What’s it like to be one of the only Muslim Arab Americans fighting terrorism in the US’ most secret military unit? Adam Gamal shares here in part 1 of 2! [Part 2 can be found here.]
What We Discuss with Adam Gamal:
- How Adam Gamal went from being an Egyptian refugee who barely spoke English to an operative in the United States’ most secret special forces unit.
- The unit’s tasks range from counterterrorism and hostage rescue to counter-narcotics operations.
- The ethical and emotional complexities of covert operations.
- How top secret operatives navigate cultural nuances while making personal sacrifices for the greater good.
- The importance of intelligence, adaptability, and the unseen battles fought every day to ensure American safety.
- And much more…
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Societal and political turbulence motivated a young Egyptian to seek a better life in the United States. Overcoming the language barrier and demonstrating the physical and mental prowess to protect the interests of his new home, he joined the military and eventually became a vital member of a covert unit referred to simply as “the unit” — where intelligence and special operations converge to tackle some of the world’s most pressing security threats.
On this episode, we’re joined by this extraordinary person — Adam Gamal, co-author of The Unit: My Life Fighting Terrorists as One of America’s Most Secret Military Operatives. Here, Adam shares personal stories marked by conflict and transformation — from his immigrant experience and evolution into special operations to the social shifts toward extremism in Egypt. We also uncover the world of secret military units engaged in hostage rescue, counterterrorism, and thwarting the flow of narcotics, emphasizing the critical role of cultural understanding and problem-solving in such operations. Listen, learn, and enjoy! [This is part one of a two-part episode. Part two can be found here!]
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Miss our conversation with Daniel Levin, a man who knows how to track down people who have gone missing in war zones and bring them home alive? Catch up with episode 617: Daniel Levin | How to Find a Missing Person in the Middle East here!
Thanks, Adam Gamal!
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Resources from This Episode:
- The Unit: My Life Fighting Terrorists as One of America’s Most Secret Military Operatives by Adam Gamal and Kelly Kennedy | Amazon
- Adam Gamal | Twitter
- The US ‘War on Terror’ 20 Years after ‘Mission Accomplished’ | Al Jazeera
- What is a Mosque? What’s inside the Mosque? | 877-Why-Islam
- US Airstrikes on Syria Mosque Compound Violated International Law, UN Says | ABC News
- It’s Been 20 Years since 9/11. The US Army Still Hasn’t Learned to Speak Arabic or Dari. | Atlantic Council
- Preventive Maintenance Checks and Services | Wikipedia
- Al Qaeda Training Manual | US Department of Justice
- Why Did US Forces Bury Osama Bin Laden’s Body at Sea? | History
- Why You Should Visit Alexandria: How to Egypt Travel Guide 2024 | Tina Huegel
- Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood | Council on Foreign Relations
- Anwar al-Sadat | The Nobel Prize
- Egypt’s Revolution: Two Lessons from History | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- In the Mainstream: Religious Extremism in the Middle East and North Africa | Wilson Center
- Daniel J. Levitin | How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era | Jordan Harbinger
- Andy Norman | The Search for a Better Way to Think | Jordan Harbinger
- Pretty Woman | Prime Video
- Jersey City’s Egypt by Sarah Essa | Medium
- Islamic Fundamentalists Challenge Sadat’s Rule | The Washington Post
- Is Oral Sex Halal or Haram? | IslamQA
- Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard | Amazon
- Military Special Forces: Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and More | Military OneSource
- Islam: Do and Don’t | Conventry Sacre
- Three Funny Examples of Why Commas are Important! | Verbling
- Timbuktu | UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- General McChrystal | Deconstructing Myths of Great Leadership | Jordan Harbinger
978: Adam Gamal | My Top-Secret Fight Against Terrorism Part One
This transcript is yet untouched by human hands. Please proceed with caution as we sort through what the robots have given us. We appreciate your patience!
[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: This episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show is brought to you by Nissan. Nissan SUVs. Have the capabilities to take your adventure to the next level. Learn more@nissanusa.com. Coming up next
[00:00:09] Adam Gamal: on the Jordan Harbinger show ,
[00:00:12] I was leaving Iraq, I made it to Q Tour. The unit commander contacted me, was like, Hey, there is a hostage situation and a kidnapped soldier in Iraq.
[00:00:20] We need you to go back. So I had to call my wife and say, Hey, uh, I'm sorry. I'm not coming. I have to go back. And those are the things that a lot of people don't realize. So people are, oh, military guys are really cool, and they deploy and I'm like, special operation guys. And they get paid more and they jump outta the aircraft.
[00:00:35] And to call your wife the day you're supposed to arrive back home and you tell her you're not coming, dude.
[00:00:44] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger Show. We decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional organized crime figure, drug trafficker, cold case, homicide investigator, real life pirate, or extreme athletes.
[00:01:14] And if you're new to the show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation, psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, cyber warfare. AI crime and cults and more. It'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.
[00:01:32] Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app To get started, my guest today, Adam Gamal is a former member of the unit. The unit is a tier one special mission unit where intelligence and special operations meet. The unit has another name, but we're not allowed to know what it is.
[00:01:49] We're also not allowed to know Adam's real name, what his face looks like, nor meet him in person to do this interview. So there's quite a bit under wraps here. This conversation, it is quite a tale. Adam moved to the United States from Egypt at the age of 20, speaking virtually no English, and went on to infiltrate terror organizations, collect intelligence, interrogate detainees, catch and kill, high value targets, and a whole lot more.
[00:02:11] We cover terrorism, special military operations and intelligence gathering, as well as some fun stories about Adam's travels. You can only imagine where this guy has been and what places shine in this industry, if you can call it that. He's also great at telling his ridiculous story of immigration to the United States.
[00:02:27] It's, it's quite humorous. Adam was very generous with his time, and as you'd expect from any Special forces operator, a true patriot in so many ways, I think you're gonna love this conversation. Even if you are not into the military hoorah stuff. There's just so much here to chew on. Uh, and FYI, there's some F-bombs in this one that we didn't bleep, so if you're offended by that, well, you might wanna skip this one.
[00:02:47] Now. Here we go with Adam Gamal.
[00:02:53] When we talked on the phone, I was like, okay, it's like a military guy's been through some stuff or whatever, but then it was, the more I looked at it, the more it really is kind of a unique story that we'll get into, I'm sure. But first of all, early in the book you're talking about calling in an airstrike, and I think it was an Al-Qaeda terrorist in Somalia.
[00:03:11] It's like, well, there's a mosque on site, so we can't do an airstrike. What's the deal with that? Can't you see if a mosque is empty? Is it just you can't blow up a mosque? What's the rule there?
[00:03:21] Adam Gamal: So it was basically at that time, US government rules. For us, we had rules of engagement according to Geneva Convention, according to international law, and according to our own US constitutions and whatever the government puts in place at that time, it was, if we gonna have a strike on a mosque, it needed presidential approval.
[00:03:41] So we would have to take the mission. But we used to call it like target package. So we take the target package to through mm-Hmm. Secretary of Defense all the way to the president. The president will have to approve it. Say yes or no. But what I was trying to explain to people, the definition of a mosque is different guys have like a room in their house they pray at, they have like a corner of in their backyard they pray at.
[00:04:02] Now we wouldn't call that a mosque. So for people who didn't understand the culture, they would go and say, well, they pray in there. It must be a mosque. To go back to your question too. Not all the time. You can have, you cannot see what's inside the mosque or inside the room. So sometimes we go on target based on what we can see and sometimes what we cannot see, but we have our own ways of knowing what's inside, if that makes sense.
[00:04:28] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it does. I just wonder, why don't bad guys just hide in mosques most of the time? If it's harder to strike a mosque. I mean, wouldn't that just sort of make it so that if they're a target of opportunity, they can get away most of the time? 'cause they know that, oh well it's gonna take them at least a couple hours to get approval.
[00:04:47] By which point I'll be gone. Or they might not bother at all.
[00:04:50] Adam Gamal: Yeah, but they cannot live inside the malls. They can't be there 24 7. And when we were tracking guys, like for example, that guy, we were tracking him 24 7, like where he sleeps, where he goes to eat. Where he's at, at that time, it was the best time to minimize collateral damage was in the super early hours of the morning lake, four, five o'clock in the morning.
[00:05:11] At four or five o'clock in the morning, the guy was doing his morning prayer. So it was, we had to balance, I had to balance between taking a guy out in the middle of the day where you have a lot more collateral damage or taking him at night right after he finishes his morning prayer, or right before he goes to his morning prayer.
[00:05:28] We just needed to understand that I needed to explain to people the definition of a mosque. So a mosque is like a church. But if you go to the side of your house and you decide to pray, that doesn't make, if you have a bedroom or like a, let's say a meditation room and you make it a prayer room, that does not make your prayer room a church or a mosque.
[00:05:48] So that's what we were trying to work on. But yeah, guys cannot hide in a mosque or in a church or a, or a synagogue 24 7, they have to come out.
[00:05:56] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, of course. That, that completely makes sense. It's just, it's an interesting story in that one, that the rules of engagement seem to hinder a lot of the anti-terrorist stuff that we're doing, and I, I appreciate that they're trying to avoid just making more terrorists by blowing up mosques all the time.
