The Team House - Former Secret Service Agent Bill Gage: Counter Assault Team and counterfeiters, Ep. 89

Episode Date: April 17, 2021

Bill Gage joined the Secret Service in 2002 and soon found himself in a major national security investigation in cooperation with the CIA in which the IRA and North Korea were involved in counterfeiting US currency with such detail that the fake bills could not be detected. Later, he made it on the Secret Service Counter Assault Team which protects the President, Vice President, and other select principles. Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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

to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents, and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Special operations, covert ops, espionage, the team house, with your hosts, Jack Murphy, and David Park.

Hey folks, welcome to the team house. This is episode 89. I'm Jack Murphy here with co-host Dave Park. Our guest tonight is Bill Gage. Bill is a former Secret Service agent, also still in law enforcement today. We're really happy to have you on the show. You're our first Secret Service agent, Bill. Thanks, Jack. And as I told you guys before we went live, whenever somebody hears I'm in the Secret Service, I always get two questions. You know, was I in Columbia? And do I know Dan Bonjian? I always get those two questions. So I'm glad to be on. Thanks, guys. Were you in Columbia and do you know Don Bonjino? No, I was not in Columbia. I was at the White House actually when that scandal broke and we can get into how I heard all about that. And I do know, Dan, I used to work with Dan quite frequently. He was on PPD. He was not on CAT, but I used to work with Dan quite frequently. And the last time I spoke with him, he gave me some really good advice. I spoke with him probably 2013 or so. And he had left the service. too and we were kind of talking a little bit about what it's like when you leave the service. So Bill, as we get started here, as you know, Jack and I are both big comic book geeks. And we always like to ask our heroes, people like you, what's your origin story? How did you get your superpowers?

How did you grow up? And what drove you into law enforcement and ultimately the, not ultimately, but the secret service and then into what you do now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I grew up. My dad was a career Navy guy. He was enlisted. He did like 23 years in the Navy.

He was an enlisted guy. And I'm sure you know this, Dave. And Jack, I think knows a little bit about it. But, you know, I grew up listening to my dad, complained about no good, you know, no nothing officers. And in the Navy, there's this real break, man, this wall between officers and enlisted guys. You know, the officers have separate messes. separate birthing.

And so I just grew up listening to my dad complain about, you know, officers. And so I just grew up with this sort of, like, resistance to authority. And so I grew up listening to my dad complain about officers a lot. And also we'd grow up with my dad, man. We would watch these war movies, you know, Tor, Tor, Tor, Toro, Toro, and Kelly's Heroes. And we would stay up late. My mom would yell at us. And we'd watch these movies.

Excuse me, but, and, you know, I know you guys have talked about the, you know, so it's not Hollywood wars, not Hollywood and that kind of thing. But, you know, when you're a young kid, it's really cool to stay up with your dad and watch these type movies. And when I was probably four, man, we were at the commissary. I was a little bit older, maybe five or six, and we're at the commissary one day. And this lady was parked in the fire lane in front of the commissary and her car was on fire. and she was sitting in the fire lane. Her car was on fire, and she had kids in the car screaming, and she was just in, like, crisis lockdown mode, man,

like condition black, threat condition midnight, just sitting behind the wheel. She just was in a panic mode. And my dad just calmly walked over there and got her and the kids out of the car and moved them away. And the fire department showed up, and my dad just got back in the car and we went home. You know, it was like, here my dad was,

I don't want to call him a hero, but, you know, like, it was like, hey, man, this is what men do. And I think we went home and he grilled hamburgers or something. I don't remember. But, you know, that had big impact on me. And from my mom's side, long before you could be like this Instagram, YouTube, woke star, you know, where you're virtue signaling all the time. My mom protested with MOK and marched along some of those protests. I found that out just before she died. And a lot of times my mom, when I was really young, would have these young Navy wives over.

And Dave, you probably remember this from your Navy days. But these young girls, 18 years old from nowhere, middle America, they marry their high school sweetheart. He joins the Navy. They get married and they moved to Norfolk, Virginia. And a week later, he's out on a six-month med cruise. And they don't know anybody. And she knows nobody. The car breaks down.

The washing machine breaks. And, you know, we had nothing, man. We grew up poor government cheese, government butter. And, I mean, my mom, we had nothing. And she would still help these people, you know, help these girls out. And, you know, the other thing, too, I remember as a kid that really affected me, especially how I view law enforcement, you know, not only was I poor. I remember as a kid when we moved to Virginia, I was only six when we moved to Virginia,

and we were trying different churches to see, you know, what church my parents liked, and we were trying to couple in the Hampton Roads area, Virginia Beach area. And, you know, I remember one of them, the pastor from the pulpit was talking about the evils of interracial marriage. And I remember my mom being like, let's go, guys, we're out of here. And I remember another time, an interracial couple had actually walked in and sat down in a pew and people were clutching their pearls and fanning themselves. And my mom was like, we're out. Let's get out of here.

So, you know, I kind of got this sort of hero thing from my dad and this kind of, I don't want to call it, it makes me cringe to say social justice, but that kind of aspect from my mom. And during the Reagan assassination, nation. I came home from school and a lot of that stuff was being broadcast live on TV, you know, Dan Rather. And I remember asking, you know, my dad came home from work and I'd been watching that stuff up my sister and my sister had a big impact on my life. And I'm watching this stuff. You know, I'm a very young guy. And I remember asking my dad and my sister, who are these guys in suits like shielding the president? And they said, oh, that's the Secret Service.

And so it's like, hey, you know, I'm going to have three goals in life. I want to be a Secret Service agent, a police officer, and I want to join the Navy as an officer. And so I got two out of three, so I'm doing okay, man. I went to VMI. I'm from Virginia, so I went to the Virginia Military Institute with the hopes of getting a Navy commission. But at the time I was at VMI, I was at the height of the Clinton drawbacks or drawdowns at the military, and they just weren't giving commissions out. And it was like impossible to get a commission. So when I graduated, I went to law enforcement and eventually in 2002 got hired with the Secret Service and let me just get a jab in here to the Navy. I tried three times to join the direct, it's called the direct officer

commissioning program. I tried three times, even last year, tried to join and made it all the way through, man, to the final selection boards and like just didn't make the cut. It's like super competitive. So if any of those dudes are listening, you missed out, man. So yeah, that's my origin story. Well, if you would have gotten commissioned out of the MI, would your dad have disowned you? No, it was actually my mom, believe it or not. My dad secretly supported me. But again, back to these sort of like poor enlisted guys. You know, my mom was pretty savvy, man. She was not naive. And my mom's fear was that I was going to join the Navy be scraping paint off of ships or mopping floors.

I mean, luckily my dad was a, he had a rate, you know, he was an electronics technician, so he had a rate, he wasn't, is it a boatman's mate, Dave, what do they call the poor guys responsible for the ship? Yeah, that's a rate too,

but it's just a hard working rate. Like they're out there, like in high seas chipping paint. Yeah, and so that was my mom's fear. And, you know, I really had wanted to go to buds, I had a real interest in the seal program, but especially when I was at VMI, it was like impossible, man. They weren't taking a lot of officers.

What'd you say? Army infantry would have taken you. Maybe, maybe. Sign this guy up. So, yeah, I got two out of the three, man. So if any of those Navy guys that sat on the border listening, you know, I don't know. You guys missed out, man. So you're lost. Anyway, yeah. Yeah, they're lost. They're lost. But I got two out of three in life. of my goal. So I think I'm doing okay. But yeah, so I was, I got hired as a police officer after VMI. So I was in the Metro DC area from 99 to 2002. And then,

uh, to me a little over a year to get hired with the Secret Service and got on. Um, so I started agent training in May of 2002 and which was shortly after 9-11. So it was an interesting time. Um, and if you guys don't mind, I'll just go through kind of the training. pipeline if you okay for the secret service so you graduated vMI in 2000 no 1999 okay okay right great 1999 and class years are very important in vMI so you're like insulting me and then it was 2000 but anyway so yeah 2002 started with the secret service and um everybody but the FBI and the DEA all other federal law enforcement go to Fletsey which is the federal law enforcement training center. It's in Glinkgo, Georgia. It's a massive complex man. It's in an old

World War II Air Base. It's huge. And, you know, I got down there and it's like, it's crazy. You have people getting police trainings, people getting special agent training. And it's, the program I was in is a 12 week. It's called the Criminal Investigator Training Program. And if I love the movie Men in Black. If you guys ever seen that movie, there's a famous scene. where he says, you're what we've come to expect from years of government training. And that's what it's like down there. It's just this, let's get everybody through that has no, if you've been a cop before, you've interviewed people and responded to calls.

It's kind of a joke. But it's a 12-week program. It's not bad. But they have a bar on campus in the middle of campus. It's a pretty famous bar. They call it the G-bar. and beer is like a dollar. So I spent a lot of time in there,

just hanging out, drinking beer, and, you know, working out. But, excuse me, so after that 12-week program, then the Secret Service has their own 14-week school at the training facility in Beltzville, Maryland, which is called the Raleigh Training Center. And Secret Service Lingo, it's RTC.

And that's where you really learn about what the Secret Service does, the protection methodologies, protective formations, firearms. And that's really a step up from Fletsey. It's a very difficult course. A lot of physical training, a lot of precise firearms, a lot of defensive tactics. And so I got done with that course in November 2002

and reported to the Washington field office. So for, I mean, everybody knows Secret Service protects the president. But what else? But that's a very, very small. part of the secret service. Like what are the jobs or the primary jobs of the secret service? Yeah. Are you guys okay if I switch over to the Jura? We would love it. And so Jura is from an island called Jura. That's what you're saying. That's what the box said from an island called Jura off the Scottish coast. So yeah, a bottled at island, aisle of Jura, Scotland.

Okay. So it's a single mall. Sweet. Let me hold it up if you guys want to try it. Any people listening in if they want to try Yeah, we'll get a shot. So yeah, so the Secret Service I always hated the name. It has a really silly name. And you can look at the history. There's some historical disputes on whether it was the last thing Lincoln signed before he was loaded up his carriage to go to

the Ford Theater. There's a lot of historical talk about that. But anyway, it was founded in 1865 originally to combat counterfeiting, which was huge after the Civil War. There was a lot of counterfeiting. And it wasn't until the assassination of William McKinley, who was President William McKinley. He was assassinated in 1901. And that's when the Secret Service was tasked with protection of the president. And slowly over time, the Vice President started to receive protection and their families started to receive protection. The Secretary of Treasury, the Secretary of Homeland Security. And the Secret of Homeland Security.

and the Secret Service is also responsible for visiting foreign dignitaries, heads of states, King and Queens, the way it's written into the U.S. Code. So they sort of have dual responsibilities, financial investigations, including the counterfeiting of U.S. currency, and protection of the president, vice president, and it sort of says others as directed. It's interesting because there are two very, you would think, two very different mission sets. But I guess at the end of the day, outside of just the closed protection, they do a lot of investigations toward into threats. And it's interesting that Jay Edgar Hoover never snatched that up from you guys and was like, yeah, we're giving us to the FBI. But still, it's like an interesting historical curiosity in the Secret Service.

That's right. That's right. And nobody can explain it. It's super odd and weird. And there's been a lot of talk over the years of splitting that up and having. Because I believe in 2003 or 2004, when they created DHS, there was a lot of talk, because I was in the Secret Service at the time, there was a lot of talk of them putting all the investigative arms under Department of Treasury and keeping the protection arm with the U.S. Secret Service. And it just never happened. So it's definitely a unique mission.

But yeah, it's, now, you know, I read investigative. investigations. They've done big financial fraud cases. And so the guys out in the field, you know, there's offices all over the country, L.A., Dallas, Miami, New York, and most major cities and a couple small cities around the country, they have field offices. And those guys are investigating a financial fraud and then we'll do protection sort of part-time when they're needed. locally if the president visits that area or if they need to fly out as part of what we call or what the Secret Service calls a jump team where the assistance protection. The full-time details are based out of D.C.

Now, are the ones that are in the field offices, are they also responsible for investigating threats to the president and whatnot? Or is that they are? And so typically the way it works, the threats against the, president, there's an office within, and I think Jack and I've talked about this before, there's an office called the Office of Protective Intelligence, and that's based out of D.C. So let's say a guy in Des Moines, Iowa, says, I'm going to kill the president, or I'm going to harm the president or the vice president, whoever, let's say he does that.

Somehow that threat will probably make it to local law enforcement, or if not, sometimes it gets filter to the FBI and eventually it'll make its way to Secret Service headquarters where they farm it out. And those are treated with the utmost sort of, like, immediacy where it's like, you've got to go now. You know, if a guy gets caught with $10,000 in counterfeit bills, maybe you go out tomorrow whenever you got a chance. But if there's a serious threat against the president or another protectee, those agents are going out right away to find this person interviewing them. And the Secret Service, I would say, is probably the best in the world with protective intelligence.

They look at three things, threat, or sorry, means, opportunity and motive. Do they have one of those three things? And sometimes people are in a mental institution. They're not getting out anytime soon. They'll still go investigate that, but do they have the means, motive, and opportunity? You know, they don't have the means. They definitely have the motive, but they don't have the opportunity.

So they'll kind of write them off. and when I was there, there were some pretty serious threats against the president where, you know, we couldn't find the person. I wasn't involved in actually tracking him down, obviously, but we would get sort of the threat intelligence that, hey, this guy's out there and nobody can find him. That would happen quite frequently. But I would say the secret service probably the best in the world.

And that all came out of the JFK assassination. A lot of what was in the, I'm drawing a blank here. Is it the Werner Commission? I believe so. I'm not sure. Okay, yeah, yeah, I'd have to look it up. Sorry, but a lot of that came out of the commission after the JFK assassination that the Secret Service needed a robust protective intelligence section. And so they really stood that up and got it going. And I would say probably best in the world. Yeah. Now, are the investigative, is the investigative side and the protective side, are they two different career paths or will people switch? It's complicated, Dave. Um, when I joined. in 2002, the standard path that was kind of your only option, you would do about three to five years in a field office, wherever you came from, or wherever you were assigned, you would then

get assigned a permanent protective, or I should say semi-permanent protective assignment, PPD or VP at the time where your only options. That since increased, now they have some other protective related responsibilities you can do where you would have to move to DC. We do about three or five years on that detail. It has since changed for a variety of reasons, quality of life. Sometimes people just want to work cases and do protection part-time. They don't want to fool with moving to D.C. and moving their families. Sometimes people love protection, man, and they don't want to do anything else.

So it's kind of changed now. And you can do one or the other sort of, if that's, that's what you want to do. So can you tell us a little bit about, you said some of the things, but like when you were in the academy or in the training or RTC, what were your thoughts, what were some of the fun parts about it,

what were some things that you thought were amazing to learn? What sucked? Yeah, yeah. So it's a really cool facility. I mean, it's massive miles and miles of roads. There's a big massive driving track. There's several tactical villages. And for somebody like me, that that's all they wanted to do in life.

That's really one of their life goals. You're kind of like, wow, man, pinch me. I'm here. It's really cool. And the firearms are very, very difficult. They have some indoor firing ranges where you're doing really precise shooting. I don't want to say so much tactical shooting. There's a big emphasis on the fundamentals of firearms, trigger squeeze,

and site picture just really, really precise shooting. There's some medical stuff. There's a lot of, at the time, some of the, I guess they call it CBRA or whatever, the Kim Bio stuff is really standing up and we're getting a lot of briefings on that. There's a pretty nice pool with a kind of a helicopter mock-up and a plane mock-up, and you do some stuff in the pool. You know, if you survive a plane crash, there were some agents killed during Nixon. They were killed in a helicopter crash, and some of them were later found still strapped into the helicopter seat.

So there was some emphasis on that. And so there was some really cool stuff there. And the driving is really cool. I was really motion sick, man. I get motion sick very easily. And so what they do is they teach you at first how to drive in sort of a sports car. And so when I was there was Mustangs, I think now they drive Dodge Challenger's maybe. but you learn how to drive in a sports car first

and then they transition over to a limo to an armored limousine or an armored suburban and you know you start to learn the vehicle dynamics the weight shift and you drive different courses high speed low speed pushouts you know if you if you drive up and there's like a roadblock like you see and is it clear what's the Harrison Ford is it clear present danger where they get the famous

They get penned in on both sides of the street. They get pinned in on both sides. So you learn how to do pushouts. And you know, one of the cool things is you're actually doing pushouts. We're actually hitting vehicles at full speed. And, you know, you learn to hit them if you can at the light side of the vehicle.

