Transcription
Hi, welcome to the Dangerous Skills podcast where we talk about life, faith, and your very own personal security. Our guest today is Sarah Adams, call sign Superbat, and she's a former CIA targeting officer with extensive experience in intelligence analysis and operations. Now, she joined the CIA in 2006, where she was a lead targeting analyst. Since leaving the CIA, she served as an investigator and an author regarding open-source materials, and she reports on threats to the US homeland. She and Dave Boon Bittton co-authored *Benghazi: Know thy enemy*, a cold case open-source investigation into the 2012 al-Qaeda attacks on US interests in Benghazi, Libya. And her most recent book is *The Gathering Storm*, co-authored with Scott Man and others. Today, Miss Adams is focused on seeking innovative solutions and challenges like the impending Al Qaeda attack on the US homeland. Can't wait to hear more about them.
Now, we have another guest today. Dave Boonbitten is a former CIA employee and Marine Corps scout sniper who has extensive experience in the military, law enforcement, protective security, and in the intelligence community. He's best known as a part of the CIA annex GRS security team that responded to the September 11th, 2012, terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, where he and his team fought terrorists for over 13 hours and saved more than 20 lives. Currently, Mr. Benton teaches tactics and shooting to civilians and law enforcement alike through his company, Threat Management Solutions.
Now, a lot has happened in the last few days regarding US foreign policy and President Trump's new Middle East reset. And I'm lucky because no one has yet had a chance to ask Sarah Adams and Dave Boon Bitten about these issues. And I'll do that now. [Music] [Music]
We are so glad to have Sarah Adams and Dave Boon Benton with us today, and we want to get right into this thing. We want to talk about something really important: The Biden-funded US homeland attack. I need to know, is the United States still giving money to the Taliban in the new administration like we were in the Biden administration?
Yeah, the money is still going to the Taliban. They basically get a piece that's humanitarian dollars, and then they get counterterrorism dollars. We actually did a little investigation the last week of January. So in the new administration and that week, $105 million was given to the Taliban in one week.
Wow. And is there any even anecdotal understanding or belief that it's still filtered down the same way down to al-Qaeda?
Yes, it still goes to al-Qaeda and a number of terrorist camps to include supporting the US homeland plot.
Wow. Okay. So, just recently, like hours ago, there was a Trump—I call it the Middle East reset—Trump's Middle East reset. And is it in any way going to affect an attack on the homeland?
Now, um, most of it was economic dealings, right, in business relationships and bringing um more dollars into the US government. So on the economic side, I don't really think it affects that way, but how we opened a relationship with the new president of Syria who actually trained some of the homeland attackers. We just enabled him and said, "Hey, you're still good with the attack." And that's very concerning to put him in that position.
Still discussing President Trump's Syrian reset. Is the new approach he's taking to Syria, is that any better? Does it help? What is it like? I'd love to hear from both of you about this. You want to go first, Spoon?
Um, no. It It's not helping in any positive way. If anything, it's just reinforcing um that we lost in that part of the region, and they're only getting stronger. So, um, you know, Galani was HTS. He was an affiliate of al-Qaeda. He's still that same tyrant. He's still that same dictator. He's still that same terrorist. Just because you put a suit on him doesn't mean he's reformed.
And your input, you know, I mean, it's part of the same thing. What I question is all those years Assad was in power, we didn't need an official relationship with the Syrian government. Why just a few months into a terrorist regime is it so important to have diplomatic relations, right? Um, it's too fast. Um, we're not prepared. Nobody's collecting on how much al-Qaeda is growing in the country. Do you know just since he took power, they established 30 new terrorist camps inside Syria that quickly? Um, and our government is almost ignoring this growth of terrorism happening in Syria because they want so bad for this new leader to be something different, and he's just not. He's always been a terrorist. He's been al-Qaeda. He's been ISIS, and he's not going to change. So obviously he can't be trusted.
Well, of course not. I mean, one thing about—I always try to explain to people. So when we did our investigation in Benghazi, right, we've come across about 175 terrorists, only one we think left terrorism out of 175. It is extremely rare. It's almost like joining a cult. You go into al-Qaeda, you stay al-Qaeda. There is not an exit. You are in it for life. You are in it for the jihad, and you're not going to give up.
So what is in—what is in this for the United States? What is in it for Trump to trust this man who, wearing his suit and tie a week earlier, was directing his people or indirectly directing his people what appears to be ethnic cleansing, the killing of Christians, murder, rape, mayhem, all directed out of a suit this time?
So part of that is that um around 2008, America decided they wanted out of the counterterrorism game. So they started reconciliation with the Taliban back in 2008. Um, we want to focus on near peer. We don't want to be involved in terrorism anymore. So if you look at Afghanistan, we gave it back to the Taliban. If you look at Syria, their thinking is if we can put someone in power that can keep that region stabilized, we don't have to worry about it, and then we can possibly use them as a proxy against Iran. Both of those are flawed.
