The Team House - Lead FBI Negotiator at Waco | Gary Noesner | Ep. 206

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

Gary Noesner retired from the FBI in 2003 following a 30 year career as an investigator, instructor, and negotiator.  A significant focus of his career was directed toward investigating Middle East hijackings in which American citizens were victimized.  In addition, he was an FBI hostage negotiator for 23 years of his career, retiring as the Chief of the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit, Critical Incident Response Group, the first person to hold that position. In that capacity he was heavily involved in numerous crisis incidents covering prison riots, right-wing militia standoffs, religious zealot sieges, terrorist embassy takeovers, airplane hijackings, and over 120 overseas kidnapping cases involving American citizens. To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 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/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] #fbi #waco #rubyridgeBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to Team House, episode 206. I'm Dave Park. co-host Jack Murphy. And tonight, we are happy to welcome our guest, Gary Nessner. I got that right, correct? Nessner. You did.

Great. Who wrote the amazing book, Stalling for Time? Gary is a former FBI negotiator. And Gary, like, you've been around. You have seen a lot. Yeah, I'm an old guy, you know. I was in the FBI for 30 years. and spent 23 as a negotiator.

And the last 10 is the chief officer's negotiator for the FBI. So, Gary, let's start out with your origin story. How did you end up at the FBI? What in your life led you to that? Well, I talk about it in the book. It's a really a simple story when I was really young, six, seven, eight years old, something like that. I saw a Mickey Mouse episode. A Mickey Mouse show was a big thing back in the 50s.

And so a kid after school would watch that. And they had an episode where the host went to FBI headquarters and interviewed Jagra Hoover. And then went down and shot the Thompson machine gun and all that sort of stuff. And I watched that. And something about it just really thrilled me. And my mom came home from work that day. And I said, I had an epiphany, you know, and I didn't. even know what one was. But, you know, I told her I really wanted to be an FBI agent. She bought

me a little kid's book about the FBI. And that was it. I never looked back. It's all I ever wanted to do. That's fantastic. So what was your path then through high school, college? Like, what did you talk to people? Did you figure out what you needed to do to get there? Yeah, I mean, obviously, it's interesting in my neighborhood there. once I was of high school age, in our neighborhood there was a fellow that worked for the FBI. I was an agent in the Jacksonville office where I was raised, Jacksonville, Florida. And, you know, he was kind enough to encourage me to pursue my dream, even though I had to get through college and all of that stuff. So, you know, I became a, I got a teacher certificate as a backup plan, but my ultimate goal always was.

to get in the FBI and you know it worked out so what happened when you first got accepted like what was the academy like back then what were your initial impressions well the academy I mean you know you the hard part was getting in and the process and the weight you know what was pretty significant when I first joined the FBI I was too young to be an agent so I joined as a support employee and you know then there was a big backup for a year on hiring and so it seemed to drag on for quite a long time and you know I was thrilled when I finally was able to get my appointment to the academy and you know then it's it's academics it's physical fitness it's firearms you know all the procedures you go through in law enforcement collecting evidence testifying court arresting people

I found it all fascinating. It's always what I wanted to do. So then my first office of a sign that was Columbia, South Carolina, where I arrested fugitives all day long and responded to bank robberies. And I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. You know, I thought it was the greatest job ever. You know, it was like a, you know, a boy's dream, you know, to do all that interesting and exciting stuff.

Was this still during the J. Edgar years? Actually, no. he died the summer before I joined the FBI. I joined in October of 72. I think he died in July, June or July that year. But I think it would not be unfair to say that he was with the outfit for quite a while in terms of, you know, policies, procedures, and certainly ethos and our socialization, you know, it was pretty Hoover-oriented for a long time.

And what was that like for you? down in South Carolina. Did you work with local law enforcement a lot? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's this, you know, you watch the movies and it's always the, you know, the cops are all the smart guys and they do all the work and the stupid FBI comes in

and, you know, got our fancy suits, but we don't know what we're doing. And, you know, that's just a bunch of nonsense. I mean, we had great relationships and worked with the police. And particularly back there in the 70s, the police depended upon. the FBI for almost all of their training, which the FBI gave it no charge because that was part of our mission. But we worked very cooperatively with local police on any number of situations. And, you know, that was one of the elements about the work I enjoyed the most. Yeah. Were there any cases that were outstanding in your memory of your time in South Carolina?

You know, no, not really. I mean, I think, you know, it was just, routine stuff. I learned how to be an agent, you know, talk to people, interview people, make a safe arrest and testifying court, and essentially do those things that an FBI agent needs to learn to do to be successful on a job. And I had some great older agents as mentors that really helped me to learn. And I also had a few older agents that I learned not to do certain things by watching them. I always used to joke around that there were two older ages I would go rest fugitives with. And what was a big, strong former college football player.

And he was certainly capable of being a tough guy, but he knew how to talk to people and would get to cooperation. And another guy I worked with, he just had this ability to piss people off. And we'd end up rolling around the dirt when we're making our rest. And, you know, I only had about three suits from J.C. Penny or something like that. And I couldn't. It was a real keen on ripping them apart, you know, for fighting some guy that doesn't want to go to jail. But you learn pretty quick who you want to copy and who you want to learn from.

And what skill sets are really helpful to doing your job as productably as you can. And communication is the key, you know, and that ultimately is what led me to the negotiation field. Yeah. So then after South Carolina, where did you go after that? Well, I was transferred to the Washington field office, not the headquarters, the Washington field office, and worked foreign counterintelligence for a couple years and really wasn't my cup of tea, but, you know, you got to work where they said you. And then I got on a terrorism squad.

And that proved to be a really, you. interesting assignment because in 1984, the Congress passed a law that said, if you kidnap an American or hold them hostage anywhere in the world, the FBI would investigate it. So here it is 1985, or the early 80s. I'm working terrorism, and all of those cases were worked out of the squad I was on with about seven or eight guys. And we were traveling all over the world, responding to high jackings and Kelly Laurel ship jacking, the TW847 hijacking, Pan Am 73, the Roman Vienna airport attacks, on and on and on. And that was sort of a heavy dose of international exposure that, you know, most agents didn't experience back in those days. The only people that

really traveled abroad were executives going to some conference or the few legal outages we had assigned to places like London or Paris. So to have a street agent traveling to Italy, you know, or Germany and conducting investigations, uh, what was a brand new thing. And it was, uh, sort of exciting to be part of that. It certainly took a toll on the family being away so much, but, uh, the experience was invaluable. I would love to ask you because this is sort of like the birth of counterterrorism. It was the FBI also, uh, building a relationship with the United States military during that time because of potential counterterrorism missions, uh, abroad?

We did. I mean, I worked more as a negotiator than an investigator, but in addition to being an investigator, I was a negotiator part-time before I became a full-time negotiator. And we would periodically run training exercises with the Delta team and with the SEAL teams, counterterrorism exercises, you know, should we have a major event and have to work together and, you know, how did negotiations support what they were doing and vice versa. So those were interesting times, and particularly when I look back, because my son eventually became a Navy SEAL, and I always thought it was interesting having worked with them, you know, back in the 80s. Was hostage negotiation, was it a formalized, was it sort of a formalized track prior to terrorism? I mean, were they doing it for like local hostage type stuff, or was it something that developed over time? Yeah, it really started with NYPD. up where you guys are, they started it, I think, 73, 74, something like that. And they say it was based on the Munich massacre, that they were concerned that something like

that would happen in the States. But I think it was also necessity based on some couple major situations they had that just weren't managed very well and didn't go the way they wanted them. So they decided to put this unit together, Harvey Schlossberg and Frank Boltz. put it together and called it hostage negotiations and is basically containing a situation and opening a dialogue. The FBI recognized it pretty quickly as being a pretty effective approach. And of course, we stole it, copied it, and then, you know, began to teach it around the United States and overseas. We were able to put a lot more resources to sort of fine-tuning the behavioral

scientific aspects of it. But we always give credit to New York for having started it. But yeah, it was a new and emerging field. And I'd heard about it. And I wanted to, something about it appealed to me. So in 1980, a couple of years after they'd started doing it, I got a chance to go to the Haas negotiation school training at FBI Academy. And, And it took, you know, it was something that, you know, I think I was comfortable doing and was successful at. So those were very exciting years for me. I was particularly in the mid to late 80s or, you know, I was working these terrorism cases like, you know, Lockerbie and things like that. And at the same time, working with local police departments in Washington responding to situation.

and getting some experience and training and responding to FBI situations as well. So it was a great time of learning. So after your time with the terrorism unit, you said that you were kind of doing negotiation then, but did you move into like a full-time negotiated position after that? In 1990, I'd been deployed to Lockerbie, Scotland for the terrible tragedy there. And at this point in time, I was the longest running field agent on the terrorism squad. And I've been doing it for eight years. And I was kind of burned out.

I had three young kids at home. I was spending an awful lot of time away. So they kept it asking me to put in for a job at Quantico to become one of what was then three full-time hostages and negotiators. There's 350 negotiators in the FBI or so, but there was only three full-time. program managers at the time. And because I was, you know, I think I was, I was certainly at a point where I needed to make a change. So I accepted one of those positions. And so then I, I remember telling my wife, I won't be traveling as much. And that was the big lie because I ended up traveling even more as a negotiator. So why she's stuck with me all these years is kind of a mystery.

