 There was a point when, you know, I stood in my closet holding a 45-gallon pistol, and I didn't want to go back to that. Scott Mann is a Green Beret and a military veteran who suffered from severe trauma after he returned from his last of six tours in Afghanistan. He resolved never to go back to that part of the world again. It was a pretty dark transition. A lot of survivors guilt a lot of challenges with purpose coming out of, you know, multiple combat tours and really got to a place in my life where I saw where things were going in Afghanistan. I saw where things were going with a very careerist military, and I just didn't want to be a part of it anymore. The Taliban is in control of Afghanistan, and Western countries are scrambling to get people out. Thousands of people continue to try and get into the airport and onto a flight, but as the Americans acknowledge while they control the airport, they no longer control the entire process. In August of 2021, he received a call from Afghan Special Operator Nizam. It was very obvious that he was in severe duress. He had been shot through the face defending a U.S. team from an ambush. Like, this guy was, you know, the quintessential Special Operator and truly a brother. And when he called me, he said to me, Sir, I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to die alone. And it just, that just rocked me to my core that we could, that I, you know, how do I leave this guy? How do we leave this guy? I ended up calling a couple of buddies who were still in active duty, who had fought with Nizam, who loved him dearly. And they were like, Hell yeah, let's do it. Let's, you know, let's get him out. And then I called a congressman that was also, that's also a Green Beret and a couple other folks. And we started putting the plan together. We moved him through the city in a dingy old taxi cab and his phone was like on 10% power. And, you know, we're thinking we're going to lose him. He is wanted by the Taliban and he's going to be, you know, swinging by a lamppost by nightfall. So we had one last play. And it was an email and a phone number to a diplomat on the inside named JP that we had been given. So out of desperation, Hell Mary, we called that number and in just a couple of minutes explained the story of Nizam, how he had taken a bullet through the face. He paused and he said, you know, I was a Green Beret before I was a diplomat. And he goes, tell him to say pineapple. So we're like screaming pineapple into the phone, you know, and a few minutes later, we get a selfie of Nizam on the other side of the wire and he had been pulled through. Then my phone just started blowing up. And it was from, you know, old friends that were going through the same thing, you know. And I looked at my wife and I was like, well, you know, what are we going to do here? And she's like, you know what you have to do. So that is how Task Force Pineapple began. Man received the Reason Foundation's 2022 Savas Award for privatization, which recognizes his extraordinary effort in creating a volunteer network that saved hundreds of Afghan nationals after the U.S. withdrawal. When the U.S. hastily announced a departure date from the country, it wasn't clear what would happen to the thousands of Afghans who had worked directly with military personnel during the war and thus faced retribution from the Taliban. I've done enough interviews on this that I'm convinced there was not a concrete plan. And when I ask about a plan to the men and women who were really like the NCO level and the company commander level, they just start laughing. You know, there was not a plan for the evacuation. Man and his team developed a system for helping those who had worked with U.S. forces to navigate their way to Abbey Gate, the main security checkpoint at the Kabul airport. Then they recruited military personnel known as conductors to pick them out from the crowd. And they would look for a green chemlight from the conductor. When they saw the green chemlight, they would hold up a symbol of the pineapple on their phone. And then the conductor, who had a baseball card with picture and number in party, would call out their name, would ask for their name, and number in the party. If it was correct, they would pull their party in, count them out, put them in highlights trucks and drive them across the airfield for process. And so that became our underground know-how. And we put it in full swing for about a 72-hour period to move hundreds of Afghans through the wire. Scott continues to advocate for the thousands of Afghans who worked with U.S. forces but are still in hiding within the country with no escape plan. We had 6,000 people on our manifest who were in safe houses. We had 20 kids born in safe houses post-explosion. One of the things I'm probably, I guess, most proud of is that we were able to raise enough revenue to keep our 6,000 person manifest to get them through the winter. And, you know, some of them didn't make it. Some of them were assassinated, hunted and killed. And there are hundreds of veterans, not just in pineapple, but in a lot of these other groups as well. They are in a moral quandary where they are literally the singular lifeline to these families, to these partners who have no other recourse. They don't know how they can move on with their lives. And that's a real, real problem that's going to have to be addressed.