The Team House - Busting up drug cartels and the Russian mob w/ FBI agent Dennis Franks, Ep. 88

Episode Date: April 10, 2021

A 22-year veteran of the FBI, he retired as the Supervisory Special Agent of the Houston Division’s Special Operations Group. During his career he supervised a number of investigative squads, including criminal enterprise and organized crime, a drug trafficking task force, a multi-agency intelligence group, as well as counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence and criminal investigations. He was also the Undercover Program Coordinator and Assistant SWAT Team leader and served as an investigator and case agent on a number of complex cases requiring sophisticated investigative techniques and undercover operations. As a case agent and Supervisory Special Agent, he successfully helped dismantle Colombian and Mexican Drug Cartel operations, as well as Asian and Russian Criminal Enterprises, receiving over twenty commendations for his exemplary efforts. He was a member of the FBI’s Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team and a firearms instructor and an international police instructor at the International Law Enforcement Academy in Bangkok, and at the Middle East Law Enforcement Academy, in Dubai. Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Espionage. The Team House. With your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, guys. This is episode 88 of The Team House. We're live. I'm Jack Murphy here with co-host, Dave Park. And our guest tonight is Dennis Franks.

I got that right, right? Dennis Franks is a retired FBI agent. served 22 years with the FBI, right? Correct, yes. So I know some of you thought we were going to have Danny Colson on, actually, tonight for Part 2. And so I, no offense at all, Dan. I took him out.

I took him out. Dennis had to, I'm sorry, Danny had to jump on a flight for a business at the last minute. So we'll have him on another time. We'll do a Part 2 with him. But I really appreciate you jumping at the last minute to square us away here, Dennis. Yeah, good pleasure. Glad to you. Yeah.

So, Dennis, Jack and I are both kind of big comic book nerds. And so one of the things that we always like to ask our guests is what's your origin story? You know, how did you get your superpowers and become the hero that you are? Was it a radioactive spill? Or how did you grow up? and what led you towards the FBI? Yeah. Well, you know, you've heard people talking about do commercials,

you know, does media have an effect on people? And, you know, my first response is, why do corporations spend billions of dollars if it didn't have an effect? And I can tell you definitely that watching a TV show growing up had a big effect on me, which is about the FBI. So I grew up wanting to be an FBI agent. it just stuck with me. And I was very focused.

I was one of those kids who was very focused. And, you know, I probably, I attribute, you know, a couple of things to me being where I am is, one, I was focused, and I had a goal, and I achieved it. And the second was, you know, I started martial arts early in life. And it gave me even more focused in self, you know, the dependence and confidence. So I don't think I'd be where I am now without, you know, those things, as well as having the right, you know, family background and, you know, being, you're pretty clean cut. I mean, I grew up with a, we grew up some guys where we cut up, we did some things that we probably shouldn't have. And fortunately, you know, when they don't look past, you know, 18, when looking into your background, but we weren't bad.

We just did some things, you know. Yeah. When do you start martial arts? And was that also influenced by the media? Was, you know. It was. It was Bruce Lee, particularly back old, what was this show where he was the sidekick to this Bruce guy.

And then it's his movies, Billy Jack before that. Yeah, I'm dating myself. I'm right there with you. I remember Billy Jack. And I think you're the green horn. Billy Jack, Bruce Lee, then Chuck Norris and so on. But, yeah, particularly, it was something about the discipline and then the Eastern philosophy that attracted me.

Yeah. So I think I was 14 when I started, which currently, they started all these. was, you know, but that was, it was a little unusual at that time to, you know, get into it when I did and in advance like I did. And I was pretty much, you know, recognized in high school at that time because there weren't a lot of kids doing it then. Now everybody does it. Right.

You know, it's like every corner, you know, but, which is great. Yeah. Yeah. So you had the Green Hornet. You had, uh, there you go. Yeah. And David Keratin was probably

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, Kung Fu, the aggress, you know. Yeah. And it all, it's, you know, it all fit with my mindset in exploring other philosophies.

And when I was into it, it was like you really do unite the mind of the bug. And, you know, I had that at least for a while. I don't, I can't say I have it now but so it was the

it was really good good thing to do and um that's that helped more so yeah so what did you when you decided you wanted to be in the FBI

what was the path that you envisioned for yourself and then what did you actually do? Did you plan to go to law school? Did you plan to just go to college? Yeah it's when you know that time in pretty much now the

were, you know, either being a lawyer or CPA qualified or which is the diverse background, which is, you know, any kind of degree, at least a bachelor's degree on three years of work experience. They're scientific backgrounds and so forth. But I decided, well, maybe I'll try accounting. I'll go that route. But that wasn't me. And even before, you know, that was my major. That's what I signed up for.

I took an accounting class and said, no, I'm just not that oriented. I'm not business oriented. I'm not. So I switched to political science. And, you know, I love political science because you're studying, you know, about current events, world affairs, you know, it's history. It's, it's everything. And, but there's not a lot you can do with that, you know, that degree unless you, you know, you are going to go on to law school or into politics or something. So I took a game. gambled and switched to political science and loved it.

I mean, I just, and I did well. And then, you know, I remember my advisor taught me that, you know, your chances of getting into the FBI is pretty, you know, minuscule, you know, based on statistics. And your chances of getting law schools,

you know, not as, you know, not as a great a challenge, but, but I did. I got, you know, the law school did well. And I was a good student. I love studying. I loved undergraduate school. While school I didn't really enjoy, I did well, but it wasn't, you know, still, you know,

it wasn't something I enjoyed doing. At the time, the hiring was a little challenging because, you know, with budgets, they have budgets where they can fund things. And this was back when, like, I was in college back during the Carter industry. So it's when interest rates were like 14, 18 percent, the economy wasn't doing well, so the federal budget wasn't doing well. So by the time I got in the early 80s when I got out of the law school, they weren't hiring a lot. So I said, you know what? I'll get, I'll get, I went through this ordeal of law school.

I'll give it a try. So I worked for a law firm for about six months, and I just didn't enjoy it. So then I applied for the district attorney's office. office. And when I was in college, I interned an honors program with the DA's office. So the DA knew me. So he hired me. And it was a great experience. I was a prosecutor for two and a half years. You learned to think on your feet. You go up, you know, sometimes you prepare a case or trial literally in 30, 15 minutes and 30 minutes. Talk to your witnesses, they'd get everything together. So you really had to think on your feet. And at times, you know, I'd go up against some of the best lawyers in town. This was in Raleigh, was Carolina. It was a great experience, but still, where do I do from there? Do I want

to do that for a career? I want to become a judge? No. Don't want to work. I had some offers to get in with law firms, but it's like, no, it's just not me. I want to be like in and I'll go back a little bit in college, I had

a trigonometry and teacher and everything and he was a PhD and aerospace engineering. And I remember in class one day, he went around to each of us. He said, what do you want to do with your life? And I said, I don't want the house with the white picket fence, the two and a half kids and everything, not yet. I want a life of adventure.

I want to go out, see the world, you know, do things. And that's what I still wanted, you know, after being an assistant VA. So I applied. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting.

Visit child and family resource network.org today. Again and got in and the rest of history. It was great. It was a great experience. It was the, you know, I got to live my dream and it was, I got to see and do things. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey.

Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today.

You know, obviously you guys have done that too, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. But there's kind of a shelf like there, and at some point it's like it's time to move on. Right, right. So what was your impression when you got hired and you show up at the FBI Academy? Because you weren't former military, so this was like your boot camp in a way, you know, the regiment and everything. Yeah, you know, the FBI Academy is not, as opposed to like, I noticed with the D.A. Academy, they were more regiment. It was more like a boot camp for them. Okay. With us, the average age of the new agent is like 29 or 30. Oh, really? Okay. Because they want to get people with broad experience, you know. So they treated us like, like it was more like graduate school or something. But, you know, they still, you know, would kick us in the buck. And so it was not. It was not. nothing at all like boot camp or anything.

And they, I would say they treated you with a certain amount of respect too, because you're not some, you know, 18-year-old kid and was trying to find their way around. Right. But they bring out the best in you. They still challenge you because... At Bakers, no matter where you order free pickup,

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and then, you know, physical fitness, defensive tactics. Hold on a second. We just lost. Sorry, there you go. We're back. So they're roughly, you know, three categories. And while I'll say this, it wasn't extremely challenging, but I challenged myself. So, you know, I did well in classroom academics.

I did well in the physical fitness. I think I was like third in class. You know, it's funny when you're in the government and you have above top secret clearance, you don't talk about yourself. You don't, you know, you're very modest. And my wife, my girlfriend at the time I'd come home and she'd say, what did you do today?

