#300 - Spec Ops Commando on Afghanistan’s #1 Darkest Secret & Undercover Warfare | Johnny MF Glenn

Summary

---

Julian Dorey Podcast #300 Summary

Guest: Johnny MF Glenn (Green Beret, Spec Ops Commando)
Date: May 11, 2025
Topic: Afghanistan’s Darkest Secret, Undercover Warfare, Life as a Green Beret

Episode Overview

In this milestone 300th episode, Julian Dorey hosts Johnny MF Glenn, a legendary Green Beret commando, for a wide-ranging, unfiltered conversation about the realities of special operations warfare, the "darkest secret" of Afghanistan, the psychological makeup of Special Forces, and what happens to elite warriors after the war. Glenn’s candor, humor, and deep perspective take listeners inside the life of a career commando who witnessed the Afghanistan conflict from the sparks of 2002 through its chaotic conclusion.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Johnny Glenn’s Path to Special Forces

• No Military Family, Early Calling: Glenn did not grow up in a military family, but was surrounded by relatives who joined. By age 7 or 8, he knew he wanted to enlist.
• “School just wasn't my thing.” — [03:04]
  He walked out of his SATs and enlisted at 17 with his father’s reluctant blessing.
• Accidental Army: He considered the Marines but joined the Army simply because the recruiter was present.
• Rapid Trajectory: Joined through a split-op program, fast-tracked to E4, and found his way to the Green Berets even before understanding what they were.

The Green Beret Selection & Training Mindset

• Psychological Screening Over Brute Strength: SF selection tests for adaptability, analytical thinking, and emotional intelligence, more than raw physical prowess.
• “They're looking for people with a higher degree of emotional intelligence… and you can control it.” — Glenn [15:36]
• "You might throw something at you... looking for a water bottle, but look deeper." — Glenn [17:36]
• Team Dynamics: Training hones groupthink, crowdsourcing ideas, and force multipliers; egos are checked for the greater good.

Psychological Realities of Special Operations

• Combat Decision-Making:
  • Training means even the most intense firefights are met with instinct and calm.
  • "It's not even training at that point. Your body…it just kicks in.” — Glenn [25:15]
• Processing Speed and Time Perception:
  • "By your fifth, sixth firefight, it's gonna be like it's moving in slow motion." — Glenn [45:07]
• Gift of Fear:
  • Glenn and others retained a necessary fear for survival: "When the hairs aren't standing up, that's not good." — Glenn [37:38]

Afghanistan: Boots on the Ground

• Career: Ten Deployments to Afghanistan (plus Iraq, Africa, Europe, Balkans).
• Cultural Shock: Coming from rural Georgia to Seattle, then overseas to Africa and Afghanistan.
• Evolution of the Enemy:
  • Early Taliban were less experienced; by 2007+, only the savvy, lifelong fighters survived.
  • "All the dumb ones you kill early. After 2008, you’re fighting the Mujehadeen guys who've been fighting their whole lives." — Glenn [38:01]

“The Darkest Secret": Systemic Child Sexual Abuse (Bacha Bazi)

• Glenn breaks silence on the persistent abuse of “chai boys” by Afghan elders and warlords—often ignored by local authorities and even some US elements for political expediency.
  • "We had a stable boy… one of the Afghan elders molested him. Beat that dude just shy of death… But the elders told us, 'he’s a chai boy.'" — Glenn [90:08]
  • Points out the utter normality of this practice in rural Afghanistan, attributing it to environmental, not innate, evil.
  • "It's a taught behavior from birth.” — Glenn [91:20]
  • Provides biting commentary on cultural relativism and the U.S. struggle to reconcile values with tactical alliances.

Undercover & Hybrid Warfare

• Hearts and Minds: Green Beret missions blend combat with winning local support—medical outreach, infrastructure, rewarding risky informants, psychological ops.
• Moral Gray Zones:
  • “Sometimes the wrongest thing you do’ll be the rightest…” — [73:25]
  • Making deals with warlords, triaging threats for the greater good.
• Comparison to Cartel Tactics: Raises controversial but pragmatic solutions for U.S.-Mexico relations—“get in bed with the cartels” to stem fentanyl flow while using their business acumen for legal economic growth.

Transitioning Home: The Lost Purpose

• Suicide and mental health crises among SOF veterans, stemming from loss of tribe, purpose, and constant high-adrenaline life.
  • "For 21 years, every day I'm surrounded by type-A personalities... When you pull these guys out—how do you feed that animal?" — Glenn [43:34]
• Family & Relationships:
  • Admits he was gone for most of his children’s childhood, leaving his wife to handle life’s logistics.
  • Speaks candidly about divorce and counseling:
    “You're nothing. That Johnny Glenn, that's just a reputation. You gotta be a husband, a father now." — therapist's advice to Glenn [63:54]
• Civilian Adjustment:
  • Frustration at civilian inefficiency (e.g., DMV) and boredom with everyday life; cracks about ex-operators losing “purpose” and military “edge.”
  • Finds solace in fitness, calling out battle buddies to stay sharp.

Geopolitical Themes & Society

• The episode ends on warnings about American complacency, situational awareness, and the risk posed by societal comfort and distraction.
  • “If you go to the DMV now, I can make this so much more efficient…they’re on their phones, they just don’t think.” — Glenn [77:57]
  • “We need a wake-up call…9/11 was one of the only times in history when we came together…” — [75:21]

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

The Black Jesus Origin Story

• [132:07] — “I just started walking towards the truck. We had this young kid on the team, and he goes, ‘Look at Johnny Glenn…He looks like a Black Jesus right now.’ He said it on SAT102…all the SF team knew we were in a firefight…and it just stuck.”
  – Johnny Glenn

On Adaptability

• "You lock 10 berets in a room, you can get almost 10 alike answers. Guaranteed." — [14:22]

Combat Psychology

• “I'd rather be in a firefight than speak to elementary school kids…Dude, bullets flying, you’re good—kids scare me.” — [22:07]

On Afghan Terrain

• “That country is designed to fight in. If you own the terrain there, you own the country...It's why they call it the graveyard of empires.” — [128:45]

Operational Lessons

• "Let the guns do the talking." — [26:36]

The Darkest Secret

• “He’s a chai boy…you pass them around. Not on our watch, dude. Not on our base. Not gonna happen.” — [90:50]

On American Blindness & Security

• "How does a guy walk into a mall, a school, with an AR, and nobody notices?… No situational awareness whatsoever." — [78:25]

---

Important Timestamps

• Green Beret Training & Psychology: [14:06] – [21:26]
• Afghan Deployments Begin: [30:43] – [46:01]
• Combat Processing & Athlete Comparison: [45:07] – [49:32]
• Post-Service Transitions, Family Life: [60:14] – [68:40]
• Transition Struggles & Purpose: [68:46] – [71:11]
• Afghanistan’s “Darkest Secret” - Bacha Bazi & Abuse: [90:08] – [93:19]
• Gray Areas/Moral Trade-offs: [73:15] – [76:18]
• Society’s Complacency, Awareness: [74:51], [77:57]
• First Firefight Reflection: [134:19] – [135:04]
• "Black Jesus" Nickname Origin: [132:07] – [133:15]
• Advice on Fixing Mexico/Cartel Commentary: [95:17] – [101:38]

---

Conclusion

Johnny Glenn’s firsthand account dispels Hollywood mythmaking and offers a gritty, humorous, and sharply insightful portrait of modern warfare’s realities—on the battlefield, at home, and inside the soul. From hard moral trade-offs to overlooked horrors like Afghanistan's systemic abuse, Glenn navigates the full spectrum of what it means to be a Green Beret before, during, and after the fight. This episode stands out for its authenticity, operational candor, and human depth.

---

Transcript

[Interviewer]

Johnny Glenn, you had a really long career with no breaks, basically.

[Johnny Glenn]

So having been trained for the last three, four years, I've been in the military. You never got to the show. But when that phone rang, dude, we going to the show. I remember I first came to the army, which was crazy. We're going to Afghanistan. That country is designed to fight in. And I remember I had a team warrant. He kept telling us, careful what you wish. And in the valley of Afghanistan, or where we were, that's a wild, wild west. We've been in a firefight all day, dude, I was white as snow, dehydrated. They know how to hide, they know how to dominate. You know, these aren't the kids that are playing Halo. So somebody said Russia got hit at that point. I just want to get the Rusty. You see how the hill just goes down? Those guys are right there in the gullet. And I remember I came all the way up from the back, like, I had to get to him. And we had this young kid on the team, and he goes, look at Johnny Glenn. He looks like a black Jesus. So all the SF team knew we're in a firefight. And he heard it. Everybody's like, johnny Glenn, Johnny Glenn.

[Interviewer]

That's one of the best names.

[Johnny Glenn]

It's the best.

[Interviewer]

Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five star review. They're both a huge, huge help.

[Johnny Glenn]

Thank you.

[Interviewer]

Johnny Glenn. That's one of the best names we've ever had come through the studio. If not the best.

[Johnny Glenn]

It's the best. Let's not cut it short.

[Interviewer]

Pull that in just a little bit. I want it like a fist from your face right there. Perfect. But it's funny, there was a little bit of, I don't know, like, the universe lining up here. My friend Mike Ritland had you on his show, I don't know, maybe like six, seven months ago, something like that. And I love Mike and I really love his judgment, like with people he brings on and stuff. So I look through that sometimes when I'm looking through military guys, and I'll go, listen, like five, 10 minutes here and there, people. And I went and listened to a few minutes of your episode. I was like, oh, this is great. Threw you on the list. And like three weeks later, your girlfriend texts me and she's like, hey, shot in the dark here. Would love Johnny to come on your show. I'm like, what the.

[Johnny Glenn]

I got this guy on the list.

[Interviewer]

So it's cool to have you here.

[Johnny Glenn]

Hey, glad to be here. Really glad to be here.

[Interviewer]

So you did. You had a really long career?

[Johnny Glenn]

I did.

[Interviewer]

With no breaks? Basically none? Zero.

[Johnny Glenn]

No, I got a. I got up for one year, but as far as, you know, breaks. In military? Nah.

[Interviewer]

So you're a Green Beret? We were just talking off camera a bunch about kind of what separates the Green Berets apart and all that, but, you know, how many deployments was it total?

[Johnny Glenn]

Like 15. Yeah. Why did you. 10. 10 to Afghanistan, 2 to Iraq and then Bosnia, Africa? Just Europe, Just all over there.

[Interviewer]

10 to Afghanistan?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, 10.

[Interviewer]

Afghanistan across what years?

[Johnny Glenn]

Starting in 2002, when the war first kicked off. You know, we started in September of 2001. In 2002, we started. And all the way up until, I think the last time I was there was 2016, 17.

[Interviewer]

So you saw it all the way through?

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Start to the rise, to the fall, to the retrograde.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. When we started retrograding and started, you know, just breaking the place down. But yeah.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

From start to finish. Okay.

[Interviewer]

So what, did you grow up in a military family?

[Johnny Glenn]

I did not. No. I got cousins that joined, but my father was not in the military. I had a cousin that joined the military. I had two or three cousins that joined, and I saw them. I was like, I think I want to join the military. But I think since I was about seven or eight, I knew I was going to join the military.

[Interviewer]

So you looked up to them, obviously, I did.

[Johnny Glenn]

I did.

[Interviewer]

What were they in. In the military?

[Johnny Glenn]

So my brother Nate, he was 11, bravo. He's an infantry guy. He was our instructor. My cousin Terry, I can't remember what he did then. I had a cousin that joined the Marines. He was like a mechanic. And then my cousin Rod was in the Navy. I can't remember what he did in the Navy. It's the Navy. So he didn't do much, but only.

[Interviewer]

Took about three minutes.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, he's in there. He didn't do too much. You know, my cousin, Marines, he didn't do much either. You know, he shot a lot, but. But. Yeah, but. But. So I was always around the military, but my parents definitely weren't military, so my dad more wanted me to go to college and play sports. That's what he wanted me to do. And I was like, I think I'm doing that. Yeah, I wanted to. Then I went down to Florida State, took the sat, like, all right, I'd like to try to go play football, basketball, baseball somewhere. Just a sport like every kid, you know. And then I realized, like, man, schooling for me, school just wasn't. It wasn't my thing. I was taking an SAT and got him and walked out. I was like, oh, this ain't going to work. And I remember that day, I went to a recruiting station down in Florida State or down in Tallahassee, right off of Capitol Circle Boulevard in Florida. Tallahassee. Walked in there, and I was honestly thinking about joining Marines because I like the uniform. But then I walked in there, nobody was sitting there. The Navy guys weren't there, Marine Corps guys weren't there. And there was army guys like, hey, what are you looking for? I was like, I don't know, man. I'm just trying to. I'm looking to do something now. Guy called me back in his office. I'm looking to do. That's not what I told him, I'm looking to do something. And he didn't. He didn't flinch me. I walked in there and I'll never get it. He just sat me down and put me in a room and showed me a video. And I looked at. I go, how do I do that? And I remember it was a helicopter. Guys were jumping out of helicopter into the water. They were swimming and they were shooting. They just blowing up stuff. It was like an old army. And right then I was like, how do I do that? He goes, not only can you do that will pay you. Olivia loves a challenge. It's why she lifts heavy weights and likes complicated recipes. But for booking her trip to Paris, Olivia chose the easy way. With Expedia, she bundled her flight with a hotel to save more. Of course, she still climbed all 674 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower. You were made to take the easy route. We were made to easily package your trip. Expedia Made to travel flight. Inclusive packages are at all protected. And I looked at him. I'm from a small little town in Georgia, man. And, you know, we weren't. You know, we weren't dirt poor, but we weren't. Yeah, we were lower middle class, I guess. And when he said he's gonna pay me, dude is sold.

[Interviewer]

Pay me to blow up.

[Johnny Glenn]

That's like what I said. You're gonna pull me? Pay me to shoot and blow shit up. What do I sign at? He's like, how old are you? I told him how old I was. He was like, all right, well, you gotta get.

[Interviewer]

What were you, 18?

[Johnny Glenn]

17. I was 17.

[Interviewer]

Oh, so you weren't even.

[Johnny Glenn]

I wasn't even legal yet.

[Interviewer]

Let's go.

[Johnny Glenn]

That's like, what it says. So I left that summer, man. My junior year, went to basic training, came back.

[Interviewer]

Oh, did your parents have to sign you?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, my dad was pissed, man.

[Interviewer]

He was pissed.

[Johnny Glenn]

I was pissed. He's like, what are you doing? You throw your life away. I think you should go to college first. And he was just trying to, you know, as any father, like, hey, you need to do this first. I was like, no, this is what I want to do. And then he told me one day, he's like, all right, well, if you don't want to go to college, he said, and his exact words were, I can up my own money. I don't need you to do it. And I was like, all right, cool. So after that, man, went to base training, came back, and then I finished up my senior year in high school, Graduated on the fourth, left on the fifth.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that's crazy. So you went the summer after your junior year, and then you come back to high school to finish.

[Johnny Glenn]

It was called a split operation program back then. I don't know if they still do it now, but it's interesting. It's called split up. So you go your junior year to base training that summer, and then after you graduate base training, you go back, you complete your senior year in high school. Which was cool because now I'm back at high school. Like, damn, you know, like, I missed football camp, missed everything. But I was like, I was off base training, so, you know, it's pretty cool. And then I graduated, and I left right after that. And where'd you.

[Interviewer]

Where'd you go?

[Johnny Glenn]

I ended up going to for Jackson, South Carolina, after that. And then I went to Fort Lewis was my first duty station. Where's Fort Lewis, Washington? Seattle, Washington, or Tacoma, Washington?

[Interviewer]

Oh, all the way out there?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, I went all did. They sent me from the east coast all the way to the west coast. I remember I called my mom, like, the second or third day. I was crying. I was like, I'm ready to go to come home, Come to home. She was like, what's wrong? I was like, I went downtown. It might have been a week or maybe two weeks, but me and some buddies went downtown to Seattle. And this girl came and started talking to me. She had purple hair, piercings in her face. Dude, I'm a country redneck from South Georgia. Where I was like, what in the is going on here? I was like, it was like I was in Mars, dude. I was like, it's time for me to get hell out of this place. I called my mom I was like, hey, mom, I got to go. It's like this girl had purple hair. Something was wrong. She's like, no, baby, you know, you're not in. You're not in Bainbridge anymore. You know, there's a big world out there. And then I just kind of embraced it.

[Interviewer]

Has purple hair.

[Johnny Glenn]

That has purple hair, Right. So I kind of embraced it. And then I kind of, you know, I kind of spread my wings a little bit, like, all right, I guess there's a different world. Like, I'm used to those country dirt roads and. Yeah. You know, just girls being girls, you know? I was like, it was weird, man.

[Interviewer]

But it's a good cultural experience.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. Oh, it was shocking. Yeah. If it wasn't so far, I'd have left. I'd probably went awol. But I can't get home. You know what I mean? Where'd he go?

[Interviewer]

He walked away.

[Johnny Glenn]

Where'd he go? He ain't gonna walk back to Georgia. So I was like. So they had me, dude. They just sent me, like, I don't know, somewhere a little closer, like maybe Florida. Yeah, I'd have walked home.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

I'd be like, I'm out of here, dude. I'm going home now.

[Interviewer]

Were you right away trying to angle to get into the special Forces?

[Johnny Glenn]

I didn't. Had no clue what the SF was.

[Interviewer]

You were just going into the army and figuring out.

[Johnny Glenn]

Going in the army. I'm figuring it out. And I remember I told my old sergeant major, Benjamin Jacobs, if he sees this, get in touch with me. But he's a great sergeant major. I remember I told my first sergeant one day, I was like, hey, I came in the army to kill, you know, to blow up and shoot guns. And I ain't done that shit yet. Like, I'm ready, like, I want to go home. That's exactly what I told him. And my first sergeant was like, oh, probably going to tell me what he want to do. I was like, yeah, first I'm ready to go to home if I ain't gonna do what they told me I can do. And I'll never forget it. He grabbed me by damn shoulder, my collar. He walked me out. We walked right across the building to the sermon major's office, Sergeant major Benjamin Jacobs. And he goes, and my first sergeant name is Frank P. Burns. And he goes, tell sermon major what you just told me. I told Sarmas Charmaine I want to go to home if y' all ain't gonna let me shoot and blow up. And he's like, oh, you wanna shoot shit and blow up? Hey, careful what you wish for there. Private Glenn. Got you. And like, two days later, man, I was in on a field problem or field problem. And he attached me to another unit. So I was out there for probably two, three weeks in the field, crushing. Loved it. I'm like, dude, this is what I grew up doing in the woods. Hunting, fishing. Loved it. And then I came out of there and I got like an Impact AM for it from another unit.

[Interviewer]

An Impact am?

[Johnny Glenn]

It's just awards. It's like an army achievement medal. So they gave me an Impact am. They wrote it up like, hey, this guy, you know, is out in the woods doing this, doing this. And back then we had miles, gears, like laser tag. So, dude, I'm running around knowing it's not real. I'm like, just killing everybody. Like, I'm one man band out there. So I got back from there, and he's like, okay, well, you did pretty good. So what do you want to do with your career? I don't know. Sorry. This is what I want to do. So at that point, he tried to get me to go to a Ranger battalion at that point. And at the time, they couldn't get the paperwork to send me the range battalion. So I was like, all right, I'm stuck here for a while. So then I'm outside the company one day just looking at a Green Beret poster. Had a Green Beret and The number was 9, 1, 0. No, it was 2 5, 3 something or another 9, 1 2. And then at four digits, I'm just staring at it. We have formation 9 o' clock. Exactly. I'm staring at. I still had no clue. My commander came out, Jeffrey Butler. He goes, he's Private Glenn. I looked at him, he goes, and the poster said, do you have what it takes? That's all I said. I'm like, do you have what it takes? I understand it. And he goes, private Glenn, you think you got what it takes? I mean, I look back at it, looked at him. I go, sean, don't even know what the is, but I know I got it. That's not what I told him, dude. I had no clue to the. Like, I had no clue what a green gray was. Then he's like, yeah, yeah, I bet you do. He's like, you should go check those guys out. And I did, man. I went over the next day to first group of Fort Lewis. I went over and talked to a recruiter, and he goes, hey, man, you got to be an E4 in order to go to selection, you couldn't go as a. I was a private first class. Couldn't go as a private first class. So back when I went through selection, you had to have, I think it was two years in the military, two to three years in the military, and you had to be the rank of E4 or higher. Yeah. So I went back and I told my commander, I was like, hey, sir. They said I had to be E4. Da, da da da. He said, all right, before I leave here, you will make E4. And he kept his word, man. He stayed in the company about another four to six months maybe. I can't remember exact timeline, but one of my buddies woke me up this morning, hey, come downstairs, put on a uniform, and he got a. He got orders to go to the Pentagon and he's supposed to be in the unit another year or two.

