Welcome to Talk With History.

I'm your host Scott, and today my wife and historian Jenn comes to you as a

guest on another podcast, Jenn recently guested on the Deep Focus Podcast

with host and former CIA Agent John Kiriakou john was actually just on the

Joe Rogan podcast to talk about his career in the CIA, how he was the head

of counter-terrorism in Pakistan after nine 11, and how he famously blew the

whistle on the agency's torture program and became the first former CIA official

to serve prison time related to the case.

John Kiriakou a rapidly growing audience on YouTube, and he was gracious enough

to have Jenn on as a guest to talk in depth about her military service,

what it was like being one of the first female pilots in her helicopter

squadron, and what it was like to fly in combat right after nine 11.

We have the first part of that conversation for you here, and if you

want to see the full interview, check out the first link in this episode's.

Show notes.

Hi, I am John Kiriakou and welcome back to Deep Focus.

You know, it's not often that we have someone who is a bonafide hero.

On the show, but we have such a person today, and not only is she a hero, at

least in my estimation, not only does she have a wonderful story to tell about

wartime and what it was like going into war in the immediate aftermath of nine 11.

But she has a fascinating story about her post-military career.

Jennnifer Bennie was a helicopter pilot.

She had a great career, an important career, and, and a career in which

she accomplished a great many things.

We're gonna talk about that.

But then after her military career, she decided to focus on history, the

same kind of history that I like.

So.

I'm not gonna tell her story.

I'm gonna let her tell her story.

Jennnifer, welcome to the show.

It's good to see you.

Thank you for having me.

It's good to see you too.

So, I wanna talk first about your decision to join the military.

Do you have a military tradition in your family or was this something you

just decided was the right thing to do?

My parents are both, uh, mil Air Force.

Uh, they're Air Force Veterans.

They're Air Force Security Police.

I was born at, in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

My parents was stationed at Pope, but I was born at Fort Bragg because the Army

Hospital was the only hospital there.

And uh, and it's interesting because my mom was one of the

first female security police in.

The Air Force, and she was the, actually the first one in Abdo, Italy.

And, uh, she met my dad.

My mom's from Queens, New York, uh, raised in Jackson Heights,

went to PS 69, Bryant High School.

My dad is a small town Pennsylvania boy from the outskirts of

Pittsburgh, a big corn fed.

You know, he, his claim to fame was his high school football team won the entire

state championship for Pennsylvania.

Right.

What, what, what town was that?

It's Houston, Pennsylvania.

It's south of Pittsburgh.

I actually went to the same high school, 'cause when my father

got out of the military, we moved back to be close to family.

I graduated with 69 people.

That's how big this high school is, and they won the entire state

championship for Pennsylvania.

So that was his big claim.

But he's a big guy.

Six three.

Two 40 big guy, a lineman, and so he meets my mother in, in Italy.

Doesn't think women should be in the military, thinks that they

make everyone weaker, that he, they have to watch out for the women.

My mom stood up, Queens, New York, said, I you, if you have a problem

with that, then you shouldn't be here because I'm doing my job.

You need to do yours, not focus on me.

And they got married three months later.

So.

Those are my parents, right?

And so when my mom was in, they from Aviano, they got stationed at,

uh, at Pope and my mom was thinking of getting outta the military.

She had just had, she had me, she had my brother 18 months later, and

a Genor was walking around My mother again, kind of poster child for.

Women in the, in the military at the time, and so much so that she was

testing out the new maternity uniforms.

They didn't even have them at the time for the military.

And a general had asked her, what could I do?

Because she was like, I'm thinking of getting out.

I just had kids.

And he goes, what could I do to make you stay in the military?

And she goes, if I had water to Hawaii.

I'd stay in.

So three months later, my mom had orders to Bellows Air Force Base in

Hawaii, which is the recreational base.

If you know anything about it, it's all cabins.

Obama would stay there.

They have a presidential cabin there.

Uh, and so my father also got orders to bellows, uh, Magnum PI

would film on Bellows while, while.