And I go, I can't talk about it, you know. But when you get out in a private sector, you know, which I have been for a number of years, you know, I was taught, I had some mentors. They said, you got to talk about yourself. You got to let people know who you are. So I'm not as modest as I used to be.

So anyway, getting back to the academics, I did well academically. I think I was third in physical fitness. In my shooting, I had developed a hand injury in shooting. But when it came to, so I did well, but it wasn't like the top or anything. I was having to get rehab on my hand. But when it came to,

the testing at the end of the school on the I there was a combat course and there was one person who scored 100 on the combat course and the instructor

said you're never going to guess who did this and it was me. So that gave me even more incentive once I got into the division to apply for the SWAT team, you know, early and take the test and get on and also I went on to

prior to instructive. A lot. Oh, that sound again. Sorry. Okay. Sorry about that. So you, you, uh,

we lost your, right when you, uh, were saying that you applied for the SWAT team early. Yeah, I was, I was still a brand new agent when I

applied for the SWAT team. And I got accepted, passed the test. And at the same time, I applied for, um, fire as instructor school and got accepted to that,

went to training and, you know, past that. So I became a fire infrastructure at the same time. I made the SWAT team. At the same time, I was doing working organized crime and drug cartel investigations. So, you know, a good thing, one of the great things about the FBI is

that we got to wear a lot of hands, if you wanted to. You could do a lot of things. You know, I became a crisis management coordinator in addition to the other things. Case agent, you know, became a supervisor. and I was a legal advisor I became an undercover program coordinator because I ran and

operated a lot of undercover operations working in drug cartels. Now, when you got a sign did you have a choice of where you went or what types of crimes you would work? Right. We were given the opportunity to put down three choices.

But we had this kind of ongoing joke about how we were selected. And I think there's some logic to it, but it seemed like it was like this. We had this joke that you got assigned to wherever this monkey came out in the dark hit on the map. Right.

And that's pretty much the way it was, but once you'd find some, like, former cops would get assigned to areas where they would be doing more typical law enforcement, like Indian reservations, you know, in more rural areas, perhaps. So I'm sure there's some logic

to it, but I don't know what it was. So I got you know, I got assigned to Houston, Texas, which is not my, you know, top three. And at first I was like, Houston, you know, this is that Caltown or something. But there was a guy in my class, Bob Casey, who was

an investigator copping detective in Houston. And he said, hold on, no, let me tight, you're going to love it. It's a great place. We're the largest city in the country. And he was right. I mean, it turned out to be a remarkable place to be

because during the late 80s, in early 90s, the drug traffickers shifted, or the Colombian traffickers, Colombian cartels shifted from South Florida to bringing things through Mexico and through Texas. And Houston became one. of the epicenters for drug trafficking.

So we had just a remarkable, you know, investigations and part of undercover operations, Title III wiretaps, long-term, you know, cases, and we worked, you know, a lot against Kelly Cartel and then the Gulf Coast Cartel of Mexico, which we did a very good job of dismaling at the time. They fill in and, you know, fill back. but we prosecuted a lot of cartel members. We had a good time doing it. At that time, we would work hard and play hard at the same time.

I don't think anybody can do that anymore, but it was great. Now, so when you showed up, I imagine that in a place like Houston, the office for the FBI, there's a lot of different crimes. There's a lot of different divisions or departments. Did you ask for drugs? did you, not for astro drugs, but did you... Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry.

I know that, hold on. Sorry. That's okay, guys. I appreciate you bearing with us a little bit tonight. It's, uh, we're working with our producer that we just brought on. It's not his fault. Yeah, we're getting him off the speed and working on different camera shots. Thank you, Dennis.

Okay. No, I just got back in and, um, my, my wife and daughter were out, and so I had the dogs in here, and, but they just got back in. that the dollars back now. But, no, you know, actually, I think what happened was that the supervisor,

there was a squad at the time, and it was called C1, or, they had a lot of criminal squads that did typical, but there was, I think there was, at that time, there was only one squad that were to organize crime and drug trafficking.

So the supervisor actually picked me once, they had the list of people coming. There were four people in my class who came in bulk. And so he picked me and he knew that I was a lawyer and had this, you know, former prosecutor. So he signed me to some of the investigations to do. Do I still have you?

Yeah, we're here. We got you. Okay. To work on, you know, Title III affidavits and so forth. and one of the first ones I worked on was with a former army officer who had a case in Galveston. So we had an offsite on the, it wasn't exactly a beach, but it was a cottage. And we had a set up monitoring station there. And I got to know Delmer pretty well then.

And he'd gone to a similar path I think you guys had gone through. You never told anybody but me, I think, that he worked with about his background. And so there's a lot of great people I've worked with

with a lot of talent. And that's the thing about the FBI is their selection process. I think they do a good job of the psychological profile because they're diverse backgrounds. I mean, they're former military. Some of people some are really hardcore.

There are some who are former teachers, dog brokers, scientists. There's a, I know an agent who was a veterinarian. But I think what they do is they find this psychological profile that we have where we really want to do the right thing.

And for the most part, we're team players. Right. So working with Dale and and other guys with just immense talents, it was just a real pleasure. And what I found is that the agents could be very, very creative. And I think that was another key. I could look at like the abscan investigation

that the FBI conducted against Congress back in the early 80s, I think, before my time. But I know agents who worked it, and they didn't have a budget, they didn't have resource, but they made things happen. And there was a saying sometimes as you, sometimes instead of asking for permission, you ask you do something,

you ask for forgiveness and that's a lot of what they did. Right. And that creativity just made it successful. And I've seen that throughout my career where just there's just a, that creativity will make things happen, get investigations accomplished and phenomenal things done.

on. And it's not like it used to be, but I think they're really still really good talented agents out there who are working hard and, you know, just trying to do the right thing. How did they prepare you for, for, you have the academy, but I imagine under cover ops, you know, as an attorney and then, you know, as a FBI agent, like how did they prepare you to go undercover? Do you take acting classes or did you just kind of throw you out with the time? to win. No, that's a whole, that's a different thing. But, but I,

the undercover, the certified undercover agents would have to go through a school. Oh, really? And one of my colleagues that worked for me and my company now, and he's been a great friend throughout our careers, and he went on, he was in Houston for a while. He'd been to other divisions and came to Houston and then left again, and then

he moved back to the Houston area. and Lenny was one of the best undercover agents the year has ever had and he became an instructor so there's an intense school that certified undercover

agents have to go through and it's very challenging they put them on the spot they give them the obstacles and it's you know to go deep under cover it takes a lot of

gumption for technical term and in thinking on your feet and creativity again and I'll just say this about Lynn too. When he retired

from the FBI he was hired by the UK to go work there and to work undercover by an intelligence agency there for about two years and it's funny because Lynn is from South Carolina and you know he has this good old boy accent so it's funny

I'm sure nobody suspected him of being you know I've never covered or law enforcement or intelligence when he was in Britain but really talented guy a lot of talented people I worked with and I'll say this I always had an affinity for military because I'll get to my father in a minute, but there were a lot of former military that I worked with,

and then we had military assigned to our task force, and drug task forces, and ran an intelligence squad for a while, while I was a supervised over the line, and we had a number of military analysts assigned to us, because at that time, it's part of the drug trafficking effort, the military was just giving us personnel and the coordination was tremendous and the

assets they brought to the table were also tremendous but what I realized in doing, working with these military personnel who assigned to us and training with military and that the military

I mean you had to do more with less. You didn't get you know always get the best assignments or recognition or resources never recognized really. So,

you know, kudos to all the military out there. I have a tremendous that respect for you. And you don't get recognized like you should. Now, I'll back up. My father, you know, when I

my father and mother was like the third child and I think I just happened. But, you know, they were older when I was born, but My father was in World War II. He was actually in the third infantry, 330 artillery. And he saw five campaigns in World War II, including D-Day, Bastogne.

He was in Battle of the Bulge. And, you know, there are guns and some other, you know, places. You know, he grew up during the Great Depression. he grew up on a farm he quit school in the sixth grade to help to work and help support the family which was they were on a farm

and he had a brother and let's see a sister two sisters and I don't even think he was oldest but he just decided he would quit and work so he just worked since he was in sixth grade. Now

he only had sixth grade education so when he went into the army and he came out he started building he had an uncle who was a carpenter who built houses so my father worked with him learned in my uncle by the way

didn't have one or went to school but or his uncle rather was my great uncle who I met but he learned from him how to build houses and my father had this great mathematical mind. He could sit down with a legal pad

and figure out all the material, all the wood, all the material he would need to build a house. And he was almost always exact. He was noted for that. You know, because sometimes you underestimate and you have to go buy more. Sometimes you overestimate and you're stuck with it. But he was always very precise.

