Danny Jones Podcast - #152 - Former FBI Special Agent Rips the Bureau | Jim DiOrio

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

Jim DiOrio spent 10 years as one of the most successful undercover agents in the FBI and another 15 as a Special Agent and international FBI interrogator. Danny  https://www.instagram.com/jonesdanny�� https://twitter.com/jonesdanny Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Special Agent Jim DiOrio, thank you for coming here. It's an honor to have you. It's my pleasure, man. I've watched all your episodes with Julian. You have a fascinating story. He and you and him together are just like magic. Awesome. I appreciate it, man.

It's an honor to be here. I listen to your stuff and I think it's absolutely incredible and inspiring for me. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. For people out there who don't know, give me a brief background on your history of the FBI and even before that. Yeah, sure. Son of a public servant. So my dad was a fireman in Newark, New Jersey, great dude.

Later became an arson investigator, and that's where I think I picked up some of my interrogation techniques. I was the youngest of three kids. And basically dad said, hey, I don't have a lot of money for college. So you're going to have to figure something out. So I became a decent baseball player, got some offers, Seton Hall University, you were assigned to play there. And then West Point came calling. And my grandmother, my Italian grandmother, answered the phone and took a message from the West Point

baseball coach. And it only relayed to my dad, hey, the Army called. So that was the message. And I was 17. So my dad's like, hey, look, I did that. You're not doing that. Then we realized it was West Point. Went for a visit.

Fell in love with it. And then went to West Point and had a great four years there. Met some unbelievable buddies. So I'm still tight with it today. Played ball there, studied there. Went to the Army. Became a combat arms officer. And then later an Intel officer serving overseas on several different deployments.

mostly intel work, which was fascinating to me. I knew that was my niche at that point and then continued on in the role of an FBI agent where was recruited by both sides. So it was recruited by the agency, recruited by the Bureau. I looked at both. I had a young family, and I realized that probably the Bureau was going to be the better spot for me to be around. And as it turned out, the irony of the whole thing is I spent probably more time overseas with the Bureau than I ever would have spent with the agency based on kind of my, I don't want to

call it a pigeonhole kind of thing, but when you become a respected interrogator, they're going to send you to the places where interrogations need to happen, especially after 9-11. So I spent the better part of 20 in the Bureau, loved it. Again, great friends, great contacts, and kind of a Hollywood-type career. I just loved it. And when it was time, I knew, got out. thought about going to work for some people, you know, kind of exclusively and then said, why the hell should I do that when I can work for a lot of different people and continue the impact?

And so that's kind of where I'm at today is continuing the impact through a small security consulting firm and married, second marriage, first marriage, still good friends with her, two kids just didn't work out because of the way things were going in my career. Inherited three-step kids, who I love. And I had my first grandchild on April the 1st. Oh, congratulations. So Big Sal is here. Nice Irish gift.

Big Sal. Big Sal is the man. So that's kind of, as I sit here in front of you, that's where I'm at. Life is good. In the simplest terms possible, could you simplify what the main objective of the FBI is? USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at U.

USAA.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. So if you look at our credentials, it's going to read that we collect evidence in cases that are criminal in nature in the domestic United States, right? That's, that's how it's going to look. That being said, we are an agency based on developing intelligence. And the better intelligence that you can go ahead and develop, the more cases you're able to clear, quote unquote. That's really what the Bureau does. It's being able to knock on doors and get people to tell you their wildest secret, something they never wanted anyone to know. We all have that thing. We all hold it close. Some of us are embarrassed about it. Some of us are giddy about our secret, right? But at the end of the day, I think that's what it comes down to, getting up, you know, every day,

having a passion to make an impact for the government, but in turn, mostly for the people that I serve. And I've always been a servant leader, and that's been kind of my approach. It's not, it's not the common approach in the Bureau, as we're seeing these days, and I know we'll talk about that later, you need to learn the job. You need to learn how to be an investigator. You need to learn how to establish yourself within the intelligence community, how to garner that information and then use it for the good, for the greater good. It seems like there's a very, very blurry line, especially the way you just described it between the CIA and the FBI. Can you can you explain the differences and the similarities?

They are the most talented intel collectors in the world. And pre-9-11, which was a huge wake-up call for the intelligence community, it was a huge wake-up call for all of us, you know, as American citizens, but we realized that we weren't communicating together

or working, kind of dovetailing and collaborating on casework. We were kind of competing. And the result is pretty clear. The result is 9-11. And after that, we became better at collaborating, but more so looking at individuals as individuals, as opposed to, well, the agency is that way, you know, or the FBI, the Bureau is that way. We became, hey, Jim and Joe are working really well together.

They serve for competing agencies, not the truth. And they're able to collaborate with other federal agencies, the IRS, you know, ICE at the time. the newly formed, you know, Department of Homeland Security. So I'd say the blurry line is really simply domestic versus international and their ability to long-term develop hearts and minds overseas, where we are more responsible for the crime problems in our areas. And you're seeing results now with the inability for local law enforcement and a lot of times has their hands tied.

the Bureau has become an agency of those just trying to get to the top without learning the job. My opinion, but I think there's many that would agree with me. Even current FBI agents would agree. And most of us who are retired can't believe some of the decisions that are being made or not being made at the top. And if you think about the political appointments that go hand in hand together with the Bureau is a 10-year appointment, CIA is a 10-year appointment. right it's supposed to be a political but they're political appointments and they don't come from within the ranks i can't remember the last fbi director that came from the ranks is louis free who served in the mid actually the early to the late 90s the greatest director in the history of the

FBI in my opinion really unbelievable just a people person it was a federal prosecutor he was an fbi agent before that and then rose through the ranks as an fbi agent to become the director just inspiring just by being around the man you understood that he had your back but he also understood the way the job was supposed to be done he stayed in his lane effectively effectively stayed in his lane and i think one of the problems now correct me if i'm wrong is it seems like every time there's a new president there's a new head of the fbi and the cia very how why does that happen well i mean sometimes it's the decision of that director to step up down based on, hey, look, I've done my time with, there's very few crossovers from presidencies.

You have to go back to Hoover. I think crossed eight presidents in the beginning. Well, we know his problems, you know, along the way. So laughable, but, you know, it was his baby, right? He started it from day one as a 29-year-old man. But I think that I think the issue is a lot of times there's an agenda based on whoever the attorney general or the director of the national security. agency has in that White House. And they effectively target different areas of the world or they

effectively target different crime problems. And based on that, they bring the person in that they think can best develop those programs. And a lot of times, like I said, it doesn't work out because they're political appointees. They have no back. It takes two or three years for them to establish themselves among the rank and file. By the time they do that, they're kind of winding down in a presidency. They've been appointed a point. So now they have to start thinking about, well, if this guy gets reelected, and it does happen. They do think that way. Look at Jim Comey. The man's a disaster. Even the presidency is like a, it's a transient position. It usually is every four years as a new president.

And the best case scenario, it's eight years. So it seems like, and then if you're automatically going to tie the head of the CIA and the head of the FBI to the president, that means these people are changing all the time. And meanwhile, you have people, you know, congressmen and senators that can stay in office forever. Ever. Yeah. It seems almost counterintuitive to getting anything done in the country. It's a great point. And I always look at continuity of operations, right? It's something that's preached in the military.

It's even preached nowadays in corporate America, you know. And we don't do a great job when I say we, I mean the Bureau. And I'm sure the agency has similar concerns, as does probably all other federal law enforcement or federal intelligence organizations. We don't do a great job kind of looking the one, the three, the five, the 10-year plan of a director. We just kind of come in and we react at first. I'm talking from a director's perspective from what I've seen. They react to issues that are being brought up to them through the ranks.

And remember, the people who are achieving rank or the people that most likely didn't learn the job, but they've always had the aspiration to go forward, to go up. That's a problem. So the rank and file that you That's human nature. It's human nature. And the Bureau, the rank and file, there's no issue with the rank and file. I mean, onesies and twosies here and there like every other organization.

There's no issue. They're going to do their job. I mean, you know, I always call it a two-thirds rule. I mean, there's going to be two guys or girls that really do the job. And one guy that's just going to sit around and say, look at my gun and badge. But we accept that. We accept that.

That's part of the way it is. My point is, I think there's not enough time placed on this rank and and file agent by the director to say, what does that person need? Not all this bureaucracy and trying to please different agendas on the House or on the Hill or in the House or what the President wants or what the Attorney General wants. Let's mold the Bureau into what it's supposed to be. Establish and collect evidence for crimes against the United States of America. That's it. No political agenda. We shouldn't be out there preaching prosecution or preaching. reaching non-prosecution as the director of the bureau, as we saw clearly in the Clinton case,

in the Hillary Clinton case. Right. The summer 2015, you know, I mean, Jim Comey, disastrous. And we've never really, we've never taken a step forward since that. And we can talk about some solutions that I think, you know, of course, it's just the Oreo, you know, but I feel strongly about some of these solutions. And who knows? Maybe down the line one day, I'll get a chance to put those into play.

Yeah, it seems like there's a, uh, conflict between getting results either politically or trying to hit milestones, whether it be climbing the ranks or budget, getting approved for budgets, similar to how cops have quotas to get tickets. It seems like there's a conflict between actually trying to serve justice and just get results as if like to service your bottom line rather than to provide justice or to get justice to the people that deserve it. Yeah, I think you make a great point there, and I think a lot of it has to do with the changing agenda of the Bureau,

which is no longer a responsive agenda. It's a reactive agenda. Okay, all of a sudden, health care is the issue this week or this year, and you're going to get preached at by every FBI supervisor. We need to make some more health care cases. Regardless of whether or not there's a need, that's the focus of this new attorney general, this new U.S. attorney that just was appointed by the president

in the district in New Jersey. Or, hey, you know what? This week it's going to be mortgage fraud. So we got to get cranking on mortgage fraud. Hey, you know what? If we do well on mortgage fraud, there's money that's coming in for new cars and for new travel

and to be able to go to seminars. That should not be driving the FBI. Which should be driving the FBI as a view of your area and there's 56 field offices in the United States. Okay. And then there's another 20 plus what we call legal out of shays in different countries. By the way, established by Louis Frey,

greatest thing that ever happened to the Bureau because it gave us the opportunity to talk hand and hand with the CIA every day, right? And those ambassadorships that are important to how we go about doing our business and how we go about making cases. So if you think about those 56, each of those 56 field offices is represented by a United States attorney who's an appointed official. And that person has an agenda to move forward. Look at Mr. Christie. Look at Chris Christie. He was the U.S. attorney in New Jersey. There was never, there was never a goal. of just being a great U.S. attorney and looking at everything

that around him and looking at the crime problems, he focused on political or public corruption, what we call public corruption, because he knew if he could make a stance on public corruption, it would be a platform that would launch him to the governorship, and ultimately he thought he was going to be the president of the United States. And then we saw him kind of cowering behind Donald Trump on the stage when he didn't get any appointment.

And he claims that it has to do with Jared Kushner, hating him, and because he went after Kushner's saying, he didn't do shit. We're the ones that went after the Kushner. We're the ones that went after Torcelli. We're the ones that went after every political, you know, corrupt, corruptly political figure in New Jersey. Not him. He just stood there and had results based on his rise to the top.

So that in itself is an issue. If you think about, hey, you've got a politically motivated U.S. attorney. You've got some politically motivated people at the top of the bureau. It's a bad combination. Could be devastating. And we're seeing results of that. What do you think is going on with the whole Trump race? how did this all happen?

And do you think it's real that the White House had no idea and the Biden had no idea? Is that possible? How close is Biden is the president to making calls like this? Well, I think you've got to look at this president, but somebody knew, right? So I'm just not sure if this guy has the mental capacity to digest and analyze. But yeah, somebody there knows. There's no doubt in my mind about that. to have a sitting attorney general bring this to a federal judge and say we have enough for a search warrant,

we have probable cause that establishes this crime, which again, we'll never see that affidavit, which is what we need to see in order to establish what the charges were potentially going to be. We're going to see this. Here's the inventory of what they took or what they didn't find, whatever. Now, in order to do that, you have to convince a federal judge that, in fact, tried everything else in your power in order to get these documents that they need it. And I'm very cynical about the fact that if you're a good agent, if you're an agent who can walk in and say, hey, look, you know, and this is the way I would approach you. Look,

let me tell you something. I've got this subpoena forthwith, which means I can't leave here today without these 11 documents. And I have a family, my kids playing literally. I know, I know how to kind of work it and get the feeling. Put the finger on the pulse of that attorney that's representing the Trump family and say, are we going to get these today? Or are they there? Am I barking up the wrong tree? Didn't we ask for these before?

I just want to know because I don't want to waste a lot of time. That's the way to do it. But the fact of the matter is they wanted to make a spectacle. When I say they, I'm not sure which side it was. What do you mean by that? Well, you can go either way on this, right? You can think about midterms of coming up. Democrats are obviously trying to divert attention to the failures over the course of the last year and a half or whatever it is.

So they're going to try to dirty this guy up so that he never establishes himself again as a potential Republican candidate. One way to look at it. Definitely a logical thought process and something that most Americans probably are thinking that way. Here's my thought. What if you're the Kushners and Ivanka Trump? What if you're that family? And you say to yourself two things. First off, we're losing a little ground here.

You know, he's kind of not, doesn't have a platform to pop off. He's not getting, you know, views either way as being the right guy, the wrong guy, or the party guy, right? What if we push this on him and allow him to, in fact, accept those rushing back to his side? This is my conspiracy theory, but I got to believe it. You know where Kushner and his wife were that night that this thing was served? No. eating dinner in Minneapolis at a quiet restaurant by themselves. Somebody needed to talk about Mirago, right?

