Luke Kennedy, a former Chicago PD officer and military veteran shares stories from his time undercover in Afghanistan and Iraq, showcasing the human side of intelligence work. From integrating refugees to identifying key intelligence assets, the role of language skills and cultural understanding is pivotal and often heartbreaking.
Check out the new DECKED system and get free shipping.
Check out Tier1Kinetics for guns, ammo, and optics accessories.
Luke Kennedy, a former Chicago PD officer and military veteran shares stories from his time undercover in Afghanistan and Iraq, showcasing the human side of intelligence work. From integrating refugees to identifying key intelligence assets, the role of language skills and cultural understanding is pivotal and often heartbreaking.
Check out the new DECKED system and get free shipping.
Check out Tier1Kinetics for guns, ammo, and optics accessories.
You know, everybody wants to be a special forces guy until they have to do what they do or train like they do, and you know it's. I look at those guys and some of them are my friends currently and some people are just born for it. Man, I mean, I was an intelligence guy, I worked with them, but I don't know if I could do as efficiently as they are, as some people are, who are just like able to focus on the mission and live that, and that's what probably helped me the most when I got out.
Luke Kennedy:These are stories of outdoor adventure and expert advice from folks with calloused hands. I'm James Nash and this is the Six Ranch podcast. Four years ago, I bought a new truck for the first time ever and I was so excited. It was incredible. It smelled good, it felt good. I wasn't constantly afraid of breaking down, you know, it was awesome. But after I drove it for a couple of weeks I do the same thing that I always do and the backseat started it just started to fill up with stuff. You know I'm guiding elk hunters and deer hunters and I'm duck hunting and I'm fly fishing and all that gear just accumulates and pretty soon I wasn't able to take people with me anymore and I was embarrassed. You know People would ask for a ride and like no sorry man, I've got too much stuff with me, but I couldn't put it in the bed because then it gets damaged by weather. So I go to the internet and I'm looking for options and I ended up buying a deck to drawer system. Now, this was a big purchase for me, but it's something that I felt like I needed and it looked like it was gonna be a good product and it really was.
Luke Kennedy:Debt came out with a new drawer system this year and they've made some meaningful improvements over the previous one. You have almost no wasted space in your truck bed now so you can access the sides of the drawers. And then the drawers roll a full 18 inches farther out so you can actually access the back of the drawer even if you don't have a lot of arm reach. There's some really strong tie down points on top. They have a 400 pound load rating. So if you're gonna haul something like a motorcycle or big coolers or whatever, you can really strap your gear down and make it secure. You can lock these drawer systems so you can lock the drawers. Or if your tailgate locks, then nobody can access the drawers anyways. So I actually feel like my stuff is more secure inside this drawer system than in the cab of my truck. That's a big deal to me.
Luke Kennedy:The complete deck system is made in America by Americans, and you know that that's something that I love and appreciate. They've got one that will fit in any truck or van that's been made in America in the last 20 years. Plus you can go to deckedcom slash six ranch and get free shipping. But just being honest with you, they get free shipping to everybody. I also. While you're there, I want you to check out their deco line. So they've got a bunch of different boxes and storage containers that either fit on top of or inside of the drawer system and those are built really robust. I saw the prototypes at an event this summer. I'm impressed. I'm excited to get my hands on them. I haven't yet, but the prototypes were super badass and the ones that are in production model they're available now over at deckedcom. So even if you just need a place for some tools or you need a new bow case or something along those lines, go check that out. And if you're driving around right now and your back seat is just full of gear and you can't haul people around, maybe you should consider looking at the full deck drawer system, because it's a good piece of gear. It was a good purchase for me and I hope it helps you.
Luke Kennedy:Hello everybody and welcome back. Today I've got a very special guest and we're recording this remotely, which I don't typically do, but you're gonna understand really quickly why that is and I think that you're really going to enjoy this conversation, because my guest today is one of the most incredible people that I've ever had the privilege of talking to. Also in the middle of the show you're gonna be hearing from Christy Marshall. Christy's 15 years old and she did a wildlife bio-shoot piece that she's going to be doing as a guest in the middle of the show, so hang out for that Without further ado. Welcome to the show, mr Luke Kennedy. Such an honor to have you here.
James Nash:Thank you, I mean, I don't think I really didn't think I was worthy of your time, but thank you so much. It's very humbling to be your guest and it's privilege is all mine. Truly, Thank you.
Luke Kennedy:Dude, you've got you've got an incredible story, and the more I think about it, the more I feel like you are multiple people in the same life, and what a privilege that really is, because, regardless of what anybody believes, what we know for sure is that we at least get this one life, and you've got to spread yours in so many different directions, with just flatitudes of I don't know, just flatitudes Like. You've got incredible depth in your experiences and what you've been able to contribute, not only to our own country, but to others as well. Can't wait to get into it. Where I would like to start, though, is with water polo, like because that's a crazy sport. That's a sport that a lot of people they only interact with about every four years. They see it on the Olympics and they go, wow, that's kind of crazy. I wonder how they do that and they go, wow, that's kind of crazy. I wonder how this ever came to be, but I'm curious.
Luke Kennedy:It's the first team sport at the Olympics. It was, it was the first team sport at the Olympics. That's amazing. So how old is water polo? Where did this get its start?
James Nash:It's kind of a funny story because technically the Brits invented it because they're sailors, right, and it's been played with pig intestines and then sheepskin balls and then the soccer ball, but then it got spread out with all the sailors around the world that worked for the great India and all these companies, that all the sailors around the world. So it's kind of like it's got spread by the naval silk express, if you will, and mostly for whatever reason. Man, I mean, the country that has been the strongest in water polo is the country that has no shores whatsoever. Hungary owns water polo. They're everything.
James Nash:I mean you can go to Hungary and water polo will be on TV and their players will be gods. They're pools and everything else very little. So all those Eastern European countries, mediterranean countries, the most Yugoslavia, ex-yugoslavia and every faction of that part just became huge and Greeks, but all the Mediterranean countries are very, very involved in it We've talked about this before, but the stresses that a human endures when they're in water polo that a human endures when they can't breathe, are unlike just about any other.
Luke Kennedy:So we can go for a long time without sleep, but that's a great way to stress people out is to keep them from sleeping. We go quite a while without eating, but that's another way to cause stress. We can go several days without drinking any water but without breathing. That clock runs down really quickly. And then if you add stress on top of that time, like if you're just laying in a pool and your face is in the water, most people can get north of three minutes with a little bit of training relatively quickly, Like in the first few days of practice, they could probably get there. But if you start stressing them out while they can't breathe, that's gonna get down to that 20 second, 30 second time frame really quickly. So I think being able to control your body while you can't breathe and while you're exerting yourself gives you a control over who you are that almost nothing else can do.
James Nash:I mean absolutely. Yes. I couldn't agree more and I think most of the I mean I promised myself I wouldn't give them that much credit, but here we are, seals, the way that some of their evolutions are. It's truly humbling to see that they teach themselves and they have the drawn proofing where they're completely tied down and it's just that element of mind over body completely. And when you stress your water it becomes survival, much faster than just any pain that you have when you run or I don't know if you do pushups. The lactic acid is much different pain than being without oxygen.
Luke Kennedy:Yeah, yeah, and really exerting yourself hard, like that's crazy, but you played it at a really high level. So tell me a little bit about your water polo career, that which you can.
James Nash:Sure, of course I played. I started when I was young, the partial grief parts of my family. It's a national sport from that part where my mom is from and it's just it's been something that you played, there's nothing else. There's no soccer field, there's no basketball field. It's funny and it's really timing. There was a gentleman that plays for Kansas City, whose father and I forget his name, and I should, as a fellow Greek, but he's in the Super Bowl and he played water polo all the way until he moved to United States and now he's a Super Bowl and he gives a lot of intel of how you can catch the ball. It's always one hand. And it's funny to me when people say how you, you have to be super coordinated to play basketball. You try having a dude yank it on you and get that ball. That's coordination, man.
