Mike Glover: "It Was a Good Run Killing a Bunch of Bad Guys" | Peak Points
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He got out September 3, 2001.

A week later, September 11th happens. We immediately deployed to Afghanistan. So I was in charge of all of them. As a new guy. And they didn't want to be the guy that failed their mission and got an American killed. Had a catastrophic failure and crashed a $100 million helicopter, MH-47. Our guys didn't even have uniforms. What did you think of working with the SEALs? It was a good run of killing a whole bunch of bad guys. A week later, Benghazi happens. The number one priority

for me is... I've been dying to ask you this question. You got out September 3rd, 2001. A week later, September 11th happens, the towers go down. What is the first thing that went through your head knowing, you know, your primary mission was or your primary goal was to become a Green Beret in Special Operations, kicking fucking doors in, going to combat, that whole lifestyle, and then

you immediately know we're at war. Yeah, it was... And you're not in it. The biggest kick in the balls that I've ever had because, I mean, backing up a little bit, I had the option to reenlist. Obviously, I was on retention's radar for like, "Hey, this guy's an Airborne Ranger qualified dude. He's an E-5. I made Sergeant when I was 20 years old."

And so I was a team leader in the infantry had good in sui ours and so it's like hey man This guy is a good guy. We want to keep in the military, but I told them that I want sniper school and I want Halo school in route to 18th airborne Corps Lurse or long-range reconnaissance or Ranger battalion And I was adamant about that. I actually I

Went into a sergeant major's office who was the military district of Washington. So he's a command sergeant major He knew my uncle and he said Mike what can I give you to stay in? I said this is the things that I want and he goes which I found later I found out later is true. Halo or free fall school It's not a reenlistment option and it's not back then you didn't you didn't have a lot of incentive for staying in so they used to give you schools to stay in and I said sergeant major well, you can make it an option right that because that's what I want and

He's like, Mike, I can't do that for you. I mean, I'll call and I'll try. And he did, but it's not an option. So a CSM even can't make it an option. And so I said, okay, that's my, I gave the options on the table and they decided not to facilitate what I wanted as a dream. And so I decided to get out. I had a buddy who re-enlisted with me that I went to Ranger school with or re-enlisted without me. And he went to 3rd Ranger Battalion.

He jumped into Afghanistan on October 19th, 2001. Son of a bitch. And so the moment it happened, I was actually in college and I had gotten out of the military, obviously, but I had transitioned into the National Guard component. Okay. So I'm sitting in a chow hall at Fayetteville Technical Community College getting my associate's degree so I could further my education and saw the events happen and

I did some crazy shit man. I immediately started making phone calls. I went home I packed a duffel bag of my equipment I threw my battle dress uniforms my camo uniforms in the the washer and then dried them And was making calls like what are we doing here? What's happening? And I was at the time I was in 30th heavy armor separate separate brigade and I was in the scout platoon and I was a team leader

So I had a little minuscule position that could affect something, but I knew we were going to war. So I had a choice to make, which is real easy, which was I'm going back in the fucking military. So on September 12th, like 0-9 in the morning, I'm making phone calls to get back in. I mean, that had to be like at the exact same time that's happening, two completely separate emotions. One, you know, tragedy. We'd just been attacked and...

a lot of people died. On the other hand, you know what comes after and everything you've ever wanted to do since you said you were 10 years old becomes a reality and you're not there. I mean that had to be, was one more overpowering than the other.

Yeah, it was, I mean, I felt for the people, obviously, but I knew that I was in a unique position to make a difference in the fight because I was a, I was an NCO. I mean, I was a non-commissioned officer and I knew that,

there was an opportunity for me to get in the military and fight and get some vengeance. And that's what I wanted to do. I joined the army to fight. The reason I got out, because there was no fight to be had. If there was a war, if there was something going on, I would have been in it. You know, I think something important to note is the biological instinct in men

Most men the men I associate with to fight. Mm-hmm I mean, I it's not it's it's to fight each other in training because that's what we do as kids we fight and we We grow up in those environments where we're displaying our masculinity and there's a whole bunch of psychological and physiological things that are Associated with that and I don't think we grow out of that we grow up and we want to fight and defend That's what men do