So if it's a suburban, you want to hit them in the back side, not the engine side because that's the lightest and you can push out. And you learn off road, on road, off road, if you've got to drive on the shoulder, that kind of thing.

So, and then you get into. two, they actually bring in role players and you get into scenarios where you're working a protectee on a rope line. You know, that's when it really starts to get fun when you're working the rope line and they have role players and different AOPs or assault on protectees. So that's really cool. You learn the protective formations and that's when it really gets fun.

That's awesome. Super cool. So, Bill, I'd really like to hear about one of, I think you said it was one of the first, like, big investigations you got involved in, which was a counterfeiting case that involved all kinds of different players and North Koreans and all sorts of stuff. I'd really like to get the story behind that. Yeah, which so that case was really unusual for the Secret Service because a lot of cases, the Secret Service was not sort of set up or geared to work that type of case. It was more of an FBI type case. The Secret Service does really good investigations.

but they're really not set up for a long-term multinational investigation involving intel agencies. So, yeah, so I got to the Washington Field Office in 2002. And this is a true story, man. So being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today.

Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with. parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. I got there in November, 2002, probably March of 2003. I just was in the office one night. I was assigned to an investigative squad, and it was probably almost five o'clock. And my boss at the time, he just leaned out, who's out there,

Gage, you're out there, come in here. And nobody else was there. And he came in to, I walked in to his office, and he said, hey, I just got a call. You need to call. You need to call. this lady at Maine Justice. There's some kind of case. They want some Secret Service expertise on and you're going to have to get an SCI clearance and you need to give them a call and apparently this needs to be done ASAP. And I think it was like a Friday, man. And I said, all right, I'll get to it on Monday. And so Monday came around and I made sure, you know, and if you already have a, and I don't want to get into the weeds and I'm not at like clearance guy, man, but, you know, if you have a top secret

clearance that the SCI is like another level. You have to sit through another briefing. And so I sat through an SCI briefing and got my clearance called this lady at Maine justice. And what we say at work like what it happened was see what it happened. Bush had given his big speech on the axis of evil right, North Korea, Iran, in Iraq. Did I get that right? Yeah. Was that the axis of evil? Okay. Yeah. So there was a National Security Council meeting, and they were really concerned about North Korea. Kim Jong-il at the time was sort of holding the world nuclear hostage. And they went around the room at this national security table, and they said, listen, this country's currency is not traded on the world market. You can't go get North Korean – it's not one. I think it's yen. I don't remember what the North Korean currency is, but you can't get it on the world market. It's not publicly traded.

how is this regime being funded? And they said it's illicit activities. They're counterfeiting U.S. currency. They're counterfeiting pharmaceuticals and arms trades. And so the National Security Council said, well, if they're counterfeiting U.S. currency, why aren't we investigating that? And it kind of went around the table. Nobody had any answers.

And so the order came down from essentially the president and his staff What's going on with the counterfeiting of U.S. currency? Well, buried in the bowels of the Secret Service was this dusty old counterfeit case from 1989 that turned out the Secret Service had been investigating for years. So in 1989 at the Bank of the Philippines in Manila, long before, and things have probably changed now, but at the time, some of these foreign banks did not have very expensive money counters. And so tellers would sit here and count U.S. currency.

And the $100 bill is the most commonly traded currency in the world, the U.S. $100 bill. And so this poor Bank of Philippines cashier, she comes across this bill and she says, it just doesn't feel right to me. Something's up with this. and the way it worked at the time was she put it in a stack of counterfeit bills and it made its way back to secret service headquarters. This was 1989 and the Secret Service has the world's best document and or counterfeit currency examiners. And they examined the bill. Hey, this is a 100% legit bill.

They sent it back. Wow. And so every couple months, these bills started coming back. And somebody at the Secret Service, this was like 1990-ish, said, let's take a better look at this bill. And the way the money is printed at the Bureau of Printing Engraving, it's pretty fascinating. You can read about it or you can take tours. They actually have these engravers that take these plates and they hand-carve them, okay, into the plates. And when they hand-carve them, they make these things that the Secret Service cause defects.

And I'm really getting into the weeds here, guys. it's like, I'm really walking, man. Yeah, it's fascinating. Okay, so the engraver will make a defect, not purposely, but it's just the way he engraves his, when he, like, is touching the metal. And it could be a little tiny piece. And it's impossible to replicate that.

And the Secret Service calls them defects. And they'll have them all over the bill. So sometimes there have been like four or five, what we call defects. And so when you're examining, a bill as a Secret Service agent, you know what the defects are. You can look and be like, yeah, that's counterfeit it. It doesn't have the defect. And so they examined these bills and they're like, yeah, wait a second, it's printed on the same paper. It has the same ink, but it doesn't have these defects.

And so an investigation was started. And this investigation ran all the way through to 2003 when I got assigned and they had agents chasing at the time there were in the late 80s and 90s there were a lot of Hezbollah guys passing these bills so the service was chasing these all over the Bacca Valley there were

a lot of CIA assets trying to figure out the source of these bills and in the mid to late 90s the Secret Service discovered that the president of the IRA this guy named Sean Garland who was a

known IRA terrorists had been passing these bills and had a whole crew of people passing these bills. And so several intel agencies began tailing this guy, Sean Garland, and he would make trips to Russia and to North Korea and get packages of these bills and then go to Europe and launder the money to then fund IRA activities. And listen, I had no business work in this case at all, zero man, I mean, this should have been like a really senior agent. I just happened to be in the office late, you know, an afternoon. And it somehow, you know, the government works bureaucracy. It just filtered down to me.

And so I started working this case with some, the two U.S. attorneys or assistant U.S. attorneys. I don't want to give their names here. One is retired. One is still an active U.S. attorney or assistant U.S. attorney. phenomenal consummate professionals. I mean, unbelievable national security experience. One of them was the lead prosecutor on the Robert Hansen case. And they really taught me how to work a case and getting evidence.

The three of us spent days at the CIA going through diplomatic cables. And just to keep the listener so I don't bore them. But eventually, after many trips, overseas. I went to several countries, worked with several foreign intel agencies. The CIA, we had to coordinate with all these U.S. government agencies. Some of the guys, we had an informant. I'm not going to give up his name or what country is from,

but this guy was a really highly placed informant. If they found out who this guy was, he'd be killed, gave us some information on where Sean Garland was. and so one of the highlights of my career, man, I was sitting in a command post and I watched the SAS take down Sean Garland in Belfast, which is, you know, a lot of people think Northern Ireland is actually a separate country. It's not. It's a, you know, part of the British Commonwealth. And so the SAS, a couple of these guys sat in a pub drinking beer. Most of the day went for him to show up and he showed up at a certain place in time. And I watched the SAS do a takedown. And so he was arrested. He ended up making bail shortly thereafter. He went back to Dublin, and you can go on his website, shangarland.org. He died last year, maintaining his innocence. But one of the cool things about that case was it was the first ever indictment of the Republic of North Korea, the DPRK. It's the first indictment of the DPRK being involved in illicit activities.

And you can Google the indictment. I'm very proud of it. We did great work. Got a great partner. I'll give his initials. J.H. If you're listening, great dude. Him and I worked together on that thing, man.

And we had a lot of good times, a lot of wild stories of stuff we did on that case. We were in trouble all the time, all the time. But it was really cool. We flew some people to the United States, some informants, some intel assets from MI5. We had another asset from MI6 that flew over. It was the first time in MI5 and MI6 asset testified. in a U.S. court. Unbelievable.

We had to arrange security for these guys. It was really cool. But when it was all sent and done, we got an indictment. Sean Garland died. He was stuck in Dublin. He could not leave.

And yeah, so that was a case, man. And I worked that all the way up until I got to Kat. What were you getting in trouble for? Or who were you getting in trouble with? So my partner, J.H., we were in real uncharted territory. I mean, some of the stuff we were doing, nobody had in the Secret Service at least,

and the FBI, for that matter, I mean, according to the people of the Assistant U.S. attorneys worked with, no intel assets had traveled to the United States to testify in a U.S. court. And so, you know, him and I were a, whatever the saying is, I've heard different versions, but ask forgiveness first, you know, or ask forgiveness later, kind of guys. And we just did what we thought was right. And so, yeah, I mean, we were doing, I mean, we would meet with diplomats, man. We would meet with the U.S. ambassador to Ireland. Somebody would call us and say, hey, can you fly over here and meet the U.S. ambassador to Ireland?

And we would be like, he wants a briefing on the case. We'd be like, yeah, we'll be over there. We'll fly. And we'd go over there and meet this guy. And we'd give the ambassador a briefing. And then we'd get in trouble that we didn't notify, you know, Secret Service supervision. Right. Be like, listen, man.

I mean, and, you know, the funny thing was when some of these assets came over to testify, I'll never forget this. We had gone, jumped through all of these hoops to get this U.S. or this foreign intel asset to testify in U.S. court. We actually had three of them. And one of them who was flying over, it was a Friday afternoon because a lot of these flights over there leave at night so that they land here in the morning. It was he had loaded up his. flight. He was over the Atlantic Ocean and it was five o'clock DC time and they're ahead of us.

So whatever time he is over the Atlantic, my partner, J.H. and I, I mean, we're packing up going to leave because, you know, he was the asset was going to land. He was kind of have the weekend kind of Saturday, Sunday to do his thing. And then, you know, we were going to brief him and he was going to testify before the grand jury Monday. Secret Service supervision comes to us at like five o'clock. We're literally walking out of the building, hey, this is a bad idea. We don't want this guy to testify. And we're like, listen, this is like a hurricane off the coast, man. This thing is like in motion. We can't stop it. And, you know, those kind of things. So we were always in trouble for something.

And it ultimately ended up in an indictment. And him and I did great work. He's still in federal law enforcement. That's why I wouldn't give his name. But bang up guy, we had a lot of good times. he's a great investigator. What was their justification for not wanting you to bring, you know, I mean, if the foreign intel service itself doesn't have a problem with it or, you know, gave him reasonable cover or whatever. Right. You know, Dave, you know, I'm sure you were Jack never experienced an officer in the military

that never wanted to threaten their career. So these bureaucrats, you know, these comfy GS-14, SCS-1s, and the Secret Service, when, you know, And we, we, my partner and I were great. We were briefing our supervision all along the way. This is what we're doing. This is what's happening. And then when it comes time and it finally gets up to somebody,

I don't want my career threatened. Right. Because these two Yahoo's who were GS-13s think it's a good idea. So that's why. They didn't want their career threatened. But of course, oh, man, we got this indictment, Dave. Oh, these guys. All the credit.

The supervisors, yeah. Look what we approved. Oh my God. This is incredible. And so, yeah, yeah, that's how it goes down. I think it's so awesome. It's like something out of a Tom Clancy novel on one hand. But it's like the whole thing kicks off because a Filipino woman in a bank in Manila is feeling $100 bills. She's like, this doesn't feel quite right. And she says it to the Secret Service ultimately. And they're like, nah, checks out, honey. It's good. Yeah. And it's just years later that the bureaucracy catches up.

like, uh, nah, something's going on here. And, and, and because of 9-11 and George W.

Bush's speech, now there's this renewed emphasis on Canada. Renewed emphasis. Yeah. And it was funny because I, uh,

you know, I eventually got on CAD in 2007, we can get into that. But 2008, 2009, um, and this happens, man,

I'm telling you. And I'm not a foreign policy guru. You know, I try to keep up. I do a lot of reading. I was a history major of college, but every so often, I'd be on cat and I'd be in a motorcade or I'd be sitting outside wherever the president was and I'd get this phone call.

There would be this renewed interest in the case. It's like people get interested in North Korea when they're testing nuclear weapons. Right, right. And then they just forget about it. Right. And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, there's more interest. There's more interest. What's going on with this case?

And so that's, yeah. And there's some really classified, highly classified portions of the case that I obviously can't get into. But, yeah, I was, man, I was lucky. to be a part of that thing. It was really cool. How did you guys connect this kind of cold case, you know, that have been floating around for a while to your case and the whole North Korea thing? Well, a lot of people didn't believe. A lot of people thought, well, it's all intelligence, right? A lot of stuff was gathered by intel agencies, CIA, NSA, foreign intel agencies that shared it,

MI5, MI6 that shared it with the CIA. And so a lot of people, especially Secret Service supervision at the time, were like, oh, it's intelligence, we can never use it. There was a lot of wiretaps from foreign intelligence agencies that had heard some of these North Korean diplomats. We had a lot of wiretap transcripts. And so people thought we could never use this in court. And they never even bothered.

And so my partner, J.H. and I, man, we were like, well, is it possible? Can we use this in court? Has anybody ever asked? And so the way him and I operated, man, I mean, he's a dude. He's got a lot more testosterone than I do. And, you know, we would fly to these foreign countries or we would bring a lot of these foreign intelligence agencies. We'd bring them to the U.S. We'd take them out for beers, man. We'd take them out to Old Town Alexandria. And they would be like, why did you bring us here? We'd talk about that later, man. Let's have fun. Let's drink some. some beer and we've hang out and talk and you know a couple of these guys I had to my house we had cookouts we had a cookout at my partner's house and we'd be like hey it's saturday man we'll talk business Monday and uh you know Monday comes around they're like you know what we think we'll share that info with you guys and it's it's not so much that we were wine and dine and we're pulling any wolves over their eyes it was that for years um you know they just would get a stiff arm from the secret service and my partner and I were kind of the first time that they had met guys that were like

you know, hey, what's up, man. We're just dudes. You're a dude. We're in law enforcement. You're in law enforcement or intelligence. And we're all doing the same thing here. And it just, we kind of bridge that gap, Dave, if that makes any sense. Yeah, absolutely.

So, fascinating. From the, from the North Korean side, were you able to uncover how they were able to manufacture such convincing U.S. dollars, U.S. currency, and ultimately, were you able to stymie that flow of counterfeit money in the end? So let me answer the second question first. No. That very first bill from 1989 still shows up today as counterfeit. It's still in circulation, that original series of counterfeit from 1989. So what ended up happening was the Secret Service, really the Department of Treasury, I should say, in cooperation with the Secret Service, had to do an entire redesign of U.S. currency. And I've, God, it's been so long since I've studied this stuff, guys. But I believe in 2004 or just before that, the Department of Treasury and Bureau and Printing Graving reintroduced a new $100 bill, which was called the Big Head. So Ben Franklin's head takes the whole portion of the bill.

And that was done directly in response to the super note, the 1989. Another feature of the bill that the Bureau of Printing Engraving introduced was what was called OVI or optically variable ink. So on the right side is a very, very expensive ink from a company called SIPCA that's in Sweden, I believe. It's the only place where this is produced. And it says 100, and if you turn it, it goes from green to. gold. That is very expensive ink. And very strangely, the North Koreans redesigned their currency shortly after this was introduced, this $100 bill. And strangely enough, they were ordering OVI ink. That's very strange that the North Koreans would order that. And you can read all of that

in the indictment. But short answer, the Secret Service, we never figured out how they did it, and they're still doing it to this day. We, my partner and I, just in consultation with Intel agencies and Bureau Printing Engraving, our assumption is that they were reverse engineering it, just kind of looking at it. And all of the materials in U.S. currency is proprietary, right? The paper is made by craning company. Everything is proprietary. And it's, you know, obviously you can't purchase that.

So, for instance, and you can read it in the indictment, The OVI ink that the North Koreans were trying to purchase, they were trying to purchase Liberty Green, which is the color of that OVI ink. And when SIPCA, the company, told them, hey, no, that's proprietary. Why would you? And they were like, well, we want the next color shade green that you can get. What's the next color? So we think that they reverse engineered it. Yeah.

Fascinating. I mean, it's very interesting what happens when you have the full power of a government to engage in, basically. basically organized criminal behavior. So what I ended up being lucky in participating in some debriefs of some defecting North Korean diplomats. And I sat in with some agency folks. And I mean, what we talked about was classified, but I can talk about that I met with these guys or sat in on the debriefs.

And basically, you know, you look at their country. Am I allowed to curse here, man? Yeah, absolutely. 100%. All right. Their country is shit. Their infrastructure is shit. Yeah.

So they're, you know, we're sort of insulated here in the U.S., but when you travel abroad, there's North Korean embassies, man. And the embassies, you know, these diplomats are poor. I mean, they don't have money. And so one of the ways that they help fund sort of running spies and how they pay for things as they get this counterfeit currency from Pion Yang. Fascinating. Wow. Yeah, it really is. And it's just something like, I mean, I've never heard this story before.

