Major Joshua Mast
Appearances
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We didn't end up filing that lawsuit until we found out they were ignoring it and just going to go forward with it. But that was because the Afghan, quote, government, and I air quote that for a reason, sent two demand letters in perfect English to the embassy and U.S. Forces Afghanistan. And the intent of those letters was to rush the administration's decision-making cycle.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And guess who do you think drafted those emails or those letters? We came through this Afghan that we've now got to the U.S. safely. He's like, oh yeah, the embassy drafted this and sent it to us on WhatsApp so that we could send back to them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So you've got this embassy drafting letters purportedly in the name of the Afghan government during a discussion about what's the right thing to do here to rush the decision-making cycle of their own government. I've got the drafts. Holy shit. Yeah. And so then they're filing affidavits in court saying, oh, well, the Afghan government demanded this to happen. And it's bogus...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Deep state, ridiculous, I don't know, it makes me angry as an American.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
No, they left that meeting where I was supposed to brief them. They left that meeting without it, and they were like, yeah, their philosophy. DoD was lead for months. They said, we're not going to get in your way, but we're not going to help. And then they got in our way and killed it. And it was totally bogus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I understand what the administration, because they were believing the embassy when they said that there was, you know, they didn't want to do it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But I mean, why would we expect differently? They did the same thing with child rape on our bases for a decade. Like, why would we expect different? Like, that's the paradigm where, like, you've got to, you know, it's kind of been a struggle for the heart and soul of the Department of Defense and the armed forces is like, are we going to live out our values or are we going to be like...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
jackbooted thugs or robots who do whatever you're told. These bureaucrats would fit seamlessly in the Third Reich in doing whatever they're told to do. And I think as constitutional officers, as service members who support and defend the Constitution, we're obligated to live out our values downrange. And when we don't, I think that really has strategic implications.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We're supposed to be a city on a hill. We're supposed to be an example of how you should do it. And that definitely wasn't it. I don't have an answer as to all the whys. I can't judge her heart. I don't know. It might be something as simple as went over her head or rear an inconvenience. I don't know. But there's a lot of questions that I have as an American that I'd like answered.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, was this a negative DNA test? I had always given them the benefit of the doubt and said, oh, they couldn't have known they weren't family. You know, I could see where they were just trying to get rid of it and rush the process and not do basic safety precautions. I was kind of giving them a bit of a doubt.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But when the colonel came and said they tested six to eight people and they're all negative, that sent alarm bells off in my head. It's like, wait a minute. Did they know they weren't DNA tested? Because it wouldn't make sense to me that the State Department wouldn't initially DNA test.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But I think once they started getting several negative tests back, either they didn't do it at all or they did it anyway. And I don't know the answer to that either. So... At a minimum, it's not the standard of care for children that we should exhibit downrange.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I'm a prosecutor and an op law attorney targeting. So I know how to pull the information and build a case. And we did. And I'm telling you what, the reason why there's so much restrictions happening through the chain of command and so much restriction of the information in this case is because if people knew the truth, they'd be livid.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah. Two days before the peace deal. So the peace deal was announced on February 29th, 2020. She was handed off on the 27th. And she was gone, like impossible to find.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Not just at the end. So the president visited Bagram for Thanksgiving. And we were waking people up in Afghanistan, like, go to the chow hall, find the president, have him meet her.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
100 yards from the hospital. Like, go get him. Go tell him. Because we had gotten, you know, basically to see the life. You know what I mean? And because we had... It was a political face-saving thing from... I mean, the Afghans, I have the email where the Afghans recommended she be sent to the U.S., to the Afghan president.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
The deputy chief of mission personally met with Afghan, or Ghani, that's what she told the FBI in her statement, that she personally met with him to get that shut down. So they went out of their way to stop that from happening.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So the Afghan Ministry of Defense, Afghan Ministry of Labor, both recommended the president approve US Forces Afghanistan formal request to send her to a guardian in the US. And that specific email chain I got from this Afghan, this Afghan child protection specialist. After three years, I've asked for that document in all of these cases for three years. And ignored, denied, never gotten it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, Sean, we actually, I saw this, watched a couple episodes and saw the gummy bears, so we actually got a gift for you to kind of reciprocate. This is... This was made by one of our community resource coordinator at MARSOC. Her husband does these for the Marines. He does a really great job. But this is a KBAR.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I didn't even get it from my board of inquiry where they're trying to say I went against US foreign policy. Well, I've got the US foreign policy email because this guy that we got out after two years gave it to us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
He was too scared to do it before because he thought he'd get shut down and deported back to Afghanistan because he was in a third country while his visa for the US was processing and it had to be renewed every six months. And so he's worried about his wife and two little kids. But you know what he did for us? I'll never forget this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
This Afghan who was really supposed to protect her, she ended up, her life ended up saving his family. But he told me, he gave me the email, the DNA test request that I'd also asked for. Because I'd been told this happened, but I couldn't prove it. And we really needed it at a time. And he wasn't safe yet. And so he said,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
take care of my wife and kids if they deport me back to Afghanistan for doing this. And he sent us that email. And that was right before he actually got safely to the US. But he risked everything to make sure that that truth got out. And that made all the difference at the board.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because here you are having the government recycling these arguments we've already proved false in court over and over again. But they did it verbatim at this board of inquiry. These same mega law firms that have been representing these litigants were in the board of inquiry, like working with the prosecutor to try to get us kicked out of the Marine Corps, which was just amazing in and of itself.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But when you have the eyewitness testimony, the only other guy in that room saying, the State Department, we asked them to do a DNA test, and then you provide the emails that the government never released, it's pretty damning, to be honest with you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, that's been our question to this day. But ultimately what the decision was made from the State Department was concerned that it would interfere with the peace deal and that these were confirmed family, which I believe was a false report like we already talked about. Functionally, they just signed her over to an ICRC representative and they flew her to southern Afghanistan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then she was gone, like a fish in the sea, needle in a haystack, all those, like she was gone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They picked the sixth or ninth random guy off the street and with zero betting. And that's one of the things why I think a lot of the restrictions on information on this case in particular is because we have the homework to show that that's exactly what they did. And I think they're very concerned for their own, I don't know, careers or their own reputation that doesn't come out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So I have a tradition at the end of an appointment to find someone that's impacted me and give them my knife. And so I got this for you. And the quote says, live for an audience of one. And it cites 2 Corinthians 5.10. And that was on my email sig block back in the day. And it's more of a reminder to just do the right thing for the right reasons.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But I mean, this is, you don't have to take our word for it, it's documented.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
How did you find out she was gone? So one of the medical staff had told us they were all like out of their minds worried about it and like trying to advocate to congressmen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They basically said that they're going to be handed over to an anonymous person through the Red Cross at this time and date. and were just letting us know that that was happening so we could try to stop it. And so we filed what's called a temporary restraining order to try to get one, and it's a high bar to get that against the government.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, I'm not supposed to talk about exactly where it was. Whatever, in Afghanistan. Yes. Not anywhere near where she was recovered. And to someone who spoke a different language and was a different race. And to me, knowing what I know now, I'm even more upset than I was then. Because then it was like... Isn't that fucking kidnapping? That's how we viewed it. So this is the U.S. government.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And with someone like you who has such an audience, it's a good quote.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But again, I think with the administration...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Thank you. Maybe it'll make the cut for the man cave, hopefully.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And that's exactly how we felt because we had gone to the authorities, we'd appealed, we'd informed them about like what we knew about on the ground, on the ground facts that are corroborated to this day. And they had recognized this authority. And I think they ended up citing like a technicality like, oh, you didn't formally notify the Department of Justice about this proceeding.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I've got the email traffic where I give it to my colonel the next day, four months before all this went down. So they basically cited technicalities like, oh, you didn't do this bureaucratic thing correctly. But as far as knowing, the U.S. government knowing this, we were emailing the White House chief of staff. We were talking to Senator Cruz's office. They were phenomenal.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They were advocating like, hey, this is insane. We can't turn a child over without vetting. And so the embassy was representing that the Afghans didn't want to do a DNA test. Well, I've got the email where they're requesting it. I've got the testimony.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And the embassy is saying? They don't do it in the email because they're smart. They did it in the meeting on December 31st. And then they iced this guy. And by God's grace, we got him out of a dangerous place and to America. Now he's here today because of her ordeal and getting turned over. This guy who was supposed to protect her ended up getting saved by her.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And that's the case for a lot of the folks we helped in the withdrawal because I told Sylvia, I don't know why, but I feel like it's going to be okay. And what we've come to learn from our experience is that that was providential because I wouldn't have been – I wouldn't have had visa experience. I wouldn't know what USCIS was. I wouldn't know what a humanitarian parole was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And we used all of those skill sets to save as many Afghan interpreters and their families as we could. Marine Corps, folks who did in war with us, based on other Marines vouching, like this guy was with me in Sangan. This guy was with me in Marja. He was great.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And like during the evacuation, when we're just working our turps, like if I wasn't connected with Afghanistan and at the unit that I was at, there was like 30, like 30-plus people that would not have gotten out but for her getting handed off. So I know these people meant it for whatever their intent was, but it was part of the plan because it saved lives in the end.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Her life affected a lot more Afghan allies in the evacuation. Absolutely. And since even, because we got that other guy out with his wife and two kids. How long was she... MIA. Almost 18 months. She was gone for 18 months? Exactly. And we were dying every minute of it. And that kind of segues pretty nicely into the next portion of the story is she's gone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, she was five months old at that point.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Some older guy, I believe. That wished to remain anonymous. That wanted to remain anonymous because we had offered to DNA test them. And there's email traffic with them saying, well, we understand that they want to remain anonymous and we'll keep them anonymous, but we need to DNA test them. Because that's what DOD was saying. Because that's a reasonable, sane policy, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Is that you DNA test people coming out of the woodwork in a country that traffics children. Like, that's not a hard call, right? it was no question in our mind that that was our requirement from DOD. But that got dropped by state and then reported up the chain as the Afghans didn't want to do it or it wasn't part of their process, I think was the white lie they used. How high up does this go?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It was run on state. I think it just went up to the embassy was the one generating bad information for the administration. I believe that that got passed on because the main lies was the DNA testing wasn't part of the Afghan process, which is Technically true, but they're asking you to do it. So is it true?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Not from this guy's where I said if the United States lead agency Which was DoD said we commit to DNA testing any potential family members in the best interest of the child and you're you know you're in a train advise assist mission where you're supposed to Train them how to have a you know run a country how to provide security, you know stability that type of thing We're trying to train advise assist them to do the right thing and DoD did that we're like hey
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
the best interest of the child, you got a DNA test, we'll terrorist vet and let them know of her medical concerns and offer free medical care in the U.S. That was DOD's policy for months. And we were fine with that policy because it's rational. Where we differed from the U.S.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
government was when they're like, oh, we don't want to interrupt the peace deal, so we're not going to require these things. Or we cannot, like what the State Department will do is like, if they want to do something, they'll say, You know, they'll come up with justification, but if they don't, they'll just cite international law and kind of hand wave it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
No, most of the Afghans were totally on board with sending her to the U.S. They're not— So how would this interrupt the peace deal? I agree. It doesn't—I mean, she was living proof it was not worth the paper it was written on, but— Outside of her being proof that the conditions weren't being met to allow al-Qaeda to use Afghan soil, I mean, there wasn't.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
This was a manufactured crisis by the embassy. And I want to hit on something. You said, how did she get turned over? She got turned over by a series of letters that the embassy, quote, received. And they had factual statements in them that were drafted by the embassy that were not true.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It said that the Afghans had confirmed there was family and that they didn't want to do a DNA test and that they're demanding her back. And so we actually had the man who signed those letters His testimony is in evidence in our board of inquiry. The minister, who was in a third country when he testified, but that was provided by the government in our board of inquiry, his testimony.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And this guy can't read, write, or speak English. Okay. He signed this document. In his testimony, he contradicts. He said, well, the baby's really little. We can't determine where it's from or who it's, if it's an Afghan citizen or not. But the letter says it's an Afghan citizen. And he says, my ministry can't grant guardianship to anybody. Like that's a court's job.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But the letter says they granted custody. Like everything that the embassy needed to say, they just put in there and had this guy who can't read English sign it and send it to us. And then when we threatened to sue, there was a demand letter that came from this same guy who doesn't speak English in perfect English. And it uses terms like next of kin, which is not an Afghan saying, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And it's literally a demand letter saying, why was the transfer delayed last week? And like, it was trying to rush the American decision-making cycle. And this child protection specialist that we got to America, he said that that was drafted by U.S.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Citizenship Services, an employee in that department, sent by WhatsApp for them to send back to the embassy to pretend like it was an arms-links transaction and it was an Afghan demand. So, like, the Afghans were doing whatever the American in charge was having them do. And this was a U.S. embassy decision, and they did a fake crisis for the benefit of the administration to deceive them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So I never intended to be a lawyer. My family business is golf. My dad played the PGA Tour for 40 years, Champions Tour. I grew up playing golf. His father, my grandfather, built a golf course when he was a child. That's how he got into golf. And so golf was kind of our family business. One of my brothers is a golfer. I played D1 in college.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And, I mean... I've got the email traffic. It's got the word doc of who drafted it at the embassy. I don't have the demand letter. Who drafted it? It was the guy in American Citizen Services.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Oh, I don't think he was. I think he was doing it at the direction of the deputy chief. Who gives a shit? Deputy chief of mission. Well, he's an Afghan. I don't want to put him at risk.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, he does speak perfect English. And like I said, I think he's following orders. But here's the fun part.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Absolutely. But here's the kicker. This deputy chief of mission, she came and did a deposition. And we were not allowed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
know what i mean well i think he's doing it the direction oh yeah uh like following or what the does that mean no i i i agree with that i think that you're you were obligated to follow the lawful orders of the president united states and his delegated authority but um i i still think that we have an obligation to uphold american values as we're doing that we have to do it in the in the most conscientious way possible um
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But I think that an important fact that listeners would be interested to know, talk about government misconduct before. It's not just a... not just in interfering back then. It's been for three years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Through all of these cases, they've tried to file statements and withhold information from the American public and the courts that is the responsibility of the previous administration's Department of Justice. Like, you can't lie to courts. You can't file statements that say, oh, we received this letter and it was an Arms Lakes transaction when it's not true.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And we've been raising the Red Star cluster, if you will, for lack of a better term, All along. So this deputy chief of mission, while she was up there in her ambassadorship, provided sworn statements and testimony. Get this. The Department of Justice would not let us ask questions in what's called cross-examination.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
She could only testify about what they wanted her to testify about, what the DOJ wanted them to say, which is that there's nothing to see here, and these letters were Arms Lakes transactions, the ones her office drafted. They were trying to force those on the courts and say, for the truth of what was in the letters, which was a lie that they drafted, And we weren't allowed to cross-examine them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Can you imagine the government coming in and saying, and this is focused on government conduct here, not the courts, state courts. Can you imagine the government coming in and saying something you know is a lie? And you've asked for the document and they won't give it to you. And you can't ask them questions like, hey, was that true? What was written? Who drafted that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I even played on the mini tours for a little bit out of college. but raised in a very traditional family. And I always wanted to go in the Marine Corps if I didn't do golf. And so we were actually married before I decided to go in the Marine Corps. I was working, I was playing some golf in the mini tours and in Florida and decided to try to go into the Marine Corps.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Did anyone in your office draft it? You can't even ask those questions. They're trying to put this facade of actual due diligence in what they did. And it's a lie. And then on top of it, that same witness, witness air quotes, is telling the Afghan, the only person on earth who can contradict her story, not to participate. Like I've got the email traffic where he reaches out and asked her for help.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And she's like, I can't help you. And then he's like, should I participate? And she's like, oh, I wouldn't. And like, who does that? What's this woman's name? Her name is Donna Welton. She was the deputy chief of mission, and now she's an ambassador. She is an ambassador now? Yeah. To what? I think it was Timor-Leste, if that's how you say it right, at the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I don't know if she still is or not. I haven't followed her career or life or anything. Like I said, they meant it for evil or for whatever their purpose was, you know, not American values, but it ended up being for good for many people. And so we're honestly thankful that happened. But, I mean, we should probably circle back to, like, where was she for 18 months? How did she get here?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because that's really— I mean, the government has—
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because that's so... I hate them. I love our people and our government needs to reflect the people. But I think that...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
have so many documented instances in our case of over classification of clearly unclassified material i'll give you like specific examples um redactions um under pretext to hide that we were communicating with like that we were fully authorized at every level of government to do what we did because they tried to portray that this was major mass like making this up and hiding it and like going in the background like we were broadcasting from the rooftops
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
advocating for this little girl. And it was a righteous cause. And everything since then has been orders changing. Like I had full authorization to testify in my own case. And guess what? this mega law firm asked their former partner who worked in the SECDEF's legal advisors for assistance, and they got revoked the night before one of our hearings.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so, like, again, this is focused on government misconduct, not the state court stuff. But who does that? Like, how does the military chain of command authorize you to testify about what you know and then revoke it the night before what was supposed to be the only hearing where we would, like, the last one? And so it was intended to prevent us from putting on a case. At all.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, even me telling you what I knew about Afghanistan or what I knew about the intel. I have a list over here. This is a... This right here is a letter saying what we can and can't talk about from the Department of Justice. And oh, by the way, the same attorney who defended the government's decision to turn her over to the Taliban in the first place is the gatekeeper of government information.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So she gets to decide ultimately what gets released and what doesn't. And do you think that she wants to be proven wrong that they helped hand a child over to non-relative terrorists? Or do you think she doesn't want that to come out? Who's this woman? Her name is Kathy Weier. She's a senior civil division state or Department of Justice attorney.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
She represented the government in the temporary restraining order hearing where we're like, hey, all the intel is you're turning this over to non-relative terrorists. She was the attorney on that. And then she got tasked to this case years later. Is she still involved? Oh, yeah. They're very much involved. So they're the ones orchestrating.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So instead of us getting witnesses and being able to cross-examine them and ask them questions, what they'll do is they'll submit a declaration and a statement of interest of the United States. And it's really just this one person in DOJ who's pretty high up and who's friends with these mega law firm attorneys. And they'll write, they literally help write statements.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Whatever the witness is going to say. We had this during COVID where they would just draft witness statements and they adopt it. And that's the statement. You can't question it. It's written by an attorney. It's just signed off by some person with the right background and the right name to do it. And so here's – I think this is the clearest way to show what the government –
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
has done in this case, like to put their thumb on the scales of justice. It's what we can't talk about. And so this says, notwithstanding the responses and authorizations identified above, the following categories of information have not been authorized and should be excluded, and that's all caps, from any testimony, evidence, or filings in this proceeding.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, so basically like, hey, you want to have a life that matters. You want to have a life that you can be a positive influence, an opportunity to lead and be led. And so the Marine Corps seemed like a good fit for that. And I was thinking of either doing law school or the Marine Corps, mostly the Marine Corps.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so this is discussing what's called TUI authorization, which is a law that says if you learn something in your government duties, it's official information and you have to have permission to testify.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And the duty policy is that information like that should be made reasonably available to courts because they're like a disclosure type of disposition, unless it's classified or restricted for some reason that's justifiable. So in this case, I've had my orders changed three different times. We've asked for multiple witnesses, gotten denied, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And they've used this as a shield and a gag to prevent what actually happened from coming out. And here's a perfect illustration. So, quote, I can't talk about in court, like they can't restrict your first member rights outside of that. That's why I'm telling you, but...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Quote, information prepared by the Department of Defense for the International Committee of the Red Cross and Afghan social worker. So I've been told that I cannot tell them that my colonel signed a very similar memorandum for the Afghans and some NGOs and released it to them five years ago, which I had from civil discovery. I was told I can't mention that in court. And do you know why? Why?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because they filed affidavits saying that Major Mast helped draft this declassified mission summary. And so it's not reliable. So they said I could talk about what I had drafted. And then they attacked me and said that I had made this stuff up. But they told me I couldn't use my colonel's memo that he signed in the proceeding. So we got it from the Afghans. It'll be up on your website.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And people can go see exactly what the government didn't want you to know. And it's really not, when I say government, it's very loose. Like, I understand they represent the United States, but it's like a couple attorneys that work in Civil Division DOJ that have a lot of discretion, and they've abused it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And they coordinated with, like I said, a former 15-year partner in one of these medical law firms who was working in the SecDef's office. I've got email traffic with them asking them to do these things. Like, you don't get your orders revoked from on high, you know, by accident. That does not happen. And I've got about three or four times back and forth in my command.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I don't blame my command at all. My commanders are phenomenal warriors. They're like, MARSOC is for real, good people. But it's so high up in the bureaucracy, and it's coming from other agencies, so it sounds like this to your commander. Oh, there's interagency interest in major math.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so I talked to an officer selection officer for the first time on a Tuesday, and they're like, call back next year. Like, our slots are full. And I was like, no, I want to go in this year. And so they're like, and then I mentioned I had an LSAT score. And they're like, oh, the Marine Corps needs lawyers. But the deadline's Friday, and so it was Tuesday. They're like, you got any tattoos?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And what that really means is an attorney at this mega law firm has been a partner with this other person for 15 years who happens to be working in the previous administration's legal advisor to a service secretary or the SecDef's office. And so they have a revolving door with partners that do that. And that's how they use power and get favors from the government.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I'm not even saying it's not illegal. It's just when they use it for purposes like this, it can be abused, and it has significantly. And so here's the next thing I'm not allowed to talk about. Information submitted to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services by another office in DOD. And that's a really, really bland way of saying, here is the deputy assistant sec defs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It's the deputy assistant sec defs. agency-initiated parole visa request. So this is a DASD level saying, our little girl is a stateless minor. The masks have received guardianship because of unique circumstances. She's a DOD dependent. Basically, formally recognizing this and making a request to USCIS to send her to the U.S. and give her a visa.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And we asked for this document for like three years. And it came out, they delayed its release until it couldn't impact the proceedings at all. Because, you know, when you're trying to say that Major Mast won't be behind everyone's back, well, how do you have a memo signed by the Deputy Assistant SecDef?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then they said, oh, well, it was Major Mast talking to, or Captain Mast at the time, talking directly to his office.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
then they denied the colonel who was his action officer who who went and verified all this because they're professionals they don't go and go off of some what some captain says they go verify it with range regiment and look at the uh sensitive site exploitation material that they pulled off objective and the colonel who helped draft this for the deputy assistant sec def testified at our board
