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Jessica Trant lost her father on September 11th. He was on the 104th floor of the North Tower, above the impact, and he called home before the building came down. She spent years running from it, then turned around and faced it, and she now travels to Guantanamo Bay to sit through pretrial hearings for the men charged with killing him. Frank Pellegrino spent more than three decades in the FBI. He was assigned to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, chased Ramzi Yousef through the Bojinka plot, and from 1993 on carried the fugitive file on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who brought the planes plan to bin Laden. He sat across a table from KSM at Gitmo in 2007. Both appear in the Paramount+ documentary Daughters of 9/11.
Most people know bin Laden. Most people cannot tell you who KSM is or why he matters. This conversation fixes that. Frank walks through how a single line on a 1993 bank record, a Minesweeper high score on a seized laptop, and a tip-off in Qatar in 1996 shaped the hunt, and how close they came to grabbing him before 9/11.
From there we get into why the case is still in pretrial status 25 years later: the CIA's enhanced interrogation program, the ruling that threw out the FBI's clean-team statements, the push to try it in federal court that collapsed under politics, and a military commission that moves in two-week increments. Jessica describes what Gitmo actually looks like for the families, what the detainees' lives look like, and what finality would mean for her. We close on why the ideology outlives the man, and how to keep this from being forgotten by people who weren't alive for it.
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Last Friday's VA disability answer generated a lot of "but what about" responses. One came from a Marine who was medically retired after Helmand, went through NICoE, and now runs a manufacturing business that sees how much money pours in from defense work. If contractors can fleece the government, why shouldn't the people who were the living, breathing tools get a cut? I break down where the training and gear money actually went, admit the price gouging I saw firsthand, and explain why someone else getting away with something has never been a reason for me to do it. You control one thing in that equation. Yourself.
A search and rescue volunteer with every certification his team asks for still feels like he's fooled everyone for four years. I've been in that spot more than I'd like to admit. We get into the difference between imposter syndrome that paralyzes you and imposter syndrome that pushes you to go learn the thing, plus the structure I use to catch negative self-talk early. There's a tangent about backcountry preparedness and the people Two Bear pulls off the mountain every year.
Then a quick one about fighter pilots. No regrets. Or regerts.
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Kyle Lamb spent more than 21 years in the Army. He started as a commo guy in the 82nd Airborne, went to 5th Special Forces Group for Desert Storm, then spent the bulk of his career in the Army's Tier 1 special mission unit, retiring as a Sergeant Major. He fought in Mogadishu on October 3, 1993, and his Bronze Star with V from that day was later upgraded to a Silver Star. He went on to found Viking Tactics and write Green Eyes and Black Rifles, Stay in the Fight, and Leadership in the Shadows.
His new book: The Next Mission, is historical fiction built on the Bible, told as war stories by a special operations soldier. We get into Benaiah in the pit with a lion, Jael and a tent peg, the forlorn hope, and Agincourt.
We also cover what he still thinks about from Mogadishu, the award upgrade he never asked for, the day he walked out of a ceremony at Fort Bragg and did not recognize himself in a mirror, and the infighting in the community. He explains why he PNG'd the unit, and why talking about faith takes more courage than any war story.
The Next Mission: https://www.vikingtactics.com/shop/the-next-mission/
Audible Version: https://www.amazon.com/Audible-The-Next-Mission/dp/B0HLBJFTXF/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0
 
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Britt Elmore spent 27 years with the San Francisco Police Department, 25 of them in narcotics, almost all of it undercover. He dropped out of school at 15, worked as a garbage man and a glazier, got a GED at 24, and started at the San Mateo County jail before SFPD hired him in 1998. Six months in, he was loaned to narcotics for six weeks of buying dope in the Tenderloin. He never left. His last 15 years were on a DEA task force running gun buys and federal wiretaps. He consulted on Training Day, and his dog's alert on a FedEx package helped kick off an MLB HGH scandal.
We get into buying crack straight out of dealers' mouths, booking 30 bodies in an afternoon, and buying rifles from a man who had told an informant he planned to rob him. He also walks through six hours in a prison van, wired and shackled, next to a man who killed his pregnant girlfriend.
We cover Flock cameras and the Fourth Amendment, fentanyl killing two people a day in eight blocks, reactive policing after 2020, and his one-word answer on how much of a dent 27 years made. 
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A Marine veteran with no combat time or service injuries asks what I think about his stepsons' VA disability ratings and whether he should file for the same "free money." I break down where that money actually comes from, what the deficit and national debt look like, and why I'd tell him to stick to his morals. I also address the people who feel the need to qualify their service. 
A listener pushes back on last week's censorship conversation and cites an FBI arrest as proof that some speech has to be stopped. I walk through what the First Amendment protects and what it doesn't, why an arrest for incitement is a consequence rather than censorship, and I repeat the question I've been asking for years: show me one example where censorship was a net positive.
A 25-year-old whose father coached him from high school through college writes in about losing the sport he loved, feeling behind in his mid-20s, and worrying his fiancée will be collateral damage while he figures it out. My advice is simple. Share all of it with her.
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