Somebody needed to talk about the layout of the house. You cannot get a search warrant without explaining explicitly that federal judge in writing and in person. Because there's a briefing that goes on with this. Here's what the house looks like. Now it was like 108 rooms or something crazy. You got to know exactly where this stuff is, what the house looks like, what the veneer is, what the paint. is what the stucco walls look like. You have to know that.

Who the hell else? Besides Secret Service, who the hell else is going to know? Family members. My conspiracy theory. Secret Service never do that. They would never do that. So you think there's a rat on the end of that?

I do, but I think it's a, it's a pointed rat. And, you know, it's somebody that made a decision, a conscious decision. I can't tell you how many times I've heard

that there was no talking to him. The daughter would go at him. Ivanka would go at him about keeping his mouth shut, stopping the tweets. Just settle down, relax. Nope, he knows better, right? And I'm not either way. I'm not a supporter.

I'm not a hater of Donald Trump. You know, I think we need to find the right mix for a president who's going to take us through the next 10 years. I worry about my grandson, what it's going to look like. But I think they figured out a way to kind of do both. Quiet him down and at the same time give him a platform to discuss going forward. Look at this. They found nothing.

I'm not charged. They tried with the January 6th. tried with the impeachment. They tried with this search warrant and they can't get me. It's almost, you know, it's endearing. It's endearing to the party and the people who are in the middle. Yeah. It's weird. It makes, it almost makes his base just run to his side even more. It seems like it helps him more. I think if anything, that it's just going to solidify any decision if he was ever on the fence to run for president again. I totally agree. And that's, listen, it's out there. And I probably have, you know, buddies in the bureau that are like, what the hell is a matter with

you, but they're thinking it. They're thinking it because they know what it takes to get that warrant. And in his statement, I think he said that they, the FBI demanded that he'd turn off his security cameras, his attorneys couldn't be there to witness it. What else? There was a bunch of the crazy thing. Why would they ask to turn off the security cameras? And then he cracked the safe. And there was nothing in the safe except his passports, which they took. Which they took. You know, what you could have asked to be turned over and reviewed and have a judge look at, why are we asking, why are we taking these passports? Why are we preventing this man from traveling overseas?

What is the reason? And now he's suing the DOJ, right? And he should. You know, he should. That's ridiculous. We didn't take passports from some people that were known criminals. We left them with their passport. You know, I mean, it makes no sense to me.

You know, there's a lot about this that just reeks of, you know, worst case scenario, corruption, the best case scenario or judgment. So he's talking about some sort of watchdog or something that he wants to get. implemented somebody that sort of like watches it. I don't understand any of this. I'm sure Julian would know what he wants to have some sort of person in place to monitor whatever they have at the DOJ or whatever kind of evidence or whatever the documents are to make sure that they don't release it to the public or to make sure only the right things are released to the public. But I think he's suing for this specific reason. Yeah. And I think that's probably the right move because you're not sure who's anything that doesn't go hand in hand with um i shouldn't say hand in hand but

anything that's questionable that can question that can that can that can be an issue for national security can be an issue for his own personal security can be an issue for anybody within his organization needs to be closely monitored closely scrutinized and then redacted if necessary i mean we do in the military you know we're doing the military if we're on a special uh i mean Jack Carr is a perfect example. Seale Team 6 guy wrote a bunch of books. If you listen to his books, it's funny you're listening to them. And they're great books, and I love it.

Reading it, you don't get the true thing. But if you're listening to the book, every other, like in a paragraph, maybe every 10 pages, and there they were in, redact it. And the guy just says redact it. So because, you know, the Navy reviewed it and said, no, you can't share this stuff. But it's kind of a similar deal where you, and I think that's what he's calling for. Hey, let's make sure we're not redacting stuff that's going to be mean. meaningful to the actual explanation of why they tried to get this search warrant and why it failed.

So it's almost like an inspector general role, which I'm a full proponent of an IG in any organization, because I think it's somebody that doesn't have sides that's independent, you know, outside, even independent prosecutors are not independent, let's face it. They're brought in as an hired gun. You know, so, but if you have a true inspector general, it's going to come in, look at the problems, look at the problems with this case, look at the problems with other cases, look at the problems with a program, that national security or the FBI is running and say, look, here are the four or five things you need to get right. You're not doing it right.

And I'm being as objective as I can with you. Stop being, you know, do this the right way. Get it done. I think that's what he's kind of calling for. And you're always confused with any messaging that he puts out. And I think it's also almost comical that the FBI can raid Mar-a-Lago, but no one's saying anything about raiding. anybody to get Geelaine Maxwell's list.

Isn't that the truth? How powerful would that list be? Are you kidding me? Right. I mean, that could expose everyone that's anyone. Yeah. You know, I mean, yeah. And I mean, the fact that she, the fact that they hammered her,

and I know that for a fact, hammered her leading into her ultimate plea and her ultimate, you know, sentencing. And she never provided that information. that's that's some scary stuff that's some scary stuff but never never did we try to say we need to get this stuff it needs to be there never i can tell you that for a fact they never pursued that they thought they could flip her they had confidence in themselves to be able to say oh we're going to get her to tell us what she needs no she's not she's a hardened person do you think there's

somebody above that someone that that's above the FBI or the CIA that's saying like don't press on it just leave it alone we have a plan like it could it could somebody come in and sort of like take the reins away from? I do believe that. Really? I do believe that. And who, what kind of person would that be? Who would be the one that would do something like that?

So it's a mix between DOJ proper. So your attorney generals and your, you know, U.S. attorneys. And it's a mix between them and the hierarchy of the Bureau for the good of the country, for the good of national security. Listen, like the big thing, one example of it is this. We are not, and this is the other thing that's, crazy too. We are not allowed up to I think six months prior

to any election. Are we allowed to interview or even serve a subpoena on a political campaign, a political candidate, a party going into an election. Period. The fact of the matter is they borderline

this to the day serving the search warrant to the day. Yeah, that's pretty fucking wild. Somebody's thinking about that. Somebody's looking at calendar and saying, well, we can't do it on that day. So we have to do it this day, this day, this day, you know? That's sinister shit. That's not just following the evidence. I'm not following the evidence on that. I'm making a statement. I'm just making some type of statement. If I'm following the evidence, you know, many times I would go or I'd bring my guys

to go to where you're starting and say, hey, we want to do this. We're really excited. Look what we found. Look at this evidence. We interviewed this guy. We got this wire tap. Hey, we want to go. And then they reminded, hey, we're 45 days out from the, oh, damn. Yeah, I forgot about that. I wasn't saying like, hey, oh, we got to get this in by. September 1st, hurry up. Right. Never. It was always follow the evidence.

That's what we're missing. We're missing that factor, and somebody's pushing those buttons at the top. How much, what year was it when you first entered the FBI? So it was a, I had kind of a hybrid situation. So I was crossover between the military and the FBI. Okay. Back in the early 90s. Working a very specific undercover case up in Providence, Rhode Island.

So kind of, I would say became an effective investigator really working on stuff in 98-ish, is when I really started investigating cases. I'm curious to how much of an influence and how much technology and social media has changed the FBI since the early 90s to today. Well, I can tell you, it's probably our greatest investigative tool and I'm probably giving up information to bad guys. who are like, shit, I'm going to head and erase my profile. But honestly, it's people don't care, right? Because people are exposing or people are trying to get the acknowledgement from others and the validation by saying, look at my life. Look how wonderful my life. And it's proven, right?

You see mental health issues are based on social media. Well, it's just so they can't help themselves from posting associations. Hey, I'm, you know, here's my friends. I can, it's one of the greatest open source tools in the history of the world. because I can go in and figure out that you and you and you, we're connected. Why are we connected? Well, here's another one's connected.

You can comment on something. Oh, my God, there he is. I use that to today. I use it today. It's the greatest thing ever, right? So it's caused a couple of different things. First off, it's caused laziness from what I said, getting up and knocking on doors.

That's the key to making a case. It's not reviewing social media. Oh, that's the way to verify, to corroborate a fact based on the fact, oh, you know what? Yeah, he was at that house. Look, he is. Here's a picture of him with a car. whatever you know so i think it's changed it in the way it's made this generation of FBI agents

less likely to go out and confront and confront with evidence confront with facts first thing i'm going to do if i'm going to go out and interview you i'm going to know everything about you every question i ask you i'm going to know the answer to because at the end of that time i'm going to be able to go ahead and put a put a meter on you and say yeah pretty much he's 70 percent there we got or i'm going to say this this person has not told me a single thing that's truthful and i'm And I'm going to know that. And the next time we meet, I'm going to throw one or two of those things out at you. The basis of interrogation is knowing what the person's going to say.

Now, you're explaining, you're kind of talking about the basics of social media, like looking at somebody's profile or their pictures or their comments. Right. But how much more access does the FBI or the CIA get behind the curtain? Like going down to the nitty-gritty of tracking location. that's something that everybody worries about. We always joke about that. Like, oh, we can't talk.

The FBI's listening. Or there's memes about talking to your friends about shit. And then the FBI just jumps into your text. But how much access do they have, whether it be into social media or into tech companies like Apple to get behind the curtain? So two different areas, right? So if you look at Apple, Apple's so resistant to,

and it's not that they're anti-law enforcement, but they're so resistant to providing information. without court orders. And even at that, it's difficult to get information. You look at the San Bernardino shootings, right? We tried critical times. You were involved with that, right? Critical times. I was definitely involved. Yep, definitely spent time consulting on that as an agent. So if you think about that to us, to us as the law enforcement community, we're like, what the fuck, you know, you got to help us out. This is terrorism act that's going on. It's happening. Right. But to them, it's a different story.

It's freedom, right? It's the ability to have that security blanket, the ability to be protected, you know, ability to be protected by the Constitution that it lies on. And I get that, right? So that's one side. So it's still very resistant. Apple is still very resistant. Now, that being said, there's guys in this world, there's talent in this world that can do whatever

the fuck they want to do, whenever they want to do it. You're talking about people outside of the agencies? And that's why we have a hell of a time keeping our cyber specialists in the Bureau. So we mostly, well, we'll use some bad guys to do it. How long can they last? They have a shelf life, right, six months before they go bad again. But the good guys, the guys who have learned it and just get it, we can only pay them $150,000 a year.

Right. That's a month. That's a month at different companies. So they're gone. There's no way to attract that. Wow. Right? So that skill is there. It's there, and I've seen it work.

And I've been fortunate enough to be on the right side of it working, to be able to help people and impact people's lives as a civilian, right? Go to the social media side. It's simple. I mean, it is not a difficult act to be able to get deep and down and dirty. There's nothing that's not available. Now, when you say it's easier to use bad guys because they're more proficient or they're better what they do because they make a lot more money,

What kind of tactics do you use to convince the bad guys to work for you? Because obviously they know that you know that they're bad guys. Leverage. It's the same. It's like any other crime. It's having leverage. It's being able to say there there's not a lot of bad guys and girls out there that are going to come and say, hey, I'm a true patriot.

I want to help. What they're going to do is say, oh, my God, I'm facing 20 years in jail. I'll help. How long do I have to help? It's always a negotiation. You want to choke them, but at the end of it, it's negotiation. Hey, listen, I'll help you with, you know, for six months, but would you just stop looking at my stuff? That's so, that's so crazy.

You just stop looking at my stuff. Many plea deals are made based on that. Listen, we have this, this, this, and this, but we kind of are starting to look here. What do you think? Well, if I help you, we'd stop looking there. And then, you know, we don't say it up front, but talk to the U.S. attorney and say, hey, we got a good, this is a good deal. We're going to stop a lot of bad here.

and we're going to know, we still know about the other stuff. So we keep it in the back pocket. So it's the same thing with a bad guy with a cyber guy. Hey, listen, we need help. We're getting destroyed by the Russians. We're getting destroyed by Pakistan. We're getting destroyed by the Chinese. You're able to help us.

Yeah, but, you know, and they play it. Like, well, we know about these three things. And they've probably got 10 more that we don't know about, but we get to know about. And so we make a deal. Wow. We make a deal. And that's the way it works.

That's the way of the world. That's so crazy. It's crazy. So when it comes to just on social media companies aside, how much influence, we talked about this before we started, but Zuckerberg was just talking about how the FBI basically came to them and said that there's some Russian propaganda going on with the Hunter Biden. This was during the election between Biden and Trump. With the Hunter Biden laptop, we need you to suppress the story.

about the Hunter Biden laptop and they did. Twitter completely suppressed it. I think there was New York Post was the publication that got it completely. Yeah, that authored that woman who wrote the book to laptop from hell or whatever it was. Right. So how much, how much influence do agencies like the CIA or the FBI have over these companies to make these kind of decisions? You know, I have a hard time when it comes to news. Yeah. I have a hard time with that, you know, thinking about that happening because I have I have some colleagues. some former life colleagues who I've talked to about that, who are in that industry. And I've said to them, like, hey, I really like to talk about ways to kind of incorporate

your world with my world. And this was back when I was in the bureau. Can we do that? And they were very reluctant to have those conversations, extremely reluctant. So when I hear that, in fact, you know, someone from Facebook or meta or whatever it's called these days or somebody from Twitter or somebody from Instagram or TikTok, whatever, would come and get cooperation, you know, or actually talk to the bureau and say, yeah, we're good. I have a hell of a time kind of biting that off.

I just do. I had one interaction with Zuckerberg. I'll tell you a quick story. Oh, really? So we have a group of guys and girls that are all service academy graduates. Each year we take a trip and we kind of learn some good stuff. So back years ago, I was still in the bureau, we went out to Seattle and we got a chance to visit Google. We got a chance to visit Facebook.

