quick. I was. I was fine. But, you know, reporters and everybody else showing up, my parents, family, house, how to get them kind of off the grid. And then. And then we just started dealing with hiring the lawyers and engaging with the government. Was there interviews for hours and hours and hours, freaking interrogations. They're telling me I have American blood on my hands for writing the book.

[Andy Stumpf]

Who's telling you that?

[Matt Bissonnette]

The doj.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, they were already coming to talk to you.

[Matt Bissonnette]

All the spins up. I'm like, hey, guys, simmer down. I didn't do any of this on purpose. Here's my lawyer. Talk to him. He's the one who advised me on the book publication process and the review process.

[Andy Stumpf]

Are we talking a matter of weeks or days?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Whenever it kicked off, it was immediate. All that conversation was. I'm like, we're not going to hold back here. If you have a problem with the book, here's exactly. Talk to my attorney. Attorney, talk to them. Like, explain this.

[Andy Stumpf]

Do what I pay you for.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Right. But he kept shooting himself and saying the same thing over and over that he could approve it and I didn't have to. And the DOJ is getting more and more heated. So that's when I hired the second attorney and we completely cooperated immediately. The whole time. Again, I had no reason to sit here and think I did anything wrong. All the advice I'd been getting was, hey, this. We did it right based off the attorney. There was nothing classified in the book, and this was just going to get ironed out. And the longer it went on, I was like, okay, well, let's sit down. Let's go through my email. So we had two different sessions with the doj. Two different occasions. Going to a little skiff, San Diego, NCIS building, and they grill me for 10 hours.

[Andy Stumpf]

Do you guys have a lawyer present for that?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay. Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Had my attorney present. And not the first one. My. My new, much better one. And all it was was a Matt Bisonette session.

[Andy Stumpf]

And what were they looking for?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Like, they weren't looking for anything. Well, first meeting, they were looking for everything. Second meeting was they'd gone through everything, and now they wanted to give me the. The exam, whatever. And that was where they were just like, well, see this right here, you talk about the. The. The mission you guys launched from Jalalabad to a base in Jalalabad. Do you know Jalalabad was mortared and an American service member was killed after your book came out?

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, drop my breadcrumbs for that.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Sorry. Sorry, sir. Have you ever been to J Bad? And he's like, no. I'm like, okay, well, I've been there like 12 times, and every time I've been there, JBAD's been ordered.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, it's a big base. Everybody knows they're there. I'm like, we have Russian contractors cooking our food. We have Afghans cleaning the shitters. Yeah, and you're telling me nobody knew we had a base there? But you're gonna put American blood on my hands for writing a book?

[Andy Stumpf]

Let alone the assets flying in and out of there? I mean, come on.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Next page, they're like, see this picture of four tube night vision goggles?

[Andy Stumpf]

Highly classified Airsoft players are running around with those.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I'm like, do you have Internet down here in the basement? Please pull up GPNVG night vision goggles. The manufacturer's website pops up with all the specifications.

[Andy Stumpf]

Are they just PBS 34 or something like that?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't even know the name. Yeah, but I know on their website they list all the specs, but these guys are like leaking classified information. It was just a constant barrage of trying to belittle, to inflict as much pain as possible. It was DOJ reps and ncis. Not a single NSW person in the room. I've never spoken to a single NSW rep in this entire process besides McRaven here at the end. And he was retired when I got on the phone with him.

[Andy Stumpf]

Would you want to talk with him?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, I did talk with him.

[Andy Stumpf]

No, no, I mean, in that process, would you have wanted to talk?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yes, I reached out to them and said, list, I'd like to discuss this. Why aren't you guys in these meetings? No show, no response.

[Andy Stumpf]

Really? How many years of that occurred?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Two years of dealing with no easy day book after two years, right? They were like, we want you on felony charges. Felony for what? Okay, we want you on misdemeanor charges. Misdemeanor for what? Yeah, they. They leaked. I had told them I had pictures of bin Laden. Right. I took all the photos on target. And. And when I got out the digital camera, I had the. They hadn't deleted the photos off the SD card.

[Andy Stumpf]

That conflicts with a other narrative. Just so you know,

[Matt Bissonnette]

they were on my phone. I had a lot of. Not my phone, my camera. Yeah, when we got back from the op. Right. Sops you Turn in the cameras, which everybody had to the agency folks who were downloading them. And they didn't delete any of the photos like our SOPs were. I never looked at my digital camera again. I threw it back in my kit. Everybody had issued a digital camera. I get out nine months later, half my gear I get to keep. And they're like, keep the camera. My daughter's running around taking pictures with it. On the weekend, I go to download it and I see all the photos are still on the. On the chip.

[Andy Stumpf]

Probably good that she didn't look through the photos.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, well, I disclosed all this in my multiple. Because the government was going to go through my computer. And I was like, hey, I want to make sure I'm. So I disclose all this. They're like, oh, yeah, no problem. Did you delete it? I'm like, yes, I deleted it. You can confirm it. They're like, okay. So as they're trying to get me on a felony or a misdemeanor, would

[Andy Stumpf]

having those pictures be either of those?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't think so. But I'm not a lawyer. They're pressuring me into some sort of deal. And like, within the week that they're pressuring me, all of a sudden there's an article that comes out in the paper that says mapisonette retained photos of bin Laden. Now, nobody else knew that information but the government. And the week they're trying to pressure me, like, hey, if you don't, if you don't cop to a misdemeanor, we're going to come after you. Now all of a sudden in the press, they talk, start talking about had the photos, like, nothing illegal with that. I've destroyed them. I've confirmed I've destroyed them all. Shared them with the press, didn't sell them, none of that nonsense.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm actually amazed by the way that those pictures never did get leaked by anybody or sold to the press.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, I'm going to make an assumption.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Controls them all. I had the extras and I deleted them.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I don't say that you probably didn't have all the. The extras.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't know. I don't know. I can only assume.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm just saying I know how things work. And again, you're not the only person who might not have looked at. You know what I mean? Or a deletion or all that stuff.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

Eventually, at some point somebody goes, man, these are worth something. And I'm not saying it'd be a team guy Maybe it's a guy who literally throws their digital camera into a recycle bin. And somebody pulls out, is like, oh,

[Matt Bissonnette]

if the photos were ever released, it would help clear up some questions. I believe very quickly. Because you would. You would see that there was no gray hair in the beard. Very clearly, very quickly. Just like you see in some of the. The, like, videos we pulled off Target, where you see bin Laden sitting there watching tv and he's got the black beard. Yeah, right. Exact same. Looked way younger. I found Just For Men hair dye in his bathroom. Little box.

[Andy Stumpf]

CBS it was. So it might not have been cbs, NBC. We'll call it one of the Alphabet soup. And I don't mean intelligence apparatus, but somebody walked through there within 24, 48 hours. And I think in the background of their footage, you can see Hair Club for Men.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Really?

[Andy Stumpf]

In the bathroom? Yeah, I'm sure you can visually see it.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That's amazing. Is that the same guy who talked about the blood splatter above the door on the ceiling?

[Andy Stumpf]

I believe so, yes.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Peter Bergen.

[Andy Stumpf]

I believe so, yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. I think he was the only reporter to actually compound before it. Before it was torn down.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, is that what they eventually did?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, that makes sense. What do you think of the burial at sea thing and the controversy that surrounded that? I'm assuming, you guys, it only became

[Matt Bissonnette]

controversial because it's gone now. To one hand, I like that, because it's just gone. There's no shrine, no memorial, no place to go.

[Andy Stumpf]

And on the other hand, it's conspiracy theory.

[Matt Bissonnette]

On the other hand, you bury me. See, it opens it up for, well, you know, he lives on the moon with Elvis or something.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't know. Did you guys know that was gonna be the end state when you launched, or was that a decision made later?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't. I don't know that I remember thinking through or worrying about what we were gonna do with the body after the fact.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's a downstream problem.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I gotta get a few. That takes more upstream to worry about.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like, let's get the raft to the end of the stream.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I feel like there's a few things we gotta work through before we forgo where we're dumping the body and who. Like, at that point, I do remember the Army Rangers coming up and grabbing the body.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I was gonna say. Cause I would imagine they just. At some point there's gonna be. We'll call it a chain of custody handover for that.

[Matt Bissonnette]

There was a. I remember very specifically Army Rangers coming out, grabbing them, and they flew Them out to the. From what I was told.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, man.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, the photos, if, if they ever got released, I don't know. I think that would help clear some stuff up. I think. I think you'd also see very quickly, it's high forehead shots. His face is not all up. You can very clearly see his bridge of his nose, whole face, mouth, mouth structure.

[Andy Stumpf]

So this is the narrative.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Easily identifiable.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

The idea that there were extra shots or any of this, that his face was distorted. Release the photos. High forehead shots.

[Andy Stumpf]

Do you think there's any benefit to the community or the world in general to release photos to get to finality or clarity? To have either the military come out and be like, listen, finality or clarity for what?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I think there's a lot of people are pretty final and clear on this, except a few other people are not final and clear on it. And there's some confusion of. Listen, I don't even. I don't know.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's final and clear in everyone's mind, depending on what version of the story. And let's say there are two competing narratives to the story.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

What I don't want to do is find the thread because I don't want. Yeah, you know what I mean? In a world where somebody who was involved in this, who still remains nameless and wants to be. So I don't want to change that for anybody. I don't want to pull the thread on anything, expose anything. I want the SEAL teams to maintain their integrity. But there are two competing, slightly different narratives. Everything's largely the same until the threshold between the second and third floor. At that point, it's. There's some deviation. I don't know.

[Matt Bissonnette]

A.

[Andy Stumpf]

The dude's dead. Huge victory for the United States and for the command. Like, dude, you guys. 24 guys went right, something like that.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Mid 20s, 24 that went to the compound. There was additional skills involved. It was not just 24 and hundreds

[Andy Stumpf]

of thousands of support personnel to make all it happen. Like, you're not trying to diminish it, but for those guys, operation of a lifetime, like, awesome, dude. I can't even imagine. And at the same time, I'm just glad the dude's dead. You know, I mean, the actual trigger puller, it. It doesn't, I think, change.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Irrelevant.

[Andy Stumpf]

It is irrelevant.

[Matt Bissonnette]

It doesn't matter because most. How many times you pulled the trigger. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to most guys.

[Andy Stumpf]

And if somebody truly wants to maintain their anonymity, of course I'm going to absolutely respect that. I'm not going to pull in that thread ever, because to me, there's nothing to be gained from that. I would love for at some point the stories to be able to overlap because without that, it allows space in between the two, and that's where the Internet goes crazy.

[Matt Bissonnette]

My problem is I don't see a lot of space between the two. I know what I saw, I know what we witnessed. And then I know we all came back and did a debrief with everybody in the room that was audio recorded. So if, if, if the other version says there was lying going on in the debrief, I don't know what the fuck that means. I've never lied in an AAR debrief because. Well, it's not lying. You may have your perspective.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

We all know you might have your perspectives of a mission, but three, why you do the debrief is so everybody else talks about their perspective and how they match up or how they don't. And you work through that. So when we did the debrief, it was. Right. Different people talked in different areas. But then when the point man came up, that was the first guy going up the stairs. He's the one who talked through all of the final sequences. Nobody interrupted, nobody talked about. Nobody talked about a second train. Nobody said there was a delay. Nobody talked about, hey, there was only two guys. The point man talked about shooting and moving into the room. Right. This, this whole question of the point man missing. I don't, I didn't see a miss. Right. And I don't know why we would need to lie about him missing or lie about or cover up any form of. There was a woman killed on the first floor.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That we talked about in the debrief on the first floor.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's in the movie.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Right. So now we're not going to talk about a woman being wounded on the third floor or talk about somebody missing a shot. That doesn't make any sense. Plus, you're going to have to get everybody in the room to go along with that story. You're going to have to coordinate a whole bunch of people to lie.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Right. To act like they didn't see what they actually saw. That's why a debrief is what it is. Right. Everybody in the debrief shares their opinion. If you talk about your movements and, and it's pretty simple when you're going up a set of stairs. Right. It's not.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, I haven't cleared every set of stairs, but I've cleared a lot of Stairs.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Right. But if your appointment talking about you clearing up a single set of stairs, it's not a lot of leeway for other people to see different things. He just talks through his actions. The shot that the point man took, right. What SEAL out there is not going to follow his shots?

[Andy Stumpf]

It's a good question.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Tactically, that is what we're taught your threat matrix. What's your biggest threat out there? Unknown. Mail. Yeah, right. You know, everybody knew bin Laden most likely lived on the third floor. He had just eliminated Khalid on the second in the landing with a gun. You have to assume, right, the guy on the third floor is armed.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So he takes a shot enough within the rules of engagement to shoot at that head.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And he decides to stay in the hallway. He decides to come off the. The known threat that he just shot at and chase women and kids. What team guys doing that? Why? Where? And then where are the kids? Where's the women and kids? I've heard 38 different versions from other people of where the women were. The women were in the room. Right? That's where the chick was wounded in the leg. Women were in the room, not out of the room. So if the first week you can pull up the sketches and the layout of the third floor, right up the set of stairs, open door on the right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Shots go right. Point man follows his shots to the doorway. He doesn't stay in the hallway. He doesn't come off of where he just shot at an adult male head in Bin Laden's compound on the third floor.

[Andy Stumpf]

Tactically what you're saying makes sense.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Who is all of a sudden gonna be like okay, shoot. Okay, I'm gonna go check this way. There's just nobody that does that. There's not a team out there that does that. You follow your shots. And that's exactly what he did.

[Andy Stumpf]

He entered the room. Were you guys able to be double stacked?

[Matt Bissonnette]

There's a picture of it. Pull it up online.

[Andy Stumpf]

Are you serious? Yeah. Shows you how little I've been looking at it. Jesus, Michael.

[Matt Bissonnette]

This seems pretty good if you're thinking of a different.

[Andy Stumpf]

There has been typing away with their little fingers.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That's not the best picture. You could pull some up from my book. And then there's an actual live shot of the stairwell.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I'll see where they. You see blood on it from where they drug them down the stairs. But.

[Andy Stumpf]

And the reason I ask about it,

[Matt Bissonnette]

pretty narrow hallway and so. Or stairway.