Yeah. And one really interesting thing is when Giuliani went to do his blitzkrieg in Syria, he actually worked with al-Qaeda on that. He worked with the Taliban, and it was also approved by Iran. So our government believing they could use Giuliani against Iran is almost laughable when he is working with Iran and actually had Iran's blessing to go into Syria. So, our government also doesn't actually seem to understand what Iranian intelligence is really working on on the ground and how close they got to these terrorist groups. They decided to use them as a proxy well before our thinking to do it. They're way ahead of us.
I I heard you once say, uh, it's not so much the government is evil as they are incompetent. I'd love to hear more about that.
Yeah, that's just my uneducated opinion, but I I I think that, you know, we say they're incompetent, but they're they're incompetent because they have bad policy, and the bad policy is what drives a lot of these things that we see going on. That's what—Well, okay. And I'm not anywhere near the expert. You've—I mean, you are the experts, but even to me, that's what it looks like. So, it must be true.
Well, and also remember we have a track record of seeing this and understanding this. So when Gaddafi fell, right, our government painted it as, oh, this huge step to democracy. They backed the government at the time, but that government was aligned with al-Qaeda. So to this day, our official relationship with the Libyan government is the al-Qaeda side. Then we saw it happen in 2021 in Afghanistan, and now we're seeing it happen in Syria. So we're just watching history repeat itself and wondering why so many people haven't watched this happen for the last dozen years like we have.
Well, just to give you another example, so bad policy had us um abandoning our allies in Afghanistan. And then we want to focus on nearpeer. But if you look at Afghanistan, Afghanistan borders Russia, Iran, and China, three of our nearpeer enemies. And then we gave up Bagram, which was strategic. It's just bad policy.
And uh, now we're going to talk a little bit about *The Gathering Storm*. Let's pivot to the new book. Uh, tell us what our readers can expect from the book.
Yeah, so basically this was a project put together by Task Force Pineapple. Um, they're involved in a lot of initiatives to help our veterans, but as Boon had pointed out, right, we abandoned our allies. It caused a lot of pain to our veterans, moral injury to our veterans. So they decided to put together this plan because a lot of Americans are starting to hear about this plot, but they have a lot of questions like where do I get started, and you know, you could be a little paralyzed on how to deal with that. So this book is great. It kind of talks about the upcoming homeland plot by al-Qaeda, and then it walks through a lot of questions that you might have as an individual to prepare as a community um the law enforcement realm, and then it does this really great job of doing lessons learned from prior attacks. So you don't just have to guess. You can see, oh, this is how it was done in the past. Maybe I can take a lesson from that.
Well, I think that's something a lot of people are very desirous of getting, and I hope they're going to—I hope their marketing team is doing a good job because people need to read this book. I plan on reading it.
Well, the Biden opened borders. They obviously gave comfort to our enemies as terrorists. Tell us a little bit about who crossed the border, in what numbers, and uh, just kind of where things lie right now waiting for an attack. Gonna start with that one. There you go. Okay.
So really the frustrating thing with what happened with our border, no matter what you think the threat is, they all came across, right? So if you're worried about um human traffickers, they came in and droves. If you're worried about drug traffickers, they came in. If you're working worried about Venezuelan gang members, they came in. Obviously, we're focused on terrorists, right? So for terrorists, you know, the government's kind of talking about, oh, maybe about 2,000 came in under the ISIS bucket or within the number of Afghans we brought over, but we really believe the number, if we bring all the groups together, ISIS, al-Qaeda, some of the Pakistani um terrorist groups, some of the other Central Asians, we're talking about probably 8,000 terrorists came into the country just in the last four years.
Wow. Right. So if you say 19 did 9/11, right? Even if you just use the numbers the new director of national counterterrorism put out that's 2,000. Well, just 19 compared to 2,000 is already a beast to deal with, and we're saying it's likely four times that. So, we have a huge problem, and we need a government moving a lot faster against these terrorists and detaining them and, you know, removing them from our country.
This 8,000 number, has it been out there a while? Is that something you're kind of fielding? And I know the work you do is fluid, right? And so is that 8,000 numbers something that's kind of new with the book or new information or what?
So it's it's numerous things. So we got some numbers um out of what ISIS is saying is here. ISIS says there's several thousand here. Obviously, we know the numbers that al-Qaeda saying they sent as attackers. We now know the numbers that at least um Joe Kent, the new director, is saying are Afghans linked to terrorists which weren't in our numbers. Right. And then there's another body of numbers of um Afghans um linked basically to the Hakani network which is a designated terrorist network here. So once you pull all those numbers together you very quickly get to 8,000.
Okay. This this is the perfect question for the two of you. Uh, because I'd like to hear it from both perspectives that what are they doing right now and how are they preparing? You know, because I've seen the videos, the training videos. I've seen them. They look a lot more like special forces training. It looks a lot more like uh team training. It looks—it it looks like folks that are going to do a better swarm attack than we have ever seen fielded. So what are they—each one take a turn please. What are they doing right now as we're waiting because special forces people would be doing force multiplying right now?
