#252 Matt Bissonnette - SEAL Team 6 Operator’s First-Hand Account of Operation Neptune Spear

Summary

The Shawn Ryan Show #252 — Matt Bissonnette: SEAL Team 6 Operator’s First-Hand Account of Operation Neptune Spear

Episode Overview

In this powerful, candid episode, Shawn Ryan welcomes Matt Bissonnette — the former SEAL Team 6 operator known publicly as "Mark Owen" and author of the bestseller No Easy Day — for his first-ever public, on-camera interview revealing his identity. For the first time, Bissonnette tells his story openly, describing his upbringing, selection and operational career in the SEALs, participating in the historic mission to kill Osama bin Laden, and his subsequent legal/political battles with the U.S. government surrounding his books and media depictions of the SEAL community. This extensive conversation explores themes of service, accountability, sacrifice, faith, and the bureaucratic double standards faced by front-line operators.

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Main Topics & Themes

• First public interview by Matt Bissonnette, revealing himself as the author of No Easy Day
• Life journey: childhood in remote Alaska, SEAL recruitment, BUD/S, and progression to SEAL Team 6
• First-hand, detailed retelling of Operation Neptune Spear (bin Laden raid)
• Legal and ethical controversies: treatment by U.S. government, book release, double standards for rank/civilian officials
• Reflections on leadership, mental health, family, faith, and institutional betrayal

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Key Discussion Points by Segment

1. Setting the Stage & Motivation (00:06–04:43)

• Shawn Ryan acknowledges the weight of Bissonnette’s decision to come forward:
  “You've never revealed your identity before. This is the first time... I know this was a major decision for you, and I just want to say I'm honored...” (00:11)
• Matt on “why now?”:
  He credits Shawn for helping him reevaluate, after years of privacy and reflection:
  “I thought about it, prayed about it, and said, hey, maybe it is time.” (03:42)
• Mission: Set the record straight on how the government treated him over No Easy Day and his forthcoming book, No Easy Way.

2. The Book Controversy and Legal Fight (04:48–12:54)

• Required government review:
  “Anybody who's signed a top secret clearance has to get any and all works reviewed. Now, is that enforced across the board? Absolutely not. They just go after who they want to.” (04:54)
• Double standards highlighted:
  “Didn't McRaven just do a special on this on Netflix? ...That’s a Netflix thing. Right. So he doesn’t have to do it?” — Shawn (05:07)
• Summing up legal ordeal: Matt details how the government seized his book earnings, kept him in legal limbo, required repayment plans, and ostracized him from the SEAL community for years:
  “The government immediately came after me...they said, hey, look, there's nothing classified in the book. We just want all the book money back. ...I pay $3,800 a month for the next 15 years.” (10:28–11:00)

3. Faith, Family, and Identity (08:59–17:42)

• Handling adversity:
  “My faith is easier to keep when I've been in the trenches, ...where I've had my biggest struggles is where I'm not in the fight...I guess I realized that anytime you're challenged in your faith, it's God testing you.” — Matt (09:10)
• PTSD & losing his community:
  “I've been fighting my own government for 12 years...Every single one of my friends...gone. Boom. If you talk to me, I was getting comms from guys on their wife's phone or prepaid 7-11 phones saying 'Yo dude...I'll come up for air.'” (165:36)

4. Upbringing and Path to Becoming a SEAL (20:28–31:53)

• Unique Alaskan childhood:
  “I grew up in a remote village in the middle of Alaska...Graduated high school with three people in my senior class. ...Drove a snowmobile to school.” (20:28–20:52)
• Inspiration from books & family:
  “I read books about the SEALs in Vietnam...That's why I wanted to join.” (24:43)
• Culture shock: Transitioning from rural Alaska to college in LA; then to military life and ROTC vs. Navy decision.

5. BUD/S and Green Team (31:01–44:38)

• SEAL training and mindset:
  “BUDS was simple enough where it was like, you get the deal. Yell, you run that way. Don't quit. Okay. Check. I got that. The selection [at Team 6] was, okay, how good are you...under stress and pressure?” (37:00–38:34)
• Green Team and Red Squadron:
  “I wanted to graduate and be assigned to one of the squadrons...Red was: 'Put up or shut up.' ...very black and white, right? Standards were this high.” (43:23)

6. Operational Deployments & Notable Missions (49:21–71:49)

• SEAL Team 6 pace & deployments:
  “The op tempo was through the roof. ...You were just deploying every six months or less.” (44:40)
• First kinetic experiences:
  “My first shootouts, my first everything was that deployment. ...Shot through the door, shooting through the door. That was the first. ...Oh my gosh, they're shooting back at us right now.” (34:37)
• Joining Delta for Iraq: Comparison, integration, mutual respect, and differences:
  “We swim more...But from the operator themselves, the way they're structured, the way they operate...very similar.” (57:15)
• Captain Phillips, casualties, and brotherhood:
  Clear-eyed reflections on loss, risk, and the evolution of tactics and leadership.
  “If I go through the contact list of my phone, yeah. 43 names...are dead...Talk about faith and my journey...The way I dealt with that, right, without going crazy, was I chalked it up as that was God's plan.” (68:32–70:42)

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Operation Neptune Spear: The Bin Laden Raid (81:08–123:29)

Initial Brief and Planning (81:08–89:05)

• Recall from leave:
  "They pulled 24 most senior of us in the squadron and briefed us up that, hey, look, we think we found him. We want you guys to plan the ground assault option." (81:25)
• Only mission he ever rehearsed:
  “Never rehearsed for a single mission...the only mission I ever rehearsed for sleeping line.” (84:42)
• High risk:
  “...you have up to a 70% chance being shot down on the Helo ride in or the helo ride out.” (88:20)

The Raid, Crash, and Execution (89:12–119:05)

• The plan:
  “Super simple, like we did in Baghdad. Top down, bottom up...We're going to squish him in the main house.” (89:12)
• Helicopter crash and why:
  “The op was moved to the right the next day. The temperature was 8 degrees warmer… we didn’t have the lift...because the President wanted to hit the White House Correspondent’s Dinner.” (91:48)
• On the ground, under fire:
  “I was setting my charge...AK-47 through the door...I picked up a little frag in my shoulder...found a bullet stuck in the handle of my bolt cutters.” (102:11)
• Combat clearance and CQB evolution:
  “We had started evolving our tactics...it was no longer hostage rescue clearance. It was combat clearance—slower, much more methodical.” (109:48–111:21)
• Killing Bin Laden:
  “Point man takes a couple shots, his head disappears into the room...You just heard some guy answer to the name Khalid...We step over Khalid, and head up to the third floor.” (107:05–109:23)
  “He’s basically twitching at the foot of his bed. There’s two women in the room. … Yes, [I shot him in the body]. A couple.” (114:13–116:35)
• Aftermath and exfiltration:
  “I can shut my eyes and remember the sound of his hollow skull bouncing down the stairs as we drug him down...”
  “...the only reason we made it back: some Army kid who joined the Army to refuel helicopters.” (119:04)

Notable Quotes

• “We turned over the body to some Army Rangers, and they’re the ones who flew it out to the carrier and dumped it. ... He’s just simply gone.” — Matt on why bin Laden was buried at sea (124:16)

Immediate Aftermath & Impact (123:29–131:01)

• Returning home:
  “We landed back at the beach...Nobody ever meets you when you come home from deployment, but half the command was standing there with pizza and beer...” (124:12)
• Mental health & insomnia:
  “I see [my friend] the day after...He looks at me...‘Hey man, can I ask you a question?...Are you sleeping?’...‘No, I'm not sleeping.’...That was the single most emotional conversation I ever had with any teammate in 14 years.” (127:56)
• Lack of institutional care for mental health and operators:
  “Not one second...was any leadership ever worrying about the individual operator...Nobody ever asked that.” (129:10)

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The Government’s Double Standard & Legal Ordeal (142:19–185:13)

Why Was Matt Targeted?

• Hypocrisy:
  “How does the government sue you for $7 million for writing a book, but the director of CIA has given full access to CIA HQ...for a movie?” (143:02)
• On McRaven, Panetta, and political priorities:
  “Admiral McRaven was at the command years ago, right before he was CO. He was not well-liked at all...He was very involved in trying to take away the dogs and ... all the stuff that helps keep us safe.” (133:05)

The Legal Battle

• Details of his defense and isolation:
  “Three years later, interrogations, all this nonsense...the only thing you failed to do was seek pre-publication review. But we want all the book money back.” (165:36)
• Financial repercussions:
  “I pay $3,800 a month for the next 15 years...I only served for 14. ... I got a plaque with my name misspelled.” (11:00, 233:41)
• Betrayal by the institution:
  “Here I am, right, Getting no help from the VA, and I don't know if it's because they said, hey, don't help this guy. Fuck him. I have no idea. ...I'd still be going to the VA for help.” (174:52)
• Loss of the brotherhood:
  “This brotherhood seems more like a school of sharks. And if there's blood in the water, they're coming after you. ...I care very little about it now.” (228:45)

The Trident Issue

• Attempt to strip him of SEAL status after leaving: “They did that to me too. Of course, I'd been out five years, and they came back and were like, hey, as part of this, we're going to. We want to take your...Trident.” (226:06)

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Notable Moments & Quotes

• “This story needs to be told.”
  — Shawn and Matt, on fighting back against institutional bullying and government hypocrisy throughout the episode.
• On faith and struggle:
  "Maybe God just challenged me through the whole thing that I've been through with the government to see if I was going to turn into a little bitch or not." (10:08)
• On leadership and betrayal:
  "By the time I got out... every major officer I knew was writing themselves up for their own awards...I saw the rules of engagement slowly starting to change, right? Making things more dangerous for us." (77:44)
• On mental health in SOF:
  “We don't have PTSD. We have LTSD: Lack of traumatic stress disorder. ...For a decade, our day job...was to creep into the house...That was our norm. ...I turned in my ID card, left the base, and never got shot at again." (237:45)
• On the future:
  “If people want to help me, they can go to my website mattbissonette.com and order a book. … And that cuts out all the middlemen...” (232:23)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment | |-----------|------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00–04:43 | Matt’s introduction, why he’s coming forward now | | 04:48–12:54 | The No Easy Day controversy and the government’s legal response | | 20:28–24:30 | Unique Alaskan upbringing and origin story | | 31:01–44:38 | BUD/S, Green Team, and Red Squadron culture | | 49:21–71:49 | First deployments, joining Delta, loss, and team culture | | 81:08–131:01 | Operation Neptune Spear: planning, execution, aftermath | | 142:19–185:13 | Lawsuit, book issues, double standards, and losing the brotherhood| | 185:13–232:00 | Battle with the VA, publishing woes, and the upcoming book | | 232:01–243:54 | Future plans, faith, and closing reflections |

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Final Thoughts & Takeaways

• Matt Bissonnette’s journey is one of front-line heroism met with post-service institutional betrayal, a story shared by many special operations veterans.
• He calls out the hypocrisy and double standards where accolades and media access go to high-ranking officers and politicians, but operators pay the costs.
• The episode stands as a stark challenge to the “quiet professionalism” dogma when used as a weapon against truth-tellers, rather than a shield to protect operational security.
• Matt’s story is ultimately one of survival, faith, and the need to reclaim the narrative, as he moves on to a new phase of life, vowing to speak for those without a platform.

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For more from Matt, visit mattbissonette.com for updates on his book No Easy Way.

For support, mental health resources, and future podcasts, follow The Shawn Ryan Show.

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Memorable Quotes with Timestamps

• “I've been fighting my own government for 12 years” – Matt (10:57)
• “Why did you conceal your identity?...I very much enjoy my anonymity…” – Matt (18:27)
• “I didn't want the story to be about me. It's irrelevant who wrote the book. It's like, let's hear the story.” – Matt (19:54)
• “That was the single most emotional conversation I ever had with any teammate in 14 years.” (127:56)
• “Nobody ever got. Nobody talked about it. Nobody talked about mental health.” (128:15)
• “The only way I sit here and smile and think about it now is thinking, maybe this was God just challenging me yet again...” (227:00)
• “I would have given anything for that team...Then I get out...this brotherhood seems more like a school of sharks.” (228:43)

Transcript

[Matt Bissonette]

Foreign.

[Sean Ryan]

Welcome to the show, man.

[Matt Bissonette]

Thanks, man. It's been a minute. Glad to be here.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, it has been a minute. But, man, I just. First off, I just want to say thank you for coming down here. I know this was a. A big, big, big decision for you. You've never revealed your identity before. This is the first time it's on, and that includes 60 minutes and a lot of. A lot of big publications that they wanted your story, and especially about the bin Laden raid and all that stuff. So, like I said, I know this was a major decision for you, and I just want to say I'm honored to be able to be the one to bring it out. So thank you.

[Matt Bissonette]

I'm only doing it here, so I appreciate it.

[Sean Ryan]

It's my honor. So. So what are we here to talk about today? We're here to talk about. You got a new book coming out, and we're going to talk about, you know, how the DoD basically went after you unjustly for the previous book, no Easy Day, written by Mark Owen. But, so we're going to talk all about that. Some of the names of the people that were involved in going after you from coming out of the darkness and trying to fuck you over. You know, I just want to say these are my favorite interviews to do. As much as I hate what happened to you, we've done. We've done this with Brad Geary, we've done this with the Blackwater guys. We did this with a Canadian sniper that held the world record for the longest sniper shot. He was on the team. Who else have we done this for? Our mutual attorney, our best buddy here, Tim Parlatores, going to be making an appearance. Who else have we done this for, Tim? Eddie Gallagher.

[Tim Parlatore]

J. Cal.

[Sean Ryan]

J. Cal. So these are. These are my favorite ones to do. Somebody with an amazing life story who's dedicated their entire life to government service, and now the government's trying to fuck you over, and we get to name the names of the people that are doing it and. And make them and their entire fucking bloodline ashamed to ever have been associated with these pieces of shit. It's my favorite thing to do. They just want to make them.

[Matt Bissonette]

It's a crazy story.

[Sean Ryan]

Hate going in public because. Because. So anyways, everybody starts off with an introduction. See, I'm excited about this shit, man. Matt Bissonnet, former Navy SEAL who served with Seal Team 6 and was part of the historic raid that took down Osama bin Laden. Author of the bestselling book no Easy Day under the pseudo name Mark Owen. Giving the world an insider's look at the mission that took bin Laden down. Stepping into the spotlight with your new book, no Easy way, and your YouTube channel, sharing unfiltered stories from your life and career. Consultant and executive producer for the CBS show SEAL Team. Faced legal battles with the government over your writing, but you're still pushing forward with your message of resilience, family, and faith. You're a husband, a father, and most importantly, a Christian. So once again, welcome to the show. And, Matt, you've stayed under the radar for. How many years has it been now?

[Matt Bissonette]

12.

[Sean Ryan]

12 years. Staying under the radar for 12 years. Never revealed your identity, your face, your name, nothing. Why? Why now?

[Matt Bissonette]

Why now? Well, as you know, I called you to talk about my next book and possibly coming on here to talk about that book. And through that discussion, we had a real, honest discussion, and you asked me some straightforward questions, like, why? Why are you still doing this? You've done it for 10, 12 years. Why not? And so through the discussion with you, I thought about it, prayed about it, and said, hey, maybe it is time.

[Tim Parlatore]

Right?

[Matt Bissonette]

It's been 12 years. I've fought this battle that I've been in very, very privately and very quietly to the best of my ability, and it's got me to this point. And the point was where I had to write the no Easy Way to tell this story. And. And so to then get this story out there and actually make sure people heard the true story and how I was treated. This is part of that journey.

[Sean Ryan]

So where is no Easy Way? Where are we in the process of.

[Matt Bissonette]

No Easy Way Book was submitted for government review, right?

[Sean Ryan]

You have to submit that one for government review.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yes, absolutely. Any book. Anybody who's signed a top secret clearance has to get any and all works reviewed. Now, is that enforced across the board? Absolutely not. They just go after who they want to. But, yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Didn't McRaven just do a special on this on Netflix or something?

[Matt Bissonette]

Admiral McRaven started on McRaven.

[Sean Ryan]

Didn't he just. Yeah, I mean, that's way bigger. That's a Netflix thing. Right. So he doesn't have to do it.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, I think there's a double standard here.

[Sean Ryan]

He doesn't have to do like that, but. So hold on, though. Why do you have to write. Why do you have to get the next book approved by the government? Are you talking about tactics?

[Matt Bissonette]

It is a long story, my friend. And I'm telling the story of what the government did to me over my first book. No easy.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, you have to get approval to tell the story on how the government fucked you over on your first book.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yes. And it's been six months and it hasn't been approved yet. They won't approve it. I've heard nothing. They keep slow rolling me, which. Which to me means the DOD swamp, right, that's there, wants to crush my story, doesn't want it out. And so again, that's part of the reason I'm coming on sitting down with you here, is to start telling the story and maybe shake the tree so people hear a little bit about. Of what these people did do to me.

[Sean Ryan]

Geez. Well, like I said, I'm excited to do this. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to do a life story on you. Starting from childhood, through your SEAL team careers into developing development group and then, you know, the book and everything that happened. I know there's a lot. Well, it's. It's basically two interviews in one because of. Of the shit you're dealing with now. But. But before we get going, I got a couple of things to knock out for you, so I got you some gifts, Matt. Here you go. Everybody gets those.

[Matt Bissonette]

Very excited about these. I've got a lot of people asking for these. If I got some today, they wanted me to bring and share with them. So thank you.

[Sean Ryan]

We'll load you up and then every once in a while we give one of these out on the show. So I got a buddy over at sig, his name's Jason.

[Matt Bissonette]

Got a good buddy over at sig, yeah, he's man.

[Sean Ryan]

He was really excited about this interview. So I thought it would be a good idea to present you with one of those. So that's the SIG Sauer P365 Legion. You like that?

[Matt Bissonette]

Do you already have one? Yes, of course.

[Sean Ryan]

Son of a. Well, now you got two. But the Legion, one for each of.

[Matt Bissonette]

You, is my favorite. The legions, the. The ducks, nuts. So thank you. Hey, you're welcome. You're welcome. And then, wait, I got something for you.

[Tim Parlatore]

Okay.

[Matt Bissonette]

Eagles and Angels. You ever heard of the brand? Yeah, dude, former Delta buddy of mine, right? He uses our old camouflage, right? We donated uniform. He cuts them out. I had these made with a godly trust because I knew you were a fan.

[Sean Ryan]

And these are awesome.

[Matt Bissonette]

Thank you. Thank you. Love it.

[Sean Ryan]

These will go in the studio. Thank you. This is your uniform, right?

[Matt Bissonette]

Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on.

[Matt Bissonette]

It's pretty cool, right? They do different operators and they. They, you know, borrow a set of cammies, they cut them up and then they they sell them. And it's kind of cool. Collector's items.

[Sean Ryan]

Very cool. Thank you. Thank you. And then. All right, one last thing. So I got a Patreon account. We've turned it into one hell of a community. They have supported me since the very beginning, and they're the real reason that we even get to sit down and have this discussion today. So I offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. This is from Matt Stockton. How do you keep your faith with so much opposition, and how did you find so much solid solidarity after war fighting?

[Matt Bissonette]

What's the first part again? How do I keep my faith?

[Sean Ryan]

How do you keep your faith with so much opposition? And how do you find so much solidarity after war fighting?

[Matt Bissonette]

I would say I keep my. My faith is easier to keep when I've been in the trenches, when I've been in the fight, because it's much more. I'm in the fight and I need to remember right where I've had my biggest struggles is where I'm not in the fight. And it seems kind of quiet and there's not a lot of stuff going on and that's where I've struggled. So in the most emotional experiences or when we dealt with a lot of death in the teams or whatever it was, that was where I was able to understand that my faith. And there's a plan, right? Dealing with the government stuff. I was in a very, very dark, negative place getting out of the teams. I mean, I was in a very dark place after the way the government was treating me. And I guess I realized that anytime you're challenged in your face, it's God testing you. That's the way I looked at it.

[Tim Parlatore]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

Maybe God just challenged me through the whole thing that I've been through with the government to see if I was going to turn into a little bitch or not. Was I going to man up and deal with this the right way, or was I going to fold, melt and. And become somebody I wasn't proud of? And so.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on, man. Well, you definitely didn't fold, so.

[Matt Bissonette]

It's been a long fight, man. It's been a long fight. I'm still in it. Yeah, I'm still in it. I got a payment plan for the next 15 years.

[Sean Ryan]

Tell me about that. So give me a brief snapshot of what happened.

[Matt Bissonette]

Okay. We're jumping all over here. You want to jump in where? The book. Where are we going to?

[Sean Ryan]

We're going to go. Just a brief snapshot of what you're going through. Let's say 90 seconds or less, and then we'll, we'll cover that in detail when we get to it.

[Matt Bissonette]

I've been, I've been fighting my own government for 12 years.

[Sean Ryan]

You wrote a book on the Bin Lamore.

[Matt Bissonette]

I wrote no Easy Day. Right. The government immediately came after me for writing that book without a pre publication review process being done. They, they came after me legally with unlimited attorneys for a whole bunch of time. Ultimately, they said, hey, look, there's nothing classified in the book. We just want all the book money back. Well, I had spent a million and a half of that book money on my lawyer fees defending myself against these baseless accusations. And in the end, the government said, we want it all back. So I gave them all the money. Book, the book money that I had left. And they said, look, you're still missing 1.5. We want that back too. So I sued my attorney. I won. Went back to the government with a winning malpractice case saying, hey, I relied on the advice of counsel to publish my book without a review. I know the government didn't want to look at this, but I sued my attorney and won. Will you relook at this case? They said, no. I said, well, I can't pay you a million and a half in three years. Give me some sort of payment plan. And so they said, give us all the money your malpractice suit made your winning malpractice suit. And then they put me on a payment plan. So I pay $3,800 a month for the next 15 years. They said if I miss one payment, they'll charge me back taxes and come after me again. I only served for 14 years, right? I served for 14 years. I got a plaque with my name misspelled when I got out. Right. One T and Matt. But yet they want me to pay back more money than I ever would have made in my service for longer than I ever served. I only served for 14. I got a 15 year payment plan. So that, and the story behind that is what I wrote about in no easy way, that's the story that the government's trying to slow roll in the review process right now. And it's the reason that I'm sitting here with, so I can start sharing this story a little bit more publicly. I've been very private about it. I've just tried to duke it out with them the best way I could through the legal system, and it's got me to here.

[Sean Ryan]

Holy shit. So here we are, Matt, we gotta talk about how to Set up a better straw man. Mark Owen.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, the Mark Owen. Easy to find. The Mark Owen name didn't last more than two seconds. And it was actually, it was a Fox News producer like one of their online producers who actually ran my real name.

[Sean Ryan]

Are you fucking kidding me?

[Matt Bissonette]

Never would have guessed that, but okay, it was an online producer. So. Right. It's pretty easy to find people's home addresses online these days, right? Pretty easy.

[Sean Ryan]

Figure that out.

[Matt Bissonette]

So I've got some friends that they set up a whole bunch of online Personas if somebody's trying to find me. And all of the home addresses that are linked to my fake accounts are all that Fox News producer's home address.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, that's fucking genius. Nice work, Nice work.

[Matt Bissonette]

I do, I do.

[Sean Ryan]

One other question before we get in the life story. Why did you, I mean, another famous SEALS come out? You know about this raid? Rob o', Neill, everybody knows. I'm just curious. Why did, why did you decide to conceal yourself when you came out, when you wrote the book, when you did? I mean, 60 Minutes did a piece on you. They did. I mean, probably a better disguise than you've ever seen throughout your entire fucking career. Definitely throughout my career, I've never seen a disguise that well done. I mean, it was like Hollywood production. It was wild.

[Matt Bissonette]

It was Hollywood level makeup people that came out and did it. But to answer your question, a, I was a kid who. I grew up reading books. I grew up reading books about the community. That's why I wanted to join. I read books about the seals in Vietnam. Boom. Had my, had my. Right, my service. I knew, I knew the President had authorized the movies and the books, right. I knew all of that was happening. Right. Three weeks after the Bin Laden, we go to Leon Panetta's retirement ceremony from Langley, Virginia. He's going to go over and be Secretary of Defense. He gives a great speech on stage, gets off stage. Langley, Virginia, right. And he literally brings over Catherine Bigelow and Mark Bowl, Hollywood producer, screenwriter, director for Zero Dark Thirty. Panetta introduces them to us and says, hey, look, they're going to make you famous. So. So within three weeks, less than a month of the mission.

[Sean Ryan]

For those that don't know, Leon Panetta was director of CIA at the time.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yep. Right. So he full access for Hollywood for that movie, right? I knew that firsthand. Within a month of the mission, right? I got out of the Navy, right. I hurt my neck in the crash. That was the last mission I was ever on. I get out of the Navy later that fall I'm contacted by the author, Mark Bowden. Mark Bowden wrote Black Hawk Down. He wrote a book called the Finish about the bin Laden raid. And he contacts me, he's like, hey Matt, I've already interviewed President Obama. I got the White House perspective of the raid. I've already interviewed Admiral McRaven. I got the JSOC perspective of the raid. We would love to interview you for your ground truth perspective. Fascinating. I already knew the movie, right? Movie was percolating, like when do you want your book to come out? It's like, well, we're trying hard to get it out before the election. Okay, so I'm an enlisted guy, right. I work for a living, right. I'm not the, I'm not the admiral, I'm not the general, I'm not the President, but I'm the Director of CIA. I'm sitting in my position watching every single leader from this country be willing to talk about their heroic actions for their right reelection campaign. Whatever you want to call, pissed me off, all right? It made me mad because none of the 24 operators that were on the mission were getting any credit for it, right? It was all the heroic decision making in Washington D.C. and so, so that's when I, I knew I was getting out. I whole bunch of us had been to ground zero, right? I'd never been to New York City before. We went to ground zero after the Bin Laden raid crushed me, right? I stood there at ground zero and, and I'm pretty, pretty good at blocking out the emotions. It crushed me. And I knew I had hurt my back pretty significantly on the Hilo crash. I was getting a divorce. I had done 13 straight tours at that time and it just felt like really good bookends. My very first deployment, 9, 11 happened. Last thing I did is crash into his compound. I'm now so senior they're going to take me out of the operational side of things.