And we had a great time. We met a lot of good people. And we got briefed by Zuckerberg himself. And everybody's telling me, Diario, shut your mouth, shut your mouth, shut your mouth. I can't. I have a hell of a time shut my mouth. So there was a, there was this case, or not a case, I shouldn't say it. But there was always this urban legend in the city of Newark, New Jersey.

In fact, where we believed that Facebook provided, or whether it be Zuckerberg himself, or Facebook as an entity or some LLC provided to the city of Newark, $100 million. for their education system. At the time, Corey Booker, who's now a U.S. senator from New Jersey, was the mayor of Newark. And there were always allegations.

Any time you have a city like Newark or Trenton, there's always allegations of corruption, how that person got there, what their background is, whether they were a gang member, always that. So I always filtered that out, you know, along the way.

But for some reason, I just was tempted as hell during this meeting. And so he was like, Like any more questions and everybody, I could feel the eyes and everybody. I said, hey, any idea where that $100 million went that you gave to Cory Booker? And he just walked out. No fucking way. Holy shit.

And everybody was like, you asshole, you know? And I'm like, well. And I caught some shit back in the bureau because I was still in the FBI. And they're like, hey, we heard about this thing because I think he might have called somebody that he knew in the bureau. And I got called in. You know, I got put on the carpet and did you say it? And I've never been one to say, no, I didn't. says absolutely and they said like that's pretty funny but you're suspended you know no way oh my yeah yeah

two weeks off yeah two weeks off so so so i'll tell so why we're on that two weeks off i got another two weeks off you'll love this one so christie was the u.s attorney you know heavy set dude actually smart man heavy set dude political aspirations still out of the yes so we had made we had convicted uh via trial a guy who was an authority like a utilities authority chairman who was basically using the utilities authority as a bartering system to get worked on on his house, his kids' houses, his relatives' houses. And he couldn't understand that it was wrong. So we went to trial and we convicted him. It happened to be Chris Christie's 100th conviction in public corruption. So it was a big deal. You know, so we're kind of hanging out. And I go back to you as attorney's office and I'm talking

and I'm telling jokes. And all these guys and girls are very young Ivy League educated lawyers who loved hearing stories. And I'm telling story after story and joke. And they're laughing at everything, laughing at everything. And I go, hey, I got one more for you. And they're like, what's that? I said, how come the New York Yankees can't sign any more free agents? And they're like baffled. What do you mean?

I said, because that fat fuck Chris Christie took all the pinstripes for his last suit. And silence. Silence. So I go, he's right behind. You know, so I turn around. He's like, hey, get your stuff and get out of it. So I'm like, who I tried to apologize. He didn't want any part of it.

Get my car. I drive back, long drive back to the office. You know, it's only about three miles, but it felt like it was about. two years. Get back there. I walk up. Secretary's like, hey, the boss wants to see you.

So I walk in. Who was the boss? It was just great, great dude. I don't know. I don't want to say his name because he's still working. Okay.

Great dude. We got along great. And I walk in and he's like, say it. I'm like, you know, I did. He's like, funny as hell.

You're suspended. To this day, and I know Chris. So I see him from time to time. He'll just look at me and just shake his head. Like, he still hasn't gotten over.

Yeah. Oh my God, man. I can just see it playing out. Do you love, what do you think about how Julian posts those clips of you talking and he uses Breaking Bad, the guy from breaking? I love it. I love it. That's it. My man, Hank.

Have you seen that show? Oh, I love that show. Such a good show. It's a great show. And I want to get that. How true is that? How true is that guy's life? How relatable is that?

I mean, not the story. I'm not talking about the story. I know it's not true. I was fictional. But, yeah. Like the situations that Hank was in with his family. and dealing with the morals of family versus... It's not.

You know, it's just not. It's just no one's bigger than the Bureau. Nobody's bigger than the DEA. You know, those guys that have attempted to do that. You look at the Strax of the world who wrote a... I don't understand what the hell he's doing, but look at the strokes of the world. You look at the Caves of the world.

Look at the Comies of the world. So they think they're bigger than the Bureau. They're not. So Hank is a guy who thinks he's bigger than the DEA, right? So he thinks he can just run ramshot around the world. And look what happens to him. He winds up, you know, six feet under. So, but I mean, the aggressiveness and the, I guess, the high level of impact and the charged up way of doing the job, there's definitely people like that.

There's definitely people that never turn it off and they're fabulous. They're fabulous. And they stay on this side of the line. There's no gray. You know, there's limited gray areas here domestically with the Bureau. I'm limited. There's no. And we've had a couple agents go bad along the way, right?

But overseas, you know, it becomes a little bit more. You're on presidential orders and you're part of a civil affairs team or you're part of a special operations team. There's stuff that happens. It just does. It just does. And it's necessary. Presidential orders is a powerful piece.

You report to one person, president. You know, that's it. So missions are based on that. And they're very, very specific, very, very organized and, you know, very objective. oriented. So a guy like Hank, you know, I mean, it's a great character. I mean, I love it. And, you know, he reminds me of myself in many ways, but definitely not, you know, in that former fashion. Yeah. You know. You worked on a variety of cases. Like not, you worked on a lot of cases, a great number of cases, but you also worked on a wide spectrum of types of cases and crimes. Yes. Over your career,

in your experience, what was the most difficult part of your job? Yeah, I think the big, the difficult part of the job is being able to present to federal prosecutors logically and systematically your case and close it down, right? Close, put a lid on that case and then evidence and say, you must prosecute this. It's a difficult piece because a lot of times as an agent, you get lost. You know, you get lost amongst, hey, this is exciting. Look, they make movies about the job I did. They make movies about it.

And it's that good. It's that good of a job. Once you get to the point where you understand what the proofs have to look like and how they have to fit into that federal crime and not saying fit in, like, in other words, hey, we just manipulate them in. Then you become a better agent and the job becomes less difficult. There's a lot of people that go through their career and never learn that. They just are always off on the short.

shiny nickel chase. So I think the hardest part of the job for me and for the regular normal FBI agents that I was is just staying focused. Staying focused on the crime at hand and collecting the evidence and going wherever the evidence led you, not fitting the evidence into the crime, but taking the evidence and sometimes there was many times, for as many cases as I made, there's many times that I would just say to a prosecutor, hey, and I would talk to my prosecutors every day, sometimes five times a day. And I would say, look, I don't think we have enough. I don't think it makes sense. I don't think this guy did it. I don't think we're going down the wrong bath here. We need to be going down this way. That's the difficult job. It's kind of

swallowing some pride, especially coming out of the military. I came out of the military. I was doing some crazy stuff. Yeah. Right. Stuff I'll never talk about. I mean, I think Sheila probably knows more than anybody else, my wife, right? But stuff I'll never be able to talk about. So then you come into this and you're kind of like dealing with, you know, a brand new wire fraud where the guy ripped off $110,000, but you're actively pursuing it. You realize you don't have enough evidence for $110,000 fraud. That drives you crazy. That's the difficult part.

But then you get to the point where you say, well, I'm only going to go where the evidence takes me. And you'd be surprising how many avenues that opens to the most important thing in the FBI, source development. Human, what they call human intelligence, being able to sit with someone and say, look, you know, you've owned what you did. It's time to become a part of Team America. And it's time to do the right thing. And there's time for you to do that. That's a tough conversation. But I used to tell them, the worst day is this day.

When I have the handcuffs on you, this is the worst day of your life. But we're going to get better starting this afternoon when you start telling me because you're going to feel like I'm your preacher and I'm your therapist and I'm everybody in between. And we're going to go with this and we're going to take your information. And if it's good, we're going to work with it. So that's the best part of the job. What was the mix for you as far as work nationally versus internationally?

So I would say probably different time periods of my career. There were times when international was 100%. There was times when domestic was 100%, you know. And so, but I would say overall it's probably a 50-50 mix. If I looked at my 20 years plus my years before, plus my five or six years, when it was kind of a hybrid situation, I'd say it's 50-50 mix, 50-50 split. You know, I was better versed at being able to, I had more contacts overseas than most people did, just because I was there.

So I would be able to kind of say, hey, I think I can run with this because I think we'll be able to get more effective and efficient information. We're not going to have to serve what they call MLATs, so they're like, basically their requests for international banking accounts.

I would be able to kind of cut through that and get that stuff quicker. And then we can kind of review and see what the deal was. That was based on context. So I would say the mix was probably definitely, I would say overall 50-50, 50, 50. At any point were you considered CIA?

Julian asked that same question. Well, you know, I mean, listen, you cross over, right? So sometimes you're not even sure what you're doing. Like, I mean, you're kind of like, well, that guy's over there and that guy's there. I kind of know that guy, but I really don't know that guy, but I'm talking to both of them about, you know, the same issue. So you've got to assume. And then basically being recruited out of the Army by the CIA and the Bureau at the same time. You know, you start to, they don't lose track of that.

They know the people they talk to, and they know the people that they were looking to kind of, you know, nurture and bring along in the hopes that they would come and, you know, serve as a case officer somewhere. You know, so it's interesting. It's an interesting dynamic. But I don't know, but I'm sure it happened. But I'm sure you worked with CIA, active CIA, that oversees or wherever. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, a lifeline. They're a lifeline.

And this was, was this mostly, this was mostly post-9-11, correct? Mostly post-9-11. I had, I probably could think of at least one job pre-9-11 that was totally different. It wasn't a terrorism-based job. It was a, believe it or not, was like a complex financial fraud case. And so we had some interactions there. Public corruption will always kind of, you'll see some things in public corruption where it, it, it, it, ties back to international, you know, accounts and or dealings. Right. But, yeah, after 9-11, it became all about following the money, you know, trying to reduce the number of those here that were looking to do harm and then trying to decentralize

those there that were looking to do harm. So that became the focus. And like I said, we started talking so much more and communicating so much better. And I felt like at that time, the leadership was better because they understood their mission. They had to actually sit back and do the job, not worry about, well, if I do this and I write up this and say, you know, oh, maybe I'll get promoted to this level. That wasn't happening as much. Are you familiar with the case, the FBI case regarding Huawei, the Chinese tech company that installed their equipment on cell towers along the corridor. There's a highway

in like middle America around like Missouri a long highway that's that's got cell towers all along it and how I sent you the article Austin if you could pull it up this is yeah this is it right here what's the title of this called yeah FBI investigation determined

Chinese made Huawei equipment could disrupt nuclear arsenal so basically there's a there's a highway that goes along that corridor through like Missouri Montana which has cell towers that the companies, the telecom companies that

have the cell towers, they're just worried about their bottom line. So they got the cheapest, most effective equipment, which was this Chinese company. And apparently they're using this, their equipment that's installed in these cell towers to spy. And these cell towers happen to be extremely close to ICBM sites. If you love diving into culture and comedy, like on Danny Jones podcast, playoff hockey is right up your alley.

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No, no, definitely not. But it's a crazy thing that even after the investigation, this happened like 10 years ago, I believe. And they still haven't finished taking all of the Chinese equipment off of the cell towers. It's amazing. Yeah, absolutely amazing. And I was good to say, could you... That's where a watchdog needs to be in place. Right. Never mind redacting documents.

Yeah. Like, could you ever imagine something like this happening, the shoe being on the other foot? Could you, like, could the CCP ever allow something like this happen where our equipment is on their cell tower, spying on their shit? Would they think about that? Like, because now, like, with things like this,

you have to worry about the xenophobia and, you know, all this stuff. Even talking about the coronavirus, you're calling it the Wuhan flu or. Yep, you got to be careful. No. No. Because those people, they kill people.

Right. They don't just, you know, send out a cease and desist. They kill you. Right. If they catch you, they kill you. Right. Period. Just the bottom line.

You know, and there's so many, there's such crossover in that industry. And what I mean is like sell towers and communications, you know, there's such crossover between, you know, American-based companies or even like sole proprietorships that get contracts. They bid on veteran-based contracts and get them and then hire the lowest, bring the lowest bidder in without doing the backgrounds. That's a lot of the work that I do now is. based on that. You know, it's based that kind of looking at, hey, we need to do firm backgrounds. We need to do extensive backgrounds on what you're doing. I understand, you know, I understand that it's really exciting in the shiny nickel concept. Hey, I'm going to hope and be able to make a hundred million here. Yeah, but at what cost? Are you looking at who's doing the work?

Right. All you're looking at is have insurance. So if some poor bastard falls off the tower and cracks his head, well, that's all good. Right. I mean, we've got to do better than that. Their incentive is profit. But I mean, this is an interesting topic, especially when you start talking about military contractors too. And you talk about companies like Lockheed Martin that are being contracted to do different things like create weapons. And I just had a guy in here yesterday who did this documentary called Phenomenon. And they talk to, they talk about these, like the, all of the UFO things that have happened around, yeah, through the history from like Roswell to to now. There's been a ton of them. And I don't know if you're familiar with the story of Bob

Lazar. No. So Bob Lizar, I'm going to fuck this story up. So all of my followers who are like the UFO enthusiast, but I am too, but I'm going to fuck it up either way because it's a very complicated story. Yeah. Bob Lizar was working for Alamos Labs, created his own rocket propelled car for fun. He was like a genius in his early 20s.

And he got a job working at Area 51. And they didn't tell him what it was for. And then eventually he got. moved to another secret site called S4, which is off of Area 51. And what he was working on was an advanced propulsion system that was something that he had never seen, that nobody had ever seen. Apparently this is something they had been working on for decades. They had extremely high security.