[00:06:10] That seems like a wise strategy. However, it's, it was also interesting to me that at this point in time, you're an Egyptian guy who's an American at this point, right? And you're fighting terrorism and you're in the position of explaining what a mosque is to people. It's like, wow, we really are starting from anti-terrorist 1 0 1 over here.
[00:06:32] Like this is what a mosque is and is not. That just shows you how far behind the learning curve we were at the time, to
[00:06:38] Adam Gamal: give you a good like anecdote of this, and two years before that, I called one of the military intelligence branches that they train, like for interrogators. I called the guy, I put it in the book, and I called the guy and I, I wanted to change my job to be an interrogator.
[00:06:53] And he's like, what language? And I said, Arabic. And he is like, couldn't have any need for Arabic. And I was like, I'm a native Arabic speaker. You don't have to send me to school to learn Arabic. When we send guys to Defense Language Institute in California, DLI for Arabic, we send them for over 54 or 55 weeks.
[00:07:08] So over a year. And then when they come out of there, they're not proficient at the language, at that level operational level yet. So I'm gonna save them like hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars time and everything. And the guy was like, well, but really we don't need any Arabic speakers. So I was like, well, if you don't need any Arabic speakers, I didn't know what to tell you.
[00:07:25] But that was like literally two years before nine 11. But it was six years after the first World Trade Center, and it was two years after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. So we were seeing radicals and we were seeing like terrorism and terrorist attacks, but we still couldn't grasp. So when you go and you explain to people like you're absolutely right when you go and explain it to people.
[00:07:46] What's a mosque? What definition is of a mosque? Without burning the book to your listeners, bin Laden was not the first guy who got buried at sea. Again, the first guy got buried at sea, was in Africa, and it was me and a State Department person saying, okay, if a Muslim guy got killed and he's taken into a back of a ship, what do we do?
[00:08:05] Do we give the body back? What do we do? So those things that you are absolutely right without having the cultural understanding. We, you're right. We are way, way behind.
[00:08:14] Jordan Harbinger: You know, that mirrors my experience perfectly with the whole language learning thing. I joined the Marine Reserves in college and one of the commanding officers, I went in and I said, Hey, I can't make my Russian and Arabic classes because I have to march in a field and I need permission to stop this marching in a field thing because.
[00:08:37] I can't attend either Russian or Arabic classes during that time. And that's the only time they offer the class. And he is like, well, you've gotta make your schedule around us, not the other way around. And I'm like, but I am taking Russian and Arabic. And he was like, we don't need languages pal. We need nuclear engineers.
[00:08:52] And I was like, are you kidding me? One, I'm not an engineer, so I'm not even in engineering school at the time, and I was just thinking, this is just wrong. It's blatantly wrong. The president of the United States at the time, George Bush was talking about how we needed all these language learners and, and I was like, do you just not watch the news?
[00:09:13] I mean, what's going on here? And it just showed me how kind of the military is so far even behind other elements in the government, at least this level of the military, that it was just brain dead. That you wouldn't want somebody to be learning both Russian and Arabic, but instead, you know, we really need Jim Marchan in this field field at 9:00 AM every day.
[00:09:35] You can't take two of these mandatory required languages that the defense department has put on a website saying we need more of. It was just mind blowing.
[00:09:44] Adam Gamal: Absolutely right. To add to this, you know, what's A-P-M-C-S? So it's primary military check something. It's like basically. Whether you go to the motor pool to check if the vehicle works properly or not.
[00:09:58] I don't remember, 'cause I've been out for a while what PMCS stands for, but it's, uh, something that military units they do every week where they send soldiers to the motor pool to check their vehicles, uh, preventative maintenance checks and services. That's it. Exactly. Exactly.
[00:10:14] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.
[00:10:15] Adam Gamal: So before nine 11, I went to the FBI for a, like a temporary duty for three months and part of it was to translate the ALADE manual that which we had for a few years.
[00:10:26] At that time, I had good contacts at the FBI and there was like a deal between an agreement between the FBI and uh, DOD. They can borrow linguists. So I called the, the FBI that I worked with during the SS call bombing and uh, the Alqaeda manual translation. And I told the, the lady at that time, I said, Hey, we have about seven eight.
[00:10:47] A speakers in the unit. I was in Fort Bragg at that time. Now they call Fort Liberty. We're not doing anything other than going to the motor pool to check to do the preventive maintenance on our vehicles. Yeah. And she's like, yeah, but we cannot ask DOD. So I go to that unit command and I'm like, we can send guys, if it's time for us to deploy, we're bring them back to a week before and then we deploy.
[00:11:09] It's not like we're gonna wake up overnight and so we deploy tomorrow and everybody said no. So we had fully qualified Arabic speakers checking the vehicle, the Martian, the jump in all of those things to like military guys, to some military guys were more important than your language maintenance. And I'm like, if we don't maintenance on vehicles, why don't you do maintenance on
[00:11:28] Jordan Harbinger: language?
[00:11:29] That's a really good point. Yeah. You'd think after nine 11 they were like, oh, you're a person who moves boxes in a warehouse, but you speak Arabic, your job is changing tomorrow. Here's when your flight leaves. Right? Like you're flying, yeah. To this place to train and translation and interrogation. But instead it was like, well make sure you've moved all those boxes in that warehouse with that forklift pal.
[00:11:51] Not that that's not important. It doesn't have to get done, but it was just like, we have a critical shortage of language speakers, but this problem seems to be not just in the military. I mean, you mentioned how unprepared the FBI was for nine 11. You said you'd had the Al-Qaeda training manual for terrorists had been in the FBI's possession for literally years beforehand and nobody had bothered to translate it because it was just like, ah, some terrorist training manual probably says some stuff about terrorism, whatever.
[00:12:20] Adam Gamal: Part of that was, so there was another guy sitting with me, an FBI, he was an older guy, so I'm assuming he was a contractor. So he retired, I think from the FBI as a translator. Then they brought him back as a contractor and he was sitting down and translating the Koran. And I was like, by the way, I couldn't go buy a Koran in English for $20 from Yeah, like Broadway, like downtown, like right around the World Trade Center.
[00:12:43] I was working, uh, in Federal one Plaza at that time, which is, was like 10 minutes away from, uh, the World Trade Center. Rather than the guy translating the, the ADEA manual, he was translating the Quran. And I'm like, just totally wrong priority. When we asked like why nobody was translating the Al-Qaeda manual before, they were like, well, it has a lot of military terms in it, so we needed people from the military to come and help.
[00:13:05] And as I stated, the easy, actually it was really easy for me to translate because the military part of the Al-Qaeda manual was already translated from English, from field manuals, US military field manuals. Some guy who was working for Bin Laden translated that from English to Arabic. So for me, I was like, I just have to find the English version.
[00:13:24] So it really could have been done. But it's sad. Like I'm afraid, like now we feeling we're going through the same rhythm of life is good, nothing's gonna happen, you know always. Well, and when we become complacent, that's when we get hit.
[00:13:38] Jordan Harbinger: Yes, of course. And I think a lot of us agree with that. How long was the Al-Qaeda manual in the US' possession before it got translated?
[00:13:46] Do you know?
[00:13:47] Adam Gamal: I dunno the exact time. If I go back and I put it in the book based on research I did at the time, but if I remember correctly, they had it like maybe for two years. I have to go back and look at it. Yeah. But it was like maybe two years. It was taken from an Al-Qaeda cell in, I think Manchester, uk, the tin, the guy, they found material in his house and one of the material they had was the Alqaeda manual.
[00:14:10] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Now, of course, nine 11 woke us up, but it was a pretty heavy price to pay for being so complacent. You mentioned earlier, burying terrorists at sea. What is the deal with that? 'cause I'd never heard of burying anybody at sea, you know, on purpose other than Bin Laden. That was kind of the first, I think most of us have ever heard of it.
[00:14:28] So what's sort of the deal with that is that the whole idea that there's no grave for this person. It's kind of like how I think Hitler doesn't also have a grave. You don't want people kind of go into this martyr grave and making a thing out of it. Is that the point of this?
[00:14:41] Adam Gamal: It is partially, but it's a combination of things actually.
[00:14:44] It's like when we go on a hit like that, whether that one we did, if we go in and to kill the guy on site and we have guys there, they take the body to make sure that they got the right person. They do DNA, but where did they do that? They take them do it on a, in a back of a ship, usually in Somalia. That was like an a Navy ship where they took the guy to do the DNA to make sure we got the right guy.
[00:15:07] Then if they give the guy back to the family, there would be a shrine, there would be all of these things. And then that would be like after doing the DNA and all of this, it was kinda like very hard. So what we did is we said, okay, let's assume the guy died at sea. So in Islam, when somebody dies at sea, what do you do?
[00:15:23] Because in Islam, when somebody dies, you bury that person within 24 hours. You're not gonna keep the body for like two, three weeks or two, three months, or you're not gonna put 'em in a fridge and none of that. Right? We did the research and it was like, okay, if the guy died at sea, he gets buried at sea and that was the burial.
[00:15:43] And then there is a prayer is done. So we brought a Muslim chaplain. The Muslim chaplain did the prayer. So we, we gave the guy a full Islamic service for his burial, but they get buried at sea. So the guy who got buried at sea first was not Bin Laden. There was a. The guy who took out in Somalia.
