Signal Interceptor in Combat | Special Forces Linguist | 82nd Airborne | 7th Special Forces | Clay Jensen

Combat Story

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Join our weekly Combat Check-In Newsletter (www.combatstory.com/newsletter) to get a short email from Ryan for people who love and support our veterans, service members, and their families. It has info on a significant event in military and/or intel history, a funny military joke, an update on a current event I'm following, something I'm doing that week in my life, a book I'm reading, a look at an upcoming interview, a reflection on a past episode and more! ========= Today we hear our first Combat Story from a military intelligence linguist and signal interceptor, Clay Jensen. Clay deployed six times to both Iraq and Afghanistan and has spent considerable time helping to get our Afghan allies out of Afghanistan.

Clay was in a Blackhawk when it was shot out of the sky while trying to identify the location of Al-Qai’da’s then #2 leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan. Clay was also forward deployed in 2007 to identify the location of Bin Laden during what became a failed raid to capture AQ’s leader at the time (listeners will recall that our former guest Mike Rutledge was also on that operation).

Clay supported clandestine and Top Secret operations working alongside NSA and other three letter agencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Latin America as part of both the 82nd Airborne and 7th Special Forces Group in a Special Operations Team - Alpha (or SOT-A).

I hope you enjoy this first ever Combat Story from a signal interceptor who we, as Apache pilots, relied on regularly to triangulate targets, as much as I did.

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Find Clay Jensen Online: - LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/clayton-jensen-793b468b/ Show Notes: 00:00 - Intro 01:02 - Guest Introduction (Clay Jensen) 02:15 - Interview begins 02:48 - Impressions on Iraq 20 years later 04:57 - Japanese upbringing 09:24 - Bilingual for Defense Language Institute 11:31 - Interest in the Military 12:58 - Joining the Military 14:57 - Recruitment 18:15 - Working with Agencies 19:24 - Training for the Signals and Intelligence 23:38 - Joining the 82nd 24:40 - Linguistics in regular MOS 28:08 - 9/11 31:05 - 1st Deployment to Afghanistan 37:28 - Supporting the battle as a Linguist 40:08 - Navigating the outcome of a battle 44:06 - Transfering to Special Forces 46:11 - Proving yourself 47:20 - Definition of SOT-A 49:33 - Difference between standard MOS and Special Forces 51:21 - The Raid for Zawahiri 01:09:33 - Columbia 01:16:59 - The importance of Vocabulary 01:19:37 - Funny things 01:24:19 - Relationship with Interpreters 01:27:03 - Getting involved in the Afghanistan Evacuation 01:34:57 - Most courageous act 01:38:26 - Best and worst MREs 01:40:07 - Sentimental items 01:41:22 - Would you do it again 01:43:09 - Listener comments and shout outs