Nobody knew what was going on. Like there was so much compartmentalization. So he was working on propulsion. There was another team of guys that were working on metallurgy. Another team of guys that were working on something else. There was just tons of scientists all working on their own things. them knew there was no communication to keep for secrecy obviously for national security um and he was working on this uh propulsion system that was essentially anti-gravity something that we we couldn't even

comprehend our scientists can't even comprehend today with the elements that we have on earth um not something that basically burns fuel and shoots it out the back right so it's like a uh some sort of technology that what we were discussing yesterday is there's evidence that this stuff does exist. No one's ever admitted it. It's still being kept a secret. And for the Freedom of Information Act, for the purpose of that, they're keeping it under the umbrella of private entities like Boeing and Lockheed Martin to protect it from FOIA.

So people can't go to the government with the Freedom of Information Act because we don't have it. We're the government. Exactly. This is somebody else. So there's the concern of these private entities like Boeing and Lockheed Martin having this stuff. And then when you're talking about what you were just talking about is doing the background research on who works for these companies. How do you know there's not Russian assets or Chinese people in these companies that are working for them too, spying on them? Like it's such a complicated topic.

Definitely. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, yeah, you think about that's crazy to even think that that guy who's, I don't. obviously a genius, is working on something. And like you said, compartmentalized. So he doesn't know what the people around them are doing, but obviously they've got it from somewhere.

Right. You know, they all figured it out from somewhere. Right. But nobody's going to talk to each other to say where or who or chances we're being. And most of those companies, and I have some good buddies that work for those companies. You know, they're retired military guys. They're guys that have seen, you know, a lot of combat action. And they know weapon systems.

And they're able to speak to that in sales. obviously, you know, going forward. But I wonder, yeah, and that makes sense. I mean, so if you hit Boeing with a FOIA request. Right. Yeah, see in 20 years. Yeah, fuck off. Or you're going to get a paper that's just everything's blacked out.

Right. Okay, here you go. Right. You know, so that's interesting. You know, I mean, it's, it's, I think about that stuff. It's very interesting. I do. I think about that stuff.

And there was attempts made to wipe his history. You know, he was in, he was at MIT doing research and they did. And they tried to wipe his history at MIT, tried to erase that. They even erased his birth certificate. They buried it or erased it? They somehow, I don't know, they may have just buried it. I don't know, but as...

Which is the same as erasing. He said, yeah, he said his birth certificate was fucking gone. All of his friends, they couldn't fuck with him because he was kind of doxed, right? Because he put himself on the news or he got in a fight with a guy who was doing reporting. And he's like, I don't want to, he's like, they worked on it forever. And the guy who was going to report on it, it's like, I got to go live with it today. And then he changed him. I was like, no, I don't want to do it.

got in like a wrestling match. The reporter won, went live with it. So now he was public. So he was kind of like his personal safety was protected. Yeah. But everyone around him got fucked with. Like he had like a bunch of his friends got audited. All kinds of crazy things. That happens, man. Yeah. That's crazy. But it, but it happens. You know. Yeah. So it's a, it's an interesting debate when you're talking about. I mean, it's a debate I had with, with Andrew Bistamante, too. Yeah. Is it talking about weighing national. security versus, you know, just being open and honest about things, like making the country and the military, making us accountable for telling, for our people, like tell everyone the truth,

tell us, let us know. For forward progress, too, for technology reasons, you know, I mean, think about that. And his argument was no one else does it. The Russians aren't doing it. The Chinese aren't doing it. If we do it, if we let all of our citizens know what's really going on, we're just exposing ourselves to these other countries who have aspirations for themselves. Yep, yep, trying to take away. the world, you know, and we're seeing it. You know, we're seeing it now. How much, how much attention does the FBI pay to China and Russia? I know the CIA is a huge part of that, but how much

attention does the FBI pay to it? A lot. I mean, there is, there are units and squads that are focused solely on those things. And it, you know, it could be as simple as at the local FBI level, it could be as, you know, Chinese or Russian organized crime, you know, which is basically kind of a different ballgame, but not really. Not really. Because, you know, their purpose is to disrupt normal business with violence and power and to take over in order to kind of move the cause forward, right? That's the way I always looked at it. So it's hand in hand. But at a different level, at the higher up level, it kind of, I'd like to think, although I'm not, I was never exposed to, you know, that particular world, what counterintelligence world is different. It's a different type of

agent, honestly. You know, in a lot of ways, it's a weird agent, but it's a good agent. You know, it's a good agent that understands what they're after. And it's long-lasting, quote-unquote, cases, but it's not really, it's not true casework because there's really not been a case brought forward in the public that anyone's seen that said, oh, yeah, look, they took that guy to trial and, you know, he was convicted of X, Y, and Z. It's more about kind of the traditional spy kind of role for the Bureau. I mean, if you talk to any agent, you know, from 40 or 50 years ago, and some of them are still, obviously still alive, they were all guys and girls that were walking.

Well, guys, there were no girls at the time, but walking around the streets of New York following what they believed to be Russian spies or trying to perform counter, you know, counter surveillance on people they thought were following them. That was, that was really the Bureau in a nutshell for an extended period of time in the 70s and even in the end of the 80s, until the wall fell. You know, so, I mean, if you think about that type of attention at the time, that was the thing to work. That was the agent that everyone said, man, you know, John Smith, man, he works Russian, you know, counter and dealt. Whoa, he's working spies.

You know, that was a big thing. Right? Nowadays, I won't say that. But there was a time leading up to 9-11 where the broken toys would kind of get put on those squats. who get put on the counterintelligence squad. What do you mean broken toys? So agents that had issues, right? Agents that, hey, you know, there's something going on at the house

and we're not sure and he's not focused. Or, oh, my God, that guy fucked up. You know, he did something stupid, wasn't criminal, it doesn't deserve to be fired, but send him over to FCI, you know, foreign counterintelligence. You know what I mean? It's a place for him to rest to get his head back. Think about that.

Think about that. Right? So you can't tell me that there were clues and messages that came in from chatter and from even not being, even not in a cooperative or collaborative relationship with the agency. There was stuff that came in that might have got lost in the mix. Might have got lost. It might have caused some of the things that happened, i.e. 9-11. And you know near and dear to my heart because I lost, you know, my current wife lost her husband in the towers.

Right. So it hits home for me when I think back about how hard many of us were working throughout the different areas of the Bureau and how it was always kind of a joke. Well, hey, he got put on, you know, counterterrorism or he got put on counterintelligence. Well, yeah, he's struggling at home. He needs to be home for the kid by 3 o'clock. Not saying everybody, but in my experience, that happened. So I often kind of wonder, um, had to rebuild that program from the ground up.

When 9-11 happened, we took all our best people and put them on those squats. Wow. I had a guy in here who was a firefighter in NYPD on the day of 9-11. He was under, there was a hotel right next to one of the towers. I forget the name of the hotel. I think it was a, I think it was Marriott, right? Marriott. Yep.

So he was underneath the Marriott in the parking lot when the tower collapsed on top of it. I'm like, yeah. And he was walking me through everything from the sounds to everyone around him. He held on to a, what are those big, fucking thing, big round concrete piling is called? Yeah, the piling. He was holding onto a piling as the thing collapsed. And he said it sounded just like, he explained it. He said, it sounded like I was on the tarmac at JFK with two 747s on each side of me with their backs facing my ears going full blast.

I believe it. And, you know, I brought up to him that I, you know, there's a lot of shit that's screwy about 9-11. Like, I don't think we're being told the whole truth about it. He didn't want to have any part of that conversation. He's like, a lot of people say that. He's like, anyone that says that, he's like, he can't even participate in that conversation. Yeah. Obviously, he has a lot of PTSD from that day.

Yeah. But there's a lot of people, you know, I know it's a sensitive subject to a people that were close to. people on that day or were there that day. But I get the sense that we're not being told everything about that day. I mean, I'm sure there's things that haven't been shared for whatever reason. I mean, you know, look back at the whole 60-page document about the Saudis. About the flight schools. Right. Right. And then look at what's going on now where the families, the 9-11 families have been attempting to receive documentation, unredacted, documents from the Bureau with regards to the terrorists, the 19 terrorist's attachment to Saudi

in order to finish a lawsuit, you know, to finish what I think is a reasonable and winnable lawsuit. So the Bureau has kind of dragged their feet on that and finally were ordered to turn over and still hasn't turned over everything that they have. Now, I can tell you from my experience, I have no doubt what happened because I was there. Right. You know, just so just like this fireman, I, you know, I, I, I, I suffered PTSD from, from life before, from my military time, right? And, and then it came, you know, 2001 didn't help. And then it came raging back 2010. I lost my mom and my best friend, my best friend to a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. And my mom of Alzheimer's in the same month. So that kind of brought it raging back. But I can tell you for

a fact, I witnessed number two hit the tower. So I came right over my head, basically, on a boat. I was on a boat in the middle of New York Harbor. And, you know, it was on the ground when the building fell. So I heard, I heard those rumbles. I heard those sounds. I experienced those smells. I experienced the choking. Covered with soot on my, I still have the vest that I kind of keep in the corner of my office

to remind me of what can happen, you know, if we're not careful. Obviously, I have a reminder every day just looking at her chilling her kids and her two older boys. So, you know, I, I know that, you know, I know people talk about it and wonder about whether or not it was an inside job, quote unquote. Man, if that's an inside job, that's the greatest military operation in the history of the world. Right. You know, it makes Pearl Harbor look weak.

There's a, there's a dog, I was going to bring it up. There's a documentary called 9-11, the new Pearl Harbor that goes really, really deep into it. And again, there's fucking people who just have this idea in their mind that this was an inside job. and I'm going to find every peg that fits into the right hole to say this was an inside job. Yeah. But I watched this documentary and there's lots of fucking crazy things in there. Like they interviewed the flight instructors

from those flight schools and they said the motherfucker that was flying the plane that flew into the Pentagon, that guy couldn't even, that guy could not even pass basic flight training. There's no, he said that there's no way, like this guy couldn't fly a Cessna to save his life. There's no way he could fly this fucking jetliner at I think it was 60 feet above the ground

at their speed it was flying when it hit the Pentagon. There's no fucking way. It would take an extremely skilled pilot with years of experience to do that. This is just one example. Well, he bounced it in. Did he?

He bounced it in. So that's another thing. Like, there's what? There's one video clip of this thing. That surveillance cam from a gate. A parking gate, right? That was it. That's supposed to be like the most surveilled building

in America, like the Pentagon. They're supposed to be like 90 to 100 cameras on that building. The FBI, I think, is holding on to a ton of the tapes and they won't release it. I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised at that at all. You could see the path clearly because the Air Force Memorial is now there.

It's the three, you know, it's kind of the jet symbolism of the jet. That's the path came in. Interesting story about that. It's the only area of the Pentagon that was reinforced with concrete back in during World War II time. The area where the plane hit. Oh, that's another part of the documentary that he did. They said that they had just finished, I don't know how recently, but hey, just doing that part of it. Yeah. And not only that, but they, they lined the walls, the interior walls with like fireproof Kevlar or something, something insane.

Interesting. I mean, the original reason that they stopped reinforcing back during World War II is because they wanted to, they had to convert the economy into the war effort. Right. So the concrete became valuable. Right. So they just stopped. Right. Right. And then, you know, I don't know when it was done again or when it picked up. I don't even know it was, but after the fact they did it. obviously to rebuild. I mean, there was a ton of people that, you know, that that died there. There's a ton of people that have stories about it, you know, that we're all military. So that's another thing. They're not, they're not going to expose their story. They're military. They're kind of, they're not allowed to, you know, and the military is weird with that. Yeah. Did you see the thing recently with Trump at the live, you know, the live golf? Yeah, at his club, right? Up in Basking Ridge at the Trump National. Yeah. And there's tons of protesters for the Saudi, because the Saudi 9-11, there were there, I think there were 9-11.

There's a lot of families, yeah. My wife's friends, some of her friends. And they interviewed Trump and he said, he goes, we haven't gotten to the bottom of 9-11. Have you seen that? I haven't seen it. You got to play it. I think, do you have the video? This is fucking, I mean, this is just something like, I don't know why Donald Trump.

I mean, obviously he kissed the Saudi's ass when he was president, right? He was like. Doesn't everybody? It's ridiculous. Is Biden kissing their ass? I don't think he knows what he's doing. No, he definitely doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. Yeah.

scroll through it. But he would if he could. He could think about it, he would. This is like, yeah, right when he starts talking, go to it. But just listen to this. The T-shot's awful, by the way. It's so weird. The steel wasn't enough.

He said this, when asked about the 9-11 family's protest. Well, nobody's gotten to the bottom of 9-11, unfortunately, and they should have. As to the maniacs that did that horrible thing to our city, to our country, to the world. So nobody's really been there. Guys, stop getting ripped off by your car insurance company and check this out. So like, what, what does that mean? Nobody's gotten to the bottom of it. It's pretty clear.

I mean, you know, it's pretty clear. I mean, yeah, I mean, he's saying it. He's exposed to it, right? I'm not exposed to it. Is he exposed to it? How the presidents? Do you think the president's, hell yeah. Get everything?

Yeah, I mean, look at, you know, if you listen to Bustamante talk about how the president is briefed and kind of how the president is really the client of the briefer. Right. Whether it be CIA, you know what I mean? He's saying like some presidents are like, don't want to hear about this, this or this. This is what I want on the front page. Regardless of whether or not there's threats that are much more realistic. So that comment is fucking crazy.

By the way, he cheats at golf too. You knew that. Yeah, Julian told me. Julian told me the story. It's an interesting story. There's three things I cheat on in life. My wife, my business and golf. He actually said, watch this drive.

