The Team House - DEA Agent Almost Shot on Operation | Jack McFarland | Ep. 353

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

The interview features retired DEA Supervisory Special Agent Jack McFarland, who shares his 32-year career highlights. He recounts early Philadelphia drug busts, his time training new agents at Quantico, and challenging international assignments in the Caribbean, including a "reverse undercover" sting. McFarland also discusses the personal toll of the job, including an assassination attempt on his agent's family and the loss of colleagues, reflecting on the dedication and sacrifices made in combating drug trafficking globally.Find Jack here:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-mcfarland-2529b92a9Today's Sponsors:StopBox USA⬇️Get firearm security redesigned and save with BOGO the StopBox Pro AND 10% off @StopBoxUSA with code HOUSE at https://www.stopboxusa.com/HOUSE GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 10% off! For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseNew merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️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/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 - Start 00:17 - Guest Introduction & DEA Origins10:25 - Undercover Operations & Major Seizures21:26 - Quantico Instructor & DEA Tactical Training36:47 - Caribbean Division & "Reverse Undercover" Sting: 52:00 - Targeted Assassination Attempt & Island Violence1:00:00 - TSA Incident & Freighter Interception1:08:59 - Risk vs. Reward in DEA Operations1:18:50 - Honoring Fallen Agents & Personal ReflectionsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Special operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Welcome to episode 353 of the Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave. And our guest on tonight's show is Jack McFarland.

Jack spent 32 years with the Drug Enforcement Agency working his way up through the ranks with assignments in the Caribbean division, working a lot in Philadelphia, instructor positions in Quantico, worked undercover operations, gotten in numerous gunfights, all kinds of interesting interagency operations that he conducted or was a part of, and even managed to get himself an internal affairs investigation because of a TSA agent that gave him a hard time. So there's plenty to talk about here today, and Jack, thank you for joining us on the show. Gentlemen, Jack and Dave, thank you very much for having me. Appreciate it.

So, you know, the mandatory first question we ask about the guest's origin story. If you tell us a bit about, like, kind of your upbringing, how you grew up, and how that eventually took you towards law enforcement. Sure. I was born and raised just north of Allentown, Pennsylvania, coal regions, coal cracker. And basically, I got into teaching and football coaching when I came out of college. And then I wanted to get into federal law enforcement. I applied to the FBI, applied to the DEA. And believe it or not, back in 1987, Ronald Reagan was president.

DEA came a call. And I chose, I got into a DEA and I never looked back after 32 years. And I mean, 1987, what was the DEA up to at that time? Like, what was it sort of like going through your training? And I imagine some of your instructors were probably Vietnam veterans during that time. We had, remember now, DEA came on board in July 1 in 1979, and so we probably only at that particular time at about 2,500 special agents. Now, since around the late 90s, we were upwards around that 5,500 mark, worldwide personnel. So most of the instructing, we were not as lengthy.

The academy was not as lengthy the academy these days. I think since the 90s have been like 17 weeks. We were more like, I think, 14 weeks. We've got trained well. No one trains are better than Uncle Sam. You two guys, I'm sure you know that. You've been part of it. And they don't mind spending the money on training. And that's what they did for us. And I do have to say probably the one of the rigorous, most rigorous I've been through.

I've been to college football camps and high school football camps. And DEA came after us. Absolutely to train us. I remember like in the 90s, the DEA was looked at like, as sort of the, I don't want to say Cowboys as in Wild, but they were the guys who like went out in DISH, like compared to other federal agencies. And weren't they the last federal agency law enforcement

that like didn't require a college degree or is that not true? Like I'm trying to remember. No, no, DEA, for your degree. They always know. Okay. Master's degree better if you have it. Okay. Because that'll do for you, Dave.

That'll allow you to become back then either be a GS-7 like me, coming on board is DS7 or GS9 coming on board if you had that master's or JD degree. Okay. So unlike the Bureau, they were 11s coming on board. I see. And was the Caribbean division your first assignment? No, believe it or not, I have to be academy. When you go through Quantico, you get hired on, you go through Chronico, you do 14 weeks of training and then you get your assignment.

And my assignment was the Philadelphia Field Divisional Office. but I hired through the Allentown resident office because that was closest to my house where I grew up. So I went there when I came out of Quantico successfully, they end up sending you back to your office of Pire, it's called. So when I went back to my office of Pire, which was Allentown, it was a small office. You know, you work a lot with the different state and local guys.

And I spent about a year there, but my knowing that I was supposed to go to Philadelphia as my assignment out of the academy. So after one year, it was finally, okay, got to go to Philadelphia, and that's when I went to the Philadelphia division. I entered into group three. And Jack, back then, group three, in Philadelphia, we had a number of enforcement groups. And each group had different designees.

Like, we were basically Coke, remember this word, crack cocaine, and marijuana. Well, we went after crack cocaine in a heavy way in Philadelphia in the late 80s. And that was the height, that's the height of it. So other groups had heroin and meth and different groups at different other designees. So we have Philadelphia, Allentown and the Philly, and I did eight years in Philadelphia, loved every minute of them. I got my grades in Philadelphia. I met some great people, my partner, Frank, who I won't, you know, he's just an amazing guy.

He was a former New York cop, New York City copter detective, and he taught me to ropes. He taught me to ropes, and as well as another gentleman named Bill, God rest of all, he passed away. but I am 62, so it's, you know, I remember when I was 24, and these guys were 38, and I thought, oh, my God, I'm going to work with these old guys. You know, what are they going to teach me, you know? So it was quite, it was quite interesting. It was quite interesting. And when you were in Allentown in Philadelphia, that was when you got to know a couple

shootouts, right? Yeah, I've got up in Allentown. And Allentown one is kind of, I won't say funny, funny. Funny when any time it's up around and weapons are discharged. It's not really funny. But, you know, Jack and Dave, we were in this parking lot. It was a Pennsylvania State Police case

and the trooper did something they shouldn't have done and he went from being an undercover to basically being an arresting agent. Well, the bad guy didn't think of it was funny so he takes off and there's a trooper hanging on the car. He lets a round go 45 into his thigh with a 45 blew the guy's thigh out. Well, myself, another trooper,

and an old Monte Carlo, you know, those Detroit muscle castle, old Monte Carlo. We come nose to nose with this pick of this sport utility. Well, there's the funny part. Here I am a 24-year-old snot-nose. I go to kick my door like Miami Vice to get out of the car. Well, you know those doors and those old Monte Carlo's?

Having sprung back and hit me in and sent me right across your freaking car. He was looking at me and go, what the hell are you doing? Get out of the car. So I said the door is knocking. The door knocked me over. So I had to get out of the car. My tail between my legs. And I, you know, he cleared the car,

infected the arrest, the bad guy. He coughed him. He was like bleeding. And he was pulling blood. He was bleeding. So he was shot. Sure was okay, though. He was okay.

And then there was another one in Philly with the Jamaicans? The Philly one was quite interesting. Now it's a little more extensive. In Philly, we were covering a confidential informant, a confidential source going in. And basically, we were doing a marijuana case because I was tired of our responsibilities. That's marijuana. Responsibilities as group threes.

And so he goes inside and they undercover, the confidential informant, and the two bad guys get in an argument on the front line. Well, they all pull freaking weapons. And they start shooting at each other. Thank God that one, you know, I'm glad the CS was inside. I remember the guy was, he was a funny guy. He was a funny Jamaican.

And he wasn't my guy. He was on the other guy. And so we, and a couple of rounds went down range and he hit one of our guys hit one of the guys. And they get into a van. So now there's a vehicle. We don't like to say the word pursuit, but there's a vehicle follow, an aggressive vehicle follows.

So we're following this van. We're going through the streets of Philadelphia, northeast Philadelphia, and we know where they're going. They're going to try to get an I-95. So we've got to get on I-95, and they're heading southbound. So we called our base operator, and our base operator basically says they'll get the highway Philadelphia Highway Patrol unit in, and they bring them a unit in. And Dave and Jack, one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. We're traveling southbound on a five-lane highway on 95.

We see these blue and red lights coming behind us and blue and red lights coming at us. And there was like about three agent cars we were following. They so smoothly got the traffic cleared and they pinned in the van. And these highway guys, now highway coppers in Philadelphia, boots, Gestapo belts, scrunch hats. You don't mess with the highway boys. because they have H's on their cars, you know, their highway. They come out with shotguns.

They don't come out with the handguns. They come out with shotguns. These guys didn't know what to do, man. They just pin their hands against the frigging windshield, dragged them out. They go to clear the vehicle name. And I remember one of the highway guys saying, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb. Like, what the what the what? So they had to shut it down, bring a bomb squad in.

And what it was was, it was dynamite attached. but there was no debt in detonation device. And I don't know what the guy was trying to do, scare somebody or whatever. But one was shot. The other guy was taken, two were taken into custody. And typical, you know, we had to answer questions. And I'm here. I'm another young guy.

I have to go, what the hell do I get myself? Is it normal to let the confidential informant carry a weapon? Or did they kind of have to because it's like part of the company? We said the same thing to the controlling agent because he was in his house. So we were not inside the location and they came out. So we did not search the house for any weapons that the confidential floor may have. So you see my place. Yeah.

Out of the house. So he sticks it in his pants so he had it under the table. And he's like, I know these guys. These guys are going to come and try to, they're going to try to muscle me. Yeah. And guess what? He's like, I'm not getting killed in my own house here. So that's what we're like, you can't do it.

He was blackballed after that, though. He was gone. Yeah. So he was finished. Was this about the time that you also got, you got stuck up and ripped off? That was, that was, this is a great one too. This was when I was working undercover. I was working with a college professor, one of our offices out in the western,

just western Philadelphia office. I'm going to go with West Virginia, okay? And he was a college professor, he was a chemist. but he knew a guy from Philadelphia who was dealing in bulk, he was dealing in kilos. So we had our office in West Virginia and said, we can't do anything out in West Virginia with this guy. It's in Philadelphia is the stores. Let's hand it off to Philly.

