Kris Paronto
Appearances
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It wasn't going to have a place in the movie. It didn't need to. But they were arguing. It's in the book. And that's where Tig was told, Tig's like, motherfucker, we got to go. We got to go. We got to go now. And that's where Bob told, stand down. You guys got to stand down. He told Tig and Tyrone and Jack's car right there. And I don't think it was malicious. I don't think it was nefarious.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I think he just was shitting down his leg. Later, it was nefarious with the military not coming. That was purely political, nefarious actions from the power that be, the commander-in-chief and secretary of state and all that. But that, I could be wrong, but regardless, we were told to stand down. And so we're told to wait once, stand down 15 minutes later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then at the 25-minute mark of us waiting there, because remember, the State Department guys have our freaks, have our ICOM freaks. They're calling us on the radios. And that was heartbreaking, man. That really was, because we're listening to them, and they're like, GRS, where are you? GRS, where the fuck are you? We need you. GRS, we've been overrun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
GRS, they're lighting the buildings on fire. We're hearing all this, and we're like, guys, rise to that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We didn't get along. He was condescending as hell. I didn't get along with him. I didn't like him. I didn't care for him. We worked in Mosul together as well. Didn't like him there. I thought we made him pretty. Well, I think that was the combination of characters. We had a team leader, and we had the chief. Chief was very passive. What's this guy doing now?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He got his CIS, so he got his top tier to retire as a CIS level. And then he became a contract instructor at the farm.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He may not be doing that. He's made enough. I mean, it's cis-level retirement.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's a shit show. It's a clown show.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He's probably retired now, living in Williamsburg or somewhere nice with 1,000 acres. I mean, he's made plenty of money. He got the highest level of the CIA.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You know what it is. You can't stop fighting. What am I going to do? Run off my building and go, help? He's got three guys up there. I got to keep fighting. I got my sector behind me I got to take. I turn around. I come back. They're still shooting. I took two more shots, and then I saw boom, boom, boom. If you've been in artillery, you call for fire and you know what that is.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I don't think they give a shit, dude. You don't think they give a shit? I hope he doesn't. But it's like asking me, you know, does Kamala Harris sleep well at night? You know she sleeps like a baby. Because they think they're right all the time. He was, I'm right, you're wrong. I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but he seriously was going to stay there to collect intel when we were leaving out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
After the mortars hit, after the bombs hit, after Ronan Bubb died, we had to force his ass out of the compound because he still was going to stay there and collect intel. And that was him. They are so elite. They're elitists. And they just think they're the smartest people in the room. And that's one of the reasons why I always would fuck with them. Because they're not.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And here's this knucklehead hayseed from Kansas giving you shit because you think you're the smartest person in the room. But that was him. And when we heard Alec... And he's in the talk. So he's watching his team basically get decimated. They're lighting the buildings on fire. He's watching all on the CCTV cameras. He says, Juras, if you don't get her, we're all going to fucking die.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was a movie magic. That's what he said. Tyrone went like, hey, Tyrone's awesome. He's in the sedan. You're in armored vehicles. You can't roll the windows down. So he cracks the door and he just does this. I was like, wow, that is. I still get chills thinking about it because, you know, he was big. His arms were like that. And he had a beard like Leonidas.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He had dyed it black, so he looked like Leonidas. She was like, you're trying to look like Leonidas, aren't you? I was like, yeah. But I remember thinking to myself when I saw that, I was like, man, I go to combat with Leonidas. This is fucking awesome. And I gave him a thumbs up and we started to head out the gate. Now, we didn't quite make it out the gate because, like I said, I'm war gaming.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We're still going through our heads. It's a chess game. Stay three steps ahead. If you're racing your gun, you failed somewhere. We need something. I don't know what we need. Then I realized it. I said, we need them all. I'm not going to tell you his real name, but the interpreter. We got to get them all. Now, he looked pretty good in the movie. Like young guy, kind of young, 40s, in shape.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Dude, he didn't look like that. He looked like Bob Newhart. Seriously. He looked like an Egyptian Bob Newhart. He was adorable. Glasses, droopy cheeks, old dude, bald. We need him, though. We don't have combat turps. So I'm calling him. I'm trying to find him. You have faith. I'm going to find him. I say, stop the cars. I get out of the car.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's fire for effect. They're right where they want to hit. Night vision goes white. And as it comes back, all I see is the pixie dust. It got quiet. It got silent. Really weird. I thought they were going to keep coming. And all I saw was the charged particles because, you know, blow-up explosion, the debris, the dust gets either heated or charged. And it looks like it does.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I'm thinking I'm going to have to run around this damn base to try to find this guy. And the Lord works in mysterious ways, brother. I get out. I come to the front of my hood. I think I'm going to have to run to his hooch and then run to the skiff to find him. And he's walking right in front of my car. Thank you. I said, we need you, man. And it was awesome. It was awesome. Because he did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He got an argument. Not an argument. He was just shitting his pants because he doesn't want to go. Bob Newhart doesn't go to combat, man. It doesn't happen. And his eyes are huge. And I said, dude, we need you, man. We need you. I don't speak Arabic well enough. None of us do. We don't want blue on green. You know what that is?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But for your listeners that don't, a friendly fire incident with a foreign force because of a language barrier. Blue on green. And I said, dude, we need you, man. And he goes, Tano, I'm not a combat trip. I said, I know that, brother. He goes, I'm not weapons qualified. I said, I know that. And I had a Glock 19 on my hip. I handed it to him. I said, here, I'll go get your stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was freaking awesome. He took it, and he ran back into Building C. Initially, I thought I lost my weapon. Boone did too. Boone was looking at me, shaking his head when he ran away. But he came back out and he ran back out. And it was awesome because he didn't have the cool Gucci gear like we do, you know, the form-fitting shit looking cool. He had to borrow somebody's helmet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was way too big for him. So it was all jingling on his head. I mean, it could even have been out backwards. I mean, it just didn't fit him. He didn't have body armor. He had a flak jacket because that's all he could find. He's got his finger in the trigger well as he's running towards me. He's flagging the shit out of me. And all I could do was marvel at it that whole time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I just marveled like... This little dude that looks like a little turtle is running towards me right now, flagging the shit out of me with this gun. And I have never felt more motivated in my life because this dude had no business going. He's not a SEAL. He's not a Marine. He's not a Ranger. He's not security. He's not law enforcement.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He's a little interpreter that he is giving of himself and he's coming with us. And I'm like, that is what heroism is. That's bravery.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Selfless service. That's it, man. And- He got in the car. I did take his finger out of the trigger well. I said, put your gun in. Because I didn't want him to shoot me in the back. He had to go behind me. And then we took off. And we started to head down there. And that was our trek towards the consulate. And it just got even hairier from there. But we get there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We stop on a road called Gunfighter. It was called Gunfighter. It wasn't Moving Magic. That's what we called it. We had a gunfighter here. And Adidas was the other road on the other side. And there was locals there. They looked like they were shooting back. And it looks like in the movie, we get up and it's creeping up. They actually were already in a firefight.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They were already shooting back and forth. We didn't know who friend or foe was, but they weren't shooting at us. So we get out of the car. Boone and myself did tell Henry. We said, Henry, get this figured out. We had our TL with us in the car. So we said, you just stick with the TL. Tell us what the hell's going on. And then... Again, leaders took over. Leaders do what leaders do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Rome parked, Jack parked, Tig parked, we parked behind him, and we started to move in position to engage. And you get close to that wall and you start hearing those cracks. Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, because, you know, the bullets were going by your head. You're breaking the sound barrier. You're hearing a shh every once in a while.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It looks like pixie dust coming down with my night vision starts to come back and refocus from the white light. And they were all gone. And my brain said, your team just got turned to dust. It's like, holy, I mean, it was, it was, it was, and it maybe it felt like longer than what it was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then there was a block, center block wall behind us, so you'd hear a smack from around 762 hitting the wall, and it was freaking, it was all, you know, it's fucking awesome. It's, It's awesome. And I saw Rowan start to engage. Nobody said a word and everybody just started to engage. And we started to move. And Tig got his, Tig got our 203, you know, our 1203.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He cracked the breech, put that HEDP round and that high explosive dual purpose round. And he just started throwing rounds down range. Boone came up to me and said, as we're shooting, he goes, you know, we knew there was a building off in the distance that we thought we could get up there and put machine gun fire, sniper fire. And so he goes, Tano, let's get high, man. Let's get high.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I said, roger that. So he went and got his SR-25. I went and grabbed the 46. I had my 46 M4 covered. I was wearing shorts. Boy, that's – were you wearing shorts? Yeah, I was. Actually, they were just a grayer version of these. They were a tan version of these. They were shorts I'd made in Canada or from old TruSpec pants.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I was also wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt, but we couldn't put that in the movie because I guess Disney didn't like Mickey Mouse shooting terrorists, but I had a Mickey Mouse shirt. Probably the closest thing he could get was the panda shirt, but it was a Mickey Mouse shirt. But yeah, and we just started climbing walls, man. And it was hard. I wasn't ready. I wasn't no spring chicken anymore.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Eight foot high block walls with all that gear on. A 200 round drum on, a nutsack on the 100 rounds on the 46. Magazines all over me, magazines all in my pocket. And just sucked it up. And, you know, I tell you what, the first wall we climbed over, I was just getting ready to get shot in the butt or the head. So I looked over, didn't see anything, and then I went butt first.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So I figured, well, I'll get shot in the butt. I could still probably fight. If I get shot in the head, I'm fucking out. But I'll be quite honest, the third, fourth wall, I didn't even care anymore. Just so smoke, get me over this wall. And we, it's only 400 meters. We're 400 meters from the compound at that point.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Jack, Tyrone, and Tig went down and fought their way down and suppressed the weapons, just like the movie did. They went down the main alleyway to the front gate, and they suppressed because Tig had that 203, and he's just knocking them back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And we had some local help, PKM, a guy with a PKM and some AK-47 guys, but half of them didn't know what the hell they were doing anyway, but at least it was gunfire. Boone and I did have two locals that we took with us. They did. The movie is two guys came to me before we jumped that first wall and said, hey, mister, can we go with you? And I looked at them and they were kids.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And at first, I just felt like I could trust them. I go, 17 Feb? They said, yeah. I said, come on. And Boone's like, what the fuck are you doing? I said, dude, I said, Forge the Fire Team, man. And I said, I'll stay in the front. You just stay in the back. If they, well, then you kill them. So, and they went with us that whole time. And we jumped walls, got onto that building.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it was that disheartening. If you, again, watch the movie, it's pretty spot on. We cleared that building. And, you know, you're not just clearing buildings, going upstairs. And I got that gear and I'm clearing it with a 46. And I'm smoked. And we get to the top of that building. You know, Boone's got his M4, but he's also got an SR-25 on him. So he's smoked too.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And we get up there and we look down and we couldn't see anything. It was like, man, all this energy wasted. Because... the consulate, there are trees that surround the consulate. Well, they were all on fire. Damn. You just couldn't see anything in there. And it's like,
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Because you're trying not to get pessimistic, but you're like, you know how many calories I just, how much water, just doing all this and for nothing. Put it out of your head. And what snapped me out of it too is Rowan came across the radio because he's still moving because he needs us to suppress. At least that's what he thinks anyway.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was only a few seconds, but I put my head down and I remember thinking it was the one time negatively I thought that every other time there was negative things happened. That was the one time where it was like that, holy shit, we might lose this. And I said, man, we can't beat this. I'm thinking to myself, we don't have any air support. They're going to fucking keep hammering us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He's doing a damn good job on his own, all three of those guys. He goes, Tonto, I need your eyes, man. I need your eyes. I go, Rowan, this roost is a bust, man. I said, shoot, move and communicate. I'll meet you in the middle. And that's what we did. And we ran down the stairs and went to the back gate. And just like the movie, we just climbed over the back gate.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
What was awesome is there was a commander that pulled up just like that movie. He pulled up with his vehicle. And I actually wanted him before we jumped over the gate. He got there before we jumped over the back gate. I wanted him to push it open with his car. So it's like, let's just open this car. He goes, wait, Mr. Wait. And he got on his phone and he started dialing a phone number.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I was like, who the fuck are you calling, man? It's like, just wait, wait. I go, who you calling? He goes, I'm calling the bad guys. I'm negotiating surrender. I said, who the fuck? I said, you doing the what? I said, motherfucker. And Boone's yelling at me because he's already inside. He climbed over the gate already. And Tig's yelling at me to get inside on the radio.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He's like, we need you, Tano. Quit fucking around. And I just let it go. And he was one of the guys that was going to facilitate the counterattack later, but I didn't know. And so that little argument you see me get in with, that actually did happen. That happened as well. And I got in there and we fought, we pushed them off. It's a nine-acre compound.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And for the next hour, we just were trying to find the ambassador running in the burning building, trying to locate all the State Department guys, because they were spaced out everywhere while fighting off the bad guys, pushing them off. We're really that initial, when we got on there, I think they were so shocked it was Americans. And luckily we have that still that air of intimidation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Americans are coming, we got to go. there wasn't much of a gunfight coming up on. We got in there, Americans here, we got our night vision on, even though I'm wearing shorts, I still look pretty Terminator-ish with all the gear on. And they ran away and we found Alec, got him out of the skiff. Dave did awesome. Dave was already out. He was already trying to find the ambassador.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Don't make me feel like a pretentious asshole.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He was already over at the consulate trying to find the ambassador. And then we just took turns running in that burning building trying to find it. And it was tough. We almost lost Roan. Roan went in the most. Jack and Roan went in the most. Tig was probably close to it. Me and Boone pulled a lot of security and then we'd take our turns, we'd spell people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But I tell you what, I would, oh, I admire and thank all you firefighters out there, I admire the hell out you. I'd rather get shot at again than ever running into a burning building filled with diesel smoke ever again.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I remember going in and trying to go in the first time and I tried to run in and the doors were wide open and you can see and it's open, there's fire, you know, alive on the ceilings and there's, it's just smoke everywhere. And I hit, I ran in the, and it's almost like I hit an invisible wall. I just, whew, that is hot as shit. It was so hot. I felt like my eyeballs were going to melt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And you know, God, God was there all night, man. And God kicked me in my ass and said, get your gun up, Ranger. And I know people are going, oh, fuck. No, that's what happened.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it's like, you really have to just, I just had to go, suck it up. Don't, it's going to hurt. Just go. And it was awful. And, you know, your body gets used to it a little bit, but it was so hot. It's like running into a pizza oven filled with diesel. Damn. And Roan did that. I mean, that's how badass Roan and Jacques are. They went in there multiple times. I went in there like twice.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
because they just kept going in, and it was hard to find. We did lose Roan almost once where he got caught way back in the back, and we had to play Marco Polo with him to get it out. We had like, Roan, we're here. Jack kept yelling for him, Roan, this way, Roan, Roan, Roan, because he got stuck and he almost lost his way because he got disoriented. But that just shows how badass, and Tig as well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Tig's lungs are currently fucked, so are Jack's. Screwed. Eventually, Scott got out, you know, and I have no qualms against Scott, nothing at all. People, why did he left the ambassador? Well, what the hell would you have done, dude? Seriously? You're dying of fire and the heat. I can tell you a test from the heat that was unreal. What would you have done, man? Really? Okay.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But he got himself out, and that's when it started to go to hell again, because that's when they started to counterattack. And... I do remember before that they did find Sean's body. Dave Ubin, Tegan Jack managed to pull him out of a window. And the movie... I wish they would have put this in the movie more so than what they did. They did a little bit of it, but it was pretty remarkable.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was one of the most defining moments to me of human spirit and sacrifice that I'd ever seen in my life because Sean was out and I see him pull, Jack pulls him out, Dave's pulling him out, Uben, Tig is, and Scott's on some stairs and he's sitting there and he just keeps rocking back and forth and he keeps saying, he was just with me, he was just with me, he was just with me. And I see Jack.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Jack, for some reason, he starts to do chest compressions and CPR on a dead body. Jack knows he's dead. The dude's dead. Sean's dead. It's obvious. He's blue. He's dead. And I couldn't figure it out. I'm sitting there watching this whole thing unfold from about, from me to probably that desk there, about that far.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I want to say something, but before I get the word out, it hits me because I'm looking at Jack and every time he does a chest compression, he looks up at Scott and he goes, we're still in this fight, man. He is being positive over a dead body to get Scott out of his shock so we don't have another casualty. He's just, it's unbelievable.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's just like, and I'm sitting there just marveling at it going, wow, these fucking dudes are awesome. I love this. I love Jack. And I still love Jack. But to me, it just defined selfless service again. And people think selfless service is giving yourself, giving up your life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Well, essentially he did, because he's doing chest compressions on a dead body to get some guy back up on his feet to back in the fight. Who thinks like that? Yeah. Obviously he did. And it was awesome. Another motivating thing. Yeah. Another reason why Benghazi was the greatest night of my life. One of them, per se, but it was defining. We get it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
A voice in the back of my head right there. I still feel it. I still get chills. And maybe it was my mom saying it. But to me, it was that voice of God. It was something saying, we don't quit. You don't quit. Get your gun up, keep fighting. And I said, get your gun up, Ranger. That's what I heard. And that's being a Ranger too. And that's what Rangers are.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Scott comes out of a shock because, you know, big Tyrone, like Superman, I don't know where he came from. It's like he flew out of the bushes, but I know he's in the building, but he's just, and I see Tyrone come out of nowhere and he just puts his arms around Scott and he goes, man, we are still in this fight. We need you. And you just see Scott from right back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it was like, wow, this is awesome. I love these guys. That's why Ronan's so, that's why he was Superman to us. But we low Scott's body on. Tig and Jack and Dave Ubin did. They put him in the back of our SUV that our team leader and the interpreter drove up after we cleared it, said it was clear. Okay. Our team leader, yeah, he waited until we cleared it, then they drove up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I don't blame the interpreter for doing that, but come on, TL. But anyway, we go back to pulling security, and then— Was the TL, like, was he even— He was former Secret Service. No military.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah, yeah. I know who he is. I was going to say, you know who he is.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Scared.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I got to get a drink of water. Take your time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He had it just like any blue. He had his uses. He would give us good intel because he was a blue badge. But as far as just everyday activities, he had the runs, controlled the runs. But really, me? I let Rowan handle that. I stayed. I mean, he's just a liaison. It really was. That's what he was. And that night, he was with us. And no, we didn't pay attention. We were allowing him to pull cover.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Go liaison, give us the intel. And that's kind of what he was then.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You do hear some favorite movies.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
When you don't hold people to the standards that everybody else is upheld to, that high-level standards, what do you think you're going to get? And we're divvying off a little bit, but I'm going to say it. Look at the Secret Service that was protecting Trump. Yeah. That is what you got with GRS-TLs. For them, unless they were former spec ops guys that were contractors.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
When you're at the 75th, get your gun up, get your gun up. You're not quitting. Keep fighting. Keep pressing through. You learn that from RIP, which is option 40 now, a RAS now. You learn that throughout. That's what's instilled in you. Rangers before you, what'd they do in Vietnam? The 100 killer teams, they ran towards the fight. What'd they do when they jumped into Rio Hato?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You say it anyways.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Well, I did. I got told after I fell asleep, I had an argument with Bob and then the TL called me in. And we had an argument. We were like, he's like, Tony, I know who you are. I saved his ass from getting his ass beat by a bunch of seals when his first trip went to coast. Why did you do that? Because I felt sorry for him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I didn't, I didn't, be honest with you. I'm just kidding. I didn't know him. He's his first trip. I'm trying to be that guy that's your first trip. Let me tell you how it is, bud. Don't go in there like you're knowing everything. You're working with a bunch of top-notch dudes. Go in there, shut your mouth, and fucking listen. That was 2006. Now it's 2012. He's got six years now. He's salty.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Real experience. It showed, too. It was funny because when we did our debrief, too, they did ask about him. They said, what did you think of the TL? I said, he did a great job because he stayed the fuck out of the way. Oh, man, the head shed at Langley, the GRS, they didn't want to hear that. But that's what I said. Boone started laughing. He was doing our AR when we got back after Benghazi.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You said that? I said it right to the, it's me, dude. I don't give a, what are you going to do? Fire me then. If you haven't fired me yet, you're not going to fire me. But the argument I had with him, where in Libya, after I got dressed down by Bob, which I was just, it wasn't dressed, I was like, eat shit, dude.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I've been through enough of this pomp and circumstance, crap enough, rah-rah, politics in progress, million fucking times. I don't have to stay awake through this shit. It's the same shit. Well, he pulled me in. He goes, I'm going to write. I got written up. I got wrote up. I did get written up. And they wrote me up. And he goes, I'm going to write you up for this because you fell asleep.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You're being disrespectful. And I remember I said to him, because I saw GRS kind of go into more like a state department. Button down. I saw it and I said, we're going more State Department, aren't we? Button down. Need guys to say yes or no. Nobody talks back. No fucking guys that cuss every once in a while. You know, you don't need guys like me anymore, do you?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I guess guys like me are dinosaurs, aren't they? And he said, yeah, pretty much. I signed my thing. When we got home, I sent him an email. I said, good thing you have dinosaurs like me, huh? That night, and I didn't get a response back from him. I still got the email. I had AOL. I said, my AOL shows you how old I am. But he said that, and I said, it looks like guys like me are dinosaurs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I'm sorry, when did he try to write you up? He wrote me up right after I fell asleep before the ambassador. It was right before the attack. So when I fell asleep and Bob dressed me down, We got in that argument. He says, well, I'll write you up. Well, I did get written up. We didn't put it in the movie because how boring is that seeing some guy get written up? But I went back to my room.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They ran towards the fight. There's no cover, they shot their way off the tarmac. Grenada, what'd they do? They ran towards the fight. Now get your gun up, Ranger. So why am I so angry? Because when somebody calls it conspiracy, and I watched, I watched Roan and Bub and Dave and Dawes at the time, I thought all the time. I watched them evaporate. That's what I did with my friends.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I'm just a bitch. I got written up. I got a black mark on me. An hour later, he called me in and I got written up. I was like, I don't give a shit. Fine. It was like getting a ticket. You got a hundred million parking tickets. You pay your parking tickets, y'all. But you know what I'm saying? And I threw it and like, whatever.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He was, actually he was, for those that you know him, but he wasn't, he wasn't a, he was in check forgery. And that was his, in the- Check forgery. It was in that division, the secret store where they do forgery and money laundering.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So whatever.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Anyway, but yeah. They drove up. Yeah, he's... And that night, it was. We just... If we need you, buddy, just... Stay in the rear, man. If you want to add your gun to the fight, fine. Just make sure there's no ammo in it. Dude, just stay away from it. But he didn't fire his gun that night, and he stayed hidden. He stayed protected.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And we didn't really worry about it because we knew he wasn't getting in the fight. It wasn't going to happen. So that's why we put Amal with him. But eventually Amal even saw what was going on, and Amal got attached to Jack. Amal kept following Jack around. When Jack wasn't running in the burning buildings. So we go back and we haven't found the ambassador.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I remember on the backside of the villa here, because we're pulling security because that gate was left open. I told that fucking commander, close the back gate when you bring your guys through before I really knew who he was. I thought he was friendly. He left it wide open. And I'm like, that motherfucker forgot to close the back gate. I said, guys, this jackass didn't close the back gate.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I said, get ready. Because I knew it was going to. I mean, you just know. It's like, shit, dude. And I'm kicking myself for not going back there and closing it as well. And trusting, right? I knew I shouldn't have. And then all of a sudden I take a knee and I hear a big explosion goes off. So I'm here. Explosion blows off this way on the barren villa. And because the angle, so lucky again.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Thank you. Because the angle shrapnels this way. But I do catch the overpressure because I'm not more than, you know, 20 feet away from the explosion. So it knocks me, catch the overpressure, but the force that goes this way. I didn't hear the initial boom. So I didn't think it was an RPG.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I mean, you know, unless you're from a very far distance, RPGs don't go, and you see vapor trails, and it's not like that. Unless, you know, it's a way distance, and then you might see it later after it hits. You'll see maybe a little puff of smoke or something. But you always hear a boom, because that's the propellant that makes it go. It doesn't, there's a boom, you know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
