Butler, the Correspondents' Dinner, and the Truth | John Constantine | Ep. 464

I'm looking at danger close mouth and like I submitted that to the service yeah and I took out I knew it I was they didn't touch it I there was like no the next one's gonna be worse because I restart the second one right now so what's the second one gonna be about we're going now to by the way so the second one is we'll get to the first one but you said the second one's going to be worse in what record the second one's going to be worse and the fact that the stories are going to be more in depth than that already is in depth are we talking about largely successes or failures inside of the institution or both okay it's both and the stories touch on things this one's more about the individual is about you becoming a better human being and a lot of that is the stories of just not like my stories but stories that I've been around and close to the second one is you being able to lead a group of people and from that perspective now you're intertwined with everybody around you yeah and coming from the cap perspective is just all teams for like 15 years of that was team team team teams teams and then a lot of people it's just you have the you can't be a good leader if you're not a good person from my perspective I would agree with that generally yeah if you're just constantly what did I say the whole time mission men and then you all right and that's I mean people ever talks about that a whole bunch of people talk about that so the mission is like hey what do we have to do keep these guys alive that's the number one it doesn't matter nothing else everything else is like second or tertiary all the way down the second is the men and those are close because they kind of flip lap sometimes depending on what the ask is well ones required for the other it is and I have a conversations with people it's like well you don't have a you can't do anything without men is like right but without the mission I don't need the men so it's like you have to balance that chicken egg almost so they're really close and then you're all the way on the bottom and that's the right way to be a leader not a manager not a coordinator not an administrator not whatever word you want to insert into there it's mission men put that up there manage those as best as you can there's a million stories I could tell about all that and then you're on the bottom but you still got to love yourself you still got to take care of yourself if you become a fat slob it's hard to do this if you're not taking care of yourself so everything together but again man in the service sometimes we put these not in the right order and it's like well I'm up top and then the other two it depends on what's going to get me what I want to get so there's a lot of that going on and it's the misaligned incentives is a good way to describe that it's I think it's just blind to what's important I don't know if they're blind I don't I think for some people that they're not blind to it that their desire for self or personal achievement or recognition actually is just the poll to that is more so for whatever reason for that type of person is more so in the individual direction than the team one I don't think they're blind to it so it's easy to say they didn't know sometimes they know well the blind part yeah you're right sometimes they know sometimes they know a lot of times they know yeah they're blind to it because that's what the culture becomes yeah the culture tells you to be good at your career have a wonderful career do everything for your career and sometimes you got to give and the more you give I have these guys they're instructors and team leaders now on cat and a lot of them they were my protege's I trained them I had them on a team I taught them how to be team leaders and I say all the time like hey don't forget that place you love that place so much it will never love you back the same yeah and they forget that because they think at the end there's going to be this like hoisting on the shoulders that's not how it works though it's going to be a replacement of one heartbeat for another you just get washed away your government employee doesn't matter how many millions of dollars they put into me like they put millions and millions of dollars into me learning all this crap that I train I went all over the world mid almost 90 countries I train with every single either at the location with their instructors or with the unit that you can just say the name except for except for the Raiders I never got I never got into like Marsock trying to return with them either yeah so I know a lot of the guys yeah there was a guy at my gym that I'm pretty sure he was made in a lab he was synthesized into lab because he was sometimes Marines are like that yeah he's like six foot three and I don't think he had body fat he was less body fat than the table so but what time of gym we talking about gymnastics gym jiu jitsu nice how long you been training through over three years just over three years why did you only start at the tail end of your career I was not focused and didn't have a set schedule where that was a real thing I wrestled for like 20 years oh no I don't ever want to roll with you I hate it and then it's wrestling is so real well that was grappling the wrestling kind of it's kind of I don't want to say it's like cheating if somebody that doesn't know how to wrestle oh but it is though but it's like and I mean I agree people in my gym and I learn quick the wrestling hurt me in the beginning but now it helps me if you can play off your back and develop a guard you're going to be unstoppable yeah because the 20 years of grappling is not going anywhere wrestlers first they don't protect their neck because they're used to being able to post up and you're like oh what are you doing especially if you throw a geod they figure that one out pretty quick yeah and you don't want to be digging your arms in on a wrestler and turtle because you're going over the top or you're getting reversed then though they don't like being on their back which I get I didn't realize it was the cardinal sin of wrestling but if you can teach a wrestler to play off their back you can always wrestle up right you and I mean now it's like I'm old too man so it's it's like I got a in order for me to go with the volume that I go I go a lot I guy I don't my he can modulate by pass by pace and intensity and I do and it goes in ebbs and flows and to again close to purple belt probably I'm a purple belt now sweet that's awesome so I have good people in my gym I competed a little bit I stopped for a while then I'm getting the itch again I got a I got to go back and do something held me now 51 be careful with your body a little closer yes sir you shut up over there see notice his night he's not even talking into his he yelled at you without even pulling his microphone why do you leave it like that by the way so I can see this today's episode of podcast is brought to you by 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founded american roasted this is america's coffee that's a reasonable answer actually amateur do you just got to teach me how to do he's a purple belt too i think awesome we should solve this on the carpet right now you were being unprofessional let's think what you're on would kick my ass i know for a fact he would did you not hear the 20 years of rest yeah i did hear that i just stay on my feet i wasn't accomplished as a wrestler i don't it doesn't matter most people get into jutsu with no grappling background yeah i'll put myself into that category you you you you tussle up a little bit with somebody who has been grappling even recreationally for 20 years it's a fucking problem uh i miss it my body can't handle the explosiveness of it do you miss the outfit uh not even a little bit i really feel like the participation in that sport would be exponentially higher if they just made a few wardrobe changes you can do a pair of shorts and a rash like a no-gui outfit i feel like in wrestling it would accomplish mostly the same thing and people would feel way better about wearing that maybe we didn't have we didn't use rash guards when i was going through why would you use shirts while i was in the mold right yeah we had rotary phones too when i was you ever seen the youtube videos of where they uh pull rotary phones out for younger generations i have no clue it's my daughter has the best i love it all right um how long was it we'll get to what the cat team stuff is how long was it though working at the white house or when you so and people don't understand the cat team counter assault team crack me if i'm wrong that specifically Paul's from the SA side of the house, right, the special agent side of the house. Yes. You come into the agency, you can go UD Uniform Division, SA Special Agent. Fletsy is kind of the same, but then you depart or diverge a little bit, right? Because your basic sworn credentials come from the same place. Specialty comes after that though, right? Yeah, you're talking about UD versus SA? Yeah, yeah. So Fletsy together though, right? No, Fletsy is still, they do, and I don't know what it's called, it's called like a, it's like a law enforcement basic. So they're more focused dealing the uniform division I'm talking about now. And they renamed it, I think it's Secret Service Police now. I don't know. I'm not 100% sure, but they do, it's basically a police course, it's like a federal police course. And we do criminal investigator training course or whatever it's called. And those are two separate, there's a lot of overlap. I would say it's like 80% overlap. And then they kind of specialize in a couple things and we kind of talk about some other things. Like the federal agents though, correct? Yes. Okay, so we're at the federal level. And then when they get to Beltsville, so the training center in Beltsville, Maryland, they'll do their uniform basic course, and then we do our special agent training course. And those are separate too, but again, there's a lot of overlap. So the curriculum for firearms, control tactics, which is, you know, hands on stuff, all that stuff is like overlaps all the same curriculum. And then legal, it's, people don't understand is agents don't have the same police powers as the officers. Really? Yes. It is different. There are peace officer status in different states, and depending what it is, the officers, the arrest powers that they have in Washington, DC, and wherever else they go is kind of, it depends on what's going on. And obviously if there's a felony that occurs in an agent's presence, then it's a felony. Then they can arrest them, but it's different than if it's like misdemeanors and depending on what level of the, call it a crime, whatever the crime is or the felony or people misdemeanor, whatever they want to call it, the agents in state to state is different. If you look up peace officer status, it'll tell you what exactly they're able to do and not able to do. In some places you can arrest somebody for just walking too close to the president or the vice president and just seeming at the right and other places, it's infinitely harder because we can do kind of way more, I mean, you go to Texas and it's just, then it's the same that you do it every one. Then you go to some other places and then, push. And then it's not harder, but just more nuanced than people would think. Yeah, it's more nuanced, but if you just have the same mindset wherever you go, the problem resolves itself because you're going to do the same thing no matter what agent is responsible for whatever protective assignment that they have, so protective side meaning a person, or what a lot of people don't understand is if it's a national security event and you're responsible for the venue, then you're responsible for the venue. When we talk about the correspondence dinner, everybody's like, oh my God, the guy blew past the checkpoint and what about all the people that were in the lobby and the hotel as you just swept the hotel. It wasn't a national special security event, so the focus isn't all the civilians. And unfortunately, that's the case. The entire secret service that was there, they're just going to default to their protecting. They're the person that they're protecting. So they'll fall back to all the presidents' detail, president. Cat team that was assigned to the president, president. Same thing with the vice president, I forgot who else was there that we had details on. And it's probably quite a few people. Yeah, there were quite a few and DHS Secretary was there, I think. And Kashputel was there. I'm sure he has a small detail. And he's from the Bureau, but they're the same way. The Bureau is not responsible for the rest of the hotel. And it's apples to oranges because we're doing, recording the whole event. But then everybody coordinates together. And the focus is the people we're protecting. Once it turns into an NSSE, which is dictated by DHS, DHS will determine if something's an NSSE or not. And this thing that occurred at the White House, America 250, it was a sear event. It wasn't an NSSE and again into that because there's a whole bunch of nuances and it comes down to like both budget and then who's kind of running the whole thing. So there's a lot going on there and it's an hour-long conversation just to explain it because at first I didn't know the difference. I was like, oh my god, just tell me where to stand. Right? But if it's an NSSE, you're responsible for the entire venue. That means everybody that's inside the venue, we're responsible for. So then everybody, everybody, because it's the security of the entire venue. Wow. We're also responsible for our people, but then they also have their own details. So if the president goes to the RNC, we're responsible for the RNC. We're also responsible for the president, but they have their own detail that they're figuring out their egress, they're figuring out where to take them, they're figuring out how to respond. Etc. We're figuring out how to secure the whole thing. No weapons in, no weapons, nothing else. And the laws are different and the funding for it where that comes from and it's this whole thing where people are yelling about like the correspondence dinner and I get it. We can talk about the Mac Checkpoint. That's a whole separate thing. But what the responsibility is, drives how this thing is run. And a lot of people think it's just blanket, we're responsible for saving everybody's life. And that's not the case. The guy was in the lobby and he had whatever weapons in the correspondence dinner. There should be a local presence of whatever municipality that would be. In this case, maybe it was, I'm not even going to say just to, I'm not trying to or shade on anybody. But just to understand how these things work, because it's, it kind of helps a lot of people don't want to hear it. They're just kind of just going to yell no matter what happens. So a lot of people don't want to grasp the concept though that security is very fluid and perfect security is impossible. It is never perfect. It does never look good. It's like they want, they want to think that you get, so we use the correspondence dinner, which by the way, if anybody at the Secret Service is listening, here's a suggestion. Take that hotel off the list of venues. Guess who else got shot there? Yeah. It's called the Hinkley Hilton for a reason. Yeah. Reagan. Now, and people think that the guy who, at first I thought he was the first metahuman because I watched a really slow frame per second video of him running by the mag check point, and it looked like the flash. Here he is. I didn't, this footage though, and they were breaking this down by the way, but the first time I think Michael and I look this, oh, it was, yeah, it was, it was as if he was the flash. Yeah, the first metahuman had exposed himself. There's, believe me, I'm sure both you and I have plenty of things we could say about what we see in the video. But people think though is that just outside of frame that Trump was standing there, this man had a floor and a half away, stairs, stairs. He was on the other, and I'm not saying it was great, but I'm like, the other end of the downstairs ballroom with a substantial amount of people, it like, there was multiple layers of security. Yes. And I'm not an apologist for the service. I'm trying to, I want to tell the truth. Yeah. 99% of the truth still alive, right? If there's, if there's, well, I talk about it in my book too, right? It's like, if you're only telling almost the truth, you're still lying. Yeah, lying by a mission by leaving the other stuff out. I can say, hey, I can't talk about something because of that sensitivity, but that's different. It's different. Yeah. So he was a floor and a half away. If he kept going at that pace, he's with no obstructions, assuming he's not a metahuman. I'm assuming he's not the flash, right? Or which I'm just saying, the first footage Michael and I saw, we unanimously agreed it might be the first documented metahuman ever. When I first saw it too, I was like, my first reaction wasn't what happened. It was like, damn, that guy's fast, exactly. If he kept going at that pace, I would say he's got about a minute, maybe a minute and change before he reaches where Trump was sitting. With a shotgun, assuming he had rounds left and then his secondary weapon seemed to be a fleet of knives. I mean, if you, I don't even know what to compare that to, but same. So I'm looking at the knives on the wall here and I'm apparently hit like a nice leather chalice system on and that's why I'm going to guess he was naked on the ground because they didn't understand what the hell he was wearing. So take it off. I think part of that was they were just, they kept removing layers and at some point you check for, yeah, Jesus. Take it easy, John Wick. Or boy and boy knife, right? I mean, that's a Rambo knife vertically oriented, which traditionally only seen in the movies, because gravity is real. I mean, I don't, mental health takes a variety of different situations. Yeah. I think you were stripped down because he might have been wearing stuff. They're looking for ideas also some, yeah. That not confirmed. That's just my opinion. Yeah. So what are your thoughts on that particular incident? Honestly. And again, not an apologist, but what happened was the security plan worked, the multiple layers of security stopped them. However, it is that they stopped them. Mac Checkpoint, and let's face it, to say anything other than those guys were complacent, and they were done with the day. - Yeah, they were breaking it down, right? That's why that box was there. And Mac Checkpoint means, I believe, magnetometer. - Magatometer, yeah. So the Magatomer Checkpoint, and they're breaking it down, which is normal, except for, they'll leave one up, maybe two up, just to ferry in anybody that's late, or if somebody leaves the venue for whatever reason, to make a phone call or go to the bathroom or. - 'Cause essentially the event had happened, so the mass throughput of those checkpoints had already occurred, which was reached it, yeah. - Yeah, and so then breaking it down is not uncommon, it's just, it'll, should leave one up. But the attitude there is, and I've said this on other shows too, it's, for me, it's the complacency that occurred then, 'cause they were done. Their mindset, that they were done there, and I guarantee you, and I know, some of those guys came from another assignment, and some of those guys are going to another assignment. So part of it is, just a tempo of how they're working, and they just want to go home. I understand that, but it's hard to say, yeah, great job, it was 100% perfect. The one agent, I think it was an officer, he missed rounds that he shot at him, so that's a problem for me, right? That it's, we hold ourselves to such a high standard that you have to have first 100% target discrimination, that's 100% you have to have, and two is, you have to have surgical marksmanship, and I use those words, which is very difficult to do across the agency, but those things are must, and I understand I come from Kat, so it's like, those guys are operating at a higher level, and I understand that, and maybe I'm biased, but in order for that to not happen again, you can't be complacent as exhausting as it is. Instead of being flush on the walls, they could have been in the middle. They could have just been standing in the middle, obstructing it, he would have at least slowed down. He might have shot them, who knows what he, who knows what you're going through them, but that's some speed. That's some, yeah, that's some Christian or Koei stuff, right? So, but, but that's, when I watched that, I was like, come on, man, you know what, like you're holding, but it's all interject here. Surgical marksmanship, I love the concept. It's not, it's not, tier one units, they miss shots too. You're accountable for your rounds, but also we're operating in environment overseas where oftentimes our backdrop is just really thick, but the walls are really in environment. Civilian environment, but you also, I think one of the main guys that shot back was the dude who just took that grazing round to the shotgun. - Yes. - So, laterally, he was laterally maneuvering, while indexing his farm pistol shot on a guy running. I tell you what, man, that's hard. It's hard and I end. I love tier one and cat dudes and all the special operation guys to death. It would be an interesting test to line them all up and have them test that for accuracy. - I will also agree with you in the same token. The way they were standing and set themselves up. - 100%, they were in a natural crossfire before the weapon was even drawn. - I think it's okay to try to achieve unrealistic expectations. - But that should be the goal, for sure. - That's the goal, that's the point of that. It shouldn't be, and I'm trying to say what I wanna say without throwing anybody under the bus, that guy did a great job in responding, okay? And that wasn't the part that bothered me more, the part that bothered me more was the complacency that was going on there. That complacency contributed to all the backlash that the service gets. Every time I either did, when I started, and I had a post-standing assignment, and I was standing in a stairwell for like 12 hours, it's like my first year, and I was contemplating the decisions of my life. - Throwing yourself down the stairway, headvert. - All right, yeah, it's just like, what am I doing here, standing in a stairwell where nobody comes to see me for 12 hours? - They didn't put that on the recruiting poster for