[Andy Stumpf]

And again if you're thinking. So you're. If you're appointment and you're up front and the stack behind you is single file. And you take that shot, you might be the only person to see what it is you had taken the shot at. So, yes, tactically, what you're saying is it would make, unless you had some other incredibly compelling reason what you would have to follow that.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Because what's the higher threat than that? You're. They've told you lives on the third floor. They might have a head stick out the male head on the third floor.

[Andy Stumpf]

You.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You're willing to take a shot at it, but now all of a sudden, something changes and you're going to stay in the hallway, or you're going to stay in another room, or you're not going to follow your shots. Doesn't make sense. Tactically, it doesn't work. That's why he would have been the first person in the room. Yeah. And any other versions don't work.

[Andy Stumpf]

Where were you? Just so people. I mean, you did an excellent job describing all this on the Sean Ryan episode. Fantastic episode, by the way. So people can understand. What? I don't think they often understand so many things.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Wait, people don't understand things?

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, I think they want to believe that it's running around and yelling in ultra high speed. And the reality is, oftentimes it's slow and quiet. You know what I mean?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well, let's talk about the pacing.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

This was not a hostage rescue style mission where it was burned through the house.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Where you absorb the maximum amount of risk as you're trying to save.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Save a hostage. That wasn't it. We had evolved our tactics a little bit. I talk a lot about, hey, don't run to your death. Right. Let's be slow and methodical. There was no rush. The only sense of urgency was, okay, do they have sfs, Is the house rigged to blow, and are they prepping something? But that's still not dictating our tactics to just sprint upstairs.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So it was slow and methodical. The. The two trains going up the stairs. I just don't understand. I don't see. I don't. You can talk and maybe I'll get him to come do an interview with you. He was the breacher that breached the bottom of the stairs. He's the point man that led up to the second floor. And he'll tell you, he's like, yeah, I stood there and called for more bodies for a handful of minutes. Minutes, probably a long time. But because everybody was going busting right by him to go to the third floor. So he says everybody was going by. He got some guys to help him clear the second floor because we all blew right past him to the third

[Andy Stumpf]

floor, which is the opposite of the other publicly recognized narrative where it was

[Matt Bissonnette]

there wasn't enough bodies and all of a sudden the split happened between clear the second floor.

[Andy Stumpf]

So they were left holding on the third. Right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And in a proper debrief, you hear from all these different angles and you hear from the guy there who's like, yeah, man, everybody. He's like, bis, you were a fucking train jumper. You blew right past me. You went upstairs. I'm like, oh, I guess I did.

[Andy Stumpf]

Listen, sometimes you have to jump the train.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Sometimes.

[Andy Stumpf]

Sometimes. Where were you in the train? And the reason I wanted to talk just so people again, you can do a. The deep dive with Sean was fantastic. But I want people to understand what you would have been able to see versus what you wouldn't have been able to see. Just to encapsulate that, if you guys

[Matt Bissonnette]

can find the picture of the hallway, stairs, where would it be? And actually, if we could. Can I take a piss break?

[Andy Stumpf]

Good. Michael, do your research. Today's episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Man. There are so many things in life that can cause stress or anxiety. It could be relationship based, personal based, professionally based, whatever it is. But it can often lead to sleep disruption or even depression and anxiety. In addition to those things can be the leading sources of conflict for couples or for individuals. And it doesn't have to be that way. Counseling in therapy is not magic. It's not the easy button. It's actually a lot of hard work. But having somebody that you can talk to to help work through from an external perspective has been so tremendously helpful in my life that I'm never going to stop talking about it. If you feel you would benefit from talking to somebody, I cannot recommend betterhelp enough. Their therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the U.S. betterHelp has a therapist match commitment. They do the initial match working for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. There's a short questionnaire that helps you identify your needs and preferences. And they have 12 plus years of experience in industry leading match fulfillment. If you're not happy with the match, you switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. BetterHelp has over 30,000 therapists and is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 6 million people globally. And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for live sessions. Based on over 1.7 million client reviews. Life is going to feel overwhelming at times. Therapy can definitely help. Sign up and get 10% [e-mail] ClearedHop. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com Cleared Hot. Back to the show. I was going to give Michael props for finding this, but both you and I know he didn't, so teamwork. Yeah. Oh, that is true. It is from the unreleased book, so.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, no, that's from my first book.

[Andy Stumpf]

Did you send the stairwell picture as well? Because there you go. Okay. Yeah. So that's pretty tight stairwell. So where were you at in the trade? Just so we can make it standalone. What were you able to see versus not able to see?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Not a enormous amount, but enough to see a.

[Andy Stumpf]

So that 180 goes up to Michael. Go one more image back. So does that 180 lead to the third? Got you right there. Okay.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yep. This is why I said when the point man took the shots.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yep.

[Matt Bissonnette]

The wives were not in the hallway. The wives were not across the hallway. The wives were in the bedroom behind the man.

[Andy Stumpf]

And you were saying there is.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So why would. Why would the point man take shots and then stay in an empty hallway that he can very clearly see is an empty hallway. Right. Very easily see. Or why would he take shots and then go into another bedroom? How would he let anybody around him to now enter the room in front of him? I don't know. I don't know. And you would say rules of engagement.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Right. Capture or kill. This was not a kill only mission. Right. We were. He was. Did not present a threat. Right. I think other versions have said the women were in the room. Right. Bin Laden was hiding behind one of the women. So Bin Laden was hiding behind one of the women. Where are the women that were outside the room that the point man diverted to? I don't understand.

[Andy Stumpf]

That was the bear hugging thing afterwards, Right. That the other version talks about. He basically took a shot but then

[Matt Bissonnette]

corralled the way, hugged them, right? Yeah, but the women were in the room. The women weren't in the hallway. So if he. If he took a shot and then stayed in the hallway. Sure, but there was no women in the hallway. There was no women across the room. The women were in the room. So he would have had to enter the room after he shot the guy on the ground, which is what I say shot him. He's on the ground. Now he enters the room and pushes the two women back. I listened to your Interview with the other guy the other day, he mentions in that interview, I don't know if you remember, that the point man jumped on the two women and the women had grenades.

[Andy Stumpf]

Did he say that on that?

[Matt Bissonnette]

He said that. Listen to it. Your interview, he said I should have recommended for the Medal of Honor. He jumped on, they didn't go off. Those women did not have grenades. They didn't have anything. There was no SFest. There was no explosives. One of the women had been some shot, wounded, something in the leg, in the calf area. I didn't deal with her much. I was taking photos of the body and doing all that.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

But somehow she had been wounded. So I, I just. If you can explain to me where the women were. Because a lot of the versions I've heard from the other people are the women were in the room and Bin Laden was hiding behind them or whatever.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Where's. Where's the threat? The rules of engagement. Where's the gun?

[Andy Stumpf]

I know they eventually found one in the room, but it was in the sse. Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Above the door on a shelf. Bin Laden standing in the doorway right above the shelf. Troop leader found an AK five minutes into the search. So where's the threat for the rules of engagement to enter the. If, if you entered the room, saw him face to face, where's the gun? Where. Rules of engagement. Wise. Right. Where's the threat to engage? There's. He doesn't have a gun. If the point man engaged coming up the stairs and he only saw a head sticking down, looking at us.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Right. Khalid had just been shot down 10ft with a gun in hand. We just stepped over his body. We're both going to assume that the next head popping out further up the stairs probably has a gun or the device to clack or a grenade or something. I would agree.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's just fine.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Within the rules of engagement. The point man took shots.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Covered under hostile act.

[Matt Bissonnette]

But if you now enter the room and Bin Laden standing there unarmed, which we know he was, where's the threat? Per rules of engagement.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't have answers to those questions.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't either. I'm just saying, I always go back to what I saw, what we talked about in the aar.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

The point man talks through his actions. Nobody counters those. Right. Nobody saw anything different to counter it. Unless you're telling me. And, and you did the interview where somebody said they had not told the 100 truth or whatever. Okay. That's on them. I don't know anything about that. Yeah, I've certainly never done a debrief where you don't tell the whole truth because you've got enough people around who saw other pieces. They're going to bring it up. So nobody brought up the idea, you know, in the debrief nobody mentioned anything about a second train. Nobody mentioned anything about a delay. Nobody mentioned any of that in the audio recorded debrief. We have our debrief. That was fine. Change. Come back to the States and all of a sudden the story had changed and now you have other people stepping out in front of this other narrative. But here's the problem. Why did you lie to the one group that's the most. The group you should be honest with but then come back and tell the whole world and everybody at the bar or wherever else a different story? That's the confusion.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right?

[Matt Bissonnette]

There was, we got back from the Ray, there was a lot of confusion going around because there was people saluting Rob. When we met the President there was, there was stuff that was just really odd and it kept like, this is interesting. And at one point our master chief pulled the first four guys that were in the room into his office. And this is after we got back from the mission and, and oneills even talked about this. Master Chief pulled us all in his office. Right. One by one questioned each of us. I don't know if they re listened to the audio. I don't know what they did. They talked to all of us. A couple weeks later, Rob moved to another squadron. So I don't know. I don't know. I, I don't know. I don't care. I'm not trying to.

[Andy Stumpf]

How many people could have realistically seen what happened right there where the shots were taken? Because I know you were you third or fourth in the train at that point.

[Matt Bissonnette]

How many people could have seen the shots from where and which shots?

[Andy Stumpf]

The talk about just the schematic that we're looking at right now.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So we'll say the top, the initial point man shots.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

From the top of the stairs. How many people could have seen it?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah,

[Matt Bissonnette]

maybe your first three, but. But still you probably would have heard it more than seen it for sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

And you would have had to been cockeyed way off the side to try to get his ability.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And if you're saying seeing the guy shoot or seeing the guy get hit,

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean that's just actually see what happened because that's where the, the divergence again seems to come from.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well, the divergence seems to come from the second deck where now all of A sudden there's this, this gap that, that allows for separation and allows for this gap that's appeared.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And I don't think the gap ever appeared. I don't think the gap is ever addressed in the air, which it would be addressed if it happened. Unless you're telling me there was some sort of massive cover up and you got all the assaulters to, to cover up a story for what? Now, now that's a, that's a much bigger issue. Right. And if there's other versions of. While we're taking the photos, somebody comes in and canoes the face. Another massive cover up that you need to be able to pull off to get everybody to now not talk about somebody coming in in the middle of an SSE photo and shooting him in the face.

[Andy Stumpf]

So that was.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Sorry, that is a major, major issue if somebody does that. And that's not going to be just brushed over in the debrief. I'm sorry.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, and again, so I'm going to reference exactly what Rob said and you can address it or not, but he basically said that he was the one doing the SSC photos when that person came in, shot him at close range. But you're saying you were doing the photos on your camera. There is a.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Rob said it was his hands holding the. I, I don't know, brother. I don't know.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay, fair enough.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I'm gonna, I'm, I'm not gonna guess what Rob says. I don't know. I haven't watched all of his interviews. I haven't. I'm only going to speak to what I saw. And what I know is in the debrief, right. With everybody there that was audio recorded. And so that's what's hard for me to understand is if, if this was some type of COVID up to change the story, then, okay, that's on Rob and he can explain that. That's not on me. My version has always been what we debriefed. And I don't think the debrief was a setup or I don't think. I don't know. And I don't know how it could have been.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't, I've never been too debrief

[Matt Bissonnette]

too many of them.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I don't know how, I don't know how you would set up a debrief like that either. How often do you guys audio record the debriefs?

[Matt Bissonnette]

It's the first one I've ever done.

[Andy Stumpf]

I was gonna ask. I don't ever remember doing it.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well, I would think because of the historical significance. I'm not saying it shouldn't have been done that historically. Should be recorded for posterity sake. Yeah, Kind of. Kind of a big moment. That's probably why the commanding officer pulled out a cell phone and was like, all right, look, let's record this. This. So we've got this.

[Andy Stumpf]

Should the skipper really have had his cell phone?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I mean, listen, I'm not here to judge. I'm not here. But as somebody who got a whole lot of trouble from the government for classification unclassification issues, recording that debrief on his unclass cell phone probably could have been done in a smarter form.

[Andy Stumpf]

I feel like he could get issued a sensitive recording device that could have been used.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I would. One would think.

[Andy Stumpf]

Where do you think that recording is today?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't know. That's why I said a savvy attorney with some good FOIA skills.

[Andy Stumpf]

They'll just deny it on national security grounds.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, yeah. Again, yeah. Then I don't know where it is. I brought it up to the government multiple times as they were coming after me. I'm like, look, he's got it on his cell phone. Do you guys have it? They'd never. They'd never admit that they had it or heard it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. I don't know if one necessarily has to do with the other, but. Oh, how was that helicopter crash?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Scary? First one? Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

How high off the ground and did you guys kind of bounce in about 40ft?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, 40ft.

[Andy Stumpf]

Pretty good amount. Did they at least say, hey, grab your ass?

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, not for me. No indication. I was in the left door, had the rope, getting ready to, like, release the bag, and. And then all of a sudden, we started rotating and then kind of going in with me sitting there.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's not a great visual.

[Matt Bissonnette]

We just got here, dude. Did you pick your feet up? I did. My little chicken legs are gonna get. They're gonna hit and roll. Like, maybe. Maybe if I hang my feet and get my feet up. God, the guy behind me is holding me in.

[Andy Stumpf]

We.

[Matt Bissonnette]

We got so lucky with the. We got lucky with the crash.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right? Like, first off, those pilots are spectacular. I'm sure they did everything. They. I'm sure they fought that thing to the last moment going in there.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. Rumor has it the. The pilot, right. He's propped up against the wall. We get out, we're doing our thing while he's trying to get it unfucked, whatever he's trying to do out there.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

He made the comment that maybe he could try and, like, take it off and reset it down into the courtyard.

[Andy Stumpf]

Only the flies would think they're like a forever.

[Matt Bissonnette]

A forever. Love your style.

[Andy Stumpf]

But only those guys would think that.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Let's just blow it up.

[Andy Stumpf]

I gotta be honest, when I saw some of those pictures, I had never seen those helicopters in person. I'd always heard the whisper rumors and which are now probably with. They were probably within China within 48 hours would be my guess. Pieces of the technology. I remember seeing those and I was thinking the Bin Laden thing is pretty cool, but the actual bigger secret out here is those things sitting in the courtyard.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No comment.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, at this point, the pictures are already out there. And I know you guys tried to destroy.

