You're listening to the CyberWireriefing from the International Spy Museum.

I'm Mark Stout, the Museum's historian.

Here at the museum we get the most interesting authors including journalists,

scholars, former spies, and intelligence officers coming in to speak with our visitors and answer questions about their latest works dealing with espionage, intelligence, and other national security issues.

Please join me in listening to another of our selected hour-long author debriefings.

Welcome to the International Spy Museum. I'm Mark Stout. I'm the historian here.

And we're fortunate enough to have today as our as our guest. First

lieutenant Mike Guardia of the U.S. Army, who's presently serving at Fort Bliss

in the Second Brigade of the First Armored Division.

He's been in the Army since 2008. And aside from being an Army officer in the Army since 2008 and aside from being an Army officer in the

armor branch he's also a historian he has his VA and his MA both in history

from the University of Houston as a scholar and a soldier, a thinker and a warrior Mike I think

exemplifies many of the things that have made the United States military the

greatest military in the world and bringing brain and bronze bronze together and in fact Mike was just telling me about his his plot to get a PhD at some point

Despite being an armor officer Mike has actually taken quite an interest in guerrilla warfare.

His first book which grew out of his master's thesis was American guerrilla, the forgotten heroics of Russell W. Volkman. His second book, which is what we're here to talk about today, is Shadow Commander, the Epic Story The

Eppic story of Donald D. Blackburn,

guerrilla leader and Special Forces Hero.

Now Special Forces and Intelligence

have a very close relationship, and you'll see a lot of that running through much of Mike's story today about Donald Blackburn.

If you go back to World War II and we actually will be talking a good bit about World War II today in the Pacific,

the Office of Strategic Services during that war

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