So I met a caddy. that was caddying for him when Tom Brady and he were playing at his club there, right? And he said, basically, Brady said, I guess Brady tells a story to a caddy who I was playing, who was my caddy that day. And he said, finally, Brady went over to the caddy that was caddy for Trump and said, listen, you kick one more fucking ball, fucking crack your head. Isn't that great? So he said, he said, he said, either he propped it up on a perfect lie, moved it, never said anything.

Just kicked it out. you know, say, oh, here's yours, drop another ball. Is that cheating? I do that all the time. I mean, I guess not when you're playing for money. Are you allowed to, like, prop it up on the grass? No. You're not?

Oh, come on. Fuck, Danny, come on. But you are my member guest partner now next year. Oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah. Dude, caddies, I feel like caddies have the craziest stories. Oh, crazy. Because they get, you know, you get, somebody said one time,

if you want to know everything about a person, play around a golf with them. Right. You'll figure everything. out. You know what? That's so true. Everything about that. The reason I take a lot of clients out on the golf course because I can immediately figure out, wait a minute. Do I really do I want to be putting myself on the line

or, hey, this is perfect. This is exactly what I'm looking for. It's true. Do you think Bustamante plays golf? No. Absolutely not. No, no. Too analytical about it. You'd be like, well, the angle that comes out on a short iron is different. He'd close the golf course. What I mean closed, not closed, but he'd actually

the other, the caddy would be going, I want to work for you. Yeah. I want to give you, you know, he's the best. Man, that would be crazy, right? Yeah. To have like some sort of, like, they need to, I don't know if there's ever been it, but I could see a TV show revolving around like the story. You know they had the show like below deck where they have the guys who work on those yachts of

millionaire yachts? Yeah, telling stories about things happened. They should have something like that for golf caddies, especially in D.C. In like that area. Well, that one guy America's caddy, I can't think he's on ESPN, but he basically is doing like, he's marketing for the big event. You know, he's going, let's say like when PGA Championship was down in Kiwa Island and Charleston, he's walking around, like telling stories about Kiwa and Charleston and those

things. That's one thing. But yeah, I think you're right. I think there's a market for caddies to the famous, you know, and saying, hey, you're about something Kevin Kossner did on the golf course. And that really is. I truly do believe the golf course is a place where you learn a lot about people. And I figure, I think it was like, I think it was, I think a woman is the one who

came out with that. But she said before I date a guy, I bring him out on the golf course because she's a good golfer. Oh, no shit. She goes, I find out everything I need to know. Four hours. Whether or not I want to continue the relationship. I was like, damn, that makes a lot of sense. It really does.

And I started doing it. And it's worked. It's worked for me, you know? I just watched Tin Cup for the first time last week. For the first time. What a good fucking movie. I can't believe it took me so long to see it. Here's another one.

Watch. It's hard to find, but it's called Dead Solid Perfect. and it's with Randy Quaid and I think Susan Sarandon. It's an old movie. Dead Solid Perfect. Dead Solid Perfect. It's based on a book by... Look this up.

What's it, Dan? The guy who wrote North Dallas 40, the same author, who's passed since. But there it is. Dead Solid Perfect. Find it like a picture of the cover of it. Yep, there it is. 1998. Yep.

Great book. Great movie. Great movie. Fabulous. You would love it. true golf movie you know just just absolutely outstanding

I fucking love golf yeah I'm gonna watch that tonight you gotta watch it you love it there's something about golf like it's unlike so many sports because it's just like you're competing mentally against yourself

I can really golf more than anything to doing this yeah because golf's all about not thinking it's all about getting out of your head and like finding that that flow where you're not thinking you're just doing it that's it because it happens with social media.

Like there's so many things on TikTok and Instagram that tell you these, give you all these golf tips and tricks. My algorithm is just all that tells me is, but all I see is golf. Yeah. On all my social media. Same thing. You too. Yeah.

And I'm always thinking about this shit. Like, oh, I got to turn my wrist that way. I got to change my grip that way. And as soon as I do that, I'm like all over the place. Screw it up. Yeah. But as soon as I forget about it and don't think about anything, I'm just hitting the ball, it's that much better.

It's a fascinating game. Well, they talk about like the best coaches is this guy, Dr. Bob Rattella, who's coached a lot of different. pros and basically his thing is just sit back behind the ball that's the think box right once you approach once you cross that line you don't think about anything else matter of fact he talks about kind of um counting down from nine like nine eight that's that's the only thought and you got i mean i've done it a few times you hit the ball just as solid as you could possibly hit it because it just removes all the thoughts of okay got to keep that right heel planted all right

let's swing the club back let's make a turn let's get the club underneath my chin and then that just winds up destroying your game. Right. On top of that, too, when you hit a bad shot, it's hard to rebound from it. Absolutely. You're on a fucking slippery slope. Definitely. You can go just down. I mean, you could stop hitting the ball completely.

You can start missing the ball, you know, so. But Rattella is really good. Bob Rettel is fantastic. I'm going to watch that movie tonight. Yep. You'd love that. Dude, can you try to crank that air again? It's hot as fuck in here.

Something our AC's been fucking up the last few weeks. I want to go back to 9-11. So there was. a forgotten case about a plane that crashed a couple months after September 11th. Yeah, early November. Can you tell the story about that case? Yeah. So, I mean, we get, you know, we get called out, hey, listen, there was a plane crash.

And I think it was in Brooklyn. I think it came out of JFK or LaGuardia. I can't remember. But it was going to the Dominican. It was loaded. It was, I think, a 767 or 757 loaded with passengers. On takeoff, the tail wing fell off. detached from the aircraft.

Wow. Just detached. And the plane wound up in a fiery ball going through some residential areas and killing some people on the ground, in addition to killing everyone on board, obviously. So we get called out. And our evidence response team in New Jersey was second to none. So we would go to all the major disasters and collect, you know, do our thing.

Like terrible thing. So I got morgue duty, which is horrible, because you're identifying people. and trying to figure out... Morgan duty? Yeah, you're basically trying to identify, you know, who they are next to kin, doing the DNA, and, you know, there's a lot of burnt pieces and those things. It's terrible. It's terrible.

The sights and smells are things that never go away. You know, in your deepest dark moments, when I wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning, it's not about, you know, oh, my God, I miss my flight. It's about, oh, man, you know, something that just strikes me. And it could be from anywhere in my life, any portion of it. You know, and it's something I chose to do. So I do it, and they need dignity as my... as anybody else, their families need answers, but at the same time, it always struck me,

and we always, we always thought about it, how the hell did a tail, you know, wing fall off of an aircraft? Right. How does that happen? So if you see the actual, I think, I can't remember what the finding actually was, but it was something along the lines of, um, the jet that took off before this aircraft was a 747. and the prop blast from that in the air was still existing and it knocked the tell. I mean, just like stuff you're like, what?

Like there's a waiting. Like we all know, we fly, right? The jet takes off. They usually come out and they make the turn as it's going down the runway, but they're not sitting behind it when it lights up its engines and starts the path. So they tried to convince whoever to make that, What is it? The National Safety Bureau or whatever the hell.

NC. I don't even know the organization that does the investigation. I used to remember like the NIC, whatever, that does the actual investigations of major catastrophes in transportation-wise. They'll go out to Amtrak sites, they'll go out to plane crashes, whatever. And they were saying,

yeah, our finding is that, you know, the prop blast from that 747 front of this aircraft knocked it off. That was your finding. Loosed it. Yeah. How long did you investigate that case? I mean, we just, we went out and did the recovery

and collected what we could and provided it to that organization, you know, and then walked away from it, you know. And we, I know a lot of us were like, holy shit, you know, it's two months after 9-11. Everybody's on edge anyway, and this happened, and nobody's taking a look to whether or not this is associated or affiliated. We never got an opportunity to look at cameras around the airport that evening or, you know, anything, just kind of went away.

Of course, the aircraft was in such major, you know, destruction. We couldn't put it back together like we did TWA 800, which is the one that I still believe was shot down. You know, I still believe that. Was that the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania? No, the one that was crashed out over the ocean with all the high school kids that were heading to France for like a graduation trip off the coast of Long Island. It was like July 25th, 96-ish, went down, killed all the people. And there was a, when we put it back together, there was a hole in the same. side.

Really? Like, and what the, what the, the finding was, was that the center gas tank on one of the wings blew up. So we actually interviewed, I think we interviewed every, every licensed and certified 747 pilot that we could find. I think it was every, I think we exhausted the list of interviews. And to a man, all of them said, that shit can never happen. You can't, it can't blow up.

Really? Yeah, because there's some type of device, there's some type of safety device that locks out, that locks out that gas tank. you know, until it's ready for use, until they're ready to get directly into, you know, the system. So that's another thing. And there was, like, remember the journalist Pierre Salinger? He, he's, he had a report that there was witnesses to, um, some type of ship that launched a missile. And it probably accidentally, but they hit the, it was a, you know, surface to air, which is a heat seeker. And so the, the witnesses said, yeah, they saw, basically saw something launched and then a,

flame, like kind of a following flame trace from the gas tank, and then the thing exploded in the air. So everybody said, well, that was the gas that was lit on fire that was now going down to the ocean, that looked like a missile going up. So how far off the coast was this? 13 miles off the coast of, what was it, Maritches, Long Island? 13 miles. Yep, yep. So there was a lot of guys and girls that I knew that actually were out on that recovery.

and they were like devastated by the stuff they were fine. They were able to put that plane back together. They were actually pulling seats. I mean, I don't want to talk about it, but there was some horrific stuff that happened on that recovery. So the whole plane didn't necessarily burst into flames and burned with crisp. They were still fell in two parts. Oh, my God.

So we probably believed that there's survivors that survived the initial. And then, you know, obviously, who knows what the hell happens. I don't, I've skydived before in the military. So I know you're prepared for that. You're trained. So if you're falling from 30,000 feet with a mask on, you're prepared. You understand what it feels like. You understand the body position that needs to be in order to not break your neck or anything else that goes with that.

You understand how to pull, how to react. Is there a protocol to surviving a plane crash, like without a parachute or being falling out of a plane? Like, is there any kind of... No. Because people have survived. Yeah. Falling fucking out of a plane. Yep.

There's, I just read a story yesterday. Teddy Kennedy. Teddy Kennedy? Yeah, remember that plane crash in Nantucket. He had the brace around his neck. He survived. Oh, shab. Yeah.

I wasn't even aware of that one. Yeah. I heard a story, I read a story the other day about a girl in the 50s, a young girl, a plane broken half in midair, and she free fell tens of thousands of, of feet, strapped to her chair, landed in the woods and survived, got out and survived in the jungle for like a week by herself. Like literally had to like cauterize her own wounds somehow. How old was she? I think she was a young girl. Maybe you can find this. A young girl in the 50s, 40s or 50s that survived a plane crash. I want to say it was over the Amazon, over the jungle

somewhere. Kids nowadays can't survive the fact that their internet goes down for five minutes. This girl survived. I know, right? Of 10,000, tens of thousands of feet fall and then she survived to Amazon. It's amazing. That's amazing. The human body is hard to destroy. Yeah. It's hard to destroy unless it's, you know, hit at the exact angle it's not supposed to be hit at. Plain crashes. Most plane crashes of death, the cause of death is going to be broken neck. Really? Yeah, because the whiplash so severe. Think about it. How many people do you recover from a plane crash? I mean, everybody. You can recover everybody. Everybody. Yeah, everybody.

We were accountable for everybody that day. Because I know sometimes when it's in the ocean, sharks are involved in that. 100%. Yeah. Is this the story? This is it? Holy cat.

What is it? What is the headline say? How I survive. No, that can't be it because this girl was in the 50. Would she still be alive? Let's see what it says. Go down. What does the subheadline say?

Yeah. She was flying over the Peruvian rainforest with her mother when the plane was hit by, oh yeah, that's it. The plane was struck by lightning. she survived a two mile free fall and found herself alone in the jungle at age 17 more than 40 years later she recalls what happened. Holy shit, man.

Oh my God. That's insane. How unbelievable is that? It was not her day. Yeah, she wasn't supposed to go. No. Yeah. Worse would have been if it said in years later,

she was strangled and eaten by an anaconda. Oh, my God, man. I don't want to go there. Terrible. Terrible. But yeah. Crazy. Yeah.

But, I mean, it's just, yeah, you'll find, you'll find everybody. In the ocean, it's got definitely some different issues. And so at the conclusion of both of those cases, the plane that crashed in Brooklyn and the plane that crashed 13 miles off the coast, you guys found that there was no foul play or no conspiracy. That was the official finding. I don't know. I never believed either one of them. We never believe either one of them. No.

No. Too close in proximity for the November one for the Brooklyn plane crash. I mean, you know, shit going on all over the place. How we had no handle on it? How detached are you from the final finding? And how do you deal with that? Once we give it up to another agency, we kind of lose. Unless there's a criminal prosecution, we're removed.

You know, I wish I could think of the organization. I'm just drawing a blank on it that does the nationally. Safety Bureau. They come out and actually come right to the scene and take over the investigation. You'd know it if I, but, but yeah, I mean, we're just become, you know, secondary to the, to the, to the cause. You know, we're collecting evidence and waiting to see if there's anything in our minds or anybody else's mind that says, yeah, foul play. Witness statements, you know, pilots, the whole deal. And then when we don't find that, we kind of just give it up. Can you talk a little bit about some of the interrogation tactics and psychological tricks that you would use during interrogation and some of these quote unquote games that you could play with people to crack cases? Yeah.

I mean, my most powerful tool was something I learned probably, oh God, it had to be in my childhood. And, you know, I remember my dad kind of talking. And he would say, hey, the best thing you can do is let people talk. And they'll tell you everything you want to hear. And he used to have this technique, two techniques. Minimization is really powerful, but we'll talk about that. But mirroring is one of the most powerful techniques you can use. So in other words, where are you sitting right now?