[Matt Bissonnette]

But at this point the government would still me for totally comment about it. So, yeah, I'm not saying it went

[Andy Stumpf]

over, but I get it. And I'm sure there's other tech at this point. But man, I was like, oh boy, that's kind of a big deal. Those are sitting there or not those. That thing, what was remaining of it

[Matt Bissonnette]

was one of the coolest things I've seen in my career. For sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'd only ever heard whispers I'd never seen in person. So again, you lucky bastards. Or not. Well. Or not. So I was gonna say yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. Five neck surgeries and I think. I think eight guys on that bird have had a lot of neck and back issues now.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Now that I fly relatively hard.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Now that I fly helicopters, man, if it. And again, I'm not incredibly familiar with that platform, but there's a lot of things like vortex ring state where you're descending into your own downwash and you can't stop it. You need to laterally move, which over the top of a courtyard. I'm telling you, I guarantee you, those guys fought it to the best of their ability and stuffed that thing in there. It's a. I would say it's a testament to them that people were able to actually walk. Were the pilots okay too?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. No. Okay. They all walked out. Yeah. Again. Again, I give all credit to them and the big guy upstairs. Right. Your time's up. Your time's up. It's not. It's not. It was not our time in that moment. I had heard rumors. Right. About the temperature. We had been delayed a day.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And the temperature was warmer that next day. You're a helo pilot, so maybe you can expl it better to me. But the density, altitude, think of the

[Andy Stumpf]

air particles just farther apart. And the blades are essentially wings, very similar to an airplane wing. So they create lift with the difference in high pressure air going underneath and the low pressure air going.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That's so warmer, you're losing ability to.

[Andy Stumpf]

So there's the altitude, what you see on an altimeter, but the density altitude is essentially what your engine and the blades think you're at.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

And so up here in the summers, we had two fatal accidents at a Runway, a grass Runway, just by the entrance to Glacier national park. Last year. Wasn't directly involved in it, but both of them. It's a high and hot day, meaning high altitude, hot temperature. So your density altitude. We might be at 4,000 foot here, but your airplane might be trying to fly as if it was 8,000ft. And that's where you can run into performance issues.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I had heard. And again, you're a pilot. I am not. It was 8 degree. We got delayed a day.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yep.

[Matt Bissonnette]

The next day we went. The temperature was warmer. And that played a role in the crash because our weight and balance was already super close as it was. Just because we wanted as many assaulters in the bird as possible. Nobody carried one guy carried a pistol. Nobody else carried a pistol. Like, we put little camp chairs in the. We ripped out all the seats we bought, like.

[Andy Stumpf]

So you are just going absolute minimum weight to make it.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yes.

[Andy Stumpf]

And if you can get the helicopter or aircraft flying, let me tell you, it flies better at those maxed out than it does hovering.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So they were probably flies better than hovers.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's called effective, effective transitional lift. You'll feel it tomorrow when I fly you down to Missoula. The transition between vertical flight and forward. You feel this bump where all of a sudden now it. Your energy is being directed forward as opposed to just fighting gravity straight up.

[Matt Bissonnette]

The hover is the hardest.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, you're at the highest power setting. And if you were maxed out in weight and that's where you're pushing the maximum. And I have never.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Walls compound, and I've never done that.

[Andy Stumpf]

So who knows what that has to do with it. Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And if those guys in a fancy aircraft. A lot of at night. Yeah. Looking through toilet paper tubes and like. And I think that's again, given props to the helo pilots. When we went in, there was no radio call that was like, hey, mayday, mayday. You know, Chalk One going in. It was just, boom, we're parked.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Chalk Two was coming in. And they were supposed to land on the roof. Right, Lip. Land on the roof. Guys were supposed to get off. Off as that pilot's coming in. A lot of stress A lot of pressure, lots going on. Looking through toilet paper tubes, he notices there's a Hilo parked in the compound.

[Andy Stumpf]

I like how you say parked.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. Yeah. So he's like, that's not good. And he makes the best call of the entire night.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Had he tried his lip landing, I. I would argue he knows. Who knows, right? Maybe. Maybe they didn't. Because that would have been higher than where we were hovering at. At 40.

[Andy Stumpf]

Hot high, it kills people. Again, I wasn't directly involved in those, but both of the incidents were overruns of the Runway into the tree.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Wow.

[Andy Stumpf]

And burned. You know, I don't know if they survived the impact with the trees. However, both were engulfed in fire afterwards. And I believe there was passengers in both. Wow. But again, it's. There's the difference between what you see on your altimeter and what the aircraft actually thinks it's trying to fly at. And there, it's just. Yeah, hot and high will kill you.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well, again, we got lucky. Second Hilo pilot, you know, caught that we had crashed and was like, okay, I'm gonna make a safe.

[Andy Stumpf]

He set it down outside the company.

[Matt Bissonnette]

He went across the street and set him down. They were supposed to be on the roof. Now they're outside the compound. So again, Hilo pilots really made a lot of great saves. Good decisions. They didn't push bad positions. Yeah, they got us on the ground safely so we could do our thing. And then when it was time to go, it was. They sent us out on the. We had the body, so they sent us out on the. On the Blackhawk. Yeah, and then they pulled some 47s in.

[Andy Stumpf]

What do you think? If you had to estimate from the first guy getting into what is called entering the compound in not even the

[Matt Bissonnette]

initial clearance, 38 minutes total time on target.

[Andy Stumpf]

How about was it from time on target till target secure?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, I don't know.

[Andy Stumpf]

Ten minutes maybe. Because you guys spent most of the time, I'm assuming, trying to just SSC your asses off with the limited time you had, your ability.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I mean, the clearance took a little bit of time, but nothing. No massive delays. Other than the breaching problems, just getting up the stairs. Yeah, I. I would hesitate to guess on. On an exact number of. Of targets secure, but yeah, the SSC thing was. Was huge.

[Andy Stumpf]

Of course,

[Matt Bissonnette]

I stayed on the third floor, did. Did all the photos, DNA searches, room, all that. The second floor, I guess, was a lot more lucrative from a. A stash standpoint. They had all his computers and all of his stuff down there and so they were sseing. I can remember the master chief getting on and be like, everybody exville now. Like. Because we'd already gone past our numbers and he's like, everybody leave the building now. Drop what you're doing, grab what you've got and leave now or you're walking home. So everybody hauled us out. I remember running out with my stuff and looking over and there's one of the. Or a couple of the. The pilots, you know, they got their big aviator helmets on and they got their army uniforms on. These big helmets and like a. Right, one of the just sitting there. Like traditional M16 standard jobs. Like, look completely out of their element.

[Andy Stumpf]

You're like, good for them though. Good for them, dude.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Can't say a bad thing about them.

[Andy Stumpf]

You should have thrown them in the train. Just on the bottom floor.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Like, follow us to the heels. We're leaving.

[Andy Stumpf]

Grab a hold. But come with me, sir. Yeah, you get your first ride in the back. You can see what we get to experience.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. Tell you what we got in the Blackhawk. And I remember the whole cockpit was flashing red. I'm a little sensitive because my one crashed that evening and it was the

[Andy Stumpf]

gas gauges, but it was still fresh, you know?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, too soon. So, yeah, we flew a short distance, refueled on the ground. Right. Nobody talks about the young army refueler kids that came out and refueled us, got gas, took back off, and then all the rest of the border were

[Andy Stumpf]

guys pretty chill about it. Even on target. Was there a sense of elation while you guys were there or was it just professionalism? Screws tight. Just get the job done.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I'll speak from my opinion and what I saw and witnessed. I didn't see any high fiving. I didn't see run around any of this nonsense. I saw everybody just trying to get out and get on the hilos and get home. Was what. What time did we have to.

[Andy Stumpf]

Around? Yeah. I didn't realize it was 38 minutes

[Matt Bissonnette]

from 40 was our drop dead time. 30 was planned. XVille 40 was drop dead or you're walking home. 38. We lifted off. So we were that close. And then when we landed to refuel, I was told we had something like two minutes of fuel left in the hilo when we landed at the far.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's not fun.

[Matt Bissonnette]

As a pilot, I. I'm out of it at this point. I'm back on the hilo like, yes. All right. Let's just get out of here.

[Andy Stumpf]

Y until you stay here. Like that sounds like one of the engines turning off and you have your second controlled landing of the evening.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Again, two minutes of time. Again, not my problem at this point. The helo pilots, they got to do their thing, right? Everybody had a key role to play and we were done doing our job for the night. We were just sitting there.

[Andy Stumpf]

Now that I fly helicopters and a lot of this flying with your ass feeling, but it's also hearing things and understanding rotor chop or noises. Now before that, I'm so thankful I had no understanding of what those noises. Oh, when you're in or the shuddering. Yeah. Because my favorite position was the front right of a Blackhawk with my feet up on the wheel because I'm right handed. So I'd have that and you'd come in and I just. When it was shuddering, the noises it was making. Now I'm like, you sons of bitches almost killed us every night.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Because now you understand the noises. You're like, that's how man. Almost crashing. That's okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

They're just, they're flying on the razor's edge. And I have such an at night in brownouts in conditioned and stuffing guys in places like landing where there's. So I get to fly when I want to. I can set up. I mean, oh, I'm going to land here. Here's my seven outs. When they're flying into downtown Baghdad and it's like you have to hit this intersection because there are no outs.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I mean I did my rotation with green and we were like, we were the little bird team for a whole rotation, man. And like Baghdad swat little birds to the roof every night. Twice a night. Yeah, I, I just a whole mad respect for. Okay, you're flying over Baghdad, big city and you're like, okay, one minute out. 30 seconds out. And they already have eyes on which rooftop they're gonna put you on.

[Andy Stumpf]

Dude.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't see it until we're four seconds out. And then I'm still confused which house we're gonna land on until they land. I'm like, okay, I'm going that way. Yeah. Just a whole different skill set. One that I can appreciate, but I don't. I understand a little bit of it and I can appreciate the, the amount of skill that goes into it. Coordination. Right from the assets, a point in the house and the landing and the outs and the extra. The second hilo and ground assault force.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's insane, man.

[Matt Bissonnette]

It was. It's pretty, pretty, pretty cool when you think about.

[Andy Stumpf]

And then what's their standard plus or minus 15 seconds? It's just ridiculous.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Or more like five. I've never had them.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Late.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, man.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Huge respect for. I mean that, that was what I enjoyed about the teams. Right. We're working with people who were at the top of their game. Whatever they did, whether you're intel or comms or operators or pilots or whatever, I. I enjoyed that. I'm sure, like you did, right. Putting a team together and going solving

[Andy Stumpf]

some complex problems, you'll never be able to replicate it either at that level, I have found outside of the military.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, no. And I think that's part of the problem with vets. Right. We get out and we hope, well, we're going to find this.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Find this feeling or find this enjoyment on the outside and, and if you're seeking that same thing on the outside, I don't think you'll ever find it.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I think that's not to that level. I don't think it's unhealthy. I don't think it's healthy to actually chase it. But I mean that goes back to. And I've asked a lot of guys this, especially guys who spend a lot of time at the command. Do you think that there is an argument for limiting people's combat exposure so they don't get to the 13 pumps in a row, Ragged edge, but still volunteering. And they're going to be the first person because, you know, the residual.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Say that one more time. Do you think it's worth limiting that?

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, is there an argument. Here's the thing. The person that you would approach and say, listen, you are getting close to a threshold of where later in life, statistically you may have some substantial issues psychologically, emotionally, whatever it may be. Do you want to take a break? That person's always going to say no. So I under. Because I look at myself. If somebody were to try to limit my experience, I would argue against it. But now, years out of the military, the next surgeries, the understanding the psychological, the physiological, the emotional burden of that job, even though you know, as the person you would have argued against it, would your life have the chance to be still ongoing or better if they were to put a limit to that exposure?

[Matt Bissonnette]

It may. It may.

[Andy Stumpf]

Good luck getting the guys to agree to it.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Sure, sure. Because when you're there, right. You've gone through all this selection where they try and get you to weed you out. So.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So it's. It's ingrained in you that you have to be the guy. No, no, we're good. We're good. We're good, we're here. It probably would have been helpful. It, it might have provided some, some longevity to the operator. Right. It would have. Would have kept us healthier for longer. Would have kept me operating longer. Right. Had, had they worked in some sort of beneficial break type thing but then allowed me to go back. Right. I'm not trying to get out. I didn't want to go to training. I, I wanted a little bit of a break and jump right back in it. So had they, had they mandated maybe a little more of a break or built it in and said all right, hey, anybody over 10 pumps in a

[Andy Stumpf]

row, you have to take a break.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Break probably would have been something smart.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think there. But there's take a break. I don't even know if I would use that vernacular because guys would say you I don't want to take a break.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well, and I'll be honest, I won't say his name. He was a guy at your old squadron. He took a four year break and then came to my squadron and was a troop chief and was a train wreck. Because a four year break in the middle of a very high up tempo war.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Is a freak.

[Andy Stumpf]

And you mean from a currency perspective. Yep, Yep.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Four year non operational break. Worked at the command. Different, different departments didn't. He wasn't. But from the ability to make savvy combat decisions under stress and pressure, understanding the enemy, understanding the tactics and where exactly they'd evolve to if you take a four year break. Sorry.

[Andy Stumpf]

I can understand that.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Especially in the pace that we were operating at for a decade. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, the tactics.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Four years. We evolved a lot in six months. So. Four years.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yep. Okay. I understand what you're saying for sure.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Pulling guys out for too long is a, is a detriment. Making it quick, mandating it a quick one. Keep them healthy, you know, maybe teach them some meditation.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I would have laughed at that before, but now my hippie wife has got me meditating and.

[Andy Stumpf]

Is it working for you?

[Matt Bissonnette]

It helps. All right, let me try. Right. I've never. Have you ever sat around and tried to just self reflect for 20 minutes

[Andy Stumpf]

or sit and sit in silence for several seconds? Yes.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, that's right. Right. Yeah. I go to like burning in a car in two seconds. I'm like, I'm. This is supposed to be a calming thing and I'm always like going the wrong way with it. But I just wonder if some of

[Andy Stumpf]

our friends would be alive if they. The residual TBI stuff, the concussive exposure, whether it be in training Real world test parachute jumping, that stuff. I wonder if it would save some

[Matt Bissonnette]

lives to mandate a break.

