Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 105 - Evy Poumpouras

Episode Date: December 2, 2019

Evy Poumpouras packs an incredible punch in a small package...She is a former Secret Service Special Agent who worked the protective details for President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, President George W. Bush, William Clinton, and George H. Bush. Evy worked complex criminal investigations and undercover operations, executed search and arrest warrants, and investigated both violent and financial crimes. Additionally, Evy was an interrogator for the agency's elite polygraph unit and trained by the Department of Defense in the art and science of lie detection, human behavior, and cognitive influence. Evy Poumpouras is a multi-platform journalist and host who frequently appears on NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and ABC. She covers a wide range of topics, such as national security, law enforcement, personal protection, behavioral analysis, situational awareness, and how to live life fearlessly. Outside of her role as a journalist, Evy is a TEDx speaker and international advisor whose expertise is sought worldwide. She has been a keynote speaker for NASDAQ, SOCOM, Yankee Stadium Series, United Technologies, Corcoran Group, Tyco, Skanska, Red Door Spa, amongst many others. She is an Adjunct Professor for The City University of New York where she teaches criminal justice and criminology. Evy was also cast on CBS's TV series "The Hunted." Evy holds a Master of Science from Columbia University in Journalism, a Master of Arts in Forensic Psychology from Argosy University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and International Affairs from Hofstra University. She is also a former New York City Police Academy recruit, and a graduate of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Secret Service Academy, and the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute.

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Her name is Evie Pompuras, and we randomly met, actually we didn't actually meet on the production of a television show from years ago. We were both involved in the production of the television show, and we were in separate locations. I was in the Burbank area. She was in the Atlanta area. So we first, I guess, connected at a distant or digital connection many years ago, and her background was always fascinating to me. She started off with the NYPD, transferred over to the United States Secret Service, worked at the close protection detail for multiple presidents and members of the presidential family, was at Ground Zero on 9-11, and it goes on and on and she does a very good job of explaining who she is and her background and where she's headed now. So I'm going to shut up and let Evie do the talking for her self. Episode number 105 with Evie Pompores.

Don't get mad of me, Evie, if I said that wrong. Coming at you. Here you go. Enjoy. Get the red smoke. To the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. What do we want to talk about?

Here's a question for you. You ready for this one? I'm ready. Have you done any more TV shows? Right. Because it kind of explains how we met in the first place. Do you ever really even talk about that show? I don't think I've heard you discuss it.

I think you kind of pushed it out. I was hesitant to actually start like that because I thought it would actually drive people to maybe figure out what we're talking about. But no, I'm not incredibly vocal about that experience. Neither am I. Yeah. This is how we met, though. Kind of.

We actually didn't meet. We never physically met. No, you called me one day and you're like, hey, what in the hell is going on? Like, okay, I'm glad that somebody else is catching this vibe too. Yes, and then I think like every day or maybe 10 times a day, I'm like, Andy, what's going on? This is crazy. You know, I thought, obviously I've thought a lot back about that experience. I think I would have been more okay with it had the expectations been set differently.

Because the way it was pitched to me was we're going to do a reality TV show, which should have been a fistful of red flags in my face. Just a fistful of red flags that I completely ignored. and they just kept saying, hey, it's going to be real, we're going to play it real time. And so I went into that, obviously, very naively. That was my first experience doing any type of TV and rapidly discovered that it was anything other than reality. Like when people say reality TV, what I think they mean is not reality. And it drove me nuts. It drove me bad shit crazy.

I remember that one day we were doing it. I'm laughing because I had you on speed. for everything. I call you up and I'd be like, what the fuck? You can swear. We're on the internet. Okay, good. So I call you up all the time.

Remember that one time I called you up for something? I don't remember what was going on. And you weren't answering. And then I text you, like, where are you? You're like, I'm going home. Yeah, it was in my truck. I'm walking out of here. What do you mean?

You're going home. You send me a snapshot of the highway. You driving from L.A. to San Diego. I'm like, what are you doing? We're filming. I'm not filming anymore. I was done at that point.

So we should probably. actually tell people we're talking about. So it was a CBS show called Hunted. Yes. In the reality TV show category. And like all I can say is it was a, that was. It was special. Was that your first, that wasn't your first experience with TV, that was it?

I've done news. I've seen you on the news quite a bit, actually, since then. I did the news quite a bit covering national security, covering law enforcement, crime. That was my first TV show. and it was pitched to me a certain way as it was pitched to you. But I had never met you. We talked for months. Well, we talked during that time when we were filming.

Well, you were in Atlanta, right? I was in Atlanta. You were in L.A. And the first time I met you was when we went skydiving, which was my first time skydiving. Yeah. It was mine, too. No. No, it was not.

It was awesome. It was awesome. That's right. I forgot I took you for a tandem. Yes. Because I was like, Andy, I've never jumped out of a plane. And I was like, well, if I'm going to jump out of a plane, it's going to be with a former seal. So there you go.

Not all former seals are good at jumping. You should know that. Okay. I knew you. Yes. I took it a little bit further than most guys did because I loved it. So I went and pursued additional qualifications. Your average military jumper probably has about 100 jumps after a decade.

That's low. You don't want to strap yourself. to that person. So use with caution. Somebody listening to this. Don't just go try to find some ex-feel. Like, hey, let's do a tandem. It may not work out well. Well, you're the only person I ever jumped with. Well, there you go. You're going to be safe. I always tell people, we're all going to die, but you're not going to die jumping with me. So you might get hurt, but we're probably not going to die. How did you transition, though, from jumping to base jumping? Um, I always wanted to ask you that because it just seems such a different.

They're similar in a lot of ways. Like you're using a parachute. Well, you're at some point falling through the air. The body positions are the same. The biggest difference is, so you remember when we did our jump, a tandem jump. Did you ever get that sensation that you were falling like the stomach rising? Or a lot of people equated with going over the top of a roller coaster ride. You get that stomach rise sensation.

Did you get that when we went out of the airplane? I don't remember. I would say you probably didn't. If I had asked you the day that we jumped, most people will say that they didn't because the aircraft is already moving. It's probably going close to 100 miles an hour. So when you jump out, you already have that forward speed. You continue to accelerate, but you're not going from zero miles an hour to 100. So there's no sensation of falling when you skydive.

When you step off of a static object, the opposite is true. Like you get that rise in your stomach because you're going from nothing and you feel that acceleration. So that's certainly different. it was something that I was curious about. I wasn't able to do while I was in the military. It was actually expressly prohibited. Not that that stopped everybody, but I wanted to wait until I got out.

And I did it by researching on the internet. I just started Googling who has the most base jumps in the world. I was just trying to find the number one person who had survived in that world for the longest and was still thriving. And the name that I kept getting from people that I knew in this case. Skydiving world was Miles Dasher, who he is awesome. Good friend of mine, he lives in Twin Falls, Idaho. And I went to the drop zone and found somebody who had known him for decades before that, got an email address, sent him a blind email. He responded. And I said, hey, let's do this and send him

a check and met him at the bridge in Idaho, completely blind. And he started teaching me. And then he really kind of mentored me through for the next two or three years, all the way out to, he taught me how to fly a wingsuit because first you have to base jump you have to you need to learn how to skydive first and then if you want a base jump you need to learn how to base jump they're similar but different then if you want to put a wingsuit on in wingsuit base jump you need to learn how to do that skydiving so actually how to fly the suit and then you add that into the base jumping world and I did my first wingsuit base jump in Italy off monte brento so we did a month long trip started at italy and then into the Lauderbrun Valley in Switzerland,

and he showed me all over that place. It took a long time. But I would think it's different because when you jump out of a plane in the beginning, you're doing tandem jump so you can get used to it. You don't have to do a tandem jump. That's actually a choice. You can go and you can jump out on your own. You're being held on to on both sides, though.

So you have your own parachute and you're responsible for flying it after it opens, but you have people holding onto you on each side. Well, when you base jump, you are on your own, which is why you need to come into that with some experience in the skydiving world. Probably the biggest thing is learning how to control the canopy, how to fly it, because in base jumping, like at Skydive San Diego, where we did our tandem, there's a huge grass area, you know, where you can land anywhere you want to. Base jumping, some areas or maybe the size of a tennis court, and you have to be able to maybe it's surrounded by trees or boulders because you're jumping off of something and they're not thinking about the construction phase of that, where should we put a landing zone? So you're kind of forcing an activity onto something that's preexisting. That's insane.

That's awesome. I don't look at it as insane. I look at it as a calculated risk, which I actually have drastically backed off of in the last few years. I don't know if I'll ever base jump again, actually. Skydiving is a different story. It's much safer because you're higher. You have a reserve parachute, all that stuff.

And I mean, I've been skydiving for over 20 years now, so I literally do it sometimes with my eyes closed. I'll just sit there. I think you took a nap when I was up there with you. It was quiet at one point I elbow you. I'm like, you awake? fall asleep on the planes all the time. It's one of the fastest ways to give me to go to sleep is to put me into an airplane that's taxing on the ground or flying. I was like nudging. I'm like, Andy, look,

the Mexican border over there. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great drop zone. You can see the San Diego Bay. You can see all the downtown San Diego. You can see Tijuana, the hills out east of San Diego. It's a cool place. Yeah, it's like, it was 10 minutes from my old house. So I'd drink a cup of coffee in the morning, drop the kids off at school, sit in the backyard. I would hear the plane take off and just go out there and jump all day long every day. It was awesome. It was cool. I don't have the chance to do that here in Montana anymore, but, you know, if you look at the mountain, snow's coming down, so I'll just go snowboarding. Oh, I saw the plane was landing yesterday. Yeah. Have you ever been to Montana? I've been, I may have been when I was with the president during one of his campaigns, probably Obama.

I don't remember, because sometimes we would do. Obama did come to the Whitefish Mountain Resort. I have seen pictures of Blackhawks landing up there, and I have to assume that was part of his advance, or how he got there. It's possible, because sometimes, especially during a campaign year, like the 2012 campaign year,

we do five states in two days. Yeah. And so there are times where I wouldn't know what state we were in. We'd land, and that moment I knew, but then you'd just get back up on the plane. It's like, all right, now we're going to Texas,

now we're going here, now we're going there. So it was a whirlwind. But I did drive from, Was it last summer the summer before I drove from New York City to Vancouver and I drove through Montana? I did that. That I remember. Why did you choose to do that?

That is not a short drive. That was my husband. He wanted to do it. That's fair. He's like, I want to see. Yeah, you want to see the U.S. I want to see the U.S. Which is fine, but the first half of the trip, it's all highway.

I was just going to say that you don't see the U.S. When you go east of the Rockies? You don't see it. You see gas stations. It's flat. You see maybe sometimes corn. fields or whatnot. That was the only letdown that first part of it, that first half. You really don't see the U.S. I think after you hit that midway point, then you start seeing really

the country. It was nice. I will never do it again. How long to take you? I think five days. That sounds about right. Five days. It was a lot. We drove a lot. The last few days of that are going to be the best. As soon as you start hitting the topography of the Rockies and the Western States. Yes. Now, then you're happy. Yes. We went through, I think, Wyoming, Montana, Seattle, then up to Vancouver. That part was nice. Awesome, yeah. Yes, it won't be doing it again, though.

It's a lot to sit in that car. Have you ever done a cross-country? Multiple times when we moved. Yeah, we moved from San Diego to Virginia Beach and then Virginia Beach back and drove both of those times with U-Hauls. But I feel like you were going with a purpose. You're going to move.

He wanted to do it as a vacation, my husband. Did you guys drive back from Vancouver? No, we flew. That was not happening. Say, all right, up on the plane. Yes. No, no.

Negative. No, no. You made the right call. Yes. I would even, if I had taken my personal vehicle, consider flying back and figuring out a different way

to get the car back as opposed to doing that drive in both directions. And I don't think the purpose makes a difference. It was a long drive once you got past. We would do the southern route.

Once you got past Denver, it's flat. Wouldn't the military move your stuff for you? They can, and we've taken advantage of that, but you still have to drive your personal vehicles. I'm trying to remember how they did it in the service. I want to say that they... It's probably similar. You might be right.

I'm trying to remember, because, I mean, I only really went from New York City to Washington, D.C. Because I first started in New York, then I went to Washington, D.C., because we have different phases in our career. The first phase is you start off as an investigator. A lot of people don't know what we do investigations. Before you get into that, we should start back at the beginning. Okay. we opened up on talking about a TV show that don't go watch people please but it is how we met so that's awesome it is it is it's true i will let you introduce yourself because i will mess it up okay um

so let's see i'm evy and i am from new york new york city i was born and raised there i started in the NYPD very briefly when i graduated college and then what did you get your degree in i study i studied political science and I actually studied fine art too. I loved art, drawing, painting, and then my mother's like, you know, my mother, my parents are immigrants. They came from Greece. Your last name is one of the most Greek last names ever. It's Evipumboras, but in English or American, it's pomporous or papyrus or whatever people want to call me, which it's fine. I never take offense. It's multi-syllable last name. I just have you my phone as EVP. So when I, I love the art, I remember my mother, she's like, you can't believe on that.

Are you going to make money? So I studied government, studied political science, and I worked for a congresswoman for about two years, but as an intern, it was great. And then, honestly, I was trying to figure my way around everything. I've graduated school, and I didn't know what I was going to do. And I had a job in an office doing underwriting, accounting. Loan underwriting? I don't even know. It was for AIG.

I had you an insurance group. And I remember sitting at my desk thinking, this is it. Like, is this what I went to school for? And I only did it for a couple of months. And as I remember one day, I'm on the New York City subway going from Queens to the World Trade Center. The World Trade Center, that's where our office was near there at the time. And I'm sitting back, and I'm really stressed out. And I see the subway doors open, and I see this New York City police officer hanging out.

He's just sitting there, and he was back in the day when it was a little different. he's got his beer belly hanging out. He's in his uniform leaning back. Are you sure it's that different? They're a little, it's different now. No disrespect to any of them, but I see often people in the first responder world who are going to need a first responder if something happens. Well, that's because you go through training, you get in great shape, but then after that

there's no, there's no standard, there's no testing. There's nobody coming in saying, hey, you have to maintain this. It's a one-time standard, then you're through the test gate. Correct. At least that's how it was in the NYPD. I don't know if it's changed since then. When I went to my latter agency, the U.S. Secret Service, that was different. We had standards we had to keep.

But I remember the subway doors opening and seeing this police officer thinking, I could do that. So most people grow up thinking, this is what I want to do when I grow up. Yes, I'm not that person. So that night I go home and I call 2-1-2 recruit because there was no internet back then, none of that stuff. What year is this? 1999 or 2000?

was the internet. It just wasn't what it is today. It wasn't what it is today. Yeah. So I found out what the number was. So it's 2-1-2 recruit. I remember. I call up and this guy picks up, he's like,

yellow, recruit. Crew, man. So I'm like, hello, sir. He's like, yeah, what do you want? I was like, well, I didn't know what to say. I was like, I want to be a police officer. He's like, you do, huh? And I was like, well, what do I need to do?