[Interviewer]

Oh, your buddy did?

[Johnny Glenn]

No, no, my. My commander. So when he got orders to leave, he kept his word, dude. He promoted me with a waiver. So I was literally in the army for 16 months and I was getting promoted to E4.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Johnny Glenn]

Which is fast. I was fast tracking.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

So he promoted me to E4 that day. And he said, I'll never forget, he shook my hand, he said, I held up my end of the bargain, now you hold up yours. I went back over, fill out the paperwork and month, two months later, dude, I was down at Fort for Fort Bragg going to selection and what.

[Interviewer]

So the training with. With green brace. Like we've had a lot of Navy seals in here talking about buds and what they do there. It's obviously different, but I've had some Delta force guys, some army guys. I had one Green Beret, Danny hall in here who talked about training. But what was a lot of them Describe how it's more rather than team building stuff, you're doing a lot of on your own.

[Johnny Glenn]

You.

[Interviewer]

They're sending you out almost into the wilderness, so to speak. Is that what yours was like?

[Johnny Glenn]

First. Your first. Your first phase of selection is just pretty much individual week. That's all you're doing. And it's more. So it's more mine like just getting your head anything. Because you have no known distances. You're walking, you're just walking with a rock on your back. And then when you do runs, you're just running. You see an orange cone with an arrow, you turn if it's right or left, you turn and it's literally mine. It's just a mind. Yeah. You know what I mean? And then your second week is team week. That's when you're assigned to a team and you start doing your team stuff. But backing up to the first week, you're literally, you're land navin every day. And they give classes like, you know, because you have a lot of guys show up there. Never land. I have never been in the woods. So they give you, you know, land nav class. You'll do your land nav classes. After you do your land nav classes, they'll give you, like, confidence boost and stuff. You'll go out and do, like, little short points. You might do a point on a yard. Then you do 1, 500 yards. Then you do one for a click. And then after that, everything after that is 10, 12, 15, 20 clicks. And you're walking all night long to find a guy and some of these trucks. And I'll say this were assholes, because you're looking for a guy, dude, and he'll be wrapped up in a poncho with a little bit of chem light. And you're walking, looking for a chem light at night, and you can find it, but it's like, come on, dude, really? You know, I mean, my Last point was 4 to 8 clicks. And now you're basically hiding, you know, like, this is bullshit, you know? But then you find the guy, he stamps off on your. You keep moving. So then you go into team week, man. And then once you get into team week, that's where it's to see if you're a team player, how you play well with others and how you get along on a team.

[Interviewer]

And what, like, are they talking about right away? What separates green Berets? Meaning, like, you have all these different Tier 1 units across the military and. And all that, but they all do different things. So are they kind of beating home, like, what the culture of a green beret is versus others?

[Johnny Glenn]

No, they don't beat at home. You take a lot of psycho psychological evaluations before you go there. I mean, ton. So they already know the type of person you are. They know you're a type A. They know you're aggressive for the most part, most guys. And they know, like, you'll put others before yourself. Like, they just off the test, which is crazy, because you can lock 10 berets in a. In a. In a room, and you can get almost 10 alike answers. Guarantee it. Guaranteed it. Because they know what they're looking for. They looking for that person that if I put you in a room and you got to go d a mission, you can go do It. If I tell you, you got to go hand out MREs, you can go do it. If I tell you, you got to read a guy's body language, get close to that guy, use that guy as, you know, whatever. To get a, B and C, you can do that as well. So he's always say, jack of all trades, massive none. But if you take a range battalion, kid, all he wants to do is, you know, run through a building. Whereas we're going to sit back and be like, ah, why run through that front door when I can call an airstrike? Or we can tunnel into it or we can do this or we can do that. So we're going to strategically beat you instead of, you know, okay, I'm just going to go in that guns blazing.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

How about let's strategically beat the guys or the hostages in there?

[Interviewer]

So they're looking. They're looking for people with a higher degree of emotional intelligence.

[Johnny Glenn]

That's it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you can control it.

[Interviewer]

Yes, yes. Yeah. Logic, but also, like, understanding as well.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So when you talk about reading people, though, so obviously, like, they're selecting for people that they think can do that. Well, how do they. Like, sometimes it's hard for me to think about this, but you're, you know, 18, 19 years old. Like, you're young. They haven't been around you for that long. How. How do you think they picked you out as someone who had a high propensity for being able to do that? Because that's a very difficult skill.

[Johnny Glenn]

A lot of it is just like. Like you're. It's your. Your ability just to be able to adapt, basically. You mean. So they put you in a room, they might ask you a whole bunch of questions. Like they give you a language test and not even a language. It's just a bunch of. And then you have to. All right, what did I just hear? It's like a language. It's like an aptitude language test. And it's a test where it's not words. It's like me and you saying. But then you comprehend what you think you heard.

[Interviewer]

Like Kenny from South park kind of thing.

[Johnny Glenn]

Exactly. Kenny from South Park. And then. Yep. And then you go. I mean, he just said, da, da, da. And believe it or not, they got all these whizzes up there that can read that and be like, all right, dude, this guy's brain aptitude, he's more of, like, his brain thinks more of mechanically. He can break, tear shit up and then push it back together so he's going to be a weapons guy. Well, this guy right here is more analytical. This guy starts, finishes, and he does steps and stages. All right, well, this guy probably needs to be a medic. Oh, and this guy's brain's way in left field. He's out there in outer space. This guy's definitely gonna be a combo guy. Because how can you take something say, I'm gonna talk to this guy and then talk this guy? Like, yeah, you're weird. Yeah. So they do all these tests so that, you know, they kind of read in your aptitude, your brain, how fast your brain works. You might throw something at you. Be like, okay, look at this, right, and tell me what you just saw. You look and you say, I saw a water bottle. All right? Look deeper than a water bottle. What did you see? All right, I saw water that I could use for, you know, I can use it to wash my hands. I can use to clean out a wound. I got a water bottle. I can use that as a weapon. I can use it to store something. So now your brain is going way beyond just a water bottle.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Johnny Glenn]

I mean, so now you see, the brain can pass what this person is capable of and what they can do. And then once you pass election, that's when your training really starts. As far as, like, can you read people? How do you read a room? How do you judge a room? And then they send you to certain schools where you get better at it.

[Interviewer]

Where'd they put you at first in those. In those boxes you mentioned?

[Johnny Glenn]

The Bravo 18 Bravo weapons guy. Because I've always loved guns. Growing up and blowing up, dude, and aggressive. And most 18 bravos are like that, dude. Like, there's just. Most 18 barbers are the same. They have a ton of guns at their house. You know, you. You're always looking tactically. No matter what I'm doing, if I'm driving, I can go to a funeral, dude. I'm thinking tactically. Hell, I play golf and I'm like, if I was gonna hit somebody, I hit him on a golf course. Ain't nobody out here. Nobody's got gun. He's just got a golf club. Yeah, but your brain's always thinking like that, you know, I mean, like. And it never turns off. So I got put into the 18 Bravo category, which is weapons, which is what I want. Because they give you choices. You get three choices out of the jobs. I chose 18 Bravo and then 18 Charlotte, which is demolitions glowing up. And then the Last one was 18 echo.

[Interviewer]

What's that?

[Johnny Glenn]

That's the communications guy. Okay. Because that's just always been fascinating to me. Like, it's kind of weird. Like, you know, me and you can talk on a cell phone in a different state. How the does that even happen? Like, how's that voice? It's wild. So that's always fascinated me, but guns have always been, like, my first love, so. So you ended up where you're supposed to sign up. Exactly what I supposed to be. And they hit it right. They hit it right on the head. I got my first choice. And most guys do, for the most part, get their first choice. Yeah. Because they've already looked at your test. Like, yeah, this guy would be suited.

[Interviewer]

Whether you line up to line up.

[Johnny Glenn]

With it, because they're trying to set you up for success, too.

[Interviewer]

So now, what about that training you mentioned a minute ago? Once they make this decision, you talked about some of the psychological training that they actually put you through to be able to read people and stuff like that. What did that look like?

[Johnny Glenn]

So once you go to the Q course, like, you put on certain teams, and then the cadre are always evaluating you. So they might give you, say, like, that you might be in charge of the next mission. Like, they'll be like, hey, check this out. Julian, you're the new team leader for the next event. And then the next event might be, all right, guys, we got to move. Like, the sandbabies event. You got these little bitty sandbabies. They were about 60 pounds a piece. We had to move them like two, 300 yards at a time. And there's only eight to 10 guys on the team. And if you're the team leader, you got to come up with that plan how we're going to move them. Most guys are like, all right, dude, discipline. We're sticking with it. Well, if you're a smart guy, you say, hey, dude, I'm gonna take my team. Be like, hey, guys, this was our mission. What do you think we should do? Then everybody got the input. You take the best one of them, then you brief it.

[Interviewer]

Crowdsource.

[Johnny Glenn]

Exactly.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

You crowdsourcing. And we like to call that force multipliers. Now, you just made one brain. Eight different brains.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Johnny Glenn]

And those eight different brains can think together. And then you get some teams where guys come together quick. They jail, they learn. Like, hey, dude, this is our mission. Let's go get a gun. Then you got some teams where everybody's type A's like, nope, I'm in charge. I might get a no go if I don't do this. Well, at the end of the day, dude, you're screwing yourself. You mean get those guys involved? Because once you get on a team, that's all you got. That's it. Yeah. And so. And then after that you just. It progresses. After that you start doing just psychological stuff. Like, hey, you walk in a room. Or they give you a psychological test, like, hey, what'd you see in the room? You start drawing. Or you might read a passage. You might read a passage. Then they start talking about whatever. And then after that they'll say, okay, now write down everything you read, you remember about the passage you read an hour ago. I mean, so.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

Now how does your brain store information? How do you, you know, how do you characterize stuff? Like, all right, in this room right now, there's four different cups I've seen. You know, how do I characterize those cups? And put them on a table where they were on a table.

[Interviewer]

And then they're grading guys out on that too, obviously, so they can see who's the best at it.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. And how your brain capacity is working and how, you know, how do we train your brain to be better? How do we train it to be faster? Because it's just a big CPU now. How do we make it store more information and store it faster and retrieve it faster while you're getting shot at? You know, so pretty hard to do. Actually. It's not, you know, I mean, I tell people all the time, believe it or not, when you train to do something like that, it's easier to me being honest. I'd rather be. I remember I had to go speak to one of my buddies. Kids, his elementary school, his wife's elementary school kids. That was.

[Interviewer]

Talked to elementary school kids.

[Johnny Glenn]

I went and talked to elementary school kids. And I brought my body armor, I brought some nods. They were actually 4 years old. I know they were pre somewhere. The principal's like, yeah, I did not. But it was good. It was good. It was good. You know, I knew my audience. That's our first thing. Know your audience. And dude, I ain't gonna lie. I sat in the parking lot, I took my daughter with me, Lauren. And we sat in the parking lot for five minutes. No, like 15 minutes. We had to be in at 9:00', clock, at 8:50, bro, when I said I was sweating, dude, I was sweating. I was shaking. She goes, what's wrong with you, Daddy? I go, the kids. I was like, kids are. Kids are cool. You never know. They're gonna ask you.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

And she's like, are you serious right now? You're a tough Green Beret. I was like, yeah, but I'm dead serious, bro. When I got in that truck, my armpits was just wet, dude. I walked in there, and the first question I got, I'm going around the room. She introduced me as Army Johnny. This is an army veteran Johnny.

[Interviewer]

I said, she didn't introduce you as Mr. Glenn?

[Johnny Glenn]

No, no, she didn't introduce me. No. Mr. Motherfucker Glenn. How do you snap a neck? I know, right? So she introduced me as Mr. I think it was Veteran Johnny or Army Johnny. I think it was Army Johnny.

[Interviewer]

Army Johnny.

[Johnny Glenn]

And I was like, hey, I'm Army Johnny. I was like, all right, let me give you guys a background. And first kid put his hand up, it was a little Johnny, dude. I know. I was like, that would have been me. I pointed at him, I go, yeah, what's your question? She goes. He goes, have you ever driven a tank? I go, actually, I have. And then. So I look at. My first thing I do is look at my daughter, right? And I look back on the car, I go, yeah. And then this little girl raised her hand, and I pointed at. What's your question? As soon as she raised her hand, dude, I look at a little blonde hair, girl cutie. She want to be. She just starts crying, bro. Crying. Just started crying. I was like, oh. In my head, I'm like, that girl never seen a black man before. I'm like, holy, that. And you know me, like, I'm clowning, but that's what I'm thinking. I'm like, oh. Like, she literally raised her hand, dude. She's raising her hand, and I looked at her, I go, what's your question, sweetie? And she goes. And she starts crying, dude. I swear to God, I was like, what the hell? And then the teacher, of course, Ms. Christy, she goes, okay, no more questions. Let him introduce himself. I look at my daughter, dude, I think I was like, you gotta be me, man. Because right then, I was lost there. I was like, what do you do after that? And then my question, Scared.

[Interviewer]

In front of elementary school.

[Johnny Glenn]

I did, dude, everything.

[Interviewer]

Bullets flying. You're good.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, dude. Because now you're an environment where, you know. Yeah. You mean that's an environment that I know? That's environment I feel comfortable in. The environment with the kids is like, holy, dude. Like, totally out of my element. I didn't want to curse. I didn't want to swear. You mean, how am I going to present myself? I mean, I don't Want to upset the kids. And then, of course, Ms. Abigail starts crying. So now I'm like. I mean, now I'm about to get an EO complaint, and I just got there. So I was like, you got to be me, dude. But, yeah, so, you know, anytime you're doing things that you know, just like, you know, if you did something growing up your background, like, say you grew up playing golf, someone put a golf club in your hand, you hit the golf ball, you know what you're doing. Somebody never played golf. And you got a thousand people watching, they're like, oh, oh, I'mma this up, right? So you just go back to your training, so. Which is easy because you've done that your whole career.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it's a big thing about all. All the Special Forces guys I talk with. I mean, the military in general. But it's like they just beat things into your head over and over and over again. So that even situations that may appear insane to normal people like me are. You've done it. You've done it thousands of times, and you're like, all right, I'm just gonna let instinct take over.

[Johnny Glenn]

And that's it. That's exactly what happens, too. You just let the training kicks in. And it's not even training at that point. It's your body.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Johnny Glenn]

It kind of knows. Knows what you're listening for. It knows what you're looking for. It's playing chess. Like in a firefight. You living in the now, but your brain is playing chess with what's going on. Especially if you're in a leadership position, you're playing chess with what's going on. So if I know guys are shooting me from over here, and I know where my guys are, my brain is trying to predict, all right, if we kill those guys right there, and that's going to in this. But what if those guys flex to this spot that I might need to get a guy, two or three guys over here. And the beauty of it is, when you're on a team like my team, dude, my first team at SF, I was on that team for 12 years. My second team, nine years. So we knew each other like the back of our hands. How many of those teams? 12. They try to be 12 man teams. When I first came to SF, I think our highest was eight, nine guys got it because you just didn't have very tight knit, very tight net. Damn me. Troy Letter, Vic Combs, Dwayne Jones, Dave Glenda. I mean, tight, tight. So these guys are already thinking like, we're already Thinking like, our minds are already thinking, like, all right, dude, we need to get this spot. Kill these guys. Or we know they're moving this spot, because that's what we would do. You mean so you're already moving to it. So you're already thinking, like the guy to your left and right. So you don't have to say much. You just kind of. Well, we said let the guns do the talking.

[Interviewer]

Let the. I like that.

[Johnny Glenn]

Let the guns.

[Interviewer]

Guns do the talk.

[Johnny Glenn]

Let the guns do the talking. Yeah. Yeah. And as a matter of fact, I might have him pull up something on the Internet. It's called 18 saves my life.

[Interviewer]

A 10 saves my life.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, 18 saves my life. He pulls it up, and you'll see me on the radio here. We're in a firefight, and we got in a. It was a close ambush right there. That's it. If you scroll towards the end of, like, it's a near end, but it says 15. 20. Insurgent.

[Interviewer]

Now. When was this from?

[Johnny Glenn]

This was in 2014. 15. I think that's Rusty on the gun right there. My boy, Rusty Cotterman. Rusty's my dude. He's a good dude. If you fish, he's on the saw. So right there, there's a definitely where the ground just drops off. And you can see, like, right where to see where the dark green tree in the background. Light green tree in the background is. You see how the hill just goes down?

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Johnny Glenn]

Those guys are right there in a gully. So they're basically shooting like this. Whoa. And you can hear him saying. So you hear me right here? If you back it up just a little bit. I just came up to Rusty. Well, in the back of the truck, somebody said, Rusty got hit. While I was in the back. I'm in the back doing my thing back there when they said Rush got hit, Rusty's like, my mini Me dude. Love that kid. Love everybody on their death. Love everybody on the team to death. But you always got that one guy that you gravitate to. Yeah. Me and Russ just kind of gravitated to each other because Rusty was a lot like. When I first met Rusty, I didn't like Rusty. I go, why don't I like this dude? And one day I looked at him and said, you know what Rusty said? What's that, Johnny? I do. I didn't like you when I first met you, but I know why now. He goes, why? I go, you were me, motherfucker. When I first got the group. Like, he was that guy that every time you came Here every morning, he held everybody to a stand, like, we got to do more pt. And I was like, what, God, dude. When I first got there, like, oh, yeah, dude, you. We need to be working out every day. We need to be getting it. Well, when they said Rusty got hit, we had infantry guys attached to us. And when they said Russia got hit, dude, for once in my life, I was like, oh, and my. At that point, I just wanted to get to Rusty, dude. Like, I had to get to him. And I remember I came all the way up from the back, and when I got up there, when you hear this, you're hit on there. You hear me saying, these fucking guys need to fuck off the radio. They just said Rusty was hit, and they didn't say Russell hit. But that's what I heard. I was like, we got a bunch of chatty caddies on. He was good. And I was like, we got a bunch of chatty caddies on the radio station. And, dude, after this firefight, I went in there at night to the infantry kids. Oh, dude, I lit in their ass. I was like, look here, don't get on the radio. The guns do talking. If you can hear the gun, the way he was shooting up there, he was fine. Yeah, but there was just so much gunfire, dude. We. They had RPGs coming. He just couldn't tell.

[Interviewer]

And their training's not on the same level.

[Johnny Glenn]

It's not on the same level we train them, but it went on the same level. You see the trucks in the background. If you fast forward and listen, you're going to hear.

[Interviewer]

That's insane, by the way.

[Johnny Glenn]

But you're going to hear the 18s come in, dude. And they don't want. You hear the gun runs. Once they came in, you'll hear rushing like, yeah, hey, tell them they clear hot for immediate re attack. JTAC sent him back through. They did another clear. Then we walked in. We cleared all that, dude.

[Interviewer]

And how many guys were down there?

[Johnny Glenn]

That was in the. We probably. We had about 12. That was just mangled, dudes all up. It was more than that. I know it was more than that because. What did you say this was, by the way? Afghanistan? 18. That's in Afghanistan. 18? Yeah. That's another pass right there. Robot pass.

[Interviewer]

What year is this?

[Johnny Glenn]

I think it was 2014, if I'm not mistaken. I'm pretty sure it's 2014.

[Interviewer]

It's just crazy there.

[Johnny Glenn]

That's a 10. Just came in then. Now, once ATN comes in, dude, guys start scattering. They start running. Yeah, but they can take that gully. This is what makes Afghanistan.

[Interviewer]

It's like an angel coming in for you guys.

[Johnny Glenn]

That it is, dude. It's like angel coming. You just sit back here. You see the guy sit back like this. Like, you're like, yeah. Now you just get brave. Do you stand up, walk around? You're like, yeah, let's. Let's do this, you know? But we had. Yeah, we had our. We were back there. That's infantry kids, right? And they did a phenomenal job. Ten mountain kids.

