The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Courage Under Fire: Under Siege and Outnumbered 58 to 1 on January 6 by Steven A. Sund

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

Courage Under Fire: Under Siege and Outnumbered 58 to 1 on January 6 by Steven A. Sund One of the darkest days in American history became an extraordinary story of courage under fire. Courage Under Fire is United States Capitol Police Chief Steven A. Sund's gripping personal account that takes readers inside the events leading up to January 6, and provides a detailed and harrowing minute-by-minute account of the attack on the US Capitol, which was valiantly defended in hand-to-hand combat by the US Capitol Police officers who found themselves outnumbered 58 to 1. Courage Under Fire draws upon audio recordings, key documents, and government records as it traces Sund's extraordinary journey from his command post on January 6 to his explosive behind-closed-doors testimony before the January 6 committee. Steven A. Sund, one of only ten men in history to hold the title of Chief of the US Capitol Police, has coordinated dozens of National Special Security Events, responded to numerous critical incidents and active shooter events, and has protected every living US president. But nothing could have prepared him for the violent attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Three days before the attack, Chief Sund requested the assistance of the National Guard. This request was denied. In preparation for the Joint Session of Congress, Chief Sund directed every available sworn officer to be on duty to protect the Capitol and all of its members and staff. But it wasn't enough. The savage attack that followed was a well-planned and carefully coordinated armed assault on the United States Capitol, involving thousands. The shock and horror of this attack exploded on TV screens worldwide as US Capitol Police officers under Chief Sund's command found themselves facing a violent siege, hit with pipes, fire extinguishers, boards, and flag poles. Dedicated men and women were knocked unconscious and sprayed with mace and bear spray as live pipe bombs were discovered at the national headquarters of both major political parties. Finally multiple police lines were breached. Then the building was breached. The National Guard didn't arrive until it was much too late. In the end, 150 officers were seriously injured, and nine Americans were dead.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. And as always, we're just coming off of our big CES interviews.

All the CEOs over there, everything we're doing. Be sure to check out all the stuff we did at CES. About 30, 35, 40 interviews over there. Just some amazing technology, brilliant CEOs who've got their eyes in the future. Pretty awesome. So check that out. Further show to your family, friends, and relatives. Remember, the Chris F their eyes on the future. Pretty awesome. So check that out. Further show to your family, friends, and relatives. Remember, the Chris Foss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you,

at least not as harshly as your mom does. Now she just sent into the show, go clean your room. Anyway, thanks for tuning in, guys. YouTube.com, 4Chance Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, 4Chance Chris Foss, all those crazy places we have on the interwebs. He is the former Capitol Police Chief. Stephen A. Sund is on the show with us today, which is important because he's just put out his newest book,

Courage Under Fire, Under Siege, and outnumbered 58 to 1 on January 6th. As of this recording, we're now just barely past the two-year mark of the January 6th coup attempt on our democracy. And it'll be wonderful to have him on the show. He's going to talk about some of his insights and tell his story. You know, there's a lot of stories that went into what we saw, a lot of misinformation that was out there. And so it's important that people read these books, get to know this data and everything else. Chief Stephen A. Sun was the 10th Chief of Police for the United States Capitol Police from June 13th to 2019 until January 8th, 2021.

Before joining the United States Capitol Police in 2017, he had a 25-year law enforcement career working for the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., where he rose in the ranks from patrol officer to commander of the elite special operations divisions. As commander, he led in planning and numerous high-level security events, including our presidential inaugurations, and oversaw a number of specialized units, including the emergency response team, special events, dignitary protection branch, explosion ordinance disposable unit, and many others.

Welcome to the show, Chief Sund. How are you? I'm doing well, Chris. Thanks for having me here. Thanks for coming. We certainly appreciate it. You've got an extensive career in policing and protecting the Capitol and everything else.

What motivated you to want to write this book? You know, originally after January 6th, the farthest thing from my mind was sitting back and writing a book. The main thing I wanted to do is I realized there was something terribly wrong that happened, that when you start looking at it and you start finding out some of the intelligence that existed out there, my attempts to secure the Capitol in advance by requesting the National Guard, that there were so many things that went wrong that day that Congress needed to be aware of. So my first choice was, I attempted to tell Congress. I wrote a letter to the leadership of Congress, an eight-page letter outlining

a number of issues that I think impacted our ability to secure the Capitol that day and received zero responses. I did a follow-up saying, just want to make sure you receive my letter. I received one response from a chief of staff that said, yeah, we received your letter, nothing more. People don't realize when they finally held their first hearings on the Senate for the joint session, I mean, for the combined committees, they didn't want me to testify. They didn't want anybody that no longer was in their position to testify. And that would mean the three people that were at the center of security on Capitol Hill, Mike Stanger, who's the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms, Paul Irving, who is the House Sergeant-at-Arms, and myself were not going to be allowed to testify.