[Tim Parlatore]

Damn.

[Matt Bissonette]

And I didn't join to be the troop commander. I didn't join to be the officer. I joined to be stay enlisted, right. I had my degree, stayed enlisted the whole time.

[Sean Ryan]

You were on the invasion.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

You were on the invasion. Holy shit. So the whole career kicked. Wow.

[Matt Bissonette]

So my whole career, I saw it happen, I saw it evolve and then I saw it, I saw it spiraling towards the end, right? I saw, I saw the officers and the self promotion side of things. I just, by the time I got back from the bin Laden mission and I knew I was hurt at that point, we went to Ground zero, I was like Man, I'm, I am cooked. I was done. Came back from that and called it.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn. Why did you conceal your identity?

[Matt Bissonette]

Oh, sorry, I missed that part. Because why not? If somebody can tell me the upside of being out there and, and being famous or, or trying to be silent. Right. I very much enjoy my anonymity. My neighbors where I live, you know, 20ft away, I have no clue anything about my background. And I like it that way. I didn't. I read all these books growing up, right. I served 13 straight tours and none of it did I do by myself. So, so why would I then now all of a sudden write a book talking about all my heroic actions? I just, I never saw it that way. I was like, okay, well, if I'm gonna wr, I'm going to do it in my terms and I'm not going to show my face because that's irrelevant.

[Sean Ryan]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

The story is what it is, has nothing to do with what we look like.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonette]

And so, yeah, that's when I was like, okay, I want to tell the story. I want to do it accurately, authentically, and then I don't want to be the center line of the story. So I'm going to remove myself from the equation. And that's where it started.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, I mean, I think it's pretty damn smart idea. I mean, one of the. How many guys were on the raid? 25, 24. 24 people out of the entire world on the raid. That takes out the world's most wanted man and pissed a lot of people off.

[Matt Bissonette]

But I didn't want the story to be about me. Who? It's irrelevant who wrote the book. It's like, let's hear the story. Who are these type of people? Where do they come from? Where do you know? Who are these guys? What are seals? What are they all about?

[Tim Parlatore]

Right?

[Matt Bissonette]

And I think Hollywood does a pretty shitty job in portraying it. Right. They think we all look like Jocko Willink. Right. But I'm sorry, I don't look like Jocko. I don't run like Goggins. Right. Like. Sorry.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. Well, glad to. Glad you're here once again. So let's, let's get into it. Where did you grow up?

[Matt Bissonette]

I grew up in a remote village in the middle of Alaska. My parents were missionaries, Christian missionaries. A village called Antioch, Alaska. 350 miles northwest of Anchorage on the Kuskokwim River. 500 people.

[Sean Ryan]

Whoa.

[Matt Bissonette]

Drove a snowmobile to school in the morning. Graduated high school with three people in my senior class.

[Sean Ryan]

What?

[Matt Bissonette]

I was a valedictorian Congratulations. Our high school mascot. And you can Google it still to this day, right? Antiox. The name of the village. Our. Our high school mascot was the Half Breeds.

[Sean Ryan]

Are you serious?

[Matt Bissonette]

The Antioch Half Breeds. The mighty, mighty Half Breeds, Right? High school cheerleaders. And everybody thinks it's a derogatory term, right? I say bullshit, right? In the village in Alaska, right? I was one of the few white kids that were in the village, right? Most everybody was a half breed. And everybody was proud of that heritage. And what was the moral of the story? Nobody cares what color you are. Don't be an asshole. That's the way I grew up, man. I grew up in a village as a minority, as the white kid appreciating the fact that everybody was a half breed, right? I drove a snowmobile to school. I bought my first AR15 for my history teacher after class. Get the fuck out of here. What? After class, I gave him 700 in cash. He reaches under his deck, pulls out my. My Colt AR15A2, and boom. I put it in my locker till the end of the day.

[Sean Ryan]

What?

[Matt Bissonette]

School ends. I slung my new rifle, walked out of school, got on my snowmobile and drove home. Holy shit. So, yeah. What's the name of this town? Anniak. A N, I, A K. Love it. So, yeah, man. It was a middle school, dude.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, hold on. So you're the only. You're the only white kid in a town of. No, there's 300, 500.

[Matt Bissonette]

There's a handful. Not more than 100.

[Sean Ryan]

I guess what I'm asking is how the hell did your family wind up here?

[Matt Bissonette]

Missionaries. I was born in California with two sisters. Right. My parents was. My dad was a teacher and had an opportunity to move to Alaska and teach for some of these remote villages. And. Right. They were always Christian and knew their faith and so moved to the village. My dad ultimately became the village magistrate. So, like, the law in town, right? Log cabin, courthouse. Right. 100% of the rules broken in town were alcohol related, so.

[Tim Parlatore]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

You get drunk, beat up your old lady, my dad would arraign you to three weeks in jail. Well, we didn't have a jail in our town, so you'd have to fly a little Cessna down to the next bigger village, do your three weeks in the drunk tank or whatever you're doing, and you'd fly back to our village, and you're trying to get back to yours. Well, the weather would roll in and you. You couldn't fly from place to place, so you just got sent to jail. For three weeks. The only person you know in my village is my dad. So you show back up at the courthouse, knock on the door, hey, Mr. Terry. Oh, hey, Sean. I see you're out. Well, yeah, well, I'm trying to get back to my village, but the weather rolled in. We can't travel, you know, Can I stay at your house? So my dad would be like, sure, but you got to stay for church on Sunday. So we'd literally have a guy that my dad sent to jail. He's back three weeks later. He literally stayed on our. Slept on our couch in our living room. And then on Sunday morning, you know, we'd have kind of a small church service at the house. And there's. There's my dad's buddy.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow. Wow. That's. That is.

[Matt Bissonette]

I never heard that. I never wanted to leave the village, man. I thought the village was as a young man, right? Hunting, fishing, running around. 16 years old. I'm taking a boat up the river for a week at a time with a fishing pole and some. Some guns, a dog, and you know a damn. We'd come back a week later, right? I barely trust a 16 year old to valet park a car these days.

[Sean Ryan]

No kidding.

[Matt Bissonette]

Alaska was. It was just a whole different deal.

[Sean Ryan]

So you spent your entire childhood up there? Yeah, damn near. Anyways.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, that's it. Graduated high school, and then all I ever wanted to do, right? I read these books in middle school for a book report. Found the book, Men with Green Faces. SEAL book from Vietnam.

[Sean Ryan]

I read that book.

[Matt Bissonette]

Gene Wentz is the author. I've met him. That was pretty cool. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Yep.

[Matt Bissonette]

That was the first book I read. And a man was hooked. Like, man. I kept reading more and more books, more and more books, and it's like, I don't. I told my dad one day, he's like, no, you don't want to join the military? I'm like, no, this is what I'm doing. He's like, well, would you go to college first? You know, all you know is this village in Alaska, go to college. I'm like, sure, okay. But I'm still going to the Navy. They were hoping I'd change my mind. So I went to school in Los Angeles, same school my parents had went to. So I didn't know anything about, right? I went to college.

[Sean Ryan]

Talk about a fucking culture shock.

[Matt Bissonette]

I'd never driven on the freeway. I had never worked a gas pump at the gas station, right? Like, before, ATM cards. Put a 20 on pump three, right? We had a barge that would come up the river and deliver fuel to like a 700 gallon fuel tank in front of our house that we would use for the year, right? I went to college. I showed up in Southern California with a flannel work boots, like, hey, I'm here for school. Like, nice. Who's this knucklehead?

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah. I'd never been on a date. I'd never driven on the freeway. I'd never done anything, man.

[Sean Ryan]

You'd never been on a date?

[Matt Bissonette]

It's a village high school. Class of three got to go to the next village. Village of Alaska. Where are you taking them?

[Sean Ryan]

Holy. You've never been on a date? Not telling college, no girlfriend, nothing. Okay, give me.

[Matt Bissonette]

Hold on.

[Sean Ryan]

I got to hear this.

[Matt Bissonette]

First girlfriend from down the river. The village. Down the river, down the R. I.

[Sean Ryan]

Mean, what did you guys do for a date? Well.

[Matt Bissonette]

Well, okay, so we. For basketball, right? I played basketball. Matt. Miss the net. When I played basketball, we would. You'd fly a Cessna from village to village, and that's how you'd, you know, compete with other schools. And so when you'd fly to the other schools, there was always like a. A dance that night. So, you know, whatever. So that was. That was it, man. Fly from village to village. You're there for the weekend. Play some basketball, find the locals, make some friends.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on, man.

[Tim Parlatore]

I.

[Sean Ryan]

Let's talk about the four Fs. That sounds like that was. Was a something.

[Matt Bissonette]

That's straight from my father.

[Sean Ryan]

With you.

[Matt Bissonette]

Straight from my father. That he demonstrated. Right. A lot of people talk. My dad demonstrated and, and he demonstrated his four Fs were. Were what guided him through life. That's his family, his friends, his fun, and his faith. And so that's that. My dad passed last December and.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, man, I'm sorry to hear that.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah. 30 year battle with Parkinson's. So long, long spiral. Never heard him complain once. Not once. So that's. That's rubbed off on me as I've dealt with my situation. Right. Whether I was going to turn into a little bitch and start complaining or if I was going to put my head down, get to work, and deal with it.

[Tim Parlatore]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

What about your mother?

[Matt Bissonette]

Mom still here. Doing fine.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonette]

Miles an hour.

[Sean Ryan]

You guys close?

[Matt Bissonette]

Very.

[Sean Ryan]

Grew up close.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah. Because you're in a village in Alaska. Not much else to do, Right. I went to college after college. Joined the Navy.

[Sean Ryan]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

Enlisted. I thought they. My parents thought I would have lost focus on the. On the SEAL thing and. No, I was just as amped up. I. I tried army ROTC in college. So they sent me to jump school, right? Army rotc. So kind of got a little sidetracked, thinking, okay, maybe, maybe I'll do this ROTC thing. Was an officer in the army and I went to jump school as a cadet, and, and I'm at the chow hall and jump school and I'm sitting across from, right, these seals. Little did I know, they just graduated buds, right? But I think they're hairy chested frogmen and, and they're making fun of my stupid army haircut. And I was devastated. I was like, fuck, these guys are making fun of my hair. Like, if I, if I continue with this army thing, I'm, I'm going to go have to do the haircuts and boots and like that's a thing. And I had read all these books about the Navy. I was like, no, man, I, I came back from jump school, my cadet status, I went to my little ROTC boss and I'm like, hey, man, I can't do this. I, I've always dreamt about the Navy and that's what I'm going to go do.

[Sean Ryan]

They made fun of my fucking hair.

[Matt Bissonette]

I'm out. I'm out. This is bullshit. Yeah, that was it. Left rotc, graduated, and then enlisted in the Navy.

[Sean Ryan]

So you did, you got your degree.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yep, yep.

[Sean Ryan]

What's your degree in?

[Matt Bissonette]

Social science.

[Sean Ryan]

Nice, nice.

[Matt Bissonette]

Waste of time. Waste of time. Never used it, but I had it. I went to the recruiter's office, enlisted. They're like, great, you have a degree, you can join as an E3. So E3 torpedo man. It's the shortest a school I could find, right? All my buddies did Gunner's Mate and they're like, oh, six months. Don't do that. So, yeah, Torpedoman, I think it was six weeks, nine weeks, something like that. And straight to buds. Glass 226.

[Sean Ryan]

Nice.

[Matt Bissonette]

And then I made it straight through. So that was.

[Sean Ryan]

The honor man. Correct.

[Matt Bissonette]

So they say, why'd you get honor man? Do you know somebody else picked me?

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, right. Come on. You got a good inclination.

[Matt Bissonette]

I like to work hard. That's it.

[Sean Ryan]

You like? Did you find buds challenging at all?

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, of course. Of course. Buzz is challenging. I'm not gonna say buds is not challenging, but I had read 6 million books and, and set my expectations here. And so I think I had set them so high, maybe it was a little, little down from where I had set them at. Didn't mean it wasn't hard, right? One of my best friends, every morning he'd Wake up. He's like this, I'm quitting today. And then he'd never quit, but every morning he'd tell me he was quitting.

[Sean Ryan]

Where?

[Matt Bissonette]

Where?

[Tim Parlatore]

Me?

[Matt Bissonette]

I was like, okay, if I. If I allow myself to think that every morning. Every morning he's like, bis, I'm out of here.

[Sean Ryan]

This.

[Matt Bissonette]

And he'd never leave. I'm like, listen, you got to fix this because you're really. You're really rubing me wrong. You're lying to me. Every morning you're with me and you're not quitting. I was afraid if I ever entertained those thoughts, I'd quit. So I was like, no, not quitting. Never entertained them. And went right through.

[Sean Ryan]

What did your parents think?

[Matt Bissonette]

I don't think they knew what to think. I think that's the part when I started lying to my parents. Right. As soon as you graduate, it's like, what they know is what they know, and they don't really need to know anything more for right now. Right. I graduated. Nothing going on. Still pre 9 11. And then on my very first deployment, I was sitting in Okinawa, Japan. Watched it all transpire on my barracks television.

[Sean Ryan]

No.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah. I mean, we were. We were like, holy shit. Like, think about it. Your first deployment, brand new guy, nobody in your platoon seen any combat. Like, you know, there's the stories of guys going around and maybe the little Grenada, Panama here and there, but nobody'd really done anything. And then now we're. We watched 911 unfold on my television and.

[Tim Parlatore]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

The rest is history.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, what did you think when you saw that? Were you.

[Matt Bissonette]

The first one had hit by the time we had turned on the news, and by the time the second one hit, we watched that live, and there was all sorts of speculation between the first and the second. Hey, what was this accident? Whatever, who knew? But by the time you watched the second plane fly in, it was the gut punch that you were like, okay, this is real. Something's happening. And if that doesn't give you goosebumps and think you're going to work, something's wrong. So, I mean, I probably would have got out of the teams had we not gone to had 911 happen.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, right.

[Matt Bissonette]

I would have done my time and got out, but now I was smack Dab. New guy. 911 just happened. We finished that deployment, came back, did another workup, and then the next. My next deployment, we deployed right to Iraq for the kind of initial invasion up into Baghdad. Man, dude still still running like thin skin Humvees like before the IED threat. Way, way, way. What, what?

[Sean Ryan]

Just what an arc of a career. So your first deployment, you're watching 911 happen, your last deployment?

[Matt Bissonette]

Well, we don't count as a deployment.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, your last, your last mission. I mean you take the, I mean you're taking the guy out that orchestrate. It's just wild to me. That's. And you're on the invasion, so you what? So first deployment, you watch 911 happen. Second deployment, you're on that invasion and you're at team five, correct?

[Matt Bissonette]

Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

How did it feel going on the invasion? Well, because I would imagine, I don't.

[Matt Bissonette]

Want to, I don't want to upset my team. Three fellas that were there before us, right, they had done the oil platforms and moved up inland. By the time five came and swapped out with three, we were just now taking Baghdad. And so we took Baghdad and then moved into one of the palaces and spent the next, the rest of my deployment running ops out of Baghdad, which was okay, like living the dream, right? Young frogman, we got, we got an enemy, we're going to take the fight to them. And you're new, impressionable and gung ho. So away we went.

[Sean Ryan]

Was it pretty kinetic?

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, for that, for going from zero before. Yeah. I mean my first shootouts, my first everything was that deployment. There was a lot of learning happened that deployment, but it's still learning because It's a Team 5 platoon. That's pretty new. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, let's talk about what was your first, what was the first shootout? What was your first gunfight like? Was it what you had expected? Reading all the books?

[Matt Bissonette]

It's never as expected. Right. You can think what you're going to think and it never plays out that way. At least that's in my opinion. Shot through the door, shooting through the door. That was the first. First.

[Sean Ryan]

First.

[Matt Bissonette]

Oh my gosh, they're shooting back at us right now. Right. We'd assaulted a target, just hitting houses, hitting houses. And it was at the front door and they just started pumping rounds through the front door. And that was the first time I was like, oh, okay, all right, something's happening here.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on.

[Matt Bissonette]

That was it.

[Sean Ryan]

What else were you guys doing that deployment?

[Matt Bissonette]

That was it, right. We lived in the Green Zone, lived in one of the palaces out by biop, Baghdad International Airport. Worked for the different intel agencies, kind of giving us targets and we'd go do our best to roll them up. Right. I thought we were pretty cool at the time. Little, you know. Then every night you'd see these Cool black helicopters flying over. And I'd go to my boss like, hey, boss, why don't we have those little birds around? There's some. Why are we in thin skin Humvees right now? Why aren't we in, like, a. Why aren't we flying to these targets? Those little birds look really cool. They're like, well, you don't get those assets here. So that's when I started learning a little more about the big leagues and the different assets that came with different units. And so I had screened for my previous command before my second deployment. So I got word on the Iraqi deployment that I'd got picked up to go to training to see if I could make it into. Damn.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay, so for those that are listening that don't know what damn neck is, that's where SEAL Team 6 Development Group is at.

[Matt Bissonette]

So I've heard. I don't know anything about it.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, you better be careful. These admirals might come after you.

[Matt Bissonette]

They will.

[Sean Ryan]

So. So Team six pops on your radar because all the assets, such as all the cool toys that they get, you're seeing that.

[Matt Bissonette]

And all the guys I knew at 5, right. Some of the. The bigger studs that I knew would, like, disappear. And then they went off to go see if they could screen. And so I'm like, all right, well, if I'm here, I need to try this. And so.

[Sean Ryan]

So you got word. You got word that you got accepted to.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, I'd screened before the second deployment, and then I got word, what, six, nine months later that I had been picked up. I barely passed my PT test.

[Sean Ryan]

Are you serious, bro?

[Matt Bissonette]

We were. We were doing a SR in Fort Camp Pendleton, and literally they called us two days prior, and they're like, hey, your screening test is like, tomorrow morning. I've been eating MREs, face painted, living under a tree for like three days, and literally three other dudes got pulled out of the field, drove down to San Diego, and the next morning we had our PT test. Holy. And. And I barely passed my push ups. Right.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah. Yeah. A little worried about that. Like, all right, are they. Are they even gonna, you know, they even gonna pick me up? Because I was a slipknot and barely passed my push ups. They. I got picked up and. And then I made sure my push ups were good for the. You take a screening test, day one of of training, they show up and give you a hard one. So.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on.

[Matt Bissonette]

I had to make sure I was ready for that.

[Sean Ryan]

So you passed the screen test. You get in there, let's Talk about showing up for training. How was that? Pretty cool.

[Matt Bissonette]

Different, right? Right. You go to buds, you have the. I'd read a whole bunch about buds. I hadn't read much about this. I didn't know much about this. I knew BUDS was more of a. Hey, don't quit. Check. I've got. I don't have that word in my vocabulary now. It's okay. How can. Can you. Selection and training. Probably more selection than training. Right. So they want to know you have it or you don't. And day one, it's shotgun blast to the face. And then it's. I thought getting into that unit was twice as hard as Bud's.

[Sean Ryan]

Really?

[Matt Bissonette]

Bud's was simple enough where it was like, you get the deal.

[Sean Ryan]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yell, you run that way. Don't quit. Okay. Check. I got that. The selection was okay. How good are you at what we've trained you to do? And can you make really good decisions under stress and pressure? And can you do that? Right. It's not just about just quitting anymore. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

You found that to be a lot harder.

[Matt Bissonette]

I loved. Was much harder. Right. Because now the selection process in which they are judging you on has nothing to do with you. Just didn't quit. Now it's okay. How good are you at the game? Right. BUDS was don't quit. We'll train you some basics. Now, you've been a SEAL for a handful of years now we want to put you to the test of what you know. And we're going to put high expectations on you. And then if you don't cut it, you're out. So I loved it, but it was very demanding.

[Sean Ryan]

Can you say how many people you started with? Do you know?

[Matt Bissonette]

I don't remember the exact number. I would say rough, rough numbers. 50% washed out.

[Sean Ryan]

50% washed out.

[Matt Bissonette]

And no disrespect, no, hey, you're an asshole. You don't cut it here. It's like, hey, you just don't cut it here. Go back to a team. Depending on what you failed out for, you may have a chance to kind of reapply and screen again. Or, or you just go back and that's it.

[Sean Ryan]

Gotcha.

[Matt Bissonette]

50Ish.

[Sean Ryan]

So when you say it's mostly selection, a little bit of training. So I mean, are they. So they. You have a baseline when you show up there that they, they, they have an expectation from, from the baseline that they, you know, I mean, so are you not learning in the training pipeline?

[Matt Bissonette]

You are, and they will learn. They will teach you something new every Single day. Every single day you're getting something new. And it's, it's, it's just, it's amazing. Every single day. And if, if you're the guy who didn't pick it up the day prior, the next day there are, okay, now they stack something new on top and you weren't getting what they got yesterday. Okay, the next day, something more. And if you're, next thing you know, you got three of these things stacked up above you and you're not keeping up, you're not, you're not going to last too long.

[Sean Ryan]

So what, what, what did you find to be the hardest part of green team? For those who don't know, Green team is a training. It's the training regimen to get into into development group.

[Matt Bissonette]

I think it's, it's an individual operator's ability to identify a situation. Right. It could be an elephant, a big, big elephant and be able to be like, okay, I'm going to eat that elephant one bite at a time. I'm going to prioritize those bites smartly and I'm going to start eating right. And the hardest part of training was, was that they were constantly putting big elephants in front of you, stressing you out, wanting to see how you dealt with that size of that challenge, the complexity of that challenge. Did you quit because the elephant's too big or did you say, okay, check, I'll eat that elephant. What size bite size piece can I take? I'm going to start prioritizing those bites and start eating. Gotcha. Like, the tactics were what they were. They're constantly throwing something new at you if you're into it and like that type of stuff. It was, it's the best training you'll ever get. Every single day you're learning something new and getting faster and better and better and, and if guys weren't cutting it, they were gone.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you get honor man of this too?

[Matt Bissonette]

They don't give an honor man in green team.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on. All right, so what, what is the. I've never really talked to anybody. We've talked pretty extensively about what green team is, what the what the what what what the what the different cycles are of the, of the program and all that kind of stuff. But what, what is the graduation like?

[Matt Bissonette]

There isn't one.

[Sean Ryan]

There is no graduation. How do you know where you're gonna go?

[Matt Bissonette]

It's like the last couple months of training, they'll be like, hey, you guys are going to this color, you're going to that color. You're going to that color. And you just. I mean, I remember guys who, the guys who went to one. One of the squadrons. I won't mention the color, but the, the guys in my class that were going to the next squadron that we're deploying, they literally left green team two weeks early, checked into their squadron, and deployed.

[Sean Ryan]

No shit.

[Matt Bissonette]

So they were like, you're. You're graduating and integrated into your second deck squadron. And for them, they, they deployed. I waited three months and I deployed three months after my, I graduated.

[Sean Ryan]

Gotcha.

[Matt Bissonette]

So it's, it's, the pace is insane at that facility.

[Sean Ryan]

And you went to red squadron?

[Matt Bissonette]

I went, yes.

[Sean Ryan]

Where did you want to go? Did you want to go to red?

[Matt Bissonette]

It doesn't matter. I wanted to graduate and be assigned to one of the squadrons.

[Sean Ryan]

You didn't care which one.

[Matt Bissonette]

I think when you're going through and you're envisioning up on what the differences are and how you, you want to make believe that there's something special and different, in reality, they're not. And whichever one you land in, you're going to be happy and content and welcomed.

[Sean Ryan]

Are there different cultures for different teams?

[Matt Bissonette]

I didn't think so. Maybe little nuances, but not, not, not significant enough to speak about.

[Sean Ryan]

How would you describe the culture of red?

[Matt Bissonette]

Put up or shut up? I don't know. Like, very cut and dry. Black or white, right?

[Tim Parlatore]

Like.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, no, no, no quarter. Right. It was. Standards were this high, and if you didn't cut the standard, we're not going to give you a break on it. Right. Here's the standard. You either meet it or exceed it or we're going to have problems. I loved it because everything was very black and white and you were either on one side or the other. And. Yeah, and then, and then, of course, right. The op tempo was, was through the roof. Right. I done two deployments at Team 5, which were the longer, slower ones. And then you get to that command and they're more often and quicker. And so then showed up and then just started. Started deploying every six months or less or whatever it was, it was just constant.

[Sean Ryan]

What was it like showing up to red?

[Matt Bissonette]

Everything that I'd always dreamt it would be, it was.

[Sean Ryan]

Let's, let's talk.

[Matt Bissonette]

It's a bold statement.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, let's talk about, let's just describe it.