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And he's personally told me that there is pictures of the dead biological mother, young, strong Asian facial features. And in contrast with that, it's supposed to be like a 40-year-old Pashtun female mother. So like not the same person, right? Those two things can't be true at the same time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so do you want to trust the photograph and the intelligence that Task Force created, that Ranger Regiment verified? Or do you want to trust these bureaucrats who are self-servingly saying, oh, this is an innocent farmer, and by implication calling our rangers war criminals? That's just unacceptable. And I can go down the list. I've got six more.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So what I will do is I'll provide this for – these have all been raised by FOIA or by TUI or by due process rights for my board. And so I can share this information. And these are all in our whistleblower complaint to Congress, like in detail outlining exactly where it's been lied. But I'll belabor the point for one more point. Okay. This says, oh, this memo that I told you about from my colonel.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I'm like, nope. And they say, you got any medical issues? Like, I don't think so. So they're like, okay, we'll show up at MEPS tomorrow at 5, and then come run your PFT, and then we'll see if we can get your application in. And oh, by the way, you have to be accepted to law school. So I actually applied and was accepted to the Marine Corps and law school in that four-day period. Are you serious?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Right now, this document here was sent by a Dutch NATO female, a Dutch NATO worker to the Afghans and the ICRC, right? Right now, because of over-classification, in an NCIS investigation, in my case, they have marked this secret no foreign document.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
This document that we got in litigation, it was sent to a Gmail account, right, to cover this up, because originally they were saying, oh, you're not authorized to talk about it. Well, then we got it from outside the government source, because this only applies to information the government provided you. So then we got a hold of it, and then they overclassified it as secret, no foreign.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
by definition, when you provide things to foreign governments, it is not secret, no foreign. When it goes from a NATO member to multiple people outside of the government's control, it's not secret, no foreign. And so, like, that's just, it's blatant abuse of our processes to weaponize the system.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And it's to cover up what this says, because they don't want the American people to see it, because it makes them look bad. And this is, you know, the senior attorney for all of Afghanistan signing off on the declassified intel. Our office helped draft the declassified mission summary, and we routed that up through the FDL process.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But our colonel used subsets of that data for specific targeted memorandums to protect this child. And five years after the fact, they're saying, nobody can see this. And that's just scratching the surface. I don't even wanna get into like the terror watch list stuff and all that because I've been so attacked for even having witnessed them flagging the terror watch list that it's a,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We joke about it. We've got lots of kids at home, so we say we don't talk about Bruno, so we don't talk about Dulles. It's kind of the joke in our household because these mega law firms have successfully gotten some terrorism records scrubbed off the terror watch list. They've what? They have gotten some terrorism records related to this scrubbed off the watch list.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I don't know how they did that, but we had marked unclassified FOUO documents that I've been told were now been retroactively classified as secret, no foreign, so they could not be used in this case.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It's just like, it's exactly what you said with these Blackwater guys. It's like, why are the five minutes that prove you're innocent gone? You know, why not the rest of it? And that's kind of why. This shit happens all the time. This is how our government works. Well, I think that's changing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so circling back, we talked about her being gone for 18 months. And what happened in that time period? And I think a lot of Americans would like to know that because it explains the narrative that's been pushed in the media. So that night, she's gone. There's no, like, no way to find her. Like, to an anonymous person, we don't know where they're going to be, told they might be Pakistani.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So this Kim Motley is a phenomenal human rights attorney. She finds her. She had some experience with trafficked children in Afghanistan, where, like, someone marries a Western wife, and then they split, and they take the kids, and they go back to Afghanistan. So she had negotiated with that, and then some other, like, actual child trafficking cases.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so she finds her in like a few days and she sent us some proof of life photos. And that's when we saw this Talib, I think. That's based on my training and like his appearance.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, we were told she was in a slum that was so dangerous, the ICRC wouldn't send people back, that she had started shaking and they had taken her back to the hospital and they said, you know, we don't have the capability to treat her in Afghanistan. And then some time starts going by, it's COVID, right? Everything's shut down.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so Kim's goal was simply to get her evaluated, Sparrow evaluated in Kabul at a Western hospital that was a private hospital that she helped represent. And so we had gotten authorization from this older man to have her checked out, to explain like in your own language what's wrong with child and what the long-term concerns were.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And we were told that he had hired, and like literally a text message in evidence at our board says, I've hired a woman to care for her and I pay her a salary. And it was this like 16 or 17 year old girl. And so this old guy had pawned her off already with an unmarried girl.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And we have come to find out over the last few years, she was living in like a group setting, like with 23 other people with extended family members and such. And in what I believe were dangerous situations, I'm hesitant to, I should probably say one thing before I go into it, This Pashtun guy that we've been in this conflict with, the first thing he told me was that she doesn't live with him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yep. So it was a break from that. But golf has been great. Like, they a lot of times will assign me to play with the general if somebody's in town or run the golf tournament. So it's been a convenient thing. And I caddy for my father. Like, I've probably done several hundred events on either the PGA Tour or the Champions Tour as a caddy, so... You know, hiking with a pack was no problem.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
That his dad was responsible to the Taliban for her. and that she lives with some other people that are like parents to her. That's what this guy tells me. And I have an audio clip of this that you guys can provide to the audience to show that. And it's been disguised to protect his identity and all those things to meet those requirements. But that's in evidence at our board.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
When she got to the States, one of the things that concerned was, I'm a Special Victims Trial Counsel certified, which means I have special training to deal with child victims and victims of sexual assault.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And the FBI has investigated all these allegations, the media. And the day they came to talk to us, we had just returned from the Carousel Center, which is a child sexual forensic facility in Wilmington. And so we had, based on her behavior and her physical characteristics of her female parts, we were very concerned because she was exhibiting all the signs of sexual abuse.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I've done that my whole life. So it was a really great time, though, the way to grow up with my dad and traveling and, you know, different parts of the world and different parts of the country. So it's been helpful with my Marines to be able to identify, like a lot of times I've been to their state or their hometown or wherever. And so it's been a big, I guess, icebreaker throughout my career. Wow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I don't think this guy did it because he told me he didn't live with him. I think it happened when you're living with 23 other random people in your house or however the communal living and you have people going to high school and finishing high school and not having like a specific person watching her and in a society where you have a lot of that type of abuse going on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I 100% believe that she was sexually abused. I don't think this guy in America now did it because he told me she didn't live with him. But we didn't even try to use that in court because I believe him when he said she wasn't living with me. He had no reason to lie at that time. He has a reason to lie now. But she was traumatized by her experience there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
She was malnourished, like way behind on her growth and weight. She was, like she had, she was... Her stool, she had worms. She was infested with lice. All of us got lice. My whole family had to deal with that for a week because it's very full-grown lice. She's got an allergy to German cockroaches, which is an acquired allergy from being around that type of insect, I guess.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It was, it was, we're so thankful she got out. Like, and I think she was young enough where that's not going to affect her, but she still carries the baggage from that. And like everything we're warning about in our lawsuit saying like sexual abuse, malnourishment, lack of access to medical care, it took her three years to get an MRI, like that picture of her skull fracture.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
When people are like, oh, she's medically complete, she'll be fine. Like that's the embassy's perspective. Like if you look at that skull fracture and imagine that's on a two-year-old. What did it look like as an infant? It's a larger area of her head. Like she looks like a cracked egg. Like there was legitimate safety concerns. Do these fucking people know this?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I think they just believe the lie. What do they want to happen? I think in their minds, they think that she's going to have a little white picket fence life with these Afghans here in the States. And I don't think they realize the real players in this story. Because it's really not between us and them. they don't have legal authority under their own legal system for this child.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They told us half a dozen times they were responsible to other people. And what blows my mind is this is what happened in the Board of Inquiry. The FBI interviews these Afghans like close to day one, like in the country, in the evacuation camps. And do you know what they tell the FBI? That, this is a quote, Her two uncles are the authority for her life. Not them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They cite the two other people as authority for life. And the Taliban commander says she couldn't come to America. So that's what they tell the FBI. Do you know what the DOJ, under the previous administration, has filed in our statement of interest to the United States? They've said that these people are her legal guardians and parents. They told them they weren't.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They've had that information for three years, and they're hiding that from the court. How do you, as an attorney for the United States government, go tell a court, these people are parents, when you have statements that are felonies, if they're not true, saying the opposite? How do you do that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It's not average. Very interesting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
These legal positions that the United States, air quotes United States, with the Civil Division, have taken are based on things they know are lies. They actually have... rips of their phones. And this guy told me before he came to American Lions, he told my Terp, hey, I've got many Taliban militants on my phone. Will that be a problem when I come to U.S. forces?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because he brought her to get evacuated. And so they've got their phone rips.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
sitting there on their front desk, like, if I'm Kash Patel, I'd be like, let's see if there's any terrorism contacts on there, because he also flagged on the watch list, and they also said they were responsible to the Taliban governor for her, and they told the FBI they were obligated to the Taliban to go talk to them, and they said no. And so, like, we, during the evacuation,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, I was born and raised in Orlando, Florida, because of the weather mostly, because it was year-round golf. And then I have five brothers, so I'm one of six boys. I'm number two. And so we grew up traveling 20-plus weeks out of the year with my father on the tour. And so we had a big RV and towed a car and stayed in national parks growing up and saw all the battlefields and museums.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We risked everything to make sure they got out okay. I've got email traffic saying, I don't want two Taliban murders in my head because I knew the risk. My commander said, you're going to have to choose between Sparrow and them because the assets we're going to use to collect them don't give a fuck about Afghans. And that's a quote. They're going to probably put a gun in their face and take them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so what I like to say to the American people is, if we were trying to take a child from her, quote, parents, from, quote, family, that would have been a pretty good time to do it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Instead, we delayed the mission from a national mission force that ultimately rescued them from behind Taliban lines for over 24 hours and tried to get a volunteer group to go get them, like some of these great Americans who are, like, going behind Taliban lines to get them out, like Chad Robichaux's folks and, like,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
other groups we had them lined up with seats paid for on the aircraft from the mercury one funding um and we had a group of of five three kids plus sparrow and these two costumes and she was like eight months pregnant so like we delayed everything risked them all to to get them out safely and so like uh i guess that's the level of fidelity we had on this um
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
The first time I ever spoke to this posturing guy was in July of 2021, a couple months before, like five weeks before the evacuation ended. Day one.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I explain who I am, why I care, that I worked for the hospital to try to get a safe outcome for her, that my job in Afghanistan was to make sure only bad people got hurt in our strikes, kind of explaining at the grassroots level what a targeting attorney does in Afghanistan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We explained that we were told she was foreign, that we had sought legal responsibility in the U.S., that she had a complete U.S. identity. And from day one, it was send her to fly out before the Taliban take over. Like, that's what the pitch was. And the first thing this guy asked me, what do you think he asked for? He's like, could I get a visa for me and my brother-in-law to come to America?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because everybody wants to come to America. I don't even blame them for that. But that is the first thing on this person's mind. And I think that the best way to explain that to the audience who's not deployed is to say, like, it's a very day-to-day survival, like, hand-to-mouth environment. It's not even their fault, right? It's...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
If you're not wealthy there, if you're not making money off the Americans being there, you're dirt poor. And so a lot of it, they're not planning what they're going to do next month. They're not planning on their five-year goal. It's how do I survive today? And it was very clear from the get-go that this guy was trying to survive and get whatever he could out of this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I'm not even blaming him for that. I blame the Americans who enable these lies and abuses of our systems. But... Like, as God is my witness from day one in detail, and that's exactly what our interpreter testified to, and that's in evidence at our BOI. That's what—there is no evidence to contradict that ever because it's what we did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I mean, how do you—she ultimately got rescued by a national mission force from behind Taliban lines. How do you explain to someone, bearded men with guns are going to come in helicopters and get this child? and we're going to bring you two. How do you explain that that's going to happen to someone, to an Afghan, a posthumous male from southern Afghanistan?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And it was a great way to grow up, like learning history by seeing the places. And my mom, because we couldn't be at home in school, she homeschooled us, most of our, like from probably third grade on. I'll blame it all on homeschooling.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They used her military ID to identify her to U.S. forces. He told my interpreter, don't tell Joshua, that's what he called me, but I have many Taliban militants on my phone. Will this be a problem when I come to U.S. lines? And I had a JSOC colonel come and testify at our board of inquiry that corroborated all of the not the allegations, the derogatory information, if that makes sense.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But I've got the Department of Justice filing in front of our court saying, oh, that was, it was never, never any derogatory, not affiliated with terrorism. I mean, I've got a guy who said, my dad's responsible to the Taliban shadow governor, not where he lives, where she was recovered from, the guy responsible for those camps. He said that, and that guy said no.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I mean, and they're describing this in detail over conversations for like six weeks, because it took a couple of weeks to track up there in the, and if you think about what's going on is the Taliban started with the Northern Alliance areas this time, and then they swept down into their natural strongholds in the South.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so Sparrow and these two Pashtuns, they spent like several, like a week and a half in their, huddling in their homes while there's like urban combat in some of these southern Afghan cities. And his biggest concern was, I'm worried the artillery concussion is going to hurt my unborn child because his wife was pregnant. She was like 19 and eight months of old. And so that was his concern.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I'm having conversations through an interpreter, but with this guy. And come to find out, the language this interpreter is using is the very strongest language in Pashto for guardian, legally responsible. He's using words wali, which is an Arabic term, but it's used in Islamic legal writings and such. And it means like the responsible person or the...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then masuliyat, which is another word for like responsibility or the one in charge. And then I mess this one up a lot, so my Afghan friends will make fun of me later. But sarprost, which is like the responsible person. And so he's using the strongest words in this guy's native language to explain this to him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then I'm on video saying, I will try to fly to Kabul and bring her documents, all her original documents. And so essentially what happened was, This guy tells me she doesn't live with him. She lives with some other family. She doesn't live with his dad. She lives with some other family. He said, my dad's gone to speak to the shadow governor.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then like two weeks go by and it's getting to be about August 14th or 15th, right before the Taliban take power. He comes back and he says, the Taliban said no. do you do and no so then the evacuation starts and so before there was no way to get all of them out right they're like the taliban will kill us if we bring her And he told me, like, oh, sir, you're so kind. Thank you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I think she should go live with you in America. You know, can she go to college? Like, they're asking questions like that. My dad wants to know this. My dad wants to know that. He's always saying his father was the one in charge or had questions. And so, like, let me talk to your dad. Let me talk to the Taliban shadow governor. Like, you know what I mean?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I'm pulling out all stops because I know it's ending. Because at the unit I was at, we had intel reports of how bad it was. And so... Two days after the evacuation started, I had the privilege of helping another Marine friend of mine. I saw a plea on Facebook, a friend of a friend. And this Marine was at the War College and he was trying to get his terp out and he was stuck outside the gates.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And he'd been there for like three days with a bunch of little kids. And so I was like, hey, man, send me that stuff. I can send it on a red line. And I had reached out to the Soxcent LNO to ask, like, hey, what is the process for requesting they evacuate people? And they're like, man, there is no process. We're building this plane and flying it. And so I was like, holy cow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So I scrounged around and I got a secret red line to HKIA where I could talk to the SJA, who was a friend of mine, who I knew. And I talked to him at the early stages, and he's like, I am an 04 SJA in the Marine Corps, and I just laid C-wire, concertina wire, and cleared an airport with, like, 250 Marines. That's what I did today. He's like, this is unbelievable.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And, like, never seen anything worse. I mean, a major laying concertina wire on a judge advocate? Like, they were, like, overrun. And, like, as I'm communicating with them, they're saying things like, the situation's not good. The State Department people are leaving. We have no guidance. It's changing. They were afraid they were going to get overrun again. It was bad.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so that first group that I got out, or I helped get out, that major was really plugged in with, it was called the Zaki family, and they're in the States, they're safe. Thank God. But they got out. And so he got flooded with a bunch of other requests from other Marines, like, hey, my turf's outside of this gate or that gate.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so he started filtering those to me because I was able to assist with that original one. And so I got sucked in and like, For the next two weeks, like, totally ad hoc, didn't have to, just did what every other, like, people who had connections tried to do and help get our allies out. Like, guys who'd gone to war with us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And if a Marine vouched for them, we would get a Marine to go find them and pull them in. It was unbelievable. So, like, all these groups, like, you know, Concilium, No One Left Behind, Pineapple Express, you know, Mighty Oaks folks, it was incredible.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, she's the only girl I ever dated, and I slapped the table pretty early, and then it took her a little while to, you know, like me. Oh! No, she's the only girl I ever dated. We've been blessed, honestly. We grew up in church together. Part of the same youth group. It was a really close-knit group. Community and just best friends. Wow. Best friends for a long time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It was probably the worst two weeks that I personally experienced, just with the huge highs and huge lows of getting people out and knowing they had no hope. But in the midst of that, we experienced a miracle with my command authorizing me to try to go to Afghanistan during all of that craziness, and then ultimately with the National Mission Force getting her. How did they get her?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So as soon as I got word, they were, well, so he came back and said, the Taliban said, no, they'll kill us. We can't go. I was like, disobey the Taliban. The president just got on the TV and said, anyone at risk or anyone who's helped U.S. forces can try to get out. And so I said, if you bring a, she's viewed as a U.S. person by U.S. forces. If you bring her to U.S.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
forces, that's helping the United States. And I will do everything I can to get you out. And then I went downstairs and I talked to my colonel. I was like, sir, crazy story. We've been doing, State Department dumped our little girl two years ago. We've been working to get her out. You know, she has medical concerns. They've reported like shaking and such.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
She's coming with a posthumous male and a pregnant female. And then, oh, by the way, the interpreter that I'm using to speak to him, he's like, hey, sir, my 15-year-old sister lives in the Northern Alliance areas in the North.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
they just passed the taliban just made an edict that they have to provide lists of the 15 to 45 year old unmarried women and the the taliban fighters going to marry them and then take them back to waziristan when they're when you know they're done with their campaign and he's like i really like my my sister not to have to marry a taliban fighter and go to waziristan and i was like he's like can we try to get her out and so i was working with kim motley at the time and we were helping each other with different connections in afghanistan and she got
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
hundreds of women, like at-risk women out. And we were helping each other because I could get people over the wall and she could get them seats out. But like she seemed like the Afghan, like female robotics team, like a lot of the staff was like, I believe it was the New York Times and some of the media agencies, they got them out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And she was like almost single-handedly responsible for hundreds of lives. And she helped us too. And so we, so this is what we did. We moved my interpreter's 15-year-old sister, his like seven or eight-year-old brother, and he had a teenage brother as well, three kids, 180 miles south through Taliban lines.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
These two Pashtuns came 280 miles north, and we rented an Airbnb of all things in Kabul, Afghanistan during the fall, about a mile and a half west of the airport, and we used it as a safe house. And I go talk to my colonels, like, permission to take emergency leave and fly into Kabul commercial through India because there's still a few flights.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because that's how the American volunteers were getting in. And then going behind Taliban lines and getting people out, it was unbelievable. And so, like, we got sucked into that cycle of just trying to get as many, like, allies out. And in that process— several instances where we were interacting with the Marines at Abbey Gate right before it got blown up. So you flew in? I did not.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So, no, I'm sorry. I should clarify. I was authorized to fly in. And then my colonel's like, because he's a phenomenal human being and just a special operations warrior, He was like, that's what I'd do if I was a parent, permission granted. And then he was like, well, I should probably tell the general.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so then they routed up to CENTCOM and they're like, heck no, you're not taking emergency leave in Kabul, Afghanistan. So they shut that down and I was told to hold. But my colonel was former JSOC liaison for our unit. And he got her added to the targeting list of the National Mission Force and she got elevated.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so that's when we had the conversation about choosing between her safety and their safety. And I have documentation where like, I cannot do that. I personally spoke to the two at the National Mission Force, and she personally guaranteed they would take them all, because they had no documents and no connection to the U.S. And they were using her military ID to get her on a bird.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And she's put up with me, so I don't know. She should probably get left out for that. Are you a golfer too?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so they went and snatched them behind Taliban lines and snatched them up and flew them into the airport in a helicopter. And so our kids and the pregnant lady didn't have to go through the huge crowds, because we had other groups that crushed her. Pregnant women like giving birth prematurely and losing the child like it was it was horrific conditions and
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
and what these what these people on the ground were going through like i'm talking to guys that deployed multiple times the middle east saying it's the worst thing they've ever seen in the g1 and you know they're throwing their kids at the end they're like just for the hope of getting out they're throwing their kids over the walls and they don't know that there's like c wire on the other side and that gets getting hung up in the in the bleeding out and i even had several instances where
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They would empty out some of the handicapped children's orphanages and use them as like, so the process was they'd hand up a child that was very young or handicapped, and then they would let them through the gate and they'd link up with them. But a lot of these kids were getting abandoned, right, because they were being used as a ploy to get into the airport by desperate people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so there was collection points for these children. And even to the point where like they're terminally ill children that eventually died in the U.S. and we were trying to find out if anyone somehow could find out who this, so they'd have someone there when the child died in the United States. Like, I don't think people realize how crazy that was, like that mission set was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And ironically, my replacement, I was the executive officer for Raider Battalion for a while, or Raider Sport Battalion. And I replaced the previous XO was the planner who planned the evacuation ad hoc. And he was like, hey, man, I plan most of this on, like, my 4G phone. And I was briefing the president on a napkin and then all this ad hoc.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And, like, basically what we had done, what we had experienced was across DOD, all these vets of the wars were trying to get their connections to get their people safely out. And, like, such a heroic experience. execution of a terrible mission, like a mission that, I mean, I think was unnecessary.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And based on my just happenstance, I thought at the time, but like bouncing around Afghanistan in my deployments, you know, seeing the strategic potential
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
difficulties of flying out of an airport where the population center is right built up onto it and like it's just the mercy of the taliban they're not shooting down our c-17s you know and then listen to some of these other guys on the ground like uh like you mentioned i think earlier uh sergeant tyler vargas and his account of like watch them beat people to death if we rejected them like all that stuff was common knowledge like we were getting reports of other suicide bombers other attacks
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And, like, it was a ticking time bomb to get these people out. And the Marines and soldiers just executed just heroically a really bad mission set. I still—I cry like a baby every time I think about it. I watched—we ended up—Steph and I both ended up going to Ramstein. to meet our group because they got through Doha. We had some rangers go find them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I talked to the tower at Doha and I'm like, my group just got put on a plane. Where are they going? He's like, sir, we don't have manifest. We have no idea where anybody, we're just packing people on planes. And he listed off like 12 tail numbers in all over the globe, like Greece, Italy, Spain, Germany, you know, It was like they were going everywhere.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so we guessed like the most planes were going to Ramstein, like 60% of them. So like the biggest chance was to go to Ramstein to try to meet up with them because we had all of our documents. We had vouched for these people disobeying the Taliban. So I was there to advocate like, hey, these people disobeyed the Taliban for us. They brought a U.S. person to U.S. forces using our military ID.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like we literally shepherded them through the process. And they knew that from day one.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So I was finishing up my last year of college, and she was in grad school. So 2006. That's when we got married. Yeah, so we both went to Liberty. She worked for the Golf Channel when we first got married, and we traveled a year with my dad just so she could kind of see the tour. And we went to— what, 38 states or something in a summer driving. Wow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, I think I should – for their family, so these Marines at Abbey Gate, they selflessly sacrificed for people they didn't even know. And it wasn't a waste. There's real people with real different lives now because of their sacrifice.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
