979: Adam Gamal | My Top-Secret Fight Against Terrorism Part Two

979: Adam Gamal | My Top-Secret Fight Against Terrorism Part Two

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: Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show.

[00:00:02] Adam Gamal: It's easy for ISIS to go and recruit this French citizen who, uh, maybe finished high school or something, but didn't go to the best schools, and he sells drugs in the street, and all of a sudden they've given him a purpose. If you put people in desperate situations, even in France and England and Belgium, they'd be easily recruited as well.

[00:00:25] 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 journalist.

[00:00:48] Turn poker champion, legendary actor, tech luminary, or music mogul. And if you're new to the show or you wanna tell your friends about the show, and I love it when you do that, our starter packs are a great place to begin. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics.

[00:01:03] Disinformation, cyber warfare, AI crime, cults, and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Now this is part two with Adam Gamal. If you haven't heard part one, go back and listen to that first.

[00:01:19] This is a continuation of that episode. We just went super long and we ended up with two parts. Alright, now we continue with Adam Gamal.

[00:01:30] There's a story you tell in the book that's quite funny because I think I can completely relate to it. It was something like one of many of your close calls where I think you'd gotten shot by somebody who was clearly just trying to take you out and it was outside some place where you were staying.

[00:01:45] Your thought was, oh man, if I die, my wife is gonna be so pissed off. And I was like. I can relate. Anytime I go somewhere, I'm like, how dangerous is this? Okay. If I'm thinking about going somewhere to do something that has an element of danger, I'm like, oh man, but if I get injured, hurt or die, Jen is gonna wanna kill me again.

[00:02:04] Adam Gamal: So if you believe in the laws of attraction, like The Secret, the book, and you believe in any of these things, yeah, I did believe of it at that time. Because honestly, I think what kept me alive was thinking of my wife, my daughter. I had that one daughter at that time. Now I have two. And my mom, I was like, dude, my wife is not 30 yet.

[00:02:24] If I die now, she's gonna be really pissed. And how the fuck her life is gonna be? Yeah. Yeah. My dad had passed away seven, eight months before I got shot. So I was like, okay. So my mom lost my dad and then she's gonna lose me. And my daughter, who was four at that time, I'm like, she's never gonna get to know me.

[00:02:43] I really believe, even when I made it to the hospital and they checked my vitals and I made it to the hospital, I would say like maybe two hours after I was shot, my vitals were perfect. The doctor was like, dude, if you don't believe in God, you should start believing. Yeah. My vitals were perfect. Although I was shot in the stomach with an exit wound in the back.

[00:03:02] I was bleeding for about two hours. From the amount of blood I lost, I got taken to the hospital in a one of the guard's pickup truck in the front seat, not in the back. So people don't think, like I was laying in the back of a pickup truck. I was in the front. I could not open the door of the pickup truck when we made it to the hospital.

[00:03:18] Right. And I pulled the guard. I said, just make sure you unlock the door. And he's like, it's unlocked. But I didn't have enough strength. But yeah, I would say my thinking of my family, what kept me alive.

[00:03:29] Jordan Harbinger: That story is why, I mean, they just followed you back home. This is, you are staying somewhere overseas in a dangerous area, I assume.

[00:03:36] And they followed you and went after you. How did this happen?

[00:03:39] Adam Gamal: What I think is, or what we think is the, uh, couple of days before. We were in a mission, so this is a country neighbor in to Somalia so we can say the name of the country. But a week before that we weren't about like to be in an ambush in Somalia where we had to really escape, but we had like, you know, radio intercepts where they were talking about like, you know, taking us out and they thought we were gonna move from the airfield where we landed to go to another location, which we used to do like almost every week that week.

[00:04:09] By the grace of God, we had equipment in the airfield at that time. So I told that team I was with, it was Two Navy Seals me, another guy from my unit and two CIA guys. So the six of us were going there in and out. I said, let's just service the equipment. We haven't serviced this equipment for about a month before we go to the other location.

[00:04:30] Or you guys can go to the other location, do you what you have to do. Then when you come back, you pick us up and then we'll leave together. The CIA guy said, no, let's just all stick together. We'll be together and you just service the equipment, you and your buddy, and then we'll, we'll go and servicing the equipment.

[00:04:46] It took us about half an hour, 45 minutes. So the guys were planning to ambush us, thought we're not going to the other location. So rather than waiting for us, they start moving towards our direction. Well, at that time too, we had like Somali guys on the ground that we were dealing with. They were helping us basically.

[00:05:03] They start like some radio chatters going on. The pilot who flew us. There was a, a local from the region who understood Somali. He, a scam is, I mean, this guy never seen him like you knew, never ever seen him angry or, uh, he's very, very calm personality, chilled really, really chill. Like you think of the guy like hiding something, but you really, he's really chill.

[00:05:23] And I saw him like saying, Hey, we have to leave now. We have to just leave now. When he starts saying that, the Somali locals guys that we, they helping us and they had weapons and everything. They were like, okay, you guys just gotta go. So we ended up leaving. The pilot took off with the, the door of the aircraft, like the steps still down.

[00:05:41] Oh gosh. So as we got there, we start and we had like weapons in our backpack. We took our weapons out, put it together. Then we start seeing those, uh, we call them technicals. Those are the pickup trucks with weapons on them. Yeah. Like crew serve weapons and we start seeing those coming towards us and the pilot took off and then we start seeing them like getting in a firefight with our local guys.

[00:06:01] But the local guys we had, like, they were well armed as well. One of the guys was involving in this episode with Somalia American. We got the name and everything and I think the embassy contacted treasury somehow. The guy bank account got frozen within like a day. His wife who knew the sister of one of our translators and our translator was Somali American with top secret clearance.

[00:06:26] So, but Somali communities connected, like you and I were talking about Egyptian community. The wife of that guy reached out to the sister of our translator and she met him in the city where we were at. That was, so the ambush was Thursday. She met the guy on Tuesday. He meets her for dinner. So she tells him, Hey, my husband wanted to talk to somebody from the embassy.

[00:06:46] And literally she said, Hey, my husband would like to talk to the CIA. She gave him a phone number. The guy left her, came straight to my house. Wow. So when the guy came to my house and he called me, he's like, I have to come to see you now. So that was like a Tuesday evening when he came and he told me the story.

[00:07:01] I said, Hey, what are you followed? Well, of course he said, no, he wasn't followed. He doesn't know. He wasn't trained. He's just a translator, civilian translator. So that was Tuesday. Two days after. On Thursday, we had the mission in the morning, came back. Then the evening, I went out to get something to eat. I came back and three guys were standing by the door of my house.

[00:07:20] So I didn't see them. Obviously. I came out of the car. The house we were in was like a townhouse villa kind of thing. We had bushes, trees, compound guard. So the guard opens the door for me. I drive in, I get out of the car, and when I got out of the car, one guy was standing right behind the car and he pulled the trigger and he shot me in my stomach.

[00:07:40] Wow. So the whole thing was a setup. That's crazy. I believe it was a setup. Some people say, well, maybe it was a robbery. We will never know the exact reason behind it. But all I know is like, I had an expensive watch at that time, didn't steal my watch. Like rather than trying to, Hey, give me what you had, give me your money.

[00:07:59] Know that guy squeezed the trigger. So that's what I believe.

[00:08:02] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Wow. That's that whole thing. That whole thing. Just, yeah. It sounds like a, a setup from the jump. It's crazy that it involved. People in the Somali community in the United States meeting and exchanging essentially intelligence at that point, I think, right.

[00:08:15] To set this, this up as well, that's kind of unexpected. It's interesting that they froze his bank account right away. I'm just imagining some guy rolling into an ambush in the back of a technical manning, a 50 caliber machine gun and he is like blink and he looks at his phone and it's a push notification from Chase that his bank account in New Jersey what I, or whatever, California's frozen and he's like, damnit,

[00:08:35] Adam Gamal: what I really think is turn the truck around.

[00:08:37] Yeah. Most likely. Honestly, what I think is, I think it was in the process before that, I don't think the fees bank account that quick. I think it was in the process before that and most likely it just timing stars aligned. It hit his account at that time or whatever he lost and that's what, honestly, that's what the wife said too.

[00:08:53] The wife said his bank account has been frozen. Was it really frozen or was it she just trying to get to the translator who works with us to see, I. He can connect her to us. I didn't know honesty. Interesting. Yeah. Then after I got shot, I got in a fist fight with the guy for about five minutes because you don't know how high your adrenaline goes.

[00:09:16] I didn't think I was shot.

[00:09:17] Jordan Harbinger: Right. I thought

[00:09:18] Adam Gamal: he

[00:09:18] Jordan Harbinger: missed. Oh wow. Yeah. 'cause you weren't disabled. Unbelievable. So tell me a little bit more about your time in Africa. You know, it seems like you were there to stop terrorist attacks against the United States. Well, probably against the rest of the world in general, but maybe especially the United States.

