The Shawn Ryan Show

The popular podcast host—whose given name isn't Shawn Ryan—went from the SEALs to the CIA to running drug networks in South America.

Since its launch four years ago, the Shawn Ryan Show has become a powerhouse.

Hosted by a former Navy SEAL, the video podcast built a following by airing long interviews with special operators who spoke with sometimes surprising candor about their careers and personal struggles. Ryan built on that early success by hosting UFO cranks and, in recent months, added politics to the mix with guests like Tucker Carlson, RFK Jr., and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Today, the Shawn Ryan Show has nearly 3 million subscribers on YouTube, and this week, Ryan released his biggest interview yet: Donald Trump.

But the more interesting story may be that of the man in the interviewer’s chair. Shawn Ryan—which isn’t his given name—went from the Navy SEALs to CIA security contracting and then, by his own account, ran drug networks in South America.

According to a biographical summary the Navy sent me, Ryan enlisted at 18, shortly before 9/11. He graduated from Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training the following year and spent three years in the teams from 2003 until he left the Navy in 2006. Ryan deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq and was awarded a combat action ribbon. In court papers, Ryan said he served with SEAL Teams Two and Eight.

After leaving the Navy, Ryan says he spent several years working in security contracting, much of it with the CIA’s Global Response Staff. GRS officers serve as bodyguards for U.S. spies and diplomats in war zones. More than a few GRS officers were former SEALs, including Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, who were killed in 2012 while trying to protect a CIA facility in Benghazi, Libya.

While still in the agency, Ryan’s life took a dark turn. He says he never used drugs in the SEALs, but in the CIA, Ryan began using alcohol and pills to cope with the strains of a career total of 20 deployments to 14 different areas of operation. He began spending time in South America, lured by a lifelong fascination with jungle warfare.

After butting heads with a team leader, Ryan left GRS in 2015, and his personal life went into free fall. “A lot of people don't know this, but I lived in Colombia for almost five years and was addicted to cocaine down there,” Ryan said on another one of his podcasts.

The former SEAL told Megyn Kelly how he used his skills as a special operator to immerse himself in narco culture and build drug networks in South America:

Ryan: It was exciting to me. I was overseas building my own network, kind of felt like I was building my own operations.

Kelly: What kind of operations?

Ryan: Drug networks. I wanted to see how deep into the narcos network I could get myself.

Kelly: But this was not for crime fighting.

Ryan: No. This was—

Kelly: Crime committing.

Ryan: Pretty much. So I kind of started at street level and built a network out and met people and found my guys. And started testing cocaine and finding the best stuff. And I found it. And that lasted for a couple of years. I got a lot of satisfaction out of the adrenaline and just seeing how much I could embed myself in these different cultures. And so then I started flying all over South America. I started going to Peru and started to build a network there. And the Dominican Republic and Panama. All over Colombia, all over the country. And Costa Rica. And then I started looking up the most dangerous places you could go in the world. And at the time, it was San Pedro Sula, Honduras. So I went there and started. I didn't get very far there, but that was my life for several years.

Kelly: Wow. And the project was cocaine and you would what? Like would it be dealers to distribute it and make it?

Ryan: I would find dealers, and then I would find their dealers, and then I would find where their dealers get their stuff. And I got to a pretty high level.

Ryan said he didn’t expect to leave South America alive. He says he overdosed more than once. He finally left when he got a tip that the federal police in Colombia were surveilling him and “the people that I was with.” Ryan says he went to an Internet cafe, booked several plane tickets to different places, boarded one of those flights, and returned home for good.

This is a remarkable confession that raises many questions. Given that some of the drugs he trafficked no doubt wound up in the United States, how did he avoid arrest and prosecution? Was he working undercover? Did he become a cooperating witness? What happened to the money he made trafficking drugs? We don’t know the answers to these questions. Ryan declined my request for an interview.

Update:

One question I had for Ryan was what led to his decision to go by a different name. Ryan’s given name, the name he was known by in the SEAL teams and the CIA, was Sean Ryan Palmisano. In 2019, Ryan got embroiled in a legal dispute over a YouTube video of firearms training he provided to actor Keanu Reeves for one of the John Wick films. In a declaration filed in that case, Ryan says he changed his name “to protect himself and his family because he was concerned about being placed on a terrorist hit list as a result of his service as a Navy SEAL and CIA contractor.”

Maybe so, but I doubt that’s the only reason. The bookshelves groan under the weight of memoirs by ex-SEALs chronicling their terrorist-hunting days, and let’s be honest: Ryan isn’t doing a good job of staying in the shadows. More likely, Sean Palmisano recognized what a mess his life had become and decided he needed a fresh start. Americans love a good reinvention story, and Shawn Ryan was born.