Captain Brad Geary
speaker
303 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Captain Brad Geary’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
There's like a one-week course that's just very surfacy. Well, ironically, from this article, that is precisely when we should be doubling down on our leadership development and making sure we have checks and balances as these people are continuing in positions of authority, climbing that chain of command. So right when we should do more, When we know from science, we're actually doing less.
So we're mixing this up, and we're putting it backwards. And I think there's some problems I've seen, certainly within Naval Special Warfare with some of my peers, as I've watched this take place in real time.
So there were three, potentially four, three that were willing to write me letters of recommendation for any kind of board of inquiry thing I had. So a total change of heart. Well, so, but a lot of them went the other way, too. But here's the funny thing, Sean. Even though, and so one of them, two of them said this, but I'll tell you the story about one.
After we won, called me up, old friend of mine, mentor of mine, phenomenal SEAL officer. Brad, I'm so proud of you. Like you just, you crushed this. You did all the right things. You handled it the right way. You didn't let it turn into an angry, bitter man. I'm just so proud of how you handled this whole thing. Congratulations on the win. This is huge.
And then he paused and he says, but I've got to, I've got to say, I've just got to say it. The process worked. You got to be fucking kidding me. No. The process worked. And I love this dude. I know, I know. And I love this dude. So I said, hey, no, sir, no. Like, we won because I subverted the process. We won because the process showed itself to be untrustworthy.
And so I raised this issue and then finally went around and obliterated the process. And he was quiet for a second. He goes, you're right.
And here's the thing that's interesting about that to me, and this is one of the things we learned in this three-year process, is even the great admirals out there, which there's some great ones, and the great generals out there, have become so institutionalized that they're in many ways incapable of even criticizing the process when they see it acting unjustly. They just can't do it.
I don't want to speak too generally, right? I think there are some absolute altruists out there who want to keep leading because they love the organization, they love the nation. What I've noticed, though, is it's an interesting pattern. When something goes wrong, and I have a theory on it, when something goes wrong, commanding officers are kind of hung out to dry, right?
Well, you were in command. We have to have total responsibility and accountability. So you see COs getting fired all the time for lack of trust and confidence. Yet if you pull the thread on like root cause analysis on a lot of these ones, what you'll find is they probably or might be working under some other Commodore or some other Admiral who is somewhat of a toxic leader or not a good leader.
And that trickled down to that CO. But you never ever see or very rarely do you see a Commodore or an Admiral fired. And I think it's because at the command level, you represent that command. Everything above that, you now represent the institution. And if you're going to fire someone who represents the institution, that is a criticism against the institution.
And they view that as their chief goal, preserving the institution. And I think that's where we see gradually what happened is a bit of a misplacement of loyalties. where, and I think it's what we saw in our case, was, well, the institution decided we're going to go with this narrative. Doesn't matter whether it's true or not.
Now we have to defend the institution's decision, and we're going to follow this through all the way to the end, even when it made no more rational sense. Even when we exposed, to quote Congress,
I think the quote was grossly unethical practices, and I'm quoting them now, it's words to that effect, and a lack of investigative integrity from a congressional letterhead because, well, we can't criticize the institution because the public trusts the institution.
What I think happens subliminally with a lot of these guys is not they're so power hungry, it's that over time, their loyalty flips, and instead of remembering that they made an oath to the Constitution, they somehow start placing the institution above that. And that shapes decision-making.
Which is an attack on the institution, which we would defend.
Well, three of them offered you the letter, but even one of the other guys, and this is one of the things I, I don't want to get too far ahead, we'll talk about this, but this is one of the things I talked to Secretary Hicks at the ballot when I interviewed with him, is... One of the other guys, same thing. We're going to write a letter for you. You're a great dude. This is unfair. This is unjust.
I can't believe this. We should treat our teammates better. I can't believe we've let this happen to you. Brad, but what you really want to do is see this process through and go to the Board of Inquiry because that's how you get vindicated in the end is by following this process. To which I replied, sir, I appreciate the letter. No, no.
When I have a thousand data points showing the process is untrustworthy, the answer isn't hope for the best and keep trusting it. I believe we have, back to our oath to the Constitution of the United States, as officers specifically,
We have a moral obligation when we see something like this happening to stand up and say no, to stand up for the truth and confront the injustice, confront the process or the system that is acting in unethical ways, and in some cases, illegal ways, and obliterate it, expose it at all costs. And that's really what we've done here, what we did with the episode with you.
And I tried to do it shy of that, I wrote letters to admirals. I sent evidence directly to the CNO where we talked about, hey, here's the irrefutable evidence showing admirals in your command lied, violated the oath of office, and produced deliberately manipulative investigations. Calm silent. Jeez. That's our duty as officers, I think.
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