And since then, I talked to, you know, my mother knew, people that he went to school with and found out that he was actually when he was in school one through six he was tutoring other students in math so he had this tremendous mathematical mind without the education but I respect that generation

because what they went through and lived through the Great Depression in what he faced in World War II and obviously he never talked about it he passed away in 1993 yeah 24 and toward the end he would he would start talking more about his experiences and I regret that I didn't ask him more but it's just something they kept in

anyway a lot of respect for you know those who served in the military had some really good friends now who served in Iraq and in Afghanistan. One of my best friends was he's a connoisseur of booze. And so we have a lot of good time.

He showed me mutual respect one time when, first time we met, our wives had met and it was kind of one of these things where you tell your wife's not to meet people on social media and stuff, but they did. And they met up. And then they, you know, they

came over one night to like a driveway party and he brought me a bottle of really expensive you know scotch and anyway we he's a great guy and we've been great friends and he's helped me you know since then connect with some former military guys and actually current military guys when I had a contract with the Super Bowl in Houston to provide security so I brought in not only you know guys that work with me but some, you know, recently

guys who recently left the military and actually a couple of, you know, ongoing military that I guess I got permission to do it, but anyway, it was a great experience in great guys, just that we had a good time. Anyway, no, it's good. Again, this isn't, we don't have a really formal interview, style here. You're sitting there drinking

Centauri. It's any time it's Centauri time. No, Bill Merz. And Jack and I are enjoying the Freud. So we're just having a conversation. So at what point were you, you said you got into SWAT early and what was that like for you? Because last week we had Danny on and we heard what SWAT was like in the 70s and I know that it progressed and actually became a lot more professionalized.

So what was it, what was the volunteer and the training process like for you? You know, it was, you went through the testing and then there was the, you know, training that you would go to, but a lot was just in doing it and, in, you know, our constant training. The SWAT team leader, when I got on was Gordon Smith.

Gordon played football for the Vikings. And he was this big Hulk guy and just a really a good leader. And then after him, I'm trying to think where there. A lot had to do with your team, the overall team leader. And I became an assistant team leader myself, but we did training. and we became Houston became an enhanced team which means we got to train more we got more

equipment and we would do our regional training which was San Antonio Division Dallas Division El Paso Division and a lot of it had to do with oil related we did training on oil rigs and the coldest I've ever been was out from the oil rig

and out in the ocean and just it was brutal And going back to what she said about Danny, in the early days, we didn't necessarily have all the gear that we needed. And so we didn't have cold weather gear necessarily. It came along and we got better gear and better equipment, like I said. But we had a good time. It was just, I love the training. I love the camaraderie.

And, you know, there were times we got to do things. that, you know, I think were important. You know, I was in Waco that deal for five weeks, and that was a no-win situation. You know, unfortunately, it was just, and I kind of realized that from the beginning. And I said this before, talking to other people, but there, it was

the siege, and Koresh had, you know, basically brainwashed his group and there were negotiations going and the HRT was there and SWAT teams from the region were there and basically our responsibility was covering perimeter and

at some point they negotiated with Kresh to let go of a couple of children I got picked, I don't even know how now but I got picked with another agent to drive to Wanda Hood Point and pick up to kids and one of them,

there might have both been girls, it was a boy girl, but there was one girl I just, I remember vividly. I'm driving them, we're driving them to the command post, which was an airport hanger, and I'm looking in the rear view mirror

at the girl's eyes, and I'm just thinking, gosh, it's just so innocent. And I just had this overwhelming feeling that this is not going to go well, the freezer side. And, you know,

it didn't really, it didn't really go well ultimately it was what it was you know crash set the place on fire and there were two one of our team leaders who came along later on the SWAT team was on HRT at that time

and he was one of two HR team members who rushed in to rescue people who came out and were burning or came out they were facing fire from weapons and they received a little awards for that, but he was one of the guys that did that and became our, you know, Houston SWAT team leader at some point. We had, you know, other leaders. And again, we

we tend to train hard and, you know, in the early days we had a good time to, you know, there were other missions we went on that, like, rating a meth lab where we had to go to Dallas and it was a multi-division operation. And there was a lot of rain that week, so we'd have to hang out. I forgot where we stayed, but we ended up going to these bars and just making the best of it for like five days

and then finally we had an operation and went inserted every night, and went to the woods and crawled up on the place and it's just funny how you think about these memories. Like there was one guy on that team that had never, he was from Connecticut, and he'd never been around, you know, cows or, or bulls or anything.

We were going to these pastures, and it was just, you know, bull that started making some noise and it was like, didn't know how to deal with that. And then there was another guy who, we got closer, and he was just a comedian. He started making jokes, and you're supposed to be quiet. You know how it is at night, with how noise travels.

And we were trying not to laugh, and he just kept joking. And anyway, a lot of stories, and that one of the guys was advancing in, and he had a snake run across his hand, he was crawling in, a lot of good memories.

Back in my era, there were a number of guys who had actually served in Vietnam. They were tremendous. There was one guy. We did a, an operation on an oil rig where they

half the teams we went out on helicopterers and landed and did our, you know, operation. And then when we left, we had to go out and Coast Guard cutters because the other happened come in on Coast Guard cutters. And it was rough. The seas

were rough so the Coast Guard cutter couldn't come up close to the oil wheel. So we had to, the oil rig had actually had a road to be able to drop down. So they brought out beans. So we had to drop, jump on the rope and drop down into the deans. And of course, you know, you've done this stuff too, more, more so. But we had all this body armor and

weapons and everything. So we had to time it right, jump down in the deemies. But then we had to go over to where the Coast Guard cutter was. And it's rocking back and forth. So we had to jump up, time it and jump up and grab them that and pull ourselves up. Now, I'm talking about this because I remember the humor stuff. You know, that's, if I ever do a, you know, a podcast or a show or anything, I want to do the

humor stuff because that's, you know, that's, that's important. That's, it's what I remember. But the, the guy that was in front of me jumping up was about five foot six. But Jack was a tunnel in Vietnam. So,

you're talking about nerves of steel. Right. Nothing phased him. But Jack jumps up. And he barely made the edge and his legs were just going back and forth. So I just started laughing. You know, and unfortunately, he made it, but it's just another one of the stories where you, you know, and I think once we got on the cutter, there was the one guy who got sick, C-Sick, going back was a Marine. So we gave him hell, of course.

anyway, just some of the stories it was just a remarkable experience an opportunity. I got to live in dream. Yeah. So how did you get brought into doing undercover ops? I'd like to talk a little bit about some of those missions or some of those assignments, investigations that you were involved in, going after drug cartels. I think I read your bio that you also had some experiences with the Russian mafia.

Yeah. So working the long-term cartels, you utilize all kinds of resources, and we had undercover operations we were called Group 2s, Group 1s, and Duke tunes, and you had to get all kinds of approvals. We have long-term undercover agents that we would

insert into them, and usually those were, you know, because of dealing with, you know, Columbia cartels and Mexican cartels, they were they needed to be native, you know, speakers. I mean, yeah, I wasn't going to fit in. So

they would go undercover and I became early on a contact agent for them, which means I would meet with them after they were working. They would go out at night and get a dinner. Basically is to keep them sane and, you know, let them keep them connected, you know, to us. And when they would go with meetings, which at the time, happened to be, you know, a lot of times for some reason the cartel guys like to get at the top of spars. So, yeah, we'd have to go in and cover them and actually, believe it or not, they kind of

got old, but we would, you know, provide security while they were in there. And the little bit, limited bit of undercover work I did was, like, as a financial guy, you know, because, you know, here I'm this gringo. And I remember in New York, I went to, we were up there working and I was sitting at a dinner table and this was kind of a surreal experience. There was a Colombian, a Mexican,

a Puerto Rican, a Cuban. I think there was somebody from Spain and then me. And I was sitting here thinking, wow, this is kind of surreal. I'm going to remember this and I still did. But

the undercover, to work in undercover, you really, you kind of have to volunteer. I mean, sometimes you may get picked and like I said, you have to have the training, you have to have the backstopping. And they just put you out there, and it's

risky. But it's effective. So, based on the fact that I was a case agent on a lot of undercover operations, which I probably ran, I don't remember now, 12 or 15 under cover operations as part of the overall investigation. And once I was promoted to supervisory position, at some point, in addition to the other responsibilities I had, they asked me to be the underpublic program coordinator, which I enjoyed doing.