Luke Kennedy:Tell me a little bit about your water polo career.
James Nash:That's what we're talking about.
Luke Kennedy:So you started at a super young age.
James Nash:Yeah, I started at a very young age and I think, well, I was a swimmer. I started swimming and with my little anger management issues as a little kid, as a young boy, I did not compute that people who are swimming with you in the same lane that their waves are normal, so I always thought they were making waves to offset my swimming. So I started jumping on them and the coach realized I think water polo is for you, my friend. So as he pulled me back and put me in a water polo practice, I got punched in the face that first practice and I said this is it, this is where I belong. So that's how I started.
James Nash:I played high school all throughout State finals, state championship Division I, ncaa finals, third place. And then after that I got up to the Olympic trials, Olympic squad European championships two of them won in Greece and one in Italy and got injured, came back home, lived the dream as an investment banker for a little bit and after that joined the Chicago Police Department, transferred to California Highway Patrol this is kind of executive summary at this point and then from there I got recruited by the Bureau and the rest is, I guess, history.
Luke Kennedy:Now you've operated in war zones all over the world. How does the war zone of, say, Iraq compare to that of Chicago?
James Nash:Yeah, is that?
Luke Kennedy:even a fair question to ask. I never know what to trust when I see on the news, but what I see looks bad. I see a holiday weekend where there's 30 or 40 or 50 people who get shot and go through the emergency rooms in Chicago Like that would be an incredible day of fighting in Afghanistan. Something that I frankly never saw were that many people getting shot in a day, so it seems like a lot, but you were in it as Chicago PD, so what was that like?
James Nash:Well, prior to that, I'll just give you a little fact. That's almost scary, but it's just the fact of life, of living in Chicago, living in Chicago in your time, during your time of Afghanistan, every single medic, no matter what branch, no matter what rank, has been prepared and trained in Chicago's Sight Night Hospital because there is never shortage, ever shortage, of any caliber possible. They can get Bullet ones, so 22s, 9s, 556s, everything in between. I mean they loved Dracos, but it's just that they, every single military deployed medical personnel, has been trained in Chicago's Sight Night. Because there was never shortage of gunshot wounds.
James Nash:And as a Chicago police officer, I've been in more gunfights in Chicago than I did in Afghanistan, and that's a fact. I mean I kind of wear it with kind of badge of honor, but on my third day in Chicago I was in a lethal gunfight that I did not have to do in Afghanistan. And even the gunfights later on that I've been in have never been in such a close proximity and never, I mean, we were almost ambushed as a Chicago uniform police officers and that's a daily thing. I mean it's the. You know one thing that doesn't really happen in Afghanistan all the time is we were not, I guess, base and forward observation bases were, you know, bombed and murdered and murdered.
James Nash:But Chicago, I mean you are a cop, you are a target all the time. I mean you are a target just like everybody else. And then you know it's difficult to be in a place such as Afghanistan, where you're going to, you know secure the rights and you're going to win. You know hearts and minds. And you come home and it's worse and that's something that I struggled with when I was leaving and I mean when I would come back. It's just. It's just. It's a different understanding of what freedom is and how people don't value it back home as much and it's kind of almost like a it's not a treasure thing anymore.
Luke Kennedy:Yeah, yeah. I even saw something recently where there was a gunfight in Chicago and nobody was charged because they just declared it as mutual combat, whatever that is. And that's wild times, that's wild, that's wild west stuff, but it's right now.
James Nash:So yeah, and so, and also a fact I mean I was a federal agent, so I kind of understand how this goes Chicago will report death and or woundings if the accident happened in Chicago and ended in Chicago. So if they got in a fight in Chicago and they went to a hospital nearby suburb no data. If they fought in suburbs, which is not that difficult in Chicago area, then you come to Chicago Hospital no data. The police report doesn't. So it's just you can I mean you can be your own, you know, you can make your own speculations of how much that is.
Luke Kennedy:So bottom line, it's not going well in Chicago. Then that moves you to. I'm glad you won your gunfight, by the way. I would like to congratulate you on that, thank you. And then then you move on to California, and that was California Highway. Yes, sir, okay, but they realized really quickly, because you're you're acumen with language, that you are going to be undervalued there. How many languages do you speak?
James Nash:Well, to just give a little caveat, everybody well most personnel in in on California Highway Patrol is bilingual, or at least understands it a little bit. So in order to get paid for anything more at my time, during my time, you had to be certified as a federal translator or you could be asset to a translator to any of the agencies or task forces. So I went to sign up to be certified for Turkish at the time, turkish, russian, greek and Bosnian, serbian, creation, all those and during that process they kind of said, well, would you like to be a FBI agent? I mean, they, you know, we can kind of transfer you around and it was. It kind of was an offer that I could not refuse at the time. I wasn't going to wake up with any you know horses in my bed, but I was.
James Nash:Just the offer they made was very lucrative at the time and this is 2009-10. You have to also kind of get into my space. Prior to that, I was an investment banker in Chicago and I didn't see a future. I mean, if you remember 2008-9-10, economy was in such a place that you, you really had to kind of think really, really, really in advance of what you're going to do what you're going to buy? Where can you live? So, knowing what federal agency could provide, I went there.
Luke Kennedy:Yeah, I graduated college in 2009, and I was already going into the Marines. I had a plan, I had a job, but for a lot of the kids in my class, man, they were hosed. It did not look good for them at all, like they're. The job market was just nothing, and especially in something like investment banking with you know the way people were viewing hedge funds and everything else at the time like that, that seems like a dead end street. So you get picked up by the FBI and, by the way, these language tests folks are incredibly difficult.
Luke Kennedy:I'm fluent in Norwegian because I lived in Norway for a year. I say fluent, but when I went to take this test that you're talking about for the Marines so that I can make a little bit of extra money, when I got to that fourth level, what I had to do was listen to radio conversations, so I couldn't see people's lips moving. I had to listen to radio conversations and they were like talk shows where they were talking about recent politics, and I hadn't lived there for a decade at this time and I failed that completely. So I only made it to level three, where I could conversationally just crush it. I could go anywhere in Norway and understand everything and make myself understood no big deal and I felt like I was fluent, but when it got to that stage, buddy, it's really hard. So if you make it to that level four, that means that you are like a natural language speaker, where you may not even have an accent in that country and can just completely blend in.
James Nash:Yeah, I got all my just I am. I understand a lot by DOD standards and by DOJ standards so I could hold the conversation and or listen ease drop at nine online. But six is where I got four, so I'm ranked four as a native speaker in six of them, which includes writing and reading.
Luke Kennedy:Wow, Good job. That's incredible. Okay, so currently we have somebody who is one of the best water polo players in the world, who becomes an investment banker, who gets in a shootout in Chicago, wins the shootout and then goes to California and then gets picked up by the FBI. Dod DOJ, which now moves you to the meat of what we want to talk about, which is ending up with you acting as a deep undercover officer. Is that the correct word?
James Nash:Sure, I mean, there's certain, and actually I really want to clarify this yeah, fbi has agents and analysts are nothing and or officers are nothing. And CIA has officers who are an analyst for everything and agents are nothing Gotcha. So it's kind of you know. People always say, well, are you an agent or your CIA spy or a secret agent? Well, you know, and you know, there's a lot of other members of our or my community, of our community, who come out and give out, you know, certain spills and stories. It's just you are. There's no one on this planet who really is a deep undercover who can tell you I'm a spy, all right, I'm working undercover. I can tell you why. Right, once you go undercover, you assume that legend and that's it, man. I mean, you don't even know what you. You know you become whoever the fuck they tell you that you are at that time. So if you become a Mickey Mouse, you're a Mickey Mouse. You're not a secret Mickey Mouse, you're not. You know you don't identify as Mickey Mouse. You are the Mickey Mouse and the other one is the fake one. I mean, that's how you have to operate. So, with that being said, I was.