That particular one was... They had Australian visas. It was a Hazara family, and they're Shia Muslims. And so they're both racially and religious minority. And she was a female activist, this matriarch, if you will, of this family. And she had been specifically called out by the Taliban. And because of that, the Australians had granted them visas.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so they've got everything from like a couple-month-old baby to like 60-year-old men and like 14 people in between. And they are stuck. in Abbey Gate in the ditch at 2 in the morning. And a call goes out on the nets like, does anybody know any Australians? And I knew one Australian I deployed with in Afghanistan. And I still had his number.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So I reach out, and it's like whatever time in the morning in Australia. I'm like, hey, sir, remember me? This is what I'm doing. I'm working these groups. There's Australian visas. I was like, do you know anybody running the Australian response in Kabul? And he's like, oh, well, my brother-in-law is actually running the op center in Doha right now. Here's his number.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I'm like, the only Australian on my phone's brother-in-law is doing that. So I'm like, ugh. So I call Doha, and I talk to this nice Australian, and he's like, oh, I'm sorry, our comms are down. We can't reach them right now. I'm like, what? I just called Doha on my cell phone while driving to Dulles to try to fly out over there, right? And so that's not going to be good enough.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It's not going to be fast enough. And so I'm like, are there any Americans? Can you see any Americans to this lady who speaks broken English? And she's like, there's one. And so she hands off the phone. I'm like, hey, I made your mask. I've been helping vet these paperwork of different Afghans to get them through. My guy's not responding for the gate.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Can you please pull these people in and find some Australians? And she's like, sir. She's like, it's a female voice. And she's like, hello? And I'm explaining my stuff. And she's like, the Australians aren't doing 24-hour ops right now. And it's 2 in the morning. They don't come on until 6. She's like, what do you want me to do?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I'm like, I want you to pull these people in and sit them down and wait for Australians. And she's like, well, I have to hand you off to my captain. So she hands me off to the captain. I explain the same story. And this is what he says to me. He's like, sir, I'm looking at 15,000 people trying to get in this gate, and I'm playing God about who gets to go. What do you want me to do?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I was like, like she said, I was like, wouldn't it be awful if these people have a seat on an Australian aircraft and tickets? I verified that with the Australians. I just got off the phone with them. Wouldn't it be awful if they don't get out because the Australians aren't doing 24-hour ops right now? And he's like, yeah, we'll bring them in. And so they sent me a video from Australia.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, we got to really know each other at that point, right? When you've been driving on I-40 for, I don't know, 1,200 miles. Yeah. Going coast to coast. What are your master's degrees in?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But we were in the air flying to Ramstein to meet our group when Abagate happened and landed. And it was... It was a ghost town. Everybody stopped work. There was no restaurants open, like the mall, all that stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Everybody stopped and they volunteered and they were building a tent city the entire length of Ramstein, like bigger than Kuwait or like if you've been to Ali As-Saleem and seen some of those bases with all those tents, like it looked like that, but on the runway. And they put 11,000 Afghans the first day we got there and 17,000 more the next day. And it was insane.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It was building tents as you put people into them. It was craziness. And these people look traumatized because a lot of them had spent, you know, three, four, five days outside, a couple of days to get on an airplane. They cram them in there without, you know, no restrooms, no moving space. Like there were fights on the planes and babies and people dying.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then they all got bottlenecked in Doha for the most part. in un-air-conditioned terminals, because we were trying to find our group, and they called us saying, hey, we don't feel well, we don't have water, trying to get them through that process. So they landed in Germany. And we were sitting in the USO in Ramstein alone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We're probably the only people in the terminal, maybe three other people. And so seeing some ambulances pull up, I'm like, what's that? And then you realize like, it's just these,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
was our um our casualties they were taking them and taking them to landstuhl medical center there and they just got off the plane and and there's just so many um because there's 30 something wounded in addition to the killed and we was just watched them take you know body after body of our wounded off the aircraft and take them over then i remember sitting there with um there was a state department lead for for that basis was a reservist a marine
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
a phenomenal person and he actually got sent home because he was raising the alarm of how dangerous it was the child safety issues that were happening at ramstein he got sent home to the us because he's like hey this is dangerous we need to do better than this and um but we're sitting there and just crying our eyes out watching these marines come off the birds and uh i i've always wanted to express the gratitude and like um
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
just having observed what their children went through and knowing that they kept that gate open longer, because it meant life or death for a lot of people. And like just the selflessness of that, that decision. that those Marines made, and, you know, the real-world cost of that for people they don't even know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Which she was finishing up during my deployment to Afghanistan in 2019. So I don't recommend doing master's degrees. Okay. Yeah, deployments and, yeah, these are projects.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But, like, just for me, I know for a fact that they saved 14 people's lives, and I got their picture from Australia, that they got out because of these Marines. And I don't know how many others they saved, but I know they saved those people. And they've been so dead, murdered by the Taliban. And I can't.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
to know the ground and to know what people were doing and to express the evil of that bombing, of the just senseless violence. It's just a... A real focal point of the GWAT, I think, is just the senselessness and the evil we're facing, where people think that that is what God wants them to do, is to blow themselves up in innocence together.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I mean, that is an evil ideology that I'm happy to fight. And I'm thankful for their sacrifice. They saved real people. I'm humbled by having observed it. But I think, we view what happened to her as providential. She saved lives in getting people out, including these folks, these posthumous with her. And, but,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I can guarantee the American people from day one, we told them exactly who we were and what we wanted. And this guy thanked us over and over again. Like, oh, I think it's fine. You know, it'll be, you know, so kind. You know, like the typical, like, flowery language stuff. He wanted to come to America, which I don't even blame him for. I think he had some conflict with his spouse at some point.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I don't know if... I don't think necessarily culturally they have the same sort of... uh, impetus to have be in agreement about something. So I don't know what he represented to, uh, his wife, but, uh, at some point she was like, um, he promised me that if I came with, I told him, if he wants to go to America, you go, I'll stay here in Afghanistan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And, um, and he, but he promised me if I came that, that, uh, she wouldn't have to leave my side. And so like, I, I think this guy probably was playing both sides against the middle. Um,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
but really what happened to dallas we were trying to be sensitive because you know it's a horrendous event right to have to go through that period leaving everything you know going through that experience i mean these this our particular group got the red carpet like having a national mission force pick you up is the best way to get out of afghanistan just saying um but it was still a traumatic event and so we were trying to expedite them through the refugee stream because of this lady's pregnancy and because of of
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Sparrow's medical concerns, because we were worried it would trigger seizures, basically. But that ended at Dulles, that we weren't going to— I had different obligations kick in at that point. And that's really the story that hasn't gotten out, and that explains the origin of some of the conflict we've had in the U.S.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And that's been deliberately, intentionally hidden because it makes perfect sense. And it totally undermines the narrative that's been out in the media.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We found all of them at Ramstein. We advocated to get them expedited, and then they were. And so we actually were able to...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, we got a call that they landed too. So it was pretty impressive. I was basically like, the National Mission Force squadron just recovered her from behind Taliban lines. I think we'll be good. So we pushed with an educated guess and it ended up being right on the money. We found them. And then what was weird is- How did you find her?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I guess there was 11,000 people there. It was 2 in the morning, and we're walking around. 11,000 people? There were 11,000 people there. And so we get there. It's like 2 in the morning. We get checked in. They only let us stay on base because we had family in the stream, and we were trying to get them their documents because base was shut down.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
There was no rental cars available because all the NGOs had come in to help.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
To say that it was—so let me paint the picture. You've got a mile or so long runway with a bunch of hangers and a bunch of tents, and they don't know who belongs to who. There's no documentation. So do you treat the second or third wife, 13-year-old wife of some guy as his wife, or do you treat her as an unaccompanied minor?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So these are some of the cultural and legal barriers that we're trying to figure out without hurting people. And so they split the women. Women and kids 12 and under went into the hangers. Men go into the tents. Nobody touched nobody until we figured this out. And there were significant child safety concerns.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They had several hundred unaccompanied minors because you had a bunch of orphans from the bombing. Now you're an orphan, what do you do? Or there was one sibling, I distinctly remember, that the Taliban killed her parents. And they were like, the Taliban just shot our parents. What do we do?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so you had these unaccompanied minors and figuring out how to – or there was people so desperate at the end. If you had a visa to America or were getting let in, they're like, here, take my kid. Take him to America with you. And so you've got unaccompanied minors with non-family members all over the place. And then on top of that, I spent like four days in the cages like walking around.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It was super dangerous. Nobody had any weapons because you're trying not to make it look like a – Like, that would be bad optics, but, like, you've got 10,000 dudes in a cage, like, and people are getting upset, you know what I'm saying? Like, it was not safe. I wouldn't let her go outside of the ECP for that stuff, but...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I watched, they're probably DIA or CIA playing close dudes with wanted posters and pulling in the Afghans soft because they had pieces of their uniform and they carried themselves differently. Pulling in the commandos or the KKA guys and like, go find this dude. And they're going and finding bad guys in this refugee street. And, like, I watched that happen over and over again.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, picture, go, like, 15 guys pull them in. They do a school circle. They brief them. They say, go find them. And, like, pulling dudes out of the refugee stream. So I'm like, holy cow. And that kind of... When they were processing these groups, they had what they were calling pods. And so the first pod was like basic intake. Who are you? What documents do you have? What connection to the US?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And they're vetting them a little bit and so on and so forth. So we were concerned because I had gotten them expedited because of the medical concerns. There was a medical priority for some of them, like pregnant women or people with diseases or acute problems. And so for both Sparrow and for this pregnant person, we were trying to get them through. And then,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Also, with my interpreter's three kids, or three siblings, they didn't have any documents at all, like a birth certificate, and that was it. And they had no connection to this group, so making sure that they stayed together and they routed together to the states was very important. And so we, I mean, we were relentless in trying to advocate to get them through, and that succeeded after a few days.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But hats off to the staff. And the USO, I mean, they were... The USO was phenomenal. I actually met the deputy commander of base. His wife at two in the morning was volunteering with the USO. And they're like, you know, getting coloring books and blankets and like just serving. And it was... these people were so, it was such a traumatic experience.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Imagine leaving everything you know and love, you know, from the fear of a great evil, like the Taliban, and then going to- Your whole life in a garbage bag. Yeah, your entire life in a garbage bag. And so, like, we were serving our hearts out to try to, like, to get everybody out. Like, I was, there was- How did you find her, though? I think a phone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I think they had like a Wi-Fi signal at some point.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, they would be able to connect to Wi-Fi and then send us a message. So we found them. But then we would lose them when they processed to the next one. So we'd have to find them each day, basically.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, I felt responsible because I didn't want to leave. I knew the Taliban would kill people if they disobeyed them. I believe that with every fiber of my being, I think they would have.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And just that I wasn't responsible for anybody's death was a big relief for me. It was exhilaration.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But it was also filled with tragedy because you just saw these kids get blown up and 170 Afghans and all their surviving orphans and even some of the National Mission Force families that I believe had tried to adopt some of the orphans because they were right there by Abbey Gate is where the squadrons were operating out of. And so they were some of the first on scene to secure the scene and just...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
scooping up kids that are just recently orphaned and bonding with them over the next three or four days before they have to evac out on, I think, the 30th. Because I believe that, I can't remember the date of the bombing off the top of my head, but it was a couple days afterwards. So you had these kids who were recently orphaned with our guys and protecting them and bonding with them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I think it was four days. She flew home on a rotator with them, with our entire group together. And then we, I think we got her a couple days after that. Because Dulles happened, and then it took them a few days to get their act together and get her back to us. So it was within a week of that that it all occurred.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It was honestly awesome. We were so thankful. We have some good video of our kids getting to see her because they'd FaceTime with her or they prayed for her, sent videos to her, sent presents to Afghanistan. And so to them, it was a very distinct person in their lives. She's two years old? Two years old, yeah. Really tiny. And she was walking like a baby deer, like a barely walk. She couldn't run.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
it took her quite a while to build the strength. So her physical therapists were like, this is like the most underdeveloped, like lower body we've seen in a child this age. And so like she was, it took her a long time to get strong. It took her a long time to get to her body weight again. but Steffi's a pretty good nutritionist and build that up over time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And it was... Well, and I would say her therapist commented that she's... She's displaying behavior that's consistent with an uncertain environment with violence because she would – she was quiet and always restricted her – she wouldn't even cry. Yeah. She knew how to suppress emotion. She would like turn in like this and sit there. So what they said is that's very common in violence.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
children with an uncertain environment where there could be, like, emotional outbursts or anger because they've learned to suppress and not make themselves a target, not rock the boat. And they also noticed that she had a real aversion to men and then closed spaces. Like, if in a therapy session they would shut the door, she'd start to, like, lose it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
She didn't want to be alone, and she did not want to be around men specifically. It was... But fortunately, like, we have a big family. She's got, like, 13 or, what, 15 cousins? So, like, that much love pouring on her with all sorts of people, like, learning to trust people. Like, it's safe. It's okay. And... She started to slowly peel that back, where today, like, you couldn't even tell.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, she's the same little girl in the hospital, same bright face, like, hold me. Because she grew up with all these nurses and doctors. Like, they would hold her for her naps and, like, rock her to sleep. So she was totally spoiled. And then to go to that deprivation and then coming back from that took some time. But, like I said, she was speaking full sentences in two months.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Oh, wow. Cool. We have a pretty strong church community, too. And then in our neighborhood, there's a lot of Marine families. So there's always neighborhood kids. There's like eight or ten kids in my backyard every day.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, mommy, daddy, like, unbelievable.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And this guy had talked to me in some of our conversations during the battle for their city in southern Afghanistan. And he described being inside for days in gunfire and all that. And he said he came out thinking it was over. And a guy next to him got shot in the head and, you know, was a casualty from that experience. This guy's crying on the phone. There's no hope.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
There's no way we're getting them out of Afghanistan. No one could predict the historic evacuation at that time. I'm dying on the inside. Man, I'm sorry. We'll do whatever we can to help you, but you got to send her before it's too late. Afghanistan's falling. I said, 40 days is done, and it ended up being 32 days.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It was funny because everything he phrased is questions from his father, who's responsible. And he's like, my father says the airplane, there's been war here for 40 years and the airplanes have not stopped. I'm like, they're stopping, man. Like, you need to, like, get her here before this runs out. And I'm so thankful that we did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
With the trampoline and the swings in the backyard. So the kids will come and congregate. Yeah. It's very loud at our home. It is.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Honestly, we, in retrospect, I probably had too much, I should have had a little more caution given the circumstances of her recovery. Like, you got a child from a named objective whose guy's talking to the shadow governor. But I figured...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
know your average military age male in southern afghanistan has got to have some connection you know what i mean like they're familiar with the taliban our friends who are you know it's a lot of the posh population down that area so um are there any signs of i mean is that like episodes of fear is that completely dissipated away now i would say by and large it has you could see like
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
She wouldn't go out of sight.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I think that we did right by these people. We did what we said we would do. We saved them from what they wanted. They wanted to get away from the Taliban. They wanted out of Afghanistan. And I can't control what lies they say about us. I can't, you know, I have no idea what exactly their why is it. Do they want to go back to Afghanistan?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, we try to keep it in the backyard as much as possible, but there's a Lego room upstairs, and it's just, there's a lot of children.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Is the Taliban really the people behind this, like forcing them to do that? I do know that they don't have control over if they ever get custody of her and they are subject to duress. What I really think it boils down to is this. This is not about our rights. This is not about their rights. This is about what's the best interest of the child for this little girl.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And what I think is so despicable about the government's role in this is they prevented that analysis from even happening. They're trying to, on a technicality based on a lie, short circuit that analysis.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
she should win whatever that looks like she should win it's not she's not chattel she's not property right like she's absolutely our daughter in every sense of the word like we're mommy and daddy she doesn't know anything about this right she doesn't remember these folks at all it's that's water under the bridge and But even that, it's about her best interest. She deserves freedom.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
She deserves to grow up to marry whoever she wants to marry, to be whoever she wants to be. And so many Americans have sacrificed to provide that for her. It is just an abomination for what a miscarriage of justice, what the government's done here to prevent that from happening. And it's continuing to.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
To this day, like, next week we have a hearing in front of the Supreme Court of Virginia, and the government is appearing and trying to say they had a foreign policy interest
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
that overrode our parental rights and that they should just blindly give her, like pluck her from her family and her brothers and everything she's been given by the sacrifices of all these Americans because of a foreign policy interest from a dead government or because of negotiating now with the Taliban. Are you kidding me?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like they filed these, for lack of a better term, creepy statements from the current charged affairs for Afghanistan, who like personally, this is a Joshua Masp opinion, should totally get fired. But they fired these, from the charge of affairs, the person responsible for running Afghanistan for the U.S. government, basically saying it's hard to negotiate with the Taliban with your case going on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So, you know, void the Mast family's rights and give her to them. Like, sight unseen, no evaluation of this, no investigation of whether they ever were proper guardians of her. Like, if she was sexually molested and, like, neglected in Afghanistan... Whose fault's that? These people are claiming that she was living with them. I don't know if that's true.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I've got a voice message that says she doesn't live with me or my family, so I don't know what's true.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It's good to be here. Yeah, Sean, we really appreciate you having us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I don't know if it's a criminal. I don't know if it rides the criminal. It's absolutely, like... We will absolutely sue these people on the back end of this for what they've done with our family. No one should have to go through this stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
To be gagged and lied about by the government is really hard to take, especially by the very bureaucrats who are responsible for getting dumped so dangerously in the first place. They're the ones protecting government information and covering up what happened. And we can prove in court with all the evidence the U.S. government has that she was turned over to non-relatives.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I think I should probably bring that up. There is documentation now. I have these guys, the person they say is her biological father. I don't even think that's, it was, but they claimed a relationship, a biological relation to this guy. That was a lie. Because after three years of litigation, we, in the board of inquiry, we have the guy's identity card.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so this elderly, this elderly posthumous man she was given to in 2020, right before the peace deal. He said, I'm the older brother of the slain, we'll call him Joe, for lack of a better term. Joe got killed. He was an innocent farmer. Give me his daughter, right? That's his claim. Well, now I got Joe's birth certificate. I got this guy's birth certificate.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We haven't yet. I mean, we've thought about it. Again, because of the traveling, we haven't been able to commit to that type of a routine yet. But I think everybody evolves through the process. Like, hey, I can do it better this year and try to incorporate new things. And we've done that. Sports have been great with the boys and the little ones.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And you know, in Afghanistan, how they have your father and your father's father? Well, they don't have the same dad. So that's just a lie. He said, I'm the older brother of the slain Joe, call him. I've got both your IDs. He's not the older brother. And guess what? The Saline Joe's five years older. So he's lying about being older and he's lying about being a brother.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So how that evolved here in the United States is this posthumous man said, well, he was a older stepbrother. So he's claiming to be a half first cousin. That's the claim biological relationship, a half first cousin. And that came about when we offered a DNA test.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because like, duh, the first thing you do, I mean, if you're in the audience and someone is claiming to be a relative of a child you've adopted, what do you do? You say, I'll pay for the DNA test. And so we did that two and a half, three years ago? Three years ago? Right off the bat. I will pay for a DNA test to test your claim because I believe you're misinformed or you're lying.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
That's what we did. And they absolutely blatantly refused to do that. So I'll do it right now. Do a DNA test. ... But I guess what I'd like to, I don't blame these mega firms for trying to represent a client, right? I have a different ethical standard of how you can do that and what level you can do with courts. I think that they may have crossed that line, but that's up for courts to decide.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
What I have a real problem with is the Department of Justice parroting verbatim what these mega law firms narrative are with contrary evidence in their possession that they won't release to us. So it's like throwing the game. Like if we've got video of these Rangers in combat, And I've asked three years ago to declassify everything. Like, it's a child. It's an old mission. Who cares?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, declassify it, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
You surrendered. Let's see the footage. But they'd rather let these guys get maligned by these different groups that support, you know, get no detainees and that ilk. Like, same sort of groups, right? The people who's filled their pro bono time helping, like, terrorist sympathizers. But they're at dullest.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We had about seven hours it took to process them into the country once they arrived in America. And I was there because I had her original documents and I had to vouch for these people, say like, hey, they disobeyed the Taliban, they risked their lives to help Americans. That's their connection, that's their eligibility to be paroled here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I had to make sure my interpreter's kids got to him, right? Like who he was and how he was helping and all that. And so I sat there for seven hours with, like, teeming masses of humanity, like, pouring in. And with these overworked customs and multiple agents trying to process all these act ends. And most of them don't have documents. Like, it's very rudimentary at all.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
My four-year-old's starting soccer this year, so we're really excited about that. The other two have played a couple of seasons, but... He is ready to go. He's got the cleats.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And at the end of that period, I... They're like, okay, you're done processing. You need to go get a COVID test. And it's like midnight. Like a COVID test? Like really? Like these people, a lot of these people had tuberculosis, right? So it was, so I'm thinking this is crazy. So we get my guy and about 20, 20, 30 military age males and their families.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And they put us in a scissor truck, like those ones that go back and forth between the terminals and can elevate and stuff for different. And they put us in the scissor truck and they drive us way out on Dulles airport. And it looked like a Bond movie where they're unveiling like a prototype aircraft, like a huge hangar. And it's got like 500 beds in there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And they got computers set up over here and they got guys kitted up with like flaxen ARs. And I'm like, this does not look like COVID test material. And I watched them go hard at my guy. Like, what were you doing in 2014? Like going down the list, just reaming him out and interrogating him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And before that, he was sitting, and this guy's Pashtun, and a lot of our allies are Dari speaker of Persian origin, right? It was different tribes that were helping us for the most part. There were some Pashtun tribes that helped. But he had not spoken to a lot of the other refugees because he didn't speak Dari, and he was a Pashtun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
but he's sitting there in this detention facility, like holding hands and chatting, because they hold hands with their friends and he's like chatting away. And that's the first person I'd seen him talk to this, like for five days in the camps. And I'm like, who's his friend to this person who speaks English? And they're like, oh, this is his friend from his home village.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Not his home city, his village. Back in the boonies where she had been recovered on the mission, because he wasn't from the big city, he just lived there later in life. He was from this village where she was recovered. And so he's sitting here in this detention facility, getting reamed out by our guys with another guy from his home village.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so I've just got this pattern going of child from a capture-kill mission, Al-Qaeda, talking to the Taliban shadow governor responsible for those foreign fighter camps, says he has Taliban in his phone, flags at Dulles. And I go to the CBP agents like, dude, what is this place? Like, I don't know. Like, I didn't understand. Like, I wasn't sure.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