So he hands it off to Philly, Group 3, being cocaine, hands off to me, hands off to Group 3. Our boss named Rick says, Jack, you're up. You want to take this one? I said, sure, okay, great. So we meet, we do our thing. you know, we get a cover story together. I'm a graduate student, University of Penn in the city,

and this guy's, you know, he's a college. I know him from teaching chemistry and all that stuff, whatever. So what happens is we meet first. No problem. We're going to do a kilo of cocaine, $25,000, North Philadelphia. I remember the streets of third and all of me.

I still remember. So we ended up doing, okay, 25, we agreed upon, no problem. A couple days go by, we put another country. control, you know, they're calling to the guy. Are you ready? I'm ready. Okay. We're ready.

So we've had about 15 agents on the street, very tight locations in the Philadelphia, in North Philadelphia. This dude was, believe it or not, one of the last holdouts of a white guy. I mean, most of it was all Jamaican or Puerto Ricans, you name it. But not white. He didn't want to move, but he knew all the players up there. So we ended up having a situation where we roll in. Back in the day, we learned a lot of lessons about this.

Don't bring the money. But we brought the money in the trunk of the car because all the money was going to be was going to be a show on her side of good faith. I got the money. Go get your dope now. Where's the dope? Where's the kilo?

Well, he comes out at a house. I meet, we meet in the middle of the street. He goes, give me a couple of minutes. I got to go and get it. Like, where are you going? He goes, I'm just going to walk around the block. I got to go get it. I go, okay.

So we sat there. I radioed up. He said he's going to be on foot. He's going to get the package. So we got the team, the surveillance team, follow him. We got the location where it came out of. We went back, of course, later on to the search one location.

He goes back in the brown paper bag. Have you go lucky up the street. He goes into the house. He goes into the house. He goes into the house. And I tell the CES sit in the car. So I go to the tree. trunk of the car. When I pull the trunk in a car, this guy meets me across the street,

and he's carrying a brown paper bag. So I said, you got it? He goes, yeah, here. And he shows me, as I show, he goes, now, where's the money? And I go in and reach for the money in the trunk. That's when I, boom, I feel the 38 snub nose going to my rib. He goes, he goes, not today, bro. Give me your fucking money. Excuse me my mouth. Give me your money. I'm like, what do I do? Jack and Dave, we're trained. Train takes over. I believe in training. I love training. Repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition. Bam, my hands went up so fast.

Danger signal, danger signal. Let me tell you something. You want to see 15 federal agents flying down the street. I'm talking, they rolled in there so fast. That guy didn't have a chance. Here's the cars coming in. He sees guys' feet coming down to concrete pavement. He sees this.

He tries to make it for a bee line for the house. Well, in Philadelphia, just like maybe in Brooklyn and the Bronx or whatever, You only have some stuff. Do you have stairs to get inside the house? Well, he tries to get in the house. And our boys cleaned his clock. They cleaned this clock, man. Huffed him up.

And here's the funny part. When my boss came, grabbed me, got me in the car, took me off the location, up the set. The guys that were arresting him. It was the end of August of 91 or 92, Jack and Dave. And the Eagles were, there were, I guess what he was calling. He'd be playing the dolphins in preseason.

And he says to the guys, the resting agents. Well, I guess I'm not going to be able to see the Eagles game tonight. You're looking at 15 years minimum right now. And then it turned out one kilo turning to two kilos. So he was looking at 10 years right there. It was over five years. He ended up getting, you got to get the guy credit. He ate the charge.

He didn't cooperate. And he got like, he was like, 10, 15 years he got. He didn't get fired for pulling a weapon on me. And I thought to myself, you know, I'm 25 years old now. I'm thinking, is this the right thing? I should be on the practice field coaching safeties and receivers, right? So it wasn't good.

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I spent eight years, a lot of great investigations. Well, one particular investigation by May, real quick. Yeah, please. This was a huge, this was a biggie. We had an operation against a couple of Colombians in the city. And we were utilizing

another country from customs named Julio, great guy, great customs guy. And we ended up negotiating, or he ended up negotiating, for 100 kilo delivery, 100 keys of Coke in Philadelphia. And this gal, she was ahead of the organization. I won't give any name.

But she said, yeah, we can do it. 25, what is it, 25? Let me get my notes here. 25. I'm going to get my notes here. If I'm correctly, oh, hang on. 25 a key. Okay.

So, yeah, we're looking at, we're looking at it. And she wanted in $20 bills. $20 bill is she wanted to. street money bills. Don't give me, don't give me 50s, don't give me hundreds, give me 20s. So we had to go to the Federal Reserve. We got to go to the Federal Reserve Bank. We got approval. It took a lot of effort, but we got approval. And we went to the Fed Bank and we ended up taking out $1 million in cash. Because why? You never go on the street, Jack and Dave, with a short package of money. You don't do that. It's only in the movies. You put a, you put a hundred

up top and the rest of paperwork in between, you're going to be yourself heard for that. You can't, you can't do that stuff. Yeah. You can't do it. So bottom line was, we ended up getting a million. You know how much a million pounds weighs in 20s? A million dollars? How much?

112 pounds. 112 pounds of $20 bills. 112 frequent pounds. We busted into, we busted into, there was 50 stacks. There was $50,000, $50,000 bills. Basically, you had 100 stacks. You did 50 in one bag, 50 another bag. I still remember the guy's doing it.

And I was on the hook for this. Me and my partner, Frank, we're on a hook for this money. Like, man, we can't lose a $20 bill. So bottom line was we gave the undercovers, the money men, excuse me, the money men. They could play for the defensive line for the fellow of egos. They came in looking really sharp, rolled it in a 750 black BMW tinted out. You know, cigars in her mouth and black jackets. And they sold her.

They sold her, man. went and got the 50, he got his 50, and in the other place, we hit a search form, we got the other 50. Successful case. Funny story. We come back. That next day, our sack, the special agent in charge, Sam is English. He goes back to the group. His men, great job last night. Great job. He said, Mack, said, yes, sir. He goes, don't forget, get that money back to the Federal Reserve. We're going to be charged interest on that. I said, yes, sir. He was worried about the freaking interest on the money. We got back that day. Do you recall how much interest the DEA got charged?

I don't. Jack, that's a great question. I don't know. But one of our Madman officer says it was pretty extensive. So you got in a 24-hour period every 24 hours. Back then, this was like 19, 92, maybe 93. We did the operation. We did this case.

And yeah, we had to get that money back. And I know what was the best feeling now? Every $20 bill was there. Not one was missing. was missing, man. I was not doing a freaking other... Because we couldn't even do a count on it. We had to get an authorization...

A chronological order sheet from the Federal Reserve. It was just too much money. Yeah. And we had to do it that way because we had to look like we were traffickers, dopers. We knew what we were doing. And she bought off.

She bought it, man. You can't look like the Federal Reserve when you roll up with that in your trunk. I mean, it's... And trust me, we probably had agent personnel in that street. We had air units. We had, you know, I don't even think there was a tracking device at that time.

We probably put some, like a bird dog or something in the damn, the bags, just in case. We must have 30 or 40 feds, county guys, excuse me, state guys. Just, that money was going nowhere, man. It was going nowhere. So it was, it was, I remember doing it on City Line Avenue in Rhode Elfay. I remember doing in City Line Avenue at TGI Fridays. And it was well covered, man, well covered. A lot of fun.

I think I know one got heard. Any others who want to talk about from Philly before moving on to the next one? No, I think we're, I think those, those, I think they stand out in my mind. I mean, I mean, honestly, I got to give kudos. I got to give kudos of the guys and gals that work, group three in Philadelphia. From 1988 to 1996 and I was there with the people, I got to give them kudos. We were such an aggressive group.

I got to give kudos to my partner, my, my, I know it's not on the award show, but my, my, my, my supervisor, Rick. he would get us, we would come up with these crazy type of scenario. Just between the, over the cusp a little bit. You guys knew as former Rangers. You kind of like, yeah, we can't do that, but we can do this stuff. You know, it's kind of fine line until you trip over, you tripping over yourself. And he would get these things approved.

And man, they would work out. And man, it was fantastic. And what a bunch of good people. What a bunch of good people. We were about anywhere from 12 to 15 anytime, any gun slingersers, any time in the group, 12 or 15. And we rock and roll, man. No, our motto was no state cases in this group, federal cases, no state case.

We want to take them all federally. We did. We did. And what was the next assignment after Philly? We went down to Quantico. We were given the opportunity to go to Quantico. Very tough at the time to get into Quantico. And I'm going to be honest with you, my former partner, Frank.

Frank was tight with the number two guy in training named Lou. God rest his, Saul, he passed away. He was a great guy. He was the number two man in training. And they were both the techers together in Florida and not at D.C., in New York. And I made a phone call and they had several openings in the gym with the instructors. So I was able to get into the gymnasium. And I encompassed physical training, defensive tactics, entry training, which you guys love, you know, bang them and ram them and slam them, go. And then also vehicle containments, any type of rest in and around vehicle.

So we had four, we probably were with the students the most of the 17 weeks. We call it the tactical unit, yet we have multiple responsibilities that we had to do everything from defense attacks. Well, what's a defensive tactic? Well, we used to teach Cobb McLaughlin. We had to teach the personal weapons skills fighting. Some people never got hit in their lives. You know, I boxed when I was age from age 12, middleweight, you know, and all like good stuff. But you would see somebody's people, and you were like, I mean, we had a guy break his femur.

And femur in boxing. Now you see yourself Jack and Dave, you're like, how the hell the guy break his femur? Heavyweight bout, heavyweight foul, two big boys going at it. Great guys. Great guys. Brad. And, of course, I hate to say, Mr. Vaney, he passed away. he got his

Mr. Vining gets his right foot caught behind his left foot on the rubber mat and I see and all of a sudden a body shot comes and spun him around and you hear this boom! Busted his famous. I was like, oh my God. That's crazy. That is insane. Yeah. Dave and Jack,

I'm telling you, it sounded like a gunshot. We all fired the 12 gauges. It sounded like a gunshot going on and we all like, what? Very big eyes. We're like, what just happened? And And thank God he was good. He was fine.