James Nash:And also to the second caveat just so people can kind of understand every crime that begins and or results in within the US territory is under federal bureau of investigations jurisdiction. So if it begins, if it's planned in Chicago but it happened in Spain, fbi will be on it to make sure what that bridge was, who funded it here, all that stuff. But it becomes an FBI thing If it began in Spain and Barcelona and that dude or ladies or whomever flies to Chicago and does it. It's still an FBI jurisdiction to go to Spain and do whatever they have to do to put it together. So it's either it begins or ends, or both. If it's none of those, then the agency, the CIA, has more I don't see a jurisdiction because they don't technically, but they have more leeway of having more access to funds and or assets necessary to investigate, hence it's intelligence agency at that point.
James Nash:So, with that being said, my job at that time was or the way that I got in one I spoke Russian and I wrote. I was able to speak, read and write Russian, which, funny enough, prior to us being in Afghanistan, it was Russians. So they had this oldest maps, or old dated but factual maps that they fought on, and at that time, if you remember, we were in good terms with Russia, we weren't on the bad terms. So I would meet up with the most old school, your Ivan Drago, dad, kgb agents and review their maps and then make that package available to our intelligence and then we will triangulate on what we had from before, what they had before. What has it evolved? Has it moved? Are Russian trying to mess with us? Are we not having as detail as they did, or is it perfect and funny enough?
James Nash:I mean, russia got me to Afghanistan, yeah, but when I was in Iraq, I was put in to operate within refugee camps. There were, there were, there were people you know, it's also a thing that's happening in Gaza now but a lot of people, a lot of Americans, everybody, I mean my family included. I know nobody's really doing on purpose, but people are really oblivious of how many refugees and how those refugees work and how many they are per little cities. I mean, you know, if you live in a city of 100,000, and you have a football field and you go to a football game, those bathrooms are trashed by the end of that day. Now, imagine those people that have to live in that football field, living there for two, three years. Yeah, I mean you've seen the lines for the food. I mean that's just super easy to kind of put into perspective. You just go to anything basketball, it doesn't matter. You know they don't get much space, you know they got as much as a blanket and there's food lines, there's all the personal when data they have in between. So you know, even though they're refugees now, the beef sort of say they had from prior still exists. So they kind of there's this oldest criminal aspect in this now eco chambered and kind of combusted places so they cannot leave for their security reasons, or what are security reasons. And so what happens is there's a lot of vulnerable youth. There was a lot of anger. There was a lot of anger of anybody men, women, everybody who either is really hating the position they're in or they're really trying to understand why they got in there, how they can resolve it. So it's a best place to radicalize anybody for good or bad.
James Nash:So my job was to operate in Iraq within the refugee camps to operate English schools. As a plate by UN they were kind of to give these refugees who have no place to go back. So there's immigrants and there's refugees. People who become refugees, really don't have place to go back anymore or for a longer time. So by Geneva Convention you need to kind of it's like an arrest, like when you arrest somebody you are responsible for them. So when you have a refugee, you are responsible for them, for all their.
James Nash:There's a big difference between immigrants and refugees that people should look into I don't get too much into here but to make them better citizens of future and to make their assimilation easier. Every camp has a school English, french, german, norwegian and I ran English schools 14 of them by the end of my career where my job was to identify who was vulnerable, who I thought was vulnerable for two aspects One for us, if they were kind of hating their government and they were more favorable to what we can do. So those people would be able to explain the situation to me better, culturally of what's happening amongst them, not really to work for us, but it just to give me intel that I can package it and send it forward. And then also people who are really angry and blaming the Americans then, who are vulnerable to the groups that will use that against us. So one and then identify who were the groups and individuals who come to do such things or who are the recruiters, so to say, and then make that package available to interested parts.
Luke Kennedy:And to an extent that's what we do here. So if somebody was to get a top secret security clearance who was working for DOD DOJ, whatever NCIS would send investigators back to their community to talk to everybody who'd been involved in their lives. So, like when I got my security clearance, they talked to my teachers, they talked to coaches, they talked to everybody. They look really closely.
James Nash:That's girlfriend, man, that was the worst.
Luke Kennedy:Yeah, they look really closely at your financial records and the reason that they do that they want to see if you have a bunch of debt and it's not like, oh, this person is financially irresponsible so we can't trust them with secrets. It's oh, do you owe $60,000 on a credit card? If somebody comes in and says, hey, I'll take care of that for you, if you just provide me this piece of information, well then that person is vulnerable, right, and that's exactly what you're looking at there, just with different triggers. Just with different triggers than what we would look at here. So you don't want to have a way that somebody can get a lever underneath of you, and if you do, then we're going to probably not give you that security clearance until that's taken care of, sure?
James Nash:or not at all because it's too deep.
Luke Kennedy:Right, right, but just to provide a little bit of continuity for the way things actually get thrown around, because the stuff that we're talking about with special warfare, with DOD DOJ, fbi, cia, most of what people actually interact with that is just garbage that comes across in movies. That is incredibly inaccurate, and the same thing with security clearances. So we're just trying to bring that back down to ground level to talk about what it actually looks like.
James Nash:Sure, absolutely, and that's 100% exactly the same across every agency there is. It's you know. They interview you for a reason and then they do a background check one to see if you are who you said you are, and two to see if there's anything that you either omitted and or missed to your advantage or disadvantage. It's really you never kind of know why they ask questions. They do.
Luke Kennedy:Yeah, ok, tell me about the Taliban financier. This is a heartbreaking story.
James Nash:Yeah, yeah. So again, you know, I want to paint a picture for everybody as a veteran, as somebody who's been through it and who's signed up truly with intentions, of Captain America. So I didn't go in with any romantic illusions of you know, maybe they're good or maybe they're bad or they're all bad. I mean I went in to make sure that nothing comes back to United States. I mean my job, I took it extremely seriously for seven years was I was devoted to eliminate anyone who was trying to come to United States and do anything wrong. It didn't matter to me. I mean, I went in with you know that, like a mission, it's just like 9-11 never again over my dead body and I'm going to stop it, no matter where, no matter how. So during working at the camps I was, this was in Afghanistan. So this is not the first four years. This is the last of the three years that I lived there.
James Nash:I had a student who comes from the mountains and comes to the school. I'm sorry he came to the school I had access because it's kind of like a jurisdiction, like I could go and ask the indigenous people do you need help? Would you like to learn how to I mean, blow glass, all these things that we want to kind of bring that to them, enrich their lives and also, you know, weighing in minds and hearts. That was the only thing that we had to do at the time. And I was asked to scout a person. He was a shepherd, a herd, he had a lot of sheeps, four kids, he had a brother and he lived in a top of a mountain and in the middle of this mountain was a clam or a sect that was not aligned with his people and his people were all like high, they're like highlanders, they're all other tops, just his families. But this specific crowd right here just did not like him for their own territory, wars, like, because he would bring his sheep down and they wouldn't like it and it's, I guess, petty, but that's just politics of their everyday life. And then the town where everything was happening, meaning that the sales and, you know, the bazaar, was below this specific crowd and there was only one road to go up and down and my job was to make sure how many sheeps he has, how many visitors he has, who are his visitors, and or if I could recruit his kids to come to our school, which will then, at that time show because Afghanistan is a conservative place, it's just. You know, if they will allow their kids to go anywhere, you will understand that they're conservative, but less. They're all conservative. There's no liberal Afghan, but this is just a less of a I guess more open-minded.
James Nash:And I went and approached them and I said you know, we have a school. I would love for your kids to come there was. You know, if there's any lessons that you don't want them to be in, that's free of choice. If you don't want your or your brother's daughters to like walk with men, that's not a problem. It's divided, segregated that way. And to my surprise, he was extremely willing, said no problem. So for I watched him for 67 days and every Friday he would sacrifice a sheep and come, send it with his brother to the camp and feed. I mean whatever meat will suffice, we will feed everybody and he will leave. You know the post. And I mean it was just this regular man, I mean no different than my father If I went to school and he was a butcher, sending me to feed us in time of war like nothing, prayed five times a week, I mean five times a day, the reason why I had to count his sheep is it's, it's that's his kind of bank account.