[Interviewer]

Except on the radio.

[Johnny Glenn]

Stepped on the radio. Yeah, dude, they were on the radio. I don't know if they thought they were on their own team freak or what, but. And that was. That was Dan. I just got a brain fart on the 60 millimeter right there. He's firing up six. We're firing 60 millimeters, and he's just hand firing it. Dude, that thing right there is a. A money saver one.

[Interviewer]

A money saver.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. When you're just a team, dude. Because we only got like, we got an M4s on our trucks, got a Mark 19s and we got our 50 cows. But with that thing right there, dude, it's air weapons. So you could drop, you know, six millimeter rounds. I think the blast rate is what, 60 yards at 90 yards, that'll do. Yeah. So you just do. And you just. And you see him, he's just dropping them. Dude just. He dropped left and right somewhere in Lockheed Martin.

[Interviewer]

They're like.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. And you see them, the infantry kids, see how good they're doing. They got a chain. One of the kids are setting a. So you set a charge on it, and it tells you, like, you want to do 1, 2. Yeah, you set a charge, like a 1, 2 or 3 charge on it, and that tells you how far it's going to shoot. So if you see him right now, they're right there next to it, so he's elevating high. So that thing's going to go up and come right back down.

[Interviewer]

And it can actually. You can get it to a pretty close. Yeah, you can get it pretty good. Exactly what you want.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, you get it pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Whoa. Yep.

[Interviewer]

And this is 2014.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, it's 2014.

[Interviewer]

What do we got in 2015? AI versions of this?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, 2015. Yeah. 2015.

[Interviewer]

20, 25.

[Johnny Glenn]

Well, now on the trucks now with the. With the AI and the technology they got, now you got sights on a truck now, you know, 1800 rounds or 1800 meters, you're getting first round hits just the way that the site's set up. Once you zero machine. Yeah, it is. It's crazy. And what the kids are doing back there, you see they're taking those. If you can rewind that. See him back there? He's taking those yellow things off. We want to just see in his hand right there. He's holding that. He's holding that round. It's got a yellow thing on it. That yellow thing is actually. He just took them off. See on the back of it, the tailspin of it. There's nothing on it. Well, it got charges on it that are like gunpowder. If you go back, you can see it when you take those off, that lessens the distance that those are going to fire. So right now he's taking that powder charge off. We're still going to ignite, but it's just going to only fire so far. He should have been taking them off right then.

[Interviewer]

Putting that thing around like a football.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, he's just. Yeah, you can throw them like back in Vietnam, believe it or not, they just take those things and hit it on the ground and they would throw them. And I think. Don't quote me, he just took it off. But I think it's 13 evolutions when it turns. It arms itself.

[Interviewer]

It arms itself.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. See the city yellow thing in his right hand in the back, back there, you can barely see it.

[Interviewer]

So you throw it like a spiral.

[Johnny Glenn]

You throw it like a spiral. And after I think it's 13, it arms itself. And anytime, I guess the. The Vietcong would get in a wire or get close to wire, they would just hit them on rocks and throw them, arm them. And then it was just. It was like, whoa. It was just, you know, at that point, it's like throwing grenades. That's crazy. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So that's the Charge Sane footage right here, by the way.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, it's a head cams, man. We had to stop wearing them, though, you know, I mean, because.

[Interviewer]

Why'd you have to stop wearing.

[Johnny Glenn]

Because people get stupid, man. You know, people are like, oh, my God, you know, innocent women and children are getting killed. Or, you know, what are you doing? And. And no offense, but. And this is what I tell people. It is so easy to sideline quarterback.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Johnny Glenn]

Like, I can see in a sideline quarterback. What we could have done a lot better. We did good there. What? We could have did a lot better. What? We could do a lot worse. But what I hate is when I get a sideline quarterback that plays like. Do you play video games? You play Halo, bro.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And they do it in slow mo.

[Johnny Glenn]

You do it in slow motion.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

Just like. We brought some guys out. When I first got in military, I was working for a company called Oak Grove. We brought us some CNN reporters, and I was in charge of the range.

[Interviewer]

CNN reporters.

[Johnny Glenn]

CNN reporters.

[Interviewer]

Sorry to hear that.

[Johnny Glenn]

I know. We brought us. I think they were from cnn, if I'm not mistaken. I think they're from cnn. Don't quote me, but I think I'm cnn. I'm pretty sure. But what I did was I put them in. Put them in full battle gear, gave him blue barrels, and we took blue tips. I got in the center of the room. They would come in the room, do not light their asses up. Just light them up. And then I'll ask them, I say, how. How long did you have to make that decision? And then I put targets in there. We call them shoot no shoot targets. And I think every reporter shot a no shoot target every time, whether it was a kid or a child. And I go, granted, you haven't been trained. And we're. We're having them doing a slow motion. They're not running through the room.

[Interviewer]

We should have milk this. You child killer.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, I know, dude. I did. I said that at one point. I go, hey, you want to film this right here and release this? And the guy started laughing. He's pretty cool. He took it well. But I told him, I was like, but when y' all sideline quarterback stuff, you want to tell us what we should be seeing? And we're not even shooting real rounds back at you.

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Johnny Glenn]

Your buddy didn't just get hit in the floor. And you're still trying to fight that next room. Like, you're doing it with paintball rounds. And you know you're going home tonight. What's the worst? We break skin because you hit your hand. That's about it. Yeah. And I was like, so next time you write a report or something, you reporting on something like this, just think about that. That operator's, you know, mentality. Just like policemen. I think they got the worst job in the world, dude.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, they're also. And by the way, they're not as truly as trained.

[Johnny Glenn]

Not at all.

[Interviewer]

Forget even Green Berets. But like. Like some of the most basic training, they put them in the worst position. You see some of these videos, like, some are. Are bad. And you're like, okay, I don't know that guy. And then you'll see other ones, and you'll be like, yo, no offense. That's a donut patrolman.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Like, he couldn't even get his gun out.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know, it looks like. Oh, my God, what's that movie where he's like.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, like the burning FIFO movies. Freeze. Yeah, exactly. This was over before I started. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, but so they made you guys. You wore that. You used to wear the head cams, and now they don't let you do that anymore.

[Johnny Glenn]

No, no. Some guys are still wearing. But our team, we stopped wearing them.

[Interviewer]

Now, was that your call or.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, it was the leadership call. And then if we did wear them, we come back like what we wore it for. Believe it or not, it was more for us. What are the ttps that they're. But that. That they're doing, like, that pass right there. We drove to that pass all the time. We got hit all the time. Yeah. So we would go back and look at me like, hey, dude, they're hitting us here. So if they hitting us in a certain spot, we would set up what's called a ttp. I'm in a trp, and that's just a target. We set up a target right there where if that's a target already set up, we would already have pre fire set for that target.

[Interviewer]

What do you mean, pre fire?

[Johnny Glenn]

So if we're going to do a mission, we know we're going through the pass. I will call up, like field artillery. I will call up our jtac, will call up the fast movers and be like, hey, dude, this grid right here, this is a TRP we're setting up because we get hit from there all the time. So now when the fast movers come in, they already know where they're going to shoot.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Johnny Glenn]

If it's coming from that direction. So when you get in a firefight, for the most part, it's all about time and direction. It's all about time. You mean how much time you got? How fast can you eliminate the enemy and move to the next target? Period.

[Interviewer]

How many firefights you think you were in?

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, my God, in your career, so many fucking deployments, dude. I say a few hundred at least, right? Yeah, it's got to be that few hundred easily, if not more. I definitely say a few hundred, but now, did you get.

[Interviewer]

Did you. I mean, obviously your training, we talked about that. Like, they really prepare you for it. So your instinct. Kick kicks in. But still when it's happening afterwards, like, you're like, whoa, my adrenaline was nuts. Did it ever get to a point where you're like, just another day at the office where it really set in that way.

[Johnny Glenn]

That is. It is. Wow. Those are the days, though, when you're scared. Like, not scared. Those are the days. I used to always tell my guys, put your fun tower on and get your together. As you always say, put your funeral on. Get your together. Because when you start, because I've done that before and I want to be a hypocrite, but when you start looking at, like, just another day at the office, that's when you slip.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

That's when you don't see something that you should have seen or you don't pick up something like a pink rock. That's a idiot initiation point. Or an ambush initiation point. You missed that blue painted, you know, pile of rocks on the side of the road because you're like, another day at the office. I'm just relaxing, you know.

[Interviewer]

My buddy Jim Diorio has been on the podcast a bunch. He was a special forces guy. Later, FBI was West Point before all that. But he talks about, like, the gift of fear.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. And.

[Interviewer]

Oh, you know, he's been doing this all his life. Very similar to you. And it's like when. When the hairs aren't standing up on the neck.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah, that's not good.

[Interviewer]

Wrong.

[Johnny Glenn]

That's not good.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

Anytime we go through the robot pass right there where that firefight was shot at. Every time we hit the robot pass, dude, all my guys would be like, you could see it. You look back in the truck and guys are up, eyes are scared, like, you know, dude, okay, it's time to get it. Just like in Maruf, in the Maruf Island, Afghanistan, you knew, like, hey, dude, you go into Maru, if you get in that firefight, that's a wild, wild west. Like, anytime, guys.

[Interviewer]

Why was it so crazy in that part?

[Johnny Glenn]

Because guys know how to fight there, you know, I mean, the Afghans, all the dumb ones. I always say we kill early. The dumb ones you kill early. We killed the dumb ones. I would say from 2001 to about 2008, 2009, you don't. Wiped out all the dumb. All the young fighters just going out there shooting, spraying and praying. After 2000, you know, 6, 7, 8 ish, now you're fighting the guys that fought, you know, the Musedine. Yeah. The guys have been fought in their whole lives. They know how to hide, they know how to jump back. They know the terrain. You know, these aren't the kids that are playing Halo. I'm trying to get my body count up. Not so that's when those guys, like, all right, dude, we hit them on our terms, then they start learning. You know, I can hit them at the first of the month or mid month, where your loom is less. Because at one point we own the night. And then our nods got so bad that we just start borrowing the night. And then you can buy nods on the regular economy, on the black economy, I should say now, you know, you got Eunice out there or you got Taliban. I do it night vision. It might not be the best. People are like, oh, but it's crap. Yeah, dude, but it's something. Yeah. I mean, so now we don't own the night no more. So if we walk around our floodlights on think we're the only one. I can see it and it's 12 of us, then you just shooting the girl. Just take your gun and point it at that floodlight and shoot. So, you know, we started just, you know, I think once, you know, the war went on, they progressed just like we progressed, you know. And that's just what you do.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. It's a sad reality.

[Johnny Glenn]

It is.

[Interviewer]

I think that's pretty accurately put. It's crazy, like, looking at your career, I don't know if you can look at it this way, because, like, you're. You're in it. You know, you're so focused on the here and now at every point of it. But looking back now, you live through the complete trials of modern history here.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

You get in, what, like three years before 9 11.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yep.

[Interviewer]

Right. So you're in there, you do mission. We're going to talk about that in a minute. You do missions in. In Europe, you know, in the Balkans, which is like a forgotten part of history, which is crazy to me. And then 911 happens, and you're in Afghanistan, you're in Iraq, and you see it at the beginning where it's like, okay, we're doing well. Then we're like, why the are we going to Iraq? Then Iraq goes south, Then Afghanistan starts falling off and getting crazy again. And then, you know, by the time you leave, it's pretty clear what's going to be happening. Like, do you ever think about the gravity of. Of the history books you actually live through?

[Johnny Glenn]

I do, I do. And then all the stories, too. I mean, just not me, but all the guys and all the stories. Because you've seen it. I remember when I first came to army, which was crazy. It was a peacetime army. I used to tell guys, I remember when I got an SF dude, I was like. And I'M not talking about my Greenberry brother, but I'm talking about him. I'd see a bunch of fat dudes. I'm like, what the fuck, dude? Like, I didn't come here for this because I was a young guy when I got there. Young, very young. I was like, 20, 21 years old. Most of the guys on the team, like I was saying earlier, you had to be an E4 to go to selection. So most guys joined the army. You were at E4. You were at least 23, 24, 25 years old.

[Interviewer]

Fast tracked.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, I got fast track, so I joined it early. So when I got to my first. When I got the third group, dude. Well, I got to the team. I was the youngest guy on the team for a long time. Just because most of the guys there were in their mid-30s. Early to mid-30s, at least. Maybe late 20s, but early mid-30s. So I got to the team, dude. I mean, I lie about my age all the time. How old are you? 28, 29. Lie my ass up, dude. Because I remember we would go do PT and I'd be like, dude, that's all we're doing. Yeah, because they were older guys, and I get it. And then I remember when the war first kicked off, our first deployment went on. Our first deployment, six months. We came back. I remember we came back. Half of our company, man, Bravo company, a lot of guys were getting out. They were tiring. And I called them. I called them paper range guys.

[Interviewer]

Paper range?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, paper range. Like on the paper shooting paper, dude. They were on it. These guys walked around with scare me badges. They got the halo badges, Scoopy badge. I'm like, when I first got them, like, man, I want to be like that guy. I want to be just like that guy. But then when those bullets really start. Fine, dude. And we started losing, dude. Guys are like, man, I'm two years from retiring. I got 25 years in. I'm done. Yeah. And I was like, what the is going on? Why are guys getting out? Maybe I was still young and dumb, but I was like, why are guys getting out? And I remember, dude, our company was. We lost a lot of dudes in our company, man. Just, I'm done. They were out. And I get it. You mean, they had my high priorities, you know? But I was more like, dude, let's go get it. You know what I mean? Exactly. I have families and shit. And I was more like, you get.

[Interviewer]

Used to the business aspect of it, and you realize, oh, no, this is real business.

[Johnny Glenn]

It's Real business. Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't a paper tower where nobody shooting back, dude. I remember guys that I freaking idolized on the range, dude. Like, you see him shooting, you're like, that dude can burn it down. Then you get back off a deployment where, you know, rounds are cracking off around your head. A couple guys get shot through and throughs, and it's like, all right, dude, I'm. I'm. This ain't what I'm doing. You know what I mean? Like, hey, it's a young man's game. You know what I mean?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

And I get it.

[Interviewer]

I had another guy, my friend Joe Ted. I was in here as well. He was another Army. Army guy and ended up CIA ground branch. But he had talked about his whole career. He was his Marines, and then left and then went to the army and was in that for, like, 10, 11 years. But it was during the peacetime, and it was like he never went anywhere. And so he, you know, he knows his training. He knows. He knows he can do it. But when he was asked to go into CIA ground branch, he would do there. Was that almost like that second thought, like, well, wait a minute, I haven't been out there, right? Like, this shit's about to get real. And obviously it turned out he could handle it, and it turned out great for him. But I always wonder, like, you know, you get so used to your surroundings, you get used to your habits, you get used to your training. But, you know, if that. If. If you do so many years where the actual adrenaline thing, the main thing isn't there, and then suddenly it is like, that can probably. With your head.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah. That's what's with a lot of veterans now. Like, especially soft guys. I'll speak for soft guys, because I'm. But that's hurting us now. Guys are taking own lives. You hear about it every day. Man, there's so many veterans killing themselves, which is terrible. But a lot of that has to do with that. Like, you think about it. For 21 years, I told people, for 21 years, every day, I'm surrounded by guys like Rusty Cotterman, you know, Damarnae King, Alan Williams, Will Wright. I'm surrounded by guys that are type A personalities, like me, Big Mike, Dick. You know, Dick. All these guys. Baby Jesus, as we called him. Baby Jesus. Yeah, Baby Jesus. But you surrounded by these guys. Troy Leter, you know, I'm surrounded by guys. Dave and, you know, Big Juice. I'm surrounded by guys that are type A personality, want to be the best dude. No matter what I was telling him driving here, dude, if my team would have landed at the airport and we were driving from the airport to come here, it had been a. It would have been an unknown race. We'd have passed you, you'd have passed us. We'd have passed you. You'd have passed us, and then you'd have walk by my, kicked your ass. Like, shut the up. Dude wasn't racing. Oh, it's always a race. It's always a competition. So when these guys are living like that and you've been at war for two decades now, all of a sudden you pull these guys out of this. How do you feed that animal? That's right. It's just like, I tell. Like I used to tell guys all the time, like, when they would ask me, whenever you get a new guy on the team, they'd be like, hey, Johnny, what's combat like? I was like, dude, just revert back to your training. I said, when you first start your first firefight, it's gonna be fast to you. Second firefight is still gonna be fast. Third four firefight is gonna start to slow down. By your fifth, sixth firefight, it's gonna be like, all right, dude, this shit's moving in slow motion.

[Interviewer]

Is it slowing down because you're making fewer decisions in your head, Meaning you're not thinking about every single goddamn thing around you like the first time. You're like that thing, that thing, that thing.

[Johnny Glenn]

Whereas, no, no, you're still thinking about. You still think about autumn things. You're. You're. I call it Your. Your computer processor, okay, it can just process them so much faster now, right?

[Interviewer]

So it appears like it's slow.

[Johnny Glenn]

It feels like it's slow, Mo, but it's still moving the same speed. But just like I do some work, some athletes, and I always ask athletes, can you control time? And I always tell them, there's 60 seconds in a minute, there's 20, there's 60 minutes in an hour, there's 24 hours in a day. Can you control any of that? And a lot of guys, you get yeses and you get no's. I say, I'm not gonna say you control time, but you can control what you do in that time. Just like you say, Albert Pujol is one of the best natural raw hitters in baseball.

[Interviewer]

Incredible.

[Johnny Glenn]

The reason why that baseball never moved fast to him.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, even his swing looks slow, Mo.

[Johnny Glenn]

Because everything moves slow to him. You mean? That's why, you know, he can play at that level. Because. And I tell people, like, I'll be with parents, they'll be like, you think my kid's a D1 athlete? I'm like, nope. D3 at best. How can you say that? He's 14 years old. I go, because at 14 years old, that game's fast as to him. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Hey, guys, if you haven't already subscribed, please hit that subscribe button. It's a huge, huge help.

[Johnny Glenn]

Thank you. And the difference between D3, D2 and D1 is the speed of the game. And if it's already faster than D3, D2 is going to swallow him. D1, he'll never. He'll never excel. So send him to a juco. Let him get, you know, that speed of the game. If his body can actually pick up the speed of the game and be faster, send him to D2 or D1.

[Interviewer]

Crazy. You can see that 14.

[Johnny Glenn]

You can see the 14 day. See the 14. And it might be something as simple as, My son was a phenomenal baseball player. I hit him a ground ball one time, he's probably 12. And he went to field it likes right here. But he caught it right here. I looked at my ex. I go, did you see that? She goes, see what? I go, did you see that? She goes, see what? I go, right there. He just showed. You had. And he missed it. And my ex go, what are you doing? My son goes, mommy, I just tried to fill the ground ball with my hand with the glove, and he hit a rock. Here's a rock right here. And I caught it with my hand. And he picked the robin through the rock up. Mom, I'm Spider Man. And I told my wife, I said, first off, he saw the ball, he saw the glove, and he saw a rock, and he caught the ball with his bare hand. You can't teach that. Yeah, you can't teach that.

[Interviewer]

Processing.

[Johnny Glenn]

But he was processing since he was about 8 because I was training him. Dude, he used to go to. We got Thor, which is our gym. He's going to work with our training. Thor. That's. Yeah, but he would go there and we got these reaction boards on the wall where you would. Yeah, he's been doing that since he was like this old. So I'm like, your reaction time should be good. You've been training since you were, you know.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Johnny Glenn]

Six or seven.

[Interviewer]

Young.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah, dude. He would go work out our trainers. I would go to work and he would go to Thor.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. My friend Luisa, Nicola, she's been on the podcast, episode 230 but she's a neurophysiologist.

[Johnny Glenn]

Nice.

[Interviewer]

So she works with everything from like extremely high level, like billionaire executives to pro athletes. And she. And obviously you're 100, right? It's way easier to teach this stuff when you're young.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh yeah.

[Interviewer]

But she'll work with guys who are, you know, 27, 28, 29, or executives who could be in their 40s, and she does all this stuff with them to improve their reaction time and build Alessia. I'm gonna up the terms here and she's going to kill me. But what's it like? Neuroplasticity.

[Johnny Glenn]

Neuroplasticity.