[Andy Stumpf]

To mandate, maybe. And again, I don't know if break is the right idea. Maybe just a mid career assessment because also from what I can determine, and I'm not a doctor much like six people could go into a compound and they all have their experience, their lived experience and the stories might be slightly different, but they're going to align. It seems as if some people are more resilient towards those things than others. So maybe that mid career assessment, maybe some people, they say, actually yeah, you've done 10 pumps, these are the things you're exposed to. But for whatever reason, genetically you're tolerating it better. We're going to give you that choice. For the other person, dude, maybe it does end their career, but maybe they don't walk off into the woods and kill themselves, you know what I mean? Like, I just don't know the answer.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, it's tough, it's tough. I think the way if a person chooses on their own accord to leave and get out like I did, right, I made the cognizant decision to get out, right? Our good friend Jimmy Hatch, right, he was shot in front of me, you know, on an op, and he did not make the decision to get out, right? That was not on his terms, not at his time. And if you've read his book, right, he, he had his demons that he needed to fight, fight to get through that process. And I think that's got to play some sort of factor with a lot of soft guys, right? Whether they choose to get out, how they choose to get out, on what terms were they wounded, forced out, medically retired. I think that's got to play a role somewhere in the, in the mindset of, hey, what am I going to do now that I'm out? Am I still an operator? You know, how do you define yourself? All of that stuff that we all have to go through and process this, I've, I've, because I chose to get out, I've not at all hung on to this. Oh, I'm still a seal. I want to still do SEAL things. I, I don't do steel things anymore. I, it's not what I want to do anymore. I chose to leave that and pursue and learn other new things.

[Andy Stumpf]

So, yeah, I don't know if you could get the guys to agree to it. I just, I just wonder, I mean, the job is unique in many ways. The impacts of, from the job.

[Matt Bissonnette]

It's very unique.

[Andy Stumpf]

It is but then so are the things that come from it, you know, and so are the, the ways that it can materially change you or in the gray areas of your brain, you know, that it changes you to make life altering decisions later on. I, I don't know. I wish that there was a way that we could figure out a solution to that one. I don't know what it is.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Purpose and community are the two things that I've, I've in my process.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You go from a, you go from a job where your purpose is at a high level. Right. You're willing to give your life for this purpose in this job. I think there's very few of those careers and environments in the civilian world where that, that translates. And so this is very special in and of itself and I think, I think that's very tough. I, I think too in the teams we're surrounded by somewhat like minded individuals and when you get out it's, it's harder to find that new community that relates to you.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Because few civilians that haven't had your experiences or our experiences can relate. We can relate on a certain level that other people can't, period.

[Andy Stumpf]

We would, we could have conversations that most people should not be involved with for sure.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Absolutely. Without a doubt. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So I think when, for me, when I got out, I was cut off from my community. Right. I lost everybody. No friends. No friends from the community. And that's grown back and now I've reconnected with all my boys, so it's great. But there was a period, long period of time where that was cut. Yeah. And I think getting rid of the purpose and getting and losing your community really puts that guy in a bad spot. If you can step out of purpose, find a new purpose. Okay. It may not need to be taking lives, whatever, but a new purpose.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

It could be saving puppies. Find a new purpose, it's important. And a new community around that and, and I think that would help. And I think when you lose community and lose purpose, it's dangerous.

[Andy Stumpf]

What's your new purpose now?

[Matt Bissonnette]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. I gotta get out of debt. I gotta get this government behind me. I mean I've been, I've been fighting this since I Get out. I'm not out of the battle. Yeah, I am still in the war. I've just gone from firefight to firefight to firefight and hopefully I'm in my last firefight. That's why I'm doing the podcasts and I'll do my little circuit, hopefully sell some books, and then I'm going back under the radar.

[Andy Stumpf]

And after that, though, I mean. And I'll tell you what I've determined mine is. And this is after years of getting out and struggling, I think, to find it. I think that is the identity piece, the identity and purpose. The identity, I think is talked about more because you physically take a uniform off, whatever, you hang it up. Who am I without this uniform? The purpose one is tougher, man. What do you want to do with your life? And for me, I realized probably within the last few years, and I think what got me over the hurdle of being willing to write the book that I did through the lens that I did was I just want to try to be a value add. I want to try to make the world around me a slightly better place.

[Matt Bissonnette]

There's a little hippie coming out of you.

[Andy Stumpf]

No, I mean, dude, we broke enough shit, if you think about it. We broke enough shit. And I wonder often about the long term impact of the things that we broke and the history books long enough out, how they will judge us. I wouldn't take back any of the actions and I wouldn't change anything about. I made the best decisions I could in the moment with the information that I had, period. That's how that job works. But I think trying to be as positive as possible, to make as much of a difference as possible is what I want to do. The purpose. I'm not sure how I'm going to. The book falls in line with that.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I think you're doing that. I'm trying to watch through the podcast, having conversations, talking about it, writing about it.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I'm not necessarily prescriptive or have a mechanism of how I'm going to do that, but I've identified that as what I want to do and it's been very helpful to do. You'll get through this stuff with the doj. You'll pay the money back for sure.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, for sure. And that's where I got over my negativity. I'm like, listen, this is. I 100% believe my opinion. This was. This was something that God set in my life. There's a reason I survived everything I survived. There's a reason the book drama went Down. And there's a reason I've kind of reconnected with my faith and been like, look, this is. I had to go through this for whatever reasons I had to go through this. And I am now positive and I can share the positive message moving forward.

[Andy Stumpf]

What do you want people to get out of your next book? There are the book that. When does it release? You said you start shipping when?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well, the eighth, so two days.

[Andy Stumpf]

Indeed.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Okay, two days. It's called no Easy way. Because turns out no easy day is not long enough. Right. The point being is life's journey will always kick you in the nuts. At some point you're gonna, you know.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You have your ups and downs and it's how. It's your personal perspective on, on that process. Right. And it's, you know, it's, it's to your point, like, hey, instead of focusing on the negative loops.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Let's focus on some positive stuff. Let's say very focused on the. It is tough. I'm not saying it's not easy. Yeah. But focus on the positive. Surround yourself with other positive people and, and then keep digging out. If you surround yourself with the wrong people, then it, it just spirals and it's. I don't know.

[Andy Stumpf]

At the end of the book. Anything in particular that you would want people to walk away from? A better understanding of who you are, perhaps your journey in life.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Man. My. My father passed away about a year and a half ago. I'm sorry, a 30 year battle with Parkinson's. But he was a guy who, who called me out. Literally, it's like a couple months before he died, he's like, he just called me out in my whole pity party that I was having over the situation I found myself in. And he was a guy who fought a disease that was. It took his life and never complained once. Like 25, 30 years of Parkinson's, he knew exactly what was coming and he never complained. And so when he called me out for that, I was like, all right. Damn, that hurt. That hurts so bad. All right, all right. I gotta, I, I cannot be negative and I've gotta move through it. And, and, and so I guess my point with that is I spoke at my dad's memorial and, and the biggest things I took away from him are things that I now try to apply to my life. And it's his four Fs that, that his family. Right. His friends, his fun and his faith. Right. Those were the things that kind of guided him and kept him on track. And I was like, you know, I don't care what career you are, whatever. If you surround yourself with good family, good friends, have some fun in whatever fashion, and then have some sort of faith in the. In the bigger picture. So when you don't understand something, you don't just automatically think the sky's falling. You can have a more positive spin on it and be like, hey, maybe I'm just being tested and. And I need to move through the smart.

[Andy Stumpf]

You think you write another book?

[Matt Bissonnette]

God, I hope not.

[Andy Stumpf]

I really.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I really just want to sell this one. What if it crushes pay my taxes, pay the government, and go to my farm. Although cows can be a to deal with.

[Andy Stumpf]

I've heard that actually. Yeah, they seem like they would be kind, but I think they're probably can be asked.

[Matt Bissonnette]

They're a little dumber than I thought. I was hoping they'd be smarter, but yeah, no, I.

[Andy Stumpf]

Did you have a history of doing ranching type stuff, where did you land on this? Wagyu?

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, none of it. Army Ranger friend of mine, he owns a company called Valor Provisions. It's an online direct to consumer protein seller. Right. You want to buy your healthy chicken, beef, all this stuff, you buy it through there, skip the grocery store, and it's healthier. And so the more I got to know him, he's like, bis, I know you got this little farm. You need to put this into action. And then he started sending me YouTube videos and a whole bunch of stuff about cows and wagyu, and here I am.

[Andy Stumpf]

You're remarried now as well, right?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yes.

[Andy Stumpf]

How long you been married?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, God, you really want me.

[Andy Stumpf]

Listen, Michael, make a note. We're gonna edit this out so his wife isn't get mad at him.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, she won't.

[Andy Stumpf]

You're supposed to know this answer.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I. We've been together for a while, but we've been married for less than that. I was never getting remarried. I was. That's why I was over that institution. And then. And then eventually I folded.

[Andy Stumpf]

I. My divorce was not awesome. I'm actually yet to meet somebody who said that there's was. I'm just leaving space out there for that person. It doesn't leave you looking for your next marriage.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, for sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

I found the right person. That was the difference for me.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Sort of. Yeah. I went five years and then we were finally like, all right, let's get. Get married.

[Andy Stumpf]

So did she know you at all when you were in the military?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Nope. That's why it works.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, mine has no in the military as well.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That's why? That's why mine works. Right? We would not have worked when I was in 100%. Yeah. She doesn't know anything really about, you know, she's seen what she's seen, but

[Andy Stumpf]

she doesn't she ever ask you about your old Joe?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Very little.

[Andy Stumpf]

Same with my wife too.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Because it's irrelevant almost, right. If. If it comes up, it's like, if I have issues, she'll ask me questions. Otherwise it's say, let's talk about modern day things.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, she doesn't know what to ask. Every once in a while, though, I'll run into an old friend and they'll tell a story about something and she'll say, were they talking about you? Were you there for them?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Like, yeah, I don't know that, Andy.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yes, I was. That was not my best moment. But yeah, it's. It's interesting.

[Matt Bissonnette]

We all evolve. We all evolve. And I was a different person when I was an E3 than I was an E5 and I was an E7 than I was a civilian and. And hopefully I continue to evolve. Right. Hopefully I'm not stuck.

[Andy Stumpf]

What would you have changed about your career, looking back now, if anything, nothing.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Man, I loved it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Do you think you still would have gotten out at 14 or would you have found a mechanism?

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, I said earlier I was. I was. Some of the leadership was. Was I. I was bumping against the rules of engagement. I was bumping against. Yeah, we'd had a loss, a massive loss of life that it was really affecting me because it's like, okay, for what? Right. That was a. They were going to help some rangers who had gotten a. Troops in contact for. In full alum. From what I understand, the team guys had passed on the target the night before range. So you start thinking about those decisions that led to a lot of death. And then we pulled out of Afghanistan. Right. And then just process all that.

[Andy Stumpf]

That. Do you think that the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which I think we can call a massive tactical failure, has anything to do with though, the service and sacrifice that people put into it leading up to that?

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, but it was an optics thing. It was just like, man, we left in such a up manner with people dying on the way out. Agreed that they just made it feel wrong. Where I. My opinion. Right. I thought we ran Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan on the first nine months of the war. I was gonna say, right, they're all in Pakistan, the smart ones. And then we fought the Taliban for the next 10 years. Like, to me, the Taliban's not flying planes into The World Trading Center. Right. The Taliban has a different set of rules, but who are we to be world police running around the world, you know, like, maybe we don't need to go to war with the Taliban. I, I don't know. Think of the money we spent, think of the lives lost for what eventually leave. Like we probably could have taken what we spent on the war each month, gone to every tribal leader in Afghanistan and bribed them for a fraction of the cost.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think peak spending in Iraq and Afghanistan when they were both going on was a billion a day.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Okay, let's, let's divide that against the main warlords in Afghanistan and you go to each of them and say, hey listen, we're going to give you 100 grand a month or whatever. The math is, is if there's any attacks, if there's anything that happens in the tribal region that you control, we're pulling the money back and we're carpet bombing your village. Or 100 grand a month, 500 grand a month, whatever it is, keep the peace. We'd save money we'd been out of there sooner.

[Andy Stumpf]

It didn't certainly seem like we had an exit strategy.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No. And then it was confirmed when we exited the up way we exited. And I think that's why you get the, the veterans that are, that are bummed about that.

[Andy Stumpf]

I get the optic, but it has nothing to do with what they did. It's a tough one. I get the optic, but one has nothing to do with the other one highlights. I mean, how many times have you ever been in a leadership role where your job is to execute a plan? Maybe it wasn't your plan like the with. And that's the thing about the withdrawal. Everybody wants to blame it on either Biden, but the reality is because our entrance and exits from those countries span multiple administrations, I'm not sure any of them really thought about the exit and it really looked like it wasn't going well. And I don't know about you, but if you're in a leadership role and an objective and things, here's what the plan says we have to do. But the real world is saying this isn't working. I'm like, hey, this plan sucks. Yeah, we're orienting. We are now going to change steering wheel totally Something that is basic leadership to me. The withdrawal highlights fights. A leadership failure at a governance level, not a military level. They were doing the best they could trying to get out of there. Very constrained.

[Matt Bissonnette]

It's.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's everybody that was upstream. Yep, it's.

[Matt Bissonnette]

It's I think that's what I was seeing with the whole, everything that was going on in Afghanistan, the drawdown, the changes, rules of engagement, all of that was all getting more and more sticky and you could see where it was going. And I was just smart enough because I'd been around the whole time like, like, let's see where that's going. I, I don't, I don't want to do this anymore. I, I don't need to do this. I've checked every box there. I don't, I'm not, definitely not chasing it. I'd been there the whole time.

[Andy Stumpf]

What would you say to somebody now who, a young man who will listen to this and is considering or wants to go down a previous career field and they hear you talking about the leadership and the arc like that. Would you recommend service to somebody or pursue that career?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Of course I do. And I, I, and I would do it all over again. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like, why though, if you saw the arc like that and you saw the community bending the knee, not that they don't have a, it's, it's a rock, paper, rank organization, obviously the military. So it's not bending the knee, it's following orders. But you would still recommend somebody go down that path even though you have the disdain for the direction you saw it was going to.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This disdain wasn't constant. The disdain was at the end of my career where I was like, okay, I don't need to be here any longer and I'll remove myself from that. Leadership changes, right? Yeah, leadership changes. Time changes a lot. Next thing, you know, prior different country priorities, whatever. We're doing different things, different places. So yes, we still, absolutely still need people raising their hand, standing up, serving and being like, yeah, I want to join an organization like the SEAL Teams because of what it stands for. And I, and I, I, I'm proud of that and everything I accomplished at the ground force level. I think anything above the actual operator level is where I, I was an operator. Right. I was the guy on the ground. I just was not a guy that spent any part of my career at that, that operational lawn. And that's not my happy place.