[Matt Bissonette]

Day one, you go up to. Well, now it's all different. But, but we went up to the second deck, right, which is where all the squadrons are stationed. You show up with your case of beer and you introduce yourself and, right. The whole squadron's sitting around. They're like, all the new guys are standing there like, okay, Bish, you know, stand up. Tell us about yourself and you know, where you're from. You're like, hi, my name's Matt, and I, Team five. They're like, shut up. Oh, no, no, keep going. You're like, okay, well, I was at team 5. Shut the fuck up. New guy. You're like, all right, check. All right, here's my beer. The next guy goes, and they yell at him. They're like, great. We don't care anything about you. Welcome to the team. You're new, doesn't care what you used to do in the past. You're now part of the team. Let's go. That was it. And then. And then we went to work, man. And we went to work.

[Sean Ryan]

What's the team room like?

[Matt Bissonette]

In what way?

[Sean Ryan]

I don't know. Do they have any artifacts in there from missions?

[Matt Bissonette]

It's like this. On steroids, right? It's cool. Cool. Artifacts from. From missions all over the place. A whole bunch of computers around the walls of the room, right? We got a new command by the time I left, so it was updated. The one I moved into was the old school, the OG building. It's been updated a lot since then.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on. Any, Any. Any particular artifacts that stick out in your mind?

[Matt Bissonette]

Nothing. They're all artifacts.

[Sean Ryan]

Nothing? Nothing.

[Matt Bissonette]

Nothing that cool.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on. Well, Matt, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll get into some of the different operations that you were on before the Bin Laden raid. Cool. Did you know your personal information could be making companies rich without you even knowing it? Every day, data brokers gather your details from public records and across the Internet. Your name, address, phone number, and even information about your family, and sell it without your permission. There's an entire hidden marketplace built on your privacy and most people have no idea that it even exists. That's where Aura steps in. Aura helps remove your personal information from data broker sites and keeps it off. It's a complete digital security platform that protects every part of your life online. And if your identity is ever stolen, you're covered with up to $5 million in identity theft insurance and 24. 7 US based fraud support to help you recover fast. With Aura, you get it all. Data broker removal, credit and identity monitoring and real human support all in one easy to use app. Right now, you can try Aura for free for 14 days when you visit aura.comsrs that's enough time For Aura to start removing your personal information from data broker sites, sign up [e-mail] SRS and get the peace of mind that your privacy, identity and finances are safeguarded. That's aura.com SRS Certain terms may apply. See the site for details. The cost of everything is still out of control, and many of us are relying on credit cards. If that debt is piling up, you're not alone. Americans collectively owe over 1 trillion in credit card debt. You might have considered reaching out to American Financing, but hesitated because you don't want to give up your low mortgage rate. Well, there's good news. They've created the Smart Equity Loan, a solution designed to help you take control of your finances without touching your current mortgage. Unlike a heloc, which can have varied interest rates, the Smart Equity Loan offers a fixed rate that means one predictable monthly payment. Giving you peace of mind. This loan allows you to leverage the equity in your home to pay off high interest debt, free up your cash flow, and keep your existing low mortgage rate intact. It only takes 10 minutes to get started with no upfront or hidden fees. Call American Financing today and start saving now. 866-781-8900. That's 866-781-8900 or american financing.net SRS.

[Matt Bissonette]

All.

[Sean Ryan]

Right, Matt, we're back from the break. We had just kind of talked a little bit about Green Team showing up over at Red squadron over at Seal Team 6 and kind of what that was like. So what I'd like to move into now is basically your career over a development group. What the pace was like, where were you guys deploying, stuff like that. So let's just start with what was your, what was your first deployment with Red Squadron?

[Matt Bissonette]

Man? First deployment with my former squadron was we deployed to Afghanistan. I was actually there for about a month of deployment. And during this period of time, right. Our army counterparts were very focused in Iraq and the Navy team had leadership in Afghanistan. So most of the Navy guys were deploying to Afghanistan. The army had control of Iraq. Well, Iraq had been picking up from the tier one perspective. So I did about a month of deployment in Afghanistan, and then I got a call that a handful of guys from our squadron were going to move over to Iraq and integrate with a Army counterpart unit. Okay, you said it, not me.

[Sean Ryan]

Why would they pick a new guy?

[Matt Bissonette]

Oh, my whole team went, oh, your whole team? They pulled the whole team. So my team leader, all the way down to me being the new guy, they pulled the whole team, moved us over To Iraq. And then they farmed each one of us out to a different army team. So I was integrated as a new guy into a army unit, as a new guy on one of their assault elements. You know, other guys on my team were Another. Another team, Another team, another team. We all live together, operated together, but we. We fully integrated with an army unit, with Delta.

[Sean Ryan]

So did they. Did Delta send guys over to six to integrate at that point?

[Matt Bissonette]

It was because they. They had. They were taking some heavy casualties, right?

[Sean Ryan]

Is this when that IED factory blew up and killed a bunch of guys?

[Matt Bissonette]

I mean, there was. There was a lot of stuff going on. Iraq was getting hotter and hotter, right? I had done my Team 5 deployment there. I screened. I went to damn Neck, and now my next deployment was Afghanistan. I was there a month, and then they moved us over to inbed and I worked out of Baghdad again with. With the Delta team.

[Sean Ryan]

So who was. Who took your guys slot in Afghanistan?

[Matt Bissonette]

They just. They just didn't backfill us with anybody. They went lighter.

[Sean Ryan]

The.

[Matt Bissonette]

The squadron that stayed there was light. A team. A team went over and augmented the army guys. Phenomenal deployment, right? I'm still very, very good friends with the army guys I worked with. They're phenomenal individuals.

[Sean Ryan]

We. Can we rewind just real quick. So were you guys. Did you guys do anything in Afghanistan or did you get farmed out? Because it was just not. There just wasn't a lot going on.

[Matt Bissonette]

No, we were doing ops. I was. I was out of Jalalabad, and we're running missions out of Jbad. It just. They weren't as kinetic. It was. It was different, right? Iraq, everything was just kicking off. Afghanistan was still. Afghanistan's been through its phases, right? I've been there 10 times. But at that time, Afghanistan felt a little slower. They were still hitting ops. They were still running missions. It was just. The priority was, okay, let's move some extra assaulters over here. I think the Delta guys had already lost a couple guys before we got there. And then while we were there, they had lost a couple more out of one of their other units. It was. It was pretty, right? I rode around on a little bird, right? As much as I dreamt about the little bird thing. We were black. We were Baghdad swat, right? Cruising around on little birds once, twice, three times a night, whatever. It was all over Baghdad.

[Sean Ryan]

So load on. Hold on. There's a lot to unpack here. I'm really curious, you know, before. Let's just keep it Afghanistan for your one month over there. So I Mean, what was your impression of the difference between regular SEAL teams? Now you're over at Seal Team 6 in Afghanistan with Red Squadron. Did you see anything right off the bat we're not talking about? I mean, you're only two deployments into your 13 deployments, so you got 11 left over at six. What was the first, your first month like in Afghanistan with Red?

[Matt Bissonette]

Great question. A lot more toys, a lot more assets. And then the guys I was working with were all older. Right. Think of our regular teams. You're all new age groups, younger because you're newer, right. You get to damn neck. A lot of older guys have been there a long time.

[Sean Ryan]

So.

[Matt Bissonette]

A, just from maturity of force, I noticed that. B, from a mission planning perspective, right, Just maturity of force, guys who've been around a little bit, the mission planning, what type of targets were just all of that. The technology was a huge differentiator. We had different toys, different assets, different stuff that we could use to target our, our guys that we were going after. So that was, that was kind of the biggest eye opening. Hey, I'm now in this big league unit that has some additional resources and tools and wow, this is cool. I'm a new guy playing the breacher. New guy just carrying the heavy and loving every minute. But. Right. We're only there a month and it was, you know, you're chasing your phones and your bad guys and doing your normal thing. But Afghanistan terrain is not like Baghdad. Right. Unless you're in Kabul. Right. I operate in the mountains of Afghanistan. So just the rural missions to urban.

[Sean Ryan]

Missions, was it everything you thought it was cracked up to be at the. From the very beginning or were you a little disappointed?

[Matt Bissonette]

I gotta be honest, man, everything, everything I dreamt about and read about and wanted to get to, I saw and I experienced and I was like right away.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, nice.

[Matt Bissonette]

It was, it was pretty legit, right, that the caliber of guys you're working with are just next level. Right?

[Sean Ryan]

You're.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, it's, you know, everybody's tightening each other, making yourself bigger and better and, and yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Nice, nice. And so what was it like jumping over to Delta? I mean, you had. You have a month taste in the training pipeline of development group and then, I mean, less than a year over from. Sounds like it's less than a year from when you showed up to green team to deploy with an army unit. Now you're with Delta.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Who's the, who's the, you know, the, the army counterpart?

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah. What they were, they were phenomenal. I had a great Time I figured there'd be more, you know, the rivalry, shit talking. None of that, none of it at the operational level that I experienced. Like I said, I'm still very good friends. Some of my best friends were the army guys I worked with on that deployment. Pretty cool, right? We're working out of Baghdad with all the, all the sexy assets that, that, right? I'd been in Baghdad a deployment and a half before, dreaming of all these fun assets and toys and what it would be like. And now here I'm back now as a tier one unit. It wasn't, you know, Army Navy, but it was army unit and a whole bunch of Navy guys were still there. And now we're, we're hitting every night. That was, that was. Right, yeah, that was, that was a steep learning curve.

[Sean Ryan]

I'll bet it was. I mean, what are some things that are different? What are some things that you notice that are different between the two?

[Matt Bissonette]

I mean, let's just start with the assets that you're given.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm talking the difference between development group and Delta. Oh, what are the differences that you noticed between.

[Matt Bissonette]

We swim more.

[Sean Ryan]

That's it.

[Matt Bissonette]

And, and, and if you get, if you get honest with the army guys, like half of them be like, yeah, if I could swim better, I would have went to buds, like, well, thanks for being honest. I appreciate that.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on.

[Matt Bissonette]

No great guys, right? I've worked with, I've worked with operators from around the globe, right? German, Israelis, Brits, Aussies, all very similar, like minded individuals, right? Their camo may be different, their technology on their gun may be a little different. The funding they got for training is definitely different. But from an individual operator, all very similar.

[Sean Ryan]

Very similar.

[Matt Bissonette]

And I would say that for the army guys, our army counterparts, very similar, same mindset. Sure, they hadn't been through buds, they have a different selection of pipeline, but, but from the operator themselves, the way they're structured, the way they operate, right? The tactics were all pretty similar. Nothing that you couldn't assimilate into easy.

[Sean Ryan]

Enough so you didn't get over there and go, oh, fuck, I'm gonna have to go through another selection.

[Matt Bissonette]

I should have stuck with rotc. Yeah, no, they never had to do this detour.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn it.

[Matt Bissonette]

They again, they were super cool. They opened me up, opened up everything, allowed me in, and I respected my talents. On their team, I was arguably the outsider and a new guy.

[Sean Ryan]

So what kind of stuff were you doing over there?

[Matt Bissonette]

Baghdad swat, right? Little birds to the roof panders. Ground assault force, squish them in the Middle, right? Night after night after night, right? Intel finds bad guy. We show up at the house, I can remember a good one where we write, these little bird pilots are shit hot, right? They are what they say they do, they deliver on every single time. And we're hitting, you know, downtown Baghdad, thousands of rooftops, right? How do you find the one rooftop in the masses that you need to land your helo on? And every single night, they were perfect. Every night, always boom, boom, boom. Nailed it, right? Well, one night we come in and we land on the roof. But it turns out our pilot had land one to one too far by accident, right? Landed one too far. We get on the roof, one house, passed our target building, ground assault fort, hit the ground, they start coming up, big shootout in the stairs, right? One of my buddies, Jeremy, shot in the leg, right? They're throwing hand grenades down the stairs. Turns out there was eight guys in the top floor that me and three other dudes would have landed and made entry into that space, right? Because we were little bird team to the roof, four man team. We would have gone top down, we would have entered onto eight dudes. And that probably wouldn't have worked out too well, right? I got a lot of big guy upstairs scenarios where, right, you don't understand it in the minute, right? You're like, oh, we landed one house too small, too far, we should have been there. Well, had we landed on the right roof, the odds are it would have, you know, maybe we wouldn't be here, right? Be a whole different story. So, yeah, that was, that was an average night in Baghdad. That, that, that mission was actually the first night I ever killed anybody. No, no, Brad, I had done two first deployment, no, no combat. Second deployment into Iraq. We'd done some shooting, but nobody that I had ever like engaged and saw type thing. And there was, that night, there was a whole bunch of dudes trying to climb out the back window and we lit them up. And then we ended up, we ended up a couple army guys ran in on the first floor of this building. They were all sandbagged, bunkered positions on the second floor. And so we pulled a Bradley fighting vehicle into the front, front door of this right, right in front of the house. And literally had the 18 year old kid behind the chain gun just start unloading into the house. And so like 20 millimeter chain gun in the front yard of this house just blasting away. And they all started trying to pile out the back window and so shot them, a whole bunch of them. And then how many of them probably four or five that tried getting out. We ended up sending an EOD guy in on the first floor of the house, and they set a big thermobaric charge, right? Ran out of the house, right? The army guy's like, okay, 30 seconds, it's gonna go 29, 30, no boom, right? All right, you're the demo guy. You just set the demo. You just said it should be blowing up now. It's not blowing up. What's up? Did you dual prime it? He's like, dual prime it? What kind of demo guy doesn't dual prime something? So, okay, now you're sitting there. There's a thermobaric charge that has been actuated. The clock's ticking.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm finding the difference between Delta and Dev Group.

[Matt Bissonette]

Always dual prime the. So anyway, we waited. We waited. We waited. And we're like, all right, somebody's got to go back in the first floor and hook another initiator to that charge. And you have no idea where that initiator's at, if it's hung up or what's going on, because you're. The demo guy said it should be off. So the same demo guy had a run back in the house, set a second initiator to it, ran out and clacked it, and whole house fell down. That was. That was. That was. That was a big, very significant moment for me in two ways. One, yeah, I had actually engaged somebody, and for the first time. But more importantly, right, I was pissed because we missed our landing spot.

[Sean Ryan]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

And you do enough of these, in hindsight, you're like, well, we're very blessed we missed that landing spot.

[Sean Ryan]

Right?

[Matt Bissonette]

So, you know, it's not always bad, right? A little perspective, look at the situation. And, yeah, we got really lucky there. So I probably shouldn't be mad that we missed the target.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. Yeah. What did it feel like to take an enemy combatant's life for the first time? Zero.

[Matt Bissonette]

Emotion? Zero.

[Sean Ryan]

Anything? Nothing.

[Matt Bissonette]

No. Easy.

[Sean Ryan]

Didn't bother you one bit?

[Matt Bissonette]

Nope. To me, I've never had any issues with that. Right. I'm on the right side of this. They're on the wrong side, and I had zero issues.

[Sean Ryan]

Did he feel accomplishment?

[Matt Bissonette]

No, not really. Because what. What sense of accomplishment, per se. Right. There's a whole bunch of people there, probably three of us, shooting at the guys, climbing out the back window. It wasn't. I just. I went and did some crazy jiu jitsu move on him or something, like. It was just part of the team and part of the mission. And how it goes down. So I've never been like, well I did that and that was me and that's just never been me.

[Sean Ryan]

Let's talk about.

[Matt Bissonette]

Let'S just talk about.

[Sean Ryan]

Before we get to the bin Laden Ray, let's just talk about any significant events that happened at Dev Group prior to the bin Laden raid.

[Matt Bissonette]

You covered it with Pete pretty good in your last couple episodes. I was on the Captain Phillips rescue with him.

[Sean Ryan]

You were on there?

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah. Yep, yep.

[Sean Ryan]

Let's hear your perspective. How'd that go down?

[Matt Bissonette]

I thought Scabell did a, did a great job just describing it. I wasn't there. I wasn't one of the shooters. I'll say. There's way more than three shots, right. Anybody who saw the movie and believes it was three heat seeking sniper bullets, I got an island to sell you, I would say, right. The other misconceived notion is right after the guys took the shots, there was one AK47 round fired inside the life raft. I don't think that's in the movie either.

[Sean Ryan]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

So talk about hero to zero status, right. The shooters thought, okay, well we just missed and they, they offed the captain. So I think probably the sexiest move that night was, was a couple of the, the snipers that were on the back fantail the, the ship, right. They put their long guns down. They still had their pistols but they, they climbed off the back of the ship, right? Ocean waves, little rope that goes out to the life raft. And they did the commando crawl like the oak horse, right down the rope on their stomach all the way to the life raft. You know, climbed to the back, stuck their hands, guns in and then everybody was dead. So that's, that's, that's the piece that, that I always share. That's not in the movie. Other than that, right. We, I wasn't one of the shooters. I wasn't intimately involved in it. I was there with the almost hundred others that if, right. If they got their captain to shore, we would have had to go hit some of the, the training camps or some of their, their facilities on shore. A lot, a lot more booger eaters than the three we were.

[Sean Ryan]

No. So that's how that would have went down.

[Matt Bissonette]

There's almost 100 of us that jumped in, right. We didn't need a hundred to deal with four booger eaters on the, on the life raft. But had they got to shore and they were within 100 yards of shore. Right. But they, they realized that that stretch of beach was different tribes. They would have made landfall, they would have offed them, taken their captain. So we were able to literally convince them to tie a rope to the life raft and tow them south. The fourth pirate, right, had got wounded in the hand during the initial assault. So they had pulled him off the life raft. And he's literally standing on the back of the, the Bainbridge with a buddy of mine there. He's got his hand bandaged, right? They're smoking cigarettes, right? He's lighting his cigarette for him. And they were trying to get the pirates in the life raft to see, right, cigarettes. And he's got his hand bandaged. And then my buddy's like, hey, tells one of the Navy guys, go in and get a soft serve ice cream cone. I guarantee the Somali's never eaten soft serve ice cream. So literally, there's the Somali with his hand bandage with a cigarette and his. And a soft serve ice cream on the back of the ship. And, and that was us trying to say, hey, look, you know, look at your guy. He's getting treated very fairly. He's got medical attention, smokes and ice cream. You know, give up the captain and, and you can have some too. That clearly didn't pan out for him.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, man.

[Matt Bissonette]

And arguably, what other tricks. He's the, he's the lucky. He's the luckiest out of all four of them, if you think about it, because he's. He's in federal penitentiary in New York right now, right? The others are dead, right? He never got air conditioning in Somalia. He certainly didn't get heat. I guarantee he's got free college, eye care, dental care, three meals a day. He's living the dream in the federal penitentiary compared to where he would have been in Somalia.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, shit, up there, they probably have his whole life planned out for him and donations and everything for when he gets out, right?

[Matt Bissonette]

For sure.

[Tim Parlatore]

So.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow. Wow. But what else? What else?

[Matt Bissonette]

That was the only real ride. There's the standby where something happens, you go. That was the only real spin up for a true standby mission, which was, hey, you know, okay, boom, go fly away, do the jump. Package in. That was the only one of those I did during my time.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you lost anybody throughout your career? A lot of close.

[Matt Bissonette]

If I go through the contact list of my phone, yeah. 43 names in my contact that are dead.

[Sean Ryan]

How many operational?

[Matt Bissonette]

Almost all.

[Sean Ryan]

Almost all of them, Yeah.

[Matt Bissonette]

A couple suicides, but yeah, almost all.

[Sean Ryan]

Who's the first person that you lost in combat?

[Matt Bissonette]

Mike Koch. It's in my green team class. Then The Badger, there's a list. All guys I went through. Green team with. Nope. No different squadrons. Red did pretty well. Right. The squadron I was in, we dodged a lot of bullets and a lot of different situations. Right. A lot of my friends in different squadrons, not so much. Yeah. Right. I mean, it's all fun and games and these deployments are great, but they're not the most safe. And Right. Guys get zipped just about every deployment. Every other deployment. Right. Yeah. That was. Talk about faith and my journey. Right. From 911 for everything, though, all of. Basically the global war on terror. I saw a lot of it grow and change, and I saw a lot of really good people not come home through it. And, and, and that the way I dealt with that. Right. Without going crazy was I chalked it up as that was God's plan.

[Sean Ryan]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

I. I knew that if I got shot in the face tomorrow, going to work, that was it. That was God's plan. It was what it was. I had done enough of these deployments, had seen enough of, you know, guys not coming home for one reason or another being bad luck or whatever. And so I think the more I dealt with the death, the closer I was with the. With the God connection of like, okay, that justified it for me in some weird way. That was the piece. The band aid I put on it in the moment to. To chalk it up is okay, well, it is what it is. And I got to get back to work.

[Sean Ryan]

Interesting. So you never really lost faith going, you know, within. Within the SEAL teams think a lot.

[Matt Bissonette]

I lost most of my faith when I was challenged when I got out by our own government and when I didn't understand it and I was confused and I didn't have a community and had been cut off right when I was in. Dude, like, how do you deal with death? Like, you're the same job I did. You know the deal.

[Sean Ryan]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

It's part of the job. And certainly you're going to keep deploying and do this for as long as I did. If you're not. If you're not absolutely comfortable with where you're going, if you get shot in the face tomorrow night, maybe you're not going to be as good of an operator as you should be. And so for me, in those moments, I always was. Was much more. I tried to place my confidence in. Okay, well, that was. I don't understand it. But that is. Since I don't understand it, somebody else must. I'm hoping. I'm betting on it and hopefully I'll have some Some understanding of this at some point.

[Sean Ryan]

Were you married during this time?

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

How was your wife handling the operational pace?

[Matt Bissonette]

I'm divorced. It's. Right. It's tough. Before I got married, I was like, hey, look, just so you know, if work isn't my first priority, I'm probably not going to come home to deal with any of the other priorities you and I may have. And so I was married for nine years, home for less than one. Both my kids are born three years and a week apart, so I was clearly home on the same deployment cycle. Divorce rates through the roof in the community, right. I think everybody does fine with, oh, your husband's in the nay. There could be stuff happened after extortion, right? A couple months after the bin Laden raid, everybody's on the high. Then extortion goes down. 22 friends in one night. You talk about. We call it Pink Squadron. That's the wives and girlfriends. And you want to talk about some social pressure of it's time to retire, time to get out, time for you to move on. Think of that A. The amount of loss. Think. Then the pressure from the wives to the other husbands that are in the command. You know how many RPGs I've seen come by a ramp on my 47? A lot. Every single one. You're like, oh, man, glad that didn't hit. And then one hits. So that puts it in perspective really quick, certainly for your loved ones.

[Sean Ryan]

How about your kids?

[Matt Bissonette]

Too young to understand.

[Sean Ryan]

How are you? How's your relationship with them now?

[Matt Bissonette]

Good, because I got out, right? I got out. They were young enough that. Right. They knew dad went on long trips. Those were deployments. Or short trips, were training trips. I've done the math. I never put them to bed for more than like 14 days in a row without another trip. Fuck. Right? Never home more than about 14 days for 14 years plus.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you think that. I mean, this is. I've done like 250 of these now at this point, ish. At least 50% of these interviews have been military. Guys talk about the same things every single time. You know, there's there. I mean, it's every. Every story is obviously unique to that individual, but, I mean, the ARC is damn near the same every single time. I mean, what are. What are some. Would it even be fucking possible? Especially in a command like that, you know, to where you can be home for more than 14 days in a row to put your kids down, you can be home for more than 14 days.

[Matt Bissonette]

There were those options. You could raise your hand and say, hey, I need to come off the speeding train. But think about it. There's only a handful of people on this job, doing this job, and the numbers are not good. Right? The year I left the SEAL teams, the SEAL community had a net gain of one new operator.

[Sean Ryan]

So that's going well. That's what I'm. I know that. I know the operator. The individual isn't going to be like, hey, guys, I need to take a break because I didn't get to put my kids down, you know, last week. But I mean, when you see the. I mean, you just said it. The net one, net plus one that year. That's it. In the middle of, of the longest war that the US has ever been in, we got a net one. That's a problem, plus one. And so what I'm kind of getting at, you know, somebody that was over there and just, you know, my own career in the regular SEAL teams, which was, you're still fucking gone all the time.

[Tim Parlatore]

And.

[Sean Ryan]

You know, the retention sucks. People are getting out left and right. I mean, how, how. I guess you see what I'm getting at. Like, it would have to come down from the top. Do you think there is a way for, for the sake of retention that guys can get more time with family, with their kids, with their love?

[Matt Bissonette]

I'll give you an example. I did, right? I never asked for anything. The longest break I had in my career was selection and training to get into my former command. That's not a break. That's nine months of just kicked in the nuts. That was my longest break, right? I had 13 straight tours. Raised my hand every time. Volunteer, volunteer at the end, right? Post Bin Laden mission, hurt my neck. I go to my master chief and I'm like, hey, Master Chief, I need a break. My family's imploding, like, medically. Something's wrong. I can't drink a beer without my arms going numb. Something's off from the crash. I don't know, but something's off. Look, will you send me to go be a Green Team instructor or something so I can take a wrap off for 18 months? I'm like, look, I'll go get my master's degree. I'll pay out of my own dime, professional development, whatever. I need to be home. I need to do something for me. I'm getting divorced. Like, I, I've gotta. I gotta figure out how to slow down. He's like, listen, I. I've got to move somebody to this other squadron. And I got your name on that billet. I'm like, I know, but that's not a. That's not a stay at home billet. That's a deployable billet. He's like, I know, but I gotta put somebody there, and we don't have enough people. And. And I've got your name earmarked for that. I'm like, well, Master Chief, look, I'm. I've never asked for anything. My family's melting, my neck is broken. Like, I got some shit going on I need to figure out. Can you please find something? He came back a week later, was like, no, it's the only option you got.