[Interviewer]

Is that right?

[Johnny Glenn]

That's it.

[Interviewer]

I got that right.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yes, she did.

[Interviewer]

Look at that.

[Johnny Glenn]

That's it.

[Interviewer]

But like there is, you see some guys, Albert Pulse is a great example. When he was in his prime, that was the best baseball player I've ever seen. There's just some guys where it just looks different and they're like, you just know, like there's something there. Like when they, there had to be a day when they were a teenager, you know, in his case, playing pickup baseball or playing in some game where he realized, oh shit, not everyone else can do this.

[Johnny Glenn]

See, I, I, I think the great ones, like I will Pujols, they never notice it.

[Interviewer]

Never.

[Johnny Glenn]

I don't think he ever, I think for a person like Alba Pujos or guys that are in combat are soft guys, I think you're great operators. They never notice that because they want to keep you. You're hungry. Like I'm always hungry. Yeah, you mean. Because I think once you notice it, you're at the top. To stay at the top. If you never notice that, you're always hungry. You know, somebody could be better. But once you realize that, it's like, all right, I don't have to practice that hard. I'm not going to say they don't notice it. I think that when they notice it, to be great, like Michael Jordan, he knew he had another gear. He knew, like, I can turn this on in four quarter, I can score 15 points. But what him and Kobe did was they kept practicing.

[Interviewer]

That's right, they kept practicing. That's right.

[Johnny Glenn]

They kept practicing. They trying to, you know, perfect their craft. But I think the ones, the truly ones that got that true gift. If you can add that with the, the mindset to be better, to want, like Rusty dude, there's no stopping that person. Yeah, no, stop that person.

[Interviewer]

I agree with you. I think, I think there probably is like the one thing I'd say is the guys like the pool hoses or like the LeBron James or Allen Iverson who was 510 buck 55 soaking wet, but had a 48 inch vertical. Like there was probably a point where they realized, okay, I'm in a higher class.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

But the reality is, and I could say the same thing about the military, when you're playing at the tier one level or whatever, there's a lot of other that have that natural ability too. So you better be on it because they're gonna be better than you are.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. And you're gonna be on the bench.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

Because you think about like, if. If you take an SF guy and this happens, say SF guy goes to OCS Officer Candidate school and you send him back to the 82nd to a regular infantry unit, Right. As soon as he walks in there, that commander, he's probably gonna put that guy in his best platoon because he knows what he's bringing to the table. Dude, you, Jeff, you basically, you just left the professional. Now you come back down to jv, so we already know what you're capable of. Just like if, say Alpu always get hurt, you send him back down to, you know, triple A ball or, or triple three ball or whatever. Triple A ball, you already know. Once he gets there, it's just to get him back into mechanics. That's it. But you know what he's capable of. So when you take a Green Beret or a soft guy or ranger guy or whatever, you moved him back down to a line unit, he's probably going to be the rock star there. No if, ands or buts about. I guarantee it. Yeah, he's a rock star there. Because he just came from here to go back down here. So to him, he's on cruise control. Yeah, he can do that in his sleep. Dude, I go back to amateur unit. I could do that in my sleep. Well, I literally do that in my sleep. All right, dude. Cool.

[Interviewer]

Bunch of pussies around here.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, you guys can get your shit together. You know what I mean? Seriously. And I would train them probably like how we train. Yeah. And I've actually done that before. Like we've had 80 second squads come out there and you try to train them. How we train shooting wise. Like we shoot North Carolina next week. I'll show you.

[Interviewer]

That's what I'm saying. Training us like this next week you'll.

[Johnny Glenn]

Do single shots and then we'll go control pairs and then we'll go double taps and you'll be doing all the stuff to how do I reacquire different targets?

[Interviewer]

He's already got this planned out. We talked about this 10 minutes ago.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah. How are we going to do target acquisitions, you know, Johnny, how do I shoot this target while I'm watching that target? All that stuff, dude. So I remember my TR. We trained some 80 second guys and I started showing them that. And the team, the squad is like, no, no, no, don't need to learn that. I'm like, they don't. Dude, you get in a firefight if you already put in two rounds. And I got my eyes should be transitioned to the next target, period. Just put him, put two in him. Now go back to him. Now go back to him. And that's just thing that's basically coming from professional going back down to jv.

[Interviewer]

It's also like, and I mean this in a good way, like you had, you had such an advantage here. Not just the timing of coming in when you did what ended up going down, but also the fact that you did get fast tracked and it's literally all you knew.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Like in a sense, like you were at the very beginning, like your basic training. Then boom, go to Green Berets within a year or something like that. And now you're at that highest level and that's the bar that you're in the NBA.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. You know, and you can't come down from that. Yeah. And guys you saw just like right now I run ultras, I run marathons. And guys are always saying, like, why are you always running? I'm like, do. What if some shit pop off tomorrow? Like, seriously, like, what if something happened tomorrow? You know? I mean, like, you never know. I'm ready. Yeah. We used to talk about the subway. Do something pop off and dude jumps out of the subway and takes off running. You fucked up, dude. I'm old, but I can still get it. I'm gonna run your ass down. You mean, you know, run you down, put hands on you. And you're like, hey, I got him right here. Come on in here. You know what I mean? But then I look at guys and I tell my SF brother this all the time. Soft guys, military guys in general, not just SF guys. We get out, dude, and we lose that, that sense of. Not pride, but we lose that sense of purpose is what I like to call it, his purpose. Because, dude, I got buddies right now, man. I'm talking that we're studs. They can barely walk through that door. I'm like, look at you, man. You like, you Had a small Asian child. Just small, bro. It's like, I do, man. I called him out. And the ones that I call out, my buddies that I call out, that are true. Dude, I'm gonna throw my buddy Gene, Gene Harris on the bus. We went and played golf down in Florida.

[Interviewer]

Oh, no.

[Johnny Glenn]

I'm gonna have Gene watch this. I said, gene, you used to be the Venus I knew, dude. Good looking brother, man, he's just yoked, man. Just you look at him be like, I wouldn't. That dude, you just. And he carried himself like, dude, he was a stud. Well, he retired. His wife retired. He got him look going on his. Gene, what the hell going on, bro? And he's like, you know what, Johnny, you right, bro. And now he's back on a workout regime. Ain't looking good, dude. Looking.

[Interviewer]

I'm like, great in 30 days.

[Johnny Glenn]

I know. I'm like, hey, you need to slow down, Gene. Slow down, bro. Like, you making me look bad now, you know, but now he's looking good, dude. Now he's calling out other brothers like, hey, man, look at you. Look at like Julio, Greg and all them guys. Everybody now, man. I golf with all my buddies now, bro. They're starting back to work out. They're starting back to get that purpose way. Dude, you're a Green Beret. I don't want to know about what you used to do. And what you were is what can you do for me now? Yeah, if I call you and tell you some other just kidnapped my daughters, I want to know that. Hey, bro, we got to move 2k to go get my daughter back. That I ain't calling a med back because you fell out after a mile and you couldn't make it or, you know, God forbid you die because you're unhealthy. And now Johnny Glenn's gotta be a father to your kids. And nobody wants that. You know, I'm big. Nobody. None of my friends want that Real. Yeah, that kid's gonna be some real dumb as hell. Just anger as hell. Just want to shoot. Like, what did you teach them? I bet they can zero fast, you know, so. But yeah, I still my buddies about that, man. Just. It's all about your part of your environment.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. But you know, it's also like, I think about this with pro athletes too. You know, they spend their entire lives assuming they were good in high school, obviously, and like playing at a high level where everything's like scheduled out for them. They're training all the time. They're on, they're on they're on, they're basically working a 60 hour a week job from the time they're 15. And then if they, you know, when they go pro and they turn in this great, you know, 15 year career, now you get up to 36, 37, you retire. The only thing you've known for more than half your life is this schedule and this constant move. And now suddenly it's like you might have millions of dollars or something, but.

[Johnny Glenn]

You'Re like, what do I do with it? What the fuck? Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

And it's the same for you guys in the sense that they're not paying you millions of dollars, unfortunately, but like you're going home and every day, especially if you were in a wartime era, there was some sort of overhanging idea of life and death and just the man beside you. And you're in these really tight knit, in your case, like, you know, 10, 12 man teams. You know, you're going all these places, you're doing 15 deployments everywhere. And now it's like, I'm gonna go play golf to it. Yeah, like that's, that's gotta be tough.

[Johnny Glenn]

I'll tell you what, and it's funny you said that because the military is getting all right, and you know, I'm a, I'm a member of team Red, White and Blue. And we'll get into that, but we're about to run and fly across America. But anyways, we'll get in that later. But what I like about Team Red, White and Blue, what they're doing is just like task force, Dagger, Greenberry foundations, they get in like minded people around each other. So like I was telling you earlier, if you get a bunch of green berries in a room, you give them a test for soft guys. You probably get the same answers. So in other words, we speak the same language. So where I think the military in general, all these nonprofit organizations, for the most part, where I think they were getting it wrong was they were sending us all off to get fixed. Hey, send this guy to get psychedelic treatment. Send this guy to talk to his best doctor in the world. Send him to go get his brain fixed. Send him to go get tbi. Well, the sad part about it was you sending him, this guy to all these places to get fixed. Then he's coming right back to an environment that he, he knows in an environment that's toxic to him. In that environment, usually is his wife and kids. Not that his wife and kids are toxic. It's just that you just send him off and he's Fixed. Now he comes back and he walks into a room. I did it with my ex. You walk into a room, you think you're all fixed. Now she's just poking a bear. She don't know the things that trigger me, but she's gonna poke the bear. Not before you know it. I'm pissed off of her for no fucking reason other than she poked a bear. But what they're starting to do now, which I like, is they're incorporate. If we're sending Johnny Glenn off to get help, his wife and kids are going with him. That way, they see you put them in a room, and they understand, like, hey, reason why Dad's checking the locks three, four times a night because he don't want to happen to y'. All. It's not these paranoid. Stop saying he's paranoid. He just want to make sure. Hey, dude, let me double check, double check, double check, recheck. Because guess what? I don't have Rusty Cotterman laying in the room next to me. I don't have Alan William in the truck right next to me. Will Wright's not on security right now. Big Wolf's not in the truck, you know, monitoring the radio. So guess what? It's just me now. So now I got to make sure those locks are checked. I got to make sure those windows are locked. I got to peep in your bedroom, make sure you're fine people. I don't want to make sure nobody's driving through the neighborhood acting crazy, then.

[Interviewer]

They'Ve never seen the Hills of Torah.

[Johnny Glenn]

And you bring it home. And so. And then for the military to think that. And that's what kills me about the military. They want, you know. And I got into it, my commander one time, I had a guy that was about to get a dui, and I went off on my commander about they weren't giving a DUI because he went to a club. He parted all night, went to sleep in his truck. Cop pulls up, he's got a cop running. Got his car running. Cop tries to give him a dui. Well, they end up giving me a dui, but he beat it. And I told my command he did everything right. Dude. He did everything right.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

He's sitting in his truck sleeping it off.

[Interviewer]

That's a crazy rule.

[Johnny Glenn]

He did everything right. Did everything right. And I was like, if you didn't get that guy a DUI for that right there, you might as well fire my whole team, because we're walking out. We're done.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

And you're about to leave About. You're about to lose about 12, $13 million.

[Interviewer]

My cousin had that happen to him. He went. He was somewhere far away from home. He was at like a party and he was like, I'm not driving. So he. His car was off, his keys are in his pocket. He goes to like sleep in his trunk and a cop knocks on the door. They give him a dui.

[Johnny Glenn]

Not for me. I'm like, that's crazy to me, dude. I got a lot of cop friends and I love law enforcement because. But to me, dude, and this is me talking and I hope the cop that sees this, if you ever in this situation. That's fucking sad, dude. Yeah. If I was a cop, honestly, I'm not perfect. I would take that guy's keys. Tell me, doing the right thing. I'll be back in two hours.

[Interviewer]

Exactly right.

[Johnny Glenn]

I'll come back and check on you, dude. I got to make my rounds anyways. I'll come back and check on you, but I'm not going to write you a dui.

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Johnny Glenn]

For falling asleep with your keys in your pocket.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I don't want to. I don't want to say this is like a write off to any law ever that's been made, but to me, and this should absolutely apply within how people apply the law, you know, like officers of the law. It's like intentions are everything.

[Johnny Glenn]

It is.

[Interviewer]

That doesn't mean people always get it right. Like, what did they intend if he.

[Johnny Glenn]

Intended to do the right thing? Putting his keys in his pocket. That's enough for me, dude. Yeah, that's enough for me. I'm gonna. I'm gonna take his keys. Or better yet, I'm probably gonna tell him, get in my squad, come and take you home. Yeah. And when you get ready to come back to your truck tomorrow, call me, somebody come pick you up. It's that simple. Yeah, because, you know, it's serve first and then protect. So that is serving the public right there. For sure. So.

[Interviewer]

No, but on. On your point about, you know, reintegrating and things like that, just even with your family and stuff like, you. Were you married really young?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, I got married about 24, 25.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so. And you have this 21 year career. So when you get out, how many kids do you have?

[Johnny Glenn]

3.

[Interviewer]

They're all teenagers at this point. When you get out? Yeah, something like that.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yep.

[Interviewer]

And you were deployed. You never took time off, so you're deployed all the time. How long was your average deployment?

[Johnny Glenn]

Six, six to eight months. So I'd Say no. Four to four to seven. Maybe four to seven, Five to seven.

[Interviewer]

So half of every year, gone, you're gone.

[Johnny Glenn]

Guaranteed. Guaranteed. My son is 25 years old. I spent seven Christmas with him. Seven.

[Interviewer]

Me and him had a big, hard being a dad.

[Johnny Glenn]

Me and him had a big heart to heart. Well, I'm not gonna say it was hard being a dad, because I love being a dad.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

All three of my kids, they can drive stick. They can shoot their asses off. They're things that matter. The things that matter. And my ex used to always say, you're brainwashing our kids. Like, dude, they can walk in a room. They can tell you everything that I can tell you about what they see, how to take down a room. They know points of domination. They. They're little operators, man. If I need them, you know, you like, they're little operators.

[Interviewer]

That's great.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

And so I'm not gonna say being a dad was hard. It was. Being gone was hard. But then you kind of know, like, all three of my kids, the first word we taught them, a sacrifice. First word we taught them. And I told him, daddy's making a sacrifice. And so I'll give a shout out to my ex. Man, Sadie, she was a phenomenal woman. And most green boy wives are phenomenal women because they know what they're getting into. So for the most part, dude, our wives, a soft wife or military wife in general or military husband, they know your spouse might be gone a lot. So guess what? You might be mom and you might be dad.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

And my ex did a phenomenal job that, dude, I can't. Hands down to her as being a great mom. And I would never, never say anything negative about her being a mom, because she basically raised our kids because she would get pissed at me because I'd be gone for, you know, five to seven months. And when I come home, guess what? Daddy's the best. Because kids want to step nine it, they want to step 11 it. You mean ain't no curvy.

[Interviewer]

She looks like the bad guy.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. I'll take you to school. Yeah. You miss a day of school, don't worry about it. That's why we've seen this private school. We're going shooting tomorrow. She's like, what'd y' all do today? Oh, Daddy took a shooting. Daddy took a shooting. She was like, you know, they missed school today. I will write them a note. They're fine. Because I'm like, hey, I've been gone. You know, it's Time for me to get my time.

[Interviewer]

I get it.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. And then, you know, and she'd be like, no, you can't do that. Or I'd come home and mess up her routine. I'm supposed to take the kids, you know, I take the kids, I pick them up this time. Pick them up this time. She'd be like, no, no, no. I got a routine set up. Don't mess it up. Like, dude, she cursed me out. I mean, yelled and cursed me one time for going to pick Tyler from school one day. Because of course she knew. 3:30, I go pick him up at school. Well, I get off. I leave the team room that day at like 12. I'm going to get T Bone. We're going to hang out. I go pick him up. She go to work. It's my son. Like, this is my kid. She gonna pick up him up. And she's freaking the out. Do you have Tyler? I'm like, yeah, he's right here with me. What's the problem?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, picked him up at 12:30.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, what's the problem?

[Interviewer]

Principal's tied up in the back.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, exactly. She's like, well, you pick him up at 12:30. I was like, the principal. The principal actually told me after 12 o' clock, they're considered present. So, dude, I pick my kid up 12, 10 all the time, dude. 12 10, 12 15. Oh, my God. Let's go, big guy. You're present. You got 10 options. We gonna get all nine of those every year, dude. Not absence. We get them.

[Interviewer]

But you got for. And if I. If I'm going to. Stuff you don't want to talk about here, by the way, just say that. But you guys, you stayed married for your whole career and you didn't get divorced till after.

[Johnny Glenn]

Pretty much. Yeah. It was. It was like when I was transitioning, I got divorced.

[Interviewer]

Was that because it was so difficult to transition from, you know, now suddenly constantly being in each other's lives?

[Johnny Glenn]

I say yes. I say yes to it. And I also say no to it. I say yes to it. And the fact that I wouldn't talk to a counselor, like we always have to do. I think we have to talk to a counselor every six months. And I'll never forget, I went to go see this counselor since I was transitioning. It was a civilian counselor. I remember I walked in, the first thing he told me was, hey, I heard a lot about you. Because a lot of soft guys use this guy. And he's good. The first thing that guy told me was, have a seat he goes, johnny Glenn, right? I was like, yep. He goes, johnny, you're nothing. I'm looking at dude like the. Is this guy. Dude like, nothing. I'm like, in the water wall. Check this, dude, I'm nothing. And he goes, look here, your name that Johnny Glenn. He goes, dude, that's nothing more than a reputation. He goes, you're a father, you're a son, your brother, you know, you're. You're a loved one. You're an uncle. And dude, he went saying this to me. I'm looking at him, I'm like, okay. He said, so now what I want you to do is put Johnny in a little box right now. Because what you got to do is be a husband, you got to be a father, you got to be all these things that you haven't been over the years. And dude, when he told me that, man, he hit me like a brick hit me like somebody points me flat in the face. And I was like, holy, doc. Like, how do I be those things? I haven't been those things, you know? I mean, I feel like I was a great dad, but I'm. Was I truly there? No, I was going all the time. So how do I. You know, it's like you just said earlier. You know, you've been doing this since you're 15 years old, professional athlete, you got millions of dollars. Now all of a sudden, you're asked to just be a human. Like, be you. Yeah. And it's like, holy, dude, I got to get a schedule. I got to get a real job. My job was going to work. 9 o', clock, working out 10, 11 o', clock, going shooting at a range, shooting with the boys, going to Hooters, looking at boobies, and then going to home like. Like, now I gotta go get a real job. Like a 9 to 5. Do I get a 9 to 5? And all this is going through your head. How do I protect my family? You mean I'm leaving the team even though this is my family, but that's my family? Yes, like, holy, dude, like, what do you do now? And, dude, that's a hard pill to swallow, man. And you just. You realize, like, dude, like, I made some big mistakes. Then you go back and you try to tell people, like, hey, I up here, I up there. And the sad part about it is, you know, with a softwife, they know how you're trained too. So softwise, they'll say, like, now you're just using what your training is. I don't think there's no wrong. You ain't got no damn ptsd. I'm like, do you not know what the hell we've seen and what we've done? You know what I mean? Yeah, but in their eyes, and they know, like, you're cut differently. And women that come at this, they know, dude, they know we're cut differently. We know we're cut a little different. You know what I mean? And, you know, like, they said good girls like bad boys, you know, it's just. That's the way it is. You know? You know what I mean? So at the end of the day, what I would say to all the softwives out there and husbands that are watching this, I'll sit in my SF brethren, hey, dude, don't be afraid to say, I'm fucked up a little bit. Let me fix me. Because we're always facing out. Sometimes we got to face in and look in the mirror and say, hey, yeah, dude, I'm fucked up. And then be man enough to say, hey, I'm fucked up. Now let me go get help to fix me. And by the way, wife that I'm loving, I want to be with for the rest of my life. I'm going to bring you along with me because this is a team effort. And if we do that, I think that, you know, I think we'll cut back on the suicides, we'll cut back on the divorces. Because guys got to have purpose, dude. Yes. In the military, bro, I had purpose. I had 12. That was competitive.

