The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The FBI Way: Inside the Bureau’s Code of Excellence by Frank Figliuzzi

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

The FBI Way: Inside the Bureau's Code of Excellence by Frank Figliuzzi "A must read for serious leaders at every level." —General Barry R. McCaffrey (Ret.) The FBI’s former head of counterintelligence reveals the Bureau's field-tested playbook for unlocking individual and organizational excellence, illustrated through dramatic stories from his own storied career Frank Figliuzzi was the "Keeper of the Code," appointed the FBI’s Chief Inspector by then-Director Robert Mueller. Charged with overseeing sensitive internal inquiries and performance audits, he ensured each employee met the Bureau's exacting standards. Now, drawing on his distinguished career, Figliuzzi reveals how the Bureau achieves its extraordinary track record of excellence—from the training of new recruits in "The FBI Way" to the Bureau's rigorous maintenance of its standards up and down the organization. All good codes of conduct have one common trait: they reflect the core values of an organization. Individuals, companies, schools, teams, or any group seeking to codify their rules to live by must first establish core values. Figliuzzi has condensed the Bureau’s process of preserving and protecting its values into what he calls “The Seven C’s”. If you can adapt the concepts of Code, Conservancy, Clarity, Consequences, Compassion, Credibility, and Consistency, you can instill and preserve your values against all threats, internal and external. This is how the FBI does it. Figliuzzi’s role in the FBI gave him a unique opportunity to study patterns of conduct among high-achieving, ethical individuals and draw conclusions about why, when and how good people sometimes do bad things. Unafraid to identify FBI execs who erred, he cites them as the exceptions that prove the rule. Part pulse-pounding memoir, part practical playbook for excellence, The FBI Way shows readers how to apply the lessons he’s learned to their own lives: in business, management, and personal development. About Frank Figliuzzi Frank Figliuzzi was the FBI's Assistant Director for Counterintelligence and served 25 years as a Special Agent. In his current role as a respected National Security Analyst, Frank regularly appears on live television for NBC and MSNBC news. Frank held senior FBI leadership positions in major American cities and was appointed the FBI's Chief Inspector by then Director Robert Mueller to oversee sensitive internal inquiries, shooting reviews, and performance audits. Following his FBI career, Frank became a corporate security executive for a Fortune 10 company and led global Investigations, Insider Threat, Workplace Violence Prevention, and Special Event security for 300,000 employees in 180 countries. As the Bureau's head of Counterintelligence, Mr. Figliuzzi directed all espionage investigations across the U.S. government. Frank frequently briefed the White House, Congress, and the Attorney General. During Frank's FBI career, he led the FBI's Cleveland Field Office, was the second ranking official in the FBI's Miami Division, ran squads in San Francisco, and worked investigations in Atlanta. Mr. Figliuzzi directed an FBI internal disciplinary unit in the Office of Professional Responsibility and adjudicated allegations of serious misconduct against FBI personnel. Frank is most noted for his clear and compelling television commentary regarding the Special Counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign. His FBI career highlights include: Leading the FBI's efforts to counter economic espionage in Silicon Valley, California; Overseeing major financial crimes and public corruption investigations in Miami, Florida, and Cleveland, Ohio; Serving as on-scene commander of the largest HAZMAT evidence recovery effort in FBI history at the Boca Raton, Florida, site of the nation's first anthrax murder; and, Publicly explaining the FBI's successful operation against ten Russian sleeper agents inside the Unit...

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. 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. Chris Voss here from thechrissvossshow.com, thechrissvossshow.com. Hey, we're coming here with another podcast.

We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in to watch the video version of this podcast. You can actually go see it live right now on Instagram.com forward slash Chris Voss. You can also go to YouTube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification. You can see all the wonderful videos of all the great authors that we've had on the show and today's broadcast. You can also go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. You can see all the books we're reading, the guests we've had on the show and the reviews of the books we have and all that good stuff. You can also go to facebook.com forward slash Chris Voss. You can see all the books we're reading, the guests we've had on the show, and the't think there would be a coup that would precede his appearance where he could give us commentary on his thoughts. And so I'm even more interested to have him on the show. And I think my audience is going to love it. And this episode is brought

to you by IFI Audio and their new NEO IDSD. The NEO is the new wave of digital sound listening for your desktop, music, gaming, and bleeding edge Bluetooth, even MQA audio file decoding. We're using it in the studio right now. I've loved my experience with it so far. It just makes everything sound so much more richer and better and takes things to the next level. company with one aim in mind to improve your music enjoyment of quality sound eradicate noise distortion and hiss from your listening experience check out their new incredible lineup of dax and audio enhancement devices at ifi-audio.com this gentleman you may have seen him on msnbc he's written a brilliant book frank flaguzzi he wrote inside the bureau's code of excellence

the fbi way and frank flaguzzi is an msnbc columnist and a national security contributor for nbc news and msnbc he was the assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, where he served 25 years as a special agent and directed all espionage investigations across the government. He is the author of this wonderful new book, and we want to welcome him to the show. Frank, how are you, my friend? Chris, I never envisioned that we'd be talking following an absolute insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. But I'm glad we have a chance to have what I think will be an important discussion. And your book as well. Let me hold it up here.