He's like, well, are you lucky? He's like, we've got a test coming up. And he's like, all right. And I was like, what is he's like, next week. He gave me the address. Like, here you go, is the address. He's like, what's your name? So I start spelling.

He's like, what kind of name is that? He's like, never mind, don't tell me. So I was like, what do I do? He's like, just take the test. He's like, good luck, kid, click. It was like literally a two-minute call. And I just show up to this high school on a weekend, I think it was. And I go in and you take a written exam.

I don't remember what the exam was called. I should. And you take the exam and then you see if you pass. if you pass or based on your score, you get called in. And so I passed the exam. I ended up doing really well, which surprised me because, you know, those standardized tests, standardized tests, like SATs, all that stuff, I was horrible at that stuff.

And then they just call you. It's like, come on in. And then there's a series of things that they make you do, some physical stuff, some medical stuff to see if you can withstand certain things. I remember them running like an electric current through my body just to see like. Really? Yeah, I forgot what it was called. It was something with a almost, I think, like the way you do hard.

for the EKGs. It might have been that. But I remember them, it was kind of connected in different parts of my body and they wanted just to see if I was healthy enough. Oh, I wonder if they were giving you

like a stress test of some kind. I think that's what it might have been. I was so, truly, I was so clueless. You know, and I'm thinking, oh, New York City Police Academy, it'll be like college. Did you have any idea what you were getting into?

Zero, zero, zero. Clueless. Clueless. I like, I did like the idea of helping people. Yeah. I always kind of, we grew up in, we grew up, I don't want to say poverty. We weren't very poor, but we grew up poor.

I lived in low-income housing as my parents were immigrants when they came to the United States. And so we were victims of crime quite a bit. And so I always grew up with this kind of thing, feeling that I had to know how to protect myself. I always wanted to protect my family. So I think I didn't realize I was going through this path, maybe subconsciously, but it just kind of happened. And so you go through the testing, and then there was this one test where, In the NYPD, there's a 12-pound trigger pull, is what they call it. So not all police departments have it, that when you pull the trigger of your hand gun,

it's 12 pounds, and it can be very taxing on your hand. Why would it be set to 12 pounds? So it sets of 12 pounds so that you can't pull it quickly, because there have been incidents in the past historically, and I want to say it goes back to, and I could have been mistaken, Amadudialo shooting where they had shot him, I believe it was around four police officers shot him 41 times. Yeah.

And people were kind of looking at these horrible police officers. How can you do that? And what you don't realize is that when you're in a stressful situation, sometimes you don't realize in your moment of panic, like how many times you're actually pulling that trigger. And so my understanding was they instilled this 12-pound trigger pull. That way you are having to work each time you pull that trigger. And let me tell you, when you're on the range practicing,

it was, your hands would get really, really tired. You know, I don't know what the triggers, I know what the triggers were set for on the rifles, and it was substantially lower than that. That's interesting. I mean, there's another approach to that is just to give your people better training. Because that did happen in my old job, too.

I mean, you would have people who, I mean, you know, there's ADs and NDs, accidental discharges and negligent discharges. And I suppose having a higher trigger pole could reduce some of those, but I think the key to that is just more training and practice. Because a 12-pound trigger pole on a pistol is ridiculous. It is.

It was every single pull. And it's probably likely to do, decrease your accuracy. Well, one of the tests, what they do is they took, they give me, I remember they gave me a gun, I never held a gun before, and it was a Smith and Weston, and there was a metallic triangle, not very big, maybe about this size, and they put my hand through it, and with one hand, and the instructor was pulled the trigger, and I had to pull it without tapping the triangle. Oh, interesting.

The minute you tap the triangle, the minute you hear that, ding, you fail. and the first time I did it, I failed because I pulled it. Oh, they're checking probably for fatigue and just the hand strength, hand strength, and I didn't have it at that time. And luckily for me, I guess they didn't have enough people. They called me back. They're like, hey, come back again. We'll let you do it again.

What a bizarre test. Put your hand in that metal triangle and we're going to see if you contact the edge really pull the trigger. Absolutely. I've never heard of that. Yeah. I wonder where they got that from. I don't know.

I don't know. I mean, I thought, I understand why they did it, but I think for someone like, me who hadn't done any of that stuff. I mean, I knew later on to build strength in my hands. Yeah. But I guess I can understand them wanting to make sure you have the physical strength to do it and that you're capable of doing it. I suppose. So how was the rest of the academy? Well, you're not even into it yet. You're still. So I pass everything. There's multiple tests. I passed all the different phases. And then they call, they, I remember working my job and they call me up. And they're like, hey, you passed everything. Do you want the job? I was like, yes, I'd love it. All right. They're like,

you start in two, it was Friday, they're like you start Monday. And I was like, wait, I, I have to give my boss two weeks, two weeks notice. I was like, they're like, yeah, well, you know, this is how we work. I'm like, you don't do the whole two weeks notice thing. They're like, nope, you want it, you got to be here on Monday. So we'll either see you or you don't, we don't. And I showed up that Monday. I went in, of course, the place why I quit AIG was furious with me because I didn't give him proper notice. But I worked that weekend. I remember trying to tie up whatever accounts I had. I show up on that Monday, Andy, I had zero clue as to what I was walking into. It's paramilitary, which I had no knowledge, and I roll in there.

I'm like, oh, this will be like college. It's going to be great. And I walk in. Did you just say this is going to be like college? Yes. Oh, my God, Evie. I'm putting it all out there, the truth. Zero clue.

I didn't grow up in a military family. I didn't grow up. And mind you, my parents don't know any of this because they were afterward, after I got in, I told them I'm going to be to the New York City Police Academy. They were so upset with me. So upset. They couldn't, I don't think they could understand why I wanted to do it. And I think we came, look, my parents grew up in a village, and they were poor.

They never went to college. These were things that were really outside the norm. You didn't do these type of things. And they were kind of like, your girl, girls don't do these things. And I remember going through the academy, and it was hard for me because I went in not understanding what I was walking into. best experience of my life, by the way. And I remember my mom and my dad, they wouldn't speak to me. They were so upset because at the time I lived at home.

But, you know, going back to the first day at the academy, I roll in there and they have us, they start teaching us front-leaning rest and standing at attention. Front-leaning rest is a push-up for people listening. I don't know any of this stuff other than when I see on TV, and I'm thinking, why is he teaching us this? And little did I know that this is part of the tools. part of the process and it was that first week the training everything so just to give you an idea

there were 1,500 recruits on that Monday in the academy yes 1500 and you were just the body and they wanted people to drop out because they just bring all these people in and they just push you and stress you out and test you and yell at you and all that stuff and because they want people to drop out I mean, it really was. Well, they probably didn't have 1,500 job openings. They did not. I think the graduating class was, you know, I don't know what the graduating class was. I shouldn't say, but I do remember the first month, 300 people quit.

They just got up and left because they really pushed you. And truth be told, I was almost that person. That first week, I was so upset. Why is everybody yelling at me? I'm such a good person. Why do they call me all these names? I didn't realize that this is just how it's structured. That's the system.

But I had zero. I'm a girl from Queens. I have no idea what I'm walking into. And P.D. was a nightmare. We had this gym, this huge gym, and there was this green line. And anybody who's been through the academy, the old academy, now they have a new one. There was a green line around the gym. And it was like the green line of death. They would line us up four in a row, set us up in ranks. And the gym could only fit maybe a few hundred people at a time. So you had to run in ranks at arm's length, arm in front, arm and back. And if you couldn't keep up, I mean, they pull you out. And when they pull you out, it wouldn't be like, oh, why don't you take a, you know, rest here. They put you in the

middle, they'd have you do suicides up and down, back and forth, and you just see people, it was the first time I saw people throw up from working out. This was new to me. I'm like, why are we vomiting? And it was brutal. And I remember, I never ran before. I never had to run. I'm thinking, oh, I'm skinny. I look like I'm in shape. No, not the same thing. So the first week when I went running, I ran around that circle and I could not keep up. Of course, I didn't want to fall out, so the instructor just grabs me, yanks me out, puts me in the middle, and I'm doing suicides. And then after that, after everybody's done running, they put you in the middle, and they make everybody about face to the people in the middle. So you were called a fallout.

So I was a fallout. And I remember the instructor being like, you see these people here? You go tell these people, you tell them to quit because they're going to get you killed. Because when you call for help, when you call a 1013, I believe it's 1013, officer needs assistant, you're going to die because they can't. come save you. I like this instructor. They were all like that, just so you know. And I was mortified, mortified. And I remember it was one of the worst feelings I ever had. I went on to my locker room. And I was like, I will never fall out again. And I started running every morning and every night. You know, I'd run. If we were day shift, because our shifts would go from day to night. So if I was

day shift, I'd run during the day at the academy, then run at night. And then, you know, the flip side, if it was night shift. And I would pray. I would be at my locker praying, please don't let me fall out. Please don't let me fall out. And I had a good company. Our class,

my class was 0-039. My company was great. I had a lot of former military people. They were just fantastic. They're like, hey, you got this. And we, it was just after that I loved it.

It was great. It was terrifying. Was it a living academy or did you guys go home at the end of the day? They didn't have 1,500 back. Yeah, I was thinking about that. I don't know about New York if they do it like offsite in like upstate and then bring you back. No.

My academy was actually at the time attached to the one three precinct in the city. So I want to say that was like a 19th street downtown. And it was just the building was old. It was decrepit. The staircases were falling in. Now they built a new academy in College Point Queens. It's much bigger. But it was it was the best.

It was I hated it. I was upset. I remember. And I did not understand what. I was walking into, but I'm glad I stuck it out. So I really went in completely naive, completely clueless. Like, probably if you think of that movie Clueless, I was her to some level. I was her.

And it just shifted. And then it wasn't, it was while I was in there, I had already applied to other agencies like DEA, FBI. When did you make those applications? I did those. Before or after you saw that subway cop? Around the time, I think. And I had bought a book.

It was about international. careers because I spoke different languages and I love the world. I love traveling. I studied overseas when I was in college and I had lived in Italy so I learned Italian. Then I lived in Spain and Mexico and I learned Spanish and then France. And so I had this love for the world. But in this book called International Careers, it was it was a book. They had about 300 organizations. It was companies, government, anybody you could think of that had had offices overseas. And so when I did my resumes, I did 300 applications. I did 300. 300? 300? I sent 300. resumes out. I was like, somebody's going to give me a job. Somebody. Because I really, my parents couldn't

help me. I did not know where to start. So I happened to send a resume to the Secret Service. Did you have any idea what they did? I knew they protected the president. That was it. There were the guys in the dark suits. This is, you know, I'm going to be honest. I don't want to be that person that's like, yeah, I grew up. This is what I wanted to do. I was not her. And I really kind of figured it out along the way, but once I got in, I was like, I'm doing this, I'm committed. And it changed me. It changed my life. And so I had happened to send out all those resumes. And one day in the mail, I get this government forum and a small letter from the Secret Service saying, hey, if you're interested in applying, fill in these forms. And over a period of time, I was doing that. And then at the

same time, I was in the academy. And I was like, oh, what does it hurt? And then I would just get called in for different phases of the hiring process, which is a test that you have to take another written exam, which was brutal. It was called the TA exam, TEA. And I think they've changed it since I thought, for sure, I failed it. There was no way. Is it like a general aptitude test, basically? Yes, but it was, for me, it was like the SAT on steroids. And I heard that, I heard they, I heard they had to change it because so many people had a hard time passing it. In fact, I barely passed mine. I remember when they called me to say, hey, you passed your test. I was like, hold on, let me spell my last name for you again because you might not have me mixed up with someone

out. Well, is that rough? For me, it was rough. And from what I know from my other colleagues, everybody was like, that was a rough test. It was really, it felt like an SAT exam. And I'm thinking, like, what are we going to be doing, algebra? Like, I don't understand this. And so it was one of the ways they would filter people. So when I passed it, there was other phases, a medical exam. They need to make sure you're medically fit. And then there was a polygraph, which nobody loves. Those are fun. We can talk about that later because I know you're a polygraph administer. I know for the person who hated her probably crap. I ended up becoming one. And so I went through that process and then finally one day I get a phone call saying, hey, you've, you've passed

through the hiring process. We'd like to give you a conditional offer of employment, which means you're not hired. You're going to go through training and there's two phases of training. And if you pass the phases of training, then we offer you a job. And at this point, I'm in the police academy. It's been a few months in. Now I love it. I finally figured it out. I got it. I'm going to good. How long is the police academy? At the time when I went, it was eight months. Okay.

So maybe it was right before what they called Gunn and Shield Day. Gun and Shield Day is when you take the police recruits and you actually put them on the street to work with police precinct so they can see what it's like. So it's like sort of midway in the academy. They take you out and they put you on the street. The crappy thing is, I don't know if they still do it. At the time, when you're a cadet, you're wearing a gray shirt. Everybody in New York knows it.

If you're wearing a gray shirt, you recruit. You're the rookie. Yes, and they put us on the street with the gray shirt. Everybody would get their asses kicked. I even initially used to take the subway to go to the academy, then I stopped because this was all pre-9-11, and people really disliked law enforcement, and people would look at me on the subway, and I remember one guy shoved me once, and I was like, you know what, I'm just going to start driving in, and I started driving in with some other recruits, and we would park the car just because

I didn't want to be out with my uniform, because people knew I was a recruit. I suspect that mentality has shifted completely on its head post 9-11. It did post-9-11, but now I think we're back. I think today we might be back there a little bit. I've had great experiences with police in New York. I go infrequently. And actually, I always go to the 9-11 memorial and it's about it. And I also stay at a trouble.

And I just know sir, yes, ma'am type stuff as well. It's amazing the response you get from law enforcement when you treat them like that. Yes, I know. It's not typical to get that. I think when you hear someone speak to you that way, you know automatically this person's either military or law enforcement or has somebody in law enforcement or sociopath. Or sociopath? Possibly, possibly, possibly.

How many women were in the academy? In the NYPD, I have to say there were, there were some women. So I went from academy class of 1500 to the service where it was 54. And I think we were, we were four women. And in your Secret Service Academy, there was 54? 54. How big was that class? So you eventually did make the shift.

You decided that? I did. I did switch over. I almost didn't. I remember I went to the lieutenant at the NYPD because I was like, do I want to leave? And I remember one of my instructors. I went to him. I forgot his name.

He was the funniest guy. He was my behavioral science instructor. I was like, sir, I don't know what to do. Secret Service offered me this. There's no guarantee. He's like, why do you want to go there for? He's like, you only got to do 20 years for with us. If you go there, you got to do a full 25.