So even before that time being one of the full time, like you were doing this on a regular basis, though. Well, you know, regular. I'm not sure what you mean by that. You know, it's not like we have a hostage or barricade or suicide situation every day. But, yeah, I was teaching police officers because as soon as I got out of the training, I became a teacher to pass that knowledge on the police. Right. So having been the teacher for the police, when they would have a challenging or interesting situation,

and they would call me out to come out and play a role in helping them resolve it. And mostly with Metropolitan Police Department in D.C. where I had great friendships and learned a lot. And also, I think, helped them in some ways as well. So it was a good partnership. So can you tell us about like your first negotiation, the first time up to bat doing this? Gosh. My first real, I mean, there's a lot of little stuff, but the first real big one,

talk about my book was a what year is that 82 I think I flew down to a Raleigh North Carolina there was a man on a train a drug runner who was traveling with his sister and her two young children as sort of his cover somewhere coming up from Miami in the middle of night on the train dispute erupted and he ended up shooting and killing her obviously they had a sleeper compartment and the other compartments, obviously heard the gunshots. The train ended up getting disconnected from the rest of the train and the car did and was there in Raleigh, North Carolina. Well, the perpetrator only spoke Spanish. So the local police didn't really have a Spanish-speaking negotiator. So

one of my mentors at the FBI Academy called me up and said, you have a Spanish-speaking negotiator on your team in Washington. And I did, a guy named Ray Aris, newly trained. So Ray and I and I, and along with this fellow from Quantico, Fred Lansley, the three of us flew down to Raleigh to help them resolve that situation. And at the time, it was the longest situation outside of a prison in history of the United States. It was 72 hours or something like that. But eventually, sadly, a young baby in the compartment died from dehydration. But we got the little girl out alive and eventually surrendered. So that was my first really big siege.

What, do you remember, like, what were, did you have any personal, like, lessons learned from from when you did that or any frustrations? Oh, sure. There's a, there's a ton of lessons. And what happened is the Spanish-speaking negotiator, Ray, he was just fresh out of the training academy. So he was a great agent, a great guy, a super guy, a great friend today. But he had never done any of this before.

So, in essence, I was coaching him. by coaching, I'm, you know, basically telling him what I thought he should say. And, of course, he's trying to move, turn that into Spanish and deliver that message. And he ended up doing a fantastic job and went forward and rescued the little girl when the guy decided to let her go. And it's all set forth in my book. It was a pretty interesting, challenging case. Yeah. I just want to ask you real quick, because you said for six months, you,

investigated politicians. And I know this is a little of a derailment, but what was that like for you? Was it challenging? Were you enabled to do that? Yeah, I wasn't there long enough to work any really big, big time cases. But in addition to terrorism and negotiations, one of the things that always intrigued me was political corruption. And and I decided, you know, before I went to Quantico and when I got off of that traveling terrorism team, that would be something interesting to work. And so I worked a couple interesting cases. Nothing major or noteworthy that you would know about, but I always felt that one of the

really important roles of the FBI was to be sort of a check and balance on political corruption, which we have no shortage of here in the United States. And I'm still proud of the work we do in that regard. I should say they do now So, you know, I'm going to kind of jump forward in the book a bit Because the book, and I highly recommend This is a fantastic book reading about

I mean, firsthand accounts of being a negotiator And a lot of the challenges That you face When you're dealing with more gungho aspects Or elements of the Of the law enforcement that you work with. I should show them the paperback version, too, because I don't even think they print the hard book anymore, but this is in 2018 when they came out with the Paramount Waco movie Random House. My publisher decided to bring this out in paperback and change the cover.

And I should also mention, Gary, that you were in the recent documentary on Netflix, American Apocalypse, which I really enjoyed hearing from you. and some of the other guys. I mean, everybody, I mean, we'll get to that, I'm sure. But it was an interesting documentary worth people's time. Yeah, I think they did a great job. I was very much involved in that project from the beginning. And I was very pleased that Tiller Russell, the director, did an incredible job of piecing it all together.

And I think there's been, I don't know, a dozen documentaries on Waco's in the last 30 years. And that one, in my opinion, is far in a way, the most comprehensive, the most accurate. And if people watch one thing about Waco, it should probably be that three-part documentary on Netflix. So let's talk about Talladega, because that was a big success for the FBI, right?

That was kind of a... You mentioned... I mean, from success to hubris is actually the title of your chaper about that. So can you give us the background on Talladega and how that all started? Well, the hubris came because of the success at Talladega. Taledega, it was a situation where we were dealing with Cuban inmates.

And you may recall that back in the 80s, we had two simultaneous prison riots in Atlanta and O'Pale, Louisiana of Cuban inmates. And what had happened was during the Mariel Boat Lift, Castro sort of emptied his cells and kicked all these prisoners. out and they came to the United States and, you know, no small number of them engaged in crime once they got here. So they were arrested, prosecuted, thrown in jail. And then when their time was served, they couldn't be extradited back to or removed back to Cuba because Cuba wouldn't take them. And then we couldn't let them out of jail here because they were here illegally. So it was a real conundrum. So that sparked eventually, you know, a not surprising riot when the Cuban inmates felt that they were stuck in limbo in perpetuity.

But that was resolved peacefully, those two riots. And then a third outcome was Talladega, you know, many years, some years later. And the reason Talladega occurred, again, with Cuban inmates, is those inmates had been Atlanta and Oakdale and had more or less been given the impression that their problems would be resolved. and they weren't. So here they are some years later and they're still stuck in a federal prison with no hope of getting out. So they ended up taking hostages, correctional officers and some immigration and naturalization service personnel. And it was a tough negotiations lasted over eight

days because we couldn't really say, hey, we'll work it out because that's the line we gave them years before and it didn't happen. I mean, we didn't have much credibility with them in terms of trying to resolve what was essentially an almost an unresolvable problem. You can't let murderers out on the street here and, you know, armed robbers and so forth, and Castro wouldn't take them back. So Taladega essentially began to unravel. And during the negotiations, we were able to get one hostage out after some considerable work. And that hostage told us that they were going to,

they already picked names out of a hat and they were going to start executing hostages. So that was really very insightful inside information, which prompted us to say, we're going to have to take some action to try to conduct a rescue. And so that's what happened. So the negotiators then went into our support the tactical folks phase. And we provided a very rich meal to the inmates who hadn't eaten for eight days. And, you know, they stuck themselves and began to feel. as though they now had turned the tide and they had all the power and control.

And as they slumbered off the sleep, the hostage rescue team entered the compound, I mean, entered the cell block and rescued all the hostages and arrested all the inmates without firing a shot. So it was a great success for the FBI. But as you mentioned, the hubris part was that the head of the hostage rescue team, I think, came away from that thinking a certain level of invincibility that. that showed its ugly side in Ruby Ridge and Waco some years later. Yeah, you also mentioned that it sort of came away with the negotiation team appearing subservient to, or, you know, that they were a lower priority

or that they were just, you know, an aspect, a supporting aspect to the assaulters. You know, there's an age old. It's as old as the negotiation business. where we're paramilitary organizations and law enforcement. And so there is a natural tendency to use force to compel somebody to do something when they resist or they don't do what we want. And it can actually drive decision making in a very negative way and cost police officers or lives. The whole reason negotiations was developed was not just because we were concerned

about saving some victim. It was really to prevent law enforcement officers from having to enter a dangerous situation where they may be killed or seriously injured. So every time we succeed as a negotiator, which, by the way, is in the mid-90 percentile, which is like nothing else in law enforcement is even remotely close to that statistically. But when we succeed, we keep officers, you know, safe and they can go home at night. So the default, you know, if you listen to all the philosophical conversations from law enforcement, We always say we'll never use, we don't use any more force than is absolutely necessary. And so that would suggest that negotiations comes first and only if that is not working or the threat increases based on the actions and behavior that perpetrated, then we consider tactical intervention.

But as a practical matter, there are those in law enforcement that don't quite understand the negotiation process. It's sort of a gray, fuzzy thing. And, you know, they live in a black and white world. And so it's like they're not doing what we say, let's go get them. And they don't stop to think very often about the potential harm to themselves or they kill a hostage by mistake or whatever it might be. So I always feel negotiations should be the default always for law enforcement. And only if we can articulate that our failure to act will likely result in loss of life, hostage, victim, whatever, then we give serious consideration to going. in, but we don't do it just because we're tired or we're upset that this guy's not paying attention to us. That certainly factors into some decision making, but it shouldn't.

It should be a decision that, you know, and a negotiator like me shouldn't be saying, oh, it's going fine, boss, or it's going bad. I should have to articulate very clearly these particular indicators would suggest to me that we are engaged in having a fairly workable relationship with this person. their language is less violent, their actions are less concerning, and stay the course. You know, it may take some time yet, but there's no reason to rush in and do anything that might jeopardize life. And conversely, you know, as in Talladega, if a negotiator like me says, hey, this thing is unraveling.

And as much as we would like to succeed, it's quite likely that if we don't act, these people are going to become violent. But that doesn't mean negotiations failed. It just means that the perpetrators failed to behave the right way or think the right way. My judgment, negotiations never fail because we always buy time. I mean, as you guys would probably know, from any time you respond to a crisis, what we know in the first hour versus say the sixth or seventh hour is vastly different. So what do we do as negotiators? We're verbally containing the situation, not just physically. We're verbally containing it.