[Interviewer]

Well, that's the thing. You have such the highest degree of purpose. It's life and death purpose. You can't re simulate that, and you can't shortchange that. No.

[Johnny Glenn]

You can't say, hey, dude, I'm gonna take a day off and not. I'm gonna go to range and I'm just gonna blast his ammo. No, I'm off. I'm gonna shoot this shit because we're leaving in a couple months. I'm not gonna be that guy.

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Johnny Glenn]

Hey, I'm run on Saturday and Sunday. Hey, I'm gonna do this because I need to be at the level of rustic ottoman. I need to be at the level of Will. I need to be at the level of Demarni. I need to be a level of Stacy. I need to be at all these guys level, Big Mike. Because if goes down, I want them to know they can count on me. Right? You mean so. And that's the way you look at it. And life's the same way. You mean if you view Your kids the same way. Like, I view my kids now. They're my teammates. You mean? I want to be there for them. I want to live long for them. I want to make sure when they come to me for a problem, I got a good, sound judgment answer. Not like, I'll it blow it up, you know? Now it's like, all right, I'm an adult now. You know? I mean, it's like, nah, Tyler, maybe, man, you know, you should be thinking about this. Or, let's think about this. You know, you're curious going here. What about this? You know, I'm thinking for them, like, all right, now.

[Interviewer]

But it took me time to get to that point.

[Johnny Glenn]

You had to get to that point. Yeah, because, dude, we're just a bunch of. I hate to say soft guys and military guys, which is a bunch of immature kids, man. We're just about. You think about it. We got a bunch of guns around us. We're shooting all the time. We're in shape. And do you just want to party? You just want to tear up? Like, that's what you want to do? So now all of a sudden, you got to come back, you got to cut grass, wash the car, go get state inspections on the car. Really?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

It's like, dude, this is.

[Interviewer]

This is work and boring.

[Johnny Glenn]

And boring. Like, this is. Boy, I'm gonna go sit at DMV for two hours. And then the whole time at the dmv, I'm sitting there like, dude, I can make this so much more proficient. Good Lord. I've been in this for three hours. You mean like, holy, dude, I just need a renewal. Those guys that, you know that are down there on that, you know, I didn't know the. They're doing it. You don't have nobody to speak Spanish, and you've been working this guy for 20 minutes trying to figure this out. Like, hi, translator. Let's get this done. I could have been going two hours ago. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

DMV is the happy shack.

[Johnny Glenn]

It is.

[Interviewer]

They hire the happiest people in America.

[Johnny Glenn]

I know. It's like, damn it. Then you just sit in line like number 12. I'm like, damn, they're gonna never get the number 20.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And I would imagine, like, little things like that sets you off, right? They gotta annoy you a lot more because you're used to. This is how it goes.

[Johnny Glenn]

But then after a while, though, after a while, you learn. Like, now I've learned how to deal with that. I've learned how to cook.

[Interviewer]

It takes time.

[Johnny Glenn]

It takes a Lot of time. It takes a lot of time to just say, like. Because you got to think about it most. I don't say all, but I would say 99.9 of soft guys are ADHD. We probably just need a fucking. What is it Rudd at all? What do you take when you're ADHD?

[Interviewer]

Adderall.

[Johnny Glenn]

Adderall. We should have an Adderall pump inside of our stuck and stomach just constantly pumping that, you know, like, hey, man, I'm set on 12 today. We're good to go, you know, because we can't just sit there, dude. Like, it's like we got to be making it, like, make shit happen. So when we go on a dmv, dude, they're sitting there like, oh, fuck, I could take her job if she just did this, this, and this. You would knock down your fucking time of seeing people by 30 fucking minutes. Yeah, you mean so it's like, so for us, man, it's just always. And that's why usually, man, like, you go to our house. We got project at the project at the project. And why does it get mad? Because she's like, you got 10 different projects. You not finished one? Yeah, because I go work on that one about two hours, and I'm bored with it. I'm going to the next one. And that's how it goes. And that's how it goes, you know? He's like, all right, I'm doing this, doing this. Just finish one. So I've been really been trying to, like, just finish one project at a time. If I'm doing something, I want to do one thing at a time, just to get it done.

[Interviewer]

So slow it down.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, but it takes time. Because we're not built like that. We're not built to go solo.

[Interviewer]

Was it like when you come home and your career turns off and we're going to come back to the beginning of Johnny's career soon? I just want to go through this tangent right now. Is it kind of like. Like the only way you would ever experience marriage in the relationship was when you were on, which means you're gone half the time and you have this purpose. Was it almost like you're married to a new person because every time your surroundings.

[Johnny Glenn]

That made it good? That actually made it good. I tell people all the time, if I wouldn't have got out, me and my wife right now would still be married. No doubt my mind. No doubt my mind. I was going long enough to pit. I was home long enough to piss her off, but gone long enough for her to miss me? Because usually it's just a honey do list. Like, hey, can you do this? Can you do that? You know, like, you need some muscle around the house. All right, honey, I'm back. Fix the dryer, fix the, you know, washer, cut the grass, whatever.

[Interviewer]

You're shipping out to, like, tour boys.

[Johnny Glenn]

She's like, thank God. Thank God. Yes. All she's gotta do is keep the house clean. That way, if he gets killed, you know, people ain't coming to the house. And it's a dirty house, you know, like, so, you know, at the end of the day, you know, like.

[Interviewer]

And now you're with each other all the time.

[Johnny Glenn]

When you're. Now you're with each other all the time. Do you see all the nuances? You see all the little things that would probably set her off? Like, why are you mad about that? Like, why have we been here? Why are we waiting this line so long? Where's our food at? You know, you sitting there ordering to eat. It's like we ordered 10 minutes before they even got here, and they got their food before we did.

[Interviewer]

You ever feel like you don't know each other?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, a lot. Yeah, because there's two different use. You mean, like, if you look at all of the tests of soft guys somewhere in there, dude, I guarantee you're bipolar or close to it, and you're borderline psychopathic. I guarantee it. Whether they want to admit it or not. Like, all those tests we took, I can tell you right now you're borderline psychopathic. And you're definitely borderline. You know, you. You gotta be. You're borderline bipolar. Because who in a right mom would say, I'm gonna go storm that building and somebody's shooting at me? Nobody. It's stupid, dude. My guys rush to be like, hey, John, I'll beat you there. Now it's a competition, you mean? So that's interesting. That's. But that's the way you design, dude.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

And they're looking for that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. We've had this conversation before with some of the CIA guys that come on. And. And they've all concurred. Like, you use the word psychopath right there. That makes sense for what you're doing, which is knocking down doors more before with CIA in a similar lane. They're looking for guys who are date for case officers. They're looking for guys who are dangerously treading the line of being a sociopath.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Meaning hopefully they're not quite one. But they're like, right there because they have to be able to, no pun intended, disassociate in some ways and break the rules from humanity.

[Johnny Glenn]

That guy's got to be able to break the rules and know that it's for the greater good. Yeah, you know, I mean, we do it all the time, dude. We call it a gray area. And you get some. The gray area, you got black and white. And then I always tell people, you got black and white. Johnny lives in the gray area. I'll live in that gray area because my dad told me, dude, I think I was 12. Maybe my dad. Something that my dad said, something always stick with me. He had done something that. He basically stole something one time. And I remember I told my dad, I was like, oh, you just stole that. He goes, shut up, boy. He says, let me tell you something. Sometimes the wrongest thing you'll do, I'll be this rightest thing you do. And sometimes the rightest thing you do, I'll be the wrongest thing you do. And I just looked at him like the. Does that even mean. As I got older, dude, and I got an sf. I know exactly what the he means. No, because he was still in something to give to somebody that really needed it.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Johnny Glenn]

And it was like a Robin Hood thing. At the time. I thought it was wrong because you taught me my whole life, thou shalt not steal. But I just watch you take something and give it to somebody else. And then it's like, same thing in Afghanistan, you know, you get some warlord that can get you close to the Taliban that, you know is making IDs. I'm putting a guy in my hip pocket.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

I got to.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

Because. And the greater good is I'm going to save lives.

[Interviewer]

Right. It's like, even though I know he's.

[Johnny Glenn]

A math trade off here, what's the trade off here? I'm saving American lives, I'm saving Afghan lives, but I'm getting in bed with a warlord. I'm getting in bed with a bad guy. Same with the CIA guys. You got to.

[Interviewer]

You talk about this Monday morning quarterbacking with, you know, some of the body cam and stuff like that. But when it comes to the real world, and the way I'm going to define the real world is that's not good. Like we have it here in America, the. That you've spent your entire adult life seeing. Do you ever feel like people here from a Monday morning quarterback perspective just don't understand that there's. There's almost no such thing as 100% win or even 100% loss. It's gonna have some sort of trade off.

[Johnny Glenn]

It is. And we just need it. I hate to say a wake up call, but our country always needs a Wait. Not always, but we definitely need a wake up call now. If you think about we need a wake up call. You know, I tell people all the time, September 11th was a fucking wake up call for us.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. That's why I say, oh, that's one.

[Johnny Glenn]

Of the only times in history, if you look at it, do we came together. Well, we came together before, but September 11th, during my generation or during my era. Oh, yeah, we came straight the fuck together. There was no black, there was no white, there was no Hispanic, there was no wall. There was nothing that said if you were fucking American, you want to punch whoever the hell punched us in the mouth, period. Even if you weren't American, you were here, you wanted to punch, you were to punch in the mouth.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

And we came together for once, dude. The news wasn't reporting, oh my God, cops slain teenage black kid or oh my God, store gets robbed by, you know, meth head in south Alabama. You know, the shit that sparks people. None of that shit was on the news, dude. Only thing was on the news was the twin towers coming down. And all people want to do was sign up. How do I defend?

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Johnny Glenn]

How do I help? How do I support.

[Interviewer]

You know what's crazy? Like 10 months before that, we had like the most, at the time, the most contentious presidential election.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Ever.

[Johnny Glenn]

Big time.

[Interviewer]

And it was like. And it was this time where some people were like, no, I think war one. And people are like, no, I think Bush won.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. Out the window. Me and you could have been president. People didn't give a fuck. All we wanted to do was go get retribution for the people that killed innocent Americans. That's all we wanted to do. And it's, it's, it's hard to make Americans think like that every day. But people got to know that there's some cruel people out there that want to bring harm to America, period. Just because we're America, we're the greatest nation in the world, people. If you don't think we're greatest nation in the world, look how many people trying to come here.

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Johnny Glenn]

And look how many people trying to leave. It ain't that many of us leaving. And for the people that want to leave, call me, I'm broke, but I'll get your ticket. First ticket out this. You mean I call a couple? Yeah, exactly. I'm sitting Here, straight to the maroon. You don't like it. You know what I mean? Like, but if. But if people just came to reality. Because I think we live in our own little world. Yes. You know, because we do want the American dream. We want the picket fence, we want the house, we want our kids going to college. We want our grandkids. That is the American dream. And I hope everybody lives that. But the reality is that there's people out there that want to hurt you. There's people. Even in America, there's people want to hurt us. You know, there's people out there that want to. I tell people all the time, the easiest job in the world is being a criminal. Criminal? Dude, I could be a criminal tomorrow and be a multi millionaire. No doubt. My mind. Because I look at how dumb people are. Yeah, people just are dumb, dude. I. At the airport now, I'm looking at people like, holy, man. People are just dumb. Like, they just don't think.

[Interviewer]

Dude, they don't.

[Johnny Glenn]

They just don't think at all. I'm like, come on, man. Just no situational awareness whatsoever.

[Interviewer]

It's crazy with all. With all, like the tier one guys I've talked to over the past few years now and stuff, the way you guys have changed my basic worldview of how to just walk down the street.

[Johnny Glenn]

And just pay attention.

[Interviewer]

And I never even thought about that. It happened naturally because now I pay attention to that I probably don't need to pay attention to. So thanks for filling my head with that. But still, it's like, you see all these situations where can just pop off and people go blissfully unaware.

[Johnny Glenn]

That's like I tell people all the time, and I don't want. I don't want a sidelong quarterback, but when I hear about this guy walked into a mall, he walked into a store and shot up a building with an ar. How the. Did he walk all the way across the parking lot with an ar? Yeah, with an ar. And nobody saw it? Yeah, like, dude, that baffles the out of me. Like, how do you do that? And if he's wearing something to hide it, I'd be like, dude, that dude's walking a little weird. Let me. Right, Let me. Let me. Let me pay a little attention here, you know? I mean, but you see it like guys walking malls, dude, it's like, how the hell does that happen? How does that happen? You mean, how does a kid walk in a school with an ar, A kid with an ar, and. And people don't notice it because one usually likes right here People on The damn phones 24, 7.

[Interviewer]

That's a problem.

[Johnny Glenn]

And then another thing I think with our country, too, is people just don't like to say shit, dude. Like, my biggest problem is, man, if I see it, I call it. Like I said. I've always been like that, you know? I mean, my dad used to say, call a spade a spade. Call like it is. Yeah. And I call it exactly how I see it, dude. And you either love me or you hate me. It ain't no in between. It ain't no. I kind of like Johnny. It ain't no gray area on that. You either love him or you hate him. You know what I mean? My ex at times hate me. If it's a kid's birthday, she might love me, but ain't no in between. Oh, he's all right. You don't get that from out of me, do you? Don't get that from anybody. You either love Johnny Glenn or you hate him. And if you hate him, they know where you stand. Yeah, but if you hate him, say why you don't like him? Like, I had a guy on my team, Troy Latiri, one time got in a fight with a guy. Well, he smacked the guy one time because the guy goes, yeah, he smacked shit out of this dude. He goes, I don't like Johnny Glenn. I don't like that. Troy goes, why don't you like him? He goes, that motherfucker called me fat. And then Troy's fat. And Troy's like, well, you fat. That's why. Like, fix yourself. Like. And I didn't even tell the guy he's fat. I was like, damn, dude, you might want to fucking, you know, start working out a little more. You did it. Nice. I did. I did it. I was politically correct, you know what I mean? Like, I did. My buddy, Dwayne Jones, I'll never forget this quick story. My buddy, Dwayne Jones, he's watching this. He's out on the team. Come on, guy, right? Dude, we got an argument. This was like, 2000, 11, maybe 8, 7, 9 somewhere. We're on our way back to Afghanistan. My team, so I was single at the time, and my team star had this. This female in the. In a hangar. We're all hanging out. She's a stripper. At least we called her stripper. She probably wasn't a stripper, but she dressed like a stripper.

[Interviewer]

I was so confused.

[Johnny Glenn]

But anyways. But he was single, you know. He was a single guy, you know, and, dude, I go to fuck off on My team Sean. And I did it wrong. I was wrong. But I go off in front of him, the whole company. So I'm like, what? Because I asked one of the kids, where's your dad at? Oh, he's still on the plane. Well, why is your dad on the plane? And of course, I go right to team Sean. Why the fuck didn't you just about that. Never leave him. You're single, and in my eyes, you're a single team sharing. Dude, you should be on that fucking plane. This guy's got kids. He should be with his kids. I won't call no names. And Dwayne Jones, I go off on the team. I mean, I go to fuck off. And Dwayne Jones, we're standing at the. At the back of the ramp of the plane. They're going to let the ramp up. And he comes back there. He goes, the fuck is wrong with you? He goes, I goes, what do you mean? I go, man, he should have had, you know, he should have went out there, pulled a guy off the plane, and I'm going to fuck off. And Dwayne goes, you know what your problem is, Johnny Glenn? I go, what's my problem? He goes, you know your problem, Johnny Glass? What's my fucking problem? He goes, you got no fucking tack. That's your problem. And I'm looking at him, I'm like. And at the time, dude, I didn't know what the fuck tack meant. I didn't. So I'm usually like, hey, motherfucker, you come to me, I'm going to come.

[Interviewer]

Back like, thank you.

[Johnny Glenn]

I go, what? I look around, dude. So it felt like 10 minutes, but I'm shaking my head. I'm like, what? I'm all, tack, motherfucker. And I walk off. So I walk on one of the officers, I'm like, hey, what the fuck does tack mean? He goes, you know, Johnny, how you approach something, you know, like, yeah, you be tactful about it, you know? I was like, that's what I mean. He's like, yeah, tack me. I said, why the fuck didn't he say tack for me? And he said, tack. He goes, what's wrong, dude? That whole fight, I couldn't sleep because in my head that Dwayne just told me I wasn't tactful. I'm like, him, you know, I'm tack. So the whole time he's sleeping, dude, I'm looking at him like that. So as soon as he woke up, dude, we went back at it. We were arguing about. And he's one of my best friends, man. We were arguing about tack and all this shit. I was like, you know, man, fuck you. I got plenty of tack. He goes, why would you tackle? Dude, just pull the team sergeant aside and talk to him, Tell him he's wrong. Johnny, he's like, your biggest problem is. Because I let my emotions get the best sometimes, you know what I mean? Because these are my brothers, man. Like, I care about this guy. I love this guy. I would die for him. And to see him on the bird watching the gear and his kids are out. My kids. When our single team start with no kids in my eyes, as a leader, dude, I would have been on that plane. My guys would have been out there with the kids.

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Johnny Glenn]

My guys would have been like, hey, where's the team shark? Oh, I'm right here with the gear. Okay, cool. Now, you also set an example of this is what a leader does for his guys, you know, so. But yeah, dude, like. And that hit me hard, man. I ain't got no tack. I'm all tack, motherfucker. Because I ain't know, you know what it means now. I know what I mean now. But I knew when he said I didn't have it, I didn't know if I had it or not. So the best thing me to do is say I'm all attacked. I was like, I'm all attacked. And I walked. I didn't even give him time to say something. He was like, went, like, right here. He went to go knife hand me, and I just walked off, dude. I was like, what the a. And I walked off. But, yeah, dude, but that's what I think our country. I got off off the topic, but that's what I think our country needs, man. We need. And nothing as big as 9, 11, but we just need a smack in the face every now and then to let people realize that you ain't living in that little bubble, that little saved. Like that little safe haven. Like, people walk around like, I don't want anything to go wrong.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

Like, no, dude, if it. If it's wrong, just call it out.

[Interviewer]

I always say this, you know, with the exception of the War of 1812 and then obviously some terrorist attacks, you know, we've never been invaded as a country, and it shows.

[Johnny Glenn]

It does.

[Interviewer]

And it's like, you know, I. I cringe when I. But I fully understand why you say it. A lot of people say it from your position. I cringe when I hear, like, oh, you know, we need something like that. Tap it Again, or something like that, because I. I hope it wouldn't come to that. But when it's not that, like, even America's been at peacetime here. We've had all these wars, these endless wars over the last two and a half decades, but they're over there. And in modern warfare, we don't have the draft. Right. Because wars fought a little bit differently. I guess for these ones you need less men than you would need of. Needed in World War II and like that. But, like, there's something about the. The tragedy of. Of comfort and why can't I think of the word right now? Complacency. That sets in. And when you give society time like that, and when you also give them things that are problematic, like an economy, a shrinking middle class, the American dream, not quite what it was, and stuff like that, it naturally starts to turn in on itself.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

And we've been at that point for a while now. And I hope without some sort of crazy impetus, you know, people can disagree on politics and like that. I fully understand that. But, like, if we could be a little more civil about that and focus on the things that actually matter at a high level, that would be amazing.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. Oh, I totally agree. And that's the problem. We focus on. Don't. Don't matter.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

Dude, like I was telling you earlier, I very seldom watch tv. Very sudden watch tv.

[Interviewer]

Good for you.

[Johnny Glenn]

So if you ask me anything that's going on, current events. Couldn't tell you. I'm dead serious. Couldn't tell you. I couldn't, man. Because I just don't. I don't get tied up in the.

[Interviewer]

You gotta live happier that way, too.

[Johnny Glenn]

And I do, man. It's all about, like, me. I got a little farm in North Carolina, dude. I go to my little farm, get away from everything, dude, and that's where I spend my time at. I don't like, you know, because it seemed like to me it's all about how do we turn each other against each other.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Johnny Glenn]

How do we turn black against white? How do we. That's right. How do we make more drama than what we need? It's like, no, dude, there's enough drama in the world. We don't need anymore. We don't need that shit. Let's just do unto others as we want done, done to each other and that's it. And if we do that, dude, we gotta. We got a good country.

[Interviewer]

Well, it's because we always have access to this.

[Johnny Glenn]

That's exactly.