So they're doing exactly that. So they learned from us. Um, there's a lot of people who fought in the Giwat, and they're used to fighting an unsophisticated inferior—inferior enemy. That is not the new Islamic army. They are very well trained, very dedicated and very capable, and they're highly intelligent. So the facilities that they're using or they use to train in because a lot of them are already here are the facilities that we left behind. So, the state-of-the-art ranges that we used when we were deployed, they're using the 360-degree ballistic shootouses that we used to perfect CQB and explosive entry. They're training in um the multi-million dollar classrooms that we used, they're training in.
And you?
Yeah. And then they learn from their own mistakes, right? It's not just our mistakes. So, um, two key mistakes they learned from is there's only two ways their plots failed, right? One is the bombs didn't work, like they failed at it. The underwear bomber got moisture. He soiled himself. The the shoe bomber got moisture in his shoe, right? And then the other one is loose lips sink ships, right? Some of the terrorists got detained. They named the other terrorists training with them. So the two ways they fix that is they've made the bombs for the attack in a laboratory, right? You can't mess it up if it's pre-made. Um, and then they basically gave new identities to all the terrorists. So even when you train together, you're training in a fake identity. So if I capture you, you can say you're in training class with the two of us, but you don't know me as Sarah and you don't know him as Boon. So what is an intelligence agent going to do when you give two fake names? And then they also, as you can imagine, like in the past, have fraudulent passports and all those type of things to travel on. So they've been smart, too. Here's why he made missteps. Let's correct them.
I've also heard you say that sometimes they like actual legit—quote, legit—travel documents and traveling rather than like going all the way down to Darian Gap and making their way up, actually just getting a legit passport and flying in.
Yeah. So the preference for the homeland attack is for them to come legally on a legal passport. Now, the passport might be in a fake name, but we're talking a legal passport from like Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, because if the US government issues them a visa, then the American people can blame the US government for allowing them in, right? So, it's black and white. Now, of course, not every single person they could get in legally. So, there are people who came over the southern border illegally, and we know at least some of the suicide bombers did.
Okay. So, uh, war fighter, tell us about these and and I I talked a little bit about them and I tried to describe them in my way, but just you are a war fighter. So, tell me about them and uh, how are they going to fight once they get on the ground? I mean, I' I've heard the term fyadine used. Tell us about that.
So you're going to—well, what we believe is that you're going to have multiple teams that can operate independently across multiple locations, which will be more than a challenge for local, state, and even federal law enforcement. These teams, not only—being well trained, they're going to be able to communicate well and coordinate multiple attacks simultaneously. But you mentioned like fyadine attackers, they're committed. Their resolve is they're going to fight and kill as many Americans they possibly can until they are killed. So if one of them seems like they're surrendering, they're not. They're drawing you in or they're going to draw in more first responders. If one detonates and first responders roll up into the scene, be weary of a follow-on attack. So again, they're going to be very mobile, extremely violent, and then well coordinated and dedicated.
I've talked with some of my friends in EMS and fire and just in general the three main first responders, and I've I've asked them, okay, if you came into a situation like this, two guys take over a school and they heard people—they they shoot some people in the front yard in the leg. They herd kids into a a gymnasium. They start stringing explosives. In another part of the building, they set a fire. And I said, "If you encountered something like that, what would it mean?" Well, it mean it'd be easy for the other guys to go put out the fire. And I'm like, "No, it looks to me like they're trying to draw everybody into a central place and then and then do a secondary kind of explosion or a secondary attack." Um, Bezam meets Cobar Towers, right? So, um, talk a little bit about their—the psychology of this.
Yeah, I mean, there's multiple pieces to their psychology. One is they want the concept of sillighting first responders, right? They want to take out first responders completely from the equation. So, you feel alone, you feel nobody came to save you, you feel your government failed you, right? So, there's multiple ways they can do this, of course. Um, one is they have done some drills on hospitals, and that's why that's come up a few times. You know, another thing that they did in Israel is they directly went straight for and attacked the police station. That was their first and immediate attack. Um, and then another interesting thing they did in Israel is, and think about this in your own communities, there's only so many ways the first responders are coming in. So they set up along those roadways and attacked the first responders as they made the response, right? So um, a lot of people actually didn't think there really was much of a response, but it was really because Israel hasn't been honest completely and said we lost a lot of first responders when they ran in to help. And you know, we lost of course a ton of first responders in 9/11. So so we know the damage that causes just in general to the response.
Well, I'm I'm I'm just kind of nonp plus. I tell you what, we'll go to a commercial break and come back and I'll try and gather myself.
Hi, this is Charles Powell, and my first book in the Dangerous Skills book series is entitled *Fearing What the Night Brings*. It tells the story of my life undercover in the war on drugs and working as a cop in Houston, Texas. I also write about some painful childhood experiences which might begin to shed some light on why I sought out Dangerous Living in the first place. *Dangerous Skills: Fearing What the Night Brings* comes out for release on June 27th, 2025, on Amazon.com. Available in paperback, for Kindle, and in audiobook. Buy two copies, give one to a friend.