No. I heard, you know, I heard a part of this story from a different contact about super notes in the Becca Valley in Lebanon. That's what I, you know, and that's what I was saying earlier, Jack, was like the Secret Service and the CIA were chasing their tail in the Baccah Valley. And what, what, what, here I go again with what had happened was. And so what had happened was, listen, and this is true with any illicit activity, man. If you're a drug dealer, if you're a money launderer, you get these piles of money. Well, you've got to get rid of them somehow. So what was happening was the North Koreans were printing all of this money.

And they had to get rid of it somehow. And so they were using it with subversive groups all around the world, right? So the IRA, the PLO, the PLFP. Am I saying that right? In Palestine, yeah. Yeah, that's right. And Hezbollah. So they were funneling this money.

to other subversive groups. So one of the big arguments, you know, my partner, J.H and I, we'd sit in these briefings with State Department folks, NSC folks, DOD would be in there, NSA, and we would listen to these debates about, well, is this economic terrorism? Is this subversive activity to try to just annoy the United States? We would sit and listen to these debates.

And who knows, man, you know, I think it was economic terrorism. I don't know if it was an attempt to just take down our economic system. I don't know. But I do know the Department of Treasury, they don't want any of this to get out because they were like if there's a confidence, if the confidence is lowered in the value of the U.S. dollar, if we let it get out there that we have counterfeit $100 bills all over the world, confidence in the U.S. dollar is going to plummet. Yeah.

And so it was like real hush-hosh for a while. Is there any indication or any hint to how much? the North Korean government was printing. No indication. Part of it, part of the difficulty in estimating the money. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five,

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becoming leaders in fields like policy, research, technology, and more. Tap the banner to learn more about the College of Education or visit education.U.U. is a lot of people overseas will take U.S. currency, and I'm not joking, like, stashed it under their mattress. Some of these people don't have banks. Now, some of it's changed. I haven't investigated this case since 2007. So some of it's changed with the advent and proliferation of sort of electronic currency and PayPal.

But at the time, people were legitimately taking $100 U.S. bills and stashing them under the mattress. And so it would be years before some of the stuff would get in circulation when people would take their life savings, which might be $5,000 U.S. dollars, and they would put it into circulation by buying something. So when I left in 2007, it was in like the $90, $100 million range. And that was just what had been detected. Right, right. And so a lot of the counterfeit detection equipment that ended up getting distributed at the different FRBs, the Federal Reserve Banks around the world, a lot of that equipment was designed specifically to find the defects present in the supernope. Wow. Did you guys have an opportunity to interview the woman at the bank of Manila and what it was that clued her into it?

No, no. She had long since retired and we were never able to find her, but we were able to read kind of her handwritten notes. And it was fascinating because it was 1989 and in this foreign country, they didn't have the sophisticated money counting machines and counterfeit detection machines that they have now. and it was all done by hand. And it was just, it was interesting because she, you know, I mean, she probably handled tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars every day. And she's just sitting here counting and just something didn't feel right. She had felt so much genuine currency.

Yeah. U.S. currency. It was just something was wrong with this bill. Yes. It was fascinating. Yeah. And it really is. So then the next step in your Secret Service career, the counter assault team,

can you talk to us about what is the counter assault team? what was your pathway there? Yeah, so one of the big missions in the Secret Service on the protective side, and I shouldn't say missions, but sort of like ethos when you're doing protection, it's one of the things, when I watch these cheesy celebrity bodyguard videos, when somebody runs up for an autograph or something, I laugh, but it's the Secret Service operates on this thing. It's called Cover and Evacuate, and,

maximum to the protectee, minimum to the problem, right? Maximum to the protectee, minimum to the problem. So if somebody comes out with a knife, don't go for the knife. You're just to shield the protectee, right? So maximum to the protectee, minimum to the problem. Well, Kat operates on the opposite, which is maximum to the problem. Okay. So in 2007, I tried out for Kat.

There's a very strenuous selection course called the cat selection school and I didn't make it the first time. There's a very stringer. I passed the PT portion but there's a rifle and a pistol course that you have to qualify and I passed the rifle and I failed the pistol. Went in the second time and passed the selection course the second time. Got selected to go to the cat school and went

so that would have been in 2000, early 2007. That's a really silly story, man. The second day I got shingles. I had this massive outbreak of shingles. And one of the cat instructors, shingles is not contagious, but one of the cat instructors

had not had chicken pox and was petrified that he, I'm really sorry guys, but my daughter has come, do you want to give me a night, sweetie? a good night, sweetheart.

Have a good night. That's all right. You're good, sweetie. You're good. One of the cat instructors had not had shingles, and he was petrified, or sorry, had not had chicken pox. So he was petrified that he was going to get it. My daughter just knocked over a lamp. We're good, yeah, guys.

And sometimes my daughter won't take no for, not. and get kissed good night. So they made me recycle. And so I went through a second time and was doing great. But there's a very specific CQB portion, which is they don't take any. You get two failures during the CQB portion, which is three weeks. You're doing a lot of live fire, live breach, live bangs. And I just had a brain lapse, man, where I just like,

absolutely just had a brain lapse. I had a mistake. Yeah. And it wasn't a safety violation, but I had to roll out of the school. I got, I got flagged. And they said, listen, you can come back again. So at the time, I was the only person to do three cat school. So I came back for a third time, made it through. That's all our RATC. And it was interesting. At the time, all of the, most of the civilian cats, instructors because they had a civilian cadre of instructors at the time and this is right at the height of Iraq and Afghanistan as far as the military was the only guys that had real experience at the time were all law enforcement guys the military guys were all overseas fighting wars and so um

a lot of the tactics the techniques even the equipment I mean when I came on cat the equipment was terrible. We were still using long-barreled M-16s. And when I got on Kat, I mean, things, it was like, bam, man, this change happened. We started getting all this cry gear and short-barreled rifles.

And, you know, double bangers, triple bangers. We started getting all of this, better ammo, better gear. And so but yeah, I made it through and I got on in December of 2007. And, and

So Kat's mission is divert, suppress, neutralized. So if there's an attack on the president, and as I went through my cat career, some of the mission profiles expanded. We ended up protecting Sasha Malia, and we ended up getting a sign to Biden. And sometimes we would travel with foreign presidents when they would go overseas.

I tell people all the time, the most dangerous trips I ever took were with former presidents. Like former President Carter, he would go to like Cairo, he'd go to the West Bank. He would take these super dangerous trips. Yeah. And I think the guy legitimately, like, he just loved it. I think he loved some of these dangerous trips.

But so Kat's mission is the birth suppress, neutralize, and attack. So the shift can cover and evacuate and get out of there. That's what Kat's mission was. So, and I should say, man, like, I barely made it through cat school. I was like the worst shooter, the worst on tactics. I just hung on by a thread, man. I just, I'm just a slow learner.

And I remember on, you know, you make it through. And I remember the graduation day. I remember one of the cat instructors came over to me and he said, you didn't really pass. You just didn't quit. You know, he was like, you just, you just like hung on by the skinnier. teeth every single day.

And at first, that kind of bothered me a lot and for a couple years. But I look back on it now and I'm kind of like, well, man, I hung in there, you know, and I did what I could. And, you know, you have to understand. And I've worked with a lot of FBI folks. And I'm just talking about the Secret Service in particular. Listen, you're talking to, I mean, I worked with guys that were Ivy League graduates, former SEALs, SF guys, just University of Michigan.

And I mean, I worked on one of my guys I worked on Kat. It was on my Cap-Ltoon for a long time. You know, he'd paid professional hockey, had gone to University of Michigan, just unbelievably smart people. And I just, I was humbled every single day I was there. So it took me a while on Kat,

probably three or four years. I'm just a slow learner, man. And it was just a while before I could really feel like I could hold my head up high as, you know, be on the range. And there were like, probably first two or three years, man, where I'd be the worst shooter. I'd be embarrassed. I'd rip my target down really fast. I went by to see it. And after a while, it just took time for me to

kind of pick up little things. And, you know, I remember there's a course of fire that's a sort of the cat standard qualifying course. And right at the end from the 15 yard line, there's this automatic course of fire where there's several facings of the target. And I remember watching this guy when I was in cat school, this active cat operator was coming through and he was able to empty an entire mag in this five second facing of the target. And I mean, he's hitting like, you know, 30 rounds in five seconds on full auto just like this. And I was like, I'll never be able to do that, you know. And after I'd been there a couple years, you just pick things up and, um, it's just unbelievable guys I work with, man. Um, I'm not going to mention their name. Sorry, I know one guy,

I'm sorry. I'd love to mention his name. But this guy, man, he'd rarely work out. out, just drank all the time. And he would just rip off 25 pull-ups. He'd go run a six-minute mile and he could shoot back-to-back, perfect scores, pistol and rifle. He used to drive me mad, man. Yeah.

Well, I think, though, it's a great example to people who are, whether they're considering a career in some sort of law enforcement or intelligence service or just in their everyday lives, like, don't quit. Yeah. Don't quit.

You know, you, you know, you, were the only person at the time that you went to RTC three times and you didn't quit. You know, you were there for a couple years, three years or whatever, before you kind of felt like you belonged. So don't worry about the whole imposter syndrome. Like, I don't belong here and sort of self-select yourself out of something. Just if you want something, don't quit. Yeah, and I remember the very first day of cat selection school. and I remember sitting in this first day

and one of the instructor cadre came in and the first thing he said was the only person who's going to put stress or pressure on you is yourself and I really didn't at the time I just you know I was happy to be there and I was like you did your head spinning because there's so much stuff going on

but I've always looked back at that and it's 100% true man the only person that puts pressure and stress is you you know and uh yeah and i i was able to just by the skin of my teeth get through the school and then just barely hang on um because the the standards are tough and you can be thrown off man i mean if you don't maintain the uh qualification standards you can be tossed and i was just barely hanging on and it just it just took time and um you know we had a lot of guest instructors especially firearms that would come in i was one of the first before anybody knew who Pat McNamara was, he came to the Secret Service.

He had just left, you know, he had already left Delta and had, I forget the name of the training company he was with, but if you guys remember from your various interactions with him, but, you know, that company, the training company had let him go and he branched out on his own. And we were like his first, Kat was like one of his first classes he had ever done. And just we had Kyle Lamb come in and just these like little things for Fireroom. you would learn about trigger pool and, you know, side alignment. You would just pick up little things. And it was just over time, a couple years, I just kind of, I got better, man. I got better. And it was just desire to learn.

Like, how can I get better? And it's so humbling, man, because you're with guys, you know, pull out a gun, just cold bore, man, boom, boom, boom. You know, they're shooting a perfect score. And you're like, fuck, man. How can I get, how can I? You know, it's just this drive. And I was a competitive guy.

I played a lot of sports and high. school and I just I always wanted to get better. Yeah. Pat McNamara is the man. He's a good guy. I'm sure he was able to impart some of that wisdom on it. Oh, unbelievable. And you know, he wasn't what he is today, kind of the Instagram star. And I don't mean that in a bad way, but yeah, you know, I just remember like seeing him for the first time. It was the middle of the fucking summer, man. It was like 130. You know, Virginia is like high heat, high humidity. And I just remember on this outdoor range. And he's just wild and crazy and you're like who is this guy and then you you watch some of how he shoots and i remember the last thing we did the last day

was one-handed steel target um just like last man standing and i've never seen this man he and and of course there was uh there were some cat guys and some counter sniper guys in this pat macdemeanor course and one of the counter sniper guys and one of the counter sniper guys from the Secret Service, it was him and McNamara. And they just kept from the 50, one-handed, steel, boom, ting. And back up. And they got to about 75, and the CS guy missed. And here's Pat McNamara, one-handed, 75 steel.

Boom, ting. I was like, wow, wow. It's insane, man. Yeah. So, yeah, it was awesome. For our listeners and viewers who are shooters, shooting one-handed is tough in and of it. self and then at 75 yards with a pistol.

I could I could do I could do 52 handed maybe on a good day on a good day. One handed is 75? No. Yeah. Yeah. One of the one of the parts of the cat pistol qualification course is six rounds from the 50. Mm-hmm. On a standard cue target.

And I was so bad when I was trying out for cat in my first couple of year. I would just aim for the top of the bottle, hoping that I would get down in this part of the bottle. So you're a jerking of the trigger then. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's unbelievable. But, you know, eventually got better.

Sure. So, yeah, I was on CAD 2007 to 2013, went to several different countries. Kat's mission expanded. We started protecting Obama's daughters. They had a threat level there. So I got on CAD in 2007. the next, geez, it was really soon after I gotten on, Obama was the first candidate to receive cat protection. Excuse me, because of the threat level.

So a lot of cat's tactics, gear, equipment was changing because we were getting a lot of feedback from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the threat level was increasingly. We had the first black president. And so, of course, Bush, even though he was. a former president after the election in 2008. He had started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so he had an increased threat level. And so Kat, I mean, it was total, like, high-speed train, man. I mean, so much was going on.

And they, we, we, we, cat from scratch, I know a couple guys, a really good dudes had to create for the first time. We called it a two-man element course where, uh, it was just two cat guys on one of the daughters. We had to rethink our entire tactics, how different it is when you're operating in a six or seven-man team versus two. So a lot of stuff was going on. So when a cat, when personnel are out there, they're out there with the close protection people also, right? So the closed protection people guard the, guard the, the principal. Protectee. Right. And then you guys assault basically or engage. So yeah. So usually cat is off somewhere. So when the motor,

kid they're riding back. If it's an event, say like on a stage somewhere, Cat is really off because they don't want to be, if God forbid there's an initial attack, they want to be off so they can survive the attack and then come in and give. And the Secret Service, we call it the shift, which is the close protection, the PPD, VPD, whoever is working, called the shift. We want to, Cat wants to survive the attack so that we can come in and give the shift enough time to cover and evacuate. fascinating. It's, I mean, it's really smart, you know. They didn't talk about wild wild west though. Yeah. Yeah. So just to back up a little bit, Dave, you know, Cat was, that all came out of the Reagan assassination. So prior to the, well, yeah, prior to the Reagan assassination up to the Reagan assassination, there was no cat. Cat was born sort of out of the Reagan assassination. The Secret Service had to,

this thing they called the muscle car, which was a Grand Torino station wagon, and they would just load it up with agents with shotguns and Tommy guns, and they would ride at the rear of the motorcade, and if there was a problem, they would just jump out. I mean, no tactics, you know, no standards. It just, they called it the muscle car. And at the time, it was usually filled with, you know, Vietnam vets.

Fascinating. And I mean, you're, I can only imagine the standards of shooting. that you must have had because generally, I mean, in a hostage rescue situation is sort of the whole CQB thing. There are a bunch of terrorists and maybe one hostage, but in your situation, there are a bunch of civilians and one aggressor,

one target generally. Yeah, and which was one of the most difficult things that we trained for, especially, you know, look, in 2008, for Obama's nomination to the, or the Democratic Party's nomination to be president in Denver at the DNC. I mean, I was on a CAT team, and our role was to respond to the stage,

if anything ever happened, if there was an attack while Obama was given his speech. I mean, I don't even know what that thing ceded. I think there was like 65,000 people there. So you're really dependent on the CS guys, the counter-sniper guys that have a lot of Overwatch. you know, to help you out. I mean, it was, it was pretty intense. I can only imagine. Have there, I mean, because the Secret Service I imagine has to have a somewhat proactive stance,

our mistakes, obviously not shootings, but our mistakes made where they, they launch on somebody, like aggressively to, and find out that whatever they were doing that looked suspicious actually wasn't? not with cat um you have to remember when when at least from the the president or even the vice president when it comes to the president or vice president they're usually on camera man and it's being broadcast to the entire world you know if they're given a speech it's usually live and being broadcast so as far as mistakes happen as far as capping deployed that has never happened um i mean I've been in dozens of situations where we're sitting there looking at the cat team leader. Like, should we go, man?

I mean, I was in Martha's Vineyard one time. And Obama, it was, would have been the summer of 2008, 2009. And Air Force One is landing in Martha's Vineyard, or actually, Nantucket. It's actually landing in Nantucket because then I think he was going to helo over to Martha's Vineyard. but, you know, Air Force One is on approach. And as Air Force One is on approach, we had some Overwatch in a helicopter above and said, we have a group of guys in camouflage with long guns moving to the runway.

And it's like, well, holy shit. So you have all of these cameras tuned in watching Air Force One on approach, right? So if they either wave off and circle around or if they touch down and then take right back off, I don't want to call it an international incident, but it's going to make news. Like, why is the president circling? Right. And so, I mean, the team leader is like, we're just going to hold, man. Let's just see what this is.