He's like, they're going to make you work there. He's like, stay here. And so I went to one of the higher-ups, and I laid it out. I was like, sorry, I don't know what to do. And I didn't know this lieutenant, and he's like, sit down and recruit. And I remember him saying, he's like, look, we'll always take you back. He's like, do this. He's like, this is an extraordinary opportunity.

Just do it. He's like, if you don't like it, just come back. And I really appreciated that. I don't remember his name or anything. And so I ended up doing the shift, and I ended up going into training. So the first part of training is in the federal law enforcement training center. We call it Fletzi, Georgia. So you go through that part.

And that's really like the federal government. Isn't that the origin for DA agents? Everybody. Yeah, everybody. They go there because that sets that baseline of understanding for the federal government. Yes. So if you want to be a federal agent for the U.S. government, this is where you go. And they teach you the standard for the federal government as far as the laws, the

laws, how to enact arrests, the driving, all that stuff. So there's like, it's kind of almost getting, fulfilling that standard. I think everybody except the FBI goes there. FBI has their own Quantico. Quantico. They do their own thing there. So if you pass that first part of training, you graduate, then you go to the Secret Service training, which is in Beltsville, Maryland.

And that is now specific to the U.S. Secret Service. And you... How long is Fletsey? Fletsey's three months. And then Beltsville was three months. Okay. And so then you... do when you go to secret service training, now it's specific to protection, to the cases they work,

which a lot of people don't know. It's a dual mission agency, so it's protection, and then it's also investigative. And that's what it was founded on, right? Was investigation? So it was created on April 14th, 1865, Abraham Lincoln signed and created the U.S. Secret Service. It was a date, and it was the same day he was assassinated, ironically. Was it really? He was assassinated on that same day of the day created it, created it, but it was created for counterfeit currency, because at the time, a third of U.S. currency in the U.S. was counterfeit. And we were, it was having, it was affecting the economy. So Abraham Lincoln created them for that.

It wasn't until 1901 after we had multiple presidents assassinated where they looked over to the Secret Service and said, hey, why don't you also do protection, protect the president? Yeah. So it's one of the older agencies. I think federal, the marshals were. created before us and then we were created and then after they when they created the FBI they actually took secret service agents out and then created the the FBI. Interesting. I've always found it ironic to create an organization called the secret service

but then be public with their creation. I think it's the name. I think it's the name. It draws like so much attention. It's like what's going on there? Don't worry about it. That's the secret service. Oh, really? Tell me more. You have to admit it's a pretty legit name. It's awesome. It's a bullshit awesome name. It is. It's way better than being a seal. People are like, what's that?

I'm like, I don't know. It's a stupid acronym. Leave me alone. Although I feel like the whole world knows what it is. Yeah, for the wrong reasons. For the wrong reasons. I mean, we used to work with seals. And I remember when I do protection assignments,

there would always be members of the seals or there would be a liaison with the seals like when we work shifts. And I was the one person who would just, I was always so curious. So I'd sit out and like, hey, what was strange? training like. A natural interrogator, huh? Hey, I read this book. Number one guy, I think I wore him out.

And I was like, oh, I read this one book. He's like, yeah, don't read everything you read. And I was really fascinated. I was like, well, what's your training like? Because I was very curious to see the difference. Yeah. I actually hosted the cat team for a week in when I was at development group on East Coast.

They came down and used the killhouse for a week and I was there a liaison and just chatted with those guys. the stories of which I will share after we turn the recording devices off because I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want me to share them but I ended up one of the guys was super cool I took my family up to the White House and got one of the tours at Christmas

time it was really cool but yeah I actually didn't realize that it was created for the counterfeiting until I was reading through the beginning of your book I know yeah it's well for Kat for your listeners it's our version of the

SWAT yeah the counter assault team. Counter assault team. And they train really intensely as well. Like they're pretty, they're hardcore too. Yeah.

They mean, they basically showed up wearing the same stuff that we would show up on target wearing with a much more restrictive set of rules of engagement. Yeah. It's different. Well, because when you're in military, you're operating overseas.

Yeah. And we're not having to worry about, you know, the Constitution and civil rights. And we don't have to announce ourselves. I mean, I've worked with quite a few SWAT teams and just local police departments. Some of the things that they have to do in a tactical environment, they just, they bring the hair up on the back of my neck, you know, having, announcing, yelling their presence before they make entry. Like, hey, I'm about to come in this.

Obviously not saying that, but when they're yelling police department before making entry into a room, it's just like, whew. Well, because it gives it, gives it away, gives away that you're coming in. It does, but they are also. There's a whole element of surprise. Yeah, but they're worried about getting sued and losing, you know, doing the correct thing on target, but then losing in a courtroom. That's a tough, that's a tough environment to operate in. Well, people don't realize it is difficult law enforcement. I had, I had insurance.

What? Oh, we had, we all had insurance. We had, I was called Wrighten Company's the company. I had law enforcement insurance because it was understood at some point in your career, you're going to get sued. When you were a federal agent, you had this. Yes. Yes.

My husband still has it because he's in federal government. I'm like, no, you have to keep this. And it's an insurance policy. So that way if I'm sued, I have legal representation if I need it. And if they sue, they sue my insurance policy. They don't sue me. The government doesn't provide that for the federal agents? They could, but there's situations.

If the government, for some reason, says, you know what, that shooting incident you were in, we're like, we don't think, we don't like it. Or if there's enough pressure from, you know, the meteor from outside, you might be left out there on your own to figure it out. because there are times where they may not support you or there's a civil lawsuit. So I had insurance. I paid for it every year religiously. So a lot of people don't realize it.

It's like being a doctor. It's like being a doctor. You have a lot of doctors have liability insurance. Or malpractice insurance. I had the same thing as a federal agent. Did you know anybody who had to use it? I don't know if they used it, but there were these agents that I know of that were involved in a lawsuit.

they went in, and I don't remember the whole story, so I may not say it correctly, but they went into a home to do an arrest. And when they went into the home, I believe the person at the residence was going for a weapon. They took out their firearms. They shot the person. The person went down.

As soon as the person went down, they immediately went and gave him first aid, medical aid, and then took him to the hospital. And although criminally, there was no criminal charges. They were correct. What happens is the person they shot took us this civil lawsuit, civil lawsuit, which you only need preponderance of the evidence to get that. And they were involved in this lawsuit for years, years.

And I remember one of them, he had been in the New York field office with me. Both of them had been. And then we ended up being on the president's detail together. And I remember one day, it kind of broke my heart. He looked over at me and he said, you know, if I knew then what I know now, He's like, maybe I would have been a little bit slower taking my gun out of my holster. He's like, it wasn't worth all this that I've been through. That's a very dangerous headspace to get into.

I think because he had just been through so much and they had been dragged through the mud and I think their names were in the papers. And it was a legit, it was a legit shoot, but it was just the ordeal of it. What I mean by that is it's dangerous to have people thinking that in the back of their mind. That's the last thought that you want to have in that environment. I think a lot of law enforcement, I think the day made me feel that way. How could they not? I mean, it's definitely trial by popular opinion before it ever is going to go to a trial by a jury.

And I mean, you work in the news, a celebrity, if you will. I'm not. I'm actually kind of laid off the news a bit. But I bet you they reach out any time there's a high profile incident and they want to get your opinion on it. And in my experience, people ask me for my opinion on it all the time too. and I always say the same thing. I don't know. I wasn't there.

And I'm not going to, I am not going to cast judgment on somebody in a tactical situation that most people would never understand because there's a process for the investigation to conduct itself and they're going to get tried by a jury of their peers. And if they're found guilty, then maybe we can talk about it. And if they're found innocent,

we can talk about it at the same time. But until then, I have nothing to offer because I understand the complexity of making decisions in those environments. It is so complex. And I think when you see a snapshot picture of what happens, And I'm not saying there's some situation where you're thinking that is bad. That is a bad situation there. That's a bad shoot.

But then there's some situations where I can understand it. I can see that maybe I could have made that choice or been involved in that. And it's very difficult to show somebody a snapshot of this happened. Oh my gosh. This person was unarmed. But the thing is, you don't know they're unarmed until after it's over sometimes. And unarmed does not mean not a threat or not dangerous. Correct.

I mean, it's, we operated under the same. We had a very, actually, I would say, pretty strict ROE overseas, and you had to have either hostile intent or hostile act or the combination of the two. And nowhere in there does it say that they have to have a weapon. Well, I remember, because I struggled with this, because I'm not a big person. And I remember when we did rules of engagement and tactical training, I always, I was very, I asked my instructors, I was like, can I shoot someone who is bigger than me? can I if I, and, you know, what are, do I have different parameters?

Evie, you would have to shoot everybody. That is not, I am stealth mode. Do not listen to this, man. We're going to go outside a relay race later. Okay. And so what would be the situation? Because hand-to-hand combat with somebody who's maybe six foot five, 300 pounds, I would, I don't care how much tactical training you think I have.

There's a very good chance. Like, I will go down. And what do I do then? And so I really... What did they say? I was told that if you're in a situation and the person is unarmed, but you think your life is in danger, you can shoot. Yep.

I agree with that 100%. I was told that. They're like, just make sure, you know, there are certain things they wanted me to check, distance, space, could I get away? Could I avoid shooting that person? You know, all those things. But if you're in a place where you think you're going to go down, because actually what happened a lot of people don't realize,

and I'm an adjunct professor. I teach, don't laugh. I teach criminal justice and criminology. have this discussion a lot with my students because they're very curious. They want to understand how it works. But the concern is not only that I'm going to get hit and go, my lights are out, it's like I go down, but then now my service weapon, which I am responsible for, someone else can take that. Yep. And if they take that, I am in so much trouble. Like, there's so many consequences to that. And if you look at the data, in 88% of the situations where a police officer's gun was

taken, that gun was used against the police officer. I've seen videos of that online. Yeah, that makes sense. I know of officers, I've had conversations with them where they're in a position now where they're so hesitant. I think they would be very hesitant to defend themselves with lethal force in an environment where the person is unarmed because of the scrutiny they would get afterwards. And the situations that they described to me sound 100, like, that's 100% legitimate.

They should be able to do whatever they need to do to protect their life, a threat to their life. And I feel bad for them. It's a rough environment right now for law enforcement for sure. The body cams, unfortunately, they only want to put on the news, you know, the snippet of a shooting. What they should put up every single day is body cam footage of incidents going exactly the way that the general public would expect. Traffic stops. Hey, how's it going? Just doing their job.

Hey, here's a body cam footage. And people are like, oh, who's going to get shot? Oh, nobody. It's just a normal interaction with a civilian populace like they're supposed to do. They're out there interfacing. Like, look, here's a good example of things going right. That never makes the news. It doesn't.

And, you know, because I did the news quite a bit, it doesn't keep people, it doesn't keep viewers on. Yeah. People want to watch the bad stuff. People want to see the drama. And I think. It taints their perception, though. It does. And I think what sad is, like, the news has become almost like drama.

Like you're watching, you're watching another reaction. TV show. TV show. Yeah. I don't know if it's actually even the news anymore. It's very highly editorialized. Yeah. But I digress.

So you're in the Secret Service portion now. 54 women started with you? No, no. Four women. So how about in Fletsey? How many women were there in that class? It was the same class. We were the same group, 54.

Oh, you all went to... We all go together. Okay. They kept this together. So we all go together. I think everybody passed. Okay. We all went through it.

And then... Because when you're in this, when you're in the service, they treat you more as an individual because they've really invested a lot of time in you. And you're there with people. I actually think one of the guys in my class was a former seal. Probably. I had a former ranger in my class. I mean, I had, I was in there and I was like, wow, look at these amazing people.

And then I'm like, how did I end up in this? I was quiet. They're like, where are you from? I'm like, oh, NYPD. Meanwhile, they had like no idea. I only did like four or five months in the academy. Yeah. So once you pass, then you go to the second phase, which is Beltsville.

and then it's the same group, but they really do invest time in you. They do treat you as an individual. But I don't want to say it wasn't harder. I think NYPD was harder for me because I walked in Clueless, and I didn't know what to expect. And then I was much more aware of what would be expected of me when I went into the service.

I still worked out. I still did everything. Even in training, I'd pick the bigger guys, because sometimes they'd want to pair me with someone small, another woman. And I really get annoyed because in the street, she's not, I'm not going to get the opportunity. With, it's going to be a big guy who I'm going to be fighting with.

Let me fight. Let me roll with this person because this is who I need to be worried about. And so sometimes you'd see the instructors kind of be unsure. And it's like, no, I'm not a female special agent. I'm just a special agent. Treat me the same way. Beat me up the same way because I'm going to die out there if you don't, you don't do that. If you cater to me, you're, you're handicapping me.

Yeah, you're not actually helping the individual. me. Yeah. And so we went through that training, and I do believe it's changed quite a bit. We had like an O course and all these different things. And I passed all that stuff too, but I put, I put my soul into it. I put everything I had into it. And then so what does the journey look like after that?

So you make it through Fletzi, you make it through the Secret Service portion of that academy. Then you actually become a federal agent at the end of the Secret Service Academy. You get offered your job. Are you guys paid on a GS pay system? Yes. Okay. Yes. I think I was a GS, I want to say a seven.

Which is a government service pay scale, which I know almost nothing about for people listening. So go to Google if you want to know more about that. The good thing about pay scales is that it just goes on time. So nobody's arguing or bickering. It's like you start on the state. This is a scale you're on. You start on the state.

This is a scale you're on. And as you grow in seniority, the numbers go up. Maybe it's the same way. You could go, hey, if you've been in two years and you're in E2, this is an Excel spreadsheet problem. It's X, Y. Exactly. It's actually nice.

But nobody really goes, I don't think, into the military for money, as I would assume, no. That path as well. So what's it look like when you start that journey? So when you graduate, everybody gets sent to a field office. I, usually they try to send you somewhere that you're not from, but I'm from New York. They sent me back to New York. And my understanding was, I asked, I'm like, why am I going back to New York?

I was happy. They're like, oh, nobody wants New York. Really? No, because if you're on this G.S.7 pay scale, I can live in Montana like a king. Yeah. And in New York, I can get like a little apartment the size of your bathroom. Yeah, shoebox, yeah. And so the quality of life.

And a lot of people did not want New York. And I also, I hate to say, but we used to work a lot in New York. Obviously, there's more crime. There's a lot more things happening. And so you're working a lot more cases. Also in New York, you have the United Nations. And so a lot of people don't realize that the U.S. Secret Service also protects foreign heads of state.

So when you have a foreign head of state coming to the United States, they automatically get Secret Service protection. Because we don't want anybody getting assassinated on U.S. soil. You don't want the prime minister of Israel or somebody coming over and then getting... Do they get a full detail or just... Yes, wow. I've probably protected, I can't count, but maybe a third of the world leaders just because they come to the U.S. And a lot of them would come to New York because of the U.N.