Uh, it was there because the, the public couldn't come on.

My mom was a personal bodyguard for Tom Selleck, right?

So I'm a little kid not knowing anything, right.

And I'm like, oh, Tom, you know, I thought his name was fabric.

I mean a magnum.

And he would carry me around.

But it's this time we moved, we got orders after that to Wyoming and I

saw the Thunderbirds for the first time and I said, I'm gonna do that.

I'm gonna fly jets and.

If you know anything about, my maiden name was Mitchell, so if you

know anything about Top Gun, right?

I, I was the real Lieutenant Mitchell Na, Naval Aviator, Lieutenant Mitchell.

So my, my, I was never married in the military, so my name

the entire time was Mitchell.

And so Jet, jet, jet Jets, I'm gonna go Air Force.

So my father gets out of the military in Wyoming.

We move back to Pittsburgh.

I go for the Navy scholarship.

I, I go for the air, the military scholarship to Penn State.

And I went to the Air Force first and the Air Force said, you have to major in math.

We love you, we think you're great, but you have to major in math.

And I was like, uh, I'm not sure if I want math.

One floor up was the Navy.

And I said, what, what can you guys offer?

And they said, we love you.

We would love for you to be a pilot.

Uh, you made what you want.

And I said, I'm gonna go Navy.

So that's why I completely changed to Navy.

Still jets, though.

Still wanted to fly jets.

So between your junior and senior year of ROTC, I had a full

scholarship to Penn State, R-O-T-C-I.

They send you to an aircraft carrier to see what you would wanna do

in the, in the military, right.

I got sent to the Eisenhower in the Mediterranean.

Wow.

1998. I've, I've

Eisenhower, it's a city on the water.

Yes, and it was, I flew into nice, like it's my first time going to Europe.

I flew into Nice, I met the ship in in Cannes, right?

I saw where the CANS film festival was.

I'm like, this is amazing.

And met the ship and they attached me to the helicopter Squadron because.

They had a female pilot and they wanted me to interact with a female pilot.

I'm like, helicopters.

I didn't even know the Navy had helicopters.

I thought that was Army.

And on an aircraft carrier, the helicopter job is pretty much

one of the most boring jobs.

You're the first to launch, the last to land.

You fly what they call starboard D, so it's a starboard, looks like a D.

You fly in a circle on the starboard side of the ship and you're waiting.

For someone to crash, right?

You're the first.

That's why their first one launched.

So they can do all their air ops, and then you're the last one to land.

So when all the air Ops are done, you land and you're just, you're

airborne in case something happens.

Right?

I

didn't know they did that.

That's the first time I've ever heard that.

Yes.

And so I was like, oh, helicopters, whatever.

I wanna fly in the F 14.

So I had gotten all of my qualifications before I left.

I, now I, I, we'll caveat about this.

I'm a swimmer and I'm not just a swimmer.

I'm a butterfly.

So I have very strong arms, strong shoulders.

So I had to do all the parachute stuff where they drag you through the pool

and you have to unleash yourself.

I had to do the dunkers, and I got all the qualifications too, if I was to get a hop.

In a jet.

I was ready to do that.

I made sure I had all of it before I went out on this Midship and Cruise.

This is 1998.

No women and any of these Judd squadrons, right?

Women had just been allowed into combat three years earlier.

But it wasn't like, I tell people that it was like it was

all these women waiting, right?

They, they allowed it, but there weren't women doing it.

There were a couple women who had qualified, but they weren't

deployed or anything like that.

And so I walk into, and this is the Jolly Rogers, so they're the

skull and the crossbones, right?

And, uh, they, they took no midshipmen, usually midshipmen

get attached to a squadron.

I was attached to the helo squadron.

I think there was s threes that took another midshipman.

Uh, I walk into this F 14 ready room.

I sit right in the front row and if you any know anything about a

ready room on an aircraft carrier, the front row is CO xo, opso admin.

It's all the high ranking office.

I sit right in the front row.

