Episode 35 – Toxic Leadership & The Pat Tillman Case – Pete Blaber

Jon Becker: Pete Blaber had command at every level of one of the most elite counterterrorist organizations in the world, the US army first special forces operational Detachment Delta. His time with the unit included most of recent history's significant military and political events, Panama, Colombia, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

In 2006, Pete retired from the military and transitioned from leading elite combat teams around the globe to leading elite corporate teams for one of the world's largest and most innovative biotechnology companies. Pete's first book, the Mission, the Min and Me Lessons from a former Delta Force commander, is one of the most widely read books among tactical units and has required reading in many tactical leadership programs.

His second book, the Common Sense, a new way to think about leading and organizing, builds on the legacy of the first book, providing specific and concrete guidance on how to implement common sense into your leadership style. His third and most recent book, common sense leadership matters, toxic leadership destroys, is a case study of the death of Patrick Tillmandeze, looking at how toxic leadership led to Tillman's death at the hands of friendly fire.

Pete has an MBA and an MS in national security studies and strategic affairs. I'm excited to speak to Pete not only because he commanded one of the most elite combat units in the world, but because he's a deep thinker on the topic of leadership and has spent a great deal of time thinking about the way we lead and how we can improve it.

I hope you enjoy my conversation with Pete Blaber!

My name is Jon Becker.

For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Pete, thanks so much for being here, man! I really appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me!

Pete Blaber: Great to be here, Jon!

Jon Becker: Why don't we just for the uninformed or unaware, let's go through just kind of a quick bio with you and talk about your career arc that led you to where you are now.

Pete Blaber: Sure. Born and raised in Old Park, Illinois. Middle kid of nine kids, had a great upbringing, played sports, you know, all the things that make America great, you know, are part of my upbringing and why I was so appreciative of it. I went to college in southern Illinois University, didn't really know much of anything about the military. But, you know, my life experiences were steering me that way. Without a doubt. I chose southern Illinois university because it was surrounded by a 275,000 acre national forest.

And, you know, my most of the time, instead of doing homework, I was out hiking around in the woods, learning how to navigate, you know, learning how to read terrain. And, you know, when I. While I was there, I think my first year, the Iran hostage rescue mission had gone awry, and that had a big effect on me. It was like the first time as a kid that I began to reflect on how good I had it and all the freedoms that you kind of take for granted as a kid. That incident made me realize how amazing this country is, how amazing it is to have the privilege of growing up here.

And, you know, I was a cross country runner and triathlete at the time. I'd go on long runs thinking about it, and it was on those runs that I realized I need to pay something back to this country. And that's what set me on a path to join the military. I didn't know anything about the military other than, you know, just what I heard in the movies and things like that. My dad did two years during the korean war, but he was not, you know, he was drafted and just did something in Maryland. Wasn't in Korea, but so he wasn't a military guy. He, you know, didn't know much about the military himself.

So, you know, I just started going to recruiters and trying to find someone who would give me what I wanted. And, you know, I knew from studying the Iran hostage rescue mission that what unit did that? It was, you know, it was Delta Force. And I wanted to be. I wanted to be a member of that, you know, that unit, because I really, not just because I thought it was cool, but I was very frustrated about what happened. You know, they were doing investigations, and for those that don't know it, they were refueling in the desert, and a helicopter landed on top of a plane and both blew up, and eight guys died out there.

So for me, it was kind of like, how could this have happened? How could we have let it happen? And I really just wanted to, you know, be in the thick of it so that it would never happen again. And I joined the military through OCS. It was called infantry OCS. And OCS was taught at Fort Benning, Georgia, the home of the infantry.

And, you know, while I was there, I picked the brains of prior enlisted guys, whatnot, to find out how to, you know, get to the unit and how to get. And they. And they told me that the way to get the unit is go to Rangers. I, of course, love the rangers, too. They were also at desert one. And so, you know, the only way you could go to the Rangers, I learned, was to go to Korea first.

So my first tour was in Korea on the DMZ. I came back from there, was fortunate to get accepted into the regiment, went to second ranger battalion of Fort Lewis, Washington, and I was a lieutenant there. I was there for four years. And the significance of that which I talk about in the third book is that that period was a defining period of, for me with regards to leadership. It's where I learned what a leadership climate is. A leadership climate is simply the sum based on the sum total of choices made by all the leaders in the climate system.

So climates are not just made by one senior leader, they're made by all the leaders. It's not any one thing. It's a whole bunch of things. And, you know, a healthy climate is created based on those choices that are made. There are positive choices made by all the leaders. And, you know, my definition of, you know, what a leader should do came from there, too. It's just make good decisions and solve complex problems that set the conditions for your people to succeed. And that's what they did. I had two great battalion commanders there.

My second one was the one who basically defined my whole career. He was a fantastic leader, totally approachable. He would talk to private the same way he would talk to a general. Any lieutenant could come up and ask him a question, and he'd give him an answer.

And, you know, not just a straight, you know, a straight lace dancer, he always added humor and a couple of shots of wisdom. Every time he talked to you, it was like he knew, you know, his job was more than just battalion commander. He knew his job was to teach future leaders how to be leaders. And the way you do that is by modeling good behaviors. And back to what I talked about, making good decisions.

So from there, I went commanded a company in light infantry company in Fort Ord, California. It was during the invasion of Panama. It was a fantastic company, 130 guys. We were very successful down there. And the criteria to get into the unit is, for an officer, you have to have a successful company command. So when I was about two months from the end of my command, which is, you know, all commands are about two years in the military, I started applying for the unit. I, again, very fortunate, you know, I was accepted, went to selection in 1991, and again, didn't get injured, was fortunate, made it through selection, and I was in the unit starting in 1991, and I stayed there with the exception of about an 18 month period.

I returned to second Ranger battalion in the infantry to be a s three major operations officer. And, you know, I did that because another senior leader told me, hey, you know, you don't have to go back there, but, you know, in the same way you join the military military to pay something back, it's kind of, you know, a way you can pay back the Rangers by going back there and bringing some of your new training back there and doing the same thing my battalion commander did. Model leadership behaviors, model common sense leadership.

And, of course, I loved Rangers. I loved the Ranger regiment. I loved Fort Lewis, Washington. So going back there to second battalion was a joyous. I totally enjoyed it for two years, and then I went back to the unit where I served out my career till 2006.

Jon Becker: So you're a lieutenant and a captain at the unit, then transfer out when you make major and come back as a major and lieutenant colonel.

Pete Blaber: Yeah, I was a captain when I got to the unit. Senior captain. Most guys, usually you're a major, but because I got command so quick, you know, I didn't have to be a staff officer before command, so I got there quicker than most people. And, yeah, I was a senior captain by the time I got to the unit, pinned on major, you know, a few months after that, and stayed there all the way until I was a full colonel. And when I went to…

Jon Becker: Retired as a full colonel?

Pete Blaber: Yeah, when I went back to second Ranger battalion, I was still a major.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay. So, I mean, you're there. You're in the unit in some of the most tumultuous times, maybe, in American military history. Right. From basically 95 to 06?

Pete Blaber: 91.

Jon Becker: 91 to 06, with two years out in the ranger regiment. I mean, that's Panama, that's Bosnia, that's Afghanistan, Iraq. I mean, it's kind of everything up to and including 911.

Pete Blaber: Right. Yeah, I was very fortunate. I'd been to Panama with my company, my light infantry company, and then right when I got in the unit, 91, 92, I think that's when Pablo Escobar escaped from prison. And we, a small team of us, went down to help assist the Colombians in the embassy with the situation. Colombia was a mess at the time, but it was, again, an incredibly formidable or formidable, you know, experience for me. I learned first I worked out of the embassy part of the time.

So, you know, wearing a suit, dealing with Department of State, the CIA, the DEA, and, of course, the big military, you know, that has a mill group commander and all kinds of other conventional military goals and programs going on. But, you know, it was like nothing else. It was, you know, there was no. There was no da Pam or no doctrine for, you know, counter narcotics warfare, if you want to call it that.

And, you know, at the time, you could easily call, you know, you could easily say that was terrorism, call, you know, narco trafficking, terrorism. But it wasn't because, you know, that whole narcotics thing meshes in with the people, you know, you got, they grow, you know, cocaine down there, coca plants, and people grow those for their livelihood.

But, you know, you also have to be very careful in a situation like that to always be comfortable being in the background. And we were very comfortable with that. We did not want to. There was no need to try to hold us back from doing the job we wanted the Colombians to do. The force we worked with was their HRT or aprobacion, and they were competent guys, but they were the guys that needed to do whatever needed to be done down there.

You know, the real foundational lesson for me was how important interagency unity of effort is. You know, the ambassador called us down there because he wanted, like, a neutral group to advise him. The DEA and the CIA were at war with each other as much as they were with the narco traffickers. And I would go on in my career to see that all over the place in many different embassies, it's kind of a natural byproduct of competing for missions, competing for dollars.

But a lot of it is also competing for credit, because those drive, you know, their budgets, those drive their reputation. And, you know, I had a bunch of senior guys with me when I was down there. I was probably one of the more junior. And those senior NCO's especially, you know, taught me a big part of the unit culture, which is we don't care who gets credit for anything, and we certainly don't have care about credit for ourselves.

We prefer to, you know, never get the, you know, external credit, let that go to someone else. All that matters is that we know, you know, we. We did what we needed to do, and we accomplished our purpose. And like I said, you know, I spent an unbelievable amount of time, like, refereeing between different agencies, trying to get consensus on things. You know, as we searched for Pablo and his lieutenants, there were a lot of, you know, small missions and small operations that had to be executed, but they had to be approved first.