But people don't realize it's not just the U.N. General Assembly that happens in September. People coming to the U.N. all year round. And a lot of these countries, they have houses here. One guy had apartments. I remember, what do we call him? I won't say what country, but we used to call him the slum lord because he used to go collect rent. He owned property, a lot of foreign heads of states send their kids here to school. Yep.

They come here. One country, one head of state, he came to the U.S. for medical treatment. He didn't want to get in his own country. So he came to the U.S. So it was a revolving door of protection. Protection. And then while you're doing that, then you would help and do supplemental protection for our protectees, which was the president, former presidents, and their spouses.

So sometimes we would help with those. And that's for life. They get it for life. They recently changed, though, right? Isn't Obama the last one he's going to get for 10 years? I don't know what they're doing with that. I remember Clinton created a, there was a law that Clinton passed, or it would pass through his administration that everybody hit,

he going backwards, basically, he would get it for life, and anybody before him would get it for life. And then after him, they would only get it for 10 years. because there was a life expectancy issue where we had all these protect these living longer lives and we're trying to protect them all. And so the thought process was, does, you know, former president Ford who had protections is he still really need it. Does Carter really need it at this point? Well, they can probably decrease the detail size, I would imagine, is there?

They do decrease it. Yeah. But it's still costly. Oh, for sure. It's very costly. You're talking about vehicles. You're talking about travel. You're talking about admin.

You're talking about even fortifying or security. you know, the security parameters around there. I was in the Delta Lounge in L.A. and Carter, President Carter came in. Did he come over? No. I sat there and I watched the Secret Service agents like moving around. I'm like, I wonder what's going on here. I just sat there quietly.

I'm like, okay, everybody has a nice day. It's like that movie, was it a guarding test? Yes. Nobody knew what was going on. Like it freaks people out. It was funny. I saw a car pulled up, actually a motorcade pulled up by the plane. And I looked out there and I was like, oh, that's a little interesting.

People got out of the vehicles and assumed a defensive posture. I'm like, oh, I know what's going on. I didn't know who it was. He popped out. I was like, oh, that's cool. Didn't know he was going to be coming into the lounge, comes into the lounge, sat in the corner and then they went and got him on a commercial flight. But I bet they have to have people on the flight with them, all that stuff.

And there's a cost of that for sure. All of that. Yeah. Because you have shifts. You also have advanced people, the advanced people that go out ahead of time, as you know, to check a place out before somebody's going to go there, whether it's domestic or overseas, it's very costly. But I think now, I thought I heard that they changed

that now everybody still gets it for life because I think they realized that it's something that they should have. Yeah. So, but you didn't start off in protection. I'm curious, but you said you started off as an investigator. So I work as investigator. We have squads.

I started off in the financial fraud squad. And so I started doing cases that involved the Treasury Department and all that. And then I were counterfeiting. I wasn't in that squad, but you would sometimes do it. Then credit card fraud squad. Then we had, we also had electronic crime squad where we would look at people doing,

and it was kind of new at the time, where people were committing crimes through the internet, one of the big ones was pedophilers, when they would try to lure, connect with people online, kids online, befriend them, and then try to get them to meet somewhere. And so I was part of that. It was one occasion that they were going to, because whatever looked like they were, and I was very young back then, they were going to put me on a corner in the middle of Manhattan to meet with them. somebody that we were chatting with.

And so I would ID him, and the minute I'd ID him, I'd be like, yep, this is the guy, take him down. But from far away, they thought I'd look like a kid, so I would work. I was like, I don't know, if this is a compliment or an insult. But how did the pedophilia fall under the Secret Service umbrella? They have, it's an electronic crime. So we had jurisdiction. So electronic crimes also fall under the Secret Service.

So there were times where we would work cases and we'd kind of connect with maybe the FBI or another agency. And then we just say, all right, look, we're both on this. Let's just team up and do it together. Yeah. So a lot of any crime that was happening online or through the internet or in that way, we would get involved. And I think we were one of the first ones to create a task force for that.

We had a really sophisticated task force. They were very good. So you work in that capacity. And then while I was doing that, we had polygrapherers. There were maybe, I don't know if I'm allowed to see how many, but there's a very, very small group of polygrapers in the U.S. Secret Service. And they asked me, do you, there's a number. opening do you want to one of the senior guys came up to me he's like you should put in for this he's

like I'm leaving I'm going to the president's detail why don't you take my spot and I was like no thank you I was like I don't want it because it was a really one it was a huge responsibility because you were the person they called when there's a case yeah and they can't solve it there's not enough proof and they need a confession where they need information and if you don't get that like you're it's bad it's a huge it's a heavy burden because everyone's looking at you and if there's times where you can't get everybody to talk and people look at you. Is it the person? Is it you? So it was a huge responsibility of them. Plus, I remember thinking like, who's going to talk to me? I was like, you need somebody big and bald and scary in that room who's going to scare the bejesus out of people,

not someone like myself. And the polygrapher at the time, the senior guy, he said, I think you're looking at this wrong. He's like, I think people will be more inclined to speak to you because they're not going to come in defensive. Their walls will be down. And he's like, and I really, He's like, I don't think you understand what it really means to interrogate someone. And I put in for it. I did not think I was going to get it. And I was selected out of a large group of people. I was surprised I got it.

And then I was sent now to the Department of Defense. It was called Dodd Pie at the time. I know not how it has a different acronym, but it was Department of Defense Polygraph Institute. So you go there, and it's the who's who of interrogator. So every agency sends their people there, FBI, DEA, military. And we all go there. and it's, it was probably one of the hardest schools I've ever been to. Probably the hardest, yes.

How long was it? Three months. Wow. Oh, it's a three-month school. So you learn everything about physiology. And it was literally a physiology course, a graduate course, that you learned in a week. I remember reading a textbook cover to cover, and I'm like, they can't, they can't be serious. And they were, they were happy to fill you out of that school.

So I went there and they teach you psychology. They have, you know, professors coming in, teaching you about medicine, too, like if people take some type of drug, what it does to them. The mindset of people, it was more of a psychology of people. And then they also teach you techniques at how to listen information, how do you influence people, how do you get people to talk to you? Because I'm a federal law enforcement agent. I have to Mirandize people.

This is at the time. I have to Mirandize. I'm not there to browbeat people. I have to be careful. So it's like, how do I get people to, confess to a crime or to give me information when there's no benefit to it. You know, sometimes it's like you talk to me and the potential of Jill is like right here and how do you do that?

So it was a really intense school and I went through that. That was three months and it was actually we trained at Fort Jackson. Fort Jackson on the Army base. We trained and then we practiced on recruits. I felt so bad. That's so fucked up. We practiced on recruits. But they were, there were the recruits.

were going to send home. There's a name for them. Do you know what they're, what are they called, Andy? When you go into the military and then they realize that you're not fit for it and they let you go home. Oh, there is a name for that, but it's escaping me at the moment. Those were the ones that we practiced on, not the ones that stayed. Did they have to volunteer for it or did they have a choice? I don't think they had a choice. I don't think they probably did either. That's an interesting pool of people to practice on. We did. I mean, it wasn't brutal or anything. It was just really practicing on in a person, and they understood that it was for a practice.

They understood that we were students trying to learn this craft. Yeah. But it was the only way that they could just teach us how to do it before you go to the real thing. Then after you graduate, even though you go out there, at least my agency did not allow me to do polygraphs right away. I think I had to do maybe about 35 or 40 with a senior person. Yeah.

And then that person has to sign off on every time I did a test. And especially if they were recorded, so they would listen. And then so I began doing the polygraphs. now for applicants, those people who wanted to work for us, they had to take a poly and pass it. And then I started doing polygraphs related to our jurisdiction, the different cases that we would work. And then we would sometimes be lent out to police departments who did not maybe have the resources to investigate a case or needed help. And we would go out and do cases for them. So if I had, I did a lot of, I did quite a few child abuse cases where you'd have children who were a broken arm or fractured skulls.

and they'd say we think it's the dad, we think it's the mom, we think it's the nanny, we have no proof, can you help us? And I would go in, and I would usually try to interview first the primary suspect, the person we suspected, and I'd go in and I'd talk to that person, and my goal was to either clear them, because sometimes people are, they're not the person, it's the wrong person, or get a confession. And so I'd travel the country on loan, and that wasn't the only one other agents did as well when we would do crimes that were not under our jurisdiction, but violent crimes.

maybe a murder or missing kid or anything like anything where we would help police departments because not everybody's the NYPD. NYPD has 40,000 police officers. They have the resources. But half of the police departments in the United States have, they're about 10 officers or less. And so to those departments that need, they need help, they don't have the training, they don't have the resource. So we'd go in and try to help them out.

Do people have to agree to sit with you and take that polygraph test? Absolutely. They have to consent. It's like in any interview. Nobody has to talk to you. So I would have Mirandize everybody. Because one of my concerns was if this person starts saying something to me, I don't want to be like, well, let's stop right there.

I'm going to Mirandize you. Yeah, you got to hold on with the confession. Hold that thought. Yeah. Tell me more in a minute. So what we would do is what they taught us to do is, no matter who you interview, even if it was an applicant, everybody got Mirandized. And I, everybody.

I was like, hey, this is just what we, do, which I appreciated because it was just policy. Didn't matter who we talked to, you're getting Mirandized. And then by that point, it's kind of put to the side, it's forgotten. They know their rights, but then also there were little things you had to do in the room. So I had to make sure that, like, my chair didn't block the entrance of the door. I would be very clear and say, hey, here's the door. I'd open the door.

It's unlocked. You are free to leave at any time. And I think the more I would say that to people, the more inclined they were to actually stay in the room. And it's kind of autonomy. me. It's actually an influence strategy, but when people feel like they have a choice, they feel like they have more control, so they're more inclined to go along with something, agree with you. Even if they know they're guilty, they would still sit there and try to go through the polygraph?

Actually, what I found, and I don't know if there's data on this, but I found that guilty people tended to be the people that wanted to stay. And I noticed that those that I thought that were innocent would get up and leave. And I think the rationale behind it, and this is just my belief, was that guilty people really want to convince you. Hey, I didn't do it. It's like, think about like a car salesman trying to sell you a lemon. He works really, really, really hard to convince you. No, this is a great car.

Where if it was just a great car, he'd be like, this is a great car. If it was like a Maserati, it's the Maserati. Yeah, stickers on the window. You want it? Great. And so I really think that it was the same way in that room. So guilty people would really work hard because they want you to go away. Because if they get up and leave, they're going to be like, well, they're still looking at me.

So they want to convince you. I didn't do it. And I would find that guilty people would tend to stay in the room. I mean, there were a few people I knew were guilty that would leave. But a lot of them would want to stay. They want to convince you, hey, I didn't do this. Was it the machine that would give them away more? Were there a behavior?

So it's the behavior. The polygraph itself, it's actually right now it's a laptop. It's a software system. And it's not allowed in court, is it? No. Why is that? Because it can be subjective. Because you know why?

Because if I suck, I'm not good. Oh, as the administrator. Administrator. Like, I can ask you a question and then I'm just going to bang the table or nudge the table as I'm asking you the question. You know what you're going to do? You're going to spike. Or I can, you know, or I can inflect my voice a certain way.

You can elicit a response. I can, yes, you can, if you're unethical, you can try, you can make somebody fail. And so that you really have to be very, very careful. So really the polygraph was just a tool because as, many people as I've interviewed, there are some people I would talk to and I'm like, I have no clue. This person's, I don't know. I don't know if they're telling me the truth and I don't know if they're a liar. So when people say, oh, I know I can spot a liar, you can't.

There's some people they're just good. So the polygraph itself was a tool for you to see the physiological responses going on in that body. And so, but you would spend, the first part of the polygraph, you would spend time talking to people. and sometimes their behaviors or their language, their verbal language or paralinguistics were so powerful that I remember thinking, I don't need to polygraph them. I've already got them, and I think I can just get them to tell me.

So a lot of times we'd call that a pre-test confession, where you talk to someone and you're connecting, you've got great rapport, and then they're opening up. And they just decide to confess. Yeah. That's a shitty criminal. I am not a criminal, but I think that's a shitty criminal. I think, you know,

It's interesting because if I look back at those people who would confess, it was easier to get somebody to confess to a violent crime than it was to a financial crime. So I'm going to put that out there and you tell me why you think that is. Easier to confess to a violent crime than a financial crime. I would say because they are probably proud of their machismo when it comes to the violent crime if it's a guy. Like they're less concerned with like, yeah, I did it. I was standing up for myself. or is a financial crime?

I don't know. It seems dirtier. It seems dirty. It's interesting. Everybody has such a unique perspective. Most people, when they commit some type of violent crime, whether it's an assault or a robbery or anything like that,

there's more guilt attached to it because you're physically hurting somebody. You're physically doing something to someone. Financial crime, I could sit in my pajamas in Russia and steal money out of your account or from my house. You're detached from the actual physical pain that you're, because you're definitely, if you screw somebody financially, there's pain associated

with that too. But you're not, you're not, you don't feel like you directly did something to them. So sometimes it would be harder to get somebody confessed to like $50 worth of fraud than it would be to a crime, a violent crime. That's interesting. I wouldn't have thought about it that it was the guilt was the driving factor and the connectiveness to the impact that it had. Look, it depends on the person.

Some people you would get, they don't care. Most people feel bad. Like I think as people we have, I can't say this. In my experience, I've never interviewed someone where I said, this person is 100% evil. There'd be elements of both good and bad in people. And sometimes I think the bad element would outweigh the good element in some people. And so in the interview room, my goal was to chase the good.

I'd call it chasing the good. Because if I talked to you and treated you like garbage, I'm going to get garbage. And they're going to shut down. They're going to shut down. But if I try to find that part of you, that human element, that good part of you and pull it out, Andy, I know you're a nice guy. I know you're an honest person.

I know you want to do the right thing here. And when you take that approach, some people, it works with some people. It connects with, you connect with them. And in truth, I... It wouldn't work on me, I mean. Well, I have a polygraph set up right after. Send it.

I've taken one before. That's the next episode. Next episode on Cleared Huff. Oh, God, we'll do a Q&A. Send your questions in. Q&A. Q&A, I would do it. I would do it.

I would do it. I mean, because, you know, there's two different types. There's like the security clearance, polygraph and then there's a lifestyle polygraph. I never got to the point where you had to take the lifestyle polygraph, which I also wouldn't care. I mean, I'm a relatively open book.

But yeah, it trips some people out, for sure. What's the craziest polygraph interview you ever gave? What's one that sticks out in the most? It's not mine. There are other ones that I'd heard of. I'll share it. It's like pretty

crass, but... Tell me more. We would people would confess to bestiality. I never had it because I guess it's not popular on the East Coast, but I would hear other polygrapers in the Midwest and different parts of the country. Why has it got to be the Midwest?