[Interviewer]

We can always go look at everything Everything that's anecdotal looks like the definition.

[Johnny Glenn]

Flashing news, you know? I mean, it's like, what the. Dude?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, and. Yeah, and the algorithms don't help. I mean, I see it all the time with. You know, I'll start looking at one thing. I'm like, all right, let me keep looking at this and let's see how fast. It's my whole feed. And it's within. And within a half hour.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah, and it's your whole feed full of it. Oh, yes.

[Interviewer]

It's wild, man.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, trust me, I know. Because if I get on Instagram and I look at some girl that's dancing nice every. And she's. Nice body, dude. That's my whole don't hit search. That's all that comes up. The hell's going on here, dude? Like, damn. I was looking for some. For some Morgan Waller music, and it's like, all you see is yoga pants. I'm like, well, let me check that out then. It's four o' clock in the morning. You're like, the AI. The AI get you, dude. It's like, son of a.

[Interviewer]

Just gotta be careful, cuz. Sometimes you gotta check between the.

[Johnny Glenn]

Hey, you got. Hey, we talked about this here. Oh, you call twice. Turn right, turn left. You know, hey, you got to run a whole background check nowadays, dude.

[Interviewer]

No, it'll show up in the feed too.

[Johnny Glenn]

And you're like, wait a minute, wait a minute.

[Interviewer]

It's like the Leo me. I'm like, okay, here I come.

[Johnny Glenn]

Let me share this, all my friends. Do not, I repeat, do not.

[Interviewer]

Do not dm.

[Johnny Glenn]

Do not DM this one. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. All right, well, that's. That, That's a good. I always love getting the mentality of. Of the guys who understand it more than I ever could and understand it more than most of us listening who haven't served in the military.

[Johnny Glenn]

But you get it, though. That's.

[Interviewer]

That's because of you guys, though. But I still can't. I can't go to. I can watch it on video. I can't go to those hills and feel what you felt. Or I got you knock down every door, talk to every person and see how much people would kill in those situations to live here, you know?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, that's just like, dude, I remember we started like a little girls school in. Damn. I'm trying to remember the name of the place where we were. We were in Afghanistan.

[Interviewer]

Oh, you guys did the Green Parade?

[Johnny Glenn]

The school did. Yeah, we did. Our team, we were getting book bags and stuff brought In.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. And we were taking them down to the school and we started talking to the. To the guys on the school. Well, honestly, Afghanistan is one of those places as backwards. So they want the kids or the girls to be dumb. Like they wanted to be less educated. Like I tell people, if you want to be smart, you want to get out of poverty, educate yourself. Be smart. Educate yourself. Whether that's something as simple as a credit score, just educate yourself. The more educated you are don't make you smart. But the more educated you are, the better, I'd like to say the better decisions you'll make financially, economy, whatever decisions you're going to make. So in Afghanistan, their thing is, if we can keep in the dark, then you never see the light.

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Johnny Glenn]

You mean.

[Interviewer]

So I remember dark, no pun intended, to think about that mentality.

[Johnny Glenn]

No, but anything think about it, dude. I remember us being out in the middle of nowhere. You'll see a guy in the middle of nowhere and you're like, dude, what the you even doing out here? And he's got sheep. And there's nobody close to that guy for hundreds of miles. Yeah, he's out there walking with sheep, dude. Him and his family walking with sheep. They bed down at night, they wake up to walk the sheep. So that's all that guy knows. All he knows. Just like, if I can go back when the war first kicked off, you know what I did? Honestly, I tell my buddies all the time how to load up a bunch of kicker pallets.

[Interviewer]

A bunch of what?

[Johnny Glenn]

Kicker pallets. Those are the things you kick out the back of the bird. How to load that up with laptops, porno and cell phones. That's it. And kick that out of the back of a plane. Drove Afghanistan kicked out of back a plane to let them know there's a whole nother world out there. That's a lot better than this right here, dude. Mia Khalifa sinned and I would. Gave them out of. Gave them free Internet, dude. Free Internet. And hey, you think about it. 72 versions. If I go blow myself up, they have been like, hey, dude, have you seen Cornhub? They been like, oh, hell no, dude. I'm out of here.

[Interviewer]

We got. We got Treaty of Ver Nuremberg and Mia Khalifa.

[Johnny Glenn]

And Mia Khalifa. That's it, dude. Just follow. Just kick out caliber, dude. Just kick out kicker Ballas, dude. I gave him a ton of. A ton of laptops with no passwords. Soon it comes up, dude, it's just, you know, good stuff on the screen. They'd Be like, oh, now that.

[Interviewer]

There's one problem here, though.

[Johnny Glenn]

What's that?

[Interviewer]

I don't know if you know what I'm gonna say here, but there's a lot of guys I talked to in Afghanistan, and they all tell me the same story.

[Johnny Glenn]

That is true.

[Interviewer]

They ain't all.

[Johnny Glenn]

That is true. That is true. That. But you're a product of your environment again, you're part of your environment, so.

[Interviewer]

You got to show them the titties.

[Johnny Glenn]

When you got to show it to them. So when you don't know any better, when you cover everything up from head to toe, you don't know what's underneath that burka, you mean?

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Johnny Glenn]

Just like, dude, I might get. Let me knock on wood. I'll probably get arrested for this. But we. We was coming back off a mission one time. I'll never forget it. Dude, this is in 2006, I think five or six. And we got back, and we had a stable boy to work for us, and one of our. One of the Afghan elders had molested him. Dude. And I beat that. Dude just shot death. I'll say it. What, are you gonna arrest me? And I put my hands on. Me and a couple guys put our hands on. Just smacking around a little bit. Just a little bit for all. Intense person. Swipe him around a little bit. But at the end of the day, one of the Afghan guys, one of the elders, pulled aside and talked to us, and he goes, well, he's a cha boy. I said, yeah, dude, that's wrong. He's a.

[Interviewer]

What he.

[Johnny Glenn]

They call him a chai boy. Like the t. They call it chai. So he's a chai boy. So the cha boy is basically like the. Yeah, I guess you pass them around. Yeah, I was like, not on our watch, dude. That happened on our. On our. On our base. Not gonna happen. But again, that goes back to power for your environment. If your father before You. Father before your father did that, guess what? You're gonna do. Same shit. Just like, dude, I'm from South Georgia. I've met racist people. I've never in my life met a racist person that I was pissed off at, because I don't blame that person.

[Interviewer]

You blame their environment.

[Johnny Glenn]

I blame their environment. I blame the parents. Parents. Parents. Parents before their parents.

[Interviewer]

There's not. Not that I. I don't want to discount, like, racism or something like that, but you're. I mean, what we're talking about right now is pet.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

That's a whole.

[Johnny Glenn]

It's a Whole nother gamut. But think about it, dude. When. When you don't know any better, when you've seen that from birth. Say you saw that from a child.

[Interviewer]

You think that's normal?

[Johnny Glenn]

You think that's normal, dude? Just like racism, dude. Anybody looking at anybody can say, if you're going to judge me because the color of my skin, we know that's wrong.

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Johnny Glenn]

But you think about it. Prime example, that movie 42. I know you saw it.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

When that kid was up there when they were screaming the N word.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

And that kid looked around, he knew, like, this is not right. But then he said it because he heard everybody else saying it, because, all right, I don't want to be that kid where I'm not fitting in with everybody else. You mean, like, it's like almost like pure purpose. She's a. So at the end of the day, like, I tell everybody, racism and pedicure and all that, especially over there, that is a taught fucking behavior from birth.

[Interviewer]

I guess the way I think about it, that's like. Because I'm very glad. I can't relate to having an environment like that. But it's like you also. That requires you to be physically attracted to that. So I guess you. I guess you could be talking either.

[Johnny Glenn]

Physically attracted to it or you just don't know any better.

[Interviewer]

But something still has to happen. You know what I mean?

[Johnny Glenn]

Like, I think if you. If you started seeing that at birth, or if you heard about at birth and people are doing it, you're just going to do it. You know what I mean? This is like when people say, I think people are born gay. I'm like, you know, tomato, tomato. It's your belief. I don't. I got a farm. And every bull. Cow I have, he tries to mount a female cow. If he tries to run another bullcatter fighting.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it's. I. I've heard. We. We've had some off the record. We've had some on the record. I know Nick Irving talked about. When he was in here, but Nick talked about, like, he had to pull people off kids sometimes literally. And there's like a. And I've heard this unless he's heard as well, from multiple people. They had like a phrase there, like, women are for babies.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. Okay.

[Interviewer]

There you go.

[Johnny Glenn]

But listen to that. They've had that phrase for how long?

[Interviewer]

So guess Alexander was there.

[Johnny Glenn]

Exactly. So, you know that means that it's already in their head. Yeah. So it's like one of those things, like, until you educate people today. Get educated. Then how do you. How do you break it? Mia Khalifa, vote Johnny Glenn president. Dude, we flying on. Hey, Dale and what's another computer? Dale's about to get filthy rich, dude. I've been make every computer you can open a free to pornhub. We're gonna fly that over.

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Johnny Glenn]

Push it out. Oh, my God. Because you think about it. That's it. Hearts and mind. That's what we do. I remember like all my. I know, right? Hearts, minds and dicks. Because all my. Because I got back. Let me see one. Not just me in general, but my team. We got back probably five, six of our interpreters that was over there. All they want to do is come to America, dude. They want to get the out of Afghanistan because they don't want to be there, dude. Because they. When they come to our base, dude. Because these guys, like Haruna, dude, I fought with Haruna Junior Ranger. I fought with these guys 10 years straight, dude. 10 years straight. Yeah, dude. Every deployment, I get my damn Afghan phone and call them. Hey, being country in a month. Roger that. Where you coming? I said, I'll let you know when I get there. Be there. I get to Kent, I'm in Kenar, dude. They in Kenar that next day, bro. Yeah. All you do is hand them to go. Hand them the body home. We go to work, man. Because you trust those guys. So guys like that, that have been around SF guys or been around Americans for the last two decades, they've seen the better half. That's right, dude. We give those. We buy those guys a computer out of the px. Hey, man, here's your computer. Here's your Internet card, whatever. And guess what? Those guys are looking at the same we're looking at. They're seeing that there's a better world out there and it's not this. And so they're like, man, I'm getting my family out of here.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Tells you a lot.

[Johnny Glenn]

It says a lot. You know me right there. Says a lot, dude. And it's like, hey, you know, just like I tell people all the time, dude, we can fix Mexico. We can fix. We can fix all those places if you want to. Just like the border problem. I can fix a border problem. Probably a year.

[Interviewer]

How would you fix that?

[Johnny Glenn]

How? Yeah, I'd make Mexico rich if they put Johnny Glenn in charge tomorrow, dude, the first thing I do, I was go to Mexico. I'm riches, free month, free money. But I'll make them rich. I tell you, I'll make their kids rich. I make their kids kids rich. So what I would do in Mexico, I would go there, I'll be a state of the art universities. I'll take all of our, you know, all of our things that we're exporting for other countries. All these T shirts we get made in China and Tijuana. I build those facts right in Mexico. You're going to pay kids a good, good wage. Kids can graduate and go to college, they can get good jobs. They never have to leave their country. And guess what they would do? Not come here. I'm not going to another country where I got to learn another language. But guess what? If I can tell my kids right now, you can grow up in Georgia, I can offer you everything you need right here at home. And US is going to fund some of that because we're going to get our, you know, it's, it's return on investment. Yeah, we're going to build these country, we're going to build these factories that make Ford and general motor parts. Tesla's going to build companies there that make Tesla parts or whatever. You're going to do them at a, at a good, at a good price. You're gonna get paid a good minimum wage and you have a good middle class and you're gonna live a good middle class life and your kids, kids can go to college and they don't have to work in the fields or do whatever they can get a good middle class life, working a good work system, going to college, getting degrees and working from there.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

Why the fuck am I gonna come.

[Interviewer]

Do it in America? And it's, it's a good idea that the, the cynical part of me that wonders if that could even slightly even try to get off the ground if we did that, is that the cartels.

[Johnny Glenn]

I didn't, I forgot the one, one thing I mentioned. I would get in bed with the cartel. That's the first thing I did.

[Interviewer]

Oh, you get in bed with them?

[Johnny Glenn]

I would get in bed with them, yeah. And you want to know why I would get in bed with them? And for the cartel just watching this, call me up. Why would you. Why I would get in bed with the cartel is that I would say.

[Interviewer]

I had called her own. Like, no.

[Johnny Glenn]

So, no, no. So what I, what I would tell the cartel is check this out. Or we would do a meeting just like we're doing right now. Like, like we call them shuras or key leader engagement. Afghanistan. Key leader engagement. Key leader engagement. I would do a key leader engagement. Bring me the Head of the cartel. Check us out, dude. This is what we're gonna do. We know you own. We know you own across the border. I want you to own that. But what I don't want anymore, I don't want fentanyl coming into America. I don't want to come in a cop for killing our kids. So me, you gonna get in bed right now, you're gonna come up with a pharmaceutical. You're gonna come up with a drug that's legal, a few drugs that's legal, that's not going to kill our kids, but it's going to give me a high or whatever. We're going to prove that, and you're going to be in charge of all that shit. That's your money, however you make it. Because what you're doing now, you're putting the cartel in charge of a drug that they can legally. Not your legal organization. You don't have to do all the crime. Not unless you choose to. But everybody out there that's buying your kilos of coke and cutting them down, you deal with them how you see fit. That's on you now. So now in a cartel, I feel like they'd be like, hey, look here, dude. We're making billions and billions and billions on top of billion dollars. And we're legit. Any out there to take our product and cut it or try to cut it, we're gonna handle that in house. They're gonna take care of that. So now you put them in a drum. Put them in a drum. Whatever you want to do. Yeah, but you know, put them in a drum. You put them in a drum. But now, what you said, he's like.

[Interviewer]

The cop in the town.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah. I didn't say, hey, turn your. Hey, look here. I'll be turning them in. Hey, look here, Julian come to see you guys next week. Julian is cutting down. If you got a drug called YouTube. Julian been cutting your YouTube drug down. He's space. He's lacing that with. With fentanyl. They gonna deal with that, dude. They gonna deal with that. And now you get in bed with him. Like, hey, dude, how do we make you guys legit? What are you guys looking to do? Because the cartel, even though it's. It's drugs, it's a legit business, dude. It's legit. They making a. Oh, they make a ton.

[Interviewer]

I see what you.

[Johnny Glenn]

So get in bed with them, dude, and say, all right, dude, how can we make things work for you? What are you bringing to the table to us? We know you got a ton of money, so this is what we can bring to the table for you.

[Interviewer]

This is a classic, like trade off scenario.

[Johnny Glenn]

It's a trade off scenario, dude.

[Interviewer]

You're looking at this so black and.

[Johnny Glenn]

White, but I'm looking at, I'm like, yeah, it ain't no gray area, dude. We don't want you to feel like. Because the cartel's smart, dude. Hey, Johnny Glenn, here's $20,000. Walk this across the board. 100, 100 miles past where the checkpoint is. Guess what checkpoints got to do. They got to go out, drive 100 miles, bring this person back. Now they got to in process this person while I'm running my drugs across the border. That's right. How about, dude, let's come to a consensus. You can bring your girls across legal as fuck, come up with illegal drugs, you can bring across the border, that we gonna approve, that we're gonna say, all right, dude, that's not gonna kill our kids. That's not gonna. Because at the end of the day, drugs ain't gonna ever go away. People gonna figure out people been getting high since the mankind.

[Interviewer]

I think you're right.

[Johnny Glenn]

So why not? Let's figure this out where. Hey, dude, I'm not saying I want my kids to do drugs, but they've already legalized weed, which I totally agree with weed over alcohol, but why not? Let's come up with something where. All right, dude, you can legally do this. All right? Get some of these brainiacs that this right here is going to put you in this state. Let's figure out how we can do that.

[Interviewer]

Even if you just stemmed, like fentanyl? Yeah, something like that.

[Johnny Glenn]

Just maybe that'd be a start.

[Interviewer]

Like, people are. We're next to you. People are going to do coke.

[Johnny Glenn]

They're gonna do it like 24, 7.

[Interviewer]

That would be more. And, and it's, it's a moral question for a lot of people. But like, if your scenario played out, that would probably be the more realistic one than saying you're going to be in big Pharma officially now. Right? It might be like, all right, you're going to do coke, there's no fentanyl coming.

[Johnny Glenn]

No. And then meth. Look at math. Like, South Georgia I'm from. Because it's so cheap.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

You mean you go in the back of a damn field somewhere in some pine trees in South Georgia, you can make all the meth you want to make and sell it dirt cheap and make a good living off of it, but then you're ruining people lives. Yeah. Teeth are gone. Just ruining people's lives. So at the end of the day, let's come up with something like, I'm all about finding solutions, man. And the solution isn't, you're not going to stop the cartel. You ever. So why not embrace it? Get in bed with him. Say, all right, dude, here's the deal. Because guess what. Every legal official over there, you're in a car, you. You're in with the cartel, or you got.

[Interviewer]

That's what I'm saying. They buy them all, you buy them off.

[Johnny Glenn]

And if I can't buy you off, I kill you off. So you pick or choose. You can be rich. I ain't a smart man, dude. I think I can handle my own. But I can be rich or I can be dead. All right, dude, how much y' all pay me? Buy me a little island and, you know, go buy me a little island. That's what I'm moving to. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. I'm moved to the Gulf of America and call today, you know, you it, dude, you don't call it Johnny's Island. You want to. You want to live free, Come to Johnny's Island. It, dude. Ain't no rules here. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Again, careful.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, I know, Careful. Sensitive, for sure. But. Yeah, but I think that if you did that, dude, if you got to be able to cartel, like, hey, look, dude, because right now, a cartel is still human. You're affecting your kids. Kids, Kids, Kids down the line.

[Interviewer]

I don't think they care that they're. They're human, but they're the definition of sociopath.

[Johnny Glenn]

So it's all about money, too.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it's all about.

[Johnny Glenn]

It's all about money. So if you can. If you can, you just got to go at the table with the right amount of money, and so they can make that money.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And I think where people would also cringe on some of the concept there, though, is that we've had our own cartel here in the form of legalized cartel. Big air quotes like, with, like, the sacklers and what they did to America. There's a big pharma company they got. They got America addicted to opioids, which, by the way, has fueled what, the fentanyl crisis that now happens because people want it.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And it's like, you know, people just, you know, people are. Are smart to that stuff now, and they don't. They don't want to see any of that, no matter the form it comes into. So, like, that's the other Thing there are things that guys like you, judgments you make over there in war torn areas where the cameras aren't with you and the media doesn't know what's going on. Which it is probably a good thing here where you can literally just make those trade offs. And it works, and it works. But then when you got to make trade offs in front of the media and in front of the public, where people can fight about it on social media while the decision's going down, unfortunately, through no fault of your own, it gets really hard because you're gonna have people that go, but what if?

[Johnny Glenn]

But what if, but what if?

[Interviewer]

And then they're gonna fight over that. And that's why shit doesn't happen. That's why our politics here is so fucking messy.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. You know, but those things do go down. We just don't see them.

[Interviewer]

That's that.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, they happen.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, for sure. Let's go back to the beginning of your career though. That was a really fun tape.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yep, that was a good tangent.

[Interviewer]

So because we were saying earlier you got in and deployed before 9 11.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

You had done some stuff. So you went to Europe, you went to the Balkans.

[Johnny Glenn]

Went to the Balkans.

[Interviewer]

Was that your first appointment?

[Johnny Glenn]

No, no, my first boss was Africa. So each group, each group is set up to go to different parts of the world.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Johnny Glenn]

And that's why you have the language speakers on each team. So that if something kicks off in this part of the world. So third group is. Was in charge. Used to be the Caribbeans and Africa. That was third group. Fifth group had like the Middle east, seven groups, always been down south. Then you got first group, 10th group. Those guys always been like Asia, Central Asia. Yeah. And places like that, which you probably already know. So third group for me was Africa. So I think the first trip I ever went on when I got the group was Kenya, I think.

[Interviewer]

And what were you doing there?

[Johnny Glenn]

We were training. I think it was Kenya. Either Kenya or.

[Interviewer]

Well, that would. So this is what, like 98, 99.

[Johnny Glenn]

99.

