The Team House - FBI Hostage Rescue Team founder Danny Coulson Part 1, Ep. 87

Episode Date: April 3, 2021

Danny Coulson was the first leader of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) and stood the unit up. In this episode we discuss his early career under J. Edgar Hoover when he was targeting communists and then the black panthers. We then get into his work with Delta Force, SEAL Team Six, the SAS, and other SOF units to help create HRT. Finally, Danny tells us about HRT's first big deployment. Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Podcast version of this show can be found here: Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit Child and Family Resource Network.org today. I'm part with my co-host Jack Murphy. We are here joined by Danny Colson, who wrote this amazing book, No Heroes. And it says inside the FBI secret counter terror force. But actually, this book is an extensive autobiography of your time in the FBI, which was before that time in HRT. And then also your time after that.

So one of the things, Jack and I are both huge comic book nerds. And one of the things that we always like to ask our guess is, what's your origin story? How did you become the superhero that you became? Well, I'm not a superhero, but you know that. I'm just fairly confident. I know how to get along with the right people, I guess. But if you want to talk about Agent Colson, I'll tell you a story. Hawk Oatsby is a very, very prominent writer of movies.

And he did Marvel. One day he called me and said, Mr. Colson, you don't know me, but I know. you. I said, how do you know me? He said, I read your book. And we keep your book on our desks as writers for dialogue. And he said, we have a character named Agent Colson, and we named him after you. I said, where are my residuals? And that didn't happen. So I thought it's kind of interesting story. Hawk is a great writer. He actually, we were going to do a book with Peter Berg on No Heroes. I mean, sorry, movie. And he was going to be one of the writers,

That all got, you know, caught up in the Hollywood nonsense. And so it didn't happen. It will. It hadn't yet. So this is the first time that we actually heard this. I did not know that Agent Colson was named after you. And now I'm kind of geeking out. Because when Jack and I were talking about this, having you on, I was like, oh, my God, we have to do a shield bit.

I wonder if he knows anything about Marvel. I'm going to look like such an idiot. Well, my wife is a school teacher. or was and the kids used to always ask her Mrs. Colson is your husband, Agent Colson? She said, as a matter of fact, he is. So I think he's probably a little better than me. But anyway, it's kind of fun.

I don't think so. But stay with us as we uncover the true secrets behind the Tahiti project. Actually, so with your origin story, like, where did you come from? What was your childhood like? How did you get to the FBI? What led you down that?

Well, that's a good story. I didn't attend to do that. My dad was the military. I lived on the military post as a young kid, and the people that worked in my house were German POWs. That's how old I am. And we were at Camp Shelby, and then we came back to Fort Worth area,

and I went to undergraduate school at old school. I think we had 60 people. My graduating class was a little small. My house grew up, and it was about the size of my double garage, maybe not that big. A very, very great childhood. I lived out in the country,

and I could put my rifle on my bicycle and go hunting for rabbits and whatever. So I was blessed. I had a great childhood. I had very much involved in a church. I was also a musician. I went to college to be a professional musician. And I found out that I wasn't very good. And I better find out something else to do.

So I went to law school. I got in law school and SMU they had very low standards and they let me in and between semesters my senior year I was at a gun store

in Dallas, Texas called Jackson Arms it's a very famous antique gun store and there was an agent named Charlie Brown he started talking to me said Danny what are you going to do with your life?

I said I'm going to the Navy I'm already pretty much said I'm going to the Navy he said you need to come to the FBI I said I don't know anyway they started recruiting me for some damn reason and they took me.

And, you know, standards were pretty low then, I guess, and maybe there was a run on agents or something, but I graduated from law school, took the Texas bar, passed it, much to my surprise, and went to the FBI Academy and came on.

And what did your folks think? Because obviously I thought, oh, he's going to law school, he's going to be an attorney, and then all of a sudden you're going to be a cop, a super fed, and, you know, a super cop. they didn't like that. Oh, no. My dad was very upset about it. They wanted me to practice law in Dallas.

Actually, ultimately, my mother disowned me over it. She was really, really angry about it. And, you know, from the book, that I married a really wonderful woman named Deborah Connor. And my mother, I never met

my wife. I never met three of my children. Because she was so angry for me going on this adventure and not going, you know, getting well practice. So it's kind of sad for her and sad for me. But, you know, when my contract was up with the FBI, I was really miserable because I love what I did. It was like every day was an adventure.

And it was just incredible to work with the type of people I did and get to do the kind of things that I did. And I'm sorry my mother did not get a chance. to me three of my four children. So that's kind of man. Yeah. Yeah. So you go to the FBI Academy, and what was it like?

Because this is, was this 66? Mm-hmm. It was. Okay. And so what? It was very militaristic. We were in the main base at Quantico. We slept, I think, 12 to a room and had to, you know, did the spit shine stuff and all that

crap. And it was hard. I mean, I had a law degree. And I will tell you. My legal classes at the FBI Academy were harder than I have much harder. And they were very physical. They were harder on us than I think they are now. They were horrible to us.

But they wanted us to be prepared because it's a very rough life. And I had a great dental respect to my instructors. They were just the best. And I excelled at the Academy. I excelled especially in physical fitness and firearms. I think I was at the top of my class in that. And it was wonderful. It was like every day you got up and said, my God, I'm at the damn FBI Academy.

How the hell do I get there? And it was a great adventure. It was a lot of fun. And you learned a lot. And then you learned how to stay alive. You don't learn to be an FBI agent until you get out and start working with FBI agents. That's a good part of the way they train you. And I went to my first office and had a great great first office.

I was put undercover at a time when Jed Hoover would deny you were an FBI agent if anybody ever found out you were an undercover agent. So that was kind of hairy for a while I was with the Patriarch, a crime family for a period of time. And that was fun. And then they rewarded me and sent me in New York for 10 years after a very successful of the government operation. So it's just what, you know, the FBI then, I can't say now, but it's one adventure after another. you didn't know when you went to work in the morning,

you didn't know where the hell you'd be that night. What the hell you'd be doing? So it was great. It was great for me as a young guy and as an older guy. And I, you know, I don't regret one bit of it. I regret the way it ended, but not the adventure part. So, and I think one of the reasons, like, we want to have you back on next week.

This book is almost 600 pages. And it's, And they're true. You mind if I take a sip? Oh, please. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers, everybody.

Cheers. So you were in the FBI during, you started when Hoover, when it was Hoover's FBI. And for some of our viewers who may not be aware of Hoover and some of his idiosyncrasies, can you tell us a bit about him and his influence at that time? Oh, I can. he was a very interesting charismatic guy who wasn't really a nice guy I think he was somewhat of a bigot I do think he was a bigot

he wouldn't hire blacks he wouldn't hire women until Bobby Kennedy came along and said you know this is a new world and you have to hire black agents and females and so this is what a crazy guy was he took all this show

FERS in the FBI who were black, I made them all FBI agents. I had one of my squadron, Jimmy Williams. Good guy. Help me a bunch. Tough guy. He was wonderfully influenced over, especially the younger guys.

And Hoover was a hard ass. I mean, really hard ass. I kept a quick story. There was agents in New York, New Haven, Connecticut. And one day they all left the office and went for coffee, eight of them. In the neighborhood. the divisional commander found them having coffee,

and he transferred all eight of them across the United States that day. I mean, he was kind of a prick. A lot of stupid rules. You couldn't drink coffee at your desk as an agent. So we would set at our desk with coffee cups in the bottom drawer and it'd bend over and take a sip and said like, I mean, it's just crazy stuff. But he did have very high standards for us.

he expected the very best he got us the best equipment but I mean frankly he was a tyrant there's no doubt about it did a lot of good for the FBI could not be the director today he couldn't live in this

PC world that we live in clearly but it was I'll tell you when I went to meet him as all ages in the academy we had to rehearse it the day before

and then we went to meet him the the counselor stood outside of the office door with a towel and dried our hands off so our hands wouldn't be sweating. That's so stupid it was. So, anyway, interesting character

created a lot of things, created the FBI laboratory, the identification division, and had a really high standards for us. But not a nice guy. But you know what? I think a lot of people, a lot of good commanders and leaders, aren't nice. I mean, Benz-Lombardi, was he nice? I don't think so.

I mean, the apostle, Paul, was he nice? Oh, no. He's a bad. guy. So I think it's interesting that people that get into these leadership positions oftentimes are just not really very nice. Yeah. You know, and that's something that I want to go into as

we move along because throughout your stories, throughout your book, the way you treat criminals is within that same light is that you treat them with respect. They committed a crime,

you acknowledge the crime, you're there to arrest them or whatever, but you always focus on their humanity, I think, when you're dealing with. No, we do. And that's what we're taught. And I think that's the way it should be. We see a lot of problems now in our society with police and local communities and things. And I think that a lot of that has to do with culture.

I think a lot of it has to do with training. But I had a lot of guys confess to me because I treated them like. Yeah. You always say, Mr. This, Mr. This, Miss That. I mean, sometimes you shoot them. Hopefully not. But sometimes it's very violent. But when it's not, then you treat them with me.

I'm a very strong Christian, too. And that's really important in my life. Yeah. And I think that even criminals deserve to be treated with dignity. And if you treat them like that, then you get a much better response. If you're, we'll get in this later, but the CSA comp him, that we did, we took down all those terrorists. Yeah. that was Mr.

this and Mr. Ellison and Mr. Noble and, you know, when they would come up, we'd all stand up and treat them just like, you know, like I treat you. And I think that that's probably saved a lot of people's lives that day. Yeah. Because they trusted this.

Yeah. And yeah, and we will to get to that for sure. So you go to New Haven, Connecticut. You do your rookie tour there, and then they send you to New York. And what was New York in? Is this 67, right?

So what was New York like in 67 for an FBI? Oh, gosh. It was, well, I remember I'm a Texas boy. I don't know very much. I'm pretty country. And I kind of walked around with my mouth open, San Ghali a lot. It was like, it was unbelievable.

And I was so naive that I got myself in a lot of trouble there. I work Communist Party USA stuff for a while And we had to at that time We had to verify the location of all these people That were members of the Communist Party Because the plan was We went to war with Russia We'd go around the rest of them all

And so I went up to the Bronx one day And I'm walking around like this dumbass Texan And I see this lady I said, you know where Sadie Gertz live? She said, yeah, I'm Sadie Gertz. I went, oh crap Because you weren't supposed to talk to these people

and so she said, who are you? I said, I'm Danny Colson with the FBI. I said, well, come on to look, come on the apartment. So she took me into the apartment. We had tea and cookies, and we talked. And for her and for most of the people, the Communist Party was a social club. I don't think they believe one thing that they preached.

So I go back to my office, and I tell my supervisor, John Dooley, which is his name, that I just talked to Sadie, and he almost had a heart in time. I mean, I thought my career was over. I thought I didn't see anything wrong with it.

And, you know, actually, I had a write memos. You know, I got lectured by the commander of the division and all that stuff. But anyway, I got the hell out of that business. I hated it. It was nothing for me, but it was just a new experience. Something totally different for me. And what I

learned about there was how timid commanders can be. The best commanders are not timid. As you guys know better than I do, they have guts and they they will do the right thing but some are more worried about their career than catching the bad guys and so

I learned a lot there and had a lot of a lot of good experiences but I got the hell out of there and started doing things that mattered that was a lot more fun now when you say you got out of there you didn't leave New York you just left the that the communist babysitter

uh exactly social club right so and then what did you from there you into the fugitive squad, is that right? Yeah, I got into fugitives. I love that. People asked me, do you hunt?

I said, yeah, I'm in. That's a great challenge. You learn so much about yourself, your courage, your strength, your wildness. You learn how to develop informants, how to talk to people. And that's not the most exciting thing. I didn't, yep, yeah, but it was certainly one of them. But I think it prepared me for later commands that interpersonal skills and the ability to get people to cooperate and tell you, you know, I'm asking a lot to me. How do you catch a few to them?

I said, well, somebody tells you where they are. And if you talk to enough people, sooner or later, you know, someone will tell you where they are. Yeah. And like you said, when you talked to them, you guys didn't go kick in doors or, I mean, if you had to. but generally you would go someplace, you would just be very approachable, very polite. Yes, sir. And talk to everybody. Also in the way you dress, too, suit and tie.

It's not like that now at all, but I think there's a really good book called Dress for Success. I never read it until I was like 45 or so. But that's a great book. You ought to read it, Mike, because you, well, you could probably use a little work on your dress, but not much. A lot. But I think that the suit and tie professional look like a banker or a lawyer. I think that went a long way for us. And I think it was helpful.

Yeah. Jay Edgar would not let you out of the office if you were not wearing a suit and tie, I imagine. Oh, my gosh. You know, we had a skyjacking on my squad. And one of my friends shot the skyjacker, and he didn't have a suit and tie on it. And he got in all kinds of trouble with who. because he saw him on TV shooting this guy. And he got in, you know, Ken got in big trouble

because he didn't have a suit and clown when he killed his hijackers. Sure. Well, go figure. So when you're in New York is when you start a case. In my military terminology, I want to call it operation, but I guess you guys would call it case new kill. Yes, sir.