As the commanding officer is speaking at the podium and he looks at me

in very colorful language and tells me to get out of his ready room

and I say, no, I'm not leaving.

I'm like, this is my dream and I wanna fly.

I tell people, a lot of times my smart mouth either gets me something

pretty amazing or in a lot of trouble, and this was a moment, one of those

defining moments in my career.

And he looked at me and he goes, in another California,

where do you go to school?

And I said, sir, I go to Penn State and he goes, big 10, you're flying.

'cause he went to Indiana in the Big 10.

And that moment he did that.

Every guy in that squadron treated me fantastic.

I was allowed to go into the, the Jolly Rogers.

Anytime I wanted, they gave me their patches.

I flew in an F 14 off a carrier, sat in the backseat like Goose.

We the co flew at the same time in his jet, played the Indiana fight song.

And I was, I was like, this is it.

I'm gonna fly jets.

We caught the trap on the way in.

It was amazing, right.

I, I, it was one of the greatest moments in my aviation career.

Like, I just, it was amazing.

Everything I wanted, I knew this was what I wanted to do, and like I said,

they were, he was great with me.

They were all great.

Three days later, I'm in the Hilo, because again, I could choose

what flights I wanted to fly every day on in the helicopter, because

I'm attached to that squadron.

I just sit in the back with the rescue swimmers, right?

And I'd be like, I'll go on this flight today.

Get off the carrier.

Something fun to do.

We're in starboard D I'm back with the rescue swimmers.

There's two of them back there.

We're kind of just goofing around and we hear aircraft in the water.

Like you hear the thing that you're like, oh my gosh, and I'm,

my eyes got so big, we all, and they start throwing their gear on.

Two F fourteens had hit each other.

Oh my God.

They had clipped wings, just like, um, they were trying to dog fight,

which we don't really practice as much anymore because there's not really a

country that can fly as well as us.

It's not an ally.

So they clipped wings.

They got too close.

The pilot I had flown with actually was one of them.

He made it back to the carrier.

The other one went into the Mediterranean.

And just like in Top Gun, the pilot died, he hit his head on the canopy, got

wrapped up in the parachute and drowned.

We rescued the NFO Naval Flight Officer like Goose who sat in the back.

When you sit on an ejection seat, you wear these shin straps that pull your

legs up under the seat 'cause you're basically sitting on a rocket, right?

Well one of them had failed and he basically saw his leg

shoot up right in by his face.

So he had broken his leg basically.

And um.

I was barely attached.

And so when they got him into the Hilo, he's screaming, the rescue

swimmer's splinting it and wrapping it, and we're going back to the

carrier, and then they eventually will fly him to Turkey to save his leg.

I help with the stretcher, right?

Because they get him and, and I'm, again, I'm a midshipman.

I know nothing, but I'm wearing a flight suit.

I'm in the back of this Hilo.

I'm watching everything, and I just help with the stretcher

as we get to the carrier.

And he looks up at me and he said, when I heard the rotors coming,

I knew I was gonna be okay.

And that's when I said, I'm gonna be a helicopter pilot.

Oh yeah.

Right.

What year was that?

This was 1998.

And I'm still friends with that NFO.

I am friends with him on LinkedIn.

Um, the pilot I flew with has subsequently, he, he, we went on

to be a commanding officer of flu f fourteens, but he subsequently has

died of cancer and he's at Arlington.

I visit his grave and tell his story.

His call sign was Rhino.

But, uh, after that I went to flight school.

So this is, I graduate from Penn State, 1999.

You graduate in uniform, your commission the day before you graduate.

So when my parents come to my graduation, they can at least

pick me out of the 10,000 people.

'cause I'm in my, uh, uniform instead of cap and gown.

And then I go to flight school and flight school again.

Being a swimmer was such a benefit for me.

I beat everybody in the pool.

We do a mile swim in full flight gear.

I beat everyone like.

Everyone, men, women, didn't matter.

I was first outta the pool.

So much so that the guys who ran the training tank gave me the best time.

They're like, Mitchell, this is the best time.

Can you beat it?

