Thank you for staying for part two. I didnt give you an opportunity to leave so im glad you didnt take it. I could not do a very good job of introducing our next two speakers. I can do a it i can do it a little bit better with matt. I will let you tell your own stories. First on my left, salwan altoki, first one that served as an interpreter for five years. He worked with the u. S. Army, the usaid and the u. S. Marine corps. Hes credited with saving the lives of at least four marines during his service. Hes a graduate of the university of baghdad where he earned a degree in Civil Engineering. Hes quadrilingual, i believe, if thats a word. English, arabic, french and russian. Hes a native in southern iraq. He served with various american organizations and units. From 2003 to 2011, and he waited two years to get his s. I. V. How did you get involved with these crazy americans and are you crazy as well . Salwan well, id like to stand because i am not comfortable with seats. [laughter] im a Civil Engineer so i have to be on the field. So let me ask you this, guys. Anybody accused to be a traitor . Was anybody accused to be a traitor . Raise up your hand. I am only one here. Of course, nobody. My colleague. My other question is, how many of you guys were standing between his fellow citizens and the american, which is their of course, not too many people. The third question is, what makes you sacrifice yourself to the person just eat with him one dish . And you have a good story with him, what makes you sacrifice with yourself to him . You dont know him. Just you eat with him one dish and you drink him, right and not like somebody who is sitting in a fancy restaurant with his fiancee, with his girlfriend asking for a date. We are the s. I. V. s, guys. We did everything. We sacrificed ourselves. We put ourselves in trouble. And then we are here as s. I. V. s. In may, 2003, some americans came to visit my shop 100 miles south of baghdad near the Iranian Border and they were asking for some real food. I told them, what are you eating in the military . \[laughter] they told me, m. R. E. , which means rejected by everyone. \[laughter] and this is a message to general petraeus. So anyway, they get involved with me with a speech and they were very interested to have me as a translator. I told them, i dont have any idea about the americans in iraq so i need to see your general. At that time he was mr. Jay garner in the beginning. Their intentions were very satisfied and they got involved with the United States. [inaudible] Civil Affairs group. We got involved, what our station. They use inside engineering skills. We get them involved to teach the young judges. Teach the Police Officers. We get involved in everything to renovate the infrastructure in iraq and to make the local government, elected local government qualified by sending them to training and we trained them also. Then, i worked with the United States agency for International Development as a Program Development officer. At that time we were involved to get women centers, children centers, Iraqi Chamber of commerce and i was proud that i am the first one who established the iraqiamerican chamber of commerce. And then i worked with the company as a subcontractor called e. C. C. Which is environmental cooperation company. This company worked with the United States air force and i am a proud i was the establisher of the first Police Academy in iraq. This Police Academy trained lots of iraqi police and national guard. Every six months, about 1,600. That was in the south. And finally, i am here as s. I. V. , and thanks for the American People and thanks for ambassador. And thanks to the gentleman. He was my guest in baghdad and now i am his guest. The only thing is hes getting older and i am getting younger. So, guys, i am proud to be here with you. And last thing i want to say is, i served with the United States to the best of my ability. So i am not afraid of this. We faced death shoulder by shoulder with the United States marine corps and was all americans. But for this reason i am not afraid of death but i am afraid of somebody left behind. Thank you very much. [applause] paul just before i introduce the next speaker, what did you do when you first got to washington . Good question. The first thing i did here was to visit the grave of the first civilian targeted of the war. I was working with his unit and then he worked with the c. P. A. , which is coalition provincial authority. As a civilian he was targeted and killed and i visited his grave here. In the marine corps cemetery. And also i feel myself proud because i have good friends here like the colonel and others. They supported me. They put me with their families. They consider me as a member of the family. Thank you so much for them. [applause] paul our next speaker is one who served as an interpreter for the u. S. Military in afghanistan for eight years. Hes credited with saving the lives of at least five u. S. Soldiers in combat. Hes received numerous u. S. Military commendations for his extremely honorable service. Hes a graduate in the university in kabul with a degree in business administration. Hes a native of jalalabad and supported the forces from 2005 to 2013. Room he spent four years waiting for his s. I. V. He speaks six languages. Hell address us in english. [laughter] can you also begin by describing what got you involved in this dangerous adventure . Janis thank you so much. Thank you, everybody, for coming and thank you for having us here. Actually, there were a couple of reasons why i became an interpreter. The first thing was because we just came from pakistan. When the taliban attacked afghanistan, we moved to pakistan and that was the only place where we could hide from the taliban. When we heard that the taliban is no more in afghanistan and theres a lot go to work, we go back and support our country and i came back to afghanistan because my english was not that much good because i learned my english from one american movie and thats all. I just went back and got a couple of classes. I became an english teacher for a couple years. In 2005 i decided to go