[Sean Ryan]

So.

[Matt Bissonette]

Part of the reason I got out, so. So can it be fixed? I hope so, right? Could it be fixed? I think so. The priorities at the time were mission success, not Sean Ryan's mental health, Matt Bissonnette's personal wealth and any of that.

[Sean Ryan]

How do you think that worked out in the long term? You think that worked out?

[Matt Bissonette]

You could crash and burn. You always take care of your people first.

[Sean Ryan]

That's right.

[Matt Bissonette]

They didn't take care of their people. Right. 9, 11. I saw a lot of changes, a lot of changes between here and here. I saw the tactics change. I saw the leadership change. I saw. By the time I got out, right, Every major officer I knew was writing themselves up for their own awards, and they were gonna get promoted off the number of missions they ran, not off the number of bad guys they caught or doing the right thing. It was okay. Number of missions, amount of awards, all this nonsense. And then I saw the rules of engagement slowly starting to change, right? Making things more dangerous for us, right? So you'd have the Admiral McRavens coming in, saying, okay, well, you can't use your dogs anymore. You can't go at night. Like, wait a second. We only go at night because it's safer to the force. We bring our dogs because our dogs save our lives nightly. But now the leadership's saying, don't bring your dogs because the locals are complaining about dogs being unclean. What? What?

[Sean Ryan]

Are you fucking kidding me? That was Admiral McRaven.

[Matt Bissonette]

We had so many different officers and congressional delegations, right? We'd have congressional delegations come over. They would ask us, hey, are these new rules of engagement prohibitive, costing you more danger on target? And our officers would be like, nope, nope, all good. Our senior enlisted master chief. I can remember a master chief. I'm not going to name his name, but he stood up in the meeting with the Congressional delegation and said, well, with all due respect, I don't believe what the officer over here is telling you. I'm the one going on the ground. And yes, it is making it more dangerous for us. Nobody was communicating those things. I saw that slowly happening over and over and over as we're sent back to Iraq and Afghanistan. Right. Risking our lives. Well, the leadership is making it harder and harder for us to do our mission. And all of that was adding up to part of the reason why I was like, I'm no longer signing my name on the dotted line to work for the idiots. Damn, man.

[Sean Ryan]

I thought the leadership over a dev group was.

[Matt Bissonette]

Oh, it has its strengths and weaknesses. I'm not saying it's, it's perfect. I'm not saying it's shitty, but I'm saying we've definitely had our less than stellar. Right? When we get into talking about all the, the book drama, right? When, when that all hit, right. I reached out to my commanding officer that I had just left the squadron. I'd known him for eight years, right. I'm like, sir, right. The only thing I've ever been taught, if there's an issue, you communicate with leadership immediately. And that's exactly what I did. You know what that SEAL officer in charge of the SEAL community did? He replied, delete me. That's the only conversation. That's the only correspondence I've ever gotten from any leadership in the SEAL community since I wrote my book or anything, period.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Matt Bissonette]

So you want to talk about leadership issues? I'd say the community has a few.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. I'm not going to argue that. Jeez. All right, well, let's move in. Let's go to the bin Laden raid. Let's talk about when did. I mean, just from the. When did that pop up on your guys radar?

[Matt Bissonette]

We just got home from a deployment. He just got home from Afghanistan like eight days prior. They pulled 24 most senior of us in, in the squadron and briefed us up that, hey, look, we think we found him. We want you guys to plan the, the ground assault option.

[Sean Ryan]

Eight days after deployment.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, right. After eight, ten days, something like that. Just come home. I should have been on leave. They pulled, pulled us in from leave and pulled the 24 most senior in the squadron.

[Sean Ryan]

So do you have any idea that's what they were going to talk to you about?

[Matt Bissonette]

No, no, I had no idea. And I actually had a medical appointment that I couldn't miss the morning that they were pulling these guys down to this other facility to read them in. And I'm like, hey, guys, I've got This medical thing at the doctor I've set up, you know, is it cool if I miss this, or do I need to miss the doctor's appointment to hit this brief? And they're like, no, you're good. Just drive down when you're done. So I finished my appointment and drove down, and then when I showed up at the facility, they'd already given the guys the brief and said, hey, look, we think we found the guy. We want you guys to plan the. The ground assault option, and boom. So then we got to work.

[Sean Ryan]

How do you plan that?

[Matt Bissonette]

Just like we've done any other mission, right? The enlisted guys at the bottom who actually do it, start coming up with the courses of action we're somewhat limited on. On the way we could tactically action the target based off where it was. Right. In Afghanistan, we'd grown very comfortable with not flying the helicopter to the compound. Right. Landing 20km away and patrolling in. So, right, we're gonna pick the lock on your door. We'll get you while you're sleeping. Don't wake up anybody in the neighborhood. That's much more of what we like to do. But because of where his compound was in the city, the odds of us landing 5km away, patrolling through the city, remaining undetected, was low. So had we been compromised on that patrol. Right. He would have left the building. So. So based off the. The building, everything we were seeing that drove us to say, okay, well, let's. Let's go straight to the target, fly the helicopters. And that. That's where that plan was. Was started.

[Sean Ryan]

Right? Did you know that you had those. The new, latest, and greatest Blackhawks that.

[Matt Bissonette]

I don't know anything about the crazy Blackhawks, okay, you can talk about them all you want, but I'm not saying anything.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you know you were going to get fancy helicopters to fly in for the mission?

[Matt Bissonette]

Not immediately.

[Sean Ryan]

Walt's not going to come after you anymore after this fucking release. Not immediately talking to you, that.

[Matt Bissonette]

Or.

[Sean Ryan]

Any of these other guys, but. So you had no idea. When did the. When did you have an idea those were coming in?

[Matt Bissonette]

The mission planning. During the mission planning, they told us about certain assets that we could use that had certain skills that we needed. And so some. Some discussion whether we truly needed it or not. And. And ultimately it was. Yes.

[Tim Parlatore]

So how long did you guys have.

[Sean Ryan]

To plan the operation?

[Matt Bissonette]

Two weeks.

[Sean Ryan]

Two weeks.

[Matt Bissonette]

Long as I've never. I've never rehearsed for any mission, right. 13 deployments. Never rehearsed for a single mission. Every deployment, every go Go, go to your plan, brief the team, roll out the door and go. The only mission I ever rehearsed for sleeping line ever had time.

[Sean Ryan]

How so can you talk about the, about the two weeks from when you did briefed to execution? I mean what was the pace like.

[Matt Bissonette]

What was came up with our plan and then just started, started rehearsing our plan. We had a mock up that we trained on. But again even rehearsing on a mock up where you don't know the inside of it is kind of irrelevant. Right. We knew kind of the outside layout and so you could go get a false sense of security running a dry run on a compound for time. But if you don't know what's in the house and what's going to happen in the house, you're getting a false sense of security of oh, we ran this in three minutes, we cleared it in three minutes where you're clearing a structure with paper targets and with, without any interference. Right? So yeah, we spent a week, week or two doing that. Went out to another state, did some more rehearsals with the helicopters and then came back. I can remember, is this like you.

[Sean Ryan]

Wake up, rehearse all the way through the night, rehearse just all hours of.

[Matt Bissonette]

The day, just rehearse day, night, day, night. And then when we weren't there, we'd, we'd give the people like hey, can you update this on the mock up? They'd update it, we'd come back the next morning and hit it again or whatever, whatever it was. And just constant rehearsals. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

What did it feel like to get that brief? Especially not have no idea. You come back from a medical appointment and it's look at your buddies, the 24 that are going on and they're like, hey, we're hitting the number one.

[Matt Bissonette]

Guy that doesn't get you excited something's wrong. That's what I'm saying. Like that's, that's a, you're like, holy, let's go. Right? I'd, I'd been involved in one other spin for bin Laden years prior. So this one felt much different. Right. The one years prior, right. It was flowing, right. Robes were, we're seen on ISR feed and he's coming back into Afghanistan to make his final, you know, take the fight to the Americans. And so it was this whole, it was a big shit show is what it was. All the officers, everybody wanted to get involved, to be involved. It was the closest spin of any intel they'd ever had on bin Laden. And so they just delayed, delayed, delayed this big force got built. They flew in like, B1 bombers from the States. They bombed the shit out of an empty hillside, right? Like three days before they're going into the mission, right? They're going to take out bin Laden. They send me and another guy over to Pakistan to do some stuff there. So I'm literally on the Pakistan side of the border, dressed in Pakistani uniforms with it, with a Pakistani element. And my guys are on the other side of the border. They're dropping bombs on a whole bunch of empty mountains. And, you know, two weeks later they're like, okay, bin Laden wasn't there. And they called us all brand. That. That was the previous spin. This one felt much different. This one was a lot more under the radar. It was quiet. It was like, okay, whoever lived there was significant, right? It was. None of the intel that I saw was 100% proof positive it was bin Laden himself, but it was somebody significant. So, okay, whoever lived there was going to have a bad night, but we would. We would figure it out. I remember in one of the intel manuals, right, I don't even know who put these together, but I'm breezing through it the first couple days. Like, on page one or two, I see a statistic where it says you have up to a 70 chance being shot down on the Hilo ride in or the helo ride out.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Matt Bissonette]

Not. And I don't know who came up with that statistic. There was intel people at all levels throwing out different numbers and statistics. But I'm like, I'm not a numbers guy here, but 70%, that's just the Hilo ride. That's not dealing with the guys with the guns. Once you're there.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you guys think it was a suicide mission?

[Matt Bissonette]

I've never thought any of my missions were a suicide mission. I refuse to think that way. I don't care what.

[Tim Parlatore]

Who.

[Matt Bissonette]

I'm not allowing myself. It's like my buddy in BUDS who every morning was like this, I'm quitting. I'm like, I can't allow my mind to go there because I'd actually quit. So I'm like, I'm not going to allow my mind to go anywhere other than. And we're going to move through this target and figure it out what was. Can you.

[Sean Ryan]

Can you run through the plan of what you guys developed for the night that it happened? And then we'll.

[Matt Bissonette]

I love my Mike Tyson quote, right? Somebody interviewed Tyson after a fight. They're like, mike, didn't you have a plan going into tonight's fight. And he looks at the reporters like, yeah, everybody has a plan till you get punched in the face. I love that quote, right? We had a great plan. Super simple, like we did in Baghdad. Top down, bottom up, right? We're going to squish him in the main house. That was the plan. Pretty straightforward. We got punched in the face as soon as we got there, right? These helicopters, helicopter pilots are amazing, right? I cannot say enough good about them. Rehearsals. Everything perfect. Everything to the second. I'm. I'm sitting in the left door of the helicopter, right? I'm gonna be the first one out. Chalk one on the left side. My buddy's on the other side, right? Ropes hooked to the helo. 40ft up, we come to a hover. It feels like four hours. It's probably two seconds, and. And immediately the helicopter goes 90 and starts going in. I'm sitting in this door. Helicopters crash. Very ugly, right? A plane maybe can come skidding in. My little chicken legs are hanging out the side of the helicopter. And we're going in this way to the side. Buddy of mine's holding me in. I'm literally falling out of the side of the helicopter as we come in and we hit. Nothing goes boom. Clear out your shorts. Whatever you need to do to get back in the game. Holy shit, man. The. The way we hung up on the wall, right? The helicopter propped up against the wall, there's a wheel on the back section of a Blackhawk, and that wheel's the only load bearing for the back half of the helicopter. That wheel landed on the wall.

[Sean Ryan]

Right?

[Matt Bissonette]

Had that wheel been 10 inches this way or 10 inches this way, tail section would have broke. I wouldn't be here, right? The. The height of the wall was 10ft. Our helicopter hit. If you watch the Zero Dark Thirty movie, the main rotor hits the ground, comes snapping off. That did not happen, right? We hit. I jump out this door and run away. Turn around and look, and the main rotors are still turning. They're within about a foot of hitting the ground. You want to talk about the big guy, right? When your time's up, your time is up, and it was not our time. Inches. Inches landed perfectly. Helicopter didn't roll. Main rotor blades didn't snap off, nothing. 40ft up. You tell me how that happened.

[Sean Ryan]

Why did the helicopter crash?

[Matt Bissonette]

Great question. Okay, so do you know what was happening in Washington, D.C. the day before the mission that the President would have wanted to be at? I don't remember a White House correspondent's dinner. So the day we had originally Planned to launch our mission was the day before we actually went. It was a weekend. Zero alum. So good, good time to go. President got involved, was like, hey, can you guys push this one day to the right? Can we push to the right? Want to hit my dinner? Okay, so, so we, we moved the op to the right. Not, not me. It was well above my pay grade. The op was moved to the right the next day. The temperature was roughly 8 degrees warmer than the day prior. You know how weight, temperature affects density, altitude, how a bullet flies over a mile? It affects how much lift a helicopter can have. So hypothetically, hypothetically, if our. Because I'm not speaking in real terms of weights, right? If our helicopter could carry say £1,000, say we were at £800 of load, that's fine. We operate within those margins normal. The next day, 8 degrees warmer temperature. We didn't have the lift. So what I've been told is we got into the, to the target area. Our. Our pilot was at full throttle and we settled with power because he didn't have enough ass to keep the helicopter in the air. So why did we crash?

[Sean Ryan]

Because the.

[Matt Bissonette]

President Obama needed to hit the White House correspondents dinner.

[Sean Ryan]

You've got to be fucking kidding me.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, it's portion of it.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow. Unfucking believable, man.

[Matt Bissonette]

The only political shots I take in no easy day, right? I make two political shots because I hate all politicians. Biden, right, he was VP at the time. We meet him after the raid. And, and he's like literally hands. He like trying to rub guys shoulders and like tell them bad jokes in their ears. Like, you're not teenage girls with ice cream here, dude. Like, come on. It's like, who's the drunk uncle that showed up at Thanksgiving? Like, oh, that's the vice President. Like, okay, that makes sense. Oh, and then, and then Obama, Obama was great, right? Super smooth. We, we all stood up there, got our photo with him, you know, gave a great speech, and then he invites us all to the White House to the residence for a beer. Okay, I'm very apolitical, but if a sitting president invites me and my team that just risked our lives for whatever, to the White House to have a beer with the sitting president. You go right? You're gonna go right? He invites the freaking women's World cup soccer team, whatever. Like everybody goes to the White House. Here's a sitting president inviting us to the White House for a beer right after we probably got him reelected. Do you think he ever followed up with that invite?

[Sean Ryan]

Probably Not.

[Matt Bissonette]

Nope. And so I put. I bet you voted for change, too. Like, that's my only one liner in the book of, like. Yeah, I bet if you're still waiting for Obama to invite you to the White House for a beer. I know you just risked your life for him and you probably got him reelected. He invited you for a beer, but you think he's ever gonna follow up with that? No.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow. Not surprising, though. Not surprising.

[Matt Bissonette]

So, yeah, all my buddies are jumping out the other side of the helicopter and going to work, and I'm like, they're gonna fly, make fun of me later if they see me over in the corner. So I couldn't run around the front of the helicopter. The main rotor blades are still turned, and I literally had to run down along the wall underneath. There was like three or four of us on our side, but we all ran underneath the helicopter, joined with the team, and reached one gate, and we were back in the original compound that we would have fast roped into, but about a minute delay. So our plan had gone sideways, Right? Our plan was top down, bottom up. Plan had gone completely sideways. We crashed into the compound. Second helicopter. There was no radio call between dash one and dash two that we'd gone in.

[Sean Ryan]

Were you going to be on the top or on the bottom?

[Tim Parlatore]

We were.

[Matt Bissonette]

We were fast roping 40ft down into the compound. My team was clearing and securing one of the southern buildings, and then we'd all wrap into the bottom floor and go up. Chalk Two was supposed to go to the roof and work down as Chalk2 came into a hover. Right. You're flying a really expensive helicopter looking through toilet paper tubes. Night vision, Right. And that pilot looks and he happens to see we've got a parked helicopter in the compound. He doesn't know if we've been shot down, a mechanical, what's going on. He just knows there's a parked helicopter in the compound. So he makes probably the best decision of the night that nobody will ever talk about. Right. He could have pushed a bad position, tried to do the game plan and land on the roof. The odds are he would have crashed. Crashed?

[Sean Ryan]

Why do you say that?

[Matt Bissonette]

Well, I'll explain why we crashed. Our hover was at 40ft. The compound was mostly 50ft. Right. That second helicopter would have had hold a hover with the same weight at 15ft higher. If we couldn't hold a hover at 40ft, there was no way Chalk Two was going to be able to hold a hover at 60ft and lip land to let his crew off onto the roof. The odds are they would have crashed. So that pilot immediately sees, says, okay, I'm going to do the safe, safe thing. And he hovers his helicopter outside the compound into a field across the street and lands him out there. They thought they were going to the roof. Now they're outside the compound, outside the wall, in a field across the street. So, yeah, we ran. Somebody ran to the door. Let him.

[Sean Ryan]

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[Matt Bissonette]

Yep. My team was tasked with securing this building. To the south of the compound was one of the other. He had. Bin Laden had two facilitators that lived in the compound and one of them lived in this southern little building inside the compound. So my team was tasked with that while the rest headed to the first floor of the main building. The we got to the door, a little, little southern building. Door was locked. I know we'd made a little noise, crash in our helicopters, but we're professionals here, right. We didn't want to make too much noise if we didn't have to. So my, my buddy that was there with me carried a sledgehammer. Right. He starts banging on this metal door trying to get it open up and it's, it's not going to open. So, okay, we're not going to spend five minutes banging on this thing. We got to get in. So I was going to use my, my explosives. I commented one of the first times I ever got shot at was through a door. Right. I've had that happen multiple times now. We just crashed into their compound. We just beat on their front door with a sledgehammer. The last thing I'm going to do is stand in front of their door setting my charge there. So I literally got on my knee as low as I could, setting my charge. And as I'm setting my charge just above me. AK 47 through the door.

[Sean Ryan]

Holy. Are you serious? Wow.

[Matt Bissonette]

I picked up a little bit of frag in my shoulder. Nothing crazy, but I carry a set of bolt cutters and a pouch on my back. Right. Each handle can kind of come up. I can pull it out, cut my little bolt Cutter set up. We got back from the mission. I was going through my stuff. There's a bullet stuck in the handle.

[Sean Ryan]

Are you serious?

[Matt Bissonette]

So we, we got lucky with the crash. We got lucky with 30 seconds later at the door, myself and my partner return fire through the door blindly, and everything goes quiet.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Matt Bissonette]

All right, I gotta go back up. I gotta get my charge on the door. I gotta clap this thing off. We gotta get in here, right? We gotta. Time. Time's ticking. My buddy spoke Arabic, right? So he starts calling into the house in Arabic and I swear to God, not five seconds go by and you hear the metal latch on the door inside, and they're getting ready to come out. Like, why didn't we try this when we got here? This would have been way simpler, right? Come on out, guys. Door opens up, it's a female holding the baby, two kids behind her, her husband laying dead just inside the door. Perfect Arabic to my buddy. You killed him. He is dead. Talking about her husband. Wow. Pulled her out, right? Women and kids away, Cleared the guns, cleared all the area, left them there, left the dead guy there, and then we rolled into the to the main house. While all that was going on, did.

[Sean Ryan]

You guys know where he was going to be?

[Tim Parlatore]

Who?

[Sean Ryan]

Bin Laden.

[Matt Bissonette]

The assessment was assessed that he most likely lived on the third floor of the compound. Assessed, Right, Assessed was Khalid. His son lived on the second floor. And another facilitator on the first. And another facilitator in this outbuilding. That was the lay down of what they assessed, right? The guys from Chalk Two had landed outside the wall. They came and got let in the compound. Now everybody's hitting the the bottom of the main house, right?

[Sean Ryan]

Are you guys hitting the main house simultaneously or did you want one door on the house?

[Matt Bissonette]

The way the house was rigged, it had had multiple doors to go in, but it had been configured on the inside to secure the stairwell going up, right? And we got in one side of the house and there's a reinforced metal door at the bottom of the stairs. Sean may be hiding somebody upstairs. If you have a reinforced metal door at the bottom of your staircase, right? Maybe a sign that you're hiding somebody upstairs, right? So all of these things you're thinking through, you're like, okay, shots fired at the first building. They want to get jiggy, right? We've got reinforced metal doors at the bottom of their stairs. That's odd, right? A couple charges and that went away. No power, pitch black. Good night vision. It's not like you see in the movies with you know, Team America here to kick your ass. And clear left, Clear right, right. We're very calmly and quietly clearing the space. Got up to the second floor. There had been an adult male and his wife engaged on the first floor. In the stairs up to the second floor. What I remember, right, SEAL in front of me that just shot Khalid up the stairs, right? Khalid was bin Laden's son. We, we'd been told we think Khalid lives on the second floor. We're literally standing on the second floor there. Set a ladder, stairs that go up to a landing and up a little head pops down looking at us on the ceiling.

[Sean Ryan]

How did he, did he hear you guys?

[Matt Bissonette]

He had to have, right? I mean the, anybody inside the house had plenty of time to wake up. They heard helicopters, hovering helicopters crash. They'd heard muffled gunfire, some explosions right outside buildings, first floor of the main building. And then now we're in the house. So they had had more than enough time to go to assume there's somebody here. That's.

[Sean Ryan]

Is it true that somebody yelled to Khalid in Arabic, he came out and then was popped.

[Matt Bissonette]

Didn't yell, whispered. It's the sexiest move I ever saw in the SEAL teams. Whispered Khalid's name. You're on the second floor, you see a head peek down the land, peek down the wall, look down at us, trying to see who's down there. Couldn't tell, right? Pitch black, we're quiet. We're not, hey, it's America, none of that. And that same seal, right, sat right next to me in the Gila crash, right in front of me on the stairs. And he literally whispers Khalid's name. Khalid, Khalid. Khalid had heard gunfire, all this stuff. Then he hears somebody whispering his name, not yelling it, nothing aggressive. Peeks around the corner and gets popped in the head.

[Sean Ryan]

Holy shit.

[Matt Bissonette]

Falls down, rolls down a couple sets of stairs. AK47, right? He was literally right around the corner of the, the stairwell with an AK47. Had we made our way up the stairs, all right, he would have popped the point man point blank as we rounded the corner. Maybe the rest of us, more importantly, he would have slowed our assault down, right? We'd given ourselves 30 minutes on target with a 10 minute window to spare. And yeah, had he stood at the top of the stairs shooting down, that would have slowed our assault up the stairs. I've had to, I had to assault years ago. There was a guy at a top of stairs shooting down at us and literally we threw a whole bunch of hand grenades up the stairs and then ran up Right behind him. It's not the prettiest way to assault a fixed position. So, thankfully, right from a historical move standpoint, that was epic.

[Sean Ryan]

Was that rehearsed or that just happened?

[Matt Bissonette]

Like, we'll pull it out in the midst of stress and pressure and send it, and that is what I love.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn. That's amazing.

[Matt Bissonette]

That's just. Come on. Who think I wouldn't have thought of that? Did you say anything? No, I wouldn't have thought of any of that.

[Sean Ryan]

It's genius.

[Matt Bissonette]

I didn't think of any of that. But you got to think right now. You're just. You just heard some guy answer to the name Khalid, right? We've heard all the guys downstairs got guns, right? I got shot at at the first floor. So, okay, whoever is in this house is putting up a fight and trying to hide, right? So. So, okay, significant. At least chalk that up in the back of your mind as you're moving through the target. That. Okay, maybe the intel folks are correct for once, right? There was a ton of different intel people involved in this. The girl from the Zero Dark Thirty movie, she was always 100% right. She wasn't a hot redhead, but she was always 100%. There was other intel people we had there, some of them be 50%, 70. She was always 100%. So, yeah, you're thinking, okay, all these little pieces, these are all little signs that are adding up in the back of your head. Step over, Khalid, and head up to the third floor.

[Sean Ryan]

How much. How much interaction did you guys have with the woman?

[Matt Bissonette]

The CIA chick?

[Tim Parlatore]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonette]

Tons. Tons. She was there when she briefed us in. She. I sat next to her on the flight over. The movie does a great job portraying how, like, feisty, smart. She is. Wicked smart. Yeah. I'll leave it at that.

[Sean Ryan]

All right, so you're moving up to the third deck, third floor.

[Matt Bissonette]

Point man in front of me again, same guy. Same guy. Same guy whispered cleat head pops out the door at the top, point man takes a couple shots, and the head disappears into the room. We don't. Right. We kind of skipped over my 13 deployments. Right. One of the. One of the biggest things that we had learned and evolved through was, right, the tactics we were taught. Cqb, right. It's hostage rescue clearance when you're in a building. Right. It's all about speed, need. Well, over time, we were using these old school hostage rescue tactics to assault buildings where there was no hostages in. Right.

[Tim Parlatore]

So.

[Matt Bissonette]

So why do we need to throw a flash crash in the room and then immediately run in here and do our clear left, clear right. You know, old school CQB stuff. When there's no hostage in here, wouldn't it be much safer to stay at the door of the room and like pie, the whole door from the space where you're much safer and less chance of getting shot back. So we, we had started evolving our tactics, right. It was no longer hostage rescue clearance, it was combat clearance. And combat clearance meants were slower, much more methodical. There was no reason to just run in the room and, and clear things.

[Sean Ryan]

So Makes a hell of a lot of sense, right?

[Matt Bissonette]

Much safer and, and, and trust me, the, the, the swamp in the community didn't want to evolve to those tactics. But over time it was saving lives nightly by not rushing into the room.