[00:09:34] Is that kinda the primary goal down there?

[00:09:37] Adam Gamal: So the primary goal was to basically track the flood of terrorism coming from the beginning. So Africa, a lot of places in Africa had, and this is no secret, Somalia in uh, specifically used to have a lot of terrorist training camps. Like the videos that you used to see on tv, well, like guys jump in the monkey bars.

[00:09:56] And so Somalia used to have quite a few of those. So we knew that there was like recruiting going on. For people to go train. And again, unfortunately we had some Americans even going there. They would travel to one of the neighboring countries and then make it to Somalia, then do training, then come out and go fight somewhere else.

[00:10:19] So our mission was like basically to sketch bad guys from the beginning, either before they do the training, and if they come in from the US hopefully we can, uh, intercept them. We had a good relationship with the FBI, we had good relationship with host nations that we were working at. So hopefully when the guy lands, if we know the guy intention is to make it to one of these training camps, usually the FI will take the guy aside with Host nation, question the guy a bit, call the guy's family and say, Hey, we have your son.

[00:10:49] Uh, your son is going to be a terrorist. And sometimes we didn't get the guys, I mean, they went and they made it to the training and they came back radicalized or they were in the potential to be radicalized and they got back. Radicalized from those. So if you see it all the way from Mali Mauritania, so there is a movie about Mauritania to them called the Moinian.

[00:11:08] The guy who was in in Guantanamo. So he can go all the way to West Africa to Moria, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and he call Algeria and Morocco and Egypt and Libyan Sudan. And so you can go, the flood to us was seem like was coming more from Africa, but Mo Z, the head of the founder of isis, basically that was a letter, was intercepted.

[00:11:31] When we were in Iraq from him, and he's basically telling his followers, like, when you recruit, recruit people from Africa, I don't want Muslims from the Gulf. He's like Muslims from the Gulf. They basically come in to get a ribbon, to get a, I went to Iraq and I fought and I came back and he's like, Muslims from Africa coming to die and that's why I want it.

[00:11:52] So as from our analysis, from everything from my reading, it was Africa where it was like, this is where they were exporting radicalized Muslim terrorists.

[00:12:02] Jordan Harbinger: I know that Al-Qaeda, and I think it was also Isis, say like, Africa's the best place to recruit because these people are willing to die, which is crazy.

[00:12:11] I mean, why is, why are they willing to die? Is just the version of Islam they have there just so much more extreme than elsewhere.

[00:12:17] Adam Gamal: No, they are desperate. It's a desperate fucking life. When you go to these places, it's very hard to go and although a lot of people will tell you like Bin Laden was a billionaire or Bin Laden didn't go kill himself.

[00:12:28] Bil Laden had a lot of people killing themselves because of his beliefs, but he didn't go kill himself. It's very hard to go get like a super rich Saudi who goes to vacations in Europe, uh, can travel whenever he want to, can go wherever he want to eat the best food, go to the best hotels, have the best cars, and go tell him, Hey man, leave all of this fun and go kill yourself.

[00:12:51] If you go to a guy in, let's say, and I've been to not with the military, and the guy who picked me up from the airport, he's like, Hey man, you cannot put your suitcase in in the trunk of the car because I bought a goat in his way. He found like a livestock market or auction or something. He bought a goat, and the goat is with him in the car and he's like, this is gonna feed my family for the next two months.

[00:13:16] When you go and you see these guys, they live in extreme desperation. So it's easy to go recruit a guy who doesn't have anything to live for and tell him, Hey man, if you die, you're gonna go to heaven, and if you die, we're gonna take care of your family. And to him, he's like, I'm dead already. Life sucks, right?

[00:13:32] So that's my humble opinion. It's just easier to recruit from there because people live in desperation and there's no future. No future, no dreams, no hope. I tell people like, you know what? The guys in Egypt who didn't have a father like mine to put him back in the right track. Who didn't have the chance to leave Egypt, who lived in desperation, didn't have the freedom even to dream, to express his opinion.

[00:13:55] He lives in like shitty fucking life. Mm-Hmm. And some guy go and tell him, Hey man, we're gonna take you to Afghanistan for him. Afghanistan is a vacation. Yeah. And he is like, oh, I'm gonna go die there. It's okay. So I think the desperation, not just the form of Islam, it's sad,

[00:14:09] Jordan Harbinger: but it makes, I mean, it definitely makes sense.

[00:14:11] You said you went to Niger, even outside the military. What, what brings you to a place like Niger if you're not serving, that's a very random country to just go ahead and visit on a vacation

[00:14:22] Adam Gamal: business. I do business, I do telecom, security consultant for some companies. And uh, okay. One thing the military gave me, gave me some, gave me good skills and gave me big balls.

[00:14:33] So I go somewhere like Nigeria and I'm like, so that's something that from the unit, I can go anywhere and I feel comfortable and I feel I can win people.

[00:14:43] Jordan Harbinger: What do you think is the sketchiest, maybe most dangerous place that you've operated in or visited? Is it Somalia?

[00:14:48] Adam Gamal: It depends how you, what you mean by, so there is a place was very, very sketchy when it comes to counterintelligence and surveillance.

[00:14:55] I cannot name the location, but it's in the Middle East. Mm. Literally I was watched in the beginning, almost 24 7. Uh, you can see surveillance, you can leave your hotel room or your apartment and you come back and you find your duffel bag dumped on the floor. All your closes in the floor. Mm. You'll find somebody messing with you.

[00:15:12] So you find like a gown out of the hotel and there is a taxi waiting for you already to take you where you wanna go. Oh, yeah. From Counter Intelligence, it's a country in the Middle East that was very pro-Russian. Besides Dubai,

[00:15:25] Jordan Harbinger: where, where, where else did you feel like you were in the most danger, perhaps as, as opposed to just being watched?

[00:15:31] Adam Gamal: So Somalia was very risky. Iraq in the second half of 2004. So Iraq in the beginning was, and people were very welcoming. As a matter of fact, I went out in heads looking for Saddam Hussein. I went off out on over, over more than 100 hits. I was with a Delta team when we were going, one of the houses we went to after we blew up the guy's door and we went in at like two o'clock in the morning.

[00:15:56] Scared the fuck out of all of them. This was 2003, I swear. After we finished the old man of the house, he was insistent on uh, us sitting, having dinner and tea and the guy was like, after you blew his door off with explosives and the guy was like, you guys here to free us from the Tyra end. We appreciate what you get.

[00:16:15] I mean, the guy was like, and I used to see that I used to go out in the streets by Shawarma, go out to carpet shops because we had guys wanted to buy carpet all the way till I wanted to say March or April of 2004. And I tell people, marsh or April, 2004, it seems it's so after being there for 12 months, the US military, not me, I was in and out after being there for 12 months.

[00:16:37] The honeymoon was over. Iraqis hated us. Yeah. They realized that we just created chaos and then the, a grape thing happened and that made it even worse.

[00:16:47] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:16:48] Adam Gamal: And I, uh, it doesn't matter what you tell people, you're like, Hey, 12 soldiers out of 120,000 soldiers were bad. And everybody saw this. The US military is bad.

[00:16:58] And I told the guy, I was like, dude, this is the best recruiting video for Ben la. We gave him the best Yeah. Man, he could ever had. Then after that, Iraq was like, really? Really? And, and I went out in the streets a few times by myself. After that, I would drive like a local car and I used to see it, and if I wasn't, I spoke the language I blended in, I would talk to them, they would know I was Egyptian At that time, there was an Egyptian phone company building the cell towers there.

[00:17:23] The guys will talk to me. That gave me some opportunities to do some collection because they, I would go to an internet cafe like Sony Extremes, internet Cafe, and. I sit down and the guy was like, what do you do what you do? And I chat with the guy and, and the guy's like, Hey, the phone service here is really, really bad.

[00:17:39] And I'd be like, yeah, actually that's why I have this equipment and this equipment, it just measures the cell tower signal so I can figure out where we need to build new towers. And I would take it out and put it actually right next to the guy that we're trying to, again, I'm not gonna say what the equipment exactly does, but the equipment was doing.

[00:17:58] Yeah, I think we can guess. Yeah, right. You can. But again, because I understood the language and the culture, I was able to sit with a boo bad guy, really, really bad guy. I'm sitting having a conversation with him and he brought me tea while I'm doing my mission.

[00:18:12] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, interesting. It's funny 'cause somewhere there's a bunch of bad guys being like, that guy betrayed our trust.

[00:18:18] Meanwhile it's like, but you told me when you were with the Muslim Brotherhood that it's okay to lie if you're at war. So it sucks when it happens to you, huh? Exactly. Yeah. So screw these guys. Two can play by those rules, that's for sure. Yeah. You mentioned Iraq getting totally messed up because, and this is just my like ignorant ass opinion, so feel free to correct me, but it seems like one of the biggest mistakes we made was getting rid of all the bath party.