I don't know. I don't know. We really have that problem in New York City. But so I remember the first time I heard about it, I didn't know what it meant. I was like, what's a bestiality? Oh, God. So do you want to explain to your listeners?

No. They can Google that if they want to. Bet you might show up on a list somewhere. So just use with caution. So those would be the ones that I would. Animals. Special relationships with animals. Yeah.

Special friends. Emphasis on the special. Those were always, I never, truth, I've never gotten one. Yeah. That's good. I'm glad that you didn't. I would hope that there are very few people like that actually. Maybe it wasn't good at my job.

I'm trying to think back now. Maybe I should have pushed on that question a bit more. I don't think you should have. I think you took the appropriate task. So when did you shift from investigative to protection? Because I'm assuming while you were doing investigations, you still have to stay current in the protective details. You still do all that stuff.

So I'm doing all of these things now. But one of the myths or a lot of people think that when you join the U.S. Secret Service, you automatically go to the president's detail. Yes. You do not. Direct pipeline from graduation to the inner circle. I'm here. Stop aside.

You do not. And not everybody gets it. There's a selection process. So you think of it. know in the SEALs, there's different divisions. And if you want to go to a certain division, I think it's Deb Group. Yeah, you apply for additional screening.

And you go through additional screening. And then if you make it and if you're selected, then you go. So the president's detail, a current president, he has to be in office. That process is like that. So phase one of your career is kind of what we just discussed, working cases. And in my situation, I just happened to become a polygrapher, which is not the typical thing other agents did, maybe less than 1% of us did that. But then phase two is they come to you to say, listen, now you have to do a full-time protection

assignment or a phase two assignment. So it can be the president, it can be the vice president, or it can be a former president, like the ones we discussed, where maybe it's not as intense. And you probably have a way better quality of life when you do those. I bet. Probably way more scheduled. Yes. Less pressure on the schedule, too.

Less intense. And you have more of a life. It's more of your life. And then there's also other divisions where you can do it. intelligence. So we have different branches. They were, so I was at the point where they were like, you have to leave New York. And so me being a two New York, I'm like, I don't want to leave New York. This is a great place. Why would I go anywhere else? I was like, well, if you're going to make me leave, I'll go to D.C. And I'll try out for the president's details. So just like everybody else, I put my name in,

and then eventually you're called. And this is, it took about seven or eight years for me to get to this point, just to give you an idea of how long you have to wait to go. So you became a federal agent pre-9-11. I did. You were in New York then, I'm assuming, on 9-11. Our offices were in Seven World Trade Center. Where were you that day? I was in the office.

I went in early. I was working on a case. I was chasing, I was trying to find this Frenchman who was committing fraud, and I believed he was in Canada. God damn Frenchmen. And they're frauds. And I went in early, and I was in the office, and I heard the, the first plane hit.

So before I answer, because I think I know where you're going with this, when you, you've obviously been in situations, and do you ever struggle talking about them sometimes? Because you feel like maybe you're doing an injustice by speaking about it or elevating yourself, or I'm not sure if I'm articulating it right, but do you ever feel? I don't, I try, and I have always tried to be just as objective and honest as I can be.

And that includes my own behavior in those situations. I probably err on the side when I talk about things in my past of telling people how I screwed up more than when I was successful because I prefer to leave it to my peers and the people that I was there with to talk about any successes I may have had. So it's easier for me in that respect to just try to be blanket honest with it. Like, hey, this is what I experienced, somebody's experience. might have been different. This is what I saw. Right. But I've been able to navigate that well by just having that as the baseline with

which I operate from. So, yeah, full disclosure, it's always been hard for me to discuss that day because I guess I always felt that all these people died and I, you know, I didn't, I survived and I always really had a struggle. I always felt internally I shouldn't discuss it as much. And it was hard for me. I wrote it about it in the book and it's really been, you have this part of you. It's like, should I even be talking about this? Is it wrong for me to share my story? So I was just curious to see how you perceive something like that. Well, I didn't have any direct, I mean, you obviously have deep ties to New York, you know.

So I think that that day outside of your federal job probably would have had a pretty big impact. I had no direct connection to that. I joined pre-9-11. I did. I joined in 96. You were like a baby when you joined. Well, they don't actually take babies. I was 18, so yes, I was still a baby.

Emotionally, I was probably nine at the time I joined the military when they, gave me my first machine gun. It's not a good call. Right now I'm currently sitting at like 18 emotionally and I'm 42. So I mean I watched I turned the TV on about 10 seconds before the second plane went in live. I had no idea what was going on. I literally just woke up, turn the TV on. So 9-11 for me was more of a shift in my life because it was a drastic shift in my occupation. But I didn't, you know, there was no issues with talking about it or what I would describe, a lot of people say is survivors guilt because, A, I wasn't there. And B, I had no direct attachment to it. There are issues from... What about your tactical stuff when you're...

I was going to say there are, yeah, there's plenty of situations where I feel completely short of the standard that I set for myself. And there are days where I feel like I met the standard. And there were, most of the days in my military career were awesome. I mean, the people I worked with were great in large. You know, every, every weed, lawn has weeds to include the seal teams. So most people I worked with were great, and I tried to minimize the time with the people I didn't want to work with. Most of the time, we had overwhelming tactical success on the battlefield because we had the tactical and technological advantage, which is awesome. And it felt great to go over there and feel like you're making a difference.

And then there's sometimes where there's a complete notar shit show, and your good friends died and things that were outside of your control. occurred and you know you struggle with it and you know a helicopter would go down you're like why wasn't I on that helicopter or somebody would get blown up or shot and well I went through that door too why didn't that happen to me and I don't I guess for me it's maybe cathartic to talk about it um and but again I just try to go with just just full honesty like hey this is what happened this is what I was trying to do this is what I was actually able to do and I'll just stand in judgment of my peers. So, like, so for us on that day, it was, so it's, it's such a difficult thing to talk about, but because it's you, Andy. Um, we had gone into work and we were in seven world

trade center and I was trying to work on this case and we're sitting there. Um, I was with the liaison, I want to say with customs at the time. And we hear the sound outside. And I honestly didn't realize it was a plane. I just heard it's like this loud sound. close was where you were to, which tower was hit first? Was it one World Trade Center? I should know this. I want to say, I always mix the towers up. I don't remember which one offhand was hit first. It was, it was the one closest to my building. Okay. It was the one, I want to say it's the north tower, the north. The one that was closest north. No, I don't want to say, because I can't remember at the moment. So we were, so the way it set up World Trade Center, it was Tower

One, Tower Two, and then around the towers at the base, there was, it was World Trade Center, four, five, six, these lower buildings. And then right adjacent to that, they built seven World Trade Center, which was about 47 stories. So we're only talking a couple blocks. No, it's not a couple blocks. It's like across the street. They're right next to each other.

So everything's in the same vicinity. Literally to get to the tower, because our parking garage was actually underneath the towers. So I'd go in, I'd park under the towers, the two big towers, and then just cross, there was a walkway. I just crossed the walkway, and now I'm in seven World Trade Center. So we are there. You hear the loud song.

sound, it didn't even occur to me that was an explosion. Everybody goes to the windows. Some people still aren't there because it was still early. And I look out and I see this big fire, this blazing fire coming from the top of the tower, the first tower that had been hit. It was up top high. I remember thinking, it was a very benign thought. I remember thinking, oh, I think it's an electrical fire. It didn't even, nobody, none of us had any idea that a plane or anything, zero, we're completely clueless. And then on the PA system, they say everybody, it comes on, it says everybody evacuated. everybody evacuate.

So not knowing what's going on, I remember I run over to, I run up to my desk, and I grabbed my gun in my batch because I was just like, I have to have these. I didn't know what was going on. We evacuate, we go down,

and then as we go down into the lobby, you just, it was a Florida ceiling glass, the lobby of the seven world trade, and you just saw chunks of steel coming down and people couldn't exit. So then the security, the building security, were pushing people out through the side.

And they're just yelling to everybody, everybody evacuate, I remember pausing, and I think at the time I was by myself, I'm thinking, I'm like, well, I'm not evacuating. Like, we don't evacuate. I'm not supposed to evacuate. And I started looking around for my colleagues. And I found a small group of colleagues, maybe about six of us, six of them. And I said, what do we do?

And they're like, let's go get our medical kits. We had these medical kits. They were called fat kits. So we'd go up. These things were huge and heavy. They had everything in there. So we go up. And we went to the area where we stored our weapons and our kits.

They were all in the same area. We obviously didn't grab weapons because we didn't really think we needed them. We still didn't know what was going on. We grabbed the medical kits and we go down and then out through the side of Seven World Trade to go towards the tower that had been hit to try to get in to help the injured people because we knew people were going to be injured and wounded. And literally as we're walking toward the tower to go into it, then I just heard a really loud sound.

It sounded like an engine revving. And it was coming from above. I didn't see it, and one of the agents that was with me, he grabbed my arm, and he yanked me, and he just, I didn't really understand what was happening. He starts pulling me, and he starts pulling me back in the direction of where we came, and then I just see everybody running, and then I hear the sound of the plane. I'm still, I don't know it's a plane, I don't understand it's a plane, I just hear the sound, I'm thinking, is it a missile? Is it, what is this? And we run, and then just as we're running, sure enough, just at that time, the tower, the plane hits

the other tower and all the debris comes shooting out and it's shooting out in our direction. And so it's just literally, Andy, it's just raining chunks of building steel and fire bomb. It was, it was, there are no words to describe it. They're, the stuff they show on air, they don't show. It just doesn't, there's no justice to what it really was. Yeah. So we start, we just run. And I remember the agent actually landed on top of me.

He slammed me up against the concrete wall. there was a wall there and he slammed me. I mean, he shielded me. He put his body over mine. Just a friend, a colleague. And just instinctually, he tried to protect me. And we sat there and we waited for the rain of stuff to stop. And I remember just looking around, just seeing people just getting smacked with chunks of steel.

Yeah. And you were there or then you were gone. It was a very surreal thing to experience. So when that happened, it occurred to us, all right, this is, we still didn't know it was a plane, by the way, no clue. We realized this is something else. This is an attack, a terrorist attack, some type of attack. And so now the way we were going in is now blocked because now the second plane came and put all that debris and fire on our path. So we had to go around a different way.

And then actually, as we went around that way, some NYPD cops stop us. And they're like, hey, we need your help because they saw our badge and guns because we weren't covered at the time. We have a guy we think, it's like the hottest thing. He's like, we think he's saying some weird stuff. We don't know what to do. And so we walk over and it's like raining debris and there's this guy standing there with a hoodie and he's looking up. And I'm like, what are you doing?

And he's where nobody is and he's like, I think they missed their mark. I was like, what? He's like, they missed the mark. And I'm like, well, who missed the mark? He's like the planes. They hit the wrong spot. So we hear this and we're thinking, what the? So I remember we grab him.

We're like, hey, why don't you just come over here and let's talk where it's not. raining debris. And we're talking to him and he starts saying these things and we didn't know what to do and the cops were like, I'm like, we can't let this guy go. We don't know what this is. So we put handcuffs on him right away and we search him. And then when I searched him, I found some paperwork that he had just come from court, some parole hearing. And then I was talking to him and it turns out he happened to be Greek. I'm like, are you Greek? And I start talking to him in Greek. And then I realized in talking to him, I'm like, I think this guy has mental health issues. I'm like, don't let him go though. we don't know what this is.

So we gave him to the cops. They had their car there. I'm like, take him. Make sure he gets interviewed. We don't know what this is. Just, I don't think it is anything, but just take him. And I remember the cops looking at me, and I was with another partner of mine at the time, the same agent that shielded me.

They were like, aren't you going to come? And then my partner, I looked at each other. He's like, no, we're going to stay. And so I remember the cops left, and they hugged us before they left. So then we go, we link up with some other agents. I found a small group of agents and a boss. And the boss stops us all. And he's like, listen, he's like, I'm going in.

He's like, whoever wants to come with me can come. And whoever wants to go, you can go. No one's going to judge you. This is obviously like unlike anything we've ever seen. And I didn't look. I just step forward. And as we get ready to go, like over in the distance, I hear somebody scream.

And then we look up. And now we're like on the West Side Highway, which is the street that's next to the tower. hours and we look up and there's somebody jumping and then another person and then another person and Andy it was just raining people they were right it was they were just not only now are you worried about the debris coming down because we're like trying to shift to make sure nothing falls on us that's debris or metal now we're we're running so we don't have a human being fall on us were the people jumping from above the impact point they want to avoid the fire yeah there were

some, there were jumping from, there was the fire so they obviously couldn't get out. They were trapped. And I remember you could see them like hanging out the holes. They showed that very briefly on the news. They don't show it. Anymore, yeah. It was, I don't know how many people jumped out. It felt, and I'm probably wrong, but it felt like hundreds.

When I say it wasn't one or two or three, people were jumping. It was raining people. And so now this is happening and we're trying to get into the tower. We can't get into the tower. So by the West Side Highway, there was already people coming out. So we just set up a triage, and we just started helping people and giving oxygen, doing different things. And just, and then ambulance trucks were pulling up.

And so the people that we thought needed help, we throw them into the truck. Some people were just in shock. Like they were, they were okay. They were covered and stuff, but you could tell they were just more, like, they couldn't think. And we would just be like, go to the water, just walk that way. So they'd go towards the water. And as that is happening, I remember at one point I was doing something, I was trying to get the oxygen

tank to work to help this woman. And I hear quiet, like just quiet. And I look up and there's no one there. Nobody. All my colleagues are gone. I'm like, what the? Would everyone go? And then I hear the sound of like, it's so hard to explain. It's just like the sound of bending steel. If you've ever been in a boat at the bottom of the boat when you hear the noise the metal makes at the hull of a ship. It was that sound, but times, I don't know, 100. And I hear the sound and I'm thinking, oh, the roof must be sliding off because I remember the first plane hit the top of the tower. And I'm thinking maybe that's given way.

I was like, and I knew because of how close I was to the tower, I was like, I cannot run this. This thing's going to fall. It's going to take seven city blocks with it. So I was like, I have to hunker down. So I looked around. and I was outdoors, I was exposed. I didn't even have time to run into any place.

So there was a corner of the building that I found like a brick corner made like this perpendicular angle. And I remember thinking, I'm like, I'll sit here and maybe when the tower the stuff comes, it'll shoot over my head. Maybe it'll shield me. But when they say time slows down,

this is the only time in my career that this has happened. I've been in tactical situations or different things. Nothing very extreme, nothing like what you've encountered. But this is the only time in my life where I'm like, that that shit is real when they say time slows down. I was like, what do I need? Water. My brain just went into automatic mode.

I need water. Why do I need water? If I get buried, I need water to drink. I grabbed water. Then there was a metal table. And I was like, look, if steel falls on me, there's nothing that that can do. But glass can kill. A lot of people don't realize that glass is just as dangerous.

