#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up

Summary

Podcast Summary: Shawn Ryan Show Episode #153 featuring Kris Paronto

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Introduction

In Episode #153 of the "Shawn Ryan Show," host Shawn Ryan welcomes former U.S. Army Ranger, Kris Paronto, to discuss his harrowing experiences during the 2012 Benghazi attack, his subsequent personal struggles, and the broader implications of government and media narratives surrounding the event. The conversation delves deep into Kris's military career, his entrepreneurial ventures, and his journey toward personal reconciliation and healing.

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1. Background of Kris Paronto

Kris Paronto, a former Army Ranger from the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, is renowned for his role in the Benghazi attack. He is also the co-author of the book "13 Hours," which provides an inside account of the events during the attack. Beyond his military service, Kris is the founder of Vigilance Elite and co-owner of Battleline Tactical and Tonto Vodka. His extensive background sets the stage for a candid and insightful discussion about real-world military operations and their aftermath.

Notable Quote:

• [02:02] Sean Ryan: "Chris Paronto, former Army Ranger, 2nd Battalion, 75th Regiment. You responded to the Benghazi 2012 attack. You're the author of the Ranger Way and the Patriots creed..."

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2. Personal Struggles and Recovery

Kris opens up about his tumultuous personal life, highlighting his battle with alcoholism, the strain it placed on his marriage, and his subsequent divorce. He candidly shares his darkest moments, including a suicide attempt in 1996, emphasizing the profound impact of his experiences in combat on his mental health.

Notable Quotes:

• [25:12] Sean Ryan: "So for starters."
• [25:13] Chris Paronto: "Yeah. Where did you grow up? ... It was a rough childhood, you know, it was a rough fun."

Kris discusses the process of seeking help, the role of his faith in his recovery, and the importance of reconnecting with his family. He narrates how relocating and remarriage played pivotal roles in his healing journey.

Notable Quote:

• [267:37] Chris Paronto: "That was huge. It was, I was so drunk. ... But that was the life. That really. That was it. The life changed."

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3. Military Career and Contracting Work

After overcoming personal demons, Kris returns to the military, ultimately earning his commission and serving in specialized roles, including with Blackwater Security and the Greystone Firearms Association. He details his roles, the challenges of private military contracting, and the bureaucratic hurdles faced within government agencies.

Notable Quotes:

• [43:13] Chris Paronto: "I did go to me. Yeah, I, I, I was, I was, I was, I was, I had a good time, man."
• [72:21] Sean Ryan: "You go through that. And I said, you don't. You're not gonna get along with everybody."

Kris highlights the camaraderie and conflicts within contracting teams, emphasizing the importance of trust and leadership in high-stakes environments.

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4. Experience During the Benghazi Attack

The core of the episode revolves around Kris's firsthand experience during the Benghazi attack. He recounts the intense combat situations, the loss of comrades, and the emotional toll it took on him. Kris reflects on the government's response, media portrayal, and the personal accountability of political figures like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Notable Quotes:

• [13:06] Chris Paronto: "Yeah. I mean, I can count good Stafford. And I'll tell the standard."
• [17:22] Sean Ryan: "What did you think you were going to do?"

Kris vividly describes specific moments, such as engaging attackers, witnessing the death of his teammates, and the moment he felt divine intervention during the chaos.

Notable Quote:

• [18:55] Sean Ryan: "What do you mean God kicked you in the ass and said, get up."
• [19:04] Chris Paronto: "Voice in the back of my head right there. I still feel it. I still get chills."

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5. Team Dynamics and Leadership

Kris provides an in-depth look into the dynamics of his team during the attack. He discusses the personalities of his teammates, the leadership styles within the unit, and how these factors influenced their ability to respond effectively during the crisis. Kris praises leaders like Roan for their valor and adaptability under pressure.

Notable Quotes:

• [35:24] Sean Ryan: "Let's do it. I've."
• [36:20] Sean Ryan: "Did you guys butt heads before Benghazi?"

Kris emphasizes the importance of mutual respect and the ability to work cohesively despite personal differences, highlighting that their focused teamwork was crucial in navigating the attack.

Notable Quote:

• [82:07] Sean Ryan: "You never got blown up on Irish."
• [84:35] Chris Paronto: "We were being."

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6. Reflections and Conclusions

As the conversation draws to a close, Kris reflects on the lessons learned from his military and post-military experiences. He stresses the significance of resilience, the impact of government accountability, and the necessity for real training and preparedness in personal security. Kris also touches upon his renewed relationship with his family and how it has been instrumental in his continued healing.

Notable Quotes:

• [243:34] Sean Ryan: "How did you rationalize?"
• [246:49] Sean Ryan: "And what did your wife do at the time?"

Kris concludes by reaffirming his dedication to truth and accountability, urging listeners to question official narratives and seek authenticity in storytelling.

Notable Quote:

• [278:17] Sean Ryan: "You did it out of respect, man."
• [280:05] Chris Paronto: "She is incredibly wonderful."

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Conclusion

Episode #153 of the "Shawn Ryan Show" offers a raw and unfiltered glimpse into Kris Paronto's life, blending intense combat narratives with personal vulnerability. Through Kris's storytelling, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the complexities faced by military contractors, the emotional aftermath of combat, and the enduring quest for personal redemption. The episode serves as a tribute to those who serve and a critical examination of the intersection between government accountability and frontline experiences.

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Final Thoughts

Kris Paronto's candid revelations and heartfelt expressions provide valuable insights into the realities of military operations and their personal toll. His emphasis on resilience, accountability, and the importance of genuine leadership resonates deeply, making this episode a compelling listen for anyone interested in military affairs, personal growth, and the truth behind high-profile events.

Join the Conversation: For those inspired by Kris Paronto's story, consider supporting the "Shawn Ryan Show" through Patreon for exclusive content, behind-the-scenes footage, and more.

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Note: The timestamps referenced correspond to segments within the provided transcript to aid in locating specific quotes and discussions.

Transcript

[Chris Paronto]

This episode is brought to you by Dutch Bros. Big smiles, rocking tunes and epic drinks. Dutch Bros. Is all about you. Choose from a variety of customizable handcrafted beverages like our rebel energy drinks, coffees, teas and more. Download the Dutch Bros app for a free medium drink. Plus find your nearest shop, order ahead and start earning rewards offer valid for new app users only. Free medium drink reward upon registration. 14 day expiration terms apply. See Dutchbros.com streaming now on Peacock. Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie are back. That's hot. Loves it. For a show stopping reunion that will prove putting on an opera is anything but simple. We're really good at this. One thing's for sure, they won't be upstaged. Good to have you back. Come on, we've got a show to do. Paris and Nicole, the encore, a three part reunion special. Streaming now only on Peacock.

[Sean Ryan]

Chris Paronto, welcome to the show, man.

[Chris Paronto]

Long time coming. I already said it, but thanks for. And you're so tolerant, man. That was so cool that you were willing to wait and then just, hey, I'm going to be in town and I hope you'd have to bump anybody if you did. Sorry, guys, but just you're, you've always been a stand up guy with me. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's really cool. Yeah, thanks, buddy.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, my pleasure. I'm just happy you're here and I'm extremely patient.

[Chris Paronto]

There aren't many standup guys in the world even coming out of our community anymore in this public figure world, so it's nice to still find a few out there like I try to be, but I'm not always a stand up guy, that's why.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, I'm sure you are.

[Chris Paronto]

Talk to my wife, man. I need to bring you home. Talk to my wife about how nice and reasonable I am because I don't get that respect at home, man.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, Chris, I want to do a life story on you.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

You know, and obviously talk a lot about Benghazi and what you're doing now, but we're going to cover the full spectrum here and so everybody starts off with an introduction.

[Chris Paronto]

So are you going to read? Don't make me feel like a pretentious asshole.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, no, you're good. Everybody gets one. Chris Paronto, former Army Ranger, 2nd Battalion, 75th Regiment. You responded to the Benghazi 2012 attack. You're the author of the Ranger Way and the Patriots creed, co author of thirteen Hours, the inside account of what really happened in Benghazi. Your motivational and Public speaker and the co host on Battleline podcast.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

You're the founder of the 14th Hour foundation, owner of Battleline Tactical and co owner of Tonto Vodka.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

You're the host of a pro military documentary series, War Heroes. You co founded E3 Firearms association and you're the father. You're a father, husband and a Christian.

[Chris Paronto]

That's the most important there at the bottom. You could have cut out everything else and just read that at the bottom and I would have been perfectly happy. Right.

[Sean Ryan]

That right there just tells everybody what a great man you are.

[Chris Paronto]

I appreciate. Thank you and thanks man. Thanks. That's cool. You say you're welcome.

[Sean Ryan]

What is the E3 Firearms Association?

[Chris Paronto]

Well, you know, and we, it's, it's so difficult. I don't know if you know, Adam Paintshot. Adam was a Sig Firearms truck. He started SIG Academy.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay.

[Chris Paronto]

Trooper in New Hampshire. It is a training website. It has been so difficult though to get that thing off the ground. It was just running a roadblock after roadblock because of Google. Because hey, and if you don't think there's state run media and state run, state run Internet web, there is if you have to be dumber than a bag of hammers to not see that out there. But it's, it's, we've tried to get it going. There's a lot of training materials on their videos out there and you know you get sponsorships to come to Battle Line Tackle courses. If you're a member. You come to my courses for free. Oh wow. I mean it's just, it's.

[Sean Ryan]

So is it online training?

[Chris Paronto]

It's an online training platform but it's a paid online training.

[Sean Ryan]

How many, how many lessons are on there?

[Chris Paronto]

Oh man, I know just hip pocket training stuff where I'll just jump on and do a 10 minute video. We've got to have 50 or 60 videos on. Oh, right on. And Adam's a wonderful, wonderful instructor. He is. I am the loosey goosey. Hey man, let's just go out and shoot. I'm going to give you some lessons. Adam is. Which is, which is great. It's a great dynamic because he, you do. There are people that respond to that kind of training better. The by the book lesson about where some guys respond to just tell me what I need to do. This is what you need to do. But you know, it's, it's been, we've had it going for a few years now and it's just always trying to improve the website. Get that flowing. It's E3 does it. And it's a whole association. So it's not just farms. There's camping, it's outdoor.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, wow.

[Chris Paronto]

Camping. Aviation. John Rainwaters runs the aviation side of it. You know, RVing, off roading. And I say. I tell the E3 owner, his name's Brian, Brian. Brian Johnson. I tell him, yeah, farms is like the redhead stepchild of E3, because all those are cruising. And ours is just. It's been very difficult. And I get it, too, because, you know, it's a paid website where there's a lot of YouTube sensations out there that are showing training, and you can get that for free. Yeah, so it is. And it's. I won't do the free video stuff. And the reason being it's not a money thing. It really is. You really don't have any control of who those videos are going to. And where do I get that from? Well, I spoke at an FBI academy, a conference which had a lot of law enforcement officers, a lot of former FBI trainers, and I sat down with them, and they're great guys. You know, of course, it's not all formal functions. I'm with a bunch of cops, man. So of course we're going to go to the bar a little bit and. And enjoy, enjoy. Have some food and. But I remember coming back and I sat with one of the officers, and he goes, you know, you've had Don Shipley on. I know. He goes, you know, I watched John's videos, but now it's starting to bother me. A lot of these videos out there because they're teaching all these tactics and they don't know they have no control of who's getting them. And the Dallas police office, Dallas chief of police, came in and they had that tactical shooting where some officers died. And he was one of the speakers at that event as well. And it kind of hit home to me. I was like, man, he's exactly right. We're putting all these videos, and God bless him. I have nothing wrong to say about Don. I don't know Don. We've never met. I support what he does. I think, you know, he's a. From what I've seen, he looks like he's a standup guy. And I'm just throwing that as example because that's what the law enforcement officer said. The police. He was from Philadelphia. He's like, we just, you know, we're really. We're really getting not upset, but he says, we're really worried that the bad guys are starting to watch these videos. Out there.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, I mean, there's a caveat to that, too, you know, I mean, what the are people supposed to do? We've defunded the police. The border is wide open.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

They are actively sending $87 million a week to the Taliban. Sorry, man. You know what I mean? But people have to be able to defend themselves, and that's where they go.

[Chris Paronto]

To do it, and they go on. And so.

[Sean Ryan]

And that stuff's out there no matter what.

[Chris Paronto]

And that's where it's just. It's where I can at least have some control, though.

[Sean Ryan]

And you know what I mean? I mean, people are. I 100% get your point.

[Chris Paronto]

And it didn't make sense until he said it, too. Yeah. Until he said there is context.

[Sean Ryan]

There's. Things aren't the same as they used to be.

[Chris Paronto]

Not at all.

[Sean Ryan]

The people. It's dangerous out there. I mean, Chicago is the murder capital of the country, and more people are dying there than they did in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Chris Paronto]

And it's no shock that that is one of my most. I have arranged there with the Chicago cop, really, Daniel Lombard, tremendous guy. We've got a range called the Compound. I don't think that's any coincidence that the majority. Those are the biggest classes that I will have when I teach out there at the compound in Crete, Illinois. It's run by Daniel Lombard. Nevada Defense is his training company, but he's a lead farm instructor for the Chicago pd. He's getting older now, so he's off the street now. He's teaching. But you're right, it's just this. Where do I find some responsibility? And again, I never thought of it that way until I talked to him, like, you know, he's got a point. So I'm not going to stop doing videos. Don't care. No, that's not going to happen. But where can I at least have some control? I'm not going to stop teaching tactics with my classes. Well, Tano, you're a hypocrite. No, I at least have some control. I know who I'm teaching. I at least have something. And have we turned students away when I couldn't verify whether they could carry criminal. Yeah, we have. I've done that. So I'm not ever going to tell guys to stop teaching tactics. And it's an outlet for us, too. It's therapeutic for us. But I would just say after talking to that police officer and then getting back to the E3 stuff, being a paid website, I don't have a problem with it being Paid because we have some control of at least who the members are and who's watching. And if it's somebody that maybe is a criminal, shouldn't be owning a weapon, we have some little control that we can. All right. I'm like, I can't stop them from learning from other guys. But you're out. We can't teach you anymore. But getting Back to the E3 again, it has been uphill climb with it because it is a paid website, and you can get the training for free on YouTube or Instagram and. But, you know, from tactics. Our tactics are tactics. Shooting is fundamentals. There is no secret sauce. There's no Jedi mind trick. You're not gonna. I'm not gonna be teaching you how to use the force the way I shoot. You can go watch another shooter and you're gonna get the same stuff. It's just the presentation. Who do you like? What. What resonates with you? So, yeah, E3 has been good, and I think it's wonderful because we're part of an outdoor. We're telling people, hey, go do something. Firearm shooting is outdoor. Shooting is relaxing. At least in my opinion. Shooting is. You're outside in the fresh air or you're at least doing something active. It's a sport. It really is. I mean, shit, you have the competitions, the uscca. You have all those. The tag games. It's a sport now, and it should be like that. The reason I'm getting into why I talk about it and the paid and not paid is really why I don't do more unpaid YouTube videos online. I don't. I don't do that. That's why I don't. And is because I don't have control of who's watching it. And. And it was that conversation with that Philadelphia police officer and then listening to. He spoke before I spoke. The Dallas chief of police. And not. He wasn't condemning it at all. He's just saying this guy knew what he was doing. He had some tactics and say, know what he was doing. He knew how to pie. Yeah. He knew how to. He knew how to edge a corner.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, Chris, before we get too deep into the interview, everybody gets a gift.

[Chris Paronto]

Oh, no, man. You're all gifted.

[Sean Ryan]

Nothing but hospitality.

[Chris Paronto]

Oh, man. Dude, gummies.

[Sean Ryan]

That's right. Those are legal in all 50 states. Fortunately or maybe unfortunately for you, I don't know. But they are made here in the usa.

[Chris Paronto]

Oh, that's what.

[Sean Ryan]

And yeah. So there you go. Some vigilance league going. Those are hard to come by.

[Chris Paronto]

And this is actually. This is going on my side by side when I get home.

[Sean Ryan]

Nice, right?

[Chris Paronto]

Honestly, it'll be at the range, man. And thank you. Thank you. You're welcome so much. And do you. We need to bring manufacturing back to this country, man. The only thing we manufacture now is drama and freaking political.

[Sean Ryan]

That's right.

[Chris Paronto]

More manufacturing. Thank you, man.

[Sean Ryan]

You're welcome.

[Chris Paronto]

Thank.

[Sean Ryan]

One last thing before we get in. I got a Patreon account. They're my top supporters, have been here with me since the beginning and they're the reason I'm here and you're here. So one of the things I do is I give them the opportunity to ask each guest a question.

[Chris Paronto]

Uh.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, and so this one is from Moose.

[Chris Paronto]

What's up, Moose?

[Sean Ryan]

What was it like for you to see the Obama administration blatantly lie about something you saw firsthand, blame the attack on something unrelated and refused to call it a terrorist attack? How did it feel to be on the ground at the annex and realize that help was not coming? Let's do one question first.

[Chris Paronto]

Well, let's go first. First with the help not coming and that's. Let's go on a timeline there.

[Sean Ryan]

We can skip that. We'll do that.

[Chris Paronto]

We'll do that. Okay, so give me number because the feeling.

[Sean Ryan]

What was it like for you to see the Obama administration blatantly lie about something you saw?

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah, I mean, I can tell you watch Fox and Friends. The last interview I ever did on Fox and Friends with Pete Hegseth, it was back in 2014 or 15 where somebody caught him on a cell phone. It was either at Loyola or one of those liberal colleges there in Chicago. I can't remember which one. And he said Benghazi was a conspiracy. He didn't know he was being filmed. And of course they threw it on the TV. It's at 6 in the morning. I was just. I was actually in Springfield. I was going to go speak at a. An event that was sponsored by the guy that owns Bass Pro. So I was staying out the Bass Pro resort up there and told Pete I couldn't be there. I said I got to zoom in. So I zoomed in at 6am and I'm half asleep. This was my fifth speaking event in like seven days. Just spent and pissed me off. Well, why would. Of course it pissed me off. I mean, all those lines continually. It was angry at me. It made me full of hate. And what did I say? You can watch it. It's out there on YouTube somewhere. I'm sure he said, what did you feel after you watched Benghazi called conspiracy? And I said, well, Pete, I said I wanted to reach for the tv and I wanted to choke his ass. I wanted to choke him out. And Pete, his eyes got big. He goes, you probably don't want to be threatening former US President. I said, pete, you asked me. That was my last ever Fox interview, actually, I ever did. And I did get visited by the Secret Service two weeks later. Luckily, I knew the guys. They showed up in my house like, chris, we got to be here. You're threatening the president on national tv. And. But if that tells you my anger right there, I mean, without even thinking, skipping a beat. And it wasn't to create. It wasn't a troll accounts. It wasn't to do clickbait. It was an immediate reaction. As soon as I saw it, it was like, that mother. And I didn't want to kill him. Let's get in the ring. I'm gonna put you in a lock, and let's see how you feel, man. That's what I felt. So, of course I was angry. I was angry for a lot of years. And I think if you watch even there's speeches that I've done out there. I just still do corporate talks. I just did, you know, that's why I'm in Nashville and do your show. And I did a talk at the. At the Gaylord there in the early days. The speeches were very, very angry because nobody was being held accountable. And there were people that were calling us liars. And there were people, and it's hard to be called the liar guys. When I saw Roan and I was shooting over their heads when that last. Those three mortars through a fire for effect hit right on top of building C. The fifth attack that night. And I was shooting, and it wasn't the movie showed it as daytime. It was actually. It was before morning nautical twilight. You know, it was right before this. You know. You know what that is? Your viewers can Google that. It's right before the sun comes up. So it's still dark. So my night vision was still on. My 15s were on. And remember, the first one hit blew up on the backside of building, so he was right over the top. Roan spun. He went cyclic on that belt fed, which was pretty freaking awesome because all I'm seeing is a laser beam as he turns, and they're coming to attack us through the sheep slaughterhouse area. I put a few rounds over his head because I want to get in a fight even though I can't See that? Because I'm back behind them on building A. He's on building circumstances. Dave Ubin shoots. Oz is up there, he shoots. Bubba's up there, he's shooting. So I'm seeing all this fire, shooting. I'm thinking, shit, mortars this way. They gotta be bringing a whole force following those mortars in. So I turn around, make sure nobody's coming, nobody's there. Come back, two more shots. I see one hit directly right on top. Night vision goes completely white. You know, this is overabundance, like white. As it comes back, I saw four, and now there's three. So guy disappeared. And I can hear him screaming. Even in all that, I can still hear him. It was Dave. I didn't know it at the time, but it was Uben just shared it. Sheared his leg off, sheared his arm. They were hanging. So not completely gone, but he's legs this way, arms this way. How do I know that? Tig got up there when he saw Dave take. Told me what his arm, his arms and legs look like. Take a few more shots because what can you do? We're still getting attacked. We're in the middle of a fight. You know it is. You don't. You can't stop fighting. What am I gonna do? Run off my building and go help? He's got three guys up there. I gotta keep fighting. I got my sector behind me. I gotta take. I turn around, I come back, they're still shooting. I took two more shots, and then I saw boom, boom, boom. If you've been in artillery, you call for fire. And you know what that is? That's fire for effect. They're right where they want to hit. Night vision goes white. And as it comes back, all I see is the pixie dust. It got quiet, it got silent. Really weird. I thought they were going to keep coming. And all I saw was the charged particles because, you know, blow up, explosion. The debris. The dust gets either heated or charged. And it looks like it does. It looks like pixie dust coming down with those. With. My night vision starts to come back and refocus from the. The white light, and they were all gone. And it, it. My brain, My brain said, your team just got turned to dust. It's like, holy. I mean, it was, it was, it was. And it maybe it felt like longer than what it was. It was only a few seconds, but I put my head down and I remember thinking it was the one time, negatively, I thought that every other time, and there was negative things happened. That was the one Time where it was like that, holy shit, we might lose this. And I said, man, we can't beat this. I'm thinking to myself, we don't have any air support. They're gonna fucking keep hammering us. And you know, God. God was there all night, man. And God kicked me in my ass and said, get your gun up, Ranger. And I know people are gonna, oh, fuck. That's no making. No. That's what happened.

[Sean Ryan]

What do you mean God kicked you in the ass and said, get up.

[Chris Paronto]

Quit whining. Quit feeling like a victim.

[Sean Ryan]

Is that a feeling you got? Is that a voice you heard?

[Chris Paronto]

Voice in the back of my head right there. I still feel it. I still get chills. And maybe it was my mom saying it, you know, but it was to me, it was that voice of God. It was something saying, we don't quit. You don't quit. Get your gun up. Keep fighting. I said, get your gun up, Ranger. That's what I heard. And that's being a Ranger, too. And that's what rangers are when you're at the 75th. Get your gun up. Get your gun up. You're not quitting. Keep fighting. Keep pressing through. You learn that from Rip, which is option 40 now, or you learn that throughout. That's what's instilled in you. Rangers before you. What'd they do In Vietnam, the 100 killer teams? They ran towards the fight. What'd they do when they jumped into Riohado? They ran towards the fight. There was no cover. They shot their way off the earth, the tarmac, and Grenada. What'd they do? They ran towards the fight. Now, get your gun up, Ranger. So why am I so angry? Because when somebody calls it conspiracy. And I watched. I watched Ron. I watched Roan and Bub and Dave and Dawes. At the time, I thought all. I watched them evaporate. That's what I did with my brain. It's like, holy shit, those guys are. They're gone. I've seen death before, but have you ever sat where your friends, just like, they're there and they're not. So when he said it was a conspiracy, it's like, hell, yeah, I was pissed off. And I was pissed off for many, many years. And it did hurt a lot of relationship. Hurt my relationship with my wife, my kids at the time. So to ask, that's. I mean, it's a great question, but it also points to how irresponsible politicians are with their words and how they don't give a shit. And him especially, you know, Hillary Got what she deserved. She wasn't present. She was humiliated. She lost. Is she going to get more? Yeah, she's going to get more. When she stands before her maker with God. God's going to judge her. And I hope he judges her. And he's going to. He's going to judge her. Well, how she should. Obama's the one that got over scot free. He was the commander in chief. Come on, man. Who's supposed to help get people to us? Is it Hillary in State Department? Granted, she was hugely responsible. So was Leon Panetta. General Ham could have done something. But who was the commander in chief? Who was General Ham? He was the Eurocomp commander. He was the one that.

[Sean Ryan]

And for everybody knows Leon Panetta was director of CIA at the time.

[Chris Paronto]

At the time. And then he went to the SEC that, you know, he became secdef and all that. But actually. But he could have done something too. But Obama is the one that really is the one that's held responsible. Should have been hold responsible for it all. And also with the rhetoric Al Qaeda, people forget that. What was his platform time Al Qaeda was on the run. Terrorism is dead. He knew it wasn't. That's who attacked us. You. You had Saran. She knows a better name. But who was the one that masterminded that? Yeah. Sour Harry. What? He's number two Al Qaeda. So, bro, the. The guy that got away with it and then continued to try to press a narrative which we see happen.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, I got a question. I don't want to get too.

[Chris Paronto]

No, no, go ahead.

[Sean Ryan]

I wasn't expecting to get this deep.

[Chris Paronto]

That's just me, man. I. I go down rabbit holes all the time.

[Sean Ryan]

What I want to ask though is I can see the rage returning right now.

[Chris Paronto]

It does. Of course it's gonna come.

[Sean Ryan]

So what was the turning point that kind of eased that rage?

[Chris Paronto]

That interview was one. Because.

[Sean Ryan]

With Pete Hegseth.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah. Cause it was the last mainstream interview I ever did.

[Sean Ryan]

Was that your terms or theirs?

[Chris Paronto]

Mine. I said I'm not gonna do anymore. I told him. I said I'm done. That was mine. I'm not doing that. Cause I did get asked two times to go on Tucker. And nothing against him. I like him. I just. I'm not doing that because that's what they want to get. I started real. That's what they want to get out of me. They wanted. They know Tano's gonna come in and say something that's gonna click bait and gonna be pissed off. Cause that's how I Always was. I am very. I get. I'm animated. I'm gonna say what's on my mind. And if it pisses somebody, so what. I'm gonna tell you how I feel. And that's great for ratings. It is. And nothing against him. I got friends down there. Sean's a nice. Hannity's a nice guy, man. You know, the Duceys are. They're nice people. You know, Martha McCollum, she's nicely, treated me very, very well. They're not. It just was. It was ruining my family and my relationship because I got divorced at that time as well. So that anger had carried over to where my wife and my kids are, like, we don't want you around anymore. Your toxicity is here. You're just always pissed off. You're never happy. And we had gotten divorced. So when I did that, we were actually divorced at that time. And it was. I gotta get myself right.

[Sean Ryan]

So it was doing the interviews that brought the rage back.

[Chris Paronto]

I think just reliving it all and not being able to handle it and finding a silver lining to it, which there always is a silver lining. God gives us a silver lining for everything that we do. We just gotta find it.

[Sean Ryan]

How do you feel about doing this interview?

[Chris Paronto]

That's. I'm good. Because I'm at peace with it all. I don't have a problem getting. I know it's going to bring anger out of me, but does it make me angry when I leave? No. Because I'm going home to see my kids. And I want to tell this because I still talk to Ty's mom, Cheryl Bennett. Wonderfully love her. She's like, she. I'm her second. I mean, she's my second mom. And telling this keeps their memories alive. Where back then it was more of. It's about me. I need to show you how angry I am. I need to show you how pissed off I am. I need. It was selfish. It was very. Now it's. I'm gonna tell you because I want people to know that. So when they hear a liberal, they hear an Obama, they hear a Hillary, they hear a Biden say, no, it was conspiracy. I was videoing a protest. They can say, no, I know that dude's telling the truth because just look how emotional he gets. And of course it's emotional. I saw my teammates die. They were my friends. I mean, we weren't best friends or nothing, but they were still my teammates and they still were my friends. And so they tried. The powers that be tried to cover it up, but that was a turning point somewhat, because six months later, I did put a gun in my head.

[Sean Ryan]

We'll get there.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

For starters.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

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[Chris Paronto]

Colorado Alamosa, Colorado loved it. Grandmother and grandmother grand My grandmother and grandfather were, were immigrants from Mexico. My garc mom's dad's a West Texas, mom's a Garcia. But so we grew up, we grew up in the lower middle class but it was wonderful childhood. Alamosa, small little town in the Sangre de Cristo range out there in southern Colorado. And then we'd go to visit my grandmother and grandfather, who were pickers. And then they owned their own farm. So I saw them. Just the hard work, man. It was amazing. I loved being a Peranto, but I also loved being a Garcia. I mean, my middle name is after my grandfather, Joaquin. Christian Joaquin. So it was awesome. And it was just always happy, you know, always playing. I'd play with the wet. We call them the wetbacks. I know that's a. That's a. That's a politically incorrect term, but that's what we. The migrant workers that would come over and work on my grandfather's farm. Wetbacks, man. Pickers. I remember going out and we would play baseball with them when they come from the field. I remember one actually saved my life playing hide and seek in a back of potato truck. And I was running away from my cousin, hit a bar that was across the top, cracked my head open. And I laid there for about five minutes before one of them carried me out, found me bleeding all over, and he carried me out to my grandmother's house. I mean, it just. It was amazing fun. It was a rough. It was a rough childhood, you know, it was a rough fun. Pin your knee up, ride dirt bikes, take your lab out, go a little hunting with the.22 or. Or with a. With a pellet gun. It was wonderful. Man skin. Crack your head open once or twice.

[Sean Ryan]

Brothers and sisters?