And that's a large, that's a large portion of the beginning of the book. Yes. Can you tell us a little bit about it? I think most people, especially cops like that, it's called a new kind of killer. And it was about the Black Liberation Army that were, they were revolutionaries, they were Marxists, and there was a split in the Black Panther Party,

the Newton faction of Hugh P. Newton, I'm sorry, Hugh P. Newton, what was the other, came over the other side. Anyway, a split. Aldridge Cleaver. Clever, I'm sorry, thank you very much. I only wrote the book. I don't memorize it. But anyway, I was a fugitive guy, and I was pretty much known as a fugitive hunter.

And I'm up in Rockster, New York, and I called in a check for messages. And one of the agents said, well, you need to come back right now. We have a new case, and they want you on it. We're going to be tracking people down as they want fugitive guys. So I jumped a bus from Roxbury, New York, went to New York City, and jumped in the BLA case. and that was really a tough time because as we're hunting the BLA members, they're hunting us too.

They're looking for us. They're trying to ambush us. And that was very violent. And a great experience for me. I had great partners. I got named Bill Baker as my partner for most of it. Another older agent named Bob McCarton. He was kind of the mentor for all of us, young guys.

And we chased Fuggest it. We just chased the way. worst people on the planet. And they killed a bunch of cops. I mean, they ambushed Piagintini and Jones and the Colonial House projects and they ambushed cops when they fostering

Lori and a bunch of more. They just walk up and throw a hand grenade out of the car. Or they just shoot them in the back and run off. And we worked that case under the orders of the President of the United States because we had no jurisdiction. Nixon

told Jedger Hoover that I want you to guess these guys, I want you to do it. So we teamed up with the NYPD detectives, and I learned more from those officers than I learned in my life anywhere. They're dedicated, they're tough, they're fearless, and tactically, very good, very good interviewers. And probably if I ever, if you had to measure your career by what accelerates it, those guys did. They were amazing. I'm a big fan of theirs to this thing. Yeah. I think it's a like I want to talk about that whole section but it's so vast and the case covers a couple years. But there's some interesting things in it like when you went into the building and we're canvassing apartments and the guy starts chewing you and your

partner out yelling at you and yes. You actually started to respond to that, but your partner handed it differently. Can you tell us? He was better than me. I was getting ready to go to war, and Baker was smarter, and he figured it was show. So we stepped into an apartment, and the guy calmed down. He said, I know you, Baker said, I know you got to do this. And he said, yeah, I do.

And he actually helped us. So, again, I learned something from somebody else. I told you, I remember he's smart. And that was a great learning experience for me, too. I think one of the things that helps you do is that we're in a confrontational business. You guys were in a confrontational business. You can't deal with confrontation. You can't survive it.

But learning when to just let it go, sometimes you just say, okay, because I'm sure you're just like me. You don't like to lose at anything. Right. And so I didn't want to have this guy think I was afraid of him, so I was ready to take him on. Right. And Bill was a lot smarter than me. And we actually, the guy ended up helping us a lot. And this guy was like dressing you down in public in front of other people.

Oh yeah. Yeah, he's been a prick. And your partner, I guess, kind of realized that he was a Vietnam debt. Oh, yeah. Yeah, a good guy, a really good guy. He should have been a cop. He should have been recruited by the Fort Worth. I'm sorry, the NYPD had become a police. Maybe he did.

I don't know. But he was bright. He was articulate. Obviously, I had a lot of courage. And anyway, it was a learning experience. I didn't end up getting in a fight with somebody I didn't need to fight with that. Oh, yeah. Now, was it about this time that the FBI, you got a call, the FBI was starting up the first kind of SWAT teams, right?

Yes. Actually, no, my first call was to put me on the FBI sniper team. Okay. But that was a pretty good marksman. And I was on that for quite a while and went to squat school and trained as a sniper. I'm sorry, sniper. Went to sniper school. and trained as a sniper.

And then they wanted to start a SWAT team. And since I'd probably made about a thousand arrests by that time, they gave me a command of a SWAT team. I had that. That was fun. That was a great experience. The only problem was that I never got a full night's sleep because every time I'd go home and go to bed,

I'd get a call in the middle of the night, grab your shotgun, we'll pick you up downstairs in 10 minutes, and we'd go off. And our team would hit a place. And I'll tell you, thing I did. Just be careful about this. I had a brand new baby, Doc, or the oldest boy, and went to the bathroom. I get this call. Of course, you know, you're blurry eye and got to go arrest somebody. So I went in the bathroom and grab my toothbrush and got the toothpaste out. It was

desicent. It was a diaper rash. I brushed my teeth with a diaper rash. So I wasn't all that alerted. But we got the guy. We arrested them. It all went good. But it's not pleasant. you mentioned that you would grab your shotgun to give people an idea of sort of the bureaucracy and how people at HQ or people at Quantico were running things at that time you said that you were always the number one man in the door because you had the shot.

Yes, this is so stupid. FBI headquarters made a mandate that if we're going to use a shotgun or a raid had to be with a firearms instructor. Well, I was only a firearms instructor for 50 agents, and we made hundreds of arrests. So I guess you made all of them. I made her most of them. So I don't know how you guys feel about shotguns.

It's the best weapon ever invented for a subway within 40 yards or so. And very intimidating. I carried a shotgun home and it looked like kind of a banjo case. So I'd be on the bus going home with my shotgun, and they'd call me. And I'd get up and meet them on the corner and they'd pick me up on an FBI car and we'd go get somebody. I got a great story. I have to say the story. It's okay.

We had a fugitive of our squad from a guy named Tony Electroca. He was about five foot four. He killed about 20 people. He was out of Puerto Rico and a bad dude. He'd shoot you in a minute. So we got a lead on Tony one night. Again, called Danny, middle of the night. I'd go get in the car.

We'd go. and two NYPD officers took, we called a key, you know what that is, it's a RAM. And these two big cops would swing that RAM, get it going, and they'd hit the door. So we get, we had informative prostitute. She came downstairs and said, he's up there right now. So, okay, let's go get him. So we go up there and these two big cops are swinging this ram back and forth. And all said, boom, they hit the door.

The door doesn't swing open. It goes flat. They just flatten that damn door. and so I go barrel in there and I can't find this guy and I looked at over the beds, look at the carvers. I didn't even look at the damn refrigerator. I couldn't find him. How did he get out?

So, you know, I go to the window and the guys in the fire skips, they didn't come this way. Well, all of a sudden this little hand comes out from under the door because he had heard us coming. He thought it was his girlfriend coming back. So he got pancake. And he didn't resist at all, but it was pretty funny. And, of course, you know,

we, you know, our answer is, Yeah, we planned it like that. But we didn't. It was just luck. We got the little guy, and he was going to go. I went to jail for the rest of the way. So at this time with the bureaucracy, you had the range guys at Quantico. Oh, yeah.

Dictating basically your firearms policy for the street. So the number one man had to have a shotgun. The only people allowed to use a shotgun were instructors. Right. So you were stuck as the number one man on every raid. basically on most of them. Yes. And then you guys had wheel guns at the time and you wanted something

different. Thank you for bringing that up. Yeah, the BLA guys all carried Browning Hop Hours, which I carry to this day. I mean, I carry one now. If you I love your viewers or listeners know what a browning is. It was the follow-up to the 1911.

It was 9mm, it came out in 1935. That's how old it was. And they wouldn't let us carry auto loaders at all. They told us, well, you know, you guys just carry two wheel guns. Well, that's only 12 rounds. And it doesn't work. So we actually all went out and bought our own pistols.

We bought Model 59 Smith & Westons. Maybe you guys wrote the gun. It was a double single gun. It started to look like a browning. And pretty reliable, pretty damn good gun, not as good as a brownie. So we brought them, and we carried them to leave them. And, you know, a great peril. I mean, we got in a shootout with Twyman Myers and one of them.

my guys shot twillam in the face with a model 59 and we're talking about how to report it. And then our supervisor said, tell him what we shot him with, help with him. So they ignored it. They completely ignored it because we, you know, we got the most wanted man in America. And he didn't survive the encounter. But that was ridiculous. The bureaucracy of the FBI with regard to firearms is just really pretty stupid. Yeah.

These guys were good. I don't know if you've ever, I've been shot at with a Brownie-Hopower. It's pretty intimidating. I mean, it's like when we got in a thing with Twyman, he killed, I think, four cops. And I thought he had his Swedish K. He shot that fast. And he had a lot of people, didn't hit me, but hit a lot of people. And it was ridiculous.

Thanks for bringing that up. That was a, that stuck in my crawl forever. And, you know, we were making, we were making arrests like three a day. You know, I mean, almost every day you arrested somebody. It was really a bad guy who'd shoot you in a minute. Yeah. And we got guns not unlike what Wyatt Earp care. Right.

And they're in auto loaders. And that's not fair. Right. But shotgun comes up to everybody. So it all worked out. I'm still here. Yeah. Well, and you guys were really outgunned, especially with the BLA and other organizations,

or other fringe organizations. They had military-grade armament. I mean, Twyman was at you. even had grenades. Oh, he did. Yeah, yeah. When I rushed him, he had a thermite grenade on him. And when he went down, he didn't, he wasn't dead yet.

And I rushed him. Well, McCartnick, he got him. But I rushed him because I didn't want him to pull that thermite grenade out. That doesn't hurt you. You know, that better than I do. Yeah. I know that much experience with him, but you guys know what they do. And so, yeah, they were, they were heavily armed.

And I think, I think the difference was we were better. we were just, you know, Lee Trevino has a great line. I use it all time. It's not their arrow. It's the Indian. And I think that's really important to remember that we were well-trained. We practiced. I shot every day in my life.

I mean, every day I went to work and went to work, I put 50 rounds in my revolver, just to be ready. And I think that was important. And the Bureau gave us that option. They just didn't give us the right gun. Right, Albert. Now, another thing you mentioned was at the time,

like when you were on the SWAT, you guys were interested in exploring the Weaver stance, which was kind of making... Weaver. Yeah, making Headway at the time. But at the Academy, the range... I saw it. Yeah. Yeah. Finally, the... Yeah, okay, for people listening, Weaver is where you put one foot back, one foot forward,

kind of on a boxer stance, and you shoot two-handed. and you do a push, pull, push right, pull left, and that keeps the recoil down. So you can put a lot of rounds down range really bad. I still shoot like that to this very day. I love Weaver. The FBI was teaching us Sasselese, which were foot, feet side by side, hands stuck straight up in front of you.

And it's not, it was good for his day. It just wouldn't keep up at the time. So, yeah. But frankly, the FBI kind of came around. A guy named Rogers. was an FBI Fireman's instructor retired and started a shooting school. And it had a really good shooting school. And the Bureau finally came around and we started shooting Weaver.

So much better. We shot better. Now, in the midst of all this, you were also involved in the events. I think you were maybe, or at least your unit was involved in the events that the film Dog Day afternoon was based on, correct? That was my squad. Yes. I did that case. Yes.

my partner if you remember the movie they agreed to take a car to the airport and they wanted a driver and I was on leave I wasn't even there then they took Agent Murphy and put him into driver and they slipped him a pistol and Agent Murphy turned out and put one in his chest and killed him in the story

you know so he did a great job Jimmy was a great agent and then what the movie doesn't tell you another guy gets away Robert Westerberg was his name. I remember that. Anyway, he got away, and so Bill Baker and I had to go find it.

So we spent a lot of time going into all the gay bars in New York City because they were all, you know, they were all looking for a sex change. And we caught him. He finally ran him down. He was, of all the guys, he was the meanest guy, of all of them. He was a bad guy.

Yeah. But Robin Banks and Robin Banks to get a sex change. I made a great movie. The movie was awesome. Al Pacino, right? Yeah, Al Pacino, right? Yeah, Alpsino, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, for anybody who doesn't know that story,

they held a bank, they took hostages, and he was doing it to get his partner a sex change. Yeah, fascinating. Typical emotive to rob a bank. Right, right. They don't have a lot. You know, that's one of the things that I found interesting, like with the BLA and later on with a Christian identity

or CSA and some of those other movements. is that how they supported themselves. Like a lot of times when you guys were researching or investigating these fringe elements, you would go look for bank robbers. You would go look for crimes that were being committed because you knew that's how they were funding themselves. Exactly. Yeah. And that was from the communist playbook.

We will finance a revolution by Robin from the capitalist. And that was what Joanne Chesemar did, Fred Hilton, Twyman Myers. Freddie Hilton, all those guys, they were committed. I mean, it was whatever your core beliefs are, and it doesn't really matter for this, what they are, but they held their core beliefs as strong as you do. Right.

Like the CSA guys, I'm a Christian, and I have very strong faith, and they had a faith as strong as mine. Right. And that always struck me that, you know, I know, I'm right. I know I'm right. But they knew they were right too.

And it makes them very formidable when you're dealing with them. They were totally committed to their cause. They fought like hell. I mean, they weren't afraid. Not many of them gave up. A few did. But Brad Hilton, Andrew Jackson gave up to me and Baker and a few other guys. But most of them fought to the last drop of their breath.