All right, we're back with our guests, Sarah Adams and Dave Boon Benton. It's a real pleasure to have you with us today. Thank you for your time and your comments. Uh, you mentioned October 7th, Israel attacked a few years ago. And go ahead and rip the band-aid off for us. Go ahead and just tell everybody the truth. I mean, it wasn't just Gazins. It wasn't just Palestinians, right?
Yeah. I mean, the best way and the most honest way to talk about October 7th, it was the dress rehearsal for the US homeland attacks, right?
That's crazy. So, what they did in Gaza, they want to do 10 times the size in America. Doesn't mean they will. America's a different beast. Um, you know, they can have ambitions. Doesn't mean, you know, we won't have people here to put them down. But when you look at that attack, the official number hasn't even come out yet, but the number of terrorists involved is somewhere between 6,000 and 7,500.
Okay, that I have not heard any number anywhere near that.
Yes, exactly. Wow. So, obviously most people know Hamas—just over time, even if you aren't a terrorism expert—they're kind of lazy. They're not well trained. It's really why Israel didn't take some of the threats serious, right? It's like, yeah, there might be a little attack, but we are much more capable of handling Hamas. Well, what happened is other groups got involved in supporting and plotting this, including al-Qaeda senior leadership, including the Taliban, including Iran, right? So, they ended up going to the level of training. Boon explained to you, they call it advanced urban warfare. Um, it doesn't exactly line up with how we describe it, but that's what the terrorists call it. And they were at another level that even Israel didn't have the intelligence on that they were training um to that level. So, at least the capabilities you saw on October 7th will be very consistent with what you see in the US homeland. So, if you are shocked by that, you're really going to be shocked by who's been deployed here.
Well, as much as it looked like Israel was caught flatfooted and the way—
That the the attacks were covered, the I mean, even when you saw the attackers going back and, you know, the film crews were there, the way it played out visually looked like, oh, maybe there's, you know, a thousand people doing this totally, but for it to it really is a swarm attack when it's 6,000 people. Yes.
So October 7th attacks in Israel in the United States. Uh, and before because the question I want to get answered is what does that look like in middle America? But before you answer that, I've never understood and I've been in a lot, you know, I'll be on an airplane and a guy next to me. I don't understand why they always tack New York and LA and Washington. It's stupid because if they ever clacked off vest, I mean, even in the even in the movies, you know, they show them in middle America clacking off vest and it shuts the whole thing down. Sakario, you know, and so I don't understand and I think people would like to know before you answer about the US, why don't they, you know, because we even hear now you folks have said it'll probably be cities, not small towns in America.
Yeah, we think they'll be more of the mid-level and then we think the usual like Washington DC is a main target for the big 911, but a lot of it is to do with the fact they need to blend, right? They need to live in an environment for a while. You know, when they went to Africa back in the day and did the embassy attack in Nairobi, they had to live there for 9 months. Now, think about putting a terrorist in a city for a year, right? There's certain cities you can put them in and they'll blend nicely, but you know, you have a cell of eight guys in your town sitting around not getting jobs. I mean, you know, um the the red flags go up and a lot of that actually happened prior to 911, which could have, if you put all the pieces together, maybe done some thwarting. And so al-Qaeda's like, we're not going to make that mistake again. So, they have to settle at least in some of these larger met, you know, metropolitan areas to fit in. And then their attacks have to be within some distance of it, right? Cuz you're moving weapons, you're potentially moving suicide vests, you got teams, you're doing casing, right? So you have to be in at least a decent geographical area to where you're living just to make it all go smoothly, not get thwarted and not make mistakes.
Okay, Boon. So, uh, the things that people talk to me about and and that's really what I'm trying to really what I wanted to try and do with you folks today was to talk about things people out there talk about and uh, and I know you answer these questions all the time, but my folks want to know, are they going to go in a city and try to knock out the power grid and at the same time hit the water and at the same time hit a school or do a thing? What kind of coordination do you folks see uh taking place, you know, this whatever particular city it is, are they going to try and take it out in a lot of different ways?
So, we have to amplify that a little bit. So, um we don't know exactly what the detailed plan is yet. Um, but when we say multiple attacks at multiple locations, we're talking not only multiple locations in a city, but multiple cities. So, there might be an attack in Houston simultaneously. There's an attack somewhere in Virginia, there's another attack um, you know, in another city. So this is nationwide which will create panic, chaos, fear and a paralysis that will overwhelm the American response system and the American psyche and basically shut the country down.