you? - Well, actually, that's not true. If you wanna be a circuit service agent, and this is, if you wanna be a secret service agent, put your best suit on. Stand outside your front door of your house. Don't let anybody in for eight hours. Have your wife come and bring you a snack. You can go to the bathroom while she stands there, and then come right back and stand there for another four hours. That's your intro to being a secret service agent? - Yeah. - You gotta get through that to do all the cool stuff, okay? So that's, and I've called this homework. - Obviously, I'm being unass, but not also being realistic, not that far from it though, but the endeavor, so look, after this happened, and you have, and then we're talking about the Mac checkpoint, nobody's talking about the guys afterwards that stopped them. Nobody's talking about everybody inside the venue that responded, nobody's talking about the guy who ripped the vans out of his seat. Nobody's talking about the cat teams, nobody's talking about anybody else. How did vans get out of his seat before the potas? - The guy that was, that the guy that pulled vans out of the seat was probably standing right there, and I know the other side of it was, understand, it was, it took about 10 seconds. It took about 10, 12 seconds. There was no threat inside the ballroom. - I get that. I can just see. - So part of it is Trump going, excuse me. - And part of it, part of it is that, do you ever watch the video with Bush and Iraq and the shoe throwing at him? - One of my favorites, right? - He has moves, I absolutely love it. - But he also did this, and the detail leader stopped. - I don't think you're supposed to do that. - No, you're not supposed to listen to the person, right? So they moved him out. - Yes, it was like 12 seconds. There it is, I watch. - Can we be honest, his moves were good. - He's the nimble guy. It is like, he's a nimble guy. And watch, here comes the detail leader, and then it just says, hold on. - Yeah, you hold on. Have you seen the video of Reagan, a balloon pops during his speech, and he goes, without a hiccup, missed me. - Yeah, oh yeah, that's it. (laughing) - Yes, now okay, you bring up an interesting point. Let's fast forward to Butler. Where Trump seemingly wants to stay on this stage. I didn't come from your world. I did, we called it PSD, personal security details, worst job ever, completely reactive, just stay in there and hope for the best. - It's kinda like us. - Yeah. But getting off the X was emphasized at all times at every level. How is it possible that Trump stood up there for as long as he did? - A little bit of what you just asked me about the correspondence dinner was involved in that. - Okay, and truth be told, that's the truth. And if anybody, we can say a good job, and then they got him off the X. But the reason he is alive, two things. One, he turned his head at the last moment. - It's luck. - And two, it was a dumb dumb. It was using iron sights, and my suspicion is aiming for his head. - I thought he had a hole son on there. - Even at that distance though, right? It probably, if it was even a one MOA, one it probably would have exceeded the width of the body. I think the issue was he was aiming for his head. Which is a difficult thing to do from. - Yes, so I think luck more than anything, but him standing there, I mean, let's not bullshit. Iconic photo, maybe top three, of standing up there and screaming, but also, how are you still standing up there and screaming, FYI? - There is, when I watch the video. - Let's get you in all the trouble right now. - Yeah, it's wild, it's like the trouble's not, this is the truth though. The truth was, in the correspondence dinner, take the complacency of the mags out. We did our job, layers of security, stop the guy, he wasn't gonna get close. Even if he got through the next three or four layers of security, he still has about that many to go before he reached Trump. - And the problem is almost nobody understands that world, and all they saw was that footage of him running by. And can you imagine if they had shot him before he had run by, that you actually are in a no win situation. You're gonna get crucified for that, and now you have people looking at something with incomplete information and zero experience, crucify you again. - So you're in a no win for clarity. - The security world is, you never win, you just try to break even. - Correct, that's kind of the security world. - What I'm saying is true though, it wouldn't have mattered how that panned out. Likely the most vocal people are the ones who have no understanding of what you're talking about, the layers and rings of security, how they worked together, how far he was. - And invite people to go down to that hotel and just walk from the hotel side, through the tunnel, to the venue, figure out what ballroom he was in, they might have changed it with the walls and everything, but just walk through, and you'll see, number one, it's two different venues, the hotel side, and then all where they have the convention center side or whatever you want to call it. There's like two different venues. - You can do this from your computer too. I watched it guys. - Yeah people, they only use their computer when social media is involved if they want to yell at somebody, but when it comes to looking up facts, - No, I mean they can do a 362 right? - I just can't, yeah, you just look at that. - No, even that's like too difficult for some people. - It was interesting, it was one of the videos that I actually did watch because I was unfamiliar with the inside of it and he literally took the path that the person did to highlight how far he was away. When he got into the ballroom, you couldn't even make out that there was a stage on the other side. - As far? - Yeah, and this is where, again, there's two different things that are going on here. [BLANK_AUDIO] that what's going on at the main max and then there was what's going on in the rest of the venue. They did their job. If you want to break it down and excoriate the people at the max and I can give you the excuses of why they retired overworked, probably some of those guys haven't gone to training in a long time because of overworked is basically the one thing like we need about two, three thousand more people like now. And then the other part of it is the security plan worked and understand what I talked about NSSEs and also the responsibility of who they're protecting. And he, he, there was no threat to the president. So when you say why didn't they move him quicker, they didn't have to move him quicker and they still got him off the stage in 12 seconds. Yeah. Let's talk about one where there was a threat. Well, how was he still on the stage 30 seconds later? Yeah. I mean, I'm not, I'm not going to give excuses for that either. But how does it happen? Is he, well, he asked, didn't he ask for to get a shoes or his hat or something? Who gives a shit? I know. I'm agreeing with you. But that was, that wasn't the role yank him also. Yeah. Put him in the car and yeah. Yeah. Wave to the crowd on your way out, dude. And I'm not, this isn't like some top secret. No, this is all can be found on YouTube. This is all, this is all like it, it's things. Yeah. And again, there we go. Here's the lucky part. Yep. He's like, Oh, ducks. Nobody knows what's good. I mean, reaction on him. Yeah. I'm assuming they're basically putting their bodies. Yeah. And they got on him quick. Yeah. That their response to him. Yeah. Was really fast. You couldn't even see the guys that, that got up there. The first guy, the first guy that jumped up on him, he's from behind the stage. You didn't see him. I think just from the angle that the camera was at, but they did a good job of shielding him. And just understand now, like they're standing there where there you guys come. Oh, yeah. Both of those guys. Yeah. I don't want to, I just, I was about to say something that, but they're, they're, the response was quick. And at this point now, they should just drag them down the steps. Yeah. It pause, Michael. I don't give away anything sensitive in nature. Why are they still right there? Via is the correct tactic to move him as soon as possible. Obviously, don't move him into greater danger. Created the barrier with the bodies, right? I'm sure there's ballistic elements associated with that with their vest, whatever it is. But he's still in the X. Let's tell him, I'll, I'll answer that with a question, when has hunkering down ever worked and go back and what do you want to die? All right. So we go back to, I mean, honestly, if your enemy can maneuver and you hunker down, you're fucked. There you go. And then we go back in time to talk about thermopoly, the Alamo, Benghazi. They probably, they had a little bit of concern in their favor. They did. Yeah. A little bit of terrain in the favor, but they still hunkered down and fought to the end. Yeah. It didn't work out well. They still, after they killed, who knows how many people, but hunkering down, I have this, this conversation is all the time. And I used to argue with supervisors. I, we would say something like, Hey, John, what's the plan here? I was a team leader, right? At this point. And he's like, all right, initial response. This is our initial response. And then we're going to coordinate with whatever the asset is. And we're going to move him and we'll take him to the cars. So, well, let's, and this is not all the supervisors, just the ones that I wanted to have resting matches with is like, we're just going to hunker down and wait for the problem to get resolved. I'm like, Hey, man. And I would have that conversation with them. That's why it's kind of, I just just rolls off my tongue. I'm like, when has hunkering down ever worked? We have to take him somewhere else. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's hunkering down. I mean, that, that, okay, maybe if you're in a place where you could strong point something or you could put ballistic something in between, this is wide open. No, this is, this is the, the example. And again, not to be an apologist, something like this, this is the first time in a long time where something like this happened. Yeah. So is the response. Rusty is the response on where they were they mentally prepared for this to happen. Some of the complacency that I talked about the correspondence dinner. I'm, I didn't talk to a lot of these guys about this, but I'm pretty sure that that happened here too, especially if something didn't happen for one was the last shooting that occurred with the secret service before that. I'm trying to think of of anything in between this and Reagan. I'll add to that too. How many of the officers have been exposed to the downrage sound of gunfire in a ballistic snap going past you to be able to move on the snap or know what it actually sounds like to get shot at? And there's, there's a lot that went on here. And again, not an apologist, but they stood on the stage to understand like they covered him. And for them not to expect more gunfire. That's what I was going to say. This might work or in him standing back up and staying there may work. I'm still not going to advocate for it. If it is a single person operating by themselves, but not if it's more than one. That would be catastrophic. That's always difficult. Yeah. It doesn't matter. So I can't exist from for the, the first right up that was whenever it was it was for an organized threat against the people that we protect. That's why cat exists. And there's also there was bunch of SWAT teams there. There was the snipers that were, you can't see them in this frame. But the capabilities kept expanding, expanding. And even after this, every time that there's something that occurs, there's an expanse in the amount of resources that go into something. And that was no different. What was that correspondence? Then there'll be no different. Sometimes things are mitigated. And it's because what was the guy that made it to Vance's residents and broke the window? What are you talking about? I do. And honestly, this story is insane. He went on. I mean, Vance wasn't there. He wasn't there. He wasn't there. But this individual was allowed in the presence of the United States Secret Service officer. It's hard to, it's hard to defend. Yeah. And I go back. Everybody wants this conspiracy theory. When I first, first act, act, asked about there. It was like, Hey, man, there was a second shooter in the water tower. There's a, there's a, oh, I know. Trust me that it was insane. These, there's the angles and the magic bullet that, that they took from the Kennedy assassination and they brought it with them and they did all this stuff. And I was like, listen, you're, you're, you want this smoking gun? The smoking gun occurs from the shooter on backwards. That's where the smoking gun is. It's, if there's a conspiracy there, it's from his background, which we still don't know about. What do you thoughts on that? There's some weird stuff that came out in the beginning. And I know more because when they say certain things, the red flags, just, they're kind of there because I was being briefed on emerging threats before I left. So there was a lot of stuff. There was a lot of overseas stuff that I was being briefed on because where I was when I left the last two years, I had access to a lot of programs and a lot of dignitaries that were coming to the United States. So I would be briefed on whoever would come to the United States. So if Iran was coming to the United States, I was briefed on Iran. I would get whatever the cable was or I'd have to go down to the intelligence division. And if it was the same thing for whoever, it doesn't matter who it is. And on top of that, the non-traditional stuff that I was doing too, which was certain people that are of interest to other groups overseas. So after being briefed on that stuff for the last two years, and also like what I knew about before I left cat when I was an instructor and when I was an operations supervisor, I would go to intelligence division and ask them for emerging threats and things like that. Now with sift through stuff, sitting in a skiff, I would sift through stuff to see what is a interest to me. And then it would give me ideas on how to, especially when I was an instructor, you had to create scenarios, so I can try to kill my guys. And putting all that together, the stuff that they said about him overseas accounts, I don't know how valid that is, but it kind of went away. It went to the land to shit no one talks about anymore. And if there is a conspiracy, it starts there going backwards. And if I had powers to investigate it, I know where I would look. It's a sea to validate or invalidate the things that they were saying. Going from the shooter forward for the Secret Service, everybody wants this like conspiracy theory. The Biden's call out at head. The director was pulling assets away from this particular event in order to, you know, like Jill Biden had something in Pittsburgh, I think. It wasn't your, it wasn't your, it was relatively nearby. I think you're putting too much emphasis into that because I could tell you what some of that is, maybe political, right? Because the director at the time is, if, in fact, there were assets going from one place to the other, it wasn't because of a hit. It was because of appearance because we're entering into a campaign. I don't know the accuracy and the truth of that. That's that part of my opinion. I don't know what. I looked at what assets she got in Pittsburgh, or wherever the event was, and it kind of was like, "Ah, all right, it's like nothing looks weird." Right? - Yeah. - And so maybe that's just people saying stuff, but this is like Occam's razor. - Yeah, there was a hole. And there's a lot of people that did a good job at this site. There's a lot of people that didn't do a good job at this site. But if you had the number one defense in the NFL, and your defensive tackle falls down, and the running back happens to run right at that hole, he's going to get past the line of scrimmage, and then it depends on what the next hole is. So you have the number one rated defense, and I'm not saying that the service is the number one rated defense, but who is, if not the service, and there was a hole there that was created, for whatever reason, there's a million stories about why there was nobody on that roof, and it's not because it was a slope roof. Let me just throw that out there. - It had a slight slope to it. - Yeah, and everybody that stood on it afterwards to include all the centers and congressmen didn't have any problems with it, okay? So like, and it was, there's manpower, stuff fell fruit. People were talking about whether it was too hot, or whatever the case might be, it was in July, I don't know, maybe it was too hot, I wasn't there. There's a lot that went into what's going on there, but the Occam's Razor, and what I know from the inside, is that there's complacency involved, okay? And that's what it was. In every time one of these things happen, everybody's the hair in the back of their neck stands up. For a while, it's like everybody's on their A game or their A+ game, and then the complacency starts creeping in, 'cause it's not like doing direct action hits where you're hitting a target every night. The target's coming to us, and that's the reality. That everybody wants a smoking gun. Oh, the Biden's pulled out, put a hit on it, stop. Just, if that happened, man, I've been around so many administrations and hurt so many pieces that would require too. - There's no secrets, man. I'm telling you right now, if I heard that, I would say it right here on this podcast, and people want to believe in these conspiracy theories, and just doing the social media stuff, I'm learning that people have lost their mind with conspiracy theories, you know, they're just. - So I've dug into it a little bit because I used to think that too, and I'm open to being wrong about what I'm about to say, but I've talked to some people about this who know more about that type of mentality than I do. There seems to be a cohort, and I saw this with, not to move away from this, 'cause we can come back, I still have some questions about this, but with the Charlie Kirk assassination. - Sad. - Incredibly sad. The first thing that I think a lot of people don't wanna wrap their intellectual arms around is that the layer between crazy people doing really gnarly stuff and causing damage is incredibly, incredibly thin. And I think the reality is, most people as human beings are just not willing to cross that line. That is probably what protects more of this from happening than anything else, whether it's the morality or wherever it is. They might have a twisted sense of whatever and a deep hatred, but there's a difference between that and going getting a high-power rifle and getting on a roof. So it's super thin, but when it does happen, what people don't like is the feeling that they're not in control or that there's chaos. And I heard this time and time again from people who were very, very deeply invested in what I will call some conspiracy theories around Charlie Kirk and for clarity, for people on the internet try to eat us alive. I do believe that there have been conspiracies involving our government in the past. They're pretty demonstrable. So I'm not saying conspiracies don't exist, but I am saying not everything is a conspiracy. We have to be able to work a little bit in between the two, but people would say, I have to get justice for Charlie. They keep digging in online and then there's these forums and they're throwing out ideas and it was the road microphone that was Israeli-made, the charter, and it was the bulletproof vest and the rounds bounced off and you can see his nipples, guys. - My favorite was the Ninja Turtle that came out of the hatch. - Or his security detail, signaling, because nobody ever gets an itch on their nose before something horrible happens, right? And when you freeze-frame things, yeah, things can look really weird. But people legitimately believed that they were trying to help to get answers for somebody that meant something to them. It was either a sense of purpose or a sense of grasping onto some level of control because they don't want to think or believe that there is almost no actual control. And that makes a lot more sense to me. Especially in a world where people feel isolated and oftentimes my word's not necessarily anybody else's, lost is something they can wrap their arms around. - Have you ever read the book chaos? - Yes. - Years ago though. - I love that book and it was recommended to me by one of the girls at the agency for the book. So I read it and she wanted to me to ask me afterwards, like what I thought about it. As I'm reading it, the idea that popped into my head, not an idea, kind of like epiphany, was that our inhibitions, and I'll start with social media, but it goes way deeper than that. Our inhibitions have, are becoming lower. For some people for sure. And for some people for sure. And if you look and if you start reading, and I like reading history and I like reading like the MK Ultra stuff and how real is that. And there was a real program for those that don't know it was a real program. And how there were 140 programs or maybe more under it, that were all funded by the same dude. So you got funded them all. And the way that they created and controlled people was by lowering their inhibitions. And they did it with this psychedelic, with this drug, LSD. And everybody's inhibitions were lower. So the inhibition, and we can just go down that rabbit hole. Again, it's like one of those like hours and hours, long conversations. The inhibitions, social media, everybody can just say whatever they want with no consequence. You can call people Nazis and you can call people, everything from good person to that and everything in between. There's with no consequence 'cause you're hiding behind usernames. And I mean, if you really wanna look, we can pull up people's IP addresses and track them down and then the direct actions come in. But if we keep lowering our inhibitions, our inhibitions to indulge into the, let's face it, with our emotions, to indulge in the behaviors that we think we should because we are-- - Or that are acceptable. - Maybe not even think that we should. They're acceptable. - Well, they think that they're acceptable. - They deserve it, right? And then it's like we do it with anger and emotion 'cause we get offended. Or things turned out not the way we wanted to. And we think that by injuring somebody that we're either fixing it or validating it or you're gonna celebrate like