And they're reporting like, oh, these guys are moving. They're doing like a military formation. They're doing like a bounding overwatch type military formation. and they're wearing camouflage and it's like shit what is going on here and so Air Force One circles around and these Boston State Police these uniform guys end up intercepting these guys

and I know you guys hate hearing this this is a no shit true story man these fuckers were playing paintball and I swear to you man and they had just not gotten a memo and apparently this was like a Saturday paintball club that played paintball here every Saturday or whatever day it was and

had just not gotten a memo. Yeah. And it took a couple minutes. Air Force One landed and Obama got out, was none the wiser, got on the helo and we got out and we ended up lifting with him, I think, over to Martha's Vineyard. And this all goes down in like three or four minutes. And so to answer your question, Dave, you think if we had. gone full bore man and cat had launched and we engaged these guys these were like weekend warriors

man paintball like larpers and you know so major international incident and it was avoided because i'm not going to give the guy's name the team who's a great dude he's still in the secret service i mean if he had given the order we would have gone yeah and you you think you know and i don't want to say we would have killed those dudes but being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting.

Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. You know, you think about the camera footage from that. Sure.

And I'll give his initials, K.E., if you're listening to him in, it was a good decision. Solid decision under fire, man. He's a good dude. Yeah. I mean, especially, I mean, I don't know if that's same. Maybe with the Secret Service, I'm surprised that the police force handled it as well as they did

because you would think that maybe today, and under today's heightened tensions, that, you know, the police might have had, or a different police force might have had a different response to seeing guys moving tactically in that kind of situation. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, ironically, that same team leader, K.E., we were in Mumbai, India,

and during Obama's visit there, geez, man. And I'm sorry if I'm getting the dates wrong, if there's some, like, internet warrior out there checking my dates. 2011, maybe 2012. When Obama went to Mumbai, he was visiting a school. And we were sitting,

you know, Kat had our position outside the school. And one of the CS guys, the counter-sniper guys, came on the radio and said, hey, we've identified a sniper. He's back behind a window. He's got a defalade. He's got a blanket over the window. And all we see is the barrel.

And he's directly overlooking the position. And Obama's going to, were to take the stage and it's like fuck man and uh so we're ready to go i mean we're thinking this is it and we're about ready to launch and ke is like guys just wait a second hold on just stand by one so they send the local um indian police up and that we could probably do a whole show on this visit man that indian police were terrible it's one of the worst trips i've ever been on i'll never go back to india but um in fact you can go Google it. The police chief of the Mumbai police force was fired after this visit. Google it. I'm telling you. He was fired after this visit. But we're ready to launch, man. We were going to go. I mean, this was it. And K.E. was like, guys, just stand by one second. He's secure in the limo. I trust the limo. I trust it. Just stand by one second. He got on the radio and said, hey, hold him in the limo. Hold him in the limo.

and I think they gave him some bullshit story, told Obama it wasn't ready yet or whatever, and they sent the local cops up there. It was some police sniper, man, that thought, I mean, we had gone over this, that we couldn't have police snipers, Secret Service had primacy on this type thing, and it was some Yahoo Indian police sniper man that thought it would be cool to look at Obama through his rifle scope. Oh, my gosh. And you, again, an international incident, you think if we had launched on that

and taken that guy out. You know, it's fascinating because those are tough calls to make, both for the snipers and for the team leader, because those are really zero or hero type

of situations. Absolutely. And not only zero, but like you're done, man. You're done. What do they say in one of the Jack Ron movies? I want to, or maybe it's maybe one of the mission impossible.

I want him guarding a radar tower in Alaska or something, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, if the president gets, you know, shot or harmed on somebody's watch, I can only imagine the implications for that. Oh, it's terrible. On that note, you mentioned the presidential limo, the beast. I was wondering, you know, if you could tell us about the vehicle,

I mean, it doesn't have mini guns in the headlight? it's like what do we need to know about this? Like what? The oil slicks come out of the back, caltrops. What does it happen? Spy hunter. The section of the president's detail that deals with the limo

and the secret service lingo is called T.S or the transportation section. Those are guys that deal with the limo. There's the ones that drive it. Officially I was not on T.S. I was never a T. It's part of PPD. I should have sent you, Jack. I have so many photos.

I'm meant to send you some pictures of the beast on like a C-17 and I'm like sleeping right next to it because we would get up in the air, the Air Force guys, you know, we could just sleep whatever. So I would throw it on all the cat dudes. We would typically travel with the beast because it's got to be there before the president arrives. And I have pictures of me like sleeping right next to the beast. But I don't want to get into.

I know what some of the capabilities are. I'm not going to get into it on the podcast. Some are really highly classified that I don't even know about. So I'm pretty sure there's no oil slicks, though, man. Damn. What was that 80s? What was that 80s game? Spy Hunter.

Yeah, right? I think it's Spy Hunter. The car game where you have oil slicks. Yeah, and you have jacks that would come out in the oil slicks. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it does that. But it has some other classified capabilities. But this is a true story.

The same Mumbai trip. All right. The threat level was so high on that trip. And we flew in a day ahead of Obama on that trip. And so we land. And for whatever reason, we had to drive through the slums of Mumbai. And to get to the, we weren't going to the embassy. We were staging the cars at some kind of embassy offsite. And it was hot as an MFer, man, that day in India. I know you guys probably hate hearing. This is a true fucking story. This is a true fucking story. No, there was. Knee deep and hangar days. We're with you.

This was a brand new limo, all right, from Chevy. And this was like, I don't know, version 3.0 or whatever it was, was brand new. And supposedly Chevy and the Secret Service had field tested this thing. Well, damn it. The thing overheated on this Indian, like, road through the slums, it overheats. Like steam is coming out of the engine. And the driver, and nobody's in it, right?

Nobody's in it. We're driving like an empty motorcade to get to this storage facility, this embassy offsite. And the driver comes on. He's like, guys, I got to stop. This thing is like redlining. It's so hot. And so we stop.

Well, I mean, what was that movie with the Indian guy, like, wins the lottery or whatever? like he's from the slums that move by. What was it? A million dollar baby. What was it? Slumdog millionaire. Slumdog millionaire. It was like slumdog millionaire.

Like thousands of Indians are coming around. And this is a classified piece of U.S. government property. And K.E., the team leader, he was like, guys, let's take up positions around the limo so this thing can get cooled off. And so we take, I mean, like thousands of Indians are like coming in. out of these slums, man, and we're like, what are we going to do? We can't shoot these people. And the guy's like, it's almost cooled down, man. It's almost cooled down. And so it's about 10 or 15 minutes there. And we can't just start wasting Indian civilians because they want to touch this limousine. But it ended up cooling down enough and we're able to get to this offsite.

And there's another story I can tell you guys sometime where the TS guy, the night before, or actually Obama had landed and he tried to fill the thing up with gas from this Indian gas station and decided to put diesel in it and it was not diesel and he pumped probably 10 gallons of diesel. And this is crazy. The Secret Service has some of the world's best mechanics, believe it or not. And these guys are all GMC Chevy trained and they go on every single trip. And so I don't remember this guy's name from the TS section. but he pumps probably 20 gallons of diesel into this brand new presidential beast limo.

And I remember turning to him, his first name started with W. And I was like, I was filling up the cat truck with unleaded. And I remember looking and I was like, hey, W, that's diesel, man. And the panic on his face, he was like, he said every cuss word, shutting the pump off. Yeah. We had to get an Indian tow truck. And Obama was supposed to go live, man, in like four hours to this major event with the president of India or the prime minister, whatever was. And so, you know, these mechanics would rarely get called.

But the look on these guys' faces when we had to, and I had to, I mean, it was a mess. And we ended up getting the limo back to this, like, garage in the embassy. And I hate to do another Tom Clancy move. But remember that from, God, what is that? Is it clear and present danger where they have the Greenberry team in Columbia? Do you remember when they're hacking into the guy's computer and they give him the computer? And he's like, ah, yes. You know, let me try birthdays.

Well, that's what these guys were. We were like, listen, man, we filled this thing up with like five or six gallons of diesel. And they were just like so excited. And so these mechanics, unbelievable. and like four hours took this whole engine apart, drained all the fuel, cleaned the fuel pump, brand new fuel pump, brand new fuel filter, got this thing up and running. It was amazing, dude, to see these guys work. And the heat of Mumbai, India, it was unbelievable. That's fascinating.

Earlier when you said, when you're talking about driving down in that movie, I thought you were going to say stripes. I thought you're talking about the EM 50, the urban assault. When you're talking about the capabilities. No, but it's amazing because those guys probably have a fairly thankless job, the mechanics. And a lot of times they don't do anything. Yeah. It's like they travel and they hang out and they can't really drink. So they're just along for the ride and they just get to see the world and they just hang out.

Unbelievable. These guys were phenomenal that day. That's amazing. Yeah, their moment to shine really and show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What um oh i forgot what i was going to say but what uh were there any like very i mean obviously the sniper was a was a very serious situation but were there ever any like serious situations when when you were on when you were with part of catchy moments yeah uh you mean other than that time yeah yeah i mean actual not the paintballers not the the police sniper but any actual threat

that were, I don't want to say neutral. All the time. All the time. All the time. I mean, I remember one time, they used to film this. So let me back up. When I joined the service in 2002, all right, some of the instructors in the Secret Service Academy were, I don't want to say old timers, but they would always talk about Carlos

the Jackal. That was like the big threat for the Secret Service for the longest time was this like lone sniper, Carlos the Jackal. And oh my God, he could be out there, he could be hiding and he could be disguised.

And so that whole thing changed, man, to this sort of like armed group. You just never know. And then it became, which it should have been all along because if you look at John Hinkley and some of the previous assassins, mentally ill people.

And so, but yeah, there was, I remember one time being at the National Building Museum, which is in downtown D.C. And Obama was filming, it was filmed to be aired later, what was called Christmas in Washington. It was like some ABC special or something.

And I remember we had gotten some intel about this guy that was after one of the daughters and he was, you know, obsessed with either Sasha Malia, I don't remember who, and he was going to kill him. And apparently his obsession had moved from one of the daughters,

and it was like he's going to kill Obama, and he's coming here now. And I remember being backstage. I don't think my team later at the time was K.E. It might have been somebody else, but I remember this coming over the air that, like, hey, so-and-so, who you were briefed on earlier, is now en route here to Christmas in Washington.

He was on the metro, the DC, Metro, the surveillance lost him. He could be here right now. Holy shit. And you're just like, shit, man. And, you know, you're just rolling the dice at that point. You're really hoping that your protective intelligence or poststanders. That's what the Secret Service calls the outer perimeter. The agents that are holding the posts on the outside, the inner perimeter, these poststanders.

And the shift, you're just hoping that they're going to do their job. and we left there hopefully or thankfully there was not an incident. I think they found that guy the next day. Wow. Would you say that social media made the secret surface job easier or harder? 100% harder, man. 100% harder just because, you know, these mentally ill people, I mean, they can go on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,

and they, I don't want to say, say, I hate to say the word day, but I don't want to say radicalized because that has so many like Islamic connotations, but can get radicalized as far as like their hatred for a particular candidate or a particular office holder. So yeah, I would say it's worse. Yeah. Were the threats easier to identify or was there just so many? Because both Obama and Trump were, I don't want to say that they themselves were necessarily highly polarizing, but they were, but they, I don't know, maybe people are already polarized, but they both grew a lot of ire. And probably a lot of people post a lot of things on social media and some people mean what they say and some people don't.

Yeah, and that's sort of the, as I mentioned earlier, the protective intelligence. I mean, that's their, their sort of job. They get a lot of extra training because Secret Service has some of the best psychologist in the world to sort this kind of thing out. And so it gets really, really difficult to determine somebody's, as I mentioned earlier, means, intent opportunity. It gets really difficult to ascertain that. And listen, man, we live in a free country, right? And you can say what you want within a reason. And, you know, I would say when Obama was elected, there were a lot of people on the right unhappy with that and

you know people would say stuff like you know for instance people would say like I hope he gets assassinated which is a fucking terrible thing to say why would you say that man you know um and whatever your political leanings are

Obama thought he was doing what was best for the country he was a good man he was a good family man you might not agree with his politics but you know why would you say something like that And then, you know, fast forward, Trump gets elected. People on the left said the same thing. And Trump was only doing what he thought was best.

And I used to tell people all the time, and I was in the Secret Service, I used to tell people all the time, listen, we're the United States of America. We are not a third world country where the elected leaders make decisions under threat of a gun. Right. Right. We have established a system here in our country where our leaders should be free. to make a decision what they feel is best for the country based on their own political leanings

and not under threat of a barrel, right, under threat of a gun. So that's what I would tell people all the time. And so I think when, you know, I remember back to Denver in 2008, you know, you can Google there. There's stories out there that there were these white supremacists. And they were coming and come, they had built a car bomb and they had a bunch of AK-417s and M-16s. and they were going to come crashing through a Secret Service barricade and they were going to try to assassinate Obama. The only reason they got caught, I don't know if they were speeding or driving without their headlights on, but a conscientious Denver police officer pulled them over.

There was a pursuit and a shootout. And, you know, that's how they got caught. But, you know, we're not, and I don't mean to diminish third world countries. And I'm not trying to be like Trump and say, like, should hold countries. I'm just saying, like, we live in a democracy man and we have a set up this system where we want. want the president to make decisions based on their their own sort of thoughts and intuitions about what's best for the country and not because they're afraid of their life or their family's life.

Right. I mean, and at the end of the day, if you hate the president, wait four years or eight years. Boom, there you go. Wait four years. And if it bothers you that much, like, you know, form your own political party or go out in protest or like, you know, go get more people to vote or whatever. Right.

You know, don't, you know, don't say dumb shit, man. Right. Yeah. So speaking of presidents, having worked with old timers, what were some of the best stories you heard, whether they were salacious or how great a person was or how shitty they were towards Secret Service and whatnot? As far as like the, as for as protectees like the presidents go. Yeah, and the first one. There was a guy on Kat.

So when Bush was president, this happened just before I got on Kat. So this was like in 2006 when Bush was still president. And he had a, obviously he had his famous ranch. Be able to say Waco, but it was actually, I think, south of Waco. Crawford was the actual city where his ranch was. but he was on the midnight cat team sitting just outside of the house, I don't know, maybe 20 or 30 yards. And he was in the cat truck and he needed to relieve himself, as they say.

And so he got out of the cat truck and it was like, I don't know, midnight or 1 a.m. and he decided to relieve himself on a tree. And he did. Well, unbeknownst to him, President Bush was kind of, you know, that Iraq war was kind of just kicking off. and Afghanistan was going on and I don't know he wanted to clear his head and went for a midnight stroll

and walked right up on him as he's pissing on a tree man and the this cat guy this agent I didn't really know him I know who he is and I mean I can tell you guys

when we're not live sometime who he is but you know just what I heard the look on his face and the conversation and apparently Bush was like, caveman, oh my God, got a caveman over here. We got a caveman, peeing on tree. And

it ended up engaging him in conversation and that became a running joke. So every time President Bush would see a cat team, he'd be like, there's my caveman, there's my caveman. And so what I always tell people is I mean, I've seen President Bush walk up to cat dudes and like smack him on the

ass. I mean, he was just like a, you know, great president, but he was just kind of like a like a frat brother man he just thought it was cool to be around these guys and he'd come up and talk to us and um you know uh Obama was was great he was very gracious very nice it just was a different mentality um so you know Bush had kind of grown up around the Secret Service right his dad so he was kind of used to that kind of thing and I think Obama never really thought or never really knew I think eventually he kind of grew to kind of understand how it was.

And which reminds me of another story when Obama was president-elect. So he'd been elected, but was not yet sworn in at the inauguration. And just talk about stories, Dave, about like what you think was an attack. So we were at his house in Chicago. And this is, this is kind of weird. And I don't remember the timeline. I think it was the same time that Bush had gone to Iraq and got the shoe thrown at him. Yeah.

Do you guys remember that? I remember that. Of course. Oh, yeah. And yeah. And my memories, you know, my memories are shady, and this was so long ago. So I hope I got the timeline, right? These Internet warriors out there are probably going to say I was all jacked up.