[00:18:41] So Saddam Hussein's political party structure alongside Saddam Hussein because everything falls apart after that, right? Like in the book you kind of mentioned, the guy who makes passports at the passport office just like takes the machine. And the guy who decides where, who owns what house at that office, he's just like, I'll take 50 bucks and I'll just make your neighbor's house your house now on a document.

[00:19:02] And the guy will take the printer for the driver's license and put it in his backyard. And now if you want a driver's license, you gotta go to some dude and just give him money and he doesn't care if you can actually drive. And we did a lot of stuff like that. Every civil servant was just unemployed or unemployable.

[00:19:18] Every qualified. Teacher or whatever, who is both party just wasn't allowed to work anymore. You just can't run a nation like that. Our military is really good at destroying nations, but building them up kind of clueless from what it sounds like,

[00:19:30] Adam Gamal: Jordan, you, you actually know. You spot on. You spot on 100%.

[00:19:34] And to show people like how much we did not understand. So basically everybody was in the government was like in the bath party. Yeah. By choice, by force, by whatever. If we end up the two uh, party system in the US and we have only one party, like let's say the Republicans or the Democrats, then everybody would be just one party.

[00:19:57] That was the situation in Iraq. And then even if he did not believe in what the bath party was, he didn't have a choice. So we went and we said, okay, you know what? All the police guys go home. Well, if he drive in downtown San Diego or Jersey City or dc the traffic lights, they work automatically. It goes green.

[00:20:18] Amber, red, amber, green, red. It just keeps it somatic. It's time. They have sensors in the ground, so you don't need a, a traffic man or a police officer. So while in Iraq, the people who are controlling the traffic were policemen will told them, go home, you can to go to work. Now, who controls the traffic?

[00:20:36] Chaos. So no traffic. Then you find neighbors That

[00:20:40] Jordan Harbinger: explains Egyptian driving. Exactly. Although we're talking about Iraq, but whatever. It explains a lot of driving, a lot of parts of the Middle East. How's that? It's a

[00:20:46] Adam Gamal: lot of driving, but yeah. Yeah. But honestly, yeah, Egyptian driving too, because they, in Egypt, they have a police guy standing there and controlling the traffic.

[00:20:52] So now it created this chaos. And like he was saying, the guy who makes passports takes the passport machine in Google. Well, Iraq before that had a lot of, uh, expats, Arab expats from Libya, from Egypt, from Sudan, from Morocco, where they've been living and working in Iraq for let's say 10 years. So they picked the dialect.

[00:21:11] Do you know how to speak Iraqi? For a hundred dollars. They were able to go get an Iraqi passport and they became Iraqi citizens. Wow. Maybe if you pay another 50 bucks, you get a birth certificate and you pay another $20, you get a house and you pay another $15 to get a Java's license. So all of those things that we did not take into consideration, and I think that Rumsfeld, when he was pushing for the deification was the worst idea ever.

[00:21:37] And we paid for it. We all paid for it.

[00:21:39] Jordan Harbinger: I know I'm skipping around a lot, but one thing I thought was quite interesting was that you make the case for diversity both in your unit, in an intelligence unit and in the military. And the idea of diversity in America for many reasons right now is sort of controversial, but this is not like woke or whatever, right?

[00:22:00] This is. You make the case for a real function of diversity, not just like, uh, affirmative action, something, something like, you've got concrete points. And I would love for you to make that case here because I think it's important you come from a place of credibility when it comes to this. Of course.

[00:22:16] Adam Gamal: So I'm really, really, really glad you asked that question because first time I've read the review and somebody in, I think it was in Amazon or something, and somebody just said, walk.

[00:22:28] And I Googled the word. I was like, what the fuck is walk? Mm-Hmm. Woke. It's not woken up. And then I started reading like, I'm like, I have not been, honestly, the book went review, like I told you earlier, in August of 2021. I think the diversity back then was okay. When I was in the military, our chaplain used to say, our diversity is our strength.

[00:22:49] So let me just highlight this and explain it. The diversity I'm talking about, I'm not talking about, I. I'm an Egyptian guy. Let me be part of the best unit in the military because you need to meet a cuda. No, I'm talking about when we have different ideas, different strength, different way of thinking, and you bring all of these things together given that they all qualified to sit on the table.

[00:23:14] So you have to make it to the table. And how do you make it to the table? You go through selection process. You join the military, you do an IQ test, you do strength test. You, let's see how, uh, much weight you can lift all of those, right? Whatever criteria they have set in place, you pass it. Well, if we have everybody fighting, look the same, think the same.

[00:23:37] Mm-hmm, we're missing out. So the diversity I'm talking about here is not, and again, I'm a minority guy and when I got promoted to E nine, which is the highest en enlisted rank, and I got promoted in 16 years, which is very fat, anybody in the military, they'll tell you that's extremely fast. One of the guys was talking with me.

[00:23:55] He is like, you know why you got promoted? Because of affirmative action. And I was like, okay. At that time I had one master's degree. I was working in my second master's degree. I had awards, I had the education. I was deploying more than anybody else. I had three bronze stores. So there was no affirmative action there.

[00:24:13] I didn't need somebody to give me a hand to cross the street. I can cross the street on my own. Yeah, I don't need a hand to get promoted. I can get promoted in my own. What I need is the same opportunity everybody else has given. Give me the same opportunity everybody else has given and I'll make it happen.

[00:24:28] So the diversity I'm talking about is not the bad word. Diversity. Let's just make sure if I have three people to choose from and I have a guy who's a unicorn and I'm missing unicorns, and the unicorn doesn't know how to speak the language or anything, let's just bring the unicorn. No, that's not the diversity I'm talking about.

[00:24:45] The diversity I'm talking about is the diversity that we were talking about before. Whenever the word became a bad word. I don't think it was ever a bad word before. Mm-Hmm. It was more of the US Army was the first US government organization that ended the segregation. And we have the Indian Americans, native Americans, uh, we have the African Americans, we have units.

[00:25:04] We always looked at diversity as a strength. Mm-Hmm. And that's the diversity I'm talking about in the book.

[00:25:13] Jordan Harbinger: You are listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Adam Gamal. We'll be right back. I. This episode is sponsored in part by Thorn. I'm totally committed to ensuring that everything I consume from food to supplements is safe for my health. I know that that's like a low bar, but whatever Thorn stands out because they personalize their approach based everything on solid science and stay ahead of the game.

[00:25:31] They manufacture all their supplements in the US in South Carolina, which means there's probably no Chinese sawdust in there. I know I say that a lot, but you'd be surprised there's a lot of Chinese sawdust in all of those pills. Thorn meticulously selects the finest ingredients from around the world and collaborates with health experts to guarantee top-notch nutritional support.

[00:25:47] I use their Omega-3 and vitamin B complex. I'm genuinely impressed by the transparency and quality of this stuff. It's really easy to get bad fish oil, Omega-3, et cetera. They put their products through a lot of testing to make sure they're the best on the market. So it's no wonder that Thorn has earned the trust of millions, including healthcare professionals and elite athletes.

[00:26:04] Thorn has a huge selection of supplements to choose from. They even offer a quiz on their website to help you find the perfect fit for your needs. But I'll give you a tip. It's almost certainly D three and fish oil. 'cause if you work indoors, you pretty much can't get enough of that stuff.

[00:26:17] Jen Harbinger: Give your body what it really needs with Thorn.

[00:26:19] Go to thorne.fit/jordan and use code Jordan for 10% off your first order. That's T-H-O-R-N-E-F-I slash Jordan Code Jordan for 10% off your first order. Thorne Do Fit slash Jordan Code Jordan, these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

[00:26:40] Jordan Harbinger: This episode is also sponsored by Better Help. Do you wish you could build a social life that feels more like recharging our batteries instead of draining them? Well, that's where Better Help can make a difference. It's like having a personal guide to help navigate the social maze. Figuring out what energizes us and what doesn't Better Help is a fantastic online platform that matches you with a licensed professional suited to your personal needs.

[00:26:59] Imagine having access to therapy from the comfort of your own home, or really anywhere you feel relaxed. No more worrying about making it to the office or fitting appointments into a hectic schedule. Getting started is super simple. After signing up, you'll be matched with a counselor who gets where you're coming from and can help pave the way to a more fulfilling social life.

[00:27:14] And because life doesn't always stick to a nine to five schedule better Help lets you message your counselor anytime with options for video or phone sessions too. But honestly, if you're one of those people who doesn't like socializing, video session is gonna be your worst nightmare. Stick with the phone.

[00:27:27] Jen Harbinger: Find your social sweet spot with better help. Visit better help.com/jordan today to get 10% off your first month. That's better. hlp.com/jordan.