And, you know, here I was a senior captain, you know, going around from agency to agency saying, hey, what do you want to do? What and what's your thoughts on this? And what do you think about this? And, you know, really just spreading logic, you know, facts and not ever allowing, you know, myself or me and my guys to, to be partisan in any way to take sides between these agencies. We were just always about the mission. And, you know, all the successes down there I think inevitably were due to that.

But again, you know, if your behavior doesn't change, it means you didn't learn a thing. And it changed me from that day forward. I was in many other embassies all the way throughout my career, similar dynamics, and, you know, you'd see the same thing over and over again. And, you know, I felt like we had a role in a lot of those situations to be that referee, to be that, you know, that mitigator, someone trying to find common ground between the group to do the right thing and, you know, accomplish the overall purpose. So it was a great, great mission there.

And, you know, that was, I went left right from Colombia, went to Somalia, and we were the second element into Somalia. I got there the night of the firefight, so we were actually taken over for the guys on the ground. I think you had Tom Satterlee on here a while back. So he was in C, I was in A, and we were supposed to swap out for them. That was going to be the changeover day.

And what happened, you know, they obviously, you heard from him how devastating that was and, you know, took a pretty significant toll in injuries and death on all the forces that were on the ground. So we took right over, started flying missions to rescue Durante. And, you know, that was in my first two years in the unit right there.

Jon Becker: That's pretty eventful couple of years. And I guess you're there if the world of soft can be demonstrated in Tom Clancy novels, you're there for all of the major Tom Clancy novels, right. It's kind of the, you know, it's the rise of soften is that era where we start to realize that conventional forces won't solve all the problems and we are better off with smaller, more highly trained units like Delta.

Pete Blaber: Yeah, I think so. I think. And people misinterpret that by people. I mean, especially in the military. You know, I think there's a then and now a population of more senior leaders who instead of looking at it matter of factly and, you know, with complete objectivity, they allow things like, you know, jealousy and, you know, hey, we could have done that, or we need to get in on that.

And, you know, to me, that's not what it's about. One of the things about the unit is, you know, just what I said to you. I couldn't get in until I had successfully commanded a company. So the fastest you can get to the unit as an officer is about six years. And for a lot of guys, it's about eight, eight to ten years. And, you know, NCO's same thing, I think you got to be a staff sergeant to get in.

And, you know, your record matters. And, you know, what is – What does that mean? It's biologic. You know, the average age in the unit when I was there was 32 years old. So there were always guys, you know, older than you in their forties. And, you know, I learned firsthand what a difference that makes, especially going back and forth to even the rangers, where they still have privates and E4s and whatnot. Age matters and experience matters, and the age part is science. We now know that the male brain doesn't fully develop till we're almost 25 years old, and so we're lucky.

Yeah, exactly. So think about that. And what does that mean? It means the neocortex, the thinking brain, doesn't fully develop in size or functionality until you're almost 25 years old. And that's the most important part of our brain. That's, you know, that's what happens to people in combat is the negative thing that happens is they panic or, you know, they allow their emotional brain to ride herd over their thinking brain. And, you know, it's much for that to happen. It's much more conducive to happening before your brain is developed than after.

And so, you know, young guys, it's just much more difficult. You know, the unit, you know, everybody, why they're there. You know, they've, they've been down the long, winding road and have gone through many experiences to include combat. And that wisdom, you know, can't be attained anywhere else. So I think that's, you know, that's what people saw then the reaction to it, instead of being, you know, what you, what you just stated was, you know, people going, well, you know, give us a chance. Give me the money. Give me the. Let me get down there and run the show. And it just doesn't work.

And, you know, the second part about that is, you know, age and maturity is, is the first part, but the second part is just the approach to combat. It always bothered me, even early in my career in the infantry, why do we approach every problem the same way? Why is the answer to every combat mission, a platoon, a company, a battalion, a brigade, a division? It doesn't make any sense.

You know, take the mission, understand what you need, understand what you're trying to accomplish, and then array, allocate, and group your forces accordingly. And, you know, that's part of the unit culture. To go down to Colombia, there were no homogenous teams that went down there. It was all one guy from this element, two guys from over here. You know, it was the right type of guys, but just guys from different elements and size.

It was, you know, you approach every problem with incrementalism. Don't put 100 guys on the ground if you only need 2 or 10 or 20. And the way to find that out is to put two on the ground. Who tell you, you know, we could. We could really use ten. And then once you have 10 on the ground and you're accomplishing some success, you might hear, hey, we could use 20, but that's it.

And, you know, now you're learning to adapt. You're organizing to learn, and you're learning how to organize. And to me, that's not just on, you know, high speed missions like that. That's everything. Iraq, Afghanistan. Don't just say, we got to get three divisions over there, you know, put some guys on the ground, assess the situation, listen to their recommendation, and take it from there. I know we have a lot of, you know, a lot of first responders on the civilian side, the police and fire in.

I believe it's the exact same thing. I've worked with a couple of police forces here in southern California and did some work on past active shooting situations to kind of brainstorm what's the best way to see to those and to approach them. And it's the same thing, you know, organize to learn, and you'll learn how to organize like the military. You know, a lot of other first responders have taken this top down approach to things.

So, you know, if it's an active shooter situation, what you'll hear is the first thing that needs to happen is we got to get a command post set up. And in a lot of these active shooter incidents, things are happening and they're not able to coordinate because they're trying to set up a command post.

And I believe that what first responders should be taught is first have a way to communicate with other first responders. But when you get on the ground, if it's two cops, and two firemen, they should come together, change frequencies, and start developing the situation, figuring out what's needed next. Don't wait till, you know, a command post four blocks away is set up and they have time to talk to you to find out what your recommendation is.

We need this kind of self organizing approach, and it's not because it's some, you know, high speed way. It's because it's common sense. That's the best way for humans to organize, especially when you're dealing with total unpredictability in complexity, like you are in an active shooter situation.

Jon Becker: Well, I think you've seen that play out. Right? Like you look back to Columbine, which was kind of the watershed event. And the big criticism of Columbine was that they set up and waited and waited for the SWAT team to get there. And, you know, we saw it repeat in Uvalde.

But for the most part, I think the mindset is moving more towards a task force. Let's grab a couple of guys and start moving. And I think that has been one of the positive effects that the SOF community has had on law enforcement. There's always been tech transfer. I spent my whole career working on both sides, the blue and green side of that equation, and there has always been tech transfer, and there's always been tactic transfer.

But I think one of the consequences of Iraq and Afghanistan and kind of house to house fighting, and the stuff that happened was you saw this more ready engagement between state and local agencies who were teaching military agencies their tactics in an urban environment, and then military units going out developing it, coming back and saying, well, actually, here's the way we were doing it. And I watched the teams that we deal with on both sides change and evolve much more to a smaller team, more aggressive, direct action kind of mindset.

Pete Blaber: Yeah. And ironically, we got that from police. In the early part of my career, one of the things that, from 911 forward, kind of impeded and almost ended was before that, to do our urban training, we went to a city and we linked up with the local police department in that city. So, you know, New York, LA, Chicago, Nashville, all these places. And we'd link up with the police and they would be kind of our guides to go do our training, and they'd be with us.

But in the daytime, we did ride alongs with the police, and that was not for any other purpose than to get to know each other and to better understand what a cop does day to day. And it had a huge effect on a lot of us. And in fact, even in Colombia, and we were being micromanaged quite a bit in Colombia. The headquarters for Columbia was at that time called was Southcom, which was located in Panama. And, you know, there was no, this is the nineties. There was no other, you know, war going on. We were the only show in town.

So they were trying to get in on everything. And anytime we'd have, you know, a, just an operation we needed to do to either collect intelligence or to maybe conduct reconnaissance to see if we could, you know, find someone to lead us to the guys we were searching for, to get permission for that was just an unbelievably, you know, difficult thing.

And the answer was always, okay, so you want to, you want to walk into the vestibule, this apartment, you want to just make sure you understand the locking mechanism on the door. How many guys you got? I'd say three. That's not enough. You need at least 15 there, a QRF ready to go in case anything happens.

And what we constantly were saying in those days, and this went on for many years, was, hey, if two cops seed, you know, a guy who's on the most wanted list and they got a tippy upstairs, they don't wait for the rest of the department or the SWAT team to come, you know, they're going to go up and check it out.

And, you know, there were many examples of that, the way police operate and something, you know, if there's six cops, you can isolate a house and you can still go in and clear it. And so we took that away from police forces, from our training that always try to go with the always economy of forces is one of your most important things because it equals speed. And without speed, you got nothing. Especially when you're trying to collect intelligence. It's fleeting. And waiting around for, you know, 20 more guys is a surefire way to collect no intelligence.

So, you know, kind of interesting what you said. I mean, the truth of the matter is we were heavily influenced by the way, you know, your, your regular day to day cop and detectives deal with developing situations on the ground in cities all across the US.

Jon Becker: Well, I don't think people understand. I mean, you go back to the Munich massacre in 72, and that is when all of the CT units pretty much worldwide, except for maybe 22 sas, are born. Delta HRT, LAPD, SWAT, everybody kind of has their genesis in Munich. And that evolution was an exchange. It was a constant culture exchange between soft units, military SOF units, and state and local special tactics teams, LAPD and delta, LAPd and Devgru la sheriff and Devgru. It was for a time there, early in my career, there was this constant partnership of somebody would discover something anywhere in the world. And it was shared both through the soft community and the law enforcement, special tactics.