I did that for probably eight years or so. I was responsible for kind of overseeing and administratively monitoring all the undercover operations and undercover agents for all the programs, whether it was counterterrorism, national security,

criminal violations. So it was just another opportunity to really experience all the FBI had. So I don't know

if I answer your question. Yeah, yeah. I would be also interested in hearing, like, a little overview about the situation with the Mexican and Colombian drug cartels at that time. I take it this was mostly in the 1990s that you were going after these groups. What was their MO at the time? How did they operate? How were they organized?

And if there are some examples of the undercovers that you ran from, like, cases that have been prosecuted that you're able to talk about, I think it would be fascinating to hear some of those details. Yeah. So one thing I realized about the cartels, and you've seen this if you watched, you know, Narcos and Narcos Mexico,

which I finally did. I kind of resisted me first, but then I watched it. It's extremely well done. But the thing I noted early on about the cartels is that they they became ingenious business-wise. They learned to adapt to the business climate

and what worked. So what we found was, and this has been shown later, it's like the Colombian cartels realize that those were getting, you know, seized out on the seas and the Caribbean and in Florida and everything. So they're like, I don't want to work with the Mexicans, but they have this history of getting contraband across the border. They've been doing it whether it's cigarettes, marijuana, you name it. They've been doing this for decades and very successfully.

So eventually they started working with them. And again, it's that business model. They may be competitors. They may not get along. But if it's good for business, they adopted it. And they did, so they started working with the Mexican cartels. And at first, they would, there was like, there was the payment for, you know, every shipment of the Mexican cartels got across.

But at some point, they started, you know, dividing loads, like the Mexican cartel, which we focused on the Gulf, Gulf Cartel, which was, you know, the, you know, eastern, you know, toward the Gulf, you know, Matamoros and down. And they would get 50% of the loads. So you had, like, the Colombians would get their shipments brought across, and then the Mexican cartels would bring their shipments across, too. So what we were able to do at some point was infiltrate the cartels and get into the shipment aspect of it, and introduce our undercovers.

And we would have these, we'd have a lot. of what we would call control deliveries, which we would, undercovers would arrange for the shipments, and sometimes if they phone in, sometimes be driven across the border, we would receive them. All right, so working undercover,

we would do the next part, was take it to the next person in the latter, which was, you know, going to take it to New York or Chicago. somewhere. But along the way, while we were delivering the load, the load would get compensated and get pulled

over it. And by law enforcement, just a random seizure. So then they would get arrested and so forth, the ones receiving it, and then we'd work our way back up the ladder. At some

point, you know, as far as putting the case together. And we did. a lot of control deliveries and we got pretty creative too as far as how we would scrape the loads we would use and this was in a case so I can I can reveal it where we took a palette of plywood and we actually cut out the center of the pallet of plywood put I don't know how much it was probably 200 kilos of cocaine and then put you know three full layers of the plywood back on top nailed all together putting in a

rental truck. And of course we had the rental truck so that it would we could control it. I'll put it that way. And we had a lot of surveillance and everything and so anyway, it was all coordinated

and there was one situation where we did that and the surveillance had a little difficulty keeping up, which is not unusual so you don't get disclosed. But the load went into a garage somewhere at the house and we weren't sure.

So we're sweating bullets because you don't want to lose, you know, multi-million worth of cocaine. You're going to pay the price administratively. And one of the surveillance agents, again, this created, he started walking around

the neighborhood. And fortunately, there was a, this garage had window pains in it. And we had put, again, this load had gone into the back of a pickup truck and we covered it with a Christmas tree

so he could see the Christmas tree and that saved our buck I mean, you know, at that time my supervisor's butt which he was phenomenal so we were kind of rejoiced in the fact that we were able to do that.

So there were operations like that and then for example against the Gulf cartel there were a series of seizures not only by the FBI, the DEA, the DEA done in Texas DPS and we put together a

what's called a RICO case which is Ractearian influence corruption organizations against the Gulf Quartel and we took all these seizures that had been done over years and I became one of the case agents and became what was considered an expert witness

and that, and we put together sears tolling and it was 10 tons of cocaine. And conversely, we also did the money going south. We did seizures there undercover operations where

we did the same thing just in the reverse. And we had I don't remember how much money we'd seized, but there were times when we literally would take suitcases with a million dollars in it. And that brings up the question

that we ever attempted? No, because it didn't seem real to begin with and it just never was a consideration and it never would be the worth of consequences of going to San Quentin or somewhere for 20 or 30

years just based on money. But it was phenomenal and there was one case that it was a a national from a country you never would have thought in driving the world.

And I won't go into it, but he was arrested. His father was an intelligence agent for this other country. And the attorney representing him went to Mexico. Basically, you know, somebody hired

him to pay his fees. He went to Mexico. He told me, he pulled me aside when they said, hey, here's what happened. I went to Mexico. They blindfolded me. They drove me to somewhere, this office building. I went in there. There were all these phone bays. And there were like five different languages

I could discern that were being spoken on these phone banks. And so this it's an example of this elaborate money launding operation that I would even speculate to help fund an intelligence agency of another country.

I'll just leave it back. Yeah. So anyway, a lot of, you know, the cases were put together, and there were mass prosecutions, and like I said, we actually ended up capturing the head of the Gulf Hotel, Juan Garcia, Vega. And we had this big bowl of all the members imposed for a big picture. at one time. And I would testify

and go like, yeah, he's in U.S. prison, he's in Mexican prison. He's in he escaped. This one was killed by the organization. This was killed by another organization. And I could go throughout, but

you know, it's like cut off the head of the dragon. The head goes back at some point. Yeah. Dennis, for the FBI operations, some of these undercover cases that you were managing as a contact officer, how long would these guys be undercover for generally? You know, it varied.

It would be, you know, sometimes six months, sometimes a year, sometimes longer. And sometimes it was just incremental. It wouldn't have to be, you know, actually inserted into the organization. It could be just meetings, you know, occasionally. but I had a lot of respect for those guys and you know you know about

Joe the Stone infiltrating the Italian mafia in New York and I had beers women one night at the academy because we actually had a room where we could go in at night when we wanted to and have beer, pizza and whatever

and I met him in there and it's he was one of the original ones and he dealt with a lot he sacrificed a lot I would say it was as far as what he had to do and he didn't get the support he needed

and it changed a lot every year's improved but he was on the cutting edge of it yeah how how did you when you were undercover or especially some of the guys who maybe were inserted in the organizations how do they manage, they're undercover as

a criminal, how do they manage being law enforcement but expecting these expecting to engage in criminal like behaviors? Well, it takes a talent because one of, one of my

former supervisors, Phil, still a lot of undercover operations in New York when he was assigned in. He did organized crime, he did drug, trafficking.

investigations where he was uncertain and Phil was when you asked that initially I was going to say you can't be an Eagle Scout necessarily but Phil wasn't an Eagle Scout so you just have to take on a persona

you have to it is in a way it is like emerging you know immersing yourself into an acting role where you take on the character you have to be that character or you're not going to survive

and you know there's certain things you do along that line which I won't really get into but you at the same time that's why it's important to have the contact agents where they keep you in reality they're like hey you know remember who you really are and you know we're good guys and so forth you know it's not to say that you know occasionally there haven't been some who've gone you know to the other side because they just got so immersed in you yeah so that's a challenge Well, I imagine the other side can be kind of seductive, you know. There's danger, but there's glamour. I'm sure there's money.

Girls? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I haven't seen that personally, but I've heard about it. You know, it's happening, you know, Florida, you know, at some point where, you know, guys did go to the other side. And I'll say this, too. one of the aspects of working these investigations, you deal with

corruption from particular with other agencies, local agencies and so forth. And one of the most interesting experiences I remember was going to this supervisor I had

Phil, who had done a lot on a couple of work in New York. He and I went to South Texas which was the very tip to for an investigation and we had to meet with

an agent who was actually a supervisor with another agency not named the agency but we were pretty sure that he was corrupt because we just had information and the problem with the border at that time was that

particularly if they were related you know, say, you know, if it was Border Patrol or customs or whatever, a lot of good personnel that they dealt with stuff I never wanted to deal with. But if they grew up in the area and they had family, there's family on the other side,

and this is shown out in, you know, Narcos and so forth, that they could be co-authored easily. You know, hey, we've got family members over here, better work for us or, you know, we're going to take care of them. So it was kind of a no-win situation.