Wow. I explained this in the book. I went to somebody I knew on the Rules Committee and said, I really want to testify. I will be there in person. And I was the only person that showed up. I was in person. A couple of other people testified over Zoom calls. They ended up getting the two sergeant arms. But I was in person. I testified for four and a half hours. Ultimately, my reason for writing this book is I'm concerned something like this could happen

again. A number of major flaws happen in security up on Capitol Hill, that if we don't correct it, something like this could happen again, whether it's the Capitol today, the White House tomorrow, or some other facility. Yeah, and it's quite the extraordinary events. I mean, we talked about this in the green room. You know, Tom Hartman referred to it as a rehearsal. You know, this is a warm-up. You know, you saw Hitler do that with the, what was the bar, Blitzkrieg, this is the

bar, the bar thing that he first got arrested for, he wrote Mein Kampf. It was a practice coup attempt. And you see that throughout a lot of these authoritarian sort of things. And, you know, this was something no one saw coming. No one ever had, in American history, had ever seen a president turn a mob onto onto the branch government and uh you know say go up there and you know hang my pence basically no never been done before so this is quite an extraordinary event in of itself but it also like you mentioned leads into the potential for it to reoccur we just uh we just saw those watching this video

years from now, Bolsonaro try and pull the same stunt, and they just pulled a January 6th and swarmed government buildings. Yeah, I was watching that and reading about it as well. Yeah, it was quite extraordinary. But, you know, one of the things in the book, you titled it Courage Under Fire, being outnumbered 58 to 1, what were those numbers and odds that you guys had that you're dealing with? Right at 58 to 1, I believe it was Cambridge that came in and did a study.

And our West Front, if any of your viewers have been to Washington, D.C., the Capitals is kind of on a little bit of a hill going down to the Mall, and the West Front is kind of the part of the Capitol everybody sees. Imagine that completely filled. At one point, we had 10,000 people estimated on the west front, a number of those people battling with my officers. So they came in, did a study, and came back with the 58 to 1 number, which I think is absolutely – I'm sorry, Carnegie Mellon was the one that did it,

corrected by my wife in the background. Anyway, and the Courage Under Fire title actually comes from law enforcement, really, whether it's my officers. And they, right after January 6th, I mean, within hours of the protest, the riot happening on the West Front and the riot at the Capitol happening, we had members of Congress, the very people that we were sworn to uphold and protect, coming out and calling my officers complicit, racist, involved. They were opening doors and letting people in. That couldn't have been the farthest from the truth. And the title comes from really all the rhetoric law enforcement has gone through, whether

it's the 2020 protests or January 6th, that people don't realize some of the stuff that goes on. Yeah, I mean, the videos don't tell the full story. And unfortunately, we live in this video world where people see short videos or clips. And in some of the videos, they did appear to let people in. But in your book, you tell the bigger story of what was really going on and the things that were happening there. And it almost seemed like they just wanted to maybe turn the Capitol Police into a scapegoat. But you could tell by watching the videos. I mean, it was an overwhelming experience.

There was just no way that they could handle this crowd, this mob. And then the violence they brought to it. These guys were prepared. They had flags that weren't really flags. They were meant to be spears and weapons of war, and they'd really kind of come in on the radar, I think. Yeah, you're absolutely right, Chris. And one of the things I talk about in the book is they came,

and now the intelligence shows that they did surveillance on our facility. They knew some of our entry points. They knew the number of officers I had at the entry points. Critical information that definitely shows they did some pre-attack surveillance. But also what concerns me is we have cameras that are mounted up on posts, walls, that you really can't get to. These people came with grappling gear, gear to actually grab the cameras and pull them down. We had officers that actually were able to go out and watch some of this,

and they had secure communications, they had equipment, climbing equipment to come up some of our walls, the way they're built. So I think definitely there were some of that group that absolutely came prepared. You're absolutely right. No one expected something like that in this kind of a demonstration, and I've never seen something turn so violent so quickly when that group approached our west front at 12.53 p.m. I was amazed at how quickly. I've handled numerous demonstrations in my career, how quickly that turned into a violent melee.

Yeah, definitely one of the darkest points in our history. You might be able to call it the darkest. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in our history. You might be able to call it the darkest. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com.

Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to for your company. Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show. And be sure to check out ChrisVossLeadershipInstitute.com.

Now back to the show. We really hit a real bottom, and hopefully we've learned from that bottom. I don't know, knock on wood, but this is why it's important for books like yours to get the truth out there and for people to read them read the january 6th thing do you did you get in involved with the january 6th were you able to testify in the january 6th committee i know you mentioned one committee that you were in yes so um actually was yes besides the senate combined committee that took place in 2021 i did did get interviewed by the January 6th committee. They interviewed me, I believe it was April of 2022. I went in there to talk to them. They wanted a three-hour block of time, and I think I walked out of there at six and a half hours.