So I think that there's a lot that people don't realize that actually was kind of co-development, because in the end, Delta's problem is HRT's problem. It's just in a different place when it comes to hostage rescue. And so I think that one of the roles that certainly the unit has played throughout quietly behind the scenes, is being a conduit of information between state and local and between international foreign forces.

Pete Blaber: I agree.

Jon Becker: So let's move forward. So I want to make sure we're covering the book. So you've written a total of three books over, what, the last 15 years?

Pete Blaber: Yeah, about 15 years.

Jon Becker: Starting with the mission, the men and me, which is standard reading in a lot of special tactics units. It's standard reading in a lot of tactical leadership courses and reading. I went back and reread that prior to this interview.

And it's funny because when you read the three books, you can see themes that developed early in your career as a young ranger leader. I remember distinctly talking about a long march that you did Fort Lewis and laying a foundation that then carries forward into your most recent book.

Do you see the three books as kind of one big story arc, for lack of a better term?

Pete Blaber: Definitely. And, you know, I did not set out to write three books. I didn't even set out to write one. You know, that first the mission met, and me, I left the military in 2006, took a job out here in Southern California in a biotechnology company. And, you know, I was out, but all my friends were still in. And of course, the global war against terrorists was raging, you know, six to eight that period.

And, you know, it was very frustrating for me because my buddies would be telling me, you know, about what's happening in both Afghanistan and Iraq and kind of the evolution, you know, how in the early days when you, you know, when you read about when I was commanding AFO, there was. In the beginning, there was no C2 on the ground. It was just us. We were our own c two. Then it started piling on. And even, you know, while Operation Anaconda was going on in Shahi coat, it was metastasizing into this, you know, massive, technologically techno centric c two model. And, you know, so that was what was going on, six to eight. And I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe we weren't learning all these amazing lessons that, that everyone knew. They were very prominent from 2001 forward.

And the way the unit teaches you is, don't complain about it, don't obsess over it, do something about it. What I could do at that time was to write a book. And I thought, I'm going to take these foundational lessons that I didn't come up with them. They've been around forever. I just had the privilege of being in a situation or situations where the application of those principles reveal just how important they are in any leadership environment and just how fundamental they are to the success or failure of any operation.

So, you know, always listen to the guy on the ground. That's one of the first things that happens when massive c two infrastructure takes over. What you're doing is building friction between the guys on the ground and whoever the ultimate decision maker is. And, you know, we should be doing the opposite. We should be always, you know, leaders should always be trying to remove friction barriers, remove levels of staff, levels of command that, you know, have to be weaved through to either get permission or to hear what the final decision is on the ground.

And so, you know, that's why I wrote that book. It was in, it was because we were not learning these basic lessons. And, you know, I had, I was in the corporate world. So the ironic thing is, as I'm writing it, I'm realizing how they're just as applicable in the civilian world as in, you know, as in the military or any first responder organization.

And all the same problems exist, you know, in the corporate world with, you know, micromanagement, not listening to the people who are on the ground. And it's not just the person on the ground. It's when you're on the ground, you're dealing with the reality of the situation going on around you.

When you're in a talk, a tactical operation center 100 miles away with a million dollars worth of electronic gear, you are not, that's not the reality of the situation on the ground. You know, it's not cold, you're not hungry. There might not be a guy, you know, lurping up on you right now behind that tree over there. You know, all the things that go into decision making and problem solving are absent in that environment.

And, you know, people get deluded into thinking that, you know, whether it's a view from a predator or some other ISR asset gives them, you know, the. This knowledge that's on the ground and it's not. It's just a substitute. It's just a way to better understand what they're going through. But it's those guys on the ground.

And so that's why I wrote that first book, was to, you know, share those basic lessons that, again, I was so privileged to learn, not just from great leaders above and around me, but also because I had the opportunity to go through these combat situations that prove they work anytime, any place, because they're principles. They're principles based on how the human brain hardwired to make decisions and solve problems.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think it's interesting because leadership books, obviously, I don't think there's any new leadership concepts. I don't think any of us have discovered anything. I kind of look at leadership books the way I look at music, right? There's twelve notes, but every single one of us takes those twelve notes and puts them into something different. And what makes different songs is your ability to hear those twelve notes in a different order, in a different rhythm.

And I think that, yes, there are certainly a plethora of leadership books, some fantastic, some not so much. But in the end, what any book on leadership is doing is consolidating the knowledge that you've learned and articulating it in a way that it hopefully relates to a broad audience. I think one of the things that's great about the first book is it does that, and it gives very specific, concrete examples that bring home the truth of it.

I mean, the one thing about there isn't a lot of difference in leadership in the military and in the corporate world, except the consequences are much more apparent and much more violent in the military world. And so I think that it has a way of clarifying errors that can otherwise be concealed or smoothed over in the corporate world. And as a guy who's been in the corporate world since I was 17, I think reading through mission men and me, it's a lot of stuff that I have learned over the course of 25 years.

Ground truth being a perfect example is the longer you're in a leadership position, the more you begin to realize that, yes, you are in a position to gather information from a variety more sources than anybody on the ground has. The guy on the ground has one source. You might have 100 sources, but every single one of those is filtered. And so it is a function of being able to get through the filters.

And for me, that means walking through the warehouse. For you, that might mean talking to a guy on an airfield, hey, what are you seeing out there? What's really going on? But I think that the first book did a great job of articulating that in a way that is very relatable from a law enforcement, military or a corporate way. What inspired you when you were done with that? Obviously, some time passes. Why did you decide to write the common sense? Why? What drove the second book?

Pete Blaber: Yeah, so, you know, I lived that first book. I was, my civilian job at the time. I was working in a biotechnology company, great company out here. And, you know, you see all the same dynamics. You know, we were squandering opportunities because the, you know, exalted senior staff not just didn't listen to the guys on the ground, never, you know, even had a conversation with them.

And, you know, it's kind of the same thing. If you think about, you know, the funny thing about our federal command and control element, when you hear, like these four star generals talking, there should be a sign above their head that says, I have the least amount of knowledge of what's really going on of anyone here. And we, it's a byproduct of the media. You know, we've been led to believe that these are the experts on everything, and they're nothing.

You know, in fact, there are some of the most detached and unknowledgeable people that you can find about specific situations and events. What's going on right now is a good example in both Ukraine and Israel. You know, they do not know.

And one of the things we advocated for after 911 is, you know, whoever the president is, someone needs to tell the president that when you really need to make a difficult life or death decision, don't just listen to the PowerPoint slide given to you by a person who got a PowerPoint briefing from someone beneath them, who got it from someone beneath them. On and on. You got a little conference call thing in the middle of the table. Hit that and call someone on the ground and, you know, just let them start talking about what they're seeing and what they think.

And that's, you know, one of the, one of the scientific or the psychological parts of this, you know, or I should say biologic parts of this. Most ideas are just flying around in our heads. Most knowledge is just, you know, a non physical thing that exists in our head. It only becomes, you know, cogent or transferable when we say it out loud. And when we say out, say out what we're thinking out loud, we're actually narrating what's happening in our brain.

And most of the time, we don't have time to do that. So for now one of the big reasons you always want to get that guy on the ground talking is so they can unload all that tacit knowledge that's in their head, you know, and it's. It's knowledge that has never come together before until they start talking. So that person is gaining insights as you're asking them the question. But from a decision making, problem solving perspective, it only makes sense to talk to that person. If you care about making good decisions and really solving problems, then you should know that it doesn't matter who you are.

If you're right 50% of the time in your life, that's a pretty good batting average, about 500 in major league baseball, and you're in the hall of fame, but you should always be trying to hit that 500 mark and beyond. And so tapping into guys on the ground is the way to do that. It's the way to self correct. It's the way to get fresh information. And I spoke about tacit knowledge. It's so easy to uncork that all you gotta do is ask the question, what's your recommendation?

And suddenly it just starts flying out of the person's mouth. Give them a few seconds, and you're going to hear all the answers as they begin telling you what they know, what they see. And I had an opportunity. I was given a talk to go out, did another ride along with a police force, and they had a domestic dispute hostage barricade situation. And I. It ended up just as what we were talking about earlier. Two of the first couple cops on the scene were the ones up at the breach point.

And, you know, no one knew what to do. But you had two cops all the way up at the breach point, which was the back door, and they had been there for like 25 minutes, so they knew the situation. And the chief was trying to figure out what to do. And he had a, you know, he had a SWAT team saying, we can do this. He had the mayor calling him, and, you know, we had just talked about this, and he got on the radio and he said to the guy, who was the first guy in the stack next to the door, hey, what's your recommendation?

And there was a pause, like, wow, you know, I get to actually unload this. And he did. And he spoke for about 35 seconds. And I. He just laid out, you know, it was like a salute report. He told you where everything was, what they were armed with, what he thought they were going to do, why he thought they could get in through that breach point right now. And if they sent a couple guys to the front door to do a near simultaneous breach that, you know, they'd all be in without any problem and be able to take down the perpetrator. And they did.

And then afterwards, I wasn't there for their after action, but the chief told me, you know, everyone was coming up to me saying, you know, that was the greatest command and control you know, I've ever seen. You were amazing out there. And he told me, the only thing I did was ask him, what's your recommendation? And, you know, I learned that again because of the privilege of experience. I learned that in, during Operation Anaconda when I had three ops surrounding the battlefield and, you know, different situations.

One of them, there were three al Qaeda guys within about 40ft of my guy's position. And it was before h hour before we were going to initiate the assault. And as these three al Qaeda guys stood there scratching their heads trying to figure out what to do next, there were three dots bouncing all over their head and their body. And my team leader said, told me what was happening.