I've got the, let's see, we've got the press copy here, the proof not for sale copy. But I just got done finishing this book. I highly recommend it. Five stars. You've got to read it. One of the things we'll talk about today is you lived through some extraordinary events in history. So we'll talk about some of that. But give us dot coms where people can buy the book and get to know you maybe a little bit better.

Yeah, sure. By the way, I'm really glad you held up your publicity proof copy that says not for sale on it. Because, of course, you'll know that someone has put their copy of the proof not for sale copy up on not for sale on it because of course you'll know that someone has put their copy of the proof not for sale copy up on ebay for sale and you too can get it for seven dollars and fifty cents wow yeah my guess is some member of the media's kid grabbed it and put it upon i suppose ebay is the sincerest form of flattery but you can get the actual proofread copy of the book in hard copy or audible at anywhere you buy books, including Amazon Online, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, and all of those great places. And my website, where you can also find how to get to the book

sale is frankfidluzzi.com. There you go. There you go, guys. We'll get into some of the details of some of the recent events and some of your thoughts on them. But let's start out with laying a foundation for getting people to buy this book. What motivated you want to write this book, Frank? The truth is that, truth be told, the organization I love, the organization and the men and women I dedicated 25 years of my life to were getting denigrated for the past four years. I call it bureau bashing. Some of it, by the way, perhaps deserved, most of it not. And what concerned me the most was that because of the public perception of the bureau among some corners of our society, the bureau's mission was going to be eroded. Because the bottom

line is, when you flash your credentials as an FBI agent on the front door of an American citizen, as is happening right now around this country, as the Bureau races against the clock to find the people who are going to do violence and have done violence, if you hesitate for a moment as a citizen to cooperate with the FBI because you doubt credibility or trust, we've got a national security problem. So my book is saying this, the FBI actually operates at the highest level of excellence when it matters the most. And boy, does it matter the most right now. I spent 25 years inside that organization observing and absorbing how they do that kind of values-based leadership, protecting what matters the most to the FBI, to the country, to the world.

And you don't have to spend 25 years inside the FBI to do it. I distilled it down to what I call the seven C's, and the book is called The FBI Way. There you go. And so what are you hoping people come away with this as they read it and as it influences whatever thought progress they might have? The book is designed to serve you at different levels. It is what you needed to be at the time. Here's what I mean by that.

If you want really cool inside stories never published before with the permission of the FBI, you're going to get those inside war stories. If you're looking for a leadership guide because you're leading a team, a business, a Fortune 100 company, it's absolutely about values-based leadership, how to lead with excellence when you're under severe stress, especially how the FBI does it and how it can apply to you. But now it even has another layer, which is on a national level, as an American citizen, our nation is under a stress test right now. Our democracy is being stressed to the max, and people are wondering if it's time to abandon our values or to do something differently, whether our values will or will

not hold and how they can help lead and be a conservator of our core values. And the book is very much a lesson in how to do that as well. This is one of the things I like. I think it was Timothy Snyder who did the book on tyranny, if I have my name referenced. And one of the things he talked about is in times like these, especially when fascism rises and there's attacks on democracy, is you have to get back to truth and core values. And that's one of the things that really impressed me about your book. It's almost like a core values book of an extended Boy Scout honor sort of system, if you will. And you talk about how the FBI really programs it into its people and creates these principles that are developed and reinforced all throughout. And throughout

your book, you talk about that. Is that a good takeaway of principles in your book? Yeah. So you've already given away that you have indeed read the book. And that's a good sign. Let me just talk about the first two chapters, the first two of the seven C's, and how it relates to what you just said and applies to everybody's life. The first chapter, the first C is code. The concept that you've got to have a code that you live by that reflects your core values. And I find a lot of people, families, even corporations saying, you know, we haven't really thought about our core values in a while. Companies sometimes

write down the core values. Employees can't tell you what they are. And that's code is everything, your code of conduct, how we should and should not behave, conduct ourselves collectively as an organization, as a country, better be articulated, better be developed. I moved to the second C, and it's called conservancy. The concept that it's a team sport to protect your values. It's a team sport to understand that each of us play a role. It isn't somebody else's job. And if you look at what happened at the Capitol the other day, I can tell you two things. Those people are playing by a different code than the rest of us. And secondly, they don't have the concept of conservancy, meaning each of us is the protector of the democratic way. So I think the book is very applicable that we've lost our way.