[Interviewer]

So this would have been like a year after the, the embassy bombings in Kenya, right?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, yeah, it was two years out. The embassy bombing. Yeah, it was either 99. Yeah, I think it was 99 or 2000. So we go to Kenya. We're training Tanzanian Kenyans and Ugandans and training them in small unit tactics, you know, shoot, move, communicate, shooting. A small unit tactics because they were fighting a war in the Congo. They always fought in the war in the Congo.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

And so it was pretty cool. Man, Going to training those guys. You know, I'm new to the. To the team. Getting there, learning, and just seeing, like, when a Green beret walks into a room, dude, and you're teaching people, it's amazing how. Because one you know your. You're teaching it, but they're actually getting ready to go use this in combat. You're like, holy, dude. They're in that room like this. I saw a kid fall asleep one night in one day in class, and he got Kane out back. They beat the out of that kid, dude. Yeah, Beat the out of him. I was like, holy. And of course, we're sitting there like, hey, sir, major. Well, one of their sergeant major, like, you can't. And one of the guys I know, we don't. We don't get involved in that. That's. That's their military. You know that they want to do that. They want to beat him. They beat and beat the out of kid. But I tell you, one day, like, so class. And then, yeah, Chase, I beat the Joe. No, dude, you can hear my back. But I'll tell you what. That never went to sleep again. I never even dozed off again, dude. He's like, my buddy's getting a class I'm into. Like, I'm getting a class. Like, I'm learning. Like, I'm not like that, dude. Like, I'm paying attention this class. Yeah, dude, he got came. But it's life or death with them, you know, so.

[Interviewer]

But they were fighting wars, and you're literally training them for that while we're.

[Johnny Glenn]

Training them to go fight wars. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So you're not in a combat scenario.

[Johnny Glenn]

No, not in a combat scenario. You're just teaching. Nope, we're just teaching. As a matter of fact, we went out one night to go do something. We took some pop shots. We think it's just probably like, some, like, hey, they go to Americans in Africa. Let's shoot at them. Nothing. Because we still carry weapons. And nothing that we were afraid of. Like, was that gunshot? Then the next day we got back, and one of our Land Cruisers had a couple bullocks. Oh, wow. Yep. Because it went ting, ting, like. Yep, that was gunshot, but not combat. You know, I mean, come back, do our thing. And then September 11th, hit man. We was actually in beat in Nevada. I remember, like, yesterday we was in beating Nevada, training border patrol guys on booby traps, small unit tactics, tracking toiletries, teaching a tracking class. And we was teaching him something else. I can't remember. And I got him. Went for a run that morning. And we were out in the middle of nowhere. I don't know if you've ever been to beating Nevada. There's nothing there. No, there's like in the middle of a town. Casino.

[Interviewer]

I've been to Las Vegas hotel.

[Johnny Glenn]

Well, if you drive on Oscars, Las Vegas, you pass by the Bunny Ranch. Because we stopped there. Passed by. We just checked it out. We stopped there. Check it.

[Interviewer]

Just checked it out.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, just checked it out. Because we stopped midday. You want to go to midday? Dude, that's like all the old women, like they should call it a Jared Torrent. But night time is when night times when the happenings happening. I mean, so we just stopped by like we never been to Bunny Ranch ever. Let's check this place out. But anyways, so we got a beauty of all nothing there. Little town. Little small ass town. They had a hotel that was set up like old school hotels, you know, like you got the rooms and it's just a ranch style house and the rooms are connected. So each one of us had a room like that. And it's just a big long ass style ranch style building. And I remember taking off running that morning. When I came back, all the guys were sitting around this one room with the doors open and all of our equipment was in these rooms. All the are they doing. So I walk around, hey, what are y' all doing? And everybody's like, shut up man. Shut the up, shut the up.

[Interviewer]

What time is it?

[Johnny Glenn]

It's right after the World Trade center went down. I can remember exactly what time.

[Interviewer]

So it's early in the morning.

[Johnny Glenn]

It's early in the morning out there. It's like seven something. Yeah, because I just got done running and it's starting to get hot. I remember everybody's running this little ass TV. The TV's like, it's like old school TV. The hotel rooms old and they're all circle on this tv. Dude. We're just staring at it. And I was like, so I'm looking over, guys showed him like, what the. And I'm like, hey, is that real? Like, shut up, Johnny. I'm like, the fuck dude. Because I just walked in. Yeah, dude, we think it's real. Because at first we didn't think that shit was real.

[Interviewer]

You didn't?

[Johnny Glenn]

No, we didn't think it was real.

[Interviewer]

You see towers burning on national tv.

[Johnny Glenn]

We saw it on, we saw it on tv, national tv. And everybody's like, is this fucking real? Because it just hit us. We had just woke up guys like, dude, is that fucking real? That's we all like, is that real? And then, you know, you had the boys coming up twin towers just got. Now another plane is going to the building. We're like, oh, that's real. And then a sat phone ring. I won't ever get it.

[Interviewer]

Oh, so wait, you saw the second plane come in? Yeah, we were there when the first one was burning.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yep. When the first one's burning and then.

[Interviewer]

You see that second, and then the.

[Johnny Glenn]

Second one's coming in. I just walked in the room.

[Interviewer]

You remember that moment?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Remember, like, yesterday I was like, oh, under attack. Under attack. We're like, oh, dude. Like. And then about maybe a minute, two minutes out that maybe five, the sat phone rang. I remember everybody's just turned and looked at it. We just looked at it, like. And watch the news and look at it. And then one of the guys like, angel phone. I remember, I grabbed. I was like, ODA 382, Sergeant Glenn speak, I'm sure, ma'. Am. And his commander, he's like, hey, where's? And I was like, right here. I passed the phone off to the commander or our team leader at the time. And he's like, roger, Roger, Roger. Always Roger, Roger, roger. Packing out. Roger that, sir. Click. Hung the phone up. We packed all our up, dude, drove to Nellis, and within a couple hours, we were on a flight flying back to Fort Bragg. Whoa. Yep. Landing at Brad. We land in. No, we land in Delaware first. Where the. That base is called Dover. Yeah, we land in Dover first. You always get stuck in Dover. Yeah, there's nothing there. We got land in Dover now everybody's, you know, trying to make phone calls. We're trying to figure out what the going on. Then we got back to Bragg, man. Once we got back to Bragg, that next day, I think we had a briefing and like, hey, guys, this shit's real. And then the group commander, third group commander, he was on his way, I guess, to D.C. yeah, I forgot what was going on. It was just sit around, wait, pack up, going to ranges, you wearing your guns, just getting ready. Because now balloons up, dude. It's like, hey, we're going.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

Back.

[Interviewer]

Back for a second, though, to when it's going down and you're on the TV and you're in that room and that call is coming in. Obviously, like, I. That's one of the first things I can really remember in my life. I was like 7 years old or something. And I remember how surreal that was. But it was, you know, I'm not In the military. I'm just a kid, but I could see this is evil. And you could see that life was changing right there. You, though, are about to now be in the middle of shit. You've been in this kind of like peacetime, ish type thing, at least as it pertains to America, and suddenly you see we're under attack on our own turf right here. Is there a moment there while you're still in the room where. Where, like, I don't know, time stops and reality sets in. Or was it just a blur?

[Johnny Glenn]

I think time stop and reality setting. I'll ask you guys on the team this. When that phone ring, because when I first saw it, we all thought like, nah, dude, that can't be real. Is it? You mean, you see the caption on the tv, you're like, what the. Yeah, because we're America, you know, I mean, like, what the hell? But when that phone rang, it was like when you watch a movie and then you get the noise and everybody like, oh, shit. We all snap back to reality, like, because in that thing ring, you knew something was going down.

[Interviewer]

Like something's red line.

[Johnny Glenn]

It's like the red line, dude. Yeah. Like, oh, like. And it was just. And it makes a funny noise when it rains. Like, everybody just looked at it and we were all like, that's for me. When. Oh, dude, this is real.

[Interviewer]

Did you know who it was right away?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, yeah, we knew. We knew it was, you know. Oh, yeah, we knew exactly it was. We know it was a group command.

[Interviewer]

So had you guys looked prior to 9, 11, had you guys been read in on stuff about Al Qaeda or dealt with them?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, we had talked about, you know, you heard the stories about Al Qaeda this, that and the other in the Mujahideen era, you know, never thought they would pull off something like this. I mean, this is America and you're driving planes into the, you know, into American. The World Trade center, dude, that's huge. That's some. We were playing not a third world country, you know, so, you know, but we still wasn't sure, you know, I mean, like, all right. And of course, you know, we were. I think at that point, a lot of Americans died. It's like, hey, we're getting retribution right now. Find me somebody to go punch in the face. It's like, somebody go hit your sister in the face. Some dude go hit your sister, you're going to whoop somebody's ass. Yep. It doesn't matter who, when, what, where, why. I'm going to find Somebody, if you fit the description, if you're close to the description, you're getting your ass whipped. So at that point, dude, anything they told us, they could have told us, the nuns in. In South Carolina, we'd have been like, all right, we're going to whoop somebody's ass, you know, I mean, like, they getting it. Yeah. You know, so.

[Interviewer]

So that same day, you're shipping and all this, and they ship you to Dover. Then we went in the same day.

[Johnny Glenn]

Same day, shipped into Dover, and Dover straight back to Fort Brian.

[Interviewer]

You guys talking to each other?

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah, dude. We're like, hey, man, what do you think's gonna happen? You know? What do you think? What do you think this? What do you think about that? And we're all just like, oh, dude, who knows, man? You know, at first you're like, hey, you think any of them are in New York? Because we're like, hey, if they can get planes in New York, maybe they invade it.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

Wish they could have at the time.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Well, they did. And so they had cells all over the place.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Operation.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It's crazy.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It's like.

[Johnny Glenn]

But I hate to say it, but we kind of needed that too, though. You think we needed it September 11th? Yeah. Because all those cells I was operating. If we didn't have the September 11th, can you imagine. This is me talking. I hate to say it, but can you imagine if those cells. If you can coordinate two. Two planes flying in America, World Trade center, can you imagine how many cells they could have built in America, which was a lot already, but can you imagine how many cells they could have built and then just did one initiation. When you initiate an ambush, we initiate with the. With the machine gun. That's the most casual producing weapon. Or we initiate with a claymore or whatever the case may be. But can you imagine if they initiate it with something like. Because the one thing that terrorists got that we don't have is time. They have time. Can you imagine if there was 10 sales per state in America? That's 50. That's 50 states. That's what, 500 sales? 500 cells. And you pick some of the most predominant targets. Yeah. That you're going to hit all at once, all at simultaneously. That scares me way more than a plane going into a building, dude. Because now if you did that, what you would do is you think about it, and if you did it right, what you do is not only would you start fighting, you would kill a lot of people, but you would start Interfighting. Like, you down in South Georgia now. You know, I'm South Georgia dude. Like, you know, we, we believe Red down there. You don't around now in South Georgia. So now you got people that are looking at. If it was a. Say it was an Arab that did something on there, then you're looking at every app like that is a. Yeah, he's enemy.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And we kind. That's the thing, though. Like, it might.

[Johnny Glenn]

And we kind of did a level.

[Interviewer]

There, but we kind of did.

[Johnny Glenn]

We kind of did that.

[Interviewer]

You ever listen to Howard Stern, 9-11-Live Show?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, it puts me in the mind of that. Remember that Denzel Washington movie?

[Interviewer]

Which one?

[Johnny Glenn]

I can't remember which one it was where the, the cop was a, he was from, like, somewhere, and they did a terrorist attack, and they arrest his family, and then they didn't want to get his family. Like, what movie is that?

[Interviewer]

Not. Well, John Q's when his son needs.

[Johnny Glenn]

No John Q's when his son is. And then Denzel's like, no, we're gonna get, we're gonna get your family and get your family back. And his wife. They got a Behind a fence.

[Interviewer]

What movie is that? The Siege. Terrorist cells made specific made attacks and.

[Johnny Glenn]

No, it might have been the Siege. Check. It might have been the Siege.

[Interviewer]

I think it's the Siege.

[Johnny Glenn]

I think it was. But anyways, the cop or the investigator, FBI agent's wife or whatever she was.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. The film follows FBI anti terrorism Anthony Hubbard. Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. And dude, that movie, you didn't watch it? Watch it. That movie is spot on how they did it because they made it look like everybody that was innocent or every ad was guilty. So we just started locking people up, put them in confinement. Dude. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Look what we did in World War II.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah. German cancer with the Japanese. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It's like when you, when you have a rotten apple in the, in the barrel, you suddenly just look at all the apples and go, well, we can't take the chance another one of them is. And it makes you do some weird things.

[Johnny Glenn]

For sure it does.

[Interviewer]

I think about that a lot, like how delicate society is. Things can be very cool. Very cool. You know, maybe we're fighting over politics and tweeting at each other a certain way. Then some goes down, and it's like.

[Johnny Glenn]

That guy said, everybody's gangster, so somebody get punched in the face, then it's too late.

[Interviewer]

100. Well, yeah, I, I, it's sad you got to say it like you did, but it's an interesting point that, like, if There had been more time and more cells and more buildup and more coordination. They could have done something worse.

[Johnny Glenn]

Dangerous. You think about. I'm not saying you're going to invade America. I think that's dumb because we're American. I hope everybody's watching this say yeah, I want to invade America. Please do. We all got guns, you know. Please do. I got plenty of guns. Please do you mean? Just please do. But I feel like if they would have did that, just held off a little longer and just grow yourselves, dude. Like just be patient. Grow yourselves and then all of a sudden just start taking over. Hit something you notice strategically. You mean like just like in North Carolina. I don't know if you read this, but in North Carolina a couple years ago, they think SF guy did a guy hit a. Like one of those, those transformers, the terminals, you know what I'm talking. The one that provides all the electricity.

[Interviewer]

Oh, oh yeah, yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

You had a guy in North Carolina do that. They think it was a Greenberry guy. Because we're taught how to do like this. You learn how to take out grid squares like that.

[Interviewer]

Wait, they never caught the guy.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah but there's a whole lot of other that led up to that too. Like they were doing some, there's some anti protesting going on with like, like gays and like that. So there's a whole lot of that led up to it that said he took it out because his, that that was going on around it. But yeah, dude, it wreaks some havoc in North Carolina for a while, man. Because he took out damn near whole was a couple grid squares he took out. It didn't hurt. No. Well, it hurt people out like on life support like that because he with hospitals. But can you imagine if best terrorists would have been like hey, let's actually plot this out right. You know, and then you start looking at reactions because this is going to be the reaction time. Now I'm going to plan for that. Now I'm going to plan for this. You know.

[Interviewer]

You want to talk about. I I talked about this when I had Sean Ryan in here a couple years ago. Some we were both passionate about. But like if you were able to do a mass scale attack on the power grid and shut that down for a week or something, you're talking. Forget the casualties. Exactly. The casualties would be an insane number. But you want to see how fast people turn on each other. It's like the purge.

[Johnny Glenn]

It would, it'd be mass chaos.

[Interviewer]

I just wonder like there was this book Sandworm by this guy Andy Greenberg, he's been on the show a couple times. Amazing book. He wrote it back in 2019, I think it was about GRU 77445. The. The. The hacking team over there. And, you know, this is before the war in Ukraine, but he writes about how in December 2015, this team coordinated a grid shutdown for, I don't know, eight hours in Kiev just to see if they could do it, and they did, and they shut down the whole thing. And. And. Exactly.

[Johnny Glenn]

I gotta read that.

[Interviewer]

Like. Like, we laugh about it because it's like, yeah, of course, like, this is possible, but the fact that they had that power back then to do that, and that's all due respect to Russia. That's Russia. That's not even China, you know, or something else like that. And here we are in 2025, and no one thinks about. This here is interesting.

[Johnny Glenn]

The.

[Interviewer]

I guess the saving grace that I hold on to with a thread here is that if these places haven't done something like that, perhaps it's because they know if they did something like that, there's a kill switch that they'll get three times as bad. I hope I'm right about that.

[Johnny Glenn]

I'd agree with that. I think that's. I think that's. I think that's valid. I would say if somebody shut down our grids like that, dude, it would be. You. Shut down our grids. Okay, watch this. Yeah, I mean, yeah, but we got Gen tax. Is that what they call, Gen tax, them generators? Gentex. I don't know, you know, the orange and gray ones genre? Is that what they call.

[Interviewer]

Are you making this up right now?

[Johnny Glenn]

No, no, Google it. The home. Just Google home generators. I think it's called Gentle Generators.

[Interviewer]

Generators.

[Johnny Glenn]

That's what people think right there. Yeah, right to the orange, right there. Generac.

[Interviewer]

Just a smooth $20,000.

[Johnny Glenn]

That's what people think. That's all. That's all people think about if the grid shuts. I got my Generac.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, get that out of the back. Alessi, we got that.

[Johnny Glenn]

That's how we. That's how we think, though, dude. That's how people think.

[Interviewer]

That's how they think.

[Johnny Glenn]

That's how we think. I see them going in my neighborhood.

[Interviewer]

I wish I had those pockets. That'd be nice.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, right. Hey, you know, I'm coming. I'm broke, so I want to offer free. I got like. I got like a 401. You. I got something.

[Interviewer]

You got something.

[Johnny Glenn]

I can run the fridge. That's about it.

[Interviewer]

And. And you Got some skills, some life skills a lot of people don't have.

[Johnny Glenn]

Dude, me and my. Like, I tell people all the time. My ex always, I brainwash my kids. But we can survive. I can promise you.

[Interviewer]

Oh, I believe that.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah, Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I feel like I'm gonna learn next week.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm coming. Oh, yeah. We're gonna learn. You're gonna learn some when I come down. Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

All right. So what. So you guys end up on Fort Bragg by the time 12th, and this, looking back on the history, you know, there was like a footing, a war footing for five to seven days. There were at the top levels and the White House and. And the Joint Chief of Staff, they're just trying to figure out the strategy here. They knew where they were going, but, like, what are we doing? So when. When did you guys find out what's going on and how you're getting put into the game?

[Johnny Glenn]

Every day we was just getting updates. Like, not really updates. It's like, hey, they're still working a plan. Then we were getting like, hey, we think it's al Qaeda. We think it came from this. We think it's this. We think it's that. You know, I mean, so you getting daily sit reps. But it wouldn't really tell us none because nobody knew nothing. They were still trying to figure out. So probably I would say a week or two is before we got, like, hard, like, hey, dude, we're going to Afghanistan. Cool. All right. Where we're staging, where we're going, where we're flying to, and we end up flying in Kuwait first.

[Interviewer]

And do you start action, like, right when you get on the ground?

[Johnny Glenn]

Once we got to Kuwait, we just continued to train with the team. Okay. So our team just continued doing, you know, team internal training.

[Interviewer]

What date are we at here? Should be, like, the 20th, 25th.

[Johnny Glenn]

I'd say about. Yeah, end of the month. 25th. End of the month. Because now you're just like, all right, dude, you're. We're in it now. We're in it to win it. And then fifth group already had guys on team, on the ground already before any happen. So, you know, there's.

[Interviewer]

Oh, they did.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, there's Us have guys already on ground. Well, I said it was on ground. They're already working with cells or in Afghanistan. Yeah. Uw. Which will always work for different armies for the rest of time, you know, I mean, like, just like, we went to war with a country, right? Now we got somebody. Oh, yeah, that's great.

[Interviewer]

Imagine Being on that team though.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah. You ever watched 12 Strong? Yeah, that was the first team in there. But those guys had sources in their way before that move was made. You know what I mean? Like, not to give away our trade secrets, but they'd like. Of course, that's how we do. That's what we do. Hearts and mind that we do. So, you know, like there's already things that we already knew or we speculated, then they verified like, yeah, okay, to do this and I can't do that now. Okay, now we can action targets. We start action.