I mean, we had to get a repair, but we were able to graduate him. Wow. Because boxing is like in week 14 back in the day. For 17 weeks. Can you imagine going through the training again? No. We got him his gun and his badge and he walked across the stage on his coach. Yeah.

Who breaks a femur, much less a femur? Yeah. Yeah. Think about it. You think to yourself, how does that happen? But when he got his foot caught, we saw it coming. Yeah. And Mr. Brad...

And he probably weighed like, what, $2.50 or something like that? I would say probably, yeah, I'll give you. Mr. Vine was probably about $2.50. You'll remember probably about maybe $2.25. Yeah, yeah. And Brad was, you know, one of these guys. It was a former ball player, football player, and good guy. And that right there was probably the most tragic event that I witnessed in the academy with my five years.

there as an instructor, as an Asian instructor, because we have, we'd have people going, you know, coding, they'd go, you know, CPR, they're heart attacking, or we had guys, you know, National Academy students in the, in a locker room, dying of heart attacks. They've got a heart attack in the freaking locker room. Because remember, in the academy, you have DEA, you have FBI, you have the National Academy students. Who are the National Academy students? They are students that represent local, county, state, and international law enforcement agencies. And you've got guys that coming in and they're like, dude, you got to run and you got to do pushups and PT and work out.

And they're supposed to be cleared, you know, but sometimes it doesn't make it. You know, like the 62 days, you guys endured down there at a ranger training, you know, you guys are all squared away before you go in that place. If not, you're like, you got to get rid of this guy. You said that you really enjoyed your time at Quantico. That was kind of like the most rewarding part of your career. That's a very good question, Jack. Yeah, I really did. You know why?

Because we were actually making the next generation of agents. Yeah, yeah. And they looked upon you. I mean, we had a, Pat, his name was he's, once again, he's passed away as well. Pat Sheik, he was a combat vet, Marine vet in battle of way he was in back in the day. And he was always this. You have to be, don't smell like booze, make sure you're shaved. And he was tight, man.

He was tight. He was a big man. He played that light gun. University of North Carolina for a guard tackle. And Pat ran a tight ship. But it was, he wanted to exemplify this is the next crew of people. This is the next body of people that we want to train the right way. You have to make sure, are they driven?

Are they competent? Can they, can they? I mean, I sound. sounds crazy here, but can they kill someone? Can they do it? Can they have the mindset? So we had to work those people to make sure they can do that. And, you know, most of my people, you get 50 in a class, we would probably not lose as much as you guys.

Rangers would lose. We would lose maybe, I don't know, two, three, four out of 50 because they couldn't shoot or they couldn't do the PT or some reason why, you know, back. attitude, you know, dismissal because of bad attitude. But most of the time, very rewarding to me from being a former teacher and a coach, I was able to like, you know, train them that way. They used to say I would repeat myself a thousand times. Well, that's what I would repeat myself because it's about repetition, repetition, rhythm, rhythm, repetition. And I saw that it's one of the guys, I didn't see him in years and years and years. He was a former student of mine. And he was out in

Los Angeles. He got to his first office of assignment. They got involved in the situation where it was a bunch of gangsters and they all split up. And him and another agent go running after the guy. They get him. And all he said is, I can hear you yelling. Cuff, double lock, high risk search. Cuff, double lock high risk search. And he goes, cuff, double lock high risk search. How cool is that? Yeah. How cool is that? And his name is Mark. And I said, you know, I didn't do it for, to hear my own self talk. I wanted to do it for you. guys know what the heck you're doing. And one of the greatest things are most proud.

Yes, I had a few people that got themselves in a little bit of trick bags on the job and they're no longer on the job or they got in trouble. You can't be with them 24 hours a day when they leave. It's just, it can't be. You just can't do it. Don't blame yourself. But not one got seriously injured or killed on the job. That's what I like to hear.

Yeah. They're good. They were good to go. Right. I mean, I'm sure you have instructors the same way. It would feel the same way. If you guys ever taught an instructor, you don't want to put them in a bad situation. Would have broke my heart if I heard that such and such guy, blah, blah, blah,

because he lost his weapon during a fight. Right. Or whatever. Right. You need to fight constantly. You know, to call him a guy on the ground and fists and elbows and punches and knees and kicks and maybe stinky, sweaty down the pool deck, sweating it out. Welcome to the DEA, baby.

And the bureau will be up there. No disrespect to the bureau. They'd be up there in the air conditioning, Jim doing her thing. I'm just not going to get a mask. I know he had Chris on his show him on doing that. His locker, Chris Wickham's locker,

was literally down a row from my locker in the main locker. And he was such a quiet guy, such a quiet guy, nice guy, a good operator, never speak badly about anyone. And those guys, HRT for a moment. You had them on. You had them on. Yeah, yeah. And he's a super guy. And he,

HRT, man, they're no joke. But remember, with HRT, they train, train, train, train, morning evolution, afternoon evolution. They are training, train and train and train. And God bless them, man. God bless them. For a long time, I mean, maybe it's a misconception, but like people would say like HRT doesn't actually do it. anything. But I mean, the last like 10 years or so, especially, it seems like they're getting after it quite a bit. I believe they are too. I mean, I mean, you had some situations that they were

really kind of getting a bad rap for. Yeah, yeah. You know the ones, the Ruby Ridge, the one this one, and one. You know, it all comes down to, you know, what's your, what's your focus? What do you want them to do? How many teams do you have? How many are in a team? And, you know, it's the same thing with us, if I may, if I may kind of transition a little bit, yeah, that would age. We had what we called, we had first, we had snow cap operation. Snowcap operations were a group of men

that would go to all the different schools and then you go down south and you blow up condescending laps and you make a ton of money. This is the days back in the, when I first, in probably in the 80s and fairly nights, I need disbanded. They just ban it. The guys to do it.

Snow cap is where they had like Vietnam veterans flying Huey's down in South America. Yeah. Yes, you got it. You absolutely got it. And you're hardcore, man. I mean, we had one guy in our group, group three named Dick. And I won't give the last name because he's a warrior, man. I'll tell you that.

But Dick, he would love to break the FNGs. And I think you know what FNG stands for. Freaking new guys, freaking new girls, you know. And he would come around on payday when he's back from deployment. And he'd have a stack of money on him. And he'd wipe his brow and he'd go, oh, it's so hot today, so hot today. And we're like going, we're GS-7s, man. We're like making like $25,000 back in like 1987, 1988, you know.

And I'm like, damn, you know, maybe I should sign up for snow caps. And then I find out what snow caps is about. I'm like, nah, I don't want any things in my intestines. And I don't want to be going to the bathroom at all hours of the night, you know. So then we moved into a program called Fast. Now, this is where the 595 comes in with the ODAs. and God bless them and thanks like I said for doing what they did.

Well, you guys did in that, Jack. And so the foreign advisory support team, there was five teams, Alpha Bravo, Charlie Delta Echo. And they would rotate in and out of Afghanistan. And they would work counterinsurgencies and drug missions are going to the bazaars and blow things up and burn things down.

And it was effective. But what happens is you get the higher jobs. And then it's like, well, you're doing a little, too much shooting him up, banging them up, we're going to have to try, we're going to have to pull this back. Because the fast guys are then moving to other operational theory, theater, Honduras, you know, doing some other, you know, snatch and grab work off the coast of somewhere. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we just, we just want the fast personnel to the 60 or 90 days to do these missions with ODA, you know, 595 or whatever. And that was, that was something

that, you know, that was dangerous. It was very dangerous. And a lot of times it came down to too many congressional hearings, too much push going on. And the guys that ran it, I mean, they're friends of mine. I mean, they were super guys. I mean, they were wonderful people. And they know their business. But it just wanted to hire up say, we can't be doing that anymore.

And they just dismantled all these weapons. Jack and Dave, I'm talking like all kind of crazy weapons, man. Beautiful weapons. As a president will say, beautiful, beautiful stuff, you know. And gone. Spend the money. Gone. So now we don't have, we don't have foreign advisory support team living along.

The fast teams were super active in Afghanistan also, as you point out. That's kind of like an untold story, I think. Can you, can you, I mean, my sharing with the fast team was as I was in inspections. Every time they pulled the trigger, we had to investigate the trigger being pulled. Right. From afar. From afar, because we couldn't enter into a war zone. So a lot of times, it was very, very short and concise, A did this, B, did this, did this, and boom. It goes to the shooting incident board, and it's to get most of the time it's cleared. So, but you're right about that. And they were doing everything your ODAs were doing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and they, they, they

As I recall, they did work with special forces, with SAS, with Australian SAS, a bunch of different units. Because they were in a country, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and you know and I know, I had the opportunity to deal with some of those, excuse me, some of the Australians. They're awesome, man. Yeah. They're awesome. They come to Quantico and they want to work the houses.

And on our free time, we'd work with them. And we had, you know, different, the Argentinians coming in. Special Forces, and it's just coming into training, train, train. And me personally, I am not a military guy. Yeah. But I was trained in the ability to teach certain ways of tactics. And it worked out. It worked out.

Yeah. And, I mean, it's easy to see how, you know, they would start having mission creep or expanding their scope or whatever else. Because when you're in theater, whether, you know, whether it was with snow cap or with fast or whatever, like, you're always. looking for work. And, you know, you might go down with, like, this approved mission set or these approved parameters, but when you see other things and you go, oh, well, that needs to be addressed too. And, you know, you've got, and everybody's willing, right? I think they were tasked to go after

the heroin, though, in Afghanistan. Yeah, yeah, right. But I mean, but, but, you know, if they're sitting at, you know, if they're sitting, you know, at Boggham with one of the TFs, they'll go knock on a door and go, hey, what do you guys up to? Is there a way we can incorporate or get into this or, you know, whatever? Like, you're always like pimping yourself. You're always looking for work in those. I got, yeah, I said, I never was part of a fast program.

I take my hats off to those personnel that did it. I know a lot of them that did it. That were former students that rolled over to, you know, to field work and then he went over to the foreign, to me, the fast team, fast program. Yeah. And, you know, I'm not saying, and I wanted to do it.