It raises questions of whether we're even teaching our kids what the democratic core values are, rule of law, constitution, three equal branches of government. And if you, I like to say this, unless, if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. So the concept of code and core values is what do you stand for? And if you don't know, then you'll never see a threat coming that poses an existential threat to what you stand for. Yes, I totally agree. And this is really what we need to do. Like you talked about in the book, we need to get back to those core values. And the FBI, there are several different factors I appreciate with the book. Number one, we've seen the politicization from a fascist authoritarian

leader of the institutions of government. And unfortunately, he's abused the FBI in that way, as he has just about every department to try and destroy it or the perception of its value in the minds of the citizens. And so I love how it reestablishes that. It sets out a thing on the value of the FBI, what the FBI is really about. You tell your story of coming up through the ranks, what you go through to be taught these values and how they're reinforced and also how they're double-checked. Basically, people are, I'm lost for the right word, but the other thing I loved about it too is you tell some great stories in here. Like, holy crap, dude, you lived through some amazing stuff. Just going back to 9-11, the Cuba crisis where they sent all the people off the boats,

the anthrax crisis. There's some great stories in here that you have. And on top of that, this is a book for business people. And you make a lot of antidotes throughout the book for business leaders. I've read as CEO of companies, I've had tons of them. I've read a lot of books on Tom Peters and everything else on how to do business. So you talk a lot about transponding these values into your workforce, into your thinking, into your job force and environment is everything. In fact, I was going to say, you could write a second book if you don't have one on the slate already for how to take the FBI code and use it in your organization. I hope the book is designed to do that. And I spend time in the epilogue of the book, actually walking the reader through

how you can take these life lessons, leadership lessons in the FBI and apply them to your group or organization. And yeah, there's some neat stories to illustrate each of the seven C's in the chapter. And I think the takeaway here is the FBI starts from day one at the FBI Academy, right? Now, first, it's garbage in, garbage out. It's spent on who they recruit into the organization. Are these people of high values? Are these people capable of adapting to a way of life that says, I'm going to be a conservator of the nation's values, and I get the fact that I'm accountable for something much greater than myself, the FBI, and the security of the nation? Again, I don't think those people who brutalized our capital and beat police officers and smashed windows are in any way

conservators of our collective values. So as a leader in a business, start thinking about whether you need to get better at who you're vetting to come into the company. Start thinking about how you ingrain values in each of your employees, regardless of their title or rank. The FBI requires everyone to spend some time looking at the values of others vis-a-vis the company. So here's what I mean by that. As a young agent, I tell the story in Atlanta, Georgia, of where my supervisor early on tapped me on the shoulder. I had a busy caseload of my own, said, I've got a new case for you. It turned out to be an accident investigation involving a FBI vehicle and a civilian. I had to investigate the guy on my squad who got in a fender bender, right? And the concept there is it's not someone

else's job to look into these things. It's your job. And if you move up the ladder in leadership, the FBI requires you to do some time doing what is traditionally called internal affairs or the office of professional responsibility and then hire to spend some time on the inspection staff, which many companies call their audit staff. not voluntary. It has to be that way. And when you walk into major corporations today, Chris, and stop an employee in the hallway and say, hey, who's responsible in this company for maintaining standards and integrity? And they'll point to an office down the hall. And they'll say, yeah, we got that compliance office. I think it's lawyers or HR or somebody. No, in the FBI, it's you that's responsible and it's ingrained in the system, the career path, the leadership journey that you're on. And I agree with you there. And it's such a great lesson. I started my first company when I was 18 and in building companies, one of the things I learned, I think I got a lot of it from Tom Peters and Drucker, was an environment, how you build

the environment and how the leader on the white horse sets that tone is really important. And setting an environment where you can either have a learning organization or you rule by dictatorship or you have ethics, what kind of judge you are as a boss or leader makes all the difference in the world. But there's, the one thing people should realize about this book is it has a lot of great stories and it has your insight into the stories and how you guys approach different challenges and things that you guys had. The anthrax story was really amazing to see how you guys broke that down. And also you really get an understanding of the pressure cooker that the FBI is under, because not only is it trying to solve crimes, protect us from the evil people in the world, but you guys are also under extraordinary integrity oversight of these politicians that aren't always, they have their careers and interests.