He's like, oh, this is where the inconclusives are. I'm like, what is that? And he's like, oh, they flagged on the terror watch list. And like, we're vetting them to see if they're a match. And I'm like, You know, I feel immediately responsible. Like, I'm a Marine Corps officer. I expedited this guy through, and I knew all this stuff, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So what I wanted to do was appropriately flag that because I knew they were looking for— To clarify, you didn't know all that stuff. You didn't know that he had— No, no, I didn't know that he flagged a watch list. I just figured his folks fought for the other team. Like, everybody wants to go to America, even if your folks fought for the other team.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I thought he was more disobeying the Taliban and abandoning that, which I was cool with. But at that point, I felt obligated. Like, as a service member, I can't not say what I know. And so I immediately flagged that through our NCIS rep and flagged it up to the FBI, and that's how this all got started. And so... They were detained for like 24 hours-ish. And then I got, they got released.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I was like, what? And so I'm trying to figure out where they're going and like where, because our little girl was there. And it ended up being really weird because it was like two in the morning, kids are asleep. My interpreter got processed through and he didn't have a car ride. So I had to like go and like take him back to his hotel.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so I got sucked away and I was trying to figure out where they were to get back when I went back. And so I'm talking to this agent and he's like, dude, this was a really bad dude, but he brought your little girl to US forces and your organization got him in Afghanistan. So we let him through. And I'm like, what? No, sir. Like, I am not, you know, I don't even know this guy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I've talked to him for six weeks. Like, here's all the things that I was tracking. And so that's when I realized I'd perhaps misplaced some compassion for some of the refugees and the bombing and all of this emotions that I could have been you know, more vigilant than I was. And I think I just conflated a little bit of the compassion with that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I still don't think this guy is Osama bin Laden, but do I think that his family fought for the other side and was directly supporting al-Qaeda in their home village? Absolutely, 100%. And how is it possible that the Department of Justice is filing filings in court saying, oh, this guy's fine, and JSOC colonels are testifying, no, we knew that before we picked him up?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, I can't go into the details of what he shared. But, like, he testified under oath that the team, the squadron that pulled him out was tracking. So, like, if I'm going to believe one entity, it's probably not going to be the previous administration's Department of Justice.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And it's definitely not going to be the attorney who helped defend the decision to turn her over to these people in the first place. I have a problem with if this has gotten scrubbed off the watch list, which I have reason to believe it has been scrubbed. It doesn't exist anymore. I'd like to know why.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Was that a valid national interest purpose, or was that a favor to a mega law firm that gets things like this done?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, that's a related issue. So they changed my orders where they ordered me not to testify about that, and I didn't testify about it. The judge never knew any of that stuff. in our own custody case, like all these warnings. And they tried to shut us up because that counteracts the narrative, because it makes sense, right? If the flag's on Tara Washington, we're like, yep, separate him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, whatever, if he's going to get deported, we're not going to deal with this anymore. That's the extent of our grace. And, you know, I have an obligation as a constitutional officer to report this and send it up the chain. And I was very concerned with the chaos that people weren't getting properly vetted.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then as time went on and these reports coming about of DoD whistleblowers saying they were getting pressure to scrub people off the watch list, and then there was a report by the DoD inspector general talking about how we weren't, because of agreements with partner nations in the combat zone, only DOD could share information that was gleaned by some of these partner nations.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And of all the terrorist database information would normally be housed under the Terrorist Screening Center, and normally be in all of our databases to share, there was a subset of combat zone information that was not applied to vetting these Afghans. And so there's a 30-page DOD inspector general report talking about how they had to give the data sets of who had been let into the country to
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
the national ground intelligence center and they re-vetted them and identified a whole bunch of people that had very concerning derogatory on them that were led in the us and most of them they didn't even know where they were and so like that's the context of where we were at as far as like i'm a marine corps officer you know america first like report this stuff up the chain and then it just
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And nobody said boo about it. Like, when I reported that stuff up, nobody was like, oh, that's classified. It's marked unclassified. It says unclassified FOUO. The guy sent me a copy, a screenshot, said, hey, this is what we were worried about, just so you know. And it's marked unclassified on the document itself. I reported it 10 months before it came back down.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And now that is marked secret, no foreign, in an investigation saying that I mishandled that information. Like, give me a break. You know, this is an unclassified database. It's in the federal register as unclassified. And I'm having to ask this nice NCIS agent who's doing exactly what these medical law firms had him do, which was interrogate me. Like, I'm fully cooperated. I'm a lawyer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I know my rights. You know, I know my third one, Bravo rights. I know our rights on the Constitution. I voluntarily waive that because I want... our country be safe? And I was trying to figure out what happened with that. And so, like, I talked to him, like, so you're saying this is an unclassified database? He's like, yeah. I was like, well, how in the world is it secret and foreign?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
He's like, well, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has determined as their original classification authority. But, like, I'm an SJA for a SOCOM component, right? I've been around the block. I know what intelligence oversight looks like. I know what classification is. I'm like, dude, did you get that in writing? He's like, no, it was on a phone call.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So I was like, you don't even have it in writing that this is secret, no foreign now and what authority that was. And if there was a security classification guide that actually says that, because, you know, you can't just like say stuff is secret, no foreign to favor political, like... You can't just misclassify information. That's illegal. It violates the executive order.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so he kind of hemmed and hawed a little bit and went back to his lawyers to try to figure that out. But I've got, like, there was another document, like, I'll show you one other thing. So there was a, get the right document, this document right here. This is the Terrorist Identity Data Mart Environment TIDE. I'm sorry.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So this is the Terrorist Identity Data Mart Environment, or TIDE, database fact sheet. This is published for the American people publicly on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence website. This is their fact sheet basically explaining how we vet terrorists and what we do to keep you safe, right? This document...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
was slammed in front of my face, marked secret no foreign by an ICS agent. Are you shitting me? Saying it's marked right now in my board of inquiry evidence. What law firm is this? I probably shouldn't say or I'll get sued. How do you get? It's represented a lot of people on the political left over the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
You know, you don't want to give them a stick to beat you with. But this document, and here's the kicker. It was marked secret, no foreign. And then it said pending classification review. And then they line that out. So post-classification review, they're saying a publicly facing website. And I've got a letter from DOJ saying I'm not authorized to use this public document in our case.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because we want to use it as an exhibit as a publicly available. So they own the court. Absolutely.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
In this lawsuit. We never got to say any of that stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
The only thing we got to do is use his own recording saying he was scared of the Taliban, they disobeyed the Taliban. That's what we were able to use.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, if the appropriate oversight asks for the classified documents from my board, please, God, go pull that stuff. And look at this document, secret, no foreign, and ask yourself, how does a counterintelligence special agent, mark a document that's Google-able It was designed and released for the American public's benefit as secret, no foreign. It's insane.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And that's like, there's like a half dozen documents like that. So this document was marked higher classification than the CONOP. It was like five I, rel two. Like, you know what I mean? So like you have a Ranger Regiment CONOP that has a lower classification than a publicly available ODNI like fact sheet for the American people. Give me a break. And so that's the kind of ridiculousness.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I'll show you one other example that's just an easy visual. So here is, here's the same document. This is what was released. See the redactions on it? This is a fact sheet made for Brigadier General Taylor, who was working with CSTCCA with the Afghans, like mentorship program. And this is how it was released for the court, right? This is how it was released for my board, so I've got it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So would you like to know what they redacted so that the judge never knew? And this is, remember, they were attacking our credibility, saying that I made this up and that I was biased in writing this stuff. Well, this is drafted by the SJA shop, not me. And so they redacted the portion that just corroborated everything we said originally in the declassified mission summary.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So it says, multiple photos recovered from the scene included pictures of Turkmen, Uyghur, foreign fighters, weapons, and al-Qaeda flags.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
A detainee captured the night of the operation indicated that the neighboring compounds were occupied by Chinese Uighur fighters from Turkmenistan and identified the pictures attached as foreign fighters who were residents of the compounds that engaged the Afghan-led forces.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
An additional detainee corroborated that the compounds of interest struck on 5-6 September were occupied by Turkmen foreign fighters and their families. So the very attorneys that let her be turned over knowing this redacted this information for release. And only at the board, when my command gave me as much as they had, they actually gave me information. Man, these people have no souls, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, I think it's like a big law, no holds barred, whatever it means necessary to get your outcome. And they pride themselves on achieving that for their clients, and they're very successful and fabulously wealthy. But here's the other question I have is, how do you afford 15 attorneys with a high-power law firm that's $500 plus an hour and three different law firms? How do you afford that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And here's the deal. What we've come to find out is that there's been fundraising videos in Afghanistan, like, saying the Taliban's helping us and we need money. So, like, I'd like to know, like, how's that being paid for? Is that some, like... shake in the UAE, like, funding this with dark money? Like, is the Taliban helping with this?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because they publicly released two years ago saying they were going to go to American authorities and protest. And then I've got the charge d'affaires filing weird affidavits that sounded a lot like, this is messing up our negotiations with the Taliban. And so I've got a lot of reasonable questions, like,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Is the Department of Justice and the previous administration doing this because the Taliban asked them to? They filed an affidavit from the Charged Affairs saying it was interfering with negotiations. What does that mean? Does that mean the Talibs want them to give our kid back to these people who are not relatives and probably on their team? I'd like to know that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I think the American people deserve to know that. And isn't that quite a bit of a different story than what's publicly out there? And why would they need to change my orders three or four different times? Why wouldn't they release all the information I asked them to declassify and release for a child's custody hearing? Like, would we do that for any child?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yes, I do math in the mornings before I go to work with my oldest. And then I do P.E. very well. I'm an excellent P.E. teacher when I get home. Right on. But I'm a cheerleader. I'm humbled by how much work she puts into that. For moms out there who are homes, that is the hardest job that I could possibly imagine. So my hat's off to her and other mothers out there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But this child was picked up off a named objective in brutal close combat where the eyewitnesses said they tried to kill us blowing themselves up in a pitched gunfight. where a dozen Americans are bleeding. And I'll never forget the platoon sergeant. He told me, sir, whatever you need with this, we'll come forward. Our guys didn't bleed, so she'd go back to hell. It was that bad.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They were that strongly about it. And these guys are being called war criminals by organizations. There was an organization that started a letter-writing campaign. That's one of the reasons I got awarded, is they sent 7,000 letters to Congress. And in those letters, they talk about how they want to promote their narrative And they want major mass to hold accountable.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And, you know, from a child that was recovered in what could have been a war crime anyway. And I'm here to tell you right now, that's defamation. There's no way that this was a war crime. Even if there were civilians killed, like it's a legitimate strike on an al-Qaeda compound of verified intelligence. So like to say that publicly is like calling people rapists. And I'm honestly tired of...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
folks who don't produce or preserve liberty for others, attacking our men. I mean, I think the SecDef owes it to these guys to clear their name. Like if you've been said, hey, you might be a war criminal and there's a video of it, do you think those guys deserve that? No, man. But they deserve the truth. You know what I'm saying? They're all under nondisclosure agreements, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They had to get authorization, and they actually tried to get these rangers not to be able to testify. They almost changed their orders. We got some weird emails saying, like, what do you need them for to testify after they were fully approved by USISOC? They're like, what do you need them again? Like, what exactly are they going to testify to?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I'm trying to screw around with the ability of these eyewitnesses to say what happened. And, um... I know for a fact there's footage of this stuff. I know for a fact there's TS and secret level information that corroborates everything we're saying. And that was so rewarding at our board of inquiry, having the ability to have some due process, right, where the colonels can come and testify.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I think we had five colonels testify. Three of them as witnesses of what they knew at the time, because the Department of Justice in court filings to a court has represented that I made this stuff up and that I misled this deputy assistant sec def as a captain. Like, are you kidding me?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Do you don't think his staff and colonels, they testified in our board that they corroborated everything independently with their targeting packages or targeting systems they have in the Pentagon. And so you, again, I think I've said this a couple of times. I, I, Law firms can represent their client. We might have some ethical disagreements.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
The Department of Justice can't parrot lies when they have evidence to the contrary. Like, that's criminal. You can't do that stuff. And if the Department of Justice through the FBI has contradictory statements, like saying these other people are an authority, the Taliban governor's an authority, if that's what they were told by these people, how do they file saying that they're
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
have legal authority over this child, they told them themselves that they don't. I don't understand how you can lie to a court like that. And so what we've done, Sean, is I have formally whistleblowed these actions with just the tip of the iceberg, just enough to pick people's interest in Congress and in oversight.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I wrote a whistleblower complaint addressed to the president via Congress in formal neighbor letter format. I'm a lawyer. This is what I do, right? I spent three days in a hole drafting all this stuff and citing the evidence. There's 30 enclosures, hundreds of pages of evidence, right? And this is just the really obvious stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like here's the one redacted document and here's the document unredacted. Why do you think that is? And laying that out for Congress. And what we've been asking is that the president of the United States, the US government release all this stuff. and look at the evidence, and if there is a lie in what the previous administration's Department of Justice has filed, which there is, Fix it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It's not rocket science. Get some oversight of these people because these are your typical deep state bureaucrats. They have absolutely weaponized the system. Like this could be like the poster child event of everything that we've all been dealing with at the grassroots level. Like you said, with the Blackwater guys, like deleting the five minutes that matter in their lives, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It slowed down a little bit, as far as the traveling goes. But as far as for this recent Board of Inquiry, that was a grind for months. It's like having a second and third job outside of, like, you do your normal job, and then you stay up late or get up early.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And we've experienced that to the point where Like, I'm a government hack. I'm a prosecutor. Like, I carry that mantle, right? But seeing it from the other side, seeing the system weaponized against, like, if they can do this to me, they can do it to anybody. It just is if they want to. And that's blown my mind.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, and that's the point of shutting down debate. And I think that's a real danger to our society. Like, we need freedom of speech now more than ever. We need open debate of ideas. We need to be able to talk through these things. And what there's a really pernicious... I guess, undercurrent, where if powerful people don't want you to, they want a certain outcome, they shut down speech.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And that's like I told you before with CBS. We gave this interview, like seven-hour interview, two years ago to CBS. And they did it in a two-part series. And then these mega law firms come in and threaten them. And then they change it to some milquetoast podcast. I don't want to say BS, but something that was not the interview. It's like, oh, they say this and you say that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And none of the facts, right? None of the what's actually going on. I've got an IG complaint that lays out email traffic between these mega law firms and the SecDef's attorneys, and then my orders get changed. When did the CBS thing happen?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
That's our hope. Honestly, morale is high in the military right now, at least in our unit. We're ready to go in focusing on warfighting and not some of this ridiculousness we've had to deal with.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, and we're in an open storage environment, so we don't have cell phones or personal computers. So it really...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
No, we're trying to get them. So fortunately, some of the Trump appointees at the Department of Justice have some oversight of these particular attorneys. But right now, the Department of Defense and the Department of State need to evaluate whether they want to continue attacking our family.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I think that there's a really good chance that they will make the decision to stop that attacks and release that information. And that would end the case.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, and Pam Bondi. We've already had Congress has sent that whistleblower complaint formally through their Office of Legislative Affairs to those authority makers. But what I'd encourage them to do and anyone to do who's interested in this is... This board of inquiry gathered 14 gigabytes of unclassified data and hundreds and hundreds of pages of original reporting in one place.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, if you want to know the truth, just pull it. Get somebody to send it to you on Sipper. It's condensed with the MARSOC SJA office. It's great. I honestly, it's the best thing that could have happened to us because it gives us an ability to talk about the same facts that nobody can gag us because we have a due process right to talk about what the government tried to do to us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
all your phone calls or whatever you have to go outside or you have to do it outside of work hours if you're meeting with attorneys or meeting with you know uh advocates or folks trying to help you it's all outside of work hours so it kind of takes up it sucks up your bandwidth for family and other extracurriculars and so we're looking forward to getting through this on the other side to be able to to have like a little bit of peace yeah normal yeah yeah and how long has this been dragging on
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And it collects like real hard evidence in one place and lays it all out. And so I think we've done the right steps as far as we've tried to, I've tried to be a good Marine Corps officer at every stage. And I've never embarrassed the Marine Corps name or my own. And I would, I'd rather die, take a bullet than dishonor
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
institutions like that's how strongly i feel about it and i haven't now that's not known but every service member that sat down and looked at this like buddies of mine or people on the board like the reason they unsubstantiate everything related to the afghans is because it's a lie and it's it's so clearly a lie and then you know one of the things my attorney made a great point in the closing argument that won the day
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
The government got up and they pitched an exact rerun of what these mega law firms already lost two years ago. Like the judge specifically rejected that stuff. That's in evidence at my board. The government put it in evidence. But they said the exact same argument again. It's like we're on repeat here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then the mega law firm attorneys are there assisting the government to try to go after us administratively after they already lost legally. So his most effective point was like, members, I'm afraid that our system is being weaponized for non-official purposes. And I said, because these allegations were made two years ago, and all he did was read the court's ruling. He read it verbatim.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
No, obviously this is just my personal opinion, our perspective on what's happened over the last few years in our life. And then normally I wouldn't even associate with MARSOC, but they've recently acknowledged that I'm a member of the command. So that allows us to be here and be able to acknowledge that today.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And it says, I reject the kidnapping narrative, and they attack him for his religious beliefs or something like that. He read it verbatim to the board, and it was exactly what these people had been spewing again in this military board on behalf of these mega law firms. And it shut it down. That's why it was unsubstantiated. And you know what?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Senior DOJ and senior Department of Defense attorneys had this written ruling. It was a 38-page ruling. They had it for two years. Guess who didn't have that ruling? The FBI investigators, the NCIS investigators, and the board, or the recorder, the prosecutor for the government. Wow. They never saw this binding ruling against these parties.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So this is a binding, a ruling is binding against the parties, right? So between us and the Afghans, here's the law, right? They never gave it to their own investigators. How do you run a military officer with the recycled allegations that were already proven false? And it's that level of... I don't know the word to describe it. It's... It's not justice. Let me put it that way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It's not a scales and equal before the law. It's we favor these people and push hard on the gas. And it is a miracle that we have survived this far financially, just emotionally with our family. Is anyone else going to cover this? I don't know. So we've been asked, Glenn Beck's asked us to come talk on his show.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
60 Minutes is going to do something, but they're with CBS and they got scared last time, so I doubt they're going to go into anything. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I am thankful.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, you don't know how thankful I would be able to appeal directly to Americans, people who've been deployed in the GWAT, understand the conditions on the ground, understand what classification is, understand what the terror watch list is. They understand the implications of this and what the political...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I don't agree with it, but I understand at least the political interest in covering up people you import that may not have been vetted. I understand where they're coming from. I don't agree with it. Does that make sense?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But be able to talk to your audience who are subject matters in targeting, subject matters in what the Ranger Regiment does and what the counterterrorism mission was and how much fidelity. Let's just say the Israelis are not the only people who can thoroughly penetrate terrorist organizations and know exactly what's going on where. We have those capabilities too and we use them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So to be able to talk to that type of audience and knowing, you know, your influence on, you know, the political debate or the debate in the country about what issues are important and what should we elevate and what should we prioritize. But we're really in the 11th hour of potentially her going back to the Taliban again. And that's just unbelievable to me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And it's just, it's just, it's not pitched like that in the media. It's covered up. But like this is, like I said, this is a Taliban, Elian Gonzalez situation. And we, we, I think the president should intervene and save her from the deep state who lied to his administration the first time around.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It's been since the fall of Afghanistan, so since 2021. Wow. So four years. And really, it started in 2019. So for me, it feels like I'm about to finish up my deployment to Afghanistan. Jeez. It's been a five-year one. So this all kicked off in September of 2019, so until today.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And if there is anybody willing to look at the evidence objectively, I don't think you come to a different conclusion than that. And I can give you the phone number of the Rangers. I can give you the phone number of the colonel at JSOC who can corroborate this guy's got dirt on him. And like I said, I don't think he's Osama bin Laden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Do I think that they should have accelerated his asylum application? If the first 800 approved, this guy's asylum application was approved to gain a litigation advantage. Because if he's at risk, he doesn't have a status here, it's kind of hard for a judge to say, yeah, take this child, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So over our allies, over the people that went to war with us, this dude I just told you all these DROG about got his asylum application approved by the U.S. government. How does that happen? Like, what's the official purpose in that? Like, I mean, the guy that was a Terp, the first Afghan I got out, he got his denied, right? Zaki, like there was a news article, but they wrote a book about him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
His initial application got denied. And this guy got approved. I don't understand how that happens. Like- It blows my mind. So, you know, the Tom Homans of the world, like, I really think they should go look at this guy's asylum application and compare it to what JSOC knows. And did this guy lie on an asylum application?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because fair to middling chance that he said he wasn't affiliated with the Taliban, and there's a fair middling chance that he is. So, like, you know, I don't think we should tolerate that sort of shenanigans when it comes to national security. Because if they'll do it just to win a case, like, whoever was involved in scrubbing this off...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
should actually, like, if they didn't do it for an official purpose and they risked national security, like, you should lose your job for that. Like, you're putting the American people at risk. You know, I just... I can live with mean words. Like, God's made me the type of person I am where I'm going to do the right thing and I'm not going to stop until you kill me. Like, that's just who I am.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And there's millions of people like me. And that's why we volunteer and we go down range and we do the things we do in whatever job or MOS that we're given, right? We're there to further and advance American principles and ideas. Like, we don't go down range just to commit violence. It's violence to advance a purpose. That's what makes us different than other militaries.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so I would like—really, the Rangers bothers me the most. I want these guys—and honestly, they should get awarded at the White House. They should get accolades for having that moral courage and that heat of the moment to do the right thing and save this little girl. They should get recognized for that. They shouldn't be called war criminals.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I think we have a moral obligation to expose that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We wouldn't have believed it if we had not lived it. I keep saying that to myself because we've seen absolute miracles and absolute heroism and everything in between.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I hope so. Honestly, we're really looking forward to some light being shown on this. Because, I mean, honestly, daylight and truth. That's what the American people deserve. That's what regular people deserve. And that's really what's been helped from us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, because of this kind of false information operation campaign in the media that's out there, the Taliban called us out by name, put us up on their website, made a little video about it. Yeah, it's unique to see some terrorist spokesman like da-da-da in your name on national television.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Let's do it. Yeah, it's like someone drowning in a lake and you're walking by and you can do something. Are you obligated to do something?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And to add a positive note, because in conversation you've talked about, like, is there anything good in our government? And what I like to counter to that is, yes, there's some really good people at the grassroots level. And we need people volunteering and filling these leadership roles in our government at such a time as this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so I'd encourage folks who've been waffling about joining the military, join. Be the difference in the military and make it great. We have an opportunity now. We've been kind of unshackled for some of these non-essential things that have kept us from being the most efficient, war-fighting, war-winning machine that we can be. And honestly, morale's higher than it's been in a long time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like me, I'm like perking up. I'm probably a terminal major at this point, but I'm like, I'm sticking around. I want to see this. I want to be an action officer on some of these initiatives. And we have met people at every level of government that have gone out of their way when they didn't have to, to help. Like once they're armed with facts, they've been just warriors for right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so I would say there's hope. I would say that there is a lot of people out there doing the right thing. Even the fact that we're here, after what's been said about us and all the allegations, that you would honor us with the opportunity to speak directly to the American people and tell the truth? that's a pretty big miracle for us. You know what I mean? That's something remarkable.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I don't mean that lightly with those K-bars. Those are symbolic for us because I really do honor that opportunity. So thank you for having us on here. Thank you for letting us talk directly to people. And I truly believe that when the truth gets out, that's what's going to win the day. And that's our hope and our prayer. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I named my son after you for a reason. You are the model leader with compassion and empathy that I hope my son's to be one day. To the platoon sergeant, all the Rangers that sacrificed on that objective, I know that they gave away Afghanistan in a way that I wasn't particularly proud of and didn't feel like it honored our sacrifices over there, but you made a difference with a real little girl
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