Charlie Kirk's death, people that celebrated it. And if you look now, the riots that are going on in Belfast and I had my opinion on Tover Heights and the way they're rioting and like I learned from the 2020 riots and like nobody wants to, they just wanna go and burn down their own city. And you talked about that in a second. But in the comments, if you read the comments and I read a lot of the comments, you have these kids, their kids, most of them are kids and they're saying, start killing people. Kill, right, and kill, kill, kill, kill, kill. And they're saying things like that, thinking that that's appropriate. And if somebody in Belfast starts killing immigrants because they're angry that this other guy were, if they injure someone else who had probably nothing to do with the event. And I understand the whole problem, but you're burning down your own city. - Yeah. - Are you gonna riot? I'm all for protesting. Do what you gotta do. I'm way more, I don't wanna say accepting of protesting, but I believe that that's a way to cause change, but you gotta be targeted with it. You can't burn down your own city and think that after you burn a town that the politicians who don't take the buses, who don't eat at the mom and pop shops, who don't even walk down the street, are really gonna care? They're gonna throw money at it, and where does a lot of that money go? Think about Minnesota for a second, and this is my opinion, but this is my informed opinion of basically what I've been around. Minnesota burned down. We threw tons of money at it. Where's one of the states that the most fraud exists right now? - I mean, if you, I haven't dug into it too deeply, but there's been reported as Minnesota. - Okay, so, but my point is, are those things correlated? Maybe it's kind of hard to say that, like, oh, those two things are totally non-related somehow, 'cause there were meetings and it was like, hey, we need ex-billions of dollars to fix this. And it's like, okay, we'll send it along, and of course, they got every bill. Those people, most of those people that live there had nothing to do with that, but you burn down your own city. Target your protest where there should be. The protest I wrapped outside in front of the White House during 2020, those kind of got the attention of people more, because the politicians live there. If you're burning down your own house, how does that make any sense? That's kind of my two cents on the protest. Well, one is driven by emotion. It's emotion. And there is inhibitions. And then the other one is driven by, not necessarily every protestor at the White House, was there logically and objectively, but if you were to think about it and you wanted to be the most visible to the people making the decisions impacting your life, that would be the more logical place to them. That's a more logical place. And then you got the protestors that show up, same ones that show up on the west coast, show up on the east coast and everywhere in between. And it's like, maybe they're professional protestors. I don't know. All right. And that's also a thing where I read a lot about the Belfast protest. They popped up all over the UK overnight. Those things were planned. Those people who were ready to organize those, they didn't come up with the idea after that guy did what he did. That stuff was planned and they activated their plan when they had a reason to. So I think you and I have been around the block enough times that we can probably definitively say and confirm that some people out there, man, their cause is just wanting shit to burn. It's like the Joker from back there. Their cause is wanting to have a cause. And we live in a world where there's always a cause where you're going to be able to get behind. It's not everybody, but I think it is demonstrably true that there are, and I think it's a very small or relatively small segment. But yeah, some people there, life's mission is to have a cause and then go do something with it. You should have a cause in life, but a productive cause. And then I'll turn it around on you and ask you, what are you doing for yourself? Go back to the mission, the men and me that it supplies here too. If your mission is whatever, right? Whatever it is in your going out, but you're not educated, you're overweight, you're hurting other people specifically targeting people and you're hurting them first, that's just evil first, by the way, can we say like if you're going to hurt somebody first and without provocation, you're the evil one. I don't know how else to say it. And I come from a place of security where been around four presidential administrations operationally, not like, you know, in the field or whatever, operationally stood without an assault rifle next to four different presidents. And I, at some point, I become numb to the politics and it's easy for me to just listen and see what's going on and it's like, hey, you're doing things that are evil, right? You're doing things purposely to hurt other people and it's not like in defense of something. You're going out because you don't like the way something is and I'm talking about the presidents here. I'm talking about the people who are coming at the presidents. You just don't like the politics, you don't like things that they said, whatever the case might be, or you're misinformed as to what the policies are. So that's like it, again, is it the truth? That's the truth. People can't help themselves because of, we go back to the indulgences, emotion. This is what everything's run now. Common sense. Man, I like having common sense conversations with people, but it's hard. Yeah. We have to have more of them though. What we can't do is throw our hands up and walk away and then let every ecosystem slowly slide its way towards those emotional decisions. It's difficult. I, you know, I have a couple of rules that I stay with online. The first one is, I mean, I will respond to people, positive or negative. So I try not to have a bias either direction, but my response will always be positive. In nature, or I won't go down to the level that they are coming at me at. I'll answer a question if they have it, if they're going to open with an insult, I'm not going to respond to one. And maybe it's a losing battle, but it's not what I'm going to stop fighting. It's, and I learn that the hard way. The social media thing is awesome. You happen to come with it so far? That teaches you. Well, I'm still a nobody, but doesn't mean you can't get in the comments section. It doesn't get. Well, I love going down the comments because I like learning, because I'll say stupid shit all the time. I say stupid shit. How many stupid things have I said? No. Can you give you counting? Tell me Michael. Yeah. We've got about 10 so far. Excellent. So those are rookie numbers, by the way. We can bump that up. Yeah. I'll put a multiplier on that. But it's, it helps me learn. I love, at this point, I love learning as much as I can. Yeah. Something snapped in my brain a lot, six, six, seven years ago, and I just like absorb things now quicker and easier, like a, in, I like going down, I like passing the message that I'm trying to pass. This is why I'm doing this. This is hard for me. It's hard for me to get in front of a camera and talk, but it's almost like, not almost like, it is, I feel that it's necessary. We need to create stronger people. If we create stronger people, a lot of these problems will go away. If we have better leaders, a lot of these problems will go away. If we have people that make better decisions for the, for us, not for you as an individual, not for you to hold power, seize power, or gain power, it's, it's, if we make people who, take care of themselves, but also have that mission and the men, depending on what organization that you're in, it's all the same. You don't have to be in the military, you don't have to be in Navy SEAL, you don't have to be a secret service agent. You can go to any organization. If you think that way and your leadership style is not just what you're going to gain out of it, you're probably going to be successful, I say it probably because nothing's guaranteed. But more often than you just, how many times people just throw their hands up, they don't even try, they make excuses, they blame, looking at our society now, we blame everything under the sun, except you, you can't look in the mirror and say, man, how did we screw this up? So from a secret service perspective, after these things happen, there needs to be a significant after action. Is there, we say there is, we say there is, did we learn? Can you find commonalities from the, this is still up, the, the Butler incident going all the way to what's the last one, the Correspond Center? Are there commonalities? I will tell you that, and I just said the one that I see is the complacency. Yeah. Let me ask you this so on that point, because this is an interesting one. Coming from the world of being a secret service agent and then being very proximal to the president because of the role of the cat team, although it's beyond just the president itself, but that's one of the main things. Is it possible to not have complacency in the job you guys do? Because we were talking about this on our way over here, the eight, the service has been pressed more times than the last two years than it has been in the last 20. But if you don't get pressed for 20 years and people may not like to hear this, there is a huge difference between experience and training. They're not the same thing. There's not the same thing. But if your job never allows for a real world rep, which is a great thing because that means you guys aren't getting pressed, but it could also be viewed as negative because that means you guys don't have the experience either. So how do you keep complacency out of the role that you have where in the rules of the game you guys are playing with, you're largely reactive instead of proactive. How do you bridge that gap? There are proactive measures that people don't see. Yeah. So I'll just throw that in there. I'm not saying they're not, but I'm saying largely the protective world is you're not out there. Guns blazing first. No. It's reactive. And the reactive, it's very exhausting. And if you can go a week and nothing happens and then a month and then a year, and I'm sure there's people. I asked my boss one time if we got hit once at every 10 motorcade that we did, we run this place the same way. He says no. Oh my God. It looked completely different. And I just looked at him like, well, then what the fuck, man? Right? That's my response is why I keep getting in trouble because I respond like that. But at the end of every operation I did, I remember one time somebody started yelling at me. I would take my helmet off and I would sit on the bumper of the truck as everybody's cleaning all their shit up and putting their stuff back in the bags. And I would just sink down and almost like all the stress would roll off of me. Because as I'm working, I'm looking at the terrain. I'm looking to see where the limo is. I'm looking to see where the other cars are, where the other agents are, what my guys are doing. I'm evaluating based on intel that I had or didn't have. And it was just a constant loop that I was going through in my head. And this occurred the last, especially when I was a team leader, constantly to ask people to do that is impossible. And I understand that to have a, first we need, again, we need so many more people, good people. And then you're able to rotate them in a way that you can't work somebody for 45 days and expect them at the end to be as capable as they were in the beginning. Sometimes it's because, and there are, there's shit happens, right? Stuff happens and we can't, we can't help it. How many times I remember were the oncoming cat team never showed up. So we just worked the double. What do you really did show up? They took a wrong turn. No, overseas. You have, you have foreign entities that won't let people through. They allow them. Man, sweet. Unplanned double. Right? But it's like, you can't, and those aren't common. Those are uncommon. But then you have, it's just, if you don't try to hold that standard, and we talked about it before with the firearms, then the complacency just comes quicker. Because then it's like, take your gear off. What could happen, man? And then it's like, will you take your gear off, then just sling your gun, take your hands off your gun? Well, what could happen? And then that's a slow roll. Now that's happened for 10 years, what's the big deal? Slow roll. And if you were able to play it for real, I think one of the things that kicked me in the ass was I kept going to look for assassination attempts in the briefings that I was getting. And I would just look at, I'm like, holy shit, the stuff that some people were doing overseas. This is all, and you see people getting, you can either attempts or what the case might be. That was one of the reasons that kept me going. The other reason is like, it is my personality. My personality was that I want to lead a group of people. And this will never happen on my watch. And I will burn everybody to the ground or die trying. And that was my, that was my message to all my guys. I remember one time we were in Bedminster. I had a brand new guy. He was driving the truck. We did the brief and we were at night and he just sits back, pulls his hat down, tries to put the seat back and like, he was taking a take a nap. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's, I don't know what you did before. That's not the way it works, okay? You got the first patrol, right? And like, he just looking at me like I scolded him. And afterwards, I'm like, brother, this is the slow creep towards the complacency. Yeah. And I get it. You're good at your job. Multiply that by 10 years. And that, what does that turn into? And that, and that turn into, and so people that you put in the positions have to have that mentality. As I'd like, you're going to be the asshole, man. And go and walk and tell people that you're, you have to stay up for as long as possible and be prepared. You can't, I got into a briefing one time. And the person briefing me was like, hey, it was, it was a bunch of us. Hey, there, there's bad intel at this venue. But we can't tell you what it is. I was like, what did it mean? You can't tell me what is that? The same clearance as you. And one of my guys is like, so basically, you're saying there's a plane that's going to hit one of the, one of the post-standards, but we can't tell you which, which post-standard, right? And, and the guy looked at him like, he's like, well, that's not it. And he's like, wait, so I narrowed it down. And we're having these arguments about why would they withhold that information from me? Because they would claim stuff that it's like, it's not relative to the, to the venue or not relative to the, and why tell you in the first place? Just to piss us off, right? Just, just because knowledge is power, because you read something, what would it hurt for you to brief me, take you admitted in a half to brief me instead of me arguing with you for a minute and a half? That could have been replaced. That's time well spent. If you just tell me style, I'll be like, and then I could come up with my own. I was like, all right, that's really not a thing I should be worried about, but I'll just keep in the back of my head just in case. So there's a lot of, of, there's a lot of goodness in the service. Again, not an apologist, but I grew up there. There are so many good people. And this is what I'm going to say. And it's on this show, it's, it's for everybody to hear, local law enforcement works hard. Every single night, all these people across the country, they see more action in one night than the secret service does, probably in its history. That's why I'm saying, how can you not be convinced? Yeah. And when they experience level and the training level, they're not equal buckets. And, and the local law enforcement does a great job. You know, for the most part, everybody's going to, they're going to start picking and choosing the stories that they want to say. But for the most part, local law enforcement does a great job because it's a hard job. And my hat's off to every single law enforcement agency in this country. The secret service, it's also a hard job. And you don't hear about how many, you hear about the things that obviously are recorded. And you can see, of course, Bond and Stinner, but you don't hear about the thousands and thousands. Let's talk about since, since July 13th, the tens of thousands of missions that the secret service has done that have occurred without incident because you only care about the one. And then you only see the one. You only see the one. Yeah. And then all the instances, and I know this is a hundred percent of the fact of things that have occurred that you don't know about because we stopped them before ever getting to this point. Yeah. So, and those people were people that weren't complacent. They're like, you know what? Fuck you. This is not happening on my watch. Yeah, proactive versus reaction. And they went out and they did what they had to do. And they did a good job. Well, you don't hear about that because those are, obviously, like the best way for us to do our job is to not keep talking about the stuff that we did well. So you don't, nobody, can you construct that? I mean, what you're describing explains people's perhaps misplace optic of what the agency and organization does. But internally, I would imagine people know what's going on and that those things are happening. But yeah, complacency still creeps in. The complacency still creeps in because it's human nature for it to happen. And sometimes it's just the perfect time, perfect storm, the correspondence dinner. And it's not like to mean those guys. It's just, I hopefully you learn from it. And now whenever you're standing there, you're like, any person that walks by, you got to scrutinize them. You can't. It's almost like I had a guy and he was struggling. He was going through cat school. I was the instructor. And he was, he is a great person. He shot really well. He struggled with his decisions. And he's like, I don't, I don't know. I, you know, he's like struggling. All I said to him was, imagine your kid is the one that you're protecting. And he became Captain America after that because he's like, every time I envision my kid, I, what would I do to prevent my kid from getting hurt? Like, good. That and whatever you had for lunch, just do that every day from now on. So we can get you through the school. And he turned out to be a fantastic cat agent. He's a special agent in charge somewhere in one of the field offices now. And to get through to people, to make them understand, to find what makes Andy Stump tick. How can I get through to Andy Stump versus how can I get through to, to, to Mike or, or whoever to, and in not just, well, this is the way it's got to be. And air all of you guys, especially when you're training people, all of you guys got to think the same. Sometimes, sometimes you have to have that human nature. And that binds us together. And it makes us family. And the secret service is family, a dysfunctional family at times. But it is a family. And because there's not that many of us agents, I don't know how many there are now. But when I left, there was like 20, 800, 2700. So you've mentioned a few times you feel like they need to hire thousands more. I feel like I feel like that would take a decade to be able to take forever. And they're trying to do it. And there's a trition and there's hiring. And then in mass high rings, you're going to get people that maybe you didn't want in the first place. Yeah. And then so I hope that they're doing well with that. I know that they're trying. They're pumping a lot of money into it. I just, is it realistic? Do you think to actually hire thousands more? I mean, it's realistic. You'd have to assign to it a realistic trajectory on when that would occur. Yeah. And I was an instructor. I was only a counter assault team instructor. So I wasn't an instructor for the basic classes that we're going through. I know the facility. I know how the facility works. I know the budgets that we're trying to acquire in order to do this. The thing that we need is time. Right. So if we prioritize that and I'm not the director or this or the deputy director. So like I know those guys have a hard job. And they're trying to figure it out. So like I'm not saying I have the answers. But the priority is just protecting people, hiring. And if we just do that, it'll take some time. But in on the backside of it is how many people we hemorrhage. And we're hemorrhaging them before not they're not making it to their end the careers. A lot of people are leaving. They're leaving their careers right when they can. Or they're hemorrhaging. We're hemorrhaging them right before we send them to big details. That was when I left. That was the problem. I don't know how they're resolving that because you have an inflow of people. And then you have you got to stop the you got to stop the bleed. And we got to keep people somehow. And those are two highly problematic areas. Not just for the secret service, probably everywhere right now that's looking to hire. But the secret service won because we are in the public eye. And two, because it is very difficult to hire the right people when you're like, well, we need a thousand people. So beggars can't be choosers at this point. I'm not saying that they're doing that. But it's like I'm sure some people hiring are like, well, let's just take these 10 people. They're good. Well, the pressure cooker of your job is an interesting one too. So I think hiring in general is difficult. I mean, you have to throw the net wider than if you want five people, you probably should look at 10. But it's an interesting challenge. And I understand why people are leaving early in their career. They have their federal creds, they have their security clearance, and they're working in an occupation that is a pressure cooker from 360, 720 degrees, and they say, "I'm infinitely employable in the federal system with what I already have right now. I'm going to do something else." There's another federal agency that went down to the White House and was passing out business cards to all the uniformed officers. They understood the assignment because they know where to go find their job pool. And a lot of those guys left. Dude, you know the deal federal creds, probably TSSI clearance, you are infinitely employable in the U.S. government system. I mean, and if you're getting