As I go back to post security, get back up on my feet because I'm thinking some guy runs in front of me and he's missing his hand. He's holding his wrist. I go, it's profile. I go up and his hand's missing. He's holding his wrist like trying to stem the bleeding. It's just mangled. And then his buddy comes out, runs from behind him, and he's holding pieces of his buddy's.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it's no farther than me and you. I'm like right here following him. I go, what the fuck? What happened? I don't even know how to speak English. That's all I can get out of my head because I'm a little rattled. Brain's knocked a little bit. I'm seeing this dude running by with no hand. He's just bleeding everywhere. I'm seeing his buddy chase him. He's holding pieces of his hand.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So I'm looking at him and I'm in my head going, dude, you forgot your hand. That's what I'm going through my head. And I'm like, I see what happened. I didn't say that. All I could get out was what happened. Guy goes, grenade. The guy holding pieces, he goes, grenade. So I'm thinking, oh, you're a fucking idiot. Next time when you cook a grenade off, I'm thinking this in my head.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I was like, holy shit, those guys are, they're gone. I've seen death before, but have you ever saw where your friends just, like they're there and they're not? So when he said it was a conspiracy, it's like, hell yeah, I was pissed off. And I was pissed off for many, many years. And it did hurt a lot of the relationship, hurt my relationship with my wife and my kids at the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You hold it for two seconds instead of three before you throw it. And I'm thinking of my dad, West Texas, from Lubbock, Texas. His voice comes in my head, and all I hear is, rub some dirt on it, you'll be all right, kid. And as I come back to pull security, because they're not a threat, I do hear a boom from a distance, like shit. I know that's an RPG.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I go pull security and I just go like this, because I know I'm dead. If it's anywhere near on this side, I'm dead. There's nothing I can do. There's no cover. I can get down and roll, but by that time I hear that boom from that distance where it's only 100, not even more than, I would say 75 meters away, if that, I'm dead. So I'm just hoping I hear the second boom.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Because if I do, I know I'm alive. And I do. I hear it, boom, blows up. This one actually is closer. And I catch building. I catch the concrete. Knocks me down in the middle of the road. Again, because of that angle, and I know that's what saved me, it was the shrapnel. Most of it went that direction or got embedded in the wall. And the movie showed me getting up and having a wall for cover.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I did. I got knocked in the middle of that road that was shotgun from the front gate to the back gate. And all that came in my head was Ranger Battalion. What's your cover, Ranger? Bullets. What do you do when somebody's shooting at you? You shoot back. And I took a knee on that road and I just started shooting. And I shot and I shot and I shot.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I was thinking of the guys from Rio Hato, because we get hammered. Rangers got a great history. Urgent Fury, Just Cause, Somalia. We shoot. Fuck you guys. We're fucking you coming at me. You're going to catch a bullet in the tooth. And that's all I'm thinking. And I'm just putting rounds. And I remember Boone, he told me later, he says, I was watching you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And all I could think of was, you're a fucking idiot. Take cover. And I'm... I've never felt the hand of God before. I've never felt it again. I fit that night. And I know, I do really believe we all get one, one, one hand of God moment where they, he steps in and protection. I did. I was like, He's looking down at me. And I say this during my speeches too, because I honestly believe this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I think my guardian angels, like on this chair, God's up here on this chair. My guardian angel and God are looking at this idiot, getting shot at, because the world's opened up. There's just crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. It's all going around me. And my guardian angel's looking at God going, see what you tasked me with, God? You tasked me with this fucking idiot that doesn't have half a brain.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And God's like, God pities the one that needs to be pitied. And he says, I got you. And I felt a golden cocoon come on top of me. And that's not, I'm not saying that. At any of the reasons, that's what I felt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was a golden egg. That's what I remember. Golden egg. I got you. Just warm. Was it like an intuitive feeling? It was a physical feeling. No, it was warm, gold. I got you. I guess intuitive, too. It's just safe. I'm good. And I kept shooting. Did it give you confidence? Yeah. I got this. Nobody's going to get me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
No. When I was shooting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
In that position there, about five seconds before I felt that. And I was already hammering away. Because it was really easy. I'm just, nobody's coming through there. It was about five seconds. I mean, five to 10, it was... Wow. It was awesome though. And then I am taking a knee. I'm not getting in the prone. So I'm just, I feel fine. God's got me. My right ear drum blows out. I remember that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So to ask, I mean, it's a great question, but it also points to how irresponsible politicians are with their words and how they don't give a shit, and him especially. You know, Hillary got what she deserved. She wasn't president. She was humiliated. She lost. Is she going to get more? Yeah, she's going to get more.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I look, and there was a Libyan that had taken a knee right next to me in his AK-47 and was shooting with me right next to my head. And that was amazing, because I was thinking to myself, ain't this the damnedest thing? God just gave me a Libyan angel and put him right next to me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Because he had a button-down shirt, slacks on, like he got off work, and he's sitting there with his AK-47 shooting with me. I never saw him again either that night. I don't know where he went. And then Boone, I'm running, and Boone comes, and Boone takes a knee right on the other side of the road, and he starts shooting with me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then Tig gets his gun into the mix on the top of the roof, and it was awesome, dude. It was just freaking awesome. Now, we moved a little bit. After that, we started to move back to vehicles and started to kind of peel out because we had to get out of there. But that moment there for me was, and I always tell people that. And I said, guys, I'm not saying the hand of God is there all the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Again, I've never felt it after. I hadn't felt it before, but I felt it that night. So when people say, do you believe in God? I say, no, I know there's God. And he took pity on somebody like me that's probably broken every commandment that we're supposed to keep. No, it was there. I felt it. And people went, ah, bullshit. Fine, you don't believe me. I don't care. I don't think it's bullshit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I know. It was amazing. Again, I wish I could say, but it was a golden egg. It was like a Willy Wonka golden egg. Warm, protected, nothing's going to get you. I got you. And we fought them off and we peeled out. And it was hard to leave because we did have a drone overhead watching everything. The ISR had come on station. And Rowan's like, guys, we got to go. They're massing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They're going to attack the annex. We got to get out. And I'm like, Rowan, we haven't found the ambassador yet. He's like, I know, but we got to go. And you got to make a decision. Leaders always make decisions, even if they're a hard decision. And it sticks with me because you know our credo, dude.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Part of the fifth stanza of the Ranger Creed is you never leave a fallen comrade to fall in the hands of the enemy. Every unit has that same, not in those words, the same thing. You leave no man behind. And we did. Because we had to get back to the annex. And it wasn't the wrong decision. We would have lost 24 if we hadn't gotten back. But it still bothers the fuck out of me. Because we left him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Now, we didn't know he was there. That's still no excuse. We still kept trying to find him. But he had gotten so far back in that safe haven area that we just couldn't get back there. And when the fire died down and the fighting moved back to our annex, the locals pulled him out. He was dead of smoke inhalation. There's been talk that he was mutilated and all that. I didn't see it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I inspected his body when they brought him to the airfield.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I looked at it. No, I didn't pull his drawers down. I didn't do that. I mean, maybe they did cut his genitals off. I'm sorry. Guys, I'm not going to do that. To me, I looked at it because what I'm thinking, again, Ranger Battalion, what am I thinking? Randy Shugart, Gary Gordon, dragging his body through the streets. So of course I'm going to look. I'm going to see if he's scuffed up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
When she stands before a maker with God, God's going to judge her, and I hope he judges her, and he's going to. He's going to judge her well, how she should. Obama's the one that got over scot-free. He was the commander-in-chief. Come on, man. Who's supposed to help get people to us? Is it Hillary in the State Department? Granted, she was hugely responsible. So was Leon Panetta.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I'm going to see if his face is scuffed up. I'm going to see if he is cut in places I can see. But he was clothed, and I didn't see any marks on his face. I just saw lifeless eyes, and he still had smoke from the diesel all over. So what I saw, I didn't see mutilation. But am I 100% sure? No, because I didn't pull his pants down.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And for those that wanted me to do that, they can go fuck themselves. Don't do that. No. I'll leave that. I mean, if I was an autopsy guy, sure. But not in that situation, no. And I wasn't thinking mutilation. I was thinking dragging through the streets too. But we left them. But I stand by the decision and all of us still do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And as leaders, you've been a leader, you know you make hard decisions, you have to. And sometimes those hard decisions, even if they're the right ones, are gonna stick with you for the rest of your life. And that's one that does. But it was the right decision. And we got back to our annex.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We had Sean's body in the back of the vehicle, so that was a little surreal because we all piled into one vehicle. So we had Tyrone, we had Tig, we had Tyrone, we had Tig, we had myself, we had the interpreter, we had the TL, and Jack was sitting on the top of Sean's body. So we're driving back in the SUV, and they trailed us. They were following us. It was easy to pick up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I wish they would have put this in the movie. It's in the book, but I wish they would have put this in there. I actually was making the calls back. I was like, guys, I was telling the gates, get the gate ready. Everyone's like, get the gate ready. And they said, what's your status? You always say, we're coming in red, we're coming in black, we're coming in yellow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Or we're coming in hot, we're coming in cold. And I don't know, I was just trying to make somebody laugh. I said, guys, we're coming in lukewarm. It was stupid. It was like, I'm just trying to get people to laugh because we've been through a lot at that point.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We come in the gate and the State Department guys, where they tried to get out of there, you know, where we got them out, the ones that were still, they did go the wrong direction. They went towards Adidas and Two houses down was where Ansar Sharia had a safe house. The consulate was right next to the terrorist safe house. State Department knew it. We told them a million times.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We'd taken pictures of it. They're just seeing the movie where you see us driving by and I'm taking a picture of those fuckers and they're flipping me off. That's it. That's it. They didn't do a damn thing about it. So when they went out the gate, Jack kept telling them and you hear it on the radio too.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And that was during the fire where that's where the confusion happened because when we were getting attacked and I was shooting, that's when we were trying to get them out of there. It was during all that chaos that Jack said, I heard on the radio, because I've got a piece in and I hear Jack saying, guys, you're going the wrong way. You're going the wrong way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Because we said, go to gunfire when you go out the gate. Do not go to Adidas. You go left, you do not go right. They went right and they got crushed. And so when we pulled in, The armor held. They managed to get back on run flats to our place. That car was just on fire, just flames everywhere. And I thought they were all dead, but none of them died. The armor held.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Scott did a great job pushing through. So did Dave getting through. They just went through a gauntlet of gunfire and RPG fire and got chased until they got back to our compound. So that wasn't movie magic at all. They got hammered. And it just was in the chaos. He just went the wrong direction. And luckily for them, and again, kudos a lot to Dave. Dave Ubin did an awesome job.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
General Ham could have done something. But who was the commander in chief? Who was General Ham? He was the Eurocom commander.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But I wasn't in that vehicle. But if I was to guess, I would say they all kept their heads pretty good. But Dave probably did the one that was like, get the fuck, go push through, push through, push through, you know. We got back. It's on fire. We get refitted with whatever we need as far as ammo. Tig did drop our grenade launcher. It was a Movie Magic. He actually dropped it. It was a 69, HK69.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He hadn't rechanged the normal lanyard that's on it. The lanyard that comes with it sucks because it just slides through. We usually cut it and we put 550 cord on it or something that sticks, and he didn't. So when he was running, it fell off and it fell on the ground. But it was weird, and I don't have an answer for you. I wish I did, but we had a second one as well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And for some reason, I was looking for it and I couldn't find it. I don't know what happened to it. I ran around for five minutes before I went up on my rooftop looking for that other grenade launcher because Tig's like, dude, I'm sorry, I dropped it. He's like, son of a bitch, Tig. And I ran around. You know how we are. We stage it where it needs to be. It's in the team room.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's in one of the gun lockers. That's where it needs to be. I didn't take it with me because I had a 46 and he had the 69 and we didn't put it in the QRF vehicle. So I ran and I couldn't find it. And I thought, well, maybe Boone did put it in our vehicle. So I ran and looked in the vehicle. I could not find it. It disappeared. To this day, I have no idea what happened to that 69.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I'm thinking, why on earth would Bob run? I'm thinking malicious, but what would that have done? So I don't know. So I couldn't find another 69, and we had two, but I couldn't find it. And grabbed more ammo, ran up the building. First, we went up to building A. Vantage Point was terrible, and then we jumped up to building C, where we could see over Zombieland and this sheep slaughterhouse.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So we had... compounds, building here, building here, building here, building here, front gate here, zombie land, parking lot where they were massing, family's houses right there that they were using to come through before they got into zombie land as cover because they knew we weren't going to shoot the kids because there were kids in there. So we weren't going to shoot the buildings.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then he went to the sec def, you know, became sec def and all that. But actually, but, you know, he could have done something too. And, but Obama is the one that really is the one that's held responsible, should have been held responsible for it all. You know, and also with the rhetoric. Al Qaeda, remember, people forget that. What was his platform at the time? Al Qaeda was on the run.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then the sheep slaughterhouse, the sheep was over here. So we got up there. A was not a good vantage point, so me and Boone moved over to C. Oz and Tig are in a little fighting position right here overlooking Zombieland, and they just start moving on us. And you're just seeing it through the night vision, and it was like kids playing hide-and-seek, man. So easy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I don't think they thought we had night vision or they didn't think it was that good because they were just running from bush to bush. Roan was awesome. And I talked about Nick and Paul, the Raven 23 guys. That was heavy on our minds at that time because they had gone to prison for defending themselves.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So we weren't going to shoot. We're like, Roan, man, I don't see guns, but they're moving on us, man. They're moving. The drone's even overhead feeding us intel. You got asymmetric movement, stuff's coming. Roland's like, do not fucking shoot. You see a gun first. Then I'll give the command to shoot. And he goes, because I don't want to go to prison. And he was referencing three guys.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So that was on our heads. So we just let him get, they just kept coming and coming and it got closer and closer. And then finally Boone's goes, I got AKs. And they were probably about 25 meters from Oz's position when he saw that. And then this fizz comes over the back gate right when he says that. And it was a gelatina bomb. And I saw it because gelatina bombs is like a stick of dynamite.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They light a wick so you can see in your night vision. And it comes over the back gate. And it goes over to Oz's and takes position. And I'm like, man, this is going to miss him, man. It's going to miss him. This is good news. And then this figure comes out of nowhere. And this bomb's coming this way. And Tick has got out of position to go get water. What are the fucking odds, man?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I mean, the odds are it's like winning the lottery. He's here, the bomb's coming. I'm just watching in slow motion and it just blows up. And all I see is the white light coming and the world opens up. That was the indicator to start the attack. And they just started shooting and we fucking destroyed them. I mean, we had our sectors of fire down. We had our...
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We had all the avenues of approach locked down. We knew the dead space. I mean, I wish I would have had that 203. We would have killed a lot more of them. But we just crushed them. And everybody was so disciplined. Sector, sector. We stayed within our sectors. We trusted each other on their sectors. And it was interlocking sectors of fire. And it was like coming... It was like...
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
coming into a freaking wood chopper. Everybody did awesome. It only took about five minutes, really. That's about as long as it was. A lot of you guys have been in a firefight. Unless you've been in Afghanistan at a base where they just keep hammering you, most firefights are only about that long. It's like a boxing match.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Then there's some dead time unless there's just a massive, massive force or you get stuck and they got the advantage. If they're losing their ass, they're going to break contact, get back and figure out something. They did. Well, when that ended, I looked and I'm thinking, I'm going to go get, let's go pick up Tig because I figured he was dead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I think, and I think the majority, I mean, it was hard, but I think we got attacked by maybe over that whole course of the period, not at one time. 200, 300 people? Two to 300 people. But not, you know, it was like, that initial one was probably 40, 40 guys. Fought them off, and then there's another 40. So it could have been the same guys. I mean, we didn't kill 40. I wish we were that good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You know, and we're good at what we do, but come on, let's be realistic. But, you know, and then at the annex, at the consulate, yeah, easily, 40, 50 that we got counterattacked. I mean, it was 40, 50 at a pop. And yeah, we were killing them. we'd shoot them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Terrorism is dead. He knew it wasn't. That's who attacked us. You had Sarah on. She knows a better name, but who was the one that masterminded that? Zawahiri. He's number two Al Qaeda. So, brother, the guy that got away with it and then continued to try to press a narrative, which we see happens now. Well, I got a question. I don't want to get too deep. No, no, go ahead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And that's the, you know, a lot of us, unless it's within, a lot of us that have been in combat, and I'm not saying in a bravado thing or an ego thing, it's just how it is. At a distance, five, five, six, if you hit somebody, sometimes it doesn't keep them down. If close you're in, it's going to. If it's me to you and I hit you, yeah, you're going down. You're not getting back up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But at 50, 75, 100 meters, you might. But generally, they're going to be able to get back up. And they'll probably bleed out or they're out of the fight, depending on where you hit them. But that was where it could have been. We have estimates. I've seen estimates of Wikipedia like 1,000. No. No. 200, 300 over the whole night. And who knows?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Some of those could have been attackers, the same attackers. We killed, I don't know. I've got reports again. I've seen reports about, no. I think we killed. I know, I think 100, 200. I think we did. Oz had contact at the hospital there. And, you know, Oz and I still talk. We get along or not, we still talk every once in a while.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I remember when we got back, I asked him, I said, what's your contact? Because, you know, we're Americans. We like to keep score, right? And I said, dude, did you ever get a word how many we got, man, how many we killed? And he goes, I didn't ever get a number, but my contact at the hospital said that they just kept bringing bodies and injured in all night.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So I was like, well, that's good enough for me. I mean, after that, it didn't matter because it was nice seeing them turn tail and run. That's even more. But, yeah, we fought them off. And the reason Tig didn't die – The gelatina bomb hit him and it landed right by his feet and blew up. It's just because he's so big. It would have stopped my heart.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You know, it's just a big, it's just a huge flashbang. It's used for fishing. It's for dropping in the Mediterranean and blowing fish come up. It's Mediterranean redneck fishing. But it fucked him up. He still has problems. His shoulder goes numb. His back's out of whack. But he got up. And that's a testament to how tough he is. He got up and he got back in the fight. And he actually got hit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
A round hit his armor. It was a piece of a round. It hit the metal post and sheared either the post or something. It hit him and knocked him down. He got up and kept fighting. And he's a tough son of a bitch. He's a tough redneck. Takes good people, man. Yeah. But it was awesome. And it gave us a wave of confidence. It did. It's like, okay, we got this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Our battle plan, our force protection plan, our sectors of fire, they're on. All right, let's keep doing what we're doing. And throughout that timeframe, we're still thinking Americans are going to help. We're still thinking that the ISRs are seeing everything. And we're thinking, somebody's coming, cavalry's coming, but they weren't.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But at that point in time, we still had some faith that they were, because they normally did. Everywhere else I was at, cavalry came. Whether it was another GRS team, whether it was a Scorpion team, an NSA, you know, the GRS equivalent at the NSA, whether it was military, somebody was, Brits, somebody was coming. And, um, Between that two-hour lull of 1 a.m. to 3 a.m.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
where the next attack happened, that's where we started to come to the realization nobody's coming. And the reason is because we didn't put him in the movie, but we had an old Vietnam veteran that manned our radios, our 117. He was a staffer with the agency, great guy, R-T-O-N, Vietnam veteran. Wonderful guy. He still cries every time we see him because he apologizes for not getting us help.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I'm sorry. That's just me, man. I go down rabbit holes all the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We already had QRF elements on station. We had a 911 call. We could call because that's what we do. GRS, that's what our jobs is, is to coordinate with the other units. So if we need people, we can just hit a button, go on 10 Alpha Common on the 117s and say, we need help. And we have 117 and
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Every so often throughout the next couple hours, Boone would come to me and say, hey, we got a hold of the Delta, man. They're on their way. And little did we know they were coming, but they got diverted to Croatia. 555th Fighter Wing, that was our big, we always thought we had them. They had two jets at Souda Bay, Greece. Souda Bay, Greece is five minutes with afterburners to Libya.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then they had the 555th Fighter Wing, the whole unit, up in Aviano. It's a QRF base. That's what it's there for. We figured they were coming. Boone's like, no, they're not coming. The Fast Company Marines, there was one in Spain, and there was one in the Med near Sigonella, and we thought they were coming. He'd keep coming back to me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
After he'd tell me somebody was coming, he'd come back and say, no, they're not. We're not getting words. There's no confirmation they're coming. And then that SIF, the ambassador's old, the ambassador's primary security team, the commanders in the extremist force that had been in Croatia and got repositioned to the staging area. That was when I really knew nobody was coming.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Because when he said, no, they're not on their way anymore either. He came and said, hey, that SIF team, the commander's team's coming.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's his job and that's our job. And yes, we went down the line. Every, that's why politicians, and that's why the CIA pisses me off. That's our job. They know that. Well, politicians may not know that, but the agency knows that. That's what our main response is, GRS.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It does. Of course it's going to come.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We're protective services, and it's also to protect our asses if something happens, to get the assets needed that we, assets that are in the area to us if we need them. So we had them all. We knew them all. I was in charge of that when I was here, but it's always, you know, every time it's passed down to somebody. So it's always refined and improved and refined and improved.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So it was the RTO, the Vietnam RTO, that was his job. And he was very good at it. And he was very supportive of us. And... The reason he cries when he sees us now, I remember. And I remember I saw him in Texas when I was doing a lot of speaking back in 2016. And I got pissed at him. We did a speaking event there in Fort Worth. And his wife's a wonderful lady. They came to have a drink with me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I think Tig was there as well. And I got pissed. I got drunk. And he hadn't said anything as far as testimony yet. And he can blow the doors off all the help that was around there. He could verify what we saw. And I'm like, put me in a fucking pussy, dude. Stop, go tell him what happened. And he got up and I saw, I feel bad. He got up, I saw him, tears in his eyes and he walked away.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That interview was one, because... With Pete Hegseth? Yeah, because it was the last mainstream interview I ever did. Was that on your terms or theirs? Mine. I said, I'm not going to do anymore. I told him, I said, I'm done. That was mine. I'm not doing that. Because I did get asked two times to go on Tucker. And nothing against him. I like him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
His wife's sitting there. His wife's Texas woman, hard as nails. I go, ma'am, I'm sorry. She goes, no, I've been telling him the same thing to tell. And I said, well, why hasn't he? He goes, because they're going to pull his pension if he does, where he don't get his retirement. And I was like, okay. I'd never say anything about it again. I love the guy. I love him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And he has a lot of info out there, but I do respect people and their family. And if that's not for my selfish reasons or anything else, I understand that. I never bugged him about it either. And I never will again, because I respect that. I do. Is it right? No, I don't think it's right, but I still respect his decision. And he did try. He did try his ass off. Well, 3 a.m., we get hit again.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it was like the movie show. It was just, they did the same tactics, and we just crushed them. It's like waves hitting a retaining wall, man. And it was very, very satisfying, but it was, man, how long is this going to keep up? Because we had a ton of M4 ammo, tons, but we're eventually going to run out. We're eventually going to get tired.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We're eventually, they're eventually going to get it figured out and hit us with a car bomb. I was so shocked they hadn't hit us with a car bomb yet, because that was, in Iraq or Afghanistan, that's probably what they would have just done, throw a car and blow up the wall, but they hadn't. So I was really shocked at that, but... You know, you think about your family a little bit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And before that second attack, I had thought about my family, and I just remembered the phone call, and I just remembered it briefly. And I thought about them, and I just remembered, the last thing they heard from me, did I tell them I loved them? And I did, so I was okay. I didn't think about them the rest of the night. It was the last words.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And my daughter, my son, and my wife know that I love them. Before I got off the phone, yeah, I told them I loved them. Out of my head, the rest of the night. And by 3 a.m., you're starting to get in what I was doing at that point in time, having some self-reflection, getting motivated that They are going to breach the walls probably eventually.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then I got to get it in my head that we may need to start. It's going to get close quarter and we're going to maybe start stabbing. It's going to start knifing. And that's a totally different animal than shooting. It's intimate. And if you're used to that, there's something wrong with you, in my opinion. I mean, shooting, I understand. I've done that. It's kind of impersonal.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And because of the way we're trained, it's almost like you can imagine targets. And also they're terrorists. Who gives a fuck? But when they're up and you got a stab,
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
that's different at least to me maybe not to others but it is and i i gotta get my mind right if that's gonna happen so i'm starting to get the mindset of hand to hand you know so i respect those guys from world war ii and world war i fighting trench fighting wow it's like those guys are bad i ain't shit those guys are badass but um and the tunnel rats you know from vietnam but uh
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We get word Bub's coming in, and I didn't know this for several years, but Bub actually ponied up money from his own bank account to rent that old executive's jet. I don't know if he was ever paid back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I found that out. Actually, I found that out from his best friend, Sean, who runs Bub's Naturals. He came on my podcast, and I had no idea that I didn't know that. Wow. But that tells you how Bub is.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Pwnied up money. I'm sure he was, I think what Sean said is the Seal Foundation came in and actually reimbursed. I don't have to say I ever paid him, which, fuck them anyway. But anyway, that's Bub, man. That's Bub. His own money. And they rented our executive's jet. It was, it was like a G6. It was nice. It did have flight attendants on there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I just, I'm not doing that because that's what they want to get. I started to realize that's what they want to get out of me. They know Tonal's going to come in and say something that's going to click bait and going to be pissed off because that's how I always was. I am very, I get, I'm animated. I'm going to say what's on my mind. And if it pisses somebody, so what?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Serious, no shit flight attendants because they were waiting for us when we got to Menina. And, but he gets there and they got there actually at midnight and they just, it took them so long to coordinate to get the 10 kilometers to our place. By the time they got to our place, it was about 5 a.m. And they get there and I remember them coming in and, I remember I was being my smart-ass self.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I was saying, hey, fucking welcome to the party, motherfuckers. Better late than never, man. Did you bring me something to drink? And I remember Bob walked by, and the TL that was with him, he was a former BW guy that went to the dark side because he started sleeping with a case officer. He married her, though. It wasn't bad. He married her. But he'd become a staffer, but they both went.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They walked by me, and they did... like fucking Tano, and they both flipped me off. I was giving them shit. And they went back. All the GRS guys, aside from Bub, went into Building C. There were two Delta guys that worked with us in Tripoli. They went into Building C, too, and Bub was the only one that came up to build. I mean, Building C, yeah, the headquarters building.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then Bub went on top of Building C. So like I said, keep them on here. I'm on building A. Building C's, I'm sorry. Building A here. Building C here. B, they're in B. I'm sorry. That's the headquarter building. Building B and then building A. Or building, I'm getting confused here. A, B, C, D. Sorry. A, they went in building C. D's here. Jack's here. Boone's still up here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I went on the front gate building, which is A. And I need to take a crap. Couldn't get anybody to relieve me. And Boone said, go take a shit. So I skidded down. You know, bodily functions still happen when I was, you know that. They don't stop. Skidded down the stairs, took my shit, got back up. And all of a sudden there was, and it didn't sound like a mortar. It didn't.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I don't know, my hearing had been shot out. I had an earpiece in one ear, but I didn't wear hearing protection in the other. And Boone had been shooting an SR-25 by my ear all night, and I'm shooting either my M4 or 46, so my hearing's gone. And I went, did you guys hear that? It sounded like somebody's, you know what it sounded like when we used to hear the 107s come in and I arrived here?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's what it sounded like. I thought it was a rocket. I said, did you guys hear that? And then, I don't know, something in me said, I go, mortars, mortars. And so this would take cover the first one hit. And it hit on the backside of Building C. And that's when the world opened up again. And I remember Roan, he just spun. He spun and he went cyclic on that other 46. And he's just...