We're gathering information about the perpetrator. You know, what's their mental health background? What's their criminal history? We talk to friends, relatives, and coworkers, you know, how impulsive are they? How dangerous? How do they handle stress? And all of these things help us to deal more effectively with the person. But while we're doing that, it allows the tactical team to practice, to rehearse, to assemble

equipment. So there's so many factors for buying time. And, you know, again, that's the name of my book, Stalling for Time. And that's why I named it that because the only time, time works against you is if you've got some hostage or police officer bleeding to death and you've got to get to them. Those are extraordinarily rare. But in almost all cases, if we slow it down, we lower the emotional content. And that's the point in time which people begin to think and behave more rational. it's uh and apparently you guys have a lot of your own types of weapons to bring to bear because

one of the things you mentioned in the talladega section was aromatic warfare which i thought was really great i actually stole that from frank bolts in the new york city i remember when i first met frank he was telling me a story about some guy was held up in an apartment building and he hadn't had a food for a while or breakfast or whatever was so they fried some of it. bacon down the hall and kind of stimulated his gastro response. So I had this idea to Taladega. I said, you know, the inmates had not eaten for quite a while. So let's bring out some big barbecue grills because we had guys literally, they didn't have handguns or firearms. So we could stand out where they could see us. So the guards surrounding this cell block,

we brought these big portable barbecue grills out and let them cook some states. And, you know, and the wind was sort of carrying the aroma of that into the cell block. And, you know, that's a strong motivation when you haven't eaten for quite a few days. And, you know, we did it nonchalantly. We didn't do it in such an obvious in-your-face way. But the message, I think the message helped. Yeah. So the humorous from this chapter, because you move on from Talladega to Ruby Ridge,

can you give us the background of Ruby Ridge and how that all started? Well, let me say what, you know, since the, early I mean the mid-70s the FBI has always thought that negotiations is our preferred method of resolution and again as I mentioned earlier only tactics only come if if warranted and we have no other recourse and and that's usually decided by the behavior of the perpetrator and more want to live than die so that's why we're as successful as we are what happened because of that very dynamic and, you know, laudable rescue work that the hostage rescue team did at Talladega, their new commander at the time kind of felt as though that he was the beginning and end of all, of how to do all of this.

And it was one problem that he thought that way, but he also, I think high-level FBI officials believed it as well. So when we get to Ruby Ridge, and I wasn't there, my partner was, but, you know, we start off with there's a shootout between the marshals and the weaver family and weaver's son is killed the marshal's killed um so as my partner and and the hostage rescue team chief are flying out there he basically says there's no negotiations involved in this and basically orders uh his snipers if you see anybody with any anybody with a weapon you you can shoot him well there's a little thing we have have called the Constitution that requires a bit more than that. I mean, you can only use deadly force if your life or another is in imminent danger. So it was sort of a violation of that.

And that's what happened. They shot Wounded Weaver and a friend of his and another bullet was fired. It went through the front door and ended up unintentionally killing Vicki Weaver as she was holding one of their children. Well, that situation turned from bad to worse real quick. But I will know. And I'm not saying this because I was there because I wasn't. But it still was negotiated out after about eight days. And despite all that loss of life. But we move on to six months later.

That was the fall of 92. In the spring of 93, we have Waco. And we still have this same person in charge. of the hostage rescue team. And again, the sort of the same aggressive approach to, hey, we're going to force these people out. You know, you try talking to them for a couple of days, Mr. Negotiator, but they're not listening. So we're going to increase the external pressure and make them come out. Well, as a negotiator, I call that the paradox of power. And that is the harder you push, the more likely you get resistance. And that's exactly what happened. So we had success as

negotiators at Waco. We got 35 people out, including 21 children, during the first half of the ordeal. I was there 26 out of the 51 days. But the problem is every time we were making successful headway, the tactical team would move forward in some aggressive action that would undercut the negotiation message. You're going to pay attention to the nice man on the phone talking to you or the guy in the tank to just crushed your car. I mean, you know, which one's going to have a bigger impact on you. So that's when I said we, you know, went from that success at Talladega to sort of a hubris of feeling that, hey, we've got this tremendous tactical resource. We can, we can use it and make people do what we want. And that's a, that was a fatal mistake there. And the FBI certainly

shifted back to the way we were after Waco, realizing that the negotiation team that I led had it right. And we should have stayed the course with that. Yeah, I mean, going back, after Ruby Ridgel quick because you you mentioned um you know given the countervailing charges the government misconduct um Randy Weaver was acquitted on all counts except failure to appear and then both him and his daughters won damages. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean again, I think the the government's actions were seen as so egregious that you know paid a price for that. And of course, Weaver paid the ultimate price. I ended up meeting Randy Weaver in 96 when he

uninvitedly came out to Montana to try to get involved in our negotiations with the Freeman. So I had an opportunity to meet him for the first time there and talk with him. And that was an interesting experience. Was he basically because Bo Gritz had sort of injected himself into your negotiations that he thought maybe he could do the same? Well, he was with Bo. He came out with Bo. Bo bought him out. And they approached us and they said, hey, we want to talk to these guys. And I was tasked by FBI leaders to sit down and talk to them both and determine whether or not we should consider using them.

And, you know, I like the message they were pretending. I mean, Bo was either trying to, you know, Bo was an interesting, is an interesting character, very outgoing and brash. But I liked his message. He was trying to, he said he would try to convince them to come out. And Randy Weaver, I asked us, Randy, why do you want to go in? And he said, I want to tell him not to make the same mistake I did.

He said, if I had just come out, my family would be alive here today. And I thought it was a pretty compelling argument. And I made that argument that argument. FBI leaders, but it's probably the only recommendation that wasn't accepted. They let they let Bo go in, but they didn't let Randy Weaver go in. I guess it was too much bad blood between Department Justice and the FBI and the Weavers after, excuse me, after Ruby Ridge. But the, the, the Freeman didn't want to see Bo either, but he sort of, he sort of convinced him to go inside there. And he, he didn't get along with him too well, but it was a,

it was an effort worth trying. Yeah. You know, I hope you don't mind. You know, we've talked about the documentary on Waco and everything, but I do, you cover a lot of things in your book that I think, you know, haven't really been talked about a whole lot before or by people who had firsthand accounts. And while we don't expect you to remember every single detail of the book you wrote, because we know how that is, I would really like to go through some of the events as they happen because it really shows sort of not just, just sort of the challenges you were having with David Koresh himself making a lot of false promises, but also the challenges that you were having with your own internal, like with the FBI, David Rogers and Jamar, like with some of, you know, some of the people on the ground. I think even from your flight out to Waco, right, can you tell us about what happens when you get

called out and you guys get on your. I mean, it's April 19th, the day of the 8th, excuse me, it's February 28, 93, the day of the ATF raid. And, of course, the shootout that followed. And we had beepers then, and not even cell phones. And my beeper went off and I went to a phone booth. I was out running errands with my family. It was a weekend. I think it was a Sunday.

And I called my boss and he gave me a thumbnail sketch of what was going on. They said, get to the airport where we keep our planes. So I took my family home and grabbed my go bag and off I went. And when I got to the airport, there's two planes there. There's an executive jet and there's a prop plane. And I get put in a prop plane and they put the head of HRT in the jet. And I'm thinking of myself, well, what's you going to do is salt the compound by himself before his team gets there? wouldn't you want the negotiator there right away to start talking to this guy?

But that's the thinking, you know, this is this is the guy. We've got to get the guy out here. And yeah, so it was just sort of a metaphor for sort of a power struggle that took place once we got out there. And so you get out there and Jeff Jamar is the FBI on scene commander. And then it's David Rogers, right, who is running her. at the time. Dick Rogers. Dick Rogers. Dick Rogers. Yeah. So what kind of what were you used to or what did you recommend in terms of like talking to those two, the leader of HRT and the on scene commander? And then what did they decide was going to be the way of you guys disseminating information? Well, the first couple

days. I mean, you know, they were certainly supportive and and they're, you know, they're both. They were both guys that made decisions I didn't agree with, but their intent was proper. Nobody in the FBI team wanted to see anybody get hurt and wanted everybody to come out alive. But their frustration levels really built up after, I think it was the third day, we'd gotten some kids out, quite a few kids. And David Kresh said he would surrender and bring everybody out alive if we played a national radio broadcast that he'd taped. We listened to the tape. We didn't see anything problematic in it. We played it to religious

scholars at Dale Baylor and, you know, it was worth the effort and I told the boss said, let's give this a try. We may be able to resolve this. And we played it nationwide on the Christian broadcast network and Koresh heard it. And in the tape, we made him include a preamble saying that, you know, once this was broadcast, nationally he and his followers would come out peacefully. So that's what we did. And then, you know, we have all the buses lined up. We have all the provisions lined up to accept these people coming out of the building.

And at the last minute, Koresh, you know, hears from God that, you know, he shouldn't go. Kind of a convenient sort of divine intervention, I suppose. And, you know, it disappointed. me as negotiator? Right. Did it surprise me? No. We're kind of used to having people make representations and then not at least initially

following through on it. So when that happens, the preferred method is to go back to them repeatedly and say, hey, David, you know, I went out on a limb for you. I had this thing played. I did everything you wanted. You know, I'm working for you here to get you out. And, you know, you're making me look bad with my boss. I'm trying to help you.