and work with the u. S. Military as a translator. And i went there to camp phoenix in afghanistan. I passed the test and i became an interpreter. The first day was i do not remember when i was there the first day but i did my job honestly. As the general said before, the translators were not allowed to carry a gun. I dont know. I was allowed to carry a gun. [laughter] they gave me an ak47 with an american pistol. I could take it everywhere. Because they know that i am one of their trustworthy interpreters and i was in each fight with them shoulder to shoulder on the front line and fighting against the bad people. And one day i was really mad at the american commander. I was like, sir, why you sending me to each war, to each fight . Whenever something happens, even if its not in my team, but you guys are selecting me to go, do you guys want me to get killed . Why . Like he looked at me for a couple minutes and said, janis, no, thats not what you think. Because we trust you. You are one of our trustworthy interpreters. Thats why we are sending you to any danger nation. We know you are a good person and you can look after our soldiers. And i was like, oh, ok. [laughter] and we trusted them because we we were waiting for some people to come to our country and save us from the disaster and finally when we heard about the u. S. Military and thats why i went. Because i could support my country. I could support my people. And the other thing i could get some good benefits, salary, to support my family. And the first person that i saved his life, i didnt know him. I didnt do him for a reason if i saved his life, he will take me to the United States, that was not my goal to come to the United States. He asked me a couple times if i ever go to the United States and i said, no, sir. Im good here. I want to support my people, my country and i dont want to go to the United States. When i saved his life, as i say, i didnt know him. I only met him for a couple of minutes or seconds. When their unit came to afghanistan, i just met him for a couple minutes. He said, hi, my name is matt zeller. I am looking forward to you guys. My name is janis shinwari, i look forward to working with you guys. I was at the Tactical Operations center. We received a radio call that the unit went to assist. They lost a truck by i. E. D. Same thing. I was not in his team that time. Somebody said, janis, put your body armor and get your weapons and lets go. And i was like, again, me. [laughter] thank god. Janis i got my body armor, my pistol and i was ready for a fight. Long story short, after about 30 minutes i got to the objective. First thing i saw from the windows of the humvee, the big truck was destroyed by i. E. D. And the engine was all gone. And i thought somebody is dead in this truck because the truck is damaged. And i jumped out of the truck. Even the driver didnt know, i left the truck and the first question i asked the captain. I was like, everybodys ok . He said, everybodys ok. I started shooting at the enemy direction. I know where the bullets are coming from. Somebody called me, do not shoot in this direction. I was like why. We have friendly guys over there. I said, are they dead or alive . They said, we dont know. I was like, im going to see if hes already dead, i will bring his body, god forbid. And if he is alive, i will bring him alive. I start moving, and when i get i got close to him. Like he didnt see me but i saw him from his behind. And if i go because i had a different uniform, if he see me he would shoot me. He would think im a taliban or somebody. I just i was thinking for a couple seconds and i thought two things are moving behind him. When i past my eyes, two talibans were coming a couple meters behind him to get him, kill him or get him alive. And i was like, now, i should make a decision. I cant go back. I cant leave my american friend here and theres two more guys that are about to kill him. And i did what i was supposed to do. I just shot at those two guys and i run at him and i was like, brother, you are not safe. Lets go back. And he was like, who the hell are you . [laughter] he didnt remember my face. I was like, i am janis, i am one of the translators. You are not safe. Long story short, we went back. We came back to the base. I went to the chow hall to get my lunch. He came with my plate and said, brother, can i sit here . I was like, sure. And he had me he said, thank you for saving my life and he said hes going to ask me a question and i was like, what . He said, what i did, what i did to him, he said he was expecting this from one of his own friends, one of his own americans but nobody came. Nobody came to rescue him. Why i did, why did i put my life in danger and save his life . I looked at him and i said, brother, you know you are a guest in my country and this was my responsibility to look after my guest. And that was my responsibility to save your life and now you are alive. You can go back and thats all i did. Thats how afghan people, generally muslim people are. They dont want their guests to get hurt by everybody. We will put our lives in danger but save our guests. Because he was my guest in my country and thats what i did, i put my life in danger and saved him. Still, he asked me when he was leaving at the end of 2008, he told me if i come to the United States, he gave me his phone number, email address, everything. I can talk to him. He will help me come to the states. I was like, no, brother. I will be fine because i love my country. I love my people and i want to be here with my people. In 2009, Afghan National army, the Intelligence Officer and said, janis, do you know now the taliban has their picture, your name, your address. And you are not safe here anymore. You have to quit your job or you have to get transferred from here to anywhere else. I said, ok. Lets talk to my american commander because he is my boss. He will if he tells me to stay, i will stay. If he tells me to go i will go. We talked to him. He contacted the company. In 24 hours i was transferred to kabul. When i came to kabul i said, now i am in the safest place because the minister of defense