[00:16:00] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.
[00:16:00] That's interesting. And it seems like it's probably a decent practice, just like you said, you have to take the body, you gotta get this intelligence. You don't wanna be doing that on site, right. You're not gonna have somebody running a DNA test in a combat zone where you just took a bunch of people out.
[00:16:13] I suppose that's wise. You bring 'em back to the ship, handle the business on the ship, and then do they literally just dump the body in the sea after that? Or do they cremate the body or something like that on the ship?
[00:16:24] Adam Gamal: So it's not cremated, but they put him in a, in a coffin. They actually do, like if you would bury somebody in land, they do the whole thing and then they just do the burial at sea and then they drop the body at sea.
[00:16:34] Not just throw it, but the body is put in a coffin and everything. They put weights in the bottom and so it stays in the bottom of the sea.
[00:16:41] Jordan Harbinger: It's not something you normally think about, but yeah, people occasionally. Die even of just freak accidents right on, on ships in the Navy. So there's gotta be a room that's essentially a morgue with coffins, a chaplain, an undertaker of sorts, and they just handle the business.
[00:16:56] I, you know, I never thought about that. I, if a US soldier, let's say, has an accident on a boat, or if it dies in combat, essentially, quote unquote at sea, do they freeze the body and bring it back to the United States? Or do they, they don't bury those people at sea, correct?
[00:17:10] Adam Gamal: No, they don't bury them at sea.
[00:17:11] They bring them back to the United States states. So there are a couple of differences there. We couldn't give the body back to the family because it would've been a lot more process. And again, in Islam you bury them out of respect to the death. You bury them as soon as you can, which is usually within 24 hours.
[00:17:24] And then when it's something like that, they do, like I said, when they do fly a Muslim chaplain, they fly the Muslim chaplain, he does the prayer, they, uh, fly the undertaker. Who knows how to clean the body before burial in, within the Islamic traditions, Muslims, they wrap the body in a, in a, like a usually white coffin like cloth.
[00:17:42] They do the wrapping, they do the cleaning, they do the whole thing. But if it's a US soldier, they take him back. But this, like, it goes back to where there was no airplanes and, and ships used to be like, uh, the Titanic stayed in, in, in the sea, at sea for like months. So if you, back then when people were dying at sea, you couldn't keep the body at sea for five, six months.
[00:18:04] So they usually, they used to even non-Muslims, they used to bury them at sea as well. But right now, obviously for years, soldiers that the ship has all that, what's needed in addition to you can fly an aircraft, that you can fly a helicopter to a naval ship to carry the body and take him and then they flying back home.
[00:18:22] Jordan Harbinger: Right. Yeah. That makes way more sense than, than anything I proposed earlier, I suppose. Yeah. Right. So the Islamic tradition stuff stems from the age of empires, right. Sailboats, where it's like, oh, we're, we're not gonna be back for three or six months. We, we have to figure this out. We can't just keep this body on the ship.
[00:18:37] And that makes a lot of sense. Tell me about growing up. I know you started off as like a skinny kid with asthma. How do you end up in a top level special forces unit in the United States? You end up there
[00:18:49] Adam Gamal: by, uh, pure determination, by having grit and by being a bit lucky. So to take you back, I started in an early age.
[00:18:58] I had an accident where I walked to the Mediterranean in January. My grandfather was visiting us. He was not visiting us. He was actually sick and he was recovering in our house, so they left the door open of the house and me not being a kid like six, seven years old. I just walked out and I made my way to the beach and stayed in the beach for a bit so that I developed asthma at that time.
[00:19:18] Then I was taking like, you know, they put me on a lot of medication and the doctor was like, you know, how severe the asthma was that I most likely I wouldn't survive past like 11 years old. But I started playing sports. I started pushing through. My mom wouldn't allow me to just be a lazy kid pushing through that.
[00:19:34] And then growing a, a bit older, I was in studying law. I was in law school in, in Egypt and law school in Egypt, as you know, like it's after high school. So I, uh, had a college professor and he is like, the law that you study in, you gotta memorize it for the test because most likely you'll never practice it because Egypt was under martial law at that time and he anticipated it to be under martial law for a long time.
[00:19:57] Which he was correct. So Egypt was under
[00:19:58] Jordan Harbinger: martial law. Wait, wait. So. You're learning civilian law and it's like you're gonna be a lawyer, but here's the thing, you're never really gonna practice this because we have a military dictatorship. So just, you know, take the exam and then go get a different job. Is that what I'm hearing?
[00:20:13] Adam Gamal: That's exactly what you hear. And, and that's, and this is coming from a college professor used to be the Minister of Justice, so he was the Secretary of Justice basically before he was teaching in college. So a guy who knows what he's talking about, and he's like, so most likely you guys will not practice this because we're under emergency law and it's basically marginal law and it's gonna be there for a while.
[00:20:34] He was correct. Like I said, it was under emergency martial law from 1981 to, uh, 2011 when, uh, the Mubarak regime was ousted. Uh, so I left to Egypt in, uh, the early nineties, like 91. I took off, it was right after Desert Store, and I borrowed money from my mom for the ticket, borrowed $500 from my sister, hid the $500 in my shoes.
[00:20:57] I was terrified. Took a flight, came to New York. Landed in New York in the summer of 91. And I'm like, okay, what,
[00:21:04] Jordan Harbinger: like, what do I do? Lemme put a pin in that for a second. So you are growing up in Alexandria, Egypt, which is kind of like, is it fair to say it's kind of a special city because it's not really, well it's an Egyptian city, but it's also kind of a, it was built by the Greeks, right?
[00:21:17] So it's correct. It's got a little bit of a different flavor maybe than some other places in Egypt.
[00:21:22] Adam Gamal: Absolutely. So Egypt, uh, Alexandria actually at that time, at the time I was growing up, we had more Greeks. Uh, we had Greeks, French Italians, we had a few other nationalities. They were living there. So Egypt, because it's on the Mediterranean and Europeans loved it.
[00:21:36] And Egypt, before the military regime took over in 1952, used to be actually a very nice place with good economy. It was like really booming. So a lot of Europeans. Mm-Hmm. Moved there and. When they moved, either they went to Cairo because they were working something government related, but the majority of them went to Alexandria.
[00:21:54] So when you go there, actually you'll see a lot more Roman artifacts than you will see Islamic artifacts or Arab artifacts. It's more European style city. Uh, or it used to be, now it's like deteriorating just with the military not doing a good job. But yeah, you're absolutely right. So growing up there, you have the uniqueness of it supports city.
[00:22:13] You see ships coming, you see Navy guys come in, commercial Marines come in, they hang out in the city. So you end up seeing all of these foreigners are coming. And I think what I've read once, like people who live on ocean or sea or they are more attracted to travel because they always, they grow up wanting to know what's on the other side of that.
[00:22:34] This big body of blue water, what's on the other side of it? So you always wanna see, so the curiosity make a lot of people living in coastal cities, they travel, they leave. And I was one of those. So I ended up at age 20, I ended up leaving.
[00:22:46] Jordan Harbinger: How did you see Islam change in Egypt when you were younger?
[00:22:51] Because I, I know it, it used to be this place, when you look at old photos of Egypt, it's like women in shorts and skirts dancing around. And it's, but I've been to Egypt of course, much later than that. In like the year 2000. There was no women walking around at all unless they were covered head to toe and often their face was covered.
[00:23:08] I mean, it was a, it was definitely not the black and white Egypt from photos.
[00:23:11] Adam Gamal: Absolutely. And if you, as you see like pictures from before, like from the twenties and the thirties and the forties and, and even when you see movies from that time, you'll see like actresses, like, you know how they dress, you know, wearing mini skirts and all this.
[00:23:23] So ironically by the way, when you look at pictures from Afghanistan in the forties and the fifties and the sixties, all the way till the seventies. It was the same thing like Egypt. You see like girls going to college?
[00:23:33] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.
[00:23:33] Adam Gamal: Like dress westerner style, if that a better way of saying it. Then what happened is when the military regime took over in the fifties, they played this nasty game where Arabs and Egyptians in particular are emotional and religion plays a big, big role of their in their life.
[00:23:51] So when the military took over at that time, the Muslim Brotherhood were like moving. They were like, they started in that 1928, that's when the, the movement actually started with the Muslim Brotherhood. So like fast forward, like, you know, 15, 16 years after the military is about to take over and the military wanted to get the general population around them.
[00:24:10] So what do you do? You go and you find a movement that actually has some popularity, which is the Muslim Brotherhood, and they had like a marriage of convenience for a bit. Then after that, the military realized, okay, the Muslim Brotherhood are actually more popular than us. They risking our ruling. So they took a lot of them, put them in jail, executed their leader, and then they were basically banned from like 19 56, 19 57, all the way to the seventies to like 74, 75.
[00:24:42] Then Sadat came, but Sadat came after Nasser. Sadad was the president who did the peace accord with Israel. When Sadat came. Now he's fighting. He had another enemy, which is like, you know, the socialist party, which was Nasser's party. They were very loyal to Naser. They were very socialists, and he wanted to counter that.
[00:25:01] So how does he counter that? He takes the Muslim brother out of jail and he starts beefing. The Muslim Brotherhood message, and even Sadat, who is my hero, but he made a few mistakes like anybody else. They used to call him the president, the leader, the believer, the believer leader. So he actually made himself like, you know, more, uh, conservative from a religious perspective, most likely than he was.