Wow. Wow. That's quite a lot of work. Some of the explosive revelations you cite in the book, never-before-detailed conversations between you and congressional leadership, including Nancy Pelosi. Give us some tease out on that, if you would. Well, she teased it at herself when she called for my resignation. Sadly, I'd gotten a little heads-up, about a two-minute heads-up, that she was getting ready to go on national TV and call for my resignation. I was in a meeting. I was briefing another member of Congress, and this is all described in the book.

So I come out. I'm told she's going to go on national TV, call for my resignation. I had a split second to call my wife, give her a quick heads up. And then she went on national TV and said there was a failure to leadership at the top, and she was calling for my resignation. But then what really struck me was when she said, besides, I haven't even spoke to him since this occurred. I spoke to her three times. And it's clearly outlined because I got a number of pretty interesting phone calls that day, one being from the White House. But Mike Pence called me several times,

Vice President Pence. And the first two times, I was just way too busy bringing in resources. People don't realize when I was up there, I've got lots of relationships throughout Washington, D.C., law enforcement. And while we were waiting for the Capitol Police Board, and I'm sure we'll get into that here in a minute, to make a decision to allow me to bring in federal resources, I was already calling in the cavalry. I was calling in all the law enforcement. So I was bringing 17 law enforcement agencies and 1,700 officers to help us turn the tide. But needless to say, when I got a chance to go over and brief Mike Pence right around 5.35 p.m. when I finally felt we were at a point where I could step away from

the command center, he put me on a telephone on his phone call, called Speaker Pelosi and had me brief her. That was call number one. Within an hour, I had a second call with her where she called to ask me some questions about what I talked to Vice President Pence about. And then the third time was probably about a half an hour after that, the second call, and it was when I briefed all the leadership that was on a secure that is at a secure facility off-site um so three critical times uh and she seemed to forget about those and what bothered me about her going on national tv and saying that she's a speaker she can she can call for whoever's resignation is uh that she wants but one she didn't know the facts of what

happened that day and any law enforcement officer is going to tell you what you hear in the first 24 hours, stand by. It's probably going to change. And two, she painted me as callous, disrespectful, and possibly even involved by saying I didn't even talk to her. Wow. That's some cold stuff, man. I mean, she's a savage politician. Like I say, I got the feeling because I'm like, why are we asking for people to resign now? There needs to be an investigation of what went on.

Because, I mean, I knew something was going to go on. We had Peter Strzok on the show months before talking about his book. And someone had made a comment on one of our YouTube videos that we're going to fix everything with violence to get something out of effect on January 6th. Someone made a comment on his thing. These people knew what they were planning to do. And since

then we've had so much come out and found out so many different things. One thing you have in the book is another teaser is you have as an explosive revelation never before heard accounting of a call from the white house to yourself during the attack that's got to be interesting it's it's interesting and yeah i definitely want to leave that little intact but the sense is this um in washington dc especially when i was with the washington dc police department

in the capital and especially when i was the commander of special operation division you would you get a chance to talk some pretty important people from pretty important when I was with the Washington, D.C. Police Department and the Capitol, and especially when I was the commander of Special Operation Division, you would get a chance to talk to some pretty important people from pretty important facilities. And oftentimes when these calls come in, they're an odd sequence of numbers. When you look down and go, this is most likely going to be someplace important or more important, somebody very important. I looked down, I saw this odd series of numbers come in, and I said, this is one of those calls. And when I picked it up and they said said this is the White House switchboard calling,

my first thought was, this is probably the commander-in-chief call. Was it? I don't know. If you want to tease it out, people got to buy the book. To be honest with you, I didn't write this just to sell books.

I'm happy to tell you how it went. I wrote this, and you'll pick it up when you read through the book. I took painstaking efforts to write this in an apolitical, unbiased fashion because if we paint it with a political brush, people are going to walk away and immediately one side or the other is going to discredit everything that's said. Trust me, this comes from 29 and a half years of law enforcement experience, everything from catching homicide suspects to handling the Pope's visit. And I don't want to see that happen. It actually turned out to be Mike Pence calling through the switchboard to talk to me. Yeah. Wow.

That's pretty amazing. I mean, I'm not, you know, that's not still not bad. But and I will tell you this, in talking with Mike Pence, in the very first time he called me, I got called out of the command center. Someone said, hey, you need to come out and take this call. When I went out and took the call, his first question, his very first concern was, how are you and how are you men and women doing? Wow. Think about that. He's the vice president of the United States.

He wants to get the certification done. His first concern was for law enforcement. I've got to hand it to him. That really, to this day, sticks with me. But then he made it perfectly clear he wanted to stay. He wasn't going to get run out of the Capitol. And he wanted to get back into session as soon as possible to get this election certified. Yeah. I mean, him staying on point and not getting in the car,

they were trying to extricate him from the thing. The whole thing is just crazy. I mean, it really was. I mean, it's a good analogy that it really was the most perfect storm that we never saw coming and probably was important for us to learn from, I guess. You know, when people use the term the perfect storm, I always picture that one, you know, the movie poster with the boat way up on the wave. And, yeah, this is not a bad way to describe it because when you sit back and you think it, that perfect storm all began decades in advance with the security structure you have on Capitol Hill. People don't realize the chief of the Capitol Police now really quick, just so your viewers know, in the executive branch, you have the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, Secret Service. You have lots of different law enforcement agencies.