[Chris Paronto]

I have two. I have a brother and a sister. And, you know, me and my sister, we have our issues, but we're close, a close family. It's not like there's any hatred. My brother. No, my brother, he's awesome. Him and I are. It's one of those relationships, though, where it's like, he'll call and I'll say, what's up, jackass? Hey. I say, yeah, what's up, douchebag? I love you, man. And two years younger than me. We played sports together growing up, and athletics was huge in the family. My dad was a football coach, NCAA football coach. So when we were at Alamosa, he was the head coach at Adam State and the athletic director. Then we moved to Brigham Young. We moved to Utah because he got a job as an assistant at Brigham Young University. And that was a one hell of an experience. I look back at it now, I was like, wow. I was blessed because that was during their glory years. So I got to hang around a Clubhouse with G. McMahon and Steve Young and Robbie Bosco and national championship team, and you're taking it for granted. You had lval Edwards, who. They don't make coaches. That was like the iconic coaches, when coaches were actually coaches and not public figures. You know, Lavelle Edwards, Paul Bear Bryant, guys like that Woody, you know, just the old school. He was awesome. But, you know, you had Mike Holmgren there, who was the offensive coordinator, who later became the coach of the packers, won two Super Bowls. Norm Chow, who was, he was a legend in the ncaa, went to usc.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Chris Paronto]

Andy Reid was a graduate assistant there at the time. Coach. So, you know, I look back, I'm like, man, I was around some cool. And you just. And all I'm doing. I'm a kid. Run around the clubhouse playing catch with Steve Young. Going to the practical. Yes. So. So sports were big, you know, and I wanted to play football and I played football. We moved to Oregon State. My dad got a job. Oregon State. And we, he. It was wonderful there. Got to be around, you know, the PAC 10. I was a ball boy on the sidelines for the PAC 10. That was so fun just being at the games, you know, and that was, that was PAC 10 at the time. I mean, that's Washington, UCLA, USC, when they were. I mean, they're still good. I kiss. But they was. It was amazing. It was just good, good time being around college when college was college, when it wasn't.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

Propaganda. Let's protest about everything. It was, it was college. It was pcu, man. It was where people would make fun of that. Yeah, let's go have a. You know, so. And it was a, it was college towns. Now. Brigham Young was a little different this morning. You know, there's, you're not going to find a lot of drink in there, but. And then he got a job in Colorado, back in Colorado, and we moved and he's still coaching at Mesa. It's called Colorado. It's called Mesa College at the time. It's called Colorado Mesa University now. And we moved there and of course, being around sports forever. And my dad was a football player. My mom was a pretty good athlete in her own right. You know, I got some good genes and, man, I managed to get a scholarship to play football. And I played football for four years at. Actually, I did go to me. Yeah, I, I, I was, I, I was, I was, I had a good time, man.

[Sean Ryan]

So your dad wasn't the coach.

[Chris Paronto]

He was the AD at. I went to that end of be.

[Sean Ryan]

What does that mean?

[Chris Paronto]

He was the athletic director at that college. But I didn't go there first. I, I Wasn't. I was a typical college football player. I'd rather drink and party, then go to college. So my first year at Mesa, I flunked out of college and I had to go to a junior college to get my grades up so I could continue to play football. So I went to. It was called Dixie at the time because of the wokeness and political correctness. Now it's called something else. But we were called the Dixie Rebels. I'm still at Dixie Rebel for all you. Whatever you call the college now. It was awesome. That was a wonderful experience because it. Dixie was like the program where byu, unlv, University of Utah would send all these truants to get their grades up. So we were a football fan. I mean, we were awesome. We were number one in the nation. We finished number two one year. So I'm around there and I'm around Gangsters, man. I'm around the Donner Street Crips. I'm around West Coast Bloods, Tonga Crip gangsters. Then you got farm kids coming from Utah, big farm boys. And we had this. It was such a wonderful experience. It was wonderful to see so many. I was out of, you know, so many people of different backgrounds and nationalities come together for a focus to win games.

[Sean Ryan]

Sounds like the military.

[Chris Paronto]

It does. And it sounds like, you know, that's why I laugh when I hear all these DEI pro aldis. So we had diversity way back then, guys. And guess what? We were called the Dixie Rebels too. And not one black dude gave two shits. We were proud to be called the Rebels. That's what we were. And I was the only. I. I wasn't as true. I mean, they were hardcore. I just flunked out of school. Now, you know, I ain't going to lie. My ethnicity did help. It does. He's Mexican, dude, and they my grandpa, you know, it was, it, it, it. It allowed me to at least have a, have a foot in the door where, okay, we can kind of trust this guy. And, and stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. I have no problem with that. But it was one hell of an experience because we were so good and it was fun playing on a team of so many different characters. And what got me is that was back in the day when Bloods and Crips, they were, you know, that was a big deal. There's gang violence all the time. And there was a guy named Stacy, he was a West coast blood, he came from Los Angeles. And then we had a guy named Chucky who was best athletes I've ever Seen in my life. He was a Donna Street Crip from Vegas. And I went to Stacy one day because I didn't get. I'm this naive kid from Colorado, you know, I don't know what I can ask or what I can listen. I say, hey, how come you guys aren't killing each other? You know, I'm being an idiot. Should I say that? I don't know. I'm 19 years old. What am I saying the right thing? And Stacy looks at me and he goes. He goes on the streets, man. Yeah, he said we would. I said I'd shoot that motherfucker. But here, I always want to win. It's like, wow. That just makes so much sense. Wow. And that's also when I started going the military and then even GRs. A lot of people don't know Oz and I don't get along. We never have.

[Sean Ryan]

I was gonna. But wait till the end of the interview.

[Chris Paronto]

No, wait. And I'm sorry. I didn't mean to jump to that.

[Sean Ryan]

Let's. Well, I mean, you brought it up. Let's do it. I've. I mean, obviously I've been following you guys. I mean, we were in the same profession, of course.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

And I remember after it happened, you guys, you know, you did the book.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

We came out. Lots of speaking events. I thought you guys used to speak together.

[Chris Paronto]

We had to. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

And then it seemed like everything kind of. I mean, look what happened. Why don't you guys get along?

[Chris Paronto]

Well, it's just personalities. They're nothing. And Oz is a wonderful, wonderful person. He is in his own right. It's just personalities. I'm very outspoken whenever we do speeches or things like that. He always wanted to kind of play like the politician. I got to make both sides. I was like, screw this. Say what happened? So we went at odds, but even we were downrange. It just was personalities, man. It just was. You just. There's just some guys. You don't get along.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you guys butt heads before Benghazi?

[Chris Paronto]

With the first place we worked at together? I'd never worked them before. That was the first. First base that I worked with Oz.

[Sean Ryan]

At and immediately butted heads.

[Chris Paronto]

It's just one of those bases where, you know, the guy come. A guy comes in and you're saying we just don't jive. He doesn't. He doesn't like my Jack Ashley. I don't like him being so damn uptight. But we were both professional enough. And this is. This is a kudo to Roan as well. Roan really was our. Was our team leader. We had an official team leader. Ron was our assistant team leader. We had a. You know, we had a staffer that was our team leader. But Ron is who we listen to. The staffer we never listened to.

[Sean Ryan]

Isn't it funny how that's, like, the common theme?

[Chris Paronto]

Well, when you don't hold the staff.

[Sean Ryan]

Every GRS team, that the staffer is always the weakest link.

[Chris Paronto]

When you don't hold them to the same standard, then they're always going to.

[Sean Ryan]

They get mad at me when I say this stuff.

[Chris Paronto]

Tough dude. It's the truth. I mean, I can count good Stafford. And I'll tell the standard. There are some that. But the majority of the good staffers were the ones that had the same background.

[Sean Ryan]

We'll get into this later.

[Chris Paronto]

But anyway, yeah, with. With Oz, it was nothing where. And it wasn't a hatred. It just was. We don't like each other, man.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

And you get to an age at 42, at that point, we're maybe in the early days, in our 30s, maybe we would have fu. Fu. Just. But it wasn't like that. It was just, you're. You're. I'm. We're 40. He's 45. I'm 42. It's like, there's no reason to create any more drama. Deal with each other. How we need to just win. Because that still kept going in my head, what Stacy said to me about the Crips and the Bloods. We just want to win. Let's put the differences aside so we can win the focus. And that's also Roan keeping us on. Hey, what's the main focus here, guys? Everybody goes home. Put your stupid differences aside, shut the hell up and do your jobs. You got your right and left limits. You got your right and left limits, and we stayed with them. And it wasn't like, a man, you're a douche. It wasn't like that. It was just, you know, you're in a room. You're just in a room with somebody that you just don't get along with. So you stay in there as long as you can, and then you get out and you go do your thing and you'll go to his thing. It is a lot more difficult because you've been on a lot of those bases doing this, where you're on top of each other, so it's harder to get away. Get away. But we did, you know, and you know, and Rowan wasn't dumb enough to put us rooming together in the Same room. You know, it was one of those things, let's, let's make it as possible. And there you always, at least at that point in time, because of my age and experience. And I think this is important for everybody. Even on people you don't like, you find things that you can respect about them. And I do. Again, I. He's tough as nails. The dude got hit with a mortar and tried to get up and shoot. I saw him, I told you in the beginning, I saw a guy get up and try to shoot after that mortar, mortar stop. And the gun kept falling because he would get up and he'd shoot and I'd see the rounds. Well, his arm, he hadn't realized his arm had gone fall. So when you watch 13 Hours and you see him getting up like that, that happened. That wasn't moving, Magic. That happened. So do I respect his toughness? Hell yeah. And he said one of the coolest things I'd ever heard in my life. When we drove to the airport, he's bleeding out, his arm's about coming off. We wanted to help get him on that plane, that executive's jet. And he said this, and I'll give him kudos for it because it was some Clint Eastwood shit. He goes, I walked into this country, I'm walking out. That wasn't a movie, Magic. That wasn't a line written. And he said that. And I remember what I heard. I was like, all right, Ozzy may not get along, but that's some cool ass shit right there. Yeah. And, and so you cannot get along, so that's fine. But you still find ways to respect each other and work together because the goal is to win. And I kept thinking about Stacy, the West coast blood. The most intellectual, wise thing I heard was from a 20 year old gangster from Los Angeles. We just want to win. It's that simple. And I think that's why when I talk to corporations, I tell. That's part of my speech. Just win. That's the goal. Let's win. Put the differences aside. And that's why also when we were out doing our speaking and you're seeing us on tv, all right, we got to put on a united front here. We're stronger together. And because there wasn't hatred, there just was a dislike. Just didn't like, didn't care. Our personalities just didn't mesh. It wasn't that hard to go in there and do an interview together. And Oz had great things to say because he was there. He saw things that I didn't. That Helped expose the BS because we were in different spots the whole time.

[Sean Ryan]

Let's move back to.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Kind of growing up. We're past childhood. I want to get to this, but I want it to all be in one piece if that's okay.

[Chris Paronto]

No, no, no, no, you're good.

[Sean Ryan]

And so what, so your football, football got the college what got your interest in the military.

[Chris Paronto]

I got your interest just path. When you're short and you're slow, you're not gonna go the next level. And I was, I was really short and, but I was super slow. So the NFL didn't come knocking at my door. So I, I remember I was just walking through the student union building there at Colorado Mesa. Mesa College, what it was called at the time. And you know at the graduation, there's job fairs at these colleges. If you go to college, you're always going to see a job fair. And I'm walking through and all these jobs over. But of course, who's there with all the, all the occupations, all the corporations, the vultures are over there in the corner. The army recruiter, the marine recruiter, the Navy recruiter, the Air Force recruiter. And you know, long story short on that one, which is not going to be the theme here, but they yelled, they said hey you. I was a stupid enough one to look in that direction. I walked over there, they said hey, what are you going to do after caught? You know, I had thought about FBI, I had thought about federal police. Every time I went to apply for one, I'd get a call, hey, you need experience, you got to go become a police officer. You got to go and do. You got to go to the military. And police just didn't sound fun to me. So I walked over there, I saw the ranger video, I saw the recruiting video, which was a 75th Ranger video. So they're jumping out of planes fast roping. They show me the SEAL challenge video the Navy guy did. So I'm watching the helocast and I'm watching the locast and I'm seeing all the cool stuff. You know the marines, they're landing on the beach. You know the recon, they're showing me recon guys, the Air Force One. I always make this a joke. I say I saw the Air Force One and you know, they were in a air conditioned room, nice, comfortable with good food. No, they're showing the jets and things. And I just thought the Rangers was, was the best one for me. And so I said signed up, I signed up. I enlisted right there. After I got My bachelor's degree.

[Sean Ryan]

No kidding.

[Chris Paronto]

And, yeah, 30 days later, I'm off to Fort Benning and did that.

[Sean Ryan]

You literally signed up right there at the job.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah. And the scariest thing that I'll tell you, I tell.

[Sean Ryan]

Talk about an impulse.

[Chris Paronto]

I was like, what am I going to do? And, you know, I had. Well, FBI, they said military. And I do remember telling the recruiter, I asked him, I go, is that hard? He goes, yeah. I go, do people quit? He goes, yeah, all right, let's do it. And so move on. And we go to Fort Benning, Georgia. And it did. I was like a round peg in a round hole. I just fit, you know, I was. I went to. It was Sand Hill at the time. It was Echo Company 258 called the House of Pain. I was supposed to be the hardest one there, but come on, they're all the hardest. Every Basic Training Depot is the hardest one. But Distinguished Honor graduate, I did really well. It just fit. I was physically fit. The athletics completely prepped me for it. The teamwork aspect of it, you just had to get used to the yelling. And they were still smacking us around. It was 1995, which, if you didn't deserve to get smacked around, then you didn't get smacked. And that made sense to me. It was based on merit. You work your ass, it's merit based. You're going to perform, you're going to do what you're told. We're going to move you up. You're going to be a smart ass. You're going to be lazy, you're going to be a fat body. No. Then you don't. It's easy. It's a piece of cake. And went to airborne school. But I was married to my first wife at the time. And nothing against, she's a wonderful person. We just got married way too young. Just nothing bad to say about her. But she was having an affair. So I got my Jody letter. I want a divorce. And it really was hard from there on out. Airborne school on out. Because that wasn't something I ever expected. That wasn't something in my family that happened. Divorce didn't happen to me. That wasn't even on my radar.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

And it was, whoa, this is. So I'm fighting airborne school. Airborne school is easy. Just all you got to do is learn how to fall and break yourself and then jump out of a plane. It was memorable. There was a memorable thing about airborne school, though. That was awesome. And again, God, looking out. My first two jumps, first day jump, first night Jump. I was the first one out the door. It was so awesome being able to have the door open first jump. And I'm watching. That was cool. Nice. It's memorable. I threw and their night jump too. I was like, how lucky am I to be. How did that happen? I got lucky to be the first one out the door. So, you know, your door opens. You get to watch all that for about 30 seconds before you go. But airborne school then went through, Rip got through Ranger, Rip went second bat and we're there. I was there for about eight months. And you know, you're an untapped guy and you've been around Rangers. You know, if we're untabbed at Ranger battalion, we're shit. We're pieces. We're getting hazed. I mean it's just, it's miserable. You're hiding in your team room on the weekends because you don't want to the tab spec 4 to come in there and smoke your balls and haze the shit out you. So you just like either hide or you take off for the weekend and. But went on a JRX training mission at Bragg about eight months in. I was at battalion and the joint redness exercise. So we're doing a joint readiness exercise with blue, green, some PJs, and then the air force guys at Pope, the Spec ops, the Spectre and you know, and the task force was there too. Night stalkers were there too. So it's a big nice. Yeah, it was. It was pretty awesome. So I mean, I'm a private. I'm just. But I'm fighting this divorce. I mean I'm. My wife's cheating on me, you know, and it's just killing.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you know who she was cheating?

[Chris Paronto]

No, I. I mean I at that. That first two week it was. It was a. It was a two week jrx. The first week I still hadn't figured it out. I was in denial more than anything. You know, that's no way she's doing that. And this is for the admin and cell phone. Cell phones are a big thing. So to go home to call, you had to go actually go to a pay phone. So it wasn't like I could call and check all the time like you could now, which maybe that would have made it worse. Maybe this made it better this way. But I'm a new private. I'm around all these tier one guys. I'm just. Holy shit, dude. I'm. Should I. You know, and when you're a new guy, you have that bravado. But should I be here, you know, tab spec fours, you got tab squad leaders, tab B5s. These guys, this is old hat to them, like, oh, my gosh. And so the stress levels for me don't up. Don't up. I got two hernias on my first jump, too. So I don't want to tell nobody because I got two little aliens going there when we jumped in. Is it Sicily at Bragg? I can't remember the drop zone. But anyway, it all came to a head and I called home and she wouldn't answer. So I finally called my brother Mike, love him. I go, hey, what's going on with Stacy, man? He goes, dude, I don't want to tell you. And as soon as he said that, you know, I was like, crap, because it was in denial. And I went home on block leave because it was right after that we were going on block leave. It was right before Christmas. And I just. I went to the guy's house and I hid in his bushes. I was going to kill him. And I came to my senses, which was great on my end because I got out of there. But it was also where I even felt like a bigger failure because, like, man, I can't even do this. I'm the biggest in the world. But God is. God's got me, you know, God's. And. But of course, everybody found out. Small town, Grand Junction, Colorado. Military found out, of course, because was very lucky. I, instead of going to jail, I gotta go to the VA there in Grand Junction. They threw me in the mental war, like, to check on me. So the military. So the wheels are turning that I'm going to get.

[Sean Ryan]

So hold on.

[Chris Paronto]

Did you get caught? Actually, I. What I did is I went back home, I drank myself silly, and my friend found me on the floor. My ranger buddy, who I joined with, that was home too, on leave, he found me on the floor. Just. I was just drunk and took a bunch of Tylenol. And. Yeah, it's just. So you tried to kill yourself? Yeah, 1997. Six or seven? 96 in 96.

[Sean Ryan]

Holy shit.

[Chris Paronto]

And, yeah, it's just one of those things, because it is. It's. You're young, you piss vinegar, you're full of fire, you're a ranger, dude. Someone is gonna, you know. But I wasn't ready. It just was being young and stupid and doing stupid things impulsively that young people do, especially young guys like yourself and myself were just. We're not thinking. We're just. Action first, consequences later. And. But the military found out, and of Course they are. And of course we called the commander and the commander found out and I had. Wonderful. So blessed first sergeant was Frank Grippy, Ranger legend Sergeant Major Grippy. You know, he was dropping mortars and tubes in Torbor and Anaconda when he was at Ten Mountain. He was a sergeant major. He was my first sergeant. And we also had Captain Paul La Camera, who I think he's a three star general now. He may have just retired, but he was my CEO and they, I mean, I wasn't going to stay in. There's no way I could stay in. But I managed to get an honorable discharge and I didn't, I didn't deserve it. So I only finished two years out of my first four year contract.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, how long did it take you to snap out of that?

[Chris Paronto]

Well, I, I went home. It took me two years. Well, I had two years. I have a choice. The real you got out.

[Sean Ryan]

Let me. Sorry.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

So you left?

[Chris Paronto]

I left the army. You left the army at the end of 1996.

[Sean Ryan]

At the end of 1996 and then went back to your hometown?

[Chris Paronto]

I went back to my hometown and I was like, I can't do this anymore.

[Sean Ryan]

What were you doing in your hometown? Nothing, just being miserable. Being miserable.

[Chris Paronto]

It was, I was miserable, but it was with family. My mom's there, my dad's there, my brothers are there. So I'm surrounded by family. My friends are still there because I just really been two years out of college. I still had guys I'd played football with that are still finishing up and I had a buddy of mine named Brian Edwards. He goes, did you look like. And I moved in with them. I, I hung out with my buddies. You know, my parents were there, but I, I moved into a room at one of their old ex football players. They were still playing one of my teammates houses and they went on. And that's what I recommend everybody to do when you go through divorce. I went to South PA island for spring break. Spring break. He goes, what happened there, Chris? He's like, dude, you look miserable. We're going to spring break. Come on, get in the car. We're going. I was like, okay. We went. And I went to South Padron for spring break. And I remember this again, the Lord. I am beyond. The Lord works mysterious ways. I'm serious. It's just so amazing. I look back at it now, I'm like, my gosh, God really does have control. I go there.

[Sean Ryan]

Hold on. Can I, can I make a prediction?

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you meet your Current wife there.

[Chris Paronto]

Get the. Are you serious? I went there.

[Sean Ryan]

Hold on, hold on. How long had you been. Were you divorced?

[Chris Paronto]

We were divor. Yeah, we. Well, we had been un. Officially divorced for only about six months, but we. She had tried to divorce me and get rid of me at basic training. So it been.

[Sean Ryan]

So you're like depressed at home.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Drinking yourself to death. Tried to commit suicide with a bottle of Tylenol.

[Chris Paronto]

And now I'm going like, what am I going to.

[Sean Ryan]

Now your buddy's like, we're going to s. Spring break.

[Chris Paronto]

Get. I need you to smile again. And Brian, I love Brian. He is. He is all he is. And he was a. He was a. He was a really good football player. Outstanding wide receiver out there. But we go there and this is what's so funny. And it's funny, but I also. I do believe there's Cupid is out there because we're at Charlie's. It's a bar there. No, it's Louie's. We're at Louie's, Louie's, Louie's Bar and something. And I'm dancing, you know, and. But I'm still jacked. I'm a ranger. Shredded. You know, I'm jacked up. Shirts off because I'm. Woohoo. I'm spring break. Drinking, drinking. And all of a sudden this searing pain all flows down the side of my face and my eyes. Well, it was before fireballs, so they had those shots of Cinnamon Snobs that the little ladies would carry around. Somebody had knocked the whole thing on me. And I look, and it was my wife, my current wife. I look, it's like Cupid's arrow. It's like, wow. And we danced. We were inseparable. That whole spring break. I stayed with her.

[Sean Ryan]

Wait, hold on. What was the one liner picked up? Who.

[Chris Paronto]

Actually, I still think she's. And I told her, I said, you spilled that. That cinnamon schnapps on me on purpose, didn't you? Because you saw my heaving chest. And I was showing her date. She was like, that was so there. But that's the. That was actually the joke. And it wasn't because I still believe, like, you saw me and you did that on purpose, didn't you? Just so I look at you and I looked at her, and she's a volleyball player from the University of Nebraska in Omaha. I mean, she. She. You know, volleyball players, come on, watch. Watch college volleyball D. And you know, she's taller than me. She's 5 10. I'm 5 9. She's 510 and just athletic. And man, that was it. And again, the whole spring break. So there was no one liner. But it was. I do give her shit for like I said, you did that shit on purpose because you saw my man booze from all them push ups and it was awesome. And so when I went home, it gave me a direction. So I went back home like, okay. The stipulations, my honorable discharge is I had to still I stay up for two years. I couldn't reenlist for two years. It came in my file. And my dad had his doctorate. My mother, she was a teacher. She had her master's. What's the logical step here? Let's go back to college. So I applied to University of Nebraska, omaha, took the GRE, got accepted, and I got into my Bronco 2 and luckily I made it to Omaha. And I lived in a $110 a month room in the slums of Omaha. Omaha's a wonderful place, but it was the poorest section of Omaha. No air conditioning, nothing. And it was wonderful. It's wonderful. It was just, it was just, it was like, I'm out of a terrible element and here I am by myself, no money. Bronco2s don't run, so it's in a crappy car. I'm still fighting double hernia surgery because I hadn't got my hernias fixed yet. But it was like, man, this is awesome. And the only person I know is this woman that spilled drinks on me that I spent four days with at San Padre island. And she was, she was awesome. And we just, we dated. And, and I just got my life together. I went back to school, the VA got my chip fixed, I got my hernias fixed there. Was there grad school, to me was, was the school. I say it's easy, but the ability to go to school and then also work, it wasn't hard because the military was so. It was regimented. You could do multiple things and not get enough sleep and still get it done. It was easy. So I got a job at Ministry of Omaha working as a security guard, go to school. And my classes I could take. At Uno, a lot of the grad classes were in the evening, so I would take classes. And a lot of those graduate school classes I was in for criminal justice, I was still thinking maybe the feds down the line even while I've done. But it was one a week. So one three hour class a week I could take. And then it was just study, study, study. And to me, studying was awesome. A library Was peaceful. So I would get an internship. So I worked at the library. I could study. I worked at Misha Omaha during the day. So I was making money over there and. And I was going to school and I was with this woman that was. Young woman that was just hotter than all hell as you. I mean, volleyball players, man squats and jumps. Obviously you can tell what kind of man I am. She was amazing. And. And she turned out to be just. Just a very wonderful person that, you know, social media, you see all the, all the women on social media. She's not that she had on a social media account. She doesn't believe. She's just a. Just a good home, homegrown Nebraskan girl. Nice. And she took care of me and she really did. She. She got me back up on my feet. She got me. She just got my. The whole situation got my life back together. But she was the main focal point on that. And two years got my master's degree. I actually went from being a security guard to where I became an insurance adjuster. So when you watch the movie where they say, yeah, you'll be happy being home, that. That argument did happen. I fell asleep during the ambassador's. I heard so much political. I didn't care. I would have been up half the night. Dude, I was up half the night. I got up in the morning. Like, screw this. Do I really have to go? Ron, he's like, tano, get in there. And I'm sitting in the back. But anyway, when the argument said, yeah, there that happened. He goes, you'd be happy going back home and being an insurance adjuster. It's because I was. I still am a licensed national flood insurance program FEMA insurance adjuster. To this day. I still can run claims if I want, but that's what I did. I went to got that certification and started working at Mitchell of Omaha. And eventually I got back in the military. And I remember it was hard. I went through eight different recruiters because nobody was going to help me when they found out what I did. Even though I had an honorable discharge. My reentry code was A3, which is very bad. That means you got an honorable discharge. But there's an asterisk there. And the last guy I saw it was a recruiting command. It was right by my house too. I'd missed it for two years. I don't know what happened. Lord works mysterious ways, my friend. I'm driving home to go home. I'm like, well, I guess the military's done. I got my master's But I guess the military's out of question. I see it in the corner and I'm like, how did I miss this? For years, been right by my house and my one room in the house I lived. And I drive in there and the Nebraska recruiting command sergeant major is in there. I walk in, he's in there. I'm talking to the recruiter. He overhears me telling, pleading my case to this recruiter, hey man, please, I really want to go in. I need to finish what I started. He walks in, he says, I'm hearing what you're saying. He said, do you really want to go back in soon? I said, yes, Sergeant Major. He goes, roger. He signs me the paperwork over. I sign it, he takes it back for me. As he's holding it, he goes, there's just one stipulation. You have to do it all over again. Roger. Yeah, so I did it all over again. Basic airborne Ranger, did it twice and went back in and I.

[Sean Ryan]

You did all twice?

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah, yeah. If you want something bad enough though, was it, you'll do it. And it really, a lot of that. And you know, this is, especially when you're early on, it's a mind game. It's fuck, fuck games. I knew it was coming. I was in great shape because that's all I did. I worked, I went to school, hung out with my, my, my girlfriend at the time who was a volleyball player there. So what did I do? She was, half the time she was at the gym. So I worked out all the time. I was running five minute miles. You know, I could, I could do 120 push ups in two minutes. I mean, I was, you know, and I'm very lucky. I had good genes from my family. You know, playing sports helped as well. So when I went in, I could outdo the drill sergeants, but I saw, I saw how the military in those three years went from. Or it was actually four years from 1995 when I first went into basic training till when I went back in, in the beginning of 1999. How had it gotten easier?

[Sean Ryan]

Even though I'm excited for the new administration, there's a lot of tension in the world. Russia, Ukraine, the border, inflation. Who knows what could happen next. Me, I'm not waiting around to find out. And I don't think you should either. Look, it's simple. I want you to go to SeanLikesGold.com you'll learn about my partners over at Goldco. They're a great precious metals company that I trust. They're one of the top rated gold companies in the industry with impeccable customer service and they support the show. And for my listeners, they're going to give you a free gold and silver kit where you can learn about how precious metals could help you protect your money. You could also get up to a 10% instant match in bonus silver on qualified orders. That extra 10% is a great way to get started, plus it helps support the show. All you need to do is go to SeanLikesGold.com that's SeanLikesGold.com make sure you do everything in your power to help protect what's yours. Performance may vary. Consult with your tax attorney or financial professional before making an investment decision.

[Chris Paronto]

Hablas Priest to Joyce Come de nos. If you've heard that sound from Babbel before, I bet you do. Babbel is the science backed language learning app that actually works with quick 10 minute lessons. Handcrafted by over 200 language experts, Babbel gets you on your way to speaking a new language in just a few weeks with over 16 million subscriptions sold and a 20 day money back guarantee. Just start speaking another language with Babbel right now. Up to 55% off your Babbel subscription at babbel.com SpotifyPower podcast spelled B A B E L.com Spotify podcast rules and restrictions may apply. I do the drill Serge When I went in the first time, every drill instructor, infantry drill instructor, except for one, was tabbed. They at least had a Ranger tab. They didn't all come from Ranger battalion, but they at least had a tab or they were mechanized and they'd seen some combat or been their desert. I mean they were hardcore. The one that didn't and he was one of my drill sergeants. Drill Sergeant Hardney. The devil loved that man. Big black dude, six seven, looked like a demon from hell. But I love him. He was actually the NCOIC for Tomb of the Unknown Soldier if that tells you anything about his qualifications. May not have his tab, but do you think he's disciplined? Yeah, standing eight hours at so when I went in the second time, two guys had tabs, no CIBs, not that much in shape. The only two guys, the senior drill instructor, he was from third bat. So he was a ranger. He was tabbed and then our commander, our CO was tapped and it was easier. They weren't throwing us around, they couldn't even get in our face. They could still do the shark attack, but it was the standards had lowered the mile max. The two mile run was 11:54 when I first went in, it moved down to 13. So it was easy. I was like, geez, this is cake. I was, you know, all the standards had lowered and. And it wasn't. It was. It was just. It was a hell of a lot easier. And of course it was a lot easier because I knew what. What was coming. Airborne school was easy. Rip was hard, like Rip should be. I mean, it was just. It was a kick in the ass. Rip should be a kick in the ass. The only thing is, though, two of the instructors there I joined in in 1995. So when I came back through, they were both E6s, E5s. And one was an E5, one is an E6. And they're like, what the hell are you doing?

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

So, I mean, it was. Why I tell people that's because it was. I didn't feel the. Oh, you know, the. The nervous, you know, like. Like you do when you went through hell week, are you. These guys are mean. It's like, I know that dude. I could outrun him. Five years. So it was. And then going back to Battalion, went there, got my tab, became a team leader. And then my platoon leader found out I had my master's degree and that I'd been at Battalion before. And he says, you need to become an officer, son. And so I became an officer. I got my commission.

[Sean Ryan]

No kidding. You. You became an officer?

[Chris Paronto]

Don't tell nobody.

[Sean Ryan]

I did not. I did not know that you would have not been invited to the show.