Yeah. And I think one thing that makes it more understandable cuz we lots of times think the ground attacks in a city cuz we got used to October 7th, but there's still an aviation piece of the plot. And I think at least those of us who are older understood what they did with four airplanes, but remember even in real time, we didn't know if it was four airplanes. We didn't know if it was 10 airplanes. We didn't know if it was 20 airplanes. We didn't even know what was going on, right? And so they're going to have the same type of airline plot, but it's going to be three times larger. So just think the chaos of is this real? What's going on? Uh what happened to that plane? Why did that plane come down? How quickly do you ground stop all the planes before something else happens? Right? And now that is over the whole United States, right? Cuz these planes are above us. Um and so that's something we need to keep in mind too. There's that piece of the plot which again will [__] responses and just cause chaos. Right? Americans aren't going to know what's going on. Even on 911, it was so confusing. And remember, we didn't even know who Bin Laden was when people started saying Bin Laden, right? I'm a college student. Who's this guy that took off did this big attack on America? And we have a lot of Americans even today don't even hear the name al-Qaeda, right? They don't they don't know there was any sort of threat. So, um, so it's very concerning. We are going to be caught off guard in some ways. And the terrorists are finding ways to catch us off guard and they're being creative. I mean we saw in Israel they came in the paragliders creative Mumbai they came on boats into that a city that large creative right so so how are they going to do that here with us you have to look at some of the second and third order of effects as well let's say that they hit a school um obviously it'll be devastating you know for the the casualties there but think about all the parents trying to go to that school to see what happened to their loved ones and then think about what that looks like when it comes to traffic and then think about what that looks like trying to take casualties to a level one trauma center, you know, and you just start amplifying and multiplying all these second and third effects and then amplify that across the country. And you know, you talked about just infrastructure, right? Like the power grid. Well, in a crisis like this, just the phone calls alone to 911 are going to 911 is going to crash the system.
So, we also try to tell people almost think it's like a hurricane, right? um the concept of losing power, not understanding things for a week, being able to have food for a week, you know, kind of like stay home, stay with your family, protect each other, um don't go out and explore. You could get in the way of people really trying to help someone. Also, what if it's not like the real 9/11? It goes the next day and the next day and the next day. Why would you put yourself at risk? So, we just want people just to kind of like prepare to hunker down. And really, the best way is to prepare like you would for a hurricane. I know you remember, but maybe some some of your viewers don't remember because they're not old enough. But think about the DC snipers. Yes. People were scared to go to the grocery store. You know, they were scared to go get gas. You know, they were scared to do daily activities that they needed to sustain life. I I do remember that. And I um you know when you think about all the disconnect that occurs and the psyche co taught us that there's nothing people would not give up for toilet paper. They were really worried about that.
I guarantee I've got a friend that if I don't ask this question he will literally lose his mind. How? Because he knows you know about your training and the things you've done. And so the question would be how should law enforcement how should civilians responsibly be training uh from that standpoint? How how should they be preparing?
Okay, so we both have an answer for this. So um law enforcement should train to where they're able to use what they use for active shooter, active killings, but multipi multiply that. So don't focus on one shooter, focus on multiple shooters. Um they need to be extremely mobile and reactive and they need to operate independently. Um they can't wait around for authority from higher command. Yes. So they have to use commander's intent and decentralized leadership and respond eliminate the threat as rapidly as they can. They also need to have extremely well well-hard skills. Now, I know budget comes into this, but basically if you're a law enforcement officer and you struggle on the state qualification course, you're lacking. Well, a lot of agencies don't even have long guns and then those that do shoot them just enough to qualify once a year and that is in no way prepared. No, that's definitely a liability. Law enforcement also needs to have the medical skills like stop the bleed to where they can treat penetrating blast injuries and trauma from gunshot wounds. And they need to have the kits in their vehicles and on their bodies. Now, civilians or law-abiding Americans, they should have a means to defend themselves, but they should be more concerned about removing themselves and their loved ones out of the hot area or the ex, you know, where the killing is happening and get to safety and understanding how to use cover and concealment. They should also be force multipliers and be trained and prepared to help the first responders when it comes to massive hemorrhage, um, penetrating trauma from blast injuries and or gunshot wounds.
Well, everybody at my house is a war fighter. I've got some, uh, real skills there. Uh, especially my wife. Um, what would your answer be to that, ma'am, about training and preparation?
Well, sometimes it's just mindset, right? You need to prepare yourself and your family for what's coming because you can't help anyone if you're just going to panic. Um, and you know, your family is going to turn to you and expect you to be prepared. I do love the stop the bleed, right, for everyone across your family. Um, you know, it's even good, you know, for your teenagers. Another thing is, and I know it's cheesy, but it's just the concept of see something, say something, right? If you explain to your family this might happen, you talk to them about, hey, talk to me if you see someone loitering out of your school. Talk to me if you see some strange people um coming into the hospital asking questions. Um talk to your pastor. Is anyone coming in here asking you about your security team? Um another question we've had at churches is do you live stream? If someone's asking if you live stream, you better call the police, right? Um all those type of things. Everyone is a sensor. The best way to thwart this plot because we'd like to get ahead of it instead of respond is people seeing things out of place. You know your neighborhood the best, right? You know everyone on that neighborhood. When something is different, you know it. It's it's at the back. It come your hair is up at the back of your neck. Don't feel strange reporting it. Don't feel strange talking to people about it. We get tips all the time from people and they're like, "Oh, we're sending it to you. We're not really sure, you know, if this is the level to go to the government." Like, no, this is the level to go to the government. Pass it. Don't feel um bad doing that because all those little pieces will come together and and make a picture. And that's what we're hoping for.