You know what I said? I wouldn't want to do it. But those who did it, God bless him, man. God bless him. A good friend of mine in Carson, he was involved with it. And he was, this guy looked like Bull from Nightcourt. And he was a mean motor scooter, man. And he was one of the PT instructors with me in Quantico.

He was a fifth degree black belt in the grace jiu-jitsu. And he would wrap you up like a spider. And you're not getting out of it, dude. Yeah, just got to tap out. I'm done. He's embarrassing. Hey, guys, our show is sponsored by Ghostbag. Check them out.

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Thanks, guys. But God bless those guys for doing it. God bless them. Where did you go after Quantica? Quantico then went down to the, I was promoted. I was promoted, Jack and Dave, to a resident agent in charge of the St. Croix resident office in the Caribbean Division. At a Caribbean division, the divisional office is in Guanabo or San Juan.

But we have what we call it's a hybrid division. meaning you have territorial offices, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, St. Croix, then you have foreign offices, anywhere from Freeport, Bahamas, all the way down to Williamstead, KordaSau, all the way down the island, all the way west. So we call it a hybrid division. So you're working with domestic, basically, with those offices in Puerto Rico, what kind of offices in Puerto Rico? Well, you have the San Juan office, you had the Aguadilla office, you had the Fajardo office, you had the Ponzi office. So all around the island in a block. But you had a Freeport office, you had a Nassau office.

So it was very complicated sometimes because one hour you're working domestically. Next hour, you're working foreign. In other words, I could have guys in Antigua working with the Antiguan's, and then my other guys over in Fajardo, executing a restaurant with the Fajardo office. So it was very, very, very cheap. challenging, to say the least, because I had about, as a boss, I had about 19, 19 weapon carriers down there, very close with the FBI, very close at ATF Customs, Border Patrol, believe it or not. And it really worked out, really, really did. It was a, a lot of challenges took place because you're on it, you're on a 28 mile wide, excuse me, 20 mile, 20 long, 7 mile wide rock.

You have to think outside the box. And we had to think outside the box there. You really did. It's just like any mission that you might have been on, you're like, oh, this is a normal mission that we've done before. It's like, no, it's different. It's change. It's change because you're on the island.

You're dealing with air, boat, assets. You know, maybe you're hitting a location, hitting the door, unlike the cities. You know, you're hitting doors, crashing doors. On the island, it's not, it's it changed. It's different. On the surface of all of this, you know, an assignment to St. Croix sounds like it's a kind of pleasure tour. Yeah.

This is a really cushy place. But you don't could. You're more than welcome to come and stay with my wife and I for about three months. And by the thing, like, I got to get out this rock. Yeah. To leave this. Do you want to. I mean, I used to give the guys R&R to go take dope back to Miami to burn dope in Miami because you get rock fever, man.

You get rocks. Sure. And everyone knows you. So you have to work outside the box. Could you also kind of like lay out. like geopolitically what the situation is down there because the Caribbean, obviously you're there for a reason. You know, you described it as a scene of modern piracy. You know, we got everything from the cocaine cowboys in the 80s and now we're into the 1990s. You know, like you said,

air, sea and land, drugs being smuggled south to north. That's correct. I mean, when I was there, and this goes back a long time. It goes back a long time. I was there from 0.1. 0 4, 4 years running the show down there, had great coordination with the troops from all our alphabet agencies, but also the Dutch, the French, and the Brits. Think about that. Because those islands. It's funny because people say the America's got the worst islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands and we got Puerto Rico, you know, I mean, I'm no disrespect, you know.

But you got St. Martin to the French. You got, you know, you got the ABCs down below it to the Dutch. beautiful and it was like oh okay and we got these guys okay so we have to take this but who was our i got to be honest view we had no disrespect to the other countries america the dutch the french and the brits it was the brits mick i'm just going to go with the guy named mick he was the man over in fort pult we were tight with the brits they would bring they would bring c assets their assets in they would think outside the box with us the dutch and the french you know they you know you know both this guy got with two keys of heroin.

Okay, give him a ticket. You know, kind of deal. Not being disrespectful to them, but that's what they would do. We would go to a coordinational means. You'll like this one. Go to the coordination. And we'd have a coordination meeting

and St. Martin, you know, the Dutch side. You know, you have the French up top and the Dutch down below to the south. We'd go over for a coordinational meeting, and the Dutch would be there, the French, the Brits. And here, and who would come walking in and they'd all say, and here come the Americans.

And here come the Americans, and we'd walk in, you know? Because why? Because the Americans, they all thought that we, being the Americans, we were the ones that were driving everything, pushing everything, spending the money, bringing the personnel in. Kind of true, because you made a commenter, Jack, you know, dope going north and money coming south. And that's absolutely true.

Because when that dope comes off the coast of Suriname, Guyana, not Guyana, Africa, Guy, Guy, G-U-Y, either south, up the southern cone there. And then you have Venezuela, and then you have Colombia. And of course, you know, Ecuador. So then they have to go through the Panama Canal to get into the Gulf, I mean, into the Sea, the Caribbean Sea. And they stay inside the sea.

They don't go out to the Atlantic Ocean. It's too rough. So they'll run that all the way up until they get around our neighborhood. And then they'll break either for Africa or Lisbon, Portugal, or they'll break over to Puerto Rico, or they'll go up to chains and the TCs or up to the, Bahamas. It's an art, man. We used to have, we had

pinned down routes and and I'm still, I'd probably walk in that office today and look at the board, I'm like, man, it doesn't change. It's still, it still happened. Yeah. So still the same thing. And people say, well, what about the seven centa have countries to your west? They're keeping that, they'll blow it, don't blow

off Honduras sometimes will come out, but that dope has to be trucked through land, possibly getting further caught, or seized versus you put on the water, you've guys been down there, I'm sure you have admission, and you look down there and you see you're punching holes in the darkness, and you're like, where are we?

You're flying at nighttime. Where the hell are we? It's also interesting, like, you know, some of it has to do, I think, with how much flight time a single prop plane has on one tank of fuel and where, you know, they have to land to refuel. And if you look at the flight range of those planes and go just like going, Google Earth and start calculating where they would have to land in that Caribbean, you know, Southern Cone, like it becomes pretty clear what the drug airfields would have to be.

Absolutely. I mean, you know, one funny movie, and I don't have you guys ever seen this, but it's fine. I don't really watch the Copper Show or whatever, but get a chance to watch, watch American Me with Tom Cruise. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is based on a, it's based on a true story. Yeah, yeah. Story, man. It's, it's, he was a, he worked all the alphabets.

C-D-E-A, FBI, C-A-T-F, CIA. He was killing us off. He was killing us off. And he's down there with the narcos, hanging out with the narcos. And honestly God, they know the routes. They knew what they were doing. But that, you know, say what you want, you know, laugh at it or whatever. I think it's funny as hell.

But watch that movie. But it's true. They'll know. I mean, they know that. The submarine action that's been happening over the last number of years, the submarines or that, you know, these people had the, biggest, may I say, Gona's in the world. They'd be in these little yola boats.

You know what a yola boat is? It's a low-lying boat with a little put-in-jointed. It's not a submersible. I think a gas and I think of water and two guys in that they'd be on the boat with 50 kilos on it. In the middle of the frigging Caribbean Sea. Like what a coast guard, a 110 or a 2-10 would pick them up and go, what are you guys doing? Oh, we need to get this to Puerto Rico, you know? I'm like, oh, my God.

You're going to die out here. You're going to die. And they're like, well, you know, whatever they're getting paid, you know, 50 bucks a key, I don't know. Supposed, I don't know. It's like hell on earth on those improvised mini-subs, too. I don't even know. I couldn't even talk about those. But I bet, man.

I mean, I couldn't imagine. But honestly, that's a great question. Yeah, great, great, great, great question. And Dave, great questions as well. We were always active. The Floyd office in the Caribbean Division, you had to work with the foreign counterparts. because of intelligence. So tell us about some of the ops.

Like in one case, you guys, you did like a reverse undercover sting? Absolutely. One of the greatest cases, man, was awesome. Great thinking. A guy named Joe put this together. I give him kudos and the guys helped him out.

Amazing. What we ended up doing was we got approval for this. And when we became the bad guys, we became the bad guys. The DEA became the bad guys. meaning when you talk about reverse undercover operation, what we end up doing was we made these burlap bags, burlap bales, 10 burlap bales, in those 10 burlap bales,

we had upwards of about 50 kilos. It was 2 pounds of wood, 2.2 pound of wood, newspaper wrapped in duct tape, and 50 them stuffed into burlapes. bank, stuff in the burlap. So we had 10 of them. And our mission was to fly it in with a DEA plane and we had an offload crew. The crew was

going to come and going to get these 10, we told them, you got 10 to get out of the water. Who told them? Confidential informantial source. We couldn't get any agency to this crew. Couldn't get it in. We had to go this with his confidential source. We ended up, had the plane.

We have a, you know, like this one, we used to have a 42-foot go-fass boat down there. Sign to us. Two of my guys with the boat handling school for it. They could drive that thing around the Caribbean, burn some fuel. Need it, must need it, you know, right?

So this plane came in, 0,300 in the morning, covered darkness, drop, boom, boom, 10 bails up, okay? Dropping it out, dropping it out. So that's 500, that's 500 keys, you know, overall, you know,

times 2, 2.2 pounds, about 1100 pounds. Throwing it out. Bam. These guys came off the beach into the water in their little yolets. In the cover of darkness, Dave and Jack,

they were able to locate all 10 bails. Wow. When they came off the beach, they had a van. That van was to put them in the van, take it to a storage facility on St. Croix because it was then going to be moved over to Puerto Rico the next day,

over than a day or two. Well, unbeknownst to them, when they came off the water and they get feet dry, that's when the rest team, we came in, we nailed them all. And two of them were like Virgin's National Guard guys and, you know, just looking for extra side hustle money.

So, yes. Without, like, obviously I don't want you to, you know, I don't want to get into questions of like trade craft or your operational security. But like when you're doing something like that, For these guys who are like the offload crews or, you know, Transpo guys, are they like independents who will work for any cartel that says do this? Or are they part of a cartel's pipeline?