He said, panther, what's your guidance? I just said back to him, what's your recommendation? And he talked through, he said, well, you know, we could drop them right now, but if we shoot them, even with silencers, you know, it's going to make a little noise and those guys aren't going to go back to where they're, whoever is expecting them and they're going to come looking for them and realize something happened and we might end up compromising the whole assault.

So based on that, if they just keep doing what they're doing and head on about their way, then I say we just let them go. And that's what happened. They stood there talking, joking, and about two minutes later turned around and made their way away in a snowstorm. And so again, you know, and someone said to me afterwards, hey, that was a great decision. I said, I didn't make any decision. I didn't do anything except ask them, you know, what your recommendation is.

And, you know, I used it throughout my career. That was, that was the first, but the first of many, you know, hundreds of times. That was, that's always my go to question. And, you know, the other thing to remember, and we started this way when I, when I was talking about active shooters, link up with whoever's there, get on the same frequency.

Remember, radios are not a way that we talk to commanders and higher headquarters radios are the primary way we share knowledge. So when you get one guy on there, you know, talking about what he's seeing and what he thinks. All the other guys are listening, too. And this is the second benefit of it. They're able to. They're seeing it from a different perspective.

So they're able to pressure test what he's saying and maybe say, yeah, agree with all, except they're actually 200 meters away from the ridge and there are three more guys. You can't see them. They're behind the rocks right up next to the ridge. Now you're building this incredible, like, depiction of what's really going on, the reality of the situation. But it's coming from all this tacit knowledge.

And, you know, in a cultural perspective, once you start doing that, the guys start getting the hang of it and realizing that they're sharing knowledge every time they get on there. So when they, when something fundamental happens, they realize, I need to get on here. And so that everybody else knows, you know, the active shooter is turned around. He's now going in the other direction, heading the other way. So really important.

But again, just foundational stuff. And so, you know, back to your question, why I wrote the second one. The second one, you know, I was at a biotechnology company, so I worked with a lot of regular people and a lot of scientists. And it was there I started for the first time asking the question, you know, what really is common sense? What makes common sense? How do our brains make sense? And because I had access to the knowledge there, I was able to begin to understand the biologic underpinnings of common sense. And it's pretty straightforward.

That's what the second book is about. Still stories, military and one corporate story, but it's about the biologic underpinnings of common sense. You know, to understand what common sense is, you have to understand how we make sense first. And we humans all make sense a common way via our senses, sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. It's the only way we make sense of the world around us.

And it's why we all have two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, a brain, and a spinal cord elegantly wrapped in skin. If we made sense any other way, we'd be another species. So common sense refers to the common way we humans make sense. And that's why once it becomes knowledge, once something becomes knowledge, like, you know, sunrise, light, warm and safe, sunset, dark, cold and dangerous, that becomes common sense because that's how we make sense.

And over time, it becomes common sense. And once you understand that, you understand it's very helpful today, especially because so much of information today that's being transferred and expounded. It doesn't make any sense at all. And if you're not seeing, hearing, or touching it or smelling it, then you should be skeptical of it, especially today, especially with videos, especially with, you know, news reports and whatnot.

But among, you know, each other, it's an incredibly important thing, too, because that's how you explain things. You know, I saw it, I smelt it. You can feel it. And so that second book explains that and explains, you know, why it's so valuable. The other part of that that I think is especially important for first responders is, you know, the simple way to think about the human brain.

And it turns out it's not just one brain. It's three brains called the triune brain. And that's the way our brains evolved. We've got, you know, at the base of our spinal cord, we have our reptilian brain store. And that came from when we, you know, were reptiles from an evolutionary perspective. And it's still there. And all reptiles, all animals have that reptilian brain, and it's a radar. It does only one thing. It detects danger.

So you don't know it's there until something that you're not used to or you don't expect shows up. So your reptilian brain is why you panic when you're startled. It's why you panic when you get really cold or really hot. And you have to understand that because you can turn it off when it does that.

So the second part of the brain is our emotional brain, and it sits on top of the reptilian. And those are our social emotions. Most of them are positive. The negatives reside in our reptilian brain. But that emotional brain is very powerful, and it's what rides hurt on most people today.

When you see these crazed people on the news or whatnot, salivating, spitting as they talk, hurling expletives, that's 100% emotional brain. That person is not thinking. That person has no idea what's really going on around them. And that's because the part of their brain, the only part of your brain that can understand real time sensory information is your neocortex. That's why it's called your thinking brain.

Your neocortex only engages when you pay attention to something. The way you can turn your thinking brain on is by taking over. It's the only part of your brain that can take over unconscious processes. So you don't think about breathing. We always breathe. And your reptilian brain is controlling that. That's why if you start, your oxygen gets cut off. You'll feel panic. Your reptilian brain is telling you, hey, this is something that could kill you. And, you know, it tells you to panic. But your neocortex is the only part of your body that can take over unconscious processes.

So one of the ways to turn on your thinking brain and turn off your emotional brain is to breathe. It's to breathe deeply, because the only way you can consciously breathe is by engaging your neocortex. Same thing with speaking. If you speak, the only way you can speak calmly is with your neocortex.

The other two parts of your brain have no idea how to understand language and no idea how to produce it. The understand part is important, again, for first responders, because someone in a riot, you know, a rioter, they're not thinking. They're 100% emotional brain. And when you say to them, hey, knock it off, the reptilian brain can't understand language, so they're not listening. They're not hearing what you're saying. Only when they can somehow snap into their thinking brain can they understand it.

And for us, for actual first responders, if you want to understand what's going on around you, you have to engage your, your neocortex, your thinking brain. You have to stay calm and think. So breathing and talking calmly, when we talk calmly, we calm the way we act. And you can act calm, and you will calm the way you act.

So, you know, walking calmly, acting stoically, also calms your brain down. But we all, you need your reptilian and emotional brain. So you're going to always feel that, you know, if you're out hunting and hunting deer and you see a deer, you're going to feel your emotional brain kick in, and you got to start breathing to get back to your neocortex to, you know, get that perfect sight picture and to be able to pull that trigger without any trembling, but making sure you're pulling it at the right time.

Jon Becker: So, you know, I think that's challenging, though. I mean, you know, as you pointed out, the reptilian brain is, you know, earlier in our development, it has more direct access to the systems. And it's, you know, I always try to describe it as the reptilian brain. It has you running because you hear something scary, and then the neocortex is like, wait a minute. Why am I running? Yeah, what did I hear? But you're running, you know, for most people, you're running before you're asking why you're running.

And I think especially in dangerous situations and emotionally fraught situations, you have to teach yourself that. I'm going to pause before I run and I'm going to take a deep breath. I'm not going to react violently. I'm not going to react angrily. And especially as a leader, that is a skill that you have to develop and learn, not to allow that to hijack, not allow the emotional part of your brain to hijacked what you say and do.

Pete Blaber: You're right, and it comes with training. The more you do it, the more you automatically shift to your thinking brain. And in the book I use, to me, the best example is a bear encounter. You're always going to feel, your heart rate is always going to pick up when a black bear or a grizzly bear pops up on a trail in front of you. But you're trained and, you know, you immediately begin breathing. You immediately begin talking calmly to yourself and you understand your life is on the line here.

And, you know, history proves that those who panic around a bear are, you know, the walking dead. But if you stay calm and think what you've learned in the past, which, again, the only way to access that is through your thinking brain, your neocortex, your, you know, reptilian and emotional brain are not going to give you answers. They can't access all your knowledge. They can only access knowledge that was learned under the same emotion.

So when you're afraid, you only remember memories of when you were afraid. But if you switch quickly to your neocortex, you're going to remember all the times that you did things based on bravery and based on common sense. And it becomes an automatic process once you do it a few times in the real world.

So for anyone, that's why, you know, experienced people, you always hear this about, wow, they were so cool, calm, and collective. It was like nothing happened. Well, that comes with time and experience, and that's if you don't correct yourself when it's happening, you're going to lose that ability.

And, you know, it's not just at work. You got to do it at home, too. You know, we're far more likely to get emotional on family members than we are with coworkers or people we don't know. And that's just from familiarity. But if you really want to build that neocortex, that muscle up, you've got to practice it all the time. And that includes at home.

And I think you'll find if you do it at home, you're a better, better spouse, better parent, you know, all around. And so it's, it's very simple, but it's, it's a secret to success that, you know, everyone should practice. And it's just what we said. If you want to stay alive, you've got to stay calm and think.

Jon Becker: So it's kind of an interesting time to segue because your third book, your current book looks at what happens when the emotional aspect of that takes over and we find toxic leadership. And you use the Pat Tillman story in your investigation, the Pat Tillman story, not only to explain what actually happened there, but also to explain the underlying mechanisms. How did you first get involved in the whole Pat Tillman thing? Where did you first become aware that maybe the narrative that was out there wasn't totally accurate and it started to get your attention?

Pete Blaber: Yeah. So my involvement and my knowledge of what happened evolved. It goes back to 2003. During the invasion, during the build up to the invasion of Iraq, we deployed to a forward staging base in the Middle east. The unit, and at the time I was the unit ops officer and the unit commander had a brain aneurysm over there. And as soon as you had the aneurysm, I was promotable to colonel at the time, they frocked me and made me the unit commander.

So I took over as commander of the unit for the invasion and everything post invasion. While we initiated the Iraq invasion, we were behind enemy lines for 23 or 26 days. Some of the guys went back at three, the rest of us, 26. At the end of that, we came back and we set up our base of operations at the Baghdad International Airport. So it was taken during the famous thunder run in the beginning of the war.