In my household uh because my background is you know my background is not the normal civilian background. So in our world and just make comment on this uh in our world we already have a plan and uh when day X happens which is what we call it when day X happens you'll you'll know it's happening and you know everybody is supposed to start making their way back uh to the homestead and some of them are miles away in another city. Uh but uh people have responsibilities to do uh you know there's one last hit at the grocery store and I know a lot of people would be like no man stay in. It's like well a block and a half away I want one more I got to have more toilet paper at those and then uh and then we have you know all the normal things you know we have generator and fuel and different things. We're getting into solar generators and different other things but we each have plans. We each have responsibilities. They you fill up the the bathtub water coffin thing and you know even even the children have something to do to keep them busy. So we have a plan to get together. We have a plan to defend ourselves. We have a plan to be of service to others uh and of benefit to others because it doesn't matter what you save or what you have if you're not helping somebody else. That's not what my belief system is. And uh so you know being a Christian isn't all about just what you don't do and throwing a lot of negatives around. It's about being proactive and being part of the solution in my world in my belief system. So okay so we have a plan.
One more thing I want to mention. So a lot of my friends are like so what what do I need to buy when I go to the grocery store? I'm not a and I'm not a prepper but I I have a little extra. And um so I had a lot of friends come after me. Hey, could you do something? So, I got with some really learned friends, doctors and other ones, and I put a one sheet together, uh, two sides, and it's about food and drugs. And, uh, so I'll inevitably give it to someone, and they'll say, well, there's, yeah, this is just stuff to buy. And I said, I didn't say it was magic. Well, then what is important about it? And I tell them, this helps you think on a day when you can't think good. And so preparation in this regard, talk to us a little bit about it. Uh having a plan.
So there there's um a lot of different things that go into that plan. And Sarah's real good at at hitting a lot of those softer skills when it comes to the plan, but um we don't believe in preppers and prepping. We believe more in being self-reliant. And that's a lifestyle. You know, prepping is kind of like, hey, I'm going to buy a bunch of this and hoard it, and then if I need it, it'll be ready. Well, being resilient means that you're capable to produce things on your own and take care of yourself and not rely on the grid. And there's different levels levels to how much you rely or don't rely on the grid. So, obviously, you should have some foods that can last for about 2 weeks. But other than that, if we talk about long-term food, you need your own food source if you're truly reliant versus prepping.
Yeah. And another thing is it's really just the basics of the plan, right? Because everyone knows what they need to do and then you're not spending your time stressing, panicking, scrolling on your phone to find out the next update, right? Because you're doing something to help each other, to prepare each other. Um, another thing is it takes some stress off if you have younger people in the family, right? You they've already rehearsed something. You've maybe played some what if games with them. Um, and it makes them, like he said, resilient. But, but it's really amazing like how young people can cope with things if you train them. Um, give them the respect of at least explaining, you know, something might happen. Now, they don't need to know the level of something like terrorism. It can just be emergency, crisis, weather. You could use tornado to do your planning, right? That doesn't really matter. And then the other part is you need people to feel safe and secure no matter what. Right? You got to f even if you all made a plan, you're ready to go in that moment. You need to make sure are you okay, right? What do you need from me? Right? It might just be a hug, right? Because you know, not everyone copes the same way. Um so you also just I need to be there for my family. And then even after the fact, you know, what are we going to do to make sure if they were traumatized by this situation, right? Like I had a coworker in the last hurricane and um their house was hit by a tree and he didn't really take a big deal about it because they fixed it right away but he didn't realize it hit his daughter's bedroom and then she didn't want to she couldn't sleep well anymore and it took him weeks right to realize oh that's her problem cuz she didn't tell him right and she had a fear from it. So if you don't understand what those fears are you can't work through them um you know and strengthen each other. So, I really just wish people would just focus on this is an emergency, how we're going to deal with it, how we're going to stay together. You know, we have a plan. We can trust each other. I can rely on you. You're going to be there. And now, another piece of that plan is you might travel a lot right now. What's the plan? Make the plan with you not there. So, then we that fear is gone. Um have it so cash is accessible, right? Um just all those little things. if the parents aren't there, hey, we know what to do. Or anyone in the family. I mean, if we're saying there might be a large ground stop of airplanes, this is going to be a lot of families separated for a week or so, right? So, just get everyone prepared um with the fact that you might not be together, but you still have to get through this.
Well, that's excellent. Well, I can tell you when when 911 happened the first time, we weren't sitting there watching television like everybody else. We went into action. We did. So, I've seen you and some of your other co-authors. I've seen you, Scott, man, others. Uh, I've seen you folks talk about, okay, in the event of a major emergency, a crisis, wouldn't it be good if they powers that be had already had plans and they were already willing to use Giwat warriors uh in the crisis? In what ways and how and what is the benefit and how do they get started?