[00:27:36] Jordan Harbinger: Hey, I know I tell you about six minute networking all the time. I'm gonna tell you one more time. It is free over@sixminutenetworking.com. It is about building a circle of people that you know, like, and trust.

[00:27:45] And I know a lot of people are like, I don't like networking. It's gross. I get it. It is gross. This, this is not a cheesy course that that's gonna make you look like a wanker. It is super easy, non cringey, very down to earth. It's great if you're retired. You can contact a bunch of old folks in your circle.

[00:27:59] It's great for your mental health. It's great for our social health. There's a lot of health benefits to being reconnected to people. I think this is fun stuff. It is very light lift. It's gonna make you a better colleague, a better friend, and a better peer. Whether you're looking for a job, you're inner job, you're not working ever again, you're gardening all day.

[00:28:17] And look, it just takes a few minutes a day. Many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. So 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. Yeah, it seems obvious in an intelligence context that you want somebody who understands what's going on, even if that person is the same, or I should say, especially if that same person comes from the same culture as the people you currently are working against, right?

[00:28:45] Correct. Like I definitely wanna be next to the person that went to college with Muslim Brotherhood, has personal experience with Muslim Brotherhood, speaks the same dialect as Muslim Brotherhood. The guy who was college roommates was somebody who went and became a terrorist. Like that's the guy you want right next to you when you're dealing with these people.

[00:29:01] So it seems really obvious from that perspective,

[00:29:03] Adam Gamal: and that's what I used to tell people. Like, okay. In a lot of my deployments, I was able to go and talk like again, and we'll talk about Iraq because it's open and Iraq. When I'm sitting down with so many extremist guy in his internet cafe that he owns, I can carry a conversation with him to get the information I need from him to make him feel comfortable to let me take my equipment, put it on his table.

[00:29:24] Yeah. Right next to him as he's drinking his tea. Take anybody else. Who doesn't have the same characteristics and take him there the day, who would've walking out of the base? He would've been shot. I had to get two, three levels of approvals to be able to leave the base. And they had to see me like, you know, hire command.

[00:29:43] And this was like, this mission was involved not just military. It was military and to other agencies and all of them have to sit with me. Okay, do you know what you, what you're going to do? Do you know the risk you're taking?

[00:29:52] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:29:53] Adam Gamal: And when they saw me, they felt comfortable. This guy can go and do it because I can carry a conversation.

[00:29:59] I can. So that's the diversity we're talking about. But you're absolutely right if I'm gonna go, yeah. And I'll tell you something. I mean, when I was, my last job, I used to fly with my commander a lot and going to certain airports in the US I was like, man, I'm glad he's a white guy. Because guess what, when I'm going through TSA, I'm going with this, the commander, we both in uniform, so nobody's looking at me.

[00:30:17] So it's using the strength, the strength that you have to accomplish a mission, not to, uh, give a free launch. There

[00:30:25] Jordan Harbinger: are no free lunches. You did mention, I think this is, I don't know if this is in the book or just something we talked about on the phone now that I think about it, but you mentioned coming back to the United States and getting detained by customs and it's like, what were you doing overseas?

[00:30:37] And you're like, well, I can't tell you that I was overseas on a mission to make America safer by assassinating terrorists. So I guess I'm just gonna say vacation. And they're like, yeah, get into secondary screening. Egyptian guy with an accent. We don't trust you.

[00:30:49] Adam Gamal: Yeah. So I think we talked about this on the phone.

[00:30:51] So yeah, I used to get, I got pulled in the secondary a few times coming back from missions.

[00:30:54] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:30:55] Adam Gamal: And at those, some of those times, even I have an official passport, like a read official passport. It chose that you weren't in a gov, a US government official job. Wow. And when I came back. The immigration would ask me more questions and my passport would've said I was born in the US and she's like, you know, uh, how come you're born in the US and you have an accent?

[00:31:13] And, and I'm like, I was born but not raised. And we would go and again, I had to get outta jail free card. I can make a phone call. But that's the last thing that you wanted as a, as a guy who's an operations, right? Yeah. So you would deal with these things. And I'm like, okay, but when I'm going overseas, guess what?

[00:31:30] I joke with the immigration guy. I say a couple of Arab jokes and the guy is like, do you wanna come over my house to have tea? I was in a another country where in Africa when I had actually the security police officer in the airport driving me to my hotel. After joking with him for a bit. Yeah. After saying, and I said it, and I mentioned a couple of other instance in the book where I, I said, I got guys who live in across the streets from a bad guy to invite me inside their house to sit in their house, drink tea with them and their family for hours.

[00:32:01] Mm-Hmm. If I didn't look like them, I would've not been able to do that. That's the strength of the diversity I mentioned in the book.

[00:32:07] Jordan Harbinger: A hundred percent. It makes sense. I mean, I guess I shouldn't be, I'm not trying to throw shade on customs and immigration for doing their job. I mean, their job is to make America safer.

[00:32:15] And if they saw you suspicious, and they're not like totally wrong about being a little suspicious, like you're an American with this, but you have an accent like that's, this doesn't add up. Let me just make a phone call. It's fine. But there's another anecdote and I, again, I can't remember if this is the phone or the book, but you're in the chow hall after a mission and someone's like, eh, we should just nuke all them Muslims.

[00:32:34] And it's like, I'm right behind you, first of all, and I was the one I. Out there while you're on the ship looking at a computer screen. I'm the one who was out there driving around to find this guy that we just took out. It's gotta be very frustrating to hear stuff like that,

[00:32:47] Adam Gamal: you know? It was more fulfilling than frustrating really.

[00:32:50] And frustrating as well. But it was a lot more fulfilling. Sure. And I'll tell you why. So I'm, we just finished the mission and that's the mission that in the first chapter, just finished the mission. We go to a military base in the area. We get a base there for a few days till just everything calmed down before we go back to where we were based, because we were based out of an embassy in the region.

[00:33:09] Again, a higher command was like, Hey, we don't want, you know, like you were in, in a somewhere and then all of a sudden you're coming back to the country. So we want you to stay four, five days till things calm down a bit. So me and these two other guys, they were with me in the mission, the actual, actual mission.

[00:33:24] It was just one guy with me. But there was another guy, Marine actually was in the mission with us, but he was, he was doing something slightly different. So we're sitting in the chow hall having breakfast. It's all over the news that this guy got taken out. And initially they were like thinking, did the French kill the guy?

[00:33:40] Did the Americans kill the guy? And then we had actually, the US spokesperson went out and said it was a, a targeted attack by US government, by US military. Obviously didn't say who were who did it or how they did it or anything, but as I'm sitting down and there is, there is a young soldier sitting as he's having breakfast watching CNN and he is like, man, I wish we could fucking all kill all of these fucking Muslim guys.

[00:34:02] This is all he is. Like the guy's like having a blast that we succeeded in a mission. And I wanted to tell him, and by the way, like he can't kill all Muslim guys because if he killed all of them, I wouldn't be the guy who's doing this mission. Right. But at the same time, the fulfilling part was how we made everybody proud of our accomplishment even though they didn't know how to strike.

[00:34:25] Jordan Harbinger: I suppose that's a good way to look at it, you know? 'cause it would be really easy to be just lose a little bit of morale. Yeah. Thinking like, okay, I work with this guy and he still doesn't get it. But it speaks to your point, another point you make in the book of the danger of dehumanizing the enemy, especially when it comes to peacekeeping missions later on.

[00:34:42] I think you make the comparison in the book with World War II Rebuilding Germany, it was a bunch of French Brits, United States and others. Of course, rebuilding a state, a country full of people that just looked pretty much the same, right? German white people, right? So even though we, I'm sure you know, you call 'em crowds or whatever, but it was like the people still look like us, right?

[00:35:05] It's hard. You can't just sort of pick 'em out on site. But now it's a little bit different, right? I mean, as to this guy's brainwashing in the chow hall. It's really easy to look at people and be like, oh, let's just kill all the Arabs, although they thought you were Mexican, which sort of goes against their point, but we're not talking about the smartest people.

[00:35:22] Yeah. Here also, brainwashing is a hell of a drug, right? When you've dehumanized the enemy, it's hard to switch that back off during your peacekeeping mission later on when you're rebuilding the country and be like, oh, I know we just got done calling these people rats for the last 10 years, but now they're our partners and we need to respect them, and they're on par with us.

[00:35:39] It's like, how do you do that? And the answer is, I think you can't.

[00:35:42] Adam Gamal: You can't unless you do it from the beginning. So you cannot dehumanize the enemy. But to go back to your example about World War ii, Japanese Americans were treated worse than German POWs. Yeah. This was, like I said, I mean, these are American who are, they came from Japanese descent.