You've got to help me help you. That would have been the approach we had planned to take. But, you know, self-control is something I teach as a negotiator. And that's what we had to exercise. I will say that others in the decision-making tree reacted to that failure to come out and took it almost personally and got extremely angry and said, well, we're going to show him. He's jacking us around.

And so they went forward with the tanks and, you know, did what they did. And of course, then Koresh responds that, hey, you know, you promised you'd stay off our land, which would have promised had been made to bring about the ceasefire with ATF after the initial shootout. So now instead of having some moral high ground relative to Koresh where we're saying we did what you did, you're not doing your thing, now he's saying, look what you're doing. You're trying to force us out. you're being overly aggressive. And he had a valid argument.

And so it was a case of, I think, the unseen commander not appreciating the inconsistencies. You know, he would generally approve of my strategies, but then he would go to the forward command post and talk to the tactical team leader and he would hear a very contradictory approach. And he would say, yeah, that sounds good too. I don't think ever fully appreciating

that the two were inconsistent and contradictory. Right. And, you know, for people who might not be aware the history, the ATF tried an 80-man raid on the compound. And we've talked to people in the past who said he probably could have been picked up out on town, you know. Well, that's one of the criticisms that you hear that, you know, instead of a dynamic entry, you know, they probably could have, you know, patiently waited for Crest to leave the property, which he reportedly did periodically and arresting. You know, I think that's the way we would have done it. Three years later when we did the Montana Freeman siege, that's what we did. We lured the two leaders out and arrested them. We countered a different set of problems, but I'm convinced that had Koresh been arrested early on, it's all over.

It's done. He was the absolute, unquestionable leader. I mean, he controlled every aspect of everyone's life. And if he'd been out of the picture, I'm sure we'd have gotten everybody out in short order. Yeah. And then you guys went to a great length to separate yourselves from the ATF in the beginning, too. I did. Yeah. I mean, and I, the first night I was there, you know, one of the ATF negotiators was kind of worn out. He was talking to them and Jim Cavillow. He'd been doing a great job. He said, I'm about to fall on my face. He said, will you take over talking to him? And it's really the only time I negotiated.

directly because at this point in my career, I'm the head negotiator. I'm not the guy on the phone. I'm running the whole team. But my other negotiators weren't out there yet. So even in my propeller plane, I got out there way ahead of everybody else. So I got on the phone with Koresh for 10 hours or so. And, you know, it was an interesting chat for sure. And, you know, we were able to try to continue the good work that Jim had done. And he released some more people the next. some more kids the next day. I'm sorry, I don't think I hit your question. No, that's fine.

It's just because it was the ATF that had, you know, done the entry. Oh, I'm sorry, thank you. What I was telling, starting to tell you was that when I took over, there were three or five or six ATF agents or more in the room. And these were guys who'd been part of the raid. I mean, they were just the walking wounded. And I said, listen, guys, when I get on the phone, you know, don't get the wrong impression, but I'm going to make sure I distance myself from what you did.

Not because I disapprove of or approved. I'm neutral on the subject. I'm just trying to make him say, hey, we're a different team now coming in. You can deal with us because you've obviously got bad blood. You can point fingers at each other who shot first, but I don't really give a shit. You know, I've got to get these people out. So I said, if you're not comfortable with that, then you should leave the room. You know, and that's what I did. you know, we're not the ATF. This is the FBI. We're in here now investigating this. And I think that was the right approach to take and would do it again. And, you know, during this time, you said that, you know, you would do these negotiations and then sometimes, like, the FBI leadership would do something that was contrary to what you'd been negotiating. How did that sort of undermine your effort,

considering that Dave Correction, a lot of these, you know, same as like, uh, the weavers where they saw you know the government as a force of the apocalypse and then when agents are swarming all over their house it's like see this is exactly what we said it was going to be well yeah

I mean David Koresh taught an apocalyptic philosophy and and the key element of that was the forces of evil the forces of Babylon were going to come against them at some point and they were all going to die and rise up again and all that sort of thing you know, kind of book of revelations sort of end times philosophy.

And so, yeah, when ATF conducted its raid, I mean, if it did anything, it enhanced Gresh's status as a profit. He's saying, hey, I told you they were coming for us. And lo and behold, here they were. So we start off in a hole with that. That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Absolutely. And then every time we as negotiated would get some positive interaction going and we'd get somebody to come out, the frustration by the tactical team that turn off the power or run over a car or do something provocative.

It just dug us in a hole that we had to dig out of again. And this went up and down and up and down for days. And it got near the end of my time there. In March 22nd, I'll never forget it. We had seven adults come out. Seven. The biggest release in the whole siege. And Steve Snyder, Koresh's assistant, the guy we were dealing with at the time, talking with a good bit.

He said, I got more people lined up tomorrow. Well, as soon as that seventh person came out without any consul temptation, without asking me or anybody in the negotiation team, I mean, they went forward with tanks and knocked shit over. and I mean, I've trained negotiations for 40 years now, and people just don't believe that something so uncoordinated could happen, but it did. And it's just not the way we teach it in the FBI. The on-scene commander, the tactical commander,

and negotiation commander need to be in lockstep. We need to be singing from the same sheet of music and totally coordinating our activities, our activities, and that just didn't happen. And I tell people, you know, people say, well, I guess the FBI learned so much at Waco and things you've never done before. So we knew what to do and we were being successful at it. What really marks Waco is a departure from longstanding FBI philosophy and approach.

Now, it's hard to explain how could that happen. Well, we had a weak director in the FBI back in headquarters sessions. And, you know, there was just poor management at the upper levels of the FBI that let this proceed as it did. I mean, stuff like playing the loud music that everybody criticizes negotiators for. Well, we didn't do that. We're definitely opposed to it.

I mean, it was just, we don't teach it, and we advise against it. It's deprivation agitation techniques. They don't work. And they're ineffective, and they're relationship killers. Yet that was done, you know, without us being asked and without our input. And it took me three days to,

get it stopped and only then I had to take a back channel approach to FBI headquarters and say, would you tell the idiot down here to quit doing that shit? It makes us look foolish and it's counterproductive. But it's amazing that I had to do that, you know, instead of just saying, boss, don't do this. But that didn't work. So yeah, I would like to name that person says they're named in your book. But your description of him, he was especially in charge out of El Paso, Dick Schwine or Schwinn, yeah, Schwine, Schwine. Swine. Swine.

Swine. He shows up wearing a dark blue swat-type uniform when all the other sacks are in like, you know, civilian attire, complete with a web belt holding a canteen. Yeah. I mean, and his hat was slightly, I mean, it's like, are you trying to win the look goofy competition today or what? You know, the other SACs had golf shirts and chinos on. I mean, you know, they're casual and professional. And this guy comes in like he's in the Looney Tunes.

And it was shameful the stuff that he did. I mean, he's just, I mean, from day one, he got there. So we're going to go get those people. We'll tell them. We'll show them who's boss. You know, and it's losing, I always talk about that. Number one attribute of a negotiator or any decision maker is self-control. If you can't control your own emotions and make decisions based on logic and not emotion,

how do you expect to control anybody else? You know, you can't. And it's just, it's basic philosophy. And, you know, the other thing I remember telling Mr. Jamar was, you know, when we could, when the seven people came out, I said, we're not going to get anybody else out now. I said, you know, have you heard of a guy named Pavlov? You know, when the dog does what we want, we feed the dog. We reward the dog.

When these people let people out, we encourage and positively do things for them. we don't kick him in the butt. You know, if you teach your dog to bring you the paper and after a couple times he does it, then you kick him in the nuts. Your dog is going to say, well, no much, I'm not doing that again. And that's what we did.

And I hate to be crude about it, but it's just that simple. Yeah. And so Schneider, who is like Crush's number two guy working on the inside, who had been trying to get people out, he'd been trying to work with you guys. Once the floodlights on the compound,

and the auditory, the sound start playing. Like, what was his response to that? Well, it was a bit embarrassing if you listened to the original tapes from the recordings from the negotiation, which were evidence in their, I think, out public access now. You know, he's basically saying stuff like,

what am I supposed to believe from my government? You're playing Nancy Sinatra music and the Dalai Lama. What is my government trying to tell me? Right. And as negotiators were mortified, because we don't have a good answer for that. Right. You know, there's nothing we can say to justify that.

And we just, you know, the only thing we could say is those people don't know you like we do. They're not talking you like we are. We can't control. Well, that undercut us because basically, Corresh and Snyder are saying, well, you guys can't control what's going on out there. Why should we even talk to you? So it was a terrible, terrible recipe for managing a situation. Yeah. So is it about this time when your tour is up on this? Well, we have a rotation system for crisis management where personnel generally spend three weeks there.

The hostage rescue team should have been relieved as well, but they weren't. You put a bunch of thoroughbred horses, you know, they want to do something. We could have used normal SWAT teams. We didn't need our elite, in my opinion, counterterrorism team there. But anyway, everyone rotates out about three weeks. I've been in my fourth week now. And I think they use that as an excuse to say, hey, Gary, we're going to bring somebody else out. I learned the real reason was I was too much of an impediment to some of the aggressive tactical action they wanted to take.