In the legislative branch, you have one law enforcement agency. It's the United States Capitol Police, where you're one-stop shop from everything from dignitary protection like Secret Service to investigations like FBI to SWAT teams. Everything, one-stop. I have 1,800 and about 90 sworn officers, 328 civilians. It makes me about the 25th largest police department in the country. People don't realize that. Wow. It's a sizable police department.

But what's important to realize is a couple of things. I've got a structure that oversees the Capitol Police that everyone thinks, you know, I'm the chief, I'm the top of the pyramid. But I've got a board that sits over top of me. It's called the Capitol Police Board. It's three politically appointed people, one from the House, from Nancy Pelosi, which was Paul Irving, the House Sergeant at Arms, one from the Senate, from Senator McConnell, and that was Mike Stenger. And then, believe it or not, one from the executive branch. Donald Trump actually put Brett Blanton in his position. So it gets kind of weird.

But this is what people need to realize. By federal law, federal law passed by Congress years and years ago, to U.S. Code 1970, and I'm the only police chief in the country that's affected by it, I can't call in federal resources either in advance of an event or while we're under attack without getting the approval of the Capitol Police Board. And when was that law put into place? I'd have to go back and look. It's been in place for many, many, many years. It's not like it's just been in place before January 6th.

Many years. But what's interesting is if I want to call them in, like on January 3rd, I wanted to request the National Guard. All I wanted was unarmed National Guard to stand on our perimeter because I knew I had a lot of officers handling the event inside the Capitol. I just wanted some extra people on the perimeter, not expecting this, you know, melee to happen, this riot, this attack to happen. And I wanted unarmed National Guard. For me to request that, I have to go to the Capitol Police Board. Plus, we also have to get leadership's approval. And Paul Irving said he, one, doesn't like the look of the optics, the look of the National Guard on Capitol grounds, and he didn't feel the intelligence supported it.

Wow. So he denied it. Mike Stinger wouldn't approve it without Paul Irving approving it. So that's two-thirds. So I wasn't getting anywhere with it. And then it gets better. When you talk about the perk storm, I want to paint this picture for you. So now 1253 on January 6th happens.

I'm looking at thousands of people fighting with my officers. As soon as they got to the gates, they started tearing the gates away from my officers, pummeling them, pulling them downstairs. And I saw my officers slowly starting to back up as hundreds and then thousands were coming onto the West Front and the battle was beginning. I made my first call to the sergeant at arms at 1258. So 1253, we get attacked. 1255, I call Washington, D.C. police asking for assistance.

And they were right nearby. Those are the police officers in the yellow and black, kind of the lime green, yellow and black jackets everyone sees come swarming into the west front. We had actually staged some of those nearby. Thank God for the Metropolitan Police Department. If they hadn't been there, we very likely could be dealing with some dead members of Congress in the halls of the Capitol. So 1253, they hit the front. 1255, I call D.C. Police. 1258, I make my first call to the Capitol Police Board requesting authority to bring in the National Guard.

71 minutes I wait until 2.09 p.m. before I finally get that call. During that time, I made over 32 calls, 32, 36 calls. Eleven of those calls are repeat calls to the Capitol Police Board saying, where are we on my request? You know, what people didn't realize is when I'm overwhelmed 58 to 1 and I need to dial 911, it's to go to the military. They have a program for it. And then it continues to get worse from there. It's not like the storm got any better once I finally got approval. Yeah. And you still got to get them there.

I remember hearing this breakdown and reading about it. And, like the i think correct me if i'm wrong the washington dc police i think were the first who were like hey we can help but then they need special approvals and you know all these different things and i think there was some muck up going on at the pentagon too as well didn't he installed the last second after he lost trump lost the election didn't he install some lackeys over there at the Pentagon who seemed to hold up sending reinforcements? Well, he pulled out Esper. I think Esper was the previous Secretary of Defense

and replaced him with a person by the name of Chris Miller, who was the acting Secretary of Defense on January 6th. And you're right. Things just seemed to go south from there. So I finally get approval. And even before I got approval, I started calling the National Guard, General Walker of the National Guard at 1250, right around 1251, 1253, saying, please send me everything you got. I'm going to get approval from the Capitol Police Board shortly because he knows I need to get approval. And I have to confirm with him that I have approval.