[Sean Ryan]

Right. Who do you call the swamp of the teams? I'm just curious.

[Matt Bissonette]

Any of the old school guys that are still there?

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, is the swamp a dev group as well?

[Matt Bissonette]

There's a swamp everywhere. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay.

[Matt Bissonette]

I think there's a swamp or just the, so there's the bureaucrats.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean that's where all the, that's where all the team's tactics come from is from Development group. I mean, well, at least when I was in, when we went, when you go to assault cell, all of that it just comes down from you guys. And so I mean it's just fucking shame to hear that there are people over there that are delaying.

[Matt Bissonette]

Not everybody, but any organization, there's the old school guys in the organization that don't want to change.

[Tim Parlatore]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

And, and they want to do things the way they've always done it and what they've always done is fine. And that's, that's fine by them. No judgment. I, I'm somebody who likes to evolve and adapt and, and when there's people dying because of a tactic, I really think we should evolve that tactic. Yeah, right.

[Sean Ryan]

I would share that sentiment.

[Matt Bissonette]

Kind of makes common sense.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, yeah. Where did that change come, where did complex combat clearance come from?

[Matt Bissonette]

Was that guys from guys like me and, and other operators that were operating and we just continually go to our leadership. Right. I did eight years at the command and you're just deploying, deploying, deploying. And so I wasn't a senior guy yet, kind of middle management.

[Sean Ryan]

And I mean it's just so different than, you know, it's completely different than everything that I've been trained. I've never done combat clearance. I was out before that got to, you know, the vanilla side.

[Matt Bissonette]

But one of the Missions we did with the, with my army counterparts, right? And a good SEAL friend of mine was right there when it happened, right? They blew the door. As soon as the breach goes, you run in, right? First four guys, four man entry breach, first four. First three went in, they had a sandbag bunkered PKM at the end of the hallway, just so everybody ran right into the pkm. Bullets, Right? My buddy, I won't mention his name, but he was literally standing there at the door, and all three fell right in front of him, man. Right? So you tell me how many times you need to be like, hey, guys, it's this tactic of, like blowing the door and running in. If there's not a hostage in there that we need to save, why are we taking that risk? To force?

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonette]

Simple question. So we, we had evolved to that, right? So, so this, the bin Laden mission, we knew there was no hostages, right? They're not holding somebody on the third floor, so there was no reason to be to rush, right? To do the old school tactics of run into the room and so cleared to the door of the room, looked in, and he's basically twitching at the foot of his bed. There's two women in the room.

[Sean Ryan]

Bin Laden's just twitching the foot of.

[Matt Bissonette]

His headshot from the guy coming up the stairs. There's two women standing there in the room, right?

[Sean Ryan]

So is he still alive or is it just nerves?

[Matt Bissonette]

It's pretty, pretty, pretty twitchy, I'd say. He's done headshot, cover the headshot, right? We didn't want to shoot him in the face. Nobody wanted to. We wanted the photo, Right. The rules of engagement were capture or kill.

[Sean Ryan]

Right?

[Matt Bissonette]

None of this was going and kill everybody. I've never been on a mission in the SEAL teams where they said, go in and kill everybody. Never. It's always capture or kill. And we had 30 different lawyers show up and brief us on this. Why was he engaged while we were coming up the stairs? Because the only thing he exposed was a head. Stuck his head out the door to look at the guy coming up the stairs and was engaged within the rules of engagement for that point man.

[Sean Ryan]

Why?

[Matt Bissonette]

Because he could have produced a gun around the corner, right? Khalid down the stairs, had had a gun in hand. Guy in the first room I cleared had a gun in hand. So third floor had more time to set up a defense than anybody on the second and the first. And everybody else had got a gun on the first and second. So for the point man to think, okay, bin Laden's armed well within the Rules of engagement. We'd been briefed. Part of the, you know, the intel packages was, hey, they have the house rigged to blow or they're all wearing S vests, and when you get in there, they'll martyr themselves and kill you guys too. So again, rules of engagement. Point man coming up the stairs only sees the head well within the rules of engagement to take that shot. Now he's laying the foot of his bed. Two women in the room, right? Same point man grabs the two chicks and pushes them back against the far wall.

[Sean Ryan]

Right?

[Matt Bissonette]

Had they had a vest on or something, he would have taken the brunt. Turns out they didn't push him back against the far wall. And that's basically target secure, right? Finish clearing the third floor and it's okay. Question the women and kids, right? Trying to get a name for the. For the guy. The women gave us an alias. Did you shoot bin Laden on the ground? Yes.

[Sean Ryan]

You did. Y. How many times?

[Matt Bissonette]

Couple.

[Sean Ryan]

Where?

[Matt Bissonette]

At the body?

[Sean Ryan]

In the body. How did that feel? Don't fucking tell me. Like, ah, just doing the job. Bullshit. You just fucking killed. You shot.

[Matt Bissonette]

I didn't kill bin Laden. I've never said I killed bin Laden.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm correcting myself. You shot him as he was twitching at the fucking edge of his bed and you didn't feel like you.

[Matt Bissonette]

I don't know what that counts for, but.

[Sean Ryan]

Come on, you didn't feel anything. No sense of accomplishment, retribution? This guy fucking.

[Matt Bissonette]

We had a long way to get home still, right? I think everybody was still very focused on. Okay, right, We're. We've got one Hilo down. All right, let's think big picture here where we are in this situation. Yeah, we got knucklehead down, but did.

[Sean Ryan]

You know it was him, man?

[Matt Bissonette]

Looking at him, it looked like him, right? The women gave us an alias. The kids confirmed it. We went back to the women, the women them confirmed it. We all carried photos of him, right? And all the photos we carried. His beard was gray and his little. Had gray hair. I searched his bathroom on the shelf just above his sink, just for men hair dye. Get the fuck out of here. Are you serious? Been dyeing his beard. That's why his beard's pitch black in all the photos.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, shit.

[Matt Bissonette]

So, yeah, right, we got a Hilo down. We got a lot of stuff going on. We're very far from home, right? You got an hour and a half helo. Ride into a country that's got surface to air missiles, and they're way different than what's going on In Afghanistan. And so, okay, we got clock's ticking. 30 minutes on target. So I started taking the photos. A buddy of mine was there. We literally. He had a camelback. He took the hose of his camelback, dripped water on his face. We took the sheets off his bed, washed all the blood off his face. I had bought. I was the supply guy, so I bought everybody in the squadron digital cameras, right? Because we knew, right, If I. If we had the body going out in our helicopter, and then we got shot down on the way out. How do you have proof on your helicopter, right? So did multiple digital cameras. Taking photos, DNA samples, different helos. And then. And then they were like, all right, you guys bag him up.

[Sean Ryan]

So we.

[Matt Bissonette]

We had the body drug him down the stairs by his feet.

[Sean Ryan]

Nice, right?

[Matt Bissonette]

I. I can shut my eyes and I can remember the sound of his hollow skull bouncing down the stairs as we drug him down, drug him over his son's dead body down to the first floor and shoved him in a body bag.

[Sean Ryan]

Nice.

[Matt Bissonette]

At that point, right, officers getting on the horn, saying, hey, confirmed, we've got them. There are EOD guys. We had one EOD guy on the mission. He starts running around. He gets on. Somebody gets on the radio, says, hey, prep it to blow. So our EOD guy starts running around the house setting thermobaric charges in all these rooms. What are you doing? He's like, well, they said prep it to blow. Like, the house. I'm pretty sure they're talking about the helicopter. He's like, what helicopter? Like, dude, you need to go look in the car courtyard. We had crashed so quickly. There was no radio call between Chalk One and Chalk Two, that we'd gone in. The whole target gets complete. And then some of the people in Chalk Two found out that we had crashed in the assault. They did not know. Are you. We were. Everything was happening so quickly that that hadn't been communicated. So our EOD guy grabs his thermobaric charges, right? Runs out to the helo, starts rigging that to blow. We're moving all the women and kids around the compound to safety. We're doing the 30 minute or 30 second shopping spree at Walmart, whatever, you know, running around, grabbing anything we could. Thumb drives, computers, anything you can find. I remember our master chief getting on the horn. Be like, x, fill the building now. Like, no more. Hey, two minutes. Like, everybody out now. Wrapped everything up. I remember running out of the building. I'm carrying a whole bunch of stuff, And I look over, and it's the most uncomfortable, weird thing you've ever seen. These helicopter pilots that are never on the ground, and they've got these big, like, aviator helmets, these big black dark helmets. And there's, like, two pilots, a two crew chief, and somebody had handed them suitcases of, like, intel. So they're. They're a big helmet. They're looking around, no guns, They've got suitcases. I'm like, come on, guys, let's go. Pulled them out. We were down a helicopter, right? So leadership called one remaining, two backup CH47s with backup seals and backup fuel. One of the CH47s flew into the compound, right? Landed, picked up the other guys. Since, since we had the body, they sent my team out on the one remaining Blackhawk. So we helo lands, we go booking out through this field carrying the body bag, get to the helo, throw the body in, we jump in. And I may be a little sensitive because I've already been in one helicopter crash that night, and the whole cockpit is flashing red. Oh, whole thing's flashing red. I'm like, I don't know what that means, but I don't think that's healthy, right? It's our gas gauges. So we'd given ourselves 30 minutes on target with 10 minutes to spare. When I lifted off, we're at 38 minutes. So we were running on fumes. Our helicopter still had to fly 8, 10 minutes to our other refueling helicopter. We landed, we got gas, right? Everybody thinks it was the 24 seals that pulled this off. There's some army refueler out there who joined the army to refuel helicopters, right? Not be Delta Force or anything crazy to refuel helicopters. Probably for college GI Bill. And that night, that army kid refueled us up, right? None of us would be back if it weren't for the army kid who refueled us. We got gas for 20 minutes. Right now we've blown up our helicopter. So now all the radars are coming up, right? Everybody's looking in Pakistan for what's going, going on. And, you know, you still have a hour, hour and a half kilo ride to the border.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow, man.

[Matt Bissonette]

So sat on his body the whole way, cleared, cleared into Afghanistan, landed, turned over the body to McRaven and the crew, and then we all flew up to Bagram, turned over the body. We were all still in our uniform when President Obama came in and gave his whole spiel on the tv. Like, we're literally watching Obama. The body's laying right there.

[Sean Ryan]

Let's keep going with the Deep. There's a lot that's about to come out that's important in the debrief on items that were kept. I mean, this is all rolling into what you really want to talk about, so I'd just be as descriptive as you can.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, I mean, we did our debrief, and that was it. Right? Did our debrief, flew home. On the way home, they're like, guys, really good job tonight. You get two days off. Like, what? We showed up at the. Landed back at the beach, right? Nobody ever meets you when you come home from deployment, but half the command was standing there with pizza and beer and, of course, the Navy bus. Get on the Navy bus back to the base.

[Sean Ryan]

Why was Bin Laden's body thrown into the ocean?

[Matt Bissonette]

I don't know who made that decision? It was somebody way above my pay grade. I agree with it. I like it.

[Sean Ryan]

You agree with it?

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Why?

[Matt Bissonette]

We turned over the body to some army counterparts, some Army Rangers, and they're the ones who flew it all the way out to the carrier and dumped it. I like it because it's. There's no shrine, no memorial. He's just simply gone. There's no. But even Al Qaeda has not said, hey, he's still alive and we've got him. Like, prove you've got him. He's gone. Done. Erased, deleted. Never to be seen again.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on.

[Matt Bissonette]

I. I kind of like that. Right? If there was some memorial or, you know, shrine or where they buried him, maybe that would be a little different.

[Sean Ryan]

I don't know. Makes sense. But it also created a lot of conspiracy theories. But, you know.

[Matt Bissonette]

Government'S got the photos. They can release them. They can do whatever they want.

[Sean Ryan]

Was that that photo. There was a photo that was circulating that was. You didn't take that photo? All right, all right.

[Matt Bissonette]

All the.

[Tim Parlatore]

All.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah. Any of the stuff online is not accurate. It's all.

[Sean Ryan]

So we were talking about, you know, the. The Hilo ride back, where you had to think about. You got to think about putting a bullet in bin Laden now.

[Matt Bissonette]

I think everybody processed it when we landed in Bagram, right? We landed in bam. We did our debrief, and then we left the hangar, right. Downloaded all our gear. Like, we were flying back a couple hours later. So literally, download, debrief, download. Okay. All that was done. And we had a couple hours, and we went to some of the. Some of the old area that we could hang out at Bagram and hung out there, and there were some TVs that guys were turning on, and that's where the story was breaking in the States, right? Like, bin Laden had given. Or Obama had given his spiel, right? There's the stuff. University guy. University's going crazy. There were some, like, ticker tape at, like, a baseball game or something. All these things were. Were breaking. And. And I would say that was the first time everybody sat in the room and was like, take a breath. I hadn't had a chance to do that until then, right? We still getting back. We still had something to do. We just got done. Like, now it's out. Only thing you're waiting for is a plane ride home, and you got a couple hours to kill. And we all went into, like, this area and just hung out, watched some TV until, like, all right, guys, plane's ready. And then we. We hopped the flight. They, you know, you typically stop in Germany. We aired air, refueled on the way home, flew all the way back to the beach, landed, and good job, guys. Two days off. I went to work both days because what. What do you do when the world has just exploded in such a way, right? And what, you're gonna go hang out at home and feel like you're normal? No way. Everybody showed up at work, right? I see one of my good friends. I went to green team with him. Spent eight years. I saw him more than I saw my family, right? I see him the day after, two days after the mission, in our cage area at the command. I'm like, hey, Pat, are you. He looks at me. He's like, hey, man, can I ask you a question? Yeah, what do you got, dude? He looks around, makes sure nobody else is there, and he's like, hey, are you sleeping? Like, no, I'm not sleeping. I haven't slept in days. He's like, okay, all right, good. I feel normal. That was the single most emotional conversation I ever had with any teammate in 14 years.

[Sean Ryan]

No shit.

[Matt Bissonette]

That was it. Are you sleeping? Nobody ever got. Nobody talked about it. Nobody talked about mental health or how you were doing. There was none of that. It was. So that was. That was two days after the mission, one of my best friends, like, hey, man, are you sleeping? Because I'm not like, no, I'm not sleeping. He's like, okay, good, good. I feel normal, too.

[Sean Ryan]

Fuck, man.

[Matt Bissonette]

It was a lot. It was a lot. It was crazy, right? And the media just hypes it up and makes it want to be crazier, and it was us just doing it. Yes. It was a very historical significant event. I get it. I'm more proud of the captain Phillips stuff. And I wasn't even one of the shooters. Right. We saved somebody. Not just killed a whole bunch of knuckleheads. I get that Bin Laden's a significant figure. I'm not knocking it, but it was. Yeah, it was a lot. It's a lot. All the, all the stuff SEALS training gives you.

[Sean Ryan]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

We can go sniper, shoot, you know, homemade bombs, all the, all the stuff we've been trained to do. Not one second. And, hey, what do you do if your friend gets shot in the face? What do you do if you do a bin Laden mission? And it's, it's you up at home and you can't sleep, nothing. So, yeah, that's tough.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn, man.

[Matt Bissonette]

If you're always going to revert to your training.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonette]

In a bad situation. There was no training to revert to. It was just, man. Right. From, from my first deployment to that. Lots of missions in between and. Right. How are you evolving? Adapting? What was changing in between that? I saw it all change, man. I saw from the beginning to the end. Yeah. Yeah, it was tough. Not any of that, not any section, not any second in there was any leadership ever worrying about the individual operator. Brand new. Everybody was excited to be there. Right. Okay. 8th deployment, 9th deployment, 10th deployment. Nobody was ever checking in like, hey, Sean, are you okay? Another three 12 divorces in the squadron last year. Your family okay? Nobody ever asked that. Nobody once ever said, hey, your family okay? Your kids okay? Are you home enough? No way. And then if you did mention, hey, I got some stuff going on at home, it was like, oh, boy, we're losing Bis. So it was the expectation and the pressure, certainly at my former command, grew and grew and grew. And with the success of Captain Phillips and then with the success of bin Laden, all of this, the expectation was, okay, you're going to be fine. And if I'm the officer in charge, we're going to do all this great stuff, I'm going to look good, and I don't have to worry about the side effect it's having on my crew. But. Yeah. And then shortly after the bin Laden raid and all the high of that, we had extortion. And you want to talk about a gut punch.

[Sean Ryan]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

That was crushing.

[Sean Ryan]

How long after the braid was extortion?

[Matt Bissonette]

What, August May to August, A couple of months. Yeah. Heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy. And yeah, I mean, that, that was kind of one of the final straws for me. Right. I knew my enlistment was coming up in December. I had been talking about. I didn't like the the decisions being made in Afghanistan, taking away our dogs, saying no night missions, all this nonsense. I had joined and stayed in because of 9, 11, and I did all these deployments and I saw all this change happening throughout this stretch. And as the longer I stayed in, the more I saw our leadership. Right, was promoted based off writing their own awards and the number of missions they ran, not how they took care of their guys or evolved. What we were doing. Right. Name a name, a general or an admiral in Afghanistan who said the way we were doing it was wrong and survived. There aren't any. There's not one. There's no leadership in our military who said, hey, the approach we have in Afghanistan is wrong. We should be doing this. No, you're relieved and we're going to bring in another yes man to deliver my policy of what I want you to do. And so I just kept seeing more and more of that. And yeah, I knew that the leadership, whether Panetta, Admiral McRaven, President Obama, all giving interviews and all their stuff for their own hype. And that's what finally hit me. And that's why I disgusted you. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

What was McRaven's position at the time?

[Matt Bissonette]

I don't care about that guy. I could give two shits about McRaven.

[Sean Ryan]

Was he. I mean, what was he, though?

[Matt Bissonette]

He was commander jsoc.

[Sean Ryan]

He was the JSOC commander. Okay.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I'll just put it this way. McRaven was at the command years ago, right before he was the commanding officer. He was not well liked at all. Everybody always saw him as a horrible boss, at least from my level, my perspective only. He gave it. When he left the squadron, he, like had this big plaque made that hung in the team room for years. Years later, he becomes the position he was in. Nobody liked him. Nobody liked the position he was in. He was very involved in trying to take away the dogs and the night missions and all the stuff that Kelpie keep us safe on these very dangerous missions. So I, I may or may not have been there when his plaque was removed from the team room wall. We cut it in half. We shipped it overseas to a forward operating base in Afghanistan that we were working out of and we burnt it in the fire pit. Now, we can, we can keep going with the McRaven references here because I'm not a fan. Right. You know, I. I wrote no Easy Day.

[Sean Ryan]

Hold on. Before we get there. I'm just. We'll get there. I know, I know we got a lot to cover there. Just Want to re rewind just a little bit? You know, when you. How long was it after the bin Laden raid? Where did you just. You were. You left the Navy?

[Matt Bissonette]

The raid was in May. I got out in December. End of December, January 1st. So onto terminal leave, seven months.

[Sean Ryan]

When did you decide you were getting out? How fast did you know this is it.

[Matt Bissonette]

I'd been talking about getting out before my last week. I told you. We came home from the last deployment, and 10 days later, we were spinning up on the bin Laden thing. So I'd been talking to a lot of my guys on that deployment because that deployment had slowed down. All the new rules were kicking in that were making it more dangerous for us. And. And I, as somebody who'd been there this whole time, was looking at this and, like, this doesn't seem right. Like, we're going backwards here. And I was getting very frustrated with how we were going backwards. I'd lived through the beginning. I'd seen all the ups and downs, and here we were at the end, and I felt like we were going backwards, right? I was not an officer. I was an enlisted guy who stayed there and operated the entire time. Right? Our officers bounce in and out and in and out and back and forth. I was there. So I saw a lot of changes. And the more changes I saw, the less and the more senior and the more mature I got and the more. The older I got and the more dead friends I earned or gained, I was like, man, maybe I'm not putting myself in the healthiest position here, being sent to war by some of these idiots. And so I was very open and honest with my team that, hey, I don't know about this. So when I got back from that deployment, probably after the bin Laden mission now, but that's when I went and sat down with my master chief, and I was like, hey, I need a break, right? I was done and operational in the squadron. No longer staying there. I'd done. Very few guys stayed there that long. They're like, okay, you got to move out of the squadron and go do something different. Now I'm like, okay, well, I need a break for 18 months. If I'm leaving the squadron, give me a break. And that's when they were like, no, the only other billet we're going to give you is an operational billet at a different squadron. I was like, okay, well, if those are my options, if you're my master chief telling me my only option is this, okay, thank you for that clarity. I already knew what was going on at the senior ranks in the military and what was going on in Afghanistan. And I saw them making it more dangerous for us doing our jobs. I was like, why am I going to continue to volunteer for these knuckleheads?

[Sean Ryan]

Well, I mean, what did the other guys think? Were they on the same page as you?

[Matt Bissonette]

Depends on where your enlistment is. You know the deal, right? Are you at 16 years? Are you at 20? You know, how close are you to that retirement, right? I never joined for retirement, right. I joined because I wanted to serve, and then I stayed, and then I just stayed and stayed and stayed because there was a war going on and very few of us were doing it. So I stayed. I didn't stay for the paycheck. You know, there's not much paycheck there. Retirement, right? I could do 20 years and retire at the same amount. The, the trombone player in the Navy band does 20 years and retires, right? So it's not about the money. Like I said, I got out with a plaque with my name misspelled. That's all I got. So it's never been about. I don't know what it's been about, but it hasn't been about. It was just.

[Sean Ryan]

It was.

[Matt Bissonette]

It was time for me, the other guys, other guys that I worked with, you know, maybe they're sitting at 16 years. I was at 14. Maybe they have two years left on their enlistment. That gets them to 18. And then, you know, they were. They were trying to get us all with the big enlistment bonuses at 19 years. If you stay to 25, we'll give you some big money tax free. So they were. They were definitely courting a lot of the guys at that level. And the hook is, if you do past 10, well, why not stay till 20 and get your retirement right? I was at 14. Why not stay six more? Well, what are the odds I make it six? It's pretty. Pretty good odds I made it at 14 based off the amount of friends that aren't here, right? What are the odds I make it another six? And then these six years, I'm not going to be operational where I like. You're going to put me in the leadership with all these clowns that I don't trust and respect. Now I'm out fucking.

[Sean Ryan]

Hey, man. Damn. A lot of dark stuff going on in the world right now. And it's to the point where I don't even believe my own eyes anymore because I cannot verify what people are saying about all the political violence. The division I partnered with this production company called Ironclad and we're doing an eight part audio series on PsyOps on why foreign countries, governments, maybe even our own government would conduct a psyop on its own people. And I just think that that this series is going to be extremely important because it's going to open the eyes of people on why these things happen. You can head over to psyopshow.com order it today.

[Matt Bissonette]

I think you're going to get a.

[Sean Ryan]

Lot out of this. Who's pulling the strings? Who's pulling them?

[Tim Parlatore]

Foreign.

[Sean Ryan]

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[Matt Bissonette]

I had talked to. Well, we knew. We knew the movie was being made within three weeks of the mission. So the movie idea and everything that the movie was happening was. Everybody knew that.

[Sean Ryan]

You mean. What do you mean within three weeks of the mission? You mean. You mean the movie was. Bin Laden dies being discussed before Bin Laden dies.

[Matt Bissonette]

Three weeks within the mission, we go to Panetta's retirement ceremony, and he has, at Langley, Virginia, full access to Langley, the screenwriter, producer, director. So we all knew that. Very, very loud and proud that, okay, they're making a movie out of this.

[Sean Ryan]

But how the fuck does the government sue you for $7 million?

[Tim Parlatore]

They didn't sue.

[Sean Ryan]

Writing a book or whatever the fuck they state, whatever you call it, prosecuted you. They fucking took your money. They took your. They took $7 million that you earned from the book. But the director of CIA has given full access to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, to make a fucking movie.

[Matt Bissonette]

They gave the female CIA woman, they gave her permission to talk to the producers to give them the movie. That's the reason the movie's so accurate. So we all knew, plain as day, right? We knew this was happening. We knew this was coming. And honestly, it wasn't much of a surprise, right?

[Sean Ryan]

Did your team know you were going to write the book?

[Matt Bissonette]

Not everybody, but I talked to a crew that I respected and said, hey, here's what I'm doing.

[Sean Ryan]

What was their take?

[Matt Bissonette]

Mixed results. A key piece to explaining what I was doing was, hey, look, I'm not putting my name on it. I'm not getting out and front of it. And. And I think they were like, okay, that makes sense. If you can do that, we get it. Because everybody else we'd seen was beating their chest, taking credit, right? And I was like, look, I. I don't want any of that. I'm not using my name. I. I don't have any plans on showing my face. I want to tell the story. I'm a kid who read a book. I read a whole bunch of books growing up. And it's because of those books that I voluntarily did 13 tours, right? It was those books I read about, right? It wasn't. So, yeah, I don't think writing books is bad. You know, I think if you're a SEAL who's done, and there's some out there, right, that have done very little and written about it a lot. Those, those kind of give a bad. But those are also guys saying, hey, look at me at the same time. So I, I took a very different approach. I've been there, did it. I don't want the press publicity, and I'm going to tell the story and I'm going to do it under the radar. At least that was the approach. That was the plan until I got punched in the face.

[Sean Ryan]

Where do we go from here?