So we went to Baghdad International Airport. It fit what we needed. We needed to be able to launch missions at a moment's notice as actionable intelligence came in. So it gave us standoff distances across the runways, but also access to vehicles, helicopters or just walking out the back gate. And so while I was there, we had a raid mission where we took four casualties, which is the highest number of casualties we had ever taken. They all injured, but two of them severe, life changing injuries. So it was a significant event. My staff, in classic unit fashion, was only about five people.

So when the medevac helicopters came in, we had a, a military, a special surgical unit that was co located with us just for situations like this. So when the medevac helicopters came in with the four men on stretchers, about, only about four of us could run outside and, you know, carry one or two stretchers at a time. As we were struggling, a bunch of rangers ran up to the helicopter and said, you, you know, we're here to help, sir. And they started helping us get the stretchers off and bring them into the triage area for the JMO unit.

After, you know, we dropped off the patients, one of my guys said, sir, we could have used some of these rangers out there. We were a little light on external security. And I was like, roger that. I'll put a request in and get these guys out for future ops. The night after they helped me in with the stretchers, I was approached by a senior NCO in the second battalion, and he asked me if he could talk to me.

And I said, sure, let's go walk and talk along the Runway. And as we walked, he talked and told me about this unbelievably toxic leadership climate in the battalion. And his purpose was he was afraid something really bad was going to happen. He didn't say what that was, but he just said, you know, nobody trusts the leadership. We can't. We're not allowed to do things we know we should be doing to keep our guys alive.

You know, instead of doing medical training and zeroing our nods and our lasers, we're standing by behind our ponchos at parade rest hoping that, you know, our canteen cups are clean enough to pass an inspection.

So, you know, it was startling to me because, you know, senseless leadership in a combat zone is as deadly serious as it can get. Later that night, I ran into two more senior NCOs from the battalion, and they told me the same thing, along with a bunch of additional examples. So, you know, once an incident, twice a coincidence, three times a pattern. It was pretty obvious what was going on, and it was very obvious to me. I had a duty to do something about it.

So a night after that, I saw a senior ranger officer, and I approached him and said, hey, you know, I. I have some information about one of the battalions. What's going on in one of the battalions is pretty serious. And, you know, can I tell you about it? He's like, sure. So I very carefully told him the exact same thing that these three guys did, but he wasn't saying anything. It was dark out.

And so I stopped and to see, you know, get some feedback from him, and he just put his finger into my chest, and I knew this guy. We were, you know, had a good relationship. There was no. Nothing negative between us. And he said, you, you already said you don't know anyone in the chain of command. And you're not in the Rangers anymore, so why don't you tell your anonymous sources to stay in their lanes? And if I had a nickel for every time a disgruntled NCO complained about obeying the orders from his officer, I'd be a rich man.

And then he walked away and I never saw that guy again. Many years later, someone gave me John Krakauer's book on what happened to Pat Tillman. And as I was reading it, I came across he had Pat Tillman's journal and he published some of the things Pat wrote. And so he published what he wrote in Iraq.

And in it, you know, he had this one passage that said, last night four guys from Delta Force were shot. I never thought, you know, it really brings home the war. Something to that effect. You know, I didn't think it was that serious. It just goes to show you. And then his next passage was, you know, we're leaving Iraq at 04:30 tomorrow morning. Thank God! And when I read that, I was like, holy cow. You know, first off, I didn't even know he was in second ranger battalion, but I was like, he was there. He helped, you know, bring my guys in on the stretchers.

And so I started talking to a bunch of senior NCO's who, you know, I grew up with in second Ranger battalion about it. And, you know, they started enlightening me to that period of time. You know, I found out from one of them that Tillman's mom was still investigating everything. Still, you know, she didn't believe what she was told.

So I was put in contact with her and I explained it and she said. Said to me, you know, and, hey, I appreciate it, but I really want to find out what happened in Afghanistan. She knew she had read my book. So she knew who I was. She knew I had been in the Rangers. She knew I had been in Afghanistan. And she asked me, hey, I have all the investigations. Would you be willing to take a look and let me know what you think? When a gold star mom, you know, the mother of a fallen colleague asks you if you can help out and give some advice? I don't know that I'm capable of giving any other answer than, of course. And when can I see the document?

So that got me on to the – I drove up there, got the four investigations paper copies of it, 3500 pages. Pictures, videos, maps, and mostly testimonials from the guys. And I just started immersing myself in what happened and trying to recreate it while also not just tapping into the guys I knew in the battalion, but reaching out to many of these guys who were never allowed to, were never asked follow on questions, were never allowed to say, hey, you know, you said this to the investigator.

Is that what happened to you? No. Well, that was part of it. That's because he asked the question that way. Here's what else happened. And, you know, I started learning all this information.

Jon Becker: It might be helpful to just kind of set up what the official government narrative was immediately following the event and why that was called into question.

Pete Blaber: The initial take was just, you know, he was killed charging up a hill during an ambush. And we don't know, you know, it was not friendly fire initially. It was just, you know, it was what was written on the Silver Star, and the Silver Star was read at his memorial ceremony on May 30th. But the unbelievable part of this is what I found out from investigating. It was they knew beyond a shadow of doubt he was killed by friendly fire within 24.

And then for the higher headquarters, 48 hours for sure after it happened. But they didn't tell Pat's brother, who was in the platoon or the family for 35 days. So, you know, they went through this period where, you know, they obviously, it's tragic. You can't. There's no way to, you know, make, make any positivity out of this situation. You're devastated by the loss of a loved one, but, you know, finding out 35 days later that he was killed by friendly fire does nothing but make it, you know, ten times worse.

And the other thing that did was it, you know, made Pat's mother, Mary Tillman, you know, ask the question, why? Why would you come up with such a long, complex story? You know, why would you lie about it? That was her question at the time. And, you know, again, back to the science of the human brain, when you've been lied to once, lied to twice, you do not believe anything.

After that, she never gave up. And, you know, I told you my initial conversations with her, one of the things she said, Washington, you know, if the situation was reversed and it was me that was killed, Pat would never give up until he found out what the truth was. And she. That's what she did. And, you know, in aggregate, it took 19 years to find the truth. But, you know, that's what we found by talking to the guys, putting it back together.

And again, just applying common sense, deductive logic to what happened, you can better understand how it happened. And that's incredibly important for future leaders, for future warriors and leaders, if we don't learn again. We can never adapt, and the same thing will just happen over and over in the future.

So, you know, among among the many transgressions of not being completely honest with the family or with the unit itself, you know, perhaps one of the biggest is you're denying, you know, future warriors, future first responders the potential to learn from it, to adapt to it, and to prevent it from happening again in the future.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Which literally means that that person was just wasted. You know, it's bad enough that they're killed with friendly fire. If you don't learn anything from it and are destined to repeat it. You've almost killed them twice. It's appalling.

Pete Blaber: Well said.

Jon Becker: What I mean, obviously, the book goes into great detail, and you did a wonderful job of laying out kind of the circumstances and the details. And, I mean, it's the maps, and it is really fantastically done in the Cliff notes version because I really want to talk about kind of the leadership lessons. Give me the Cliff note version. Give our listeners a cliff note version of what actually happened and why. What was the underlying cause of this friendly fire incident?

Pete Blaber: So this area that we're going to be talking about is Kaust province, Spera district. It's in the far eastern part of Afghanistan. It's right up against the Pakistani border. And when I say border, I mean a invisible line that just happens to be on a terrain feature. There's no fences, there's no patrols. There's nothing like that. It's governed by two of the pashtun tribes who are, you know, some of the oldest pashtun tribes. They've been there for a thousand years.

They, you know, by trade, they're they're smugglers and, you know, importer exporters. There's a lot of bandits that go through that area. You know, you've heard the expression win the hearts and minds. Well, we never use that expression because it's impossible to win the hearts and minds of people unless you live with them and you stay with them.

So a foreign expeditionary force can never win hearts and minds of – And it's where we always go wrong. Talking about winning hearts and minds, the first thing you do is you try to bribe them. You know, you start building stuff and giving them stuff that doesn't win hearts and minds.

And again, you can't win the hearts and minds unless you live with someone. But what we did talk about was losing the hearts and minds. You can lose the hearts and minds, and when you do that, you've created enemies where there were no enemies before you lost them. So to put it in perspective, you go back to the first book, and I fought in the battle of Shahi coat, known as Anaconda. That's only 8 km away from where Pat was killed.

And so you could not pick a more dangerous, inhospitable area of Afghanistan. You couldn't pick an area with more daunting terrain than this area. I'm sure there's some that are tied, but no, no more daunting, you know, so it's a volatile area.

And this platoon of rangers, most of them on their first tour ever in Afghanistan, are land in an airfield, are flown to another airfield, put on vehicles, and they're driving out into this area, you know, three days after they landed. It's crazy. And they're told to go in there and town by town, search every single house for weapons caches and potential terrorists. And the way you do that is you break down the door, you toss, basically the house. You're looking for hidden compartments. It's a formula for losing the hearts and minds.

So this platoon's out in the middle of bad guy country. They're being controlled by what's called a CFT, a cross functional team, which was a concept put in place by the commanding general, where every staff looked exactly the same. And the staffs were all 20 men, ten on each side of a U-shaped table with the commander in the middle, and then a wall of screens up front, usually with video teleconference information and electronic maps, things like that. Their day was defined by how many video teleconferences they had.