And sometimes there's a conflict there. But the FBI is contained inside of itself, trying to uphold those highest levels of integrity. And in everything it's doing, while it's trying to solve crimes and while it's trying to stop the bad guys. Yeah, you really described it pretty well because there's really two things going on simultaneously with the FBI. While they're trying to protect us, they're trying to protect their public image. And it's not about optics. It's about the fact that they can't do their job if you don't trust them. If they screw up, it's on the front page of the paper. And look, they do screw up. The chapter on credibility says credibility isn't about being perfect. The FBI isn't perfect. Its track record is

better than most companies. That's why I wrote the book. But credibility is about being passionate about getting it. So there's plenty in the book about FBI screw ups, including the fact that a guy named Robert Hansen was my unit chief when I was a young supervisor at FBI headquarters. Robert Hansen was the most damaging spy in the history of the FBI. He spied for the Russians for 10 years, and the FBI should never have hired him and certainly should have caught him during the 10 years he was a spy for the Russians. That guy was my boss, briefly. And so you say, Frank, why in God's name did you put that story in the credibility chapter? And I say, because it's not that the FBI screwed up. It's how the FBI handled a colossal disaster

and came out and said, we hunted down one of our own. We were unafraid to do it. And here's what happened. And here's how we're going to fix it. That's what CEOs need to do far more than they are currently doing. And CEOs who come to me for advice

and say our company's under stress. Never before have we faced a COVID virus, a crisis of culture and leadership in the nation, a market and economy that's crashing. Oh, okay. Let me tell you a little bit about stress and my FBI career. Let me tell you about being the on-scene commander for the first anthrax murder in the history of the country, the largest hazardous materials crime scene in the history of the country, the largest hazardous materials crime scene in the history of the FBI.

That's stress, that's pressure, sending a team into a 60,000 square foot, three-story building filled with microscopic anthrax spores. We could have said, we've never encountered this before. This is an unprecedented stress. We don't know what to do. Let's abandon all of our protocols and figure something new out. But instead, we ask ourselves some simple questions. Is this a crime scene? Yes. Are we really good at crime scenes? We are.

Is this a hazardous materials environment? Yeah, it is. We suit up in hazmat suits and go into meth labs all the time. Okay, so it's a crime scene in a hazmat environment. Let's stick with what got us here and all of our training. If the nation were to do that, if the nation were to do that right now and not panic and not say we've never had an insurrection like this, we've never had a president like this. Instead, say, let's stick with what got us here. Democratic values, rule of law, constitution, three equal branches of government. I had several different epiphanies reading your book, and I don't know why they didn't occur to me earlier. One is what Donald Trump has been doing for the last four years in breaking down institutions is seeing how far he can push his support base, including the GOP into it.

I liken it to, I think in the sixties, there was an experiment. I meant to Google this before the show. There was an experiment where they would turn the shocks up on people. They weren't really being shocked, but they wanted to see if they could push them to the levels of the Nazi whores,

just average people off the street. And that's really what he was doing. He's let's see how low we can go. And we hit our bottom. The other thing that struck me that I had a piffy on your book is looking back on what, how Hoover built the FBI and the organization with these values. Cause I really got aware of them reading your book. And for many years, I've often looked at like the Mexican police and other different countries that, that they really struggle with inside their ranks with integrity, embezzlement, being bought off and things like that. Mexico is a good example because they've really struggled with the drug cartel.

And in realizing that, I started to realize it really is. I don't know. I imagine Hoover had a lot of this to do from my understanding of the FBI. But really those codes and the systems that you talk about in the FBI, double-checking everything, really are what kind of set those things apart. Am I correct in that assumption? Yeah, you gave an interesting example with the corruption within Mexican departments, even the military in Mexico, and the lack of systemic corruption historically in the FBI. And it makes you ask, why is that? And for a couple

of reasons, we come back to that issue of recruitment. How are you vetting people to get in your organization, even in an environment where culturally corruption is the name of the game? Do you pick the right people? And I think the answer is no. People say you get what you pay for. You get what you vet also. And by the way, that applies in droves to our president. The FBI spends more time backgrounding and vetting the person who pours coffee in the FBI coffee shop at headquarters than we do vetting a president. People often ask me, Chris, hey, how did this guy get a clearance? My Lord, how did this member of Congress get a top secret? How did the president get a top secret? And my

answer is, this is a teachable moment. They don't have backgrounds when you're an elected official. You voted for him. You got him. And so what I suggest is we spend a whole lot more time nationally vetting the people who serve us in our highest elected offices. I'm not talking about a bureaucratic panel picking a candidate. No, I'm saying nationally, together, collectively, if we're conservators, that's second C, let's go ahead and demand tax returns, financial analysis, foreign entanglements, family business interests. Let's get it all out in the open as a matter of course. So when I talk to CEOs and they go, oh, we've got a terrible problem with theft,

or I've got an embezzlement or an insider trading problem. I couldn't believe, how did that person get there? What are you doing to maintain integrity and compliance and checks and balances within your organization? And then how do you get better at it? There you go. I would agree with you too. I remember reading your book. One thing, it's great that anybody can ascend to the levels of presidency, but they really should be able to pass a background check. I really think that somebody should be able to do that. Certainly, I might've been to Spirit Rhino a few too many times to run for president because someone's going to pull that up. I've been a bad person in that way sometimes.