Yeah. It's pretty tough. Even Twyman fought me until he died. Well, and an interesting thing is you guys developed a tactic that you would basically trail each other by about 30. That saved their life, actually. Right. There's a really good move you guys ought to see. It's called The Battle of Algiers.

It's about the French in Algeria. Get it, read it. It's really a good book. And it talks about the tactics the Algerian rebels used against the French police. and they would walk up right behind them and blow them away. Oh, that's what the BLA did. And so we're looking at it and we're having a meeting. And I said, you know, the key here is not to walk together.

That sounds kind of basic and simple, but it's really true. If you got 15 feet between you and your partner, that's effective. Twyman Myers actually talked about the fact that when actually Baker and I were trailing him, he spotted us and we didn't spot him and he walked up behind us and within a second we separated out. He said, I knew there were FBI guys.

I probably get one. I wouldn't get them both. They come. So he didn't try. So that's I think that's a good lesson. I don't think cops today think about that. Yeah. I still think about it but I don't think that they actually think about that tax. He sounds really

basic and kind of simplistic but it worked. He kept me alive. I'm here talking to you because you worked for me. Yeah. And that was kind of a chilling part of the book because you're interviewing somebody that you had brought in. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have

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you spend 40 or more on a great selection of participating items. Just look for the signs and save at Bakers. You know, somebody that you guys had apprehended, I think, or who had actually just kind of split off from them. And he basically describes you and the person you were with that day. He doesn't know it's true, but says, yeah, Twyman said this, that I was going to execute these guys. and then they

Yeah, well, and he would have. We arrested Fred Hilton. We got him on a stake out in Brooklyn and with NYPD. By the way, and what we're talking about here, always remember NYPD and us. I don't want to think anybody to think this and that BIA if it wasn't.

We were doing this as comrades together. So we got Hilton in the car and they went in the back seat and he said, who are you? I said, I'm Colson, and he looked at Baker and said, you must be Baker. That's showing. Yeah. And he said, I said, well, if you knew, well, it's fine.

You call me. And he said, you don't understand we're at war. And I said, if you're at war, you'd be dead. I watched you for half a day through a sniper rifle. I was going to kill you. But I didn't because you may be worth us. We're not at war with you. You're going to go to jail.

And interestingly enough, many, many, many, many years later, I'm interviewing Michael Fortier, who's one of the bombers at the Pomer's that's up on a semi-bombing. And I've got him in a trailer out in Kingman, Arizona. And, you know, we started the interview, and, you know, you had two middle-aged guys here,

I guess me more old than the middle-aged. And I said, we want to talk about the bombing. You said, you don't understand. We're at war. I'd heard that before, Fred Elton. So I said, no, we're not at war. I said, I arrested McVay. I'd have killed him.

I'd have thrown him out of the helicopter. I'd killed you today. I'm not at war. And then he said, he kind of looked to me kind of funny. He said, well, it's about the Constitution. I said, it is. And let me explain something to you.

One day, we're going to strap you to a gurney. Oh, back back up. One day we're going to take you to trial under the Constitution. And we're going to convict you under the Constitution. And Janet Reno says, we're going to kill you. And we're going to kill you. gonna strap your ass to a gurney, stick a needle in it, we're gonna kill you

under the Constitution. And I thought he was gonna have a heart attack. This, you know, two middle-aged guys, not screaming at him, just explain the very, matter of fact, yeah, we're gonna kill you. And I think that's pretty chilling. It was for him, and guess what? He cooperated.

He testified because you knew we were dead ass serious. And actually, I met with his mother the next day, and she hated me. Oh my God, poor lady. I bought her breakfast and she didn't appreciate a damn bit. And she told me, you don't understand. I know my son. I said, ma'am, I put about a thousand minutes in jail and all their mothers thought they're going to see.

And then I'm working. And we're going to execute your son. And so they cooperate too. So I think he gets back to what we talked about earlier, as opposed to slapping them around. You just kind of whisper in their ear, we're going to kill you. It's a lot, you know, we can all stand to be smacked around. but when some old man tells you in a very calm voice

the government's going to kill you kind of chilling yeah yeah for sure so I mean I kind of want you to tell the whole story but

but get the book read the book like the first probably 10 to 12 chapters covers your time in New York and trying to track down the BLA and what they were doing

really across the United States because they were at war with the police. Similar to on the other side of, you know, sort of, I don't know if you'd call them a black separatists or black nationals, but similar to the white nationalists and white separatists later on,

they all, they're at war with, the police. But so you go through all this and that wraps up. And then can you kind of tell us what was going on in the late 70s that led globally? Because there were a series of attacks. Yes. So. There were quite a few.

You know about Munich. You know about what happened with the Germans and how they were totally unprepared for dealing with the terrorists that. they confronted and failed miserably. There was a takeover of City Hall in D.C. by the Hanatha Muslims. And I wasn't involved in that at all. And we didn't know what to do with it. We couldn't do it. We did not have the capability to do it.

So the Bureau started thinking about, what are we going to do now? You know, the world is getting worse. And so the FBI Academy, to its great credit, started working with Jason, with Delta. and later with JSON. And they had a great relationship with Delta Force, with Charlie Beckwith and all those guys. And for whatever you want to say about the FBI,

we have the best firearms program on the planet. We may not be able to solve a case. We can share as hell shoot. And so we did a lot of training with our SWAT program and our firearms program to help Delta get ready to do their job. And I'm a huge, by the way, I'm a huge fan of the Delta Force and Silting both. I've done missions with both of them.

And they're a great asset to our country and a blessing to humanity. So they did two exercises at Quantica. It was called Masquerade 1 and Masquerade 2. And they did a joint operation between the Delta Force and the Washington Field officer squad team, which was really good. and at the end of the exercises, two things were decided. The government didn't want Delta doing something

on the United States, and more importantly, Delta didn't want to do it. They didn't want any part of that. So somebody in the white, I can't remember who it was, somebody in the White House stood up, and he looked at the director of the FBI, and he said, director, you're getting this job,

I suppose you get yourself ready for it. and it's like, oh my God, you know, to start with, you know, SWAT teams are good. You know, they're really good. But they're not that good. They're not CL Team. They're not Delta. They're not GSG-9 or GIGN or any of those other guys. And so Director Webster, who was the best director in the history of the FBI, the great man, still alive, is very fine.

He assigned a guy named John Byron Hottis, who, here's his education. He graduated from Duke. graduating from Duke Law School, got a master's in law from Harvard and a doctorate law from Yale as a Marine Corps captain. I mean, pretty good resume. A really good guy.

I was my boss for a while at headquarters, he lefty gave him the job to put this together. And what, there was an interesting story, I know it's true, that during a demonstration with SEAL team, you know what junk on the bunk is, you know what that is,

where you show all your gear to the visiting dignitaries. And so during junk on the bunk, Webster asked a seal team operator, wear your handcuffs. They said, we don't need it. We kill everybody. He said,

oh, my God. He's a federal judge. So he gave HOTUS this job to create the concept for the HRT. And he did it. And he called the FBI's hostage rescue team. I mean, he didn't want it. He didn't want it to sound

too violent, but he knew it would be. And so he approved it, signed off on it. The Attorney General signed off on it. And the president was briefed on it, and so they started trying to pick a commander. You know, they couldn't find anybody else so they picked me and gave me the ticket and we were off the races.

I think it's a humorous moment in your book. when you actually, because you mentioned that Delta didn't want the Conis job. And Conis, for those of you don't know, is continental United States. So, you know, something within, you know, the borders of the United States. And Delta didn't want it. But the telling, the way you told that was why Delta didn't want it. Because Beckwith is like, yeah, we would do this and then we would fade away and nobody would know anything.

And exactly. And the FAA's like, no, there'd be an investigation. You'd have grand jury. Sometimes you'd out all this. Wow. We're out. Take all your weapons. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that caused him apoplectic. If I. There's another interesting little sidebar there with the Hanafi Muslims who took over those buildings in Washington, D.C. They actually spun up special forces at Fort Bragg for that. Yeah, no. Yeah, and they were going to have them go and do it. And these guys, they were green berets, they were Vietnam veterans, but no one knew how to do this at this time. hostage was totally different from that other stuff

and it was interesting because that that event had to do with a big split between the Sunni black Muslims in the United States and one of the another group came to the house of the leader of the Hanaffis and murdered basically his entire family like horrible drowned children in the bathtub around a baby in the bathroom same that's awesome that's horrible horrible stuff. And I know one of the green berets who got spun up because that so the Hanaffis went and they took over those buildings because they were demanding justice. Yeah.

And so SF, thankfully special forces did not go in. It was negotiated and they surrendered peacefully as I recall. Thank God because, well, as you said, Danny, if we went, if we had to do a forest entry, it would have been a bloodbath. No one wanted that. But that also led to special forces also thinking about counterterrorism. and to create a blue light in 1970.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that was an interesting period in our time because we had a threat. We couldn't deal with. We didn't know how. And it's

to prepare a counter-terrorist team is it's a pretty big deal and it's really hard. But, you know, I get credit for creating the HRT. I didn't created it. The FBI created it.

I was a jockey that rode the Thurbrand horse, frankly. And they gave me, Webster gave me absolute authority to pick anybody in the FBI wanted. And that is huge. Because the HRT

was not a popular concept with the FBI. People didn't want it. We're investigators. We don't do this. But when the White House tells the director, you better get ready for you're going to get it. Well, he's going to get ready for it. Right. And that was, we can get into that a little later, but the FBI is probably the only entity in the world that could have put that together, the way they did it. And, you know,

I was the benefit of it. And I would also like to ask you to elaborate a little bit, Danny, another aspect of this is that Delta Force, as capable as they are, or special forces, in the case of that Hanofi incident, none of these elements are really supposed to be operating. in the United States under the U.S. law. No. Well, remember that we have, there's a law in the United States. It's called Posse Comitatis. And it was enacted after the Civil War to prevent the military from being policeman. And I was involved in two instances where we waived it.

I was a commander at the Atlanta Prison Riot. And the director called me, well, let me back up a little bit. I left the HRT. I was no one of the commander. I was an inspector. And the HRT was deployed to Teledega, I think. And the Atlanta prison right went down. And the assistant director of the inspection division ran into my office. You got to go to Atlanta. You're going to take that riot.

How many times you get a message like that? You go handle a riot. What are you doing today? Go handle the riot. So, anyway, I was involved in that. The director called me and said, can you do this without Delta? I said, well, I could have had the HRT here, but you got to have another riot. I'm here by myself.

Oh, not by myself, but with the SWAT team. And the important thing about the Atlanta prison riot was, number one, you can't get in. It's a prison. So you have to have breaching capability, which the HRT has, the best in the world. But I didn't have it. So he said, what are you telling me? I said, I need the Delta snipers and I need the Delta breaches. And he said, I'll call the president.

So he wrote the little order, and then he got his Delta force, and we took down that riot. But that was just kind of an, it was, it's an interesting political exercise to think that even though it's right to bring in the military, tactically, it's wrong as it applies to the Constitution of the United States. And I believe in God, the Constitution of my wife, that's about it. And that Constitution to me is extremely important. And they did it the right way. And, you know, we were successful. I got arrested 100 hostages that day. And that was a good thing.

And I would also like to point out that that Delta Force breaching expert that came down to the Georgia prison was previous guest on this show, Sergeant Major Mike Vining. I know, Mike. Operation Pocket Planner. He is amazing. He taught us breaching. The breach show on the HRT was a man, an agent named James Atherton. and James Atherton was a supervisor at FBI headquarters in the lab, an explosives expert,

and he would be the equivalent of a, I guess, a major in the Army. And I talked to him about breaching, and he said, he said, I'll do it. But he had to take a cut in pay, like a huge cut in pay to do it. So his assistant director wouldn't let him go. And assistant directors in FBI, That's kind of a big deal. It's a three-star general billet. So they think they're big deals.

They're going on. They're a bunch of clerks. But they, you wouldn't let me have them. So I'm marching to the director's office and said, okay, I can't put your team together if I can't blow a hole in the wall. So what do you want? I said, I want Jamie Afton. He picked up the phone and said, I think you can let Mr. Atherton go work for Mr. Paulson.

Of course, they all salute. So, you know, you have to go a little behind the scenes and pull your strings. and every commander that's ever done this will tell you the same thing. Yeah. It's not what you know, it's who you know high enough up the chain of commute. And Webster, he liked me. I took him through his confirmation to be the director. So we had a pretty good relationship.

I had a great general respect for him. And he wanted that team. When I met with him, this is a little bit of aside. When I went with him to take my command, I went to his office and he looked at me and said, I went to best counter-terrorist team in the role, I expect you to do it. That was it.

It wasn't good luck. It wasn't anything. You know, go do the damn thing. So we did it. What then is the difference between HRT and some of those other Army, maybe counterterrorism units? Like, what made HRT unique as opposed to all these other elements that were being stood up? I think the focus on hostage rescue and counterterrorism. I mean, the job of the military that you guys know better than anybody is to break things and kill people.