And that was a big change in warfare. That started with Afghanistan and Iraq war by VTC. And it's, you know, the generals get on there, they pontificate, then their staff officers get on and pontificate. It's actually completely backwards. The only guys who should be pontificating are the low level guys, and the pontification should flow upwards, but that's not the way they go. They go down and, you know, a day for a staff officer can have five or six of those, some of them 3 hours long. That's their day. That VTC, and it's, you know, various general officers.

So you're, you know, you're stuck to your chair and your eyes have got to be forward the whole time. This reflected the first time in my lifetime that I know of, or even in modern military history, where I believe we can look at that moment and say, we went backwards. If that platoon had been out there during Vietnam, the company commander would have been on a hilltop that was halfway between the tock headquarters and the guys, and he would have had two rtos with massive antennas. He would have had a small security element, and he would have lived on that hilltop until that mission was over.

And that platoon would have always had someone who could make a decision, always have someone who could help support them when they needed it. But that wasn't the case here. So off the Rangers go. They realized within a couple days that this was just an exercise in futility.

So back to the guys on the ground. If someone had come in and said to them, hey, what do you think about this mission? Should we keep doing it? You would have gotten, I think there were 36 guys in the platoon. You would have gotten 36. No, let's get the h*** out of here. This is complete waste of time because they weren't finding anything. They found, like a rusted machete, a couple old black powder guns, you know, two AK-47s.

And they found a ton of weed, you know, not anything. No intelligence. They've been out in the field eight days, driving around. They're low on water, low on food. That day starts out right on the Pakistani border. They're in a place called border control .5. It's run by the Afghans, but it's a, you know, joint American Afghan outpost. Just a little postage stamp up on a ridge with a helipad and, you know, probably 20 Afghans, man in it. That was their base of operation. That's what. Where they started on day eight. And they started with one of the Humvees. Not, you know, not starting. They couldn't start it. They had eleven vehicles at the time, and they were packed into every one of them.

So even one vehicle down would affect, you know, the way they were arrayed and allocated as a platoon. But, you know, they worked on this vehicle, could not fix it. The platoon leader called back to the rear, said, hey, this thing's deadline. Recommend we leave it here. You can either send in a higher level mechanic or, you know, airlift it out. And the response was, you know, denied. Tow it along with you.

So, you know, to put that in perspective, like, when the platoon leader told that to the guys, they were, you know, the WTF phrase was the first thing out of everyone's mouth. You got to be kidding me. And anyone who understood this terrain could never even get the words out of your mouth, hey, just drag it. But drag it they did. They hooked up nylon straps to it and took off from border control .54 and a half hours later, and 6 miles later, they were traveling at 1.5 miles an hour.

The vehicle just gave out, the wheels busted out sideways, the axle broke, the steering column snapped. It was completely inoperable. And they were in a little town called Maggara, again, a stone age town, about 100 people living in cliffside dwellings, very friendly.

As they came out, you know, there was no hostility, but obviously you're now surrounded by, you know, 100 plus people around your vehicles. And so the platoon leader did what he, you know, what he should have done. He called back to headquarters and reported, hey, this vehicle now is completely deadlined. Can you get a CH 47 helicopter in to airlift it out? Or a wrecker, which is a big tow truck. So when the platoon called in, they were on a VTC, that was their battalion headquarters.

For that CFT to make a decision, it had to get permission from the CFT in Bagram, which was their regimental headquarters, and the regimental commander was there. And for that one to get permission for, you know, out of the ordinary things, they had to call the CFT that was in a place called Balad, Iraq, with our higher headquarters in it, and get the commanding general to approve it.

So you have these massive, you know, staff officer CTFs, million dollar talks, trying to control these guys, conducting a simple operation. And I. Well, so the first response came a little over 1 hour later, and the response was, hey, there's no helicopters available. And the wrecker, the tow truck can't leave the Calista Gardez highway, which was 15 km from where they were.

And so the platoon leader, you know, talked to his guys and he came back with, well, how about we blow it? And, you know, they asked to blow it, went through another hour long wait for an answer. What came back was, you know, request denied. You're not allowed to blow vehicles. You need to tow that thing to the highway, to the wrecker. And as if that wasn't bad enough, they were telling them, hey, you're way behind schedule now. You need to get back on schedule. To get back on schedule, we want you to split the platoon in half.

And here's how you need to split it. And they told them, you know, mortars need to come back, snipers need to come back. A couple of these guys, every vehicle is set up, you know, with five guys. One guy's on the gun, one guy's the TC, one guy's the driver, two guys got rear security.

So when you start breaking up that organic, you know, organ, the way they're organized organically. You're messing up everything. They've agreed on all of their little sops they've learned over the days, and that's what they did. They tore the guts out of this platoon, split it in half. What you find is the guys did the right thing over and over again. And in this case, the platoon leader did the right thing. He pushed back very diplomatically. And remember, he's a lieutenant and this is his first time in combat, too. And he pushes back.

He says, well, splitting the platoon doesn't make sense, and here's why. And he firstly, secondly, thirdly, gave three great reasons. And his first reason was Como. If we split in this terrain, we probably won't have any camo between us. And if one of us makes contact, we're not going to be able to. The other elements not going to go to their assistance. Given the fact that it's almost sundown right now and that we have an SOP, that you can't go into a village at nighttime. You have to wait till the morning.

It doesn't matter if we get there right now, we can all drive to the highway, take the inoperable Humvee, drop it off, drive back. We'll still have plenty of time to get, catch some winks before sunrise. At sunrise, we'll wake up, clear the village and be on our way. And, you know, he laid that out to them. Same thing. Okay, I'll get you an answer. VTC is still going on. Answer comes back denied. And he's like, well, why? And there was no why. It was just because you were told to. And so he had enough. He knew when, you know, I can't fight this anymore. And they hired a civilian Jenga truck driver to help tow the Humvee to the Kg highway to the wrecker.

Now they're going to drive through a canyon with a dump truck dragging Humvee that can't be steered. And, you know, so frustration, anger is set in. These guys do what they're supposed to do. They split up the first element with the platoon leader and Pat Tillman. They're told to get to this town of Mana by sundown. Off they go.

The first one bolts out, comes to the Y intersection outside Magra, takes a left. About five to ten minutes later, the second element comes out. This is the one towing the Humvee that's supposed to go the highway. They take a right, which is the planned route to the highway. The first two vehicles go.

Then the Jenga truck gets that, sees him taking a right and he won't move when they go to ask him, hey, what are you doing? Why won't you drive? He said, you can't go that way. That goes over a 6950ft ridge, and it's impossible for even my Jenga truck to get over it, much less a Jenga truck towing a Humvee. So they figure, hey, which way should we go? And the Jenga truck driver told them, same way as your other element went, it's the best road and you'll actually make it there quicker. So they turned around to follow the first element.

Unfortunately, when they turned around, the Njinga truck took the lead. So now the Jenga truck with the Toad Humvee is in the front of that column. And sure enough, as they turn around, the platoon sergeant's trying to call the platoon leader to tell him this, but they have no comms. It's negative comms.

So he continues moving down behind the first element, unbeknownst to them, on the same route that the first element moved through. Now we come to the culmination. To get to this town of Mana, you have to go through a slot canyon, which is a canyon cut through the rocks, in this case, walls 1000, 1500 ft high on both sides, the creeks on the bottom. It's peppered with massive geometrically shaped boulders. To watch both sides, your head has to be crooked back all the way. It's very uncomfortable.

So this is how they're pulling security while driving over the most uneven, undulating terrain you can imagine. The first element made it through there without any problem. And they pull up damana. You know, they're there. It's not quite dark yet, but they – There's nothing they can do. All they can do is wait until the other element has dropped off the vehicle and comes back.

But as soon as they pull over, they hear boom, boom, two explosions. And those two explosions are either mortar or RPG rounds landing on the side of the canyon wall while the second half of the platoon is driving through and again watching the video paint. It's worth a thousand words. There's many parts in here where you literally have to make hairpin turns, left, right, left, to get around these boulders. And they're in an ambush.

And everyone knows, in an ambush, your first immediate action is to get out of the ambush, and they have no way to get out of it because this Jenga truck towing this mv is now moving less than 1.5 miles an hour. So you've got a civilian, unvetted civilian, speaks another language, you know, who's driving the Jenga truck trying to thread this needle with a Humvee while they're under fire.

After the first two rounds exploded, two more exploded and then rpg machine gun fire opened up from the ridges. And when that happened, the rangers in serial two did what? The only thing you can do, which is suppress the target. Meanwhile, the guys over by Mana, the platoon leader, Pat Tillman, they're hearing this and, you know, they know something's behind them. They know it's a firefight. Some suspect it's the other half of the platoon. Others have no idea.

But the leaders realize, hey, we have no camo and we can't see anything. Let's scoot up to the high ground here. We should be able to see what's happening in the camo, and the elevation will give us line of sight communication with the other half of the platoon. One of the squad leaders and the platoon leader grabbed most of the guys and they head up this path. Pat Tillman, who was a team leader at the time, he grabs his guy and he says, hey, let's go help our boys and let's go kill some bad guys. And off they move up onto this high ground. So they get up 1000ft up on this spur.

So a spur is like a tongue that sticks out from a ridge line. Usually it has a creek on each side of it, but it's a piece of terrain that slopes down like a finger off of a ridgeline. That's what a spur is. And they come to the end of the path and they are smoked, number one.

But they realize we can't see into the canyon from here and it's not enabling us to make line of sight communication with the other element. The guys on the spur are under. They were under fire. They saw the enemy up on the ridge at first, but as they got up to the top, the fire became just thousands and thousands of rounds. The shape of the canyon explains a lot of what was happening.