And so it definitely was part of my character and my DNA. And I don't think it was fake. I think it was something very real. And I wanted to fight, so I had to go back in. How did you get back in? It was a battle because the Army didn't really know how to handle a whole bunch of dudes who were prior service guys that wanted to go back in. Was there a lot of guys that wanted to come back? Oh, yeah. There was a lot of guys. There, in that time period, a lot of people who were prior service who had gotten out

I mean, even older guys who had gotten out wanted to come back in and serve. So I had to go through the whole process again, which was... Holy shit. I had to go through MEPS, you know, as an E5, going back through MEPS, you know, the whole duck walk thing, all that stuff. I had to go back through all that to get back in.

And they had a program which is kind of similar to what's called 18X right now where you can come in off the streets and try out for selection. And if you make it, they'll send you to special forces training. And if you don't, you simply just go back to your sister unit. Or if you don't have a unit, whatever your job is, they'll find a job for you in that position. Now, how old are you at this point?

At this point, I'm 21 years old. You're 21 years old. Yeah. You just saw the towers come down. Yep. And the only thing on your mind is I got to fucking get back in there. Yep. No shit. I mean, wow. That's, I mean, that's...

That's a lot of courage. I was young when I hit the ground. I mean I was running we immediately deployed to Afghanistan How many guys are on your team roughly? Well, I think at that time maybe ten ten dudes Yeah, we're most attachments are light by nature of guys coming and going Like I said, my 18 Bravo senior was got was in surgery so he had to get a surgery recover and so we deployed that year

to Afghanistan with a little bit of a light package. What year? This was 05, early 05. So that's a hot year. Now, are you doing, are you running Indige? Yeah, part of the job is running Indige. I mean, when I reported Indige,

As an 18 Bravo, I was in charge of about 144 Afghan commandos. Holy shit. So there's 10 SF guys running a 144-man army. Yeah. And basically, I was the commander of them. So I was in charge of all of them. As a new guy. As a new guy. Holy shit. I'll never forget. He said, hey, your guys are formed up waiting on you. Waiting on me? Yeah, you're the 18 Bravo. Get up there and...

Be their commander because everybody else had other stuff to worry about, you know I mean the 18 Charlie's had to run the fire base which is a full-time job of the you know base security and the actual physical structure the generators the water system Everything the commo base defense the guys are living conditions like shit I mean tents living on a cot Living on a cot

surrounded by stacked sandbags.

Concrete ish just mud mud hut. Okay on the second floor of a little structure So you're way the fuck out there and like at your own fire base. There's no px nothing There's no chow hall. Nothing. None of that shit. Are you eating local food? A lot of the time we were or mermite or mre. I mean we were the furthest northern fire base on the on the border with pakistan and

And we had really not a lot of support. I mean, the closest support was J-BAD, which is still hours away. I mean, if something went bad. So how trained up? You show up in country. You're now the commander of 144 Afghan force. How well are they trained? Did you guys...

Was there like a changeover from another team or are you starting from scratch? No, some of them were trained up by prior ODAs. I think first group was there before us. Before that, there was another third group team. And so they had a little bit of training, but that's, I mean, man, when you're talking about Afghans in a rural province of Afghanistan that have no education,

have no aptitude, don't know how to read, write. Yeah, I mean it's all relative. I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I'm assuming the first thing you want to do is figure out what they're actually capable of doing. Yeah, you have to, no matter what the condition or the situation when you come into a new fire base or fall into new indage, you got to vet them. You got to

Put them through some kind of process to be able to see what their current capability is. We did that. It wasn't much. So we started from scratch. Wow. We were doing small unit tactics every single day. I was doing small unit tactics with them every single day that we weren't operating. And this would be the force. Not only, this is before Afghan commando units, Afghan border police,

Afghan National Police, this is before all that. So they didn't have a job. Their job for us were, they were Afghan commandos working for special forces guys. We paid them directly cash. So these were our first line of defense and QRF if anything went wrong. - So you show up in country, you gotta get to know these guys, you gotta train 'em, you gotta figure out what their capabilities are, you gotta improve those. How long do you have before

boots on the ground first operation well i mean again that's that's relative as well because when you infill into a remote fire base the one we were at in the middle of nowhere was surrounded by high ground it was just a couple americans in in the middle of the wild west so we were getting rocketed we were getting reports of attacks and all these things that were happening