But I said, please start everything you got. I need whatever assistance you can give. And I'm watching. Picture me. I'm in the command center looking at this screen, probably six, eight video screens in front of me of people just pummeling my officers. I've got people on

the west front, people on the east front now, all fighting. I finally got approval to bring in the National Guard. I'm talking to the Capitol Police Board. I've talked to the National Guard over at the D.C. Armory, and then I get a notice to call the Pentagon, to get on this call with the Pentagon at 234. At 234, I get on the phone, and it's Lieutenant General Piat,

and I've got the mayor of the District of Columbia on the phone, her chief of staff, the chief of Metropolitan Police, Robert Conte, and then a bunch of military brass. And they're asking me if I need National Guard. Now, mind you, they're in the Pentagon, and I guarantee you, every one of those Pentagon offices has a large screen TV showing the exact melee

I'm seeing. And their command center actually has our radio in it. So they're hearing the cries for help. They ask, are you asking for the National Guard? I said, yes, this is an urgent, urgent request from the National Guard. I need any assistance you can send me right now. And this guy by the name of Lieutenant General Piat is on the phone. And he's telling me, and it's very similar to what Paul Irving had told me,

I don't like the look of the National Guard on Capitol Hill. Oh, my God. Have you seen the TV? Yeah, I'm like, do you like what you see any better? So, again, I said, I need assistance right now. I'm begging. I mean, they literally said he was

begging for assistance for his men and women. So he said, you know, I'd much rather relieve some of your officers on traffic posts so you can put your officers in the fight. I said, I don't have that. I have every officer in the fight. You know, I need assistance now. And he kept going back to that. I said, I don't have that. I have every officer in the fight. I need assistance now. And he kept going back to that. I said, that's not an option.

That's not an option. And finally, he says, and I'll never forget these words. He says, my recommendation is not to support your request. Holy. And I'm looking at this, and this is the military that's saying it to me. Robert Conte, the chief of Metron Police Department, goes, hold on a sec. You'rei the chief of metropolis police department goes hold on a sec you're denying the chief of the capitol police assistance right now steve do you need the national guard i said absolutely i need them it's urgent i need them now as quick as possible

and he said i'm not saying i'm denying them i just would rather you know relieve your officers on traffic because i'm like you know here we are we are. We're in this circle. And I'm like that. I don't have that option. I need you guys now. So this goes on for a number of minutes and then at two 34 to 44 PM, I hear over the radio shots fired in the county. And that infuriated me. And you'll read about what I, what I ended up saying to the Pentagon before I hung up the phone. But needless to say, I hung up the phone not knowing if any assistance was coming.

Jesus. I had gone. I had FBI coming out, ATF coming. I had police all the way from New Jersey State Police coming. And you know what? They got there before the D.C. National Guard got there. That is insane. Which is insane.

But, yeah, when you talk about the perfect storm, that was it. And what the kicker is, Chris, they finally get there at 540. We swear on the first 150 National Guard. I have to swear them in as special police officers. So I have it all set up. I have where to go, how we're going to deploy them, who's going to swear them in because I have to by law. I have to swear them in as special police officers so they have authority. We swear them in. I have to by law I have to swear them in a special police officer so they have authority on Capitol grounds we swear them in

the fighting is over we've already established the perimeter and you know what they do they line up and take a picture with the Capitol in the background the very optics that they said they didn't want to see I'm not I'm not kidding it seems ironic that you should be

I don't know if irony is the right word, but you should be the one that they asked to resign. All these guys should have been taken out of their jobs. That was what was going on. Well, you know, when you look at it, there actually was an effort for Lieutenant General Piat to be promoted. But Colonel Earl Matthews, within his command command who was on the phone with me wrote a 32-page letter.

It's actually available online, and I referenced it in my book, calling Piat an absolute liar. He lied about everything he said that I had said in the call. So he put his career on the line, but they ended up bypassing him for his promotion. But this is the crazy thing. And I reference all the documents. When it comes to defense support for civil authority, which is a program, I'm not stupid. I've actually been asked to teach it for the Department of Defense. They may not realize that, but they're about to find out. So I know what I'm talking

about. There's a policy out there and they didn't follow their policy. They didn't do exactly what they're supposed to do. And you know what the kicker is? The Department of Defense Inspector General did a complete investigation and said their response was appropriate. Wow. Yeah. Let me guess who appointed them. Do you feel that some of that was intent coming from the white house to to not send in the pentagon and i mean it seems like really i was really disturbed when um trump appointed those people

the pentagon and relieved esper at the last second you're like you you've just got days left like why are you bothering and a lot of journalists were really worried about it. Do you feel like that was intentional? So I talk about a number of things that I think contributed and were behind why there was some of the delay. And I believe, I'm just trying to remember, I think Chris Miller may have been like his fourth Secretary of Defense before he could think about it. But I do talk about why. There was definitely absolutely an intentional delay

and prevention of the national guard from getting in the fight there's no doubt there's there's no quorums about that chris miller came and he testified and he even said he said there's no way i was going to put national guard east of ninth street which means they'd stay up by the white house um and people need to realize there was 150 national guard with all their equipment within eyesight of the capital that's the crazy thing so he said and he, he wasn't putting them anywhere east of 9th Street because there was a lot of concern that the president may invoke the Insurrection Act and try and deploy the military and actually seize the Capitol.