It's really not to rescue people. It's not key people alive. And I think that like Delta, like SEAL team, we focus all of our effort, or not all right, most of it on rescue and hostages. And all the options you have to do. Because if you think about it, the world we live in, you got to do a rescue on a plane, on a ship, on a subway, on an oil platform. We have to do that.

So if you think about all the things where people congregate, I've got to be able to do all those. And I think the focus of the HRT and Delta and SEAL team on those types of targets, you may have to do an open-air assault. We've done a lot of those, by the mind. We're pretty good at that. I think that's what makes the difference between them and us, that we focus on all these different.

Well, remember the accolally laura when they went down? You know what the HRT was doing when that went down? We know a SEAL team practicing taking down cruise ships. that was what we were doing that week. So every week you do something different. I mean, we can do any aircraft ever built. I took the boys out to Dallas one day, the whole team, and we were practicing different aircrafts,

because they're all different. Each airline is different. And we actually did the Concord. We practiced on the Concord. And then after we did the Concord, the Space Settle was there. So I told the driver, take us the Space Shuttle. said, all right, boys, get out.

They went, we got to do the space show. I said, no, but I want you to think about it. So I think that's the difference is that being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting. journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today.

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

So I hope I answered your question. It's basically our focus is on rescue and hostages. Unlike a Delta operator, correct me if I'm wrong, does an HRT agent also have to be prepared to gather evidence, give testimony in federal court, these sorts of things. Yeah, thank you for asking. That's a great question. We have to be special agents of the FBI. You have to have been to the academy and you have to be an experienced agent and have really good investigative experience when you ever even go through selection.

They have a special program now where you get kind of a leg up if you've been in Delta or force recon or something like that. They give you a little bit of an extra. But it's not go through select. I had Navy SEALs go through selection. It's been best. It's not easy. It's It's a difficult course physically, but it's also, I think, it's more mentally. It's hard. You have to write term papers. You have to give speeches. You have to do all these things that an FBI is going to have to do.

And also, you've got to be able to shoot like a, you know, like we shoot. And I think that is there. I think I can't give the exact number, but since 1982, slightly over 300 men have passed selection to be on the team. Yeah. I thought it was really interesting that part of your selection course was doing a

press briefing. Yes. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. First of all, I'll give you that little background. The deputy director of the FBI, who was an HRT operator, who worked for me in a field office,

who was under my community, had to go to a meeting at the White House, house with Obama and a Navy admiral to talk about the Captain Phillips rescue. And Obama loved the HRT. I can't say it was mutual feeling, but he did love us. Not me, because I'd laugh. And Obama said, I want the HRT on this, because we have a pretty good track. And the admiral with some amount of arrogance said,

Mr. President, we're going to be haloing. and this HRT deputy director said we've been doing it for 20 years and we did so I think people tend to underestimate what we can do and how we do it but I think I think the foundation for it is their experiences in agent I mentioned earlier I believe in the Constitution

and I think right now we're not following it very well in our country at least our president's not and I think that's what makes this difference. Are we deadly killers? I mean, I'm kind of old now, but I can sell you pretty good. But they are unbelievable. They do some of the things they've done. Remember the little boy that was kidnapped off the bus that was put in the bunker?

The story about how they rescue that kid is mind-boggling. I've been in a lot of rescue situations, and I'm pretty jaded. And that's the most incredible rescue ever in the history of law enforcement in our country. And I think it's because they're smart. Give us the rundown on Dady's perspective on that. Oh, okay. I got a brief on it. I just went to the academy and meet with the team.

And I came home. And I got a text message from the commander. He said, I bet you know where I am. Oh, that's where they were. They were in that job. They went there. And I said, I texted me. him back. I said,

he wants you there. You better watch. He's got IEDs everywhere there. And he texted back, oh shit. Well, I don't know if you remember or not, the negotiations took place through a tube. Do you remember that? He had this tube. They talked down the tube.

Well, after we had our little communication, he sent the EOD guys over there who ex-carried that team. This was in that tube. Explosives. Wow. He was going to detonate it. So, you know the story of the negotiation?

The guy was a total whack job. He was in the bunker underground, and he had a hatch. And, you know, the cables you use to secure your bicycle, you know, the long cables? He had attached those from the hatch into the sides of the frame. And we knew that. We figured that stuff out through a lot of capabilities we have. And so they decided to do an explosive charge and blow that hatch off. so obviously it became pretty apparent that he wasn't going to come out.

I think FBI's the best negotiators in the world. They're really good. When they say he ain't coming out, they ain't coming out. So the commander authorized him to do a dynamic entry. So they put explosives on that hatch, and our breaches are really good. I couldn't do that stuff. I blow my arm off or something, but they know what they're doing.

and they blew the hats but all the all the cable stayed on so they got the hatch off and they got the cable they can't get in and so the guy is putting round after round at them up to the hatch so an operator

whose job was to dive in there and get him I've seen the videos of it and you can see him he's actually rocking back and forth getting ready to dive in there and get this kid and the guys are cutting cables I mean, I talked to the commander about it. He said, I kept saying, work the problem, work the problem, work the problem, work the problem.

And they worked it and they finally clipped all of them and he dove head first in, got the kid, two other operators jumped in and put a 45 under the guy's chin and blew his head off. But think about that. I mean, how dynamic is that and what kind of courage that man have to do that? All of them, all three of them, because he was trying to. to kill them. And a little boy lit, no scratches, no nothing. And I'm asked

often, why do these guys do that? And I think here's the answer. You didn't ask the question, but I'll answer it anybody. You know, the movies say we do it for God and country. We don't. That's bullshit. We do it for each other. And that's

where we're there. We love our country, love our God. We're all there for God and country. When it comes down to when it hits the fan, you do it for your brother or your sister. And I think that's really important. Remember that that we don't let each other fail. I'll have a story I'll tell you later about not letting people fail, which I think is really, really important to this whole story,

is that the HRT is a, it's almost like a spiritual thing. It's an amazing group of people, and they look at them, we're almost like a cult. Does that make sense? I mean, we have that we are very, you guys are too. You know, you're a different call, but you're in a call. And I think that that brotherhood we have is pretty amazing. Quick story, I'm on a job. What was that doing?

I was on a job with the PGA Tour. I was a security director for the PGA Tour for 20 years. So I'm out there getting ready for a tournament. I took my wife and my grandson with me. and we're in a Marriott Hotel and we're in the executive you know, whatever, the upgrade Marriott Point thing and we're sitting there and my wife and

my wife and having wine and my grandson is there with us and my granddaughter. And this guy walks into the room and we look at each other. I knew who the hell he was? I knew it was one of us. And he came over and he sat down and said, hey boss, there's nature tea opera and there's just something there I don't know it's it's kind of spooky but

that's kind of who we are and he had I talked for over an hour and he never worked for me I was gone long before he got there but I think I think the point I'm trying to make here is that this isn't a job for a your job when you were a diver when you did what you did

your arranger that wasn't a job that was your life and it's a calling and I think most people that aren't in that business can't understand. They just don't. Danny, I mean, I want to percent agree with that idea. And it's hard to replace that when you've left it, you know. Oh, you have no idea.

Oh, my God. Yeah. When I left the FBI, the PGA tour recruited me to take care of a young man named Tiger Woods. You probably heard of them. So for 21 years, I did his security and the security for PJ tour. And we were playing, my first year with the tour, we're up at Glen Abbey, playing on the Canadian Open. I'm up on the driving range. I'm doing my thing.

And I got him, David DeVall, you probably heard of. He said, can I talk to you a minute? So I woke up here. It was with another player named BJC. They said, we want to know what's the difference between what you do for living with us. what you used to do for a living. That's really easy. I used to get messages like,

they're going to kill the hostages, go get them out. Now I get messages like there's no bananas on the T-boxes. So it's a huge difference, and it's just different, and you have to scroll back a lot. You have to lower your expectations of the people you work with.

It's just not the same, but it'll never be the same. I don't know about you. I miss the HOTS in this very moment. Yeah. Yeah. I miss that. I miss being with the guys.

I miss the door. deployments, I miss the challenges, the risks you take every day if you go to work, I miss that. I have a great life. I have a great business. I do a lot of cool things. I work in Africa and South America doing some pretty cool stuff, but it's not the same. I'm just a clerk now. Yeah. Yeah. Danny, I want to roll it, I want to roll it back a little bit to the question about like how is HRT different than Delta and SEAL Team 6 and whatnot because I think like in your book

you had some really interesting conversations between you and Webster and Hodes and everything about like Webster did not want to create a commando unit he did not create Delta and you you were 100% on board with that you did not want to militarize the FBI so and the motto that you chose

was very different it was Servare Deez Yes to save lives Yeah and I think Robson was right I know he was right I think that

you have to remain a cop A pretty special cop But a cop Because if we militarize our law enforcement Then I think you create hostility

I think the people Want to know we're Policemen And although it's our police are becoming more militaristic because of what we face now because of a threat. But I think Webster's idea that we want to be policeman first and then we're pretty deadly, though. We have the exact same skill set in CLT. Everything they do, we do it.

We just do it differently a little bit, not much. If you went and watched an exercise between CL team and HRT, you wouldn't know the difference. You can't tell. and sometimes they can't tell either, but bottom line is we're there to arrest people. And HRT has arrested a boatload of people. Right. And it didn't kill anybody. But when it's time to use violence, there are the good as there is.

And I think that's a real difference. And I don't want to say that your job or the HRT is more dangerous than Delta or SEAL Team 6 or, you know, any of the GIGN or whatever. But it's dangerous in a way that those other units don't have because you don't really get to shoot first. You don't. No. Yeah, you don't get to take the preemptive action. Your chief goal is to make the arrest and only engage if you're fired upon. Well, you know, first of all, let me say that all of our jobs are very dangerous.

Right. People say, what's the most dangerous thing you did in the HRT? and so to go to work every day. You're fast rope and you're putting, you know what we do. And it's very dangerous. You know, we kill many more people in training we do in operations, many more.

We've never lost an operator in operation. We killed a lot of them training, as you guys have. So I think the danger factor is the same. I think what's different is our rules of engagement. You know, if you get really screwed up in certain areas. You call it an airstrike. We can't do that.

Can't call it an airstrike because some guy robbed the bank. I got to go and get his ass and pull him out of there. So that's different. But their job is extremely dangerous. And ours is too. And I cannot tell you enough how much I admire those guys. First of all, they taught me my job. Delta taught me how to be a HRT operator and a commander.

They were wonderful. That was a great experience for us. And Sharon Williford was a commander at Delta when I had the HRT. Charlie had left. And they did unbelievable things for us. I mean, if you want to go into that a little bit, I can't get my help. We were going back and forth. Jeff Weymire, who is my ex-o,

and the guy John Similmon, we would go to Delta and start writing lesson plans on CQB and assault options because, you know, we have to have a million assault options. And one day I'm talking to Willardford,

he said, Danny, instead of doing this, weren't you doing the team here? We'll put you through the ringer. So we went in two sections, Blue went and then goal with, and we moved in to Fort Bragg and lived with them

and we learned that all the assault options. And that's a huge thing. I mean, we learned to do, I mean, pretty much everything we had to do, they taught us how to do it. The one thing we could whip their ass on was shooting. We got out shooting any of them. But they knew more we did about most things that we didn't know anything about. So, yeah, that was a great benefit to us. One of the things we had to do with the team was be certified.

and J-Soc certified us as a counter-terrorist team, and that was a huge process, huge. And Pete Schumacher, General of the Army, you guys know him, you probably know. He was my certifying guy. He certified my team and moved in with us and wrote a big evaluation. Yeah, these guys were ready, turn them loose.

Yeah. So that was a huge thing. And I can't say enough about what Delta did. did to get us ready. And then, of course, crazy Dick Morsenko came along. And oh, my God, that was crazy. And he is crazy. You got to get him on here sometime. He's crazy as we're at. And but super smart, super good. And Dick and I are good friends. But I guess I rattled along too much. But that's what Delfton did for us. They gave us their start. Well, and you had a really close relationship with Beckwith too, right? I mean, he kind of helped

you or like coach you. I don't want to say coach you. I mean, like, the whole, it's better to go upriver with seven studs than a hundred assholes or... Ten heads. Oh, yeah, no. Yeah. Yeah, I, I think Charlie had some suspicions about me. I'm a lawyer. Who likes lawyers?

I mean, certainly you guys, but I don't like them. I don't like them either. But I met with Charlie right after I got the team. We met in Crystal City, and we spent hours together. He gave me some really good advice. And that was the first one. We were going through selection at the time. And he said, better to go up the river with seven studs than 25 shithets.

And that's, hope it's okay to say on your program. I apologize for that. But he was right. He also told me something else. And this stuck with me even longer than that. He said, don't be afraid that you will be given an impossible mission. And you will be. Because your men will figure out how to do it and you'll be successful.