Especially high velocity. Yes. So I was like, what can I use to shield myself? So at that area, because of the way the area was designed, they had a lot of outdoor tables and patios where people would eat. It was those big heavy metal tables that people eat at outside a restaurant. I saw one. That thing was, it must have been twice my weight.

I remember grabbing it and my adrenaline just kicking in. I dragged that thing. I remember scraping the concrete with it. And I shoved it into the corner. And I'm like, all right, if the tower doesn't kill me or whatever is coming doesn't kill me. I didn't know the tower's coming down. I really thought it was just a top part. of it or a portion of it.

I was like, so if that doesn't crush me, at least I've got this to shield me from glass, I've got water, I'll figure it out. And I got into that corner and I made myself, and I'm small to begin with, I remember I made myself so small, teeny tiny. I'm like, I remember I pulled my knees into my chest. I was like, do I have all my toes in? And you were by yourself. There was nobody else there with you.

By myself. I remember thinking, I couldn't one of these guys top me on the shoulder and be like, hey, I've come with us. They had bolted? Everybody bolted. I think it just happened so fast that everybody just went into an automatic. mode and nobody thought to say hey to tap me on the shoulder to be like hey you might want to come with us i just i just ended up being by myself and i just sat there and i waited and it started to

come down and it was like sitting in the middle of an earthquake or an inside of volcano it was it was unlike anything i ever felt before and i remember sitting there and as it started to happen something hit me i was like oh my god i'm i'm going to die I was like, this isn't what I thought. And I had that moment, I was like, I'm really going to die. And so I was like, all right, well, I don't have a choice, whether I live or die. It's not my choice. If I die, it's out of my hands.

But I can choose how I'm going to die. And I was like, I'm not going to die afraid. I remember sitting there. And, you know, I'm not an overly religious person. I don't go to church every Sunday. But in that moment, I was like, I'm going to pray. and I started praying out loud, and I asked God to forgive me. I was like, you know, God, I was like, I hope I've been a decent enough person,

and please forgive me, and don't let me be alone when this happens. And it's interesting because I wasn't afraid of dying. I was sad because I was dying alone. It's such a weird thing, because when you do these jobs, when you put in to do something like this, you go in with the understanding I could die doing this job. but this was something different. And although I had not been prepared to die like this, you know, I always thought it would be a bullet in the head or something.

I'm like, oh, I'm good. But I didn't expect this. And I prayed and I just let it come. And I remember it just turned tonight. And this wave of heat and darkness just came in. And you're just watching it come. And I was like, nope, I'm not going to die afraid. I'm going to keep my eyes open.

I keep my eyes open. I was like, I want to know how I die. I want to see it happen. And just, as I guess as the tower came down, the blast came and just, even though I was already in the corner, just slammed me back into the brick wall. And then it just started coming down. And I thought, for sure, I'm like, I'm done. And I waited, and it just kept coming down, coming down. And all the stuff was coming down.

And I felt like an eternity. And then finally, all of a sudden, everything just goes quiet. just like deathly, like silent. And I sat there for a bit and I was like, I think I'm dead. Because I couldn't see anything. I remember taking my hand and putting it up in front of my face. And I was trying to look at my hand. It was like only two inches from my face.

I couldn't even see my hand. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know what this is. And then I realized I started burning because I kept my, in trying to be courageous, I ended up sabotaging myself because all the debris and all that ash came into my eyes and was burning me, and I'm like, man, I'm being brave and probably not the wisest thing to do. So my eyes started burning because all that stuff that fell on us.

My skin was okay, but it was just really the orifices of the body. And I sat there for a bit because I was afraid I had been buried alive. And I was like, I might be buried. That's why I can't see anything. And I waited. And I waited. It might have been a good solid five minutes where then I put my hand out and I just started to slowly crawl out. And then I felt a wall.

And again, still, I can't see anything. And then eventually I saw like this light in the distance, this dim light. And so I just started crawling over to it. And I stood there and then I heard a colleague call me. I don't know how he found me. And he's like, is that you, Ev? And I'm like, yes, it's me. And he's like, I was like, I can't see.

And he's like, just stay where you are. He's like, I'll come grab you. And he came and got me. And as the dust started to clear a little bit, I mean, you looked around and it was just debris everywhere. I mean, firemen bleeding. and then occurred to us, we're like, oh my, holy shit, there's another tower. If this thing came down, the other one's going to come down.

And I still didn't, I still did not know the tower came down. I didn't understand what was happening. It was after this was all over that they were like, hey, a plane hit, then another plane hit, then the tower fell, then the other tower fell. No clue. And so after that, they took me into a lobby. There was a super there, and he cleaned my face because I was really burning and he cleaned my eyes. and then we just started evacuating people

because all these, the thing with the towers, they were so huge that when they collapsed, when they spilled over, the chunks of debris actually scraped adjacent buildings. And some of the buildings, actually, they had to take them down after the whole incident happened because they were so structurally damaged

because the towers fell on them. So my building, building seven, that building collapsed. I think our building collapsed at 5 p.m. that day, but it collapsed because when the tower fell, it fell on top of it. Our building caught fire. It burned,

until it went down. And so even after the first tower came down, we kind of regrouped and we started pushing people out because we're like, you know what, if this one fell, the other one's going to fall. And as we started to push people out, the second one started to fall too. And we were just pulling people, dragging people, lifting people. I remember we carried this one kid who, I don't know if he was handicapped, he couldn't walk, somebody was screaming help, he can't move. And we just picked him up and threw him into an ambulance. And it was, it was insanity that day. And then I remember that whole thing happened.

And then all of a sudden, we see, so after the second one falls, all the fire trucks, all the first responders, everybody starts bolting. And I'm on the west side highway, still by ground zero, and the firemen are on top of their trucks. Everybody run! Everybody get out of here!

And I'm thinking, what else could happen? Yeah, sleek. So everybody, yeah. Yes, everybody thought that when the tires collapsed, I guess there was a gas smell. And so all the fire trucks, everybody's blazing, blazing down the highway. And I'm on foot with my colleagues, we start running. We just start running. And we just ran as far as we could because we thought downtown Manhattan was going to explode.

And so it was crazy. I can't believe sometimes it's like 18 years ago. but we, you know, you do, you did the best you could. I mean, I did the best I could. And there's moments where I think back, maybe it could have done this better, done that better, gone in here. And it just makes you sad because you just see this massive loss of life. And you just, it was really hard to watch.

You know, all those people die. And, I mean, you come from a background and you're thinking, I'm worthless. I can't do anything. I would say helpless, not worthless. Helpless. Helpless. You felt, but you know what, to be fair, I felt like that.

I felt like, what can I do? And you have got your gun on. You're like, what's this going to do? You're bad. Like, there's nothing. Nothing at that point. No, no. So that was, you know, a really life-changing experience.

And I think sometimes we get caught up in life. And whenever I feel myself kind of shift, I'm like, remember that day, life's not so bad or things are, it kind of brings you, brings you back. Sadly, though, there's a lot of folks. still dying from the aftermath of 9-11, there's a program. It's called the World Trade Center Health Monitoring Program, which I'm part of. Every year I go, we all go, or most of us go, that we're there.

They check us to make sure that we're okay because there's a lot of people that were there that worked there or helped there, and they suffered a lot of illnesses, and there's a lot of cancers. Yeah, the carcinogens. Coming up. So, you know, it is.

is what it is, that story kind of hard thing. Yeah, it was an interesting day for sure. I wish our country would go back to how they behaved in the few weeks after that. Oh, they loved us. After that, I would go in and help with the cleanup effort and that part, and we would drive down the West Side Highway. There were people lined up all over the highway, people from New York City holding up their signs. We love you, we love you, law enforcement, because only law enforcement without allowed inside. And first responders were allowed. And then the military came,

the National Guard and all that. And they were just, and people came from all over the world to help. I remember there was, where our command post, we had a command post set up the Secret Service by Greenwich Avenue. And one day, one of the days,

this big tractor trailer shows up and they're hauling all this stuff. And it was like New Orleans and some restaurant from New Orleans. These people come out, they're like, hi, we're from New Orleans. We came up here and we're going to cook for you.

And they just started pulling out these big tubs of gumbo and cooking gumbo in the middle of Manhattan. And I'm like, what's gumbo? This stuff is great. You know, I remember McDonald's too. They had, there was a McDonald's place, and they had a little cart, and you'd be shifting through different things, and there was a McDonnell's McDonald's worker, and he'd come up, in the back, he'd have this towing, like, he's like, you want

chicken and mcgumack, you want filet, fish. What do you want? And they just... Don't eat the filet fish. I don't like filet of fish. My husband loves it. I think it's gross. It's disgusting.

I'm pretty sure it's not fish, but I digress. I found that people, even beyond their appreciation for law enforcement, they were the most compassionate I've ever seen strangers be towards each other for a few weeks after that. Like, just everybody calmed the fuck down. And now that's gone. I wish she would go back. I think it's gone because people don't.

Like, for example, so I told you I teach as an adjunct professor. My students, they weren't even, some of my students weren't even more. Yeah. And so I don't think that they, for them, it's something that happened in history. Like, oh, this happened, but it's, it happened way over there. And I think that's where the disconnect is. Yeah, I don't know. I think that you have to have something thrown in your face like that to recalibrate the context of who you are in your life and your station and society.

I think sometimes maybe, you know how some countries make people like, Everybody has to go into the military. Yeah, mandatory service. I really feel that something like that would really help people or help this country, just serving your country just so you can understand what it means and what you're doing and contributing. And then afterward, have your opinion. It would enhance their perspective, for sure, and give them a greater context of where they sit

and where this country sits in a world stage, for sure. I don't think it even has to be, I've talked about it before. if it was mandatory service, military, cool, but also maybe the Red Cross is your thing, or Doctors Without Borders, or something. Some service. Some service outside of yourself, two years I think would be amazing. And if they could do it outside of the U.S., I think that would be even more impactful. Right.

But even inside of the U.S., like just serve something other than yourself for two years. I really think it would shift perspective, and that shift in perspective would change the interactions what people have. I think it would do a lot to enhance our society as a country for sure. I really think that like this my parents are immigrants and they're Greek I was born here.

The opportunities I've had in this country and I love where my parents came from. I love Greece too. I would have never ever, ever had those opportunities there. This country to be born here to grow up here I am so

blessed like this There is nothing. And I don't, there are beautiful countries in the world, but there is nothing like the United States. Like I really, I, it just,

you can be, you can be no one, have no money, no nothing, and come here and work, bust your butt, and you can be something. There's other places in the world.

You cannot do that. Agreed. Yeah, and it's tough to explain that to people if they don't go and take the time, or have the opportunity to go see those things. Good opportunity or best.

however you look at it. How long have we been talking for? It feels like a really long time. One hour and 37 minutes. We're not done. I want to know about the presidential protective detail. I got questions. Okay, okay.

Will your listeners stay on this long? I don't know. It's up to them. Probably. I don't know. I mean, it depends on whether or not they connect with what we're talking about. I mean, I don't know how many people get to talk with Secret Service agent. Former.

Former, whatever, retired. But doesn't that bother you too sometimes that's like, yes, It's what I did a while back. Like, it's not who I am. But it's a part of who you will always be, whether you like it or not. People will associate that title with you for the rest of your life. And I struggle with that one too because I definitely don't want to be keyhold into just being that person. I have no problem with it springboarding me into whatever might be next.

But I just don't want that acronym to follow me because it's not as cool as secret service. We just have a cooler name. Hands, kudos to whoever came up with that name. Like, I got it. It's going to be a public organization. called the Secret Service. It's true, it's true. Just when you say to people like, wow, but then five minutes later, they're like,

oh, FBI, right? Yeah. Oh, she's CIA. So you put in post-9-11 now, or years past 9-11. So you put in for the presidential detail. Yes, I put in, I throw my name in the hat. I have to go through another physical training exam in my office, which is New York. I pass that.

They test me, and then they send me to Washington, D.C. when you go to Washington, D.C., now you have to go through, like, I don't know what it's called. It's just, it's not another academy, but it's just another selection process, like what we discussed. Yeah, probably just additional training and refinement. Exactly. With standards that you have to meet, I'm assuming? You have to meet those standards, because there are people that do not meet them, and if you do not meet them, then you cannot go to the president's detail. Think of the president's detail, like, that's the peak.

And it's just... And when you say that, does that mean you're working in the White House? Does that mean you're working directly with and around the president? I mean, is, or how broad is that term when people say the president's detail? So the term PPD, which is presidential protective division, hopefully I said that correctly. Yeah, I have no idea. I'm going to go if you want it. You know what is like when you learn acronyms and you just stop saying the full word?

So I might butcher it. But PPD, when you go to PPD, that means you live, eat, and breathe. The president's detail. So everything I did before is gone. And now you are 24 hours in service of the president. So you're straight protective. The investigations have fallen to the side. It's all gone.

Okay. So now I move, I physically move to Washington, D.C. I go through the training. I pass. I go through a process where I'm helping in another division for a little bit. And then actually, before I went to the president's detail, I ended up having Barbara Pierce Bush, which is the daughter of President George Bush, one of the twins. They actually gave me her for a while.

I was her assistant detail leader, which means I was in charge. of her protection for a bit. I had supervisors above me, but I had that assignment, which was awesome, by the way. It was different because she was young, and we were not too many years apart. And so she just was a much more interesting person to be around and do protection with, and she's just a great protectee. But then after that, I ended up going to shifting into PPD. First, I started doing the perimeter security around the White House, whereas a lot of people don't know, but people come, they monitor, they leave stuff behind, they want to see how law enforcement is going to react, whether it's something real or a package that's just left

to just arise suspicion. So sometimes... How often does that happen? It happens often. That's what I figured. It happens often. I wouldn't have been surprised if you said every day. It might be every day.

It happens, I think, some people may forget something. I do think there's a group of people who leave stuff and then go back and watch to see how we respond. Yep. which is smart. They want to see what do we do, what do we shut down, who responds, how long does it take, what mechanisms do we, you know, what do you use? You're trying to understand your playbook.

Yes, exactly. That legit, I know does happen, happen. And so I started off in that division, and then I went to the first lady, so I was with Mrs. Obama, and at that point, there's two functions. There's, and I can talk about this because the service okayed it in my book, so it's okay for me to talk about it here. So we have two sections. It's called the shift.

and it's called the advance. The shift is what you see that's with the protectee. So when you see the president come off the plane, the agents with them, they're called the shift. And literally you're in, I don't want to use this term, it's not the appropriate term, but you're in the bodyguard mode to say, you're with him, and you're there to shield, protect,

and we move, and there's a choreography to the way we move. Like everything is perfectly designed for specific function. That's the shift. Then there's the advance, and that's the portion. of the agents actually go overseas to prepare for the arrival of someone. So, for example, when I was on the First Lady's detail, Mrs. Obama went to Africa, and I was sent to Botswana for a month. And I was there, and I worked with the State Department and the government

and the South African government working out the logistics, guns, what do we bring, cars, all that stuff, hotels, logistics. It was just, it was intense. That's the advance. But when you're on the, when you're on PPD, you do both. We just swap one week or shift. Next week you're like, hey, you're in advance, which is nice because it changes it up.

