Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Butler, the Correspondents' Dinner, and the Truth | John Constantine | Ep. 464

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

John Constantine spent almost 23 years in the United States Secret Service. Fifteen of them on the Counter Assault Team — the assaulters who exist for the day everything goes wrong. Team leader. Instructor. Operations supervisor. He stood with a rifle next to four presidential administrations, worked in almost 90 countries, and finished out in the Dignitary Protective Division running foreign heads of state. He wrote a book about the part of it nobody sees. It's called Hallways and Stairwells. He breaks down what actually happened at the Correspondents' Dinner, why the security plan worked even though the magnetometer checkpoint didn't, and how far that guy really was from the President. Butler gets the same treatment. The layers of security people never see. Why hunkering down has never worked, anywhere, ever. Then it goes past tactics. Mission, men, then you. Getting swatted at his own house over a function fire and suspended for it. Refusing to send guys and guns overseas as a favor unless somebody put it in writing. Two thousand eight hundred agents doing the work of ten thousand. And the part that almost killed him. His identity got ripped out with the job. His wife found him on the bathroom floor. He talks about the climb back. Hallways and Stairwells: https://a.co/d/00SrmoEJ Take the Operator Code Assessment: https://www.theoperatorcode.com   Today's Sponsors:  Black Rifle Coffee:  https://www.blackriflecoffee.com LMNT:  https://www.drinklmnt.com

Okay, got the red smoke. West of the smoke, I'm looking at danger close now. Come on winning, baby. Give it to me. I made it. You're clear it hot. And, like, I submitted that to the service. Yeah.

And I took out, I knew what I was doing. They didn't touch it. There was like, no, the next one's going to be worse because I already started the second one. No. So what's the second one going to be about? We're going now, too, by the way. So the second one is. We'll get to the first one, but you said the second one's going to be worse.

in what regard? The second one's going to be worse than the fact that the stories are going to be more in-depth than that already is. In-depth, are we talking about largely successes or failures

inside of the institution? Or both. Are we having... It's both. And the stories touch on things. This one's more about the individual is about you becoming a better human being.

And a lot of that is the stories of just not like my stories, but stories that I've been around and close to. The second one is, you being able to lead a group of people and from that perspective. Now you're intertwined with everybody around you. And coming from the cat perspective is just all teams.

For like 15 years of that was teams, teams, teams, teams, teams. And then a lot of people, it's just, you have the, you can't be a good leader if you're not a good person from my perspective. I would agree with that generally, yeah. If you're just constantly, what did, I say it all the time, mission, men and then you. And that's, I mean, people Aver talks about that.

A whole bunch of people talk about that. So the mission is like, hey, what do we have to do? Keep these guys alive. That's number one. It doesn't matter, nothing else. Everything else is like secondary, tertiary, all the way down. Second is the men. And those are close because they kind of flip-flop sometimes,

depending on what the ask is. Well, one's required for the other. It is. And I have a conversations with people. It's like, well, you don't have a, you can't do anything without men. It's like, right, but without the mission, I don't need the men. So it's like, you have to balance that. Chicken or egg almost. So they're really close. And then you're all the way on the bottom. And that's the right way to be a leader, not a manager, not a coordinator,

not an administrator, not whatever word you want to insert into there. It's mission, men, put that up there, manage those as best as you can. There's a million stories I could tell about all that. And then you're on the bottom, but you still got to love your You still got to take care of yourself. If you become a fat slob, it's hard to do this if you're not taking care of yourself. So everything together. But again, man, in the service sometimes we put these not in the right order. And it's like, well, I'm up top.

And then the other two, it depends on what's going to get me, what I want to get. So there's a lot of that going on. And it's the misaligned incentives is a good way to describe that. It's, I think it's just blind to what's important. I don't know if they're blind. I don't, I think for some people that they're not blind to it, that their desire for self or personal achievement or recognition actually is just the pull to that is more so, for whatever reason for that type of person is more so in the

individual direction than the team one. I don't think they're blind to it. It's easy to say they didn't know. Sometimes they know. Well, the blind part, you're right. Sometimes they know. Sometimes they know a lot of times they know. They're blind to it because that's what the culture becomes.

The culture tells you to be good at your career. Have a wonderful career. Do everything for your career. And sometimes you've got to give. And the more you give, I have these guys, they're instructors and team leaders now on Kat. and a lot of them, they were my protegees. I trained them.

I had them on the team. I taught them how to be team leaders. And I say all the time, like, hey, don't forget that place, you love that place so much. It will never love you back the same. Yeah. And they forget that because they think at the end there's going to be this like hoisting on the shoulders. That's not how it works, though. It's going to be a replacement of one heartbeat for another.

You just get washed away. You're a government employee. It doesn't matter how many millions of dollars they put into me. Like, they put millions and millions of dollars into me learning all this crap that I went all over the world. I meant to almost 90 countries. I train with every single either at the location with their instructors or with the unit that you can just say the name. Except for the Raiders. I never got into like Marsock.

I never train with them either. Yeah. So I know a lot of the guys. Yeah. There was a guy at my gym that I'm pretty sure he was made in the lab. He was synthesized in a lab because he was... Sometimes Marines are like that. Yeah, he's like six foot three and I don't think he had body fat.

He was less body fat than the table. So, but... What time of gym are we talking about? Gymnastics gym? Jiu-jitsu. Nice. How long you've been training? Through over three years, just over three years.

Why did you only start at the tail end of your career? I was not focused and didn't have... have a set schedule where that was a real thing. I wrestled for like 20 years. Oh, no, I don't ever want to roll with you. I hate wrestling. Wrestling is so real. Well, that was- grappling is grappling. The wrestling kind of, it's kind of, I don't want to say it's like cheating if somebody that doesn't know how to wrestle. Oh, but it is though. But it's like, and I mean, I have great people in my gym and I learn quick, the wrestling, hurt me in the beginning, but now it helps me.

If you can play off your back and develop a guard, you're going to be unstoppable. Because the 20 years of grappling is not going anywhere. Wrestlers, first, they don't protect their neck because they're used to being able to post up. And you're like, oh, what are you doing? Especially if you throw a guillard. They figure that one out pretty quick, though. That was quick. And you don't want to be digging your arms in on a wrestler and turtle because you're

going over the top or you're getting reversed. Then though they don't like being on their back, which I get, I didn't realize it was the cardinal sin of wrestling, but if you can teach a wrestler to play off their back, you can always wrestle up, right? And I mean, now it's like, and I'm old too, man. So it's like I got a, in order for me to go with the volume that I go, I go a lot. I don't, my wife. You can modulate by pace and intensity.

And I do. And it goes and ebbs and flows. And, uh, Tweed getting close to purple belt, probably. I'm a purple belt now. Sweet. That's awesome. So, um, uh, I have, good people in my gym.

I competed a little bit. I stopped for a while. And I'm getting the itch again. I got to go back and do something. Hell old are we now. 51. Be careful with your body. I got a little closer.

Yes, sir. You shut up over there. See, notice his, he's not even talking into his. He yelled at you without even pulling his microphone. Why do you leave it like that, by the way? So I can see this. Today's episode of the podcast is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. Some are rewards people who move.

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I think what John would kick my ass right now. No, for a fact, he would. Did you not hear the 20 years of wrestling? Yeah, no, I did hear that. That's why I said it. I just stay on my feet. I wasn't accomplished as a wrestler. I don't, it doesn't matter.

Most people get into Jiu-Sit with no grappling background. Yeah. I'll put myself into that category. You tussle up a little bit with somebody who has been grappling even recreationally for 20 years. It's a fucking problem. I miss it. My body can't handle the explosiveness of it. Do you miss the outfit?

Not even a little bit. I really feel like that participation in that sport would be exponentially higher if they just made a few wardrobe changes. You could do a pair of shorts and a rash, like a no-gee outfit. I feel like in wrestling, it would accomplish mostly the same thing. And people would feel way better about wearing that. Maybe. We didn't have, we didn't use rash guards when I was. going through.

Why would you? T-shirts. Well, I was, because I'm old, right? Yeah. We had rotary phones, too. And I've ever seen the YouTube videos of where they pull rotary phones out for younger generations? I have no clue.

My daughter has nothing. It's the best. I love it. All right. How long was it? We'll get to what the cat team stuff is. How long was it, though, working at the White House or when you be, so, and for people to understand the cat team, counter assault team, correct me if I'm wrong, that

specifically pulls from the essay side of the house, right? The special agents. side of the house. So you come into the agency, you can go UD, Uniform Division, S.A, special agent. Fletsey is kind of the same, but then you depart or diverge a little bit, right? Because your basic sworn credentials come from the same place. Specialty comes after that, though, right? Yeah, you're talking about UD versus SSA? Yeah. Yeah. So Fletsey together, though, right? No, Fletsey is still, they do, and I don't know what it's called. It was called like a, it's like a law enforcement basic. So they're more focused,

dealing the uniform division I'm talking about now. And they renamed it. I think it's Secret Service Police now. I don't know. I'm not 100% sure. But they do, it's basically a police course. It's like a federal police course. And we do criminal investigator training course or whatever it's called.

And those are two separate. A lot of overlap. I would say it's like 80% overlap. And then they kind of specialize in a couple things. And we kind of talk about some of the things. things. Both federal agents though, correct? Yes. Okay, so we're at the federal level. And then when they get to Belsville, so the training center in Belsfield, Maryland, they'll do their uniform basic course, and then we do our special agent training course.

And those are separate too. But again, there's a lot of overlap. So the curriculum for firearms, control tactics, which is, you know, the hands-on type of stuff, all that stuff is like overlaps all the same curriculum. And then legal, it's, what people don't understand is agents don't have the same police powers as the officers. Really? Yes, it's, it's, it is different. They are the peace officer status in different states and depending on what it is. The officers, the arrest powers that they have in Washington, D.C., and wherever else they go is kind of, it depends on, you know, what's going on. Obviously, if there's a felony that occurs in an agent's, presence, then it's a felony. Then they can arrest them. But it's different than if it's like

misdemeanors and depending on what level of the, called a crime, whatever the crime is or the felony or people misdemeanor, whatever they want to call it. The agents, and state to state is different. If you look up peace officer status, it'll tell you what exactly they're able to do and not able to do. In some places, you can arrest somebody for just, walking too close to the president or the vice president and just seeming a threat in other places, it's infinitely harder because we can do kind of way more. I mean, you go to Texas and it's just, then it's the same that you do whatever you want. Then you go to some other places and then blush.

And then it's not harder, but. It's just more nuanced than people would think. Yeah, it's more nuanced. But if you just have the same mindset wherever you go, the problem resolves itself because you're going to do the same thing. matter what. An agent is responsible for whatever protective assignment that they have. So protective aside, meaning a person, or what a lot of people don't understand is if it's a national special security event and you're responsible for the venue, then you're responsible for the venue. We talk about the correspondence dinner. Everybody's like, oh my God, the guy blew past the checkpoint.

And what about all the people that were in the lobby and the hotel? I should have swept the hotel. It wasn't a national special security event. So the focus isn't all the civilians. And unfortunately, that's the case. The entire Secret Service that was there, they're just going to default to their protectee, the person that they're protecting. So they'll fall back to all the president's detail, president. The cat team that was assigned to the president,

president. Same thing with the vice president. I forgot who else was there that we had details on. Probably quite a few people. Yeah, there were quite a few. And DHS secretary was there, I think. Cash Patel was there. I'm sure he has a small details.

He's from the bureau. But they're the same way. The Bureau is not responsible for the rest of the hotel. And it's apples to oranges because we're doing, we're coordinating the whole event. But then everybody coordinates together. And the focus is the people were protecting. Once it turns into an NSSC, which is dictated by DHS, DHS will determine if something's an NSSC or not.

Like this thing that occurred at the White House, America 250, it was a CER event. It wasn't an NSSC. And I get into that because there's a whole bunch of nuances. And it comes down to like both budget and then who's kind of running the whole thing. So there's a lot going on there. And it's an hour long conversation just to explain it. Because at first I didn't know the difference.

I was like, oh my God, just tell me where to stand, right? Yeah. But if it's an NSSC responsible for the entire venue, that means everybody that's inside the venue, we're responsible for. So that everybody. Everybody, because it's the security of the entire venue. venue. Wow. We're also responsible for our people, but then they also have their own details. So if the president goes to the RNC, we're responsible for the RNC. We're also responsible for the

president, but they have their own detail that they're figuring out their egress, they're figuring out where to take them, they're figuring out how to respond, et cetera, et cetera. We're figuring out how to secure the whole thing, no weapons in, no weapons, nothing else. And the laws are different. And the funding for it, where that comes from, and it's this whole thing where people are yelling about like the correspondence center and I get it.

We could talk about the MAC checkpoint. That's a whole separate thing. But what the responsibility is drives how this thing is run. And a lot of people think it's just blanket. We're responsible for saving everybody's life and that's not the case. The guy was in the lobby

and he had whatever weapons in the correspondence center, there's, be a local presence of whatever municipality that would be. In this case, maybe it was, I'm not even going to say just to, I'm not trying to throw shade on anybody, but just to understand how these things work because it's, it kind of helps. A lot of people don't want to hear it. They just, they're just kind of just going to yell no matter what happens. A lot of people don't want to grasp the concept, though, that security is very fluid and perfect security is impossible.

It is never perfect. It does never look good. It's like... They want to think that you... So we use the correspondence dinner, which, by the way, if anybody at the Secret Service is listening, here's a suggestion.

Take that hotel off the list of venues. Because guess who else got shot there? Yeah. It's called the Hinkley Hilton for a reason. Yeah. Reagan. Now, and people think that the guy who... At first I thought he was the first met a human

because I watched a really slow frame per second video of him. running by the mag checkpoint and it looked like the flash here he is i didn't this footage though and they were breaking this down by the way but the first time i think michael and i look this oh it was yeah it was it was as if he was the flash so i just was low nps yeah the first metahuman had exposed himself there's believe me i'm sure both you and i have plenty of things we could say about what we see on the video but people think though is that just outside of frame that trump was standing there this man had so floor and a half away

Stairs. Stairs. He was on the other end. And I'm not saying it was great, but I'm like the other end of the downstairs ballroom with a substantial amount of people. There was multiple layers of security. Yes. That he got nowhere near. I'm not an apologist for the service.

I'm trying to, I want to tell the truth. Yeah. 99% of the truth still a lie, right? If there's, if there's, well, I talk about it in my book too, right? It's like if you're only telling almost the truth, you're still lying. Yeah, lying by a mission by leaving the other. stuff out. I can say, hey, I can't talk about something because of sensitivity. But that's different. It's different. Yeah. It's, it's, so he was a floor and a half away. There was a lot. If he kept going at

that pace, he's with no obstructions. Assuming he's not a metahuman. Assuming he's not the flash, right? Which I'm just saying the first footage Michael and I saw, we unanimously agreed. It might be the first documented metahuman ever. When I first saw it too, I was like, my first, my first reaction wasn't what happened. It was like, damn, that guy's fast. Exactly. And then I was like, holy shit, let me just see what just happened, right? So, but he, if he kept going at that pace, I would say he's got about a minute, maybe a minute and change before he reaches where Trump was sitting. With a shotgun, assuming he had rounds left. And then his secondary weapons seemed to be a fleet of knives. I mean, if you, I don't even know what to compare that to, but, you know,

Same. So I'm looking at the knives on the wall here. Apparently he had like a nice leather chalice system on. And that's why I'm going to guess he was naked on the ground because they didn't understand what the hell he was wearing. So take it off. I think part of that was they were just, they kept removing layers. And at some point you check for. Yeah. Jesus.

Take it easy, John Wick. They're a buoy knife, right? I mean, that's a Rambo knife vertically oriented, which traditionally. only seen in the movies because gravity is real. I mean, I don't, mental health takes a variety of different expressions. Yeah, I think he was stripped down because he might have been wearing stuff. They're looking for hi-EDs also. So, yeah, that's not confirmed. That's just my opinion. Yeah. So what are your thoughts on that particular incident? Honestly, and again, not an Apologist, but what happened was the security plan worked. The multiple layers of security

stopped them, however it is that they stopped them. The MAG checkpoint, and let's face it, to say anything other than those guys were complacent and they were done with the day. Yeah, they were breaking it down, right? That's right that box was. And MAG checkpoint means, I believe, magnetometer. Magnetometer, yeah. So the magnetometer checkpoint. And they're breaking it down, which is normal, except for they'll leave one up, maybe two up, just to ferry in anybody that's late, or if somebody leaves the venue for whatever reason to make a phone call or go to the bathroom. Because essentially the event had happened, so the mass throughput of those checkpoints had already occurred. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. And so then breaking it down is not uncommon. It's just they should leave one up. But the attitude there is, and I've said this. on other shows too. For me, it's the complacency that occurred then, because they were done.

Their mindset that they were done there. And I guarantee you, and I know some of those guys came from another assignment and some of those guys are going to another assignment. So part of it is just the tempo of how they're working and they just want to go home. I understand that. But it's hard to say,

Yeah, great job. It was 100% perfect. The one agent, not agent, I think it was an officer, he missed rounds that he shot at him. So that's a problem for me, right? That it's, we hold ourselves to such a high standard that you have to have first 100% target discrimination. That's 100% you have to have. And two is you have to have surgical marksmanship. And I use those words, which is very difficult to, to do across the agency.

But those things are must. And I understand, I come from CAT. So it's like those guys are operating at a higher level. And I understand that. And maybe I'm biased. But in order for that to not happen again, you can't be complacent, as exhausting as it is. Instead of being flush on the walls,

they could have been in the middle. They could have just been standing in the middle, obstructing it. He would have at least slowed down. He might have shot them. Who knows what he, who knows what he went through them? At that speed. That's some, yeah, that's some Christian O'Coye stuff, right?