I'm like, I can beat it.

Get everyone outta my way, because you have to swim around everybody, right?

And they're like, oh, we can't do that.

I'm like, I can't.

I'm trying to maneuver between everyone who's slower, but I can beat that time.

Now, I didn't beat it because again, there was like 20 of us in the pool.

But um.

But I beat everybody and I made a point.

I could do pull-ups, I could lift a guy on my shoulders.

I could do, I mean, I'm not a small girl.

I'm five seven.

And so it kind of helps because when you're going through aviation,

uh, physiology, you have to get measured everywhere, right?

Shoulder to hip, hip to knee, uh, shoulder to the end of your hands.

'cause you've gotta fit in a cockpit.

That was built for men.

Right?

And so being a bigger woman helped and being able to do those things helped.

And I think having a mother who proved herself in, in a, a male dominated

field, she told me, just do the things.

Just do all the things and let them see you do the things,

Jenn, and that'll be enough.

And it was true.

I trained with all these guys.

I could throw a guy on my shoulders and I never heard anything about she can't do

it.

So you weren't, you weren't intimidated by this at all.

No.

And I tell people, they ask me, where does that confidence come from?

Yeah.

And I think it's because I had a six foot 4, 240 pound father who

a hundred percent believed in me.

Yeah,

right.

People always say, you're a woman in the military, do you have daddy issues?

And I always laugh.

I'm like, I've, if you meet a father who loved and supported me

and I never had to worry about, you know, having a male figure in my

life, uh, yeah, I had daddy issues.

I had a father who was a, he beca became a high school football coach.

After that, he was also a, uh, you know, in the law enforcement, and

he a hundred percent believed in me.

He was like, you can do it, Jenn.

Just go out there and do it.

I have a hundred percent faith that you can, you can achieve this.

So, because I had the support of both my parents, I didn't

care what anyone else thought.

I didn't, and I was, I was making the grades, I was getting the scholarships.

I that had that great experience on the Eisenhower.

I felt very reinforced by my confidence that I could do this.

But I tell people, flight school, right?

I graduated in 99, started flight school in 2000, the beginning of 2000.

It's, it's hard.

I had never flown before.

Right?

No private pilot's license.

You started from scratch, so you started from scratch when you were,

when you were 17, 18 years old, you weren't out at the local municipal

airport in the, in the Sessman 1 72, taking the, the flight lessons.

No, because as much as like, I would have loved to have done that, my

parents were blue collar workers.

Sure.

Right.

I, I could not have afforded school without the Navy.

Uh, I had good grades, but not good enough to get a full academic scholarship.

I had good grades to get a full Navy scholarship, you know, and,

um, and so I, I had to work all my summers just to afford the

basics when I got back to school.

And so, uh, I.

Never had a chance for any, anything sub, you know, extra

before I went to flight school.

Uh, I had just watched Top Gun a million times, but I tell people your

first flight, they show you everything.

Your second flight, you take off by yourself.

Your third flight, you land by yourself.

You can't do that.

You're out.

We're talking helicopters here.

I, I actually got my pilots.

No fixed wings.

Fixed wings, fixed wings first, okay?

Mm-hmm.

I got my pilot's license in, in 2000, the summer of 2000.

Um, only because I, I worked in a, in a group of five guys in, in the CIA

station overseas and in the course of conversation one day they all mentioned

that they all had their pilot's licenses.

And I said, oh, please.

I said, if you dopes can get pilot's licenses, I can too.

And we laughed and I mentioned to my ex-wife, um.

Hey, everybody in the branch has a pilot's license.

I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna give it a try.

She said, what?

You're too stupid to get a pilot's license.

You have to, you have to be good in math and, and calculus and stuff like that.

So I went home on r and r. My dad and I were in the car driving

to Walmart and there was, I, I'm also from Western Pennsylvania.

Newcastle, Pennsylvania, which is just north of Pittsburgh.

I know that.

So, and we also had a killer football team.

Uh, still do, in fact we're, anyway, we're number one right

now, but that's a different issue.