If I was interrogating you, subconsciously, you know, you're not understanding, but I'm going to put my hands like you have. And we're going to start to relate, and it's weird. And the way I figured out, my dad, one time he showed the example, and it was amazing. So we pulled the top of the street. I grew up in the Valesburg section in Newark, New Jersey. So primarily an Italian section, great spot, very busy, long streets. At the top of the street was the main road that we would have to pull out onto every day

when he drove me and my brother to school. And so we would pull to the top. And, you know, there was no traffic light. It was busy and nobody would let you out, you know, nobody at all. And there was a port. At one point, there was cars stop. One car was going to actually go. you know, make a right on the street, the other car was going to go straight. And they kind of

stopped for each other for a second. And the passenger in the car that was kind of slowing down where we need it to get across had, it was the wife of the guy, had her arm out the open window. So my dad quickly opened his window and put his arm out. And he said, watch this. And the woman looked and she just went to her husband, stop. And they waved us to go. And he said, that is mirroring. That's what you do. You just mirror what people do and they will go ahead and give you the benefit of the doubt. So I took that into interrogation. Never having really learned true interrogation from my dad, but I would take the mirroring effect into interrogation. And I would begin the process of talking to anyone with just a silent period and just kind of mimic, not to mock, but just mimic what they were doing, kind of ate them for lack of better terms.

So if they were doing, you know, if they were leaning back in their chair, I just leaned back in my chair, you know, whatever, if they were like, you know, I would do that over the course of time. Then usually it would, you know, hey, what are we here for? I just be like, what are we here for? Whatever. And invariably, you would get a bond. It's a weird dynamic. Subconscious.

It's a weird dynamic. And then that kind of causes some discussion to start, which then gives you the ability to kind of work in the minimization technique. Now, there's all other things that people talk about, torture techniques and different things along the, and there's times and places, and I'm not going to lie to you that some of that stuff needs to be utilized in order to get information quicker, in order to get information that's necessary. But I'm not talking about, you know, everyday techniques. The minimization piece is incredible, and I'll explain it to like this.

Let's say there's a, you know, a child molester or a child rapist or something that you have to talk to. It's disgusting. The worst crime you could possibly think about, right? the goal is to not embarrass and make that person feel, you know, take them off their pedestal because they come in like they're on a pedestal. Yeah, I can do this. Fuck you. You know, I'm not going to tell you about it.

The worst thing you can do is kind of jump them and judge them in their head. Now, you want to kill them is what you want to do. But you're basically not going to judge them because it's not going to get the open communication goal. So you're mirroring a little bit. You're talking. And then you kind of can throw something in like, hey, you might have a picture of the little girl. You might have a picture of a little boy. You might want to just look at it and say,

I don't know if I can control myself. Under your breath, something along those lines. And then you kind of see like, you know, now this is, TV would make it look like it's 30 seconds. This can be over the course of a couple hours. You're kind of wearing each other down. They're trying to wear you down. You're going to fight the fight.

You're going to stay in it because it has to be done. And at the end of it, you know, you're basically, hey, man, I don't blame you. I don't blame you. I mean, little girl, walking around dressed like that, I don't know, I'd be honest with you. I don't know if I can control myself either. You want to, you know, not easy to do, but you're kind of minimizing that activity with a public

official. Same thing. Like, hey, you didn't know. Dude, you didn't know. I mean, you didn't know. You took, you bartered the, you bartered the utilities authority. Your daughter needed new windows in the house. You know, you told the guy, hey, man, you know, if you put windows in my daughter's house for nothing,

I'll give you the contract that utilities. I love my kids too I probably have done the same thing You know what I'm gonna do I mean yeah I can't afford one windows I'm an FBI agent How am I gonna afford that? Yeah of course I gotta do that

And I was alright That's all you need It's all you need is the opening there right now On the terrorist side of the house It's a different story You know because overseas True criminal masterminds And I've dealt with a couple of serial bank robbers

You know people who even on this side but mostly the stuff I did, you know, in and around the world to kind of discover information or to get explanations or to develop areas that we needed to create as an objective, both in the military and in the bureau, had to be focused. It had to be violent and it had to be on point. And their belief system is different. They have no problem dying for their cause. Right.

Right. So you have to understand that. And basically you have to work it through a system that kind of deals or kind of places violence with violence. Right. You can only... They don't understand anything else. You can only respond to that kind of violence with the same kind of violence. They don't care about their family like we do.

The biggest, you know, if you're, if I'm going after somebody and I threaten your kids in this country, you got a problem. You know what I mean? That's it. They're going to give you what you need to have. They're going to, you know, they're going to do it. hey, or bringing, like even that guy I was telling you about, like, hey, I want to put your daughter on the stand. And she's going to talk about how she got free windows for this.

And you almost have them. And then he went to trial. And he put his daughter on the stand. She lied on the stand. She got charged. And I just said, told you. Told you, you idiot. Told you.

I gave you an opportunity. Right? So, but in the other world of, you know, savage terrorists, savage killers, they could give a shit less about anything but they're calling. They're happy to die for it. They're happy to die for it. You know, like Patton once said, the object.

So what do you do? How do you deal with them psychologically? They don't give a shit about anything except for God. Long process. It's just trying to bond with that type of person is the hardest thing you'll ever have to do. Trying to find a commonality. My belief in something. The only thing I could see is literally the worst torture.

Like playing the Barney song on the loudest ball. for 10 days straight or a week straight. Like, how else? I don't know. Restricted. Restricted personal space is powerful. Powerful. Think about it.

You ever have an MRI? You ever laying an MRI tube for 20 minutes? I think I have, yeah. You start thinking about it. Oh, good? Just adjust the frame. Oh, good. Sorry.

You start thinking about it. You start, like, if you're laying in that tube and you start going, holy shit. this thing's only like two inches from my nose. Oh my God, I can't move my shoulders. You start thinking about it. It'll get you. I've had it happen.

Like, do a little cry, I've got to get out of this, right? You take a box that's four feet by four feet or four feet by to start and then make it four feet by three feet and just keep restricting that body space. It's going to go. Blast on a little bit of music, throwing a little water in the box, you know, making it cold and uncomfortable. and unpleasant, you're going to actually get a conversation going based on that.

And once you have, once you get to the point where it's, what do you need from me? What, what's going to make this stuff? What do you need from me? You got it. At that point you got it. Right. Once you're telling me, once you're putting me in control and saying, you know, what do you need from me?

Now it might go another three weeks. Right. But I know I got you. You got to be patient. I know I got you. You know, I'm going to wear it. it out and I'm going to find stuff. Plus, we also know, we know things that they don't think we know. That whole thing about Deepest Dark a Secret. If I knew you Deepest Darkest Secret, you're going to

fucking tell me what I need to know. Guaranteed. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, we allow you. alert you right away, all through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Get the alerts that could make all the difference. Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash special offer. Terms apply.

Guaranteed. Because I'm going to expose it to your, you know, your spiritual leader. Or I'm going to expose it to somebody that's important to you. Now, I have to know who's important to you. You know, for most of us it would be family, right? If my dad knew X or if my wife knew Y or my wife knew Y. my kids knew this. Not the case.

Case is, does my spiritual mentor and leader, no. Right. Does this take me out of the opportunity to be something bigger in the afterlife? Which is all the shit that, you know, cause of a lot of that stuff. The biggest problem with some of these, a lot of people have more dilemmas with things like torture or the death penalty. but I think most people, if you detach them from the public square or just had like a one-on-one conversation with them, like I think by and large most people would agree that the death penalty is justified for a certain group of people and tortured is also justified for a certain group of people.

The problem is we get it wrong all the time. The death penalty, there's so many people that are exonerated every year off of death row because DNA evidence exonerates them. I just had a guy in here a couple weeks ago who was charged. He was 16 years old when he was charged with the murder of a girl, rape and murder of a girl. And the cops basically they didn't want to do the work

to find out who really did it. When they had DNA evidence that didn't match him, they somehow fucking got the case closed by sending this kid to prison. He went to prison for 16 years. And eventually they arrested the guy that actually committed the rape and murder. My God.

And they got his DNA. and this guy had to fight forever to get a lawyer through the innocence project. And this guy almost didn't get out. But once they arrested the real guy and matched the DNA, like he found 16 years of his life. So huge penalty to pay for something that you didn't do and nobody's listening. Right. So that's my problem with the death penalty is that we fucking put the wrong people on there.

And then it's the combination of, the justice system, the judicial system, they're, they want to get as many people as possible to take the plea. And they want to, there's obviously it costs money to, right, to go through a trial. They want you to take the plea. They want to send you in. It's everything costs money.

We got to, like we were talking about in the beginning of this podcast, we got to meet our quota, whatever it may be. That mixed with these things like the, death penalty and torture. That's where it goes wrong. So agreed. What, in your opinion, what do you think could be done to fix the judicial system? Well, I think you hit the nail on the head. And basically, the thought process for a prosecutor, whether appointed or elected, whether federal level, state level, county level, town, you know, local level, is the thought process is always, let's get the plea because we don't want to take the chance to be beat at trial.

Right. And that serves two different purposes, right? So if you have a U.S. attorney at the federal level that has aspirations to be the president or the governor, they don't want to lose a trial. Right. So if they bring 100 cases that they're sure are going to get convicted at trial, they're 100%. However, what you don't see.

is the 7,000 cases that were not brought to trial that were plea bargained or dropped. So if you think you have enough evidence to go forward with a criminal charge, my point has always been, go forward, go forward and let a jury of their peers decide whether or not they're guilty or innocent. That's a much more structured environment in my case and my thoughts, right? So I think part of that would solve kind of the judicial corruption if there is, corruption and take that at any level. It doesn't matter, right? But the other side of it is really taking the time to be, I guess, collaborative about investigation. So in other words, cooperate amongst ourselves to discover whether or not we have enough. It's not just about, let me check one in my

box so that I get this for promotion. Same thing. I want to make sure that I'm doing everything that I should be doing to uncover each of the areas that we've looked at or tried to, to provide evidence that goes one way or another, and that's the choice of a jury to do that, or it's the choice of the individual. Hey, here's what we have against you. You make a decision whether you want to play or not. And we have such great tools, like you mentioned.

We have DNA. We have the ability to do that immediately. We have the ability to do many things immediately. We have facial recognition. We have all these different things. We have camera systems all over the country. We have, you know, easy pass that can put people in the right spot at the right time. It's different.

than when it was back when that person was wrongfully convicted. It's getting better every year. So that's one side of it with, you know, judicial system. I think the other side of the judicial system, which bothers me is kind of the good old boy network. It's still in place. Okay, you know what? We're going to nominate. If you're a good boy and you do everything that you're supposed to do and you're a good United States attorney and your good assistant United States attorney, we'll put you, we'll make you a federal judge.

And you can ride off into the sunset for the next 50 years. You know, making up your basically creating your docket and deciding if you want to work one day a week or five days week. Or not at all. And we're still going to pay you the money that we're going to pay you. Right. So how do we kind of, and you see it, you see what these appointments. What you see what's always kind of highly covered in the press is the Supreme Court appointments, right? What's not covered is all these federal judges that are appointed by different administrations and why they're appointed.

who's who's kind of the watchdog on that stuff right who's doing the background checks on that stuff and figuring where they lie nobody because all they want to do it does it meet my party's agenda right to put this person in place guess what that person's the person that's sitting and in judgment obviously by the name sitting in judgment of those people that come before he or she and they can influence a trial greatly i had examples of that my career or a judge has influenced a trial by throwing out portions of an indictment or not allowing evidence in or allowing evidence in unfairly so the defense is scrambling. It all, it happens. It's, it's, it's, I don't know what the short answer is for it, but I do think that if there was a closer watch at, you know,

who's appointing who, what the qualifications are and how we go about maybe term limiting some of those folks. Right. How we, you know, it's like anything else. Like, you go to, you go, you go, you go to new client and they say, I really like you, but I want to give you just six months to prove whether or not you could do this. We don't do that. Because the problem is if you get rid of it, you're also getting rid of human motivation. People, that's the humans are motivated to get to that role. To evolve better. Right. To get to that role, to better their career, to make more money, do the better for their families. Right. But shouldn't there have to be some type of peer evaluation? Something. Something that says, hey, listen, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're

happy with these four judges. And I'm talking amongst peers. We do it in the Army. You can peer each other out of different schools. You can peer each other out of the Army. It's saying, hey man, you know, you're not pulling your weight and you don't believe it. So we're going to tell you once, we're going to tell you twice, and then we're going to boot you the fuck out. Right.

If you don't do your job, and it happens. Are you familiar with Ross with Ross Ulbricht? I'm not. He was the kid who founded a website called Silk Road. Forget what year it was. Maybe you can find out the year that he was sent to prison. But Silk Road was basically it was a, a dark web, kind of an eBay of the dark web where people can buy drugs. Now that you say that, I think, I think,

yes, I think I did discuss that maybe or found out about it through Julian. Yeah. Yeah. And basically what ended up happening, whether it was fake, whether it was real or not, 2011. Okay. whether it was real or not, basically somebody, a couple people he knew ratted him out or tried to destroy his operation and these people were informants

or they were undercover and he, I'm also, I'm fucking this up a little bit. He allegedly put out a hit or tried to hire somebody to kill these guys. And they used that

to send him to prison. Now this kid got, he never, actually bought or sold drugs, he basically just set up this marketplace on the dark web where people could use cryptocurrency to buy shit like drugs, you know, weird stuff. There was no, there was no human trafficking, there was no sex trafficking, there was nothing like that. It was only like drugs and shit that wasn't legal. And he got, he essentially got, I think it was double El Chapo sentence. So, so did he, when he made these, when he tried to set up these people to be killed, right? That's what it's going to.