[Matt Bissonette]

The book came out. Well, let me back up. Next question, right? So I get out of the Navy, I'm going to write a book. I've never written a fucking book before. Where do you go? How do you do this? Like, okay, I, I met a, A, a literary agent who does the book stuff. Talked to her. I'm like, hey, how do I do this? I need an attorney. Whatever. She had represented a former Delta Force author by the name of Dalton Fury. That was his, that was his pseudonym, right? Delta Force officer wrote a book called Killing Bin Laden.

[Sean Ryan]

Interesting.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, interesting. But, okay, he's, he now died of cancer. So Dalton Fury writes this book. Literary agent had represented him. So she's like, hey, I can help you. I helped him through the whole process. I'll get you in touch with the same lawyer we used to do his book. Amazing. Great. It's exactly what we need. So former SOCOM jag, now civilian practice, represented other military authors. Like, okay, great. I think I've got the perfect. I got a lawyer, I got my literary agent, we go get a publishing deal. And I'm like, okay, how do we need to do this lawyer? How does this work? Like, okay, well, I can review the book. I've got my clearances. I've done this for other people. I'll review the book and set. That's how it works. Like, okay, check. Did I know anybody who'd write a book? Could create some waves in the community, sure. But as long as my lawyer was telling me I was legal, and I'm referencing that against the movies and everything else coming out from the administration, I'm like, okay, seems to make sense. This guy's a former SOCOM jag. He's represented a former officer who wrote a book about bin Laden and did a 60 Minutes episode. But I've got the right legal advice.

[Sean Ryan]

Seems like the perfect fit.

[Matt Bissonette]

So, boom, knock out the book. Book finishes, right? We get it published and the book comes out. Right. And as the book comes out, that's when the government hears it reads it, whatever, and they go high and. Right. Right. Now, mind you, my book came out before the presidential election, and it came out before Obama's movie, right before the Zero Dark Thirty movie. And I want to say it might have come out before the finish, which was the book that they'd all given interviews for. So my book was a surprise to the White House and everybody else. So the DOJ is sent after me. Man, holy shit. You think getting in a gunfight's bad? I've never seen anything like. I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know that this world existed. And then. And then my real battle started. Right. Three years.

[Sean Ryan]

So this really happened because Zero Dark Thirty, the presidents in Panetta's movie wasn't out. Their book wasn't out.

[Matt Bissonette]

Interesting timing to all of this. Right. If I. If I look at somebody who's running for. For president for a second term, who's going to run very much so on his movie that he's promoting, that's promoting his heroic decision making to take out bin Laden. Right? Right. You want to make sure that narrative is out there. Well, if a nobody presents a narrative that could counter yours, whether you've read it or not, what do you do? You crush the competition. If you have a Hunter Biden laptop weeks before a presidential election, that could upset the election, what do you do? You have 100 former intelligence officers write about the fact that this isn't a real laptop and this is all fake, and they crushed the other news. Same difference. I was just a nobody, and so they came after me. And legally, right. So legally, so lots of lawyers throwing all sorts of threats. My original attorney, right, the guy had given me all the advice and says, look, I can review it. He's like, look, they're wrong. There's nothing classified in the book. He's like, wait till they read it. They'll leave you alone. There's nothing wrong. They seem pretty angry here. What's the deal? He's like, nah, you're good. I don't like that vibe from my attorney when I got a whole bunch of pit bulls over here yelling at me. So I hired a second attorney. First attorney continues to tell my second attorney that we had no obligation to get the book reviewed, that he had the prior authority to review it, to vet it, to make sure there was nothing classified in it, and check the box. New attorney is like, man, I don't know that that's accurate. So remove Attorney 1, bring in Attorney 2, and go to the pit bulls at the DOJ and say, Look, I'll give up attorney client privilege. I didn't do any of this maliciously. I'll answer anything you want. Like, please don't be so mad. Look, this is exactly how we got here. I'll go through my emails with my attorney for the past nine months. This attorney has been guiding me through this process to this moment. So if you have a, if there's a legal problem here, let's all sit down and discuss this, right? That was when all this hit, right? All the drama in the press hit when the book came out. I've been taught, right, communicate with leadership. If there's a problem, communicate with leadership. I'd done that every time in the teams. If there's a problem, go hit up leadership and communicate. So our single biggest asset is our ability to communicate through the issues. I text message, my former commanding officer, commanding officer of my squadron, who'd moved up to be commanding officer of the whole team, said, hey, sir, this has gotten out of hand. I would love to talk with you about this and explain what's going on. Open up. Communication. He responds back with two word text, Delete me. That is a perfect example of the leadership inside nsw, right? Delete me. No, didn't want to talk to me, didn't want to ask what happened. Didn't want to say, hey, Bis, you're one of our top performers. You've been here for years. You just left like, what's going on? There was none of that. It was an immediate, we're gonna crush this dude. And so I had done some, like, when I first got out, I did some video games. I helped with a video game company, shoot some like, advertisement type content. Well, I'd hired some buddies that were still in. They went after them, the command did. They went after any one of my friends. They absolutely. One of my friends, they told him not to even come back into work for his last year in the Navy.

[Sean Ryan]

Are you serious?

[Matt Bissonette]

Officer? One of my officer friends that I had actually emailed a copy of my book to before it had come out. And when I gave up attorney client privilege so they could look through my computer and see the advice I got, they went through my computer and dug up everything they could and they saw that I'd sent a copy of this book to an officer friend who was enlisted and became an officer in the community. And they went to him and were like, hey, why didn't you report him? He's like, report him for what? Well, he was writing a book and you should have reported him. And they fucked him, right? They screwed over probably 12 other of my friends. What do they do?

[Sean Ryan]

They say, I don't know. I didn't know this was wrong. I mean, we just had the president, Leon Panetta, the director of CIA, fucking have Hollywood and open the door doors to Langley.

[Matt Bissonette]

They didn't care. The hypocrisy is so in your face and sick when you're sitting through it. I'm like, hey, what about the movie? They're like, well, you're not Panetta. You couldn't authorize that. I'm like, okay, what about Admiral McRaven and Obama giving interviews for this book? The finish. Did anybody approve what they could talk about or not talk about? Well, they know what to talk. I'm like, okay, well, what's the review authority? We're all operating off the same. Like, come on, guys. Right?

[Sean Ryan]

So.

[Matt Bissonette]

So for. For three years. Three years, they came after me. I've. I've never written, thankfully. The book made a ton of money, right? The book. All the book money went into a savings account. I've never written a $50,000 check in my life. I was writing $50,000 checks a month for my attorney's fees. Because if you're the government and you have unlimited attorneys, what do you do? You outspend them. So immediately they were like, yeah, felony. Felony for what? All sorts of threats. Every threat under the sun. I'm like, I gave up attorney client privilege. They called me in for two separate I'll Kellerman interrogations. They weren't questionings. They were 12 hour sessions in the basement of the NCIS headquarters in San Diego. Right where they. No SEALS in the room, just some NCIS guys and. And literally going through every step in my book, like, well, right here, right here, you talk about you guys launched the mission out of Jalalabad. Did you know there was a mortar attack in Jalalabad a week after your book came out and an American service member was killed? That blood's on your hands. I'm like, I'm sorry, did you just say Jalalabad was mortared? Like, have you ever been to Jbad? No. Like, okay, well, I've been there like 12 times. Do you know how many times it's been mortar? Every time. I'm like, hate to break it to you, but we have Russian contractors cooking our chow, and we have Afghans pumping the shitters. Like, it's nobody's surprise that we have an American base in Jalalabad. Right? Didn't matter. That was them just trying to poke me they. They pulled up a picture of my book of the four tube night vision goggles, like, right there. Highly fucking classified. How could you. You're such an idiot. How could you leak this stuff? Like, do you get Internet down here in the basement? Please, please. Google GP NVG night vision goggles. And the manufacturer's website will pop up with all the specifications.

[Sean Ryan]

In fact, you can buy them for 40 grand.

[Matt Bissonette]

They're on sale now. Anybody can have them.

[Sean Ryan]

The Canadian Tier 1 unit tried to pull that shit with us, that the four tubes were classified, that the quads were. Yeah, were classified. So we sent them the article. Actually. They said all of the equipment that was used to take the world record sniper shot was classified. So we actually sent them the article in Ballistic magazine that I believe was that, like 2 years old, Tim, 2 years old, said, oh, you mean all of this equipment that you guys had Ballistic magazine fucking put in the article about you?

[Tim Parlatore]

Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, that's classified.

[Matt Bissonette]

Okay. They picked.

[Sean Ryan]

So we put four dildos over the NOD tubes and sent it back to them. We said, here you go, Canada.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yep. The hypocrisy.

[Sean Ryan]

They.

[Matt Bissonette]

They kept saying, look, it's tactics, techniques and procedures. Ttps. It's the same. They just went after Pete Scobello, right? Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Who's that?

[Matt Bissonette]

Who's the guy?

[Sean Ryan]

What's the guy's name? That I'll say.

[Matt Bissonette]

I won't say his last name, but his first name is Wall, and he had the ball.

[Sean Ryan]

Allman. He's an admiral, Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

I don't know who Nike is.

[Sean Ryan]

Walt Allman. An admiral, Tim. Yeah, Walt Allman. He's the guy. Yeah, he went after. He went after Pete Scobell and, like, threatened him and said that he's gonna. He's gonna fucking ruin his reputation in the SEAL teams because he came on the Sean Ryan show and talked about an operation.

[Matt Bissonette]

Look, I love. I love Walt, but I think people change when they get into positions of leadership. And I. I think that's. That's what we. That's why I left the community, is because I saw these great officers moving up into a. Into a realm where they became politicians and. Sorry, I'm not a fan of any politician.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, you know, Walt came. He got in touch with. With my attorney, you know, who's sitting right over here and is telling him that it. Pete. Pete needs to. Sean needs to take the episode down or whatever because Pete released classified information about the weight of the boats. He said the wrong fucking way to the boats.

[Matt Bissonette]

It's like, Walt, here's what I would say to that, right? Leadership has the balls to call Pete, who absolutely bared his soul on that episode and crushed it, Right? But NSW has the balls to call a guy like that and harp on him. But, right, recently there was a Netflix documentary, a Netflix documentary that came out in the past six months on the bin Laden raid. So this is a great story on the bin Laden raid, specifically about the bin Laden raid, only about the bin Laden mission. Netflix special. Six months ago, the same raid that.

[Sean Ryan]

You were on and wrote a book about and then took $7 million from you.

[Matt Bissonette]

Producer of the show calls, gets ahold of me, says, hey, Matt, we're doing this interview. I've already interviewed Admiral McRaven. We're doing this whole bin Laden thing. I'm like, listen, a, hasn't this been done already? He dies in the end. Let's get over with the story. They're like, no, but Netflix has never done it. And we're going to do our version. Like, okay, great. He's like, listen, we've interviewed all the intel folks out of DC. We just sat down with Admiral McRaven at his house for, like, four hours. And look, we'd love some of the operators on the ground to come in and share their story. And I'm like, really? You? Admiral McRaven just talked about it. I'm like, what authorities? Any clearances, anything that we went through to that it's okay to talk about this. And that's when I explained to the producer. I'm like, listen, I explained my situation, how the government came after and we got to finish it, but how the government came after me and put me in debt and all this stuff. I'm like, look, I got a payment plan for writing a book and talking about this mission. Now, it's been 10 years, and it's supposed to be okay for me to go sit down Next to Admiral McRaven?

[Sean Ryan]

Well, this obviously didn't go through, right?

[Matt Bissonette]

Well, no, I talked to the producer. I'm like, never allow.

[Sean Ryan]

Walt Allman would never allow this to happen.

[Matt Bissonette]

So I'm like, hey, can you get me in touch with the admiral? Right? Nobody inside the seals has ever talked to me about anything. But I'm like, can you put me in touch with the admiral? And the producer? Does I get a call set up with Admiral McRaven? Like, fuck, yeah, let's do this. Call McRaven. He's in his car, he's driving, like, hey, sir. Hey, Bis, how you doing? I'd love. Hey, what are you up to? I'm like, well, you know, I'm a little conflicted. A little bit of conflicted here, sir. Let me explain my situation. I wrote a book, hired a lawyer, wrote a book. Government came after me for that book. I now have a payment plan on that book for the next 15 years. And the government just can fucking kill me if I say anything about this book. But now they're asking me to get on a Netflix documentary next to you. He's like, oh, well, Matt, Matt, don't. Don't feel obligated to be on that. Like, what. What do they want you to do?

[Sean Ryan]

We'll take all the credit. Don't worry.

[Matt Bissonette]

What do you mean, don't feel obligated? I'm like, sir, they want the operators to get on and tell our version of the story. And to be perfectly honest, sir, if you're okay doing it, then I guess it's okay for us to do it. You could literally hear him shitting himself through the.

[Sean Ryan]

I'll bet you could.

[Matt Bissonette]

Right? Go, Matt, Matt, no, no, you don't need a. Don't feel obligated. I'm like, sir, don't. Don't worry. I'm not. I'm not going to be involved in this. I still got a payment plan for talking about it. Like, was there some authority that allowed you and other people to participate in that interview? Well, Matt, I know what to talk about. And I'm like, okay, great. I'm sure you do.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, he knows. He knows.

[Tim Parlatore]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, okay.

[Matt Bissonette]

So he then switches gears. He's like, well, Matt, maybe I can connect you with somebody who can help with your situation. Like, oh, sir, that'd be amazing. It's so thoughtful of you. It's amazing that now all of a sudden thinking, admiral, when you don't want me to go on the Netflix documentary and you want to now try and help me. So he sets me up with a civilian, former seal, he's now a civilian, aide to the sitting admiral. So I'm like, great. I get on the phone with this guy, this guy takes my call. This guy's actually was phenomenal. Former Team 6 commander, older guy, now a civilian. Long conversation with him.

[Sean Ryan]

Him.

[Matt Bissonette]

Broke down the whole thing. Everything I've been through, he's like, man, can you back this up with documentation? I'm like, absolutely. Stand by. Blasted him. All the documentation with everything to back up everything I've been through, and everything goes quiet.

[Sean Ryan]

Why would Walt ALLMAN Allow Admiral McRaven to do a Netflix special?

[Matt Bissonette]

Well, that's my question.

[Sean Ryan]

Wouldn't let Pete Scobell, come on and talk about.

[Matt Bissonette]

I'll get a call after this interview. Pete Scobell got a call after his. And they're trying to sell. To smack us on the wrist. But who's calling Admiral McRaven and telling him to shut the up?

[Sean Ryan]

I bet Walt isn't calling him.

[Matt Bissonette]

I bet Walt's not calling him.

[Sean Ryan]

Wonder why.

[Matt Bissonette]

It's further up the food chain, right?

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonette]

So unfortunately. Right. I'll give you another example. In the height of my issues, I contacted a former seal. I won't name names, but he has an eye patch and he's a congressman out of a state.

[Sean Ryan]

You mean Dan Crenshaw?

[Matt Bissonette]

I'm not naming names.

[Sean Ryan]

Another one of my favorite people, sir.

[Matt Bissonette]

Here's my situation.

[Sean Ryan]

You know, Dan. Dan actually sent me a message, I should read this to you. But basically he tells me I brought something up about him and I never even met. I gave him the courtesy of not even mentioning his name. It was about his birthday party where he hired Steve aoki to, to DJ's birthday. I mean, that can't be cheap, right? Especially on a congressman's salary. And I brought that up. And Dan sends me a message that says his boys over at 6 are really upset with me that I brought that up and they're going to. They might come beat me up.

[Matt Bissonette]

Boys at 6.

[Sean Ryan]

Boys over at 6.

[Matt Bissonette]

Well, to infer he's got.

[Sean Ryan]

I don't know why a congressman would be threatening me with Seal Team 6, but I'm still fucking waiting. This is actually a couple years old. I still have not had my ass kicked by a couple of guys over at 6. But Dan Crunch, he fits with all these fucking people you're talking about.

[Matt Bissonette]

So I called him, right? He's a sitting congressman, He's a former officer and. Drumroll, please. He was getting ready to release his book, so I called him up. I get a conversation with him. I said, sir, here's my situation. I hired an attorney. The attorney gave me bad advice, book was published. I've given up attorney client privilege, cooperated everything I can to fix this. They've still come after me. We can get into all the other stuff that I'm dealing with. Said, sir, can you help me out with this? He's like, well, you know, I'm about ready to publish my book and I'm not getting it reviewed. Like, well, sir, same letter of the law that they came after me for failure to seek pre publication review. I didn't get pre publication review because my lawyer told me I didn't have to. And he could do it like in your case, you know, you have to get it reviewed. I'm here telling you, confirming, you have to get reviewed or the government's going to come after you. He's like, yeah, but I'm not going to write anything classified in my book. I'm like, there's nothing classified in my book. They said there was. They went through it. They said, no, there's nothing classified in it. You just failed to seek review. Like, so if I. Only thing I failed to do was seek review, you're willingly going around that obligation and you don't give a shit. He's like, yeah, but I'm not going to write about anything classified in my book. That was the answer. Never talked to him again. So he published his book, no review, nothing's happened. He's kept his money. He's a sitting congressman. I got a payment plan.

[Tim Parlatore]

So.

[Matt Bissonette]

So to say I've been alone.

[Sean Ryan]

So I guess, I guess you're not one of Dan's boys over at sick.

[Matt Bissonette]

Definitely not Dan's boys at six. That's a pretty ridiculous statement if I've ever heard one.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, you have been targeted, man.

[Matt Bissonette]

So, so the first two years, right, that came after me. I signed an agreement called a proffer agreement. And the lawyers can explain what that is, but it's basically like, hey, listen, I'm gonna, I'll give you full disclosure. I'm not lying about anything. And unless you find some sort of smoking gun, like, we're good. So they're like, okay, cool. So I full. Everything talk. What? Anything they wanted to answer, anything they want to hear about whatever went through it all. Lie detector tests, two interrogations in the basement where they're accusing me of all this nonsense. And they finally come back after about two and a half, three years, they're like, okay, we'll leave you alone. But you. And there's nothing classified in the book. You just failed to seek pre pub review and we want 100% of the money back. I'm straight suicidal at this point, right? I've got a gun in my mouth over this. I am fucking. I've lost my community.

[Sean Ryan]

You've. You've legitimately had a gun in your mouth, or this is a figure of speech.

[Matt Bissonette]

No, legitimately in my mouth.

[Sean Ryan]

Got that bad?

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah. I got out of the teams, my whole community, my world, everything was ripped from me, right? Every single one of my friends. I didn't have friends outside the SEAL teams gone boom. And if you talk to me, I was getting comms from guys on their wife's phone or some prepaid 711 phone saying yo dude, when I get out I'll come up for air. But if anybody's hot even talking to you from the command, they'll kick us out of the command. So it was this big. This big. Hey, anybody connected to BIS got man, what the. You know, I mean this is just.

[Sean Ryan]

An hour ago we were just talking about retention and recruitment and how development group had a what plus was that development group or the entire NSW wide and it's out of the entire SEAL team. We had a plus one SEAL for the entire year. And now they're just. Now that now they have allowed. They've allowed a movie, they've allowed books, they've allowed everything. They target you. They target you for what? Because your fucking book went out before the President's movie. And. And they are going to. They are going to fucking lynch people in the SEAL teams just for associating with you. So over, over, over. What they say is classified, but there was nothing classified. You can't even fucking run the classified operations because they don't have the manpower because they're. Their egos are so.

[Matt Bissonette]

It's just, it's just.

[Sean Ryan]

And they're gonna burn dudes for. For even associating with you. All the headlines when the exact same material went out and all these other avenues.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

And they're going to destroy the Navy's Tier 1 unit over making a example out of somebody. That's. That's a double standard.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah. So.

[Sean Ryan]

So I think you made the right fucking call. Getting out at 14 years. What a joke.

[Tim Parlatore]

Joke.

[Sean Ryan]

What a joke.

[Matt Bissonette]

You saw, you saw what I saw, right?

[Sean Ryan]

I saw that makes me so angry. Do you know? Oh man. And nobody, nobody said nobody, nobody, nobody challenged it. This is like, this is like this. Oh man. Dude. What the. Like do you know who this J. Cal guy is that I've interviewed? He's an SAS guy. He's being charged with murder.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yes I have.

[Sean Ryan]

Of you know it. I. I thought it would be a good idea to cover it. Maybe we'll fucking get this. He's really good buddies with. With DJ Shipley, works at GBRS and they now he's fucked and he can't do it. So I thought it'd be great to expose it all. Do you know how many SS SAS guys have come out and like spoken up for this fucking guy? Yeah, zero. You know what they're fucking. This is. This is the best part. Do you know what their motto is at sas? He who Dares wins. How fucking hilarious is that? They can't even stand up for their own fucking guys. They can't even stand up for their own fucking guys.

[Matt Bissonette]

It's. It's the same in their fucking motto.

[Sean Ryan]

Is he who dares wins. What a fucking joke. Like, what a joke.

[Matt Bissonette]

I'm not smiling because I get it. I'm smiling because I've been. I was in a very dark place, right? I got out, I had everything ripped from me. Zero. I got divorced. Everything gone, right? Any community I ever had, gone. Like, if you talk to me. No, can't talk to you. They're gonna get me. I can't. Nothing gone. And that's when I was absolutely. I'm like this. I'm out. I'm like, right, okay. So they're like, okay, we want all the book money back. Like, okay, great. Here, here's all I got left. I had spent close to just under a million and a half dollars in my legal defense in about three years. I don't have that money, right? I got a plaque with my name misspelled. No retirement, no pension, nothing. So the only way I could defend myself was with the millions of dollars the book had made that was sitting in my savings account. So I'm writing checks to my lawyers three years later, right? Interrogations, all this nonsense. They're like, you didn't leak anything classified in the book. The only thing you failed to do was seek pre publication review. But we want all the book money back. Like, fine, take it. I don't give a fuck. Wrote them a check. They're like, whoa, you're missing some. Like, yeah, here's my receipts. You've never charged me with anything. Never charged me with a crime, never anything. They're like, we want it all back. Like, okay. Like, we want it in three years. Like, okay, I don't know how I'm going to go make a million and a half or 2 million, I may pay taxes on it to then give you assholes the rest. So I was like, hey, I'm going to go sue my attorney. He gave me the advice. I gave up attorney client privilege. Go through my emails and look at the advice I got from counsel. This was not me maliciously going around my legal obligations like, we don't care. So I wrote him a check, every bit of money I had, and they gave me three years to pay the rest back. I sued my attorney, okay? I figured this out. When you sue somebody, the first casualty of a lawsuit is the truth. And that's fucked up, right? The first casualty of a lawsuit is the truth. The truth is irrelevant. It becomes about statute of limitations and where did you file in? And so for two and a half years we fought all this nonsense until we get to a court date. Two and a half years in, we get a court date. And the day we get a court date where we're going to go to court, I'm going to actually get a chance to sue my attorney. He settles, he says, okay, you won, I gave you bad advice, we'll settle. Okay, so problem is the lawyers make all the money in that space, right? He writes me a check, okay, I got to pay my attorney and then I got to pay taxes on it. So I don't have the million and a half that the government needs. I go back to the government with my half a million dollars and my winning malpractice case and I say, hey, look, I got a winning malpractice case. I know you assholes, right? And through the malpractice case we did discovery, right? And in this discovery process we were able to question my attorney. Did you know that the DOJ, right, they came after me. Two 12 hour interrogation sessions, three years long. They had one phone call with my original attorney, one phone call, 15 minutes. The DOJ called him once for 15 minutes and my attorney was like, no. I told him he had to get a book reviewed, Lied to him, never looked in the emails, that hundreds of emails with all of his advice, none of it. So the government took that, didn't care, the we won the malpractice case, went back to the government, said, hey, will you relook at this? Right? This proves I've got a winning malpractice case. That proves I relied on counsel to publish this book without a government review. And if this is the only thing they got me on is I failed to seek pre public review. Then he told me, I like, look, here it is, he's culpable in that decision making. Government was like, we're not opening it up again, so wouldn't touch it. So then I went back to them and I said, okay, I can't pay you a million and a half dollars in three years. Will you give me a payment plan? So they disappeared. They wanted all my tax returns. I sent in a whole bunch of junk. They came back a couple of months later and said, okay, this is just this last January, said, okay, give us all the money that, that you made from your malpractice and then we'll put you on a payment plan. So 30$800 a month for the next 15 years. I only served for 14. There's no way I made over 1 million and a half dollars in my service. So I'll pay back more money for longer than I ever served. They went through my computers. They deleted every photo from my career. Gave me back a computer with no photos on it, Basically zero eyes. My whole career. That is when, right? And I've been very. I've been in some dark spots through this, right? That's why I said my. My faith, my journey of faith has been much more locked in. When I was in the fight with friends and people and whatever, and it was like I understood, hey, seal, shit's going to be hard. And it's going to. I never expected the civilian world to be this hard and to hit me this way. And I got freaking junked. And I was not ready for it. I didn't have a community around me to help me. I was alone and in a dark spot, right? I went to the va, right? Bad neck and back issues all through this time. I'm going to the VA for my medical care, right? The DOJ is me trying to kill me. And I go to the va, I'm like, hey, man, I can't drink a beer without my arms going numb. The pain meds, pain meds, pain meds. Never even got an MRI in a year and a half.

[Sean Ryan]

Holy shit, dude.

[Tim Parlatore]

Right? My.