[00:25:27] But it was like, you know, a lot of leaders play those games. And so he did that and he took those guys out. And then we started seeing a lot more of that preaching of, Hey, a woman should cover their hair. Women should cover this. As a matter of fact, growing up, a woman wearing pants was not a good thing to do.
[00:25:45] Like they used to talk about this on, like, those people preaching. They used to talk about like, you know, if a woman is wearing pants, she's not conservative enough, she's not good. She's this, she's that. So we went from women wearing mini skirts and shorts to women wearing pants as wrong. And that kept going and going and going, and kept the situation, just kept getting worse and worse.
[00:26:06] Until when I was in college and the Muslim Brotherhood started, they started the grassroots movement way before Obama did. This guy is started at, in a way where they started preaching and talking to kids. So when I was, you know, eight, nine years old, they used to like approach kids like my age and take us to the mosque and talk to us and like, you know, salute the flag as Haram is forbidden.
[00:26:29] Doing arts in school, doing music is forbidden. And when they teach you that, when you learn this at that early age, that becomes engraved. Fortunately, my father kept me away from all of this, but you had other people who actually just went that route and, and when they ended up going that route, that's how we ended up having, so the Muslim Brotherhood was the foundation that, like Islamic Jihad was built on it.
[00:26:52] That was like Jamal Islamia was branch out of the Muslim Brotherhood. Then after that you have Al-Qaeda started out of that. So Iman Ri was member of the Muslim Brotherhood before that. Then fast forward. That was like an front, which is basically was the beginning of isis. So it keeps getting like more radical and more radical and more radical.
[00:27:14] And then we don't know what's next.
[00:27:19] Jordan Harbinger: You are listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Adam Gamal. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by AG G one. It's important to me that supplements stuff I put in my body are high quality. I will not tell you to put anything in your body if I won't put it in mine. That's why for over a decade I've been drinking ag one.
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[00:30:26] Come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course@sixminutenetworking.com. Now, back to Adam Gamal. What span of time was this? I mean, how fast did everything go downhill? Because it sounds like once they kind of opened up the Muslim Brotherhood can of worms. Women started covering up, you mentioned in the book there's like street Imams that basically just preach super conservative Islam regardless of how accurate it is.
[00:30:53] I'm asking because it, I feel like this stuff always happens much faster than people think that authoritarian oppression comes at you pretty fast.
[00:31:01] Adam Gamal: Yeah, I agree with you. So I think that the whole thing, like if I'm correct, like I said, growing up in the beginning, we used to have, so as a kid I lived right by a major road, which is like one block away from the beach.
[00:31:13] So we used to have like an Easter, we used to have like these parades and you would see like, you know, Mickey Mouse and the Easter Bunny and you know, Santa Claus around Christmas. So I saw those things as a kid who was maybe eight, nine years old. When I was like, you know, 12, 13 years old. So in span, like, you know, four or five years, then those things went away and then they said, well, the economy is bad.
[00:31:35] But it wasn't because of the economy, because those things were not, they were like mainly by companies and by people. So within four or five years, just people went and they start saying, this is Haram and this is Haram, and this is Haram. So it goes a lot faster than a lot of people think. Then if you wanna add to that too, during that time, right, a bit after that it was the Soviet Union, Afghan War.
[00:31:56] So during that time, again, the, the us, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, they played this game of like, let's just push people to go fight the Soviet Union. Which when you look at it as a, it's a good cause. But again, the way they took it and the way they pushed people to go, they start pushing. So I, I grew up seeing Mujahideen going to Afghanistan, fighting for five, six months.
[00:32:19] I'm coming back. And when they came back, some people held them as heroes. Some people looked at them as radical extremists that we don't want to deal with them, but all of these things were happening under the government's watch. Then how to motivate people to go fight in Afghanistan, you have this street imams that you're talking about, and they'll, they'll go on cassette tips back then and they'll preach and they'll say whatever.
[00:32:44] And these cassette tape were like everywhere. I mean like everywhere. They were giving them away for free all, you don't have to buy 'em. They were like giving 'em away for free. And you can just, you ride a taxi, you can hear it in a taxi, you ride, uh, you go visit a friend, you can hear them playing it in their house.
[00:32:59] And the government allowed that to happen because for whatever reason, either it suits their agenda or they were so, I, I don't think they were that ignorant, but these guys start talking about like, everything was forbidden, everything was haram. So it became so suffocated to the people there. And you'll see a lot of people left Egypt in the sixties and the seventies.
[00:33:17] I.
[00:33:17] Jordan Harbinger: It almost sounds it. It's weird 'cause as a podcaster it's like tapes making their way around and changing people's mind. It's like that's so grassroots and it, but it's really hard to stop that kind of stuff. Right? It's hard to stop people from sharing a cassette tape with a crazy message. It's wild how popular that stuff was because clearly that stuff struck an underlying nerve or cord, I should say, with the population.
[00:33:40] If you could hear it at your friend's house and in a taxi, it's like Joe Rogan kind of only for terrorism. Really not ideal to have viral appeal like that, but it says something about the society. Would you agree?
[00:33:51] Adam Gamal: Yeah, absolutely. But here's the ATO too. How did you protect society from stuff like that?
[00:33:57] When you have a good education system that teaches you critical thinking and like how to analyze the information, how to actually take a piece of information and analyze it and critically think about it, then you can go and say, okay, a guy told me sing the national anthem is Haram. I'm like, okay, he's an idiot.
[00:34:15] So you can go now, you can be the best podcaster and you can go and say, we should burn the US flag everywhere. Then people will be like, okay man, Jordan went crazy. We're not gonna listen to him anymore because people are educated enough to make this idea right. Although we have people saying, let's burn the flag.
[00:34:31] Jordan Harbinger: I look as somebody who's mission. The whole show is about critical thinking and helping people analyze information. Lemme tell you, by the time the message of this show gets its shoes on, the crazy idea of burn the flag or become a terrorist has already made its way around the world a thousand times.
[00:34:49] Right. So like that, that's, that's the problem, is us inoculating the population against nonsense ideas is a much harder process than distributing a nonsense idea in the first place. My audience would be a hundred times larger if all I did was distribute nonsense ideas. 'cause that stuff is so popular.
[00:35:07] Correct. The correcting misinformation. It's, uh, unfortunately much slower.
[00:35:12] Adam Gamal: So yeah, so that's what I was saying. So at that time, so if you wanna like combat this kind of thinking and people are educated enough, then they can actually listen. But in Egypt, the education system is like, you know, we tell you we, it's built on given you receive information, you memorize the information, we ask you in the test, what was the information and you spit it out.
[00:35:34] But we don't teach you how to think or how to critically analyze and, and how to like digest and dissect actual, dissect information. It was very easy for this street imams to influence people. As a matter of fact, in after the revolution in Egypt in 2011, that was a election, I think in 2013. It was the Muslim Brotherhood and a former Air Force general and the Muslim Brotherhood candidate went around mosques and he said, if you don't vote for me, you're going to help.
[00:36:05] And some people actually believed the guy, I voted for him. Sure. And they said, well, this guy represents God again. That's what I was like preaching a lot in the book, and I'm not preaching, like trying to explain in the book is like, Hey, when we give people the proper education, we all live a better life.
[00:36:22] Whether it's formal or informal education, you don't have to go to school to have education.
[00:36:26] Jordan Harbinger: I agree. This is a good message. It's, there's a story in the book about you running for, I think it was like student council and the Muslim brotherhood guys go in and they beat all you guys up and then they file police reports that say that you beat them up.
[00:36:40] The illustration of this story is perfect because you go up to the guy and you go, why'd you beat us all up? And then say that we beat you up. And he goes, it's okay to lie about things because we're at war. And it's like, oh. So you will literally just make stuff up. Doesn't matter what it is because you are right and everyone else is wrong and you can't.
[00:37:01] Really fight an organization like that unless everybody's on the same page because you have to know they're just gonna lie. Everything they do is to take over power. There's no rules other than win.
[00:37:14] Adam Gamal: Correct. So basically by any means necessary. Right? Right. So I tell the guy, and the guy is like, well, and he credited to the prophet and he said, well, the prophet said we have three occasions we are authorized to lie during those three occasions.
[00:37:28] And one of them is war. And I'm like, so who you are at war with? And he is what at with everybody who does not. Believe what we believe. And these guys, they were so organized that they orchestrated the ass whipping during the day where there's, uh, a soccer game between the two major teams in Egypt. So nobody's in school because everybody watching the game, they give us a room to have a meeting in the fifth floor, so you cannot jump out of the window unless you're planning and killing yourself.
[00:37:55] And they put us in the end of the hallway. So these guys planned it. So it wasn't a random, let's just go beat them up. It was like, okay, we're gonna have a plan. Ah, so we cannot underestimate their sick mind and go and say, well, and we have a lot of those guys in the US by the way, and we, and they've been in the US since the sixties, and they have beliefs that they're not gonna change unless, like I said this in the book as like, you know, some grass, you can water it and you change the color and you make it really green grass if you start early on with that grass, some grass already as long as like older or grown enough.