Chris, we've never had to. That would be the least of Trump's words. We've never had to consider a president as a national security threat. So I get the fact that, oh, yeah, we really should have checked this guy out more. Yeah. And now moving forward, we've got to understand that we could have the greatest insider threat of all if we pick the wrong person for the Oval Office. One of the things I loved about your code is you talk about the code and how important that is. But one thing that did strike me is there's an education process to that. And somehow we need to get back to that more in the education of our society. Let me ask you this, in the Untouchables movie, I don't know if you like that movie or not,

is there a favorite scene or part that you like? Oh, there's so many. Let's see, there's one where Sean Connery is a cop in that movie. And there's so many lines from him in that. But one of them is there's this little kind of short accountant guy that they throw a shotgun to. He's going to help Elliot Ness out with the accounting on the organized crime figures. And Sean Connery says, do you carry a badge? And the little accountant goes, yes. Then carry a gun. And he throws him a shotgun. And I think that's a great one. My favorite scene is where they cross on the bridge with costner and he lets costner go and costner's like wait i had a piece on me you let me go and he goes well you claim to be a g-man no one would claim to be that wasn't or something to that effect

and i just i always love that line and i'll use it in different variations where people tell me something like i'm a hairdresser and i'll be like no i'm claiming to be that that wasn't but the next line that comes from that, that I love so much. And if I was FBI agent, probably get in trouble for saying it too much. I'd hear under the lesson. I love that line. That's just, this is such a line. It'd be like my dirty hairy line. If I was an FBI, I'd probably get in trouble for it if I was an FBI. So one thing that's in the book too, that I want to encourage people to go read it is a lot of people really don't understand what candor means to the FBI and the importance of it. It seems like a throwaway thing, especially when

you saw a lot of politicians trash it and stuff. And there was the McCabe thing and Peter Strzok, you talk about in the book, Peter Strzok, McCabe and Comey. We've had Peter Strzok on the show talking about his book. We've invited Comey to come on. We're still in negotiations over that one. I'm not sure we'll get him because I don't know. I don't know if he's doing a lot of tours. But what was interesting is your take on the Comey and Peter Strzok. Can you explain what that really means and candor and why that's important?

Because when you look at some of it, you're like, wow, that seems like a little thing to let someone go on. But you really explain it in detail and really educate the public on what that's about. Yeah. This comes back to the concept of code, how seriously you're going to take your code of conduct and your core values and really identifying what it is, what line is it that can't be crossed in your organization because it represents a threat to what you do for a living. So what is that bright line in the FBI? And by the way, it's literally called a bright line in the manual. What is it? It's lying under oath. What is the one thing they absolutely can't have an FBI employee do? Lie under oath. Why? Because they become useless to the FBI. You can never put an FBI employee on the witness stand in a criminal or other investigation if he's been found, he or she's been found to have

lied in the past about anything, because it all has to be disclosed to the defense. The jury may find out, and that person will be impeached on the witness stand. I give the story in the book. I won't go into the huge story, but bottom line is we found while I was the head of an internal affairs unit and had to decide discipline, we found that a young agent had lied about the number of times that he picked up his little toddler girl from daycare in his government vehicle. So he had an unauthorized passenger in the car. That's a 30-day suspension. And then he, that's all it was going to be. But he lied about the number of times he did it. We had him dead to rights on toll pass records and on daycare pickup records.

And he lied significantly about the number of times there was no reason to do it. I cringed at firing a very bright, successful young agent for that. But you know what? It was about the bright line. We can't have you lying under oath, which you are in an internal inquiry. So I tell the whole story of how it had to go to court. This young agent took this to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. And we said, bring it on, because you're messing with our core values right now. And ultimately, a judge said, you're right. The FBI has a right to police itself vigorously like this. One of the things Comey is coming out on his book, and I'll be interested if

I can nail it onto the show to talk to him about it. I might end up arguing with him about it, but he evidently, what he's saying in some of his interviews is he believes that Donald Trump should probably be pardoned and we should move on. And he does believe that they, to be fully factual, he does believe that he probably should be prosecuted. One of the things you talk about in your book is accountability. And we've had a lot of authors on here. We've talked about fascism, Silvio Brescoloni, and how since they didn't prosecute him the first time, he won office again. My biggest fear is that this all comes back in two to four years with more QAnon people and more Trumpsters and whatever. And I don't want to see another Confederate flag for the rest of my days.