But anyway, we went into a meeting with this agent from another agency. And it's saying, you know, while we were talking to him about a legitimate investigation that we're, he's starting to ask us, like, where do you guys stay? And we were staying on the South Pardier Island at the hotel. We were like, you know, we're staying on the island. We kept kind of been coming back to it. It's like, we can't stay, you know. We kind of dance around and avoid the topic.

And, you know, it's interesting where, you know, obviously he needed to know for a reason. I don't know what would have happened if he found out. And maybe we even had, you know, some surveillance unless we left the office. I don't know whatever happened, you know, to that agent with the other agency. I think he probably, you know, eventually was uncovered and arrested and everything, but it was an interesting cat and mouse experience. There was occasion which I was assigned as a member of a five team, well, five-member team of FBI agents to investigate a very sensitive national security.

matter and we worked it for about a year or so and we actually were inserted into a South American country without at least initially our own embassy knowing about us

and because it dealt with something going on in the embassy and that was a really fun experience because at some point you would like that you're being picked up on it,

but you don't know if it's the foreign government. You don't know if it's foreign government working for the cartels. You don't know if it's the cartels. Or you don't even know if it's your own guys or, you know, agency personnel watching you. So it was kind of thrilling experience. I'll just think of it went.

So that was sort of like an anti-corruption type operation, I'd take it? It was, yeah, anti-corruption and national security in a sense that there were national security issues with what was being accessed.

Oh, geez. So what was the result of that investigation after a year? We solved it, and we actually, we got cooperation, tremendous cooperation from the Colombian government. We were able to do things on their premises that had never been done before. They had allowed us to conduct certain aspects of the investigation. So it was remarkable. And that's the thing about,

there was obviously a lot of corruption in South America and Mexico and everything. And there are a lot of reasons for that. You know, police aren't paid enough. They're just a history of it. And it doesn't justify it, but yet you kind of understand why. But it was remarkable that when you do get the cooperation and the guys who want to do the right thing, which we did in that case. And one of the hats I've worn before is an international teacher, international instructor, and I taught at the International Law Enforcement Academy in Bangkok a couple of times.

and then Middle East law enforcement or FBI Middle East Law Enforcement Center in Dubai outside of Dubai and then I talked with that was with Department of State

but I've worked with the Department of Sense in teaching a place in Romania about crisis management in the context of weapons of mass destruction but an interesting thing I experienced in teaching in Bangkok was

and this was organized crime investigations we had students from pretty high-level police officers from 13 countries now three of the countries were Republic of China Vietnam and Macau which were communist still communist now it's like a UN setting they've got you know your phones on that got translators saying you do this and it and

what I found was like the the officers from the People's Republic of China would fill a need to kind of wave the flag and found the table to promote the PRC at times

but when it came to breaks and after class they would come up and they were just cops they wanted to do the right thing they just thought they had to do that and they probably did to make a lot and keep a job. But there were cops, they were bringing in hats and groups and stuff

and they were at heart, they were cops who still wanted to do the right thing. And it was interesting to say that, you know, throughout, you know, investigations and getting back to, going forward to Russian investigations that I was promoted to, you know, supervisor positions, and I supervised a drug task force, multi-agency drug task force. And they brought me back into the main office.

And I supervised a, we made a strictly organized crime squad. And for us, when I was in Houston, was Asian organized crime. We had the second largest Vietnamese population in the country in Houston. And there was a lot of trafficking, you know, human trafficking.

And people, you know, actually, Chinese who would pay $10,000 to get transported and they would get extorted and taking advantage of there would be shipped to Guatemala and bought up through traffickers through Mexico and into Texas and so forth

but we also focused on Russian organized crime and that's when I developed a fascination for working Russian organized crime because the culture is amazing. I mean they tend to be very intelligent, very strategic.

And I've often said that they're, you know, dealing with Russians is like dealing with chess players who are, but there are six plays ahead. Well, most people in the U.S. are probably, you know, they may think two plays ahead. And it's, so, you know, working in the Russian organization as crime, we, you know, we developed sources. And, you know, it was interesting,

to get to know them, their personalities, their culture, and they could be, you know, the investigations could be very challenging, but interesting at the same time. I'd love to hear more about the personalities

and the culture of the Russian mafia, because I think, I feel like 95% of the stuff we see in the movies and the TV shows is bullshit. I'd love to hear it from somebody who was actually involved. Well, I'll give you an example. one of the investigations we had involved,

it reminds me of two things. One, I'll get back to the Russians, but one of the first cases I worked as a brand new agent was an actual Italian organized crime, Sicilian, as part of the Pizza Connection investigations way back. In Galleson, Texas, there was a pizza restaurant that was involved. they were trafficking heroin. There were two guys, two brothers

who owned a restaurant, they were involved with New York and, you know, trafficking heroin, and we had a Title III wiretap, and then it was down in the organization. It was rather, it was kind of stereotypical as far as their personalities

and everything, but there, my, you know, as a brand new agent, it doesn't matter what your background is, for former prosecutor or whatever. They don't really trust you at first until they see what you would do.

So I never got to go on with surveillance until one day, or it was going to be a Saturday, they said, Dennis, why don't you help us on this surveillance? But back then we didn't have individual cars assigned.

I had, I think I was assigned a car, but it was with two other agents. And senior, so I ever saw it. So if I ever needed a car, I would have to borrow me from another squad. So there was a white color squad next to us. And I went to them one Friday. I said, hey, if you got anything, I need a car and I got surveillance. So yeah, yeah, there's this plenness, fury, or whatever it was. Yeah, you can take your hair keys. Well, there's a reason why that car is available because it was a junker. So I get on this, we're in Galveston, we're sitting on the street and it's a

February. And it's raining and we're, you know, we've got our, you know, communications going and they said, okay, the targets are reading. And my car stones. And I can't crank it. And one of the other senior agents comes up

and he tries to crank it in their moving. He says, hey, I got to get on. Yeah, go. So I get out and I walk to a service station like, you know, two blocks away. And again, it's February and it's raining. You know, I don't have I get cold and wet

and they bring a wrecker over and we jump the carver so I'm like okay I think I could still make it they made a detour and went to somebody's house before they get to the airport because the objective was to put him

on a plane because he was flying for both of them they were flying to New York and then the agents were going to pick him up once they arrived in New York following me so the objective was put them on the plane and it's like other agents were doing

it that's like I want to do it I want to accomplish this. So I'm like, okay, I can still make it. So I've got the car going. I get by the airport. This is one of the two airports in Houston, but this is the one on the south side. And I get in front of the airport,

and I get pulled everybody at least. Or an expired registration on the car. So I'm like, oh, fuck. So anyway, I finally get up to the park and get in Russia, I mean, you know, the guy just gotten on the plane, but I just missed it. Anyway, that's the story.

So that reminded me when you were talking about, what is it really like? Okay, so the case we had against this Russian, and I say Russians, Eurasian, there were Russians involved, there were Ukrainians involved in the city force, but the group that came to Houston had kind of, I'm pretty sure they had posed as being,

Jewish refugees and that enabled them to get into the U.S. I don't think they were Jewish, but there was a way for them to get in. And they operated a pari-repair place. So it was nothing really sophisticated like you see in the movies where they're wearing the suits.

I mean, these were kind of gumbas like they talked about with the Saudi guys. And in a way they were comical, but they were able to pull things off because they were created, they were smart. We never found it when we heard that they had buried a body in San Joseon State Park.

You know, where do you ever look for? It's a huge part. So they were brutal at the same time. And their strings were being pulled by what we call the Russian criminal enterprises. they didn't tend to have the strict structures like the Lacostinoza, Italian Lacoste Noste we have where they've got the head organization, and they've got the Capos and lieutenants under that and so forth.

Soldiers, they tend to be more loosely structured, but the higher the status of the organization that could pull the strings of the local guys so and that was a smart thing to do too it's not to be sort of strictly structured necessarily that you bring more attention

and that was true with a lot of the cartel members too the better ones wouldn't bring attention to themselves they would live in modest homes they wouldn't drive you know the friars and Lamborghinis and at some point

they would decide you know what, I'm just going to buy a business and go out of it. But the greedy ones were the ones who kept one to advance and everything. I've often said that it reminded me of this, I think it was

Aristotle who said something about, it's not it's not it's not powered but it's the quest for power but it's the intoxicate. And you know, you would see that a lot with the cartel members,

where no matter how much money they made, instill that desire to promote and the power of being charged and amassing, you know, wealth, influence that was the intoxic. Right. And then the higher and higher they get up that hierarchy, the more federal attention they get from our government. I mean, that's like the classic story of Pablo Escobar, right?