[Andy Stumpf]

So it may not be your happy place, but it's where you could have the most impact.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Agree. And, and I, I talk about that in my book. That was, I could have stayed in, I had my degree.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I could, I could have done your.

[Andy Stumpf]

Would you get your degree? I don't have a degree.

[Matt Bissonnette]

How did you become an O? Are you an LNO?

[Andy Stumpf]

Listen.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, you're an LNO.

[Andy Stumpf]

LDO.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, LDL.

[Andy Stumpf]

Sorry. No, because they got rid of the LDO program, so they made me an 1130. It's not a big deal. We don't have to celebrate it.

[Matt Bissonnette]

What's an 1130?

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't know. That's the official coding for naval officers.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You're an officer with no degree.

[Andy Stumpf]

Some of us know how to use Google better than others.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, I might agree. Before I came in.

[Andy Stumpf]

What's it in?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Criminal justice.

[Andy Stumpf]

How'd that work out for you? You criminal. Look at you, getting misdemeanors and felonies. You should have. Didn't you learn about these things?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yep. Apparently not. Yeah. So I. Trust me, I thought about that. I had option. Could have done the OCS thing and applied. And that. That was a. That was a real lane of thought that I went down for a period of time. I was like, all right, I can be the guy who bitches and moans. Right? Because, you know, there's that enlisted level where you can just bitch and moan and you can get away with it. But then you mature through that and

[Andy Stumpf]

you're like, okay, it's called the E5 mafia. We both know what it is.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

But then eventually, you got to mature and grow up. And actually, some people don't. Not just and moan. You got to bring solutions. Right. Yeah. So it was time for me to evolve.

[Andy Stumpf]

I get hit up a lot from people recently asking me whether or not military service is still worthwhile. That's why I asked you that particular question. It's tough to. What I don't want to do ever to people is paint with the rosy brush. Look at the excitement, the challenge, all of these things. The commercial. Yeah. And then leave out the shadow. Because you really need to let people know what they're getting into. Because people. How old were you when you knew you wanted to be a team guy?

[Matt Bissonnette]

15, 16. Read a book.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Did you even really. Could you even really articulate what it was, or was it this just gravitational pull?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I read every book under the sun. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, anybody. Special operations, whatever. SEALs. I was reading all of that to try and understand the culture of the organization and what I was getting into. But this was all pre war, too.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, totally.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Right. Like, all of that changed drastically 911. And then it was like, oh, okay, this isn't just the books and historical. This was like, okay, not now. We're. Now there's a real job. I. I probably would have got out, had 9, 11. I would have gotten out sooner. Had had 911 not happen, I'd have done a couple pumps. I'm like, all right, check. Nothing to do.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think it was beneficial because I. So you probably went through buds and what about 2,099? 88. Okay.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Graduated early 99.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think it's good that we saw the pre 911 teams. I think the people that struggle the most were the ones who entered post 911 early GWAT. And then as it came, kind of came over the bell curve kinetically, they were struggling and I saw that. I was like, oh, I've been part of this community before. And it was a good balance to see it kind of going back to that.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, but that's a special perspective. Well, and it takes time and maturity. Yes.

[Andy Stumpf]

That perspective and the luck or disluck or bad luck to enter into. I mean, there was generations of guys in our community of people post Vietnam, pre 911 spectacular guys. I mean, the command that we were at that was founded on those people. When I went through selection in 2002 and got upstairs late 2002, I mean, they had been on combat deployments, but I'm not going to say that they were looking back at it now. I mean, laughable levels of combat exposure. I don't mean that negatively.

[Matt Bissonnette]

It just was what it was.

[Andy Stumpf]

It just was what it was. The reps, they were earlier in the rep cycle and.

[Matt Bissonnette]

But those reps picked up and they ran for a long time.

[Andy Stumpf]

Time.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And yeah, that. That's where I got to see it all. I got to see all the freaking change and leadership. I got to see it all right to. To where I saw it too and was like, all right, I'm good, I'm cooked, I'm full.

[Andy Stumpf]

I wonder what it will look like because I think the senior most members of people that were in our generation are now largely in the senior most positions or getting close to the senior.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Our friend who may be the Mick Pon soon.

[Andy Stumpf]

I swear one time he told me he was going to get out at 20. I said, do you.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I'm thinking he's already well past 20.

[Andy Stumpf]

I know. I was thinking about. Did you mean 20 times two?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm not sure what the retirement calculator is, but I think it's only 1.5% per year, buddy. But also, if that's the thing, like if you love that stuff and you want to do that and you're the person for the job.

[Matt Bissonnette]

To each their own.

[Andy Stumpf]

To each their own for sure. But I mean, I wonder when those people eventually hang it up.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Up.

[Andy Stumpf]

If there is going to be a change in the community, either it will come under their guidance and leadership or it will come after them when the next generation of people who didn't have their experience comes into it. And maybe it'll. Maybe that's just the balancing act of

[Matt Bissonnette]

that ebb and flow of the world, right? I don't know.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't either, to be honest.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I try not to think about it anymore. Not my problem.

[Andy Stumpf]

What would you say to somebody, though, who asked you? They don't know whether or not service is worth it anymore, but they're considering it. What would you answer them?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yes. 100 neighbors where I live. Good friend, just went to buds. Made it through buds. Just graduated Corman School. Checking in at his team. I've helped mentor him through the. Through the whole process. And it was never saying, don't do this. This isn't worth it. This is worth it. It. But think of this, this and this. Think of balancing your family in a way time. Here's. Here's some lessons learned from a guy who's been there a long time. And here's a little perspective for you.

[Andy Stumpf]

What was your strategy for balancing family time? Because I failed.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I didn't have. I didn't have any of that. I figured that out way later. So that's why I could be the guy to. To tell the young kid, like, hey, think through some of this stuff, right? Like when, when my. I guess it was my. When my son was born, the squadron had blown out or was blowing out for some stuff. We won't talk about where, but the whole squadron was blowing out.

[Andy Stumpf]

They were going to do some things. Thanks.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And. And I was like, I'm not missing this. But it was over the. When my son was due and, And I'm like, no, I'm going. I had my gear packed. I was like on the chalk lists and everything. And then. And one of the team leaders came back. He's like, you're not going. What are you talking about? I'm like, no, I'm good. I can miss it. It's just fine. He's like, no, you have to stay. I was like, oh, geez. He took me off the load. I didn't go. And then. And then, of course I stayed. And Lance Vaccaro from my old squadron is a tandem bundle course burnt in and died. And so then, of course, I didn't do the blowout. I'm there waiting for my son to be born and then I have to go do the notification that Is rough. Yeah. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

How do you even prepare yourself for that?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I mean it's like half the other we did that we've never done before

[Andy Stumpf]

and you just jump in that or you try to just hold your together to get the information across in the most compassionate way possible. I mean, what's the game plan going into that that

[Matt Bissonnette]

we found out? He passed the, you know, the old command spins up the KO Casual Casualty Assistance Calls officer. There you go. They had somebody, you know, was one of the officers or something at the command attached and then they were like, hey. And, and his parents were split so we needed two teams. So I went with one of the KOs and we notified his dad. But yeah, dude, I mean, putting your uniform on at a freaking, you know, you fly up to local area, civilian clothes. Yeah, I go change in a, you know, bathroom at the 7 11. Put your uniform on and then drive to the house and knock on the

[Andy Stumpf]

door and deliver the worst news.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You know that there is no confusion about why you are there.

[Andy Stumpf]

No. As soon as you open the door, they know what it is.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Open the door. He sat there for two seconds and he fell to his knees. So, yeah, no prepping for that. No training, no nothing. Talk about it like the mental health aspect of the backside of dealing with everything we dealt with. No training, no ability, all the front load of like how to blow something up, how to jump out of a plane, how to do this, how to do this, how to do this. Where was the. Hey, when this happens, here's. Here's some strategy off ramp something. Here's some stuff to think about. None of that, man. Never.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Hey, you just, just, you just went and notified your buddy's parents that he died and now you've got to process that.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Or go back to work or deal with your family or still keep working or whatever. And so that's all of those things. Right. And so that, that is why, and I mentioned it earlier with, with all of the death that I had to deal with through my career, I, I hid from it. I, I buried myself in work because that to me justified the, the, the skip.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like, okay, what's your plan to deal with it if you have one or if ever.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I, I gotta figure it out. I don't know. I, I unfortunately I still feel like I'm in the battle with the government, that I can't let my guard down to process anything. I gotta keep my guns up and keep fighting until this is over. And I feel like I can have a letdown and then when I Have a letdown from like, okay, the war is over. Okay, let me go process some of this war.

[Andy Stumpf]

Unless you repeat your previous behavior and find another battle to fight as opposed to processing.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't want another battle unless it's with some fucking cows. I'm trying very hard to avoid any battles. Yeah. I'm living a much slower, more comfortable, less stressful life. Hanging out with family and friends and just. That's it, man. And, and trying to sell a book so I can get out of debt.

[Andy Stumpf]

You're going to be okay. You're going to work your way out of that one. Like all life's problems have solutions. As long as you don't make decisions that are, you know, life altering, you're going to be okay. And I hope that you have. I mean I would feel like a. A small victory is the doj. Like, here's a deal, let's sign the deal now we can execute on like that's a good step. The fact that you got two there and then you can. At least the breadcrumbs are out there.

[Matt Bissonnette]

There's there. And I don't even. I hesitate to bring this up because who. Every time I've seen a crack of opportunity that there may something could change or whatever, I've been literally shot. Not literally, but shot in the face every time. Right. Every opportunity has gone nowhere. After the. The Sean. Because I've been very quiet. Right. I've never shared any of my story besides the books. Yeah. After the Sean Ryan interview, people within the. The current administration reached out to my legal team and have engaged with them. We'll see where that goes. But the consensus has been, wow, bis got. We want to see if we can help you, so we'll see where that goes.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't know what else were you doing after you got out other than the books? I mean you worked there. There's kind of a. Interesting palette of occupational stuff you got involved with.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, dude, I've tried everything. I wasn't. I didn't want to go work for somebody else. I was done working for the man. So I was like, all right, I'm gonna go just swing away at what I. I've done.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's the game I'm in. It's again, there are self employed problems and there are working for other people problems. The problems come with you. So just don't think that one of those choices is absent problems.

[Matt Bissonnette]

But I. I'd rather bitch at me being the boss boss.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'd rather be the warden of my own prison where I can shift the view. Or if I need to find a person to blame, it's a bathroom, walk away into the mirror. Like, hey, what's up, buddy?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I love my weekly personal aars. When I call myself out for all the things I missed or up or whatever. I'm like, okay, I, I live way happier there and go from there. So speaking. Done. A handful of speaking.

[Andy Stumpf]

Do you enjoy it?

[Matt Bissonnette]

It's been therapeutic. Been therapeutic. That's been helpful. I had an opportunity to sit down with the president of cbs, the SEAL Team CBS show that was on for.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm aware of it for a while. Zero episodes.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yep, there you go.

[Andy Stumpf]

As I think most team guys have.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You should take a look. I'm not, I'm not. I'm not saying it's horrible. I'm saying I'm, I'm at least proud of it. From a few takeaways, what was your

[Andy Stumpf]

role there or interaction there?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I, I had a meeting with the president of cbs and, and the topic came up, what does Hollywood do wrong with military content? And I was, yeah, basically, I was like, well, first of all, you don't hire any veterans to actually portray the stories. Or if you do, he's the technical advisor. You don't give him, you know, the technical advisors to make sure we're all wearing the uniforms and running around with the right stuff and the right look, but he doesn't help shape the stories. And I'm like, listen, I, I, I might have done all the the seal, Rambo shit, but, you know, we all tried to stay married. We had kids. There's a lot of other balancing act that goes on here. And then there's mental health stuff.

[Andy Stumpf]

There's.

[Matt Bissonnette]

There's a lot more than just the Rambo that's always been portrayed. And so CBS guy was like, all right, well, would you help us put a team together?

[Andy Stumpf]

Sure.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So I, an executive producer on it and involved from day one, helped hire a whole bunch of different veterans. Tyler Gray, I know literally the show would not have worked without Tyler on the show because Tyler was the tech advisor. We got him directing. He was invaluable. We had some other character.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah,

[Matt Bissonnette]

we had another. We had a couple other characters I went through green team with. We had writers in the writers room. Right. If you understand the Hollywood stuff, you get the whole bunch of writers that write the script, and by the time it gets on set, you can't go change it. So. So we were getting these script ideas where they're throwing nuclear hand grenades and, you know, parachuting.

[Andy Stumpf]

From space. I like both of those ideas.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Phenomenal. Very realistic. But that was the Hollywood machine spinning up in the typical wrong direction. And so we were able to put people into the. All aspects of the production. And that just grew and grew and grew. And it made the show more authentic and successful. We talk a lot about mental health. We have a. We have a character commit suicide in a VA parking lot. I mean, we. We hit a lot of that. The. The central focus is mental health. And so I think the veterans that have watched it can connect. Yeah, it's Hollywood. Yeah. But it's.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's.

[Matt Bissonnette]

In my opinion, it's been a very good version and it's portrayed some decent messaging around the community. So that ran its course trying to get another one going right now about the Coast Guard. We'll see how that plays out. But yeah, do that. A little farming. Little. I went through the brain treatment stuff. I opened up one of those clinics for a minute. I've. Yeah. A whole bunch of different stuff.

[Andy Stumpf]

What happened with the video game?

[Matt Bissonnette]

The video games?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yes. Mostly because other people got.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Did you Google that?

[Andy Stumpf]

I knew people directly involved.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, cool. Don't. Names. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Guys from the command. I was actually asked if I had wanted to be a part of that. My schedule didn't align for me to be.

[Matt Bissonnette]

For the job stuff.