But we were in Chicago, and I remember my team leader, K.E. talking to guys that had been on that Iraq trip where the shoe had been thrown at Bush and the cat guys had left the truck and were going to deploy inside and as they were going inside to help Bush during the shoe incident the Iraqi police they got like sort of

as the cat guys were going in the Iraqi police were coming out with the shoe thrower and just putting the beat down on this guy and the cat guys were told to wave off get back in the truck and I don't remember if it was that night or the next night at Obama's house in Chicago we were sitting there at like one in the morning and the loudest explosion you could imagine

just boom sparks flying loud explosion you know first black president we're like shit man it's on and so we deploy out and we take up positions and we're ready to break in into Obama's house to secure him thinking like this is happening because there were

continual kind of booms and booms and one of the CS guys one of the counter snipers came over the air and was like hey I think it's a transformer that just blew standby because the power had been cut to Obama's house everything went dark and one of the CS guys was like hey I see cat deployed standby hold your position their their call sound was Hawkeye or something Sorry, their call sign was Hercules. So he's like, Hercules, Hercules, Hawkeye, standby. I think I see, just hold your position, stand by. And then there were a couple more booms.

And he was able to see, like, yeah, it was just a transformer blown. And it was pretty late, man. It was like one or two in the morning. So thank God we didn't kick in the door and, you know, go wake Obama and his family up. But anyway, sorry to digress back to a story there. It just came to me as we were talking about the different president. Yeah, that's so. I think it's, oh, man.

Out of curiosity, is there sort of a code within the Secret Service that you really kind of don't spill the dirt on? Because you don't often get Secret Service agents talk about the protectees and their habits. You know, even... Yeah, yeah. And I think there's sort of... And I think now they actually make agents sign an NDA. And I'm not going to talk about the president's purse. personal lives.

Sure. But, you know, I'm happy to talk about the Secret Service of training and what we go through and some of the stuff we saw. Yeah. But as far as the personal life, yeah. I mean, like I said, I'll talk about, I mean, Bush was kind of like a frack guy. Yeah. Very jovial kind of front Obama was more of like a serious statesman.

Yeah. And I had heard Clinton from somebody who, who worked that detail. I had heard that he was kind of sort of the sort of like a Bush. Like he'd go down to the kitchen. Like he would. Talk to the guys, you know, eat with them. That's right. Yeah.

And one of my supervisors on the Supernote case had been a detail leader on Clinton's detail. And he would talk about the same things. He'd come down to make a turkey sandwich at one in the morning. Yeah. That kind of thing. Yeah, that's right. That's right. He'd come to the kitchen and just wrap with the guys and have a sandwich with them.

Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's right. And so, and listen, it's, I'm not disparaging Obama by any means. I'm just saying it was just a different guy, man. You know, just a different guy. And, you know, the family was different.

And you can't escape the race factor. I mean, you know, there was sort of an increased threat level. And Michelle was like, listen, I want cat dudes on the daughters. And so, you know, we did a lot of traveling with the daughters, a lot of protective work with Sasha and Malia. Yeah. I mean, it's understandable, you know, considering like the level of ire coming from some sectors, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, do you guys think, you have any more question about the Secret Service? You guys want to talk about policing, man? I mean, that's been in the news lately.

Do you guys, you guys? I want to get into capital security. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Policing, because you're an expert on, on use of force. Easy, Dave. I'm not an expert, man. Easy, easy, easy. I'm not an expert. We have some viewer questions that we want to get to you real quick. Alex, Ben, thank you very much. Alex said the I-L of Jura is the same place that George Orrell wrote 1984. I once tried to apply to the USS, but on the qualification questionnaire, I was disqualified because I was fired for my first job.

Oh, from the Secret Service, I guess. Yeah, okay. That probably wouldn't happen today, but I mean, I don't know how long ago that was. It probably wouldn't happen today. She probably would not be denied employment. I don't know how long ago that was. Yeah.

I mean, I used to be whenever you're applying. to any federal agency, just lie about your past because they all want, like, those. Yeah. I mean, they may or may not find out about it. Roll the dice. Just don't lie on the polygraph. Yeah.

Oh, I say always lie on the polygraph. Like, the polygraph, in my opinion is. Yeah. No, I agree. That's a separate conversation probably. A lot of friends that are polygraphers. But anyway, yeah. What's the next question?

You have friends that are polygrapher. No, I'm just kidding. I do. I have a lot of friends that are polygrapers. I talk to them quite frequently. I have my own opinions on the polygraph, but I don't want to say I'm on here. Richard, thank you very much for the donation. He said, oh, damn, I wish I would have prepared questions for this one.

Let's see if he had a question on that. Hey, guys. Does he have a book or anything? Are you writing a book? No, not writing a book. As I told Jack, I'm just me, man. I'm not here to promote myself. I did a little bit of consulting after I left the Secret Service.

I am part of a company, countermeasure consulting, but we haven't done anything in a couple years. We were doing a lot of security consulting and sort of active shooter awareness and training. I know that's kind of in the news lately, especially in the last couple weeks. We sort of took a break. My business partner had some health problems, and my mom was very sick who since passed. But yeah, I'm not here to promote myself. match. Okay. And guys, on that note, please make sure to give this video a little thumbs up and

subscribe to the channel. If you haven't already, hit the bell icon so you get notified whenever we go live. And leave us some comments. Let us know how you think we're doing. Well, also, join our Patreon for a dollar a month or more. You can support our rent and our drinking habits. And you can hear great stories like the one maybe that you'll tell later. You know, we have exclusive stories from people, from people bonus segments that they don't, that they don't talk about on, you know, on the live show. And the links down the description. Yeah. John Dugan, thank you very much.

He said, will cash sales like Google Pay and Apple Pay make our currency more safe and stable? Well, of course, I mean, anytime you have electronic payments, I mean, it's going to diminish the, you know, you. use of U.S. like hard currency, but, I mean, I've been all over the world. I know Jack has Dave, I know a little bit of your background. I don't know how much you travel, but U.S. currency is accepted everywhere in the world, man. I mean, it really isn't matter where you go. You show somebody at 20 or 100, they're going to, frigging, they're going to take it. So, yeah, I mean, uh, like to get a, go ahead. You always go to the black market to get a better exchange rate than the banks. Yeah, that's right. That's right. If you were inclined to do

illegal things, but I mean, I'm not. Let's see here. Ian Hutchison, thank you very much. How do they handle when a member of the first family has to learn to drive? That hasn't happened in a long time. I think Malia was learning to drive or about 2012, 2013, right as I was leaving the service are shortly thereafter. And a very, very close friend of mine, I don't think he's listening if he is. DG. is his name. He was a favorite of the older daughter. And I don't remember

if that was Sasha or Malia. I can't remember who the older daughter was. I believe it was Malia. I could be wrong. But he was a favorite agent of her. DG., if you're listening, I love you, man. A great dude. But they actually took her out to the Secret Service facility. to teach her to drive on the driving track. That's fantastic. So, yeah, yeah. So that's how they do it. How, I mean, with Obama's children being the first kids that you had protected or that had been protected, was that tough?

Because I know that sometimes teenagers and, you know, don't always want people up in their business. And, you know, even on just civilian protected details, we'll try to ditch their security. Yeah, yeah. So I'm just, I'm trying to think so. Before I got on CAT when I was in the Washington field office, I had this temporary assignment where I was assigned to this counter surveillance unit. All right. So the service, some of the best in the world in what they call counter surveillance in the service lingo, it's called CSU. So it's, this will start it all about the time of the Clinton administration, counter surveillance, where. you're actually looking for people doing pre-attack surveillance, okay? And so I was assigned before I got on CAT, Washington field office. I got this temporary assignment to do counter surveillance. And I was getting ready for work one night. And I get this call.

And the supervisor from the president's detail, I look at my work phone. I didn't know who was. I answered it. And he was like, hey, this is ATSAC, which is a Secret Service term for a supervisor. He said, hey, this is ATSC so and so. what are you wearing right now? I'm like, fuck am I wearing, man.

I mean, I'm wearing like, I don't know, jeans in a shirt or something. I'm trying to blend it. He was like, perfect, perfect.

I looked at your picture, you're a young guy, perfect. Meet me at this place, wherever it was. So I show up, and there's another agent there who's wearing jeans

in a throwback jersey. I think it was like a, like Patriots throwback jersey. And he said, guys, here's the deal. Jenna Bush hates to see agents and she's going into this bar in Georgetown with her boyfriend

and she'll recognize us. She doesn't know you guys, you guys look great. We're going to send you guys in and you're just there to monitor her. We're going to have the front covered, the back covered. You're just there to make sure nothing happens. And this was like 2004, man. I'm like, I just got in the Secret Service. You're throwing me all this right away.

I was like, Jesus Christ, man. So, you know, at the time I was, I know I look older to you guys now. Then I had a full head of hair and I was a very handsome fellow and very fit and thought a lot about myself. So I go in with this agent. I really hadn't met before. So we go into this bar in Georgetown and we're both petrified, right? Because she was notorious. She wanted to live her life.

And this is not a bad thing. I'm not disparaging Jenna Bush, but she wanted to live her life. and she wanted not to be watched by, you know, people all the time. And that's fine. I mean, I would hate to have somebody watching me all the time. So we go into this bar and we're kind of watching as best we can from afar. And one thing leads to another. And the night kind of carries on.

Him and I are trying to sip some beers. So it looks like we're just kind of hanging out, a couple of bros hanging out. And this DJ kicks open and they move these tables and it becomes a dance. floor and a true fucking story man I'm not I'm not making this up I swear to you and I'm kind of drinking a beer sipping I'm standing on this pole kind of drinking a beer and the dance floor kind of gets crowded and somebody's a little bit tipsy probably had a little few too many drinks and who do you think comes over and wants to kind of like dance with me none other than Jenna Bush and I

I'm just kind of sitting there on the pole, man, on this big beam behind me. And I'm just kind of sipping on a beer. And I'm acting like I'm not interested. And she's kind of doing her thing. She's really drunk. And her boyfriend, who's now her husband at the time, is dying laughing. I don't think they had any idea. I was a Secret Service agent.

But I was there, like, sick sour on my hip, man. And my partner's over there. Like, I gasp. He's like, I can't believe this is happening. And I'm just kind of sitting there sipping on a beer. like yeah where to party at you know just kind of hanging out and I think she got totally disinterested to me and went back over uh I think her husband's name is is it Phil Hager maybe I can't remember but anyway that's awesome so uh yeah so sometimes the the families you know that they don't want protection man

they're they're not I don't want to say wise and mature but they just don't understand the threat level they don't you know it's their parent you know and they don't they don't understand all that and And it is really intrusive. I mean, to be fair to them. 100%. It's absolutely. It's very intrusive. It's terrible.

And it's not fair to them. It really isn't. But it is what it is. How hard is that for Secret Service agents to balance doing their job versus the desires of the client? Obviously, the president is your boss, but you also have a job to do. It's awful. It's miserable. and my friend DG

I don't know if he's listening but he got caught in a lot of situations and I can't remember I don't have my Google up if Jack's got his Google up whoever the older daughter was that's who he was assigned to her whether it was Sasha Malia and I mean Christ man she was like a 13 year

14 year old girl they're like experimenting with boys and there were a lot of times where you know she would be in a boys room and it would be time to go and she had a curfew and he would have to go up there and be like, hey, mom wants you home at midnight. Like, we got to go. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's terrible. And it puts the agents, and this, some of these internet warriors out here are thinking I'm probably disparaging Obama, but it's not, it has nothing to do with the Obama family. Right. It's just the way it is. Like the agents will be put in these terrible positions.

It's just how it is. Right. Because if the child complains about that agent, they can get removed from the detail. Yeah, that's right, 100%. But they shop to do their job. Yeah. Now, it's tough. I mean,

you know. So, Bill, James Quinn has a question. This is a little weird, but he says, I had a friend said he saw a Secret Service agent with rip-off male stripper-style pants with a P-90 on his thigh. Sounds crazy. Can he say if there's something to it? Yeah.

So when I first joined the service, the P90, and I'm not a weapons guy, man, so excuse me, but I believe Fabric Nacional made the P90. It was a French machine gun, right? Am I wrong? It's Belgian Fabric Nacional, yeah. Okay, okay, so Belgian, French Belgian, it's all the same, right, Jack? But anyway, it's a joke. Yeah.

So the ERT, which is the emergency response team, a uniform division section of the Secret Service, that was responsible for the perimeter of the White House. When I first joined the service, they carried the P90. I don't know why, but that's what they did. They carried the P90. And that might be what the friend is talking about, that at some point, maybe near a T guy was carrying the P90. And it was a really odd weapon, right?

Wasn't it top loading, Jack? It's a horizontal magazine, yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, horizontal 50-Ram mag. Jonathan says, could you tell us a little bit of information about the Secret Service Hammer teams? Okay. So I have a good friend, and he probably doesn't care if I mentioned his name.

Michael Pukesch was on Hammer. So Hammer is an acronym. God, I'm going to F up this acronym, which is, I'm not even going to attempt the acronym, but it's basically the Kim Bio guys and the medic guys. and we on cat used to love it because the hammer guy the the the hammer truck was always confused with the cat truck so the cat truck was usually this nondescript suburban somewhere in the motorcade but the hammer truck is this massive and they ended up getting this custom-made truck in it is this massive ambulance looking thing and the hammer program really got stood up probably about 2009 a lot of it is really classified they ended up carrying a lot of of classified kimbio stuff like anthrax type mitigation procedures and mitigation of materials so the hammer program these guys were unbelievable they would get every paramedic certification you

could imagine and these guys who were they were great dudes and they would do vehicle extractions with Hearst tools and so one of the things the hammer guys found out when this program got stood up was the Hearst tools could not extract the president from

the new addition limos. They could not cut in because the armor was so thick and so these hammer guys were able to T&E and figure out the best ways if there was an explosion, if there was an accident, God forbid, like a T-bone accident with a limo,

how to best get the president out of the limo? And so the Hammer Program, if I were to describe it, and just for the layman, I'm embarrassed even you make this kind of like a pararescue slash paramedic type. That's what the Hammer Program was. Fascinating. Yeah.

Jackson asks, have you ever cross-trained with national assets like Delta SEAL Team 6 or FBI HART, which team impressed you the most and why? So when I got on CAD in 2007, there was this big push. The CAT program was really started at the behest of a guy who ended up becoming a Lehmer Letty, who ended up becoming Secret Service Director. and he formulated a relationship with Delta, and they really assisted with the formation of Kat back in the mid-80s, and it established a relationship.

And so when I got on Kat, we would go down to train with Delta as well as Dev Group or SEAL Team 6. We would go down there a couple times a year. And so it was fascinating and incredible, when I got on Kat because, you know, the wars were really at like volcanic like status, right? Like you're dealing with guys that have seen serious combat, man. And so we would get to train with them when they were on their down cycle, where they had come back from a deployment and it was sort of their down cycle. And we would get to train with them, firearms, small unit tactics, all of that.

It was unbelievable. highlight up my life to go down to Bragg or Damneck. Unbelievable. Right around 2008, 2009, there was a real push to sort of cross-train with H.R.T. with FBI's hostage rescue team. And there was a big push to cross-train with them. We did a lot of training with them. They are an unbelievable national asset. They have an incredible sort of mission set.

they are the premier national counterterrorism team, right? Like Delta is not going to deploy if there's a hostage situation anywhere in the United States, barring some sort of presidential directive due to the POSA Kamatadas Act. But H.R.T is the premier. They have to be, believe it's eight hours. They have to be anywhere in the United States within eight hours. And they have some pre-packaged, what am I trying to say? They have pre-packaged sort of assets that they can launch and be ready to go and land anywhere in the United States in eight hours.

Those guys are unbelievable. H.RT guys highly trained. We began to do a lot of cross-training with them in 2008. And we used to deploy with HRT a lot with different NSSEs and national special security events. A good friend of mine, JQ, was one of the first guys to sort of stand up these liaison units where we would be. embedded with HRT or HRT would be embedded with us and that really became ubiquitous and kind of on a regular basis where we would deploy with HRT. Now some of the foreign trips, Iraq, Afghanistan, some of the war zone, even some of the Columbia's, some of the other trips, really high threat

locations. We would have a Dev Groove guy with us or a Delta or CAD guy with us or in a whole platoon depending on what was going on. And that became really commonplace after sort of 2008, 2009. Wow. Also, let me just add, like, I mean, I've trained and deployed with NYPD Emergency Services Unit, LAPD SWAT, L.A.S.S.S.A.S.S.A.S.S.A. Like, a lot of these really premier local SWAT teams I've deployed with or trained with. My running joke, I know you're sort of a quasi New Yorker, Jack.