burned out, your relationship is fraying, you're not getting to see much time with your kids, and again, this can go back to manpower in time. That's a big part of it too. Yeah. How could it not be? The aspect of the Secret Service is, they'll say stuff like family first, but there's so many instances. You read one of the things in my book that's like, there's just, it goes back to like, "Well, it doesn't look good for me if I let you have leave now." And you have to manage those two. The mission has to, we have to accomplish the mission. You can't let this stuff happen. But then you have the people. So this is another story. I was the team leader. I had a bunch of kids. I had a kid he was there for, I don't know, maybe less than a year. He was a great, one of the best, most talented people I've ever had the privilege of supervising in my entire career. And he came to me and he's like, "Hey man, I'm having problems at home." And I just like, I'm like, "Okay, he told me what it was." And I said, "All right, this is what you're going to do." I have to fill these assignments. You can't take leave because there's a blackout period, like there's blackout periods where people can't take leave unless it's like very special circumstance. Case by case, yeah. So I said, "I'm going to send you to England and you're going to do a liaison role, which is you're going to go, you're going to liaison with the police, their SAS, if they're around." And you're going to take your podium and you're going to fly your wife out there. This is what you're going to do. He said, "Can I do that?" I'm like, "All those motherfuckers on the detail." And it was for Vice Presidential Trip. They're doing it too for their wives and girlfriends. So I'm telling you to do it. And then when you get back, I will work all of your shifts and you can go have your leave even though it's a blackout period. And I'm like, "I will figure it out, don't just fuck you with my, like me working it. You got it. I need you to be good. I'll get work out of you." He's like, "Well, people are going to get pissed because I'm going to London. You let me handle that." And I got some fire for it, but you know what? I need to accept that to make my guy one, trust me, to have a good headspace so he can do his job going forward. And three, we solve all these problems because when you say things like, "Well, you just keep that at home. That's your problem at home. You got to do this. We got to fill a shift. Sorry. That's the way it is. That's when you have to be a real leader, step up, absorb heat, people didn't like that. Like what's a blackout period? Like, "You let me worry about that. I'll work his shifts. I'll work doubles if I had to. It didn't come to that." And to make decisions, and I know that's like a dumb story, but it's like, if we have that collective mindset, all of us together, there is nothing we won't be able to handle. This stuff wouldn't happen. It has to occur at the leadership levels all the way at the top. All the way at the top. Because what you're talking about is managing essentially an emergency for somebody, which above one level above, I would hope that the relationship exists that either A, those people know what's going on or they have insight into their own agency and they could realize, yeah, we need two to three X more people so we can actually turn some of these steam gauges off and let the pressure off, cycle through it a healthy, funny term that everybody lets work life balance. Yeah, my old job came with one of those either. Otherwise, yeah, people are going to eject at the four-year mark, or they're going to be presented with a choice by somebody they care very deeply about. You can either change your job or I'm leaving. What do you expect people to do at that point? There are people that give more of the job than they do with their families. And I would say the majority of them are probably in that case, as well as the job I came from as well. One of them are forced to. The job suffers last. That's right. That's a hundred percent right. Some of them are forced to. I'm not recommending people just throw their hands up and say, oh, this job is not important. I'm just going to give everything to my family because one, you also chose to come to this job. All right. You chose to come to this job and then expect to stay home. Did you not hear what I said, like almost 90 countries and pretty much almost every single state in the Continental and Oconous United States, right? And a lot of those were I didn't want to go, right? And I was on cat. So I didn't get to go to the Ireland's and the Italy's. I've never been to Ireland and Italy. All those countries I've ever been to, right, to do Ireland and Rome. Can I go to Rome and have a pizza, right? But I've been to like 20 something countries in Africa and it's different to response. It's to be honest with you. That's another conversation to have because those were my favorite trips. Yeah. After a while, it was like, hey, you're going to Liberia. I was like, yeah, fucking hell. Let's go, right. I can't wait to find a bulk instructor in my room and yeah, you know, check your boots before you put them. It's not that big of a deal. So, I mean, it happens. But the how we manage everybody, a lot of people give so much to this job and it is, think about it this way. Secret Service, you stand next to the president of the United States of America. Not another country. Pick a country. It doesn't matter which country it is, they're not number one. Everybody is number two or lower, okay. That's the reality of that. If you have an unhealthy ego, and I'll talk about this now, and you're standing next to that guy and you're charged with protecting the United States of America, it doesn't matter who it is. What does that do to your ego if it's unhealthy? Because everybody sees you stand in there and you're like, yeah, I'm the man. Regardless of whether you save his life or not. And that starts to seep into your psyche, your identity. It's who you are. Your job is to be that Secret Service agent. Everybody can see you. And when I first started, like first, it was 2004 because it was the campaign for Kerry. And I had to do a site. I was in Newark. It was the office for the first few years of my career. And I did a site for John Kerry going to where a little giant stadium used to be. And now it's whatever MetLife, I don't know where it is now. And MetLife, I think. I was, there was a rope line that he was doing, so he was shaking everybody's hand. And I was standing next to him doing the rope line. And on the other side of the rope line were my friends that I went to high school with. And they were like, John, they had no idea. I'm working now. We can talk about this. And all I said was to them, I was like, can I see your hands? Right. And as we're going down and they were like, just doing this. And they're like, what the fuck? I was like, keep your hands up. And I would just like go down. And then afterwards, they'd all call me and make fun of me. And they were like, you know, you can't still can't tie a tie. And it's like the ego, if your ego is unhealthy, and that is steam that you're getting. And again, I talk about this because it is a real phenomenon. It's like, I'm the man. And that keeps feeding you and feeding you, and that's your identity. And then when you take that identity away, you'll do everything that you can to make sure that it doesn't get ripped out of you because it's all you got. It's confusing who you are with what you do. Yeah. And I would say that applies to professional athletes. Yeah. Well, it applies to anybody who may receive an oversized amount of attention. Screw it in your good or bad public eye, whatever it may be. If you, man, if you tie your beliefs on who you are into what it is you do for living, at some point, I'm not aware of a job. Well, maybe the job of a parent would be the only one that doesn't expire at some point in time, but everything else that requires a uniform, there will be a time that you hang it up. And there's also your loyalty is changed depending on, and I, I have this discussion with guys. And they're like, well, I'm going to do everything I can to walk back through the front door of my house. Like, don't make those promises. If you're coming with me and we're going to Pakistan, all right, your loyalty is to me. My loyalty is to you. It has to be right now. I'm not talking about Cartagena go finding hookers. I'm talking about survival. If we deploy out of that truck, your loyalty and my loyalty has to be to each other. In that way, we can guarantee coming back home. And then when you get back home, your loyalty shifts back to your family. Doesn't mean you don't love them. And you understand exactly what I'm saying. Yes. And a lot of people are like, well, I'm not going to do that because it's going to affect my family. You know, then you may not want to operate in those environments. I understand what you're talking about. Yes. You know, maybe then there's another job for you down the street. Yeah. And that's hard. And I'm not being negative at anybody who struggles with that, but having, it's hard. It is hard, but look at the demands of the situation that you may be. be operating in. We use the documentary Clear and Present Danger as an example. I've never been to Cartagena, but I've seen that, and they get ambushed in a vehicle. It's a great scene. It is a great scene. Um, for a movie. For documentary. Let's be very clear. Everything in there, I believe, was historically based. First off, walled in by buses, elevated positions with RPGs and automatic weapons. That would suck the biggest of dogs you could find. That would be horrible to begin with. If, and obviously I'm joking for people listening, but the reality of that situation, I'm not intimately familiar with all of your training scenarios, but I would imagine a vehicle ambush with the inability to maneuver or limited ability to maneuver probably shows up at some point in time in your training cycle. If you can't turn off everything but pure violence, aggression and the mind of a tactician, you're not going to survive that situation. Well, you might, you're, I would say statistically, your odds are decreasing. The less you can rotate that dial, you have to be able to shift back and forth and have the understanding that that might be the role that you end up serving in. You have, you have to be able to do that. To me, it makes intuitive sense. I'm trying to break it down a little bit for people who don't live in this or come from that world who are looking at both of us like complete sociopaths right now because you're not saying be a sociopath. There's a little bit of that in there. There is a little bit of that in there, but it more than anything. It's rational sociopath. Well, I like, I like the way that DJ Shipley talks about this. It's dials not switches. You have to be able to adapt to the environment that you are in and one of the environments that you hopefully are going to go back to is your family setting. You have to be able to dial that back into that as well too. It's way harder to do than to sit here and to talk about. There, there probably is something a little bit different about people who pursue a tactical career versus those that don't. I say that without judgment. I don't know if it's good or bad. Hopefully the sociopathy could be kept at the lower end of the spectrum perhaps. I think in the tactical world and being around going down to Little Creek, Damna and Fort Prague or anywhere I've been all over the place. Just I had this discussion. I was talking to his command target major and we were talking about our capability. It was all TTPs and metal and SOPs and stuff. Hold on. Tactics, techniques and procedures. Metals are mission essential task lists. Largely looks called a three-room binder of what you do. SOPs of standard operating procedures go. Yeah, so apologies. That's okay. That's what I'm here for. But we're talking about that and it went into what do you want to learn? I was at the tail end now. This is at the tail end and I'll be honest to men. What you guys do and I said I've stolen so much crap from you guys to implement. But the one thing that impresses me more than anything is how you treat each other. And it just like started laughing his ass off and he's like, and his exact words were, "This potato gets it." I was like, "Are you talking to?" That was the conversation and I'll never forget it because it was a validation as to how I treated everybody. The good measure of your success as a leader is how much the people to the left and to the right of you believe not only in you but themselves. And if you do encounter those people with the unhealthy egos, they're the ones that usually are, they're either threatened by you or they think that you're going to erase some of their legacy or they're, they're like, these are, this is a real phenomenon. This is not secret service thing. This is like the entire world. And doing that, you have to make a choice at some point to do the right thing, to be that heat shield. I say that all the time. You're that heat shield. And sometimes people don't want to hear, we just talked about all this stuff and I talked about the beginning of the podcast. A lot of people are going to be like, oh my God, I can't believe you said that. Is any of that stuff, and I'm not trying to water it down, is any of that stuff wrong? The complacency. Is that wrong? You can't, you want to, you want to sit here and say that everything was like hunky dory and perfect and let's miller time, let's just go have a beer, right? And that's not the case after action it. Find out what you did wrong, sustains, abstains, you know, it just like keep doing it over and over again. It's never going to be perfect. But you can strive for perfection. You're going to say that's the goal, unachievable that constantly moving in that direction. And it's okay if you never achieve it. But as a leader, you have to have those hard conversations, not just with your guys. Oh, you have to tell the bosses, hey man, kind of fucked up. You're putting us in a bad position. And they're like, you just, how many conversations I've had where it's like, you just do, my favorite is just go and shave because I had a beard a lot when I was, when I was on camera salty, right? It's like, just go shave and stop asking me about this. And I would push back and I was the asshole. No wonder like they would mad, they were mad at me all the time. How do you do these things matter? There are tactful and effective ways to approach your leadership and there are less tactful and less. Yeah, I learned out the hard way too. I explored deeply the latter more so probably than the former. But you know, one of the main ones, spoiler alert, don't challenge your boss in public, everyone. If you work for a rank-based organization, your nuts are going to go onto the chopping block and get just smashed pieces. The how you do it matters. If you really want to have it like in private, pick your time. Chain of command is a lot like a ladder. You need to be able to go up and down it a little bit. You have to know your role. But yeah, you have to be able, a lot of the times, I mean, let's be honest too, in organizations like this, the boss on paper is the most detached from the boots on the ground. 100 million, I don't know how many more percent we can put on that. Yeah. You don't know what you don't know. You think you know. That's the problem. And that's what I guess I'd never have been able to understand. Because most of these people draw their origins at least from some entry-level position in an organization and probably work their way up. I'm not aware of somebody who was two years in that all of a sudden got lifted and shifted and now they're the top meaning. They saw all the things that were working well on their way up. But you get to a certain station in life and then. So, we've always done it, Andy. Yeah, but that doesn't work. Everything works. Those are the deadliest words in law enforcement, right? That's the way we've always done it. And I'm not talking about fixing it. Yeah. My point is that when they get to that role, they should know it doesn't work. And they should also know that they don't know everything because they had they were homegrown in that organization. You know what I mean? You would see the military sometimes too. Somebody would get a particular job and start acting in a way where you could say, "Hey man, do you remember like a year ago when we were complaining about people asking us to do something like this?" And oh, by the way, both of us understand where the teeth of the gears aren't aligning because we know how the sausage is made. Why are you acting all of a sudden like you don't know that? You should. When I was hired in 2002, we were talking about hiring more people. Yeah. It's 2026. Yeah. And so nobody who's been in that organization should be able to sit there and look at you and say, "John, this is the first time hearing about being underman in overworked." What are you talking about? There's more nuance than just hire more people at the same time because they should have lived it. And then they get to a position where they can have an impact and they say, "Well, I didn't know." Like, you didn't know where you weren't looking or are you pretending that you don't know? It could be a combination. Sure. Like, multiple things can be true or are you just worried about yourself? Are you looking at the next step for you? Is there nepotism involved? All of these things can be shades of true. But if you come up inside of the organization, you should constantly be reminding yourself that you don't know everything. So go out there and ask questions. Look around. The guy is the program manager for Cat right now. He's got a number written in the dryer race board. And he just, when I would go visit him, he'd just point to it and he'd be like, "I'm not going to stop until we reach that number." And he would tell me, he's like, "That's my number one priority other than getting the guys training and doing our operations stuff." But they'd be like, "I need to reach that number." And as a God bless you, what do you need for me? Well, how can I help you? And he would beat his head against the wall and still does. And the guy who's in charge too, they're trying to hire more people and that's their goal. And it's an honorable goal. And again, not a secret service apologist, but I was on counter assault special operations for 15 years, just in the secret service. And I will default to those guys, but I will tell them the truth, but they're doing a good job of just focusing on the things that they need to focus on. Now, they might not get those results for whatever the reasons are. You can talk about the training and the amount of people that are available. Because you pull from the agents that we have. If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments. of 3,000 agents. The math is the math. Okay. And there's programs where they're just trying to hire and everybody, I read the comments, everybody's like, well, they need to hire Delta Force and SEAL Team 6 and, you know, whatever. And there are programs that they can pull directly from there, but it takes time. And it's not like you're going to get-- I know people also have to want to do that. And they have to want to do that. And it's a different job. Yeah. And it's funny you say that. It's good that you say that. I'm going to say this on them. It talks about counter assault team and they talk about special forces or Naval Special Warfare or SOCOM and JSOC and all they say that is SOX. The counter assault team is not a special forces team. They are not-- Is that what they tell themselves though behind closed doors? I'm telling you. Do you guys sit there and say, yeah, we're basically Cag Team 6. If they say that, I'm going to say that you're just, I tried. My profanity is kind of generic. I use the fox and the shits. Yeah. So I was going to say something else. But if they say that, they're wrong, okay, that is not who they are. It's not who they're supposed to be. They're not who they're supposed to be. That's coming from me. I'm the dinosaur of the counter assault team. They're also not a SWAT team. They are not law enforcement. Well, you're kind of the president SWAT team, which is pretty dope. Not SWAT. You're either SWAT or you're not. I heard that on another documentary too, also titled SWAT. Yeah. Not. I'm joking. Counter assault team. Yeah. They are a bunch of assaulters. They are. That's what they're trained to do. Isn't it technically in case the president becomes kidnapped? Was that the original intent behind Cag? That was. Yeah. It was originally formed in the 1970s. The deputy director right now, his father was one of the authors for the counter assault team. No way. Yeah. It's cool. It's kind of like there's a lot of history there. And they were formed around the same time as I'll send you, there's like a little history pamphlet that talks about this. I'll send it to you. And they were formed around the same time as one Beckwith formed Delta Force, which was listening. And they kind of went in different directions, obviously, where we are. And they grew their program and they're in we are where we are. And it was kind of born around the same time in the same conversation. And I'll send you could read the whole thing. Yeah. Please do. It's interesting. And I just, I don't want to say the wrong thing, not because I can't, because I'm not sure. Yeah. And it was born from there to do exactly that. It was supposed to be a group of people, the agents that are a bunch of assaulters. That's what they're trained. They're cross trained in the same fields. That's special forces, naval, special warfare, steel team six, Delta Force, all these guys. They're trained in doing the same things. I stole so much stuff from everybody as an instructor. I learned so much from everybody that I incorporated it. Like retroengineered stuff to put into what we do, and to operate in the environments that we do the way we do. Obviously, if we go into a war zone, we shift into that role, because we're actually with, have you ever worked, when you were overseas, have you ever worked with the details we come in? Yeah. So then you have tanks. It's such a good, different animal. That's what I'm saying. Not even tanks. It's like, I used to love the ISR, I would just turn to the Air Force guys like, hey, what's going on? And you'd be like, hold on. He'd just open it down. I don't start from people. We were talking about like a predator reaper feed. You're looking at, it's an overhead, you know, I