that I'll forever be grateful for. We have the privilege of watching her experience new experiences and freedoms and growing and have a life that she would not have except for your decisions on objective. And I know it was one night and it was, you know, of course we'd do that, but honoring the instinct is important, I think.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I hope you get the recognition you deserve and get recognized for that. I honestly think that that should be at the White House. Who else should I thank? For everyone who's prayed or given or helped our family along the way, thank you for that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
My brother, Richard, my attorney Hannah Wright, all my team at McGuire Woods, that's a law firm that's helped us pro bono and they provided hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal services. We'd be drowning if it wasn't for them. Could not afford this because they price you out of the market with some of these big firms, how they attack you. So thank you for making a difference.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Is there anybody I'm missing?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like Senator Cruz and his staff, like you all have, you literally saved her life because you delayed her being turned over to what turns out to be, you know, non-relative terrorist-affiliated people. Like, literally, that was the fight. And the State Department absolutely misled you. And I know that you ought to have kept fighting if you had been armed with the facts that we know now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But you delayed her getting dumped in an orphanage, and that would have been a black hole, and she'd be dead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
and uh i truly believe those advocacy efforts saved her life and it delayed her getting turned over to she was more stable and older and so she was able to survive that ordeal and thank god she survived the war and she survived neglect and she survived abuse like we're so thankful and in her life saved so many other people that I absolutely see the providential hand of God in her life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because if she hadn't gotten dumped like that, and they made it for evil, but it was used for good in the end. And there's real people alive today that would be living under the Taliban, but for her life. So, I mean, I've got to be thankful. It makes me grateful and it makes me humbled to have been a part of this. And we're going to keep fighting. Like, we are fighting forward.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And you better be willing to put it all on the line if you're going to attack us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, I saw those episodes with Sarah Adams and just unbelievable. I can't believe that that happened.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
americans would even think like how does that even cross your mind yeah yeah um after what these what these people have done for 20 years and oppressing their own people even not to mention oh by the way we've been fighting them for 20 years yeah do you guys have any do you guys have you guys yeah we moved we sold our first so when when our first our address became publicly um
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
available through some of this litigation. We moved, talked to the... Actually, I remember this because I talked to our NCS rep and I was like, hey, this is a child from a named objective raid and this person who brought her to the US was... talking to the Taliban shadow governor, and then he said he had Taliban in his phone before we brought him into U.S. lines at the airport for evacuation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then I watched him flag on the watch list, and I've got some security concerns. And so our force protection officer, this is what he told me. He's like, well, you should dial 911 if you feel threatened. And so I was thinking I would get a little more from that at a, you know, like how many other people in the command have gotten their name put on the internet by the Taliban.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So I was expecting a little more there, didn't get it. So we decided to move. We sold our home, which is great because it helped pay for a lot of the early litigation. And then we, our second home address got leaked, but we're in a pretty, we're in a cul-de-sac where we got good visibility everywhere. So we're very vigilant with our kids. We put up a fence. I'm a Marine, we have guns, you know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It's just, I mean, you basically, self-help has been our, we are on, like, with the local law enforcement, they know if we call 911 from our house, they're not going to send a regular unit. They're going to send a SWAT team. So, like, we've taken the precautions that we're able to with our current financial situation as much as we can.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But, yes, are there people that drive by and take pictures of our house? Yes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Do reporters come knock on the door? Yes. Do crazy people know, you know, can know where we live? Yes. So all of those concerns, and obviously, I think with the veteran community, they could understand why we'd be concerned about that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like every judge advocate in the Marine Corps, we start out and you build MOS or military occupation specialty credibility by doing a trial billet. So I had done my time in the trial shop about two years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I had done, while I was doing that, I had as much as possible to try to be involved in operational law, which is where my interest lied, which is advising commanders in light the law of war and rules of engagement and targeting. And so I got the opportunity to be the Marine Corps representative at the Army JAG School in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so there's a section there called CLAMA, which stands for the Center for Law and Military Operations. And what they do is... They're kind of like the after-action reports and lessons learned across the spectrum of operational law. So there's domestic operational law for, like, disaster relief and such. There's, like, noncombatant evacuation ops, targeting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so the Marines' portfolio in that section is—
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
the joint targeting process collateral damage estimation and civilian casualty response and so when you get there you go through all the training in those disciplines to understand those and then you're dealing with you're you're finding marines have deployed with the mu or deployed to afghanistan or deployed to iraq or syria and as they come back you're capturing those lessons learned and then you're publishing and disseminating them
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Okay, so obviously we can't go into classified information. A lot of what we're going to talk about has been declassified and authorized for release into the public domain. So we will talk about that portion of it. And then as far as ongoing legal matters, the only thing we're not going to do is some of the Afghans we've been in other litigation with,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And one of the things I did, I was an editor for what they call the, now they call it the National Security Law Quarterly, where we collect all that knowledge and spread it across DOD in the different judge advocate communities so that you learn from those experiences. And that's actually what I was doing in Afghanistan in 2019 when I deployed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I did a very short trip in 2018 to sit with like at Camp Alpha and Camp Vance and watch some of the targeting going on live and talk to them about like, hey, what are you seeing? And then the other thing I would do is I would instruct at the schoolhouse during operational law courses, or sometimes they'd have other legal communities ask you to come in and speak on operational law.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So explaining to, for lack of a better term, baby jags, what is the joint targeting process, what is collateral damage estimation, so that they have credibility when they go in front of a commander and get an operational law billet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Okay, so in 2019 when I deployed, I was attached to the Resolute Support US Forces Afghanistan. Judge Advocate's office. So it's the senior attorney for all of Afghanistan. It's a colonel sitting on top of probably 10 or 12 attorneys, but he's responsible for all of the attorneys in Afghanistan. Okay.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So that's not the actual name of the op, but that was a code name we had had for her amongst the medical staff and the Americans trying to help get a safe outcome for her. They called it Operation Starfish.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, she was finishing her master's degree. So it had been off cycle for us. Like, it was a short deployment, 90 days, so not a big deal. I landed on the ground in Bagram on September 6th, 2019, which I learned that out the course of, but that is exactly like down to the hour when she was getting lifted off the X by the Rangers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And when I learned that two months in, I had goosebumps because it's like, wow. Like, what are the odds that you land at the same time? So September 6th, 2019 sticks in my head because that's when I got to Afghanistan the second time at about two in the morning when we landed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We're not allowed to identify those people to third parties or where they're from or where their families are from. And so we're not going to do that. It's really not even the focus of today. And then there's a restriction from commenting on some of the state court proceedings. So we're not going to talk about what's happened in the state court.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
As an office, we would go and have dinner together at the dining facility. And I will never forget, we're walking to Chow, and my colonel's like, with probably eight or ten attorneys, and my colonel, the senior attorney in Afghanistan, is like, what the hell are we going to do with this baby? And I was like, that was very odd. Like, I'm the new guy, right? I just got there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
You're like, what baby? Exactly. I was like, what baby, sir? He's like, oh, well, some special operators hit an Al-Qaeda training camp, and it was really bad, and they recovered a baby. And we're supposed to figure out what to do with it. And I was like, jeez. And they're like, oh. Does that happen often? I don't think so. I mean, did they just kill everybody on target?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, I mean, it depends, like, I guess. We went through it. It was 100 plus dead. They did a very good job of making sure that no al-Qaeda leaders left those structures. It's not a hit on them. I'm not saying it was bad. Oh, no, no. I'm just telling you they were very thorough. And so it was kind of just by the by that we'd first heard about it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I remember at the time, because I was worried my wife would be upset, I was like, well, sir, like, What's the concern? And they're like, oh, well, it's foreign child. We've talked to some of the NGOs like ICRC and such, and they're saying that the situation in the Afghan system at the time wasn't safe for foreign children. And so we got to figure out something like a safe outcome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So I was like, well, sir, like, if there's nothing else to be done, like, as a last resort, like, we'd volunteer. Like, I've got two kids. Like, what's one more? Like, don't leave a child here if there was an option. And he was like, oh, sure, we'll see. Like, you know, it was more just like a gut reaction.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And what I came to find out was everybody had that reaction from the Rangers on the objective to, like, the medical at the forward surgical team that treated them all when they first got off the golden hour, all the wounded and her. One of those guys had volunteered. One of the civil affairs officers had volunteered.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But what we are going to focus on today is there was a recent board of inquiry at MARSOC that I went through in October. And then for the first time, that was actually a blessing in disguise for us because for the first time we had some due process rights to information that we've been asking for for years. And it could be discretionary denied before if it was in a civil case.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
There was a list of Americans like, hey, we'll step in and take care of this child if there's no other option. How old is the baby? So we didn't know. We just were told. Baby. We didn't know the gender, nothing. Like it was just baby. Like weeks. Bad mission. Months. We came to find out that she was between six weeks and two months old, like somewhere in there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
She was malnourished, so it was hard to say the exact age.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So she had a medically estimated birth date in July of 2019. I actually, we had to come up with some day. And so in the office when we were doing this for her birth certificate, we're like, hey, who's got a birthday in July? And somebody's like, mine's the 24th. So her birthday is July 24th because of that moraine who says like, so he knows who he is out there. He's an uncle, honorary.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Wait a minute, so how did they pick you? It just kind of happened, and I can go into it. So I called her off-cycle. Do you want to tell that part?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So what happened was we came to find out through these daily stand-up briefs. So our colonel briefs the general, the four-star, in charge of all of Afghanistan every evening. And so in order to prep himself for that, we do a stand-up in the mornings with each of our disciplines saying, hey, sir, this is what's going on. And you give them a two-minute spiel on what's going on in your section.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so we would get updates, of course, as an office, like a bunch of Americans in a shop anywhere, if there's something interesting, you're cuing into that. And so the guy handling this was originally an Air Force judge advocate, and his specialty was not operational law. And he had advised the commander, like, hey, it's an Afghan decision, we're going to tell them and whatever they say.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so I had heard, you know, indications and warnings in the shop, like, that they thought she was foreign and that it was injured in a hospital. And then we found out that it was actually a little girl several weeks in. And when I'm listening to these briefs and hearing the legal advice, there's—
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
For context, there's a little bit of a disparity amongst lawyers about what the appropriate role of a legal advisor is. And what I've been taught in the Marine Corps is that our job is to give a commander legal maneuver space. So we give him his left and right laterals on a decision. Like, here's your range of options here that are legally supportable. Based on the situation, I recommend X.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But in this case, because they was putting your career on the line, they had to give you at least some of that information. And so a lot of this is going to focus on the Board of Inquiry and then a little bit on some government misconduct.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then you stand by and you salute smartly when he makes his decision. And he can accept risk anywhere on that spectrum depending on what his objectives are and what he believes will support the mission. And I think that's the proper role of a legal advisor.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But I think sometimes with inexperienced or people with more of an ego into it, we'll paint commanders into a corner and say, hey, sir, like the only legal supportable COA is X because that's what they think. And I think that's a mistake. I think it's really up to the commander to take on that risk and take on the appropriate level of risk based on you briefing in his space.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I really think that's what happened here, is this guy had said this was the option. And when I'm sitting here, like, as a curious young Marine captain, like, well, why do they say she's foreign? I don't know. You know, why is she in the hospital? I don't know. How old is it? Like basic questions that you would think you'd need because a lot of times your legal advice depends on the facts.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so I kind of stepped in and was like, hey, sir, can I help you? Because he outranked me at the time. Can I help you with this? And so I really got involved by trying to get information, like factual information to make a better legal advice for a commander so he can make a safe decision. Because it really wasn't just, you know,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Let's see what the Afghans say because we wouldn't do that like like for example in Syria you would never ask Like if you had a German or French or British foreign fighters child, you would not be like hey, let's leave in an orphanage in Syria Right, you would try to repatriate them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
That was like we do that Like especially with Isis with from so many different backgrounds and so it was trying to get facts for decision-makers and so I got sucked in like that. So I had reached out to one of the other Marines in this joint environment, because it's not very many Marines, was the civilian casualty coordinator for U.S. Forces Afghanistan. And so we had met once or twice.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And, you know, because of the Marine Corps thing, we at least knew who each other were. I was like, hey, man, what do you got on this baby? And so he sends me a KANA from... the Joint Task Force operating under Task Force 20 to stay up in the clear. And so I had worked with them a little bit on my previous tour to CENTCOM for targeting, watching them do targeting. And so I was like, holy cow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so it's a very developed con op with all of the basic intel that supported this strike. And it was very clear that these were foreign fighters and exactly where they were from. And at the time, that was all classified. Where were they from?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So the intel that we had was they were from Turkmenistan and that this specific 10-digit grid compound was a repeat sending foreign fighters of different nationalities. And they were feeding them into the Haqqani Network and Taliban victory units or Taliban Red Units. To work, you know, fight against us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so they were, this particular group happened to be from Turkmenistan and we had that high fidelity. It was the, one of the senior leaders in this group. It's called the Turkestan Islamic Party. And we all had that properly declassified through the foreign disclosure officer of US4A at some point in this process to help us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
informed decision makers about the fidelity of where exactly these people came from and and since then we've we've actually had numerous conversation with the Rangers who recovered off objective and like there is literally nothing To contradict that in US government possession Wow it's unbelievable that we're even having this conversation and have to say like where's she from because to me you have in Afghanistan in 2019 you're you're what 19 years into the war and
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
You have developed HUMINT. You have developed SIGINT. You have all sorts of assets for the JTF. Like, it's getting to be wintertime, so the fighting season's winding down, so they're chopping most of the assets to the JTF to use, right? Because they're still hunting terrorists because they have a counterterrorism combat mission, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They're there to kill al-Qaeda, Haqqani Network, and senior Talibs. And at that time, interestingly, the president, I think the next day, I think September 7th, The president had canceled the peace negotiations with the Taliban because they did an attack in the green zone that killed an American Green Beret, a staff sergeant, and a Romanian NATO SOF.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
He was so appropriately incensed that they would do these sorts of attacks when we're in good faith negotiating a reduction in violence to try to get to a solution for Afghanistan that he canceled their flight and turned them around. They were going to meet at Camp David that weekend and announce the peace deal. And he shut that down and turned it around.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I distinctly remember that because in the opposite intelligence brief for the four star, we were trying to bleed them back in the negotiating table. And so like they were just, the body count went significantly up after the president put pressure on them to punish them for that bad faith. And it was a very distinct shift in the op tempo and task force was really doing a good job at that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I did a joint casualty assessment team I think on September 11th, we went out to the west in Herat, and we picked up an ODA team and pushed them out west. And they already had a SEAL team out that way, and they were just going after people. It was impressive. Wow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So what we decided for this is to, we had called her Sparrow because it was a, we didn't know the gender at the time. So why don't you tell that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Home Depot box. Home Depot box, because they didn't have any baby. Like, we're at a combat trauma center, right? And so these young Americans who serve in those positions, the medical staff there, they cobbled together as much as they could to make her as comfortable as she could. She was in a huge amount of discomfort with her fractured skull, and she had a fractured femur there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
where they had to actually put a rod in to repair it and, like, burns on it. And she's, like, 45 days old?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So you can kind of—it's blurred out, but you can kind of see her. Her left skull is swollen there. That was one of the reasons why we were trying to get her back to the States quickly is we were trying to get one of those little cranium skulls that you could kind of reshape it. And you couldn't tell now because of her hair, but, like—
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Then our experience with PTSD and the TBI from Marines and soldiers going down range and getting IEDs. I have a lot of experience as a judge advocate working through that, making sure people are checked out for that stuff when they get back from deployment and does that have any play in their misconduct. Those are things that commanders just consider and that we advise on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I'm very familiar with the long-term concerns for TBI. And so, I mean, all of those things are present. And then we're kind of gathering information. Like I mentioned earlier, we got the concept of operations from the Ranger companies that went out for that mission. And we were also able to get the...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
tactical interrogation report from the detainee that they picked up off objective and there's actually one off of this objective and then um some raiders had done a co or a simultaneous mission on the same network to kill the same night and so they had also picked up some detainees and so we were able to get a lot of like captioning material with al-qaeda fighters chinese looking uh with flags very consistent with what they were trying to target that night and they even captured the um
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
a video from a terrorist device in this building of the deputy emir of that al-Qaeda group. Like he's, and he's currently in Afghanistan, or he was in Afghanistan in 2022 and 2023 timeframe. So like, as far as the fidelity of what, who was occupying this structure, you know, they brutal close combat for over an hour and a half, room by room clearing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I'll kind of go into the story of what we have learned about what happened that night in a minute.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So I had worked with the Regional Exploitation Center at Parwan prison with some projects for General Miller. We were working on detainee prosecutions and how to speed that up. So we had to study from intake on the objective with associated with or ASWs that were picked up with an objective from a task force mission. What are ASWs?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like associated with, so like people on the objective, like military age males on the objective with targets. And so, you know, they put their puck around their neck and where they've caught them and take a picture of it or they're I think that's a person under control or place of capture.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I can't remember what the acronym stands for, but there's a little bag that goes around their neck where they take a picture of what they found with them. And then when they put them in the bird and take them to Parwan prison, because that was the terrorist holding facility at the time. And there was more than 5,000 like terrorists in Parwan prison when I visited that in the fall of 2019.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It was about when the Haqqani 3 were there, because we toured it, and we're studying, like, soup to nuts, how do they bag and tag these guys? How do they prosecute them under the, like, counterterrorism laws that we had helped the Afghans put in place? Like, we met with the judges.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We sat with Task Force 20 and, like, hey, we need this type of information when, you know, to be able to successfully prosecute these and speed up that process, because they're basically clogging the prison with so many people they were getting arrested. So, because of that project I had just done, we were able to reach out very easily and get those tactical interrogation reports.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And this detainee is like, yeah, I brought these people. Like, he identified the photos that we'd captured on objective as the people occupying this structure. And it was the 10 series. So, like, it's the primary target where they expect the detainees. the detainee to be, or the objective to be, rather.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so the mission was to kill or capture three named objectives, which were senior leadership in this al-Qaeda group. And there was a leadership compound, which was the 10 series. And then about up an elevation to about maybe 80 meters away, there was larger compounds that were conjoined and had fighters in them. And so they were expecting more kinetic up there, and it actually was very kinetic.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But I can get into the story, I guess, if we want to.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, so they started... So one of the issues was a fiscal law issue. This is, can we spend U.S. taxpayer dollars and buy baby stuff? Like, not really. We don't have a lot of authorities for that. So a lot of the medical personnel started to volunteer and, like, purchase stuff off Amazon and purchase stuff off the local economy, and we were able to spend... I mean, even that...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
When I was there, it would take a month to get something from Amazon. It was. And so they were just cobbling stuff together and just doing whatever they could to take care of her. What were they feeding her? Did they even sell baby formula in Afghanistan? They did, yeah. They were able to get some stuff off the local economy around Kandahar Airfield.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And that was some of the issues that we were working as a shop, and that's why I kept filtering up in the stand-up briefs. That's where you guys, it was Kandahar Airfield? So she was originally picked up, she was Golden Hour flighted to Terrancourt. And the, I think, eight or nine guys that required surgery off the objective and her were operated on to stabilize them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then they were evacuated to the nearest role three in Kandahar. And so she was there for about a month. And then they, because there was, it was clear indications that she was foreign and because no one had come forward to claim her.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And they decided to move her to the joint theater hospital at Bagram, which had a larger footprint, and be able to determine what was going to be her long-term outcome. But there were talks about putting her in The French hospital, there's a French hospital in, I believe it's in Kabul. It may be in Kandahar. I can't remember exactly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But there was talks about putting her in a civilian hospital, basically. But that would require funding, and we didn't have a mechanism to pay for that. There was different NGO-run orphanages, or I think there was a few state-run orphanages that were talking about putting her in.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And it kept boiling back down to, well, if this is a foreign child, it would be better for her to repatriate her to her country of origin if we can get fidelity on what that is. And so that's really what drove this like fact-gathering mission that we did. But once we got the tactical interrogation report and the guy said, yeah, I brought these people here from Turkmenistan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
These were documents of the compounds. And you're looking at Al-Qaeda flags and PKMs, NAKs, and you're looking at all this captured enemy material from the objective. And then we had even gotten a few like 5W's emails. I think I provided that for the audience to look at. But there's a email that they declassified for our board of inquiry.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
That is the Joint Task Force assessment that says she's very likely not or is very likely foreign. We'll put that up on screen right now. And it says the father was throwing grenades and shooting at the assault force. The mother was killed in a barricaded shooter incident. And that the family and most of the village had moved to Afghanistan solely to wage violent jihad.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And that was the paradigm, like that was the baseline for U.S. forces on the military side of the house. Like no one even questioned that. They would refer to her as like the Uyghur baby. or, you know, the Al-Qaeda baby because it was just not even a question. That's why there wasn't even a, normally in these types of things with anything in the military, you do an investigation, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like how did this happen? And you get fidelity on these things. It was such strong intelligence. They didn't even do that because like task force told us where they came from. And we even had, I don't know if it's in the materials that you all have that were released yet, but there was, I distinctly remember the task force SJA
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Say hey if you need more than this we have more on on yellow on TS and we never had to because it was so clear in the stuff that we had declassified and so Now, looking back, it was actually an even more kinetic fight than we'd even realized once we talked to the Rangers and got them to testify.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, and I think that speaks to the in extremis, like how bad it was on the subject. Yeah, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, and I think that as the audience, like, here's what actually happened, they'll understand why these guys did what they did. And honestly, it was heroic. And so, hold on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Not for a while, actually. So September 6, 2019 is when this mission goes. It takes a couple weeks. We thought that she'd gotten turned over or the baby had been turned over, and then we found out, no, it wasn't. There was back and forth because the Afghans kept saying, we don't have capability, which is not uncommon. It's an injured infant. That's nothing to be ashamed of.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It's just the facts, right? And we'd done that with other types of logistical support for the Afghans before, you know, from – munitions to strikes, you know, you provide that support to enable those, you know, partner forces. But for a baby, we're trying to make sure that they have a safe outcome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so, again, I had told you, like, we get updates with these stand-ups and asking basic questions and then providing those informations to decision-makers, and it became more and more clear that this is a foreign child and that wasn't the only legally permissible COA. And so I went back to this Air Force major, and I was like, hey, sir, like, we need to go back and brief the two-star, like,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
what we know now, because we had a significant amount of information that we did not have before. And the attitude was kind of like, oh, well, I already kind of made a big stink about having to tell the Afghans because they weren't going to tell them in the first place. We're just going to do the right thing and take care of the child. And he had made a big stink about telling them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then they were like, we can't, you know, we don't have capability. And he didn't want to go back and brief this two-star. And I was like, Why? I don't know. This is not judging. I'm just saying that's what happened. I don't know why. I think he felt like he had already made a big deal about having to tell the Afghans in the first place.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then when we had fidelity on that she was not Afghan, he didn't want to go back and correct that brief to the commander. And so what ended up happening was I started to look at
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
research okay well what are the risk factors you know again like you make legal advice based on facts so if the commander executes and gives this infant with a fractured skull and a fractured femur to an afghan institution in 2019 afghanistan what does that look like that's what i wanted to know like and i didn't know like i i was new in country i hadn't really studied