I mean, that was the, you know, some of the stuff we see on January 6th. They planned this for a long time. This was planned. This was planned going to our highest, I mean, I'm see on January 6th. They planned this for a long time. This was planned. This was planned going to our highest. I mean, I'm just citing January 6th people. This was planned. The intent for there to be something that would happen, a politician to be killed, and then he could evoke the martial law, basically, and seize power,

which isn't – I mean mean this has been done before a million times in autocratic fascist governments it's it's as old as time and so they're just looking to create an event where they can seize martial law and and throw everything over and take over so um it's really interesting um everything that goes into it and i you know more and more people need to read the details and understand what went on to this. You give an expose in the book of a critical intelligence military failure surrounded January 6th. Like I said, it just boggles my mind that there's so many different things

that it's so hard for you to call for help. I mean, this is the people's house. This is the, you know, I mean, these centers, everything else, I mean, they're protected by, you know, what, a shield where airplanes can't fly them and everything else. We have all these different backup firms, I'm sure, from 9-11. But yet the police chief can't call in, you know, backup. It's crazy. Yeah, I have to agree with you.

I mean, like I said, I came here with 29 and a half years of experience. Well, right when I left, but I've got a lot of experience. You brought me in to be a chief. Let me do my job. Don't put a political structure over top of me that these people have trouble even handling votes, let alone they want to tell me how to do security. I think they need to just focus on what they need to do in politics and let me focus on security. And that's what they need to do. And to be honest, they changed one part of that law that I told you about, the law that says in an emergency, I have to go to the Capitol Police Board. December 2021, Congress passed the law and President Biden signed it in the law that says the chief now, without having to go to the Capitol Police Board, can call in federal resources, which is good. Hats off to them, step in the right direction. But in true Washington, D.C. fashion,

a lot of people need to read one of the last lines in the law. It's revocable by leadership. Think about that. So now they can go in again and say they don't quote, like the look of it, and we're going to go ahead and pull those resources back out. So it's things like that that make me concerned that something like this can happen again.

And you talked about the J6 committee. They have their report. I think it's 845 pages right around there. I've read a good majority of it. My thing is I've written this book, and I've painstakingly tried to stay apolitical and unbiased in it to make sure that the true security failures, people can pull them out and use them rather than just say, hey, it's purely the executive branch's fault or whatever fault it is.

There's significant fault to go around, and I just don't want to see this happen again. Definitely. We don't want to see it happen again ever. I mean, to me, it's just this it's a, to me it's one of the darkest parts of our history. Even seeing the Confederate flag being waved in the people's

house. You know, that flag had never gone anywhere near that Capitol 200 years ago when we fought a war of it. And to see that we're still fighting the same war, I was just like, are you freaking kidding me? I mean, I still to this day, it's like 9-11. I have a hard time watching the videos because I have such an emotional, visceral reaction to it.

One of the things that they're building in the book is deeply personal conversations between the chief and officers who had just been through the attack. It sounds like you interview a few of them and talk about their experience. I'll tell you, I talk to my officers every day. I actually just had a number of them meet with me right as I was getting ready to leave out of the city and went down. I'll go down every once in a while during holidays, things like that, to meet up with them. I truly love the men and women of the Capitol Police, Capitol Police, Metropolitan Police Department. They are A-OK in my book no matter what. They saved the day that day, along with the 17 other law enforcement agencies. So I talk to them.

There are a lot of personal stories. When people say, what was January 6th like for you? Imagine this. Every single one of my employees, and it doesn't have to be a sworn employee. It could be somebody working in crime analysis, things like that. Their family was watching that attack take place. They were watching the beatings, the battles. I talk about my son, what he saw, because he recognized some of the officers

and were concerned for their loved ones on the Hill seeing that happen. I talked to officers on January 6th for the two-year anniversary, and one thing they tell me is it's tough to watch the video. It still is very tough. It's tough for me to watch the video because it's sad what my men and women went through. I feel so bad for what they went through that they turn to me and they say, you know what, I just want January 7th to come. Yeah, it's for any event, but the one thing man can learn from his history is

man never learns from his history and that's why it's so important for us to read these documents understand what went wrong get the politics out of it you know it's it's if you you you i think it was was it goodman officerman? Yeah, Eugene Goodman, yep. Eugene Goodman, the one who, you know, he moved people away from the thing. You see the, I think it was Mitt Romney, who was within seconds of being found. Yeah, you watch the January 6th to see how close, like sometimes almost around the corner, these people seem to be. And they literally saved the day.