[Matt Bissonette]

My final trip to the va, I came back with a bag of pain meds, no mri. My parents were in town visiting. I remember showing my parents the pain meds, and my mom just broke down. She's like, what the heck? So I wasn't. Here I am, right, Getting no help from the va, and I don't know if it's because they said, hey, don't help this guy. Fuck him. I have no idea. I just know they. I was getting no help at my only medical help that was there to. I have no. I pay for my own insurance, right? I. I served. So I get my va, and VA is doing nothing for me. So, yeah, I met a neck and back surgeon in California, former air force guy. Dr. Robert Bray, disc Surgery center, former Air Force trained surgeon that started his own practice. I. I met him, and he's like, bis, come on out. He gave me X rays and mri, and I met him in an hour and a half. He's like, listen, man, you need to clear your schedule. Your neck's basically broken. Like, what are you talking about? He's like, yeah, your C4 and 5 are like 8 millimeters offset. And if you hit a speed bump the wrong way, you're never walking again. Oh, he's like clear your schedule A week later. He operated on me. Fusion. He's done five surgeries, hasn't charged me a penny. I'd still be going to the VA for help.

[Sean Ryan]

That's a hell of a dude.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yep. He's operated on probably. He operated on the guy who held me in on the helicopter on the crash. Right. He's probably eight of their of my friends now. He's operated on.

[Sean Ryan]

No shit. Yeah. What's his name?

[Matt Bissonette]

Dr. Robert Bray.

[Sean Ryan]

What a fucking badass. That's awesome, man. Yeah. Buckle up because the biggest black Ops ever is arriving on November 14th. That's Call of Duty Black Ops 7. With three epic game modes across co op campaign, multiplayer and zombies. It's pushing the franchise into bold new territory. The all new co op campaign lets you play solo or with friends as you infiltrate Avalon, a high tech stronghold on the brink. At launch, jump into 18 explosive multiplayer maps with exciting fast paced movement. If you're looking for some undead action, the round based zombies mode is back again with a twist. You'll fight through hordes of zombies as you drive the new wonder vehicle named Old Tessie and wield a brand new wonder weapon. Black Ops 7 doesn't just evolve, it reinvents. If you thought you knew Call of Duty, get ready for something even bigger. Pre order Call of Duty Black Ops 7 now available November 14th. Rated M for mature. All right, Matt, we're back from the break. So it sounds like there, there's, it's not just one investigation, there's a second investigation coming. So how does this happen?

[Matt Bissonette]

Right? The first one went three years. That was over no easy day that was getting that money back. Okay, that finished, I started suing my attorney. And while I'm suing my attorney, one of the days I'm we're doing our, our stuff with him, I get a call from my ex wife and she's like hey, some FBI agents just showed up at the front doors. The kids are leaving for school. Real good, real nice, Mike. What are you talking about? She's like well, they confiscated your old computer. You had that we had when you were in. I'm like okay, what? They'd say what? And they're like yeah, something about your consulting gear. Consulting work you did when you were in. Like oh my gosh. So okay, up starts another investigation. Gear, consulting gear and equipment. Okay, so this new investigation is out of the Department of Justice Norfolk field office, not the Dart. Department of Justice, San Diego field office that we'd been dealing with for three years. Right. This was all new. Oh, surprise, surprise. Now they're pissed at gear consulting. I did when I was, When I was in. Right. I was always a gear guy. I mentioned that earlier. I love my gear development stuff and I was very involved in that. My, actually, my former commander that ultimately said, delete me. First name Wyman, last name rhymes with Coward. Wyman Coward came by one day and he's like, hey, you're really good at this gear stuff. You know, you ought to go talk to the jags, get some approval so you can do it the right way. But, you know, a lot of your designs have some good cross. You know, maybe you design this flashlight, Marines can buy it, whatever. So, okay, I went to our JAG at the command, got approvals to do consulting for, for companies on the outside. Shoes, hats, guns, whatever. Just any of the stuff I was into outside of work, the very little time I had at home, that was outside of work, and it was approved by the command. So here we are. I hadn't done any gear consulting for years. I've been out of the Navy, and now all of a sudden I find out they're coming after me for gear consulting. So, okay, soul spin up again. Now Instead of the 12 hour interrogations in San Diego, 12 hour intention, 12 hour interrogation in Norfolk, New set of assholes run me through the rig. Oh, you, you did all these things. You broke the law, whatever. You need a plea to a misdemeanor. Like. A misdemeanor for what? Like prove any of this you're throwing at me. Prove that I made money off any of my designs through. I had the. I'm not the purchasing agent. I can't affect anything that I design. I can't buy. We have contracting departments, so there's no conflict of interest there. But they're like, oh, no, you made money off this stuff. We're coming after you. So for another year, they came after me. They kept trying to throw, throw anything at me to get me to. They were like, if you don't plead to a misdemeanor, we're going to try and push a felony. I'm like, where? What?

[Sean Ryan]

How?

[Matt Bissonette]

So about a week before they're trying to get pressure me, I go to the shot show in Vegas and the press hits and all across the press said Matt Bissonnet retained photos of bin Laden. I had photos of bin Laden. I told him about it in my. All of my interrogation stuff. Nobody knew that but the government. So then the government leaks that the same week that they're trying to pressure me into taking a misdemeanor because they wanted so bad to get me on something. And I just kept saying, fuck you, prove it. Now, granted, I have to pay legal bills to get that to work. So that's when I'd written my second book. I'm paying. I'm out of money from the first one, right? Given all that back, I'd written no hero. I'm using that money to continue to pay my lease. Legal defense. This goes on for a year. After a year, they're finally like, okay, you didn't do anything criminal. Just give us all the money back you ever made. So it became a financial shakedown. So I wrote them a big check and they went away. That was. That was the last I heard from them. And then I've just been dealing with the. Trying to get to the financial closure of paying them back for no Easy Day. That is why I wrote no Easy Way. Now what's crazy about that, right? I submitted that book for review. That book has been into the government for six months. So what do you think they've approved?

[Sean Ryan]

What is that book about?

[Matt Bissonette]

Everything we're talking about right now.

[Sean Ryan]

So you have to get. I just.

[Matt Bissonette]

This all takes place since me getting. I'm a civilian writing this whole book, but I have to get it reviewed based off the agreements that I've signed. Now the guy with the eyepatch doesn't and he just blows it off. But. But I have to because they came after me for the first one. So I'm going to submit this one for review. But now they've sat on it for six months and they don't want it to get out. Right? They don't want my version, this story that we're telling. Right. They don't want this out in written form because it makes them look bad. And so six months they've been sitting on.

[Sean Ryan]

But there's nothing classified in the book.

[Matt Bissonette]

Unless they don't want me talking about something that they don't want me talking about it.

[Sean Ryan]

So what if you were to write a book on, I don't know, fixing.

[Matt Bissonette]

Up your have to submit it.

[Sean Ryan]

1950S truck.

[Matt Bissonette]

Have to submit it based off how they've come after me. I wouldn't dare not get it submitted. Think of all the drama I've been through because my book did not get submitted. So. So I'm not about to submit another book or to publisher without getting it reviewed. Well, but now they're they're sitting on this. Why would they sit on this? It's not because it's leaking tactics, techniques and procedures. It's because it's exposing their hypocrisy. And they don't want it. Right? They don't want the story of. So how would they crave.

[Sean Ryan]

How would they come after you if there's no.

[Matt Bissonette]

They just won't review the book. They'll just sit on it, let it die. And they know I owe payments every month, and if I miss one payment, they've told me to my face they'll come back and charge me back interest and fuck me.

[Sean Ryan]

What would they. What could they get you on if you bypass?

[Matt Bissonette]

I have no idea.

[Sean Ryan]

Could they get you on anything? I mean, I know they can get you.

[Matt Bissonette]

If they could get me on something, they would have.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Matt Bissonette]

If they could have got me on something. They tried for four years straight to get me on anything, and the only thing they could do was break me financially. And so I've got to this point, and now I'm like, okay, I'm telling the story. Nobody's going to believe it. I've shut up. I've fought my battles with the government. I fought the legal battles. I thought the Justice Department was going to be just. It's not. I've waited 12 years now for some sort of adult supervision to step in and be like, hey, this is fucked up. We need to fix this. Now. I will say. I will say we may have some potential, good momentum. Literally last week, my attorney got a call, and there's some potential that this administration is getting involved. And hopefully. I don't want to speak. I don't want to think too optimistic because I've been shot in the face every time an opportunity comes up, but there is an opportunity that the current administration is getting involved and going to help fix this. So we'll see. Well, but I'll believe it when I see it.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, that would be great. Let's bring on. Let's bring on our attorney and see if we need to clean anything up here.

[Matt Bissonette]

Great idea.

[Sean Ryan]

Cool.

[Matt Bissonette]

Tim.

[Sean Ryan]

Tim Parlatore.

[Tim Parlatore]

How are you, sir?

[Sean Ryan]

It's always good to see you.

[Tim Parlatore]

You too, man.

[Sean Ryan]

So are you representing Matt?

[Tim Parlatore]

So I have represented Matt for a number of years, and I want to be clear. I'm here to talk about his case. I don't represent him on his current dealings with the department, and that's a decision that we made because as he goes to try and negotiate a better deal with the department, it made sense for me to Take a step away from it. Because since I also have represented the secretary, we want the decision to be made based on the merits as opposed to having anybody sit there and say, oh, well, they just made a decision based on how his lawyer is also the secretary's lawyer. So for that reason, I've stepped away from that piece of it. However, look, I maintain long relationships with all of my clients, so. So I consider Matt a friend and a client, and anything he needs, I would help him with.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, Tim, we met under similar circumstances here, so we met through the. Dallas Alexander, the Canadian sniper, when they came at me saying that, oh, there's all this classified material in there. And then we found out what it really was, is they're fucking humiliated because they fired one of their legendary snipers over COVID vaccine and not wearing a mask, right? And they didn't want that out there. So we gave them. We gave them, you know, very politely gave them the finger and said, fuck you. The episode's going back up.

[Tim Parlatore]

You were very polite about it, though.

[Sean Ryan]

But. But, you know, the shit just keeps happening. You know, Matt was actually, I think, the first person that I've heard about this shit happening to now it's happening again, obviously, with a new book. But, you know, look, I mean, it was. We've just seen so much corruption from the government. You know what I mean? I mean, I was going to bring up Eddie Gallagher and the Blackwater guys and Brad Gehry, but I think those fall under, you know, different. Different circumstances, all just as, you know, even. Probably even more fucked up than this. But. But, you know, it's. It's the shit. It's Dallas Alexander. I mean, a couple weeks ago, we had a couple of Delta guys reach out, wanting their episode pulled because Delta made a statement basically scaring the shit out of all their guys. Oh, you can't go on here. We're gonna fucking come after you legally. And I had to tell him about.

[Matt Bissonette]

I'm.

[Tim Parlatore]

I'm.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm. I'm tired of playing this game. Yeah, I am tired of this. Of. Of playing this game. And they're freaking these guys out. They're not allowed to talk about. They think. They're not allowed to talk about their own life, you know, and. And I'm. I'm not pulling it. I'm not doing it anymore. I'm not playing these stupid games. And so it's. You know, it was Chris Fedis. We had to get involved with Chris Fetus because we had people telling us that they're gonna. They're gonna sue Chris and they're gonna do this and they're gonna come after him and they're gonna ruin his reputation. And it. It just got to the point where, I mean, on that one, nobody even knows this, but that one. I called you and I said, I'm. I want to fund Chris's legal battle and I want him to fucking. Whoever is making this shit up about him and coming after him and trying to ruin his fucking life, we are going to sue them, and then we're going to sue them again, and then we're going to sue them again, and then we're going to sue them again. So they don't have anywhere to fucking live, so their kids can't go to school. So they're. I'm just. I'm so tired of people with these guys for coming on here telling their story. And because they tell their story, it jet launches their business and they're able to get out of the. Of the. Of the fucking. The Navy SEAL operator mindset and move on with their fucking lives.

[Tim Parlatore]

This is a problem that we keep seeing, and a lot of it is viewpoint or content based because we are treating people differently based on what they have to say, whether people like it or not, and also, quite frankly, what their rank is. And I do want to clear up one point, if you don't mind. Walt Allman has only been an admiral for a few months. Okay. And he was, you know, he was the Commandant of Midshipman at the Naval Academy before he recently put on one star, and then he became the acting Morcom Comm Commander when Jamie Sands got fired. So a lot of the things that you were talking about with Matt that involved where you were talking about Walt, the reality is that was before he transferred to that position. So it is the WARCOM commander that you were referring to, but a lot of that was Sands, Keith Davids, Wyman Howard. Matt's a good friend who said, delete me. And some of it even going back to Colin Green and before. But what you have here is you have these people that once you get above a certain rank, it does become political. And they are doing things, you know, not all of them, but a lot of them are doing things to just try and get another star and to try and move up the ladder. And so anybody who puts out information that may make them look bad or may upset somebody, they want to try and crush that. It's not right. And what they've done. I think Matt's case is one of the most extreme of this, where because his factual unclassified book embarrassed President Obama. That created this situation where they had to crush him. And you have these people making decisions saying, I want to hurt this guy. I want to crush this guy because he embarrassed me. These people have never been to any form of combat like Matt's been.

[Sean Ryan]

That's what I'm. I mean is that they have, but they don't care.

[Tim Parlatore]

And this is the common thread that I see that I am going to pull back to Eddie Gallagher and Brad Gehry and Jay Cal and all of those things where they pursue these vindictive prosecutions because they are angry at the individual as opposed to thinking about what is fair. And so because they're angry and because they have power, they will have NCIS go after people and do these type of things or Air Force, OSI or CID or FBI, whoever, or whatever the British equivalent is for JCal. And ultimately you're unleashing complete incompetence from these investigative agencies to try to pursue, you know, what is a political persecution. NCIS was so bad years ago. It used to be called nis, Naval Investigative Service. They had to do a whole rebrand and restructure because NIS had become such a politically driven organization to go out there. And anybody that the admirals didn't like, they would trump up these investigations, usually trying to accuse somebody of homosexuality because that's easy to way to get rid of somebody you don't like. Used to be called the Admiral's Gestapo. Okay? They went through a reorganization, a rebranding, and yet in a lot of ways they're still doing the same thing. They did the same thing to Matt. And I sit here and I look at it and I say, they take a guy who has given his entire life to this. He's given his youth, his health, everything, put it out on the line to try and keep us safe, to try and. To go out there and continuously deploy. And when he gets to the end, they try and throw him away. Something Eddie Gallagher and I talk about all the time, where you sign up knowing that you're expendable, but they treat you as if you're disposable. And so what Matt went through of being excommunicated from the community, and you know this better as well as anybody else, when you go through that training, you become a seal. That is for a lot of people, that's your identity, that's your tribe, that's what you are connected to. And when you're then removed from that and excommunicated from has so many more negative effects. You know, PTSD is something that is exacerbated through a feeling of abandonment. And yet the command, the military as a whole, the leadership is taking. Not just a feeling of abandonment. They were creating actual abandonment. And so many other clients that I've represented that you've never heard of that, because the command is angry with them, they will not only kick them out, but they'll take their tried and on the way out, and they'll say, you were never a seal. Okay. Guys who've done plenty of deployments, and I have clients like this, where you look at their DD214, and they've done 15 deployments. Purple Heart, Silver Star, no Trident, not a member of the community. And so when they then go to try and go to a veterans event or something, something, you know, they want to go to Navy SEAL foundation for help because they're having difficulty. Navy SEAL foundation says, nope, you're not a seal. You're not a part of us. You can't even attend reunions. And, you know, Matt is lucky that he got out and then they got angry at him after he already had his DD214, because had his timeline been a little bit different, I have no doubt that NSW would have wanted to take his Trident away from him. So he'd be out there as one of the guys that put bullets into Bin Laden's body. But they could say, oh, he's not a seal. They tried to do with Eddie Gallagher. They tried to take his trident away.

[Sean Ryan]

It's.

[Tim Parlatore]

It is bad for our people. It goes right back to what Matt was saying about leaders should be taking care of our people and not focusing on writing up their own awards and chasing their next promotion. And what they do is they see these people as an impediment to their next promotion. So if somebody makes them angry or embarrasses them in any way, well, we have to destroy them because they hurt my ability to get another star. So that. That's kind of thematically how.

[Sean Ryan]

How did Matt hurt somebody's ability to get another star?

[Tim Parlatore]

Ah, because his superiors now have to answer to Obama of, why did you let your guy put out his book before my version of offense?

[Matt Bissonette]

Hmm.

[Sean Ryan]

It's that petty.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah.

[Tim Parlatore]

Yeah. And when it comes down from the top of, I want you to take care of this.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay, so if that's true, how. How were all these other people, Leon Panetta, Obama? I mean. I mean, I get it. I know what it is. I know what it is.

[Tim Parlatore]

It's the content. It's the content.

[Sean Ryan]

It's the rank.

[Tim Parlatore]

It's the rank.

[Sean Ryan]

Only fucking thing that matters.

[Tim Parlatore]

It's the rank and it's the content. We like what their rank is and we like what they have to say, therefore we're going to let them get away with it. John Bolton, perfect example, former national security advisor, he goes out and writes a book, he doesn't get the pre publication review, they start to go through, putting him through the exact same process that they did to Matt, investigations and everything. But the election happens and so all of a sudden the White House turns over to Biden. Well, Biden liked what Bolton had to say because he wrote that Trump was bad. So therefore all of a sudden, the Biden DOJ puts the brakes on and says, oh, but we're going to let Bolton go. Let his book that has classified material in it, go right ahead. Let him keep all of the revenue from his book that has classified material in it. But at the same time, we want to make sure that we still crush Matt, whose book doesn't have classified material in it, but has content that we don't like. You know, when. When his attorney, you know, Kevin Podlowski was the attorney that had given them this bad advice when he settled that lawsuit, one of the biggest impediments that Matt had during this process was that the attorney had lied to doj. He lied and he said, I told him he had to get it reviewed and that was their linchpin, because his whole defense is, my attorney told me this is okay. And they could say, well, we talked to him and he said that's not true. So now they have a witness against him. They get him to take this settlement. And I didn't represent him at the time, by the way. He then gets this. Gets this malpractice settlement. And in the malpractice settlement, yeah, I got to give him a lot of credit. I didn't handle it. But whoever handled it got him a great settlement where Padloski actually admitted in the settlement that he had given him this advice. Usually settlements have one of those, you know, neither side admit that they did anything wrong, but he actually admitted what he did. And that was something that, you know, I then came into this and I was able to take that back to DOJ and say, see, you brought this whole thing based on a false premise. You had a witness who lied to you, which is a crime, by the way. You have a witness who lied to you, and now you have proof that everything Matt did was on the advice of counsel. And one thing to Understand is that the consent decree that he entered into on this, the cause of action was breach of contract. He breached the contract that says before you submit something or before you publish something, you have to submit it for pre publication review. If he was relying upon the advice of counsel, that's a defense that he would have had had it been litigated at the time. Because we finally had this information, I went to the court and I tried to file a motion to vacate the consent decree and to change the result to match the actual facts. DOJ opposed me. They said, too much time has passed. This should have been done within whatever it is, six months of the consent decree being entered. Even though the statute does say yes, there's a timeline, but it says, and it can go after that for good cause shown. The good cause shown from my perspective is this is something that he didn't have at the time. As soon as we had it available, we brought it to the court. But the problem is that the courts don't really like to change things. You know, they like finality in the judgments. And so ultimately, DOJ opposed us, not factually, just on, well, they should have done this earlier. And the judge agreed and said, well, too much time has passed, so we're going to leave this judgment in place. At that point, that left me with no real options other than to try and negotiate down for him. And the only way that we could really negotiate down at that point was based on an ability to pay. Now, there's a key aspect of this financial settlement that you need to understand, which is taxes, because when he got the money from the book originally, he paid taxes on it. The portion went to his attorney. Now you have $1,500,000. As he said, he's got a little bit under $4,000 he's got to pay back a month. But he's not allowed to claim that as a deduction or an expense on his tax return. So in order to make the $4,000 payments, he's got to earn $6,000 a month pre tax just to pay that. So that $1.5 million figure, he really has to earn more like 2.5 to $3 million just to be able to pay it. And that's not something, you know, the IRS is not going to give him any break on that. He's essentially paying tax on this thing twice. He paid the tax on it when he first got the revenue, and he's paying tax on it a second time to try and pay it back. And all of it goes into the U.S. treasury. So between the taxes and the forfeiture, the treasury is making a ton of money off of this guy.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn. Why are they holding his book up?

[Tim Parlatore]

Pre publication review is a messed up process, okay? I've done it with other clients and he's right. Anybody who has signed one of these agreements has to have their book submitted. Now, if it's a cookbook, nobody's going to really, you know, throw a fit over it. Some guys do actually, you know, are that careful with it, but. And for him, I would definitely be that careful with it. If he's going to write a cookbook, he should submit it. What happens is it goes to the main office at Dow Department of War that does a pre publication review. They do a first read of the book, they then decide, okay, how many different agencies have a stake in this? And then they'll send the portions off to those agencies. And so a big portion of this obviously goes to Naval Special Warfare Command. Some of it may go to the CIA, some of. For his portion of it will definitely go to NCIS because of the content of this third book. There's nothing classified in there. There's nothing that NCIS has to be concerned about. And the government is not allowed to edit your book in any way or to. The only two things that they're allowed to object to is classified material.

[Sean Ryan]

And.

[Tim Parlatore]

A misstatement of government policy. Those are the only two things that they're supposed to remove. But the way that they do this, where they farm it out to all the different agencies, and I don't want to defend them on this and say that they're not holding it up, because I think that they probably are. But the reality is when you send it over to Naval Special Warfare Command, there are just so many SEALs writing books that they have a backlog there. I mean, it's just a fact.

[Sean Ryan]

That actually doesn't surprise me.

[Tim Parlatore]

You can publish a Green Beret book a lot faster than a SEAL book.

[Sean Ryan]

Does anybody read those, though?

[Tim Parlatore]

Well, they're not as interesting.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm just kidding. I know there's at least one person.

[Tim Parlatore]

Out there you could publish.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm just fucking around.

[Tim Parlatore]

You can publish a surface warfare book really fast. So there is that. I do think that there's probably some element of dragging their feet and once you get it back, they'll have a whole bunch of stuff blacked out. And some of it's silly, some of it, you know, it's like if anytime, for a book like his, anytime you see a number somewhere between five and Seven. That'll be a little black box. You know, green team is something that'll be blacked out. You know, things that are, you know, certainly public domain, that they'll still blackout Eddie's book. When Eddie Gallagher submitted his book, they tried to redact out portions of it because they were embarrassed about the name of the Iraqi unit that his unit had been assigned to. And they tried to say that was classified. And I went back to them, I said, how is that possibly classified? Well, that's what they said. So, yeah, here's the transcript where the prosecutor said the name of that unit seven times in his opening statement in front of a courtroom full of media. So if that's classified, you need to prosecute the prosecutor. Oh, okay.

[Sean Ryan]

You can put that in the book.

[Tim Parlatore]

So there is still a negotiation process at that stage. But, yeah, it does take a long time, and it takes even longer when somebody doesn't want this book to come out. And that really goes back to the original problem that Matt had, is his publisher wanted his book out before the election. That's why the publisher gave him a lawyer who said, I can help you do this so it gets out before the election. Because if he had done it the right way, if he had been advised by a different lawyer who said, this is what you legally have to do, the book would have been published after the election. It would have been published after the movie. It would have been published after the other, you know, the Mark Bowden book. He wouldn't have had any problems. He would have been able to keep 100% of the revenue. But, you know, it would have been timed the way that the administration had wanted it to be timed.

[Sean Ryan]

Makes sense, unfortunately. Do you think Matt has anything to worry about with the new book?

[Tim Parlatore]

No, no, not at all. And, you know, with the second book, with the third book, he's got nothing to worry about there because he's following the process. He's not doing what the original lawyer said. And so as long as you follow the process, you have nothing to worry about.

[Sean Ryan]

Is there any time limit, or can this just drag on for years and years?

[Tim Parlatore]

At a certain point, if it is clear that the government is dragging its feet, you can file a lawsuit at that point.

[Sean Ryan]

How can you. How can you know what amount of time will go through, will go with Matt's book before his attorney advises him to fucking file a lawsuit?

[Tim Parlatore]

It's no specific timeline. Like, it's. It's there. There's no specific deadline. But if it's sitting there for 12 months and it hasn't been acted on and he decides to file a lawsuit. Here's what's going to happen. He'll file a lawsuit. DOJ will get it. You know, DOJ is the agency that defends every other government entity. They will all of a sudden spit out the fully reviewed book before they. Before their deadline to respond to the lawsuit comes.

[Sean Ryan]

How did I know you were going to say that?

[Tim Parlatore]

And then they're going to put in a response saying, we don't know what he's talking about, Judge. You know, we've complied with our obligations, so therefore we move to dismiss the lawsuit.

[Sean Ryan]

So why couldn't he just file one right now?

[Tim Parlatore]

It's still a little bit early.

[Sean Ryan]

Could you just file the lawsuit with the review? By the way, if this isn't done next week, I'm going to sue your.

[Tim Parlatore]

You know, it's difficult because, again, the, the timelines for SEAL books are so much longer just based on the, on the volume. Now, it would be worthwhile, potentially, because I don't think that they publish these numbers. It would be worthwhile potentially to file a FOIA to find out what is the average length of reviews. And then once you can, through the freedom of information, I get what the timeline statistics are on books in general, sealed books, Green Beret books, compare those. And then once you have that timeline, you can see, okay, if it takes an average of two months for a Green Beret book, six months for a SEAL book, and eight months for a Matt Bissonnet book. Now you know that they're delaying you.

[Sean Ryan]

Gotcha. Gotcha.