So we were in it. We were in the thick of it already. But, I mean, we didn't have any time. It was immediate. I think we went on an op two days, three days after we hit the ground. Immediately went and did a link up with one of the Afghan...

seniors or Afghan elders in a village. And that's a movement to contact. I mean, you're just rolling, hoping you're not going to get blown up, hoping you're not going to get in a tick with the guys that you haven't vetted yet. Holy shit. We're talking two fucking days. Two days. And you're out the door with them on a movement. Yeah. We had no choice. How did that go? It went uneventful. We had activity, but nothing significant happened, luckily for us.

And we just started building more rapport with them, vetting them, training them, and it improved our situation over time. So you're out, you meet the village elder, you come back, you debrief. Are you happy with what you've just been handed with the 144 guys? Or are you going, holy shit, we have got a lot of work to do? No, I will say, here's just a little bit of forward history on the guys that I trained.

Those same guys that I trained had worked with Special Operations, including Special Missions Unit from the Navy prior to working with us. So there were some good dudes. And when I left that fire base, a guy by the name of Rob Miller ripped into that fire base and was with those guys as an 18 Bravo from 3rd Special Forces Group when he was killed and earned the Medal of Honor, posthumously, of course. And...

Those men those Afghans that were with them were the Afghans that I trained that were trained prior and so they were squared away I mean they had a heart they were disciplined. They wanted it man. They pressed with him. Yeah, I was impressed a good example was they instinct instinctively knew when or if there was a potential significant act gonna happen called SIG act and

And they would immediately get to the high ground. And they were good about displacing themselves and then talking to the local community. Because you have to understand that these people lived in that same community. So they knew everybody around them. And they didn't want to be the guy that failed their mission and got an American killed. So they had buy-in. So yeah, I was impressed with them. We had a lot of work to do, obviously. But they had a good base. And all the guys...

and Nuristan Province that I operated with that were Afghan, in the village of Nurei, and Asadabad, and Barakout, all great, great men. What do these guys carry in? Do they have nods? Do they have helmets? At this time in the war, no nods, no helmet. We eventually evolved into that, but we were straight AK-47s and flip-flops. Oh, man. I mean, our guys didn't even have uniforms. They were rolling around in whatever we can get them.

I actually exploited a program that was a nonprofit that was providing clothes and toiletry items to soldiers overseas and got this nonprofit to send me helicopters full of equipment to be able to outfit my Afghans with just clothes, with just toothbrushes because they didn't have it and we weren't paying for it. So they needed stuff.

I mean, it's so funny seeing these dudes running around with Harley-Davidson shirts and flannel jackets and USA ball caps. But we had to do what we had to do. You finish that deployment. You come home. What's next? I get back from that deployment, and Iraq was getting bad, and I wanted to go to school. So I went to...

to put my name in the hat to go to Sephardic, Sephardic Tech, which is Special Forces Advanced Target Reconnaissance Target Acquisition Interdiction Exploitation, a whole bunch of words and an acronym that doesn't even look right. It's Sephardic Tech, whatever. People call it Sephardic, and it's our CQB advanced schoolhouse for hostage rescue, for direct action,

for vehicle interdiction. We learn all that stuff there. It's, I believe, an eight-week school, maybe nine weeks, so it's pretty long. And it is the minimum qualification that you need to serve in a commander's and extremist force, which there's one of those per group, which is a reinforced company that's

designed to conduct Haas's rescue and crisis response across the world. How much CQB do you have? What's your background in CQB before you show up to that school? What is the basic kind of mold for an SF guy? Usually at the team level, you learn in, it's called Sephawik. You learn basic CQB. Sometimes it's Strongwall. I think at that time it was probably Strongwall. Real basic CQB.

You don't learn points of domination. You don't learn Haas's rescue considerations Maybe a little bit, but it's not there's not a lot of it. Okay, so at the at the basic team level if you don't have a Sephardic qualified guy and

You might not know a lot. You might think you know a lot, but you really don't. And I thought I knew a lot, but I didn't know anything. I showed up and didn't know shit about CQB until I got there. I knew how to shoot. I was a decent shooter with pistol and carbine, but I didn't know much. After that school, let's fast forward to the next deployment. Did you utilize that a lot, or was it back to...

