Jimmy Watson: Life Inside John McAfee's Inner Circle

Jimmy Watson went from cleaning toilets at a Texas Bible camp to becoming a Navy SEAL, a Blackwater team leader in Iraq, and eventually the head of security and CEO for tech icon John McAfee. His story spans combat in Afghanistan, the infamous Nisour Square shooting, a year in a naval mental hospital after attempting suicide, two years as a fugitive, and a spiritual transformation that he says saved his life. Watson's account offers a rare ground-level view of McAfee's paranoid world, the dead man's switch, and the surreal chain of events surrounding McAfee's death.

From West Texas Farm to the Front Lines

Watson grew up on a thousand-acre farm in Muleshoe, West Texas, where his father—a crop duster, preacher, and Texas judge—filled his childhood with Bible stories and the Green Beret song. By 14, Watson had set the school record for detention hall (99 days) and corporal punishment swats. His parents pulled him out of school and tricked him into attending what he thought was summer camp but turned out to be the Texas Bible Institute, a work camp where he cleaned toilets for a year and a half.