He got so big, started doing things that were way, way above what any cartel leader had done behind, blowing up airliners and things. Like, now you got a little bit more attention than you bargained for it. Right, right. Yeah, that's a perfect example where the ego gets, you know, prevents them from really accomplishing what they could accomplish. Right, because smart money is like, I'm going to get out,

I'm going to buy some car dealerships, chain of restaurant, and go legit. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I would say it now, but I know at one point, South Florida was probably riddled with all kinds of businesses that didn't necessarily start out. It was legitimate. Dennis, I know you guys weren't working drugs. You were working organized crime, and that might involve drugs, which would bring in the DEA or maybe the ATF or firearms or whatever. How did, how was your relationship with those agencies? and was there friction very often

Well, in 1983, it's when the FBI was actually given the jurisdiction with drug trafficking too. Okay.

So, but it was, we approached it from an organized crime perspective where, you know, D.A may do more

overall in a tremendous agency, they would do more street level stuff as well as organized crime stuff.

Now, like I said, when I, was first promoted to supervisor position. It was assigned to a high intensity drug trafficking task force, which is a multi-agency organization

where I supervised. I had FBI, D.E.A. Customs, Houston Police, Harris County Sheriff Department. I'm sure I'm leaving out agencies, but then I had multiple supervisors

too. Not only either have my FBI supervisors, I had to answer to DA supervisors, you know, the administrator, the ASAC's assistant special agents of charge and above. So it was a complicated position to be in because sometimes

the agencies had competing objectives, but you had to learn to navigate it all. And what I learned to do was and I'll say this, the agents, the investigators, the officers, on the squads,

would, for the most part, learn that it's a team effort. We're just all together. We're just trying to get the right thing done, work as a team, and we would do that. And it was when it came to the hierarchy above, the bureaucracies when they were conflicts.

What I also learned was, I kind of equated to like being a football coach or, you know, whether it's pro football or whatever. that you would recognize your talent. Think of Belichick or something. I mean, he's great for recognizing talent and putting them in the light places. So that's what I learned to do with, you know,

agency personnel. It's like, what does this one bring to the table? What does this one bring to the table? The customs guy has all these connections with, you know, getting in and out of the country. The Harris County guy has tremendous street cred. He can go out and talk to people. The D-A agent has tremendous undercover experience,

and actually he and I ended up going to Belgium for an extended period working on the case. So you recognize your talent and putting in the right positions, and then getting back to the approach analogy, you would find that you would, sometimes you'd like, well, maybe this player is not the best for, team, I'll trade now and I'll try to get this other player

that was in bed, you know, better for this position. So you find yourself trading with other supervisors sometimes when you could. You know, it's like the pre-agency draft and everything. So it was all remarkable and

the, you know, for like I said, for the most part, everybody wanted to do the life and get, just take out the bad guys. Yeah, one team, one-five. Dennis, we have some viewer questions that we need to get you. Let me, Richard Ballen, thank you very much.

Oh, you just said, you just donated. Jackson, thank you. How competitive is the hiring process for the FBI today compared to when you applied? Do you read? I don't have, yeah, please. I don't have the statistics, but in any given time, I think there are, over 100,000 applications from qualified candidates. Qualified being, you need educational age

and experience requirements, which nobody unless you're some, you know, has some amazing technical, scientific qualifications. No one gets hired by college. You have to be at least 23 years old. And again, they like people with real world experience. So at any time there were over 100,000 or more qualified candidates who meet the criteria,

and at any given year, depending on the budgets and the hiring process, the attrition rate, there may be 100 higher, they may be 50 higher, then it would be zero higher, then it would be 200 hired. It just depends. So, you know, you do the math, and it's like one. you've got, you know, one percent chance of getting in or greater. It just all depends, but my suggestion is this. Don't let that deterred.

Don't let the statistics deteriorate because I didn't let it deter me. And if it's something you really, really want to do, keep working on it. And there were other options, too. I mean, there are analytical positions, intelligence analysts, and non-agent's positions that are available also that are just as important in the FBI and other agencies

and if nothing else get into one of those positions then work you weighing in because you get your foot in. And then Jackson went on and said do grad students stand a chance today? Yeah. You know, yeah, I mean it's always better to have higher degrees there.

I knew there were analysts working with advanced degrees, their master degrees and PhDs and even lawyers working these analysts. So it helps absolutely. In the past there was this emphasis on somebody getting a criminal justice degree or something like that. And I'm like, don't do that. It's kind of like you'll learn what you need to learn. There's nothing to do with a criminal justice degree other than try to get law.

enforcement. It's not going to say they'll get an FBI. Get a business degree and then get an MBA, get a master's in public administration. And now a big thing is you can get degrees in national security and the advanced degrees in that. And I go that wrong. That's, yeah, that's my advice right. Yeah. I think there's kind of a misconception out. there sometimes that agencies like the FBI or the E.A. specifically the FBI, the CIA that like they don't want you to have a degree in intelligence studies. Or that they want you, they're only going to take people who are former special

operations in the military. That's, you know, that that's the big thing when that's not the reality at all. No, I mean, they're, you know, percentage-wise are probably, you know, looking back, are probably 30% FPA agents I work with with former military 30% maybe 20%

of lawyers you know 30% are accountant CPA qualified and then there's a broad diversity otherwise language specialist

former teachers stockbrokers you know people who give up good paying jobs because they want to be an agent do the right thing and be you know, do the right thing and be, you know,

there's no rhyme or reason necessarily. But it is competitive, you know, so just make yourself, my advice is make yourself as competitive as possible. But I have a fallback, you know, which is, you know, go into business, do something. I mean, we have former bankers, you name it, business owners. Just demonstrate that you've got what it takes.

That's the biggest thing. They're not looking for people with certain backgrounds necessarily. It's just what you bring to the table. How well do you do the testing? Part of the testing is that there's an interview that's imported to psychological profile and so forth. with the psychological profile the advice I was given is just to be honest

don't try to second guess it and be yourself be honest and the psychological profile that never tell the truth during the polygraph yeah yeah well you know it's funny

I've heard they're not even polygraph anymore because I don't they're early on they didn't really do it sometimes with background They would do it. Every five years, you have to have another background done.

But I've heard they're not even part of it anymore because I don't want to say found it that useful, actually. No. Yeah. It's a tool for interdioscience. Yeah. And last one from Jackson was also, did you ever work with HRT? I trained with HRT.

We would go back for training with them and they were former HR team members who came to who transferred in Houston that came on the SWAT team or SWAT team leaders. Jack Foley was, I think, my second SWAT team leader, he was former

HRT. He was one of the former original members of HRT. And there were others there, and I'll bring this up to when I retired from the FBI, I started my own company, investigated and security the Global Solutions.

And about two or three years into that, I was recruited by another outfit called Risk Control Strategies to open an office in Texas be their regional director. And the president of

RCS was Doug King. Doug King was one of the original members of HRT also. And he was a badass. And the CEO, of RCS with Paul Rales who did in New York. He was a

Manhattan D's office and he did a bunch of stuff phenomenal guy too but but what I learned from you know working with Doug and Jack there were things I did I never knew until they wanted to tell you the story but

Doug got jammed up he got injured in a helicopter you know falling out of basically falling out helicopter one time and stuff, but every year they're about, and I don't know if they still do this, probably do, but they're about four HR team members who get to go to Budstream. So actually Doug and Jack, and I didn't know it when Jack was a teamer. We never talked about it, but they went through Budstream, and as a matter of fact, Jack held the record for the fastest run.

and I'll bring in Delta Force also because Delta Force is instrumental in setting up HRT. It was actually modeled after Delta Force and SAS prior to that. So a lot of Delta Force personnel were instrumental in establishing HRT and getting it going the principles and the test and so forth. So to answer the question, yeah, I, I, I worked with HR team members, training with them. We'd get back to training. You know, it's a good group of guys.

They're really good at what they do. You know, it's like the paramilitary version of special courses, really. And there are a lot of former, you know, special forces guys on there. You know, Delta doesn't talk a lot, you know, obviously. And I've worked with the Delta guy versus Green Beret, former Green Beret, former Green, Gray in the FBI in Air Force Paralysty. There was a guy on our team that did that, which they did a phenomenal job too. I mean, they're kind of unrecognized about their capabilities.