No, that's a great question. That's a great question, Dave. It's mainly going to be who wants to pay somebody to do a side hustle. That's what it is. They're looking for money down there. They could be doing this one week. next week they're i hate to say this they're they're taking you know human trafficking off a cargo ship over to porto regal interesting it's very it's you know it's sad it's sad sometimes everyone i mean i love

i mean you come into this into the caribbean and i always tell people yeah blue green water sandy beaches blue skies it's great and all that it is and it's very expensive to live health care so-so would always say living in the third world country under the american flag um It was rough. But you know what? I salute the people that work the Caribbean division. You know, because back in the day, and I'll put it in football terminology. The in-country agents that are in the Colombian offices and the, you know, the Ghana and the Ecuadorian offices,

they're like the defensive line. Then you move into the Central Americas and you move into the Caribbean. Now you're like the line back. And now they get into America, US of A, they're the defensive back. You know, that's the best way I can put. The lines of the fence are there all the way through. Yeah. And, you know, it was, I always considered us, if we don't stop it here, it's getting in and it's getting in a bigger location, the United States of America.

Yeah. But they can go into Miami, they can go into Jacksonville, they can go into the Carolinas, the Phillies. They can just bump, bum, bum, bum, and it was true. And it was definitely true. And we would try to always, uh, always. A lot of time we get calls from the Kones, the Kona's office. Say, I just give you an example. Say Atlanta.

Atlanta got a case, an operation, and they know these guys that are from St. Corey. And we'd be like, yeah, we know, we know Jones, you know, or, you know, whatever. And sure, sure. And we got them up, we got a warn up here from his arrest. I'm like, well, what do you got? And they would tell us. So we would kind of formulate a plan where our St. Thomas office to try to end up

sticking this guy up not only in the Caribbean, but also hit him up in the northern district of Georgia, of Atlanta. And that's the best way because we used to try to get these guys off the islands because even though you had federal court in St. Croix and St. Croix and St. Thomas, who are coming into the jury pool? They're fierce. They're tied in. He's my aunt.

He's my uncle. Forget going to, forget going to territorial court. They're going to get off. So you have to take the case as federal. And we would love to take them federal off another jurisdiction, like the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Southern District of Florida, central district, a middle district of Florida, just to get them off the rock.

And I'll tell you, my people, my guys and gals, they're races, man. They were, they were awesome. It was hard. It was hard when he came in evaluation time because everyone got to know, man. They wouldn't get it outstanding because it's, it's just, I had to do what I had to do for it. So, so when they, so, you know, because I've heard.

in the past that, that whether it's drugs or human trafficking or whatever, that even though there are different parties that are like responsible for that stuff, that they tend to follow the same paths. And is it because of these like sort of independent agents at whatever way stations or localities it is that just facilitate movement through borders or through areas? Well, main thing, when you're talking different, you're different, talking different stages throughout. Right. Remember, they wall each other wrong. They wall each other off.

Okay. If you get caught with it, you don't know on the next leg. Right. Because we don't want to know one another. We don't want to be that co-conspirator. Right. Kind of stay away from one another. But yet you have situations where, you know, as a dog moves further north in that Caribbean, it gets

more and more expensive. And and you know, it's just like that freighter captain had brought that load into Philadelphia. I mean, you don't think he was talked to? Right. Oh man. You know, I mean, And he's like, you know, I have a thousand fifty-two-foot containers on here. I didn't know. I didn't check them all.

Right. I didn't check them all. So, and that was going all the way to Montreal. Yeah, we haven't told that story yet on the show. So we should. Yeah. I want to get, yeah, I do want to get into that one. But there's also the assassination attempt.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Assassination attempt, one of one of my ages, I'll tell you, what a hardworking guy. This guy was, great guy. Former 86 and airborne guy. named Angel. He's just amazing. He's from St. Croix. His family owns probably the best restaurant on the island that deals with chicken. You know, you love that type of chicken where it's just cooked on the open flame. We used to always call it, get the chicken on a Friday

and add it. So what happened was we were investigating an organization, and the organization on the island, they were dealing with getting their packages from down south. And they were also going against the crew over the BVI's name. the Hodge crew. They were very, very much battling it out. They were looking for total territorial. They wanted to be part of the be-all-end-all on that part of a region.

So what happened was our guy, agent, and when I say agent, he's a deputized task force officer. Okay. The Virgin Islands Police Officer assigned to my office. Great guy, well-known, just a tough, tough guy. what happens is his father is closing down the chicken shack. They call it the chicken chef. Well, Angel's father is driving the son's pickup.

The senior's driving the junior's pickup truck. Well, the gangsters, they're not the best intelligence or surveillance. They think it's the officer, the agent, let's call it. Okay. As the pickup truck leaves the location and is driving on the left-hand side of the road. Now, picture the islands, left-hand side of the road, but you drive with the vehicle wheels on the left-hand side as well like in the States. So this other pickup truck comes up behind him, cover of darkness about midnight. He was going to the dump that throw some trash away, comes around and comes around on his passenger side.

Two gunmen, automatic weapons. stand up in the back of the truck. 60 rounds. They counted 60 dows, 60 rounds, 30 and 30. That's 60 rounds. 30 rounds, 30 rounds, total 60. He was hit three times 60-year-old male, 2-2-3 rounds. The man survived.

The only way he survived used to carry a snub nose, a 38 snub nose on his ankle. He fired over the hood of the car at them. Didn't hit anybody. And they fled. He survived. three two two two three rounds hit them and 60 different dials that's the usvii

well when that happened Dave and Jack it created a a firestorm it created a firestorm on the island for the agencies we were the lead agency we brought more firepower in there

than you could imagine we had all kind of personnel DEA FBI US Marshals ATF, customs, we just brought it all in. And we sat on these personalities, this organization from January until about May. And the crime statistics went way down. Chief Francis, Commissioner Francis, loved us for it. And I said, we cannot sustain this.

And we were arresting these guys left and right because we had federal wiretaps. We were kicking doors. It got so crazy. It got so crazy that the guys from the BVI were coming over and killing them. And I said, no, no, don't kill them because I need to do a personal history arrest form on them. Because if you're dead, I can't take you as a statistic. It's just a little joke. It's a little joke.

It's a little joke. But if they're dead, I can't take you guys a statistic. One in particular case, it's about 11 o'clock in the morning. And there's one fella, he had these long dreads. and I get a call at the desk. A boss, yes, Chris, what's up? You'll never guess who's laying in the doorway in his house. And I said, who?

And they says, blah, blah, blah. I said, I got to come and see this. They had guys dressed in black masks on, shotguns. He tries to run out the back door. Now, mind you, it's a block home. There's no up and downstairs, no basement. just a block home, man, galvanized Rubing and you see it in Africa and all that crazy stuff. He goes to run out the door, leaving his girlfriend sitting there watching the prices right.

He goes running out the door and he hit him in the back. Boom, boom. The dreads were flipped over his head. He was crushed in the middle of the door. So, like, great. Now, I can't take this guy's staff. So these other criminal elements were moving on these guys because of this? Absolutely.

Absolutely. That's wild. They knew they weren't armed. We were doing their work for them. And one particular guy, the main guy, and I'll just say they call him the Godfather, he was in his, he was basically standing in his yard. Now, let's be honest, the yard is a chain-legged fence with dirt and a little block building. He's on the phone and about right across the street.

Boom, boom, AK-4-7s, one that I had one that a chest dropped him right there. You're still in the phone talking to his mom. They found them holding the phone still. Wow. They went over, searched the bush. There was the case. So when you talk about, like, you know, was I worried about the family members?

Was I worried about my wife? Was I worried about the guys on the islands? Oh my God, yeah. Absolutely. Because they were out, they were just doing her crazy stuff. 50,000 population, 50,000 population, on the island, about 100 murders a year. Wow.

Most of the country can relate. It's crazy. I mean, one particular shootout, they had where I would turn to go home. And I know my wife at particular time she's at the gym, and I know she's finishing up. And I get her on the phone. I said, where are you?

She's at the gym. I said, stay there a little bit longer. Do some more work on, you know, on a stepper or a lipstick all that at the door. I just dung out there a little bit longer. because they weren't investigating a shooting right at the intersection. Yeah. It's like, whoa.

But you know what? We did it, man, a day-to-day in the Caribbean, man, Caribbean, man. Yeah. And so around this time frame also, I mean, it's early 2000s. You want to tell us this kind of humorous story, I guess, about the internal affairs investigation? Oh, geez, yeah. That one I talk about because, you know, in my, I said this.

earlier. If you're not doing your work, you're going to get an internal affair. Or we call it OPR, officer professional responsibility. And, you know, I was good for my career. I didn't get any

crazy stuff laid on me or whatever. And I was in the inspection division, but on the misdemeanor side, not the felony side. So what happens is, 9-11 takes place. It's September. 2001, 9-11, 2001.

Wife and our coming back from the in-laws from Christmas, and now this is going to be, I guess, in January of 2002. Well, the TSA didn't have their stuff all together at the time. They were just fairly new. They were virgin. They didn't know what really was going on or how to treat law enforcement and how to treat passengers. So I do my normal thing.

And if you guys don't know what we do, we've got to move to the side. because we're going to be armed, we're going to be, identify ourselves, and, you know, sign the book in a whole bit. In any airport, in any airport. And then my wife starts to go through regular screening. There's one fella. He worked for Kmart, and he was the head of TSA for that,

and he basically came up hard on me. Highly qualified. You know, highly qualified. And I basically gave him the tent. I didn't shove it in his face. I didn't do anything of magic. Well, we got through security. We get to the plane.

We're going from Philly. We're going from Harrisburg to Philly, down to St. Croix. And I said to my wife, I said, that guy's going to cause me trouble. He's going to cause me trouble. I just felt it on my bones. I just felt it.

When I looked at the case file, there was a case file on me because it is, there was a piece of paper, eight and a half by 11 white piece of paper, ripped in half, and a note on it, and said, this agent was disrespectful to me. And I got an investigation on you. Wow, that's crazy.