[00:38:33] You cannot change it, you just get weed out. And I'm not saying go kill people. I'm just saying that's how the, the G Wild was, is like, you know, when you, there are people with hopeless cases and you cannot just to try to convince them to change their minds. So we have to look at how these organizations, radical organizations, and not just Islamic radical organizations, honestly, in the radical organizations, we have to look at how they recruit the people.
[00:38:57] They join them and, and we go and we say, how can we fix this? But if we just watch and wait for them to change their mind, that's not gonna happen.
[00:39:06] Jordan Harbinger: What made you wanna come to the United States? Was it the idea that like, look, Egypt is full of these Muslim brotherhood guys, the other side's a military dictatorship, there's no future here, or was there something else going on?
[00:39:16] Adam Gamal: It's, uh, mainly all the above plus, right? So okay. Muslim Brotherhood were like, you know, moving faster than a lot of people thought. Although as, as a kid I was seeing that I was a kid anymore. I mean, I was in college, so I can see that government, uh, was military, military dictatorship. So. Based on what's your last name, what family you came from, how rich or poor you are.
[00:39:36] You have no hope. What I was telling, I firmly believe this. I came to the US to give me the right to dream and what a lot of people don't, they take this for granted. The US actually gives you the right to dream that you can actually walk down the street and you say, you know, you see this house. One day I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy this house, I'm gonna own a house like this.
[00:39:58] In Egypt, you don't have that option. You cannot go and say, well, here's a couple of million dollar house. I'm gonna work my ass off till I buy it. You don't have that option there. It's either you poor or you're rich and where you were born and how you were born and what family, and, and you can have one of two exceptions, but even the exceptions of successful people in Egypt, they left Egypt.
[00:40:19] Like, you know, some of the best doctors in the world are Egyptians. They left Egypt, uh, one of the best soccer players in the world. Everybody knows him Salala in in Liverpool. He left Egypt Noble Prize winners who originally from Egypt. They won it when they were in the us. So it's seeking better opportunities than seeking a, a land where you have
[00:40:37] Jordan Harbinger: the right to dream.
[00:40:38] Speaking of dreams, tell me about your first night in New York City, because that was more of a nightmare. I think
[00:40:44] Adam Gamal: that's a good way. I was gonna tell you, so isn't a dream. So I land in New York, but literally, I mean, I, I had a booklet, they give it to you as an international student. You have a booklet that has all their economic places to stay at.
[00:40:59] I had the addresses of all the YMCAs. Oh yeah. One of them is, was in New York City. I get off the plane in New York and I try to talk to the bus driver who I don't understand what he's saying. He was nice enough to like, okay, dude, just sit here. Took the booklet from me after asking him 10 times, and it was his way of like, dude, stop fucking asking me questions.
[00:41:20] When your stop comes, I'll
[00:41:22] Jordan Harbinger: lay out. Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. Like Y-M-C-A-Y-M-C-A. All right. Just sit here, I'll tell you when to get on the bus. Exactly. Just stop talking and then we'll be okay.
[00:41:29] Adam Gamal: Yeah. So I get on the subway, we get off. I had a friend, he was traveling with me, me not speaking English. I knew English more than he did, so it was, it was like, you know, a clown show.
[00:41:41] Couldn't make it outta the subway station to go up. It was a Sunday. Finally, a police officer, after asking him a few times, took me by the hand and took me out, and he's like, here's the street. So it is raining. And I'm like, dude, it doesn't rain in Egypt and July. I mean, it's raining in the summer. We had a suitcase.
[00:41:57] I have my $500 hidden in my shoes. Well, I bought, like, you know, the, the subway ticket, I think it was like a dollar 25 at that time. So I have whatever left from the five five. So I'm hiding the, the money in my shoes. I'm terrified. I see the police officer is like, he pointed the YMCA. We go there and I had a phone number of a friend.
[00:42:15] He was in the Boy Scouts in Egypt with me. His mom gave me his phone number and she's like, he's in the us He's been in the US for, I wanna say it was a year or two before me. I get coins and I'm dialing his number from a paid phone in the YMCA. There is a community bathroom in the YMCA, the paid phone by the community bathroom.
[00:42:34] So I go and I dial the number and what his mom didn't do is she didn't put one plus one before the area code.
[00:42:41] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, she didn't dial one before the area code? Right. Okay. She didn't
[00:42:43] Adam Gamal: write it or she didn't write the one. Right. I'm dialing without the one. It doesn't go through. I kept doing that till like about two o'clock in the morning.
[00:42:51] Finally, there is a junkie standing by the bathroom. I think he got sick and tired again of seeing me. The guy wanna smoke his joint and he is like this. Foreign kid come in. So he took the number, he took the quarter, put it there, and dialed the number for me. Finally, my friend answered, I told him where I'm at.
[00:43:08] He's like, go back to your room, move your bunk bed behind the door so nobody can break into your room and don't leave. Don't get out of the room till I come and pick you up tomorrow. So my buddy's in the room, I go back to the room, we push the bunk bed behind the door. I take the $500, I put them under the install of the shoes and I put my socks there.
[00:43:30] And I'm like, okay, if they, if somebody comes to the room, they wouldn't be able to find the money. So I was really terrified. I mean, because when I landed there too, I had just seen pretty woman, Julia, Robert and uh uh, Richard Gar. I was like, dude, what happened to the limos? What happened to Julia Roberts?
[00:43:45] I mean, what happened to, right. All the pretty women that I'm gonna see in the streets and the limos and you know, like well dressed men and I. Was none of that, by the way, none of that.
[00:43:55] Jordan Harbinger: So I
[00:43:55] Adam Gamal: was like, yeah,
[00:43:56] Jordan Harbinger: they're not at the YMCA in Harlem at four o'clock in the morning.
[00:43:59] Adam Gamal: And I was like, did I land in the wrong, did I land in the wrong country?
[00:44:03] So next morning we ended up going to New Jersey and uh, the journey started from there.
[00:44:09] Jordan Harbinger: That's so funny. I, I, my friend is also Egyptian and grew up and his whole family's in New Jersey. It's a, I don't know how big the Egyptian community is there, but there's a distinct possibility that you are either related to or know somebody from my friend's family, unless there's just a zillion Egyptian people there are in New Jersey, which is also possible.
[00:44:26] Adam Gamal: It's a huge Egyptian community and I have no idea. And when I came and everybody was like, Hey man, when you go, there is a mosque in Jersey City. Just go there and you'll find people that you know, and you'll meet them and then they'll tell you where to, uh, go to school, where to live, where to get a job.
[00:44:43] So, I don't know why Jersey City, but everybody comes to Jersey City. The fortunate one, the lucky ones, they go there as a stop and they leave. I think the unfortunate ones our, the all lucky ones, they ended up going and staying. I was lucky. I went there for a bit and I left
[00:44:59] Jordan Harbinger: trapped in New Jersey, the American nightmare.
[00:45:01] Yeah. No, it's probably not that bad. It's not, it's not New Jersey's the butt of every joke as you know. It's really not that bad of a, of a poison. I know. We need something to kick, I guess. I don't know. It's like poor New Jersey.
[00:45:12] Adam Gamal: When I tell people like I was, uh, I lived in New Jersey, like put exit, I'm like 14 a, so, but what I didn't tell you to, like who did I meet in the mosque?
[00:45:20] So I met the blind chief, the guy who was behind the World Trade Center. Oh, the bombing, you mean the blind sha. So tell us a little bit about who this guy was. So this guy was originally, most likely was one of the Muslim brotherhood guy, advanced a bit to whatever came, like JAMA Islam like came after the Muslim Brotherhood.
[00:45:40] And he was the guy who issued the Fatah for killing Sadat, the president of Egypt, the president of Egypt at that time. And he said because Sadat did the peace agreement with Israel. It's okay to kill him because whatever he came up with some, like any of the other crazy imams. So he came up with this and he's like, so he ended up being prosecuted and I don't know if he spent time in jail or he came out, but then after that he was helping pushing people to Afghanistan with the war against Soviet.
[00:46:11] And then according to public record, few years after CIA helped him, issued him a visa from the US Embassy in Sudan. And he ended up in the us He ended up in Jersey City in the mosque. So here I am, I walked there and maybe my second or third months I'm in the us I walked there and I see him and I hear people saying, you know, Shroer is here.
[00:46:32] Shroer is here. His name is Omar Rap Mann. And we called him the blind chair. He wasn't doing sermons or anything. I mean he was just, he would go pray. He, I think he was married to an American Muslim lady to get his green card or whatever. But he would sit down and after Friday prayer. He would sit down and people would sit around him and ask him religious questions like you wanna ask a priest like, is gambling okay or not in in religion?
[00:46:59] So one time I'm a curious kid and I said, I'm like, I wanna hear what these people talking about. Those are the people who beat the fuck out of me in Egypt. And here I come to the US and they are here still. I mean, what the fuck?
[00:47:09] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.
[00:47:10] Adam Gamal: I sit down and I'm like, lemme see what they say. And then what kind of crazy stuff they talking about.
[00:47:15] I think the second question that somebody asked him was like, is oral sex allowed in Islam or not? So these guys who've been studying religion for God knows how long, and you know, they come into a Friday prayer and they sit down and they're gonna talk about like, you know, how they gonna solve the world's problem and.