A lot of good stuff out there. And I currently have a relationship that in the private sector and with some things I'm trying to get going the group of us are trying to get some productions going with that will help assist veterans and businesses and so forth and I'm working with I have a couple of volunteers from Green Goy who are willing to help me with that

currently on duty and they're going to try to get Army and you know to commit to it too it's something we'd really like to get accomplished is getting this program going where we would go out it's a team concept we would go out and help communities veterans businesses, veterans

get their acts together to try to get things going kind of like the Greenbrae does worldwide. They go into community other countries and assimilate to the community and try to you know, get the

improve the communities and so forth. So I'm just doing it out there. Does, would you like to plug it? Would you like to tell us what the website is or the company or anything? Yeah, let me get back to you as far as, you know, we've got, you know, I did a production. I was the executive producer and host of Aini investigates the plot against America,

which aired a couple of years ago. We did a year and a half investigation. It started out as a long story, and I'll try to simplify it as much as possible or make a short story longer. But I was approached back in 2018, I think,

by a journalist out of New York who was working with a production company, and they were looking at putting together a show about undercover operations, and they were going to put together teams like, and they picked me, they found me as somebody with undercover operation experience, and it was going to be this concept where they put together in these teams, that was kind of like the competition.

But in the process of talking about myself and everything, it's one of the most fascinating things I did in the Bureau was working watching the ordinance. crime. And I said as a matter of fact a friend of mine, a colleague of a private sector who was a former, told me that there was

Russian organized crime in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. I go, I used to work Russian organized crime. I haven't heard that. He said, yeah. And the journalist and I started looking into it and researching it and found

that, yeah, there was a big population of Russians in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. In Gatlinburg, Lige and Forge in the big resort area. It's huge. They have her 10 million visitors in the area. In the early 2000s,

there had been a murder of two Russians who had an employment agency by another Russian, and he left, the good damn, I guess he got prosecuted in Russia at some point. And, you know, Russian

cops came over. So, And what happened is they started going for and started looking into it. There were Russian clubs in the Smoky Mountains. There were businesses, restaurants, and they found that there was organized crime activity. But it kind of went away or went underground. Now, so the network, which is A&E at the time, is fascinating. It's, oh, yeah, let's pursue this.

So we went to Gatlinburg, and I identified a, where we found a couple of PIs who private investigators who we thought had some information and talked to them and they said well there are these rumors about these prostitution

rings and these hotels and apartment complexes and this and that but you know actually there's this car deal ship that just set up like two doors from us that it's a Russian

home they had 50 cars and now they've got like you know 250 cars. Okay. So that night I went back, did my database research, and I linked this card dealership to modeling agency and

a medical massage business. So put two and two together. And so this colleague and I, this phenomenal guy, he owns his own private investigative agency too, which I

ended up going back to my agency and my company and running that but um and I'll touch on that later but he and I went on the coverage of this car dealership like we're searching for cars and the workers were rushing and said how do you need to go talk to the

owner we go in and he's sitting behind this big wooden desk and there's a chair sitting you know kind of ridiculous to it and there's another chair so I sit in this one my colleague since this other and we're talking him about buying some cars. Like I'm moving to the area from Texas.

My story was that I just got divorced, but you know, my wife took me for a million dollars. And I don't have anything to do with American women anymore, you know, greedy. And, you know, my colleague's talking about buying a car for his wife, but he doesn't want to pay sales tax. And so

we're in the guy, the owner, he says, what do you need to find the Russian woman. And I'm like, well, yeah, I know a couple of guys have done that, but it takes like a year for him to get bogged over and anything. I'm not that patient. So I'm trying to get him to buy, you know, hey, I've got some girls, you know. The phone rings. And he picks it up. And the woman is talking so loud I can hear her. And it's the, the manager of the hotel across the street, which we're told, has a lot of prostitution. She says, there's this guy's filming you from the

SUV from across the street. Were they American or foreign? You know, which was an interesting statement. So why is he concerned about it being, you know, somebody born? You know, that was really very interesting. So we're just like,

we don't, you know, we don't know, we don't hear anything. So she says, well, they moved to, you know, they went away. So he hangs up, we continue talking, like nothing happened. Five minutes later, the phone wings, and she said they're back

they're just at the corner they're still doing so he stands up and he turns as the bear now so he says well I'm going to send my guys out and we're going to get their license plates so they do it to start a couple of guys start getting toward the car and they're filming them as they're driving away coming toward them so it's

very dramatic so we figure out we're going to turn the tables we're like what the hell is going on here well are we being filmed and we're just talking about some illegal stuff. He said, no, no, no, I've got security cameras, but they're, you know, you don't have anything to worry

about. So we stayed another 20 minutes just talking about, you know, cars and women and stuff. And finally, you know, we get up and leave, but, so there's that, that was in Knoxville, Tennessee. But

we started looking at, why is there such a sizable population of Russian and the region in this part of the country? Spooky Mountains. And what we found was there was a lot of documenting interviews and

television and articles and stuff about a Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists, nuclear scientists who was tasked with going to Russia after Chernobyl and after the fall of the

Soviet Empire to check on the security of nuclear facilities and nuclear weapons and this nuclear scientists had gone over there and so we started

and he started he had this epiphany when he was there because he was confronted and not confronted he was encountered by like 20 or 40 kids in his apartment complex who spoke perfect English who are you, what are you doing here

and he explained it and they came down and started talking to him and he said that he had this epiphany. It's like, I don't want to create weapons and bombs that would kill kids and women and pets anymore. So he decided to create an exchange program. And there's this local Duma guy that we teamed up with

so they created an exchange program to bring kids over to work in Dollywood and, you know, the resorts there, which they'd welcome because they didn't have enough American kids who could work in the summers and everything. So this exchange program started in the early 90s and

it assimilated into this huge, you know, Russian Eurasian population in the area. But the circumstances surrounding the scientists being there was that he

talks about it, he talked about it like, you know, it's warns, you know, be careful, you know, don't stay away from the women and everything. But what happens, but he ends up marrying the translator that was assigned to him on the first trip. He described being, going to this, with this Duma guy that started the exchange program, and he had this overwhelming thirst. So they stopped at this, you know, water kiosk on the road. And they're talking about, you know, hey, want to make sure they're good kids and they're this tall, good-looking blonde,

Russian woman, and just speaks perfect English behind them and says, oh, I couldn't help overhear you. I can provide, I'm a teacher, I can, you know, provide kids, and along with other teachers, we can come, you know, get this going. So I, you know, based on my experience in training and I consulted with a CIA, former CIA officer who works with my company now and another CIA

officer who had been worked in Russia and they go yeah nothing happens in Russia by coincidence when you're you know American official or otherwise and it was it was all in our opinion was all a set up

really they found out that this American nuclear scientist from Oak Ridge they've been working with youth groups prior to that. So it was a perfect opportunity for them inserting operatives, you know, and

what we learned also was that translators, the Russian translators signed, they weren't, you know, they weren't FSP officers or anything that they had to record. So we set up this operation,

investigation, and enlisted, we ended up enlisted, we ended up and listing to former FSB, one former FSB officer and the intelligence analyst who had defected, and that's a whole other story, you know about them,

to help us with the investigation in the show. And we set up this ultimate interview of the scientists and his wife, and were able to, you know, the former FSB officer was able to elicit from the, former Russian translator that she got a job

at local national laboratory and she didn't even have to get a clearance. She got her job because she had to report, she admitted she had to report to FSD about what she knew and so forth. So, anyway, that was the crutch of the show, and

you know, we basically uncovered an intelligence, at least the groundwork for the intelligence operation, didn't catch a spy, because when the network said we want you to catch a spy and like it takes the

FBI years to do that with all kinds of resources and manpower but hey I'll give a shot I'm having a good sport so that's what we Dennis? I think we I think he throws we'll see if he comes back here

yeah it'll probably pick up in a second sometimes and this is a good time to thank you please if you haven't already subscribed to the channel hit that like button, share it far and wide. And if you'd like to see all kinds of exclusive content, you know, maybe the seedier side of life, join our Patreon.

A dollar a month will get you access to our exclusive content. And there's a link down there also for the merch. If you want to get yourself a little team house coffee mug. we just lost them yeah well thank you guys for joining us tonight really appreciate it we'll try to get Dennis back we'll probably dial back in

but in the meantime thanks for joining us and if any of you have any questions or anything for for Dennis get them in or since we're here for a few minutes trying to get them back if you want to have anything you want to ask Dave or I feel free to shoot him out there. Yeah, so I'll just say a few things about what's going on kind of in the background here is we got De Producing now. He's behind the scenes.