It must have cost Uncle Sam like $2,000 to do that, to get me cleared. Yeah. They're kidding me. So in my retirement party, I told the crowd, I said, and I had one, I had one, frontal affairs investigation, and I beat it. And they're like, Matt Jack, what was I said? DSA case. That doesn't count.

Yeah. That's funny. I there are a few other interesting things that happen you know throughout your career here do you want to tell the story about your cooperation with the royal canadian mounted police and tracking the freighter coming in from Venezuela yes great great case Mike and Matt were both the case age and I was like a third on it and we had information that a freighter was coming out of Venezuela up to Philadelphia and we were working very closely with not only DEA but also customs on the way.

And that freighter was given basically a free reign on a controlled delivery covered by customs, basically let it move up to Philadelphia to his destination. And when it hits Philly, we're going to board the vessel. And that's what happened. When that vessel was being tracked all the way. Imagine this, all the way from Venezuela, through the Caribbean Sea, all the way past Miami, Miami hits Philly. Well, when we end up hitting it, hitting it in the container,

we knew the container number, pulled it out, they had within two-by-fours. The trafficking organization, the traffic organization, had 1.1-pound baggy stuff, not 2.2s, half kilos, in boards for a total of over 1,000 pounds, a thousand keys. Well, that tracked a trail, that 52-foot freighter, or not, excuse me, 52-foot, what do you call it, container?

Cargo container, yeah. cargo container was going to be taken to Montreal, Canada, and handed off to the RCMP and also our office in Montreal at the time. And it's going to be in the cover where you have a driver. The driver is, you know, an unwitting driver. He's a professional tractor trailer driver. And when that thing gets on his vehicle, on his track and his trailer, he's going. And then I'll tell you what, Jack and Dave, you want to see a professional driver take off? So he took off, man, and he drove. And this guy knew when to stop, where to stop,

to get that package, get that load up to Montreal border. When we were going up, the New York State threw away. A storm came in. We had a fixed wing covering it. We were watching the fireflies up on it, nighttime and all that. They came upon a storm. And the plane says, we have to veer off. I can't go through the storm.

I got to veer off. Ground units, you take it. Well, the ground units weren't close enough. Like, talk about miscommunication. We basically lose the tractor trailer for a period of time. We find that truck stop on the left, on the west side of, I guess it was the New York State Thruway, Interstate 87. We circle back around.

He's pumping fuel. Like, woo, we found him. We found him. The bird goes and gets more fuel as well. Storm passes. He gets back up in the air. We moved back on the interstate. But before going on to the interstate, I took a ball peen hammer,

and I smashed a little red light to make a white light show through it. And I said, there's your beacon, man. And we followed that beacon up the ASTAT, the throughway until the storm did pass. And we got up to the RCMP or a Canadian border. We had to give our weapons up. So we were pretty much like, we're just kind of hanging out now. We can't do anything because the RCMP won't allow us to bring weapons in the country. So that was one of the one of the, it was a great investigation from not just from from the guys down south to to customs and us in Philly, but to RCMP international case.

You talk about an international case. And I was going to an organization, a bunch of gangsters, Italian gangsters up there in Canada. And we stayed up there for the week. And I think around Thursday they did the take down because why did they do it to take down? because when they broke in, they had the location wired up, and when they broke in, the dope, say, the wood, that's when it take down took place. And we were not part of it.

We were not part of it, but it was the RCMP did a great job with that. That organization is a dynamite organization. It's kind of, I mean, if I understand the concept of the operation correctly, I mean, it is fascinating that you guys knew this shipment was coming from Venezuela, tracked it to the United States, allowed it into the United States, drove it through the United States, crossed another international border into Canada, and then let the buy sort of pseudo take place so that the Canadians could not only seize the drugs, but also arrest this local group of gangsters.

And that's what you call, that's what you call international control delivery. International control delivery. It's pretty hot. It's one of those things that you have to get certain approval. and the higher higher-ups got to prove that. Because what's the biggest thing that could possibly happen? You lose track of shipment. Okay, so there's another thousand keys.

There's another thousand keys of cocaine put on the street. Right. And people like, oh my God, you can't do that. You can't do that. Well, trust me. We let it go being like, it's on a boat. It's on the boat. Where's it going to go?

Going to the water? You're going to push the containers of the water? Let it go into the water? No. Let it get to port. And that's when you take it. And that's when you ended up taking it in done. If you have to have right information,

because if you see those freighters and you've seen them, you know, up in New York and Baltimore and Newark up there in Jersey, they're stacked to the gills, man, what equipment was stuff in them. But you've got to know what number. And you got to know what, because once they start moving all that stuff out, it's like moving chest pieces.

Yeah. You get to the right one. And you can run dogs all over them. those poochers are going to be burned out before they find it. And that's basically, I keep saying customs. I'm an old school guy, custom. Now it's Homeland Security. Customs and Border Protection.

God, there's so many other alphabets out there now. I got to be honest, I know my normal EEA, FBI, ATF, CIA, you know, Marshals. But to do that, it was quite a, quite a, entertaining feat to say, and as a bottom line, no one got hurt. No one got hurt. That's always what we do. Safety, safety, safety.

What is sort of like for you guys, for your hires, like what is the risk analysis? Because like you say, you know, whether it's you guys kicking drugs out into the ocean in order for, you know, in order to identify the pickup crew or, you know, or allowing the shipment to come in. Because we see like the ATF fast and furious, right? where they tried an operation and lost track of everything. So like what's... Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So like... That one I cannot speak on. I do know that was not a good thing. Right. I don't, not necessarily for you to speak on on that. But you guys are engaged in similar types of operations where there's a certain

element of the unknown where, you know, if you do lose the eyeball or something like that happens or if they do something that's maybe, you know, that changes up their pattern of life where it's like this, we didn't expect them to do this and now we don't know where they are. Like, how does that, what's the risk mitigation type for you guys, for your hires? Do, like, do, does the, you know, executive level sometimes get cold feet when it comes to this kind of stuff? I mean, that's a great, that's a great question, Dave. I mean, you know, it depends on, you know, what's the, you know, what's the old saying, risk versus reward.

you know always always air on the side of always err on the side of caution and I get it with the higher ups I became not that higher up I mean those guys are in the SES levels making those decisions for extra $12,000 a year and they're all getting gray hairs and they're getting heavy set in the bellies

because they can't do anything but being the opposite like oh my God what am I going to do how do I do this but I do believe that I may boast her a little bit I do believe that the DEA and what we do and training and knowledge and lessons learned,

we have seen it and done it. But then again, we've done all kind of trickery stuff and all kind of great things and it works out. I mean, yes, we might lose. I hate to say the word lose. Yes, you might lose.

I'll be honest, in Baltimore. I'm up in Baltimore. I'm first out of the Caribbean division. Now I'm used to dealing with major loads. I go now from the Caribbean Division as a resonating charge up to Baltimore as a group supervisor. Another wonderful group, group six, 16 weapon carriers, Baltimore City guys, Baltimore County, state guys.

And one of the first missions during the week, they want to go out and do a control delivery. Oh my God. I said, okay, well, you want to go and do a control delivery. Okay, now I'm thinking control delivery, Caribbean division, I'm thinking multiple keys, you know, whatever, whatever. Well, they got a package from the FedEx, FedEx. They used to take the FedEx places. And they ended up getting like, it was like 10 pounds of weed.

They wanted to control the delivery this. And I'm like, no, you got to be kidding me. Because I even said it. I said, well, what do you got? I got a couple hundred pounds. What do you want to do? How much is it? 10 pounds.

I'm not being disrespectful to the guys. When I showed up, I was like, what? I mean, because I was used to working with, you know, it's like you guys. You guys are used to work with the former, you know, former tier two operators and, you know, two of one operators. And I was when they say, yeah, go and teach these guys. Go work with these guys from the National Guard here. You're like, what? You know, you're like, no disrespect.

But, you know, I'm not saying you're dumbing us down, but it's like, are you sure you want me to do this? Right, right. So what I did for the guys, I wanted to see how you were going to operate. I wanted to see how we're going to operate as a former coach, as a teacher. I want to see how we're going to operate versus my other, how we operated in Philly in downtown and down in the Caribbean. How are you going to operate? Well, let's say it didn't go so well because the gentleman in the back missed the eyeball. And the crook went out the back with 10 pounds of grass.

Right. And guess who had to write a memo? Oh, no, not the boss, not me. It was a case agent. And then the boss There was like, what, what, what? And I'm like, it's 10 pounds of grass. 10 pounds of marrow.

No one got hurt. But that's a great question you had. But honestly, God, you try to do all, you take all the bull out of it. You try to whittle it down. You're still going to get issues. Yeah. And you guys know.

Rangers. I mean, you're in a swamp somewhere. You're doing something crazy. And you're not supposed to do it. And this guy's over there doing something you're not supposed to be doing. It's like, did you see that? I didn't see that. You need to cover your six?

No, I missed it. Yeah. Well, now you guys all killed. Yeah. But bottom line with that, though, and that's a big, great question. That's the only time. And I'm running out of the God,

I was front of federal court, is the only time I was ever used to, I was part of dope being lost. Yeah. Was a mere, a couple pound of grass in Baltimore. And the guys felt terrible. They felt terrible. Yeah.

I said, next week we're doing it, and we're going to have remedial training and we're going to do it again, you know, and they honored that. They were honored because I didn't say no, no more, no more, no more. Nope, not doing that. Another, something else that happened, I think, in the latter part of your career, you were involved in the investigation where there's a helicopter crash where a bunch of DEA agents were lost.

Yep. Tell us about that one. Good one there, Jack. Yep, good one. Yeah, that was, that's going to tie into what, you, my friends were part of and basically Special Forces 5 and Special Team, excuse me, I want to get the right terminology for you. You are, I'm going to get my notes here.

One second, my brother. The fifth group, the fifth group, you have to be aware of Special Forces Group 5, the fifth group, and, of course, you were over there in Southeast Central Asia and Middle East. And basically what happens was our guys would always work with the ODA. Operation Attachment Alpha 595, which would be that fast, or if they weren't fast, it was just basically some of our guys out there with the bazaars, you know, burning the heroin and that. And very sad for DEA, if anyone wants to look this up, October 26, 2009, we lost three of our ages were killed and also seven-military personnel were killed because of a CH-47 were shot down.