James Nash:So the sheep account never went anywhere else, up or down, like so that means that he wasn't doing any illicit business or paying anything that wasn't being sold where it was. So the only problem that there was and it was in my package that the logistics guy that goes between his top of the mountain and now to Bazar also was known to carry Taliban stuff. He wasn't Taliban himself, but he was Taliban friendly enough that they will hire him to transport their stuff. So in a way he was kind of a fanboy who kind of greased around to do a lot more business because nobody could mess with him because he was Taliban but he wasn't. So that's the only way that the sheep from the top of the mountain will go down from this praying dude that in 67 days I couldn't notice anything wrong.
James Nash:Who on Fridays will send food to feed complete strangers? Had I mean Afghans all have weapons on site, but nothing crazy that I could. You know I would be suspicious and you know, at that time I'm already, I'm already better enough to kind of realize what's going on if I'm being set up and not, and just one of those days, the direct action people showed up and they were just like hey, man, we need you to identify someone to Bazar with us and I'll be. You know it's just it's us. So no problem. I mean, once direct action shows up, you know it's it's. You know that's why. I mean, that's truly what I'm there for and I am an extension of the existence and I am their limb. So just kind of go in.
Luke Kennedy:And for those who don't know what is direct action.
James Nash:Direct action is, at that time, killer, capture. You know the special forces guys, seals, sometimes Delta. So it's just they are. They come from direct orders from either Pentagon or or CIO, whoever, with a mission to be finished then and there, they're not really in there to manipulate anything. They had the intel, they, they practice for so long they go through everything and when they show up they're going to execute. There is there is no mission fail with those guys. So when they show up, it's just like whatever that they're for is going to happen, rather, whether you want it or they want it or it's happening, I mean it's. There is no stopping that at that point, right? So when they show up, I you know he wasn't my only target, so I was just going to like let's see if the citizens might be fun.
James Nash:And when they showed, when we got in and they showed I mean I was scope I saw the guy. I said what is this for? And they said, well, man, he's a. I mean, at this point, you know this is the guy, you know, you do, you know, but this doesn't make any sense. This makes no sense, like none.
James Nash:I mean, if you guys need to talk to this guy, you need something I have. I mean, I can walk there right now and speak with him and they just plain said he is a Taliban finance here. And I couldn't, it's not. It's just not possible. And I know for a fact I'm the only one where I thought I was the only one, but then I realized this guy is indirectly financing Taliban by employing logistics guys. So it's no different than us. You know, I hired in your trucker from West Virginia to like send something from Virginia to you and that guy being a, you know, clan member, and all of a sudden me or you being accused of being a clan members, right, or even worse, financiers, and at that moment he didn't make you back. I am Torairs very good.
James Nash:Yes, I'm a father today, man, and it's so difficult for me, you know, just like I do nothing wrong, you know, I have a business, I do charity. I have, you know, friends, families, and this dude prayed five times a day. Man, I mean, he lived within the structured environment that he was born, raised and lived. He believed in his God, our God, one God. It doesn't matter, this is not his or my God, it's just like he was a devoted believer, a businessman, a local man, a giving man and gone, just like that. Right, and it is, and I carry the guilt of did I? You know, it's a man I always think maybe I put wrong explanation or maybe I didn't explain enough, or maybe you know it's difficult to live with this that you know.
James Nash:Wait, I had his life, man, I mean, it's just like. It's just like you know my nickname I'm on direct action People was you know, I don't like it, but was Angel of Death. Because it's just like you live with this authority over people's life. That's manmade man. I mean, it's just like you know, I identify or don't identify through a scope Someone who either lives or doesn't live. I didn't even know, I mean, when I said that's him. It could have been. There was a spirit of life.
James Nash:So it's not every time that direct action shows that they take somebody out. You identify him and they start following him because they know that he's and I need somebody else who they need. So it's just like it's not really. You know they show up and you point that guy and he's dead. But it's just being on that scope and like watching a man that I just watched for 67 days and pure, pure man, like did he die for him? Nothing, I don't know. I like to believe that I wasn't the only one watching him and that they had different intel. And I live with the guilt that what if my package let somebody to misunderstand what I wrote and take that guy out just because I didn't do good enough job of explaining what that was and what that wasn't? And he always had?
Luke Kennedy:It's a it's a tough thing to be the one to decide who dies right, and you know I had, I had my my fair share of that as well, and you and I have talked about this before. But I, I firmly believe that it's easier to pull the trigger or issue the fire command to to kill somebody than it is to to give the order for somebody else to do it right. And in this scenario, you weren't giving somebody the order, you were just playing your role and you were asked hey, I just need you to identify, to make sure that this is the correct person. And it's not only likely, it's for sure that there was other intelligence on that individual that you did not possess. So somebody knew something that you didn't know. And you know you were, you were a piece of that puzzle, and it's a terrible thing to be a piece of a puzzle where it doesn't make sense to you.
Luke Kennedy:And you know I was definitely in scenarios as well where it's like I don't think that's right, like I don't think that that guy needs needs to get shot right now, but that's not up to me, right, that's, that's not my role and it wasn't your role either. It doesn't change how you carry that guilt or how you carry that burden. But you know, the reality is you're not guilty of anything. It just doesn't feel good. It just doesn't feel good. But I'm sure there was also times where you had a package on somebody who was the worst of the worst and you got to point them out and be like that guy right there and he has earned it. He's earned it twice, you know.
James Nash:Yeah, and and, and I, I, I, at one point of time doing my career and doing those experiences, you know, you almost kind of want to have. If you know, when you had that bad feeling, you want to have a good one, to kind of offset it. And in with that euphoria, at the time it feels good because you kind of you can forget what this is. But just like when you play you know any, I mean you wrestle anybody who's competitive will tell you that they will remember all of their mistakes they made in a game. They want yeah, and and and and.
James Nash:Coming back, you know, I mean every time I, you know, I live in in Virginia and those, those mount tops are not that much different at times and I just keep thinking I mean, it's really. You know, I allow myself to not live with the guilt but have it. But it also is something that I strive to tell everybody that it's just it's, it's. It's not that easy. You know everybody wants to be a special forces guy until they have to do what they do or train like they do and and and and. You know it's. I look at those guys and some of them are my friends currently and some people are just born for it and I mean, I was an intelligence guy, I worked with them, but I don't know if I could do as efficiently as they are, as some people are who are just like able to focus on the mission and live them, and that's what probably helped me the most when I got out.
Luke Kennedy:Yeah, well, you know, I wanted to be a seal at one time and when I took the test, they realized immediately that my test scores were way too high, so they sent me to the Marines instead. I understand.
James Nash:I understand man. I knew the moment I saw you I'm like yep, no way this guy could be. I mean, seal was just like yeah, no. Plus, you don't have a book, so I don't know if you know you were saying that that's an obvious joke.
Luke Kennedy:I never wanted to be a seal. I love, I love some of my seal brothers. I think need to pipe down a little bit. They are incredible humans, but I will never stop making fun of them.
James Nash:They're true, and you know we've talked about this before. There are certain conditions in certain scenarios where there's nobody else you would call, and there is certain places what they do is it's they are the best of the best. On denial, yeah, you know, if somebody needs, I'm, but I'm going to flip it, man. I mean, in Afghanistan, or even today right here, if I needed to call anyone, like if I needed someone, I would rely on Green Berets a lot more than seals, and it's not because seals are better looking, it's just. It's the way that the whole unit works. With Green Berets, I, I, I'm forever impressed with everything they do when they're fully on. It's just, whichever way you turn that that team around, it's able to go forward without any compromises.