So when it comes to the GWAT, you have a whole generation who have been in extreme environments and have dealt with threats like this and they're very diverse and they bring a lot of skills with them. So currently we're in a generation where we have people in law enforcement, um public service, firefighters, um um EMS that weren't even alive when 9/11 happened. So they might not have the experience to deal with this type of extreme threat. So bringing in those GWAT veterans to help with that and kind of fill those gaps can go a long way. Plus, um, when budget is very, uh, thin for everybody, uh, the Gwy community is almost like a free resource to come in and do threat assessments or grabbing an 18 Delta Special Forces medic to do free stop the bleed courses. Now, also, you have those same um, resources that you might be able to get from some law enforcement agencies or the fire department to come and teach, you know, medical courses. It's just the GWAT veteran has a lot of knowledge that can be tapped into for free and they're already out there in the community. Why would you not want to include them?
And what I love about what you're saying is um I was with a medical person and they were talking about what they would use for a particular kind of chest wound. And then the Gwatt warrior was there. Yeah, duct tape. Don't waste my time. It was almost like he was a savant. They're like over here talking about all these things. You're wasting your time. Just put duct tape on it. And you know, because real-world experience, this person had seen traumatic amputations, real serious chest wounds and problems and things and running out of medical supplies using what they had. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a really good point. So, for 20 years, right, we sent these men and women to these war zones and they had to be scrappy. Now, scrappy is great when you got low budgets, right? But scrappy um also is going to matter in these crisises because they chose to serve. A lot of these people volunteered to serve their government after 9/11. That's already their temperament, their mentality, the humans they are, right? So, if you get to take advantage of that, do it. And we saw three really great examples. We saw the Giwa veterans step up during the fall of Afghanistan and go in and save Americans that were left behind. A lot of people don't know 8,000 Americans were left
behind um, at the end of August, in 2021. That's a very large number, as our government was telling people 100. Um, when Ukraine kicked off, the Giwat veterans went in there and started evacuating people because that war moved in quick. The Russians moved in quick, right? There was a lot of people to save, right? There weren't just Americans. There were a lot of international students in Ukraine, from Africa, from India. Like, who's going to go in there and help them, right? It was actually American Giwa veterans who were evacuating them over the borders. Um, and then when we just saw these horrible hurricanes this last fall, when you talk to people in some of those remote areas, they say, "Yep, the first person who showed up here, they had a backpack on, they were a veteran, and they worked for no one, right? They weren't working for the government. They might have worked for a nonprofit. They might have lived three hours away, and like, I'm going to get in there and help somebody, right? Because that's who they are. And so that's who we're relying on because you're not going to be able to wait on the government. You're going to need these people in your community. And so why not now have the relationships?
If you're going to do a tabletop, invite, you know, the veteran community. If you're going to talk about Fedayan attackers, bring a couple speakers who are in Fallujah and Ramadi, right? And fought these guys. Um, you know, if you're going to do medical, find out who around you might have the skills already, right? Um, we used to do that all the time when I worked overseas. People think CIA people are the perfect train. No, but a lot of CIA people are. They put you in a room. They're like, "This is how you do this. This is how you do that." You have to be proactive and want to learn these things on your own and ask for the help. Now is the time to ask for help. When the crisis is going on, if you didn't make these relationships now, you don't know who to call, and you don't know who to rely on.
Is there a set of topics like you could—here's a here's a set of topics—or maybe it could be created that uh local county governments uh could get together on, and is there a tabletop method as per se that could be presented to them? Okay, we're going to get together next month on the 7th. We're going to do a tabletop about Fedayan attackers or about medical and being scrappy and using GWAP warriors. Uh, is there something that we could tap into that is a set of topics and a method? Okay, we get together over time. It takes two hours to do this or whatever, and this is our method. So the the Gathering Storm book does exactly that, and that's the purpose for it is to pose questions and then leave it up to you to solve the answers. So I can come in personally and tell you, hey, I think you should do this, this, this, and this according to the Boone method. That doesn't mean I'm right. You know, your challenges are unique to you and your community. So, I have one perspective, but um, if I have a gathering of a diverse set of GWAT veterans, they have a different perspective that I might not have just coming from a law enforcement background or an EMS background or from um being a mayor or, you know, a community leader. You get a different perspective that normally you wouldn't think of depending on what you do.
So that that gathering storm um not only covers case studies for law enforcement to see the lessons learned and the challenges they might have to overcome, but it's also kind of like a checklist of potential problems for the entire community to look at and say, "Well, me as mayor, how would I solve that?" Or me as a sheriff, how would I approach that? Or me as a medical director, how would I approach that? or um, collectively um, several people on the board of education. How would we deal with that for our little piece of the pie in our community? So that really is a checklist, an—to not answer the questions but to ask the questions and then collectively as a community to come up with and solve those answers and you know, work smarter not harder. We are in the era of chat GPT AI, right? So all you need to do is say um, "I want to make a tabletop exercise in my community. I live in Franklin Springs. We are going to have a marathon. Here's the date. We want to model a terrorist attack by um the Boston bombing. I want to talk—I want to bring in the mayor. I want to bring in the local hospital. I want to bring in the police department. I want to bring in um the the run organizer, maybe it's a a nonprofit for the school, whatever." And ChatGPT will walk through and make you your whole tabletop. And then the next time around, you could pick, um, "Hey, we have a military housing compound in our community. What if that had multiple phases of attacks?" And ask it, build this out as a tabletop. It's really fascinating now with AI that not only can build up the tabletops, it can say, you know, "I've I've done this a lot of times, like what were the lessons learned from this? What were the law enforcement failures of this?" Because then you can actually teach those too as you're going through it. So again, you don't actually have to be the um expert on bezelin, but boy, if you utilize AI, you can put a really great um tabletop together to do with your local school for something similar. And so just take advantage of that.