But the thing is like your life is not your own. You live and eat, breathe that job. And I think there's a lot of sacrifices that people make, a lot of marriages that don't succeed, I think. A lot of spouses that come with their loved ones and just kind of like, I never see you. What does a day look like? Like say you're on shift at a broad perspective.

What's your wake up and go to bedtime and everything in between? So shift work sucks. Let's just put it out there. It sucked because we had, hopefully one day they'll change it. But the way our shift worked is we had day shift, afternoon shift, night shift, and then training or advance or travel. So which meant for all those years you're on the detail, it could be five years. You work day shift, which means 5 a.m.

I'm on post and I'm done around one or two. And I do two weeks of that. Then the next two weeks, it's afternoon shift, 1 p.m. to like 9 p.m. whatever it was. And then two weeks of 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. That's got to destroy your circadian rhythm and everything inside of your body. I had wrinkles on my face. I looked like I was 90. It was, well, it was, it was five years of that.

Two weeks days, two weeks afternoons, two weeks shift, two weeks travel. So you stayed on PPD for five years? I'm wondering if it was a full five. It might have been a little less than five. It was probably less. It sounds like a substantial amount of time. But you're doing this, you're doing this for years. And shift work is brutal.

So when you do shift work, you can show up at the White House if they're at the White House, if they're home. But if they're traveling, then you're traveling with them or you're leapfrogging. So I remember once I worked a midnight shift at the White House, but that morning the president was going to leave to go to San Francisco. So as soon as I was done with my shift, I hopped on, I went straight to the airport. I got a red eye. I caught a red eye with my vest, all my gear. I get on the plane and I fly to San Francisco. to get there before he gets there.

We had maybe like a couple hours sleep. They gave us maybe three hours sleep. And then as soon as he landed, I had to be ready to receive him with my shift group at the hotel. Then he comes to the hotel, and then I'm working that shift. So shift work is supposed to be eight hours, but sometimes it can be 16 hours.

There's days you're standing in front of a door or you're in the middle of Wyoming with snow and your 12-hour shifts. I think that, the shift work and then just that was hard. just standing there because you're supposed to stand and look. You're not supposed to be on your phone. You're not supposed to be, you're supposed to be out there looking for somebody, the threat.

Yeah. And it's, you have to be in this constant state of alertness. It's very hard to just be there and be quiet. It's a grind. Chips away at you like percentage point at a time. We went through additional training for, what the hell did we call it?

PSD, personal security detail stuff. Oh yeah, you guys. So we would do that. Like we, I've done advance work. when, you know, generals would go overseas. I did some stuff in the United Kingdom, even some stuff in the U.S. and I hated that job. I hated the reactive nature of it.

Like, I'm here. Everybody can see me. I can't do anything until you do something. Please don't do something. And you just like, ha, ha, but it just grinds away at you. Like the same thing. Stand in front of this door for even two hours. Like, just if people want to understand how hard it is, literally just go stand in front

of a door for two hours. don't take your phone and be alert and try to observe all the behavior of people that you see past that door, deciding whether or not they're a threat, and then multiply that by five. And that's your average workday. And you're going to probably want to brush your teeth with a pistol the next morning. It's rough. I hated it. Look, the job is great, but that part of it, I know in the movies it looks fantastic,

and I think sometimes people don't realize that. Sometimes in the movie, though, there's a guy standing out there watching a dumpster. or a garbage can. And I'm assuming that's real. I've done that. I've done that. I've done that. I've done that.

Right here. I mean, it's like, agents stand here and make sure nobody comes to this door for 16 hours. Or the HVAC system. It'll put you on a rooftop because we want to protect the air coming into the building. So somebody can come and just drop something into an HVAC system in a building. And now the whole building system's corrupt. So you're on top of a building in a skyscraper somewhere.

You're freezing and you're standing there just to make sure nobody drops something. Yeah, there's a lot that goes into it that is invisible for sure. A lot of people don't realize, look, most of security and most of protection, it's all the stuff you do in advance. It's everything you do in advance. And then look, that layer, that shift layer, that's there that when it's like, when things get through the, penetrate through the layers, which they shouldn't. Yeah.

Because if you do your layers correctly, which it's multiple layers of security, that that layer is there to be that final thing. But with presidents, one of the tricky things that exist is that they have to be connected with the public. And that's where it gets difficult. That's where shift work can get difficult because they're shaking hands. They're going to these events where there's thousands of people. Ride that fine line.

And people lose their minds. I mean, there was people would hug the president. And it wasn't just Obama, any president. They'd hug them. And then they wouldn't let go. So we have this maneuver where if they hug someone, you take like the middle finger and you bend it back and so you can help them release the hug. I'm hoping I didn't break too many fingers out there,

but you'd see that death grip go on. It's like you have to let him go. He has to keep moving. Yeah. And so there was maneuvers that they teach us to do on people's hands or arms or neck just to get them to kind of release the person so they could move on. I don't think they've ever showed somebody releasing the hug with the middle finger, which is good because the agent is probably behind the president.

The camera is probably in front capturing the hug. They can't see it. It's hidden. Because I don't want to grab her or her or him from front, so you do it from behind. For sure. I'm standing behind. You just bend the hand, the finger back.

Just do one finger, one finger, more. And then they let go. They realize, I think some people just, they. They get caught in the moment. They get caught. Because people probably do lose their shit. It's like, it's like going to concert sometimes. And it depends on the president, too.

Yeah. Clinton was, I remember the times when I would help out. I was never on his detail permanently, but I would help out a lot on his shift because he moved to New York after his presidency and I would have him quite a bit. People loved him. And he liked engaging with people. And then it was difficult.

And then sometimes, too, with the public, you're always scanning, looking for a threat, looking for a threat. And shooting was a big part of it where you had to be, they wanted us to be very accurate shooters because if you're shooting, you might be shooting into a crowd. And you better be very, very, very good at shooting. And that was important. I loved shooting. I loved the art of it, the sport of it.

but I also, it was very stressful because you understood that every time you're doing something that my mind would go, okay, if that person's a bad guy or the threat, can I shoot him at that distance and not hit somebody else? And that would be very a difficult thing, kind of a nerve-wracking thing to think about sometimes. It's like you better be good. Yeah, take it into account your backdrop and all those other factors. Why did you decide to stop doing it? So it was about 13 years, almost for me. And I think your situation was different, and I think you didn't want to go.

And I think for me, I looked at it, and I loved what I did. But I think we change, we shift as people. And when I went in, I was young, and I wanted to do something else. And while I worked in the White House, I was around the White House press pool, and I was one of the few agents

that didn't mind working with the press pool because we had to stay with them and make sure they stayed in a certain area. Corraled. Corraled them. We would call it. No offense to the press pool, but we were like, oh, who's going to babysit the press today?

And one of the, NBC was there, and there was somebody from NBC who came up to me, one of the producers said, you ever thought about going on air to cover news or to cover national security and all that? And I hadn't. And they kind of planted that seed. And I was like, no, I don't know.

Thank you, but I'm not sure. And maybe a good year or two years went past, and it kind of stayed with me, and I remember looking around. So look, I love the job. But one of the things I noticed is that when you do that job so much, because all we were was that job, I felt that I was worried that all I would be was that job. And I'd see guys and gals leave or retire,

and they would struggle with their identity. Because that job became so part of who you were that I would see people leave, and they didn't realize, like, who am I now? And I remember I had a boss. great boss, he did that job for many years, and there's a point where they forced you to retire. And he didn't want to go. And they forced them to retire. And for six months, he kept coming back to the office. Nobody said anything to him. He would just come in and do paperwork and sit at the desk. And you could just see the struggle. And I would see, and I say guys, because it was mostly men on my job.

It was predominantly men in the service. I could see them struggle. And I knew that after I left, I didn't want to do security, private security, just wasn't my thing. So I kind of was like, you know, maybe this is an exit point. Maybe this is an opportunity to do something else. And I feel like we have one life, and maybe this goes back to my 9-11 thing, but you have one life. And I think I wanted to live as many lives within that one life as possible. And so it was terrifying.

I was like, all right, let me give this a try. And so I was like, I'll do news. I'll cover national security and I'll start doing that. And initially, my first move was to go to NBC to do that kind of like as a security analyst. Mind you, I have no idea. The same way I went with the blinders on into the police academy, I went into this new profession. And I just shifted and I said, you know, it's time for me to go. And it was weird. It was a struggle because I knew I was supposed to go, but I didn't want to go. And I actually, I gave my two weeks to my boss and I told no one else. And I told him, I was like,

please don't tell any of the other agents. Because I didn't have the heart. I knew if other, my colleagues came and they were like, dude, you're leaving. Where are you going? What are you going to do? I knew I would break and I knew I wouldn't be able to do it. And so I said, so my boss just knew in the higher ups and then I left and I said nothing to no one because I would have changed my mind. And then I ended up going into this other career field that I had to figure out and navigate. And I think we just grow, Andy. We change as people.

I just didn't want to be that one thing. And I had seen guys that were just like, this is what I am. And I was afraid. It's what you are right now. There's an expiration on everything from. cottage cheese to careers. And, you know, a guy serves in the military. Say you can do 30 years, which is an absurd amount of time.

But if you join in your 18, you're not even 50 yet. You better have a plan B. Or your plan B is going to be at the VFW telling stories that people are getting tired of hearing. Yeah, you get stuck. I mean, do you see... I do. I do see people struggle with it for sure. And I think the point you made is correct.

The people I see struggle the most are the ones who have so much of their identity associated with that one thing. It becomes who they are, not what they do. Yes. It's a dangerous place to be. Yes. Where'd you meet your husband? So he was in the Secret Service as well. Scandalous, Evie.

Scandalous. We're allowed. We're allowed. Actually, to be fair, I dated him because he ended up leaving the service and he went to Homeland Security. So I did not begin dating him until after he left. But in that organization, there were many agents who actually were married. Cool.

They didn't frown upon it at all. In fact, I think at least for me as a woman, having a husband who understood that world was very helpful. I was just going to say that. You guys had a shared understanding of the demands of the job. It is very hard. And you know what? I take that back, not just a woman. I would see the guys that I worked with struggle so much at home with their wives and their families and divorces because they could not understand the lifestyle.

It was such a hard lifestyle. And I think a lot of families or wives felt like you're choosing this job over us. And they didn't understand like you can't, when you got an assignment, you can't say, hey boss, can you, can we just, can we change this or I want to do dinner? I remember even before I got married, I went to go on a date. I had to book, I had to three weeks out, go to my boss. I need this day off, so I can make sure I had off so I can go on a date with someone. Someone.

It was a very, there was no such thing as sick leave. Sick leave was something you scheduled. I will be having the flu from December 20th to January 2nd. No, you showed up to work. You showed up to work. The only way you don't show up is either if you're in the hospital or on your way to the hospital or dead. You show up to work. You never, there's no such thing as calling in sick because everybody has a function.

And if one player doesn't show up, the whole thing gets jammed. So you schedule sick leave. But going back to my husband, he was an agent and I went and got my master's in forensic psychology. And it's actually, kudos to the service. They sent me to get it at the time when I was learning to do interviews and stuff. And so I had met him through that. He was an interrogator, but he was in the Midwest, in a flyover state somewhere else. And so I'd see him once in a while.

Our past would cross. But I knew him for years, and I didn't actually date him until many years later, until actually I was in the president's detail towards the end of my career. And so he was a polygraph examiner as well. So he had the same interrogation skills. Oh, Jesus. Thanksgiving dinner must be amazing. Sitting there just interrogating each other across,

like, oh, I noticed you looked up into the left. When you answered that question. That's awesome. I think probably there's a lot of strength to be gained for me, too, having the same background and understanding of those demands. Because if you've never lived that, I think it gets really, really difficult. I think it would have been hard for me to,

I think it would have been hard for that person. And I also think they might not have accepted me. Because look, when you're, and it's not one of the, it's, when you're a guy and you do this kind of job, people like, people, women look at it. They're like, yeah, wow, look at that. That's cool. And you're a girl. They kind of look at you like, what's wrong with you? Why would you want to do that?

I could see that. And it would have that people say that to me quite a bit. You know, why are you, even internally, like, why are you here? Yeah. So it's an interesting thing to kind of go through. But the best thing I ever did in my life. my life. Is it what drove you decided to write a book? I know it's not coming out until what, April. April. But guess who has one? You do. It's right here. It had to go through a pre-publication review

process with the service that took quite a while. Why did you decide to write a book? So I almost did not. I had been approached to write a book before, but everybody wanted, oh, tell us what it was like in there. Tell us about, and so essentially they wanted to tell all, and I said no. So this one is about I wanted to write a book that would help people. So I don't want to write a book about myself because it's just not who I am. I don't really like, oh, let me tell you what I did and who I was.

It just, that's a very difficult thing for me to do. But I wrote a book where there's a narrative, there's some stories about me that I share to help write the book to make it interesting for the reader. But I took essentially all the things that I was taught to, as far as protection, as far as resilience, strength, it's training, all the things that I learned that helped me deal with the world that we live in, to be a more stronger person, to be a more resilient person.

And I called the book Becoming Bulletproof because, in a sense, like, we all want to be that resilient human being. And my, like, every day we wore our bulletproof vests all the time because of obviously the nature of our work. And a lot of people don't realize Kevlar, which is what the bulletproof vest is made out of, it's fabric. And most people... Lared and layered and layered. Right. And so I thought of making the book in this way. Initially, everyone's like, oh, you should call it fearless.

And I really had an issue with that. I'm like, no, because there's no such thing. And people would meet me and say, oh, you must not be afraid of anything. And it's just not true. And so I think when you tell people, oh, you should be fearless. And when you feel fear, you think, oh, something's wrong with me. Nothing's wrong with you. It's one of the most natural emotions that there is.

You're supposed to. Yeah. It helps with evolution. too. Like I'm afraid of a lion on the Serengeti. Maybe don't go run with them. You know, the person who's not afraid of lions on the Serengeti is now dead. Their DNA did not pass on. It's true. Or even in a life thing, like when I left the service, I was afraid. I knew I had to do it, but I still was afraid. I still did it anyway. And so with the book, so I took all these different strategies and everything I learned as far as interviewing people, influencing people, strategies,

how to use them in your everyday life so that you can, so it can help you. So we split the book in three sections. The first part is protection. So it's the physical part where people always curious like, hey, how to protect myself, my family, my kids. There's that element of it. And then there's also the mental protection.