Your biggest fear is that you'll be given a fatal tactical mission from another unit. for you will forever be tarred with a brush of their failure. Ruby Ridge, wake up. We didn't start either one of them, and we had to fall out because we had to try to rescue what they'd done. And I've never forgot that. When the Department of Justice came in to interview me about both of us, the first thing I said to them and said,

how do you expect me to fix this? You know, they failed it, and you give it to me to fix? You know, if you want me to do it, give it to me to begin with. You know, the three of us could arrested David Koresh. Hell my wife could arrest the neighbor Corresh. But still they decided to run up there in a couple of cattle craters and jump out and say, come out of your hands

up and they got their ass shot off. Right. The ATF didn't want, and we'll get into Waco and Ruby Ridge and all that. But basically what you're saying is like the ATF didn't want to wait for a crush to go into town and grab them. They wanted to make a big production of it. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's

normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. There was no theater in that.

Right. There is no theater to snatch the guy out of the dairy corner. And I've done that a thousand times. You know, theaters when you, you know, you sue. up, you jocke up, put on your fancy gear, and run in and, you know, meet your chest and get killed. And by the way, I'm a big fan of the ATF agents.

One of my, one of my dear friends, Bill Buford, who you read about in the book, at CSA, he was the one shot off the roof at CSA. I'm sorry, wake up. And I met with him after that fiasco, and they had a memorial service.

I went to it, and he came up to me, and he said, I wish you and I had done, wake out together. Yeah. And I said, I wish we had too. Because he's a, he's an American hero, a really courageous guys than more stuff on all over do. And, but he had bad leadership. Yeah.

We can talk about leadership later too. Yeah, because that, because you guys had actually worked together in the past in a similar situation and managed over time. He was very much on board with like resolving it peacefully and getting these people. Oh, of course he was. he and I went into the CSA compound one night. We took an assault team inside the compound where, you know, if you've read the book, you know how heavily armed they were and what bad assesters they were. And Bill Buford, he's an American hero.

He's one of the best men I've ever known in law enforcement and come from kind of the same background I do. We're both single parents and married better women the second time and a good man. Yeah. So going back to, and this is. is why we want to do two episodes because we're already over an hour in. We have some viewer questions and oh good. That'd be fun. Yeah, so let's get to the viewer questions. And then I want to ask you about that very first HRT selection course that you ran because this was something

totally different. And I think it's really just that in itself is a very interesting story. But let's get to some viewer questions real quick. Bar way. First off, thank you, Richard Bowman. we appreciate it. Jackson, did you envision the HRT having an overseas capability? Operator Chris Whitcomb says HRT especially in pre-9-11

era was Tara snatch and grabs. How did that mission statement evolve over time, especially post-9-11? I was before 9-11. I was approached very early as a commander about developing capability to go overseas. Because if you remember,

after, shoot, Grenada, not Grenada. Oh, Christ. The group of the all committed suicide in South America. Jones Town. That of the Dionne. Jones Town, thank you. Thank you. I should have remember that. After Jonestown, the Congress passed legislation to make it a crime

and kill American citizen overseas. So we had jurisdiction. The FBI then had the jurisdiction. So I was called up to headquarters by Buck Reveld. and he said, what do you feel about operating overseas? I said, let's go. We'll do that. We can do that. We had Air Force Air Lift command.

I can go anywhere. And we, you know, we can do that. So we started increasing to some degree our ability to work overseas, primarily communications with SATCOM and stuff like that. So that was, that developed when I was still the commander there. And so it wasn't after, Chris was wrong. It wasn't after 9-11, but, you know. Yeah.

And, well, I think because it was the same way that NYPD, like, had sort of, like, you would find NYPD in Afghanistan. Yes. You know, pursuing a criminal case against people who attack the U.S. Very interesting. Thank you, Stuart Oliver. Oh, Dave, what are we drinking tonight? Well, first off, Danny, what are you drinking? I'm drinking TX whiskey, which is made in Fort Worth, Texas.

and if you hadn't tried it, you need to try it. It is the best whiskey on a planet. And I quit drinking tequila because I like TX better. There you go. And we are drinking LeFroid tonight. Our standby. You know, I do probably 55, 60 national television shows a year. This is by far the best.

Oh, thanks, man. No big deal. You heard it here first. That's the David Olson endorsement right there. You heard it. That's going to be our sound bite for now on. Let's see. Jackson, what is your proudest moment as the HRT commander?

Oh, my God. Well, I can tell you my saddest moment. Okay. Day I left. That was the hardest day of my life. Proudest moments. Oh, my God. I think when the guys walked out of the CSA compound.

Yeah. The most heavily armed group we've never faced ever in history of law enforcement, much better armed than Koresh or those other idiots. To see what those guys did there and what this big machine, that's the FBI can do with logistics and aircraft in surveillance and negotiators and intel guys that came together and one, joint effort to do that.

And we were facing long rockets, a tank, Claymore mines, hand grenades, automatic weapons, kind of what you guys faced, I guess, you know,

in your careers. So I think that's, that's one of them. I think the day that I got the prisoners, we got the prisoners out of the Atlanta prison, we recovered 100 hostages.

That was pretty big deal. That gave me some pride to, again, you have to understand. You have to understand. what the FBI is about. It's not,

you know, when you, in our business, it's not like that stupid movie taken. Remember that? Yeah. Where he goes in by himself

and he does all his crap. We go with a hundred guys do that or five or 30, whatever, like, you know, like you. And I think that the realization

that this big FBI grinding machine was so successful. Yeah. And that was a really proud moment. CSA especially. That was a really proud time. I think that's pretty much it.

I think some of the guys on the team that overcame fear, and you guys don't know how that works. We have time for a quick story. It's amazing story. Because it's about pride. Generation 2, selection, a man went through selection that was just like an amazing guy. He was the first alternate on the U.S. DeCathelon team.

He was a great agent. He could run, fight, shoot, climb, dive, all the stuff we have to do. He was number one in his class. And so he comes on, he goes to knots, no operator's training. I don't know in my office one day. And he comes in with his team leader, Fran Burke. And I said, what's up? He said, Lloyd can't repel off the dormitory, which is only 10 stories.

It's not a big deal. I said, what do you mean? You can't do that? He said, I can't do it. I said, you can fast rope, you can call out of a Sikorski, you can do all these things, all the clums. And you can't go off that building? He said, no, I said, when you got to leave, you got to pack your stuff up and leave. And he looked at me like, hit him in a head with a hammer.

And so I looked at his team leader. I said, take him back, make sure he does it, bring him back and tell me about it. Comes back 40 minutes later, still can't do it. he cannot do it. And this is a major stud. Take of the most studly guys you went through, you know, your ordeals with. And this is the top of the list.

So I said, you know, the name was Lloyd. I said, Lloyd, better you die today than not do this. Because the rest of your career, you're going to come back and know that that building took away your dream. And we all dream for this.

You know, one-tenth of one percent has this job. Right. So I looked at this team meter. I said, I want you to go over and put another line up. He said, we've already done it. So I said, get in the car. So I went over my kit bag and pulled my rappelling hornet out. And we went over and he's deadly quiet.

I was saying a whole lot. So we get in the other one and we go to the top. And I rig him in. I rope him in with a bottle opener. And I rigged myself in. I put him off on the ledge. And he's laying on the ledge. And I got behind him.

and I just reached up, take his feet and pull him off. So he's hanging 10 stories above the ground, which is not a big deal. And so I said, stand up and announce, and he just kind of wimply said, oh, I'm a pal. And so I smacked him in the face. So we got to go with him.

So we went down, and we went down six times. And on the sixth time, I went over, I said, I'll not have to do this again for you. He said, most sir, I got us. I know you did. So the XO comes over and he says, better you die today? I said, I don't believe that.

I think it's better to not live than do that, to die as a county. But that's not what's important. What's important is that we do not let each other fail. Right. Whatever he takes him, I take him, another guy takes him, we cannot let each other fail. That's why I made the comment earlier,

we don't do this for God and country. We do it for each other. And he did three tours. on HRT, had a great, successful career. And I think that kind of thing is important to emphasize the fact that we don't have a luxury of fail. If we fail, the United States of America fails, or people die. And I think that's really important part of that

things that nobody understands about us or understands about you, that there's this, I said, I was teasing earlier about being a cult, we're almost a cult, but this cohesiveness. And by the way, they're all men of very strong faith. They have great faith. And I always struck me that when we'd go in an operation, we had a man on the team as a minister. He was an HRT

minister, ordained. And, you know, we'd always say a prayer. God, make us fast, make us true, make us strong. What always struck me, though, is that the bad guys were praying, too. The same time I'm praying to God, they're praying to who they think it's God. Right. And I think

that's, yeah, I kind of have to sort that out. And And I don't want to get, you know, carried away with a religious lecture here, but I think faith is really important. What's important to us and show is. I think, Danny, the thing I like to add to that, I mean, it's amazing. But I think it's also super important for the other guys in the unit to see the old man get out there and take the lead like that. Which you, I guess you were at that time. You know, you're the old man of the unit, right?

And now- Yeah, I was 42. I was pretty old. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, I think, but, you know, that's your job. Yeah, yeah. You know, leadership is, you know, saying follow me and expecting to hear footsteps behind you. Yeah.

And I've seen some pretty miserable leaders. Yeah, I like horrible leaders. And I wouldn't going to be that. And I think it was important. And, you know, I think it's important, too, for a commander to be able to do everything they can do. I will tell you, I struggle with the swimming. I could do it a past test, but I was horrible in the water. First of all, I like to be cold because I'm kind of a sysic.

but I was not good in the water. But I was fine with the rest of it. I took the selection course. I figured it's about in the middle half of the class, popping firearms. But I don't think that you can be a leader if you can't do what they do. And I think there's a good aspect of that

because on the HRT, which I don't think is unique, but we did it, I never made a plan for all the ops I did. I never planned one of them. I give them them. mission and say you plan it, bring it back to me. Now, if I can't do

what they can do, how do I have to plan a work or not? You don't have I mean, if you can't do it, he said, well, you know, we can do this, this, this, well, you know, I know what they know, and I know I can't do that, so you can't do it either. So I think that's really important is that as a

commander, you have to have their skill set. I went in the shooting house every day with the boys and shot with them. Or I, you know, we'd build explosive charges. I'd build one too. Um, I mean, were they better than me? A lot of things? Oh, yeah, probably much better, almost all of them, but I could do it.

And I think that's really important from, I teach management leadership classes now. And I had this saying that leadership is not titled, it's preparation. And most people don't get that. It's you got to get ready and you got to be able to, you know, you got to be able to do it. If you can't do it, then, you know, get another job. Yeah. And, you know, it's, well, it's interesting because you as, you as. as a lawyer as an attorney and then also as a SWAT team member. I think that those two things,

because Webster, one of the reasons you were singled out, not only because of your tactical ability and your arrest history and all that, but it was also because Webster wanted an attorney to lead this to make sure that you guys weren't infringing. I'll tell you something really scary. think about this. The HOT was approved by a lawyer, the concept paper written by a lawyer, and a commanded by a lawyer. That's pretty scary. Shakespeare would not like that because he wants to kill all the lawyers and remember. So, yeah, that's kind of scary. We had several operators or lawyers too. I actually think, and this will sound really goofy, but I think having a legal background

which focuses on addressing issues. So when you're given a big job, instead of looking like a big job, it looks like a bunch of small issues. I think that helps a lot for me. And whatever, it works.

Sorry, I just want to get back to some of the questions. Richard Bowen, thank you very much for putting me in a better mood. Oh, thanks. He just donated saying things that we put him in a better mood. Oh, good. You put him in a better mood.

John Dugan, this simulcast has become like drinking beers with your friends on a Friday night. Thanks, John. That's what we aim for. That's true. Yeah, that's what we want. We just want to hang out with our guests and, you know, hear him talk. Alex Clinton, thank you very much. How much was HRT training based on Delta training?

And we've talked about that pretty much. I would say a huge amount, especially initially. I mentioned that we moved into the Delta compound, and we learned the Delta assault process. I learned a lot about command. I learned how to do what the boys did, and I think that helped me a bunch. But also, we can't forget Silt Team 6, because they participated with us in a lot of training. We have to do, you know, salts on ships, and we still do. Yeah.

So both of them were, America is blessed by their two military teams. They are absolutely amazing. The best people we have on the planet, the best commanders, and they go in harm's way every day, and we should think about that. Yeah.

Well, and in addition to American forces, one of the things you mentioned was like the SAS, the British do planning at a level that nobody does, and training. integration at all levels of the government, right? Well, thank you. Yes, I spent a lot of time with the SCAS. Michael Rose was very helpful to me.

I moved in into the SAS compound in Hereford, England, stayed there quite a bit of time. And we learned planning. That's what I learned from them. I still use that in my business today. I always have plan A, plan B, plan C, plan B. And it's because of the influence of the SAS. You know, they've all got these sissy-ass names.

You know, Chester and Sydney and whatever, and they are stone-ass killers. They are unbelievable. I mean, we get some ops with them, and we'd get up, you know, 3 o'clock in the morning. We'd get on the Lorys and go to the C-130s. And these guys would ride into the compound on their bicycles with their little bells on the handlebars.