So, but, but it, that's, when I watched that, I was like, come on, man, you know, like, you're holding, but it's all interject here. Surgical marksmanship, I love the concept. It's not, it's not reasonable. Tier one units, they miss shots too. You're accountable for your rounds, but also we're operating in the environment overseas where oftentimes our backdrop is just really thick mud walls. It's a civilian environment.

Civilian environment. But I think one of the main guys that shot back was the dude who just took that grazing round of the shotgun. Yes. So laterally, he was laterally maneuvering while indexing his firearm pistol shot on a guy running. I tell you what, man. It's hard.

It's hard. And I love Tier 1 and cat dudes and all the special operation guys to death. It would be an interesting test to line them all up and have them test that for accuracy. I will also agree with you in the same token, the way they were standing and set themselves up. 100%. They were in a natural crossfire before the weapon was even drawn. I think it's okay to try to achieve unrealistic expectations. That should be the goal. And that's the goal. That's the point of that. It shouldn't be, and I'm trying to say what I want to say without throwing anybody under the bus. That guy did a great job in responding. Okay.

And that wasn't the part that bothered me more. The part that bothered me more was the complacency that was going on there. That complacency contributed to all the backlash that the service gets. Every time I either did when I started and I had a post-standing assignment and I was standing in a stairwell for like 12 hours, it's like my first year and I was contemplating the decisions of my life. Throwing yourself down the stairway head first. All right. Yeah, it's just like, what am I doing here? Standing in a stairwell where nobody comes to see me for 12 hours.

They didn't put that on the recruiting poster for you? Well, actually, that's not true. If you want to be a circuit service agent, and this is, if you want to be a secret service agent, put your best suit on, stand outside your front door of your house. Don't let anybody in for eight hours. Have your wife come and bring you a snack. You can go to the bathroom while she stands there and then come right back and stand there for another four hours. That's your intro to being a secret service agent. Yeah.

You got to get through that to do all the cool stuff. Okay? So that's, and I've called this homework. Obviously, I'm being unassed. But you're also being realistic. Not that far from it, though. Yeah. But the, the endeavor.

So look, after this happened and you have, and we're talking about the Mac checkpoint, nobody's talking about the guys afterwards that stopped them. Nobody's talking about everybody inside the venue that responded. Nobody's talking about the guy who ripped Vance out of his seat. Nobody's talking about the cat teams. Nobody's talking about anybody else. How did Vance get out of his seat before the POTUS?

the guy that was, the guy that pulled Vance out of the seat was probably standing right there. And I know the other side of it was, I understand, it took about 10 seconds, took about 10, 12 seconds. There was no threat inside the ballroom. I get that.

I can just see. So part of it is. Trump going, excuse me. And part of it, part of it is that. Do you ever watch the video with Bush and Iraq and the shoe thrown at him? One of my favorites.

He has moves. I absolutely love it. But he also did this and the detail eater stopped. I don't think you're supposed to do that. No, you're not supposed to listen to the person, right? So they moved him out. Yes, Michael. It was like 12 seconds.

There it is. Now watch. Can we be honest, his moves were good? He's the nimbly guy. He is like, he's a nimbly guy. And watch, here comes the detail leader. And then it just says hold on. Yeah, he'll hold on.

Have you seen the video? Have you seen the video of Reagan a balloon pops during his speech? And he goes, without a hiccup, missed me. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a. Yes. Now, okay, you bring up an interesting point.

Let's fast forward to Butler. Mm. Where Trump seemingly wants to stay on this stage. I didn't come from your world. I did. We called it PSD personal security details. Worst job ever, completely reactive. Just stand there.

hope for the best. It's kind of like us. Yeah. But getting off the X was emphasized at all times at every level. How is it possible that Trump stood up there for as long as he did? A little bit of what you just asked me about the correspondence center was involved in that. Okay. So, and truth be told, that's the truth.

And if anybody, we can say good job. And then they got him off the X. but the reason he is alive two things one he turned his head at the last month and look and two it was a dumb dumb he was using iron sights and my suspicion is aiming for his head i thought he had a holo son on there he may even at that distance though right it probably the if it was even a one m oa one it probably would have exceeded the width of the body i think the issue was he was aiming for his head which is a difficult thing to do from yes so i think luck more than anything but him standing there. I mean, let's not, let's not bullshit. Iconic photo, maybe top three of, you know,

just standing up there and screaming, but also how are you still standing up there and screaming, FYI? There is, when I watched the video. Let's get you on all the trouble right now. Yeah, it's, well, it's like the trouble's not. This is the truth, though. The truth was, in the correspondence center, take the complacency of the mags out. We did our job. Layers of security. Stop the guy. He wasn't going to get close. Even if he got through the next three or four layers of security, he still has about that many to go before he reached Trump. And the problem is almost nobody understands that world. And all they saw was that footage of him running by. And can you imagine if they had shot him before he had run by? You actually are in a no-win situation. You're going to get crucified for that. And now you have people looking at something with incomplete information and zero experience. crucifying you again. So you're in a no win for clarity. The security world is you never win. You just try to break even. Correct. That's kind of the security world. What I'm saying is true, though.

It wouldn't have mattered how that panned out. Likely the most vocal people are the ones who have no understanding of what you're talking about, the layers and rings of security, how they work together, how far he was. I just invite people to go down to that hotel and just walk from the hotel side through the tunnel to the venue, figure out what ballroom he was in. They might have. I changed it with the walls and everything. But like just walk through and you'll see, number one, it's two different venues. The hotel side and then all where they have the convention center side or whatever you want to call it. There's like two different venues.

You can do this from your computer too. I watched a guy. Yeah, people, they only use their computer when social media is involved if they want to yell at somebody. But when it comes to looking up facts. No, I mean they can do a 360 tour. I just kidding. No, even that's like too difficult for some people. It was an interesting, it was one of the videos that I actually did watch because I was unfamiliar with the inside of it.

And he literally took the path that the person did to highlight how far he was away. When he got into the ballroom, you couldn't even make out that there was a stage on the other side. It's far. Yeah. And this is where, again, there's two different things that are going on here. There's what's going on at the main mags. And then there was what's going on in the rest of the venue. They did their job.

if you want to break it down and excoriate the people at the mags, and I can give you the excuses of why they were tired, overworked. Probably some of those guys haven't gone to training in a long time because of overworked is basically the one thing. Like we need about, I don't know, 2,000 or 3,000 more people like now. And then the other part of it is the security plan worked and understand what I talked about NSSEs and also the responsibility, of who they're protecting.

And he, he, there was no threat to the president. So when you say, why didn't they move him quicker? They didn't have to move him quicker. And they still got him off the stage in 12 seconds.

Yeah. Let's talk about one where there was a threat. Well, how is he still on the stage 30 seconds later? Yeah. I mean, I'm not, I'm not going to give excuses

for that either. They should have, but how does it happen? Is he? Well, he asked, didn't he has to get his shoes or his hat or something? Who gives his shit?

I know. I'm agreeing with you, but that was, that was, isn't the role yank him off? You put him in the car and leave. Yeah. Yeah. Wave to the crowd on your way out, dude. And I'm not, this isn't like some top secret. No, this is all can be found on YouTube.

This is all, this is all, like, it's things. Yeah. And again, this is, here we go. Here's the lucky part. Yep. He's like, ow, ducks. Nobody knows what. Good react.

I mean, reaction on him. Yeah. I'm assuming they're basically putting their. bodies. Yeah, and they got on him quick. The response to him was really fast. You couldn't even see the guys that got up there. The first guy, the first guy that jumped up on him, he was from behind the stage.

You didn't have seen him, I think, just from the angle that the camera was at. But they did a good job by shielding him. And just to understand now, like they're standing there where there was gunfire. Oh, there you guys. Oh, yeah. Both of those guys. Yeah, I was about to say something that

But their response was quick. And at this point now, they should have just dragged them down the steps. Yeah. Hit pause, Michael. I don't give away anything sensitive in nature. Why are they still right there? Via is the correct tactic to move him as soon as possible. Obviously, don't move him into greater danger.

Created the barrier with the bodies, right? I'm sure there's ballistic elements associated with that with their vest, whatever it is. But he's still on the X. I'll answer that with a question. When has hunkering down ever worked? And go back into the- When do you want to die? Right?

So we go back to- I mean, honestly, if your enemy can maneuver and you hunker down, you're fucked. There you go. And then we go back in time to talk about Thermopylae, the Alamo, Benghazi. Thermopyla, at least,

they had a little bit of terrain in their favor. They did. Yeah. A little bit of terrain in their favor, but they still hunkered down and fought to the end. Yeah. It didn't work out well.

They still, after they killed, who knows how many people, But hunkering down, I have this conversation all the time, and I used to argue with supervisors. If we would say something like, hey, John, what's the plan here? I was a team leader, right, at this point. And he's like, all right, initial response. This is our initial response. And then we're going to coordinate with whatever the asset is, and we're going to move him and we'll take him to the cars. So we'll let's hung. And this is not all the supervisors, just the ones that I wanted to have. wrestling matches with. It's like,

we're just going to hunker down and wait for the problem to get resolved. I'm like, hey man. And I would have that conversation with them. That's why it's kind of, I just just rolls off my tongue.

I'm like, when has hunkering down ever worked? We have to take him somewhere else. And it's, it's sometimes, that, I mean, that, okay,

maybe if you're in a place where you could strong point something or you could put ballistic something in between. This is wide open. No, this is the example. And again, not to be an apologist, something like this, this is the first time in a long time where something like this happened. Yeah. So is the response rusty? Is the response, were they mentally prepared for this to happen? Some of the complacency

that I talked about the correspondence standard. I didn't talk to a lot of these guys about this, but I'm pretty sure that that happened here too, especially if something didn't happen for. When was the last shooting that occurred with the Secret Service before that? I'm trying to think of anything in between this and Reagan. I'll add to that too. How many of the officers have been exposed

to the downrange sound of gunfire and a ballistic snap going past you to be able to move on this snap or know what it actually sounds like to get shot at? And there's a lot that went on here. And again, not an apologist, but they stood on the stage to understand, like, they covered him. And for them not to expect more gunfire. That's what I was going to say.

This might work or in him standing back up and staying there may work. I'm still not going to advocate for it if it is a single person operating by themselves. But not if it's more than one. That would be catastrophic. That's always more difficult. That doesn't matter. That's why cat exists. For the first write-up that was, whenever it was,

it was for an organized threat against the people that we protect. And that's why CAT exists. And there's also, there was a bunch of SWAT teams there. There was the snipers that were, you can't see them in this frame. But the capabilities kept expanding, expanding. And even after this, every time that there's something that occurs, there's an expanse in the amount of resources that go into something. And that was no different.

was that correspondence, then it'll be no different. Sometimes things are mitigated and it's because what was the guy that made it to Vance's residence and broke the window? You know what I'm talking about? I do and honestly

this story is insane. He went on. I mean, Vance wasn't there before we get into this. But this individual was allowed in the presence of the United States Secret Service officer. It's hard to,

It's hard to defend. Yeah. And I go back. Everybody wants this conspiracy theory. When I first, first act, asked about Butler, it was like, hey, man, there was a second shooter in the water tower. There's a, there's a. Oh, I know. Trust me.

It was insane. There's the angles and the magic bullet that they took from the Kennedy assassination and they brought it with them and they did all this stuff. And I was like, listen, you're, you want this smoking gun. the smoking gun occurs from the shooter on backwards. That's where the smoking gun is. If there's a conspiracy there, it's from his background, which we still don't know about. What are your thoughts on that? There's some weird stuff that came out in the beginning.

And I know more because when they say certain things, the red flags just, they're kind of there. Because I was being briefed on emerging threats. before I left. So there was a lot of stuff, there was a lot of overseas stuff that I was being briefed on. Because where I was, when I left the last two years, I had access to a lot of programs and a lot of dignitaries that were coming to the United States. So I would be briefed on whoever would come to the United States. So if Iran was coming to the United States, I was briefed on Iran. I would get whatever the cable was or I'd have to go down to the intelligence division. And it was the same thing for whoever. It doesn't matter who it is.

And on top of that, the non-traditional stuff that I was doing too, which was certain people that are of interest to other groups overseas. So after being briefed on that stuff for the last two years and also like what I knew about before I left Kat when I was an instructor and when I was an operation supervisor, I would go to our intelligence division and ask them for emerging threats and things like that. And I would sift through stuff sitting in a skiff, I would sift through stuff to see what is of interest to me. And then it would give me ideas on how to, especially when I was instructor, how to create scenarios so I can try to kill my guys. And putting all that together, the stuff that they said about him, oversees accounts, I don't know how valid that is,

but it kind of went away. It went to the land of shit no one talks about anymore. And if there is a conspiracy, it starts there going backwards. And if I had powers to investigate it, I know where I would look. It's a seat to validate or invalidate the things that they were saying. Going from the shooter forward for the Secret Service, everybody wants this conspiracy theory. The Biden's call out it hit. The director was pulling assets away from this particular event in order to, you know, like Jill Biden had something in Pittsburgh, I think. It was nearly, it was relatively nearby. I think you're putting too much emphasis into that, because I could tell you some of that is maybe political, right, because the director at the time, if, in fact, there were

assets going from one place to the other, it wasn't because of a hit, it was because of appearance because we're entering into a campaign. I don't know the accuracy and the truth of that. That part is my opinion. I don't know what... I looked at what assets she got in Pittsburgh or wherever the event was. And it kind of was like, ah, all right,

it's like nothing looks weird. Right? Yeah. And so maybe that's just people saying stuff. But this is like Occam's Razor. Yeah, the simplest. There was a hole. And there's a lot of people that did a good job

at this site. There's a lot of people that didn't do a good job at this site. But if you had the number one defense in the NFL and your defensive tackle falls down and the running back happens to run right at that hole, he's going to get past the line of scrimmage and then it depends on what the next hole is. So you have the number one rated defense, and I'm not saying that the service is the number one rated defense, but who is, if not the service. And there was a hole there that was created for whatever reason.

there's a million stories about why there was nobody on that roof. And it's not because it was a slope roof. Let me just throw that out there. It had a slight slope to it. Yeah, and everybody that stood on it afterwards to include all the senators and congressmen didn't have problems with it. Okay? So, like, let me, and it was, there's manpower, stuff fell through.

People were talking about whether it was too hot or whatever the case might be. It was in July. I don't know. Maybe it was too hot. I wasn't there. There's a lot that went into what's going on there. But the Occam's Razor, and what I know from the inside is that there's complacency involved. And that's what it was. And every time one of these things happen, everybody's, the hair in the back of their neck stands up. For a while, it's like everybody's on their A game or their A-plus game. And then the complacency starts creeping in because it's not like doing direct action hits where you're hitting a target every night.

the target's coming to us. Yeah. And that's the reality. Everybody wants a smoking gun. Oh, the Biden's pulled out, you know, put a hit on it. Stop. Just, if that happened, man, like, I've been around so many administrations and hurt some.

Do you know any moving pieces that would require to? There's no secrets, man. Like, and I'm telling you right now, if I heard that, I would say it right here on this podcast. And people want to believe in these conspiracy theories and just doing the social media stuff, I'm learning that people have lost their mind with conspiracy theories. You know, they're just...

So I've dug into it a little bit because I used to think that too, and I'm open to being wrong about what I'm about to say, but I've talked to some people about this who know more about that type of mentality than I do. There seems to be a cohort, and I saw this with not to move away from this because we can come back because I still have some questions about this, but with the Charlie Kirk assassination. Sad. Incredibly sad.

The first thing that I think a lot of people don't want to wrap their intellectual arms around is that the layer between crazy people doing really gnarly stuff and causing damage is incredibly, incredibly thin. And I think the reality is most people as human beings are just not willing to cross that line. That is probably what protects more of this from happening than anything else, whether it's the morality or wherever it is. They might have a twisted sense of whatever and a deep hatred, but there's a difference between that and going, getting a high-powered rifle and getting on a roof. So it's super thin. But when it does happen,

what people don't like is the feeling that they're not in control or that there's chaos. And I heard this time and time again for people who were very, very deeply invested in what I will call some conspiracy theories around Charlie Kirk. And for clarity, before people on the internet try to eat us, alive, I do believe that there have been conspiracies involving our government in the past. They're pretty demonstrable. So I'm not saying conspiracies don't exist. But I am saying not everything is a conspiracy. We have to be able to work a little bit in between the two. But people would say,

I have to get justice for Charlie. They keep digging in online. And then there's these forums and they're throwing out ideas. And it was the road microphone that was Israeli made that shot up a And like it was the bulletproof vest and the rounds bounced off. I'm like, you can see his nipples, guys. Like my favorite was a ninja turtle that came out of the hatch. Or his security detail signaling because nobody ever gets an itch on their nose before something horrible happens. Right. And when you freeze frame things, yeah, things can look really weird.

But people legitimately believed that they were trying to help to get answers for somebody that meant something. to them. It was either a sense of purpose or a sense of grasping onto some level of control because they don't want to think or believe that there is almost no actual control. And that makes a lot more sense to me, especially in a world where people feel isolated and oftentimes my words not necessarily anybody else's lost. It's something they can wrap their arms around. Have you ever read the book Chaos? Yes. Years ago, though. I love that book. And it was it was recommended to me by one of the girls at the agency for the book. So I read it and she wanted to ask me afterwards, like what I thought about it.