[Interviewer]

It's interesting though, because this is, this was like a modern military masterpiece in the sense that they do. They changed how warfare is done. Right. It's paramilitary. You got like tip of the spear, like CIA running it with, you know, some spec op guys that work with them. And then you have all these tier one teams across the military, be it the Navy SEALs, be it you guys, be it Delta Force, be it the Rangers. And yet everyone like kind of has for certain teams from each of those levels is brought into the ground there and has their own, has their own mission. So did you have overlap with any of the other like tier one teams in this?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, we did. We did some stuff in the Maruf Valor with the seals. I can't remember what team it was because I remember they were the outer court on and we actually went in to conduct a hit. We didn't have killing nobody on target, but we ended up taking some. Some pretty cool. I'm gonna say cool. Some pretty high value target guys. Or back then we didn't call them high value target. It was just guys that had information that would lead on more into the war of guys we're actually looking for. So. But yeah, we did some joint with the seals back then because I remember rolling a Kandahar, there was nothing there. Dude, we had a little base we set up in like 01. Yeah. No one. Well, this is like beginning of O2 now. Okay. Yeah. Because we didn't. I didn't actually end up going until the beginning of O2 because we were still waiting for.

[Interviewer]

You're waiting?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. Pieces of the puzzles to get put in where you putting guys. Where are these guys going? And that's basically how I was working. Like you had, you know, we got seals going to take this here, Rangers taking this area. Delta's doing this with ground branch and we're sitting here, we're gonna, they're gonna do this, which is gonna trigger this. We're gonna need guys here. So it's all just. It's chess.

[Interviewer]

Were you burning to get out there?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. And I remember I had a team. I had a team warrant at time. Bart Bryant, I won't ever forget. He kept telling us, careful what you wish for. Careful what you wish for. Because I was going to gym every day in Kuwait, just getting it. Like, hell, yeah, let's get it. Because one of them things where it's like. It's like being in the NFL or been in major league sports and you trained your whole life. Like you were saying earlier, 15 years old, you make it to the Super Bowl. 15 years old, you never make it to the World Series. You never make it to the Stanley Cup. You never get put in the game. You mean. Yeah, you played all the seasons, you played the games, but you never got to the dance. You never got to the show. So having been trained for the last, what, three, four years. I've been in the military four or five years. Like, dude, we're going to show. Like, I'm ready. Let's go. Let's go. Put all this shit to the test. I remember Brian, I won't ever get. He says, hey, careful what you wish for. And he said that to Stanley Herman that got killed. It wasn't five days after he said that. Operation Anaconda. Yep.

[Interviewer]

So you were in that operation?

[Johnny Glenn]

No, I wasn't in Operation Anaconda. So Stanley Hammond got a team went. We didn't go. Our team wasn't there. So their team went. We was a gmv, a rug team at the time. I can't remember what team Stanley Hammer was on, but I think he got attached to somebody or something. But anyways, I remember we were leaving the gym and he was having a conversation with Bart. They were both Warrants. And I remember we all walked up and Bar was like, well, you know, you just have to be careful what you wish for. And he ended up getting killed, man. In Anaconda. It wasn't. It was less than three days.

[Interviewer]

That brings it home.

[Johnny Glenn]

It does, man. I think he's the first guy killed on ground, if I'm not mistaken. I could be wrong on that, but he was either first guy. The first Green Beret for sure. I know he's the first Green Beret. And then after that, dude, it's like, we knew then, like, all right, it's real now. It's real now. Like, it's. It's here, you know? So then we're just itching to get in a fight, dude.

[Interviewer]

When was your first firefight?

[Johnny Glenn]

2002. Of. I want to say it was May of 2002, if I'm not mistaken. Okay. And it was a far, far ambush. We was driving through south. We was in southern Afghanistan, driving through southern Afghanistan. And our trucks got hit by PKM rounds, RPG rounds. And we just, as a team, we just kind of maneuvered. Didn't really know what the we were doing, but we're going to maneuver on it because that's what we've been trained to do. Yeah. And we returned some fire. That was the first. First time I got shot at. Dude's like, all right, we hear, where's it coming from? Because a bullet cracking in the air makes it. It makes a distinct sound. It's like a. It's like a. I don't know. It's a crack. Yeah, it's a crack in the air. And in the valley of Afghanistan, where we were, it was like an echo at that crack. So you're like, all right, where did that come from? And all you could do is like, all right, it came this. I know it went by this way. So, you know, it's from generally this direction. So we're all looking for, you know, where to come from who shot at us. And then I think it was Troy, maybe Bart, one of them saw, like, somebody moving up in the hills, and it's probably three, 400 yards away. You mean you could see him moving? And it was all like, just look like black man jams or black dresses or whatever you want to call it. And then, of course, we saw another shot, and that was like a muzzle flash. And at that, we just started lighting that hill up. I think one guy started shooting, and it was money. After that, everybody started shooting.

[Interviewer]

Well, we saw you showed us the video earlier of the one that was later in like 2014. But, like, you know, in Afghanistan, you're fighting the geography as much as you're fighting the people.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, dude, the geography is everything. If, if, if we were fighting, like, if we were fighting in Afghanistan, I mean, Americans, we, as American, the United States Army, Marine Corps, the armed forces, we fight in Afghanistan. We own that country. Nobody could beat us. Nobody could beat us. That country is designed. It's designed to fight in. If you own the terrain there, you own the country. That's interesting.

[Interviewer]

I wouldn't expect that because the terrain's so complicated. It's why they talk about, like, Afghanistan being like the graveyard of empires, because great military have come to have come in over the years. Exactly.

[Johnny Glenn]

Came in and left out with a toe between your legs. Dude, that's just a place where.

[Interviewer]

Because the people know it and the.

[Johnny Glenn]

People know it, dude. Like everywhere we ever got hit, suffer, maybe, dude, all the firefights I've been in, I can probably name on two hands, maybe 10 firefights we actually initiated where. We actually initiated where? I do. We got intel. This is what we're gonna do. Fifteen at the most. Yeah, most of the time, dude, you're driving.

[Interviewer]

The bullets are flying.

[Johnny Glenn]

Bullets are fine, dude, because they got high ground. They're looking out at you. Yeah, gotcha, bro. That's why I say if we. If we own that country, nobody could ever invade us because nobody's gonna outshoot us. We got the best shooters in the world. And then without technology, dude, just won't happen. You can literally just take a jtag, send them up on a hilltop, and he can own 2, 300 miles. Yeah. With fast movers and C130s Apaches and a one man band, dude.

[Interviewer]

Which is another reason why strategically, like the fall and being completely out of there and leaving that, you know, potentially. Right.

[Johnny Glenn]

I think. Yeah. Nothing else, you put. You keep a unit there that you can rotate in and out and then you make it a staging area if we need it. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

All right, let's take a quick break.

[Johnny Glenn]

Let's.

[Interviewer]

Let's get you some lunch. We got all day here.

[Johnny Glenn]

Do it.

[Interviewer]

But this, this is great so far. We'll be right back.

[Johnny Glenn]

Let's get it.

[Interviewer]

All right, we're back. Before we move on, I've been looking at this all day and Alessia just said something too. What, what is going on with. With the hat, by the way? Maybe you can take this off and show this to everyone.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, that's a good lug hat right there, brother.

[Interviewer]

Hold on, that's. That's not a hat. That's a.

[Johnny Glenn]

Look at.

[Interviewer]

I don't know what to call that.

[Johnny Glenn]

That's a hat. Matter of fact, you know, anybody make them. And I'm trying to start me a hat company. Just call them distressed hats. Distressed hats, WJMFG hats.

[Interviewer]

There's nothing like. Like what, what, What'd you do to that thing? Put it through a rag?

[Johnny Glenn]

No, just wear and tear, brother.

[Interviewer]

Just wait. How long have you had that?

[Johnny Glenn]

14 years.

[Interviewer]

I can tell.

[Johnny Glenn]

December be 14 years.

[Interviewer]

I've ridden some hats into the. I love how he knows exactly. I've ridden some hats in the ground before. I've never done anything remotely. Yeah, yeah. Like, do people comment on that all the time?

[Johnny Glenn]

They're like, hey, why do you wear the hat? I'm like, good lie.

[Interviewer]

You're on the plane. You're, like, perfectly dressed. And they. Look at that. They're like, what.

[Johnny Glenn]

What day happened?

[Interviewer]

Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

[Johnny Glenn]

What happened? Actually, I was in a firefight with this hat on.

[Interviewer]

You were in a firefight with this hat on?

[Johnny Glenn]

I've been in a few firefights. This hat, not my. This is not my. My favorite hat. I. I can't even wear it. It shreds. But this, right, I've had for 14 years.

[Interviewer]

There's one that's worse than that.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That one I got left now. That one I got my nickname over. It was actually a third group hat. It's got the third group flash on it.

[Interviewer]

Can we see it anymore?

[Johnny Glenn]

You can. It's just thread. You can see it. You can make out it's a hat. But I had that thing for, I don't know, probably. Probably about 15, 16 years.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And you got your nickname from that?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yep. We were in a firefight. I was telling. I was running, and it blew off my head. We've been a firefight all day, dude, I'm talking. I was white as snow. Just dehydrated. Yeah. And I turned around and go get my hat. And when I turned around and pick up my hat, I bent over and all the blood went to my head, and I stood up. I don't know if you've ever been, like, totally dehydrated.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

Well, I stood up. Everything was moving. The ground was moving. Earth was moving. Excuse me. I was like, holy. Now look up. I remember I put my gun up. I took a shot. I turn around and look at the trucks. And I was like, I'm just gonna walk back to the trucks. My mind was telling me to run, but my body would not run. So I literally just started walking towards the truck. And we had this young kid on a team, and he goes, look at Johnny Glenn. He looks like a black Jesus right now. And when he said that, he said it. I was telling Alexi. He said it over Sat102, which is like, Satcom102 is your all Afghan radio network. It's all over. Anybody can listen to it. Anybody can hear it. It's satcom. Well, he thought he was on our team freak when he said it. And when he said it, you know, I was telling him, anytime you get in a firefight in Afghanistan, you sit by the radio like, hey, where they at? Somebody's plotting on the map. Someone's like, hey, dude, they're only 10 clicks from here. So you're trying to go get in that fight. If they're close enough. So all the SF team knew we're in a firefight, and they heard it. And then we went back to Kandahar, like, maybe three or four days later to get mail and all that. Everybody's like, johnny. And then it just stuck. Dude, it's like.

[Interviewer]

It's a hell of a name.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, it just stuck. It's like, Johnny. And what's crazy is I'll say it sometime. Like, I don't mean to say it. They're like, what's your name? I'm like, that's Johnny. I'm like, that's Johnny. Depending on where I'm at. But now.

[Interviewer]

All right, Samuel Jackson, sit down.

[Johnny Glenn]

And my buddy got this wallet made. It says bad on it. I was like, hey, let me get that. He's like, no. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

There is something about putting. Or in the middle of, like, any term that just gives it.

[Johnny Glenn]

It gives it flavor. It gives it sauce like that.

[Interviewer]

That's right. It's like Chef's Kid.

[Johnny Glenn]

That's it. It's done.

[Interviewer]

That's right. It's like if Samuel Jackson had said, you know, we gotta get these goddamn snakes off this plane. No one's watching that movie.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, but if he goes, we gotta get these snakes.

[Interviewer]

People are like, that sounds like the worst movie ever.

[Johnny Glenn]

But I'm coming. I'm watching it. I'm watching it. Hell, yeah. Well, there's something about it. That word.

[Interviewer]

All right, so we left off. You. You had said you had your first. First firefight in May 2002.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yep.

[Interviewer]

And what was that like? How long was the firefight, first of all?

[Johnny Glenn]

That was probably about 20 minutes, 20, 30 minutes.

[Interviewer]

So not too.

[Johnny Glenn]

Just not too, too long. Just exchanging fire. I always call it plunging fire because it was three, four, and eight yards from each other. So I call it plunging fire. To me, they would say, that's a far far ambush. Me, I just call it plunging fire because they're basically, they're shooting off the top of a mountain down at us. It's hitting, but big. Like, it's hitting rocks. I think they hit a couple trucks, but nobody got hit, you know, I mean, so it's more like, oh, that person's shooting at us. Oh, don't. People are shooting at us. More than one up there. And then we're, of course, shooting up, trying to shoot back, you know.

[Interviewer]

So how to end. You take them all out.

[Johnny Glenn]

Oh, no, we shot, like, two dudes, I think and then they retreated. It was on like, four, maybe five dudes. Then they retreated in the heels.

[Interviewer]

What was your adrenaline like at the end of that? We're like, there it is.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. He was trying to, like, it was adrenaline rush for sure. But I think more so more than anything, I kept trying to replay it in my head. Like, you know, like, when you see the dude, like, I shot him, what happened? You're trying to see that.

[Interviewer]

Like, that's right.

[Johnny Glenn]

Like, did I hit the dude? I should. I know I was shooting at him, so I don't think I hit him, but I know I was shooting at him. I was hitting all around the rocks. He pop up, pop down, this one pop up, epoch down. Then all of our guys are shooting at him. Then once we, you know, the guys fled. We made our way up there. There's two guys up there with shot the up. So, you know, I guess we all shot them two dudes.

[Interviewer]

So it's kind of. I mean, it's. It's got to be crazy, though. It's like you're baptism of fire, and.

[Johnny Glenn]

Now you're like, this is what we're.

[Interviewer]

Going to be seeing.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. And it was. And it was. And then it just got. After that, it just morphed into firefights was bigger. They were more. When was the orchestrated? Like, two days later. Wow. Day or two later. Right away, they were more orchestrated. Yeah, they were more orchestrated because at that point, they were just hitting anybody. Any American or any vehicle they saw they thought were American, they were hitting us.

[Interviewer]

Hey, guys, if you haven't already subscribed, please hit that subscribe button. It's a huge, huge help.

[Johnny Glenn]

Thank you. Yeah. What do you mean.

[Interviewer]

What do you mean by orchestrate? Meaning, like, they knew where you guys were going to be more.

[Johnny Glenn]

Well, they knew where we're going to be. But not only that. They started like, it's like anything else. They started growing. Like, if we hit you with four dudes, going to hit you with 10 dudes. Instead of putting 10 dudes together like they did, they started. Because you can Google how to send an ambush. So then what they started doing was like, all right, we're gonna. I swear to God. You can google my 7 days is all in it. Ranger handbooks in there. But they started setting guys in. Yeah. In more, I would say, like, almost. Not really strategic positions, but in better positions. Like, all right, let's put a guy here and put a guy here and put a guy here. Then we're gonna put 10 guys over here, you know, we're gonna shoot at him in this spot. And then when they start moving, we're gonna run this way. They want to try to ambush them up here. This got smarter, you know?

[Interviewer]

I mean, now were you guys doing like routine patrols within the area of your base or are you also moving between bases?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, well, we would do like what we would call is our fire bases. We always, we expand our white space. So anytime a team go into an area, expand the white space. Our white space is like our neutral space.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

So anytime we go into an area, the first thing we can do is we're going to own an arch by what we got. Whether we own it, occupy that by force. We'll take it by force. We need to. So if we own and occupy this room in here by force, what we do at that point, we would extend the corners. So there's four corners in this wall house. Right. First thing I would do is extend that corner out. Let's expand our space. Whether that's through kinetic or through non kinetic means, the best way I think to do it is a little bit of both. But you, you basically want to stay non kinetic. Because if I can stay non kinetic, then that means I'm working the hearts and minds of the people. Now if I'm working hard to the minds of the people, and I'm staying non kinetic, those same people I'm working, they know I'm there to protect them or be there for them or whatever. Now these people gonna start giving me intel. Now I can build targets. I can say, hey, I know for a fact Julian goes to this place downstairs and eats every day. I know Easter every day. Now I can put surveillance on him. My guys can watch him. And now we want to hit him, we can hit him or we pull them in, we talk to him like, look, dude, I'm gonna get in bed with you. I know you don't want to be a bad guy, but you got to take care of your family. I got a family back home. I'll take care of my family. But I'm gonna offer you a win win right here.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

You know, whoever the ID maker is, you help me get that guy, that's what I'm gonna do for you. Yeah, you're good with me now. All this little, you know, selling on the side, I don't care about that.

[Interviewer]

What's the bigger problem?

[Johnny Glenn]

What's the bigger problem? This is the bigger problem. This is what we need to solve. How do you help me help you? And now, dude, that guy, he starts seeing A global impact, because we're going to do that. So now we're going to do is. Once we start expanding that, guess what? My medic's gonna go, and he's gonna do a metcalf. Where he's gonna go in, he's gonna help that local guy we know that's got a big ass lump on his head, which I got to do some. I call it brain surgery. It's just. I got to cut on a guy's head.

[Interviewer]

Oh, they let you do that?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, he had a big skin. What are you gonna do? I know. Really?

[Interviewer]

Dr. Mother?

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, I'm a doctor. Come on in. I'm gonna cut you over. What are you call Peter? Like, oh, my God, they're over here doing this or whatever it is. So he can't say, you violated my medical rights. So I cut this. This guy had a. It was like a brain. It looked like a brain tumor growing his head. It's a big ass lump about that thick.

[Interviewer]

You just sliced it off?

[Johnny Glenn]

We cut off, and my medic was there. I numbed it up. And my medic's like, all right, Johnny, start cutting. We start cutting. We dabbing it. He's dabbing it off and he says, see that right there, John? And that? And then he said, okay, it's not cancerous. And he was telling me all the medical terms. He said, are we gonna cut it off? We can cut off real slow. Cut it down right to his right onto his skull. And then he said, johnny, now if we had time, we could skin graph this. Shave skin. I was like, no, dude. So we cut it off, we put something over it. He came back three days later, it started to heal, man. And then after that. Do you heal once? It heals just like a mole on his face. But look better than that third horn. He had grown.

[Interviewer]

Was he talking normal or did he walk?

[Johnny Glenn]

No, no, he was talking. He was talking the whole time. The whole time we're doing, he was sitting there talking. We never put him under. We just numbed it real good.

[Interviewer]

So you. You didn't damage anything else?

[Johnny Glenn]

Didn't damage nothing else.

[Interviewer]

That's insane.

[Johnny Glenn]

So you.

[Interviewer]

You are literally a brain surgeon.

[Johnny Glenn]

I guess so. But the beauty of it. But it's on the outside of his skull, so we didn't have to really go into his skull. We cut just a little bit down into school. Not much, just a little bit and cut. He's like, let's cut everything out.

[Interviewer]

Make sure you're like, that looks like enough.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah, let's do It. Yeah. My man was like, I'll keep going down the field. He's like, keep going. I was like, all right, cool. But, yeah, do you get to do over there that you normally. Yeah. Like, we had a kid get blown up. He got blown up by shrapnel. We think it's from the bad guys. They said it's from Americans, but it wasn't. It's from the bad guys. But the kid came in and we stapled. I got pictures that I have to send it to you. We stapled his. Whoever. Whoever fixed them. They put staples from base from the tip of his sternum all the way down to his midsection. Whoa. And so when he came in, the dog was like, yeah. The dad was like, they told me to bring my son in to get these staples out. And he was like, when they tell you? He's like, oh. They told me to come back after some period of time, dude. This guy waited, like, two months, man. So the skin was starting to kind of grow over the staples. It was ugly. Just a kid, dude. He might have been the cutest kid. Six or seven, maybe. Cute as. All I do is, man. A little Afghan kid, little kid.

[Interviewer]

His skin's growing over this thing.

[Johnny Glenn]

Yeah. So he let. So for whatever reason, the kid liked me. I don't know, because I was brown or I was brown like him or what, but he liked me, dude. He's like. So I was holding his hand, and Phil was taking the staples off, and he kept telling steel, no, no. And he pointed at me, and Phil's like, you want to take him out? I'm like, fuck him. Yeah. Because they teaches, you know, the operator feels no pain. So if I'm stitching you up, whatever. They don't feel no pain. So I don't feel nothing. Even though, as a kid, I was trying to be gentle. But we got all those staples out of them and got him out, dude. We gave him, like, some lollipops and stuff and candy and stuff like that and told his dad, like, hey. But that's how you get people to come on your side to help you.

[Interviewer]

When you first get down there, though, those months before you're out doing patrols and stuff, are you getting handed off through the various chains of intel to. Or having guys handed to you, I should say, that are going to be your interpreters and are going to be in the field with you, or did you have to go out and develop those people for the most part, the.

[Johnny Glenn]

First couple years of the war, dude, you developing that stuff every now and then the three letter agencies, they'll throw you. They might throw you a little bone. They might. Like here, dude, we've been working with this guy. He knows the area.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johnny Glenn]

Then you get with that guy and then that guy, he has subscribed and.

[Interviewer]

You'Ll see this when it hits the feed, sometimes soon. And also, if you haven't followed me on Instagram or on X, those links are in my description below. Thank you.