Luke Kennedy:I feel the same exact way and if I was jammed up someplace in the world, pick a random country and I got one phone call my phone call is probably going to be to a Green Beret, and they're they're. Their skills are a lot more broad, you know, if you need somebody to swim somewhere sketchy and then blow something up, once they get there, the seal is the perfect tool for that job Right. If you need a group of guys to show up and break everything and kill everybody, call the Marines. Right, they're going to do that really, really well and then they're going to leave. If you need some type of really specialized mission done, there's somebody within the Green Berets, within one of those groups, that is going to be better at that than anyone else in the world and and their teamwork's phenomenal. They're incredibly humble.
Luke Kennedy:You probably know a Green Beret in your life who's never said anything about it, and that's also incredibly uncommon amongst these special forces folks. So lots of admiration to all of them. But yeah, this is this is me giving a nod to the Berets. I've got a knife right here that that a Beret made for me and I have it in front of me on every single show that I record and I just admire it and I think about who he was as a person and it's something that's very special to me. And yeah, you'll also find that the Green Berets almost always have have a relationship with sharp objects, which, which?
James Nash:I appreciate, yeah, they do. And I want to give a little example. I was one of those schools when taught, you know, it was just a remote area and and, and you know internet exists but it really doesn't exist and there are certain things that you claim you know, so you really cannot look it up. And I needed to know a bit more about a Persian poet, rumi. And as direct force was coming, direct action was coming through, they kind of asked me like, hey man, you know, do you need anything that needs to be sent this way, because you, literally there's no door dash for for undercover agents in Afghanistan. So I said, yeah, man, I do. I actually really do. I need some books, some, some literature on this Rumi dude.
James Nash:He's a poet and it just like I mean out of nowhere, this blue eyed blonde kids, the show. I was like what do you want to know? And I'm like you know, get the fuck out of here. I mean like I need to know a lot, like because they joke. I mean you know this is downtime. It's like no man, this was on my you know, this was from my work up. I'm what do you want to know? So I'm looking at this guy, but, like you know, I'm also waiting. Thank you, I'm waiting for them to walk out and walk away, so like I'm not really engaging him to much as much as I should.
James Nash:So I just said, well, you know, I like this guy, rumi, and the dude man I mean, he just like from memory, started Well, is it this? Is it this? Is it this? You know, some people put it on this angle and I was just like, dude, you look like you're from Minnesota.
James Nash:How the fuck do you know Rumi? I mean, like how much was your work? Like what did you? And apparently that's what he did, man, I mean, he was there for the cultural reasons and you know, a lot of Afghans are heavily influenced by Persians on the West side and you know, pakistan is on the East side and that was his thing.
James Nash:I mean, he and I, you know, I'm not going to say I don't know a SEAL team that would have that in their, you know, in their agenda coming up, but I for sure, even as an intelligence agent, was not ready for it and I thought I was the best.
James Nash:So it just it really humbled me and it gave me respect towards these people who took every mission as their only mission, and that's also something that's just. It's so, it's so impressive to watch because, like you know, I just want to like give them this credit. It's just like those are the guys that are humbled perhaps not all of them, but you know even the ones that are super humble and super quiet and like or joke with you or even will cuss here and there Once they turn on men. It's like you have those like Belgian, mellanoise, it's just like you see there in the element and it just I mean it's like the most beautiful synchronization of characters that just there to do one job that they like all think alike it's been, it was very impressive to watch them, as somebody who's been in the teams a lot of boys, a team or any teams, even like being a part of them gives you this confidence of like yeah, man, we can do this.
Luke Kennedy:Yeah, now that is pretty cool. It's amazing what you know a platoon or a squad can do right Of like-minded and well-trained, motivated individuals like they can take on the world. It is absolutely phenomenal what a small group of guys is capable of.
Christie:Well, hi guys, welcome to Chrissy's Crash Course on Barbarie Sheep, otherwise known as the oddad. Okay, so, to start off, I have always been fascinated with this particular species, ever since my first time hunting along with my dad up in Texas, and let me tell you, they are not the easiest animal to stock down. Okay, particularly because of how well they can camouflage into their surrounding environments, such as desert-like areas with rocky mountains and jagged cliffs, as well as the fact that they have a keen sense of smell, so they can detect your scent before you are within range. So you guys don't even give you a chance. Also, through hearing is immaculate, so lots are betting against you when hunting these creatures, so I wouldn't even attempt to bring my bow at this point. I would bring my rifle instead. Unless you like a challenge, then go for it. You know, no one's stopping you. But anyway, what's something that stood out to me about the oddad when I was researching about them is how they can move around the way that they do on such steep and sharp rocky cliffs with little to no edges. I mean oddad are able to balance their own body weight, which can range from 175 to 320 pounds as adults. I even did some research of my own on how this is even remotely possible and come to find out it's all in the way their hooves were created, which allows them to maneuver a certain way. The hooves on an oddad are pointed and upright that help to balance themselves on abnormally weird little nooks and crannies on side of cliffs. But oddly enough, this is almost like an advantage for them. Initially, because where they are able to support themselves on these sketchy high up cliff edges, other animals don't even dare follow or step foot. It deters them away.
Christie:Oddad are uniquely equipped for this type of environment because of their origins and their native habitats in Northern Africa, morocco, the western Sahara, sudan and Egypt, although their own native habitats are being commonly threatened, more so there than here in the US, because you have poaching, habitat loss and destruction, as well as overgrazed lands due to the domestic livestock over there. Those are the Barbary Sheep's main threats outside of the US, though. So you're probably sitting there wondering well, how did the species of sheep from Northern Africa show up in the Northern United States, right? Well, before I answer your question, you guys should probably note that, even though they are called Barbary Sheep, they aren't really sheep. They are not from the sheep family. They are from both the goat and the sheep ancestors, but somehow make up their own category. Therefore, they are their own species of animal, crazy, right Like what the word Barbary also stems from, where they are native to, which is in North Africa, along the Barbary Coast.
Christie:Now to answer your question on how they got here in the first place, this all started during the 1900s, when Barbary Sheep were first recognized to be included in DeZoos. What happened was a couple of XGIs, who had earlier served in North Africa during the time of World War II, had come to a conclusion that maybe these creatures would make for a possible game animal to hunt here in the United States. It's something different and new, you know. So later, after 1950, was when they introduced the odd add to Texas and New Mexico, and they had been thriving in this new terrain. You can since then now find them in West Texas, california and New Mexico running wild in free range or just on ranches. Since bringing them from Africa to America, they have developed and adapted to their new habitat.
Christie:Incredibly, they can withstand both extremely hot and cold temperatures and jump up to two meters high when climbing on the sides of cliffs, like how. In other words, these animals are pretty strong. You'll find them grazing around on the sides of mountains with a few others in a group, eating all sorts of plants, grasses, flowers, leaves and shrubs, which they also get their water intake from, since in desert areas, as we know, water isn't fairly common everywhere. A fun fact about the Barbary Sheep is that they can go about five days without a drink. Like how? This is crazy. The species travels in almost like a small family type group. They tend to wander at night and can travel relatively far in just one night. In the daytime, though, you may find them grazing alongside mountains and around the outer edges of cliffs. During the hottest parts of the days, they will be under trees, in the shade or underneath overhanging rocks, and sometimes even in caves to get out of the heat of the sun.
Christie:With all this being said, odd add, being another species to live in the United States comes with its own new threats, such as hunting and possible risk of loss of agriculture. This can happen, since they aren't originally from here. The lifespan for these animals, though, can differ on either being in captivity and being taken care of, or being on their own but in the wild, with multiple different contributors to threats and illnesses. Odd add that live in containment or captivity can live up to 20 years, and odd add that are wild and on their own can only live up to 10 years. Another fact you should know about Barbary Shade is their mating season and exactly what that entails. It's from September to November where they're at their peak breeding point, and each female will give birth to one or two lambs in between the months of March through May. Rarely. Some females may have twins or up to three lambs, rather than just one or two. At the age of 18 months old, they have made it to sexual maturity and can then on go on their own, already adapted to the environment since having to learn and keep it up at such an early age.