I mean, they look like a bunch of pussies. But they are the toughest guys. on the planet. And we lived with them. And I remember asking a guy at dinner one night. He said, why do you do this? He said, so I can kill terrorists. Well, he wasn't getting around.

That's what they do. And the cool part about what they do, that we have not reached this, I don't think, yet. They do their exercise with the prime minister. I did one with them with Maggie Thatcher. She was the woman. And it's called Cobra. called COBRA then. And so

they go through this whole process with the politicians but here's the cool part about it. At some point, they say, you got it and they get out of it and they sign it over to the SAS commander and they can't

have any input they get the hell out of the way. And that is huge. As you know, you know, you get politicians involved and that kind of stuff. That was a huge huge thing for me. They were not very good

with tact, not tact, with equipment. I mean, I did a job with them with that infield rifles. This is in the 80s.

You know, that goes back to what, 20s or 30s or whatever? So I can't say they're the most sophisticated with weaponry and stuff, but as far as brains and operations

and the things they do, they're amazing. Absolutely amazing. Yeah. Now, how, I think, just as a humorous side note, how easy was it to find the SAS compound when you got to

Hereford? I couldn't find it and nobody would help me I mean they would not tell me where that damn thing was because the people in Hereford they have adopted that unit one day John Simeon and I went for a runner we got her ass lost we couldn't get back and nobody would help us and we walked around that time for like probably an hour before we finally figured out how to get back to the to the compound We get in there. Of course, they're a laugh.

They have great sense of humor. I remember the first day I was there, I'm up on shaving in my room, and this lady comes in the room. I don't have any clothes on. She walks in, good morning, saw you ready for your tea? I'm looking for towels, going around. And, of course, when you get there for breakfast, they said, did you meet Tilly?

He said, yes, I met Tilly. Thank you very much, you asked. So they have great senses of humor. It's very dry. They were great with me. When we did the CSA compound, this is important. CSA had great thermal, I mean, infrared. They had great infrared capability.

So I wanted to thermal. I call Michael Rose. He put a thermal imager, actually, too, on a plane to send them over so I could have it. He said, all I want, Danny is a briefing on your eye. Who's it? I mean, those things were probably worth $100,000 then. Yeah. And he came to me because, you know, it's like this brotherhood.

And I can't say the SES great. the French are great. Goofiest bedbugs are crazy to drink all day. They were a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun with them. Christian Proto was their commander. And he kind of gave me the idea for the HRT logo. At dinner one night, he said,

you know, Danny, all life has value. Even the man you may have to kill, his life has value. So you shouldn't remember that. And that's kind of the way we looked at it too. And so the boys wanted a logo. and so they wanted all this super tactical stuff and so we're not doing that.

So our logo is an eagle, American Eagle, bald eagle, breaking the chains of bondage underneath it says Servari Vitas, which means save lives. So they were, Chris John was a good man, very fun boyant, good guy, very helpful to me. The Germans are good too. Have you guys only been in the opposite with them? Yeah, German West Border Guard,

they're really, really good. Big help to me. Wagner came over and met with me with the director. And he talked to the director about how hard my job with me. And that helped me a lot. Anytime you can have somebody, you know, it's kind of a big deal. Come tell the director I got a hard job.

That's good for me. Yeah. Jim G., thank you very much. Was the shootout in Miami what caused the FBI to change their firearms policies? it didn't change their firearms policy but it changed their weapon remember the sheet out in Miami was a horrible thing

I had two friends shot there they got away it caused the FBI to try the 10 millimeter I don't know if you know about 10 millimeters the FBI went to it it was a really good gun amazing gun

amazing bullet but the quality of the gun was so bad, I ended up recalling it. They were falling apart and malfunctioning, and I committed the division in Oregon, and the assistant director of the academy called me and said, we got a foo bar here. Can you come fix it? So I left my command, came back for about a month, the academy,

and I couldn't fix it. The workmanship was so bad. And I love Smith and with some products, but that was some, it just didn't work. So to answer your question, it just put us on the road to the 10 millimeter, which evolved into the 40 and then we went back to the 9. And there's a myth out there that we got rid of the 10 millimeter because we weren't mad enough to handle it. That's total BS. I can't leave.

And that was just poor worksmanship on the part of Smith for a really good product. Yeah. I interviewed Ed Morales once about the Miami. shootout. He's American hero. Hardcore. He's amazing. Hardcore. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Shot in the arm, his arm broken. He shot a guy with a pump shotgun like three times

with one hand. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. He's a... Addy worked for me for a little while. Yeah. It's amazing. Mitch Maserl, thank you. Does Danny have an experience with Elizabeth Claire Prophet Church Universal or universal and

triumphant out in Montana no I've worked in Montana a lot but not with that church okay and Danny keeps mentioned the CSA and that's something that we'll get into later on because it's

a major opt for HRT in the beginning of the HRT yeah okay we have a couple more here okay thank you Stuart I think have an old

H&R T-shirt in a drawer somewhere that a friend Oh my gosh Are you serious? If I can find it will Dan, will Danny autograph it for me?

Absolutely. Absolutely with bigger. I'll put HR tire H.R. T-R. T-shirt. That was the FBI's

first shooting house. We built it out of tires. Oh, cool. That's awesome. And 5-7-6-5-75- Sierra. Any work with similar units in Canada or Mexico?

Yes. Not Mexico. No. No. I've worked with the Ontario provincial police SWAT team. We brought them to the Academy. They're red-hot good. Very impressed with the Canadians. Of course, they have the best snipers in the world, I think. Now, they have all the records. But yes, I have worked with a lot of them. I work with the RCMP a lot.

I was the director of security for the PGA tour for 20 years, actually. And I worked, did the Canadian Open and worked with all the cops up there. They have very professional police. Their politics are stupid. You know, the cops can't even take their guns home at night. Did you know that? No. No.

They can't carry their guns home in the night. No, they have to put them in the locker. So, well, I have a great deal of respect for the Canadians. They're awesome people, probably our best friends in the whole world. Yeah. So getting, so that's, that's it for the, uh, the questions right now. So now you have talked with, you know, you've talked to, uh, Webster, been briefed by Webster and, um, you're, you're, you're bringing these people in.

You bring on a, you consult like a shrink. Um, yes. And, and your number, like he asked you what your number one trait, character trait. Yes. He did. David Soskis. was hired by director. I think he was scared to death at the HRT.

He told me one time, he said, you know, I'm a little bit afraid you're going to take over a small country. I said, small country? Because that's what I'm talking about. So, yeah, he gave me David Soskis. He came to my office when I was still a unit chief, which is like a lieutenant colonel, and he said,

what do you want the first personnel in trade? He said, sense of humor. I said, that's really important. We're going to be in a lot of stressful situations. And you break stress by humor. And David was really good. He helped me with selection a lot because that's pretty dicey. And this is a good story about David.

We have a, we have a system where we don't know the names of the operators. We just say they're XY3 or whatever it is. And so he's briefed me on XY3. and he said, you know, Danny, this guy has some dimensions I'm not comfortable with and he started giving me all this psychological mumbo jump, I didn't understand any of it.

And he said, I don't know if he's going to be happy with this. And so I turned to Jeff Weimarer as Ex-O and he said, who is that guy? He said, that guy's a fucking asshole. And Soska said, he is an asshole. I said, I'm paying you all this money and tell me a guy's an asshole. I knew that.

So what am I paying you for? So he was really good validator. You know the concept of subliminal judgments where you make a judgment you can't articulate why? He was really helpful with me with that. He said, Danny, if you have a subliminal judgment, you don't want the guy to take him. So David was really good. But the guys used to goof on him like crazy. He'd deploy with us.

And they play tricks on them. Like one of them, Donnie Brigham one night was unpacking his kit. and there was a pacifier fell out of it because his baby helped him pack his kid who we deployed. So Sosk sees this pacifier laying on his bunk and he looks kind of fun at Don and Don and says,

you know, Doc, when I get really stressed out, I just suck on this nipple. That was not true. It was all BS. And Soscus, like, put into the whole thing or guys would come walking out of the shower in front of him. They'd hold hands and stuff. I mean, you know, the humor of these guys is insane.

and we drove him crazy. I mean, we absolutely drove, but he was a huge help to the HRT, and especially when we got into selection. He was, like, really helpful. Yeah. So your first selection course was 50 men and one woman? The first, that was the first selection. No, oh, yeah, it was.

I'm sorry. Yeah, Marianne Settle. Yes, Marianne, no woman's ever passed the HRT selection. Marianne came the closest. The problem with females in selection for the HRT is the same thing with professional baseball. They're super valuable. One year, Marianne was she was actually picked for the team as a staff member. She was an MVP on the team one year.

She was super valuable. And a great woman, a great asset to the team. But, you know, a lot of what we do is climbing. And the climbing with all that gear and all the stuff is, just hard for them. And Marianne did a heck of a job and then she got picked for the team but as a

she was our logistics woman, she planned all of our ops. And her husband went through selection next generation and he crapped out on an event like crept out bad. They'd taken the hospital. So I, you know, as

cleaners do, I went up to meet him in the hospital and I'm walking down the hall and she's in there talking to I mean, she said, I told you you were too fat to do this. And she is railing on that poor guy. So I walk into the room and he said, Commander, would you get her out of here? I said, she's your wife.

She's not my responsibility. I said, we're going to take a hike. And he went through sex again. He finally passed. He came back. But it's hard for women. We had some really great women try out. It's just they don't make, they don't pass.

Maybe someday they will. the last last time I talked to one of the commanders about he said I think we'll have a little pass him hope we do well and you mentioned that it was really it's like you said there's a lot of climbing so on the obstacle course is whatnot

the constant taxing of the upper body strength that they just don't have the muscular stamina near the end of the course the muscle mass right yeah but um what you wrote about her and the reason you selected her to still be part of the team

in a different capacity was just her absolute grit when it came to finishing. She just never quit. I mean, she was actually one of the top in her class, swimming. She just better swim than all of us. Well, except maybe a couple, I had several Navy SEALs,

but she just didn't quit. And you got to love that. She was amazing. And it's, I mean, that poor woman, she had bruises on her bruises. on her bruises, under bruises, on her bruises. Yeah. And I remember the last day of class going over and gave her a big hug, said, thank you.

You made us all proud. We have you here. And then when we picked staff, we picked her. And a man named Horace Muberon, who went through selection, didn't pass. He was a specialist for, he was a green beret, Vietnam. A lot of decorations. He was a war hero. But he couldn't do all of it. Yeah. He became the Intel guy from the team.

And great, great man, great asset. I mean, everybody didn't have to be a shooter. You know that. You know how important staff is. I mean, our radio guys were amazing. One of them was a Navy pilot, Dennis Hughes. He was the, he was the, he made his talk and did all our technology, all of our break-ins and stuff. And so it's like everybody in the football team is not a quarterback.

You're all. Somebody's got to, you know, drive the bus. and somebody got to do whatever. Yeah. And that was, the team did not function about staff. As a matter of fact, there's been a new change

in the bylaws in the HOTT Association where staff members can be in it. And we voted unanimously to bring them in. Yeah. Because we're not doing it work. Right.

Yeah. I thought it was, I don't know. Very impressive that when you say that she just wouldn't quit, Marianne Solo, that for the viewers, in your,

book you write, she gets to like the last obstacle on this course and she's out of gas like upper body wise because I guess she has to grab a bar and pull herself up. Yeah. She can't. So she shimmies up the wooden, the raw unsaned. Of the ball, yeah. Exactly.

Getting splinters and everything until she Oh yeah. She didn't care. Yeah. Who would not pick her? Right. How would you not take her? And you know, she did another cover stuff for us. And she was a very attractive, very shapely blonde woman

who was really pretty and we would go against these neo-Nazis, they all fell in love with her. So, you know, that was a great asset for me. I mean, and she was tough and she wasn't afraid. And probably if you

measured all of us on hearts, she'd beat all of us. Yeah. Just remember these people have babies. Yeah. I mean, come on. Right. You know, they're tougher. Right. So let's talk about Los Alamos then. Which one?

We did a lot of stuff. Your first demonstration. Are you mean Equus Red? Pardon? When we were said, Aquis Red certified? I believe so. It was the airplane truck incident. Oh, my God.

Oh, I guess. Well, we were almost done. Equish Red was our certification exercise, which tests everything a C-T unit can do, including deployment, everything. And so I went out, did the advance, brought the team out, and one of our team leaders, the guy who won the Silver Star, as a Navy SEAL, is driving our truck, and he drove the truck under the wing of the C-130, and it was cleared by that much. and it was the closest I ever had to come and have a heart attack so anyway

he had a little chat and it was over and he went on and become the deputy director of the FBI how about that number two so yeah I almost forgot about that oh my God

yeah that was pretty scared yeah yeah you don't you think God has a hand to some of this I mean there but the grace of God we wouldn't even be a team well worse than

that we deployed for the Olympics. We're in 2C-130s and we're coming into one of the airports near L.A. And we're on, we're like 500 feet off the ground and a small plane beers in front of us and almost put us in, almost put us on the ground. And fortunately the pilots, you know, as good as they are,

they avoided it. And we'd have lost half the team. And, you know, we'd lost 25 operators. That'd been in. And that was one of your first, that was 84, right? The 84, last year. Yes, 84 December games, yes. And that was really one of your first operational deployments.