As I'm reading it, the idea that popped into my head, not an idea, kind of like epiphany, was that our inhibitions, and I'll start with social media, but it goes way deeper than that, our inhibitions have are becoming lower. For some people for sure. And for some people for sure. And if you look and if you start reading, and I like reading history and I like reading like the MK Ultra stuff and how real is that.

And there was a real program for those that don't know it was a real program. And how there were like 140 programs or maybe more under it that were all funded by the same dude, right? Sydney Gottlieb funded them all. and the way that they created and controlled people was by lowering their inhibitions. And they did it with this psychedelic, right?

With this drug, LSD. Yeah. And everybody's inhibitions were lower. So the inhibition, and we can just go down that rabbit hole. Again, it's like one of those like hours and hours long conversations. The inhibitions, social media, everybody can just say whatever they want with no consequence. You can call people Nazis and you can call people Nazis and you can call people. people, everything from a good person to that and everything in between, it's with no consequence

because you're hiding behind usernames. And I mean, if we really want to look, we can pull up people's IP addresses and track them down and then the direct actions come in. But if we keep lowering our inhibitions, our inhibitions to indulge into the, let's face it, with our emotions, to indulge in the behaviors that we think we should because we are. Or the, are acceptable, maybe not even think that we should, they're acceptable. Well, they think they're acceptable. Here, they deserved it. Right. And then it's like, we do it with anger and emotion because we get offended or things turned out not the way we wanted to. And we think that by injuring somebody that we're either fixing it or validating it or you're going to

celebrate, like Charlie Kirk's death, people that celebrated it. And if you look now, the riots that are going on in Belfast. And I had... my opinion on Tava riots and the way they're rioting. And like I learned from the 2020 riots and like nobody wants to, they just want to go and burn down their own city. And I talked about that in a second. But in the comments, if you read the comments

and I read a lot of the comments, you have these kids, they're kids, most of them are kids, and they're saying, start killing people. Kill, right? And kill, kill, kill, kill. And they're saying things like that, thinking that that's appropriate. And if somebody in Belfast starts killing immigrants because they're angry that this other guy were if they injure someone else who had probably nothing to do with the event.

And I understand the whole problem, but you're burning down your own city. If you're going to riot, I'm all for protesting. Do what you got to do. I'm way more, I don't want to say accepting of protesting, but I believe that that's a way to cause change. But you've got to be targeted with it. You can't burn down your own city and think that after you burn a town that the politicians who don't take the buses, who don't eat at the mom and pop shops, who don't even walk down the street, are really going to care?

They're going to throw money at it. And where does a lot of that money go? Think about Minnesota for a second. And this is my opinion, but this is my informed opinion of basically what I've been around. Minnesota burned down. we threw tons of money at it. Where's one of the states that the most fraud exists right now? I mean, I haven't dug into too deeply, but it's being reported as Minnesota.

Okay. So, but it, my point is, are those things correlated? Maybe. It's kind of hard to say that like, oh, those two things are totally non-related somehow. Because there were meetings that it was like, hey, we need X billions of dollars to fix this. And it's like, okay, we'll send it along. And of course they got a rebuild. Those people, most of those people that live there had nothing to do with that.

But you burn down your own city. Target your protests where there should be. The protests that were outside in front of the White House during 2020, those kind of got the attention of people more because the politicians live there. If you're burning down your own house, how does that make any sense? And that's kind of my two cents on. like the protests. And it's...

Well, one is driven by emotion. It's emotion. There is. Inhibitions. And then the other one is driven by, not necessarily every protester at the White House, was there logically and objectively.

But if you were to think about it and you wanted to be the most visible to the people making the decisions impacting your life, that would be the more logical place to do it. That's the more logical place. And then you got the protesters that show up,

same ones that show up on the West Coast, show up on the East Coast and everywhere in between. And it's like, maybe they're professional protesters. I don't know. All right. And that's also a thing where, like, I read a lot about the Belfast protest. They popped up all over the UK overnight.

Those things were planned. Those people who were ready to organize those, they didn't come up with the idea after that guy did what he did. That stuff was planned. And they activated their plan when they had a reason to. I think you and I have been around the block. enough times that we can probably definitively say and confirm that some people out there, man, their cause is just wanting shit to burn. It's like the Joker from Batman. Their cause is wanting to have a cause. And we live in a world where there's always a cause where you're going to be

able to get behind. It's not everybody, but I think it is demonstrably true that there are. And I think it's a very small or a relatively small segment. But yeah, some people, their life's mission is to have a cause and then go do something with it. You should have a cause in life, but a productive. productive cause, and then I'll turn it around on you and ask you, what are you doing for yourself? Go back to the mission, the men and me, that applies here too. If your mission is whatever, right, like whatever it is, and you're going out, but you're not educated, you're overweight, you're hurting other people specifically, targeting people, and you're hurting them first. That's just evil first, by the way, can we say? If you're going to hurt somebody first and

without provocation, you're the evil one. I don't know how else to say it. And I come from a place of security where being around four presidential administrations operationally, not like, you know, in the field or whatever, operationally stood with an assault rifle next to four different presidents. And I, at some point, I become numb to the politics. And it's easy for me to just listen and see what's going on. And it's like, hey, you're doing things that are evil, right? You're doing things purposely to hurt other people. And it's not like in defense of something. You're going out because you don't like the way something is. And I'm not talking about the presidents here. I'm talking about the people who are coming at the presidents. You just don't like the politics. You don't like things

that they said, whatever the case might be. Or you're misinformed us to what their policies are. So that's like it, again, is it the truth? That's the truth. People can't help themselves because of go back to the indulgences, emotion. This is how everything's run now. The common sense, man, I like having common sense conversations with people, but it's hard. Yeah. We have to have more of them, though. What we can't do is throw our hands up and walk away and then let every ecosystem slowly

slide its way towards those emotional decisions. It's difficult. I have a couple rules that I stay with online. The first one is, I mean, I will respond to people positive or negative. So I try not to have a bias either direction, but my response will always be positive in nature or I won't go down to the level that they are coming at me at.

I'll answer a question if they have it. If they're going to open with an insult, I'm not going to respond to one. And maybe it's a losing battle, but it's not when I'm going to stop fighting. It's in, I learned that the hard way. The social media thing is awesome. You haven't fun with it so far?

That teaches you, well, I'm still a nobody, but. Doesn't mean you can't get in the comments section. It doesn't get, well, I love going down the comments because I like learning. Because I'll say stupid shit all the time. I say stupid shit. How many stupid things have I said now? Can you count?

Do you have a tally, Michael? Yeah, we've got about 10 so far. There you go. Excellent. Those are rookie numbers, by the way. We can bump that up. I'll put a multiplier on that. But it helps me learn.

At this point, I love learning as much as I can. Yeah. Something snapped in my brain six, six, seven years ago. and I just like absorb things now quicker and easier. Like a, in, I like going down. I like passing the message that I'm trying to pass. This is why I'm doing this. This is hard for me.

It's hard for me to get in front of a camera and talk. But it's almost like, not almost like, it is, I feel that it's necessary. We need to create stronger people. If we create stronger people, a lot of these problems will go away. If we have better leaders, a lot of those problems will go away.

If we have people that make better decisions for us, not for you as an individual, not for you to hold power, seize power, or gain power. It's if we make people who take care of themselves, but also have that mission and the men, depending on what organization that you're in, it's all the same.

You don't have to be in the military. You don't have to be a Navy SEAL. You don't have to be a Secret Service agent. You can go to any organization. If you think that way, and your leadership style is not just what you're going to gain out of it, you're probably going to be successful. I say probably because nothing's guaranteed.

But more often than you just, how many times people just throw their hands up, they don't even try, they make excuses, they blame, look at our society now, we blame everything under the sun, except you, you can't look in the mirror and say, ah, man, how did we screw this up? So from the Secret Service,

perspective, after these things happen, there needs to be a significant after action. Is there? We say there is. We say there is. Did we learn, can you find commonalities from the, this is still up, the Butler incident, going all the way to, what's the last one, the correspondent center? Are there commonalities? I will tell you that, and I just said the one that I see is the completely.

complacency. Yeah. Let me ask you this on that point, because this is an interesting one. Coming from the world of being Secret Service agent and then being very proximal to the president because of the role of the cat team, although it's beyond just the president itself, but that's one of the main things. Is it possible to not have complacency in the job you guys do? Because we were talking about this on our way over here. The service has been pressed more times in the last two years than it has been in the last 20. But if you don't get pressed for 20 years and people may not like to hear this, there is a huge difference between experience and training.

They're not the same thing. There's not the same thing. But if your job never allows for a real world rep, which is a great thing because that means you guys aren't getting pressed, but it could also be viewed as negative because it means you guys don't have the experience. either. So how do you keep complacency out of the rule that you have where in the rules of the game you guys are playing with, you're largely reactive instead of proactive. How do you bridge that gap? There are proactive measures that people don't see. Yeah. So I'll just throw that in there. I'm not saying they're not, but I'm saying largely the protective world is you're not out there guns blazing first. No, it's reactive. And the reactive is very exhausting.

And if you can go a week and nothing happens, and then a month and then a year. And I'm sure there's people. I asked my boss one time if we got hit once out of every 10 motorcades that we did, but we run this place the same way. He says no. Oh my God, it would look completely different.

And I just looked at it. I'm like, what the fuck, man? Right? And I think that was my response. That's why I kept getting in trouble because I respond like that. But at the end of every operation I did, I remember one time

somebody started yelling at me I would take my helmet off and I would sit on the bumper of the truck as everybody's cleaning all their shit up and putting their stuff back in the bags and I would just sink down and almost like all the stress would roll off of me

because as I'm working I'm looking at the terrain I'm looking to see where the limo is I'm looking to see where the other cars are where the other agents are what my guys are doing I'm evaluating based on intel that I had or didn't have

and it was just a constant loop that I was going through in my head. And this occurred, the last, especially when I was a team leader, constantly. To ask people to do that is impossible. And I understand that. To have a, first we need, again, we need so many more people, good people. And then you're able to rotate them in a way that you can't work somebody for 45, days and expect them at the end to be as capable as they were in the beginning. Sometimes it's because, and there is shit happens, right?

Stuff happens and we can't, we can't help it. How many times I remember were the oncoming cat team never showed up, so we just worked a double. What do you mean they didn't show up? They took a wrong turn? No, overseas. You have foreign entities that won't let people through. They won't allow them.

Man, sweet. Unplanned double. That's a fun time. Right. And but it's like you can't, and those aren't common. Those are uncommon. But then you have, it's just, if you don't try to hold that standard, we talked about it before with the firearms, then the complacency just comes quicker. Because then it's like, take your gear off. What could happen, man? And then it's like, well, you take your gear off. Then just sling your gun. Take your hands off your gun. Well, what could happen? And then that's a slow roll. Nothing's happened for 10 years. What's the big deal? slow roll. And if you were able to play it for real, I think one of the things that kicked me in the asses was I kept going to look for assassination attempts in the briefings that I was getting. And I would just look at, I'm like, holy shit, look at the stuff that some people were doing

overseas, this is all, and you see people getting, can either attempts or what the case might be, that was one of the reasons that kept me going. The other reason is like, it didn't. is my personality. My personality was that I want to lead a group of people, and this will never happen on my watch, and I will burn everybody to the ground or die trying. And that was my, that was my message to all my guys. I remember one time we were in Bedminster. I had a brand new guy. He was driving the truck. We did the brief, and we were at night, and he just sits back, pulls his hat down, tries to put the seat back, and like he was taking to take a nap. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

That's, I don't know what you did before. That's not the way it works, okay? You got the first patrol, right? And, like, he's just looking at me, like, I scolded him. And afterwards, I'm like, brother, this is the slow creep towards the complacency. And I get it. You're good at your job. Multiply that by 10 years.

And what does that turn into? And that turned into. And to people that you put in the positions have to have that mentality as that, like, you're going to be the asshole, man, and go and walk and tell people that you're, you have to stay up for as long as possible and be prepared. You can't, I got a briefing one time and the person briefing me was like, hey, it was a bunch of us. There's bad intel at this venue, but we can't tell you what it is. I was like, what did you mean? You can't tell me what is. I have the same clearance as you. And one of my guys is

like, so basically you're saying there's a plane that's going to hit one of the poststanders, but we can't tell you which poststander, right? And the guy looked at him, like, he's like, well, that's not it. And he's like, wait, so I narrowed it down. And we're having these arguments about, why would they withhold that information from me? Because they would claim stuff that it's like, it's not relative to the venue or not relative to the... And why tell you in the first place? Just to piss us off, right? Just because knowledge is power. because you read something, what would it hurt for you to brief me,

take you a minute and a half to brief me instead of me arguing with you for a minute and a half? That could have been replaced. That's time well spent. If you just telling me, I'll be like, and then I could come up with my own. It's like, all right, that's really not a thing I should be worried about,

but I'll just keep in the back of my head just in case. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of goodness in the service. Again, not an apologist, but I grew up there. There are so many good people. And this is what I'm going to say, And it's on this show, it's for everybody to hear. Local law enforcement works hard every single night.

All these people across the country, they see more action in one night than the Secret Service does, probably in its history. That's what I'm saying. How can you not be complacent? When the experience level and the training level, they're not equal buckets. And the local law enforcement does a great job.

You know, for the most part, everybody's going to, they're going to start picking and choosing the stories that they want to say. But for the most part, local law enforcement does a great job because it's a hard job. And my hat's off to every single law enforcement agency in this country. The Secret Service, it's also a hard job. And you don't hear about how many, you hear about the things that obviously are recorded and you can see correspondence dinner, but you don't hear about the thousands and thousands.

Let's talk about since July 13th, the tens of thousands of missions that the Secret Service has done that have occurred without incident because you only care about the one. Well, you only see the one. You only see the one. Yeah. And then all the instances, and I know this is a 100% fact of things that have occurred that you don't know about because we stopped them before ever getting to this point. Yeah. So, and those people were people that weren't complacent. They were like, you know what?

Fuck you. This is not happening on my watch. Yeah, proactive versus reactive. And they went out and they did what they had to do and they did a good job. We don't hear about that because those are, I say, the best way for us to do our job is to not keep talking about the stuff that we did well so you don't, nobody can deconstruct it. I mean, what you're describing explains people's perhaps misplace optic of, you know, what the agency and organization does. But internally, I would imagine people know what's going on

and that those things are happening. But yeah, complacency still creeps in. The complacency still creeps in because it's human nature for it to happen. And sometimes it's just the perfect time, perfect storm, the correspondence dinner. And it's not to demean those guys. It's just hopefully you learn from it.

And now whenever you're standing there, you're like any person that walks by, you got to scrutinize them. You can't. It's almost like I had a guy and he was struggling. He was going through cat school. I was the instructor. And he was, he is a great person. He shot really well. He struggled with his decisions. And he's like, I don't, I don't know. He's like struggling. All I said to him was imagine your kid is the one that you're protecting. And he became Captain America after that. Because he's like, every time I envision my kid, what would I do to prevent my kid from getting hurt? Like, good. That and whatever you had for lunch,

just do that every day from now on so we can get you through the school. And he turned out to be a fantastic cat agent. He's a special agent in charge somewhere in one of the field offices now. And to get through to people, to make them understand, to find what, makes Andy Stump

tick. How can I get through to Andy Stump versus how can I get through to Mike or whoever and not just well this is the way it's got to be. All of you guys, especially when you're training people, all of you guys got to think the same.

Sometimes you have to have that human nature and that binds us together and it makes us family and the Secret Service is family. A dysfunctional family at times, but it is a family. because there's not that many of us. Agents?

I don't know how many there are now, but when I left, there was like 2,800, 2,700. So you've mentioned a few times you feel like they need to hire thousands more. Thousands more. I feel like that would take a decade to be honest. It would take forever.

And they're trying to do it. And there's attrition, and there's hiring. And then in mass hirings, you're going to get people that maybe you didn't want in the first place. Yeah. And then, so I hope that they're doing well

with that. I know that they're trying. They're pumping a lot of money into it. I just, is it realistic? Do you think to actually hire thousands more? I mean, it's realistic. You'd have to assign to it a realistic, you know, trajectory on when that would occur. Yeah. And I was an instructor. I was only a counter-salt team instructor. So I wasn't an instructor for the basic classes that we're going through. I know the facility. I know how the facility works. I know the budgets that we're trying to acquire in order to do this. The thing that we need is time, right? So if we prioritize that, and I'm not the director or the deputy director, so like I know those guys have a hard job, and they're trying to figure it out. So like, I'm not

saying I have the answers. But the priority is just protecting people, hiring. And if we just do that, it'll take some time. But on the backside of it is how many people we hemorrhage. And we're hemorrhaging them before not they're not making it to their end to careers a lot of people are leaving they're leaving their careers right when they can or they're hemorrhaging we're hemorrhaging them right before we send them to big details uh that was when I left that was the problem I don't know how they're resolving that because you have an inflow of people and then you have you got to stop the you got to stop the bleed right and we got to keep people somehow and those are

two highly problematic areas, not just for the Secret Service, probably everywhere right now that's looking to hire, but the Secret Service, one, because we are in the public eye. And two, because it is very difficult to hire the right people when you're like, well, we need a thousand people, so beggars can't be choosers at this point. I'm not saying that they're doing that, but it's like, I'm sure some people hiring are like, well, let's just take these 10 people. They're good. Well, the pressure cooker of your job is an interesting one too. So I think hiring in general is difficult. I mean, you have to throw the net wider than if you want five people.