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I'm going to tell you how I feel. And that's great for ratings. It is. And nothing against him. I got friends down there. Sean's a nice, Hannity's a nice guy, man. You know, the, the, the Duceys are, they're nice people. You know, Martha McCollum, she's a nice, she's treated me very, very well. They're not, it just was,
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
over where the sheep slaughterhouse is. They're trying to come through there. Like idiots, they're walking their troops into where the mortars are coming. Fine with me. They can take out their own guys if they want. But Roan is just, so I'm seeing this laser beam because it's not daylight. The movie shows this daylight is actually was a before morning nautical twilight.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So it's, you know, it's right when the sun's, but the night vision, you still need your night vision. Um, so I'm watching all this. I'm seeing one guy turn and start to shoot that direction. I'm seeing another guy turn, which was Oz. The next guy was Bob. Then the next guy was Dave Uben. And of course I want to get my gun in the fight, but I can't see the targets because they're here. I'm here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The targets, they're coming from this direction. Mortars are coming from this way. So I'm shooting over their heads. I put a couple rounds down, and I look, and I think, you know, we kind of already went through this before, but I look behind me to make sure there's nobody coming from my six, because I still got areas of responsibility. Nobody's there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I turn around, get a couple more shots, and I see the next one hit, and this one hits on building C. It hits right by the parapet wall. Boom, blows up. As my night vision goes white and it comes back, those four guys that were shooting are now three. So it's like, it was, it's like, you know, close your eyes, you see four, open your eyes, there's three. Dave's hit. Dave got hit with a 81.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It sheared half his leg off. It sheared half his arm off. They were on, but they were just hanging by tendons. And he's screaming. And I go, how did you hear that? I don't know how I heard it, but I heard him screaming. I'm hit. He's yelling. He's screaming. I could hear it. I'm still shooting. They're still shooting. I turn around and make sure nobody's coming again because I still got my six.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We still got to fight. We got to finish it. You can't quit. They got to take care of Dave. I'm not running off my position and helping. I'm just expecting maybe the Delta guys or somebody to come up and help. But I don't know. We got a fight to go. I put three rounds over the top of their head. I went boom, boom, boom. And as soon as I did that, three mortars, fire for effect. Boom, boom, boom.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And when they did that, my night vision went completely white because of the overabundance of light. And as it came back, They were gone. And I saw the pixie dust. I saw the charged particles because any of those explosions, if it's fine particles or dust and there's not a lot of wind and there wasn't, you can see the particles coming down because they get charged or heated.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So I'm watching the pixie dust come down. And it really did look like they got turned to dust. My brain's like, because they're gone. All of a sudden they're gone and there's a cloud of dust. We can't beat this. We don't have any air support. And I put my head down. I said, 400. And I know it was God. It was God or my mom. And he said, get your gun up, Ranger. I kept fighting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And Jack kept fighting. And Boo kept fighting. and we fought those guys off that were coming for us. Boone and Jack Primar, they had better avenue fields of fire than I did. And they did awesome. But the mortar stopped. And at the time, I was like, wow, I wonder why they stopped. I mean, they hit with the building they wanted to hit. It was far for effect. They had that thing locked in.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was really my family and my relationship, because I had gotten divorced at that time as well. So that anger had carried over to where my wife and my kids were like, we don't want you around anymore. Your toxicity is here. You're just always pissed off. You're never happy. And we had gotten divorced. So when I did that, we were actually divorced at that time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's our main building. That's Skiff. That's where all of our troops are. That's where all of our equipment is. That's where all of our comms are, is that building. They knew which building to hit. And unlike David Petraeus, who needs his ranger tab pulled, that said, well, it must have been a truck, and they just ran a truck, and they just haphazardly put a mortar tube in the back of a truck.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Come on, man. Come on, man. What's up, infantry officer? I got respect for Petraeus, but when he said that, I'm like, dude, come on. Anyway, the reason they stopped the movie, I wish they would have edited it a little bit better. You see the militia take off before the mortars came. They actually took off after that first shot. When I heard that, they must have heard it. I don't know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They must have known who it was more than me, which then my hearing had gone to shit. They took off, and then that first one hit. They went and took the mortar team out for us. Their commander had actually come in with our team, and he was in Building C when those mortars were hitting. So that first one, they scattered because that's their tactics.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They knew something was coming, a mortar was coming in, so they're moving their vehicles. So they're not part of the carnage. And then I could hear in the distance, tires screeching, gunfire, in the direction where the mortars were coming from. And they went and took the mortar team out for us because their commander had got caught in Building C when the attack happened.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Lord works in mysterious ways, brother. Yeah, no kidding. And the ironic thing is, too, is the mortar team, that whole militia belonged, they were former Omar Gaddafi commanders. Wow. We got saved, you know, we got saved by Omar Gaddafi. So for anybody to think that we went in there to overthrow them or Qaddafi, that's bullshit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We went in there to destabilize a region so the Muslim Brotherhood could come in and stabilize it under that foreign policy under the Obama administration. And we needed Qaddafi's weapons to go and give to the friendly militias, as McCain would say. But anyway, they saved us and mortar stopped. And then at 7 a.m., you know,
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
A militia was coming in, and I remember there was just me and Boone and Jack left. Nobody, and it would piss me, nobody would come and relieve us. It was like, dude, it was like, guys, GRS guys, Delta, would somebody come give us a break? I mean, it's like having a patrol base, and you got to give guys breaks. Nobody would come relieve us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So we stayed up there, and I remember Bob said, Delta guys didn't come up? No, and I got in a heartache. I did for a big time. What were they doing? I don't know. I, that's a good question. I have no idea. And they're Delta. I know they do hardcore shit and I got no heartache with them. I'm not trying to throw them under the bus here. It's just, it is what it is.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it was, I got to get myself right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I know they're fucking warriors because they're Delta. You kind of have to be at the unit. Now I've seen guys, Bolo shoots from the unit too, going through TDC and going, but like anybody, they have bad days, but I just, I don't know. Maybe they're on our different, I would like to know. If you ever get them on, I would love to know what the hell they were doing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
maybe it was document destruction, destroying classified documents or whatever. I don't know. I mean, that's what we put in the movie. Michael Bay actually has a pretty good, he has a pretty good, he has his own peeps within the agency that feed him shit in DOD because they love him because he makes them look really good, which he should. He's honoring, he loves veterans.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So maybe he put that in there because that's what they were doing. I don't know. But all I know is they wouldn't relieve us because I kept calling for him. Then I kept making fun. Like, hey, D-Boys, you think you can come relieve us? I got to get a drink of water. I was just on the open mic so everybody could hear it. So I was being my normal jackass, pissed off stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I think just reliving it all and not being able to handle it and finding a silver lining to it, which there always is a silver lining. God gives us a silver lining for everything that we do. We just got to find it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Anyway, when the militia was coming in, Bob says to me, he goes, Tano, you got the front gate. He goes, make sure this militia that we got coming is friendly. All I had left was my M4. That's all I had ammo left for. That's all I had, my pea shooter. It was daytime now. And I remember asking Bob, I go, Roger that, Chief. I got front gate. I understood.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Can you give me some description of who I'm looking for? He goes, I don't know, Tano. I said, Bob, I said, Chief, do you have vehicle colors? Insignia I can ID. He goes, we don't have any of that information. And the TL needs to be start chipping in. I'm asking the TL the same things. I go, are there uniforms I can look for? Do I have communication via cell phone?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
My burn phone, can I call somebody? Do you guys have communication? We lost communication. I go, give me a number, Bob, at least. He goes, our team leader comes across, and he goes, Tano, the number is between 30 to 50. They're all technicals. I was like, holy fuck.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I got on the radio, and we didn't put it in the movie, but I said, and you guys expect me to fight these fuckers off with a pea shooter? I said, Roger that. No response, because why keep poking the bear? Because I'll keep giving him shit. And I just said to him, I go on the radio, I clicked it one more time. I said, Bob, you've been a plethora of information that I really appreciate.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And being a smart ass. And I went dark and I saw him coming. Pablo played it. It still breaks. I mean, it does. It breaks my heart when I see it, because he played it so spot on, because that's how exactly I felt. I'm watching these technicals, and it is a huge militia. You know what technicals are.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's those Hiluxes with those discus or anti-aircraft guns in the back or a PKM mounted, and it's a badass militia. And as they're coming in, I get behind that parapet wall at three foot high, and I made myself as small as I could. And I had an EOTech that was on, and I put the EOTech on the passenger, Because I'm thinking to myself, you know, hey, this ain't over.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I'm good because I'm at peace with it all. I don't have a problem getting angry. I know it's going to bring anger out of me, but does it make me angry when I leave? No, because I'm going home to see my kids. And I want to tell this because... I still talk to Ty's mom, Cheryl Bennett, wonderfully. Love her. I'm her second mom. I mean, she's my second mom.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's not over until it's all over. It's not over until it ends, man, and I'm dead or they're dead. It's probably going to be me. And all I'm thinking is that Dishka is going to rip me in half and I hope it's quick. But I'm thinking to myself, I'm at least going to get one of them. And I got my infrared dot, I mean, my EOTech on the passenger who looks like a commander.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I don't know, but he's passionate. And then I'm just rotating back and forth from the Dishka gunner to Dishka. the pasture, because if I see the disker gunner move and he hits that fly, I'm going to hit that fly then, fly trigger, I'm going to pull my trigger and at least get him, and then I'll get ripped up. But I just couldn't think of anything else. I had no way to connect them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I learned the Jambo in Mosul at Merez because we had Sudanese guards, and every time we'd leave the gate, they would throw up the Jambo to me in 2008. So one day I stopped and asked them. I said, what does that mean to you? It means good morning. It officially is Swahili. It means good morning. You'll see it on shirts and app. I said, Jambo.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But because the Shaka is much cooler, be cool, they've kind of adopted that. That's what they told me. I said, so it just means be cool. So I would throw that up. And every time I threw it up, if I wanted to see if somebody was friendly, if I got it back, well, I'm here. So nine times out of ten, it was friendly. And I couldn't take anything else. And I went like this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And, man, you could have put a lump of coal up my ass. It would have been a diamond like that. I was like, just tight. And they're both chewing cot. I remember the cocks. They had big wads of cot in their mouth. For those that don't know what cot is, it's an amphetamine they dip before they go into battle. It's like a leaf, but it's like chewing copain.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's like mixing Copenhagen with cocaine and steroids. That's what it is. And it rots your teeth. It turns your mouth brown. You chew it all enough. It makes you look like a heroin addict if you chew it. And they look like they've been chewing it forever. Just gross. caught everywhere. I remember doing this. I went like this and I'm thinking to myself, this is going to hurt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And the pastor reached out and he smiled at me. He smiled, huge, caught brown teeth. And he went, and he was that close. I could see him that vividly. And he smiled through the job walk. And the diska gunner took one hand off the fly, took off that diska, the back, and he went like this. No shit. And I said, people watch the movie and they're like, that's so dramatized.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Like, oh, that's the fuck what happened. And I said, my wife is gorgeous. My kids are beautiful, beautiful smiles, but they know this. And I told him, I said, honey, I love you. You got a beautiful smile. But that smile that that caught Phil's still just the most beautiful smile I've ever seen in my life. And I did lose it. It was like, for briefly, I did. I just kind of let it out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And telling this keeps their memories alive. Where back then it was more of... It's about me. I need to show you how angry I am. I need to show you how pissed off I am. I need, it was selfish. It was very, now it's, I'm going to tell you because I want people to know that. So when they hear a liberal, they hear on Obama, they hear Hillary, they hear a Biden say, no, it was a conspiracy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I got on the radio and I went, there with us, there with us. And I mean, I'm hoping the movie, what all them felt like you see in the movie, I'm hoping that's how they felt in there where it just was somebody. Somebody. What had happened, and I don't know how Bob didn't get this fucking information since the commander was right in there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The buddies that took the militia, the militia that took the mortar team out, they went and got more of their buddies. So they just got more Qaddafi people. So we got saved by Qaddafi twice. Wow. And then we got out of there, you know, and got to the airfield and... There were some fights over our vehicles. I mean, in the movie, it showed a few guys.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
There was actually probably about 15 guys that wanted our vehicles. It was kind of comical because some guy, Indita, is AK when they were fighting over our vehicles. So we're in the middle, and we're trying to get people on. And again, this is a respect I have for Oz, and I've said it before. I think it was either with you or with... But...
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Again, you respect, even if you don't like people, you respect and give respect when it's due. And again, he did. He was John Wayne. He said the coolest fucking thing, and he did say this. When we got there, we were trying to help him off the back of the truck and get on the plane, and he wouldn't let us help him. He climbed his own ass down from the building bleeding.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I don't know if he said it during his interview. He may have, but that was pretty fucking impressive. He was down, pepper trapped, arms flying off, and he climbed down a ladder one-handed. He slipped on a rung and caught himself with his elbow, and then he walked himself down. So me and Oz may not get along, but he's one of the toughest son of bitches I've ever been with, and
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
When he said that, I was like, God dang, I wish I would have said that. I said, damn, that's some John Wayne Clint Eastwood shit right there. And he walked in there, and the flight attendants were out there. What did he say again? I walked into this country, I'm going to walk out. He said it wasn't movie, it wasn't script. That's what he said.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We were all standing there, and all of us were like, damn.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You do. You have to. You go through that, and I said, you're not going to get along with everybody. You can't hang out with everybody. I'm not for everybody. Believe me. They'd be like, man, I hate that son of a bitch, but if I need him, I want him on with me in the front with me. And there's some that don't. Some of them, I hate that son of a bitch. I don't want him anywhere near me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And there's some that, man, if we go through the gates of hell, I want you standing right next to me. That's just humans. That's just how we are. You're not going to like everybody. But if you have a job to do, and this goes in corporate world, this goes in the military, anywhere, private military, you have a goal. You need to reach that goal. You better be all on the same focus, the same path.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Now, you may have different jobs, but don't create more drama by not liking each other. And that's a good leader that puts you in positions that don't make you co-mingle all the time, which Roan did. He put us in jobs and responsibilities that If we had to do stuff together, we did. But if it wasn't necessary, then he wasn't forcing us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So we had a healthy dose of each other when we needed, but we didn't ride all together. It wasn't necessary for me and him to do the, I can't call him, it's got names for him. It wasn't necessary for us to do the meetings and the pickups and all that together. You didn't do that. And you had leaders that would force guys to ride. No, we didn't like each other.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So there's other guys, us, you just don't have to ride together. There's plenty of other people here. And they put us in different vehicles. Yeah. But what was funny and comical in that is it only showed in the movie that the flight attendant put one towel down on the stairs because Oz was bleeding over everything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
No, it was a video in a protest. They can say, no. I know that dude's telling the truth because just look how emotional he gets. And, of course, it's emotional. I saw my teammates die. They were my friends. I mean, we weren't best friends or nothing, but they were still my teammates and they still were my friends. And so the powers that be tried to cover it up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
She actually came down and was putting multiple towels all along the stairs and was putting them in the fuselage because she was more worried about blood getting all over the plane than blood. than Oz, helping Oz into the plane. She didn't give him a hand, nothing. She just let him walk up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They're like, wow, if that ain't, honestly, that's probably more closer to humanity today than how people are today than it really was back then. But he got on there and Dave, God bless Bob, dude. Bob sacrificed his life, saved two guys. He gave himself, John 15, 13, man. He exemplified that. Dave and Oz would have bled out. Dave was bleeding out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He went into convulsions twice because his tourniquets kept coming loose. He was losing so much blood. We were out of IVs. But because that plane was there, we had a little bit of a problem when we got everybody on the plane. As we got everybody on the plane, we heard a pop. Somebody shot their gun on the plane, the heating and air guy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
All the contractors had sidearms if they were weapons qualified. Our HVAC guy that was a contractor there with us, he had a pistol. He took it out to clear it, dropped the magazine, and instead of racking the slide, he pulled the trigger and he shot the plane.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So the plane sat there for an extra 10 minutes while we tried to locate the bullet because the pilot wouldn't fly if there was a hole in the fuselage. And we got lucky. It lodged in one of the iron frames in the back of a seat. Wow. Insult to injury and just comical, comical shit. Wow. And finally found it. That's when it got out of there. And, um,
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
There was a Western-trained Libyan doctor, and one of the 18 Deltas had got back to Tripoli. I don't know if it was from the SIF team or he'd come in from Djibouti, but there was a Delta that was waiting there, an 18 Delta, from one of the groups that was working in the region. And I still don't know who it was. I just know it was an SF guy. And they got... They got him stabilized.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Dave stabilized. Dave, good to go. They got Oz good to go. And then we sat and waited. And that's when I inspected the ambassador's body. They brought his body on. I opened up the body bag. And again... I don't think he was, you know, his genitals were mutilated. I didn't look. And I didn't see blood down there, but that didn't mean nothing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They could have cleaned it up and just pulled his pants on. But I didn't see any marks that indicated he was drugged through the streets, which is what I was looking for. Tig looked at him too. And Tig didn't see anything that indicated that as well. So we're saying no. Could it have happened? Sure it could have, but we didn't see it. a C-130 landed at 1030.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And as I'm seeing it come in, you know, you've been around, you know the telltale signs even from a distance of what a 130 looks like coming in. It's beautiful coming in, dueling, just cracking, looking at the tail boom. And I'm thinking to myself, fine, well, better late than never, America. And as it gets closer, I'm like, My eyes just say, man, that's red, green, and black.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's not an American flag. And as it gets closer, I verified it's a Libyan flag. And it lands. And I remember thinking, what? And I said it to myself, out loud to myself. I said, still no Americans here. Whatever. Goes down. I figure we're going to hot load it. So it's going to drive. It's going to drop its ramp. And we're going to, it's going to turn.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But that was a turning point somewhat because six months later I did put a gun in my head.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then we're just going to run in and take off. It didn't. It went by us. Went down about 400 to 600 meters. Banked a right. Shut its engines down. And I'm like, that's odd. Okay. Well, maybe they need to refuel. And I look at my T, I look at the TL. I go, is that for us? He goes, no. I don't know. And our country tail was there as well. And I asked him, I go, is that for us?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We jumped in some cars that we had left. We jumped in, we had another interpreter that was our expediter from the airport. He had a vehicle, jumped down there. They were all sitting in the room drinking chai. They were maxing and relaxing. Went to the pilots. We're like, is this for, and they had no idea what had just happened. They had no idea what had just happened.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And we ended up talking them into flying us out. Have faith, man. Wow. Have faith, God. I always tell people, never lose your faith. It's amazing that if you have faith, your luck increases. It just showed up. And that was something that, honestly, I pushed when we were doing all the testimonies. And nobody really ever cared.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So I just let it go. I don't push it anymore. But I like to tell about it because it is, of course, it is a, man. God still in control, man. Yeah. And I am going to talk about that. I do because this is why I don't like Obama or anyone. Mike Rogers, he's Republican. He talks shit about Benghazi. He's a terrible man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Whenever they call a conspiracy or they say, oh, it didn't happen the way they said they did. We got on that plane. And forgive me, Katie and Bub's family, but I do want to talk, because this is why politicians need to shut their fucking mouths, is Bub's rigor mortis had set in. So his arm was, when we got on the plane, we loaded the bodies in. We didn't have body bags for everybody.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So we had to put sheets, a sheet over Bub, because we didn't have enough. And he had gotten dropped off the roof by the D-Boys. They dropped him. I don't know why. Again, I've come to terms with that. I'm not going to beat those guys up. They're A-men. They're D-boys. I know they serve their country well and they did well. If you ever have one, you can ask them. But his arm was up in the air.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So it was, you know, we had him covered with a sheet, but his arm was like this the whole time. It's like an elephant in the room. You're on a C-130 and I'm on the, we're sitting on this side on the webbing and they're sitting on that side on the webbing. And you're seeing these dead bodies here and everybody's pretty much covered up, but Bob's arm is out there and everybody's just staring at it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I was like, what the fuck? Okay. I was like, well, fuck, if I have to be the one to do it, I didn't say it, but that's what I thought. And I walked over there. And I thought it was disrespectful to leave him like that. So I just grabbed his arm and I went, and I ripped it down and I felt everything ripped, but I could tuck his arm underneath the sheet so we couldn't see it anymore.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You know, I don't know if that was right or not, but I just, I couldn't ride an hour watching his, And everybody was staring at it. And it was just silent on the plane. It's like nobody wanted to acknowledge that that was going on or maybe what had just happened. And it was like, fuck. And maybe this is the, everybody, I have a little sociopathic.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's like, man, do I always have to be the one to do the dirty shit? That's kind of what I felt. But I'm glad I did because I know, I thought it was more disrespectful to leave his arm up in the air and leave him in that position and get him settled, get his arm underneath and have him be in a respectful position. And that still bothers me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I don't talk about that too much because, one of all, I don't talk about it a lot because it bothers the shit out of me, obviously. But because I don't want to disrespect the Doherty family by saying that maybe they would think of it like a desecration. And that's not what it was for me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's what it was. And that's not a rationalization. But I also...
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's it. You always respect family, though. You always respect other people's family, especially people you serve, because you want them to respect your family. And I love, I think, Katie and what she's done with the Glenn Doherty Memorial Foundation and Glenn's brother. They're amazing people. And Mrs. Doherty passed away, I think, a few years ago.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But I have the utmost respect for them because they lost their son needlessly. And I just don't want to harp on that. But I do want people to understand and know that. So when they hear a politician say Benghazi is a conspiracy or Benghazi didn't happen or those guys are not telling the story right, I want them to hear stuff like that because that's why I get angry.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Nobody believes politicians, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I hope not. Yeah. regardless that happened and we got back to Tripoli and we went back and we got off the plane, we went to the annex there in Tripoli. I took a shower and got some food and I was a big Copenhagen dipper at the time. So I was like, man, does somebody have Copenhagen? I need some big dip in. There's actually a picture.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
There was one picture taken of me sitting on the steps of the Annex in Tripoli. I borrowed somebody's New York Yankees hat. I didn't have any clothes because I wasn't able to get my gear. So I borrowed somebody's white under t-shirt. I had somebody's pants on that didn't fit me. So it looks like I'm a lot bigger than what I am down there, but I'm not because they were too tight on me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I have a big old dip in. And my sunglasses on. And I'm trying to come to terms with it all. And I got some food in my belly. And then they load all the contractors. None of the staffers. They load all the contractors on a motorcade. The Jewish guys are there. We load in our cars. We drive down the airfield. The Air Force crew chief, she was awesome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Broke every reg in the world to let us load those flag-draped coffins. They already had the flag. She was incredible. She already had them flag-draped coffins, ready to go, pristine. You couldn't have done any better than that Dover. She was incredible. And the pilot, Eric Stahl, Lieutenant Colonel Eric Stahl, who was a C-17, wonderful. Every reg in the world they broke to accommodate us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They had already loaded. Oz was already on. I'm not going to post it because it's for Oz. But I got a picture of him where he's in his gurney. IV's in. He's coherent. He's doing this to me. But he's on the plane. Dave is sedated, of course. He's out because he's in massive, massive trauma. Get the coffins on. ramp closes, we take off and we fly to Germany. And then we get to Germany and
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Playing Lance, I didn't let go of my rifle the whole time, or my ammo. Give two fucks. It's not going anywhere. It stayed right next to me with my ammo. So we get there, and I wish I would have known what I know now about General Hamm, but he's on the way to greet us, the Eurocom commander. He's the one that controls the Eurocom forces there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He's the one that can sacrifice his position and tell Obama and Hillary to go F themselves and send us troops. Well, he gets on, and I don't even remember what he said, to be honest with you. I just remember he said something positive to us. You know, he's a true guy, Ranger Tav, all that. And all I remember is I remember going up to him and saying, hey, sir, is there an amnesty box anywhere?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Because I got a bunch of ammo I need to download. And that's my conversation with him. But if I'd have known that he could have sent people and he didn't, then I probably would have had a different conversation. But I didn't know at the time. Yeah, he goes, yeah, sir. He's a good guy. He goes, great job, man. And he goes, it's right over there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I walk over there and there's a sergeant arm, like a sergeant, I would say sergeant arms, but whatever the ammo draw. And there's a, there's a sergeant there. And I gave a tech sergeant, Air Force guy. I gave him the ammo. And that's why I always tell people support the USO because they were already there waiting for us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And this lady come, she was the nicest lady, 50 something lady, blonde hair. about five foot six, she comes up to me and she goes, she goes, they already know what happened. They know what happened. They know the story. They know where we're coming from. Anyway, they don't know her agency. They just know that there was a battle.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
There's some deaths, there's some military and some civilians coming in, get your shit ready. And they already had stuff laid out like toiletries, underwear, you know, clothes, shoes. And she comes up to me and she goes, what'd you lose? She goes, what'd you, you okay? I said, yes, ma'am. She goes, what'd you lose? I said, ma'am, I lost everything. She goes, okay. And she started taking me around.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I got some jammies. I got some sweats, USO sweats. And I got my toiletries. And then we got to the end of it. She goes, write down what you need. I said, ma'am. She goes, no, I need you to write down what you need because you might be here for about four or five days. I said, every what? And she goes, anything. So I'm just doing, you know, I lost my tennis shoes. I lost my jeans.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I lost my t-shirts. And I gave her a list and it was, it was a full page of stuff I lost. I wasn't being a dick. I lost it. I, you know, lost my PlayStation. I was like, I said, if I handed it to her and, I go back to my room, and they put us into a nice room. It's Air Force. It's nice rooms, man. It's like a hotel. It felt like a hotel. They put us in. We're right next to BX.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's Air Force Base Exchange, Army, PX, Post Exchange, but it's Air Force BX. And I lay down for a second. I can't sleep. I knock on my door at 1 a.m. We got in real late. We got in like at 11 to Germany when we finally got there. And it was her. And she had two bags. She goes, here. She goes, I got your stuff. And I didn't break down in front of her, but I did when I closed the door.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Because it was the first time I'd felt where someone generally cared. like actually gave a shit. Not like Bob who came after when we were at AAA and he goes, thanks, man. Thank you. And I think he was trying to be sincere, but when you're that long in the agency, your sincerity is never out there anymore. Or having somebody say, man, great job. It wasn't.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And the GRS guys, they don't know what's, you know, what do we say? You know, I know it's sincere, but it's a good job, fist bump. But actual, like a mother figure saying, Carrying, it meant a lot. And then I put the clothes on. She got me some jeans. She got me some running shoes. I felt normal. And I tore a tree, took a shower. And then I slept for about four or five hours.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then I got up and I turned the TV on and I saw Susan Rice already on TV. And I remember I called Jack and they were saying a video and a protest. And I was like, I said, are you seeing this fucking shit? And we turned it on, and I just turned it off. And he turned it off, and we didn't want to watch it. Because we figured at that point, we're like, somebody's going to tell the truth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You still have some optimism that there's some heart and some integrity within the government that somebody is going to say something. And we still had that at that point. It had only been a day. Who knows? If I'd have known what I know now, 12 years later, probably would have been more vocal at that point in time, but we still had that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We still had that faith that there was still integrity and ethics and morality in DC. We hadn't seen behind the curtain yet. We had a little bit, but not really, you know, because we didn't, that wasn't our job. And we stayed on there. And then I remember That night we got super piss drunk. There's still a picture that I'll post every once in a while of me, Jack, Boone, and Tig.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And actually, the safe part, Alec was on one side, but I'll crop him out because I don't know if he wants to be seen. And I'm smiling a little bit. And I honestly feel bad that I'm doing it. I'm looking at it going, what the fuck am I smiling at? But I remember that I'm just trying to get through it. And I remember that I was drunker than shit, dude. I was so drunk.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And we had been laughing together, healing together before that picture was taken. Because Tig was telling me, man, this is what I did. And Bill was telling me. Some of the shit is comical. That's why I'm glad we got the comical shit in the movie because that happens, man. The bravado is there in all the movies. Lone Survivor, American Sniper, Black Hawk Down, even ours.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But they miss a lot of the jackassery. And that's one thing we're like, Mike, we got to get that in there because that happens. That's actually more prevalent than the bravado. And so I remember we were telling a story, and I can't remember the story that it was, but we were laughing because I was like, holy shit, I can't believe that just happened.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I think it was Tig talking when he said, one of the SPOs, one of the base security guys that we had there, called Tig into the office and said, can you come look at the monitor? I've got some problems in the sheep slaughterhouse area. And he went down there to look, and the sheep were jumping on each other.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And he's like, yeah, I went down there and I was watching these videos and the sheep were running around in a circle and they're jumping on each other and jumping on each other. Well, all the sheep are doing, they're trying to get away, but they can't get away because they're in a pen, they're in a circle. And it looks like they're humping.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And he did say that the Spogo, so do you think people are sneaking under there? He goes, I don't know. It's either that or the sheep are humping. And the Spoh goes, well, what do you think it is? He goes, man, it was like 2.30 at night. He goes, I don't know nothing about sheep. So it was just funny. It was dumb, but it was funny because it was just, again, ludicrous shit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So when you see that in the movie, you're like, was that part of the... No, that actually, that happened. And that's what's so...