[Andy Stumpf]

Correct. My schedule didn't align for me. I would have said yes.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I don't know what trajectory that

[Matt Bissonnette]

would have had in my career that the video games. Dude. I got out and like two weeks after I got out, I knew all these guys and they're like, they're work with EA Sports video game company and they had Medal of Honor, War Fighter, I think was the game. I don't know. They're like, hey, will you help us make some promo videos? Like tactical promo videos that are all over online these days? Like, sure. So I was out, but I had reached out because they were paying really well. I reached out to a whole bunch of my friends and I said, hey, if you guys want to come shoot some videos over the weekend or whatever, jump stuff, whatever. We didn't borrow any rigs from the command. We rented everything. Rented C130s, did the whole thing. Those videos. Those videos were out. But as soon as my book came out and they were looking for any way to hurt me, they then knew I was involved in those videos and they knew other people were involved in those videos. So then they started tracking down all the guys. All the active duty guys that participated. Participated in those.

[Andy Stumpf]

They came down with a Heavy hammer them. They came down with a heavy hammer on those guys.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yep. They. I'm telling you, they. Our other good friend that you went to BUDS with, they basically told him not to come into work for his last year in the Navy because they had seen that I had sent him an early copy of the book via email. I mean, they. Anybody who was associated with me got fried.

[Andy Stumpf]

Where do you stand now with the community, do you think? Obviously you reconnected with your boys.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Don't care. The community. Don't care. The boys. The guys I served with. That actually I care about that. I went to war with these guys and they are my friends. Connected great. Reconnected with all the ones I care about, and slowly they pop back up on the radar. So the community. I don't care.

[Andy Stumpf]

Have you been back to the command at all?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Why?

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't know. I get invited to go to the Stump Monster. I haven't been back since I left. I've never seen the new facilities, the new copper. I've never even seen it.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That'd probably be worth checking out.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't know if I want to go. I feel like at this point they've probably taken my name off the Gold Squadron wall just because I host the podcast and talk openly about my experiences. I'm always. I always say the same thing, though. I didn't do. And I was happy and I did the minimum amount of time there and I moved on.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't know that the judgment from who and where is so hard to get.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like, it's impossible to.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Happy, healthier person. Like I said, not worrying about it. I don't care that. What value would that add to me to go back to command? Like, all my best friends now are former team guys.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And those that I. They're in my closest community. They've all transitioned out. They've all had their ups and downs.

[Andy Stumpf]

They've all.

[Matt Bissonnette]

They've all tried to move into the civilian life in a positive mental way. And those are the guys that I hang out with. So to. To go to a stump muster and see a whole bunch of.

[Andy Stumpf]

I've never been to. Well, I've never even been to a SEAL reunion. That was never just my thing. I'd rather go spend holiday weekends with my family as opposed to going. I was like, I'll see you at work on Tuesday, dude.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. You know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

No, I've never gone back there, I don't think.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No. I did my time. I was happy to do it, but I'm happy. I'M done. I don't. I don't feel the need to go back. Right. I. I left on my terms. I don't feel like I need to go. I'm good. I'm happy. I did my time.

[Andy Stumpf]

Was it tough for you getting over the. Because up until you went on Sean's, like, you had done Jack's podcast a few times, filmed from the back of your head, blacked up.

[Matt Bissonnette]

My better side.

[Andy Stumpf]

When you were doing those, though, that was Mark Owen, right? It was like, yeah, okay.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. The only reason I chose the Matt Bissonnet come out of the shadows on this is because I had to. Right. I needed to. It was part of the story. It was like, hey, my real name's been leaked for sure. The only thing that was not out was my face. The only thing was out was. Was my face.

[Andy Stumpf]

Was it a tough decision for you to make intentionally be the one to. And obviously a great platform to do it on with Sean's. But. And was there any hesitation in being able to do so or just kind of this. We have to do this.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Sean talked me into it. I was like, hey, Sean, you know, I'd like to come on promote my book and, you know, can you not show my face? He's like, no, you have to show. He's like, sean, can we talk about this? He's like, bis, if you wanted to sell books and if you want the podcast to be a success, you've just come on. It's been 10 years. Get over it. And we had a conversation about it. He's like, like, what value add do you have by continuing? I'm like, so we had a whole conversation.

[Andy Stumpf]

I was like, okay, he gave you good advice.

[Matt Bissonnette]

If. If. If I need to come out of the shadows own. You know, I always played by the Marco and stuff. If I did speaking events, it was Mark Owen and. And no photos allowed, whatever. Like, because the story's not about Bis. It's about Mark Owen and whatever. He's fictional. Oh, yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Has it been almost a sense of relief to not have to bounce between those two and you can just be Bis or is. Has it what you thought it would be, Stepping out of the shadows like that?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I very much enjoy the position I put myself in. Right. Like it. Some people enjoy the being out there. There's other people you've interviewed that like all of that that I don't. I chose for 10 years to avoid that very strategically and, yeah, judge me for my actions. I did not want to get out in front of this. And okay, look at me. I wanted to tell the story and. And be left alone. And then I got in the fight and had to get through the fight. And then that's the only reason I popped up back on the radar, was, okay, I gotta get through this fight. And this is probably the best way to help. Help kick that off.

[Andy Stumpf]

How'd you explain to the 60 Minutes people you needed an intricate disguise? You're like, so, well, I'm gonna do this.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I used, again, all. All very early on. I used my attorney that gave me all the bad advice. He was Dalton Fury's attorney. Dalton Fury, the Delta guy? He used the disguise on 60 Minutes when he did his interview.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yes.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And so he was like, oh, yeah, I helped. Well, Dalton disguised.

[Andy Stumpf]

We.

[Matt Bissonnette]

We could do this. And so when we sat down with 60 Minutes, I was like, hey, I don't. I don't want to look like myself. I. I want some anonymity here. And I'm like, just a fake beard and sunglasses makes me look like a homeless person. Maybe we could try something different. And so they. They had the disguise. People come in and put it on.

[Andy Stumpf]

That had to have been very bizarre.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yes.

[Andy Stumpf]

Very bizarre. Enough to do it twice?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. I actually did it a couple more times for different speaking events.

[Andy Stumpf]

Did you really?

[Matt Bissonnette]

For large groups. Because I've never had my. I tried very hard to not have my photo taken for 10 years. Moving around in the public space. I do it smartly, so I would limit audience size or whatever and take people's phones. Like, you can't take photos. I don't want my photo taken. And so for bigger audiences, for certain things, I'd be like, all right, if you want me to do it, you put the disguise back on, and then we don't have to worry about things.

[Andy Stumpf]

Photos, man. Okay. Never thought about that. Doing a public speaking effect.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So I don't know the. I'm in small town where I live now.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I'm not going to name where.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's definitely good not to.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And don't tell people. I'm at, like, this little dive restaurant and have dinner with my wife. We go home, like, the next day on Instagram, I get this DM from this. This random dude, and he's like, hey, man, I don't want to be weird, but did I see you at this restaurant in such and such and such location yesterday? And I'm like, so that's. That's the stuff that I don't necessarily like, because I very much enjoyed the fact that nobody knows anything. All Right. I walk around everybody and it's nice. Right. Our, our good friend Jack Carr, Right. Hit the shot show with him this year and he can't go 5ft without 6 million people. And they talk to him and have no clue who I am. So it's great. Like, Jack, you go take care of that. I'll go. I'm gonna go hang out.

[Andy Stumpf]

I move there is. You just grab people's phones and take like. I'll take pictures and that way you're.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Then you're out of it. That's smooth.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, that's the move.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, hey, did you want a picture? Hand me your phone.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, I got it. I got it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Totally.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

It. It solves the problem.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, that's good. You're just immediately out of it and they don't even think about you. Correct.

[Andy Stumpf]

Correct. Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You're just, you're just the polite friend that takes the photo. Oh, Jack, man, he's crushed it. He's done great.

[Andy Stumpf]

Is awesome to see. I hope he gets some downtime. I feel like he writes when he's asleep. I feel like he writes when he's awake. I feel like.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I don't think he gets much downtime.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't think he does either.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, he's. He's a very, very busy man. I can't wait to see the next terminal list that pops.

[Andy Stumpf]

No, they're all going to be great. I mean he's proven to be a spectacular author, but how does that just go on for the rest of your life?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I think so for, for guys like that. I mean that's, that's the world that he's wants to be in and has put himself in and is, is. Is certainly putting a lot of work and effort into it and, and doing very well in that space. So. Yeah, respect to him writer brings to choose what. What they want to do and how they want to go about it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Seriously.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

He openly said and openly says he only wants to do two things. He wanted to be a SEAL and an author.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That's it.

[Andy Stumpf]

He kept that second one to himself while he was in.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. Yeah. But you know, you probably know him pretty well. He was one of the best. Most well read seals.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh yeah, right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Most seals don't read books.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean some of us.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well, maybe we didn't. You're right. Right. Maybe in middle school, but active duty guys read less and less where.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Jack was always the guy reading tons of books and you know, big thinker and I think it perfect. One, two, punch.

[Andy Stumpf]

How old do you know, 51. 51, yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Old.

[Andy Stumpf]

How's that feel?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Old? No. I don't know. Ages in the head, man. Age in the head. I feel healthier now.

[Andy Stumpf]

Kind of real though.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I've gotten, I've gotten. I went through my, my fat post Navy stage unhealthy. I've had five neck surgeries now.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I up my neck really bad in the crash. A couple artificial discs, a fusion. So that's, that's helped a ton just medically.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Are you able to attach that obviously to disability? I mean, those are directly service related.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I've got my disability rating, but the VA did none of the work. I went to the VA for a year and a half.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Trying to get an MRI and all I got fed was pain meds and never got to an mri.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's rough.

[Matt Bissonnette]

The last time I came back with a bag full of pain meds. I'm like, I'm not doing this. So I just didn't take any and just dealt with what I was dealing with through a friend of a friend in San Diego or in la. Connect me with a neck doctor out there, former Air Force trained guy. He's like, yeah, Bis, come on out, I'll see you. Show up at his office. I got X rays, I got an MRI and I met the doctor in like two hour time span. He's like, dude, your C4 and C5 are not looking good. They're millimeters offset. Like you hit the speed bump the wrong way, you're probably not going to walk. I need to fuse that immediately. So like a week, 10 days later.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, damn.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, I have three through the front or a fusion. Two artificial discs on either side of that. So he's, he's reconstructed a lot. I've, he started a foundation to work on other veterans. I've connected him with three other guys who are on my helicopter that he's worked on them now. He's worked on other guys from team five.

[Andy Stumpf]

Damn.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So he's, he's a doctor who gives back. And, and so that was, that was a key part of my kind of my medical health transition. Right. As he was working on my neck and getting me physically fit there. That was about the same time I went through the brain treatment stuff. That was about the same time I cut back on my alcohol and you know, started eating healthier, working out again. Just all the, the needed things.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And. Yeah. So healthier, happier. All good.

[Andy Stumpf]

What if cows aren't enough?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Do you think it's the last time you with a cow? There's A lot to continue.

[Andy Stumpf]

Never.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well, I eat them, come out and visit.

[Andy Stumpf]

What if it's not enough for you? What do you do you. Are you hoping that that will be enough and that's what you want to occupy your time with?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I. I'd like to think I have plenty of things to do. I don't think I'm going to be bored outside of the cows. Right. I. Making money in other ways. Business ideas, other opportunities. I'm pursuing a million different things. Those aren't going to stop. And actually, when we're off this, I've got a something we need to talk to you about. Business wise.

[Andy Stumpf]

Viagra. No, it's this new idea more about still you chew on.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Less Viagra, more archery.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Anyway.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay. Maybe there's a tie over there I'm not sure of, but arrows do have a shot.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Interesting. Yeah, I'm not going to pursue that. Yeah. Serial entrepreneur. Like clearly it's not just the cows aren't going to pay all the bills. So yeah, I'll do other things.

[Andy Stumpf]

But.

[Matt Bissonnette]

But the cows are a nice escape, right? The cows. I get to go to my farm and I get to. They're. It's not people that talk back and helps me.

[Andy Stumpf]

I only ask because I have found. I don't even know the easiest answer when people ask me what I do is I say I own a coffee shop because it's the easiest one to talk about. When the. If you say, oh, I host a podcast, they say, what's it about? And I have to say, I don't know. It depends on the guest.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And they say, who is your favorite guest? And it's not that I mind it. They ask questions that are. You know, when somebody says, who's your favorite guest? Like, Dude, I've had 500 of these at this point. That's tough. That's not fair. You know, So I don't. I don't know what I necessarily do, but I know I like doing a variety of different things. I don't know if I'd call that being a serial entrepreneur, but I enjoy the brief attention in certain areas and consistently trying to learn new stuff and figure it out. I think that's the.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I like being challenged in new areas and learning.

[Andy Stumpf]

Figuring it out. Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Because I've never done cows. Right. That. That's a new thing. I gotta go learn. I. I do not want to go back to what I've always done. Right. I'm. The last thing you're gonna see me doing is teaching shooting.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I'm I'm not interested in doing that. I want to evolve outside of that world. So. Yeah. And whether it's cows or something else, there will be a million different things. Right?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And. And now, honestly, my kids are a lot older, so it's. I'm putting energy and effort into them.

[Andy Stumpf]

How were you able to stay connected with them as you were going through this pressure cooker, or was there an aspect of time where you needed to reconnect with them? Mine were super young when I was in. In, like my daughter. I kissed her in a crib. The last appointment I did in 2010. And zero recollection of my military time. Maybe my oldest son remembers a little bit of coming and going.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I didn't have to. That would be cute. Can you imagine our. Our old job and you had teenagers.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No. Or no? I mean, no, no, no, no, no, no. I can't.

[Andy Stumpf]

You'd be a phantom in their life.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

You'd have to reconnect with them as an adult, I think.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. Yeah. Mine were 7 and 4 when I got out, so my. My daughter knew long trips or short trips, deployment or training trips. And, you know, she knew if we went to Home Depot, she saw somebody with a beard, it was probably daddy's friend or something. You know what I mean? Virginia beach, small town, beard, got to be the team guy.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

But no. So got out, got divorced, all that. I live in the same. Very close proximity to them still now.

[Andy Stumpf]

You do.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Awesome.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So very good relationship. Lots of. All the right steps were taken at the right time. Thankfully. To your point, had they been teenagers when I was. In no freaking way. How would you be home enough to even. I wouldn't be. Yeah. And then when you were home to be able to put any energy into them that they need. So, no, I'm. I'm very happy looking back when I got out and the timeline from. From them. From a family aspect of being able to put energy into them during. Right. Because once they're out of high school, which they now are. They're flying on their own now. And that's. That's the.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's a wild.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That's your. That's your area of impact. And once. Once that area of impact leaves, you've got very small windows of any impact.