[00:47:34] What you gonna ask the guy is like, you know, is oral sex allowed or not? Yeah. I mean,
[00:47:39] Jordan Harbinger: I'm like, dudes be dudes at the end of the day, I think. Yeah.
[00:47:41] Adam Gamal: Yeah. So I'm like, okay, I'm standing in the wrong crowd and got up and left. And if people are interested, what he said is, he said it's allowed. So if people are curious
[00:47:50] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.
[00:47:50] But it's like you think like, oh, I'm gonna ask this guy. Like, why did God put us on Earth? Yeah. And it's like, Hey, can I get BJ's or, or what? Yeah.
[00:47:59] Adam Gamal: All right. Yeah. You and I, like I said,
[00:48:00] Jordan Harbinger: deep thinker. He is
[00:48:01] Adam Gamal: the guy with like, you know, the big thinker, the scholar, the guy who's been studying Yeah. Religion forever.
[00:48:06] I'm gonna ask him like, how could I be a good human being? Or like, why God put us on Earth or, right. Tell me the history of this religion or that religion. But I know that the question was literally that and I was like, okay, fuck all of you guys. I'm leaving.
[00:48:19] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Well it also shows you like the level of thought people put into, they're like, I'm gonna die from my religion.
[00:48:26] What do you know about it? Uh, I just know that I'm allowed to, you know, get oral sex. Yeah. And what's the history? I didn't ask any of those questions. I didn't ask any of the big, like, those other questions. It's just like, this is the stuff that's important to guys who are in their early twenties or whatever, who are Yeah.
[00:48:41] The ones that they're recruiting into this extreme version. Yep. Of religion. It's just, it's insane. It's literally insane in a waste of air. How was immigrant life though in the first few years? I mean, you talk about having dentistry done basically in some guy's house, people ripping you off at work, playing chess in the park for money.
[00:49:02] I mean, that's quite a grind.
[00:49:03] Adam Gamal: So what's a lot of people don't realize is like, you know, the majority of immigrants, legal immigrants, so I don't want people to get all banned outta shit. But immigrants, when they come, they come in because they are seeking a better life and they'll do whatever it takes.
[00:49:16] They'll work hard, they'll study hard, they'll grind. So first month, first three months, actually I'm sleeping on the floor and not like having a mattress on the floor, no sleeping on the floor. I didn't have money. I barely got a job. I'm going, taking English classes in the evening to learn English. I'm working in a factory that the guys were like Lebanese.
[00:49:37] Again, nothing against Lebanese people, but these guys decided not to pay me after like, you know, three, four months. And you're like, okay, now I don't have money. What am I gonna do? Found a mattress in the trash, took a mattress from the trash, put it in the room. And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna bring a blanket and just put it on and sleep on it.
[00:49:52] This is part of it. And you like, you know, you work in gas stations, you do whatever it takes, because whatever you have here at that time, still better than your own country. You went and you work, then now I can go to school. Now I can learn English. Now I can maybe learn more than English. Maybe I can get a college degree better than what I was gonna have from there.
[00:50:12] And then I, I didn't know I even know how to drive. So I've learned how to drive with all of these different jobs. And then finally I found a job with a, a guy, his name is Jim, and he, Jewish American, Israeli, like originally from Israel. So he and I could not be any different. I'm from Egypt, right? Arab Muslim, he's Jewish, Israeli American.
[00:50:33] But we both had the same common goal, like, you know, looking for a better life and looking for how to make America home. So, didn't take us a week to click to like, you know, we had the same ideas, we had the same common goals, we had the same opinions. You do that and you do that a bit, and then you are like, okay, how do I make this home?
[00:50:51] How do I make this country really home? It's not cliche. I'm not trying to recruit people to join the army, but I was like, here is a key actually can get you. To be as American as anybody can argue with you. And it was joining the military and I felt like it's a, that I owe the country I'm gonna make own.
[00:51:08] And I decided to join the military. But during that time, whether, uh, the things that people take for granted, just the right to dream or even understand in the immigrant community, like we were to save money. If you come in from Egypt, it was cheaper to buy a ticket from Egypt round trip. So when we would go to Egypt, we'll take one way ticket, come back, have our own trip ticket, but then at that time, the airline was the only phase that you see when you get in on a flight for an international flight.
[00:51:38] Like he came from Egypt. I would buy your ticket from you and pay you, you know, some money and you give me your ticket and I'll fly to Egypt and a ticket that it says Jordan on it. And nobody knew that. So those are the things that I'm talking about. Like immigrants, they knew the ins and outs of those things.
[00:51:54] They knew, like, who's faking a driver's license somewhere in uh, Brooklyn. Who's getting people to marry for a green card? Immigrants knew those things. So it's a valuable resource for us to just ignore them and say, well, you know, you just arrived, you know, two generations before you and my family came in Ellis Island and they took the keys with them and they locked the door and nobody else can come behind.
[00:52:18] No, it's still a country of immigrants and if you don't bring them in and, and have them part of society, they gotta become part of, again, a society and you don't want there.
[00:52:30] Jordan Harbinger: This is the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Adam Gamal. We'll be right back. I. This episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show is brought to you by Nissan. Ever wondered what's around that next corner, or what happens when you push further? Nissan SUVs? Have the capabilities to take your adventure to the next level.
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[00:54:42] You're wondering if we even have that sponsor, just email me, jordan@jordanharbinger.com. I am more than happy to surface that code for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now, for the rest of part one with Adam Gamal, it's interesting, you, in the book, you make a, you highlight the idea that the American dream is the right to dream, whereas in Egypt, under the Muslim Brotherhood, you don't have the right to dream.
[00:55:06] It's, you're not supposed to do anything like that. It's not really a part of the culture, which is, it's hard to wrap your head around that as an American. Like, wait, you don't want upward mobility if it's not somebody who's in our organization that believes what we believe. I mean, that is such a toxic thing to grow up with because basically you're forcing all your best people to join this weird militant organization where they're focused on totally different things.
[00:55:30] So of course people leave if they have potential in the ability to do so and go literally anywhere else. Well, maybe not literally anywhere else, but certainly to a free country like the United States, a relatively free country like the United States. So you joined the military. How many Egyptian immigrants with shaky English are in basic training with you at that point?
[00:55:48] I would imagine it's the lonely journey. In the beginning, I was the only guy,
[00:55:52] Adam Gamal: so yeah, I bet. I was totally the only guy For people who know me in person, A lot of Egyptians look like Mexicans or Puerto Ricans. So everybody spoke to me in Spanish because everybody thought I was Puerto Rican because nobody nice.
[00:56:05] Like even fathom, like the idea of I. Having an Egyptian guy in the Army. So yeah, I was the only guy in basic training. I was the only guy in advanced training. I was the only guy. Uh, well, I'll tell you actually, the first Egyptian I met, I met him. Fort Hood, Texas was in his way outta the army. He was an older guy, spent four years in the Army and he was leaving the army at that time.
[00:56:26] I think he was a tanker. But no, there wasn't that many Arabs in general. I think as a military we were not doing a good job in recruiting in those immigrant communities. And then at the same time, the immigrant communities, the Arab American immigrant community, were not doing a good job adapting like some immigrants, whether Arabs or non-Arab, some immigrants, when they arrived to the us they have achieved their goal.
[00:56:47] Their goal was to arrive and they stop it and that's it. Yeah. And I'm like, no, that's the beginning of the journey. You just arrived to the beginning of the journey. That's one point I'm trying to put a lot of emphasis on, on the book and in my interviews to speak to the immigrant community. Don't settle for.
[00:57:06] Status quo. I mean, you came to this country to make it home, to make the best out of your life. So go to school, join the military, go work hard, start the business. Do something other than just saying, I'm gonna come and stay in this. So like you and I talked a few minutes ago, but it must be like a gazillion Egyptians in Jersey.
[00:57:24] 'cause they come and they stay. Well you have like another 49 states. You can actually travel, go to different states, buy a foreign motor, like go farm somewhere, or go cow tipping in Wisconsin or go do something else. Like explore America. The
[00:57:38] Jordan Harbinger: peak of American life.
[00:57:39] Adam Gamal: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:57:41] Jordan Harbinger: Like that's funny. I understand that.
[00:57:44] It's true though. People do. They stay and they get settled. But that's also like very much human nature, you know? Like my grandparents were immigrants. One of my grandparents, I should say was an immigrant. The other ones were also already had been born in Detroit, but their parents had immigrated to Detroit.
[00:57:58] And then my parents stayed in Detroit and then I moved. And then suddenly my cousins started moving and I, I was like, oh, you know, it's funny that you ended up moving to California. My cousins, a bunch of my cousins told me, oh, I never would've left Michigan. But then you left. Yep. And then I left, and then Christina left and then Steve and it's like, oh, you guys left because I left.
[00:58:18] And they're like, yeah, we saw you moved and then you were living like a different life and you would, you didn't move back home after five months. So we moved and we realized we like it better over here. You really do need to see somebody break the mold. It's, it's tough though. And that's kinda like what you're doing, right?
[00:58:32] Like you broke the mold, join the military, move to a different place, and you're showing other immigrants like, Hey, you don't have to just stay in, you know, New Jersey or Dearborn, Michigan, or Cupertino, California, or wherever your family. Moves to Arcadia, I guess for the Chinese, a lot of the Chi or Vancouver, right?