[00:35:59] They were treated a lot worse, and they got taken and put in camps and all of these things. And don't get me wrong, when after nine 11 happened, Arab Americans were afraid of the same thing. They were like, are they gonna do the same thing to us? But the brainwash and thing. Part of it when I was in Iraq, so a lot of the units I was part of, we don't wear unit patch.

[00:36:18] So everybody was in the military, they know every unit has a patch. We don't, we actually don't wear any nit tags, no rank, no patch, nothing. But we had guys who had patches of nine 11. This is an Iraq. So I would chat with them and I'm like, you know, why do you have the World Trade Center? And, and he's like, that's why we're here.

[00:36:36] Because the guys who did nine 11 were from here. And I was like, there was not one Iraqi guy involved in nine 11. Right. And I said this to a guy, actually I said this in more than one occasion. I said, if we were gonna attack a country, because the guys who did nine 11 were from there would've been attacking Saudi Arabia.

[00:36:52] Right? 'cause 14 or 15 of the 19, yeah, were from Saudi Arabia, but we didn't touch Saudi Arabia. So I'm like, so why are we, or we would've been attacking Yemen because a lot of them did training in Yemen and Bin Laden was originally from Yemen. So the brainwash and in dehumanizing the enemy makes us go extreme.

[00:37:09] There is a really good book called On Killing. It did a study on in World War I, a lot of US soldiers, they were wi within shooting range from the enemy. They had the weapon. They couldn't squeeze the trigger and kill somebody because they looked like them. So it's easier to fight somebody who doesn't look like you.

[00:37:28] If we tell you the person who doesn't look like you is less human than you and ISIS is doing that, isis, they go and they say, well, this guy is not your religion, so he is not like you, so it's easier to kill him. So by dehumanizing the enemy, we go extreme again. The best battles are won without a fight.

[00:37:46] And this is coming from a lot of soldiers who've been through combat. They'll tell you if we can win a battle without fighting, that's the best thing. That's the best situation. And this is from the art of war. This is, we have to fight that way. We have to think that way. And I'm not saying sometimes you have to go and you have to take the fight to the enemy.

[00:38:02] You have to kick their ass. But you gotta define the enemy before we go and we say, you know, every brown guy is a, is a bad guy. And then we're gonna go after that and say, Hey, by the way, no, they're not bad guys.

[00:38:16] Jordan Harbinger: To your point, also just the idea of dehumanizing the enemy. You mentioned in the book, beating people, torturing them during interrogations, it just, it doesn't work.

[00:38:26] And what does work is building rapport and connecting with people. I mean, you can really only sort of terrorize people to just tell you what you wanna hear, not to get accurate information. I. And that seems to be a realization that we still aren't always coming to here, but every negotiator that I've had on this show has always come to that same conclusion.

[00:38:47] Like, you really can only scare people to a certain extent. And as you mentioned as well in the book, you were surprised that some of the guys who wouldn't give you any information, you'd monitor a call with their family, they're basically saying goodbye to their family. And the wife's like, oh, sorry, you're gonna die, but just try and kill as many Americans as you can on your way out.

[00:39:05] It's just like the level of fanaticism is truly next level.

[00:39:09] Adam Gamal: Yeah. So it's very amazing. Their mindset is like, whether they, uh, beat us in the world, they win or they die, they win. So if you go in to fight against somebody, his ideology telling him when he's dead, he's a winner. It's not that easy to beat that out of him.

[00:39:25] So if you're gonna interrogate him and beat that out of him, he wanted to die. Right. So what you gotta do is you try to use reason with that guy and use the same reason he's coming from. So you gotta speak his language. You get to, if he tells you a verse from the Quran, then you tell him another verse from the Quran.

[00:39:41] If he tells you like a story about the prophet's time, then you tell him something. So otherwise you talking to a guy who's not on the same page as you,

[00:39:49] Jordan Harbinger: it seems like we don't understand a lot of our enemies. You know, you mentioned also in the book how the Russians tend to think much more long term as opposed to the Americans.

[00:40:01] Can you speak to that a little

[00:40:02] Adam Gamal: bit? Yeah, so we had, I think it was a situation was like, I don't remember exactly what, maybe like seven, eight years ago where they start catching like Russian espionage cells in New York and California around the us and then when they did the investigation, I looked, they looked at these guys.

[00:40:17] These guys were around for 10 years, 20 years, 25 years. They came to the US in a younger age and stayed there forever. I've seen it in some of my deployments. Where, uh, Russians were speaking Arabic fluently that literally we did not know. We thought they were Native Arab speakers, but they were Russians.

[00:40:37] So where for us, when we go in somewhere, whether it's a CIA or military, you send in a guide to be working in a country for two years, three years, maybe four years max. That's CIA. For us as military, we're going for maximum a year. If you are in a, working in an embassy, maybe you do it a year, two years.

[00:40:55] But our system is not built for guys staying long. That's one thing. Then the other thing is, we don't have the patience for that. We wanna come back home.

[00:41:05] Jordan Harbinger: Can you blame them? Like, no, a Russian guy has to go live in New York. All expenses paid. It's like, okay, that's pretty awesome. But people are probably fighting for that job.

[00:41:12] But if you're like, Hey man, you gotta go live in Russia and maybe you don't get to live in New York. Maybe you get to live in, I don't know, like a suburb of Chicago, that's fine. But if you have to live in a suburb, quote unquote, of Moscow for a long time, I mean, that could grate on you after a decade or so, right?

[00:41:27] Your life is on pause.

[00:41:28] Adam Gamal: Absolutely. Or imagine that if you have to go live in uh, Mauritania or in Mali or in NIH or in Afghanistan. So yeah, I see that. But then who would live in those places? Let me give you a good idea. If you actually have immigrants came from those countries. Some of those guys were willing, like we had immigrants came from Pakistan.

[00:41:45] They came in a young age, they, uh, joined the military. They, they went to college, they joined the military. And some of them, if you tell them, Hey, we wanna send you back to Pakistan and we gonna set up a business or whatever, I don't wanna like reveal sources and methods, but those guys are willing to go.

[00:42:01] But when you have a guy who was born in, uh, in North Carolina and you tell him, Hey, I need you to go live in, uh, Timbuktu, and he'd be like, where's Timbuktu? So strategically, if you wanna fight that war, you gotta fight it differently. You cannot have the traditional military or CI assignments of like two, three years in one country.

[00:42:22] For CIA, you're gonna hand your. Assets to another CIA officer. And then, and this is something in, I mean, it's written in by, uh, CIA retired officers in books where like, hey, I, I worked this target and I worked this guy and I recruited the source. And after my two, three years, I handed my source to another case officer.

[00:42:41] We're not there for the long

[00:42:41] Jordan Harbinger: term. Right. That makes a lot of sense. It, it is interesting, the Russians, I think they're called illegals, right? Because legal spies if you will have diplomatic cover, correct? Oh, I work with the transportation. I'm the liaison for commerce and something like that. Like they work in the oil and gas industry.

[00:42:59] But if you're just here pretending to work at an insurance company, we had a guy on the show, Jack Barsky, who was an illegal in the United States for a long time. He just basically worked at an insurance company and they were gonna activate him at some point and they never really did. And then they told him to come home and he was like, uh, no thanks.

[00:43:16] You know, he stayed here because going back to Russia, he was from originally East Germany, so going back behind the Iron Curtain, no thanks. And he stayed here. He now lives near Atlanta, which is to my earlier point, he was like, this place is great. I love it here. There's all kinds of opportunity. You want me to go back there and be like a, the richest person in a non-free country with, that's basically the equivalent of going back to black and white tv.

[00:43:40] No, thank you. You've been to over 60 countries. Yeah, that's a, a hell of a lot of places. How many languages do you speak? Uh, I speak four languages. Four, okay. Can you tell us which ones or, or you're not supposed to? No, you're not supposed to. Okay. Got it all. I won't ask which of the 60 countries. Obviously

[00:43:56] Adam Gamal: Arabic is what?

[00:43:56] Arabic is one of the languages.

[00:43:58] Jordan Harbinger: Arabic and English. All right. So great. I can't ask about the other two. All right, fair enough. 50%. That's not bad. Yeah. I asked you what of the sketchiest place was and, and I think you hinted that it was adjacent to Somalia or possibly Somalia. On the other hand though, what's a surprisingly awesome place that you just didn't expect to be so welcoming and beautiful and maybe even fun or, or interesting?

[00:44:21] Adam Gamal: So it was during a deployment coming back from a deployment, and it was a deployment to the Middle East, and it was me, another unit guy. And we were traveling back and we had to do a transit in Dubai for the first time and. We landed in Dubai and we spent like a night and we ended up going, uh, walking around the beach.

[00:44:41] It was just amazing. And a lot of people say, well, it's the Middle East. Well, if you've never been to Dubai and somebody throw you out an aircraft with a parachute and you land, you wouldn't know where you're at. Because we walked around the beach, we saw people on, on the beach in Bikini and on Burkini.