You probably should look at 10. But it's an interesting challenge. And I understand why people are leaving earlier in their career. They have their federal creds. They have their security clearance. And they're working in an occupation that is a pressure cooker from 360, 720 degrees. and they say, I'm infinitely employable in the federal system with what I already have right now. I'm going to do something else.

There's another federal agency that went down to the White House and was passing out business cards to all the uniformed officers. See, they understood the assignment because they know where to go find their job pool. And a lot of those guys left. Dude, federal credit, you know the deal. Federal cred's probably TSSCI clearance. You are infinitely employable in the U.S. government system. I mean. And if you're getting burned out, your relationship is fraying.

You're not getting to see much time with your kids. And again, this can go back to manpower in time. That's a big part of it too. Yeah. How could it not be? The family aspect of the Secret Service is, they'll say stuff like family first. But there's so many instances. You read one of the things in my book that's like, there's just, it goes back to like, well,

Well, it doesn't look good for me if I let you have leave now. So, and you have to manage those two. The mission has to, we have to accomplish the mission. We can't let this stuff happen. But then you have the people. So this is another story. I was the team leader. I had a bunch of kids. I had a kid. He was there for, I don't know, maybe less than a year. He was a great, one of the best, most talented people I've ever had the privilege of supervising in my entire career. And he came to me and he's like, hey man, I'm having problems at home. And I just like, I'm like, okay, he told me what it was. And I said, all right, this is what you're going to do. I have to fill these assignments.

You can't take leave because there's a blackout period. Like there's blackout periods where people can't take leave unless it's like very special circumstance. Case by case, yeah. So I said, I'm going to send you. to England. And you're going to do a liaison role, which is you're going to go, you're going to liaison with the police there, S-A-S if they're around. And you're going to take your per diem and you're going to fly your wife out there. This is what you're going to do. He's like, can I do

that? I'm like, all those motherfuckers on the detail, and it's for a vice presidential trip, they're doing it too for their wives and girlfriends. So like, I'm telling you to do it. And then when you get back, I will work all your shifts. And you can go have your leave even though it's a blackout period. And he's like, I will figure it out. Don't just fuck you with my, like me working it. You got to, I need you to be good. I'll get work out of you. He's like, well, people get pissed because I'm going to London. Like, you let me handle that. And I got some fire for it. But you know what? I need to accept that to make my guy, one, trust me, two, have a good headspace so he can do his job going forward. And three,

we solve all these problems because when you say things like, well, you just keep that at home. That's your problem at home. Well, you gotta do this, so we gotta fill a shift, sorry, that's the way it is. That's when you have to be a real leader, step up, absorb heat, people didn't like that. Like, what's a blackout period?

You let me worry about that. I'll work his shifts. I'll work doubles if I had to. It didn't come to that, but it's, and to make decisions, and I know that's like a dumb story, but it's like, if we have that collective mindset, all of us together, there is nothing we won't be able to handle. This stuff wouldn't happen.

It has to occur at the leadership levels all the way of the top as well. All the way of the top. Because what you're talking about is managing essentially an emergency for somebody, which above one level above, I would hope that the relationship exists that either A, those people know what's going on or they have insight into their own agency. And they could realize, yeah, we need two to three X more people so we can actually turn some of these steam gauges off and let the preempties.

pressure off, cycle through it a healthy, funny term that everybody lets work, life balance. Yeah, not what my old job came with one of those either. Otherwise, yeah, people are going to eject at the four-year mark. Or they're going to be presented with a choice by somebody they care very deeply about. You can either change your job or I'm leaving. What do you expect people to do at that point? There are people that give more of the job than they do to their families. I would say the majority of them are probably in that case as well as the job I came from as well.

Some of them are forced to? The job suffers last. That's right. That's 100% right. Some of them are forced to. I'm not recommending people just throw their hands up and say, oh, this job's not important. I'm just going to give everything to my family because, one, you also chose to come to this job, right? You chose to come to this job and then expect to stay home. Did you not hear what I said, like almost 90 countries and pretty much almost every single state in the continental and Okona's United States, right? And a lot of those were I didn't want to go, right? And I was on cat. So I didn't get to go to the

Ireland's and the Italy. I've never been to Ireland and Italy. All those countries I've ever been to Ireland and Rome. Can I go to Rome and have a pizza? Right? But I've been to like 20-something countries in Africa. And it's different tourist spots. It's, and to be honest with you, that's another conversation to have because those were my favorite trips. After a while, it was like, hey, you're going to Liberia. I was like, yeah, let's go, right? I can't, wait to find a bow constructor in my room. Yeah, you know, check your boots before you put them. It's not that big of a deal. So, I mean, it happens. But the, the, how we manage everybody, a lot of people give so much to

this job. And it is, think about it this way. In the Secret Service, you stand next to the president of the United States of America, not another country. Pick a country. It doesn't matter which country it is, they're not number one. Everybody is number two or lower. Okay, that's the reality of that. If you have an unhealthy ego, I'll talk about this now, and you're standing next to that guy, and you're charged with protecting the United States of America, it doesn't matter who it is, what does that do to your ego if it's unhealthy? Because everybody sees you stand in there and you're like, yeah, I'm the man. Regardless of whether you save his life or not. And that starts to seep into your psyche, your identity. It's who you are. Your job is to be that secret service agent.

Everybody can see you. And when I first started, like first, it was 2004 because there was the campaign for Kerry. And I had to do a site, I was in Newark. I was in Newark Field Office for the first few years of my career. And I did a site for John Kerry going to where the old giant stadium used to be. And now it's whatever, I don't know what it's where it is now. and met life, I think. I was, there was a rope line that he was doing. So he was shaking everybody's hand. And I was standing next to him doing the rope line.

And on the other side of the rope line were my friends that I went to high school with. And they were like, John? They had no idea. I'm working now. We can talk about this. All I said was to them, I was like, can I see your hands? Right. And as we're going down.

And they were like, just doing this. this and they're like, what the f-all? I was like, keep your hands up. And I would just like go down. And then afterwards, they'd all call me and make fun of me. And they were like, you're like, oh, you know, like you can't still can't tie a tie. And it's like the ego, if your ego is unhealthy and that esteem that you're getting. And again, I talk about this because it is a real phenomenon. It's like, I'm the man. And that keeps feeding you. And, feeding you and that's your identity. And then when you take that identity away, you'll do everything that you can to make sure that it doesn't get ripped out of you because it's all you got.

It's confusing who you are with what you do. Yeah. And I would say that applies to professional athletes. Yeah. I would say what applies to anybody who may receive an oversized amount of attention, um, scrutiny good or bad public eye, whatever it may be. If you, man, if you tie your beliefs onto who you are into what it is you do for a living at some point

I'm not aware of a job well maybe the job of a parent would be the only one that doesn't expire at some point in time but everything else that requires a uniform there will be a time that you hang it up

and there's also your loyalty has changed depending on and I have this discussion with guys and they're like well I'm going to do everything I can to walk back through the front door in my house like don't make those problems If you're coming with me and we're going to Pakistan, right, your loyalty is to me.

My loyalty is to you. It has to be right now. I'm not talking about Cartagena go finding hookers. I'm talking about survival. If we deploy out of that truck, your loyalty and my loyalty has to be to each other. And that way we can guarantee coming back home. And then when you get back home, your loyalty shifts back to your family. doesn't mean you don't love them.

And you understand exactly what I'm saying. Yes. Because a lot of people are like, well, I'm not going to do that because it's going to affect my family. Then you may not want to operate in those environments. I understand what you're talking about, yes. You know, maybe then there's another job for you down the street. Yeah. And I'm not being negative at anybody who struggles with that, but having...

It's hard. It is hard, but look at the demands of the situation that you may be operating in. We use the documentary Clear and Present Danger as an example. I've never been to Cartagena, but I've seen that, and they get ambushed in a vehicle. It's a great scene. It is a great scene. For a movie? For a documentary, let's be very clear.

Everything in there, I believe, was historically based. First off, walled in by buses, elevated positions with RPGs and automatic weapons, that would suck the biggest of dongs you could find. That would be horrible to begin with. If, and obviously I'm joking for people listening, but the reality, of that situation, I'm not intimately familiar with all of your training scenarios, but I would imagine a vehicle ambush with the inability to maneuver or limited ability to maneuver probably shows up at some point in time in your training cycle. If you can't turn off everything but pure violence, aggression, and the mind of a tactician, you're not going to survive that situation.

Well, you might. I would say statistically, your odds are decreasing, the less you can rotate that dial. you have to be able to shift back and forth and have the understanding that that might be the role that you end up serving in. You have to be able to do that. To me, it makes intuitive sense. I'm trying to break it down a little bit for people who don't live in this or come from that world who are looking at both of us like complete sociopaths right now because you're not saying be a sociopath. There's a little bit of that in there. There is a little bit of that in there, but it more than anything. It's rational sociopath. Well, I like the way the DJ Shipley talks about this. It's dials, not switches. You have to be able to adapt to the environment that you are in.

And one of the environments that you hopefully are going to go back to is your family setting. You have to be able to dial that back into that as well, too. It's way harder to do than to sit here and to talk about. There probably is something a little bit different about people who pursue a tactical career versus those that don't. And I say that without judgment. I don't know if it's good or bad. Hopefully the psychopathy could be kept at the lower end of the spectrum, perhaps.

I think in the tactical world and being around. going down to Little Creek, Damnet, Fort Prague, anywhere, I've been all over the place. Just, I had this discussion. I was talking to his command sergeant major, and we were talking about our capability, and it was all TTPs and metal and SOPs and stuff. Hold on. Tactics, techniques, and procedures.

Metals are mission essential tasks list, largely, let's call it a three-ring binder of what you do. SOPs and standard operating procedures. Go. Right. Yeah. So apologies. That's what I'm here for.

But we're talking about that. And it went into like what do you want to learn? And I was at the tail end now. This is at the tail end. And I'm like, I'll be honest to me. What you guys do and I said, I've stolen so much crap from you guys to implement. but the one thing that impresses me more than anything is how you treat each other.

And he just started laughing his ass off. And he's like, his exact words were this potato gets it, right? And I was like, are you who are you talking to? Right? Are we being recorded? And that was the conversation. And I'll never forget it because it was a validation as to how

I treated everybody. A good measure of your success as a leader is how much the people to the left and to the right of you believe not only in you but themselves. And if you do encounter those people with the unhealthy egos, they're the ones that usually are they're either threatened by you or they think that you're going to erase some of their legacy

or they're like these are this is a real phenomenon I'm not not this is not secret service thing this is like a the entire world right and doing that

you have to make a choice at some point to do the right thing to be that heat shield I say that all the time You're that heat shield. And sometimes people don't want to hear. We just talked about all this stuff.

And I talked about the beginning of the podcast. A lot of people are going to be like, oh, my God, I can't believe you said that. Is any of that stuff, and I'm not trying to water it down, is any of that stuff wrong? The complacency. Is that wrong? You want to sit here and say that everything was like hunkie d'Orian perfect and let's mill it time. Let's just go have a beer, right?

And that's not the case. After action it. Find out what you did wrong. sustains, abstains, you know, just like keep doing it over and over again. It's never going to be perfect. Yeah. But you can strive for perfection.

I'm going to say that's the goal, unachievable, but constantly moving in that direction. And it's okay if you never achieve it. But as a leader, you have to have those hard conversations. Not just with your guys up. You have to tell the bosses,

hey, man, kind of fucked up. You're putting us in a bad position. And they're like, you just, how many conversations I've had where it's like, you just do, my favorite is, just go and shave. Because I had a beard a lot when I was on counseling, right? It's like, just go shave and stop asking me about this. And I would push back. And I was the asshole.

No wonder, like, they were mad at me all the time. How you do these things matter. There are tactful and effective ways to approach your leadership and there are less tactful and less. Yeah, I learned out the hard way, too. I've explored deeply the latter more so probably than the former. But, you know, one of the main ones, spoiler alert, don't challenge your boss in public, everyone. If you work for a rank-based organization, your nuts are going to go onto the chopping block and get just smashed to pieces. The how you do it matters.

If you really want to have it in private, pick your time. Chain of command is a lot like a ladder. You need to be able to go up and down it a little bit. You have to know your role. But yeah, you have to be able to, a lot of the times, I mean, let's be honest, too, in organizations like this, the boss on paper is the most detached from the boots on the ground. A hundred million, I don't know how many more percent we can put on that. Yeah. They, you don't know what you don't know.

You think you know. That's the problem. And that's what I guess I never have been able to understand. Because most of these people draw their origins at least from some entry level. position in an organization and probably work their way up. I'm not aware of somebody who was two years in that all of a sudden got lifted and shifted and now they're the top. Meaning, they saw all the things that weren't working well on their way up, but you get to a certain station in life and then. It's the way we've always done it, Andy. Yeah, but that doesn't work.

Everything doesn't work. Those are the deadliest words in law enforcement, right? That's the way we've always done. And I'm not talking about fixing way. My point is that when they get to that role, they should know it doesn't work. And they should also know that they don't know everything because they were homegrown in that organization. You know what I mean? You'd see in the military sometimes too. Somebody would get a particular job

and start acting in a way where you could say, hey man, do you remember like a year ago when we were complaining about people asking us to do something like this? And oh, by the way, both of us understand where the teeth of the gear aren't aligning because we know how the sausage is made, why are you acting all of a sudden like you don't know that?

You should. When I was hired in 2002, we were talking about hiring more people. Yeah. It's 2026. Yeah. And so nobody who's been in that organization should be able to sit there and look at you and say, John, this is the first I'm hearing about being undermanned and overwork. What are you talking about?

There's more nuanced than just hire more people. But at the same time. Because they should have lived it. And then they get to a position where they can have an impact and they say, well, I didn't know. Like, you didn't know or you weren't looking or are you pretending

that you don't know. It could be a combination. Sure, like multiple things can be true or are you just worried about yourself? Are you looking at the next step for you? Is there nepotism involved? And you have, like,

all of these things can be shades of true. But if you come up inside of the organization, you should constantly be reminding yourself that you don't know everything. So go out there and ask questions. Look around. The guy is the program manager for Kat right now. He's got a number written

in the dry erase board. and he just when I would go visit him he'd just point to it and he'd be like I'm not going to stop until we reach that number and he just would tell me he's like that's my number one priority other than getting the guy's training and you know doing our operation stuff but like I need to reach that number and I was like God bless you what do you need for me well how can I help you and I and he would beat his head against the wall and still does. And the guy who's in charge too, and they're trying to hire more people, and that's their goal. And it's an honorable goal. And I've, again, not a Secret Service apologist, but I was on counter assault special operations for 15 years just in the Secret Service. And I will default to those guys, but I will tell them the truth, but they're doing a good job of just focusing on the things that they need to focus on. Now, they might not get those of results for whatever the reasons are.

You can talk about the training and the amount of people that are available, right? Because you pull from the agents that we have. If you have 3,000 agents. The math is the math. The math is the math. Okay. Like there's programs where they're just trying to hire. And I read the comments.

Everybody's like, well, they need to hire Delta Force and Steel Team 6 and, you know, whatever. And there are programs that they can pull directly from there. but it takes time. And it's not like you're going to get... And also it's not the same job. And it's a different job. And it's funny you say that. It's good that you say that.

I'm going to say this on them. Everybody talks about counter assault team and they talk about special forces or naval special warfare or socom and... J-Soc. And all they say that. All the socks. The counter-assault team is not a special forces team.

They are not... Is that... Is that what they tell themselves, though, behind closed doors? I'm telling you. Do you guys sit there and say, yeah, we're basically Cag Team 6? If they say that, I're going to say that you're just, I try. My profanity is kind of generic. I use the fox and the shits.

So I was going to say something else. But if they say that, they're wrong. okay that that is not who they are it's not who they're supposed to be they're not who they're supposed to be yeah that's coming from me i'm the dinosaur of the counter assault team they're also not a swat team they are not law enforcement traditional well you're kind of the president swat team which is pretty dope not you're either swat or you're not i heard that on another documentary too also titled swat yeah not counter assault team they're a bunch of assaulters they are that's what they're train to do. Isn't it technically in case the president becomes kidnapped? Was that the original

intent behind Kat? That was. It was originally formed in the 1970s. The guy, the deputy director right now, his father was one of the authors for the counter assault team. No way. Yeah. Cool. It's kind of like there's a lot of history there. And they were formed around the same time as I'll send you, there's a, there's like a little history pamphlet that talks about this. I'll, I'll, send it to you. And they were forming around the same time as when Beckwith formed Delta Force. Okay. It was soliciting. And they kind of went in different directions, obviously where we are. And they grew their program and we are where we are. And it was kind of born around the same time

and the same conversation. And I'll send you could read the whole thing. Yeah. Please do. That's interesting. And I just, I don't want to say the wrong thing, not because I can't, because I'm not sure. Yeah. So, and it was born from there to do exactly that. It was supposed to be a group of people, the agents, that are a bunch of assaulters. That's what they're trained. They're cross-trained in the same fields that special forces, naval special warfare, SEAL Team 6, Delta Force, all these guys.

They're trained in doing the same things. I stole so much stuff from everybody. as an instructor. I learned so much from everybody that I incorporated it. I retro-engineered stuff to put into what we do and to operate

in the environments that we do the way we do. Obviously, if we go into a war zone, we shift into that role because we're actually with, have you ever worked when you were overseas? Have you ever worked with the... Yeah, when the details would come in.

Yeah. Yeah. So then you have tanks. It's like a different animal. That's what I'm saying. Not even tanks. ISARs. And it's like I used to love the ISARs. I would just like turn to the Air Force guys like, hey, what's going on? And he'd be like, hold on.