And, I mean, that comes close to your hearts, too, guys, because of the fact that, you know, for B and for military. And it was during a, you know, an oath, there was another one night mission, and there was an hour long gunfight. They got up on that bird, and it crashed.

Yeah. We lost three agents. Lost three ages. And if I may be, if I may be so as well, it's just where I'm losing personnel. You know, there's,

in DAA headquarters, there's a call it Wall of Honor. And at Wall of Honor is, you know, in Arlington, Virginia, in our headquarters. And when we, we came over and, from,

into DEA, we've had 54, 54 DEA personnel killed and their portraits are on that wall, 54. And that's rough, man, that's rough. I mean, I know the CIA, Dave, they'll like to put the stars up and all that stuff. And one thing is that you have a situation where you have 54 just killed. I mean, all kinds. I'll be so bold. My roommate in the academy, God rest of soul, Eugene T. McCarthy, please look him up. Eugene T. McCarthy.

He was killed February 2nd, 1991. He was the number one student in our class, naval academy graduate, major in the Marine Corps. He was assigned to our San Diego office. He was in, of course, Snowcap at the time, and his unit got called up for the first Gulf War. Oh, wow. He was a cobra gunship helicopter class.

And I shared this with you. I share this with people because I honor him. I honor him very much. And it was a Brooklyn, New York kid, 75th precinct. Calgary Cemetery's Barron. And what happened was, was he was running wounded Marines coming out of Iraq, February 2nd, 1991. And his COVID was given trouble. And that's a gunship.

Night Vision goggles on first, first year, or first, you know, generation night goggled. Shashes his chopper, hitches it, bam into the sand. They didn't have the neck brace. They didn't have the harness to the helmet. It's like NASCAR they do now and all that fancy stuff. Snap, both of them, him and his captain is called. Gunner were both killed. When they went out to find him

the next morning, there he was just like, they looked like they're sleeping. Now, Gene was this number one student. He got to pick where he wanted to go. He wanted to go back to San Diego. Wonderful man, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful fellow. You know, I still have his phone numbers.

I still have his phone numbers from his phone and all that shit is, his residence is everything, Carl's back, California. And I honored a guy because, you know, you think, well, and who's these guys? Do they get killed? Is it dangerous? Yeah, even though he was not killed on a DEA

mission. But he had to raise his hand because he was in the reserves. His unit got called up, and he went to another hot spot in the world to serve his country. And you know, one thing I like to say is there's an author named Joseph Campbell, you know, Joseph Campbell. And I just found this today, and I was thinking about it. I said he once wrote, a hero is someone who has given his or her life to someone bigger than his oneself. Think about that, bigger than his oneself. And the hero is with, And the book that he wrote about is the hero with a thousand faces of 1949. And that's true because you guys probably know the same guys, man. They give their stuff up for wife and limb, man.

They do it. And we've had agents wiped out in five of them crashing in the mound of Peru. We've had agents undercover, you know, up in your place. Everett Hatcher, undercover deal, killed. There's a street name after Everett, New York Field Division Office guy. I mean, there was a New York State trooper killed. Syracuse got. I mean, I can go on and down the list, but I want people to realize that this is not a job that's like all funny games and all that stuff. No, man, it's, it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. Let me put a light on a minute. Let me put a light.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, please. Is that help? Is that not? Not, well, a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Yeah, that's great. That'll do it. I love it. So, Jack, tell us a little bit about sort of like your career winding down in retirement. Career winding down in retirement. So here's a funny one for you. You know, I'm in Baltimore. I'm in Baltimore.

And you do your, how can I put this? You do your supervisory out in the street, your supervisory time in the street, which I did. I did a number of years in Croy, four, then three in Baltimore. So I was the boss down to field on two separate assignments for almost over 70 years. Most guys, they'll get in the headquarters about, you know, after four years. But I had to do, it was a long list. And I missed where it just started. The program just started.

So I had to wait. So I got called in. I had to go into my former stack, the former boss boss, the Caribbean division named Roger. He sees my name in the list. He's not like the number, he was like the chief inspector, the chief, operations I can't really remember. He was up there, though. He was a heavy.

He calls me up. He says, Jack. He says, I see your name's on a list. He says, of course, I'd like you to come into the inspections division. I'm like, oh, man, inspectors. I said, geez, I said, he said, I want you to go to OPR, which is our internal affairs. I said, oh, boss. I really don't want to be doing guys in internal affairs and all that.

He goes, okay, you're going to an inspection. So we have a mystery. We have the finale felony squad and the Mr. Meanor squad. So I went to the Mr. Meena squad, which was more of like you go to the offices, you inspect things, make sure all the pensions are counted, all the cars are in order. But you travel the world. You know, it's a little boring, but you travel the world. So I'm thinking, you know, two things I hate.

Two things. I became a newspaper reporter writing all the time. And then I became a travel agent. I'm always on the road. I was gone for, you know, 52 weeks. I'm gone for, oh my gosh. 30-some weeks and 52 weeks on a road inspecting. I did it for five years.

Five years. I couldn't get out. Couldn't get out. And meeting to another assignment. And I learned a lot. I can tell you every darn, you know, class of, you know, different settings. If there's 34 this, there's 30 that. Every toy you're great.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, here you go from being a gunslinger. Yeah. So like, hey, can you count these pencils? Yeah. Can you, did you sign that in red pen or blue pen? And maybe I shouldn't say this, but we used to have a little, we used to have a little game we play. And again, we played with a couple of agents, agent inspectors.

Now remember, we were all boss in the field, ran our own offices or ran your own groups. Now they bring you in the headquarters. And now you put the inspections. Yes, it wasn't prestigious. Very much so. Very much, very much prestigious, absolutely shirt and tie. just, you know, lace it up and all that stuff. I don't mind getting dressed up.

I call it the Superman outfit. Yeah, I put the Superman costume on. And so we used to have a little thing. We go to, let's say we're inspecting the Philadelphia field divisional office. And we roll into like an army, you know, 40 inspectors come in because it's a big, it's a big operation. So you have to do certain things. So we used to have, we used to have to call interviews. We have to interview the employee.

And it was an interview sheet. You have a sheet. Okay. You have a sheet. you bring the person in and fill your badge, gun, credits, credit card, you know, driver's license, and then you need to time ourselves to see who would have the most, the fastest interviews done and conducted for that particular assignment. Just to freaking ward off the monotony sometimes, you know, is just like, wow, you know.

I used to be somebody, you know? Yeah, yeah. Nice for listening to that story. But then I went over to the version division. I finally got out of inspection. I really learned a lot in a year I was there. I don't know if you guys remember the K2 and the spiced craziness, the potpourri that people were smoking and making it crazy.

Yeah. Yeah, I was on that thing for a year. And I learned a lot about it. All I knew was it was dealt with the TAC of the marijuana and people were smoking, freaking potpourri and making them crazy or jumping out of bridges and running around, running around, no clothes on. It's like, oh, God.

So then I finally had a contact in our operations division, the operations division. And I was able to get out of there, and I went to operations. And operations was great. I was in the Mexico, Central America, Canada section. Can't stay enough about those guys and gals. Probably the busiest, in my opinion, the busiest. As I said, we're all busy, but I think I'm just going to say that, probably the busiest in headquarters in relation to the operations division.

Then I oversaw the offices up in Canada, but yet helping with the Mexico and the seven cententime country offices. But my main focus was the offices up in Canada, which we have an office in Vancouver and Ottawa. We closed down to Montreal office. And they were great people. And all you're doing there is catching. Catching. You're like, what do you need? I need 10 grand for an operation.

Oh, great. Some of your operational plan. So and after that, about a year, Jack and a year, Dave, about a year out from retirement, mandatory retirement at 57, the HR gives you tap on the shoulder and they say, time to look at the paperwork. Time to look at the paperwork. And you're like, what? You're like, mandatory retirement's coming in 12 months.

I'm like, really? So when you're done, I mean, you're finished. I mean, yeah, it's a good ride. I had 32 and, you know, I just, I mean, it was, I miss it though. I mean, I miss the people. I miss the hunt. I do it, Mr. Hunt. And what gets me is, and you guys know this too, the GP, we call the GP the general public.

The general public doesn't know a darn thing what you were capable of doing. Yeah. You're just, you're just a guy in the beach or you're a guy in the gym pumping iron or you're a guy in a bar, you know, having to have it, having a drink. And they think, I want to see about. I want to see about it. Maybe we should try this guy. Well, let me say, bro, come on and try it because I might be going to be 63 years old, but, you know, we can. I can still roll a little bit, you know.

But just, you know, you're just like, they don't get it, man. And the bottom line is that we know what we've done. And that's good for me. And I know what I was part of. You guys know what you were part of. And it's a great feeling. It's a great feeling. We served this country.

We did right for this country. We did some great things for this country. And some of our people, some of our friends didn't, didn't make it back, man. They got shot up or they were dealing with ailments or dealing with PTSD because they got a, I got the gun in the ribs at age 25. I think if I would got that later in life, I think I would be a little more me. Yeah.

I just like, I'm invincible. I can deal with that. Yeah. I'm good. You know, you want to say I'm good. I'm good. I'm good, my boss. I'm good.

You know. So. Yeah, I just wanted to be, I wanted to make sure because, you mentioned this before. the show. How did you find out or how did you come to email us? I want to make sure you give that shout out. I'm going to give a shout out to my neighbor. My neighbor

Nick, who's my beach neighbor here. He was the one that said, is you ever listen to these guys on the team house? Like out of New York City, I go, Team House. No, let me check Team House out. So I did and I said, okay, and I did some magic with some guy in New York.

York and I did some other things and bam, it got me on and I love it. I love it. I honor you guys, man. I honor you and like I said, I'm not looking. All I'm looking for man is to let people know that there's guys like you doing what you guys did and there's

guys like myself who did it and there's people that are doing it because it's not an easy life. And I'll tell you the spouses, you talk about rate of divorce and alcoholism and and crazy stuff on our job.