Do you want to give your opinion on what you think, whether Trump should be prosecuted or not? I do. And respectfully, I have to disagree with Jim Comey, who importantly, I think is a man of incredibly high integrity and good intentions. One of the most incredible stories of integrity is in his first book and who he is, who he stands for. But I respectfully disagree. Here's the deal. There's one of the seven C's I write about in the book is consequences, consequences. If you have core values and they're that important to you, be prepared to act when someone violates that code of conduct. And in the United States, violating our code of conduct can't be any brighter than destroying our democracy and fueling an insurrection with lies. And so when someone

asks me, hey, should we heal the nation and not prosecute Trump for anything or anything related to his presidency? Maybe we shouldn't even impeach him and remove him and ban him from future office. I say hogwash its consequences and accountability. It was an exit. He posed an existential threat to our democracy. We have to send him before we can even talk about healing. We have to send a message to ourselves and the world and to future presidents that this can never happen again. It's totally unacceptable. That's what we need to do. Look, violent extremism is an infection in our society. You don't heal an infection by covering it up and hoping for the best. It doesn't go away. You have to treat it aggressively. And in my mind, aggressively here means prosecuting, impeaching, and banning.

There's a certain line where you go so heinous. Right now, Nixon, at least Nixon, respected our Constitution enough to step down. He wasn't trying to destroy democracy, although he did push the line of the president cannot be a criminal and but even then in the end he respected the institutions of our government this was a fascist authoritarian takeover from everything i've studied about fascism authoritarianism takeover governments donald trump fits the profile of your mussolini's your hitler's your duterte's, your Pinochet's. I think we joked about when we had the author of Strongman on, she wrote Ruth Bengate, she wrote about this. And there is like an FBI sort of profile on these guys. They're all the freaking same as to how they're built,

what they want to do, and what they end up doing. The violence, the killing, the destruction of human beings, their populace they don't care about. It's just all about them. There's also FBI profiles that look at narcissism, ego, hubris, and then I'll take it a step further. There is a kind of dysfunction and mental illness where people cannot feel anything other than their own self-interest, cannot see what the impact they're having on others. And that fits the bill for Trump. And there's also studies out there about cults, how cults develop,

how a figure takes over, how you become loyal to a person rather than to a country or a concept and what people are capable of when they give up their values and replace them with that of a leader who doesn't actually care about them. And what we saw happen at the Capitol looks much like cult-like behavior and even a form of radicalization that I've seen when I work international terrorism. That kind of radicalization process has played out over the last four years. I think that's the biggest thing the FBI is going to have to, I suppose they want switch roles because they'll still be fighting international terrorism, but our homegrown radicalization, it's crazy. I don't know if you watched ProPublica put up 500 videos that got scraped from Parler. And I guess they've hit the white

hat hacker. I'm not sure if they are a white hat hacker, but evidently they've handed that stuff over to the FBI. And it's extraordinary to watch, horrifying to watch. But I also laughed a bit because I'm like, yeah, wait for the cameras for the FBI. Make it easier for them to profile it. Good job, buddy. No one said these were rocket scientists, but there's two things that jump out at me when I look at those videos. One is clear signs of planning and coordination and organization, number one. Number two, I see that indication of the radicalization I just talked about. People saying things like, oh, even the New Yorker posted these really amazing videos from

Inside. And people, first of all, when you see more Trump flags than American flags, that's a clue of radicalization. When people saying Senator Ted Cruz would think it's okay that we're in here doing this, that's another sign that people are allegiant to a person and personality rather than to our country. People beating police officers, smashing windows of the their stuff. I think Director Wray spoke about how this is our biggest threat. And if you've been watching the SPCA, the Southern Party Law Center's website on hate groups, it's just out of control. And this is my biggest fear with Donald Trump winning office. From the very first days, we saw the rise of hate. Do you think Biden's going to really help or what can the FBI do more to win back the trust of Americans? Part of that has to be they need politicians to quit politicizing them and persecuting them. And hopefully certain parties are on their heels with us taking over the Senate.

Yeah, you're pretty savvy on problem number one with the FBI's perception is that my response to what needs to happen next to restore institutional integrity is for politicians to stay the hell out of the way of the Department of Justice and the FBI and stop inserting themselves and trying to shape investigations and break the rule of law. Let career professionals do what they do best and represent us the best. Look, I hope we've learned as a nation that our values as a country aren't in a person, an elected official. They are wrapped up in our institutions. You may not like bureaucracies.