Christie:But can we take a minute, though, to just admire how rare and interesting the odd add are? I mean, what's so fascinating is how males aren't the only ones that have horns, like females have them too. In order to tell them apart, though, is based off of their horns, is to notice how the males have usually thicker, longer, more rigid horns, while the females have more of a slim look to them. The females are also more mean and aggressive than the males, right Like how ironic is that those species aren't considered to be aggressive creatures? They seem to co-inhabitate with other hooked animals that they cross paths with just fine, and come across as actually very social animals towards others. I mean, sure, their eyes are far apart and they look like a big goat, but the way that they have evolved and were able to adapt to the environments in the US and to now be thriving here and spread throughout is just simply amazing.
Christie:I know I may sound biased, since I have a love for hunting Barbary sheep, but if you ever get an opportunity to do so, I would just say take it Like. Just take that opportunity, you'll see. After You'll see what that feels like. It feels amazing. I still think about that hunt and those times I spent with my dad though spotting and stalking one.
Christie:I sit there and I reminisce on how I felt when I was about to take my shot, like I remember the adrenaline and how nervous I was because I literally did not want to mess up on my one chance at a good one. And how it felt after making that climb up this steep mountain slope to see my animal Like it feels so good and to be up close and personal. It's you're. You're in awe of it.
Christie:My dad instilled at me at a very young age, though, to always have gratitude for an animal into no matter what. Treat every animal with respect, if it being dead or alive, so we use every part of it as we can so that killing it doesn't go to waste and it goes towards feeding my family, which, honestly, that's another feeling like I wish every child and person that has not been able to hunt or hasn't hunted before could feel, because it feels it feels really good that you're able to provide for your family, and so, whether you are interested in hunting odd add, or just simply admiring such a unique creature from afar, now you'll have the information you need and some interesting facts to go along. So thank you for listening to my little crash course about Barbary sheep and, yeah, bye, guys.
Luke Kennedy:Okay, let's get back to Afghanistan a little bit.
Luke Kennedy:Our our ex-fil from Afghanistan when we left as a country.
Luke Kennedy:You know that's been highly, highly criticized, probably hasn't been scrutinized well enough, but to to provide a little bit of context around it, I left in 2013 and I would. I would watch on Google Earth all the places that I had previously been and I would watch them slowly get taken back over by Taliban and I could see, you know, the vehicles change. I could see the structures change, even, in some cases, see that like the walls begin to erode and the deserts taking it back over again, and it was hard for me to look at that and think this has been for nothing, or for very little, I think, if nothing else, I went to a place where, where militant people hated Americans and I said I'm here if you want to fight, if you want to come after an American, you don't have to come to America to do it. I'm here for you right, right now. Right, I do believe that there's value in that, but it's hard to see everything that you fight for just go away.
Luke Kennedy:We fast forward a couple years and then it happens to the entire country. We're leaving Afghanistan moving a ton of people all at once and there's always going to be chaos involved with that. But were you in Kabul at the time?
James Nash:Not at the time of X-FIL now, okay, but that X-FIL has. It is one of the things that I have the hardest time stomaching, for many reasons, and but not just political or even operational. It's just, as I mentioned before, kabul airport is right next to a, the tallest tower of Kabul, and it's called a Azizi tower. And it's right next to the airport. I mean it's, you cannot miss it. You know, everybody who's ever landed in Kabul has seen Azizi tower. And Azizi tower is a place where if you're an expat, if you're anybody that's not Afghan, and anybody that's valuable to their country, for whatever reason, that's where you would stay, eat, meet, whatever. It's kind of like off base. It's like a speak easy base for everything else that's not military. And the more important you are to your country or to your cause or you know, the higher the floor you stay and, again, within that, the more important you are, the further away from the airport you're placed, because the noise of jets, it's just. I mean you are right on the, you are closer to the air, to the runway, than the tower is, and I faced that gate man for three years, like I mean, I was pretty low and I watched that gate and passed through that gate for more than a thousand days, man, and all of the 13 people who there was, 11 Marines, a sailor, corpsman and, I believe, an army personnel who died that day were there for three days. Three days, man.
James Nash:I was there for a thousand days during active, busy war as a deep undercover asset, essentially being hunted at all times because you know if, if Taliban ever understood who I was, there was no coming back and those kids been a third day. I mean, if you're ever traveling anywhere, if you travel from San Francisco to New York, the first three days you don't know what the fuck you are right along. If you travel from United States, germany to Afghanistan, you know, I mean, there was no way that they knew their body, knew where they were when they were there. They just, I mean the smell, the, the, the oxygen, the, the altitude, everything that's there. Three days is not enough for you to compute where you are. It's just not if you've never been there before.
James Nash:And two, I mean when I realized they were just there for three days, man, and I was there for, you know, a thousand, three years, man, more than thousand days. I, I just didn't know how to handle it, man. I mean, it's just something that I mean. You know death when we sign up for this duties or this platforms, it's, it's a possibility and you always think it's not gonna happen to me or anybody that I know. But you know that it could happen. But then when you I mean when you just put it in in in a, on a paper, and you realize three days, man, that's 72 hours, today's Friday by Sunday, think about like how much you you can't even get your house chores done by now.
Luke Kennedy:If you really wanted to listen to what your wife wants you to do by Sunday will not be done, like how much there is to be done and you know when I I vividly remember stepping off the plane, uh, into Afghanistan, and it felt to me like I had just just walked onto a planet from Star Wars. Like it was so hot, it was so bright, the air felt thick, there was, there was this incredibly fine dust that was just all throughout the atmosphere. There's so much dust that you can barely see a star at night in helman right it's. It's incredible just how thick and and crippling that air is and it takes your breath away. It was, you know, over 120 degrees and nothing is a color that I've ever seen before. It's just incredible.
Luke Kennedy:And that shock, that culture shock, uh, and and the terrain and everything else, and then combine that with with jet lag and stress, like you don't have the chance to be operationally effective and to be on your game that quickly, you know, for for me I felt like it. It took three or four months before I was any good at being there, and really I wasn't that good at it until six or seven months when it was time for me to leave.
James Nash:So three days is really setting those troops up for failure oh yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes I take pictures on Instagram and there is that one filter that kind of makes everything orange. Mm-hmm, dude, that's Afghanistan. Well, you get off that plane and all of a sudden you are in a different filter and everything looks orange, like I mean that dust, that, that that thing is just like that brown, it's like it's, it's I mean, you put it perfectly it feels like you are on a different planet, you know it. Just, I mean even the cars that you see kind of move differently, and the first three, four days you just like are not, you're not.
Luke Kennedy:I mean it's not real yeah, totally, uh, so an absolute tragedy that that those troops died could have been a lot worse, could have been a lot worse, but I don't want to take away from from how bad that is, because that's just, that's just. The charismatic portion of it is that we lost 13 of our own there. There were so many Afghans that were killed, so many of whom had had worked for the US, who'd worked for allies, and you know them and their families, like a lot of them, didn't make it and I wouldn't even dare put a number on it, but it would. It would horrify you, it would be more than that number is, more than all of the people that you know. So imagine everyone that you know getting killed horribly. And that's probably not even scratched on the surface of what actually happened in Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan when the Taliban took over and we left and you know this is public knowledge, but it's just.
James Nash:I don't think people understand what truly happened when we left everything there. Um, I think it was August 28 or 29 I was still in that shock what's going on? Because you didn't make sense. And I got a phone call from a friend of mine who, at when I was active, was on the offer on an admin side and we would just remain friends in them you know different agencies, but good contact and he just said hey, man, I don't know where you are, but listen, wherever you are, you're compromised.
James Nash:I'm like um no man, I'm, I'm out, you know I'm married, I'm not, I'm compromised because I, you know, I'm married now. But it's uh why?