And when you look at the map of the canyon, it's shaped like a mushroom. The first investigator came to the conclusion that anyone does and reads it, and that's that they were probably getting the crossfire from the other element.

Jon Becker: So the two elements think that they're engaged and in fact they're engaging each other.

Pete Blaber: The guys in the canyon are trying to fire at the north, but these are non gyro stabilized weapons. So think about driving off road. You're shaking the vehicle. You only need an inch to move the barrel of the weapon an inch over. Now the fire arcs over the hill what looks like just an inch is 500 meters once it plays out across the terrain. And so they didn't hit any of the guys in serial one.

But I'm pretty confident many of those rounds were landed behind them. The guys were hearing the sonic crack of bullets over their head, so, you know, they weren't hitting each other. But the rounds were adding to the confusion. So the machine guns in serial two, the 50 cal, the 240, even the m four, are all at about 150 decibels. The mortar, the 203, a little bit less. But all of them are over 130, all the way up to 155 decibels. And they were exposed to that 150 decibel noise for twelve to 14 minutes.

Jon Becker: So after 30, they're all effectively deaf.

Pete Blaber: Then they're all effectively deaf. I'm reading all the guys testimonials and they're all separate. And as you finish each guy, you're. They. They go, you know, the investigator always ask them, anything else? And these guys go, well, yeah, I was. I couldn't hear anything. I was deaf after about two minutes. And so I couldn't talk to my squad leader or he couldn't talk to me, or we had to pull guys up, right up by your face to talk and read lips.

So finally the canyon opens up wide enough where they can pass the Jenga truck and the Humvee that's at the end of the canyon. Now they're coming out and there's one more sloping ridge as you come out, dividing them from where serial one is on the spur.

And unfortunately, when they ran up there, when path Tillman and his guy ran up there and Afghan decided to follow them at one of the afghan soldiers while this ten to twelve minute firefights going on, they're starting to think, hey, he's drawn enemy fire on us because they are getting fire from both the south and the north. So they're trying to get him back, back here, come on. Using their weapons, their hands, but he won't move. He's standing 10ft in the front of him firing his AK.

So it didn't dawn on them as they realized he was probably drawing enemy fire, that he might have the same effect on friendlies. And sure enough, when this lead Humvee with, you know, five guys in it, a 50 cal, a 240 a saw, a 203 M, 4S with ACOG sights, you know, this thing had as much firepower as a full platoon in one vehicle. They come around the corner and the first thing they see is this Afghan and he's firing his AK either right at them or right over their head to the south.

And, you know, the squad leader picked up the site in his ACOG site and shot him on the spot. And again, all the guys are deaf. And what you're trained as an infantryman is when in doubt, shoot where your team leader and squad leader shoots. So when that squad leader shot the Afghan, they turned their machine guns on that Afghan. And 10ft behind that Afghan was Pat Tillman and that private hiding behind the boulders.

Now, from their perspective, you know, the only guy, the only account of what happened is from the ranger private who was with Pat Tillman. You know, they dropped the Afghan. And now these guys are under intense machine gun firing and they're looking down at. These are Humvees on a – In a creek bed, you know, that is mostly tan in color, a few river rocks, but, you know, the Humvee sticks out.

And so when they saw him, they were like, hey, you know, we're friendlies up here. They were yelling at the top of their lungs, waving to them. Well, these guys are all deaf and they had no way of knowing that, so they're just screaming louder. And as they scream, their frustration is rising because it's like, why the f***, you know, we're yelling and, you know, why aren't they hearing us? And why aren't they seeing us?

Well, it's last light. You don't quite need your nods yet, but you're minutes away. You could actually flip them down in preparation for darkness, which is coming in minutes. But from the creek bed, looking up, this spur is. You couldn't have asked for better camouflage to hide a bunch of Mendez. It's got a mottled surface, kind of lava, black and brown, with massive cracks going from all directions, no contiguous shapes on it. And it's full of foliage. You look up and you can barely see humans on this spur. This is last light.

And, you know, they're driving in a Humvee on a rocky creek bed. They're both deaf and blind. They can't see anything. And all they know is this Afghan with a beard. And Ak was firing at them from the same direction as they've been firing at the whole time. And they opened up.

Pat was providing incredible guidance to his private, you know, telling him, hey, stay calm, think, stay focused. Which helped this guy to better, you know, kind of, you know, move his body so that it would stay behind the boulder as the vehicle is, you know, moving out in front of it.

So he saved that, you know, that private's life. And then right toward the end, he tried to throw a smoking aid to give one more signal that was friendly. And when he threw that smoke grenade, it's believed, is when he was hit in the head and killed very tragically right at the end. You know, this is now the 12th or 14th minute of the firefight. And so the guys pull up the vehicle. No one knows what happened. No one suspects.

You know, from the shooter's perspective, they're, you know, they're – They don't even know. Why would the rest of our platoon be up on the high ground instead of by their vehicles? But they start piecing it together and, you know, guys are very honest. They're, you know, soldiers are, will always come to the, you know, the reality, the realistic conclusion. And they did. They pretty much figured out, you know, that night, the next day that they were shooting right at them.

And then as they pulled bullets out of the rocks, the boulders around where Pat was killed, they realized, hey, these are your 50 cal, your 7.62 rounds. And those guys were like, s***. You know, we shot him. And the platoon headed back. It was two nights later when they got back to the rear in KAOS. They did their first hot wash.

And, you know, it's in the book, but you can, you know, very much be proud of these guys. The. The leaders immediately took responsibility. You know, if I had, you know, my guy shot where I shot, said the squad leader from the gun jeep, and the guy up top said, tillman wouldn't have been up there if he hadn't followed my squad up there. So, like great leaders, they're taking responsibility.

And in the book, I point out there's a big difference between taking responsibility and taking blame. When you take responsibility, you're just acknowledging that you're responsible and you're accountable for everything that happens to while you're in a position of leadership. But it's very different from taking the blame. Taking blame means you're saying it was my fault. I did it, something I did caused it.

And of course, they didn't take the blame, and they shouldn't have ever taken the blame. They couldn't figure out how the whole thing happened. And as the investigation began unfolding in those days after, they were completely kept in the dark about all the decisions that were made behind the scene and why what happened happened on the ground.

Jon Becker: So, yeah, I mean, at that point, the plane had already crashed. Right? Like the plane was going to crash 20 minutes before that, and they just didn't realize that they were on a course that was going to lead to this how. I mean, how, from your perspective, how did toxic leadership result in this? Like, what was toxic in the leadership chain that caused this to occur?

Pete Blaber: Yeah. So, you know, toxic leadership, which I explain in depth in the book, is, you know, the way you understand toxic leaders by the choices that leaders make. So I define leadership as. I define common sense leadership as using common sense to take care of your people by making good decisions and solving complex problems that set the conditions for your people to succeed. Pretty simple!

That's your job as a leader. All the accoutrements and, you know, glory that comes along with being in a leadership position, the higher pay, the privilege, you know, you get that, but you also better get that you are responsible and that your job is to make good decisions and solve complex problems that enable your people to succeed. And that's where toxic leaders go off the rail. They don't give a s*** about their people. They treat everyone with equal derision. They believe that they're always right, that they've earned this position.

And by God, while I'm in this leadership position, people are going to do what I say or else. We talked about the three part brain. Toxic leaders are emotional and reptilian brain leaders. That's all they operate off of, you know, when someone p***** them off, you know, or they don't like somebody, they don't like their personality. They live that with their decisions that seeps into the decisions they make.

So, you know, if you didn't like this platoon, when they call up and say, hey, this vehicle doesn't work anymore. We're at BCP five. Can we leave it here? And you guys come pick it up, it's like, no, I don't like those guys. They're behind schedule. Let's teach them a lesson.

And I'm just mimicking the way a toxic leader thinks here. And so send them off. And now they're in Magura and they're still behind schedule. And, oh, it, you know, the way they decided to tow it didn't work. And now the thing's completely deadline, and they want, you know, a helicopter or a pickup truck. Hey, let's – They're even further behind schedule now. Let's teach them a lesson, you know, and let's make them do this.

So you're giving orders and making decisions that are the opposite of enabling your people to succeed. And what that translates to on the battlefield or in any, you know, emergency situation is failure of the mission and the inability of the guys to accomplish what you sent them out to. Accomplish.

And so, you know, remember, I started this. My connection to it was from one year earlier. And for, you know, three NCO, Ranger NCOs to jump across command lines and come over and talk to, you know, the Delta Force commander about their own command, that doesn't ever happen. Range. You can, you know, you can physically torture a Ranger NCO and, you know, you still have to, you know, cajole them or somehow get them to tell you what's bothering them. They just suck up pain. They do not complain. You know, you admire this. It's a. It's a known trait, and you admire it over time.

And so I didn't start looking into this thinking this was all the result of a toxic leadership environment, but I went into it knowing that that was present. Remember, this platoon leader never talked to his company commander. He never talked directly to the battalion commander. He never talked to the S3. He was always talking to a middleman, the XO.

So one of the recommendations you brought up, I put in the end of the book is it needs to be mandatory. Technology has lulled us into this sense that leaders can send emails or have a staff officer contact you and tell you, hey, you need to change the way you're working, that we need to end that.

If you're in a leadership position, you cannot give an order unless you give that order. You've got to say that order out loud to those individuals, or there is no order. And you've got to explain the logic of why that order makes sense, or there is no order no more. Just do it because I said so.

And, you know, trust has a lot to do with that. Once you trust someone, you will do. You can take something like, hey, I need you to, you know, run, run down to the end of the canyon right now. If you really trust that guy, you know, you might do it, but there was no trust here already.