And so they wanted to get me out of there. And sure enough, no one else came out after I left. Yeah. Yeah, because just prior to that, the SAC Jamar, he said we needed to punish Koresh for not moving fast enough. And that was how they were. Yeah. Koresh was embarrassing them. And, you know, there was a lot of, in their, you know, to some extent, their defense, certainly Jemar's is, I mean, this is the biggest thing in the news, you know, worldwide. massive press corps there

massive pressure the FBI spending a million dollars a day or whatever it was in 1993 and you know and a lot of people in the FBI have always taken pride in our ability to to effectively manage situations and all of a sudden I think there's a lot of people

say you know this guy's making us look bad we're we're looking inept and ineffectual and why can't we get this resolved And those kinds of thoughts lead to action imperative. And the action imperative is, you know, doing something, anything, just to be seen to be doing something when oftentimes doing nothing is the best course of action. Yeah. And so they sent out a gentleman named Clint, Clint, Clint Sant.

Is that right? He replaced me, yes. Yes. And can you tell us about the reservations you had about him? Well, I don't want to go in too much, but he's a very devout, born-again Christian guy. And I think I was concerned knowing that, having worked with him, that he would try to out-divinity, Trump. I mean, Trump, excuse me, out-divinity, Koresh. That was a Freudian slip.

Anyway, that he would try to convince him that him, Koresh, that his interpretation of the Seven Seals, was faulty. And I thought that was a fool's errand because you can't really talk somebody out of their core belief systems. And when we got people out, it was not when we talked about religion. It was when we kept him in the here and now.

So my boss came out with him to relieve me and we sat down together and promised they wouldn't do that. And sure enough, a couple days later, that's spent all night doing it for multiple nights and got nowhere with it. And what was, it was shortly after this period of time,

I think that the siege ended or that Waco ended. Can you like, for your... No, no, I left halfway through. It didn't end for another 20, 25 days or something like that. And did... But you could say, you know, negotiations ended when those seven people came out and we responded in a completely inappropriate way.

right so you left halfway through but no more people came out no more children were sent out that was that was nothing nothing and up into that point how many people had had come out of the compound 35 21 kids and the rest adults and how many people were left in the compound you know whoever I mean I think 77 died the last day I don't I don't have the exact number off the tip of by tip my tongue. There were nine that survived the fire on the final day and there

is speculation that the reason they survived is they were the fire starters. Maybe not all of them, but a good many of them were because it didn't come out in the trial or anything, but they had accelerant on their clothing. In other words,

they had the fuel oil or the diesel fuel, whatever it was. They used to light the fires on their clothing. And that's the reason they were not clustered in the middle where they would have perished with so many of the others so tragically. I thought one of the interesting things in the documentary, and I had never studied Waco closely, so I kind of just hear things, right, like many people have. One of the impressions that I was under that I had heard was that a fire began in the compound

because law enforcement was firing tear gas into it and the canisters had set it on fire. But in the documentary, it makes the point that that was the day prior to the fire. So then it was the next day and you had the fires breakout. And some of them were you had one fire and then two more broke out that were upwind of the original fire. And I mean, all of this was very interesting to learn in the documentary. Well, a little backed up on that. I mean, the tear gas went in the final morning. Okay.

It was pumped in. And there were also ferret rounds popped in with shotgun shells with tear gas in them. Those can be flammable, and it's convenient for people to say, oh, the FBI started the fire. But the arson investigation made it pretty conclusive that the Divideon started the fire. The fire originated simultaneously in three places. There were hidden microphones that we had sent in with various deliveries of milk and whatnot. and those were not contemporaneously. You know, you had to filter those and listen to them later.

But after the fact, we heard, you know, they're saying light the fires, start the fires. One of the surviving Divideons was put in front of the one of the nine was put in front of the grand jury the following day. And he said, I didn't see anybody start the fires, but I heard them saying start the fires. So, you know, and then we have an observation of one of the hostage rescue team guys, the walls had been partially torn down, saw a guy starting fire. So all of these together. And the survivors continue to deny it. I think the evidence is overwhelming and conclusive that they started the fire.

Now, clearly they started the fire in reaction to our effort to end the thing through the insertion of tear gas. But the tear gas did not mistakenly light up to place. Yeah. I'm sure you can find plenty of plenty amongst those survivors that would dispute that claim, but I think the evidence is overwhelming. Were there, so once this happens, I know that you said that you called the negotiators personally to make sure they understood that they did the best they could, things like that. Like, what were the ramifications?

Because this was a big hit for the FBI. What were the ramifications you? You saw, what did you see agency-wide? Well, I think that close to it. It took a while for that all to settle down. But immediately, I'm the head of the FBI negotiation program at the time, and I felt these guys and gals are on my team. I'm going to call each and every one. I'm telling them how proud I was of them and that they did their best.

They saved 35 people. And I just think that's what a leader should do. And so I did that. I'm still very proud of that team. While the incident was tragic, that team really was quite effective. And many innovative things we put in place in Waco that have become standard practice throughout the negotiation profession now. Getting to the larger thing, there was obviously after action reports.

There was investigations. I can sum it up for you that the FBI basically said that we should have stuck with what the negotiators were saying. That was the bottom line finding. So afterwards, the on-scene commander and the tactical team leader were sort of encouraged to retire, which they did sometime after. And I was given a promotion. We enhanced the power of the hostess negotiation team, the crisis negotiation unit, to be at the same level. At the time of Waco, the HRT commander was like a colonel in the army, and I was like a lieutenant colonel.

and the Yonstein commanders like a general. But after Waco, they elevated me to be in parity with the head of the HRT so that my voice would have equal weight. That's how it was supposed to work in theory. And we embarked, I was selected to, along with another guy, to train essentially every leader in the FBI about the mistakes that were made and what not to do in the future. So while the FBI vigorously defended itself against external critics, it nonetheless internally knew damn well that we had not done what we always taught. We had not followed our own principles and our own procedures. And, you know, it boils down to this. People ask me who's responsible.

I say, well, you know, it's a complex story. I ultimately hold David Koresh response. Because each and every day, we encouraged him. to bring his people out peacefully. We made all sorts of concessions and arrangements to make him comfortable with doing that. And yet at the end of the day, he chose not to do that. But because that responsibility is so squarely on his shoulders, a very malignant, narcissistic, self-serving leader,

it does not mean that the FBI didn't also make mistakes. And I think that's the important thing. I think the public, you know, I've been dealing with this a long time. people wanted to be black or white. You know, they were all crazy people and they deserve what they got or big old bad government shows up and says, let's kill all these people. And that's just ignorant and naive and unsupported by the facts. It's a complex, tragic story.

The people inside were mostly good people who unfortunately hitched their wagon to a megalomaniac who abused them in every way. And in the FBI, we had most. really good people there, essentially all good people trying to do the right thing, but some leaders who, for lack of training or experience, made some really bad decisions that tend to support our success as negotiators. Gary, I'd like to ask you a question, like beyond the tactical questions, this is almost something more philosophical, I think, that Ruby Ridge and Waco still occupy a place in American culture and the American consciousness to this day.

And I know if I went and spoke to those surviving nine members of the Branch Davidians, if I were to sit down with Randy Weaver, they would have a perspective. But I'd like to ask your perspective about where does Waco fit in an American consciousness, an American culture? How does that resonate to this day? I mean, in 2023, it's not just you and I who are still, and Dave, who are still talking about this. I mean, this is something that still exists as something that is contentious. And for some people, an open wound.

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. The topic, you know, in 2018, Paramount came out with a Waco dramatic six-part series about Waco. It was pretty good, some fictionalization in it. But actor Michael Shannon played me. Well, they just came out with the second season. And it's on Showtime Paramount right now, and it's called Waco the Afterman. And it's about what happened after Waco. And part of that focus is how the events at Ruby Ridge in Waco, Waco particularly, really became a rallying cry for anti-government sentiment, which I think leads to your question.

And it continues today. But then I recently heard a quote from Sheriff Jack Harwell, who was out in McClinnock County in Waco and would spend a lot of time in Ardena, negotiation room and a lovely man. And he said, once he said, I don't think, and I'm probably not directly quoting him, but he said, I don't think Waco is so much a rallying cry for the right. It's more an excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway. And I think that makes a lot of sense to me. I think, you know, we had long before Waco, we had the CSA siege and we had issues with some extreme right-wing anti-government folks. So it's not they just popped up overnight after Waco. So they were around. I just think this became sort of an excuse for them to do some of the things

they did and continue to do to this to this day. You know, we, three years later, we had an 85-day siege in Montana with Freeman, another anti-government group. And this time, unlike Waco, we had a new director, Louis Free, and he basically is on the phone with me and the other leaders out there. And he says, hey, Gary, I'm in no rush for this to end. I want this done the right way. And it showed there was a paradigm shift.

You know, now we had gotten back to where we were before Waco. And sure enough, it took us 85 days, but no shots were fired and everybody surrendered. No fire, no drama. And, of course, nobody knows about it because it fell off the news media. But that's fine. That's the way we want.

wanted. But it was a it was probably one of the things I'm most proud of because it was a it was a reassertion of what we had always believed for you know 20 years in the FBI and and it's what we'd always taught and and what we'd shared with law enforcement from around the world. And we were finally able to to show that despite the tragedy of Waco, we knew how to do these things and we knew how to do them safely and efficiently. And so I was very proud of my team out of there. Yeah. Outside of

Shwine, who, you know, sounds like he kind of was larping, you know, playing make believe. Do you feel as though people like Jamar and and Rogers, do you feel that they were under pressure from higher ups

to like get this solved because it, because there were dead ATF agents and it was consuming so much like national media space? I think Jeff Jamar, who, who, you know, I always hate talking about him because I know in his mind, in his heart, he was trying to do the right thing.