Luke Kennedy:and he just said well, we left all of the biometrics of all you guys behind, and they have it now, and every single one of you that operated there is it's covert, no more so every deep undercover person that we had, we left the biometrics, which means your fingerprints, your retinal scans, your face, your teeth, all that stuff, all those ways it's so easy to identify you.
James Nash:Yeah, holy shit and you know the way that that works is just, it's like a large, it looks like a credit card machine. I mean the biometric data was at the airport or the base and anywhere else. But every single one of those gadgets that looks like a credit card scanner when you take took a picture of someone, or take their, if they had an ID, or if you took their fingerprint, will show on the screen if the guy is friendly, not friendly, known, friendly, known, help and or adverse. So at that point of time, taliban literally had a full list of people who were friendly to Americans, with all of their information, man, I mean everything to the point that you know we all have, and this is the truth. You'll have a safety question of, even if you get captured and when they are saving you, if you don't look the way that you do, like what is your question? You can make up whatever you want, and I mean, down to that question, everybody was out.
James Nash:Now people might say, well, who the fucking cares? It's Afghanistan, it's Taliban. Well, taliban has an embassy in China right now. I mean, yeah, it's, it's, it's it's. It's more than fair to assume that whoever was an undercover asset and or any kind of asset. It doesn't matter. I mean it could. It doesn't have to be undercover, just like they could have all of their information forever. I mean, like what am I gonna do now?
Luke Kennedy:you know, change everything so look, I mean, we've got thousands of people crossing the southern border daily right now. We know that a good number of them are from the Middle East or from Afghanistan. Are you worried? Are you worried that somebody's gonna show up at your door or, you know, find you and and seek reprisal um?
James Nash:no, I'll put it this way man, I, I, I, um, I never look over my shoulder. I have faith and I've done everything I could at the time that I did it with good intentions. I never went to hunt anybody or hurt anyone or face anyone who I was not sure was out there to hurt my people, you, your family, any American race, gender didn't matter to me. If you were an American in Afghanistan, for whatever reason, you could have been kidnapped by cartel and traffic in the middle of Kabul and then be somewhere in any province. And I got a call. There's an American and you could have been the LGBT Black Lives Matter president, for that matter. I will gladly die to save you because you are an American and we are what we are, but we stand together.
James Nash:So when I was there, my main job, my mission, was nobody harms my people, nobody. And here at home I live a peaceful life knowing I mean, if somebody comes to my door, man, come and get it. Man, I'm Spartan, right, more than love eggs, just like you want my weapons, man, more than happy to share, I'm gonna get it. But I am worried in a different spectrum because I know how difficult it was to get in certain countries untraced to appear in a country, and in the most advanced country, that's not the case. I mean you can just walk over. I mean, when I went to certain countries and cities, it was planning months in advance of how am I gonna get in there and then resume life? That's not the case for us here.
James Nash:I mean, one of the biggest obstacles that any adversary has, it's not present entering to our country. That's the problem, that's the fear that I have. It's not what they can do, because once they're here it's fair game, but it's just like it's so easy to come here. I mean it's harder to get into fucking Afghanistan, from Afghanistan to here. That's my bottle. We have the most advanced technology of surveillance in the world, yet it's a lot easier for Taliban to go to Mexico and walk over than for me to go to Afghanistan to save any of those guys that were there. It's crazy when you think of, when you put it in that perspective. Right, yeah, so yeah.
Luke Kennedy:So this loss of these troops affected you extremely personally. You did something very special to commemorate that. Tell me about your 13 mile swim.
James Nash:I normally swim every day for an hour, which sometimes ends up to be two hours. It's in between two and three miles and the Sunday. So last year the 25th wasn't a Friday and Sunday a private Friday. I was just swimming and I had this urge, man, I was just like I need to honor them, I need to do it, it's not for anybody else, I need to get in space to be with them. And I just didn't think really much. I just said I'm going to swim 30 miles and I called our mutual friend, ben Ben Winner, and I just said hey, man, listen, I'm going to swim this Friday. It's going to take like seven and a half hours for this event, not knowing what his schedule is, and I think at the time the reason why I called him was we were going to sell our patches he has a company, tier 1, or make t-shirts, and I was just I didn't have enough time to kind of make it happen or I didn't have a website. I still don't have a website. Can we host over Tier 1? Or whom, whom should I call? Ended up to be through a very, very close friend of mine, blake Cook, who works with Blueberry, and Kyle Morgan. Kyle Morgan is the delta from Mali Attack and they helped me with t-shirts within four days, man. I mean we had t-shirts ready for everybody. But Ben, who is a commercial pilot for mainstream airliners, moved around his schedule, flew in to where I live at night, drove with me to the close by lake, watched me swim for seven and a half hours, fed me as I stopped, got back in his uniform. We drove him back to the airport and he, you know, welcomed award, you know Flight 7447, and took everybody away. So that's how you and I met.
James Nash:For everybody else, but that swim was probably one of the hardest swims mentally and I can go into a little bit in detail how wrong everything went during that swim. I had three days to prepare. I didn't have a permit. I couldn't find a buoy that goes behind me, because you need to have a buoy as you go in open water. So I went to a scuba shop and they gave me a diver below Lody. Yeah, that's supposed to stay stationary. So as I'm dragging it, it's actually trying to stop me. Oh, wow, I had combs in my ear. I have a little Bluetooth that had a walkie-talkie with Ben if I needed anything and he will check up on me and also music, because it's seven and a half hours. Within four strokes that thing died on me, man, it just stopped. I had these goggles that show me the direction of where I'm going and kind of distance that I'm going and my pace, and they had a yellow. They have a yellow screen in my right eye.
James Nash:But I was swimming a quarter of my laps and there was a yellow boat on other side of where I was swimming and I kept zigzagging. Man, I kept zigzagging because I didn't know which way to orient, because it's just like if anybody swims, you don't have that much time to look up. You kind of look for something first and kind of aim for it, and I mean everything went dark. I had no combs, it's like, so the visibility was two feet and I had no music, no visibility. I was dragging this thing that later on we found out it was like around 70 pounds of pullback that I had the whole time and I don't know how, like mile five, right before I swam, I let.
James Nash:Hunter Diaz is one of the Marines and I got in contact with his mom and she told me how Hunter, before he went, he liked swimming, he really enjoyed swimming, and I'm not going to, I'm not here to tell you like how it was euphoric. But as I went back with those strokes, every strokeman, every stroke I took, I pictured the elevator down from Azizi Square. I lived for 7 and 1 half hours in Afghanistan. I was there with them and I mean I just went back and I just like and at one point of time I remember vividly, I remember explaining this strokes to Hunter just like this is tactical swimming, this is technical swimming, this is where you go slower. But it's just like I went into this euphoric stage where I just connected with being there and I just, in a way it's hard to explain and I'm sure I don't want to sound like being at that horse here but it felt like if I can finish this 13 miles, I can rewrite the history and there'll be a lot. That's how I swim. It was just like it wasn't the, it was not fast, it was not impressive to at all, it was just I in my head, like in my mind, felt like if I can do this, if I can do this, there'll be less pain, like their families will have less pain, which is not the truth. I mean, they're not coming back.
James Nash:But I connected with that loss and I really, when I stopped, when I got out, I probably cried for half an hour. I didn't know how to stop, like my family was looking at me and I was just I couldn't stop crying. It was one of those things. I wasn't tired. I mean I was tired, but I wasn't tired. I completely kind of needed to cry because my body gave up. My soul was so aching that I just cried, man. I mean like I didn't know how to stop and I looked for you. Know what man I mean?