You can't see him. We'll get him a camera one day. One day. We'll get him a camera one day. Here's Dennis. So you cut out right there just as you were talking about how you had uncovered the groundwork for an intelligence. operation at this nuclear lab in Tennessee. Yeah, and, you know, Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the

top repository in cutting for nuclear weapons and for U.S. government. And it is a, they're on the cutting edge of developing a lot of technology there. So it's a very sensitive area. You know, some, you know, government agencies, had kind of, I think, dropped the ball on, and I never blamed the FBI or anything.

There's, I'll just say, Department of Energy, probably probably not there. You know, they're probably not a little happy with me, but

there's some things, they were diplomatic, you know, diplomatic considerations and, you know, like scientists had there was a protocol in place for interviewing scientists and the FBI was involved too and in making sure they weren't compromised, but sometimes there are the sense of cooperation and, you know, politics that security would take

the, you know, backseat when, you know, things were overlooked. And there are other incidents that have occurred where I think scientists have been compromised that were kind of swept under the rug. That's an amazing story. We have a few more questions. Mike, thank you very much for the generous donation. Dennis, amazing to hear from you and Colson. I'm also an attorney by training applying now. Given your SWAT background,

do you have any advice as to how to attempt to position myself for NSD-C-T-C-I-R-G with no mill experience? You know, it's just what you bring to the table. I mean, I was, it doesn't, but again, it doesn't matter if you don't have a mill or, you know, police background for that type of, if you, you know, if you're athletic and you have the desire and you stand to get a chance as anybody else. So just pursue that, let them know what your intentions are. It doesn't mean you'll get that because there's this saying in the Bureau, it's the needs of the Bureau. It doesn't matter what you want or expectations.

And, you know, that's the thing about the new generations, the ex-gege. generations, wide generations and so forth, it's been a little, I think, challenging for them that, you know, they come in with expectations. And, but the bottom line is, if you're, if you're really right for the part,

you'll do whatever and buys your time. And at some point you'll get your opportunity. So just, you know, let it be known what your interests are and work toward that. Yeah. Thank you, brother Dank. Can you tell us about the Russian capabilities FBI borrowed for the Waco Sage?

A telephone type subliminal device, a psychic hotline? I don't know anything about that. I will say this. The Russians were very, very cutting edge in psychic research. And it's actually one of the topics we have. or a production team for looking at some of the experiments they've done. And the CIA has done it too as far as psychic abilities and research. But as far as, you know, I have no idea as far as any of that.

I think you're holding out on us on the control device, Dennis. I think you are. But all jokes aside, you're right that the U.S. Army had a remote. Vote viewing program. Maybe something we can get one of those, because they're still out there, the guys who serve in that unit. We're familiar with the guys in that, so yeah, we could pursue that.

And actually, I think there's something there. It really is. I even had, well, I'm going to reveal a secret. Okay. In the plot against America, actually, a friend who had some abilities that

gave me some advice in that investigation. So, I think there's some of that is real, you know. So it made you a little bit of a believer. You think there is something to it?

Something that we don't quite understand yet. Yeah, I think there's a lot of things that are out there that can't take for granted. And it was an intelligence agency or anything else if you don't at least look into it and pursue it

then you know you somebody else is going to so right you know what the CIA's done in the past and you know with the remote viewing and I think there's something there I mean from what I've read and there are the experts out there who it's worth

looking into it's an interesting topic yeah it really is I've probably read like five books written by people who were in that Army program. The men who start a ghost is kind of the most popular. That was written by a journalist who looked into it. This is a huge, huge segue

away from what we usually cover on the show. But I think 2, 3% of the time that there's a real phenomena taking place. I think there, I don't think it's total BS. I think there's something happening there in some instance. Yeah, there's a lot

look, I'm not at all conspiracies. I mean, all these conspiracies out there about, you know, this and that and I'm like, hey, the real world, you realize that that's just not the case. I mean, but there is a certain percentage, like you say, there's something there, not

conspiratorial, not these big grand, you know, conspiracies or anything, but there's, there are, you know, the human mind and everything else, you know, like they say, we only tap into a small percentage of what is really dear. And, you know, as I get older, that diminishes even more.

But so anything, any help I can get with, you know, I certainly welcome. Lando St. Clair, thank you very much. and he asked how often, if ever, did you work with postal inspectors? You know, I did. I've actually worked with them more in the private sector

with my company now who went on to work at other agencies and they're very, you know, I found the ones I've worked with very talented and very capable people. So that's, you know, investigators and very competent,

very well-qualified. So, that's my hat's off to them well do you have any that you could send to the post office over here because they're yeah now what types of cases

might you might a Postal Inspector work on you know there's a lot of fraud you know credit card theft and things that they work on but it could get as complex as you know a serial killer or bomber sending things to the mail, you know, they're the experts then when it comes to looking at, you know, tracing

things. So, like I said, the ones I've dealt with it has been very, very impressive. Dennis, is it okay if we steal you for like an extra 10, 15 minutes to do the bonus segment? Oh, thank you, man. I really appreciate it. And thank you, everyone, for joining us tonight. Dennis, any kind of final thoughts? Anything we failed to cover? that you'd like to say before we kind of wrap up tonight. No, it's just, you know, I'll just point my companies investigate the security global solutions. And we're, I've got, you know, probably about eight, nine, ten retired FBI agents

working under my umbrella. I've got former CIA officer, CIA officer, and two former Air Force OSI agents who also did, you know, for security in Afghanistan and Iraq. and local police detected and we're based out of Texas Houston and I live in Austin now

and we're we do a lot of good stuff I mean it's kind of it's kind of like we're working as the Bureau again a lot of sophisticated work and we're looking at putting together an actual show a program about what we do. Some interesting cases, some

challenges, you know, based in Texas, primarily because there's so much here. You know, missing diamonds, you know, deaths of trade secrets. You know, oil guys stabbing each other in back and stealing stuff. It's fascinating.

Dennis, I think there was, I think we were talking at the same time when you said your company named. Do you want to say that one more time? Yeah, it's investigating. and security global solutions. I try to shorten it to ISGS, but we do all kinds of investigations, A to Z, corporate, you know, family, high networks,

you name it, and we do security work, security consulting, risk assessments, and then some personal protection. Just it's, it doesn't replace the bureau, you know, the government work, but it's, we have fun, we do a lot of good work, and occasionally we'll get a case where we're just like we did, you know, in the Bureau.

And, you know, I have a network across the country and across the world that conducted investigations and, you know, surveillance is in, at times in five different states and two foreign countries. And, you know, we're, like I said,

we're working on a, you know, a show concept where we feature some of our investigations and some of our talent and show you what it's really like out there, what it's like out on the streets and conducting surveillance and so forth. That's fascinating. It's a lot of interesting, you know, talented guys. How long have you had that company for it? Believe it or not, 12 years.

Over those 12 years, have you seen a shift or a change in the types of investigations you do, or has it been pretty much the same? You know, I always say that there, it, comes down to basic which product is always product.

You know employee fraud there's a lot of people who steal from their companies trade secrets

and then go create their own company similar companies and take the clients and there's a lot of that

there's we deal with a lot of wealthy people who are targets of our opportunity, who have

thefts over there trying, they infiltrated, and we even had, you know, Russian organized crime, you know, actually infiltrate some families, wealthy families. You name it. It's just, it's fascinating. We sometimes

deal with some cold cases. You know, we're unsolved murders and you, it's really hard to describe all the things we do because it can vary day to day, but it's sometimes it's mundane, but a lot of times it's fascinating. Like I said, it doesn't replace the government work. What I've realized is, you know, we're, you know, I run a company and I want to make a profit.

I want to be successful. But what I've realized is that all of us are still wired as public. service. We still like helping people. We still like working as a team. We still like solving things to help people out. So that's what we're best at. Dennis, this has been really cool, man. And again, I just want to thank you for jumping in at the last minute and coming in. And I almost had very good. I had no idea what to expect myself. But this was really cool because you talked about some things that we have never discussed on this program before. We interview a lot of like CIA operations officers. We interview a lot of like former green berets and stuff. But you're talking about undercover operations, undercover FBI operations targeting drug cartels, targeting

the Russian mob. We've never really gotten into that stuff here before. So this is like kind of all new material for us. Well, you know, invite me back and I'll be glad to ramble on more. Yeah, man. No, thank you. We appreciate it. And thank you for everyone who joined us live tonight, watching the show. Really appreciate it, guys. Please make sure that you subscribe to the channel. If you haven't already, give us a little thumbs up, leave some comments down in the description,

tell us how you think we're doing. And there are also some links down there if you want to join our Patreon and support the show and also get access to the bonus segments like the one we're going to do with Dennis in just a moment here. Thanks, everyone. Take care.

Thanks for what you're doing, guys. Thank you, Dennis. Thank you.