Did, was there ever an overt, like, action to have that happen? I don't know. I don't know. If there was any actual- It's lazy fucking police work. I don't know if there was any actual evidence. I don't know what I- It's lazy police work. Yeah, it's, it's, so the point is if, even if you just say, okay, this guy was selling,

if, say he was selling drugs, hypothetically, say to, but figure it out. Right. If he was. And say he did, what is it, what is, what is, I don't know what the term is called. When you try to hire a hit man, they, they, you get, uh, you get caught trying to hire somebody to do a hit. Yeah, like, whatever that is. Murder for hire. Murder for hire.

Right. When you try to hire somebody to commit a hit, even if you didn't, the murder did, the murder did not happen. Is that worth two life sentences? No, yeah, there has to be a transaction. There has to be some type of this for that. Mm-hmm. A quid pro quo. Right.

In order for that to, to, to, to hold, you know, if I said, if I said to you right now, Hey, go, go fucking kill. You know, go kill Julian. If I pay you and say, hey, you're going to go do this and you make an overt action, you go to his home. We've got a problem. Right. But if I just say, hey, go kill him.

And there's no exchange. It's quit pro quo. It's exactly what, you know, using an official, basically asking for an official action. Right. Right. And return for some value. Right. That's a crime.

Even if it doesn't happen, that's a crime. If I exchange, you know, like basic is the hooker, right? So you have all the. stings that go on. Okay, you know, we got to get you handing the money before I can arrest the John. Can't just say, hey, give me, you know, give me, whatever, fuck me and, you know, you don't have to pay. That's not a crime. I guess, I guess what I'm getting at is it's just like, it's this guy, Ross Albrecht is one of the most overt examples of trying to make an example out of somebody because of the government had no control over whatever it was. Right. I mean, and no understanding,

more importantly, because if you had an investigator that could go out that was capable of looking at this whole picture and do some interviews. Go out and talk to the guy. There's nothing wrong with doing that. There's nothing wrong with going out to, you know, we don't often do it, but there's nothing wrong with it. I'm going to talk to everybody around them, though. I'm going to find out exactly, hey, did you feel like you had to

or he was forcing you or he was selling? Have you had to find out the transactions. Find out what actually happened. Look in his account. Is there any money in there? Did anything happen? He was just trying to, you know, was it marketplace that he happened to stumble upon because he's probably a really smart dude.

Yeah. And it kind of went out of control. And now in the meantime, he's serving a shitload of time. Right. He was also a young kid. He was in his 20s. He's young kids. So his life is different. It's over. You know? I mean, so that comes back to the, I chalked that up to just lazy and unconcerned investigative work. And I go back to the, the other thing that bothers me. But think about the George Floyd. I'm often asked what I would have done, where I have patrolmen. in the world of George Floyd. I'm often asked about that. Really?

So I'm not, I never was, but I understand I've had situations overseas in the military where I had those situations. How would you have handled that differently? You want to know how I would have handled it differently? I would have went over and said, hey, man, I know you're having a bad day. Like, you look like shit.

You know, and knowing that if he really did something down the line, he would have to pay for it? Say, would you just get in the back seat, get in the back seat of the car. Close the door and lock it and it's it. You're done. you're done. And then the fact that no other police officer,

no other police officer said, hey, you know, you need to get your knee off his neck. It doesn't look like he's breathing. Nobody had the moral turpitude to say, get off him. What the fuck are you doing? No one. And in the meantime, he died.

It caused the issues it caused. And the cop and everybody else's lives are different. Yeah. That police department will never be, never be the same. It'll never be the same police department. And it's a police department. that's needed. The area has gone out of control, right? So that's what we're missing. We're kind of missing on both fronts. Like training, training and understanding and common sense is

missing in law enforcement. Why? Because when I, if you went down to any police academy tomorrow and I showed you and you just had a chance to observe the training, you know what you're going to see? the basically it's going to be this obsession with the guy or girl who's physically tough right good with their hands look at him greatest uh you know fighter ground fighter wow what a great boxer man they can shoot well holy cow look at them with the baton honestly what really should be happening and if i had the opportunity to be the crimes are hopefully someday i will maybe you never know if i had the opportunity to be crying training about how to talk to people how to understand their motivation how to be a true community pleaser which is missing in law enforcement the respect goes to the guy who

can whack you over the fucking head with a baton not the guy who can sit there and say hey listen you know you understand what you're going through this is a problem now you got to be safe you got to protect yourself but that shouldn't be the first thing that shouldn't be if i go to if i got to go to my gun right out of the box, we got a problem. If I got a kneel on your throat, right out of the box where you're handcuffed, we got a problem. I think the exhaust pipe of that car was right over his face. Right over his face. And no one had the balls to just say, get off him, dude.

We'll talk about it later. I can't tell you how many times as a young agent or a young military officer, my peers and I would butt heads. Like, what are you doing? What are you doing? You wrote up a report that is inaccurate because in the Bureau, we don't tape record it. We don't tape anything. There's no cameras or anything. I go out an interview about a situation.

I'm not supposed to put opinion in there. I'm supposed to be facts of what you said. It's your statement. I'm writing it. I'm memorializing what you told me. And I would have often I would have fights and arguments. Even when I was a boss, I would look and say, this is opinion. You're taking what he said and you're turning it into what you wanted to say.

You know, you have to be to the point on that poor. or in the military, you know, out and talking to people or talking to towns leader, whatever, and be like, what are you doing? What the fuck are you doing? We don't do it that way. We listen to what they have to say. We make them collaborative partners in what we're doing. Nobody does that anymore.

Police academies don't even teach it. Really? Don't even teach it. They teach interview and interrogation, which is great. That should be part of it. Social, you know, being able to socialize with the community that you serve. Yeah, that's. That's something that's mandatory for survival in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

You have to be able to integrate with the civilian. You better because they'll sell you out in two seconds. Because you need them. You don't have them. You're done. And if you pay them, they get murdered. So you better be careful. You better be careful.

What you do? You're dealing with life and death. So are we on the streets here. You know, there's an old thing that I love. I love the show NYPD Blue. I think Andy Sippewitz is the best character in the history of TV. He just did. You know, and there's a session in there where he's teaching his son, who later gets murdered,

for doing exactly what he taught him to do. And he blames himself for the rest of his life. But there's a section at the end of one of the episodes where he's teaching his son about surveillance and about knowing your beat. And he says, son, you got to know your beat. He said, there's four things you need to know. People, places, the things they do, and the times they do them. And he goes on to tell the story about how one night on Christmas Eve, he saw a couple of cameras. characters going to this toy warehouse.

Two seconds later, they came out with a gun, and they were walking down. And he says, and I was just about ready to go up and pull my gun. And I recognized it as the owner of the toy factory. And I said to him, what are you doing? He said, I'm bringing a toy gun home for my kid. It's Christmas Eve. He said, had I not known what was going on in my area, what a shot and killed him on Christmas Eve.

He said, so that's the important piece. We're missing that in law enforcement. We're missing that in training. understanding because there's this there's this great value placed on being able to you know knock your side wrestle you to the ground by oh he took the sky out over the car well you know what that's going to backfire on you someday and it has in many ways be a community pleaser listen to people who have done it before i'd rather be able to talk to someone and figure it out and i've done it in many places in many places in many places

around the world and my life, here I am, here I sit, I survived it. I'm a survivor. Be a survivor. Going back to what we're talking about. And I'm passionate about that, so I'm sorry. Yeah, no, I'm too. I'm too. About the, like, even going back to using the judicial system as an example of human nature. Humans have, most humans have a deep desire to get better and to advance their lives and advance their careers and grow and evolve. I mean, just like technology keeps evolving, we want to make new iPhones, new bigger and better things. It's the problem is the people that want to become policemen with the amount of money they make. If you're somebody who's like yourself, you're passionate about this, you believe in this. You obviously are an ambitious individual. Do you think a lot of

the people that are police officers now are the same type of people. They're ambitious. They like are they going to end up being a policeman? I don't know how much an average police officer makes, but it can't be much more than 50 grand a year. Depending on the area. I mean, obviously, you know, some of some towns up in New Jersey, they're starting at 100. Oh, really? Yeah. But I get what you're saying, though. I get what you're saying. I think most of the young officers that I know or I have mentored or had the opportunity to be around are driven individuals who want to make a difference. Want to do the right thing. Want to make a difference.

Want to be a leader in their community. Want to be respected. Want to have an honorable job. You want to be able to look to both sides and say, okay, I'm respecting the community. I've done what I'm supposed to be doing. My problem is when that is not respected within the ranks of that young police officer's world. It can get rocked quickly.

You ass kiss. What are you doing? Always trying to work these second shifts. What are you screwing me over? I got a second job. I need that shift. That stuff starts to happen. And then it's the stories.

You know, the stories are all the same. Oh, this dude, you know, I stopped them. He started to mouth off. So I locked them up. You know, I put them in the back of the car. Who gives? That's the easy thing to do. You know?

So I think you don't go into law enforcement to make money. You know, you truly don't because it's not there. Money is not, but it's a consistent, honorable, steady job when done properly. It's making a difference. It's serving something bigger than yourself. Truly the thing that I fell in love with the military, with West Point, the military, and the FBI, always serving something bigger than myself. Right.

Not just being about me. You know, now, where I'm at now, I use that training and experience, and I use the credibility that I earned over time in order to do more for myself, for my family, for the people to have an impact on the people I work with, the clients I work with. But along the way, I never lose focus on that. I think that's what's missing. The respect for that, the respect for, hey, look at this young person who wants to do more. That's why I love being around mentoring service academy kids or RTC kids that want to go in.

Because I see the passion. I see the passion as a servant leader. I see them wanting to do more. Not just for them. You know, not just the easy, hey, it's going to be, this is going to be awesome for me. I want to easy, easy, easy, you know, basically easy peasy. Here's my reward. Immediate.

Immediate gratification. Right. It's not the case in servant leadership. So we're missing a little way. I don't think it's the majority of police officers that fall into this category. No, definitely not. Some of the greatest people I know have served and served honorable. Same.

you know um but ego has to do you think ego becomes a big part of it because i think when or do you ask you do you think in the george floyd case where the man's i forget the guy's name is kneeling on george floyd's neck and uh all those people are filming and yelling at him to get off his neck and do you think his ego sort of got in the way there where all these people are screaming at me trying to tell me what to do i'm the one in charge i'm not going to do what these people are telling me to do. Yeah, I think that's a part of it. And once you get to that point where it's combative and it's contentious, you kind of lose, you lose focus on what's actually happening. So, you know, yes, that guy, a thousand times what he would do and he would never do that,

obviously, because it turned out in an awful way. But at the end of the day, yeah, I think he's contentious with the people around him. And he's going to show that I'm in charge, nobody's taking advantage of this police department. We're making this community better. exactly the opposite of what happened. Treating a person like a person no matter who they are. Would it piss you the hell off that this guy's walking around, drugged up, and is a menace in the town? Of course it would.

But there's always a different day. There's people like that, if they're still doing what they're doing, any criminal, if they're still doing what they're doing, eventually it's going to catch up. Might not be that day and you might not be able to be the judge, jury, and executioner. But at some point, you're going to be able to be able to be able to be a judge, to say, hey, you know, that's what happens. It doesn't, it never, you know, that cycle never turns out with a great result for the person that continues the cycle, which is why I always love to, I always love

to flip people because I got them back on the right track. In my mind, 500, I think I counted, I think I had 500 plus arrests and convictions in my career. I only had one guy not shake my hand at the end and say, thank you for being professional. Thank you for being who you were. I appreciate The one guy that didn't shake my hand is the guy we talked about today. Utilities of chairman. And his wife told me on the way out of the courthouse, I hope you die, a horrendous death. And I looked at her and said, is there any other type? Shark attack? What do you want? I mean, what do you want? You know? So, and then he came back after his jail term, he came back to the office, had another opportunity. I was friendly. I was like, hey, I hope you're doing okay. I hope you feel the right. Fuck you. So he told me, five years. later. I tried to shake his hand and he wanted. I'm on it. You're an asshole. Okay. Still bothers me, by the way. Does it really? Hell yeah. Hell yeah. After everything you worked on. Hell yeah. Still bothers

me. I wanted that handshake. How much of your time was spent on white collar crimes or like corruption or like bank fraud, that kind of stuff? Periods of my career were specified cases that I kind of felt that when I was working cases, I always earned the chance to work on the best cases. And many times they came from my sources. They came from people who would provide information. You know, it's, I pride myself on nurturing my network, whether it be a criminal network that has information,

whether it be friends or classmates from West Point or classmates from the FBI Academy. I pride myself on that. So when they would come, you know, sometimes they were taken from me and given to other agents, but many times I would plead to let me run with this. You know, I'm the person who brought it to you. I need to stay involved. And to this day, I still do that. If, you know, if I feel like I owe to the person or to the cause to move forward, I'll stay with it.

So really, when I was working cases, which was for about eight years of my career, you know, we're actually working cases, I always, you know, I always felt the more complex the case, the better and more intrigued and more motivated. And motivated's a bad word, but, but more jazzed about the case. And in that world, it's just about, you know, it's about creating opportunities like anything else. Hey, I think, and once you know, once it goes off in your head, sometimes it takes a week, sometimes it takes a year for to go off in your head. This is wrong. There's something really wrong and criminal about this.