He just had not been well trained for. You know, in the FBI, because you're a general, and you have this territory under you, there's an assumption that you know how to do all these things. Well, you know, he can run a great office and get great crime statistics and do any number of things extraordinarily well that the FBI does on a routine basis. But who works a case like this when you get the experience? to manage something of this magnitude. Well, the fact of the matter is he didn't.

And not he alone, but many didn't. So, I mean, this is what I did for full time for my living. So I had some sense of doing these things, but not necessarily the big decision maker. So, but he was trying his best. And I think he was under a lot of pressure. Now, Dick Rogers, I think just, you know, had a different philosophical approach. I mean, some people say, well, the problem was it the tactical people, H.R.T. And the negotiators weren't talking. Well, that's not true. We had a HRT guy in the negotiation room 24-7. We were exchanging information. The problem was we had a deep-seated, fundamental disagreement on the way to deal with these people. We wanted to talk them out, knowing that the harder we push, the more likely we'd get resistance. And he felt the way to resolve it was to tighten the noose, apply ever-increasing amounts of pressure, and make them do what we wanted, which we

We know, you know, it's the king of the castle, you know, you, it's, we've seen it in law enforcement. There are people that'll defend to the death some ramshack or shack they live in because it's their, their place. And if the police are trying to come in, they'll fight to the death to defend it, you know, where most of us wouldn't even look at a place like that. But so that's the key, you know, you attack people in their home. And, you know, you've got to, the first thought is not, oh, they're getting really serious here, let's go surrender. It's to resist. Yeah. I used to tell classes,

imagine yourself, you're held up in your home and, you know, you're holding someone hostage, whatever it might be. And I'm negotiating with you and I say, hey, you know, Jack, Dave, come on out, please. And you say, no. And then I send a tank forward and I crush your brand new car in the driveway. I say, how about now? We've friends now. I mean, you know.

Yeah, it doesn't work like that. That's essentially what we did. But it's not a way to build trust to demonstrate, hey, we're decent people. We're trying to help you out of this situation here. And you know, you do that kind of crap. And it's self-defeated. Do you have in your mind? Because like we had Danny Colson on for a couple episodes.

And, you know, when he was bringing the HRT up, like even in his book, like some of their early, you know, missions were the, you know, with these sort of white national. sort of Christian, they were protracted sieges that ended up well. And it was like, we're not the military. Our job is not to conduct military operations. Do you know when that sort of shifted from like the early 80s into the 90s? Well, I don't know. I mean, Danny's quite right. He was out there for the, I forget the year that crossed the sword and the arm of the Lord.

And that was resolved. And, you know, I worked with Danny from the day he was appointed H.R.T. commander when it was formed out of the Washington field office where I worked. So I was the chief negotiated there. So I worked with them quite closely. We didn't always agree on issues, but we got along pretty darn well. And I have respect for Danny. But I think I, I, I, that's why going back, Dave, to that chapter where you mentioned from, to hubris, you know, success to hubris. I think that's what triggered Ruby Ridge and Waco. I think Talladega, the success that it was, left the HRT commander with the belief that he had all the answers and knew how to do this. And speed and force was the way to resolve these things. And he had the personnel and the equipment to do it.

And I think that's what led to that circumstance because it's the only time it happened in those two cases. And we moved away from that. pretty quickly. Yeah. And so do you think it was something that was kind of throughout HRT or do you think it was mostly just sort of sergeant severe as you called him, who sort of had that mentality? I mean, I think there's a mix. I think there were a lot of guys on the Hossus rescue team. I mean, they're thoroughbreds. I mean, these are, you know, really quite amazing guys and they're very fit. And they're trained to do this very dangerous job.

and it's not surprising that they want to do it. And feel confident in their capabilities to do it. So I think part of the problem was that those guys who were actually out in the trenches really had no idea what we were doing or trying to do as negotiators. And I asked at one point in time, I asked Dick Rogers, say, hey, can I brief your team at the shifts, you know, the 12, our shifts. And he said, no, they're getting everything they need for me, which is obvious they weren't. But, you know, three years later in Montana, that's exactly what we did. Every tactical

team shift during the day, I or one of my negotiators would go out and say, here, guys, here's what we're working on today. Here's the intermediaries we're sending in. This is what we're trying to accomplish. And, you know, you can't treat an FBI like some 20-year-old in the military that, you know, you say, go guard that fence line behind that tree and that's what they do all day long. You know, agents need information and knowledge and understanding. These are highly educated professional guys. So armed with a better understanding of what we were doing and why they became completely supportive. And it changed the whole tenor of that siege as compared to three years earlier at Waco.

That's fascinating. And it's funny because HRT is high. rescue and when you think of hostages, you think of negotiators. So it's weird. It's weird that like you guys aren't tied at the hip in general. Well, what happened when the team was formed, then there was a budget, you know, there was 60 guys or something like that. And I think one of the things that Danny Colson, when he set up the team, he needed every one of those people for tactical purposes. And he said to me, well, you'll be my negotiator if we deploy. I don't, I I don't think Danny fully understood that then what negotiators did and how we were, you know, how we could support tactics as well if we weren't successful than what we were doing.

But I think you're right. I think in the initial stages, they should have incorporated negotiations to have it all under one roof. And in essence, that's how the FBI has it now with the creation of the critical incident response group that came post-Waco. So now those units are under the same command. And they train together and have a little bit better relationship than when I was there. I mean, it's great that it has evolved to that point. Yeah, but it should have. I mean, it's, but you know, this goes on in every tactical team. I mean, there's thousands of police departments in the United States.

And it's still a frequent thing that I hear is that, you know, the tactical teams get all the money. They get all the budget. They get all the training time. They get all the equipment. They don't really understand or undervalue negotiators. So the negotiators always feel like the weak step sister, whatever it is. But in other departments have recognized that these units have to work extraordinarily close if they're going to be effective. Again, you know, in law enforcement, and this has become very topical in the last few years as police use of force has come into question.

you know, we serve the public. We have to be able to convey to the public that we are well trained, we're professional, and that we use force not because we want to, not because we can. We use force only under one condition. When the behavior of the perpetrator leaves us no alternative, and when the public can clearly see, you know, through videotape, paper, testimony, whatever it is, court of law, a court of a public opinion, that this person, you know, left us with no choice other than the use deadly force, they'll support us.

But if we can't make that case, if it, if it, if it, if it comes out that we took this action because we're cold, we're wet, we're tired, we're angry at this person, you know, then we lose public confidence. And law enforcement agencies can't afford to lose that support. So, I mean, you have a few other, you know, you have the Freemans and you have the Ohio correctional facility. like there are several more stories in this book. Can you kind of hit on some,

I don't want to like just read your book, you know, for the audience because everybody, remember, buy this book, stalling for time. It's a fascinating look into, I mean, a firsthand account of what like negotiations are really like. But can you give us sort of like, kind of give us high points of...

Well, I'll give you a few. I mean, obviously, when I was relieved at Waco, I flew to the Middle East for a training operation, which had long been scheduled. And that was part of the excuse to rotate me out. You know, you need to go on this mission. Well, that could have easily been handled by somebody else, but be that as it may. When I come back from the Middle East, immediately upon leaving Waco, I come back from the Middle East and my boss says, hey, one of two things, you know, we're either going to send you back to Waco or we're going to

to send you to Lucasville, Ohio, where prison riots ongoing. He calls me the next day and he says, they're going to put tear gas in, go to FBI headquarters to the command post. So that's where I went. Of course, that's where I was when they put the gas in, and I observed that. I was very angry, and I jumped on a plane and flew to the prison ride. So I go from Ways, to the Middle East to Lucasville without really almost getting a change of clothes. And but we resolved Lucasville and that was successful and, you know, helped the local authorities there resolve that peacefully. And, you know, and then as I mentioned, three years later, we had the Montana siege.

We worked the St. Martinsville Prison ride, another Cuban situation that worked. What was one of the other ones? I'm having an old man moment here. Oh, Vykes Island was a big case. We worked. The Republic of Texas siege in 96. I flew down to Texas and helped the Texas Rangers resolve that situation with another anti-government group.