[00:58:50] There's a lot of places you can go. I would imagine though if man, if you're like the only Arab that you even knew in the military, surely you're dealing with some racism at that point in time just because you know, you're talking about joining a military full of people who are fighting other people that look like you, not necessarily being on the same team.
[00:59:08] Adam Gamal: Yeah, absolutely. So I wanna go back to your point about people not moving. It's exactly what's in the book. Who Moved My Cheese? I was the first mice who just decided, you know what, I'm not gonna say who moved my cheese. I'm gonna go out and find more cheese. So I found a lot more cheese. But to go back to, uh, yeah, so when you join the military and you, you're not white, you're not black, you're not Puerto Rican or you're not Hispanic, you must be the enemy.
[00:59:33] That's just how the equation goes, right? You must be the enemy. And it was right after Desert Storm. So my second day of basic training, the drill sergeant, they set you on the floor. It's like a big call. They set you on the floor. They, uh, trying to break the ice. The drill sergeant goes around and he's like, you know, every, every one of you guys tell me your name, where you're from, and why did you join the Army?
[00:59:56] And you have the guy from Hawaii. He is like, I'm from Hawaii. My name is John Smith. And I joined the Army because I want a better education. Or I joined the army 'cause I wanna serve my country. I wanna pay for college, I have student loans. So you have all of these different reasons. I didn't get to tell the guy my reason.
[01:00:11] I said, you know, my name is Adam Gamal, I'm from Egypt. And the guy was like, well, hold on, hold on. Before I even told him why I joined the army. And he is like, where you from again? I said, I'm from Egypt. He is like. Didn't we fucking kill all of you Arabs in desert store? Oof. I said, as a matter of fact, no, you have one left.
[01:00:28] Same here.
[01:00:30] Jordan Harbinger: Oh my gosh. What a horrible thing to say though. I mean so ignorant and gross. And let me
[01:00:36] Adam Gamal: add to this, that drill sergeant's last name because it's a very common last name was Vasquez. So you can imagine Vasquez what national exactly. So I'm like, yeah, this is coming from a brown guy just like me.
[01:00:49] Yeah. My battle buddy was from Pennsylvania. A blonde kid with blue eyes. One of the nicest guys right after that, I mean we, we walked back to our, like as we walk into our bunk beds and the guy was like, Hey man, no. Like something like that bother you. So I tell people, for every person that you meet who's either ignorant or, I didn't wanna say the guy was racist because I don't think he was racist.
[01:01:09] I just think he was ignorant. But for every person that you meet who's ignorant, there are at least maybe 99 who are good hearted kind people. Who are willing to just show you the rope and take you with them. And, and the way, and, and like I said, a lot of things I mentioned in the book, like about that guy is like, you know, the, the last name, basic training, want me to spend time with his family.
[01:01:30] I go to for Hood, Texas. My first platoon sergeant is a great guy who is like, you know, taking me under his wing, literally like taking me under his arm. And he's like, and I'm short, so it's easy for him to take me under his arm. And he shows me, he teaches me those things. So for every, like, I don't want people to be scared like, oh, the military is like full of racist people because it's not.
[01:01:51] But I did, I did encounter those and I want this to be more positive and more encouraging and like inspire in. This is not about me complaining about somebody being racist in the military because we, we have racist people in Egypt too, so we have him everywhere.
[01:02:04] Jordan Harbinger: That's true. I just thought it was an, you know, you're the only guy there.
[01:02:07] Surely that must have happened. Tell us what we can learn about the unit. I know it's tough because you can't even mention the name and it's like there's no other books about this unit. It started in 1981. No one other than you has really written about this. Correct. It's basically still totally secret.
[01:02:24] Adam Gamal: So, correct. So we have journalists who did like, you know, investigative journalists and they got like, you know, we set in a bar, got some information from, I'm the first actual operative or operator that was member in the unit that wrote a book about his life and about the unit. So it was a very hard balance to tell, to tell a story and at the same time protect national security.
[01:02:48] It's an organization made of, it's a mix of a special operation and intel. So imagine that you take Delta and CIA and you put them together. NSA and you put the three of them together and you come up with a guy who's capable of being one of the three. So that's the objective of the unit was created after the Iran hostage situation.
[01:03:09] And that was like at that time, okay, we have door kickers. And I'm not gonna say like it's easy to become a Delta guy or a Navy, or like a Seal Team six guy. It's still hard, but it's a lot more physical. So like, you know, go to the gym 20 hours a day, get muscle memories and how to shoot, you're gonna pick it up.
[01:03:24] Then the more you shoot, the more calm you are when you shoot. You can train what we call hard skills when you go to soft skills, how to blend in, how to be the gray guy. How to be the guy who's not gonna sit and talk about, let me tell you how many times I jumped out of an aircraft and let me tell you how cool I am and let me, let me just show you how you wanna go to the gun show.
[01:03:43] Let me show you the guns. Mm-Hmm. But for us as an organization, we were a bit different, mentally different. We were more, I don't wanna say we were more intellectual, but we were more like thinkers. We more wanna solve problems. Give us a problem, we'll put our brain behind it and we'll sit and think about it and, and do it.
[01:04:01] And then it's made of, you know, like men and women, and I call 'em like, you know, shadow Warriors, who they, nobody knows anything about them. I wanted people to know, like there, there is a, an organization that, and we got approval from DOD, just went through all the process. It sat with DOD for, uh, 13 months, the book.
[01:04:17] They took some stuff out, they changed some stuff to protect sources and methods. So the book went to DOD in August in 2020 21. So literally almost three years ago. This is what it first went for review and it, it sat with them till 2022, late 2022 is then when we got it and we, we talked about it, but the organization itself, I cannot obviously say the location, but we, when I was there, we had people deploying in over like 20 plus countries in war zones, non-war zones, working out of embassies, not working out of embassies, but we were going after.
[01:04:53] The real, real, real bad guys, and our main job was not to kill them. Our main job was to find them and fix them. Fix them, is like, I did, like the story that we talked about in the first of the book is this guy has been tracking him for a few years now we know exactly where he's at. Fix him. He's like, okay, he's gonna be in this location for a few days, a few weeks, or whatever.
[01:05:14] For us to be able to execute the target, that's the unit. Our selection process is not classified, but to maintain the integrity of it. I didn't talk about selection or training.
[01:05:23] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.
[01:05:23] Adam Gamal: Part of our training obviously is classified. Another part is like, you know, how to do land navigation, how to, uh, do defensive driving, how to shoot, how to jump out of an airplane.
[01:05:34] Those are common things like for special operation guys.
[01:05:37] Jordan Harbinger: I thought that was, I was like, wait a minute. This training, there's a lot of gaps, but it makes sense that they made, they had to remove a lot of that stuff. It is sort of clear though that brain power is part of the focus and I know. People idolize seals because of their super impressive physical and mental training.
[01:05:52] But I, I always figured, and I wish I'd known this when I was younger, because I may have actually stayed and joined the military instead of leaving the reserves, I, I figured there had to be room for people who can speak multiple languages, blend in with various cultures, develop relationships at a really expert level, but maybe can't, I don't know, like swim five miles in the ocean while carrying a cinder block or whatever.
[01:06:17] Like that stuff is amazing. But whenever I saw that, I was like, well, I can't do that. All I, all I can do is learn languages to fluency very quickly and connect with people really easily and get them to tell me things that they don't normally talk about like that. I was like, ah, but there's no real use for that.
[01:06:31] The State Department was interested in that stuff. Of course, and other organizations were interested in that stuff. But the, the military was like, we need nuclear engineers. And I was like, all right, this is not the crew for me that you either need to be able to swim five miles in the ocean without a wetsuit carrying a cinder block, or you need to be able to be a nuclear engineer.
[01:06:48] So I just, I left for that reason.
[01:06:50] Adam Gamal: So the thing is for us too, well, what are the guys who are swimming and, and they throw things in the bottle of the pool. We did some of these things, not, absolutely not to the extent like the Navy seals do. I think a lot of people love the Navy Seals because the Navy Seals love to write books.
[01:07:03] Oh, people know them very well. Yeah. That's part of it. That's, sure. But the guys, I, I have a lot of friends like Navy Seals and I have a lot of friends from Delta. Uh, I have a lot of friends from CIA and NSA and they are all great Americans. It's just everybody brings his own strength to the table. We couldn't do it by ourselves.
[01:07:21] We couldn't do it without having other guys with us. For them, it's the same thing. They couldn't do it without having other people around them. So it's a good ecosystem in the join special Operation command, and especially when we partnered a lot with uh, C-I-N-N-S-A, we were able to execute targets a lot better.
[01:07:37] But you're absolutely right. Having people with like, you know, the language capability, the cultural capability, the people who are like, what you doing now is like, you get people to talk, right? And you get them to tell you stories that most likely they wouldn't say it somewhere else. Having that capability, being a good listener, being attentive to even in business now, like for me, understanding when to shake somebody's hand.
[01:07:59] Understanding when, how to treat an older guy who's older than you. And I've seen it, like I've seen it in Iraq, I've seen it in Afghanistan. When you see like a young captain who is 23, 24 years old, captain America, he feels he is better than everybody else in the world. And he sits with a. A 70-year-old tribal leader in Afghanistan, and he just sits and he crosses his legs and he has the bottom of his shoe in the face of the older man.