So, um, I was taking a shortcut to the Walmart and it was past the local

airport and they had a banner out front and it said, learn to fly here.

So I said, dad, let me pull over for a minute.

I just wanna go in and ask him a couple of questions.

So I park the car I run in.

I said, how much does it cost and how long does it take?

And he said, um, it's $5,000 flat, and if you're serious,

you can do it in six weeks.

And so I learned to fly in six weeks.

Now landing is hard.

Taken off is easy.

Flying the plane, the plane wants to stay in the air, it flies itself.

Mm-hmm.

Landing is hard.

And what I'm gonna ask you about in a second is flying a plane is one thing.

Flying a helicopter is an entirely different animal.

Yes.

So

your training in a fixed wing aircraft.

Mm-hmm.

And then

what?

So everyone who goes to flight school trains in fixed wing.

Um, and again, it's to weed you out.

And, and what do you, what kind of fixed wing are you training on a T 34 mentor?

You probably have seen them.

There's, they're on the flight deck of the intrepid.

Uh, they're painted orange and white.

Like, stay away from me.

Right, right.

Students are in here.

It's, it's a, it's a turbo prop.

It's a pretty powerful aircraft.

'cause I'll do my, I'll do all my aerobatics in that aircraft.

I learned how to fly form in that aircraft.

I do a cross country in that aircraft.

That's what you all, everyone does this in primary flight school and

um, it's a lot of testing beforehand.

Like you said, it's a lot of like aerodynamics and thermodynamics and.

Weather engines, they throw a lot of testing quickly at you in

eight weeks, and you fail till you're out and 80% is passing.

So that's how they first weed you out.

And then it's a lot of physical fitness tests, right?

And that's, that's even before you fly a lot of physical fitness tests and eyes,

all those things for pilots, right?

Colorblindness, eyes, all those things that could also disqualify you.

And then you start to fly fixed wing, which I like again,

first flight, they show you.

Second flight you take off.

Third flight you land and you brief these flights for an hour

before you even get in the cockpit.

You have to talk through every procedure.

You have to have studied them.

And I always would get like the hardest guys, like the people who had the

reputation of being very difficult.

And I remember being like, okay, gotta do it, Jenn.

Gotta do it.

Right?

So I would just put my head down and study and learn and get in

there and just give it my best.

I think they wanna see that, right?

They want, they're trying to weed out people who are

not confident in themselves.

'cause you want a confident pilot, right?

You want a pilot who's like, I can do that.

I'll figure it out.

We'll get, we'll get in, we'll get out, we'll, we'll get them, we'll save them.

And so I think they're looking for that foundation of you

as a, as, even as a learner.

And so.

Yeah.

And I loved it.

I learned it quickly.

Right.

And I just, I loved being in the sky.

And I tell people, my first solo was, my 13th flight is your first solo.

And like you said, we fly every day.

And if you, I think you become a better pilot flying every day.

It's a lot of study.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

It's a lot of work.

Yes.

Right?

Mm-hmm.

But it's just like driving.

If you drive every day.

You're gonna be better.

And same thing with flying.

It's a, like you're studying your butt off, but that 13th, that 13th flight,

your solo, you take off, you go to another field, you do five touch and GOs,

and they watch you and they grade you.

And then you have like an hour to go back to the original, you

know, Pensacola original field.

And um.

I climbed up in close to the clouds and I could see my shadow on the cloud,

and I could see just me in the cockpit like no instructor, and I put my hand

on the windscreen and I had never felt.

Such a sense of accomplishment in my life.

Yeah.

Why know?

Like

I did it.

I did this from nothing.

Yes.

From nothing.

I, from nothing.

My dream.

I brought it all the way through to fruition.

I can do this.

Right.

And that's just my first solo.

From there you learn aerobatics, which is so much fun, you know,

spins and dives and rolls.

And then you do two solos doing that on your own in the cockpit.

So you're pulling Gs and you're making sure you don't pass out

because you're flying solo.

Uh, I loved flying form.