And then, of course, the Montana Freeman. That was also. And then I flew down to Peru in 96, 97 for the... Oh, the embassy. Yeah, I flew down for the 120-day long siege in Lima, Peru. So, you know, I get around. I get around. Gary, what does a negotiator like you see when you walk onto a scene,

whether it's, you know, like the Freemans or whatever it is, or Peru, what do you see that other people don't see? Like, what are your goals that are different than the tactical? operators on the ground? Well, first of all, I mean, I try to look at what's the best approach to stabilize the situation and to open a channel communication. To the extent we can, without jeopardizing security and safety, lower the confrontation. You know, if you're in somebody's face, it's harder to calm them down than if you back off

a little bit. that's the first thing I look at. And then I look at behavior. What are really motivation? Why are they doing what they're doing? What are they trying to accomplish? And then what are their needs? And how do we formulate an approach that helps them realize that, you know, if they have out landish demands, that it's really not going to work out the way they want? And, you know, I just look at a lot of different things. And it's mostly about, is there a potential for building a relationship with this person. I don't mean a loving long-term friendship. I'm talking just about a practical engagement where, you know, you're basically saying as a negotiator,

hey, listen, man, I don't know if I can help you with all the things you want to accomplish, but I'm here to listen to you. I want to understand where you're coming from. And if I tell you something, you can count on it, if I make a representation to you, I'm not going to school around with you. You know, just basic good human interpersonal communication. I would love, if you don't mind to hear a little bit about the Lima embassy siege, because that's something that's kind of been like, I don't want to say swept under the rug or anything, but it's something that happened prior to 9-11 major terrorist incident that, like, nobody really talks about. If you have any, you know, anecdotes or recollections from your time there, I'd be really interested to hear your insight.

Well, we flew down on a U.S. government plane. you know, there was a celebration at the Japanese ambassador's residence home, which was, by the way, built as a model of terror from Gone with the Wind, a little side note. And it was where the Japanese ambassador lived, and they were holding a party to celebrate the emperor's birthday. And basically every dignitary bigwig in Lima was there. Ambassadors from dozens of countries, generals, important government official, President Fujimori's mother and sister were there. So there was just several hundred people in attendance and the MRTA, not the Shining Path. This is a separate group, the MRTA terrorist organization, you know, conducted this operation where they used explosives and blew into the place and captured everybody.

And, you know, there was probably, I don't know, a dozen of them. I can't remember all at the top of my head. And the situation, you know, was pretty, tense. There was American diplomats in there, so that's why I flew down with others from the U.S. government to help manage the situation. But what we quickly learned that President Fujimori was trying to snatch the jaws of defeat. He was trying to pull defeat out of victory. These guys wanted to talk. They put signs out. We want to communicate. We want to communicate. And he refused, thinking it would be a sign of weakness. And he refused to talk. with him. And, you know, I'm trying to remind those officials down there,

listen, he's got literally hundreds of hostages. They have throwaways. They can kill a whole bunch and not diminish their bargaining position or their defensive positions in one iota. Talk to them, open a dialogue. Well, Fujimori really resisted that. And finally, he'd released a Catholic bishop, a Canadian ambassador, and a few others who became sort of intermediaries that through it was funny we had a little ad hoc negotiation team two negotiators from Scotland Yard two from the RCMP and myself and another FBI negotiator and I trained all of them and we we huddled together and we would come up with a consensus and go back to our ambassadors and basically give them all the same advice which they then would pass to these intermediaries

But it was a very complex situation, and President Fujimori just never learned to keep his mouth shut. He constantly said unhelpful and aggressive things for his domestic political consumption that only made the situation more tense and more volatile. But we eventually came up with an idea, and the FBI was doing it, where the garbage would come out of the place, and we'd go through the garbage, and we were finding notes from the hostages telling us what was going on. on, so forth and so on. And there's some other things like that that happened. So we had a channel communication.

And ultimately, while negotiations was slowly going on with not one success, the Peruvians built a tunnel to try to get access to under the road and to the residents. Now, you know, to mask that tunnel digging, they conducted big military parades every day. And one day, one of the soldiers shot the finger at the rebels and the rebels fired off around, almost killed the guy, just missed him by an inch. That would have set in motion a tragedy for sure. But ultimately, the information that we gathered from the information that was coming out

through the trash and so forth was that every day at a certain time, the male terrorists would, they cleared all the furniture out of the, the living room and they were playing soccer indoors. And so we knew exactly what time that took place every day. So the Peruvians put an explosive under the floor and detonated it and killed almost all the hostage takers right there in one explosion. Then they rushed the building and killed the rest of them and released all the hostages. One hostage, I think, died of a heart attack.

One commander was killed and all the terrorists were killed. So it was looked at as a huge success, but from my point of view, I think I talk about in the book, by the grace of God, that thing didn't turn to crap because Fuji Mori hadn't. I mean, he was, you talk about better being lucky than good. He was, he was lucky in so many ways. You know, you just don't, when people are threatening people's lives, you don't just refuse to talk to them. It's, it's not good policy. how has you know you've been with or you had been with the FBI through like I said 30 years like seeing the genesis of negotiation how had the training the art the science and negotiation how has it changed through the years yeah when I first got into it the New York model was all due respect to that was a pretty basic quid pro quo model you know hey you want a hamburger

Well, you've got to let a hostage go and I'll give you a hamburger. You know, it was basically built on that model. But what we found when I became a full-time negotiator is our examination of what was going on around the country, not just with us, but with police departments, was these weren't really, for the most part, quid pro quo bargaining, which is what a hostage situation is. That's usually quid pro quo. You hold a hostage because you can't get what you want and you're threatened to harm unless somebody gives you what you want. But 90 plus percent of what cops were doing were emotionally driven situations with no clear purpose, no clear goal, unplanned, people just acting out and not knowing how to get out of what they got into.

So I think the biggest innovation in negotiations was when we and the FBI in 1990, wholesale changed our course to incorporate active listening skills that. Carl Rogers originated that we got from the counseling field, mental health field, and we applied those in a way that negotiators could easily learn them, practice, and master them. So even to this day, say 1990, if I'd gone to a negotiation conference and said, how many you know what active listening skills are? They're probably lucky if one hand out of 200 people went up. Now every negotiator is the bread and butter of what they do. If you haven't been taught active listening skills, you're just simply not a negotiator. It's what we do. And it's about, you know, restating the content of what we hear and, and, and, and, and, and, and, you know,

responding to the emotion we hear. So it's, it's listening to people trying to understand what's motivating them, giving them an opportunity to get stuff off their chest and to share with us things that are bothering them. They feel a sense of loss over self-esteem, job, family relationship, you name it, it's a driving motivation. And we may be the most empathic, you know, ear that they've yet to have. People feel like they're not being listened to. They misbehave so that people start paying attention to them. So we're there to say, do you tell me more about that? You know, what happened? You say your boss fired you and you want to kill him. Well, what exactly happened today? Please explain to me. Open-ended questions. You know,

we label the emotions we hear. And it's just a, it's just a very powerful tool to project empathy and to get people to cooperate with us. It's, it's applicability far beyond negotiations, but it's a great life skill.

When, when you're in that sort of situation, and then people go, okay, I'm being heard, but I've really fucked up, now I'm going to go to jail for the rest of my life,

or this is going to happen. Do you, do you guys find yourself, and positions where you need to stress the truth for people, or are you just generally honest with them? Like, yeah, you messed up. Yeah, this isn't a great situation, but we'll do the best we can to help you. I mean, that's essentially it. I mean, we don't, we avoid the extent we can lying, but we would basically say like, hey, I'm not going to tell you there's not any consequences to this, but, you know, I'm not a judge. I'm not a jury. I can't decide you and I can't decide here

what's going to happen. But I know one thing, hurting those people isn't going to make the situation any better. And, you know, I'll certainly be willing to tell the judge that you were cooperative when we spoke and, you know, you didn't hurt anybody else after we started talking. And I think that may be of value to you, you know, because if you, a lot of these guys have had a track record with the criminal justice system. If you say, oh, it's no big deal. It's no problem. Don't worry about it. They know you're lying to them. You know, you've lost all credibility. You know, you just say, you know, I don't know, this is serious. You know, you've shot somebody, you know, and, you know, there's going to have to be some

investigation of that. But, you know, it gets tougher when they've actually killed somebody or killed a cop even. You can't very well say, hey, it's no big deal. You know, you've got to play the card that, hey, you know, let's not make it worse. Right. And go from there. Right. But I think, I think people come out, you know, I'll share with you something I share with

other audiences that in all the situations I was. involved in where we asked people what did we say that made you come out because we want to know we want to learn sure so we so we do it again and the answer is always the same it's really funny it's always the same answer more or less and it's I don't remember what you said but I like the way you said it and you think about that in terms of not just these situations but all interpersonal communications your tone your genuineness your sincerity your likeability These are all powerful tools we use to get people's respect.

People want to work with people they like and respect. And if you gain the respect and you do that by showing respect to them and treating them fairly and genuinely, you know, I can't guarantee doing that will lead you to success. But I would say that if you are successful, it's probably because you're doing it that way. So, I mean, that's kind of a, you asked her,

that's been the biggest shift. in negotiations. And I think, you know, some people think it's all about, well, understanding their mental health and psyching them out and getting inside their brain. And, you know, that all sounds good and it's good for TV. But the bottom line is you just come across as a genuine, helpful person, excuse me, non-threatening. And that's worth its weight and gold.