loved it. Yeah. I loved it. I was like, I loved ATAC. Yeah. I lived on ATAC. It was one of my favorite things in the world. Yeah. You can go too far on ATAC, though, too. You can. I have my own. You've got to go heads up a little bit. It's like flying an airplane. You can't spend the whole time looking down at the instruments. You've got to lift your head. Well, it was, it was guy, I have my own mesh system at home that I run ATAC and teach my daughter how to, how to play. What is it? It's Android team assault, no, Android team awareness kit. Awareness kit. Yeah. It's a flip down essentially. Why did Android get the, why can't you use an iPhone? It was open. Oh, that is right. They had to be able to crack it to do it. It's called literally called an ATAC system, A being the Android. You'll see it on a lot of modern gear. It looks like they have a cell phone right in front of their heart because spoiler alert, it's a fucking cell phone that you can flip down. Apple has it now. So like it still got to call it ATAC. I still call it ATAC. Apple would work for that though too. The Apple. No, it's ITAC. You got to have to, you got it right? ITAC. Yeah. Of course it is. Of course. Yeah. So I love that thing. It's, and it's basically like Legos. You can do whatever you want. You build whatever you want in it, right? And now there's all this crazy stuff where you just flip it down and there's an amazing situational awareness tool. As what it was, and working with so many different units because when we traveled, I would work. We'd go to whatever, bumble fuck in the middle of the United States. And if they had the capability, I can just federate my ATAC with them. And then now I can see where the SWAT teams were. I can see, or I can move them around. And when I had the time to do it, again, like I said, my face wasn't buried in my phone. It was looking forward. This is also a whole conversation about looking down and looking up. But, and then, to work with the military, when we would go overseas, any O'Connor strip that we had, if I had that, I could federate it with, and I say, use the word federate for lack of a better word. That means we're just joining our systems together, still sharing. So we can see each other, and it gave me the ability to embed into those units so that we can do what we had to do. And the amount of awareness and the amount of stuff that I learned, not just to be able to run that, but how other assault units work, Ranger battalions, and we went to Afghanistan one time and I had the second. With us, it was awesome because we were rolling through something and they got one guy flipped on his phone. He's like, "Depth, don't worry. It's all taken care of." And I was like, "That's it. That's the kind of shit I'm talking about. Oh, you'll be here, right?" And it's one of my favorite things that I miss right now. It's the communications. I loved communications, leadership communications, because all the firearm stuff and the tactics, if you just see it for what it is and don't over-complicated, you're good at it. Then step up the communications. We created this communicator role that was like, literally, we would plug into local infrastructures when we travel. So we would plug into so-and-so SWAT team, and we were able to talk to the SWAT team on their frequency because we were plugging into their systems, and again, all this stuff is not something that you don't know about them saying it for the camera. But we retroengineered a lot of stuff from the military to be able to enhance our capability that's the kind of stuff I love doing when I was on cat. I loved it to just keep innovating and pushing forward, and by doing that, you piss a lot of people off. The innovation in the government is, like, people don't want to say change. Change is like the kiss of death basically just, like, you're going to be public enemy number one. Well, it depends if the person you're talking to is a budget line item is associated with the change you're asking for. A lot of the changes that I did didn't cost much or anything. Yeah. Hard for people to see, though, when oftentimes their position is directly tied to their budget, therefore, authority in things with that nature. Do you think it's hard for the guys? I'm not going to have to ask you to conjecture a little bit for the guys that you work with. They do travel around for people who don't know, and you're working with all the tier one units. All the units. You were in largely the same gear, carrying in largely the same stuff, doing largely the same thing. But you get to go and train with all these units who then get to go get reps overseas for real. And your guys don't get to, is that tough? It is, Ralph. I call it, I stole this word from one of the guys being kinetic, okay? Today's podcast is brought to you by Element. I have been talking about these guys for years. Very thankfully, I am good friends with Rob Wolf, one of their co-founders. So he exposed me to this project early on, and the product as well. What's the best way to describe this? 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I hope it never happens, but there's the people that are like, well, I want it to happen just to see how we do. I'm like, no, bro, cool story, bro, right? And I don't wish it upon any of those people because I love them all. I love the ones that that still know me. I love the ones that don't know me at all, and like past, present, future, I love them all. I always will. That's the program that I grew up in. So I want them to succeed and be the best that they can, even if they don't love me back. That's like how I view them. You have to understand though, the reps can be every single motorcade that you're in. This is how I, this is how I exhausted myself. As we were going through motorcade, and I would play these games sometimes where I would take one of my guys that I was training. I would sit him in my seat and I would sit behind him. And he's like, I don't want to do this. And it wasn't motorcade. I assessed the, like how severe it wasn't. You're picking your time in place. We used to do this stuff all the time by the way, too. Yeah. It's perfect. And I would sit there and I would say, what do you see? And I would teach them how to drive. The driver was listening. I was like, do you want to be closer or further? Do you want to be on the left or the right? Are we on the X or outside the X? Should we be on the X or outside the X? And we would just go down and I was training them how to think. I did this all the time. And not only did it train them how to think, it trained me how to think. After we did it, hundreds of times, those were reps real time without having the limo all stopped by the way, that thing is very difficult to stop. There might be a video of that being high-sided somewhere. Okay. And so a little bit stuck. So that I remember, I remember you asking about that. I remember you asking about that now as just I was like screaming at the, at the, at the freaking TV when I was like, I was watching it. But those become the reps. And the reps are also, did you brief today? And I know these are, this is dumb. Did you brief, did you deal your pre-coms checks, your pre-com back pre-com checks, did you do them all? As you go through all that, and I used to do, I used to pre-coms checks. And then I would always, and everybody knew too. At, at, after a certain point, they're like, he's going to test us to see if our shit is, is, is working. And if we got somebody scabbed out to us, it'd be like, stump, right? And you'd have to, you key, you do the same thing. You key up and real like, stump, and everybody thums up and you go around and make sure everybody's talk. And then the new guy, invariably the new guy, it'd be on the wrong frequency. It wasn't coded. That means you didn't have the, whatever crypto in you, right? And it's, or you didn't have it on. And I was like, hey man, if I deploy you out of the truck, and it was a learning point, and it started to elevate our floor, elevate our floor, elevate our floor. I can't simulate a firefight for you. But I can make you as close to possible and let you know that I take this shit for real every day, put those people in the positions of leadership. And by most part, cat guys all think like this, for the, for the most part, I mean, in every, every tactical team, there's always going to be those couple of guys that you're like, I don't know how you're still alive, bro, but you know, but the cat guys think like that, because they are the ones that solicit this type of world. I know it is a, it's a high, it's a hot, it's a hard ask to have everybody with that mentality. Without being kinetic, every day, that those reps become so much more important, because you're in the motorcade and you know what the limo does. You know what the shift does, the people that suit and tie guys that are running around. And yes, there it is. This is Ireland. I believe it is. Is this Ireland? I think so. And, and we're all, listen, the answer here is a two by four. All right. Let's just get it under the tires. We'll just back it up. Let's, I'm not even going to talk about it. I mean, the reality is this, that's a very long vehicle. It's very heavy and that driveway has an apex to it and the two mathematically didn't work out well. And in, in the services defense, that wasn't the limo fair enough. That's the spare. So the limo just, that's fine. If you guys don't want to get reps in on your spare, that's fine and it's not a big deal. So it is hard to ask for the guys. You know it's harder or would be harder and this is an easy one to dismiss because they'll say it's never happened. What? It's happened one time. Standing in front of Congress and explaining why the president is dead. Oh, buddy. We have that. We say that all the time and go back to Kennedy. That's right. Yeah. Well, it should have said Abe Lincoln. But I don't think the secret service was what it was back in the day. It wasn't. We started after McKinley. Yeah. And it was unofficial for a while. I remember like 1912ish or something like that before our time. We're old but not that I'm pretty old, but in my class, my Jiu-Jitsu instructor is always like, where were you born? 1812? I'm like, come on, man. Give me a little credit. Let me do old man Jiu-Jitsu and Lian people. It's pretty awesome. But it, and then moving past McKinley, they never showed us. It was a brutal film and training. How's that possible? See? You came to the same reaction that I did. Oh. And did they just basic, basic training? Did they assume that you had seen it previously? Did they reference it? We saw Reagan a million times. Yeah. We saw a bunch of other stuff like Chevronazzi and all that, right? They didn't show us the subruder film. Now, I, to this day, and I tell every single secret service agent to read the Warren Commission, and you don't have to read the whole thing because like a thousand pages, and you're going to want to kill yourself afterwards because it's the most of it's boring. It's very dense. But just read the part that that's about the secret service. Because we must know what we did then, as opposed to what we do now. This is like after action reports, and if, if I hide the names and the dates, and I'll ask you, did we learn from this, now, born from that was that limo that needs to get over that lip over there, right? He probably was the last president who wrote around, and uncovered a car, wasn't he? They have other cars that were like that. It's hard for me to imagine the situations that they let the presidents to ride in those, and that was like the, the lesson, because look, and like mass shootings started in the 60s. And then that tower in Texas, it was a school, all right? That's when that started, mass shootings. Now it's like on a Tuesday, you're like, all right, none? All right, good. We're good today. Let's move on. So, well, yeah. I mean, the FBI, I believe, counted as anything involving more than four people. So now, everybody wants to go back to conspiracy theories, and they talk about the JFK, and I don't have enough evidence to say that it was a conspiracy theory, and if there is a conspiracy theory, again, just like Butler, the shooter on back, is there enough information to figure out backwards? Because then you're able to see, well, who's trying to kill this guy? You can do the same thing today with Butler moving backwards. You can do the same thing with what's that guy's name, and the guy who was at Mar-a-Lago and had the SKS against the fence, right? Whatever his name was. He just got life in prison a couple months ago, and then it's like, look at their backgrounds and don't stop looking at them when you, because I believe that it's deeper than that. The idea for that, they didn't just come up with that on their own, sitting in their mom's basement, and just being like, you know what, I'm gonna buy an assault rifle, climb on the roof and try to kill the president. That's where the conspiracy, I believe, that there's more, that's Occam's razor, may or may not apply there. Yeah. I think it's possible. I don't know the plausibility of it. Not everybody. Yeah. Not everybody just decided to do this on their own, and then there's the propaganda, and then there is, like, it goes back to, like, our inhibitions are being lowered, so we're able to indulge in, like, I'm angry, I'm gonna hurt people, and it's usually people that, the people that come to the White House who do get into shootings and stuff, a lot of them, if not all of them, have mental illness. They have something that's, they're not thinking right. How their mental illness manifested, it's case by case basis, that's the majority. of the people that go to the White House that are looking. Look at the kid that just got shot. You pull the gun out of his bag, all right? And he thought he was God at one point, right? That's that normal. And then you have other people that show up that are looking for suicide by cop, okay? That's like a real thing. So they might have been that guy. I know, I feel bad for the guy also. I feel bad for our people that are being put in that situation, but I also feel bad for the people that are showing everybody's like, "Oh, God, just kill 'em, burn 'em down." That's the wrong answer also. And then you have all of the butlers and the Marlagos and whatever the case might be. All those people, there's something wrong there where you're looking to do what you're trying to do, okay? And a lot of people will be like, they think whatever they think of the reason they're looking for reason to justify themselves like we were talking about. But when it's all said and done, might have done this. It's like 90 something percent. - Yeah, you know, agreed. - Did the allure of working near the president in the White House ever wear off? Did it ever just become the backdrop of where you worked? - Yep. I say to this day, if I met Trump right now 'cause he's the president, or Obama, or Biden, which I've met all these guys, or Bush, or all the presents that I wear around, I'd be like, all right, nice to meet you, sir. Thank you for your presidency and I don't care, right? It's, I don't care. I'll get more, I'm trying to think of somebody that would be star struck by. I think for me, the one, I don't care. After seeing the president millions of times, I say millions, but probably. - South, I wanna say, yeah, there's like tens of thousands. I would just go to, and it would be my assignment. It didn't matter if it was Trump, or it didn't matter if it was Hillary, 'cause we still did things with the former's, or a special assignment, right? One of the family members, I didn't care. It was like, I'm gonna keep this person alive. - I think there's a head space you need to have anyway. It should be pretty apolitical if you're in that job. - All I was thinking was, I would walk into a venue and they're eating somewhere, I'd start knocking on the walls to see what they're made of, I would just go around, I'd have my, where I'm gonna throw them, I had my hard rooms, I had this, I had that. I start going through all my checks, right? There was the first thing that I did. It was like being a machine. You just did it, did it, did it, did it, did it, did it. And then afterwards, they're like, all right, now I'm ready, I have my plan. I brief myself, I brief my guys then. I do, you do range your handbook, you take a third of the time for yourself and you brief everybody else. And then I was ready to go. And I didn't care who was. I just escalated and de-escalated, depending on the, obviously the president gets so many assets. And when I was, I, you know, a prime minister of Belgium, not as many assets. So my plan would change, depending on what it was and what I was capable of, the team that I had, what assets that I had, et cetera, et cetera, right? We can go on forever. And that, to me, taught me a lot about just being a professional, a capable professional. Just being professional, this is the word we throw around. But capable professional because we're trying, I'm trying to do my job and be good at my job. I can explain to you whatever situation that you want. Let's, we can talk tactics and I'll tell you exactly why and the principles behind it. And it's almost like some guys would learn a tactic and try to force that tactic into the situation. And I would just turn around and be like, what's the situation? And I'll tell you what the principle that we need to have behind the situation, now I'm going to choose the tactic that best helps me accomplish my goal. To be able to think like that, escalate and de-escalate that. And I would just do it. It was, it was just like the way my brain worked. Everybody would be like, we're going to form a perimeter here. I said, why are you pre-positioning yourself in an enemy sector of fire right now? The firing hasn't started. Why are we forming a perimeter? And we need to fall back and do this. And they just look at me like I punched them in the teeth. And I'd be like, no, give our guys the best chance to succeed. So these are things that I wish I had more time to teach people the way to think. 'Cause I had my plans quickly. They were like, I would just do it. If I had 10 minutes to do to make a plan, this is how I would make a plan. If I had days to make a plan, then I can get a good show going because I had days to prepare for all this bullshit that's going to you're going to throw at me. But that way of thinking, instead of just turning around and deciding, well, who do I have? Well, he might not like this or he might not like that. I don't care. I'm going to drag his ass down the stairs. And he might be mad at me afterwards. I had one person that-- - Protect-y, yeah, protect-y. - I'm not going to say the person's name. Read into that as much as you want, right? But I had one person we were leaving a venue. I was a new agent and I was the lead agent and it was like late at night. I was still in Newark and you can do the math and figure out who it is. I'm just, I have this internal thing where I'm not going to throw people under the bus. But I gotta tell the story. And we left this venue and I was in a state trooper car. New Jersey state police, I love 'em, they're awesome. And we left and I'm writing down 'cause we didn't have cell phones back then. I'm writing down the departure time and from the time I took to look down, to look back up, I just said, bro, you're on the wrong side of the road, right? So we're doing a motorcade and on a coming traffic. I was late at night and the cars were all the way. There were no cars on the road, which that's why he made the mistake 'cause it was dark and he didn't see the turn. And there was no cars, no lights, it wasn't. I could see how-- I could see that I've made that mistake zero times in my life. - So, right? So he's like, I'm only gonna turn around. I'm like, nah. And I reached down and I flipped the lights on, right? 'Cause we didn't have the lights going. - Yeah. - 'Cause it was a little motorcade, it wasn't that big. And there were lights, but they were like 200 yards down. I could see them. And at some point, the concrete barrier between just ended and we could hop over to our lane. Cool, done. Nobody needs to know. The only people that know, the people that are listening to this, right? And this was like in, this was 20 something years ago, right? Again, no phones, no ATAC, okay? Do we get to the airport and I get out of my car. The protecting you exactly where the lead agent sat and just turns around and sees me, just like seething hatred, right? And it's like, oh my god, not you again. 