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
the the the environment like for children in afghanistan but i as i'm researching on the embassy's website and you know the state department's got a lot of like formal reports to congress over these types of things like trafficking in persons or the risk factors in afghanistan so i'm pulling like agency level study reports to congress and it's scaring the bejesus out of me it's saying that there's systemic child sexual abuse in every province in afghanistan
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
There's even a, if your audience is familiar with Bachi Bazi, there's a practice dating back thousands of years in that region of dressing, and this is somewhat graphic if there's children listening, but dressing up male children as females and they dance and they sexually molest these children. And that was happening systemically. And, you know, to be honest,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I had been trained like, hey, there's child molestation is part of the culture. It's how it is here. It is how it is there. And I'm not saying that's all Afghans. I've got one of my best friends is an Afghan. And I've got so many friends that we've gotten out through the evacuation. It's very common. It is. There's good and bad people everywhere on earth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But in this particular location, there's some evil people. and um one of the things that bothered me is that we were advised by state department like oh that's not illegal here like it's just you know got to make deal with it and for a decade you have american service members who have put you know some of these uh people in power that
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
and having to allow child rape on our installations and saying, it's just part of their thing, like you can't do anything about it. And like that mentality to me is just the antithesis of what we should be about as Americans, because that's wrong everywhere on the globe. And we came downrange to represent this uniform.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And if we're enabling child rape on our basis, that's not a hard call to say, hey, this is wrong. We're going to lose moral high ground. How are we going to have the moral high ground to intervene as a country on good causes if we permit evil when we get there?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so in 2019, after that, however long we've been in Afghanistan, finally, through our influence, we changed the law in Afghanistan and it became illegal. And do you know how many people they prosecuted that year? Three. And in our office, we did the Leahy vetting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So if there was allegations of gross violations of human rights, we would defund that or defund a percentage to that Afghan unit, right? And so we were getting these reports at the operational headquarters of Afghanistan from all over the country about some checkpoint that was killing another checkpoint over who, I mean, who would rape the T-boys that weekend?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like that's the type of conversations we're having in the office. So when we're talking about foreign girl, baby, right? And I'm researching these reports talking about that even some of the orphanages trafficked children. And then I think Stephanie touched on this earlier. I did nothing dangerous in Afghanistan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
The only thing that we did outside the wire was we would go outside of our compound and we would process claims. So if we had a ground movement and they...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
they damaged a jingle truck or they ran over some livestock they would do a message in a bottle and throw it out the window to whoever the property they damaged they wouldn't stop because you could be a target and that message would say go to this gate at rs headquarters at this time and on this day and you can present a claim against the us government and we'll reimburse you for the damage
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so we would process those claims. So we'd take our turps, we'd go outside the checkpoint, and we would interact with local Afghans that had had some sort of damage done by US military operations. And so I was very, you know, you can be very familiar with the culture and like, hey, this is a $20,000 cow. And I'm like, I don't think so. And so I had to negotiate down to a reasonable outcome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But one of the interesting things about that is you would interact with the local street children as you go outside the gate. And so the first time you go out, you're buying their little bracelet or whatever trinket they're selling and you're trying to help them out as much as you can and like be friendly. And so I distinctly remember this one boy, he was exactly my son's age, he was like seven.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I appreciate it. I think I'm going to reverse that. So I'm going to answer it in reverse. So the way I've justified the sacrifice is, as an American, you're a constitutional officer. You're sworn to uphold certain values. And then we put it on that uniform. We go down range to represent American values.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And like really like a handsome little boy, like kind of like my kid, different complexion, but just like filthy dirty and like in this environment. So this particular kid, he was asking for money. So I gave him like a buck. And I watched him go over to his owner and, like, give him that dollar, like the guy who owned the kids for begging.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I realized, like, there is nothing you can do to help this kid. And so, like, after that, we would just get him disposable, like, food or, you know, stuff from back home, like give him a lollipop or something. Just something they could consume right then and no one could take from them because if it was anything else, they would take it from them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And they would particularly get kids with scoliosis or kids that were more sympathetic to beg as we did that stuff. And so that's kind of the context of evaluating the safety concerns in a tribal society.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so to me, when you're acting in accordance with those values, the cost is not relevant, at least not—and this was a very easy— Like a very easy call in the moment.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I feel bad for them, even the opposing attorneys, because they have no idea the reality of what they're doing. Like, for a real little girl, like, what's been such a struggle through all this?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I think in their mind that they're going to keep this, they're going to get them back. How do they justify it to themselves? Because I think they think that she's going to stay here. They think that she's going to have this nice little picket fence life with these Afghans here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And what they don't realize is these people are proxies, are puppets of the Taliban that have their family in Afghanistan. Do you really think that they put Marines' families on national news and then don't know who these people are or how to touch them? Like, absolutely not.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
The follow-through has been very difficult but I mean from from the Rangers on objective to the Medical staff who raised her and like really put their career on the line to advocate for her and to make sure she had a long-term safe solution To us we're the public face of that now But it was dozens if not hundreds of Americans who were who who sacrificed along the way their peace But none of them did that
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, this is, that's why we're saying it's really a Taliban-alien Gonzalez situation because she's not going to stay here in the United States if we lose cover. and these people do, they're going to put a gun to their family's head and make them go home. And then whatever the Taliban says is what's going to happen to her.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And she'll, you know, she's not going to go to college or marry who she wants or grow up to be who she wants to be. And, you know, that is... I don't know. If they don't kill her. For my dead body. Like, that is basically, like, we have all, from day one, we have said, based on everything in U.S.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
government possession, all of our intel, our billion-dollar intelligence-gathering apparatus in Afghanistan says X. We sent helicopters full of special operators to kill these terrorists. But the U.S. government can't figure out where she's from? Like, give me a break. Like, you have this information. We've had it all along.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And you've had people like us, just regular Americans at the ground level, saying, look at the information. Like, if you watch this video of these rangers in combat with these terrorists, like, they're heroic. They're doing what we tasked them as American people to do, kick down doors and eliminate these terrorists from the face of the earth. And they were doing that. And I cannot—
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I cannot express how much appreciation we have for that. Like, you know, you're raised in America, you're patriotic, you care about service members, like thank you for your service, that type of thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But when you read what these guys have done or you hear, like when it gets out from behind, because there's a lot of non-disclosure agreements, there's a lot of stuff that you don't get to talk about, especially with the special mission units. And when you actually dive into that and you get to see some of these experiences they've had, unbelievable, like heroic.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It's humbling to be able to read some of this stuff and talk to these guys.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Okay, so probably fast forward a couple months. She's been under U.S. care at Bagram. Doctors and nurses love her, obviously, trying to make sure she's safe and recovering and all that. We're trying to get more information for decision makers. And then there was a real problem with classification. So we have some NATO folks who don't have a U.S. secret clearance.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And we're working with NGOs and some folks at the embassy that it's not easy to share how much we know. And so at one point I sat through – a meeting where they were going to use our general's influence to make the Afghans take her. Like, end of story. Like, here, your problem. Like, kind of like an operational, like, it's a distraction from operations, Afghan problem.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Let's just make them take her. And so that was going to happen. And I was like, I went to my colonel. I was like, sir. I was like, I don't think I can sleep at night. If we, like, close our eyes and say that she's not going to get, like, best case scenario, she's going to die of neglect. Because you're talking about Kabul, which is like Denver. It's a mile-high city.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It's fall, so it's going to be cold. There's no heat in the orphanages. There's no running water, electricity. There's a few nice presentation facilities in the capital that they showed all the NGOs to get people to donate. But in reality, in most places, there's nothing. You know, there's very little infrastructure. There's no medical care. And, like, this is a kid with a fractured skull.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, holy cow. How do we ignore, as Americans, like the big U.S., us, how do we ignore what's actually going to happen? And I have no problem with killing terrorists. Like, her parents died in combat with our guys. No problem with that. But we're about protecting innocence.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
selfishly. I guess the best analogy I can articulate is if you see a car wreck and a car burning on the wrong side of the road and you go and help that person get them out, you're not thinking about you. You're showing, I guess, I guess you're showing sacrificial love in the moment. And then whatever the follow-through is, that's just part of the decision-making process.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like we believe, like even our worst enemy, it's not that child's fault that their parents were terrorists in a foreign country or brought them there to wage jihad. And so it was about getting that information to the right decision maker. But I got off track. Your question was... How did we get involved? We appealed. I went to my authority.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I was like, hey, sir, can I try to create a legal path to the U.S. for this child? And he was like, oh, sure, knock yourself out. I appreciate where you're coming from. And so I got authorization.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
He wasn't not serious. It was just such a crazy Gordian knot of a problem set. There was just like... he didn't mind someone trying to take a crack at it. And so I went back to my CHU, or my housing unit, and I called Stephanie, and we were just talking about this, like, how are we going to advocate to change the US policy towards the kid and not just ignore?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because at that time, we ran a lot of important things in Afghanistan, the airspace, the borders, the infrastructure, security, we provided those things. And so if it was important enough, we would execute. And so our goal was to make her life that important. And so...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I was like, we're going to have to get this to the president. It's a policy decision, ultimately. Does the United States value this child's life over operational convenience? In order to change the four star, nominally the four star, his staff, you'd have to get the US policy to change. We're like, who can we? It's been so funny that we've been portrayed in the media as politically connected.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I am a regular—I'm a captain of the Marine Corps. We are very by the book for the most part. I'm a judge advocate. Like, I'm very, like, by the book. And so I was like, how do we change U.S. policy? And we had a time hack because I believe it was a Thursday, and they had a meeting scheduled on the next Monday.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And they're going to dump her with the Afghans who had already said we don't have the capability.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then it went quiet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And— And so I did two things. We—I was kind of on the phone Googling, like, who's got children in the military? What politicians or whoever, like somebody who might have influence? And—
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
i just so happened to see the the vice president someone's a marine and he was a captain i'm a captain and uh so i i just drafted up an email saying like basically like hey dude i'm downrange i need an assist on this i think it's you know here's the situation here's the five w's i think it's wrong that we're doing this like i made the moral and principled argument that this child's life was at risk by our actions that were
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So to me, it has been hard. It has been straining our marriage or stress, constant work. Because as an attorney, I'm thankful it was us because of the skill set I have that I can work as many hours as I can into the night.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
basically based on a policy decision. And so we shouldn't do things when there's other options that could hurt kids. And I would say that's true across the board. It was particularly true in her instance because, you know, I think all of the evidence shows that she was a foreign al-Qaeda fighter's child. And so we had options.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, no, it was Pence at the time. Oh, it was Pence. So it was Pence's son. And honestly, to his credit, like, He was like, hey, I'll help. So he got that to his dad through his, I believe through his mother.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, absolutely. And there is a bond with Marines. Like, you know, it's just like if you're in some of these special mission units, you know, the services, there's a bond there. And he absolutely came through. for protecting innocent life. And, you know, we're forever grateful for that. He got that through, and it was like a bolt of lightning. The vice president reached out, directed U.S.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
forces in Afghanistan to make every effort to bring her to the States and act in the child's best interest. And that was testimony from a colonel in my board of inquiry that that happened, that he was directed by the four-star who had been communicating with the office of the vice president. And so we changed U.S. policy. And so we thought that's all it would take. Like, I thought, done.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, safe. She's safe. Like, now we're going to start working towards a good outcome. And honestly, we kind of, like, it'd be kind of unique or it'd be a great opportunity to be able to be the one who got to take care of her. But, like, there were so many other people. I didn't even think that was going to happen. I just thought she was going to get to the States. She's going to be fine.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah. Because the U.S. policy changed distinctly. And I got yelled at a little bit, but not too bad. My colonel was like, I'm flexible. We'll row the ship in the other direction. And he was a good person about it. He actually signed a birthday card saying like, congratulations on your new baby. And he signed it like the vice president or something.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
This is my award, my end of tour award from Afghanistan. And the colonel put it on the back, said, don't make me call the VP again. And so it's kind of funny how bureaucrats like to paint reality. They're like, oh, Major Mast, you went and hid, and nobody knew, and if only the U.S. government had known, they'd have shut this down. That's just a lie.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then I'm grateful—one of my best friends, Hannum Wright, was a reservist in the Marine Corps and heard about this, and he volunteered his time and he's fought with us like every step of the way when for a long time it was just us and him fighting against some mega law firms and some of this litigation. And seeing those people like willing to sacrifice their time and money to—
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We were talking directly with the vice president's staff and with the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the head of the Humanitarian Affairs branch. Once the vice president and U.S. policy changed— Our office worked as a shop to accomplish that directive. And I was a part of that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And we used that information, declassified it to inform our Afghan partners and some of these NGOs. Like, trust us, here's the pictures. Like, we showed them the math a little bit. about what we knew about the fidelity of her origin. And so from there, we thought it was, we're golden. Like, she's going to be safe. We'll see what happens.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But nothing like, oh, yay, we get to adopt a little girl from Afghanistan. Nothing like that. It was a child, an innocent life. I'd have done it for any, like, we didn't know sight unseen. I thought it was a blown up child, like no idea what the condition was, expecting it was going to be a handicap.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so what really changed that was the embassy. And, like, we talked about heroes and villains in this story. Our first villain, and I'm not necessarily trying to judge her, but I have a very distinct disagreement with her worldview and her practice. The deputy chief of mission at the embassy
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I was on the email chain from a senior State Department official back in the States who was working with the vice president's office and working with some of the president's staff to accomplish this. I said, well, we're going to need to coordinate with the embassy, right, because we're right next door in Kabul.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so she cold emailed Ambassador Bass, informed him of the situation, and he said, okay, we're going to sign this deputy, I think she was the acting deputy chief of mission at the time, the number two at the embassy, to handle it. And so we're like, great. And then there was a meeting set up for two days after that. And so that was October 23rd, 2019 is when that meeting occurred.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And what's so funny is I've been accused of fraud for knowing there was known family in this meeting that we had with the embassy. And the reality was, is that we were supposed to brief the embassy on the intelligence that DOD had.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I stayed up to like three in the morning, gathering all the stuff and culling it out and making sure it was like chopped down to like the bare essentials to know like, what's the name of the guy in this building? Who's this guy in this photo that we got off the objective? Who was the target? Like, where does he fit in this Al-Qaeda network? And like, what is the fidelity we have?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so I had two binders in my hand, one for the deputy chief of mission and one for our two-star operations officer. and we were going to brief the embassy on what we knew. So we show up at this meeting, and for lack of a better word, they ambushed us. So there are Afghans in this meeting where I'm supposed to talk about U.S.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
classified documents and to explain to them how we know where she's from and that she is a foreign child and with all the concomitant risks associated with that in the Afghan system at that time. And... Not the first words out of her mouth, but very close to the first words out of this deputy chief from Mission South is, now that she's medically complete, how soon can you take her to the Afghans?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So this is two days after the vice president of the United States sets U.S. policy. After the four stars, like, yep, act in the child's best interest and try to get her back to the States. Like, U.S. forces Afghanistan and DOD is stepping out smartly on the administration's policy. Like, I admit that we advocated for that, like, totally.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
basically put their name on the line and stand in the gap with us, it's just so humbling. So there are low points, but the people that come along during that journey have been just such incredible people. It's been an encouragement. It's honestly been an honor. It's been a fight, and I don't say that lightly, a literal fight for her life, but
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
As a captain, like, we were just—we were trying to inform decision makers. But that was U.S. policy. Like, absolutely. And they were directly insubordinate to what the administration told them to do. They were trying to make it a fait accompli, like she was already gone out of U.S. custody before it got traction and they had oversight. And so they never, ever— Why?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Oh, that's true. Five years after the fact. So my deputy S.J. is a Navy commander at the time. And he went and tried to make things nice with the embassy after this meeting. Because I basically was like, are you tracking that this child has a fractured skull? And so the Afghans were like, we cannot take a child out of these capabilities.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And there was some chatter about like, oh, the Red Cross might have located some family. And what actually happened was, was because of the classification levels. The NATO representative was a Dutch civilian, and she helped deal with, like, children caught in conflict, right? She was an advisor on that. And she had said, oh, we might have found an uncle at Parwan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I was thinking, that's odd, because Parwan's, like, 100 miles away from where this actually went on. And I was like, can you send me that traffic? And so she sends me email traffic of a name and an alphanumeric...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
code that i recognize as a detainee number and so i i actually had pulled that number and was going to brief them that no that was not an uncle this guy said that these were foreign fighters he actually described his like disgust for their features like like had mimicked like throwing up in his interrogations like like these people are disgusting and uh wow
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so the fidelity, it was so crossed wires for these folks without a clearance that that's why we went and declassified it in the first place. So it took us about a week after that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, that was the moment I was like, oh, they don't care about facts. Like, I didn't realize that it wasn't about this child or the truth. It was about whatever political convenience there was. And I think that centered a lot around the peace deal.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
the people we've gotten to meet along the way have just been incredible. Even like this, sitting here and talking to you and being able to speak directly to Americans, regular people, without the filter of some of this legacy media folks or spins or agenda, you can just say, hey, this is what happened. This is who we're about. This is why we did what we did. And we do it again.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, I think that it's important for folks to understand both the medical concerns we have, this story, what should stick in the audience's mind is this is why we were concerned about her long-term medical care and also why we were concerned about who exactly was going to come forward and claim her at any point. Because we're talking about intel that's saying hundreds of these
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I mean, honestly, we feel blessed to have been a part of this. Like, we're very proud of it. And we'd like to put the spotlight on some people who've made it happen along the way. Regular Americans doing their thing at the ground level, and it's really about them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
foreign fighters come back from Syria and settling in Afghanistan, and task forces are actually hunting and killing them. And that's the prelude, that's the context to what this mission was. And so our concern was, if we don't properly vet whoever comes forward, she could be back on the next objective and not make it. She barely made it out of this one, which you're about to hear.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So I think it's also important, before we go into the stories, how we know this. So we had the Alpha Team leader and the multipurpose K-9 handler come and testify. Their testimony is in evidence at our board of inquiry. So a lot of this stuff is eyewitness sworn testimony. But just for ease, I'm going to kind of talk you through like the story of what happened.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So it's period of darkness, 5 to 6 September when we operate. We own the night, right? And task force goes out on a mission to capture or kill three named objectives. They are Uyghur slash Turkestani. There's different names for that kind of ethnic group that are an al-Qaeda branch.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And one of their boutique specialties for al-Qaeda is they run some child training camps in Syria and Afghanistan and Pakistan. That's all open source. And they had been part of this group that had left Syria and come back into Afghanistan. There's a UN report publicly available that I provided so they can see that of where these people were and what they were doing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So rangers get tasked with doing this and it's a pretty large hit. There's two company size elements of rangers on the objective. And so the primary compound of interest is what they call the 10 series. That's the priority target. And then the other companies hitting this other target, or I'm sorry, not company, I meant platoons. There are two platoon size elements are hitting this other compound.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So you execute undercover darkness. They infiltrate with, you know, one train feature away outside of earshot. They execute a march in to surround the compounds and isolate them. And they succeeded that. Like it's quiet on the objective. They maintain the light noise discipline. They surprise them. So the first thing they do is, you know, call out, surrender or die.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I think that would be the most surprising thing to people. It's like, we are extremely proud of all of the decision-making we've made. And I mean, it is absolutely worth it, I guess, to see her flourish and safe at home and loved and have a family and a life. We're very grateful for that. I don't know if I answered all of his prompts, but... Do you have anything to add to that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They go through their escalation of force, TTPs. Nobody responds. And I mean, I think the best assumption, you know, in retrospect was that they were arming up and putting on their vests and getting ready to go. So they continue to escalate force because there's no response from the 10 series.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And they breach one of the compound walls to allow them to kind of gain situational awareness of what's going on in the compound. There's some other ways they have of having situational awareness.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
uh that we've been asked not to disclose but um they start getting uh voices and seeing movement inside and so the first glimpse the multi-purpose clan handler sees her is her dad has her and he's using her as a human shield and he's got an ak and he's engaging the rangers at the compound entrance and um he's trying not to shoot this baby while he's killing this terrorist And he's shooting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
This is Sparrow? This is Sparrow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
One of the first things they saw. So it was about an hour and a half into the fight that they actually recovered her. But in the first initial stages is when they saw her. So then they exchanged grenades. So the ranger vividly described a grenade rolling out. And he sees it at his feet. It was like Soulmotion for him. It was like a homemade explosive. It was just unique.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And he covers his dog and yells grenade because they're all stacked up at the company. So did they kill the guy that was using it? They don't know at this time. They killed everybody eventually. Yeah. They don't know if he was— They don't know. So he sees a grenade, yells grenade, covers his dog, and it goes off. And he's the closest to the grenade, but he isn't hit. His buddies are.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So I think they picked up three or four casualties initially from fragmentation. Okay. And one of the things that they said saved their life was it was mostly homemade explosives. And so some of them only partially detonated. He said he wouldn't be here if he stepped on a toe popper and going around the building with his dog.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
No, not right off the bat. So they roll grenades back in at him, and he reemerges without her throwing grenades out. And so they have an exchange of grenades. And there's some sympathetic secondary explosions inside the structure. And we're talking about a small, like, family-sized compound, not like a huge open space.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So it's pretty contained, and they have it isolated with, you know, machine guns. And it's pretty open terrain with a little ravine where they had approached the target through for cover, like a river. And so they have both of these structures pretty isolated with good visibility. And so they continue to... room by room, clear this. And so they're breaching these people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
People are fighting to death, even with their family members present. They told me that there were detonated grenades with their children present as they're clearing these structures room by room. They have an Afghan partner force with them that is helping it to some extent, but it's mostly the rangers, room by room by room, clearing these structures.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
and so as they're in the first or second room in these structures it goes really kinetic up the hill at the other compound and um there's if you can envision like there's a there's actually a map tip of this they put up on the screen it might help but the north compound in the 20 30 and 40 series which has been declassified and released properly um they were breaching the center structure
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And the breach, as they were stacked up, set off an HME cache, and it went sky high. Like, I had multiple, like, Rangers that had been on five or six deployments to the Middle East, and it's the largest explosion I've ever heard. And they described the chemical taste. It immediately just flooded the area.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They thought it was like a booby trap where they actually had to test it to make sure they weren't contaminated and could return to base. But they thought they were dead. The Alpha Team leader, a lot of them have lung damage from breathing that stuff in. It was that pervasive across the target. There's a gunfight down here that's pretty kinetic.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Up the hill, it's getting really kinetic and the bullets are going over their head into the trees and you're hearing it whizzing. They're both using Carl Gustavs to breach and to engage different targets within the structures.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But when that homemade explosive cache went off, it was ammonium nitrate, they had multiple Rangers buried because the compound wall collapsed on them as they were stacked up. And so the dog handler and the platoon sergeant And whoever was available that could be least engaged down at the 10 series ran up the hill to dig out their buddies under fire to get them out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They actually had two guys partially paralyzed from that incident. And so they're already getting US casualties. Ultimately, they had, I believe, nearly a dozen US Rangers casualties and about the same amount of partner force casualties.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We're talking about a super kinetic event to the point where they're calling for fire from some assets they had available to suppress and to kill squirters and that type of situation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So the multipurpose canine handler is a more senior ranger, and he had a little bit of freedom of movement because he's, you know, make sure there's no booby traps, et cetera, and the breaches are clear for the rangers to engage and breach these compounds. So...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They're doing their room clearing and they're experiencing barricaded shooters where they're shooting at the guys entering the room, throwing grenades, setting off vests over and over again through this compound. So I think they had about four or five barricaded shooters in the compound of interest where they thought the main objective was going to be. And we're talking about