Are there statistics or sort of studies on, the outcomes of situations when there is and is not a like train negotiator on scene? I know if it's broken down that way, but I know the FBI has a hostage barricade database. And, you know, I think negotiators are successful in the in the 90%. I mean, it's pretty pretty significant. And so, yeah, I mean, if we take our time and we're patient and we're thoughtful, you know, that's usually going to be the pathway to success. So given that significance, has the role or the authority, I'll say,

the authority of negotiators on scene to actually dictate what happens on scene instead of being overruled by HRT or SWAT or the tactical person in charge, has the negotiators authority increased due to, sort of that those statistics i wouldn't say authority i would i would hopefully say influence okay you know if you're the chief of police and you have a situation that's tense and may not have a happy ending you know you certainly want to be able to say i you know i listened carefully to my negotiators and and allowed them the time and support to try to convince this person to come out peacefully unfortunately his behavior left us no choice and i had to authorize a sniper to take a shot

whatever it might be. But, you know, I think negotiations has to be the default. But we always teach that negotiators negotiate and commanders command. You know, we don't want to be the ultimate decision maker. Now, as a practical matter, you know, when I was in as long as I was, if I made a suggestion at an incident, it was, you know, increasingly difficult for an unseen commander to say, well, who are you? You don't know what you're talking about. I mean, I mean, it was sort of a career threatening position to take at that point in time. You know, but, but ultimately, you know, as a negotiator, you had to say, boss, this is your decision. You know, you have to decide.

Here's what I recommend. Here's what the negotiation team has been working on. This is how we see it. This is the approach we believe we should take. We think it's going to take a while yet, but we'd like to continue doing this. And, you know, if you lay that out carefully and you've got a thoughtful decision-making, then you usually prevail. As a negotiator, outside of something obvious like them starting to kill hostages or something, as a negotiator, did you sort of had hard limits or in your mind when you just felt like negotiations have failed and you'd say, hey, we've done everything we can, but we don't feel like it's going to go anywhere? No, that's not the trigger.

I never gave up on negotiations, and I never said they failed. In fact, I think they always succeed. As I mentioned earlier, because they buy time and allow you to assemble resources and better decision making and all that. kind of stuff. The only time I would go, and I have done it in real life, gone to a commander, is to say, these are indicators of great concern. You know, there's been a shift in behavior, in attitude, in threats made. Our relationship has seemed to go down the toilet. It's our concerted view as a negotiation team to this person is becoming less stable, more dangerous and more volatile. Now, what that basically translates to is,

now if the tactical team has a viable plan, you may give that more consideration now than you would have, you know, a little bit earlier. So, and I think that's the proper way. I think negotiations should always be the default. I mean, you can't very well say this tactical plan didn't work. So now we're going to try to talk to you. Right. You know, you can go from talk to action, but it's hard to go from action to talk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So for everybody out there who's not going to be negotiating for the life of a hostage, what from your learned experience in negotiation can they bring into their life, like with their spouse, with anybody around them? Like, what are some key elements in negotiation that are just great for everyday life? I think the biggest thing, as we apply to men in the military and law enforcement,

particularly, but men more broadly, we're problem solvers, you know, we see a problem, we want to identify it and then move on to the next problem. So when our spouses are, you know, come up to us with a problem, we're quick to find the pathway to a solution. Okay, well, you tell them this, you do that, boom, boom, boom. And nine out of ten times, that's not what they want from us at all. They just want somebody to listen to them and to acknowledge how they feel about a situation. So you have to force yourself.

And I mean, it took me time. I didn't, wasn't good at this automatically. you know, you have to invest the time in listening. And we call it active listening, and I'll tell you why, because listening is not a passive endeavor. You know, if it's a passive endeavor, you don't say anything, you don't know anything, you just sit there. Active listening is asking open-ended questions.

Can you tell me more about that? For labeling emotions, it seems like you were really disappointed when she said that to you. No, I wasn't disappointed. I was surprised. Fine. I've just learned something. I thought I was hearing disappointment, but it was surprised. Well, that's good. He's clarified for me. Now I have a little better understanding of how this person. So you can only get to that point by really focusing in on what they have to say. If I'm talking, you know, I'm not learning anything about them. I want to listen to them. But I have to engage him in a way that encourages them to tell me more and more and more and to share with me how they're not. they're not just what happened to them in life, but how they feel about it and and how that's driving their motivation. And I'll tell you, if you do that with your spouse, your girlfriend, your significant other, your kids, it makes a hell of a difference. You know, I mean, I've got seven grandkids now and, you know, my kids are all grown and they were great and they were super.

And, you know, I think I was a pretty good dad overall. But I have more time with my grandkids now when they're around. And I appreciate how short-lived that is, that developmental time in their lives when they're young, they're all under age 11. So when they come up to me and they say, Poppy, you know, they want to talk to me about something? I mean, they get my full undivided attention, you know, and it's, you know, it's the old Cats in the Cradle song by Harry Chapin, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I cry almost every time I hear that song because it's so powerful, it's so moving about, you know, that we keep saying, well, I don't have time now, I'll do this later. But the people in our lives who are important to us, close friends, coworkers, spouses, family

members, relatives, you know, if you think there's something going on, you need to listen, you know, and really try to understand. It's the cheapest concession we can make. And it's powerful. You know, people really appreciate the fact that you're the kind of person that wants to know more about what happened to them and how they feel about it. So that's my primary advice.

I think it's fantastic advice. I mean, look, if you're negotiating for the life of people or, you know, whether it's people being held or just the person you're negotiating with or the law enforcement going inside, like it's such a, I don't want to say low risk with family and friends, but to take those lessons and be able to pass them all,

you know it's it's phenomenal it's something it is and we all think we're good listeners and most of us aren't and you know it's a it's a skill you have to learn if you want to be effective and I don't know a single business a single type of relationship a single endeavor maybe if you live in a a lighthouse off the coast of Maine by yourself you don't need this stuff but for 99.9999 99 of the rest of us we're social animals We have to deal with other human beings. So if we can become, you know, responsive listener and understand others,

well, even Stephen Covey, the business guru, he says, seek first to understand and then to be understood. So make the effort first before you give advice or try to solve somebody's problem, understand what they're going through. You know, and even in a hostage taking or barricaded situation, the thing I love to hear is when I get to a point where somebody He'll say, you know, Gary, we've been talking for a while. I just don't know how to get out of this. Yeah.

Well, that's music in my ears because now I've earned their respect. And I've demonstrated genuineness. And now they're asking me for some advice. And that's where you come in and say, well, I think the best thing to do is put that gun down. And I think there's some tough issues to overcome, but I've got your whole life ahead of you. Let's get you some help. Let's work through this, you know. Because I've finally, through listening, I've earned the right to be of influence.

It doesn't just come to you because of your rank or your status or you have to earn it. With these, you know, sort of bonds you've created with these people in these barricaded or hostage situations, have they ever, like, reached out to you afterwards because they felt a kinship with you? And how did you respond to that if they did? more so with hostages than hostage takers. I know there was one of the fellows from the Montana siege that, you know, to end the siege, we developed quite a good personal relationship. And he and I have been in contact subsequently and we're friends on Facebook, you know,

and I have a lot of respect for him. I didn't agree with some of the decisions he made, but he was inherently a good person. And I liked him. I like him to this day. And, you know, and I think you need to find the good in people, and most people have some good in them. And, you know, let that be your goal. It's amazing.

Gary, thank you so much for spending your evening with us here on a Monday. Sure. Stalling for time, buy this book. Gary, where else can people find you? Well, I have a website, you know, Gary Messner.com. all one word and it's got articles I've written and news interviews and podcast links and all that sort of stuff and yeah so that's the best place yeah so yeah check out the book and like I said check out American Apocalypse on Netflix with Gary's one of the people interviewed in it I think

you guys out there will really enjoy it and you might maybe enjoy it's the wrong word but I mean it's illuminating it's an important at peace. And they may want to look at the show Don Paramount, Waco, the Aftermath dramatic series. They've shown three of them. They have two more to go every Friday night. And that's with actor Michael Shannon playing me again, who's really a pretty amazing individual. And are you, now, are you still teaching

negotiation? Not really. I mean, I give some, I'm doing this television consulting and then I'm doing some I do some corporate speaking occasional law enforcement conference but in terms of teaching a long class I don't I don't do that anymore I'm mostly retired and enjoying life playing golf and voting and all that sort of good stuff we have two questions here and I don't know if we have any on Patreon but Danny thank you very much does Gary believe that the artificial intelligence will influence or

be incorporated in hostage negotiations in the future you know I'm going to have to plead ignorance here. I haven't followed the AI stories much lately, and I don't know a lot about it, not enough to speak to it. But from what I do know, I wouldn't be surprised if it plays some role at some point in time.

And also from Danny, thank you very much again. Did Gary retired before the Clive and Amon Bundy standoff in Oregon, 2016? Any thoughts on that standoff in its eventual resolution? Yeah, I did retire. retired before that. I retired in, in 03. The Bundy siege, you're talking about the one in Oregon. I think there was been a couple of actions with the Bundys, but the one in Oregon, I think the FBI took a very patient and thoughtful approach to dealing with that, and fortunately got resolved peacefully. So

obviously lessons learned. Yeah. So folks out there listening, please subscribe to the channel if you haven't. Check us out on Patreon, the links below if you want to get these episodes ad-free. And we'll be back on Friday with Gary Linderer, who served as a lorp in Vietnam. Really excited to have him on the show. And Gary, thank you again for coming and telling us about your experiences and your memoir. Buy the book. You'll love it. Stealing for time.

I can't tell you how fascinating it is. Thanks, guys. it was a pleasure. And also how frustrating you must have felt a certain points in time. You know, I deal with frustration pretty well. So, yes. Gary, thank you so much for your time. We deeply, deeply appreciate it.

You're welcome, guys. The pleasure is all mine. All right. Take care, everyone. We'll see you Friday.