[Chris Paronto]

It wasn't long lasted, though, because I did. I got my Commission and in 2003. Yeah, 2003, I was going through IOBC, I'm sure officers basic course. I actually joined 19 Special Forces Group too. So I. I stayed enlisted in the Guard as I was getting. Because I did Green to Gold. I didn't go to Officer Canada School. I just had to do a year of Green to Gold at Creighton University. So I joined the Guard 19 Special Forces Group is where I linked up with my partner that does my vodka with me, Ben Morgan from First Ranger Bat. He was on ODA993. They brought me into ODA993. So we were. We got to. We were friends and we grew up in Grand Junction. But that's where we really developed a great friendship because he went to a different high school. We didn't really hung out. Gotcha. But anyway, I still had. I got my commission and I Infantry got it. And at the end of the course, I was standing out there at the Malone Ranges. And my stomach was really hurting bad, terrible. Was feeling awful. But I'd just been out the cannon the night before, drinking, you know, I was like, it's normal shit. We're out here sweating our balls off, just drinking. Ate a ton of pizza, of course. And I, you know, I had passed gas. I let a fort go and I charted. I chip myself. But it. The pain actually increased when that happened. So I was like, that ain't right. And I went and dropped trial and I had bled all over. Just. I had what I had blood. Just. I had. Well, they rushed me to Martin Amer Hospital and I figured I had ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease. And it was really bad. And I remember the GI doctor. Yeah, I just had blood all over the place. I'd shit blood because that's what it. When it becomes extremely inflamed for those don't know what ulcerative colitis is and all. Crohn's disease, it's your lower intestines in your colon become inflamed and they just have ulcers all over them. It looks like you've got road rash. It's like when you. I've had had it for years. I just didn't really. You know, I didn't really notice it because it. I was going at such a high level, and I think the focus was there to finish what I started, that it. I wasn't going to let anything hamper that. But it got so bad that now it was affecting my nutrients, it was affecting my energy levels because I couldn't. That's where you process all your food. That's where when you eat everything and when it's all like that, your food, it doesn't process. It just shoots right through you. It's blood, mucus, and food. And that's what was starting to happen. Wow. Yeah. I got discharged. I got discharged in 2003. And that was a kick in the balls, dude. That was my one. One time where in my life where God was. I was mad or I was like, man, I wonder if God really exists. Because like, holy crap. I went through all this. All this. And I remember lying on that gurney looking up at him going, really? Why? What the hell? And that's all right. He has pain. God always has patience in us. He, you know, he pities us, which he always. He always pities. The one that needs the most pitying too, was at that time was me and went home and I lost 30 pounds. I mean, it was like Ranger school all over again. I lost 30 pounds in about a week because I couldn't eat.

[Sean Ryan]

Were you just like completely devastated, discharged again?

[Chris Paronto]

Yes, because it was. That wasn't the plan. The plan was I had already.

[Sean Ryan]

What did you think you were going to do?

[Chris Paronto]

I had no idea. I had no idea. No idea. I was, I didn't know my wife was there. She was very supportive. We had actually gotten married. We got married before I went to Ranger school. She's. That's how wonderful she is. We got married at a courthouse and I was off to Ranger school the next week, but she was there.

[Sean Ryan]

And what did your wife do at the time?

[Chris Paronto]

At the time she was actually. She stayed in Omaha and she was managing Gold's gym. So she was a Gold gen. She was just working. She had a business degree and that was, you know, I fit her. She's athletic. Gold's gym at the time, that was when Gold's was really big. So she had a good job. So not that, you know, it's about 40 grand a year. That's tough for two people to live on. Couldn't do that anymore. But that time we were okay. We're living in an apartment and all she cares that we're just healing. So I'm trying to find natural remedies to heal myself. I'm going to nature store because I'm on prednisone. But prednisone is rough. So through the next year all I'm doing is first of all I'm eating things and if it goes right through me, I write it down, I cross, I can't eat it anymore. So I'm figuring out what I could eat my diet and then I'm taking the medication and then I'm going to go into nature food stores, organic food stores. You know, it wasn't a whole foods at the time. You had to find the little mom and pop ones. And trying to find out what could I eat to start to build my body back up because I couldn't take away protein. I couldn't do anything that was dairy related. And I just tried to build my body up for the next year and I found this goat colostrum which they, they don't. I wish they still made it goat milk. I could do that. And then I, I could eat corn stuff. I could eat stuff that was rice related. I could eat anything in the Bible. If it was mana mana bread, I could eat that. For some reason it didn't, didn't disagree with me and I built my body back up for the next year. And at the end of 2003, I got a call on the phone from Blackwater Security. Blackwater called me first, and then 30 minutes later, triple Canopy called.

[Sean Ryan]

How did they get in?

[Chris Paronto]

I mean, did you. At that time, it was just word of mouth. And I remember they got a hold because one of my ranger buddies at both places were already working for him, and they had recommended my name to him.

[Sean Ryan]

Interesting.

[Chris Paronto]

And, yeah, they were good, actually. Blackwater was a gentleman, and he's a great guy. Brian masterfini was his name, and he had recommended that as Rangers. Let's give him a shot. He didn't know I was sick, though, either.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

But they. They got my phone number because he, you know, he's a friend. He had the phone number. So he's like, here it is. And they called me. And the only reason I went Blackwater for Blackwater is because they called me first. And at that time, they were both great organizations. You had Eric running that, and it was still relatively small. And they had Lee Van Arsdale running, who's a, you know, Delta Legend, running Triple Canopy. There was. It was pretty good. And.

[Sean Ryan]

And was it for oga?

[Chris Paronto]

No, that time there. There wasn't. There was peak. It was called. Polar Quest was just starting to come online. But at that time, it was Bremer. The Bremer detail.

[Sean Ryan]

What year is this?

[Chris Paronto]

2004. End of 2003. Began in 2004. So cars. I had already been going. The cars I detail, which a lot of your brothers were on, on that car's eye. And they had just started to move into Iraq and they were starting to pick up guys to go on the Bremer detail, which was going to be the Negropani detail down the line. It wasn't State Department either. It was the Coalition Provisional Authority.

[Sean Ryan]

Interesting.

[Chris Paronto]

How'd you like that? The beginning? It was great because it was like oga.

[Sean Ryan]

I remember showing up at GRS and everybody was talking about the.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah, that was. That was the good old days. That was when it was State Department really didn't have their hand in it. So it was. It was the Wild West. I mean, that was. You know, that's where Sack started. Sacks was. He was. That's where he became really a legend over there with. In the grs was. He was one of the original Bremer guys. Love Sacks. But anyway, yeah, that's. That's what I. And I went. And I went to the First Class, where I met Boone. Boone and I were in. That first was called the.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you work with Sachs in That.

[Chris Paronto]

Not in the Bremer detail. No, no, he moved on. He was one of the first guys move over to Jurassic. Okay. Sachs was the trendsetter on contracting, but rightfully should be. And he was.

[Sean Ryan]

What a great guy.

[Chris Paronto]

He is. That's the one thing. He is an opera, but he's just a nice guy.

[Sean Ryan]

I love that dude.

[Chris Paronto]

He was obviously I'm mentioning him, so he had an effect on my life, a positive effect. But yeah, I went there and went through the training, which was basically three weeks at Moyak of Delta long Tavers, white soft blue Rangers and Marines fighting with each other.

[Sean Ryan]

And it never changed throughout your entire contracting career.

[Chris Paronto]

It was. Dude, it was so hilarious. We didn't learn a damn thing during that. We. We went through all this shooting, so you had to pass the shooting. But as far as the PSD stuff, we didn't learn a thing because they were just always. Everybody was always, always tactics. And then you're having the. The white was. The white stuff. You know, the seal, the white, the vanillas, the SEAL teams outside of blue.

[Sean Ryan]

The me, the regular shitbag Navy seals.

[Chris Paronto]

Come on. I believe, man, I'd rather work. The vanilla guys knew infantry stuff better than the blue guys. I was always said, man, you guys know your infantry shit down. You guys had it. Mike Haynes saw Bones was a guy I worked quite often. He was awesome and he hated blue.

[Sean Ryan]

It's like.

[Chris Paronto]

But I. He was awesome. Bones was the man. And anyway, they're running the course, so do you think a blue guy is going to take shit from them or Delta? And it was. I remember sitting on the bleachers, week two, and we're trying to do through. We're trying to learn basic formations, walking formations, diamond, you know, and then how to react, contact within this formations. And it just turned into a big argument.

[Sean Ryan]

Shoving from a bunch of guys that none of them have done personal protection.

[Chris Paronto]

The other ones that were assaulting and the ones that were teaching it, you know, they'd been down range for what, six.

[Sean Ryan]

Hey, guys, we're going to go on defense now. What's that?

[Chris Paronto]

What's that? I don't know.

[Sean Ryan]

Figure it out and teach it.

[Chris Paronto]

That's what it is.

[Sean Ryan]

It was so.

[Chris Paronto]

But it was. It was. It was awesome because it was a beautiful day. You know, it's. It's. It's early spring in North Carolina Moyak. It's. Sun's out, it's starting to set. I'm in the bleachers and one of the instructors come over to me. His name was Call someone Shrek, he come over to me and he goes, what you smiling at for, Ranger? I said, you guys are paying me because I hadn't made shit for a year. You guys are paying me 250 bucks a day to sit out here in this beautiful weather, get a shoot gun and I get to watch you guys just clown show. But this is awesome. And I'm just, I'm just unbelievable. Like how, how lucky am I to be right here watching the show go on? And it was so awesome. It was wonderful. And then, you know, I finished the course. I had to go home for like two months because my clearance still hadn't cleared yet. And I hadn't got my clearance yet from the State Department. You know, that's when we started to figure out, oh, you know, dod, NSACI have their own clearance. Oh, I didn't know that. I thought if you got one, they all, they don't cross over. So I had to wait for my State Department clearance, Got it, went home to my wife. I said, please don't divorce me, but I'm going to Iraq. That's when the contracting life for the next 10 years took over, man. That was it and early days. And it was, it was the wild west, man. It was, man. Sitting up on top of a building on Haifa street with my Ranger buddy in pigeon shit over watching one of our PSD teams watching Bradley shoot down Highford street, spinning. The guys in their turrets, they spinning because they're. That was. I still remember. That was so cool. So they, because they're, they're gun the up gunners, they're spinning, making sure they're looking and they're not going to get shot because hyfu was bad at that time. That was real bad. And you know, I'm ducking because they don't know if I'm a good guy, but I don't want them to shoot me. But just. That was wonderful times, man. Driving down biop, driving down Irish route Irish at 100km an hour, fucking making sure that you don't get hit on that overpass or.

[Sean Ryan]

There are not a lot of people that say they've had a great time running up and down Route Irish. One of the few.

[Chris Paronto]

I loved it and I had an awesome team. We had a wonderful. Just an awesome team again, another one just guys that just not all got along, but it just, it worked.

[Sean Ryan]

So for those listening that don't know about Route Irish, Route Irish is most likely unanimously the most dangerous road in Baghdad.

[Chris Paronto]

It was for a time. I mean, there were other Dangerous roads too. Like Haifa street was very dangerous. Route Wild, when you got up to solder was pretty damn dangerous. And even Route 10 at some points were dangerous. And then of course, Route 10 when it got into Ramadi and Fallujah course were extremely dangerous. And God bless him, Helveston and the guys, you know, that got hung and died there, you know, But Irish was always hot, always something he was dying or getting hit on Irish. And I loved every minute of it. And I had the best drivers in the world. And you've seen when you see a motorcade with three cars and they know the drivers know what they're doing. And I was very lucky enough that I moved being from the Trump monkey to eventually I became the team leader. So I'm on that rear vehicle making the calls and just watching drivers do their thing. Blocking and screening at 100k. Dude, it is beautiful, man. And I just get chills thinking about it because I was like, man, it got to a point where it was like a great football team where a coach didn't need to say a thing. Everybody knew what they were doing and they just did it. It was amazing having my two left and right door gunners cracking doors. If they needed to hit somebody, they'd hit them. If they didn't, they didn't, you know, getting out. And even when I got to be a door gunner on the left rear, when you're going 100k and you got to crack that door and you're hanging out the side, like, that's almost the same as hanging on the bench of a little bird as it's banking in. It's, it's, it's wonderful, man. Who gets to do that? That was, that was fun times. And we, we were up and down that thing in a two month period. @ one point, we had to run it six times a day. Stupid. It was State Department.

[Sean Ryan]

Six times a day. You had to.

[Chris Paronto]

We were. Whoa. We were protecting.

[Sean Ryan]

Six times a day on Route Irish.

[Chris Paronto]

We were protecting the rhino bus and we got passed for that and six times a day, and it was. We violated every security principle that you're supposed to have.

[Sean Ryan]

Were you guys one of the crews that had the.

[Chris Paronto]

Which one? I don't know.

[Sean Ryan]

Somebody dressed up like a dinosaur at the back of a truck and rode that day?

[Chris Paronto]

No, no, that, that, that wasn't us. As far as you know? I don't think. No, it was. It wasn't us. It wasn't us. It wasn't us. That was later down the line. It was a dine corps Team that was later down. Yeah, that was down the line. It was team five. I believe it did the Dine core team because we would rotate with Dine Corps on this because we were still didn't have enough people. So we would take it. Then they would take something. I love the Dine core guys too, but now that was not serious. That was the Dyncore 2, which I wish it would have been. That was. That was some funny. That was hilarious. YouTube that stuff. Guys dinosaur Rod Irish. But yeah, we were time and place predictable. We were a big target and we were slow. Everything you didn't want to be on Rod Irish we were.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you guys. Did you guys take contact?

[Chris Paronto]

Just sniper fire from away. You know, right when you hit Route Irish you had those. That the. Where the. Where the Edinburgh Risk guys got hit. That's that famous that I say famous. That infamous video where those guys are on and there's an SF guy in there that everybody hammered because he ran and hid in a little ditch.

[Sean Ryan]

I've not seen that.

[Chris Paronto]

It was Edinburgh Risk where it's right at the beginning. When you get out of the Green Zone, you start hitting around Irish. It's still Iraqi urban areas right there and it's about 300 meters off the road. And they would sit PKMs or snipers on there and they'd. Because there was also a building had been bombed and burnt out that they put sniper fire about 100 meters away when you're going. And so anyway we would take every once in a while. But we got. Didn't get hit with a car bomb. We got very lucky. The Dyncort team that took over for us got hit the next week. So we would just take. And you know, you're ping. All right, well we're good. Everybody good? Yeah. All right. It just added to the flavor, man. And, and you know, it was something to say that for the team as well, how, how awesome they were and how good motorcade operations. If you're running it right, they're going to hit somebody that's not doing it right.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

And. But I do remember that it was when we got the task to do it and I was a tl, I was like, can you guys do this? Yeah. You know, what am I saying? No, of course we can do it. But I went to the team and you should have seen the looks, man. Half of them were stoked, the other half were like I'm not going home.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

And you're trying to keep everybody pumped up. But in my head going holy shit. Six times a day. Just the odds that we're going to get hit with a vbid. I said we can take small arms far because we're going to keep moving. We're going to keep pushing through. Just don't stop. Don't create your own kill zone like the Edinburgh Risk guys do. Did that got hit where you get caught in a traffic jam there and then you push everybody out right and left. So you're basically, you. You've just given them an ambush zone. You give them a big target. But we could just keep pushing. Don't worry about the rhino. It's got much armor on it. It's the State Department armored bus that M1 Abrams has. It's going to be able to take a hit. Just be able to med vac him or get him out of there if it goes down, but just keep moving. And it was very. We just did everything right and we got lucky. You know, man, you.

[Sean Ryan]

You never got blown up on Irish.

[Chris Paronto]

Blown up on Irish.

[Sean Ryan]

That is.

[Chris Paronto]

It's like it's a.

[Sean Ryan]

For running six times a day, time and place. Predictable. With a huge bus as a target.

[Chris Paronto]

I mean, it was.

[Sean Ryan]

That is incredible.

[Chris Paronto]

It's lucky. It is very lucky. It is because again, I said when Danker took over the next week, Team five, they got hit. The car bomb hit him. Hit the. Hit the rhino right off hit on. Boom. And you know, I want to attribute it to that. Hey, yeah, we were just that awesome. Now we're just.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, that's luck.

[Chris Paronto]

We're just that lucky. But it still brought the team together. It was wonderful. It was wonderful. And it was very tiring days because.

[Sean Ryan]

You are distressed that I'm not diminishing your team, by the way, by saying that it's just luck. I'm just saying.

[Chris Paronto]

No, no. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Those dfps, and I mean, there was.

[Chris Paronto]

Well, and they were. And they were starting to drop the grenades with the little. Little shoots off the overpasses as well. No, of course it. There is some. There is some. Hey, we did what we. We did what we had control of. We planned what we had to. We ran the routes, right. The motor kit operations were great. We were doing what we needed to do. We kept moving. We didn't ever stop.

[Sean Ryan]

Let me. Let me say sorry.

[Chris Paronto]

No, go ahead.

[Sean Ryan]

I get yelled at if I don't talk about these acronyms. So an EFP for the audience. An EFP is basically a bomb.

[Chris Paronto]

It's a platter charge. It's a force projectile.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

I want to say. Always say I always Say electrically, but that's not right. I don't know why my head say it. It's a platter charge. They put a piece of copper on it. It's a force projectile. I always forget what the E stands for. You guys can hammer on me later about that. But it's where it goes. And that platter of that copper turns into molten lava. So it'll go through the armor and then when it goes through, it cools. And then it becomes. It becomes a projectile. Hard projectile. And they were starting. Yeah, remember that? They were starting to hit us with that. And. And that was always.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, they would even put those thermal sensors on.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

So when they. When they sense the heat of the engine, that's what would turn off.

[Chris Paronto]

Because we were able to counter their. First of all their wires were. We could see them a lot of times, which, you know, you just did. But we were able to, with all the countermeasures, we could counter the cell phone. So that was huge. Yeah. And yeah, we had a buddy that next month, guy named Wee man that got hit with. They got hit with EFP when they were driving the Mambas around. You know, Blackwater had those white South African. And it went right through that armor.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

And you know, I always say, I love Wee Man. I love Chris. He was a great guy. He was actually our. He worked in the mail. I mean, it sounds kind of cliche, but he worked in the mailroom. He came in and he didn't have. He was not special ops. He worked in a small town police department. And he came in and he wanted to get on the road and we would never let him on the road. We're like, no, dude, you don't qualify. This is where you belong right here. And finally he got out on the road and got hit with an AFP and he fucked him up.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn, man.

[Chris Paronto]

And. But I still love him to death. But I'll be honest. I think. I think. I think. I don't say he wanted that because I would never say on anybody. But I do remember when they. Because we didn't go pick him up, the QRF team that responded, they went to help. My team was the PSD team. And I do remember when they came back, one of the guys on the QRF team kept saying. I said, did you see we. Man. He goes, yeah. He goes, well, you see? He said, just. He kept asking me to take a picture of him. It's like sometimes you get what you wish for, man.

[Sean Ryan]

Man.

[Chris Paronto]

And yeah, I'm not. Not to get. He's he is awesome. We. And he's braver than shit. He is. But be careful what you. I always. That's always a reminder to me. Be careful what you wish for. Yeah. But, yeah, we did that. And. And then I did another year and then I went back home. And in between, I was instructing at Blackwater, so I was a farmer. Firearms and tactics instructor in between contracts. So I really never went home.

[Sean Ryan]

So did you move to Moyauk?

[Chris Paronto]

No, I stayed in Omaha. She had a great job, so it was one of those things where we were just apart a lot. I was gone, or I'd go home for a month and it was hard because my son was born, my 19 year old. He was born the first two months I was over in Baghdad, my first two months on the contract. So I did come home to see his birth, and then I went right back for another seven months and then I. And. But that was, you know, at that time, that's. That's what I wanted. There's nobody to blame but myself, man.

[Sean Ryan]

What is. What is it? My whole career was pre kids. And so, I mean, as you know, today was my.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Son's first day of school.

[Chris Paronto]

Congrats on you. And I'm so happy that he's just like, dad, I'm out, man.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, I was expecting, like, a little, you know, I'm gonna miss you, mom and dad. No. He's like, I don't give a shit. I'm like, he'll see you guys later. But I am.

[Chris Paronto]

I.

[Sean Ryan]

Missed his first open house. Cause of a. I interviewed Trump.

[Chris Paronto]

Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

And otherwise, there's no way I would have missed it.

[Chris Paronto]

You gotta do what you gotta do.

[Sean Ryan]

And I'll tell you, man, when my wife sent me pictures of my son, like, with his backpack on, walking into that school, I was like, you know, and. And it just. Every time I have an experience like that, I just wonder, like, how the. How did my buddies do it back in the day?

[Chris Paronto]

How.

[Sean Ryan]

What. How. How do you.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah. How do you rationalize?

[Sean Ryan]

I want to know what it's like to come home. You met your son when he was a. When he.

[Chris Paronto]

When he was a baby.

[Sean Ryan]

He was born. He was one month, and then you come back. He's seven months old.

[Chris Paronto]

Now today, at that time, it was. It was just what it was. It was. This is what I'm doing. This is what I got to do. I'm providing for. You're rationalizing because this is. I'm providing for my family.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

But it's also a little ego this is what I want to do. This is where I've been. This is what I've always wanted to do. And you know, when I got discharged from the military, my buddies were jumping into Afghanistan. So like, I thought I missed my war. You know how. Yeah, well, no, I got my war. This is where I need to be. I'm going. And I did have a good time. I was enjoying it. It was wonderful. Now looking back now and experiencing, you're getting experienced, the little kid time with my 9 year old that I have been with him growing up. Now it's. Now it's hurts and now it's like, man, damn.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you feel?

[Chris Paronto]

I missed. I missed. And we had to, we had to come into Jesus when he was 16 because we didn't know each other. And even when I was home as a contractor, you don't get. There's no decompression, there's no demo. You're off a plane, a commercial jet, and you're going home and it takes about 30 days just to get your head right. You're not home and then you have 30 days of downtime and then you're back out again. So that's why I think it was even easier for me. Just, I think maybe that was a defense mechanism. I don't want to go home and be angry and just, just let me keep working. That's. And I'd go back and continue to instruct at Moyak and I wouldn't go home for more than a couple weeks or I'd fly them out. To me, it was good. It, it. At that time, it wasn't hard because I thought we were doing it for something bigger than, you know, it's patriotism. They attacked us. We're now looking back, I'm like, man, gosh, I miss that. I would have enjoyed being a father then. And luckily for us, him and I are very close now.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm happy to hear that.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah. But. And so we were able to come to terms. Same with my daughter too.

[Sean Ryan]

What did that, what did that mean? Did it come to a head and there was a conversation.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

When he was 16, what was that conversation?

[Chris Paronto]

We, my wife and I had reconciled. You know, we were back together. You know, we, we. It was two on. I'm sorry, not when he was 16. So it was right around the year 2018 where I got my shit together and him or her and I back together and we're out at a family dinner and we're out at Olive Garden and Council Bluffs. IO I Remember it vividly. And, you know, my little guy, I'm being able to be a father with him, even though I'm speaking and I'm starting to whittle the speaking down. I'm starting to be home a lot more. You know, I'm hugging all over him. The stuff I really didn't do with the other two because I was just so detached when I was home. It was. I wanted to, but I didn't know how. I mean, it really was, because I wasn't always there. My brain was sandbox Afghanistan, brains, half brains there, half brains. Family, where now my brain is all there with the family. And my little guy did something, and I'm sorry, I can't say it. My wife, well, y'all. Well, many people know, but I just. My wife.

[Sean Ryan]

It's all good.

[Chris Paronto]

My little guy, Peanut. All my kids have call signs. Peanut, he does something that the other two at Olive Garden, he's doing something he's having. Starting to get angry, have a tantrum because he got those little games there at Olive Garden you can play on the little monitors. In the past, when those kids. When my other two, Kiki and Bubba, when they were growing up, I'd get angry, just lose it, because I was back home, off the handle. I'm not getting mad at him. I'm actually being a dad. I'm actually. I mean, I'm being disciplined, but I'm having some patience. He looked at me and it killed me, dude. It did. He looked at me, goes, why don't you get mad at him like you used to get mad at me? And it was like, whoa. I mean, it's just knife in the chest. And I didn't have an answer. I couldn't tell him it was because of the war, it was because of Iraq. I mean, that's an excuse, kind of. He's not going to understand that. And that was where I realized that he was angry with me for being gone for many years and Kiki, my daughter, same way. Because I was. My little guy, Peanut got treated a lot better. A lot less hand spanking on the bottoms or whatever than the other two. And that's attributed to my mind state being coming back. Because, you know, you come back and you have that excuse, man. What are you guys crying about? You see this little Iraqi kid, He's on the street. He didn't have nothing to eat. And you're trying to compare the two. Yeah, but it's completely different. But that's how I am coming back. That's my rationalization. I may be yelling at you, but you could have it a lot worse. I know a lot of guys, a lot of fathers now are realizing that, because we're comparing their lives to these Afghani. The Afghani that's walking down the street carrying water up a.5 miles up a hill or, you know, or this. Or the kids that are caught in a crossfire because. Or a car bomb goes off and it blows up a busload of kids going to school. You know, we're trying to compare that. Yeah. They don't understand that, and that's not a fair comparison, but that's how I was until I was finally home more and able to come to terms with what was going on over there. That. That was a life. But now my life is as a father here. And my actions were completely different with my younger son than it was with the other two. And I didn't realize it until he said that.

[Sean Ryan]

How did you reconcile?

[Chris Paronto]

This became a present. Hug on him more. Love him more. I. I told him, I said. When he pushed away from me, giving him his space, but then come back and just be, hey, are you okay, son? I love you, man. Even now, that. And with the advent of cell phones, that's one positive, is that I can just always. I love you, Bubba. And even if I get back. Yeah. Cause he's a teenager. He knows. And, you know, I know we reconciled because his junior year, he was his athlete as well, when he played basketball. He played football his freshman and sophomore year, but he had three concussions, so I pulled him out. I said, no more. You're done with football. Play something else. He loves soccer anyway, so he went to soccer. He changed his number to 13. I was like, no way. I went to a game, and in my. I was. You know, my wife Tanya was sitting there. I said, is that. Oh, shit. I said his name. Sorry. Is that Bubba? Thank you. I said, is that Bubba? She goes, yeah. He goes, he's number 13. She goes, yeah. And that's when I knew that he'd finally forgiven me. And we are very close now. Yeah. I love that boy to death. And he is just a good kid his mom raised. I mean, he is. He was. He's nothing like me. He doesn't drink. He went to school. He had a soccer scholarship to go play at Northwestern College there. It's a Christian school in Iowa. And he's up there, and I thought it'd be all right. And he's like, dad, I don't. I don't do any. All the guys go to Go to Sioux Falls and drink. And they. And he goes, I don't do that. He goes, I go, well, then come home and you have a track scholarship to the small college in Kansas. Write that coach up and tell him you want to come in. That's what he did. So he was. He was wonderful, man. It's just.

[Sean Ryan]

How about your daughter?

[Chris Paronto]

She's headstrong, man. But now that she. We're starting to. We're starting to get better because it's. It's the daughter's way different. Little boys, you know, boys, you can be a little firmer. Girls, you. You. You don't really want to, in my opinion. You don't. Because you don't want them falling in with a man that. That bosses him around. But you also, you know, she's still your daughter. She got a discipline. So what do I do, Mama handle this. But it came to a point to where. Yeah. And my daughter's, as far as her outspokenness is like me. My oldest son, he's not, you know, he's very, very, very quiet. He's strong. But he. He. You know, he doesn't argue back. He doesn't. He. He. He knows I got. He goes, I got it. I'll fix it. That my daughter, she's going to argue, argue, argue, argue. And there were times where we would be. Yeah, we'd be yelling at each other, like, because the disrespect that was there. And my wife finally said. She goes, just let me. Let me in. Let me handle it. And this was a couple years ago, and so done. You just default to my wife, who. And my daughter responds better to her mom. And a lot of it has to do with me being gone a lot. But now we're. We're. No, we're getting back again. We're. We're. We're. We're reconciling, and we're at a point where. And she's not very. I think she got. She's not very affectionate. She doesn't like the hugs and the. And the kisses, like my little guy does. And my oldest son, who. I said, I'm gonna hug you till you're 40, till you're 50 years old. Sons, they like it. I mean, my son doesn't hug back, but he lets me. She doesn't like it. And I think a lot of that has to do with, you know, her growing up and me and her mom, you know, sometimes having some issues. We got divorced at one point, and me being an angry, angry man coming back from deployments but she knows I love her. And, you know, there was an issue at her school that. I love it. She wrote a letter to the school saying how she had a problem with one of the dress code issues. I'm like, yeah. And I remember I called, I said, I got your back, darling, because I believe you. I said, and I know you're doing the right thing. And that's what I love. Because that is something Tonto would do, like telling Pete Hegseth, you're going to choke out a former president. Hey, she got her opinion. Hell, yeah, I got you. And I called her, and she was. She. You know, so it's. It's a lot of time where I'll tell her I love her. I love you. Darn. Yeah, Dad, I love you. I love you, too. Because I called her. I said, you write what you want. You know, I got your back. Tell them how you feel. I said, I love you. And she goes, I love you too, dad. And that was actually just last week.

[Sean Ryan]

Good for you, man.

[Chris Paronto]

So it just. It's being a father, man. You just have to figure it out. And there are. It's okay to be a dis. Disciplinarian. There's nothing wrong with that. But you also. Your kids are all different. And for us that deployed, we do have to relearn. We have to change ourselves. You know, warriors don't retire, like Ron said. And I know we put in the movie, but he said that. But it's the truth. But we don't ever retire. But we can't be a warrior at home all the time. You can be a dad, and. But you have to figure out a way how to reach your kids. And. And luckily for me, my kids are smarter than me, so they would maybe not tell me, but they would say things where I was astute enough to pick it up, like my son or like my daughter. And they don't always have to say they love you just in action, like my son wearing number 13. I just know right then, like, he forgives me. He's. We're good, and we have been perfect since.

[Sean Ryan]

And I'm happy to hear that.

[Chris Paronto]

Ah, thanks, man. That's pretty cool.

[Sean Ryan]

Chris, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we will get into how you got into the OGA contract.

[Chris Paronto]

You got it, brother.

[Sean Ryan]

Perfect. I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patrons are the driving force behind the success of this show, and their support allows us to keep doing what we Do. Depending on the tier you choose, you'll get access to benefits like behind the scenes footage before each interview, early access to episodes, end of the month live zoom calls with me, exclusive merch and more. Join us and become a patron starting at just $5 a month by visiting patreon.com vigilancelead that's patreon.com vigilance elite. Thank you for listening to the Shawn Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to itunes and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. All right, Chris, we're back from the break.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

And we just went through a small portion of your career. Well, I guess not a small portion.

[Chris Paronto]

Move on to a portion. Yeah. Instance of my life. Small. A small portion of my last. Put that way.

[Sean Ryan]

But now we're getting ready to get into how you got picked up for.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah. OGA that was, you know, again, I, I and I keep referring this God's path. The Lord works mysterious ways. It really, it wasn't anything I wanted to do. I was doing fine doing. I was working with Blackwater doing State Department stuff. But then also I was working the Greystone, which was Eric's. He was trying to make like kind of an executive outcome sort of, but it was Greystone. So it was still Blackwater, but it was like a little offshoot we would go down.

[Sean Ryan]

What's Executive Outcomes?

[Chris Paronto]

That was the old South African pmc where it was really a pmc. Mercenaries were.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, that was like the weird.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah, that was where they were going and actually getting hired by governments to take down terrorist organizations or, or actually do direct action missions.