You may have problems with institutions, but they plod forward every day perpetrating our core values. So stay out of the way, number one. Biden's got his hands full. Look, he's going to battle a global pandemic. By the way, the Russia hack that is described by experts as the largest intrusion ever in the history of cyber is still going on by the accounts that I'm getting. He's got to deal with that. And that tells, by the way, that's nothing compared to what Russia and China and Iran and North Korea could do if they actually wanted to cripple us with an infrastructure attack. So welcome to the job. He's got a domestic terror threat that's growing by the hour. And then in terms of the FBI specifically, I'm here to tell you, I get up on my soapbox, the FBI doesn't have the investigative tools they need to deal with, as you correctly said, is their number one threat.

And people go, what do you mean? What do you mean by that? And I say, people actually think, many of your listeners, and I know you've got a smart audience, but many of your listeners may actually think that there's some law against domestic terrorism. There is not. Many of your listeners may think there's a way to designate domestic terror groups and organizations. There is not. But there is on the international terrorism side. There is a law that puts you in prison for life for being an international terrorist. There are investigative techniques that are permitted if you merely associate with a designated international terror group. You show up at an al-Qaeda meeting, you enter a chat room

of ISIS, right? Boom, the FBI is there. They've got undercover agents in the chat room. They have a court-ordered wiretap. You are, I can tell you cases, Chris, where a guy delivered, poor guy delivered a pizza to an ISIS cell meeting. And the surveillance and the phone number dialed is such that pizza guy's under investigation for days. Was it a pizza? What was in that box, right?

Now switch it. Change the religion from islam and extremism and violent jihad designated terror group poor pizza man trips into it now change it to the el paso walmart shooter who's in a chat room young kid saying i'm gonna i want to hurt the brown invaders i want to kill the brown invaders. I want to kill the brown invaders, which by the way, is Trump language. Nobody's there because it's domestic. It's a white kid group saying that with no designated group, no domestic terrorism law, no investigative tools. Yeah. The interesting thing of the aspect around this, we've had a lot of great authors on this year and we've talked a lot about Black Lives Matter. And just fortunately, there's this really

great drop of books that were coming from the publishers. Eddie Glaude Jr. was on the show. We talked about Begin Again with James Baldwin. We had a lot of different great authors, and the gentleman who wrote The Fire is Upon Us and lots of Baldwin discussions about racism. We had a lot of religion, white nationalist religion people on the thing. And if I recall rightly, the Trump administration did interfere with the FBI wanting to go after more terrorism and white nationalist terrorism in the States. In fact, they wouldn't, if I recall rightly, there was some order or something they put their finger on where they didn't want certain like Pr proud boys listed as a terrorist organization and other things. But one thing that really struck me in watching a lot of these videos

and that came from those discussions that we had with all the great authors was the white entitlement and the ability to feel like you're above the law. And to see like that one gal who's a realtor in Texas going, well, I want a pardon now. And when you look at her, you understand that they went to that Capitol to burn it down, to break the windows. In fact, she says that we're going to go break the windows. They went there with that in the back of their mind. Fuck it. If things go wrong, Donald Trump will pardon us. And the entitlement of that is just extraordinary. And I think as the FBI hopefully gets new laws and different support groups for this, that's one of the things we really have to combat is this

belief system that I'm above the law, that sort of thing. Look, it may be even worse than that. They may be part of the law. By that, the evidence developing that the presence of police officers, active and retired, military active and retired at military, active and retired, at the insurrection is growing by leaps and bounds. And this is perhaps what concerns me the most about the inauguration is we hear there's 25,000 troops, the National Guard present. That's great. But only one of them has to move a barrier or let somebody in with or rent their credentials, the lanyard around their neck to somebody for an hour. And we've got a problem.

Yeah, I was watching. My friends were like, yeah, the National Guard showing up and someone tweeted out a photo you may have seen on Twitter. They had one of the banners that they use. I believe it's the thin blue line flag, but it was on the back of one of the officers. So I was pretty relieved this morning to hear that the FBI is doing background checks on all 25,000 soldiers that are there, but that's a daunting job. Like I was like, oh my God. But it also tells us why it's important to have these institutions, what these folks are doing. And that's another reason why I really loved your book is because people really need to understand that we don't see the FBI a lot doing stuff. We

don't see a lot of the investigations. We don't see a lot of times when you take down the bad guys. You guys are there operating and keeping that nasty stuff away from us as much as possible. And a lot of people don't appreciate that, I think. Yeah, it's funny. Let's look at what you just said. The FBI, thankfully, is doing background and vetting of the National Guardsmen there. And I think it's given some people a great sense of relief. Although, by the way, there are strict limits to that kind of background and determining whether someone's radicalized or not. But that's what the book is about, is do you as a leader, do you as an organization have that kind of credibility where people go, oh, thank God they're here now? I trust that organization.