[01:08:24] Well, in a lot of cultures that's not a good thing. So you do that and then you right there, you just lost an ally. You just lost the guy who could have been your own. What I tell people, like understand culture, it's like the commas and the periods of the English language, the commas and the periods are too small, but they change the meaning.
[01:08:43] It could be a question, it could be a sentence, it could be the end of a sentence, you not knowing. The culture is basically you just have a sentence run in without any commas, periods, question marks, just the sentence is going and then you're going with it. So I tell people just those small things in the culture have a lot of meaning and people should understand it.
[01:09:02] And I was promoting that when I was in the military. Like, guys, we need to learn these things, not just the language. We need to learn those things because we can win hard. Some minds a lot faster. Then just go and talk him down to an older man.
[01:09:14] Jordan Harbinger: You know, the punctuation analogy is really good. It makes a lot of sense.
[01:09:17] There's a saying in English that I'm sure you've heard, which is punctuation is the difference between helping your uncle jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse. Yep. And I'll let that one sit there for people who need a minute. I've heard that way. Hey, it's not mine. So feel free to go ahead and throw that, sprinkle that in your, your media tour.
[01:09:37] Yeah, I'll, but, uh, lemme take a note. Yes. Yeah, write that down. Only the important stuff. What types of missions you, you sort of touched on this a little bit, but what types of missions was the unit involved in? I mean, one, in the book you mentioned finding kidnapped generals. Like when I heard that, I was like, wow, how often does that happen?
[01:09:56] That seems like something that should probably never be allowed to happen.
[01:09:59] Adam Gamal: Yeah. So the unit is involved in missions where I. So we were basically getting our tasks from like Secretary of Defense level three main missions. JSO joined a special operation command in charge of three main missions, counter narcotic, counter terrorism, and hostage uh, rescue.
[01:10:18] Those are the three main missions. Counterinsurgency is something that came up after and, and I'm just still trying to understand what the fuck is Counter-insurgency. Mm-Hmm. But it's something like some general came up with it and it sounded cool, but those are the three main things. So whether it's a counter narcotic, like killing Pablo Escobar, counter-terrorism, the bin Ladens and the guys I talked about and Akai and you name it.
[01:10:42] And all the way from, I'm from Egypt, so I can say this all the way from Bak, Egypt to uh, the other bak Egypt. Right, right. So from anywhere I deployed to places. So I'll say the name of this city just because it sounds really cool and it's not classified that people were there. The name of the city is Waa Dogo.
[01:11:03] So for your listeners, they can Google it and figure
[01:11:06] Jordan Harbinger: out where the fuck is Waa Dogo. Yeah, you know, it's funny, I've heard of it before, but now I'm like, where is Waga Dogo again? Is it Ghana? No, it's Burkina. Burkina Faso. Is it Burkina Faso? Yeah. Burkina Faso. Some place of the military dictatorship.
[01:11:20] Adam Gamal: Yeah.
[01:11:21] Burkina Faso. And then you can be, maybe you'll end up in Timbuktu or you end up in
[01:11:26] Jordan Harbinger: Ji in Mali. So you can be, which also has a military dictatorship right now, which aligned with Burkina Faso. I, I guess coincidentally.
[01:11:33] Adam Gamal: And the one thing with a lot of these places that has a military dictatorship, while they have military dictatorship, the environment is ripe for extremist groups.
[01:11:43] Uh, because those extremist groups, sometimes they partner with the military, they don't partner with the military, they go against the military. And then yet there is a lot in the Saha region in uh, west Africa going all the way to Sub-Sahara. There is a lot of smugglers. So these smuggle weapons, these smuggle, and if you are a smuggler, you can smuggler terrace as well.
[01:12:00] And then the smugglers are just, their main goal in life is to make money. The unit or other junior special operation units, they go to these areas to track down bad guys who are being smuggled through. And you never know, like the, the underwear bomber was from Nigeria.
[01:12:14] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.
[01:12:15] Adam Gamal: And then they make it all the way to East Africa, to Somalia.
[01:12:18] From Somalia. They can cross the Batman Strait to make it to the Arabian Gulf and they can make it up. So it's not, it's connected and they can travel around. So General McChrystal, one of the greatest generals in our recent time is like, he used to tell us all the time, it takes a network to defeat the network if we're not operating as a network.
[01:12:40] So basically you have to, if your enemy speaks Chinese, you need to understand Chinese. If your enemy speaks network, you need to understand network. So that's why we were everywhere. So we were deployed to a lot of different locations. I traveled, I deployed more than 12 times in the 10 years I was there.
[01:12:55] After that, I left and I went to another organization, was doing something else. Then I retired in 2016, but the unit itself, so those three things, the counter narcotic, hostage rescue and counter terrorist. That's why that, okay, there is a, a general got kidnapped or when I was in Iraq, I was leaving Iraq coming back to the us.
[01:13:14] I made it to a tour. The unit commander contacted me, was like, Hey, there is a hostage situation and a kidnapped soldier in Iraq. We need you to go back. So I had to call my wife and say, Hey, uh, I'm sorry I'm not coming. I have to go back. And those are the things that a lot of people don't realize how hard on any family those things are.
[01:13:33] So people are, oh, military guys are really cool and they deploy and I'm like, special operation guys. And they get paid more and they jump out of aircraft and no, but to call your wife the day you're supposed to arrive back home and you tell her you're not coming, dude. Mm-Hmm. They need some balls.
[01:13:49] Jordan Harbinger: You are about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger show with the go-to person to help negotiate a hostage situation in Syria when no other intelligence agency would help.
[01:13:58] Daniel Levin: When you have a hostage negotiation, especially in a war zone, the hardest thing to do is to actually figure out who the hostage takers are and the rumors are off the charts. Proof of life is getting that authentication that you're talking with the people who actually have the person, and you want to know, of course, that the person's still alive.
[01:14:14] You ask 'em for some question of some nickname, something that no one would be able to know, and if they can't come back with that answer, you walk away. The person I had to flag down and find who held this Westerner hostage was probably the biggest CAPTA gun dealer in the country, and they often use the same distribution routes for the CAPTA gun as they do for human trafficking.
[01:14:34] So the same people who take little girls from villages and send them to the Gulf, to Dubai, to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia to other places there, they fill also stomachs of the girls with drugs and use them as couriers while also shipping them as the product itself. The first thing you have to do is tell the parents.
[01:14:53] To stop doing something that they wanna do and that every schmuck under the sun was telling him to do, which is to seek public support, right? To get public statements, to do Facebook campaigns. The Secretary of State say how we're not gonna leave a stone unturned until this awful act is being brought to justice.
[01:15:10] What just happens with that is your price went up before you even started negotiation. You do not wanna drive up the perceived value of the hostage. Sometimes people are taking hostage just for the shock value of executing them. What you're gonna do with the campaign that you're doing right now is gonna get your child or your spouse killed.
[01:15:29] How is pissing off the people who hold that person's life in their hands helping you? By the time I get involved, it's usually too late.
[01:15:36] Jordan Harbinger: To learn all about the nuances of negotiating with criminals and human traffickers, check out episode six 17 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Alright, that's it for part one.
[01:15:46] Part two coming soon. Might already be out, depending on when you hear this. All things Adam Gamal will be in the show notes@jordanharbinger.com. I gotta admit, there's not a whole lot. It's not even really his name. Uh, you can also ask the AI chat bot on the website, transcripts in the show notes, advertisers deals, discount codes, ways to support the show.
[01:16:02] All at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. We've also got our newsletter where every week the team and I dig into an older episode of the show. We dissect the lessons from it. So if you are a fan of the show, you wanna recap of highlights, takeaways, or you just wanna know what to listen to next.
[01:16:19] The newsletters are great place to do just that. Gabriel and I are refreshing the format as well. Looking forward to hearing your feedback on that. Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Don't forget about six minute networking as well. It's over@sixminutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram.
[01:16:35] You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. This show is created an association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is just share it with friends. When you find something useful or interesting, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about.
[01:16:53] So if you know somebody's into this, like military stuff, the intelligence stuff, special forces stuff, definitely share this episode with 'em. Maybe you wanna share it with somebody who's recently moved to the United States and is feeling a little bit foreign. This is an immigrant who really assimilated and really made it here in the States.
[01:17:07] Share this episode with them too. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. Thanks again to Nissan for sponsoring this episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Learn more@nissanusa.com.
[01:17:22] Adam and Dr. Drew: Hey buddy. Hey buddy. What's going on, man? Hi guy.
[01:17:26] Yeah, yeah, the team Loveline man. You guys remember us from back in the day? Well, we're doing a pod and we're doing it every day and we've been doing it for a while. And if you, if I hear one more time, people say, God, I loved you and Adam together on Loveline. And I'm like, yeah, yeah. We're doing a podcast.
[01:17:42] Will you please just join us at the Adam and Dr. Drew Show please at Adam, dr drew show.com. It's a great show. Come on now. Only on podcast one. That's us, Adam, and Dr. Drew Show. Just like the old days doctor's orders. Oh, oh man. You're funny. Yep. Alright, let's go save some babies. Let's do it.
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