You learn how to tuck in, right?

So when you see the blue angels, when you see the thunderbirds, how they're

tucked into each other, looking at a sight picture, I tell people, you never

take your eyes off the other aircraft.

You're constantly looking at them.

You don't look at your cockpit at all.

You're making little movements to keep that site picture perfect,

and the only person navigating is the lead, the one who's looking

outside, you're just with them.

So you don't even know when you're rolling.

You're just so tucked into that site picture that you're just

going, you don't even realize that what you're doing aerobatics wise.

And so, uh, I loved form.

And then from there you graduate.

Primary intermediate is your cross country, and then you go to advanced.

And advanced is rotary wing.

Wow.

And yes, learning to hover is divine

because it is hovering is little micro movements they call it.

I, I'm stirring the soup right?

Because to hover, to hold a hover is these little micro movements to

keep you in a nice, balanced hover.

And, uh, you learn all these things with helicopters because you

have to learn how to auto rotate.

Auto rotation can save your life.

It's the only way to save the aircraft from an engine failure.

You practice auto rotation every time you fly, and so.

It was a different animal, but I loved it.

I loved, you're low, you're slow, you do a lot of land navigation and uh, I

knew my job in the Navy would be a lot more saving lives than taking lives.

And so, but, so this is all happening in 2000 and I just finished flight

school the beginning of September, 2001.

And again, my mom's from New York.

I'm done with flight school.

It's September 4th.

I walk into my commanding officer's office and I said, uh, I, I, we

had talked before, they had never had a female pilot at all in Japan.

I wanted to be that female pilot in Japan.

My c said.

If you're first, Jenn, if you're first, I'll make sure you're

the first female pilot in Japan.

I walk into his office September 4th.

I said, how's it looking?

He goes, you're first, you're gonna Japan.

I'm like, awesome.

September 11th happens, right?

My parents are coming in for my wings.

September 14th, my mom calls me.

I'm sleeping in because I'm done with flight school.

Uh, I pick up the phone.

My mom's from New York, right?

And she's like, turn on the television.

And I saw.

We, we, the first plane had hit, right, and that's when I was

like, what, what's going on?

Did they, was that a mistake?

Were they, was it, was it.

Out of fuel was the engine failure and they crashed and, and then

we saw the second plane hit on, I watched it on TV with my mother

and I said, mom, I gotta go.

I knew in that moment it was an attack.

I knew it.

And um, my commanding officer shut down the base, right.

All the bases was shut down.

He called us all, told us to meet him at a waffle house off base.

My whole winging class, I'm winging with about 20 people.

And we meet at the Waffle House and he's like, okay.

Uh, bases had been shut down.

This is when we knew everything.

We already, the Pentagon had been attacked.

And so, um, Shanksville, the crash had happened in Shanksville.

And so we all knew something was going on.

And he's like, you're anyone who's coming to your winging, we

need all copies of documentation.

There's cars will be searched.

You only get one vehicle across.

Uh, so who's ever coming to your winging?

We need to all that documentation now.

Orders are being pulled.

And he looked at me and he goes, Jenn, they need you in San Diego.

And I said, yes, sir. He goes, that's where you're going.

I said, okay.

So I didn't even question it, right.

I didn't even question what helicopter was flying, what was needed.

I, I tell people I joined the Navy.

To see the world, to get college paid for, to fly, and all of a sudden

now I'm gonna be fighting, right?

Fighting a war.

Now, I knew that could be a possibility, but it was not what

I had specifically joined up for.

But I was ready to do my job and, uh.

So September 14th happens, my parents come to my winging, it's fantastic.

And then I'm supposed to ship out to San Diego to start Sears school.

So we'll talk about sea school and waterboarding, right?

Um, I'm set to start SERE School in October, 2001.

If you wanna hear what

SERE school was like, what it was like flying over a rack before

we had troops on the ground, and what continues to drive gin.

Check out the Deep Focus podcast on YouTube, or just click the first

link in this podcast show notes.

We'll talk to you next time.