Are you a quasi New Yorker, Dave? I've been here for like 10 years. Okay. All right. Do you consider yourself a New Yorker, but... Yeah. I'm still a tourist to them, I think. So my running joke with the NYPD and all the rest of the police departments around the country is, you know, so say you're in Dallas or L.A., you ask them to do something and you get no attitude and a lot of production, right?

the NYPD. I've worked with those guys a million times. ESU. I love those dudes. You get a lot of attitude. Who the fuck are you, man? I mean, come on, come on. You get a lot of attitude, but incredible production, man. Those guys, if you ask them to shut down a street or an entire block, it's freaking done, man.

Nobody's moving. And, I mean, the entire, you won't even see pedestrians walking down the street. They'll put up barricades and amazing dudes. And, you know, if I were to say the most elite tactical team, local police department. I'll take New York ESU, man, anytime. I really will. I mean, this guys are unbelievable.

Go back and watch our episode with Ray Flood. We had a former ESU member on the show. Go check it out, guys. Yeah, they had a great rescue on there of the Roosevelt Triumph. Yep, yep. People got stuck on the same. So there was a question that you didn't address in James thing about the mail stripper

rip-off pants. I look man I can't speak about male strippers that's not my thing and um you know I know there's probably some Instagram warriors out there they're gonna say I'm like homophobic or some I can't address male strippers I'm sorry I really can't one thing I'd like to hit you up about uh because we we had talked about in the past a little bit of myth busting at Trump's inauguration there was all these allegations that the secret service agent had fake hands that he was holding in front of himself like the These were fake appendages in front of him, and he secretly had like his submachine gun under his trench coat ready to come. Yeah.

No, absolutely, like, urban legend, man, internet urban legend, not true. And that guy, I know who he is. I'm not going to mention his name here. He's a very, I don't want to say famous, but he was a secret service supervisor assigned to Michelle's detail. And he just had pale skin. And it just so happened, he had big hands. He's a bigger dude. He was really tall.

And so that's where that came from is people saw his hands. And they were like, oh, my God. And I remember when you're working for another publication, Jack, I think you hit me up and asked me, is this true? And I was like, absolutely not, man. Yeah. That's fascinating. It's funny how people interpret pictures and stories and things.

And they come up with a little story in their mind about what they're talking. Yeah, and the Secret Service is, I mean, just the public has all these myths and legends, and that was one of them. How hard, I mean, I'm sure that a lot of people in the Secret Service obviously take their job very seriously and don't let their personal politics influence them. But whether it was Obama or Trump or whatever, are there occasionally guys that just, like, politically are so opposed to the president that, they can't put that on a shelf? I mean, I never experienced that. You know, when I left the service, there was a female agent in Denver.

I did know her. She was pretty famous in Secret Service slash cat circles. She was one of the only females to try out for cat and didn't make it. She had failed one of the, one of the requirements for CAD is you have to do three pull-ups with a 45-pound vest on and she was not able to do that and this is not a disparagement on her physical, you know, characteristics. I just gave that as background and you can Google her name.

It's all over the news, but she had posted some disparaging stuff about Trump when he was elected and said some kind of comment, I'll never protect him or something like that. I don't remember what it was. But generally, the Secret Service, I used to say this all the time when I was an agent and I was active. The Secret Service is apolitical, all right? We protect the, or the Secret Service protects the office of the presidency. Right. We protect the person, not the party.

And we would get these questions all the time, man. I'd be at a rally in, you know, wherever, like Dubuque, Iowa or something. And people would come up and be like, are you afraid you're going to be out of a job in three years? And I'd be like, what? No, we protect the person, not the party. I'm here to protect the office of the presidency, not the party. Right. So short answer to question, Dave, I never saw that.

But when I left, I know that there were some high-profile incidents where people, made some social media comments about a particular, you know, candidate or the president. Yeah. So you can Google that and read about it. Yeah. So, uh, Columbia. You, you claim that you weren't there. Uh, not only claimed, Dave.

I was not there. I was not in Columbia. So, um, I know the guy that started, uh, I'm not friends with him. He was on another cat squad, uh, Art Huntington. You can Google. I mean, he was the guy that started the whole Columbia incident. But, yeah, man, I mean, I remember that day the scandal broke. We met up, me and the cat squad I was on.

My team leader, great dude. I'm not going to mention his name here. It was not K.E. It was a different guy. Phenomal guy. I still talked to him this day. Great dude. We met up.

We were the morning shift, the morning cat shift that morning at the White House. that President Obama was supposed to go to Andrews and then on to Columbia. And we were, the morning shifts, it was probably like five in the morning, maybe 4.45 and we're driving to the White House. And I'm in the backseat of the cat truck. And I remember looking up and he was just on the phone, man. And he was on the phone. And he would, yes, no, yes, nope.

He'd hang up and he would start texting. And we're driving through the streets at DC. It's early morning. Yes, no, no, yes. and he would start like texting again and it was early man I'm still wiping the sleep from my eyes I'm like what the fuck is this guy doing

and so we get into a particular section of the White House and I don't want to talk about it here where cat stages but there's a particular room in the White House where cat stages so we get down there we relieve the midnight guys

the midnight cat guys you know they tell us you're like these are all friends of ours who were like shaking hands hey what's up guys and they're somehow

happened last night, man. They're like, we don't know what happened, but something's going on. Good luck to you guys. So we relieve them and they take off. And within a couple minutes later, all of these PPD guys, the presidential protective vision guys, start coming down. Did you hear? Did you hear what's going on?

Have you heard anything? And they would leave. And within an hour or so, we start getting rumblings that something had happened in Colombia involving a cat guy and a process. That's what we started hearing. And of course, we're texting guys. We're like, well, we know this guy's there. We know that guy's there.

And one of the guys from my cat squad was the advanced guy. And this is, you know, super embarrassing for the Secret Service. But for a number of reasons. But one of the reasons for Cat was this guy, I'm not going to mention his name, he was a great dude. I haven't talked to him a while. He's on cat with me. We went to team leader school together. Great dude. He was the cat advanced guy down there. And he had a Delta guy assigned to him because Delta was trying to learn. Sometimes they would get tasked out to do protective assignments around the world. And this Delta guy was trying to learn. This was basically his protection course. He was going to be assigned to this guy that.

I knew and learn how to do a protective advance from the tactical aspect. And we're like, fuck, so-and-so is down there with this Delta guy. Shit, man. And I had to, geez, I got to be careful what I say here, man, because there's so many interconnections with Delta. But, but yeah, like, it started leaking out. And then Obama had to leave that morning. And Obama left that morning to fly to Columbia.

and, you know, the Air Force One, we knew a guy who had been on CAT that had gone to the Protective Division, the PPD of the Presidential Protective Vision, and he texted my team later that morning. And we would do what we call pitch and catch, right? So there'd be a cat team at the White House, and we would sort of pitch over to the cat team at Andrews. There'd be a cat team at Andrews, and then they would pitch on to the guys in California. Columbia. We call it pitch and catch. But I remember my team leader at the time, A, B, he got this text message from a PPD guy on Air Force One. And it said, it is hot as the sun on this plane, meaning like Obama was in the air, right? And the scandal was breaking. And everyone was like, oh my God, Secret Service guys, prostitutes. And listen, it was embarrassing for the United

States government. All right. The president of United States is going to Columbia to talk about foreign policy matters directly related to the national security of United States. And what is he getting questions from from the domestic and foreign media about secret service guys and prostitutes? It was embarrassing as an American citizen. It was terrible. Well, I'll tell you what's embarrassing, Bill. What's embarrassing is you guys won't pay your bills. I know, I know. And that's what ended up happening. And so, you know, the story that not a lot of people know is, um, the team leader on the ground there on Columbia, uh, was a former member, great dude. I'm not going to mention his name here. He's an unbelievable guy. Um, I know him

very well. We, the cat school, uh, that I got shingles in. I had gone through cat school with him. Um, he had been a member of, uh, and I don't know if you guys are here with the ISA intelligence support activity. He had been in the, the, the ISA. He had been, nobody knows this man, and it's not well known, but he had been

sort of a short-term prisoner of war where he had been in Haiti doing like advanced ops and had got taken prisoner by Aristides, like forces and beaten up and like, shit. Yeah, like the guy was no joke, man.

He was legit. And he was a cat team leader. He was a cat team leader. leader in Columbia. And not a lot of dudes can say they were like a short-term POW, you know. And he had these stories about Aristide and his forces. You know, he was held in this cell and beat up and all this crazy wild stuff. But anyway, originally, apparently the ISA was doing advance ops for Delta who were supposed to do,

I guess, like, you know, if we were going to do an invasion there. But anyway. So the Art Huntington goes out, and apparently this was a well-known scam in Columbia, man, well-known scam where you go out to a bar, you meet a girl, and you think this is the greatest night of your life. This amazing woman is all about you. Right. And, you know, you think this is the best night of your life. And that's what happened. And Art met this girl.

And he thought she's really into him. And he took her back and trying to keep this a G-rated show guys. They got to know each other. And when they got to know each other, she said, hey, you know, you need to pay me. And he was like, what are you talking about? And she said, gig is up. You know, hey, you've got to pay me. And he threw her out of the room.

That's a clear violation of ethics. It's got to be. Yeah. You've got to be clear with the business arrangement. Got to be clear. That puts a different spin on the story. That puts a different spin on the story. Yes.

And listen, Art was, I mean, I'm a happily married guy, man, but I guess if you were a girl, Art was like a handsome strapping fellow. And he was appalled that she would even request money.

And so the team leader, so this girl goes out, and which would happen frequently, we would have foreign policemen. in the stairwells of our hotel, right, to keep us safe. One time I was in Islamabad in Pakistan, this was before I got him Kat, and we were told some Al-Qaeda guys were going to come in and kidnap an agent and slit their throat. And I was thinking the Marriott of the Islamabad or the Islamabad Marriott.

And so, you know, we would frequently have local police officers in the stairwell of these hotels. and she came out, she saw a local Colombian police officer and said, hey, this guy didn't pay me, which is against Colombian law. So prostitution is, I've got to get this right,

prostitution in Columbia, I guess, is legal, but it's illegal to not pay them or something. I forget how the law is there. You can't be ripping people off. I mean, we all understand that. That's not the question. Yeah, capitalism, man, right?

It's capitalism. So she went to the policeman. The policeman called the embassy and just kind of one thing led to another. And the reason I bring up the team leader from Kat, who was an intelligence support activity, a great dude, man. And he pounded on Art's door forever. You know, all you got to do is pay this girl, man.

All you got to do is. And Art just wouldn't come to the door. And it just started this cycle of events. And I remember shortly after Columbia, I guess it was 2011, 2012. I remember going to Las Vegas on a presidential trip, and I was the advanced guy, and I was working with some Las Vegas swat guys, right? So we would always work with the local tactical guys. I remember working with some Las Vegas swat guys, and we would do our work,

and I remember I was kind of out hanging, we're having some beers and had dinner with these Las Vegas swat guys. sidebar super guys man I mean Las Vegas SWAT you've seen some of the stuff they've done

the active shooter they had at the country concert really really experienced guys and so I was out having some beers we're hanging out talking and I remember one of these guys telling me the fuck was going on there man

that is the most well-known scam in Vegas how did one of your guys fall for that that basically this hot girl makes her approaches and comes on to a guy who probably could never pick up a girl like that as an entire life. How did he fall for that? And he was saying all the time when he was a Las Vegas patrolman at 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning, he would respond to, you know, Caesar Palace or one of these Vegas hotels. And, you know, he would tell this guy, like, you could never pick up

this girl under regular circumstances. Pay her and let's get this over with. Yeah. As a friend of mine said, you've got to to know your number. Like if you're a four and she's a nine, you need to ask yourself some questions about what's happening right now. Yes, that's right. That's right. I think we're, she loves my sense of humor. We're breaking some news here as far as this is the real story behind the Colombian hooker story. Yeah, I have not heard this side of the story before. Yeah, yeah, that's what happened. I mean, and there's several other nuances to the story. And unfortunately, a lot of guys got, I'm not excusing their behavior, but some other guys that had

nothing to do with that particular aspect of it, got wrapped up in it. My friend, JQ, great dude, he got wrapped up in it for a variety of reasons. He did not pick up a hooker, JQ, but he got wrapped up in it for some other stuff. And it was really sad how the whole Secret Service came crumbling down because of that one incident because Art, would you say, Jack, didn't know his number? Did it know his number? He didn't know his number. Well, I mean, ordinarily, I mean, to be let he, he was without sin, cast the first stone.

Yeah. And to be fair, that sort of sets a precedence for any kind of blackmail situation. If girls are like, oh, well, these guys depend on their reputation for their job, you know. Yeah. So it raised a lot of interest and questions. I mean, the military got dragged into it because there were some military EOD guys. There was,

I think some SF guys, maybe they got dragged into it. So the question became, if it's legal in that country, does it make it illegal for a U.S. citizen? And so it became, yeah, that's exactly right, Jack. It became this whole thing was,

if it makes you subject to blackmail, then it's not okay. And so they ended up, the government started passing these, I don't want to say reforms, but they started instituting these sort of security precautions for your security clearance that, you know,

if you have hooked up with a foreign national or a foreign national prostitute, that was a security violation. Oh, they made that a new rule that if you had hooked up with somebody. I don't want to say it was a new rule, but they like specified like okay so before it was kind of like if you met a foreign national you need to report this and if you don't report it it could be considered a violation and so they sort of altered the rules that said if you pay for sex internationally

that is a clear security violation johnny law just taking all the fun they're just sucking the fun out of the job. I mean, that's right. I'm not saying in this particular instance, but they make it to the point, you know, with their security interviews and things like that. And it's been like that for a long time

that you have to lie in the polygraph. If you've ever had any kind of life, you know, or, you know, they want choir boys and choir girls, but that's often not what the job calls for. You know, somebody would... No, and that's

true, Dave, and, you know, I remember this. I didn't deal with it a whole lot when I was in the field office. I was never a polygrapher. I had some friends that were polygrapers. I have a lot of close friends now that are Secret Service polygrapers, but I remember 2006, 2007, before I got on Kat talking to friends of mine that were Secret Service polygophers. And, you know, and when I was in a Washington field office, I'd be going to lunch or something. And I'd be going to lunch or something and I would see this guy sweating out in the hallway and I would find my friend that was a polygrapher and I'd be like yeah what's up with this guy man he's sweating bullets out there what's going on and be like listen on paper this guy's phenomenal it's a combat marine

um you know a tour in afghanistan tour tours in iraq he was wounded he's got a purple heart silver star but um he's single right he's never been married and um um because um because he's single right he's never been married and because of PTSD he took a weekend in Dubai and hired like four Russian prostitutes for the weekend and it's like is that really that bad I mean come on I mean when when you like a security clearance is supposed to determine whether a person is trustworthy with information of you know the security not it's not a moral judgment about a person. And I feel as though the whole security clearance process has shifted over to that. We're going to judge you as a human being. And it's also not

work like fundamentally not working. Yeah. When you have these Edward Snowdens and these people who are like divulging all this classified information, like your process isn't working. Right. People are slipping through the crows. Right. Yeah. Right. And you know, I mean, and I mean, I mean, would you guys hire a guy that all these great awards? He was single, saw serious combat. He was a single dude. And he goes for a crazy wild weekend in Dubai. Not my business.

Yeah, what he does on his weekends. I don't care about what he does on the week as long as he's not like divulging United States secrets. Right, right, right. So, Bill, I do want to get into you a little bit with the subject of security, Washington, D.C. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is obviously a subject that is in the press quite a bit since January 6th, but even before that, we had people jump in the fence at the White House. Once or twice people actually making it inside the White House.

That's right. I want to ask you about this subject because I feel like maybe our capital and maybe some of our VIPs, presidential or otherwise, are not as secure as people think and that we are one really bad day away from something catastrophic. And for people who maybe don't keep up on the news, I think that we should. We had the Capitol incident when people on the right, I believe, kind of rushed the Capitol and got inside, like broken. And then on the White House, we had people on the left, assault. the gates, assault the fern fences,

burn down a guardhouse, and actually injured, I think, like, 60 Secret Service officers and agents, like injured them to the point where the president was taken to the bunker. What do you guys want me to address first? You want me to talk about generally D.C. You want to talk about the riots at the Capitol.

Start where you want. I think it's all interplays with each other there. Whatever feels natural. Okay. Yeah. So let me say overarching. Let's talk first. We live in a free country, man.