So in order to do it, they should have had the logic of why it made sense. Denying them the ability to leave a Humvee at a secure base instead of dragging it through the equivalent of the Grand Canyon. You can't make sense of that decision then Magara not allowing them to blow this Humvee. It turns out this Humvee wasn't even on their property books. They found this Humvee at Bagram when they arrived.

And, you know, from my perspective now, looking 19 years later, we left over 10,000 Humvees in Afghanistan, many of them armored. And we certainly don't seem to think that was much of a big deal or no one's getting upset about leaving those Humvees behind, 10,000 of them. None of these decisions made sense. Splitting the platoon violates principles or the ten principles of war. You never split your forces. And just the callousness of the way these guys were treated afterwards.

Pat Tillman was revered like, you know, and I don't use that lightly. You know, he validated for a young private to see a guy come from the NFL or have any job where you're making millions of dollars, you know, incredible admiration. But it's, you know, it's affirmation, too, that, hey, what you're doing makes sense. And it's not just the dregs of society out here, everybody. It's patriots from all walks of life who do it.

And after this happened, and they came to the realization that they, you know, this was a tragic accident. You can imagine. These guys, you know, needed some talking to, some picking up, but instead, they did the opposite. They began the scapegoating process right there from day two on that, hey, these guys, you know, not. They didn't just cause it. They're not just to blame, but they. Every phase of this, they f***** up in.

And, you know, in these original investigations, they lay it right on the platoon leader for, you know, not doing good, troop leaning procedures, the platoon sergeant for not using the radio more, and then the full. Everybody in that front vehicle, you know, it states, these guys were yelling to them and they ignored their, you know, verbal warnings. They were waving their arms, and they ignored their visual warnings. We have an SOP. You never shoot at anything you don't positively identify.

But as far as I know, no one, including my old unit back then or even since, does maneuver live fires with friendly and enemy targets. That's what you do in a shooting house or CQB. No one drives around in vehicles, comes around corners, and, you know, you got to shoot on a hill.

And three of the paper targets are, you know, women, and three are guys with knives or, you know, or guns. No one does that. So they had never been trained from a motorized perspective to conduct targeted discrimination. But even if they had, you couldn't see anything. You couldn't hear anything.

Jon Becker: And because they asked, guys were turning fire at them, right? Like, yeah, it's just they're disoriented, they're auditorily excluded. You know, it's dark. Like, it's just. It's one of those things where you look at it and you go, every single thing pointed towards a tragedy. And the. The opportunity to avoid it occurred when they should have just blown up the Humvee.

Pete Blaber: You're right.

Jon Becker: Right. It's not the last act that causes the crash. Right. It's always, you know, aviators talk about it as a chain of events, and it's, you know, ten things have to happen for the plane to crash. And in this case, the avoidance.

And this is why I would encourage people to read your book, is you realize there were a lot of opportunities to avoid this happening, not because you would know that it was coming, but because you know that you're just making bad decisions and you're getting feedback from the field saying, hey, this is a stupid idea, and it's not a good idea to schlep a truck around.

Oh, it's an even worse idea when the front axle is broken. It's an even worse idea when it's a slot canyon. You're pulling it with a Jenga truck. It was 20 little decisions that led to one catastrophic event from a perspective of lessons learned. What do you think? You've got a few minutes with a team leader now to sit down. What do you leave them with? What is the lasting legacy of this story, you think?

Pete Blaber: Yeah, I think it starts with its leadership lessons, and it starts with climate, back to what we talked about in the very beginning. A climate emerges from the sum total of choices made throughout this climate system. And you just said it, this event happened nothing because these guys couldn't discriminate or because the Afghans stood out there. It happened because of the sum total of choices that were made in the 12 to 15 hours before it happened.

And, of course, that goes way back. You could go back the whole year, but specifically on this day, it was the sum total of choices, all the way from doing the mission to border control .5 to Maggara, splitting the platoon, not monitoring the platoon at any point.

So your job as a leader, it comes back to, what do leaders do? And that definition is really important. They take care of their people by using common sense to make good decisions, solve complex problems that set the conditions for their people to succeed, period. It doesn't matter if you're in the military, doesn't matter if you're a civilian first responder. It doesn't matter if you work in the corporate world. That's a leader's job.

And, you know, the art of doing that goes in a lot of different directions. One of the most important, I think, that needs to be institutionalized for all first responders is that part about the logic of why you cannot give an order without attaching the logic of why it makes sense. And the logic of why comes from your neocortex. Your thinking brain is the only part of your brain that can produce logic, and we all know what – it is first of all. Second of all. And thirdly, if an idea doesn't have three legs to stand on, it's probably not standing on solid ground, right?

A tripod will support anything a two legged stool tips right over. And usually the third reason is the hardest, and that's because if you can't come up with a third reason, it's telling you what you're thinking probably doesn't make sense. So going through just as a leader, coming up with three reasons that whatever you want them to do makes sense is a check and balance for yourself. It's going to prevent you from making stupid decisions and potentially affecting the safety and well being of your people.

So, you know, decision making, problem solving, go into that logic of why technique. But really just, you know, the title of the book says it all. Common sense leadership matters. Toxic leadership destroys. There's no place for toxic leaders. They should be fired from any job that they're found out in. They do not belong in a leadership position because toxic leadership destroys. And so that would be what I'd tell a new aspiring leader or first responder from this event.

Jon Becker: Well, what I love about the book and what I love about this is you've kind of created this arc of doctrine that toxic leadership is a very easy thing to think. Has no consequence. It's very easy to go. Oh, yeah, I know. Those two guys hate each other. Well, that's no big deal. And, yeah, they're both a*******, but that doesn't really affect the organization. It affects every part of the organization.

And I think it's easy to sugarcoat it and think that it just means people aren't happy or people don't get along, and there's no real world consequence. And I think the great thing about this book is that you take a very public event that everybody knows and do a fantastic job of articulating this and give us a concrete example of why we really do need to care and why we really do need to strike, you know, to focus on trying to eradicate toxic leadership.

So, Pete, I appreciate all the time you spent with me today. I'd like to end these episodes with five rapid fire questions. Before we do that, though, how can people find your work? What is the best way for people to engage with your work?

Pete Blaber: Yeah.. I've got a website. You can go there, look at all the pictures of the spur. You can watch video of the canyon. You can see all the maps. They're in color of the platoon's journey. I know it's a little difficult explaining it with just words, but if you go on the website, you'll see, and you can play around with it as long as you want. So and check it out and let me know what you think.

Jon Becker: Beautiful! Okay, let's. Let's go with the five rapid fire questions. Short answer, kind of gut reaction. What is your most important habit?

Pete Blaber: Probably just, you know, controlled breathing, understanding the power of breath, how it calms you down, how it optimizes your athletic potential, how it shifts you away from your emotional, non thinking brain into your logic based thinking brain, where you can, you know, make good decisions and solve those complex problems.

Jon Becker: What is your favorite, current, favorite online resource? Web, you know, website? Podcast?

Pete Blaber: You know, online resource. That's a tough one. I, you know, I go to a bunch of different news, try to get my, you know, find the most truthful in there, and then podcasts. I like the team house. I just did that.

Jon Becker: What's the most important characteristic of an effective leader?

Pete Blaber: The ability to make common sense decisions and solve problems. It's decision making, problem solving. That's what, to me, leadership is. It's the only litmus. You can be funny, you can be handsome or pretty or whatever. Nobody cares about that. Your job as a leader is to make good decisions and solve those complex problems. And if you can't do that and you don't love doing that, then you probably shouldn't be in a leadership position.

Jon Becker: What's something you've changed your mind about in the last few years?

Pete Blaber: Probably, you know, the whole conspiracy thing. I never thought, you know, I never was a big believer in. In what we thought were conspiracies. Now I see that, you know, conspiracies don't have to be explicit. They can just be a bunch of people with a common interest who tacitly agree to collude with each other for that, you know, that self centered purpose.

And I think what we've seen, you know, in our country over these last years has changed the way I think about potential for some of these outlandish things to happen and specifically for our freedoms to be taken away.

Jon Becker: Last question. What's the most profound memory of your career?

Pete Blaber: Probably, you know, now it's this. The interaction with the Tillman family and with the men of the platoon, we didn't mention it here, but, you know, there were casualties in the firefight and then the follow on casualties. I'd never seen such devastation, PTSD devastation as I saw with the platoon. And here we are 19 years later. These men are all in the prime of their lives. They're now in their mid and early forties. Some of them can't work. At least two of them are still battling suicidal thoughts. And most of this came from not being told what really happened, not having access to knowledge.

So when I get on the phone with these guys, you know, after studying these 3500 pages, the terrain, putting everything together, you know, each guy, I'd say, wait a minute. Have you read any of the investigations? The answer is always no. And then I'd go on to tell them what really happened and to tell them, hey, you did nothing wrong. That was not your fault.

There's nothing you could have done in that situation. You couldn't see, you couldn't hear. You shot where your squad leader shot. Stop beating yourself up for it. And the reaction from these guys was like I was giving water to someone crawling out of the desert. Unbelievable gratitude, which I deflected.

I said, you don't owe me any thanks, you know, but the military owes you an apology and, you know, the government owes you an apology. You were put through the wringer over nothing and just that, you know, that feedback from the guys and of course, the family misses Tillman, especially to me. Washington, you know, if not the most rewarding tied for the most rewarding thing I'd ever experienced in my military career.

Jon Becker: Pete, thank you so much for your service to the country, for your work on leadership and for taking the time to sit down with me today on the debrief!

Pete Blaber: Thanks, Jon! I enjoyed it!