He'd just open it down. I was sorry for people. We're talking about like a predator, reaper feed. You're looking at, it's an overhead, you know. I loved it. I loved it. I was like I loved ATAC. Yeah.

I lived on ATAC. It was one of my favorite things in the world that I had. You can go too far on ATAC though, too. You can. I have my own. You got to go heads up a little bit. like flying an airplane. You can't spend a whole time looking down at the instruments. You've got to lift your head. It was, it was, I have my own mesh system at home that I run ATAC and teach my daughter how to, how to play with it. What is it? It's Android Team Assault. No, Android Team Awareness Kit. Awareness kit. Yeah, it's a flip down essentially. Why did Android get the, why can't you use an iPhone? It was open. Oh, that is right. They had to be able to crack it to do it. It's called, literally called an A-Tac system, A-Bing the Android. You'll see it on a lot of modern gear. It looks like they have a cell phone.

right in front of their heart because, spoiler alert, it's a fucking cell phone that you can flip down. Apple has it now. Still got to call it ATAC. I still call it ATAC. Apple would work for that though, too.

The Apple. No, it's ITAC. You got to have the, right? ITAQ. Yeah. Of course it is. Of course. Yeah.

So I love that thing. And it's basically like Legos. You can do whatever you want. You build whatever you want in it. Right? And now there's all this crazy stuff where you just flip it down. It's an amazing situational awareness tool.

That's what it was. And working with so many different units, because when we traveled, I would work, we'd go to whatever, bumble fuck in the middle of the United States. And if they had the capability, I can just federate my ATAC with them.

And now I can see where the SWAT teams were. I can see, or I can move them around. And when I had the time to do it, Again, like you said, my face wasn't buried in my phone. It was looking forward. This is also a whole conversation about looking down and looking up. But and then to work with the military when we would go overseas, any O'Connor's trip there we had.

If I had that, I could federate it with, and I say use the word federate for lack of a better word. That means we're just joining our systems together. So we can see each other, right? And it gave me the ability to embed into those units so that we can do what we had to do. And the amount of awareness and the amount of stuff that I learned, not just to be able to run that, but how other assault units work, Ranger Battalions. We went, we went in Afghanistan one time and I had the second with us. I love, like, it was awesome because we were rolling through something, and one guy flipped on his phone.

He's like, don't worry, it's all taken care of. And I was like, that's the kind of shit I'm talking about. I owe you a beer, right? And it's one of my favorite things that I miss right now. It's the communications. I loved communications, leadership communications, because all the firearm stuff and the tactics, if you just see it for what it is and don't overcomplicate it,

you're good at it. Yeah. Then step up the communications. We created this communicator role that was like literally we would plug into local infrastructures when we travel. So we would plug into so-and-so SWAT team. And we were able to talk to the SWAT team on their frequency because we were plugging into their systems. And again, all this stuff is not something that you don't know about. I'm saying it for the camera.

But we retro-engineered a lot of stuff from the military to be able to enhance our capability. that's the kind of stuff I love doing when I was on Kat. I loved it to just keep innovating and pushing forward. And by doing that, you piss a lot of people off. The innovation in the government is like people don't want to say change. Change is like the kiss of death. Basically just like you're going to be public enemy number one. Well, it depends if the person you're talking to is associated with the change you're asking for.

A lot of the changes that I did didn't cost much or anything. Yeah. Hard for people to see, though, when oftentimes their position is directly tied to their budget, therefore, authority and things of that nature. Do you think it's hard for the guys? I don't know, I don't have to ask you to conjecture a little bit for the guys that you work with. They do travel around for people who don't know. And you're working with all the tier one units, tier two, all the units. You're wearing largely the same gear, carrying largely the same stuff, doing largely the same thing. But you get to go and train with all these units who then get to go get reps overseas for real. and your guys don't get to. Is that tough? It is rough. And I stole this word from one of the guys, being kinetic. Okay.

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Hopefully ever. Hopefully. I hope it never happens. But there's the people that are like, well, I want it to happen just to see how we do. I'm like, no, bro. Cool story, bro. Right? And I don't wish it upon any of those people because I love them all.

I love the ones that still know me. I love the ones that don't know me at all. And the past, present, future, I love them all. I always will. That's the program that I grew up in. So I want them to succeed and be the best that they can, even if they don't love me back. That's like how I view them. You have to understand, though.

The reps can be every single motorcade that you're in. This is how I exhausted myself. As we were going through motorcade, and I would play these games sometimes where I would take one of my guys that I was training, I would sit him in my seat, and I would sit behind him. And he's like, I don't want to do this. And it wasn't motorcade. I assessed the, like, how severe it was. You're picking your time in place.

We used to do this stuff all the time, by the way, too. Yeah, it's perfect. Yeah. And I would sit there and I'd say, what do you see? And I would teach them how to drive. The driver was listening. I was like, do you want to be closer or further? Do you want to be on the left or the right?

Are we on the X or outside the X? Should we be on the X or outside the X? And we would just go down and I was training them, to think. I did this all the time. And not only did it train them how to think, it trained me how to think. After we did it hundreds of times, those were reps real time without having the limo stopped. By the way, the thing is very difficult to stop. There might be a video of that being high-sided somewhere, you know, and it's a little bit stuck. So that, I remember, I remember you asking about that.

I remember you asking about that. And I was just, I was like screaming at the, at the, at the freaking TV when I was, like, I was watching it. But those become the reps. And the reps are also, did you brief today? And I know these are, this is dumb. Did you brief? Did you do all your pre-coms checks? Your pre-combat pre-com checks?

Did you do them all? As you go through all that, and I used to do, I used to pre-coms checks, and then I'd always, and everybody knew too, after a certain point, they're like, he's gonna test us to see if our shit is working. And if we got somebody scabbed out to us, it'd be like, stump, right? And you'd have to, you key, you did the same thing.

You key up and you'd be like, stump, and everybody thumbs up and you go around and make sure everybody's talking. And then the new guy, invariably the new guy, it'd be on the wrong frequency, it wasn't coded, coded. That means you didn't have the, whatever. Crypto. Yeah. And it's, you didn't have it on. And I was like, hey man, if I deploy you out of the truck, and it was a learning point. And it started to elevate our floor, elevate our floor, elevator floor. I can't simulate a firefight for you. But I can make you

as close to possible and let you know that I take this shit for real every day. Put those people in the positions of leadership. And by most, most part, cat guys all think like this for the most part. I mean, in every, every tactical team, there's always going to be those couple of guys that you're like, I don't know how you're still alive, bro, but like, you know, but the cat guys think like that because they are the ones that solicit this type of world. I know it's a high, it's a hot, it's a hard ask to have everybody with that mentality without being kinetic every day. that those reps become so much more important because you're in the motorcade and you know what the limo does you know what the shift does the people the suit and tie guys that are running around and yes there it is this is Ireland I believe it is this Ireland I think so and and we're oh listen the answer here is a two by four all right let's just get them under the tires we'll just back

it up. That's, uh, I'm not even going to talk about it. I mean, the reality is this, that's a very long vehicle that's very heavy and that driveway has an apex to it. And the two mathematically didn't work out well. And in, in the services defense, that wasn't the limo. Fair enough. That's the spare. So the limo just. That's fine. If you guys don't want to get reps in on your spare, that's fine. And it's not a big deal. So, um, it is hard to ask for guys, you know it's harder or would be harder, and this is an easy one to dismiss because he'll say it's never happened. Well, it's happened one time. Standing in front of Congress and explaining why the president's dead. Oh, buddy. We have that, we say that all the time.

And go back to Kennedy. That's the, yeah, well, I should have said Abe Lincoln, but I don't think the Secret Service was what it was back in the day of Amson. It wasn't. We started after McKinley. Yeah. And it was unofficial for a while. It was signed into law. I remember like 1912-ish. or something like that. Before our time. We're old, but not that old. I'm pretty old. But in my class, my jihitsu instructor is always like, when were you born, 18, 12?

I'm like, come on, man, give me a little credit. Let me do old man jihitsu and lay on people. It's pretty awesome. But it, and then moving past McKinley, they never showed us the Zabruder film in training. How is that possible? See? you came to the same reaction that I did. Oh.

And just basic, basic training. Did they assume that you had seen it previously? Did they reference it? We saw Reagan a million times. Yeah. We saw a bunch of other stuff like Chevronauty and like all that, right? Okay. They didn't show us to Zabruder film.

Now, I, to this day, and I tell every single Secret Service agent to read the Warren Commission. And you don't have to read the whole thing because it's like a thousand pages and you want to kill yourself afterwards because most of it's boring. It's very dense. But just read the part that's about the Secret Service. Because we must know what we did then as opposed to what we do now. This is like after action reports.

And if I hide the names and the dates and I'll ask you, did we learn from this? Now, born from that was that limo that needs to get over that lip over there, right? He probably was the last president who wrote around in an uncovered car, wasn't he? They have other cars that were like that. It's hard for me to imagine the situations that they let the presidents like ride at those. And that was like the lesson. Because look, and like mass shootings started in the 60s.

What was it then that in that tower in Texas? It was a school. That's when that started mass shootings. Now it's like on a Tuesday you're like, all right, All right, good. We're good today. Let's move on. So- Well, yeah. I mean, the FBI, I believe, counts it as anything involving more than four people. So now everybody wants to go back to conspiracy theories and they talk about the JFK and I don't have enough evidence to say that it was a conspiracy theory. And if there is a conspiracy theory, again, just like Butler, the shooter on back, is there enough? information to figure out backwards because then you're able to see, well, who's trying to kill this guy? You can do the same thing today with Butler moving backwards.

You can do the same thing with what's that guy's name in the guy who was at Marilago and had the SKS against the fence, right? Whatever his name was, he just got life in prison a month ago. And then it's like, look at their backgrounds and don't stop looking at it. I'm when you, when you, because I believe that it's deeper than that. The idea for that, they didn't just come up with that on their own, sitting in their mom's basement and just being like, you know what, I'm going to buy an assault rifle, climb on the roof and try to kill the president. That's where the conspiracy, I believe that there's more, that's Ackham's razor may or may not apply there. Yeah. I think it's possible. I don't know the plausibility of it. Not everybody.

Yeah. Not everybody just decided to do this on their own. And then there's a propaganda. And then there is, like, it goes back to like our in-heromers. inhibitions are being lowered. So we're able to indulge and like, I'm angry. I'm going to hurt people. And it's usually people that the people that come to the White House who do get into shootings and stuff. A lot of them, if not all of them, have mental illness.

They have something that they're not thinking right. how the mental illness manifested, it's case-by-case basis. That's the majority of the people that go to the White House that are looking. Look at the kid that just got shot. You pulled the gun out of his bag. And he thought he was God at one point. That's not normal. And then you have other people that show up that are looking for suicide by cop.

That's like a real thing. So they might have been that guy. I don't know. I feel bad for the guy also. I feel bad for our people that are being put in that situation, but I also feel bad for the people that are showing everybody's like, oh, just kill them, burn them down. That's the wrong answer also.

And then you have all of the butlers and the, in the, in the, in the, Marlagoes and whatever the, the case might be. All those people, there's something wrong there where you're looking to do what you're trying to do, okay? and a lot of people will be like they think whatever they think of the reason they're looking for a reason to justify themselves like we were talking about but when it's all set and done mental illness it's like 90 something percent yeah you know agreed did the allure of working near the president and the white house ever wear off did it ever just become the backdrop of where you

worked yep i say to this this day, if I met Trump right now because he's the president, or Obama or Biden, which I've met all these guys, or Bush, all the presidents that are around, I'd be like, all right, nice to meet you, sir. Thank you for your presidency and I don't care, right? It's, I don't care. I'll get more, I'm trying to think of somebody that would be starstruck by. I think for me, the one, I don't care. After seeing the president millions of times, I say millions, but probably, I want to say, yeah, it's like tens of thousands. I would just go to, and it would be my assignment.

It didn't matter if it was Trump or it didn't matter if it was Hillary, because we still had, we still did things with the performers or a special assignment, right, one of the family members. I didn't care. It was like, I'm going to keep this person alive. I think there's a headspace you need to have anyway. It should be pretty apolitical if you're in that job. All I was thinking was I would walk into a venue and they're eating somewhere.

I'd start knocking on the walls to see what they're made of. I would just go around. I'd have my where I'm going to throw them. I had my hard rooms. I had this. I had that. I started going through all my checks, right? It was the first thing that I did.

It was like being a machine. You just did it, did it, did it, did it. And then afterwards, they're like, all right, now I'm ready. I have my plan. I briefed myself. I briefed my guys then. I do you arrange your handbook. You take a third of the time for yourself and you brief everybody else.

And then I was ready to go. And I didn't care who it was. I just escalated and de-escalated depending on the, obviously the president gets so many assets. And when I was, you know, prime minister of Belgium, not as many assets. So my plan would change depending on what it was and what I was capable of the team that I had, what assets that I had, et cetera, et cetera, right? We can go on forever. And that, to me, taught me a lot about just being a professional. a capable professional, just being professional,

or this is the word we throw around. But capable professional because we're trying, I'm trying to do my job and be good at my job. I can explain to you whatever situation that you want, we can talk tactics, and I'll tell you exactly why and the principles behind it. And it's almost like some guys would learn a tactic and try to force that tactic into the situation.

and I would just turn around and be like, what's the situation? And I'll tell you what the principle that we need to have behind the situation. Now I'm going to choose the tactic that best helps me accomplish my goal. To be able to think like that, escalate and deescalate that. And I would just do it. It was just like the way my brain worked. Everybody would be like, we're going to form a perimeter here. I said, why?

Are you prepositioning yourself in an enemy sector of fire right now? The firing hasn't started. Why are we forming a perimeter? And we need to fall back and do this. And they just look at me. like I punched them in the teeth, and I'd be like, no, give our guys the best chance to succeed. So these are things that I wish I had more time to teach people the way to think. Because I had my plans quickly.

They were, like, I would just do it. If I had 10 minutes to do it to make a plan, this is how I would make a plan. If I had days to make a plan, then I can get a good show going because I had days to prepare for all this bullshit that's going to throw at me. but that way of thinking instead of just turning around and deciding, well, who do I have? Well, he might not like this or he might not like that. I don't care. I'm going to drag his ass down the stairs and he might be mad at me afterwards. I had one person that...

A protectee. Yeah, a protectee. I'm not going to say the person's name. Read into that as much as you want, right? But I had one person, we were leaving a venue. I was a new agent. And I was the lead agent. And it was like late at night.

I was still in Newark. You can do the math and figure out who it is. I'm just, I have this internal thing where I'm not going to throw people under the bus. But I got to tell the story. And we left this venue and I was in a state trooper car. New Jersey State Police. I love them. They're awesome.

And we left. And I'm writing down because we didn't have cell phones back then. I'm writing down the departure time. And from the time I took to look down, to look back up, I just said, bro, you're on the wrong side of the road. Right? So we're doing a motorcade oncoming traffic. That was late at night.

And the cars were all the way. There were no cars on the road, which that's why he made the mistake, because it was dark. Yeah. And he didn't see the turn. And there was no cars, no lights. It was, it wasn't. I could see how you could.

I could see that. I've made that mistake zero times in my life. So, right? So he's like, want me to turn around? I'm like, nah. And I reached down and I flipped the lights on, right? Because we didn't have the lights going. Yeah.

Because it was a little motorcade. It wasn't that big. And there were lights, but they were like 200 yards down. I could see them. At some point, the concrete barrier between just ended and we could hop over to our lane. Cool. Done. Nobody needs to know.

The only people that know are the people that are listening to this, right? And this was like in, this was 20 something years ago, right? Again, no phones, no ATAC, okay? Do we get to the airport? And I get out of my car. The protecting knew exactly where the lead agent sat and just turns around and sees me. Just like seething hatred. And it's like, oh my God, not you again.

And they're like, turns around to the detail eater and it's like, fire him. Right? Just storms off the stairs of the plane. I just stood there and I just shrugged my shoulders. I don't know what the hell I was doing, right? But I was trying to solve the problem that was created. It wasn't that big of a problem. That was the only time anybody wanted to fire me that was a person that was protected. So everybody else, they'd always stop, thank.

They all know we're there for them. Yeah. The one thing that surprises me about the White House, and I hate to break people's illusion of how awesome that place can be is the rat problem. The rat problem why can't that be solved?

Those things are huge. You would think the cats and the rats would find an equilibrium. I happen to be walking around the grounds in the evening, kind of getting a tour, and my God, on the north side, uh,

bright in the little bushes, just go ahead and look at the bushes. There's a lot of things moving around in there. What the hell, dude? I don't know. It's a... There was a bobcat at one point. No way.

There was a little... I say bobcat. It had the lynx ears and the stubby tail, and it was the White House bobcat. And we would see it all the time. After a certain point, that thing didn't even care that there were people. It would just come out. People would, like, throw food at it.

Yeah, that's why it would come out. And that's why he would come out. And it was the bobcat. And like the last few years, I didn't see it. I hope it, you know, somebody maybe took it home or maybe it was just old. There was a White House bobcat. They needed to take care of the rats. It's insane.

They're probably still there. Not probably. They're still there. They're 100% still there. They need to take care of that for sure. What, uh, what would you want people to know about a career in the secret service outside of it that you think that they miss about that job or they don't understand? It is, I'm going to beat a dead horse. It's a difficult job.