What you were doing before no it was in fact I was in Charlie company second battalion the sif was Bravo company second battalion One company designated per group so they were right next door So I used to see those dudes come in and had longer hair they had cooler uniforms They had better guns and I wanted to be in the sif at that time you had to have two years team time to even think about going in the sif and

but i had real good rapport with my company's art major and he went next door to take the sif so he was the he was my sergeant major he became the sif sarn major and you know long story short i wasn't supposed to go sif as a new guy with only a year and some change on the team but i went to sephardic and came recommended out of sephardic and so they pulled me over i mean i wasn't supposed to deploy to afghanistan for another year

But I went next door and I was in Iraq a month later. I mean, out of Sephardic. From that trip, I came back, I went straight to Sephardic, which is two months. I had 30 days and I was straight back in Iraq. So you did a nine-month deployment, come back for roughly 90 days. Yeah.

Two months of that is... Training. Becoming an assaulter at the highest level, and then you redeploy. Yep. Redeployed to Iraq for a counterterrorism mission, which was all CQB. Did you have any... Were you married at the time? At the time, I was married, but I was married young and didn't... I mean...

To be honest, absolutely secondary to the mission. We barely knew each other. I mean, on the ground, I had a couple months with her. So it was turning and burning. In fact, I had a hasty marriage because I saw some dudes get killed our trip. I was part of Operation Red Wing that trip. And we had a couple other Chinooks that were down. We had guys that we lost in the company. So it was a bad trip. It was a bad year.

a lot of americans were killed that year it's a small world you know the fact that you were there i came there right after that which means we were there at the same time and as we talked a couple days ago you you met my best friend uh who just passed away yeah um that's it's crazy you know it's a small world it's a small world man

so you did utilize sorry sidetracked there but so you did utilize that school on that next deployment every operation i was sure i i explosively breached every other target every other night we went out every night sometimes twice a night uh going after bad guys and it was it was a real active campaign it was us and i believe seal team eight and we did join ops

where it was like two SIF guys and five SEALs. And we went out with our Indige and conducted counterterrorism missions. What did you think of working with the SEALs? My first impression of them weren't great because we had a few interactions with them where I'll never forget. At the time, I was, I believe, still in E6. I hadn't made E7 yet, but I had combat rotation behind me, and I was on my second deployment.

and had been in training for years, had been in the military and the infantry, and so I had a background. I'll never forget one of the young SEALs being told by one of my guys who was a senior guy. I was the most junior guy in the SIF. A SIF, a Commanders and Extremist Forces, filled with the most senior guys in the group.

I think my detachment years later, everybody made Master Sergeant the same time. Wow. Like an entire senior team with guys with multiple deployments. I had the least amount of combat. Guys on average had three or four rotations. And this is early GWAT. He said, hey, maybe you should hang out with these guys because we could do some cross training and maybe teach you guys some things. And he said, what could your guys possibly teach mine? You got to be shitting me. He said that.

And I was humbled to the fact that a lot of my own guys were so senior and already legends in the community. There was already stories about them. So I paid attention. And we had a lot of experiences like that with the young SEALs, but a lot of them weren't. I mean, Jeremy Wise, who eventually went to work for the CIA and he was killed, unfortunately, in a suicide bombing. He was there. He was great.

a couple guys that are now in other special missions units were working with me and they were great. So I didn't have a horrible experience, but it was different. I mean, a young SEAL coming out of training, 21, 22, and even at that time, I was 26 at the time. So it was different, but we got along good. I mean, we didn't have problems with operating with them and we had a lot of

Action we had a lot of fun that rotation. What is your next assignment? So you're at the you're at third group you go to the CIF what comes next? Another another rotation in the in the CIF. I mean the CIF is a grind. Mm-hmm I did three CIF rotations that I racked back-to-back going to war coming back going to war coming back going to war coming back I eventually moved up into reconnaissance in special operations

and became a sniper, went to sniper school, went to free fall school, and started specializing my efforts on long gun. So between unilateral operations, which is working with task force, the joint task force, I think at the time we were working with Tom DeTomaso, who's a famous Black Hawk down platoon leader, and he was a special missions unit commander.