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
HUMINT pointing to that, SIGINT pointing to that, lots of SOC with ISR assets over the last couple weeks, and it's been a structure historically used for years as a waypoint for foreign fighters flowing into the area of operations.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So as they're working their way through this combat, they're into the last room where they think this guy is going to be, or they're getting down to the last couple rooms left, hour and a half of room clearing, and it's still going kinetic up to the north. So they actually ran out of breaching explosives.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so they used the Carl Gustav gun up on an elevated position to do the last breach because they were assuming that all the entrances were fouled because they kept running into IEDs, like implanted in the walls or toe poppers in the ground. And so...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
The Rangers took shelter on the far side of the structure while the Carl Gustav gunner, and for your audience who doesn't know what a Carl Gustav, they call it a goose gun, but it's like a bazooka, or an RPG for lack of a better descriptor. So they blow a hole in the compound, the original compound where the last room is, and they're getting RPK fire from this compound.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And that blast kills that guy that they believe was her biological father and blows his body into the compound. And the dog handler vividly describes making sure he was dead, peeking in, making sure he wasn't moving, making sure he was dead, and that he had his little man jams and an AK bandolier on his chest.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And distinctly Asian facial features look like the target is what he described under oath.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
and then he uh the first time he sees what was her biological mother is he describes her running from the room screaming bloody murder and uh he is obliquing off the corner to kind of get an angle at the new breach they just made in the wall and he said that she got about 15 feet away from him and then partially detonated and um So she had a vest on? She had a vest on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And the Alpha team leader described it as maybe also kind of like cooking off almost, like maybe fire had started to set it off. But he said it partially exploded as she was running at him. And so she didn't die immediately. He described overpressure wounds, so almost like a pop without the frag.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so he said she was mangled, but he dragged her behind a berm because they were still getting fire from the surrounding structures because the two compounds were kinetic, but they were getting fire from surrounding buildings, from other fighter contingents in those buildings.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And that was confirmed later by the detainee that who was, like a lot of those village buildings were housing Arab and other nationalities. So he drags her behind a berm, and the first thing he does is, like, his training. He strips her down to make sure, you know, see where she's bleeding, see if they can plug the bleeding first, then tries to create an airway.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And it's just pretty graphic of her coughing up blood and bleeding out, basically. There's nothing they could do. She died in, like, two minutes. But he strips her down, straddles her. So they tried to save her after she had a suicide vest on?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
He's just alive. And what he noticed was, because they have to strip him down, that's standard practice to make sure there's no bleeding. he noticed that she had the signs of giving birth. She had an enlarged breast and a displaced stomach. And so in his nods, he's like, he does this. And he saw her for the first time moving, Sparrow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And he said that there was some fire on the structure from the cagey round. And so it was pretty well illuminated in his nods. And he saw something moving and it caught his eye and he found her. And so mom expires pretty quickly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
gets the baby and At the same time the Afghan partner force is clearing the last room in that structure and they get engaged by another female with an RPK And one of their guys gets shot and they they just exfil and they leave their guy in there And so he's like get back in there and get your guy and like kicking them back into the structure to get their guy So they kill that other female fighter get their guy and come out and he's got the baby and I
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So the Afghan platoon sergeant from the KKA, partner force, he's mad. He's like, don't bring this baby. Like, fucking throw it in the river. Like, let me shoot it in the head. Like, we don't want it to be a foreign terrorist in our country. And he's coming back as they exfil off the objective. And they had to do that with call for fire because they were getting effective fire.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So these Afghans on the objective, they know she's foreign. They don't want her to grow up in their country and they're mad at our guys. And can you imagine having your own guys bleeding? You got two paralyzed dudes at this point on stretchers and you're walking wounded in a casualty collection point. You've got a baby that's like, she was this big, like so tiny when I met her.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And that was weeks afterwards that I met her. But they have the moral courage, not even a question, like, We're not doing that, like ignoring them, resisting them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And they even had, I believe they'd handed it off to their female engagement team or whatever SOCOM's version of that is, but they had to take them back and have positive control because they were so aggressive in wanting to dispatch this little girl on objective.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And that's the part I don't think that regular Americans know about this brutal civil war is that there's a lot of bad things that happen. And- You know, they kind of, they were kind of very, the Rangers were very sensitive about telling us these things initially, like, hey, how much do you really want to know about this?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But we felt like obligated to at least be able to pass that knowledge on at some point of what happened and, you know, and. And it's such a contrast between what's actually these lies on the media. Like this was not an innocent farmer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Our guys got blown up and shot and had brutal close combat with like committed terrorists who were totally fine with killing their own families as long as it meant obtaining their ultimate objective of fighting us. And these guys kept pressing on, even with wounded. Like, talk about a textbook soft raid. Like, even with casualties, pushing on through the objective.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then one of the underscored documents that I got released was... It says that structure was destroyed in accordance with JTFROE. That's, like, the understatement of the century. Like, they... deliberately made sure that no Al-Qaeda operatives were walking out of that structure when they rolled off the objective.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so I am very confident based on like the ordinance and the assets they were dropping on that thing that no one was alive when they left. So they literally saved her life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Oh, so he said, he was asked at one point in all this, like, what makes you remember that night? And he said, I think that's the first time I was able to put a face to what evil looks like, seeing what he saw that night. And that just struck me because when he, he didn't find out that Sparrow got out and was safe in America until years into this. Wow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And it was actually with a Google photo drive that some of the doctors and nurses put up of all her photos from her time in the hospital with American forces. And he commented and he said, I have always wondered what happened to that baby. He goes, I am so happy that she got out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so it's just been such an honor to be able to share her life with these people whose decisions were probably instinct, right? But to honor that instinct for our guys, because how rare is it? That someone would bother, right? No one would have said boo if they left her. No one would have said boo if they let the Afghans do what they wanted to do and kill her.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But even in a gunfight where they're blood up and they're guys, you know, in the heat of the moment with their guys on stretchers, they still had the instinct to protect innocent life. And I mean, that is just... It's what it's all about for Americans, to be able to have that, a warrior who can still live out our values, like that's rare. And they displayed that that night.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They pushed through the objective, they achieved their mission. It's honestly heroic stuff. But I guess they actually got a little bit of flack for bringing her back because they're like, what are you doing, right? But when they explained the situation, like they got authorized to pull her off objective and she gets out. And so we didn't know a lot of the details until years later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I would add one other thing to that is one benefit that's come from this is when you're faced with a lot of criticism and you know it's unjust, but over time what you do is you look internally like, hey, did I make that decision right? Was I operating? Is any of this stuff true?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But at the time, at the operational headquarters level, we were getting like indications of warnings like, hey, trust us, this is really bad. And so that was one of the reasons why we're digging into from a SJ's perspective of like, what happened here? This sounds bad. And in trying to inform decision makers to make a better decision of a safer outcome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But I actually did a lot of research at the time with this specific Al Qaeda group, like Where do they come from? What are they about? What do we know about them? And there's a lot of open source out there. Bill Roggio with the Long War Journal with the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, he has a lot of articles about this specific group.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And what was so interesting is, as time went on, is there started to be – like this incident happened on September 6th, right? And I told you the president had canceled the peace deal. then there were some more reports about these Turkestani foreign fighters in Afghanistan to the point where the Taliban in early December formally said that those reports are false.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They're like, there are no Turkestani foreign mujahideen in Afghanistan. So they specifically disclaimed this group that she was living proof was operating in Afghanistan in December of 2019. So all that in the backdrop of trying to get them back to the negotiating table and trying to get the peace deal back on track,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
That's a strategic – this child's existence, this group's existence in Afghanistan at that time was proof that the Taliban were not abiding with their commitment to not let al-Qaeda operate out of Afghanistan. I think we all know that now. Like I've seen so many shows with Sarah Adams and others, experts talking about al-Qaeda running free in Afghanistan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But I think there's a lot of evidence they never stopped.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, I think they said six weeks to two months, like somewhere in there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
She was very undernourished at the time, and so they stabilized her, and like I said, they moved her to the main theater hospital, and she stayed there for five months.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
That was what we didn't know at the time and we had found from the hospital when I reached out and asked, like, hey, what do we know about the injuries for this child? Because we were trying to build a picture for a commander to decide, like, what are the risks for her?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so, you know, obviously with a fractured skull, you know, your TBI injuries and was there any software damage in there and will that impact her development? And then with her leg... it still impacts her walk. And so the question was, as she develops, how will that, does it hurt the growth plate? Will she be able to walk normally? Would surgery help with that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And having to do that soul searching and being like, it's just a nature of the beast of getting criticized for the first time really in a public way. And going internal, I'm like, okay, this is my worldview. These are my beliefs. These are the facts.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Those are kind of the concerns that we were worried about. And then also just cosmetically trying to make sure that that got reshaped while her skull was still soft enough to mold it. Those were some of the things that the questions we were asking both professionally and then as we got to be like the person on the seat who had to volunteer to get a visa to the U.S. for her.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Those are the questions that we are arranging medical care in the U.S. for, like specifically to evaluate and treat those concerns. I mean, how is she now? She's five and a half now. Did any of those blast injuries stun? So fortunately, it looks like her brain is fine. That was our biggest concern. We had...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
um we'll get into this a little bit later but when she was in you know when she was outside of u.s protection there were reports that she was shaking her her eyes were twitching she was shaking and um we were very concerned that those were seizures uh sounded like that's what it was describing She's been hospitalized several times in the U.S.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
to the point where they took them a couple days to stabilize her. She has some severe allergies to a variety of things, but especially almonds and peanuts, where she has anaphylactic reaction to it. And she also is very asthmatic. So she has an inhaler for daily use and for emergency use. And like I said, she's been hospitalized, I think, two or three times for exposure to something.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We don't know necessarily what triggers it every time, but she gets hospitalized for it. She'll get a reaction where she's almost like drowning because she can't expel the air from her lungs. It sounds like she's puffing. Is that from the... I have no idea. It could be from... I guess that's possible.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And especially in this ward, when you actually get to go back, that's the first time I've actually gone back and looked at some of the stuff in five years. And you're like, holy cow, absolutely we made the right call. We did the right thing, and so did these regular Americans. And it's just interesting. You're almost getting gaslit on history of what actually happened.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, from the ammonium nitrate. Actually, I never even considered that, but the rangers have had lung problems from that, so that makes perfect sense. I never even put two and two together. Regardless, I think if you reflect on how many times her life was this close to death, it's just staggering. Because she's got a leg wound here from shrapnel, and she's got some more shrapnel down her leg.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But six inches higher on a baby, that's this far and you bleed out. She's got a skull fracture that if it's any deeper, she's dead. She's got a little bit to the left with a KG round, and you're done. even with the Afghan partner force. Like if these guys weren't committed to protecting innocence, she'd be dead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, honestly, if she didn't get – I am not confident if she had gone through some of the medical emergencies she's had in the United States that she'd have survived if she'd remained in Afghanistan. And then, I mean, I think the elephant in the room is with the Taliban and can charge after 2021, what type of life is that for a little girl? You don't go to school. You don't go outside.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
You know, you get to marry who you want. None of those things can happen for her. So we're so thankful for her. for the Americans who have saved her life at those points and for the ones who got her out of Afghanistan. And we'll get into that a little later in the story, but... How does she interact today?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I think that a lot of GWAT vets could close their eyes right now and see a face of a kid or a person, a vulnerable person, and caught up in a crazy circumstance of war that they wanted to help, tried to help, couldn't help. Or maybe some who did. But I've had so many, like, grown colonels crying in my office, like, when I'm telling this story.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And going back and having to go in granular details, it's honestly – It's difficult because there's so much trauma when you have to go back and reliving it, especially with the fall. Like I cry like a baby every time I think about that period of my life. And I wasn't even there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And, like, that reminds me of—and telling stories about their experience. For instance, I had a colonel with the – there's a news article, the kids of Camp Eagers, and there was a suicide bombing ISIS child. But he was trying to seek guardianship of an orphan that would come and beg at their camp. And, you know, trying to do it, but there's a lot of red tape, and he said he was –
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
He was introducing new lieutenants and like, hey, indicators of something off in your pattern of life. He was like, all these jingle trucks, that one's brand new. Like, why is that? Like, you should watch for things like that. And the next day, that jingle truck, I had driven my 14-year-old Isis a suicide bomber, blew up all those kids and killed this little girl.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so, like, he wanted the help and couldn't. And, like, he says, I don't think I've ever told anybody that story before. And I had another, like, these are hardened, soft, like, kernels. Another one in 2007, Fallujah. He said he had a team that was, took IDF mortar rounds, and they missed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And they hit the compound, family compound next to them, and a little four-year-old girl, like, took shrapnel to the abdomen. And they wouldn't send a medical bird because it wasn't in conformance with the medical ROE. And he's like screaming at them on the radio, like, send this. You know, if you don't send this, I will go or blackball and take her to the hospital, ground her back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so this colonel said, like, it was his twin, he had two twin little girls at home that were four at the time-ish. And he said it was about the same age. And so he asked for volunteers and he got like some mass sergeant and him and they got in a Humvee and went over Fallujah blacktop roads as fast as they could risking all the IEDs. And she bled out like halfway there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so like, these are the memories our guys that have the same values as these rangers demonstrated. I bet you that is so common in the war that it's not even funny. Because I probably had, there's more I could talk about.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like the medical staff, one of the reasons they were so worried about her was because of their experience with other soft bringbacks where they'd had to shoot through children that were being used as human shields to kill these terrorists and then treat them and then return them to the Taliban. And there was one that stood out in my mind.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
There was a 12-year-old girl that had lost her hand in a, I think a farming implement of some sort. And so the medical staff nursed her back to health for like a month. And then they had some uncle of some sort come to the gate to claim her. And 10 minutes after the guy left, they got a call, hey, come pick up a body at the gate.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But, you know, you're connected with these people on the ground and you're trying to get vulnerable people out and you're trying to get your little girl out like last chance before the Taliban take over. And so like a lot of that stuff reflecting on it is difficult, but it is absolutely reinforced like the paradigm that we made these decisions in.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And this guy had shot this little girl because she had no value as an amputee as far as like marrying her out. And so these nurses and doctors who nursed this little girl back to health and like prepared her arm and made sure she was as set up as she could, had to come get her from the ECP because they'd shot her.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so in their story after story from these medical personnel of just child abuse injuries they had to treat, but it was a local leader And so they couldn't do anything about it. There was no criminal prosecution, like to the point where they're putting a titanium skull in a four-year-old because he got his head beat in by some of these practices.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And again, that's not saying it's across the board, but it happens. And it was happening irregular enough where these people were very concerned. And so back in time when I reached down to the hospital, I was like, hey, we're looking at trying to get a legal path to the U.S., They were like, we are all in to find a safe outcome for her.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like we believe we're morally and ethically obligated to try to find a long-term safe outcome. And that's kind of how we got.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I'm excited to kind of talk through what those were.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And like I said, we are so proud of our participation in her story, but it's not really us. It's really all these unsung people that contributed to her life and safety at that moment in time. And I mean, honestly, we felt obligated to honor that and keep moving that forward.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so what that looked like at the operational headquarters level was, okay, to get a person to a country, you have to have a visa. After we talked about the US policy change, the administration said, act in a child's best interest. That's a no-brainer. Try to get her back to the States. The US forces of Afghanistan moved forward smartly and did that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I talked to you about the embassy initially trying to ambush us and destroy that effort early on, make it a fait accompli. Did you ever find out why? So my deputy SJA, as a Navy commander, and he was a reservist on a year deployment to Afghanistan, and he had a intelligence background, worked for the House Intelligence Committee as an attorney in his civilian job.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so he was actually involved in the negotiations with the Taliban in the room, like describing how this is going with the Taliban, what they want and how they're acting. And he's like briefing us at night. So we have like a front row seat of what's happening in Doha, like on a regular basis. He happened to be back, you know, because there was multiple rounds of these negotiations.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So he tried to go and like make peace with the embassy, like what is the deal? Because it was very difficult for us to understand like why they're on a different wavelength than we were. And so he's like, ma'am, like, so he met with her again. He's like, ma'am, like, I sent some hostility in the last meeting. Like, what's going on? And he personally told me this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
He's like, she said, we really didn't appreciate you going over our heads to the administration. And so we're like, sorry, we were trying to take care of the child's, like, you know, safety, you know, that type of thing. And so they basically left it as, we're not going to help you. The embassy's perspective was, we're not going to help you, but we won't get in your way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so DOD was lead for months after that. And we were working to get a visa. So now, before we were advocating for her, when it became, here's the task from the administration to, you know, make a long-term safe outcome for this child, we did that. And the first thing was a visa. And so... What do you do if you need a visa? You talk to U.S.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Citizenship and Immigration Services, and they can issue an advanced parole visa. And so it's—ironically, it's what she entered the country on with 120,000 other Afghans or however many actually came to the States. They were all paroled into the United States under humanitarian parole. Well, there's an advanced humanitarian parole. And that's what we were seeking to get.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But there's some basic requirements. And this is where it was pretty miraculous that we were able to be involved because we had the skill set to track down all these administrative requirements. To get a humanitarian parole visa for medical care, to get into the United States, you have to have certain things. First is a financial sponsor.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Under federal immigration law, you can't be a burden on the government. The tax dollars can't pay for you to be here. So you have to have someone that signs on the dotted line and says, I will pay for this person. I will cover their costs. And so we volunteered. Like, that's easy. We'll cover the costs. For medical care, you actually have to have a doctor have it scheduled and paid for
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So we're like, how are we going to do this? Like, it's a Jane Doe baby off of objective. And I'm talking to USCIS like, hey, crazy situation. You know, you, this is me. This is what we got. We've got a Jane Doe Al Qaeda infant with a fractured skull. It's not safe here in Afghanistan for child trafficking purposes and lack of medical care.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And there's often a prejudice for foreigners in this country. And so they're all like, well, you basically get a list of bureaucratic requirements. And we were just knocking off those lists. Like, go to your authority, ask them what we need to do. They tell us what you do, and then you go work it. And so I'm literally on the phone with the head of the humanitarian affairs branch. Great guy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
a lot of the positive stuff would not even happen it's in god's hands and and um so it doesn't so kind of what i'm getting at here is it doesn't sound like it's really maybe it's strengthened your faith absolutely rather than absolutely yeah so i think i would 100 say it is it when you get to see um deliverance and the faithfulness of god over time it encourages you um to just trust him for the future and like she should have been
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, really compassionate for refugees and does a lot of great work. But he's like, well, you need a name for the visa. I'm like... How am I going to get a name for this little girl? And I'm just figuring it out, right? This is our office's task. We're all working it. So the larger office is negotiating with the Afghans to be like, yeah, that's fine. Send her to the U.S.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It happens before with other kids from other strikes. It's not like uncommon, but kind of more of like a face-saving thing, not an actual requirement. It's just like managing good relations, but we're giving your country away to the Taliban anyway. So, you know, it's kind of in that context. So how do we get a name?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So we had had another American attorney, Kim Motley, who is, by the way, an American hero. I'll get into her a little bit later with what she did in the fall of Afghanistan, but she literally saved hundreds of lives. Like, she should be getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to be honest with you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But Kim Motley had volunteered, based on her experience in the Afghan legal system, to act as a guardian ad litem, which is, for folks who don't know, that's a court-appointed representative to look at the child's best interests and no one else's.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Now, they don't have that same concept in Afghanistan, so it was like a voluntary, like self-appointed, but our office was working with her to get a safe outcome. She had tried to get documents for her. Asked the Afghan government, no response, right? Nobody wants to take on the risk. They view it as a foreign child, and like it's kind of terrorism-y, so they don't want to touch it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So we're like, how else do we get a name? And then in addition to that is how do I arrange for medical care for a minor child in the United States? I don't have any authority to act for her. The government doesn't. Who can authorize surgery on a child? Who can authorize an MRI? And so, like, I'm going through, like, my wheelhouse, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, I don't know the answer, but I'm a lawyer, and I'm going to research it and find out. And so it has to be a guardian. She has to have a name. Well, a court can appoint a name, right? There aren't any courts in this area of Afghanistan that's controlled by the Taliban for most of the war, right? I mean, if you go up there, you're going to get a gunfight. So—
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
with the operational realities on the ground, we're like, okay, well, let's see if we can get emergency legal custody. And she's not Afghan. We have high-strength intelligence that she's not Afghan. This group is kind of nomadic Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Western China. Like, they're from that region, right? A lot of them have been fighting in Syria and Iraq.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We don't know exactly where she was born. Maybe in Afghanistan, maybe in Pakistan, or maybe in Turkmenistan before they crossed the border. We don't know. So the best argument was she's known for it. Afghanistan doesn't have birthright citizenship. Most countries don't. So you're not automatically a citizen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And statelessness is a huge problem in Afghanistan because of all the IDPs and such that people don't have documentation citizenship or they don't have citizenship. So we're like, okay, well, the best category for her that she fits into is stateless. And she's in the custody of the United States. And, like, terrorist detainees in Gitmo have basic rights.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So let's advocate, let's make the argument that she's a stateless minor in the custody of the United States. And so we were authorized to declassify this stuff and use it in the court system, and we did. And the next day—so we argued that— She is a stateless minor in U.S. government custody.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