James Nash:I know you and I have talked about this before, but I would like to invite you to choose a place for 2024. Anywhere you want open water, and I'll swim 13 miles and I would like to start planning it somehow better this year that we can do some charity work for Hunter Lopez Foundation, ran by his mom, which is she's kind of like a spokesperson for those 13 families that have lost. I mean they're all. She's the one that's they're all active, but she's the one that's going to manage it and all proceeds go to them straight. I mean we can just pack team and I'll be more than happy to have you. I mean I'll be honored to have you by my side. You don't have to swim, but it's just like as a Marine, I'm sure it will touch close to home with you and whomever you wish to invite.
Luke Kennedy:Well, look, I'm not. I'm not a great swimmer, I'm an effective swimmer. I guess for the purposes that I've, that I've used it, which you know is mostly like swift water rescue and white water. And trying to get back in my bow and then spear fishing and swimming 13 miles is pretty intimidating. I've never swam that far in my life Officer candidate school and in her nose at the basic school in Quantico.
Luke Kennedy:I had to get to the I think it was the third, the third of four levels for swim qualification. Highlights had to get that fourth level. But I failed that test 23 times in a row. I drowned twice, had to get water pumped out of my lungs twice and, folks, I don't know if you've ever failed something that many times in a row, but it starts to get at you. But if I didn't pass that, it was disqualifying. I was not going to be able to continue. So I I swam at night, I swam on weekends, I went out of state, I got swim lessons. I went to colleges and got swim lessons. I worked at it extremely hard and, you know, on my last chance I did pass it.
James Nash:Wait, 24 is the limit. At that point I will say you know what man you're good and I'm here to take as many as you want.
Luke Kennedy:Yeah, now, well, it was the end of the course. It was a six month long course and that's that's how many times I failed. I failed every single week. So, anyways, eventually I did pass on my. I think it was my 23rd attempt that I passed. I could be off on a number two, but it was pretty close to that. All that said, I'm in. So August 26th this year, I've got the lake, I've got the support boat, we're going to do it. I'm going to get in the water and I'm going to get those miles in. I'm probably going to wear a wetsuit and fins and a mask and a snorkel and I might have to stop and sit on my boat and eat a bologna sandwich from time to time. But I'm in, let's do it 100%.
James Nash:Oh, we're amazing.
Luke Kennedy:We're going to make this into something. So that much is done and we're going to get tier one kinetics involved. I want to talk about that a little bit, because Ben did make this introduction, which I'm very grateful for and put a lot of value in. So Ben winner started this company called Tier One Kinetics, and you can find that on the internet.
Luke Kennedy:What that is is a place for you to buy tactical and hunting equipment and a bunch of other stuff, and everything that he sells has been vetted by a combat operator, so not just a veteran, not just somebody who's in the military, but by somebody who, who was an actual operator, or by somebody who's a professional hunter. So everything in there has been vetted as a good piece of gear, certifiably Very special, and, yeah, and Ben's a tremendous guy. So if you need stuff, buy it there, and that's who we're going to be doing this swim with as well. I'm both excited and terrified at the prospect of it. I'm going to build up to it and we're going to get this done, and I'll probably be crying for at least half an hour at the end of this as well.
James Nash:I'm all about hugs, man. I train with Swicks, so it's all about that touchy, feely stuff. Man, I'm in. Well, between that and being Greek, I think hugging is just part of who you are All the way.
Luke Kennedy:Yeah Well, I want to end in this with a question. You've seen a lot of the best and more than more than your fair share of the worst of what humanity has to offer. Both inside the United States and outside, you could live wherever you wanted. Wherever you want, you choose to live here. What is something that is special and valuable to you about living in America?
James Nash:That's very personal to me and I tell everybody I am an American through and through and I do not apologize for any of it. And this is the only country in the world. And to give context of how I know this is doing my career of seven years, I went through five passport books. Every passport has 24 pages. Each page, back and forth, can hold up to seven, 14 stamps. So you did a math of how much traveling in countries I've been to get five passport books.
James Nash:There is no country on this planet now or before ever, that you can come with nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing, and you can enjoy success in your lifetime. It just doesn't exist. You can go to France, to Germany, to all those places and if you come from nothing, if you're lucky, your third generation after you might be a decent citizen. This is the only place where you can practice everything you want. Everything you want, I mean you can even say that this country sucks as you come here and you'll still be allowed to say it. That doesn't exist in 99% of the population.
James Nash:We have a constitution and it's my most favorite document, because I don't read the people as a limiting contract when I read it the way that. I read it, the way that I take it I mean it's tattooed on my body is it's a platform for success. It's a blueprint of what you can do to live the way that you want, if you choose to. I mean, you know every other country, every other country, their laws are putting you in kind of boxing you in to be able to do what you want. Here we're not boxing. Constitution does not box you in. It allows you to do anything, man. I mean, you know, pursue of happiness exists is the only place I get. I get really emotional man, because it's just.
James Nash:I've seen, I've seen so much of people around the world dying, willing to die, willing to kill so their kids can be here, willing to die just to have a chance to live here. And I've also seen so many people here who don't value it at all, who choose not to value it. It's not because it's not valuable, it's not because he doesn't carry any value. They just choose to ignore the value of it. They're just assigning values to different platforms that don't exist. It's just. It's not even crypto money, crypto value it's like monopoly value. It doesn't exist.
James Nash:The freedom that you think, as an American, that you don't have, nobody else has anywhere else. I mean it doesn't exist. You know, and I can put this in many ways, if you want to have the life that you have here as a mediocre income family in most of the world, you are top 1% of that population with education that you don't have here, with the sacrifices of families that your families have not done I mean third, fourth, fifth generation, college professors, surgeons in many countries do not have the life and the luxuries that we have here. My joy, when I came back, I remember I'm not a big like super music fan, I like stuff, but I just remember when I first came back Justin Bieber, sorry, and that music was on I was just like this is fucking it, man. I mean this is it.
James Nash:You know. I mean imagine, man, I mean you can listen to whatever the fuck you want anywhere, right, and I'm not. You know I understand people are going to say well, that's Afghanistan, how about different countries? I guarantee you, from starting from zero, if you leave everything that you have here, without any transfer of income or money, there is no other country. You will make it to the point where you are now leaving and that you enjoy it within your life. So it's life type, so it's just, it's not just privilege to live here, man, it's just such luck, I mean it's beautiful.
Luke Kennedy:Yeah, I completely agree, and I often hear this perspective either from people who have spent a lot of time elsewhere or from people who have immigrated here. They're like this is this is the greatest opportunity in the world, and it is a special thing and it's good to have that reminder. Luke, I am extremely grateful for your service and for for your sacrifice and dedication, not only to our country but just for the good of people everywhere. And you know, you've given. You've given more than can be understood. You've given more than anybody could ever ask and having spent seven years undercover in war zones, dude, I cannot even imagine the toll that that has taken on you. And I'm so glad to see you, you know, living well with your family back here in the States, and it it's truly, it's truly a privilege just to get to talk with you. And when we take on this, what is to me a gargantuan challenge of putting on these water miles in honor of those troops who are killed in Afghanistan, I'm looking forward to that as well.
James Nash:Thank you for having me. Man, it's, it's, it's. I'm lost for words. I truly am.
Luke Kennedy:What can people do to support you?
James Nash:Enjoy your every motherfucking day. As an American man, you know, have that latte or don't have that fucking latte, and it just like remember that you are living the dream that most people will kill for Amen.
Luke Kennedy:Thank you all very much for listening. I'm going to keep bringing you these stories from normal people just like you, who have done extraordinary things. Everyone is an expert at something and they have interesting perspectives on life and work and the environment and all the things that we care about. I'm going to keep bringing that to you and I want to thank you so much for making this show possible. I also want to thank Emily Bratcher for producing this show. She does a great job editing. Really appreciate her. I want to thank John Chattelin he did the art for the six ranch podcast and Celia soon to be Harlander she digitized that so that we can get it out there on the internet for you. Also want to thank Justin Hay for writing this original music and the beautiful whistling that you're listening to right now. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much. Please keep listening to the show, write me a review if you feel like it and just keep doing your thing and we'll all learn from this together. It's been fun and we're just getting started.