'Cause like, they're like, it turns around to the detail eater and it's like fire him, right? Just storms up the stairs of the plane. I just stood there and I just like shrugged my shoulders. I don't know if the hell I was doing, right? But I was trying to solve the problem that was created. It wasn't that big of a problem. That was the only time anybody wanted to fire me. That was a person that would protect it. So, everybody else, they'd always stop. Thank, they all know we're there for them. So, the one thing that surprises me about the White House and I hate to break people's illusion of how awesome that place can be is the rat problem. The rat problem. Why can't that be solved? Those things are huge. You would think the cats and the rats would find an equilibrium. I happen to be walking around the grounds in the evening, kind of getting a tour and my god on the north side, riding the little bushes. Just go ahead and look at the bushes. There's a lot of things moving around in there. What the hell, dude? I don't know. There was a bobcat at one point. No way. There was a little, I say bobcat. It had the links ears and the stubby tail and it was the White House bobcat. And we would see it all the time. After a certain point, that thing didn't even care that there were people. It would just come out. People would throw food at it. Yeah, that's why it would come out. And now that's why it would come out. And it was the bobcat. And the last few years, I didn't see it. I hope that somebody maybe took it home or maybe it was just old. There was a White House bobcat. They didn't take care of the rats. It's insane. There's probably still there. Not probably. There's still there. They're 100% still there. They need to take care of that for sure. What would you want people to know about a career in the secret service? Outside of it, do you think that they miss about that job or they don't understand? It is. I'm going to beat a dead horse. It's a difficult job. I want all the men and women in the service to succeed. And most of them do because they're great. The kids, I call them kids, where it relative, right? When I'm 25 years older than you, I can call you a kid. They try so hard to make sure that this stuff doesn't happen. The people that are coming into the service, if you want to be successful, you have to come in with the mindset that you're going to give a lot to that job. And by giving that giving a lot, being part of a team, not an individual where you can steal authority, responsibility, opportunity from people end. and then you become a kiss ass and, 'cause that's a real thing, right? And you are looking to just enhance your resume. You can do that and maybe you'll get what you want, but you won't be good at your job. You'll just be stealing opportunities from everybody. There are some people that can do both. But it's like that having somebody, what's that chart, the loyalty versus the performance? - I don't know. I don't know if I've seen that chart. - You have a high performer and his loyalty to the organization is, you have a high performer and the loyalty to the organization is low. And then you have a low or mid performer. - But loyalty is probably high. - But his loyalty is super high. I can take that guy who's not so great and elevate him. That high performer that's only there for himself, that's who's gonna be detriment to everybody around him. Maybe he become the supervisor. And I will say that not everybody in the service can become the director. Is that a fair statement, okay? - Well, even mathematically. - That's why I say that 'cause it's a ridiculous comment to say like, oh, you're all gonna be the director? - Well, it's safe and sound to one individual. - It's just one guy, yeah. - Not everybody can be deputy director or the assistant directors or however it's structured. I don't know why we chose like the words that we use to designate everybody 'cause they're the first like five years I was confused. And to be a subject matter expert in the service is also a thing. You wanna talk about counter assault stuff? I'm your guy. I'll sit there and talk to you until the end of days and we can talk about every single venue scenario and motorcade or whatever you want. We can talk about it. I'll tell you exactly my thoughts on it, but I have an answer, a consistent answer and I could probably train whoever to do whatever. That was me. It was like 15 years doing that. Other people believe that the more you bounce around in the service, the more you're quote unquote well rounded. That's great if you wanna go to headquarters and be an administrator and know how your decision affects the field office as much as it affects the division, the operational protective division. So if you pull bodies from I say bodies, I hate saying that and I said it. You pull people from one place to the other, how it affects one, 'cause it's like there's always a gift. There's always, you're always making a sacrifice somewhere but it's like having the military and having everybody be an officer. It doesn't work. - It doesn't work. So you need to have people coming into the organization and if you wanna be good at something, maybe it's just cybersecurity, 'cause we do that. They're great at it, they're good at it. And be good at that. And then if you want to endeavor to go to move up and be a director, assistant director, whatever the case might be, that's great. Be good, be great at something. That way you can teach a pocket of people instead of having everybody that just jumps around every two, three year and a half. Now I think to be a supervisor, you can get your first supervisor position and then the rule now is 12 months and then you can move on to something else. There is, it's hard for you to learn, make an impact and not make decisions that you're just worried about your next step. If you're just gonna be there for 12 months knowing that you're gonna leave. - I mean, you have to get up to speed, figure out how to drive it and then off board to somebody else. - That's right. - Yeah, that's true. I would say 12 months is where you're using your eyes and the ears a lot more than your mouth trying to figure out what the hell your job is. - If you're smart about your position, that's true. So, and they adopted that, I don't know what agency or if it's a DHS thing, they adopted that. And now it used to be, you needed to do two first line supervisor positions. So you do one, you do another, I was a supervisor on cat for five years. So first line supervisor, team leader, operation supervisor, when I got in trouble, I did a bunch of other stuff too and I got in trouble a lot. But like it's, I learned so much within the purview of being in a special operations division. And when somebody, somebody, my replacement one time had to do something and it was the trip that, I don't wanna see even say the trip was, somebody comes downstairs 'cause I was still in the building 'cause I was in the dignitary position. So there's like two years, my last two years, I moved to the dignitary protected division. I did a lot of the presidents and prime ministers that would come from Oconus, all these foreign diplomats. So they come down and like, hey, we can't figure out how to link up with the special forces team that's gonna be assigned to us for whatever the visit is. And I was like, well, where's my replacement? My operations supervisor. They're like, he's not answering his phone right now. We gotta get the guys out there. So I'm like, I take my personal phone and I just look up the number and I write it down and I slide a piece of paper over. I'm like, call that guy. Tell him, I said it's me and he'll link you up with the right people like, how do you know this? I'm like, he's the major over the team that's gonna be working with you. And like, how do you know that the special forces team that's working with us? I go, well, because that guy came down and I wrote the letter form so he can request it. So they can only be those people. So they went upstairs and they're five minutes that everybody was linked up. So the institutional knowledge of that to know who to call why, where, when, et cetera, et cetera is something that you can't replace by being there for 12 months and then moving on to somewhere else. - No, not even close. - And I solve their problem in five minutes. And again, it's like not to toot my own horn. It was something that anybody in my position that was there long enough would have known to do the same thing. And you have to have subject matter experts to teach people how to do, not that. You can, you know, make a connection with anybody. To teach people, he meant, how do we think? How is this? How can we move the program forward? And the guys who are in, and I say cat, 'cause like again, I love those guys and I know the people that are there, like they're all my friends, they're all great people. They've been there for a long time and they're pushing things forward. If you look at the correspondence dinner, the gear alone that those guys have now compared to when I started, is light years ahead. And they keep advancing and advancing and learning and advancing and learning and advancing, 'cause that's who they are. They wanna be great at their job. And it's a place of innovation, cat, special operations. You know this, right? Does it cascade down to the front line? Sometimes. That was one of the cool things about being a development group is that it actually was a developmental location where you can get your hands on stuff that wasn't on the ANU or authorized for naval use, which are limited to largely at a SOCOM level. So a tier underneath JSOC. But you would test stuff that would show up in the hands of other people by design and doctrine in 12 to 24 months. Which was pretty cool. I think the volume of how the developmental group is situated allows you to do that. Well, it was designed with the purpose, yeah. And for us, there's not enough of us to do that for other divisions. We develop stuff within and incorporate stuff. And then if the other divisions think it's a good idea or maybe they wanna adopt it too because it's working for us, then they'll take it. I mean little things, even just from gear. It has an example, lightweight standalone multi-strike plates. Yeah, and most of the gear that's propagated across the entire secret service has come out of the special operations division. Okay, so that's essentially what it would be. Yeah, you just have to have the right people who are willing to just do not be like, "Well, no, we've used the same eye facet for the last, you know, however many years we're just gonna stay there." I'm like, yeah, well, you know, et cetera, et cetera. This is the capabilities of this. We just bought 10,000 units and there's budgetary stuff too. Yeah. But at the same time, it's like the forward movement. I love when people push the envelope. Same. I love when people try to innovate and it's at, sometimes it's at their expense. And that's where I call it, I call it in the heat shield. It's like, "Hey, there's gonna be people that will be mad at you. Sometimes it's 'cause they're trying to preserve their position. They're trying to preserve their legacy. They're threatened by you." Whatever the case might be. So you're gonna absorb all this heat, but everybody behind you'll be fine. It's honorable. It's the role of the leader to be an eye-user of the term umbrella. And especially if you have a dog shit leader over you, which I'm sure it never happened to you. Never, ever, ever, ever. It's only in the teams where sometimes there's bad leaders. (laughing) The number of times I've gotten that question, publicly, personally, email DMs. What do you do if you have a shitty boss? It's like, first buddy, you gotta survive. But then really, if you wanna be the leader that you wanna see from other people, you have to protect everybody else. You have to protect people. You become the umbrella. And you also have to lead up. Yeah, that's what I said. It's more like me to me than a ladder than it is. A lot of people will say leadership is like a waterfall. Things are, waterfalls don't go both directions. I'm not saying you should climb every ladder, but the ability to peek your head up there and say, "Hey, I had a suggestion for the suggestion box, even though I know you're not asking for them." And again, tactfully, Don't do what I've done before which is challenging right there at the morning meeting Which I was told to shut the fuck up and then as soon as the meeting ended I was told to report to their office Why'd you start getting in trouble John? Which time How long had you been in before you started getting in trouble? I got trouble a lot for little things are big things both But we're some of the bigger ones give me the wave tubs So this is the story the story reference in the book. I don't just say what it is and I got in trouble because two people Took my rifle and they wanted a photo op my rifle was pristine, right? I I it was how did they have access to your rifle? I just gave them we were at the range and they wanted they want it was the other cat guys and They shot it they were doing full-auto mag dumps through it and try to get the flame come out of the front Historically really good for the service life and accuracy of weapons, so I got it back and I had to I'm doing the short version. I do surgery on it to take the suppressor off before because it changed colors, right? Yeah, for people who don't know this suppressors if you really get on the old go button They sometimes you don't need a flashlight because they can start to glow there were multiple mags that went through it Yeah, and I before I realized what was going on So I took two rifles put them together and I did a I live on a sub-divided farm, and I did a function fire My neighbors were firing their guns - so it wasn't I mean you were taking you were basically doing a surgical repair of the pieces Yeah, I took I used to do when I was in structure. I build rifles all the time Yeah, and I function fired it. I fired like three rounds. I looked at it. I inspected it I fired the three or four more rounds. I was satisfied. I cleared it made safe. I had a little berm that I made it was like I don't say like five to seven yards Right, just it's like I don't I never shot my stuff on my property. Yeah, so each other government issue stuff my government issue stuff Yeah, this is what this is the problem, right and My neighbors are firing. It's not like the punisher live next door So I was like I put it away. I'm like I'm good and I was I Was trying to be prepared to go to work and 45 minutes later. This is like 45 minutes later Police rolled up my driveway, which is like we're talking about like a black and white. Yep, like My end of my driveway is like 50 yards off the road. So it's not like it's it's not a house that and again sub-divider farm There's acreage and then my property backed up to woods that went on for a while before right? So it's and then my neighbors are firing as the police officers standing in the in the driveway. There's two of them And they're like over here for for reports of gunfire And I was and I just looked at him and I said it was me And though they're like are you sure that you sure it's not the next doors? I was like also them Is this like your subdivision? Why is gunfire not okay? Uh, I live It is a sub-divider farm and there's gunfire all the time. There's gunfire the day before I left to come to Montana So then who called it in they that's a whole story that I'll just leave that but in the end of the day the person who called it in Doesn't like cops ironically and basically said that I was murdering my family And that's why the police showed up So I was swatted is basically what it was right. Didn't you have like something you could have shown them to let you know that you're law enforcement? I did maybe handle this issue. I did okay. Oh the the person who called or the police the police who showed oh yeah I identified myself immediately So they knew I was I was a secret service agent. Yeah, the person who called them said I was a secret service agent And then I murdered my family. So what a do you sure? Oh, yeah There's a whole other story to that but the what what ended up happening was I called my supervisors First I said hey, I'm on a self-report. Yeah, because I don't like my kids riding her bike in my driveway My wife comes out. She's got a dress on. She's like are we gonna eat like what's going on? And Supervisor comes in Everybody leaves. There's no charges or I didn't give it up for anything. They had an internal report that they have to provide And when I showed up on Monday, I got my ass kicked by the supervisors so For use of your government issued firearm at your home for yeah, and there was a whole bunch of it wasn't the You just said it. I stood my ground I didn't handle it the way I showed up. There was a lot of go-to-hels and a lot of stuff like that going on but They It's like one of those situations where I wasn't exactly I was good at my job, but they just Believed they wanted people to move on So this was a good excuse for them to get me in trouble and the exact words from one of the supervisors. I got you now Those are the exact words. So that was like Kind of a catalyst for a lot of stuff for me because I was like you guys do what you got to do I got up and just walked out on them and again for anybody that's listening That is not the way to handle that Their minds were gonna be made up one way or the other. You don't have to help them though I don't have to help them. I don't have to make it worse, but From that I learned a lot and I learned a lot about myself my integrity and like I saw it for poor man You wouldn't even know if I didn't call you Maybe you would I don't know like right, but I called you to tell you and you treated me like crap So I learned a lot about them. I learned of what their true nature was I learned what their their agendas were I learned about there and it was Just a cascade of effects and the fact that I told them to go fuck off it made things infinitely worse And it sent me into a spiral and it also made them it exposed them for who they were but I fought back and I Was suspended for two days because of that But the spent the the suspension was like I told them I was like I'll give you 30 If you just let me just go back to work. I didn't care about the the suspension I know you can suspend me for 30 days. I just want go back to work Because I love my job and how could you be suspended in it work I'm sorry wouldn't you've had to take 30 days off? Oh, yeah, I would take 30 days off Because it took a while to get to the suspension and I was just oh did they bump you from the cat team because of this They held me back and I wasn't a lot of work until the situation was resolved Did your house have a basement? Yeah, have you ever Put your suppressor on and they won't work down there. No, I'm just saying in a hallway you get like five to seven yards For some groupings. Yeah, I wouldn't work down there. I haven't done it either. I was just curious if you had no that that's like I'm like trying I'm trying to rationalize it in my head. I'm just saying you have your own little bunker You know just creative solutions to real-world problems that exist. I think in the future I would have I mean it was a rough situation to be in because there was time exudancy involved in everything and it was one of those things I am A risk taker and a rule breaker. I am it's like it's built into my DNA And I do take a lot of risks and that was a risk because I wanted to be prepared I could have gone to work with a rifle not knowing what the hell it was going to do Because they we have to throw the upper away and rebuild the lower when it was all said and done of the my original rifle and What do you think they would have said if you would explain that to him? I did but they say they didn't care As somebody who's in a leadership role and who's had teams of people working underneath you do you want risk takers and rule breakers? Yes to what degree? You know what your left and right lateral limits are and operate within them if you break the rule You have to know the rules first if you know the rules first so happy that you said that because there's a difference between Knowing what the fuck you're doing and making shit up on the fly so by helicopter Instructor is a huge fan of this because he'll say you always do this you always do this and so I'll get into this Wrote habit of doing it and will be in a phase usually an airspeed related thing And perfect example You got to get into the green before you make your downward term because it has to do with the high velocity And you gives you the ability to have an out and one time we're taken off and he goes Yeah, just turned down went and I said dude, we're not into the green yet and he literally took a breath and goes He was smiling because he was glad I knew the rule, but then he said Once you know the rule now you know how to break him you know Well, what he actually said was there's a difference between knowing the rule and knowingly breaking it And not knowing what you're doing so if you're gonna break a rule you need to know it first and the potential consequences that can come from it Those are two. That's the difference between risking and gambling Oh my god, it's literally my exact same or like the way I describe everything We had a this is a bunch of situations in and Their situation were the bosses Want us to send extra cat guys and extra rifles to another country and People are gonna get pissed off when I say this and I was an operation supervisor And I said Why are we doing this Why are we sending extra guys with extra rifles in order to get the rifles into the country us we have to put them on A diplomatic note and that goes that's a dip courier men right and it goes to the embassy and the country's got to approve it So then they'll say you're allowed 10 long guns or whatever it is right Okay, cool at the last minute when you're like we're gonna say and another three, four, five, whatever, however many more guns, and I said, why? And they're like, you just do what we tell you. Like, that's not how it works. You're putting my guys at risk. And for this situation, they wanted to do their friend a favor, they wanted to send extra cash guys, so we have whatever the case might be, an appearance of having more people or to do a favor for something. So I said, what's the intel on this? Is the juice worth the squeeze? No, we're not doing it. Or if you want me to do it, put it in writing and give it to me. 