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
funny about, and it is funny, and with 13 hours, but it's just the night in itself, is just the stupid shit, the stupid stuff that we said just to make each other laugh, or just stuff that comes out of your mouth, or rub some dirt on a kid, you know, after a guy blows his hand off. I mean, it's there, and...
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I still remember laughing and getting in that picture because of that story that Tig told. But when I look back at the pic though, it still hurts me a little bit because there's nothing I need to be smiling about there. We just lost two guys. We just lost an ambassador. We lost Sean who hadn't seen, that's two weeks. I've been doing that for 10 years and I've been pretty relatively unscathed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He's dead. And here I am smiling. a day after the attack, all of us were. And it bothers me. That picture, I still will post it because I do want to tell us, any picture that I post on social media, I know it's not the cool thing to do, I'll always have a story behind it because I want, it's therapeutic for me, but also maybe somebody will learn from it. But we were there and then we went home.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The reason they kept all the staffers there including Sarah, she can tell you more about than I can. She has already. She's already talked about it. And they flew us out is because they didn't want our input on how they were going to write the report of what took place. So they flew all of us contractors out. I didn't know that either.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
If any of us would have known that, we thought they were just being cool. It's like, oh, they're getting us out of here. We got to go home. It was no, because they're going to fly Petraeus in so they can get debriefed without us. There's agency for it. That's it. Wow. We went back to Langley. You know, you stop, you turn in your passport, you do your debrief.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's where I, we did our big debrief up on the seventh, up on seventh floor. And we went through, this is what happened. We mapped it all out. We stayed there for an extra day. We went through what we all did. And, you know, they did a big, like, really, it was just a big AAR like you do in the military. We were up there and this is, we're moving.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then we went downstairs and we sat with all the GRS head shed out of, you know, that worked out of Langley there, the guys that worked out of the building. And that's where we went through another AAR. They're like, what'd you do? What happened? And that's when they asked me, like I just said, whenever we talked about it earlier about our TL, they go, so how'd the TL do? And they said his name.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I said, he did great. And they're like, really? And Boone kind of looked at me like, and I said, yeah, he did great. Because he stayed out of the fucking way. What was their reaction? What are they going to say to me? It was, one put his head down and snickered because he knew who he was. The other two, they just looked at me. They didn't say a word.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I didn't say a word and I looked right back at him. And Boone was laughing the whole time too. Boone's laughing. So what could they say? I got no right. What are they going to say to me? I ain't going to, not a, been around long enough. I know who you guys are. You know who I am.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Well, I was also, and not that I'm, I've gotten my ass kicked enough times, but I'll fight if we need to fight. And that's what it was. Like, he stayed out of the fucking way. And it was stay out of the fucking way. And then with my eyes, I'm going, what the fuck are you guys going to do about it? I'm a little guy. I'll get my ass kicked.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Do you know what? That's why I didn't get any response back. If they would have had a set of balls, somebody would have said something. I do also think the one that was laughing that snickering and smiling, giving a little smirk. He had been down range before. I'd worked him a few times. They also knew the truth. They knew, what were they gonna, they knew.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They knew that he wasn't gonna do anything. So that's why one was in the corner going, you know, Boone's sitting there going, after he looks at me and I said it, he's like, he just started laughing. Boone doesn't laugh, you know, like that. He just started laughing. And everybody's on our side snicker. And so what are they going to say? They know I'm right. And if they did, then they would.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But nobody said anything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
What's that? Stafford. Who did? Oh, yeah, he's still working. The TL? He's still working? I'm pretty sure he's still working. Come on, you know the deal. He ain't going nowhere. He played the role. He didn't say a word. When he testified, he testified against everything that we said. He never testified with us. He testified on his own. He testified once with Tig, because Tig was still working.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Tig was the last one to quit. All of us went to Yemen. Tig went to Lebanon. So myself and Jack went to Sana'a after we took our 60 days off, and then we went back to Sana'a. Boone went to Aden. Tig went to Lebanon.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I took an extra couple weeks. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I had to get back on that horse, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Ike actually called her from the airfield. There's a wonderful, wonderful, I'm glad they got this right in the movie. You just see Jack's perspective where he calls home. We paraphrase in the movie because we got what we all said. Then they had a wonderful writer named Chuck Hogan who mashed it together and got all of our, based our words into that monologue when Jack's on his phone or Krasinski.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I remember I called her on the tarmac and I said, hey, you're going to see something on the news. That's us. I said, I'm fine. I love you. I said, I'll be home as soon as I can. And then she goes, what happened? I said, I can't really talk about it, but we lost one. And I met Rome. And yeah, this still bothers me a little bit too, because I really wasn't thinking about Bub.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I was thinking of the teammate, even though Bub had come from Tripoli. I said, we lost. And I said, on an open line, I said, we lost Rome. And I said, that's all I can say. I said, I'll talk to you when I get to, and I didn't know where I was going. I said, I'll talk to you when I talk to you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I,
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Hung up the phone. And yeah, every one of us had a phone call like that. Jack was the closest to Roan out of all of us there, Roan and Bob. So his conversation was a little bit more emotional than ours. But it was, it still was, hey, you're going to see someone on the news. It's over. We're okay. I'm okay. Yeah, we lost some people. Be home when we can. Love you. Bye.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's the most important there at the bottom. That's right. You could have cut out everything else and just read that at the bottom, and I would have been... I'm perfectly happy, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then my conversation when I got to Germany was a little bit more in depth, but I had to be careful because we're on open lines. And it wasn't I was worried about the bad guys listening to us. It was I started to figure it out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
uh colorado alamosa colorado loved it um grandmother and grandmother gram my grandmother and grandfather were were immigrants from mexico my garcia man my mom's dad's west texas mom's a garcia but so we grew up uh we grew up in the you know lower middle class but it was wonderful wonderful childhood alamosa's small little town in the sangra de crystal range out there in southern colorado and uh
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You know, Toto started to open that curtain where the great and powerful Oz was, and I started to see... who the enemies not really are, because the terrorists are the enemies too, but that we also have enemies in our own house that don't want the truth to come out. So I was more careful about what I would talk about on an open line.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then when we got back to Langley and all that, you know, there are debriefs. I did also tell them as well, because of that 203 incident where Tig lost the 203 and I couldn't find that other one. I sat down with him, because you can bitch about a problem, but if you're going to bitch about a problem, have a solution to it. And I remember sitting there with him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I go, you guys know that for some reason, we didn't have enough 69s out there. I said, if we would have had enough 203s for all of us, the fight would have ended way before it did, you know, at 530. We would have crushed them. They would never have touched us again. So in the future, every GRS operator has to be just like when we were in the military. Everybody has to have a 46.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Everybody has to have M4. Everybody has to have a 203. Everybody has to have an SR25. Everybody has to have the right gear for the right op, and then they get to pick which gear they need when they head out. Because this is bullshit. I said, we're the agency, and we don't have enough 203s. I said, what the fuck is that? Obviously, it fell on deaf ears.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I even said, I said, even Ground Branch has every weapons system they need. And I get it. They're DA. We're not. But that's horseshit. This is why everybody needs every weapons system. Because if this happens again and we lose one, we're not out an entire weapons system that could have been a game changer, a force multiplier, like a 203.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And from what I heard, and you kept working, I don't think, I think that fell on deaf ears. It didn't.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So fuck those. Fuck those pieces of shit. How hard is it to get an extra 203 or an extra 46 for the guys? Especially when there's only five guys on a team. Or an extra GLM. Something. But I remember saying that to him because I was pretty pissed. I was pissed at that. Because again, I felt like we're the runt of the litter. And so what if we are? But guess what?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
This runt of the litter just turned the tables without any assets at all. It's not easy being a Ranger or Delta or SEAL. It's not. You're doing DA stuff. But it is nice and it is heartening to have a Spectre gunship fucking overlooking you. It is nice if you are a SEAL team going out there to have a platoon of Rangers that got your back or vice versa.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
When you're on your own and that's it and you don't have all those assets... it can be a little bit more scary that you don't have all those protections. And so that's why, give us everything we need. And I'm not asking for much. It's not like I'm asking for a DAP cover. I'm not asking for, you know, I'm just asking for, can you all get us at least, each of us have a 203?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah. In all aspects. I wish I could tell you different, but that's what happened.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The end of 2017, 2018, when I reconciled with my wife. I tried to, from 14 on— Six years. Six years, yep. Because all that time in between, and that's when we had gotten divorced. I was sleeping around. That's why we got divorced. It was me and my infidelity. I was drinking a shitload. I was drinking all the time. I was gone all the time. I was speaking. How did you reconcile that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
First, you have to reconcile with God, man. How'd you do that? Stood in the mirror and said, God, I need your help. Carry me. I can't do this anymore. After, I don't even remember exactly what I was. I was at home by myself. They'd lived out. I lived by myself. I was a divorcee. I still had our little guy. Our little guy was still a baby.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Then we'd go to visit my grandmother and grandfather who were pickers and then they owned their own farm. So I saw them, just the hard work, man. It was amazing. I loved being a Paranto, but I also loved being a Garcia. I mean, my middle name is after my grandfather, Joaquin, Christian Joaquin. So it was, it was awesome. And it was just always happy, you know, always playing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So that was hard because I was like, holy shit, I'm missing a child again. because of my own stupidity. But I remember I was in the shower doing the crying game thing in the shower. I was like, my life sucks. This is awful. And I had millions of followers. This was before I shit-canned all my social media accounts. So I had like... Gosh, I don't remember. 275,000 followers on Instagram.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I think I had 300 on Twitter. When it was Twitter and Facebook was like 40. That was what was important in my life, right? That is so fucking ego-centered, vapid. But that's what my focus was, was myself, ego, and self. I realized that that was leaving me hollow. Then the toxic relationships. Then trying to fill it with alcohol. Then trying to fill it with money. I had a lot of money.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Tons of money. Didn't make me happy. And it was when I realized that I can't do this anymore. God, I need you. I do. I need you. I was in the shower. I did the crying game thing, crying in the shower naked. Got out of the shower. I had my Glock. It was right there. And I looked in the mirror, and I did. I put it right here. And I thought back, and I thought, just briefly, I said, okay, hard life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah, you've had it. Not hard, but it was rough. You got this disease that you're winning. You're winning the Crohn's disease fight. You got it under control. You got kicked out of the military. You fought your way to get back in. You made it. And you got through Ranger School, and you did what you wanted to do there. You conquered that, even though their odds were against you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
your grandson of immigrants that worked their asses off to give you everything. You've got that gene of that you don't give up, like your grandma, your abuela and abuela, abuela and abuelo.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then 10 years overseas, seeing death and seeing life and getting through all that, making a bad call in Iraq that I made a bad call in Iraq where a little Iraqi girl died that I could have saved her in 2005 in the Mansour district. He went through Benghazi and he got through that. And now the devil's gonna win this battle for your soul. That's what I thought.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I looked in the mirror and that's when I said, I looked at him and I said, God, carry me, I can't do this. And I just put the gun down and I stopped crying. And I went and grabbed the phone and I called my, she was my ex-wife at the time, Tanya. And they were on vacation at Disney World. They had taken off for Christmas. They were going on vacation. In the divorce, she got the DVC membership.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But they were there. And I said, can I come spend Christmas with you guys? And no hesitation, she goes, yes, come on. And... And I mean, it's like God answered me like that. There was no delay, there was nothing. I got on, by that time I had more miles to orbit the sun on every freaking airline in the world. I got on a Delta, got a ticket, flew out the next day.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I'd play with the wet, we called them the wetbacks. I know that's a, that's a, that's a politically incorrect term, but that's what we, the migrant workers that would come over and work on my grandfather's farm. They were called wetbacks, man. Pickers. Yeah, I remember going out and that we would play baseball with them when they come from the field. I remember one actually saved my life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And they were staying at the Polynesian Village at one of the little huts there on the water. And it was freaking awesome. Best vacation ever. And with that, that was the life. Really, that was it. The life changed. Stopped doing the media. I did one more written Fox interview for the Fox E-media. And that's where I said, I'm done. Anger's gone. God's got Hillary. God's got Obama.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He will take care of them. I don't need to judge anybody. Who am I to judge anybody? They will be judged. Let it go. And life's been great ever since. I stopped doing so much social. I stopped doing a lot of, I don't do 60, 70 talks a year anymore. I do like 10. I shit canned all my social media. I just got rid of all of it. Now, I got back on when I got my head right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
My wife is a big part of that, too. So it's not just me. It's me and her. But that was huge. That was so toxic. And that's why I don't... I give people shit for protecting those accounts or making them so important because they're not at all. And I got rid of all of them. And... Business-wise went a different direction too, as far as business goes, which means I minimized it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Still had some battle line stuff, but I stopped doing the traveling courses as much. And I focused on being home. And we also ended up getting remarried. So worked on a relationship. It took time. And how that worked is we just started dating again. It wasn't like we got right back in it. It was, we still lived separately. And then we would just start going on dates.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
How did your kids react when you came back in the picture? They, I mean, they were happy that dad was there, especially at Disney. We're having fun. But it was awkward for the two older ones because they really didn't know what to think. I mean, is dad going again? Is he going to be here this time? Is he leaving?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But also at that time, they were so used to me being gone anyway, even when we were married from a point, it wasn't... It wasn't anything that it was odd and they were pushing me away. And also because mom and dad aren't arguing anymore. They're not yelling at each other anymore. So it was a happier environment.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
If it was like a normal job, nine to five, where all of a sudden I disappeared and then I came back, maybe they would have been a little bit more, it would have creeped them out, weirded them out a little bit. But because dad was always gone anyway, I saw as him being a little happier, but as we talked about earlier, they still were very reserved and I don't know if this is for real.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You know, dad was mean whenever we come back from, we're actually going to be mean dad. And, and he makes, he makes mom cry and that's what they would see, you know? And so it just took time, a year of dating, of just more dating, of then spending more time together, of then the kids in it, maybe staying over then,
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Eventually it just ended up just like a normal where you're dating somebody and it develops into a relationship, a marriage. And we had to do it that way. And it was a little weird, but it was fun doing it that way because I got to do things that maybe I didn't do the first time I quartered her where I did. So it was like a do-over. And it was awesome. No, it was great. Everything was fantastic.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I did have some where I would still get angry sometimes because it's just seeing what you saw, not anything where it was infidelity or anything like that. No, that's terrible. I'm a terrible person. I hate even saying, but I'm going to be honest with you, man. And she, I mean, obviously she knows. I wrote about it in some of the books that I've written.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I was playing hide and seek in the back of a potato truck and I was running away from my cousin, hit a bar that was across the top, cracked my head open and I laid there for about five minutes before one of them carried me out, found me bleeding all over and he carried me out to my grandmother's house. I mean, it was amazing, fun. It was a rough childhood.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But there are times still where I would get angry, you know, and post-traumatic stress, whatever you want to call it, shell shock. You just, you remember, and you just, the anxiety was there. But I said the CBD really did help. I did get on an anxiety medication, but all the VA does is just, and I got good VA. Midwest, they do take care of you, but all that does is just create more problems.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The CBD helped. I stopped drinking. You know, even though I have my own vodka, when I say I stopped drinking, I have a drink with my wife maybe once a month, you know? Um, and I also made it a point to be a father, be home. This is where I want to be. And, uh, I did realize that in 2017, 2018, I did a contract. My last contract, it was to Costa Rica.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was an anti-kidnapping contract for a private firm in Texas to find an American that had gotten kidnapped. And so I was still contracting a little bit. I wasn't going to the Middle East anymore, but I was still doing some South America stuff. And it was Halloween time, and I was there for Halloween, and my wife sent me a picture of my son Peanut, my daughter, going out to trick-or-treat.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And, you know, that feeling that you got to go downrange, I got to – it was gone. Because all I could see was the picture, and all I'm thinking to myself is, what in the fuck am I still doing this for? And I finished my contract. And luckily, those things are real short. You find the guy or you don't.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You're going to find him alive in a few weeks, or you're going to pass it on to the next guy, or he's going to be dead. And he did. It was an American that they held for ransom. They did find the culprits. And he was dead. But contract's over. I flew back. And, man, just everything. My son, I reconciled my 16-year-old boy. We had that inning at Olive Garden, that incident.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The first time?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The second time? I didn't get down on my knee. She's not that kind of woman, David. She's not that type of woman. It was honestly very nonchalant. And it was just, you know, we still had our rings, and I put my ring back on. She goes, you still wearing your ring? I said, well, I am now. I said, where's your ring? She goes, it's in the box. I said, do you want to do this again?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And of course, I knew the answer. She's tough as nails, dude. And it was back at Disney. You know, and most people hate Disney. And their politics are horseshit. But it still can be a happy place for the family. A lot of happy things happen there. And we were actually running around, what's it called? The Polynesian Village. There's another one out there where there's a massage place.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was a rough, fun, skin your knee up, ride dirt bikes, take your lab out, go a little hunting with the .22 or with a pellet gun. It was wonderful, man. Crack your head open once or twice. Brothers and sisters? I have two. I have a brother and a sister. And, you know, me and my sister, we have our issues, but we're close. It's a close family. It's not like there's any hatred. My brother, no.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The white one. It's like a southern resort. I can't remember the name of it. But we're running out there jogging and we stopped. And I said, will you marry me again? And she just laughed. It's just like, because it was so corny. I'm such a nerd. It was so corny. And she laughed and just, yeah. And really, it was the smile. And she has a beautiful smile.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
When she really wants to smile, she doesn't like smiling because she thinks her smile is ugly. But it's gorgeous. And she just gave me her gorgeous, squinty-eyed, big-ass smile. And we sold her house. She had a second house in Omaha. We went back. She got it ready for sale. We sold it. She moved back into my house in Omaha. or say our house, because it was our house.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's what we, we brought it together when I was in the military. And then we stayed there for a few years and it was, it was, it was married. I was, and I was, I was a husband, finally. She was always a wife. I couldn't ask for a better wife. I couldn't ask for a better partner. Couldn't ask for a better woman because she's just, she's just a wonderful, wonderful person.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And she's wonderful for me because she's not sappy. If I'd have went down on my knee and did all that stuff, she would have told me no. It had to be doing something athletic. We're out running because that's how she is. And me just throwing it at her and her being, and that's how you are. And that's how I am. Yeah. And she knows that. Um,
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And she put her ring back on and I even asked her, I said, I'll buy you a huge, because I had a little bit of money at that time. And I said, I'll buy you a huge rock. What do you want? I'll get you a huge rock. She goes, you know I don't want those huge. I don't need diamonds. I don't wear, I wouldn't wear that because I'm fine with what I have.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it was our original ring that I bought her when we got married in the courthouse in Tacoma before I went to ranger school when I was a second ranger battalion. And then we stayed there in Omaha for a while and Omaha changed just like all cities do. And it wasn't the Omaha that I remember
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
know good values and there's good people in omaha there are wonderful people in omaha but it started to turn like cities do amazon moved in google moved in warren buffett is warren buffett the tearing down cornfields uh there was even riots and protests in omaha at the time and we're like we're out we're not here and and um we moved to Kansas.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
She is. She is wonderful. And then we, cause nobody, you were the first person that's asked me that. Cause nobody's ever asked me that. And I think it's an awesome, I do. I think it's awesome because it, it just, to me, it reminds me of how awesome she is and how she's not a girly girl. She doesn't want the girly girl stuff. And I,
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I did think about proposing to her, like doing the proposing and on and down. Because we're in Disney, and we're at the resort. I wish I could remember that damn right. It's right next to Polynesian Village. It's the old southern resort. It's the perfect place for it. You know, you've got the gazebos and – But I never would do that. I'd go like, there's no way. Because I did think about that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Like, man, I got to propose her the right, come on, on a beach somewhere. And it's like, no way. If I did that, she would think I was such a, she wouldn't believe me, first of all. She'd be like, what did you do? It was out running and being athletic. It was out and it was perfect for us. And then what'd we do after that? We went to the gym and we worked out together. And it was awesome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I was so happy. It was the best. And I still have those feelings when I go home. That's why I love where I live, where I just walk in and everything is just whoosh. And I don't need anything. I don't need anything else but that. It's wonderful. And she's there and she has her life. She doesn't need me to, we don't need to be doing things together all the time. She coaches volleyball.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
My brother, he's awesome. Him and I. It's one of those relationships, though, where it's like he'll call and I'll say, what's up, jackass? Hey. I'll say, yeah, what's up, douchebag? I love you, man. And two years younger than me, we played sports together growing up. And athletics was huge in the family. My dad was a football coach, NCAA football coach.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
She's very independent. But she'll still come home if she wants to, and she'll make dinner. I don't need to add, but it's not required. I like to cook too. But, you know, or she'll come home and she'll say, get your ass up and go make me some food. Yes, ma'am. Yes, darling. And now she's my angel. And I have a tattoo up here. I had a cross that she gave me. She gave me this before Libya.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I've had it since Libya. But I had another one that I had, she came out as a military and it said, love, love, honor, courage. And I have a tattoo up here on my chest is that cross. And then I haven't put peanut on there yet, but it has the call signs of all my other kids. It says one, she's Angel, my wife's Angel. My daughter used to be princess, but now she's like my wife. She's not a prince.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Dad, I'm not a princess. Don't call me that. But that was her call sign when she was little. Now she's Kiki. And then I have Bubba, because Bubba is Bubba. And that's them. They're always right there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You saw that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Oh, my God. That was demon time. And... Wow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Thank you, brother. And right back at you. I appreciate you being patient with me, and... That's cool that you did see that. And seeing your pictures downstairs with your kids and your wife, it sounds like, yeah, you ain't the boss of the house either, are you, brother? And we don't need to be. We need somebody that's going to boss us around and tell us, hey, our shit stinks sometimes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's right. It's a wonderful house. So thank you, brother. Thanks for having me. It was an honor, brother. No, the honor's mine. Thanks for letting me go down the rabbit hole like I did with just me, brother. Thank you. God bless, Chris. God bless you too, brother. Thank you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So when we were at Alamosa, he was the head coach at Adams State. and the athletic director. Then we moved to Brigham Young. We moved to Utah because he got a job as an assistant at Brigham Young University. And that was a one hell of an experience. I look back at it now and it's like, wow, I was blessed because that was during their glory years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Stevie Wonder!
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Thanks, man. Thanks. It was cool of you to say.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So I got to hang around a clubhouse with Jim McMahon and Steve Young and Robbie Bosco and national championship team. And you're taking it for granted. You had Lavelle Edwards who they don't make coaches. That was like the iconic moment coaches when coaches were actually coaches and not Public figures, you know, Lavelle Edwards, Paul Bear Bryant, guys like that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You know, it's just the old school. He was awesome. But, you know, you had Mike Holmgren there, who was the offensive coordinator, who later became the coach of the Packers, won two Super Bowls. Norm Chow, who was a legend in the NCAA, went to USC. Wow. Andy Reid was a graduate assistant there at the time, coach. So, you know, I look back, I'm like, man, I was around some cool.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And all I'm doing, I'm a kid running around the clubhouse. playing catch with Steve Young, going to the grad school. That's cool. Yeah, so sports were big, you know, and I wanted to play football, and I played football. We moved to Oregon State. My dad got a job at Oregon State, and we... It was wonderful there. Got to be around, you know, the Pac-10.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Well, you know, it's so difficult. I don't know if you know Adam Paintshot. Adam was a SIG firearms instructor. He started SIG Academy. Okay. He's a trooper in New Hampshire. It is a training website. It has been so difficult, though, to get that thing off the ground. It was just running a roadblock after roadblock because of Google. And if you don't think there's state-run media and state-run...