[Tim Parlatore]

But ultimately, the people that are administering this are career GS civilians. This process is not something that any of the political appointees really have that much visibility on because it's something that's kind of. It's administratively handled at that lower level, which is, of course, where all of the, you know, the deep state lives. And so it's the kind of thing that once you kind of bring light to it, then maybe people up above say, okay, maybe we need to fix this process.

[Sean Ryan]

And I'm just so, so tired of people with these guys just for telling their story.

[Tim Parlatore]

Yeah, I'd have to go back and look. I think it took Eddie about seven or eight months to get his book reviewed, and everything in his book was stuff that had happened in an open courtroom. We thought this book will take two weeks to review. All you have to do is read through real quick and see that he's not talking about any operations. Everything happened in an open courtroom.

[Matt Bissonette]

So, yeah.

[Tim Parlatore]

But no, still took A very long time.

[Sean Ryan]

Man, this is pissing me off. You know, I mean, Matt just said it. I mean we, me and you have talked, especially with the Chris fetus stuff. Yeah, like that really pissed me off. Yeah. And you know, and we had had discussions that I had, I said this is a, this is a reason why these guys are killing me themselves because they're not allowed to share their story and if they do, they get ostracized by either the leaders at the command or the operators at that command. And when, when that happened to Chris, I, I just want to clarify because I was pissed and I don't think I said it properly. But first the first thing was, oh, the CIA is pissed because they don't want that getting out. Then it was some of the operators over at Dev group. Then it was, then we knew exactly who it was.

[Tim Parlatore]

Right.

[Sean Ryan]

And you know, it's always these fucking people who are lurking in the shadows who never want to be revealed.

[Matt Bissonette]

Right.

[Sean Ryan]

We found out who that was and it was. If you, if there is any defamation, any fucking non truths and whatever is going to come out about Chris, I am going to fucking sue your ass for defamation.

[Tim Parlatore]

Right.

[Sean Ryan]

You know, and, and then magically we never heard another fucking word about it.

[Tim Parlatore]

Correct? Correct.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm just sick of this shit. And then we get fucking Walt Allman coming on about Pete, about Pete Scobell talking about some shit that happened 15 years ago on about equipment that they don't even use anymore.

[Tim Parlatore]

It's another thing that I've seen where people that leave before they retire, you know, when I left the first time I left as an 03 and I see a lot of veterans that leave and they kind of mentally freeze at that rank. And so what happened with Pete is very consistent with what I've seen with other people where they'll have a high ranking officer reach out to a veteran of a certain rank and treat them the same as if they were still a lieutenant or, or a junior enlisted guy and use that positional authority over them. And some veterans, they still fall into that. I mean that's one of my beliefs. When it comes to our friend, the one eyed congressman, Is that.

[Sean Ryan]

Dan Crenshaw?

[Tim Parlatore]

Right. Because when warcom wants him to do something like stay out of the Eddie Gallagher case, they'll send a flag officer to talk to him and you know, tell him hey Lieutenant Commander, this is what it is. And he just nods and salutes and says, you know, oh yes sir, a video of him committing murder. Yes sir, I won't support him Sir, I mean, that's. That's my belief, is that just seeing how he blindly parrots whatever the senior leaders want him to. Yeah, I think that they take advantage of that. I. I think there was an element of that, of, hey, if we call up, you know, Lieutenant Scobell and just, you know, tell him, hey, you need to do this.

[Sean Ryan]

Harass him, you mean? Harass him.

[Tim Parlatore]

Yeah. There are certain things I want to get somebody to.

[Matt Bissonette]

I know.

[Tim Parlatore]

There are certain things just.

[Sean Ryan]

Like they're trying to make an example out of these guys. I want to find one of these fuckers that make an example out of him.

[Tim Parlatore]

There are things that we don't want people to say. There are obviously classification issues. We don't want people going out and revealing secret missions and things like that.

[Matt Bissonette]

I get that.

[Sean Ryan]

But you know what we're talking about. People aren't even clearing rooms anymore. They have drones for this. Now we're talking to dinosaurs in here.

[Tim Parlatore]

Right?

[Sean Ryan]

This is. This is no different than me talking to Don Graves about Iwo Jima, right? Like, good job. You cleared a fucking house. We don't do that shit anymore. We have robots that do this for us, but let's still attack them, you know, for shit that we don't even. Let's. Let's. Let's still attack them for giving up tactics that we don't even do. We don't even have humans on the battlefield barely anymore. Give me a break. And, like, off.

[Tim Parlatore]

And part of the problem is that the people that are trying to hurt these guys are ones that they. They don't really fully understand the rules themselves.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, because they've never been on the battlefield.

[Tim Parlatore]

No, there's that, too. They don't understand. You know, they may not fully understand what the law is on these things, what the regulations actually say that people can and can't say. You know, when. You know, for example, while you have to get review to talk about operational stuff, any military member can go out there and talk about their personal experiences. And so the morning after the verdict in the Eddie Gallagher trial, Eddie went on Fox and Friends and did his first ever media interview. I was with him, and it was Pete Hegseth that did the interview, and he talked about his personal experiences of going through this trial, all of which happened in a room that was full of media. And wouldn't you know it, within an hour, I get a call from the Warcom JAG saying we're thinking about charging him for having done this interview. And I said, really? Okay, what do you think he did? Wrong. Well, he didn't get approval. He's talked about.

[Matt Bissonette]

No, no.

[Tim Parlatore]

Okay, why don't you pull out the work comm Public affairs instruction? We'll read it together. What paragraph are you looking at? Well, no, no, no. You pull up the instruction. I'll wait. Well, it's not really in. Yeah, exactly. It's not in there. So you're threatening him for violating a instruction that you didn't even read before calling me up and threatening that you're going to charge him with.

[Matt Bissonette]

I read it first.

[Tim Parlatore]

I know what he was allowed to say, and I set up the interview so that he could talk about the things that he was allowed to talk about and so he wouldn't talk about the things he wasn't. So take your threat and go fuck yourself. That happened, happened, and that's what happens frequently. But people maybe aren't able to push back at the introductory stage like I was. And so they'll call Pete Scobell and threaten him. Somebody may be dumb enough to try and threaten Matt here. They'll send threats to Chris Fetus, Tom Satterley. You know, you called me up about him, that somebody was telling him he should try and take down the interview from three years ago, talking about what he did in Mogadishu back in the 90s.

[Sean Ryan]

It's classified, Tim.

[Tim Parlatore]

No, it's people that are just trying to control, and they don't even know what the rules are themselves.

[Sean Ryan]

You know, I just. I don't think there's more to cover. Is there? With me and you right now, is there anything else we need to cover? Then what. What I want to ask you is, I mean, because it's my podcast that, you know, that is getting everybody in trouble. So it's my fucking podcast. So, you know what? And all these guys watch my podcast. And so what I want to ask is for anybody who's wanting to tell their story or share their experience or document history or get their business off the ground or whatever their motivation is for coming out and sharing their story when these fucking assholes come after them, whether that's their former colleagues or the head shade of the command, I mean, what steps should they take? If for the next guy that comes on my show and gets harassed by some other fucking app admiral or general or whoever, I mean, what steps do they need to take?

[Tim Parlatore]

I wish I had a better answer than this, but the reality is that the best answer is to get a lawyer who knows the system and push back. No. And, you know, now you're giving me an idea that you and I should sit down.

[Sean Ryan]

This could have been a better advertisement for yourself, Tim.

[Tim Parlatore]

I'm just saying I'm not here to promote my business. I'm not here to promote my business. I'm here to help out a friend and a client. But you know what? You're giving me an idea. Why don't you and I sit down, you know, later and pull all the public affairs instructions and all the rules from the various services, and we can put together a little bit of a guide. It's something that I had actually suggested to Walt Allman as an idea of people need guidance if they don't know the law or the rules. They need to be trained on it. But you know what? You know, just simply, you know, what they did in the wake of Matt's first book where they just started, you know, going out with the whole, oh, we are supposed to be quiet professionals. I do not advertise the nature of our work. That's bullshit.

[Matt Bissonette]

Okay?

[Tim Parlatore]

It doesn't help anybody. You need to give specific, actionable guidance. This is where. This is what the law is. The law says you're allowed to talk about these things. The law says don't talk about this. Okay? So maybe you and I should sit down and I'll create a little guide on this. Because if the commands are not going to properly train their people on it, and the reality is, so many of these guys are out. They've been out for 10, 15 years, and so they're not going to work. Comm is not going to be sending a training PowerPoint to Pete Scobell at this point. But maybe that's something that we should do and to educate people. Because the reality is these stories are important. They're important not only for everybody who watches this and listens to this, but they're important for the people telling the stories because it's therapeutic for them. And then it's also therapeutic to other veterans who listen to this and watch this and they see their own story reflected there, and it's probably the biggest.

[Sean Ryan]

Recruiting tool in the fucking country.

[Tim Parlatore]

True.

[Sean Ryan]

To come on this show.

[Tim Parlatore]

True.

[Sean Ryan]

And talk about all the badass shit you did.

[Tim Parlatore]

True. So the answer is, I need to do some homework for you, Sean, and I'll write something up.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, I appreciate you, Tim. It's always good to see you.

[Tim Parlatore]

You too. You too. Do I get gummy bears here?

[Sean Ryan]

Because I'll definitely. We will load you up.

[Tim Parlatore]

I was gonna say, don't look like.

[Sean Ryan]

You'Re eating any of the gummy bears lately, though, Tim.

[Tim Parlatore]

I'm not gonna be. No, no. For my wife. My wife gets mad at me if I don't come back.

[Sean Ryan]

We will load you up. We got some other stuff too, so. But thanks for coming on, man.

[Tim Parlatore]

Thank you.

[Sean Ryan]

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 vigilance elite. 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, Matt, we're back from the break. Just got done chatting with Tim, but I got.

[Matt Bissonette]

I got to interject here. He said, you know what the SEAL community does very maliciously is they try and go after your SEAL trident after you've served and you're now out. They did that to me too.

[Sean Ryan]

They did.

[Matt Bissonette]

Of course, I'd been out five years, and they came back and were like, hey, as part of this, we're going to. We want to take your. Trash it. Like, and my lawyer represented me at the time. Like, I. I don't even think they can do that.

[Sean Ryan]

You're.

[Matt Bissonette]

You're out of the Navy. How do they retroactively go back and take away a warfare insignia that you earned and you got out of the Navy with? He's like, that. That's not even legal.

[Sean Ryan]

You still have it, right?

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, well, you still have it. Yeah. I don't care. But the in. In the Navy paperwork. Do I have my SEAL trident? Yes. Did they try and take it away retroactively to be spiteful and little bitches? Absolutely.

[Sean Ryan]

So they. They just literally just spew out whatever bullshit they feel like, whether they have any legal recourse or not to try to fucking scare you, piss you off, ruin your day. I mean, whatever. They just. They'll just spew it all out there.

[Matt Bissonette]

It's the SEAL mindset when. At all costs, right? And if it doesn't, you know, crush the other guy. Hey, man, so, yeah, it was, it's been a, it's been my life biggest struggle for sure. Right. Getting into Buds, making it in the seals is one thing. I thought that was hard. Getting out kicked my ass. Not the getting out part, because I was, I was ready to get out. I was cooked, I was done. But what, what came after getting out was, was single handedly my biggest challenge. And, and again, I talk about faith. I was in my lowest when I got out and didn't have community, didn't understand why I was being put through everything I was being put through. And that's where I was furthest from my faith. As I've got through this experience, it's really reminded me that, hey, there is a reason behind this. I may not understand it, I may not know it right now. It may take me years to understand why. And so it's really been more like, hey, I'm going to trust that this is all part of God's plan, right? I dealt with a decent amount of survivor's guilt, having done what I did and getting out. And then I dealt with a ton of questioning why I went through everything I went through. And again, the only way I sit here and smile and think about it now is thinking that, okay, maybe this was God just challenging me yet again, right? Maybe he wanted to see if I was going to turn into a little bitch. Maybe he was going to see how I acted, how I let my actions. And so I'm big on my actions over my words, right? So, yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Has this entire experience changed your opinion of the teams?

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, for sure.

[Sean Ryan]

How so?

[Matt Bissonette]

Man, I would have given anything for that team, for the teams, the community, right? I was that guy that they had hook, line and sinker. I would have done anything, died for him. No questions asked, easy check, had friends, done. Then I get out and I'm like, well, wait a second, this isn't the. Where's the. This brotherhood seems more like a school of sharks. And if there's blood in the water, they're coming after you. Like, this isn't the brotherhood I remember or was sold. Right now that community is the seal community. Whatever it is, it is whatever it is. I care very little about it now, right? Community that I've gotten reacquainted with are all a lot of my favorite operators that I worked with. They've now gotten out. Right? And I think we all collectively have a perspective that we respect each other for what we did. But it's not about the seal community or about this world. I guess the Delta Guys I worked with, they're saying the same thing. They're like, fuck the leadership. I'm over it. We're over it, right? We were sent into harm's way by leadership for what? Right, we, we got sent a lot, right? A few of us didn't come back. And that same leadership that, that arguably left millions of dollars of military equipment in Afghanistan, they've got promoted in retirement and everything. And somehow I have a payment plan. It's hard, it's hard to process, it's hard to justify. In my mind, the only way is knowing that, hey, there's a plan, he's got a plan. I may not understand it right now. Keep the faith.

[Sean Ryan]

It's a good way to be, man. It's a good way to be. So what else is in the new book?

[Matt Bissonette]

The new book is me telling this story. The new book is me venting about this. Because I haven't. I've kept my mouth very shut and quiet. I've been very private about it. I tried to fight this battle as best I could through the legal system. And when that ran its course, I was like, I've got to tell this story. But then through this story, I don't want it to be a Debbie Downer and woe is me. And Bis is over there just bitching and moaning. I can't have it. Right. I try to be very optimistic in some shitty situations. And so we Talked about the four Fs earlier, right? I learned that from my dad, family, friends, fun and faith. I sprinkle some of that into the book. Cause I don't want it to come across like it's just some former SEAL bitching and moaning. Right? It's some former SEAL who's been through some and is going to share a little bit of what helped him out when he was in his nice darkest times.

[Sean Ryan]

What is in there about the aar?

[Matt Bissonette]

The AAR of the Bin Laden made? Only thing I put in there is that there's an audio recording of it. And I mentioned that because that's where my flow of the mission comes from.

[Sean Ryan]

Gotcha.

[Matt Bissonette]

What I saw, what I experienced and then what I sat through in a debrief and what I remember hearing on that debrief and what was audio recorded. And I've confirmed with other people what they heard on that radio or on that recording. So that's the only thing I get into. Just that there was existence of it and that that's where my version comes from.

[Sean Ryan]

And the name of the book is no Easy Way.

[Matt Bissonette]

No Easy Way, it's a playoff. No easy day because it turns out today is not long enough. Right. You're gonna get kicked in the nuts. Life's journey's a little longer than that. Takes more than a day.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, we will help you promote it.

[Matt Bissonette]

When I'm not, I'm not using a publisher on this one, right? I used the publisher on the last two. Guess who kept all their money in the process.

[Sean Ryan]

Go. Go figure.

[Matt Bissonette]

Publishers, literary agent, Go figure. Everybody kept their profits except me. So this book, I'm not using a publisher. I'm going as most direct that I can. If people want to help me, they can go to my website, mattbissonet.com and order a book. And that cuts out all the middlemen, that cuts out all the fluff, that cuts out all the nonsense. And then when the book finally gets.

[Sean Ryan]

Reviewed.

[Matt Bissonette]

Goes straight to you.

[Sean Ryan]

Good for you, man. Good for you. What are you doing with the YouTube channel?

[Matt Bissonette]

YouTube channel, that's. That's an interesting one. Right? I, I kind of parachuted into Hollywood for this, the SEAL Team show on cbs, right? I, I had an opportunity to sit down with, with the president of cbs. He says, hey, Bis, what does Hollywood do wrong with military content? Pretty easy. You don't hire enough veterans to make sure the veteran content actually gets across. Right? I said, Look, I did 13 deployments. And it's, it's not about the Rambo. I did plenty of that. I was married, I tried to have kids, like all of these things. And it's a balance. It's not, it's not just the shoot em up stuff, right? There's way more to being a SEAL than what's in combat. He's like, okay, would you help me put this together? Sure. So started hiring a handful of vets. Then Hollywood stepped in. They're like, no, no, no, no. You've got three involved. Like three. We need like 300. So I went back to the president of CBS. I'm like, sir, this, this isn't the deal we got like this. You have to put a lot of them in here, right? There's only three of us so far. And of course, right. What he wants and the lieutenants below him, they always change what he wants, like the military. So I kept butting heads, but every time I'd go back and talk with the president, he'd say, okay, Bis, okay. And I'd win. And by season seven, right?

[Tim Parlatore]

What?

[Matt Bissonette]

Seven seasons?

[Sean Ryan]

Seven seasons of this.

[Matt Bissonette]

Seven seasons. 200 vets employed on the show.

[Sean Ryan]

Congratulations, man.

[Matt Bissonette]

Directors, editors. We had two former SEALs and a former MARSOC guy in the writers room writing the episodes with the crazy Hollywood types to write the episodes. Right. Otherwise we'd be throwing nuclear hand grenades. Episode two. Right. It doesn't work. They clearly pulled a whole bunch of stuff from my books and put it in the show. We talk a lot about mental health. We have veteran suicide. We have an episode where we had a veteran shoot himself in the VA parking lot. Right. Mental health was never brought up at all. Ever during my time. Ever. It was dirty word. Right? So to have the ability to have an effect on a show that. That can tell a real story. That was it. So Seal Team 7. Seven seasons. Learned a lot. It's super expensive. It's slow and. And it's a dying breed.

[Tim Parlatore]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

So I've got a farm in North Carolina, which is where I am moving to in my next phase of life. I'm going to be a farmer raising some wagyu beef.

[Sean Ryan]

Nice. And some of that up here. I'll trade you gummy bears for wagyu beef any day.

[Matt Bissonette]

Deal. So, yeah, through that process. Right. It's an old cattle farm that my wife and I bought 10 years ago. We've been cleaning up and we're like, you know what? We should share a little bit of the story of.

[Sean Ryan]

Hey.

[Matt Bissonette]

Where our food comes from. Right. I'm a little bit of a prepper, so we'll be getting off the grid with some solar and whatnot. And so we're like, let's. Let's put a little show around this. And then. And then, you know, I bring. Bring buddies out and bring them through the show.

[Sean Ryan]

No.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, you.

[Sean Ryan]

Let's go, man.

[Matt Bissonette]

We'd set up a thing called the Farm Olympics with my son. Now it's. When you come, we'll have you do it. But it's shooting out of an ice bath, sporting clays. Right. Paddle boarding side by siding with ax throwing with Winkler. Like, we got a whole bunch of stupid fun stuff to do around the farm.

[Sean Ryan]

Dude, that's awesome.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Sounds like a total man camp. That's amazing.

[Matt Bissonette]

It is.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, congratulations, man. I'm really happy for you. And so a couple more questions. Send it one. What is the. What is the. The. The. The one thing that stuck with you the most out of your career in the SEAL teams?

[Matt Bissonette]

A positive one. A pa. A positive. A positive from my time in the.

[Sean Ryan]

SEAL or all the happened, man.

[Matt Bissonette]

And you've lived it. So I'm speaking to the choir here. There's something about working with a group of people. I'M not talking about the officers and all the people around, talking about the operators that you worked with. Right. And the fact that each one of them. Right. Would give of himself for the team. Right? And I loved that.

[Sean Ryan]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

I loved the fact that I worked in an environment where the team was all rowing in the same direction. And. And it was great. I absolutely loved that. I loved the black and white nature of it.

[Tim Parlatore]

Right?

[Matt Bissonette]

There's very little gray area either all in or you're not. And I was all in. So I loved all of that. Problem is, you get out and you miss it. I have a Delta Force buddy who's on the. On the SEAL team show. Delta guy playing a seal. That's weird. But Tyler Gray, and he's like, look, Bis, we don't have ptsd. We have ltsd. Have you heard this one before?

[Tim Parlatore]

No.

[Matt Bissonette]

Because I'm like, tyler, what's ltsd? He's like, we have lack of Traumatic stress disorder. Okay, explain it to me. And it's the best way I've ever heard it explained. Okay, Bis, he's like. For a decade straight, our day job, Monday, Wednesday, Friday on average, was to creep into the house, pick the lock on the door, and come deal with you and 10 of your friends with me and 10 of my friends, right? We're going to be. We're going to be very calm in that chaos because that's what we do. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And for a decade, it's kind of our normal night. That's our norm. That's our baseline. I don't get. I don't get adrenaline rush in a shootout. I slow down and make smart decisions. Adrenaline will get you killed. So. So that becomes our norm. I turned to my ID card. I left the base. I never got shot at again. I haven't been skydiving. I haven't. I've had lack of traumatic stress in my life.

[Sean Ryan]

Life.

[Matt Bissonette]

And, And Tyler's like, he explained that to me. I'm like, holy. It's the best way ever. I. I have l. I don't have ptsd. I have ltsd. Right? I did it long enough that that was my happy place and my norm. It made. It gave me purpose. It gave me all the things I needed in life. And then one day I turned in my ID card, I left, and now I have lack of Traumatic Stress Disorder. Now why do vets step into drug and alcohol addition issues? Maybe they're trying to recreate the chaos single handedly. The best way I've ever heard it explained to me.

[Sean Ryan]

Maybe, Maybe I don't know. A lot of other symptoms going on while in service. Like you saying you're not fucking sleeping while in service.

[Matt Bissonette]

Yeah, I didn't sleep for more than four or five hours a night for almost a decade.

[Sean Ryan]

Right.

[Matt Bissonette]

There's a lot of combined stressors that add up and add up. And you think about it again, I was at the command for eight straight years and that pressure never got relieved for anybody. I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about the command in general. That pressure just got more and more pressurized. More and more pressurized. More and more pressurized. Oh, big success of Bin Laden Russian. Okay, Boom. We got gut punched with all of our friends died. Yeah, right. Like.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, man.

[Matt Bissonette]

I got one other crazy story for you.

[Sean Ryan]

What do you got?

[Matt Bissonette]

So when my kids were little, I would go volunteer at their school, right? I. They use their mom's maiden name, so nobody know. They're just trying to stay under the radar. Certainly nobody at the kids school knows my background. But there's a program called Watchdogs. Dads of good students. Dads can go to the school, volunteer for the day and whatever. So I'm gonna be a watchdog. I show up at the school like, yeah, you know, I'm, I'm Ava dad. You know, I'm here for my volunteer. Like, okay, well, you know, here's your T shirt. Would you go work the crossing guard? As the buses show up, here's a reflective vest and a stop sign. Like, I'm probably overqualified for this, but it's going to be a really safe intersection. I got my, my Navy SEAL hand and arm signals, right? I'm working the intersection. Reflective vest, stop sign. The middle of this, I see this guy walking up with a couple, couple kids and he's got a SEAL Team six hat on the type we don't sell. Oh, right, we have squadron hats. We don't have Team Six hats. So he walks across the intersection. I give him a look, you know, he gives me the tough guy nod and walks into school. Holy shit. I gotta talk to this guy. Maybe he was at the command. So I, I let him come out. I get out of the street, I let the traffic go, and I'm looking, I'm like, hey, man, see you.

[Tim Parlatore]

The hats.

[Matt Bissonette]

Were you in the teams? I was, I'm like, oh, no, on team six, those are the guys that got Bin Laden, you know? You weren't a part of that, were you? This guy looks around. I don't like to talk about it, but I was oh, my God. I can't believe what he just said. I just keep staring at him. I'm in my reflective vest. I got my stop sign. I'm like, no shit. So was I. And that's all I said. I just.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, my gosh.

[Matt Bissonette]

And he's looking at me. I'm looking at him.

[Sean Ryan]

The two crossing guards are out there beating the shit out of each other.

[Matt Bissonette]

I'm like, I'm gonna kill him with my side. My wife's texting me. She's like, you know, the kids are at school. Don't kill them with the stop sign. We had a few choice words. I'm like, who is. Who is the master chief on Cha Kwan? What Bud's class were you in? All right. This guy had nothing. Like, listen, I got. I got a lot of dead friends who'd be really upset that you're coming in here acting like you are once you beat it. How about that? What are the odds of that, man? 24 dudes in the world, and he's lying to the wrong crossing guard at the wrong time.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow, wow, wow. People never cease to amaze me. Well, man, we're wrapping up the interview. Last question.

[Matt Bissonette]

Send it.

[Sean Ryan]

If you had 3 people to recommend for the show, who would they be? 2.

[Matt Bissonette]

Three guys to come on this show. Great question. They probably wouldn't want me dropping their names on this right now. I could think of a couple operators that I worked with who would be phenomenal to help round out a whole bunch of stuff for you. Whether they will come here and be on the show, I don't know. Like I said, I wasn't going to do any of this until I talked to, you know, knowing you, knowing what you've been built and the type of person you are, that's why I was willing to come sit here. So I appreciate that. And I think. I think there will be some others that will follow suit.

[Sean Ryan]

Well.

[Matt Bissonette]

And so I won't drop names, but they will be phenomenal interviews if I can encourage them to come out. Thank you.

[Sean Ryan]

Thank you. Well, Matt, it was an honor. I wish the best.

[Matt Bissonette]

Know that.

[Sean Ryan]

Hope that book gets. Gets the blessing soon. So appreciate it. God bless, brother.

[Matt Bissonette]

Thanks, man.

[Sean Ryan]

Cheers.