is here, the minister of intelligence is here. Like hundreds of thousands of troops are here. I will be safe here. But i didnt know those people were coming after me even to kabul city. When i came to kabul city i was a manager. I was managing like 250 interpreters. I started phone calls. Like getting phone calls in afghanistan. Said, hey, we are here. We know where you work. We know where you live and we will kill you or your son, anybody from your family. I was a couple miles away from my home but like most, i stayed at the military base because i was safe there. And in the meantime, i talked to my brother and said, brother, now i am in a high risk, what should i do . He sent me a letter and said, submit this. Send it to the s. I. V. , apply for a visa. I sent everything to the s. I. V. That was in 2010. But i never heard anything back. In 2013 i did my interview but still they told me to wait for your visa. In this time i received the worst news in my life. One of the u. S. Commanders said, this base is going to be shut down at the end of the year. Not end of year but in september. And because we didnt get any replacement, you guys should go home because we dont have enough troops to assign you guys with. And that time i contacted matt and said, brother, i need your help. You need to get me out of afghanistan because now i lost my protection and i dont want to die or i dont want my son to get kidnapped and because my friends were kidnapped by the taliban. They were tortured, killed. And they sent their body parts to their family and friends to see and start working with the taliban. And i said i dont want to be one of them. And i want to go because now im married, i have children. And my brother, then he will tell his part but good thing i received my visa after two months. And now im here. Im safe and once again, i am thankful for my brother. He helped me a lot. Got my visa, my family. I owe him a couple lives now. And thank you so much. Thank you for everyone. [applause] paul janis, two quick questions. Who was the movie you learned english from . It had to be a pretty good one. Janis it was an old one. The movie star is arnold schwarzenegger. The movie is commando. [laughter] thats how i learned. Paul so how did you get rid of your german accent . Janis still my accent is like schwarzenegger. Like broken english. Paul serious question. I am told your mother had a lot to do with helping the americans. Your mother. Janis in a muslim culture, especially in our country, if a mother is not educated, then their sons can go to the wrong ways. Most of the im telling you most of the taliban and al qaeda because in our country, if i go do anything, i will get my moms permission first to do it. If she says no, its no. If she says yes, thats yes. Without her blessing, we dont do anything. And the one who is like taliban because their mothers are uneducated. They dont know what the koran says. They say, ok, i am going to fight and i am going to kill americans, anybody that works for the government. Because the mother is uneducated she says, ok, go ahead. God bless you, my son. But if i say the same word to my mom, trust me, she will slap my mouth and say sit down. But when i told her i am going to support my country, im going to help the u. S. Mission in afghanistan, she was like, ok, my son. Thats good. Go ahead and do it. And thats how i started working with the americans. If my mother said no, i wouldnt be able to save my brothers life. Paul lets hear it for your mother. [applause] so last by no means least, matt zeller. Hes the cofounder of no one left behind. He is, as i understood it, abandoned the promising career to take on this mission. Hopefully you can accomplish the mission in the next six months and go back to something else. Any rate, whatever length of time it takes. Matt, just say a little bit about how you got we already know some of your story, but this part of the story. Matt thank you, all, for being here. Thank you to ambassador wolfowitz and general petraeus, i cant thank you enough for your time. And to a. E. I. For obviously hosting us and to my amazing team who you all stood up before. The only reason weve been as successful as we have been for the past four years is because the only reason weve been as successful as we have been for the past four years is because of them. They followed me down this sort of crazy endeavor when it was a labor of love. I think to understand how this got started, the guy sitting next to me is not only my guardian angel, hes a saint. Ill spare you the long story of what it took to ultimately get him his visa but when he arrived here, we had made such a stink about it in the press that cbs news sent a prominent journalist and camera crew to cover our reunion at the airport. They ended up showing it nationally on the next day on the tv on the Morning Program with charlie rose. What a lot of folks didnt see is what happened after the cameras turned off. The camera crew was packing up their equipment. We were saying goodbye to everyone. I turned to janis, i said, ok, brother, lets get the rest of your luggage. Tonight you can stay with my family and i. And janis pointed and turned to four rollaway suitcases and he said, brother, this is all we have. We were only allowed to bring one suitcase per person. It has to be under 50 pounds and fit in the overhead flight bin. I realized at that moment that he arrived with the clothes on his back and whatever contained inside those suitcases it wasnt large sums of cash or bars of gold or even perishable items. It was the family koran. The only black and white photo of his father that he owns in his life. The tangible items of his heritage and culture that are the precious family air looms that will never get heirlooms that will never get sold because he and his children cannot return to his homeland. When i realized at that moment they didnt have linens for a bed, they didnt have any sense of what it was going to take to survive in our country and our culture, i was dumbfounded at just about how extensive the challenge was going to be to try to get him and his family integrated. So i turned to