All right. And if we're up to the Secret Service, we would put the President, the Secret Service would put the President in this bulletproof, protective, you know, blastproof bubble. We would take him out once a year. He would wave to the cameras and say,

hey, I'm alive. And then we would put him back in this bubble. and once a year he would come out, I guess if it's a four-year term, he would come out four times, and that would be it. Unfortunately, we live in a free democracy, and that's not practical. And, you know, keep in mind, man, this is something that's been lost. And I'm not excusing what happened on January 6th at all. And if my sister is listening, I hope she is. I love her.

She's had a big impact on my life. We disagree in a lot of things. and my sister is like way left wing, man. Corey, if you're listening, I love you. So this is not a, this is, I'm not blessing what happened on January 6th by any means. But let's keep in mind, man, that our country was founded by some dudes that were really upset over taxes, right? Isn't that what our country was founded on? I mean, if you think about it, what were the guy, you know, Ben Franklin, George Washington,

what were those guys pissed off about? They were pissed off about taxes. And so we have a long history in this country of protests, man, and it should be peaceful protest. Right. And I'm not excusing what happened on January 6th, but the challenge for our country, right, is how can people peacefully protest

and get their grievances out there, right? but also not be violent and not destroy shit and burn shit. And so when I watched what happened on January 6th, I think I hit Jack up pretty quickly. I don't know, maybe it wasn't that day. But, you know, I've been to the Capitol a million times, man, especially in my Secret Service days. And the White House is no different.

But, you know, we have to secure these facilities, but we also have to allow the public to be able to tour them to see them. And if people are pissed off about stuff, we have to allow them the right to grievance, right, to protest. And so obviously January 6th was not a lawful grievance. It was not a lawful protest. And so, you know, some of the things I thought about that day was, I mean, I've worked with the Capitol Police.

There are a lot of great dudes and gals. but they have been let down by their agency, right? They've been hypnotized, I think was the exact words I told Jack that day, by access control, right? Every day pressing a button. You can go in now. Let me see your ID. Oh, you're good. So I also thought about, this is probably 2003, 2004.

I was a very young agent, went up on the Capitol for a visit by Vice President Cheney. and I had this clean press suit. I'm a fucking badass man. I'm a brand new secret service agent. Don't fuck with me, right? And I get this magnetometer checkpoint. And the senior agent said, hey, stand here and don't let anybody through here

with this Capitol police officer that's not access to go through this mag, the magnetometer. If you have any questions, check what this dude, the Capitol Police officer. And I don't know. I was standing there. I was very excited. I was waiting for al-Qaeda to come through there any moment, right? I was going to waste me some al-Qaeda, bin Laden coming through here. I got you, man.

And here came this young girl, probably in her early 20s, no identification. She comes through the magnetometer, tries to go around the magnetometer. She has no identification. I go to stop her. As I've been told, the cap of police officer is like, hey, man, wave off. No, no, no, no, let her go. and she walks through, goes around the magnetometer, goes on into the Capitol. And I was like, WTF, man, what's going on here? And he was like, that's Nancy Pelosi's daughter. She's really important. She's like a journalist and a staffer.

Holy shit. And so I always think about that. And when I saw what was going on January 6th, that's what immediately popped in my mind is. These poor guys were set up to fail. right and I've been up there a number of times I have seen it where these guys at the different checkpoints capital police officers would be given a picture of members of Congress and their staff and these people I don't want to say untouchable but you know they were supposed to allow these people through the magnetometers

and you're supposed to memorize their faces now they're supposed to wear a congressional pen right and the Secret Service operates on a pin system we can go out and then later if you want the Secret Service does that what we call a hard pin or what the Secret Service calls that hard pin. Members of Congress have a certain color and shape of pen. I mean,

I haven't checked in a while. How many members of Congress are there? They're 400? Yeah, I mean, you can buy one of those pins on eBay, though, right? Yeah. I mean, you could. And, you know, you take this poor soul, this 23-year-old Capitol police officer.

Right. you know he's supposed to memorize all the faces or you know i mean and they can get him or her fired in a heartbeat probably that's right that's right so um you know so it's an impossible job they get hypnotized years and years of access control years and years of getting um scolded for stopping people without their congressional pin do you know who i am i'm so and so i'm a staffer to so and so, minimal training. And I just read this morning, I was prepping for it to speak with you guys, I just read this morning, the congressional IG report came out and it was like these guys had riot shields

that were disintegrating. The first sort of like bottle that got thrown in the shield was just like falling apart because it was so old. The CDT teams or the civil disturbance teams were hadn't trained in, you know, a long time, decades in some cases. So you're talking about an agency totally unprepared for what was coming. And listen, I don't mean to disparage the agency. I just know this Secret Service, you know, as I mentioned earlier on in the interview, some of the best, probably the best in the world, preparatory intelligence gathering, a real academic approach to protection.

A lot of foreign protection agencies come to study how the Secret Service does things. So, you know, they just didn't take it seriously. And I remember in 2003, 2004, there were a lot of Bush anti-war protests in Washington, D.C. And I have pictures somewhere. I couldn't find him. I was going to send them to you, Jack. But I'm holding signs, man. I'm, like marching in these anti-war protests.

I'm a Secret Service agent. And these people, I've got like make love, not war signs, man. and I'm like marching through. And, you know, my job was like, I secretly text like, hey, they're peaceful right now, you know. And so why weren't there people embedded in these, the Trump rally, which became sort of this Trump right? Where weren't there people embedded in these riots to say, hey, they're moving this way, man. They're really angry. Yeah.

Well, and I think it's also tough because you, whether it was for the Trump, the protesters on the right, or the protesters on the left, it doesn't take that many people that have bad intentions. Oh, 100%. To make the entire group, whether the right or left look like it's an issue.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there's kind of a saying in the Secret Service, you know, if you're willing to trade your life, nothing's going to stop you, you know? And so, you know, again, man, I mean, if this were China, if this were Myanmar or Burma, whichever one you want to call it, those countries, they were to just start hosing people down, right? They just started killing folk.

And we don't do that in this country, man. And we have a right to lawful protests here in this country. And I think, you know, what is lawful, you know, is a question for the courts, I guess. but that was a difficult situation and those guys had bad equipment, bad training, and their whole infrastructure. So one of the things too that's difficult, a lot of people don't realize, and I'm probably going to mess up the number and I forget what I emailed you, Jack, but there's 37 different police agencies in the District of Columbia.

Wow. All right. It's unbelievable. And each have little jurisdictions. So the Capitol Police only have jurisdiction around the Capitol. And then you have the Metropolitan Police Department, which is sort of, even though D.C. is not a city, but the Metropolitan Police Department is the police agency responsible for the District of Columbia. And so there are so many bureaucratic layers.

And there was so much backlash what had happened during the BLM protest with the National Guard out. can read some of these army folk. I just read something today. Then they were like, look, we don't want the image of National Guard troops there for crowd control. And so, um, I'm not reporting from the right or the left man. I mean, I've told Jack that when I emailed him. I'm, I'm not reporting from the right or from the left. But, um, you know, the army, when you read some of these quotations, they were basically saying, we, don't want to deploy the National Guard right now. Let's just wait and see what happens.

We don't want the National Guard there for crowd control. And haven't we seen this movie before, man, with Kent State? You know, I mean, this happened 50 years ago where they killed college students who were protesting because we put these poor guys in a position that they shouldn't have been. And so I think I read something this morning from a news outlet. They're still blaming Trump for, like, not allowing the National Guard to. deploy and you know Trump might have inflamed the tensions there and and might have encouraged these people to riot but I don't think he had I mean our country doesn't work like that where we have

a dictator that can say like deploy the army or don't deploy the army it doesn't work like that there's some commentary out there from the secretary of defense at the time Chris Miller and also a lot of it was the what was it over the summer when there were a lot of riots and there was a lot of push back against the deployments of the National Guard where there was they were all lined up in front of the Lincoln Memorial. We came very close to having the U.S. Army, the 82nd Airborne, deployed. So that was like in the back of that. That played into what happened on the sixth and the hesitancy to deploy some of those military forces.

That's right. Yeah, yeah. And could you imagine deploying the 82nd Airborne and the streets of D.C.? I mean, unbelievable. And people have this misconceived notion that Trump is, evil puppet master that can say like push a button or make a phone call and say deploy the army and it just doesn't work like that in our country man yeah i mean i would hate when situations arise like that i would hate to be the president regardless which side you know you're on because

whether it was the white house you know or the capital or the lincoln memorial you know how how much damage do you allow people to do and if the capital police can't handle it like do you want the lincoln memorial destroyed do you want the capital you know rushed by a gang of people do you want the lighthouse you know to people to run through the gates yeah it's it's it's a really difficult thing i think i think would be a really difficult thing to balance yeah and i would say you know this is what i would tell the riders man um you have valid grievances right again our country was found on grievances of taxation and representation, but there's things in our country that are sacred,

man. No matter your grievances, you're going to storm the capital. You know, like, some things are sacred in our country, man. I mean, I know the Supreme Court has said that flag burning is okay and I think you should have the right to burn a flag, but there's certain things that are sacred here, man, and like storming the capital and sitting at Nancy Politbu. Lucy's desk like do you not have any dignity right you know and you think you're a patriot um you know my grandfather fought in World War II and I think he'd roll over in his grave knowing that you propped your feet up on the Speaker of the House's desk you know like I think he would lose his mind yeah and I mean both my grandfather's fought in World War II and I'm okay I listen I'm

all for protest again right this country was founded on protest but have some dignity man Yeah, it's tough when the rhetoric grows on both sides, when sort of the battle lines harden, when people feel, I don't know, I think that people on the left and people on the right feel as though they have to take a harder position because they have to resist the other side harder because the other side is tyrannical. That's right. And, you know, the other thing that makes me sick, too, is, you know, I've talked a little bit about CAD and some of the, uniforms and equipment and you know look man I'm not a tier one guy I'm sort of a law enforcement guy and um

you know look man I've had an M4 and and I've had a breacher behind me and we're going to go in and grab this MS-13 guy we're going to explosive breach and this guy's killed somebody or he stabbed somebody or I mean I remember one time where a dude had raped a baby

and we're going to go in and grab this bad dude and you know but then I'll look at some of these riders and they're wearing cry kits and they've got like helmets on and I'm like have these guys ever done anything real world you know and they're like these screaming open carry and and I know there were some military vets there um you know I'll tell you I'll tell you guys a story I remember I was in this training class one time this is probably 2013 and I was in his training class instructor was like, hey, I just want to recognize the vets here. And I knew a guy in this class and he had been

a Marine in Fallujah and had been wounded like half his Marine like squad had been wiped out. Really serious combat in Fallujah. And I knew this guy, DG, if you're listening, I love you, man, great dude. And, you know, so the instructor in this class was like, I want to recognize the vets. and who here is a vet and seen combat and I was sitting next to my friend DJ he never raised his hand right and this girl in her hand in the back raised her hand and she was like yeah I'm a combat veteran

and he was like okay yeah what branch and where did you serve she's like I was Air Force and I was in Kuwait I was in Kuwait for 18 months and it was really tough I had a lot of PTSD from that deployment and I got sent home and I just remember looking at my friend DJ and he was just like, are you fucking kidding me?

You know, I lost like eight guys in my platoon. And, Jack, I was not in the middle turn. I don't mean to like talk about like losing people. But my point is you look at some of those riders. And you're like guys that are like day traders,

man. You know what I'm saying? Like, and they're wearing cry kits and they're talking about like, you know, right to bear arms and stuff. And I just shake my head at that. Most of them were warpers, just like you say.

Warpers. I'm afraid to say, though, Bill, my team sergeant from Special Forces was there that day. Now, was he like breaking shit, or was he just present? He was outside the building. Yeah, but again, I think there's a massive difference between, just like the people outside the White House protesting. Like, there's a difference between people peacefully protesting. This wasn't. I mean, they trespassed, broke through the barracks.

barriers were outside. He broke through the barriers? I'm not saying he broke through personally through the barrier, but he was right outside the building. Yeah, but you're going to be right outside the building. If you're just like again, the people at the White House, like you're going to be outside whatever building when you're protesting. But the people who went in are the people are responsible for going in. Not him. Yeah, I don't know. Jack, has he been arrested? I mean, I don't know. The FBI is apparently investigating all. He's knocking on his door.

He has not been arrested, to my knowledge. Okay, all right. That's sort of like blaming, sort of painting, like, everybody who is protesting in New York for the people who are breaking in the Gucci stores and stuff. Like, you can't compare the two. Well, my sister, I talked to her just before I came on here, and she's, you know, really left wing, and she's a liberal, and that's fine. I love her, and I respect her. But she was saying some new footage came out. where some of these protesters were like,

I forget what she said, but she was like, there was some new footage out that, you know, some protesters were like, we're going to fucking kill this capital police officer and they grabbed him. I hope that wasn't your,

your buddy there, Jack. I mean, I'm assuming not, but I mean, some of these protesters were. Yeah, no, my former teammate was not,

he did not attack anyone. He was not violent. Okay, okay. I'm assuming not. Yeah, yeah. He wasn't fighting the police.

thankfully. That was not his prerogative, but he was there outside the building. And yeah, I mean, was it legal or not? I mean, I think you have to, I would encourage him to seek legal counsel. I would just say that.

Legal counsel, yeah. And, you know, when it comes down to like letter of the law, I'm not an attorney, but, you know, that building's open to the public, man, and there's no signs up that say no trespassing. you know in theory I don't know I mean through actual physical barricades

to get there yeah okay okay the people enter can you not protest outside the capital or the White House is that illegal after you break through barriers and enter federal property yeah and if somebody's on a like megaphone

saying you're you know this is an illegal assembly you must disperse you know those kind of things I'm pretty sure that's breaking a law yeah so But, yeah, Jack and I, I help, I give Jack some information on article. And yeah, so, you know, when I first saw the Capitol stuff, I was like, man, these poor guys at the Capitol, they were not prepared for this. Poor training, you know, poor leadership.

I'm pretty sure the chief now, who's the interim sheep, she already got a vote of no confidence. She's probably on her way out. and they're probably going to bring somebody in from the outside is going to be my guess. But, you know, the other thing I'll add, too, is shame on members of Congress. They want to be holier than now, now, and high and mighty. And, oh, they want to clutch their pearls and fan themselves about how awful this was. But listen, they're the ones that control the purse strings of the Capitol Police. And they're the ones that control, like I told you that story about Nancy Pelosi's daughter.

I mean, they're the ones that are doing some of this. shit for, you know, years and years. Yes, that's right. That's right. So when this stuff happens and they're clutching their pearls and fanning themselves, it's like, well, wait a second. You guys controlled the budget. You guys controlled the atmosphere here. So let's not get crazy. Yeah, it's not like they showed them any respect up until all the news cameras were on this subject. That's right. That's right. That's right. And, you know, some capital police officers died And it's a tragedy, man.

And, you know, this other protester, this girl, I don't remember her name. I guess she was an Air Force veteran. She died too. It was Ashley Babbitt. What'd you say? Ashley Babbitt. Yeah, yeah, Ashley Babbitt. She died.

And, I mean, that's a tragedy, too. And, I mean, I've heard some, I try to listen to both sides of the political circle. Like, listen, I'm pretty crazy, man. I watch NBCC. I listen to MISNBC podcast. I also watch Fox News. I had a college professor that was like listen and watch both sides and then somewhere in the middle is probably the truth. But I was reading a conservative thing saying that, you know, that she was probably killed illegally.

I guess they decided yesterday that they weren't going to press charges. But we'll see how that plays out eventually. Yeah. So, Bill, tell us, you know, where you are today. I mean, you left the Secret Service. You're in law enforcement today. Where are you at now? So I'm in the Metro Richmond area.

I'm a police officer in a pretty large jurisdiction outside Richmond, Virginia. And listen, man, I love policing. I really do. I tell my son all the time that if you love what you do every day, I mean, I love going to work every day. I miss my family. You guys, I don't know if you saw my daughter coming over to give me a kiss. But if I'm going to hang out of it. out with my family, I'm working man or I'm researching something about work. So I'm a police

officer. I love it. I love going to work every day. And when I was giving you guys my origin story, listen, man, when you grow up like that, when you grow up poor and your mom, you know, when I grew up how I did with my mom, you just have a different perspective on things. And, you know, where I work is a pretty violent jurisdiction. We have shootings every day. There's a lot of very poor, section 8 housing complexes and those are my beats and I just have a different perspective on policing man and you know when you grow up poor and you have a mom the way I did you know it's just like stop man why are you stealing from the store what are you doing you know I'm just like stop for a second and you know kind of thing where they like try to convince a store owner you know look do you really

want to charge this guy right um but you know listen I work in that violent jurisdiction you know I've been shot at and I just talked to a close friend of mine tonight. A guy, one of the reasons I was late, we were just talking and back in, what is this, April, back in January, this guy shot it, me and my partner, man, and shot at both of us. And he called me last week and he said, I just got the phone with the prosecutor. And he wants to know, is 10 years good enough, is 10 years good enough for this guy that shot at us? And I was like, I'll call you back. And I asked my wife, you know, hey, is 10 years long enough sentence for this guy?