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I was a ball boy on the sidelines for the Pac-10. That was so fun just being at the games. You know, and that was Pac-10 at the time. I mean, that's Washington, UCLA, USC when they were – I mean, they're still good, I guess. But they was – it was amazing. It was just a good time being around college when college was college, when it wasn't – Yeah. Propaganda, let's protest about everything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was, it was college. It was PCU, man. It was where people would make fun of that. Yeah. Let's go have a, you know, so, and it was a, it was college towns. Now, Brigham Young was a little different this morning. You know, there's, you're not going to find a lot of drink in there. But, and then we, he got a job in Colorado, back in Colorado.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And we moved and still, he's still coaching at Mesa, it's called Colorado, it's called Mesa College at the time. It's called Colorado Mesa University now. And we moved there. Of course, being around sports forever, and my dad was a football player, and my mom was a pretty good athlete in her own right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I got some good genes in me, and I managed to get a scholarship to play football, and I played football for four years. Actually, I did go to Mesa. I had a good time, man. Your dad wasn't the coach. He was the AD. I went to that college. What does that mean? He was the athletic director at that college. Okay. I didn't go there first. I wasn't, I was a typical college football player.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I'd rather drink and party than go to class. So my first year at Mesa, I flunked out of college and had to go to a junior college to get my grades up so I could continue to play football. So I went to, it was called Dixie at the time because of the wokeness and political correctness. Now it's called something else, but we were called the Dixie Rebels.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I'm still a Dixie Rebel for all you, whatever you call the college now. It was awesome. That was a wonderful experience because Dixie was like the program where BYU, UNLV, University of Utah would send all these truants to get their grades up. So we were a football family. We were awesome. We were number one in the nation. We finished number two one year.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So I'm around there and I'm around gangsters, man. I'm around the Donner Street Crips. I'm around West Coast Bloods, Tonga Crip gangsters. Then you got farm kids coming from Utah, big farm boys. And we had this, it was such a wonderful experience. It was a wonderful to see so many,
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I was out of, you know, so many people of different backgrounds and nationalities come together for a focus to win games. Sounds like the military. It does. And it sounds like, you know, that's why I laugh when I hear all these DEI pro, all this. So we had diversity way back then, guys. And guess what? We were called the Dixie Rebels too. And not one black dude gave two shits.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We were proud to be called the Rebels. That's what we were. And I wasn't as true. I mean, they were hardcore. I just flunked out of school. Now, I ain't going to lie. My ethnicity did help. It does. He's Mexican, dude. And my grandpa, it allowed me to at least have a foot in the door where, okay, we can kind of trust this guy. And stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I have no problem with that. But it was one hell of an experience because we were so good. It was fun playing on a team of so many different characters. And what got me is that was back in the day when Bloods and Crips, they were, you know, that was a big deal. There's gang violence all the time. And there was a guy named Stacy. He was a West Coast Blood. He came from Los Angeles.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then we had a guy named Chucky who was best athletes I've ever seen in my life. He was a Donna Street Crip from Vegas. And I went to Stacy one day because I didn't get, I'm this naive kid from Colorado, you know. I don't know what I can ask or what I can't listen. I say, hey, how come you guys aren't killing each other? You know, I'm being an idiot. How should I say that? I'm 19 years old.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
What am I saying the right thing? And Stacy looks at me and he goes, he goes, on the streets, man. Yeah, he said, we would. I said, I'd shoot that motherfucker. But here, I just want to win. It's like, wow, that just makes so much sense. Wow. And that's also when I started going to the military and then even GRS. A lot of people don't know. Oz and I don't get along. We never have.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
state run internet web there is you have to be dumb in a bag of hammers to not see that out there but it's we've tried to get it going there's a lot of training materials on there videos out there and you know you get sponsorships to come to battle line tackle courses if you're a member you come to my courses for free oh wow I mean it's just so is it an online training platform it's an online training platform but it's a paid online training how many how many lessons are on there oh man
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We had to, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Well, it's just personalities. Oz is a wonderful, wonderful person. He is in his own right. It's just personalities. I'm very outspoken. Whenever we do speeches or things like that, he always wanted to kind of play like the politician. I got to make both sides happy. I was like, screw this. Say what happened. So we went at odds. But even when we were downrange, it just was personalities, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
There's just some guys you don't get along.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's the first place we worked at together. I'd never worked in before. That was the first base that I worked with Oz at. And immediately butted heads. It's just one of those bases where, you know, a guy comes in and you're like, man, we just don't jive. He doesn't like my Jack Ashery. I don't like him being so damn uptight. But... We were both professional enough.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And this is a kudo to Roan as well. Roan really was our team leader. We had an official team leader. Roan was our assistant team leader. We had a staffer that was our team leader. But Roan is who we listened to, the staffer we never listened to.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
When you don't hold them to the same standard, then they're not always going to be the weakest.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Tough shit, dude. It's the truth. I mean, I can count good staffers, and I'll tell the standard. But the majority of the good staffers were the ones that had the same background.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But anyway, yeah, with Oz, it was nothing where, and it wasn't a hatred. It just was, we don't like each other, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And you get to an age at 42 at that point, we're maybe in the early days in our 30s, maybe we would have, F you, F you, but it wasn't like that. It was just, he's 45, I'm 42. It's like, there's no reason to create any more drama. Deal with Jared how we need to. Just win. Because that still kept going in my head what Stacy said to me about the Crips and the Bloods. We just want to win.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Let's put the differences aside so we can win. The focus. And that's also Rome keeping us on, hey, what's the main focus here, guys? Everybody goes home. Put your stupid differences aside. Shut the hell up and do your jobs. You got your right and left limits. You got your right and left limits. And we stayed within those. And it wasn't like a, man, you're a douche. It wasn't like that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was just, you know, you're in a room, you're just in a room with somebody that you just don't get along with. So you stay in there as long as you can and then you get out and you go do your thing and you'll go do his thing. It is a lot more difficult because you've been on a lot of those bases doing this where you're on top of each other. So it's harder to get away, get away.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But we did, you know, and, you know, and Rowan wasn't dumb enough to put us rooming together in the same room. You know, it was one of those things, let's make it as, And you always, at least at that point in time, because of my age and experience, and I think this is important for everybody, even on people you don't like, you find things that you can respect about them. And I do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Again, he's tough as nails. The dude got hit with a mortar and tried to get up and shoot. I saw him, I told you in the beginning, I saw a guy get up and try to shoot after that mortar stopped. And the gun kept falling. So he would get up and he'd shoot and I'd see the rounds, boom, boom. Well, his arm, he hadn't realized his arm had gone flat.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So when you watch 13 Hours and you see him getting up like that, that happened. That wasn't movie magic. That happened. So do I respect his toughness? Hell yeah. And he said one of the coolest things I'd ever heard in my life. When we drove to the airport, he's bleeding out. His arm's about coming off. We wanted to help get him on that plane, that executive's jet. And he said this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I'll give him kudos for it because it was some Clint Eastwood shit. He goes, I walked into this country, I'm walking out. That wasn't a movie magic, that wasn't a line written, and he said that. And I remember when I heard it, I was like, all right, Ozzy may not get along, but that's some cool-ass shit right there. And so you cannot get along, so that's fine.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But you still find ways to respect each other and work together because the goal is to win. And I kept thinking about Stacy, the West Coast Blood. The most intellectual, wise thing I heard was from a 20-year-old gangster from Los Angeles. We just want to win. It's that simple. And I think that's why when I talk to corporations, I tell them that's part of my speech. Just win. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I know just hip pocket training stuff where I'll just jump on and do a 10 minute video. We've got to have 50 or 60 videos on. Oh, right on. And Adam's a wonderful, wonderful instructor. He is, I am the loosey goosey, hey man, let's just go out and shoot. I'm going to give you some lessons. Adam is... Which is great.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's the goal. Let's win. Put the differences aside. And that's why also when we were out doing our speaking and you're seeing us on TV, all right, we got to put on a united front here. We're stronger together. And because there wasn't hatred there, it just was a dislike. Just didn't like, didn't care. Our personalities just didn't mesh.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It wasn't that hard to go in there and do an interview together. And Oz had great things to say because he was there. He saw things that I didn't that helped expose the BS. Because we were in different spots the whole time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah, no, no, no, no, you're good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
God, just path. When you're short and you're slow, you're not going to go to the next level. And I was really short, but I was super slow. So the NFL didn't come knocking at my door. So I remember I was just walking through the student union building there at Colorado Mesa, Mesa College was called at the time. And, you know, at the graduation, there's job fairs at these colleges.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
If you go to college, you're always going to see a job fair. And I'm walking through, and all these jobs are there. But, of course, who's there with all the occupations, all the corporations? The vultures are over there in the corner. The Army recruiter, the Marine recruiter, the Navy recruiter, the Air Force recruiter.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And, you know, long story short on that one, which is not going to be the theme here, but they yelled. They said, hey, you. I was a stupid enough one to look in that direction. I walked over there. I said, hey, what are you going to do? You know, I had thought about FBI. I had thought about federal police. Every time I went to apply for one, I'd get a call. Hey, you need experience.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You got to go become a police officer. You got to go endure. You got to go to the military. And police just didn't sound fun to me. So I walked over there. I saw the Ranger video. I saw the recruiting video, which was the 75th Ranger video. So they're jumping out of planes, fast roping. They showed me the SEAL Challenge video the Navy guy did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So I'm watching the helo cast and I'm watching the low cast. I'm seeing all the cool stuff. You know, the Marines, they're landing on the beach. You know, they're showing me recon guys. The Air Force one. I always make this a joke. I say I saw the Air Force one and, you know, You know, they were in an air-conditioned room, nice, comfortable with good food.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's a great dynamic because you do, there are people that respond to that kind of training better. The by the book lesson where some guys respond to, just tell me what I need to do. This is what you need to do. But, you know, it's been, we've had it going for a few years now, and it's just always trying to improve the website, get that flowing. It's E3 does it, and it's a whole association.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You know, they're showing the jets and things. And I just thought the Rangers was the best one for me. And so I said, signed up. I signed up. I enlisted right there after I got my bachelor's degree.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And, yeah, 30 days later, I'm off to Fort Benning. Did that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And the scariest thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I was like, what am I going to do? And, you know, I had, well, FBI, they said military. And I do remember telling the recruiter, I asked him, I go, is that hard? He goes, yeah. I go, do people quit? He goes, yeah. All right, let's do it. And so move on. And we go to Fort Benning, Georgia. And, yeah. It did. I was like a round peg in a round hole. I just fit. It was Sand Hill at the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was Echo Company, 258. It was called the House of Pain. I was supposed to be the hardest one there, but come on, they're all the hardest. Every basic trading depot is the hardest one. The Stingers Honor Graduate, I did really well. It just fit. It was physically fit. The athletics completely prepped me for it. The teamwork aspect of it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You just had to get used to the yelling, and they were still smacking us around. It was 1995, which if you didn't deserve to get smacked around, then you didn't get smacked. And that made sense to me. It was based on merit. You work your ass, it's merit-based. You're going to perform. You're going to do what you're told. We're going to move you up. You're going to be a smart ass.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You're going to be lazy. You're going to be... Fat body? No, then you don't. It's easy. It's a piece of cake. And went to airborne school, but I was married to my first wife at the time. And nothing against, she's a wonderful person. We just got married way too young. Just nothing bad to say about her, but she was having an affair. So I got my Jody letter. Hey, I want a divorce.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it really was hard from there on out, airborne school on out, because that wasn't something I ever expected. That wasn't something in my family that happened. Divorce didn't happen. To me, that wasn't even on my radar. And it was, whoa, this is, so I'm fighting airborne school. Airborne school is easy. Just all you gotta do is learn how to fall break yourself and then jump out of a plane.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was memorable. There was a memorable thing about airborne school though that was awesome. Again, God looking out. My first two jumps, first day jump, first night jump, I was the first one out the door. It was so awesome. Being able to have the door open, first jump, and I'm watching. That was cool. Nice. It's memorable. And the night jump, too. I was like, how lucky am I to be?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
How did that happen? I got lucky to be the first one out the door. So, you know, your door opens, you get to watch all that shit for about 30 seconds before you go. But airborne school, then went through RIP, got through Ranger RIP, went second bat, and I was there for about eight months. And, you know, you're an un-tabbed guy, and you've been around Rangers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You know if we're un-tabbed at Ranger Battalion, we're shit. We're getting hazed. I mean, it's just, it's miserable. You're hiding in your team room on the weekends because you don't want the tab spec four to come in there and smoke your balls and haze the shit out of you. So you just, like, either hide or you take off for the weekend. And, but... Went on a GRX training mission at Bragg.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
About eight months in, I was at battalion and the joint readiness exercise. So we're doing a joint readiness exercise with blue, green, some PJs, and then the Air Force guys at Pope, the spec ops, the specter. And the task forces are two night stalkers were there too. So it's a big thing. It was pretty awesome. So, I mean, I'm a private, I'm just, but I'm fighting this divorce.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I mean, my wife's cheating on me. And it's just killing me. Did you know who she was cheating on? No, I mean, at that first two week, it was a two week GRX, the first week. I still hadn't figured it out. I was in denial more than anything. You know, that's no way she's doing that. And this is for the admin and cell phone. Cell phones are a big thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So to go home to call, you had to actually go to a pay phone. So it wasn't like I could call and check all the time like you could now. Which maybe that would have made it worse. Maybe this made it better. But I'm a new private. I'm around all these tier one guys. I'm just, holy shit, dude. I'm... And when you're a new guy, you have that bravado, but should I be here?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So it's not just farms. There's camping. It's outdoor. Oh, wow. Camping, aviation. John Rain Waters runs the aviation side of it. You know, RVing, off-roading. And so I tell the E3 owner, his name's Brian, Brian Johnson. I tell him, yeah, Farms is like the redhead stepchild of E3 because all those are cruising and ours is just, it's been very difficult.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You know, tab spec fours, you got tab squad leaders, tab B5s. These guys, this is old hat to them. I'm like, oh my gosh, man. So the stress levels for me, don't fuck up, don't fuck up. I got two hernias on my first jump too. So I don't want to tell anybody because I got two little aliens going there when we jumped in. Is it Sicily at Bragg? I can't remember the drop zone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But anyway, it all came to a head and I called home and she wouldn't answer. So I finally called my brother, Mike, love him. I go, hey, what's going on with Stacy, man? He goes, dude, I don't want to tell you. And as soon as he said that, you know, I was like, crap. So it was in denial.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I went home on block leave because right after that, we're going on block leave, which is right before Christmas. And I just, I went to the guy's house and I hid in his bushes. I was going to kill him. And I came to my senses and, which was great on my end, because I got out of there. But it was also where I even felt like a bigger failure, because like, man, I can't even do this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I'm the biggest pussy in the world. But God's got me, you know, God's. But of course, everybody found out, small town, Grand Junction, Colorado. Military found out, of course, because... I was very lucky. Instead of going to jail, I got to go to the VA there in Grand Junction. They threw me in the mental ward, like to check on me. So the military, so the wheels are turning that I'm going to get.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So hold on, did you get caught? Actually, what I did is I went back home, I drank myself silly, and my friend found me on the floor. My ranger buddy who I joined with, he was home too on leave, he found me on the floor. I was just drunk and took a bunch of Tylenol. So you tried to kill yourself. Yeah, 1997, six or seven. 96, then 96. Holy shit, guys. Yeah, it's just one of those things.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Because you're young, you're pissed vinegar, you're full of fire. You're a ranger, dude. Someone was going to, you know, but I wasn't ready. It just was being young and stupid and doing stupid things impulsively that young people do, especially young guys like yourself and myself. We're just, we're not thinking. We're just action first, consequences later. But the military found out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And of course they are. And of course we called the commander. And the commander found out. And I had wonderful, so blessed, first sergeant was Frank Grippy, Ranger legend, Sergeant Major Grippy. He was dropping mortars and tubes in Torbo and Anaconda when he was with 10th Mountain. He was a Sergeant Major. He was my first sergeant.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And we also had Captain Paul La Camera, who I think he's a three-star general now. He may have just retired. But he was my CEO. And they, I mean, I wasn't going to stay in. There's no way I could stay in. But I managed to get an honorable discharge. I didn't deserve it. So I only finished two years out of my first four-year contract.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Well, I went home. It took me two years. Well, I had two years. I didn't have a choice. You got out. Sorry.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So you left.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I went back to my hometown, and I was like, I can't do this anymore. What were you doing in your hometown? Nothing. Nothing. Just being miserable? Being miserable. It was. I was miserable. But I was with family. My mom's there. My dad's there. My brothers are there. So I'm surrounded by family. My friends are still there because I'd just really been two years out of college.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I still had guys I'd played football with that are still finishing up. And I had a buddy of mine named Brian Edwards. He goes, dude, you look like shit. And I moved in with them. I hung out with my buddies. You know, my parents were there, but I moved into a room at one of their old ex-football players. They were still playing in one of my teammates' houses.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And they went on a, and that's what I recommend everybody to do when you go through a divorce. I went to South Padre Island for spring break. He goes, what happened there, Chris? He's like, dude, you look miserable. We're going to spring break. Come on, get in the car. We're going. I was like, okay, we went. And I went to South Padre for spring break. And I remember this. The Lord, I am beyond.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I get it too because, you know, it's a paid website where, There's a lot of YouTube sensations out there that are showing training, and you can get that for free. So it is. I won't do the free video stuff. And the reason being, it's not a money thing. You really don't have any control of who those videos are going to. And where do I get that from?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The Lord works mysterious ways. I'm serious. It's just so amazing. I look back at it now. I'm like, my gosh, God really does have control. I go there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Are you serious? No shit, I went there. Hold on, hold on. How long had you been, were you divorced yet? Yeah, well, we had been unofficially divorced for only about six months, but she had tried to divorce me and get rid of me at basic training.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And now I'm like, what am I going to do with my life?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We're going to South Padre Spring Break. I need you to smile again. And Brian, I love Brian. He is all. And he was a really good football player. Outstanding wide receiver out there. But we go there. And this is what's so funny. And it's funny, but I also, I do believe there's Cupid is out there because we're at Charlie's. It's a bar there. No, it's Louie's. We're at Louie's.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Louie's, Louie's bar and something. And I'm dancing, you know, and, but I'm still jacked. I'm a ranger, shredded. Yeah, I'm jacked up. Shirt's off because I'm, woohoo, I'm spring break drinking, drinking. And all of a sudden, this searing pain, like, all flows down the side of my face and my eyes. Well, it was before fireballs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So they had those shots of cinnamon snobs that the little ladies would carry around. Somebody had knocked the whole thing on me. And I look and it was my wife, my current wife. I look, it's like Cupid's arrow. It's like, whoa. And we danced. We were inseparable that whole spring break. I stayed with her. Wait, hold on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Who picked up who? Actually... I still think she's, and I told her, I said, you spilled that cinnamon schnapps on me on purpose, didn't you? Because you saw my heaving chest and I would show her, didn't you? She was like, that was, so there, but that's the, that was actually the joke. And it was, because I still believe that. You saw me and you did that on purpose, didn't you?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Just so I look at you. And I looked at her and she's a volleyball player from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. I mean, she, you know, volleyball players, come on. Watch, watch college volleyball, dude. And, you know, she's taller than me. She's 5'10". I'm 5'9". She's 5'10". And just athletic. And, man, that was it. And, again, the whole spring break.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So there was no one-liner, but it was, I do give her shit for that. I said, you did that shit on purpose because you saw my man boobs from all them push-ups. And it was awesome. And so when I went home, it gave me a direction. So I went back home. I'm like, okay, I... The stipulations, my honorable discharge, is I had to stay out for two years. I couldn't reenlist for two years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It came in my file. And my dad had his doctorate. My mother, she's a teacher. She had her master's. What's the logical step here? Let's go back to college. So I applied to University of Nebraska Omaha, took the GRE, got accepted, and I got into my Bronco II. And luckily, I made it to Omaha. And I lived in a $100 and 10-month room in the slums of Omaha.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Omaha's a wonderful place, but it was the poorest of Omaha. No air conditioning, nothing, and it was wonderful. It's wonderful. It was just, it was like I'm out of a terrible element. And here I am by myself, no money. Bronco 2s don't run. So it's in a crappy car. I'm still fighting double hernia surgery because I hadn't got my hernias fixed yet. But it was like, man, this is awesome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Well, I spoke at an FBI academy, a conference, which had a lot of law enforcement officers, a lot of former FBI trainers, And I sat down with them and they're great guys. Of course, it's not all formal functions. I'm with a bunch of cops, man. So of course, we're going to go to the bar a little bit and enjoy, have some food.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And the only person I know is this woman that spilled drinks on me that I spent four days with at South Pike Island. And she was awesome. And we just, we dated and I just got my life together. I went back to school. The VA got my shit fixed. I got my hernias fixed. They were always there. Grad school to me was, the school, I say it's easy, but the ability to go to school and then also work.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it wasn't hard because the military was so regimented. You could do multiple things and not get enough sleep and still get it done. It was easy. So I got a job at Mission of Omaha working as a security guard. go to school, and my classes I could take at UNO, a lot of the grad classes were in the evening. So I would take classes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And a lot of those graduate school classes, I was in for criminal justice. I was still thinking maybe the feds down the line, even with all I've done. But it was one a week. So one three-hour class a week I could take, and then it was just study, study, study. And to me, studying was awesome. The library was peaceful. So I would get an internship. So I worked at the library. I could study.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I worked at Museum of Omaha during the day. So I was making money over there. And I was going to school and I was with this woman that was, this young woman that was just hotter than all hell. I mean, volleyball players, man, squats and jumps, Obviously, you can tell what kind of man I am. She was amazing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And she turned out to be just a very wonderful person that, you know, on social media, you see all the women on social media. She's not that. She doesn't have a social media account. She doesn't believe it. She's just a good homegrown Nebraskan girl. Nice. And she took care of me, and she really did. She got me back up on my feet. She got me...