Then it's just a matter of every single chance and opportunity to talk to people, to look at evidence, to subpoena evidence, to wiretap, you know, to search warrant. Every bit of that is incorporated into your daily, like, being. Like, I would wake up in the middle of the night and be like, I got to go in. I'm going in. I'm going in. Oh, I thought it. Oh, my God.

it did work out. Look at this. Holy cow, pull somebody's trash off their curb, which we're allowed to do, by the way, as federal law enforcement money. Look through it. Oh, my God. Here it is. Here's the document. I knew he had a bank account at Lakeland. Son of a bitch. It's where he's hiding the money. That kind of stuff. So, you know, I kind of mixed and matched the kind of cases that I generated and nurtured through my network and then made a decision to either, hey, you know what? Bob Smith's so much better at work in this kind of case. I'll stay with him if he wants me to, but that's the guy that should be on this. Or, oh my God, this is a serious. bank robber. Okay, we got to put John on that. You know, John knows exactly what he's doing on that. And that carried over into my boss time. You know, as a boss, like managing, I could be like, oh, there's nobody else I want, but that dude, that dude needs to do this case. He knows what he's doing. Because I knew two things. I knew he would give it his 100% effort. And if the evidence didn't follow where it went, he would tell me. Nope, we don't have it. And I knew when he told me that, I knew we didn't have it. And I think I had that reputation with bosses. If De Aureo came in and told you, nope, you know, it's not going to work. You knew it wasn't going to work. So all different

types. Boycala was a public corruption was, was a portion of my career that was wonderful. You know, I don't mean that. Wonderful. But it was intriguing. Most difficult case to make. One of my, one of my most popular guests on this show is a guy who whose career was made through bank fraud running from the FBI. I saw that. It was awesome. You watched that. Oh, it was great. Yeah. What's his fascinating guy? Matthew Cox. Matthew Cox. He's amazing. Yeah. Ran from the FBI. I played Cat and Mouse. Like, catch me if you can. type. Frank Abilnell. Yeah, yeah, the original. I wanted to ask you earlier, how much of a concern is it, if at all,

working in the FBI or any of these agencies for that matter of you guys are surveilling lots of people, some innocent, some guilty, whatever it may be, people that you, whether they're informants, they're in your network of people trying to solve a problem. are you ever worried about or do you know that you are also being surveilled by somebody else? Like are, as the FBI keeping tabs on you? Because I know that when it comes to a position that involves high secrecy in government, that it's important that the people working there are in the right state of mind mentally, especially with their family life too.

Going back to that story, I was telling you about the guy Bob Lazar. Yes. They were monitoring. They were tapping his phone lines and he knew about it. He gave them permission to do that. And they found out at one point because they were tapping his lines and his wife was cheating on him. So that's when they fired him because they said, this guy's going to be unstable. We have to get rid of him.

Yep. Yep. It's definitely always in the back of your mind, you know, whether or not you're jeopardizing anyone else in your world or in your life that's important to you by doing the job that you do. So you're very most people in that world, most of the really top-notch agents and prosecutors are very self-aware and situationally aware of what they're creating by doing the job they're doing. Right. And those who aren't, you know, we've seen examples of that would break my heart. The federal judge in Newark, who the guy came to the house and dressed as a FedEx guy. and murdered her son and maimed her husband.

When was this? This was not long ago. This had something to do with Epstein, didn't it? It did have something to do with Epstein. Yeah, this was probably what, four years ago? Maybe. Yes, I remember this. Not even.

So I think that goes through your head. You definitely do think, especially I did a few undercover gigs that I often wondered, was I backstopped enough. And my first undercover gig was with the military. home in conjunction with law enforcement. So you often think about that, but I think it's a matter of just being on top of your game. So I knew who the threats,

I knew the potential threats that I was taking on in order to complete this case. And I made it very clear to the people that I was investigating through either to themselves or through their attorney that it would not be tolerated. You know, threats or even mess. would not be tolerated. And, you know, we, we slammed some people after the fact when they actually,

we actually had one dude mortgage fraudster that winds up that, you know, he probably knows. Matthew Cox probably knows who tattooed the initials of the federal prosecutor with like one of those circles with a line through it on his arm and came to sentencing like that. So the judge was like, I see that and I'm going to consider it in a sentencing. I was going to give you eight years in jail. you now have 20. And then we monitor the phone calls. That gives us the opportunity to monitor because it's threat.

So we'd monitor those prison phone calls, you know, for the next 20 years. Somebody's listened to that shit. So you're always prepared and aware. I think if you let your guard down with regards to who's looking and who's watching, it's not to be paranoid, but there's a form of paranoia that's actually not a bad thing. And I think the Bureau and the agency especially looks for that. They look for, you know, kind of controlled paranoia. So they want you to kind of be looking, you know, what's going on around you.

Absolutely. And that's a, that's a symptom of PTSD is the hypervigilals. Right. Which is scary. Right. You know, to the point where you could be sitting, you come back from a combat situation or come back from a mission and you're sitting in a Starbucks in Red Bank, New Jersey, and you hear, you know, a car tire screech, you can lose it.

Like that. So think about how many young soldiers who don't have the, you know, wherewithal or the support to be able to figure that out. So they go to the VA who just loads them up with Kalanapin. Here you go. Take as much of this shit as you want. What's the number? 22 a day.

22 a day. And I think that's light. I think that's light. Honestly. I think that's really light. It's crazy that the government can't find out, can't figure out something to do with the people that come back from deployment or come back from jobs like you can't come back home.

Isn't it crazy? Alternative, there's alternative methods that they, won't even allow into the system. You know, like your transcendental meditation, those kinds of things that I'm a firm believer in that can help. You know, or just the fact, like, we do have some nonprofits that are out there doing great work.

Great work. Giving cause, giving reason, giving purpose. Purpose is an important thing. It is. It is important thing. And if you're not careful, you can find yourself really in a bad, in a dark place. If you don't have purpose day to day,

I don't mean like purpose, you know, I'm making money, I'm taking care of a kid, something to do, something that's mean. meaningful to you. You know, and that's kind of like, I think that's part of the problem. They come back from something that no one understands. Nobody understands what it's like to be in a combat deployment. They can't talk about it.

No PTSD survivor talks details. They don't. They can't. You need to. You need to fucking scrub that, man. You need to figure it out. The only guys, if I, perfect example, probably 10 years ago, I'm sitting in a panera. Sitting in a panera eating it.

And this older gentleman comes up and goes, how you doing? No idea who was. How you doing? You're a sufferer, aren't you? I look up, he's got like a, like a, you know, one of the veteran caps on. And he says, I know, I could see it. And we became friends. We still talk.

We still talk monthly. Out of, and a panera, he noticed it. And I've got the ability, like I consider myself somebody who can move past things. I was trapped there. Without that guy, I don't, I probably don't. Honestly, I probably don't have, and then you lose purpose over the course. We all, listen, we all lose purpose along the way. Like, shit, I thought I really want to do that, but I really want to do this.

But it's not for a, when it's an extended period of time, you know, there's something behind it. So my thought is always like, involved, stay involved, you know, stay with something. Giving, all you're doing with medicine and prescriptions is prolonging the cycle. You're compressing the cycle. You need to have people, they need to have purpose. The purpose is the biggest thing. Biggest thing. The drugs are just band-aids, right?

The drugs like the marijuana, the psychedelics and the MDMA, I mean, all that stuff, I'm sure is great, but you've got to have a purpose in life. You have to. And especially after doing something that demanding, that insane is got to be coming back to everyday comfortable life in America. That's not even close. And on top of that, to compound that, all of these people who are being deployed into. combat or who used to be deployed into combat in like Iraq or wherever it may be. They're in their late teens, early 20s. So they're not even developed human beings yet.

Not even close. They say your brain, I think scientists now say your brain doesn't start developing until you stop developing until you're like mid to early 30s maybe. Yeah. And when you severely introduce this kind of trauma to somebody who's still a developing human being, you are going to alter their trajectory of development drastically. Drastically. It's the same thing.

So true. It's different, but the same. I often talk about, like, I compare it to NFL and NBA players when they're young, when they're their teens, in their 20s, and they get, all of a sudden, they leave high school and they're surrounded by sports agents, lawyers. They're getting millions of dollars, and they're getting told how to spend it, how to manage it, how to do this, how to talk to this person, how to talk to the news. These people are just at a high school.

Like when I was at a high school, I was a complete idiot. I probably didn't, I didn't really start learning about life until maybe my mid-20s, late-20s and like through failure, fucking up friendships, all kinds, losing money. Through trial and error into my mid-30s, I maybe have like a fraction of what it means to be a well-rounded human being now. And I didn't have any of this crazy, any of this stuff. When you're that young, when you're in your 20s, early 20s, and you all of a sudden have millions of dollars. Yeah. Hand at the world.

It changes your friendships. It changes your relationship with your family. It changes everything. Nothing's real. Nothing is real. No relationship is real. And what happens to you when all of a sudden in your mid 30s or your early 30s, it all vanishes? And how often does that happen? All the time. All the time. You know, and it's just even, and that is such a good point. And I mean, you know, things to come with my partnership, you know, that we have a plan to kind of help that out. But we'll, I can't share it now, but you'll be the first now. Well, we'll tell us, tell us a little bit about what you're doing now since you've come back, since you've been, you know, left the FBI. What have you been doing

since then? Yeah, definitely. So the, the funnest thing that I'm doing is Jersey Mike's restaurants. So we own two of those. And so it's doing great. And working shoulder to shoulder with your kids is a pretty cool thing and a pretty cool opportunity. But what we've since done is a My company is called J3 Global, and it's a security consulting firm, but I've partnered with some amazing individuals who have similar type companies. And together, you know, we have really taken peace of mind kind of consulting to another level. So we have actually been able to find, and it's all word of mouth this stuff. This is what's amazing to me. It's all word of mouth. you know, it's like, hey, if you need something, you know, kind of to reestablish your sense of situational awareness,

or reestablish or maybe even establish your sense of a security culture, whether it be in your life, whether it be with the company. We focus on high net worth, which all due respect, you know, there's some tough people. Obviously, they've done a lot to get where they are. So we want to kind of help them protect where they're at, help them realize. that there's a need in this world more so than anything else, and then provide an assessment of their life, and then give them recommendations of priorities to take care of that

and be side by side. It's almost like a hand-holding experience. But to me, the impact that we're having on these individuals takes me right back to my first platoon in the Army, where I had a true impact to teach and to show and to be side by side and to guide them through difficult portions of their life. The things maybe they never recognized or never thought what happened.

And what I tell them all the time, and this struck home with me, and it's easy for me to kind of display and to explain. When they say to me, what's the first thing? When you talk security in this day and age, people say, well, their immediate responses, you know, I'd love to talk to you. And, you know, definitely we have some background checks

that we want you to do. but nothing's really happened. So I don't know if I should spend money or I don't know if I should engage you. Nothing's happened. We're kind of okay. And I'm like, let me tell you a little story. Back in 2018, I was in the best shape of my life. And I decided because so, because I was, you know, reading a couple books about, you know, being a cardiologist.

I decided that I was a cardiologist and that I could take myself off my Lipitor because I didn't need it anymore. I was in great shape. I had no chest pain and no issue. It was working hard, whatever. Well, in December of 2019, I was seated in my office, and I felt a sense of doom, which is what they talk about, which is definitely something that's intensified since my roles in different situations along the way.

And I knew something was really wrong. Got some pain in my chest. Got pain in my arm. I got pain in my jaw. And immediately I said, I got to go. I got to go to the doctors. I got to go to the hospital. started to take myself to the hospital,

realized I couldn't make it, called 911. They rushed me to the emergency room where I went right into a cap lab. My doctor, who I told him, hey, I'm going to take myself off a lip-a-door that day. I didn't tell him before that. He told him, he was shocked. He's like, what's the matter?

You're on your drug? I said, I got a problem. I didn't take my lip-a-door in like nine months because nothing's going to happen. Right. They said, well, here we are. He said, you're 95% blocked in your widowmaker, and your L-A-D.

said, I'm going in right now, I'm going to put stents in. And he didn't. He saved my life on the spot. And for that, I'm forever grateful. He's the greatest doctor in the world. So you had a blockage? Blockage. Massive blockage.

I had about two days to live. It was that close to closing down. Right. So that's what I told clients who say, well, I don't really want to, I'm your lipitor, dude. I'm the one that's going to protect you. Take the lipitor now. Because when something happens, it's too late. I didn't have a heart attack.

I got lucky. So I didn't have, I have no damage to my heart. I'm better for it. I've got a better mindset. I'm grateful to be alive. And now I'm going to take that and I'm going to transfer it into helping you, giving you peace of mind. If it's a medical issue, it's one thing. But when it's an issue that you can prevent because you have me consulting and you have my partners consulting.

And the stuff we can do, our capabilities is beyond anything anybody can do. I put it up against anybody in the world. So all you big companies that are looking at have 700 employees, we have three. and we'll knock your socks off. So that's kind of what I'm doing. And you can tell the passion is there, man. Oh, yeah. You know, and the more passionate you are about something and you believe,

and you know this, the more things start coming in, you know, and it's kind of like just a wonderful feeling. So that's what I'm doing right now. In addition to, I make a fabulous number 13 at Jersey, Mike, so you want to come to see. But it's in South Jersey. Well, thank you so much for doing this. Yeah, man.

My pleasure. How can people get in touch with you or contact you if they need to? Yeah. I mean, I'll give out my email address, which is the best way. So it's J.Diorio, Dio, R-I-O at J-3-Global.com. Please, you know, send me a note. Websites being redone because we're getting a lot more action. My LinkedIn has everything you need to know.

So please, direct message me or whatever. Love to help you out. You heard it, folks. Thanks again, Jim. I really appreciate it, man. My honor.