[Andy Stumpf]

Dude. It's such a wild phase. I have. My middle son is turning 21 next month. My daughter just turned 18. My oldest is 23. Wild. How long after you got out did you end up getting a divorce?

[Matt Bissonnette]

I mean, I was getting it before I Got out. It just. It. That was. That was. That was in process for a while.

[Andy Stumpf]

Mine was a few years later. And. And I've noticed that, you know, statistics are sometimes accurate, sometimes inaccurate.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Are they online? Because they're always accurate if they're online.

[Andy Stumpf]

I feel that way when I fight them or I'll make up studies to support my opinions. There's the families that don't survive the military service, and then there's this weird jump where about two years later they fall apart there. And if you think about it, it's probably because they're spending more time with each other. And I can only speak from the community we came from. They're now actually spending more time with the person than they were married with before.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Like, who are you?

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't like you.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I only got to see you in seconds before. Now I get to see you in minutes. This is way too many.

[Andy Stumpf]

And let's be honest, coming back from that op temple, you're a disruption to the life that they've created to be able to facilitate while you're gone. And now you're back and you want to, like, I have to.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You want to correct yourself.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm the hero of my own story, and I demand to be the hero of yours as well, too. And then the marriage just goes whack. But, yeah, it's about two years afterwards. It spikes up there again, that's kind of.

[Matt Bissonnette]

There were.

[Andy Stumpf]

My marriage wasn't doing great when I got out of the military, but we divorced shortly after that. A couple. Couple more years beyond that. But it was all the residual things that we didn't deal with. The nucleus of all called the merry go round of things that we would. I don't want to say fight, but ruminate over all was the origin of that time period. And yeah, the more time with each other, it's like, oh, maybe we just don't like each other that much.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I think for me, personally. Right. That job is gonna change you somehow some way in lots of ways. And that's. You're changing. Your spouse may not. Or maybe they're changing in their own ways. But. But. But you are maybe arguably changing in more dynamic ways because of the environment you're in and that stuff. I can remember coming home and, like, the biggest arguments I'd have with the ex were what the sprinkler setting was going to be.

[Andy Stumpf]

Because I'm like, It is critical.

[Matt Bissonnette]

40 minutes, twice a week. Yeah. More water gets the. Gets the roots. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

She'd be like, well, more eggs versus

[Matt Bissonnette]

I think 30 minutes, three times a week. You know, she's like, fine, set it. So I'd set it, and I'd leave again in a day, and I'd come back a week later, and it's gone and it's switched back, and you're like, stupid little things that. And then you're just. You're not connecting. And I just. I found myself just moving further and further, and it was really hard to reconnect. And again, it was arguably my fault because I continued to raise my hand and continued to volunteer here, and I never volunteered to just stay here. I volunteered to go here.

[Andy Stumpf]

And so if you layer resentment into that, man, you are loading up a poison pill towards the end. It's a tough one to get over. How do we prepare people for what? You said that that job will change you. Because I agree. I don't think it has to make you a worse version of yourself. I think in many ways it can make you a better version, but it will change you.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I wish I had an older mentor, someone, anybody in my career path that was above me. And I had a few.

[Andy Stumpf]

Don't.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Don't think that I didn't have any, but I wish I had a few more good mentors that. That could come back and say, share a few words of wisdom and. And. But they'd have to be guys that I respected enough to listen to.

[Andy Stumpf]

Were you mentoring anybody when you got out in that role that you had looked.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well, I mentioned it earlier that the young kid getting in is just past corpsman school. He's going. That's where I'm like, hey, hey. Don't always volunteer for the trips.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

He's young and he's married already. I'm like, oh, strike one. You already got married. All right, well, if you're already married, well, let's. Let's not make more mistakes. Yeah, let's keep that marriage. But there's. There's some things you need to think about, and your ego is going to be telling you you want to go to that next school and you want to go on this trip and you want to do all these things, but you need to understand there's going to be side effects that come with that, that are gonna. That are gonna counter your true love. Know that. That.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Calculate that into your equations and your decision making and then make smart decisions. But I never. I never really had too many people lay that out for me, because, honestly, there wasn't that war going on before we got.

[Andy Stumpf]

I was going to say they may not have known. I think a lot of this stuff is still, they're figuring it out. It's not a lack of desire to try to figure it out. Some of this stuff is just evolving at the speed of war.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I think though, too early on, a lot of our senior leadership in the community hadn't seen any combat. So now I remember early on Iraq, when Iraq kicked off, what was the motto? And it might have been a Team 3 thing. When we turned over with Team 3 in Kuwait, it was never have so few been led by so many so poorly. Wait, say that again. Never have so few been led by so many so poorly. And you looked around the, the SEAL base in Kuwait and there was more warrant officer fives and fours and all these crusty old team guys. No, no disrespect, no judgment, but they were there to get their war on. And okay, great. But that, that ended real quick and they moved up in the ranks and

[Andy Stumpf]

were they there to get their war on or were they there to get their war award? So they both advanced. Both I've never saw, I mean, I don't know what.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Depends on who they were.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, it was top heavy at times.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And I'm, I'm speaking specifically at the very beginning because I think everybody thought the war was going to be over three weeks and this 100. We got to get our end now because it's going to be over. And then it just stretched and stretched and stretched. And so a lot of those senior moved up in ranks so they stopped deploying. And my brand new guy on my first deployment, 911 happens. You want to talk about sitting in a freaking home run position to then keep doing what I did?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, I was there for OIF1 and I don't know, probably OEF very low single digits as well too. It's interesting. I'd love to get your take on the military award system.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, God. God, no comment.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, here's the thing. Early on I do believe, and I think it's fair to say that most people thought that it was not going to be 20 years. That we'll just say that for a

[Matt Bissonnette]

war, 20 year of combat wasn't going

[Andy Stumpf]

to be 20 years.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, I remember.

[Andy Stumpf]

And it wasn't leadership talking, but I do remember conversations, people saying and oh, I better get it in now because it's probably going to be over Thursday. You know, so awards come out though at the end of that and I'm not here to judge the award system, but in my opinion, and I can only speak for my opinion, the Award system started getting broken because certain awards were associated more with rank than actual actions, which made them more competitive on advancement boards. And so then every subsequent person, if that becomes the new standard to be competitive, it now detaches itself, especially for which ranks specifically. I'm talking about officers.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You said it, not me.

[Andy Stumpf]

I am only speaking from my experience. That's all I can speak from. Yeah, I witnessed firsthand awards, very high awards that have very specific guidance that have to be awarded for singular acts involving combat action.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yep.

[Andy Stumpf]

Being awarded to people that I was on deployment with and knew where they were. And I'm not trying to say my service was any different than theirs, but I'm also not trying to say I was deserving of that award either. But when that award is issued to leadership, what does that then do and what does that say to everybody coming after that? If you don't do that or close to it?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well, you're not going to compete.

[Andy Stumpf]

You're not going to compete. And so then it breaks the system.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yep. I didn't join for awards.

[Andy Stumpf]

Nor did I.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You didn't join for awards? Most guys I served with and actually went to combat with. The only award I ever received in person was the. Was the one post bin Laden mission. Every other award I got, I think I got just set in my cage at work, like just whatever. Yeah, we had.

[Andy Stumpf]

Did they do a big award ceremony for you guys? For the raid guys?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't say big.

[Andy Stumpf]

It was official then like.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, it was a very official fly. Somewhere a whole bunch of brass was there and everybody got a better award.

[Andy Stumpf]

What did you guys get? Silver stars.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, I'd say deserved the. We had a commanding officer, squadron commander. I was not on this mission. The he's on the op they get in troops in contact. Very good friend of mine. There's like four dudes flanking their formation. He's. He's at the far right flank and happens to see them flanking them. He maneuvers on them and eliminates all four. Very heroic, very strategic, big life saving for the group. They write him up for a silver Star. Very deserving. Her actions were pretty gnarly. Commanding officer because I was the ground force commander and overall responsible. And he got a silver Star. I need one too. He wrote himself up for the silver. He got it. He got it.

[Andy Stumpf]

So specific.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I know, but they wrote around it enough. And, and I saw the award to exactly your point. I saw that game being played by lots and lots of people. Enlisted an officer because it did help with. Well, if. If commanding Officer so and so led so many missions and his troop did this many missions and had this many awards under hit. Well, he must be a better strategic leader and he should be promoted. This guy had half the missions and half the awards.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, maybe because it was winter time.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yes, but that's not what, that's not what.

[Andy Stumpf]

I know, I know.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And, and that, that is why from the beginning, it's never about awards. It's never about self anything. It's about just get the job done, do the thing.

[Andy Stumpf]

Have you ever read a BV from like Korea?

[Matt Bissonnette]

No.

[Andy Stumpf]

It sounds like a Medal of Honor citation. I bet. Well, alone in a trench batting away grenades with a shovel for 48 hours.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Right. Right out of ammo.

[Andy Stumpf]

Navy Achievement Medal, Nova V. Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

They were handing out. I mean a, a, A bronze star with no V. Yeah. Is like hard candy for everybody now. Right? Like, oh, do it up. Oh, I think there's a ton of people with bronzes with no V. Which

[Andy Stumpf]

for people listening, that is the highest award that is allowed to be given for. If, if it's without a V, your certificate will say for meritorious achievement. If it is with a V, it'll open with for heroic achievement. But above that, they're all they are by doctrine supposed to be for actions under combat. The Bronze Star is the highest one that can go either direction.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. So you got a lot of people like, oh, I'll get a bronze, but for leadership or for whatever.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I really don't care. Yeah, right.

[Andy Stumpf]

That was just interesting. It was some, it was something that I saw and I, you know, I even remember it in the moment thinking, man, if you guys start this, there's no end.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Do you have a shadow box type setup with your like awards and you tried it and all that stuff? You know, a lot of guys like retire and get the, like the wall at home with the flag and I don't try to end their awards and everything in there.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't know where any of that stuff is.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I've, I've never done that because I, again, to your point with the awards, I'm like, I don't care. I didn't join for that. That's great. I, I got some.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, check. No, I have, I have a three ring binder that has like school certificates and stuff. And I think I have.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Those are more important than the awards. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, I have the, you know, the little folding thing. They give you the award like that has a little picture of whatever it is. And then the little. I have that in the three binder I pulled the pieces of paper out, and I did that while I was still. I'm glad that I did, because my kids have never asked to see it, but maybe one day they will be like, make sense of this if you can. You know, like, go ahead and. But as far as the physical awards themselves or any memorabilia, I actually think the. One of the few things I have is the Gold Squadron line behind you, which was my departing gift. And other than that, that was. I found that at our lake house in the garage in a box.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I was thankful because I was looking for it because I knew I wanted it to be.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And the paddle. The paddle that the Team five gave me, those are the two things that actually that I have. Have physical items.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I never got a paddle from five. Just left without one or whatever. Just. I don't know. And then team five, I got the plaque when I left or. Damn it. Yep. When I left with my name misspelled. And when they handed it to me, they're like, oh, we noticed. I'm like, we'll get it fixed. I'm like, no, no, no, no. I think this is way more fitting. Just leave it with one T. It's

[Andy Stumpf]

a power move for sure.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So, yeah, again, I didn't do it for.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Awards, accolades, and I did it for the boys. And to do it.

[Andy Stumpf]

I agree, I did it for exactly the same reason. But I also, again, if you go back and if what you care about the most is the community and the integrity, you have to have conversations about the awards. You have to talk about what can happen if it detaches itself from what they're supposed to be and becomes a metric of a leadership position. I'm not saying that always happens, but I have a hard time finding people who are around it who say, yeah, I never saw that.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That. Right. The. I will say, you know, be. Because I'd been around for as long as I had and seen a lot of the change. Right. I was only an E8 when I got out.

[Andy Stumpf]

Only an E8. Yeah. There's only one more to go.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well, but there's a ton of E9s floating around the command, so I'm. You know, that is true. I'm still 28. I'm sorry. I just lost my train of thought. What were we just talking about?

[Andy Stumpf]

Awards.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Awards.

[Andy Stumpf]

Because you had been there for so long and you had seen the ups and downs is what you were saying.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, my gosh. I just lost my complete train of thought. I'm sorry.

[Andy Stumpf]

Probably because you have cut that out. TBI type stuff. Not cutting that out at all. This is going to work.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Where was I going with that?

[Andy Stumpf]

Sorry, we were just talking about. We're talking. I mean, the bottom line is I wanted to talk to you about it because I do believe that the integrity of the community is of the utmost importance. And you have to have those conversations about the reality of. Of it.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Conversations. I was getting more and more verbal with some of the. My disdain. Disdain for a lot of the award stuff or a lot of the other stuff that was happening around the command. Right. Or just in the community in general. And a lot of the guys that I'd served so long with were. Were getting more vocal as well. And. And we'd call out a lot of these ridiculous things that we saw and. And then it finally got to the point where there was a lot more pushback for anybody being mouthy. And we're like, okay, we've been around long enough. We can get away with it, but we can only get away with it to a certain point. And we'd always try the best to kind of poke the bear and poke the leadership. They were like, hey, the enlisted guys are watching and we see this and. But eventually, you know, we just get overrun and they do their thing.

[Andy Stumpf]

It is rock, paper, rank world in that community.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. So again, you know, you can only push as far as hard as you can. And again, yeah, I could have put in for ocs. I could have gone and been an officer. I could have. Could have been involved in those conversations and added. Added context there, but I chose not to. So I. Based off my position, I could only push it so far and then go back to work.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. We think the hardest thing you did was during your career or in your perspective, from your perspective was the most

[Matt Bissonnette]

hardest, like operationally, mission wise, mentally. What either.