[00:44:59] Burkini is, uh, the park that totally covered, had the two ladies, both of them sitting next to each other. Neither one of them is bothered by the other. Both of them enjoying the, the beautiful. We came during the winter, so the weather was beautiful. Both of them enjoying the winter in Dubai is like in the seventies.

[00:45:16] Weather is beautiful. Big buildings are very safe. The airport smelled really good. And every public bathroom we went to was like, smelled really good. And I was like, wow, there is something. And then you go to the hotel and people in the hotel taking your, and this is like a normal hotel. We did not stay in a fancy hotel.

[00:45:33] Normal hotels, people taking your luggage to your room and, uh, they, uh, welcoming you with a, a drink and like, it was just very impressive. And then we had the opportunity to visit like a mosque. And my buddy who was with me, he's a tall, white, blonde, Jewish American. And he was like, how is that gonna, I was like, dude, it seems like very, very open and very welcoming.

[00:45:56] And there is a, there was like a mosque, big mosque that, it's in Abu Dhabi. So we drove like about 45 minutes. We walked there and we found like a group of monks walking there, getting a tour. So we had monks, Muslims, Christians, Jewish, in the same place. And they all felt very comfortable. And again, this is, it wasn't surprise.

[00:46:15] I mean I've heard about it, but it was my first time coming. It was extremely, extremely impressive. Another place I have to give credit to, like, I traveled to Kenya one time and a lot of people think Africa is really, really bad and, but Kenya was gorgeous, like the nature and. The green everywhere. And so a lot of places are really nice.

[00:46:33] Not as people. Just imagine.

[00:46:35] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I, I mean Kenya is definitely, you only hear good thing, mostly only hear good things about Kenya, Dubai, like Las Vegas of the Middle East, however interesting underbelly of organized crime trafficking and it's essentially a police state. So you do have a quite a big trade off, I think for some of the safety that's enjoyed there.

[00:46:55] But maybe that's what's required that maybe you need a police state in order to keep a place like that from erupting into something that's unstable.

[00:47:02] Adam Gamal: I, I agree with you and, and I did read about it and study about it, but you have a country has over 170, 180 different nationalities. I think you have to be a police state.

[00:47:13] So they have cameras everywhere. I think they're competing with London, who has more cameras in the street and they have facial recognitions of everything. I. But like I said, for us, traveling through was just extremely impressive experience, especially where we were coming from. I mean, we came from a place where we came from a very nasty place.

[00:47:32] It was uh, dust everywhere, no clean water. Women were covered head to toe, like literally head to toe. You didn't see any faces. You might see some eyes, and it was a police state as well. So you have a police state with some freedom, and you have a police state with no freedom.

[00:47:51] Jordan Harbinger: This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Adam Gamal. We'll be right back. We. This episode is sponsored in part by Shopify. Picture yourself and Shopify as the dynamic duo of the business world. Soaring off into the entrepreneurial universe like Armstrong and Aldrin leading the charge into what's next for your business journey.

[00:48:07] Think of Shopify, not just as a platform, but as your business's trustee sidekick from the exhilaration of that first sale to the excitement of opening your virtual doors all the way to celebrating shipping out your millionth order. Shopify's got your back, got something amazing you're dying to share with the world.

[00:48:19] Whether it's the trendiest school gear or planet saving play things, Shopify is your ultimate wingman, making it a cinch to sell wherever and whenever Shopify's checkout beats the competition by a whopping 36%. Almost every time I buy something online, it's powered by Shopify. They make it so easy as a buyer and as a seller.

[00:48:35] Use Shopify Magic to help whip up product descriptions or blog posts. With Shopify sleek dashboard. You can wrangle orders, handle shipping, and keep tabs on payments from the palm of your hand.

[00:48:43] Jen Harbinger: Sign up for a $1 per month trial period@shopify.com slash Jordan in all lowercase. Go to shopify.com/jordan now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in.

[00:48:53] shopify.com/jordan.

[00:48:55] Jordan Harbinger: This episode is also sponsored by SimpliSafe Spring, hath Sprung, and there's nothing like basking in the new season with zero worries. All thanks to SimpliSafe. It snagged the title of Best Home Security System of 2024 by US News and World Report and earned kudos from Newsweek for its standout customer service.

[00:49:11] SimpliSafe rapture space in a cozy blanket of security, arming it with sensors for intrusions, fires, floods, plus indoor and outdoor camps that keep an eye on things 24 7. It's essentially a little safety bubble for your home. And with 24 7 professional monitoring that's less than the cost of a daily coffee, quick emergency responses become a given the standout feature.

[00:49:29] Simply Safes team can directly address intruders, letting them know they've been caught red handed, and the police are on route. And of course, they can verify for the police that there's somebody in your house. So it's not just a false alarm, no pesky contracts, and if you're not feeling it, there's a 60 day money back guarantee.

[00:49:42] Jen Harbinger: SimpliSafe has given us and many of our listeners real peace of mind and we want you to have it too. Get 20% off your system today when you sign up for Fast Protect monitoring@simplisafe.com slash Jordan. That's simplisafe.com/jordan. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.

[00:49:58] Jordan Harbinger: If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do.

[00:50:02] What do they do? They take a moment and they support our amazing sponsors. That's what they do for one thing. All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are all searchable and clickable over at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. A lot of you have been emailing me 'cause you can't find a code or you're not sure if we have a certain kind of sponsor.

[00:50:17] Please do that. Email meJordan@jordanharbinger.com. I'm more than happy to surface that code for you because it is that important that you support those who support the show. A lot of people buy stuff off podcasts. They don't look up our code. I actually it. It takes a little bit of a ding after a while, so I appreciate it when you take the time to go to the deals page or even get the code from me.

[00:50:36] Thank you for supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Adam Gamal. So I'm curious your take on the Israel Palestine conflict. I mean, we don't have to do a whole big spiel about this, but a lot of people will say, Hey, look, Israel is just creating more terrorists by handling things the way they're doing it.

[00:50:57] I wonder if you agree with that, your take on that and your take on Hamas as a terrorist organization. But I'll ask one question at a time. Is Israel just creating more terrorists by handling things this way?

[00:51:08] Adam Gamal: So I have a very good example for this, that when people ask me, I tell them that Che Muhammad, the Pakistani slash kui grew in, quit, lived in kut.

[00:51:19] Uh, he was the mastermind, KSM, he was the mastermind of, uh, the World Trade Center, the nine 11. His nephew, Ramsey Yusef, was the guy who in 1993 drove a a truck under the World Trade Center and his plan was to have the truck in between the two towers. Blow it up, make the two towers collapse against each other.

[00:51:42] So when PSM was interrogated and even, uh, Ramsay, so when he was interrogated and during interrogations, during our questioning, we're like, why did you do that? And he's like, because of Palestine and every interrogation, they interrogated the guy, even when he's in Guantanamo. He said that when you read about him or you, this is nothing classified.

[00:52:02] He joined the Muslim Brotherhood when he was 16 years old, that we were talking about early on why the Muslim Brotherhood was the foundation for a lot of these extreme organizations did that assisted his nephew in the First World Trade Center bombing in 1993. So he kept doing all of these things. He, his nephew, he has another nephew was involved in nine 11.

[00:52:24] So this is like a family business. And all of this was because he heard, uh, some of the sermons. By an Afghan, one of those, like we talked about, like, you know, street Imams a guy who didn't really study, but he was talking about like, you know, fighting the Soviet Union, fighting the Israelis, fighting whoever supports the Israelis, fighting the Americans.

[00:52:43] So with everything that was going on to take you to that is like the more aggression we try to do, the more terrorists we create, the more sympathizers. So you have a guy who came all the way from Pakistan, which is not even in the Middle East. So the far, it's like, it's not even near Palestine or Israel or Jerusalem, or not near any of these things.

[00:53:04] So those acts of aggression and like what, what I was saying earlier, the more you try to push people, whether in interrogation, whether in beating them up, guess what? You're just gonna keep creating, uh, more, uh, enemies. You can call 'em terrorists, you can call 'em something else. But like I said, I was saying even when we're in Iraq, we're creating more enemies and terrorists than we can handle.

[00:53:23] So the listener can definitely try to understand from that how somebody came, grew up in Pakistan, lived in Kuwait, by the way, most of his life. So he lived a luxurious life. KSM actually came studied in the us. He went to some university in North Carolina. So he came from a rich family. And why did he do that?

[00:53:41] Because he felt that was like unjust going on with everything going on. Now, I do believe Israel is, it is creating more terrorists and more enemies than, uh, anybody wanted.

[00:53:52] Jordan Harbinger: I wonder though, if, if Israel were to just, we could turn it off like a light switch and it wasn't there tomorrow. You know, there's a lot of logistics that would be involved in something like that, but let's assume it didn't exist.