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The whole situation got my life back together, but she was the main focal point on that. Two years, got my master's degree. I actually went from being a security guard to where I became an insurance adjuster. So when you watch the movie where they say, you'll be happy being at home, that argument did happen. I fell asleep during the ambassador's speech. I heard so much political... I didn't care.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I would have been up half the night, dude. I was up half the night. I got up in the morning like, screw this. Do I really have to go around? He's like, Tonto, get in there. And I'm sitting in the back. But anyway, when the argument said, yeah, that happened, he goes, you'd be happy going back home and being an insurance adjuster. Well, it's because I was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I still am a licensed National Flight Insurance Program FEMA insurance adjuster to this day. I still can run claims if I want, but... That's what I did. I went to, got that certification and started working at Mutual of Omaha. And eventually I got back in the military. And I remember it was hard.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I went through eight different recruiters because nobody was going to help me when they found out what I did, even though I had an honorable discharge. My renter code was a three, which is very bad. That means you... You got an honorable discharge, but there's an asterisk there. And the last guy I saw, it was a recruiting command. It was right by my house too. I'd missed it for two years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I don't know what happened. Lord works mysterious ways, my friend. I'm driving home to go home. I'm like, well, I guess the military's down. I got my master's, but I guess the military's out of question. I see it in the corner and I'm like, how did I miss this for years? It's been right by my house and my one room.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But I remember coming back and I sat with one of the officers and he goes, you know, You've had Don Shipley on. I know he goes, you know, I watched Don's videos, but now it's starting to bother me. A lot of these videos out there because they're teaching all these tactics and they don't know, they have no control of who's getting them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
in the house I lived, and I drive in there, and the Nebraska Recruiting Command Sergeant Major is in there. I walk in. He's in there. I'm talking to the recruiter. He overhears me pleading my case to this recruiter. Hey, man, please, I really want to go in. I need to finish what I started. He walks in. He says, I'm hearing what you're saying. He said, do you really want to go back in soon?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I said, yes, Sergeant Major. He goes, Roger that. He decides me to paperwork over. I sign it. He takes it back from me. As he's holding it, he goes, there's just one stipulation. You have to do it all over again. Roger that. So I did it all over again. Basic airborne ranger. Did it twice. And went back in. You did it all twice. Yeah, yeah. If you want something bad enough, though, you'll do it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it really, a lot of that, and you know this, especially when you're early on, it's a mind game. It's fuck-fuck games. I knew it was coming. I was in great shape because that's all I did. I worked. I went to school. I hung out with my girlfriend at the time who was a volleyball player there. So what did I do? Half the time she was at the gym. I worked out all the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I was running five minute miles. You know, I could do 120 pushups in two minutes. I mean, I was, you know, I'm very lucky I had good genes from my family. You know, playing sports helped as well. So when I went in, I could outdo the drill sergeants. But I saw, I saw how the military in those three years went from, or it was actually four years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And that was from 1995 when I first went into basic training till when I went back in in the beginning of 1999. How had it gotten easier?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And the Dallas police, Dallas chief of police came in and they had that tactical shooting where some officers died. And he was one of the speakers at that event as well. And it kind of hit home to me. I was like, man, He's exactly right. We're putting all these videos, and God bless him. I have nothing wrong to say about Don. I don't know Don. We've never met. I support what he does.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I do the drill, sir. When I went in the first time, Every drill instructor, infantry drill instructor, except for one, was tabbed. They at least had a ranger tab. They don't come from Ranger Battalion, but they at least had a tab. Or they were mechanized and they'd seen some combat or been to the desert. I mean, they were hardcore.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The one that didn't, and he was one of my drill sergeants, Drill Sergeant Hardney, the devil, loved that man. Big black dude, 6'7", looked like a demon from hell, but I love him. He He was actually the NCOIC for Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, if that tells you anything about his qualifications. He may not have his tab, but do you think he's disciplined? Yeah, standing eight hours at, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So when I went in the second time, two guys had tabs, no CIBs. Not that much in shape. The only two guys, the senior drill instructor, he was from third bat, so he was a ranger. He was tabbed, and then our commander, our CO, was tabbed. And it was easier. They weren't throwing us around. They couldn't even get in our face. They could still do the shark attack.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Long time coming. I don't know if I already said it, but thanks for, and you're so tolerant, man. That was so cool that you were willing to wait and then just, hey, I'm going to be in town, and I hope you didn't have to bump anybody. If you did, sorry, guys, but just, you've always been a stand-up guy with me. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's really cool of you. Thanks, bud.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But it was, the standards had lowered. The mile max, the two mile run was 1154 when I first went in. It moved down to 13. So it was easy. I was like, Jesus, this is cake. I was, you know, everything, all the standards had lowered. And yeah. And it wasn't, it was, it was just, it was a hell of a lot easier. And of course it was a lot easier because I knew what was coming. Airborne school was easy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
RIP was hard, like RIP should be. I mean, it was just, it was a kick in the ass. RIP should be a kick in the ass. The only thing is, so two of the instructors there, I had joined in 1995. So when I came back through, they were both E6s, E5s, one was an E5, one was an E6. And they're like, what the hell are you doing?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I think, you know, from what I've seen, he looks like he's a stand-up guy. And I'm just throwing that as an example because that's what the law enforcement officer said. The police, he was from Philadelphia. He's like, we just, you know, we're really getting, not upset, but he says, we're really worried that the bad guys are starting to watch these videos out there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So, I mean, why I tell people that is because it was, I didn't feel the, oh shit, you know, the nervous, you know, like you do when you went through hell week or these guys are mean. It's like, I know that dude. I could outrun him five years. So it was, and then going back to battalion, went there. Got my tab, became a team leader.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then my platoon leader found out I had my master's degree and that I'd been at battalion before. And he says, you need to become an officer, son. And so I became an officer. I got my commission. No kidding. You became an officer? Don't tell anybody.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It wasn't long-lasted, though, because I did. I got my commission. And in 2003, I was going through IOBC, infantry officer's basic course. I actually joined 19th Special Forces Group too. So I stayed enlisted in the Guard as I was getting, because I did Green to Gold. I didn't go to Officer Canada School. I just had to do a year of Green to Gold at Creighton University. So I joined the Guard.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
19th Special Forces Group is where I linked up with my partner that does my vodka with me, Ben Morgan from First Ranger Bat. He was on ODA 993. They brought me into ODA 993. So we were... We were friends and we grew up in Grand Junction, but that's where we really developed a great friendship because he went to a different high school. We didn't really hung out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But anyway, I still had, I got my commission and I got it. And at the end of the course, I was standing out there at the Malone Ranges and my stomach was really hurting bad.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
terrible was feeling awful but i'd just been out the can in the night before drinking you know i was like it's normal shit we're out here sweating our balls off just drinking i ate a ton of pizza of course i and i you know i had passed gas i let a fart go and i sharted i chipped myself um But the pain actually increased when that happened. So I was like, that ain't right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I went and dropped trowel and I had blood all over. Just, I had blood. I had blood, just, I had, well, they rushed me to Martin Armour Hospital and I figured I had also colitis or Crohn's disease and it was really bad. And I remember the GI doctor, yeah, I just had blood all over the place. I had shit blood.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Because that's what I, when it becomes extremely inflamed, for those who don't know what ulcerative colitis is and all Crohn's disease, it's your lower intestines and your colon become inflamed and they just have ulcers all over them. It looks like you've got road rash. It's like when you... And I'd had it for years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I just didn't really, you know, I didn't really notice it because I was going at such a high level. And I think the focus was there to finish what I started, that I wasn't going to let anything go. hamper that, but it got so bad that now it was affecting my nutrients. It was affecting my energy levels because I couldn't, that's where you process all your food.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's where, when you eat everything. And when it's all like that, your food, it doesn't process. It just shoots right through you. It's blood, mucus and food. And that's what was starting to happen. Wow. Yeah. I got discharged. I got discharged in 2003 and that was a kick in the balls, dude.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That was my one, one time where in my life where God was, I was mad or I was like, man, I wonder if God really exists because like, Holy crap. I went through all this, all this. And, and I, I remember lying on that gurney looking up at him going, really? Why? What the hell? And, uh, Sorry, he has patience. God always has patience in us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He pities us, which he always pities the one that needs the most pitying. It was at that time was me. And I went home and I lost 30 pounds. I mean, it was like ranger school all over again. I lost 30 pounds in about a week because I couldn't eat.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yes, because that wasn't the plan. The plan was I had already— What did you think you were going to do? I had no idea. I had no idea. No idea. I didn't know. My wife was there. She was very supportive. We had actually gotten married. We had gotten married before I went to ranger school. That's how wonderful she is. We got married at a courthouse, and I was off to ranger school the next week.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But she was there. What did your wife do at the time? At the time, she was actually, she stayed in Omaha and she was managing Gold's Gym. So she was at Gold's Gym. She was just working. She had a business degree and that fit her. She's athletic. Gold's Gym at the time, that was when Gold's was really big. So she had a good job. Not that, it was about 40 grand a year. That's tough.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
for two people to live on. Couldn't do that anymore. But at that time, we were okay. We were living in an apartment. And all she cares about, we're just healing. So I'm trying to find natural remedies to heal myself. I'm going to nature store because I'm on prednisone, but prednisone is rough. So through the next year, all I'm doing is, first of all, I'm eating things.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And if it goes right through me, I write it down. I can't eat it anymore. So I'm figuring out what I could eat, my diet. And then I'm taking the medication and then I'm going to go into nature food stores, organic food stores. You know, it wasn't a Whole Foods at the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You had to find the little mom and pop ones and trying to find out what could I eat to start to build my body back up because I couldn't take whey protein. I couldn't do anything that was dairy related. And I just tried to build my body up for the next year. And I found this goat colostrum. I wish they still made it goat milk. I could do that. And then I could eat corn stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I could eat stuff that was rice related. I could eat anything in the Bible if it was manna, manna bread. I could eat that for some reason. It didn't disagree with me. And I built my body back up for the next year. And at the end of 2003, I got a call on the phone from Blackwater Security. Blackwater called me first, and then 30 minutes later, Triple Canopy called. How did they get in?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I mean, did you apply? At that time, it was just word of mouth. And I remember they got a hold because one of my ranger buddies at both places were already working for him, and they had recommended my name to him. Interesting. Yeah, they were good. Actually, Blackwater was a gentleman, and he's a great guy. Brian Mastrofini was his name.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
and he had recommended that uh as rangers let's give him a shot he didn't know i was sick though either yeah but they uh they got my phone number because he you know as a friend he had the phone number so he's like here it is and they called me and the only reason i went blackwater for blackwaters because they called me first And at that time, they were both great organizations.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You had Eric running that, and it was still relatively small. And they had Lee Van Arsdale running, who's a Delta legend, running Triple Canopy. It was pretty good shit. Was it for OGA? No, at that time, there was Peak. It was called Polar Quest. It was just starting to come online. But at that time, it was Bremer, the Bremer detail. What year is this? 2004, end of 2003, beginning of 2004.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So Karzai had already been going. The Karzai detail was a lot of your brothers were on that Karzai, and they had just started to move to Iraq, and they were starting to pick up guys to go on the Bremer detail, which was going to be – the Negroponte detail down the line. It wasn't State Department either. It was the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
How'd you like that? The beginning, it was great because it was like OGA.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah, that was the good old days. That was when it was State Department really didn't have their hand in it, so it was the Wild West. I mean, that was, you know, that's where Sachs started. Sachs was, he was, that's where he became really a legend over there in the GRS was he was one of the original Bremer guys. Loved Sachs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But anyway, yeah, that's what I, and I went, and I went to the first class where I met Boone. Boone and I were in that first, it was called the- Did you work with Sachs in that? Not in the Bremer detail. No? No, he moved on. He was one of the first guys to move over to GRS. Okay. Sachs was the trendsetter on contracting, but rightfully should be, and he was just- What a great guy, man. He is.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's the one thing. He is an operant, but he's just a nice guy. I love that dude. He was, obviously I'm mentioning him, so he had an effect on my life, a positive effect. But yeah, I went there and went through the training, which was basically three weeks at Moyock of Delta, Long Tavers, White Soft, Blue, Rangers, and Marines fighting with each other a lot.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Dude, it was so hilarious. We didn't learn a damn thing during that. We went through all the shooting, so you had to pass the shooting. But as far as the PSD stuff, we didn't learn a thing. Because they were just always, everybody was always fighting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then you're having the white stuff, the vanilla, the SEAL teams outside of blue. The me's. The me's. The regular shitbag Navy SEALs. Come on, shit. I believe you, man. I'd rather work. The vanilla guys knew infantry stuff better than the blue guys. I always said, man, you guys know your infantry shit down. You guys had it. Mike Kane, Saw Bones was a guy who worked quite often. He was awesome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it didn't make sense to me until he said it, too. Yeah, until he said it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And he hated blue. He was awesome. Bones was the man. And anyway, they're running the course. So do you think a blue guy is going to take shit from them or Delta? And it was, I remember sitting on the bleachers week two and And we're trying to do through, we're trying to learn basic formations, walking formations, diamond, you know, and then how to react to contact within those formations.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it just turned into a big argument shoving.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's all been assaulting. And the ones that were teaching it, you know, they'd been down range for what, six months?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's what it is. It was so, but it was awesome because it was a beautiful day. You know, it's early spring in North Carolina, Moyock. It's sun's out. It's starting to set. I'm in the bleachers and one of the instructors come over to me. His name was, his call sign was Shrek. He come over to me and he goes, what you smiling at for Ranger? I said, you guys are paying me
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Because I hadn't made shit for a year. You guys are paying me 250 bucks a day to sit out here in this beautiful weather, get a shoot gun, and I get to watch you guys just clown show. This is awesome. I'm just unbelievable. How lucky am I to be right here watching the shit show go on? And it was so awesome. It was wonderful. And then, you know, I finished the course.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I had to go home for like two months because my clearance still hadn't cleared yet. And I hadn't got my clearance yet from the State Department. You know, that's when we started to figure out, oh, you know, DOD, NSACI have their own clearances? Oh, I didn't know that. I thought as you got one, they don't cross over. So I had to wait for my State Department clearance. Got it. Went home to my wife.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I said, please don't divorce me, but I'm going to Iraq. That's when the contracting life for the next 10 years took over, man. That was it. And early days, and it was the Wild West, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was, man, sitting up on top of a building on Haifa Street with my ranger buddy and pigeon shit, overwatching one of our PSD teams, watching Bradley shoot down Haifa Street, spinning the guys in their turrets, spinning because they're, that was, I still remember, that was so cool. Because the up-gunners, they're spinning, making sure they're looking and they're not going to get shot.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Because Haifa was bad at that time. That was real bad. And I'm ducking because they don't know if I'm a good guy, but I don't want to shoot me. But just, that was wonderful times, man. Driving down Biop, driving down Irish, Route Irish at 100 kilometers an hour. Fucking making sure that you don't get hit on that overpass.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I loved it. And I had an awesome team. We had a wonderful, just an awesome team. Again, another one, just guys that just, I don't know, got along, but it just, it worked.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it's no shock that that is one of my most, I have arranged with a Chicago cop, a law defense, Daniel Lombard, tremendous guy. we've got a range called The Compound. I don't think that's any coincidence that those are the biggest classes that I will have when I teach out there. At The Compound in Crete, Illinois, it's run by Daniel Lombard, Divide Defense.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was for a time. I mean, there were other dangerous roads, too, like Haifa Street was very dangerous. Route Wild, when you got up to Sadr, was pretty damn dangerous. And even Route 10 at some points were dangerous. And then, of course, Route 10, when it got into Ramadi and Fallujah, of course, were extremely dangerous. And God bless Helveston and the guys that got hung and died there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But Irish was always hot. always something that he was dying or getting hit on Irish. And I loved every minute of it. And I had the best drivers in the world. And when you see a motorcade with three cars and they know, the drivers know what they're doing. And I was very lucky enough that I moved being from the trunk monkey to eventually I became the team leader.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So I'm on that rear vehicle making the calls and just watching drivers do their thing, blocking and screening at a hundred K. Dude, it is beautiful. And I just get chills thinking about it because I was like, man, it got to the point where it was like a great football team where a coach didn't need to say a thing. Everybody knew what they were doing and they just did it. It was amazing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Having my two left and right door gunners cracking doors. If they needed to hit somebody, they'd hit them. If they didn't, they didn't. You know, getting out. And even when I got to be a door gunner on the left rear, When you're going 100K and you got to crack that door and you're hanging out the side, like that's almost the same as hanging on the bench of a little bird as it's banking in.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's wonderful, man. Who gets to do that? That was fun times. And we were up and down that thing in a two-month period at one point. We had to run it six times a day.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah, we were protecting the Rhino bus, and we got tasked for that. Holy shit. Six times a day, and it was... We violated every security principle that you're supposed to have.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
No, no, that wasn't us as far as you know. I don't know. No, it wasn't us. It wasn't us. It wasn't us. That was later down the line. It was a Dynacore team after. That was later down the line. Yeah, that was down the line. It was team five, I believe, that did the Dynacore team because we would rotate with Dynacore on this because we still didn't have enough people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So we would take it, then they would take something. I love the Dynacore guys too. But no, that wasn't us. Seriously, that was the Dynacore team, which I wish it would have been. That was some funny shit. That was hilarious. YouTube that stuff, guys. Dinosaur around Irish. But yeah, we were time and place predictable. We were a big target and we were slow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Everything you didn't want to be on Route Irish, we were- Did you guys take contact? Just sniper fire from away. Right when you hit Route Irish, you had those that were the Edinburgh risk guys got hit. That's that famous, I say famous, that infamous video where those guys are on and there's an SF guy in there that everybody- hammered because he ran and hid in a little ditch. I've not seen that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was Edinburgh Risk where, it's right at the beginning, when you get out of the green zone and you start hitting around Irish, it's still Iraqi urban areas right there. And it's about 300 meters off the road and they would sit PKMs or snipers on there. Because there was also a building that had been bombed and burnt out that they would sniper fire about 100 meters away when you're going.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
is his training company, but he's a lead farm instructor for the Chicago PD. He's getting older now, so he's off the street. Now he's teaching. But you're right. It's just this, where do I find some responsibility? And again, I never thought of it that way until I talked to him. I was like, you know, he's got a point. So I'm not going to stop doing videos. No, that's not going to happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And so anyway, we would take every once in a while, but we didn't get hit with a car bomb. We got very lucky. The Dynacore team that took over for us got hit the next week. So we would just take, and you know, ping, all right, well, we're good. Everybody good? Yeah, all right. Yeah. It just added to the flavor, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it was something to say that for the team as well, how awesome they were and how good motorcade operations, if you're running it right, they're going to hit somebody that's not doing it right. But I do remember that it was, when we got the task to do it and I was a TL, I was like, can you guys do this? What am I going to say, no? Of course we can do it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But I went to the team and you should have seen the looks, man. Half of them were stoked. The other half were like, I'm not going home.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And you're trying to keep everybody pumped up and in my head going, holy shit, six times a day? just the odds that we're going to get hit with a VBID. I said, we can take small arms fire because we're going to keep moving. We're going to keep pushing through. Just don't stop.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Don't create your own kill zone like the Edinburgh Risk guys did that got hit, where you get caught in a traffic jam there and then you push everybody out right and left. So you're basically, you've just given them an ambush zone. You've given them a big target. But we could just keep pushing. Don't worry about the Rhino. It's got much armor on it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's the State Department armored bust that M1 Abrams has. It's going to be able to take a hit. just be able to med vacuum or get them out of there if it goes down, but just keep moving. And it was very, we just did everything right. And we got lucky, you know, a lot, 90%. Man, you never got blown up on Irish. Never got blown up on Irish.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's lucky. It is very lucky. Because, again, like I said, when Dyker took over the next week, Team 5, they got hit. The car bomb hit them. Hit them right on the right off. Hit them. Boom. And, you know, I want to attribute it to that, hey, yeah, we were just that awesome. No, we were just that lucky. Yeah, that's luck. We were just that lucky. But it still brought the team together.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was wonderful. And it was very tiring days because you were distressed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
No, no. Even with those EFPs and shit, I mean, there was... And they were starting to drop the grenades with the little shoots off the overpasses as well. Of course, there is some, hey... We did what we had control of. We planned what we had to. We ran the routes right. The motor kit operations were great. We were doing what we needed to do. We kept moving.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's a platter charge. It's a force projectile. Yeah. I want to say, I always say electrically, but that's not right. I don't know why my head's saying it. It's a platter charge. They put a piece of copper on it. It's a force projectile. I always forget what the E stands for. You guys can hammer on me later about that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But where can I at least have some control? I'm not going to stop teaching tactics with my classes. Well, Donald, you're a hypocrite. No, I at least have some control. I know who I'm teaching. I at least have something. And have we turned students away when I couldn't verify whether they could carry a criminal? Yeah, we have. I've done it. I'm not ever going to tell guys to stop teaching tactics.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But it's where it goes, and then that platter, that copper turns into molten lava, so it'll go through the armor. And then when it goes through, it cools, and then it becomes... It becomes a projectile, a hard projectile. And they were starting, yeah, remember that? They were starting to hit us with that. And that was always a concern.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Because we were able to counter their, first of all, their wires. We could see them a lot of times, which, you know, you just, but we were able to, with all the countermeasures, we could counter the cell phone. So that was huge. Yeah. And yeah, we had a buddy that next month, a guy named Wee Man, they got hit with the EFP when they were driving the Mambas around.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Blackwater had those white South African, and it went right through that armor. Yeah. And, you know, I always say I love Wee Man. I love Chris. He was a great guy. He was actually our, he worked in the mail. I mean, it sounds kind of cliche, but he worked in the mailroom. He came in and he didn't have, he was not special ops.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He worked in a small town police department and he came in and he wanted to get on the road and we would never let him on the road. We're like, no, dude, you don't qualify. This is where you belong right here. And finally he got out on the road and... He got hit with an EFP and he fucked him up. Damn, man. But I still love him to death.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But I'll be honest, I think, I don't want to say he wanted that because I would never say that on anybody. But I do remember when they, because we didn't go pick him up. The QRF team that responded, they went to help. My team was the PSD team. And I do remember when they came back, one of the guys on the QRF team kept saying, I said, did you see Wee Man? He goes, yeah. He goes, what was he saying?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He said, just, he kept asking me to take a picture of him. It's like, sometimes you get what you wish for, man. Man. And yeah, I'm not, not to guess, he is awesome. And he's braver than shit. He is. But be careful what you, I always, that's always a reminder to me, be careful what you wish for.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But yeah, we did that. And yeah. And then I did another year, and then I went back home. And in between, I was instructing at Blackwater. So I was a firearms and tactics instructor in between contracts. So I really never went home. So did you move to Moyock? No. I stayed normal. She did a great job. So it was one of those things where we were just apart a lot.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Or I'd go home for a month, and it was hard because my son was born. My 19-year-old, he was born the first two months I was over in Bagdiv, my first two months on the contract. So I did come home to see his birth, and then I went right back for another seven months. But at that time, that's what I wanted. There's nobody to blame but myself. Man, what is it?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Congrats on your... I'm so happy that he's just like, Dad, I'm out, man. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You got to do what you got to do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it's an outlet for us too. It's therapeutic for us. But I would just say after talking to that police officer and then getting back to the E3 stuff, being a paid website, I don't have a problem with it being paid because we have some control of at least who the members are and who's watching.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He was born.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And if it's somebody that maybe is a criminal, shouldn't be owning a weapon, we have some little control that we can, all right. I can't stop them from learning from other guys, but- You're out. We can't teach you anymore. But getting back to the E3 again, it has been an uphill climb with it because it is a paid website and you can get the training for free on YouTube or Instagram.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And now today, at that time, it was just what it was. It was, this is what I'm doing. This is what I got to do. I'm providing for my... You're rationalizing because this is what I'm providing for my family.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But it's also a little ego. This is what I want to do. This is where I've been... This is what I've always wanted to do. And when I got discharged from the military, my buddies were jumping into Afghanistan. So I thought I missed my war. You know how you do that? Well... No, I got my war. This is where I need to be. I'm going. And I did have a good time. I was enjoying it. It was wonderful.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Now, looking back now and experiencing, you're getting experienced the little kid time with my nine-year-old that I have been with him growing up. Now it's, now it's hurts. And now it's like, man, damn. Do you feel? I missed, I missed him. And we had to, we had a coming to Jesus when he was 16 because we didn't, know each other.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And even when I was home as a contractor, you don't get, there's no decompression. There's no demob. You're off a plane, a commercial jet, and you're going home. And it takes about 30 days just to get your head right. You're not home. And then you have 30 days of downtime and then you're back out again. So that's why I think it was even easier for me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Just, I think maybe that was a defense mechanism for me. I don't want to go home and be angry and just, just let me keep working. That's, and I'd go back. and continue to instruct at MIAC, and I wouldn't go home for more than a couple weeks, or I'd fly them out to me. At that time, it wasn't hard because I thought we were doing it for something bigger than, you know, it's patriotism.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They attacked us. Now looking back, I'm like, man, gosh. I miss it. I would have enjoyed being a father then. And luckily for us, him and I are very close now. I'm happy to hear that. So we were able to come to terms. Same with my daughter, too. What did that... I mean, did it come to a head and there was a conversation? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When he was 16. What was that conversation?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was, I'm sorry, when he was 16, so it was right around the year of 2018 where I got my shit together and him or her and I back together. And we're out at a family dinner and we're out at Olive Garden in Council Bluffs, Iowa. I remember it vividly. And, you know, my little guy, I'm being able to be a father with him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Even though I'm speaking and I'm starting to whittle the speaking down, I'm starting to be home a lot more. You know, I'm hugging all over him. The stuff I really didn't do with the other two, because I was just so detached when I was home. It was, I wanted to, but I didn't know how. I mean, it really was, because I wasn't always there. My brain was sandbox, Afghanistan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Half brain's there, half brain's family. Where now, my brain is all there with the family. And my little guy did something, and I'm sorry I can't say it. My wife, well, many people know, but I just, my wife is all good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
My little guy, Peanut, all my kids have call signs, Peanut, he does something that the other two at Olive Garden, he's doing something, he's starting to get angry, have a tantrum, because he got those little games there at Olive Garden, you can play on the little monitors. In the past, when my other two played, Kiki and Bubba, when they were growing up, I'd get angry. Just lose it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Because I was back home, left the handle. I'm not getting mad at him. I'm actually being a dad. I'm actually, I mean, I'm being disciplined, but I'm having some patience. He looked at me and it killed me, dude. It did. He looked at me and goes, why don't you get mad at him like you used to get mad at me? And it was like, whoa. I mean, it's just knife in the chest. And I didn't have an answer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But you know from tactics are tactics are tactics. Shooting is fundamentals. There is no secret sauce. There's no Jedi mind trick. I'm not going to be teaching you how to use the force. The way I shoot, you can go watch another shooter and you're going to get the same stuff. It's just a presentation. Who do you like? What resonates with you? So yeah, E3 has been good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I couldn't tell him what was because of the war. It's because of Iraq. I mean, that's an excuse, kind of. He's not gonna understand that. And that was where I realized that he was angry with me for being gone for many years. And Kiki, my daughter, same way. Because I was. My little guy, Peanut, got treated a lot better. A lot less hand spanking on the bottoms or whatever than the other two.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And that's attributed to my mind state being coming back. Because, you know, you come back and you have that excuse. I mean, what are you guys crying about? You see this little Iraqi kid, he's on the street, you know, nothing to eat. And you're trying to compare the two, you know, but it's completely different. but that's how I am coming back. That's my rationalization.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I may be yelling at you, but you could have it a lot worse. And a lot of guys, a lot of fathers now are realizing that because we're comparing their lives to these Afghani, the Afghani that's walking down the street, carrying water up a five miles up a hill or, you know, or the kids that are caught in a crossfire because, or a car bomb goes off and it blows up a busload of kids going to school.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You know, we're trying to compare that. And they don't understand that. And that's not a fair comparison. But that's how I was until I was finally home more and able to come to terms with what was going on over there, that that was a life. But now my life is as a father here. And my actions were completely different with my younger son than it was with the other two.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I didn't realize it until he said that. How did you reconcile this? It became a present. hug on him more, love him more. I told him, I said, when he pushed away from me, give him his space, but then come back and just be, hey, are you okay? Son, I love you, man. And with the advent of cell phones, that's one positive is that I can just always say, I love you, Bubba.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And even if I get back, yeah, he's a teenager, he knows. And you know, I know we reconciled because his junior year, he was an athlete as well. When he played basketball, he played football his freshman and sophomore year, but he had three concussions, so I pulled him out. I said, no more. You're done with football. Play something else. He loved soccer anyway, so he went to soccer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He changed his number to 13. No way. I went to a game, and my wife, Tanya, was sitting there. I said, is that? Oh, shit, I said his name. Sorry. Is that Bubba? Thank you. I said, is that Bubba? She goes, yeah. He goes, he's number 13. She goes, yeah. And that's when I knew that he'd finally forgiven me. And we were very close. Yeah, I love that boy to death. And he is just a good kid.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
His mom raised him. He's nothing like me. He doesn't drink. He went to a school. He had a soccer scholarship to go play at Northwestern College there. It's a Christian school in Iowa. And he's up there. And I thought it'd be all right. And he's like, Dad, I don't. I don't do any, all the guys go to Sioux Falls and drink and they, and he goes, I don't do that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He goes, I go, well then come home and you have a track scholarship to the small college in Kansas, write that coach up and tell him you want to come and that's what he did. So he was, he was wonderful, man. It's just. How about your daughter? She's headstrong, man. But now that she, we're starting to, we're starting to get better because it's, the daughter's way different.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I think it's wonderful because we're part of an outdoor. We're telling people, hey, go do something. Firearm shooting is outdoor. Shooting is relaxing. At least in my opinion, shooting is you're outside in the fresh air or you're at least doing something active. It's a sport. It really is. Shit, you have the competitions, the USCCA, you have all those. The tag games, it's a sport now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Little boys, you know, boys, you can be a little firmer. Girls, you don't really want to, in my opinion, you don't because you don't want them falling in with a man that bosses them around. But you also, you know, she's still your daughter. She got to discipline. So what do I do? Mama, handle this. but it came to a point to where, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And my daughter's, as far as her outspokenness is like me, my oldest son, he's not, you know, he's very, very, very quiet. He's strong, but he, you know, he doesn't argue back. He doesn't, he, he, he knows that I got, he goes, I got it. I'll fix it. My daughter, she's going to argue, argue, argue, argue. And there were times where we would be, yeah, we'd be yelling at each other.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Like, cause the disrespect that was there. And, uh, My wife finally said, she goes, just let me handle it. And this was a couple of years ago. And so done, you just default to my wife who, and my daughter responds better to her mom. And a lot of it has to do with me being gone a lot. But now we're, no, we're getting back again. We're reconciling and we're at a point where, and she's not very,
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I think she's not very affectionate. She doesn't like the hugs and the kisses like my little guy does. And my oldest son, I said, I'm gonna hug you till you're 40, till you're 50 years old, sons. They like it. I mean, my son doesn't hug back, but he lets me. She doesn't like it. And I think a lot of that has to do with her growing up and me and her mom sometimes having some issues.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We got divorced at one point and me being an angry, angry man coming back from deployments. But she knows I love her. And, you know, there was an issue at her school that I love it. She wrote a letter to the school saying how she had a problem with one of the dress code issues. I'm like, yeah. And I remember I called. I said, I got your back, darling, because I believe you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Hey, she got her opinion. Hell yeah, I got you. And I called her and she was, she, you know, so it's, it's a lot of time where I'll tell her I love her. I love you, Donna. Yeah, dad. I love you. I love you too. Cause I called her. I said, you write what you want. You know, I got your back. Tell him how you feel. I said, I love you. And she goes, I love you too, Dad.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And that was actually just last week. Good for you, man. So it just, it's being a father, man. You just have to figure it out. And there are, it's okay to be a disciplinarian. There's nothing wrong with that. But you also, your kids are all different. And for us that deployed, we do have to relearn. We have to change ourselves. Yeah. Warriors don't retire, like Ron said.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I know we put it in the movie, but he said that. But it's the truth. But we don't ever retire, but we can't be a warrior at home all the time. You can be a dad, but you have to figure out a way how to reach your kids. And luckily for me, my kids are smarter than me, so they would maybe not tell me, but they would say things where I was astute enough to pick it up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
like my son or like my daughter. And they don't always have to say they love you, just an action. Like my son wore number 13. I just knew right then, like he forgives me. We're good. And we have been perfect since. I'm happy to hear that. Thanks, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it should be like that. The reason I'm getting into why I talk about it and the paid and not paid is really why I don't do more unpaid YouTube videos online. I don't do that. That's why I don't. It's because I don't have control of who's watching it. And it was that conversation with that Philadelphia police officer. And then listening to, he spoke before I spoke, the Dallas chief of police.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
There aren't many stand-up guys in the world even coming out of our community anymore in this public figure world. So it's nice to still find a few out there like yourself. I try to be, but I'm not always a stand-up guy. Oh, I'm sure you are. Talk to my wife, man. I need to bring you home. Talk to my wife about how nice and reasonable I am because I don't get that respect at home, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We went through a portion. It's of my life. Small portion of my life. Let's put it that way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That was, you know, again... and I keep referring this, God's path, the Lord works in mysterious ways. It really, it wasn't anything I wanted to do. I was doing fine. I was working with Blackwater, doing State Department stuff, but then also I was working with Greystone, which was Eric's, He was trying to make like kind of an executive outcome sort of, but it was Greystone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So it was still Blackwater, but it was like a little offshoot.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That was the old South African PMC where it was really a PMC mercenaries.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And he wasn't condemning it at all. He's just saying this guy knew what he was doing. He had some tactics. And he didn't say know what he was doing. He knew how to pie. He knew how to edge a corner.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah, that was where they were going and actually getting hired by governments to take down terrorist organizations or actually do direct action missions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That wasn't the De Beershit. No, this was the old... Real mercenaries. Yes, where the term mercenary, I would say, well, the term mercenaries back in the beginning of time. But that was where the government stopped in and said, we got to stop doing this. Because there were 60 South African...