And Darrell Gates, right? Oh, yeah, Darrell. Love Gerald. Yeah. He and I had a few battles. He said they were better than we were. Oh, that crap. And they weren't. But they were good. I mean, LAP's my team.

He and I got to be very dear friends. and we worked through it all. I told him at dinner one night. Yeah. We, we, we, uh, you cut out a little bit. Uh, your, your, uh, your, uh, Wi-Fi. Oh, I'm so sorry.

No, so, uh, you, you said LAPD, yeah, just, uh, we mentioned Daryl Gates and then you kind of cut out. Oh, I'm sorry. Dale Gates was the chief of police in L.A. He had a really good SWAT team, and they'd done a lot of training. And, um, he wanted his people to handle any terrorist in their, there. And Dick Rogers, Jeff Rogers, I'm sorry, was their SWAT team

commander. He and I became really good friends and at dinner one night, I said, look, if we get a job and you try to fuck me, I'll shoot you. But if you want me to hold your ladders, I'll hold your ladders. I say, why don't you bring your whole team back to the Academy, we'll train together? And we did. We paid for it. We brought

the entire SWAT team back. They live with me at the Academy and we'd have done something together. But they're really good guys. I mean, I have nothing but the greatest respect for the LAPD and especially that SWAT team, especially Jeff Rogers. You know,

they kind of, they kind of paranoid. They pioneered SWAT. They developed it and made it, you know, kind of sexy and movie star and all that kind of stuff. But,

yeah, they're good. They were really good. We had some caregivers. We had some pay-tolders they didn't have. But, you know, we had more assets than they did, too. So it kind of figures.

Really, that was sort of a political battle between the administration, between LAPD and the FBI, but it was kind of solved by the guys on the ground over beer. You know why? Because we knew someday somebody was going to say, Jeff, Danny, you got this, you got to do this.

And so we had to be able to work together. And I was very happy with that relationship. And of course, you know, well, we had no incidents at all. And primarily because of the work the FBI and LAPD, interviewed all the potential terrorists by terrorizing the terrorists. And it worked out just fine. It was a great experience for me. And I have a great deal of respect for all those guys.

So 1984 was the Pacific Northwest. So that was, oh, for the case Brink Rob. So that was the order, the group of the order, which was part of the Christian identity movement, which I think that a lot of these groups kind of branched off of, right? Yes, sir. Yeah, Christian identity is really interesting. The religious philosophy is that in the story you know about the Garden of Eden, the Temptation of Eve and the Old Testament, that the temptation of Eve was actually a sexual union between Satan and Eve,

and a child was born from that. Want to guess who is, what his name was? Kane. Kane, right, yeah. Yeah, and so Kane became the father of the Jewish race. because he was a seed of Satan. So that's why in their religion, it's okay to kill Jews. And it's also okay to kill FBI agents because we're soldiers of Zog,

the Zionist-occupied government. And so they were bad dudes. I mean, really bad dudes. And so we got the job to go get them out of their lair and put them all in jail. So that was another whole story. but it was interesting. And I think that's one of the, one of the things the FBI does is their intel.

And what they, the intel they collected on those people and the personality stores. I didn't make it work. They made it work. I just followed their script. You know, this is something that Jack and I have kind of talked about before,

about extremists, whether they're on the left or the right. And sometimes they'll switch sides, but they'll still, even when they switch sides, they move to the extreme of the other. side. But whether you were dealing with like the black liberation army or these white supremac, you know, these Christian identity, you know, identitarians or whatever. Yes.

And you're, because I know that even when you're in law school, you were curious about what made people drift to these, you know, like the American Nazi party drift to the very extreme. I went to a lot of meetings with them. Yeah. I have a theory about that. It's somewhat unique, I think. I think a lot of those people are inadequate personalities. I think if it weren't for inadequate personalities, that wouldn't have had a job.

I tell my children that you have nothing to fear from strong people. You have much to fear from weak people because they're costly trying to overcome their own inadequacies. And so I think these people, the way they get away from their inadequacy, and I'm not a psychologist, so forgive me if I sound like a goofball. But they know they're inadequate, they know they're losers. And so in order to make themselves not such losers, they have to find somebody worse than they are. So they focus on minorities, blacks, especially Jews, and they take out their own inadequacies on adequate people to make themselves feel better.

Does that make sense? I hope I'm making sense. here. And I think that's what it's all about. I think it's whether it's the left or the right. I think it seems to predominate on the right from my experience. I arrested Tim McVeigh. He was a loser.

I mean, there's no doubt he was a complete loser. Terry Nichols did him too. He's a loser. All these guys were a bunch of Michael Fordier, a bunch of losers. McVeigh went through special forces selection. You know how long he lasted one day.

I'm almost 80 years all I get through two. And he couldn't get through one. And because he was a loser. And so in order to make himself feel better, he last himself on to this, the Turner Diaries. I think you know what that is.

And all those, these neo-Nazi, white supremacist BS things that made himself feel better. And I think that's, that is, that is the core of the problem. And I think this is going to sound a little bit weird.

But I think that one of the reasons we are successful at CSA, which could have been the biggest catastrophe in the history of our law enforcement world, was because Ellison liked us. Right. He liked me a lot. And I'm not very likable. You probably know that. But when he would come out, the first time he came out,

he was dressed in blue jeans and looked like crap. When he came out again, he was dressed exactly like I was. He had on cammy gear. and he came out once and had that when he finally surrendered to me he comes out to surrender and this is very tense because we're talking about

two armies facing each other and one spark and we're in the fight he said I got to go back in and I forgot to cold my hair I said good God man but do it fast so I think he he wanted to be he would like to be one of you guys

he would love to be you he'd like to be HRT or Delta or one of those but he can't he's a loser. And so we kind of played on that. Our psychological profile of him that was done by a cat. He was amazing. They were so good with me helping me deal with that guy. But he comes back to him being inadequate. And he could never be one of you. He couldn't be what you guys did. Never in a million years. He doesn't have the guts, the strength, the courage, anything to do it. So he adopted this

Christian identity religion that focuses on minorities. Many of them fell there. Like a big guy. Now, because sometimes we find veterans and sometimes even soft veterans in the special operations veterans in those movements. And again, generally, I think that a lot of times it's more to the extreme right. And I mean, I guess right is the term even though they're not like pro government or anything like that. But we call it extreme right. Sometimes on extreme left, way more often. Do you think that when it comes to those guys that, because you're,

mentioned like being an HRT was like being in a cult, that sense of belonging, right? Yes. And I know that, I mean, for me at least, you know, being in the military and, you know, being a ranger, being these things was a sense of belonging. When you other, you know, when you other people, when you say that's them and this is us, you automatically form that sense of belonging. Do you think that some of the people do these movements in order just to feel like they belong to something, something to find?

Oh, absolutely. I completely agree with that idea, that they want to belong to somebody. And they find people of like feelings. And they do a lot on the internet. That's where a lot of it comes from. And that's how they recruit. A lot of internet recruit.

Yeah. And, you know, we're suffering because all these black guys out here, you know, they're subjugating. us and we're the white and we're the super race and total nonsense and they want to belong to something. So here's the danger of that in my view. If you have a group like that, let's say CSA, well it's okay to run around through guns and play the army and all the stuff they do and preach their religion. But sooner or later, if you don't do something, people leave.

So that's when the violence starts. It starts when people start to. lose their focus and they have to have to have an action that focuses what they're doing you know you guys know this

baronauty you only train so long right you can train so soon or later you got to get your butt in the water right you got to do a dive or you have to do a mission a raid or something and so I think the psychology of it is if you don't do something you lose your group

so you know like Kerry Noble the deputy commander of the CSA they sent him to blow up a church. And he didn't do it. He said, I'm not doing that. So, by the way, Carrie became a good friend of mine and came my daughter's wedding after I put him in jail.

Yeah. So let's actually talk about the CSA, because we have the order and Robert Matthews, which was one very much. Yeah, I know. Right. And then the covenant, the sword, and the arm of the Lord. which is what CSA is, right?

Covenant Sword, Arm of the Lord. And that was led by Jim Ellison. Yeah, they just died two weeks ago. And so how were you guys turned on to the CSA? Oh, my gosh. Well, I mentioned to you that I had an intel guy, and his job every day was to go up to headquarters and find out what's going on in the world.

And they briefed him on the CSA, because they were getting ready to kill Asa Hutchinson, who you probably know is the governor of Arkansas, who's the United States Attorney, they're going to kill a federal judge, and an FBI agent. So ATF had been looking at them for a long time. We had not.

So I get a call from the deputy director. Lee Caldwell, and I came up for the academy, I had on, like, you know, academy clothes and into this palatial office. And I go in and he says, I got a job for you. And he said, he explained to me what I've explained to you.

It's a Christian identity thing. They got, they got, they got, they have like, I think that 20, 25 hostages they were holding. They had an armored car. They had, they had almost the same gear of the HRTS. They had really good night vision stuff. They had Claymore mines, law rockets, hand grenades, fully automatic weapons. They had a Lewis machine gun. Have you ever seen one of those?

pretty cool. So they had all of this stuff and they had a training ground and they trained all the time. They had a Hogan's Alley like we did and all of them trained. And each house on the compound and there were three was a fighting position. It was pretty good. They were pretty good. So he's there brief for me and so I said okay can I deploy? And he said you didn't say holy shit. I said, you don't pay me to say that.

You pay me to do your job, my job. And he said, I don't think you have a lot of humility. I said, I don't have humility. You don't pay me to have humility. I've got 50 of the smartest guys in the world. I'm going to do this. I left to say sick him. So he told me to get out until I left.

So I went back and briefed the boys. Actually, Horace briefed him and I talked to them. And if you think about, okay, guys, I don't know what you're doing tonight. We're going to take down this carriage compound. and I described what I described you. Most people say, I ain't doing that, right? I mean, most people in the world say, why in the hell would you want to go do that?

And these guys, you know, you got to fight them to get in line. They are dying to do this. And they started planning at that moment to do this thing. I took a team out, and I met with this ATF agent Bill Buford, who knew about CSA, knew all of them. And we started planning about how we're going to, going to do this off and they're in the middle of nowhere. They're on both shows like,

make a long story short, we had to do an amphibious landing, but to get ready for it, to find landing spots, we had to do a recon and go inside the compound. So Bill and I and Bob, Larry Bonnie and CORE, Bob Core, we all went in with suppressed weapons of night vision gear and we actually went inside their compound and figure out how we're going to take down each house. Now we're going to get in and how we're going to get out. And then the thing that made the opt-thum, when I talked about the

FBI vina machine, we're briefing in the hotel and there's a knock on the door that's absolutely drop dead beautiful woman walks in. And her man, the name was Mary Ann Snowden. And she said, Danny, Bucklevel sent me, we're nightstalker.

I said, what the hell is that? Well, Nightstalker was the most sophisticated surveillance air plant in the world that had the most unbelievable, this is the 80s, right, they had the most unbelievable thermal image capability. So we can see everything you need to see. And I can talk to you and talk you. You will not be ambushed with us. That's a big deal, as you know. So she said, as a matter of fact, we're taking on a ride tonight. So we, later that night when he got really dark, she took me up in a night's talk. She, she took me up in a night's She was the operator.

She's the one that sat in the back and ran all the cameras. And it was a Mitsubishi aircraft that was like they'd probably kill more American pilots than Japanese zeros. It was a very dangerous airplane. But it was quite a deal. So she took me up and I couldn't even believe it because it had never been used in a criminal case in the history of the FBI. It was all the espioners. But Oliver B. Revell, who loved the HR team, assistant director, he wanted to. me to have it because this is a pretty big

deal. This case is a pretty big deal. And I was actually told by Lee called us that we expect you to have cash money. Rep. I never since that. So anyway, we used that and you helped me with patrols and all the things we did. They kept the bad guys from embushing me

or me from running into them by mistake or whatever. So that's how we lost it. And Larry Bonnie was the assault leader and planned the whole thing. And then the academy he sent a and negotiator out to help me

because here's the deal. This is really a departure. There's a lot of guts here. We can't use negotiators. You've got to be the negotiator because we know Elson won't talk to anybody but you. We don't do that.

Because the negotiation philosophy is that you have to have liability as a negotiation. I got to talk to the boss and he's the bad guy. Well, the position, of the Bureau was I had to do it.

I had to be a negotiator. So I turned the team over to the XO, Jeff Weymar. And they were so good that when I would negotiate with the negotiators, and I'd go negotiate with Nelson, it was the same. I mean, they knew everything I would say. One of the problems is, as you probably gathered, I tend to use a lot of profanity. And these guys are stone killers, but they don't use profanity.