[00:54:01] Would these guys just find another reason to wage jihad against the west?

[00:54:08] Adam Gamal: Uh, most likely. I mean, if people wanted to hate, they're gonna hate. So when anybody was asking me before, like, what do I think a, a reasonable or a good solution for the whole thing, it is like you have to have two states. I mean, you have two, two groups of people.

[00:54:21] They having a hard time living with each other, but each one of them claiming the land and some of them saying, we owned this land from 2000 years ago. Somebody saying, no, we owned it 5,000 years and nobody knows. So having two states, but to, yes, if you have a switch and you flip it and you go and say, you know, what is, it doesn't exist, this, uh, radical groups, they're gonna end.

[00:54:41] I'll give you a good example. When the Soviet Union was fighting in Afghanistan, so all the mujahideen and the Afghans and the Afghan fighters, they fought, tell, uh, the Soviet, the Russians actually left. What happened after that? They fought against each other Exactly.

[00:54:58] Jordan Harbinger: It's, it's kind of like these groups exist to fight things.

[00:55:02] They're just going to end up, I mean, even Hamas and PLO were fighting each other before. That's part of the reason that we're in this mess. They're not designed to necessarily govern. They're just designed to take over and destroy things. I mean, they're militaries essentially.

[00:55:15] Adam Gamal: They're still fighting against each other.

[00:55:16] And it was in a, a movie before. It was just a, one of the saying in a movie, like, uh, my business is war and uh, business is good. So it's a business to some people. Some people, that's how they, if you take ISIS off the face of the earth tomorrow, the leaders of isis, what they gonna do. They're like, okay, wait.

[00:55:33] We have to find a, a reason. So this is, again, people are using religion. They have agendas to reach certain goals. They'll do whatever it takes to reach those. You have people take Israel out, there would be something else. And by the way, take Hamas out too. There will be something else. So if we say, you know what, Hamas ends tomorrow.

[00:55:53] There is no more Haas. Hamas didn't exist till, uh, the late eighties or the nineties. 83. 83. Yeah, it was 83. So before that there was no Hamas, but that was the PLO and the PLO were, were declared the terrorist organization back before then. It was fat too. I mean, so there is always, now they have, uh, you have Islamic Jihad, you have codes, forces.

[00:56:15] Hezbollah was not there. Now, Hezbollah, I mean, there is always those things. So unless we educate people the right way and to make sure that people are not easily influenced and going in the wrong direction, we're gonna keep having those problems.

[00:56:29] Jordan Harbinger: That's an interesting segue to what I was gonna ask you about the solution for terrorism.

[00:56:34] In your opinion, it sounds like you think. The solution for terrorism is essentially education. And I know you do fund some education for girls in Egypt as well.

[00:56:43] Adam Gamal: Correct? I believe myself, even if my dad did not push me towards like getting the right education, and then maybe I would've went in the wrong direction.

[00:56:51] So education gonna help people prosper. They're gonna help people actually at least critically analyze the information they are, they are receiving. So when somebody's bullshitting them about, Hey, if you go to the bathroom with your right foot, not your left foot, you're going to hell. If you have an educated person gonna look at him and say, you know what, man, this doesn't make any fucking sense.

[00:57:10] And then I believe to educating women, it's crucial because they are raising us. A lot of people spend more time with, with their moms than with their dad because they nurture us and they do all of these things. So if we have a population of educated women in the Middle Eastern and any of these countries, uh, I think these countries will prosper and it'll be harder to convince these guys to become terrorists.

[00:57:33] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, we spend a lot of money on weapons in these countries. The Egypt, for example, your homeland, right? If we put a tiny fraction of that towards education, I feel like it would do a whole lot more.

[00:57:43] Adam Gamal: I agree with you 100%. However, I don't think any dictatorship in any of those countries would accept it, because again, if we educate the people there after like, you know, 20, 30 years, the people are gonna be like, Hey man, we have an idiot rule on us.

[00:57:59] So I know in Egypt, the US government was trying to fund education programs and I think the Egyptian government was pushing back on that. But in, uh, Charles Wilson's war movie, it was very clear that we spent a lot of money on, uh, in Afghanistan and arming them. And as soon as, uh, the war ended, we packed our shit and we left and we didn't spend a dollar on education.

[00:58:22] Fast forward to nine 11, it bit us in the ass. So if we think we save them money. By not giving them money for education. We're not in the long term. We, we are not saving money. We're gonna end up spending more.

[00:58:33] Jordan Harbinger: It seems like if people aren't being educated, Al-Qaeda, isis, whatever, some jihadist group, they just fill in the gap because we see this, this hopelessness, right?

[00:58:44] This ignorance. Oh, how are we gonna rebuild this whole nation? Which I understand, right? You know, we can't really do that in the first place, rebuild the whole nation. Bad actors, they see that as an opportunity to recruit. I think we talked about it earlier in the show. One of the reasons that the blind check, for example, wanted to recruit in Africa was because they were so desperate that they were willing to die because their current life was so bad.

[00:59:06] There was absolutely no upward mobility. That's the best place to go. Get your ride or die suicide bomber type soldiers. And you know what you, you're absolutely

[00:59:15] Adam Gamal: right. Let me even highlight this. In Europe, so even in Europe where ISIS was recruiting, like in Belgium and in France. They were recruiting from the underprivileged immigrant population, they didn't really assimilate well because I give huge credit to the us We have good system to help people assimilate with the US system.

[00:59:35] We have more work to do. Obviously, we're still not doing enough to assimilate the immigrant population. But in Europe, even in France, and, and a lot of people wouldn't do. So France brought a lot of Africans after the, the independent of certain countries in Africa. The French brought a lot of Africans, like from North Africa, from Algeria.

[00:59:54] And when you go to Paris, you'll see those populations living in, uh, the best conditions. And as a matter of fact, even built bridges between where these people live and the city. So they cannot walk to the city. They have to like really walk on a bridge and, and it's harder for them to get into the, the center of the city.

[01:00:10] So there is a void there. There is like desperation, there is a void. Uh, not the best education or some education, but they don't have. The right opportunities. And then it's easy for ISIS to go and recruit this French citizen who was born in France, who, uh, maybe finished high school or something, but didn't go to the best schools and he sells drugs in the street.

[01:00:32] And all of a sudden they've given him a purpose. So purpose is very important, right? So they've given him a purpose and they're like, Hey, why didn't you come and fight with us? So this guy packs his sheen. He goes from France to Turkey, Turkey to uh, Syria, and he goes to the Islamic state of whatever. At that time, they wanted to be, they recruited from Belgium, they recruited from Africa.

[01:00:51] But again, you bring the Europeans and some crazy Americans ended up there as well. So it's easier to recruit. It doesn't have to be only in, in Africa. If you put people in desperate situations, even in France and England and Belgium, they'll be easily recruited as well.

[01:01:08] Jordan Harbinger: Speaking of selling drugs in the street, what's this about your neighbor?

[01:01:11] Thinking you're a drug dealer, tell us Maybe, maybe we keep it light, maybe we end in a light note. So

[01:01:17] Adam Gamal: yeah,

[01:01:17] Jordan Harbinger: that's the rumor around town is that your neighbors think you're a drug dealer.

[01:01:22] Adam Gamal: So I'll give you, I'll give you actually two good examples for that. So first, before I get to my neighbor, I'll tell you when I first, yes, the station in Texas and for the Texas.

[01:01:30] So I have this small, tiny hookup pipe. It's tiny. It's like you can hold it with like two fingers. Me being ignorant. So I got one of this and I put it in my room in the barracks, in the military, and I have a big picture of when I was in a basic training. I went and I got a book and it was Malcolm X's Life and it has a Malcolm X's poster with it.

[01:01:50] So I took that and I put it in my room. So I have a Malcolm X's poster in my room. And I have a, a hookup pipe in my room.

[01:01:57] Jordan Harbinger: Right. And so basically you got your Malcolm X poster and your bong next to each other.

[01:02:02] Adam Gamal: Exactly. So me not knowing anything. And then I think this is like, you know, after four or five weeks, me being there, station in, in Fort Hood, Texas, they do this what's called health and welfare inspection.

[01:02:14] I didn't know that till like, you know, few months after I've learned and I got smarter in the military system and what they do. So they came to my room and searched, well, they searched or they cannot search only my room. So they searched all the rooms and they were like, oh, we know you don't have anything here.

[01:02:28] But they literally, they were searching for drugs. And then fast forward, like 15, 16 years after, I'm a guy in the join Special Operation Command. I don't wear military uniform because the unit I was in, we didn't wear uniforms. You have facial hair, you have weird hair, you travel. I'm driving a nice BMWI live in a nice house and I had a, a hooker, but this time I was actually putting it in my, in the back of my deck.