'Cause who's gonna eat the shit sandwich if something, if we get caught? You know how many times I've been on the tarmac where the host country, they have the customs guys. And I have the weapons, and it's on the dip note that he's holding in his hand, and the serial number is all match up, but he's not gonna let us in. Really? Oh yeah, 'cause I gotta bribe him. Let's not forget what juices a lot of the, or makes a lot of the wheels turn in many countries overseas. Right, so when I pull out 50 bucks, which is, I don't care. Can you put that on your expense report though? Hell, fuck no. Right? But I give him, I'll give the guys 50 bucks, and he's like, all right, good. Yeah, we're all good here. And I'm, and he's like, hey, man, I don't, I can't, more than one hand that that's happened where I've had to pay the guy off. And everybody's like, no, that never happens. Like, well, I traveled on carplanes. I didn't travel on Air Force One, right? I've been on Air Force One a few times. It's usually to go to war zone, but we would travel on carplanes. I lived on carplanes. My frequent flyer miles, I could probably go around the world like 10 times. And when we landed, all the customs guys from whatever country it was, they would always, and there's ways around it. And I, if I wanted to smuggle stuff and do a contract, I could do it easily. If you're sending me, if you're like, we got to send extra dudes to Afghanistan to, you know, to do a hostage rescue. Like, hey, fuck yeah. Like, I'm going to send you how many you need 10. I'll give you 20 with more guys. We're doing this. Jews is worth the squeeze. If we're doing it for shits and giggles. Yeah. I'm going to tell you to go fuck yourself. Status flex, so somebody looks more important. But that's what it is. So it's like, for me, I would have that conversation and I would just make the decision. I'm like, no, I'm not going to send my guys there for it. Plus, I have other shit to fill too, right? And it's like, we'll just make it happen, John. And like, send it to me, you're writing. Well, of course, you piss people off. They don't want you around. And there's now you know they're dirty laundry too. I didn't bend the knee, which I didn't become one of them. But at the same time, this is the game that you have to play. You can go down this path, but once you bend the knee once and you do what they want at one time, they got you forever, especially when it's not documented. And your name is on all this shit, right? And I guarantee you this happens in the government. And it's not, that's not the culture of the service. It's just selected people that just wanted what they wanted because they wanted to do somebody a favor because they're going to get promoted out of it or look good or whatever the hell they're going to get out of it. That's real. And if you say it doesn't happen, you're just lying. I just told you what happened. I was your first hand knowledge of it and these are the kind of things that I would fight against. And this is, I pissed a lot of people off because they're very vocal about it. I'm like, no, you're just, you're, what are you, what are you talking about to go to where? And, and also if the request or legit just put them all in writing, put it all in writing. I mean, so easy. It is. And it also gets, there is no more gray area. I can do an amendment on the dip note. I'll send it to whatever country is and they'll, they'll either approve or deny it. And then you could, that should just be status quo in the policy. It's all in writing. If it's a country, what's a country that doesn't like guns in? Like, you know, England or UK rather, California, but England and UK would be a good example. They have a pointy thing problem though. Well, that's a whole, they, they banned zombie weapons. That was in 2000 and I forgot recently. Yeah. That didn't help. Are they just kitchen knives kitchen knives zombie weapons are big, but if you go, yeah, the UK, Japan, countries like that, they don't have a gun problem. And I'm not saying these were the countries, but if you ask me, I'm not saying they're not, if you ask me to send more guns to those places, I'm going to say no unless there's a specific intel that says that now if it's, we're in, you know, pick a country, Afghanistan or Iraq and it's the height of the war and you want me to send guys there because of whatever the reason. It's like, I got you. But all those, both of the situations, if it's a legitimate request, just put it in writing. Just put it in writing. And that's, that's the part that drove me crazy. Not because I wasn't going to break the rules. If it was for a good reason and I broke the rules so much, right, I just told you I fired my weapon on my property because I wanted to be ready. That was a risk that I took and it blew up my face. That's fine. But it puts my guys at risk. And sometimes you want to do what looks cool, but you got to understand when we're able to do this and when we can't, especially the secret service that stands next to the president of the United States, any fuck up that we do brings attention to the president. Look at Cartagena. And I keep bringing that up because it's a good example because it was, we derailed his foreign policy meeting with the president of Columbia. He didn't even leave from the White House. I was in the White House working a midnight when we got notification on our blackberries, by the way. We had blackberries that. Remember those things? Right, book. What was the subject line? It was something like retro, retro flights, right, because we were sending 12, 12, 13, something like that. People. It is had to have a little shift to personal. And for people who don't know what we're talking about, it can mostly be summed up with secret service hookers, Cartagena. Just Google that and you'll get the story and again, so what happens is the trip continued. He shows up and he has to talk about that. And our director has talked about that in just by something dumb because it was, it was dumb on many levels. We derailed foreign policy because it's a global stage because it's what it is. And it's, I don't want to say it's different. This is another way that Cat and the secret service, but Cat specifically, because again, we are like the, and a lot of the military in the Navy Army, the special units, they were special warfare, special forces, they're higher regarded than just the general population. Is that true or false? They're, because we like, forget the jealousy and all that. I would say different, definitely regarded for sure because it is a different occupation. I don't know. They shouldn't be more highly regarded. They should just be viewed as something that is, they're different tools. A Phillips head once a, the president's detail in the secret service is viewed as the highest, the pinnacle. I can see that for sure. Yeah. It is, people think secret service, they think of, in the land of fire, Clint, Clint Eastwood, they don't think of counter assault team. Yeah. They do now because of that guy with a watch, right? Yeah. I just gave him another, if you have an Instagram page, you just got another 10,000 clicks. But yeah, he has, he has a watch and it's like a cat watch and he was wearing it that day. And nobody knows what the counter assault team is. I like it like that, actually, right? We're talking about it here a lot, but that is the majority of my experience as the counter assault team. It is, it's, you know, 15 years and be doing all that stuff, traveling around the world. At the end, I did a lot of suit and tie work when I was in the Dignatory pool. I worked with a lot of special assignments and then the foreign dignitaries that came in. And I learned a lot and I loved it. My time in the truck is my most precious time and I love that too. And I had to separate it from it. My identity had to be removed from it at some point because it was like everything we talked about. That was me. I was Mr. Cat, right? So it, and we keep going down the rabbit hole so I don't end up answering the question. I don't even know the question was at this point. I neither do I. I'm just thinking, I was just listening to you, you know, talking about it. We're talking about the, we're talking about essentially the, you guys work in a no-fail mission, no-fail statement on a global stage, which that's what it was, which by definition is actually impossible. It includes, and that, that's what the question was, and they're not the question, but at the point, a failure in the service, not just about their failure, a failure in the service is also, the Cartaghanias is also when all these guys are doing, they're making poor personal decisions, and it just creeps up in the news, right? And I'm not talking about operations because again, the operations of the service, all these kids, they're trying to do their job. And again, tens of thousands of missions that have been, that have been successful that people don't even know, like there's stuff that we've stopped people with guns and stuff that people don't know about, they'll never know about. Those don't count, right? We don't count those, we'll account the failure, which to be fair is bad enough. If we lose one person, it's bad enough. However, it extends past the operations into the behaviors that we have because we are so closely tied to the media, it's not like if for something to come out from the military, that's so bad that it merits the same level of attention that we get when a guy in misbehaves with a green braid betting on polymarket on the Maduro raid. That's bad, right? That's the point. That being is this though, you're talking about the same thing. If you, John, were still active and let's say had an incident out in whatever, he had a few too many espresso martinis out in Washington, D.C. And you make them do this. Like the Cosmopolitan's, right? Whatever it may be. I'm not here to tell people at a party. If it's you and the news is able to figure out what you do, the headlight will read secret service cat agent. That's right. Fill in the blank. It's an additional level of scrutiny that comes with the job. And it is unfair, I would say, but the fair is in Iowa with cotton candy and a merry go round. If you want to have that job, you have to understand what that means. You have to understand what you're getting into. A lot of guys that say, well, I could do what I want on my spare time. It's like, okay, cool. Until you make national news. Until it happens to you, and there's a difference between, and I'll say this, like me getting into trouble was always because I was looking to do my job. The thing with the gun, I was looking to be prepared. I wanted to step out of the truck and shoot somebody if I had to. And I didn't want to wait for it to go click and be like, oh man, I should have function fired it. When I got in trouble, I passed ammo to the wrong division one time, not realizing, but they wanted to go train. And I got in trouble for that. And they were like, hey, man, you don't give ammo here because of whatever the round counts, et cetera. And I was like, oh, I didn't know. It was like, boom, you know, I was like, and I didn't get to spend there anything, but it was my boss picked my ass, right? And I would get in trouble repeatedly for trying to do my job or help the people around me. I don't, I never had a Cartagena hookers alcohol I'm a terrible drinker. So the alcohol thing's not gonna happen, right? Like I just told you, Cosmopolitan's, I don't even know what they taste like, but I want to know that I said that, right? But like, Michael would know, right? That's what he dreams about as much as Michael. I've actually never had one. Surprising to hear, but I would have assumed. My wife knows I like fruity drinks, like crushes and stuff. So she's, I drink beer too, but getting older. Anyway, going away from the alcohol. It was me trying to do my job. I wasn't trying to solicit hookers. I wasn't trying to steal money from the agency. I wasn't trying to do any of that stuff that benefited me personally in those kinds of ways. And there's a distinction there that if you find people, and again, I love every military law enforcement first responder manual on the planet, it says if you're not getting into trouble or you're not trying hard enough, right? And I'm not talking about like, again, all this, this outside of the, of the service behavior that comes back to bite you in the ass. I'm talking about trying hard in your job. You gotta try hard in your job. Innovate, push the envelope forward. Emerging threats, emerging trends in what enemy tactics. And you know, when you turn around and you say, hey, we need to do this and you get in trouble because you're trying to implement a new program. I applaud you. I don't know if how legitimate it might be. Maybe you're trying to do something that's not possible. There were some good ideas that I remember people trying to do and I'm like, I don't, you haven't thought this through, but we had to have conversations, but they were trying to be better. They were trying to enhance our capability. In the government, it's hard to do that. One in the service, there's like the time factor. We don't have enough people. We got to test stuff. You can't, my favorite ever was we rolled out a new communication system during an NSSE. It's during the State of Union. Back in, I forgot what year it was. You guys chose to change operational tech during that time. - Yes, it wasn't like an in and out trip in Cleveland. It was during an NSSE. And I didn't, I was a new caca, right? So I got to cat in 2007, 2008. And I was there all the way to 2023. And I even thought, I was like, is this the best idea to do this right now? Should we have tested it? - No, it's not the best. - And that's the point. That's like where now we have a great idea and we're gonna throw it in. And everybody, you have to just adopt it. We didn't test it in the right capacity. Maybe the people in headquarters tested it, but the rest of us didn't know what the hell we were able to use this. And it was like on the job training. That mentality, that mentality breeds failure, right? Because you're doing, why did you do it? Why did we pick that system? Was it a favor to somebody? Did somebody think it was good? Why didn't we get trained on it appropriately before we rolled it out? I had so many questions and I was brand new. And I was asking the right questions. I can only imagine like my team leaders, well, my team leader just sat there on the front. He was like, I'm just gonna yell loudly and you better hear me when we come out 'cause he was so angry. So there's the give and take. And again, not to be an apologist for the service, I'm also not trying to excoriate it. That was years ago. That was like maybe 20 years ago. Let me let less than that. The service and the government needs to be continually listening to the people that are on the ground working as to what we need and we don't and the ideas coming back should come from down, up, evaluated and implemented. Not up top that's been disconnected from operations for pick a number of years. And then you have the idea and propagate it down and force something upon people, forcing us to do three times the amount of work because you had such a great idea. All this stuff, like I learned as I was going and sometimes there'd be something so dumb as, hey, Kat, you're no longer gonna be in this position, you're gonna be in this position. And I said, well, you're making us, do you three times the amount of work just by moving us 10 feet? Why? And I would explain to 'em with tactics, how it relates to our metal, how I support the president's detail. And it was kind of like the Mike Cousin Vinny that is a rational, logic, lucid explanation overruled. And I was, I'm like, rock paper rink. So go fuck yourself, man, right? And then I would just go in and I would talk to the shift leader and I'd just say, you know, the shift there I was like, hey, you got 30 second response time. You got 30 seconds by the time I get there to get a show going and then I'll take over. But you got 30 seconds. Why? 'Cause this is what they want us to do. Anyway, like, and it was other reasons too. Sometimes it's to keep us out of the public eye. Sometimes it's to do whatever the case might be. But if you just listened, we can come to some amicable, or a conclusion as to enhance my capabilities. Trust me, man, I know what I'm doing. There's a lot of that. And it wasn't the service culture. It's just individuals that make those decisions that have the authority to tell you to do something. Looking back now, post-career, if you could would you go back and change the way that you either phrase those conversations or your behaviors? Yeah, a lot of that. I would say 75% of them, I would say the same thing. Would you say it in a different way though? No, those 75% I would do the same exact thing. 'Cause I actually, when I had my head, my wits with me, and it wasn't angry or I wasn't swinging back, I had a very good explanation, everything. And sometimes they were never gonna concede anything. They just wondered what they wanted. The other 25% was me just being like, go fuck yourself. I'm gonna yell, I'm gonna flip the table over and tell you go to hell. Those are the ones that I regret. 'Cause those are the, they don't focus on what the issue was. They just remember that you were an asshole, right? And stuff. And it's like, you fell into their trap. Because they're like, oh, can you believe it's an asshole? Yeah, it's an asshole. He told us to go fuckers, all right, cool. What were we talking about? They didn't care, it doesn't matter what it is. That's, this is the leadership 101 for everybody. Don't make it worse, all right? That's a good starting point for sure. I've failed on that one many times. The worst is too, when you have those outbursts or you express yourself, let's just say under the bar of what you would aim for as a leader, a lot of the times the people that are working for you are watching as well. And so they see that as a poor expression. It's, it's gotta be managed. You have to address, you have to change behavior. I think the metric that I have for myself is my guys, love me, it will follow me to hell and back. And the people above me may not feel like that. And that's okay, because if these guys believe in me, not because of special favors, but because I held them to a higher standard. And I also led by example, it wasn't like, I didn't tell them what to do. I did everything I told them to do together. And I told them we were gonna fail together, but we'll succeed together, no matter what. And I held the line, I shielded them, I protected them, I led them, I taught them, I loved them. And they extend all that back to me. And all these guys have like these super retirement parties. And then some of them might be head quarters and. I don't even know I even got any of those because I'm not I'm not a headquarters guy My guys threw a barbecue for me at a local barbecue spot near my house that I like to go to and Like the people that showed up. It was some supervisors that were above me And they were they came they gave me a hug they told me but it was just like So many people showed up to just tell me to thank me to give me a hug and then leave That meant more to me than any super big retirement party because I didn't even want one day like I was One of the supervisors told one of the guys that they need to throw one for me and They called me and I was like, no, I don't want anything I just want to leave and I just want to finish my book. All right. That's like priority number one Oh, you are already writing it while you're in. Oh, it was I was gonna get there Did you ever think while you were in that you were gonna write a book or where did the idea come? Yeah before you answered too I successfully retired with no party whatsoever. I would have I left work one day I told my boss the only guy I was in the process of getting medically retired and they'll you know, hey, do you want to do a ceremony? I realized I had nothing to do for a Good amount of time more time off than you should have given me and I just went in and I said hey The new guy's already replaced. Yeah, he's up to speed. Do you have an any for me to do? He's like no, like I'm not coming back to work and he said okay. That was it last day. I went into work. I didn't want one and after we had it I I loved it because there's the love that I felt from everybody that will no one love me John So the way to just really hold the love of others from you over my head people probably still text you this day I just didn't want to do the retirement thing More so not that I don't appreciate the ceremony. I know the pomp and circumstance and the time drain it is for other people We were more shorts and drank tequila. So we were yeah, I mean what I'm looking what I was staring down the barrel out is they get you And then the huge flag and people who was gonna speak in your dress uniform and I was just Now that I know that I'd never go for I'm gonna go home today boss Do you mind if I never came back? My wife wanted to go be barbecue that day too. So that was that was also a fact really okay? So you had this idea for the book while you were still in the book changed. It was originally a book about leadership All the stuff that I talk about here in this podcast. Mm-hmm way more stuff than that and Then it turned into like a comedy because I was writing stories that were funny That probably that nobody would believe yeah It's because we do so much stupid shit right and and When I I started to detach from cat and It started with that incident with the rifle I Spiral down that identity was ripped out of me and I was depressed. I was suicidal. I was it was it was a it was a like and at some point I don't know if you've read any of it. It's it's like it at some point one day That weight of the world of that identity being gone Was like an empty void. I didn't know how to replace it and my wife found me in the bathroom on the floor Like I just collapsed in the middle of the night and Stories in there of like how she found me and yeah, it's it's quick It's not that long for anybody that doesn't like reading but When I woke up from that and I just saw her face. I just sprung up and I was like, you know what? Fuck this like this is thing is not gonna kill me and I put her back to bed. I had to go to the doctor obviously, right because like The not it not a normal occurrence of might want to get that channel. Yeah, right? So what did doctors say you could have been anything from syncopy to a mild heart attack? Okay, so I knew was the stress. Yeah, it was it that I knew what it was we had a guy pass away right after he retired And it was like the he had all the the tells for What happens to military law enforcement force first responder when we leave our lifespans are inherently shorter It's like two and a half to five years, right? So he was you this sunset walk, you know enjoy your retirement fucking retirement might be half a decade I dealt with this before I retired because I had my Cardi rascal related episode and I'm suicidal and I can talk about that too. I won't even if you want me to talk about I will just to the story But the more importantly is for the people that are listening is I Decided that I need it to fill this void Not with the job that I had Because all the stuff that I knew how to do how to counter assault people tactics leadership Ethics all this stuff that I clent that I would cling to going through and I was good at a lot of stuff And I was I was really good at my job for anybody that's listening. You want to hire me? I'll teach you whatever it is you need to know you'll be a killer of men to and it's like a and I was good at my job However, it almost killed me Because that my entire identity was torn out and it happens to all of us my friend who passed away. He passed away He had a heart attack and it was I don't want to say like a year to year-and-a-half after we retired We falls into that range The number one killer of us that shorten our lives is suicide and Cardi vascular related event, right? Those are the two biggest killers of people that leave This these areas that we're in so I had both of those And I made it through and we have programs in the service that kind of They talk about like the peer support stuff and the people that are there are fantastic people that are trying to help everybody because we do have depression and we we've had a bunch of suicides and we've had right like nobody hears about this kind of stuff either so I Had a framework of the book leadership, you know Comedy show, right in I went I Told my wife to go back to bed and then I'll go to the doctor, right and the doctor was like you have I think you had a heart attack It's like you should have called 911. I was like no, I felt fine. I