She's a victim of terrorism, like, in this crazy situation, and no other state would have jurisdiction over her. And based on the evidence, the judge, like, the evidence that they were moving every 30 days, they were known to go over multi-jurisdictional boundaries, like, over national borders, the judge agreed with that assessment. They found these facts in a ruling.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So we were then her guardians, right? So now I can arrange an appointment at the University of Virginia Medical Center, and they have a world-renowned, like, pediatric ward. So we set her up, like, the whole nine yards, a treatment plan, her doctor. We gave her doctor her medical record from DOD. We got everything set up for her to come back, and, like, it's looking like she's coming back, like,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I'm talking to Headquarters Marine Corps on the phone. Like, I'm in Afghanistan at 3 in the morning, my time, talking to Headquarters Marine Corps, dependency branch, and they formally grant her. I have the documents downstairs. Like, they formally add her as my dependent.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And in the meantime, we also got her a certificate of foreign birth because in Virginia, there's this, there's a, they had contemplated that foreign children being adopted in Virginia might need a birth certificate because sometimes from third world countries, you don't have that documentation. And so there's a way where you can apply for that. And so we did and we got it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so we have a name that says unknown birthplace, unknown parents, or those unknown birthplace, citizenship unknown, and then us as her parents. And so we provided that documentation and the court order to the Marine Corps Dependency Branch, which is the authorized agency official to make those determinations, fully knowing we're in Afghanistan. My wife was on the phone with him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I'm calling from Kabul. And they add her as our dependent. So that provided information. a way to guarantee payment, right? Now she's eligible for TRICARE. So I have the legal authority to arrange healthcare. We do that. And it's literally just to get the visa, right? Somebody had to do it. We were in the seat. We had a short timeframe. So we did that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then ironically, and this is the crazy part, is when we were going to get her birth certificate, we had a guardianship order. We're her legal guardians under US law. Steffi goes to the Vital Statistics Office in Richmond, Virginia. And they say, we don't agree with the judge's interpretation of this statute. We're not going to issue you this birth certificate.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And we're like, we have to have this birth certificate because they said it's a requirement for the visa. We have a name from the court order. We have a birth certificate as an identity document to apply for this humanitarian parole visa. And they're like, well, you know, we don't agree with his interpretation. We don't think it fits the statute.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so my brother is an attorney, not a family law attorney, but is an attorney. And so he's engaging with them. And the legal advisor for the Vital Statistics Office is the Virginia Attorney General's Office. And so he's talking to the Attorney General's Office, like, really? Like, you're not going to issue, like, here's why we need this. We need this for a visa.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We need a name and an identity document. And she has none. And they're like, well, we would prefer if the judge issues an adoption order, because we think that complies with the statute. So we're like, so you want us to apply to adopt this child and the judge to do it? And they're like, yes. So we did. Like, it wasn't even our idea. Like, honestly, I didn't even contemplate that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So we filed for adoption. The Attorney General of Virginia recommends the judge grant it under the circumstances because, you know, there's a lot of background that she's stateless and these were terrorists, et cetera, et cetera. And so they issue this stuff. And I provide it to my command. I am doing it by the book for a crazy situation, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because I think my personal philosophy is I will always try to be administratively correct and morally right. But if it's going to come down between the two of them, I'm going to be morally right. And we'll try to make this fit because administrative rules often can't contemplate the crazy situations in life. And so that's why we are a principle-based institution in the military.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We operate on principles of, like, you know, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, the Constitution protects those things, we live out those values, and then we have all these rules to help us do that. But sometimes those conflict in a crazy situation, and this was one of those things. It was unprecedented to have this happen. And here's the linchpin of the whole thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
If the US military's 19-year-old, multibillion-dollar intelligence-gathering apparatus is correct, There's no case to be talking about right now. She is a stateless child. Her origin was an Al-Qaeda foreign fighter. I've never seen evidence in five years to even suggest that that wasn't the case. And so I think the reality is that we're facing is the embassy, and we'll talk about how they did it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But they literally gave this child after she'd been recognized as our daughter by DOD, after she'd been added as a dependent and issued an ID card, after she had an insurance and a full ride to the U.S. like set up with no one and nothing before that claiming her. They handed her over to what's turned out to be non-relative terrorist affiliated folks.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I think that that is kryptonite for these bureaucrats because they never thought that some low-level officer would be able to still get her out of Afghanistan at some point. And I didn't think that either. Like, that was an absolute miracle that she got out and got safe during the evacuation. I don't think they ever thought they'd be held accountable for what they did to this little girl.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But for us, 18 months before Afghanistan fell, we had a little microcosm of the little value they place on human life over whatever bureaucratic policy they're working at that time. their worldview keeps bumping into reality in very painful ways for real people on the ground. And we saw that with people falling off C-17s in Afghanistan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We've seen that in people, you know, at best, if they're lucky, wasting away in lily pad countries trying to get to the States. And people have gone to war with us. People have gone to combat with us. People are in danger because of our commitments to them. And I think we saw a microcosm of that really early. Like, I never thought that...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
She would get turned over in the way she did and it was it ended up being two days before the peace deal was announced She got dumped to what I think was Taliban proxies coming forward to falsely claim it and the reason I think that is in my board of inquiry a Colonel testified and we had asked for this colonel authorization to testify for three years and were denied and He testified that they had six to eight false claimants come forward
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And they DNA tested them, negative testing for all of them. So these were non-family members coming forward out of the boonies to claim a child. And the question is, why? Why would six to eight people who are not relatives of the child come forward? And I think the best answer to that is, what was the Taliban strategic? What was their number one priority right then in Afghanistan?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
In September to March, of 2019, 2020, what was their goal? Is to get the US to leave, right? And what the conditions on the peace deal was that the soil of Afghanistan would not be used by Al-Qaeda. And she's living proof that they're violating that. And then I think if you also think strategically from the embassy's perspective,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
President Trump had made a decision that this was a bad deal, and he canceled it. And he tweeted, how many more decades do you want to fight? I was sitting in the chow hall when that went on the news, and I was like, huh, that's awesome, right? Because I saw this car bombing. This is a guy with kids at home. He got shredded by bull bearings for no strategic purpose.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It was just a middle finger from the Taliban.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
and i think the president rightly said this is a bad deal and killed it and then both the embassy and the taliban want to get this done right and i don't think in with with history as in retrospect it was a bad deal does anybody think that that went well like does anybody think that made our country safe does anybody think that that made afghanistan stable and not a safe haven for for the taliban and i'm not saying stay there forever and i'm not advocating for forever wars but i'm saying
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah. And to ask others for help. We've learned that. We've never asked for help ever. But when it's so far beyond you and you can't do it yourself, that's one of my first things in life where it's like you can't, between the two of us, you can't figure it out. Pull it off or afford it or those types of things.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
That wasn't—the total abandonment of Afghanistan was not the plan in 2019. They were going to leave task force behind, and they were going to do a counterterrorism mission and mow the grass, because I was sent to study that withdrawal. That was my mission, is how do we transfer all these assets to the Afghans? How do we make this stable? And really, it wasn't until—
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
the spring of 2021, and I happened to talk to our JSOC liaison, and they're like, no, man, they're pulling everybody. I'm like, what? Like, you're pulling everybody? Like, they're pulling task force? Because I was sitting in the new Camp Vance that they were building adjacent to Kabul airport for the SOF to operate out of till the cows come home and kill Al-Qaeda.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so I think that, you know, looping this back, both the embassy and the Taliban were dealing with a president who doesn't get pushed around. And they were both peddling a bad deal. Like the embassy was doing it for the American people and the Taliban was doing it to get us out of Afghanistan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I think if the, you know, who knows, but a living proof that this al-Qaeda group is still operating in Afghanistan. And here's an interesting fact for your audience. The Taliban was in these, on this objective the next morning, filming a propaganda video. And they released it a couple days later. It's on Twitter. You can go find it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And they're, you know, accusing – they're typical, like, accusing of war crimes. You only killed women and children, et cetera. And they show some bodies, and it's sad, right? Like, the human cost of war is sad. But they have Chinese-looking bodies. Like, little kids, they look Asian distinctly. You have – Guys wearing Arabic scarf, like red check scarves, like very looks like Syria to me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like that's not the Afghan scarf, check pattern, right? They have black flags. But what the message these propaganda videos are saying is the Americans have bombed local people, farmers, local people. And you're in the middle of nowhere Afghanistan. Why would you feel the need to emphasize that these are local people and farmers in like literally the dead center of southern Afghanistan?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I think that messaging—and then a month later they say, there are no Turkestani-born Mujahideen in Afghanistan. And they are very keyed into the fact that this deal just got blown up, and they want to get back to the negotiating table. And that was the directive for SOF at the time, was bleed them back to the negotiating table. And we were doing it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They wanted to get back and negotiate with us. So I guess all that—I think that— Was she the leading thought in their mind? No, but she was an inconvenient truth for both sides, both the embassy and the Taliban.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Was it in the— Oh, probably mid-October. I got to go down on a rotator to Bagram and spend a couple days down there on some other project. I can't remember what it was. Oh, I think I might have been visiting Parwan. But, yeah, I got to hold her for the first time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But then when you have so many good people come along and help you through those, it's just totally unexpected a lot of the times. And this has gained momentum now where it's more of a national news story. But at the beginning, people without any recognition were coming in and stepping in and helping us. And they have literally saved our lives and her life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And it makes all the difference because seeing a case in paper, like just reading about it in emails, like when you're holding this little life— And you're like, what is going to happen? Like, we're leaving Afghanistan. This is going to go south. Like, I'm thinking, you know, not even with the hindsight of history, but at the time, going like, what's going to happen when we leave? Right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
There's going to be a civil war at a minimum. And, you know, just a... you know, borderline genocide is what ended up happening, but, you know, holding her like that, it just, her so vulnerable. Like, you felt obligated to protect if you could. And so, I mean, the commander of Task Force Medical Afghanistan, I named my fourth son after him because
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
he was the model of empathy and like he risked his career advocating like hey we can't we're morally obligated to dna test and terrorist vet for this child like you cannot like i have as a doctor can't abide by this like to the point he was getting warned he's gonna get fired from a two-star who thought it was a distraction and uh like
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
He would hold the hands of dying service members, like made sure that none of our guys died alone. Like that's the caliber of person this man is. Like physically fit, just everything you want in a leader. And that's not always the case in the medical corps, but like this guy, I so admire him. Who brought her home?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
That's a long—so she was, despite all of that, despite Senator Cruz advocating for her, different folks trying to get her home, the embassy reported falsely that the Afghans didn't want to do a DNA test and that they had confirmed that there was family. That's what they reported.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, well, so actually, they didn't just come up with this. That's what they reported came out of a meeting on December 31st, 2019. They said they met with this senior child protection specialist who's a low-level decision-maker in an Afghan ministry at the time. We worked for two years to get that guy out of a lily pad country. And you know when he got in the country?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Three days before my board of inquiry. That's when he arrived in America. And that was the only time he felt safe to share the other side of the story. And so in our board of inquiry, he testified that at that meeting, he asked the embassy to do a DNA test because they had nothing, no corroboration. It was just a bare claim. This guy said he was an uncle.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And he's like, we didn't even have a test giro, their national ID card, like their birth certificate. He goes, we didn't have, we had nothing. The only thing we had was DNA. And the embassy declined to do it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We had committed, like I've got the emails downstairs saying we will DNA test, like DOD will DNA test any claimants, any potential family to confirm a DNA match, because like that's basic safety. And then if there was a match, the plan was to explain her medical needs and offer to send her to the US for medical care. That was the plan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because we knew she had no immediate family members alive because they were dead. But the embassy reported out of that meeting that DNA testing wasn't part of the Afghan process and they had confirmed family. And in fact, they had no evidence this claimant was related at all. And it turns out he wasn't. In documentary evidence, this guy said he was related to someone he claimed was a father.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It was an elderly, I say Taliban elder because he's got a big black turban and he looks like a Taliban elder. I've got a picture of him. And when I saw that photo, we found her outside of the government later. But when I saw this guy, I was like, they gave her to the Taliban. It just screams it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And, you know, we'll get a little bit more into some government misconduct, but this same embassy person in all of our litigation has filed statements saying that, oh, like trying to make it look like they had processes like the right way or that the Red Cross was involved, like...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I've got an email downstairs with your people from the Red Cross to this Afghan child protection specialist, like three days before she was supposed to get turned over to them. And they're like, hey, could you please identify who this person is? The Red Cross had no idea. who she was going to.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And they have, the Department of Justice under the previous administration has filed like filings and lawsuits saying the Red Cross was involved. It's like, well, if that's true, how come they're asking for her identity like two days before you're supposed to put her out of U.S. custody with no vetting at all? And then this guy, we acquired his phone number at some point.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then, you know, if you plug in, like a lot of vets know, like WhatsApp and Signal, you know, we all use those things. It has a profile picture that pops up. Guess what's on this guy's profile picture?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Well, it's a little Taliban flag, and it's a little placard bragging that the Taliban is coming to hear his, like, grandson or something in their home village three miles from the objective recite the Koran. Which, like, whatever, it's your culture, fine.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But if you've got a flag of—the Taliban flag over a map of Afghanistan on your profile picture, I kind of think that you're probably sympathetic that way. Yeah. And— There's a whole series of indicators that we'll get into a little bit later as we go to how she got out of Afghanistan because that's literally like the second half of the story. We're probably finishing with how she got turned over.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But basically, because of the State Department's position was we don't want to impact the peace deal. A colonel testified that the Taliban negotiators had mentioned the situation. I don't know if that's true. I don't have firsthand knowledge of that. And so it was this...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
series of, what, half-truths that they were able to IO campaign the administration to be like, oh, well, like, nobody wants to, like, oh, take her away from family. That's safe. And, oh, maybe we're just wrong. But the embassy had never looked at this classified intel. And we weren't able to, the colonel from the Pentagon I mentioned earlier that came and testified at our board of inquiry,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
he said they independently corroborated everything we had declassified sent them. They went and talked to Ranger Regiment and verified all that with their targeting system, the Pentagon. He said, yeah, we knew where they were from in Turkmenistan, where they were moving them from, like high fidelity, who these people were and where they came from. And so he mentioned to me, he struck it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
He said, I will go to my grave thinking that these were al-Qaeda terrorists that were moving through the region from Turkmenistan. He goes, there's nothing that would suggest otherwise. But at the same time, and this is big picture, at the same time, we have the previous administration's Department of Justice filing, court filing, saying,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Her parents were an innocent farmer killed in a crossfire with zero evidence. Like the eyewitnesses say she blew herself up and her suicide vest was partially detonated. We have the DOJ saying the ICRC was involved. And we have, like, I can give you 50 examples, but I've got a couple for your team. where they're redacting what we knew at the time from the traffic.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Because what they'd rather do is they go after a junior officer, like a fairly low-level officer, and attack your credibility and say, no, no, the embassy was doing safe and there was nothing to see here, basically. And I don't think they thought they'd ever be in a position where I can prove in court that you were lying and that you did this to this little girl. But they're in that position now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And so that's why they've sought to gag you and to shut you up and over classify things so that the truth of what actually happened and how dangerous it was and how it's child abuse what they did to this little girl. And like, she has become our daughter. We've had her for years. Like she has no idea any of this ever happened.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But it's not right from a national perspective that this should have happened. No one should have to go through what she's gone through and what we've had to go through as a result. Like, we were telling the truth on day one. We're telling the truth now. And if they release that...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
That intelligence, if they release the video footage of this combat, like, our guys aren't war criminals on objective. They're not fighting innocent farmers. Do civilians die in war? Yes, they do. But that's the result of terrorists who bring their families along on jihad to come fight us. Like, that's the sad reality of war. But that's not our guys.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So I will circle back at some point and then talk about the period from when she was dumped before the peace deal to how she got out of Afghanistan, because that was an incredible story. But I think it's very important to focus on what the embassy knew and why they did that. Well, I guess a better question is, why didn't they know this intel? Why didn't they DNA test?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like a DNA test, it's the most biometrically enrolled society on earth. Like we have a lab set up that does it in four days. I have her DNA swab. The DOD did in December of 2019. I have it downstairs. Like we had her DNA. We tested six or eight other people. Why was this person on DNA tested? And what's my real concern is did they know it was a negative test when they dumped her?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, I'd like to know that. Like, did state know these people were not family when they handed her off or just assume that risk? Because what happened next was we found out that they were gonna, to not vet whoever she should be turned over to. And so we actually, as a captain,
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
We sued in federal court to try to prevent that from happening, saying you cannot do this in an objectively dangerous manner based on everything we know. She's a foreign fighter's child and that you're likely turning over to non-relative terrorist affiliated. You can go look up the court case. It says that. And it said all the risk factors.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It said who the Turkestan Islamic Party was and some of these pictures of children in their training camps. We filed it under seal because we didn't want to put any Americans at risk because we still had troops on the ground. But it was just basically what the presumption was from DoD's perspective that this was a foreign child the whole time. And there was literally nothing to contradict that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, and I think that for people to understand, it's essentially a Taliban-Ileane Gonzalez situation. That's how we've kind of boiled it down into a one-sentence thing because we're not really litigating these Afghans that we've been in litigation with because they wouldn't actually be in control of this child if she was ever in their custody.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Some rando claiming a familial relationship. And with children having value as chattel, essentially, like, hey, does anyone want a baby and trolling around in rural Afghanistan? I bet you get people claiming just offering a child because they're valuable, right? And we were getting reports at the time in Kabul of the conditions on the ground.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, we're getting reports they were eating cats and dogs, that they were selling, like, some of their younger children to pay for food through the winter for the others. So, like, the conditions in Afghanistan at that time were really bad. Like, I'm having the docs telling me this stuff, and I'm going and researching it to corroborate it. And I'm like, holy cow. And so, like, then as you become—
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I guess once we volunteered and a judge says, hey, you're responsible for this child. Like it was totally a good Samaritan, like volunteer, like regular American, do the right thing type thing. But once the judge says, you're responsible, I mean, we are not, it's like your oath.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Like, you know, it's like when I raise my hand and I swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign, domestic, I mean that with every fiber of my being. And when a judge says, you're responsible for this child, you're their protector, your guardian, your parent, We, that's not a light thing to us. Like, it's just like any other oath I've ever taken in my life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
To my marriage, to my country. Like, we're going to go after that with everything we got. And that's why we sued the Secretary of Defense. Like, do you think that's a comfortable moment? I mean, we were terrified, right? I'm thinking this is a career suicide, but I can't sleep at night if she's putting it in harm's way again. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And who knows, if this is some... And we believe that they were totally anonymous to the U.S. government. They didn't even know who they were. I think they may have had a name. They didn't have an ID. But our understanding was she was being basically laundered through the Red Cross so that they maintain combatant immunity, and that she was just taken to southern Afghanistan. Jeez.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And let me tell you what that meant to people who raised her. So this flag...
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
was flown on i think it was 28 february let me get the right date so i don't mess this up because this is important for your audience to understand so this is an american flag certificate and it says flown on 28 february 2020 in honor of and i won't don't zoom in too much because i'm not supposed to talk about her name but it says uh
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Let it be known that the flag accompanying this certificate was flown in the face of the enemy and bears witness to the removal of terrorist forces threatening the freedom of the United States of America.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
It was flown with great honor and pride over the eminent soldiers of Craig Joint Theater Hospital, Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, during Operation Freedom Sentinel and North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Resolute Support Mission, where each day Americans fought the global war on terrorism in remembrance of all who have lost their lives.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And it says, you will never be forgotten because they thought she was dead. And then every single of the two different iterations on deployment of medical personnel, the ones that were still there, every one of them signed the back of this thing. Oh, wow. And they drafted this poem basically saying thanks for trying, Gus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
There would be someone above them that would be calling the shots, and I believe that's the Taliban.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I got this after she got dumped with like a fishing to see gone anonymously in Afghanistan in a war zone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Yeah, that was the testimony is that he'd never observed such an unprofessional meeting where they basically got shut down, called racist for believing basic intelligence that everybody had believed the whole time, saying, like, we have some serious credibility questions about anyone coming forward and claiming this particular child. Plus, it was in a city 100 miles away from the objective.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So I can talk about this because it's declassified. There was a civil affairs officer at the time on the joint staff at Resolute Support, and she came and testified against us in court. And it was so fascinating to watch because... like she had her little prepared portion of her testimony. And then my attorneys were able to question her. And do you know what she testified to?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
She said that they did DNA on our daughter. And that I think she described Uzbek and a couple other like other tribes in the northern stands, like the countries north of Afghanistan consistent with that. And that just blew my mind because they gave her two Pashtun speaking Pashtuns And they have her, like, she testified that they had done their DNA.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then we had declassified the language that we were picking up in SIGINT. Like, it's Turkmen, right? Like, it's a very distinct non-native language. Like, we got it declassified for a purpose, right? So they gave them to a different race of people. who speak a different language, and maybe after they DNA tested them negatively. So, like, it's just mind-boggling to me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And then the one thing I wanted to ask the civil affairs officer is like, hey, did you ever read the declassified mission summary? Did you ever read the classified underlying intelligence? And she's like, no, the Afghans didn't ask for that, so we didn't look at it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And I'm thinking, like, she was actually came across as angry at these regular Americans for caring enough to ask the question, like, why are we doing this? Like, what's going to happen to this baby? Like, it was like some sort of like a distraction.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And this is what the colonel wrote in that certificate. He said, the enclosed flag was flown over Craig Joint Theater Hospital on 28 February 2020, the darkest day of my one-year deployment to Afghanistan. My intent was to fly the American flag in celebration of her day of rescue.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Instead, the flag was flown to help us remember a baby that had profound positive impact on every member of my trauma hospital, a true butterfly effect. And then he told us that they had grief counselors there because so many people were so shook up about this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And they actually had the personal security detail of one of the two stars come down to ensure they didn't physically resist turning her over to these people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So the ICRC physically flew her to the location, but they didn't actually involve in vetting whoever she was being turned over to. It was a bare claim, like, hey, I'm an uncle. That was the level of detail they had. And they had some local people saying, you know, Joe is who Joe says he is, like as a pseudonym.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
But there was no corroboration of the claim, and it actually turns out to have been false from the get-go. It was a lie.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
And there's some just tragic text messages I have for your team from the general while this is happening, saying like, we have DNA. We're morally and ethically obligated to do this. Why aren't we doing this? And I agree with him. I would like to know that question is, if the Afghans asked the embassy to do DNA, why didn't we do it? And if not, who made that decision?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Was it the deputy chief of mission? Because that person should get fired. And when all this broke in America three years later, she was up for an ambassadorship, and she was being vetted for that. And so, get this. This will show you where this person is coming from. During all of this, she's filing affidavits against the court, saying, like, this was all by the book, you know, essentially.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
Nothing to see here. Right. At that time, this senior child protection specialist, this Afghan, was in a third country, not safe, in danger of being deported. He reaches out to the deputy chief of mission and he says, an attorney has reached out and asked me to participate in this case, in her case. What should I do? So what do you think the deputy chief of mission tells him?
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
She says, I wouldn't respond if they're really an attorney. She advises him not to participate. He's the only person on earth who can say, no, that didn't happen in that meeting, and he did in my board. But he is the only person on earth who can contradict what this person represented to her own agency and to the Trump administration about confirmed family and the Afghans.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
I think the half-truth or the lie was it wasn't part of the Afghan process. Well, that's because they're asking you to do it. They're asking you personally to DNA test this child. And we have an Acme lab at Bagram that does it in three days. And we already have her swab. And they had actually sent one of these people out of the woodwork in Afghanistan to get DNA tested.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
So, like, that's what he told them. I've got it in an email downstairs where he's asking the embassy, like, this person that says that there's a surviving sibling, we now want to do the DNA test. And then there's this nondescript response from the embassy, and then they get them in person, and they say, don't talk to the DOD anymore. Are you serious? Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
They get an order from the two-star that no one in US4A will advocate for this child. I've got the order. It's a draft. It wasn't signed. It was a verbal order. He never signed. But it was, you will not advocate for this child. All questions of this will go to the embassy. And so something else happened that's very important for viewers to understand.
Shawn Ryan Show
#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump
When we threatened to sue, there was a hold by the Secretary of Defense on her movement. Like they were going to move her on February 11th, 2020, and they ended up not moving her to the 27th. And so we thought, okay, we've succeeded. They're going to do a DNA test. They're going to vet these people, right, to make sure that this is a safe outcome. And so we thought we succeeded.