Right. So he would have to ensure that I would, get into this dialogue and not slip in a few AMAPs or whatever and they were amazing I I would I negotiated that whole thing got surrendered to me but I didn't do it they did it well they I was just the puppet and they were I think we need to talk about I mean you like you I you talk about I negotiated the whole thing but I think the whole process of negotiation and first off Ellison was quite a character right he he got divorced and then he married a woman a single mother

right um and then a what 10 years later whatever decides that he's the second coming or something like that and yeah crazy and then that was crazy um that was really interesting because the first guy we talked to was carry noble right he walked out and you think about this from their port of view they're paranoid and as he's walking out all these voices are talking to them. It was my snipers. And he never saw those. He never saw our snipers. H.R.T. all these all these guys are snipers and Marines. They're really amazing. They can conceal themselves like as good as they can shoot. And so he's coming out. And there's one guy said, turn right here. I come this way and he is pooping his pants. He is really

terrified. So he comes out and I meet with him. And he said, I said, we're at the FBI. We have your completely surrounded. We don't have gunfight here. We want you to come out and talk to us. So he goes back in and Elson comes out. I told him he came out in blue jeans and he wants to talk and he is terrified. And so we continued this dialogue. And the dialogue was totally driven by these behavioral scientists.

Because I'm not very smart. I couldn't figure that stuff out. But they did. And they would actually. I said earlier, they would negotiate with me as Ellison. And they were spot on. They were really, really good. And

the negotiator, I'm sure, the behavioral scientist would stay with me all day. And, I mean, he was with me like my shadow. And he would ask me questions. And every now they'd just upset him, my thoughts on some profanity about have a hard time.

He thought I was going to do with Ellison. But I was I guess I was like the reading the script. And they gave me, they just gave me a really good script and it all worked and you know, often got them all out. But it was really touch and go. And then

I took a lot of heat from the bureau because I let Allison come out of water for him. Remember? So he came out to talk to me. I talked to him and sent him back in. Right. So I'd never done that in my entire life. I mean, I've never you know, I've raised a lot of people.

I never told them, you know, I'll talk to you later. Well, that's not the way it works. So I'm there. Go ahead. I was just going to say, I mean, in your book you mentioned that that, first off, Ellis wouldn't come out for quite a while because you guys were Zog, right? The Zionist occupied government or agents of Zog.

They first thought we were Delta. At first they thought we were Delta. They thought you guys were going to murder everybody. Yeah, exactly. That's what you were there for was to murder them. And even getting him out, you know, like it wasn't just getting him out and arresting him because then you were worried about then have to. I got a fight. Oh, exactly.

And then that got reported back to headquarters. And so one of the commanders there was a SAC special agent in charge named Tony Daniels was a friend. And so he comes to talk to me. He said, headquarters wants to know why he didn't arrest him. And I gave him this look. He said, you'll me tell him a shit in their hat? I said, yeah, I did. I got this.

You know, he's back there 2,000 miles away behind a desk, and I'm out of here in the jungle. So I had great commanders there because I was not the overall commander. I was just a tactical commander. So the guys that I worked for, let me do what I needed to do.

And he kept him off my back because that was a big deal. Why didn't you arrest him? You had him? Well, because he's got machine guns and rifles and, you know, all this stuff. So the command staff there was, really, really good. Yeah.

And so during the course of it, Ellison comes out to talk to me and he said, I need my spiritual advisor. I said, okay, who would that be? And he said, Robert Millar. Robert Millar ran a Christian identity compound

in Oklahoma. And he was charismatic, he looked like Colonel Fanders. He dressed in a white suit and all that stuff. And so I talked to headquarters about it. And they said, we don't, what do you want to do? So I want to send them inside to get these guys come out. Well, they about had heart attacks.

But, you know, this was not the run-of-the-mill FBI case. This is, well, you know, you know what kind of firepower you guys had in your job? They had the same thing. Right. They were good. And the last thing I wanted to do is getting a fire. I know we'd win the firefight. We didn't pretty easy, pretty quick.

But we didn't want that. That's not who we are. And so I got permission to get Robert Millar flown in. He met with me. And we had a long talk. And I decided to send them in. Pretty risky. Pretty risky deal.

Because if they got, you know, who knows, they'd kill them or whatever. So, send him in. I was going to say real quick, just for the viewers who haven't read the book yet, and I know you all will read the book, but the viewers who haven't read it, the reason you can send in another Christian identity person is because there are actually kind of two strains or a couple strains of this Christian identity, one more militant than the other.

So Malar isn't necessarily going to go in and goad him into war. Oh, no. No. And you know what? After talking to him, I knew he wanted a peaceful solution. And every time I talked to Ellison, I kept reemphasize,

this, today's not the day to die. We're not dying today. You know, deal what you've got to do with the government, but live to fight another day. If you want to fight me later, I'll fight you later. But this is not the day. It's just not the time. And Malar believed that too. And I spent a lot of time with him and said Clint Van Zamp was the behavioral scientist. You see Clint's on TV all the time. He's probably saying he's really good. He was the one that was kind of the architect or the strategy. So we sent him in. And he called me and he said,

I'm spending the night. I thought, oh, okay, I don't guess I can do anything about that, but I'm not really happy about it. So he came out a day later and came out and met with me. And then, oh, I forgot to mention this. Allison brought

his wife to meet me on the first day. He came out brought her and said, I want my wife to meet you. I don't know if I trust you and she will know whether I should trust her. So I guess she'd like, you know, goofy Texans or something. So she trusted me. And then we got about 30 hostage kids out that day. That was like, oh my, they asked me one of my most proud moments is that thank that I got a bunch of kids out, a bunch of babies out. And that was huge. They brought them out in this old. jalopy, it looked like the Jed clamped

Mobile, they came out, had all these kids. Then I had to figure I wasn't going to put the kids. And so we went in hotels and I'm sorry, motels and we put them in there. And that actually worked. And that was like, I think that, I'm sure it's the first day. So headquarters was pretty

happy with me. And the first day where there we get 25 hostages. So that kind of gave me a little bit of leeway, I guess. there's another interesting story that one night we're out there on post we don't go home

they were there 24 hours a day and you sleep in ships or whatever and so I went to the I went to an agent in the office there I said you know what we're eating crap

can you get me like 50 pizzas so they took a hue and they flew to a pizza hut landed in the park a lot, I wanted him bought 50 pizzas and brought him to the boys. And the next night, I said, I want 50 Big Macs.

So he took the Huey. That's probably some, there's probably I violated some law, I'm sure. He flew in and he bought burgers and brought them to the boys. So you got to take care. You got to feed the troops, as you know, but you got to take care of them. So that was,

the Little Rock office was really, they were great to work with. And they loved having us there because we got to do it. they didn't have to, which was a pretty good deal. So how is this standoff eventually brought to a conclusion? Bottom line,

and talking to Ellison, the message was, you can't get away. You've never seen our people. You know, we're here. We're ghost to you. And if you get in a firefight, we're going to kill all of you. I'm just telling you right now.

And one of the rules of engagement they gave to the operators, the snipers, don't kill anybody. Shoot them all on the shoulder of the leg. Now, that sounds really weird because we shoot to kill. But what I wanted, if we had to shoot somebody, I wanted that guy inside that compound screaming bloody murder because he hurt so bad.

And I killed him. He's just sitting there. He doesn't say anything. He's just dead. So the snipers looked at me and said, you're kidding me? I said, yeah, no, I'm not. If we have to take a shot,

I want you to want to know whoever it is. But if they come out with a law rocket, put one in between their eyes. I want him killed. Because I'm not having my guys. We know it along. You see no more than I am. So,

and I think what convinced him was that. It's not, today's not the day we're going to die and live to fight another day. And he called me and said, okay, we're coming out. And he marched them all out.

And I put the snipers along that road. I actually pulled a permanent little bit. We deployed the snipers. So as they walked down the road, every about 20 yards a sniper would stand. up. And in gillies, you know what gilly suits are? They were in gilly suits. You couldn't see them. All of a sudden, boom, you got a bad looking guy with a rifle point that you. And we were, you know, at that time, our snipers deployed with them 14s and our sniper rifles. So they all had their 14th who was close. So I think that what I was afraid of is they make a break for it. I was really concerned about that. And I did have the Arkansas State Police on a big outer perimeter. So we planned for that.

because I didn't know it was over until the very last minute. Yeah. And when they came out, actually, Allison said something really funny. He said, as my guys are standing up, he said, boys, you follow it, Dan. He's a good one. And, of course, they did, and we got him. That was the end of it. I still had some of the pictures from that surrender.

And that was a pretty, that was a pretty, that's a pretty good moment. Yeah. We had to stay around for a couple of days. And so the X-O and I went to the boat and went fishing. And we're out down in Bull Shoals Lake, which has great fishing. You ought to go there and some done. And we're having, we can't catch anything. I couldn't catch a cold.

I can't caught nothing. And I said, we don't seem to be having much luck. And he looked at me and said, well, I think we had a luck yesterday. I said, you're right. That was better than catching a fish. I think, you know, it was, it was, interesting, like, how much you had to reassure him, how, you know, like, you're, you would tell him you're going to jail, and then he'd go, well, is everybody going to jail? And it's like, no,

yes. Anybody who has a warrant in there will go to jail. Nobody else will be touched. Like, and they were. Like, there was a massive, like, I, I don't know if people could get away with that day. Because even with the compound. he asked you, are you guys going to take our home? You know, we're people going to live and you're like, we're not interested in the property where I think in a lot of cases the government would just seize the property and auctioned it off. Well, that was part of the negotiations. And very fortunately, for me, they let me drive that.

But I'm talking about life and death. I don't give a damn about the property. I got people to keep alive. It's my responsibility that, frankly, not to kill him, but I don't have to. and the Bureau gave me the latitude to do that. And I've been to that property since then. I went back and shot a couple of TV shows there. And it's still there.

It's a little bit overgrown. Are they still, are there still Christian identitarians? No, they're not. No, they're not. They're with, they're with Malar's group, not with Malar because he's gone. I don't know if you know or not, but Tim McVeigh, they went to Robert Malar's compound before he blew up the Burrell building. That's something we could talk about later.

I'm sure that's kind of talking. I think I'd like to kind of start wrapping up tonight's episode. Okay. Next week, next Friday. So part two, we're going to talk about Waco. We're going to talk about Ruby Ridge. Okay. Waco.

And then Timothy McVeigh or Oklahoma City. You guys tell me, you know, the highlights. Yeah. And then any like... Anything you want to talk about. But for those of you who have been asking about Waco and Ruby Ridge, Danny is very familiar with both of those operations. Yes.

Unfortunately, I am. Yes. And, you know, and the effects on your career and everything else like that. So that will be next week. Thank you. I've really enjoyed this. You guys are great interviews. I do Sean Hannity all the time.

You guys are better. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Martha McCallum, it's better than both of them. At least from a looking point of you. No, it's been, it's been amazing. And we can't wait for next week. Like I said, the book is almost 600 pages.

And it is, even though it says inside the FBI secret counter terror force, like, it's a massive autobiography of Danny's time. and really kind of a history of the FBI during your time there, which is super fascinating. Well, thank you. To open the book up, and there's a picture of me and Janet Reno in the book. I'm briefing her.

And if you go to the Oklahoma City of Bombing Museum, there's a hall of honor there. Honors all the people who are killed. When you walk in to that hall of honor, the first thing you see is my ugly mug with her right there. One more user question before we go. Yes. Did you ever know or knew a special agent that made it into HRT,

he didn't have military or law enforcement experience before they joined the Bureau? Absolutely, yes, lots. A lot of the Gen 1 guys have never been in the military. A lot of them. And I had a good mix. And, you know, I tell you, if you pass HRT, selects, I don't care what the hell you did before. If you pass that, you deserve to be there.

So guys, I just want to remind all the viewers, thank you for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it. Please make sure you like, share, and subscribe to the channel. Leave us some comments below. There's some links down in the description if you want to support the channel and get access to our bonus segments. And also, we have T-shirts and bugs and stuff like that, too. Yeah, and also you can find Danny's book on Amazon. Actually, though, there are two listings for it.

there's one by some used booksellers that are selling for like a hundred bucks or something but if but there's actually there's another listing where you can find the hardback and the paper there's a softback too and softback is the lighter version just modified a little bit yeah so so if you see a copy going for over a hundred bucks you can find a different listing that has I didn't know it's worth that much more reasonably priced coffees uh also Isaac Ellison, thank you very much and PPA Izzy. Appreciate it, man.

Yeah, thanks, man. And he said, great to hear from a fellow Fed Leo. So, yeah, the book is called No Heroes by Danny Colson with Elaine Shannon. And we will get into part two next Friday talking about some of these other huge operations and debacles and controversies that happen later on in Danny's career. And Danny, thank you so much for sharing these experiences with us.

No, you guys are great. I really had fun with this. It was fun. Plus, you let me have a TX, so that's even better. You can have another next week. Yeah. I'll do it. All right, thanks, guys.

Be safe. Hey, happy Easter. It's important day to. You too. Thanks, you too. And everyone else out there who's watching. Happy Easter, everyone. And we'll catch you again next Friday.

Okay, we'll talk later in the week. Take care. All right. Thanks, Danny. Bye-bye. Thanks. Thanks, everybody.