We operated under him and under Task Force 16, which is Stanley McChrystal's big kill-capture operation.

conglomerate of the best units in the world. We were part of that effort when we went out and crushed bad guys for years. I mean, it was a good run of killing a whole bunch of bad guys. Yeah. So I did that for three rotations in a row. You've got a hell of a career, man. Yeah, thanks, man. So you leave there and then... So I leave and start grinding to build up this unit, hire and fire a couple guys and

Build up a skill set for special reconnaissance in the continent of Africa to be able to respond to crisis that potentially happened and There was no there was no at the time Organization that was covering down on Africa because it used to be third groups responsibility But because of the war we had a change in hands and change in responsibility So we stood it up. It was a grind

We got validated by Special Operations Command and that was, ironically enough, September 1st of 2012. We got validated and a week later, or September 11th, Benghazi happens. I had already been notified prior to Benghazi happening that my team and myself was going to be the first guys into Libya.

to run what's called a 12-weight program, which is a congressionally mandated counterterrorism program to counter Al Qaeda. Which therein lies the "benny." Therein lies the point. Which is, before September 11, 2012, I had already been identified, we're going to go in there, stand up a counterterrorism force to counter Al Qaeda. So it's often been said that, "Hey, oh, there was no threats there.

there was threats there was bombings there were shootings there was attacks on on uh the un foreign nationals ambassador embassy staff so i was getting all those intel sit reps before that happened and then obviously that happened and it changed everything where were you when that happened ironically enough i was back in a special missions units compound doing a crosstalk brief with

basically a key leader engagement with the team lead from Team Libya that had been designated and me and the other guy from my unit because we were former unit members of that unit. We were there doing a crosstalk. I'll never forget I went I went there and met up with the J-3 which was a at the time a colonel and he told me last night

this just happened and this is what's going on and so I I stayed an extra few days to assess the situation and to get tied in because at that point it was my unit's responsibility to react and respond outside of obviously the primary main effort that unit that I was in's responsibility of

responding to that crisis. So was this happening, was Benghazi happening real time when you found out? Yes. Yeah, it was happening real time. It had, it had, it was, it had, it was still active and it was still happening and I was watching on ISR things, things unfolding. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Is this what ultimately led you to separate? Yeah, so that's exactly right. Long story short, I deployed to Libya soon after that

and stood up a 12-0 weight program. And we had all the right things done to go after the guys that were responsible for the killing of the four personnel that were killed in Benghazi. You know, Ambassador Stevens, Smith, and then Glenn Doherty and Tyrone Woods. So we went there. I was deployed there for over six months. I busted my ass and tried everything I could to

kill or capture those guys with obviously other special operations units that were there. And other, one other special operation unit that was there. And we offered up a full platter. Kill capture, bilateral mission, unilateral mission, whatever you want, we'll do. And we were told that the political climate wouldn't allow for it, so we're not going to do anything. And so, let's just say I was disgruntled when I came back.

i had a lieutenant colonel that i was co-located with that was a reserve officer from africom who was a piece of who was drinking every night getting drunk who didn't give a about the mission was making excuses every single day about not wanting to work not wanting to do the op and so when i get back i said go yourself god are you serious yeah

You know, I know how fucking tough that can be. I mean, I didn't watch, we didn't have PredFeed or anything like that, but to watch an event going down, I mean, that's one of the most, when you know you can fucking help, it's one of the most helpless feelings in the fucking world, and I've experienced that as well. We were working with a foreign counterpart and should have been on that fucking op, but we weren't, and their helos went down, and...

We listened to the entire thing on the fucking radio and and then we saw him when they got back and I mean and the event that you had this, you know stay on the sideline for us I mean, yeah, I could see how you could be that disgruntled. I mean you got out with 18 fucking years in right? Yeah. Yeah two years to retirement. Yep. Yeah, I got back I did get recruited by the CIA at the time and

They recruited me for a job and I had finished my college degree, my bachelor's degree, the year prior to that. So that was a prerequisite to become a staffer for them. I came back with the anticipation of doing that job, but the sequester happened, which was a stop loss on all or a hiring freeze on all jobs. So I wasn't able to do that job, which kind of fucked me up. I was prepared to do that.