Because I think it's not just physically protecting yourself, but sometimes we have to be able to mentally protect ourselves from situations and people. I think the mental aspect will lead you out of the physical, requirement, like high 90th percentile at the time. I was flipping through the book. It just showed up yesterday. I definitely am going to read this, but I was flipping through it and looking at it,

and I like the layered approach to it, and a lot of the stuff that you had in there about reading body language, the warning signs. If you can recognize warning signs early, you don't have to get into physical altercation. If you can distance yourself, and almost every physical altercation is avoidable, in my experience.

Most people choose to enter into them because they want to either prove themselves or the bravado or they're hammered or they're making bad decisions. But I look at almost every violent confrontation I've ever been. Outside of my old job, yeah, I could have avoided every single one of them. But you can't if you're not paying attention. And that's one of the big things I think the book will help people with is give them some tools to recognize warning signs early. And then act on the warning sign. That's one thing I try to tell people. Just act on the warning sign.

You don't have to wait for the catastrophe. maybe leave before the catastrophe occurs. And then you find yourself and broiled it and you can't get out of it. Remove yourself from the situation. But you can't do unless you're paying attention. Yes. And I think people think that when you walk away, it's a cowardly thing to do. That's the smart thing to do.

Because if you sit and you engage with every buffoon that comes your way. Yeah, you're a moron. And you'll never get anything accomplished. Because there's plenty of them out there. It is, yes. So it's, so it was incorporating reading people, but then also assessing people because we have a lot of deceptive people that come into our lives. Obviously, sometimes what somebody says is not in harmony with what they mean. And so a lot of that polygraph training and my experience on my own and interviewing people and through a lot of the research that I've done through science, there's techniques and things that you can do that you can look out for, but you have to pay attention to people.

So it's like noticing the things people say. So, you know, there's the verbal part. Like there's certain things that people say that when you hear it, it's like a little red flag should go up to help you to inquire. Okay, why did this person answer this question this way? I asked them this, you know, what time did you come home last night? Oh, I usually come home around six. It's not what I asked you. I asked you what time did you come home last night.

But sometimes we'll hear that and we'll move on to the next question. Yep. And we don't realize that there's more things we should follow up on. And it's the nuances also of influencing people to talk to you. We don't get anywhere. I'll tell you this. I never got a confession. from anybody when I told them that they were going to go to jail,

when I told them they were a horrible person, when I was like, I'm going to- Bad cop. It doesn't work. It does not work. But there's other strategies you can use, like priming people. So priming is, for example, starting off a conversation in a way. Like every line I used when I entered an interview,

and even today, when I do a business negotiation or a deal, my first line's always rehearsed. I know what I'm going to say. And then you prime a sentence, for example, Andy, it's so great to meet you. You know, I'm open to having this relationship and sharing all this information. And I look forward to the opportunity of working together and cooperating and having an honest relationship.

So that sentence, even though it didn't flow as well, but in that sentence, I primed you with words, sharing, cooperative, together, open, relationship. You can prime people. That shit doesn't work on me. It does work on you. It doesn't. It totally works. I'm like, what is this?

You won't know. That's the thing. You don't. know when it happened. Look, this whole interview we were talking. And you don't realize it, but when you were doing this, I was doing this. I was watching that. Stuff doesn't work on me.

I sell everything. But it can work and it can really help people in just, it's not a tactical way. It's just in your everyday life. And I think for me, that was the goal of this book. Like, let me give you all the tools that I've learned over the years that have helped me and they can help you be more resilient and not be fearless, but live fearlessly. People who tell me they have no fear I get extremely concerned with because it tells me that probably one of two things is happening. They're either not paying attention or they're a sociopath.

It's bullshit. Yeah. Well, both of those things are dangerous. Yeah. Fear is, like I was saying, it's probably one of the most natural emotions you could ever have as a human being. And it's an alarm bell. Like, hey, maybe you should pay attention to this. Maybe this is dangerous.

Maybe you shouldn't do this. But you have to find a way to not. be paralyzed by it. It's about making smart decisions. Like I run, I run at night and I go to a park by my house and I go running there. And there are nights when I go, if it's dead quiet, I leave. I'm like, you know, this doesn't feel right tonight. I don't, I'm not like, oh, I'm going to go run. I'm so and so. It's like, no, this is a, you're paying attention to your environment. A bad situation. And I think it's also about the other thing with the book I talk about is about, I think we live in a world where everyone's like, oh, it should be stress free and this and that.

and I really have a different school of thought that stress is good. Stress is actually what makes you more resilience. There's a term for it. It's called the hermetic effect. And they use it in our training academies and where they put small amounts of stress on you over periods of time and they increase that stress. And that actually makes you more resilient. Buds is the same way.

If you look back at the last day of buds versus the first day of buds, you're able to tolerate stress. In any training pipeline I've been able to go through, breaking people with stress is super easy. You just overload them the first. first day and they can't handle it because they're not resilient or they haven't become inoculated to that level of stress, but you layer it an ounce at a time. And a few months later, they can handle an immense amount of stress, amount that would break them on the first day.

But you have to apply it properly in those protocols. All you just snap people. In training in Buds, where would people fall out or break them the most? It was usually physically based. It was a, it was, you know, I say, people say that Buds is all mental and there's a huge mental component to it, but you're still driving around in your human body, right? You're still navigating in a flesh machine. And there's a lot of requirements on the body and it becomes painful or you're tired or you're cold or you're hungry or the combination of all those things. And then it starts eating away at your brain. Like, I can't do this anymore. I can't do this for the next six months. So it was more in those moments of we would introduce

stress via physical activities and requirements in standards. and just watch people come unwound between the years. But it was in the beginning of training. Probably the first five or six weeks of training is the highest level of attrition. Because everything is overloaded. There are some situations that are very difficult to pass, if not impossible to pass,

because you have to learn how to deal with failure too. And just really stress the students out and look at them at the most microscopic level that we could and to try to basically drive them to the lowest point and then see the behavior that comes out because that's the true person. Yeah, because you don't have time to think. Yeah, you're too, you're just fried. I mean, Hell Week is a good example where they keep us up basically for five days straight.

And most of the attrition and training occurs in the first two days of that. And the people just become overwhelmed. I've always been fascinated with Bud's training. It is not very fascinating. It is actually, you know, we use the ocean, the sand, some telephone pole, some boats, lessons on teamwork, leadership, and just try to suppress human beings to their lowest levels and see whether or not they can still put their own desires aside

and function as a team, whether they're going to be selfish. I mean, you get people to that level where they're so fried and you'll watch them make selfish decisions instead of ones that benefit the team. You'll watch them shut down. They won't communicate. They won't give a shit about anybody other than themselves. And it's like, hey, this job is not for you.

Can you disqualify someone when they behave that way or do they have to actually do something? They have to quit, but most of the time that behavior will lead to it along the way. And the class will turn on those people as well. Like you'll have this boat crews of six or seven people and you'll just see the one person become ostracized because in those moments where they have a chance to be selfish, they'll take it and everybody else in their team sees it and they're like, oh, okay, motherfucker. And they chip away at that person and then they'll eventually quit. Until they leave.

Andy, I'm curious, with women, there haven't been seals that were women. It has only been open to women applicants, I believe now for the first five or six years. There have been two women. And I'm paraphrasing this, and I've heard this third hand. When you go to the Naval Academy, you have the opportunity they do stuff in the summers. And there's a, I think it's called mini-buds. It's for the officers who are looking to go down the seal pipeline. It is an incredibly condensed version.

and from my understanding two women have applied for and gone to the minibuds program, both of them deal hard or drop on request, which is a polite way to say quit. Quit. Yeah. What do you think it is? What part of the process do you think is the, I think it's going to be the physical element? It's physiological. The differences between the male, I do believe it's possible that there's a woman who could

graduate from the training program. And if they did, awesome. I have no issues with serving with a female seal. It wouldn't bother me at all as long as the standards were never moved. but there are vast physiological differences between the female body and the male body. And there's a ton of strength required, specifically upper body strength in buds. And it would, like I said, the woman's out there, whether or not that woman wants to be a seal, I don't know. And it will probably take a while to find that person.

It is correct. Like what you're saying, and I'm saying this being a woman, like there is, we are not physically created equally. Like for me to do pull-ups, like it took work. Yeah. My upper body strength is designed differently than the men's. In fact, you know, full disclosure, when I went to the service, my first week, I went there and I went through from the New York City Police Academy. And I remember sitting in the lunch hall was the first week and I was sitting with some of

the other New Yorkers. I'm eating and they were acting kind of weird around me. And one of the guys like, Teller, and I was like, tell me what? and they were kind of quiet and I was like, tell me what. And then one of the guys who was actually a friend, he's like, look, he's like, we don't want to upset you, but some of the other people here don't think you should be here. And I was just like, okay, you know, why? And, you know, my mind, I'm like, did I not say hello to somebody in the hallway when I walk by them?

Can you tell like I'm a fleep for a shot of water sometimes? That's where my mind went, you know, because I'm New York, so I'm like, I was probably maybe rude to someone and I didn't realize it. And he was like, no, he's like, they just feel that you shouldn't be here. And it was just the first week. And I was like, well, how can you make that assessment of me? I passed everything you guys passed. And then one of the guys was like, well, he's like, the physical requirements are not the same.

And he was right. And I went and I found out the men's requirements. And that's a super dangerous protocol. And this is all law enforcement, by the way. Yeah. The men's requirements, the standards are. different from the women. And so I went and I went to the PT instructor and I said, could you give me the sheet that shows the men's and the women's? And he's like, sure, and he gave it to me.

And at that point, I was like, I will train to meet the men's requirements. Because there's different levels. It was excellent. There's. Well, there should be no men or women's requirement. Because in the environment you're going to operate in out in the real world or the street, there is no requirement. You're not going to encounter somebody who says, oh, you're a woman, so I'm going to react. I'm going to give you 80%. it's you're going to get what you're going to get exactly and so i was i was like you know what i don't want to hear shit from anybody i got that i pinned it on the wall in my room and i was like i will train to meet all these requirements and so and that's what i did and so even like with pull-ups

truth be told i'd never had to do pull-up even in the olypd so i went to the service i couldn't do any pull-ups i had never done them before and i was just like i'm going to do them at the women standard i'm going to do with the men's standards. And I just did pull it every day to like, I couldn't feel my arms. Pull ups, pull ups, pull ups. And you just do it because it's like, I don't want, I don't want anyone to think I didn't earn it. But it's interesting because even then, most people will be like, you know what? Yes, I'll work with you. I'll take a door with you. I'll do whatever with you. But then there's always still going to be people that no matter what you do, because I remember when we did the final phase of training and we, they did like one of the things they tested up, like,

for example, pull-ups were saying, I went up there and I banged it. out, I might have banged out more pull-ups than half the class, half of my class. I beat a lot of the guys. Not one of those guys that had an issue with me came up and said, hey, good job, Pomparis. So sometimes some people will still have an issue. Yeah. But that's when you realize, like, that's when you know, that's on you.

Fuck those people. But that's my personal theory. Perhaps it wouldn't be the best, but that's my personal theory. But I do agree with you. Like, there is standards that are different, and there are times when even me as a woman, I would see someone else go through and I'm like, I don't. I don't think that's right. Because in the street, no one's going to care.

Yeah, you get what you get. I'm going to close it out. What would you like to close with? What would I like to close with? I don't know, Andy. You don't have to know. I'm interrogating you. That's not how you interrogate.

It's how I interrogate. Have you, I know how we're going to close it. Have you ever interrogated anybody? Yes, but none of the procedures that I use should be replicated. I think we went to very different interrogation schools. Yes, I didn't go to a school. I just needed information. Well, I don't know.

Well, this was awesome. Yeah, thank you for making the flight. Thank you from New York to Montana. From New York City to Montana, definitely. Yeah. It's actually very nice out here. I see what it's all about. It doesn't suck.

And when the book comes out, I'll make sure to put up another post about the book, because it's awesome, and I think people need the tools. That's one thing I think is missing, is a good set of tools for people that can apply. And I just, if I could change, I mean, there's a lot of things that I would change, but one thing I would certainly change about most people is just pay more attention.

Most people, vast majority of people, probably high 99.9% of people, I think they have good heart. I think they have good morals, but that doesn't mean that there are people who won't pray on that. And you're never going to, find them unless you pay attention. I think also, but even as good people, like even good people

make bad decisions. Even good people hurt people. Even if you look back in your life and I look back at my life and there's decisions we've made where it's like, you know what, I hurt this person. I did wrong to this person because that's just what we do. And I think with the book, like the idea with the book, it really just stayed in harmony with who I am is just to serve. And I was like, how can I serve? I don't want to just write a book to write a book. I don't want my name to be on the cover. I didn't care. genuinely, I didn't care. And even with this, you're like, oh, let's put your photo on it. I'm like, no, no, it'd be.

I don't want my photo anywhere. It can be in the back and a little small block, you know, where they put the author's photo, but that's not the point. It's just to be of service to people. It's like, look, I was privileged. Both you and I were very privileged to go through something, to be around very, like we were around some of the best people. Totally agree.

And the reason why I try to make brave decisions and I feel like I have courage in me is because I was around other people who were strong and had courage and pushed me. You know, one of the questions, sometimes people say, would you really take a bullet for someone or for the president? And I'd say, yeah. Well, first of all, they're like, oh, for that person or whoever person they were, you know, pointing out to, it's like, first of all, you don't, I never served the president.

You don't serve the person. You serve the office of the president. And what you're doing is bigger. It's a symbolic thing. and for me my mindset was like you know what we're all going to die all of us but to give your life and service to save another human being's life for me no better way to die that's a good ending thank you again to hello fresh for supporting the cleared hot podcast hello fresh shops plans and delivers step by step recipes and pre-measured ingredients so you can just cook eat and

enjoy. Get nine free meals with HelloFresh. Go to hellofresh.com forward slash clearedhot nine and use the promo code cleared hot nine. And also thank you to Away for sponsoring this episode, Cleared Hot. Away makes first class luggage at coach prices that allow you to charge your phone on the go. If you want to check them out, and for $20 off a suitcase, go to away travel. Go to away travel travel.com forward slash cleared hot and use the promo code cleared hot and that is all I have for this week. The last thank you, as I always try to do, is thank all of you out there who are taking the time to listen and taking the time to provide me feedback and help me spread the word. It wouldn't be possible to do the podcast without you. And tell you what, the podcast has been much

more cathartic for me than I ever thought it could be. I had no real intentions when I started at it. I can't really say I have the best direction in mind for where it's going to go, but I do know that I love doing it. I love sitting down and having conversations with interesting people and exploring my own thoughts and beliefs and ideas on topics.

And that's what I'm going to continue to do. So that's it. I'll, uh, I always want to say I'll see you guys next week, but I'm not going to. That's an audio only format. So, I guess you'll hear me next week. See you.

Thank you.