You saw them, you saw them bargaining with protesters, leading them away from places and all this stuff. And they're working with just their wits at that point because these people are violent. They've got weapons. They're wholly outgunned when it really comes down to it between just the sheer mass of the mob. And so it's sad to me that we've not treated these people better as heroes.

We've not done more to recognize the work that they did that day to save these people. And a lot of it seems to have been politically thrown under the bus. You know, when you work up on the Hill, you realize that you're often going to get pulled into politics. My officers know that. It's just part of the job. But they did. They put their lives on the line that day. And I'm glad that they came out. I'm glad they did the Congressional Gold Medal for the officers, for the various agencies that came in. I'm glad they saw that because that was important for them to get recognized for that. It was their blood, sweat, and tears that defended that Capitol.

And people, and I've had people tell me, oh, it was an easy breach. They breached the Capitol only within minutes. Between 1253 and when they hit my west front, it was 80 minutes before I think it was, Pazella was the protester that put the riot shield through one of the windows. I think that was the first one of those broken. Think about that. Eighty minutes that those men and women fought with their blood, sweat, and tears

to defend every inch of that Capitol before they got up to the skin of the Capitol and broke that window. But I'm glad that they were recognized for that. I'm glad Congress finally came forth and did that. So I think that was good. Definitely. Do you think that there, I mean, there were people that died on that day.

Mr. Fatone almost died, I mean, there were people that died on that day. Mr. Fatone almost died. I mean, he suffered damages and health damages, I believe, a lot of other ones where they can't return to work in their field of trade. Being an officer probably wouldn't want to after that. But, you know, I mean, these are life-changing events. Do you think there should be a statue we should put up to honor the men and women of that day? I think there should be a statue we should put up to honor the men and women of that day? I think we should. Well, you know, and I'll tell you, I've talked to a number of officers about that. And there, yeah, one time Congress was talking about doing a plaque on the West Front

that had every officer's name. And I think they've gotten away from that. The officers, like I said, a lot of the officers really want to, you know, I don't know about a statue. They like the gold medal that they received. A lot of them really hold that in very high esteem, and I'm glad they got that. And I think the plaque that they're going to put on the West Front that's just commemorating the West Front, I think, will suffice. The big thing is that we have the National Law Enforcement Officer Memorial in Washington, D.C., and we know Brian Sicknick's name is going to be on that.

Howard Leibengood's name is going to be on that. Jeff Smith with Washington, D.C. Police. Everyone that was determined to be a line-of-duty death associated with this will be represented on that wall, and that is held very near and dear to the officers in Washington, D.C. I think that's important. I mean, we need to memorialize this. You know, you see the Bolsonaro thing.

It's just this is how fascist and authoritarian things happen. And if we don't put our foot down, we don't hold people accountable, then people will be like, well, we can do this next time and whatever the case may be. The people behind this, you know, their stories are so important, and the facts are important too, because even now, you'll see these guys that go out and do interviews at rallies, and they'll find people that they have all sorts of misinformation. They're still pumping and sharing.

So it's great that they have your book that's out there as a document to this so that, you know, the truth can be told and hopefully set us free, I guess. Yeah, and I'm happy about that because I've received dozens of contacts, texts, emails of officers just saying, we really appreciate the fact that someone's actually put a voice to, given us a voice and that we're actually hearing stuff. We knew some of the stuff that you went through and now we're reading it. But that really means a lot to them.

And I'm more than happy to be the one that does that because this is really their story and I write it in defense of them. Because one thing that we started off the podcast on was some of the misunderstanding, the misinformation about the actions of my officers. My officers didn't open gates. They didn't allow people in. They upheld their oath of office. There's pictures of somebody taking a selfie.

Trust me, what people don't realize is that officer is still standing in his post. But if you are surrounded by dozens or hundreds of protesters, there's only so much you can do. You don't have the physical capability or the resources to physically take them on. So to de-escalate it by use of a selfie, that's, you know, hats off to that officer. Yeah, when you're outnumbered, you're pretty much playing a psychology game there of trying to get people to calm down. You know, you saw a lot of the officers trying to talk to people. Hey, let's, so we're all Americans here.

Let's, you know, put down our weapons. Yeah, self-preservation. Yeah, really. I mean, that's what uh, so we're all Americans here. Let's, uh, you know, uh, put down our weapons and self-preservation. Yeah, really? I mean, you're, you're, that's what you're dealing with. And, and like it says in the title of your book, 58 to one, I mean, you think of trying to take on any group of people, uh, of that size and defend it. You know, I mean, I, I, I made the comment that, you know, I, I could never be a police officer cause I would just end up shooting somebody just because they were dumb, which I just would. And so I would make a horrible, I would never make the ranks.

But, you know, the fact that they didn't open fire and just start shooting everybody like they would in some governments, you know, Iran and other places, is extraordinary in and of itself, especially when they are far outnumbered. And I think it speaks to the quality of our police force and what those brave men were trying to do that day. And I agree with you. And you may say that now, but if you go through the training these officers go through, you act just like they did.