All right, we've had a great time. Thank you for being with me. I've got one more question for both of you. Um, what is the latest data you're getting? What does it suggest in terms of—and everybody wants to say timing, but—and while I'll say those words, I'm not trying to tie you to that because I already know what the answer is going to be. But what what are things looking like? How have things changed from like other appearances you've had? Has the picture changed any? And just the latest forecast. We're going to look right out the window and see what the weather is on this. What would you say about the coming attack on the American homeland? Sure. And you know, we're two different people. We'll have different opinions. You know, my opinion is at least on paper, they planned the homeland attack for 2025 as we've brought up. Um, they had planned October 7th for 2022 and pushed it a year, right? So you have a window it could push to. Um, another thing though we want to point out is two different things. One is there's suicide vests involved. There's chemicals involved. We believe they have a shelf life. Do we know the shelf life? No. But but terrorists have to make decisions on timing based on the shelf life of the chemicals. Right.
Another thing that happened that was really interesting in our favor um, you know, as a country is so you know, there was the New Orleans attack, right? So that terrorist cased New Orleans. He cased Tampa, Florida. He chose New Orleans. Um, you know, the government really hasn't been as forthcoming as they should, but from what we've seen, you know, the ISIS branch in Iraq planned that. The mastermind who planned it actually ended up getting killed in a strike in March. Right now, is he the mastermind for the other midtier cities in the United States? That would be amazing, right? We don't know for sure, but we could have thwarted multiple follow-on top um attacks just by the strike on him. And that's a thing, right? When you're proactive in going after these external operatives and external planners, you do throw attacks. So, I think that's a benefit at least for the attacks we talk about where you live, work, and play, your local communities, your schools, your supermarkets. Now, there's the big 9/11 attack which isn't as strongly ISIS controlled and focused, right? And that's the one we believe is in honor of Osama bin Laden. They want to take it to the US government. It's mostly a DC focus in the airline plot. We have not seen anything yet that we think is at least a thwarting that plot. So, we still think it's on track and go, but we don't know the timing.
I I agree with what Sarah said, but I also kind of think about it a little differently. So um, we think of time from a western perspective. When it comes to terrorism and these threats, they don't think in time like we do. So like Sarah said, everything we have right now indicates that they want to do it within 2025, somewhere within there. But um, anything we do or things that happen in the world can um push it or maybe speed it up. But when it comes to terrorism, we think in four-year term limits. When they think of it, they're thinking generationally, you know, so they're patient. Um, if things don't work in their favor during 2025, um 26, 27, 28, they're okay with that. They will wait until the time is appropriate. So again, we believe it'll be, you know, 2025 this year or 2026 next year. But if it doesn't happen this year, it doesn't mean it's not going to happen. If it doesn't happen next year, it doesn't mean it's not going to happen because of the way they think in terms of time. Yeah. The good part is the more you get them to push their timeline, um higher costs, right? If they have a very large number of people in America, um they need to keep them here legal, right? Even if you came on a tourist or business visa, you got to renew it, right? You're paying for apartments, you're paying for safe houses. There's suicide vests. There's automatic weapons, right? Those things could be found. So, we want them to extend. If you can't stop the plot, let's extend the timeline, right? It gives more time for law enforcement. Gives more time to make mistakes. It might even give more time for one of these terrorists to be like, "Yeah, I don't know what I was committed to, right? They put me on drugs when they put me in the suicide bomber camp. Now, my I have a clear mind again, but I don't want to do this." Right? And and they might report something. So, um, I always like to look at our goal is to thwart it, right? How can we affect it? What can we do? And that's why we say things like harden the hospital because if they were going to target that, now they got to pick another target. When they pick another target, they got to recase. Um, there's a lot of things involved in that that are um visual, right, that you could see and maybe report it. And so that's why we say everyone's a sensor and get involved in helping with this. One good thing with time though, if it doesn't happen this year, that's another year we have to prepare. So the longer they take, the more time we have to get ready. And Israel made that mistake, right? They were getting little pieces that something was going to happen. They didn't think it was big as it was, but boy, it pushed a year. They had one whole year to like harden, prepare, get ahead of it, and they really didn't take those extra steps. It was kind of little hubris, right? Well, let's not make the same mistake they did, right? Let's be ahead of it. Let's—Hey, they want to—if this is going to happen, they're going to come here. We're going to show them never try this again in the US. Well, that's great. Well, thank you so much for being here. I could never find words to end this better than that. That's amazing. Thank you for watching the Dangerous Skills Podcast. We'll see you next time. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat.