Messy Roots, Queer Identity, The Beauty of Wuhan, and Writing a Graphic Memoir While Traveling the World with Laura Gao (Ep 190)

♪ Crown coins for C.O. ♪ Winning never sounded so good. What would you do if you won big? At Crown coins casino, real people win real prices every single day. Hi, this is Michael from Georgia, I won 40k, and finally renovated my home. Visit crowncoins.com, sign up in seconds, enter code Crown and get a free lucky wheel bonus. You may win up to 10,000 sweeps coins. Crowncoins.com, that's C-R-O-W-N coins.com. No purchase needed. Code valve for new users only. We're prohibited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions applied. Crowncoins.com, that's C-R-O-W. One of the guys asked a question, where'd you get these snakes? And he's like, "Well, the pit viper "is from the field over there. "The parking lot is where I got, right?" And he's like, "Oh, we need to leave, right? "We need to go." So this is like one of my first trips ever, and I'm just smiling ear to ear, 'cause it's like, "I can't believe this is real." I'm Steve Murphy, DEA Special Agent Retired, and now host of the Game of Crimes podcast. If you've seen the Netflix series Narcos, then you know my story. I now bring you stories of heroism and bravery from our law enforcement and military heroes, and occasionally, from the criminals that they faced. Welcome to Game of Crimes. (upbeat music) John, you've spent nearly 23 years in the Secret Service. 15 of those years preparing for the day that someone tries to kill the person that you're protecting. You've stood with a rifle next to four different presidents, you've worked in over 90 countries or nearly 90 countries, but after all that, the hardest fight of your life apparently came just prior to your retirement. Can you tell us a little bit about that? - Thanks, Steve. Thank you for having me on. Let's go, let's just jump right into it. That whole sequence of events came from, there was a lot leading up to it in terms of how it was handled, but I made a mistake that people deliberate over whether it was legitimate or not. I had a couple of people destroy my rifle, and just so if anybody doesn't know, I was on the counter assault team, the tactical team, counter assault team, my job is to task to assault anybody who tries to assault the people that were assigned to. So, and you can ask questions, let me, I'll answer the best I can. A couple of people destroyed my rifle, I took it home, rebuilt it, and shot it on my subdivided farm to function fire it. There's an individual that found out nearby, and basically swatted me, said that, that called the police and said I was murdering my family. And that's, it's in the police report. He shows the police show up, everything's fine. My kids riding her bike in the driveway, my wife's getting ready for dinner, and I had to go to work late that night, and that's about it. And my neighbors at the time were actually firing their weapons. It sounded like the Punisher lived next door, and it's subdivided farm, so there's space. And the police asked me, I fired total of seven rounds, right? And I functioned, I fired a few rounds, inspected my rifle, fired it again. I was in contact with it, put it on safe, cleared it, put it away, and that was the end of it. I had to rebuild it. And it was pretty bad. It ultimately, my original rifle, my upper was just thrown away, I had to rebuild the lower, et cetera, et cetera, all this stuff, right, government nonsense. And from that, I called my supervisor and self-reported. It was police contact. And from that, my supervisor took that as an opportunity to just do everything that they could to punish me. And it wasn't the what I did, 'cause ultimately I received two-day suspension out of it, and it was for, 'cause I'm not a certified armor, was the first reason and then the second reason was, I think I displayed my weapon in public, and those were the two days that I got that I was suspended for. And realistically, that wasn't the punishment, the punishment was everything that came afterwards. But for me, it was a self-inflicted punishment, because my identity, my whole identity, was being the team leader of the counter assault team, being a secret service agent. And the weight was handled and it spiraled out of control. And there was a lot of things that they did that were not on the up and up to try to punish me, because I didn't stand down, right? It's like I learned a lot about my integrity that day. I learned a lot about how much I needed to grow still, 'cause my identity was attached to that whole job. And then it just sent me, it spiraled me into this depression, because I was just sitting there waiting for the situation to be resolved. And they did everything they could to embarrass me, punish me, do all this stuff. And it just kept getting worse and worse, not to get into a couple of things, not a couple, a bunch of things that they did to try to make the injury worse. But I wasn't where I needed to be. I wasn't strong enough to be able to handle that. I lost my identity right there. And that's what sent me on that spiral. So from that, grew into everything that we're about to talk about. - Excellent, and sorry to start out on the sore point here, but things are not always what they seem, everyone. As you, I hope you already know that. But it's an honor and a pleasure to introduce and welcome John Constantin to Game of Crime this week. As he said, he's a 23 year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service serving from 2002 to just retired last year in 2025. 15 of those years, he was assigned to the elite counter assault team within the Secret Service. We're gonna talk about that. And in there, he served as an operator and instructor, a team leader and an operations supervisor. He heard me say earlier, he's worked protective operations involving four presidential administrations. He's worked in approximately 90 different countries. - Just thunder. - I think most people don't realize there's that many countries in the world. He is now the author of hallways and stairwells. Unhealthy ego is broken identities in our journey for self-worth. You can see I've got a copy of his book here. And like every other book, I do recommend this book. But this is, we're gonna talk about it. I don't want to waste time right now. But John, welcome to Game of Crime's brother. It's an honor to have you on here. - Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate being on here. It's good to, you know how you know that you were an investigator? All your details are correct. (laughing) - Look at that. That was a cop for 38 years. - Yeah. - It's sometimes they talk to people and they're getting some details right. Some details wrong. Yours are spot on all the way through. Although this guy pays attention. All right, everybody out there paid attention. He's paid attention. They'll tell him too much. (laughing) - Well, let's just hope the rest of the interview goes that good. - No, I don't think so. - I'm sure it will. - But how John and I met was you were on another podcast that's hosted by a friend of ours, a former guest on the show, Eric Imzburger, retired ATF agent. For those of you who haven't listened to Eric's episode, it's episode 215 that came out in September 2025. Go back and listen. Eric's getting more and more active on social media. I see him on there pretty much every day. And his story's, oh my gosh. He had some exciting stories. I don't know if you know his background job, but. - Yeah, we spent, we spent a lot of time talking. And he just told story real quick of how one of his guys got into a shooting. And he showed up on the scene, this is New York City. And he showed up, he's an ATF agent. He showed up and they had to take the individual who was in the shooting's weapon away 'cause he was being put on administrative leave. So Eric took his gun out and gave it to him. And everybody looked at him and was like, what are you doing? And Eric just says, no, he's not going home unarmed. - That's called leadership. And from that, Eric just has me 'cause how many guys would have done that that we're looking out for that guy's interest and not judging him on the spot. So it was, that's how our friendship is growing from these stories, these kind of stories. So I have to brag on him a little bit. - You know, doing the right thing. I mean, that's just, that's what you're supposed to do. It's called leadership. - Leadership, man, yeah. - Anyway. So John, before you were protecting presidents and carrying a rifle on that counter assault team and traveling to all those countries, who was the kid that became the guy, John Constantine? Where'd you grow up? What were your family dynamics? Where'd you go to school, athletics, that kind of thing? - I'm from Northern New Jersey. That's where I grew up. I threw it, threw it, store the New Jersey. I grew up and I'd write it in the book. I just was listening to like Boston and Journey and then Metallica and Guns and Roses. I mean, I'm an 80s kid growing up in the 80s. I wrestled and played football in high school. And from that, I had no idea what I was doing. No idea. I was a happy, go lucky kid. My ambitions were just to be happy. And I was kind of just to give you an idea and didn't really start drinking until I was about 24. All right, like so, up until that age, that's when all the corruption set in. That's what my wife says. 'Cause she corrupted me into her right? And I didn't really start drinking until then. And 9/11 happened. And from that, I went to college. and again I didn't know what I was doing. I had three jobs and 9/11 happened and I decided I was just going to go into the government and where my parents lived. They lived in a little apartment building but it faced the water towards New York City. You could see the towers fall. So yeah and they're smaller for months and you could see that and that's just like constantly. I can see it right now and just going into the city after it opened back up and just try to get down there and the smell of death. That was just it just forces you to make decisions in your life and I decided that not that I was so immature but I was immature for a long time. I had to grow up and do something important and service snatched me up first. I had a degree which helped me apply to more places and I would otherwise I would have just enlisted and I'm going back in time. I don't know what I was doing so I went to the secret service. I almost got into the DA also. There you go. They called me while I was in secret service training to offer me the job and at that point I was too lazy to start something new. Well I mean looking back to career I think and as you listeners are going to hear I think you made the right choice. When you were younger did was there anybody in your life at that point that you would consider a hero? My rest in coach and he's still out there today and I have to say edge wrestling, Ernie Monaco and his whole family, John Monaco and all of them were like my big brothers and at the time I didn't realize it but I'm even kind of getting emotional now thinking they were so good to me those guys and they helped me because I went like I was around them for so long. A lot of them was wrestling related I got wrestled I one of my coaches passed away Tony Janish he was great he was like and it was mostly surrounded there and then there's a couple of other people here and there that I can pick out but it's really it's like that was the world I was in because when I started doing something that's all my mind was on wrestling at certain point. Where did what did you go to college and what's your major in? Rutgers I went to Rutgers University I stayed at home New Jersey right I didn't know what I was doing I had a wrestling everything was paid for so I majored in everybody's gonna laugh it's a biological sciences and I emphasize like biochemistry and molecular sciences and things like that and I had a I had a second major it was an exercise physiology I don't know what it's called now they rebranded it exercise science or something whatever it is now but so I had two majors I graduated two majors I went to graduate school because I started working for the university because again I didn't know what the hell I was doing in my life and when 9/11 happened I just up and left I didn't finish the degree that I started wow so you were smart kid smart's relative because I did a lot of stupid things in my life okay your book smart how about that and I do more well that's what alcohol does to your kills off 24 that's what it all started going downhill right some people some people say alcohol kills brain cells but I always looked at it that it kills the weaker brain cells to give the stronger brain cells more room maybe the stupid brain cells kind of took over so so and you mentioned going to the secret servers and you applied for DEA why on secret servers when I decided I was gonna do something in the government I initially was gonna go down to the army recruiter and enlist I didn't know how anything worked I had like no guidance right my my parents were immigrants here and they didn't know anything they were just proud of me for no matter what I did and a lot of people were like yeah you have a degree apply to OCS apply to the FBI DEA custom secret service and I was like writing it down I'm a guest right and I applied to everything and service scoop me up from the time that I applied for about five or six months I had a job wow well I know why DEA never is moving that fast yeah as uh I was gonna throw out a name but there was a DEA guy that I still remember to this day and he was work putting me through the recruiting probably like me he wanted me he wanted me uh in the DEA because he thought I was a doofus but I would fit in this was exact words by the way that I was a doofus but you fit in just fine here yeah we've got our share of those that might be one of them what what it was his name do you remember you said you remember mark mojure I know mark mojure good for him and well you know what he saw something in you and that was talent I don't know what it was but he was all he was good to me how long was your secret service academy and where is that academy for the first three months I went down to uh Fletsy in Georgia and there's also there's another academy in artesian New Mexico I kind of missed out on that one apparently to the middle of the desert I've never been there to artesian uh but so for the first three months you do a criminal investigation course down in Fletsy and then for the uh three months you come back up to Beltsville Maryland and then you go through you do all the protection block you do some more investigation stuff and they kind of tee you up to be an agent before you report to your field office do you when you get hired on because I know uniform secret service have his uniform division does do you only apply to be an agent or could you go either way you could do both you could do out well either or uh it used to be and I might be wrong but it used to be that you needed a degree to be an agent uh and not so much to be an officer because the officers were uh a lot of them are just coming right out of school um but I don't think that's the case anymore they'll take experience we have a lot of vets that come back uh and they still like the degree because they want life experience uh like if you if you see the secret service now and every time there's misconduct in the media from somebody and it's both officers agents and administrative people uh they're trying to just mitigate that by hiring people that have more life experience and they're trying to do and they are they're migrating to a system where they're trying to get people that they try to mitigate those things because it's like uh we have the things that we do operationally that are difficult enough and when we have successes and failures and like not to get into everybody knows which they are you can just look at the news the last few years but then you have the misconduct side that's like we can't defend the indefensible after a certain point right like you can't defend the indefensible and uh they're trying to mitigate that also so it's like on two fronts fix the operational side which they are these services great I don't want I'm not bad mouth in the service in that regard that these kids do a phenomenal job uh but then you have this misconduct side and this is this is part of the old it's an issue not just for the secret service that there's agencies everywhere that do it but we're so close to the most powerful seat in the world that it's amplified times of million when we do something dumb absolutely and ladies and gentlemen there's this john has done multiple other interviews where this has been discussed ad nauseam I'm not going to spend any time on that today because there's so many other things we want to find out about john here but if you're interested go just google john constantine us secret service and you'll see all the different programs that he's been interviewed on and john what so for you what was the hardest part of of becoming an agent with the secret service there's a culture shock for me uh again I came in I grew up in New Jersey and stayed in New Jersey and barely traveled before this shop and uh I didn't know what I didn't know then New Jersey New York was like the epic center of the world for me and uh when I went into the service I was witness to a lot of things uh honestly a lot of great things that I didn't know existed a lot was in travel all right my first trip ever I went to Missouri and if there was a it was like a tornado just hit so it was like a disaster stop so I got to see it was like the whole side of the street was destroyed by a tornado and I'm standing in the rain in the middle of the street uh running a radio and then we went jump from there to new Mexico to Santa Fe and spent I don't know how many days at this like resort golf course so it was like a tale of two cities right there on my first trip ever and I was right away I I like uh oh right like I don't know what I like what have I done in a good way right in a good way and uh and then there's also the things that you just heard about that I never really witnessed until uh I was in the service and and uh not just from within the service but externally and a lot of it is cultural a lot of it is is things that I wish some of it didn't exist uh and then you have all the the stuff I talk about in the book and talking about like the clicks and the and all that stuff and that was a giant culture shock too it wasn't something that I was ready for well and and based on what I read in your book a lot of lack of leadership people and leadership positions that were not leaders but that's not just the secret service that's pretty much any job description in any business, not just government. - Most people are great, but it's the few that aren't that stand out, right? Because in a job like the Secret Service, you measure wins and losses by nobody got hurt. So it's like you're not, it's not like, oh, this guy had 30 arrests and this guy had 20 arrests, this guy produced more. That might be the case for investigations. So a little bit of politics, internal politics comes into play sometimes when people are trying to advance their careers and that affects leadership, that affects all that stuff. - When you came out of the academy, what was your first assignment and did you have any choice in that assignment? - They told me I was gonna go to Newark, New Jersey, again, New Jersey, Detroit or Tampa. And they said, most likely you're gonna go to Detroit. And I was like, all right, there it is. Right, like the culture shock, culture shock. Now, stayed in New Jersey, Newark. - And what would you, you know, - 20 minutes drive. - 20 minutes drive to the office. - Very nice. - What do they have you doing? Do you go into credit card fraud or do you go into protection? - So right away when I got there, they put me in an investigative squad. So I did everything from fraud-based stuff counterfeit but also I did protection. And my first special agent in charge told me that our investigations are just when we have a break between protection assignments. So when we're not traveling, we come back and we're looking for to do all this stuff. And I kind of fell into a money laundering task force and that kind of blew up and we did some good work there. - What, in your opinion, what type of personality should never become a secret service agent? - So many different personalities. I think that going into federal law enforcement, law enforcement in general, I'd say federal law enforcement because that's my experience. But I work through the nature of what I did with so many departments, both city, state, municipal, federal overseas and internationally. And it's kind of like what you bring with you. If you step in and you have a giant ego, when we talk about it, I talk about it a lot in my book. It's the book is all about egos. That's going to, one of two things is gonna happen. It's either gonna be amplified and it's gonna start to, it gets in your head and you're gonna become yourself importance is gonna grow and become greater than it is. Or you're gonna be humbled quickly and you stay humble, that's the key to all of those is to stay humble and remember where you came from as you're dealing with everything and everybody as you're traversing through your career. But the bigger the ego, the more that you have to prove to people around you, the more that we talk about, I talk about our self-esteem instead of our self-worth, you're trying to, I define self-esteem as what everybody thinks of you, okay? Like, it's esteem is something that can be good but it's what you think other people see you as. It's dangerous. If especially if you have an unhealthy ego, your self-worth is what you really think about you. And only you can measure that. There's nobody that can look at you and be like, "Oh, that guy has high self-worth." We can kind of guess, but we don't know. But your self-esteem, we know where you're constantly chasing the next thing. And your decisions are creative. So if you have an unhealthy ego and you're chasing that self-esteem and you enter into federal law enforcement, think about the secret service, I stand next to the president. You think that doesn't get in my head. And if I have an unhealthy ego, that just gets worse and worse and worse. It's like the super soldier serum in Captain America, right? The red skull toolkit turned into that guy. Captain America took it turned into that guy, right? I am a nerd, too, right? So you were just going to. That's okay. And I know listeners can't see me as you're speaking, but I'm just shaking my head off my shoulders 'cause I'm in so much agreement with the things that you're saying. There's an old saying here in the South that if you have to teach your own horn, it's probably not worth tuning, which is all about self-esteem. A lot of people, I made it up to, you know, I was a special agent in charge with the DEA before I retired. It's a title. It doesn't make you any more important than anybody else. You have different responsibilities. And one of those responsibilities is to take care of your people. The one of the opening chapters of your book, I read about your first experience with the guy who thought he was all that in the bag of chips. I'm just thinking, holy cow. I just make you want to smack him in the mouth and turn around and go find another job, but you didn't thank goodness. - I thought that's the way it was. That's the way it was. And you guys could read the book, but just they were things where I couldn't work out in the gym with a special agent in charge who's working out in the gym. It's his gym. I didn't know that. I got in trouble for that. You can't walk past his open door. It's if I had to go past his door, I had to go the long way around the office. Couldn't do that. Couldn't talk to him first. He had to address you first. I just thought that's the way it was. I'm like, wow, government's weird. - Well, you know what, we had people like that too. That's not just a secret service. But so I want to get into more about this counter-assault team 'cause this is a very highly sought after. I mean, that's one of the most elite units that you can join. If not the most elite unit, you can join in the secret service, is that right? - It's one of the few places where you have to enter into a selection process, be selected, and then still potentially be washed out as you're going through the school. So there are a lot of checks and balances there, and they're only making it a better program every day that, whereas we're having this conversation. - Excellent, that's good to hear. And you did it for roughly 15 years. So can you explain to us what the CAT team is to those of us who think, well, your secret service agent, you guys all do the same thing. You just run alongside the cars there and protect presidents. - Yeah, I don't run next to any cars. (laughing) - I'm good. - So I had a non-traditional career. After a few years, I tried out, and I made it onto the counter-assault team. And what the counter-assault team is, is we're assultors of assultors, okay? And I'd say that, it's funny when you say it, but if anybody tries to hurt our people, our job is to assault them. And with that comes, there's a lot of tactics and planning and logistics and leadership and all these things that go into it that make these guys what they are. And right now, these guys are better than they've ever been just from my continuous conversations with everybody. I was like a dinosaur there. I was there for a long time. And a lot of people that will go to the counter-assault team and after about three years, maybe four years, they'll go to one of the details, President or Vice President, those are the main two. I didn't do that. So the normal career of a guy, counter-assault team is about three years normal. This is normal. And I was there forever. And I had a little stint where I was an instructor for three years. And then I came back as a team leader and a supervisor for my last five years there. So that's what they do. It's not normal to stay there indefinitely. But right now, there are more people that are more invested into the program than ever before. Which is why the program is growing because the institutional knowledge is expanding all the time because these guys are just staying there and investing into it and making it better. - Makes perfect sense. And I mean, the way you described that, I don't wanna say that you were abnormal, but you said you weren't normal. Sorry. - I was not normal. I definitely wasn't normal. That's how competitive is that selection process? - I don't know what the nutrition rate is now. And it fluctuated during the years. We, it was about going through the selection process. It ranged anywhere from, there was a time where we had one guy finish selection, beginning with maybe like a thousand guys. And then there was a time where we've had 10 guys pass the selection. And then in the school, we've had about 40% graduation rate to about 70% graduation rate. All right, these are just rough numbers I'm throwing out. But you can see how even if you make it through the selection, not necessarily gonna make it through the school because it is, it continued. There are continued gates that you have to get through without getting into the specifics of it. And then the metrics of that are they keep them close. Everybody thinks that they know what they need to do to get through. Some of it's easy, right? Like don't shoot your teammate. That probably would get you thrown out of school. (laughing) But, but all the other stuff, a lot of people don't know. And my advice to anybody that's going through, there's a direct hiring where you can go straight from military law enforcement that has prior tactical experience and go straight into the counter assault team. Or at least go straight to the selection. And. my advice to you if you're going to do that is just make it to lunch and once you make it to lunch, make it to dinner and just follow instructions. And if you do that, there's a high probability you'll pass. But the people that project too far out and think that they know what they're doing because they heard if they do this, then they'll do this. Those are the ones that usually get tripped up because they're not thinking about the task. Yeah. >> The winning never sounded so good. What would you do if you won big at Crown Coins Casino, real people win real prizes every single day? >> Hi, this is Michael from Georgia, I won 40K and finally renovated my home. Crowncoins.com, that's C-R-O-W-N coins.com, no purchase needed. Code valve for new users on void were prohibited by law. >> Ready to level up your day, then join me and my friends at loonstarkacino.com, that's L-O-N-E-S-T-A-R Casino, where you can experience the thrill of Las Vegas. No matter where you are, loonstarkacino.com is an absolutely free to play social casino with thousands of games, daily bonuses, free spins, and jackpots that pop like fireworks. 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They wanted people that had never held a gun before so they didn't have to untie bad habits that you learn in other occupations. Let me ask you what makes, I don't know, someone successful on the CAT team. >> Your ability, so when I was an instructor, the things that I love to see was trainability. Are you trainable? With that comes a lot of humility. With that comes a lot of, I don't care what you did before. We've sent Green Berets home and we've passed guys that worked in the food service industry. I'm talking extreme, just to make a point. Usually the people who have prior tactical experience do well because they can handle stress, which is the second thing, you're able to handle stress and problem solve. What the CAT guys are really good at is, let me say it without cursing, is pulling crap out of their butt, right? Like basically being resolute and being flexible to adapt to almost any situation. And I did a podcast, somebody asked me what they were not. And I said the CAT, counter assault team is not special forces, they're not special forces guys, they're not naval special warfare, they're not a SWAT team. They're something entirely different. And it's like, well, what are they then? And I told you the definition before, counter assault team guys become whatever the service needs us to become. And then if it's if they need us to dress a certain way to do certain things, that that's what we're going to do, name, we'll get the job done, which is to protect the people that we're assigned to protect. So it's fair to say that as a CAT member, you have to be very fluid given the situation and you need to evaluate, adapt, and overcome, does that kind of describe what you guys do? That's right. And then for me, and I would say it all the time, the motto for my team when I was a team leader, and one of the matters I've reused was who you are to be felt not seen, you will be felt first before they see you. And that that increased the lethality, that increased the ability to solve our problems and the ability for us to maneuver freely around people. Sometimes you couldn't help it, right? Because the cameras everywhere, right, those journals everywhere, let a lot of times nobody knew we were there, which is the way I like it. And one thing I failed to mention, ladies and gentlemen, I told you about his book, Stair Wales, and I'm sorry, Hallways and Stair Wales, is when he's describing things in his book, and it's almost like a psychological review type book, and to a certain degree, somewhat like a textbook, but he applies real life situations that he's experienced, or people that he knows has experienced to the situations. And I'm a visual learner. If you, you know, you throw those scenarios in there, it just helps me keep on track and visualize exactly what you're talking about. There he does discuss in there some of the training scenarios that they go through, not so much the scenarios, but how people react to them. I mean, I remember the story that you tell in there about Joe when he's boxing, or I think it was the pugal sticks that you guys had. And I'm not going to tell you the story, ladies and gentlemen, because you can read the book for yourself and find out, but a true story of motivation, of somebody never giving up during the fight and after the fight. Just cause the fight's over, and you may have consequences as a result of that fight. Never give up. Man, I mean, he's just an inspirational guy to read that story. One of my favorite kids ever, I used tabs to mark things in the book as I'm reading it and Joe got a tab. As he deserves one, as he deserves one, I, for those, for those people that aren't going to read the book, Joe is somebody that no matter what happened, never quit in his life, and he fought for his life, so thank you for that, but that's for Joe out there if you're listening. Absolutely. I had a partner in DEA, Kevin Stevens, who we got in a little shoot out there in Miami one day, and he came and got hit twice, and with 45 caliber slugs too, in his right arm, that would have disabled most people. He took him a year about eight operations to get over it, came back, finished out his career, and he's still a healthy, I started to say young man, but he's older than me, so I know he's not young. But those are the motivational people that we run into, and we have the distinct pleasure and opportunity to work with, and Joe is in that realm there. When you joined the Secret Service, did you have plans to go into a leadership role? No, I had plans just to make it to the end of the day, so every day. Yeah, I didn't know what I was. I knew when I was a young agent after I graduated and I was sworn, I got my badge, I got my gun. I don't know what I was doing. I don't know how to do it, and I think a little bit of me growing into my leadership role was, you read the chapter, if you want to live with wolves, you have to howl like wolves. That's a great, I love saying that it's an old Russian proverb, I think it's Russian, maybe it's Persian. Anyway, it's not for the United States, and it's, at some point I saw things that I didn't like, and my capabilities weren't what they were, and all I had to go back on was when I wrestled. It was really like, when I was young, my first life, high school, and before, and kind of in college, that's all it was, and I wasn't accomplished by any means. I wasn't like anything special, but everything that I did was to that, and I wanted to be as perfect as I could in it, which there is no such thing as perfect, and I didn't feel like I was, and I had to make a choice whether it's to accept, and it's not from everybody, but at least culturally, at least certain things I didn't like, and in order to be a leader, you have to, and I say, this is paramount, all the leaders out there, you have to innovate, you have to innovate, and move forward at a pace where you're keeping up in the secret services case, you are keeping up, and the head of the competition, which is people that are trying to kill us, and the innovation there, and this is my recommendation to anybody that's in a leadership role, is you stay ahead of the competition, and that's what I wanted to do, and as I did that, I was immature in the beginning, and I made a lot of mistakes and I argued with a lot of people, but in doing that, I learned a lot about myself, and I learned a lot about what's important, and then you develop your ethos, you develop what you believe in, and for those of you that have issues, trying to come up with an ethos, you just start with what's right and wrong, and then you can build it afterwards. You can't just jump into the step 10 without step 1, and as you grow into that, and you keep at it, people will recognize you for being a good individual, which is what the book is about, a good individual person, and if we build strong people, we'll have strong leaders. That follow, and Steve, I say this, I'm going to say it again, people are going to roll to summarize the mission of the state of California. what you're doing has to come first. This is everything that you're doing is for that mission. It has to be the people that work with you and for you as a leader come second. But right underneath, it's close. This is Pete Labour's book, The Mission, The Men, and Me. And Me is last, it's like down here somewhere, like not even close. The mission and the men are up here and you're innovating to that. I got to make the mission stronger what our goal is and I got to make the men better to support the mission. And I got to make me better and make sure that they respect me and they're not going to step on me or I could turn around and find people that can help them accomplish these. And if you have that mindset, this is what I believe this wholeheartedly, that's a great book, Pete Labour is an ex-Delta Force guy, Mission, The Men, and Me. And I steal it all the time. I don't know him, but he's just going to, he's like, I said that all the time, right? But yeah, it's from your book. But it's I grew into that belief system. And everything that I did was for that. And I would have to make a choice. And sometimes these two are interchangeable, right? Sometimes the bosses will say, we're going to do this. And it's like, well, no, it's not impacting the mission. So my guys don't have to, they're not expendable assets where we're just going to throw them into the walls. So we're not doing it this time. And they just look at me and be like, but this is what I want. I'm like, I think you're doing the meat part of it, right? Because this is like affecting you somehow, but it doesn't affect the mission and you're impacting my guys negatively. We're not doing it. And it was easy for me to make these decisions that also out people that were the wolves, the people that only cared about themselves. Yeah, that makes life so much more difficult. And you mentioned that you can never reach perfection, but there's certainly nothing wrong with continuing to learn and strive to reach that level. You should never stop. Exactly. Exactly. I'll tell you what I agreed with everything I read in your book. I did not finish it completely. I think I'm missing the last few chapters there, but the majority of it, so far that I've read is fantastic. I appreciate that. No, no, no, we're going to talk about it more as we go here. But now you mentioned what we're going to talk about. For instance, first you serve under four presidential administrations operationally. So as a cat, as a kind of a soul team guy, I started on Bush and I ended on Biden. I was in a cat guy for when Trump started and then I retired a couple months after he took office the second time, second Trump. And Bush was second Bush, right? George W. George W. Let me just ask some questions about that. How does the different presidents now have different personalities? How does that affect your security planning? Do they get say so? What we do doesn't change. How we do it from a counter assault team, but I'm going to talk about the secret service. And then you can ask me specific questions about cat. What the secret service does doesn't change. It's adapting to their schedules that changes. So, and I tell the story, Bush would go over to the, he'd come down to the residence and go over to the West Wing like 536 o'clock in the morning. And we do like a shift change early in the morning, right before that, maybe 30 minutes before that. And it, you have to, there's things that we have to do different than when Obama was there, he'd go over 930, 10 o'clock, right? I'm doing averages. Everything is a little bit. And so, when you got, get there, the residence was, was where he was for the majority of the time. And then we'd have a shift change in a few hours later. And those are different. And then when Biden took office, it was different. And then when Trump took office, it was different. Or the other way around Trump first and then Biden. And it's not what we do. It's how we do it around their schedules. Obama would go to Chicago and Hyde Park as a residence was. And Hawaii, or during the holidays, he would go out to Hawaii. Those pose different challenges. Then Bush, we would go down to Crawford. And that poses an entirely different challenge. And in Hyde Park, it's still Chicago. And I remember hearing gunfire every now and then. I wasn't near us, but it was on the periphery. And then in Crawford, it was pitch black at night. And then I remember there would say, hey, look out for the Puma or the Panther or whatever it was. And I was like, what are you talking about? My shoes? It was the first time a city boy, remember? I grew up in New Jersey. So they're telling me to look out for this thing. And I remember my first trip ever. They were like, look out for, I don't recall if I said Puma or Panther. And I was like, where are we? What are we doing here? Where's my night vision? Let me talk about my night vision on just to make sure. Absolutely. Of those four presidential administrations, which one presented the greatest logistical challenges for you guys? They're all logistical challenges. And they're all different logistical challenges, but they're all difficult. So I can't answer that because I believe that again, they all present the footprint that we gave all of them in the locations that we have to go to presented all different challenges. And it became easier the longer the administration went on. So Obama towards the end of his second term was easier because we were accustomed to it. So the logistics were easier to do. So early on as were the most of the problems occur. Yeah, kind of again, it's like a new marriage getting used to each other, right? Yeah, right. How often does the protectee, and in this case the president, do they ever know the full extent of the threats against them? Are they briefed on that? Yeah, I think they're unless it's some kid in his mom's basement that said in threats, like all the something severe that's legitimate, they're probably not probably I'm trying not to speak out of terms, be read in on it. What happens when a president wants to do something that you security professionals strongly oppose who wins? Well, they listen. And it's very, very rare that they're going to do something that they want. And a lot of it is there's so much logistics and planning that goes out. So pretty much everything that if there's a failure, and it's like these are like the Butler type incidents, if there's a failure, it's something that we should have been able to do our job. It didn't because anything before then is like, I want to walk down the street in Fallujah by myself. It's like, I'm sorry, you're not going to do that. You're not going to make it to the end of the block, all right? And he'll listen. But if it's anything else that we should be able to mitigate, we just do our job. And that's that's where the difficulty and I say before I left, and I called them kids, because I call myself calling somebody's son one day. And I came home and I was just like a mess. I was like, oh my god, how old am I? But before I left these these kids, these kids do a fantastic job. And I can't stress that enough because everybody looks at the failures. But I've said it on all the other podcasts, and I say it all the time, the tens and thousands of missions, tens of thousands, not like a thousand, tens of thousands since Butler that they've done. And there's been a lot of times that they've stopped people from doing something catastrophic before it happens. And you don't know about it. You only know about the things that you know. And it's, and I'll say the recent one where the plane change, the whole that whole situation in Turkey, the secret service did, it was flawlessly executed where they snuck him on through a different plane. And somebody out of that that whole operation, which is a felony. And the service did its job and people are still angry, right? And that's that's the that's where you're not going to win no matter what. And it's like they did a great they did an excellent job. And I've been part of a lot of those. It's funny because when that came on TV and my wife got blessed because she let's me rant and rave and spout off when I see things I don't like. And I'm looking at that and and we're discussing. And I'm like, they should never report things like that. Even if the media saw it, that should never be reported. Because whether you like the president or not, that's the leader of our country. And he sits in an office that's one of the most powerful offices in the world. And I know the director. And I haven't spoken to him about this. I guarantee you his blood pressure was through the roof that day. And and it's it's because those things not only do you endanger the president. And I don't know who leaked it yet. There's all a bunch of rumors. I don't believe I believe all of them in none of them because I don't know if the situation is. But not only do you endanger the president, you endanger everybody else that's aboard those planes. All the secret service people that are involved, all the military that's involved, the host nation that's involved. The like it just goes on and on. All right. And and it's to leak those things and the person should be found out who it is. And prosecutor is an example, so nobody does it anymore, right? It's just unacceptable. And not to mention there's other journalists on the plane as well. There's other journalists too. And it's like, what are you doing, dude? And I don't know if it was a journalist. I don't know if I'm not accusing it. I don't know who it is. I've heard that rumor too. But so not just with Presidents, but other protectees that dignitaries that come into the country that qualify for Secret Service Protection, what's the closest you ever came to believing that something was about to go terribly wrong? Many times. As many times. It's all the story. You read the story where I had my rifle. I was the, that guy was a suicide bomber and I was trying to shoot him in the head before he got close. And he was resting with a bunch of officers. We were overseas. And it was, it was maybe 15, 20 yards from where I was. And I was in a vehicle. And it's a story that's in the book. And I was tracking him. And I couldn't get a clean because he kept moving. It's difficult to hit a head like a bobby head, right? It's not. But he was what he was. That was terrible. That was probably the worst. And then there's a whole bunch of warnings and indicators that if you're a true professional and you do your job, you can detect these warnings and indicators. If you're, if you just phone it in and are complacent. And it's one of the things that kills me. I said it a million times. The complacency kills. That's, that's a saying that I don't have to say. But it, it, it makes me, it sets me when people are complacent. And that's the other side of it. So there's warnings and indicators that you as the professional and the secret service were, were supposed to lead the, and be the example for security for everybody. So we need to be better about identifying these things. And there are, there's, there's too many incidents where it's like, what are we doing? We have intelligence that we get real time. We've had, I mean, we've had explosives that were found on motorcade routes. That are, our guys found, right? And this is probably 20 years ago. So I could just mention it, but it was legitimate operations overseas. There's things that we get, when we go to the embassies that they tell us. So it's real time. There's, there's people identified with weapons real time. So those warnings, the warnings and indicators are there. And most of the time, you can look in the media for the times it wasn't, they are mitigated. So I couldn't tell you one or the other that this one was worse than the other. Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever had a protectee that surprised you with extraordinary kindness? Yeah. That'll trump. Like, he never failed to stop. And they all stop. And I'm not, I'm not demeaning any of the other ones. But he, there's a counter assault team. I'm not next to him where he knows my name. You know, no, my name. He knows, you know, he's no idea who I was, but he stopped to talk to me so many times. And, uh, and of course, people are going to say, well, what about this guy? Or you're just saying that because, because of this reason, like, that's what he generally, he, I was around him a lot. I traveled with him a lot. And I was in some of these high profile visits that he did in his first term. I was always around there. That was when I was a team leader. So I was close to all the supervisors. I would have to go talk to the supervisors and I'm dressed in tactical, full tactical gear. And he would stop and usually joke around. I have a picture here. I'm pointing to it right here. And this is Donald Trump and the vice president. And right underneath, there's a stairwell. You can't see it because the candy's in the way. There's a Air Force candies. I'm right underneath the stairwell. And he's right above here. Right. And he was going up. This is, uh, we went to see a SpaceX launch. And he stopped and talked to me and we were, he was just thanking me and he's good to see me because he knows my face and, and he said some things that only somebody who paid attention and remembered me from the last time would say. And he was always kind. And I'm affectionate with him. I like, I'll make fun of him because I'll mimic him and I'll just like make fun of him or certain things. But to do things like that, you remember the people and there's, there were, there were other people that we protected to a presidency. I mean, they all appreciate you. He kind of, you know, when you visit somebody's house and they overdo it with everything, he kind of would would make sure that we were taking care of, uh, Bush, Laura Bush was like that. Not that he wasn't, but Laura Bush came out and she would try to give the agents hot chocolate. Right. She was, she was upset for them if they were in the cold too long. Some of the other first ladies also, they'd stop and they just appreciate us to death, especially when we were protecting their