Yeah. Trust me. It's there and you've got to be really strong. And some of these things, I was watching a Joe Rove and he had this one guy on one day and he was an undercover guy. And he was all dolled up with his tats on him. And, you know, he was well-spoken. He was doing his thing.

And he said, how do you turn it off? Dude, man, you just got to compartmentalize. Yeah. It's just, and I like what he said, you know, but it's just like, you know, you could be driving, home in a BMW convertible. That was my Jeep car in Philadelphia. I have to put that out there.

I have to put that out. BMW converter who seized it off a kid who delivered a kilo a crack. Kilo a crack, man. 34 ounce baggies. Kilo a crack. Took his car, 3,000 miles. I still remember it. And you're driving home in a BMW convertible.

And you're living in Princeton, New Jersey, where your beautiful wife and she's working in Manhattan, she's doing her thing. And you know just the night, usually left at 4 o'clock in the morning, and he just kicked a couple doors in, because it was a round, we call them roundup. And you successfully, no issues. You know, no issues.

And you came home. And the first thing you're going to say is, what do you want to do for dinner tonight? Yeah. You're like, oh, my God. I don't know. What do you want to go to that time place in downtown Bristol? What do you want to do? Yeah.

So you guys felt this. You guys felt it. Tell us a little bit about, like, where you're at today, what you're up. to now. Right, right today, you know, I come across different things, you know, podcasting. I'll do, I'll do some motivational talks, you know, to different groups. I just actually, if you got, if you got any hooks, man, I just put in for All-American Entertainment Public Speaking Bureau. You know, to get me, I just sent the stuff into them. And yeah, I mean, I think there's enough in my pool bag that I can hold an audience, I think, I think. I think. Well,

That's amazing. But you're also just, I mean, it's amazing that, you know, how long you served. And usually, like when people tell, you know, when a lot of people think of their retirement, they're thinking they're counting the days. And here, you know, you wake up one day and HR say, hey, God. You know, it's time. You're like, wait a minute, hold on. You know, Dave, thank you very much.

And Jack, I tell you, I didn't like that. Yeah. I didn't like it. Yeah, I knew, I knew. Yeah, you weren't ready. You know, I just, I didn't like it. I, I just, people say to me, you know, why didn't you move to the next level? Why just went to, you know what?

I was content where I was. Yeah. I didn't want to, you know, I didn't want to be one of these guys that, you know, some guys chase the carrots. I don't want to be that guy chasing the car. Yeah. It chased the car. Four PCS is and I got the QSIs.

QS are like quality step increases for, for, you know, exempt, you know, exempt, exempt, work you get in the division. I got one in Philly, one in Quantico, one in St. Croy. And then I just felt like I was like done. I got, I was like finished, man. All of this stuff they put into you. All of this great training, you man. I love training.

I can't tell you how many rounds. You know, like into this day, I still carry the same weapons I carried the job. I carried my nine millimeter as my Glock 9MM. I certified to carry it. I carried out as my backup weapons. My Glock 22 was the duty weapon. I had to turn that in.

I still got a tactical 12-gate shotgun in by myself. I got an M4, 5.56. I've been on those weapons. You know, and trust me, you meet me in person. You see my life? You be like, no way, he's that guy, a barrel sucker. And I call it a barrel sucker because I, you couldn't tell me about, well, that's a 10.5 millimeter barrel.

I saw it lock up your range that pushed around. What are you talking about? Yeah. I just put the mag in, lock it. and load, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, you know, and let's go to work. Gun, gun, good. Yeah, gun, shoot, gun, good.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I love that. Gun shoot gun, good, you know? But I try to do that. I try to keep in touch with some personnel that I worked with on the job. I try to keep in touch with people that this won't blow your way.

And I know my wife told me, nah, don't get any of your personal talking. But I'm going to tell you anyway. Every year. Every year. The 1979 Marion College Football Seniors, there's 18 of us. We get together every first Saturday in October for football reunion back in near Allentown, Pennsylvania. That's fantastic.

Is that freaking cool? And every year we give back to the football, current football program. It's a private school. I'm a pro quo kid. From first grade to eighth, 12th grade. I went to private school. My dad was a public school teacher. And he's like, you know, I can't send him.

my kid there you got to go to private school. Me and myself, my two sisters. This year, our gift, which we all present to the team, they have a locker room called the Blue Room. We are going to give them a 55-inch color TV. We're going to give them a drink refrigerator, drink for drinks, a PlayStation with an extra controller and Madden football games.

The kids are going to fucking die. We blow them away every year. We blow them away over year. You know, and last year we bought them plates, blue and gold, rubber ice. plates and these blue and gold rubber rice plates are not cheap from pitan fitness from the 45s and 25s or 45s they were like wow yeah because remember catholic schools you know it's yeah there's like some bushy 45s that you're yeah yeah yeah so and then one year my good buddy

we got them this thing called the soundbox you know what a soundbox is it's like a miniature like speaker, it will blow the socks off you, man. And they take it out free game. They put it on the 50-yard line and they play their music. Yeah, that's awesome. That's cool, man, right? Yeah, it's cool. But you like that and you think that's cool.

And like I said, like I said, I do miss it. I do appreciate people like you. I really do. And if there's, you know, anything I can do for you guys, don't hesitate. Absolutely. Tell people where they can find you, Jack. Do you have a website? Do you have a place that they could find you?

I am an old school guy. My wife, I think I just got a new iPhone 16 for Christ's sake. You know what I mean? I mean, I can't give the cell number out because they're going to all kind of Yeah, yeah. But do you have any social media accounts where people can follow you or anything like that? I don't. I never was able to, we were not allowed to go on social media back in the day.

Yeah. I never, I honored that. All I have is a regular email that you. guys get to me. I will text you my cell number. I will text you, I will, not at what I will, I will, I'll email you with the number and maybe we can discuss on the side or something, but you're not on LinkedIn or anything? I'm linked, I'm on LinkedIn. Yes, I'm on LinkedIn. Yes, I'm on LinkedIn. But you're going to see LinkedIn. There's no picture. There's no buyer. It's just who I am. Yeah. I'm not trying to run from anybody. I'm not trying to hide from anybody. You can order,

board I'm open to find me. Yeah. But I am. That's a good one. Yeah, LinkedIn. Okay. So that's a good place for people to find you and reach out. Yes.

I really appreciate it. Is there anything else I could discuss? I mean, I think we covered all our feelings. That's it. I did my homework for you. Yeah. We appreciate it. You guys.

Yeah. Yeah, really appreciate it too on our end. Jack. Thanks for joining us on the show. Yeah. Thanks so much. And thanks so much. And thanks, Nick.

for us also for like, yeah. Yeah. He's actually an avid listener and he's going to turn it up in Baltimore and he's a solid guy. And yeah, he'll trust me. Now, how does this, now are we, when will this air? How's it doing? What's what we doing? What goes on?

This is going out to our, a very limited group of people on our Patreon and it will go live on like YouTube and podcast platforms in the next couple. Yeah, it's live right now for our Patreon subscribers. So if you're not subscribing the Patreon, this is what you're missing. Do we have any questions for, Jack? Love it, man. Love it. We're just going to see if we have any questions for you from...

Fine. So what you're thinking about about two weeks? Because no, my boys, whatever. No, this is not even. A couple days. This will be out either tomorrow, tomorrow night or Wednesday. Yeah. And what are we looking at?

This one's number 353? 53. 53? Yeah. I'm going to put that down. 353. All right. We have one question from M. Corbyn.

Do people who drug traffic, do they usually always pay with cash or other types of currency? Man, that's a great way. I mean, back in my day, it was all cash related. Maybe some assets, you know, maybe a trade your car for, you know, for two keys of Coke. But nowadays, it's that Bitcoin and it's a whole different game. Yeah. It's a whole thing. I even, I ever ran into one of the guys, this is a good, great question.

I ran into some of the guys, one of the guys, excuse me, that was a former, when I left Quantico, he came in as a new agent. And he goes to the one beach town here. You probably guys know the beach towns, Dewey Beach, Robes Beach, Lewis, Bethany Beach, Fenwick. That's the whole strip of beaches, the beaches here. And we were up in Dewey Beach one night, and he basically, we were talking. and we got talking about federally wiretapped. And he goes, oh, no. He goes, totally different, he said.

But all these encrypted sites is totally different. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm lost, man. Yeah. I'm so lost. Yeah, it's fascinating. But the guy to answer this question, back in my day, money, maybe an asset here and there. But other than that, I'm sure there's there's the Bitcoin or crazy other things going on with that kind of. Yeah.

We had a case where there was one guy, gold. You're going gold back in Philly. You get gold for his dope because he didn't have, he didn't want to break, he didn't have any cash. That's a whole other money laundering angle to it. We did some things with that. Myself and my boy, Jeff, we were pickup men in Philadelphia for a trafficking organization. We were picking up money. And we were, of course, laundering of money through Philly,

taking our cut and giving them money back to a different account, I've been an undercover count. And yeah, we were pickup boys. So back in the day, when we were quite young, quite young. Yes, yes. Well, thanks, Jack. We really appreciate it, man. We really appreciate you coming on, reaching out and coming on.

Well, thank you. Like I said, if you guys are here of anything, please feel free. I consider you guys friends and solid guys up there. And thank you very, very much. And I need some dinner, I guess. And really appreciate it. Yeah, hell of you. It's in a couple of days.

Yeah. it'll hit under your website. It'll be on YouTube in like two days. Yeah, it'll like it. It's either Tuesday night, tomorrow night, or Wednesday night follow the next morning on audio. So in the next couple of days for sure.

Okay, so that's D. Say, D, thank you very much. Appreciate it. I'm going to send it. I'm going to send a email with my cell number to you guys. And then it's up to you. You want to get back? You want to get back?

It's not it. It's up to you. Sounds great. Thanks for your service, man. Thank you guys. We'll see all of you guys out there next time. Thank you, Jay. Jack. Thanks, everybody. Stay in touch.

Thank you, Jack. Thank you, Dave. Bye, bye, by now. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been watching it, enjoying it. But you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com slash the Teamhouse. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of the Team House, ad free.

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