felt great when I woke up and There's something he was talking about or releasing endorphins and I didn't pay attention, but I Checked on my kid that morning and I went straight downstairs to start reading It was like no, I'm starting right now. I'm not tomorrow Not a day not next week right now and I took out and remember the first book. I pulled off the shelf It was Marcus Aurelius meditations and I burned through it and I started working on myself To make myself as strong as possible and then I replaced that void with so many things that Like Jiu Jitsu was one of them, right? I started you're supposed to burn through meditations I read it and I just kept like and I would kept you supposed to meditate on it. Well, it's I don't think meditations supposed to be a page turner because I think you're supposed to read a few pages I just I do that with all the books now. I'll get in them I have to put my ear buds in so I don't hear anything yeah for clarity people out there I'm fucking joking. There's no wrong or right way to read a book however that one generally they want you to sit with the You got you got you got to say the count is the first book and I used to carry it in my bag all the time because I would go back to it and refer to it and And then the Bible Mm-hmm And I went through the whole thing and I go back through the gospels now and and I I read whatever I can get my hands on I've read your new book and I Burned through that one too using the same words. This is short book though That's let's be very clear my book in the book by Marcus Aurelius titled meditations should never be mentioned in the same sentence Well, you don't know that you know what pretty fucking sure and so are you and so is Michael Michael if you read the book Go fuck yourself. You haven't read anything So anyway the my book is like a pathway It starts off and it takes you the first quarter of the book takes you on a dire downward spiral I talk about this identity and egos and self-worth and self-esteem and Then I'll start taking you back up and it's the story It's not a biography on me. There's stories about me stories about other other people But it is a pathway That I found that helped me and it's there's a bunch of stories in there some are sad some are happy some are funny some are you can't believe or true but That's what this thing turned into and it's for the self. It's for the person individual There's a lot of like you can assimilate to a culture or It's just because somebody's telling you something does that mean you have to do it sometimes sometimes no and it just It takes you and it it asks you a bunch of questions You have to answer them and Ultimately in the end now. It's like my identity is me I'm I'm the one like you can't pull me out of me now. Mm-hmm. I do jujitsu if I get injured I got something else to go to if if that goes away. I'll go back to you. It's not who you are That's it and every day you go out there you strive to be this good human and it It there's so much that goes into it's not just one thing and If as long as you keep trying and endeavoring to be endeavoring? That's a word. - I'm on board, I know. - Yeah, I know. - As long as you endeavor? - Endeavour is a verb, right? - Yeah, I don't know if that's the aim. As long as you endeavor? - Endeavour? - Yeah. - This is how you know I went to a public college. - If I was writing this, I would look for the squiggly line underneath so I could right click on this. - Oh yeah, that's a good chance. (laughing) - But as long as you keep trying to be a good human, you'll be a good human. That's it, the second that you stop, and you're like, nah, I got it, I'm good. That's when everything starts falling apart. - That's wild about that. Is so many people, and this is a realization, I think I'm coming to later in life, but so many people want life to be easy. And I think I know what they mean. I think they want to be comfortable, and they want it to be enjoying, and fulfilling, and enriching, but I think the path to all of that is actually through difficulty and hardship, and seeking it out. I don't think you should seek an easy life. I think you should basically to steal somebody else's words. Learn how to suffer well if you can appreciate that, and you can stay on that journey. I think that might be the juice of life in life itself. - You can't ask for things. The book starts with a quote from John F. Kennedy. Don't ask for things to be easy, ask instead of they be worth it. And I used to have a picture of the rotunda at the Capitol, and it was from the top looking down, and it was Kennedy's casket, and it was the five branches, it was Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and then the Coast Guard, and they were standing around. You at the guard, and then had all the, you know, picture I'm talking about, I do. This is my favorite picture, and I had it next to my desk at home. I've since taken it down, but it was to remind me why I'm doing what I'm doing for work. And every day that I would look at it, and be like, "Fuck man, I never want that shit to happen here." So now I'm moving forward, I would fight for the service. And all these years that I did what I did, I fought to make the service better, and to be better in the service, and lead men, all right? And women, but I was on cat, and most of those guys are guys. Is it open to women? It is, okay. And after I decided the whole thing with my identity, now I was fighting for me, and it's the same mentality. I never wanna go return to that wretched place that I was in. And I never will, because the things that I learned to get on the other side of what I went through, to go through that depression and that darkness that I was in, now I can't go back, because it's like my journey will never end. I would just keep going forward and never stop doing. I'm 51, like in Jiu Jitsu, my next goal is, I wanna learn how to, like I know the techniques that I'm working on, and I have, like I would do comoras and everybody, so I told my instructor, I was like, hey, I'm gonna do a six month band, I'm not allowed to do any comoras. So it could force me to take the back and start doing all this other stuff. He's like, are you sure? I was like, yeah, I'm gonna suck for a while, right? But you know what, I wanna learn how to do this shit. And he's like, all right, cool, right? And then, as I see the arm, and I wanna grab it, but like the point is, like, the goal, you're making a harder choice. It's the harder choice, and I suck more, it's hard for me, because that was my go-to, just to grab an arm, and I would be like, underneath somebody inside control, and I would grab their arm, and I have their back all of a sudden, they'd be like, what the fuck, John, right? Also, listen to what you just said, I suck more. Yeah. You know who gives absolutely zero fucks about that? Nobody. Everybody other than you. So again, we have to be so careful with how we talk. You can say to yourself, I'm gonna suck more, or you can say, I'm gonna evolve and innovate, or innovate, and it's gonna take me a little bit until I get back up to speed. Yeah, I mean, I say, I say-- I know what you mean. Oh, trust me, I have a doctorate in negative self-talk. So I woke up, I wake up in the morning in the mirror, I'm like, what's up, you piece of shit? You have the people that are positive and negative. I sit somewhere in the middle, but leaning negative. Total, right? So, but yeah, it's-- But you're making-- I love it. You're intentionally limiting yourself with the intent to struggle so you can grow. I think that's the juice of life. And the competition for me is not to beat the black belt instructor. It's not to beat Marcelo Garcia, who I love. Good luck with that, by the way. I've seen him roll. I don't know. Never. He'll break all my arms before I know what's going on. My goal is to be better than the version of myself that was yesterday. That literally is all that matters, by the way. I think that's the healthiest way to approach Jiu-Jitsu. It's me. It's the journey is, am I better than me. I'll kick my ass from a year ago, and a year from now, that guy is going to kick my ass now. And I don't care how many times you tap me. I don't care how many. Because it's like, hey, how did you do that? I don't get upset and trust me. I'll tap quick, 'cause I don't want any break anymore bones or tearing more ligaments. But it's-- And that's just Jiu-Jitsu. That's just an example of that. But it highlights something else, too. How often have you heard people talking about, I caught this person, where they caught me. Instead of comparing themselves against their former self, they compare themselves against their teammates and training partners. What an amazing way to rob the joy of your own personal progression. That's healthy competition is good. It's healthy, but it can be taken too far. Because in that, I know people who will get hyper-fixated on a person that they can't beat, where something always happens. In their Jiu-Jitsu is gotten galactically better against the version of the person they were six months ago, and they can't see it because of one outcome with one person. Healthy can be taken too far. Same thing with water. You can kill yourself by drinking too much water. It's also pretty life-sustaining. I'll ask the question sometimes. You learned all this stuff. When somebody does it wrong, did you stop and explain it to them? Whether they want to hear it or not, at least it depends. And it-- well, there you go. Take us on the teams, read in our room. And I'd always be the first one off the wall. And it's because the guys would hesitate. And I'd come off the wall, and their muzzles are up. But I did it on purpose. And I was like, you know to name it, but always lower their muzzles. I was like, why did it take so long? And I was like, well, I wasn't sure. I was like, trust yourself. And they would come-- we'd go in the room. And then all of a sudden, everybody's coming off the wall at the same time. And it's like, boom. Now, it's like, what I learned, and I learned it, because I put myself not in danger. But at the same time, I knew you guys were done. Everything is not-- I heard the clicks. Everything's not safe. Now, I'm going to pass that on to you. And all of a sudden, guys are just flowing off the wall. And everything I did, again, take the cat stuff. It's great. I love it. Now it's like the individual journey stuff. It's like, you caught me playing chess, right? And I'm going to have to phrase it like that. I happened to walk over you were playing chess. I wasn't, you know, are you playing chess, right? No, no. You asked me if I won or not. I was asking you to win it. And now it's like, I started seriously looking at chess a couple of years ago, and I'm learning different techniques, different tactics, stuff that I didn't even know like you could do. And all of a sudden, I'm setting traps up for people, open with the Hofmikers gambit. And it's so classic. I do the English opening or the London system. So right now, those are, those are rookie things, but I got really, it's fine. But I got really good at traveling people with the English opening, but it's like, it's, it's, I just stick to it right now. And when I don't want, again, sometimes I'll just be like, I'm not doing this now. I'm going to do something else, right? And it's, and then I get, I'll, you know, like, I'll get my ass kicked. And I'll be like, I'll review it if you do chess.com and you hit the view button. Most people don't know that button exists. Go into it. It'll help you. It's the same thing going back to when we mess up in the secret service. Did you do an after-action? Did you listen to the after-action? Did you implement the new ideas? Did you stop doing the stupid shit that caused it? And emphasize those things and teach everybody and make sure we're all in the same collective mindset so that the next person that tries, we can kick that guy's ass. The after-action on things that go well, I would argue, is almost irrelevant as opposed to the one where things go wrong. That's the one where the most emphasis should be put on it. The information disseminated widely. The going well is like, you're reinforcing something and it should be quick. Hey, you did this good. Good job. Next. That's it. Yeah, because it's not a whole lot to be gained by reinforcing that you're doing it well. The whole point of that is to how can you sharpen the blade more and you don't do that by saying, "Let's pat each other on the back for 20 minutes." I talk about after-actions in the book. If I finish the next one, it'll be more in depth about true after-action reports. But the point of this book is that you do it to yourself. I'll find myself driving home from class or I'll give a talk. I'll, you know, I went to a church and they asked me to talk to a bunch of middle school kids and I'll drive home and I'm thinking about what I said. I'll do that here. I'll do that after this podcast. I'll be like, "What the fuck did I say?" Right? And I'll just go through it and figure out how to be better next time. What things that I say that didn't make any sense to even myself like it's like when I read stuff that I wrote Like what the hell did I write? I don't even know what I wrote How many people write something in college I used to do this I'd write a write a paper and I'd submit it. I never checked it Which is why I was never a doctor by the way, right? Because it's like I would just do shit turned it in and I was just happy doing whatever because I wrestled and that's all I cared about And then when that was gone I don't know what the hell is doing. It was the same thing that just happened in the service So after actions, I think takes a lot of humility You have to quiet your ego Just having a flared up ego and learning don't go together. No, that's a scientific. I it's like The people who have Tourette syndrome I talked about this on another podcast The people have Tourette syndrome that neural pathway Tourette's associated with anger emotion and anger The neural pathway is the same. Your pathway is focused Interesting. It goes one way and the other when one is flared the other one can't exist You have these people who are surgeons that can do brain surgery and cardiovascular surgery that have Tourette's Yet when they're in there, they're perfectly still When they put the blade down and they're done the Tourette's returns the ticks return That is that's there's so many studies that talk about that and I say it to make the point of if your emotion is flared If you're angry, you can't learn anything that anybody's telling you all you see is you're the blind rage that that's in front of you Oh, I added that you can't lead either. That's Yes, yeah Two more questions for you. We've been at it for over three hours. Really which is excellent First one, where can people find your book and you want social media? I'm on Instagram. My social media started a certain way and now it's kind of I'm redoing the way I do it You could find me on Instagram. I'm John concertine one zero and It's small. I'm just starting to figure this stuff out and then don't be in a rush. It's I'm not in a rush Think of the most heavily mind country in the world, which I think is still Afghanistan and just put it a magnet You know, multiply around that Here's the thing though. Just be kind graveyard of empires. Just be but if you're kind if you stay on there and you maintain positivity and you're kind It's a whole different experience for the most part the most part I just I want to pass this message. Yeah, I want to talk about leadership. I'll talk about like tactics and stuff, but like That's like It's like beating a dead horse, right? It's like everybody I could talk about firearms I'm not like the greatest shooter in the world compared to these guys that are out there Tactics aren't evolving that much either the those books have been written I mean, let's be honest the hallway always in the stairwells which people may not intuitively understand It does are environments that you're training and all the time clearance problems always stairways I get it I am sorry There is a finite amount of ways to do it sure you can involve tech, but angles or angles pying stuff is pying stuff you can do it quickly The juice I think is not in the tactic. It's in teaching and leading. That's it man. Yeah, that's it's I had a Phone call with somebody and he was asking me what is the number one quality or trait that a leader should have and I was bad. I made my consulting company to consult on this stuff Because I would just give everybody the answer is like before I did so it's like to get in business like you have to hold something back But you don't actually I say I just say because I want people to be better. Yeah, right? You don't you don't have to hold it back That is a business model, but if you care about impact. Don't hold it. Yeah, I just say what you should be doing and I tell people like hey, man, so what I told them and I blurted it out without thinking twice my guys My guys who are listening know what I'm gonna say. Yeah is love and the guy's like stopped and he's just like like you love your guys I go you love your mission you love the people that you're leading and you love yourself and It starts with that order and you have to manage it in the two up to and I said everything. I said at the beginning Love your mission. I love the secret service. I love what they do what they stand for I want them to succeed. I never want this crap to happen ever if I could Become the Punisher and help them I would right? Yeah, my wife let's say something about that, but like it she Who in their competing narratives, but you know, right? Your name is close to finishers. I have to hear Our ease are a little iffy with him might create more international incidents than he solves I'll pick another guy. I'm like I'm not I'm not that good with maybe you're in our devil. I don't know I don't know you're I think yeah, I'm not a lawyer. All right people find your book. Oh, sorry I didn't mean to catch up. No, you're good and it's well the books on Amazon. Okay, and hallways and stairwells John Constantine and it's I Lived and back hallways and stairwells and carplanes and suburban so all over it So that's but the book the hallways and stairwells means the hallways and stairwells of you the back alley Hallways and stairwells in your life the things that you don't see Because all you see is this you don't see what's going on up here or in here and If it's something that resonates with you You can contact me and I'll lead you to it, but That's what the books about it's trying to help people and so far have given it to a bunch of people and There's one person that said that they were having a difficult time. I'm not saying they were or were not suicidal But they read it and it gave them a new pathway and even that's worth it. Just one person. Yeah It's it's that to me was the validation for me that I did something good and that also I helped the human being so It starts with one two and that can compound and you never know the cascading impact that that person still being with us could have on other people's lives as well Who knows? Yeah, all right. We've mentioned you've mentioned quite a few times that the secret service needs a few thousand people Yes, you spent what two decades plus working for the secrets almost 23 years Let's close with this give me your best recruiting pitch for any young men and women out there as to why they should even consider that pathway in the first place Let's help the service find the right people If you want to be part of an organization That Does something to do security is you're giving up a part of yourself? So there's sacrifice To see the world on a stage that you cannot Anywhere else because you will be have access to so many places from the inside looking out that people are like wow What would it be like in there and also Classified locations that we couldn't even discuss to work on programs dealing with every single law enforcement military and intelligence agency in the United States and often outside the United States you touch on everybody and the more authority Opportunity responsibility that you gain by doing a good job You're able to see so much stuff be around people Like forget the presidents even but you're talking about congressman senators foreign presidents in in like you're around every single decision that's made in your part of history Things that I've done I've been historic events I Have been at many where I was there working and I was part of history The pitch with the secret services. It's hard You're going to sacrifice some of yourself But it's worth it as long as you can manage this stuff that we just talked about that you just don't become that And that's the journey that you're going to take inside and I Officers we need a bunch agents. We need a bunch Administrative professional technical people we need a bunch. It's like all facets apply Be great at your job teach others So and I'll add to that as fucked up as our country can be at times Don't listen to the headlines. It's not worth we're not at a place where we need to throw the talent It's worth it and we need people still willing to sacrifice to keep us moving into interaction and then people to protect those who make that their lives work So one has to come with the other Last thing for you You're a tactical man. Do you have you heard of Montana knife company? I have do you have any other blades? I do not Well, we're gonna change that up. So did you check a bag or carry on all carry-ons? We'll mail it to you The battle goat Pop that sucker. There you go. I feel like for you. It's perfect. Awesome Yeah, it's fun. Sometimes I'll say you'll never guess where it's made and people will be like where can tuck him like God damn it Montana knife company the first word The things are hard to come by, but it's got the podcast logo laser and blush dial on blade as well Thank you for this. Yeah, for sure it goes well with tactical kids Those things are do their razor sharp be careful with that thing for sure I opened it this way. Just yeah, Josh gave one to Dana White to tie back into the White House and he opened it and then went to the hospital So yeah, be cautious John. Thank you for the time. We'll put the show link up the link to your book in the show notes and your IG profile and stuff like that, but do that was awesome. - Thank you for having me. I appreciate it, man. - Yeah. - Open it, but come back when you do the second book. - So we'll talk, we'll see what happens between now and then. - Don't be a pussy, do a second book. I think it's gonna happen, so. - Perfect, awesome.