[Andy Stumpf]

Or what was the most difficult thing that you think you were able to accomplish while you were in. Or that they asked you to do. To.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I mean, maybe looking back now, I. I see it as probably pretty challenging, but to. To stay as positive and to stay as fired up and to stay as motivated and to stay as all the things. I tried to very much stay on the positive side of things.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

It's a slippery slope. The hardest thing looking back was to stay positive. As positive as I could be through. Through 13 straight pumps.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's a lot, man.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. Yeah. Because you see things and then they don't get. You see things in a different way from different perspectives. Yeah. Talked about that all day.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And. And I Think the hardest thing looking back was, was staying positive through that, continuing to learn and evolve through it. Not getting disgruntled. Right. There's plenty of old dudes floating around the community that are just old curmudgeons and. And I saw those looking up and I was like, I'm not doing that. I'll get out before I reach that level.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's fair.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So that. That was probably the, the hardest. I love the work, so that wasn't hard.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's hard not to love the work. It was busy.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Work was good, right? Like, yeah, man, you're like living the dream. Right. Everything I read about, I left at

[Andy Stumpf]

the time where it was ramping up for you guys. I mean, we were busy in relative terms, but I think 06 and beyond until probably 09 was substantially busier operational tempo wise. Yeah, just the savviness of the enemy as well too. Them changing their tactics, information passing back and forth.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, I feel like there was a slowdown come 2010, it was slowing down a little bit. 11, 12, it was just a slow nosedive. Yeah, it's. And I talked to a lot of my. All my best friends are guys that I served with that whole chunk. And, and we talk about. We're like, you know, there's not too, too many guys in the overall community that literally operated that long.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

And you had to have almost gone to dev group, you know, because if I'd stayed at 5, they would have pulled me out and sent me to training cell or something after two deployments or three or whatever it is. But to stay operational for 13,

[Andy Stumpf]

I.

[Matt Bissonnette]

It just adds a different perspective and there's not too, too many guys.

[Andy Stumpf]

Feel like you should have augmented the squadron for one more operation and not had a helicopter crash on your last one.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, that's good. I'm good.

[Andy Stumpf]

Just like, just put me on the C2 element over here. Just. Just drop me off and come get me. We'll just go. We'll go out with a thumbs up. You guys went out with a huge thumbs up. But like, like just. We'll skip the helicopter wreck. Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, it was good.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, if you're going to go out on top, that's a hell of A1 to end it on. For sure.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we got. We got very, very lucky.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, for sure. What makes you happy in life now? H.

[Matt Bissonnette]

My family, friends, fun and family.

[Andy Stumpf]

Faith.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's a good answer.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Not. Not talking about old work. Drama. Right. Oh, talking about new, exciting, fun stuff. What people are up to now.

[Andy Stumpf]

Sweet.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Creating new things. What they're doing. Well, we got a ton of veteran buddies that are getting out. They're all, you know, doing new, fun, exciting things.

[Andy Stumpf]

So it's cool to see the guys reinventing themselves.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Those that can and those that choose to. Yeah, I'm excited to see for the ones who can't.

[Andy Stumpf]

And it gets all personal choice with the trajectory you put your life on. And some people, I think I've heard them say this and it breaks my heart. Well, I don't know how to do anything else. And I understand why they say that. But also you can teach yourself. And I say that as a barely functioning human being from an intellectual capacity that has stumbled their way through enough things in life. If I can do it, you can do it too. You are going to fail. It's going to be embarrassing at times.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I think it's the easy out. Come on on team guys, since you made it through buds, all you've done is evolve through your career and learn new things. So, so to then leave the Navy and be like, oh, I can't evolve. That is the only thing I know. You're like, yeah. Not saying that's an excuse, but I think it's the easy out to just be like, well, I don't want to evolve. I don't want to go learn anything new. I just, I just want to do this. And, and no judgment. That's it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Easy.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You've worked hard to earn the right to go do what you do. 0i, I. You and others have just don't want to do that. We chose another right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, well, there's also a shelf life on the tactical prowess, you know, so

[Matt Bissonnette]

for guys, my shelf life expired a

[Andy Stumpf]

while ago, as did mine. And I don't, and I don't have any desire to extend that shelf life. And again, no shade towards the people who do. But that evolution of what's going to be next will come for them at some point because it. You will. You will.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I gotta be honest, do you watch these drone videos from Ukraine? It is an entire different warfare, dude. It's a different level. It is not what we did. Future war is drone on drone. It is. It is not what we are used to.

[Andy Stumpf]

Here's the craziest thing about Ukraine. It's the cutting edge of electronic warfare. Drone on drone. And still they're fighting in trenches like they were in World War I. Yeah. So there's two like, so is that the solution to drone battle is we get shotguns and go into trenches which Holy hard pack. Pass, by the way.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, no, that's my point. I'm glad I'm expired. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And the drone stuff, even harder. Pass.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, I don't.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know, you see recruiting videos now. It used to be in. They'd be like the guy pulling the nods down, now it's an fpv.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah. And now he's flying a drone. Like I said, it has evolved a lot. And I'm. I'm happy with my time. I'm happy I evolved out. There's a amount of evolution going on that I can't keep up with. There's new, smarter, faster, way more tech savvy kids. This going through that pipeline.

[Andy Stumpf]

Have you ever seen the videos over in like China and Taiwan where they'll have a dragon flying through the air because there's thousands of drones that are synchronized.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

What does that look like? First off, keep it looking like a dragon because that'll terrify everybody.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, right.

[Andy Stumpf]

But how, how do you combat that? I. I mean, I'm sure we have people thinking about that stuff. Oh, boy. Yeah. Damn, Michael. Now first off, if you could get the front of this dispute. Fire out of some of those. But like, come on. Yeah, you're telling me that if you launch that over a hill in Afghanistan, that that's not going to have a

[Matt Bissonnette]

psychological impact that scare the shit out of everybody in the valley for sure. If I could call that in for close air support just to fuck with somebody. Send in the flying dragon.

[Andy Stumpf]

No, dude, that's pre assault fires,

[Matt Bissonnette]

but it doesn't have to land. It just flies over the battlefield just to scare people.

[Andy Stumpf]

Just up the valley and have a cruise back, maybe one pass over the target.

[Matt Bissonnette]

If that didn't make the bad guys run away, I don't know. Point being way over my head.

[Andy Stumpf]

Totally. Look at this shit.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

You're telling me there's. Oh my God. I mean, yeah, that's just weaponize that. And I'm sure this is dated technology and ability.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's why I'm again happy I did my time.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Happy I rotated out.

[Andy Stumpf]

Happy I live kind of in the middle of nowhere. Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yep. Because when the power grid goes down, bro. Yeah, I know, man.

[Andy Stumpf]

Where can people find your book?

[Matt Bissonnette]

We've been at it for three hours on my website. It'll be available on Amazon to service that market. But Amazon takes a huge piece of that.

[Andy Stumpf]

What do they take percentage wise?

[Matt Bissonnette]

A very large amount more than depends on different percentages for my audiobook or written. But do they take it because they

[Andy Stumpf]

produce the book or are you talking about having them just physically?

[Matt Bissonnette]

They're just physically the distribution for Amazon markets. Because everybody, Amazon's such a big powerhouse.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So they want their pound of flesh. I've tried to sell directly through my website so matt missonnet.com people can get it. And then that, that helps me the most because it's no Amazon fees.

[Andy Stumpf]

Audiobook.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Audiobook. And this time I actually read the audiobooks. Last one I had the voice actor. Yeah. I was like, all right, this is personal enough. I want to read this one.

[Andy Stumpf]

Gives you an appreciation for people who read other people's books, especially if they go into a blind. Because I did my audiobook as well.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Did you?

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay. And at least I did it right here. But at least I wrote the thing. And I know where I could put a pause or some reaction, but for a voice actor coming in blind, well,

[Matt Bissonnette]

then the voice actors have to do all the other voices. And I'm like, no offense, but I'm not playing every other voice either. That's gonna be the worst audiobook ever. If you want me busting into.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You know.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

The Master Chief. Oh, my God.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, not, not. So yeah, yeah, I did some stuff and then we used AI to do the other voices.

[Andy Stumpf]

Sweet.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So, so yeah, that'll be.

[Andy Stumpf]

So the main portal. Matt Bisset.com Matt Bissette.com and then on socials. Are you active? Is peripheral.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I, I, I am, but I hate all social media and all that stuff. I just, I do it. I have a Matt Bessette official, I think Instagram.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Those are that it. That's my two, that's my one. My one social media outlet. I'm not on Twitter. I'm not on anywhere else.

[Andy Stumpf]

You're not missing.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I, I do a horrible job servicing my Instagram stuff. I like it because I've got a ton of different kids that have hit me up. They're like, hey, I'm thinking of going to buzz. What do you think? And I've engaged with a lot of them. And so that's been a, a fun way to, to actually be able to engage with some, some young folks looking to serve. Otherwise, how would they find me? How would they ask those question? There's an actual outlet and I, I actually try hard to answer all those.

[Andy Stumpf]

So imagine if we had had. I didn't meet my first team guy until I was in the military.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Really.

[Andy Stumpf]

I did. Was from Santa Cruz, California. Traditionally not a hallmark of military enlistment. Yeah. Standing out surfers, professional I mean, it's just. I didn't. I mean, I had an idea, but the first people. I was a dive motivator at Great Lakes as a guy who was rotating through there. I can't even fathom having these. These anxiety rectangles in your pocket. But you can occasionally use it to reach out to a guy and say, what was it like for you? I've got none of that.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah, I get a ton of those guys.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think that's important. I do my best to answer those as well, too.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Back to your point of giving back and. Right. With your book and writing. And I'm like, okay, if I'm in this position where a person wants to reach out and ask a legitimate question, I'm not gonna be rude and ignore them. I'm gonna try my best to.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. And I feel obligated to tell the truth, not just the. The shiny stuff. But hey, this is probably what you're seeing. But consider that. Here's the shadow of what that could be your decision to make. I'm not talking you into it or out of it.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

But let's give you as much information so you can make a total decision that will serve your life better. That's what I go for. Okay.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Question for you and your book.

[Andy Stumpf]

Fire away.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Did you go through a it was cleared review process?

[Andy Stumpf]

It was cleared.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Okay. How was that for you?

[Andy Stumpf]

Pretty easy.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Was it?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yes.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Did it take a while?

[Andy Stumpf]

No. No, it did not.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Did you have a back channel way in?

[Andy Stumpf]

It's hard to say.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You know, some people may listen to

[Andy Stumpf]

this, so I knew the right people.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, I knew the right.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Good. Cool. I'm glad you didn't get. And I get it. I read half Ears this morning already.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

You don't get into any. Nothing crazy stuff.

[Andy Stumpf]

Literally, like, hey, this is how I lost my.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I did notice you have a. A picture of a trident in there. And when I went through my review process, they were like, you have to. They. They wouldn't allow me to do the trident.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like, really?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Are they where you just get one on Amazon?

[Matt Bissonnette]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, but you gotta remember too, that through the process of the. The community coming after me for writing the book, they tried to take my trident. Like, I'd been out of the Navy four years, five years.

[Andy Stumpf]

They tried to.

[Matt Bissonnette]

After you retroactively as part of my punishment for no Easy day and all the other nonsense. They were like, oh, yeah, we're gonna. We're gonna retroactively polish trident.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, that's just a Straight Fu Move.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Well, that's what I was dealing with for as long as I was. And my attorney's like, they can't do that. You're out. You can't take a warfare insignia after you've already left. But this was. This was how bad they were trying to be. Like, hey, if you do this, we're going to come after you.

[Andy Stumpf]

So, yeah, greener pastures.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Fun. Fun.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, greener pastures.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Old news. Onward and upward.

[Andy Stumpf]

I like it. Cool. What do you want to close it out with? Like I said, we've been out for three hours. Hours.

[Matt Bissonnette]

No, hey, just thanks. Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Open invite, for sure. Anytime.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Definitely. I'm. I did not come here to bring up any drama. The stuff. I. I don't like naming names. I just want to talk about what I remember, what I know was audio recorded, all the stuff we talked about. And then I want to leave it and.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, move on. I don't think it's ever going to be clarified at a level institutionally.

[Matt Bissonnette]

So I think there's enough guys that are coming out. You know, I mentioned it on the Sean Ryan interview, the Admiral McRaven Netflix documentary. Right. I got to talk to Admiral McRaven about that.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I was like, you know, sir, what's the authority? What's the approvals that you got to sit on a Netflix documentary and talk about this? How does that work?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yes, they're right here. In case you don't.

[Matt Bissonnette]

I can make my own decisions.

[Andy Stumpf]

Actually, these days. He'd be like, right here in this.

[Matt Bissonnette]

See, he. Yeah, he's like, you know best. I explained to him, I said, look, this Netflix producer, he's trying to get any of the other operators that participated to sit down and talk. And for years now, they've all been worried about sitting down and talking because they've seen what's happened to me. But if. If you're okay with it and just to sit down on Netflix and I think Rob was on the thing. I'm like, well, is it cool if. Why don't we get everybody. I'm sure I could make some calls, and there would be some people who'd more than, well, income share their story if you said it was okay. And he immediately was like, oh, oh, you know, Matt, you know, nobody should feel obligated to do this. I'm like, oh, they don't feel obligated.

[Andy Stumpf]

Nobody said the word obligated.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Nobody felt obligated. But if you are doing it, sir, and leading from the front, then people feel like it's okay. Now they want to care. They want to share their story. And can you help me with this? Help me justify the decision making in my head whether I'm going to participate in this interview or not. He didn't help me with any of it. He's like, oh, I'll transfer you to somebody I know inside Warcom. And of course, I talked to a few people inside Warcom and they never once gave me advice on how to deal with Netflix. They just wouldn't engage with me because Warcom didn't want to be seen engaging with this event. So it's. There will be others and it's only a matter of time. Right. If we're all allowed to have these conversations. I know multiple the appointment or the seal that I mentioned that was the breacher and made it to the top of the second set of stairs. Right. He's going to come share his story at some point, I'm sure. And I think slowly, through different people, you will hear enough to make your own decisions and people can make their own.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's what it'll come down to. It'll be the totality of the information. And as with a lot of things, let's say there's a road and you have to pick the side of the road you're on. If things are trending in all in this direction, the totality or that, then, yeah, people can make their mind up based off of that.

[Matt Bissonnette]

That's the world we lived in. Just who's gonna, who's gonna uptake the information enough to actually make a smart decision or. I feel like in today's day and age, if you're just. You're stuck on one side, you're always stuck on that side.

[Andy Stumpf]

In politics, I think it's that way for sure. Very team sports.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Which I know very little about. The politics aspect. Cool, man. Hell yeah. Thanks for making the trip out. I appreciate it.

[Matt Bissonnette]

It was a process. Kalispell's not easy.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's not hard, though. I mean, you also live in a small place and this is your origin story. And where you were landing were two small places. So there's some hops in between to

[Matt Bissonnette]

get to the small place. Yeah, that's it. Well, I appreciate it, brother.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, of course, man. Thank you.

[Matt Bissonnette]

Yep. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at progressive. Com, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.