Thank God someone's got this, right? And that's why the FBI fights like hell to protect its perceptions, its credibility and reputation every single day. And I tell you how you can do that. I will say that there is a limit to these backgrounds. I cringe at this, but I'm glad they're doing it. But you know that the signs of radicalization really happen in social media postings. And so a background investigation of these troops is going to be a criminal check. And likely they don't have any serious criminal charges or they wouldn't be in the National Guard.

And number two, anybody on a terrorist watch list, 25,000 people, maybe somebody tripped over something. Yeah, OK, maybe. But the reality is, you know, the FBI doesn't have the time. It's Wednesday, the inauguration to check 25,000 social people for all of their social media postings. By the way, they're probably using a fake name anyway. So the signs of radicalization could be there and not be caught by Wednesday. for all of their social media postings that, by the way, they're probably using a fake name anyway. So the signs of radicalization could be there and not be caught by Wednesday. Yeah, it's crazy, but it's really important. I used to have to, I owned a mortgage company for 20 years. I was a realtor for six. And when we first moved to Nevada in the nineties, I had to pass a mafia background check to be in banking. And that was quite extraordinary

to fill out the forms and they had to know my whole family. In fact, one of the things was how many security boxes, bank security boxes do you own? And then in Nevada, and we had licenses in Utah and Denver, I had to pass a background check with the FBI and also an Interpol check. So internationally, I had to pass that check. It was pretty interesting. I'm like, man, I'm never doing anything bad. But that's a good thing to have in life, good value. Anything more we haven't covered in the book that you want to plug, Frank, before we go out? I want to close on a couple of thoughts. First, that vetting of National Guard troops, think about that in your company and organization, meaning what do you do systematically on a regular basis to check on your people. I'm doing consulting now more than ever with corporate C-suite types who say, I don't know what my role is now in terms of

being a conservator of the nation's values. And where is the line that is going to be crossed if one of my employees does this or one of my customers or clients crosses a line? What is the line? What am I doing? How do I avoid becoming political, but still being a good corporate citizen? And then lastly, I end the book with the consistency chapter, the last of the seven C's. Stick with what we've got. Stick with your values. Know what they are. Fight like hell when those values are threatened, and you'll get through just about anything. And someone in our comment stream actually said that second book would be a really good idea.

That one that really gets deep into the business and all that good stuff. So you got it there. You got some things. So Frank, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you for spending some time with us. A great discussion. Glad we could do it. Yes. So guys check out his book and give us the plugs one more time, Frank, so people can find you and get to know you better on the interwebs. Yeah. If you Google the FBI way, you'll find the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million. HarperCollins is the publisher. And then if you really have some time on your hands, check out my website, frankfigluzzi.com. All of my archives of clips, appearances, columns, all there, plus how to get to the book site. Take a look at it. I highly recommend everyone grab the book. You'll see our review on thechrisfosh.com and on goodreads.com as well. Five-star rating. It's a great book. It's a fun read. It's an adventuresome read, and there's a little bit of gruesomeness in there. Frank gives

you some warnings, like you may want to skip this part if you, if whatever, but it really tells the story of how important these core values are. It tells his story and he lived through, it seems every major event you live through the FBI and you don't look that old, Frank, either. I just wanted to mention that. So I'll have to pay you some extra money under the table for saying such good things about me. But look, there's a reason why the FBI has mandatory retirement at age 57. There's a reason why they let you retire at any age with 25 years of service. It takes a toll on you. And the book goes into the impact on health and the stress and burnout of the job. But if there's one thing that's positive that could ever come out of this book, it's that a young person might read it and think about a career in public service because it's well worth the rollercoaster ride. And it's great for business. And I would also even say a parent

sit down and take a look at this and do this. One of the challenges I had with my parents, and they were really good people, was sometimes they didn't stick with their core values they would try and teach with us. And I think we've all go through that with their parents and we go, I think you're a little full of soda. So it might be a good parenting book as well for my audience. Thank you for tuning in. Thanks to your comments on instagram.com as well. It's been fun to broadcast this live.

You can go to youtube.com for Josh, Chris Voss. You can see the full version of this video and everything else. The Chris Voss show.com as well. You see all nine podcasts at the cvpn.com. You can also go to goodreads.com for just Chris Voss, facebook.com, The Chris Voss Show, and you can find our groups on LinkedIn and Facebook as well. Thanks, Monics, for tuning in. Thanks to Frank for being here, and we'll see you guys next time.