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Those guys were 60 South African strong of former military, and they were taking out huge armies at the behest of some of the African governments. Read about them. It was pretty interesting stuff. They were badasses. What is this called again? They were called executive outcomes. How the hell do I not know about this? I'm not so surprised too, man. That's a big deal. I'm a dumbass sometimes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I don't know if anybody's still alive from any of those. You know, it was early, long 70s, 80s, I think it was. But anyway, Greystone was supposed to be kind of like a offshoot of that. So it was Blackwater, but we were called Greystone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was very small, and it just lasted. But it was, Eric wanted to keep that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
No, it was private stuff. We were going down South America and training local South Americans to go and protect bases. So protect blackwater bases more. So instead of using the Nepalese, the Gurkha Gurkhas, we were trying to... All right, hold on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I don't think it lasted very long. It was very small. It really was more training. going down there and vetting locals that we could use from South America, Central America. So I went to Peru and El Salvador, and then we all said, team's going to Columbia. And it wasn't anything nefarious. It's not like we were going down there and... Starting to execute. We weren't pulling inks.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Let's put it that way. We weren't doing that. We were going down there to train and then working with the Fuerza de Especial and helping them train a little bit. So it was like a FID mission. It really was. But I think Eric wanted to get to a point where it was like its own self-sustaining army.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But it just never morphed into that because then, you know, that's when... Those times is when State Department started to take over the CPA. Now it was High Threat Protection. Then it went to that WHPS, Worldwide Personal Protective, and State Department getting their hands in. And that's when the microscope started going up Eric's keister, where they were trying to come after him for stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And... Whatever. I like Eric. I protected his family in between contracts. I'd go to Tyson's Corner, and I'd go run with him in the morning because I was the only guy that could. He was a beast. He was physically a beast. I could run with him in the morning, and I'd go take his kids to school because Code Pink, that liberal terrorist crazy women group, was always threatening them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So we had a team that would help him, and I was on that as well. I was the detail leader for that. But anyway, we did that, and I got to go. So I went to South America in between contracts. So I was State Department, and then, do you want to go Greystone? Do you want to go to South America? Hell yeah. So we went to Piedra, Peru, went to San Salvador, went to Lima, Peru, and it was fun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was a good time. Again, my Spanish comes back, so I don't really feel like it's a deployment to me. you know, and ate some good food, went to a couple of spin classes there in Lima, you know, Shakira on bikes and spandex.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
What can go, what, anyway, anyway, it was a great, and then it was, and then the training too, you know, and, and, and working with the Forza de Especial, especially in El Salvador was pretty cool. But then I came back and I was still teaching high threat protection, getting ready to do another contract. And, uh, Marty Strong, SEAL Lieutenant, great guy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He's written a few books himself, but great guy. He was one of the program managers on the Blackwater contract, the State Department contract, and Randy Leonard was running, starting to run the OGA side house. We call it the Victory. We call it the Victory Program, and AOB, Army of Blackwater Program, which was the static CIA guys, the base security guys.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Marty comes to me and says, hey, you want to go work OGA? Yeah. I'm like, Marty, man, I'm in the State Department, and I thought the requirements were still like eight years or nine years spec ops. I only had six. So I was like, I don't qualify. And it was six, but he goes, you qualify. I go, all right, because I was jogging in Moyock.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I lived out in the back at the PTC, the private training center, which was out. So I was jogging one day, and he was driving home, and that's when he yelled out of his window. He goes, you want to go do OGA? I was like, Marty, I don't qualify. And I'm still trying to run. He goes, you qualify. Okay. All right, sure, put my name in the hat.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then the next day, Randy came and there was seven of us instructors that had been working contracts. And there was the victory program, which we ran to get guys certified for OGA. It was easy. It wasn't anything tough, to be quite honest with you. We're coming back and I remember, you know, we're getting done training. We're teaching a class for the day to send guys over on the whips contract.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I was doing the high threat protection side of the house on that side. And he pulls all these guys and what get, these are all, these are all tough guys, man. All pipe hitters, right? Cool. Yeah. Everything. I can do anything. And Randy comes in and TDC had gotten a name for itself. It was hard. People fail. A lot of people were failing. And so Randy comes in and there's seven of us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He goes, we have a slot for TDC. Who wants to go? It was crickets. All these pipe fitters, man. Everybody's looking. Somebody say something. I was like, fuck it. I'll go. I was like, I'll do it. And it was like everybody went, ha, ha, ha. Because if one of us didn't volunteer, Randy was going to pick one.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And if you don't pass it, well, then maybe it'll come back on whips, but you're never working. It was. It was literally pass or fail. You pass. If you fail, never OGA ever again.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The intelligence stuff. Yeah, the clowns in action. We're getting into the clowns in action. True, true. But we didn't call it GRS. I didn't know what that was called. I didn't know it was GRS. He said OGA, which I knew what it was, but it wasn't called GRS at that time. If it was, that wasn't the term used around the head shed there. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So I say, and Randy says, okay, we need to get you spun up. And he brought in Dan Simpson, Dirty Dan, one of the original makers of TDC with Randy. I mean, they started with Dan, another Dan. He started Jira. He's a great guy. I wish I could remember his last name. I can't.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Don't, you're right. Even though he's, well, he left and started Osen Hunter Group.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Actually, this is going on my side-by-side when I get home.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So he's a bit, no worries. Anyway. He goes, we need to get you spun up. And if you're a Ranger, SEALs, you guys use pistols. SF, they get good at pistols. Rangers, we get a pistol, we're throwing it in our rucksack. We don't shoot this. We're rifling a machine. That's our thing. Rifles, machine guns, Gustavs, that's our thing. And Randy goes, get out there. I need to start training.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It'll be at the range, man. Nice. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you so much. We need to bring manufacturing back to this country, man. The only thing we manufacture now is drama and freaking political bullshit. That's right. We need more manufacturing. Thank you, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And at the time, too, I wasn't using broom handles. Oh, shit. Because you guys did. Blue and White Soft did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That wasn't a thing. High readies. Or M4. M4, AR-15, SBR, PDW, whatever. All you gun porn people can call it whatever you want. And figure it out. Yeah, exactly. But I remember, and we never did a high ready. That wasn't a thing. It was low ready, low carry, low carry, low ready. So that's Ranger, right? You got to teach your high ready. So I get out there with Dan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The high ready actually came pretty natural. The broom handle, I love. It's like, man, why have I not been using that thing? And I used a Dieter. I like the Dieter foregrip, the CQD foregrip. It was excellent. It was perfect. It fit my hand right. And so I got the rifle stuff down. That was pretty quick. The pistol, jeez. I mean, I could pass a State Department quality pistol, which is a joke.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The TDC pistol was... Not a joke. That was like, whoa, how am I going to do this? And we worked on that continually for about a week. And then it was like, you're gone, go, see ya. And we went, my TDC course was held in... Danville. Not Danville. ITI. That's where it started. The racetrack out there. ITI. What is that? West Point, Maryland? I don't remember. It was called ITI. It's in Virginia.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's in Virginia. Yeah. But we did it there. Went there. Did the PT test. Easy. I mean, actually, I'm running five-minute miles. It's nothing. I think I ran that... whatever it was, in nine minutes where you had to run a half mile, carry the body, run back. I mean, I was just, I was very blessed. I've been blessed with good Aztec running genes. The rifle part, I mean, it was tough.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was challenging. I wouldn't say it was easy. It was challenging. No, it's tough. It was, the time standards, they're tough. Got through that. The night stuff, again, we used night shift. I was used to infrared lasers. It was awesome to actually not have a 14, a Cyclops on, and it wasn't the 15s we were using at that time. They were 23s. They were a little bit bigger.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Those old school ones. They were real heavy, but it still was all right. You got used to it because we had stronger necks back then. We were tougher back then. The vehicle stuff was just tactics. It was Battle Drill 1 Alpha, man. React to contract, break contract. You know, it's from Battle Drill, squad attack. Battle Drill 1 Alpha. And then you either break contract or you flank.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it was the vehicle attacks were pretty simple. It was just bounding. It was infantry. And house stuff, no problem. Just don't flag your buddy. The high ready eliminates that, which made it a lot easier. And just get on your target, think. That's where I started. This needs to start kicking in more than this. More than the shooting. It's a chess game. Be three steps ahead of your enemy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
If you're racing towards your gun, you're already screwed. You've screwed yourself. That's why I don't get into the YouTube, let's go fast. Because if you have to go fast, you've fucked up somewhere. And that's what Randy really... Dev Guru Ran, SEAL Team, Horsecock Randy, you know where his holocaust side came.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He really harped into that with me along with my platoon sergeant range battalion, which I didn't really start to put together till TDC. Be three steps ahead so you don't have to react fast. It's a chess game. And we had MI5 and MI6 guys trained in there too. They were part of our vetting team too.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And for some reason, I don't know if this was your, every MI5, MI6 guy I met was either named Mick or Moe. We had a Mick and we had a Moe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But they were, one was an SBS guy, the other one was a Royal Marine that went to SAS. And they were a part of our instructing cadre too. Okay. And they were, those guys think. I mean, it's find, fix, and then eliminate. But they're always thinking. And that's, so it really became now where things started to slow down. You know, your adrenaline, fire breathing, let's kick through that door.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's actually where I started, hey, that's, take a breath, start to slow it down, Ranger, all right? Be aggressive when you need to, then bring it down. And it really, it just started to all make sense. So the room clearing was actually, it was great. It was like, man, I'm getting this. I'm actually becoming an operator, you know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And, you know, it only took 10 years, but I'm there, I'm getting there. And the pistol though, I was so worried. When I did the pistol and I'm, You get, I don't remember, was it two tries? You do practice. They have us do some practice runs through. So it's not like they put you on their cold. You're practicing. This has changed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I don't remember, because we had a day of practice runs that morning. And then they said, okay, call. We went out and called. I blowed the head. All right, you get one alibi. And I went and the body was fine. I was making the times. I couldn't hit the head because my grip was just, I just didn't have the right grip. I didn't have the mechanics.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I was really, because I didn't shoot a pistol a ton at range baton. We just didn't do it. Yeah. So, I mean, out there, and I mean, luckily for me, fundamentals are fundamentals are fundamentals. So, I'm trying to find the front sight, trying to do whatever, and doing it within that timeframe, which...
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The one that got, the one that was getting me was the two to the body, and then you have to, you know, you start at the 10, and you have to run to the two and put one in the head. So it's like, go, draw, you run, and you have to put two to the body, then you have to run down to the five, or it's the seven, and then you got to put one in the head within like, it was stupid.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It was like three seconds or something like that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They might be different now. They might be. And I still got my quals. If you ever want me to send them to you, I've still got those quals because I used to teach the course after.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So I've still got those. Got them too. And I'd like to see what you have. I mean, I can always use more training material, man. I love quals. But that was getting me. I could get the body. And then you had to run fast down to the three. And it was like 10 to the three. Or no, I'm sorry. Yeah, it was 10 to the three. I'd have to look, guys. Forgive me, guys. You guys all know. Maybe I'll send it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We'll put it online. But it wasn't ungodly. It was tough. And I kept blowing the headshot. Because you did that twice. And if you didn't get in the A-box both times, it didn't matter. You failed. Yeah. You could get every body shot in the world, but you had to hit A-box. Not outside. Twice.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's on those IPSC targets, the I-P-S-C targets. And the last one I got. I didn't do anything different. I just got lucky as shit. Body was fine. Physically, I was fine. I was fast still. Still could run fast. I got there. So my job was to get there, get those bodies out. You're going to hit them because they're easy. All you do is A or B, which is here or here. That's a big spot from 10 yards.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That's not hard to do, especially if you've been shooting a lot. I couldn't do it now, but back then. And then use my speed and run as fast as I could so I could get a stable position and then just pray. So it was run like this and pray and I did it, got it. Nice. And I got it. I hit the first one center and I broke the line on this thing. Break the line, it counts. Yeah. And I was like, oh.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And that was it. I made it to your rest and went back and It was a good feeling. Because you weren't looking down at guys, but it was like, yeah. Because not many guys had passed TDC. We lost half the course that we had. And all of them were Ranger SEALs. We had one D-boy and SF. And we had 10 guys, five pass, five fail. Yeah. And yeah, I went back and... They said, where do you want to go?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I said, I don't care. And they sent my first trip. I went to the secondary. Went to Afghanistan. Went to Kabul. And that was the end of 05, beginning of 06.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I remember the main and the secondary.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
At TDC. They told you? Yeah, because they would sit us down and they would tell us. Afterwards or during the course? During the course. During the course. We would know. Randy started the program. He'd been agency for a while. Gotcha. We knew. I mean, he didn't have to... It was, hey, guys, this is OJ. Wink, wink. You know, we knew.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It wasn't... But officially, when we got there, because it was a cordoned off training area, it was like a private training area where there were no outsiders.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah, exactly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah. And... So that's when I knew. And what I was so cool about is that the teams, for me, the pay was better. It was. It was great. It was great pay. Granted, we weren't getting paid well before, but it was still great. But the smaller teams were what was cool to me. I thought that was neat. Being you and a buddy and that's it. Yeah. And you're out there on your own.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then sometimes you're out on your own, on your own, on your own, where I did a lot walking within the cities on my own, which was awesome. I love that. Where was your first deployment? Kabul, Ariana. Kabul? And I... When I grow this out, I can blend pretty good. Not that I wear shalma kameezes, but I could look like a business. You don't have to draw on the man, wear the man jammies.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Well, let's go first first with the help not coming. We'll just go on a timeline there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
There's a lot of government workers out there. You know, just wear what they're wearing. They wear button-down shirts, man. And in the wintertime, they wear long coats, and you could buy one off at the park down by the movie theater, you know, right where the...
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Not the Serena Hotel, that's the one that got hit, but there's that other hotel downtown that they had that park and you could just go buy stuff. And I would, I'd stop and I'd buy local stuff, throw it on. Yeah, you know, just make sure you de-louse. De-louse, you're gonna smell a little bit, but it worked. And I loved walking on my own. Like in Saks, he trusted me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Or maybe he just thought, well, he's expendable. I don't know. But he liked Gaetano. He's like, do you want to go for a walk? And I loved doing that. A lot of guys didn't, and I get it. I mean, when you're a white dude tatted up down to here and you eat well and you're always buffed out, you're not going to blend very well. I get that. It wasn't that they were afraid. It's just they didn't blend.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I'm a little guy. I have a brown complexion. I know how to handle myself, and I wanted to. And so I got, man, I went to the Moddy Market walking. It was like Indiana Jones. I got to walk in some of those alleyways. It was, I have pictures of it. Now, sometimes I'll post them. It was where I was acting and I was walking with a CIA case officer. We were back there doing a recon.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I think, honestly, I think she just wanted to go back there to see what's cool. And this was, I threw an MP5 in a computer bag. I had my Glock 19 on me. I wore just local. I wore just what they wear. I wore khakis and a button-down shirt. And we went back. It was by CNN Circle. It was back by the soccer field where you go across the river. And the Mardi Market's where the river was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then if you come out the front side, it's where that two-story mosque, their famous mosque is. Well, if you get out on the market in the river, there's the river here, and then you see people walking to shop, and there's whole other shopping alleyways through that, and you have to find your way in there. It was so cool. You just walk in, and it is like the movies.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's like this tight alleyway, and you get through it, And a whole other world of shopping opens up. You've got spices. You've got fighting quails that are about this big. You've got naan everywhere. And there's people being crazy everywhere. I'm not crazy, but it's just people shopping, Afghani shopping. You've got police. I remember walking in one.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah, I mean, I can tell you, watch Fox and Friends, the last interview I ever did on Fox and Friends with Pete Hexeth. It was back in 2014 or 15, where somebody caught him on a cell phone It was either at Loyola or one of those liberal colleges there in Chicago. I can't remember which one. And he said Benghazi was a conspiracy. He didn't know he was being filmed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And you do have a lot of shit and a lot of trash piled up on us because, you know, the open sewers and so forth. I remember walking and we bought out of this right left alley. And there was this police officer with a blackjack beating sticks. He was beating the shit out of some Afghani, just whooping the back of his legs, like just disciplining him. And I remember walking.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And we did have a local guide. So that was a plus. I have a local Afghani with us. So he's with us. And I said, what the hell, man? He's beating the shit out of him. And, you know, first instinct as an American is to step in. I got to stop this. No, no, no. It's Afghan. Let it go. What they would do is when they would go shopping, they'd hire guys to pull those.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You see guys pulling donkey carts around? That was for people that didn't want to carry all their supplies back to their vehicles or their home. They'd hire these guys to put in the donkey carts and they'd walk them. Kind of like the little tuk-tuks, I guess. Donkey carts is a better explanation. Little pole wheelbarrows. I said, why is he kicking the shit out of him?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And he goes, he parked his donkey cart in the wrong spot. It's like, there's Afghanistan for you. But it was fun because... I wasn't on a military base. I wasn't always being a DA guy. I was getting out and doing surveillance and counter surveillance and just getting atmospherics. And that was fun. That was so cool. And getting to experience the food and hanging with the locals a little bit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it was awesome, that first trip. And all the trips after were awesome because after I would do a couple of those trips, And Sachs and the agency found out I was a guy that they could rely on to do that. They sent me out to do a lot of stuff. I'd go out in the Makarian district and they said, can you go take pictures of this apartment building?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We think there's a government worker that's part of the Taliban. And I'd go, yeah, sure. And we'd set it up so I'd have QRF around, great guys I could trust, like Popeye was one, Sax was another, you know. Otto, Marine buddy that runs Fortana's defense, he was a GRS guy. So they'd be close by. They'd be orbiting the area. So if I was 911, dude, I'm getting wrapped up, come help me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But I could go out there and they'd just let me go. And I would just walk around the city. Okay. It was fun. I loved it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
That was the job on GRS that I loved. But that was the beginning of GRS was right there where I got the taste and that's where the bug got me. It wasn't even the protection. It was that, holy crap, I have freedom to actually get to know these cities and see the stuff that I only saw in movies and National Geographic.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
For the most part. And then you had to come back to the agency and put up with the bullshit or go, you know, try to stay clear of the Taliban. Somebody's getting in a fight or drinking too much. You weren't a tally bar guy? I went in there a couple times, but I wasn't a big drinker. No, I wasn't. It was too much drama. Yeah. It was drama or, you know. A lot of drama. A lot of drama.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You just stay away from there. And, you know, a lot of women, the women that were there, you know. A lot of things happened on that pool table. Yeah. You said it. I didn't. But it was too much drama. It was just alpha women, alpha males and females. And no, I always said I was my best person when I was overseas because I focused on the job. I had fun. Gyms were good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
There always was a gym and I could always work out. I didn't have a problem running around the area, and I loved running, even though, oh, you're getting all that crap in your lungs. Well, I'm getting the crap in my lungs in the gym with the little mini splits. So I loved it. And that first trip was all, first seven, eight months was off and on to Cabo. That's where I went.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And, of course, they threw it on the TV. It's at 6 in the morning. I was actually in Springfield. I was going to go speak at an event that was sponsored by the guy that owns Bass Pro. So I was staying at the Bass Pro Resort up there. I told Pete I couldn't be there. I said, I got to zoom in. So I zoomed in at 6 a.m. And I'm half asleep.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Kept going, kept going, kept going. It was fun, and I had a great time. Where was your favorite place to work? Kandahar? GECO. GECO by far, because all the ops were at night, so you could sleep all day.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Favorite place for me was GECO. No shit. Yeah, I did love it. I love Kandahar. And I love, I got to do a lot of flyaways there. A lot of, Losh hadn't spun up yet. So we were setting up Losh Gagar and Spin.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
those places were still they were thinking about setting them up so we were doing a lot of flyaways and landing in the middle of the night in a soccer field running off the back of a of a hip which i hated flying those things i felt like i was flying in a death trap because you know slowly it's just but landing in a soccer field the middle of night having the local guard force can pick you up then you'd go stay in a bombed out building with some ratty old blankets and
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
but you'd go with your Canada, our security force too. So we'd always take guys with us. And I got real close to him. And I was also in part, I was also in charge of the training. So I'd run the training with the locals too, with our local QSF guys, you know, the local guys that worked with us. So that was fun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So I, you know, I'd go over there and even though there was a language barrier, I'd go in there and with their CEO, with their head guy, and we, I drink chai and we just sit and we try to communicate. And it was fun. I enjoyed it. Played soccer. on that rocky soccer field where PT was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I remember PJ, whenever he, I don't want to say his name, but he broke his ankle out there because there's just rocks everywhere, you know, and then we'd run up Gecko, you know, run up the mountain, do PT in the morning and, It was awesome. And we had a great team there. That team rivaled the Benghazi team. That was one of the best teams where everybody got along.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Myself, Curly, the TL we had there, Rebel, he was awesome. One of the best TLs. Again, another guy that qualified if he was a contractor, but he became a staffer, one of the good staffers. Curly X Bixler Joseph, who passed away in a motorcycle accident, you know, the following year, he just got hit while he was driving his motorcycle too fast.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And Mushroom, who was a old force recon Marine, old Marine, Who doesn't like an old, crusty Marine? Great guy. And then Joe Dirt. Joe Zart. Joe Dirt. Dirtay. But Dirt. Joe Dirt. 10 Special Forces group guy. And everybody just got along. It was wonderful. It was just, and everybody, it was one of those, again, teams where you could go out and do stuff and nobody really needed to say anything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You didn't even need to work together. You just, everybody just knew what everybody was going to do. And you just roll out. I loved it because it was all at night. And going out and wrapping up guys at night was fun. It was hot, so we didn't get a lot of ops. It wasn't like you guys, where you guys were constantly going. But when it was, it was fun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then at that time, too, is also when we lost Jeremy Wise and we lost Southside at Coast. So that's when the tactics changed, too, or the... The standards, operating procedures changed where we had to search people that were actually coming in.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They wouldn't just let them on the base because, you know, for those that don't know, I don't think the movie's that great, but I do like that scene actually is pretty good. It was Zero Dark Thirty. where they showed what happened where the CIA chief of base let the double agent on too far and he blew up. That was accurate. That was Southside. That was Jeremy. Doc Wyatt didn't die.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
This was my fifth speaking event in like seven days just spent. And it pissed me off. Why would it? Of course it pissed me off. All those lines continually. It was angry. It made me full of hate. And what did I say? You can watch it. It's out there on YouTube somewhere, I'm sure. He said, what did you feel after you watched Benghazi Call It A Conspiracy?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He came to Tripoli later, but he was one of the ones that injured and they lost that real good targeter. But that's what we had to do as well. And there was one I remember. There was a defining moment for me there of how to handle it, because we'd have Taliban people coming on, or we'd go grab them, then we'd have to bring them in, and we'd search them again there on a facility outside.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And X was hardcore SEAL. He wanted to kill everyone. I loved him, but he just was mean. He was the nicest guy to us, but Taliban, I don't care who you are. You do what I tell you to do, you do it now, or I'm going to slam you. And we brought this Taliban guy in, and we were searching him. He wouldn't let us search him. But we're out of facility. So if anybody gets blown up, it's going to be us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You know, we're expendable. It's all right. Well, he wouldn't let him. I remember, and he was trying to search him. And we had one of our interpreters there. And I'm trying to play good cop. We're playing good cop, bad cop. I'm trying to be the nice guy. And X is grabbing him and trying to get him to do what we're telling him to do. And he was fighting it. He's Italian. He's fighting it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I go, what's going on, man? Why is he not letting him search him? Is he hiding something? Is there a bomb here? Because now my spider senses are going up because I think he's going to blow us up. And he goes, no, no. He says, it's because he's got his Koran in his top pocket. He's got it in his charm of Kamis up here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I always carried my pocket Bible and the little green ones we'd get going down the range. The New Testament, I had one here. I always carried it every day. I pulled it out of my pocket. I said, here, you give this to him and you tell him he can touch it. We're saying, God, I believe in God. I respect his God. He respects my God. We're good to go. And I said, you say that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And you always said, you don't know the interpreters. I said, you say that exactly how I said it. Don't change it. Don't try to change the words. You say it just like that. And he did it in Pashto. And the Taliban guy stopped fighting. He looked at me. And he says, okay. I shook his head. I said, I go, so we good? We cool? He goes, yeah, we're cool. And he let me search him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I was like, man, you know what? Just a little diplomatic relation, but also the religious side, man. God is God. I don't want to disrespect your God. You don't disrespect my God. We have to search him. I said, tell him, and I did tell him this, that we tell him we have to search him because I don't want him killing me with a bomb. And he said it, and we searched him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Now, X was in all his rights to throw that guy around. And believe me, I wanted to as well. He's Taliban, man. Yeah. But there's got to be more way to remedy this than just throwing his ass around and all of us getting scuffed up a little bit. Because nobody, Roadhouse, Patrick Swayze, the great philosopher Patrick Swayze said, no one wins a fight. And he's right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Somebody, all of us are going to get scuffed up a little bit. We're going to win because we're going to throw him down. But somebody's going to get scratched. Somebody's going to get beat. Somebody's going to get hurt. Screw it. Let's try to do this. Be the nice guy first. And it worked, and he gave us good info.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Case officers were very happy with us because they didn't get a belligerent guy trying to give information. He gave up. At least that's what they said. I don't get into it. But that was Kandahar, and that was how Kandahar was for me because it just, the team fit, the work fit. I enjoyed going out at night. I enjoyed that it was very hot.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You know, guys were getting, or you had, I don't know if you talked about it, but you had Bradley on, Don, lucky. You know, he got a massive car bomb there when you were with the teams. I mean, that was Kandahar.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I said, well, Pete, I said, I wanted to reach to the TV and I wanted to choke his ass. I wanted to choke him out. And Pete, his eyes got big. He goes, you probably don't want to be threatening a former U.S. president. I said, Peter, you asked me. That was my last ever Fox interview, actually, I ever did. And I did get visited by the Secret Service two weeks later. Luckily, I knew the guys.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But then also, I love that we got a punch out all over Nalashkigar and the Helmand province and the Kandahar province. And we got to fly and do, it really felt like cloak and dagger type shit. It was really cool.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I'm good for whatever you are, brother. If it hurts, then that's what I'm supposed to feel. That's what people need to see. You lead the way and I'll guide. Yeah, yeah. I went to Tripoli first. My first trip wasn't in Benghazi. It was to Tripoli. And one of the things that I enjoyed about GRS, and especially then, is by that time I had started to stop moving.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I stopped working for, like, the secondary companies. I wasn't doing contracts for Blackwater or SOC, who took over the contract, or... Or those were the main two. I don't know who has them anymore. Osen Hunter had another contract where I would do teaching with Osen Hunter. That's where I got to, I mean, that's me and Evan Hafer worked on those contracts together. Great contracts.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But they started a program called the Direct Hire Independent Contractor. You know that, you've worked it. To those that don't, It's funny because what's the acronym? D-H-I-C. We were dicks. And that was the joke. We were dicks. You want to be a dick? Sure, I'll be a dick. So they would come recruiting from the Blackwaters and whoever else.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And if you had a good record, you've done a lot of time, and your C1 at those places would write you a good eval, you could come and be a dick. And that's what I did after Kandahar, actually. I said, yeah, do you want to go? Because it gave us the opportunity to just, because it gets mundane going from the secondary to the main, to the secondary. I mean, you're going to Afghanistan, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