[Sean Ryan]

That wasn't the De Beer shit.

[Chris Paronto]

That wasn't the Dabir shit. No, this is, this was the old real mercenaries. Yes. Where the term mercenary. I always say, well, the term mercenaries back in the beginning of time. But that was where the government stopped in and said we got to stop doing this because there were 60 South African. You know, those guys were 60 South African strong of former military and they were taking out huge armies at the behest of some of the African governments. Read about them. It was pretty interesting stuff. They were badass.

[Sean Ryan]

What is this called again?

[Chris Paronto]

They were called Executive Outcomes.

[Sean Ryan]

How the hell do I not know about this?

[Chris Paronto]

I know. So I'm surprised too, man. That's, that's a big deal. That's.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm a dumbass.

[Chris Paronto]

I don't know if anybody's still alive from any of those. You know, it was early long 70s, 80s I think it was. Anyway, Greystone was supposed to be Eric's kind of like a offshoot of that. So it was Blackwater. But we're called Greystone.

[Sean Ryan]

But I didn't know Greystone either. Yeah, dude, I got left in the.

[Chris Paronto]

Dark on so many things. Very small. It just lasted. But it was. Eric wanted to keep that.

[Sean Ryan]

Was it the agency stuff?

[Chris Paronto]

No, it was private stuff. We were going out South America and training local South Americans to go and protect bases overseas. So protect Blackwater bases more. So instead of using the Nepalese, the Gurkha, Gurkhas, you know that we were trying to.

[Sean Ryan]

All right, hold on. Let's go. Let's talk about Greystone. I've had Eric on here three separate times. We have not talked talked about Grace.

[Chris Paronto]

It was, I don't think it lasted very long. It was very small. It really was more training going down there and vetting locals that we could use from South America, Central America. So I went to Peru and El Salvador and then we also had teams going to Colombia and it wasn't anything nefarious. It's not like we were going on there and starting to execute. We weren't pulling, we weren't pulling inks, let's put it that way. We weren't doing that. And we were, we were, we were going down there to train and then working with the Fuerza de Special and helping them train a little bit. So it was like a fit mission. It really was. But I think Eric wanted to get to a point where it was like its own self sustaining army.

[Sean Ryan]

Gotcha.

[Chris Paronto]

But it just never morphed into that because then you know that's when those times is when state departments started to take over high. The CPA now was high threat protection. Then it went to that whips worldwide personal protective and State department getting their hands in. And that's when the microscope started going up Eric's ker where they were trying to come after him for stuff. They and whatever. I like Eric, I. I protected his family. In between contracts I'd go to Tyson's corner and you know, I'd go run with him in the morning because I was the only guy that he was. He was a beast. Dude was physically. I get run with him in the morning and I go take his kids to school because that code pink, that liberal terrorist crazy women group was always threatening them. So we had a team that would help him and I was on that as well. I was the detail Leader for that. But anyway, we did that, and I got to go. So I went to South America in between contracts, so I was State Department. And then. Do you want to go Greystone? You want to go to South America? Hell, yeah. So we went to Pierre, Peru, went to. To San Salvador, went to Lima, Peru. And it was fun. It was. It was a good time. Again, my Spanish comes back, so I don't really feel like it's a deployment to me, you know, and ate some good food, went to a couple spin classes there in Lima, you know, Shakira on bikes, in spandex, what can go. What? Anyway, anyway, it was a great. And then it was. And then the training too, you know, and. And. And working with the Forza, Day of Special, especially in El Salvador, was pretty cool. But then I came back and I was still teaching High Threat protection, getting ready to do another contract. And Marty, Strong SEAL lieutenant, great guy. He's written a few books himself, but great guy. He was one of the program managers on the Blackwater contract, the State Department contract. And Randy Leonard was running, starting to run the OGA side house. We call it the Victory. We call it the Victory Program and AOB army of Blackwater program, which was the static CA guys, the base security guys. Marty comes to me and says, hey, you want to go work oga? And like, Marty, and I'm State Department, and I thought the requirements were still like eight years or nine years spec ops. I only had six, so I was like, I don't qualify. And it was six. But he goes, you qualify, all right. Because I was jogging in Moyak, I lived out in the back at the ptc, the private training center, which was out. So I was jogging one day and he was driving home, and that's when he yelled out his window. He goes, you want to go do oga? I was like, marty, don't qualify. And I'm still trying to run. He goes, you qualify, all right, sure. Put my name in the hat. And then the next day, Randy came and there was seven of us instructors that had been working contracts. And there was the Victory Program, which we ran to get guys certified for oj. It was. It was. It was easy. It wasn't anything tough, to be quite honest with you. We're coming back, and I remember we get done training, we're teaching a class for the day to send guys over on the Whips contract. I was doing the High Threat protection side of the house on that side, and he pulls all these guys, and these are all tough guys, man. All Pipe hitters, right? Cool. Everything. I can do anything. And Randy comes in and TDC had gotten a name for itself. It was hard. People fail. A lot of people were failing. And so Randy comes in and there's seven of us. He goes, we have a slot for tdc. Who wants to go? It was crickets. All these pipe hitters, man. Everybody's look, you know, look in. Somebody say something. I was like, fuck it, I'll go. I was like, I'll do it. And it was like. Everybody went, oh. Because if one of us didn't volunteer, Randy was going to pick one. And, you know, if you don't pass it, well, then maybe it'll come back on whips. But you're never working. It was. It was. It's literally pass or fill. You pass. If you fail, never OGA ever again.

[Sean Ryan]

For those listening, OGA stands for other government agency.

[Chris Paronto]

So we weren't calling.

[Sean Ryan]

Getting into the intelligence stuff.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah, the Clowns in Action. We're getting into the Clowns in action, sure. True. But we didn't call it grs. I didn't know what that was called. I didn't know it was grs, you know, he said oga, which I knew what it was, but it wasn't called GRS at that time. If it was, it wasn't. That wasn't the term used around the head shed there.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

So I say I did. And Randy said, okay, we need to get you spun up. And he brought in Dan Simpson, Dirty Dan, one of the original makers of tdc with Randy. They. I mean, they started with Dan, another Dan. He started grs. Great guy. I wish I could remember his last name. I can't.

[Sean Ryan]

But it's probably better you don't.

[Chris Paronto]

Don't. Yeah, you're right. Even though he's pro. Well, he left and started Osun Hunter Group. Oh.

[Sean Ryan]

Maybe different.

[Chris Paronto]

So he. He's a bit. No worries. Anyway, he goes, we need to get you spun up. And if you're a Ranger and seals, you guys use pistols. Sf, they get good at pistols. Rangers, we get a pistol, we're throwing it in a rucksack. We don't shoot this. We're rifling a machine. We can. That's our thing. Rifles, machine guns, Gustavs, that's our thing. And Randy goes, get out there. I need to start training. And at the time, too, I wasn't using broom handles, which.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, shit.

[Chris Paronto]

You know, and because we don't. That wasn't. You guys did blue and white Soft. Did.

[Sean Ryan]

A broom handle is a forward grip Goes on the front of an AR15.

[Chris Paronto]

That wasn't a thing. High readies or M4. M4, M4, AR15, SBR, PDW, whatever. Yeah, you get all you gun porn people can. Can call it whatever you want.

[Sean Ryan]

They figure it out.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah, exactly. But I remember and, and I never. We never did high ready. That wasn't a thing. It was low ready, low carry, low carry, low ready. So that's Ranger, right? You got to teach your high ready. So I get out there with Dan. The high ready actually came pretty natural. The broom handle I love like man, where did. Why am I not been using that thing? And it was this. I used the Deeter. I like the Deeter for The foregrip. The CQD4 grip. It was excellent. It was perfect fit my hand. Right. And so I got the rifle stuff down. That was pretty quick. The pistol, jeez. Ah. I mean I could pass a state department quality pistol, which is a joke. The TDC pistol was not a joke. That was like, whoa, how am I going to do this? There's. And we worked on that continually for about a week and then it was like, you're gone. Go see you. And we went. My TDC course was held in Danville. Not Danville. ITI that's where it started. The, the racetrack. The out there. ITI what is that? West Point, Maryland. I don't remember. It's. It was called ITI It's.

[Sean Ryan]

It's in Virginia.

[Chris Paronto]

It's in Virginia. Yeah. But we did it there. Went there. You did the PT test? Easy. I mean actually I'm running five minute miles. It's nothing. I think I ran that, whatever it was in nine minutes where you had to run a half mile, carry the body, run back. I mean I was just. I was very blessed. I've been blessed with good Aztec running jeans. The rifle part, I mean it was tough. It was challenging. I wouldn't say it was easy. It was challenging. No, it's tough. It was the time standards, they're tough. Got through that. The night stuff again. We use night shift. I was used to infrared lasers. I was used to. I was so it was awesome to actually not have a 14A cyclops on. And it wasn't. The 15s were using that time. There were 23s. They were a little bit bigger.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh damn.

[Chris Paronto]

Those old school ones. It was real heavy. But it still was all right to it because we had stronger necks back then. We were tougher back then. The vehicle stuff was piece of. It was just tactics. It was battle drill one Alpha man, react. Contract. Break contract. You know, it's from Battle Drill Squad attack. Battle Drill one Alpha. And then you're either break contract or you flank. And it was. The vehicle attacks were pretty simple. It's just bounding. Ultimate sex. It was infantry and house stuff. No problem. Just don't flag your buddy. The high ready eliminates that, which made it a lot easier. And just get on your target. Think that's where I started. This needs to start kicking in more than this, more than the shooting. It's a chess game. Be three steps ahead of your enemy. If you're racing towards your gun, you're already screwed. You've screwed yourself. That's why I don't get into the YouTube. Let's go fast. Fast. Because if you have to go fast, you fucked up somewhere. And that was what was. That's what Randy really did. Dev Gru ran SEAL team. Horse Cock. Randy calls. You know, where's Holocaust? I came. He really harped into that with me along with my platoon sergeant Randy Battalion, which I didn't really start to put together till tdc. Be three steps ahead so you don't have to react fast. It's a chess game. And we had a Mi5 and Mi6 guys trained in there too. They were part of our vetting teams too. They were. And for some reason, I don't know if this was your. Every MI5 MI6 guy I met was either named Mick or Mo. We had a Mick and we had a Mo. Okay.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, standard issue call sign.

[Chris Paronto]

But they were. One was an SBS guy. The other one was a Royal Marine that went to sas. And they were a part of our instructing cadre too.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay.

[Chris Paronto]

And they were. Those guys think that. I mean, it's fine, fix and then eliminate. But they're always thinking. And that's the. So it really became that where things started to slow down. You know, your adrenaline, fire breathing. Let's kick through that door. That's actually where I started. Hey, take a breath. Let's start to slow it down. Ranger. All right. Be aggressive. We need to then bring it down. And it really. It just started to all make sense. So the room clearing was actually was great. It was like, man, I'm getting this. I'm actually becoming an operator here, you know? And, you know, it only took 10 years, but I'm there. I'm getting there. And the pistol, though. I was so worried when I did the pistol. And you get. I don't remember. Was it two tries you get. You know, you do practices. They have us do some practice runs through. So it's not like they put you on there cold. You're practicing.

[Sean Ryan]

This has changed.

[Chris Paronto]

And I. I don't remember, because we got. We had a day of practice. Practice runs that morning. And then they said, okay, qual. We went out, called. I boloed the head. All right, you get one alibi. And I went. And I. The body was fine. I was making the times I couldn't hit the head because I. My grip was. I just didn't have the right grip. I didn't have the mechanics. I was really. Because I didn't shoot a pistol a ton at range Battalion. We just didn't do it.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

So I'm out there and I mean, luckily for me, fundamentals are Fundamentals are fundamentals. So I'm trying to find the front sight, trying to do whatever and do it within that timeframe. Which. The one that got the. The one that was getting me was the two to the body. And then you have to, you know, you start at the 10 and you have to run to the 2 and put one in the head. So it's like, go draw. You run and you have to put two the body. Then you have to run down to the five, or was the seven, and then you got to put one in the head within, like, was. I'm. It was stupid. It was like three seconds or something like that.

[Sean Ryan]

I think these are different quals.

[Chris Paronto]

They might be different now. They might be. And I still got my quals. If you ever want me to send them to you. I've still got those quals because I used to teach the course after. Yeah, I got. So I've still got those. Got them, too. And they may. I'd like to see what you have. I mean, I can always use more training material. Man. I love qualis, but it was. That was getting me. I could get the body. And then you had to run fast down to the three, and it was like ten to the three. Or. No, I'm sorry, ten. Yeah, it was ten to the three. I'd have to. Look, guys, forgive me, guys. You guys all know, maybe I'll send that. We'll put online. But it was. It wasn't ungodly. It was tough. And I kept blowing the. Blowing the headshot because you did that twice, and if you didn't get in that the. The A box, both times, it didn't matter. You failed. Yeah, you could get everybody shot in the world, but you had to hit a box. Not outside yet.

[Sean Ryan]

And basically, what he's talking about Is there's a slot that we call the credit card.

[Chris Paronto]

Credit card in the head, the prefrontal cortex lobe. Right.

[Sean Ryan]

The eyes.

[Chris Paronto]

And. But it's.

[Sean Ryan]

So if you miss, if you hit outside of the credit card, you're. You're done.

[Chris Paronto]

You're done. It's. It's on those IPSIC targets, the ispc, IPSC targets. And the last one I got. I didn't do anything different. I just got lucky. As body was fine. Physically, I was fine. I was fast. Still. Still could run fast. I got there, so my job was, okay, get there. Get those bodies out. You're gonna hit them because they're easy. You know, all you do is A or B, which is here or here. That's a big spot from 10 yards. That's. That's not hard to do, especially if you've been shooting a lot. Probably couldn't do it now, but. No. Back then. But. And then use my speed and run as fast as I could so I could get a stable position. And then just pray. So it was run like this and pray. And I did it. Got it.

[Sean Ryan]

Nice.

[Chris Paronto]

And I. And I got it. I hit the first one center, and I broke the line on this thing. Break the line. It counts.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

And like. Oh. And that was it. I made it GRS and went back. And it was a good feeling because you weren't looking down at guy, but it was like. Yeah. Because not many guys had passed tdc. We lost half the course that we had, and all of them were Ranger SEALs. We had one D boy and SF and we. We had 10 guys. Five pass, five fail.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

And. And, yeah. I went back and they said, where do you want to go? I said, I don't care. And I. They sent. My first trip, I went to the secondary, went to Afghanistan, went to Kabul, and that was the end of 05, beginning of 06. And I forgot.

[Sean Ryan]

We called it the secondary.

[Chris Paronto]

I remember the main and the secondary.

[Sean Ryan]

What. When did you realize that the OGA contract was for CIA at tdc? At tda?

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah, because they would sit us down and they would tell us.

[Sean Ryan]

Afterwards or during the course.

[Chris Paronto]

During the course. During the course, we. We would. We would know. And Randy. Randy started the program. He'd been agency for a while.

[Sean Ryan]

Gotcha.

[Chris Paronto]

We knew. I mean, he didn't have to. It was, hey, guys, this is O.J. wink, wink. You know, we knew.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

It wasn't. But officially when we got there, because it was a. It was a Cordonoff training area. It was like a private training area where there Were no outsiders.

[Sean Ryan]

Private training area within a private training.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah, exactly.

[Sean Ryan]

So we're at the same spot all the way in the back.

[Chris Paronto]

Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

Yep.

[Chris Paronto]

And so I. So that, that's when I knew. And, and what I was so cool about is that the teams. That was the. The for me, the pay was better. It was, it was great. It was great pay. Grant I. We weren't getting paid well before, but it was still great. But the, the smaller teams were always cool to me. I thought that was neat being you and a buddy and that's it. Yeah. And you're out there on your own and then sometimes you're out on your own. On your own. On your own where? I did a lot walking within the cities on my own, which was awesome. I love that.

[Sean Ryan]

Where was your first deployment?

[Chris Paronto]

Cobble. Arian and I, when I grow this out, I can blend pretty good. Not that I wear shama kameces, but I could look like a business. You don't have to draw on the man. Wear the man jammies. There's a lot of government workers out there.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

You know, just wear what they're wearing. They were button down shirts, man. And in the winter time they wear long coats. And you could buy one off at the park down by the movie theater, you know, Right. Where the, not the Serena Hotel, that's the one that got hit. But there's that other hotel downtown that they had that park and you could just go buy stuff and I would, I'd stop and I'd buy local stuff. Throw it on. Yeah. You know, just make sure you delouse. Be lost. You're gonna smell a little bit. But it worked. And I loved walking on my own, like. And Sax, he trusted me. Or maybe he just thought, well, he's expendable, I don't know. But he liked Gaetano. He's like, do you want to go for a walk? And I love doing it. A lot of guys didn't. And I get it. I mean, when you're a white dude tatted up down to here, and you eat well and you're always buffed out, you're not going to blend very well. I get that. It wasn't that they were afraid, it's just they didn't blend. I'm a little guy, I'm. I have a. I have a brown complexion, you know, I know how to handle myself and I wanted to. And so I got, man, I went to the Mari market. Walking. It was like Indiana Jones. I got to walk in some of those alleyways. It was. I have Pictures of it now, sometimes I'll post them. It was, it was where I was acting and I was walking with a CIA case officer. We were back there doing a recon, just seeing. And I think, honestly, I think she just wanted to go back there to see it was cool. And this was. I threw an MP5 in a computer bag and my Glock 19 on me. I wore just local, I wore just what they were. I wore khakis and a button down shirt. And we went back. It was by CNN Circle. It was back like by the soccer field where you go across the river and the Maori markets where the river is. And then if you come out the back, the front side, it's where that two story mosque, their famous mosque is. Well, if you get out on the market in the river, there's the river here. And then you see people walking to shopping. There's whole other shopping alleyways through that. And you have to find your way in there. It was so cool. You just walk in and it's like. It is like the movies. It's like this tight alleyway. And then you get through it and a whole other world of shopping opens up. You've got spices, you've got fighting quails that are about this big. You've got non everywhere and there's people being crazy everywhere. I'm not crazy, but it's just people shopping, Afghanis shopping. You've got police. I remember walking in one. And you do have a lot of shit and a lot of trash piled up on us because the open sewers and so forth. I remember walking and we go out of this right, left alley and there was this police officer with a blackjack beating sticks. He was beating the shit out of some Afghani, just whooping the back of his legs, like, just disciplining him. And I remember walking and we did have a local guy. So that was a, that was, you know, it was a plus. I have a local Afghani with us, so he's with us. And I said, what the hell, man? He's beating the shit out of him. And you know, first instinct as an American is to step in. I gotta stop this. No, no, no, let it, it's Afghan. Let it go. Well, what they would do is, is when they would go shopping, they'd hire guys to pull those. You see guys carrying, pulling donkey carts around. That was for people that didn't want to carry all their supplies back to their vehicles or their home. They'd hire these guys to put in the donkey carts and they'd walk Them. The. The. Like kind of like a little tuk tuks. I guess you donkey carts are a better explanation. Little. Little pole wheelbarrows. I said, why is he kicking the. Out of him? And he goes, he was parked his donkey cart in the wrong spot. It's like, there's Afghanistan for you. But it was. It just. It was fun because I got to. I wasn't on a military base. You know, I wasn't always being a DA guy. I was. I was getting out and doing surveillance and counter surveillance and just getting atmospherics. And that was fun. That was so cool. And getting to experience the food and hanging with the locals a little bit. And it was awesome. That first trip and all the trips after were awesome because after I would do a couple of those and sacks and the agency found I was a guy that they could rely on to do that, they sent me out to do a lot of stuff. I'd go out in the Makarian district and they said, can you go take pictures of this apartment building? We think there's a government worker that's part of the Taliban. And I'd go, yeah, sure. And we set it up so I'd have Curef around. Great guys I could trust, like Popeye was one. Sachs was another, you know, Otto Marine buddy that runs Photonus Defense. He was a GS guy. So they'd be close by. They'd be orbiting the area. So if I was 911, dude, I'm getting wrapped up. Come help me. But I could go out there and they just let me go, and I would just walk around the city. It was fun. I loved it. Yeah, that was the job on GRS that I loved. But that was any. That was the beginning of GRS was right there where I got the taste, and that's where the bug got me. It was. It wasn't even the protection. It was that, holy crap, I have freedom to actually get to know these cities and see this stuff that I only saw in movies and National Geographic. Yeah, that was awesome.

[Sean Ryan]

Those were good times.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah. Yeah, those were good times.

[Sean Ryan]

For the most part.

[Chris Paronto]

For the most part. Just dealing with the. And then you had to come back to the. To the agency and put with the or. Or go, you know, try to stay clear of the Talibar. So somebody's getting in a fight or drinking too much.

[Sean Ryan]

You weren't a tally bar guy.

[Chris Paronto]

I would. Went in there a couple times, but I wasn't a big drinker. Now I was. It. It was too much drama. Yeah, it was drama. Or, you know, A lot of drama. A lot of drama. Stay away from there. And you know, a lot of women, the women that were there, you know.

[Sean Ryan]

A lot of things happened on that pool table.

[Chris Paronto]

You said it. I did, but it was too much drama. It's just, you know, just alpha women, alpha males and females. And. And no, I always said I was my best person when I was overseas because I focused on the job. I had fun. Gyms were good. There always was a gym. I could always work out. I had no problem running around the area. And I loved running. Even though you're getting all that crap in your lungs. Well, I'm getting the crap of my lungs in the gym with. There, with the little. With the little mini splits, you know, So I loved it. And that first trip was all. First seven, eight months was off and on to the Kabul. That's where I went. Kept going, kept going, kept going. It was fun and I had a great time.

[Sean Ryan]

What was your favorite place to work?

[Chris Paronto]

Kandahar. Gekko. Gecko, by far, because all the ops were at night so you could sleep all day.

[Sean Ryan]

Favorite place in Afghanistan or favorite place?

[Chris Paronto]

Favorite place for me was Gecko.

[Sean Ryan]

No.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah, I did love it. I love Kandahar and I love. I got to do a lot of flyaways there. A lot of lash hadn't spun up yet, so we were setting up Lash Gagar and Spin. Those places were still. They were thinking about setting them up. So we were doing a lot of flyaways and landing in the middle of the night in a soccer field, running off the back of a. Of a hip, which I hated flying those things. I felt like I was flying in a death trap because you know how slow it's just. But laying in a soccer field in the middle of night, having the local guard force come pick you up, then you'd go stay in a bombed out building with some ratty old blankets and with. But you'd go with your Canada, our security force too. So we'd always take guys with us. And I, I got real close to him and I was also, in part. I was also in charge of the training. So we, I'd run the training with the locals too, with our local QSF guys, you know, the local guys that worked with us. So that was fun. So I, you know, I'd go over there and even though there was a language barrier, I'd go in there and we'd. With their co. With their head guy and I drink chai and we just sit and we try to communicate and it was fun. I Enjoyed it. Played soccer on that rocky soccer field where PT was. I remember PJ whenever he. I might say his name, but he broke his ankle out there because there was just rocks everywhere, you know. And then we'd run up Gecko, you know, run up the mountain, do PT in the morning. And it was just. It was. It was awesome. And we had a great team there. No, the team was. That team rivaled the Benghazi team. That was one of the best teams where everybody got along. Myself, Curly, the To, we had their rebel. He was awesome. One of the best TLs, again, another guy that qualified if he was a contractor, but he became a staffer. One of the good staffers, Curly X. Bixler. Joseph, who passed away in a motorcycle accident, you know, the following year. He just got hit while he was driving his motorcycle too fast. And Mushroom, who was a old Force Recon Marine. Old Marine who doesn't like an old. Old crusty Marine. Great guy. And then Joe Dirt, Joe's Joe Zar, Joe Deer, Tay, but Dirt, Joe Dirt 10 Special Forces Group guy. And everybody just got along. It was wonderful. It was just. And everybody. It was one of those, again, teams where you could go out and do stuff and nobody really needed to say anything. You even worked together, you just. Everybody just knew what everybody was going to do. Yeah. And you just roll out. And I loved it because it was all at night and going out and wrapping up guys at night was fun. I mean, we didn't. It was hot, so we didn't get a lot of ops. It wasn't like you guys, where you guys were constantly going. But when it was. It was fun and it was like. And then at that time too is when. Also when we lost Jeremy Wise and we lost Southside side of Coast. So, you know, so that's when the tactics changed too, or the, the. The. The standards operating procedures changed, where we had to search people that were actually coming in. They wouldn't just let them on the base because, you know, if. For those that don't know, I don't think the movie's that great, but I do like that scene actually. Pretty, Pretty good was Zero Dark Thirty where they showed what happened, where the CIA chief of base let the double agent on too far and blew up. That was accurate. That was Southside. That was Jeremy. Doc Wyatt didn't die. He came to Tripoli later, but he was one of the ones injured. And they lost that real good targeter. But that's what we had to do as well. And there was one. I Remember, there was a defining moment for me there of how to handle. Because we would. We'd have Taliban people coming on, or we'd go grab them, then we have to bring them in and we'd search them again there on a facility outside. And X was hardcore seal. He wanted to kill everyone. I loved him not, but he just was mean. He'd nicest guide us. But Taliban, I don't care who you are, you do what I tell you to do. You do it now or I'm going to slam you. And we brought this Taliban guy in and we were searching him. He wouldn't let us search him. But we're out of outer facility, so it's. So if anybody gets blown up, it's going to be us, you know, so we're expendable. It's all right. Well, he wouldn't let him. I remember. And it was. He was trying to search him. And we had the Afghan, we had one of our interpreters there. And. And I'm trying to play good cop. We're playing good cop, bad cop. I'm trying to be the nice guy. And X is grabbing him and trying to get him to do what we're telling him to do. And he was fighting it. He's Italian. He's fighting it. And I go and say, what's going on, man? Why is he not letting him search him? Is he hiding something? Is there a bomb here? Because now my spider senses are going up because I think he's gonna blow us up. And he goes, no, no. He says, cause he's got his Quran in his top pocket. He's got it in his chama kamis up here. And I always carried my pocket Bible. And the little green ones we get going down the New Testament. I had one here. I always carried it. Every day I pulled it out of my pocket. I said, here, you give this to him and you tell him he can touch it. It. We're saying, God, I believe in God. I respect his God. He respects my God. We're good to go. And I said, you say that. And you always said, you know the interpreters. I said, you say that exactly how I said it. Don't change it. Don't try to change the words. You say it just like that. And he did it in. In Pashtu. And the Taliban guy stopped fighting. He looked at me and he says, okay. I said. I shake his head. I said, I go, so, we good? We cool? He goes, yeah, we're cool. And he let me search you. And I was like, man, you know what? Just a little diplomatic relations, but also the religious side, man. God is God. I don't want to disrespect your God. You don't disrespect my God. We have to search him. I said tell him, and I did tell him this, that we tell him we have to search him because I don't want him killing me with a bomb. And he said it and we searched him. Now, X was in all his rights to throw that guy around. And believe me, I wanted to as well. He's Taliban, man.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

But there's got to be more way to remedy this than just throwing his ass around. And all of us getting scuffed up a little bit because nobody roadhouse Patrick. Suy, the great folks loss for Patrick Swayze. He said no one wins a fight. And he's right. Somebody, all of us are going to get scuffed up a little bit. We're going to win because we're going to throw him down. But somebody's going to get scratched, somebody's going to get beat, somebody's going to get hurt. You know, screw it. Let's try to do this. Be the nice guy first. And it worked. And he gave us good info. And case officers were very happy with us because they didn't get a belligerent guy trying to give information. He gave up. At least that's what they said. I don't get into it, but that was Kandahar. And that was how Kandahar was for me, because it just, it. The team fit, the work fit. I enjoyed going out at night. I enjoyed that. It was very hot, you know, guys were getting. Or you had. I don't know if you talked about, but you had Bradley on Don Lucky, you know, he got massive car bomb there. When you were with the teams, I mean, that was, that was Kandahar.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

But then also I love that we got a punch out all over in the Lashkagar, in a Hellman, the Helmand province and the Kandahar province and we got to fly. And yeah, it really felt like cloak and dagger type shit. It was really cool.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, that was a good place to work.

[Chris Paronto]

It was, it was.

[Sean Ryan]

Let's move into. Let's move into Libya.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

You ready?

[Chris Paronto]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do it.

[Sean Ryan]

You want to skip right to it?

[Chris Paronto]

I'm good for whatever you are, brother. Every I. If I, if it hurts, then that's what I'm supposed to feel. That's what people need to see.

[Sean Ryan]

You lead the way. And I'll Guide.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah. Yeah. I went to Tripoli first. My first trip wasn't in Benghazi. It was to Tripoli. And one of the things that I enjoyed about grs, especially then is by that time I had started to stop moving. I stopped working for, like, the. The secondary companies. I. I wasn't doing contracts for Blackwater or soc, who took over the contract or. Or those were the main two. I don't know who GASM anymore. Osun Hunter had another contract where I would do teaching with Osun Hunter. That's where I got to. I mean, that's me and Evan and Hafer worked on those contracts together. Great contracts. But they started a program called the Direct Hire Independent contractor. Do you know that you've worked it to those that don't. It's funny because. What's the acronym? D H I C. We were dicks. And that was a joke. Or dicks. You want to be a dick? Sure, I'll be a dick. So they would come recruiting for. From this if. From the Black Waters and whoever else. And if you had a good record, you've done a lot of time, and your C1 at those places would write you a good eval. You could come and be a. Be a dirt. Be a dick. And that's what I did after Kandahar, actually. Yeah. Do you want to go? Because it gave us the opportunity to. Just. Because it gets mundane, going from the secondary to the main to the secondary. I mean, you're going to Afghanistan. All right. When you're doing that 10 years, it just. You get bored. So it gave me the opportunity. Opportunity to go out to different places and. And Libya was one of them. So I was like, yeah. So I went to Libya, went to Tripoli. It was fun again. It was another place where, you know, you get from the American government that these. These dictators and all, they're just awful people. And these countries are holes. And I went there. I'm like, this isn't a wow, all right. There's still. The hotels are still open, man. There's still a Sheridan here that's still open, man. This little resort down by the Mediterranean, still open, even though there's a burning tank down the road. I mean, it was. That's where I didn't ever really question foreign policy and things like that until Libya. It's like, okay, I'm not really sure this was right, but who cares? That's not my job. I don't. It's not. I'm here to do what my job is. And it was fun. That's where I met Bob, I met Glenn. He was there. And it was less protection and more atmospherics. It was more surveillance, counter surveillance, and trying to see if there were terrorists that were moving into the country because of the vacuum of power, who was on our side, who was not on our side. And that was fun because it wasn't so much protection anymore. Doing like we did a lot in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was, was more, just a lot more tradecraft. It was, it was fun. And, and, and it was, it was a lot of times where, where, you know, you're getting to see things or like even getting to go places that you wouldn't get to go in Iraq, Afghanistan. I'm talking about just nature. There's the ocean right there. You know, you got Leptis Magna, the old Roman colosseums that are right there. And a lot of this job took us to those places. So you're getting to work in some historic places. They're like, wow, I didn't know Rome was here in, in Libya. Or you're seeing, you know, the, the Battle of Tripoli and you're seeing the Marine grave sites or. And we wrote about in 13 hours when the, there was a consulate that was attacked in Libya way before ours. And we write about in the book and getting to go see that. So it was almost, you know, it's like a music I'm on, I'm on a job, but I'm also on a historical tour tour. And it was awesome, man. And the guys were great. Because if you're on the, on the Dick program, you're generally, you'd been there for a while. So everybody, even if you didn't know, hadn't worked that person maybe in an area because I worked in Kurdistan as well, love that place. I love Suli and I love their bill and I love the hook. But you would know the guys. So the guy, you hear the name. Oh yeah, I've heard of him. Oh yeah, I know he knows it. So you're not getting a new guy coming in with a chip on his shoulder. Everybody's man are chill, man. They're like you, they're like me. I'm probably the most wired. They're like you. They're just chill. Got a job to do. We're done with the job. Flip the switch on, let's go kick some heads in. Then turn the switch off and just relax. And that's how it was. And the agency there, you know, I had learned how to deal with it. You know, I, I, I knew what I I knew what to expect. And Bub was awesome. Bub was always a crossfitter. He was always out working out and so was I loved working out. But he did the CrossFit stuff. I wasn't a big CrossFitter. We'd watch, you know, we'd go watch movies in our downtime. He was the only guy that would watch Black Dynamite with me. I love that blaxploitation movie. And every guy hated it there except for Buck. He was the only one that would sit through it with me. But the first trip was pretty, just normal. Nothing really big was happening. You'd see some black flags going on. You, you'd see the terrorist flags, Al Qaeda flags, but you're used to that time and you see them everywhere. So what? There's some black flags. And you weren't really thinking of it. Went home. And then the next trip they said, you're going to Tripoli. So I'm getting ready to go to Tripoli. And then right when I got to Suda Bay, Greece, which is where our stopping point was, where part of the 555th Fighter Wing is, they said, no, we need people in Benghazi or going to Benghazi. It's like, okay, triple A Benghazi. So what? Head out there, I get there and you know, you just felt it was different. You just walk, you get on Benina. And the movie did an excellent job show showing that, man, you just get off a plane. We do have an expediter there. We always, you know, we have expediters all these airports, but you have a guy waiting for you, a GRS guy waiting for you by himself. So because that was where we were doing a lot of movements, single person, one person movements, which was even better. That was even more fun. Guy waiting on himself. You get off a plane, living air, probably flying in, you know, flying that first class flight, which is love how the movie did it just right. You have a first, first class ticket, but on those planes there's no first class. So you just get the whole road to yourself. So you watch the movie again. Jack's flying first class. He has a whole road to himself. That's just the little things that they got right. Well, you get off the plane, you go in there, they get you off, and then you go to, you go to the base and it just like it wasn't secure. You know, other places there's going on, but it felt somewhat secure. At least there's big brother's kind of watching you there. You just, he did, you were like run our own, which was fine, but it just felt different. And there was. The work was pretty. The work was fun. Enjoyed it. Did a lot of. Again, a lot of tradecraft. More surveillance than any protection. I remember towards the end, though, and this is where it started to get hairy where we were. Just me and Boone are there. And Boone's been at it a long time to. He was starting. He's been doing longer just as long as I have. And we're out on an op, and it was about three weeks before the attack. And Sarah, you've had Sarah on. She's like, hey, we've got reports at aqi, sir. There's this camp and we had all. On our Falcon view, we had all the terrorist camps marked. And we were spot on. We had 10 digit grids on each one. Rafala Sahate, Ansa Al Sharia aqim. And she goes, there's a Rafala Sahate camp that they think there's AQI in there. Can you guys go sit on it? Now? Boone's. For those that don't know. Boone's black Mexican. I grew my beard out now. I always thought he was Mexican. I could never figure out he's. He's. He's weird looking. I thought he was Tongan once and I thought he was Polynesian. Thought he was black. And then he's like, are you Mexican? But he's. He's mulatto. But what I'm saying is he looks. He can fit, he can blend. Yeah. So we take our local car out, we go to this Rafala Sahate. Cancerous is go to this one, and we sit on it for a little bit. And there's this opening within the compound that their camp is. It's walled, but there's an opening. And we're sitting there in our vehicle and we can see through it. And like I said, we do look like locals. And nobody's monitor us. And this guy walks by and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. And I looked at Boone. I said, do you see that, man? He goes, yeah, that's aqi. Yeah, that's. That's al Qaeda, man. They're here. And it looked just like we were people we were fighting in Iraq, man. He looked just, you know, you could. Even the dead eye. I mean, we're. It was. I don't know. And we weren't super close something like that. But it was just. It was a. You just knew. It was like, that's. That's aqi. Holy crap. We rushed Back like, Sarah. They're here, man. You guys are getting reports. AQI's here. And we got chewed out for that. Yeah. For what? That was beyond our scope of duties. We weren't supposed to be sitting on camps. Bob came and chewed our ass out and chewed Sarah out. She goes, you guys. And Sarah was pissed. She's like, dude, I just got chewed out. Bob came and got us because you guys are going beyond. You don't need to be doing that. That's not what our job is here. And me and Boone are like, yes, it is. It's like, chief, that is our job. And Boone's pretty laid back. I. Chief. Yeah. That is our job. That's our job. And he did rip Sarah more than us, though, because he can. She's a staffer, and she was pissed. She was just. And you know Sarah. She does. She's a pit bull, man. Yeah. And I remember that after that, she said, we can't go sit on camps anymore. Just can't. We're not doing. I said, well, what the are we doing here then? Because it was towards the end, I'd already gone through the fights with all the CIA case officers, made fun of them, you know, chubbed their. I been doing that for. For two months now. And I was like, well, what the are we even doing here? And two weeks later, the attack happened. Two, three weeks. And it was like, man, it almost like they knew it. And I still don't understand why the job that we're supposed to be doing. We found a target. We verified that target. Let's action that motherfucking target. Why we got in trouble for that. And the only one that can ever answer that is Bob, Maybe. Rto. I never got an answer. Sarah, maybe she knows, but I don't know if she really does or not, because I don't think she. She even got an answer. She got reprimanded. But that was Benghazi. It was like it was. We were. And that was even Libya. Even some of the State Department officers will tell you, the rsos, it's like we were fighting al Qaeda in our own offices. Yeah. And that was it. It was a lot of. Just doing a lot of great work, getting to be on our own a lot singles. But then when we did our jobs, we'd get reprimanded for it. We took some. We got another time. We got reprimanded as well. Before that happened with Sarah, we. Some BT Garve guys came in, the listener guys, and there was a hospital there that they. We were what they wanted. And that's part of our job. We'll take them around, we'll drive by the areas that they think they can hear, and if they have or gather information, suck out text messages with their little stuff that they do, the cool stuff. And. And we took them out because there was a hospital that they thought Iranians were in. And so we drove by it to see if they could find out. And as we came back, we came in, Bob was outside, he was waiting on us like we were in trouble for something. And he called the BT Charvi guys in the staff. There were staffers and called him in. They were on a plane out the next day. And I was like, what happened? He's like, he didn't want you going and listening on this hospital or. And he doesn't want you doing any of that stuff. And these guys shouldn't have done that. They weren't supposed to. I don't have an answer. Somebody. Why? I don't have an answer. I. I still. I don't know why we're doing what we're supposed to be doing. We're getting good intel, we're getting action Guys were in there. Somebody had brought them in for some reason. Yeah, we did what we're supposed to do. And every time we do something and get headway where we could action on a target, because we're not the action guys, you know, we're the collectors. We're the protectors. But when we did, it would get. We get it, get. We'd get condemned for it. He would jump on our shit. And it was. It was just. I just like. And I did a lot of times, what the hell are we doing here? Why are we even here then? I don't get it. What's the deal? And then the attack happened on 9, 11, 2012. And you know, there were some precursors to that. You know, the British ambassador had got hit by rpg. We were. I didn't respond to that. I was in Tripoli when that happened. The GRS guys that were there at that time did respond to it. That's when they moved out of the country. They got hammered. One of their security officers got the RPG lodged in them, but they were out. Red Cross had been attacked once, which is news. That was a big news thing. And they had also blown a hole in the consulate once already. Before the attack. They had tried to breach the wall. So the signs were already there.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

And, you know, we were always over there at the concert. They were good guys. Alec was a good guy. You know, they Were they? Dave was awesome. And they're, they're. I have nothing bad to say about them. They just were, they were, they were overwhelmed. I mean they were.

[Sean Ryan]

These are the state guys?

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah. Alec Henderson, Scott Wickland, who was the ambassador's body man, Dave Ubin were the three guys that were mainly there. And I feel like, oh, they were chicken. She weren't. What would you have done? You got a massive 40 man force running in, you're out there smoking, who could chill and relax and you don't got nothing but M4s. And you're not allowed to even carry them because State Department policy says when you're on the compound and you're not pulling work, you got to keep them in your, in your armory, which is over by the kitchen. I don't blame them doing what they're doing. They ran, they did what they needed to do. Scott ran towards the ambassador to protect him. That was his job. Alec ran to the talk, that's where we were supposed to go. Dave ran to get a weapon. They were just overwhelmed like that. But that being said, you know our conversations with them, we would constantly warn them, and that's the scene from the movie where Pablo or me being that asshole. I did do that. I remember looking at their compound. We came and we did a evaluation of their compound before the attack. And I remember looking at Scott looking at Alec. I was looking at the walls. There was a big building overhead that I thought you could put. Sorry about, put sniper fire in. And I remember looking at him, I said, guys, your walls are soft. Your guards ain't for shit. You know, they're local guards. Half your guys don't even have guns. Blue Mountain Group didn't even carry guns. I said, you're a sniper's paradise. I said, any big element gets in here, all gonna fucking die. And I remember Scott's eyes went. And I did feel bad a little bit, I did. But Ron was there, he covered. He's like, guys, if you ever need us, we'll come get you. And they had radios, we gave them our radios. We all had icoms to talk to each other. And they did request more security. There are so Eric Nordstrom in Libya and Tripoli did. So they did try, they were just turned down. They requested 240 Bravo. They requested more armed security and it was turned down by Patrick Kennedy and Charlotte Charlene Lamb. Patrick was the undertone secretary for Hillary and so was Charlene. She was in charge of space security and all that. Those people also get away scot free. They should have been held accountable as well. Very much accountable. But. But when the attack happened, it still was a shock to me because the ambassador at that time, his. He did have a security detail attached to him. It was 10 special forces grouper was this. It was the sifting team that was his security. For some reason, they had been pulled off him when he came to Benghazi. I don't know why. No, I did not know that. When you watch the movie and it says JSOC team repositioning to four position, that was his team. They had been pushed out for a training mission in either Croatia or Spain. I can't remember. Interesting. Yeah. But I knew because a lot of those guys when I was with 19 Special Forces Group, a lot of those guys from 19th, I was in Colorado when they did active duty time. There were 10 special forces. So we knew a lot of the same people. And they'd come eat with us when I was in Tripoli because their food at the State Department facility sucked. So they'd come and eat dinner with us. And that's why, like I said, that's why in the movie, when we're talking to Bob and the bachelor's coming, and we had that conversation like, the bachelor's coming, you guys, you know? And I was like, so who gives a fuck? We're in the State Department. And Bub's like, dude, they're not. He's not coming with his detail. I was like, where the is this detail? They're not with him. And they were. They were hardcore pipe hitters. There was a sift team, and they pulled him out. So that's why we stayed. And three of us did extend. Myself and Boone and Rowan are supposed to go home two weeks earlier before the attack. And we stayed because we had a great team. We didn't want to mess that chemistry up, you know, and sometimes that'll piss some people off because, of course, if Bob would. If Ron would have went home, he'd still be alive, of course. But I know Ron wouldn't change it because if he wouldn't have stayed and we would have new players in there. Not saying that we're awesome tactically any better than anybody else. We just had a good team. I don't think the outcome would have been the same. Not because of skill sets or anything. Everybody's got great skill sets. You worked your asses. You know the deal. We all got great skill sets. But it's the. That team. Yeah, that and that team. Whether we got along or not, we meshed well. And, yeah, so people. Oh, why'd you guys make it so dramatized that when you said during that film that three guys were supposed to. Three guys extended. Well, because three of us did extend. Myself, Boone and. And Ron and. And you know, it's. It's also very telling of how awesome Roan was. And maybe he just foretold everything before the attack we had just done. And I don't. Oz may have said this during his. I don't know, because it really sticks out with all of us. The day before the attack, we had just done a full on kazavak training op where Rome put us through a huge scenario of if the. If the compound gets attacked, this is what we need to do medevac wise. And we had ketchup, we had tourniquets who were teaching all the CIC officers going through a huge kazavak plan.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Chris Paronto]

And it was just. Isn't that just the most. I said the Lord, I love God. I just love. I mean, I do. As much as God looks at me and goes, man, I cannot keep this guy straight. Isn't it? It's just he did it. And I didn't want to go to me being Tano like, Ron, eat shit. I've done enough. I don't want to do this shit, man. Tono, get out there. Oh, fine. And yeah, it saved lives. It did. It was just. It was 24, 36 hours before the attack. We went through base wide training, medevac, kazavec plan. How do we handle mass cas. Mass.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah. So that just shows you how awesome Roan is. So.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

But the attack happened. I remember we were just laying there and me and Boone were on curef. We always had, you know, we always had a team on curef standby. Every team would be up and then we always had guys that were on a. That's all they did all day. 24 7, 24 hours we were on that urf. So end of the day we're thinking, quiet day. My gosh. Almost time to go home. You know, I got a few more days left extension. I even remember we were watching two of the greatest movies ever made. I just watched Battleship and I was watching Wrath of the Titans and we get a call on the radio and you can hear the gunfire, but it's not really because there's always gunfire. Yeah, I thought maybe somebody's having a wedding or something. And we get a call on the radio and it's from our team leader, Jira. He goes, Jerusalem. He's in the team. Room. And it was about that monotone. Not a lot of excitement. And at least I didn't think it was. I didn't hear the excitement. So Boone did roll over me and he's like, dude, he's like, what the did you do now? Todo. Because he thought I'd pissed somebody off again. And I go, dude, I ain't done anything. I've been a saint all day, dude, I swear, I just want to go, man. Because nine times out of 10, if we got called, I. I did something. I either put. I had a placard from the movie tropic thunder where Sergeant Cyrus, the Robert Downey Jr. Character, I actually wasn't a placard. It was a piece of paper and I laminated it and it said, never go full retard. And if a CI case officer did something stupid, I'd put it on their desk so they'd see it in the morning. And so I do stuff like that. I just love picking. I love picking on them. The Jason Bournes. So. The Jason Bournes. So. So Boone. Boone. And that Boone's been with me for 10 years. I mean, we hadn't worked together continuous, but we've been at different spots for 10 years from State Department onto OGA. So he knows me. He's like, dude, what did the hell do you do now, you son of. It's like I. Nothing, bud. I've been good, I promise you. And then the, then the urgency came. It was about 30 seconds later though, it said, juris, we need you in the team room now. And it was. And you just know you've been doing this long enough. I've been doing this long enough. All right, it's time to go. And I look at Boone and we're getting our gear. Cuz we kept some of our gear in our lockers, but our, our quick ready gear, our body armor and our M4s, our pea shooters, we kept right by our bed on qrf, so it was right there. Radios were right there. Of course, all the night vision, all the heavy weapons were still in our lockers in the team room. We start getting our shit on and Boone's smiling. I'm smiling, it's awesome. I'm smiling just like this. I still remember. I still remember looking at him. He's smiling, I'm smiling. I go, man, we could do some fun tonight. And we headed out our door. And as soon as you got out the door, our door from. We were in Building Charlie where it opened up. The annex was directed at 12 o'clock. So as we opened the door, you know, and we're seeing the tracers, you can see the firefight. It's going off.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn.

[Chris Paronto]

So now all that popping, you know, now it's starting to. Oh, that's what it is. You know, the brain's starting to realize, oh, this ain't just some. Some crazy night in Libya. This is. Holy shit. Casa's getting attacked. Attacked. And the Jason Bournes, the ones I saw were like. It was like cats lighting firecrackers at them. They're just going everywhere. And I saw a team. I saw Roan. We all had tasks, we had responsibilities. My responsibility was heavy weapon. Mark 46. Get that. And then I was going to drive the suv. Boone's responsibility was to get the keys for it, get it out. My responsibility was to make sure we had it ready to go. And then actually, we all had our different tasks. And it was beautiful, dude. It was just beautiful. I saw leaders acting like leaders. And it wasn't the barking orders. It wasn't the yelling at each other. It's everybody shut the up and did their jobs. And it was. It was awesome. Because even in that elements there, you don't always get that. You're always going to have maybe one guy that thinks he's in charge. And everybody respected enough each other and trusted each other enough that nobody needed to say a word. And it was. It was like Mozart. It's just. Wow, wonderful. And that's what it reminded me. I mean, I was like seeing notes, man. And we're. Five minutes, we're ready to go. Five minutes, it's time to go. And I remember I looked at Roan. He's got the sedan, he's got Jack. And taking that Booms, Boone. Boone's. Boone's a rock star. He's got our together. The SUV's ready to go. I got my 46. You know, we're geared up. We got our night vision on that. We got all the stuff that's in our lockers, got the ammo, run goes like this. I look at him. That's all I need. He's good? Yeah. All right, good. Chief's here. Our team leader's here. They're on their cell phones. I go, chief, we're ready to go. He doesn't bother even look at me. I said, chief, we're ready to go. He looks at the team leader, still isn't looking at me on his phone, talking to somebody. I don't know who it was. Still to this day, he says to the team leader, tell these guys they need to wait like that. Motherfucking disrespectful. Fine. I didn't say any word. I'm just. What. The team leader looks at me, he starts to tell me that. I go, dude, I got it. I fucking got it. I walked back to my car. Rowan's like, dude, Tano, what's, what's happening? What's going on, man? I said, bob's telling us we gotta wait. Now, the movie where Jack and Ron got stopped and we tried to get to him in the beginning that happened, but it was at night, so we had already been through that before. So we're like, shit, he ain't gonna let us go again. So that wasn't part of movie magic. It's just the only thing we changed it to. It was nighttime when that happened, and Roan did bluff his way out of it, and he just had a CIA chief of support lady with him when that happened. It's pretty awesome. But we'd already been through that where he would not let us go. But we're waiting. You know, we're. We're. We're still thinking at that point in time, maybe he still does know something we don't. Maybe the SIFT team is on its way. Maybe they're sending a bird in. Maybe something's coming in. Maybe there's marines off the coast and they're, you know, we don't. We're trying to play the benefit of the doubt by not creating more drama because more yelling and screaming is not going to do any good. It's not. And that's why that team was so awesome, is we all knew that if we had all been younger with this and vinegar, we probably would have been fighting with him. And what would that have done? Nothing. So we're waiting. We're continually going scenarios. At least I am through my head. I know the team is, you know, you're war gaming. You're what if. Ing through your head. You're going through your head, going, going through scenarios that you win to keep the adrenaline in check. So I'm going through my head. I'm going, okay, if we get hit with mortars here, what am I going to do? How do we win this fight? Fine, we get out the gate, we get ambushed on this road, what do I do? How do we win that fight? So you're just. It's what you do in the corporate world too. When. So you don't like this. You're just going through scenarios that you win and you. And the only way you can do that is through hard training. Training or experience or both. And by that time I'd been through a lot of hard training and a lot of experience. So I was able to pull from that. And I know the other guys were doing the same thing because nobody was panicking. Everybody was, Ron's taking the lead. He's our charge. He's going to take care of this. And we trusted that. So Ron's talking to, to the chief. Tig's there too. Tig's talking the chief. And the time just going by, the fighting is intense. And then instead of just hearing AKA and PKM far and you know what this sounds, we start hearing a holy. That's a dish. Holy. We gotta go and can't do it. We're still waiting. And that's when I saw Tig and Bob arguing. That's when the one huge interaction we didn't put in the movie. It wasn't gonna have a place in the movie. Didn't need to. But they were arguing. It's in the book. And that's where Tig was told bot Tig's like motherfu, we gotta go, we gotta go. We gotta go now, now. And that's where Bob told stand down. You guys gotta stand out. He told Tig and Tyrone and Jack's car right there. And I don't think it was malicious, I don't think it was nefarious. I think he just was shitting down his leg. The later was nefarious with the military not coming. That was purely political nefarious actions from the power that be commander in chief and Secretary of State and all that. But that I could be wrong. But regardless, we were told stand down. And so we're told to wait once, stand down 15 minutes later. And then at the 25 minute mark of us waiting there because remember the State Department guys have our freaks have our icon freaks. They're calling us on the radios. And that was heartbreaking, man. That really was. Because we're listening to them and they're like grs, where are you? Grs, where the are you? We need you. Grs, They're. We've been overrun. Js they're lighting the buildings on fire. We're hearing all this and we're like guys, is the.

[Sean Ryan]

Is the chief of base here in this?

[Chris Paronto]

On the. He's. It's all on the talk. Cuz they're open mics.

[Sean Ryan]

Let's. I mean so he's hearing this and he's still not letting us go. What was the relationship like him before this night?

[Chris Paronto]

We didn't get along. He was condescending as hell. I didn't get along with him. I didn't like him. I didn't care for him. We worked in Mosul together as well. Didn't like him there. I thought we made him pretty well. I think that was the combination of characters. We had a team leader and we had the chief. Chief was very.

[Sean Ryan]

What's this guy doing now?

[Chris Paronto]

He became. He got assists, so he got his. He got his. His top tier to retire as assist level. And then he became a contract instructor at the Farm. Now I don't know if he's still doing that.

[Sean Ryan]

Are you fucking kidding me? They took that fucking clown and put him at the Farm to train all the upcoming.

[Chris Paronto]

He may not be doing that. He's made enough. I mean, assist level, retirement.

[Sean Ryan]

What a fucking joke.

[Chris Paronto]

I know. So he's. He's.

[Sean Ryan]

What a fucking joke. I would take that guy and put him in charge of the fucking up and coming case officers.

[Chris Paronto]

Wow.

[Sean Ryan]

And that's why that agency doesn't do shit anymore.

[Chris Paronto]

It's a shit show. It's a clown show. What if he's probably retired now? Living in Williamsburg or somewhere nice with a thousand acre. I mean he's made plenty of money. He got the CIA, you know, he got the highest level of the CIA.

[Sean Ryan]

What do you think he thinks about every day?

[Chris Paronto]

I don't think they give a shit, dude. You don't think they give a shit? He doesn't sleep well at night. I hope he doesn't, but it's like asking me, you know, does Kamala Harris sleep well at night? You know, she sleeps like a baby. Because they think they're right all the time. He was, I'm right, you're wrong. I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but you know, we're. We. He seriously was going to stay there to collect intel when we were leaving out. When? After the mortars hit? After the bombs hit? After Ronan Bub died, we had to force his ass out of the compound because he still was going to stay there and collect intel. And that was him. They are so elite. They are elitists and they just think they are the smartest people in the room. And that's one of the reasons why I always would with them, because they're not. And here's this knucklehead, hey, Seed from Kansas. Giving you because you think you're the smartest person in the room. But that was him. And when we heard Alec, and he's in the talk. So he's watching his team basically get decimated. They're lighting the buildings on fire. He's washing all on the CCT TV cameras. He says jir us if you don't get her all going to die. Just it wasn't movie magic. That's what he said. Tyrone went like he. Tyrone's awesome. He's in the sedan. You are in armored vehicles. Can't roll the windows down. So he cracks the door and he just does this. I was like wow, that is. I still get chills thinking about it because you know to. He was big. His arms were like that and he looked. He had a beard like Leonidas. He had dyed it black so he looked like Leonidas. Gave him shields like you're trying to look like Leonidas, aren't you? Yeah. But I remember thinking to myself when I saw that I was like man, I got to do a combat with Leonidas. This is awesome. And I gave him a thumbs up and we started to head out the gate. Now we didn't quite make it out the gate because. And I, I you know I like I said I'm war gaming. We're still going through our heads. It's a chess game. Stay three steps ahead. Don't rush. You don't. If you're racing to your gun. You failed somewhat somewhere. We need something. I don't know what we need. Then I realize it. I said we, we need. We need them all. I'm not going to tell you his real name but the interpreter. We got to get them all now. Dude, he looked pretty good in the movie. Like young guy, kind of young 40s in shape. He didn't. Dude, he didn't look like that. He was. He looked like Bob Newhart. Seriously. He looked like an Egyptian Bob Nard. He was a V. Adorable glasses, droopy cheeks, old dude bald. We need him though. He. We don't have combat terps. So I'm calling him and trying to find him. You have faith I'm going to find him. I say stop the cars. We get. I get out of the car. I'm thinking I have to run around this damn base to try to find this guy. And Lord work some mysterious ways, brother. I get out, I come on the front of my hood. Think I'm going have to run to his hooch and then run to the skiff to find him. And he's walking right in front of my car. Thank you. I said we need you man. And it was awesome. It was because he did. He got an argument. Not an argument. He was just Shitting his pants because he doesn't want to go. Bob, Newark doesn't go to combat, man. It doesn't happen. And his eyes are huge. And I said, dude, we need you, man. We need you. I don't speak Arabic well enough. None of us do. We don't want blue. Blue on green. You know what that is. But for the your listeners that don't, a friendly fire incident with a foreign force because of a language barrier. Blue on green. And I said, do we need you, man? And he goes, tom, I'm not a combat trip. I said, I know that, brother. He goes, I'm not weapons qualified. I said, I know that. And I had a Glock 19 on my hip. I handed it to him. I said, you're now go get your stuff. It was freaking awesome. He took it and he ran back into Building C. And initially I thought I lost my weapon. Boone did too. Boone was looking at me shaking his head when he ran away. But he came back out and he ran back out. And it was awesome because it was. He was. He didn't have the cool Gucci gear like we do, you know, the form fitting shit looking cool. He had to borrow somebody's helmet. It was way too big for him. So it was all jingling on his head. I mean, it could even be on backwards. It just didn't fit him. He didn't have body armor. He had a flak jacket because that's all he could find. He's got his finger in the trigger. Well, as he's running towards me, he's flagging the shit out of me. And all I could do was marvel at it. That whole time. I just marvel like, this is freaking. Aw. This little dude that looks like a little turtle is running towards me right now, flagging the shit out of me with this gun. And I have never felt more motivated in my life because this dude had no business going. He's not a seal, he's not a marine, he's not a ranger, he's not security, he's not law enforcement. He's a little intelligent interpreter that he is giving of himself. And he's coming with us. And I'm like, that is what heroism is. That's bravery.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

Selfless service. That's it, man. And he got in the car. I did take his finger out of the trigger. Well, I said, put your gun. Because I didn't want to shoot me in the backs. He had to go behind me. And then we took off and we had it started to head down there. That was our Trek towards the consulate. And it just got even hairier from there, from there. But we get there, we stop on a road called Gunfighter. It was called Gunfighter. It wasn't movie magic. That's what we called it. We had a Gunfighter here, and Adidas was the other road on the other side. And there was locals there. They were. Looked like they were shooting back. Now it looks like in the movie. We get up and it's creeping up. They actually were already in a firefight. They were already shooting back and forth. We didn't know who friend or foe was, but they weren't shooting at us. So we get out of the car. Boone and myself did tell Henry. We said, henry, get this figured out. We had our TL with us in the car. So we said, you just stick with the tl. Tell us what the hell's going on. And then again, leaders took over. Leaders do what leaders do. Rome parked, Jack parked, Tig parked. We parked behind him. And we started to move in position to engage. And you get close to that wall, and you start hearing those cracks just crack. Cr. Cr. Cr. CR Going by your head, just breaking the sound bar. You're hearing us every once in a while. And then there was a block, center block wall behind us. So you'd hear a smack from around 762. Hitting a wall. Hitting the wall. And it was freaking. It was all, you know, this awesome. It's awesome. And I saw Rowan start to engage. Nobody said a word, and everybody just started to engage. And we started to move. And Tig got his Tig out. Our 203. You know, our 1203 cracked a breach, put that HEDP round and that high explosive dual purpose round. And he just started. Started throwing rounds downrange. And Boone came up to me and said, as we're shooting, he goes, you know, we knew there was a building off in the distance that we thought we could get up there and put machine gun fire, sniper fire. And so he goes, tano, let's get high, man. Let's get high. So roger that. So he went and got his SR25. I ran and grabbed the 46. I had my M46 mark. 46, M4 covered. I was wearing shorts. That's. Are you wearing shorts? Yeah, I was actually. They were just a gray version of the. They were a tan version of these. There were shorts I'd made in Canada or from old Truspec pants. I was also wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt. But we couldn't put that in a movie because I guess Disney doesn't like Mickey Mouse shooting terrace, but I had a Mickey Mouse. Probably the closest thing he could get was the, was the, was the panda shirt but it was a Mickey Mouse shirt. But yeah we, and we just started climbing walls man, and it was hard. I wasn't ready. I wasn't no spring chicken anymore. 8 foot high block walls with all that gear on that, you know, a 200 round drum on a nut sack on the 100 rounds on the 46, you know, magazines all over me, magazines all in my pocket and just sucked it up and you just, and you know, I tell you what, the first wall we climbed over, I was just getting ready to get shot in the butt or the head. So I looked over, didn't see anything and then I went butt first. So I figured well I'll get shot in the butt. I could still probably fight. If I get shot in the head, I'm fucking out. But I'll be quite honest, the third, fourth wall, I didn't care anymore. Just so smoke get me over this wall. And we, it's only 400 meters. We're 400 meters from the compound. At that point point Jack, Tyrone and Tig went down and fought their way down and suppressed the weapons just like the movie did. They went down the main alleyway to the front gate and they suppressed Cuz Tig had that 203 and he's just knocking them back. And we had some local help, PKM guy with a PKM and some AK47 guys and but half them didn't know what the hell they were doing anyway. But at least it was, it was gunfire. Boone and I did have two locals that we took with us. They did the movie. Two guys came to me before we jumped that first wall and said hey mister, can we go with you? And I looked at him and they were kids and at first I just felt like I could trust him. I go the 17th of Feb. They said yeah. I said come on. And Boone's like what the fuck are you doing? I said dude, I said forge a fire team man. And I said I'll stay in the front, you just stay in the back. If they pull then you kill them. So and they went with us that whole time and we jumped Wallace, got onto that building and it was that disheartening. If you again watch the movie, it's pretty spot on. We cleared that building and you know, you know I just clearing buildings going upstairs and I got that gear and I'm clearing it with a 46 and I'm smoked. And we get to the top of that building. You know, Boone's got his M4, but he's also got an SR25 on him, so he's smoked, too. And we get up there, and we look down, and we couldn't see anything. It was like, man, all this energy you wasted because the consulate. There are trees that surround the consulate. Well, they were all on fire.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn.

[Chris Paronto]

You just couldn't see anything in there. And it's like, God, man. Because you're trying not to get pessimistic, but you're like, you know how many calories I just wasted? How much water just doing all this and for nothing put out of your head? And what snapped me out of it, too, is Ron came across the radio because he's still moving, because he needs us to suppress. At least that's what he thinks anyway. He's doing a damn good job on his own that all three of those guys. He goes, tano, I need your eyes, man. I need your eyes. I go. I go, ron, this roost is a bust, man. I said, shoot, move and communicate. I'll meet you in the middle. And that's what we did. And we ran down the stairs and went to the back gate. And just like the movie, we just climbed over the back gate. What was awesome is there was a commander that pulled up just like that moon. He pulled up with his vehicle, and I actually wanted him before we jumped over the gate. He got there before we jumped the back gate. I wanted him to push it open with his car. So it's like, push this. Open this car. He goes, wait, mister, wait. And he got on his phone and he started dialing a phone number. And I was like, who the are you calling, man? He like, just wait, wait. I go, who you calling? He goes, I'm calling the bad guys. I'm negotiating surrender. I said, who the. I said, you doing the what? I said, and Boone's yelling at me because he's already inside. He climbed over the gate already. And Tig's yelling at me to get inside on the radio. He's like, we need you, Tono. Quit fucking around. And I just let it go. And he was one of the guys that was gonna facilitate the counterattack later, but I didn't know. And so that little argument you see me get in with, that wasn't. That actually did happen. That happened as well. And I got in there and we fought. We pushed him off. It's a nine acre compound, and for the next hour, we just were trying to find the Ambassador Running in the burning building, trying to locate all the State Department guys because they were spaced out everywhere. Why? Fighting off the bad guys, pushing them off. We're really. That initial when we got on there, I think they were so shocked it was Americans. And luckily we have that still. That era of intimidation. Americans are coming. We gotta go. They wasn't much of a gunfight. Coming up on. We got in there. American's here. We got our night vision on. Even though I'm wearing shorts, I still look pretty Terminator ish with all the gear on. And they ran away. And we found Alec. You got him out of the skiff. Dave did. Awesome. Dave was already out. He was already trying to find the ambassador. He was already over at the consulate trying to find the ambassador. And then we just took turns running in that burning building trying to find it, and it was tough. We almost lost Roan. Ron went in the most. Jack and Ron went in the most. Tig was probably close to it. Me and Boone put a lot of security, and then we'd take our turns. We'd spell people. But I. I tell you what, I would. And I. Oh, I admire and thank all you firefighters out there. I admire the hell out you. I'd rather get shot at again than ever running into a burning building filled with diesel smoke ever again. I remember going in and trying to go in the first time, and I tried to run in, and the doors were wide open, and. And you can see and it's open. There's fire, you know, alive on the ceilings, and there's. It's just smoke everywhere. And I hit. I ran in the. And it's almost like I hit an invisible wall. I just. Who that is? Hot as shit. It was so hot. I felt like my eyeballs were going to melt. And it's like, you really have to just. I just had to go suck it up. Don't. It's going to hurt. Just go. And it was awful. And, you know, your body gets used to it a little bit, but it was so hot. It's like running into a pizza oven filled with diesel.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn.

[Chris Paronto]

And Roan did that. I mean, that's how badass Ron and Jack are. They went in there multiple times. I went in there, like, twice because they just kept going in, and it was hard to find. We did lose Roan almost where he got caught way back in the back. And we had to play Marco Polo with him to get it out. We had, like, roan, we're here. Jack kept yelling from Rowan, this way. Rowan. Rowan. Rowan. Because he got stuck in him, almost lost his way because he got disoriented from his. But that just shows how badass. And Tig as well, you know, Tig's lungs are permanently. So are Jack's. Screwed. Eventually Scott got out, you know, and I. I have no qualms against Scott. Nothing at all. People. Why he left the Ambassador. Well, what the hell would you have done, Dave? Seriously, you're. You're dying of fire. And the heat. I. I can tell you, Tess, from the heat, that was unreal. What would you have done, man? Really? Okay. But he got himself out. And that's when started to go to hell again. Because that's when they started to counterattack. And I do remember before that they did find Sean's body. Dave, Ubin Tig and Jack managed to pull him out of a window. And the movie. I wish they would have put this in the movie more so than what they did. They did a little bit of it, but it was pretty remarkable. It was one of the most defining moments to me of human spirit and sacrifice that I'd ever seen in my life. Because Sean was out and I see him pull. Jack pulls him out. Dave's pulling him out. Ubin Tig is. And Scott's on some stairs and he's sitting there and he just keeps rocking back and forth and he keeps saying, he was just with me. He was just with me. He was just with me. And I see Cha Cha. For some reason, he starts to do chest compressions and CPR on a dead body. Jack knows he's dead. He's dead. Sean's dead. It's obvious. He's blues. He's dead. And I couldn't figure it out. Like, I'm sitting there watching this whole thing unfold from about. From me to probably that desk there, about that far. And I want to say something, but before I get the word out, it hits me because I'm looking at Jack and every time he does a chest compression, he looks up at Scott and he goes, we're still in this fight, man. He is being positive over a dead body to get Scott out of his shock so we don't have another casualty. He's just unbelievable. It's just like. And I'm sitting there just marveling it, going, wow, these fucking dudes are awesome. I love this. I love Jack and I still love Jack. But it just. To me, it just defined selfless service again. And, you know, people think selfless service is giving yourself, giving up your life. Life. Well, essentially he did because that he's doing Chester pressures on a dead body to get some guy back up on his feet to back in the fight. Who thinks like that? Yeah, obviously he did. And it was awesome. Another motivating thing. Just another reason why Benghazi was the greatest night of my life. One of them per se. But it was defining. We get it. Scott comes out of his shock because, you know, Big Tyrone, like Superman. I don't know where he came from. It's like he flew out of the bushes, but I know he's ridden the building, but he just. And I see Tyrone come out of nowhere, and he just puts his arms around Scott and he goes, man, we are still in this fight. We need you. And you just see Scott come right back. And it was like, wow, this is awesome. I love these guys. That's why Ron is so. That's why he was Superman to us. But we load Scott's body on Tig and Jack and Dave Ubin. Did they put him in the back of our ass SUV that. Our team leader and the interpreter drove up after we cleared it, said it was clear. Our team leader. Yeah. He waited till we cleared it, then they drove up. I don't blame the interpreter for doing that, but. Come on, Teal. But anyway, we go back to pulling security and then was.

[Sean Ryan]

It was the TL like, was even.

[Chris Paronto]

He was former Secret Service. No, military.

[Sean Ryan]

I know who he is.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

I know who.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah, I was gonna say, you know.

[Sean Ryan]

What I'm asking is, was he scared? I know he was scared. I know who he is. I'm trying to figure out how to ask this question the right way.

[Chris Paronto]

I got. I gotta get a drink of water. Take your time.

[Sean Ryan]

I guess what I'm trying to ask was, did you guys even keep him informed? Was he even.

[Chris Paronto]

What?

[Sean Ryan]

Really part of the team or did you have. You totally just.

[Chris Paronto]

He had it.

[Sean Ryan]

Just like him.

[Chris Paronto]

Just like any blue. He had his. He had. You know, he had his uses. You know, he could. He would give us get intel because he was, you know, he was a blue badge, so. But as far, you know, just everyday activities. He had the runs, control the runs, you know, and. But really me. I let Ron handle that. I stayed.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, he's just a liaison.

[Chris Paronto]

It really was. That's what he was basically. And that night he was with us. And no, we didn't pay attention. It wasn't. We were allowing him to pull cover.

[Sean Ryan]

We were allowing him like 99 of the staffers in GRS. They're just liaisons.

[Chris Paronto]

And that's.

[Sean Ryan]

They're not operators. They're just like.

[Chris Paronto]

They aren't just go liaison. Go liaison. Give us the intel. And that's kind of what he was.

[Sean Ryan]

We don't even really know what you do here.

[Chris Paronto]

I'm qualified to be here. You do do here. Still. Favorite movies are working.

[Sean Ryan]

I can't stand them. I'm. I'm just. I can't stand them. It's probably something I'll never get over. But you, the amount of worthless that were in charge of me and you and all these other like stellar performers and then you got these chumps.

[Chris Paronto]

When you don't hold people to the standards that everybody else is upheld to that high level standards, what do you think you think you're gonna get? And we're divvy off a little bit, but I'm gonna say it. Look at the Secret Service that was protecting Trump.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

That is what you got with grs. Tls for them. Unless they were former spec ops guys that were contractors.

[Sean Ryan]

I think they were always just supposed to be liaisons though. And then at some point in time, they asserted themselves to be some leader. And it's like, back to your desk. Go get your fucking pen or your pencil and get the fuck out of my way.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah. My face. And that was him.

[Sean Ryan]

But you can't say that. Cause he'll fire you.

[Chris Paronto]

But you can still.

[Sean Ryan]

You say it anyways.

[Chris Paronto]

You can still. I did.

[Sean Ryan]

And then you get fired.

[Chris Paronto]

Well, I did. I got told after I fell asleep. I had an argument with Bob. And then the TL called me in and we had an argument. We were like. He's like, tano, I know who you are. I saved his ass from getting his ass beat by a bunch of seals when his first trip went to coast.

[Sean Ryan]

Why did you do that?

[Chris Paronto]

Because I felt sorry for him. It was his first trip. I didn't. I didn't. Be honest with you. I did. I didn't know him. He's the first trip. I'm trying to be that guy. That's your first trip. Let me tell you how it is, bud. All right? Don't go in there like you're knowing everything. You're working with a bunch of top notch dudes. Go in there, shut your mouth and fucking listen. Yeah, but he didn't. It been. You know, that was 2006. Now it's 2012. So he's got years, six years now. He's salty.

[Sean Ryan]

But real experience showed too.

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah. Didn't it showed? It is. Yeah. It was funny because when we did our debrief too, they did ask about him. They said what you think of the tl? I said he did a great job. I go because he stayed the out of the way. Oh man, the headshed at Langley, the grs, they didn't want to hear that. But that's what I said. Boone started laughing. Was doing our AR when we got back to after Benghazi, you said that? I said right to the that's me, dude. I don't give it. What are you going to do, fire me then? If you haven't fired me yet, you're not going to fire me. But the argument I had with him where in Libya after I got dressed down by Bob which I just. It wasn't dressed like eat shit dude. I've been through enough of this pomp and circumstance crap. Enough rah rah politics and progress million times. I I don't have to stay awake through this. It's the same well he pulled me and he goes I'm gonna write. I got written up. You know how we get. I got rid up wrote up. I didn't get written up. And they wrote me up. And he goes I'm gonna write you up for this because you fell asleep. You're being disrespectful. And I remember I said to him because I saw GRS kind of going to more like a State department button down. I saw it going. I said we're going more State Department, aren't we? Button down. Need guys that say yes sir. Nobody talks back. No fucking guys that cuss every once in a while, you know? You don't need guys like me anymore, do you? I guess guys like me are dinosaurs, aren't they? And he said yeah, pretty much. I signed my thing. When we got home I sent him an email. I said good thing you have dinosaurs like me, huh? That night and I didn't get response back from him. I still got the email. My I had AOL shows you how old I am. But he said that and I said you looks like guys like me are dinosaurs. I'm sorry.

[Sean Ryan]

When did he try to write you up?

[Chris Paronto]

He wrote me up right after I got ripped. Right after I fell asleep before the ambassador. It was right before. It was before the attack. So when I fell asleep and the Bob Bob dressed me down or we got in that argument, he says well I'll write you up. Well I did get written up. We didn't put it in the movie because it how boring is that seeing some guy get right now. But I went back to my room.

[Sean Ryan]

You mean people don't want to watch a pencil pusher write up a real man. I'm gonna write you up because I'm not a real man.

[Chris Paronto]

I'm just a. So I got. I got written up. An hour later he called me in and I. I got written up. I don't give a fine. It's like getting a ticket that you got 100 million parking tickets. Pay your parking tickets y'all. But you know what I'm saying. And I threw it and like whatever.

[Sean Ryan]

That's probably what he was doing before this.

[Chris Paronto]

He was. He was a. For those that you know him. But he wasn't. He wasn't a protect. He was in fort check forgery. And that was his. In the check forgery. It was in that division, the secret store. They do forgery and money laundering. So whatever. Anyway. But they drove up. Yeah, he's. And that night it was. If we need you buddy, just stay in the rear man. If you want to add your gun to the fight, fine. Just keep.

[Sean Ryan]

Just make sure there's no ammo in it.

[Chris Paronto]

Just, dude, just stay away from. But he didn't fire his gun that night. And he stayed hidden, he stayed protected. And we didn't really worry about it because we knew he wasn't getting a fight. It wasn't going to happen. So that's what we put. We put. I don't want to say his real name almost did. So we put Amal with them. But eventually Mal even saw what was going on and Amal got attached to Jack Maul kept following Jack around when Jack wasn't running in the burning buildings. So we go back and we haven't found the ambassador and. And I remember on the backside of the villa here because we're pulling security cuz that back gate was left open. I told that commander, close the back gate when you bring your guys through. Before I really knew who he was. I thought he was friendly. He left it wide open. And I'm like that forgot to close the back gate. I said guys, this jackass didn't close the back gate. I said get ready. Because I knew what was gonna. I mean you just know. It's like shit, dude. And I'm kicking myself for not going back there and closing it as well and trusting, right? I knew I should know. And then all of a sudden I take a knee and I hear a big explosion goes off. So I'm here. Explosion blows off this way on the Baron Villa and because the angle. So lucky again, thank you. Because the angle. Shrapnel's this way. But I do catch the overpressure because I'm not more than, you know, 20ft away from the explosion. So knocks me catch the overpressure. But the force that goes this way. I didn't hear the initial boom, so I didn't think it was an rpg. I mean, you know, unless you're from a very far distance, RPGs don't go. And you see vapor trails, and it goes. It is not like that unless you know it's a way distance. And then you might see it later after it hits. You'll see maybe a little puff of smoke or something. But you always hear a boom because that's the propellant that makes it go. It doesn't. There's a boom. And as I go back to pull security, get back up on my feet because I'm thinking some guy runs in front of me and he's missing his hand. He's holding his wrist. So I go his profile and I go up, and his hands miss. And he's holding his wrist, like, trying to stem the bleeding. It's just mangled. And then his buddy comes out, runs from behind him, and he's holding pieces of his buddies, and it's no farther than me and you. I'm like right here following him. I go, what the fuck? What happened? I don't even know how to speak English. But that's all I can get out of my head because I'm a little. I'm a little rattled. Brain's knocked a little bit. I'm seeing this dude running by with no hand. He's just bleeding everywhere. I'm seeing his buddy chase him, that's holding pieces of his hand. So I'm looking at him, and I'm in my head going, dude, you forgot your hand. Go back again. That's what I'm going through my head, and I. I say, what happened? I didn't say that. All I could get out was what happened. The guy goes, grenade. The guy holding pieces because grenades. So I'm thinking, oh, you're a fucking idiot. Next time, when you cook a grenade off, I'm thinking this in my head. You hold it for two seconds instead of three before you throw it. And I'm thinking of my dad, West Texas from. From Lubbock, Texas. His voice comes in my head, and all I hear is, rub some dirt on it. You'll be all right, kid. And as I come back to pull security, because they're not a threat, I do hear a boom from a distance. Like, shit, I know that's an rpg. I go pull security and I just go like this because I know I'm dead. If it's anywhere near on this side, I'm dead. There's nothing I can do. There's no cover. I can get down and roll, but by that time, I hear that boom. From that distance, it's only 100, not even more than I would say 75 meters away if that, I'm dead. So I'm just hoping I hear the second boom, because if I do, I know I'm alive. And I do. I hear it. Boom, blows up. This one actually is closer. And I catch building. I catch the concrete. Knocks me down in the middle of the road again because of that angle. And I know that's what saved me. It was the shrapnel. Most of it went that direction or got embedded in the wall. And the movie showed me getting up and having a wall for cover. I did. I got knocked in the middle of that road. That was shotgun from the front gate to the back gate. And all that came in my head was, ranger Battalion. What's your cover? Ranger bullets. What do you do when somebody's shooting at you? You shoot back. And I took a knee on that road and I just started shooting and I shot and I shot and I shot. And I was thinking of the guys from Riojato, because we get hammered. You know, Ranger's got a great history, you know, urgent fury. Just cause Somalia, you know, we shoot you guys, we're you coming out, you're going to catch a bullet in a tooth. And that's all I'm thinking. And I'm just putting around. And I remember Boone, he told me later, he says, I was watching you and all I could think of was, you're a idiot. Take cover. And I've never felt the hand of God before. I've never felt it again. I fit that night. And I know I do really believe we all get one, one, one hand of God moment where he steps in and protection I did. He's looking down at me. And I say this during my speeches too, because I honestly believe this. I think my guardian angel's like, on this chair, God's up here on this chair. My guardian angel and God are looking at this idiot getting shot at. Because the world's opened up. There's just crack, crack, crack, crack, crack. It's all going around me. And my guardian angel is looking at God going, see what you tasked me with, God? You tasked me with this fucking idiot that doesn't have half a brain. And God's like pity God, pity is the one that needs to be pitied. And he says, I got you. And I felt a golden cocoon come on top of me. And that's not. I'm not saying that at any reasons. That's what I felt.

[Sean Ryan]

You actually felt it in that moment.

[Chris Paronto]

It was a golden egg. That's why I remember golden egg. I got you just warm. Just.

[Sean Ryan]

I was it. Was it like a intuitive feeling?

[Chris Paronto]

It was a physical feeling? No, it was physical. It was warm, gold. I got you. And I guess intuitive too. It's just safe. I said I'm good and I kept shooting. And then did it give you confidence? Yeah, I wasn't. I got this. Nobody's gonna get me.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm felt it before you started shooting or in the middle?

[Chris Paronto]

In the middle of it. No, when I was shooting you there in that position there about five seconds before I felt that and I'd already went. I was already hammering away because, you know, that was a gay. It was really easy. I'm just, I'm just. Nobody's coming through there. It was about five seconds. I mean five to ten. It was. Wow. It was awesome though. And then I am taking a knee. I'm not. I'm not getting in the prone. So I'm just. I feel fine. I'm. God's got me. My right eardrum blows out. I remember that. And I look and there was a Libyan that had taken a knee right next to me. His AK47 was shooting with me, right next to my head. And that was amazing because I was thinking to myself, ain't this the damnedest thing? God just gave me a Libyan angel and put him right next to me because he had a button down shirt, slacks on, like he got off work. And he's sitting there with his AK47 shooting with me. I never saw him again either that night. I don't know where he went. And then Boone. I'm running and Boone comes and boom. Boone takes a knee right on the other side of the road. He starts shooting with me. And then Tig gets his gun into the mix on the top of the roof. And it was awesome, dude. It was just fricking awesome. Now we moved a little bit after that. We started to move back to vehicles and started to kind of peel out because we had to get out of there. But that moment there for me was. And I always tell people that. And I said, guys, I'm not saying Hand of God's area all the time again. I've never felt it after I Didn't felt it before, but I felt it that night. So when people say, do you believe in God? I say, no, I know there's God. And he took pity on somebody like me. That's probably broken every command. Well, not probably. Has broken every commandment that we're supposed to keep. Oh, it was there. I felt it. And people. Ah, fine. You don't believe me. I don't care.

[Sean Ryan]

I don't think it's.

[Chris Paronto]

And I know. And. And it was amazing. Again, I. I wish I could say, but it's a golden egg. It was like. Like a Willy Wonka Goldmeg. Warm, protected. Nothing's gonna get you. I got you. And we fought him off. And we peeled out. And it was hard to leave because we did have a drone overhead watching everything. The ISR had come on station. And Rowan's like, guys, we gotta go. We get. They're massing. They're gonna attack the annex. We gotta get out. And we're like, ron, we haven't found the ambassador yet. He's like, I know, but we gotta go. And you gotta make a decision. Leaders always make decisions, even if they're hard decision. It sticks with me. Because you know our credo, dude. Part of the fist stands of the ranger creed is you never leave a fallen karmite to fall in the hands of the enemy. Every unit has that same. Not in those words, the same thing. You leave no man behind. And we did, because we had to get back to the annex. And it wasn't the wrong decision. We would have lost 24 if we hadn't gotten back. But it still bothers the out of me because we left. We left him now. We didn't know he was there. That's still no excuse. We still could have kept trying to find him, but he had gotten so far back in that safe haven area that we just couldn't get back there. And when the fire died down and the fighting moved back to our annex, the locals pulled him out. He was dead. Of smoke inhalation. There's been talk that he was mutilated and all that. I didn't see it. And I inspected his body when they brought him to the airfield.

[Sean Ryan]

You inspected his body?

[Chris Paronto]

I looked at it. I didn't. No, I didn't pull his drawers down. You know, I didn't do that. I mean, may. They did cut his genitals off. I'm not gonna. I'm sorry. I'm just. Guys, I'm not gonna do that to me. I looked at it. Cause what I'm thinking again. Ranger Battalion. What am I thinking? Randy Shugart, Gary Gordon, dragging his body through the streets. So of course I'm gonna look. I'm gonna see if he's scuffed up. I'm gonna see if his face is scuffed up. I'm gonna see if he is cut in places I can see. But he was clothed, and I didn't see any marks on his face. I just saw lifeless eyes. And he had still. He still had, like, you know, smoke from the diesel all over. So what I saw, I didn't see. I didn't see mutilation. But am I 100% sure? No, because I didn't pull his pants down. And for those that want me. Wanted me to do that, they can go themselves. Don't do that. No, I'll leave that. I mean, if I was an autopsy gusher, but not in that situation. No, that's. I would. And I wasn't thinking mutilation. I was thinking dragging through the streets, too. Yeah, but we left him. But I stand by the decision, and all of us still do. And as leaders, you've been a leader. You know, you make hard decisions. You have to. And sometimes those hard decisions, even if they're the right ones, are going to stick with you for the rest of your life. And that's one that does. But it was the right decision. And we got back to our annex, we had Sean's body in the back of the vehicle. So that was a little surreal because we all piled into one vehicle. So we had Tyrone, we had Tig, we had Tyrone, we had. Yeah, Tig, we had myself. We had the interpreter, we had the tl. And Jack was sitting on the top of Sean's body as we were driving back in the suv. And they trailed us. You know, they were following us. We could. It was easy to pick up. And we're like. And I wish they would put this movie. It's in the book, but I wish they would have put this in there. I actually was making the calls back. I was like, guys, I was telling the gate, gates, get the gate ready. Ron's like, get the gate ready. And they said, what's your status? You know, you'd always say, we're coming in red, we're coming in black, we're coming in yellow. But. And I said, or, we're coming in hot, we're coming in cold. And I don't know. I was just trying to make somebody laugh. I said, guys, we're coming in lukewarm. It was stupid. I'm just trying to get people to laugh because we've been through a lot at that point. We come in the gate and the State Department guys where they tried to get out of there, you know where we. We got them out. The ones that were still, they. They did go the wrong direction. They went towards Adidas. Two houses down was where an Sharia had a safe house. The consulate was right next to the terrorist safe house. State Department knew it. We told them a million times we had taken pictures of it. There's a scene in the movie where you see us driving by and I'm taking a picture of those fuckers and they're flipping me off. That's it that happened. They didn't do a damn thing about it. So when they went out the gate, Jack kept telling them, and you hear it on the radio too. And that was during the fire. That's where the confusion happened. Because when we were getting attacked and I was shooting, that's when we were trying to get them out of there. It was during all that chaos that Jack I heard on the radio, because I've got a piece in. And I hear Jack saying, guys, you're going the wrong way. You're going the wrong way. Because we said, go to gunfire when you go out the gate, do not go to Adidas. You go left, you do not go right. They went right and they got crushed. And so when we pulled in, the armor held. They managed to get back on run flats to our place. That car was just on fire. Just flames everywhere. And I thought they were all dead, but none of them died. The armor held. Scott did a great job pushing through. So did Dave getting through. They just went through a gauntlet of gunfire and RPG fire and got chased until they got back to our compound. So that wasn't movie magic at all. They got hammered and it just was in the chaos, he just went the wrong direction and luckily for them. And again, kudos a lot to Dave. Dave Ubin did an awesome job, but I wasn't in that vehicle. But if I was to guess, I would say they all kept their heads pretty good. But Dave probably did. The one was like, get the foot. We go push through, push through, push through, you know. But we got back, it's on fire. We get. We get refitted with whatever we need as far as ammo. Tig did. Did drop our grenade launcher. That was a movie magic. He actually dropped it. He didn't. It was a 69 HK 69. He hadn't rechange the normal lanyard. That's on it. You know, whenever we get that, the lanyard that comes with it sucks because it just slides through. We usually cut it and we put 550 cord on it or something that sticks. And he didn't. So when he was running, it fell off and it fell on the ground, you know. But it was weird. And I don't have an answer for you. I wish I did. But we had a second one as well. And for some reason I was looking for it and I couldn't find it. I don't know what happened to it. I ran around for five minutes before I went up on my rooftop looking for that other grenade launcher because Tig's like, dude, I'm sorry I dropped it. He's like, son of a bitch. Tig and I ran around, you know, and you know how we are. We stage it where it needs to be. It's in the team room. It's in one of the gun lockers. That's where it needs to be. I didn't take it with me because I had a 46 and he had the 69 and we didn't put it in the QRF vehicle. So I ran, I couldn't find it. And I thought, well, maybe Boone did put it in our vehicle. So I ran and looked in the vehicle. Cool. I could not find it. It disappeared. To this day, I have no idea what happened that 69. And I'm thinking, why on earth would Bob. I'm thinking malicious, but like, what would that have done? So I don't know. So I couldn't find another 69. And we had two, but I couldn't find it and grab more ammo. Ran up to building first. We went up to building A. Vantage point was terrible. And then we jumped up to building C where we could see over zombie land and this sheep slaughterhouse. So we had compounds. Building here, building here, building here, building here, front gate here. Zombieland parking lot where they were massing families, houses right there that they were using to come through before they got into Zombie land as cover because they knew we weren't going to shoot the kids because there were kids in there. So we weren't going to shoot the buildings. And then the sheep slaughterhouse, the sheep litt was over here. So we got up there. A was not a good vantage point. So me and Boone moved over the sea. Oz and Tig are in a little fighting position right here overlooking Zombieland. And they just start moving on us. And you're just seeing it through the night vision. And it was like kids Playing hide and seek, man. So easy. They're just. I don't think they thought we had night. We had night vision or they didn't think it was that good because they were just running from bush to bush. And Ron was awesome. And I, you know, I talked about Nick and Paul Raven, 23 guys. That was heavy on our minds at that time because they had gone to prison for defending themselves. Yeah. So we weren't going to shoot. We're like, ron, man, I don't see guns, but they're moving on us, man. They're moving the drones even overhead feeding us intel. You got asymmetric movement. You know, stuff's coming. Roland's like, do not shoot. You see a gun first, then I'll give the command to shoot. And he goes, because I don't want to go to prison. And he was referencing three guys. So that was on our head. So we just let him get. They just kept coming and coming and it got closer and closer. And then finally Boone goes. I got AKs. And they were probably about 25 meters from Oz's position when he saw that. And then this fist comes over the back gate right when he says that. And it was a gelatina bomb. And I saw it. Because gelatina bombs is like a stick of dynamite. They light a wick so you sooner night vision. And it comes from the back gate and it goes over to Oz's and takes position. And I'm like, man, this is going to miss him, man. It's going to miss him. This is good news. And then this figure comes out of nowhere and this bomb's coming this way. And take his guy out of position to go get water. What are the odds, man? I mean, the odds are it's like winning the lottery. He's here. The bomb's coming. I'm just watching in slow motion and it just blows up. And all I see is the white light coming. The world opens up, you know, that was the. That was the. That was the indicator to start the attack. And they just started shooting. And we destroyed them. I mean, we were. We had our sectors of fire down. We had our. Our. We had all the avenues of approach lockdown. We knew the dead space. I mean, I wish I would have had that 203. We would have killed a lot more of them, but we just crushed them. And everybody was so disciplined. Sector, sector. We stayed within our sectors. We trusted each other on their sectors. And it was interlocking sectors of fire. And it was like coming. It was like coming into a freaking Wood chopper. And we just. Everybody did. Awesome. Well, it only took about five minutes, really. It's about as long as it was. And a lot of you guys have been in fire. Unless you've been in Afghanistan at a base where they just keep hammering you. Most firefights are only about that long. Yeah, they're gonna. And it's like a box mess. You know, you're real quick, and then there's some dead time. Unless there's just a massive, massive force or you get stuck. And they got the advantage, but they're losing their ass. They're going to break contact, get back and figure out something they did. Well, when that ended, I looked and I'm thinking, I'm going to go get. Let's go pick up Tig, because I figured he was dead.

[Sean Ryan]

How many. I mean, did you guys have any estimate in your. In your head?

[Chris Paronto]

Yeah. How many do you think that I think. And I think the major. I mean, it's, It's. It was hard, but I think we got attacked by maybe over that whole course of period. Not at one time. 200, 300 people.

[Sean Ryan]

2 to 300.

[Chris Paronto]

But not it. You know, it was like that initial one was probably 40. 40 guys fought them off, and then there's another 40. So it could have been the same guys. We didn't kill 40. I wish we were that good, you know? You know, and we're good at what we do, but come on, let's be realistic. But, you know, and then at the annex, at the consulate. Yeah, easily 40, 50 that we got counter. I mean, it was 40, 50 at a pop. And, yeah, we were killing them. I mean, we. We chewed them. And that's. That's the. That's the. You know, a lot of us, unless it's within a lot of us that have been in combat. And I'm not saying in a bravado thing or ego thing, it's just how it is at a distance, 5, 5, 6. If you hit somebody, sometimes it doesn't keep them down. Yeah. If close you're in, it's going to. If it's me to you and I hit you, yeah, you're going down. You're not getting back up. But at 50, 75, 100 meters, you might. But generally they're going to be able to get back up and they'll. They'll probably bleed out or they're out of the fight, depending on where you hit them, I mean, or. But that was where it could have been. You know, how many guy I would. We have estimates I've seen estimates of Wikipedia. Like a thousand. No, 200, 300, over the whole night. And who knows? Some of those could have been attackers. The same attackers we killed. I don't know. I've got reports. Again, I've seen reports. A thousand. No, I think we killed. I know. I think 100, 200. I think we did. Oz had our. Had contact at the hospital there. And, you know, Oz and I still talk. We get along or not. We still talk every once a week. Wall. And I remember when we got back, I asked him, I said, do you want your contact? Because now, you know, we're Americans. We like to keep score, right? And I said, dude, did you ever get a word how many we got, man? How many we killed? And he goes, I didn't ever get a number. But he. The. My contact at the hospital said that they just kept bringing bodies and injured in all night. So I was like, well, that's good enough for me. I mean, after that, it didn't matter because it was nice seeing them turn tail and run. That's even more my. And. But, yeah, we fought him off. And the reason Tig didn't die, the gelatina bomb hit him, and it landed right by his feet and blew up. It's just because he's so big, it would have stopped my heart. You know, it's just a big. It's just a huge flashbang. It's used for fishing. It's for dropping in the Mediterranean, blowing fish come up. You know, it's Mediterranean redneck fishing. And. But it him up, he still has problems. Shoulder goes numb, his back's out of whack. But he got up, and that's a testament to how tough he is. He got up and he got back in the fight, and he actually got hit around, hit his armor. It was a piece of the round. It hit the metal post and sheared. Either the post or something hit him and knocked him down. He got up and kept fighting. And he's a tough son. Bitch. He's a tough redneck. Takes good, good people, man. Yeah. But it was awesome, and it gave us a wave of confidence. It did. It's like, okay, we got this. This. We. We. Our we. Our battle plan, our force protection plan, our sectors of fire, they're on. All right, let's keep doing what we're doing. And throughout that time frame, you know, we're still thinking Americans are going to help. We're still thinking that the ISRs are seeing everything. And we're thinking, somebody's coming. Cavalry's coming, but they weren't. But at that point in time, we still had some faith that they were because they normally did. Everywhere else I was at Calvary came, whether it was another GRS team, whether it was a Scorpion team, an nsa, you know, the GRS equivalent at the nsa, whether it was military, somebody was Brits, somebody was coming. And between that two hour lull of 1am to 3am where the next attack happened, that's where we started to come to realization nobody's coming. And the reason is because we had a. We didn't put him in the movie, but we had a old Vietnam veteran that manned our radios. Our 117, he was a staffer with the agency. Great guy rton Vietnam, wonderful guy. He still cries every time we see him because he apologizes for not getting us help. We already had curef elements on station. It was, you know, we had a 911 call. We could call because that's what we do GRS, that's what our jobs is to coordinate with the other units. So if we need people, we can just hit a button, go on 10 Alpha Common on the 117s and say we need help. We have 117. And every so often throughout the next couple hours, Boone would come to me and say, hey, we got to hold the Delta man. They're on our way, on their way. And little did we know they had were coming. But they got diverted to I think Croatia. 555th Fighter Wing, that was our big we. We always thought we had them. They had two jets at Suda Bay, Greece. Suda Bay, Greece is five minutes with afterburners to Libya. And then they had the 555th Fighter Wing, the whole unit up in Aviano. It's a QRF base. That's what it's there for. We figured they were coming. Boone's like, no, they're not coming. The fast company of marines, there was one in Spain and there was one in the Med up near Sigonela. And we thought they were coming. They. He'd keep coming back to me. Every after he told me somebody was coming, he'd come back and say, no, they're not. We're not getting words. There's no confirmation they're coming. And then that sith the ambassador's old the master's primary security team, the commanders and the shremis force that had been in Croatia and got repositioned to the staging area. That was when I really knew nobody was coming. Because when he said not, they're, they're not on their way anymore either. He came and said, hey, hey, that sift team, the commander's team's coming.

[Sean Ryan]

You guys actually went through this entire checklist.

[Chris Paronto]

That's his job, and that's our job. And yes, we went down the line every. That's why politicians. And that's why the CIA pisses me off. That's our job. They know that. Politicians may not know that, but the agency knows that. That's what our main response is. Grs. We're protective services. And it's also to protect our asses if something happens to get the assets needed that we. Assets that are in the area to us if we need them. So we had them all. We knew them all. It was. I. I was in charge of that when I was there. But it's always pay, you know, every time it's passed down, it's always so. It's always refined and improved and fine and reproved. So it was the rto, the Vietnam rto. That was his job. And he was very good at and he was very supportive of us. And the reason he cries when he sees us now, I remember. And I remember I saw him in Texas when I was doing a lot of speaking back in 2016, and I got pissed at him. We were out, did a speaking event there in Fort Worth, and his wife's wonderful lady. They came to have a drink with me. And I think Tig was there as well. And I got pissed. I got drunk. And he hadn't said anything as far as testimony yet. And he could blow the doors off all the help that was around there. He could verify what we saw. And I'm like, quit being a fucking pussy, dude. Stop. Go tell him what happened. And he got up, and I felt bad. He got up. I saw tears in his eyes. And he walked away. His wife's sitting there, his wife's Texas woman, hard as nails. I go, ma'am, I'm sorry. She goes, no, I've been telling him the same thing to tell. And I said, well, why hasn't he? He goes, because they're going to pull his pension if he does or they don't get his retirement. And I was like, okay, I never say anything about it again. I love the guy. I love him. And he has a lot of info out there. But I do respect people and their family. And if that's not for my selfish reasons or anything else, I understand that. I never bugged him about it again and I never will again because I respect that. I do. Is it right? No, I Don't think it's right. But I still respect his decision. And he did try, he did try his ass off. Well, 3:00am we get hit again and it was like the movie showed. We just, it was just. They did the same tactics and we just crushed him. It's like waves hitting retaining wall, man. And it was a. It was very, very satisfying. But it was, man, how long is this gonna keep up? Because we had a ton of M4ammo tons. But we're eventually gonna run out. We're eventually gonna get tired. We're eventually. They're eventually gonna get it figured out and hit us with a car bomb. I was so shocked. They hadn't hit us with a car bomb yet. Cause that was in Iraq or Afghanistan. That's probably what they would have just done. Drove a car and blew up the wall. But they hadn't. So I was really shocked at that. But you know, you think about your family a little bit. And before that second attack, I had thought about my family and I just remembered the phone call and I just remembered it briefly and I thought about them and I just remembered that the last thing they heard from me did I tell them I loved them. And I did. So I was okay. I didn't think about the rest of the night. Those are the last words. Did my daughter, my son and my wife know that I love him before I got off the phone? Yeah, I told him I loved him down my head the rest of the night. And by 3am you're starting to get in what I was doing at that point in time, having some self reflection, getting motivated that they are going to breach the walls probably eventually. And then I'm. I got to get in my head that we may need to start. It's going to get close quarter and we're going to maybe start stabbing, it's going to start knifing. And that's a totally different animal than shooting. It's intimate and that's a mind. If you're used to that, there's something wrong with you meant in my opinion. I mean shooting, I understand, I've done that. It's. It's kind of impersonal and because of the way we're trained, it's almost like you can imagine targets and also they're terrorists. Who gives a. But when they're up and you got a stab, that's different, at least to me, maybe not to others, but it is. And I, I got to get my mind right if that's going to happen. So I'm starting to get the mindset of hand to hand, you know. So I respect those guys from World War II and World War I fighting. Trench fighting. Wow. It's like, God, those guys are bad. I ain't. Those guys are badass. But. And a ton of rats, you know, from Vietnam. But we get word Bub's coming in. And I didn't know this for. For several years, but Bub actually ponied up money from his own bank account to rent that all executives. Yet I don't know if he was ever paid back.

[Sean Ryan]

Are you kidding?

[Chris Paronto]

I found that out. Actually, I found that out from his. His best friend Sean, who runs Bob's Naturals. But he came on my podcast and I had no idea that I didn't know that. Wow. But that tells you how Bub is.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

Ponied up money. I'm sure he was. I think. I think what Sean said is the SEAL foundation came in and actually reimbursed. I don't have to see I ever paid him. Which them. Anyway. But anyway, that's Bob, man. That's Bug. His own money. And they rented his executives jet. It was. It was like a G6. It was nice. It did have flight attendants on there. Serious. No flight attendants. Because they were waiting for us when we got to Manita and. But he gets there and they got there actually at midnight and they just. It took them so long to coordinate to get the 10km our place. By the time they got to our place it was about 5am and they get there and I remember them coming in and I remember I was being my smart ass self. I was saying hey, welcome to the party. Better late than never, man. Did you bring me something to drink? And I remember Bub walked by and the TL that was with him, he was a former BW guy that went to the dark side because he started sleeping with a case officer. Sick of married her though. Wasn't bad. He married her. But even become a staffer. But they both went. They walked by me and they did like Tono and they both flipped me off. I was giving them shit. And they went back. All of them. All the GRS guys aside from Bub went into building C. There were two Delta guys that were worked with us in Tripoli. They went into building C2 and Bub was the only one that came up to build. I mean building. Building, yeah, Building C. Yeah, the headquarters building. And then Bubba went on top of building C. So like I said, keep in mind here, I'm on Building A. Building Cs I'm sorry. Building A here, Building C here. B. They're in B. I'm sorry. That's a headquarter building. Building B and then building A or building. I'm getting confused here. A, B, C, D. Sorry. A. They went in building C. D's here. Jack's here. Boone's still up here. I went on the front gate building, which is A. And I need to take a crap. Couldn't get anybody to relieve me. And Boone said, go take a shit. So I skipped down. You know, bodily functions still happen when I was you guys, you know, that they don't stop. Scurried down the stairs, took my shit, got back up, and all of a sudden. And it didn't sound like a mortar. It didn't. And I don't know. My hearing had been shot out. You know, I had earpiece in one ear, but I didn't wear hearing protection in the other, so. And Boone been shooting an SR25 by my ear all night. And I'm shooting either my M4 or.46. So my hearing's gone. And I went, did you guys hear that? It sounded like somebody's. You know what it sounded like? When we used to hear the 107s come in in Iraq, you're like, that's what it sounded like. I thought it was a rocket. I said, did you guys hear that? And then, I don't know. Something in me said, mortar. I go, mortars, mortars. And so I said, take cover. The first one hit, and it hit on the backside of Building C. And that's when the world opened up again. And I remember Roan, he just spun. He spun, and he went cyclic on that other 46. And he's just over where the sheep slaughterhouse is. They're trying to come through there like idiots. They're walking their troops into where the mortars are coming. Fine with me. They can take out their own guys at that they want. But Ron is just. So. I'm seeing this laser beam because it's not daylight. The movie shows this daylight is actually was before morning, nautical twilight. So it's. You know, it's right when the sun's made. But the night vision, you still need your night vision. So I'm watching all this. I'm seeing one guy turn and start to shoot that direction. I'm seeing another guy turn, which was Oz. The next guy was Bub, then the next guy was Dave Ubin. And of course, I want to get my gun in the fight, but I can't see the targets because they're Here, I'm here. The targets, they're coming from this direction. Mortars are coming from this way. So I'm shooting over their heads. I put a couple rounds down, and I look and I thought, you know, we kind of already went through this before. But I look behind me, make sure there's nobody coming from my six because I still got areas of responsibility. Nobody's there. I turn, I could a couple more shots, and I see the next one hit. And this one hits on Building C. Hits right by the parapet wall. Boom. Blows up. As my night vision goes white, and it comes back. Those four guys that were shooting are now three. So it's like it was. It's like, you know, close your eyes. You see four. Open your eyes. There's three. Dave's hit. Dave got hit with a 81. It sheared half his leg off. It sheared half his arm off. They were on, but they were just hanging by tendons. And he's screaming. And I realized, how did you hear that? I don't know how I heard it, but I heard him screaming. Screaming. I'm here. He's yelling. He's screaming. I hear it all. I could hear it. I'm still shooting. They're still shooting. I turn around and make sure nobody's coming again because I still got my six. We still gotta fight. We gotta finish it. You can't quit. They gotta take care of Dave. I'm not run off my position and help him. Somebody. I'm just expecting maybe the Delta guys or somebody to come up and help, but who, I don't know. We got a fight to go. I put three rounds over the top of their head. I went boom, boom, boom. And as soon as I did that, three. Three mortars fire for effect. Boom, boom, boom. And when they did that, my night vision went completely white because the overabundance of light. And as it came back, they were gone. And I saw the pixie dust. I saw the charged particles. Because any of those explosions, if it's fine particles or dust, and there's not a lot of wind, and there wasn't. And there's a lot. You can see the particles coming down because they can get charged or heated. So I'm watching the pixie dust come down, and it really did look like they got turned to dust. My brain's like. Because they're gone. All of a sudden, they're gone. Then there's a cloud of dust. I'm like, man, we can't beat this. We don't have any air support. And I put my head down and God's. And I know it was God. It was God or my mom. And he said, get your gun up, Ranger. I kept fighting, and Jack kept fighting and Boo kept fighting, and we fought those guys off that were coming for us, Boone and Jack Parma. They had better avenue fields of fire than I did. But. And they did awesome. But the mortar stopped. And at the time, I was like, wow. Wonder why they stopped. I mean, they hit with the building they wanted to hit. It was far for effect. They had that thing locked in. That's our main building. That's Skiff. That's where all of our troops are. That's where all of our equipment is. That's where all of our. All of our comms are, is that building. They knew which building to hit. And unlike David Petraeus, who needs his Ranger tab pulled, that said, well, it must have been a truck. And they just ran a truck, and they just haphazardly put a mortar tube in the back of a truck. Come on, man. Come on, man. What's up, infantry officer? I got respect for Petrespo, and he said that. I'm like, dude, come. Anyway, the reason they stopped the movie, I wish they would have edited it a little bit better. You see the militia take off before the mortars came. They actually took off after that first sh. When I heard that. They must have heard it. I don't know. They must have known who it was more than me, which My hearing had gone to shit. They took off, and then that first one hit, they went and took the mortar team out for us. Their commander had actually come in with our team, and he was in the building C when those mortars were hitting. So there. That first one there, they scattered, because that's their tactics. They knew something was coming. Mortar was coming in, so they're moving their vehicles so they're not part of the carnage. And then I could hear in the distance, tires screeching, gunfire in the direction where the mortars were coming from. And they went and took the mortar team out for us because their commander had got caught in building C when the attack happened. Lord works in mysterious ways, brother. Yeah, no kidding. And the ironic thing is, too, is the mortar team, that whole militia belonged. They were former Omar Gaddafi commanders.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Chris Paronto]

We got saved. You know, we got saved by Omar Gaddafi. So, yeah. So for anybody to think that we went in there to overthrow Gaddafi, that's bullshit. We went in there to destabilize a region so the Muslim Brotherhood could come in and stabilize it under that foreign policy under the Obama administration and. And we needed Gaddafi's weapons to go and give to the friendly militias, as McCain would say. But anyway, they saved us. And mortar stopped. And then at 7:00am, you know, a militia was coming in. And I remember there was just me and Boone and Jack left. Nobody. And it would piss me. Nobody would come and relieve us. It was like, dude, I was like, guys, GRS guys, Delta. Would somebody come give us a break? I mean, come on. It's like having a patrol base and, you know, you gotta give guys breaks. Nobody would come relieve us. So we stayed up there. And I remember Bob said delta guys didn't come up. No. And I got no heartache with. I did for a big time.

[Sean Ryan]

What were they doing?

[Chris Paronto]

I don't know. That's a good question. I have no idea. And they're Delta. I know they do hardcore shit. And I got no heartache with them. I'm not trying to throw them under the bus here. It's just. It is what it is. And I know they're. They're warriors because they're Delta. You get. You kind of have to be to be at the unit. Now I've seen guys BOLO shoots at from the unit too, going through TDC and going. But like anybody, they have bad days, but they're. I just, I don't know, maybe they're in a different. I would like to know if you ever get them on. I would love to know what the hell they were doing. Maybe it was document destruction, destroying classified documents or why we were there. I don't know. I mean, that's what we put in the movie. Michael Bay actually has a pretty good. He has a pretty good. He has his own peeps within the agency that feed him DOD because they love him, because he makes them look really good. Which he should. He's honoring. He loves veterans. So maybe that's. Maybe he put that in there because that's what they were doing. I don't know. And. But all I know is the. They wouldn't relieve us because I kept calling for him. Then I kept making fun like, hey, D boys, you think you could come relieve us? I gotta get a drink of water. You know, I was just on the open mic so everybody could hear it. So I was being my normal jackass pissed off self. Anyway, when the militia was coming in, Bob says to me, he goes, tano, you got the front gate. He goes, make sure this militia that we got coming is friendly. All I had left was my M4. That's all I had ammo left four. That's all I had, my peash shooter. It's daytime now. And I remember asking Bob, I go, roger that, Chief, I got front gate understood. Can you give me some description of who I'm looking for? He goes, I don't know, Tano. I said, bob, I said, Chief, do you have vehicle colors, insignia I can id? He goes, we don't have any of that information and the TL needs to start chipping in. I'm asking the TL the same things. I go, are there uniforms I can look for? Do I have communication via cell phone? My burn phone? Can I call somebody? You guys have communication? We lost communication. I go, give me a number, Bob, at least. He goes, our team leader comes across, right? And he goes, tano, the numbers between 30 to 50, they're all technicals. Holy fuck. And I got on the radio and we didn't put it in the movie, but I said, and you guys expect me to fight these off with a peash shooter? I said, roger that. Again, no response. Because why, why keep poking the bear? Because I'll keep giving him. And I just said to him, and I go on the radio, I clicked it one more time, I said, bob, you've been a plethora of information and I really appreciate him being a smart ass. And I went dark and I saw him coming. Pablo played it, I, I still breaks, I mean it does, it breaks my heart when I see it because he played it so spot on because that's how exactly I felt. I'm watching these technicals and it is a huge militia and you know what technicals are? It says hiluxes with those discas or anti aircraft guns in the back or a PKM mounted and it's, it's badass militia. And as they're coming in, I get behind that parapet wall at 3 foot high, and I made myself as small as I could. Not eot tech it was on. And I put the eotech on the Passenger because I'm thinking to myself, you know, hey, this ain't over. It's not over till it all over. It's not over till it ends, man. And I'm dead or they're dead, it's probably going to be me. And all I'm thinking is that Dishka is going to rip me in half. And I hope it's quick. But I'm thinking to myself, I'm at least going to get one of them. And I got my infrared dot, I mean my eotech on the passenger, who looks like A commander, I don't know, but he's pasture. And then I'm just rotating back and forth from the dishka gunner to the pasture. Because if I see the disca gunner move and he hits that fly, I'm going to hit that fly. Then fly trigger. I'm going to pull. Pull my trigger and at least get him, and then I'll get ripped up. But I just couldn't think of anything else. I had no way to connect him. I learned the jambo and Mosul at MRZ because we had Sudanese guards. And every time we leave the gate, they would throw up the jambo to me in 2008. So one day I stopped and asked them. I said, what does that mean, dude? They. It means good morning. It officially is Swahili. It means good morning. You'll see it on shirts and Africa. I said, jambo. But because the shock is much cooler. And it be cool. They've kind of adopted that. That's what they told me. I said, so it just means be cool. So I would throw that up. And every time I threw it up, if I wanted to see if somebody was friendly, if I got it back, well, I'm here. So nine times out of 10, it was friendly and I couldn't take anything else. And I went like this. And I. Man, I was. I. I was. You could have put a lump of coal at my ass, it would have been a diamond like that. I was like, just tight. And they're both chewing cot. I remember the cock. They had big wads of cot in their mouth. For those that don't know what cod is, it's an amphetamine. They dip before they go into battle. It's like a leaf. But it's like chewing copa. It's like mixing Copenhagen with cocaine and steroids. That's what it is. And it rots your teeth. It turns your mouth brown. You chew it all enough, it makes you look like a heroin addict if you chewed it. And they look like they've been chewing it forever. Just gross and caught everywhere. And I remember doing this. I went like this. And I'm thinking to myself, this is going to hurt. And the pasture reached out and he smiled at me. He smiled. Huge cot, brown teeth. And he went. And he was that close. I could see him that vividly. And he smiles. He threw the jambo up and the disco gunner got. Took one hand off the fly, took off that disc in the back, and he went like this. No. And it was. And I said, people watched the movie. Like, that's so that's so dramatized, like, oh, that's the fuck what happened. And I said, my wife is gorgeous, my kids are beautiful, beautiful smiles. But they know this. And I told them, I said, honey, I love you, honey, you got a beautiful smile. But that smile that, that caught feels still just the most beautiful smile I've ever seen in my life. And I did lose it. It was like for briefly I did just kind of let it out and I got on the radio and I went there with us, there with us. And I, I mean I'm hoping the movie, what all them felt like, you see in the movie. I'm hoping that's how they felt. And there were just was somebody what had happened. And I don't know how Bob didn't get this information since the commander was right in there. The buddies that took the militia, the militia that took the mortar team out, they went and got more of their bodies. So they just got more Gaddafi people. So we got saved by Gaddafi twice. Wow. And then we got out of there, you know, and got to the airfield and there were some, there was some fights over our vehicles. I mean in the movie it showed a few guys, there was actually probably about 15 guys that wanted our vehicles. It was kind of comical because some guy indeed is AK when they were fighting over. So we're in the middle and we're trying to get people on. And this again, this is the respect I have for Oz. And I've said it before, I think it was either with you or with. But again, you respect. Even if you don't like people, you respect and give respect when it's due. And again he did, he was John Wayne, he said the coolest thing. And he did say this. When we got there, we were trying to help him off the back of the truck and get on the plane and he wouldn't let us help him. He climbed his own. Yeah. For real? No, he climbed his own ass down from the building bleeding. I don't know if he said it during his interview, he may have, but that was pretty fucking impressive. He was down pepper shrapnel, arms flinging off and he, he climbed down a ladder one handed. He slipped on a rung and caught himself with his elbow and then he walked himself down. So me and Oz may not get along, but he's one of the toughest son bitches I've ever been with. And when he said that, I was like, God dang, I wish I'd have said that. I said, damn, that's some John Wayne, Clint Eastwood Shit right there. And he walked in there and the flight attendants were out there. Did he say again, I walked into this country, I'm a walk out. He said it wasn't movie, it wasn't script. That's what he said. We were all standing there and all of us were like, damn, man.

[Sean Ryan]

I'll say it's. It's just nice to hear you guys have a healthy respect for each other.

[Chris Paronto]

You do. You have to. You go through that. And I said, you don't. You're not gonna get along with everybody. You can't hang out with her. I'm not for everybody. Believe, believe me. They'd be like, man, I hate that some bitch. But if I need him and I want him on with me, in the front with me. And there's some that don't. Some of that. I hate that some bitch. I don't want them anywhere near me. And there's some that, man, if we go through the gates of hell, I want you standing right next to me. That's just. That's just humans. That's just how we are. You're not going to like everybody, but if you have a job to do and this goes in corporate world, this goes in the military, anywhere private military, you have a goal. You need to reach that goal. You better be all on the same focus, the same path. Now, you may have different jobs, but don't create more drama by not liking each other. And that's a good leader. That puts you in positions that don't make you co. Mingle all the time. Which Ron did. He put us in jobs and responsibilities that if we had to do stuff together, we did. But if it wasn't necessary, then he wasn't forcing us. So we had a healthy dose of each other when we needed. But if we didn't like, we didn't write all together. It wasn't necessary for us to. Me and him do. Do the. Do the. I can't call him anyone. It's got names for. But it wasn't necessary for us to do the meetings and the pickups and all that together. You didn't do that. And you had leaders that would force guys to ride you don't want? No, we didn't like each other. So there's other guys. Oz, Tom, you just don't have to ride together. There's plenty of other people here. And they put us in different vehicles. Yeah, so. But what was funny, I'm comical on that is is it only show in the movie that the. The flight attendant put one towel down on the stairs because Oz is bleeding over everything. She actually came down, was putting multiple towels all along the stairs and was putting them in the fuselage because she was more worried about blood getting all over the plane than Oz helping Oz into the plane. She didn't give my hand nothing. Just let him walk up. Like, wow, if that ain't. Honestly, that's probably more closer to humanity today than how people are today than it really was back then. But he got on there. And Dave. God bless Bub, dude. Bub sacrificed his life, saved two guys. He gave himself John 15, 13, man. He exemplified that. Dave and Oswald had bled out. Dave was bleeding out. He went into convulsions twice because his tourniquets kept coming loose. He was losing so much blood. We were out of IVs, but because that plane was there, we had a little bit of a miss, a little bit of a problem. When we got everybody on the plane. As we got everybody on the plane, we heard a pop. Somebody shot their gun on the plane. The heating and air guy had a pistol. Of all the contractors had sidearms if they were weapons qualified. Our H Vac guy, that was a contractor there with us, he had a pistol. He took it out to clear it, dropped the magazine, and instead of racking the slide, he pulled the trigger and he shot the plane. So the plane sat there for an extra 10 minutes while we tried to locate the bullet. Because the pilot wouldn't fly if there was a hole in the fuselage. And we got lucky. It lodged in one of the iron frames of the back of a seat. Wow. Insult to injury and just comical, comical shit.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Chris Paronto]

And finally found it. That's when it got out of there. And there was a Libyan, a Western trained Libyan doctor. And one of The Deltas had 18 Deltas had got back to Tripoli from that. I don't know if it was from the SIF team or he come in from Djibouti or. But there was a Delta that was waiting there, an 18 delta from one of the groups that was working in the region. And I still don't know who it was. I just know it was NSF guy. And they got him stabilized. Dave stabilized. Dave good to go. They got Oz good to go. And then we sat and waited. And that's when I inspected the ambassador's body. They brought his body on. I opened up the body bag and again, I don't think he was desert. You know, his genitals were mutilated. I didn't look and I didn't see blood down There, but that didn't mean nothing. They could have cleaned it up and just pulled his pants on. But I didn't see any marks that indicated he was drugged through the streets, which is what I was looking for. Tig looked at him, too, and Tig didn't see anything that indicated that as well. So we're saying no. Could it have happened? Sure, it could have, but we didn't see it. C130 landed at 10:30. And as I'm seeing it come in, you know, you've been around, you know, the telltale signs, even from a distance of what a 130 looks like coming. It's beautiful. Coming in, dueling, just cracking. Looking at the tail, boom. And I'm thinking to myself, finally, well, better late than never, America. Oh. And as it gets closer, I'm like my eyes deceiving me that that's red, green and black. That's not an American flag. And as it gets closer, I verified it's a Libyan flag. And it lands. And I remember thinking what I was like still. And I said it to myself, out loud, to myself, I said, still no Americans. Whatever goes down, I figure we're going to hot load it. So it's going to drive, it's going to drop its ramp and we're going to. It's going to turn, and then we're just going to run in and take off. It didn't. It went by us, went down about 400 to 600 meters, banked right, shut its engines down. You know, that's odd. Okay, well, maybe they need to refuel. And I look at my T, I look at the tl, I go, is that for us? He goes, I don't know. And our country, TL was there as well. And I asked him, I go, is that for us? We jumped in some cars that we had left, we jumped in. We had another interpreter that was our expediter from the airport. He had a vehicle jumped down. There they were all sitting in the room, drinking chai. They were maxing, relaxing. Went to the pilots. We're like, is this. And they had no idea what had just happened. They had no idea what had just happened. And we ended up talking them into flying us out. Have faith, man. Wow. Have faith. I always tell people, never lose your faith. It's amazing that if you have faith, your luck increases. He just showed up. And that was something that, honestly, I pushed when we were doing all the testimonies and nobody really ever cared.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Chris Paronto]

So I just let it go. I don't push it. Anymore. I like to tell about it because it is, of course, it is a hey, man. God. Still in control, man.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

And I am going to talk about. I do, because this is why I don't like Obama or anyone. Mike Rogers, he's Republican. He talks shit about Benghazi. He's a terrible man. Whenever they call conspiracy or they say, oh, it didn't happen the way they said they did when we got on that plane. And forgive me, Katie and Bub's family, but I do want to talk because this is, this is why politicians need to shut their fucking mouths. Is Bub's rigor mortis had set in. So his arm was. When we got on the plane, we load the bodies in. We didn't have body bags for everybody, so we had to put sheets, a sheet over Bob because we didn't have enough. And he had gotten dropped off the roof by the D boys. They dropped them. I don't know why. Again, I've come to terms with that. I'm not going to beat those guys up. They're, they're, they're. Amen. They're D boys. I know they serve their country well. And they're, they're, they did well. You, if you ever have them on, you can ask them. But his arm was up in the air. So it was, you know, we had him covered with a sheet, but his arm was like this the whole time. It's like an elephant in the room. You're on a C130, and I'm on the, we're sitting on this side on the webbing, and they're sitting on that side of the webbing, and you're seeing these dead bodies here, and everybody's pretty much covered up, but Bub's arm is out there and everybody's just staring at it and like, what the fuck? Okay? I was like, fuck if I have to be the one to do it. I didn't say it, but that's what I thought. And I walked over there and I thought it was disrespectful to leave him like that. So I just grabbed his arm and I went, crap. And I ripped it down and I felt everything rip. But I could tuck his arm underneath the, the sheet so it could, so we couldn't see it anymore. And, you know, I, I, I don't, I don't know if that was right or not, but I just, I couldn't ride an hour watching his. And everybody was staring at it, and it was just silent on the plane. It's like nobody Wanted to acknowledge that was going on, or maybe what had just happened and it was like. And maybe this is the. I have everybody. I have a little sociopath. It's like, man, do I always have to be the one to do the dirty shit? That's what I kind of felt. But I'm glad I did because I know I thought it was more disrespectful to leave his arm up in the air and leave him in that position and get him settled, get his arm underneath and have him be in a respectful position. And that still bothers me. And I don't really talk. I don't talk about that too much because one of all, I don't talk about it a lot because it bothers the shit out of me, obviously, but because I don't want to disrespect the DY family by saying that. That, you know, maybe they. They would think of it like a desecration. And that's not what it was.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, you did it out of respect, man.

[Chris Paronto]

That's. That's what I. That's what it was. And. And that's not a rationalization. And. But I also. You.

[Sean Ryan]

You're just doing the best you can.

[Chris Paronto]

That's it. You always respect family, though. You always respect other people's family because. Especially people you serve, because you want them to respect your family. And I love, I think, Katie and what she's done with the Glen Doherty Memorial foundation and Glenn's brother. They're amazing people. And Mrs. Doherty passed away, I think, a few years ago, but now I have the most respect for them because they lost their son needlessly. And I just don't want to harp on that, but I do want people to understand and know that. So when they hear a politician say Benghazi because is a conspiracy or Benghazi didn't happen, or those guys are not telling the story right. I want them to hear stuff like that because that's. That's why I get angry.

[Sean Ryan]

Nobody believes politicians. They don't.