I want all the men and women in the service to succeed. And most of them do, because they're great. The kids, I call them kids, relative, right? When I'm 25 years older than you, I can call you a kid. They try so hard to make sure that this stuff doesn't happen. The people that are coming into the service, if you want to be successful, you have to come in with the mindset that you're going to give a lot to that job. And by giving that, giving a lot, being part of a team, not an individual where you can steal authority,

responsibility, opportunity from people and then you become a kiss ass and, and, and, and, because that's a real thing, right? and you are looking to just enhance your resume, you can do that and maybe you'll get what you want, but you won't be good at your job. You'll just be stealing opportunities from everybody. There are some people that can do both. But it's like that having somebody, what's that chart,

the loyalty versus the performance, right? I don't know. I don't know if I've seen that chart. You have a higher performer and is loyalty to the organization. is you have a high performer, the lower theater organization is low. And then you have a low or mid-performer. But loyalty is probably high. But loyalty is super high.

I can take that guy who's not so great and elevate him. That high performer that's only there for himself, that's who's going to be a detriment to everybody around him. Maybe he becomes a supervisor. And I will say that not everybody in the service can become the director.

Is that a fair statement? Yeah. Well, even mathematically. That's why I say that because it's a ridiculous comment to say like, oh, you're all going to be the director. Well, it siphons down to one individual person. It's just one guy. Yeah. Not everybody can be deputy director or the assistant directors or however it's structured.

I don't know why we chose like the words that we used to designate everybody because over the first like five years I was confused. And so to be a subject matter expert. in the service is also a thing. You want to talk about counter assault stuff. I'm your guy. I'll sit there and talk to you until the end of days, and we can talk about every single venue scenario, motorcade, whatever you want.

We can talk about it. I'll tell you exactly my thoughts on it, but I have an answer, a consistent answer, and I could probably train whoever to do whatever. That was me. It was like 15 years doing that. Other people believe that the more you bounce around, in the service, the more you're quote unquote well-rounded.

That's great if you want to go to headquarters and be an administrator and know how your decision affects the field office as much as it affects the division, the operational protective division. So if you pull bodies from, I say bodies, I hate saying that and I said it, you pull people from one place to the other, how it affects one. Because it's like there's always a gift. There's always, you're always making a sacrifice somewhere. But it's like having the military and having everybody be an officer.

Doesn't work. That doesn't work. So you need to have people coming into the organization. And if you want to be good at something, maybe it's just cybersecurity because we do that. They're great at it. They're good at it. Be good at that. And then if you want to endeavor to go to move up and be a, you know, a director,

assistant director, whatever the case might be, that's great. be great at something. That way you can teach a pocket of people instead of having everybody that just jumps around every two, three year and a half. Now I think to be a supervisor, you can get your first supervisory position and then the rule now is 12 months

and then you can move on to something else. There is, it's hard, for you to learn make an impact and not make decisions that you're just worried about your next step, if you're just going to be there for 12 months knowing that you're going to leave. I mean, you have to get up to speed, figure out how to drive it, and then off board to somebody else. That's right. Yeah, that's, I would say 12 months is where you're using your eyes and ears a lot more than your mouth trying to figure out what the hell your job is.

If you're smart about your position, that's true. So, and they adopted that, I don't know what agency or if it's, a DHS thing. They adopted that. And now it used to be, you needed to do two first-line supervisory positions. So you do one, you do another. I was a supervisor on CAT for five years. It's a first-line supervisor, team leader, operation supervisor. When I got in trouble, I did a bunch of other stuff too. And I got in trouble a lot. But like it's, I learned so much within the purview of being in the Special Operations Division. And when somebody, my replacement one time had to do something,

and it was the trip that, I don't want to even say the trip, was somebody comes downstairs because I was still in the building because I was in the dignitary position. So it was like two years, my last two years, I moved to the Dignatory Protective Division. I did a lot of the presidents and prime ministers that would come from Ocones, like all these foreign diplomats. So they come down and like, hey, we can't figure out how to link up with the special forces team

that's going to be assigned to us for whatever the visit is. And I was like, well, where's my replacement, my operation supervisor? They're like, he's not answering his phone right now. We got to get the guy's out there. So I'm like, I take my personal phone and I just look up the number and I write it down and I slide a piece of paper over. I'm like, call that guy. tell him, I said it's me, and he'll link you up with the ripe people.

Like, how do you know this? I'm like, he's the major over the team that's going to be working with you. And they're like, how do you know that the special forces team that's working with us? I go, oh, because that guy came down and I wrote the letter for him so he can request it, so they can only be those people. So they went upstairs, and in five minutes, everybody was linked up. So the institutional knowledge of that to know who to call why, where, when, et cetera, et cetera, is something that you can't replace by being there for 12 months

and then moving on to somewhere else. No, not even close. And I solved their problem in five minutes. And again, it's like not toot my own horn. It was something that anybody in my position that was there long enough would have known to do the same thing. And you have to have subject matter experts to teach people how to do, not that,

you can make a connection with anybody, to teach people, hey man, how do we think? How's this? How can we move the program forward? And the guys who are in, and I say cat, because like, again, I love those guys and I know the people that are there. Like, they're all my friends. They're all, they're all great people. They've been there for a long time. And they're pushing things forward. If you look at the correspondence dinner, the gear alone that those guys have now compared to when I started is light years ahead. And they keep advancing and advancing and learning and advancing and learning and advancing because that's who they are. They want to be

great at their job. And it's a place of innovation. Cat, special operations. You know this, right? Does it cascade down to the front line? Sometimes. That was one of the cool things about being a development group is that it actually was a developmental location where you can get your hands on stuff that wasn't on the ANU or authorized for naval use, which you're limited to largely at a Socom level, so a tier underneath J-Soc. But you would test stuff that would show up in the hands of other people by design and doctrine in 12 to 24 months, which was pretty cool. I think the volume of how developmental group is situated allows you to do that.

Well, it was designed with that purpose. Yeah. And for us, there's not enough of us to do that for other divisions. We develop stuff within and incorporate stuff. and then if the other divisions think it's a good idea or maybe they want to adopt it too because it's working for us, then they'll take it. I mean little things, even just from gear. As an example, lightweight standalone multi-strike plates. Yeah, and most of the gear that's propagated across the entire Secret Service has come out of the Special Operations Division.

Okay. So there is a, I mean, that's essentially what it was. Yeah, you just have to have to have the right people who are willing to just to not be like, well, no, we've used the same IFAC kids. for the last, you know, how many years, we're just going to stay there. I'm like, yeah, well, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

This is the capabilities of this. We just bought 10,000 units. And there's budgetary stuff too. Yep. But at the same time, it's like the forward movement. I love when people push the envelope. Same.

I love when people try to innovate. And it's at, sometimes it's at their expense. And that's where I call them the heat shield. It's like, hey, there's going to be people that'll be mad at you. Sometimes it's because they're trying to preserve their position. They're trying to preserve their legacy. They're threatened by you.

Whatever the case might be. So you're going to absorb all this heat, but everybody behind you will be fine. It's honorable. That's the rule of the leader to be in. I use the term umbrella, especially if you have a dogg shit leader over you, which I'm sure it never happened to you. Never, ever, ever. It's only in the teams where sometimes there's bad leaders.

The number of times I've gotten that question, personally email DMs. What do you do if you have a shitty boss? Like first, buddy, you got to survive. But then really if you want to be the leader that you want to see from other people, you have to protect everybody else underneath you. You have to protect people beneath you. You become the umbrella. And you also have to lead up. Yeah. That's what I said. It's more like me to me than a ladder than it is. A lot of people will say leadership is like a waterfall. Waterfalls don't go both directions. I'm not saying you should climb every ladder, but the ability to peek your head up there and say, hey, I had a suggestion for this.

suggestion box, even though I know you're not asking for them. And again, tactfully, don't do what I've done before, which is challenged the ball. I'm right there with you. At the morning meeting, which I was told to shut the fuck up. And then as soon as the meeting ended, I was told to report to their office. Why did you start getting in trouble, John? Which time? How long had you been in before you started getting in trouble? I got in trouble a lot. For a little things? Things or big things? Both. What were some of the bigger ones? Give me the wavetops. So this is the story. This story I referenced in the book. I don't just say what it is. And I got in trouble because two people took my rifle and they wanted a photo op. My rifle was pristine, right? And I, it was. How did they have access to your rifle?

I just gave it to them. We were at the range. And they wanted, they wanted, it was other cat guys. And they shot it. They were doing full little mag dumps through it and try to get the flame come out of the front. Historically, really good for the service life and accuracy of weapons. So I got it back and I had to, I'm doing the short version. I do surgery on it to take the suppressor off before, because it changed colors, right? Yeah, for people don't know this. Suppressors, if you really get on the old go button, they, sometimes you don't need a flashlight because they can start to glow. There were multiple mags that went through it.

Yeah. And before I realized what was going on. And so I took two rifles, put them together, and I did a, I live on a subdivided farm, and I did a function fire. My neighbors were firing their guns too, so it wasn't. You mean, you were taking, you're basically doing a surgical repair of the pieces. Yeah, I used to do when I was an instructor. I really build rifles all the time.

Yeah. And I function fired it. I fired like three rounds. I looked at it. I inspected it. I fired the three or four more rounds. I was satisfied. I cleared it, made safe.

I had a little berm that I made. It was like, I don't say like five to six. seven yards, right? Because it's like, I don't, I never shot my stuff on my property. Yeah. So, you're talking government issue stuff. My government issue stuff. Yeah.

And this is the problem, right? And my neighbors are firing. It's not like the punisher live next door. So I was like, all right, put it away. I'm like, I'm good. And I was, I was trying to be prepared to go to work. And 45 minutes later, this is like 45 minutes. there police rolled up my driveway, which is like...

Are we talking about like a black and white? Yep. Like, um, right? And in my driveway is like 50 yards off the road. So it's not like, it's not a house that. And again, subdivided farm. There's acreage and then my property backed up to woods that went on for a while before, right?

So it's, and then my neighbors are firing as the police officer standing in the, in the driveway. There's two of them. And they're like, oh, we're here for, for reports of gunfire. And I just looked at him and I said, it was me. And they're like, are you sure? Are you sure it's not the next doors? I was like, also them. Is this like a subdivision?

Why is gunfire not okay? I live, it is a subdivided farm. And there's gunfire all the time. There was gunfire the day before I left to come to Montana. So then who called it in? That's a whole story that I'll just leave that. But in the end of the day, the person who called it in, doesn't like cops ironically

and basically said that I was murdering my family and that's why the police showed up. So I was swatted is basically what it was, right? Didn't you have something you could have shown them to let you know that your law enforcement? I did. Maybe handle this issue? I did.

Okay. Oh, the person who called or the police? The police who show up. Oh, yeah, I identified myself immediately. So they knew I was a secret service agent because the person who called them said I was a secret service agent and then I murdered my family.

So what a docher. Oh yeah. There's a whole other story to that. But what ended up happening was I called my supervisors first. I said, hey, I'm going to self-report. Yeah. Because I don't like this. My kid's riding her bike in my driveway.

My wife comes out. She's got a dress on. She's like, are we going to eat? Like what's going on? And supervisor comes in. Everybody leaves. There's no charges or I can give it up for anything. They had an internal report that they have to provide.

And when I showed up on Monday, I got my ass kicked by the supervisors. For use of your government-issued firearm at your home? Yeah. And there was a whole bunch of, it wasn't the, you just said it. I stood my ground. I didn't handle it the way I should have. There was a lot of go-to-hells and a lot of stuff like that going on. But they, it's like one of those situations where,

I wasn't exactly, I was good at my job, but they just believed they wanted people to move on. So this was a good excuse for them to get me in trouble. And the exact words from one of the supervisors was, I got you now. Those exact words. So that was like kind of a catalyst for a lot of stuff for me because I was like, you guys do what you got to do. And I got up and just walked out on them. And again, for anybody that's listening, that is not. not the way to handle that, their minds were going to be made up one way or the other.

You don't have to help them, though. I don't have to help them. I don't have to make it worse. But from that, I learned a lot. And I learned a lot about myself, my integrity. And I self-reported, man. You wouldn't even know if I didn't call you. Maybe you would.

I don't know, right? But I called you to tell you. And you treated me like crap. So I learned a lot about them. I learned what their true nature was. I learned what their agendas were. I learned about their, and it was just a cascade of effects. And the fact that I told them to go fuck off, it made things infinitely worse.

And it sent me into a spiral. And it also made them, it exposed them for who they were. But I fought back and I was suspended for two days because of that. But the suspension was like, I told them, I was like, I gave you 30. if you just let me just go back to work. I didn't care about the suspension. You can suspend me for 30 days. I just want to go back to work

because I love my job. And how could you be suspended and at work? I'm sorry? Wouldn't you have had to take 30 days off? Oh, yeah. I would take 30 days off because it took a while to get to the suspension and I was just...

Oh, did they bump you from the cat team because of this? They held me back and I wasn't allowed to work until the situation was resolved. Does your house have a basement? Yeah. Have you ever...

put your suppressor on and... It won't work down there. No, I'm just saying in a hallway, you can get like five to seven yards for some groupings. Yeah, it wouldn't work down there. I haven't done it either. I was just curious if you had.

No, that's like... I'm trying to rationalize it in my head. I'm just saying you have your own little bunker. You know, just creative solutions to real world problems that exist. I think in the future, I would have... I mean, it was a rough situation to be in because there was time exigency involved

in everything. And it was one of those things. I am a risk taker and a rule breaker. I am. It's built into my DNA. And I do take a lot of risks. And that was a risk because I wanted to be prepared. I could have gone to work with a rifle,

not knowing what the hell it was going to do. Because we had to throw the upper away and rebuild the lower when it was all set and done of my original rifle. And what do you think they would have said if you would explain that to him? I did. What did they say? They didn't care. As somebody who's in a leadership role and who's had teams of people working underneath you,

do you want risk takers and rule breakers? Yes. To what degree? You know what your left and right lateral limits are and operate within them. If you break the rule, you have to know the rules first. If you know the rules first. I'm so happy that you said that because there's a difference between knowing what the fuck you're doing and making shit up on the fly. So by helicopter instructor is a huge fan of this because he'll say, you always do this.

you always do this. And so I'll get into this rote habit of doing it. And we'll be in a phase, it's usually an airspeed related thing. Perfect example. You got to get into the green before you make your downwind term because it has to do with the high velocity and it gives you the ability to have an out. And one time we're taken off. And he goes, yeah, just turned down wind.

And I said, dude, we're not into the green yet. And he literally took a breath. He goes, he was smiling because he was glad I knew the rule. But then he said, once you know the rule, Now you know how to break them. You know, well, what he actually said was there's a difference between knowing the rule and knowingly breaking it and not knowing what you're doing. So if you're going to break a rule, you need to know it first and the potential consequences that can come from it. Those are two.

That's the difference between risking and gambling. Oh my God. It's literally my exact same word, like the way I describe everything. We had a, this is a bunch of situations. and there was a situation where the bosses wanted us to send extra cat guys and extra rifles to another country and people are going to get pissed off when I say this.

And I was an operation supervisor and I said, why are we doing this? Why are we sending extra guys with extra rifles? In order to get the rifles into the country, us, we have to put them on a diplomat. automatic note and that goes to- dip core you men. Right?

And it goes to the embassy and the country's got to approve it. So then they'll say you're allowed 10 long guns or whatever it is, right? Okay, cool. At the last minute, when you're like, we're going to send another three, four, five.

Whatever, however many more guns. And I said, why? And they're like, you just do what we tell you. Like, that's not how it works. You're putting my guys at risk. And for this situation, and they wanted to do their friend of favor. They wanted to send extra cat guys,

so we have whatever the case might be, an appearance of having more people or to do a favor for something. So I said, what's the intel on this? Is the juice worth the squeeze? No, we're not doing it. Or if you want me to do it, put it in writing and give it to me.

Because who's going to eat the shit sandwich if we get caught? You know how many times I've been on the tarmac where the host country, they have the customs guys, and I have the weapons and it's on the dip note that he's holding in his hand and the serial numbers all match up but he's not going to let us in. Really?

Oh yeah. Because I got to bribe him. Let's not forget what juices a lot of the, or makes a lot of the wheels turn in many countries overseas. Right? So when I pull out 50 bucks, which is I don't care. Can you put that on your expense report though? Hell, fuck, no. Right?

But I give him. I'll give the guy's 50 bucks and he's like, all good. Yeah. We're all good here. And I'm, and he's like, hey man, I can't, more than one hand that that's happened where I've had to pay the guy off. And everybody's like, no, that never happens. I'm like, well, I traveled on car planes.

I didn't travel on Air Force One, right? I've been on Air Force One a few times. It's usually to go to war zone. But we would travel on car. I lived on car planes. My frequent flyer miles, I could probably go around the world. 10 times. And when we landed, all the customs guys from whatever country it was, they would always, and there's ways around it. And if I wanted to smuggle stuff into a country, I could do it

easily. If you're sending me, if you're like, we got to send extra dudes to Afghanistan to, you know, to do a hostage rescue. Like, hey, fuck, yeah. Like, I'm going to send you, how many you need? 10. I'll give you 20 with more guys. We're doing this. Juice is worth to squeeze. If we're doing it for shits and giggles. I'm going to tell you go fuck yourself. Status flex, so somebody looks more important. But that's what it is. So it's like for me, I would have that conversation and I would just make the decision.