When you're doing that 10 years, it's just, you get bored. So it gave me the opportunity to go out to different places. And Libya was one of them. So I was like, yeah. And so I went to Libya, went to Tripoli. It was fun. Again, it was another place where You know, you get from the American government that these dictators and all, they're just awful people and these countries are shitholes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I went there and I'm like, this isn't a shithole. Wow. All right, there's still, the hotels are still open. Man, there's still a Sheraton here that's still open. man, this little resort down by the Mediterranean is still open, even though it was a burning tank down the road. I mean, that's where I didn't ever really question foreign policy and things like that until Libya.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's like, okay, I'm not really sure this was right, but who cares? That's not my job. I'm here to do what my job is. And it was fun. That's where I met Bob. I met Glenn. He was there. And, um... And it was just, it was less protection and more atmospherics. It was more surveillance, counter surveillance.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And trying to see if there were terrorists that were moving into the country because of the vacuum of power. Who was on our side? Who was not on our side? And that was fun. Because it wasn't so much protection anymore, doing like we did a lot in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was more protection. Just a lot more trade craft. It was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And it was a lot of times where you're getting to see things or like even getting to go places that you wouldn't get to go in Iraq or Afghanistan. I'm talking about just nature. There's the ocean right there. You know, you got Leptis Magna, the old Roman coliseums that are right there. And a lot of this job took us to those places.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So you're getting to work in some historic places that are like, wow, I didn't know Rome was here in Libya. Or you're seeing the Battle of Tripoli and you're seeing the Marine grave sites. Or, and we wrote about in 13 Hours, when there was a consulate that was attacked in Libya way before ours. And we write about in the book and getting to go see that. So it was almost like a museum.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They showed up at my house. Like, Chris, we got to be here. You're threatening a president on national TV. But if that tells you my anger right there, I mean, without even thinking, skipping a beat, and it wasn't to create, it wasn't to troll accounts. It wasn't to do clickbait. It was an immediate reaction. As soon as I saw it, it was like, that motherfucker. And I didn't want to kill him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I'm on a job, but I'm also on a historical... Tour. Tour. And it was awesome, man. And the guys were great, because if you're on the DIC program, you've been there for a while. So everybody, even if you hadn't worked that person, maybe in an area, because I worked in Kurdistan as well. Loved that place. I loved Sulian. I loved Erbil, and I loved the hook. But you would know the guys.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So the guy, you hear the name, oh, yeah, I've heard of him. Oh, yeah, I know. He knows it. So you're not getting a new guy coming in with a chip on his shoulder. Everybody's... Man, they're chill, man. They're like you. They're like me. I'm probably the most wired. They're like you. They're just chill. Got a job to do. It's time to do the job. Flip the switch on. Let's go kick some heads in.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Then turn the switch off and just relax. And that's how it was. And the agency there, I had learned how to deal with them. I knew what to expect. And Bub was awesome. Bub was always a CrossFitter. He was always out working out. And so was I, loved working out, but he did the CrossFit stuff. I wasn't a big CrossFitter. We'd watch, you know, we'd go watch movies in our downtime.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He was the only guy that would watch Black Dynamite with me. I love that Blaxploitation movie. And every guy hated it there, except for Bub. He was the only one that would sit through it with me. But the first trip was pretty, just normal. Nothing really big was happening. You'd see some black flags going on. You'd see the terrorist flags, Al-Qaeda flags.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But you're used to that time and you see them everywhere. So what? There's some black flags. You weren't really thinking of it. Went home, and then the next trip, they said, you're going to Tripoli, so I'm getting ready to go to Tripoli.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then right when I got to Souda Bay, Greece, which is where our stopping point was, where part of the 555th Fighter Wing is, they said, no, we need people in Benghazi. You're going to Benghazi. I said, okay, Tripoli, Benghazi, so what? Head out there. I get there, and you just felt it was different. You get on Bonita, and the movie did an excellent job showing that, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You just get off a plane. We do have an expediter there. We have expediters at all these airports. But you have a guy waiting for you, a GRS guy waiting for you by himself. Because that was where we were doing a lot of movements, single-person, one-person movements, which was even better. That was even more fun. Guy waiting on himself. You get off a plane.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Libyan air probably flying in, flying that first class flight, which is love how the movie did it just right. You have a first class ticket, but on those planes, there's no first class. So you just get the whole road to yourself. So you watch the movie again, Jack's flying first class. He has that whole road to himself. That's just a little things that they got right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Well, you get off the plane, you go in there, they get you off. And then you go to, you go to the base. And it just, like, it wasn't secure. You know, other places there's shit going on, but it's felt somewhat secure. At least there's, Big Brother's kind of watching you. There you just, you did. You were like, which was fine, but it just felt different.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And there was, the work was pretty, the work was fun. Enjoyed it. Did a lot of, again, a lot of trade craft. More surveillance than any protection. I remember towards the end, though, and this is where it started to get hairy, where we were just, me and Boone are there. And Boone's been at it a long time, too. He's been doing longer, just as long as I have.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And we're out on an op, and it was about three weeks before the attack. And Sarah, you've had Sarah on. She's like, hey, we've got reports at AQI, sir. There's this camp, and we had all, on our Falcon View, we had all the terrorist camps marked. And we were spot on. We had 10-digit grids on each one. Rafala Sahate, Ansar Sharia, AQIM.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Let's get in the ring. Put you in a lock and let's see how you feel, man. That's what I felt. So of course I was angry. I was angry for a lot of years. And I think if you watch even your speeches that I've done out there, I just still do some corporate talks. I just did, you know, that's why I'm in Nashville and do your show. And I did a talk at the Gaylord there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And she goes, there's a Rafala Sahate camp that they think there's AQI in there. Can you guys go sit on it? Now Boone's, for those that don't know, Boone's black. Mexican, I grew my beard out. Now, I always thought he was Mexican. I could never figure out. He's weird looking. I thought he was Tongan once, and I thought he was Polynesian, I thought he was black, and then he's like, are you Mexican?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
But he's mulatto, but what I'm saying is he looks, he can fit, he can blend. So we take our local car out, and we go to this Rafaela Sahate camp. So we go to this one, and we sit on it for a little bit. And there's this opening within the compound that their camp is. It's walled, but there's an opening, and we're sitting there in our vehicle, and we can see through it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And like I said, we do look like locals, and nobody's monitoring us. And this guy walks by, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. And I looked at Boone, and I said, do you see that, man? He goes, yeah, that's AQI. I was like, fuck, yeah, that's Al Qaeda, man. They're here. And it looked just like people were fighting in Iraq, man. You could even see the dead eye. I mean, it was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I don't know. And we weren't super close. But you just knew. It was like, that's AQI. Holy crap. We rushed back. Like, sir, they're here, man. You guys are giving reports. AQI is here. And we got chewed out for that. Yeah. For what? That was beyond our scope of duties. We weren't supposed to be sitting on camps. Bob came and chewed our ass out and chewed Sarah out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
She goes, you guys, and Sarah was pissed. She's like, dude, I just got chewed out. Bob came and got us because you guys are going beyond. You don't need to be doing that. That's not what our job is here. And me and Boone are like, yes, it is. It's like, chief, that is our job. And Boone's pretty laid back. I said, chief, yeah, that is our job. That's our job. And, uh,
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He did rip Sarah more than us, though, because he can. She's a staffer. And she was pissed. She was just... And you know Sarah. She's a pit bull, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And... I remember that after that, she said, we can't go sit on camps anymore. You just can't, we're not doing that. I said, well, what the fuck are we doing here then? Because it was towards the end. I'd already gone through the fights with all the CIA case officers, made fun of them, you know, chubbed their shit. I've been doing that for two months now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And I was like, well, what the fuck are we even doing here? And two weeks later, the attack happened. Two, three weeks. And it was like, man, it almost like they knew it. And I still don't understand why the job that we're supposed to be doing, we found a target, we verified that target, let's action that motherfucking target, why we got in trouble for that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And the only one that can ever answer that is Bob, maybe our T.O., I never got an answer. Sarah, maybe she knows, but I don't know if she really does or not because I don't think she even got an answer. She got reprimanded. But that was Benghazi. It was like, it was. We were, and that was even Libya. Even some of the State Department officers will tell you, the RSOs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
In the early days, the speeches were very, very angry because nobody was being held accountable. And there were people that were calling us liars. And it's hard to be called the liar guys when I saw Roan and I was shooting over their heads when those three mortars threw a fire for effect, hit right on top of Building C.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's like we were fighting al-Qaeda in our own offices.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And that was it. It was a lot of just... doing a lot of great work, getting to be on our own a lot, singles. But then when we did our jobs, we'd get reprimanded for it. We got another time we got reprimanded as well. Before that happened with Sarah, some BT Garve guys came in, the listener guys. And there was a hospital there that they wanted. And that's part of our job. We'll take them around.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We'll drive by the areas that they think they can hear or gather information, suck out text messages with their little stuff that they do, the cool stuff. And we took them out because there was a hospital that they thought...
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
iranians were in and so we drove by it to see if they could find out and uh as we came back we came in bob was outside he was waiting on us like we were in trouble for something and um he's called the btr bike guys in the staff there were staffers and called him in they were on a plane out the next day and i was like what happened it's like he didn't want you going in
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
on this hospital and he doesn't want you doing any of that stuff. And these guys shouldn't have done that. They weren't supposed to. I don't have an answer. Somebody said, why? I don't have an answer. I don't know why. We were doing what we were supposed to be doing. We were getting good intel. We were getting action. Guys were in there. Somebody had brought them in for some reason.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We did what we were supposed to do. And every time we'd do something and get headway where we could action on a target, because we're not the action guys. We're the collectors. We're the protectors. But when we did... it would get, we'd get, it'd get, we'd get condemned for it. He would jump on our shit. And it was, it was just, I just like, and I did a lot of times.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
What the hell are we doing here? Why are we even here then? I don't get it. What's the deal? And, um, then the attack happened on, on 9-11, 2012. And, uh, There were some precursors to that. The British ambassador had got hit by RPG. I didn't respond to that. I was in Tripoli when that happened. The GRS guys that were there at that time did respond to it. That's when they moved out of the country.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
They got hammered. One of their security officers Got the RPG lodged in them. But they were out. Red Cross had been attacked once, which is news. That was a big news thing. And they had also blown a hole in the consulate once already before the attack. They had tried to breach the wall. So the signs were already there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And, you know, we were always over there at the concert. They were good guys. Alec was a good guy. You know, they were. Dave was awesome. I have nothing bad to say about them. They were just, they were overwhelmed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah. Alec Henderson, Scott Wickland, who was the ambassador's body man, Dave Ubin, were the three guys that were mainly there. And people were like, oh, they were chickens. What would you have done? You got a massive 40-man force running in. You're out there smoking hookah, chilling, relaxing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You don't got nothing but M4s, and you're not allowed to even carry them because State Department policy says when you're on the compound and you're not pulling work, you got to keep them in your armory, which was over by the kitchen. I don't blame them doing what they're doing. They ran. They did what they needed to do. Scott ran towards the ambassador to protect him. That was his job.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Alec ran to the talk. That's where we were supposed to go. Dave ran to get a weapon. They were just overwhelmed like that. But that being said, our conversations with them, we would constantly warn them. And that's the scene from the movie where Pablo, or me being that asshole, I did do that. I remember looking at their compound.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
the fifth attack that night, and I was shooting, and it wasn't, the movie showed as daytime. It was actually, it was before morning nautical twilight. You know, it was right before the, you know, you know what that is. Your viewers can Google that. It's right before the sun comes up, so it's still dark. So my night vision was still on. My 15s were on. And, um,
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We came and we did an evaluation of their compound before the attack. And I remember looking at Scott, looking at Alec. I was looking at the walls. There was a big building overhead that I thought you could put sniper fire in. And I remember looking at him and I said, guys, your walls are soft. Your guards ain't for shit. You know, they're local guards. Half your guys don't even have guns.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Blue Mountain Group didn't even carry guns. So you're a sniper's paradise. I said, any big element gets in here, all gonna fucking die. And I remember Scott's eyes went. And I did feel bad a little bit. I did. But Rowan was there. He covered. He's like, guys, if you ever need us, we'll come get you. And they had radios. We gave them our radios. We all had ICOMs to talk to each other.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And they did request more security. Their RSO, Eric Nordstrom in Libya, and Tripoli did. So they did try. They were just turned down. They requested 240 Bravo. They requested more armed security. And it was turned down by Patrick Kennedy and Charlene Lamb. Patrick was the undersecretary for Hillary, and so was Charlene. She was in charge of base security and all that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Those people also get away scot-free. They should have been held accountable as well, very much accountable. But when the attack happened... It still was a shock to me because the ambassador at that time, he did have a security detail attached to him. It was 10th Special Forces Group. It was the CIF team. That was his security.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
For some reason, they had been pulled off him when he came to Benghazi. I don't know why. No shit. I did not know that. When you watch the movie and it says JSOC team repositioning to 4th position, that was his team. They had been pushed out for a training mission in... either Croatia or Spain, I can't remember. Interesting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Yeah, but I knew because a lot of those guys, when I was in 19th Special Forces Group, a lot of those guys from 19th, I was in Colorado, when they did active detour, and there were 10 Special Forces, so we knew a lot of the same people. And they'd come eat with us when I was in Tripoli because their food at the State Department facility sucked. So they'd come and eat dinner with us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And that's why, like I said, that's why in the movie, when we're talking to Bob and the basher's coming, and we had that conversation, like the basher's coming, you guys, you know, and I was like, so who gives a fuck? We're in the State Department. And Bob's like, dude, he's not coming with his detail. I was like, where the fuck is his detail? They're not with him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And they were hardcore pipe hitters. It was a civ team, and they pulled him out. So that's why we stayed, and three of us did extend. Myself and Boone and Roan were supposed to go home two weeks earlier before the attack, and we stayed because we had a great team. We didn't want to mess that chemistry up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And that pissed some people off because, of course, if Roan would have went home, he'd still be alive, of course. But I know Roan wouldn't change it because if he wouldn't have stayed and we would have new players in there, Not saying that we're awesome tactically any better than anybody else. We just had a good team. I don't think the outcome would have been the same.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Remember the first one hit, blew up on the backside of Building C. It was right over the top. Roan spun. He went cyclic on that belt fed, which was pretty freaking awesome because all I'm seeing is a laser beam as he turns and they're coming to attack us through the sheep slaughterhouse area.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Not because of skill sets or anything. Everybody's got great skill sets. You worked yours as well. You know the deal. We all got great skill sets. But it's that team. And that team, whether we got along or not, we meshed well together. And yeah, so people, oh, why'd you guys make it so dramatized that when you said during that film that three guys were supposed to, three guys extended?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Well, because three of us did extend, myself, Boone, and Rowan. You know, it's also very telling of how awesome Roan was and maybe he just foretold everything. Before the attack, we had just done, and Oz may have said this during his, I don't know, because it really sticks out with all of us. The day before the attack, we had just done a full-on Kazavac training op.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
where Ron put us through a huge scenario of if the compound gets attacked, this is what we need to do medevac-wise. And we had catch-up, we had tourniquets who were teaching all the CIKs officers going through a huge CASAVAC plan. Wow. And it was just, isn't that just the most, the Lord, I love God. I just love, I mean, I do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
As much as God looks at me and goes, man, I cannot keep this guy straight. Right. Isn't it? It's just, he did it. And I didn't want to go to him. Me being Tano, like, Ron, eat shit. I've done enough. I don't want to do this shit, man. Tano, get out there. Oh, fine. And yeah, it saved lives. It did. It was just, it was 24, 36 hours before the attack.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
We went through base-wide training, medevac, casavac plan. How do we handle mass casualties? Damn. Yeah. So that just shows you how awesome Ron is. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but the attack happened. I remember, I remember we were just laying there and me and Boone were on QRF. We always had, you know, we always had a team on QRF standby.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Every team would be up and then we always had guys that were on a, that's all they did all day. 24 step, 24 hours. We were on that QRF. So end of the day, we're thinking, fly a day, my gosh, almost time to go home. I got a few more days left, extension. I even remember we were watching two of the greatest movies ever made. I had just watched Battleship. and I was watching Wrath of the Titans.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And we get a call on the radio, and you can hear the gunfire, but it's not really, because there's always gunfire. Yeah. I thought maybe somebody's having a wedding or something. You can hear the... And... We get a call on the radio, and it was from our team leader, G.R.S. He goes, G.R.S. needs you in the team room. And it was about that monotone, not a lot of excitement.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I put a few rounds over his head because I want to get in a fight even though I can't see that because I'm back behind them on Building A. He's on Building C. Dave Rubin shoots. Oz is up there. He shoots. Bubba's up there. He's shooting. So I'm seeing all this fire. I'm shooting. I'm thinking, shit, mortar's this way. They got to be bringing a whole force following those mortars in.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And at least I didn't think it was. I didn't hear the excitement. So Boone did roll over me, and he's like, dude. He's like, what the fuck did you do now? Because he thought I pissed somebody off again. And I go, dude, I ain't done anything. I've been a saint all day. Dude, I swear, I just want to go home, man. Because... Nine times out of ten, if we got called, I did something.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I had a placard from the movie Tropic Thunder where Sergeant Cyrus, the Robert Downey Jr. character, I actually wasn't a placard. It was a piece of paper, and I'd laminated it, and it said, never go full retard. And if a CIA case officer did something stupid, I'd put it on their desk so they'd see it in the morning. I'd do stuff like that. I just love picking. I love picking on them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
The Jason Bournes. So Boone's been with me for 10 years. I mean, we hadn't worked together continually, but we've been in different spots for 10 years, from State Department on to OGA. So he knows me. He's like, dude, what the hell did you do now, you son of a bitch? I was like, nothing, bud. I've been good. I promise you. And then the urgency came. It was about 30 seconds later, though.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He said, Juris, we need you in the team room now. And it was... And you just know, you've been doing this long enough. I've been doing this long enough. All right, it's time to go. And I look at Boone and we're getting our gear because we kept some of our gear in our lockers, but our quick ready gear, our body armor and our M4s, our P-shooters, we kept right by our bed on QRF.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So it was right there. Radios were right there, of course. All the night vision, all the heavy weapons were still in our lockers in the team room. We start getting our shit on and going smiling. I'm smiling. It's awesome. I'm smiling just like this. I still remember. I still remember looking at him. He's smiling. I'm smiling. I go, man, we need to do something fun tonight.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And we headed out our door. And as soon as you got out the door, our door from where we were in building Charlie, where it opened up, the annex was directed at 12 o'clock. So as we opened the door, you know, we were seeing the treasures. You can see the firefight. It's going off. So now all that popping, you know, now it's starting to... oh, that's what it is.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
You know, the brain's starting to realize, oh, this is just some crazy night in Libya. This is, holy shit, Kasa's getting attacked. And the Jason Bournes, the ones I saw were like, it was like cats lighting firecrackers at them. They're just going everywhere. And I saw a team. I saw Roan. We all had tasks. We all had responsibilities. My responsibility was heavy weapon, Mark 46, get that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And then I was going to drive the SUV. Boone's responsibility was to get the keys for it, get it out. My responsibility was to make sure we had it ready to go. And actually, we all had our different tasks. And it was beautiful, dude. It was just beautiful. I saw leaders acting like leaders. And it wasn't the barking orders. It wasn't the yelling at each other.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
It's everybody shut the fuck up and did their jobs. And it was, it was awesome. Because even in that elements there, you don't always get that. You're always going to have maybe one guy that thinks he's in charge. And everybody respected enough each other and trusted each other enough that nobody needed to say a word. And it was like Mozart. It's just wonderful. And that sort of reminded me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So I turn around, make sure nobody's coming. Nobody's there. I come back. Two more shots. I see one hit directly right on top. My vision goes completely white. You know, it's overabundance, like white. As it comes back, I saw four, and now there's three. So the guy disappeared. And I can hear him screaming. Even in all that, I can still hear him. It was Dave.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I mean, I was like seeing notes, man. And we're five minutes. We're ready to go. Five minutes. It's time to go. And I remember I looked at Roan. He's got the sedan. He's got Jack and Tig in that. Boone's a rock star. He's got our shit together. The SUV's ready to go. I got my 46. We're geared up. We got our night vision on. We got all the stuff that's in our lockers. Got the ammo.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Roan goes like this. I look at him. That's all I need. He's like, he's good to you? I'm good. Our chief's here. Our team leader's here. They're on their cell phones. I go, chief, we're ready to go. He didn't bother even look at me. I said, chief, we're ready to go. He looks at the team leader. Still isn't looking at me. On his phone, talking to somebody. I don't know who it was. Still to this day.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
He says to the team leader, tell these guys they need to wait. It's like that motherfucking, fine. And the same word, I'm just, what? The team leader looks at me. He starts to tell me that. I go, dude, I got it. I fucking got it. I walked back to my car. Roan's like, dude, tell me what's happening. What's going on, man? I said, Bob's telling us we got to wait.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Now, the movie where Jack and Roan got stopped and we tried to get to him in the beginning, that happened, but it was at night. So we had already been through that before. So we're like, shit, he ain't going to let us go again. So that wasn't part of the movie magic. It just, the only thing we changed it to was nighttime when that happened. And Rowan did bluff his way out of it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And he just had a CIA chief of support lady with him when that happened. It was pretty awesome. But we'd already been through that where he would not let us go. but we're waiting. We're still thinking at that point in time, maybe he still does know something we don't. Maybe the SIFT team is on its way. Maybe they're sending a bird in. Maybe something's coming in.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
Maybe there's Marines off the coast. We're trying to play the benefit of the doubt by not creating more drama, because more yelling and screaming is not going to do any good. It's not. And that's why that team was so awesome, is we all knew that. If we had all been younger with piss and vinegar, we probably would have been fighting with them. And what would that have done? Nothing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
So we're waiting. We're continually going scenarios, at least I am, through my head. I know the team is, you know, you're wargaming, you're what-iffing through your head. You're going through your head, going through scenarios that you win to keep the adrenaline in check. So I'm going through my head, I'm going, okay, if we get hit with mortars here, what am I going to do?
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
How do we win this fight? Fine. We get out the gate, we get ambushed. On this road, what do I do? How do we win that fight? So you're just, it's what you do in the corporate world too. So you don't go like this. You're just going through scenarios that you win. And the only way you can do that is through hard training or experience or both.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And by that time, I'd been through a lot of hard training and a lot of experience. So I was able to pull from that. And I know the other guys were doing the same thing because nobody was panicking. Everybody was, Rowan's taking the lead. He's our charge. He's going to take care of this. And we trusted that. So Rowan's talking to the chief. Tig's there too. Tig's talking to the chief.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
I didn't know it at the time, but it was Ubin. Just sheared his leg off, sheared his arm. They were hanging. So he's not completely gone, but he's legs this way, arms this way. How do I know that? Tig got up there when he saw Dave. Tig told me what his arms and legs looked like. Take a few more shots because what can you do? We're still getting attacked. We're in the middle of a fight.
Shawn Ryan Show
#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up
And the time's just going by. The fighting is intensifying. And then instead of just hearing AK and PKM fire, and you know what this sounds like, we start hearing that. It's like, holy shit. That's a dish cam. Holy fuck. We got to go. You know? Can't do it. We're still waiting. And that's when I saw Tig and Bob arguing. That's the one huge interaction. We didn't put it in the movie.