[Chris Paronto]

I hope not. Well, regardless, that happened and we got back to Tripoli and went back and, you know, we. We got off the plane, we went to the. The annex there in Tripoli. I. I took a shower and got some food. And I was a big Copenhagen dipper at the time. So I was like, man, does somebody have Copenhagen? I need some co. Big dip in. There's actually a picture. There was one picture taken of me sitting on the steps of the annex in Tripoli. I borrowed somebody's New York Yankees hat. I didn't have any clothes because I wasn't able to get my gear. So I borrowed somebody's white under T shirt. I had somebody's pants on that didn't fit me. So it looks like I'm a lot bigger than what I am down there, but I'm not because they were too tight on me. And I have a big old dip in and my sunglasses on and I'm trying to come to terms with it all and I got some food in my belly. And then, then we. They load all the contractors, none of the staffers. They load all the contractors on a bus, on a motorcade. The juris guys are there, we load in our cars, we drive down the airfield. The air force crew chief, she was awesome. Broke every rag in the world to let us load those flag draped coffins. They already had the flag. She was incredible. She already had them flag draped coffins ready to go. Pristine. It was. You couldn't have done any better than at Dover. She was incredible. And the, the pilot, Eric Stahl. Lieutenant Colonel Eric Stahl. It was a C17. Wonderful. Every rig in the world they broke to accommodate us. They had already loaded Oz's Oz was already on. I got. I'm not going to post it because it's. It's for Oz, you know, but I got a picture of him where he's in his gurney, IV's in, he's coherent. He's doing this to me. But he's on the plane. Dave is sedated, of course he's out because he's massive, massive trauma. Get the coffins on. Ramp closes, we take off and we fly to fly to Germany and then we get to Germany and plane lands. I didn't let go of my rifle the whole time or my ammo. Give two. It's not going anywhere. It stays right next to me with my ammo. So when we get there, and I wish I would have known what I know now about General Ham, but he's on the radio. Gretas, the Eurocom commander, he's the one that controls the Eurocom forces there. He's the one that can sacrifice his position and tell Obama and Hillary to go F themselves and send us troops. Well, he gets on and I don't even remember what he said, to be honest with you. I just remember he said something positive to us. You know, he's an infantry guy, Ranger tab, all that. And all I remember is I remember going up to him and saying, hey, sir, is there an amnesty box anywhere? Because I got a bunch of ammo I need to I need to download. And that's my conversation with him. But if I'd have known that he didn't, he could have sent people and he didn't, and I probably would have had a different conversation, but I didn't know at the time. Yeah. He goes, yeah, sir, he's a good job. He goes, great job, man. And he goes, it's right over there. And I walk over there and there's a sergeant arm. Like a sergeant. I would say sergeant arms, but whatever the ammo drive. And there's a. There's a sergeant there. And I gave a tech sergeant Air Force guy. I gave him the ammo. And so I always tell people, support the USO because they were already there waiting for us. And this lady come. She was the nicest lady. 50 something lady, blonde hair, about 5 foot 6. She comes up to me and she goes. She goes, she. They already know what happened. They know what happened. They know the story. They know we're coming from anyway. They don't know her agency. They just know that there was a battle, there's some deaths, there's some military and some civilians coming in. Get your shit ready. And they already had stuff laid out like toiletries, underwear, you know, clothes, shoes. And she comes up to me and she goes, what'd you lose? She goes, you okay? I said, yes, ma'am. She goes, what'd you lose? I said, ma'am, I lost everything. She goes, okay. And she started taking me around and I got some money, I got some jammies, I got some sweats, USO sweats. And. And I got my toiletries. And then we got to the end of it. She goes, write down what you need. I said, ma'am. She goes, no, I need you to write down what you need because you might be here for about four or five days. I said, every what? She goes, anything. So I'm just doing, you know, I lost my tennis shoes, I lost my jeans, I lost my T shirts. And I gave her a list. And it was. It was a full page of stuff I lost. I was. I wasn't being a dick. I lost it. I, you know, lost my PlayStation. It's like stuff. I handed it to her and I go back to my room and they put us into a nice room. It's Air Force. It's nice rooms, man. It's like a hotel. It felt like a hotel. Put us in right next to bx. It's Air Force Base Exchange, Army PX Post Exchange, but it's Air Force bx. And I lay down for A second. I can't sleep. I knock on my door at 1am because we got in real late. We got in like at 11 to the. To Germany. When we finally got there, and it was her and she had two bags. She goes, here. She goes, I got your stuff. And I didn't break down in front of her, but I did what I closed the door because it was first time I'd felt where someone generally cared like actually gave a. Not like Bob, who came after when we were at Tripoli. And he goes, thanks, man, thank you. And I. I think he was trying to be sincere. But when you're that long in the Agency, your sincerity is never. No. Not there anymore. Or having somebody say, man, great job. It wasn't. And the GRS guys, they don't know what's. You know, we. What do we say? You know, it. It. I know it's sincere, but it's a. It's like, good job fist bump, but actual like a mother figure saying, caring. It meant a lot. And then I put the clothes on. She got me some jeans, she got me some running shoes. I felt normal and toiletries. Took a shower. And then I slept for about four or five hours. And then I got up and I turned the TV on and I saw Susan Rice already on tv. And I remember I called Jack and they were saying a video and a protest. And I, like, I said, are you seeing this? And we turned it on and I just turned it off. And he turned it off. And we didn't want to watch it because we figured at that point we're like, somebody's going to tell the truth. You still have some optimism that there's some heart and some integrity within the government, that somebody is going to say something. And we still had that at that point. It had only been a day. You know, who knows? If I'd have known what I know now, 12 years later, probably would have been more vocal at that point in time, but we still had that faith that there was still integrity and ethics and morality in D.C. we hadn't seen behind the curtain yet. We had a little bit, but not really, you know, because we didn't. That wasn't our job. And we stayed on there and then I remember that night, we got super piss drunk. There's still a picture that I'll post every once in a while of me, Jack Boone and Tig and actually the State Department. Alec was on one side, but I'll crop him out because I just. I don't know if he wants to be seen. And I'M smiling a little bit. And I still. I. I honestly feel. Feel bad that I'm doing it. Like, what the. I'm looking at, going, what the am I smiling at? But I remember that I'm just trying to get through it. And I remember that I was. I was drunker. And dude, I was so drunk. And we had been laughing together, healing together before that picture was taken, because Tig was telling me, man, did you, man, this is what I did. And boom. And some of the is comical. That's why I'm glad we got the comic in the movie, because that's, you know. You know, that happens, man. They miss the bravado is there in all the movies. Lone Survivor, American Sniper, Black Hawk down, you know, even ours. But they miss a lot of the Jack Ashley. And that's one thing we like, Mike. We got to get that in there because that. That happens. That's actually more relevant, more prevalent than the bravado. And so I remember we were telling a story, and I can't remember the story that it was, but we were laughing because I was like, holy shit, I can't believe that. Just. I think it was. I think it was Tig talking when he said. When he. One of the. One of the SPOs, one of the base security guys that we had there called Tig into the office, said, can you come look at the monitor? I've got some problems in the sheep slaughterhouse area. And he went down there to look, and the sheep were jumping on each other. And he's like, yeah, I went down there and I was watching these videos, and the sheep were running around in a circle, circle. And they're jumping on each other and jumping on each other. Well, all the sheep are doing. They're trying to get away, but they can't get away because they're in a pen, they're in a circle, and it looks like they're humping. And he did say. The SPO goes, so do you think people are sneaking under there? He goes, I don't know. It's either that or the sheep are humping. And the SPO goes, well, what do you think it is? He goes, man, it was like 2:30 at night. He goes, I don't know nothing about sheep. So it was just funny. It was dumb, but it was funny because it was just, again, ludicrous. Yeah. So when you see that in the movie, you're like, was that part of the. No, that actually. That. That happened. And that's. That's what's so funny about. And it is funny and. And with 13 hours. But it's just the night in itself is just. Just the stupid. The stupid stuff that we said to just to make each other laugh or just stuff that comes out of your mouth or rub some dirt on the kid. You know, after a guy blows his hand off. I mean, it's there. And I still remember laughing and getting in that picture because of that story that Tig told. But when I look back at the pic, though, it still hurts me a little bit because there's nothing I need to be smiling about there. We just lost two guys. We just lost an ambassador. We lost Sean who hadn't seen. That's two weeks. I've been doing that for 10 years. And I've been pretty relatively unscathed. He's dead. And here I am smiling a day after the attack. All of us were. And it bothers me that picture. I still will post it because I do want to tell us any picture that I post on social media. I know it's not the cool thing to do. I'll always have a story behind it because I want. It's therapeutic for me. But also maybe somebody will learn from it. But we there and then we went home. The reason they kept all the staffers there, including Sarah, she can tell you more about than I can. She has already. She's already talked about it. And they flew us out is because they didn't want our input on how they were going to write the report of what took place. So they flew all of us contractors out. I didn't know that either. If any of us would have known that, we thought they were just being cool. It's like, oh, they're getting us out of here. We gotta go home. It was no. Because they're gonna fly portray us in so they could get debriefed without us. Here's agency for it. Wow. That's it. Wow. We went back to. Went back to Langley. You know, you stop, you turn in your dip passport, you do your debrief. That's where I. We did our big debrief up on the seventh. Up on seventh floor. And we went through. This is what happened. We mapped it all out. We stayed there for an extra day. We went through what we all did. And you know, they did a big, like, really was just a big aar. Like you do in the military. We're up there and it's just removed. So we're gonna. And then we went downstairs and we sat with all the GRs headshit out of. You know, that Worked out of the. Out at Langley there. The guys that worked out of the building, and that's where we went through another ar. They're like, what'd you do? What happened? And that's when they asked me. Like I just said earlier. Whenever we talked about it earlier, about our tl, they go, so how'd the TL do? And they said his name. And I said, he did great. And really. And Boone kind of looked at me like. And I said, yeah, he did great because he stayed out of the fucking way.

[Sean Ryan]

What was their reaction?

[Chris Paronto]

What are they going to say to me? It was. One put his head down and snickered because he knew who he was. The other two, they just looked at me, didn't say a word, and I didn't say a word. And I looked right back at him. And Boone was laughing the whole time, too. Boone's laughing. So what could they say? I got no right. What are they going to say to me? Been around long enough. I know who you guys are. You know who I am. We can.

[Sean Ryan]

And what would a normal human being say to you? Nothing.

[Chris Paronto]

And these people?

[Sean Ryan]

Who the hell knows?

[Chris Paronto]

Well, I was also. And not that I'm. I got. I've got. I've gotten my ass kicked enough times, but I'll fight if we need to fight. And that's what it was like. He stayed out of the way, and it was the other way. And then with my eyes, I'm going, what the are you guys gonna do about it?

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

And. Yeah, they probably wouldn't mind a little guy. I'll get my ass. Oh, no, no.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm not in the situation.

[Chris Paronto]

But it's. It's that.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, there's just so many staffers that have no concept of what that might be like, because they haven't done it. They've never done anything and nothing.

[Chris Paronto]

And do you know what? That's. I don't. That's why I didn't get any response back, because if they would have had a set of balls, they would have. Somebody would have said something. But I do also think the one that was laughing, that snickering and smiling, giving a little smirk, he had been down range before. I'd worked him a few times. They also knew the truth. They knew. What were they gonna. They knew. They knew that he wasn't gonna do anything. So that's why one was in the corner going. You know, Boo's sitting there going. After. He looks at me, and I said it. He's like. He just started laughing. Boone doesn't laugh, you know, like that. He just started laughing. And everybody on our side snicker. And so what are they gonna say? They know I'm right. And if they did, then they would. But nobody said. Nobody said anything. And then I also.

[Sean Ryan]

Did I continue to work?

[Chris Paronto]

What's that staffer who did? Oh, yeah, he's still working. The to.

[Sean Ryan]

He's still working.

[Chris Paronto]

I'm pretty sure he's still working. He's still. Come on, you know the deal. He ain't going nowhere. He. He. He played the role. He didn't say a word when he testified. He testified against everything that we said. He never testified with us. He testified on his own. He testified once with Tig because Tig was still working. Tig was the last one to quit. All of us went to Yemen. Tig went to Lebanon. So myself and Jack went to Sanaa after we took our 30 day, our 60 days off. And then we went back to Sana'a. Boone went to Aden. Tig went to Lebanon.

[Sean Ryan]

You only took 60 days off?

[Chris Paronto]

I took 75. I took an extra couple weeks.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, that's it.

[Chris Paronto]

I had to get back on that horse, man.

[Sean Ryan]

What was the. What was the first conversation like with your wife and kids?

[Chris Paronto]

I actually called her from the airfield. There's a wonderful, wonderful. I'm glad they got this right. In the movie. You just see Jack's perspective where he calls home. We paraphrase in the movie, because we got what we all said. Then they had a wonderful writer named Chuck Hogan who mashed it together and got all of our base. Our words into that monologue when Jack's on his phone or Krasinski. And I remember I called her on the ATAR Mac, and I said, hey, you're gonna see something on the news. That's us. I said, I'm fine. I love you. I said, I'll be home as soon as I can. And then she goes, what happened? I said, I can't really talk about it, but we lost one. And I met Roan. And, you know, this still bothers me a little bit, too, because I really wasn't thinking about Bub. I was thinking of the teammate, even though Bob had come from Tripoli. But I said, we lost. And I said on an open line, I said, we lost Roan. And I said, that's all I can say. I said, I'll talk to you when I get to. And I didn't know where I was going. I said, I'll talk to you when I talked to you. And I hung up the phone. And, yeah, every one of us had a phone call like that. Jack was the closest to Ron out of all of us there. Ron and Bub. So his conversation was a little bit more emotional than ours, but it was. It still was. Hey, you're gonna see something on the news. It's over. We're okay. I'm okay. Yeah, we lost some people. Be home when we can. Love you. Bye. And then my conversation when I got to Germany was a little bit more in depth, but I had to be careful because we're on open lines. And it wasn't. I was worried about the bad guys listening to us. It was. I started to figure it out. Toto started to open that curtain where the great and powerful Oz was. And I started to see who the enemies not really are, because the terrorists are the enemies, too, but that we also have enemies in our own house that don't want the truth to come out. So I was more careful about what I would talk about on an open line. And then when we got back to Langley and all that there are debriefs. I did also tell them as well because of that 203 incident where Tig lost the 203. And I couldn't find that other one. I sat down with him because you can about a problem, but if you're going to bitch about a problem, have a solution to it. And I remember sitting there with him, I go, you guys know that for some reason, we didn't have enough 69s out there. I said, if we would have had enough 203s for all of us, the fight would have ended way before it did. You know, at 5:30, we would have crushed them. They would never have touched us again. So in the future, every GRS operator has to be just like when we were in the military. Everybody has to have a 46. Everybody has to have M4. Everybody has to have a 203. Everybody has to have an SR25. Everybody has to have the right gear for the right op. And then they get to pick which gear they need when they head out, because this is bullshit. I said, we're the Agency and we don't have enough 203s. I said, what the fuck is that? Obviously, it fell on deaf ears, but I even said. I said, even Ground Branch has every weapon system they need. And I get it, they're da, we're not. But that's horseshit. This is why everybody needs every weapon system. Because if this happens again and we lose one, we're not out an entire weapon system. That could have been a game changer, a force multiplier, like a 203. And from what I heard and used, you kept working. I don't think. I think that fell on deaf ears. It didn't.

[Sean Ryan]

It fell on deaf ears.

[Chris Paronto]

So those pieces of shit, how hard is it to get an extra 203 or an extra 46 for the guys? Especially when there's only five guys on a team or an extra GLM something, you know? But I remember saying that to him because I was pretty pissed. I was pissed at that because again, I felt like we're the runt of the litter, and so what if we are? But guess what? This run of the litter just turned the tables without any assets at all. It's not easy being a Ranger or Delta or seal. It's not. You're doing da stuff. But it is nice and it is heartening to have a Spectre gunship fucking overlooking you. It is nice if you are a SEAL team going out there to have a platoon of Rangers that got your back or vice versa. When you're on your own and that's it, and you don't have all those assets, it's. It can be a. It can. It can be a little bit more scary that you don't have all those protections. And so that's why give us everything we need. And I'm not asking for much. It's not like I'm asking for adapt, cover. I'm not asking for. You know, I'm just asking for, can you all get us. At least each of us have a two or three.

[Sean Ryan]

But how long did it take you, Chris, for? I mean. I mean, you were abandoned by the US Government in all aspects.

[Chris Paronto]

I wish I could tell you different, but that's what happened.

[Sean Ryan]

How long did it take you to rid yourself of that anger?

[Chris Paronto]

2000? The end of 2017? 2018. When I reconciled my wife, I tried to. From 14 on.

[Sean Ryan]

Six years.

[Chris Paronto]

Six years. Yep. Because all that time in between, and that's when we had gotten divorced. I was sleeping around, you know, that's why we got divorced. It was me and my. Me and my infidelity. I was drinking a shitload. I was drinking all the time. I was gone all the time I was speaking.

[Sean Ryan]

How did you reconcile that?

[Chris Paronto]

First you have to reconcile with God, man.

[Sean Ryan]

How'd you do that?

[Chris Paronto]

Stood in the mirror and said, God, I need your help. Carry me. I can't do this anymore. After I even remember exactly what I was, I was at home by myself. You know, they'd Lived out. I lived on my own. I was by myself. I was, you know, I was a divorcee. I still had our little guy. Our little guy was still a baby. So that was hard because I was like, holy shit, I'm missing childhood. I a child again because of my own stupidity. But I remember I was in the shower doing the Crying Game thing in the shower. I was like, my life sucks. This is awful. You know. And I had, you know, I had millions of followers. This is before I canned all my social media accounts. So I had like, ah, I don't remember. 275,000 followers on Instagram and I think I had 300 on Twitter when it was Twitter. And so Facebook was like f. That was what was important in my life. Right? That is so fucking egocentric, vapid. But that's what was my focus was is my self ego. And I realized that that was leaving me hollow than the toxic relationships, then trying to fill it with alcohol, then trying to fill it with money. I had a lot of money, tons of money. Didn't make me happy. And it was when I realized that I can't do this anymore. God, I need you. I do. I need you. I was in the shower, I did the Crying Game thing. Crying in the shower, naked. Got out of the shower. I had my Glock. It was right there. And I looked in the mirror and I did. I put it right here. And I thought back and I thought just briefly, I said, okay, hard life. Yeah, you've had it. Not hard as, but you know, it was rough. You got this disease that you're winning. You're winning the Crohn's disease fight. You got under control. You got kicked out of the military, you fought your way to get back in. You made it and you got through Ranger school and you did what you want to do there. You conquered that even though their odds were against you. Your grandson of immigrants that worked their asses off to give you everything. You've got that gene of that you don't give up like your grandma. You're a Wela and a wella wela and willow. And then 10 years overseas, seeing death and seeing life and getting through all that, making a bad call in Iraq, that I made a bad call in Iraq where a little Iraqi girl died, that I could have saved her. In 2005 in the Mansour district, you went through Benghazi and you got through that. And now the devil's going to win this battle for your soul. That's what I thought. And I looked in the mirror and that's when I said, I looked in the mirror and I said, God, carry me, I can't do this. And I honestly put the gun down and I stopped crying and I went and grabbed the phone and I called. She was my ex wife at the time, Tanya. And they were on vacation in Disney World. They had taken off for Christmas. They were going on vacation in the divorce. She got the DC membership but they were there and I said, can I come spend Christmas with you guys? And no hesitation, she goes, yes, come on. And, and I mean it's like God answered me like that. There was no, there was no delay, there was nothing. I got a play. I got on, you know, I got on, you know, by that time I had more miles to or orbit the sun on every freaking airplane in the world. I got on Delta, got a ticket, flew out the next day and they were staying at the Polynesian village at one of the little huts there on the water. And it was freaking awesome. Best vacation ever. And with that, that was the life. That really. That was it. The life changed. Stopped doing the media. I did one more written Fox interview for the Fox emedia. It was. And that's where I said, I'm done. Anger's gone. God's got Hillary, God's got Obama. He will take care of him. I don't need to judge anybody. Who am I to judge anybody? They will be judged. Let it go. And life's been gravy ever since I stopped doing so much social. I stopped doing a lot of. I don't do 60, 70 talks a year anymore. I do like 10. I can all my social media. I just got rid of all of it now I got back on when I got my head right. My wife is a big part of that too. So she's. It's not just me, it's me and her dude. But that was huge. It was, that was so toxic. And, and that's why I, I don't, I, I give guys people for protecting those accounts, for making them so important because they're not at all. And I got rid of all of them. And business wise went a different direction as to. As far as business goes, which means I minimized it. Still had some battle line stuff but I stopped doing the traveling courses as much and I focused on being home. And we also ended up getting remarried. So worked on a relationship. It took time and how that worked is we just started dating again. It wasn't like we got right back in it. It was. We still live separately and then we would Just start going on dates.

[Sean Ryan]

How did your kids react when you came back in the picture?

[Chris Paronto]

They, I mean, they were happy that dad was there, especially at Disney. We're having fun. But it was awkward for the two older ones because they really didn't know what to think. I mean, is dad going again? Is he gonna be here this time? Is he leaving? But also at that time, they were so used to me being gone anyway. You. Even when we were married for a point, it wasn't anything that. It was odd and they were pushing me away. And also because mom and dad aren't arguing anymore, they're not yelling at each other anymore. So it was happier environment. If it was like a normal. Where I had a normal job nine to five or all of a sudden I disappeared and I came back, maybe they would have been a little bit more. It would have creeped them out, worded them out a little bit. But because dad was always gone anyway, I saw them being a little happier. But as we talked about earlier, they still were very reserved. And I don't know if this is for real. Dad was mean. Whenever we come back from Iraq, he's gonna be mean dad and he makes mom cry. And that's what they would see. So it just took time. A year of dating, of just more dating, of then spending more time together, of then the kids in it maybe staying over. Then eventually it just ended up too like, just like a normal. Where you're dating somebody and it develops into a. Into a relationship that a marriage. And we had to do it that way. And it was. It was a little weird, but it was fun doing it that way because I, I got to, you know, I got to do things that maybe I didn't do the first time I quartered her where I did. So it was. It was like a do over and it was awesome. No, it was great. It was. Everything was fantastic. I did have some. I did have some where I would still get angry sometimes because. Just because it's just seeing what you saw. Not anything where it was infidelity or anything like that. And that's terrible. I'm a terrible person. I hate even saying, but I'm going to be honest with, with you, man. And she, I mean, obviously she knows I wrote about it in some of the books that I've written. It's. But there are times still where I would get angry. You know, the, the. And post traumatic stress, whatever you want to call it, shell shock, you just, you remember and you just. The anxiety was there. But I said the CBD really did help. I did get on anti anxiety medication, but all the VA does is just. And I, I got good va. Midwest, they do take care of you, but all that does is just create more problems. The CBD helped. I stopped drinking. Even though I have my own vodka, when I say stop drinking, I have a drink with my wife maybe once a month, you know. And I also made it a point to be a father, be home, this is where I want to be. And I did realize that in 2017, 2018, I did a contract, my last contract, it was to Costa Rica. It was an anti kidnapping contract for a private firm in Texas to find an American that had gotten kidnapped. And so I was still contracting a little bit, wasn't going to the Middle east anymore, but I was still doing some South American stuff. And it was Halloween time and I was there for Halloween and my wife sent me a picture of my son, peanut, my daughter going out to the trick or treat. And you know that feeling that you got to go down range. I gotta, it was gone. I was like. Because all I could see was the picture and all I'm thinking to myself is what in the am I still doing this for? And you know, I finished my contract. Those. And luckily those things are real short. You know, they're. You find the guy or you don't. He's. You're gonna find him alive in a few weeks or you're gonna pass it on to the next guy or he's gonna be dead. And he did. It was an American that they held for ransom. They, they did find the culprits and we found he was dead. But contract's over. I flew back and man, just everything. My son, I reconciled. My 16 year old boy. We had that inning at Olive Garden, that incident where how'd you propose to your wife? The first time.

[Sean Ryan]

Second time.

[Chris Paronto]

The second time I didn't get down on my knee. She's not that kind of woman, dude. She's not that type of woman. It was honestly very nonchalant and it was just, you know, we saw our rings and I put my ring back on. She goes, you still wearing your ring? I said, well, I am now. I said, where's your ring? She gets in the box. I said, you want to do this again? And of course I knew the answer. She's tough as nails, dude. And it was back at Disney and most people hate Disney and I do, their politics are horseshit. But it still can be a happy place for the family. A lot of happy things happen there. And we Were actually running around. What's it called? The Polynesian village. There's another one out there where there's a massage place, the white one. It's like a Southern resort. Southern. I can't remember the name of it, but we're running out there jogging and we stop and I said, will you marry me again? And she just laughed. It's just like. Because it was so corny. I'm such a nerd. It was so corny. And she laughed and just. Yeah. And really it was this smile. And she has a beautiful smile when she really wants to smile. She doesn't like smiling because she thinks her smile is ugly, but it's gorgeous. And she just gave me her gorgeous, squinty eyed, big ass smile. And we sold her house. She had a second house in Omaha. We went back, she got it ready for sale. We sold it. She moved back into my house in Omaha, or say our house because it was our house. That's what we. We bought it together when I was in the military. And then we stayed there for a few years. And it was. It was married. I was. And I was. I was a husband finally. She was always a wife. I couldn't ask for a better wife, you know, I couldn't ask for a better partner. Couldn't ask for a better woman because she's just. She's just a wonderful, wonderful person. And she's wonderful for me because she's not sappy. If I'd have went down on my knee and did all that stuff, she would have told me. No. It had to be doing something athletic. We were out running because that's how she is. And me just throwing it at her and her being.

[Sean Ryan]

And that's how you are.

[Chris Paronto]

And that's how I am. Yeah. And she knows that. And she put her ring back on. And I even asked her, I said, I'll buy you a huge. Because I had a little bit of money at that time. I said, I'll buy you a huge rock. What do you want? I'll get you a huge rock. She goes, you know, I don't want those huge. I don't need diamonds. I don't. I don't wear. I wouldn't wear that because I'm fine with what I have. It was her original ring that I bought her when we got married in the courthouse in Tacoma, before I went to ranger school, when I was at 2nd Ranger Battalion. And. And then we stayed there in Omaha for a while. And Omaha changed just like all cities do. And it wasn't the Omaha That I remember, you know, good values and there's good people in Omaha. There are wonderful people in Omaha. But it started to turn like cities do. Amazon moved in. Google moved in. Warren Buffett is Warren Buffett. The tearing down corn fields. There was even riots and protests in Omaha at the time. And we're like, we're out. We're not here. And we moved to Kansas.

[Sean Ryan]

That is a good woman.

[Chris Paronto]

She is. She is wonderful. And then because nobody. You were the first person that's asked me that. Because nobody's ever asked me that. And I think it's an awesome. I do. I think it's awesome because it. It just. To me, it reminds me of how awesome she is and how she's not a girly girl. She doesn't want the girly girl stuff. And. And I did think about proposing to her, like doing the proposing and on a down. Because we're in. We're in Disney and we're. We're at the resort. I wish I could remember that. Damner. It's right next to Polynesian Village. It's the old Southern resort. It's the perfect place for it. You know, got the gazebos and. And. And. But I never would do that. Like, there's no way. Because I didn't think about that. Like, man, I got a proposal. Or the right. Come on. On a beach somewhere. And it's like, no way. If I did that. She would think I was such a. She wouldn't believe me. First of all, she'd be like, what did you do? And not you. It was out running and being athletic. It was out. And it was. It was perfect for us. And then what'd we do after that? We went to the gym and we worked out together. And it was awesome. And I was so happy. It was the best. And I still have those feelings when I go home. That's why I love where I live, where I just walk in and everything is just. And I don't need anything. I don't need anything else but that. It's wonderful. And she's there and she has her life. She doesn't need me to. We don't need to be doing things together all the time. She coaches volleyball. She's very independent. But she'll still come home if she wants to. And she'll make dinner. I don't need to add, but it's not required. I like to cook too. But, you know, she'll. Or she'll come home and she'll say, get your ass up and go make me some food. Yes, ma'am. Yes, darling. And now she's. She's my angel. And I have a tattoo up here. You know, I had a cross that she gave me. This. She gave me this before Libya. I had it since Libya, but I had another one that I had. She gave me. I was in the military. And it said, love, love, honor, courage. And I have a tattoo up here on my chest is that cross. And then I haven't put peanut on there yet, but it has the call signs of all my other kids. It says, one, Sit. She's angel. My wife's angel. My daughter used to be princess, but now she's like my wife. She's not a prince, dad. I'm not a princess. Don't call me that. But that was her call sign when she was little. Now she's Kiki. And then I have Bubba, cuz, Bubba is Bubba. And that's them. They're always right there. Amazing.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, Chris, there's a lot more we could dive into, but I think that's a perfect way to end it, brother. And I just want to tell you, man, I saw you speak. I saw how much pain you were in. You know, probably. Probably getting close to. Probably getting close to 10 years. Not quite.

[Chris Paronto]

Where did you. Where did you.

[Sean Ryan]

Boca Raton.

[Chris Paronto]

You saw that?

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Chris Paronto]

Oh, my God. That was. That was. That was. That was demon time.

[Sean Ryan]

And.

[Chris Paronto]

Wow.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm just really happy for you, man.

[Chris Paronto]

Thank you.

[Sean Ryan]

I can tell you're at peace now and sounds like you got a great family and an amazing wife, and you deserve it.

[Chris Paronto]

Thank you, brother. And, you know, right back at you. I appreciate being patient with me, and that's. That's cool that you did see that. And seeing your pictures downstairs with your kids and your wife, it sounds like. Yeah, you ain't the boss of the house either, are you, bro? And we don't need to be. We need somebody that's going to boss us around and tell us, hey, our shit stinks sometimes. And that's right. It's a wonderful house. So thank you, bro. Thanks for having me.

[Sean Ryan]

It was an honor, bro.

[Chris Paronto]

No, the honor's not. Thanks for letting me go down rabbit holes like I do. That's just me, bro. Thank you.

[Sean Ryan]

God bless, Chris.

[Chris Paronto]

God bless you, too, brother. Thank you. Named one of the best personal finance podcasts, the Stacking Benjamin show with Joe and his friends makes financial liter fun. Draymond Green has a podcast. He was asking Mark Cuban why, at the beginning of 2024, Cuban sold a huge part of his company. He's like did you see how much money I got? I'm sure there's a more graceful answer than that, but dude, I bought it for 200 million and sold it for 6 billion.

[Sean Ryan]

Like, what the heck?

[Chris Paronto]

I don't think it was that much.

[Sean Ryan]

More graceful than that.

[Chris Paronto]

Find out more by searching the Stacking Benjamin's podcast wherever you listen.