I'm like, no, I'm not going to send my guys there. Plus, I have other shit to fill too. Right? And it's like, well, just make it happen, John. And I'm like, send it to me your writing. Well, of course, you piss people off. They don't want you around. And now you know their dirty laundry too. I didn't bend

the knee, which I didn't become one of them. but at the same time, this is the game that you have to play. You can go down this path, but once you bend the knee once and you do what they want one time, they got you forever, especially when it's not documented. And your name is on all the shit, right? And I guarantee you this happens in the government. And it's not, that's not the culture of the service. It's just selected people that just wanted what they wanted because they wanted to do somebody

your favor because they're going to get promoted out of it or look good or whatever the hell they're going to get out of it. That's real. And if you say it doesn't happen, you're just lying. I just told you what happened. I was your first-hand knowledge of it. And these are the kind of things that I would fight against. And this is, I pissed a lot of people off because they're very vocal about it. I'm like, no, you're just, you're, what are you talking about to go to where? And also, if the requests are legit, just put them all in writing. Put it all in writing, man. So easy. It is. And it also gets, there is no more gray area. I can do an amendment on the dip note. I'll send it to whatever country is and they'll either approve or deny it. And that should just be status quo in

the policy. It's all isn't in writing. If it's a country, what's a country that doesn't let guns in? Like, you know, England or UK rather, California. But England and UK would be a good example. They have a pointy thing problem, though. Well, that's a whole. They banned zombie weapons. That was in 2000, and I forgot, it's recently. Yeah. That didn't help. But they used kitchenized zombie weapons.

They're big, the long ones. But if you go, yeah, the UK, Japan, countries like that, they don't have a gun problem. And I'm not saying these were the countries. But if you ask me, I'm not saying they're not, if you ask me to send more guns to those places, I'm going to say no, unless there's specific intel. that says that now if it's we're in, I'll pick a country, Afghanistan, Iraq, and at the height of the war, and you want me to send guys there because of whatever the reason, it's like, I got you. Yeah, but all those, both of the situations, if it's a legitimate request, just put it in writing.

Just put it in writing. And that's the part that drove me crazy. Not because I wasn't going to break the rules. If it was for a good reason, and I broke the rules so much, right? I just told you, I fired my weapon on my property because I wanted to be ready. That was a risk that I took. And it blew up in my face. That's fine. But it puts my guys at risk. And sometimes you want to do what looks cool, but you got to understand when we're able to do this and when we can't, especially the secret service that stands next to the president of the United States.

any fuck up that we do brings attention to the president. Look at Cartagena. And I keep bringing that up because it's a good example because it was, we derailed his foreign policy meeting with the president of Columbia. He didn't even leave from the White House. I was in the White House working at midnight when we got notification on our Blackberries, by the way.

We had Blackberries then. Remember those things? You're like the size of my book. What was the subject line? it was something like retro, retro flights, right? Because they were sending 12, 13, something like that. People home. He just had to have a little shift to personal.

And for people who know what we're talking about, it can mostly be summed up with Secret Service, hookers, Cartagena. Just Google that and you'll get the story. And again, so what happens is the trip continued. He shows up. and he has to talk about that. Yeah. And our director has talk about that.

And just by something dumb, because it was dumb on many levels, we derailed foreign policy. It's a global stage. Because it's what it is. And it's, I don't want to say it's different. This is another way that Cat and the Secret Service, but Kat specifically,

because again, we are like the, in a lot of the military, right, in the Navy Army, the special units, Navy Special Warfare, Special Forces, they're higher regarded than just the general population. Is that true or false? They're because we like, forget the jealousy and all that that exists. I would say different, differently regarded for sure because it is a different occupation.

I don't know. They shouldn't be more highly regarded. They should just be viewed as something that is, they're different tools. One's the Phillips said once a flat. The present is detail in the Secret Service is viewed as the highest, the pinnesty. I can see that for sure. Because it is, people think Secret Service. They think of in the line of fire, right?

Clint Eastwood, they don't think of counter assault team. They do now because of that guy with a watch, right? Yeah. I just gave him another, if you have an Instagram page, you just got another 10,000 clicks. But yeah, he has a watch and it's like a cat watch and he was wearing it that day. And nobody knows what the counter assault team is. I like it like that, actually, right? We're talking about it here a lot, but that is the majority of my experience is the counter assault team.

It is, you know, 15 years when me doing all that stuff traveling around the world. At the end, I did a lot of suit and tie work when I was in the dignitary pool. I worked with a lot of special assignments and then the foreign dignitaries that came in. And I learned a lot and I loved it. My time in the truck is my most precious time. And I love that too. And I had to separate it from it. my identity had to be removed from it at some point because it was like everything we talked about.

That was me. I was Mr. Cat, right? So, uh, it, and we keep going down a rabbit hole. So I don't end up answering the question. I don't even know what the question was at this point. I neither do I. I'm just thinking, I was just listening to you, you know, talking about the, but talking about the, the, we're talking about essentially, though, you guys work in a no fail mission statement on a global stage, which by, that's what it was, which by definition, is actually impossible. It includes, and that's what the question was, not the question, but the point,

a failure in the service, not just a Butler failure, a failure in the service is also, the Cartagena's, is also when all these guys are doing, they're making poor personal decisions, and it just creeps up in the news and I'm not talking about operations

because again, the operations of the service, all these kids, they're trying to do their job. And again, tens of thousands of missions that have been successful that people don't even know. Like there's stuff that we've stopped people with guns and stuff that people don't know about. They'll never know about.

Those don't count, right? Like we don't count those. We'll count the failure, which, to be fair, it's bad enough. If we lose one person, it's bad enough. However, it extends past the operations into the behaviors that we have because we are so closely tied to the media, it's not like, for something to come out from the military, that's so bad that it merits the same level of attention that we get when a guy misbehaves with a...

Like a Green Beret betting on Pauley Market on the Maduro raid? That's bad, right? Point being is this, though. You're talking about the same thing. If you, John, were still active and let's say, had an incident out and whatever, he had a few too many espresso martinis

out in Washington, D.C. And you make the news... Like the cosmopolitans, right? Whatever it may be. I'm not here to tell people at a party. If it's you and the news is able to figure out what you The headline will read, Secret Service Cat Agent.

That's right. Fill in the blank. That's right. It's an additional level of scrutiny that comes with the job. And it is unfair, I would say, but the fair is in Iowa with cotton candy and a merry-go-round. If you want to have that job, you have to understand what that means. You have to understand what you're getting into. A lot of guys that say, well, I could do what I want on my spare time.

It's like, okay, cool. Until you make national news. Until it happens to you. And there's a difference between. and I'll say this like me getting into trouble was always because I was looking to do my job

the thing with the gun I was looking to be prepared I wanted to step out of the truck and shoot somebody if I had to and I didn't want to wait for it to go click and be like oh man I should have function fired it right when I got in trouble I passed ammo to the wrong division one time not realizing but they wanted to go train

and I got in trouble for that and they were like hey man you don't give ammo here because of whatever the round counts, et cetera. And I was like, oh, I didn't know. It was like, boom. You know, I was like, and I didn't get suspended or anything, but it was my boss kicked my ass, right? And I would get in trouble repeatedly

for trying to do my job or help the people around me. I don't, I never had a Cartagena, hookers, alcohol. I'm a terrible drinker, so the alcohol thing is not going to happen, right? Like I just told you of cosmopolitans. I don't even know what they taste like, but I want to now that I said that, right? But like I- Michael would know.

Right. You drink plasma, I'm sure, Michael? I've actually never had one. It's surprising to hear, but I would have assumed. My wife knows I like fruity drinks, like crushes and stuff. So she's, I drink beer too, but getting older. Anyway, going away from the alcohol.

It was me trying to do my job. I wasn't trying to solicit hookers. I wasn't trying to steal money from the agency. I wasn't trying to do any of that stuff that benefit me personally in those kinds of ways. And there's a distinction there that if you find people, and again, I love every military law enforcement and first responder manual on the planet says if you're not getting into trouble,

you're not trying hard enough. And I'm not talking about, like, again, all this outside of the service behavior that comes back to bite you in the ass. I'm talking about trying hard in your job. You got to try hard in your job, innovate, push the envelope forward, emerging threats, emerging trends in what enemy tactics. And you're, you know, when you turn around and you say, hey, we need to do this and you get in trouble because you're trying to implement a new program.

I applaud you. I don't know if how legitimate it might be. Maybe you're trying to do something that's not possible. There were some good ideas that I remember people trying to do and I'm like, I don't, I don't You haven't thought this through, but, and we had to have conversations, but they were trying to be better. They were trying to enhance our capability. In the government, it's hard to do that. One in the service, there's like a time factor.

We don't have enough people. We've got to test stuff. You can't. My favorite ever was we rolled out a new communication system during an NSSE. It's during the State of the Union. Back in, I forgot what year it was. you guys chose to change operational tech during that time. Yes, it wasn't like an in-and-out trip in Cleveland.

It was during an NSSE. And I didn't, I was a new cat guy, right? So I got the cat in 2007, 2008, and I was there all the way to 20, 23. And I even thought, I was like, is this the best idea to do this right now? Shouldn't we have tested it? No, it's not the best idea. And that's the point. That's like where now we have a great idea and we're going to throw it in and everybody,

you have to just adopt it. We didn't test it in the right capacity. Maybe the people in headquarters tested it, but the rest of us didn't know what the hell we were, how to use this. And it was like on the job training. That mentality, that mentality breeds failure, right? Because you're doing, why did you do it? Why did we pick that system?

Was it a favor to somebody? Did somebody think it was good? Why didn't we get trained on it appropriately before we rolled it out? I had so many questions and I was brand new and I was asking the right questions. I can only imagine like my team leaders or my team leader just sat there on the front. He was like, I'm just going to yell loudly

and you better hear me when we come out because he was so angry. So there's the give and take. And again, not to be an apologist for the service and also not trying to excoriate it. That was years ago. That was like maybe 20 years ago. Let me tell less than that.

The service and the government needs to be continually listening to the people that are on the ground working as to what we need and we don't. And the ideas coming back should come from down, up, evaluated, and implemented, not up top that's been disconnected from operations for pick a number of years. And then you have the idea and propagate it down and force something upon people, forcing us to do three times the amount of work because you had such a great idea. All this stuff like I learned. as I was going. And sometimes there'd be something so dumb as, hey, cat, you're no longer going to be in this position. You're going to be in this position. And I said, well, you're making us do three

times the amount of work just by moving us 10 feet. Why? And I would explain to him with tactics, how it relates to our medal, how I support the president's detail. And it was kind of like my cousin Vinnie, that is a rational, logic, lucid explanation overruled. And I was, I'm like, oh, right? Rock paper rink. So go fuck yourself then, right? And then I would just go in and I would talk the shift leader and I'd just say, you know, the shift there. I was like, hey, you got 30 second response time.

You got 30 seconds by the time I get there to get a show going and then I'll take over. But you got 30 seconds. Why? Because this is what they want us to do. And it was other reasons too. Sometimes it's to keep us out of the public eye. Sometimes it's to do whatever the case might be. but if you just listened, we can come to some amicable conclusion as to to enhance my capabilities.

Trust me, man, I know what I'm doing. There's a lot of that. And it wasn't the service culture. It's just individuals that make those decisions that have the authority to tell you to do something. Looking back now, post-career, if you could, would you go back and change the way you either phrase those conversations or your behaviors? Yeah, a lot of that. I would say 75% of them, I would say the same thing. Would you say it in a different way, though?

No, those 75%, I would do the same exact thing. Because I actually, when I had my head, my wits with me, my wasn't angry or I wasn't swinging back, I had a very good explanation of everything. And sometimes they were never going to concede anything. They just wanted what they wanted. The other 25% was me just being like, go fuck yourself. I'm going to yell, I'm going to flip the table over

and tell you go to hell. Those are the ones that I regret, because those are the, they don't focus on what the issue was. they just remember that you were an asshole, right? And it's tough. And it's like, you fell into their trap because it's like, they're like, oh, can you believe he's an asshole? Yeah, he's an asshole.

He told us to go fuckers. All right, cool. What we were talking about? They didn't care. It doesn't matter what it is. This is the leadership 101 for everybody. Don't make it worse, right? That's a good starting point for sure.

I've failed on that one many times. The worst is to when you have those outbursts or you express yourself, let's just say, under the bar of what you would aim for as a leader. a lot of the times the people that are working for you are watching as well. And so they see that as a poor expression. It's got to be managed. You have to address.

You have to change behavior. I think the metric that I have for myself is my guys love me and will follow me to hell and back. And the people above me may not feel like that. And that's okay. Because if these guys believe in me, not because of special favors, but because I held them to a higher standard.

And I also led by example. It wasn't like I didn't tell them what to do. I did everything I told them to do together. And I told them we were going to fail together, but we'll succeed together, no matter what. And I held the line. I shielded them. I protected them.

I led them. I taught them. I loved them. And they extend all that back. to me. And all these guys have like these super retirement parties. Some of them are, might be at headquarters and I don't even know. I haven't gone to any of those because I'm not, I'm not a headquarters guy. My guys threw a barbecue for me at a local barbecue spot near my house that I like to go to. And like the people that showed up, it was some supervisors that

were above me. And they were, they came, they gave me a hug, they told me. But it was just like, so many people showed up to just tell me, to thank me, to give me a hug and then leave. That meant more to me than any super big retirement party. Because I didn't even want one. Like I was, one of the supervisors told one of the guys that they need to throw one for me. And they called me. And I was like, no, I don't want anything. I just want to leave. And I just want to finish my book, right? That's like priority number one. Oh, you were already writing it while you're in. Oh, it was. I was going to get there. Did you ever think while you were in that you were going to write a book or where did the idea come? Before you answer it too, I successfully retired with no party

whatsoever. I would have. I left work one day. I told my boss, the only guy, I was in the process of getting medically retired and they'll, you know, hey, do you want to do a ceremony? I realized I had nothing to do for a good amount of time. More time off than you should. should have given me. And I just went in and I said, hey, the new guy's already replaced. Yeah, he's up to speed. Do you have anything for me to do? He's like, no. Like, I'm not coming back to work. And he said, okay, that was it. Last day I went into work. I didn't want one. And after we had it, I loved it because there's the love that I felt from everybody. That, well, no one loved me, John. So the way to have a way to just really hold the love of others from you

over my head. People probably still text you to this day. I just didn't want to do the retirement thing. More so, not that I don't appreciate the ceremony. I know the pomp and circumstance and the time drain it is for other people. We wore shorts and drank tequila, so we were good. I mean, what I'm looking, what I was staring down the barrel out is they get you and then the huge flag and people who was going to speak and your dress uniform and I was just, no, that I'd never go for. I'm going to go home today, boss. Do you mind if I never came back? My wife wanted to go eat barbecue that day too. So that was also a factor.

Totally. Okay. So you had this idea for the book while you were still in. The book changed. It was originally a book about leadership. All the stuff that I talk about here in this podcast, way more stuff than that. And then it turned into like a comedy because I was writing stories that were funny. Probably that nobody would believe.

Yeah. Because we do so much stupid shit, right? And when I started to detach from Kat, and it started with that incident with the rifle, I spiral down. That identity was ripped out of me. And I was depressed. I was suicidal.

I was, it was like, and at some point, I don't know if you read any of it. It's like at some point, one day, that, weight of the world of that identity being gone was like an empty void. I didn't know how to replace it.

And my wife found me in the bathroom on the floor. I just collapsed in the middle of the night. And the story's in there of like how she found me. And it's quick. It's not that long for anybody that doesn't like reading. But when I woke up from that and I just saw her face, I just sprung up. And I was like, you know what? fuck this like this thing is not going to kill me and I put her back to bed I had to go to the doctor

obviously right because like the not it not a normal occurrence so might want to get that checked out yeah right so what the doctor say it could have been anything from syncope to a mild heart attack okay so I knew it was the stress yeah it was it I knew what it was we had a guy pass away right after he retired and it was like the he had all the that tells for what happens to military law enforcement first responder when we leave. Our lifespans are inherently shorter. It's like two and a half to five years, man. Right.

So he was- He promised you this sunset walk, you know, enjoy your retirement. Your fucking retirement might be half a decade. I dealt with this before I retired because I had my cardiovascular-related episode and I was suicidal. And I could talk about that too. I won't even, if you want me to talk about it, I will just the story. But more importantly is for the people that are listening. is I decided that I needed to fill this void, not with the job that I had, because all the stuff

that I knew how to do, how to counter-assault people, tactics, leadership, ethics, all this stuff that I would cling to going through, and I was good at a lot of stuff. And I was, I was really good at my job. For anybody that's listening, you want to hire me, I'll teach you whatever it is you need to know. You'll be a killer of men too. And it's like, and I was good at my job. However, it almost killed me because that my entire identity was torn out. And it happens to all of us. My friend who passed away, he passed away, he had a heart attack. And it was, I don't want to say like a year to year and a half after he retired. We falls into that range. The number one killer of us that shorten our lives is suicide and a cardiovascular related event. Those are the two

biggest killers of people that leave these areas that we're in. So I had both of those and I made it through and we have programs in the service that kind of they talk about like the peer support stuff and the people that are there are fantastic people that are trying to help everybody because we do have depression and we've had a bunch of suicides and we've had right like nobody hears about this kind of stuff either so I had a framework of the book leadership you know a comedy show right and I went I told my wife to go back to bed and then I'll go to the doctor right and the doctor was like you you have I think you had a heart attack it's like you should have called 911 I was like I was No, I felt fine. I felt great when I woke up.

And there's something he was talking about, releasing endorphins, and I didn't pay attention. But I checked on my kid that morning, and I went straight downstairs to start reading. It was like, no, I'm starting right now. Not tomorrow, not a date, not next week, right now. And I took out, I remember the first book I pulled off the shelf. It was Marcus Aurelius Meditations,

and I burned through it, and I started working on myself. to make myself as strong as possible. And then I replace that void with so many things that Jiu-Jitsu is one of them. Right? I don't think you're supposed to burn through meditations.