children. Right. Like they, that's like a big, like they'll stop and I remember, uh, I remember one time is, uh, is one of the first ladies. She came around the corner and she sees the counter assault team. She turns to the agents that are wearing the suits and she's like, all right guys, they got it. We're good, right? This is like, thank you guys for everything you do. And, uh, they got so mad at us and we didn't even do anything. We're just standing there, right? We're just standing there with a full tactical gear and they're just mad at us for existing. And it's like, I can't win. So that's, that's the camaraderie within law enforcement. Yeah, it's, it's great. What's, what's the loneliest part of being on one of these protection details? The bigger the detail, uh, I don't say it's lonely because we, we travel with so many people. I was always with my team. And, uh, to this day, they're like my family before, before we got on, uh, one of the guys is calling me up, showing me pictures of his newborn. And we always end the conversation, you know, love you, man. And it's for family for life. We travel overseas together. There's just some stories in the book where we may or may not have broken things and nobody knew who did it. Um, but it comes lonely after you're done. After you're done and off those major details, you have that separation of identity where you're not around all your friends anymore. All right, I can just walk down the hall and there's four of my friends are down there somewhere. And we always travel together, protect each other when we're overseas, hang out together, go to dinner together. The sadness came afterwards, loneliness, or when I was a team leader, it was a little lonely because you have to be a leader to them. You can't hang out with them anymore. You can't, you can't be their friend and their leader. There it has to be, you could do both, but it's after you earn their trust and respect. Well, spoken. Well said. Which country worried you the most that you've visited? Worried me the most. I got a question, which was my favorite country to visit, but this was, this is different. There's a lot of countries. So for different reasons. So I say for physical threats, if we were in Africa and there we had intelligence, there's a lot of organizations in Africa that like to do harm to Americans. When I took, it's like sometimes we assigned to former president. So former Bush, Bush 43, when he will go to Africa, because he did a lot of charity aids work and things like that, when he was in office and continued to do so afterwards, we'd go with him and we'd receive intelligence. And that was more of a threat of a physical nature. If somebody's going to try to shoot us, blow us up, things like that. Going to Asia, right? Russia plays, places like that. Ukraine right before the war. And this is, I'm talking about years before the war because it was different than you have a counter intelligence threats. And now we're talking about threats of you can potentially be compromised. And those exist. And those are real threats that can do far more damage to the United States. And you, on the long term, then obviously the short term of somebody trying to try to do harm to you physically. And then there's both. Some places are both. And it all depended on where we were going, what we were going to do. Some places, the threats were just, if we drink the water or eat the food, you may die. So, and then everything else is fine, but just like we have to figure out how we're going to drink water and shower ourselves. So there's also that. Wow. What was the strangest foreign protective a summit that you participated in. Was that in Africa also? And again, it's strange for different reasons, but like I'll tell you in Africa story we landed we were in Uganda at one time. And we landed and they gave us a picture of a beetle and the beetle was like this big. It was just a picture. It was red. It was awesome. It had the big pictures on it. And they said, if this thing lands on you, don't squash it. Just shoe it off. Won't bite you. And this is like right off the car plane. I just was like brand new agent, right? So I go to my first overseas trips. We off the car plane. Like what are we doing because it's like it what and why? Why? Why don't we because the inside of it potentially the innards of it. Burn your skin and corrode your skin and you can get an infection and it's going to cause your skin to fall off and all that stuff. Like why are we here? This is like this is like the first thing I go right off. It's like you want to scare the crap out of me coming from the city where the other thing I know is rats the size of small dogs. And and it started like that. And then there's like I'm learning about Edia mean and like I had a hydroelectric plant and how he's throw people in the river. And I was like this really happened here. And they're talking about the snake zoo that we went to. There's a zoo is all snakes and there was like cobras and pit fipers and in a whole bunch of things. And I learned the difference between pythons or only South American bow constrictors, which is Africa right like the guys trying to teach us. And one of the guys asked the question, where did you get these snakes? And he's like, well, the pit viper is from the field over there. The parking lot is where I got right. He's like and we're like, oh, we need to leave right. We need to go. So this is like this is like one of my first like trips ever. And I'm just like smiling ear to ear because it's like, I can't believe this is real. Right. What are we going to do? I was like, I don't know. Get bit by his snake. Right. I'm definitely afraid of things, but I would have been the one leading the pack running out of there. It was a great time. It was great. Those are my favorite trips. By the way, looking back on it, those are all my favorite trips. That's great. That's great. That's not John. We've been going for about an hour now. So ladies and gentlemen, John's like other guests has agreed to come back tomorrow for part two of this episode. Getting an inside look at the counter assault team, which I'm going to guess most of you have never heard of with the US Secret Service. We're hearing some funny stories, but you're hearing reality as well. We're going to talk more about his book tomorrow because that's very instrumental in what he's doing now. So John, thank you for joining us today. We're looking forward to having you back tomorrow. I appreciate it. I'll see you then. All right, and everybody, thank you so much for continuing to support the show here. Couldn't do any of this without you. You know, love you guys. So thank you for joining us until tomorrow. Stay safe out there. God bless. [Music] [Music] Ready to level up your day. Then join me and my friends at loonstarkaceno.com. That's L-O-N-E-S-T-A-R casino, where you can experience the thrill of Las Vegas. No matter where you are, loonstarkaceno.com is an absolutely free to play social casino with thousands of games, daily bonuses, free spins, and jackpots that pop like fireworks. Hit pause on life and hit play on loonstarkaceno.com. 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