So I transitioned off active duty and then went into the National Guard component where I took a team in Texas, a 19th Special Forces group, and was just waiting on the word. In field craft, it seems like you guys do a lot of prepping and are masters of it. And I don't know about you, but a lot of the clients that I've had think that there might be something different

they need to prepare for they think something might happen not necessarily the end of the world but they just want to be ready in case of a natural disaster an efp there's a thousand different scenarios what would you say for somebody that's completely green they don't know how to shoot they don't own a gun they don't have food storage anything what would you say the number one priority would be where do they start the number one priority for me is personal defense

because, you know, the first principle of patrolling is security. And if you can't secure yourself, you can't secure your family, you can't defend your life, you can't defend your family's life. So I would say it starts with a personal decision to...

Buy a firearm learn how to utilize a firearm and carry that firearm daily What firearm would you suggest starting with pistol or rifle? I think universally, you know, I carry different guns for different reasons But universally a Glock 19 is probably the staple conceal carry pistol In contracting we carry Glock 17s typically but Glock 19s is the right frame size for most it's the right size frame for concealment and

It has the most accessories per gun in the industry. It's a good platform. It's reasonably priced. And I've used a Glock 19 when the military got them in special operations. And I've seen them throughout my military career, and I've never seen one fail. So a single action only Glock 19 is the start point. I would definitely agree with that. It's like the Toyota Corolla of handguns. Yeah, absolutely. They just...

Never fucking die. Yeah. 100%. And then, so next would be, so you would say pistol and then move on to rifle? No, the next priority for me is med. Med? Med, absolutely. 30,000 people a year die in vehicle accidents. I wonder how many of those could have been prevented. I mean, 400 idiots a year fall out of their tree stands and hunting and break their legs and do dumb shit. So we're prone to accidents. We're prone to trauma.

And I've treated trauma in real life. I've saved people's lives with tourniquets. Tourniquet, which is a $29, $99 piece of equipment from North American Rescue, which we sell on our website at fieldcraftsurvival.com, is the number one piece of equipment in med that you need to carry. Stopping an extremity wound, a traumatic bleed,

from a femoral or brachial artery is life-saving. If you don't do that, you simply just go to sleep and die. Are you guys teaching meds? We absolutely do, yeah. We teach TCCC, Tactical Combat Casualty Care, which we were required by our contract to train. We teach a course, certified TCCC course, through NAMT, the certification on tactical med training, trauma training.

I just taught a CPR lifesaver course at my tribe expo recently. So we frequently teach med and I expect that if in contracting in austere environments, we are required to carry a tourniquet based on our own understanding of what we could run into that a civilian should do the same. Whether that's in your

inside your waistband because we do sell inside the waistband tourniquet holder or that's inside of a bag or inside your vehicle somewhere within arm's reach where if you're experiencing trauma you could save your life. Interesting. So number three, what would the number three thing be? We got pistol, we got med. If we're talking about equipment specific things that you need to carry the next piece of equipment would be the way in which you carry it which would be the bag in which you carry

A lot of people don't think about it, but the extension of your capability of what you can carry on your person is limited. You can only fit so much shit in your pockets and your pants. And if you have a bag, meaning an everyday carry bag, that might be your purse, your murse, your European man satchel. It sets you up for an extended capacity. That's how we look at vehicles.

I mean if I have a med kit in my back pocket that's a minimalist, you know, low-vis med kit, well I want my fucking car to be an ambulance. I want there to be enough med equipment to treat my family, myself, and then you upgrade that to your house as well. I want a damn hospital at my house. So having the ability to carry all their stuff is super important and in that bag I would definitely include a survival kit, a modern survival kit that

That has the staples of survival including the ability to contain water purify water start a fire signal communicate potentially sat iridium VHF UHF the list goes on gummy bears gummy bears at a

you know, that are fat free, that have lots of carbs, lots of sugars, lots of calories. They're survival bears. That's what we call them. They're survival bears. No matter where you're watching Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify podcasts.