Well, I read it, and I just kept like, and I would have kept reading. You're supposed to meditate on it. It's, uh... I don't think meditations is supposed to be a page turner because I think you're supposed to read a few pages and meditate on it. I just, I do that with all the books now. I'll get in them.

I have to put my earbuds in, in so I don't hear anything. Yeah. For clarity people out there, I'm fucking joking. There's no wrong or right way to read a book. However, that one generally, they want you to sit with the concept. You got to sit with the concept. It's the first book and I used to carry it in my bag all the time because I would go back to it and refer to it. And then the Bible, right? And I went through the whole thing and I go back through the Gospels now and I read whatever I can get my hands on. I read your new book. And I burned through that. That one too, using the same words.

That's a short book, though. Let's be very clear. My book in the book by Marcus Aurelius titled Meditations should never be mentioned in the same sentence. Well, you don't know that. I'm pretty fucking sure. And so are you. And so is Michael.

Michael, have you read the book? Go fuck yourself. You haven't read anything. I don't read anything. So anyway, my book is like a pathway. It starts off and it takes you, the first quarter of the book takes you on a downward spiral. I talk about this identity and egos and self-worth and self-esteem. And then I'll start taking you back up.

And it's the story, it's not a biography on me. There's stories about me, stories about other people. But it is a pathway that I found that helped me. And it's, there's a bunch of stories in there. Some are sad. Some are happy. Some are funny. Some are you can't believe are true.

But that's what this thing. turned into and it's for the self, it's for the person, individual. There's a lot of like, you're going to assimilate to a culture or just because somebody's telling you something. Does that mean you have to do it? Sometimes. Sometimes no. And it just, it takes you and it asks you a bunch of questions. You have to answer them. And ultimately in the end, now it's like, my identity is me. I'm the one, like, you can't pull me out of me now. I do jujitsu. If I get injured, I got something else to go to.

If that goes away, I'll go back to something else. It's what you do. It's not who you are. That's it. And every day you go out there, you strive to be this good human. And there's so much that goes into it. It's not just one thing. And as long as you keep trying and endeavoring to be endeavoring, that's a word. I'm on board.

I know what you, yeah, no, as long as you endeavor. Endeavor's a verb, right? Yeah. I don't know if the ing, as long as you endeavor. Endeavor? Yeah. This is how you know I went to a public college. If I was writing this, I would look for the squiggly line underneath so I could right click on it and get suggestions.

But as long as you keep trying to be a good human, you'll be a good human. That's it. The second that you stop and you're like, now I got it, I'm good. That's when everything starts falling. on apart. You know it's wild about that? It's so many people, and this is a realization I think I'm coming to later in life, but so many people want life to be easy.

And I think I know what they mean. I think they want to be comfortable and they want it to be enjoying and fulfilling and enriching. But I think the path to all of that is actually through difficulty and hardship and seeking it out. I don't think you should seek an easy life. I think you should basically, to steal somebody else's words, learn how to suffer well. if you can appreciate that

and you can stay on that journey I think that might be the juice of life in life itself. You can't ask for things, the book starts with their quote from John F. Kennedy, don't ask for things to be easy, ask instead that they be worth it. And I used to have a picture

of the rotunda at the Capitol and it was from the top looking down and it was Kennedy's casket And it was the five branches. It was Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and then the Coast Guard. And they were standing around. You had the guard and then had all the, like, you know, a picture I'm talking about? I do.

This is my favorite picture, and I had it next to my desk at home. I've since taken it down. But it was to remind me why I'm doing what I'm doing for work. And every day that I would look at it and be like, Fuck, man, I never want that shit to happen here. So now I'm moving forward. I would fight for the service. And all these years that I did what I did,

I fought to make the service better and to be better in the service and lead men and women. But I was on cat and most of those guys are guys. Is it open to women? It is. Okay. And after I decided the whole thing with my identity, now is fighting for me.

And it's the same mentality. I never want to go return to that wretched place that I was in. And I never will. Because the things that I learned to get on the other side of what I went through to go through that depression

and that darkness that I was in, now I can't go back because it's like my journey will never end. I will just keep going forward and never stop doing. I'm 51. Like in jiu jitza,

My next goal is I want to learn how to, like I know the techniques that I'm working on. And I have like, I would do comoros on everybody. So I told my instructor, I was like, hey, I'm going to do a six-month ban. I'm not allowed to do any comoras. So it could force me to take the back and start doing all this other stuff. He's like, are you sure? I was like, yeah, I'm going to suck for a while, right? But you know what?

I want to learn how to do this shit. Yeah. And he's like, all right, cool. Right? and then as I see the arm and I want to grab it. But like the point is like I, but you're making a harder choice. It's the harder choice.

Yeah. And I suck more. It's hard for me because that was my go to just to grab an arm. And I would be like underneath somebody inside control and I would grab their arm and I have their back all of a sudden. They'd be like, what the fuck, John, right? Also listen to what you just said. I suck more.

Yeah. You know who gives absolutely zero fucks about that? Nobody. Everybody other than you. So again, it's you, we have. to be so careful with how we talk. You can say to yourself, I'm going to suck more, or you can say I'm going to evolve and innovate or innovate, and it's going to take me a little bit until I get back up to speed. Yeah, I mean, I mean. I know what you mean. Oh, trust me,

I have a doctorate and negative self-talk. So I woke up, I wake up in the morning in the mirror. I'm like, what's up, you piece of shit? You have the people that are, you know, the people that are positive and negative. I sit somewhere in the middle, but leaning negative. Totally. So, but yeah, it's But you're making, you're intentionally limiting yourself with the intent to struggle so you can grow. I think that's the juice of life. And the competition for me is not to beat the black belt instructor. It's not to be, you beat Marcelo Garcia, who I love. Good luck with that, by the way.

I've seen him roll. I don't participate. No, never. He'll break all my arms before I know what's going on. My goal is to be better than the version of myself that was yesterday. That literally is all that matters, by the way. I think that's the healthiest way to approach jih Tzu. It's, it's me.

It's the journey is, am I better than me? I'll kick my ass from a year ago. And a year from now, that guy is going to kick my ass now. And I don't care how many times you tap me. I don't care how many, because it's like, hey, how did you do that? I don't get upset. And trust me, I'll tap quick because I don't want to break any more bones or tearing more ligaments. But it's, and that's just, that's just a jujitsu.

That's just an example of that. But it highlights something else, too. How often have you heard people talking to? about I caught this person where they caught me. Instead of comparing themselves against their former self, they compare themselves against their teammates and training partners. What an amazing way to rob the joy of your own personal progression. That's, that's healthy competition is good. It's healthy, but it can be taken too far. Because in that, I know people who will get hyperfixated on a person that they can't beat where something always happens and their jiu-jitsu has gotten

galactically better against the version of the person they were six months ago and they can't see it because of one outcome with one person. Healthy can be taken too far. Same thing with water. You can kill yourself by drinking too much water. It's also pretty life-sustaining. I'll ask the question sometimes. You learned all this stuff. When somebody does it wrong, did you stop and explain it to them? Whether they want to hear it or not. LSA depends. Well, there you go. Take us. on the teams, we'd enter a room and I'd always be the first one off the wall. Right? And it's because guys would hesitate and I'd go off, I'd come off the wall and their

muzzles are up, but I did it on purpose. And I was like, you know to, and they would always lower their muzzles. I was like, why it takes so long? And I'm like, well, I wasn't sure. I was like, trust yourself. And they would come, we'd go in the room and then all of a sudden, everybody's coming off the wall at the same time. And it's like, boom. Now, like, it's like what I learned, and I learned it because I put myself, not in danger, but at the same time, I knew you guys were done. Everything was on, I heard the clicks. Everything's on safe. Now I'm going to pass that on to you. And all of a sudden, guys are just flowing off the wall. And everything I did, again, take the cat stuff. It's great. I love it. Now it's like the individual journey stuff. It's like you caught me playing chess, right? And-

I mean, we'd have to phrase it like that. I happened to walk over. You were playing chess. I wasn't, you know, like, are you playing chess right? No, no. You asked me if I won't alone. Yeah, I was asking to win it. And now it's like I started seriously looking at chess a couple of years ago.

And I'm learning different techniques, different tactics, like stuff that I didn't even know, like, you could do. And all of a sudden, I'm setting traps up for people. Open with the Hoffmikers gambit. And it's a classic. I do the English opening or the London system. So right now. Rookie. Those are rookie things, but I got really good to trap them people with the English opening.

But it's like, it's, I just stick to it right now. And when I don't want, again, sometimes I'll just be like, I'm not doing this now. I'm going to do something else, right? And it's, and then I get, you know, like I'll get my ass kicked. And I'll be like, I'll review. If you do chess.com and you hit the review button. Most people don't know that button exists. Go into it.

It'll help you. It's the same thing going back to. When we mess up in the Secret Service, did you do an after-action? Did you listen to the after-action? Did you implement the new ideas? Did you stop doing the stupid shit that caused it? And emphasize those things and teach everybody and make sure we're all in the same collective mindset

so that the next person that tries, we can kick that guy's ass. The after-action on things that go well, I would argue, is almost irrelevant as opposed to the one where things go wrong. That's the one where the most emphasis should be put. on it. The information disseminated widely. The going well is like you're reinforcing something and it should be quick. Hey, you did this good? Good job. Next. That's it. Yeah, because it's not a whole lot to be gained by reinforcing that you're doing it well. The whole point of that is to how can you

sharpen the blade more and you don't do that by saying let's pat each other on the back for 20 minutes. No. It's the, I talk about after actions in the book. If I think, finish the next one. It'll be more in depth about true after action reports. But the point of this book is that you do it to yourself. I'll find myself driving home from class or I'll give a talk. I went to a church and they asked me to talk to a bunch of middle school kids and I'll drive home and I'm thinking about what I said. I'll do that here. I'll do that after this podcast. I'll be like, what the fuck did I say? Right. And I'll just go through it in. figure out how to be better next time. What things that I say that didn't make any sense,

to even myself, it's like when I read stuff that I wrote, I'm like, what the hell did I write? I don't even know what I wrote. How many people write something? In college, I used to do this. I'd write a paper and I'd submit it. I never checked it, which is why I was never a doctor, by the way, right? Because I would just do shit, turn it in, and I was just happy doing whatever because I wrestled and that's all I cared about. And then when that was gone, I don't know what the hell is doing. It was the same thing that just happened in the service. So after actions, I think, takes a lot of humility.

You have to quiet your ego. Just having a flared up ego and learning don't go together. No. That's a scientific, it's like the people who have Tourette's syndrome. I talked about this on another podcast. The people who have Tourette's syndrome, that neural pathway, Tourette's associated with anger, emotion, and anger. That neural pathway is the same neural pathways focus.

It goes one way and the other. When one is flared, the other one can't exist. You have these people who are surgeons that can do brain surgery and cardiovascular surgery that have Tourette's. Yet when they're in there, they're perfectly still. When they put the blade down and they're done, the Tourette's returns, the ticks return. That is, there's so many studies that talk about that, and I say it to make the point of, if your emotion is flared, if you're angry, you can't learn anything that anybody's telling you.

All you see is you're the blind rage that that's in front of you. I'll add to that. You can't lead either. That's, yes. Yeah. Two more questions for you. We've been at it for over three hours. Really?

Which is excellent. First one, where can people find your book? And you on social media? I'm on Instagram. My social media started a certain way, and now it's kind of, I'm redoing the way I do it. You can find me in Instagram. I'm John Constitian. 1-0 and it's small. I'm just starting to figure this stuff out. And then...

Don't be in a rush. It's... I'm not in a rush. Think of the most heavily mined country in the world, which I think is still Afghanistan and just put a magnum, you know, multiplier on that. Here's the thing, though. Just be kind. Graveyard of vampires, right? But if you're kind, if you stay on there and you maintain positivity and your kind, it's a whole different experience. For the most part, the most part, I just, I want to pass this message. Yep. I want to talk about about leadership. I'll talk about like tactics and stuff, but like that's like a, it's like beating a dead horse, right? It's like everybody, I could talk about firearms. I'm not like the greatest shooter in the world compared to these guys that are out there. The tactics aren't evolving

that much either. Those books have been written. I mean, let's be honest. The hallway, hallways in stairwells, which people may not intuitively understand. Those are environments that you're training in all the time, clearance problems, hallway stairways. I get it. I am sorry. There is a finite amount of ways to do it. Sure, you can involve tech, but angles are angles. Pying stuff is pying stuff. You can do it quickly. The juice, I think, is not in the tactic. It's in teaching and leading. That's it, man. Yeah. That's, it's, I had a phone call with somebody and he was asking me, what is the number one quality or trait that a leader should have? And I was bad. I made my consulting company to consult on this stuff.

because I would just give everybody the answers before. So it's like to give business, like you have to hold something back. You don't actually. I say, I just say, because I want people to be better. Yeah. Right?

You don't have to hold it back. That is a business model, but if you care about impact, don't hold it back. Yeah, I just say what you should be doing. And I tell people like, hey man, so what I told them, and I blurted it out without thinking twice.

My guys, my guys who are listening know what I'm going to say is love. And the guy's like, stop, and he's just like, like, you love your guys. I go, you love your mission. You love the people that you're leading. And you love yourself. And it starts with that order, and you have to manage it in the two up to, and everything I said at the beginning, love your mission. I love the Secret Service. I love what they do, what they stand for. I want them to succeed. I never want this crap to happen ever. If I could. become the Punisher and help them, I would. Right? Yeah. My wife would say something about that. But like, she, I mean, they're competing narratives, but, you know, right? And your name is very close to it.

Punisher's anti-hero? Is a, I don't know. Ah, ROEs are a little iffy with him might create more international incidents than he solves. I'll pick another guy. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not that good with figuring out of the story. I don't know. He's a lawyer, I think. Yeah. I'm not a lawyer. Where can people find your book? Oh, sorry, I didn't mean a good job. No, you're good. And it's, well, the book's on Amazon. Okay. And hallways and stairwells, John Constantine. And it's, I lived in back hallways and stairwells and carplains and suburbans and all over.

So that's, but the book, the hallway and stairwells means the hallways and stairwells of you, the back alley hallways and stairwells in your life. The things that you don't see, because all you see is this, you don't see what's going on. up here or in here. And if it's something that resonates with you, you can contact me and I'll lead you to it. But that's what the book's about. It's trying to help people. And so far, I've given it to a bunch of people.

And there's one person that said that they were having a difficult time. I'm not saying they were or were not suicidal, but they read it and it gave them a new pathway. And even that's worth it, just one person. Yeah. That to me was the validation for me that I did something good and that also I helped the human being. So it starts with one too and that can compound.

And you never know the cascading impact that that person still being with us could have on other people's lives as well. Who knows? Yeah. All right. We've mentioned, you've mentioned quite a few times that the Secret Service needs a few thousand people. Yes.

You spent what two decades plus working for the Secret Service? Almost 23 years. Let's close with this. Give me your best recruiting pitch for any young men and women out there as to why they should even consider that pathway in the first place. Let's help the service find the right people. If you want to be part of an organization that does something to do security is you're giving up a part of yourself. So there's sacrifice. to see the world on a stage that you cannot anywhere else

because you will have access to so many places from the inside looking out that people are like, wow, what would it be like in there? And also classified locations that we couldn't even discuss to work on programs dealing with every single law enforcement military and intelligence agency in the United States and often outside the United States, you touch on everybody.

And the more authority, opportunity, responsibility that you gain by doing a good job, you're able to see so much stuff be around people, like forget the presidents even, but you're talking about congressmen, senators, foreign presidents,

and, like, you're around every single decision that's made. and you're part of history. Things that I've done, I've been historic events, I've been at many where I was there working and I was part of history.

The pitch with the Secret Services, it's hard. You're going to sacrifice some of yourself, but it's worth it. As long as you can manage the stuff that we just talked about, that you just don't become that. And that's the journey

that you're going to take inside. And I, officers, we need a bunch. Agents, we need a bunch. Administrative, professional, technical people, we need a bunch. It's like all facets. Apply. Be great at your job. Teach others. And I'll add to that, as fucked up as our country can be at times, don't listen to the headlines. It's not worth, we're not at a place where we need to throw the towel on. It's worth it. And we need people still willing to sacrifice to keep us moving in that direction. and then people to protect those who make that their life's work. So one has to come with the other. Last thing for you.

You're a tactical man. Do you have ever heard of Montana Knife Company? I have. Do you have any of their blades? I do not. Well, we're going to change that up. Did you check a bag or carry-on? All carry-ons.

We'll mail it to you. The battle goat. Pop that sucker. There you go. I feel like for you, it's perfect. Awesome. Yeah, it's fun. Sometimes they'll say you'll never guess where it's made and people will be like, where, Kentucky? I'm like, God damn it. Montana Knife Company. The first word. Those things are hard to come by, but it's got the podcast logo, Laser and Bletch.

I love it. And Blade as well. Thank you for this. Yeah, for sure. It goes well with tactical kits. Those things are, do their razor sharp. Be careful with that thing for sure. I opened it just sort of cut my thumb. Josh gave one to Dana White to tie back into the White House and he opened it and then went to the hospital. So there you go. Yeah. Be cautious. John, thank you. Thank you for the time. We'll put the show link, the link to your book in the show notes and your your IG profile and stuff like that. But dude, that was awesome. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it, man. Open invite. Come back when you do the second book. We'll talk. We'll see what happens between now and then. Don't be a pussy. Do a second book. I think it's going to happen. So perfect. Awesome.