[01:02:52] And I got it from one of the deployments to the Middle East, and I'm standing in the back of my deck and I'm smoking this hook and it's dry fruit tobacco, windy, every five years the government does background check to update your records, to update everything for you to maintain your clearance. So my next door neighbor, a guy was, uh, a retired Air Force major who never said anything to me other than like, you know, I would wave at him.

[01:03:15] He was very introvert. He would wave from far away. But when they went to ask him about me and he's like, why you guys asking? And they're like, how were you new in his clearance? And the guy himself had a clearance. He was working for the government and he was like, that guy seems like a junkie. Because I see him a lot in his back, in his back, back smoking his hookup.

[01:03:35] At the end of your, uh, update of your security clearance, they do what's called subject interview. So they come and they talk to me and they were like, Hey. They chat and they chat and they're like, Hey, by the way. Your neighbor fought this, so you must be doing a really good job that your neighbor even didn't know you were in the military.

[01:03:51] Yeah, I was the guy who was deploying and, and I disappeared like every two, three months I would disappear for four or five months. So the guy is like, this guy must be like a mule. He disappears and he comes back and he lives in a nice house and he's driving a nice car and he wife driving the next car.

[01:04:06] So he thought I was a, a junkie and I looked Hispanic. Of course the brown guy lives in a nice neighborhood. Oh, so you must

[01:04:13] Jordan Harbinger: be, that's so funny. You can imagine the FBI knocks on the door and like, we want to talk to you about your neighbor. And he's like, finally I knew it. I knew it. And then they're like, yeah, we're renewing his top secret security clearance because he is in a, a super high level organization that we can't discuss.

[01:04:27] And he is like, wait, are we talking about the same guy, not the junkie with the bong that drives A BMW and is only here half the year. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, that guy.

[01:04:34] Adam Gamal: And sometimes I would go, I would leave in the morning wearing shorts and flip flops and uh, and that guy is like, this guy cannot be working in any decent job.

[01:04:43] That he goes to work just like this.

[01:04:45] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Where do you go on the swimming pool At the YMCA? Yeah. No thanks. Yeah, man, this is such an interesting conversation, man. I know we went super, super long. I really appreciate that and thank you for your service and I just, I think it's a really cool angle. You know, I can tell how passionate you are about preserving, well, first of all, preserving your American way of life, which is also your Muslim way of life assimilating into the United States, but also maintaining like your own unique culture in doing it in the exact sort of right way.

[01:05:15] And I just think it's really incredible. Yeah. Thank you once again for coming on the show. Jordan, thank you so

[01:05:21] Adam Gamal: much for inviting me to your show. I've heard tons of great things about you, so it's really, uh, an honor to be with you on the show. I say this all the time, for anybody who tells me thank you for your service, I tell them, thank you for allowing me to serve.

[01:05:33] America's a great country that does open the door for immigrants who don't speak English. To learn some English and be able to join the military and make it to the highest positions in the military. And you didn't see that in any other country. So thank you. Uh, I do really appreciate it and hopefully, uh, you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.

[01:05:54] Jordan Harbinger: I've got some thoughts on this one as usual, but before I get into that, here's a preview with the 26th National Security Advisor, general HR McMaster, on the greatest threats to the United States. Here's a preview.

[01:06:06] H.R. McMaster: War is this continuous interaction of opposites, right? You and maybe multiple enemies and adversaries inside of a complex environment.

[01:06:14] You have to understand strategic empathy to try to view these complex competitions. From the perspective of the other,

[01:06:23] Jordan Harbinger: do you think our divisions domestically right now are one of the greatest threats to our national security?

[01:06:28] H.R. McMaster: Absolutely, Jordan. They are. And you know, our average church is doing everything they can to exploit them.

[01:06:33] I mean, Russia's masterful at this. When we were attacked on nine 11, you know, Al-Qaeda. Didn't target Democrats or Republicans. Right? Right. They targeted Americans. And I think it's time to really demand real reforms. You know? And, and if teachers unions are, are an obstacle, we've gotta tell 'em, Hey, you can't strike reform anymore and we need to demand it.

[01:06:52] The fact that we're driven apart from each other based on these divisions in our society, what social media is doing to us by driving us apart with these algorithms to show you just more and more extreme information that based on your predilections, the fact that, you know, if you are of one political persuasion, you watch one TV network and somebody of a different political persuasion watches a different one,

[01:07:13] Jordan Harbinger: many Republican senators,

[01:07:14] H.R. McMaster: you're creating two different realities.

[01:07:16] We're doing this to ourselves, Jordan, we gotta stop. You know, we gotta stop it. So let's think about, let's work together to make our republic better every day. And there are some who don't want to do that. They think that, hey, you can't even empathize. You're not even allowed to empathize. It's a real tragedy

[01:07:31] Jordan Harbinger: for more including general hr, McMaster's thoughts on immigration and climate change.

[01:07:35] Check out episode four 10 on the Jordan Harbinger show. Man, there was so much we left out. Adam went to Bosnia, talks about the differences between Muslims there, how sort of secular they were until the genocide and the conflict and then Saudi radical Islam starts filling the gap. And in fact, our A Amen Dean episode, episode 3 83.

[01:07:59] He talks about going as part of Al-Qaeda to Bosnia and the extreme Islam and how that sort of disillusioned him. He talked about nice sweet kids chainsawing people in the head and just he's like, what happened to us? What's going on? The Muslim Brotherhood, all this stuff is just authoritarian nonsense with a religious veneer is a very interesting overlap between criminal groups.

[01:08:22] Muslim extremist groups or any sort of extremist group, these people really only clearly care about money. I, I'm not talking about Muslims in general, I mean extremist groups. This whole thing with a religious veneer, maybe ISIS is a true, a bunch of true believers ish, but really the people who smuggle terrorists, they smuggle women, they smuggled guns and drugs before that.

[01:08:40] It the line between straight up organized crime. Jihadism and militant extremism is pretty blurred to that point. The unit also before Adam's time, of course, found Pablo Escobar. They hunted Radha Van Caric, the Bosnian Serb leader in hiding. They've done a lot of this kind of thing. And I think frankly, if we're looking at the war on drugs, the war against these extremist groups, we really do need bad asses who can blend in, know the culture, and know how to operate on the ground.

[01:09:08] And we're just never gonna get anywhere. And we've also shot ourselves in the foot a few times. There was at least a critical shortage of Arabic and Farsi linguists, uh, at the time of, especially after September 11th, because they kicked out all the gay people. Don't ask, don't tell. Remember that. That was very problematic, especially for fighting terrorism.

[01:09:28] And you know, no matter what you think about homosexuality, I kind of think we need everybody rowing in the same direction here, do we not? I. This book, it really was positive about America. While speaking some interesting truth about the American Dream and the military, and I know a lot of Muslims don't wanna join the military, Adam is living proof that Muslims can assimilate into Western culture.

[01:09:51] And I thought that was an interesting note about all this because right when I was talking with Adam on the phone prior to the show, I said to him. Man, a lot of people think Muslims can't really assimilate. The culture's incompatible. And he's like, yeah, there's a reason for that, but it's just not true.

[01:10:04] A lot of us are quite secular and values of Islam when they're not extreme mesh great with Christian Judeo-Christian values of the United States. It's really not a bad fit if you're not a kook. And that should be eye-opening for a lot of us, I think. And I think Adam's just a really good example of a, a true American in just every single way because of where he came from, the way he assimilated and the way he's helped the country.

[01:10:28] I just think it's an awesome story. Of course, now he does security consulting in the Middle East to Africa, et cetera, and we can't show his face or give any other details about him, even if he's not active in the unit because well, terrorists b Wiley as well, and they'll link him to current operations and that of course would be no bueno.

[01:10:45] All things Adam Gamal will be in the show notes@jordanharbinger.com transcripts in the show notes, advertisers deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show. All at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support this show. Don't forget our newsletter. Gabriel and I are revamp in the format.

[01:11:01] We put a little weekly wisdom tidbit in there, something that we've been thinking about. Some stuff you can think about or even do to improve your week, weekend, or whole life. Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Don't forget about six minute networking over there for free@sixminutenetworking.com.

[01:11:15] I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. This show is created in association with Podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Foggerty, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends.

[01:11:31] When you find something useful or interesting, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. So if you know somebody who would be interested in this particular type of thing, maybe the think of a join in the military, military. Maybe they need a little inspiration.

[01:11:42] Maybe they just like these military type tales and episodes, definitely share this one with them. 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.

[01:11:55] Adam and Dr. Drew: Hey buddy. Hey buddy. What's going on, man? Hi guy. 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.

[01:12:13] And I'm like, yeah, yeah, we're doing a podcast. Will you please just join us at the Adam and Dr. Drew Show please at adam, dr drew show.com. What's a great show? Come on now. Only on podcast, Juan. 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.

[01:12:31] Let's do it.