And she's like, what do you think? And so, yeah, man, my passion in policing is really the training. And when you see what's happening, we've had a particularly rough month, man, a couple weeks actually in policing. and my passion. I'm a police trainer. I've been teaching all week at the academy. I'm a part-time trainer.

So where I work in my agency, we have a full-time academy staff, and they get supplemented during the academy. And so I'm a part-time academy trainer. I'll get called in when the academy's going on. So sort of my passion, man, is we can never eliminate risk in this job. All right? It's a dangerous fucking job, man.

And there's a lot of best. bad dudes out there. But we can mitigate these risks. And how do we mitigate these risk is by proper tactics. Okay. And the tactics are, you know, on making sure we search people. Let's not outrun our headlights. All right. And this is just my personal thing, man. If it's not rape, robbery or murder or a crime against a child, let's pump the brakes here. All right. rape, robbery, murder or a crime against a child, we're going to pump the brakes and we'll figure this out. Why are we chasing this dude?

And there's been some jurisdictions that have gone to this mentality of where it's bad tactics equals a bad shoot, all right? And where that officer is automatically at fault because of his bad tactics. And I don't necessarily agree with that because we're dealing with human error right police are humans and we all make mistakes and so uh if you know if you take a sports analogy right if our sports heroes tom brady does he get a right every time of course not he's a human he makes these millisecond errors um here or he would win super bowls every year he would complete the pass every time and so what we wanted to do is eliminate that or sort of mitigate that

possibility for human error. That's what I try to teach these young recruits where they're going through the academy is let's slow this down. The mind can only process information so quickly. And if you put yourself in this situation where you're processing information so fast, you go chasing after this bad guy and you're sprinting at full speed. You cannot think fast enough. Right.

Your mind cannot process that information fast enough. Let's slow it down. Why are you chasing this guy anyway? Did he steal from Walmart? Who fucking cares that he stole a pair of socks from Walmart, right? It's not worth anyone's life. Yeah, it's not worth anybody's life. And let's put a focus on, right, priority of life.

And so for years in law enforcement, the priority of life was only on the police officer. Let's put a priority of life on everybody. Right. Let's put a priority of life as how can, how can we get this guy in custody? safely and how can we get you to go home at night? And those are not competing or what do they call it exclusionary where they both cancel each other. Let's make it so your priorities or, you know, let's get this guy into custody safely and let's let you go home at night.

And so that's my passion now, man. And listen, I love my sister. and if she's listening tonight, I'll be honest, like my sister is not a fan of the police. She really isn't. And so it's, you know, listen,

this is my chosen profession, man, and I'm passionate about it and I love it. And I'm pretty good at it. And, you know, one of the other things, too, is you watch these police videos. And I was having a conversation with a guy tonight

about this myth of stress inoculation, right? Right. We always hear these police officers talking about stress inoculation. And so, and that was brought up in Dave Grossman's book about this stress inoculation. And a lot of guys have jumped on this bandwagon. And so here's the thing, man. Stress inoculation, you have to do that all the time, right? I've been in enough stressful situations where I've had my gun on somebody or I've been fighting somebody where I'm able to overcome all of those sort of innate pre-programmed,

human emotions Friday flight. So I'm able to like, because I've just been in them so many times, man, that like I can just get somebody and I'm talking to them the whole time. I've got my gun on somebody. I'm like, look, man, do as I'm telling you. Put your hands up, turn around. I'm not yelling. I'm not screaming.

And when you look at a lot of these police academies, they're training people, scream. Drop the gun, drop the gun. You know, and it's like slow down, calm down, man. You don't have to do that. Just relax. And so this stress inoculation, we teach people in the academy that we give them these stressful situations in the academy where they're under these stressful conditions. And depending on where you work, you might not see that for three, four, five years. You might not ever see it.

And so this myth of stress inoculation, that's got to be a training thing, man. We need to be training officers like every year. We need to be getting them, we need to put them in stressful positions every year. And when you look at a lot of these police-involved shootings, I've watched them. I'm a police trainer. I don't call myself an expert, but I mean, I've been in law enforcement a long time. Some of these I watch, and I'm just cringing, and I'm like, the officer caused that shooting because of bad tactics. Right, right, yeah.

And not like malevolent intent, but it's like the. tactics, the whole bureaucracy and how we train these guys and the procedures are kind of like flawed from like way back in the training academy and everything else. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It's also. Yeah.

Oh, please. Go ahead. Go ahead. Dave. No, no. I was just going to say it's also, you know, if the politicians are complaining about, you know, some of these circumstances and talking about police reform, the reform needs to start at the law level. You know, I think it was, wasn't it Eric Gardner who was selling Lucy's and resisting?

It's like, if you don't want that type of interaction to happen, don't make selling Lucy's, loose cigarettes, an arrestable offense, making a ticketable offense. Right. Like, reduce the number of frictionable. And a lot of the, a lot of the, I mean, I think this is starting to become more of a conversation, thankfully. But instead of a law enforcement interaction, there's a lot of citizens. situations where like really should be like a social worker or a psychologist. That's right. That's right.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Mental health. And I go on mental health calls all the time, man. I go on them all the time and it's like, why am I here? Yeah. This is a mental health call that should be handled by a mental health worker or a social worker.

But, you know, there are sometimes I go on a mental health call and I'm like, this person needs to be committed. And just before we went on air, I was reading the FedEx shooting that just happened. And, you know, that guy's family was like begging for that guy to be committed, apparently. Yeah. And he had been interviewed by law enforcement. But, you know, I go on calls all the time, these mental health calls. Yeah. And sometimes a person's armed and they're threatening their family.

And, you know, I don't want to say arrest him, but we'll take them into custody for a mental health evaluation. And they're out, you know, 10 hours later. Yeah. And so, you know, it's difficult. But as far as the new recruit, it's very difficult to take some. somebody, especially a college graduate, okay, right out of college, they're 22 years old. The flip side is we take somebody from the military, he's got a little bit of experience, and they always want to harp on while I was in the Army, this will be easier.

I was in the Marine Corps, and this will be easy. But listen, man, you're dealing with an entire different set of circumstances here. So, yes, you're in the military. There will be some common themes here. But for the most part, that part of your life is over, just, you know, pack it away. And so it's difficult to get people to understand you can die on this job. You can be seriously injured or hurt, but not everybody's out here to harm you.

So it's very difficult from the police trainer side to get people to understand that. And, you know, listen, I've trained people, man. I've been a field training officer where I've gone on calls with people. And they've totally, they're terrible. Yeah. And they were very dangerous. You have to pull them aside. We call it FTO override where it's basically like, I've got this.

You stand over here. And now I handle this and you tell them after like, listen, I'm really sorry. I don't think this is the profession for you. And it's difficult. But when I, listen, I've watched a lot of these videos. You know, I just watched the Chicago police shooting. It's been all over the news. And it's very, very difficult.

And then I watch, I don't know if it's made it up to you guys, but the Windsor Virginia police where they're yelling and screaming at that Army Lieutenant, I don't know if you guys have seen that where they rip them out of the car and they pepper spray him. I haven't seen it, but I heard about it. Yeah. Okay, yeah. That's fucking terrible, man.

I mean, it's awful. I mean, it's terrible policing. And we have this hesitation. And law enforcement are like, well, you weren't there. How can you say, no, man, I've been there. I've been in dozens, if not hundreds of those type situations where you've been noncompliant

motorists and like a couple kind words couple kind words like look bro look man just get out of the car so we can talk about this like take it easy relax let's talk about this um so you know we have this hesitation in law enforcement not to what i call it a systematic approach to look at these things so look what happens when a plane crashes right we take a systems approach why did this plane crash right We take a systems approach and we have pilots look at this and they break it down. Was this a mechanical error? Was this a pilot error? What happened?

What caused this plane to crash? So what's happening in these police interactions is it's, in my opinion, getting hijacked by a very vocal minority, right? And no other profession in this country do we have non sort of people in that profession judging what happened, right? If there's a medical malpractice suit, do we have non-doctors sit on that board? No, we have doctors sit on the board to figure out what happened. If we have a lawyer malpractice, do we have citizens sit on that to figure out what happened? No, we have lawyers figuring out what happened. I mean, interestingly, I mean, on a jury, it's usually not people of the same profession, unless you're talking about the military.

It's not. It's not, but what I'm just specifically talking about is some of the civilian police review boards. I know New York has a very powerful one. The most powerful one is in Oakland, which has higher and fire authority, right? And so they'll fire, I mean, that's why they've had like nine chiefs and, you know, four years in Oakland. Yeah. And I know New York has a pretty powerful civilian police. And I'm not excusing misconduct by officers by any means, but I think we need to have a sort of systems approach.

What went wrong here? Did the officer use bad tactics? And you need to have people that are sort of schooled in the profession, right? Like police officers say, yeah, look, the officer took a bad stance here or he escalated this or, you know, he should have backed off here. and the only people that really know or police officers to be able to talk intelligently about that. It's almost as if police agencies need to do like a five-day selection course with people to put them through stressful situations just to see what kind of personality they have. Yeah, yeah.

But the thing is you need to do that continually. You can't just have one and then okay, you're hired and then, you know, you don't have another stressful situation. Um, you know, I, I just was having this discussion with a, a friend of mine today when I was at work and we were talking about that and we were talking about the, uh, the, uh, the shooting where the female officer in Minnesota grabbed their tases. We're just talking about them. And we're like, you know, him and I have been in dozens of stressful situations, man, dozens. And, you know, it's serious and people have guns and, and we're really worked up. And him and I are just talking to each other like I'm talking to you guys. guys now.

Like, we just can't imagine grabbing the wrong weapons system. You know, I don't know what was going through her head, and I feel really bad for her. She's probably going to go to jail. I mean, to be honest with you, though, I can in a way, because, you know,

if somebody goes, I'm not like, she shouldn't have shot him. But I understand the fear that a police officer may have when somebody goes into their car, when they don't want, you know, to be arrested, and they go into their car, you're worried about a weapon.

If she has not done enough training, if she has not, you know, if she was afraid, we do, we do weird things when we're afraid, you know? And he was afraid of them. They were afraid of him, and it, you know, the fear escalated. But, but, I mean, I hate to say this today,

but when we, was the last time she was afraid. Right. You know, like I, I've been afraid many, many times, man. And, you know, I was just teaching in the academy this week or last week. And I was talking about what happens to you, not philosophically, but physiologically. And, you know, I'm embarrassed here, man, because we have a combat vet here. And I only know Dave's, or Jack's background, Dave.

I'm sorry if you've been in combat too. but, you know, I've been in stressful situations, man, I've been in shootings, and I know what happens to my body physiologically. Right. And it's just really silly, man, but my left leg starts to shake a little bit. Like, right? Like, I'm on a door and we're going to kick in this door. We're going to explosive interest. We're going to go grab this dude.

And, you know, I just, I know that my left leg shakes a little bit. And so I can overcome that. I know I get short of breath, right? And so I've been in enough situations that I know how to over. overcome that. Right. When was the last time she was in a situation? Probably never, you know. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, she, what, she had, how long, 26 years or something they said? Oh, I didn't know that. I didn't know that. So I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was a 20 plus year veteran. And so my point is we get these like stressful situations in the academy. Yeah. When is the next time.

Right. Um, we, we have people in a stressful situation. And what we don't want to have happen is we give you a stressful situation in the academy. Your next stressful situation is like, you know, like life or death man. And, you know, we want to have some training in between. And so, you know, so we can teach people, look, man, slow it down, breathe. You know, we, there's a sort of a situation, there's a motto in law enforcement that is slowly catching on. My department adopted it several years ago, and it's this equation. It sounds really silly.

Time plus distance equals safety. Okay, so you're in an armed confrontation. If you can time plus distance equals safety, if it's not one of these situations where someone who pulls a gun and you immediately have to return fire to save yourself, if you can back off and slow everything down, it allows you to process information, you know, because so many things are going on, time plus distance, equal safety.

If you can back off, slow everything down. All right, now what do we have? Right. Does that make sense what I'm saying here? 100%. And I think that what you said earlier needs to be emphasized too is that a kind word would have done wonders. Like, I think that a lot of times police need to stop being trained to rely on their authority because that just increases fear of resistance on the other side.

Like, Bill, yeah. I really thank you for, you know, having this conversation tonight. I mean, everything from the Secret Service and the counter assault team to talking about policing, which is an increasingly relevant and important question in our country that's obviously not going away. it's not getting better on its own. Like we need to do some things as a country to kind of, you know, we'll never completely solve the problem, but to make it, I think we make it a hell of a lot better. Any final thoughts?

I want to ask you if you can stick around for the bonus segment afterwards for like 10, 15 minutes. Yeah, absolutely. Any final thoughts as we wrap this up tonight? No, man. I mean, listen, I was very humbled to be in the Secret Service, an incredible group of people. You can imagine education and competency level of that agency. I was very proud and humbled to be there.

And I'm very passionate about policing and police training. And just, you know, don't jump on the bandwagon when you see this stuff. I have a very close professor, a college professor that teaches at BCU. And he has this saying, man, until you've held a pair of, Until you've held a pair of handcuffs, don't pass judgment. So anyway, yeah, just that, man. So, yeah, let's go on to the bonus segment. If you guys give me one second, I'd just take a quick break.

I think we might have one or two questions that we did not get to. So, James, sorry about this. These are people who donated the show. So we just, we're kind of. Yeah, yeah, you know what's, man. James, thank you again. And James said the question was all about the pants, Jack. James is still working.

Are you wearing pants, Jack? Like, what is that question? I promise I'm wearing pants. Alex, thank you very much. What kinds of training or improvements do you think that police departments need to make? And what was your favorite meal you had while in duty? We kind of talked about the improvements that you think police departments need to make. Yeah, favorite meal.

Yeah. Geez, man. Again, this is a true, true fucking story, man. I was, when I was in Kat, we went to Afghanistan, I believe Obama. I don't remember the year, but we flew into Afghanistan. It was a quick in and out. There's a whole side story. We were sort of a classified trip.

I did a lie to my wife, tell her where we're going. but we did the visit. He did a Lassad Air Base maybe. I don't remember where the air base was Obama, but he flew out. And so it was a pitching catch, as I talked about earlier, there was a team catching him. So we were stuck there.

And so somebody said, hey, you guys hop on the spare Air Force One, right? There's always a plane. There's two planes that land in case there's a mechanical issue. And so we were going to fly back to Germany on the spare Air Force One. So me and the five other guys on the cat team, we jump on the spare Air Force One. Nobody else is on there. It's just six of us cat dudes. And so we lift off from Afghanistan and the Air Force stewardess comes back and says, listen, guys, we baked all of these buffalo wings.

and we have a couple cases of yingling. Would you guys be interested? It's just going to go to waste. And a lot of people don't know this, but the president is privy to new release movies at the time. I don't remember what the new release movie was at the time. But we sat on Air Force One on our way back, like eight-hour flight to Germany,

and we drank yinglings and eight buffalo wings. We're the only dudes on the plane. and we partied like rock stars, man, as we flew back to Germany. So that was my most favorite meal. Yeah, that's a pretty awesome. On an empty Air Force One. And then James, thank you again.

James said, look, I'm a JQ and a vet 115th Infantry. This is a great cover story. The pants were used with the hooker. Always lie on a polygraph. Take care of guys. okay um and then let's see here i think that's about it uh all right guys yeah that's it so join us next friday uh episode 90 we're going to have lindsay moran on the show she was a CIA case officer served in eastern europe macedonia uh i read her book actually this week called uh blowing my cover

super good book. So we'll have her on next Friday. Bill, thank you again. Really appreciate you joining us tonight. Bill, it's been awesome. Yeah, thanks, guys. I'm a big fan. I listen to you guys every week.

I'm a subscriber and I'm really honored to be here. You guys have had some true fucking American heroes on here. And I'm embarrassed that I'm here. And you're one of them and we appreciate it. And thank you, Dee. If you guys notice the production value is a lot nicer on the show tonight, it's because Dee is producing behind the scenes. here. Awesome job, Dan. Thank you.