And I'll tell you, and I do address the shooting that we had inside the Capitol, the shooting with Ashley Babbitt, I do address that in the book. But any loss of life is tragic, whether it's a rioter, a criminal, especially an officer. Any loss of life is tragic, but I will tell you to have 17 law enforcement agencies come in, in addition to Capitol Police, over 1,700 outside law enforcement officers, and to show that level of restraint and that level of professionalism, I couldn't be happier. It was a bad, dark day in American history.

Imagine how it would have been if there would have been more loss of life. Yeah, including the senators and the things, the potential for that to be evoked for martial law. I mean, we just really don't understand, except with documents like yours, how close we came to ending, you know, this beautiful little experiment we call a democracy in a republic. You know, how close we came to losing it. I mean, I remember, I think it was General Mattis made the comment, you know, at the Biden inauguration. He goes, well, we landed the plane.

Didn't think it would happen or something to that effect, but we landed the plane and we barely got by. I think very few people really understand how close we came and how close we can come again if we don't do things to fix this in the future. I absolutely agree with you. We need to make sure this doesn't happen again. You had said it before, I think when you mentioned about the morality. We are better than this as a country, whether it's how we respond to violent rhetoric, politicians. We need to do better.

We need to raise that moral bar higher. Our members of Congress need to be able to work across the aisle. They need to grow up. Because too many people out there in the field, out there in the communities are mimicking what they're seeing their elected officials do, and we're better than this. Yeah. I mean, we just saw the crazy go too far between QAnon and everything else.

I'm hoping that the most recent election that we had was a referendum to wanting what you just mentioned, a better thing for our republic, a fact that we're tired of the crazies, we're tired of weird stuff, we're tired of the January 6s, we're tired of the denials and the lying. I think hopefully it's brought a value to us in this dark moment, a value to us that this is sacred and we need to work hard to keep it. And we're all Americans. You know, I mean, that was the hardest part, I'm sure, for those people.

I mean, this wasn't a bunch of terrorists attacking the Capitol on January 6th. This wasn't the British, you know, coming to burn everything down like they did in the 1800s. This was, 1800s, 1700s, this was American on American. And I mean, that's a whole new dynamic to have to really think about. Yeah, it was really sad to watch. Yeah, definitely. Well, it's great that you've written this book. Anything more you want to tease out before we go, Chief?

You know, it's interesting. We haven't even gotten into the intelligence aspect. There's a lot of intelligence. And I do talk about how the intelligence for January 6th was handled differently. You know, I've worked in Washington, D.C. for a long time with a lot of intelligence. And I do talk about how the intelligence for January 6th was handled differently. You know, I've worked in Washington, D.C. for a long time with a lot of different events with various threat streams that were much less now that are realized than this had, that the FBI, DHS would have handled a whole lot different. But I do talk about that. But I try and lay this out as concise as I can so people can understand kind of the structure of the Capitol Police, how it works or sometimes doesn't work.

But just how everything happened, building up to it. We had had two previous Stop the Steal MAGA events and how those were handled based on intelligence and how they worked out coming into this. So I try and give as much facts as possible to let people walk away. Many are going to walk away scratching their head going, I can't believe our government is this dysfunctional. But it gives them all the ammunition they need to try and fix this. Yeah. I mean, we saw that after 9-11. None of the bureaus were talking to each other.

Everyone was kind of siloing their own data and information, and they say it's one of the things that may have helped 9-11 go down because people weren't sharing information. Everyone was like, well, this is our little secret over here. And you think we would have learned, but this is why we need books like yours. The one thing men can learn from his history is men never learn from his history, and everybody goes round and round. Chief, it's wonderful that you're telling this story, that you're sharing with people. We certainly, it was an honor to have you on the show. Well, thank you. It was nice to be here.

I appreciate it. There you go. People, please read the book. Pick up the book. Educate yourselves on what happened in the world. Courage Under Fire. Under Siege and Outnumbered, 58 to 1 on January 6th. And we need to remember and revere the people that were not only lost

on that day, but the people who gave their health and lives. I mean, some of them can't return to work. This was something that changed the lives of many of these people, and they gave with their blood, sweat, and tears. And people who wanted to give with their blood, sweat, and tears to this country and to this democracy, republic, as we call it, are much more important people and stronger than I am, because I probably would have ran away screaming. But like you mentioned, I didn't have the training that you had.

But I don't know. People who are police officers, people in the military and stuff are much better people than I am because I just don't – I'm just not that courageous, I suppose. So I'll throw that under the bus when it comes to me. So thank you for coming on the show, Stephen. Thank you very much. Thank you. There you go. Thanks on the show, Stephen. Thank you very much. Thank you.

There you go. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, FortressCrispFast, YouTube.com, FortressCrispFast, all the places on the interwebs. Pick up the book wherever fine books are sold.

Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. And that should have us out.